As I've said on the index page, music is a very important thing to me, so I'm making this page to document what bands and musicians I like most. I hope you consider listening to at least one of these!
CARPENTER BRUT
Gonna start off strong with one of the best synth artists making music right now and one of my favourite musicians overall.
I first heard a Carpenter Brut song in Hotline Miami 2, namely Roller Mobster, which is embedded below. As soon as the drop started, I instantly loved it. Still probably my favourite track on HLM2's soundtrack. After that I checked out TRILOGY as a whole and it's now one of my favourite albums of all time. Can't really pick out even a few "favourite" tracks because all of them are just that good, but I can say that I want more songs like Anarchy Road, absolute vibe of a track.
Unfortunately I can't say the same about Leather Teeth (although it's still a good album). The instrumental tracks are good but I didn't like them nearly as much as I did TRILOGY, but comparing it to a instant synthwave classic is pretty unfair, even if it's made by the same musician. Can't say I like the songs however, I don't know why but they just do not click with me at all. Still, to repeat myself, the album's good, I especially like Inferno Galore and the title track, and the music videos are genuinely golden, Sunday Lunch especially is hilarious!
Edit: As of writing this, 12.07.2023, I've only just noticed that the Sunday Lunch video got unfairly removed from youtube because of "violating TOS". FUCK YOUTUBE.
I should add that I started listening to Brut somewhere around early spring 2022, or probably even earlier. So you could imagine my surprise when Imaginary Fire dropped! A new song and album announcement from this artist that I only recently found, already? Was it my birthday? At first I liked it, along with The Widow Maker which dropped soon after, but then one of my friends kinda gaslit me into disliking Imaginary Fire, somehow. I don't know how but after some time I decided to re-listen to it and I realised that it was actually good.(which, thank fuck for that, lol) Anyway, I definitely like Leather Terror as an album a lot more than Leather Teeth, especially the vocals in this one were a biiiig improvement, since my favourite tracks include already previously mentioned Imaginary Fire and The Widow Maker, along with Lipstick Masquerade, Day Stalker/Night Prowler, and Color Me Blood. Definitely looking forward to the already announced third Leather album!
Sadness
This is one of a myriad of projects Damian Anton Ojeda is working on, and also some of my favourite music ever. I say this completely seriously, Sadness is some of the most beautiful music I've ever had the pleasure of listening to.
I first heard of it from a person in a discord server I usually hang out in, they warned to not listen to it if you're very emotional, which was a warning I acknowledged and completely ignored. I don't regret that decision at all. blue was the first Sadness song I heard and I still believe the EP it's from, "motionless, watching you" is the best Sadness release. I will have a CD of it some day, mark my words. I like it way too much to not have a physical copy of it. The first 2 minutes of blue are beautifully melancholic and calm, and then... Then comes what I can only describe as pure emotion condensed into music. I cannot put it into words any better than that, please, listen to it yourself, you won't be disappointed.
The latest Sadness album (at the time of writing this), "april sunset" is also just amazing. I have not yet listened to all of the songs in it, but the ones I have I love. bigbury april twilight is such an amazing opener to the album.
Along with motionless, watching you, ____, or Orange Bunny Album, as I call it, is another one of my fave Sadness albums. Contrary to the name, sadness isnt the only feeling Sadness specialises in, and this album (and many others) proves that. It feels, hopeful, I'd say. And that's very welcome in today's times. If you're gonna listen to just one of the bands that's on this list, make it this one.
NINE INCH NAILS
TRENT REZNOR IS SO COOL OMGGGGG
Anyways.
I actually have a very interesting story of discovering NIN. Before I really got into it, I had already listened to ISN'T EVERYONE by Health and Nine Inch Nails and loved it a lot. At the time a friend of mine also was telling me to check them out but I put it off a while for some reason. But also at the same time, I was reading an Undertale fancomic called Ask Fallen Royalty, and in one of the final pages of the comic (at the time) a line from Head Like A Hole was referenced. Won't link it here for spoiler reasons, go read it, or follow it for the redraw that's going on currently. Anyhow, I asked what the line was referencing, and upon getting my answer I instantly went and listened to the song. And now I'm here, with NIN being my most scrobbled artist as of writing this. (which is 13.07.23)(2024 update: horribly outdated now lmao. my most scrobbled band is Linkin Park at like 5k+)
Recently I also started collecting CDs, and my first 3 were none other than With Teeth, Year Zero and The Fragile. I'm so happy I decided to do that because I've discovered physical music is fucking amazing, I love having a thing i can grab with my hands and it also has music I love on it... Anyway. Take a look!
First 3 CDs I ever got!
So, let me go over With Teeth since I mentioned it. The thing I love most about this album is how each song flows into the other near seamlessly, especially The Line Begins To Blur to Beside You In Time to Right Where It Belongs, those are probably my favourite tracks(though GOD i love the drums in The Collector). Listening to this one on CD is an absolute treat.
Another thing - the glitch art theme of Year Zero started here and is another thing I really like about it, but I'll write more about that in the YZ section.
This particular photo of Trent is my favourite example of With Teeth art. It comes from the CD, in the jewel case (which is what I have) it's on the inside of the front booklet with the cover art, can't really say much about other disk versions though.
Now, Year Zero. Half the reason this album is in my top 3 is the ARG they made way back when. Sadly I think all the official pages of it have been scrubbed off the internet. Luckily however the website NINDestruct has a full archive of it, which I've downloaded for fun.(Do be warned however, it is several gigabytes of data and takes a while to download) In general too, that website is awesome because it archives so much NIN content it's kinda ridiculous, and a bunch of things in this part of the page is taken from that. Give it a visit.
In terms of music, the noisy sound of YZ is one of the most unique parts of it and one that I really really like, The Great Destroyer is one of the more memorable songs in NIN's entire discography for me because of the ending. Also, some parts of songs are used in other songs, I think that's called a leitmotif? I'm not a musician, I dunno. An example of this is in God Given and Meet Your Master, they start with the same bit of music, except it's slowed down in MYM I think. Anyway, on the other hand, Survivalism is, I think, the most "traditionally NIN" sounding song in the album, which makes sense because it's supposed to be an actual NIN song in the universe of Year Zero. Weirdly I don't think I can say it's in my top 5, which I think says something about how good it is. And that means - go listen to it, lol.
About the ARG I mentioned - the album takes place in an alternate history United States, one that has become a Christian fascist dictatorship. It takes place in 2022, which is how we know living in 2023 (or hell, maybe I didnt update that year and you're reading this in 2029 or something. i don't know. hello random reader from 2029.) that it's fiction. The US has instated a new year counting system which begins at 0000, which is 2022 for everyone else. In other news, the world is being ravaged by an insane amount of wars and climate change. Hooray!
Along with those tragedies, another phenomena has been appearing on Earth, mainly in America, however it has been spotted in Switzerland and in the Middle East. I am of course, talking about The Presence.
"Berne Switzerland wasn’t drugged with Parepin-infused drinking water. And a couple tourists took this photo in Walensee."
The Presence is. Something. God? Aliens? Another type of entity? It's unknown(but highly likely it's supposed to be at least a nod to the Christian God). It takes the form of a ghostly hand reaching down from the sky and induces feelings of intense fear, insignificance, astonishment, and forgetfulness in those who see it. In other words, if you see it, you shit bricks and then promptly forget it afterwards. It was at first thought to be hallucinations users of Opal (a hallucinogenic drug that has taken cocaine's place in the world of YZ, since insane climate change has made it impossible to smuggle materials for cocaine into anywhere before it rots.) and people drugged with Parepin (a brand name for an in universe drug called zeridine, which is dispersed into ALL water in cities of Year Zero America. it dulls your mental state to the point of the person on it not caring about anything.) experience, but that had been quickly discovered to be false when sober people started seeing it too.
"A buddy and I were getting our asses kicked by a couple cops after they caught us tagging a wall. I remember hearing this crack like thunder right overhead. Next thing I knew, we were all standing there, looking up like baby birds. One of the cops was crying. We were all shaking. It was like realizing I’ve spent my whole life underwater and finally looking up and seeing *real* life on the other side of the surface. The cops just left us, just forgot about us. But we didn’t notice because we’d forgotten about them."
TRENT REZNOR IS SO COOL OMGGGGG 
