1.
Tesseract - "Sunrise"
Some technical (progressive?) metal to open up with. This isn't particularly good, though, as the guy seems to have confused screaming with singing.
2.
Aesma Daeva - "Disdain"
A lot is written about this female-fronted metal act. It's pretty standard-issue, though. Ethereal female vocalist and very 80s sounding drums, complete with keyboard noodling in the background. I'm not remotely convinced.
3.
The Gathering - "You Learn About It"
I've heard one of their albums before, and this is from a different one, so that's a good sign. I've always appreciated their vocals above a lot of other female-fronted metal acts, possibly because they didn't start recording with Anneke at the outset, so it's a more organic thing. This isn't exacly a metal track, but the vocals are terrific as is the melody. Just lovely stuff.
4.
Susana Baca - "Se Me van Los Pies"
Some Peruvian music now, of all things. Susana's voice is quite warm and interesting, although this song isn't at all what I'd expected. The link, apparently, is that this is Afro-Peruvian music - so there are some tribal sounding drums throughout. There's also some call-and-response stuff going on, which I haven't really met in Spanish-language music much. Quite an interesting discovery, I must say. A bit funky, too.
5.
Blumentopf - "Safari"
Some more German hip-hop, and this is by a band which gets rave reviews. From the first notes, I can tell exactly why. The rapping is strong, and the humour is definitely omnipresent. I love this passionately. As a note, this is where Holundermann ("von Blumentopf") comes, and it's easy to see that he's not the only talented member thereof.
6.
Deichkind - "Limit"
And a bit more German hip-hop. This is a lot tighter and more focused than Blumentopf was, but still a lot of fun. More serious all round, though.
7.
Melvins - "Night Goat"
One of those "you must hear this band" bands. Nice and heavy and doomy-sounding to start off with. The vocals are a sort of stoner/doom sound, but nicely buried by the music. I like the sound of this a lot.
8.
Teeth of Lions Rule the Divine - "The Smiler"
I was hoping to hear a proper drone track, and here's one now. This is a sort of supergroup of members from Sunn 0)) and a host of other places, and it's heavy as hell. The vocals are a take-it-or-leave-it proposition, but they fit the music quite well. If this is what proper drone is (leaving out the country-tinged stuff Earth do nowadays and Sunn's relentlessly weird experiments), it may be that I've underrated the style. This really is quite amazing.
9.
Chaos Moon - "Tenebrific"
From glacial drone to black metal. This starts off calmly and acoustically (is that even a word?), before turning up the volume with a big black metal scream. The vocals are indeed screamed, rather than rasped, and they're almost the only thing I can hear here - although there are more keyboards than I'd expected. Interesting stuff, and in the context of an album it may make more sense.
10.
Jurassic 5 - "What's Golden"
Ah, the song that won me back to Chali 2na and his bandmates. Not their best track by any means, but the way the lyrics are locked to the beat here is probably an art form more people need to learn. Nice of a newer hip-hop group to trace their lineage to Public Enemy, too. Good memories. Good music. And if anyone can honestly say Chali's voice doesn't make them smile, they have no soul. One of the most underrated MCs around.
Chaos Moon
