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SAT - 10.31.2026 - 5:26PM

happy halloween. i present the scariest thing: more things i've listened to (as seen below)

OXBOW - AN EVIL HEAT (2002). i bring up eugene robinson once in an earlier blog post and now i'm suddenly an oxbow fan. i actually ended up getting a copy of their love that's last compilation at reckless records the other week and surprisingly it was a sealed copy. there's a little hype sticker with some praise from various artists, and there's a quote from jarboe that just says "it's, um, nassssttttyyyy..." which honestly could've been the only quote on the sticker because it's the best one.
anyway this album is really good. i don't remember the last album i listened to where as soon as it starts i'm asking myself "what is going to happen to me?" and i mean this in the best way possible. the first 2 songs (or first song? they are formatted as 2 separate songs but it seems they conceptually consider it the same song + the lyrics are the exact same on both songs) set the tone for this album perfectly: anxious, nasty, unforgiving, and beautiful all at once. and i do mean beautiful, especially with a song like stallkicker. that may actually be the best song on the album, but believe it or not that's not an easy decision to make considering there are a lot of strong contenders on here. it's also worth pointing out that this is also a very cinematic album to my ears, which i guess may be weird for a noise rock album? the atmosphere is very potent but also the lyrics seem to have a narrative thread going through the whole album. this doesn't mean much on its own but what makes it work is the vocal performance of the words + how well the music fits with the vocal performance. even when it doesn't seem like it would work, it works perfectly. i will mention stallkicker again because that's actually an example of a vocal performance on this album that works perfectly when it seems like it wouldn't. you wouldn't imagine such shrill and disjointed voices pairing with a slow and heavy(ish) song like that, but oxbow does it anyway! they are kind of mad geniuses in that sense. give this album a listen if you wish to be cleansed.

SEPULTURA - ROORBACK (2003). very happy to report this is better than nation. it seems they realigned their focus in a "back-to-basics" style approach and i find it a bit refreshing. nation had a pretty good overall concept but it didn't stick the landing most of the time. in comparison roorback is a real straightforward no-nonsense type of album. it sounds like if they took the angrier vibes of against, made them sharper and more precise, and spread it throughout the album. and i love it! i think this one might actually be my favorite over against, and i think what puts roorback higher up is the consistency of this album. this is nothing but bangers all the way through. check it out if you want the best full album out of the derrick green era of sepultura.

SEPULTURA - DANTE XXI (2006). what is going on here. i really do not know how to feel about this one, and that's truly scary! for context the album is supposed to be heavily based on dante's inferno, and i won't pretend to have a stance on how accurate this album gets to portraying the story since i haven't read it, but it seems to have put a specific type of constraint on the material here. it kind of feels like a second attempt at what nation is going for, which is both not as bad as i expected but still really confusing to me. dante XXI has its share of songs that are pretty good and songs that are forgettable just like nation, but at multiple points in this album they try to mix in musical ideas that i think are supposed to be reminiscent of the time period dante's inferno was written in?? there are a few times where it works (ostia is honestly really good when the cello kicks in), but most of the time it does not work. trumpets and distorted guitars do not fit anywhere near each other and i am shocked that sepultura thought otherwise when they wrote false. if you took out most of those aspects of the music, this would be a pretty alright album. but with those elements i just don't know what to make of it. maybe this means it's disappointing? maybe. it's also worth mentioning this is igor cavalera's last album with sepultura, which kind of sucks because he's generally a great drummer, and while that applies here (i'm very fond of the opening drum fill in convicted in life, it reminds me of easy as it was by the melvins) it doesn't really save the album in my opinion.

MON - 10.19.2026 - 12:37PM

some albums i've checked out lately:

SEPULTURA - AGAINST (1998). this is the sepultura album i've been revisiting the most out of the ones i've checked out so far, guess this means it's my favorite? feels a bit moodier/heavier (angrier?) than roots and i really like that. i've already heard plenty of sepultura songs with derrick green on vox but for his first album with them he makes a really good first impression as the new vocalist. some stuff is a little hit or miss but the misses aren't bad enough to bother me. at the very least the misses are just kind of confusing the first time around but they become less of an issue the more i revisit the album. reza's a good example of this, it's a great song but i wish joao gordo's vocals didn't sound as muffled most of the time. overall really good album though i'm torn over whether or not i recommend this as someone's first sepultura album. i think roots seems like the more crucial pick for first album to check out especially considering max cavalera is still in the band for that album, but i think against is a generally stronger album.

SEPULTURA - NATION (2001). unfortunately not as good as against. similar hit or miss situation but the misses are now bothering me mainly because (most of) the misses are really forgettable. the scary thing about this album is that the problems are highlighted right in the first track: sepulnation is pretty solid right until it gets to a breakdown that it didn't earn. there's a hint of a buildup but it just gets right into the breakdown without any space to breathe before it hits. this is scary because sepultura is usually really good at breakdowns?? from there it just goes all over the place quality-wise. border wars and the ways of faith are the two songs that i really liked, the latter song especially for the more mellow bits. now earlier i alluded to (most of) the misses being forgettable, and the one miss i remember is politricks because of jello biafra's vocal feature. i think i'm at the point where i'm starting to find him rather annoying, but more importantly i remember seeing a post on creem magazine's instagram that had an interview snippet with eugene robinson where he mentioned jello stealing an oxbow album from their merch table because they were signed to neurot recordings at the time which strikes me as insanely petty. anyway before i start getting irrationally mad at the idea of people being mean to neurosis let me get back to getting irrationally mad at this sepultura album real quick. overall kind of an ok album but this is not an album that you absolutely have to listen to. check out some songs and see if you like it enough to dig further. hopefully roorback is better than this, i've already heard some songs from there that i really like.

CHAT PILE - WHO LOVES THE SUN (2026). this is the important one. finally got around to listening to this and i am SO happy to know these guys just don't miss. as a slight tangent i will say god's country initially didn't do much for me, but when i actually started getting into chat pile around cool world's release i realized it was mostly due to the mix not sounding that good to me. the demo of grimace_smoking_weed.jpeg sounds a lot better to me than what ended up on the album if that helps explain the issue. all this to say i'm willing to forgive god's country and not count it as a miss. anyway this album is awesome. this builds further on the atmosphere they've already been building but they're also getting a bit more adventurous with their musical choices. this one felt like they were digging a bit more into their nu-metal influences at times, or at least i felt that they were stronger here than on previous efforts and i'm here for it. also heavily digging the more mellow territory they venture into on stuff like october all the time and same rules. same rules actually might be my favorite although PEN IS MALL is really close up there. i think the only downside to this album is that i didn't really care much for the late-middle chunk of it. wasn't bad at all but not as strong as the rest of the surrounding material. this album's not as amazing as cool world (though i think i'm biased because that's the album that made me a chat pile fan) BUT still overall incredible, definitely recommend. if neurosis didn't release anything this year chat pile would've had AOTY in my opinion. these guys paint a more honest picture of the world than most current bands that i've heard.

SAT - 10.3.2026 - 12:49PM

yesterday i released a cover of the beginning and the end by ISIStheBand, check it out here. bandcamp exclusive, completely free. download to yr heart's content.
i recorded this way back in early august 2025, the day i came home from a trip where i was sick for most of it. i'm aware of how absolutely ridiculous this sounds but i heard this cover in a dream - the 2 key characteristics were that it was a bit slower and it was pitched a little higher up, like in the differences between NTSC and PAL broadcasting if i'm getting that correct. i'm probably not getting that right. told you it'd be ridiculous.
at some point i wanted to do vocals for this, but enough time had passed where i got the feeling that it didn't really need vocals anyway. and i'd feel weirder abt just keeping this locked away so i figured i may as well put it out there. i think it stands pretty well without vocals.

anyway the really important thing about today is this: it's been one full year since IGNORANCE, DEATH, AND MADNESS was released. this is a big one for me. this is really the first rail emeris album where i feel like i was able to craft something that was thematically cohesive compared to everything else that i released before it. it's a pretty dark and angry album (if the M*A*S*H reference in the title didn't hammer it in bluntly enough) - i had started writing and recording the bulk of the album right before the current presidential mess kicked in, and the few weird and incoherent lyrics i wrote are supposed to reflect how i was feeling about that at the time, which unfortunately has only gotten worse as of the current time that i'm writing this blog entry. hopefully the day where this reflection can be considered outdated will come real soon. hopefully it happens while we're alive. as a dear friend of mine likes to say, "something's gotta give."
i do find myself a bit more motivated to write about things that stem from that nature, but i feel like that's a bit of a double edged sword in a way. on one hand it's great that i've found things to actually write about compared to just cobbling words together and seeing what sticks, but also there is a part of me that wishes there were nicer things to write about. seems like that part of me is pretty small, considering i've found that i'm not as interested in lyrics unless they're really pondering on the struggles of dealing with the outside world and the inner turmoil of being human. i find things of that nature way more relatable than someone writing about how nice their own life is. like yeah, good for you, most people can't go outside without worrying about whether or not ICE is gonna take them away from everything they've known for no reason but it must be nice for you to never have any problems. it's also reminding me about how trying to argue against the idea of art being political is kind of stupid, because you gotta be willfully ignorant of your surroundings to argue against it. it strikes me as a very centrist argument, and i truly do not believe centrism can work as a functioning ideology because what, you don't believe in anything? at all? bullshit. i don't trust that there's nothing in this world that pisses you off. again, it would be cool to write about nicer things, and don't get me wrong, there are definitely nice things out there, but they're not around everyone. so it'd feel a little disingenous for me to write about stuff like that when the reality is pretty incongruent. i think marwan makhoul's poem "on politics and poetry" nails this point way better than i can, and it's short enough for me to paste it here for you guys to read:

"In order for me to write poetry that isn't political
I must listen to the birds
and in order to hear the birds
the warplanes must be silent."

THUR - 9.24.2026 - 11:58PM

jesse newcomb's new album is out tonight - it is called IN NO RIGHT MIND. it's out on all the streamings but more importantly it's out where it matters: bandcamp. check out the whole thing here.
we recorded this in one night at the airBNB me, shavon, and m.s. were staying at when we went down to knoxville in mid-august. the way the album is sequenced is basically the order we recorded all the songs in if i remember correctly. beer and fear were definitely not recordings that were planned for but i think it helps balance out the vibe of the album. sometimes you can't have too straight of a focus. you gotta get a bit unhinged whenever you can. i personally think they fit well in the same world as the rest of the songs.
on jesse's last album magician i played acoustic bass, which felt a bit weird at first but only for maybe a minute since that was my first time playing bass for anyone else. i was happy to be behind the kit for this batch of recordings but i did miss my toms. they had to be removed given the recording environment. the kit looked like this:

mixing the album definitely felt like a more daunting task. this is the first time i've mixed someone else's album and i did feel quite the pressure to make this sound as good as possible given the recording equipment we had access to, which wasn't a lot but we made it work. i really like how it turned out in the end, but more importantly jesse was really hyped listening to the final masters when i sent those to him at the end of august, and that matters a hell of a lot more given it's his album. shoutout to moosen for teaching me about the power of a limiter last time me and shavon were at his place recording for shavon's new album. can you believe rail emeris has been going on for 5 years and i haven't used this for anything until the brakas album? crazy stuff.

TUES - 9.22.2026 - 11:06PM

practiced with anti-sinwat on sunday, consistently reminded that working creatively with friends is one of life's greatest blessings. we practiced some new songs and they're sounding awesome already. if there's one thing that's always been true about m. small, it's that they're a damn good songwriter.
we are playing a show soon, but i have no idea how much info i can disclose on that yet. gonna have to ask them about that later.

don't know if this happens to anyone else but every once in a while i'll get a little bored of listening to a lot of the same bands over and over again, then boom i peep a bit of one particular band and i latch onto them for a while. i actually really like when this happens, it feels like a cyclical cleansing of the palette. sometimes it's a band i've heard of but never listened to, sometimes it's a band i used to listen to but haven't been listening to for a long time. i honestly think this might happen in loose accordance with the seasons, because oddly i can remember how it played out last year into this year: last spring was when i binged on isis and neurosis, last fall was crowbar and down and some of the other NOLA sludge bands, this spring was type o negative. if anyone else goes through this let me know.
right now the band i've been latching onto is sepultura. i've known about them for quite a while, listened to the full chaos a.d. album a month ago (pretty good, had refuse/resist on repeat before i heard the rest of the album) but earlier today i did a full listen to roots and that honestly may be the peak of the max cavalera era of sepultura. incredible 3-track streak at the beginning. straighthate is a great jam. it feels kind of cool to hear nu-metal actively being born in this album (i say this while i'm pretty sure korn was already kind of on that path a bit earlier but i don't actively listen to korn so uhhhh...)
i'm pretty excited to listen to against and some of the derrick green era stuff, i listened to choke a few days ago and it's on repeat enough to the point that i really believe it's one of the best songs ever.
also i realize i've REALLY gotta listen to the new chat pile...

quick disclaimer that this is technically going up on 9.16.2026 but i already wrote a bunch of stuff the day before. get tricked

TUES - 9.15.2026

unsure when this website is gonna go up. working on this instead of actual important things. uhhhhh
not a lot of stuff planned for rail emeris at the moment. will have to practice with band to do shows hopefully soon.

recently played drums on and mixed jesse newcomb's new album. check out the new single here. full album should be out by the end of the month.
had a lot of fun recording it. shavon reznikov plays bass on it and m. small plays guitar on it. was quite nervous mixing it but i think it turned out pretty good. jesse's digging it big time thankfully.
speaking of those two i play drums on shavon's latest single. the eternal homie stavros made the visualizer for it, check it out.
album will probably be out by the end of the year??? i believe we recorded this along with some other songs last october...
hopefully this album comes out quite soon. we've been playing these songs for 2 years at this point. it's gonna be a damn good one though.
also played guitar on m.s.'s final mind loser album - specifically on the new version of andrew w.k. website. felt nice to revisit this one.
been jamming on bass with m.s.'s new project anti-sinwat. very good times - we've played 2 shows so far but i'm excited to play more. check out the first one here.

ignition (the first album under the "brakas" project) has been out for a while, check it out here.
the reception to this has been quite good. i really wasn't sure how people would react to it but a lot of what i saw in the livestream chat truly warmed my heart. big thanks to anyone who gave it a listen.
the rest of what i caught on the stream was really cool. if anyone else saw the interview with all the composers i was the one who asked the question about physical releases for nathan furst's trilogy score.
realistically i know they won't happen anytime soon but just knowing that it's not impossible is enough for me to be excited about that. hell i'll pay top dollar for a 1 of 1 CD if that's what i gotta do. study up on nathan furst's music for the mirimax bionicle trilogy, you will not regret it.