HYLI Vol. XXXIX - Carly Ray Jepsen and Into Eternity

Andy gives Thomas some Progressive Death Metal from Canada and Thomas gives Andy some Pop also from Canada

Thanks again to Thomas for such a great piece on The Wonder Years last week. Please check it out if you’ve missed it. Pat is on vacation and I was “impacted” by Hurricane Ian meaning I did nothing but raise a 2 year old and 6 month old for a week. I asked Thomas to be part of the newsletter again this week and we both had a whopping 24 hours to listen to each album. Sorry we are late. We are doing our best here at HYLI Corp. We will be back to 100% next week.

Carly Rae Jepsen - E•MO•TION

Thomas: Andy often complains that the music I send him should be construed as inconsiderate picks. “I always try to give you something you’ll like, even if it doesn’t work,” he’ll whine, little binky in his whiny mouth. Here’s the thing, though. Andy likes songs that “go hard” and I take the definition broadly. I am always looking for unexpected tracks that “go hard” to deliver a surprise & delight experience for the consumer. Carly Rae Jepsen’s E•MO•TION album is filled with two things: Songs that slap and wonderful ‘80s pop vibes. She’s here to chew bubblegum and deliver bangers and she’s all out of bubblegum.

All of the music in this album should be played during the first 20 minutes of a Stephen King-adapted movie before things turn south. “Making The Most Of The Night” (Andy: hm, I think I kinda agree?) could have replaced the Kate Bush song in Stranger Things 4 and we wouldn’t have lost a beat. No disrespect to “Running Up That Hill,” btw, which also slaps plentifully. “Warm Blood” gets into you and stays there. Those are slightly deeper cuts but the singles are, I think, all celebrated enough to not need detailing here. I asked Andy to go into this with an open mind and I’m still expecting to see this album soundly slapped to the floor like Dikembe Mutombo half-angrily swatting a lay-up that shouldn’t have been attempted within a quarter-mile’s radius of his defensive presence.

Andy: I don’t hate pop music. I just think that most of it is really really bad. I’m partial to Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream (mostly because I have a djent remix album but still). Miley Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball” is an actual great song. Is Lil Nas X pop? “Panini” is a banger. Taylor Swift has a few. I’m not opposed to pop. Most of it is just not good.

Thomas asked me to go in with an open mind (I always do) and that I’d think some of these songs “go hard” (undefinable but necessary). He was right. Some of these songs go hard. A lot of them don’t, but some of them do. “Run Away With Me”, the only song I’ve heard before, goes very hard. Great song. “Making The Most Of The Night” is fun. Good song. “Warm Blood” is interesting enough. Okay song. “I Really Like You” is poop imo. Bad song. Most of the other songs are pretty miss for me. Someone with a music theory degree needs to explain what I mean when I say “go hard” cause I’m not even sure at this point.

I’m not sure if or when I’d ever return to this. I enjoy this project because it forces me to listen to stuff I normally wouldn’t (he says for the 100th time). I didn’t hate my listens but I didn’t particularly enjoy it overall outside of a few songs but I’m not sure even those would make my preferred pop songs list. It Was Okay.

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Into Eternity - The Scattering of Ashes

Andy: It’s 2006. I’m a sophomore in high school watching Headbangers ball on MTV2 with my now wife. Music videos man. Remember them? When they played on tv? (Thomas: Yes, I spent 2 years and change working at Fuse TV, the number one source for music video on television and Billy On The Street reruns in America) Killswitch Engage’s “Holy Diver”, Clutch’s “Electric Worry”, Maylene & The Sons of Disaster’s “Dry The River” are all permanently part of that era for me. Into Eternity ran the music video for “Timeless Winter” during that era. My only experience with Into Eternity is this album (which I bought on CD off some internet site that was not Amazon…really dating myself whit this).

I thought this would be a fun album for Thomas to try out cause he seems like he has a soft spot for Dragonforce and Trivium and this seems like a good middle ground for both. Stu Block has some crazy fun range on his vocals with everything from deep growls to high pitch power metal cleans. Fun as heck. Guitar work is technical but has some great riffs. They play with everything from ballads to death metal to power metal. Just fun Power-ish Progressive-ish Metal. Hope You Like It.

The quality of this is impressively bad.

Thomas: The other thing about Andy is that he actually is very considerate with the picks he sends me. This album, The Scattering of Ashes, is a sort of mix between Dragonforce power metal and, at least at times, the vocal-and-instrumental call-and-response of Protest The Hero. Two bands I really like! In Dragonforce’s case, really just that one album with that one song, but I really like that one album (Andy: because its great). 

I love when a metal band is having a fucking great time shredding and destroying their amps then the vocalist for some reason is in a slightly different movie doing a hyper-melodic high-pitched vocalist thing. It’s one of my favorite brands of metal, a genre which I’m generally still too uneducated on to speak broadly about influences or precursors, so everything is a surprise to me when it happens. This album does stray slightly at times into Andy’s preferred moods of dismay and calamity — there’s a track called “Severe Emotional Distress” and another called “Pain Through Breathing.” But my takeaway is that this is a fun-to-listen-to album that I’ll keep in my library — the tracks “Timeless Winter” and “Suspension of Disbelief” stood out in particular in the listens I was able to do before writing this. I like metal albums that I can listen to somewhat passively and don’t fill the room with a sense of impending dread — this fits the bill. Thanks Andy! (Andy: You’re welcome)