Lamp, broken circa 1988

And hopefully in Actual 2021! This year has seen a LOT of records that I've adored so I'm interested to see what else came out that didn't land on my radar. Rules: First Come, First Serve. If you nominate two, I'll listen to zero. No guarantees that my review will be positive. If someone suggests your album I'll ask the both of you if you have another album you'd rather I review. First Come First Serve still applies. My personal album of the year was "The Apple Drop" by Liars, which came out on the same day as my runner up, Lingua Ignota's "Sinner Get Ready." I've been a huge Liars fan for years and years and this very well may be their best record. The thing I love about Liars is how different they sound and how much they challenge their outer boundaries of what they can do as musicians, always learning and expanding. This time, now that Liars is just Angus Andrew, the way that he chose to expand is using professional musicians and a writing partner. The result is an enormous, eerie, fun, great rock record. I'll also post my full top 10 at the end of this process for anyone who's curious. And yes I realize there's three months left in the year, so if you want to wait that's totally fine. Submissions close on New Year's Eve. Now, please to be share yon records!

Alright! That's a wrap for 2020 there! Sorry that took so long to get done y'all. I do intend to do this again this year but I'm not going to open that up for another few weeks. "Fetch The Bolt Cutters" by Fiona Apple "Forever Black" by Cirith Ungol "Show Pony" by Orville Peck "All Hands Around The Moment" by Richard Youngs and Raül Refree "Wake of a Nation" by Zeal and Ardor "The End of Everything" by Noah Cyrus "Eons" by Neptunian Maximalism I know nothing about Zeal & Ardor. A cursory set of googles leads me to two discoveries I don't know how to reconcile. First is, their website has the subtitle "Blues, Gospel and Soul meet harsher music." The second is that the wikipedia about the band invokes 4chan as how they found their sound. It's time to listen before deciding how I feel about those two things!

you did the Stop/Spot thing bro admittedly that tweet is GameSpot reporting on GameStop so I understand how it happened but yeah

So here's what I've pieced together: -The lady is Divya, the ring announcer who also insists that she is the Queen of CWE. I think she's demanding to still do ring announcing stuff but as queen has an entourage for protection and fanning. -Badshah Khan (who I've decided his gimmick is Man Who Cannot Control His Emotions) hates this dude named Avnish for some reason that's not clear. He tried to jump him, and, well... And then Badshah sees someone watching some video he thinks is Avnish and chases him with the Cookie Sheet of Wrath, and, well... By the way, Sardar Singh just posted a promo where him and his goons hang a man so I am pretty sure CWE is my new favorite company.

Today I learned that Great Khali's wrestling school is uploading matches. This has one of the most unique setup gimmicks I've ever seen, looking like a comedy caper at the end of a movie about an underground fighting ring. The match itself is ecstatic shades of green. Straight up might be one of the most fun matches I've seen all year.

@Casey since they put out two consecutive albums about vampires and werewolves @username It's entirely your call. My position is I gave my word that I'd listen to it so I intend to, but if you want to change albums that's totally in your prerogative. If it helps with your decision, the short version of that clipping review is that I liked midcity & CLPPNG, didn't like the sci-fi one, believe that spirit > technique, and that losing mystique is a hard thing for anyone to overcome. Favorite song was Run For Your Life, least favorite was Story 7.

ok here's a news update: I listened to clipping's album "There Existed An Addiction To Blood," had an unbelievably miserable time, and then realized that wasn't even the right clipping horrorcore album. I wrote the review and everything. So I'm going to give it some time before i listen to the correct clipping record and finish this process, to wash that whole record out of my head and give the right one a fair chance.

Who knows, maybe that "metal musician yearns to make a genre of music that's not full of white guys (yet)" is a San Diego thing, but I've run into that dude so often. The one I wont forget is the virtue signaling groper idiot cop caller grindcore guitarist/drummer who was overheard yearning to be in an afrobeat band. Hard to forget a thing like that. "Fetch The Bolt Cutters" by Fiona Apple "Forever Black" by Cirith Ungol "Show Pony" by Orville Peck "All Hands Around The Moment" by Richard Youngs and Raül Refree "The End of Everything" by Noah Cyrus "Eons" by Neptunian Maximalism As an alt-country liker, I've definitely heard about Orville Peck and just haven't gotten around to listening to their music, though I did hear one song that a friend sent me but it was so long ago that I don't remember which it was. Genuinely looking forward to this!

What's funny is, I suspected that's why you nominated it and almost skipped it because of that, but I couldn't prove it and asking you to show your work would've given you an out and made me look bad. Instead you outed yourself after I gave you the benefit of the doubt for two hours. So, good job, you got me. Don't worry about submitting records anymore.

Obligatory reminder that there's no guarantee I'm gonna write something positive about what you submit. "Fetch The Bolt Cutters" by Fiona Apple "Forever Black" by Cirith Ungol "All Hands Around The Moment" by Richard Youngs and Raül Refree "The End of Everything" by Noah Cyrus "Eons" by Neptunian Maximalism Googles of Neptunian Maximalism revealed a bunch of Belgians in dreadlocks calling themselves a Drone Metal Arkestra. The bandcamp describes the band as a community of "cultural engineers." I've never seen a band I'd be less surprised to learn that they are racists. also this thing is two hours so this is a really long review.

OK after dealing with a metric ton of trauma and realizing I wanted to do the Listen To The Albums thing for 2021 (which has been a GREAT music year), I remembered I didn't finish this year's, so, let's do that first! "Fetch The Bolt Cutters" by Fiona Apple "Forever Black" by Cirith Ungol "All Hands Around The Moment" by Richard Youngs and Raül Refree "The End of Everything" by Noah Cyrus A cursory google confirmed to me that Noah Cyrus is related to Miley Cyrus. I assumed that was the person who got caught lipsyncing on SNL but that was in fact Ashlee Simpson, literally 17 years ago. Time is ruthless. Let's listen to this EP!

hello i do not post very often anymore but I felt like writing some game reviews and this is the only place I've put them for years scale reminder: 1 = hate it, 2 = regret it, 3 = don't regret it, 4 = love it CHILDREN OF MORTA [3] Not usually a roguelike guy, and definitely not a save-the-world guy anymore, but I've been playing this in a co-op setting and the actual gameplay loop once you get more characters is pretty fun. I have fallen off of it as I have sworn off games with exposed numbers for the forseeable future, but I'd recommend this for anyone looking to do co-op RPG things. No netplay though, so, that'll be a hamper on that. JUDGMENT [4] If you like Yakuza games, this one's good and fun and different. If you don't like Yakuza games, this one isn't going to sell you. PAPER MARIO: THE ORIGAMI KING [3] Started this because I have taken on a role in my friend groups of The Nintendo Streamer since they don't mess with Nintendo stuff at all but I do. Often great, but I'm in the home stretch and my main thought is that I can't wait to be done with it. This is also the most interesting way that Nintendo has ever enforced its "take breaks damn you" mantra because the puzzle element of the combat system is mentally taxing enough that I literally can't play it for long stretches. Also I got to hit Kamek with a hammer as many times as I wanted, which is hundreds. SAMURAI GUNN 2 EARLY ACCESS [4] Samurai Gunn was a game I wanted to play but didn't because of a lack of netplay and a... let's say tendency among my friends to be super toxic competitors. Samurai Gunn 2 not only has netplay, but it has an adventure mode. It's stylish and heavy and impactful. CRUELTY SQUAD [4] Game of the year. Not close. The single best FPS since Titanfall 2, in literally the complete opposite way since Titanfall 2. It's like Deus Ex by way of the tv show Xavier: Renegade Angel, with the shooter gameplay of the original Rainbow Six games and a story that is Actual Cyber Punk. An example: my last mission required me to go attack three people who were working with the goofood startup G-TECH, as my employer had invested $5 Billion into them and they turned around and started selling trade secrets. Well, some of them. The third guy used their part of the money to stock up on chunkopop figures. Anyways, the first kill was easy as I was able to walk right onto their compound, only really encountering resistance from the guard dogs. I took them and my target inside and harvested their organs, which is my most profitable side hustle (I can't fish and I dont have enough money for the stock market to be worthwhile). The second and third targets were next door neighbors, with much more active guards. However, I propped myself upon a fence and had to choose between the two. One was on the top floor, the other was in a basement bunker. I figured it'd be harder to get the guy in the bunker so I did him first. After another round of firefights and organ harvesting, I reached the bunker. I saw him running around on the lower floor, but as I started going downstairs, the lights began to dim and the enormous computer console's eyes- a terminal panel more comparable to half a modern TV in size- opened and turned red. I decided I did not need to go down stairs, waited from him to walk in front of the staircase, and shot him in the ear. I left those organs behind, but I had no enthusiasm to learn what the computer was trying to do. Without an easy way back onto the fence- I'm saving up for Gunkboosters- I left the bunker and went to the local pizza restaurant to get something to eat before fighting my way to my third target. The man behind the counter opened fire immediately. He lost. I helped myself to his organs (hey, a stomach! Nice, those sell for a lot) and every slice of pizza on every table of the restaurant. They probably lost their appetite. That's why they didn't fight back. That and the part where I was walking around with a submachine gun in one hand, shoveling their food into my mouth with the other. The third target was the easiest of the three, though I still almost ate shit from someone hiding around the corner. The third target was also the braver of the three, as despite clearly hearing his guards being shot and torn apart, he wasn't running in fear. In fact, he thought I was like him: an appreciator of delightful chunkopops. Coming into the room, I saw a tower of the toys starting on my left, floor to ceiling, three boxes wide, that wrapped around the entire room except for the doorways and windows. He turned away from me to look at them. While the others died in fear, he died looking at what he loved. I could only salvage his pancreas. Upstairs in the attic, a similar terminal to the second man's bunker sentinel hummed peacefully, its own terminal eyes closed. The panel was a soothing purple. I let them sleep and made my way to the extraction point. On the way back, I noticed a house in this neighborhood had an enormous pentagram carved into the front of the house. Not my problem tho. This is a literal description of how I played one mission in Cruelty Squad. Game of the year. Not close.

y'all need to remember this thing is going to be on SteamOS, meaning Linux. The games that will work on the Steam Deck are the ones that have linux support already. If you're looking to play stuff that doesn't have linux support you're in for disappointment. EDIT: here's the category page for SteamOS/Linux. https://store.steampowered.com/linux

hey update your windows tonight, every version of windows has a Bad Problem involving printers and the sooner you can update the better, s/o to microsoft for getting the patch out in like three days

I bought an x-box series s because I'm not going to have a 4K TV any time soon and here's some things I've been playing on it, with brief reviews. MLB THE SHOW 21 [3] As good as you'd expect. NHL 94 REWIND [3] Also as good as you'd expect. CASTLEVANIA SYMPHONY OF THE NIGHT [2] Redownloaded thru X360 backwards compat. I have learned in the last few years that repetition causes deep dread in me, and hitting the upside down castle made me want to run away from civilization so I tried some other stuff. ORI AND THE BLIND FOREST [1] This didn't work for me at all. HOLLOW KNIGHT [4] This did. It might be the single best action game I have seen in my life, I will keep you posted as I play through it. CROSSCODE [3] On recommendation from my brother. I like parts of it very much. The action loop involves plotting encounters in a line in order to increase the rarity of the drop rating. Neat! Except the game expects some amount of grinding and that hits the repetition thing. JUDGMENT [4] As someone who is completely done with stories about saving the world, a competently written crime drama works alright. I've already been rewatching a lot of Columbo so I'm in this mindset already.

New Liars single is excellent

Today marks the 9th anniversary of the passing of MCA, and I mark that occasion every year by watching this. RIP.

Hi! I did not forget about this. I've just been busy and didn't want to post a single thing in here until I had a review done. And so here we are. "Fetch The Bolt Cutters" by Fiona Apple "Forever Black" by Cirith Ungol "All Hands Around The Moment" by Richard Youngs and Raül Refree I know nothing about Richard Youngs or Raül Refree. Google searching Richard Youngs brings up him playing with Jandek. Raül Refree's first listing under his discography on wikipedia is a collaboration with Lee Ranaldo. I am now adequately prepared for what I am about to listen to. Also this came out December 2019 but I went radio silent for months and opening up with "THIS DONT COUNT" is a dick move so I'll let this slide just this once.

I BOUGHT DAN IN STREET FIGHTER 5 AND HAVE SINCE GOTTEN BACK INTO STREET FIGHTER 5 [2] this game fuckin sux but you cant choose your coping mechanisms sometimes lol LOOP HERO [4] Early front runner for game of the year. I remember watching trailers of it and thinking "this looks awful." I remember hearing it described (poorly) and thinking "this sounds awful." Eventually I just gave up and picked it up because I needed to see it for myself and OH BUDDY. I won't try to explain it because I don't rightly know how, but honestly it should be enough that it's a game that defies description while also being REALLY well written with an extremely metal premise. OUTRIDERS DEMO [3] There's a cutscene early on where you knock on a door and the slide in the door opens and someone talks to you (I want a door like this) and says you cant come in, and so you knock again and they stick their fingers through to make a gesture and your character grabs their arm and then breaks it and then uses magic powers to explode the door, and then they mismatched the timing of the fade up from the cutscene so every time you come up from it you're getting shot by like 8 people. anyways it's gears of war but destiny with no live team and no games as a service aspiration but the demo is one of the most on-fire games I've played in years so maybe don't get it at launch

guilty gear beta good play potemkin, wait for their string to end, grapple twice, cackle loudly

Man this last week. So like, on the last tuesday in January I accidentially apneate while laying on my side and have a massive panic attack about it. Kind of a come to jesus moment about my health. That wednesday I talk to my therapist and I'm like "ok we're back on this calorie counting starting immediately cuz this can't happen." Last sunday, my sister expresses disappointment that I'm not trying harder to lose weight because she doesn't want to outlive me. Like... men in our family die early anyways so like I'm only so much in control of that, but regardless I'm already counting calories. This is not good enough. She proceeds to clash with me, over and over, for three days about this, saying tons of unfair and untrue and cruel things, doubling down every time I try to express "I'm already working on it and this thing you are doing is hurting me." The last day, I plead with her to understand that what she is doing is hurting me, and she insists I'm "addicted" (i don't know to what, that wasn't specified) and just continued to double down. At a point, I set the phone down and walk away, since the last text I saw had "Let me just say this and then you'll never have to worry about me again." I didn't read whatever came next. After three days of being hurt over and over again, I'd had enough. She's blocked me on everything, and I don't think I'll ever read that stuff. I have theories as to what happened to her but they don't matter. No one in my life has ever been closer to me. She spent three days ripping me across every vital line I had over something I was already doing. I don't think I can let her be that close again. I'm lucky that I have a broad and amazing friend group, one I've developed over the course of the pandemic and one that's done a lot to help me this week. There's a time in my life this would have devastated me, and instead they put out the fires by hearing me out. Now I just have bewilderment, and work to do to keep myself from internalizing any of what was said. I have good memories of my sister. I don't know who that person I talked to this week was.

If you don't mess with pop or electronic music, I don't know how to begin to explain the impact SOPHIE has had on music in the last decade, or how that influence fucking exploded across the world of electronic and marginalized artists after this record, but if you'd like to start to understand then spin this today. RIP SOPHIE

DISCO ELYSIUM [4] It's a winter of backlog clearing and first on the plate was that I never finished my playthrough of this game. When I came back to my save, I discovered that the state I had left the game in was, uh, Catastrophic. I got a very bad set of ending circumstances, but in the skeleton of what I did I saw the amazing nature of everything I could have done and how much space there was for things to change. It's a 20 hour RPG that upon completion I immediately wanted to play again. This is, retroactively, the best game of 2019, and in totality, one of the finer things I've seen in my time playing games. DONUT COUNTY [1] And this is not. While i was tempted to play it at release, something kept me from it. Namely, a slowly increasing pit in my stomach over "indie games" and the homogenization of a codified style, where they become these pastel gelatin molds with googly eyes and they're trusting writing and "charm" to get the rest of the way. The success of the style only succeeds in making me feel really fucking insane. I made it three levels into this before the concept of doing more of it caused me to immediately stop and uninstall it. Game Pass is good because it gives me a chance to play an old game and be like "welp turns out I was right to never try this." I'm glad other people liked it, even if it makes my life harder to know that. MARS MATRIX [3] I briefly entertained becoming a Shmup guy again in my desire to have an action game I could play. This is one of them. Unfortunately, repetition makes me feel really bad so I can't become a true shmup high score chasing sort. MONSTER HUNTER RISE DEMO [3] A quick moment to re-establish what my scale means: 3 = "I don't regret playing this." The phrasing is purposefully nebulous to allow for situations like this: I am so glad they put out a demo so I could have a chance to see what they did to the Hunting Horn and that I could find out before I bought it. If I had learned it through buying it, it would be the end of me playing Monster Hunter games and you would be reading a screed. But since it didn't cost me anything to find out my weapon is no longer in the game and therefore I have nothing I enjoy doing in the game, I'm free! That's $60 I get to put somewhere else! Thanks Monster Hunter Rise Demo! I wrote this a day after I played it because if I wrote it in the middle of mourning the death of my sweet beautiful Hunting Horn, I'd lack the hindsight to understand that the people who worked on The Least Popular Weapon In The Game probably see that as a problem and would rather see it get played more. I hope for their sake it works.

Okay. I don't know what part of me is the same if I don't hear DOOM. In small ways, looking at every day objects or words causes me to remember a bunch of DOOM lines. "Brita water filter juice." "Oh, my aching hands, from raking in grands and breaking in mic stands." "Disappear, reappear, disappear again." I've got all of Great Day Today memorized. In larger ways, he kicked doors open in my creativity and expression. I don't tell jokes the same way without DOOM teaching me how to use surprise. I don't see things the same way without him. I think that's why this didn't make me hurt so bad? Because the stuff he's put out has already affected me so deeply and the work that did come out after Born Like This has all felt like blessings from an old master, I guess I was ready. I hear him in my mind all the time anyways. RIP. and thanks.

Hey I just wanted to make two things clear. First, I'm expanding the submission window to the end of this month. Second, no reviews for like a week because I find it hard, bordering on disrespectful, to listen to anything that's not MF DOOM at the moment.