@joshthefunkdoc
i like music written by drug addicts who slept on floors soaked in cat piss every night
Bathory - Under the Sign of the Black Mark Haven't dug as much into extreme metal but god i love how this sounds like it was recorded in hell, noise-adjacent tbh Enter the Eternal Fire is an all-timer! Highlights: Enter the Eternal Fire, Equimanthorn, Woman of Dark Desires, Call from the Grave
Blind Guardian - Imaginations from the Other Side "Pure" power metal has never been done better than this! Their heaviest record and their most consistent, though their next 2 albums afterward have higher highs imo Highlights: Title track, Bright Eyes, And the Story Ends, A Past and Future Secret
Skinny Puppy - Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse A halfway point between their earlier synthpop and later noisy horror. Better songwriting than their followup; 200 Years is a dark horse for my top 10 SP tracks! Highlights: 200 Years, One Time One Place, God's Gift (Maggot), Love, Stairs and Flowers
Chat Pile - Remove Your Skin Please EP My fav modern band finally enters the chat (har har)! Big Black meets The Jesus Lizard meets Godflesh meets the dirtbag left, but w/ a more cinematic bent. Dallas Beltway is my #2 song of all time, FYI. Highlights: Dallas Beltway, all of it's great though!
The Black Mages - The Black Mages i'm not a fan of "arrange" albums for game music, but this is something else. If you can deal w/ the cheesy synths this is strong prog metal - the Gilgamesh theme is total NJPW entrance music! Highlights: Clash on the Big Bridge, J-E-N-O-V-A, Dancing Mad
Babyland - You Suck Crap Deleted this post by mistake, so: Hardcore punk w/ old-timey computer sounds in place of guitars (their style is called "computercore"), rivetheads will feel at home here too. A bit of 90s album bloat but so unique i don't mind! Highlights: Smrow-Toh, Mask, Burning Up
Alice in Chains - Jar of Flies These days i'm kind of a grunge hater as i find the music that inspired it much more interesting, but this band is the exception. This one's more relaxed than their most famous album but harrowing in its own way Highlights: Rotten Apple, I Stay Away, Whale & Wasp
To close it off, Game Newton's tier list for Soul Calibur III: Arcade Edition! Remember, Namco used console as the beta test for SC3 - the arcade version is such an improvement you can barely even call them both SC3. All the Variable Cancel bugs are gone, X was nerfed, etc.
Onward to Game Newton's 2025 tier list for the beloved Soul Calibur II! Again, the top tiers mostly match the console SC2 consensus (though Talim and ESPECIALLY Maxi are higher here). Cass & Cervy are a bit lower here vs. console, and Kilik quite a bit lower
Game Newton runs an annual event called SSS World Cup, it's tournaments for the arcade versions of Soul Calibur 1+2+3 One neat detail is the players at the arcade work together and make a tier list for each of the 3 games, then show it on stream before each game starts! Here's (ARCADE) SC1:
Chrome - Alien Soundtracks For years i'd thought this was just the beta test for Half Machine Lip Moves, but god was that off! Pygmies in zee Park might be my fav Chrome song & makes me kinda wish they went full goth, haha Highlights: Pygmies in zee Park, Slip it to the Android, Chromosome Damage
DJ Shadow - Endtroducing A ""RYM album"" that my sibling discovered when we were kids. Instrumental hip-hop/trip-hop w/ a mostly relaxed nighttime vibe, the 90s-ass interludes suck but the rest is gold! Highlights: Midnight in a Perfect World, Changeling, Building Steam with a Grain of Salt
Big Black - Songs About Fucking Less experimental than Atomizer, but still full of that buzzsaw guitar sound & Albini's acerbic lyricism. Fish Fry is one of the most straightforward & haunting portrayals of misogyny i've ever heard in music! Highlights: Fish Fry, Bad Penny, L Dopa, Pavement Saw
T-Ride - T-Ride Like Life Sex & Death, this was a one-and-done project that updated hair metal for the 90s. The difference here is far more influence from black music - you've got New Jack Swing beats and even some rapping! Highlights: Zombies from Hell, Luxury Cruiser, Backdoor Romeo
The Gerogerigegege - Yellow Trash Bazooka EP Moenai Hai was an anomaly for this band, so here's something in their "classic" style (i.e. yelling "1-2-3-4" then playing 10 seconds of noise vomit before moving on to the next "song"). Here, every song title begins with G! Highlights: Gay, Genderfuck
Justice - Cross Remember when these guys were Pitchfork darlings? Haven't connected with their later work but this one holds up - the sound is rooted more in disco and less in the aggro robot farts that drenched their next album. Highlights: DVNO, Stress, Genesis, Let There Be Light
Nine Inch Nails - The Fragile Their true high point imo - if the Left side were a standalone album, it would rank in my top 10! The Right side is less consistent (i'm a Starfuckers hater, sorry) but still def worth being there. Highlights: La Mer, The Great Below, Ripe (With Decay), Pilgrimage
Butthole Surfers - Butthole Surfers EP The debut for the ur-shitposters of 80s rock, and easily their most "punk" release; there's even a hardcore-punk parody song! One of my fav album openers, and just delightfully stupid all around. Highlights: Shah Sleeps in Lee Harvey's Grave, Something, Hey
Hisayoshi Ogura - Darius Gaiden OST Forgot about my all-time fav game composer! In honor of this game getting into AGDQ i'll say it's possibly my GOAT game soundtrack. Yellow Magic Orchestra made weirder & more otherworldly, w/ VISIONNERZ as a landmark. Highlights: VISIONNERZ, FAKE, SELF, AXON
Meat Puppets - Up On the Sun Meat Puppets II is this band's consensus peak, but i say this is their best! They exchange the punk energy from II for a relaxed summertime vibe which i prefer. Two Rivers is absolute god tier! Highlights: Two Rivers, Up on the Sun, Maiden's Milk, Swimming Ground
Skinny Puppy - Rabies Produced by Al Jourgensen, this puts a much more metal spin on SP's sound. Their most divisive record among the core fanbase but i might enjoy it even more than VIVISectVI these days! Worlock & Tin Omen are top 10 Puppy imo Highlights: Worlock, Tin Omen, Fascist Jock Itch
Midori - あらためまして、はじめまして、ミドリです Japanese noise jazz-punk fronted by a woman who can be seductive or fucking SCREAM. Yukiko-san is one of the absolute GOAT noise rock tracks, but there's good variety of styles w/ virtually no filler. Highlights: Yukiko-san, Osaru, Howling Jigoku, Kanashii Hibi
Nightwish - Once More theater kid metal! The band ditches EU power metal in favor of more Americanized sounds. This was controversial at the time but it's their most beloved album now, thanks to the strong songwriting. Highlights: Ghost Love Score, Dark Chest of Wonders, Romanticide, Planet Hell
Font Line Assembly - Tactical Neural Implant Back to our usual programming w/ one of THE masterpieces of 90s industrial and the single most "cyberpunk" album i've ever heard. Bill Leeb is a cagey chud, but i have to acknowledge the brilliance here! Highlights: Final Impact, Mindphaser, Gun
The Ballers - A Day Late and a Dollar Short Another one-and-done group a la Life Sex & Death, the theme here is "G-Funk but jazzier w/ lots more rapping about Florida". Me 4 Me uses a sample that would later resurface on Madvillainy! Highlights: Ain't Nothin' Changed, Me 4 Me, Saturday
Being reminded of Flux Magazine today... For those who don't know, Flux was a pop-culture mag w/ a primary focus on video games, and it only existed for < 10 issues in 1995 i think. It oozed that mid-90s edgelord vibe, shitting on Kiddie Games(tm) in favor of Doom & Mortal Kombat
Blind Guardian - Nightfall in Middle-Earth And now we get to my theater-kid side! Power metal w/ some symphonic elements & plenty of Queen DNA, used to retell the Silmarillion. Worth a shot even if you dgaf about LOTR (as i don't)! Highlights: Time Stands Still, Mirror Mirror, Nightfall
Otoboke Beaver - Itekoma Hits 4 Japanese office ladies w/ very color-coordinated 60s fashion sense form a hardcore punk band and god do i love almost every moment of this. Vocal hooks for days even if you don't know the language! Highlights: Love Is Short, Ikezu, Bad Luck, Bakuro Book
Skinny Puppy - VIVISectVI Back to my kamioshis, this time with the peak of 80s electro-industrial! Lots of animal-rights & geopolitical stuff here, and am i the only one who thinks the best thing here is Hospital Waste? Highlights: Hospital Waste, Harsh Stone White, VX Gas Attack