My thoughts have changed in the five year gap.
Sounds like now you’d need a hip hop act that samples heavily from Appetite For Destruction!
Yep. I enjoyed it at the time, but I don’t ever listen to Guns 'N Roses. I have listened to most of their work now(not Chinese Democracy) and it’s good, but I’m not that big a fan. Impressive, though. November Rain is a great song and Axl still does it well live.
I now think Joshua Tree is great throughout. And U2 is a great band. Lots of crappy songs, but enough great stuff to put together a playlist of 25+ songs or so.
Music on my phone right now, not including stuff you guys just recommended me:
Kamelot - great group
U2 - great group
Coldplay - really good group
Sepultura - their recent album was really good. Roots is in my top 5 all time.
Nightwish - probably my favorite band, especially last 3 albums
My Indigo - Sharon Den Adel’s album that literally came out today
I’m glad you’ve done a 180 on U2. There are very, very few bands that have been around as long as they have and still sold a viable amount of records with songs on them that were good on their own merits without aging fans propping them up with nostalgia.
I do agree with WordMan about them much earlier in the thread: Achtung Baby is their magnum opus. It’s such a great recording. I love it and was jamming the shit out of it in the car the other day.
If you can think of a CD with a stronger set of songs than 1-8 on Achtung Baby, I’d love to hear it.
My favorites are “Until The End Of The World” and “The Fly”.
The Edge is such a tasty, awesome guitar player.
It’s definitely great and is their second best album, I think. I’ve come to realize that every single song on Joshua Tree is a classic. One of the very, very small amounts of albums that can pull that off.
Given your general enjoyment of industrial music and metal (which is a genre I don’t actually understand and would gladly take recommendations on) I would like to recommend 2 acts that people who are into metal and industrial seem to really dig.
The first is Tech N9ine. Check out K.O.D. He’s Hip Hop but with a metal mentality? It’s decidedly hip hop music. He’s also one of the most skilled rappers out there and the single most successful independent musician ever. 100% indie all DIY, no label at all.
The next is Death Grips. Start with The Money Store. This is not hip hop. This is its own thing. The Money Store sounds the most like an industrial album with a Rapper as the front man and spawned a host of imitators (including Kanye on Yeezus). Their other albums change things up. Call it experimental rap or art rap. Not gonna lie, it’s not really for me. But it’s good quality music and you might dig it.
I’ll recommend some, but I don’t like about 95% of metal. I have very specific likes.
I will make a list for you to try, though.
That’s cool. I know almost nothing about the genre. But I noticed Sepeltura, Nightwing, Canibal Corpse and KMFDM getting mentioned by you, which is why I figure Death Grips might be up your ally. I grew up as a punk, but I also grew up in the mid/late 90s so I was exposed to System of a Down, Korn, Slipknot etc by osmosis and kinda hated that shit. But I think back to when I was 13 and at summer camp and we spent a lot of time listening to Metallica and Norwegian Death Metal and that was pretty ok. Beyond that I got nothing because as a teenage punk I was supposed to avoid anything that seemed even vaguely like metal like it was a disease. It’s a giant hole in my music knowledge.
Speaking of System Of a Down, you should give them a whirl. Try Toxicity, it’s probably the best place to start.
Yeah, I generally don’t like that nu-metal genre (and I’m not even sure if System of the Down quite qualifies, me not being an expert on the genre) but they’ve always felt a little bit different to me. I’m no expert on their ouvre, but everything I’ve heard from there has always been fun and interesting. They clearly have a sense of humor in their music, have very interesting musical parts, interesting melodies, unexpected rhythms. Great musicians all around. Definitely worth checking out.
I don’t think they quite fit that genre. I always associated that with bands like Limp Bizkit or any “heavy” bands that also featured rapping (Linkin Park). I never figured out why Korn fit into that genre either, other than maybe timing of popularity. Korn I like, I actively dislike the rest of them and always will.
I don’t like Cannibal Corpse or death metal at all, but I did see them in concert.
Some would call Sepultura death metal, but I think that is entirely incorrect. They also are not that great a lot of the time. They underwent a lot of changes in who is in the band and have declined quite a bit.
Here are two albums I would suggest:
Sepultura - Roots - Probably “too heavy and angry” sounding for most, but an all time great album. Would make my list of albums that impacted me the most in life. Get past the singer’s “screams” at first and you can realize it is amazing.
Nightwish - this performance of Ghost Love Score. I could recommend albums, but if you don’t like this song and performance, they won’t persuade you much. I think it is an all-time great performance.
Nightwish is my favorite band.
I quite like Gojira for heavy metal.
I have to toss in some Artists getting no love
Starting with one that got some.
Steely Dan, Aja This album gets a ton of respect for its incredible production values. Still used to test new sound systems to this day.
Death Grips Exmilitary Not an easy band to listen to, self described as experimental industrial hip hop.
Melt Banana Cell Scape Japanese Noise Core, With a “singer” who raps at you in angry engrish and a guitarist with a pedal board that probably requires a degree in particle physics to operate.
Tom Waits Bad as Me A Legend, deservedly so. this guy is someone that musicians respect. hard as hell to get into for a lot of people but one of the all time great masters of every level of song craft.
Violent Femmes Self titled the ultimate in high school angst captured in song.
Tool Undertow Lead bass guitar and long slow builds, songs with disturbing as fuck lyrical content? one of my top all time favorite albums.
Note none of these are all that easy for a noobie to get, and the problem with just about anything is that you cannot understand or appreciate anything of any complexity without a certain amount of understanding of that subject. so dont worry or expect to much given your lack of musical knowledge.
I love introducing people to Melt-Banana. Most people can deal with the guitar right away, but the vocals just confuse the hell out of them.
I feel like I’m the only Kanye fan in the world who doesn’t like Ultralight Beam. It’s just so… boring.
This is what turned me into a fan. He came around when I was in high school and I wrote him off as just another bragging rapper. But when I actually listened to his music properly I realised just how brilliantly hilarious he is.
I understand being underwhelmed by Ultralight Beam. I find it’s just such a perfect intro to TLoP, also that chug chug chug sample (no idea what he is sampling there) takes my breath away every time. Then there is Chance who, for me, has maybe my favorite verse in hip hop.
But I suggested the snl performance for a reason. I think it’s easier to connect with live. Takes you right to church. But don’t listen to ANY of the rest of the rest of the album until you have listened to All of Kanye’s stuff Mahaloth.
The performance is getting hard to find so here is a link.
Cool. Kanye is barely a solo-artist, it seems. He has other people in most of his songs. Not a bad thing, but also a huge surprise to me. For someone with a gigantic ego, I’m kind of feeling like he’s more of an collaborative artist than a solo singer.
Someone of that is just hip hop culture, which is highly collaborative in nature. Some is that Kanye is really acting as a composer first, and getting the right people to perform the right parts is more important than him being the performer.
It’s shockingly well thought out and personal music. My favorite of his albums is essentially him dealing with suicidal depression out loud and in public, including pretty overtly contemplating suicide in the wake of his mother’s death.
The singing isn’t for me because I like to comprehend lyrics, but the singing tone and music and attitude and the fact it is supposed to be angry reminds me of Fucking Werewolf Asso.
Listening to Kanye West’s second album. While I wasn’t blown away by the first one entirely, it was definitely startling and intriguing enough to me to continue exploring Kanye more.
He is not what I expected at all.
And Jesus Walks is on the playlist I’m making of great songs from new artists. That and Feel from Kendrick Lamar.