Top 5 Songs of the Month ~ May 2023 ~ Slow Danse with the Dead, The Blood Pact, Haunt Me
Another busy month, this blog is a bit later than it ought to have been. Should I just start doing these in the middle of the Gregorian calendar month? Maybe. I dunno. These are as of May 8th, the day this blog should have come out, so any song that came out after then has a chance to be on next month’s list. Also, I once again went down memory lane and provided my top 3 songs of May from 20, 15, 10 and 5 years ago. This will take you through many different eras of my life, as I went from metal to dark electro/EBM to post-punk and deathrock.
Anyway, here’s what Ive been listening to.
Slow Danse with the Dead ~ If One Coffin Lid Shuts Another Shall Open
Slow Danse with the Dead is back, now as a three-piece band rather than a solo project. And if the new album Dark Ritual is indicative of their new direction, I am very excited. The first half of the album is rerecorded tracks such as this one, from the earliest days of the band. I chose this song because I’ve always liked the message. The body may die but the soul is eternal. There is no end. But I could just as easily have picked any track off the album as a fave.
I couldn’t find the song on its own, so here’s the full album. It’s the second song after the spooky intro.
The Blood Pact is an 80s style deathrock band out of the US state of Virginia. This whole album is great from start to finish, and is another of those rare concept albums in the age of streaming. The album Death of the Vampire is packed with enough spooky tracks to satisfy any vampiric goth. I actually first came across this album on the video above, and after a few listens I decided to get it on Bandcamp. It’s not The Blood Pact’s first album either, they’ve had a handful of releases since debuting last year.
Hot damn, how did I miss this song for so long? I never heard this because it was originally only released on the European single for “My Girlfriend’s Girlfriend”. It’s a cover of a song by of course Black Sabbath, but rewritten in order to give equal focus to Satan, apparently. It’s so badass though. I love it when I uncover some rare track from a band I thought I heard everything from. If you haven’t heard it, you should. It’s delightfully sinister sounding.
Haunt Me ~ All Things Turn Grey
Haunt Me is a band out of Austin, Texas that I’ve been following and enjoying for a while now. This is another one of those “We’re all going to die” songs I keep ending up liking. Other such songs include Type O Negative’s “Everything Dies”, Mortiis’ “Everyone Leaves”, Tears of Ozymandias’ “683280 Hours”, and Devoted Sinners “Everything I’ve Ever Loved is Dead”. Maybe one day I can make a very happy little mixtape of just death songs. Anyway, this one has a nice beat to it at least. I actually feel like it’s reassuring somehow. Yeah my back is ruined for life and my hair’s starting to get just a little thinner, but it happens to everyone. At age 37 I think I’ve still fared better than a lot of people. I still look like I could be in my 20s, despite my internal physical issues. Some people have lost all their hair and teeth by that age. Anyway, memento mori.
Okay, it’s time to give my thoughts on AI in music. Now the lyrics in this song were generated by AI using Nirvana’s songs, and the song’s music cobbled together by the artist, who did their best to sound like Kurt Cobain. I don’t actually think it does sound like Nirvana, maybe more like another 90s Nirvana-esque band like Local H, but I ended up just liking it as a song. It got stuck in my head. The lyrics “You’re as pure as water and I’m rotting away, I got my reasons. She’s the perfect daughter and I’m a mistake, I got my reasons” resonated with me somehow.
As for AI music itself, I think it’s okay if you’re just messing around with it for fun, particularly if it’s a deceased singer and the band is never getting back together again anyway. I can see it becoming a problem when you start using it with still-active bands. And it threatens to make pop music even more soulless than it already was if they make completely artificial music with it. I think if you’re going to use it at all this is the ideal way to do it, using a real human to sing it at least, and not for a profit. It comes off more like a tribute than a ripoff this way. I don’t think AI has reached the point where generating a voice makes it sound truly good, yet. At worst you get something like this.
I have different feelings about AI art though. That’s being used by capitalists to force the very few artists who can do it for a living back into wage slavery. If it gets even better this might happen with music too, sadly.
TOP SONGS OF May THROUGH THE YEARS
20 Years Ago ~ May 2003
My metal phase was ongoing, and The Kovenant mania had still not run its course for me at this time. Their album SETI came out in April 2003, and ended up being the final album from The Kovenant, despite teases from the band that there was another one in the works, or perhaps even finished but never released, titled Aria Galactica. I’m still waiting after all these years! I was also enjoying Cradle of Filth’s Midian album, which I still think is one of their best. Also, I learned through a mix CD a friend had made me of rare Rammstein songs that Rammstein had covered a Kraftwerk song, to my amazement at the time. Too bad it was “Das Modell” though. I think “Sex Object” would have been more up their alley. I wonder if I still have that CD buried somewhere in one of my huge CD binders I have stashed away.
Oh woe was me. I talk about this way more often than I should on this blog, I’ve been over it now for years I swear. It’s not something that keeps me up at night. But this was what was happening with my failed first relationship. On my 22nd birthday, April 21, I learned through a friend that my then-girlfriend was planning on breaking up with me. It shattered me. E Nomine carried me through my sorrows at the time. They were kind of a passing phase I went though, not helped by the revelation that they’re a Christian band. I can’t deny they have a few good songs though. I also gravitated toward “Stitches” by Orgy, and the song served as the title track for a mixtape full of breakup songs I put together as a coping mechanism.
Light Asylum’s IPC topped the charts for the second month in a row, because I could just not get this song out of my head. My then-girlfriend now-wife introduced me to the song “Runnin’ Up That Hill” by Kate Bush, giving me hipster cred over people who didn’t hear it until it was used in Stranger Things. I liked the Placebo cover because it was a bit gothier, but I think the original is overall the best. Ayria’s new album Plastic Makes Perfect was coming out soon too, and it’s still one of my favorites.
For some reason it took me until 2018 to give The Cure’s early albums a listen. “Cold” is still my favorite song by The Cure. At this time I was starting my grueling call center job with Macy’s, and “Cold” really encapsulated how I felt at the time. Like my heart had to be frozen as ice to be able to handle being yelled at all day. I discovered “See You” by Depeche Mode at this time too. An underrated track from early in the band’s career, from 1982. I wasn’t quite done with my synthwave phase either, hence Gunship. I mostly got tired of the genre by 2019 (because 95% of the songs sound the same or are just instrumentals, and it ceased to be dark and dreary enough for me as my tastes turned toward post-punk and goth rock), although I might still come across a song I like every now and then.
No comments:
Post a Comment