violet cold
The 30 Best Songs of 2021
A pair of rappers pulling off the best Tom Tom Club sample since Mariah Carey’s “Fantasy” (G Perico & Rucci), an iconic New Wave band trafficking in tongue-in-cheek nostalgia (Duran Duran), a blackgaze act embracing their love of vocal harmony (Deafheaven), and psych-rockers using the shopping mall as a metaphor for capitalist greed (My Morning Jacket) — SPIN‘s 30 Best Songs of 2021 offer something for everyone. For our latest year-end track recap, we kept our overall sorting process the same as 2020: For a cut to be eligible, it needed to be one of two things: 1) a stand-alone single released in 2021 or 2) part of an album issued in 2021. 30. Beatrice Deer – “The Storm” The sound is so simple that, at first, it feels almost formless: a primal drum groove, shards of metallic elect...
Ghastly’s Trippy Death Metal Dives Deep Into Madness
Death metal and psychedelic rock may seem worlds apart, but the two are actually riding the same psychic wavelength more often than not. In fact, I’d argue death metal has carried the mantle for psych for well over three decades. Both push guitar music to induce cerebral intoxication and overdrive – aided by copious volume – which can seem suffocating and freeing all at once. Psych’s trippy visions of boundless cosmos elicit the same heady pleasure of death metal’s visual fortes: dripping, melted skin, godly beings crushed into dust, endless wars begetting endless wars. No band embodies this connection like Finland’s Ghastly, whose latest album Mercurial Passages, out on May 28th through 20 Buck Spin, is as mind-bending as it is brutal. The trio, comprised of chief instrumentalist Ian J. D...
