Believe it or not, all of that instrumental chaos is pretty clean and could've benefited from more distortion. No need for me to get literary with things. If you like it, spin it. The sun will still rise in the East.

"Taking Care of Business" makes me want to jump off a bridge, but "Let It Ride" is my jam, so this is a nice middle-ground. Jazzy number and love the wry nature of the lyrics. A bit long in the tooth, though. 6/10

It's perfectly fine as far as buttrock goes, but still mediocre. I guess 5/10 cause I have nothing strong to say one way or the other.

We need to get you into more butt rock.

I was in high school in the early 2000s. I've heard enough.

The corny fantasy movie synth intro was great and the track also has some nice 90's sounding production to it. Could it be remastered 80's thrash? I'm not sure. It just has a slightly unusual sound to it. I like the rattling drums, the prominent bass and the fairly fat guitar tone. Sadly, it kicks off with a couple pretty goofy sound riffs and the singer doesn't sound nearly wild enough for his cartoony vocal approach. He comes off like a parody of a certain type of thrash singer. Cool solos, some ok riffs here and there, but I feel like this band probably has some better songs. The singer has to go. His thrash metal vail was decent, but otherwise, I felt like he was slumming it.

4/10

My pick:

the music was pretty cool mostly but I didn't like anything about the vocals and otherwise cheesiness. Although there guitar was downright sick at parts. so like 5/10

Since my previous pick was from ages ago, I don't feel too bad about jumping in on this one:

Sonic Youth - Stones
The extended intro was great. The guitars sounded amazing and there was a very interesting vibe to this part of the song. Once it gets going and the singer comes in, I like it less. The drums are really, really good, the guitars are fine and the vocalist is... karaoke level. He mostly reminded me of a Lou Reed with less personality, except when he reminded me a bit of Stipe from R.E.M. I get that this kind of thing is par for the course for rock band singers, but to me, he's just kind of... not cutting it.

The instrumental part at the end really brings this song back up. It's the long stretch with more of a vocal focus that I'm not too keen on. If that had been on level with the start and end of this song, it would have been playlist material for me.

6/10

My pick:

Yasmine Hamdan - La Ba'den

I like the dry and atmospheric production on that and her voice is pretty nice. It fades too much in the middle to boast quality song structure, but overall the percussion is great and she's a quality vocalist. I'll give it a 7/10


https://comaclustervoid.bandcamp.com...umb-of-disease

Thumb of Disease is about tech gadgets like computers, and cell phones, video games etc. - things you use your thumb to operate. It's about how they are used to spread "filth across mankind" and are used to "fulfill despotic desires." They are monolithic culturally - everyone uses them, and they're oppressive probably cause people are addicted to them. Kinda of a bummer of a song.

Captain Beefheart - Click Clack