All the songs have been sung.
Das Oath's exit from the stage this past year was a major blow to all us kids who spent our formative years feeling our hearts swell like deformed balloons with punk pride, only to feel those hearts deflate and come vomiting up out of our throats when the majority of the really great bands fell apart, leaving only the truly benign, often awful shit to reign supreme. For seven years they did it right, progressively righter and righter, right up until 2006, when they released arguably the two best records of their career--the (technically released in limited numbers at the end of 2005, but more widely released in 2006 so I'm going to count it) brilliant mini-epic Mini-LP, and the "holy shit!" hit in the face that was their 11" (Who's Your Daddy? to those of you on the Coalition mailing list). The Mini-LP is the absolute perfection of their brand of layer-of-noise over alternately speedy and dirty rock 'n roll 'core, while the 11" is that same perfection after it has completely lost its mind, almost teetering (and, graciously, not fully barging) into Blood Brothers territory. And then they had to spoil it all by quitting just when we (me, you, everyone, etc.) probably needed them the most. But I was able to see them on their fairwell tour, at a random house in Albany, and it was just as fucking awesome as I could've hoped. For me they left this world exactly how they'd entered it--playing utterly confused and pissed to the point of losing it hardcore in a basement and running into me for about 20 of the best minutes of my life. RIP:

Das Oath - "Tightened, Solidified, Cracking" (from the Mini-LP)
Das Oath - "Occupant/Applicant" (from the Mini-LP)
Das Oath - "The Terror, the Delight, and the Unendurable Pointlessness of Trying" (from the 11")
Das Oath - "Years of Veneers" (from the 11")

The song of the day for Sunday the 21st is "Better All the Time", courtesy of Scene Creamers (aka Weird War), from one of the best records in many years, I Suck On That Emotion. A nice counterpoint to the Das Oath eulogy I just typed up and a thrilling example of how far something like the Three's Company theme could have gone.

Oh and Cryptograms is up on eMusic a full nine days before its official release, just so you (and I'm talking to possibly as many as two people when I say "you") know.