Itâs been quite a month and Iâm thankful for the music that helped make it a little more tolerable. Below youâll find my thoughts on some new music and some other music that was new to me. Iâve linked to a playlist that pulls together some highlights from my month in music with a vague theme of resistance that finds itâs center in love. Hereâs the top 25 albums that filled my ears this month. Check out the playlist at the bottom to hit some highlights!
New Music
Thereâs a quite a bit of great music that came out this month, but there are two albums I came back to quite a bit.
âShaking Handâ by Shaking Hand
These kids from Manchester are so good! This album has been basically on repeat since it dropped. I love the meditative quality of some of the repetitive riffs. It reminds me a lot of the early emo / post-hardcore from the 90s that I loved so much, bands like Unwound and Karate. The wrinkle here is that a lot of the melodic sensibilities and vocal approach feel like they came from college radio around the same time. Itâs fresh and nostalgic. The kids are gonna be alright!
âDREAMCRUSHâ by MĂL
Iâve been listening to MĂL for the past five years or so and have come to really love their particular brand of blackgaze. This latest album is their best work yet in my opinion, and starts to blur the lines between those blackgaze roots and the âdream metalâ of bands like Astronoid. it reminds me of the similar growth weâve seen from LantlĂŽs, who has a new record dropping later this year. The melodic bits are delightful, the blast beats deliver, and the album as a whole is greater than the sum of itâs parts.
New To Me Music
These two albums are not technically ânewâ as they both came out last fall, but they are new to me and I have been listening to them over and over the last couple of weeks.
âLes dĂ©ferlantesâ by NAUFRAAGE
Blackened Skramz out of France. This album is an absolute monster. The riffs are gigantic and there is a lot of beauty and pain in the mix here. Iâm a sucker for all of the ingredients that go into this album and this particular mix is potent and powerful. 11/10, would highly recommend.
âSila Nunaâ by Sedna
Post Black Metal from Italy that bends, winds and morphs itâs way through a sludgy mix of metal genres. From punishing riffs to gorgeous ambient passages, this album covers some serious territory. I found out in this review that the album pulls heavily from Inuit mythology. The title âSila Nunaâ is Inuktitut for âSky and Earthâ and the album seems to cover both and everything between. I canât get enough of this!
Playlist Links
With everything going on in our country I keep thinking about how resistance is only sustainable if it is rooted in love. As I pulled songs together I realized that the composite vibe (for me at least) reinforced that sense of community and love in the face of a bleak and dark brand of fascism that seems to have rapidly taken root here.
âMay the warmth of our love be enough to melt this ICEâ is a representative sample of what Iâve been listening to lately and it can be found on Buy Music Club or on Apple Music.