S H I E L D H O U S E

Part of a stacked "second generation" lineup of Solid State Records, a then young label, Haste the Day is an American Christian metalcore band from the state of Indiana. Although they were never anything as groundbreaking as other Solid State bands of the time (see Underoath, August Burns Red, and Norma Jean), Haste the Day represents a decade of the perfection of 2000's era metalcore. What makes Haste the Day such a stand out band is their genuine energy, familiar song structure, and catchy hooks & choruses. Admittedly, I only got into the band at the dead end of their career with the release of "Attack Of The Wolf King", but as my tastes and opinions have continued to open up and grow since then, Haste the Day has remained as a band that I can always put on shuffle and have a good time. As such, I thought I'd go through the band's discography and rank the albums top to bottom, as well as give some of my personal thoughts on each of the albums,...

     This month I found quite odd for the sort of "algorithm" I had hoped to set up for the monthly track roundups, I had hoped I could be able to pick and choose from a diverse range of genres from single tracks that had been released throughout the previous month without exploring new releases from genres I usually don't listen to, as I wouldn't be the greatest authority on them. Due to that, this month is a little more sterilised, consisting of predominantly Metal, Rock and Hip-Hop tracks, with one outlier in the Afrobeats camp.      For clarification, I also try not to pick tracks from albums released throughout the month and instead choose tracks from yet unreleased albums or one off songs from artists. And if you hadn't assumed by this point, I am doing this monthly in groups of 8. Don't know why, just am. Wytch Hazel - Save My Life (Single from II: Soujourn : July 13th on Bad Omen Records)      Rock music, for me at le...

Release Date: May 18th, 2018 Label: Season of Mist Album Link:      Progressive Metal is in dire need of a renaissance, the new wave of Djent bands and Math Rock bands who label themselves or equally are labelled by others as Progressive Metal are a largely sanitised group of bands which end up being interchangeable with one another. There are anomalies within these genres, such as Animals as Leaders, who have transcended genre classification in their four album existence, and other bands like Tesseract and Uneven Structure who have perfected a good albeit simple sound that has spawned many plagiarisers.       While Opeth, forever my favourite band, have drifted gracefully away from the Progressive Death Metal which built their career and fanbase and now exist in a sort of nostalgic Progressive Rock vacuum alongside Ghost and The Sword, they still inspire many today. Among this number are Alkaloid, a "Progressive Metal Supergroup" consisting...

     As someone who once despised anime and used to view it as one of the lowest forms of entertainment, I am a firm believer that there is good anime out there that can hook anyone, regardless of their disposition, or experience with anime. Maybe you were one of those 90's kids who used to watch Pokemon, Dragon Ball Z, and/or Sailor Moon, but never really watched anime outside of that. Perhaps you're not interested in anime because it's hard to follow subtitles, or because anime is generally over-sexualized (I assure you that's a generalization). Heck, maybe you're like everyone else on the planet and you're looking for something to save you from going on your seventeenth The Office re-watch. I guarantee there's something out there that will open you up to anime.      So where do you start? Well luckily for you, Netflix has a growing, very solid selection of anime to watch. With the assumption that you are the normal person with access to Netflix, I'm...