Hello, everyone! Time for some more mini reviews!

As always, I’m just sharing how I personally feel about these albums. I’m not saying any of these are ‘objectively good’ or ‘objectively bad’, whatever that even means. Nothing here is meant to be mean or anything, even if the review is negative.

I’m curious to hear what you think of these albums, so let me know in the comments (if you want to, of course). And now, time for the reviews!

Blackbraid II by Blackbraid:

Here’s a black metal album that’s over an hour long by an artist I don’t remember hearing of until recently. And I mostly like this!

The mixing is really good, and the vocals sound incredible! I also find the snares really hard-hitting!

The album is very long, and toward the end I find it a bit less interesting, but there’s still a lot to like, and there are some mellower moments which add more variety here, such as part of “A Song of Death on Winds of Dawn”. And I like that there’s mellower moments to add more variety, even though “Spells of Moon and Earth” and “Celestial Passage” don’t really wow me that much.

Overall, I’m going to give this a 7/10. I think I’d like it more if it were shorter, but there are a lot of really interesting lyrics, and lots of great guitar melodies, and the vocals are phenomenal! Overall, I really like this!

Final Thoughts
Rating: 7/10
Favourite Tracks: “The Spirit Returns”, “The Wolf That Guides the Hunters Hand”, “A Song of Death on Winds of Dawn”
Least Favourite Tracks: “Twilight Hymn of Ancient Blood” 

My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross by ANOHNI:

This album has been getting a lot of critical acclaim, so even as someone who hadn’t ever listened to any of ANOHNI’s music before this, I was really excited to hear it!

But unfortunately, continuing with a big theme of 2023 for me, here’s another super critically acclaimed album that I can’t say I love … don’t get me wrong, I don’t dislike this album, but it’s still not really my cup of tea.

I think a big part of why this didn’t fully click for me is the vocal melodies, which often just feel meandering and don’t grab my attention much. And while there are some interesting ideas lyrically, a lot of the lyrics don’t really grab me personally, and at times the lyrics get pretty cringey, like in “Scapegoat” when she says ‘I can use you like a toilet.’

I like some of the detail in the instrumentation, but the production doesn’t always work for me, with the percussion often feeling too quiet in the mix. Overall, it’s a mostly pleasant album while it’s on, but I don’t think I’ll go back to it much. 6/10 for me.

Final Thoughts
Rating: 6/10
Favourite Tracks: “It Must Change”, “Can’t”, “Why Am I Alive Now?”
Least Favourite Tracks: “Sliver Of Ice”, “Scapegoat”

Pyrophonics by Heavenward:

This is the debut album from this project of Kamtin Mohager from the band Teenage Wrist. Kamtin has released quite a few albums under the name The Chain Gang of 1974, and as someone who’s never listened to Kamtin’s music or Teenage Wrist’s music, I wasn’t sure what to expect going into this … and I’m not sure whether Heavenward is a band or just a solo project, or what it is, but either way I can’t really say I’m liking this album all that much.

A lot of the snares feel annoyingly stiff, and the mixing feels really messy with the vocals often sounding drowned out by the instrumentation—a big example of this is “Supernova”.

Also, the vocal melodies don’t really work for me, either, and I personally didn’t find a lot that really grabbed my attention lyrically—that’s not the say there’s nothing to the lyrics, it’s just that I personally didn’t find them all that interesting. But keep in mind I’m not the biggest lyrics guy.

Overall … I mean, some of the guitar distortion sounds nice, and at least it’s a pretty short album, and there are a few moments where the vocal melodies click, but there’s not enough here that I like to save this from getting a really light 5/10. Even as a fan of hard rock, this isn’t for me at all.

Final Thoughts
Rating: 5/10
Favourite Tracks: “Heavenward”, “Something Real”, “Planned Human Combustion”
Least Favourite Tracks: “Be My Blues”, “Tangerine”

A Mind Waiting to Die by Graphic Nature:

Here’s an album I first listened to months ago in February after it came out, but I’m finally reviewing it now.

As someone who really likes metalcore, I was curious to check out this debut album from Graphic Nature, a band I’d never heard of until this album came out.

There’s a lot of emotion in Harvey Freeman’s lyrics here, a lot of which are about mental health, and I hope he’s doing well, but I did not enjoy this album.

I’m not really a fan of the messy-sounding production here, with the guitar distortion not hitting as hard as I’d like.

I get that the subject matter is very serious, but if I’m being honest some parts of the album do come across as unintentionally funny—for example a bunch of the usages of the word ‘fuck’ … it’s not that I’m against swearing, it’s just that it often feels so overdone here and like he’s trying too hard to say ‘fuck’ as many times as he can. Again, I’m not saying this to be mean, and I hope Harvey is doing well, but this album just doesn’t appeal to me at all.

But with that being said, I do love the song, “A Twin”, the one big standout for me. The tension in the haunting instrumental really fits with the terrifying lyrics which seem to be describing a nightmare—and it’s a great song!

But as a whole, I’m giving this album a light 4/10.

Final Thoughts
Rating: 4/10
Favourite Tracks: “A Twin”
Least Favourite Tracks: “Sour”, “Into The Dark”, “Killing Floor”, “Headstone”

Monuments to Absence by Fen:

Fen are one of those bands whose name I’d seen online before, but I hadn’t listened to any of their albums until now … and I still haven’t listened to any of their other albums. I’m sure I’ll get around to hearing them eventually, but I just recently found out this came out and I didn’t want to go through their pretty large discography before listening to this, as I wanted to review this sooner rather than later.

The first thing I want to say is that I couldn’t find the lyrics to this album when I looked them up, so I won’t be able to comment on that as I have a hard time hearing what the lyrics are.

Anyway, this is a metal album that’s been mostly critically acclaimed so far, and I can’t say it’s fully clicking for me. I don’t think it’s bad, it’s just not really wowing me personally.

There are some moments I really like, such as the crushing drums and guitar near the beginning of the title track, and the punchy snare in “To Silence and Abyss we Reach”. And overall, it’s mostly pleasant while it’s on …

But for an album that’s over an hour long, it just doesn’t grab my attention enough. A lot of people are really liking this album, and you very well may be one of them, so if you’re into metal I’d recommend you listen to it, but even as a metal fan myself, it’s just not totally clicking for me. Monuments to Absence, for me, is a strong 6/10.

Final Thoughts
Rating: 6/10
Favourite Tracks: “Monuments to Absence”, “To Silence and Abyss we Reach”, “Wracked”
Least Favourite Tracks: “Eschaton’s Gift”

i care so much that I dont care at all by glaive:

This is glaive’s debut studio album, and one that hasn’t been getting a super positive reception from what I can tell, but I was curious to hear it as someone who’s never listened to any of glaive’s music before this, and …

Well, the mixing/production sounds really good for the most part! I really like a lot of the subtle details in the instrumentation and the way the instruments are blended together in the mix, and I mostly like the percussion, too!

But I mostly want to focus on the lyrics here. The album opens with “oh are you bipolar one or two?” in which he says he’s going to kill himself when he’s twenty-three, and while he’s probably not being serious, it still makes me worried about him. And then there’s that line in “pardee urgent care” when he says, ‘You told me I should kill myself with pills that stay inside my shelf. I know for a fact I deserve it.’ I doubt this is meant seriously, but still … hearing him say he deserves that is really worrying, and I hope he’s okay.

But then the title track shows him looking back to the past and being glad he didn’t take his own life, and it made those other two songs I mentioned feel more like they were from the perspective of a character, or maybe his past self. 

From this point on there are some more really emotional songs, some of which I really want to say I love but I can’t because the vocal melodies really bore me … and overall, the vocal melodies are one of the biggest things that holds this album back from clicking for me more. There’s a lot of good production and emotional song writing, but the vocal melodies just really don’t click for me at all.

There are two songs here that I love, like “the car” which shows the narrator having sex with someone who’s already in another relationship, and the narrator is very much aware of that … but the instrumentation really fits to make this song feel like more of an intentionally fucked up story, and I think this song is a total banger! There’s also “all i do is try my best”, which is a nice, optimistic song about, well, trying your best and not worrying too much about being perfect, as the title would imply—and this song also has a great chorus and great production!

But then there’s the second to last track in which he mentions suicide again and it’s pretty much the opposite of the title track, as here he says, ‘So this is it, my final shift, my last hoorah, before I take a gun and do something I should have done.’ And again, it makes me worried about him. And even if this isn’t meant to be taken seriously (which, again, it probably isn’t), it still makes me want to stay the hell away from this track and makes me more reluctant to recommend this album when there’s nothing in the closing track that fully wraps up the story being told here, at least as far as I can tell. So, for me, this album is a 4/10. I get that art is open to interpretation, and maybe I’m overthinking all this, but the way he writes about suicide here just feels really questionable to me … but again, art is open to interpretation, so feel free to let me know what you think. And most importantly, I hope glaive is doing well. Clearly he’s been through a lot, and I hope he’s found happiness.

Final Thoughts
Rating: 4/10
Favourite Tracks: “the car”, “all i do is try my best”
Least Favourite Tracks: “oh are you bipolar one or two?”, “the good the bad the olga”

UTOPIA by Travis Scott:

This is my first time listening to a full Travis Scott album, although I like some of the songs of his that I already knew before listening to this.

And despite being as long as it is, it’s not an album that gives me a ton to say … I don’t find the lyrics all that interesting, but I’m not sure if it’s that I haven’t looked into them enough or if there’s just not much interesting being said here, or maybe a mix of both. (I’ve read the lyrics, and like with any album I review I (at least somewhat) try to understand the lyrics, but it gets exhausting worrying about making sure I understand everything 100%.) That being said, there are some things that stand out to me lyrically, for better or for worse. I like the part in “MY EYES” where he expresses guilt for the tragedy at the 2021 Astroworld Festival. I’ll admit I haven’t read much about what happened at the festival, so I don’t know how much or how little of the blame should land on Travis for what happened, but this part of the song I’m referring to is very emotional, and it shows him wishing he’d handled the situation differently. But there are also some questionable lines on here like in “SKITZO” when he says, ‘I got Ye over Biden’—I’ll admit my knowledge of US politics is lower than it probably should be (even though I’m a Canadian who’s lived in Canada my entire life), so maybe I’m missing something here because I don’t know a ton about Joe Biden or Ye, but I know for sure I wouldn’t want Ye to be the president.

The guest features are a mixed bag if you ask me, with some of my favourites being The Weeknd on “CIRCUS MAXIMUS”, SZA on “TELEKINESIS”, Teezo Touchdown on “MODERN JAM”, and Beyoncé on “DELRESTO (ECHOES)”.

Overall … well, there are parts of the album I really like, but nothing here is as great as “SICKO MODE” in my opinion, and I find the album very inconsistent. And considering how long it is, and I’m not usually the biggest fan of long albums … for me, it’s a 5.5/10. Travis is a good rapper/singer a lot of the time, and there are some catchy moments here, but as a whole it’s not something I’ll be going back to much, if at all.

Final Thoughts
Rating: 5.5/10
Favourite Tracks: “HYAENA”, “THANK GOD”, “DELRESTO (ECHOES)”, “CIRCUS MAXIMUS”, “TELEKINESIS”, “TIL FURTHER NOTICE”
Least Favourite Tracks: “MELTDOWN”, “I KNOW ?”, “TOPIA TWINS”, “SKITZO”, “K-POP”

Worldless by The Suns Journey Through the Night:

Here’s a black metal album by a one-man project who’s been releasing music for a few years now, but whom I hadn’t heard of until recently, at least not that I can remember. It’s unknown to the public who the man behind this project is, and when I look at the writing credits on Apple Music, it just says John Doe.

Anyway, unfortunately this isn’t really for me. Part of it is feeling like I’ve heard lots of black metal albums with a similar musical style and there’s not much here that really stands out to me that much, but I also don’t really like the production, and it’s hard for me to describe why. It just sounds kind of fuzzy at points, or maybe ‘foggy’ is a better word … I’m not sure, but it just feels like it could use more punch, and at points the snares sound drowned out by the overpowering guitar.

I will at least say I find some of the lyrics interesting, like in the title track which describes something that ‘exists between all things,’ but overall, there’s not a ton about this album that really wowed me, and it does feel like it meanders during some of the mellower parts of the album, like “Grief, The Star”.

But I still recommend you hear it if you’re into black metal, as the very haunting sound of it combined with the lyrics makes for a kind of interesting listening experience even if there’s not much about it that makes me personally want to go back to it … maybe that didn’t make any sense, but to me this is a light 5/10. There’s a good chance you’ll really like this (at least if you’re into black metal), but this didn’t do much for me personally.

Final Thoughts
Rating: 5/10
Favourite Tracks: “Worldless”
Least Favourite Tracks: “Grief, The Star” 

Girl with Fish by feeble little horse:

This is a very short alternative rock album that I saw getting a lot of critical acclaim, and I was excited to hear it!

And it turns out this has got some absolutely fantastic guitar distortion! It sounds absolutely crushing and fits these songs super well!

And I also really like a lot of the lyrics here, even though a lot of them are hard to understand. But I often like lyrics with enough detail to make you really think while still keeping some mystery, and this album does that really well!

There’s a lot of really cool experimentation here, which keeps it from sounding like a generic alternative rock record, but instead of feeling too all-over-the-place and messy, the experimentation feels like it fits.

Now, that being said, “Pocket” is an exception to that, as it does feel a bit all-over-the-place, and it’s my least favourite song here, although even this song has some really fascinating lyrics.

If you want to know my favourite tracks, they’re listed below, but there are a lot of strong highlights here, Lydia Slocum is a great vocalist, and there’s a lot of subtle details in the instrumentation that I really like! I think this is great, and it’s getting an 8/10 from me!

Final Thoughts
Rating: 8/10
Favourite Tracks: “Tin Man”, “Steamroller”, “Heaven”, “Sweet”, “Slide”, “Station”, “Heavy Water”
Least Favourite Tracks: “Pocket”