5 Songs to Get You Through the Week #114

5 Songs to Get You Through the Week is a feature I run on Young Ears, Fresh Perspective on Sundays/early hours of Monday morning where I pick out 5 tunes that I think are notable and tell you a bit about them. The point is to give you some rocking music to help you deal with your weekday blues. You can either listen to one each day, listen to them all at once, or any other combination that you feel. As long as you can get through the week without the man getting you down, that's all I care about. Without further ado, here are the 5 tracks I've picked out for this week:

1. Devil on HWY 9, by Danzig

This is a pretty solid new tune by Danzig. You can tell that Glenn's voice has aged, but that doesn't stop this song from slamming you in the face and pounding out your ear drums in all the best ways imaginable. He definitely has a good guitar player on this. If the rest of his upcoming album is as good as this then I imagine it will do pretty well. It has volume, power, and all the right amounts of heavy metal evil to it.

2. Back Door Man, by The Doors

Everyone needs some Doors in their life every now and again. Anyone who says otherwise is just wrong and is a very poor unfortunate misguided soul in serious need of some rock n' roll therapy that of course only some prolonged exposure to The Doors can provide. This tune has a really groovy blues feel to it, but then again that is no real surprise considering most of what The Doors did was rooted in the blues. That said, you don't hear this one on the radio too often so you should check it out and crank it. Jim Morrison REALLY howls on it.

3. Black Water, by Timber Timbre

This is a rather trippy tune that an acquaintance of mine turned me onto recently. It's a fascinating marriage of jazz, psychedelic rock, and indie. It's definitely something to put on if you're interested in jumping down the musical rabbit hole or if you just want something new on your chill-out playlist. I advise trying it with RainyMood.com and/or headphones in the pitch black of the night. Then close your eyes. You'll thank me later.

4.  Stone Cold Crazy, by Queen

If easy listening isn't your speed, then worry not. This song in my opinion is one of the birth places of thrash metal. What? A Queen song giving birth to thrash? What kind of nonsense is this? No, really. Play it and you'll see what I mean. It's loud, heavy, and drives like you wouldn't believe. You can hear a great deal of the beginnings of the genre all the way back in 1974. Queen actually used to be a very heavy rock/borderline metal band and in my opinion this is one of the best tracks from that era.

5.  Across the Universe, by David Bowie

This is one of the few covers that could actually be considered better than the original depending on your tastes. It was apparently so good to the original writer John Lennon that he said that it was the best version of the song ever recorded when he played guitar and did backing vocals on it for Bowie in 1975. That is definitely a high compliment, especially since it is coming from a former Beatle. I definitely agree regardless that it's a rather grand rendition.