Eternity follows me everywhere

A week of some very low lows, and a few highs. But just music-wise. Personally, this wasn’t such a great week. I feel like some unknown force is out there sapping me, draining me of my will to do anything but exist. But I can feel change is just around the corner, let’s see if I can turn it.

Anyways, this week I listened to bands that about 30 or so years ago were quite important to me. All of them had a run of albums/EPs that were just magical around that time. Some of these bands I sort of kept up with, others not so much.

Dramatis personae : 

Day 33 - Tiamat - 'The Scarred People' 

I hadn’t listened to a Tiamat record since god knows when. I did know a song off of this - they over Lana Del Rey’s ‘Born to got’, and to be fair - here and there I can see the influence she may have had when they wrote this album. This album is gothic, though, very Sisters Of Mercy gothic, could hardly tell it was Johan Edlund singing. It’s a far cry from the proggy masterpieces from the 90’s, like ‘Wildhoney’ and ‘A Deeper Kind of Slumber’.

A couple of good songs here, maybe. 6/10

Day 34 - Samael - 'Hegemony' 

Terrible. I love Samael - especially old Samael, but this was embarassing. HOW DO YOU GO FROM ‘I LOVE SATAN’ TO ‘PROBLEMS AREN'T SOLVED WITH A GUN’? 5/10

Day 35 - Moonspell - ‘1755'

Loved Moonspell when they appeared, but somewhere in the late 90’s, I stopped caring. Their 2003 ‘Antidote’ album brought me back in, but then I stopped caring again. And though now and then I dip into a few songs from their catalogue, there’s a bevy of their records I never listened to. This one was one of them. And I almost bought it, even. Pretty good, it gets 8/10

Day 36 - Cradle of Filth - 'The Screaming Of The Valkyries' 

And no band was more important to me back then than Cradle of Filth. I swear they could do no wrong. Then they did and I got bored. Every now and again I decide to listen to a random track and I’m not impressed. And that sums up this album… not terrible, just not great. Dani's voice has lost its power, and it seems like I'd heard these songs somewhere before. 7/10, and I'm being generous

Day 37 - Paradise Lost - ‘Ascension’

Also big for me were these lads. There’s so much love from me for these guys, but the last album I listened to was ‘Symbol of Life’, which I adore. Again, dip in here and there, sometimes like, sometimes don’t. This one? Really fucking good. So good I listened to it three times in a row. 9.5/10

Day 38 - My Dying Bride ‘A Mortal Binding’

A band I can really, really like, or really, really dislike. So I rarely bother with them. And this one… oof. Starts off really bad, first song is one of the worst songs I've ever heard. Gets better, though. Good enough to get 7/10

Day 39 - Amorphis - ‘Borderland’ 

A good surprise, here. And funny, the last album I’d heard from them was 1996’s ‘Elegy’, which I didn’t really like except for a couple of songs. Since then until now I’ve only listened to one of their songs, a song I actually listened to by accident, and had to do a double take, because it sounded nothing like the Amorphis I knew. And neither do they now, while at the same time remaining familiar? I really enjoyed listening to this. Maybe I’ll check some more of their recent stuff. A good, good 8/10.

Next week will be a much more pleasant experience. I’m going to spend some time with the ladies.

Who watches over me?

A week of highs and lows, this one, and one in which I’d be done with a few things that should’ve, by rights, been sorted, but somehow got delayed to next week. One which, I think, will be a particularly hard one, considering how I’ve got to have a very serious conversation with my mother, to see if she understands the severity of our current situation. We are now at the threshold of poverty, and any and all luxuries must be cast aside if we are to make it through the month, each and every month. I don’t think she’ll understand that, though. I really don’t think she will

Music wise this was also a week of highs and lows, maybe next week will be a better one.

The challenge for this week was to revisit bands that were somewhat important to me many years ago, though some of these I still listen to their old stuff every now and again. How do they hold up? Let’s find out.

Day 26 - Covenant - 'Blinding dark'

To say that Covenant had a monumental impact on me would be an understatement. In fact, the name for this blog comes straight from their album ‘United States Of Mind’, which I listened to to death some twenty odd years ago. But I stopped listening to them with ‘Skyshaper’, and not because it was a bad record or something like that, I had just moved on from this kind of sound, more or less. Going back to them was at once both familiar and disappointing. For one, all of these bands have one thing in common : find a formula that works, rinse and repeat. The first half of the album is good, but not stellar, and the second half verges on the forgettable. I’ll give 6.5/10
Day 27 - VNV Nation - 'Construct'

Now, VNV Nation is a band that’s just as momentous to me - if not more - as Covenant. I’ve always loved Ronan’s lyrics, and he has such a great voice. I still go back to a lot of their older stuff on the regular - tracks like ‘Further’, ‘Honour’ or ‘Rubicon’ are some of my all time faves. But just like Covenant, I just ended up straying away from them, though I stuck with VNV until 2013. I loved the album they released that year - ‘Transnational’ - and there are a couple of tracks there in particular that I absolutely love - ‘Teleconnect Part 1’ and ‘Teleconnect Part 2’. And just like with Covenant, this is VNV at its absolutely formulaic, it works, because it is exactly what you’d expect it to be, but it doesn’t surprise you anymore. Also a 6.5/10
Day 28 - De/Vision - 'Citybeats'

This is one of those bands that I can’t remember just how I came across. But be that as it may, circa 2005 I was listening to them non-stop. Well, at least to one of their albums, I was - 2001’s ‘Two’. The band wear their synthpop influences proudly on their sleeves, and this one has some good, moody moments that will remind you of ‘Ultra’ era Depeche Mode. I found the album to be rather forgettable, though. Meh, it’s a 6/10.
Day 29 - Suicide Commando - 'Goddestruktor'

Once a upon a time, when I went out and found myself dancing the night away to the beats of aggrotech/harsh electro, there was nothing that got me more psyched up than ‘Hellraiser’ by these guys. It ‘Love Breeds Suicide’. Or ‘Comatose Delusion’. Man, those were the days. But now, twenty something years later, twenty something years older, I just don’t have the patience for this shit anymore. It’s juvenile, with lyrics that don’t even try to be clever about religion and politics, written by some 16 year old edgelord who lives in echo chambers all day long. This one was bad - I’ll give it a 5/10 and I’m being very  generous.
Day 30 - [:SITD:] - 'Stunde X'

Not much to say here. Better than Suicide Commando, at least with better melodies. 6/10
Day 31 - Seabound - 'Speak in Storms'

Seabound is in the same camp as De/Vision. How did I find this band? Who cares? But around that same time, circa 2005-6, I was also listening to their 2001 album ‘No Sleep Demon’ a lot. And if I’m honest, this is one that adheres to the formula they created, and it does so with gusto. There’s nothing new here, not really, but it ends on a very high note. Good enough to give it a 7/10
Day 32 - Mesh -' Looking Skyward' 

Unlike some bands here, I know precisely how I came across Mesh. Back in 2003, it was, and I was doing some back office work at the place where I used to work back then. One of my coworkers, indeed a friend of mine, was listening to something that I was finding familiar, though could not quite figure out what it may have been. Then it dawned on me that we were listening to the new Depeche Mode album, and I asked my friend just that. He smiled and said ‘no’, then proceeded to tell me we were listening to Mesh.

And they do sound an awful lot like Depeche Mode - especially because the vocals are so reminiscent of Martin Gore’s. Great, bouncy synthpop, great lyrics, these guys never disappoint, they’re true masters of they craft.

And I really liked this album… well, most of it. See, at 13 tracks long it sort of overstays its welcome. Especially because there are three or four tracks that could’ve stayed on the cutting floor. But what’s there that’s good makes up for all that. It’s a sold 8/10.

This coming week I’ll be listening to heavy stuff. I think.

See you in the funny pictures.

Maybe someday you’ll look up and, barely conscious, you’ll say to no one ‘isn’t something missing?’

I can still remember the day I realized I no longer cared. Well, this wasn’t necessarily 100% true, but for the most part, for pretty much the most important part, I well and truly no longer cared. It’s mid-December 2016, and I was scheduled to attend a concert up north, and then afterwards I was to submit my review of it to a webzine I sporadically wrote for back then. But before I travelled northwards, I had things to do. It was my son’s birthday, so we had dinner together, and then I took him home. When I was making my way home, I was talking to a girl I was sort of involved with at the time, and around one a.m. or so, I was meeting Silvia near where I lived, and we went to a motel to have sex. It wasn’t great, it wasn’t spectacular, and I’ve always known and felt that I was unworthy of her. I knew it would be our one time being together, ever. We stayed together in the dark for a few hours, but she had to go home to her husband. Before we got dressed though, I took a long, last look at her naked body, and I sang to her a bit from a Leonar Cohen song : ‘Your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm’. Soon enough we kissed goodbye, she gave me her scarf - something I still have -  and that was the end of that story. 

I didn’t get any sleep that night - as early as I could, I hopped on a train and went up. I’m sure I slept all throughout the roughly three hour trip.

When I arrived, I knew I had things to do, I had places to go. I went to my hostel and dropped off my stuff, recharged for a bit, then got on a train again, this time to travel a bit further north, so I could soak in the peaceful greenery of a catholic shrine in the outskirts of the city. There I sat for a couple of hours - reading one of Peter Hook’s books - and slowly I started making my way back. I elected to rest for a bit when I got back to the hostel, then I went for a meal just around the corner, there’s this place that specializes on Celtic cuisine, and I always go there whenever I’m around. I went back to my hostel, took a shower and then went for a long walk through the city’s riverside, taking in the city lights by night. I’m listening to Lana Del Rey, and when she sings ‘I feel so alone on a Friday night’, I begin to cry. 

Alone, I sit by the river. For some reason I’m reminded of ‘Brideshead Revisited’, and I make a mental note to temeras it one day. I walk around some more, drink a bit, then go back to the hostel. It’s one of those with pods embedded on the walls, and there’s nothing but a flimsy piece of cloth covering each pod’s entrance. Mine’s the upper one, I climb a ladder up to it, and instantly realize when I take my headphones off that the couple beneath me is fucking. The girl moans like no one else is present, and I think to myself, ‘Jesus lady, calm down’, then feel bad because it was stupid of me to think that, and I put my headphones on back again, and fall asleep to something or the other.

I wake up early next day, and decide to have breakfast somewhere. But funnily enough, what happens is that I wind up going to a big park in the city instead. It’s a bleak, cold winter’s day, the sky grey and sterile. As I walk through the park, 9 a.m. just coming up, I start to feel empty. No, that’s not right, I was empty already. I allowed emptiness to overcome me. I felt the morning’s chill on my face as I walked along the tree lines, and people ambled through the park. There, a couple pushes a pram slightly uphill, drunk on happiness. Crossing my path, a young woman, very very pretty, locks eyes with me. I wanted to say ‘good morning’, or nod my head at her, but my eyes turned forward. I felt a void within me that I no longer had strength to keep at bay. 

Most of the day is spent idling until it’s time for me to prepare for the gig. I give it my all - bare as it may be. I shave, I take a shower and put on a dash of perfume. I know what I’m going to wear that night, in fact I knew as soon as I was assigned the gig. In a sea of people clad in black, I’d the guy wearing blue jeans and a white t-shirt. And not just any white t-shirt, mind. I was still fit back then, so I wore my New Order ‘Substance’ t-shirt. I take a look at myself in the mirror.  I look good. I know I did. It was the last time I looked like that. It’s now time to make my way down to the venue, and I walk down the streets leisurely - it’s only about ten minutes or so anyway. When I get to the venue, I start seeing familiar faces. I meet up with a few acquaintances, trade a few kind words with them and others I know from around, visit the merch booth, then when the time comes, we all go inside.

I take my leave from the small party that accompanied me - I had to stay at the back, so I could observe what was going on stage, and because there were some high top tables near the bar area, I chose that spot so I could jot down whatever I felt of note for my upcoming review. I remained focused on what was going on stage - I mostly ignored the opening act, and then paid much more attention to the main act, a Swedish band called Covenant. It felt as if I was watching the gig somewhat from a distance. I was there, but I wasn’t there. Not really. Not in any way that mattered.

So the concert came and went, and I met up with the people I knew. Soon they were on their way, and there I was - all by myself. On my way to the hostel I stopped by a drugstore that was open and bought the meds from my regular prescription. What was walking up the road was a dead man walking. It wasn’t me, I had stayed behind, years ago. I saw myself walking up that street, I felt its emptiness, I saw as it typed a half-assed review. I knew, even before he did, that I had decided to die that night.

What was that line you said? Something about how time runs down.

Man, I tell ya, I really do, I don’t know how these weeks just melt away. I always end up feeling like I did nothing, or at least I didn’t do enough, but the truth is that I’m always completely shattered. Hopefully this will be the last of these such weeks, at least for the foreseeable future. The dust begins to settle, the pieces have begun to - somewhat - fall into place, and though I can’t say that things are perfect, much less ideal, I definitely can see some progress. By next month I’ll be able to get into a much different groove, I deem.

Now, as for this week, l finished the whole of the Coheed and Cambria discography, at least when it comes to studio albums. 

Day 19 - Coheed and Cambria - ‘The Color Before the Sun'

Day 20 - Coheed and Cambria - ‘Vaxis – Act I: The Unheavenly Creatures'

Day 21 - Coheed and Cambria - ‘Vaxis – Act II: A Window of the Waking Mind'
Day 22 - Coheed and Cambria - ‘Vaxis – Act III: The Father of Make Believe'

So, having listened to every single album I can definitely say I really loved pretty much everyone of them - but likely I loved the first half better. While I enjoyed these four records a lot, they do tend to sound a bit samey. That said, every single one of them was truly worth my time, not a dud in the lot. They have such a clean and well defined identity to their sound that you know you’re listening to a C&C record within seconds. And Claudio has a really great and versatile voice, and I love it when he goes into this low, husky register he uses for the quietest tunes mostly. I often think of Brian Molko’s voice when I hear his voice, and not because they sound anything like each other, but rather because both are so distinct, and they both use their own tricks and techniques that make their voices so easy to identify. This is a band I’ll be returning to in the future, for sure.

And then… then I needed to listen to something else. But what? My first choice came from thinking about the passage of time, and how this year marks the twentieth anniversary of some key moments in my life.
Day 23 - Jeniferever - 'Choose a Bright Morning’.

It’s 2006, and months before I met the girl that I’d spending the next five years of my life with, I had a friend called Alice. And Alice isn’t even her real name - I forget what it is - but everyone knows her as Alice. I’m not sure if friend is indeed the right term - we have not seen each other more than a handful of times, once here in Lisbon and then a few more in London. But through the social network of the time - Hi5 - we were friends who shared songs with one another all the time. All this to say that she had a friend there - and a real life one at that - that really caught my eye, a girl called Joana. She had long black hair with bangs, and she was quirky and wild and funny - or so she seemed to me. But she was really beautiful, and she had a taste in music that more than matched mine - she knew of bands I’d never heard of. And one of those was a Swedish band called Jeniferever. One day she shared a video on her wall, and I played it. I loved what I was listening to. So you know what I did next? Well, I never listened to anything by them ever again. Until this very week, that is. This is very much in that dream-pop, shoegazey kind of slowcore that I like - think maybe stuff like Beach House, Daughter or Cigarettes After Sex, but with some post-rock trappings in the mix, maybe reminiscent of Mogwai. It’s stupid it took me this long to get to them, really. Good stuff here, an 8/10.

Now, for these last two, I admit this with a certain sense of shame. When I was buying records on the regular, there were - above all - two labels I followed religiously, and these were Dunk! Records and Pelagic Records. I’ll not say that I bought everything they’d put out, but…. I bought a lot from these labels, and some stuff I never, ever listened to. Either because I wasn’t so inclined, or I didn’t have the time, but be that as it may… here are a few I listened to for the first time this week.

Day 24 - EF - 'We salute you, you and you!'

And probably the biggest surprise of the week, this album is a work of beauty, so emotionally wrought and  layered with pounding guitars, some shouty bits which I adored, and lots and lots of melodies to be found. This album was so good that I listened to it twice in a row. This is a 9/10 and I’ll be listening to whatever else they got.
Day 25 - PG.Lost - 'Oscillate'

Now, to be fair - I had listened to ONE song from this album some years ago, and I really loved it, so buying the record was a no-brainer for me. Hell, I even went so far as to buy their whole discography. Can you guess how many I’d listened to before? You’re goddamn right, none of them. A pattern begins to reveal itself, eh? And it’s really good - I probably couldn’t have wished for a better palate cleanser than this one. Post-rock/post-metal with a healthy dose of electronic in there, all completely instrumental, just solid and well produced. Another one to get to know better. 8/10

As for the coming week, I’m going to choose bands from twenty something years ago that I really liked - though the sound I was into at the time was wildly different from anything here so far - and I’ll give a listen- to their latest record.

My dearest Apollo, I’ll be burning Star IV

I’ve not been finding any time, let alone any will, to write here as often as I would want to, but now, and as the move to the new place finally winds down, and the dust is beginning to settle, I can see some sort of hope that things will get better, sometime soon, somewhere down the line. These first few weeks though, have really run me ragged. Between packing stuff, and then unpacking it, and still put in my work hours, has left me feeling completely drained. Invariably, I turn to my old demons at the end of the day, just so I can unwind and turn off the brain for a few hours. How did that old song go? ‘Problems with the booze, nothing left to lose’.

When I first decided to embark on this challenge, I knew that sooner or later I’d delve into the discography of a certain band - Coheed and Cambria. I’d known of them for at least twenty years or thereabouts, and I’d even had their whole discography - up to a certain point in time - in one of my defunct external hard drives. But I never listened to a single second from one of their songs. Never, ever. But for some reason… the fascination was always there. Most of their records revolve around a si-ci concept created by the band’s leader, Claudio Sanchez. That concept - dubbed ‘The Amory Wars’ - is a multimedia venture that encompasses not only the music itself, but comics as well. And on that respect, I also had a bunch, though not all, of the comics that were published, though I never did read them. So why did it stick with me all these years? And why now? The answer to the first question is a simple and weird one - I was afraid I’d like them. And you may wonder why that would be a bad thing - it’s not necessarily bad, per se, but with me… when I’m really into something, I don’t stop until I have EVERYTHING in my collection. So I resisted going down this particular rabbit hole for all these years. It had to be now - now, when I don’t want anything anymore, when I don’t need to have anything anymore - now it finally makes sense. And that answers question two.

But I didn’t start the week with them, no. I had a band in mind, and I wanted to say I’d be revisiting it, but not really - I’ve only known the one song by them.
Day 12 - Psychotic Waltz - 'A Social Grace'
We have to go back many many years, back to the time when music TV channels not only still played music, but they had individual shows for music genres. Way back in the 90’s, if you -wanted to watch a metal video, then it had to be either MTV’s ‘Headbangers Ball’ - which I found too commercial, but still had a pretty decent selection of videos - or VIVA’s ‘Metalla’, hosted by Markus Kavka. It was here that one day I chanced upon a song by this band - Psychotic Waltz - called ‘I Remember’. And for some reason I’ve always thought that this song was about Terminator 2, but I guess I was wrong. Now, I’ve always really liked that song, it even has some neat flute parts, but I never felt the urge to listen to more. And now I did. And I kinda regret it, because it just wasn’t that great. By the time the record finished, it had outstayed its welcome by half an hour. Nah, this is dull, I’m sorry. 3/10

Day 13 - Coheed and Cambria - 'The Second Stage Turbine Blade'
Day 14 - Coheed and Cambria - 'In Keeping Secrets Of Silent Earth : 3'
Day 15 - Coheed and Cambria - 'Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV, Volume One: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness'
Day 16 - Coheed and Cambria - 'Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV, Volume Two: No World for Tomorrow'

Day 17 - Coheed and Cambria - 'Year of the Black Rainbow'

Day 18 - Coheed and Cambria - ‘The Afterman : Ascension’ + ‘The Afterman : Descension’

And so my descent down the Coheed And Cambria began, and let me tell you - I’ve been absolutely loving it so far. They’ve been, by far, the very best I listened to this year, at least for this challenge. They’re billed as being Progressive Rock / Progressive Metal / Alternative Rock - and I can see why, although to my ears they have much more in common with European Power Metal - though not that sort of happy happy joy joy Power Metal, but the absurdly technical Power Metal. It’s hard for me to explain in words. Because I also hear a lot of classic rock here, and that’s a good thing, because it’s pulled off expertly.

I give TTSTB and IKSSE:3 a very strong 8/10. 

‘Good Apollo’, both of them, I liked even more - that’s a 9/10 for both. 

‘YOTBR’ was the first real disappointment, and from what I’ve read online, I’m not alone in this. I don’t want to say I loathed the first half of the album, but I really didn’t like it one bit. And then about halfway through, it gets really, really good. That first half, for some reason it didn’t even feel like I was listening to the same band. Then they return with a vengeance on that second half. And if that first half had been just as strong, I might have had a clear favourite. As it is… I give it a 6/10.

And then I cheated - I listened to two records in one day. And I’m so glad I did - the double offering of ‘The Afterman’ was a true delight to listen to. They’re quite likely just as good as the ‘Good Apollo’ records were. And I give them the same score : 9/10.

That’s it for this week. I’m hopeful that from now on I’ll be able to write more often - we’ll see.

Dag sem nótt ég geng nú einn

And then, when you’re settled, you look at all the boxes that you neatly stacked on one side of this cubicle that you now call your room, and you start unpacking them, one by one. You sift carefully through all the contents, looking for something - anything - that would remind you of all the time spent with her. Oh, you have all the memories, but now, right now, right now in this very moment of time and space, you want - nay, you need - something tangible that you could hold or look at, but in the deepest pits of your stomach, you start to feel this sinking feeling - it’s not there. There’s nothing left. 

Boxes filled with clothes that don’t fit you, boxes filled with records you’ll never play, boxes filled with books you no longer want. And yet you continue, hoping against hope, that somewhere in the smaller boxes inside the bigger boxes you find proof that something escaped your culling. 

There are boxes filled with random assortments now, and in one you find a smaller orange box, and in it there’s a bunch of your pictures. You sit down on the floor, and you look at the pictures. There are pictures of your son’s mother, and of you when you were together. There are pictures of your son when he was a baby, and of when he was very young. Pictures of past loves, from almost twenty-five years ago, from twenty years ago, but nothing… not a thing of your time with her. And you question yourself, had the both of you even taken a single photo together? Maybe,  maybe not. Memory’s playing tricks with you. You could swear you did, but you can’t pinpoint a single moment in time where that might have happened. There were those photos of her she gave you, but you know full well where they ended up. And if you knew, then why the pretense? Why the need to feed your soul with hope you knew wasn’t there?

Because, and though reality, abject reality, will hit you in the face a thousand times over, you still cling to that elusive hope that maybe, maybe, something slipped through.

And it didn’t. It didn’t. All the boxes have been emptied, and you pick each one up, and you turn them upside down, empty them onto the floor, but the only things that fall are the tears that stream down your cheeks. Crying in the dark, in the sweet silence of the dark, is no stranger to you, and nor is feeling the biting cold in your naked flesh : still, you seek to punish yourself for what once was, still you think that you deserve the pain. You hope it numbs you, you hope it supersedes other aches. 

It’s time, now. The time has arrived, the ritual’s done. Nothing will ever change. Things are as they were meant to be - you are where you said you’d be - and against the chill of the closed window where you pressed your head to… you say her name. A sacred word, still, to this day. It escapes as a whisper, one no-one but you can hear. And you remember. You remember that which you never forgot. That which you will never forget. It is eternal, this feeling. And though you endeavour to ball it up and contain it deep inside you, you struggle to contain it. You place your fingers against the window, and in your mind, they reach out to hets, touching from a distance,

Juliet, the dice was loaded from the start

Oh boy, what a week this was, filled with great and complicated new beginnings, and a whole lot of saying goodbye to a whole bunch of things. Houses, acquaintances, friends - I sang them all a song to say gooodbye. Unwavering in my resolve, I kept on listening to an album a day. And right of the bat I can say that this was a week filled mostly with duds… for me at least.

Let’s get right into it, then.

Day Five - Gentle Giant - ‘Gentle Giant’.

This one begins a theme for this week. Albums with covers I have always hated. And this one has always been so high up there, that for decades I swore I’d never ever listen to it. I mean, the cover is so monumentally ugly and stupid that it’s always drained me of my desire to listen to a single song by this band. This exercise being in motion, I somehow knew that I’d listen to it sooner or later. And you know what? It’s actually pretty great. I loved it and might listen to something else by them in the near future. I’d give this one a good 8/10.

Day Six - King Crimson - ‘In The Court Of The Crimson King’

Speaking of records with terrible covers, this is one such record. I’ve always detested the cover illustration. But I quite like King Crimson, something that up until a few years ago I thought I’d never say. This all came about when I was listening to whatever on YouTube, and after that video had finished, it started playing something I didn’t recognize. After a few minutes of actually enjoying what I was listening to, I switch tabs and lo and behold1, it’s King Crimson that I’m listening to. It was a live gig in Montreux, and I’d come to learn that this was in fact the 80’a incarnation of the band - which is by leaps and bounds my favourite of them all. All three records from that era are really, really good. I loved those records so much that I went back and listened to another one of their older records - ‘Red’ - which I found just mostly not bad. And it’s exactly what I think about this album - mostly not bad, though there’s a truly awful improv bit that becomes an unbearable piece of Muzak. 5/10.

Day Seven - Rush - ‘2112’

The only song I think I ever knew from Rush was ‘Tom Sawyer’, a song I downloaded by mistake twenty-something years ago. Found it ok, but at that time I was listening to completely different things and never felt the urge to go find out. A few years ago I did, when I started getting into Yes, I was of a mind to go down the Rush rabbit hole, though I never did. I decided to begin with ‘2112’, I guess their most famous record. And again- it was ok, just ok. A bit underwhelming, if I’m honest. 5/10.

Day Eight - Van Der Graaf Generator - ‘Still Life’

I’d heard things about this band. Some people love them, some people loathe them. Apparently, Peter Hammill had one of those voices that you either were a huge fan of or you’d find it maybe too over the top. So I wasn’t really keen on listening to them. I dug around a bit and took a look at their discography. None of the album names rang any bell. On their name alone, I chose this one right here. And you know what? Perfectly fine with the voice. Quite liked it. Instrumentally, too, it was pretty damn good. Maybe the strongest listen of the week. 8/10.

Day Nine - Jethro Tull - ‘Aqualung’

There’s something about most of these records that, to me, just screams 80’s record store. I vividly recall seeing this album for sale in a few of the record stores we went to as a kid. I never liked the cover. And all I ever knew about this band was that they had a it who played the flute. Never sparked my interest. This one wasn’t bad. More along the lines of rock and roll than prog. Five is too low, and I’m not sure it fully deserves a six. I’ll give it anyway - 6/10.

Day Ten - Uriah Heep - ‘Demons and Wizards’

I can’t remember a single song out of this one. Nothing. But I know I didn’t dislike it. Let’s be diplomatic and give it a 5/10.

Day Eleven - Emerson, Lake & Palmer - ‘Brain Salad Surgery’

Oh man, am I going to piss people off with this one. I mean, it starts really well - ‘Jerusalem’ is a rocking tune, setting to music a poem by William Blake. And then… then it just gets so meh. I hated ‘Benny the Bouncer’ with a passion, and found the ‘epic’ called ‘Karn Evil 9’ to be a boring, meandering indulgence in almost everything I hate about music. Now, the shocker is that I really enjoyed ‘Love Beach’ when I listened to it for the first time, and I know it’s their most universally panned record. But I expected more from this. And because it just isn’t there for me… jeez, 3/10.