When it comes to radio stations, in America you have your classic rock stations, your “80s, 90s and Today” stations, your hip hop stations, a Spanish station, a generic Top 40 pop station, a news station, and then it repeats. It’s the same from town to town. By about 2002, with Nu Metal overtaking alternative rock and the Emo craze right around the corner, I disavowed FM radio and listened exclusively to European metal on CDs for the next few years. The radio, with its mainstream music looped over and over, and ads between every two songs, had nothing more to offer me, so it seemed. But, that is because I only had access to local stations.
These days, I get most of my new music from gothic music podcasts and YouTube uploads. Listening to the radio for new music is something I haven’t done consistently for almost twenty years. But then, I found out about a website. Radio Garden. This website lets you navigate an interactive Google Earth map (without borders, because radio signals don’t adhere to borders) and listen to radio stations from all over the world. I have searched the world for worthy radio stations in my preferred genres, and found quite a few. Even some goth ones! Several of those, in fact. Maybe it is time to return to the radio. How was I to know I could be listening to Hungarian goth radio stations all this time?Why is this type of music so completely absent from the American airwaves? I keep asking myself this every time I find another of these stations. I think I’m culturally more European than American, despite having been born here. As I searched the world I was still surprised by how similar to America’s a lot of their radio stations all are. You’ve got Top 40, 80s, 90s, oldies, etc. in nearly every country. Seems the majority of the human race listens to the exact same music, sadly, because that’s all the corporations shove down our throats. But there are a few unique stations here and there, like hidden gems. Especially in Europe. I only wish I had a way to record from these stations onto a blank tape. Sure I could use an auxiliary cord, but those seem to kill the sound quality.
Sadly there are still ads, and they’re always local to where you are no matter where in the world the radio station is. I don’t want my German polka music interrupted by a commercial for Publix in Florida, dammit. At least it would be interesting listening to ads from other countries, but no. Must be how Radio Garden pays the bills. You can just switch stations when an ad comes on, just like with regular radio. If a station is ad-free anyway then you don’t need to bother. A word of caution, though. Radio Garden will try to convince you to download the app. I did, and I lost all my favorites on the website version, which did not transfer over to the app either. If I hadn’t already been writing this blog and saving the links I may not have been able to find some of these stations again. I think it periodically forgets your favorites eventually anyway even when you’re not messing around with the app though. Maybe the app is better at remembering, but I haven’t really used it enough to be sure because you get popup ads on the app, which you don’t get on the website. Everything else on the app was exactly the same as using the website. So I don’t recommend the app. Unless they update it to be better somehow after this writing.
Below I have linked to some of my favorite radio stations from around the world here, sorted by genres I am into (Goth, Metal, Alternative Rock, Armenian music, folk, and other random genres) in roughly the order I discovered each one in. This is more so that I can have them saved somewhere, but also to share them. I just discovered this website last week so this list is by no means exhaustive.
This was the first station I found that played music from under the “Goth” music genre umbrella, which I will be using in this blog entry as a convenient shorthand. I am pretty sure stations like this do not exist in America. Granted, this station focuses mostly on dark electro, like what the dance clubs play. That’s what most of the gothic music stations I found have in common. As the name suggests, very synth-heavy. I like that though. Expect to hear VNV Nation and the like.
Much like the previous station, this one plays dance club goth music. It’s not actual “Synthwave”, another term for Retrowave, which is a revival of 80s New Wave and pop, but maybe Synthwave means something else in Hungary.
This is obviously related to the previous station, but the focus is darkwave and post-punk. Guitar-based goth music. They play The Cure fairly often. There must be a big goth scene in Miskolc, Hungary. Who’d have thought?
A Peruvian radio station that’s a little more my style, playing electronic music. It’s not really dark synth, but it’s up my alley enough, and is one of my favorites. Music you still wouldn’t really find in the United States so much. I actually heard them play And One though. And songs other than just “Military Fashion Show” and “Panzermensch” too, which are the only ones most club DJs ever play. So they will play EBM from time to time. It’s funny how they interrupt the song to say “Rrrradio synthpop perrrrfecto!” every now and then. This is a charming little radio station to put on.
Leave it to Germany to have a Gothic music station. It’s got darkwave, post-punk, industrial, industrial metal. I even heard them play Rammstein, appropriately enough. There are so many great bands from Germany they have to get airplay somewhere.
I thought I had found all the goth stations, but then I decided to search under the term “dark”, and got some more. This one from Scotland was playing Ministry when I first tuned in, so I knew I’d found a good one. From what I’ve heard, this station seems to specialize in Industrial music and dark electro. A lot of the time it feels just like listening to the Communion After Dark podcast. I have heard them play VNV Nation, [:SITD:], Das Ich, Project Pitchfork, And One, and even Kraftwerk. They’re after me own heart, they are. They blend the songs together like a DJ does at a club; you start to hear hints of the next song at the end of the current song, and it transitions. It’s like listening to an endless DJ live stream. This might be my favorite radio station in the world. Followed closely by Radio Synthpop. Unless there are more that I haven’t discovered yet.
The “dark” search also turned up this station, another dark electronic music station. So Italy has enough cool people to warrant a goth station as well. How lucky for them.
Yet another dark electro goth station! Found this one while searching “synth” trying to get back to Lima’s Radio Synthpop. It truly is a synthetic experience. They even snuck some Kraftwerk in there as I listened, which made me excited. I’ve also heard Laibach and Diary of Dreams. This is one of my favorites.
I knew there had to be a metal station in Norway somewhere, since that’s where all the best metal comes from. And there is one! There’s another genre missing from American radio.
I expected this to be another goth station, but it seems to be more of a metal station. Still a cool find. So far I’ve mainly heard melodic power metal, not sure if they ever play black metal or other genres. I feel so cheated as an American. Why do our radio stations all suck?
There’s a very similar station in Cologne, Germany called Ultra Dark Radio, which seems to be the same kind of music and may be affiliated with Dark Radio.
This is just a good place to go for the 80s and 90s alternative rock I grew up listening to. I could probably find a station like this in the US since it is pretty mainstream, or was when it was new. Except it’s all the way in Moscow. That just makes things more interesting.
I have a history with this alternative rock station, and I’ve told that story on the blog before. I grew up listening to this radio station. I recorded my first mixtape off this radio station. It’s a student-run radio station at a high school, where they train DJs. It’s been around since 1969, good to know it’s still going. I’ve moved on from this type of music, but it’s still kind of nice to go back and listen to this station again. It’s sentimental.
Yeraz is Armenian for “dream”, and this is an Armenian radio station for the diaspora living in Syria. The fact that this station is up and running leads me to believe maybe Aleppo is more intact than the western media would have us believe. No, Syria isn’t just a big rubble pile. This station plays Armenian traditional folk and modern Armenian pop. Diasporan Armenian radio stations are more dedicated to playing Armenian music than the actual radio stations in Armenia, oddly enough. I guess when you’re surrounded by it constantly you want to hear something different. It’s interesting to contrast attitudes in Armenia versus in the Armenian diaspora by looking at their radio stations. Maybe it’s similar when you compare a Spanish radio station in California versus a typical radio station in Mexico, which would be under no obligation to play only Spanish-language music. So anyway, if you’re in the mood for Armenian music you’re actually better off finding one of these stations than finding one from Yerevan, where they mix in Russian and American music a lot of the time. I found a couple more Armenian stations in Lebanon and one in America which I will cover.
“Lav” is Armenian for “good”. This is one of the better stations to get Armenian music from the actual country, although it’s pretty much just pop music. There are two Lav Radio stations. The other one is Lav Radio Mix. This station plays electronic music and pop, not necessarily from Armenia alone, and they throw in some Russian and English-language songs too. It’s not always my type of music, though. Like I mentioned in the previous post, it’s a bit of a mix.
I will go ahead and mention Nor Radio here as well (“nor” means “new”), a very similar radio station also from Yerevan. That station also mixes music from other countries, and is essentially just like Lav Radio. All of the stations in Armenia come out of Yerevan, although I could have sworn Vanadzor had one when I was living there for two months. Maybe Radio Garden doesn’t have them all. I do have to be careful when using the map not to accidentally switch to a station in Turkey or Nakhichevan. For historical reasons.
“Hayazgi Dzayn” or “Armenian Voice” in English. Another Armenian radio station, this time from Lebanon. It’s not the only one there either, such as this one. There’s a very large Armenian diaspora community in Beirut. Again, it’s mainly traditional folk or pop-folk. But you know what you’re getting, no random pop music from other countries.
Oh alright, one more Armenian station. Gotta catch ‘em all, I guess. And this one is from the United States! I should have grown up in Glendale. It’s a small town near Los Angeles and a well-known Armenian colony. I checked Glendale specifically just to see if there were any Armenian radio stations there, and there was this one. The Armenians in Glendale are very committed to preserving their identity, so this is a good radio station for that reason.
Now here’s something completely different. You like pan pipes? Well here’s the station for you. Peruvian folk music is very relaxing. My wife is half-Peruvian which was what led me to search Peru for radio stations. I like this one.
Germany is home to a few German folk music stations, mostly in the south of the country. Nearby Munich also has Volksmusikwelle, and Radio Heimatmelodie. These three stations alone should cover your yodeling and accordion fix. But there are most certainly others.
This one is too weird not to include. It’s a radio station from Greece that plays music from Japanese anime shows. Really. I have no idea how this happened. I’m just amused that it exists.
An actual dedicated New Wave station is hard to find, but Dublin, Ireland has one. There are 80s stations all over the world, but at least this one doesn’t mix in the boring love ballads and pop music.
Radio stations with music this old are a rarity. I do like me some classic jazz, swing and big band music every now and then. This station plays music you’d expect to hear in old black and white movies and Betty Boop cartoons.
Electro Swing is a modern swing revival with electronic music infused with it. It is such a niche genre, it’s really cool to see that there’s a radio station that plays it somewhere. I didn’t think it was really very well known outside of YouTube. There’s so much more variety on the radio in Germany.
Anyway, I probably still haven’t discovered all the radio stations I would like. If you know of any you think I would be into, go ahead and let me know here or on Facebook.
Valentine’s Day is soon upon us, tis the season of love! What better time to listen to a playlist of hate songs? Hatred
has been something I’ve long striven to overcome. I’ve written about this struggle before. But every now and then, in a
fit of anger, I might regress. It’s only human. I try not to make it permanent. There will always be things I hate. I made a
playlist of songs for a mix CD some months ago; a collection of hate songs.
More for fun than anything else, and something to listen to when I’m angry as a way to vent. Part of an old habit. It’s another in my series of mixes which focus on one word or concept. Others I have talked about on the blog before are Cold, the Moon, the Sun. I have more coming up too, one about the Heart, and one about Time. But, it is interesting to listen to it and ponder the
concept of hatred, and the many different ways the songwriters use it in their
songs. The purpose of the mix is to first allow me to vent, then stew for a little bit, begin to calm down, and then lift me out of my bad mood, leaving me in a better mood than I was at the beginning of the mix. This just works for me. It’s like music therapy.
Here is the track listing. I will briefly discuss each song that I feel warrants discussion. I remade 5e mix in Spotify for those who want to listen along, but Spotify doesn’t have every song.
This is the first song I think
of when I think of a “hate” song. Often it would come to my mind when dealing
with difficult customers while I was working at the call centers. A song for someone you are just so sick and tired of being around. We all have someone we could dedicate this song to.
Korn
– Right Now
Right now, I can’t control myself I fucking hate you!
What originally drew me to this song was the music video, an animation of someone mutilating themselves in horrifically twisted ways. If you read my comics, you know I get that kind of humor. The song is also great to listen to when you’re angry. Sing along, rock out. Try it sometime, it’s really cathartic.
Twiztid
– Kill Somebody
This song builds off the energy of the previous. A song for those times when you’re so livid, when you’re seeing red, and your anger isn’t so much directed at one person but at everything. We all have those times. Some more often than others. Myself, more when I was in my teens, but still every so often.
Alice
in Chains – Love, Hate, Love
This is kind of a cool-down song after the last two. This song transitions us from the really angry songs to the dark and seething symphonic black metal songs to come. It is more contemplative, contrasting the concepts of love and hate.
Covenant
– The Dark Conquest
Don’t we all, at one time or another, at some point in our lives, wish we had ultimate power? The power to act on our hate without any consequences? This song taps into dark fantasy. Off one of my favorite albums of all time In Times Before the Light. I decided to go with the original version over the 2002 industrial metal version after the band changed their name to The Kovenant. It’s more raw, more pure. The remixed one is also longer, and I needed this mix to fit on an 80 minute CD. But both versions are good.
Dimmu
Borgir – The Serpentine Offering
I am hatred, darkness and despair.
Similar energy to the previous song. Dimmu Borgir is great at adding a symphonic element to their black metal, creating powerful dark music that could be the soundtrack to a supervillain. It really gets your adrenaline rushing, especially if you’re angry.
Cradle
of Filth – Thank God for the Suffering
This song is on here if for no other reason than for the chant of “Hate! Hate! Hate!” at the end of the song. This rounds off the black metal section of the mix, as by the end of this song my adrenaline will be spent.
[:SITD:]
– Brother Death
I hate you, you hate me, Brother Death is calling me.
This track kind of tones things down compared to the last song, but not too much. That “I hate you, you hate me” line reminds me a bit too much of the anti-Barney songs we used to sing in Elementary School though. “I hate you, you hate me. Let’s get together and kill Barney. With a great big axe and a loaded .44, no more purple dinosaur.” We all had such an irrational hatred for that purple dinosaur back in the 1990s. To this day I still do. I can’t explain why. I mean to be fair, Elmo from Sesame Street is probably even more irritating. My two year old has never watched an episode of Barney though, and it will stay that way.
Insane
Clown Posse – Hate Her to Death
This track may seem out of place with the others if you go by the band name, but it’s not exactly. It’s a song about hating someone for not loving you back. It is the kind of feeling you would only get as a teenager or something. But perhaps it is something I remember.
Orange
Sector – I Hate You
This is an essential hate song, for obvious reasons. Orange Sector has at least a couple good hate songs, this being one of them. The singer reminds me of Ren from Ren & Stimpy.
Gwar
– Hate Love Songs
I hate love songs! I hate lovers! I hate, everything that I can’t have, so I hate love!
A great song for those poor souls who are single on Valentine’s Day. I ought to know, I have still spent the majority of my Valentine’s Days single.
Ayria
– Friends and Enemies
It’s okay to hate your enemies, it’s either them or me, just want to break their things.
The word “hate” doesn’t appear in this song much. Instead the main word is “bitch”, pronounced “beetch” in a Russian accent. I love the insult in here “your dick is under six inches”. What a burn.
Orange
Sector – I Spit on You
I spit on you, I spit in your face! I spit on you, I spit on your grave!
This song compliments the previous one by Orange Sector. “I spit on your grave” is an insult we don’t hear often enough.
This is a cool-down song, which Spotify does not have unfortunately. So you can find it on YouTube. I was obsessed with this band for many years. Not sure what they’re up to these days. But this song is quite catchy. Not as angry as the last several.
Buzz
Kull – Ode to Hate
Once again, this track is more catchy than angry. I like the lyric “The world I’m living in makes no sense”, because it doesn’t. Hate itself makes very little sense sometimes. Particularly when based on race or nationality.
Voltaire
– God Thinks
I hate people who blame the devil for their own shortcomings, and I hate people who thank God when things go right.
A very poignant song about how people in power twist the word of God to suit their own often hateful agendas. More of a rant set to music, really.
Diary
of Dreams – Play God
Why don’t you compensate all of my pain and hate?
Hate really isn’t the central subject of this song, but it is yet another calm down song. I needed a few of those after screaming along to Korn.
And
One – Save the Hate
Save, the hate, it’s another day. Don’t bring me down it’s far too late.
To me this song is about not giving into the hate, not letting the people who want you to be upset win. Just go on with your day, and save your hate for someone who has really earned it, at least. Don’t waste it on petty internet trolls the like. And it’s a great song to end the mix on for that lesson.
Anyway, I hope you’ve enjoyed the mix if you decide to put it together yourself. What songs would you add? You can go ahead and let me know over on Facebook if you will (you can comment on Blogger, but it never lets me know when I get new comments). If I end up liking the suggestions maybe I can include them on a longer 90 minute cassette version of the mix. Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!
More people should see the Sun the
way it looks in this picture. It really puts our reality into a different
perspective. Here’s a fun thing you can look up. Go on Google and ask it
“What’s the nearest star to the Earth?”
It
gives you Alpha Centauri A, which is 4.3 lightyears from Earth. Is the Sun, a
mere 93 million miles away, a joke to you, Google? Is it because we
subconsciously as humans don’t put the Sun in the same category as the rest of
the stars, even though it is a star? By the way, I love watching videos where someone attaches
a camera to a weather balloon and lets it fly into the upper atmosphere. It
nearly gets to the vacuum of space before popping. When you see the sun up
there, against a black background instead of blue, and you see other stars in
the sky, it makes you confront the fact that the sun is just another star. A
closer one to us, but a star nonetheless. Why do we categorize the Sun differently?
The
ancient Armenians considered themselves the Children of the Sun; as did the
Incas, and the ancient Egyptians, and countless other cultures, separated by
centuries and continents. The vast majority of religions ever followed by
humanity have the Sun as their central deity. It’s true though. We are the
children of the sun. We exist because of the Sun. The atoms and molecules that
make up our bodies come from the Sun, formed in the same gas cloud as the Sun
eons ago. We forget this due to modern materialism, which postulates that the
sun is nothing more than an uninteresting, unremarkable flaming ball of gas. Not
many people really stop to contemplate the Sun or be grateful to it. It’s been
objectified, despiritualized and taken for granted. It simply is. Yet we rely
on it in uncountable ways.
I myself have had a somewhat
troubled relationship with the Sun over the years. I like darkness. The Sun
bothers my eyes, and I dislike heat and get sunburned easily. I prefer night to
day, and winter to summer. But in the last couple years I’ve been grappling
with existentialism, the meaning of life, and contemplating the universe I’ve
found myself in, as well as my own existence. You could call it an existential
crisis, but I view it more as an awakening. I discovered the hypothesis of
panpsychism, which postulates that the stars have their own consciousness and
are in a sense alive, and the epiphany was mind-blowing.
A
star has a life cycle; it is born, it builds itself and grows just like an
embryo, reaches maturity, grows old, and dies. Most scientists rely on the hypothesis
of dark matter to explain why stars defy gravity, expanding the universe when
gravity ought to be making the universe contract, and why stars move faster
around their galaxies than should be physically possible. But there’s no proof
of dark matter’s existence. Who’s to say the stars aren’t moving of their own
volition?
I
see the Sun as my oldest living ancestor. Panpsychism can’t be proved nor disproved and likely never will be, which is why it's likely to be labeled a pseudoscience and not taken seriously by the scientific community. But I feel that I’ve faith in it. Almost a
sort of religion, I suppose, based both in modern science and ancient paganism,
whereas the Gods are more like symbolic personifications of real ideas and
concepts. But really, I view it more as an interpretation of reality, or a
philosophy. And one guess is as good as another when it comes to interpreting
this bizarre reality we’ve been born into. I’m not dogmatic about it, I could
even change my mind entirely down the road. But the ancients always believed the
Sun has a consciousness. Ra, Apollo, Aramazd, all the Sun Gods are different
representations and interpretations of the Sun by different cultures. Why do
children tend to draw a face on the sun? Could it be that we’re all inherently
aware of the sun’s consciousness somewhere in the back of our minds, until modern
society convinces us it’s not true? If the Sun does indeed possess a consciousness, it would be something that we couldn't even comprehend. Perhaps the sun is hyper-aware of all that its rays of light touch. Are we as lifeforms merely extensions of the Sun’s consciousness? Are we not all a part of the Sun, in some way?
In appreciation of the Sun,
I’ve put together a mix CD in honor of this year’s Summer Solstice. It could be considered a sister mix to the one I did about the Moon. Each song
is either about the Sun or mentions it somewhere in the lyrics. The playlist
takes the form of a day; at the beginning is a song about dawn, and near the
end are songs about sunset. Each song was relevant to me at some point in my
life. It crosses genres.
I
tried my best to rebuild the playlist on Spotify for anyone interested. They
had most of the songs, but not all.
This song is one of the best odes to the Sun I know
of. Although entirely in German. It's about the rising sun, how it is the brightest star in the sky. I always liked the angelic feminine vocals that accompany the song. It brings to mind light.
Pink
Floyd – Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun
As a Pink Floyd song it has a
psychedelic quality to it. It’s the song that makes me think about the actual
Sun as a star in space, and contemplate what a remarkable thing the Sun really
is, as well as the mystery surrounding its purpose in the universe.
This song also has a spacey energy to it. I don’t
know what an “astral kiss” is. Perhaps it refers to an eclipse. But it is a
great concept. Very poetic. I couldn’t find it on Spotify, unfortunately, but
three of La Scaltra’s albums are on there.
Holygram
– She’s Like the Sun
“She’s
like the sun, far away.”
If the only thing that the woman in
this song has in common with the Sun is that she’s far away, I don’t think
she’s very much like the sun. Is she 93 million miles away like the Sun?
Anyway, I do like this song a lot.
“At
the first day of life you were blinded by light, don’t believe the Sun.”
A lot of And One songs, especially the English language ones, are just word
salad, it’s hard to find meaning in them. But I think this song is about how
the Sun is a constant throughout your life. It mentions stages in your life
from birth to death. It may even mention reincarnation in the lines “So you die
and you’re dancing in the tunnel of light, don’t believe the Sun. At the first
day of life then it shines so bright and then, you realize you’re born again.”
Kind of goes with my theory that your soul is part of the Sun and returns to
the Sun after death to be recycled into another lifeform.
Another
song missing from Spotify, sadly.
New
Order – True Faith
“I
used to think that the day would never come, that my life would depend on the
morning sun.”
I don’t really know what this song
is about exactly. But it is interesting when someone talks about a “morning
Sun” as if it’s separate from a “noon Sun” or an “evening Sun”, even though
it’s the same star. I suppose the Egyptians had more than one Sun God, Horus
representing the morning Sun and Ra representing the evening Sun. It’s like
when someone says “look at that moon!” as if there’s more than one. It’s funny
to think about how other human beings look at the Sun and Moon.
Stratovarius
– Eagleheart
“Heart
of an eagle he flies through the rainbow into a new world and finds the Sun.”
Here’s another song I don’t know how
to interpret. But, the lyrics are very poetic. I think the singer must have
been making some sort of metaphor.The
mention of rainbows is a good lyric to bring up, as a rainbow wouldn’t exist
without the Sun.
The
Bambir – ԱրևէԵլել (The Sun is Up)
The
Bambir is an Armenian folk rock group, and this song, translating to The Sun is
Up, is dedicated to the Velvet Revolution of 2018, when the people of Armenia
organized a massive peaceful protest and forced the Prime Minister Serj
Sargsyan, known for his corruption, to resign. The Sun here represents hope and
optimism, the end of a long dark night that began with the fall of the Soviet
Union.
“Must have been, late afternoon. On
our way, the Sun broke free of the clouds.”
This is a song from my childhood in the 1990’s. It’s
very emotional, I get nostalgic and teary-eyed sometimes if I listen to it in
the right mood. The line above is some great use of imagery, I can see the
image in my mind when the singer describes it. And the main chorus says “Tell
me all your thoughts on God, ‘cuz I’d really like to meet Her.” Interesting
pronoun choice, but I have no qualms with it. I’m at the point now where I
think of the Sun and stars as Gods. Those are my thoughts.
Nice use of imagery in the lyrics,
but I don’t know if the sun really “blows” anything, does it? Anyway, you can’t
go wrong with throwing Type O Negative on the mix. This is one of their
characteristically dark and beautiful songs. September is when the Sun seems to
wane, as the northern hemisphere tilts away from it. The sunlight almost has a
different color tint to it in the autumn.
And this song is missing from
Spotify! How? I think the whole album it’s on is missing. Maybe that will
change eventually. As an aside, making this playlist made me realize whether or not a song can be found on Spotify doesn't necessarily depend on how obscure it is.
Voltaire
– All the Way Down (Cave Canem Demo)
“The sun
goes down, as children listen. All the way down.”
Now we get the songs about the sunset. This song is
a beautiful one, which makes the connection of sunset with death. I listened to
this song when my grandfather Dean passed away, and it tends to make me think
of him, even though I don’t think he would have ever heard this song himself.
It’s kind of my private tribute song to him.
The
Midnight – Sunset
“Sunsets,
no regrets, first chance last dance stuck in the middle.”
This is a song about just packing up
and leaving everything behind with your significant other to start a new life
somewhere else. You don’t usually see sunsets being used as a metaphor for new
beginnings, that’s usually more of a dawn thing, making this song unique in
that regard. It’s a great song.
The
Jetzons – When the Sun Goes Down
Another song about the sunset. I’ve
talked about this obscure early 1980’s New Wave band before, and their
connection with the soundtrack of the video game Sonic the Hedgehog 3. It’s
been theorized that this song served as the basis for the Marble Garden Zone.
The
Kentucky Vampires – The Falling Sun
Everyone’s favorite Kentucky goth
rock band besides Scary Black. I don't have a whole lot to say about it. The songs get darker from here on in, and this song helps the transition. There's a certain science to making playlists that flow well, you see.
Svetlana
Mart – Moon Eclipsed the Sun
I mentioned this song in my top 3 songs of June.
It’s a catchy little number about casting spells during a solar eclipse. I’ve
witnessed one solar eclipse in my life, it was that famous one on August 21,
2017. In Florida it was only partial, but the sky got dimmer, it got less hot
out, and the sunlight in the shadows under trees became crescent-shaped. It
felt like I was wearing sunglasses but I wasn’t. It was pretty surreal. I don’t
know if I’ll ever get to see a total solar eclipse. But I would love to one
day.
VNV
Nation - Further
“The
sun was born, so it shall die, so only shadows comfort me.”
This is a great song about
existential nihilism. Earlier in the song it asks “When the sun burns out, will
any of this matter?” These are questions I’ve been tackling recently. One day
the Sun will expand into a red giant, likely swallowing the Earth in the
process, but not before all of Earth’s oceans boil away. Who will be around to
talk about humanity then?
SYZYGYX
– The Dying Sun
This song is nearly an instrumental if not for some
vocalizations by the singer here and there. The dark imagery that the
instrumental brings to mind is of the Sun as a red giant in billions of years,
scorching the solar system and engulfing the inner planets. Will life exist in
the solar system at this point? Perhaps its doubtful; I don’t really hold much
hope for the human race to last more than a few hundred more years myself, but
perhaps I’m being too pessimistic. I also like to think that life takes on more
forms than scientists currently think. Perhaps every planet has its own type of
life. But, I don’t base that on any actual evidence. It’s just a thought.
This short instrumental which I wrap
the playlist up with samples the female vocals from Rammstein’s "Sonne", giving
the playlist a good bookend. Like the cycle of day and night, it ends where it
begins.
One night I was looking for the song "Cold" by The Cure on my computer. I
typed the word “cold” into the search bar on Windows Media Player, and it came
up with a list of songs that had the word “cold” somewhere in the title. I
started listening to the list, and realized a lot of the songs went well
together. Each has a unique way of using and defining the concept of cold. I
then started a playlist and added songs that use the word “cold” in their
lyrics somewhere too. I probably should have been doing something more productive
with my time, but, that’s how the idea for this mix came about, as well as
others I plan on making centered around other concepts. I may do an extended
cassette version of the mix later on, but for now, it’s a CD mix.
The Cure – Cold
“I
was cold as I mouthed the words, and crawled across the mirror. I wait, await
the next breath, your name like ice, into my heart.”
This song is darkly beautiful. As
far as my tastes in music goes I prefer The Cure’s darker albums, such as Pornography
and Disintegration. Their pop music is okay, but a bit more shallow, in
a way. "Cold" in this song is more of a feeling, an emotion, than literal cold.
Perhaps it’s a song of lost love. The lyrics are hard to comprehend, but I
think that’s what it’s about. What would it take for someone’s name to be like ice into your
heart? Like being stabbed in the heart with an icicle? If even the mere mention of a name brings
such an association to mind you’d have to have very strong feelings, either
negative or tragic. Perhaps of a lover that left you or died. Or perhaps not of
a lover at all, I could be way off. The singer doesn’t have to be singing about
a woman, or even a person.
I can’t find the lyrics to this one
anywhere, and since the title is in Spanish, I probably wouldn’t understand
them either. But this is a very atmospheric track, the last one on Obscura
Undead’s UnObscured 2019 compilation, which I’ve discussed numerous times already.
The description that came with the digital album suggests this song wouldn’t be
out of place in a fog-shrouded cemetery, and I have to agree. Although the
image that I get listening to this song is a desolate, frozen tundra, lit only
by moonlight, whipped by freezing winds. It continues the energy of the
previous track.
Coldwave Kids (South Park Goth
Song Cover) – Accumortis
This song may be cheating, because
it has no lyrics, and “coldwave” refers to the musical genre. But it has the
secret word in the title!
"It's the secret word of the day! AAAAHHHHH! HA-HA!!"
This was made by the Youtube user Accumortis,
and is a cover of the song that the goth kids from South Park listen to.
However, let us consider for a moment why the genre of coldwave has that name.
The genre was apparently first applied to Kraftwerk, yet another of the dozens
of genres they helped launch, and came to refer to music which uses minimal
synth,usually with sparse, monotone vocals. Listening to music in this genre,
for some reason I do feel a certain coldness. A robotic, emotionless type of
coldness, perhaps. I can’t properly articulate why coldwave in general, and
this song in particular, elicits thoughts of coldness. The song makes me think
of a clear, starry winter night. It also makes me ponder why we associate
coldness with the things that we do. We associate it with emotionlessness, to
be unkind, unforgiving, even cruelty. And we associate warmth with kindness and
love. It’s strange if you think about it.
Mortiis – Marshland
“I’m
stuck and cold, I’m stuck and cold in Marshland. I’m stuck and cold where life
is plentiful but nothing lives.”
Perhaps the marshlands of Norway
where Mortiis is from get cold. They’re not cold in Florida or California,
really, which are the only marshlands I’ve ever been to. I’ve written about this song on this blog before and dissected its lyrics. The use of the word
“cold” in this song goes along with what I’ve mentioned; emotionless,
lifelessness, cruelty. The chorus goes on to talk about the machine”, which
doesn’t care what you think or feel and will keep moving on if you die. To me,
the machine represents our society, where materialism is valued over people.
Thus, though the word “cold” only plays a minor role lyrically, the
associations that it brings permeate throughout the whole song.
And One – Years
“Years
are getting colder, just memories left behind.”
This is another song I’ve previously discussed. Lyrically the song doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense, but I
like this particular line. It reminds me of becoming more jaded and cynical,
i.e. “colder”, as the years go on and you lose more and more of your innocence.
Cold here can mean jaded, depressed, bitter, hardened, as the dreams you had
when you were young seem more and more unattainable as soon as you start to
grasp the cold reality of how the world works.
Ministry – Cold Life
“Earth
gets colder every day, if scientists could have their way, they’d study us from
far away and watch as people’s minds decay.”
An early Ministry track from their
synthpop days (but it never made it on With Sympathy, so Al Jourgensen can't really claim the record companies forced him to make it), although this one has more of a funk sound to it, like early Red Hot Chili Peppers. The use of “cold” here is much as I said in the previous song. I
don’t know if I agree with him on scientists. Maybe some scientists are that
“cold” and detached from sentiment. The ones who do animal testing probably
are. The song is about a cold, pessimistic outlook on life, and the world.
Later in the song we have lyrics such as “Earth is such a filthy place and
humans such an awful race.” In actuality the world is overall becoming warmer
every day due to rampant climate change that’s going to doom us all pretty
soon, but metaphorically, I think it is becoming a colder place as well. Of
course, that said, the world has always been a harsh place, and humans have
always been an awful race. The “good old days” are an illusion. The world is a
colder place for those of us entering adulthood.
Bella Morte – Break this Cold
“Walk
this winter mile, under the snow, knowing the sun won’t ever break this cold.”
At long last, a more literal meaning
of the world “cold”. Days like this are sadly very rare where I live, in
Florida. But this song is about those winter days where it’s sunny, but
paradoxically, still bitter cold. Not even the sun is enough to warm the day. I
sometimes wish I lived in an area where it snowed. But everyone I talk to who
does seems to hate it. Yet snow gets romanticized every year around December
even in areas where it never snows. When I lived in California, in the San
Francisco Bay Area, everyone would get so excited when little Mt. Diablo (just
under 4,000 feet high) got snow. In Florida people make “sandmen” instead of
snowmen. The bigger cities in both states will often have parades or events
where fake snow is generated from machines. Ice skating rinks can be found in
both states, even in the town which I find myself in now, Rockledge. Snow is
one of those things. Those who don’t have it, want it. Those who get it, don’t
want it. As for the song, it’s about a winter cold that defies even the sun. A
cold that I miss and long for. Especially when it gets over 80 degrees
Fahrenheit in December here in Florida.
Hante – In Cold Water
“And
I’m scared I won’t survive tomorrow if I let myself sink deeper. You can’t go
back from the abyss of sorrow. How could I keep breathing in cold water?”
Hante is a coldwave band (insert Pee
Wee Herman scream here) from France, that I’ve been a fan of for a couple years
now, ever since I heard the song “Empty Space”. In the lyrics to this song, the
singer is walking along the beach and is drawn toward the ocean, walking deep
into the cold waters, and wondering how deep they can go before they drown. I
think the “cold water” here is a metaphor for depression, the clue being the
reference to the abyss of sorrow. How deep can they sink and still survive? As
someone with depression, I definitely relate. It can give you a sinking,
drowning feeling when it becomes overwhelming. The word “cold” isn’t overall
very important to the lyrics as a whole; in fact, it may only be there to make
the number of syllables add up. But its inclusion does bring with it its own
implications. She could have substituted “warm”, “blue”, or “deep”, but the
song writer chose “cold” for a reason. Likely because of its nonliteral
interpretations, all of which I’ve mentioned.
Le Matos – Cold Summer
“In
the forest, why does it feel so cold? Feels so cold in the summer. In the
forest, I’m growing cold, feels so cold in the summer.”
Having it be cold outside in the
summer sounds amazing. Especially in Florida. The only places I’ve been where
it can get cold in the summer are Monterey, California, Vanadzor, Armenia (as
well as anywhere on around Lake Sevan), and maybe up in the mountains anywhere.
All places I wish I lived. Anyway, as for the song lyrics; no one expects it to
be cold in the summer. It doesn’t sound like the singer is happy that it’s cold
(like I would be). So here, cold symbolizes an unexpected disappointment. If
taken literally, maybe this song is about a summer camping trip that went awry
due to unexpected weather. But if you look into the alternate implications
which the word ”cold” has in the English language, you can make your own
metaphorical interpretations from there. Perhaps this is a metaphor for being
treated “coldly” by a loved one from whom you expected “warmth”, or affection.
It could mean any number of things.
Hoffen – Cold Tears of an Angel
“Cold
tears of an angel, are devastated with treason and lies.”
This one isn’t the easiest song to
interpret, but I found the full lyrics on Hoffen’s Bandcamp page. Tears are
generally warm, coming from the body which is a steady 98 degrees Fahrenheit.
Perhaps angels are different? It’s a song about being betrayed by someone, and
if angels are generally seen as pure and innocent (though they aren’t always in
many myths), the lyrics give the sense of a loss of innocence. The betrayal of
someone who is not used to shedding tears. Someone who is now “cold” on the
inside, and therefore so are their tears.
Paula Abdul – Cold-Hearted
“He’s
a cold-hearted snake, look into his eyes. Uh-oh, he’s been telling lies.”
Oh goodie, time to admit to a guilty
pleasure. I spent much of my early childhood watching MTV in the late 1980’s
and early 1990’s, where I inevitably became a fan of Paula Abdul. She was
probably my first crush. I never stopped liking her music, even after I got
into metal and then goth music. Pop music in the 1980’s is still way more
tolerable than pop music from the late 1990’s onward. Singers still had to have
some degree of musical talent back then. In any case, the usage of the word
“cold” in this song is related to its use in the previous song. The singer is
warning others about their ex-lover who cheated on them. To be “cold-hearted”,
by this song’s definition and in the general sense of the idiom, is to have the
ability to betray the love and trust of someone who loves you without any
remorse. I’ll be doing another mix like this with the word “heart”, where I can
discuss the implications of that word in its literal and metaphorical senses.
New Order – Blue Monday
“Tell
me how does it feel, when your heart grows cold?”
People have analyzed the meaning of
this well-known song already in the past. It seems to be about being in some
kind of a relationship (whether romantic or not isn’t stated, but somewhat
implied) with someone who is manipulative and controlling. This made it a very
good break-up song for me with my first girlfriend. Ah, fun times. The last
line in the song is the one above. Again, we have the “cold-hearted” idiom,
which can only be taken metaphorically. The person being sung about in the song
is unfeeling and unsympathetic, and the narrator wonders how it feels to become
that way, to no longer care about others. This is what it means to be cold, or
cold-hearted.
Kamelot – On the Coldest Winter
Night
“On
the coldest winter night, this moment is our right.”
Let’s
look at a song that’s not about a failed romance now (well okay, the romance
does fail in a major way later in the album, which is a concept album based on
the story of Goethe’s Faust, but nevermind that). This song just makes
me feel all warm and toasty inside. It’s all about cozying up with your true
love on the coldest night of the year and having a moment of passion with them.
The world outside is cold, maybe in both the lyrical and metaphorical senses,
but love warms this couple in spite of all that. I’ve always loved this album, Epica.
I suppose Kamelot is a melodic power metal band, but you’d never be able to
tell with this song, which is mainly soft piano and vocals. If more people only
listened to this album it would be more popular.
Serj Tankian – Garun a
“My
sweetheart has become cold. Akh, I wish for my rival’s tongue to dry up.”
Serj Tankian covers an old Armenian
folk song popularized by Komitas Vardapet in this track. The full lyrics aren’t very long. It’s spring yet still snowy, the singer’s lover has ”become cold”, and
it seems to somehow be the singer’s rival’s fault (if the final line is
connected to the other two at all). I have an intermediate understanding of the
Armenian language, but I can’t say I know if the word for cold has the same
several meanings it has in English. The word specifically in this song is սառել, meaning “to become cold”, as the
act of becoming cold is it’s own one-word verb in the language (nifty, isn’t
it?) Has she become cold because the singer is in a love triangle with their
rival, and she’s choosing the rival over him? Or is she literally cold, perhaps
even dead, and the rival is to blame? I can’t really say for certain,
unfortunately. Wishing for someone’s tongue to dry up must be an old-world
curse, I take it. Maybe someone else knows the correct interpretation of this
song. I’ve heard renditions of this song that are upbeat, danceable even, but
this one sounds tragic and heart-wrenching. It’s a tear-jerker. I remember it
best because I listened to it on repeat on my last day in Armenia and moped because
I was leaving my beloved country. This song brings me back to that last day.
I’ll blog about that day on its anniversary this October.
Dishwalla
– Counting Blue Cars
“It’s
getting cold, picked up the pace. How our shoes, make hard noises in this
place.”
Following the sentimental
tear-jerker theme this mix is now on, we have this gem from my 1990’s
childhood. It’s hard to say what this song is really about when you look at the
lyrics. “Tell me all your thoughts on God, because I’d really like to meet
her.” Having God be referred to as a female is kind of interesting. Maybe the singer is Wiccan. Anyway, the word
“cold” isn’t doing a whole lot in this song. Perhaps if I find a song more
centered on cold I would eliminate this one from the list. Not that I don’t
like it, of course. It’s a song from when I was pure and innocent, before
Middle School destroyed it all. But yeah, if I make a mix of songs about God
I’ll have more to say about this.
Eisbrecher
– Eiskalt Erwischt
“You
smell me, you chase me, you have me, captured ice cold.”
And now for some German. We’re
kicking it up a notch now after the last several songs to a speedy industrial
metal song. Maybe I should have put more of a mid-level heavy song between this
one and the previous as more of a buffer. But, I consider this mix kind of a
work in progress anyway. The band, “Eisbrecher”, translates to “ice breaker”,
and the song roughly translates to “Captured Ice Cold”. Coldness is a common
theme in Eisbrecher’s songs, unsurprisingly. The band sounds a lot like
Rammstein to the untrained ear, making it even more amusing when he says “Du
has mich” several times throughout this song. The song is very carnal, about
being chased down and captured by your lover and enjoying it. But with lyrics
like “I tear the cold heart from your chest every night with lust”…yeah, maybe
it’s more than just sado-masochism. As long as it’s consensual, whatever floats
your boat I guess. I’m unsure if “eiskalt erwischt” is a common German idiom.
My last German class was a long time ago now. I’m better at Armenian at
this point. Maybe it means something akin to being “caught red-handed” in
English. That would be my guess. If true, that would be an altogether different
way to look at the word “cold”.
The
Kovenant – Through the Eyes of the Raven
“My
tears no longer turned to frost, my eyes they gleam no more. Triumphant pride
forever lost. King Winter, where’s thy cold?”
I’ve discussed at length
Covenant/The Kovenant’s debut album In Times Before the Light, an
important album of my formative years. This song is almost like a prayer, or a
summoning. A summoning of the cold of winter. Later on in the song the singer
even makes offerings (“Make me frozen cold as ice, I give to thee my blinded
eyes”). King Winter here is kind of a representation of winter, like a God of
Winter. This is sung by someone who misses winter and hates summer, but is also
steeped in dark fantasy. They want winter back. Their glory and pride depends
on it being winter again. At least they don’t live in Florida. I found this to
be a suitably grand finale to the mix. An ode to coldness and winter.
Honorable
mention:
Clan of Xymox – Under the Wire
“So
tired, so cold, as stone I’m told.”
Missing
the boat on the CD mix was “Under the Wire” by Clan of Xymox, because I only
realized after I’d burned the CD already that it had the word “cold” in it. It
will have to be on the cassette version, whenever I make it (I may wait until next winter). Or if I have to
remake the CD Mix (which is inevitable after a couple years when the CD
eventually gets too scratched up) I’ll put it on there, possibly instead of
“Counting Blue Cars”. If I were to keep “Counting Blue Cars”, this may be the
track I was looking for to bridge between that and “Eiskalt Erwischt”; and this
is what I did for the Spotify version of this mix. Anyway, looking at the
lyrics for this one, it seems like a depressing one, about having reached your
limit, being fed up with everything, close to the brink. Maybe I should add happier
songs to my music library? Eh, that’s what my synthwave music is for. “Cold” here is used as part of the idiom “stone
cold”, as popularized by the wrestler “Stone Cold” Steve Austin. It can mean
literally cold (as in “your tea is going to be stone cold if you don’t drink it
soon”), or it can basically mean the same thing as cold-hearted, more in the
sense of being emotionally stoic than a heart-breaker.
Anyway,
as I said I did my best to reproduce the playlist on Spotify, although of
course, Spotify doesn’t have the really obscure ones. For that there’s YouTube.
Who knows what songs I may have missed, they’ll probably turn up over time and
the playlist will get longer. In the meantime, my next mix will have to do with
the Moon.
