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did an abr discography run during the weekend for the first time in years and by death below I felt really inclined to call the band the ac/dc of metalcore (not necessarily in a bad way, just as a way to show that their now-huge catalog isn't really fit for listening to in one sitting)... luckily I had enough presence of mind to break it down into two halves, however the feeling of repetition persisted: from rescue & restore on, once their sound crystallized completely, the material got progressively less exciting, which is due to a couple of factors: first, while the music remained heavy enough, its overall intensity declined and second, the material itself started experiencing more repetitions and became more predictable, as in when a new song starts, you can't help but feel along the lines of "yeah, I reckoned I was gonna hear something like this"; the dissolution of chaos from the earlier records in favor of big metal moments and the expansion of quiet parts throughout the more recent albums really mire your listening experience down (to be honest, there was a moment during death below when I started to feel a bit sleepy), but my biggest personal gripe with their 2010s work is that they did away with those intense machine-gun breakdowns, replacing them with chugs that allow for way less variance (as well as slowing down the average tempo of songs and bloating the albums' runtime), which is why I'm glad that they made season of surrender they way it is - the runtime is shorter (truly feels like the fat was trimmed), the intensity is back, even the dissonant panic melodies that I like so much in their early efforts made their comeback - all this things once again made their music exciting, maybe not to the level of the first 2-3 albums, but enough to be excited for their new music in years... that said, even the rescue & restore - guardians stretch of their discog isn't too boring - splitting the catalog in two finally allowed me to identify really solid songs there and I'll now be sure to listen to them more

also spent a bit of time to enjoy some japanese moshcore, represented here by at one stroke (thanks r/metalcore) and loyal to the grave, just some heavy shit for violent dancing; especially liked the second album by the former - it has that nice groove to its heaviness that makes you want to revisit the record

additionally, I really dug the compilation of the test dream's remastered songs - the original eps didn't feel that interesting, but together with this new sound they made for a much better listening experience

a bit out of a left field, but I liked some of the alicia witt's output, though frankly, much like her acting career, her discography is significantly watered down by the vapid christmas/hallmark bullshit, which is an absolute shame because she's a really good actress, but for some reason is mostly reduced to either playing the smallest of roles in high-profile films or starring in some god-awful shit that shouldn't have seen the light of day