Weekly Recap (Feb 5th-11th, 2024)

Discover Weekly

- ifa - Burn Your Desire

- GhostBoi - LEVITATE (Yes. The Vibe.)

- Ak3k - Shinigami Eyes (I'm not too sure if I like the lyrics, but for now, they fit The Vibe.)

- Babel - movie screen (A bit mumbly, but it fits the song. And the vocal delivery fits this song's vibe, anyway. Sounds a bit like Billie Eilish, actually.)

- whatyoudid. - SuperVillain Origin Story (Fun song concept.)

- KAYLA KING ft. Lauren Babic - STAR WALKIN' (Two metal singers do a pop rock cover of a pop rap song for a video game? Haha 😂 It was alright.)

- Rezodrone - beLIEver (I like the title. It's chorus is a bit too... epic and hopeful 😂 for it to fit The Vibe. But I liked the song.)

- Faetooth - Echolalia (Coool. The Vibe, and they get a follow. "Fairy doom", huh? I hear it and I LOVE it. 🖤)

- HORSKH - Trying More (Nice mix of metal and electronic music. Very chaotic, doesn't fit The Vibe, but fuckin hell...)

- Hellhills - Before I Bleed

- Black Math - Detonate (It's cool people still do alt metal, the kind of alt metal my youth had. Reminds me of Mudvayne and System of a Down. But they got their own thing going on, otherwise it wouldn't be alt metal, would it?)

- Aeon Smiles ft. Sunbeats & Juzo Mori - Prey

Release Radar

- Knox Hill - Crème Brûlée (Yeah, it's a pretty good song, nice triples. I made an Initial Thoughts post about it.)

- Statik G - Take Me Home (More country? I know it's only been two songs, but like... in a row. Is he working on a country album? That might do well in America. Country ain't my thing, tho.)

- Token - WHY WOULD U WANNA BREAKUP? (I like the beat, and the certain kinda energy this got... He sounds calm, not aggressive at all, but he's... menacing, sort of. Demanding an answer, but calmly.)

- Tech N9ne Collabos (with, like, seven people on one track) - Roll Call (Talented bunch. You rap fast, you can fit seven people in a bit over 6min song.)

- Naïka - 6:45 (Nice, dance-y but chill. Latin rhythms and multilingual, like a lot of her music.)

- Kalevauva.fi & Paleface - Hämeenlinna (Musically, Kalevauva's songs aren't my thing, but his lyrics are hilarious. They're 100% compiled from internet forums and message boards. I saw him live once and couldn't stop laughing. This song is about a Finnish town called Hämeenlinna, asking "why does everyone hate Hämeenlinna" and then various reasons people have listed.)

- Borknagar - Moon (Cool, I like them! Just read a Loudwire article saying they have a new album coming out, this is probably from that. Prog metal is sooo my jam.)

- Harper - I Hope You Choke (She's, what, 13 now? And can scream with the best of them!)

- Infected Mushroom - Disco Mushroom REBORN (Epic. Like, literally, beginning sounded like a movie soundtrack. Then it got different... my mind gives me an image of a dystopian scifi video game, with high tech, but also playful, colorful plants and mushrooms, obviously... The tech and nature coexisting. Similar to the video game Stray. And the protagonist child who was supposed to save the world because only their blood contains an antiviral, becomes the antagonist... That's what I'd make, as an animation, if I'd make a music video for this. If I knew how to do animation. I think I need to draw what I envision, if I can... My imagination is better than my drawing skills.)

- nothing,nowhere. - Pity Party (More positive and pop-leaning/mainstream than I remember his older songs being? Sounds ok, though.)

- Mimi Barks - FSU (Such a cool genre mashup again... Rap, metal, pop... Everything, coexisting.)

- TWENTYTHREE ft. Istasha - NOT FOR ESCAPING A NIGHTMARE (The Vibe. Also, the line "rest in pieces"... Wow. Brutal. I love it.)

- Nini Music - HUYAO (Ok, folk metal, tho! Endless pit of new sounds one's never heard before. This is amazing!)

- Knives At Sea x allalonealaska - MISFIT (Yesss, genre mixes for the win! Not The Vibe, but very interesting! Followed both.)

- Rosey Reign - Fallen Angel (I hear potential. She might have song I like even more than this one, this was pretty good.)

- Satin Puppets - Desolate (Quite pop, but atmospheric and alt enough to be The Vibe.)

About The Vibe

I'm really enjoying going through my almost 6000 liked songs on Spotify and making a playlist where I am the only authority to decide what fits The Vibe and what doesn't. Even if no one else cares but me, it's still somewhat a confidence boost. My opinion matters, even if it only matters to me. Same thing goes for this blog. Most posts get 1-5 reads, I've yet to receive any comments, but I don't care. Here, I don't have to listen to anyone but myself, I'm free to be me and say whatever the fuck I want. I love it. It's very liberating to have my own space for my thoughts, where I don't have to make myself fit anyone else's expectations.

And it really helped that I started to make a separate list, of just names, on my phone's notes app, of artists that don't fit The Vibe but whose music has REALLY made an impression on me and I want to listen more and support in the future.

The concept of The Vibe is a bit unclear to me as well, but basically it's songs that make me feel like Katatonia's music makes me feel (they've been my favorite band for about a decade now). Melancholic and thoughtful, but calm and confident at the same time. But not like a boasty rapper kinda confident or a feminist power anthem kinda confident, more like a quiet, introvert kind of self-assuredness that makes my anxious, depressed brain a much more tolerable place to be in. My happy place, of sorts. But a very metalhead-y kind of happy place, in the sense that it's more peer support from lyricists who've dealt with mental health problems themselves and turned that into something beautiful, rather than a happy-go-lucky escapist kinda mentality. That's not for me. Not all the songs are about depression, but from an outsider's perspective, it's not a happy playlist.

And also, this is me bringing different sides of myself together, onto one playlist that looks like me. Men, women, enbies and everyone in between, queer and cishet, metal, hiphop, pop, alt, everything - labels don't matter, as long as the music fits The Vibe. 

Sure, I'm an enby (NB, nonbinary), I'm queer, I'm still more a metalhead than hiphophead or pophead or any-other-head. But those labels don't matter to me. We're all humans, we're all complex and multifaceted creatures. Genders or genres don't matter, boxes just keep us separated from each other, when we have more in common than we think.

(One big exception I make again is people who have committed sexually charged crimes. Those crimes are inexcusable, nothing another person does or says makes it ok to commit those crimes. Those people don't pass the vibe check, they're not The Vibe. I have blocked most of them on Spotify anyway, the ones I know of that is, since they don't deserve to be on playlist, on my blog or even played on my devices. I don't believe in full cancellation, though, I think everyone gets to decide themselves where they draw the boundaries an artist cannot cross, but this is a major boundary for me, that makes me boycott an artist. I hope that it's a boundary for many people now and in the future, but it's not my decision to make what society does as a whole.)