Japan and Hell

My vacation's at its end. For what I thought was going to be a week of books, gaming and music was actually spent on errands, gardening and home improvement. Well, the latter three were also included on my "To-Do" list but I didn't know how tiring and time consuming they were. Nonetheless, I was still able to catch up on my gaming (I've advanced my character in Warhammer from Tier 3 to 4) and music.

There are a lot of good new music releases that are out now and, once again, they piled up on me. So I have to preview a lot of songs before buying some CDs. I was only planning on getting two (because that's the allotted amount of CDs I can get with my budget) but ended up with four. It's just hard for me not to get the new albums of Isis and Sunn O))), both of which are really epic. Then there are also cool new fun bands like Japandroids and Heaven & Hell.

Japandroids

Japandroids is a two-man garage rock band, kinda like The White Stripes, that hails from Canada. This band sounds like what a garage band should be: Raw and Energetic. But what really separates them from other garage band is that they fuzzed and buzzed the heck out of their guitar to drown all the empty spaces in their album, Post-Nothing, and that is a big accomplishment for a two-man band. Their music also reminds me of the 90's, mostly stoner rock bands like Fu Manchu and Unida, decked out with some new riffs from today's noise pop.

Heaven & Hell

This band is not new. They're only new in name. In fact, two of its members are so old that they were the ones who invented heavy metal. If you haven't guessed it yet, or too young to know them, Heaven & Hell is composed of Black Sabbath members during the Dio years (Iommi, Butler, Dio and Appice). So it's like a reunion album and its aptly named as The Devil You Know. However, unlike Guns & Roses and Metallica who made a very impressive comeback last year, Heaven & Hell never really brought anything new to the table. They just refreshed their old music, which is good fun. Kinda like an old bridal gown being washed so it can be re-used by a sentimental daughter.

I don't think a lot of people will like these two bands I just posted above. Japandroids, even though they have the 90's all over their music, they're too raw and too young for most people my age to dig. Heaven & Hell, on the other hand, is too old and too 80's for young kids to appreciate. But when you get past the generation gap, both albums are extremely fun to listen too.

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