My LGBTQIA+ Cards

 Damn, look at all these little ID cards I have in my pocket! This is all typed out so you can't see them. Ha ha ha ha! You fucking wish. But hey, I'm going to talk about this. I've been out of Closetville for a while. I'm just going to put this out somewhere because I feel like it. I talk about being queer on stream sometimes but I rarely go on a whole rant about it.

tl;dr:
My pronouns are they/them and she/her.
My gender is non-binary but I'm okay with feminine labels (i.e. girl, woman, chick, bitch).
My sexual identity is polysexual.

Pronouns

I use they/them and she/her. I must say that "they" has quickly grown on me since I came out as non-binary. A lot of my close friends started referring to me as "they" without me explicitly asking them to. Some friends I still very much like and respect refer to me as "they". I refer to myself with they/them  or she/her pronouns. I especially use she/her on odd occasions when I put in more than fifteen minutes into outfits, makeup, and hair. I also do this when I draw my little avatar fucker in more feminine outfits. Like "damn, look at her!" That's pretty much it. Nobody fucking calls me "she" but you can if you want and it isn't fucked up.

Gender

I'm non-binary! Ain't that somethin'? I am transfem, genderqueer, gender non-conforming, all that stuff. So originally I liked the concept of having many elements of masculinity, androgyny, and femininity encompassing my identity. Now that I have been out for a while and most of the people I meet just treat me like a man despite wearing obvious make-up and a decent amount of women's clothing, I'm kind of over it. I don't get offended or upset by feminine labels. I definitely don't get offended by gender-neutral labels. I originally didn't care about masculine labels but now I don't like them. Not only do a lot of people still just treat me like a man, but most of them also treat me like a straight, cis man. When your gender identity is a lot of things and not an exclusion of things, it is kind of hard to say "well, actually I don't like that". The question is always "what do I replace calling you BRO with then?" Why? I don't know or care. That's just the way it goes. So I just have to take it and be miffed a little bit. It's just easier.

So uh, try to refrain from calling me bro, man, dude, or sir. Especially "sir". I don't know what it is about "sir". You're trying to show innate respect or something completely discounting that I barely look like a sir. I just have a big upper lip and a long-ass face. Like. I'm on HRT. I have tits. What do these punks want from me, y'know?

Anyway. Yeah. Enby. Also, calling me an enby is great. It's totally fine. Some people that aren't non-binary think that "enby" is like the n-word of non-binary people or something. Not that extreme but same basic concept. It's not that deep. It's really easy and cool to use.

Sexuality

Polysexual. Not many understand what this is. It took me so many years to find this and what it actually means. So polysexuality is close to pansexuality. So imagine a bunch of solo cups, right? Each one has marker on it that shows what gender the cup is. So like a gay dude might just throw a ping-pong ball into the "men" cup. A pansexual person will say "give me all these fucking ping-pong balls you motherfucker" and throw one into each cup. A polysexual person like myself might throw a ball into each cup and then say "uh... actually hang on". Then I'll take a few out. For me, it's the "men" cup. That one's pretty damn empty. That's basically where I'm at.

I can't see myself fooling around with men. I have tried to imagine it and it just doesn't work. It simply exists as a fantasy. Like Pan's Labyrinth but sexual. When I think about enbies and women in that same vein, it's a much different sensation that I simply don't get with men.

"Um, okay? Thanks???"

So I get three flags. The trans one, the polysexual one, and the non-binary one. Technically, I probably get more than that, like the genderqueer one but those are the three where I'm like "ah, yeah okay, those are the ones that I fit into". That's pretty much it. Just kind of sitting here wanting to type something and this is the something I typed.

What does this mean for you? Don't be discouraged not being able to find what label you can put on yourself right away. Don't be discouraged if the criteria for a label you thought you found ends up changing. I once thought because I can see what people attracted to men see in some men to some extent that I was bisexual because it was one of the only sexual identifiers I was aware of. I never really identified as that though because it didn't really seem all that accurate. I also told a few people "I might as well be a lesbian at a certain point". Gee, I wonder what would have led me to that conclusion. Maybe it was being born in the wrong fucking body and being raised to believe that anyone who wasn't cis or straight was psychologically deranged. Just spitballing. Don't be down on yourself for not having one concrete answer to sexuality or gender. Sometimes yours will change later anyway because people change over time. You were always born as yourself. "You" should just be an umbrella term that works for everyone. It isn't your fault that this term isn't good enough for a lot of salty people. Maybe you already found your identity cards. That's pretty rad too.

I've got a debatable pile of the L, a dash of the G, I guess a dash of the B, at least 156mg daily of the T, and decent fucking loads of the Q and the "+"! Cool. That's the conclusion of my blog post. "Cool."

Shoving Music Down Your Throat [2021 Edition]

 here we go again

Shoving Music Down Your Throat is a thing I do every year where I talk about music I listened to over the course of the year. I gush about the top ten albums that really struck me, trying to keep it to one per artist (because one of these was the year I got into Dir En Grey and that band took up like a third of the event). Beyond that, there's not much of a prerequisite. The albums don't even have to be from the current year. In fact, they usually aren't. In the case of this year, the only current-year album is MASS by The Gazette. Yes, I did actually listen to Lorde's new album. I probably won't go out of my way to ever listen to it again but I also don't think it's bad. People freaking the fuck out calling being an abomination of an album need to take a deep breath and listen to as much AFI as I have, then go back and give Solar Power a fucking spin. You'll be kissing Lorde's very apparent ass after that new trial of perspective, I bet.

The albums are in chronological order.

Here's a link to the playlist I made for the 2021 Edition of Shoving Music Down Your Throat. I pick a song from each of these albums to put on the playlist. These songs aren't always my favorites from each respective album. They are usually just the ones that are either the one I think is the most accessible to the most people or the one that illustrates a specific point I brought up about it the best. Sometimes these things overlap.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5z5urWxz7jN0uDpgoC6NDt?si=20da13d7da344293

I was working on my own music more often this year so I didn't get to listen to as much different stuff as I have since starting Shoving Music Down Your Throat years ago. For what it's worth, these were not the mere 10 albums I listened to. I definitely took in more than that, just not as much as I might have wanted to.

Faces by Earth, Wind, & Fire [1980]
genre: R&B, funk

I have now listened to a decent handful of Earth, Wind, & Fire and must say: the hype is real. It's honestly hard to go wrong with this band. I do recall listening to an album that came out in 2000-something that I didn't like but I cannot fish out which one it was. For all you know, that album is great too. It had cover art that looked like a Journey album but you could argue that for like 5 EW&F albums. This year for whatever reason, I decided to listen to a few more. I finally got around to listening to All 'n All which is one of the "big" ones, I guess. It was really good but I feel like anyone interested in funk is already aware that All 'n All slaps bounding ass or should be aware if they aren't yet. So I'm going to talk about Faces because this one's also really good. Most of my EW&F experience so far has been 70s stuff and Faces starts their 80s stint. I was kind of scared because I feel like most bands seem to drastically change their style up in the midst of a new decade for some reason. That or they laughably stagnate. Faces sounds different enough but still has a lot of stuff that makes the previous few albums great too. I lack the language to efficiently articulate what separates Faces from all of their 70s stuff that makes it noteworthy. I *can* say that the main reason I'm putting this on here though is because it is the album I feel is the most consistently amusing. If that sounds prudent, it would sound way more dickish trying to basically "review" the album here. Neither of us wants that to happen, right? There are moments that are either notably goofy or just feel standardized on almost every EW&F album I can think of, even on All 'n All. The high moments of the album always make up for it though. Faces is more consistently bangy though its bangiest might not bang as bangy as the bangers of other albums. Of course, this is all subjective. I just feel like most people getting into certain genres expect the spearheads to have a lot of albums with two great songs on their most popular albums with a bunch of dust bunnies lodged in the seams. Faces, I can assure you, is not like most Maroon 5 albums. This can apply to a lot of bands and albums, I just thought I'd get a quick dig in. It's not cute but what's done is done. I could edit it. I could backspace it right now. That said, we're moving on.

Raoul and the Kings of Spain by Tears for Fears [1995]
genre: pop-rock, Spanish folk

Hey, white moms! Did you know the band that made "Shout", "Head Over Heels", and "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" released an album in 1995? I've researched this kind of phenomenon for years now and can confirm that a lot of the bands you remember from the 80s released more music after you stopped giving a shit! It's true!!! Hey, millennials! Remember Donnie Darko? That queef snorkeling vocal mess disguised as a song at the end of that movie has a good version that came out before most of you were born! That band used to be a big deal until the two main members split in the early-to-mid 90s, leaving the remaining member to finish up an album at his new home studio and pretty much write this 1995 album by himself! Hey, gen Z! Look, this is one of those bands you immediately forget when you heard them at the dentist and I mean no disrespect but you're not going to have the attention span to research this. Furthermore, I can assure you from firsthand experience that the scholarly approach to Tears for Fears is not worth your fleeting time.

Raoul and the Kings of Spain is basically a Roland Orzabal solo project but it's called a Tears for Fears album because why the fuck not? The first time I heard this, I found it kind of weird that it had a lot of Spanish stuff that seemed to harken back to a culture that the creator didn't know about only to find out that Orzabal isn't a racist cunt, I just need to spend much, much less time on Twitter. Roland Orzabal is known as an Englishman because he's the dude that isn't Curt Smith from the band that did "Everybody Wants to Rule the World". However, he has very strong ties to his Spanish heritage and lyrically explores that a bit in personal ways that are kind of interesting to look into. You're not going to have your mind blown by any of the lyrical content but what he did with a longstanding brand is commendable. But is the music fucking good? This one really has its heavy ups and downs. For whatever reason, I keep fucking listening to it. It is nowhere near as good as The Hurting or Songs From the Big Chair but I really appreciate its own flavor of Tears for Fears. There are cheesy moments even for Tears for Fears standards. For the most part, these moments are made up for with pretty moments and fairly unique guitar and vocal arrangements and effects. I recommend listening to the album once through but can't guarantee you're going to love every track. I have admittedly listened to it several times now and still don't listen to a handful of songs on the album on their own or skip them sometimes during a revisit. The only one I will mention by name here is "Don't Drink the Water". It's one of my least favorite songs from this album anyway because it is corny and the parts that do punch are in a more dad-rock way than in any way actually intriguing or awe-inspiring. In addition, it has the f-slur disguised cleverly with everyone's favorite cigarette slang excuse! Yeah, who knew someone would need a content warning for a fucking Tears for Fears release! All of the genuine and not-hammed-up weirdness of the album is thematic and seems to escalate as the album continues while still being pop-rock. Though at least half of these songs are a good time on their own, "Raoul" really shines as a full experience more than fuel for your shuffler playlist. I wouldn't be talking about the album here if I didn't really enjoy it but it's more of a "why do I enjoy this and will other people like it at all?" than a "this album is the tits, why is nobody talking about it?" If you have never delved into a full Tears for Fears album, please don't start with this one. On that note, I will have you know that I have knocked off a few years of my life expectancy to listen to all of Tears for Fears' studio albums and can say with conviction that "Raoul" is not their worst. The Seeds of Love is! Though I recommend Songs from the Big Chair more, it's one of those albums that more people are aware of than they think. Raoul and the Kings of Spain is more interesting to talk about because nobody has in about 24 years.

Social Dancing by Bis [1999]
genre: indie pop, electropop

Remember watching Powerpuff Girls when you were eight and thinking "damn, this outro theme is so cool. If there were more music like this I would totally figure out what weed is and smoke it to that while I don't do my homework"? Bis is the band that did that. Turns out they weren't just hired hands in terms of composition for the show and actually had a flag in the ground of 90s electronic music. To my knowledge the big one was and unfortunately still is Social Dancing. It has punk elements here and there but mostly, the electropop label fits here. Though mostly following a bit of a verse, chorus pattern of a pop album, the chord choices and layering between the guitars and synths keep the album consistently interesting. The vocals are also really fun and harmonically creative. All three members do vocals at various points of the album. It's not in a System of a Down way where it sounds like the vocalists are fighting each other for your attention and another Chop Suey royalty check. The singers all do different harmony parts or overdub themselves sometimes depending on what they actually wanted to do with each individual part of each song. It's really cool to hear and is electronic music that is really unique if nothing else. The album after this one was a lot more shrill and yelly. Not terrible but shrill and yelly. Despite growing up with Powerpuff, Bis is pretty new to me so I don't know if this is their best album or whatever. I know it's definitely not their worst and one I would highly recommend. If you have any friends that have been asking for Scottish electronic music from the 90s with punk undertones recommendations, Social Dancing might just be the missing puzzle piece to their fucking Bisless heart.

鬼葬 (KISOU) by Dir En Grey [2002]
genre: industrial rock, alternative metal

Dir En Grey is a "Shoving Music Down Your Throat" mainstay but most of it has been their more "processed" stuff for lack of a better term. Dir En Grey is one of the very rare metal bands that don't completely stagnate when faced with higher production value. If you're just now hearing of them, Arche is still my favorite album from them and I especially recommend it to people who like weirdo metal. Probably Uroboros for a little more variety. All that babble out of the way, KISOU is one of their first albums, back when they were still considered a visual kei band if I'm not mistaken. They still did not sound like what I have mostly heard from visual kei but that's part of what I like about them in a sense. KISOU is decidedly less heavy than most of their albums. However, it's not particularly soft either and still has all the weirdness one would expect from Dir En Grey. There are a lot of really emotive performances from the vocalist, Kyo. Across their discography, these usually range from situationally moving to really fucking silly to probably unsettling for most people, and I mean all this is a positive sense. "Moving" is more subjective for KISOU if that makes sense. Some of the silly stuff I still personally recognize as Kyo trying to go for something specific and probably succeeding. I also don't speak any more Japanese than a native two-year-old so maybe to a fluent Japanese speaker, this is the stupidest shit. Works for me. It's harder for me to recommend a lot of their albums I've heard several times a piece now because they are much more "metal" than "alternative". KISOU is somehow less heavy but notably wrackier. Still, it's a varied album in terms of alternative metal and industrial rock. As one of their longer albums, if my memory is accurate here, it never grinds its gears. It's still weirdo metal and although not a punk album, I think it will do better for people within that crowd than it would for your friendly neighborhood metalhead. It's a very unique album in a way that is hard to put into words unless you have heard Dir En Grey's other stuff, which works out because despite KISOU being really good, I still recommend Arche and Uroboros more. That's a lot of homework though so for those who don't want to sacrifice that much time just because I told you to, here's a reminder that at the top of this post, there's a playlist consisting of one song from each album featured in this post so you can hear a pretty dope-ass song from KISOU called "Gyakujou Tannou Keloid Milk". Did I mention this is weirdo metal?

Tremulant by The Mars Volta [2002]
genre: prog rock, post-hardcore

I somehow had no idea that there was a studio project by The Mars Volta that I somehow didn't know existed until 2021. The Mars Volta is one of my favorite bands of all time and has been for about a decade now. So this is a big deal to me as much as it is mystifying that I could be that negligent. This isn't some strange, obscure B-side kind of thing. This EP is the first thing that The Mars Volta put out. They weren't out of nowhere either. The Mars Volta features a few prominent members of At the Drive-In, a fairly influential and decently well-known punk/hardcore band. Tremulant embodies a weird tonal crossover between the adrenaline from At the Drive-In and the trippy prog energy-lightswitch that is The Mars Volta and their first album in particular. For those who don't know what the fuck I'm talking about, Tremulant is three prog-rock songs done by punk artists. It's punk done by a band with an idea of what a time signature is or at the very least occasionally using 3/4 time on purpose. Also, nice organ sounds and occasionally psychedelic parts. Wouldn't be a Mars Volta release without at least like seven of those. Tremulant might not be the first thing I recommend for people to listen to from The Mars Volta. At the same time, I feel like the band is generally pretty fucking acquired taste anyway. If someone said "show me that annoying band you listen to but note I probably won't press play unless it's less than 30 minutes long", I would certainly show them Tremulant in hopes that they enjoy it as much as I do or it at least inspires them to listen to The Mars Volta's other stuff. Look, I swear it's good alright?!? For those who are familiar with the band, here's a bonus section! For those who really want me to shut the fuck up about The Mars Volta already, skip the bonus section or something!

BONUS: Landscape Tantrums by The Mars Volta [2021]
genre: prog rock

One of the most popular albums, if not the most highly regarded, from The Mars Volta is De-Loused in the Comatorium. Personally, it's in my top 3 favorites from them even though I wore it out the first time I heard it roughly 8 years ago. Landscape Tantrums is a bunch of demos of that album in early conception. The difference between Landscape Tantrums and when most bands do something like this is that Landscape Tantrums covers pretty much the entire original track-listing. Lyrics are different and sometimes missing, vocal melodies are altered, harmonized, de-harmonized, or scrapped entirely. A lot of lead guitar overdub wasn't done yet. You might be thinking "I can't stomach that, it's going to sound like shit. I was actually pleasantly surprised with how clean this release sounded considering the fact that it was essentially a demo reel recorded sometime between 1999 and 2000. I'm sure it was fine-tuned for a 2021 release as to not make it ear-shattering. It still isn't something I would listen to every day but something I could recommend to someone without being a sadist. I won't blab about this one too much nor am I putting it on the playlist. The interesting aspects of this album lie in the fact that it is an unfinished version of something that already exists. As such, I wouldn't recommend it to people who aren't already a fan of The Mars Volta or at least "De-Loused". If you really like that album as I do, this is worth at least one listen.

good kid, m.A.A.d. city by Kendrick Lamar [2012]
genre: hip-hop

To Pimp a Butterfly, another A+ album by Kendrick Lamar, was one of those rare albums I find that really woke me up from the process of just trying out new music. This one even more so than many others that further inspire me in both musicianship and in life. Listening to To Pimp a Butterfly was supposed to just be trying out a new album while doing something else. It demanded my attention. Not in an annoying way. It was magnetizing to my mind in so many ways. good kid, m.A.A.d. city is not that album. It's still pretty fucking good though. I would say it is equally creative. "m.A.A.d. city" plays out like a feature-length film set in Compton. This is one of those albums that uses long dialogue segments without seeming pretentious or obnoxious. From front to back, the album delivers what it seems to be selling. This effectively tells a competent story without being too on the nose with what's happening. Something I don't have a problem with but many might with "TPaB" is that there are a lot of parts that fully juxtapose from most of what each song has going for it. Not quite "inserts" but segues that pull out in front of you at 70mph. Other than the dialogue portions, this album has more of a tendency to stay on each song's original course. Make no mistake though; if you like the sporadic genre bends of "TPaB", there is plenty of that in good kid, m.A.A.d. city. Moments towards the beginning upon my first two listens of the album made me say "oh cool, a hip-hop album" in comparison to "TPaB". By "beginning" I am referring to the first three or four songs. They are still good songs but anyone who isn't a fan of hip-hop probably is not going to be particularly swayed by this one until a good handful of songs in. This is one of the main things that would make me still recommend To Pimp a Butterfly over good kid, m.A.A.d. city. So if you were laughably behind on the times as I was prior to listening to "Butterfly", I guess listen to that first, especially if you aren't familiar with Kendrick Lamar. In any other case, I still recommend giving good kid, m.A.A.d. city a shot. I'm going to go ahead and shut up about this one for now. Typing the full title of this one out is physically and mentally exhausting.

Restoration by Haken [2014]
genre: prog metal

I fucking love Haken. I started listening to them in 2020 and according to Spotify I am in the top 1% of people listening to Haken in 2021. Let me tell you about the EP called Restoration before I find a way to avoid all of my taxes. Haken is a prog metal band but not a screamy one. I guess I get why most people assume death metal that sounds like a skipping vinyl when I say "prog metal" but I would say a safe 98% of Haken's discography doesn't sound like that at all. So apparently there are some old Haken demos I haven't heard from when the band was still a band baby. Haken was fully formed after the members decided they were badass enough to be a full-time prog-rock band and goddamn the extra years of effort show. Restoration came out about four albums into Haken's discography. Most of the music is recycled from their old demos, completely reworked all the way down to the songs' titles. It's only three songs but the average Haken song is probably seven or eight minutes long. The first song is pretty cool. I particularly like "Earthlings" and "Crystallized" though, the latter of which is over 10 minutes long. These three are notably melodic not unlike their other stuff released before 2014. I was pleasantly surprised to hear that Restoration doesn't sound like an expansion pack to whatever album preceded this one. Although it's closer to The Mountain than Vector and Virus, it doesn't sound like something that didn't quite make it onto The Mountain for whatever reason. It also doesn't sound exactly like their first two albums, though you could argue that for the first track. Restoration, if someone new to this sort of music can stomach the runtime of each song, also isn't terribly heavy or aggressive half the time. It definitely has its heavy moments; Haken is still a prog metal band and they didn't take a break from that for this EP. Before Vector, Haken was pretty good at saving the aggressive stuff for moments that are supposed to give off an aggravating or anxious mood. A lot of "Crystallized" is actually pretty fucking upbeat, a lot of it sounding kind of more like Yes than one might expect, as much as I hate making such comparisons. I'm not just using this EP as an excuse to gush about Haken. I kind of am but I'm not just doing that. Until I become re-obsessed with another song by Haken that changes my mind or perhaps a new release, "Earthlings" from this EP is one of my absolute new favorite songs by them. That's really saying something because I have spammed the fuck out of Aquarius, Visions, Affinity, and The Mountain. Restoration really isn't the worst way to try Haken out either. One of my favorite things about Haken is how good they are at chaining a story together throughout the course of their album. Restoration doesn't really do this unless I'm missing something. Aside from that, it does a pretty good job of getting across most of the things I like about the band in under 30 minutes. If you're new to Haken and you like good music, I would probably recommend Affinity. If you're new to Haken and you like metal, I would recommend Visions. If you're new to Haken and you like fucking goddamn heavy metal but don't mind a melody line every now and again, Vector is for you. Okay, I need to stop myself. I really like Haken. Stop. Fuck! Shut up!

Hitch by The Joy Formidable [2016]
genre: alt-rock

The Joy Formidable is a really cool and easily identifiable Welsh alt-rock band that I never hear anyone talk about here in the States. Every time I look into them they seem to be doing fine though. They're still hangin' in there! All of their releases are pretty fucking good and it's going to be up to your personal alt-rock tastes which one might be for you. Duh, right? So why Hitch? The album that I think they are most known for is The Big Roar for a few select singles. This isn't to say they fell completely into obscurity so much as they fell into complete obscurity in America. The album after this one, Wolf's Law, is really fucking cool but both of these albums feel like an indie rock three-piece making an indie rock album with slightly higher than usual production value. They're still unique but there's less dynamic tonal variety especially in the overall audio department on their first album. Wolf's Law really picks up as it keeps going but starts out similarly. Hitch is where things get a bit weirder while still being charming-ass Joy Formidable. I don't know if "weird" is the right term so much as "melancholy" though. I also listened to AAARTH this year and that's weirder and dips into the alternative metal pool from time to time. To elaborate on what I meant by "feels like an indie-rock three-piece", there are many vocal trade-off moments between the guitarist and the bassist that sometimes just sound like they're drunkenly yelling out a melody line and Melodyne pairs with reverb to turn that into music. This is a staple to the point of stereotype in alt-rock. It's much, much less annoying when The Joy Formidable does it. Moments like this I guess have this arguably more "live" sound to it that a lot of people appreciate. I'm not one of those people. When it comes to what I enjoy in an album and how I create my own music, live is live, studio is studio; very few exceptions. Hitch sounds like they actually went in wanting to make an album instead of just seeing what stuck. This probably sounds fucking cold and whiney. I really don't mean it to be, this is just the best way I know to describe Hitch in comparison to The Big Roar and some of Wolf's Law. Delightful stuff all around. There really isn't, to this point, a bad Joy Formidable album. That said, I picked Hitch over AAARTH for this blog simply because I think Hitch is more accessible to more people overall. This is why I earnestly really like AAARTH but a general audience will probably find more that they immediately appreciate about Hitch over AAARTH, or as general as this audience gets while still managing to find this thing where I just ramble about music that I like.

Since I started writing this, The Joy Formidable also came out with a new album called Into the Blue and it's fucking good. It has one of the lowest points of the band in my personal opinion but it's brief. The rest of the album is every bit as good as their others.

Swords by Nick Lutsko [2019]
genre: indie rock, I guess

Nick Lutsko makes really silly songs on the internet, known mostly for ones that dunk on idiots that conservatives think are really cool. He also makes songs that are not joke songs. He has some pretty cool music videos for them on his YouTube channel which is mostly populated with lower-budget music videos for the goofy songs about Dan Bongino and Gremlins. Explaining this makes me sound like an IGN article that doesn't know what a meme is so I'm just going to explain Swords instead. Swords is a full-length album that is not a comedy album. It's not to say that there aren't things about the album that aren't goofy but it's usually to a higher lyrical point than it is to be super funny. Swords also has tracks that all start with the letter "S". Not sure what the fuck is up with this despite listening to the album a few times. Indie rock is the best descriptor I have for the album's sound because it's all over the place. This is why I love it. Most of the time when I listen to music, it's a bunch of stuff I like shuffled together. No particular genre, just a lot of stuff I like regardless of how it sounds. Swords works for me really well in that sense. There are elements of everything from pop to rockabilly to symphonic rock and other styles I'm too uncultured to have the balls to guess a name for. The songs seem to have a lot to do with privileged white Americans standing at the wayside while other people are oppressed both in and out of their country. It also seems to be lyrically spoken from the vantage point of Nick himself, a Tennessee-raised musician seeing this sort of thing repeatedly occur throughout his own life as well as his own musings and mental health in direct response. The songs are all memorable and catchy in the midst of the heavy themes. As the album continues, it gets overall darker with sadder-sounding tones and bolder symphonic layers. The last track, "Software" is really somber and pretty with a fitting sense of finality to the album's tale but also has this slight feeling of continuation, which is pretty fitting since this was released right before 2020 came and fucking happened. The only real "problem" I have with the album is that some of the mix is kind of quiet for something released in 2019. Magic Machine by An Endless Sporadic is one of my favorite albums and it was kind of quiet and occasionally thin for 2016. It's not that big of a deal to turn the volume up for a little bit. Though it varies itself and is not an album I would all-around consider "repetitive", this is a pretty standard arranged album in terms of accessibility. Translated from computer to human: it's not a prog-rock album despite what I usually talk up this much and it goes verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus frequently. I have no problem with this. For most people, this isn't a problem in general. I also highly recommend his YouTube stuff, a lot of which is also on Spotify in the form of Songs on the Computer.

MASS by The GazettE [2021]
genre: visual kei

The Gazette is one of my favorite bands of all time and I haven't been sitting there waiting for their new release since their 2011 album, Toxic. This is because, in my opinion, The Gazette's last great album came out in 2009. Despite being my favorite band, I only really have a soft spot for their first four albums. Every full-length album before Toxic is really fucking good. Toxic is when they started leaning way heavier into industrial metal than they did on the 2009 album Dim. The sound of Dim with more pitch correction and industrial influence basically turns it into a nu-metal album with a better singer. That was Toxic and subsequently the four albums after Toxic. It's not great. It's not the worst but it's not great. The next four albums more or less do the same exact shit and I'm constantly disappointed by this. Their first four albums are four of my favorite albums ever and Toxic was at least a step in a slightly different direction for the band at the time. MASS doesn't do too much to break out of this moldy, crusty mold but at risk of sounding like a complete cunt, it sounds more "refined". Don't worry, I too taste a little puke. The way I've explained it to my friends who have never heard of The Gazette beyond my insane ramblings and the existence of Black Butler season 2, I explain MASS as "it sounds like songs from the Shadow the Hedgehog soundtrack but on purpose and better." That's not a dig on Shadow the Hedgehog's soundtrack as much as it's a knock on nu-metal. MASS does not feel like a nu-metal album. It doesn't sound as cool as Dim but there are some little gimmicks that help separate it from the five albums in between. Most of the metal stuff I recommend here or talk to people about is weirdo shit. The Gazette is pretty fucking accessible unless you hate any form of death growl at all in a song or are racist. As a whole, MASS might be the most generally accessible one I can think of while still being a fun album from beginning to end. The guitars usually serve as a wall that serves the melody of whatever pretty synth or vocal tracks are playing at the time. The drum mix on this one is pretty solid too. Nothing groundbreaking or anything but the drums don't sound plastic or like YouTube metal. The only song that I think is kind of comparatively lame is "Frenzy". The opening riff kind of sounds like The Gazette covering Metallica which would be one of the only ways I would agree to voluntarily listen to Metallica. Even then, "Frenzy" isn't a bad song. It makes up for its basic-bitch metal riff pretty quickly. Ruki's voice sounds great. Granted it's probably pretty well Melodyned, it doesn't necessarily sound like it had to be. I'm not a mixing expert but I'm also not a complete amateur. I usually have a pretty good ear for that sort of thing. His screams sound a lot different over the course of the last few albums and not in a way of "I'm getting old but this is my career now so I'm just going to ravage my fucking throat". The scream parts are pretty damn rare on MASS. That's part of the reason why I said this is one of the most accessible albums in their discography. The screams that are there are good, gritty screams but they are mixed in a way that sounds pseudo-plosive without being wracky. They're "soft" but they're still screams. I went back to flip through a few of the songs to pick one for this year's playlist and was thinking "is this really good enough to put on here or will I be embarrassed now that the novelty of 'this is the new Gazette album' has passed?" I was surprised by twists and turns I forgot the album took, though briefly. The album isn't the most artistically baffling, wheel-retconning thing in the world but it is creative enough within its own merit for me to say it's a solid album. Not every song needs to change time signature, genre, and tempo three times for it to be intriguing. I'm pretty happy that I have an album by one of my favorite bands that can serve as a stepping stone for people to maybe try some of the stuff I like even more than the new stuff. MASS isn't the best album ever, not the best album by The Gazette, nor is it the best album on this list. It is still a good album and one I confidently recommend.

These aren't on the Shoving Music Down Your Throat playlist but my buddy Game & Sound released a new sick-ass Metroid medley called Journey of a Hunter. This is a big deal for him but even if he had just miraculously slapped this one out, I would still recommend it because his medleys are nutty and this one is no exception.

https://open.spotify.com/track/7Gk6h7DbNHzzf6THnOAAuj?si=eda1ec80198a4673