Swans revisited part 14/22

A continuation of the sound started in White Light From The Mouth Of Infinity, Love Of Life, while a magnificent album in its own right, ultimately suffers greatly from being stuck in the shadow of its much more instantly captivating predecessor. In the end, Love Of Life ends up feeling more like a bunch of cut songs that were good enough to have a proper album release but still not good enough to go toe-to-toe with the majority of what you could find on the previous ... read more

David Bowie revisited part 15/27

As the Berlin trilogy comes to a close, we see Bowie move away from the experimentation that made the two other albums of the three stand out so much and instead go for a much more accessible art rock sound with some hints of the new wave stuff he would be doing the following year, and it ends up being the most mixed-quality Bowie outing in quite some time.

Lodger is definitely a strange one. Hell, it may even be Bowie's strangest release in his entire ... read more

The Beatles revisited part 14/16

Released a month after The Beatles' break up but recorded before Abbey Road, Let It Be sits as what is technically their final album, but is realistically more of a bonus record than a proper final statement. Maybe it is just because Abbey Road in particular is such a striking album in its quality and it feeling like an actual final album, but Let It Be just doesn't leave much of an impact as a final album, and as such I look at it as more of a collection of ... read more

Swans revisited part 13/22

A compilation of unreleased songs, demos, and live performances from their no wave era. Even though this is one of the most inessential albums from Swans, this is still a pretty good outing, and one that I highly recommend any fan of Cop to check out.

Body To Body, Job To Job is often called the most soul-crushing album in all of Swans' discography, and considering even some of their tamest material can be described as such, and they even have albums like Cop and ... read more

I actually liked this. I mean, it wasn't the most amazing thing ever or anything, but I actually thought it was a really fun listen. I can actually see myself returning to this a few more times in the future. But other than that, there really isn't much else to say. It's a fun album, and maybe it is just the fact that I'm not a fan of chiptune, but this isn't all that impressive to me. There are a few really entertaining tracks, and some stand out moments, like that drop in Waves and the ending ... read more

David Bowie revisited part 14/27

Bowie's best live album. Even though he is one of those artists who has multiple noteworthy live albums, as well as one of those artists who could always put on a great live performance, Stage has always been the one live album of his that I've always loved. Maybe that's down to the fact that his Berlin era sound is my favourite, and hearing so many fantastic tracks from this era being played extraordinarily well as well as some of his earlier glam material ... read more

The Beatles revisited part 13/16

Quite possibly the best final album of all time (even if Let It Be was technically their final official studio album). Even though I have an extremely difficult time with The Beatles' discography with picking out just a solid top five alone without flip-flopping between many different albums for places five-through-two, the one placement that I'm always sure of is Abbey Road being number one. To put it simply, Abbey Road just may be the most beautiful record to ... read more

Swans revisited part 12/22

White Light From The Mouth Of Infinity starts a very brief period of Swans' discography where they would be the most accessible they had ever been (okay, maybe you could say that that was the case with The Burning World, but everyone's already forgotten about that one, so...). This record is often placed amongst Swans' all-time greats, and for good reason. Not only is it by far their most accessible record that also happens to be insanely good, and arguably even on ... read more

Metallica revisited part 12/12

Metallica's most recent outing ends up being both their best in years and their most forgettable and inessential in their entire career.

Even though Hardwired is the only album they've released since the Black Album to actually be enjoyable front-to-back, this is still the album that I find myself less interested in listening to when I think about listening to this once-great band. Even when I'm thinking of albums from their less-than-great period, I'm more ... read more

David Bowie revisited part 13/27

Yep, three perfect scores in a row. What can I say? This entire late '70s period was Bowie at his most flawless, with the Berlin trilogy in particular not having a single dud track let alone album, and releasing five outstanding albums in a row which all stand out as top ten albums of his as well as some of the greatest albums of all time in their own right, plus an amazing live album to top everything off. With that said, this period from 1976-80 is my ... read more

The Beatles revisited part 12/16

The dreaded Yellow Submarine soundtrack album... yeah, I still don't like it. Okay, I admit, I at least appreciate some of the songs a lot more than I used to, but this still sits as the most inessential moment in The Beatles' entire career, and an album that would have honestly been better had it not been released as a proper Beatles record.

I guess the best way to start off this review is by saying that this album really isn't as bad as a lot of people would ... read more

Swans revisited part 11/22

In an attempt to maintain the popularity their cover of Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart brought them, Swans make a very accessible folk record, and unsurprisingly to literally everyone, they fail.

The Burning World is the closest Swans ever got to making a truly bad record, and in all honesty, it really isn't even that bad. I won't be like those people who just defend this album by saying "Just because it's different and doesn't fit their discography ... read more

Metallica revisited part 11/12

An EP that nobody wanted, nobody asked for, and nobody is thankful for. Seriously, why the hell would anybody want the scrapped songs from what is by far Metallica's worst thrash record?

So yeah, Beyond Magnetic consists of four songs recorded for Death Magnetic but were scrapped because the band thought they were worse than everything else during these sessions. That should tell you everything you need to know about this release. Really, you could just ... read more

David Bowie revisited part 12/27

In late 1976, Bowie completely reinvented himself, ditching drugs and moving to Berlin to get away from the American life he had been living for the past few years. This resulted in arguably the best string of albums in his entire career; the Berlin trilogy – a set of albums that are hard to beat. This one-two-three wammy of Low, "Heroes" and Lodger are perhaps the most consistent and experimental Bowie ever got, and seeing as Bowie was always ... read more

The Beatles revisited part 11/16

The White Album shows The Beatles perfecting the art of the filler album. While an album which is probably about 80-90% filler may seem like a bad idea on the outside, and most artists end up failing disastrously by doing something like this, The Beatles succeeded at not only making by far the best filler album, but one of their best albums ever.

I wouldn't be surprised if me calling the White Album – by far one of The Beatles' most renowned works ... read more

Swans revisited part 10/22

The point where Swans become more melodic and more "accessible" while still holding on to that bleakness that made them such a terrifying band in those first few albums. Children Of God marks their first steps into gothic rock, a genre they would work in for most of the rest of their pre-hiatus career, but the decision to include industrial influences makes it stand out much better than the other two obvious gothic rock albums, White Light and Love Of ... read more

Metallica revisited part 10/12

Metallica's semi-return to form. After over a decade ranging from hard rock to alt metal, it is admittedly refreshing to finally hear them go back to their thrash roots. And above all, it's their best album in a full ten years! That's always a bonus. Or at least it would be if the album itself actually had something more worthwhile than just being a return to thrash.

First things first, and that's that Death Magnetic is factually their best release in years. ... read more

David Bowie reivisted part 11/27

Here it is, my favourite David Bowie album. When it comes to artists like Bowie, it's difficult to pinpoint an album to call the absolute best of the best, and it can also be really fucking difficult to choose just one favourite. As such, I have often flip-flopped between this, Ziggy Stardust, Low, Heroes, Hunky Dory, and even Lodger at one point. But the fact of the matter is that Station To Station has always been my go-to Bowie record. It's the start of the ... read more

The Beatles revisited part 10/16

You know that an artist has reached their absolute peak when even their weakest album in quite some time ends up being as good as Magical Mystery Tour.

I feel like this is an album that has somehow managed to get a status that is both underappreciated and overhyped. With so many people either undermining its actual quality as well as others liking to throw its actual quality as an album out of proportion, this is definitely one of the few Beatles albums that ... read more

Swans revisited part 9/22

Underwhelmed by Greed and Holy Money? Disappointed at how they stopped making music that is solely brutality, and much more accessible than anything else they had done up to that point? Think the songs on those albums were boring? Well, Public Castration fixes that!

Swans' first live album, consisting only of the songs which appeared on the two albums that released the same year, is like a condensed version of those two albums which sounds closer to Filth and Cop but ... read more