I’m sure some of you have noticed that I’ve been doing less writing of late and focusing more on making YouTube videos. I’ll get back to writing eventually, but I’ve decided that I need to challenge myself with a new medium, as well as expand the THKD empire beyond blogging. It’s been a fun, refreshing change of pace and I hope you’ll come along on this journey with me while I try something new for a while.
With 2018 beginning to wind down, I’ve started to reflect upon all the great releases I’ve enjoyed throughout the year. This in turn lead me to compiling a massive playlist on Spotify; it’s about 99% metal, but there are also a few non-metal surprises lurking around in there.
As I was preparing to review this album, something occurred to me; In nearly ten years of THKD I’ve never once written about Amorphis (I have no idea why). It also occurred to me that many readers will probably be surprised to find out that I unabashedly love this band, given that their music is pretty much the antithesis of so much of the other metal I love; it’s proggy, folky, pristinely produced and at times poppy as all hell, yet somehow Amorphis makes all these elements that I’m not always such a big fan of (at least not when it comes to metal) palatable, nay downright tasty.
It’s a widely accepted fact that British metal legends Judas Priest helped define the sound of heavy metal as we know it today. But what isn’t as widely acknowledged is how they also helped define the visual aesthetics of heavy metal; indeed, Priest is as much responsible for what metal albums look like as they are for what metal albums sound like. Although they’ve never had a single unifying theme to their artwork (ala Iron Maiden’s Eddie or Motorhead’s Snaggletooth), no less than seven of their album covers do have something very important in common: ass-kicking robots.
My wife recently surprised me with tickets to the Smashing Pumpkins reunion tour, and as such I’ve naturally been compelled to revisit their catalog. For the longest time I’ve proclaimed that the band’s 1993 breakthrough Siamese Dream was my favorite Pumpkins album, but right now I’m thinking it might actually be Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.
The early eighties was a rough time for Alice Cooper. After releasing a string of commercially unsuccessful albums that he to this day can’t recall making due to heavy substance abuse (Special Forces, Zipper Catches Skin and DaDa), the shock rockin’ son of a preacher opted to take a three year break from writing and recording music.
I had an intro written and ready to go, reflecting on all the good and bad that heavy music in 2015 had to offer (mostly bad), but then I remembered that no one reads these long-winded, pointless intros. So, without further ado, here are eleven musical things (not just albums) that grabbed a hold of my crank and kept on yanking in 2015…
