What Are You Listening To Now?

The Fray ~ How To Save A Life

Having listened to my brother playing the title track on his guitar & singing along ad infinitum for the past couple of weeks [he's had his heart broken by a teenager, bless him] I've turned to the original CD - it's pretty good actually.
 
Euro - Dead Can Dance being what Lisa Gerrard did before she became Ridley Scott and Michael Mann's favourite singer?
 
INXS, the band without Michael Hutchence singing. JD isn't bad but he's not a patch on the real thing. I've just discovered they'll be playing after racing at Newmarket on June 22nd. Am pondering going along.
 
I`ve always found Sigur Ros a bit meh. I realise they`re a band on the gentler side of the Post-Rock spectrum but i prefer the heavier side of the genre like Mogwai, GY!BE and 65daysofstatic.
 
I've been listening to Mogwai for 10 years but they've never quite made me go weak at the knees like SR. Come On Die Young is a fav though so make of that what you will! Haven't listened to Godspeed in years; I've got Lift Your Skinny Fists but it's back in Dublin...
 
A lengthy programme last night on SYSTEM OF A DOWN, with plenty of excellent concert tracks. I didn't know the rationale behind their songs - the genocide inflicted in 1915-17 on the Armenians by the Turks, and the lack of any recognition or apology for this since - and the commitment by the American-Armenian group members to highlight this through their material and powerful, articulate performances. Excellent rock with some haunting Middle Eastern melodics, timbred voices and lyrics with a strong political message.

The programme also highlighted how the USA and UK governments have failed to manage to utter the word 'genocide' over the decades, since using Turkey as an oh-so useful military strategic airbase. While we're busy abnegating ourselves for the sins of our fathers over slavery (slightly airbrushing out its cooperative African and Arab influences), are ready to talk of a Jewish Holocaust and a Rwandan genocide, in fact, virtually every ethnic war or conflict in genocidal terms, SOAD's works bring to our attention that we seem particularly coy about slamming the Turks for committing one which cost 1,500,000 Armenian lives - a deliberate and cold-hearted anti-Armenian, anti-Christian action by the Muslim Ottomans against men, women and children.

The documentary was peppered with vivid images of the time - rows of Armenian heads, butchered women and starved children. And the USA still can't quite bring itself, in spite of strong pro-Armenian allies among the politicians, to call it what it was. It's 'a regrettable incident', 'an unfortunate time', and as one 'spokesman' hysterically said, 'it's a - er, ah, ah, ah, - it's, well, ah, a - a - we don't, ah, want to use the term, ah, ah, genocide, but, it's ah, a .... ' which just goes to show how difficult it is to utter the words your jolly old chum doesn't want to hear, especially when you have billions of dollars tied up in not saying the word, to each other's benefit. And Turkey sure as hell doesn't want to admit to something which might see surviving families put in for a few dollars' worth of compensation for being dispossessed, rendered homeless and countryless, does it?

Thanks, SYSTEM - you're doing a helluva good job for all the right reasons. (And I think they sound great, too!)
 
SOAD have a bad rap in the metal community. Each of their albums have been more commercial than the last, but i love `em.

np

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Why is that, Euro (re SOAD) - too meaningful? Too in-yer-political-face? I'd have thought that metal would be the ideal 'angry' medium for their stuff. Lyrics about f*cking your government don't come over quite so powerfully to a jolly ska beat or James Last.
 
Originally posted by krizon@Apr 11 2007, 08:08 PM
Why is that, Euro (re SOAD) - too meaningful? Too in-yer-political-face? I'd have thought that metal would be the ideal 'angry' medium for their stuff. Lyrics about f*cking your government don't come over quite so powerfully to a jolly ska beat or James Last.
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Nah, the lyrics have nothing to do with it, a lot of metal bands have meaningful or political lyricists. For some bizarre reson SOAD have always been tinged with the nu-metal brush

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nu-metal

Bullshit of course, and to be honest i think the derision the band come in for is wholly down to the fact that a lot of their fans also like the bands mentioned in the Wikipedia piece. Guilt by association i suppose.

Side note, Noel Gallagher is actually on record as saying SOAD are the worst band he`s ever heard.


np

My Bloody Valentine - Loveless
 
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