Weakling - Dead As Dreams

Artist: Weakling
Album: Dead As Dreams
Genre: Black Metal
Year: 2000
Origin: USA

I've been meaning to post this album for a long time, but it's difficult to write about. I'm not sure I even know how I feel about it. It's a brilliant album for sure, but you have to be in the right mood to handle the dark and hypnotic atmosphere, otherwise it can be downright hard to listen to. From Dead As Dreams, Weakling's only release, you can see where some of the more recent US black metal bands, such as Wolves in the Throne Room, got their dense atmosphere. But Wolves in the Throne Room took it in a more... light-hearted, I guess... direction, whereas Weakling is closer in some ways to the misanthropic feel of fellow San Francisco artist Leviathan.

All of the ID tags should be correct, though one of the files is misnamed: it should be "Desasters in the Sun". In general, if it looks like proper English it's probably not the correct track name.

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Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra - Full Tension Beaters

Artist: Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra
Album: Full Tension Beaters
Genre: ...
Year: 2000
Origin: Japan

I think the name pretty much sums it up. Really I have no idea what else to say.

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Ilkim Oulanem - Iblisbilim

Artist: Ilkim Oulanem
Album: Iblisbilim
Genre: Black Metal
Year: 2009
Origin: Turkey

Ilkim Oulanem is a one-woman black metal band from Ankara, Turkey. This EP is actually one of the better pure black metal albums of the year, above any Scandinavian releases I can remember from 2009. As far as I know, there's not too much of a Turkish black metal scene (I've listened to ...Aaaarrghh..., but wasn't much more impressed with their music than with the band name), but I think this album is a very nice (though traditional) beginning.

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Union Jack - There Will Be No Armageddon

Artist: Union Jack
Album: There Will Be No Armageddon
Genre: Psytrance
Year: 1995
Origin: UK

There are two bands named Union Jack, and I like both of 'em! But this is the English psychedelic trance duo, not the French skacore band. In the best psytrance tradition, the music is made up of lots of interesting sounds, which are particularly great in the song Water Drums, which manages to make me think of instruments made out of liquid. It's calming music, as far as trance beats can be.

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Iskra - Bureval

Artist: Iskra
Album: Bureval
Genre: RABM
Year: 2009
Origin: Canada

Iskra is a Canadian crust band that has leaned heavily black metal in the past, and is apparently focusing on the black metal aspect of their music even more in this recent release. The band takes its name from a Soviet newspaper, and is often brought up when people discuss the Red and/or Anarchist Black Metal scene. This album is just as furious and thrashy as the self-titled album, but I think I like this new one better, particularly since this drumming and a few of the riffs would fit in with any pvre kvlt Norwegian black metal band.

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La Plebe - ¡Hasta La Muerte!

Artist: La Plebe
Album: ¡Hasta La Muerte!
Genre: Punk
Year: 2007
Origin: USA

La Plebe is a (primarily) Spanish-language punk band from San Francisco, who I only recently discovered when they opened for Star Fucking Hipsters, and played a very memorable set. They play punk music that is heavily infused with trumpet and trombone, but it is not ska at all, just good old fashioned punk rock with prominent horns. In fact I would compare it more with banda/mariachi style music, though really I don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to Mexican music, and I enjoy this way more than the "traditional" Mexican music I've heard on the radio. The name means something like "the proletariat", I think, and the music is certainly political. The song Plebe por Vida is really fun, and I remember it being great at the concert as well.

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Essoupi - Aktiv Dødshjælp

Artist: Essoupi
Album: Aktiv Dødshjælp
Genre: Dark Ambient
Year: 1999
Origin: Denmark

Essoupi is a brilliant and almost entirely unknown (at the time of this posting, 10 listeners on Last.fm) dark ambient project from Denmark. It's somewhat understandable that the band is unknown after recording only a single-track demo, but it's a damn good (and long) track. As you can probably guess from the silly picture, it comes at ambient music from the metal perspective, breaking into black metal riffs at one point.

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