ALBUM REVIEW: "Caustic" by Primitive Man

Caustic is the most brutal, unpleasant, abusive, oppressive and masochistic album I have heard in a long time, certainly this year. Every thing about this album in comparison to the band's previous, slightly more one-note releases is bigger, heavier, dirtier and more punishing. For one thing, it's over an hour long, but definitely is closer to epic than overlong. The guitar tone is absurdly disgusting, the vocal delivery is like the devil himself tying you down and yelling at you through a mouthful of broken glass and teeth, and the songwriting draws on slow, punishing, doom-influenced grooves that simply don't let up. It's not super diverse and the playing isn't the most mind-meltingly skilled shredding you'll ever hear, but something this overwhelmingly crushing deserves more than a casual listen for anyone who enjoys a little pain in their pleasure.

Rating: 7.5/10

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A Response To 'Christian' Views On Secular Music

Is there such thing as music that Christians shouldn’t listen to? Should we be dismissive of music with either explicit language or sexual, violent or substance oriented themes? Should anyone even be telling anyone else what they can and can’t listen to? These are questions that are thrown around a lot in Christian circles, and given what I do here on this blog and how that overlaps with my job working for the church, I thought I would share my thoughts on this topic. I’ll say this at the outset so that we’re on the same page – I think any attempt to dictate what people should and shouldn’t listen to is stupid and disrespectful on a fundamental level. I’ll go into detail about why I think that later on, but for now here are some thoughts I have on some of the “Christian” opinions I come across pretty regularly. The first and most ludicrous thing that seems to follow me around is the idea that because I listen to underground genres, particularly on the heavy metal ...

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Should Brand New be in my top 20? (CONTENT WARNING: sexual abuse)

For those who read both top 20 albums lists that I did - one here on thatmusicnerd and one over at Kill Your Stereo - you will have noticed, I'm sure, that one had The Ongoing Concept's album Places at number 1, and the other had Brand New's Science Fiction at the top. Full disclosure, I initially had Brand New at the top of just the one list, but the readership of Kill Your Stereo reacted very strongly against the allegations of sexual misconduct against Brand New frontman Jesse Lacey and so I removed it entirely. In fact, none of the KYS contributors' top 20 lists featured Science Fiction at all. Of course I was happy to follow the general consensus in regards to whether or not an artist accused of such things should be promoted by a music publication, but I still stand by my opinion that Science Fiction was the best album of 2017 and as such it was number 1 on my thatmusicnerd top 20 list. 2017 has been a pretty crazy year in terms of the ...

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