Top 5 Songs of the Month ~ March 2021/Արեգ 4513 ~ Rein, Bleib Modern, Mortal Boy

March is here, and the pandemic is a year old, at least in the US. Tired of it yet? You know at first I relished in the chance to wear a mask in public and have it be socially acceptable, but I’m starting to miss being able to breathe at a grocery store. Not to mention what it’s done to my complexion. Of course, I’m in Florida where aside from mask requirements they act like it’s not even happening. 

February just flew by. The future blog projects I mentioned last month are still on the table (a couple music reviews, the complete list of my Top 3 Songs of the Month going back to 2000, etc.), I just haven’t done them yet. I’ve been focusing on my webcomic for the most part. But I will get around to it. I have another album review to do from someone who was kind enough to send it to me to review. You’ll be seeing that soon.

Here are the songs that have been ringing through my head as of late.

Rein - Off the Grid

I heard this song thanks to a mix by DJ Maus on YouTube, and it was love at first sight...er, hearing! Especially since I too want to get off the grid. “They’ve tried to force me into a mold until I slowly suffocate.” I want to do my art for a living, society wants me to have a crappy full time desk job that chips away at my sanity. It’s relatable. I dream of relinquishing my US citizenship and fleeing the country with my family to start a new life as goat herders in a remote rural village in Armenia. If only. I’m stuck here in the grid, for now. So in any case, this song speaks to me. It has an angry desperation to it, like someone who just can’t take living in this modern post-industrial society.

This song is off their 2020 album Reincarnated, which you can find on Bandcamp.

https://reinofficial.bandcamp.com/album/reincarnated

Bleib Modern - Sleep

This is not the kind of song you get up and dance to. It’s a song that hits close to home for me though. I know, oh goodie, another really depressing song in my top 5, time to mark your bingo cards. Somehow this song just captures how depression feels, better than any other song I’ve heard in a long time. It’s a very powerful song. Great music video by Piper Wave too, which I’ve embedded above. Maybe not an official music video, but a good one. They make music videos for a lot of different bands, usually without their knowledge I think. But I’ve never seen a musician be ungrateful for it when they find the video.

This is off Bleib Modern’s album Afraid to Leave, which released just a few days ago. Lots of great songs on it too by the way. There’s a cassette release too, and you know how I love those if you’ve been following my blog.

https://bleibmodern.bandcamp.com/album/afraid-to-leave-lp

Mortal Boy - Passion Dance

This could be the one. This could be the song that saves you. So the song claims in the lyrics, at least. I don’t know if this song has saved me yet. Keyword there is “yet”. Maybe one day I’ll be in some far-fetched situation where the song will save me. I wouldn’t call this so much of a pep-talk song, something like for example Omnia’s “Free Bird Fly” (with lyrics such as “don’t you know this song is about you”), which is meant to lift you out of your sad mood and motivate you. It keeps a melancholic mood throughout. Perhaps the song aims to save you in another way, which I have yet to discern. Anyway, I have been hearing more of Mortal Boy lately, and I’ve liked what Ive heard. 

This is another music video by Piper Wave. This time the singer of Mortal Boy found out about it and liked the video so much they proclaimed it official in the comments on YouTube, so there you go, it’s the official music video. 

Here is Mortal Boy on Bandcamp:

https://mortalboy.bandcamp.com/music

Grey Gallows - Dissociation 

The Greek post-punk band Grey Gallows is at it again with a brand new album this month, Garden of Lies. This time they collaborated with the singer Cleopatra Kaido, whose feminine vocals add a new flavor to their music that wasn’t present in previous albums.  The track “Dissociation” is my current favorite. Grey Gallows strives to capture that 1980s post-punk sound in their music and that really shows through on this track. It’s kind of a blend of modern and 80s post-punk, because I think the post-punk that’s come out since its resurgence in the 2010s does have kind of a subtle uniqueness to it that the original post-punk didn’t have (I’m no musical theorist so I can’t say exactly why, but I can always tell if something actually was released in the 1980s or recently), and Grey Gallows achieves a sort of balance between them.

I’m still waiting for Grey Gallows to tour with the bands Forever Grey and Into Grey on the Grey Tour. Or Greyfest. Something like that. Any concert promoter reading this should make it happen after the pandemic ends.

https://greygallowsgr.bandcamp.com/album/garden-of-lies

The Parallel Project - Dissolve

For the first time in forever, I discovered a new song I liked on the radio. Thanks to Radio Garden I was listening to the Swedish radio station SDX Synthetic Experience, and this song comes on. And I think to myself, that singer sounds so familiar. Could it be Jennifer Parkin of Ayria? So I used Shazam to find out the name of the song and the band that made it. It wasn’t a long lost Ayria song, but it was sung by Jennifer Parkin. It was a song she did guest vocals on for The Parallel Project in 2004. I knew Parkin had been in another band prior to her solo project Ayria called Epsilon Minus, but I never heard about this. Still, it was just guest vocals. As for The Parallel Project I really had to do some digging. But I found out that this song was off the album Fusion. Not the easiest album to track down either, but eBay and Amazon have it. And of course as you see YouTube has it because they have every song ever recorded. Each of the 14 tracks had a different guest singer. The Parallel Project was a solo effort by Alex Matheu of Tampa, Florida. 

This was a nice little discovery to tide me over until Ayria’s next album. 

Here’s where I found out about it:

https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/the-parallel-project/fusion/

Hate Songs - Mix CD Reflections

 

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.

 

Hate Songs– Spotify Playlist 

 

Gwar – Sick of You

            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.

Is it okay to hate your enemies? Ayria seems to think so. Hate begets hate though. I did a pretty good writeup on this song back when I reviewed the album it appears on. 

 

Little Big – For the Haters

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. 

 

And One – H.A.T.E.

 I know, you know, what you gonna hate?

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! 

Mixtape Reflections: Naqoyqatsi: Life As War

           

It was early April 2016, when Azeri forces instigated a blitzkrieg against the unsuspecting border villages in the Republic of Artsakh. I had just been in Artsakh less than a year earlier. I had met people who lost family in their war for independence in the early 1990’s; I had been to their war museums, I had even been taken up to the trenches at the ceasefire line. Even though I was in the US at the time, this brief four-day war shook me to the very core. I had to take time away from social media as it became bombarded with graphic images. The US media tends to censor gore out of their news coverage, but Armenia does no such thing. The image of an elderly couple, slaughtered in their homes in their sleep after Azeri soldiers snuck into their home in the middle of the night, is forever etched into my psyche. And I did what I often do when I need a coping mechanism. I made a mixtape, this time about the horrors of war. And now, with the United States invading Iran, I felt like returning to this tape. It’s not a mixtape I listen to often, but it is there when I need it. I am troubled by the prospect of war with Iran for many reasons. I bear no ill will to Iran or its people, and believe the United States is the definite aggressor, working at the behest of its allies. And I detest war. There’s never a good reason for it. Self-defense, maybe, but then there’s no good reason for the aggressor to be attacking.

Naqoyqatsi is a Hopi word meaning “Life as War”; or in one interpretation, “civilized violence”. I guess one way you could interpret it is war or violence becoming routine. I don’t speak Hopi, so I can’t really say for sure. The name came to me after watching the Qatsi trilogy of films, which mainly consist of stock footage and images paired with orchestrations by Phillip Glass, focusing on some aspect of human society. Koyaanisqatsi, the first and most famous, is my favorite of them. Naqoyqatsi was the third and final film in the series, and you can read about it on Wikipedia if you like. The opening track to the mixtape is of course the theme song of that film. Listening to the orchestration gives you a mourning feeling, and a feeling of horror. The energy of war. 

Next, we have the two opening tracks from Hanzel und Gretyl’s 2003 album Uber Alles. I feel the need to stress this to those who give these tracks a listen: I don’t think the band Hanzel und Gretyl are neo-nazis; they’ve gone on the record stating that their music is a form of satire. But they’re still banned in Germany, perhaps because there are those might take their music non-ironically. I understand if someone has misgivings about their music. My own great-grandfather, a Jew living in Austria under Nazi rule, was shot and killed when he failed to pass their Aryan tests, and my grandfather Suren spent much of World War II as a prisoner of the Germans. These are blog posts for another time. These tracks to me symbolize the way governments beat the war drums and whip their citizens into a frenzy for war with propaganda. It’s the same in any country on Earth. Think about the techniques Germany used to prepare its citizens for World War II. How many of these techniques have you seen other countries use on their citizens? How many are being used right now?

From there we go to Voltaire’s song “Crusade”, in which a brave knight is radicalized into thinking dragons are evil, and he goes to slay one, only to find that the dragon was a mother protecting her young. Years later, his son is radicalized into believing that Muslims are evil and he wants to join the crusades; the father warns him to know his enemy. The song is about humanizing the so-called “enemy”, and its lesson is an important one. We’re all human beings. We are one. Why do we kill one another? Because we make the enemy into an “other”. We demonize and dehumanize them.

Rage Against the Machine’s “Darkness of Greed” speaks for itself mainly. Wars and genocides are committed by the rich to satisfy their greed. The poor are sent to their deaths so that the rich can fill their pockets. Genocide and war often go hand-in-hand. And they’re both caused by greed. As an Armenian, I know this only too well.  I’ve known this song for a long time, and I always felt a connection to it.

Next is System of a Down’s “Soldier Side”. They’re going to be on this tape a lot. A song from the soldier’s point of view, and that of their mothers watching them go off to war. Watching your friends die, the black hand of death always looming. “They were crying when their sons left, God is wearing black. He’s gone so far to find no hope, he’s never coming back.”

Voltaire returns to the tape with “Accordion Player”. It’s because lyrically I find it relates to both the previous and the next song. This song is actually a cover of a song by the somewhat lesser-known Julia Marcell. Both versions are good, but I chose this one for the bomb sound effects at the end of the song. It’s about an accordion player who didn’t want to be drafted into the war. He wanted to keep playing his songs. “Oh mother, I could die a hero, and bring glory to your home. But what would you do in a house full of glory if you had to live there alone?” What really gets me is when I was in Artsakh, I stayed in the home of a mother who lived alone in a house full of glory; her husband and son had fought against Azerbaijan in the early 1990’s. I’ll do an in-depth blog entry about my time in Artsakh at a later date. But this song really encapsulates my feelings on war.

The sounds of bombs and gunfire at the end of “Accordion Player” bleeds into Metallica’s “One”, a song which begins with sounds of war. Probably the most well-known song on the tape so far. This song was inspired by the book Johnny Got His Gun by Dolton Trumbo, a book about a soldier in World War One who had all of his limbs, his eyes, his lower jaw and his nose blown off by a bomb, leaving him blind and deaf, being kept alive in a hospital and wanting nothing more than to die. The insanity and horror of war. If everyone read this book there’s be a lot more anti-war sentiment in the world, let me tell you.

And One’s “Unter Meiner Uniform” (Under My Uniform) is in the same vein as the previous songs. The line that strikes me most translates to “Under my uniform, we can only die once.” I remember having this song in my head when I visited the Fallen Soldiers Museum in Stepanakert, Artsakh. The walls covered with portraits of fallen soldiers, old uniforms. A shrine to those who needlessly died; a war of self-defense on their part. The reasons behind any war, no matter which side is in the right or the wrong, who was the aggressor and who was the defender, do not change the costs much at all.

The faces of war.

Cradle of Filth’s “Sleepless”, a cover of a song by Anathema, captures the raw anger and despair behind those who suffer because of war in a way only black metal really can. “Surely without war, there would be no loss, hence no mourning, no grief, no pain, no misery. No sleepless nights missing the dead.”

Me at the monument to Sardarapat

Side B starts with the song “Sardarapat”, an Armenian anthem to the battle of Sardarapat in 1918. My own great uncle fought and died in this battle, in which the Turkish army attempted to invade Armenia and destroy the country once and for all. However, the Armenians were victorious, and declared their independence after pushing back the Turkish aggressors, ensuring that today there is still an Armenia on the map. Once again though, I put this song here not to glorify war. As glad as I am that the battle of Sardarapat turned out victorious for Armenia, it should never have happened in the first place. My great-uncle could have survived. Instead, my grandfather grew up an orphan. He was around 13 years old, with no living immediate family save for a sister; his father died sometime before of typhoid fever I believe, and the story is that his mother died of fright when she learned the Turks were invading the area they lived. War has cast a long, dark shadow on my family. Did you know psychological trauma can be inherited and passed down the generations? Explains a lot of these blog entries.

System of a Down’s song “War?” is a song I’ve actually already talked about on this blog, and appears on the mixtape for obvious reasons. Marilyn Manson’s “Cruci-Fiction in Space”, I believe, illustrates what drives humanity to the practice of war. “This is evolution: the monkey, the man, and the gun.” Is the gun the end result of our evolution, when we inevitably cause our own extinction with it? Time will tell. The next song, “Jihad” by The Kovenant”, is on the mixtape to represent religious wars of all sorts. Merely another justification for war put forth by the rich who profit from it. Killing is easier when God says it’s alright.

Ayria’s ”Friends and Enemies” is another song I’ve spoken of on this blog before. It makes me think about human nature, of what drives humanity to create “enemies”, of pacifism versus violence. Are people your enemies, or is it the philosophy they follow that is the enemy? Is it ever okay to retaliate? System of a Down’s “B.Y.O.B.” (Bring your own Bomb) poses the question “Why don’t presidents fight the war? Why do we always send the poor?” The answer to that of course is obvious, but the question is something more people need to ask themselves. You’re not going to see Trump or any of his family at the frontlines in Iran, that’s for sure. No, it’s going to be the poor and the young, who joined the military because health insurance and college are kept expensive by the powers that be; done in lieu of the draft because that seems to make the masses too angry for some odd reason.

And One’s “Steine sind Steine” is about the endless colonialism engaged in by the higher powers. The same patterns followed throughout history. Translated lyrics include “first comes gold, then comes the world”, “first comes pride, then comes your land”. People are too historically illiterate to see the patterns. And they’re kept that way on purpose. If you’re over twenty years old you’ve already seen this play out in your lifetime with the farce that was the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, I don’t get why these idiotic armchair warriors who are actually for the invasion of Iran continue to be fooled.

Covenant’s “The Dark Conquest” is yet another song I’ve talked about on this blog before. A song about a dark lust for power, from the point of view of an overlord that has conquered an empire and left ruin in his wake. The album In Times Before the Light is mainly dark fantasy, but fantasy is always a reflection of reality. This song would be on the playlists of many tyrannical warlords throughout history, if they had playlists.

With the tape wrapping up, we return to Hanzel und Gretyl with the song “Auf Wiedersehen”. A song about ruin befalling a country on the losing side of a war, its pride in tatters, sounds of bombs falling in the background. Like Germany in 1945, and so many other countries throughout time. And the last song is by The Kovenant. ”Industrial Twilight”, is a song about nuclear apocalypse. Which of course, is the end game when it comes to war. It’s how this is all going to end up if we don’t put a stop to it. We’re only one world war away. “In nuclear war, all men will be cremated equal.”

At the end of the day, there’s nothing I can do about war beyond writing about it, and making mixtapes that only I am ever going to listen to. And, even though I hate that it’s happening, it really doesn’t affect my personal life beyond perhaps gas prices, at least until the nukes start flying. I think I’m too old to be drafted, should it ever come to that. I’d probably be a poor fit for the military anyway. Yet it depresses me anyway. I’m too empathetic for my own good. But I can only control what I can control. I can take care of my wife and kid (and hope there’s not a war going on when he’s 18), and I can work on my novels. Anything else is beyond my control.

There are more songs I could have put on the mix, but the tape was only 90 minutes. Fortunately and somewhat surprisingly, I was able to find all of these songs on Spotify (although “Unter Meiner Uniform”, even though I found it, wasn’t playing for some weird reason, so I‘ll link that to YouTube), so now all of you can listen to the mix too. Go ahead and give it a listen, if you feel in the mood for a playlist with anti-war sentiment.

Naqoyqatsi:Life As War – Spotify Playlist   

Side A

Phillip Glass – Naqoyqatsi

Hanzel und Gretyl – Overture

Hanzel und Gretyl – Third Reich from the Sun

Voltaire – Crusade

Rage Against the Machine – Darkness of Greed

System of a Down – Soldier Side

Voltaire – Accordion Player

Metallica – One

And One – Unter Meiner Uniform

Cradle of Filth – Sleepless

Side B

Sardarapat

System of a Down – War?

Marilyn Manson – Cruci – Fiction in Space

The Kovenant – Jihad

Ayria – Friends and Enemies

System of a Down – B.Y.O.B.

And One – Steine sind Steine

Covenant – The Dark Conquest

Hanzel und Gretyl – Auf Wiedersehen

The Kovenant – Industrial Twilight

And yes I've been doing a lot of mixtape reflections as of late. I want my next blog entry to be about something else, but I don't have a topic yet. But I love talking about music, and have over 200 mixtapes from nearly 21 years of making them, so that's always going to be a common topic on this blog. So yes. Stay tuned.

My Top Songs of the 2010’s

            “The flow of time is always cruel. Its speed seems different for each person, but no one can change it. A thing that does not change with time is a memory of younger days.”

Sheik – The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

            This quote popped into my mind suddenly as I was writing this. Time really was a central theme in that video game. And it had something deep and profound to say about it. Time waits for no man. The Earth has completed another orbit around the Sun since the last time it was close to New Years, and by the abstract Gregorian calendar most (but not all) of humanity uses, it’s going to be the year 2020 soon. And this is considered significant, although not quite as significant as 2000 was. The years 2010 and 2000 don’t feel all that long ago. But in some ways, they feel like they were an eternity ago too. Maybe they’re never going to feel like that long ago to me. One day my son, born in January 2019, will look at the year 2010 the way I look at 1977. It is going to all seem like ancient history to him. And to me 2010 was like a couple years ago, in my mind. Getting old sucks. Yes, as Sheik said the flow of time is indeed cruel.

But I suppose since everyone else is taking stock of the last ten years at the moment, I might as well hop on the bandwagon. I have little idea what music was actually popular in the United States during this decade. I stopped keeping track of that after high school (Class of 2004 if you’re curious). I suppose once you reach adulthood it gets easier to shelter yourself from all of that irrelevant nonsense. You might still have to hear the irritating popular music at the store or something, but most of the time you can avoid it. What did the kids listen to this decade? There was it that dubstep noise, that prima donna Justin Bieber, Katy Perry and Gangnam Style became the Macarena of the decade. That’s about as far as I know about the music that was popular in the 2010’s, and it sure wasn’t what I was listening to. Come to think of it my lack of knowledge about it makes me understand why so many people over 50 seem to think young people still wear baggy jeans that show off their boxers like it’s 1998. You get more sheltered from all of that foolishness the older you get. I hope I don’t ever get quite that out of touch.

            As it so happens, another weird tradition I keep (I should have started blogging years ago so I could share all these), is to keep track of my top two songs each year. The ones that remind me the most of how my year went. I do this so that I can eventually make a mix tape covering the years. These songs needn’t have been released that same year as they’re listed, in fact some of these are from the 1980’s and 1990’s, but it’ll be the year I discovered them, and the year they impacted me.

            “Time passes. People move. Like a river’s flow, it never ends.”

2010   

·         Ayria – Lovely Day

A song I associate with sitting in my room at night having no one to hang out with and nothing to do, when I wish I did. But “I fear rejection more than being alone”, very true of myself at the time and why I had neither a girlfriend nor many friends in general save for a small core that I still have today. At this point I actually had to return to Community College for the last couple of classes I still needed for my Bachelor’s degree, which weren’t offered at my University. So, I was back with my parents in Martinez, California, doing mainly nothing else but write. I was in limbo at this time. 

·         And One – Years

A song about time. It makes me think about how the years roll by faster and faster, growing “colder” as they pass, as I look at the world through an increasingly jaded lens. And when they’re gone, it’s “just memories left behind”.  The cruel passage of time. Like a river’s flow, it never ends. Fits in with my introduction to this blog entry quite well.

 

2011

·         Epsilon Minus – Just Another Long Shot

So this song was done by the band Jennifer Parkin was in before she went solo and started Ayria, but the song appears on one of her later albums anyway as a bonus track of sorts. In spring 2011 I was trying to get accepted into Graduate School, throwing my bets on that being what would provide me with a financially stable future. *cue laugh track* It was another long shot. This song was there when my anticipation was at its highest. I was holding my breath, waiting for the answer for months, wondering if I’d be good enough. I’m still wondering if it was fortunate or not that they accepted me. As I’ve discussed, if there was a year that I could just do over, it would probably be 2011.

·         And One – Save the Hate

A song I associate with trying to put your negativity aside and enjoy the day. Don’t let the depression win, save the hate for another day, just seize the day and don’t let anything get you down. “Don’t bring me down it’s far too late”. I’d been through the worst of it, nothing that life could throw at me was going to be something I couldn’t handle. It was a song that pumped me up as I prepared to enter Graduate School. 

2012

·         And One – The Sun

This song will always remind me of my first trip with my girlfriend to Florida (my wife now). I see it as an ode to the Sun, the star that gave us all life, which I personally have a love/hate relationship with, but have to remember that without it, life wouldn’t be here. 


 

·         Light Asylum – Heart of Dust

I wouldn’t say this song has a whole lot of personal relevance to me, but I was obsessed with this song back in late 2012 and early 2013. By the lyrics, it sounds like a song about a haunted house, or trying to get a spirit to leave your house. Interesting subject choice, not something I can say I've had personal experience with. I want Light Asylum to come out with a new album already. They had what, a single, one full album, and then they were gone. We miss you and need you, Light Asylum. 

2013

·         Light Asylum – IPC

Yes, this band again. I bought their album in early 2013 after having heard “Heart of Dust”. This song is even catchier than Heart of Dust. And its anti-authority, which is always fun. It stands for "Industrial Prison Complex" and is about people being arrested for petty crimes for the profit of prison owners. Nobody's innocent in their eyes. It's true. The tune of this song is going to get right up in your brain and never leave though, so be careful. Here's a live version for you to watch.

·         The Jetzons – Hard Times

It was this year where in the Sonic the Hedgehog community, someone finally put two and two together and realized that this song was the basis for the theme of the Ice Cap Zone in Sonic the Hedgehog 3. The song had been recorded in 1982, but went under the radar along with the rest of The Jetzons’ catalog. Their music was rereleased in 2009 but remained obscure, and it took four full years before someone listened to this song and realized it sounded like the Ice Cap Zone theme, and discovered that the singer of The Jetzons, Brad Buxer, had worked on the soundtrack for the game, so it was obvious. Before this the main theory was that Ice Cap Zone was based on Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal”, since he also worked on the soundtrack, but that turned out to be a red herring. Ice Cap Zone was always the best song from that game, and to hear a New Wave song done to the tune of it? A part of my childhood was completed. Any time I feel like I’m going through “Hard Times”, it makes me think of this song. The hard times can still be the “happiest days of our lives” when we look back on them, even if they felt hard at the time. 

 

2014

·         And One – Missing Track

This song is inseparable in my mind with my first trip to Armenia, a two-week excursion with Fresno State’s Armenian Students Organization. I afforded it with a scholarship and a generous donation from my aunt Sharon (thanks!). I had this song on my MP3 player while we were on the tour bus driving through the beautiful mountain landscapes. But the lyrics are about writing to someone far away that you miss, like a long-distance relationship. I still missed my girlfriend Deborah while I was on the trip and it reminded me of that. The song came back the next year when I went to Armenia again for some internships, becoming even more relevant to me. And wow, the "Missing Track" is missing from YouTube! How strangely appropriate. This was all I could dig up. 

·         Aurelio Voltaire – The Night (1988 Deathrock version)

This version is my favorite, as Voltaire had an earlier version that was heavier on the violins, but somehow not as dark sounding, nor as heavy. I suppose I just prefer it in this style. It’s a song for those of us who prefer the night to the day, despite others telling us it is unhealthy or wrong. The perfect song for any goth, really. I relate to it quite well.

  

2015

·         And One – Nyctophiliac

This is one of my favorite songs of the decade, really. I can remember listening to it on my MP3 player on a tour bus driving from Armenia into Artsakh, the unrecognized country I visited during my trip. It was night out, the roads were winding through the mountains, tossing us back and forth. Through the windows I could only see an inky black night, with the rugged mountains only slightly darker than the sky above. If you live in America, you probably rarely see landscapes this dark. No city around for miles. A village passes briefly every now and then, but these aren’t very bright either. Only the major cities in Artsakh have street lights. They have to conserve. As I pressed my head against the glass of the window in fatigue, I thought about how much blood was spilt over this land in the early 1990’s, when a war was fought between Armenia and Azerbaijan over it. I thought about the history of conflict here over the centuries. Night had fallen over this land. It was peaceful, but the peace is a fragile one. Will it survive? “Will I survive?” The lyrics seemed to me to be sung by the land itself. I'm also a nyctophiliac myself, which is a lover of night, so that's another reason I relate to it.

   Garegin Bingyol – Done Yar

This is the catchiest Armenian song ever. I first heard of this singer when I was in Armenia and one of their songs was played on the bus during one of our trips. I discovered this one after I returned to the US, late in 2015. It kept me connected to Armenia at a time where I felt sadly severed from it. 

2016

·         Vellum Stairs – You’re Always Guilty

An overlooked song from 1990, this is some good New Wave. And I was feeling guilty at the time I heard this. I felt guilty that my fiancé had a job and I had been unable to find one. I felt like baggage, like a burden. This song hit close to home that summer. It was a depressing time, but the good news is that September I started the best job I’ve ever had, at the Cracker Country museum on the Florida State Fairgrounds. Then I got married. So things turned around.

      Katzenjammer – Soviet Trumpeter

This song reminds me of my tortured inner artist, who must subsist in a world where it is so hard to be heard, so hard to be noticed, and you often have to endure rejection. This could be the theme song of this blog, really. It certainly felt that way to me around the time I uncovered this song, when I was finding out that self-publishing was a lot harder to make money from than I had anticipated.

2017

·         Brotherhood – Damned

This is a catchy song I was really into in the spring of 2017. Reminds me of how life feels sometimes. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, there is no hope. Life after graduation with a Master’s degree. This song has stuck around with me too. The description on the official upload describes the song as being about the pursuit of elusive happiness, among other things. And happiness is elusive.

  

·         The Midnight – River of Darkness

This was the year I discovered synthwave, a revival of the synth music of the 80’s. The Midnight is my favorite band in this genre, with the great vocals and 80’s sax, and melodies that many times feel magical. It was something different from what I’d been into before. I don’t adopt new genres often but this song here was a gateway drug. It’s probably dark enough to get played on one of the goth podcasts out there, but a lot of the rest of this band’s music probably is not. It hooked me in though. 

   

2018

·         The Cure – Cold

Yeah this one’s an oldie from 1982, and unlike "Hard Times" by The Jetzons, which also came out that year, this song wasn't almost completely unheard of for almost 30 years; but for some reason it eluded me until 2018 when I started buying albums from The Cure. The album this is on, Pornography, is my favorite album from The Cure. A lot of people say Disintegration is their favorite, but I just like this one better. The songs are more raw, I suppose. Disintegration was The Cure’s return to darker music, but Pornography is the sound they were returning to. The origin.  I love the lyric “Your name like ice, into my heart”. It helps that I discovered this song right around the time I started the worst job I ever had, at that call center. It made me feel like this song inside.

·         Ministry – Game Over

If “Cold” represents my depression from that year, “Game Over” represents my escape from that depression. An old Ministry track from when they were synthpop, I mentioned before on this blog that it just feels adventurous. It feels like a fantasy, an escape. I got heavily into escapism while I was working full time at this call center, and it was partly fueled by this song. And the Land of Oz books. 

2019

·         Boy Harsher – Fate

So this year is over, and I might as well pick my favorites from this year. It’s hard to pick just two, it really is, I’ve heard all sorts of music this year. It’s easier to talk about the years when they’re in the past, not when they’re not quite over yet. I’ve been jumping from band to band this year thanks to listening to Communion After Dark and other music I find on YouTube. But, let me first go with “Fate” by Boy Harsher. I saw this husband and wife duo in concert last April in Ybor City, Florida, with my wife, and we had a wonderful night out. I bought their album Careful on cassette too, which I should review sometime. This song was running through my head for a couple months earlier in the year.

        Buzz Kull – Avoiding the Light

This song came out last year and I’m kicking myself for not hearing it sooner. It’s dominated my top 3 songs of the month for two months straight. It’s one of those songs that I feel like was written for me in a way. And I bet I’m not the only one who feels that way. I want them to play this at The Castle nightclub in Ybor City so I can dance to it. Somewhat sadly, I’ve moved this year so I won’t be able to show up there as often anymore.  This song just makes me think of dressing up and having a fun night out at a Gothic nightclub. 

            I’ve been making playlists for my CD mixes of my favorite songs that were released year by year since 1981, and I’ll be sharing those soon if you’d rather see a list of songs going by the year they were released. I’m currently up to 2007 on that. I like to decide the best songs released during a decade after a little more time has gone by, because I may not have heard it all yet. I’ve only recently been able to put together a comprehensive list of the what I consider to be the best songs of the 2000’s in the last couple years, and well over half of the songs on that list are ones I wouldn’t have discovered yet in late 2009. But that’ll be for a later blog entry.   

Ayria - Plastic Makes Perfect - Day 10 of 10 Albums that Changed my Life

Ayria – Plastic Makes Perfect

Genre:  Synthpop

Year: 2013

Year I discovered it: 2013

My last album is Plastic Makes Perfect by the Canadian synthpop act Ayria, headed by Jennifer Parkin. Ayria is my favorite band with a female vocalist. I have a nice story behind this album too. Ayria released some singles before releasing the album itself, namely the song "Hunger", which in 2012 was one of the songs I showed my girlfriend Deborah when we first started dating. The following June in 2013, Ayria was playing at the DNA Lounge in San Francisco, so Deborah and I took the BART train out there from Pleasant Hill and booked a hotel to stay in over night. It was a perfect night. Project Pitchfork was headlining the concert but really, I was just there for Ayria. We were probably one of the few who's whole reason for coming to the concert was Ayria, but still. The venue was nice, it was my first time really being in a gothic atmosphere, something I would get to experience more often in Florida when I went to The Castle nightclub. Ayria sounds just as great live as on the album, which can't be said of all singers. After the concert I bought this very album. The one that I got was a deluxe edition that had the album itself, and then two more discs of nothing but remixes of the songs, which are hit-or-miss but nice to have. It also contained a poster, and some cards and stickers. I had singer Jennifer Parkin sign it and she gave Deborah and I a hug. She was very nice and approachable in person. I'm just waiting for her to come down to Florida for a concert. The album just reminds me of that perfect night with my then-girlfriend now-wife.

I first discovered Ayria in 2010 when I ran across “The Gun Song” on YouTube. This was off her 2008 release Hearts for Bullets, which I bought a little later after hearing and enjoying more of Ayria’s music. Ayria quickly became the other band of my 20’s, second only to And One. You could say I should probably be talking about Hearts for Bullets on this blog, since without it I wouldn’t have gone to the Ayria concert and purchased Plastic Makes Perfect, but eh, I just have more memories tied to this album. Ooky Spooky wasn’t the first Voltaire album I had heard either or else I would have reviewed The Devil’s Bris. And I’m torn between Plastic Makes Perfect and Ayria’s debut album Debris as being my favorite Ayria album, to be honest, if we’re looking purely at the music and not the memories I have tied to the music.

The first track is “Hunger”, which as I stated I heard before this album even came out. It’s a song about being dissatisfied, hungry for more, and about losing the taste for all you loved. Depression will do that. I’ve gone through hard times where I just lose the desire to write, I lose my love for music, I just have all of the joy sapped dry from me. I’ll never forget the message Jennifer Parkin wrote on the inside of my CD case, lyrics to this song. I know she probably wrote the same thing on everyone’s CD, but I take it personally anyway:

“Don’t lose the taste for all you love,” she wrote. You know why I started this blog, really? All the sudden, seemingly out of nowhere? I felt like I was losing my love of writing. I felt hopeless. I felt like my writing was never going to reach an audience. It is so hard to get published. Literary agents get 20 queries a day, and out of that respond to like 10 a year. It’s like trying to win the lottery, getting traditionally published. You can self-publish, like I did with my first novel, but without the money to market yourself, you’re not going to reach much of an audience. I’m too poor to self-publish, the only people who buy my book is family and friends. I have so much I want to say, but no one will listen to me. I was afraid of fading away, being forgotten after I’m dead. My dreams were unattainable. So I decided, screw it, I’ll write what I want to say and I don’t care if I don’t make any money off my writing or if only five people end up reading it. I can’t give up. Writing is what I was born to do. I can’t lose the taste for what I love. If I give up writing, I might as well give up living. Sadly, I was born too late to be able to make a living off of writing. There’s too much competition, all the publishers care about is if your writing will be marketable and profitable, and my fantasy stories about ancient Armenia are just too outside the norm for people. They want the next Harry Potter, the next Twilight, the next Game of Thrones. My books are none of those things. Nobody cares about the stories I want to tell, no one but people who know me personally.

         Jennifer Parkin, Voltaire, Mortiis, all of these artists I admire, they are able to make a living somehow doing whatever the hell they want to do. Perhaps it isn’t easy for them either, but I so want to be like them. And why can’t I? What am I doing wrong? Is it society, or is it me? I can’t break through that glass ceiling. I’m stuck in call center hell with the other lost, broken souls who’ve had their dreams crushed into dust and blown away in the wind. Destined to be a soulless robot working for the corporate machine until I’m gone and forgotten.

            I need to go have a good cry right now. Damn it, I hate making myself cry.

Will all this ever be enough?
I don't want to hunger anymore.
Sometimes I lose my passion, forgetting all I loved.
Is this the best we'll ever know?
All my idols gave up long ago
I'm terrified I'll lose the taste for all I've loved.

The next track, “Big Plans”, kind of continues the theme of the last track. The singer has big plans for themselves, they’re running away from their life to the big city where their dreams are going to come true. “This restlessness can no longer be ignored. Too many setbacks, too many empty nights, stuck in this place, it just never felt right.” I definitely relate to these lyrics, in ways I just wrote about. I feel stuck. I’ve had too many setbacks, I’ve been rejected too many times. These lyrics just hit way too close to home, reading them now. I didn’t feel this way yet back in 2013.

Anyway, here we go, “All That Glitters”. I think this is a song about how everyone’s an asshole as a teen, and a lot of people just never grow out of it.

Been knocked out so many times
I'm scarred and broke and scabbed and bruised
But I'm still standing
And that will never change

Yeah, I got bullied a lot in Middle School, leaving me scarred for life. But I’m still here. Still alive. I didn’t let the bullies defeat me. I have a pretty low opinion of humanity in general though, based on my experiences. The song itself is catchy, but not really among my favorites. I like the lyrics more than the rest of the song. Still, it’s a nice confidence boost after the previous two songs. The next track is “Games”, which I’m not too sure what the lyrics are about. Reminds me of a sado-masochist relationship or something. Who knows, maybe in ten years I’ll really relate to it and it will drive me to tears. I don’t dislike the song, but I don’t really get much out of this particular track.

            The title track “Plastic Makes Perfect” is one I really liked when it came out, and one of the songs released as a teaser several months before the album dropped. “I hate that I like you, I hate that I’m like you.” I’ve never really had a relationship like that with someone, fortunately. I like songs with this kind of low-key angry energy to it, even if I don’t quite relate to it. It’s also really catchy. “Missed the Mark” is another song about bad relationships. I had a one-week “relationship” that barely counts in 2006, a five-month relationship in 2008 that ended before it could go anywhere, and then I had a girlfriend who I was very compatible with, married, and we’ve been together since 2012. My love life would make for a very short book, so that’s why I don’t relate to a lot of these failed relationship songs. Fortunately, I guess. But they exist for the people who do relate to them, and that’s a good thing.

            “The Box Under My Bed” is actually a song that ties into all of these blogs I’ve been writing.

I love when we sit and do nothing for hours
And put on music that reminds us of our past
The songs we loved since we met
We don't skip the sad songs
Time's gone by
Measured by the melodies that last

It’s like I’ve been talking about all along. Music is my life. My mix tapes are autobiographical. When I go back and listen to the music of my past, it brings back all sorts of memories, good and bad. Music has such a power. Without it, I would have no memories. If I lost my mix tape collection, I would have amnesia. I’d forget my whole life. But thanks to them, I can listen to a tape from 2000 and be 14 years old again, I can listen to the tape I made in Armenia and be on that trip again. I can listen to my newest mix tape and think about my present situation.

It's true
I have a tendency
To live in the past
But I hope
In the future
You're still here

“Friends or Enemies” is probably the angriest Ayria song. It’s a song that I dedicate to my enemies, either people I’ve met in person who I dislike, or larger-scale enemies. “It’s okay to hate your enemies. It’s either them or me. Just want to break their things. Is it okay?” Then again by posing the question “is it okay?”, it stops and makes you think. Does an eye for an eye make the whole world blind? Is it ever okay to hate? I hate Turkey for committing the Armenian genocide, erasing the evidence that Armenia existed on the lands they now control and denying their crimes. But is it really the people of Turkey I should be angry at? They can’t help that they’ve been fed lies by their government. Azerbaijan, out of bitterness over losing the war for Artsakh, teaches school children that Armenians are evil, denies any of the pogroms and massacres against Armenians they committed, destroys anything remotely Armenian in their country and claims it was never there, violates the ceasefire on a regular basis by shooting at border villages, killing several Armenian soldiers and occasionally civilians a year. But are they really to blame if they’ve been brainwashed since childhood? Hell, I was brainwashed in childhood into thinking marijuana was evil, and that if I got a Master’s degree I would succeed, and those were both lies. Anyone can be brainwashed. Hating is easy, empathizing is difficult. One is an emotional response, the other is logical. Even though this song has an angry energy and can be very cathartic to listen to when you’re angry at someone, if you look at the lyrics, I think these are the things Jennifer Parkin wants you to think about.  

The next song, “Three Months”, is about getting over a breakup.

I should have known you'd let me down
I know your kind and how easy it was
To shut me out
Maybe it meant nothing to you
It meant the world to me

This is a song I understand pretty well. It took me a long time to get over that second relationship I mentioned earlier. By the time this song came out in 2013 I had moved on, but I still remembered what it had been like. It felt like I had been used, my heart trampled, that the relationship had meant far more to me than it had her. I wondered if any of the breakup even affected her while we didn’t communicate at all for months afterward, while our mutual friends never hung out with both of us at the same time. It still hurt three months later, five months later, a year later. Basically, she’d confided in my best friend that she wanted to dump me, then acted very cold and distant to me at my birthday party, and after the party my friend, who didn’t want to prolong this charade, confessed that she was planning on breaking up with me but hadn’t decided on how to do it yet. Ah, fun times. Best birthday ever. So even though I heard this song five years later, it makes me think back to that. I’m over it now. Haven’t spoken to that woman in almost ten years now, in fact. Maybe I still bear a slight grudge over the whole thing all these years later, but it doesn’t keep me up at night or anything. I’m happily married now.

            The next song is my favorite off the album, “Big City Lullaby”. The singing is beautiful in this song. “Everybody wants to live their life in the spotlight.” Everybody wants to, but not everybody can make it. That’s the whole problem with me. Everybody wants to be traditionally published. I listened to this song a lot when I was living in Yerevan for a few months in 2015. It’s the biggest city I’ve lived in. I was hoping my time there would be a stepping stone, that I could move on into teaching and parley that career into becoming a novelist. I had so many hopes and dreams, back then. This song reminds me of that hopeful time in my life. Before…everything that happened after. Before reality came crashing in. I do want to live my life in the spotlight. But I must dwell in the shadows instead.

            “The New Style of Riot” is another song I don’t quite get, looking at the lyrics. It’s an angry song like “Friends and Enemies”, but not to the same extent. It’s very intense and energized. You can’t tell if she’s saying “If you” or “F-you” throughout the song, which I think is on purpose. The last track is “Letter From an Angel”. Jennifer Parkin blogged on her website for a while and she’d do song dissections. This song is a letter to her father, who’d died some years prior to this album’s release. He used to call her his angel, but she writes that she’s not his perfect angel. So sad. I’ll relate to this song eventually, but not yet, fortunately. It makes me wonder what impression I left on my grandparents before all four of them died. The only one who lived until I was an adult was my maternal grandfather Dean. I wasn’t fully matured at age 20 when he died, even if I believed myself to be. I wish they all could still be alive, so I could have real conversations with them. I wish they could read my books, see the person I turned out to be. Just to sit and have a cup of tea with any of them, just once. I guess that’s how I relate to this song. These are the thoughts it brings to my mind when I listen to it, even though I know the true meaning of the song and it’s not about me.

            As I said it came with two more discs, with remixes on them. It was a pretty nice deal, only a little over $20 if I recall. And Jennifer Parkin signed it and gave me a hug for free. Here’s all the swag that was inside:

That concert is one of my happiest memories with my wife. I’ll never forget our day in San Francisco, checking out a bar that was just opening, going over to the DNA Lounge where we had a nice jalapeno and mushroom pizza while we waited for the concert to begin while they showed gothic music videos on the TV such as “Blue” by The Birthday Massacre, that’s where I first got into that band. Project Pitchfork has some good music and this concert got me into them more as well, although I didn’t feel the same love for the fans from them as I did from Ayria. When their concert was done they just up and left, only reluctantly coming back for an encore, and then quickly leaving again. I mean maybe it’s just me, but they struck me as a little rude. BART would have been closed by the time the concert ended, so Deborah and I walked over to the hotel which wasn’t far. It was a wonderful day and night.

Anyway, I am done rambling about myself, hopefully you got some enjoyment reading these. If/when I ever write a memoir it will be very music-centric, probably based on my mix tapes, so this is like practice. Or maybe this blog really is my memoir. I think it is.

Here's some runner-ups who didn't make the list but still affected my life:
Kotipelto - Waiting for the Dawn
Stratovarius - Dreamspace
Rammstein – Sehnsucht, also Mutter
Oasis - What's the Story Morning Glory
Weird Al - Bad Hair Day (the first CD I ever owned)
Kamelot - Epica
David Bowie - Blackstar
Cradle of Filth - Midian
Dimmu Borgir - Death Cult Armageddon
Linkin Park - Hybrid Theory (yes as a teen in the early 2000's I'd be lying if that wasn't at least a runner-up)

Nine Inch Nails – Pretty Hate Machine

And tons of others. I might review all these albums someday, and others too. But for now, let’s turn to topics other than music for a while. I don’t know if I’ll post every day, but my goal is at least three times a week. Probably will more than that though for a while. I have an infinite number of topics.