The Syndicate

Final Score

39. 41.0 PunchyTheCat
38. 44.2 Moose
37. 51.6 Frog
36. 53.9 Relm
35. 55.5 BoKnows
34. 56.0 Logic
33. 56.2 Cory
32. 57.0 gbsfranca
31. 58.5 roro__b
30. 58.8 ladd
29. 60.7 staypositivefriend
28. 61.4 nutella
27. 61.6 vanity.
26. 61.7 Visorslash
25. 62.8 Made
24. 63.3 Ace Marvel
23. 63.7 Owner
22. 64.3 Aladyyn
21. 64.5 soah
20. 64.7 Marcher Jovian
19. 65.2 Keldeo
18. 65.4 LordQuas
17. 65.6 KnightsofCydonia
16. 66.7 shubaka17
15. 66.8 Zack
14. 67.2 Adam
10. 68.8 birdwithteeth11
10. 68.8 Bloobird
10. 68.8 marmot
10. 68.8 Newcomb
9. 69.0 Ampharos
7. 69.1 Psycho666Soldier
7. 69.1 schadd
6. 69.4 Kane
5. 70.4 Zarathustra
4. 70.5 tane
3. 71.9 Tangrowth
2. 73.1 MyNameIsNothing
1. 75.5 BLOODYRAIN10001

1st place:

Kane

The Specials - A Message To You Rudy

The lights are on and the boomer venue owner put on a classic to kick you out the door to. So go on, get.

This is kind of a cat fail lol. But I couldn't not close with it, and not giving a win to the song I play last feels ridiculous. So congratulations, you broke my system and forced a tie.

11

1st place:

Tangrowth

Hüsker Dü - Books About UFOs

Ok, no, we're really done, just let me play this one last song... This feels exactly like the happy mush that is my brain after rolling out 8 walrus categories, and it has been an absolute pleasure and privilege to experience them all with you.

11

2nd place:

Bloobird

Pavement - Fillmore Jive

Is it over? We're still going?

This is just too perfect lol

I've only listened to Wowwee Zowee, and not terribly much of it. Good stuff.

10.9

3rd place:

tane

Vajra - 猿は拝まない - Monkeys Don't Pray

I think that Armed track finally broke me. This song is at the barest brink of holding anything whatsoever together. I can't feel my feet. I have no idea how I'm still standing let alone what the hell I'm playing, but by God I'm going to keep pressing on.

I just discovered at the last minute that this is Keiji Haino. I only knew him from a hundred collaborations with other musicians I love. Neat. I bet he's incredible live.

10.8

4th place:

LordQuas

The Armed - Bad Selection

This might be a weird spot in so far as I think I enjoyed All Futures more--this category's been the first time I've actually listened to The Armed despite being told to all the time. But I'm in the category zone now and it's in complete control of placements. This song feels like it's even more exhausted, digging even deeper to drive on, struggling harder to keep up the energy, sometimes slowing down and nearly losing it, finally finding it and exploding more radically than anything that's come before it in the end.

10.7

5th place:

BLOODYRAIN10001

CQ - Primal

These are progressing by how much I'm feeling the drain as I plow through them. The melancholy mood of this as it rockets ahead stacks up the burnout, makes my ears even more reliant on the pure adrenaline they're serving up on a platter to keep me in the zone.

10.6

6th place:

Ampharos

65daysofstatic - Retreat! Retreat!

This top 10 shaped up so fucking epic to me because like, every track is lay your final 100% on the line and push it to the end and then another track gets to grab the torch and do it all again. That spoken word clip right before the song kicks off sets a mood for this category so well. "This negative energy just makes me stronger. We will not retreat. This band is unstoppable." It's silly but it's so perfect here.

Fall of Math era was the only time I was really into 65days, and this hooks me so much more effectively than most of their later material I've heard.

10.5

7th place:

birdwithteeth11

Leprous - Contaminate Me (Live)

Wow wow wow Ihsahn absolutely kills it and the lead singer absolutely kills it and having two drummers is supposed to be a gimmick not this awesome and wow. I can immediately tell this is the sort of track that sounds sooooooo much better live than it ever could in a studio take. This is awesome. I definitely need to check out some Leprous. And I've drifted away from Ihsahn's albums over the years as he dabbles further and further into eclectic noodling, but maybe I should just go straight for the live sets. Dude's still a beast, and this appears to be his touring band's main project.

10.4

8th place:

Zack

The Armed - All Futures

As I got into these highest tier subs that were just impossible to parse, I found myself ranking them on how I felt at the transitions. It seemed... an appropriate approach for the category. It's like the Daft Punk sub took me to a higher level finale but I broke out of my daze and took off blazing ahead again on this next unknown level of adrenaline. It's encore after encore after encore, and if I didn't get the order perfect on song quality, listening to them all in this sequence blew me away.

This is what I was referring to when I mentioned a new contender for my favorite album of 2021 by the way.

10.3

9th place:

MyNameIsNothing

Daft Punk - Contact

I guess I can't claim to have never paid attention to a Daft Punk song before anymore. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ This is fabulous.

10.2

10th place:

soah

Non Serviam - Infanticide

This is like taking a half dozen appropriate songs for the category and condensing them all together into a seven minute package. Each transition point is an exercise in gathering yourself up and ramming forward in defiance of every impulse to call enough enough. It takes some of the wackiest experimental French metal I've heard and pushes it a step further. It was a pretty instant hit for me that just kept getting better over time.

10.1

11th place:

Keldeo

The National - Graceless (Live)

This has a lot of subdued energy. Something in the way the singer feels like he could lay down on the stage and fall asleep at any moment but the drums and bass are driving on full speed ahead and dragging him along with them. It hits on the category well for me from the start, and his outburst at the end really sells it. This absolutely needed to be live. Though I think it's high time I gave their studio albums another try.

9.7

12th place:

Cory

Nothing - Say Less

Wow shoegaze works soooooooo well for the mood I was after here. That soaring guitar and the underlying noise mix with the pace of the song and tone of his voice to give me exactly what I was looking for. It's a comet blazing through the sky, melting away at every angle but determined to crash into the earth before it can flicker out.

9.6

13th place:

Marcher Jovian

Streetlight Manifesto - If and When We Rise Again

Something about this instrument palette always resonates a sense of being at the end of the line to me. I'm not sure what it is. I would humor a quip about how the transient tonal qualities of brass submerged in ska energy resonate a struggle against finality, but I'm tired. This works great.

9.5

14th place:

vanity.

Tearist - LOV

This is deliciously erratic. It comes off like it was barely even planned and she's just doing whatever comes to her. I get the feeling maybe all of their music sounds like this, but as a stand alone piece, the improvisational chaos of her vocal performance sells me. Definitely worth watching the video too.

9.4

15th place:

KnightsofCydonia

The Black Keys - Little Black Submarines

That guitar tone is so absurdly thick and dirty I am in instant bliss the moment it kicks in. There's not much to this song, but there doesn't really need to be. It resonates all the sweat and smoke and grime of a band rocking out in a crowded room for two hours and coming back for a final hurrah.

9.1

16th place:

Ace Marvel

이달의 소녀 (LOONA) "Hi High"

We said goodbye to Pogo. Now it's time to see off kpop with an exceptionally energetic final run. Sub these to me forever; they never get old.

9.0

17th place:

Relm

The Elders - Meetings of the Waters

My first impression of this was that I didn't like it at all but it was an exceptional category fit, and I knew it would grow on me to an extent. It starts out in a sore spot for me prevalent in a lot of 60s and 70s-vibing tunes--the uncanny valley zone for happy music, neither raw enough to feel natural organically nor cheesy enough to feel natural in that roundabout let's stop caring and just have fun with it sort of way. But the fiddle bailed it out on early listens, and the chorus rocks, and the more I listened to it the more I got over myself and learned to love this.

8.9

18th place:

Psycho666Soldier

Immortal - Beyond the North Waves

It is probably not difficult to predict that I am a fan of Immortal, but by the nature of the genre, familiarity isn't as game-ending as some of the other songs I already knew coming into this category. Moodier, broodier, generally higher replay value. This feels like an outro all over and I really enjoy it in that context. It's more of a slogger than a slugger and doesn't have the ideal level of energy for the category, but that's only going to hold it back a bit.

8.8

19th place:

Visorslash

Battles - Atlas (Live)

I've subbed Atlas at least twice and recently played it in a post-reveal jam, so it feels kind of lol to get it in my own walrus. Watching it performed live is pretty rad. I'm impressed by how accurately they reproduced it. I'm not convinced it's ideal for the category, but even with that and the familiarity factor it's pretty irresistible.

8.7

20th place:

roro__b

Pogo - Happee

As my journey through the world of Pogo comes to a close, this feels incredibly appropriate to end on. These subs haven't fared well over all, but it's mostly been a matter of category fit. I definitely feel an endearing attachment to his sound. This is like saying goodbye to a friend.

8.6

21st place:

Made

Ayoni - Unmoved (A Black Woman Truth)

Lyrics this raw serve a respectable artistic purpose but aren't particularly pleasant to wade through. I tend to leave a lot of room for tracks that aren't what I anticipated but accomplish their goal well, but hating myself isn't really the note I want to go out on here. It's a compelling closer in the sense that any song with a powerful message can resonate as a key point to leave on, but is it a cat fit really? Soldiering on in the face of adversity has reoccurring relevance in my closing categories, but this year's in my head and in how I think I presented it was very direct and experience driven. It didn't need to be optimistic or burnout-defying energetic or performance-oriented or any one thing necessarily, but I wanted to be left within a spectrum of feelings that this opposes.

And this is on a level where I tend to go "who cares" and bump it up anyway, but my internal resistance is unusually compelling here. I didn't want to end on downers this year, especially when so many other subs were so good. I felt I designed the category to avoid that. It was a high risk sub, and I very frequently reward those, but it's not really a risk if it has no potential to fail. There were a couple free play sessions where I was just passively going down the random.org line and I hesitated on this one and went that's the buzz kill track and skipped over it. With that in mind, I'm content to not force it in higher.

8.5

22nd place:

Adam

Against Me! - Pints of Guinness Make You Strong

Every one in a while I'll sit down and try to compile some ranked 100 favorite albums list. I never get far before stopping myself and realizing how dumb and arbitrary it is, but Reinventing Axl Rose is always in the top 10.

It took a while to get my head in the zone of parsing this as a submission to cat 8 and not as, you know, Against Me! playing Pints of Guinness Make You Strong. I just kept plugging it in next to songs, and this is where it ended up feeling the most appropriate. Any semblance of a novelty factor could have likely bumped it higher. A bit of bad luck for you there.

Along the way I found a 15 year old video of me screaming this at the top of my lungs, so that was fun.

8.4

23rd place:

Newcomb

World's End Girlfriend - We are the Massacre

It took a lot of outstanding subs to bottom half World's End Girlfriend. I have some sort of finale type category to end most of my walruses, and each has some nuance differences in theme. This is well suited for a cat 8 but might wind up short-changed for less imaginative but more driven options in this cat 8. Its limited energy held it back just a bit over the competition.

8.3

24th place:

nutella

Japandroids - Continuous Thunder

This feels a bit turn of the century lovesick alt rock radio single in a way that I took a while to warm up to, but that distorted wall they put up hooks me and the sweet melancholy endeared itself over time. It definitely fits as a song to go out on.

8.2

25th place:

ladd

Mew - Snow Brigade

Mmmm... the forward-driving bass in this is huge when it hits full throttle. It's a sexy closer I can get behind: mega energy, and sitting on the melancholy side of Mew's spectrum to give it a nice farewell feeling.

8.1

26th place:

marmot

Motorpsycho - The Golden Core

It's long in the getting there, like the band's waking back up and regaining their energy in slow motion. I like how tangible the category feels, and it's pleasantly rough around the edges. I really enjoyed it and like getting these early to mid 90s post-rock subs. It's a time period for this sort of sound that I'm a lot less familiar with than the late 90s and 2000s. These guys might be getting some attention when I burn out on Dirty Three.

8.0

27th place:

Zarathustra

Toasty Digital - Kanye West & Kendrick Lamar - MONEY POWER

This is really well done for a mashup. It's low key climatic in the transitions between the samples. It builds up in a way that strangely works for me here despite feeling like it absolutely shouldn't.

7.9

28th place:

Aladyyn

'68 - Track 10

Metalcore vocals don't always work for me, but I'm digging these ones. The flow he executes at 1:38 is really cool. I'm loving the recording quality. It starts out with intense energy and progresses into a feeling of ending. Not something I would voluntarily listen to often, but it's got all the right pieces. Something in its confrontational approach and meandering transitions makes it tiring to sit through in a way that brings out the category. This seems like it would be a really great experience live.

7.5

29th place:

Frog

Yes - Roundabout

I would have never imagined Roundabout as a closer. It's such a classic quintessential opener. But I'm not at all struggling to envision it as the encore either. I don't have time to go digging the way I've done in earlier categories, but I'm really curious how a live recording of this as an actual closer would have settled on me. Something where the burnout is really tangible in the energy of the track. I'm intrigued. I clicked the link and went really and then oh, maybe! but never quite reached yessssss. I think live was the way to go with this song if a high quality option is out there. Creative choice for a classic though.

7.2

30th place:

shubaka17

Miley Cyrus - Night Crawling ft. Billy Idol

The only opinion I had relevant to Miley Cyrus walking into this was that Achy Breaky Heart is a good song.

Billy Idol kind of feels like the weakest link here to be honest, and not much of one. I dig Miley's vocals and the tune at large. Feels best as a mid-range cat 6 sub, but the lyrical theme and mood give it decent closing relevance. I tried to bump this up higher--I don't think 31st place reflects how much I enjoyed it--but there were too many other great subs.

7.0

31st place:

schadd

Duster - Copernicus Crater

It works and it doesn't. I did enjoy it. I definitely feel the burn--the sense of exhaustion. But it drags on out of obligation, not some final burst of wim. It's appropriate material for my cat 7 last year or cat 4 here. I think if it climaxed in the slightest it might have flipped into a sweet spot and shot up into contention. But the main thrust of this song is feeling the drain, not overcoming it.

6.8

32nd place:

staypositivefriend

Dismemberment Plan - 8 1/2 Minutes

This gives me a strong Steve Albini vibe. That's cool. It feels like a band I could definitely get into on an album basis when I'm in the right mood. I'm not connecting with it in terms of this category. I could see it closing out an album maybe, but not a live set so much. It doesn't have that sort of last hurrah energy.

6.7

33rd place:

Logic

Bill McClintock - The Temptations and Black Sabbath - "Get Ready for the Grave"

This is unironically pretty good.

And ironically pretty good.

Might even be Alanis Morissette tier.

6.5

34th place:

Owner

Witchrider - You Lied

This is cool but not the best the best the best the best the best the best the best the best the best the best the best

6.4

35th place:

BoKnows

Travis Scott - The Ends

That's a pretty wild album cover. This gets off to an intriguing start, but it kind of calms down to a brooding tension counter to what I'd ideally hoped for. I can see it as an ending track, just not this category's kind of ending track. But mostly I think the autotuning wore on me fast.

6.2

36th place:

gbsfranca

Fugazi - Bulldog Front

I wanted to vibe with this. I have heard extremely little Fugazi, and post-hardcore seems like a style loaded with appropriate material. But I'm just not connecting with the category here. It doesn't have that aura of a closing track to me. I feel it belongs in the early late phase of a set, when you're actually starting to feel the burn and haven't caught your second wind yet.

6.0

37th place:

PunchyTheCat

Be Your Own Pet - Becky

It's a cute one time through I guess and I like their punk edge, but the gimmick gets tedious for me pretty quick. And it doesn't really feel like the sort of song you would close with at all.

5.0

38th place:

Moose

VvvvvaVvvvvvr - Take On Me (SingStar Pop)

This is cute I guess in that they made him actually work with the song, but I know absolutely nothing about Minecraft except that it has intentionally putrid pseudo-retro graphics and the creator is a jerk. Y'all gotta meme a bit more boomer to register with me. It was surprisingly pleasant to listen to though when they're just modifying his voice and not sampling him coughing up flem into the microphone. Maybe if it had some grand underlying cat relevance I'd put it higher for yucks.

4.5

Scoring through 7

39. 36.0 PunchyTheCat
38. 39.7 Moose
37. 44.4 Frog
36. 45.0 Relm
35. 46.6 Cory
34. 49.3 BoKnows
33. 49.5 Logic
32. 49.9 roro__b
31. 50.7 ladd
30. 51.0 gbsfranca
29. 52.2 vanity.
28. 53.0 Visorslash
27. 53.2 nutella
26. 54.0 staypositivefriend
24. 54.3 Ace Marvel
24. 54.3 Made
23. 54.4 soah
22. 54.7 LordQuas
21. 55.2 Marcher Jovian
20. 55.5 Keldeo
18. 56.5 KnightsofCydonia
18. 56.5 Zack
17. 56.8 Aladyyn
16. 57.3 Owner
15. 57.9 Bloobird
13. 58.4 birdwithteeth11
13. 58.4 Kane
12. 58.5 Ampharos
11. 58.8 Adam
9. 59.7 shubaka17
9. 59.7 tane
8. 60.3 Psycho666Soldier
7. 60.5 Newcomb
6. 60.8 marmot
5. 60.9 Tangrowth
4. 62.3 schadd
3. 62.5 Zarathustra
2. 62.9 MyNameIsNothing
1. 64.9 BLOODYRAIN10001

1st place:

Bloobird

Dan Deacon - Wham City

This is one of those categories where I can listen to songs in ranked order and end each going I must have made a mistake; how can it get better than that and be proven consistently wrong. Kind of mindblowing that the major transition happens 7 minutes into this song, because it never feels like I've been listening anywhere near that long when it happens. Those indie pop vocals have no excuse to work here. They should be pleasantly silly, not aural bliss. But somehow this comes together perfectly. Perfectly. The bass feels like enhanced Gameboy tones and maxes out everything I love about that sound. The... why am I even bothering to type things at this point lol

How can a song be this perfectly orchestrated to make every single moment feel more hype than the one before it for 12 straight minutes.

Oh hey you also get my bonus point for best sub of the walrus, so I guess that makes this the highest score I've ever given anything. :wowee:

10.5 + 1

2nd place:

marmot

Shackleton - Primal Drones

This is sublime. One of those songs where I can just close my eyes and completely space out into the soundscape. I can imagine the scene, if really want to, but it's so much easier to let the experience take me there directly--to become a part of it. It's so odd to walk this track backwards after it has ended. I'm always caught off guard by how much has changed. It progresses so much, but I never notice that in a conscious sort of way. It's like a physical journey: I'm not reflecting on how one view looks different from the next; I'm immersed in the enjoyment of traveling through this space, and the song recreates that experience perfectly.

On my final run through these I had a seriously difficult time reading my own write-up. This song holds me so fast I can't concentrate on the words for the twenty seconds it takes to parse them.

10.4

3rd place:

BLOODYRAIN10001

Midori - Swing (If Takuya Were In Midori)

Mariko Gotō's vocals grew on me just as much as I knew they would during my first perplexed listen. The intensity of her voice and the frantic guitar and drums pair with the relative calm of the piano to really grasp the scene, at once grand and deeply personal. This is some joyful chaos, and a rare case where I enjoyed a remix more than the original, too.

These videos are back on Youtube now, and in the process of digging around to figure out who Takuya was, I accidentally left two recordings of the song on playing at the same time out of sync. I had a moment where I went holy crap this song is even higher level than I remembered before I realized what I'd done.

So I did it a few times intentionally, and for better or worse, layering more and more madness on top of this just makes it sound even better.

10.3

4th place:

KnightsofCydonia

Yoshida Brothers - Frontier

This is some pretty transcendent Enyacore. The accompaniment is fabulous from start to finish. There's maybe a moment where I wish the shamisen did more to capitalize on its eternally staccato texture, but the rock inclinations that come out around 2:50 hit at the perfect time to resolve that. There's some really rad bass support that's easy to miss. On the whole it feels... oddly predictable for a song that pursues sweetness on such a grand stage, but maybe this was a style that couldn't fail. I loved it every time I listened to it.

10.0