Metal Monday: Lord Stereo

Programming note: Nearly a full month without posting. Two reasons: 1) I bit off more than I could chew with my initial posting schedule, and 2) I'm studying for the Nevada bar exam. The latter is taking up quite a bit of my basketball-viewing time and even more of my posting time, so I expect that I won't post much over the next couple of months. I do hope to post a bit more often, though, especially with conference play starting to ramp up and some really interesting stuff happening (surprising Big East teams, Wisconsin losing three straight Big Ten games, etc.).

One thing I also plan to resume/keep going is Metal Monday. And so, via Metal Underground, I give you the stream of the debut album of Lord Stereo, a Polish garage band.

Metal Monday: Year-End Lists

With the end of the year nearly upon us, the various and sundry metal blogs out there are compiling their annual "best of" lists. I'm not doing one, because I'm not a music critic and don't listen to hundreds upon hundreds of metal albums every year. Maybe next year.

What I am doing, though, is compiling as many of these lists as I can, and posting them there. Everyone seems to be doing at least a top ten, so I'll list the top ten from each and then give you a link to go view the rest.

I haven't heard most of this stuff, so I can't vouch for it. I will be listening to as much of it as I can on Spotify over the next several days, and I'll post on Twitter anything that I think is really good.

Remember, it's not too late to add your favorites to your Christmas list -- or to give the gift of metal to your loved ones this holiday season.

Metal Monday: New Lamb of God Track

Despite their massive popularity, I've never really gotten into Lamb of God. I've never been one of those people who is constantly searching for new music -- I am just a tad too old to have taken full advantage of Napster, and I'm more likely to use streaming radio for background music while I do something else, so I'm not sitting there tweaking my stations and feverishly tracking new music to listen to. I'm starting to do that a bit more, for the purposes of this column and for my own personal enjoyment, but throughout most of my life, I've basically been satisfied listening to the same bands year after year after year.

Anyway, when I first heard Lamb of God, it was at a time when I was strongly adverse to the throaty growls that characterize the vocals of so many sub-genres of heavy metal. I really couldn't stand them, and so any band that employed them really have a chance with me.

For whatever reason, my taste has changed, and I don't mind them as much. While I think I'll always prefer the more "normal" singing of most thrash and speed, I listen to my fair share of death and black metal and have come to a certain peace with this vocal style.

I'm glad I have, too, because Lamb of God has some great stuff going on behind the vocals. After checking out the free stream of a new track, "Ghost Walking" (a/s Metalsucks.net), I spent some time this morning listening to Lamb of God's catalog on Spotify -- and came away with plenty of stuff to put into the rotation. I'm now eagerly awaiting the January 24 release of Resolution, the album on which "Ghost Walking" appears.

Metal Monday: Taking the Easy Way Out

I've got a ton of stuff to do today and no time to post substantively. So I'll take the easy way out. For what I assume is a limited time, you can stream Cormorant's Dwellings in its entirety, thanks to our friends at National Public Radio. I had a listen this morning, and it's good.

(a/s MetalSucks.net)

Metal Monday: Speedwolf

If you like Motorhead, you'll like Speedwolf. (If you don't like Motorhead, get the f -- well, you know.)

These guys have been around for a few years, but their first full-length album, Ride With Death, came out two weeks ago. A couple of tracks were streaming for free a few weeks ago, and having heard them, I have to agree with one review I read, which said (and I'm paraphrasing here) "Speedwolf doesn't do anything groundbreaking, but that doesn't mean that they still aren't really good."

The band isn't popular enough, or the album hasn't been out long enough, for the whole album to have shown up on YouTube yet. (Either that, or Speedwolf fans are more respectful of intellectual property than most.) For some reason, the player on the band's Myspace page isn't working on my computer -- it may on yours, though, so check it out. (They've got six tracks there.) You can also hear a couple of tracks on their Facebook page.

Finally, you can go here, a metal merch site that has some Speedwolf stuff. They've got three tracks -- "I am the Demon," "Denver 666," and "Speedwolf" streaming there. The music starts on its own as soon as you get there, so make sure your volume is up.

Metal Monday: Megadeth's Th1rt3en

Despite their (rightful) place among thrash's Big Four, Dave Mustaine and Megadeth have always struck me as outsiders. Obviously, simply liking or playing metal makes one an outsider in most cultures, but even within that relatively small circle, Mustaine has always appeared to me to not quite fit in.

Maybe it's because so many of Mustaine's song and album titles seem like bad jokes -- Killing Is My Business ... And Business Is Good, Peace Sells ... But Who's Buying? My caricature of Mustaine has always been of the unpopular kid who, in an attempt to impress the cool kids, comes up with an elaborate joke for the sole purpose of unveiling an underwhelming punchline -- then immediately breaks into an explanation of the joke to the nonplussed audience. For this reason, I've internally referred to Megadeth as "nerd" metal. I don't have a better explanation for it than that -- in my mind, it just fits.

All of this is to say that I had to roll my eyes a little bit when I saw that the stylized title of the band's latest release included a couple characters of Leet-speak.

The thing is, as we've learned from fairy tales and countless forgettable cookie-cutter movies, you can't judge a book by its cover. And behind some of the groan-inducing album titles, songs, and lyrics over the last two and a half decades, Megadeth has consistently put out some of the best, most blistering thrash metal available.

Metal Monday: My Top Ten Glenn Danzig Songs

Metal Monday is something I used to do periodically on Rhymes With Hondo. It didn't really work there -- it's out of place on something so specific as an NBA team blog; I didn't post regularly enough; and the posts I did make were sort of half-assed. When I started this blog, I decided to redouble my efforts and make it a truly regular feature.

I'm still not sure where I'll head with this. Some posts might be a list, like this one. Others might be a link to an album stream or free download. On the relatively rare occasions I purchase a new album, I'll probably do a review. Occasionally, I might try to "cleverly" tie it into basketball. Realistically, though, most of the posts will probably just be me telling you what I like to listen to.

I wasn't going to start it up for a while, but Halloween and a four-part series from MetalSucks inspired me to do a post on one of my favorite artists, the godfather of horror punk: Glenn Danzig.