Song of the Day: Opeth - The Lotus Eater

     It's been almost a month of songs of the day now, and I have yet to do an Opeth song. Shame! Odds are you don't need me to tell you how awesome Opeth is, so I won't waste a lot of time and energy trying to convince you of said awesomeness, but if you don't know Opeth... seriously, what's wrong with you? Have you been living under a rock for the last 20 years or something? Stop reading this right now and click play already, OK?

     Your song for today is "The Lotus Eater" from Opeth's phenomenal 2008 album Watershed. This was such a great album that I could really recommend the whole thing, one song a day, for a week, but I'll settle for having you listen to this thoroughly badass track from it. If the demented metal circus break at about 5:45 doesn't get you going, you're a stronger man than I.

Song of the Day: Mandroid Echostar - Kingdom and the Crown

     We're back in the present today, and I've got yet another recently-discovered band to share with you. I found Mandroid Echostar (yes, that's their name) at the same time that I found Intervals (they're going on tour together this fall), and both bands are proggy outfits based in southern Ontario (go Canada!). But while Intervals is heavier, instrumental (for the moment, anyways) and kinda djenty, Mandroid Echostar sounds like Coheed and Cambria if the latter leaned away from proggy punky pop-rock and towards proggy metal. Vocalist Michael Ciccia even resembles Coheed and Cambria's Claudio Sanchez a little. But make no mistake -- these guys aren't just Co&Ca copycats, and I think they're definitely worth a listen.

     As such, today's song is "Kingdom and the Crown", the lead track from Mandroid Echostar's self-titled first EP, which you can download from the band's bandcamp FOR FREE! So if you like the song, check out the rest of the EP and let me know what you think.

Song of the Day: Marilyn Manson - The Speed of Pain

     We're stuck in the past for one more day today before we set out for more modern metal tomorrow, and I think I'm going to slow things down, change the mood up a bit.  When Marilyn Manson's Mechanical Animals came out in 1998, that CD didn't leave our stereo systems and discmen for a while. Even now, I can put it on and genuinely appreciate it, rather than just digging it nostalgically. There were a bunch of cool songs on it, but for today I'm picking a song with a not-exactly-metal vibe.

     Today's song is "The Speed of Pain" by Marilyn Manson. It's a bit of a slow-burner, but its spacey, psychedelic, Pink Floyd feel is worth the build-up. If you know Mechanical Animals, this'll take you right back, and if you don't, this'll help you get acquainted.

Song of the Day: Nothingface - Goldtooth

     Due to the great expense involved in operating the Wayback Machine, we'll be hanging out in the past for at least another day whilst raising funds for the journey back to 2012. In the meantime, you get to hear another great song from back in the day, by another great band that my friends and I listened to a fair amount of. Like Sevendust, Nothingface were in their heyday roughly concurrently with nu-metal, but also like Sevendust I've always thought of Nothingface as more of a straight up metal band. In fact, if anything I'd say Sevendust was the more nu-metally of the two, although that's really neither here nor there. Bottom line, Nothingface was awesome.

     Today's song is "Goldtooth", the opening track from Nothingface's 1998 An Audio Guide to Everyday Atrocity (which is a pretty fucking cool album title, if you ask me). Put it on and prepare to be assaulted. Matt Holt's arrogant, aggressive delivery of the line "feel your cunt dripping, it all smells the same" is worth the price of admission on its own.

Song of the Day: Sevendust - Black

     Won't you step into the Wayback Machine with me for today's song? Well, not way way back, just back to my time in high school. One of the better bands to get big around the time of nu-metal (though they weren't necessarily quite a nu-metal band themselves) was Sevendust. My friends and I listened to lots of Sevendust, and while they had a lot of great songs back then ("Denial", "Waffle", and "Bender" come immediately to mind), I think our favourite was -- and still is -- today's song.

     Your song today is "Black" by Sevendust, off of their 1997 self-titled debut. Put it on and bask in the nostalgia.

Song of the Day: Intervals - Sonar

     I've got some cool Canuck instrumetal for you today. I just recently discovered today's band, Intervals, and downloaded their debut EP The Space Between. I've only had the chance for a couple of listens, but so far I'm digging it: djenty, headbanging grooves, some good leadwork, a couple of nice (and audible, thank the gods!) basslines, and some solid drumming courtesy of Anup Sastry of Skyharbor (among other things). There's even some electronic-style manipulation and ambient-ish stuff, and the whole package amounts to something that makes me very excited for the new material that their Facebook page tells me will soon be in the works.

     Your song today is "Sonar" by Intervals. Check it out.

Song of the Day: Between the Buried and Me - Telos

     Once again, today's song picked itself. If you're a metal fan, you probably already know by now that death-tech-prog-everything  gurus Between the Buried and Me have finished working on their new album, The Parallax II: Future Sequence, a conceptual sequel to last year's The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues EP. Future Sequence is due out on October 9th, and I'm stoked, but I don't have to wait that long to hear some new stuff, and neither do you.

     The song of the day for today is "Telos" by Between the Buried and Me, and it's the first song released off of Future Sequence (though at more than nine minutes long I don't know if it can be considered the first "single"). It's epic, it's all over the place, and it's exactly the calibre of awesomeness you'd expect from Between the Buried and Me. Have a listen and mark your calendars.