Unsung Podcast

This week, we're talking about two things we think are quite interesting. First off, we chat about the early mathcore/metalcore band Drowningman and reflect on why they never quite reached the heights of their peers, such as Converge and The Dillinger Escape Plan—bands they often found themselves touring with in the late 90s and early 00s.
While that story is compelling in itself, Drowningman can also count themselves among the artists who tried to sabotage a contractual obligation to a record label. As the story goes, they hit the studio with Kurt Ballou (Converge, God City Studios) to record a very weird album, tentatively titled Best Album Ever. The record was never officially released; it was allegedly created with the sole intention of being purposefully bad in order to satisfy, and terminate, their two-album contract with Revelation Records. In the end it never saw the light of day.
This got us thinking about other artists who have tried to escape their contractual obligations. We use this lens to take a wee sojourn into the annals of music history, unearthing stories of several big-name artists who tried, and sometimes succeeded, in doing something similar.
We hope you enjoy! Highlights:
00:00 Intro
01:27 Skipping the Discourse
01:56 Viral Bands Debate
02:59 Patreon Pitch
05:37 Awkward Party Exits
06:17 Meet Drowningman
08:19 Origins and Scene
12:00 Early Releases Breakdown
16:07 Rock and Roll Killing Machine Era
21:07 Later Records and Fadeout
24:47 Did They Deserve Bigger
27:05 Contractual Obligation Albums
35:38 Ozzy Contract Loophole
36:25 Speak of the Devil Drama
38:05 Ozzy Album Aftermath
38:57 Neil Young vs Geffen
39:49 Beach Boys Owed Album
40:55 More Contract Escapes
42:40 Sisters of Mercy SSV
45:46 More Obligation Oddities
47:43 Rolling Stones Provocation
50:31 Zappa Lather Bootleg
51:25 Prince vs Warner Saga
57:42 Drowning Man Review
59:32 Track Highlights Breakdown
01:02:56 Final Verdict and Wrap
01:06:21 Outro and Thanks

This week's episode is another FROM THE VAULT as we travel back to one of our (sadly) many episodes that were recorded during the pandemic. This one is actually a condensing of two episodes on the weird/genius/odd/interesting music, and personality, of pianist Lubomyr Melnyk. Enjoy!
Chris has been chomping at the bit to do this Lubomyr Melnyk album for a while. In fact, some may even remember that he brought it up during our Pandemic Mixtape. Well, the time has come to finally tackle this post-classical/minimalist work and in doing so we absolutely had to cover his…interesting thoughts on musical philosophy. Which cascades into his questionable thoughts on the actual science of how sound works. Which takes us down a big old rabbit hole, as I’m sure you can imagine.
All of this to say that it takes us a while to get to the album as a result. Also, the dude’s done like 20+ albums (although we don’t cover all of them) so that’s another whole thing we had to deal with.
We also talk about continuous music (the genre he reckons he’s in…of which he is the only practitioner), his incredible piano playing speed and a bunch more things.
Our voyage into continuous music comes to a close as we dig into Lubomyr Melnyk’s eighteenth (!) album Corollaries. For the unfamiliar, Melnyk categorises his style as being something almost beyond classical music, yet this release sees him team up with neoclassical composers Nils Frahm and Peter Broderick. This album seemed to give Melnyk a new lease of life; upon getting together with Frahm and Broderick he stated “Where were you in my thirties?”, a statement that stands in stark contrast to his general aversion to playing with other musicians in the years before.
There’s a lot to be said about Melnyk’s playing, and I think we cover most of that in the episode. Once again, potato quality audio from Mark but hey, it isn’t terrible.

THIS WEEK ON FROM THE VAULT we revisit episode 25 and our dive into Never Better by P.O.S. It's a great example of what this podcast does best, and we hope you dig this episode if you haven't heard it before. In the intro Mark talks a little about what's happened to P.O.S since too, specifically around the allegations made against him in 2020, his apology, and where he is now.

Original shownotes follow:

Folks, we did it. We managed to find a hip hop record that Chris Cusack enjoyed. We're fairly sure that this is one of the signs of the apocalypse so we're probably just going to end the podcast here. Thanks to everyone who listened.
Joking aside though, this is a screamer of an album. People have been drawing comparisons between punk and hip hop since...well, forever. The line between the two is drawn pretty clearly on this album. P.O.S himself was a punk kid, but growing up in the cultural and musical melting pot that is Minneapolis meant that there was a great deal of other influential music lurking just around the corner. Indeed, the diversity of the artists that come from the city is telling of the city's cultural and creative landscape. And did we mention that it was the home of Prince, perhaps one of the masters of genre-hopping?
This is P.O.S third album, and like every album before or since, it's a singular musical, tonal entity in his oeuvre. He's artist that never wants to cover the same ground twice, and whilst we all couldn't necessarily agree on if each of his records are successful at melding together as many disparate influences as this one, we all certainly agreed that this is his best work. And we all agreed that this should indeed make it into our discography of unsung classics.

You may be shocked to hear that Lift to Experience made one album. One. A ninety-minute double CD concept record about the apocalypse, set entirely in Texas, written by three boys from Pentecostal and Baptist backgrounds who genuinely believed they had something to say to God. And then, more or less, they vanished.
In this episode we cover the Texas Jerusalem Crossroads in full — the vision behind it, the religious fervour that powered it, and the question of whether you need to share any of that fervour to find the record genuinely moving. We'd argue you don't, and the band themselves seemed fairly relaxed about that.
We also get into the wider story, which turns out to be just as compelling as the music. The album that couldn't be bought in its home country for years. The label that mixed it without the band present and broke their hearts. The tour that never happened. The beard competition. The sandwich grill.
Along the way we ask a question that feels increasingly relevant right now — what does it actually mean when Americans start singing about Texas as the site of the final battle between good and evil? In 2001 it seemed like a grand artistic conceit. In 2025 it feels a little different.
Is the Texas Jerusalem Crossroads the unsung post rock record with actual things to say? We think so. But it's a ninety-minute album, so you've got time to make up your own mind.
Highlights:
00:00 Intro and Whether We’re Actually Living in the End Times
03:11 Album Introduction
04:46 Millennium Anxiety
09:17 Band Origins
11:19 Sound and Influences
12:22 Post Rock With Vocals?!
17:33 Name and Release
19:48 Religion and Meaning
25:46 Art Versus Belief
29:46 Lyrics and Apocalypse
32:00 Track Highlights
33:51 Shoegaze Favourite Track
34:50 Dynamics of Cloud Nine
36:27 Maximalist Texas Vibes
37:03 Album Art Joke Explained
38:56 Religion and Tech Rants
40:53 UK Success US Absence
44:22 Recording Struggles and SXSW Myth
49:19 Bad Mix and Band Fallout
53:17 Aftermath and Cult Legacy
56:02 Reunion and 2017 Reissue
59:41 Remix Reviews and Changes
01:02:42 Apocalypse Talk and Final Thoughts
01:07:45 Outro

This week we're throwing back to June 2018, when this pod was only six months old. Things were simpler - the research was less onerous, episodes were shorter (this would easily be a two parter these days), Dave was still part of the crew and the world wasn't ending...

Godspeed You! Black Emperor don't really do brevity. They do epic, sweeping, often joyous, always elaborate, suites of music that are designed to move you. They're thorough, crafting songs with painstaking attention to detail.
In keeping with the spirit of the band, we thought we'd do the same, so we present to your our longest episode yet. But trust us when we say that it's probably up there with our most interesting listens.
We dive deep into the band's back catalogue, stopping along the way to talk about the politics of the band and yes, we do offer a take on some thorny subjects. With this band it's something that can often be inseparable from the way their music, and image, is presented, so it had to happen.
The Foo Fighters Nexus also returns (jingle pending) and Chris has a full on GY!BE superfan nerdgasm, while Weaver whacks his politics degree on the table and Mark takes issue with the label "post-rock".
This is a fun and captivating listen.
We understand that the title of "best Godspeed album" is a contentious one, so we're intrigued to see if people agree with our decision to include this in our canon Unsung classics.