My Music Recommendations

Agents Of Man - Count Your Blessings

2008-05-18T18:20:00.001-07:00

This band rocks. FTW.

via DonXml's Music Reviews by donxml on 9/24/06

Agents Of Man

Count Your Blessings

My Score: 7 out of 10

Category: Metal

I finally updated my website, and in the process, improved the look and feel of the site. One of the big things is that wanted to do is to fix the main page. You see, this site is primarily a technical site. But, I like to post about other things too (like music). In the old site, all post got equal weighting, as it just mimicked the full blog feed. But, with the new site, the tech posts are placed front and center, with my music posts relegated to the sidebar as just links to the post. This way I have the freedom to explore other topics, but I still get the Google juice to my other posts. If you want to explore the other stuff, that is great, but if you are only here for the tech stuff, well, the non tech stuff is a little less conspicuous, but still visible on the home page. Now I can feel less self conscious about posting too many music blog entries.

Agents of Man is a very hard band to categorize into a musical genre. Most of the band comes from the New Jersey and New York Hardcore scene (the members are mostly from Bulldoze, One 4 One and Train of Thought), but the band is anything but hardcore. I’ve seen a lot of negative reviews, mostly because they reviewers are trying to put them in the metalcore genre, and that surely isn’t the case either. The guys are mostly a couple years younger than me, and musically grew up with my younger brother Jay (J-Crime from NJ Bloodline and Fat Nuts) in the local NJ Hardcore scene. But the NJ scene was more than just hardcore, as most of the bands really got into the 80’s thrash stuff (Antrhax, early Metallica, etc.), along with the European melodic metal scene. So Agents of Man is really a mix of hardcore, metalcore, classic thrash & European metal. Their sound has the aggressiveness so prevalent in metalcore, along with some hardcore breakdowns, and sometimes throwing in the proverbial kitchen sink. You have the occasional scream vocals transitioning to all out melodic choruses, backed by a hard driving rhythm section.

The first 5 songs, Death of Me, No Tomorrow, Blood Money, Repercussion, Without a Trace, are killer metal songs. From there the quality varies from a guitar and vocal ballad (Be My Savior) to more metalcore sounding (Headless), to pure melodic metal (Can’t Run), typical of late 80’s NJ bands like Prophet.

If you are into the newer bands like Avenged Sevenfold, Bullet For My Valentine, or Eighteen Visions, you might want to check these guys out. If you are an old school metal guy and loved the hardcore/skater bands like Suicidal Tendencies (like me), well Agents of Man is a band that will give you hope that the music you loved back in the day is still influencing bands, and is making a come back (at least here in NJ).

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David Bowie - Diamond Dogs

2008-05-18T17:52:00.001-07:00

via Today's Blog Music - The Hype Machine on 5/18/08

From DiamondFacts: “ Revenues from diamonds have enabled governments and health organizations to greatly improve existing public health services and provide new health services to those who have never had them before. Diamond revenues have funded more h (in post Diamonds in the Rough from If It's Good, It's Good. Download this at Amazon iTunes)

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Starting experiment in music recommendation

2008-04-15T23:58:00.000-07:00

Our common friend introduced me to bunch of new web sites. I am a noobie in social networking but know nuf about tech bs. Let me start by sharing my song selections.

Closed off from love

I didn't need the pain

Once or twice was enough

And it was all in vain

Time starts to pass

Before you know it you're frozen

But something happened

For the very first time with you

My heart melts into the ground

Found something true

And everyone's looking round

Thinking I'm going crazy

But I don't care what they say

I'm in love with you

They try to pull me away

But they don't know the truth

My heart's crippled by the vein

That I keep on closing

You cut me open and I

Keep bleeding

Keep, keep bleeding love

I keep bleeding

I keep, keep bleeding love

Keep bleeding

Keep, keep bleeding love

You cut me open

Trying hard not to hear

But they talk so loud

Their piercing sounds fill my ears

Try to fill me with doubt

Yet I know that the goal

Is to keep me from falling

But nothing's greater

Than the rush that comes with your embrace

And in this world of loneliness

I see your face

Yet everyone around me

Thinks that I'm going crazy, maybe, maybe

But I don't care what they say

I'm in love with you

They try to pull me away

But they don't know the truth

My heart's crippled by the vein

That I keep on closing

You cut me open and I

Keep bleeding

Keep, keep bleeding love

I keep bleeding

I keep, keep bleeding love

Keep bleeding

Keep, keep bleeding love

You cut me open

And it's draining all of me

Oh they find it hard to believe

I'll be wearing these scars

For everyone to see

I don't care what they say

I'm in love with you

They try to pull me away

But they don't know the truth

My heart's crippled by the vein

That I keep on closing

You cut me open and I

Keep bleeding

Keep, keep bleeding love

I keep bleeding

I keep, keep bleeding love

Keep bleeding

Keep, keep bleeding love

You cut me open and I

Keep bleeding

Keep, keep bleeding love

I keep bleeding

I keep, keep bleeding love

Keep bleeding

Keep, keep bleeding love

You cut me open and I

Keep bleeding

Keep, keep bleeding love