Read Poets Society

   The Contortionist are no longer the band they were when they started. From kids from Indianapolis writing "djent" (I hate that word) music from Indianapolis, they have grown and changed into something that has been distilled into Clairvoyant , and is nothing short of spectacular. Like, holy shit. 2014's Language saw them transition into something really worth taking notice of, and is a challenging piece of work regardless of what you think of that side of "heavy" music (although I would in no way categorise Language as simply a heavy record, it is so much more than that.), and with Clairvoyant the band have almost entirely shed their metal roots in favour of the prog rock sound they had shades of on Language . It really sounds like a band coming into their own; before this change they sounded like most of the other "djent" bands chugging away at their 7 string guitars with some twiddly stuff thrown in, now they are a group of musicians composing inc...

   Bon Iver's third studio album turns 1 in about a week (where did that year go?), so I thought it would be interesting to talk a bit about how my impressions of the album have changed - or how they haven't - over the last 12 months. When this album was released I was more excited than I think I ever have been to hear a new album. For Emma, Forever Ago is one of my all time favourites, and I love his self-titled second album too, so I had huge expectations for this album, but was also wary that expectations might ruin my experience of the music. This was particularly the case for 22, A Million , because it is unlike anything else Justin Vernon has released. There have been hints at this more processed, electronic direction previously, like the song "Woods" on the Blood Bank EP and occasional flourishes on Bon Iver , but 22, A Million is a drastic departure from the Bon Iver sound we had grown accustomed to at this point in time. Or at least, that's what I thought...

   Silence is something rarely explored in modern music, and for that the ludicrously titled but haunting He Has Left Us Alone... is an utterly absorbing listen. Instead of the album bringing the music to you, you are invited to lean in and discover, an experience similar to understated, subtle thrillers like Denis Villenuve's Prisoners (seriously, go watch it if you haven't already). Of course silence isn't really silence, and the silence on He Has Left Us Alone... is cold and grainy, a time to sit and marinade in the experiences you are being encouraged into. This is an album similar to another previous Nostalgia Pick, Swans' Soundtracks for the Blind , not only in the sound of it but the way it has morphed and changed with me over time. Its openness has allowed it to mould and develop as I have, and I can't recommend it or state its importance enough. Absolutely, it's pretentious and self-indulgent, but there is a time and a place for that, and He Has Left Us...

   Rage Against The Machine they are not. While the classic rhythm section remains, there is something hollow about this first full length from supergroup Prophets of Rage. The first and biggest major let down for me is in the vocal department. I'm all for rap rock, but this just doesn't work. Part of what makes Rage Against The Machine so timeless is Zac de la Rocha's fury that he spews spectacularly - this kind of conviction is nowhere to be heard. Instead we have some occasionally rousing but mostly mundane performances from Public Enemy's Chuck D and Cypress Hill's B-Real. Also a disappointment is the severe underutilisation of such an iconic rhythm section. The guitar solo in Unfuck the World is a glimpse at the sheer insanity and groove Tom Morello is known for, but there is a serious lack of banging tracks, the likes of which make up the entirety of the first Rage Against The Machine album. When there is a ripper of an instrumental track it just screams for a...

   I don't know much about this band, so I wasn't really expecting anything in particular from Vacation , but what I got was an enjoyable pop-punk album loaded with a bunch of influences from 90's alt-rock, from Third Eye Blind to Weezer. Basically it's a fun, chorus-laden sing-along of an album injected with some healthy nostalgia factor. The songwriting is the album's greatest strength here; the majority of the tracks are sharp and catchy with interesting guitar parts and great choruses, if sometimes formulaic. The album sounds good, particularly in the guitar department, but the drums lack a bit of punch and seem to sit a little too far back in the mix for my liking. The only other problem I have is how "pop" the vocals sound - this is normally where pop-punk bands tip a little too far towards the pop end of the spectrum for my liking, and Vacation suffers a similar ailment. Having said that, there's a lot of fun to be had on this album. Get learnin...

   Album number nine for Dave Grohl's Foo Fighters and we land at another fairly samey record with just enough fresh ideas to be worth listening to. While I am a definite Foo Fighters fan, and an even bigger Dave Grohl fan in general - dude's a legend - there hasn't really been an album since Colour and the Shape with anything near the excitement or vitality. Sure, there is enough post Echoes, Silence material to warrant a second "Greatest Hits" collection, but unfortunately there hasn't been a bona-fide classic Foo Fighters album in a long time and Concrete & Gold is another good but not great album. Like every Foo Fighters album there are a number of absolute corkers in the tracklist, but the majority of the tracks could be interchangeable with any other track between In Your Honour and Sonic Highways. This isn't necessarily a terrible thing, they have a sound and they are great at replicating that sound, but I'm hoping that with album number 10 ...

   I've been anticipating the release of this album for a long time, since it was announced in December of last year, in fact. The anticipation was made worse when, on original release date June 9, the album didn't show up anywhere. It was later revealed by the band that they were having problems with their then label, Equal Vision, who had the album. Since then they have left the label and bought out the rights to this new album, released it independently, and we can finally hear it.    I've been a fan of Being As An Ocean since 2012 when they released their debut Dear G-D, which is still my favourite album of theirs. Since then they have never stayed in the same place, each release moving to different territory while retaining their post-hardcore roots, and while I haven't been quite as enamoured with their most recent records as I was with the first, as time has passed I have grown to appreciate How We Both Wondrously Perish and Being As An Ocean more and mo...

   Stray From The Path have never been the embodiment of mature and measured political commentary, but even by the band's well established standards Only Death Is Real is particularly hard to take seriously - lyrically, that is. Granted, they are one of the most assured and confident voices in hardcore today, but with lines like "everything has a price, but the price is wrong, bitch" getting repeated nine times in a song and a sample of Trump's "they're not sending their best" speech it is sometimes hard not to roll your eyes at some of the messages. There's a pretty funny critique of lead single "Goodnight Alt Right" on YouTube (which is kind of just as cringy as the song itself) which you can see here , and that kind of says all there is to say about the lyrical content of this album. Having said this, one classic band I can draw similarities to, Rage Against the Machine, were sometimes criticised for the same thing (go and read about BB...