It’s Monday again, time for another blog post, and this time it’s about music. I will go back to posting about the games I’ve been playing but I didn’t feel like drawing anything today so I wanted to talk about this album by The Thermals because it actually really impressed me.

I tend to avoid music that lacks hooks (unless I’m using it for ambience) and has especially whiny lyrics so most pop punk and post-punk fails to really grab me, but I think I found the sweet spot with The Body, the Blood, the Machine. The lyrics are pretty anti-religious with a pretty nihilistic yet bombastic attitude, a very topical Bush-era explosion with just enough grit and sarcasm to make up for the lack of terribly distinct choruses or melodies. In a way, this is kinda what I wish Fidlar was?

What makes this click for me is the cohesion. This sort of indie-punk is always going to inherently feel somewhat immature to my ears, but the aforementioned anti-religious imagery and references to the Bible make for some pretty badass lines and interesting takes. Combine that with the damn near perfect 35 minute length, occasional ear-worm riffs and sheer energy – this album is insanely relistenable, there’s so much to dig into every time.

Other albums that have impressed me over the past week or two include Big Black’s Atomizer, Six Finger Satellite’s Machine Cuisine if you want a pretty obscure and even shorter pick, and Daniel Johnston’s More Songs of Pain, which I found to be a pretty intense follow-up to one of my favorite albums ever. I might write more about them in the future, but I usually only write about music when nothing else has been going on or I’m too lazy to write anything else.

I’ll leave you with the hit single, A Pillar Of Salt which you might recognize from Skate 3 or somewhere else, god knows. Thanks for reading.