Tag Archives: nine black alps

My iPod #411: Nine Black Alps – Get Even

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“Get Even” is a B-Side that can only be found on the vinyl single of Nine Black Alps’ song “Not Everyone”, released in 2005. Due to the track only being released on the vinyl format, it is very very hard to find this track anywhere. It’s not on iTunes, not Spotify…. nothing. Well, unless you go to the band’s official website. It can be found there on their music player on the homepage.

Its format of release also causes the track to have somewhat of a mono-aural mix where everything you hear is in the centre channel rather than the regular ‘stereo’ mix. Dunno why that really matters, I just thought I should tell you.

The track does sound like it could fit right in to “Everything Is“, obviously being recorded around the time the album was being worked on it would do. Though I think it’s a good song, the only thing problem I have with it is that it isn’t as thrilling or powerful as the twelve tracks on that album. Maybe it’s the mono mix that takes its edge off a bit, I don’t know. But even if it was in stereo, I don’t think it could have matched up to the songs on the final tracklist. The band probably knew this too.

Still, it is one to hear if you’re into Nine Black Alps. It is a hard song to find.

My iPod #400: Nine Black Alps – Full Moon Summer

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Nine Black Alps’ third album “Locked Out from the Inside” owns. Unlike “Everything Is” where there are two solely acoustic tracks to slow down the album’s flow and mellow things out a bit, “Locked Out” provides one stormer after another. “Full Moon Summer” is the seventh one in the track list.

I can’t remember how I felt about the track when I listened to the album for the first time. As a whole, I was just very happy to be hearing a new Nine Black Alps album; the excitement took over and I knew that I was hearing stuff, but it didn’t really sink in. But after inevitable repeated listens of it, I weirdly came to the conclusion that “Full Moon Summer” is the album’s centerpiece.

I hear this song and visualise the band playing it on a stormy day under skies in the mixed colours of pink/blue/black/purple that you see on the album’s front cover. Generally,  I find something very mystical and highly dramatic about it. Mystical because I think it’s about a ghostly presence (if not I have no idea), and dramatic just because of how every note and sound is pummeled into your ears. It’s intense.

My iPod #386: Nine Black Alps – Forget My Name

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“Forget My Name” is one of my favourite songs from Nine Black Alps’ “Love/Hate” album. Though I’ve stated time and time again that it’s not my preferred album of the band’s, it does have this one. And it’s because of this track (and another one, but I won’t tell) that I think that I should really start to give it another try.

The track is about someone being fed up with people and life in general, that they wish to stop existing. Now there’s nothing about dying or committing suicide (there is that interpretation), but don’t get that idea. I think it’s more about wanting to disappear completely from the world and for it to exist like you were never born in the first place, because you feel like it’s the perfect place to be if you weren’t there at all.

“Love/Hate” was a lighter and softer approach the band had to their music after “Everything Is”, but “Forget My Name” brings a 90s indie rock feel to the album, with a sliding riff that repeats throughout (whether it be from the bass or the guitars) a snarling vocal performance topped off with a few growls near the end by Sam Forrest and a general crunchy and moody atmosphere purveyed by the group as a whole.

A small note, I also like how the song mirrors the guitar rundown introduction at the ending of the song, where instead the guitar notes slide up the neck climaxing with a few sparks of feedback. Think it’s quite cool.

My iPod #335: Nine Black Alps – Everybody Is

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Here’s another one by Nine Black Alps. Just when you started to think they were never coming, you get two on the trot.

This time though, it’s the almost-title-track “Everybody Is” from the band’s debut album “Everything Is“. I believe that it is not available on some editions of the 2005 release, maybe it wasn’t on the American edition or something, but I was lucky enough to get the limited edition which did have it. It is also on the “Shot Down” single if anyone has that.

The track arrives near the back end of the album coming after you have experienced the pulsating energy that pours into your ears from listening to “Just Friends”. Looking back now, I don’t think it took me that long to get into “Everybody Is”. There’s something that’s very reassuring and comforting about it. Even though the song clearly states that people are liars and hypocrites, the track is the expression of someone’s acceptance of this situation. It’s probably one of the most happier songs on the album, actually.

Like every other song on “Everything Is” (bar two), it’s loud. Very big sounding guitars, and quite a busy bass line too.

If you have the version of the album that doesn’t have this, you’re missing out bruh.

My iPod #334: Nine Black Alps – Every Photograph Steals Your Soul

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(Skip to about 6:10)

Now I always feel as if I have to be careful about what I say about Nine Black Alps songs. The band follows me on Twitter, you see, and I think it was because they read one of my posts. Whether they liked it or not is a mystery to me, but I guess they want to see more. I haven’t talked about a Nine Black Alps track in a while.

Well, here is one now. It’s “Every Photograph Steals Your Soul”, the third track from the band’s third album “Locked Out from the Inside” released way back in 2009. I first heard it when the album was exclusively put up onto we7.com. If anyone remembers that site, isn’t it a shame what happened to it? It started to change by becoming a radio only site in 2012, and then it changed companies altogether. A real shame, I liked that site.

But anyway, I was excited as fuck to be listening to that album. Was hyped from the day “Buy Nothing” was revealed a few months earlier, but when I heard the first strum on “Vampire in the Sun” I knew I was in for something special. Nine Black Alps were heavy again after “Love/Hate”, and were bringing back the noise.

The topic of the track is really all there in the title. The song is from the perspective of a photographer who is all about the money and stealing people’s innocence for their own personal gain. Well, I’m thinking that’s what the band intended to make out this person to be. There is low, sinister guitar playing during the verses which give me an image of some sleazy man taking pictures of somebody, and then the volume increases for the chorus; the guitars get loud and Sam Forrest yells the title phrase with a few ‘yeahs’ thrown in there for good measure.

Just throwing this in, but the part which gave me goosebumps on my first listen? The part where everything stops for a split second before a ear splitting “YEAH” brings everything back in again. That was when I realised that this album was the shit.