video review: 'so it goes' by ratking

Man, this one took a lot of work to really unpack, but I'm glad I put in the work for it.

Okay, let's round out this week of hip-hop with RetroHash from Asher Roth, and then I'll deal with Neon Trees and Ronnie Dunn. Stay tuned!

album review: 'so it goes' by ratking

How much does it matter where you're from in music?

Because in some genres, nobody will care one way or another - as long as the music is good, most heavy metal or pop or indie acts couldn't care less which city or town from whence you came. But when it comes to music that not only just demands a degree of authenticity, but also harkens back to the community at large, location starts to matter. You see this a lot in country music, where regionalism across the United States and Canada plays a bit of a factor in defining the referenced landmarks and delivering a specific appeal. That's one reason why country acts love to reference rural tropes in their music: whether it's building a sense of community or just affirming the fact they came from that sort of upbringing, it's a nationalist spirit in microcosm.

And yet in one of many bizarre similarities between country and hip-hop, rap music does a lot of the same. Thankfully we've moved past the eras of region conflicts between west and east coast, but there's still plenty of references and callbacks to the places where these artists came, to frame their stories, add richer detail and context, and give their music a definite sense of place. Both country and hip-hop have a sense of richer history about them, and defining one's place with respect to that history is a major part of some rappers' careers.

So when I started to look at Ratking, an upstart alternative hip-hop duo from New York known for chaotic and noisy production in the vein of acts like Death Grips and Clipping and with a reportedly strong punk sensibility, I was curious in spite of my own issues with this particular brand of noise rap. After all, the Beastie Boys were New York rappers who had inclinations towards punk, and they were some of the most influential and awesome acts to ever rock the music world, so it made a certain amount of sense for me to at least get a familiarity with this sort of music. So I picked up So It Goes and gave it a few spins - how did it go?

video review: 'the new classic' by iggy azalea

Well, this was definitely a welcome surprise. Fun stuff.

Next up... hmm, continue with hip-hop and deal with Asher Roth, or finally deal with the Neon Trees? Stay tuned and find out!

album review: 'the new classic' by iggy azalea

So do you want to know something that really pisses me off about mainstream radio in the modern era, something that reveals a certain type of systemic sexism that somehow has only gotten worse in the music industry? It's that whenever you have a new, up-in-coming female rapper who has a reputation for being able to spit and deliver potent lyrics, they try to give her a pop or R&B edge or at least that one song that will cross over to mainstream radio because of that pop edge. And as their careers progress, you quickly realize that the radio is going to stick with those pop-friendly songs instead of letting her step up to the microphone with hard-hitting raps, unlike her male counterparts. I mean, outside of Drake, how often have major labels gone up to rappers and said, 'Yeah, you need to be able to sing an R&B ballad or pop tune or you won't get radio play'? Male acts might be asked to dumb down their content - female rappers are asked to change their entire identity.

What, you want evidence? Look at Nicki Minaj, or Kreayshawn, or even to some extent with Angel Haze. Hell, even though Colette Carr had more outright pop appeal, her singles weren't exactly the songs where she was outstripping her male counterparts, which she can easily do. And thus when I saw early buzz suggesting Australian rapper Iggy Azalea was going to be singing for the first time on her debut album The New Classic, I simply shook my head. Of course she was - even though she featured on XXL's list of top rap freshmen in 2012 with Danny Brown, Hopsin, and Macklemore, I expected that with the long-delayed release and troubled production, this wasn't going to be a hard-hitting rap album. Either way, I gave the album a listen: how did it turn out?

video review: 'honest' by future

Ugh, good lord, this album sucked. Glad to get this shit out of my system once and for all.

Okay, Ratking needs to be addressed, and then... well, not sure, we'll see. Stay tuned!

album review: 'honest' by future

I do not understand why Future is famous.

I've said this before about other artists, most notably about 2 Chainz way back when I reviewed his last album, and the fun fact is that I actually came to an answer about that particular rapper: apparently, he's the funny one. Frankly, since my own sense of humour is weird, I guess I can accept that for 2 Chainz, even though his technical skills as a rapper would have had him laughed out of the game only a decade ago.

But with Future, I don't get it, and I'm starting to think I never will. The only reason Future has a career is because his cousin Rico Wade founded Dungeon Family and brought him on - which from a larger point of view blows my mind because this is the music collective that gave us OutKast, Killer Mike, Cee-Lo, Janelle Monae... and then Future. One of these things is not like the other, folks, so let's all give thanks for nepotism! But okay, that's obviously the push that has gotten him success, but why him? He can only barely sing with gratuitous autotune that barely gives him a personality, his rap flow varies between disinterested and embarrassing, his content only manages to paint him as a materialistic, lecherous asshole with none of the charisma that briefly made it excusable from Ludacris or T.I., and he works with terrible producers like Mike Will Made It. I listened to his debut album Pluto, which had five singles that managed to chart, and frankly, I couldn't recommend any of them other than overproduced commercials for the luxury brands he crams into his rhymes. The one thing I'll give Future is that he sounds like nobody else on the radio, but you know that's not always a good thing, right? Just because you stand out somewhat stylistically doesn't mean your lyrical content is worth a damn.

But apparently he scraped up enough goodwill to make a second album titled Honest, which apparently is distinctive because Future proclaimed there would be 'no love songs on this album'. I'm fine with that - Future was never convincing on the love songs anyway - but did that mean his new album was worth a damn anyway?

video review: 'ptsd: post-traumatic stress disorder' by pharoahe monch

Glad to be back - Easter was relaxing, but it's good to get back into routine, and this album was a great way to start.

Next up, not quite sure yet. We'll see!

album review: 'ptsd: post traumatic stress disorder' by pharoahe monch

You know, when Eminem released ‘Rap God’ last year, I wonder how many people saw the underground rapper Pharoahe Monch referenced in the lyrics and either thought, ‘Hey, I wonder who that is’, or ‘I’ve heard the name, but if Eminem referenced him, he must be good, so it can’t hurt to check him out’.

And I’m not too proud to admit that I include myself in the second category. I had heard of Pharoahe Monch’s strange and twisted career before – starting in the underground with the critically acclaimed duo Organized Konfusion with Prince Poetry before releasing his debut instant classic Internal Affairs in 1999… and then vanishing from rap music for a good eight years after a sampling controversy before a comeback and complete shift in style and content with Desire in 2007. I figured that once again, it was a good opportunity to finally acquaint myself with an artist in my backlog that I just hadn’t had time to cover.

And man, it’s a good thing I did, because Pharoahe Monch represents almost everything I love in rap music. A lot of personality and charisma, a taste for eclectic beats and production, an actual sense of humour, and most of all a gift for intelligent and layered wordplay that deserved all of the praise it got.  And with the benefit of that knowledge, I could see traces of his multisyllabic flow and delivery in so many rappers who followed him that it’s startling that he isn’t more famous considering his influence.

But when Pharoahe Monch returned to hip-hop in 2007, he came back with a decidedly different edge, less of the hard-spitting yet deftly intelligent gangsta rap that characterized his debut and more of a conscious political angle. Now in theory, I had no issues with this: of the many rappers who have tackled politics and serious issues in their music, Pharoahe Monch would probably be one of the few who delivered the material with any degree of respectable nuance. But when he released his third album We Are Renegades in 2011, I found myself a little dissatisfied. The political arguments were distinctly disjointed, the wordplay wasn’t quite as tight, the heavier beats and production that moved away from the soul samples often felt like they lacked cohesion, and it all spoke to a lack of singular focus. Sure, the album was still very good and I liked much of the content that he brought up, but I felt his presentation suffered a bit in bringing it to the table. On top of that, the dystopian framing device of the album felt a little silly and hyperbolic to me – not so much bad as lacking in subtlety.

As such, I wasn’t sure what we’d get with Pharoahe Monch’s newest album Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The album did promise a more personal focus – a touch I felt was somewhat missing from We Are Renegades, but given it was marketed as a follow-up to that album, I had no idea what he was planning to do. So I picked up the album and expected the worst – how did it go?

video review: 'the human contradiction' by delain

Well, this was a bit of a disappointment, but eh, it could have been worse.

Next up, I want to talk about Pharaohe Monch's newest album, as it's given me a LOT to talk about. Stay tuned!

album review: 'the human contradiction' by delain

So recently I was watching one of the new React videos from the Fine Bros., specifically the 'YouTubers React to Babymetal'. For those of you who don't know, Babymetal is a band fusing J-pop and heavy metal, amongst other genres, and honestly, they aren't really my thing. But one of the questions the Fine Bros. asked got me thinking: would there be a way to fuse pop and metal in a way that was accessible to the mainstream public? 

Because when we look back through the Billboard Charts, the periods of time when metal has crossed over into mainstream acceptance has been thanks to rock trends of the time - the punk and post-punk movements in the 70s, hair metal in the 80s, and nu-metal and post-grunge in the 90s and 2000s. But if you were looking to skip the conventional definition of rock altogether to fuse metal and conventional pop, how might you do it?

Well in my opinion we already have something of an answer, and that lies in what I'd call the most accessible genre of metal: symphonic metal. Often featuring clean vocals, pretty and upbeat melodies, soaring choruses, this was the method I got into metal and with the commercial success of a band like Evanescence, it's proven to work. 

And if I was looking to answer one of my recent questions of 'how can I get into symphonic music', I now have an answer if you're coming from pop: Delain, the Dutch symphonic metal band formed in 2002 by former Within Temptation keyboardist Martijn Westerholt and who might be without a doubt the most commercially accessible symphonic metal act from a pop landscape I've ever heard. Now that's not a bad thing: I've stressed a number of times pop music is worth defending and a transitory step between the two very different genres isn't a bad thing. However, Delain also strikes me as a band that instead of effectively blending the two genres chose to water down the metal side significantly. The highest praise I can give the band is that lead vocalist Charlotte Wessels is a really good singer with a lot of emotion and range, but the melodic progressions are simplistic, the guitar solos are inexcusably basic, and the production is shallow at best. On top of that, the band often seems to have a painfully high school sensibility to the lyrics, which can make some of the self-esteem and 'social commentary' anthems come across as overwrought and lacking in nuance. And while symphonic metal lyrics are often arch or borderline-irrelevant, here the arch subject matter comes across as a bit pandering to me, and that rubs me the wrong way.

Now let me stress I don't think Delain is a bad band - but in a symphonic metal landscape that has Nightwish, Tarja, Within Temptation, Epica, and others, Delain doesn't really stand out for me. But I figured that I'd give them another chance with their newest album, The Human Contradiction - how was it?

video review: 'the oath' by the oath

The streak of metal reviews continues with this, and it's awesome. Some great riff-based metal, definitely worth a look.

You know, I'll think I'll continue this streak with Delain and continue to ignore Emmure's existence. Stay tuned!

album review: 'the oath' by the oath

Let's talk briefly about simplicity in music.

Now I tend to get a lot of... well, let's call it constructive criticism on my pop reviews saying that, 'Man, it's just pop music, it's not trying to be high art, you're too hard on it!'. And while there are points where that has been true, here's my common rebuttal to that statement: good pop music - indeed, good pop art - can require just as much, if not more talent as any other brand of art. Crafting something that has artistic purpose and can appeal to a wider demographic besides yourself, that isn't easy. And on a similar note, creating something compelling from a decidedly simple formula can be just as difficult. Sure, if you can play a couple chords you can probably make a decent pop song from that foundation, but making that foundation special so it can transcend that simplicity is an entirely different challenge.

So when you move into riff-based punk and hard rock, you might notice some of the compositions of the songs are pretty damn simple when it comes to chords and progressions. And yet through delivery, through songwriting, through presentation and production, you can make something entirely unique. But even putting that aside, there's something to be said for purity, refining a simple approach down into something so visceral and effective. I keep bringing up Andrew W.K., but there's a reason why his album I Get Wet is a near-classic in my books: it takes a simplistic approach to composition, lyrics, and delivery, but it uses that simplicity in creating powerful melodic hooks and pumping everything up to larger than life status. It's a perfect fusion of artistic intent and execution, and it's a reason why simple hard-edged, riff-based rock and metal will never go out of style, in that quest to perfect that visceral thrill.

As such, I was really looking forward to the debut album from the German heavy metal act The Oath, who were already building a reputation for monstrously powerful riffing that called back to the classic years of heavy metal. So I bought the album and prepared myself for a glorious trip back to the past. Did I get it?

video review: 'bang!' by gotthard

Wow, this album was fun. And since I've been listening through the Pharoahe Monch discography in preparation for his new album, I've been awash in great music lately. Times like these I really like this job.

Okay, next up is The Oath. Stay tuned!

album review: 'bang!' by gotthard

I've made no secret of the fact that I have an unironic love of hair metal and hard rock, the sort that was most prevalent throughout the 1980s. Sure, it was dumb, cheesy, and occasionally ridiculously chauvinist, but it was a genre that at least was willing to go over-the-top when it came to instrumental prowess, bombast, and sense of fun to elevate the material, which was a huge redeeming factor for me. And thus, I can appreciate the irony that the hair metal and hard rock I would come to love effectively died out around the time I was born, replaced by a grunge and alternative scene I never really embraced in the same way.

But the fun fact is that Nirvana and Pearl Jam didn't really kill that genre more than the genre simply killed itself through over-saturation and a lot of mediocre bands riding the trend, especially in the tail end of the 80s. And thus in 2008, off of listening to 01011001, the newest magnificent progressive metal project from Ayreon, I decided to check out the band of Steve Lee one of the singers associated with the project.

That band was Gotthard, a Swiss hard rock that started in 1992, a few years after its brand of hard rock was supposed to be dead and yet still managed to sustain a career... and they're one of my favourite bands of all time. No, I'm not kidding, a retro-hard rock act with a terrible pun for a name is one of my favourite bands, and they're also the act I point to when I say this brand of hard rock is worth defending over their decades-long career. Their cover of Bob Dylan's 'Mighty Quinn' has been my ringtone for five years!

So what makes Gotthard worth a damn? Well, in comparison to most hard rock, Gotthard had a melodic focus, which leaned towards killer hooks over displays of sheer instrumental prowess. And while the band had its fair share of cheesy ridiculousness, they also weren't bad songwriters and weren't afraid to take risks with their material or venture into different genres altogether. The combination of those two factors has meant Gotthard has made some killer rock ballads over the years, especially in their mid-period work in the late 90s and early 2000s. However, most people remember Gotthard for their frontman Steve Lee, who honestly might have been one of the best hard rock vocalists in the industry. It wasn't just that he had an impossible range that remained emotionally compelling and expressive, but he made it look easy.

Sadly, Steve Lee passed away in a motorcycle accident in October 2010, and Gotthard brought in a new replacement with Nic Maeder for their 2012 album Firebirth. And while that album is pretty good, it's also decidedly transitory, as Maeder is trying to step into some pretty big shoes and he didn't quite seem to fill them, at least initially. And thus, when I heard they were releasing a new album this year with Bang!, I was excited. Hopefully touring and songwriting with the band had improved their chemistry, and this new incarnation of Gotthard would impress me. So how's the album?

video review: 'here and nowhere else' by cloud nothings

And that was the second album that I had to get out of my system! Whew, that feels good.

Okay, this week we're going headlong into hard rock and metal, because Gotthard, The Oath, Delain, the solo record from Tuomas Holopainen, and hell, I'll even throw Ratking under this umbrella - they all dropped albums and I'm going to cover them. Hell, I might even cover Emmure's new album!

Just kidding, that won't happen. I actually value my time.

album review: 'here and nowhere else' by cloud nothings

It's always a risk when a band makes a choice to go dark.

Because let's face it, while there have been several acts who have made the shift work, it's always jarring for the initial audience and there's the long list of bands whose careers imploded by making a 'dark' album. And depending on the critical or popular acceptance, it can shape the course of bands for better or for much worse.

So when power pop group Cloud Nothings announced they were working with legendary audio engineer Steve Albini and were tackling darker material, some original fans had to been feeling uneasy. This was a band who had been steadily advancing with pretty damn solid power pop that skirted the edges of lo-fi, and the question of whether they'd be capable of delivering the same quality - even with Albini, who worked with The Pixies and Nirvana - had to have been raised.

And yet in 2012, they delivered with Attack On Memory, a goddamn great album that showed the band taking huge steps in a more interesting and dynamic direction with a great melodic focus, solid lyrics, and a concept dedicated to rectifying their fans' preconceived image of the band. And what was better was that the album actually turned into a pretty solid commercial hit on its own, being many people's - including mine - first exposure to the band. And thus when they announced a follow-up without Albini or their former guitarist Joe Boyer, I was curious to see where they'd take their musical direction - would they advance even further or would they backslide?

video review: 'broken crown halo' by lacuna coil

God, this took too long to get out my system. Damn it, I wish this was better.

Okay, Cloud Nothings, then I've got a few more hard rock and metal albums coming up, so stay tuned!

album review: 'broken crown halo' by lacuna coil

I've mentioned in the past I have a complicated relationship with gothic music.

Because despite some of the things I've mentioned in the past, I do like a large chunk of it and a lot of the bands that pioneered the format remain favourites of mine to this day. And hell, even though I never had an angry white boy phase as a teenager, I won't deny that my unironic love for symphonic metal had more than a passing fondness for goth subculture. 

But maybe it's just greater exposure, but I only tend to tolerate gothic music of certain veins in small doses, and I liken it to that friend you idolize on some level for being a badass. Sure, he's cool and dark and edgy and can take you on a wild ride, but in the end that brand of darkness either becomes too depressing or too insufferable to tolerate. It's one of the primary character arcs in Edgar Wright's movie The World's End with Simon Pegg's character, and there are a lot of elements that ring true there. Plus, I'll restate what I normally say about nihilistic artwork: if you don't switch up the formula or innovate with it beyond standard goth cliches, it can get insufferable really fast.

The funny thing is that four albums into goth metal band Lacuna Coil's career and after the star-making double punch of Comalies and Karmacode, they seemed to have a similar revelation. For me growing up, Lacuna Coil was the good version of Evanescence and while they weren't really on the same playing field as Nightwish or Within Temptation, they still had a niche I appreciated. But after four albums of pretty damn solid gothic metal, they flipped the script somewhat with their 2009 album Shallow Life, an album that still had many goth cliches but a more mainstream-accessible focus. Unfortunately, they got this thanks to producer Don Gilmore, who is most famous for working with Linkin Park, Good Charlotte, and Hollywood Undead. And honestly, while I can't say Lacuna Coil delivered any of their best material on either Shallow Life or their 2012 album Dark Adrenaline, I blame Gilmore for why those albums are nowhere near as great as their predecessors, mostly thanks to placing the guitars on the surface in the mix and dampening the melody, and moving the vocal track closer to the front. And look, the lyrics have never been Lacuna Coil's strong point, and by lessening the focus on the melody, the songs got a lot more interchangeable and considerably weaker.

Thus, I was actually enthused when I saw they had ditched Gilmore as a producer for their newest album Broken Crown Halo. And while I wasn't expecting a return to the glory days, I did hope that the band would be able to recover some of their spark. Did they pull it off?

video review: 'z' by sza

Well, this was a bit of a letdown, but I'm glad I got to say my piece anyhow, because there are some great elements on this album that should be examined.

Okay, next up will either be Cloud Nothings or I'll finally have the chance to put Lacuna Coil out of their misery. Stay tuned!

album review: 'z' by sza

A few weeks back when I talked about Young Money, I made the statement that they were probably one of the few rap groups that had a consistent record in launching unique solo careers, at least in terms of chart success and the popular consciousness. Between Lil Wayne, Drake, Nicki Minaj, and to a lesser extent Tyga, Young Money managed to have a lot of commercial success, especially in the past five or six years - and up until very recently, a fair amount of critical success as well.

Well, okay, that might be overstating it, because of the group only Drake has proven to be the consistent critical darling, with increasingly uneven output from his peers, and their label collaboration album Young Money: Rise of An Empire being not exactly stellar - or, you know, good. No, if I want to look for more consistent critical acclaim, I've been looking more towards Top Dawg Entertainment, an independent hip-hop record label that's been getting some serious critical buzz over the last few years, especially after the release of good kid, m.a.a.d city by Kendrick Lamar. In terms of business expertise, I find a lot more to like with Top Dawg, mostly because unlike Young Money, they're working hard on establishing a relatively small stable of solid rappers before recruiting additional talent. And while I'm not the biggest Ab-Soul fan, I've been pretty impressed by the work they've done with Kendrick, Schoolboy Q, and especially Jay Rock.

But earlier this year they announced they were signing two new artists: Isaiah Rashad and SZA, the latter of which is an R&B singer influenced by 80s synthpop and soul. And as the only female artist on Top Dawg at the moment, I was curious how her material would be shaped from that label and I made it a priority to check out her full-length debut Z. How did it turn out?