Listening with an open mind. Writing about what I hear. Do you have something interesting you'd like to share? Write Mick at thasoundblog@gmail.com. Twitter @thasoundblog
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Alright, what have we got here? Epic fantasy setting. Hell in space, or maybe an open-air dungeon sunk into the inner rim of a volcano. Antagonistic, voyeuristic extraterrestrials en route. Cal-Art-injected pastel hardcore fonts. ASCII Miffy art. Midwestern emo and gang-vocal pile-on pop punk with a conspicuous familiarity with Melt-Banana. Singapore... Yeah, none of this is very Mid-Century…
Craft was quiet for quite a while before this. Granted, they've been quiet since as well, but at least there is a precedent for it now. After drummer and founding member Daniel Halen quit in 2005, the band briefly considered breaking up, with the ultimate fate of the group remaining unclear even after 2011's Void , where Dirge Rep of Enslaved filled in behind the kit. White Noise & Black Metal was…
You don't have to dig much to pry up stories about artists getting screwed sideways in the music industry. The frequency and severity of the repercussions reaped from advances taken and recouped in mythic levels of psychic damage, or the prevalence of general business chicanery, became almost a rite of passage for alternative artists in their dealings with the vampiric patronage of major label…
In about 2017 or somewhere around then, all the little shops by me that are run by like one girl and sell mostly Sears catalog jewelry they picked up at estate sales, a selection of three interchangeable blouses, and tour shirts from the '90s at a 1000% markup also started offering nazar amulets in various guises and trinkets. I don't know why, but other girls who couldn't afford to run stores…
Sometimes, the ripple of an earshot can be heard around the world. The local is the expression of global conditions; global conditions are the percolation of circumstances that well up around one's feet where they stand, like the spreading overflow of a well with too many stones in its gut. There aren't many bands that can capture the feeling and sound of being from anywhere without losing the…
Anytime you dare to pipe up about the hardships in your life, your struggles, the inherently cursed nature of the present state of things in any way, shape, or form online, you will inevitably be flooded with comments justifying your misery. Can't afford a house? Can't afford rent? Groceries? Healthcare? Should have gone to college; then you'd have better job prospects, get paid more, and be able…
If you could find something you love in your formative years and find a way to keep doing it for 30-plus years, wouldn't you? Not many people are so lucky, but Dave Marriman of Chicago punk pillars The Arrivals certainly is. He and his crew have been keeping steady and remaining reliably prescient all these years, and have recently (as of this spring) managed to release their 5th LP, Payload . You…
Chicago metal, underappreciated, yet undeterred. Despite receiving little to no love across the rest of this cursed land, the Second City is really second to none when it comes to spawning immensely visceral and bottom-buck-nasty musical marauders. Take blackened death metal project Blood of the Wolf, for instance. Every time they unveil a new record, it rolls off the proverbial press like a…
A wrinkled evanescence. A chattering gem. Pearling curves which catch the light and curtail them into purple, blue, green, red, and yellow pinions. Frozen in an instant, iterative in plies, cascading in concentric columns, begging to have its rings counted- winnings pooled from serial adaptations and voyages to sunken substrates of voided eons. Echos of decaying echolons and the leer of dimming…
Generally, escapism is viewed dimly in society- at least it was for our parents and older siblings. Now they do it too and just avoid conversations that tend to unearth the guilt they harbor while mired in a zombifying pool of blue light ever-present due to a screen addiction, or their mental absence while they cling to the tail of some projected fantasy of success or belonging, or emotional…
