I’ve been writing about movies for a long time on my website but a driving force in my everyday life is definitely music. Since a young age, my mom had been playing tapes in her car and at home for me and it’s something that caught on and with it, an eclectic as ear as my eye is for film. So, with this in mind, I thought I would start compiling playlists of my days in two week pieces. It gets out there odd sometimes and I have a heavy metal ear and a candy pop and synth heart so these playlist might get weird!
Track #1: Eyes Set To Kill – Misery – Eyes Set To Kill (2018)
A four-piece out of Tempe, Arizona, this band is fronted by the Rodriguez sisters, lead guitarist and vocalist Alexia and bassist Anissa. Spotify recommended their self-titled album, the sixth full-length they had released, and I was hooked. This is a jam that I consistently rock out to when I do a usual front-to-back listen of the record.
“Can’t get me out of your mind
Misery, misery”
Track #2: Darkest Hour – Tranquil – Undoing Ruin (2005)
Absolute face-melters out of Washington, D.C., these guys became one of my favorite metal bands of all time after first discovering their music on a CKY skate video, then my purchase of this album, Undoing Ruin. This track starts with a great snare lead directly off the previous track, Paradise. A glorious six and a half minutes, it includes a stunning solo and an outro that bookends so beautifully with track one, With A Thousand Words To Say But One
“Now I know that the worst part is behind us now
Now I know that we’ll get on with life
‘Cause we deserve it”
Track #3: Atreyu – Honor – Lead Sails Paper Anchor (2007)
A great mix of blistering and clean vocals, this Yorba Linda, California band got on my radar with their 2004 album, The Curse, but this album keeps coming up with the most liked songs. Honor, the second track on the album, has that good metalcore drive and a chorus that spurs you to sing along. To top it all off, it has a shouting line that is so fun to lose yourself to, going “Fight, fight, fight ’til the break of dawn!”
“We’ll fight our battles, we’ll wage our wars
Settle the scores with honor and blood
We’ll wear our scars like medals of hope
Like medals of hope, like medals of hope”
Track #4: The Offspring – Gotta Get Away – Smash (1994)
The landmark record that put The Offspring on the map of mainstream radio bands, this is an album that is a big part of my music taste formations that I found myself, obviously through listening to the radio incessantly. Now imagine a thirteen-year-old Steve seeing the music video for this song and discovering what a mosh pit is. Yes, it was a total game-changer for a young man and it may still be my favorite track on the record.
“Sitting on the bed
And lying wide awake
There’s demons in my head
And it’s more than I can take
I think I’m on a roll
But I think it’s kinda weak
Saying all I know is
I gotta get away from me”
Track #5: Violent Femmes – Add It Up – Violent Femmes (1983)
When you hear this band’s name probably the first thing that comes to mind is their biggest hit, Blister In The Sun, a song about masturbation that gets played at sporting events sometimes, prompting those who know to giggle. That was my beginning with them too as well as their song on The Crow soundtrack but this song, with its breakneck stand up bass notes and the frenetic wailing vocals from Gordon Gano all get me grooving. Plus, it’s used brilliantly in Jennifer Lynch’s mystery thriller Surveillance.
“Words to memorize, words hypnotize
Words make my mouth exercise
Words all failed the magic prize
Nothing I can say when I’m in your thighs”
Track #6: Apocalyptica – S.O.S. (Anything But Love) – Worlds Collide (2007)
I’m a real sucker for mixing classical-style orchestral with heavy metal guitars and drums so when I got a whiff of a Helsinki-based and cello-driven instrumental band Apocalyptica, I was all over it immediately. Worlds Collide has many great singer pairings but this one with Lacuna Coil frontwoman Cristina Scabbia is a song I go to time and time again. Cristina is an absolute force that pairs so beautifully with their full-bodied metal sound.
“Oh, stripped down to my naked core
The darkest corners of my mind are yours
That’s where you live, that’s where you breathe”
Track #7: Placebo – Pure Morning – Without You I’m Nothing (1998)
This was the first track I ever heard from this London band and it became a quick earworm, along with the other single Every You, Every Me solidifying that I liked their sound. Decades later and now in my forties, they are a group that constantly comes up on my liked songs list shuffle and it is all starting from this leading single. Placebo is incredibly important to British emo pop rock and this is an all-timer
“A friend in need’s a friend indeed
A friend with weed is better
A friend with breasts and all the rest
A friend who’s dressed in leather
A friend in need’s a friend indeed
A friend who’ll tease is better
Our thoughts compressed, which makes us blessed
And makes for stormy weather”.
Track #8: Tantric – Breakdown – Tantric (2001)
Being a huge fan of the acoustic heavy act Days Of The New, I knew that Todd Whitener, Jesse Vest and Mat Taul were worth following after being fired by frontman Travis Meeks. Forming Tantric with Massachusetts native Hugo Ferreira was a comfortable move as his and Meeks style are closely related, just without the overswell of ego. This was the first of three singles off the record and just with that beginning riff, you know it rocks.
“I know the breakdown
Everything is gonna shake now someday
I know the breakdown
Tell me again am I awake now maybe
You can find the reason that no one else is living this way”
Track #9: In Flames – Bottled – Soundtrack To Your Escape (2004)
Easily one of my favorite records of all time, I listened to this one front to back multiple times over and over again when I bought it. One thing I adore about this Gothenburg, Sweden band is the chances they take in their composition and Bottled is definitely one of those risk takers towards the end of Soundtrack To Your Escape. Hell, it even does a bridge that sounds like it’s straight out of the Highlands of Scotland.
“I channel the pain through this
The paper, the pen, your eyes
To stare into what’s next
It frightens me
No control, no reward”
Track #10: Future Leaders Of The World – Spotlight – LVL IV (2004)
With a hammering intro, this Buffalo, New York band shows its post grunge cards immediately which is only heightened when Phil Taylor’s pretty Cobain sounding vocals kick in. THis track is a total headbanger to scream along with and if it wasn’t for the Spotify recommendations I never would have stumbled upon them. Solid stuff to get into now, especially as the band hasn’t released anything in almost a decade.
“We’re gonna pull you in
Never gonna let you out
Make sure you know your way in a crowd
When freedom only costs as much as you can buy
They’ll sell you whole life in pieces, rest till you die”
Track #11: Tegan And Sara – So Jealous – So Jealous (2004)
The Canadian content has arrived on this playlist finally and it is twins out of Calgary, Alberta that kind of became my music obsession after the release of their album, The Con. Going back through their catalog afterwards, this title track always stuck out to me. A lilting pulse that moves into a snare-hammering chorus. Love it.
“There I am in the morning
I don’t like what I see”
Track #12: Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Cold Light – Fever To Tell (2003)
Opening with the sultry vocals of the iconic and immediate Steve crush Karen O, this track off the New York City indie trio’s debut record gives a great indicator of their unique sound. I love the simple crunchiness of the drums and guitar mixed with the sex kitteny vocals, it really just makes you have to move to sway with their gravity. Heck, that can be said for all of the tracks off of Fever To Tell to be honest.
“Cold light
Hot night
Be my heater be my lover
And we could do it to each other”
Track #13: Sturgill Simpson – Sing Along – SOUND & FURY (2019)
This is a cool one because it’s sort of a crossover with my reviewing side as Sturgill stars in the new and ten-time Oscar-nominated Martin Scorsese film Killers Of The Flower Moon but his “day job” is as a country singer. This is also a rare one as country is not a genre that will appear very often at all on these playlists as I generally don’t like any of it. That said, this song is such a toe-tapper and reminds me of something Jesse Hughes of the Eagles Of Death Metal would have put together. It’s funny that I have a country song on the first playlist I put together here.
“Words can stab as deep as night
And cut like a razored thorn
Bitter air and the winds of spite
Like the cold of winter’s scorn
Leaves may fall on sleeping ground
But the wind sweeps them away
Like hurt lovers in the final round
What once was is now decayed”
Track #14: Olivia Rodrigo – ballad of a homeschooled girl – GUTS (2023)
Be warned, I have my metal side but I also have my pop side and my adoration of some pop stars and it makes its first appearance here to close out the playlist. Olivia was that TikTok song that felt like it repeated one part of the track over and over again to a nauseating degree but once I dug into the record, I was shocked with how much I liked it. The second album is even better with its maturity and this song is probably my favorite to come from it.
“I broke a glass, I tripped and fell
I told secrets I shouldn’t tell
I stumbled over all my words
I made it weird, I made it worse”
Steve Stebbing 