Perfect 10's: Mezmerized-System of a Down

So a couple of weeks ago I was watching a recording of System of a Down's free show up in Armenia and after being blown away by the sheer awesomeness of them blasting through a catalog of awesome album cuts and singles I was motivated to grab my copy of Mezmerize/Hyptotize and give that a listen and that's where today's post comes to mind.


We all have a small list of albums that we've heard that in all honesty from beginning to end there isn't a single tune that is bad in all honesty the whole album from beginning to end is all killer with pretty much no filler and after kind of reliving my middle/high school nostalgia fueled excitement I thought to myself that I should highlight such records and with that in mind I'm a do a little segment called Perfect 10's which in all honesty is just a term I'm  using to describe an album that from beginning to end is all great with no dips in quality at all.....in my humble opinion and since this album was the first one to come to mind I figured fuck it why not.

Mezmerize was System of a Downs 4th studio album released on May 17, 2005 and was the first half of a double album with the second half Hypnotize released about 6 months later and while they should be observed as a whole album in all honesty I find Mezmerize to be such a superior product in it's own right that I often just kind of keep forgetting about Hypnotize even though it is a solid album in it's own right but that's not the thing we're talking about here.

From beginning to end this album is an all our assault on your senses just brimming with fast paced rockers and amazing guitar work through and through with the right blend of super obscured and awkward lyrics like Cigarago and Violent Pornography that are merely there to kind of make you listen so you can come to realize like every album this band has done it's an incredibly politically charged work that shines very heavily in it's biggest cut B.Y.O.B. and Sad Statue the latter of which has some of the most impressive guitar work I've heard from this band probably ever and actually wiht that in mind the middle eastern influence in guitar tones is more overt in this album especially in a track like Revenga.

Overall this album really shines for me because it just doesn't let up at any points it's a hard hitting effort of amazingly well done songs that for whatever reason or another haven't aged like their contemporaries and when i come to realize it's been 10 years since it came out and it still pounds as amazingly great now as it did then I'm only more impressed.

Really if you haven't given this a listen and you want some Heavy Metal that's more then just breakdowns and screamed vocals then you should own this album 10/10 highly recommended.

Quality Cuts: Sad Statue, Old School Hollywood, Violent Pornography, and Questions?

Sam Sugguest a Song: Six-All that Remains

So there was this odd metalcore explosion when i was in middle and high school and the sheer amount of these bands that you couldn't really distinguish from one another on top of just how many of them lightened up and got really bad kind of make re-hearing some of these older tunes a bit of a trip especially if their still pretty good like today's cut.

I'm not going to lie I am more then sure that the only reason I heard this song was because it was in Guitar Hero and I recall a lot of the people I knew that really sunk hours into that game playing this along with a variety of the other Metalcore tracks because of it's fast pace, blistering difficulty, and teh fact that it rocks pretty fucking hard with it's mostly screamed vocals and a large amount of breakdowns and chugging rifts that are semi reminiscent of Slayer and Pantera.

Overall still a fun tune if not a pretty unoriginal one....

Album of the Day 3/26/15

So I can't lie I really dislike a load of modern hard rock and heavy metal acts because they all seem to come off as very single note and boring in plenty of way's and also a lot of modern/hard rock stations have been playing the same shitty songs for the last 10+ years and most of the top acts in modern hard rock make very safe formulaic music, and with that in mind I do occasionally dive in and listen to some of this trash because well.....I was an angry white boy at one time and the occasional heavy record can amuse me.

My only issue in that right is finding the right record to post because there's a few acts that I can decently get behind but I think in this case I'll post something that I recently came across randomly looking at a buddy of mine's collection and gave a whirl in the form of HELLYEAH's debut self titled LP from that magical year of 2007.

I do recall being amused with this band when they came out but then I eventually grew up and kind of broadened my own musical taste so the fact that upon looking up information on them I was surprised to learn that they're still going and while I had no desire to give the new stuff a listen I can say that this album kind of starts out on a really strong note before only really kind of having any bits of being alright when Mudvayne's Chad Gray who in all honesty is a solid vocalist for his genre is screaming the word fuck repeatedly in the more metallic numbers.

In all honesty the best songs on here while being relatively light on overall deph are at best by the number headbanging heavy numbers that only serve as an outlet to just kind of give the drummer from Pantera something to do...

Song of the Day 1-6-15

SO I was trying my best to come up with methods of making the new year a smooth and consistent thing and realizing that I’m not too good at just posting random tunes that just kind of hit me at the most random points I decided it’d be easiest for the time being to have my week’s all follow a theme because while the scheduled weekly things like Tuesday Two-Fer and all that was good for me I think I got to take this blog in a more consistent direction by at the very least having the first few weeks be these themed series of songs while I start really listening to the newest music and albums coming out and start to really get a feel for things considering I just spent a whole month thinking back of the best songs I’ve heard all year.

Now with that in mind I thought to myself what would I do for my first week what could I possibly cover, and that’s when it occurred to me when I’m at work one of my co-workers enjoys having these light hearted bit’s of arguing about how he seems to think every cover version of a song is better than the original to which I often disagree because he seems to enjoy really shitty covers like Limp Bizkits Behind Blue eyes and Shinedown’s rendition of Simple Man which are both Cringworthingly terrible compared to the acts their poorly imitating.

While I do often defend the original tunes it’s not that I’m completely against covers in fact I’ve spent PLENTY of time covering covers on this blog and since their a pretty amusing topic I figured I’d post some halfway decent to pretty damn great covers that I’ve heard but upon coming up with a list I figured I’d not write about songs that I’ve written about MULTIPLE times when Covers come to mind so sadly I had to exclude both Die Die Die My Darlin and Hanging on the Telephone from this week’s list but even so I still managed to come up with some truly interesting  cuts so without any further adoo I figure I’ll start this week with the shortest cover in the form of this amusing little interpretation of the Misfits courtesy of one Guns N’ Roses…

Attitude-Guns N’ Roses (Originally the Misfits)

So  while I find this bands output after GNR Lies to be pretty junky they still managed to pump out a few interesting tunes here and there and even if I find the Spaghetti Incident to be a REALLY poor album it’s most certainly full of its fair share of interesting cuts namely this snarling little dirty punkish number and it’s true to form speedy no-fucks-given sound that’s pretty much note for note like the original but that’s also why the song is so good because it’s the best example of taking a good thing and not fucking it up…