Top 5 Songs of the Month ~ December 2022 ~ Leiv Reed, SDWTD, Devoted Sinners

Damn, I’m not ready for it to be the end of the year yet, it all went by so fast. You sure it’s not still 2020? This decade is probably going to feel like one long year. It doesn’t feel like December either, probably because Florida doesn’t have a winter, it has a wet season and a dry season, with maybe a cold snap here and there if we’re lucky. The days are shorter though, and I’ve come to find especially in recent years that I have a very love-hate relationship with the Sun. Seasonal Affective Disorder will do that. In fact the entire holiday season which exists across cultures in the northern hemisphere probably exists because Seasonal Affective Disorder is way more widespread than people think. I’m reminded of a Mark Twain quote: “From the cradle up I’ve always been much like the rest of the human race; never quite sane at night.” 

Time is short these days, and I dedicate a lot of my free time to my webcomic, but I would still like to round up my top albums of 2022 and do a blog entry about it if I can. I’m also slowly working on two other blogs, one about a series of mixtapes I made and another about my new music setup in my room. Let’s see what I can get done. The other two blog entries can wait if need be. 

Anyway, my music tastes over the past month have reflected my moods as the days darken. 

Leiv Reed ~ A Dying God Coming into Human Flesh (acoustic cover)

Acoustic covers of black metal songs is a subgenre I never thought about seeking out until recently. But I’ve been really into acoustic music for the past year or so, especially dark acoustic music which is kind of rare, and it finally came up after having very limited success in finding acoustic covers of goth songs. Leiv Reed is the foremost artist in this YouTube-based subgenre. I used to be really into black metal as a teen but my tastes simmered down over the years, now a lot of it sounds like noise to me unless I heard it as a teen. But bringing it down to an acoustic level makes it easier for me to enjoy. 

This is a cover, the original is by a band called Celtic Frost. The original song doesn’t sound too dissimilar to this, it’s mostly acoustic except for the electric guitars and growling vocals over the chorus. But I like Leiv Reed’s voice the best. This song has been kind of an ode to my chronic back pain as of late, as I feel like a conscious being trapped in a slowly aging body. 

Here’s his Bandcamp:

https://leivreed.bandcamp.com/

Slow Danse With The Dead ~ Doom and Gloom

Another song from Slow Danse with the Dead this month. “Doom and Gloom” could be used to describe their entire discography really. But I felt like this song hit close to home for me, as many songs by this band do. I’m sure many people are familiar with the feeling of waking up, and immediately regretting it because you know that today is going to suck and there’s something you’re really not looking forward to doing that day, or you’re just not happy with your life in general at that moment. It’s weird how sometimes when you wake up, especially if you’ve just been having vivid dreams, it takes a few seconds to remember who you are, where you are and what you’re going to be doing that day. Sometimes that reality setting in is painful.

On Bandcamp, with lyrics:

https://slowdansewiththedead.bandcamp.com/track/doom-and-gloom-2

Devoted Sinners ~ Everything I’ve Ever Loved is Dead

Now here’s a happy-go-lucky song that will get the party jumping! A song about how the singer’s favorite musicians and actors are all dead, as well as everything else they have ever loved. It belongs on a playlist with Type O Negative’s “Everyone I Love is Dead”, “Everything Dies”, and Mortiis’ “Everyone Leaves”. The mention of Vincent Price hits the hardest for me. Imagine what he could have done with just one more decade. The singer keeps it mainly limited to goth icons. If I were writing this song perhaps I’d have also mentioned Layne Staley, Kurt Cobain, Florian Schneider, David Bowie, Peter Steele, Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy and The Three Stooges. Well you could go on all day about great deceased musicians and actors. 

The singer only states that these people are dead, he leaves it to the listener to interpret how they feel about it. These great artists wanted to be remembered after their deaths, and they’ve succeeded. They may not be around to enjoy being remembered, unless ghosts are real, but they did what they set out to do in life, whether or not they got to live as long as they could have, they still succeeded. It’s interesting how we mourn people we’ve never met. But often times, you know more about your favorite singers and actors than you do your next door neighbor or even some of your relatives. They may as well be family. 

Here it is, off their EP The Dangerous Obsession, released Halloween 2022:

https://devotedsinners.bandcamp.com/album/the-dangerous-obsession-ep

Killmoure ~  Violently Ill

This is a song that I first heard when it came out in June 2021, forgot about for a long time, but heard it again and liked it a lot. One of those songs that I needed to be ready for I suppose. I needed to be in a grim enough mood. I have had a pesky illness for over a week now actually, and while I’m not “violently ill” it’s just enough to affect me and make me extra gloomy and grumpy. This is a great song to put on when you’re sick, it catches that feeling perfectly. To be honest I thought that it might be a Slow Danse with the Dead song I had forgotten about, they sound very similar. The fact that it features backing vocals from Queen of Daggers was the first tipoff that it wasn’t them. 

This is off their Livid EP:

https://killmoure.bandcamp.com/album/livid

Calaverx ~ Tenochtitlan 

I was captivated by this music video. I don’t speak Spanish so I could only interpret what I saw. I know that Tenochitlan was the capital of the Aztec Empire, modern Mexico City, and the woman’s outfit looked like Aztec attire. She steps into a bathtub in the middle of the forest and washes her fact paint off, and then the tub fills with blood, as some huntsmen in war paint find her and carry her off. My guess was that perhaps it was a metaphor for colonization, and after finding the song on Bandcamp and looking at the lyrics in English it appears that I was right, it is a song dedicated to the destruction and colonization of the Aztecs. As an Armenian, I deeply empathize with the pain of colonized peoples, and I hope for Mexico that one day they can throw off the last vestiges of colonialism. 

Find it here with the lyric translation:

https://calaverx.bandcamp.com/track/tenochtitlan