Rise Against - Swing Life Away -- Siren Song Of The Counter Culture (2004)

Right now I'll be talking about in my opinion one of the best songs and one of the best bands out there. The Swing Life Away song is for quite some time my absolute favorite. Before I had last fm it had around 1000 plays in my itunes library, since I use this platform it is ranked second with nearly 200 plays when I'm done with this post. Only the Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors song of Editors has been played more since I made my account in 2007. 

If we look at the band you have one of the better punk rock bands in the scene, even some melodic hardcore in some songs  if you wish. Rise Against is one of the few punk rock bands I still listen to as mentioned in my post about Yellowcard and it's by far my favorite band in the genre. I Bought 4 of the albums by Rise Against and I obviously downloaded the others. Except The Unraveling which only is decent for me I can honestly say all the albums they produced are at least excellent. OK you need to like the genre, but when you are into the genre I think it's very hard to dislike Rise Against. Vocals of Tim Mcllrath are brilliant for me, he's able to sing very good (something were other punk rock bands often screw up in my opinion) as well is he able to bring the more powerful songs with excellent screaming when needed. Music wise the band is even more Brilliant and last but not least, lyrics do have a meaning with this band, something I absolutely support.

The song is like I said my most played track in general and often used as titles for my blog, the video is lovely for me, since I'm so fond of the song itself I think though. If you're not familiar with the song or the band (which I hardly doubt...) Swing Life Away is one of the few acoustic songs by the band and is featured on a punk goes acoustic album as well as the band's Siren Song Of The Counter Culture album. Enjoy!

Official site

last.fm artist page

Yellowcard - Ocean Avenue -- Ocean Avenue (2003)

Next up is Yellow Card, again a band I'm listening to for quite some time. To be exact since my early teenage years, age 13 more and less. Right now I'm not that much into the punk rock genre anymore, but some bands I still am able to enjoy a lot, especially Yellowcard (explains the post) and Rise Against (explains the blog title). The Ocean Avenue album in 2003 didn't actually blew me away, I wasn't that much into music back then so the album didn't really get the chance to do it I guess. I did have few songs of the album and the Ocean Avenue song itself is right now my favorite by the band but it didn't strike me as being that excellent at first. Two albums later all that changed though, I developed in huge a music freak in 2007 and played the new record over and over. So I was and still am a huge fan of the Paper Walls album when it came out. I guess I'm one of the few people that actually finds this album better than the Ocean Avenue one, but I did back then and I still do right now.

About the newer material I can't say that much, I have it but I really don't listen to it. Which is a shame, I know, but whenever I feel like it I put on Paper Walls and nothing else, Maybe I should change that tonight and put on When You're Trough Thinking, Say Yes or Southern Air or look for the two first albums online to add to my media library, who knows. For now it's Paper Walls while typing this, and I'm happy with it, haha. 

The song itself has an entertaining video and excellent lyrics to sing along to with good punk rock music supporting them. It really gets me nostalgic whenever I listen to music like this, it's a bit like Deftones and the harder music when I was a kid, but now for my early teenage years, the years right before I listened to Indie Rock a year or two years later in 04/05. So yes I'm not that much into it anymore but you may expect some bands like this, just because I have some history with them and I enjoy ranting about them. I'm not even sorry, haha. For now enjoy the song and go back to whatever age you were when you found out about Yellowcard.

Official site

last.fm artist page