Free Music Friday 24!

Bandcamp.
Is there a better website for discovering new music? I think not.
You can get free albums, unlike MySpace where you have to stream one song at a time.
You can download the whole album and keep it. Once again, MySpace streams.
You can buy it directly from the band if you like their shit.

If it wasn't for Bandcamp, I wouldn't have done Free Music Friday. About 70% of this stuff comes direct from Bandcamp. And it's generally some random band that has absolutely no info and I have no idea how I stumbled onto it.

Which brings us around full circle to this Free Music Friday. It's a band called Step Dads. And the only picture I could find is from their Facebook.

There is apparently a very attractive female in this band, according to the picture. Which of course means I like them a lot already.

But in a non-sexist way, I decided I liked this band way before I knew that. You see, they are that noisy type of post-hardcore that I love. Post-hardcore to most of the young generation is just synth/breakdowns/bad-core music (think Bring Me The Horizon etc), so it always irks me that the old/good style of post-hardcore is lost. That's another rant for another day though.

The last few weeks I've been blasting a lot of the Black Powder and Black Eyes and really any of that good old-style of Dischord records style of music. Also the amazing Arms Exploding album that someone over at Phatry Records was nice enough to package for free in a vinyl order for me. Basically old-school amazing post-hardcore. And it's made me so nostalgic that I've also been blaring a lot of At the Drive-In. The point is, I've fallen back in love with the more "classic" style of post-hardcore, especially the times when it just disintegrates into a very noisy-style.

Step Dads are that style. I wish I knew more about them, but so far apart from their Facebook and Bandcamp, I've seen nothing. Except they're from Indiana. Go the midwest! (my old stomping grounds).

Over on their Bandcamp, you can get their EP for absolutely free. Chuck it a listen if you like the sound of anything I've mentioned so far this blog post, or you just want some excellent, noisy and slightly chaotic music.

They also have a song called Legos. I basically want to be in this band.

Finch

Continuing on my run of emo-bands from my teenage years, it's time to talk about Finch. At about the same time as Taking Back Sunday, they released the album What It Is To Burn, featuring a mix of emo, alternative rock and post-hardcore. I dug it hard.

They had a few acoustic songs that my friends and I always used to mimic in our jam sessions. As I write this I'm listening to a demo Kenny and I recorded... Halfway through, we start yelling about ducks. Good times.

After What It Is To Burn we waited for what seemed like an eternity. The band kind of disappeared. And then they came back with a single track to the Underworld soundtrack. It went a lot heavier than their earlier work and showed an interesting twist, which came to fruition with their second album, Say Hello to Sunshine. This album, although alienating a lot of fans, has now become one of my all time favourites. It's amazing.

They then broke up and disappeared. Only to reappear with a disappointing EP and a spot on the Soundwave Festival in 2009. I was lucky enough to see them twice on that tour and was just blown away. There was hope for them in the future! They were recording again! Demos existed!

But then, this week, the end. They announced they were done. Differences of opinions. No longer able to collaborate together. Which is sad, because they left us two finished songs. And they are awesome. You can get them here.

I'm going to go listen to Say Hello to Sunshine now and be all sad in my room while clutching my Finch drumstick.

New My Chemical Romance Song

I Brought you My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love was a huge album for me. It introduced me to post-hardcore with it's fast guitars, progressive drumming and insane live shows. I saw My Chemical Romance play some amazing live shows on the back of this album (with some amazing tour mates such as From Autumn to Ashes, Taking Back Sunday, Recover, Murder by Death and Vaux) for some ridiculously cheap prices. I don't think I paid more that $15.


They were insane, one of the highlights for me was at Gabe's Oasis in Iowa City back in high school days. In one song, I think it was Drowning Lessons, the guitarist was jumping around like a madman, eventually running across the stage, jumping feet first into the wall, pushing off it, landing on his back, all without missing a beat.

If you had talked to me before the release of the Black Parade, I would have mentioned this band. Hell, I used to wear their shirts to uni almost weekly. And then the Black Parade came out, pretty much ruining their music much in the same vein as American Idiot did to Green Day (shit, it turns out both albums were produced by the same man. Thanks Wikipedia for confirming how jointly shit they were). When I saw them at Big Day Out they just stood there playing their instruments. It seems their energy went away with their good songs.

Well anyway, enough reminiscing. They have a new album coming out soon with a horrible name: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys. Bleh. There's a song leak on soundcloud too http://soundcloud.com/attentiondrain/mcr-na-na-na/s-m3qv7. And it sounds just as horrible and modern-rock-pop as the Black Parade. I've given them one more album until I write them off, so I have a feeling this may be the parting of ways for me and this band. We've had some fun and I will still continue to play songs from I brought you my bullets on my guitar.