A absolutle killer of a closing track. Personally I think you would be straining to find a better closing track to any album.
To me a song about being afraid to aspire to your greatest potential. The higher you aim the greater the risk of failure, understanding that consequence (s)he restricts themselves to the point of being unaware, shallow and ignorent.
An absolutely exceptional album, diverse, extremely technical and complex with each song having a myriad of influence that bubble to the surface. It is a monster of an album with a ravenous appetite to match.
Ants of the sky is the centre piece of the album, and illustrates perfectly the diversity that this album has created. Whether it be middle eastern or jazz influences or in the case of this song, towards the end, country music (a hoedown, complete with clinking bottles and a good ‘ol time in the background) you find no matter how far they divert, in the end they always return to the central metal sound of the track.
“I wrote this song in an airport. When I listen to music on my headphones, I like to watch the world work and think about what every single person is doing that day. This song is about each one of us creating our own itinerary and flying through our life on one big vacation. Trying to find happiness, perfection, and love.
It’s a “bloody, bumpy” road for most, and others it’s a wonderful journey. We fly away from our problems and towards our solutions (at least what we think are our solutions). We are the ants of the sky…aka the walking dead.”
Many have touted this latest offering from Grails as their darkest and heaviest album to date. Stretching out with smokey psychedelic rock, smoldering middle eastern melodies and experimenting with some lounge-bound cosmic jazz, it is definitely their most diverse and edgy album.
While I dont feel like this their best work to date and it is probably their least consistent album there still are a lot of great moments to be had for the listener.
Predestination Blues is just the first track off the album that appealed to me.
I’m not going to list a single track on this post because my opinion is that this album should be listened to in its entirety. It’s only 35min long and wont take much out of your day but will give so much back in return.
This is the second album from Ulver, the masters of change and evolution. Over there sprawling career they have strove to reinvent themselves with every album. From Black Metal they have ventured into electronic, experimental, folk, atmospheric, ambient, and jazz.
Kveldssanger is a folk album but in essence it still retains some of the black metal atmosphere from their previous album Bergtatt. It is a beautiful, uplifting, peaceful piece of work. Taking the roots of Norwegian Folk to another level with flowing streams of acoustic melodies and guitars laid bare. Coming together with some wonderful vocal harmonies and moments of flutes and wind, all these elements amble together to form a magnificent river of harmony.
Tranquil in its beginnings, Kveldssanger is an album that will make you want to get away from it all, to absorb your surroundings and reflect and at the very least it will make you smile.
Heavy and tight, Benea Reach have created an album full of thick, impenetrable sounds. Like a huge wave of metal that looms over you, casting your entire body and mind in shadow and threatening to crush your entire being into a thousand pieces.
With there Mushuggah trademark tempo’s and rythmic playing, Benea Reach construct the programmed sound of a mechanized hammer’s pounding away at the fabric of conventional thought.
Lionize was the first track that stood out for me, so if you want some fibre in your diet I recommend it.
This is an absolutely massive album. Epic and sprawling it is composed of just five, ten minute plus tracks. The songs themselves flow smoothly from melodic, acoustic, almost medieval renaissance elements into the brutal, progressive death metal style.
Simplified, Nectar is about not being able to let lost love go. Unable to forget his/her dead lover the song describes the main character seeing their lost love in their dreams and at the very end of the song even indicates that the dead lover is seen while awake.
Plain and Simple its a reflection on what it is like to lose love.
Waking this morning with a slightly shriveled, dehydrated brain rattling around in my vast expanse of a skull, I decided I needed a little melody, a little ambiance, a little atmospheric conditioning before I actually got going. So while I showered and tried to wash away last nights beers from my behind my eyes I was embraced with the seductive melodies from this little known band.
Poetic, expansive, opaque sounds filled my bathroom combined with some absolutely mesmerizing vocals. “Knife” is one of my favorite tracks off the album, it deals with backstabbing, cheating and pretty much stringing somebody along.
…Alternative, Progressive Rock/Metal from Californ-i-a…
This album is the one that probably changed the whole way that I listened to music. Blew me away from the first listen and it still holds up well today.
There are many arguments out there about what the lyrics of this track fully mean. One theory is that its about the evolution of the human species, that we will develop two extra chromosomes for a total of forty six and two (the two being the sex chromosomes). Throw a little Jungian and Melchizedek theory into the mix as well and the song is supposedly self explanatory.
Personally I dont think its that simple. I agree its about evolution, but more the evolution of thought and eventually society. Ther moving of one conciousness to another, higher consciousness. The evolution of chromosomes from 46 to 48 I believe is to be taken not literally but metaphorically.
In the song Maynard sings about looking into the shadows and discovering who he really is. Also he sings the line “listen to my muscle memories” referring to the fact that the cells hold the memory for life to construct itself again and again in an orderly and efficient manner. Learning from the past and moving up into the higher level of consciousness.
But in the end an astounding song that really gets you thinking, which I beleieve is what Tool has intended all along. Remember believe in nothing, beliefs are crippling to the mind. Explore anything and everything.
…The third studio album from these post-punk/indie New Yorkers…
Personally I’m not the biggest fan of Interpol, I think there are definetly better bands out there. For example ’The National’, to me they have a richer sound which I like. But to say that, this album is slowly growing on me over time and I kept singing this song in my head all yesterday afternoon.
To me this song just bleed’s festering, sexual frustration. To me its the control that immorality, wickedness, lust has over us all in some little way or big ways.
