Top 13 Releases of 2018

Top 13 Releases of 2018

13

Sleep – The Sciences

Sleep’s Holy Mountain and Dopesmoker are odd albums in my musical experience. My mind knows I’m meant to like them and everything is there to bring that response about, but they’ve never really grabbed me. In some ways, The Sciences is the same, but the parts that work really work. The guitar tone and overall sound are insanely good. Worth the price of admission alone. Just listen to the “Marijuanaut’s Theme” and the way the guitars swirl around each other. Like clouds of smoke spiralling in the air.

Try listening to: Sonic Titan

12

Will Haven - Muerte

As much as anything it’s reassuring that a band that started when I was a teenager, can pretty much disappear, re-form, make new music, and still cut it. Muerte does not strike out in to new territory, but it does what Will Haven did at their very best, and at times does it better. It’s bleak and abrasive like they were on El Diablo, WHVN, and Carpe Diem, but there is a lifting energy that underpins it all creating the feeling of a new beginning. From death, a rebirth.

Try listening to: The Son

11

Ben Harper and Charlie Musselwhite – No Mercy in this Land

Man, I always doubt Ben Harper, and he regularly proves me wrong. I always feel like I’ve heard all I want to hear of what he does, and he finds a vocal hook that I can’t resist. I always think that his collaborations will go places I’m not interested in, and then he pulls out something so full of heart that he could be working with a rock and I wouldn’t care. Luckily, Charlie Musselwhite’s harmonica sound has way more of both subtlety and power than a rock. And when combined with their shared dedication to the blues as an art form and a historical document, you are gifted beautiful music crafted from its own heritage.

Try listening to: No Mercy in this Land

10

Ghost – Prequelle

I don’t like Ghost. Which is a ridiculous thing to say, because this album is an absolute hoot. It’s the party I always wanted but could never have. It’s like watching a cheesy 80s action movie soundtracked by a bonkers metal band. The combination of that bizarrely insistent clean vocal, hard rock riffing and tempos, and the faux religious horror imagery really shouldn’t work for me, but it does. The transition from intro track “Ashes” to “Rats” is a delight. “See The Light” is the best sing-along tune I’ve heard in ages. It’s fucking fun. It’s good to be reminded that this stuff should be fun.

I still don’t like Ghost though.

Try listening to: See the Light

9

At The Gates – To Drink from the Night Itself

Something about the production on this and At The Gates’ previous album, At War with Reality, smooths the edges too much, takes away the kicks of all the explosive moments so many people loved from Slaughter of the Soul, but stick with it long enough, and make sure to see some of these songs played live, and it will jump up in your brain. These are vibrant, kick-ass metal songs. And while it doesn’t stray far from the band’s identifiable style, there are moments of ingenuity and creativity that will surprise long time and brand-new fans alike.

Try listening to: The Colours of the Beast      

8

Obscura - Diluvium

Ah crikey. This is tiring stuff. No time for rest as Obscura lurch and dive from one insane passage to another. Tech death with progressive elements, it sounds like Gorguts and Cynic got locked in a room and the only way out was to write an album. Obscura may actually work in this manner, because much of what they do sounds like the results of a group suffering from cabin fever. It’s unhinged musically, stylistically, and thematically, keeping the listener on their toes long after the album has finished.  

Try listening to: Convergence 

7

Yob – Our Raw Heart

In at number 7 is 7 mammoth tracks of emotional honesty. Fully embracing the fragility that makes Yob stand out from their peers, Our Raw Heart is a near spiritual journey through the dark and light of the human psyche. Mike Scheidt’s crystal clear clean vocal is fantastically forlorn. You could be on a crowded train on a Monday morning and as long as this was in your ears, you could be standing on a rock all alone looking out over the ocean. It’s a work of staggering beauty at times, and it would definitely be higher on this list if it weren’t for “The Screen” – a song that seems so unnecessary on this album, that I’m still sure it was a mistake at the CD pressing factory. Still an amazing album.

Try listening to: Beauty in Falling Leaves

6

Clutch – Book of Bad Decisions

Inevitably Clutch couldn’t continue the outstanding quality of the last two albums, Earth Rocker and Psychic Warfare. This is purely because you cannot make rock’n’roll better than those albums. It’s impossible. Clutch weren’t about to shy away from the challenge though. While things are a little stop-starty overall, and there are a couple of tracks nobody would miss if omitted, tracks like “Weird Times”, “Spirit of ‘76”, and “Lorelei” grab you by the ears and throw you in the air.

Try listening to: Emily Dickinson  

5

Corrosion of Conformity – No Cross No Crown

No Cross No Crown was the album I was hungering for the most in 2018. That fact probably goes some way to explaining why I struggled to enjoy it as much as I thought I would. After waiting 13 years from Pepper Keenan’s apocalyptically good last work with the band, and my favourite C0C album, there was an inevitable period of disappointment. Now that I’ve worked through those complex emotions, I’ve found an album with delicate textures, warmth, density, and great song writing. The production doesn’t have the punch that I needed when I first listened, but it lends itself to more personal and intimate listening sessions, just you and those big overhead earphones that you really shouldn’t wear outdoors. Combining the hook-laden America’s Volume Dealer with the sonic intensity of In The Arms of God, COC’s latest has life well beyond the first listen.

Try listening to: Nothing Left to Say

4

High on Fire – Electric Messiah

This album scared the hell out of me for about a week before I managed to find a way in. I absolutely adore High on Fire, but on the first eight listens it was overwhelmingly heavy. I accept this is a good and necessary thing every now and again though - need to test those boundaries and expand into new territory. After recalibrating, I fully enjoyed being dragged behind the runaway horse that is “Spewn from the Earth” or getting my bones smashed by Des Kensel’s cudgels on the slower “Steps of the Ziggurat/House of Enlil”. But it’s “The Pallid Mask”, bringing back memories of the brilliant “Carcosa” from the previous album, that kickstarts a furious riff-fest that dumps you at the “Snakes of the Divine”-esque closer, “Drowning Dog”. Matt Pike is my electric messiah.

Try listening to: The Pallid Mask  

3

Slugdge – Esoteric Malacology

There is nothing more fun in metal right now than saying “Slugdge” over and over again. I also enjoy correcting people for not pronouncing it properly. But this is not your average metal-band-with-a-funny-name. Textured, vital, and challenging; their progressive, melodic, techy death metal takes formal chances in songs with titles that never stray far from the band’s slug-based theme. Four albums in and hardly anyone speaks about how brilliant they are. Maybe that name, while I love it, wasn’t the best idea they ever had.

Try listening to: Slave Goo World

2

OHHMS – Exist

Listening to OHHMS is personally challenging. There is no softening of their beliefs to make their lyrics more palatable for potential listeners. There is no room for interpretation of the issues and themes presented. This is an album that tells you it’s wrong to kill or mistreat another animal. It’s up to you how you react. If you are willing to accept the challenge or change your views on meat, the album is a stomper. Dominated by the 23-minute contemplation of humans’ treatment of animals that is opener “Subjects”, Exist has a dynamism that allows OHHMS to be equal parts esoteric and catchy beyond belief.  

Try listening to: Subjects

1

Boss Keloid – Melted on the Inch

I love Boss Keloid. A unique sound, a unique approach to heavy music, and a uniquely inspirational madness. The epic, heavy, oddball theatricality of their music somehow brings you closer to the quietly touching personal truths at its heart. Every track displays a willingness to take unexpected turns, but every decision the band makes brings elation to my ears and soul. I feel like I’m being lifted, weightless, above all the unnecessary nonsense around me and in my mind. Alex Hurst’s soaring and beautiful voice is a huge part of that, but every aspect of Boss Keloid’s sound pushes you towards peaks of emotion that will stay with you long after you stop listening. And then, of course, you’ll come back for more.

Try listening to: THE WHOLE DAMN THING. Any track. Any time. Any where.


[Honourable mentions to Emma Ruth Rundle, Alice In Chains, and Pig Destroyer]

52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #2

The Paper Chase – Hide The Kitchen Knives

(Southern Records, 2002)

Buy the album here

This is somehow the most twisted and the most musical moment in this entire blog. The Paper Chase was a band that revelled in distorting and choking notes until they died in front of you, yet celebrated melody with unbridled joy and delivered perfectly timed hooks as second nature. The domestic darkness at this record’s core is more frightening for all the catchiness and lush instrumentation, but it is the theme pulling the music towards a unifying central line that makes Hide The Kitchen Knives the band’s best work. While other albums, especially the band’s final release Someday This Could All Be Yours, Vol.1, proved their musical ability and their acute vision of everyday demons, none of these works had such focus and single-minded intent. Hide The Kitchen Knives magnifies minute domestic details until they burst through their own cells, splattering the listener with emotional gore and aural distortion that will never wash off.

John Congleton is, simply put, the maestro behind this madness. For most people, he’s more likely to be known to them through his vast catalogue of work as a producer with acts as disparate as Saint Vincent and Baroness. His attention to detail as a producer clearly plays into the flow of this album and the richness of its sounds. Take “A Little Place Called Trust” as an example. Scraping into existence along the sharpening blades of the title’s kitchen knives and bolstered by the mumbles of what sounds like sampled news reports, this song displays all the diverse architecture of a John Congleton song where angles, curves, wood, stone, and glass clash repeatedly but somehow unify to create a powerful yet fragile family home. The distorted guitars jump over and are then swamped by discordant piano and bleating lambs (really). Behind this madness the deep percussion and thick bass provide steadier ground for the overly sweet melodies of Congleton’s voice, allowing their insidious hooks to take hold and making his cries of “you are not the innocent” unavoidable and frightening.

And “frightening” is the word needed to describe the portentous atmosphere and sickening rhythm section of “AliverAlungAkidneyAthumb”. Its opening repetition of a spoken word sample recounts the hypnotic power of cntrl-alt-delete-u but The Paper Chase aren’t hanging around on this one. Even with the gut-churning constancy of those plodding toms and bass, the pace is frantic once Congleton breaks his silence with, “how could you let it in your house and let it in your bed”. The lyrical flow is astounding and takes you on another tour of domestic terror replete with spiritual and physical metaphors yet always grounded in a grim reality. Signing off with the darkest delivery possible of the line, “drive carefully dear” transports us seamlessly into the song of the same name with its jammed out opening and pained vocals. These songs also share the lyrics, “my little nest of vipers”, a recurring technique in The Paper Chase’s songwriting drawing the listener into this dirty world of minute details and gigantic emotions. In fact, while there are amazing standalone songs, the impact of listening to the album as a single entity exponentially magnifies the intensity of each song, so as we drift into album closer “Out come the knives” we are hanging on every single word of the worrying and evocative tale Congleton tells:

did sweet daddy die square on your birthday

in some macabre-ish attempt to see you’d rue the day.

or appear in the end and be happy he made it back,

to be just in time to cut the cake and watch you

boil alive in your own butterscotch

Congleton’s expertise as a producer and performer creates the impression that the band simply stood mic’d up in a room for roughly an hour and just jammed this out in one take. And that’s an incredible feat when you consider the thick layers of instrumentation that make this production so lively and re-listenable. It also makes a mockery of trying to explain the greatness of this record one track at a time. There is only so much we can learn from isolating these tracks when the relationship they have with their neighbouring material is important and strong. I think the best I can do is to describe the sensations I have experienced while sitting/standing/dancing and listening to Hide The Kitchen Knives. Initially I felt the imagery of the lyrics pulling me in to the titular kitchen scene imagining my own stories of familial or romantic turmoil, while the live feeling of the production pulled me to the centre of the band’s rehearsal room. But more recently the record has felt like the soundtrack to Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. I feel myself being drawn near to delicate and detailed characters while the fear of a horrible crime lingers behind me at all times. And much like Capote’s novel, it is the attention paid to the extended reality of these stories that holds this power over the listener and made such an important record in my musical life.

52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #6

Exhorder – Slaughter in the Vatican

(Roadrunner, 1990)

Buy the album wherever you can find it, because I can't

I had seen Exhorder T-shirts flying around long before I even knew what they sounded like.  The jagged letters in the logo suggested death metal influences, but the swampy yet razor sharp thrash I eventually heard was somehow heavier than that.  The frantic drumming only heightened the sheer fear generated by the vile and disgusting guitar sounds, and the pained and brilliantly arranged vocals surprised and slayed in equal measure.  While their sound doesn't easily associate them with the NOLA scene, the southern sludge influence of the band’s hometown can be heard throughout their debut album and lends a unique atmosphere to their groove-thrash.  The infamous Scott Burns was drafted in by Roadrunner to produce and, while the results are controversial for some, there is no doubting the intensity that the band captured with this melding of thrash, groove, and death.  Having reformed in 2008, the band have yet to release a follow-up to second album The Law, but with Slaughter in the Vatican setting the benchmark it is understandable they are taking their time to write killer material.

“Homicide” is nasty.  Plunging bass sounds that make you want to vomit, demonically twisted backing vocals, disgusting lyrics, and a guitar/drum assault that feels like GBH come together in a musical maelstrom of murder.  The groove kicks in during the second minute, but the damage is already done to a neck that will need warming up before listening to this beast.  That it’s only 3 minutes long is little help, a point proved again in another relentless blast of thrash in “Anal Lust”.  Snare ‘til you die in this two-minute wrecker gives you no time to think, but on repeat listens you will notice the skill of Kyle Thomas’ vocals.  Whether he’s going with the rhythm or against it, Thomas pulls out the perfect emphasis, pitch, pace, and intensity at every turn.  This is one of thrash metal's finest vocal performances.  Even when they slow things down on a track like “Desecrator”, the barks, growls, and screams all hit their marks, at times being spat out with such speed and precision that you can’t help but picture a torrent of spittle flying from his overworked mouth on every plosive.  “Desecrator”, while still brutal, allows Exhorder’s influence on thrash and groove metal in the 90s to shine through.  Everything the band are about is on display here.

“Exhorder” is more succinct.  No preamble here.  Just smashing you in the face from the outset.  The guitar tone and drumming are incredible and the cries of “Exhorder” are gleefully pained and catchy at the same time.  “Legions of Death” turns my prefrontal cortex to mush.  Bashing it against the inside of my skull has that affect.  Title track and album closer, “Slaughter in the Vatican” is perhaps the most patient composition, but the moment the band lose that patience is breath-taking.  Around the 1’40” mark, after a building groove, it sounds like their ADHD has driven them spare.  The next 5 minutes has them lurching back and forth between sickened grooves and brutalised blasts of thrash punctuated by Thomas’ hurling of the words, “If the father of the church is to lead and teach you/Then why doesn't he follow the rules?/Imitate the son of man and live with the poor/Instead of fearing him while he's on tour”.  But it’s the first song rather than the last that leaves its mark on the listener.  Every time I listen to opening track “Death in Vain” I think that there can’t be a better track than this on the record.  Following a suspiciously Sepultura-esque atmospheric sound effect, Exhorder unleash an album’s worth of energy in the following 4 minutes of anti-war proselytising.  It’s a petrifying whirlwind of sludge-thrash riffing, pounding snare, and gnarled vocals crowned with the lyrics, “Cause of death was never confirmed/Did he really die?/Get permission from the state/To save his precious life”. 

It’s an album that could send its fans in the direction of Obituary, Pantera, Anthrax, Eyehategod, or Sepultura, but I guarantee they will always return to Slaughter in the Vatican.  This is an album that should have been a touchstone for the thrash generation, but somehow got stuck in the sinking mud of the early 90s near-death of the genre.  Once metal fans had pulled themselves free of that mud they were free to dive back in to the swamp with Exhorder and we’ve seen a rejuvenation in the genre fuelled by old and new bands alike.  And that’s what Exhorder did for me as a music fan: reminded me how vicious, vital, and different thrash can be and brought me back to my favourite musical genre.      

52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #7

Prong - Cleansing

(Epic, 1993)

Buy the album on eBay

I use the term “party metal”, and nobody ever seems to know what I mean.  I refer to music that has all the hallmarks of heavy metal, meaning it would never be able to infiltrate the mainstream, but has the energy, danceability, and sense of fun that might result in a party getting started, even if only by one lonely guy in his front room.  I’m most often referring to bands like Every Time I Die, their no-holds-barred lyrics, and their don’t-give-a-shit charm, but the term started before that band even came around.  For one shining album, Prong made party metal that could have sweaty maniacs moshing hell-for-leather one moment, and grooving all sexy-like, looking for a hook-up the next.  It feels like music for people who would wear leather trousers out even though it’s 35 degrees in the club, but simultaneously it’s for those who subscribe to the Andrew W.K. party uniform.  So even if you’re in your jeans and white T-shirt, grab your leathered friend, get Cleansing blasting through your speakers, and let the party commence.

Produced by 90s metal producer extraordinaire, Terry Date, you’ll hear Pantera guitar tone influences on this record, and at times that groove metal feel might make you think Prong are little more than Pantera impersonators.  However, Prong and Tommy Victor (guitar, vocals) are far less interested in macho posturing and way more into industrial and dance music influences.  In fact, Prong are closer to White Zombie in their sense of musical fun, and, while the explosion of DJs in metal bands wouldn’t occur until later, you can feel the push towards scratching being incorporated into metal with some of the guitar techniques and sampling employed here.  “Broken Peace” begins with a Tom Morello-inspired background riff and a pummelling bass line.  Those Rage Against the Machine-like guitar squeaks hint at the developments mainstream metal would see in the 90s, but more importantly provide a lighter, more danceable backdrop to the industrial riffing that kicks in.  While Prong want you to dance to their tunes and keep everyone happy with their rounded rhythm section sounds, they are a heavy band and the riffs are crushing in their weight and sharpness.  Tommy Victor’s vocals are not the usual frothing, angry metal frontman style, but rather have a slow, deliberate burning intensity to them, exemplified by his delivery of the lines:

Now it's all exploding

Pick up the broken peace

Nothing left to break.

“One Outnumbered” maintains this vaguely politicised burning intensity but balances it with coddling passages of dream-like guitar clouds and soothing bass.  It’s indicative of a band mindful of dynamics and the value of a gentle sway to break up the neck-snapping headbanging.  That’s all well and good, but it ain’t metal if it doesn’t punch you in the face at some point, and the riff here is a series of jaw-cracking jabs, the vocal a left hook to make your head spin.  It’s one of those riffs that makes you wish you could bang your head backwards as well, as if standard headbanging doesn’t fully express your approval of the pacing, rhythm and crunch of that guitar sound.  Tommy Victor displays an exceptional innate sense of rhythm and groove on this record, both on guitar and in his vocals, and at points the album feels like a tribute to the riff, every song designed to put its perfectly formed guitar parts directly into your brain.

Even when things get a little swampy on the later tracks, there is an undeniable guitar hook in each song.  The squeezed riff of “No Question” inspires thoughts of Zakk Wylde’s over-exposed production on Sonic Brew; “Home Rule” hits with the intensity of Rollins Band and its great riff is perfectly complemented by peppery drumming; the staccato phrasing of “Sublime” is a prime example of what Prong do even if it wanders too much.  But the true heart of this album is in its opening third.  First track, “Another Worldly Device”, does not delay its riff attack, shredding your tympanic membrane with a delightfully abrasive guitar sound played at speeds that keep your feet moving double time.  The raspy vocals match that riff, before the solo injects a little left-field lunacy with wailing squeaks that continue to lie below the surface of the closing chorus.  “Cut-Rate” has a lunacy of a thrashier nature, with top speed being reached within tenths of a second of the song’s beginning.  The solo somehow seems to crank that speed up until the song can barely contain itself and it dissolves into some vague industrial noises and a plodding, heavy outro.  While both of these songs are great, Prong’s strength is not necessarily in playing at speed.  The album’s iconic high point is the party metal duo of “Whose Fist Is This Anyway?” and “Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck”, both more focused on intense groove, stop-and-start rhythms, and banging of the head.

“Whose First Is This Anyway?”, a song title applicable to so many life situations, is built on an incessant rhythm that allows the guitar parts to chop, stop, roll and generally keep the listener grooving and moving.  The influence of and on White Zombie can be heard most clearly here and is a clear sign of Terry Date’s work across the bands he worked with in the 90s.  “Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck” is a bona fide heavy metal classic.  The lyrics of working class hardship seem to carry a self-reflexive heavy metal importance that has made the track a club classic since its release.  The rolling bass intro lines up another cutting Prong guitar sound, but it’s happy to let Victor’s voice stand on its own before lurching back in with a galloping pre-chorus riff.  The picked sections, open string strumming, pinched harmonics, and vicious main riff provide an incredibly varied foundation for the iconic line to grab hold of its listeners, “snap your fingers, snap your neck”.  It’s a song for singing along, swinging your hair, and banging your head with your friends whether they prefer leather or denim.  Christ, even if they prefer corduroy or twill cotton.  Cleansing is an album that exists right at modern metal’s heart.  Welcoming fans from both ends of the metal spectrum to celebrate guitar riffs and party hard.  While Prong have never quite rediscovered this perfect balance, Cleansing stands as a classic metal album with an identity all its own.      

52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #13

Death – Symbolic

(Roadrunner, 1995)

Symbolic is not Death’s best album.  Human and Leprosy are essential listening, but as an ultra-infectious starting point for new fans, there is no better than Symbolic.  Filled with viciously grooving hooks, frenetic galloping passages, 80s and 90s video game riffing, and customarily excellent musicianship, this record is a smorgasbord of Death sounds.  It doesn’t have the cohesiveness or invention of Human, but it crams into 50 minutes just about everything you could want to know and feel about this band.  Symbolic was my gateway to the phenomenal and genre-defining work of Death, and as such has shaped my musical life as much as any other extreme metal album.

Line-up changes had become an accepted part of Death’s career, with only the late Chuck Schuldiner being a constant in their existence, and their 1995 release was no exception.  Bobby Koelble and Kenny Conlon would make their only recorded appearance with the band, while Gene “Atomic Clock” Hoglan would make his second and final album with Chuck before continuing his unmatched drumming tour of heavy music.  With the exception of Paul Masvidal and Sean Reinert’s influence on Human, Death was really Chuck Schuldiner and the Death Boys from the outset, and that fact shines through on this record.  Symbolic feels as though Chuck is allowing his writing to flow naturally, fusing the more exploratory styles of Human and Individual Thought Patterns with the instant catchiness of Leprosy and allowing himself more fun through his music.  There is a 90s video game quality to the whole affair.  In songs like “Without Judgement” I hear Makoto Tomozawa’s work on Megaman X, but the album’s frenetic riffing, rampant solos, and insane drumming continually remind me of playing Smash TV on the SNES or Xenon 2 on PC.  I feel like I’m dodging a hail of laser bullets, spinning in circles trying to avoid obstacles or collect power-ups, and panicking every time more baddies enter the fray.  It’s a dizzying experience of dense riffs, crystal clear solos, military precision drumming, and beautiful death metal vocals.

“Crystal Mountain” might be the best example of the immediacy of Chuck’s approach on this album.  Opening on a galloping riff, supported by Hoglan’s exquisite double bass control and overlaid with echoing lead guitar accents, this track is about as cheesy and catchy as extreme metal gets, with even a Spanish guitar somehow infiltrating the final moments.  It was the first Death track I ever heard and convinced me in mere seconds that I would be buying this album.  Once purchased, “Without Judgement” continued in this vein with its video game initial riff leading to more tightly packed verse guitars and frenetically paced choruses.  The speed and pitch perfect delivery seems to physically pick you up and spin you round, while Chuck’s vocals and lyrics provide the thoughtful counterpoint to this loss of corporeal control.  His drawn out vowels and deliberate pacing highlight his lyrical plea for a society and its people to be more open-minded, and to eschew over-simplification of others’ issues.

And I have to be careful not to oversimplify what Death have done on this record.  While it is more accessible than its two immediate predecessors, there is interesting complexity at every turn.  From Chuck’s slightly offbeat vocal on “Zero Tolerance” to the eight minutes of structural and pacing experimentation of “Perennial Quest”, via the choppy guitars and wild mid-section solos of “Empty Words”, this album is frequently surprising and rewards repeat listens.  The grooving intro of album opener “Symbolic” belies the chopping riffs, psychedelic sci-fi-inspired solos, and unexpected vocal rhythms that follow.  At times the song is travelling so fast, and there is so much density of sound, that the mind almost can’t keep up.  Adrenaline starts to flow in response to this barrage, and each Chuck growl stands to attention the hair on your neck and arms.  This is a feeling that doesn’t let up through album highlights “Empty Words”, “Sacred Serenity”, “1,000 Eyes”, and “Without Judgement”, each contributing to the album’s astounding middle act, and leaving listeners gasping for more.

Every time a Symbolic track pops up on shuffle, it’s time to stop what I’m doing, pay attention, and thrash my head relentlessly.  Every song is irresistible, the production is perfect, and the lyrics and vocals challenge any preconceptions of death metal.  That feeling of being thrown into a physical maelstrom while being intellectually stimulated is rare in music and is the reason that Death are so iconic.  To Chuck’s credit, Symbolic retains these qualities while somehow managing to incorporate an almost pop music level of catchiness.  This is death metal for those who enjoy a little life with their death.

52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #16

Tom Waits – Nighthawks at the Diner

(Asylum, 1975)

Buy the album second-hand online somewhere because I can't find a reputable place selling the damn thing any longer.

I’ve potentially broken my own rules in choosing this Waits album for the blog.  Is it technically a live album?  I would argue that in its production intent it is essentially a studio album recorded before a live audience.  But I would say that, wouldn’t I.  You and I will have to forgive me as this record NEEDS to be on the list.  Nighthawks at the Diner is a watershed moment in my cultural existence, and deserves to be discussed, criticised, and praised along with all the other albums here.  But mostly it will just be celebrated as the endearing, heart-warming, and wonderful performance it is.

Tom Waits was at the beginning of his recording career, so it might seem strange to opt for a “live” album so early on.  The difference here was that almost all the songs were original compositions written for this album.  The live setting was intended to bring out his jazz influences, and bring in the jazz fans.  Devotees of Closing Time and The Heart of Saturday Night, of which there were a handful, would have recognised Waits’ idiosyncratic tone, but may have been surprised by the humour, the stage persona, and the jazz atmosphere.  In creating this sound, producer Bones Howe was dedicated to bringing in some of jazz’s best musicians: Mike Melvoin, piano; Pete Christlieb, tenor sax; Jim Hughart, upright bass; Bill Goodwin, drums.  Waits even went to the length of writing this about them in the liner notes for the record:

I’ve had the privilege to work with some of the most creative and imaginative, leviticously duteronomous hi voltage musicians

I don’t know what he means, but it sounds pretty damn good.  The music they created together is bewildering, beautiful, and continually surprising.  Bass sounds deeper than the Mariana Trench and sax smoother than Dr. J gliding to the hoop create a disarming and charming jazz foundation over which Waits’ ramblings, croons, and asides hang like the cigarette smoke you can almost feel in the air of the club as you listen to this record.

Pulling out individual songs is a strange way to talk about an album of this sort – it’s more about how the whole experience moves you – but there are highlights worthy of note.  “Nighthawk Postcards” is a wandering lounge jazz epic in which you’ll bump into all of Waits’ knowledge, heart, obsessions, and observations.  In “Nobody” we are dealt a more sincere, Streisand-like, Tom Waits, but his gravel-raked throat lends this story of a tumultuous relationship a down-to-earth quality that draws it in line with the rest of the performance.  “Better Off Without a Wife” has more than a hint of irony to it, especially considering the number of songs Waits has written with or dedicated to his wife Kathleen Brennan, but its cliché-filled longing for male freedom shows off Waits’ incredible storytelling prowess and his under-appreciated (at least in his later career) ear for a melody.  This is sing-along song-writing and performance at its best.  As a raconteur-cum-troubadour Waits is in a class of his own, and in “On a Foggy Night” these skills are on full display.  His voice draws you in with its tuneful laziness, and is somehow able to create a mesmerising tale of being lost driving in the dark, before leaving you in a trance with its delicate repetition of the chorus.  Even “Eggs and Sausage”, a song with a delightfully irreverent chorus, becomes a touching observation of the humanity on display in society’s meeting places.

Indeed, it is Waits’ raconteur-like ability to put on display his humanity, even in persona, and his belief in the goodness of everyday people that makes his performance so enthralling.  While this record has indirectly led me to the music of Frank Zappa and Nick Cave, I’ve never felt as connected to an overt storytelling songwriter as I do with Tom Waits, and this ability to connect is no more evident than in the spoken-word/stand-up intros.  Whether it’s discussing the service in the venue or really romantic wanks, his words are inclusive and expertly gauged.  His ability to pass this all off as spontaneous stream-of-consciousness is inspirational and probably a source of embarrassment to many supposedly professional comedians.  Even when he makes jokes specific to 1970s America or even about local LA hotels and diners, his delivery ensures we all feel part of the joke, whether we get it or not.  With the line “I’m so damn horny, the crack of dawn better be careful around me… I wanna pull on your coat about something” in the opening moments of the record, Waits makes you his friend in an instant, and prepares you for the gently cutting wit that you assume must be stolen, but isn’t.  A little more than 70-minutes later, after laughing, singing, and bopping to the whole affair, Waits is confident enough to leave us with nothing more than a “thanks for coming”.  The End.   

52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #20

Zao – The Fear Is What Keeps Us Here

(Ferret, 2006)

Buy the album here

Metalcore is dogged by the reputation that its bands all sound the same.  It is the heavy metal scene’s heavy metal.  But as heavy metal fans we know nothing is this straight forward.  The sub-genre has highs and lows like any other, and for every complete turd there is a hidden gem somewhere.  One of these is Zao’s 2006 effort produced by the incomparably great Steve Albini.  For every over-produced, slick, almost sickly sweet metalcore album Zao have delivered a minor antidote, and as the modern metal world fawned over Killswitch Engage’s all-too-earnest End of Heartache, Zao were working on giving up control in the studio and bringing something raw back to the scene.  The result was the deeply scary The Fear Is What Keeps Us Here.

Built on live performances transferred to analogue tape and over-driven vocals, The Fear… is testament to the immediacy and brutality that can be squeezed out of one of metal’s most maligned sub-genres.  Zao have no fear taking inspiration from hardcore and black metal simultaneously to make a that has its listeners clinging on in more ways than one.  And with Steve Albini helping to craft that sound, it is a cliff-edge experience throughout: the raucous sound is constantly seconds away from imploding, testing the limits of your speakers.  To keep listeners teetering on the brink the whole record without actually dropping them off and losing them forever is a skill, but one that Zao have mastered here.

With the addition of Martin Lunn and Jeff Gretz, surviving members Dan Weyandt and Scott Mellinger pushed the band towards this new sound, and though they’ve looked elsewhere since, it is their most impactful and memorable album.  From the dark, patient, then explosive opening of “Cancer Eater” to the rolling, punk-infused spirit of “A Last Time For Everything” with its petrifying, over-amplified outro, The Fear… is designed to make you feel uncomfortable throughout.  Unlike much of metalcore, and indeed Zao’s other albums, little is offered in terms of melodic escape.  Weyandt’s vocals are almost exclusively growled and screamed with a near black metal intensity, while the live production style lends itself more keenly to aural aggression and abrasiveness.  The lyrics focus on humanity’s helplessness and lack of control in the face of death, loneliness, failure, and the fear these generate.  There is no hopeful and uplifting chorus to look forward to, the listener must endure and somehow come out stronger under their own willpower.  Weyandt reminds us of the simple, dark truths of life, and refuses to see the positive side on this album:

Everything you love will fly away
On the wings of an unknown destiny
Behind the sun and disappearing sky
Everyone you love will pass away

This is not music made to make you happy, but crafted to move you and make you contemplate your own fears.

“Physician Heal Thyself” builds a wall of sound with furious, dirty riffs and cascading drums which Weyandt’s vocals attempt to pull down with vicious growls and Converge-esque grunts.  The breakdown towards the end reminds us that this is metalcore, but third track “Everything You Love Will Soon Fly Away” discards this balance in favour of bleak blackened hardcore.  It rips into existence with the sounds of furious instruments bleeding out through one another, and not until the isolated melodic chorus vocal of “It’s Hard Not to Shake With a Gun In Your Mouth” do we have a reprieve.  The spoken word section and key change explosion of the bridge in this track is the most idiosyncratically Zao, and one of many highlights.  “There is No Such Thing as Paranoia” slows the pace momentarily, but this only allows the sheer weight of the creeping fear to rest heavier on your chest.  With each wretched scream, cymbal crash, and twisted riff it becomes harder and harder to breathe.  The lyrically questionable “Pudgy Young Blondes With Lobotomy Eyes” does nothing to alleviate this feeling with coiled hardcore riffing and an expansive bridge section with sheet ice riffing.  It all comes to a head with “A Last Time for Everything” in which one of the lightest and punkiest songs of the album also succumbs to the fear, being swamped by the deafening mantra, “the fear is what keeps us here”, until it collapses under the strain of its own distorted, broken sound.

This is not an album to be listened to in a darkened room, not as release from hard times in your life, not to be visited in your loneliest moments.  You’d better be ready to listen to this.  It pins you to a wall and asks you all the questions you would rather avoid.  It is relentless in pursuing negativity with horrid sounds, crushing lyrics, and no obvious points of escape.  The Fear Is What Keeps Us Here denies you the cheap “pop” moments that make metalcore so easy to like, and instead invites you to look in to the darkest parts of your life.  If you survive that process you might just find a place in your heart for this record.    

52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #29

Gojira – From Mars to Sirius

(Listenable Records, 2005)

Buy the album here

Godzilla is a gigantic monster.  Whales are huge mammals.  The distance from Mars to Sirius is unimaginably great.  Gojira somehow manages to make sounds that seem larger than all these things.  Theirs is a crushingly heavy yet uplifting sound that holds a contemplative beauty in its brutality.  From Mars to Sirius is an album that will make you feel like a colossus astride the globe, Joe Duplantier’s roars flowing through your veins, but invigorated by a protective sense of belonging to its creatures, resources, and potential.  The heaviness, the deep growled and screamed vocals, the death metal-inspired drums, and thick, equal parts doom/death guitars place Gojira as one of the more extreme bands in mainstream heavy metal.  While heavy metal has often dealt with feelings of isolation, Gojira want us to see that we’re all part of the same ecology, and that we all have a part to play in keeping it alive… even if their music is devastating to all that stand in its path.

Extreme metal tends to engender assumptions.  These can range from the obvious stereotype of thuggish guys peddling mindless noise, to the belief that death metal vocals can be about nothing other than violence.  And while there are plenty of bands throwing their hands high in the air to proudly lay claim to those stereotypes, Gojira show us the other side of extreme music where heaviness, aggression, and loudness are about caring deeply for something, bringing people together, and hoping to be a force for positive change.  In fact, Gojira are at their most effective when their heaviness is more natural or seemingly incidental, as if just an extension of their feelings on the subject.  The Way of all Flesh, the follow up to From Mars..., struggles to produce the same emotional connection simply because it is hitting its listeners too hard.  But here we have incredible moments of heaviness on “From The Sky”, “Where Dragons Dwell”, and “Flying Whales” that never overstep, never impede your emotional connection, and never cease the spine tingling feeling that inspires you to hug everyone and simultaneously kick holes in the wall.  Gojira do what all good heavy metal bands should do: bludgeon you around the ears and make you smile about it.

For many, From Mars… would have been their first Gojira listening experience, but looking back, it’s incredible to note how much of a leap forward in songwriting, performance, and production the album represents.  While the moments of djent-inspired complexity and bruising vocals are all present on their earlier albums, they lack the individuality and ear for hooks and doom heaviness that allows them to stand apart on this and later albums.  The opening track “Ocean Planet” introduces the running theme of the album with gentle whale song, and instantly displays a newfound confidence in their unique identity with riffs built around brutal repeated breakdowns and pinched harmonics, and lyrics preoccupied with the interweaving of nature and human consciousness.  “Backbone” does similar work with a more free-flowing, high tempo approach, blastbeats, expansive guitar sounds, and extended vocal growls.  It’s an attention-grabbing opening salvo filled with diverse sounds, textures, and emotions.  Oddly, having grown up on 90s metal like Machine Head and Fear Factory, Gojira give me a little of everything I’m looking for from heavy music: big guitar sounds, ferocious vocals, double bass pedal action, and loads of pinched harmonics, but with enough hook and melody for me to latch on to.  The main difference being that Gojira wrap it up in the theme of nature and spirituality, so while they’re making you feel like a mean, bad-ass… you’re a caring, mean, bad-ass.

Back-to-back tracks “From Mars” and “To Sirius” take us on an abbreviated journey from the former’s gentle, whispered prelude to the enormous, adrenaline-pumping genius of the latter’s opening riff.  Gojira’s ability to take a simple riff and make it feel epic with the infusion of Mario Duplantier’s intense double-bass led drumming, and the elongated vowels of brother Joe’s death vocals is unmatched in metal right now.  At times Joe Duplantier’s cries are like sheet lightning flashing across the sky, leaving only the memory of its existence before the thunder and depth of his death growl comes to remind you of its power.  “The Heaviest Matter in the Universe” and “Global Warming” are the high points of an album that has not a single bad song.  The former is a pit-starting, thrash-death masterpiece that briefly toys with being too heavy before punishing you with the catchiest song about mental and spiritual anguish you’re likely to hear.  The latter closes out the album with a beautiful, diverse, and rich prog-death culmination of the thematic threads introduced with “Ocean Planet”.  Gojira wear their hearts on their sleeves here, unafraid to proclaim a sense of powerlessness in the face of human arrogance and wastefulness:

We are taking everything for granted
I don't think we should do this now
And when I see the smoke all around
I feel like I'm not

From humankind down there
I feel like glaciers are my eyes
And mountains are my head
My heart is ocean
And I feel all alone
Because everybody's wrong

But they are a positive and forward-thinking group so never let go of hope:

I had this dream, our planet surviving
The guiding stars always growing
And all the worlds
The fates all the countries
They're all rebuilding at the same time
I never fell and always believed in
We could evolve and get older
Open your eyes and let all this flow
Now see a new hope is growing inside

From Mars… is a perfect unit.  Nothing stands out too far, there is nothing that doesn’t belong.  It is focused and aggressive, but confident enough to explore and experiment.  It is unendingly catchy, but has enough depth to have you interested in new ways on every return.  Gojira have, in making an album about the dangers the earth faces, channelled their frustration, hopes, and desires into a timeless piece of music.  It has all the sonic qualities that suggest it will age well, and, even 12 years on, it is as vibrant and modern as it was on its release.  I hope, as I imagine the band do, that the album’s warnings of irreversible damage to the planet don’t prove to be as timeless as I think the music itself will.  Let the warnings be heard.

52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #30

White Zombie – Astro-Creep: 2000 – Songs of Love, Destruction and Other Synthetic
Delusions of the Electric Head

(Geffen, 1995)

Buy the album here

What is Rob Zombie even saying?  Listen to “Real Solution #9” and you’ll be none the wiser thanks to his synthesised ramblings.  Read the lyrics to “Super-Charger Heaven” and you may still be struggling:

Eye for an eye and a tooth for the tooth
I ain't never seen a demon warp dealin'
A ring a ding rhythm or jukebox, the racket
My mind can't clutch the feelin'

Go and see him live and you will have even less idea.  That dude really can’t sing.  But the glory of listening to White Zombie and Astro-Creep… is that, like the Japanese horror masterpiece Tetsuo: The Iron Man, it’s the fear you feel in your gut when primal drives meet industrial forces that is the meaning, the point of it all.  Rob Zombie’s drawls, mumbles, and screams lie lazily over the top of a frantic clash of industrial guitars, weird and diverse samples, and pounding rhythms.  Astro-Creep manages to feel both like a synthetically produced drug, and as if it crawled out of a dank swamp.  Like Tetsuo..., it is the clash of nature and technology, and everything in between.  It plays with pop culture, subculture, Satanism, sexuality, lunacy, and more, and never makes you doubt that they all belong right there together.  Rob Zombie and Tetsuo director Shinya Tsukamoto both have rollercoaster careers that may make you question their personal quality control standards, but each has a shining moment of industrial horror fetishism that fans will never forget.

“Electric Head, Pt.1 (The Agony)” displays all White Zombie’s influences in its protracted horror movie sample intro, “Perhaps you had better start from the beginning” being lifted from the classic 1957 horror film The Curse of Frankenstein, building atmosphere, suspense, and anticipation of phenomenal headbanging to come.  John Tempesta’s first crisp, snare-heavy drum beat cuts through the industrial sounds at the end of the intro, before giving way to the immense groove of Jay Yuenger’s guitar riff.  Zombie’s movie monster vocals are the deep, growly, nearly indecipherable top layer of what is a non-stop flow of samples, sound effects, and industrial clangings.  The album feels like it was recorded on the set of a horror movie being made in a factory filled with working pistons, grinding gears, and vats of hazardous waste, in to which all the members fell, fused with their instruments, and came out banging their heads to some unrelenting and irresistible industrial beat.  It’s a monster album in every sense of the word.

“Super Charger Heaven” pushes this feeling with turbo-charged riffing and a rhythm section so poppy your headbanging will take on a quality of pogo-like perpetual motion destined to give you brain damage.  Zombie’s vocals are sick, dirty, demon growls, and his cries of “Devilman” will hurl you round the dancefloor like a lunatic.  White Zombie change the pace with the groove-laden “Real Solution #9” inspired by Charles Manson and his attack on the Sharon Tate house.  It’s a darker moment on an album that is generally more concerned with referencing fictional horror than dealing with true life stories of murder.  The impenetrably dense riff of “Creature of the Wheel” continues that darkness with the aural equivalent of trawling a swamp for corpses.  This is where you really notice the down-tuned guitar sound that White Zombie embraced on this record in creating the industrial heaviness missing from previous records.  Even the glory of the chorus, “New God kill machine/And man say Lord of the/Engines – Yeah”, is only temporary relief from this tar pit of a riff. 

“Electric Head, Pt.2 (The Ecstasy)” does away with that, drawing on White Zombie’s love of rock ‘n’ roll to hit you with a soul-pleasing hook.  Introduced with a classic Shaft sample, the song kicks the album back to life with its dancefloor-filling energy.  This song, more than any other, set up Rob Zombie for what he would bring us on Hellbilly Deluxe, and shows off the party-starting power of White Zombie.  “Greasepaint and Monkey Brains”, keeps it simple with quiet, eerily croaked and whispered verses that seem like an inspiration for Alabama 3’s Sopranos theme, “Woke Up This Morning”, and giant choruses led by Zombie’s crazy roars and Yuenger’s expansive riffing.  A plethora of samples leads to the album’s coolest riff on “I, Zombie”: a razor thin slice of guitar that feels like a race car taking a corner at speed, hurtling the listener towards the course wall with little to no protection.  Tempesta’s drumming only serves to throw more momentum in to your imminent demise as the danger mounts in this 3-minute rager.   

But even this song becomes mere prelude to the sexualised, gory, ‘psychoholic’ display of power horror that is “More Human Than Human”.  The solid and nearly unchanging rhythm allows the insane main riff to become the twisted centre of this contorted stream of consciousness.  The riff is a like a series of wails winding up the tension, building pressure in your fragile mind, until it explodes into the heavy chugging of the lunatic’s chorus.  But it’s on "El Phantasmo and the Chicken-Run Blast-O-Rama" that Rob Zombie really lets loose with his most enjoyable vocal performance of the whole album.  His screams of “yeah” are things of pure delight giving life to the laconic ramblings of some demented necromancer.  The rocket-up-its-bum opening of that song is probably one of the pit-starting highlights of an album that will have you dancing, grooving, and snapping your neck continually from start to nearly finish.  ‘Nearly’ because “Blur the Technicolor” and “Blood, Milk, and Sky” close things out with a far looser experimental feel that allows the album to drift off rather than burying a hatchet in your already rattled skull.

Because it is an album that bathes in horror violence drawn from films, real life, and the mad (and maddening) imagination of Rob Zombie, people will either be turned on or off the very moment that The Curse of Frankenstein sample introduces the demon-teasing hour ahead of you.  For me this album changed my view of heavy metal and horror movies in one go.  All of a sudden, the music I liked was party music for stupid dancing and dressing up, rather than the angst-ridden teenage anger of grunge, and the films I watched were inspirationally imaginative and quote-worthy parts of a subculture that seeped in to the mainstream drop by bloody drop.  Heavy metal, after all, is exaggerated in all it does, be it huge sounds or absurd character-based bands, and White Zombie tapped in to that vein of running-with-the-devil madness and fun better than any other band of the 90s MTV generation.  In doing so, they may have created a world in which far less party-worthy bands like Slipknot would emerge, but I’ll leave it up to you to decide on the merits of that legacy.  For me Astro-Creep is the haunted house of modern metal: the fear is the fun, the ghosts, demons, and killers are there for your entertainment, and your pounding heart reminds you that you’re alive.