S H I E L D H O U S E

Let's just start off with a bold statement: there are no such thing as "guilty pleasures".      What I mean to express by this is that there is music that one likes and there is music that one dislikes, and there are no guilty pleasures in the purest form of consuming music. Only when you use listening to music as a personality crutch, can something you might listen to become a guilty pleasure. Because at that point, you become worried enough about revealing that listening habit to others that it becomes alike in how you dress yourself, if you listen to something you actually audibly enjoy, and decide against pursuing it because of personal image, you are not consuming music correctly. (stock images are great, don't @ me. I'm lazy and don't want to create a header.) Preference:      I have been guilty before of hiding aspects of my musical tastes to homogenize my tastes as a "Metalhead" when I was younger, I even contacted spotify to un

     Due to the fact that I didn't really find many stand out EP's this year which I really loved, I have decided to not do an EP's list this year, I had planned to and even mentioned it in my songs list, but as I sat down to write it up I really couldn't find much to say about the ones I had shortlisted which made them sound like the best the year had to offer, so I'm just going to straight into the Albums list. Honourable Mentions: (These 3 are here because I liked them quite a bit, but I listened to them and enjoyed them generally less than the other 7 listed) 10: Infernal Coil - Within A World Forgotten 9: OWL - Nights in Distortion 8: Dead Can Dance - Dionysus Best of 2018: 7.  Biosphere - The Hilvarenbeek Recordings      Earlier this year I really expanded my tastes to include a lot of electronic and ambient music, and soundscapes. Biosphere's other albums scratched the itch for minimalistic and moody ambient music, and I found other o

           2018 is well behind us now, a year that brought plenty of variety, surprises, sequels, and disappointments in the world of anime. Looking back on things, I gave a lot more anime than I would have a chance to improve past the age old "three episode" rule. Despite still dropping a handful of anime a little later into the seasons, I feel like I have a better understanding of what makes some stuff harder to keep up on week by week, but I hope next year I can push myself to watch more stuff I don't initially like to find the hidden gems, if not to pad out some more scores below 6/10. Setting aside my struggles with giving media a numerical rating, here's a real quick and easy look at the best anime to come out in 2018, starting with #10:     10. Hinamatsuri     The bottom position of the top 10 list is always the hardest to pick with anime because there are always so many shows that are equally as good and deserving to make an appearance. Zombieland Sa