The Most Anticipated Albums Of 2020 (Part One)

New year, new decade, new music.

In 2020, we’re getting several great albums some several great bands and artists, but out of all the albums that are coming out this year, these are the ones you need to keep your eyes on. Here are the most anticipated albums of 2020, in no particular order.

A Day To Remember

Album: You’re Welcome (Fueled By Ramen)

Release Date: Early 2020

Originally scheduled for a November release, pop-punk/metalcore outfit A Day To Remember had to push the release date for their long-awaited seventh studio album You’re Welcome due to mixing and artwork not being ready. So far, they’ve given us two new songs (three excluding the track they did with Marshmello) to keep us happy. Hopefully it comes out soon.

Every Time I Die 

Album: TBA

Release Date: TBA (Epitaph Records)

Four years. That’s how long it’s been since Every Time I Die have dropped a new album. Low Teens brought in a whole new audience for ETID, and a new album would help their fanbase (what up, ETIDiots?) greatly. We did hear some new tracks during their ‘Tid The Season shows back in December, and they were sick as fuck. The band will be in the studio with Low Teens producer Will Putney (The Acacia Strain, Fit For An Autopsy, Knocked Loose) later this month after they wrap up a short tour in Europe.

Kesha

Album: High Road (RCA Records/Kemosabe)

Release Date: 1/31

Poppy Kesha is back and stronger than ever. Fueled by the success of her inspiring past record Rainbow, the singer is ready to give us one hell of a good time. She told Rolling Stone that High Road is nothing but “pure and utter debaucherous joy.” Bouncing around genres like country (“Resentment”) and pure pop (“Raising Hell”,) High Road might be the best pop record of 2020. The end of the month seems so far away now.

New Found Glory

Album: TBA (Hopeless Records)

Release Date: TBA

Pop-punk legends New Found Glory haven’t released an album filled with original music since 2017, but they did tide us over last year with the covers EP From The Screen To Your Stereo 3, plus a demo for their new song “Puzzles.” While no news has come out yet on the band being in the studio, they did say that a new record will be out sometime this year.

Weezer

Album: Van Weezer (Atlantic Records/Crush Music)

Release Date: 5/15

Will this be the album that will make Weezer great again? Maybe. After dropping their riffy hard rock track “The End Of The Game” late last year, Weezer revealed their new album Van Weezer, which drops 14 months after their last record. Vocalist Rivers Cuomo told Entertainment Weekly, “What I’ve been working on the last two weeks is back to big guitars. Blue Album-ish, but a little more riffy. The working title is Van Weezer. The inspiration came from our live shows, where, in the middle of ‘Beverly Hills,’ unlike on the album, everything stops and I just break out with this crazy guitar solo. We noticed that, recently, the crowd just goes crazy when I do that. So it feels like maybe the audience is ready for some shredding again.” Please don’t be a disappointment like your previous records (Love you, Hurley.)

The Aquabats!

Album: TBA (Gloopy Records)

Release Date: TBA

With the success of their Kickstarter campaign, superhero band The Aquabats! were able to fund 12 new mini-episodes and two new albums. Backers got downloads for The Aquabats! Super Show! Television Soundtrack: Volume One and The Fury of The Aquabats! Live at The Fonda!. But those weren’t the albums. After dropping a new song called “Skeleton Inside!” in October, the group announced that a new album was coming out “later this year,” but that didn’t happen. Expect it to come out before summer.

The 1975 

Album: Notes On A Conditional Form (Dirty Hit/Polydor Records)

Release Date: 2/21

No way was this album coming out in 2019. I originally had this record on last year’s list, but it never saw a spring or summer release. Turns out it wasn’t done yet. Currently we have three tracks off of Notes On A Conditional Form and they’re all killer. The album will contain 22 songs, their biggest album to date. Who’s ready for February?

Four Year Strong

Album: TBA (Pure Noise Records)

Release Date: Late Winter

Their self-titled record came out in 2015, five years ago. Then they released a rarities album called Some Of You Will Like This, Some Of You Won’t in 2017 that confused fans. But finally new music will be out way later this year. Working with producer Will Putney (look at ETID’s entry above,) the Worcester, Mass., group are aiming to kick ass once again. And from what we heard at their Christmas show last month, it’s gonna be beyond good.

’68

Album: Give One, Take One (Cooking Vinyl)

Release Date: Spring

So much happened after noise rock duo ’68 dropped Two Parts Viper two years ago. Drummer Michael McClellan quit and was replaced with Nikko Yamada, toured with Avatar, The Devil Wears Prada, and Stone Sour, and caught the attention of producer Nick Raskulinecz (Alice In Chains, Foo Fighters, Rush.) Vocalist Josh Scogin told Alternative Press about working with Raskulinecz, saying he “will have a wonderful outside opinion on our songs. Sometimes it is easy to get a little narrow-minded on where a song can go or what a song can do, since you have had such a singular vision of a particular song from its very conception. Having a third party such as Nick can really help shed new light.” Can’t wait for this album to come out.

Broadside 

Album: TBA (Victory Records)

Release Date: TBA

Pop-punkers Broadside ended their Paradise era late last year and dropped two new songs to tide us over until we hear anything about their third studio album. Vocalist Ollie Baxxter said in a press release back in August, “We are at the halfway mark on completing our third record. We decided to dial in all of our interests on this album. Personally, I’m excited to pull a lot of my influences from some of my favorite bands in a way I couldn’t imagine doing previously. Before we were afraid to experiment because we were afraid of losing our ‘pop-punk’ audience, but as we’ve gotten older we realize it’s important to be true to yourself as musicians and artists.” Just don’t be surprised if it doesn’t sound like Old Bones.

Part two will come out later today.

Nostalgia Critic Ruins “The Wall” For Everyone

Hello I’m Chris Prenatt, I listened to it so you don’t have to.

40 years ago, progressive rock band Pink Floyd released their masterpiece The Wall, a rock opera about a musician named Pink who builds a metaphorical wall around himself after dealing with multiple problems in his life. Bassist Roger Waters created the character Pink based on himself and former guitarist Syd Barrett. Several of the problems Pink faces were also situations Waters went through, such as their dads dying in WWII and being mistreated at school. The album was a massive hit.

Three years later, the album was turned into a film called Pink Floyd – The Wall. The film followed the album and was seen as a great film according to critics. It’s since obtained a cult status.

37 years later, the Italian born YouTuber Doug Walker, known online as the Nostalgia Critic, decided to “review” the film. And by review, I mean parody, horribly. The 40 minute video has since been torn apart by people online, having 16k likes compared to 29k dislikes.

But we’re not talking about the video, oh no. We’re talking about the album he released along with the review. Yes, Doug Walker, along with music YouTuber Rob Scallon and Grammy award winning metal vocalist Corey Taylor of Slipknot and Stone Sour, made a parody version of The Wall called Nostalgia Critic’s The Wall. The 15 track album tries to add in comedy while pointing out the film’s apparent flaws. However, there’s one issue: it sucks.

Poorly mixed, godawful lyrics, jokes that Amy Schumer wouldn’t bother to steal, and the tone-deaf vocals supplied by Walker himself (along with the lyrics, go figure), Nostalgia Critic’s The Wall is the definition of cringe.

The immediate problems about the album can be found with the first song “In The Floyd,” a parody of “In The Flesh?”. The instruments done by Scallon are subpar at best, but Scallon doing subpar stuff is absolutely shocking. This is coming from the musician who has made some incredible songs and videos and has his own signature guitar. Everything feels like it was mixed in a rush, as if the album had to be ready by yesterday. Scallon trying to play guitarist David Gilmour’s power chords sounds awful, and this guy can play the guitar like a god. The hell went wrong?

Continuing, Doug’s “jokes” are flatter than a crêpe, sounding like the kind of shit 7-year-old boys would make. Seriously, “Is There Anybody Who Cares?” instead of “Is Anybody Out There?”, what the fuck? That’s not funny at all, dear god. These titles are beyond terrible, like “We Need More Victimization,” “So Long, Weird Song,” and “The Song After This One Is Really Good.”

One of the worst jokes has to be from “We Need More Victimization.” If you know the original context about “Another Brick In The Wall Part 2,” unlike Walker, you’ll know that it’s about the issues he dealt with in school in post-WWII UK in the 50s and 60s. For some reason, Walker thinks that Waters is just bitching about school like everyone does, singing, “Well oh well we got another hit in the wall / L-O-L so school sucks grow a damn pair of balls…You hated school, who the hell didn’t? / Whats next? Hating DMV’s? / Hey Waters leave it all to me / All in all, complaining doesn’t mean much at all / But who cares, its just a cool song in the wall / We don’t need to hear you, cunt / What unique boys to say schools lame.” Hey Doug, Waters’s teachers used to hit him, and you have the fucking gull to compare that to the modern U.S. education system? Are you fucking daft? The lack of research and caring is just astounding. Fuck sakes.

Now let’s talk about Walker’s vocals, or lack thereof. The way he sings is the equivalent of nails on a chalkboard. His squeals are just nerve-racking and putrid. And he sings on every single song, minus two, and those two tracks are like a symphony compared to whatever the fuck he thinks singing is.

Everything about this “comedy” album rubs me the wrong way. If there’s one thing to know about a comedy album, it’s supposed to be funny. Well Walker somehow missed that memo because this is the farthest thing from funny. Nothing on this album will make you laugh. Instead, you’ll just cringe throughout, praying to whatever god you believe in that this hell will eventually end. And you got Corey Taylor of Slipknot to sing the Spongebob Squarepants theme song cause it’s “funny?” Fuck you, man.

The only good track that I will say has to be “Fennah’s The Trial.” In the video, this song is animated by YouTuber FENNAH, who makes some beautiful, strange looking animations. The only reason this song is tolerable are the different singers on the song, greatly overshadowing the shit Walker spewed out. But the lyrics as usual are bad. Go figure.

Overall, it’s one big pile of shit. It’s not worth your time, it wasn’t worth my time, fuck, it’s not worth anyone’s time. You know how the CIA tortured terrorists at Guantánamo Bay with bad songs by Eminem, Nine Inch Nails, and Britney Spears? Well, they should add Nostalgia Critic’s The Wall due to how torturing the album is.

I’m not even a huge fan of Pink Floyd, but this cancer made me appreciate the band even more. Doug, never do music again. Ever.

Motionless In White To Release 7″ For Fearless Record’s 25th Anniversary

Metalcore act Motionless In White are the ninth band to drop a 7″ for their old label’s 25th anniversary.

The Scranton, Pa., quintet will be dropping a 7″ featuring classic tracks from their time on Fearless Records (As It Is, Locket, The Plot In You). The tracks on the record are “Reincarnate”, the title track from their third album of the same name, and an acoustic version of “Sinematic”, which comes from their sophomore album Infamous.

You can purchase the record right here, but buy it now. At the time of publishing, only 458 remain.

Motionless In White signed with Fearless in 2008 and released three albums with the label. The band made an announcement in 2016 that they were leaving Fearless and signed with rock label Roadrunner Records (Coheed And Cambria, KoЯn, Stone Sour). During their time with Fearless, MIW played the Vans Warped Tour seven times from 2008 to 2018 and toured with Slipknot, Lacuna Coil, A Day to Remember, In This Moment, and For Today. They released their new album Disguise back in June.

Previous bands who released records for the series include Plain White T’s, Pierce The Veil, Mayday Parade, The Maine, Sugarcult, Every Avenue, I Prevail, and Alesana.

Weezer, Manchester Orchestra, Rage Against The Machine, Twiztid, More To Release Records On Record Store Day Black Friday

The full list of artists for this year’s Record Store Day Black Friday event has been revealed, and it features some killer releases.

Demos from Manchester Orchestra’s latest album; a rare Rage Against The Machine Japanese collection; songs from Twiztid’s upcoming album The Nightmare Children; and Weezer’s cover of Toto’s “Africa” pressed on vinyl shaped like the continent, will be released exclusively for the event. Other artists like BØRNS, Dave Matthews Band, Sheryl Crow, The Smashing Pumpkins, G-Eazy, U2, The Flaming Lips, Adam Sandler, Paul McCartney, and Stone Sour, will be dropping records as well.

Record Store Day Black Friday will take place November 23. Participating stores can be found on RSD’s website. You can check out the full list here.