Eden's 8 Favorite Games of 2021: Numbers 1 through 8 will shock you!
2021 feels like it was a complete whirlwind of new games (...in addition to other stuff, I guess, but we’re just talking games here). By my count, I played forty-two games this year, more than half of which are from this year. And so, here we are with a year-end list of my favorite releases, all of which are worthy of a ‘top spot’ for a traditional GOTY award in my estimation. I still have a backlog of eight or so from this year I couldn’t get to – notably absent from this list are The Eternal Cylinder, Cruelty Squad, and Psychonauts 2, all of which I am highly looking forward to. For other odds and ends I didn’t mention, I recently started keeping a Backloggd account of my plays, as well. I also don’t have much to say about it but I want to give an honorable mention to The Forgotten City as well. So, with all that out of the way, let’s get on to the list, in no particular order!
Read MoreStructural comparison of "Pull Me Under" and "On the Backs of Angels" by Dream Theater
Finally, after 9 years, I felt compelled to actually notate the structures of these two Dream Theater singles (from 1992 and 2011 respectively) to compare the structures which have been sorta called out as being conspicuously similar.
Read MoreA Review of Between the Buried and Me's "Automata I"
I genuinely don’t have a lot to bring to the table here, so I’ll forgo the background explanation and context setting I usually do. “Automata I” is the first part of what I presume is a two-part work mirroring Between the Buried and Me’s prior release “The Parallax”, which was a 30-minute EP followed by a 72-minute LP. “Automata I” is 35 minutes long and effectively 5 tracks. So, how is it? Well, it’s… fine.
Read MoreA Review of Organized Chaos's "Divulgence"
I was graciously sent this album out of the blue by composer/vocalist Vladimir Lalic and frankly, it hooked me pretty early. Lalic has also contributed vocals to things like David Maxim Micic’s “Bilo 3.0” which is an album I come back to frighteningly often. This album strikes some similar notes with me as “Bilo” in the excellent production, melding of instruments, and drum programming, but isn’t especially derivative of it which is nice (not that I’d be incensed at more artists deriving things from Micic!). There are also several shades of Devin Townsend’s “Ziltoid the Omniscient” and “Deconstruction”, as well as a couple parts that remind me of The Omega Experiment for whatever reason. But, again, these influences are represented in a constructive and thoughtful way, rather than as novelty. Overall, “Divulgence” has a freshness to it that makes me simply have to recommend it – not even despite its flaws, which are there but really minimized in the context of everything else well-executed in it.
Read MoreA Review of The Contortionist's "Clairvoyant"
I don't have a lot of words on this one, because The Contortionist have made another very honest, human album with some occasionally actually progressive songwriting in them. After Language, I had high hopes for them to keep evolving, and they did; Clairvoyant strikes a good balance of continuing things that worked, improving things that had potential, and breaking some new ground. The personal story behind where most of the lyrics came from is also elegantly portrayed throughout the album, and everything is executed well technically. It's not an especially flashy release, but I feel it's a really solid work at both a macro and micro level.
Read MoreA Review of Leprous's "Malina"
Leprous is a band from Norway who meld elements of art rock and progressive metal with a healthy amount of operatic vocals and pop tonality. This is their fifth album in this fairly consistent area of genre; if I'm honest, I didn't expect to have words about this one after their previous album The Congregation. That album was essentially a bunch of guitar demos with drums shedding over them – to me, it was an extrapolation of every mistake they avoided in their third album Coal which is simply a platonic ideal of art rock composition. Judging by the one single I heard from Malina, I was ready for more of the same complacent riffing. Yet, this album surprised me with some ambitious compositional choices that reminded me of Coal in a good way, so... here I am!
Read MoreMini-reviews for 2017
Short-form criticism of The Dillinger Escape Plan's Dissociation, Shobaleader One's Elektrac, CHON's Homey, Richard Spaven's The Self, and Animals as Leaders's The Madness of Many.
Read MoreUnsquaring the Meter: the first entry in an examination of new theoretical concepts in music
A critique of an often-overlooked element of modern musical notation: the basic divisions of time that make up notes and meter.
Read MoreDon't Meshruggah This Band Off: a six-track introduction to Meshuggah
Meshuggah is a long-running metal band which set off a lot of modern trends, especially the "djent" genre & timbres. Their music deals heavily in rhythm and groove via minimalist repetition, with textural additions from harsh vocals and additional guitar lines in the high registers.
Read MoreLet's Talk About the New Periphery Singles from "Periphery III"
As of now, there are two singles out from Periphery's next studio album, Periphery III: Select Difficulty, which, come on. That's not even a title. Regardless, I'm going to analyze them both – the first in much detail as I find it more remarkable in how unremarkable it is. Let's start with "The Price is Wrong" from May.
Read MoreUnreleased Working Titles for "Periphery III: Select Difficulty"
Periphery III: Game Over
Periphery III: Are You Sure You Want To Quit? Yes / No
Periphery III: That's Right! We Know About Video Games
Periphery III: Post FX Anti-Aliasing SMAA 1X High
Read MoreMini-reviews for 2015
It's been too long since I posted any criticism! Not much music deeply connected with me in 2015, and I was listening to less of it as well. However I wanted to write something before the new Animals as Leaders and Periphery (maybe even Karnivool?) this year, so I figured I'd take a look at my most-listened albums of 2015 and do some short write-ups.
Read MoreA Review of Tesseract’s "Polaris"
Tesseract is a uniquely interesting band. Their progression as composers is pretty antithetical to capital-M Metal, in that they started with a fairly diverse set of influences and have steadily chipped away elements to get to a core sound that grows more dreamy and bittersweet every album, instead of grafting on new elements.
Read MoreLet's talk about Between the Buried and Me's "Coma Ecliptic": Part One
Here we are again. I'll be upfront and say I'm not 100% sure whether I like this album or not yet, which is partially why I'm writing this. It feels like an inevitable thing that BTBAM (no, I'm not going to CamelCaps that) is going to keep releasing somewhat unique metal concept albums until the end of their career, so I'm not shocked by the ambition, and few of the songs on Coma Ecliptic have really bit into me.
Read MoreLet's talk about Periphery's "Juggernaut": Part 2: Omega
Hoo boy. Continuing on from my review of Alpha, this is going to be a similarly involved affair–Omega has more experimental composition choices, but it's definitely made by the same people in the same mindframe. I don't have many "simple thoughts" about this one, having listened probably 7 or 8 times, so let's just get into it.
Read MoreLet's talk about Periphery's "Juggernaut": Part 1: Alpha
This is intended to be an in-depth critique and review of Juggernaut: Alpha by Periphery. I have a lot of complex feelings and critiques about this album so I'm going to start out with a short history and the easy stuff, then go track by track through my thoughts about Alpha, having listened to the album 6-7 times since its streaming release. I have not listened to Juggernaut: Omega past its two singles, and I won't until this post is finished–I will very likely write a companion post to this doing the same thing to Omega and comparing the two.
Read MoreGuardians of the Galaxy
I feel like Guardians of the Galaxy is never quite sure what it is, or what it even wants to be. It's a generic action movie, it's a comedic parody of generic action movies, it's the heartwarming tale of unlikely friendship among space randos and some white guy, but it's not very good at any of those things. If anything, it commits the most to being a space action movie and does a pretty predictable, serviceable take on that idea, but that's what you'd expect from Marvel and that's seemingly why they advertised it primarily as a lighthearted, comedic romp.
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