I was recently inspired to pen a list of my guilty music pleasures by the weekly Metalhammer podcast I subscribe to. A list which, rather unsurprisingly revealed that Fall Out Boy was big amongst the Metalhammer team. I often find myself listening to music, which in the light of day or amongst friends I might never admit to, but what the hell, this is only the internet, whose really listening?

So my list of 5 Guilty Music Pleasures are as follows:

1. Avenged Sevenfold – The Avenged Sevenfold members don monikers akin to those of cheesy black metal man-children, M. Shadows, Zacky Vengeance, Synyster Gates, The Rev and Johnny Christ. The music ranges from cheesy Bon Jovi inspired ballads to tracks which encompass the full range a combination of punk and thrash might offer. Yet, their lyrical content and their brash persona’s make them a band best kept on that obscure backup drive you’ve had in the cupboard for years.

2. Enter Shikari - Hardcore + Techno combine in this tech-core fusion band – the archetypal trendy myspace generation band. With breakdowns which are like segways into minute long bouts of inward squealing, and attire/lyrical content/use of claps midsong all reflecting their blatantly scenester-sensibilities I always find myself questioning just why I have their track ‘Ok, time for plan b” on at 12, and why my inner voice is chanting along when they begin their pre-teen-scream of “this means war, this means war” but regardlessthey bring back fond memories of a great summer spent at home. Hell they wear red pants on occassion, and clearly red pants are cool.

3. Elvenking – few will have heard of this band, my musical fetish, a folk/power metal group hailing from Italy. Yes, it’s as cringe worthy as you’re already imagining it might be. It’s Tolkien inspired lyrical content, with lightning fast guitar work, set against the soaring vocals of Damnagoras who sacrifices intelligibility for vocal-range. Their sound is best summed up by a fittingly cliche metaphor; picture bilbo baggins, shredding in the shire with Gandolf commanding his pipe, a Shure microphone and wielding a vocal range which goes from testicle-dissolving to glass-shattering. Did I mention, they break into folk like dance break-aways mid-track? No, well they do that too.

4. BranVan 3000 – A canadian outfit, with clearly no intention of making a commercially successful album ever, have been on and off of MTV’s charts perpetually for the last 10 years but seem to be all but unknown amongst most people I speak to. Perhaps it’s because tracks like “Couch Surfer”, “Drinking in L.A” and “Forest” all took such unconventional approaches to making the least offensive, most relaxing, made for waking up in a good mood, kind of music. The mere mention of BranVan 3000 in my repertoire and people begin questioning whether I understand music at all. It cracks my list because it holds nostalgic value, as it came to be the soundtrack to my last year of high school, and is a constant reminder of the hazy humidity settling on a summers morning, like a wet towel clinging to a chair in summer, which I miss so much now that I live in Johannesburg.

5. The Offspring – I was born in ‘83, and by the time I was in high school I’d collected all of Offspring’s albums, and was well on my way to collecting all of Rage Against the Machine and Metallica’s works (those release in the nineties at least). Offspring was my generation’s Limp Bizkit, there wasn’t a day that went by that you didn’t hear someone attempting to fit “you stupid dumbshit goddamn mother fucker” into an argument, like one might find a wine conneseuar trying to sqeeze the word “tannin” into a debate about the quality of a wine.  The Offspring were untouchable, with Ixnay on the Hombre, fans like me were treated to the Offspring’s wry humour, with mock interludes and outtakes on their albums, corpses all over the album cover and lyrical content which would have made your mother’s mind erupt – Offspring couldn’t have picked a better generation, nor a better time to push their own musical boundaries. That was until they grew old, we grew up, and they simply stuck around in the early 90’s to hold onto that big break when their music is recycled in 2020. Saying you like Offspring now is much like saying you can’t wait for grunge to really take off  – so I steer clear of confessing I still regularly listen to both Smash and Ixnay on the Hombre.

So I’ve told you my guilty musical pleasures, now I’d like to hear a few of yours!

Avenged Sevenfold - the scensters

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