Music & Media Archives
The Best Music of 2009
12: Letzte Instanz’s Schuldig (“Guilty”) was a mostly uninteresting alt-metal album. But the songs were extremely catchy and stood out well one from another. Usually Letzte’s albums will have a few dud tracks which just don’t stick in the brain, but not this time around. This is as good of a pop metal album as [...]Copyright and a Culture of Monoliths
Though it was originally instituted for the protection of the distributors of media, copyright has come to be regarded in popular mindset as protection for the incentive of artists and innovators to create. The distribution industries know that the function of protecting the distributors as such has been made unnecessary by the advent of the internet, so they no longer try to justify copyright laws that way. They would have us believe instead that without copyright laws, actors, musicians, and writers could not make a decent living…Children Of Men and the Moral Ponzi Scheme
This post is intended to expand on the philosophical ramifications of a sociocentric theology. Whether Christian or not, the only feature required for the applicability of this post is the belief in the happiness of others or of society as a whole as a final moral end…The Political Philosophy of Star Trek
Star Trek often catches a lot of flack from the American Right for portraying a Socialist space utopia. Certainly there is a vast, far reaching central government, and the human race is indeed portrayed as enlightened beyond self-interest. But should Star Trek be totally thrown out for its political philosophy? I believe there’s more to [...]Best Albums of 2008
10: In Extremo – Sængerkrieg didn’t impress me a whole lot at first – they have yet to top 7 – but it’s grown on me of late, with catchy pipe riffs strewn throughout the album. It’s definitely not one of their better efforts, but In Extremo on a bad day still beats most other bands on their best…
Why Scenes Stifle Music (or, Let’s Hear More Christian Black Metal)
For as long as there have been different styles of music, there have been people looking out for the purity of that style. Some genres attract these types of people more than others – generally, the more inaccessible the music, the more “pure” the fans will generally want to keep it. Unfortunately these scenes that [...]The 10 Best Albums of 2007
2007 was a year of a lot of surprisingly bad albums, but while there was a lot of disappointment, there were also a lot of pleasant surprises, not to mention the albums that actually lived up to their expectations. And though I wish I could list all of the pretty good albums this year, for [...]A Tragedy of Conceit
The more I look at pop music, the more ridiculous it seems to me. Perhaps that seems like a judgmental statement, especially from one whose stylistic tastes aren’t exactly mainstream, but right now I’m not even referring to anything stylistic. It really seems that almost every top pop song of late has been unabashedly self-aggrandising [...]Album Covers : Best Of
It’s been said that album artwork is just as important as the music inside. That’s a rather terribly misguided statement, but album artwork is nevertheless still pretty important. After all, without it, the internet would be sorely lacking in blog posts like this discussing it. Which would be, of course, a Bad Thing™. Now that [...]Corvus Corax is my Sufjan
Simply having a catchy melody or good instrumentation seems not to be enough to establish one’s street cred in music culture anymore. As more and more people flock to Sufjan Stevens because he’s the cool thing now (or maybe sometimes even because they actually enjoy him), a lot of qualities are cited that make him [...]Who are you, and what have you done with Vintersorg?
Is it just me, or has Vintersorg been getting lamer with every album release? First of all, Till Fjälls and Ödemarkens Son were both great albums. Strong melodies, a powerful bass voice, heavy and fast drums, and noticable folk-influence all made for a great sound – despite (and at times even because of) the harsh [...]Weird Al, a hero in the struggle
Nothing short of another PR blunder (and believe me, we aren’t short of those. Heard the one about the dead guy?) could have dealt a bigger blow to the RIAA’s credibility: An artist, one of their own and a high-profile one at that, has not only come out against their actions (there have been plenty [...]