Category: Music

Best of 2017

Unwinnable Listens to the Best Music of 2017 – Part Three

By Team Unwinnable • January 23rd, 2018

The Can You Hang? Challenge proves to be almost too pleasant an experience and two members of Team Unwinnable reveal that they couldn’t hang.

The Cranberries Baseball Association: Remembering Dolores O’Riordan

By Matt Marrone • January 16th, 2018

Matt Marrone shares an unusual memory of Dolores O’Riordan, the Cranberries and baseball videogames.

Best of 2017

Unwinnable Listens to the Best Music of 2017 – Part Two

By Team Unwinnable • January 15th, 2018

The gang continues to find great new songs during the Can You Hang? Challenge. Has Unwinnable’s collective taste in music gotten better?

A strange island in a black galaxy, figures surrounding a blue lake there.

Eat the Rich and Dance

By Levi Rubeck • January 9th, 2018

What better way to roll out 2018 than immediately accounting for what one may have missed in 2017.

Best of 2017

Unwinnable Listens to the Best Music of 2017 – Part One

By Team Unwinnable • January 8th, 2018

Team Unwinnable enters this year’s Best Music gauntlet and finds it…kind of nice? Caution reigns, though: the other, dog poop covered shoe of other people’s taste in music is bound to drop soon.

Rookie of the Year

Music Loves, Too

By Matt Marrone • December 29th, 2017

You’d think for Twin Peaks super fan Matt Marrone, the soundtrack to the third season would be a shoo-in for his favorite album of the year, but that isn’t the case.

Best of 2017

The Best Music of 2017

By Team Unwinnable • December 28th, 2017

Every year, our Best Music list is the most eclectic. This year, there was barely a consensus at all.

List-O-Mania – December 2017

By Team Unwinnable • December 26th, 2017

All the stuff that filled Team Unwinnable’s free time this month – now with TV and Movie categories!

Battle Jacket

The Best Metal Albums of 2017

By Casey Lynch • December 25th, 2017

In the final installment of Battle Jacket (we’ll miss you!), Casey crowns the metal king of 2017.

Unwinnable Presents ChristmApocalypse: The Final Conflict

By Team Unwinnable • December 22nd, 2017

Ho-ho-ho. The end is nigh.

The Burnt Offering

Stranger Songs

By Stu Horvath • December 6th, 2017

With soundtracks, sometimes too much of a good thing can be terrible. Evidence: the in-your-face 80s soundtrack of Stranger Things 2.

List-O-Mania – November 2017

By Team Unwinnable • December 5th, 2017

Books, music and games to help you pass the time as you get ready for the holidays!

Battle Jacket

The Best Metal of November 2017

By Casey Lynch • November 28th, 2017

Casey Lynch has his finger on the vein of the best metal of November, and every other month.

California Gothic

By Levi Rubeck • November 7th, 2017

Nearly twenty years later, I’m afforded the chance to correct the failings of my youth and catch The Black Heart Procession on tour again

List-O-Rama – October 2017

By Team Unwinnable • October 30th, 2017

On tap for October: tons of great games, music and books.

Return of the Video Dead

By Team Unwinnable • October 27th, 2017

Out of the best parts of our old Halloween mixes we have constructed the best Halloween mix and unleashed it on humanity. Beware!

A white figure standing near a light, a still from the game Hollow Knight.

The Ecstatic Solitude of Hollow Knight

By Levi Rubeck • October 25th, 2017

While I delight in these various directions and surprises, my most sublime joy in this game is found as I walk the path of the humble insect warrior.

Battle Jacket

The Best Metal of October 2017

By Casey Lynch • October 23rd, 2017

Every month is a good month for metal, but October especially so. Here’s our picks for the very best.

A sweaty man in a black shirt singing into a mic and being carried by a crowd. This is a still from Touche Amore.

Symbiosis of the Troubadour and the Crowd

By Levi Rubeck • October 5th, 2017

But Nick Cave and Touché Amoré have earned their fans through honest expressions, powerful storytelling, a willingness to embrace the stains of humanity in order to shine light on our virtues.

List-O-Mania – September 2017

By Team Unwinnable • September 29th, 2017

Team Unwinnable’s got some recommendations for ya…

A rich painting of a sort of bacchanal near orgy, a man in a tie and little else having his nipples painted by a thinner man who holds him aloft, a woman shielding his nudity from view. Around him rest similar older white men in states of undress, their colors rich and resplendent. This is the album cover for Veterans of Pleasure.

Aren’t You Glad to Be An American?

By Levi Rubeck • September 26th, 2017

A light shone on the gout-riddled veterans of pleasure above and a tribute to the mad oracles living in a Lovecraftian nightmare of our own making below.

Battle Jacket

The Best Metal of September 2017

By Casey Lynch • September 26th, 2017

Casey Lynch delivers the best blistering metal of September.

A womans torso, in blue, on a pink background. She is holding a bat with bright orange gloves and midway along the bottom of the image it has "Parental Advisory Explicit Content"

Choir of the Mind, ASMR of the Soul

By Levi Rubeck • September 19th, 2017

Playlists, mixes, links IM’d by friends, auto-plays based on cookies, and radio, each a tributary spiraling out in serpentines towards and through the larger rivers of our shared musical canon.

Rookie of the Year

Folk Yea, Twitter!

By Matt Marrone • September 6th, 2017

The Rookie of the Year has the time of his life pestering performers at the Newport Folk Festival on Twitter.

A carnival like atmosphere with a sketch of a man upside down in a water tub, framed by two people. This is the cover for Ted Leo's the Hanged Man.

Helping Ted Leo Help Himself

By Levi Rubeck • September 5th, 2017

Perhaps I took Ted for granted, assuming he’d always tear through town again either on the festival footpath or in an Allston living room.

One man stands playing a guitar and singing, behind him a woman.

Come Sail Away, Mr. Roboto: future of the left and the Passion of the Medley

By Levi Rubeck • August 29th, 2017

future of the left have constructed this one around a song by their former band not simply out of obligation to their frothing followers, but because it’s fun to play.

List-O-Mania – August 2017

By Team Unwinnable • August 25th, 2017

Need something to read, play or listen to? Unwinnable’s got a few dozen recommendations for ya.

Battle Jacket

The Best Metal of August 2017

By Casey Lynch • August 24th, 2017

Rip into the best metal of August and wish a happy 35th Birthday to Metal Blade Records!

Whatever Happened to the Startup Sound? – An Excerpt from Unwinnable Monthly 93

By Jordan Oloman • July 31st, 2017

What do Frank Ocean, Lil B, Sonic 06 and Max Coburn have in common? They’ve been seduced by the allure of the system startup sound.

The Burnt Offering

The Perils of Realness

By Stu Horvath • July 28th, 2017

Forget all that other trash. This is the real deal.

List-O-Mania – July 2017

By Team Unwinnable • July 26th, 2017

Stuff that Unwinnable likes in July, 2017.

a figure in red boots and a hoodie walking down a set of steps to the right. this is a still pixel art image.

A Simmering Hum

By Levi Rubeck • July 25th, 2017

Momodara: Reverie Under the Moonlight is a constrained exploratory game with a singularity of purpose, in narrative presentation and the majority of its score.

Battle Jacket

The Best Metal of July 2017

By Casey Lynch • July 25th, 2017

July is going to be hard to top in terms of awesome metal albums released.

Lead singer of the group Linkin Park, Chester Bennington, holds a mic to his mouth in front of a crowd, his jaw jutting forward and his arm in the air. This picture is in black and white.

Chester Bennington: The Voice I Grew Up With

By Khee Hoon Chan • July 25th, 2017

Then the internet happened. She was told that there are tons of better rock and metal acts out there. She discovered new bands. She learned about hardcore punk, post-hardcore, emo, grunge, post-grunge and many other genres. But she always came back to Linkin Park.