Man vs Machine

Man vs Machine No. 3

Still looking for an image.

Every week Apple Music makes a New Music Mix for users. I will make off the cuff “reviews” of the songs the algorithm “thinks” I will like. I can manipulate this list much easier than the friends list by what I listen to. That being said it loves feeding me Black and Death Metal which for the most part isn’t my thing.

The Damned “Making Time” if I didn’t know this was the Damned I’d never guess. Listened to 1 minute and 8 seconds.

Civic “Cosmic Astronaut “ Not the Aussie punk band. Apple you need to fix the multiple bands with the same name problem. Listened 8 seconds.

Landowner “Slippery Abyss” Jangly guitars with talk singing, a painful combo when the song is so bad. Listened to 31 seconds.

Hey Colossus “Runaway Heart” I think this is supposed to be weird, it’s boring. Listened to all of it waiting for something to happen.

A Place to Bury Strangers “Acid Rain” Ultra distorted guitars almost to being painful. Ethereal vocals. Not sure what I think. Listened to all of it.

Megadeth “Another Bad Day” Lifeless. Listened to 1 minute.

Lubomyr Melnyk “Windmills, Pt. 1” Dark, creepy almost ambient piano. Eventually gets into his more Philip Glass type music. Listened to it all.

Black Swan “When the Cold Wind Blow” Starts off and I’m excited for some noisy rock, then it becomes dull power metal. Listened to 1 minute 18 seconds.

Joe Hoekstra’s 13 “Lifeline” Wow sterile unimaginative pop metal in 2026. This is paste. Listened to 50 seconds.

Necofier “Servents of Darkness, Guide My Way III” You know you’re in trouble when you’re on the second sequel of a song. Generic Black Metal. Listened 1 minute and 31 seconds.

Possession “The Black Chappel” Out of all the music I play, I listen to Immortal once and it’s like here’s a lot boring of Black Metal . 1 minute 2 seconds.

Final Gasp “No Hand to Lead” Someone likes Lane Staley. 34 seconds.

Psycroptic “Failing” Music is as bad as the band name. Enough with the metal. 22 seconds.

The Silver “Memorias” Melodeath Black metal. Kinda prog. It’s shit. 53 seconds.

At the Gates “The Fever Mask” It’s good but do you really need more than Slaughter of the Soul? Listened to all of it.

Harrowed “The Haunter” Maybe there should be some kind of license needed to have a metal band. 1 minute 10 seconds.

Suplecs “Pentacle Star” i think this is supposed to be Stoner Rock, whatever it is it’s bad. Listened to 1 minute and 12 seconds.

Chuck Treese Rachel Anne “Our Town (Eye Can Tell)” How this was recommend to me and what did I listen to trigger it is a mystery. Listened to all of it to see if it was anything but vocals and breathing, it wasn’t.

Good Riddence “There’s Still Tonight” Great I listen to hardcore punk and it thinks I want this crap. 58 seconds.

Social Distortion “Born to Kill” Still mining the “I work on my car/motorcycle 50+ punks”. 33 seconds.

Stereolab “Cloud Land” never been much for them. A bit too twee. I kind of like this. Listened to it all.

ADULT. “No One is Coming” Shit, two in a row I enjoy. Noisy Electronic/Industrial with Lene Lovich like vocals. Listened to it all.

Nick Plunti “Bruises and Bandages” The dreaded singer songwriter, who is good at neither. 12 seconds.

Dada Laida “The Beyond” Because you can play guitar technically doesn’t mean you play it well. 44 seconds.

Angel Du$t “Downfall” What did I do to deserve this? 37 seconds.

Man vs Machine No. 2

Still looking for an image. Better first half of the list this week.

Every week Apple Music makes a New Music Mix for users. Each week I will make off the cuff “reviews” of the songs the algorithm “thinks” I will like. I can manipulate this list much easier than the friends list by what I listen to. That being said it loves feeding me Black and Death Metal which for the most part isn’t my thing.

Jack White “What’s the Rumpus?” While not a pastiche of himself it’s close. It’s listenable but unremarkable. Listened to it all.

Dinosaur Jr “Whenever Your Ready” The AC/DC or Slayer of 80s indie rock? Quality reproductions of past glory that don’t get near the heights of the classics. Listened to all of it.

Guided By Voices “Serine King” I wish Apple Music would stop feeding me GBV. This song is pretty good but I have all I need. Listened to all of it.

Loma “Pink Sky” Slinky slightly creepy and laid back. Kind of like Blonde Redhead with more 60s French pop thrown in. Listened to and bought the album, more of a US Broadcast. Listened to all of it.

Water From Your Eyes “Tired of Being Alone” First clunker of the week, modern indie rock aping the 70s California thing fronted by a woman that can’t sing. 36 seconds.

J.R.C.G. “Dogear” Beak> meets Girls Against Boys. Not sure what I think, need to revisit. Listened to the entire album and bought it. Great stuff, unique. Listened to it all.

1349 “The God Devourer” Long time traditional Black Metal vets, it’s fine but not good enough to buy. Listened to it all.

Ripped to Shreds “Perverting the Funeral Rights…” Things I hate about modern metal is that it’s so mechanical and artificial sounding. Death/Grind Grind/Death. 44 seconds.

Nachtmystium “Predator Phoenix” Dull black n roll. 42 seconds.

Loudblast “From Beyond II (The Return)” The music I like, kind of a melodic metallic hardcore, the vocals are that over the top how low can I go growling crap. Listened to it all.

Fulci “Human Scalp” More of the low growling vocals, this time over paint by numbers death metal. 32 seconds.

Mayhemic “Triumph Portrit” Sometime I think metal has completely run out of ideas. 50 seconds.

Dark Angel “The Shadows” The electronic music taking a known band name to cash in. Apple needs to fix this. 22 seconds.

Ceremony of Silence “King of the Mountain” A rip off of early Mastodon but a bit more Death Metal. 55 seconds.

Aeternus “Fire Pendulum” This seems to be a former metal band doing awful EDM. 26 seconds.

Holocausto “Seres Inertes” Kind of entertaining retro thrash. Listened to all of it.

Black Lava “Colour of Death” It’s got to be a drum machine Black metal. Listened to 2 minutes and three seconds.

Swervedriver “Butterfly” Left overs from 99th Dream, probably better than anything that made the record. Listened to all of it.

Swami John Reis “Ketchup, Mustard, and Relish” I want to love this, but I heard this hundreds of times from John Reis. Well done but not needed. Listened to all of it.

X “Ruby Church” X with all the edges sanded down. 1:00.

Ron Keel “Hollywood” Excruciating pop metal country cross over. 27 seconds.

Sacri Monti “Desirable Sequel” I was intrigued by the song, then it started for real. 1:09.

Stratovarious “Heroes” i was hopeing for a power metal cover of Bowie’s “Heroes” for a good laugh. No such luck. 1:32.

dirt “Wreckage” Metal is dead. 23 seconds.

Radon “Azufee” Not sure what this is supposed to be but it’s terrible. 46 seconds.

Man vs Machine No. 1

A new take on my “Hate Your Friends” series. I’ve not found a suitable image.

Every week Apple Music makes a New Music Mix for users. Each week I will make off the cuff “reviews” of the songs the algorithm “thinks” I will like. I can manipulate this list much easier than the friends list by what I listen to. That being said it loves feeding me Black and Death Metal which for the most part isn’t my thing.

Deep Purple “Light it Up” Deep Purple’s expiration date was somewhere in 1984/85. 52 seconds.

UK “Light it Up” Not the prog band. Electronic music scammers love to use old band names to drum up cash. How Apple hasn’t fixed this is beyond me. 2 seconds.

Voxtrot “Esprit de Cœur” Usually my friends list and new music list don’t cross over. The is terrible, seems to be attempting to sound like poppy Eurythmics. 22 seconds

Redd Kross “I’ll Take Your Word for It” Why does Apple Music recommend albums that are already in my collection? It knows what’s in there. Anyway this is great, if you dig power-pop, punk, bubblegum. Great songs. Listened to all of it.

Fantasy of a broken heart “Loss” A nice updated 70s bubblegum track, then the lead vocals start. 52 seconds.

Sex Week “Kid Muscle” Sounds like a twee take on early Low, but not nearly as good. 54 seconds.

Kim Gordon “ECRP” Same problem as recent Low. Music is some kind of poor hip-hop backing track. 1:32.

Les Savy Fav “Mischief Night” another repeat from “Hate Your Friends”, still don’t like it. 57 seconds.

Karate “Mystery Man” i don’t remember Karate sounding like The Hold Steady. Unlistenable. 37 seconds.

Wormwitch “Inner War” Here comes the metal. Black Metal. Nothing you haven’t heard a billion times if you’ve heard Black Metal. Why has Metal got so boring. 53 seconds.

Tribulation “Tainted Skys” Tribulation went down the we’ll be the goth/black metal Ghost a while ago. It’s fine. Listened to all of it.

Extinction AD “Epidemic of Mutation” The most robotic shitty drums I’ve heard in a while. Sounds like a d level The Haunted. 41 seconds.

Scald “Ancient Doom Metal “ Bad Viking Candlemass like doom. 33 seconds after I skipped the intro.

Hyperdontia “irrevocable Disaster” Grind I guess. So boring. Metal is in a sorry state in 2024. 18 secondsl.

Jesters of Destiny “If You Want To” Goofball 80s weirdo crossover band but this is from 1988 and sounds like a shitty band trying to cop Blue Oyster Cult. Odd. 1:04.

True Black Dawn “Fish, Sin and Soma” At least the title is interesting. Listened to 5 seconds.

Baphomet “Crimson Abyss” starts with the guttural bleaaarrrrrrrrggggghh thing, pass. Listened to a minute and three seconds.

Wraith “Asylum” Ed Repka rip off cover, if you understand that you know what this sounds like. 30 seconds.

IRONFLAME “Blood and Honor” Starts with an AC/DC Thunderstruck thing then goes into boring power metal. A dime a dozen. 1:20.

The Hard-Ons “Buzz Buzz Buzz” I loved the Hard-Ons. No idea what the hell this is but it doesn’t sound like the Hard-Ons. 1:18.

The Effigies “Sortie” No clue if this has anything to do with the Chicago punk band, I can’t find any connection. Regardless it’s bad. 59 seconds.

Nap Eyes “Passageway” Ughh I’d rather have more shitty metal. Modern twee folk? 28 seconds.

The Shivas “Hellbound” I think, judging by the cover, that this is supposed to be psychedelic. Sounds like the Sundays without the songs. 1:21.

Sunflower Bean “Shake” Stoner grunge? Poop. 52 seconds.

Orden Ogan “Prince Of Sorrow” Why is most power metal not powerful? 18 seconds.