"The noise you prefer to hear"

I have loved the way this album sounds for 14 years. It came out September 27, 2005, and is one of the few pieces of music I can still enjoy from that year my early life was torn apart by dogs. When I played Shadow of the Colossus in the fall of 2006, this album was on repeat, and feels like the real soundtrack to learning you were the monster while desperately doing the bidding of an untrustworthy authority.

I've never heard another piece of music that captures the vicious, grinning energy and complex, angry hope of this album's atmospheric, singalong rock songs. Their previous album, "Humanistic," was a formative ingredient as I began to write songs for my high school rock band. This album kept me company as those dreams struggled to stay alive over the next few years, and one I can still turn to for strength when I refuse to be defeated.