Happy ancient Armenian New Year, Navasard. I still technically do these by the ancient Armenian calendar, even though I don’t put it in the blog titles anymore to save space. Anyway this is the only part of the year where there are 36 days between these blog entries because the Armenian calendar has an extra six days at the end with each month being an even 30 days. A lot more practical in my opinion. The ancient Egyptian calendar was set up the same way.
I’ve had a lot going on musically the last 36 days. I restarted my year mixes, the next one I need to cover is 2011. And I’ve been digging up music from all over the world and from years past.
Ayria - We Can’t Love Here Anymore
Ayria’s newest album released on August 5th, which I have been eagerly anticipating since last year. This song is my favorite so far, rivaled by “This is My Battle Cry”, “No One Asked You” (which made my charts two months ago), and “Why Aren’t You Dead Yet?”. The latter of which joins the ranks of my favorites song titles, along with Scary Black’s “Eat the World, Kill Them All, Scalp them with a Knife”, and Aurelio Voltaire’s “Riding a Black Unicorn Down the Side of an Erupting Volcano while Drinking from a Chalice Filled with the Laughter of Small Children”. Obviously it’s much simpler than those two, but you get the gist. The lyric video for this song was released in July as kind of a teaser for the album, but it is one of the best tracks overall. Anyway, Ayria’s one of my longtime favorites, been listening since 2010, and I’m happy to have a new release.
https://ayria.bandcamp.com/album/this-is-my-battle-cry
Digital Factor ~ Falling Down (Update 97)
Now where has this band been my whole life? I stumbled onto them via YouTube’s algorithm, they’re a German dark EBM act that started out in the 1990s. They sound like a cross between And One and Velvet Acid Christ to me. I started listening to their demo albums from 1993 and 1994 and followed through the discography from there. They’ve recently rereleased their albums in recent years too, such as their 1996 album “On Demand” this past April, while their “Falling Down” album was rereleased last year.
https://alfamatrix.bandcamp.com/album/falling-down-remastered-ep
I think the real reason this song caught my attention is because it sounds a little bit like “Game Over” by Ministry, one of my favorite songs. It’s the guitars. Glass Apple Bonzai is a band from Ontario, Canada. This is apparently a 2022 re-recording of an older song, but I just heard of this band so it’s my introduction to it. They’ve been around going back to 2014 and have been very prolific, so I have a lot of catching up to do.
Stolen ~ Chaos
Earlier last month, I was thinking about how I know of goth music from all these different countries, from Europe, North and South America, but I really didn’t know a whole lot of bands from Asia. I decided to remedy this by digging up Chinese post-punk. There were some good finds, but I think the band Stolen from Chengdu, China “stole the show”. This was a hard one to pick because I think going solely off the music itself I like their song “Enter the Gap” a bit better, but this music video is so strange and captivating. In it an old man is listening to a cassette, and suddenly the tape shoots out and starts wrapping around him, and then tape shoots out of his other audio and VHS cassettes and wrapping him up like a mummy, and the tape starts spreading around the town and wrapping itself around people, objects and animals. Then there are scenes of a group of people sitting around a table eating audio tape with chop sticks. And at the end the old man has become one with the tape and reduced to just clothes stuffed with tape, which drags itself away. It’s amazing. And since I have a strange cassette obsession, perhaps I should take this video as a warning.
Glass Apple Bonzai - Upstairs in the Attic
I think the real reason this song caught my attention is because it sounds a little bit like “Game Over” by Ministry, one of my favorite songs. It’s the guitars. Glass Apple Bonzai is a band from Ontario, Canada. This is apparently a 2022 re-recording of an older song, but I just heard of this band so it’s my introduction to it. They’ve been around going back to 2014 and have been very prolific, so I have a lot of catching up to do.
Male Tears ~ Deal3r
In the beginning when I first heard of Male Tears I kind of thought they were a joke band, an affectionate parody of cheesy 80s music. Have a look at some of their early music videos and you can see why. I liked them, don’t get me wrong, and they are no strangers to my monthly music blogs (whether they know that or not). But every song I hear from them now seems better than the last, and this song here is legitimately and unironically awesome. This is some dark dance floor music for sure. When you compare it to the 80s style music it’s like if Weird Al decided to make dark dance music without any humor.
A Slice of Life ~ Seven Days
This song is so very sad. And I’ve been where the singer has been before too. It’s about being in a deep depression, where time just seems to slip by and have no meaning anymore. I was captivated by this song when I first heard it. That line about staggering from the toilet to the bed, and having to guzzle down pills. Luckily I’m not in that state anymore, but I have been. But this song is all about the lyrics for me.
Gaywire ~ Gender Garden
I first heard this band’s single “Ave Satanas” when it first came out in 2017, but I didn’t listen to any of their other stuff. I heard the song again on an old episode of Communion After Dark and thought I should finally check this band out. I bought their album on Bandcamp, and I wasn’t disappointed. Gaywire, as their band name suggests, is an LGBT aggro-tech/industrial group, with songs themed around the injustice they face in society. This song, for instance, has the repeated lyrics “No place is safe, you must live a lie”. And I was recently diagnosed with autism, so I may be cis and straight but I still think those lyrics resonate with me. I’ve had to mask myself and pretend I’m something that I’m not my whole life to avoid harassment and bullying, and I never really felt like I fit in with the rest of society, or was ever able to fit in with their standards of how an adult man “should” be. Nor do I even want to conform to society at this point in my life. It’s never been safe for me to be who I am in public. That’s why I’m happiest when I’m alone in my bedroom. That may be why I have a lot of gay and trans friends, I feel like I relate to them better than most other people. I get where they’re coming from anyway, even if admittedly I haven’t had to face quite as much strife as they may have.
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