Day 44: Slough Feg - Digital Resistance

Artist:   Slough Feg
Album:  Digital Resistance
Source:  http://pitchfork.com/advance/347-digital-resistance/

Pre-listening Notes:  So, I am a few days behind and there is a mass of stuff coming out in the next month or so.  I thought there was going to be a huge rush on new streaming to catch me up, but really none of that stuff is doing full album stuff yet.  So, I will look into this release.  They are a metal band, folk-metal?, who has been around for over 20 years, this being their ninth album.  However, I've never heard of them, so I'm going based on stuff written on the internet here, but it seems like they take a lot of their influence from the Euro metal scene.     

Initial Reaction:  Woah, have I been transported to a renaissance fair?  I really would never say this is metal, but maybe more of a weird folk hard rock combination.  This is weird, not necessarily bad, but I am not 100% sure what is going on here.  Do they take themselves seriously?  Is this all a joke?  Musically, everything is interesting enough.  This is just a whole lot of strange.

Random Thoughts:  Okay, song two starts off a little more normal.  It still has a weird vibe to it, but it sounds more like what I expected based on the influences I read.  Lyrically, I think there is some mentions of computer related items.  I thought I heard something about a "corrupted firewall", which I guess based on the title of the record isn't that weird.  This song is a lot more interesting and almost catchy and enjoyable.  The next song falls more into line with the second track, so maybe the first song was just slightly more weird sounding than the rest of the album.  Alright, the song Magic Hooligan kicks in after an intro with a little bit of pep to the song.  This song I can get behind.  This settled into a more British sounding rock record after that first song.  It still has a unique sound to it, but this isn't bad at all.   

Final Reaction:  I was a little unsure when I went in to this, and then even more so early on, but once this got going, this ended up being better than I expected.  Some cool stuff going on and something I'd probably throw on again while playing some video games or doing some computer work.     

Final Grade:  6.5/10