LISTMANIA 2019: A YEAR-END LIST BY SEB PAINCHAUD (TUMBLEWEED DEALER)

 LISTMANIA 2019  8 Responses »
Jan 022020
 

 

(Seb Painchaud, the main man behind Montréal’s Tumbleweed Dealer, has very expansive and very eclectic musical tastes, and a way with words, and so for a fourth year in a row we asked him to share a year-end list with us. As in every other year, his list pulls us off our usual beaten paths by highlighting some favorite releases that are way outside the usual metal lists… including a lot of very interesting Not-Metal.)

 

So this year I bring to you a proper top 20 albums list. No ‘Albums you might have missed’ bullshit, just straight up my 20 favorites. Why? Well, I’ve dubbed 2019 ‘The Year Of Good Not Great ©’ as it brought us a lot of more-of-the-same and I-preferred-their-previous-one outings that left me feeling like a jaded musical hipster complaining about every release as he clangs away at his typewriter in a Starbucks, mansplaining to every underage girl he can corner in a house party he doesn’t know anyone at about how he was into every band before they ‘sold out’ and owns an original first pressing copy of their demo on vinyl. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2018: TOP 20 ALBUMS YOU MIGHT’VE MISSED THIS YEAR (FROM SEB PAINCHAUD, TUMBLEWEED DEALER)

 LISTMANIA 2018  8 Responses »
Jan 082019
 

 

(2016 was the year when I discovered Montréal’s Tumbleweed Dealer through their extremely cool third album Tokes, Hatred & Caffeine (and I’m still trying to be patient while waiting for TD4). The band’s main man Seb Painchaud has very expansive and very eclectic musical tastes, and a way with words, and so for a third year I asked him to share a year-end list with us. As before, he pulls us off our usual beaten paths by highlighting some favorite releases that are way outside the usual metal lists… including a lot of very interesting Not-Metal.)

 

So this year we’re going to call it a Top 20 Albums You Should Check Out. If I were to make a top 20 list, I’d waste a lot of space telling you about albums you’ve already heard and will be present on every other list you read. Do you really need to see me overcompensate for my limited vocabulary with swear words to explain that Frontierer and Sectioned dominated the scene with their amazing albums? If so, then here you go: Fuck a cock on a stick its god damn fuck your mother fucking good.

And when you have every established music website and magazine tripping over themselves to talk to you about The Armed, you don’t really need me adding to it. Do we need to discuss Mol? You either hate it or love it, but you probably know about it. And all the big tech death bands released great records that pushed the limits of the human body this year. Only one remembered to include amazing song writing. Let’s not get into a shouting match over which one it was.

It was Obscura. Those Cynic-like robot vocal hooks had me going back for more all year long, Fight me if you don’t agree.

So here is my ‘Top 20 Albums You Might’ve Missed This Year’ (yes the title changed since the opening line). Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2017: A YEAR-END LIST FROM SEB PAINCHAUD (TUMBLEWEED DEALER)

 LISTMANIA 2017  2 Responses »
Jan 032018
 

 

(2016 was the year when I discovered Montréal’s Tumbleweed Dealer through their extremely cool album Tokes, Hatred & Caffeine (and may there be a new one soon, please). The band’s main man Seb Painchaud has very expansive and very eclectic musical tastes, and a way with words, and so for a second year I asked him to share his year-end list with us.  As before, he pulls us off our usual beaten paths by highlighting favorite releases that are outside the usual metal lists… including a lot of very interesting Not-Metal.)

 

 

 

  1. Kusanagi – Aeon

A band I always enjoyed yet never recommended, they seemed like a 2nd- or 3rd-tier math rock band with really good albums but never transcending into anything great. This all changed with Aeon. The band puts song writing before technicality on this album and 5 songs averaging a format of 8 minutes each puts emphasis on that, as these are actual songs with recurring riffs and melodies rather than a collection of angular riffs.

https://kusanagi.bandcamp.com/album/aeon

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Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2016: A YEAR-END LIST FROM SEB PAINCHAUD (TUMBLEWEED DEALER)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Dec 302016
 

tumbleweed-dealer-live

 

(2016 was the year when I discovered Montréal’s Tumbleweed Dealer through their very cool new album Tokes, Hatred & Caffeine. The band’s main man Seb Painchaud has very expansive and very eclectic musical tastes, and in this year-end list he pulls us off our usual beaten paths by highlighting favorite releases that are outside the usual metal lists… including a lot of Not-Metal.)

 

To be honest, I fucking hate Christmas. Yup, that’s how I’m going to start this article. I fucking hate the holidays. I hate the parties, the gift giving and the family gatherings. It’s cold as fuck up here at this time of year and snow isn’t the beautiful white flurries you see in Christmas movies in a big city like Montreal, it’s just grey, wet mush that ends up everywhere, ensuring wet socks from the second you leave the house until the moment you brave the arctic winds once again to make it home.

The one thing I actually enjoy about the holidays: End of year list season.

I love going through every list I can check out and every album I haven’t heard yet, and try to agglomerate everyone else’s discoveries into my own list. That’s why I put out a top 100 list every year. Not 25, 50, or even 75. 100. And I always end up cutting albums to bring it down to 100.

But 100 is a bit much for here and there’s no point in mentioning the same albums as everyone else. So I offered NCS to write a list of albums you won’t find on most metalhead’s lists. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: TUMBLEWEED DEALER — “SALOON FIGHT”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Nov 162016
 

tumbleweed-dealer-cover

 

Those of our readers who visit our site every day (i.e., the truly wise among you) will immediately recognize the artwork at the top of this post — because it appeared here only yesterday, when I included a new song by Tumbleweed Dealer in a collection of music that I urged people to hear. And as I promised in that post yesterday, we have yet another song by this very talented band to put before your ears. Its name is “Saloon Fight“, and it comes from Tumbleweed Dealer’s new third album Tokes, Hatred & Caffeine, which will be released on November 21.

For those who didn’t stop by here yesterday and who may be newcomers to this Montréal band, they are a formidable duo consisting of guitarist/bassist Seb Painchaud and drummer Jean-Francois Richard. There are weed references aplenty in everything surrounding the band, from their name to many of their song and album titles, but you need not be a toker or a deeply devoted fan of stoner rock and metal to appreciate Tumbleweed Dealer’s approach to music. They, too, have different interests… including imagining how the Old West might have looked if seen through the prism of a horror movie (and a lot of drugs). Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: TUMBLEWEED DEALER, UNDERGANG, ARCADE MESSIAH, TRISTE TERRE, SUFFER YOURSELF, CADAVERIC INCUBATOR

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Nov 152016
 

tumbleweed-dealer-cover

 

We’re entering the time of year when year-end lists will quickly start popping up, and that means our own annual LISTMANIA frenzy will soon begin. As usual, the earliest of the forthcoming lists (those that will soon appear in print zines), will necessarily neglect albums that are set for release between now and January 1, and even some that were released in the first half of November. We will continue trying to spotlight those, despite succumbing to listmania.

The impending LISTMANIA orgy also means that our own output of reviews and new-music features will likely diminish. In what’s left of our period of normalcy, I have plans to throw as much new quality music your way as I can, including two features today, beginning here. The organizing principle of this collection is simply this: Diversity.

TUMBLEWEED DEALER

To begin today’s round-up I’m stepping off our typical beaten paths of blood-lusting savagery with music from a band I’ve only discovered recently — Tumbleweed Dealer from Montréal. Their third album, Tokes, Hatred & Caffeine, the cover of which is visible above, will be released on November 21, 2016. Continue reading »

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