Friday, February 26, 2010

Digging into the old catalogue

Going back into my catalogue of music I have collected over the years, I have found some treasure that I still enjoy today. My iTunes library has about 22 days worth of music and while I don’t want to listen through all 22 days, I am trying to comb through and rediscover some tracks that I connected with when I was young.

AFI – Sing the Sorrow

This album I think started my fascination with the punk and emo scenes in LA. I remember going over to my friend’s house after school and he put this album on while we played the new Metroid game (the Metroid series will forever be at the top of the best video game series in existence). Stuck in a lush 3D environment, the music seemed to take over our perception of reality and were got sucked into the mixture of visual stimuli and an overwhelming sense of drowning in the music. The epic opening drums to album, reminiscent of the Terminator 2 theme bring in Davy Havok’s voice in a melodic chant followed by the rest of the band. The growing wave of chanting even engulfs us as we sang along to it. This albums grabs you by the shoulder with a firm but engulfing grip and takes you through rumbling and melodramatic punk pieces with dips and turns into industrial electronic beats or just all out chaos. The album ends with the increasingly epic “…but home is nowhere” That brings a satisfying end to their experience.

While most purists consider Sing the Sorrow AFI turn for the worst and the subsequent albums bringing them into the mainstream and sugar coated singles, I believe that this album was a successful experiment in exploring new ways of writing and producing music with the help of areas outside of the punk and emo genre.

I’m gonna keep digging.

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