I'll post about an album here every week (hopefully every wednesday); I'll share a link to the album, the album's genres (as according to RYM), my personal rating out of 10 for the album, some comments about the album, the track that I feel best represents the album as a whole, and my favorite track from the album.
Note that, while most of these will be albums that I like, I may also occasionally post about an album I dislike.
#Spook-O-Lantern's Album of the Week
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Week One: Eidola - Degeneraterra
Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7JiJ3AxREuUbFwnhVwsemH?si=3_l7KJIVRMKywEsn8Z8i9w
Genres: Swancore, Post-Hardcore, Progressive Rock
Personal Rating: 10/10
I'm starting with this album because it is the album that, imo, best represents the genre of "Swancore", a genre that I will likely be posting many albums in the genre of in the future. Swancore, also known as Progressive Post-Hardcore, is a combination of the Post-Hardcore and Progressive Rock genres that was popularized through the band "Dance Gavin Dance"; the genre's name comes from Dance Gavin Dance's guitarist and vocalist Will Swan, who also produced this album and created the Blue Swan Records label that it was released under.
As for the album itself, both its instrumentals and lyrics are complex and well thought out in a way that makes it a fantastic listen. The instrumentals will frequently feature multiple guitar lines stacked on top of each other (as is natural when your band has three guitarists), but at no point do they feel overwhelming or too much. As for the lyrics, they cover a variety of religious and philosophical topics and concepts; more specifically, they mostly cover religious concepts from a philosophical point of view. And these religious concepts are not restricted to any one religion. In fact, Christianity isn't even one of the most covered religions in this album; instead, those would probably be Islam, the Jewish faith, and the Baha’i faith.
Overall, I think this album is a great listen, and I definitely recommend checking it out.
Track that Best Represents the Album / Personal Favorite Track: Omega: Third Temple
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Week Two: Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard - The Harvest
Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1ctS55Z8IGbCgWvz9ymiPE?si=5-LGMo94SS2mvCKpAYjLXA
Genres: Doom Metal, Horror Synth
Personal Rating: 8.5/10
Of the handful of Horror Synth albums that I've listened to, this one is definitely my favorite. Its combination of ethereal-sounding vocals, dense, heavy guitar and almost atmospheric synths works to create an eerie, haunting atmosphere that accentuates stress in an... almost cathartic way. I personally find that it works best while performing already decently stressful/stress-inducing tasks, such as playing a horror game or crunching to get an essay done a few hours before its deadline.
Track that Best Represents the Album: The Harvest
Personal Favorite Track: Logic Bomb
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Week Three: Royal Coda - Compassion
Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5Uc4k1ZPf8CDHu73RiYQ0R?si=N3sWIDXsSomBKT7YBeBwCg
Genres: Swancore
Personal Rating: 9/10
Don’t really have much to say about this one, it’s just a (relatively) short but sweet Swancore album with some decently unique instrumentals. It also lacks the “screamed” vocals that a good amount of other Swancore albums feature, which, imo, works in this album’s favor.
Track that Best Represents the Album: Numbing Agent
Personal Favorite Track: The Innocence Of
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Week Four: Closure in Moscow - First Temple
Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2xHj8hmXi1wQ2v6DWIkhLV?si=EkUoppIHS1ivaP1qRawNuQ
Genres: Alternative Rock, Swancore
Personal Rating: 8.5/10
This album mixes together Alternative Rock and Swancore in a creative way, and is notably the first of only 6 albums (according to rym) to mix the two genres together. The most common comparison I've heard for this album's sound is to early The Mars Volta, though I've never listened to them and thus don't know how accurate that comparison is. Overall this is a very solid (and catchy) album, though Permafrost and Couldn't Let You Love Me both prevent me from rating it higher due to being unnecessary interlude tracks that don't do much beyond disrupt the flow of the album. Every other song on the album has, at least once, gotten stuck in my, especially the buildup to Sweet#Hart's chorus.
I should probably also note that, out of Closure in Moscow's (currently released) discography, this album is unique, though not as much as their second album, which I plan to cover next week.
Track that Best Represents the Album: Sweet#Hart
Personal Favorite Track: I'm a Ghost of Twilight
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This week’s album will be late, I’m already at over 3000 characters and I’m not even finished talking about the second track on the album yet
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Week Five: Closure in Moscow - Pink Lemonade
Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1S0dJcSjS7imowLavbihCs?si=u4piWuYnTi-CCyoQM4mn3w
Genres: Progressive Rock, Alternative Rock
Personal Rating: 8.0?/10
The best way that I describe this album is as follows: it's Miracle Musical - Hawaii: Part II if it were a prog. rock concept album from a fucked up alternate timeline where Tally Hall made Post-Hardcore music.
Allow me to explain.
Both this album and Hawaii: Part II share several qualities. The first, and arguably most important (mostly because it is extremely noticeable in this album), shared quality is that, in both albums' tracklists, no two tracks share the exact same set of genres (ex. The Church of the Technochrist is Funk Rock while Mauerbauertraurigkeit is both Progressive Rock and Psychedelic Rock), though most tracks share a "unifying genre". For Pink Lemonade, this "unifying genre" is Progressive Rock; for Hawaii: Part II, the "unifying genre" is Art Pop. Both albums also have, at some point in their tracklist, both a song sung entirely in Japanese and an out of place chiptune song; Hawaii: Part II has 宇宙ステーションのレベル7 and Labyrinth, while Pink Lemonade has ピンク レモネード, which manages to be both at the same time. The third, and final, similarity between these two albums is that both sound completely different from their respective artists' previous works; Hawaii: Part II is both tonally and stylistically different from either of Tally Hall's releases, and the same goes for Pink Lemonade when compared to Closure in Moscow's previous album and EP.
As mentioned before, this album is considered a concept album, and that's because it tells an overarching story. The story of this album follows The Fool, who is supposedly a space cadet, in his search to find enlightenment/"heaven on earth". However, The Fool desires a simple and quick way out to finding what he desires, which leads him to the Alchemist, who offers him the album's titular pink lemonade as the easy solution he desires, but subtly warns him that it won't be exactly what he desires. The Fool, however, does not notice these warnings, and drinks it anyway. Immediately after drinking it, things get weird, and the forest clearing he was previously standing dissolves away as he begins swimming through extra spatial dimensions while being confronted by physical manifestations of his anxieties and stress; to quote the band's lead vocalist, "homie is straight up tripping balls". During all this, The Fool gets a glimpse of Brahmatron, which is the infrastructure of reality.
As the "ball tripping" reaches its end, The Fool is awakened by a voice and finds himself laying in an unfamiliar alleyway, which leads him to believe that everything he just experienced was simply just a bad acid trip. He follows the voice that awakened him into a small bar nearby, where he gets a look at who it was coming from, that being the Tacky Ornamental Slut, who is performing a song onstage in the bar. The Fool feels as though the song is being sung directly to him, and he finds the lyrics to be appealing to his desires. However, as the song ends, reality begins to distort around him, and, while it is revealed that the song was, in fact, being sung directly to him, the Tacky Ornamental Slut is not who she seems and reveals herself to be the Oracle. The Oracle asks, albeit rhetorically, whether her previous character was what he truly desires. She then introduces him to Verina, a young, time-traveling Byzantine Empress who has brought the fashion of the future to the present in hopes of finally being noticed and desired. The Oracle warns The Fool to be careful with how he treats her, but he doesn’t listen. After exhausting his “use” for Verina, he begins to treat her poorly, causing her to grow bitter and resentful. Deep down, The Fool is aware this is his fault, but he still tries to shift the blame onto her.
From here, The Fool begins to have an existential crisis about Brahmatron, for it is not a deity, but instead merely a series of vibrations that determine everything in reality. In other words, reality ain’t “a god’s kinda music”. At some point, The Fool comes across his universe’s node, a “super-duper computer” that connects a universe to the layer of reality that Brahmatron resides within, and he decides to take a screwdriver to it and attempt to disassemble it in defiance of the pointless mess that is reality. This backfires, and The Fool is sucked in and sent to the Brahmatron layer, where he learns exactly what he feared: Brahmatron is neither benevolent or malevolent, but instead merely “dreams” of all possibilities with no regard for anyone. The Fool cannot stand this knowledge, and decides that he must go back in time to prevent himself from ever drinking the Pink Lemonade. He then spots the forest clearing where he first met the Alchemist being sent to one of the nodes, and decides to follow it; afterall, what’s the worst that could happen? The Fool then finds himself in an alternate universe in which dinosaurs never went extinct, and instead evolved to possess human-level intelligence. These dinosaurs also happen to be in the middle of a war against cyborgs that have been hunting them for their bones, and are on the losing side due to refusing to use any of the cyborgs’ technology against them. The Fool manages to find this universe’s node, but is unable to escape in time before a “cambrian bomb” is dropped on the dinosaurs, and finds himself knocked through the node and into a black void of nothingness.
While floating through this nothingness, The Fool begins to think about Verina and how he treated her. For the first time, it dawns on The Fool that Verina wasn’t merely some husk of a person to use and discard. Instead, she was an actual person with actual reasons for her behavior; her desperate need for attention and validation were the result of a series of painful experiences and misfortunes. He begins to feel extreme regret over his actions, feeling as though “Satan’s cloud” had been looming over his head this whole time. He tries, in vain, to reach out to her, to connect with her somehow, and as he does, he begins to dissolve and dissipate. Yet something keeps him intact; the sound of church bells.
The Fool finds himself in front of a church, and decides to go in to confess his wrongdoings. This is no typical church, however; this is the church of the Technochrist. A very enthusiastic priest greets him and informs him that ridding himself of his sins is easy; all he needs to do is upload his soul and mind into the “holy” mainframe of the Technochrist. The Fool is reluctant to go along with the process, but is ultimately convinced by the concerningly eager congregation. Halfway through the upload process, however, The Fool realizes with horror what he is becoming a part of, and he unplugs himself. However, what seemed like a few seconds that he was plugged in were, in reality, thousands of years due to how time folded in on itself while uploading. He finds himself in a deserted wasteland, and fears that this is the end of himself. He finally lays down to die, and his eyes close for the final time. Then they open again.
The Fool finds himself back in the alleyway from earlier, and he realizes that everything that just happened was just an absurd drug trip. This realization brings joyful tears to his eyes and he begins to get off the ground. Then he is suddenly struck down again in a blinding flash of light. To once again quote the band’s lead vocalist, “like a phoenix from slutty ashes, Verina is before him”. She's undergone a transformation, however; her true beauty has been revealed to The Fool, and she is now the “enlightenment” he desired personified. The Fool realizes that the “heaven on earth” he was seeking was with him the whole time. As it turns out, he needed to drink the Pink Lemonade in order to realize he never needed the Pink Lemonade in the first place.
TLDR: This is a bizarre concept album with a bizarre story that can’t quite decide what it wants to sound like, bouncing from genre to genre with each song.
Link (putting it down here again so that it embeds down here): https://open.spotify.com/album/1S0dJcSjS7imowLavbihCs?si=u4piWuYnTi-CCyoQM4mn3w
Track that Best Represents the Album: Pink Lemonade
Personal Favorite Track: Mauerbauertraurigkeit
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completely forgot about this for this week 💀
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Week Six: HOTT MT - Earth on Heaven
Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2ahsumBkBiJ1Rg7vgG7g8S?si=agw3saRsR5ev0RKDMiwKYA
Genres: Psychedelic Pop, Dream Pop
Personal Rating: 8.0/10
Not much to say about this one, it's just a good, somewhat short, Psychedelic Dream Pop album with a very dream-like vibe to it, mostly due to its usage of synths.
Track that Best Represents the Album: Angel
Personal Favorite Track: Valiant Return
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I'm saving this weeks album for saturday. you'll find out why soon :)
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Week Seven: Pattern-Seeking Animals - Only Passing Through (Bonus Track Edition)
Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1BVQQO3pUSYJex3ZAmNhrF?si=JNdTOD-6TKyqfqTtSL4CjA
Genres: Progressive Rock
Personal Rating: 9/10
It's this album's one year anniversary, so what better time to cover it?
Despite having been released on April Fools, this album is not a joke (besides the fact that the "Bonus Track Edition" is the only edition to exist); it's just a really good prog-rock album. It also has a sound that is quite unique amongst all the prog-rock artists I've heard, which likely comes from the concept for the band's composition; according to the composer for the band, he "didn’t want more than a few bars go by without some kind of instrumental or vocal hook.” This leads to a sound that is always changing in everyone of their songs; no matter how long a song may be (one of the ones on this album is 13 minutes long), you will likely not get bored listening to it. This album also has a couple songs that stray a bit from the band's typical sound, especially with the bonus track, which leads more into the album staying interesting the entire time.
Track that Best Represents the Album: I Can't Stay Here Anymore
Personal Favorite Track: Much Ado
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Week Eight: Floating Cloud Music - Love is a Burning Building That Will Suffocate Us All
Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6gO054EjmPWehPzXOdODcM?si=DUedwbk4TZaephOkPLSbVQ
Genres: Indie Rock
Personal Rating: 10/10
This is just an incredible album. It's an Indie Rock album (with elements of emo) that was all recorded and produced by one guy, which leads to it having an extremely personal feel to it, which is a quality I always appreciate in music. Speaking of the production on the album, it's absolutely incredible here, and is definitely what makes this album so good. This album also has 4 ambient/noise tracks that break up the album , and these are equally as good as the rest of the album.
Oh and also the guy who made this is the vocalist for Kevin and the Bikes. That's pretty neat.
Track that Best Represents the Album: Body in a Vehicle
Personal Favorite Track: (slip into dream state / landing pad)
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Week Nine: Seto Kaiba - The Greatest Fucking Album Ever
Link: https://juiceofmango.bandcamp.com/album/the-greatest-fucking-album-ever-lp
Genres: Harsh Noise, Novelty
Personal Rating: funny/10 (2/10)
It's a 3 minute long Harsh Noise "album" by a band named after a goddamn Yu-Gi-Oh character, I don't need to explain why this is A. funny as hell and B. not very good musically. Also this is both the first album that I've had to share a bandcamp link for and the first album here that I dislike the musical contents of, which I find humorous.
Track that Best Represents the Album / Personal Favorite Track: N/A (just listen to the entire thing, it's only 3 minutes long)
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Week Ten: The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/49LA20VMk65fQyEaIzYdvf?si=Yv8Z1fRTS2meYb_o84tO7w
Genres: Neo-Psychedelia, Psychedelic Pop
Personal Rating: 9/10
This is, in my opinion, both one of the best introductions to the genre of Neo-Psychedelia and one of the best psychedelic albums in general. Its atmospheric synths, incredible guitar and bass parts, great production, and sci-fi theming combine to create a vibe that I don't any other psychedelic album has managed to replicate for me. Its popular for a reason, and if you haven't listened to it yet, I highly recommend doing so.
Track that Best Represents the Album: Fight Test
Personal Favorite Track: All We Have Is Now
