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 And when combined with their shared dedication to the blues as an art form and a historical document, you are gifted beautiful music crafted from its own heritage.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 - #14

Tool – Ænima

(Zoo Entertainment, 1996)

Buy the album here

On the CD of Tool’s Ænima is the image of a person performing an act of incredible flexibility, perhaps in pursuit of spiritual enlightenment and physical stimulation of the chakras found in yoga… perhaps attempting to fellate himself.  This is the tone Tool struck on their second full length release.  Even the title - a combination of Carl Jung’s term ‘anima’ representing the feminine archetype in his theories of collective unconscious, and the word ‘enema’ which is the flushing of faeces from the bowels – is equal parts intellectual and scatological.  Throughout the album there are challenging ideas, lyrics, and song structures, but Tool are more than happy to throw them in your face as if it was an elaborate rouse, or a stairway to nothing.  Disdain dominates the tone.  If I imagine the band sitting together while I’m listening to it, Adam Jones, Justin Chancellor, and Danny Carey are looking away as if they don’t care whether I’m listening or not, while Maynard James Keenan is giving me the finger with his twisted-up, little rat face.  This combination of disaffection and anger is Tool’s reaction to the vapid and flaccid cultural surroundings of mid 1990s Western capitalism, but feels even more relevant in the age of the internet where readily digestible content has elevated the meme to our primary form of emotional self-expression.

Ostensibly an alt-metal album with prog leanings, Ænima’s songs are frequently interspersed with odd conjoining tracks of varying tone and content.  These range from the distorted record sounds of “Useful Idiot” to the infamous recipe for hash cookies found in “Die Eier von Satan” which is read in German with the stylings and crowd reaction of a Hitler speech.  It seems to be an attempt to disorient the listener, making them evermore vulnerable to attack or new ideas.  After softening them up Tool hit them with the Altered States-like closer “Third Eye” which, in true Tool fashion, references both a transcendental gateway in human consciousness, perhaps found through psychedelic drug use, and the human male urethra.  It’s a mammoth song with musings on psychedelic drug use “prying open” the third eye, childhood memories, enlightenment, and freedom.  Opening on a pounding heartbeat and Bill Hicks eulogising drug use in artistic creation, the song is birthed by way of searching drum lines, slowly building bass, criss-crossing guitar distortion, and more of Hicks’ challenging comedy.  Keenan’s vocal is gentle and instructive, but as the tension builds his voice and the guitars heavily distort, and the song feels as though it will burst.  This passage seems to represent the trauma of drug use, and the calm and melody that are found on the other side stand for the enlightenment that may be reached in discovering the true meaning of the “third eye”. But ultimately, the album leaves us with the vicious heavy screaming, crashing drums, and sheet metal guitars of the line “prying open my third eye”.  It suggests violence and damage in finding enlightenment, but also conveys that passivity will never discover anything new, that meekly accepting the commodified life of capitalism will never enrich your life.

Tool are more musically accessible than this would suggest.  The intensity and focused malintent of a track like “Hooker with a Penis” is indicative of Tool’s ability to write direct, aggressive, powerchord-driven rock music.  “Forty Six and Two” takes a different tack, drifting in on warbling bass sounds, deliberately picked guitar notes and what sounds like bongos, before Maynard’s delicate vocal carries us patiently to the instant hooks of the track’s huge chorus.  And in “Jimmy” and “Ænema” Tool carefully build and nurture a desire for melodic catharsis that they are unafraid to fulfil.  The peaks of “Jimmy” are awe-inspiringly, spine-tinglingly intense with the dense riffs and melodic wails creating an atmosphere that is simultaneously claustrophobic and epic.  “Ænema” is more upfront with its riffs and melodies but matches this with an aggressive chorus that builds with each reprisal and Maynard’s soliloquy on “this stupid shit”.  The band’s suggestion that we all “learn to swim” is made more convincing by the sheer weight of sound that swamps your brain in the furious build towards this album’s climax.  Maynard gives us the rest we need with his beautiful delivery of the line, “I’m praying for rain”, but it’s a momentary distraction as landslide guitars crash in to this beauty, driving it out of our minds with thoughts of Armageddon.  Tool will make you feel like the world is ending, but that worse things could happen.

If you need to convince a friend that they need this album, the opening three tacks of Ænima will do that work for you.  “Stinkfist” is an immense opening track.  I can still feel the surprise I felt on first hearing that pulsing bass, Maynard’s equal parts fragile and angry voice, and the lilting, scratching, searching sounds of Jones’ guitar.  That sense of awakening is sustained through “Eulogy” and “H.”, and it’s in these two songs that we become familiar with Tool’s progressive sensibilities and soaring choruses.  “Eulogy” wanders, but is always mere seconds from exploding with melodic force, taking advantage of the tight, almost sinister, chugging of the verse riffs to provide a sense of elevation.  As the song closes one of the album’s defining moments leaves a lasting impression: Maynard screams “goodbye”, holding that final vowel sound for 12 seconds.  It’s an awe-inspiring, breathless moment that never fails to grab my heart and pull me closer.  This connection is further cemented with the more abrasive passion of “H.” with its similarly powerful chorus of brilliantly gauged drumming and truncated syllables and instant vocal hooks.  And this is Tool’s true strength.  Concepts, themes, enlightenment, deconstruction of western capitalist emotional wastelands, and even the undeniable skill of each musician all fall by the wayside when you are grabbed by these passionate, uplifting, and hook-laden outbursts.  Tool fans talk about interpretations of lyrics, album art, interval tracks, and even Bill Hicks, but what we’re all really in love with is that almost every song on Ænima lifts you up, shakes your bones, and has you singing and screaming along until you slump exhausted on the floor.  Music for self and global annihilation.

52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #26

Clutch – Blast Tyrant

(DRT Entertainment – Weathermaker Music, 2004)

Buy the album here

These words are a foreign language in my brain…. I didn’t really like Blast Tyrant when it came out.  I found it fluffy, poppy, and lyrically esoteric on the first few listens and decided I was better off without it.  I had stumbled across Clutch when they supported Raging Speedhorn in Glasgow (to our delayed collective confusion) and was overjoyed and blown away on first listening to Pure Rock Fury.  PRF is an album that hits with hardcore intensity, delightful blues-tinged jams, wild vocal dexterity, and that bursting-at-the-seams garage heaviness that I adore.  By the time the more polished, key-infused rock ‘n’ roll of Blast Tyrant came around I was rabid for “Pure Rock Fury II”, and found myself slowly backing away from the new album as if trying not to offend it.  It just wasn’t what I wanted.

Luckily, I was wrong.  It’s exactly what I wanted, what we all wanted.  Blast Tyrant is crowd-pleasing, life-affirming, perfectly conceived and executed rock ‘n’ roll from the best active rock band in the world.  Clutch have continued to sharpen to a fine point their approach on Earth Rocker and Psychic Warfare, but it’s on this album that guitarist Tim Sult, bassist Dan Maines, drummer Jean-Paul Gaster, and vocalist Neil Fallon reached their zenith.  The extended jams of earlier work like Clutch, the heaviness of PRF, and the more tightly packed simplified rock of Earth Rocker all meet in the middle of this band’s phenomenal career to produce a record that genuinely gets better from first track to last. 

“Mercury” rolls in on Sult’s heavy yet rounded and warm riffing, Gaster’s balanced drumming, and Maines’ beautifully light touch on bass before silence descends and Fallon cries out “Daedalus, your child is falling and the Labyrinth is calling”.  The difference between this record and PRF is instantly recognisable – the assured guitar sound is rockier and distances itself from their hardcore roots, the drumming is about feel rather than punching a hole in your eardrums, and Fallon’s vocals are more diverse than ever.  By the time we get to the dancefloor-filling “The Mob Goes Wild” it’s clear that the band are musically channelling Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Tom Waits, and AC/DC while drawing on Fallon’s unmistakable talent for telling frontier-type stories touched with sci-fi, fantasy, and mythology.  But there is barely any time to take note as the songs fly by in a flurry of brilliant riffs, genius vocal hooks and choruses, perfectly delivered drum fills, and general rock prowess.  “The Regulator” brings a moment to breathe and reflect.  The beautiful acoustic guitar intro is goosebumps-inducing, while Fallon’s deep and smooth vocal carries the listener off in to the world of The Regulator.  When the song bursts into its rocking chorus it feels as if you are being lifted by the very angel feathers Fallon sings of, and the hairs on your neck will to stand to attention until the guitar slowly fades out and into “Worm Drink”.

Other high points on the album are “Cypress Grove” with its rock single feel refining the intent of earlier album The Elephant Riders, “Army of Bono” where Fallon’s ripping chorus vocal points forward to his unmatched performances on Earth Rocker and Psychic Warfare, and the breakneck speed and superb backing vocals of “Subtle Hustle”.  But the whole album finds its perfect representative in “(Notes from the Trial of) La Curandera” where immediacy, jamming, storytelling, and otherworldly feelings of being carried off somewhere combine to supreme effect.  Sult’s riffs are huge and uplifting while Fallon’s voice is equal parts gravel and soaring melody, giving the impression that the song exists in the clouds somewhere.  And I think this is the key difference between this record and PRF: where the former was very much a gruff, earthy album, Blast Tyrant takes flight from the very beginning and never puts you back down.  It’s a journey that makes you feel weightless, inspired, and almost breathless.

This is all thanks to the skills of each of the band members.  There is at least one song that perfectly displays what each of them does better than any counterpart in any rock band in the world.  The sheer array of insane and catchy guitar sounds Tim Sult produces on “Profits of Doom” sets him apart from his contemporaries, while Dan Maines’ controlled and rumbling performance on “Worm Drink” does more for the song than any other instrument while simultaneously not drawing any attention to itself.  Jean-Paul Gaster also has this skill of being able to serve a song without outwardly showing off.  During “(In the Wake of) The Swollen Goat” Gaster sits just behind the gigantic riffs powering the whole song with insane fills, exquisite feel on the high hat, and perfect timing.  And if you thought that Neil Fallon was all shouty and gruff, just skip to “Ghost” to hear his sonorous tones and melodic range deliver another of his gripping stories.  I used to daydream of perfect all-star rock and metal band line-ups when I was a kid, plucking a frontman from this band and a guitarist from another, but I don’t need to any longer.  Clutch are all I could ever need from a rock band, and they fill my heart with joy. 

      

52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #28

Pantera – Vulgar Display of Power

(Atco, 1992)

Buy the album here

This blog post is getting stuck in my brain.  Pantera were a huge influence in my shift towards heavy metal, and years ago would have been a top ten band.  But my understanding of their music is shrouded now.  The on-stage murder of guitarist Dimebag Darrell amid an acrimonious band split, a retrospective reinterpretation of the band’s open embrace of white American South values, and the ongoing problem of vocalist Phil Anselmo’s racism have marred a joyful experience of chest-beating, mosh-pitting, trend-killing heavy metal.  In a 90s scene that was struggling to hold on to the aggressive, virtuosic, solo-filled thrash fury of the 80s, Pantera were the self-proclaimed saviours of “real” metal.  While metal would have survived without Pantera, it is not an exaggeration to credit them with maintaining the dreams of mainstream metal fans enduring the side effects of grunge in the early 90s, and the near disaster of nu metal in the latter part of the decade.  In 1992 Pantera intended Vulgar Display of Power to be the antidote to the seismic shift in heavy metal caused by Metallica’s “Black Album”.  It is concentrated metal attitude with the hardcore edge that Phil Anselmo brings to most of his projects.  The fun-time rock ‘n’ roll shenanigans of Dimebag Darrell and his drummer brother Vinnie Paul, evidenced by their earlier power metal phase, are keenly balanced by Phil’s desire for Pantera to lead rather than follow at a time when heavy metal was in disarray. 

While the macho, “us vs. them” lyrics may not have aged well, Phil Anselmo was undeniably the best frontman in metal through the 90s.  On “A New Level” and “Mouth For War” Anselmo’s bravado is a galvanising force for those on the inside and a stiff middle finger to those outside.  The swaggering groove of “Walk” and its staccato gang vocal chorus set the tone for an album that hammers at the same point repeatedly without ever boring the listener.  Anselmo’s unwavering delivery is central to this feat.  Combining vocal depth and abrasiveness previously unheard in mainstream metal, his performance became the blueprint for a generation of American heavy bands.  It is, even after all the shit that has happened, an irresistible display of anger and arrogance. 

But it only partially prepares you for the ferocity of Pantera’s self-proclaimed “hit” song, the almost-too-subtle “Fucking Hostile”.  At this point your ears turn to the perfect rhythm sounds and crisp solos of guitarist Dimebag Darrell.  He was killed in 2004 while playing with his new band Damage Plan, but the work he left behind could be the genius product of a lifetime of practice.  While the influences of Eddie Van Halen and Ace Frehling can always be heard in Dimebag’s work, it is channelled here to produce a genre-leading album that revels in going against the grain.  “Fucking Hostile” is built around a Battery-esque verse riff, a pure Pantera groove-laden chorus, and a phenomenal solo from a man who kept alive the traditions of guitarist forbears while pushing the art in new directions.  Dimebag used his whammy bar as a second vocalist.  If you ever saw Pantera live or have been in a metal club when Pantera songs hit the dancefloor, you’ll have witnessed people “singing” along with Dime’s solos, and “…Hostile” is a prime example, wailing out like a NWOBHM singer.  This quality is continued, at half the pace, on album lynchpin “This Love”.  Dime’s picked opening is atmospheric, channelling the spirit of the classic “Cemetery Gates” from previous album Cowboys From Hell, and is supported by Anselmo’s thoughtful croon.  The direct heaviness of the chorus riff and its interplay with the vocal hark back to “Walk”, but “This Love” has much more happening with an extended bridge section and bruisingly slow and heavy breakdown leading to an expressive Dimebag solo.  Pantera display everything that makes them so influential in this one song.

Drummer Vinnie Paul and bassist Rex Brown are central to that Pantera sound, providing an immense foundation that allows Dimebag to seamlessly veer from rhythm to lead guitar.  Driven by thick bass and tom sounds, measured use of double bass, heavy china and crash strikes, and an unerring snare that cuts through the guitar without ever overcrowding the song, Vinnie’s performance on Vulgar… is classic heavy metal drumming updated for the modern metal fan.  Rex’s bass is gut-shaking low-end with enough hook to stand alone.  In “No Good (Attack the Radical)” the bass riff during the opening verse builds tension brilliantly while Vinnie’s thunderous skin beating powers the song throughout.  “Regular People (Conceit)” displays the unity the band had as performers: the riffs and drums play off each other while the vocals feed on that energy, constantly propelling them forward.  The bass makes this possible with its unshakeable solidity and groove.  But its Dimebag’s riffs that stick in the mind, and “By Demons Be Driven” is a bursting-to-life of his flare, heaviness, groove, and free-flowing solo genius.  He does everything in this song from militarily heavy riffing and blues-inspired grooving, to the pained squeezing of notes and one-man “duelling” solos.  In combination with Anselmo’s perfect roars of “by demons be driven”, Dimebag’s performance creates another classic heavy metal track and sets up the sonically diverse closer.

Establishing itself as a ballad about the death of a friend, “Hollow” displays Pantera’s classic metal influences before splitting itself in half and hitting you with a neck-snapping series of riffs, double bass driven drums, and vicious vocals.  And this is what Vulgar… did to me when I was growing up: it introduced me to music from earlier generations by openly celebrating its influences, but was completely intent on carving out a new extreme, groove-based sound that was unwavering in its self-belief.  Pantera were, throughout the 90s, the one mainstream metal band that refused to pretend.  While other bands experimented, softened, or catered to the masses, Pantera held to their “fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke” attitude, and proved that heavy music would always have an audience irrespective of trends.  For me, and many others, that all started with this album and the screeching slide at the start of “New Level”.  That moment proved these guys weren’t here to please anyone else, and that they would dominate through sheer force of will.  And while their story has taken painful and unacceptable turns, during the Phil Anselmo era Pantera produced a decade of musical aggression that stands alongside the work of the biggest metal bands in history.      

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.      

52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #31

Rainbow – Rising

(Oyster/Polydor, 1976)

Buy the album here

Heavy metal would be a different experience if it weren’t for the contributions of Ronnie James Dio and Ritchie Blackmore.  Dio and Rob Halford of Judas Priest led a generation of heavy music vocalists with unlimited talent, operatic stylings, incredible range, and, in Dio’s case, a penchant for ludicrous fantasy lyrics.  Blackmore stands proudly in a line of iconic heavy metal guitarists like Tony Iommi, Randy Rhoads, and Eddie Van Halen who pushed the envelope and changed common perceptions of what the guitar could do, and what heavy metal could be.  Together, Dio and Blackmore have taken me to heights that none of these other musicians’ bands could accomplish.  The imaginative epic quality of their music, the riffing and structural intelligence of Blackmore in combination with his renowned soloing, and Dio’s badass, righteous voice do more for me than any other band of the era.  Rising is the pinnacle of Rainbow’s all-too-short existence.

And in terms of pinnacles there are none greater, none more impressive, than the masterpiece of “Stargazer” in which Dio and Blackmore exceed even their own high standards.  Dio’s lyrics concerning a wizard who enslaves thousands in his quest to build a tower to the stars are thematically focused but fantastically realised, and his delivery is bold, aggressive, and pitch perfect.  Blackmore’s riffs are huge, atmospheric clouds that seem to change with the wind, and his solos are both as sharp as lightning strikes and as gentle as summer rain.  But it’s the powerful drum solo from heavy metal legend Cozy Powell that brings “Stargazer” to life, and the work of both The Munich Philharmonic Orchestra and Tony Carey on keyboards that have the song reaching for the stars, much like the delusional wizard Dio creates:

All eyes see the figure of the wizard

As he climbs to the top of the world

No sound, as he falls instead of rising

Time standing still, then there's blood on the sand

Oh I see his face!

From the moment the wizard falls to his demise, the song continues to scale the heights of musical greatness.  The strings, guitars, drums, and vocals keep pushing and pushing, insisting that there must be higher peaks to reach, as if the spirit of the wizard is still convinced of his ability to touch the stars, and take his place among the gods.  The progressive element of Rainbow’s approach matches so perfectly the tale they want to tell that you may find yourself wishing that the story and this incredible song may never end.

Rising is more than just a vehicle for this show-stealing epic though.  “A Light in the Black” continues the story of the enslaved people of “Stargazer” with yet more inventive work from Blackmore, solid driving rhythms from Powell, and Dio stamping his vocal authority over everything.  It seems like a comedown after the excellence that has preceded it, but Blackmore’s and Carey’s histrionic solos followed by Dio’s screams of “I’m coming home” make it a fitting end to the album.  The chorus of “Do You Close Your Eyes” is perhaps a low point on the album, but the verse riffs and vocals are awesome, even if the song lacks the high-flying creativity of the rest of the album.  The mid-paced chug of “Run with the Wolf” is a more direct heavy rock song with Dio’s vocals providing the greatest highlights, while “Starstruck” draws a stirring harmonised sea-shanty guitar opening in to one of Dio’s customary tales of dangerous women. 

But it’s the album’s opening track that evens the scales when set against “Stargazer”.  “Tarot Woman” begins with floating, prog keys delicately setting the scene for an album that belongs to an astral plane.  The exaggerated vocals work off the staccato rhythms of much of the main riff, before the solos carry you to another level.  Dio pins you down again with screams of “no, no, no” that develop the sense of danger that lurks just beneath everything in this fantastical album, but ultimately it’s the unique sound of Blackmore’s guitars working alongside those keys that leaves it mark and builds the foundation from which “Stargazer” launches itself towards greatness.

Rising taught me to love that more natural 70s drum sound where the heaviness is incidental, the power of fantasy lyrics, and the genius of Ritchie Blackmore.  Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath always dominated my thoughts of the period, but this album changed that for me, and I have to give most of the credit for that to Ronnie James Dio.  The man credited with popularising the use of “devil horns” among heavy metal fans gave more to us with his vocal talent than he ever did with crowd-pleasing gestures.  Just listen to Henry Rollins discuss his love of Dio’s voice or the Sabbath album Mob Rules and you’ll start to understand that Dio had something that no other heavy metal singer has ever had.  He may have sung about beasts, dragons, mystical lands, wizards, evil women, and many other things you will never encounter, but he did it with an intense sincerity that could, and still does, make you care about things you barely understand.  His was a talent for inclusion, a weapon to draw people in rather than slay them like the dragons he saw in his mind.  Heavy metal sung with heart and soul to give others heart and soul when they needed it most.      

52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #32

Rollins Band – Life Time

(Texas Hotel Records, 1987)

Do Not Buy the album here... because it is very difficult to find

Henry Rollins is a subcultural icon and touchstone for an entire generation of heavy music fans longing for the anger, cynicism, and intelligence of early punk.  In a decade renowned for its burgeoning materialism, greed, and Charlie Sheen in suits, thrash metal captured many of those fans in its underground scene and went on to become the driving force behind heavy music moving in to the 90s.  But punk and hardcore were still breathing and burning a level further underground with bands like Minor Threat, Bad Religion, The Dead Kennedys, and Henry Rollins’ own Black Flag leading the way for a collection of fans who watched many of their favourite bands break up or just disappear.  In fact, in leaving Black Flag in 1986, Rollins may have flirted with alienating the very scene that he was helping to keep alive.  But his solo band debut, produced by Minor Threat and Fugazi main man Ian MacKaye, captures all his hardcore aggression and punk spirit, and moulds a whole new bluesed-out foundation for his razor-sharp tirades.  Life Time is throat tearing, vein bursting, macho posturing, thought provoking, inspirationally angry heavy music from a man who now travels, reads, writes, and speaks in the name of self-enlightenment and equality.

Opener “Burned Beyond Recognition” pulls no punches lurching straight in with a vicious drum roll and Rollins’ patented screams of “yeah yeah yeah”.  The rhythm section immediately feels thicker and heavier than Black Flag with the screeching punk sound of the guitar often sliding off it to give Rollins’ shouts, screams, and roars centre stage.  Despite the vocals dominating the song, it is evident the Rollins Band musicians are potent.  Chris Haskett, Sim Cain, and Andrew Weiss balance their sounds so perfectly, and MacKaye has an incredible ear for punk dynamics, ensuring that every note is punched in to your ears.  The intensity doesn’t let up on “What Am I Doing Here?” in which Weiss’ unrelenting bass plucking will grab you by the neck and shove your ears right in Rollins’ gaping maw.  It’s a straightforward tale of alienation but, as with everything Rollins does, it is delivered with unwavering conviction.  Even the comparatively wandering experimentalism of “1,000 Times Blind” is confident and slams you against the wall with huge explosions of power.  There is no room for uncertainty on Life Time and, in true Rollins style, no life time to waste.

The first true highlight of the album is “Lonely”.  It is more reminiscent of Black Flag with its direct riff, percussive bass and simple structure, but will feel familiar to those who know Henry Rollins from his “big hit” video for “Liar”.  The aggressively cynical take on human relationships and the cutting delivery are attractive and repulsive in equal measure, but there’s no question the performance is breath-taking.  Chris Haskett’s guitars crash in to Sim Cain’s drums throwing shrapnel in all directions, piercing the hearts and minds of unprepared listeners.  If you weren’t on board before this, you are now, and so begins this album’s stretch of focused brilliance.  “Wreck-Age” shakes you with its pulsating rhythm and dystopian world view before dumping you at the unforgiving doorstep of “Gun In Mouth Blues”.  It’s an almost indescribably intense track, building from a bare and gently drummed intro to frightening crescendos of screamed croons or, from now on, “scroons”.  Henry Rollins is for 8 minutes a scrooner who lays bare the anger and frustration of some disaffected everyperson in a style not unlike Peter Finch in Network.  It is musically simple, but the constant burning anger that feeds its existence and sudden outbursts is overwhelming, and will have even the mildest listener screaming along.

“You Look at You” and “If You’re Alive” keep the intensity flowing, but it’s “Turned Out” that provides the album’s next highlight.  Led by Rollins’ confidently spoken verses and more stirring screams of his favourite word “yeah”, it has more shape to it than some of the other tracks, and gives you the impetus to really build in to the heavy chorus.  The bridge section truly feels like the album has succumbed to its own heaviness.  And on the original release that is, in fact, the case, as it was the last song.  For those of us who came to the album by the time it had received reissue treatment, the Do It EP tracks had been attached to the end allowing Rollins Band to kick us in the head three more times on Life Time with what must be Rollins’ personal anthems, “Do It”, “Move Right In”, and “Next Time”.  The cover of Pink Fairies’ “Do It”, in particular, gives you the basic Rollins ethos: get shit done.  He wants you to do, experience, live, learn, change, mess up, try again, and never forget that your life is not for anyone else to live.  Witnessing all he’s done and experiencing the intensity of the man, it seems as good an ethos as any other.  Do it.

52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #33

 Faith No More – King For A Day… Fool For A Lifetime

(Slash, 1995)

 Buy the album here

If this was an album review for a commercial site or a popular music magazine, there is no chance that the editor would give me this job.  When the assignment was offered out, “Mike Patton Fan Boy” would be scrawled over my joyful face or ingrained in the over-enthusiastic words of my near-instant response.  Impartiality, balance, objectivity… these words mean nothing to me when it comes to the output of the world’s greatest man.  Even a fan of his music struggles to keep up with the sheer volume of work – three albums over 2016-2017 so far – but the quality never seems to suffer.*  For a man who is so vocal about his reluctance to re-tread ground, this is an incredible feat.  Point being, Mike Patton is great.  Now let’s have a listen to the band that he is reputed to have felt creatively constricted by….

King For A Day... will make you think Mike Patton was a lunatic.  The entire album is about creative and talented musicians pushing each other to ever greater heights.  Seems Mike is a little hard to please.  The band’s first album without highly respected guitarist and friend of Bill & Ted, Jim Martin, is not the work of a band with limited avenues of expression.  It turns sharply, lunges lazily, jumps wildly, and sways gently.  It is a place where the thrash-schlock-horror of “Digging the Grave” can sit comfortably next to the lounge warbling of “Take This Bottle”.  It is an album of musical joy, unbeholden to a scene, a genre, or even fans.

The title track of sorts, “King For a Day”, encapsulates the Faith No More approach.  New and temporary guitarist Trey Spruance is asked to gently strum with an electro-acoustic while also bringing huge rock landslide guitars similar to those fans would hear on next release Album of the Year.  The quietly supreme Mike Bordin is bone-crushingly heavy, using every tom and cymbal in his collection, then suddenly his sound is so delicate it feels more like the thought of a drum strike than the strike itself.  Bill Gould’s wild, wandering bass rumble contributes to an undeniable heaviness that the floating keys of Roddy Bottum cut through in creating the equal parts earthquake/sensual massage sensation this album seeks.  The master of the voice Mike Patton simply does it all: croons, screams, gasps, rasps, coughs, and gigantic vocal hooks are interwoven until you no longer distinguish between them – they are all equally great.

 

As musicians they are serious masters of what they do, but this album feels as if it has its tongue firmly placed in its cheek while also appealing to our most sincere emotions.  No song displays this more than “Ricochet” with its infectious, wickedly spiteful, and sardonic chorus:

It's always funny until someone gets hurt
And then it's just hilarious

Faith No More love to pick up idioms and throw them in to the air or the dirt dependent on their mood, much the same as they will move seamlessly or destructively from heavy to light.  “Ricochet” maintains a thread of heaviness drawn through from album opener “Get Out” while also providing a new mood for “Evidence” to pursue.  Elements of reggae, lounge jazz, and soft rock interplay on this funky little number.  Mike Patton hits you with a gut-rumbling baritone before smoothing things through with his trademark melody and panty-dropping delivery.  It’s just enough to get you in the mood for something a little darker.

The tone found in “Ricochet” makes a return in “The Gentle Art of Making Enemies” but with a more deliberate thrash heaviness.  Trey Spruance brings a catchy main riff, Bill Gould sets the dark tone with an ominous bass line, and Mike Patton draws on this with his Vincent Price-esque verse vocal.  With Mike Bordin’s drumming sounding like the ticking of a clock, there is a driving menace to this song that in part characterises the heavier parts of King For A Day and Album of the Year.  But on both of these albums the most enjoyable and successful moments are the faux epic, spine tingling, sing-along-if-you-can masterpieces of cheese.

On King For A Day that track is album closer “Just A Man”: a song so powerful you will feel like an angel, a demon, and a human all at the same time.  You will cry though you feel like laughing.  You will sway with your eyes closed even though you feel like moshing while smiling.  You will melt, evaporate, and solidify again before this song is done with you.  It is a huge song with lullaby verses, choruses seemingly sung by a chorus of Mike Pattons (heaven), and an insane spoken word section that will make you feel weightless before a choir picks up your featherlight frame and carries it to wherever you would wish to go when your time comes.  It’s like dying happy. 

Faith No More wrote albums very few others would ever think of or be brave enough to record, and they did it with the verve, wit, and commitment that makes them all passionate pieces of art. 

P.S. That’s what I meant about a lack of impartiality, balance, and objectivity.

 

*If you haven’t already, please check out Nevermen, Kaada/Patton, and Dead Cross – to name just the recent projects.

52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #35

Nirvana – Nevermind

(DGC, 1991)

Buy the album here

Some reviews don’t really need to be written…. but here goes anyway. 

Discovering your new favourite band by finding out some rock star died is a strange way to experience a transformative cultural moment, but it’s a moment that changed the trajectory of my life.  It didn’t save me from prison or anything like that, but it did save me from a potential lifetime of pop dross, a fate worse than prison, and steered me through the dangerous “Oasis Years” which still haunt me.  I’m hopeful some similarly dull, middle class teenager is being saved right now by Motörhead, Bowie, or Prince.  Thanks to Nirvana, I’m sitting in an overpriced coffee shop with a flat white and carrot cake slice, writing a blog post on my fancy laptop…. but I’m wearing an Exhorder “Slaughter In The Vatican” T-shirt rather than a polo shirt.  Saved.

Nevermind still kicks you in the head all these years on.  Butch Vig’s production smoothed the edges too much (he is no Steve Albini), but Kurt Cobain’s ripped-up-larynx vocal tears through the veneer, grabs you by the ears and pulls you violently into this world of self-loathing and not-quite-teenage angst.  It is filled with anthems that have come to define a generation’s young adult development and sense of rebellion.  The image of Nirvana playing to a hazy gym-full of moshing kids in the video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is for teenagers of the 90s what Elvis dancing was for kids of the 50s or the anti-establishment aggression of the Sex Pistols was for teenagers in the 70s.  “Smells Like Teen Spirit” makes it clear that Nirvana were moving towards the middle.  Gone were the bass-heavy, sludgy sounds of the Melvins-esque debut Bleach, and in their place was crisp production, catchy riffs, and choruses that manage to rhyme “mosquito” and “libido”.  The first awesome crack of Dave Grohl’s drums drives home how much he meant to the band’s development, and Krist Novoselic’s strong bass sound allows Nirvana to retain that punk influence that helped grunge to transcend genres.

It’s Novoselic’s atmospheric bass sound that is the highlight of the ironically upbeat “In Bloom” with its glorious chorus attacking all the latch-on fans that had come their way.  The clash on this album between its noticeably more polished and anthemic sound and Cobain’s desire to be true to his music and underground leanings is hard to reconcile, especially in light of his suicide and the self-loathing that may have driven him to that point, but it does produce moments of real brilliance.

Where hits like “Come As You Are” and “Drain You” brought millions of new fans, fuzzed-out bastard-child-of-sludge-and-punk tracks like “Breed” remind me now that Nirvana didn’t want to be your friend.  Its a-tonal verse vocal, bulging bass sound, and rancid guitar scratching are deployed to test new fans.  “Territorial Pissings” continues these tests with a furious attempt to make sense of masculinity by screaming until your throat bleeds.  Cobain’s voice completely cracking with anguished passion at the end of this punk attack followed immediately by the delightful vocal opening of “Drain You” is all you need to know about Nirvana: Equally capable of smashing their instruments in rebellious confusion and writing near-perfect pop songs.

The bizarre, unsettling bridge section of “Drain You” is the dark undercurrent upon which this hit album flows breaking through.  Its presence is disguised by catchy choruses and the sheer success of the album, but there is no doubting it’s there.  From the lascivious-feeling “Lounge Act” with its invigoratingly screeched yet melodic vocal to the obvious anti-social, anti-commercialism of “Stay Away” which seems to falter under its own intensity, Nevermind is seemingly all parts of the cultural spectrum at once: borne from defiance and rage yet accessible and ripe for assimilation into the mainstream.

My feelings towards this album will never be clear, but in ending with “Something In The Way” Nirvana left me believing that more than anything they wanted to give a middle finger to the world and do whatever came to them in the moment.  It is the dreary counterpoint to the album’s anthemic opening track, and fills me with joy every time I listen to it.  It’s a band saying that if you’ve made it this far, you can hear what we want to tell you.  It is Kurt Cobain drawing you in to his world.