Don’t have time for a big write-up, but here’s a great tune from The Appleseed Cast.

All the best metal comes from the lands of vikings, I’ll stand by that statement til the day I die. Ensiferum represents some of the best of the best. This track really shows off their range as it breaks down into a ‘Spaghetti Western’ style around the 3:10 mark and then launches into a blazing banjo solo at 6:05. You can find more info about Ensiferum here. I celebrate their entire catalog.

This week I present “Used for Glue” by the band Rival Schools from their 2001 album ‘United by Fate’. If that name sounds familiar it might be because of the 1998 Capcom fighter “Rival Schools: United by Fate” for the Playstation. Rival Schools was founded by NYC hardcore legend Walter Schreifels (Gorilla Biscuits, CIV, Quicksand) as a departure into more of an alterna-rock style. This song takes me way way back and makes me want to break out some JNCO’s.

Narrowing this down to one song a week is proving to be more difficult than I thought. I’ve been bouncing between 3 different songs since last week, trying to decide on the one to post. Ultimately I chose “Arrive” by Horse the Band. These guys have been making some amazing chip-tune flavored post-hardcore for the past decade. Many of their song titles and lyrics have had a Nintendo Theme (Pol’s Voice, Cut Man, Birdo). Their most recent album “Desperate Living” has a more refined sound than their previous releases, making it somewhat more accessible. I say ‘accessible’ but don’t misunderstand me… Horse the Band still have all the ingredients that make them so awesome. It took me a while to pick a song on this album because, to be honest, I love every song on there. If you like this track I highly recommend you check out the rest of the album and their other releases as well. Enjoy!

Sunny Day Real Estate is and always will be one of my favorite bands. This song is off of their final studio album “The Rising Tide” and really shows how their style evolved. SDRE came onto the scene in the early-mid 90’s when most of the Hardcore/Punk scene was dominated by the Revelation Records and Victory Records style. Somehow this band struck a chord with that audience and became the blue-print for many ‘emo’ bands that followed them. Emo has a nasty stigma attached to it these days, but back in 1994 it just meant “Hardcore music with melodic vocals”. Anyway, hope you enjoy this one and if you’re interested in more SDRE go check them out.

This week on NMM we have “M4, Pt. II” by the band Faunts. Anyone who has had the pleasure of completing Mass Effect will recognize this song as the music that plays over the end credits. The song works perfectly for Mass Effect. The whole game has an 80’s sci-fi movie feel to it and this song does the synth-space rock thing pretty well. I was immediately hooked on this band and decided to go check out their other releases. I was sad to see that there is no Faunts on the OST for Mass Effect 2, or any other rock music for that matter. This is the shorter music video version of the song, the actual track is twice as long with some pretty cool instrumental interludes. Anyway, if you like this track you should definitely check them out.

Welcome to my new weekly feature here on the Nerdlog. One of my 2010 resolutions was to get more content on here on a regular basis. I had been posting tons of music on Facebook via YouTube clips last year and since I deactivated my Facebook account I figure I should be posting that stuff here. So my goal is to have a new bit of music on here every monday morning.

So this week’s song is “Ashes in the Snow” by MONO. MONO is a Japanese instrumental post-rock band with a very similar sound to Scotland’s Mogwai. I recently got a copy of their album “Hymn of the Immortal Wind” and have fallen in love with the layers of sound they’ve created. “Ashes in the Snow” is the first track on the album and gives you a pretty good idea how the rest of the songs sound. If you want some cool background music while you’re working but aren’t into electronica this may be the album for you.

This week, The Lonely Island released a new album, “Incredibad”. You might know these guys form SNL’s “Digital Shorts” skits like “Dick In A Box” and “Lazy Sunday”, but I’ve been a fan of them for the past few years from their independant projects like “The Bu’” and of course “Stork Patrol”. These guys have a rare chemistry so I was pretty pumped when I found out “Incredibad” was coming out.

So far, I’ve given the new album a good three listenings, and like their previous work it just gets better every time I listen to it. You pick up little bits and pieces that you may have missed before, and it delivers on the laughs consistantly. You may recognize several tracks that are straight from their SNL skits like the before mentioned “Dick In A Box”, “Lazy Sunday”, “I’m On A Boat”, “Jizz In My Pants”, “Space Olympics”, “Ras Trent” and “Natelie’s Rap”. joining this group is “Santana DVX”, “Boombox”, “We Like Sports”…you know what, I just realized I’ve pratically listed every track on the album, and each title brings a smile to my face.

These guys are a success story in action. I know how cliche it sounds, but thanks to today’s technology (i.e. the internet) The Lonely Island was able to get their stuff out there. The fact that they are producing content that as far as I can tell is uncompromised from their indepenant work is rather astounding and rare. You can buy “Incredibad” at Amazon for a cool 8 beans. It’s totally worth the price. Plus, you can head over to TheLonelyIsland.com to get their earlier songs and shorts. It’s good stuff.

We’re Metallica fans here at Shamoozal, well most of us are anyway. Even though we don’t all see eye to eye on the particulars, I think we all agree that Metallica has rocked pretty hard over their career with varying degrees of success. So rather than have us write separate reviews of the new Metallica album ‘Death Magnetic’ we decided to join forces like Devestator and give you the Shamoozal Mega-Review^TM.

So sit back, throw on your copy of Death Magnetic and enjoy the celebration of all things Metallica…

John Manfre

Last week, Nine Inch Nails released a new single Discipline to a mysterious, untold album. The track was a free download off of NIN’s website. Buried in the metadata of the MP3 was a message saying to come back to the NIN site on May 5th. Today, they released for FREE their latest album, The Slip, as a thank you to the fans. You can get it in a variety of flavors from MP3 to FLAC off their website. A physical CD is still being planned for a July 08 release. The Slip is a shorter album than Year Zero, but its a pretty tight package. You gotta hand it to Trent Reznor for coming through with this amount of quality material over that past few months. NIN is planning a tour starting off this summer in all major cities. Trent’s been a busy guy!