The Mars Volta, "This Apparatus Must Be Unearthed"
This is from the first Mars Volta album. So, as you can tell, the Mars Volta were swinging for the fences right away. You never really know where they're going, and that just was more and more true as things went along.
Señor Coconut, "The Robots"
Oh man, you're all in for a treat. Señor Coconut is a project of electronic artist Uwe Schmidt, who created this album to document a fake Latin group doing an entire album of Kraftwerk covers. It's pretty much all note-for-note covers of the originals, but with little flourishes here and there. It's all played with a totally straight face, and it's 100% delightful. I never knew that I needed fake Latin covers of Kraftwerk, but I did. Very much.
Th' Faith Healers, "Spin 1/2"
Usually classified as a shoegaze band, Th' Faith Healers used that formula of washes of guitar distortion with whispy vocals to good effect. They put out a couple of good albums in the early 90s before disappearing, which again, is pretty much the shoegaze playbook. This is the closer to their debut album Lido, and just soak up that guitar distortion y'all.
Artificial Brain, "Worm Harvester"
Before we get into this, yes, "Worm Harvester" is a breathtakingly good metal song name.
Anyway, one of the things I look for in metal is bands that are really pushing the envelope. The more chaotic, atonal, and just out there a band is, the more likely I'll find something cool about it. I'm not sure why that is. Artificial Brain kept getting mentions as being one of the truly outré bands, so I gave them a whirl. And, sure, this is nuts. But I don't know if it's my kind of nuts. It's hard to put my finger on exactly why.
Mr. T Experience, "When I Lost You"
Revenge Is Sweet, And So Are You is a totally appropriate name for a very bubblegum album, as this song demonstrates.