Do you like Rage Against the Machine? If yes, then you should be listening to One Day as a Lion for sure. Rage frontman/main songwriter Zack de la Rocha pairs up with Mars Volta/Queens of the Stone Age drummer Jon Theodore for a five-track EP full of undeniable rap-rock bangers. Zack’s writing is on point as usual, and he shows a lot of prowess with synthesizers here as well, as well as choosing some gorgeous synth tones. Jon’s drumming is incredible (I might even say better than ... read more

As an album, Post is a lot. As a Björk album though, it makes a lot of sense. In the amount of her work I’ve heard so far, I’ve come to expect the unexpected, with a whole lot of eclectic strangeness following every creative urge and whim Iceland’s favorite daughter desires to follow. On Debut, that was a lot of London EDM, which does make a return here in places. But Post is an album that elects to follow a much greater variety of muses. Numerous tracks dig into Nine ... read more

Not really enough to say for a proper review, but I can at least say that this album is good. Björk's eclectic style is shining through immediately, and from the handful of her songs I'd heard before (Including Human Behaviour, but not anything else from this album), I'm already aware that I'm a fan. Surprised by the amount of house on this project, a bit disappointed that some tracks go on a bit longer than I'd like (which seems to just be a thing with house as a genre from what I've ... read more

“Maybe it’s me”, I wrote in my notes. That’s definitely one possible explanation for why I feel how I do about this album. “Maybe it’s me”. Maybe I’m not in the right headspace for the album at the current time when I’ve chosen to listen to it. Maybe if I come back to it again later I’ll change my mind about it. Maybe if I listen to it multiple times it’ll grow on me and I’ll come around to it. Or maybe there’s ... read more

In a press release included with the album’s announcement, Annie “St. Vincent” Clark called her fifth album, Masseduction, “pretty first person”, as to differentiate it from her previous projects where she took on characters, or “archetypes” as she terms it. In an interview on The Daily Show, Clark was speaking about those same archetypes and said that Masseduction’s was a “dominatrix at the mental institution.” The first quote is ... read more

Going into this album, I figured the “long” in the title would be accurate at least because of the 74-minute runtime (This might be the longest album I’ve ever listened to now, it’s certainly very close), but that’s just the beginning of the “long”ness of the record. Whether it’s the dragged out repeating passages of most of the first half, or the much-too-late hype moments of the latter half, Long Drive feels its length and then some, and it ... read more

So I just finished listening to Van Weezer, and I immediately put on Maladroit because I'd much rather listen to anything else than play this one again. Weezer’s most recent release is an attempt at arena-sized rock, but they’ve already done that sound more interestingly in the past. The album itself sounds fine, but the songwriting just is not there for nearly the whole track list. Many of the notes I wrote while listening end on the word “boring” because there’s ... read more

Listening to OK Human was a bit of a strange journey for me. For the first three tracks, I was very ready to call this album a 7 and move on. Those songs are fine, not super impressive but I appreciate what the band was going for with them. What’s so strange about that is that the last time I had that reaction was with The White Album, and both that and this have been consistently praised by everyone else while other recent Weezer albums are generally looked down upon, but those are the ... read more

In my previous review for The Teal Album, I said that I was “running out of reasons to be shocked that Weezer can create something solid,” and with The Black Album I can officially say my last excuses are either completely gone or completely justified. There’s no way I should’ve expected to like this album, its reception has been nothing but negative from everywhere I’ve looked, but I guess everyone else must be wrong. I kid of course, but my goodness did this ... read more

The first thing that needs to be said about Weezer’s fifth self-titled album, best known as The One with the Rivers Cuomo Leisure Suit Disaster (also commonly called The Teal Album), is that these are all covers. Y’know, in case you weren’t aware. But what’s great about that is that it guarantees that the songs as written will be good. Weezer went ahead and picked ten all-time classics, so there’s only so much they could potentially fuck them up. But what’s ... read more

I was first introduced to The Living End in high school via their thirty second banger Ready, which originated on the Fat Wreck Chords’ compilation Short Music for Short People. That song gives a very pinpoint accurate explanation of the band’s sound: brash ragers full of punk angst and fury and surprising instrumental capabilities. And that sound comes in droves on their sophomore album Roll On, the only release of theirs I’ve heard in full to date but one that made me a fan ... read more

If The White Album was Weezer’s Beach Boys album, then Pacific Daydream is Weezer’s Mike Love album. No, the latter isn’t quite as offensively bad as Summer in Paradise, but there’s something about how Mike Love missed the point (whatever that point is) of Brian Wilson’s music and came up with a bland, lowest-common-denominator approximation of it that feels analogizable to this era of Weezer. Whatever it was that worked well about White is absent here, even if I ... read more

This feels like it’s meant to be the hardest review I’ve had to write yet. I don’t really know what to say about Weezer’s fourth self-titled project, best known as The White Album. It’s good. Essentially flawless from my first listen. There are definitely some lyrics I don’t care for, but are they notable enough to be worth mentioning? The music can be explained very briefly: It’s a sequel to Holiday and Island in the Sun, all about classic Beach Boys ... read more

Holy shit Weezer, you’ve done it again. Once again, I assumed my neutral expectations were at best going to be met exactly, and somehow you hit it out of the park. Everything Will Be Alright in the End (which abbreviates to EWBAITE, which sounds gross) is definitely the band’s best since The Red Album (Unless Death to False Metal is a secret masterpiece), but part of me wonders if it might be even better than that. After a run of less-than-favorably received projects to close out ... read more

I almost didn’t know what to write about for this review. For most of my first listen, I thought this album was perfectly decent, and by the end I still mostly felt that way. Even now, I don’t know that there’s much of note to say. I could try and go on a whole tangent about Raditude again, and how this album being so much better got my frustrated by the band’s complete inconsistency, but Hurley is decent enough that I don’t really have the same anger in me that I ... read more

I didn’t really want to listen to this album, but I did. I don’t really want to write this review, but I will.

Fuck this album.

That’s what I wrote several times in my notes, to the point where it was starting to become reminiscent of Jack Torrance in The Shining. And that’s a strong summary of how I feel. This isn’t the worst Weezer album ever (I’m still putting it one point above Green), but it was a slog to get through and I’m never gonna listen to ... read more

For me, Weezer’s sixth album and third self-titled project, best known as The Red Album, is defined by my expectations. Or lack thereof. Or both? Well, allow me to maybe attempt to explain what that means. See, I was going into this album (and the discog dive in general) thinking very low of Weezer. Thus far, I’ve only liked two of the five albums I’ve heard, and the way people talk about the band’s later output I was mentally preparing to only ever like those two and ... read more

The first time I listened to Always Foreign, it was on a whim. I was in a bad depressed mood state and needed something, anything, to get my brain back on track. I can’t remember why this was what I opted for, but it was instantly perfect for me. See, when I’m really getting hit with depression, the only music I can usually stomach listening to is really soft. For example, for years, my depression go-to was Tony Sly’s 12 Song Program (maybe I’ll write a review on that ... read more

I use the word “incredible” frequently, but generally only when I mean it (or as sarcasm). So I do want to emphasise just how much I mean it when I say that this album is incredible. Fresh Faced & Effervescent is about as straightforward as one can get in the realm of emo/hardcore, done to perfection. The songwriting, the performances, every piece falls together exactly into the best place possible. The album hasn’t even been out for a year yet, but it’s immediately ... read more

This album sure is perfectly charming and acceptable for what it’s going for. The band calls their sound “cabaret rock”, and I’d say that label fits fine. There’s a variety of genres present on the album, though the project mostly is mostly rooted in the sound that label suggests with a hint of 2000s emo sprinkled in for good measure. It’s a bit like ten tracks of Panic! at the Disco’s I Write Sins Not Tragedies, though not quite as boisterous. But ... read more