benpaco
Who's gonna watch you die?
Age: 27
Location: California
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- #17
- Posted: 12/03/2014 02:54
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OK, this is probably most up your alley given what you said you usually listen to:
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Megalithic Symphony by AWOLNATION
It's sort of dance rock. You know Sail, probably, but there's a lot of good stuff on here and it's not TOO angry (compared to what others have recced and what lies below). If you like Phoenix but want something madder, this may be for you. Not consistently mad, though, some tracks like All I Need are rather cutesy and happy, whereas Not Your Fault is a beautiful face smashing pop song. Like is it rock? Probably not. But damn it's some really heavy, loud pop.
We're gonna get a little angrier, slowly. This is going to just get more progressively angry on the scale if I can help it, and do stop checking these out once you're calm, as I find myself getting mad at people just listening to some of these.
Next up is an album which is electronic again, but punk. Synthpunk, not the angriest genre but more upset than pop, for certain.
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Teledrome by Teledrome
This is a new release from this year. It manages to be fairly dancable but maintain some pretty pissed off guitar and some incredibly messed up lyrics ("Blood Drips" is somewhere between psychotic and disgusting, in a somewhat interesting way). The drums take away from the anger due to the simple fact they don't seem that talented, loud, or fast.
These next guys really aren't talented, and not entirely loud, but they do fast, or at least did, better than most bands I know. We're knocking the synth off of synthpunk and getting into a proper Gilman release.
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Answer That And Stay Fashionable by AFI
Yeah, if you know them, you probably are questioning this decision. "But Ben!" you're saying "angsty depression for the sake of selling records isn't particularly angry!" Ah, that's where you're wrong. Before these guys completely changed their sound, probably to sell records, they made some really, really good Gilman punk. It's not quite skater punk, but it's not far from it, and while the songs seem to mock the angsty teens that now make up AFI's dwindling fanbase (see: I Wanna Get A Mohawk (But Mom Won't Let Me Get One), it manages to also convey their anger.
Like punk? We'll be swinging back to it with hardcore in a bit, but for now, we've gotta progress up the scale still. In fact, this pick is pre-hardcore.
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Ramones by Ramones
This album starts to add the "loud" back to the fast equation I mentioned earlier. Are the songs great and different? No. Is it high energy, good mosh music? Yeah. If you need a soundtrack for a little more than "I'm gonna throw something soon", more into "right, I'm throwing things", here you go. They're fairly short tracks, though this isn't the best example of short tracks you'll find on this list.
Pre-hardcore to post-hardcore we go. This is a genre I'm better versed in than the others, probably. We'll start out light here still and build our way up.
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The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me by Brand New
I wasn't really sure to put this above or below Ramones. This album is weird in its emotion, flowing all over. The title is taken from a conversation about the great schizophrenic Daniel Johnston, and if I had to describe the anger here, I would call it bipolar. If you've ever struggled with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, or know anyone who has, you know how randomly things can shift, rather literally, from "I love you, thank you for coming" to "I wish you would just die already!" in a sentence. And that's sort of this album. There's moments on Luca, for example, that could probably pass for an Antlers record, but even that doesn't last the whole track. Sowing Season is one of my favorite angry tracks.
Liking the post-hardcore? I hope so, but let's get a little madder:
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I Was Trying To Describe You To Someone... In Stereo
This album and the last one share some commonalities, being post-hardcore albums by the same producer, both from Long Island bands. But I'd wager that this album actually has more in common with Brand New's second release, Deja Entendu. There are some real similarities there: mostly soft intro that builds, same number of tracks, same rough album flow. I like Deja better, so why did I choose this? Well plain and simple, if Deja's a yell, this is a scream. Deja does a great job of conveying one man's fears and anger, but it's not instantly accessible unless you were raped, a professional musician who regretted that, or your anger stems from an existential crisis (it may well, but that's fairly specific circumstances). IWTTDYTS has this weird thing the whole time where it feels like you're going downhill. Every track feels slightly faster than is natural, there's something a little unsettling to the pace. Some songs, like Exit Halo, have a certain feeling of being several discarded ideas being thrown on each other all at once, not in a sloppy way, but in a way that makes you feel like pieces have been lost, discarded, amputated, however you want to put it. Adds to the anger.
Next, here's a more pop-punk version of post-hardcore. It's even more easily accessible, I think.
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Dear Diary, My Teen Angst Has A Body Co...st To Last
That's right, Skrillex made my list. Er, Sonny did. Pre-Skrillex. He's a talented guitarist and vocalist and I wish he'd stuck with this. Anyways, this album, as I mentioned, is more easily accessible and poppier. Generally I think of poppier as happier, but with this one, no. This is easily accessible because it was designed to sell to those sorts of kids who shop at Hot Topic and blast Xiu Xiu in an attempt to look cool while also being made in a genius way on a great label.
Let's talk record labels real quick. [skip if you don't want a long description of why I like Epitaph's style of album here]:
From First To Last released this on Epitaph Records before switching to Rise. Rise is alright, I suppose, but sells very much to a certain crowd, and isn't huge on musical talent so much as the emotion and the scene. Scene is maybe the best word for it. Epitaph, however, is different. Founded by the guy from Bad Religion just to be a Bad Religion company originally, but even at the start they got L7 (grrrl riot pioneers) and The Vandals (ska punk pioneers) before either was famous. That was early 80s. 1987, rival record company Lookout! was formed, maybe my favorite single label ever (main competitors are probably Epitaph and 4AD). It's almost like Epitaph went "huh, we can do that", so 1989, they sign NOFX and started pioneering skate punk. Early 90s, they signed Offspring, Pennywise, and Rancid, among others, again competing with Lookout!'s finds of Mr T Experience, Green Day, and Operation Ivy. What Epitaph did then, though, was the winning move over Lookout! - they branched out. They started ANTI -, partnered with Burning Heart and Fat Possum, and gave Rancid their own label, Hellcat. This effectively added Billy Bragg, Neko Case, Dr Dog, Nick Cave, Eddie Izzard, Man Man, Elliott Smith, Tom Waits, Wilco, Flogging Molly, The Hives, Band of Horses, Black Keys, Andrew Bird, Dinosaur Jr, and Yuck. As the last nail in the coffin, and maybe kicking everyone else while they were down, Epitaph added Weezer, Operation Ivy, Social Distortion, and Alkaline Trio. But along the way, they also realized that 1 Post-hardcore could succeed and 2 Post-hardcore could be good. Along the way, they got Story of the Year, Bring Me The Horizon, You Me At Six, and yes, From First To Last. Their output of more punk-ish post-hardcore remains among my favorite in the genre.
Time to get angry now. Like we're starting to get actively rage-inducing here, I think. Here's some full on hardcore influenced by NOFX's skate punk:
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Cerebral Ballzy by Cerebral Ballzy
If you watched American television in the early 2010s, specifically Adult Swim, you may well remember their obscure 1 minute long commercial for "Don't Tell Me What To Do" off of this album. A censored version of the song played as the band walked through the streets yelling about what they could and couldn't do with song along lyrics showing on the bottom of the screen. It was weird, loud, fast, and something that honestly scared my brother. It still has a certain teenage aesthetic to it - SK8 All Day isn't exactly a phrase meant to appeal to a mature audience - but damn if it isn't like putting a drill up against someone's head and pulling the starter. There's something so exciting about their rage, it's mob mentality all in a bottle. Even the album cover is angry, designed by Pettibon of Black Flag's logo and Goo fame. The songs rush like Ramones by Ramones, with only 2 songs even hitting 2 minutes long.
Now for some more "traditional" hardcore punk than that skater stuff:
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The Record by Fear
You might know these guys for their SNL performance. It was bizarre - people getting thrown on stage, moshing everywhere, fights breaking out - this wasn't your normal SNL musical guest. If we're going into classic albums for RAGE, it should be noted that Black Flag or Slayer could just as well be here in my mind, but that this album's a bit more ... insane. Slayer is rage to the umpteenth degree, Black Flag is anger unbridled at moments, but this is insanity. This is like Madness's "Tarzan's Nuts" went on a murder spree with Ian MacKaye. It's really almost nonsensical at times, hard to find exactly what these guys are mad at, but you KNOW they're mad. Of course, No More Nothing clarifies the answer to "Why are you upset?" really should be "BECAUSE OF LITERALLY EVERYTHING". As a music critic put it, "makes sense that John Belushi was a big fan of Fear, because The Record sounds like the punk equivalent of the movie Animal House -- puerile, offensive, and often reveling in its own ignorance ..." This was one of Cobain's favorite albums. On top of it all, there's a pioneering aspect to it, too, this was the first punk release from Sound City, so far as I can find, and it was almost certainly their most offensive, bizarre recording at the time.
So what's the angriest album I've ever heard? That's really hard. Really, really tough. There's a lot of albums I've not even mentioned, Nevermind and Unknown Pleasures 100 Onces and Nevermind the Bullocks and Foiled and a ton of others. There's a lot of angry out there, and I'm not saying the above is the best angry music out there, just a good progression getting more and more angry. But my pick for the angriest album I've ever heard, the album which tops the anger scale:
Jane Doe by Converge
Whipping bass, screams, paranoia, guitar licks comparable to the real heavy metal greats. They're branded as "mathcore", a genre I was unfamiliar with until very recently, but it essentially combines hardcore punk and heavy metal and then puts them into more rhythmically complex meter. It all stems from Black Flag's "My War" (it's starting to feel weirder and weirder that they don't have their own entry here somewhere on my list), and to give you a sense of its reputation, it was referred to as noisecore. This specific album was my first experience with the genre, thought not my last, but also my favorite. I don't know if anyone here has had the opportunity to be pissed off about something and be able to just destroy it, to literally take a sledgehammer and rip apart the thing that's caused you months of difficulty, but there's a certain freeing feeling through the anger where you need to stop, admire, and keep going. I had the pleasure of taking apart our failed Odyssey of the Mind project with a few friends, it had really screwed us after hours of work, injuries, etc. I still had a glue burn on my finger, but we whacked it to death and set all the wood parts on fire and roasted marshmallows after screaming and dancing on the remains. We'd gotten screwed by a rules techinicality, a failure in transport, and some other things, mostly out of our control, so the anger was real. And this just reminds me of that. Just swing swing swing swing swing GAHHHHHHHHHHHH swing swing swing swing GAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. There's something musical in it while at the same time sounding for all the world more like a man being electrocuted than anything else. This, to me, is the epitome of true, destructive, animalistic rage.
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