There was a ton of new and amazing music in 2015, like My First Story with Alone and the Wagakki Band with Ikusa. Then there was Superfly with White Light and Passepied with Tokinowa. One of the groups that surprised and delighted me this year was The Full Pledge Munkees, an amazing Ska band out of Singapore, represented here by their song Positif MV. And that really only covered the first 4 months of the year, and didn’t even mention One OK Rock, who finally had their big breakthrough in North America with their release of their first US album this October. Like most such events, their overnight success came after a decade of working their tails off to get there.
Art Rock band The Oral Cigarettes have put together some tasty tunes over the years, so I wanted to share a few of them with you. The first one is their track Hey Kids, which was the 2nd OP song for the anime Noragami Aragoto (the first Noragami OP was Hello Sleepwalkers). The second song is this year’s hit Amy, and the third is 2014s Star Get. I think this band has a lot of promise, and I can’t wait to see where they go from here.
Lindsey Stirling has a great sound and a large range; if you haven’t been listening so far, now is the time to start. The first track from tonight’s collection is Roundtable Rival, a very nice Steampunk kind of song (her “Shatter Me” is also quite SteamPunk). The next is Dragon Age, which goes straight to the heart of one of my favorite MMORPGs. She follows up quite nicely with Master of Tides, another wonderful SF/F kind of track that shows off what a truly innovative technical team can do with the input from an inspired performance. Her music is quite tasty, you should check it out every chance you get.
Sometimes called Chap Hop, SteamPunk music has quite a few interesting tunes. Tonight we are presenting Lady Has Bustle from the Desert Rose Theatre, and the second tune is the Steampunk Style parody of the famous Psy song. OK, one more I couldn’t resist; the Gentleman Robot VS Iron Man 1889!
They are touring North America right now, promoting their latest album on their first tour with an American release, 35xxxv (DELUXE EDITION), a best of collection from all their recordings since they formed in 2005. The lyrics are all in English, and the first song posted is Last Dance, the next one here from the same album is Cry Out. Don’t let their initial ballad for the US fool you, this band is all about serious Rock-N-Roll, in a way so many bands wish they could pull off. If you have even the slimmest chance to see them, I urge you to do so; they are truly amazing. The last few tracks here are Mighty Long Fall, Decision, and Be The Light. And yes, while all of their music has been available through iTunes for the last half decade, it is nice to finally have a natively available source for it. And OK, the final track of this set might be just a bit of a ballad again, if you are going to be a stickler about formats.
The German band Guano Apes got together in 1994 and they have been creating solid rock music ever since, with the occasional break. The first track is Close To The Sun from their new album Offline, the second is 2014’s Fake, released on the same album. The final song is Sandra Nasic singing Fever, possibly from a solo project. I love that one of their several Best Of albums has the title Planet of the Apes. The band broke up in 2005, but when they got back together in 2009 they were reborn, releasing more music each year than ever before, lots of it climbing the charts, some of it making it to number 1.