Cordavision Music Reviews

Literally took a couple minutes to figure out what the hell this cover was, but it’s cool, I guess. I’ve been aware of Yung Lean for a while now and he honestly hasn’t done that much for me when it comes to his music. Sure, the pictures of him with Kanye West and Rei Ayanami from Neon Genesis Evangelion are insanely funny to me, but that’s the most positive I’ve been with him. Finally, Lean gets put in the Cordavision chamber with Stardust , his first project in a couple years that I’ve been eager to check out. Let’s get into it. You know, I’ll give it this one thing: It was never boring. Each track had something I liked about it, whether it was Lean himself, the production, or a featured artist, but for an odd reason, it all never really came together. I know it’s very cliche to compare an album to a rollercoaster, but it really felt like that. It took many twists and turns, and I really didn’t know what to expect from the next song while listening to it. The only track I really did ...

Oh, the Ho99o9! Ho99o9 [an absolute joy to type] are a group that are genuinely unique in a big crowd of unique musicians coming out these days. The first time I had heard them was on clipping.’s amazing 2020 album Visions of Bodies Being Burned , and since their feature on that album, it’s been a wild listen for me. I think that their debut album United States of Horror is pretty good, and ever since their next album Skin was announced, I’ve been ready. I haven’t heard any of the singles, so I’m fully ready to dive into this without warning. Let’s just do it right now and get into Skin . It’s worth noting that Travis Barker from blink-182 produced this entire album and is the first official release on his own label, DTA. Admittedly, that kind of worried me for a second because of Barker’s inconsistency recently, but I think his production nailed it. The mix of trap, metal, and industrial music is a damn-near perfect blend of each genre. Even with the features from Bun B and Slipknot...

British punk is one of the surprise subgenres of 2021 that finally clicked for me. I don’t know much about Idles, but I had heard a couple of their albums, which are 2018’s Joy as an Act of Resistance and 2020’s Ultra Mono . I ended up liking both of them, so in that mindset, I decided to check out their newest album, whenever that would be released. I was just surprised that it ended up coming out this soon. This one’s called CRAWLER , and like most albums in this genre, I ended up going in blind and not listening to any of the singles. So, let’s not waste any more time and get into CRAWLER . What I think is the biggest thing that sets it apart from the other Idles albums I’ve heard is that this sounds the most intense out of all of them. You know what’s funny? That’s really all I have for it. It was pretty intense, vocalist Joe Talbot is pretty intense most of the time, and the track “Car Crash” is one of the most intense songs I’ve heard this year. I think it’s pretty impressive th...

If this is the 2000s pop-punk revival, I’m down for it. If you don’t know who Willow is, I mean, come on. Willow Smith is the daughter of Will Smith and brother of Jaden Smith. Granted, it’s been a hot minute since I’ve kept up with her music. I know she has a self-titled album from a few years back, but I haven’t heard it. Why? Because this would apparently have a completely different sound here: The pop-punk sound of the 2000s that was (personally) perfected by Avril Lavigne. Switching from conscious R&B to this seems pretty risky, but Willow seems like she’s confident in this. lately i feel EVERYTHING is Willow’s second album and features contributions from blink-182’s Travis Barker, Ayla Tesler-Mabe, Tierra Whack, Cherry Glazerr, and the aforementioned Avril Lavigne. Is this album a successful revival at a long-dormant sound? Let’s find out. So, let’s just answer the question I posed above right now. I think it’s almost there. It’s not that long of an album, only 26 minutes, s...

There are sadly no sea creatures involved in this album :( Call me crazy, but this post-punk craze in 2021 has been a tiny bit underwhelming. Bands like Idles and Shame have had decent records in the past few months, but what really picked up the scene for me was Black Country, New Road’s debut record For the first time . That album is one of my favorites of the year so far and has really inspired me to dive into the post-punk scene. When I had entered this scene, I had heard rumbles of a relatively new band, Squid. They had dropped a few singles from this album, Bright Green Field , and I decided to intentionally avoid them, just like I did with For the first time . Simply put, I had to give this a few extra listens before I sat down and wrote this out. Is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing? Let me tell you. Going in without listening or even knowing the singles from this album was a pretty great decision. God, this album is catchy as fuck. My favorite track off this was “Narrator...

 

When I said I was bringing back written reviews, you didn’t think it’d be this album, huh? Well, let me flex my ability to write decent articles before I started doing YouTube videos and talk to you about Speedin’ Bullet 2 Heaven . This album right here is quite an oddball. Scott Mescudi, or Kid Cudi, was in a dark place for some of his life. That’s nothing new, we all have rough patches. Cudi here happens to be a musician, and music is a way to peer into the mind and emotions of that artist. Sometimes, it even connects to you, the listener. When Cudi pivoted from hip-hop to rock on this project, it was pretty shocking. Yes, he’s dabbled in rock music before with his WIZRD group, but a Kid Cudi rock album? The amount of emotion that he puts into his music already was different for hip-hop at the time, but if that was put into a rock album… the concept here was pretty amazing on paper. On paper. This is a pretty ambitious undertaking for such an established name in the rap game. Along w...

 

 

Not a lot of people know this about me, but I’m a sucker for some good pop-punk. blink-182’s Enema of the State is one of those albums that will always stay iconic for me, while I guess if you wanna call My Chemical Romance ‘punk,’ Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge and The Black Parade are some of my favorite punk albums ever. After seeing what Machine Gun Kelly has been doing with his career, I would’ve never expected him to make a full-on pop-punk album, mainly produced by blink-182’s Travis Barker, no less. Either way, this is tickets to my downfall , MGK’s latest album and sort of an artistic risk for him. Let’s see if the risk pays off. tickets to my downfall is a rock album with pop, punk, and hip-hop influences. Now, I have to admit, I was a little worried heading into this. When I heard that this was a rock album, I immediately thought of Kid Cudi’s Speedin’ Bullet 2 Heaven , his A-for-effort rock venture that fell flat on its face. Somehow, MGK’s turn at punk is… kinda good?...