Genres

Cool things can happen when you turn a listicle into a playlist. Take Spin’s ranking of every Gn’R tune: As rock criticism, I wholeheartedly disagree. All 10 jams comprising the mighty Appetite of Destruction have to crack the top 15—yet only five do. In terms of listener experience, however, this anti-intuitive move pays dividends. With the ranking frontloaded with cuts off their other albums, the playlist winds up accentuating GnR’s under-appreciated diversity. For a bunch of Sunset Strip sleazeballs they covered a lot of terrain, from psychedelia to folk balladry and industrial. Only diehards will plow through the entirety of this admittedly immense playlist, but don’t be surprised if you come away with a markedly different perspective of these infamous rockers.

Click here to add to Spotify playlist!Joey Bada$$ emerged from Brooklyn in 2012 as part of a wave of New York teenagers—a.k.a. the Pro Era collective—who were reviving traditional hip-hop values. On his debut mixtape, 1999, he constructs songs with dense lyrical arrangements and beats from sampled loops and drum patterns. He raps about rocking stage shows and battling kids in other ciphers, two themes that haven’t been in vogue in mainstream rap since the mid-‘90s. A few of Joey’s song titles even pay subtle homage to old-school fare like Souls Of Mischief’s “93 ‘Til Infinity” (“95 Till Infinity”) and the illuminati fad (“Killuminati”).The narrative around Joey Bada$$ began to shift when his 2015 retail debut B4.DA.$$ (Before Da Money) debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard top 200 album chart, forcing rap fans who dismissed him as a niche backpacker to pay attention. (A widely circulated Instagram photo of Malia Obama rocking a Pro Era T-shirt also helped.) Then, last year, he released “Devastated,” an empowerment anthem filled with chorus and echo that foregrounds his singing while relegating ‘90s homage to the background. (There’s a brief flicker of the melody from OutKast’s “SpottieOttieDopaliscious.”)Bada$$ will never be confused with Wiz Khalifa, who forever reduces his bars in favor of a catchy hook. Joey’s new album, All-Amerikkkan Bada$$, shows how he’s managed to transform into something more contemporary—sharply assessing the political landscape on “Land of the Free” and trading bars with Schoolboy Q on “Rockabye Baby”—without losing the qualities that made him a star. The songs collected here chart his evolution.

As one of the stalwart holdovers from the early ‘90s indie boom, Drag City has released consistently lovable and knotty music for over two decades. While other labels of their kind built their names on too-cool-for-school slackerdom, Drag City have always been overachievers, putting out music that consistently redefines whatever genre or idiom they are working within. It’s country music that rejects tradition, punk music with a sense of dignity, and avant-experimentalism that feels more like hanging out with your buds than begrudgingly doing your homework. Above all, Drag City are the torchbearers for the concept that challenging, willfully elusive art should always remember to keep it fun, and this playlist is our token of gratitude for all the great sounds they’ve shared with us over the years.Note: The Drag City catalog is not available on streaming services, but can and should be purchased on iTunes, Amazon, or, better yet, your favorite record store.

The musical force of nature known as Ezra Furman returns this February with his most epic statment yet, Transangelic Exodus (Bella Union), a quasi-conceptual glam-goth-pop odyssey that he describes as “a queer outlaw saga.” Here, he reveals the influences that pushed the record to the next level. “These are songs I was into during 2016-2017 that made me want to turn the way I made music on its head. One develops a certain idea of what music is supposed to be and how it’s made, but the fact is, the possibilities are infinite—possibilities for songwriting, for arrangement, for editing and sound and delivery and combinations of ideas.“I’m not sure why, but a few times every year since I was 12 I’ve just heard something and said, ‘THAT. That is my future. That is what I need.’ It started before I even played an instrument. It was never (solely) about making the music, but about a way of thinking or being I could hear in a song. When you hear music that’s not like something you’ve heard before, you can sometimes intuit a whole different cultural and/or personal ethos from it. That’s what happened when I heard these songs, and I craved to incorporate some element of them into both my music and my life. Sometimes, it even happens with songs you’ve heard a million times, but that you just had never heard in that certain way before.“The Talking Heads’ and Nick Cave’s paranoia. The Mountain Goats’ and Lou Reed’s storytelling. The ear-candy pleasure principle of Vampire Weekend and Sparklehorse. The musical anarchy of Tune-Yards and Beck. It all got folded into my brain and pushed me toward Transangelic Exodus.“I’m so glad people write songs and make records. I’m so grateful for the work they put in to realize their mad visions. It’s like water to me. I need it to live. And I’m so glad I get to make my own as well.”—Ezra Furman

Of course, all great thrash melts faces. That’s why the genre exists! But then there are those facemelters that go above and beyond the call of duty. They’re so violent, pissed, and chaotic they leave you feeling pumped, possibly a little dazed, and, in those rarest of instances, aurally violated.Certainly, speed is vital to thrash’s ability to invigorate/intimidate. Yet despite its lofty status among thrash lifers, it’s not the sole determining factor. After all, Exhorder’s “Homicide” comes riddled with dense, slower breakdowns, and it won’t just melt your face; it will chew it right off. Then there’s The Accüsed’s “Mechanized Death,” which derives most of its unhinged power from Blaine Cook’s puke-screech and the band’s stuttering primitivism, and Sarcófago’s “Sex, Drinks & Metal,” which certainly hits blurring velocities, yet ultimately smashes minds through its deeply nonsensical song structure. It’s kind of like the sonic equivalent of a drunken temper tantrum.Warning: This surely will piss off those who kneel before the Big Four, but outside of Slayer (okay—I’ll make an exception for Metallica when they’re plowing through ragers like “Fight Fire With Fire”), I’m of the belief that the sickest thrash (i.e., the most intense facemelters) doesn’t actually come from them. To subject yourself to true sonic fury, dive into the German outfits Sodom, Kreator, and Destruction: All three are downright cruel in ways that are unique to a Teutonic scene whose bloodlust for dense, mechanized propulsion has little use for melody or hooks. Brazil also has coughed up a bunch of sickos. Of course, Sepultura (pictured above) became megastars once they shifted to groove metal, but dig into early, cult-level thrash numbers like “Primitive Future,” and you’ll encounter a group that’s both terrifyingly unhinged and stunningly precise; ditto for the already mentioned Sarcófago, as well as the hyper-obscure Anthares, whose 1987 album No Limite Da Força is a grainy blast of Satanic phlegm bursts and feverishly raked guitars.If you dig these facemelters, there’s a whole lot more where they came from. After all, thrash is kind of like the garage rock of metal. It’s a sprawling, grassroots pastime that has sprouted far too many regional scenes and underground freaks to count. In other words, the facemelters are endless.This feature is part of our Thrash 101 online course that was produced in partnership with the good rocking folks at GimmeRadio, a free 24/7 metal radio station hosted by heavy-music experts like Megadeths Dave Mustaine and Lamb of Gods Randy Blythe. Check them out here and sign up for the Thrash 101 course here.

Thank you for checking out the 11th installment of our Thrash 101 program, produced in conjunction with GimmeRadio, your free 24/7 radio station hosted by heavy-music experts and artists such as The Dillinger Escape Plans Ben Weinman and Death Angels Will Carroll. Check it out here.Of course, all great thrash melts faces. That’s why the genre exists! But then there are those facemelters that go above and beyond the call of duty. They’re so violent, pissed, and chaotic they leave you feeling pumped, possibly a little dazed, and, in those rarest of instances, aurally violated.Certainly, speed is vital to thrash’s ability to invigorate/intimidate. Yet despite its lofty status among thrash lifers, it’s not the sole determining factor. After all, Exhorder’s “Homicide” comes riddled with dense, slower breakdowns, and it won’t just melt your face; it will chew it right off. Then there’s The Accüsed’s “Mechanized Death,” which derives most of its unhinged power from Blaine Cook’s puke-screech and the band’s stuttering primitivism, and Sarcófago’s “Sex, Drinks & Metal,” which certainly hits blurring velocities, yet ultimately smashes minds through its deeply nonsensical song structure. It’s kind of like the sonic equivalent of a drunken temper tantrum.Warning: This surely will piss off those who kneel before the Big Four, but outside of Slayer (okay—I’ll make an exception for Metallica when they’re plowing through ragers like “Fight Fire With Fire”), I’m of the belief that the sickest thrash (i.e., the most intense facemelters) doesn’t actually come from them. To subject yourself to true sonic fury, dive into the German outfits Sodom, Kreator, and Destruction: All three are downright cruel in ways that are unique to a Teutonic scene whose bloodlust for dense, mechanized propulsion has little use for melody or hooks. Brazil also has coughed up a bunch of sickos. Of course, Sepultura (pictured above) became megastars once they shifted to groove metal, but dig into early, cult-level thrash numbers like “Primitive Future,” and you’ll encounter a group that’s both terrifyingly unhinged and stunningly precise; ditto for the already mentioned Sarcófago, as well as the hyper-obscure Anthares, whose 1987 album No Limite Da Força is a grainy blast of Satanic phlegm bursts and feverishly raked guitars.If you dig these facemelters, there’s a whole lot more where they came from. After all, thrash is kind of like the garage rock of metal. It’s a sprawling, grassroots pastime that has sprouted far too many regional scenes and underground freaks to count. In other words, the facemelters are endless.

Growing up in the South during the 90s, Factory Records was always the music of older cousins and cooler friends. Dont get me wrong, I have had hard musical crushes on acts like Durutti Column, Happy Mondays, Joy Division, and New Order, but it never seemed entirely mine either. It was the soundtrack for lives that I made guest appearances in, humming in the background as a bit of anglophile ennui.This playlist is from Spotify user Coco Baker. (S)he isnt a professional curator (as far as I know), and the playlist does have some factual slights (that Cabaret Voltaire track was released on Rough Trade and not Factory Records), but its still a pretty good overview of the scene. Too often, user generated playlist have no sense of rhythm. People will line up multiple tracks by the same artists, and there will be giant stylistic leaps from track to track, but this does seem to have a perspective and flow, so well excuse the factual lapses.

Click here to add to Spotify playlist!Controversy magnet Ronnie Radke and his bandmates in Falling In Reverse (who seem to change every few months) have made some of the densest, most outrageous, and devastatingly clever modern rock and art pop of the last decade—yet nobody outside of kids who attend the Warped Tour year in and year out pay them any mind.Some of the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of Radke. On top of boasting serious pop smarts, he’s cocky, moody, confrontational—let’s not forget he was fired from Escape the Fate in 2008—and at times misogynistic. As he sings in “Just Like You”: “I am aware that I am an asshole / I really dont care about all of that though / I got nothing to prove / But honestly Im just like you.” There’s also the fact that modern post-hardcore and metalcore bands aren’t given much space in outlets like Pitchfork,Rolling Stone, and Spin; it’s a black sheep subculture forever consigned to Alternative Press and Blabbermouth.Net.Falling In Reverse believe a rock album should be nothing less than an epic sonic experience, promoting a bigger-is-better philosophy preached by heroes like Queen, My Chemical Romance, and Andrew W.K. (Though, truth be told, Radke’s just as likely to name-check Katy Perry, Gwen Stefani, or Lady Gaga.) Their latest album, Coming Home, is no exception. Where 2015’s Just like You was a manic fusion of blink-182-style snot, glam pomp, chart pop, metallic crunch, and Eminem-influenced attitude, the more carefully paced Home clears room for post-dubstep spaciness and chilly, atmospheric synthesizers. For instance, the title track sounds like a cosmic collision between Muse’s “Madness,” Daft Punk’s “Give Life Back to Music,” and the ZAYN/Taylor Swift collab “I Dont Wanna Live Forever.”Of course, Falling In Reverse aren’t the only Warped cats suffusing their jams with electronic ether. Issues and I See Stars—with whom Radke has feuded—incorporate flickering EDM programming, while The Word Alive drench their brooding anthems in ambient-like textures and acts like Pvris and Tonight Alive incorporate electro-pop touches. Yet none of them can quite match Falling In Reverse when it comes to packing songs full of hook-laden brilliance. Radke, for all his faults and failings, is a tunesmith operating on a whole ’nother level.

The propulsive James Jamerson bass lines, Benny Benjamin’s funky-but-precise rhythms, the elegant, atmospheric orchestrations — given the opportunity, who wouldn’t want to assimilate all those elements at the intersection of pop and soul and assemble their own Motown pastiche? We’re not talking about artists covering classic Motown tunes, either. From the “You Can’t Hurry Love” groove of The Jam’s “Town Called Malice” to the New Jack-meets-Jackson 5 vibe of New Edition’s “Candy Girl” and Amy Winehouse’s brassy, sassy “Rehab,” these tracks take the Motown template and go someplace with it.

Although Paramore’s new album, After Laughter, marks the return of founding drummer Zac Farro, frontwoman Hayley Williams remains the only permanent member of the Tennessee pop-punk group since the band began, five albums ago. But even as Paramore have diversified their sound, Williams’ side work as a guest vocalist has cast an even wider net, as she’s played with acts who are heavier or more poppy than anything in Paramore’s catalog.Williams has experienced some of her greatest chart success as a hook singer, crooning the gentle melodies on Atlanta rapper B.o.B’s blockbuster single “Airplanes” and German producer Zedd’s EDM crossover hit “Stay The Night.” Her affection for indie and electronic music came out in a collaboration with Scottish synth-pop band CHVRCHES, and she’s embraced family-friendly pop stardom with high-profile collaborations, as on the cover of “Rainbow Connection” with Weezer for a Muppets tribute album.But most of Hayley Williams’ guest work has been with the kinds of punk and emo bands that Paramore came up with in their Warped Tour days. She’s added a much needed feminine perspective to songs by Say Anything and has dueted on multiple occasions with husband Chad Gilbert of New Found Glory. But most impressively, Williams has been able to hang with metalcore bands like The Chariot and Set Your Goals on blistering uptempo collaborations, and Zac Farro’s recent return to Paramore was foreshadowed by her appearance on “As U Wave” by Farro’s long running solo project HalfNoise.Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.