Last October, M83’s sixth album, Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming, was released. After months of build-up, a pretty good single, and a music video about runaway telekinetic kids who throw a super-hip party in a warehouse (or something like that), critics and fans alike devoured it.

As a huge M83 fan, I was just as pumped as everyone else for the supposedly epic double-album that would forever change the way that I would perceive music. After listening to the album a couple of times, waiting for that moment of spiritual awakening, I realized the awful truth of Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming: It was just another M83 album. A very good M83 album, but an album that was hyped to an absurd extent.

Due to this hype, it was impossible for me to tell if I genuinely liked the album. I eventually got so sick of all the praise that I started to hate it on principle. On the flip side, when my friend introduced me to M83’s debut album a couple years ago, I didn’t have some exterior force telling me how I should react to it. I felt like I was truly discovering something, building a relationship with the music.

This relationship-building is why there are so many venerated classics that continue to be played to this day: Pink Floyd’s The Wall, Led Zeppelin’s Led Zeppelin IV, pretty much everything The Beatles ever put out. But our inability to detach ourselves from this relationship and our continued insistence on publicly extolling them has prevented anyone who came after their time from building a real, individualized relationship with the music.

So if you have an album you really love or a band that you would give anything to see live that you just have to show people, check yourself. Suggest it and let your friends discover it for themselves. The only way that good music will survive the generation it was composed for is if a new generation can view it as genuinely meaningful, and not just as a facet of culture.

This year’s Massive Music Weekend was certainly of epic proportions. We ended the festivities with an hour of Aztec Moon Cult in the Style of Oscar Wilde. If you happened to miss out on this magnificent piece of auditory art brought to you by the staff at WRCT, fear not! You can check it out on our SoundCloud

The Black Sabbath reunion has become not much of a reunion due to drummer Bill Ward pulling out because of problems with the contract he was offered. Not sure if I’m going to care about the new album or tour anymore. Can they write new songs and still capture the heavy swing that was so important without their drummer?

This is classic Black Sabbath, which no reunion can capture — especially without Bill Ward on drums:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtqy4DTHGqg

In Pittsburgh there are some concerts and releases coming up that everyone should support:

A number of album release concerts: Fist Fight in the Parking Lot on February 25 at the 31^st Street Pub, Invader on March 10 at the Smiling Moose, and Vulture on March 31 at the 31^st Street Pub.

The Pittsburgh band Dream Death, who released a number of demos in the mid ’80s and one full length called Journey into Mystery, are reuniting and playing with epic doom metal band Argus April 21at the 31^st Street Pub. Their sound was very Celtic Frost doomy thrash:

On Saturday, February 25 at The Shop in Bloomfield you can check out Winter’s Wake 2012 with a long lineup that starts at 2:30 p.m.:

ARGUS
COMPLETE FAILURE
MOTORPSYCHOS
MOTHS
LADY BEAST
GRISLY AMPUTATION
VITANDUS
FALLING UPWARD

I’ve been enjoying this track by the band Vitandus and look forward to their new EP Macabre Incarnate which will be released at Winter’s Wake. Listen to “Macabre Incarnate” here.

Until next time…