Trollheart Tries Desperately To Keep Up With This Year's Music
 

This thread has two aims: first, and most importantly, to drive Ki nuts by having yet another of my threads to annoy him. But seriously, as I wade through the releases of 2017 I am of course in danger of missing out on some good music released this year. To that end, I've signed up for the Allmusic New Music This Week email, and will be listening to, and commenting on, anything I get in that.

I should also note that anything I check out off the above, I'll be taking the first track from the album, unless a single is the sample I get. I also have to go looking for the full YouTube as AllMusic only give me about a thirty-second sample. Poor me. And they say people don't have problems, huh?

No ratings this time, just a simple one-word result, anything from terrible to excellent and everything in between.

Beyond that: this IS a rec thread! Rec me music, however please observe my three simple rules:

1. Only ONE TRACK per post per time please
2. Only 2018 music
3. Please wait to post again until at least one other person has posted

As I'm recced tracks I will listen to them as I can and advise what I think of them. If I think something is really good I may check out the album it's from (if there is one) although the chances are I'll probably be lucky to find the time to do that. Nevertheless, open to any and all genres, as long as the rules above are followed. Post YouTubes or link me to Spotify, Soundcloud, Bandcamp, whatever.

I just received my first email from AllMusic today so will be listening to those tracks and will post my reactions to them soon. If anyone knows of any other similar service I should be checking out, feel free to let me know.

I'm not terribly up to date on 2018 music, as I've got a long list of 2016 and 2017 albums that I need to catch up with, but I have been listening to the new single from the upcoming Arkona album, Khram.

I really love the aesthetic of this song, even though their usual folk metal trappings seem to have transformed into something more resembling some kind of semi-black metal thing.

I expect the album to be one of my favorites of the year, but I don't want to hype it up too much. It's not going to be quite like that Arkona track you liked so much in your other recent recommendations thread.

I'm honestly not sure you'll like this one at all, but for what it's worth, I'm pretty hooked on it right now.

ARKONA - V pogonie za beloj ten'yu

Only fair to do the recs first so here goes.

Title: “V pogonie za beloj ten'yu"
Artist: Arkona
Album: Khram
Genre: Folk/Black Metal
What I know about this artist: I think MicShaz recced me one of their tracks in one of my many other threads, and I think I loved it.
And now, to listen...
Great power, good atmosphere and I love the riffs. Time was when death vocals would turn me right off, nowadays, though I prefer my vocals to be listenable, I can stand them all right. There are also some clean vocals on here, which helps. It's in Russian (or whatever) which doesn't, but then folk metal is often not in English anyway so no big deal. Sounds like there's a female vocal in there somewhere too. It's quite long, at eight minutes and change, but I think a song like this needs to be that long. This allows for a great dark atmospheric instrumental that leads into a fine closing section.

One-word impression after listening: Excellent

Title: “Cement 4's”
Artist: Your Old Droog
Album: Dunno
Genre: Hip-hop
What I know about this artist: I enjoyed his Packs album from last year
And now, to listen...
Good forceful stuff, plenty of expletives, good guitar work (look, is it a sample? I don't know) and great sort of looped percussion (?). Also features someone called Conway? Short but kind of savage in its way. Impressive.

One-word impression after listening: Very Good.

@about the Arkona track.

The other track of theirs you've heard was Slovo, off the album of the same name.

All the vocals are by "Masha Scream" - both the screams, growls and the clean singing. As far as I know, it's also her that arranges all of the music and writes all the lyrics. She's got some skills.

Most likely a sample ja. It can be hard to tell especially on stuff with good production but a good rule of thumb is to assume it's samples when it's not The Roots playing.

Title: “Spook”
Artist: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
Album: Wrong Creatures
Genre: Rock
What I know about this artist: Heard of them, may have heard an album back in the day. Think WWWP might have recced them to me.
And now, to listen...
Kind of a standard rock thing really; reminds me of John Cougar Mellencamp mixed in with Springsteen, sort of a dark rockabilly feel to it, bit of Steve Earle too. I've heard better. This is nothing special. At all.

One-word impression after listening: Meh.

Title: “King For a Day”
Artist: Anderson East
Album: Encore
Genre: Roots Rock/Retro Soul/Southern Rock
What I know about this artist: Nada
And now, to listen...
Right out of the gate I get a Chris Rea meets Van Morrison feel. I like the wailing organ, his voice is kind of raspy, which suits this kind of music. Nice backing vocals with a sort of bluesy/gospelly tinge and decent horn work too. Not bad, not bad at all.


One-word impression after listening: Very Good to a possible Excellent on further listenings.

I'd probably rate BRMC in general as meh. They have a couple moments in their catalogue but mostly, they sound like they're going through the motions with their seventies style retro sound.