Whatever The Hell This Is, Part 1

So, if for some reason you get your wizard rock news from this site instead of, say, any other site, ever, you may not have noticed that the Wizrocklopedia is back.  Well, I have some surprising and shocking news for you: the Wizrocklopedia is back!  Hooray!  And it now has a massively updated wizard rock band list, as well as an updated list of bands by location.  It was the news that over 100 bands were being added to the list that made me realize that for all I like to pretend to be connected with many areas of wizard rock, and champion and listen and know about the little bands, there are probably at least 300 wizard rock bands I’ve never heard of.  So, I decided to go through the entire ‘Pedia list, and, live on Twitter, throw out quick rec’s for any bands I find that did something interesting, or had something noteworthy about them, and I had never heard of before (or I believe most people would have never heard of before).

I foolishly thought I’d be able to get this done in about 5 hours.  About three hours in, I hadn’t even gotten halfway through the A’s.  So, expect this to be a new weekly segment for some time, where I collect and expand upon my last session of tweets.  Most live listening/tweeting sessions will probably be held on the weekend.  Also, I will still be keeping to my three updates (at the most) a week schedule, so this will be replacing whatever I don’t feel like doing that week.

Without further ado, let’s get on with it, shall we?

2 Cauldrons and a Broomstick is instrumentally interesting, but lyrically boring and vocally flat. Could be an awesome instrumental band though.  Actually, it also could be really good if the vocals were pretty much the same, except super ethereal and stuff, maybe add a bit of a trip-hop vibe to it.  A new direction could definitely make this band a force to be reckoned with.

Unfortunately, the best thing about 25 Hour Unicorn Diner is the name, but the cries of “AaaaaaraaagooOOOoooOOOooog!!!” in the song of the same (basically) title are pretty cool, too.  Also, I’m pretty sure they were in the amazing documentary We Are Wizards which you should really watch if you haven’t already.

50 Points From Slytherin features a strong, talented voice, but not much else besides some very bland instrumentations and adequate at best lyrics.  However, here’s some interesting Wrock History Trivia for ya: 50 Points From Slytherin used to be more than a one-person band, before there was some sort of schism or whatever.  You now know the former fellow bandmates of 50 Points as Kwikspell and Statutory Snape – TruFax!

7 Years does the coolest things with GarageBand loops I’ve seen since The Curse Breakers – lot of mixing and chopping to make a really unique sounding, original song.  Too bad there’s only one of them, and it’s only 50 seconds long.  Still, it’s a nice 50 seconds.

The 8th Horcrux make well-played, well-written, and well-sung filks. If they keep at, they could really go places.  I would like to take a couple moments, though, to talk about the last song on their player, “Why’d Ya Do It, JK?” which begins with the phrase “Dumbledore’s gay”, and unfortunately does not rhyme it with the phrase “and that’s okay“, but instead “how could this be, JK?”, and goes on to (sort of) catalogue the singer’s dismay at Albus’ fondness for wands.  The reason I wanted to talk about this is because the lyrics are, to put it mildly, sort of stupid, and I’m really trying to figure out if the song was meant ironically or not.  That is all.

The Abandoned Boys I believe take their name from a Split Seven Ways’ song, and referencing other wizard rock bands in your own band’s name will always get you points in your favor.  However, while what I could hear of their music didn’t sound too bad, I COULDN’T FUCKING HEAR MOST OF IT.  Or at least, it was hard to hear it.  Listen to your song before you upload it, plx.

ABCDEFG! A Wizard Rock Band is, surprisingly enough, a wizard rock band. “Dumbledore” is pretty damn good, and really gets cooking around the forty-fifth second mark, so try to hold out until then, but the recording quality does make it hard to appreciate it.  I know that this is a tiny little band that made three or four songs for fun, so I don’t hold that against them, but still, it’s enough that I can’t get into the music, or at least not as much as the music probably deserves.  Really, this goes for all the songs, so just mentally copypasta the previous sentence for each of the next two songs.  “The Scar” has a really, really, catchy and fun chorus, and “A Minor Fusion” is… interesting…  This band started back in 2005, and only did four songs, one of which doesn’t work, so it’d be more likely for them to finish making Duke Nukem Forever than for ABCDEFG! to start making music again.  Oh, wait. Anywho, with more practice and better recording, ABCDEFG! coulda really been something.  They coulda been a contender.  Anyway.

Aberforth Dumbledore and the Nannies is like Mermaids Above Water, but with goats. And slightly more listenable.

Accidental Horcrux has the best MySpace tagline ever: “Darn it, I’m a fragment of an evil soul”. The music is sometimes catchy, but too quiet (AGAIN!).

Accio Hogwarts has a surprisingly fun acoustic parody of “Barbie Girl” all about Draco. I hope they make more shit. Good shit, that is.

Accio Ladies! is an awesome name. However, their only songs are acoustic covers of old Harry and the Potters songs that could at best be described as “competent”.  The covers, that is, not the original songs.  Though, come to think of it…

Once you get past the weak picking intro, Accio Love‘s “Accio Love” is pretty fun, but not quite iPod-worthy. Still, practicing and just continuing to make music could really help.  Also, the sky is blue, grass is green (sometimes), wizard rock is about to really pick up for this year (two tours, Wrockstock, etc.), and Chrono Trigger is the greatest RPG ever made.

Quick side note: Alas Earwax! is back!!!!

My original tweet about the Albeus Humbledores went as follows: “The Albeus Humbledores are very obviously influenced by The Giant Squidstravaganza, with all the good and bad that that entails.”  I was later informed that they predate TGSS, which is odd, because he’s been around for like, thousands of years, but still.  #TruFax #OhWaitThisIsntTwitter

Albus and the Dumbledores have a pretty sweet electric guitar instrumental track, and… that’s about it.  Too bad.

Albus and the Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledores are silly and awesome (yay!), but they only have on track, and don’t seem likely to make any more (boo!).

Albus Severus is, once again, a wizard rock band with only a single song to their name.  However, this one song happens to be a seven-minute long Rush-esque (sorta) epic.  AWESOME.

The Albus Severi‘s only song is a very fun and funny, but also very demo-y filk of T-Pain’s “Buy U A Drank”.

Lastly, we have The Albus Severus Potters, who barely qualify as a wrock band, since their only song is a demo of the beat for a song that was never made.  Admittedly, the beat is quite good, and I would love to hear the song that was to never be (does that grammatically make even a lick of sense? Whatever, I’ll just roll with it), and I completely accept instrumental wrock as a valid sub-genre, but still…

Aaaaand that about wraps it up for this segment of… whatever the hell this is. We’ll workshop a name later.

Also, this was supposed to be posted, oh, about last Monday, so maybe later today there will be another round on twitter, and maybe maybe there will be a corresponding post on Monday.  Also, I got a half-finished review in the pipes, so I’m not quite as lazy as I must seem.  Though, I may not do another round tomorrow, since it is 10-10-10, or 42 in binary, so it is obviously going to be the greatest day of everybody’s life, so I’m going to spend most of the day having adventures, eating food, meeting beautiful people, and having mind-blowing sects with them.  We’re going to start a church.

See you… next time!