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Limited to one pressing, this 10th Anniversary Viny Box Set Brings Together 2 of Five Finger Death Punch’s Best-Selling Albums (Pressed on Silver Metallic and Gold Metallic vinyl and housed in gatefold sleeves with updated album art), along with their long out-of-print live album, PURGATORY (TALES FROM THE PIT). This 6-platter collection contains 6 bonus tracks and a 4-decal sticker sheet. This will be a highly sought-after collectable among the band’s legion of devoted fans. Five Finger Death Punch will have just wrapped up fall tour dates with Metallica and Ice Nine Kills in November.
A tech company's "senior spirit guide" finally comes to the defense of the "financially unsuccessful" Vincent van Gogh; wonders of the natural world are reimagined as "muster points for brainstorming innovators"; the "artificial char lines" on fast-food burgers are cited as if signs of the apocalypse. For the better part of three decades, Aesop Rock has used the syntax of the moment to pinpoint the fault lines in that moment's supposedly solid foundation. With his tenth album, Integrated Tech Solutions, Aes wields insidious corporatespeak as a tool to pry that parasitic worldview away from the parts of life that truly matter.
A concept album about an organization offering "lifestyle- and industry-specific applications designed to curate a desired multi-experience," Integrated Tech Solutions picks apart the charlatan language that hears app inventors put themselves on continuums starting with cavemen and continuing through da Vinci. On "Mindful Solutionism," the wheel evolves seamlessly into modern agriculture-and then into atomic bombs, Agent Orange, cigarettes, and surveillance cameras. In a rare moment of transparency, the engineers Aes give voice to sum up this spiral in just a few words: "We cannot be trusted with the stuff that we come up with."
Appropriately, the album sounds like the past and future at once. Largely self-produced, Integrated Tech Solutions catches Aes at his leanest and most innovative, leveraging "Solutionism"'s careening bounce against the wistful "By the River" or the slow creep of "Salt and Pepper Squid." The effect is a record that sounds itself like an organism growing, mutating, hurtling toward profitability-and then destruction. As fans have come to expect, Aes is cuttingly funny and slyly profound at once, whether recounting a childhood restaurant run-in with Mr. T ("100 Feet Tall") or quipping, on "Pigeonometry," that "white dove is a pigeon-you motherfuckers is bigots." At the same time, Integrated Tech Solutions is working on another parallel project: tracing the sprawl of modernity and cutting directly to its core. "I've been doing laps of the lost worlds," he raps on "All City Nerve Map," sounding at once wearied and reinvigorated. "I can draw a map to the raw nerve."
Multiplatinum-selling, GRAMMY-nominated rapper/producer VIC MENSA has announced his long-awaited sophomore album, Victor. “This album is a story of redemption; trial and triumph, pain and glory,” states MENSA. Executive produced by BongoByTheWay and largely self-produced, the album delves deeply into this quest, with VIC taking stock of his trials and detailing the work he’s done inwardly and outwardly to try to affect positive change; through social work, sobriety and delving into his cultural roots traveling to and working in Ghana. 2 LP set on bone colored vinyl.
Throughout her new album 'Drama Queen' Idina Menzel brings her electrifying vocal chops to high-energy, electro-dance-pop anthems. With funky grooves and a disco-infused vibe, Idina's self-empowering songs invite the listener to share her spotlight and MOVE to the dancefloor! Featuring collaborations with Nile Rodgers, Jake Shears (Scissor Sisters) and more, Menzel's new album brings the drama in the best way possible!
“A lot of this record is questioning all the bad stuff we see in the world and the difficult things we go through in life, and asking how to deal with it,” says vocalist/guitarist Brian Fallon, whose bandmates include drummer Benny Horowitz, bassist Alex Levine, and lead guitarist Alex Rosamilia. “I think the answer is that we’re all in this together and that somehow makes it okay, even when it’s anything but easy. The main message of the album is empathy.”
The first release from their own Rich Mahogany Recordings (a label distributed via Thirty Tigers), History Books finds The Gaslight Anthem working with acclaimed producer/engineer Peter Katis (The National, Interpol, Death Cab for Cutie) and recording at his Bridgeport, CT-based Tarquin Studios. “We didn’t have any interest in reinventing what The Gaslight Anthem sounds like,” Fallon reveals. “We wanted to stay true to ourselves but also let Peter do what he does best, which is to make things sound beautiful and sad and fun and exciting all at the same time.” Featuring a guest appearance from longtime Gaslight Anthem champion Bruce Springsteen, History Books matches its unfussy yet gracefully crafted sound with the force-of-nature energy that’s defined the band since getting their start playing basement shows back in the mid-aughts. “None of us wanted to make a very somber or serious record showing how much we’ve matured,” says Fallon. “We’ve all changed and grown and learned so much, but the overall mood was a feeling of excitement to be back together and making music that means something to us.”
The follow-up to 2014’s Get Hurt, History Books takes its title from a heavy-hearted track about the power in letting go of what no longer serves you. “I think forgiveness is so important on so many levels, but I’ve learned that in some cases you need to cut ties with the people who’ve done you harm,” says Fallon. Rooted in lyrics that perfectly encapsulate Fallon’s penchant for gorgeously lived-in poetry (e.g., “Nights of smoke and dirty jokes/Darkened rooms with lonely ghosts/They were beautiful some time ago/But time keeps rollin’ us on”), “History Books” also echoes the album’s themes of transience and transcendence. “In some ways each song is a history book—they each tell a story of the past, and all the things that we’ve left behind,” Fallon points out.
Vinyl reissue of the long-out-print 2006 release. Peeping Tom is Mike Patton with special guests Norah Jones, Massive Attack, Dan The Automator and more.
Vinyl reissue of the long-out-print 2006 release. Peeping Tom is Mike Patton with special guests Norah Jones, Massive Attack, Dan The Automator and more.