TomoLust

Hell yeah, this fucking rules. It's never taken them this long to drop a record but it was worth the wait, I hella fuck with the darker sound of this.

This is the guy who ruined The Gaslight Anthem, right? Edit: (this is a joke, obviously I know that this is the guy who ruined The Gaslight Anthem)

I'M SORRY WHAT!?

Did not give a fuck about Deluxe until I saw "Vaporwave Remix (feat. Lil Uzi Vert)". Now this I have to hear.

There's definitely gotta still be something missing from the puzzle. It's such an odd rollout, like I said above, it's reminding me of Endless. I'd reckon something else is gonna happen next Sunday too. Even the name of this being the date of the website premiere date, most of the songs being timestamps for titles including a song that's been released and had a name for well over a year, but two songs not having timestamped names...something seems up, like we are still missing something.

You know though, thinking more about this, I think I found the real problem with this album; it would have been a better album with a better first impression if he cut out Heartless and After Hours, the two best songs on the whole thing, unfortunately. The problem is that Heartless was a tease of a song that made us think he was going to go dark and druggy and thotty again, and After Hours (the song) only enforced that feeling; even Blinding Lights had a little lo-fi grit to it despite being a pretty boring song otherwise. The rest of the album however is a much brighter vibe than those singles and they actually feel like they get in the way of the tracklist's vibe rather than help it despite being the best songs on the whole thing. What he should have done was keep those two songs for a separate album; pull a Future or a Lil Uzi and drop a second album next Friday that sounds like those songs to appease both sides of his fanbase, rather than bloating down the tracklist with both (a la Starboy) or getting them in the way of the other vibe (like this album). The other big problem that contributed to this false perception was the album cover and album title. I feel a lot better listening to this album this afternoon than I did late last night, which is ironic as fuck considering the album title and the album cover. All Abel had to do was take Heartless and After Hours off the tracklist, change the album title and the album cover, and this would be a pretty decent album about like healing and self-growth, but instead those two songs get in the way of that theme. This man really needs to turn those Starboy Sessions demos into real songs for a new project; talking tracks like I Wanna Feel You, Lonely Thoughts, Wanna Know A Secret, Quatre Neuf, How Will I Know, etc.. Those would have been fucking classics if he finished and released them. I was really hoping back in 2018 that those songs would have been on My Dear Melancholy or the rumored sequel to it.

This is the actual album of the year. The only problem I have with it lies in Fanfare. It's a fantastically written song but it's bogged down by the cheap orchestra samples. All she had to do was use better samples for that track and it would be a masterpiece. But that aside, the song itself is still incredible. Album of the year. 9.9/10.

Edit: Damn, how are all of y'all using the word "coherent" and "consistent", like do y'all know what those mean? There is nothing "coherent" or "consistent" about jumping around four different styles over the course of 14 songs. "Most consistent since Trilogy". Like damn, y'all really ain't gon realize Kiss Land is his most actually thematically consistent album for another few years then, huh? Trilogy ain't an album, sweaty. It's 3, and they're inferior versions of their original selves so long as you got the Trilogy versions. Yeah, this is definitely a let-down. I feel like he purposely fucked with us by dropping MDM and then Heartless and After Hours (the song) making us think he's back to his old ways, like that druggy dark thotty shit, and then we just get this really mid album. When Blinding Lights dropped after Heartless, I got a real bad feeling and it's unfortunately come true - this album is just Starboy 2 but without the visual consistency or the occasional dark grit of Starboy. Heartless and After Hours are the only good dark vibe songs. Even the album cover made it seem like we were getting another gritty project. I appreciate how Too Late and Hardest To Love respectively take some influence from UK garage and DnB, but then Scared To Live comes in and ruins what little vibe the first three songs establish with its shitty attempt at trying to be a boring radio ballad. This man was never meant to get superstar-level popular. It's mostly downhill from there save for Heartless and After Hours; the last song shows potential to be really good but then just ends super abruptly. I'm so fucking over 80s nostalgia-baiting synthpop sounding bullshit from literally everyone that isn't The Midnight and Carly Rae. idk, I shit on Starboy a lot but there are still a good amount of songs from Starboy that I still revisit still to this day; I don't think I'll be revisiting more than those two good singles from this, my first four listens were so boring I don't even think I wanna listen to it again tbh, and I've been XOTWOD since 2013, man. I even go as far as controversially saying Kiss Land is the best album and that Beauty gets more hate than it deserves too, but this album is just...not hitting. I noticed a lot of people last night on Twitter saying like "haha can't wait to cry to this new Weeknd album" like what? Since when has The Weeknd ever been inherently sad music? Y'all sure you been listening to the right artist? I'm not trying to cry to The Weeknd on release night, I'm tryna get high and be a mf thot. So much for that, thanks coronavirus. Anyways, idk, it's...it's mostly mid. I'm just glad it's only 14 songs long, cause if we have another Starboy of like 20 songs and they were all this boring, I'd feel even worse. I don't foresee myself listening to this as much as I still listen to every single other album of his. 4/10. Wake me up when he finishes up and drops those leaked Starboy Sessions demos, OVOXO, or Kiss Land 2.

I'd recommend not Trilogy, but the original versions of the mixtapes themselves which have some pretty noticeable differences that Trilogy kind of ruins. The mixing, for one, on Trilogy, takes away a lot of the grit and pushes Abel's voice to the front of the mix which immediately takes away from the hazy atmosphere of every song. There's also a lot of unlicensed samples that got taken out of House Of Balloons. I'd say listen to each mixtape individually (they're still all officially available for free on DatPiff) because they're all superior to the Trilogy versions, save for the song Gone which has a much better sounding bass on Trilogy. Kiss Land still the best thing this man has ever done and these die-hard fans won't admit that for another good few years.

lol

Oh fuck yes, here we go babeyyyyyyyyyyy

Glorified Jay Z album lmao Don't get me wrong, it's good, I'm enjoying it, but I didn't wait 13 years to hear that Jay.

I'm getting some Frank Ocean - Endless vibes from this rollout. Something bigger is for sure coming.

Where’s Human Sacrifice!? Please tell me it’s just renamed.

lol

Not sure how I feel about this yet. On one hand I'm super glad it's only 12 songs. The number one mistake so many new rappers make is dropping an album longer than that. So many of these dipshits have no self-awareness and have been dropping like 20 song albums lately where every song kind of just follows the same formula and it's just 20 songs of suffering. See: Lil Baby's newest effort. Which sucks too, because Lil Baby has potential to be great, like I really like his flow and his hook-writing, but he doesn't have any songwriting chops or eye for curation. On the other hand, it feels like he just might have played it a bit too safe. Some of the songs have fantastic production and progression, Cardigan was the first one that really stuck out, I love the way that that one ends. But the core of a lot of these songs still feel like kind of middle of the road Travis-influenced trap rather than taking its own lane or trying to transcend what Travis is doing, especially as his protege. It takes a sort of dollar store approximation of what makes Travis Scott songs great - melty hooks and production that starts dark and morphs into something melodic or more progressive, but these songs never go too far with it. Or maybe I should say they don't go far enough. A lot of the songs basically follow the same structure as Highest In The Room; immediate start, two hooks, two verses, all over mostly the same loop of the beat, then the ending turns into something a little more harmonic and then ends right as it sounds like it's about to go somewhere really interesting. The songs are definitely a step above a lot of other rappers simply for that formula alone, the hook writing is good, and I'm definitely glad it's short because too much of this would be...the definition of too much. Feeling like maybe a 6/10 on first listen, but it doesn't turn me off to more listens so I might come around to liking it a bit more with more listens.

LUVVTW2 so much better than Eternal Atake, this rules.

Hell yeah, been looking forward to something like this from her for a while now. Thanks!

MOST Loved

Where's Vs. The World 2!?!?

Mission accomplished then lol I know I can't be the only one out there like this. I had to make the Blind Guardian orchestral album cover just say "Blind Guardian" when it dropped last year too because the "Twilight Orchestra" subtext bothered me so much lmaooooo

Anyways, this is fucking...profound? Like I haven't heard a "metalcore" album this fucking exceptional by any other band but Converge. This is the finest this genre can offer. I remember seeing these guys way back in the primitive Code Orange Kids days in a tiny little bowling alley venue, I never would have expected them to evolve into this though. But of all things, a lot of the experimental sides of this remind me kind of what Slipknot almost did on We Are Not Your Kind, but even deeper than that, it takes me back to what it was like listening to really wild experimental Japanese bands, like the first time listening to Mad Capsule Markets, Boredoms, Polysics, etc..

Uhhh idk, figure I'll put it here - I just edited the Love Is Love//Return To Dust cover to match the aesthetic of their post-name change album covers and figured maybe there's at least one mf as compulsive as me who would want it. Don't want it to go to waste for just me.

This is fucking incredible, absolutely underrated gem even in the J-music community. They remind me of if Shinsei Kamattechan were making heavier and more sludge/drone/noise-inspired stuff and also if Shinsei were still making music worth a shit in general lmao

Damn, only just found out about this record yesterday. Shame nobody is really talking about it, especially since it seems like Tit trying to bring up new talent.