Hang on, what?

Yeah, seems like no one noticed. Or cared. Anyway, the Abysmal record isn't. It's great. The other one? Not my thing but it does the job.

Corrosion of Conformity - Deliverance

 

This review started out quite different to its current form. But it
read like something on Metal Archives or Angry Metal Guy so I had to
kill and reincarnate.

Take two...

It must have been the end of a southern-hemisphere, sub-tropical
winter in an insignificant rural town. I say "must have" because I
remember it being cool and comfortable as I lay on my bed, listening
to Deliverance. I know I was "comfortable" because I fell asleep and
had one of those precious dream sleeps influenced by music seeping in
without me being conscious.

Twenty years later, I am still listening.

I used to think I owned this album, however, truth be told,
Deliverance owns me. First on CD, later on cassette, mp3, CD again and
soon, in the trail of crackling energy of its just passed twentieth
anniversary of release... at long last... on deluxe vinyl reissue.

I have in quiet moments, fantasised about which albums crucial to the
development of my musical personality I would do a special vinyl
release for, should I ever win the lottery. Deliverance has been at
the top of that list.

More than almost any other album, I have puzzled over the lyrics,
unpicked the riffs, replayed the solos in my mind while riding through
dusty dusks. I simply can't wait to start doing it again.

Deliverance is available for pre-order at Prosthetic Records.

Skrew - Universal Immolation

When I was sixteen years old, I saw the video clip to "Picasso Trigger" on a video cassette recording of ABC TV's rage music video program. That song zietgeisted hard, three guitars, beefy electronically supported beats, strobing and distorted vocals.

  

I got to hear all of Dusted. several years later (don't laugh, Napster was just getting born) and never really recovered from my disappointment.Over the weekend, I got to hear Universal Immolation. Somewhere along the line (unlike the djentlemen from three years ago), Skrew picked up on the best bits of Meshuggah (hypnotic, tribal, repetition), started programming better beats and soundscapes and actually became good.

 

Universal Immolation won't blow your mind but it is a rather good representation of what industrial metal can and should be in the Twenty-first century.

Corrosion of Conformity - IX

Didn't see this one coming.

I sighed, I listened, I sighed. The first few tracks off COC's latest, IX left me rather unimpressed. Their previous album and first post-Pepper was rough around the edges, punky and jammy. On first listen, so was IX. But deeper into this new country, better jams, more obscene solos and in fact, new ideas were unearthed by me.

Minus one sigh.

Plus one, woah.

Some of these grooves cry out for a bit of Pepper manipulation, a melodic spit here and a harmonic polish there with actual vocals in place of Dean's scratch tracks would make this album a five star winner.

As it stands though IX is another Southern winner. What makes this sound fresher and better than the current naked emperor, Down? It is hungry and vital - as though it is seeking something, trying something. It's a rickety ride in a rickety ride but a hell of a lot more fun than it ought to be.

Just do it, align the stars, agents, managers and contracts. Dudes need to re-Pepper pronto.

The Allure of Jojo and Different Masculinities

New academic year and a new job. Well, same job, better pay, different route.

The funny thing is that due to the current internet situation without a smartphone or portable wifi modem, I am essentially stranded in a an internet free zone. The world of my everyday has been blocked, filtered and sanitised into something which is , quite frankly, quaint and very retro. It is not exactly 56K days again but due to imposed limits on access, it sure feels like it.

The upside is that it means less distraction and more time for concentrating on things that matter - such as my current study. Unfortunately it also means the premature end of a project I had hoped to sink my teeth into: contributing to a definitive, high quality (unofficial, fan) translation of Part 6 of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure.

For those unfamiliar with this title, let me explain. Jojo's is a Japanese manga, Part 1 of which was originally published in the late 1980s. At present, Jojo's is in its eighth part. However, the only part of the story that has received an official translation and publication in English is the now out of print Part 3: Stardust Crusaders by Viz in the US. Why is this the case? Apparently, author Hirohiko Araki (first name, family name) although approached by publishers in the past, has refused to compromise or change certain aspects of his manga which currently prevent its release in the West.

While this might sound potentially scandalous, it is not. Its relevance here, however, requires some exposition.

Jojo's is originally the story of two young Englishmen thrown together as a result of tragic circumstances. Over the years they become fierce rivals and eventually enemies. Over time they learn to utilise "ripple" energy, a kind of force not unlike that found in kung fu legend which allows users to perform feats normally humanly impossible. From Stardust Crusaders, Araki abandons the "ripple" concept and replaces it with "stands". A stand is an external manifestation of a person's psyche and can take human as well as other forms. In fact, the conceptual looseness around what constitutes a stand is one of the key elements that makes Jojo's plots so exciting and unpredictable.

Where as characters in the first to parts were named after Western music artists (Cars, ACDC, Wham) in the third part stands, their owners and frequently their "powers" as well are also named according to this convention (from Terence Trent D'arby to Purple Haze, Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Boyz2Men).

The use of such names is antagonistic to US copyright law which forbids other parties profiting from the names of existing artists. What's interesting to me though is that there has been no prosecution of this issue even though it has been occurring for over thirty years. Is this just a demonstration of the inability of US law to police copyright outside of its sovereign borders? Or is it the result of linguistic ignorance? Given the state of knowledge availability in the world today, I would say it is the former.

Why does this matter? It does to the extent that it explains despite its ongoing popularity why Jojo's remains largely unknown outside of Japan.

While this might appear cut and dry, closer inspection reveals a number of interesting issues. First, is linguistic - if we are to transcribe the names of certain characters into English as they are then AC/DC becomes Eishidishi, Wham is Wamu and Cars is Kaazu. Clearly while phonetically similar in appearance, as written words they appear significantly different to the brand/band names they are supposed to signify.

Second, it appears that the use of these names often only ever bears a superficial resemblance to the original. Stardust Crusaders' Boyz2Men is a disturbing monsterlike creature who grants twisted versions of its enemies' wishes. Purple Haze from Diamonds are Unbreakable is a golden spitfire shot from a guitar of a golden haired guitar god. It seems then that Araki is more interested in the evocative power of names and he frequently uses them in ways which are so oblique as to suggest that any connection to the original is either entirely random or else otherwise known only to the author himself.

Third and critically are the intertwined issues of masculinity and sexuality. While not particularly overt or explicit, the style of the artwork is frequently, implicitly homo-erotic in ways that would likely disturb or otherwise unsettle a casual Western reader unfamiliar with Araki's work.

In Jojo, bodies contort, attack, defend, are destroyed and healed in quite graphic fashion, however, regardless of what is done to them, faces and bodies remain beautiful. Readers familiar with Western style comic bodies are likely accustomed to depictions of strength, rigidity and implied (yet almost always neutered) potency. Jaws are square, brows prominent, eyes angry. Costumes, even when skin tight and revealing are frequently adorned with technology, weaponry and implied strength.

Yet in Jojo, particularly post-Stardust, not only are costumes adorned with fabulous belts, boots, butterflies, hearts, ladybugs – the very bodies that inhabit these costumes come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Scrawny boys, athletic heroes, boneheads, an overweight special needs kid, old men, dapper dandies... then there are the lovingly drawn faces with curves, eyelashes, land lips that do more than just scowl and sneer (though they do that too!). Araki is not afraid to draw on a wide range of masculine identities from the manga canon to the fashion world in which he was once involved.

So, after reading all this, you want to read Jojo then? What to do, where to start? Unfortunately for the most part you simply won't be able to read the series legally. A good start for resources is The JBA Community. Check out your favourite torrent site for packages of single issues and whole series. But, a warning – fan translations vary wildly in terms of quality. Some of the more recent high-resolution scanlations are stupendous, done by folk with good equipment, proper language skills, access to high quality source material and an eye for detail. Some of the older translations are so bad as to be unreadable – full of stilted dialog, incorrect translations, Times New Roman cut and paste using Microsoft Paint and squares... translated into English from Chinese (not sure what dialect) translations of the original Japanese...

Work is still ongoing and we will see a point sometime in the next year or so where the good translations have not only caught up with the Japanese release schedule but will have finally eclipsed the older, bad translations in terms of availability. Obviously, the most favourable situation would be one in which the comic receives and official translation and Araki can be proper compensated for his work and Jojo receives a level of popularity corresponding to its quality.

Don't hold your breath.

Crowbar - Symmetry in Black

Me rub dem long time.

Kirk Windstein plus whoever have been doing Crowbar for a long time. Longer than I have been listening. That said, I'm pretty sure I know whose copies of Crowbar and Obedience Through Suffering I bought used at Music Bizarre in Lismore back in the day. Crowbar have grooved, lurched and bludgeoned over the years to great effect, subtly innovating with micro-turns toward more melody, more swing and better production.

Sonic Excess In Its Purist Form welcomed me back after a long break and made me cry with its crushing, melancholic despair. Lifesblood for the Downtrodden, steeped in melody and hinging on regret was gorgeous.

Kingdom of Sorrow (Windstein with Jamie Jasta from Hatebreed) came along, wrote a good few songs and recorded half a great second album. Crowbar followed up with the more upbeat (really?) Sever the Wicked hand which essentially sounded like Kingdom of Sorrow outtakes which sounded like punk-ed Crowbar outtakes in the first place.

So, Windstein leaves Down, Down release another patchy EP and... where is all this going, you might ask? Let me put it this way for y'all TD;DR ADHD-ers... Crowbar's Symmetry in Black mops the floor with Down's IV.ii. There are a few close calls with the past (elements of of "Planets Collide" on one track, rather familiar grooves here or there) but overall the song writing is tight and focused, the riffs are big, there are big ass guitar harmonies.

While this is all bad news for Down it bodes well for Corrosion of Conformity... Say what?

"So the questions always come up all the time [about whether I will do something with C.O.C. again]. We are getting closer to solving that. Everybody is talking. We've had offers from a lot of different promoters all over the place. It's just a matter of [finding the] time [to do it right], you know, and not doing it half-assed. It has to be real. I'm not gonna jump into it for a paycheck. We all talk and we wanna get together and start writing and see what happens."

Go here for more.

Yep, if Windstein can run away from the mediocre and hash out something awesome just think of what the always awesome Keenan can do with those always swingin' Raleigh lads.

Oh, and Symmetry in Black is an album. Not an EP. And it's excellent. Go listen.

Archspire - The Lucid Collective

God hates my wallet. One listen. That was all it took. Pre-order button hit so hard I have dead pixels on my monitor. It is not even a touch screen. Too easily excited, perhaps?

The Lucid Collective is tight, brutal, melodic and brimming with originality.

Gorod's A Perfect Absolution was my favourite tech death album of 2012. The Lucid Collective does the job this year.

Down IV.ii

Do not mistake my sentiment in the words that follow. As a country boy myself, I have always felt a resonance with the language, music and history of the South. But have you seen this video? The South will rise again, or so they say... well, that's if they can even get out of bed or through the door frame. These Southern gentlemen could do with a little more dietary balance I feel. Seriously, Pepper has to make at least one more album with Corrosion of Conformity before heart disease and cholesterol take him down.

Again, Down are one of my favourite bands. Nola has a permanent reserved seat in my top 10 of all time. Hedgerow while not as great had some great songs in the thick of all the weed smoke lysergic murk. Nevertheless, IV.ii is the new Down EP and frankly, it is a Down EP.  Lead track "Steeple" may lead you astray with its reprise of Over the Under's "Three Suns, One Star" but do not give up. There are some fantastically doomed riffs, bluesy, melodic phrases and some classic, evocative Anselmo-isms in the lyrics (fancy an attic window). I left this party full but a little unsatisfied, I wanted more. Not quantity but innovation. IV.ii is a great listen but I feel these gents need to hit the gym for both peak physical and musical health.

Whitechapel - Our Endless War

So a deathcore band on post-zeigeist? Actually, it makes sense in this case. Whitechapel have achieved something special on this album: they have exceeded their original genre designation and come out the other side as a metal band with a fine album. I will concede one potential stumbling block - the lyrics tend toward the adolescent "fuck the system" side of the spectrum but are otherwise somewhat poetic.

What makes Our Endless War stand out? Straight up American riffing with elements of Meshuggah (in the good way: stuttering, lurching riffs that are played rather than chopped up and remade as a production technique - swing them balls!), very tight song writing and riffs that keep moving and evolving throughout the course of a song. Well done, gents.

Cynic: Kindly Bent to Free Us.

I once read that Gorguts' From Wisdom to Hate should have been the album that came out between The Erosion of Sanity and Obscura. Obscura was such a giant stylistic leap from what had come before that it hardly made sense at the time. In the space of one album they went from a quite good nineties death metal band to something otherworldly, bizarre, a sanity challenging pathos monster. Perhaps they even needed the revisionism of From Wisdom to Hate in order to comprehend the magnitude of their transformation.

Last year, they followed up on Obscura with the amazing Colored Sands. They continued to fill in the (intentional stylistic) gaps at the same time as pushing into new conceptual and musicological territory.

But this is supposed to be a Cynic album review, right?

Kindly Bent to Free Us basically should have been Cynic's first album. It is not really metal in the strict sense. It is actually more of a collision between King Crimson, Rush, Yes, Air Supply (no, really) and... Cynic. Kindly is the pared down framework of the band doing what they have always done best: rhythmically aggressive, driving basslines capable of shifting into exquisite melodies and uniquely arranged harmonic support, drumming that sounds straight ahead yet full of subtle intricacies (should the listener choose to listen for them), the lushly orchestrated guitar and vocals of Masvidal and... technological courage and originality.

Aside from the excellent prog-in-under-four-and-a-half-minute compositions and performances, it is the integration of electronic elements from vocoders to washes, swoops and atmospheric flourishes which really makes this album stand out. And in my opinion is a direct extension of the technological aesthetic of Pestilence's unfairly maligned Spheres.

The approach taken seems to be less of augmentation and layering and more of combination, integration and hybridity. There are obvious moments of glorious synthesiser excess on this album yet it is the subtleties of regular guitar sounds and vocals processed to create specific tones unique to sections within individual songs. In other words, it never sounds like a gimmick.

Cynic's metal album proper, Focus, should have come out after this. Then followed up by the astounding Traced in Air. So get this album, take a trip, time travel to the essence of Cynic, to a safe space before they embraced and were unjustly wounded by metal.

Pestilence: Obsideo

Pestilence comes in three flavours. The Martin Van Drunen Years, The Progressive Phase and Twenty-First Century Revival. I am an unabashed fan of the piggy in the middle. Testimony of the Ancients is a great album but Spheres was the game changer for me. I have written about it elsewhere on this blog. Go read.

A few weeks before I got Obsideo, I was listening to Spheres in my car. It seems as though every time I listen to that album, I am able to unearth new layers of sonic complexity, subtler rhythmic shifts and splendid, original solos wrapped in the (flawed) technological innovation of the time. Spheres, quite simply is a science-fiction synthesiser soundtrack... played entirely on guitar.

As I listened through Spheres both ways to and from work it occurred to me that underneath the synth rich soundtrack to a sci-fi movie never made was some really simple, precise, well composed and executed straight ahead death metal. And I thought: I wonder what this would have sounded like without Roland's midi guitar synth?

Then Obsideo came out. A combination of Twenty-First Century Revival phase muscular production, the urgent savagery of The Martin Van Drunen Years and the melodic and compositional intelligence of The Progressive Phase. Basically a stripped back, stripped down masterpiece released just in time to be spun and forgotten or simply overlooked.

Do yourself, the band and death metal history a service. Listen to this baby.

Skindred - Fight the Power

So while the backlog of articles continues to accrue (including a follow up to “Self Medication Blues” and “State of Innovation”) along comes a new Skindred album…

Skindred’s new LP Kill the Power is the album that should put them in a higher sales bracket. It is the album that should make them a household name. In this day and age of short attention span and publicity by spam, however, it is highly likely that it will be just-anaother-amazing-album-lost-amid-the-noise-in-a-forever-changed-music-industry.

Kill the Power sees Skindred doing what they have always done. Only much, much better. What makes Skindred such an exciting and interesting band - aside from the talented and diverse vocal performances of Benji, the bevy of skillfully integrated electronic production sounds, their tightness live and their ability like Faith No More to fully inhabit genre parameters without losing their identity – is their hybridity.

At their core, Skindred are a post-Bad Brains, crossover reggae act. On their way to this identity they have assimilated the raucous cacophony approach of Public Enemy style hip hop, the bounciness of dumb funk nu-metal, the subdued and sinister crawl of trip hop (woah, blast from the past), dubstep’s mental suffocating menace, trashy garage rock leads and 1980s style arena metal “woah-ohs”. And the best part? Never once does it sound forced or contrived.

Kill the Power opens with the nu-metal lurch of the self titled track. Though familiar sounding, it is the small things, the better written melodies, the transitions between parts and even the production quality is light years ahead of the last album. Playing with the Devil is perhaps my favourite tune on Kill the Power. Starting out like a lost track from Massive Attack’s Blue Lines it warps into a snarling dubstep battery with great vocal hooks. Meanwhile “Ninja” is another aggressive, more up front metal type track that makes excellent use of samples and sample playback (including the cool throwback-primitive rhythmic triggering). “The Kids are Right Now” is a love song to Bon Jovi via reggae and a middle eight that starts out as a dubstep break down but then fires out a so-simple-it’s-cool psyche-rock fuzzed out guitar solo. There is the evocative of U2 pretty melody of ….. and even a duet featuring the tough but smooth vocals of Jenna G.

The most amazing thing about all of this diversity and complexity is that in the quieter moments, when the band employ restraint, the gleaming, well-constructed reggae songs become audible. I haven’t had my mind so twisted by reggae since the early days of Dub Trio. Truly, Skindred have adopted and adapted hybridity and reggae as their own and recalibrated them for the twenty-first century. Kill the Power is original, innovative, interesting and most importantly, it bangs. Easily set to be one of the best albums of the year. Provided it doesn’t get forgotten because of the terrible release window…

 I wonder if they will make it out to Japan… hopefully not on a festival tour.

Zeitgeistin'

It has been too long. It is entirely logical to presume that the three and a half of you out there reading this blog have long since moved on. I have not forgotten you but neglect however ineptly executed, remains neglect. Consistent with my most recent post, I am going to flow with the zeitgeist and simply report on now.

Monster Magnet - "Mindless Ones"

I dropped in at Dopes to Infinity and subsequently dropped out of reality. The throwback, silver age, B-movie, comic book flavour sucked me in from the first flanging guitar drone. From out-there space dudes to sleazy garage rockers to post-overdose, re-deconstructed, tightly composed psyche-rock, it has been a long and enjoyable road. Good news is that we have yet to reach the end. Monster Magnet have made their new tune, "Mindless Ones" available for streaming. And what a lovely slice of cleverly dumb, non-literal rocking-out it is.

Sepultura – "The Age of the Atheist"

Say what you will about the band more than a decade after the big split. You might even correctly assert that while they have written a number of great songs in recent years, albums as a whole have lacked some x-factor required to make them into coherent, moving wholes. The upcoming single, from the new album produced by Ross Robinson, sounds exactly like post-Roots Sepultura.

Huge, meaty sound, reverberating bass, rumbling percussion, hard core via thrash, tuned way down. Then suddenly, in the second act, the groovy syncopated percussion kicks in, Greene gets melodic and suspended chords ring out atop the maelstrom and then you realize: “wait a minute, this sounds like a rough and ready, muscular take on Killing Joke”. Holy smoke! Then again, it should hardly come as a surprise, Sepultura have always had melodic mojo, check out their covers EP that came out with Roorback for proof.

Godflesh

First new recording in twelve years. Yeah,it’s a cover. But also, yeah, it sounds like Godflesh. I am not sure that I have ever had such satisfying wake up in the morning stream experience ever. Like the newly rebooted Carcass, Broadrick is smart enough and talented enough to create new and interesting music within the specified limits of a certain musical project. Turns out we should have a new LP in May, 2014. What is it with these ex-Napalm Death boys from Birmingham, who gave them such staying power?

Brothers from other mothers and Irish Twins

 The Black Dahlia Murder and Killswitch Engage have a lot in common. They have a keen sense of identity and possess deep knowledge of metal history. They love what they do and have a sense of humour. Strnad's thick glasses scream "real life, actual nerd" and Adam D.'s sideburns, receding hairline and tutus on stage have even caused the already fully furrowed foreheads of serious metal heads to furrow even further. Although their chosen genres are somewhat far apart both bands prove that a sense of humour and heavy fucking metal with heart need not be mutually exclusive. They also happen to both have new albums out as I write.



KSE's Disarm the Descent is a splendid, lean platter of post-metal-core explosion, metal... Once posterboys for all that was evil in modern (relatively) mainstream metal KSE have exceeded their image and sound. Heavy verses still give way to smooth melodic choruses but there is is an organic vibe to proceedings. The biggest breakthrough is solos - where once there would have been a breakdown now there are hell for leather solos tearing through the middle eights all over this album. Only problem is that they are often not long enough (for me). Suspending knowledge of 'core and simply opening your ears to this album yields an exquisite galloping, post-Iron Maiden, post-Swedish melodeath theme throughout.

Meanwhile, Everblack is nothing short of a masterpiece. When Cannibal Corpse decided to stop treading blood and properly embrace technicality from Kill onward, they proved to all up-and-comers and veterans alike that while strictly limited, death metal could be done better. They upped the anti and have dropped three slabs of pure, brutal, tech death without compromise over the last 5 years. With Everblack, TBDM have essentially reached the same point as Cannibal did on Kill. Featuring an astounding awareness of death metal conventions and history as well as the gall to experiment and traverse different genres (from the slime of Morbid Angel to the claustrophobia of Suffocation to the soaring heights of the Swedish glory days) Dahlia simply murder (the competition). The production is astounding, polished enough to hear everything that's going on but primal enough so that it sounds like a band playing rather than a Pro Tools' quantisation and sound replacement textbook exercise.

1. Meshuggah - Koloss

Yeah, breaking with the space time continuum, stay tuned for six through nine.

Just been reading MetalSucks' various contributors' Top 15s. Both Rosenberg and Neilstein traveled to the future, read my review, re-wrote it into two better versions. So I copy and paste here. All credit to the original authors.

Rosenberg:

Meshuggah are to the Hulk as djent is to Loki. Djent talks a big game, but in the end, Meshuggah can just pick it up by the ankle and slam it back and forth on the floor like a dish rag. Koloss has groove more elastic than a rubberband and so cavernous that the record needle actually disappears into the wax. And those are its most pleasant qualities. Because mostly what it sounds like is a fucking giant walking into a room full of people he doesn’t like, and then just pummeling those dudes, breaking every bone in their bodies, getting them to a point where they’re begging for death… and then just pummeling them some more. Rarely has an album’s title been so apt.

Neilstein:

They did it. They really did. A LOT happened in the four years since Meshuggah release ObZen, namely the rise of an entire sub-genre built upon the groove-based, downtuned metal template they created. But Meshuggah somehow managed to rise above it all, writing an album that kept the basic idea the same but changed up the formula just enough (slower tempos, more guitar solos) to firmly stick their feet in the sand and say, “FUCK ALL YOU POSERS! WE ARE STILL THE BEST AT THIS.”

***All artwork pilfered from the supremely rad artist luminokaya.

Hawkeye 2012

And now for a deviation from the top ten...

The new series of Hawkeye from Marvel Comics is likely one of the best new comic series of the year. It easily the best new Marvel title in years.

Very cool minimalist artwork, washed out 4 colour palette, tight writing, dark humour all about the lamest Avenger when he is not an Avenger. The writing is Fraction at his best. Scratch that, this is Fraction's best writing. Smart, meta and very cool. How long can it stay like this?

9. Gortuts VS Cryptopsy

It is likely that I will face charges of cheating. Perhaps even accusations of laziness. Frankly, y'all can go get nicked. These are two re-issues I bought (and there are several others I want, sigh) which were re-issued on vinyl in 2012. So they count, alright?

First up Gorguts. Obscura is a harrowing listen. It is unrelenting and its emotional dial is set on frantic psychosis for the duration. It is exhausting, impenetrable, opaque and convoluted. Yet for some reason, time and again I am drawn to this album, drawn into it. Obscura is one of the most original, genre defining and genre defying albums in the history of death metal. The guitar tones are relatively clear, crystalline at times, reminiscent of jazz or noise rock, the arrangements are circular, with song like structures spiraling into themselves, challenging the listener down awkward rabbit holes...

Two pieces of information helped me finally get this album. The first was a random internet opinion that argued for an underpinning Assyrian/Egyptian tonality. Apprehended in this way, Obscura sounds like a related yet distinct peer to Nile. The second tidbit was that guitarist Steeve Hurdle suffered from dysthymia, a type of debilitating depression. This latter fact puts a new spin on the approach to vocals and the psychological spaces opened up by the convoluted internal structural aesthetics. This is not about voyeurism and watching a man go mad, rather it is the sound of a man wrestling with his mind, and constructing the world from a unique place.

Obscura is easily one of the most important extreme metal albums of the twentieth century. Get it before the print run sells out. Before this last one, CD copies used to go for $US60. On vinyl for $CND12 you really have no excuse.

Now to Cryptopsy. None So Vile is to brutal tech-death what water is to plants. The rhythmic density of the drumming is intense, the vocals horrifying and the bass is just plain rad. However, what elevates this album above its many competitors is, swing. This baby swings. Contemporary tech-death relies on high frequency meter and tempo changes. Songs progress rapidly rarely giving the listener a chance to find her/his feet.

None So Vile dares to groove, dares to be listenable and in this way is more dangerous than its competitors. Much tech death requires a kind of musicological aesthetic fluency but this album plain rocks. Do not be mistaken, it is heavy and no doubt exhausting to the novice listener. Nevertheless, pleasure is taken to a new level by the historical and musicological literate listener.

What makes this album so innovative for its time and so exciting even in the present is Flo Mounier's drumming. Cryptopsy are one of the few metal groups led by the drums. Listen to the lyrical ways in which he punctuates blast beats, flying off on a hyper brief effortless tangent, a kiss or a wink to the savvy listener, to the inner drummer in us all. Indeed, None So Vile could likely be stripped of everything but the drums and still sound thrilling. What makes Mounier's performance especially outstanding is that the album was recorded in 1992 before the advent of micro-midi-management of triggered and replaced drums. This is wholly human percussive intensity.

Re-issues of both albums made 2012 a better more historically informed year. Thanks War on Music. And thanks, Canada. What is in your drinking water?

Abiotic VS Rings of Saturn

 

I have written elsewhere about the evolution of metal post-social networking. My thesis can be summed: the increasing speed of dissemination is having a profound influence on the number and types of musicological elements contained in any single composition (let alone genre). Another way of putting this is to say that metal's stylistic memes move more quickly and across a wider range of genre landscapes than previously possible. Sometimes the sheer velocity of information is so great that the listener may quite reasonably be unable to relate musicological elements to each other or indeed to the broader concept of metal as a whole. This raises an interesting question: are we seeing a perfect post-postmodern articulation of infinite competing discourses (knowledges, informations, personal narratives fixed through informational text technologies) competing infinitely thus rendering the weight of history insignificant?

Since metal as an aesthetic is evolving quickly and as new stylistic tropes are stacked on top of, underneath and against each other as a banal occurrence, it is becoming clear that historical roots are relegated to irrelevancy. Metal, like jazz, has always been jealous of its heroes, its obscurity, inaccessibility and independence. In the present, however, a first page google search and a few wikipedia pages can in no time produce an armchair expert. The dark edge to this is that even while the information is available it is in competition, a type of competition so fierce and unfairly stacked against the past. The vertical weight of respect and relevnace previously tipped toward the past has shifted toward an ever emerging future being created amid a multimedia textual maelstrom.

But "so what?", right? You know as well as I that a gnarly riff is just that, regardless of its genre classification or stylistic association. And here is where the truly complicating factor arises, the trajectory that remains obscure to yours truly. Even in an informationally obese society where so much is consumed through the eyes and mind and via myriad distractions the relevance of music can only be apprehended aurally: it must be listened to for it to have value. Where information can be assimilated in seconds, music as an act takes time, after all is that not what rhythm is? Space between events?

Meanwhile, what are we metal heads to make of the environment of consumption in the present. There is more music and more diversity than ever before and paths through this landscape are undoubtedly more individualised and complex than in the past. The so-called filters of the big record labels hardly apply anymore as relevance coalesces around apparently quantitative measures such as “like” buttons, re-tweets and obscure search algorithms based on links and recommendations. Labels will continue to exist but not as big business, more like patrons to the arts, a final expression of fidelity to the cause an ethical, critical and aesthetic gesture to art.

Which leads me to my latest review:

Head to Head:

Abiotic versus Rings of Saturn.

 Abiotic

Abiotic while supported by a major (metal) label have made some questionable decisions relating to production and/or clear songwriting. There are definitely stand-out elements on "Symbiosis" and indeed some brilliant ideas, however for the most part it remains unfocused. This is not the controlled chaos of grind, or grind/death crossover such as Brain Drill. This is a band with formidable talent yet not enough experience to know quite when to rein in the ideas.

As for the production, for some reason the vocals are incredibly dominant, leaving the rhythm guitars sounding somewhat hollow. This makes sense since the focus is on the dueling lead lines, but the sonic real estate inhabited by the vocals does not always allow the instrumental ideas to be fully articulated in the mix. As a bass player, I dig what is going on but again, where the bass in this listener's opinion would have been better serviced by an Obscura/Jeroen Thesseling slippery, fretless fatness or a Steve DiGiorgio era Death dirty fretless grind, Abiotic instead opt for a scooped mids, smiley face clank and rattle.

 

Rings of Saturn

Rings of Saturn have on Dirgnir transformed themselves from an immature death metal parallel to deathcore band with a gimmick (chip tune sounding leadwork) to a focused and muscular beast. They still sound as though from another planet but their new gig incorporates more explicitly metal elements from prog to Swedish melo-death while remaining firmly unified in their overall vision. again, my only criticism here is with production and some ideas.

I normally reserve my opinion when it comes to the production of drums because I know just how hard it is to get them right. However, consistent with some of the average riffing, the drum lines tend towards the vanilla which makes them stand out, especially during fast sections. I like mechanical drums, Fear Factory's Demanufacture remains one of my favourite all time albums. However, it is a sound that should serve the cause and on Dignir, I am not always sure that it does. The sound is poor, one dimensional and very fake.

Conclusion: Both albums are flawed yet fucking rad articulations of modern metal by young bands and deserve more than a distracted cell phone speaker/ear bud listen. Stay tuned for another article on the Rings of Saturn production/performance scandal later in the week.

All Hail the Yeti – Self Titled (2012)

This is what you get when Maylene and the Sons of Disaster deconsecrate and doom up via Eyehategod and Grief and lose the Goo Goo Dolls. There are a few lyrical missteps along the way but then again not every musician can be a poet, right? Nevertheless this is a mix up of southern boogie, southern harmony and southern sludge that recalls Acid Bath in its articulation of light and shade through melody and brutality. I’m Down…

Over Your Threshold - Facticity

Tech-death is developing some concrete tropes. Seeds planted by Death, Atheist and Cynic then necrotically nurtured by Cryptopsy, Decrepit Birth and Obscura and occasionally visited by close Swede melodeath friends and the occasional post-djenst-er have blossomed into Spawn of Possession, Gorod, Veil of Maya, Abiotic, The Contortionist, The Faceless, Sophicide and Fallujah. Now we can add Over Your Threshold to this list. A ton of Obscura worship with some truly swangin', creative and just plain rad basswork. Who needs more Necrophagist anyway?