Metal Worx

Red, White, and Ted Nugent

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 17:30:00 +0000

Last night, Seth and I were discussing the release of Ted Nugent's new book - which I had misremembered as Red, White, and Nuge, which I think is a catchier than Ted, White, and Blue - and how it could be used as a get out of jail free card with the TSA in airports: just hold it at chest level in the security line and they'll not only wave you through the scanners, but grant you a full honor guard escort all the way to your gate, where you'll be given an upgrade to first class on the spot. You see, the government security establishment thinks highly of the Nuge and his political throwbacks to an America that never existed, and therefore anyone who favors his views could not possibly be a terrorist. It's like reverse profiling!

Today, we find out the book isn't coming out until October. While the later release date means you'll need to use one of Ted's earlier books - I favor Kill It & Grill It myself, for its pithy title - as the passport through our iron-clad airport security system, it does give Ted, White, and Blue a much more important primary role. Since the book is highly political in nature, pitting "God, guns, and red-blooded, full-throated Americanism against pantywaist politicians, nanny-state judges, and tofu-eating Obamamaniacs," I suspect we may have found the 2008 October Surprise a few months early. That's right, folks: Ted Nugent is going to save this country, one book reader at a time.

C.C. DeVille's Suffering and Failure

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 23:14:00 +0000

Contrast this headline - "C.C. DEVILLE Wants POISON Concerts To Be 'Honoring To God'" - with this headline - "AVERSE SEFIRA: Christianity Is 'The Root Of All Human Suffering And Failure In This World'." Who says metal isn't a big tent way of life, offering shelter to comers of all types?

Actually, since DeVille was such a burnout that he committed the musician's ultimate sin (being so fucked up you mess up a live performance), compounded by committing that sin while playing a huge venue, and he's probably adopted Christianity as a way to stave off his other addictive impulses, maybe Averse Sefira's got a point, by the magic of time travel, Christianity is at the root of DeVille's suffering and failure. So, in conclusion: big tent, but inclusion by exclusion more than by shelter.

Master of Covers

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:14:00 +0000

If you'd told me a few months ago that Metallica was planning to release a new album later this year, my response probably would have been, "so fucking what?" Then I would have laughed at my cleverness, because I'm a huge nerd.

My feelings did a pretty abrupt 180 after hearing Metallica's cover of "Remember Tomorrow" on the Iron Maiden tribute CD that Kerrang! recently put out. Gone is the crappy St. Anger production, and Metallica does an excellent job finding that all-important balance between making the song their own and keeping with the spirit of the original recording (a balance that several other artists on the record would do well to learn), producing a track that makes me wonder whether they might still have something interesting left in the tank.

I guess we'll find out soon enough, because the band announced the track listing and album artwork today. Themes of rock 'n roll martyrs ain't exactly Master of Puppets-level potential, but they could be interesting, and the open grave/magnet thing on the cover is pretty cool. Heck, they're even using the old logo font for the first time in seventeen years. But I still have my doubts:

First, "Unforgiven III"? Really? The original song was fine, but what bothered me about the sequel was the seemingly lazy decision to shove the tune from the original into the chorus and tie it all together with the awful pun off of "II/too." Totally unnecessary, and really a waste of what was a half-way decent verse line by making the song a pretty big joke. Even if Metallica doesn't try to pull the same trick again (what would they pun off of three? Something about trees, spoken by a "character" with soft palette problems?), the legacy exists. Metallica can be as out of the box as they want to, but if they're going to do something proggy like have a song cycle, don't make it sound like a bad action movie trilogy.

Second, I might be fooling myself by placing my hopes on a cover. Metallica are past masters of doing kick ass song covers, as a listen of all two-plus hours of Garage Inc. will happily prove, but doing a great job reinterpreting other people's material does not mean you've gained (or regained) the ability to write great originals. "Remember Tomorrow" is really more of a double-edged sword for anticipation: either it heralds a great new tomorrow, or one full of some pretty heavy disappointment.

At The Gates at The Fillmore NY / Irving Plaza

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 15:58:00 +0000

A four point breakdown of why the second At The Gates reunion show at the Fillmore was a disappointment:

The .250 batting average. Four bands took the stage - Toxic Holocaust, Municipal Waste, Darkest Hour, and At The Gates - but only the wildly popular Municipal Waste had the energy to put on a really great set, complete with 30 people galloping around in a circle pit about the size of the Fillmore's floor and a full-fledged wall of death. Toxic Holocaust was fun before the Waste blew them away as a reference point; Darkest Hour was a hideous combination of generic and stereotypical that sent me running for the downstairs lounge; and At The Gates...well, there were issues that I'll get into more below. One in four good showings does not a good night make.
Darkest Hour. Who keeps inviting hipsters to the metal party? Doesn't everyone realize they're just going to spoil the whole thing by trying to introduce irony at every turn? I have an idea: let's hold up Darkest Hour as an example of the bad things that can happen, and maybe this insanity will stop. A five piece band, they feature four hipsters and one token metal-looking dude on guitar; the bass player spent the few minutes of their set that I could stand to watch jumping around on the nearest available monitor looking like he was trying to conjure up Sid Vicious (i.e., strung out and slapping strings at random). I left before I spent the whole set making fun of them.
Heat and Light. A note to the owners of Fillmore NY: it may be more difficult to turn a profit in these days of rising energy costs, but packing a room with people who have no compunction about shoving into each other and then turning off the air condition is a terrible idea. When sweat's pouring off me while I'm standing still, I don't want to go buy more of your overpriced beer; I want to leave. And to the light director: setting up the spotlights so they shine down into the eyes of concert goers was also a poor move. It's hard enough seeing a band on that stage from the back of the floor; shining bright white lights in my eyes just makes it worse.
At The Gates. I'm still not entirely sure what bothered me about At The Gates' set, but I do know I was pretty miserable for the last half hour - the heat and light didn't help - and left before the encore, so there had to be something. I hate to assign the issue to something super subjective like band energy level (maybe I've been reading too much about baseball statistics today), but something was missing. And more importantly, most of the people around me couldn't feel it missing and were having a good time, which made everything a little worse. I'm not going to go delete my bootleg copy of Slaughter of the Soul or anything, but I wouldn't go see them again if they came back around.

Def Leppard: Charming Ladies Out of Their Pants Since 1983

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 17:44:00 +0000

Listening to Pyromania, and I've made a discovery: I'm pretty sure "Action! Not Words" is about homemade porn, which means one important thing: Def Leppard managed to write a song about doing it for the love of the game and getting it on film and still managed to appear absolutely irresistible to a good portion of the female population. Props to them, I guess, because I'm pretty sure that's something the average male musician couldn't pull off. I was originally going to mark this down as an example of Def Leppard being Dave Matthews before there was a Dave Matthews (with a higher rock quotient, of course), what with the whole "Crash Into Me" thing Matthews pulled in the late 90s, which proved inconclusively that women are far more obsessed with sex than men, but will only reveal this obsession if crooned to properly. Or at least that was my experience at the time - here was a guy singing about some sort of fetish wet dream thing he had going on with a picture of a fashion model, and any girl who didn't already dislike Dave Matthews thought it was the most wonderful thing on the radio.

Anyway, I quickly revised this conclusion. Def Leppard gets the edge on subtlety, treating this difficult topic with the sensitivity it deserve: There's not a single mention of the song's narrator selling the video to his local porn producer after he and the video's "star" break up. That's the kind of treatment that wins hearts and minds, folks.

Did Alexi Laiho Learn English From Redubbed Japanese Movies...

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 21:12:00 +0000

...Or did he just go to the Scott Weiland school of lyric writing, where students learn to write lines of songs that literally make no sense but still emerge a theme? I'm reading through the lyrics of Blooddrunk right now, working on an angle for the album description, and while I can eventually pry the meaning - or a meaning - out of the words by reading long enough and looking for the 10,000 mile view, I wouldn't say there's anything particularly coherent going on line by line. An example, from "Roadkill Morning":

Bastard of Bodom, reporting
That sharp pain always go's away
How did I get here once again?

I have to shoot to survive
Otherwise screech "I wanna fucking die"
But I need the bottle and I'll be fine

Based on the combination of statements about alcohol and pain contextualized in the near past in both this snippet and the rest of the song (not to mention the title), I'm guessing "Roadkill Morning" is about a really bad hangover, probably combined with some post-brawl bruising and maybe a broken heart, too. Of course, it might be about something else entirely, and I'm missing the meaning - if there even is one, and these songs aren't just words strung together to match a general mood - because I can't find my way around the syntax. Here's the kicker, though: I'm not sure if Laiho throws out verbal landmines left and right because he's trying to get the listener to dig for subtlety, or because his English skills are less up to par than his stage banter might suggest (not that he gives monologues on stage or anything, but he seems to have some idea of what he's talking about, like doing a substitution rhyme of "motherfucker" with "trucker." I feel like you need a basic understanding of the language to do that). Maybe he writes everything in Finnish and then translates it afterwards?

Partially related: Every image I include in my posts comes from Google Images, as part of a common practice where bloggers break copyright laws by taking images from other sites without permission (the process is self-perpetuating, too; according to my site statistics, most of my traffic comes from images.google.com). The image I grabbed today happens to be a picture I took back in December, 2006, because it's the first search result for Alexi Laiho. Definitely something to look back on with pride in the declining years.

Dethklok at The Nokia Theatre

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 20:41:00 +0000

I've described this show four or five times since I saw it about a week ago, and every time I say the same thing: "it was actually really cool, until they ran out of video." For those of you not in the know, here's how it went:

Well, actually, for those of you really not in the know, here's what Dethklok is. Think Gorillaz, but they have a late night TV show, so there's more exposure and slightly larger plot lines. Adult Swim, in their genius, has episodes online, so you can check it out and see how much of a genius Brendan Smalls is for making absurdist comedy out of death metal. For everyone else:

Brendan Smalls got a band together, including Gene Hoglan (whose street cred makes up for how unmetal the rest of the band is) to play the music, which makes up most of the show. He and the rest of the band play in the dark, while a video projection behind them shows Dethklok playing in a series of music videos, reprising material from the show's career. There's a brief sketch of a plot - the Tribunal tries to kill them and all of their fans with some sort of poison gas but fails in the usual deus ex-machina style that characterizes all of their plots - and some interludes with the band where they tell us how much they hate us and how much they weren't there. Brendan does all of the voices - or at least appears to - relying mainly on the characters he voices in the show.

All well and good, particularly because the Nokia had installed screens on the second level of the auditorium (where I was standing) that allowed me to watch all of the video without having to break the fourth wall and look through the band to watch the action. Maintaining the illusion was a very important part of the experience, even if it meant that I was essentially paying money to watch a cartoon show at very high volume. Where things fell apart (as you've no doubt guessed from the first line of this post) is when the band came out to do the encore and opted to play without any additional video.

Here's why doing so is weird to me: encores aren't spontaneous things. The house knows the band is coming back out - they leave the lights down until the show is really over - and the audience knows, too. In fact, the band knows (or should know) the audience knows, and they should (and as far as I can tell, usually do) plan accordingly. Given all of that, why would you not plan footage for the encores? I know it means practicing to synch up two more songs to the video screens (which is really impressive, by the way - they never really missed a beat), but that seems a small price to pay to see three geeky-looking guys (and one very metal drummer) empersonate a sociopathic death metal band on stage.

However, I'm more than willing to overlook that one flaw: for an hour, Dethklok kept us entertained. For two hours before that, Soilent Green didn't suck too much, and Chimaira was pretty good. The show was about the right length, was fun to watch, made me want to go watch Metalocalypse again, and would certainly be worth catching on subsequent tours. I'm a fan.

Kurt Cobain: The Legacy

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 00:09:00 +0000

I just saw the commercial for the portable version of Guitar Hero, where some kid is playing Guitar Hero on his DS while the background transforms into scenes out of the video for "Tonight, Tonight" (note that anything involving space backgrounds and music makes me think of the "Tonight, Tonight" video) and "On a Plain" plays in the background. Somehow, I feel like every time that ad comes on, Kurt Cobain goes into a high speed spin cycle in his grave. You know, because he hated the commercialism so much. I bet Courtney justifies it to herself, though. Preserving the legacy and all that.

Censoring the Saints

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:45:00 +0000

Just got done listening to the new Mötley Crüe, on assignment for the album descriptions thing, for the first time in what will probably be six or seven times before I hand in the description in about a week. The album is what I expected it to be: fun music not requiring a whole lot of intellectual energy to get behind, songs about sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll, wrapped in a package that's got to be one of the slickest pieces of album artwork I've seen in a while. In other words, it's pure Los Angeles stereotype, just like what I was hoping. But here's the thing: it's been censored.

It's the usual problem: big music retailer with family values aspirations, making an edited version a gateway to retailability to any record label that wants a piece of the revenue pie. Usual malarkey where a third party makes morality decisions about what their customers should and shouldn't hear, with the complete arbitrariness that demonstrates lip service to a supposed standard and an all too pragmatic subservience to the bottom line. Anyway, they bleeped out every incidence of "fuck" on Saints of Los Angeles, which comes pretty close to ruining the record: nevermind the judgment on the maturity of the listener, this is freakin' Mötley Crüe, the band whose history is like a bible for decadent lifestyle. You don't bleep that out; it's so counter to the whole point that it practically creates a bizzaro world, a world where a band can sing about waking up in a haze and doing some powder off the bathroom sink but can't proclaim themselves the motherfuckers of the year without hitting the censor's auditory pen. Not cool, man. Not cool.

I blame Tipper Gore.

King Diamond Fans + Camera = Instant Recorded Fun

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 20:09:00 +0000

Though the above video of two Tennessee-based King Diamond fans driving in their car singing along to "Welcome Home" (aka the best use of a song in a movie ever) has been around for a year, it's just reached a larger audience (aka me) thanks to the King giving his official seal of approval via press release to Blabbermouth. What jumps out when watching:

They harmonize. Could be intentional, could be voice cracks from nervousness, but it still works. Someone should keep that in mind for the next King Diamond tribute record.
The guy riding shotgun can't look directly into the camera without getting a hunted expression in his eyes, like he's anticipating the merciless mockery he knows he'll experience as soon as he posts on YouTube. He cracks a few other times, too: answering the phone (great unintentional tension release) and while watching the driver absolutely rock out while at a stop light, like he can't believe anyone would ever open themselves up that much on camera. The driver, meanwhile, is the rock star: he's going full out through the whole song. Of course, that might be because he was smart enough not to look at the camera.
These guys have bigger balls than I do for not only filming this tribute, but putting it online. Dorky teenagers: this blog salutes you.

Liquid Tension Experiment at B.B. King's

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 14:48:00 +0000

A story for you: After coming home from this concert, I went to sleep, and suffered from a reoccurring/waking dream for three or four hours that involved both LTE's music and snapshot images of the show I had just seen (Mike Portnoy standing up on his drum riser to address the crowd, for example. Lord knows why so many of my music dreams feature Mike Portnoy, but I suspect it's because he does of putting himself forward, so he's really noticable). I've had these dreams in the past; the only way to break the cycle and get any real sleep is to wake myself up completely for a few minutes. That night, it took me until 4:00 AM, and when I finally did so, I came to the conclusion that the source of my mental distress was, to quote Emperor Joseph II in Amadeus, "too many notes." Basically, I couldn't sleep because I was still trying to process all of the aural information I had absorbed - or because my legs still hurt after standing still for two hours.

Sleep deprivations aside, the concert was worth the admission price: a full capacity of Dream Theater, King Crimson, and prog/jazz geeks (perhaps the biggest concentration of pudgy middle-aged white males I'm likely to see a show in a while - or at least until August) watching four master technicians do their thing on stage. The extreme cerebriality was fun (because, to face facts, I had a love for the possibilities of prog drilled into me in childhood), but the guys also looked like they were having fun - and there's a hard edge to enough of their music to make me feel like I'm witnessing something that still rocks in its own fashion.

However, I discovered something about LTE (and by extension, Dream Theater) while watching this concert: the music is a lot more enjoyable when it's prescripted material from an album, as improvisation isn't really a strong point. Actually, that might be a little inaccurate; during the three improvisational jams the band played during their set, you could see the genesis of songs that, once time had been taken to polish, would make for tracks as interesting as anything LTE has produced thus far, partially eliminating the charge of wankery for no purpose, because at least the band sounded like they were sharing how they go about writing new material. Seeing the beginnings of that process was (in retrospect) cool from a purely geeky perspective, but because these songs didn't go anywhere - and ended, at least once, in pure shredding noise - it wasn't very interesting to watch. Overall, a good show to see, but one that could have been more effective with some more tightening down on the self-indulgence.

Dammit Hipsters, Get Off My Lawn

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 16:24:00 +0000

I'm not entirely sure what to make of this video, because I can't tell if they're being serious, funny, or trying to invoke some deep level of irony that I, in my simple ways, cannot comprehend. Might help if I could understand the lyrics, but they're quite incomprehensible. I'm led to understand that the cooked up corpse of Kevin Bacon is somehow involved...

The Cure at Madison Square Garden

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 18:56:00 +0000

This show was one of "those shows;" an opportunity to see a band live that I'd wanted to see for years. I'd tried once, about ten years ago during the Bloodflowers tour, but never got anywhere because I couldn't find someone to go with me (something that would change as the years passed and I discovered that live music can be such a primal thing for me that I'm not bothered if there's no else around I know to share it with). This show was even a bit of an aberration than other examples of "that show" - Emperor, Metallica, Megadeth (the first time around) - because the ticket practically fell into my lap a couple of weeks before the show. Boy was I glad I went.

Back in high school and the beginning of college, I fancied myself a composer on the make. I wasn't dedicated enough - in part because I couldn't conceive of the level of dedication needed to be really good - to be an outstanding musician, but I had ideas about music and a fascination with technology that I figured would serve me well enough instead. I did some cool things, learned some stuff, and made some music that was different than what other people were doing around me, culminating in 10 minute piece in three or four movements, scored up for computer-based synthesizers, that I wrote when I was a high school senior. It was a pretty sweet accomplishment, and still makes me feel good when I think about it.

Here's why I bring it up: 65 Days of Static, the band that opened up for The Cure, sounded exactly like what I was going for with my music at its peak. Surprisingly (or maybe not, because I don't really have much of an ego about my creations), seeing someone do my thoughts better than I ever could made me really happy, like how a director must feel when watching actors bring their vision to life - if, you know, the director had absolutely no connection to any part of the movie they were watching. Good stuff; made me want to start writing music again.

Then The Cure came on and played over thirty songs in three hours, bringing me back to the exact same time period I'd so recently inhabited while enjoying 65 Days of Static's set, to the times when I wasn't trying to write music and was mowing the lawn or wooing girls or doing homework or driving around. I put their music onto mix tapes (and later mix CDs), declared "The Kiss" one of my favorite pieces of noise ever, reveled in the mix of "Close to Me" with the Dixie horns that I found on Napster, and used "Night Like This" to help assuage a breakup. This band was a formative part of my experience, and here they were, playing all of those songs and a whole lot more right in front of me. It wasn't all perfect, but in a night full of good things that made me feel ten years younger, I have no desire to complain.

Two things that really struck me about this show:

Robert Smith may look a bit worse for wear, but I couldn't tell the difference between his voice on Friday night and his voice on, say, Show, which comes from recordings made in 1992. What's even more impressive is that he still sounded just as good at the end of the show. I've gotten use to cutting older metal singers (Geoff Tate, Rob Halford, James LaBrie, even Bruce Dickinson to an extent) some slack when it comes to performing their earlier material, because their vocal cords are too damaged by age and years of the rock 'n roll lifestyle to hit those high notes with the same precision they had when younger, and I expected to do so with Smith, too, so (and even with the caveat of having less demanding material to sing) I was really surprised about how good he sounded.
No keyboards for this show whatsoever. I think I might have heard an organ piped in for "Close to Me," but otherwise Robert and Porl Thompson orchestrated all of the necessary keyboard parts to guitar and cut the rest. It didn't always work properly - "Hot Hot Hot!!!" sounded a little thin without the fake horns, for example - but mostly it was cool to hear the parts transposed to guitar. I'm not sure why the band didn't just hire a touring keyboard player, but maybe that would have hindered putting all of those songs into one set.

Set List for The Cure

underneath the stars
prayers for rain
a night like this
the end of the world
lovesong
to wish impossible things
pictures of you
lullaby
fascination street
from the edge of the deep green sea
the perfect boy
hot hot hot!!!
the only one
wrong number
the walk
sleep when i'm dead
push
friday i'm in love
inbetween days
just like heaven
primary
shake dog shake
charlotte sometimes
one hundred years
baby rag dog book

Encore 1

E1: if only tonight we could sleep...
the kiss

Encore 2

freakshow
close to me
why can't i be you?

Encore 3

boys don't cry
jumping someone else's train
grinding halt
10:15 saturday night
killing an arab

NIN In Rehearsal

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:36:00 +0000

Playing "1,000,000:" http://www.nin.com/1000000.html

That, my friends, is how a band is supposed to rock. That is rock music at the level of vitality that just fills you with energy. I want to go out and start a band right now.

Iron Maiden at Madison Square Garden

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 15:36:00 +0000

What to say, what to say...well, this happened, which pretty much sums up anything I could say about how awesome this show was. Playing soccer on stage while the crew deals with a blown speaker (during "Powerslave"...the irony is gigantic) and making it fun for 20,000 people to watch does take a special talent. Hell, watching a band play the exact same set list three months apart and loving every minute of it because they managed to make their show that much bigger the second time around (Madison Square Garden: big frickin' space with decent acoustics that sounds massive) is proof positive by itself that Iron Maiden is one of rock's premiere live bands. See them live, but don't take all of the tickets because I'll be coming back for more.

Before the show, I was explaining the rules of t-shirt wearing at concerts to my brother-in-law. Many people don't understand these rules, so it's worth going over them here, if for no other reason than that I was validated for following them immediately after the show. So, here we go:

Do not wear a t-shirt put out by the band you're going to see. Doing so makes you look like a poseur who lacks a deeper knowledge of the subtleties of the music scene, or at least the understanding that there are other bands out there who play the same kind of music. On a corollary, don't wear a shirt put out by a fan of the band you're going to see paying homage to that band (like this shirt, for example. By the way, this picture makes me happier than I can say), for the same reasons. You'll just be That Guy, and no one wants that (although the legions of people I see buying shirts at a show and then wearing them during the show might disagree). Also, variety makes people watching far more interesting between sets.
Don't wear a shirt of a band that has a long-standing disagreement or feud with the band you're going to see. For example, if you're going to see Megadeth, don't wear a Metallica t-shirt; if you're going to see Iron Maiden, don't wear an Ozzy t-shirt (or a maybe just a shirt with Sharon Osbourne on it, which would be pretty lame anyway); if you're going to see Dream Theater, don't wear a Queensryche shirt, etc. Much like breaking rule one, breaking rule two makes you look like a tool who doesn't pay attention to the subculture you're invading. Chances are this means you cost some fan who really does care about the music a ticket, which means you're an evil person. It's also possible you just don't care about feuds, but then you're missing the point.
When picking a shirt to wear, the goal is to choose something that's either old or obscure or (preferably) both. Both factors give you credibility, and can help you strike up conversations with random people during the show. Having an old tour shirt (we're talking a piece of clothing that's a minimum of 20 years of age) can even let you break rule number one. I'm pretty sure I saw a shirt from the original Somewhere in Time tour last night, and even though it was a Maiden shirt, it was an old Maiden shirt, which made it pretty cool. People with shirts like that tend to have interesting stories.

Anyway, those are the rules. Follow those rules, last night I chose to wear a GWAR shirt I picked up during the We Kill Everything tour, and sure enough: walking back to my car, I was hailed by two guys who thought my shirt was the coolest thing they'd seen in the past half hour. Instant validation, at only pennies a day!

The One That Got Away

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 18:00:00 +0000

I'm working at home today, which means I get to use my component system and send sound waves through a larger space than the distance between earplugs and my ear drums. I've carried this system and its two speakers around in one form or another (the current CD player dates from the summer of 2000, if I remember correctly, while the tape deck - yes, tape deck - joined the party in 1995, and the amplified and speakers formed the foundation in 1994) through years and habitations and they've served me well, so it's always a pleasure to listen.

Anyway, Systematic Chaos is still kicking around in slot five of the CD player some two months after I put it in there, and once again I had the desire to listen what's become my favorite (or maybe second favorite) Dream Theater album. As I started doing so, I realized that today was the first time I'd listened to Dream Theater since I missed Progressive Nation and once again, I felt a little sad - and a little guilty. Here's what happened:

The day of the show, my wife ended up in the hospital with an air bubble in her lung. She's better now, and fortunately the worst part of the experience was the twenty minutes between my getting a voice mail from the NYPD saying she had collapsed in a subway station, couldn't breathe, and was in a hospital and her text message saying she was going to be ok, when my morbid mind leaped to the very worst of possibilities, but she had to stay in the hospital overnight, and as a result I chose to miss the show and end my streak of what would have been eight Dream Theater performances in seven years. It was a no-brainer decision, obviously: I'd have to be sick in the head to choose a concert over my wife, but I was still disappointed at circumstance and felt a bit like I was in mourning.

Hearing Dream Theater's music again for the first time in three weeks or so, I get the same feeling again: that remorse for missing the show, coupled with guilt for feeling remorse: no one died, no one got hurt, the band hasn't broken up and they'll be back again at some point next year. To rationalize, however: I suspect these feelings stem from my disappointment with the August 2007 show, where the lack of a strongly-directed set list made the music seem a little underwhelming. I wanted to see this show, not only because I wanted to see it, but because it would make up for the previous time and subconsciously reassure me that everything was still on track with my favorite band.

In Which Ihsahn Becomes My Favorite

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Wed, 28 May 2008 15:55:00 +0000

While I've written a bit in the past about my love for Emperor, I really haven't said all I should, particularly when it comes to Ihsahn. After years of waiting, I finally got my chance to see Emperor on their reunion tour two years ago, an event that left me drooling at the mouth at the sheer awesomeness of the evening, despite its brevity.

Ihsahn impressed me that night by emanating the sort of evil that you see in creepy psychotics in psychological horror films; more Norman Bates or Hannibal Lecter than the cartoonishly garish "evil" represented by black metal bands in corpse paint and spiky armor (although Ihsahn pulled that look off pretty well back in the day, too). It wasn't that I expected him to kill anyone, but more that he looked like someone who could offer intelligent discourse on the aspects of extreme individualism in Satanism and not sound like a douchebag when doing it. He had gravitas.

Anyway, not long after that he released Adversary, which was very good, and now he's just released angL, which defines new levels of awesome and makes me wonder why I thought I could ever write music in the first place (seriously, it's that good. Buy the album and listen to it while driving through some dark, snowy coniferous woods or something similar and discover new emotional depths in your soul. Maybe if enough of us do so, he'll come tour the album in the US and make my year). Today, though...today Ihsahn reached new levels of awesomeness in my esteem.

About a month and a half ago, I had a dream where I hung out with Mike Portnoy, and I woke up wondering what we would have really talked about. Today, I watched the second part of a documentary done by two guys from MetalKult, who flew out to Norway and toured Ihsahn's studio while he explained the uses of each piece of gear. The charismatic front man with the on stage heart of black ice turned into the recording gear geek, talking about how he'd sequenced "Opus a Satana" in Cubase 2 hooked up to a Roland synthesizer because he wanted to learn how to use the equipment, or how the microphone he just bought is a special edition full of tubes they don't make any more. It was glorious, and now I know what we'd talk about if the two of us were ever to grab a beer: we'd geek out about studio equipment.

Mathias Nygård is the Finnish Dio

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Sat, 24 May 2008 19:14:00 +0000

Afterwards, I felt a little bad for Ensiferum. Here they were, headlining one of the most consistently excellent shows (opener to closer) I've seen in a long time, and they weren't even close to the best thing I'd seen all night. They weren't dogging things, either, but after Tyr, Eluveitie, and Turisas all worked the crowd into a hopping, dancing, bashing frenzy for some three hours straight, the headliners needed something a little extra - something they didn't quite have - to really push their show over the top.

Not that I'm complaining: Ensiferum's "not quite good enough" still really rocked. But I think the band's problem stems from something they lack; something the other bands, especially Eluveitie and Turisas, had in spades (or maybe spade?): a really strong front man. Petri Lindroos started to get the idea by the end of the set, but either he lacks the charisma or the experience - which seems a little surprising for a guy who's been a professional musician for at least six years - to know how to get a room packed full of people to really move.

Mathias "Warlord" Nygård is another story. The Turisas founder/singer/producer/genius not only has the goods behind the mixing board, but on stage as well. I might mention that I bought the ticket for this folk metal festival specifically to see Turisas, so I had some high expectations; expectations that grew exponentially when I learned the band had decided to include "In The Court of Jarisleif" on their set list, as I was looking forward to celebrating the madness of drinking metal. Of course, they delivered - or I wouldn't be writing about them in such glowing terms - but none of them would have been met without Warlord's masterly approach. About halfway through the set - around when he divided the crowd in half to do some competitive singing - I realized who he reminded me ofy: the great Ronnie James Dio. Not in singing style, or singing ability, because the combination of the crappy BB King's acoustics and his own reticence made half of the singing inaudible, but in sheer showmanship ability: the man just knows how to run crowds. He mentioned at one point that Paganfest was their first US tour, but if they generated that kind of energy every night (and drew the same capacity crowds) I have no doubt they'll be back for more.

One final item of note: As a part of the frenetic pacing of "Jarisleif," I was looking forward to seeing this man rock the accordion solo, but he decided he was going to disappear into the wilds of Amsterdam a few months ago, so Turisas hired Netta Skog, who looks a lot like Elizabeth Röhm, as a stand in. She played the parts perfectly, so the hiring was a good choice, but either a.) she found the spectacle of a few hundred idiots hurling themselves into each other really funny, b.) she was having a really good time, or c.) someone told her you need to look happy on stage, because she had a big grin on under her warpaint the entire time. Looking happy while you're playing is so unmetal.

Retrofit: Throwdown - Venom & Tears

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Wed, 14 May 2008 14:48:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Fri, 09 May 2008 15:54:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Fri, 09 May 2008 15:32:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Sat, 03 May 2008 02:09:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 17:58:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:29:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 15:29:00 +0000

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.