Marj – Marj

I am telling you to listen to this album because, simply, I fucking made it. This band out of Nashville is the first band to have an album released on Cake Or Death Productions, which is the company I started about eight months ago. I saw this band once and instantly signed them. They are that amazing and unique. Each of them has a strong underground punk influence, but has grown beyond it to make truly artistic noise-rock. It’s like listening to The Clash or even The Sex Pistols if they were on acid and influenced by Pink Floyd. So it clearly isn’t punk, but you can definitely tell the influence. It’s trippy in some songs, but not overbearingly. It’s catchy, its confusing, but more importantly, its intriguing. All you want to do when you listen to this album is to see them perform it live, which they do in an absolute haze of noise and sweat. If you don’t buy this album, at least check these guys out. They deserve the listen.

Dethklok – The Dethalbum (5 out of 5)

Many of you know of this band, but a lot more of you don’t. If you’ve ever seen the show Metalocalypse on Adult Swim, then you know of this band. Dethklok is comprised of the main characters on the show, which takes the stereotype of heavy metal to a comedic extreme. I am a fan of the show so I bought the album to support it. When I listened to it, I literally didn’t even get done with the second song until I was thinking, “holy shit, this is amazing.” I am very much a metalhead at heart, and it is really hard for a metal album to really catch my attention and impress me. The last one, that I can recall, that truly impressed me before this was the Human Abstract album. And that was almost a year ago. The vocals on this album are the best part. It’s the stereotypical low grunts, but its amazing. The lyrics are even better. “Many years ago today something grew inside of your mother…that thing was you! RSVP please, to the death party, you have little time, and you’re running out of life.” How awesome is that? Well, to answer my own question, it’s pretty fucking awesome. There is even a song that runs through a checklist of all the things you need for battle, and all the things you need your opponents will have for battle, and after every thing on the list, they all yell “check!” This album amazed me and exceeded all of my expectations. It truly blew me away. I hope the show goes on for at least three more seasons. If you don’t have the dvd set of the first season, get it, because it just came out and its amazing as well. Five out of five fucking stars for this one. Fuck yeah. *****

Kanye West – Graduation (4 out of 5)

A lot of you know that I am much more of a metalhead at heart and I love eclectic rock and anything that is out of the ordinary and strange. Every now and then I need to relax to something catchy though. I’m a big fan of Kanye West. His confidence and egoism is completely comical to me and I think that the samples he uses in songs are genius. Well, maybe not genius… but still pretty awesome stuff. His first album, College Dropout, threw him onto the scene and stuck him at one of the head spots. That was his proof that he could do something other than just produce and mix. With Late Registration he proved that he could stay on top, and it was arguably his best performance to date. Even if you despise rap, there was no way you couldn’t get into the song “Gold Digger.” With his new album, he tries to have his catchy samples, taking in from places such as Daft Punk and Coldplay, but he falls short of his previous achievements. Don’t get me wrong, the album is great, but there are just too many little things that stick this album underneath the previous two.

The beginning track is one of my favorites, but I also can’t listen to it for too long without getting a headache. You can imagine my frustration. It’s because the snare hit he uses in the song sounds like an aluminum baseball bat tapping against a metal pole, which sounds cool at first, but never stops repeating through the entire song. After a while, it feels like an aluminum bat against my skull. Even if he had turned down the volume of it in the mix, I think it would have worked better. It stands out when I listen to it and even as I write about it now, it brings back my headache. And it’s still a good song! It’s so frustrating! I want to listen to it but I have to change songs halfway through!

Secondly, and more importantly, is Lil’ Wayne. This guy gets something around fifty thousand dollars a track. A lot of people look up to him but I’m not sure why. He comes close to ruining the entire album when he is featured in the song “Barry Bonds.” When I first listened to it, the whole scenario of what may have caused his shittiness played out in my head. What I think happened is that even a big time rapper like Lil’ Wayne was in awe of Kanye West and felt lucky to even be in his presence. He then wanted to impress Kanye by taking on his style and mannerisms in the studio. In the song, he raps curiously a lot like how Kanye would rap. It doesn’t sound like Lil’ Wayne’s style at all, like he was trying to be Kanye on Kanye’s album. What came out was utter bullshit. “I’m all about my Franklins, Lincolns, and Reagans. When they make them, I shall have (he says is like he is rhyming it with cave or save) them, oops I mean have (says it normally) them. I’m so crazy.” What the fuck?! Fuck you Lil’ Wayne! Go back to Cash Money Records and the Hot Boys, because that was the only time I even thought you had a damn fingernail’s worth of talent. GOD you suck on this record.

The other little things don’t quite amount to the shittiness of Lil’ Wayne. It seemed like Kanye didn’t want to do as many samples in this album because he thought that he was outplaying himself with them. I’m not too sure, but songs like “Drunken Hot Girls” could have been a lot more badass with a sample of some kind. The beat just lacked something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

So in conclusion to this review, I say that the album is definitely worth getting, and you shouldn’t even compare it to the new 50 Cent. You shouldn’t even get me started on that guy. He is worse than Lil’ Wayne in my mind, if you can imagine that. Kanye hits hard and big with this album, but his previous two albums were such big home runs that even though this one was out of the park, it still isn’t as impressive as the others. To make the analogy that much more annoying, I’m going to say that he hit hard, but there was so much wind resistance (Lil’ Wayne), that the ball fell short of the back row in the stands. The key tracks on the album are “Flashing Lights” and, of course, the two singles. I give it four out of five stars, I am tempted to give it only three because of Lil’ Wayne, but I’ll just forget that his verse ever existed and give it four.***