The ease at which I can get sucked in by a new package isn’t really the point of this post, the real point is that Mountain Dew’s experiment from last year, it’s DEWmocracy (yes, that is a stupid name) is back.  PepsiCo intros 3 new flavors of Dew and we all vote on which becomes the new, permanent Dew flavor.  Last year gave us the choice between Supernova (strawberry-melon), Revolution (berry) and the eventual winner Voltage (raspberry-citrus).  I, of course, tried all three flavors like a good boy and didn’t really care for any of them.  Honestly I don’t think Dew has ever topped its original flavor.  Code Red is terrible, High Voltage is OK but Orange isn’t my favorite and their Gamer Fuels have all been pretty so-so.

So here we are, in 2010 with 3 more flavors to pick from.  Before I get into my personal thoughts on each soda, understand I am not a food critic and I assume my descriptions will be less than professional.  Thankfully this is the internet and stupid people get to have stupid thoughts, so here I go…

Lets start off with White Out, the whitest soda that I have even put into my body.  Squirt does come a close second, but this stuff is white like snow.  The soda actually tastes a whole lot like Squirt as well, which is a good thing in my book.  This stuff is labeled as “light citrus flavor” and I guess that’s correct.  Before tasting it, all I could think was “Isn’t Mtn Dew already a citrus flavor?”  I guess it is, just think of White Out as a different citrus flavor.  Think grapefruit crossed with Mountain Dew and that’s what this tastes like.  I, personally, quite enjoyed this one, probably mt favorite off flavored Mtn Dew since Pitch Black.

The second flavor I had the (dis)pleasure of trying was Distortion, the “lime blasted Dew”.  The color reminded me of the short-lived (in my area anyhow) MDX, Dew’s “energy soda” that was released with some of my favorite ads of the decade.  If it would’ve tasted like that, I would’ve been pretty happy.  Instead it tastes like a soda with way too much lime.  I guess that’s why Sprite/7up stick to the lemon and lime combo, picking one or the other clearly isn’t a good decision.  The one good thing I can say about this flavor is that it is very unique, I can’t really come up with a good flavor comparison.  I think the best I can do is imagine any of the lime flavored colas out there.  Now imagine that they put so much lime flavor in that it overpowers everything else.  That’s the taste I get from this stuff.  There really isn’t a Mountain Dew taste in there at all, it’s very much so lime all the way and it’s got a bitter taste while swallowing.  It’s not awful by any means, but I don’t really like it enough to try it again.  I don’t think my vote will be going here.

That leaves Typhoon, a very pink soda that would lead you to belive that it would taste like something pink, but instead it tastes a lot light pineapple.  The color is a curious choice, but I guess it’s better than blazing yellow, which is what I would expect a pineapple soda to look like.  Goya does a Pina soda, a soda that is indeed blaze yellow.  Back to the Dew… Typhoon is going for a tropical taste and it achieves that pretty well.  Pineapple is the most obvious flavor but there has to be a mix of other tropical fruits that I am not refined enough to pinpoint.  I’d guess some passion fruit or papaya or something of the sort.  This is just as good as the White Out so it’s going to make my final vote a little difficult. 

With a gun to my head I think I go with Typhoon as the best of the bunch, with White Out a very close second.  By comparison, Distortion is awful.  It’s bitter and sour while not offering any sweet.  I’m always glad to try new soda, so I already can’t wait until next year.  In the meantime, it’d be great if they could re-release Pitch Black this Halloween.  Do it Pepsi, I beg you!

10. Deftones – White Pony: This is my oldest album on the list being released in 2000.  The Deftones were one of my favorite bands at the time and this release was easily the best stuff they have ever done.  They successful converted from Nu Metal to doing their own thing and leaving all of their peers in the dust.  KoRn never did anything this good and I don’t even want to remember what other Nu Metal crap I was listening to in the late 90′s.  This album mixed the heavy and soft (on of my favorite things, need variety) and had some awesome tracks on it.  To this day I can never pass listening to Passenger (w/ Maynard from Tool) when it pops up on my iPod.  Digital Bath, RX Queen and Change all had this emotional edge to it that you could feel.  The Deftones kind of fell of my radar since this release.  They have gotten a little too spacey for their own good, but this one will always hold a special place in my heart.

9. Underoath – Define The Great Line:  I am sure I might lose some “cred” with this pick, but I think this is about as good as heavy music can get.  The vocals are punishing and the music is brutal.  All at the same time it has softer touches that help to break up all of the ass kicking.  This falls under “post-hardcore” and it’s about as good as you can find in that genre.  The vocals are really what made me love this album.  A lot of times screaming gets old or it just sounds bad.  Spencer, the screamer here, has a certain tone in his voice that works better than any other screamer that I have heard from any other band.  You can feel what he is talking about and it brings you closer to the music.

8. Aerogramme – My Heart Has A Wish That You Would Not Go: I knew noting of this band when I randomly listened to this after it’s release.  Obviously I was impressed.  This one did take quite a while to grow on me, it wasn’t love at first listen.  Aerogramme started as a heavy band with lots of feedback and lots of screaming…. that’s not at all what happens here.  This is laid back, acoustic guitars, string arrangements and some of the best vocals I have heard.  The album is one that conveys the emotion of sadness and depression, but as you will see in my list, I’d rather feel a little depressed than not to feel anything at all.  When a band can successfully transfer their emotion on to the listener, that is what makes music into something bigger than just music.  It becomes part of your life.  This is one of those discs.

7. Katatonia – The Great Cold Distance: This came out in 2007 but I have only listened to the group for about the last year.  They released Night Is The New Day towards the end of 09 and that CD was equally as good as this one, so I had a hard time picking between the two for my list.  I went with The Great Cold Distance because it is one of those discs I will never forget listening to for the first time.  This was another random listen that I picked up, because I liked the band name and album cover.  Very superficial, but when you listen to as much music as I do, you take chances here and there on superficial interests.  I put it on my iPod as was blown away.  Katatonia fall under the Doom Metal genre but they don’t do anything you would expect a Doom bnd to do.  They sing instead of scream, the songs are never drawn out and compared to a lot of Doom, this is easy listening.  I guess that might turn off the “true” Doom or Black metal fans, but for me it took a genre that I loved the music of and put clean vocals over the top to make some of the best depressive music you will find anywhere.

6. Queens of the Stone Age – Songs For The Deaf: This is an interesting one for me.  I tried really hard to get into it when it first came out but I just couldn’t understand the hype this was getting.  Then at some point 3 or 4 years after it was released I revisited the album (thanks to Rock Band) and didn’t understand what I had missed the first time around.  Josh Homme is one interesting dude.  Between Kyuss, The Eagles of Death Metal and QOTSA he has done some amazing stuff.  With the Queens his vocals are stright up crooning.  I am talking about stuff that Frank Sinatra would be proud off.  And all of that laid back loungeyness to Homme’s vocals end up as a perfect mix with this excellent guitar work.  Also worth northing is Dave Grohl’s drumming.  A good drummer can make a huge difference and he helped to make this the best thing the Queens have done.  Since I finally ”got” the album I have played it quite a bit and gotten into all of their other stuff.  One of the best heavy bands of the 2000′s.

5. Isis – Panopticon: The last 2 years have been filled with post-metal/rock discovery for me.  This is another genre I tried to get into early in the 2000′s but the song lengths (anywhere from 3 to 15 minutes) were just too long.  I’m guessing I became a more patient person sometime during the decade and learned to love this stuff.  Isis is the post-metal band in my book.  They build songs that ebb and flow like the ocean.  At some points it’s calm but there is always a storm coming.  Beautiful and brutal at the same time.  If you ever wanted to get into the post-metal/rock genre, this is a great place to start.  Others might rather see Oceanic here, but I’ve always like Panopticon best.  You can’t go wrong with either.

4. The Postman Syndrome – Terraforming: The rare band that releases one album and then calls it quits.  This is progressive metal at it’s finest.  Another release that goes from light to heavy in a second.  Vocals are sung and screamed in unison.  There are layers upon layers of guitar tracks in each song.  All of that adds up to an extremely interesting listen.  Unfortunatley they broke up after this.  Since then, different members have formed differetn groups.  East of the Wall, Day Without Dawn and Biclops all rose out of the ashes of The Postman Syndrome, but none have done their original group justice.

3. A Wilhelm Scream – Mute Print: Mixing technical metal and punk, this become one of my favorite bands of the last 5 years.  They play faster and better than their peers.  They write extremely catchy songs and the vocals are perfectly fitting with the music.  This one has some of my favorite songs of the decade but the main track that has always stuck out is The Rip.  That track has the group at it’s finest in every area.  Some people might think that a punk/metal hybrid isn’t worth thier time, but those people haven’t heard A Wilhelm Scream yet.

2. Wintersleep – Untitled: Probably not on many people’s radars but Wintersleep is one of the best bands this decade.  Wintersleep plays a nice mix of acoustic and electric guitars.  Most of the music is repetitive and at times feels like it’s droning.  The group adds multiple layers of vocals to each track which help to offset the drone of the backing music.  The mix works perfectly.  They have been called the Canadian Pearl Jam, but Pearl Jam hasn’t release anything in the past decade that was up to this standard.  Not for everyone, but one of my personal favs.

1. Brand New – The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me: Here it is, number one of the decade.  Looking over my Last.fm stats, this is the album I have listened to most since I have joined.  A perfect mix of heavy and light (see that theme a lot here) and the group is able to transfer what they are feeling to the listener.  I love groups that I can connect with and there are few that I am as connected to as Brand New.  If you still think this is “emo”, do yourself a favor and listen.  This might be one of the best things you have heard.

So there it it, my list.  There were some other things that I could’ve swapped out for something like Tool’s Lateralus or Thrice’s Vehissu.  Those can just remain as honerable mentions.  The 2000′s were the decade I went from music fan to music addict.  Some might even say music snob.  That’s OK, just keep the good music coming.

I went ahead and took some screen shots on what I listened to during the year.  Some of what I see surprised me but for the most part this just reminded me of the variety I keep on my MP3 player.

Top 30 Artists:

My top 3 artists all had awesome releases during the year.  I think the 1/2 punch of Brand New and Katatonia makes up my two favorite artists in my head and that’s reflected in my scrobbles.  Nothing here surprised me all that much.  The majority of artists here are groups that released something in 2008 or 09 that I fell in love with.

Top 20 Albums:

This was the list that most surprised me.  Most of the albums here were 2008 releases.  Very few 09 releases made it and even fewer pre-08 albums made it.  The top release, Katatonia’s The Great Cold Distance, was a random find towards the end of 2008 that I (obviously) had a hard time staying away from.  Great disc and it was my (very late) introduction to Katatonia.  Minor Threat was a group I listened to a lot pre-Last.fm and I finally downloaded their Complete Discography during the year.  I had forgotten how good it was which is why I listened to it so many times.

Top 20 Songs:

Wintersleep’s Search Party probably my favorite song ever written and my play count supports that 2 years running.  The other big part of my list here is Katatonia’s collection.  Into the White, Leaders and Journey Through Pressure are some of the best metal songs ever written.  Other than that, the list is made up of all of my top artists.

The Year Ahead:

Already have two releases for 2010, the new Fear Factory and Bouncing Souls.  Off the top of my head I am most excited about the new Wintersleep.  I am sure that 2010, like any other year, will be full of new stuff to discover and fall in love with.  Can’t wait.

For those who don’t know, The Grouch & Eligh are members of the hip-hop collective known as the Living Legends.  The California-based group has all sorts of different spin offs and solo releases and this one might be one of the best.  The Grouch is a very laid back rapper, rarely raising his voice to a yell and always speaking consciously.  Eligh is the polar opposite.  His flow sounds like it’s been influenced by the caffeine from 10 Mountain Dews.  He is fast and he is tongue twisting, but always in control at the same time.  We have all heard the saying the opposites attract and that is the case here.  Both artists play off one another perfectly, so well that they remind me of what Outkast once was.  The Grouch is to Andre 3000 as Eligh is to Big Boi.  The contrast keeps everything flowing and everything interesting at all times.

So we got two talented rappers in the fold, now we just need some good production.  Thankfully this album delivers in this area as well.  For the most part the beats are slightly laid back, slightly chill.  It’s rare that the beat is picked up and that’s OK, the Cali vibe this album’s production gives off plays perfectly into the vocals of G&E’s.  I can’t quite call the production groundbreaking, but it is different enough to separate these 2 from all of their commercial brethren and a lot of their fellow underground counterparts.  The most original part of the production are the little touches that you might not even notice on your first listen.  The opening track, Say G&E!, has the laid back vibe that is so prevalent on the album, but during the chorus you get a touch of a bubbling synth in the background that I might expect to hear in something more dancey or even something industrial.  The synth takes the song to another level and helps to make it feel original.

Other great touches are prevalent throughout the album.  On Do It Again the track opens with a female chorus of “Ba Ba Babba Ba’s” that you might have heard in a commercial from the 50′s.  It sounds like it might be odd but it matches the track perfectly.  Sign of the Times has a vocal backing the entire song that reminds me of something you might have heard on Bjork’s Medula.  Mark Bell is featured on the track and uses various throat sounds and some Do Be Da Be Do that is so laid back it just blends into the track.  So many touches like this take what might otherwise be average and turns it into something more.

Lyrically the album further reminds me of Outkast in that it’s not about bitches or switches.  It’s about the world around us.  The thoughts inside us.  The important things.  Take a track like Rivers Run Dry and you will hear about global warming in a clever way that comes across as neither elitism or preaching, it feels like genuine concern for the earth we all live on.  Sign Of the Times is a commentary just on that, the signs all around us.  The false importance put into objects and money, forgetting what’s really important.

It isn’t all peaches & cream however, which keeps this from being a great release and turns it into just a very good one.  There are some guests featured and some do not work well.  Atmosphere is featured on the track Boom which is an awful track you would expect to hear from someone like Solja Boy (or however the eff that’s spelled).  All In is a bizarre poppy track with a live drum beat that feels cheesy, not chill.  Thankfully the mis-steps are at a minimum so the disc as a whole still ends up as one of the years best.

It isn’t perfect, but what is?  It’s just a God send to hear something fresh this year.  While the radios pump out sonic garbage into the ears of the mainstream, greatness isn’t too far away.  Just say G&E!

Overall Rating: 4.0 out of 5.0

Listen if you like:

• Outkast: Atliens
• Goodie Mob: Soul Food
• P.O.S. Audtion

Best Tracks:

• Say G&E
• Rivers Run Dry
• Sign of the Times

The mix of hard, dancey electronics with super aggressive metal was what my life was missing.  I followed their every move from Evil Inside until Soundtrack for the Revolution and once they disbanded I was pretty disappointed.  The group was only around for 3 or 4 years, had released some of best music I had heard and had already called it quits.  I never expected to hear another release under the Shizit’s name.  I guess I should expect the unexpected.

Floored as I was that not only had the Shizit released a new album, it was free on top of that.  As soon as the download finished I started from track one and didn’t stop until the album finished.  The Shizit are back and sounding better than ever.  The “group” was resurrected by JP Anderson who had been keeping digital metal alive with his other group, Rabbit Junk.  Original guitarist Brian Shrader did not re-join so this is more or less a solo release with a little help from Cyanotic’s Sean Payne.

The album kicks off with Civilization Extermination which brings the Shizit back to life in a big way.  The track is more or less what people who know the Shizit would expect.  Super aggressive guitars and vocals, a hard Gabber beat in the background and JP’s politically motivated lyrics.  While that description may make it seem like the Shizit haven’t changed since 2001, that’s not really the case.  With their previous work the Shizit split time between the electronics and metal almost on a 50/50 basis.  With this release the electronics have been toned down a bit and I would say that split closer 70/30 in favor of the guitar.  That’s not disappointing, if anything it gives the electronics that are used more of an impact.  The last thing to note is that the drums are all synthetic.  While that may sound like a downer to some, JP programs them better than just about anyone else on the planet, so they work really well.

The album continues with song after song of pissed off music that is about as aggressive as anything I have heard in ages.  Bloodlust Blues takes a break from politics and lyrically comes across as something straight out of the mind of a serial killer.  The track starts off very aggressive, as many Shizit tracks do, but then it slows down during the verses which are spoken like a semi distorted rant.  The track is one of the slower tracks you will hear from the Shizit but the play between loud and quiet works perfectly and makes from one of the better Shizit tracks ever.

The album finishies with Fat Slave which is the best track the Shizit have ever laid onto a hard drive.  It starts off with a synth line that might have been programmed by Dracula himself before kicking into the aforementioned aggressive metal.  The verses are screamed and the chorus is sung.  One thing that is apparent on this release is the growth of JP as a vocalist and lyricist.  The sung chorus sounds awesome and lyrically it’s the most introspective thing I have heard come out of JP’s mouth.  He questions whether or not his time is worth it.  Is it worth worrying about politics?  Am I a hero to anyone else?  The chorus speaks to something we have all felt.

For prior releases I do like using the term Digital Hardcore to describe the Shizit.  This release falls into more of an industrial metal feel than previous work due to the decrease of dancey electronics.  I’ll repeat that this isn’t a negative, it’s just the slight change that has taken place with the Shizit since we last heard from them in 2001.  Now that we have the genre out-of-the-way I can safely say this is the best industrial metal album I have heard in a long, long time.  The tracks are all aggressive.  Most of them do not go over 4 minutes.  It’s just an in your face, pissed off record.  So many bands try to be aggressive but they end up feeling like a group of people who are trying to fit into a scene.  The Shizit come across like a brick to the head.  This is not bullshit, this is pure aggression.  And did I mention it was free?

Overall Rating: 4.5 out of 5.0

Listen if you like:

• Atari Teenage Riot – 60 Second Wipeout
• Rabbit Junk – This Life is Where You Get Fucked
• Alec Empire – Futurist

Best Tracks

• Fat Slave
• Bloodlust Blues
• Civilization Extermination

To differentiate between Kary, Wintersleep went full on acoustic for this, their debut album.  The tone of the album actually comes out to be extreme on the melancholy, but it’s dripping with emotion and feeling.  That might sound a little pretentious but Wintersleep has to be heard to understand this element.  Paul’s vocals over the (sometimes) drab music creates this gentle feeling of depression that is hard to avoid.  While “depressing” or “melancholy” are seen as a bad thing in today’s world, listening to music that is depressive somehow takes that feeling away from me.  One thing that I have learned about music is that I’d much rather feel something, rather than nothing.  Wintersleep makes you feel.

The album opens up with Sore.  Light acoustic guitars start off the song for a few seconds before Paul comes in with a gentle tone in his voice.  This song is probably one of the more “cheerful” songs that the group have recorded and it’s probably the closest thing to a love song we will get out of them.  When the chorus kicks in, the vocals are amped and go from gentle to pained.  Not painful in a bad way, but painful in a fashion that gives us the feeling that the vocalist is sharing while singing the lyrics.

I know that I am going on an on about the “feeling” or the “emotion” that comes across, but that is this albums strongest asset.  We are able to connect to this album because we can understand the emotion behind it and the lyrics are also made up of realities that we face every day.  Assembly Lines is a song that everyone can understand.  The verses talk about things like “The Wife, The kids are starting to get in the way of the important thins/Like cars, like ours, like customers just keep smiling” which leads right into the chorus of “I’ll try harder”.  This is a song that can easily have a connection with just about everyone on earth who feels the need to try harder to be what other people expect them to be.  The music backing the song is a repetitive acoustic guitar riff and layered backing vocals of “oh’s” and “ah’s”  which give the song depth it might not have other wise.

Those are the touches that Wintersleep add to make what could potentially be very boring into something special.  They are the masters of droning on with what sometimes feels repetitive, but if you really listen subtle things get added on during the course of a song that end up in many layers by the end.  Maybe the guitar riff is the same for the whole song, but there might be a time shift in the background or some layered vocals.  The layered vocals are something that is seen on a lot of tracks.  Ambulance, a track about someone having a deadly medical issue in front of you.  The chorus constantly asks “If this is a joke/Please tell me so/So I’ll know”.  The verses have a layered vocals with a female singer in the background.  While the song does follow the verse, chorus verse formula,  the song ends with Paul going into a series of vocal riffs that give the feeling of someone who has been hurt.  Looking at another track, like Wind, we once agin see the repetitive nature of the band.  The same guitar line over and over again, but there is a subtle keyboard note in the background.  A female vocalist comes in and out of the song with Paul’s vocals building and building up to the end of the track.

This isn’t Wintersleep at their finest, but it’s still very good.  This album was a great start for the group and when listening to this now it’s easy to understand how they have grown since this has been release.  Their 2 LP’s after this one brought in electronic guitar, which brought back some of what people were missing with Kary being put on indefinite hold.  If you don’t mind music being a little on the depressing side and you like acoustic rock, this is something that needs to be heard.  For Winterlseep this release marks the start of something sadly beautiful, maybe you will find the same value in it as well.

Like most people, the first thing I heard off this album was Forsaker which is the albums opening track. It’s a track that is heavy as you can get with Jonas’ wonderful clean vocals over the top. The track shows why Katatonia are the Masters of Melancholy because the track has this heavy, depressing feel to it. Most of the album gives of that vibe and while people might think that listening to depressing music is, well, depressing… they are correct. The way I see it, however, is that it’s much better to feel something instead of nothing. So many bands have no feeling, no emotion. It’s all glossy, happy stuff. Or it’s just not from the heart. Night Is The New Day is from somewhere deep inside the members of Katatonia and it comes through on every track.

After Forsaker opens things up on a high note, the next 4 songs are equally as brilliant. Onward Into Battle is my favorite track off the disk. Something about the pacing and sound of Jonas’ voice just make me all warm and fuzzy inside. The albums latter half is not quite as good as the first half, but that doesn’t make it bad. The entire album doesn’t have a track worth skipping over.

The newer elements that help to push this disk forward (when compared to past releases from the band) is the addition of more prevalent sythns. They are used to supplement almost every track here and help to give them album more weight. If you had the privilege of hearing Unfrul (released on an EP after The Great Cold Distance) you will have a good idea of what I am talking about. They haven’t turned into an electronic metal band or anything, they just use small electronic accents here and there and they work perfectly within the style of music.

If you are scared off by the words “Doom” or “Depressive Doom” in front of your metal, don’t be. Katatonia takes what everyone thinks about the genre and flips it on its head. They have some of the best clean vocals in all of metal and some of the most talented musicians. The album is pretty dark and it is pretty depressing, but as I said before, I just like that it does such a wonderful job of conveying that emotion. This might not be for everyone, but I think it’s something all metal fans should give a chance.

Final Score:

• 4.0 out of 5

Listen If You Like:

• Katatonia: The Great Cold Distance
• Anathema: A Natural Disaster

Thankfully Caspian has given us something to be excited about. Their last disc, The Four Trees, is looked upon as one of the classics in the genre. While I have enjoyed it, I never got into enough to call it one of my favorites. It was a good listen occasionally, but I wasn’t overly impressed. The Four Trees was a little too soft for me, a little too safe.

Post-rock is at it’s height, for me, when the album/songs reach a crescendo that pays off. Often times, artists within the genre meander across 10 minute long songs that never really go anywhere (I’m looking at a lot of your stuff, Mogwai), they never pay off. There are a lot of artists who are guilty of that which is why you see some people say that post-rock is dead. Maybe you have someone who is trying to get in the genre, with little knowledge, and they end up with one of these long, boring releases that turn them off of the genre for good. Now I think I have a current release that we can point people to and say “Look, post-rock is aliving and kicking”.

Caspian’s latest is an interesting progression for them, one I didn’t expect. While there were some intense moments on The Four Trees, they were few and far between. On Tertia they bring the thunder and they bring it pretty often. They haven’t gotten quite as loud as something like Isis or Minsk, but they have gotten hard enough to border on the “post-metal” edge here and there. That’s what really makes this disc for me. It feels like it pays off time and time again with soaring apexes and a “wall of sound” approach that feels like it might engulf you.

The other smart choice that was made on this disc was the length. There are some long songs that come in at 8 or 9 minutes, but most of the album is quick and to the point. None of that pointless wandering that a lot of post-rock albums are guilty of.  It’s much easier to get into a 9 minute long song when the tracks leading up to it were between 4 and 6 minutes long and very engaging on top of that. Don’t take my issue with time and make me out to be an impatient person. If an artist can do long songs and keep me interested (Mono, UpCDownC) I’m all for it. The issue is that there are few artists who are really good at that. Seeing Caspian come out with this release and shorten down some of the song lenghts has just made their strengths seem stronger while their weaknesses have been smoothed over.

The album starts with Mie which is a soft intro into what is easily Caspian’s heaviest album to date. From there it’s track after track of post-rock goodness. One of the things that surprised me the most about the first few songs is the strength of the percussion. There are some spots where the drums truly shine and that’s pretty rare in this genre. Often the drums are there just as to keep pace; they rarely come to the forefront. The album’s best track (or at least myfavorite) is Malacoda. The song is heavy throughout but brings something not many post-rock artists use… vocals. Granted it’s not lyrical or verse chorus verse, but it’s a collection of elongated “ah”s and “oh”s that fit perfectly with the heavy guitars. This song is probably the one to point to where there is no fluff, no wasted moments. It’s five minutes of post-rock in it’s highest form. The other standout track is The Raven. Coming in at 7 minutes it’s another track that is perfectly paced and has a wonderful build to the apex that just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.  The album closes with Sycamore which is the perfect ending.  The track puts together everything that is great about Tertia.  It puts together the soft with the heavy and Caspian again display their perfect pacing.

This might end up being my post-rock release of the year, but there are still 3 months to go and If These Trees Could Talk had a damn good release earlier in the year. This is an album with 3 amazing tracks that are surrounded by very good tracks. There isn’t a song worth skipping. The album is perfectly paced. Caspian proves to be some of the best at knowing when to go full bore and when to pull back. I think this is their strongest work to date and I hope they continue on the path they have created here, because I think it’s the right one for them. There may not be much that is new to the genre, but it’s perfected a lot of what the genre already offers. If you like post-rock or are interested in getting into it, this is a great release for you.

Rating: 4.00 out of 5.0

Best Tracks:

• Malacoda
• The Raven
• Sycamore

Listen if you like:

• Mogwai - Mr. Beast
• Upcdowncleftcrightcabc+start - Embers
• If These Trees Could Talk – Above the Earth, Below the Sky

Urban Species is really a solo venture, though the name might lead you to think otherwise. The style here is ultra laid back british hip-hop. The genre is a blessing and a curse. Sometimes it’s great to be laid back and chill. Sometimes it’s nice to pick up the pace. Unfortunately, the one song he does pick up the pace in, turns out to be pretty awful. The vocal style is constantly slowed down and at times really drab. At times it does work well but after listening to an entire album with little to no change on the vocals, it becomes tedious. The production here feels very jazzy at times but for the most part I think this could be looked at as a trip-hop or downtempo disc. Some of the production reminds me of Lamb but comes across feeling very different because of the vocals present.

The album starts off really well. The first track is good, but nothing special. The second track, Destructive is amazing. The production contains a jazzy beat with some light guitar backing. The track starts of small but swells to a wall-of-sound buy the chorus, which is sung by a female/male combo. The track works really well all the way through. After that we get into Blanket, which is the reason I’m here in the first place. Again, the track is laid back, jazzy beat and laid back vocals. If it weren’t for Imogen Heap I would probably be really bored with it, but she saves it and makes it a great song. She opens the song with a verse and then chorus. Then Urban Species kicks in with his laid back style. Heap takes over the chorus each time and each time it sounds brilliant.

After this it’s mostly downhill from here. I Wonder follows Blanket with a 90′s cheesiness that should have been dead by the time this was recorded. There is a female vocal backing the entire track with a “Ba-Ba-Ba-Bapa-Bapa” type style that sounds awful with the cheesy, wonky guitars. Next is Woman, his tribute to the female gender. It’s boring and his attempt at ultra conscious lyrics come off as indulgent and corny. The album picks up with the next two tracks to then be a difficult listen the rest of the way.Predictably Unpredictable is a 7 minute long track with mostly female vocals. This track comes across almost as straight up Trip-Hop that you might have heard coming fromPortishead in the mid-90′s. The only problem is that the track is 7 minutes long when it should be 4. The verses and chorus are repeated over and over again. If you make it through the entire track you will become incredibly bored by the end, but it’s a great song the first few minutes. Then comes Rockstar which is by far the strongest track from a lyrical perspective. At times throughout the album it feels like his lyrics are heavy handed while he is trying to help save the world. On Rockstar, however, his preaching turns into clever lyrical wordplay. I feel like if I explained what he was saying here it might sound cheesy, so listen to the song. After that it’s the worst track on the album which isReligion and Politics. He literally talks, not raps, about religion and politics. Sound exciting? Not to me either. The last two tracks are pretty awful and long on top of that.

If this would’ve been a 5 song EP, it might be a really good one. Unfortunately it’s an LP with 5 songs too many and needs to be looked at that way. I would say that if you really like laid back hip-hop with a jazzy feel to it, there are some excellent tracks worth listening to. Even if you love trip-hop, there are going to be some redeeming qualities for you here. Overall, the album just isn’t very good. Yes, there are some great tracks, but there are just as many bad tracks and they are really bad tracks. If you are in the mood to chill, give this a shot. You might come away with a handful of songs that deserve to be on your iPod.

Listen if you like:

Imogen Heap - Speak for Yourself
Portishead - Dummy
Tricky - Maxinquaye

Rating – 2.5 out of 5.0