So despite me planning on publishing Succinct Six Songs playlists here first, I’m instead gonna publish Thallium – Metal Adjacent music first. It’s the most recent playlist I’ve made with focus and I’m particularly proud of it. The way it flows, the flexibility of the theme, the fact that it’s a great playlist to walk to, all excellent. The first time I listened to it, I was washing the dishes and the the scrubbing brush broke! You could argue that that makes for a powerful playlist, which I did, but the truth is that the scrubbing brush was old and it was probably gonna fall apart soon anyway.
A good playlist tells a story, and with No Lives Matter and Declare Independence opening this, they certainly set the theme. This isn’t the first version, I had to shuffle a few songs around, namely Bread, Cheese, Bow and Arrow was recalcitrant and it took a while to find its place. Now, you could rightly argue, “Why not drop the song?” to which I simply say, I didn’t want to. I felt I could get it to work, and by gum, I think I’ve done it!
The songs are quite consistent in length, but as we get to the back end of the playlist, I start to explore the longer, proggier stuff. Yes, Skywards is essentially just a stoner rock song and Goliath could be argued to just be a prog rock song, but I feel that Constant Motion, Jambi, and Level Five are what you you’d want from prog metal. Thousand Yard Stare is not only the final track of the playlist, but of the EP, Iridescent, that it hails from. The sampling of Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dotspeech ties us nicely back into the opening theme of the playlist. Hearing the music fade away to just be left with Sagan’s musings is, as he says, “A humbling experience.” It’s hard not to feel a tear well up in one’s eye.
P.S. I’m well aware I greatly missed the opportunity to make the playlist 81 minutes long to reflect Thallium’s atomic weight, and by well aware, I mean I literally just realised that as I was looking for an image to use in this post. Oh well, create your own version of the playlist to scratch that itch.
https://embed.music.apple.com/au/playlist/thallium-metal-adjacent/pl.u-jV8968DsdmePy0
Tracklist:
- No Lives Matter, Body Count, Bloodlust LP (2017)
- Declare Independence, Björk, Volta LP (2007)
- High Risk, High Rewards, High Tension, Death Beat LP (2013)
- Power Tool, Regurgitator, New EP (1995)
- Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck, Grinspoon, Pushing Buttons EP (1998)
- Somebody To Love, Moby, Animal Rights LP (1996)
- Der Mesiter, Rammstein, Herzeleid LP (1995)
- Next In Line, Dead Letter Circus, Next In Line EP (2008)
- Revenga, System Of A Down, Mezmerize LP (2005)
- Malpractice, Faith No More, Angel Dust LP (1992)
- Bread, Cheese, Bow and Arrow, Future Of The Left, How To Stop Your Brain In An Accident LP (2013)
- Bullet In The Head, Rage Against The Machine, Rage Against The Machine LP (1992)
- My Enemy, Cog, The New Normal LP (2005)
- Goliath, Karnivool, Sound Awake LP (2009)
- Surrender To, Fait, Atmosphere EP (2014)
- Skywards, Monolord, No Comfort LP (2019)
- Constant Motion, Dream Theater, Systematic Chaos LP (2007)
- Jambi, Tool, 10,000 Days LP (2006)
- Level Five, King Crimson, The Power To Believe LP (2003, 2019 version used)
- Thousand Yard Stare, Majora, Iridescent EP (2015)
Alex’s Alliterative Audio Assemblies 