Andy Biersack/Black is, in my humble opinion, one of the best young vocalists in rock. In his “day job” as frontman of Black Veil Brides, we’ve heard his vocals and songwriting skills improve in leaps and bounds since they formed in 2006.
From the run-of-the-mill screamo of their debut album, We Stitch These Wounds (which was rather blandly stereotypical), to the way-more-glam Set the World On Fire (2011), to the monster hits of Wretched and Divine (2013) and Black Veil Brides IV (2014), he and his bandmates kept knocking it out of the park and getting better and better. Then, in 2016, he released his superb debut album, The Shadow Side: far more pop-oriented than BVB’s output, it is polished and catchy as hell. BVB’s fifth album, Vale (2018), built on everything that had come before and was another fantastic rock album. The pattern had been set: continued growth, and restrained experimentation, and more sophisticated song-writing. Continue reading
I stumbled across Lord of the Lost one evening, enjoying one of my frequent music video binges. Specifically, their video for “Loreley” appeared in my Suggested list, and decided to give them a try. I rather enjoyed what I heard, and decided to check out a few more of their videos.
Recently, I feel like I’ve become rather unadventurous in my music taste. There are a handful of bands whose albums I will always buy — for example, In Flames, Trivium, Within Temptation, Five Finger Death Punch, Asking Alexandria, and Sia — regardless of whether or not I don’t find the albums particularly compelling (I realized recently, for rather random reasons, that 2011 was a bad year for some of my favourite bands). In this respect, I adhered to 
“Your ears start bleeding” when one cranks modern music up to 11, Thirty Seconds to Mars frontman Jared Leto observed to Rolling Stone‘s Brian Hiatt. He has a point — modern music production methods tend to lean towards loud, busy and highly-compressed recording. “It used to be pleasurable to crank up Zeppelin or Nirvana to 12 in your car,” he continued. “Now everyone would complain — it’s so piercing, so bright.”
I’ve been a fan of Machine Head’s music since 1999’s 
Civilian Reader 