Assorted Music I Like

I usually save up music until I have enough to fill a post on particular themes. But I’m way behind in blogging. I’ve got dozens of drafts and pages of notes of bands I’ve liked but never talked about. And I need to get caught up, at least a little bit. So in no particular order, here is some music I like.

Ghosts of the Sun

An instrumental project out of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, Ghosts of the Sun doesn’t quite fit anywhere. They’re not from anywhere I pay attention to. They have a post-rock kind of name, but they don’t really sound like most of the other post-rock outfits I listen to. They use the ambient and electronic tags, but there’s a lot of guitar in Existia, and some of it even chugs. It’s just good stuff.

.

Here Lies Man

Brooklyn Vegan asked the question, “What if Black Sabbath played Afrobeat?” and answered themselves with Here Lies Man‘s latest album, Ritual Divination. Well, I’m not even quite sure what Afrobeat sounds like, but I was intrigued. So I checked out Ritual Divination and added my own answer, “It would kick ass.”

.

Nervous Decay

Instead of wasting time finding someplace to file this self-titled offering of death metal from French band Nervous Decay, I’m just going to share it. They don’t reinvent the wheel, they just made a very good one.

.

Bashar Murad

Bashar Murad is a Palestinian pop artist with Icelandic connections whose upbeat tracks are all fun and games until read the translation of the Arabic lyrics. Then you realize songs like Makshara are incisive indictments of oppression, revealing the pain and hopelessness of marginalization and occupation. I don’t think he has an album yet, but Bashar Murad is interesting enough to justify tracking down individual tracks on You Tube.

.

Prime Mover

The bio for Prime Mover on Bandcamp reads as follows:

In their underground Temple beneath the Burning City, a Mystic Order of Metal Monks, using the Sacred Sorcery of intricate riffs and pummeling drums, seek to traverse the Astral Plane and become one with the Dark and the Light, the Beginning and the End, and the force that has set all into motion – the PRIME MOVER.

Hail, brothers and sisters. The time has come.

Such a bio can mean one of two things.

Super pretentious black metal band

Fun, silly headbanging metal

Fortunately, Under the Penumbra is the second one. Like Spinal Tap, they belong to no subgenre, but unlike Spinal Tap, they are no joke. Hail, brothers and sisters. The time has come to make metal fun again. Plus, that album cover, tho.

.

Katla

Too buzzsawy to be doom and too doomy to be black metal, the second album from Katla, Allt þetta helvítis myrkur (“All this damn darkness”) is hard to place. And honestly, I don’t feel the need to. I just want to listen to it. And so should you.