Retrofit: Throwdown - Venom & Tears

When writing my album descriptions, there are times when I have to listen to the CD a few extra times just to find something that makes the music unique enough to add a sellable spin to it. That's not to say that I don't like what I'm hearing - otherwise I would just take a pass - but I have a hard time coming up with something to say if I can't trick out an angle, particularly when I'm listening to (and trying to write about) something that's more than a little derivative.

Take Throwdown, a band out of southern California that finally achieved success (of the Billboard type, anyway) after more than a decade of music with Venom & Tears. I liked what I heard from these guys, but it was obvious after one listen that they'd taken everything they knew and loved about Pantera, Lamb of God, and (to a lesser extent) Machine Head, threw them into a blender, and poured the result into a CD master: Singer Dave Peters sounds like Phil Anselmo when he doesn't sound like Randy Blythe, the music is carbon copy of the traditional groove metal sound, etc. On the surface, it was a tough sell: How can you convince someone they want to buy this album without outright lying, sounding like a snake oil salesman, or omitting the striking lack of originality that made Throwdown seem like a groove version of Godsmack?

Maybe there was some self-delusion in the process (although I listened to the album again recently, some two months after writing the description, and I still like what I hear), but with enough digging, signs of creative thought began to appear. The intro to opening track "Holy Roller," for example, gets positively thrashy before it settles into a body-rocking groove, and when Peters actually sings like himself instead of like a Phil Anselmo clone, he's got a unique enough sound. However, the highlight of the album - and the one piece that really sold me on the idea that Throwdown has a future as something more than a cover band - is Cancer, a short, haunting instrumental that uses a very simple progression to convey the loneliness of dying by degrees in a hospital bed. Sure, it may bear more than passing resemblance to Fear Factory's Echo of My Scream, but it's progress. If Throwdown can build on that type of variety but continue to rock, I don't doubt that Venom & Tears will be but one part in a string of successes.

Alcohol, The Emo Kids, And Me

Much has been made (among my friends, at least) of how In Flames' latest record does an excellent job of pandering to the whiny teenager set, at the more maturity variety of subjects covered in their earlier material. I had the opportunity to write up an album description (as a part of the new gig) for A Sense of Purpose... (or is it Sense of Purpose? or maybe A Sense of Purpose without the ellipses that so clearly grace the cover?), so I had to struggle with the undeniable change in the band's style - and determine whether or not I liked what they were doing - before writing up the description. I ended up doing it, because I decided I liked the album enough to want to keep it and (more importantly) want to write positive things about it, for reasons that I won't go into here because they're outside the main point of this post:

Tuesday morning, following a particularly vicious combination of tequila, beer, no dinner and a three-hour period where I passed through what astrophysicists (when they develop the instruments sensitive enough to record what I experienced) will some day call a time/alcohol continuum, I woke up with a hangover. It was not the worst hangover I've ever had, but it was pretty ugly, and as I was stumbling around my kitchen looking for foods that would nourish me without making me sick, I had a moment of connection with one of A Sense of Purpose...'s more emo moments (from "The Mirror's Truth"): "I feel like shit/but at least I feel something."

Stuff of whiny 14-year-olds with LiveJournal blogs and chips on their shoulders it may be, but damn if it didn't ring a little true after my rock star morning-after.

Metal Thought for the Day

Running in the rain - particularly in a hard rain - seems like one of the more metal things you could do on a regular basis, particularly if you're listening to something appropriate ("The Long Distance Runner," for example, or anything fast and brutal). At least it does to me, but I look at running through the rain as being some sort of test of man versus nature, even though a.) I'm running through Brooklyn, one of the most controlled natural settings on the planet and b.) I'm running through rain and not something really hardcore like hail. In any case, throw in something metal as the soundtrack to the sound of pounding feet and all of the sudden I'm a mythical hero, locked in struggle against the titanic will of the gods.

You should note that I'm not a big fan of running in the first place, so anything that keeps me motivated - no matter how outlandish - is worth trying.

Ministry at The Fillmore NY / Irving Plaza

I didn't like Ministry's last album. I didn't dislike it either, and I still have the copy I got for the review I wrote, but The Last Sucker is no Psalm 69, or Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste, or Land of Rape and Honey (Al sure does cook up some great album titles, doesn't he?). For this reason alone I was a little disappointed when I saw the set list from Ministry's final tour: a disappointment written by the preponderance of Bush Trilogy song selections and then sealed by the news that openers Meshuggah would be playing a paltry 35 minutes because of an impingement in the drummer's shoulder.

That's the great thing about low expectations, though: they're so very easy to surpass. I'm pretty sure Meshuggah played 45 minutes, for example, treating us all to the unexpected delight of watching musicians head bang in synchronization to different time signatures: the singer in a half-time four, the guitarists in whatever weird compound time signature they were playing in. It's very impressive to see, but I figured out the band's secret: I happened to spend their set a few feet back from the venue's computer-equipped soundboard, and noticed that their engineer had inserted a digital plug in Dark Essence into the mix. In absence of further evidence, I will assume that Meshuggah uses Dark Essence to insert the proper amount of distilled digital evil into their music. Highlight of the set: finishing the night with a face-melting version of "Future Breed Machine" that inspired one drunk patron - a gentleman with a shaved head and a long camouflaged skirt (Army/Navy surplus, no doubt) who'd been boosting himself up onto the barrier separating the sound and video engineers from us mere mortals all during the set and screaming, "Fuck the mainstream!" - to start an impromptu pit with two young women who were otherwise happily engaged in not moshing. He missed, one of them fell, and the other kicked him in the ribs until someone else dragged him off. It was a good scene.

But Ministry...man. I mentioned about a year ago that KMFDM / Pig in 2003 was one of the loudest shows I've ever been to. After seeing Ministry - incidentally the first industrial / industrial metal show I've seen since those far-off Boston days - I have a theory: when it comes to ear-splitting intensity, keyboards > guitars. Seeing Ministry live, with all volume knobs set to eleven, sound clips and weird synth sounds and pure noise pouring out of the keyboards, and buzzsaw guitar riffs cutting holes in the sonic atmosphere made even the new material sound very kick ass, and when the band pulled out the classic material for the encore, the show made the transition into Experience, melding hipsters, metalheads, and gearheads into one seething mass, all screaming "So what!" at the tops of their lungs, all moving at the behest of the guy up front with the black dreadlocks, Ozzy Osbourne sunglasses, and top hat.

After my friends and I skipped out before the second encore (replete with covers) ruined the evening, we passed other concert goers on the street speculating about the seriousness of the announcement of Ministry's purported demise. After that night, I don't think there's any question: if the goal is go out on a high note, this concert seals the deal. Ministry may be dead, but they sure as hell went out with a bang.

Mocking Boring Thrash

In addition to writing (independently now - woo!) concert reviews, I've picked up some work writing album descriptions. They're a bit like reviews, except I can't write anything negative (or anything too negative) because they're written for a retailer, which is in the business of selling CDs, not informing the public about their musical value. It's an interesting creative challenge, because it can mean finding the good in things that are, well, mediocre. Fortunately, thanks to MySpace, I can filter out the real trash before it comes to me, so to this point, if I'm writing to recommend something it's because I actually like it - which is why I bother linking to the reviews from my clips page.

Of course, there are always the ones I was happy to let get away, or the pieces I wrote that omitted my sharper criticisms for the sake of the client's request - but there's no rule that says I can't talk about those albums here. In other words: new feature, where I bash crappy metal albums, or cover the other side of my reviews. Let's begin.

Flash back to a couple of weeks ago. I'm perusing the weekly list my editor sends me with the week's additions. All of these albums either are or were on the Billboard 200 in the past year, and because I'm a Clear Channel-hating luddite who has way too much nostalgia for rock radio from the mid-1990s, I've generally never heard of three-quarters of the artists on the list because they're (presumably) on the airways and I'm not listening. In any case, unless I get lucky and something like ObZen or Ghosts I-IV gets on the list, I'm going to need to do some research through Google, Wikipedia, and MySpace.

This particular week's pull is pretty grim. There's Down's third album, which I really want to like because I like both Pantera-era Phil Anselmo (despite his being a huge douchebag) and Corrosion of Conformity such as they were when "Albatross" was a single, but I can't because it's legitimately terrible. There's Atreyu's latest release, but I liked them better when they were called Van Halen. And then there's a group called Black Tide.

Wikipedia tells me that Black Tide has an average age of very young (well under 20) and that they have a throwback late 80s thrash sound. Equally much seems to be made of their youth and their sound, which should set off alarm bells: I liked Silverchair when I was 14, but not too long afterwards I released how terrible that first album was and how part of the hype was that it was a rock album recorded by sixteen-year-olds. Anyway, I'm intrigued, so I find their MySpace page and take a listen. Very quickly, I am appalled. Even worse, I grow bored.

There's no doubt that Black Tide is a very talented group of musicians, with a pair of shredders who can play much better than I ever could. They even have a cool name for their lead single (if that's how you can describe a MySpace track): "Warriors of Time." Here's the problem though: take every NWOBHM and thrash cliche you can think of - twin guitar harmonies, fast paced palm mute riffs with thin, crunchy distortion, backing vocals that can easily be chanted by a large crowd - slap a nice production veneer on it, and you've got Black Tide. Their music is a faithful, boring reproduction of metal from twenty years ago, without any new touches or twists (besides the better recording quality) that would help them stand out from a crowd. I hate boring music. I will not review boring music. I will make fun of it instead. So, Black Tide: if you can cook up something new and interesting for your next album - even in the thrash vein - I will gladly give it a listen. Until then, you're getting far more attention than you deserve.

Gigantour III at Hammerstein Ballroom

I was pretty excited about this show before going; it was Megadeth, after all, and even though I've seen Dave Mustaine and his latest group of instrument-wielding henchmen far too many times over the past three years (Six! Six! What the hell is wrong with me?), they've made up for my terrible first viewing so many times at this point that it's hard not to get psyched up about the upcoming thrashing. Then I found out that Children of Bodom was on the bill.

As I've mentioned in the past, Children of Bodom exerts a strange and powerful influence over me, not unlike that of Megadeth. Putting the two of them on the same bill was a stroke of pure genius, and while people make jokes about a show being too much rock to handle, in this case it was nearly the truth: I thrashed and banged so hard during the two sets that I couldn't sleep properly for the next two days from my aching neck and shoulders and had to call in sick. It's a measure of a good old metal time when you're not only physically exhausted but slightly damaged, too.

What's odd - for me, anyway - about seeing any band (whether I know them well or not) live is that I don't remember very much of the music afterward. Take this show, for example. I know Job for a Cowboy played some wretched-sounding sludge that made anticipating Bodom that much sweeter, like an upcoming feast for a starving man (seriously, they were that bad). I know I was making up words to "Angels Don't Kill" and "Sixpounder" because I was so hyped up I had to scream something, even if they weren't technically the right lyrics. I know my friends and I retreated to the downstairs bar while In Flames played because they were in serious danger of becoming the crap sandwich between two buns of awesome and we had some bullshitting to do. And I know I nearly removed my skull from my neck during "Hangar 18," and that I thought that Chris Broderick did a better job on the Spanish guitar bridge in "Holy Wars" than Glen Drover, and seemed to have more stage presence, too. But I don't really remember much else, and when I try to think of the songs I do know, I just hear the studio versions. Soon enough, the mental pictures from this show will merge with those from other shows, and - if I'm lucky - I'll be left with one framing shot from the whole night, and the feeling that I had a great time.

Conversations with Rock Stars

Last night, I dreamed that Mike Portnoy and I were hanging out in his bedroom, which for some reason was a cramped fishbowl-type layout with enormous windows on the first floor of a building in midtown Manhattan. People were walking by and looking in with idle curiosity as we talked. It was a weird scene - not because of the geographic locale, or because there were two beds crammed into a space not much larger than a closet - but because Portnoy was simultaneously his current age - early 40s, married, kids, successful - and in high school, and we were hanging out in his bedroom because that's where kids hang out before they have places of their own with things like living rooms. At one point Mike's family did show up, and then Dave Grohl stopped by, but he was looking for something in the kitchen. In the background, the Midtown location slowly shifted to some lodge high up in the mountains. Meanwhile Mike and I talked about music, and it was a good time. I attribute all of these dreamed oddities, by the way, to listening to portions of In Utero at some point yesterday, and reading through most of the Images book of Lifting Shadows before going to sleep last night.

When I woke up, I spent a good half an hour wondering about what I would have really talked about. I met Jordan Rudess once, when he was doing a demo for Mark of the Unicorn at the 2003 AES convention, and I couldn't think of anything to say to him except that I really liked his work with Dream Theater and that I'd written my senior thesis in college on Scenes From a Memory. I came to the conclusion that what I was really looking for was not to talk to him as a journalist, because there'd be no connection, and not as a fan, because I would feel I was imposing, but as someone else who really loves music. No doubt that would help me get past the intense, irrational intimidation I felt about interviewing someone in my sleep.

Testament at B.B. King's

It's incredible how a good band can get past the limitations of a terrible venue and play a great show. It's also incredible how much I've come to dislike seeing shows at B.B. King's, and yet I still continue to subject myself to the occasional appearance because I'm willing to sacrifice things like sonic quality to see a band. It's a common enough problem for any concert goer I'm sure, and I should probably consider myself fortunate that the three shows I've seen there - Emperor in 2006, Symphony X in 2007, and now Testament in 2008 - were all excellent despite the venue. I'll go into that more in a minute, but first: Testament and their awesomeness.

Not ten months after I said Testament refuses to tour anywhere near New York City they very kindly made me a liar, and came to headline B.B. King's at the head of another group of local acts I had no desire to see. Once again, my reactions bordered on hero worship: Chuck Billy is larger than life and should take up air guitar competitions as a side gig, Alex Skolnick is a shredding demon who's still the man even though he bounces around on stage like a teenybopper, and the set list (see below) was quality. Seth had teased me with reports of inclusions of "Demonic Refusal" in earlier gigs, but it seems like either New York wasn't Satanic enough to warrant the inclusion, or Testament still hasn't quite come to terms with their past.

To be honest, I'd love to know why they don't play more from that album: is it musically too far outside of where they want to be? Too demanding on the voice? They gave us "Low" instead, which kinda jives with the heavy groove thing they're putting into the new record, but it's not like Demonic was bad album - give us more of it! Maybe they'll bring back some more when they open for Priest/Heaven and Hell this summer. I think three appearances in the same area in less than a year warrants some set list experimentations.

Anyway, B.B. King's: I don't like the place because unless you're right up front, taking the risk of having someone's boot planted in your face as they go crowd surfing by, it's difficult to see, as your view will doubtless be blocked by one of the room's odd architectural features (like the thick columns spaced a third of the way out from either side of the room's walls), and if you're shorter than six feet, you'll be looking at the stage through gaps in shoulders. Then there's the sound problem: sound must get trapped in weird corners of the room and die, because it's not making it to the back. I took my earplugs out during the second song to see if that gave me more of an impact, but that only lead to my discovering what everyone else in the club was enjoying: highs so shrill they'll cut your head off. Good stuff. Like I said above: I've yet to see a bad show at B.B. King's, but I get the feeling I'm never going to enjoy it there.

Set List

1. Over The Wall
2. Into The Pit
3. Apocalyptic City
4. Practice What You Preach
5. The New Order
6. Electric Crown
7. More Than Meets The Eye
8. Low
9. A Trail Of Tears
10. Henchmen Ride
11. Souls Of Black
12. Evil Has Landed
13. The Preacher

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1. DNR
2. 3 Days In Darkness
3. Alone In The Dark
4. Disciples Of The Watch