T w e n t y S i d e d
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This came in the mail today. Like I said, this is my first new CD in about half a decade. There just hasn’t been much new music that made me want to pay full price for an album. Until now.
This is an innovative album full of infectious hooks and solid beats. Notable tracks include Organix, which has a fun rhyme and a punchline ending. JZ75 is another impressive track, where the group’s high-speed, high-bandwidth delivery will make you wonder if they really are machines. Precogni2 and Precognito are variations on the same brilliant lyrics, both of which are essential. Finally, Fuzzy Dice and Ford vs. Chevy are witty and fun tracks. The tracks are short but plentiful, keeping things fresh and coming at you from a lot of different angles.
Lead vocalist Wheelie Cyberman comes up with numerous complex and ever-changing Rhymes, while Bass player Stumblebee shows a great skill at coming up with basslines that puts the whole album on wheels.
The only nitpick is that a few tracks end with about 30 seconds of Japaneese(?) chatter and static. I’m not sure where they were going with this. It’s short and amusing at first, but after a few trips through the album I was anxious for them to end and get back to the fun.
Top 64 Videogames
Lists of 'best games ever' are dumb and annoying. But like a self-loathing hipster I made one anyway.
Raytracing
Raytracing is coming. Slowly. Eventually. What is it and what will it mean for game development?
The Brilliance of Mass Effect
What is "Domino Worldbuilding" and how did it help to make Mass Effect one of the most interesting settings in modern RPGs?
Fixing Match 3
For one of the most popular casual games in existence, Match 3 is actually really broken. Until one developer fixed it.
Rage 2
The game was a dud, and I'm convinced a big part of that is due to the way the game leaned into its story. Its terrible, cringe-inducing story.
I thought cybertron whas were the transformers live
o rly?
Is the track Fuzzy Dice in any way a reference to the amazing sci-fi novel of the same name, by Paul di Filippo?
No, it’s about a cab driver.
I’ve never been into Transformers (I grew up with Beast Wars, myself), but this is a really cool band! It’s funny how Shamus’ writing is exposing me to new and interesting stuff even after his death. So much so that it’s making me write in a dead thread 18 years after the fact :D
What’s really interesting to me, though, is the perspective a post like this gives on early 2000’s Internet culture. Back then, it was so novel to have a band singing about nerd-adjacent subject matter. This was happening just as the likes of Spoony, AVGN, and Nostalgia Critic were rising to prominence. A big part of their appeal was the fact that they were talking about the kind of stuff you didn’t see on TV and other mainstream media. People had such a strong desire to talk about this stuff that they were willing to overlook the amateurish production values.
Of course, many of those people were actual kids who were awed by the fact that they could watch videos about nerd stuff with copious amounts of swearing. I mean, what’s cooler than that :D
Of course, almost 20 years on, the market is completely different. “Nerd culture” is mainstream now, and has been for more than a decade. A band like this would never make an impression nowadays, let alone release several albums. And that’s without even touching on the abysmal state the music industry is in.
Simpler times…