Tag Archives: folk

My Top 25 Albums of 2025

Posted on by necromoonyeti

Some years go heavier than others. Per last.fm, I listened to more music in 2025 than any prior year of my adult life, but much of that is due to my inevitable spring vgm binge extending well into the fall. In terms of new releases, I don’t think I kept up less than usual, but I maybe never keep up quite as much as I let on and just landed on fewer gold mines than usual throughout the process? Then about a month ago some friends took me to task to listen to their collective ~40 favorite new releases, none of which were metal besides that uh new Deafheaven album that left a lot to be desired for me personally. So I ended up with a list that’s a fair bit less metal-heavy than usual. That’s fine and the trend might continue because a lot of the things they led me to are fantastic. Unique 2025 full album play through count was 125 releases and I probably sampled 100 other things that didn’t interest me enough to pick up.

Honorable Mention! Sleep Paralysis – Sleep Paralysis

avantgarde black metal for spiders

Sample track: Stress

I did a lot of write-ups for albums I ended up cutting and I’m going to say I cut this one too because 25 is a nice number, but I enjoyed its unique weirdness enough that I didn’t want to actually remove it. Piano and chiptune and some guy whispering about his nightmares trim a black metal package with dissonant passages you probably won’t expect but shouldn’t struggle to associate with the theme.

25. Ancient Mastery – Chapter Three: The Forgotten Realm of Xul’Gothar

black metal

Sample track: The Dread of Xul’Gothar

If Chapter Two hadn’t missed my radar until January it would have had a strong case for my 2022 AOTY, and Erech Leleth’s other project Narzissus did claim the title last year. Suffice to say I greatly enjoy what this guy does… ok his excessively 80s heavy metal project leaves a lot to be desired, but Ancient Mastery is great and this album is pretty decent. As an entry in a high fantasy world concept, it presents a darker, less earthy vision than Chapter Two. It’s a fair bit less original for that, but the songs are catchy and tickle a bit of my love for later era Falkenbach. Not my favorite Erech release but I have consistently enjoyed revisiting it throughout the year. I’d say it’s… really quite basic if I think about it? Not in a negative way, but I could see myself blowing it off if it was my first encounter with him. It definitely helps that I’m already a bit invested in his project as a whole, but whatever the case it’s here because I enjoyed it more than most.

24. Arkhaaik – Uihtis

massive viking doom

Sample track: Geutores Suhnos

I cannot listen to this album at work because it overwhelms my cell’s cheap headphone jack and I just get a downtuned dial-up connection. Arkhaaik have shipped one of the biggest sounds I have ever heard. Sick viking metal anthems and grinding grooves keep the novelty from wearing out on me, but this production is so higher level that I recommend checking it out a bit to test the quality of your speakers even if the style isn’t really your thing. It’s a good idea trust

23. Vörnir – Av Hädanfärd Krönt

dissonant black metal

Sample track: II

Frequently throughout the year I will scan through lists of other people’s favorite metal and new releases on bandcamp and sample dozens of things and throw the five or six that strike me the most in the cart. More often than not, these don’t disappoint but don’t leave a lasting impression either. This was one of those pick-ups, and it stuck around as the rest of its class drifted away. Dissonant experimental atmospheric black metal that reminds me a bit of Veilburner’s sound before they were trending, when I still really liked their music lol. A bit more walled off than that. The experimentation is less in my face more draped in black metal noise, but it might be better off that way. The encompassing harshness makes it more accessible for me? Instead of getting pummeled into irritation by overmixed drums and guitar crunches it just all kinda melds together and I can enjoy their eclectic intensity from my comfy spot.

22. Night Vigil – Night Vigil

atmospheric black metal, ambient

Sample track: Into the Absurd

I am a long established sucker for everything Ayloss does. This album was an instantly satisfying background piece for me that I kept putting on over and over again while telling myself I should check out something new instead, and it amassed 10 plays through as of writing this despite it only dropping in mid-November. In the grand scheme of his music I don’t think it’s his most innovative or melodically compelling work, but that did not prevent me from enjoying it more than most. It still has that ancient feeling core to his sound–that sense of listening from the threshold of a vast stone temple of a bygone age. It’s aesthetically sublime, as always.

21. Synaptic – Enter the Void

prog tech death

Sample track: The Lost Continent

Very fun and seemingly underappreciated debut album from a band that claims they formed in 2004 ???. Tech death metal with hints of a mellowed out Archspire and classic melodeath more focused on playful prog than grinding my ears into the pavement? I have no idea what that means but yeah. Whenever I’ve put this on it’s been kind of a hype me up experience with no thinking involved, but reflecting on it now I feel like the prog influence is maybe even on equal footing with the death metal, not really in what they’re doing but in the attitude they’re doing it with. There’s something clean to it, not in a bad way, just puts on all the focus on the rhythmic and melodic silliness. And that’s fine because they’re pretty good at it.

20. Grima – Nightside

melodic folk black metal

Sample track: Skull Gatherers

Grima continuing to write incredibly satisfying black metal that trades off the genre’s raw origins for a clean, refined sound. Unmistakably wintry vibes paint an idealized landscape I fell in love with on Frostbitten and feel even more viscerally here. Love the accordion in place of traditional synth to really bring the scenes to life.

19. Phrenelith – Ashen Womb

death metal

Sample track: A Husk Wrung Dry

Probably my favorite no frills straight forward death metal album since Immolation’s Acts of God in 2022. I spun the hell out of it all year and am still not remotely tired. It just does everything right–memorable tracks that crunch between my eardrums with such a satisfying tone. Everything blends nicely to let me enjoy it, nothing overbearing, no single element overreaching the others.

18. Earthencloak – The Glistening Mist Betwixt

comfy synth

Sample track: Honeypot Daydreams & Sugarplum Lullabies / How Puckish, These Puddle Pixies

Seriously well conceived comfy synth album that ditches the genre’s inclinations to pick an aesthetic vibe and roll, instead crafting a variety of distinct scenes and settings to bring the gnomeverse to life through creative song-writing. Best experienced as a complete album, if you have any love for classic 90s RPG music or diy D&D campaign compositions, this is a playful reminder that the scene is still alive and well.

17. Deftones – private music

alt metal

Sample track: Milk of the Madonna

Nu metal was not a mistake because it gave us Deftones. I adore the encompassing aura of this album. It wraps me up and lifts me into its moody heavens, bleak perhaps but never lonely. The guitar tones are so lush and satisfying. When “Milk of the Madonna” gets rolling the energy is so gripping I’m approaching classic Billy Corgan tier fulfillment. Ohms completely slipped off my radar, so this is my first run in with Deftones since Gore nearly a decade ago. Nothing went stale with age, that’s for sure. They’ve continued to perfect their sound, and this has been a joy to listen to every time.

16. Trollslottet – Kryptan

dungeon synth

Sample track: Maskträdet

While it is rare for a single dungeon synth album to rise through the ranks of my absolute favorites, I listen to a hell of a lot of dungeon synth. It’s just a thing to be enjoyed in bulk, all queued together without rhyme or reason, a little bit of hobbitcore here, a little bit of mermaid synth there. This is, however, extraordinarily and exceptionally good in my opinion, and I know it must be true because it has the most boring album cover in the entire record label. Highly recommended for anyone who enjoys music in the 10-15 bpm range.

15. Vauruvã – Mar da Deriva

folk post-black metal

Sample track: Legado

It’s post-black with an often Krallician infinite tremolo inclination except there’s a bunch of Brazilian folk music in the mix too. If that is not sufficient to intrigue you I dunno get good.

14. Gingerbee – Apiary

Of Montreal for edgy nerds instead of art majors

Sample track: Petal Dance

I don’t know wtf this is.

13. Rebecca Roger Cruz – Río Abajo

stuff gringos call world music

Sample track: Alcaraván

This was a late discovery for my primary music recommendations hub and unfortunately appears to be our best kept secret because no one else is listening to it. Beautiful, moody, delicate, subtle, really brilliant hybrid of classical arrangements and Latin American folk that kinda knocked me off my feet on first encounter and might be riding a liiiiiiittle bit of recency bias but I think probably isn’t because these aren’t sounds I traditionally gravitate towards. Maybe it’s just that good.

12. Byonoisegenerator – Subnormal Dives

jazz bdm

Sample track: 5mgInspiredVibes

A bunch of ridiculous nonsense. 🎷 \m/

11. Kexelür – Epigrama de un pasado perdido

experimental atmospheric black metal

Sample track: Ningún resplandor evitará el final

Start with a satisfying holistic sound that makes me want to keep listening for the black metal mood, but actually write songs that convey a progression of emotional experiences with memorable melodies and unexpected but fluid transitions. This is such a well-conceived album. Their commitment to an overarching atmospheric bm sound unlocks a world of potential to inject creative passages without sounding disjointed or overproduced, or particularly chaotic either despite a demonstrable capacity for the eclectic. I find so much experimental black metal to take a blunt approach that demands I focus on what it’s doing. This, on the other hand, I can enjoy without effort. All of the interesting things they’re doing come as a bonus to be discovered after I’m already content with my experience.

10. Willi Carlisle – Winged Victory

old-time bluegrass and folk country

Sample tracks: Winged Victory / Big Butt Billy

It’s not often a country album pulls off this level of consistency. Winged Victory holds together from its most serious to its most whimsical moments without a downer to speak of. Even my least favorite track has sufficiently strong vocals to carry, and every song offers a distinct experience. Willi’s voice is outstandingly refined. His lyrics are competent at their weakest and often brilliant. His arrangements span the full country spectrum from traditional oldtime to just shy of contemporary, but they never collapse over into the pit of modern mediocrity. Winged Victory isn’t my first encounter with Willi Carlisle. I missed out on his 2024 album but had pretty high regards for Peculiar, Missouri, and I feel I can confidently say Winged Victory surpasses it.

9. Blut Aus Nord – Ethereal Horizons

atmospheric black metal

Sample track: Shadows Breathe First

I haven’t gushed over every album Blut Aus Nord has ever released, but it happens a lot more often than not. These guys have been killing it since the mid-90s and are continuing to ramp up what could be considered their third great era. This is their third album in four years, and each one has been better than the last if you ask me. This is just sublime from start to finish, and if I’ve been saying that for a couple of releases now, I mean it more each time. Undreamable Abysses was a wonderful experience but the tracks didn’t forge their way into my memory uniquely. On Nahab they started to grow, but two years removed I can’t honestly say I remember them. Whether I’ll be saying the same about Ethereal Horizons eventually, they’re really resonating and stick around in my head right now. Never mind that with Blut Aus Nord that’s really just a bonus, because it’s the encompassing feeling of their songs that always captivates me. It’s been out less than a month, but I’ve been spinning it regularly since the day it dropped and it’s sometimes hard to even want to listen to anything else.

8. Mechina – Bellum Interruptum

symphonic djent

Sample track: On the Wings of Vecterra

I first encountered Mechina through Empyrean in 2013, and they’ve released nine albums since. Outside of two specific songs, I don’t remember any of them, but that was never an issue. They scratched my scifi itch with a high fantasy worldcrafting that both guaranteed continuity and generated an immersiveness beyond the scope of the sound. How much I got into any given album–and it has varied a lot–was never a concrete definable thing. It was a matter of whether the music sucked me in and took me to the world they’ve developed or just left me superficially going “yeah cool glad they’re still doing their thing”. I have never tried or focused. I let it do what it wants to me. And from that perspective, Bellum Interruptum is easily their best release since Siege and maybe their best to date. I’ve been absolutely hooked on this one.

7. Besna – Krásno

post-black metal

Sample track: Hranice

While everyone else was jumping on the new Harakiri For The Sky album early in the year this became my personal go to for highly melodic and emotionally-driven plodding black metal. It’s big and beautiful and instrumentally keen and the vocal style fits tightly. Just all around really well written and executed post-black metal album that hasn’t been getting half the love it deserves. I dunno like, this style has grown stale on me over the years but Besna are taking me back hard to when it was my favorite sound on earth.

6. Scimitar – Scimitarium I

black ‘n roll

Sample tracks: click play from track 1 for the sick intro and let it roll into Aconitum

Imagine peak Peste Noire album intro and hold that thought for about four minutes, then replace Famine’s sardonic French croaking for slightly seductive slightly sinister clean female vocals that keep it tastefully non-theatrical without holding back a shred of intensity. Now maintain that raw power for forty minutes with no deviation from a full heavy metal trajectory and if you are satisfied with the outcome you might be a metalhead at heart. It doesn’t pursue a subgenre or try to do anything but write kick ass songs end to end and succeeds phenomenally.

5. Lorien Testard, Alice Duport-Percier – Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

folk, ambient, electronic

Sample tracks:
Lumière – The Departure
Ancient Sanctuary – Bonzaie Clairing

Despite being the thing I actually listen to the most, game soundtracks rarely make my year-end list. I suspect it’s in large part because I don’t really play games much. I tend to encounter new soundtracks after they’ve made waves, not when they first drop. Expedition 33 happened to come early in the year with enough instant renown that I did not miss out. And in a year where I spent more time listening to game soundtracks than ever before and had to really struggle to make myself want to hear other things, this cemented an obvious spot the moment I scanned my folders and realized it was a valid option. It’s an 8 hour collection of music, so if you want to dive in for the full journey be prepared to set aside a full work shift for it.

4. Hesse Kassel – La Brea

Isaac Wood learns Spanish and forms a bcnr splinter cell but this one kid likes post-hardcore and eventually everybody fucking dies

Sample tracks: Anova / Yo La Tengo

It’s a full Vegas buffet.

3. Shearling – Motherfucker, I Am Both: “Amen” and “Hallelujah”

dissonant noise rock, man screams about horses

Sample track: it’s just one song

This is a labrador song, spinning around the orbit of my mind. Max and Ruby; one yellow, one black. If either one barks, the whole world is blown off its axis and several thousand centuries pass by in seconds. And that is all you need to know.

2. Ninajirachi – I Love My Computer

electronic

Sample track: All I Am

I do not have a well informed perspective on electronic music. See: tagging this electronic music instead of some microgenre with three adjectives. Pretty confident I don’t need one to recognize how great this is. Easily the most fun album I encountered this year, I can bop it all night every night and not get bored.

1. Ciśnienie – [angry noises]

in my head these are zeuhl doom bands but it’s probably just tagged post-rock

Sample track: My childhood was a period of waiting for the moment when I could send everyone and everything connected with it to hell

The new Neptunian Maximalism album this year didn’t leave much of an impression on me, so these lads stepped up to fill all of my live instrumental zeuhl-adjacent Efrim-reverent droning avantgarde doom jazz needs for the season. I like that the cover looks the same with and without my glasses. I was asked to not listen to it so someone can win my next music discovery game. I respect that. Now that I’m over 40 I can’t remember anything anyway though so why not both.

My Top 15 Albums of 2017

Posted on by necromoonyeti

Hi! Still existing and loving my family, hope the same goes for all of you. I may be retired from all else in the music world, but the year end list is eternal.

Sample size: I have 83 albums released in 2017 at the time of writing this. Can’t promise I actually listened to all of them.

Surgeon General’s Warning: Ranking music is silly and I generally discourage it.  (But I do it once a year anyway…….)

15. Chinese Man – Shikantaza

trip hop/hip hop

Sample track: Liar

fun French hip hop/trip hop album that seems to have gotten overlooked a lot. I listened to it a ton earlier this year. It’s not something I’ll remember years down the road, but it certainly earned a spot for as much as I played it.

14. Elder – Reflections of a Floating World

stoner prog

Sample track: Sanctuary

For me personally, this is probably the most unorthodox pick on my list, because it is heavily rock-centric in all the ways that typically turn me off. God but something about rock and roll has always felt absolutely soulless to me in a way that few genres can match at their worst. But Elder just do what they do so damn well that it’s impossible to hate this opus. An endless onslaught of prog ingenuity with a nice stoner rock crunch that keeps it driving from start to finish. It’s 64 straight minutes of ear candy without a dull note in the mix, and I have a world of respect for how flawlessly these guys accomplished what they set out to do.

13. Krallice – Go Be Forgotten

post-black metal

Sample track: This Forest For Which We Have Killed

Krallice are responsible for a lot of the best music to come out this decade, and in 2017 they pumped out two new ones (both painfully late into the year for a band that requires a lot of repetition to fully appreciate). While I haven’t actually read anything about either of these yet, the distinctly different styles between them have me pretty convinced that Mick Barr wrote the bulk of this one and Colin Marston took charge on the other. Go Be Forgotten gets off to a glorious start with its opening track, but the remainder has so far failed to really captivate me to the extent that most of their previous works did. It doesn’t raise the bar (or if it does, it hasn’t sunk in yet), but it’s still a fascinating exploration of highly complex soundscapes that few other artists have the technical precision to delve. And god that opening riff is sick. Krallice will be a perpetual year end contender as long they keep doing what they do.

12. Father John Misty – Pure Comedy

folk rock

Sample track: When The God Of Love Returns There’ll Be Hell To Pay

I have mixed feelings about this album, and my inclination is to point out the negative; suffice to say, it’s not lacking in universal praise. It wouldn’t be on my list if I didn’t love it. The reason it’s not higher is that, as I see it, Tillman too often defaults to rather throw-away lines. That’s not inherently problematic (see: my #1 pick), but I think it clashes with the more refined, theatrical vibe of the sound around them. Simple case in point: Total Entertainment Forever kicks off with an absolutely delicious line–Bedding Taylor Swift every night inside the Oculus Rift–and follows it up with something so generic that I feel it only exists to achieve a rhyme–after mister and the missus finish dinner and the dishes. Sometimes gentle flaws make a work all the more endearing, but Pure Comedy goes too big and refined to get away with it for me. I feel like he aimed extraordinarily high and almost got there.

11. Tchornobog – Tchornobog

blackened death metal

Sample track: II: Hallucinatory Black Breath Of Possession (Mountain-Eye Amalgamation)

A landscape album as only blackened death metal can paint one. Tchornobog takes you on a 64 minute journey across an entirely unpleasant and stomach-turning waste of all purpose ugliness that really reflected how I’ve felt about the world this year any time I let my attention range beyond my immediate household. We’re talking death metal aesthetics here so yes, that can be a compliment. And while the visions are certainly exotic, there’s not much surrealism of the lofty, artistic sort you find on say, a Blut Aus Nord album. It’s just leaves you feeling kind of dirty. It hit a note I could appreciate while maintaining enough melody and progression to avoid succumbing to redundancy.

10. Hell – Hell

doom sludge

Sample track: Machitikos

Ridiculously heavy slow-rolled sludge that shouldn’t require any genre appreciation to crush your skull. At its peek on “Machitikos”, the quality of this album is unreal. Unfortunately I was pretty late to the ballgame, and their more ambient moments are going to take more than a sporadic month to leave a lasting impression or definitively fail to. Nowhere to move but further up the charts for this one.

9. Nokturnal Mortum – Істина

pagan metal

Sample track: Дика Вира

We’ve certainly come a long way from Knjaz Varggoth screaming hateful nonsense to crackling cassette recordings of Dollar General synth, and as endearing as Nokturnal Mortum’s early works may be, you can’t deny that he has matured (both musically and intellectually) substantially over the years. This album thoroughly lacks the trademark Eastern European folk metal execution that Knjaz inspired more than perhaps anyone else: brutally hammered folk jingles lashing out violently from beneath a wall of modern noise. Істина is a lot more even keel, to such an extent that its metal elements almost feel unnecessary at times. It fully embraces the more cerebral, orchestral sound we began to hear on Weltanschauung and leaves most else behind, achieving a new height in terms of orchestration. I do miss Knjaz’s more passionate explosions, but I don’t consider that a flaw. The real down side to the album for me stems from the studio. For all of its grand instrumental diversity, the complete package is a bit washed out. Everything feels like it’s playing in the background as a supporting element to a non-existent centerpiece. It’s something I’m certainly used to–Nokturnal Mortum have always struggled a bit on the finer finishing touches of sound production–but it’s still a fault that’s hard to ignore. An incredibly solid album that could have been even better.

8. Riivaus – Lyoden Taudein Ja Kirouksin

black metal

Sample track: Vihan Temppeli

This is probably the most unknown album on my list. It’s just straight-up black metal. No frills. No novelties. Really it’s the sort of thing I rarely listen to these days, because most great bm artists have moved on to more experimental fronts. But this is tight as fuck. The riffs are great and it’s got a nice punchy pace and a crisp tone that suits the mood perfectly. Outstanding debut from an unheard of artist. Hoping he sticks around for many years to come.

7. Thundercat – Drunk

funk/jazz

Sample track: Bus in These Streets

A tongue-in-cheek dreamfunk fantasy. Artists who can let a cheesy sound be cheesy often accidentally stumble into brilliance. This guy makes some of the goofiest sounds that funk and jazz have ever imagined somehow feel endearing. I’m also pretty impressed by how distinct his sound is. I mean, considering how radically uninformed on this sort of style I am, it kind of blew my mind that I could instantly go “this guy must have wrote the bass lines to Wesley’s Theory“. I think Drunk is an incredibly well-craft work masked behind a delicious veil of comedy. And it’s given us such eloquent 21st century mottos as “thank god for technology, because where would we be if we couldn’t tweet our thoughts?”

6. Krallice – Loüm

post-black metal

Sample track: Etemenanki

If Go Be Forgotten offered Krallice’s most deranged opening melody to date, Loüm might take the prize for their heaviest boot in the ass. Etemenanki hammers down all the brutality of a headbanger’s wet dream from the first note without budging an inch on Krallice’s classic eclectic tremolo noodling. I don’t think I’ve wanted to just open my mouth and shout “fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck” to a Krallice song this bad since Inhume. As with Go Be Forgotten, there’s a serious question of whether the album as a whole is really that great or if the opening song just carries it, and that’s not to knock the rest so much as to say that by Krallice’s ridiculously high standards I think it might have some mediocrity. You can never really tell with most Krallice songs until you’ve heard them four dozen times. It’s complicated, intricate shit that your brain doesn’t instinctively unravel. My gut tells me that Loüm will keep on growing on me in a way that Go Be Forgotten may struggle to, and I was right about that with Prelapsarian’s incredibly late release last year. (Yes, it is amazing.) The only lasting down point about Loüm for me is, surprisingly, the addition of Dave Edwardson (Neurosis, Tribes of Neurot) on vocals. He does a killer job, but I am shamelessly in love with Nick McMaster’s vox and can’t help but miss them.

5. Mount Eerie – A Crow Looked at Me

folk

Sample track: Crow

Phil Elverum’s wife died last year, and he wrote this album. It’s artistically significant for reasons that are pointless to explain, because I think you will either already get it or it will fundamentally conflict with whatever life coping mechanism you personally subscribe to, and both are fine. It matters to me more than other albums about death because we appear to share roughly the same world view. It isn’t my favorite album of the year because it can’t be.

4. Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Luciferian Towers

post-rock

Sample track: Bosses Hang

I somehow managed to ignore the rebirth of GY!BE in spite of being entirely aware of it, and this is the first album I’ve listened to by them since Yanqui U.X.O. fifteen years ago. In the meantime, I’ve become an avid consumer of Silver Mt Zion, and after that long of a break it’s easy to forget just how different the two projects were. I’m at a loss for words to properly describe how I feel about Luciferian Towers because I have nothing remotely current and similar to compare it to. “Bosses Hang” and “Anthem For No State” are both absolutely mind blowing, and I usually skip the first and third tracks and don’t even care. This is the greatest band in post-rock being exactly that.

3. Kendrick Lamar – Damn

hip hop

Sample track: DNA

Every time I saw this album top another year-end list, I wanted to move it further down mine. It doesn’t move me on an emotional level like To Pimp a Butterfly. It’s not Kendrick’s greatest work. Can it really be the best of 2017? But every time I revised my year-end list, it just kept moving up instead. Everything he touches has a subtle finesse to it. I love the sound of his voice. I love the way he weaves it into the instrumentation flawlessly. I love how every aspect of each song seems painstakingly tailored to suit the intended vibe. I can just really get into this from start to finish time after time with zero effort. It was my 2017 fallback the grand bulk of the times I wasn’t in the mood for something dark or heavy. This album makes me feel empowered every time I put it on with no cheap sense of escapism attached, and god did I need something like that.

2. Boris – Dear

drone/doom/psych/post-rock

Sample track: Dystopia (Vanishing Point)

Wow. This is 16th year that I’ve compiled a year-end list. For the grand majority of that time, I would have named Boris in my top 5 favorite bands if you asked me. During that time, they’ve put out 53 releases just that I have managed to acquire. And not one has earned my #1 slot. Smile came so close. So close. And now I’m saying it again. I almost feel guilty leaving Dear at #2. It was never dropping any lower. But if you’re at all familiar with it, this might sound generous. Dear is nowhere near their most well-received album. It is absolutely nowhere near their most accessible. Doom and drone at its core, it’s a slow drip grind that will leave all but the most steadfast fans bored out of their minds on first encounter. Yet I somehow managed to listen to it close to 50 freaking times. It wasn’t that I liked it at first. I kind of didn’t. But the mood was right. It hit that sweet spot between ambience and melody that made it never quite dull enough to bore inherently but never quite memorable enough to bore through familiarity. It was dark but it wasn’t morbid. It was just the right sort of fuzz to make me feel more alert without distracting me. And it was through that extremely passive but relentless pattern of listening that its finest moments slowly revealed themselves to me, raising the bar higher and higher, until now it blows my mind that a track like Dystopia (Vanishing Point) could have failed to sweep me off my feet on first encounter. It certainly manages to every time now, on take number one hundred and god knows what. This isn’t my favorite Boris album, but I suspect it’s much higher up there for me than for most fans, and after a very great deal of consideration it only failed to take the title by a fraction of a hair. Oh, I also got to watch them play it live in its entirety. 😀

1. Sun Kil Moon – Common as Light and Love are Red Valleys of Blood

Americana

Sample track: Lone Star

The grand prize goes to Sun Kil Moon. I think this might be for me what Pure Comedy has been for a lot of other people this year. It just speaks to so much I’ve been feeling in 2017 in a way I can completely relate to. Mark Kozelek takes half of the stuff I’ve been making enemies spouting all year and sets it to solid American folk music. He has a blue collar political perspective that offers no compromise for our “total fucking asshole” President but takes far more cutting hits at liberal America’s zero-attention-span reaction-click-and-move-on culture for allowing the country to fall into this state. The album is a two hours and ten minutes meandering disjointed travel through personal stories and monologues that reach all over the place, but underneath it all is a consistent love and appreciation for the bonds we share in our meager little lives, and an intense compassion for those who have permanently lost them. If he comes across as cranky, he’s just pissed at how many Americans have lost sight of this.

Previous years on Shattered Lens:

2011 / 2012 / 2013 / 2014 / 2015 / 2016

October Music Series: Opeth – The Twilight is My Robe

Posted on by necromoonyeti

If there’s one thing that will draw me back out of obscurity no matter how much work I’m bogged down with, it’s Horror season here on Shattered Lens. As a de facto film blog’s one author who pretty much never watches movies, I like to do my part by digging out a mix of tunes appropriate for the season.

This is always the time of year when I stop focusing on new releases and revisit a lot of my metal and folk favorites of old. From b-side Satanic cheese to authentic pagan anthems to the truly deranged, all the music I love most seems to find a home when that oppressive summer sun gives way to pleasant temperatures and dimming lights. It’s my favorite time of year, and my music collection rises to the occasion.

Opeth is pretty common fair in the textbooks of heavy metal these days, but Mikael Akerfeldt’s finest works came before the fame, in my opinion. Their 1995 debut, Orchid, ranks highest for me. While Akerfeldt’s trademark progressive rock experimentation was present from the get-go, those early albums had a sort of hollow, natural tone to them that lent the band a distinctly folk vibe. Orchid (and Morningrise) seem to drift through the crisp, foggy air surrounding a lake on the edge of a forest, the sun just beginning to rise over the horizon. I don’t wake up early when I can help it, but if a morning commute is necessary, Opeth always sees a spike in my play count. The vision that songs like “The Twilight is My Robe” paint is stunningly vivid, and surprisingly peaceful in contrast to Akerfeldt’s harsh vocals.

Neon Dream #15: Happy End – Kaze Wo Atsumete

Posted on by necromoonyeti

“Kaze Wo Atsumete” by Happy End (はっぴいえんど) appears twice in Lost in Translation: once outside a karaoke room at the end of a long night, and once at the end of the credits. Since that movie was so central to how I remember the late 90s and early 2000s, I thought I might end with it too.

Here are links to the previous entries in my series. They all clearly share :???: in common. (Well, I had fun, anyway):

1. Maserati – Inventions
2. Boris – Intro
3. Tom Waits – Small Change
4. Hong Kong Express – 浪漫的夢想
5. 日本航空株式会社 ✈ Japan Airlines – Airglider
6. 식료품groceries – 슈퍼마켓Yes! We’re Open
7. 古川もとあき – One Night in Neo Kobe City (from Snatcher)
8. Aphex Twin – Flim
9. Air – Alone in Kyoto (from Lost in Translation)
10. The Album Leaf – The Outer Banks
11. Kinski – Semaphore
12. 芸能山城組 – Kaneda (from Akira)
13. 川井憲次 – Making of Cyborg (from Ghost in the Shell)
14. Blut Aus Nord – Epitome XVIII
15. Happy End – Kaze Wo Atsumete (from Lost in Translation)

Review: The Decemberists – What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World

Posted on by necromoonyeti

I was basking in the golden glow of San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall when I first laid eyes on The Decemberists. It was Summer 2004, and it was a day I still remember well. I arrived alone, but I ended up befriending two girls about my age from Sacramento. It was a pretty thing–three kids too young to buy drinks and too engaged to harbor ulterior motives, thrilled to witness a band that seemed to capture every novelty of a world we were only barely old enough to traverse independently. It wasn’t particularly crowded–we walked right up to the front of the stage–but there wasn’t a stranger in the audience. “Billy Liar” was a hall-wide sing-along. On “Red Right Ankle” you could hear a pin drop. Chris Funk dawned a fake beard and marched through the audience pounding a drum strapped to his chest for “A Cautionary Song”. “California One / Youth and Beauty Brigade” was a swaying dream that will resonate in me until the day I die. I wanted to marry those girls by the end of it–both of them, and I never bothered asking their names.

Austin Texas, fall 2006, I stumbled into Stubb’s BBQ in a daze. “Indie rock” had become the musical movement of the decade, and I felt like a king in the middle of it all. It was a crazy two-week stretch: The Album Leaf, The Mountain Goats, a trek out to Houston for Built to Spill, a return to my metal roots for Between the Buried and Me, and somewhere in the midst of it all I found my sleepless self in a sea of humanity as Colin belted “Culling of the Fold” outdoors to a sold-out crowd. He was exhausted but elated, grinning from ear to ear the whole set, and so was I. The irony of “I was Meant for the Stage” was not lost on either of us.

Pittsburgh, 2009, I took my seat at the Byham Theater to witness The Decemberists in a traditional performance hall. I had traded in faded proofs of attendance for garb with actual buttons, and the band was decked out in full suit and tie. The Hazards of Love was larger than life–Shara Worden striding across the stage like a spidery temptress to a majestic display of lights and an unprecedented rock opera. The Decemberists rose to their fame as only they could, and the result was in one breath a self-aware mockery of their grandiose ambitions and a brilliant realization of the same.

…I wrote of The King is Dead‘s simple folk rock sound that it seemed like The Decemberists were “coming down off their own high. I imagine it’s difficult to be as… musically intelligent as they are without some fear of becoming pretentious.” The album title might even hint at this, and the band’s subsequent three year hiatus seemed to confirm it. Now it is 2015, more than a decade since that wonderful night in San Francisco, and What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World is due out in just over a week. I don’t really know what I expected, but I know what I was feeling. It certainly wasn’t the grandeur of The Hazards of Love, nor epic ballads reminiscent of “The Mariner’s Revenge Song” and “The Island”. I was waxing nostalgic on Colin at his sweetest. “Grace Cathedral Hill”, “Shiny”, “Red Right Ankle”, “Of Angels and Angles”… Because The Decemberists were no longer a novel in their own right. That beautiful rise ended with The Hazards of Love, and the hiatus laid it all to rest. Theirs was a tale to look back on fondly; the story had come to an end.

What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World gives me that sweetness, in a way. Tracks like “Lake Song”, “Make You Better”, and “12/17/12” are absolutely beautiful. All of the songs fall somewhere between these mellow numbers, blues/folk tracks like “Carolina Low” and “Better Not Wake the Baby”, and upbeat pop like “The Wrong Year”, “Cavalry Captain”, and “Philomena”. I could live without the latter three, but suffice to say the album is generally pleasing to listen to, though Jenny Conlee’s accordion has sadly all but left us. “Lake Song”, “Make You Better”, and “12/17/12” definitely steal the show for me, but I won’t soon forget the catchy choruses of “Anti-Summersong” or “Mistral”, nor the lulling blues melancholy of “Till the Water is All Long Gone”.

But this album breaks my heart. Through it all, I can’t escape the feeling that some fell force sucked away Colin’s joie de vivre, substituting mellow content to lead a normal life where once the world had been a playground. The music is still great, but I can’t feel the synergy between it and the lyrics anymore. At least “Lake Song” has been spared this fate. Here is what I can understand of “Mistral”: “So we already wrecked the rental car, and I’ve already lost my way. I feel entombed in this tourist bar, for a day anyway. So lay me out on the cobblestone, and unfurl this aching jib. The streets are built on ancient bones, and the crib of the rib. Won’t a mistral blow it all away? Won’t a mistral blow away? So it’s me and you and the baby boy, and a ? shed away, reeking out a little joy. What a waste. Bad mistakes. Won’t a mistral blow it all away? Won’t a mistral blow away?” I don’t know. It’s just… kind of shallow–a bit of babbling around the surface of a theme–and it’s pervasive through much of the album. “Better Not Wake the Baby” is packed with creative one-liners, all tied by a refrain of “but it better not wake the baby“. What does that mean? Plenty of Decemberists tracks have sent me to Wikipedia in the past, but I’m not going to find an answer here, and for that the song means nothing to me. “12/17/12”, my favorite track, still totally jars me out of my happy daze when Colin appears to rhyme “grieving” with “grieving” and “belly” with “belly”.

Go ahead. Crucify me. Point out the most obvious meanings; remind me that Colin still has a robust vocabulary; explain how it’s none of my business to criticize someone else’s creativity; note that it’s still better than 90% of popular music; tell me to shut my mouth and go listen to something else if I don’t like it. I don’t care, because the sad fact is I will go listen to something else. I spent more time on Castaways and Cutouts than on What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World while writing all this. I don’t want that. I want to love this album and hold it dear, but I can’t. I listen to the lyrics and more often than not I just hear Colin going through the motions without any of the magic. From the 5 Songs EP all the way to The Hazards of Love it was a constant indulgence, and now it is gone.

The opening track, “The Singer Addresses His Audience”, is the reason I can still listen with a faint smile. It is not one for the album, but for the memory of all that The Decemberists have meant to me over the years. In almost a parting farewell to Colin’s old stage persona, he sings in classic form: “We know, we know we belong to ya. We know you built your lives around us. Would we change? …We had to change some. We know, we know we belong to ya. We know you threw your arms around us in the hopes we wouldn’t change… But we had to change some, you know, to belong to you.”

And they still do, and I still love them, and I still look forward to catching them on their upcoming tour, but What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World is a bittersweet experience.

Review: Panopticon – Roads to the North

Posted on by necromoonyeti

Two years removed, Kentucky has left a unique long-term impression in my mind. For all of the excitement over an authentic and well-crafted mingling of traditional Appalachian folk and black metal–the term “blackgrass” got tossed around a lot–I honestly don’t remember how most of the songs went. This is because Kentucky‘s message managed to trump its sound. I remember the old man talking about organizing strikes against the coal company. I remember Sarah Ogan Gunning’s boldly defiant calls to overthrow capitalism. I think of settlers slaughtering Indians, mountains blown into dust, rivers running black with pollution, grim-faced miners broken in body but never in spirit, a modern generation abandoning everything their ancestors worked so hard to accomplish… That is my memory of Kentucky.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-q1RURXusI

Chase the Grain

I can’t detach myself from Kentucky enough to appreciate Roads to the North as an independent entity. That’s probably fine. I had never heard of Panopticon before Austin Lunn nailed his bloody heart to his sleeve in 2012, and that identity will persist through my perception so long as it remains true. Roads to the North has no explicit message, no lyrics sheet, no spoken tracks or American folk covers. But it has Kentucky, and because of that every song takes on a deeper, more robust meaning than it might have otherwise.

It would be interesting to know what a folk/black metal fan unfamiliar with Panopticon takes from this album. Does the music alone stand far above and beyond the norm? I like to think it does. The album incorporates some entirely unexpected but highly effective melodic death metal moments, especially in the opening track “The Echoes of a Disharmonic Evensong”. This track also gives us perhaps Lunn’s best incorporation of fiddle directly into black metal to date. “The Long Road Part 2: Capricious Miles” transitions out with a long and enthralling jazzy progressive rock chill reminiscent of mid-era Opeth. The whistle in “Where Mountains Pierce the Sky” sounds nothing like what we’re used to out of the European scenes, harkening instead to a western indigenous sound I have only heard from some obscure Mexican folk metal bands. “The Long Road Part 1: One Last Fire” is an unconventional six minute acoustic bluegrass piece that feels more like something straight out of Lunn’s imagination than Appalachia.

The intensity hops around so suddenly that Roads to the North may feel disjointed at first, but the stark contrasts are never forced. Because you don’t always see them coming, they are striking rather than cliche. Lunn performs each of the album’s myriad instruments better than a lot of people who specialize in only one, and there aren’t many producers on the black metal market that can compare to Colin Marston. He has a knack for subtlety that is hard to come by in the scene. I absolutely love the way the tremolo emerges around 30 seconds into “Chase the Grain”, for instance. It’s so soft that you feel its effect on the song as a whole long before your brain consciously recognizes it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSlCWhbKorM

Norwegian Nights

But I suppose I don’t really care about the finer musical details of Roads to the North, and that is why I found this album so difficult to review. This music is only a gateway. Like an engaging book, you never notice that it is well written. Roads to the North is not the guided tour we found on Kentucky. It leaves us be to explore where the feelings take us within the context of the world Lunn has already shown us. Those paths can be rocky. It’s not the glorified past of so many European pagan metallers. The should-be eternal is tainted. The land is marred. It’s the introspective melancholy Americana of Bob Dylan and Tom Waits, and your heart goes out to so many things that you can never hope to save.

“Lie beneath a cold blanket and watch the mountains sleep. The train rolls by every hour, as I wake and dream. The woods and the hills–faces so dear to me. Frozen lakes, flatland snow, where I’m called I’ll go. Such still quiet, then the whistle echoes. My fragile sleep torn from me, as many other things will be.”

Review: Agalloch – The Serpent & the Sphere

Posted on by necromoonyeti

If someone asked me what the most significant metal band of the past decade was, I am not entirely sure which name I would ultimately drop, but the elite circle of finalists would definitely include Agalloch. Pale Folklore (1999) and The Mantle (2002) pretty much defined America’s brand of folk metal, influencing countless bands to come as that global musical movement picked up steam. Ashes Against the Grain (2006) gave us one of the earliest incarnations of post-black metal on record. It might not sound much like what that term conjures to mind today, but in its day it was monumental, and time has not lessened the epic weight of tracks like “Limbs”.

But then there was Marrow of the Spirit (2010). This album was ugly. I can’t think of any better word for it. I won’t go so far as to say it was bad, but it was sufficiently displeasing to my senses that I never engaged it long enough to responsibly draw that conclusion. I didn’t want to listen to it, and it left enough of a bad taste in my mouth that I didn’t really want to listen to The Serpent & the Sphere either.

Agalloch – Birth and Death of the Pillars of Creation, from The Serpent & the Sphere

But I did listen to The Serpent & the Sphere. I listened to it quite a lot, actually, in the background as I worked or played games. It was pushing a dozen on my last.fm charts before I got to thinking “Hey, I ought to give that new Agalloch album a spin and review it.” Wait, have I heard this before? “Birth and Death of the Pillars of Creation” had been lulling me into such a passive state that I must have forgotten I was listening to anything at all by the time its ten minutes ran their course.

It’s the antithesis to Marrow of the Spirit‘s “Into the Painted Grey”, in a way. Where that track summoned in me the instant urge to rip my headset off my ears and put on something else, “Birth and Death of the Pillars of Creation” dug its way into the back of my skull and set its roots where I would barely notice them. It didn’t just get tuned out; it etched itself in my subconscious. And it’s no wonder. On my first really attentive play through, with the volume blaring, I find the track completely enthralling. It’s a brooding neofolk masterpiece best experienced without anticipation. If you listen wondering where it might lead, you are bound to grow impatient. If you just embrace it in the moment and let it consume you, you’re in for a treat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eco5QNfpbIw

Agalloch – The Astral Dialogue, from The Serpent & the Sphere

The next track, “Serpens Caput”, is a gorgeous and rather brief acoustic instrumental, and then “The Astral Dialogue” kicks off like Pale Folklore was just released a year ago. The many inattentive listens before had engrained the melody in my mind without my knowing, and the familiarity was so strikingly similar to their 1999 debut that I found myself shocked to realize I had only first heard the song a few months ago. A dubious avant-garde interlude at 3:14 aside, “The Astral Dialogue” is old school Agalloch to a T. At least, I should say, the composition is. The feel is a bit different. Where Pale Folklore was as crisp as a cold winter sunrise, The Serpent & the Sphere has a much fuller sound. (Youtube, as usual, can’t hope to capture it all.)

The Serpent & the Sphere feels a bit frontloaded, with the opening 20 minutes being the most compelling, but “Dark Matter Gods” and “Celestial Effigy” carry on the Pale Folklore mid-tempo folk metal tradition. “Cor Serpentis” offers another fabulous acoustic interlude track much like “Serpens Caput”. I think the album loses steam a bit on “Vales Beyond Dimension”. We get a catchy hook at the beginning and near the end, but the plod in between feels a bit contrived.

Agalloch – Plateau of the Ages, from The Serpent & the Sphere

“Plateau of the Ages”, the final track before a brief acoustic outro, more than makes up for any second thoughts about “Vales Beyond Dimension”. It kicks along in the Pale Folklore tradition we are by now thoroughly reacquainted with until 4:20, when we hit a wall of post-rock. It switches back after a two minute taste of things to come, and we get the real grand post-rock exit from 9:30 to the end. It might not be the most breathtaking use of the genre that you have ever heard, but I love the way Agalloch take it and make it their own, masterfully fusing it to the sound that has defined them for years.

I have actually read a lot of comments suggesting that Agalloch lost their touch on The Serpent & the Sphere. It’s hard for me to see any grounds for that. I suppose it is not much like Ashes Against the Grain really, and not at all like Marrow of the Spirit, but I don’t regard those albums as Agalloch at their best. Ashes might have been their most significant work, but my heart was always for Pale Folklore. The Serpent & the Sphere feels like that album, more than anything they’ve released since it. Oh, it might not be quite as catchy, and it’s certainly not as raw or black metal infused, but it’s a pleasant blast back to the Agalloch I loved most.

Review: Cormorant – Earth Diver

Posted on by necromoonyeti

Cormorant are a 4-piece San Francisco Bay band formed in 2007. They released their third studio album, Earth Diver, back in April of this year. Lacking major ties to any other band I have heard of, it’s probably no surprise that they stayed off my radar until now, but this is a band that definitely deserves some attention. Their well-crafted mix of folk, progressive rock, post-rock, and black metal sets a high standard at the cutting edge of metal today. While Earth Diver may possess a fatal flaw, it offers a world of potential that few bands can hope to realize.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqevYzJrhks

Cormorant – Daughter of Void, from Earth Diver

Earth Diver opens with “Eris”, a two and a half minute instrumental folk guitar track with a bit of a Spanish flare. As nice as the song sounds in and of itself, I am not convinced that it was the ideal choice for their opener. The second track, “Daughter of Void”, kicks off acoustic as well, and with the two tracks combined, the intro just seems a bit overdrawn. Don’t worry though; that’s the last time I’ll be complaining about the album’s structure. The acoustic portion of “Daughter of Void” sets the stage nicely and gets us straight to the point without much delay, kicking the metal side of the song off theatrically. We start with a nice metal groove lacking any of the repetitiveness you might expect from a band with the “black” tag, and at two minutes their prog tendencies start to show. Black metal vocals give way to something reminiscent of Opeth or Mastodon, and the song shifts through a variety of genre norms without really breaking from the overall feel. The song hits a peak at 4:05 with an Amorphis-esque vocal melody and a really catchy rhythmic hook. The bending tremolo behind the vocals starting at 5:35 is sick, and they build on it further at 6:25. The song is just packed with little standout moments that never last long enough to seem like overkill. (The youtube video ends early, but you’re only missing eight seconds.)

This is the sort of track you could easily remember from start to finish, if you could get in to it enough to care. If. The down side to “Daughter of Void” is a fairly mediocre production job that fails to really pull me in. I can hear everything clearly enough, but I can’t really feel it. They are going for classic low-key grit over big, booming sounds, and I get that, but it feels pretty washed out. The sort of sound Agalloch accomplished with Ronn Chick on Pale Folklore could have pushed this song from above average to outstanding.

Funny fact I didn’t realize until I wrote this: Cormorant actually do share some production history with Agalloch. They work with Justin Weis, who did a notoriously shitty job on Marrow of the Spirit. Go figure.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoeqDqIvqwQ

Cormorant – Sold as a Crow, from Earth Diver

“Sold as a Crow” has a very different feel about it. We kick off with some delicious post-black metal. A pretty tremolo melody warps into a desperate cry as the distortion and blast beats kick into gear. The snare does not always feel quite on point with the guitar, but Lev Weinstein might just have me spoiled in that department. This is the kind of black metal I live for. I love the single-beat stop at 1:46 and 2:00. I love the harmony at 1:50 and 2:05. I love the octave shift at 1:52. I love the three seconds of guitar flare at 1:55. This constant barrage of subtle nuances tends to distinguish post-black metal from its ancestor, and it’s the reason I can recall every note of a 15-minute Krallice composition while an Immortal track might fade into the back of my mind in seconds.

At 2:36 the main melody returns with a sort of flowing, jazzy feel, and then the majority of the song repeats. We get some new variation at 4:03 as build-up to a minute of soloing to close out the track. Maybe because the ending doesn’t appeal to me quite as readily, the production of the album starts to eat at me again. It still feels a bit of a wash, lacking depth or crispness without a good reason. I can appreciate “Sold as a Crow”. I can love listening attentively to every note from every instrument, especially in the first two and a half minutes. But I’m left without that desire to hear it again, right goddamn now. I can never listen to a whole Krallice album at once, because I always get stuck on a track and set it to repeat ad nauseam. “Sold as a Crow” could have been a song like that, but its beautiful structure is not matched by compelling tonal quality.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi1XiAg0XDs

Cormorant – Broken Circle, from Earth Diver

What you’re not going to hear on Earth Diver is more of the same. This isn’t the sort of album where I can describe two or three tracks and feel like I’ve summed the collective up well. Every song is a masterfully complex beast unto its own. With Opeth always on the tip of my tongue, peppered by Amorphis, Agalloch, and Krallice, Cormorant manage to remind me of a lot of the most unique bands in metal without ever paralleling any of them for long or losing its own unique flavor. “Broken Circle” has jazzy acoustic guitar a la My Arms Your Hearse Opeth, straight-up in-your-face black metal, a break to a distinct Orchid-era Opeth sound at 3:29, brief allusions to math rock, and a world in between. When the singer isn’t barking in classic black metal fashion, he might be pulling off his best Pasi Koskinen or Mikael Åkerfeldt impression, letting out a bellowing roar, or even shouting at the top of his lungs (2:04). You can often catch the bass running wild, sounding especially like Johan De Farfalla during the Orchid moment (why oh why did Mikael fire that man?). But as many band references as I can throw out there, the majority of “Broken Circle” sounds like Cormorant’s own unique creation.

And yet. And yet I can’t pull this album in and hold it close for long. What struck me as mediocre production from the start begins to feel like a travesty in the face of such absolutely brilliant compositions. This album was robbed of its well-deserved glory by a quality of sound that totally ostracizes me. I keep cranking the volume up louder and louder, hoping that I am just not experiencing it immersively enough to feel the pull. But it’s never there. Oh, it doesn’t sound half as bad as the transcoded garbage you’re hearing in these youtube samples. It would be fine for an average, run-of-the-mill album. But Earth Diver is not that. It deserved above-average attentiveness–something carefully crafted to showcase their sound in all of its uniqueness. I can’t help but think that if Colin Marston had gotten his hands on this raw potential it would have been molded into the best album of 2014.

Song of the Day: Oats In The Water (by Ben Howard)

Posted on by Arleigh

TheBurghIslandEP

The Walking Dead may not be what some critics as great television. Hell, it’s been called boring, pandering and badly-written. It’s popularity has eluded detractors and supporters alike. There’s one thing the show has consistently done well and that’s pick licensed songs to help highlight particular episodes.

Tonight’s episode, “Internment”, is another such episode with a perfectly picked song. This time around the song is “Oats In The Water” by British singer-songwriter Ben Howard.

The song enters the episode as part of the calm which followed one of the most tense and terrifying sequences of the season. Whoever is in charge of licensing songs for this song needs to get a raise because it’s definitely been a highlight of each season.

Oats In The Water

Go your way,
I’ll take the long way ’round,
I’ll find my own way down,
As I should.

And hold your gates
There’s coke in the midas touch
A joke in the way that we rust,
And breathe again.

And you’ll find loss
And you’ll fear what you found
When weather comes
Tear him down

There’ll be oats in the water
There’ll be birds on the ground
There’ll be things you never asked her
Oh how they tear at you now

Go your way,
I’ll take the long way ’round,
I’ll find my own way down,
As I should.

And hold your gates
As coke in the midas touch
A joke in the way that we rust,
And breathe again.

And you’ll find loss
And you’ll fear what you found
When weather comes
Tear him down

There’ll be oats in the water
There’ll be birds on the ground
There’ll be things you never asked her
Oh how they tear at you now

Ten Years #22: Стары Ольса

Posted on by necromoonyeti

Decade of last.fm scrobbling countdown:
22. Стары Ольса (Stary Olsa, 1,257 plays)
Top track (111 plays): Танцы (Dances), from Келіх кола (Loving Cup, 2000)
Featured track: Дрыгула, from Дрыгула (2009)

I don’t know of too many bands from Belarus, but the one I’m most familiar with is amazing. It’s a bit fitting that Stary Olsa should be my first entry in this on-going series to appear within the fall season, because I actually featured both “Dances” and “Drygula” this time last year. Of course it has nothing to do with horror, but it’s firmly rooted in the traditions from which our Halloween has derived–those of a misty past dominated by perceptions and beliefs not yet subsumed by European Christian standards. I don’t know whether the songs Stary Olsa play are themselves of ancient origin, but their instrumentation certainly is, and the songs they have crafted, whether traditional or original, are convincingly and memorably medieval. You’ll hear none of that western adherence to formula here; playing slightly out of tune or hitting a wrong note is a positive property of the music I like best. It comes to life with an earthiness that strives not for order and rationality, but for a taste of those unpredictable, wild-eyed expressions that highlight the more authentic human experiences of joy and sorrow. A lot of the best folk music abandons modern society’s notions of how these feelings ought to be expressed in exchange for a more direct connection. Stary Olsa certainly aren’t unique in this regard, but they do it better than most any other ensemble I’ve heard.