Week one of Music reviews. I listened to a lot of metal this week. It was hard to listen to anything else because it seems as if metal is the only thing that comes out the first week of the year. Let me rephrase this in a more ornamental way: Metal is the only good thing I have heard all week long. I would like it if a good rock album came out this last week, but I did not hear it if it did.

David Bowie released his final album before passing away this past week end. Many people say things like, “Lazarus was his final good-bye to his fans,” but it could have been anything because you and everyone you know can die at any second. If I released an album and then died, then that album would be my final good-bye to my fans.

My least favorite part about this last week in music is I asked people last week as a conversation starter if they were going to get the new David Bowie album, Blackstar. (insert soon-to-be-everywhere emoticon of a star, but black) Last week no one could name a David Bowie song or knew what kind of music he made, or could name an album, or anything David Bowie did. Today, all anyone did was say, “David Bowie was the most influential musician of the last century.” Whatever, media savvy America. Whatever. David Bowie, just like every other famous artist, worth more dead than alive. Great job again, media. Dying is a fail-safe way to increase the value and fan base of your art work.

My favorite part of the last week in new music was Primal Fear. Their new album, Rulebreaker, has a cool track on it called “We walk without fear.” The first track is kind of cool, too, but really, I just listen to “We walk without fear” over and over. It starts of with this super corny early 2000’s Hollywood Epic Trailer style attempt at symphonic metal, but then instantly abandons it and goes into 10 more minutes of decent metal. I am not a metal head. The only reason I appreciate metal is because I like guitar work and music in general. The structure and variety is good and strong and the song is ambiguous and open ended, like a good metal song should be. It does have this crumby low budget choir-ah intro plugin quality effect that permeates the whole track, but is quite enough to be ignored. Also, lots of church bells. Church bells are something you can not apparently have enough of in metal. The more the better. Be careful not to max it out too much early on in the track or else there will not be anywhere else to go later on. The whole album is good, though. I encourage you to check it out if you are wondering what all the kids are listening to. (that is going to be my lingo of choice for the album of the week.)

I only listened to about 15 albums, and most were okay. That was a reoccurring theme. OKAY. The rock all totally sucked. It was all over produced and emotionless. Since when was rock supposed to be emotionless? That is the whole point of rock. Power chord, back beat, emotion. Some of it was so bad it made it onto my “Albums so bad they’re good” list. The other terrible part is how produced sounding everything is. You really can produce garbage of enough quality to sell it. There was a popular “hip-hop” album that was so bad the tracks were just spin offs or blatant rip offs of popular party rap songs from the last ten years. It was sickening because every song was carbon copied and the production quality was fantastic. There was one track with this dude who made a barking sound with his voice that made me want to find him and punch his throat.

Anyway, I am still listening to more albums from the first week but am trying really hard to find something new in the world of rock, since that is basically all I care about. Techno would be nice, too.

See you, Spaceman. Or is it Spaceboy? Is there a Spacekid?