Band of the Week: super-mega-awesome feature... again

Yeah yeah yeah, blog neglect. But anyhoo, I has music scrummies to share.

First, earthtone9 and particularly their new EP For Cause & Consequence. I don't think it's available digitally (and legally) anywhere outside of PledgeMusic, but if you can find somewhere to listen to it, DO IT. And you can always get hold of a physical copy. I only started listening to them after getting their greatest hits compilation free sometime last year and I've still not got round to properly checking out their material, but they're a pretty great British alt-metal band.

Next... hmmm... choices. How's about There For Tomorrow. I only know a couple of songs by them, but they're a decent alt-rock/pop band. Lovely stuff.

That'll do on the artists front. Now for some songs.

Japanese Voyeurs just released their new video for Cry Baby. Awesomeness as always.

Then, there's this epicness, which I already posted yesterday, but it's awesome so I'm posting it again.

And then this, because I think I've fallen in love with the Wicked soundtrack. I should probably point out that I usually hate musicals. Something about them just grates on me, but I love this. And I just had it stuck in my head all the way through my Tasmanian Fauna exam.

Anything else... Lady Gaga's Judas has become a bit of a guilty pleasure. Although, I wouldn't exactly call it a guilty pleasure - I try not to feel guilty about anything I listen to.

And this. I've never listened to Yellowcard and then I got a free sampler from Hopeless Records last week. This track's pretty cool.

And to finish, one of my favourite videos of all time to go with one of my favourite tracks of all time. I'm not much of a fan of Avenged Sevenfold but this is just epic.

For some reason the official video doesn't show up when I search via Blogger. How odd...

Band of the Week: super-mega-awesome feature the second

Iiiiiiiiiii... haven't posted for weeks and I don't have a good excuse. I'm also not in the mood for writing a proper Band of the Week, so we have super-mega-awesome feature (take two) instead. Yay! Moving on...

First up, the delectable Jill Tracy. Dark cabaret. Think smoky jazz clubs and that gorgeously sultry music with a sinister edge. She's got a damn good voice.

Then we have Civet. Self-styled 'femme fatale punk rock', for which read really good punk with even more awesome female vocals. Again, damn good voice.

Next, Bourbon Crow, outlaw country from Wednesday 13 and Rayen Belchare (both of horror-punk band Wednesday 13). Brilliant, tongue-in-cheek country. By which I mean it takes the piss out of the genre while still being really good music.

Hmmm... who next? Nine Inch Nails hardly need plugging, they're HUGE, but hey, they're also awesome so check 'em out if you haven't.

And then go and have a listen to Dommin and their lovely atmospheric gothic rock/metal. Brilliant live and their cover of Cutting Crew's Died In Your Arms is beautiful.

Is five artists enough to count as a super-mega-awesome feature? Hmm, maybe one or two additional pieces of scrumminess...

This is EPIC:

This is Enter Shikari, by the way, covering one of their own songs. Class. And available for free download too. One sec, I'll find the link. First one on this page 'ere: http://www.entershikari.com/downloads/

And finally, this 'ere has to be one of my favourite covers ever. You know I said Nine Inch Nails are awesome? Have a listen to how awesome Japanese Voyeurs' cover of their song Closer is.


Japanese Voyeurs - Closer by ThrashHits

Much brilliance. In other Japanese Voyeurs news, their debut album is due out at the beginning of July. They're very much worth checking out. Get on it.

Current love: Japanese Voyeurs

So, after that lovely ramble of an introductory blog, I thought I should write about something slightly more interesting. MUSIC! After all, that's why I created this thing. Here goes.

I came across Japanese Voyeurs a few months back. February? March, maybe? Sometime near the beginning of the year, anyways. They were in Kerrang!'s Introducing... article one week and for some reason I decided to check 'em out. Turns out, I pretty much fell in love at first listen. And I'm still not entirely sure what I love so much about them. Romily Alice's vocals are amazing - swinging between an atonal drown and an ear-splitting shriek and yet in between those two extremes, she has such a sweet voice. And the music itself - definitely grunge sounding, but definitely not grunge as most people know it. Most tracks follow the whole "quiet verse, loud, heavy chorus" pattern, which is pretty normal for grunge, but Alice's vocals, combined with some of the more unusual moments of music definitely put them slightly outside of "traditional" grunge. I found one article online which described them as spaz-grunge and as yet, I think that's possibly the best tag I've found. Doesn't apply to all of JV's music, but it'll do for now.

Anyway, having gorged myself on the tracks that were on their myspace page, I decided I needed to download a few tracks, so I headed over to the UK iTunes store, hoping. Bearing in mind, the UK store is notoriously bad at actually having the music I want, but considering Japanese Voyeurs are English, I thought I was in with a good chance of finding something. And I did - That Love Sound/Blush, a double A-side single. Happy times for me. So I played that on repeat. A LOT. I then discovered that the band had the song Dumb available for free download. More happy times. And then I realised that Dumb actually came from an EP - Sicking and Creaming - that was released in 2009. Try as I might, I couldn't find a download for the other two tracks anywhere. I gave up after a while.

A few months later, I set up a group on deviantART for music reviews. A couple of weeks after setting it up, I decided I wanted to review something by Japanese Voyeurs. I looked again for the rest of the Sicking and Creaming EP and once again only came up with physical format - vinyl at that, which is useless because I have no record player. It got to the point where I was posting on Twitter about how annoying this was. It's a good job I did, because their manager got in touch and kindly offered to send me the mp3 files. I could've hugged him. Suffice to say, the review was very positive - you can read it here.

Several months down the line, I discover the band have made Smother Me available for free download ahead of the release of their debut album. This caused a major flailing moment for me, in which there was much squeaking and waving of arms and general hyperventilating. I should point out this is my normal reaction to music. So, now I'm just waiting for the album. And hoping madly that I'll be able to find some way of getting it in Australia.

Smother Me is available for free download via JV's myspace page. As far as I'm aware, no release date has been given for the album, but I'm guessing before the end of the year. Check 'em out, let me know what you think and pass it on.