So Ive been tagged in two of these top 10 album posts by Michael Harron & Dom Grech, but since I did a top 10 albums earlier this year I have decided to follow up this time with 21 underground songs that changed my life Happy reading; Dolly Denko, Lee Stevenson & Jake Leaney I invite you three to post about your top 10 albums are just something about the music that has influenced what you do. 1. 311 –Amber Being a big fan of Papa Roach & Limp Bizkit, but wanting something more mature than the standard rap/metal that was around at the time I stumbled across this track by reggae/ska/metal/hip-hop/rap/genre whor-ing band ‘311’. Recommended by my friend Mitch Tomes when I heard the track ‘Down’ at his house. I immediately searched ‘WinMX’ when I got home for their most popular track based on how many people were seeding it and downloaded ‘Amber’. Although not a heavy track in any way, the warm clean guitar tones had me spending weeks trying to dial in a similar tone on my Line 6 Spider II combo amp. youtube/watch?v=SUFSB2plwzM 2. Anti-Flag – Stars & Stripes Who remembers sitting around at lunch or recess comparing CD collections with your friends on a Discman? This was the first time I heard ‘Stars & Stripes’ by Anti-Flag. From just the catchy bassline intro to that octave lead this song had me hooked right away. Then when the vocals came in this was something so unique for me, a modern punk sound that still retained a genuine raw-ness and aggression in the vocals, perfect to convey the bands strong political agenda. Anti-Flag went on to be one of my most influential underground punk bands. youtube/watch?v=7TUBIuzqmI4 3. Avril Lavigne – Losing Grip Not exactly an ‘underground’ artist but a song that didn’t get much attention on a very popular album. After buying this CD from a Sanity in Queanbeyan I went home to my dad’s house and curled up in the corner with a Discman expecting Avril’s typical bubblegum punk only to be surprised by how aggressive this track was! The rest of the album was great too, but it’s hard to forget the energy I felt when I heard this track for the first time. youtube/watch?v=LOcKckBLouM 4. Benjalu – My Shelter My Fortress This is one of my favourite stories about a song discovery. So I used to study in Canberra during the weeks but drive back home to the South Coast every weekend to party. I would never normally pick-up a hitchhiker, I was way too scared of what could go wrong, but on my way through Nelligen I saw this one and thought ‘why not… just this once’. I don’t remember his name now, but it turned out we knew a lot of the same people and had been to the same parties but never properly met. He said he just saw this band called ‘Bejalua’ play in Canberra “weird name I know, but amazing music” he told me, and wanted to know if I was interested in hearing them. He proceeded to slip the CD into my car stereo, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect but wow! I was blown away by this acoustic/folk/chilli peppers influenced mix with a melody that was just infectious. My hitchhiking friend let me keep the CD afterwards because I seemed to enjoye it so much. youtube/watch?v=7xfEQOfBHwM 5. BOB – Play For Keeps In a world where hip-hop normally irritates me for its lack of melody and musicality (I’m not one to take much notice of lyrics in music) B.O.B. caught me off guard with a great pop sensibility in his music. The string section in this track went on to inspire me to write one of my most popular Soundcloud tracks ‘Panic! At The Discostep’. youtube/watch?v=psh4ArLz4i8 https://soundcloud/simonabbottsmith/panic-at-the-discostep 6. Boy Sets Fire – Last Years Nest Getting a lift to a party with my friend Luke Jackson I remember this ‘Boy Sets Fire’ album ‘Tomorrow Come Today’ doing a rotation on his car mix. This song took the punk sound I knew to a level of heaviness that I hadn’t heard before. Even though Boy Sets Fire never quite engrained themselves in my personal favourites, this band was the first taste I had of what was to become ‘Post-Hardcore’. youtube/watch?v=n4drO256-Tw 7. Catch 22 –What Goes Around Comes Around I was a closet ska fan all the way through high-school, beccause for some reason ska wasn’t a style of music you bragged about being into… From Goldfinger to Less Than Jake I was looking for more ska-favourites to add to my collection and some random WinMX hunting lead me to Catch 22, thanks to the way people used to label underground band’s with more well known artists in the file name to help them get discovered. The way Catch 22 combined infectious ska melody with a much heavier approach to guitars than other bands in the genre had me downloading the rest of this album right away. The band quickly became one of my number one ska favourites. youtube/watch?v=--fRiSgsmWg 8. Celldweller –Birthright A real game changer for me as an electronic music fan. Even though my first Celldweller experience was ‘My Last Firstborn’ on an mp3 compilation I got from Leigh Mercer it had me interested enough to look for more. I had never heard such a perfect blend of electronic and metal music and ‘Birthright’ was a song that I just couldn’t stop repeating. This songs production and those choir bursts are something that have heavily influenced a currently unreleased Danger! Earthquake! song :p youtube/watch?v=5UPCLR8-Aeo 9. Disarmonia Mundi – Celestial Furnace Another one from Leigh Mercer’s mp3 mix that caught me off guard, I was later to discover this was a side project from Soilwork’s ‘Bjorn Strid‘. My first reaction is this seemed much more aggressive and even more metal than Soilwork, which is a really subjective statement actually. The thing I always loved about European metal was no matter how heavy the music got it always retained such a melodic pretty-ness, it might be obvious by now that melody is the number one factor in whether a song captures me or not. If you like Soilwork or any melo-death and you missed out on Disarmonia Mundi go listen to it right now! These are one of the genres best bands that did however always remain as just studio project. youtube/watch?v=vnIPvSj0ySk 10. For This Cause – Stories End A little known Australian pop-rock band with a Fall Out Boy vibe and a Getaway Plan styled maturity. My old band ‘Evacuate The Fallen’ were destined to support these guys in Sydney (a show run by Ash Hull before he was famous) however the show did fall through before it ever happened. The real winner for this song was the way the intro ‘Prologue’ transitioned into this track, and that Dead Letter Circus style throwback delay in the verse is amazing! The singer in this band has a way of coming up with absolutely infection vocal melodies too! I found this band’s EP on Bandcamp for $10, and even though I thought about buying it, old habits die hard and I jumped on IsoHunt just to see if they were available for free… and they were. This EP saw a good 4 week rotation in my car before I tired of it. youtube/watch?v=Dro2C9W_D1s 11. Funeral For A Friend – Rookie Of The Year Another Discman trading session with Scott Bailey led me to this song, I rememeber after just 20 seconds I had to stop and ask him “who is this! This is amazing!”. It was at this point Scott offered to loan me his CD collection, some burnt, some real of around 50+ punk and post hardcore bands. I proceeded to listen to and copy/burn nearly all of them, a very tedious but rewarding task indeed! Funeral For Friend, in conjunction with bands like The Used helped transition my taste to enjoy the sound of screaming in music. Another gem from this same album ‘Casually Dressed And In Deep Conversation’ is the track ‘Novella’ if you’re interested in listening. Scott I can never express how much the act of loaning me those CD’s completely changed my musical journey! youtube/watch?v=klKS04wbuqw youtube/watch?v=KMn7HtgoTTA 12. Flogging Molly – Whats Left Of The Flag I have always been a sucker for the vibe of traditional European music, whether it be classical or folk. The Dropkick Murphy’s had introduced the idea of Irish jigs in punk music but I wanted something… more Irish, less punk and Flogging Molly hit the nail on the head. The band became a long time favourite of mine, and much disappointment was experienced when they were forced to play an acoustic set at a recent Soundwave due to their gear not making it to the stage in time. youtube/watch?v=0krxo46Ifbo 13. GOB – Lemon-Aid Standing for ‘Good Old Boys’ hooked me in just 10 seconds with this track. The way it came is so hard and heavy and so catchy, and at a time when I was trying to prove heavy guitars could be used to make pop music this was one of my stand-out examples. This album was yet another gold mine from Scott’s collection. youtube/watch?v=hWHynelvKoQ 14. The Get Up Kids – Action & Action This was another WinMX discovery where someone had named a lesser known artist as someone bigger and I’ll be forever thankful for it. With other favourites from this band like ‘Stay Gone’ & ‘Mass Pike’ & ‘Overdue’ The Get Up Kids showed me the lighter side of punk/emo rock. youtube/watch?v=_FOnSFiYFQs 15. Inspection 12 – Red Letter Day I found this song on a mix CD, I had no idea what it was, but after 20+ obsessive listens I decided I needed to find out. So I googled the lyrics religiously until I found the artist and song name. Because this song was so unknown, but I wanted to learn to play it, there were little to no guitar tabs available and this was one of the first tracks I attempted to tab by ear. I taught myself every nuance of the song from slides to bends, hammer on’s and I learned that solo note for note, including all the harmonies and all the bass parts. youtube/watch?v=NmUHQdnGpms 16. The Juliana Theory – If I Told You This Was Killing Me Would You Stop Recommended by another friend Adam Garn as a track that I just absolutely had to hear, and he was right! The Juliana Thoery are a band with a powerful emo/rock sound for their time that just got more and more rock as the band progressed, a band that never made it into the spotlight but are a must listen to for fans of the genre. youtube/watch?v=q5vXuVrG08k 17. Mest – Cadillac I have a very situational attachment to Mest. I can remember exactly where I was when I got obsessed with this band. My mum, brother and sister used to live in a Caravan Park for around 3 months while we were between homes, it was the middle of summer and hot as hell! So to escape the lack of air conditioning I would go sit in my mum’s car #getoutmecar in its shady undercover parking spot and lap up the cool air to the tunes of Mest. Especially this very cool, and very situationally appropriate song. Pop-Punk with a hint of Nu-Metal & DJ scratching, amazing! youtube/watch?v=PeLyLjYcOl4 18. Mad Caddies – Villains Yet another band I discovered trying to fuel my love of ska and genre crossing bands, Mad Caddies were another CD I found In Scott Bailey’s collection that are still today one of the most interesting every genre crossover punk bands, from reggae to swing to pirate tunes this band crossed everything they could with punk rock! youtube/watch?v=5tkyjEGbiPQ 19. Nickelback – Side Of bullet Despite all the Nickelback hate in the world and the pre-concieved notion that their music is wussy it’s pretty hard to forget how heavy this song was once upon a time. youtube/watch?v=LDeP6KpI-aI 20. Plain White T’s – So Damn Clever Another band I remember in a more situational context. Springing up at a time when my love for Pop-Punk was fading a little this band re-ignited that fire, and it was the dark melodies in this song in-particular that made this a stand out track. I remember it being on heavy rotation in my car when driving between my dad’s house in Jerrabomberra and my girlfriend at the time Maddy Dean in Tuggeranong. I’m pretty sure she would remember hearing this song constantly as we would go for car trips, that and Nightwish’s ‘Dark Passion Play’ album. #amaranth youtube/watch?v=TGjsyEH2r2I 21. Strung Out-Orchid A band that were reasonably well known in the punk scene but who’s popularity was fading by the time they made it to this album ‘Blackhawks Over Los Angeles’ that I consider to be one of their best. An amazing production & some of their most interesting and creative song structures yet, with ‘Orchid’ being an easy stand-out track. If I remember correctly I remember trying to force this album upon Amanda Gibbs, Crystal Gibbs, Jessica May Tong, Sammii Gibbs & the rest of the crew who I cant tag here for some reason when they just wanted to listen to Jay-Z and Lil Wayne youtube/watch?v=Umeah4h8f2Y If you got this far let me know if you heard the tracks and what you thought? Zak Knight, Matthew Mumford, Vonnie Sofia #toptenalbums #toptensongs #music #influence #underground #punk
Posted on: Sat, 11 Oct 2014 01:06:47 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015