NecroSocial

I almost exclusively get into new bands by giving the first few bars of a random one of their songs a listen. If those bars suck but have potential not to suck I skip ahead and check more, if the song sucks but the band has the potential to still not suck I give the same treatment to up to two more of their songs. Sometimes I start this process by searching up "what is [bandname]'s heaviest song" and going from there. After so many years my ear is trained to judge bands pretty much perfectly based on those starting few bars. Back when I was playing in bands I'd always hear that a lot of labels judge whole artist demos based on the first few moments of the first song, at the time I thought that was a BS practice but once you've heard a gazillion bands in a genre you really are able to get an almost infallible sense of how good a song or band is from just brief sections of their stuff. I'm into so many musicians who's album covers I've never even seen.

It has a bunch of players and a big community on socials. Ubisoft is just a terrible company.

heavy lifting

More good news: SEC Chair Gary Gensler to step down