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 - #4

Neurosis – Times of Grace

(Relapse Records/Music for Nations, 1999)

Picture this: a young man wearing oversized baggy combat trousers, Airwalk skate shoes, and a dope Korn T-shirt has just listened to a free Kerrang! CD highlighting releases of 1999. This kid was blown away by a weird, angry lot hammering on about not being able to “see California without Marlon Brando’s eyes” or some such nonsense, but he couldn’t recall the band’s name. While wandering around HMV in Aberdeen going through a “Swimmy, Swammy, Swanson… Samsonite!” process in his mind, a bolt of recognition struck mid-perusal of the metal section. Neurosis – Times of Grace! This had to be it. Why else would the recognition feel so strong? Plus the artwork was incredible, so the young man tripped over his own trouser legs in his hurry to the till. A few hours later at home with his trusty Aiwa CD player, confusion and fear washed over him. The dark and obscure sounds weren’t what he expected at all, more Wicker Man soundtrack than Blade, and on inspecting the aforementioned Kerrang! CD it became apparent that he had intended to be a Slipknot boy rather than a Neurosis man.

Nearly 20 years later this Neurosis man is thinking back to one of the best mistakes he ever made. Times of Grace is a majestic, frightening, and bewitching album. It’s pure, heavy, and regularly surprising. It might not have converted that youngster instantly, but the quality of those dark sounds was intriguing enough to bring him back again and again. On seeing Neurosis, sandwiched by Today is the Day and Voivod (still one of the best line-ups I’ve seen?), at The Cathouse in Glasgow during freshers’ week at university, my bleeding ears told me that I was a complete convert. The bleak yet warm heaviness, the visual show that was so carefully curated to complement the music, the brilliance of both vocalists, and the dedication to music that ignored genre boundaries was inspirational and perspective-altering. Even if all Neurosis ever did was make me a fan of their music then Times of Grace would still occupy this position on the list, but without them it would have been a much longer route to Isis, Mogwai, Aereogramme, Swans, OHHMS, Godspeed You Black Emperor, Sleep, and so many other bands that have enriched my life. Other than doing an Arts degree, that HMV purchase in 1999 might be the most influential mistake I’ve made in life.

“Suspended in Light” begins as something from 2001: A Space Odyssey, those sci-fi-like beeps still send shivers along my spine, but by its end the earthy tones and grounded focus of this album have begun to shine through. The listener may want to hold on to the light that exists in that most atmospheric of opening tracks, as the first 90 seconds of “The Doorway” is bleak and bruising stuff. It’s not quite the near death of listening to Through Silver in Blood but it is an oppressive and heavy sound that will have you clinging to any metaphorical security blankets you have stowed away. Steve Albini has used his apparent genius to draw out a more natural sound from Neurosis. The guitars are gritty and crunchy but retain a hint of warmth that brings the music that bit closer to your heart than Through Silver… which, while stunning in its own way, holds you at arm’s length with its intensity. The drums have a depth that somehow brings gargantuan sounds and wonderful subtlety to these tracks at the same time, while nurturing a naturalised tribal quality. This is most evident in “Under the Surface” with its slow burn powered by rumbling toms, whining, squeaking, groaning guitars, and a delectable control of the desire to unleash untold fury. Like edging, but less hassle. Structurally it’s hard to describe but Neurosis show no fear of allowing the momentum to crash out from underneath the song. They extend ambient passages for minutes, almost tormenting the listener with the anticipation of the cataclysmic sounds that surely await them, and with dual screams from Scott Kelly and Steve Von Till of, “your shell is hollow, so am I/the rest will follow, so will I”, that climactic aural wall collapses on you with piledriver force.

“The Last You’ll Know” pursues this crushing feeling with landslide plunges into an imaginary mire, but the scything guitar sound makes it an even more bleak and extreme experience. However, intricate, barely audible backing vocals, keyboards, and samples are indicative of the detailed approach Neurosis employ, and even in their most oppressively heavy songs there is a wealth of aural and emotional stimulation to balance the overwhelming waves of heaviness. Here, the naturalised feel that Albini encourages is promoted by the undeniable beauty of the world’s favourite instrument, bagpipes. It is one of the more memorable passages, evoking a Celtic longing for open spaces and rugged wilderness, on an album that specialises in unforgettable and unique sounds. “Away” is equally evocative but is willing to bring this to bear with a pared back folk approach that is so gentle it repeatedly threatens to lull itself to sleep, at one point almost being carried off on the wind. This track is a startling achievement, fusing folk, post rock, and doom with patience and care that belies the raw emotion at its heart. The founding minutes of the song will send listeners in the direction of Scott Kelly and Steve Von Till’s brilliant solo folk projects, while the latter stages of this song will find their continuation in two of Neurosis’ most thoughtful and “gentle” albums, A Sun That Never Sets and The Eye of Every Storm.

The title track reignites the intensity that fuelled the record’s opening tracks before “The Road to Sovereignty” carries us quietly to a much-needed rest. At this point your mind will start to slowly recover memories of the physical and spiritual challenge you just endured. My mind inevitably returns to the sounds and feelings of “End of the Harvest”. It feels like a séance gone wrong and is powerfully primal, tearing at your soul with lines like, “have you ever tasted the soil (destiny)/and felt your own death in your veins”. There is a dedication to texture, progressive repetition, and vocal viciousness that develops the song into an emotional epic that, even on a record of this quality, stands out. It is a song you will simultaneously wish to revisit yet feel too drained to even contemplate. “End of the Harvest” is inspirationally destructive music.    

Times of Grace feels like a reverse Wicker Man where what appears to be violent and awful turns out to be organic, life-loving, and spiritual. Obviously, that wouldn’t make such an entertaining film, but as a piece of music it is an incredible decades-long journey that promises eternal enrichment. I haven’t even touched on the accompaniment record Grace that Neurosis produced under their instrumental and ambient Tribes of Neurot alternative identity, but there is so much depth in this record that I feel no urge to complicate or cloud the experience. Neurosis recorded an album that defines a whole genre of music for me. Every crafted sound pulls at me, crashes over me, or carries me away, and while it may be nearly 20 years since I first listened to it, Times of Grace still surprises, scares, and inspires me.

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 - #24

John Knox Sex Club – Raise Ravens

(Self-released, 2011)

Buy the album here

Scotland is renowned as a proud country of great national beauty, from the coves and jagged rocks of its coastline to the beguiling and ever-changing scenes of its highland ranges, but for most of its inhabitants Scotland is a far more urban experience.  With massive population centres like Glasgow and Edinburgh, Scotland’s history and character are as tied to industrialisation, living conditions, and education, as they are to its famous mountains, lochs, and wildlife (real or mythic).  While Scottish music may still be widely considered to stem from rural and Highland traditions, and most commonly encountered at ceilidhs, Scotland has a more recent but equally important musical identity.  Bands like Belle and Sebastian, Arab Strap, and Mogwai have created a new urban “folk” music that, inadvertently or otherwise, draws on tradition but actively engages with the urban existence of Scotland’s contemporary population.  For me, John Knox Sex Club does this better than anyone.  Even their name pulls on Scotland’s history and drags it in to the red-tinged light of modern, urban Scotland.  Filled with traditional instrumentation juxtaposed with amplified guitars, crashing percussion, and honest vocals with native accents, theirs is an openly folk approach to post-rock-influenced indie.

To describe John Knox Sex Club simply as indie denies them the full impact of their epic visions and immense musical power.  It’s a music that should only be played in the cavernous and echoing halls of grand castles and cathedrals.  Fittingly, the vocals are delivered with the worryingly addictive vehemence of a preacher sermonising on your sins, while the orchestral strings clash with the rhythm section like the forces of heaven battling the demons of hell.  This is epic indie with unbound scope and musical ambition.  Opening track, and 13-minute behemoth, “Kiss the Dirt” does all of this and more with its cold, foggy, Scottish morning opening gently strummed and lyricised, and its powerfully cathartic peaks packed with Mogwai-like progressive dynamics.  The heartfelt and beautiful vocals work alongside the violins to cut through the intensity of the instrumentation and provide a moving poetic exploration of modern civilisation.  The lyrics are an epic poem of human history, mythology, politics, fate, love and more that anchors itself to modern urban life:

Link arms across

High rise flats

Or watch as our lives drop

Like dripping taps

In forgotten rooms

It is an unfathomably good song; uplifting yet honest, musically epic but never complex, “Kiss the Dirt” is an astounding way to open an album.  The only problem being that it’s impossible for the album to maintain this standard.

“Above Us the Waves” is a beautiful song of longing that replaces the immensity of “Kiss…” with lyrical and musical subtlety.  Passion is still a driving force here, but John Knox… ask us now to take pleasure in quiet moments, gentle melodies, self-effacing hooks, and minute domestic observations meeting grand nature similes.  It’s a comedown of sorts, but one that rewards repeat listens.  From there an instrumental track leads us from “…Waves” to the more outwardly post-rock slow build to powerful release of “The Neighbours” and its memories of family strife in urban settings.  A memorable chorus is supported by a twisted bass line that winds itself around the gliding strings and escalating wails of both vocalists, before ominously leaving us with the permanent and unresolved danger of the line “like footsteps in the hall”.  It’s another impassioned poem of urban life that leaves the listener in awe.  “Katie Cruel” is a reworking of a traditional song that further develops the idea of a new folk music in Scotland.  The sparse, gloomy atmosphere combined with the underlying distorted guitar sounds give this traditional song a modern twist without overwhelming the strings and the original lyrics.  Where hints of Harvestman peek through on “Katie Cruel”, the final track has a more accessible Crippled Black Phoenix quality to it.  A noticeably warmer verse and guitar sound in “The Thaw” is interrupted by the experimental, part spoken word, mid-section that layers light sounds in a dizzying manner.  John Knox… then find their way gently to the uplifting and hopeful repetition of the album’s final line:

The grass grows beneath the ice and snow

Produced in small batches and packaged by hand by the band themselves, Raise Ravens is a unique view on modern life in Scotland produced by a truly independent band.  Never disavowing the past, never judging the present, and finally pointing to the future, John Knox… have produced an album that touches on all parts of life in Scotland.  While the lack of record company backing may have contributed to multiple hiatuses, it is their independence that allowed John Knox… to truly express themselves and deliver the beauty of this album to anyone who wishes to listen.

52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #36

Down - NOLA

(Elektra Records, 1995)

Buy the album here

I turned over the CD case of Down’s debut album in the old Virgin Megastore in Glasgow, and was met with an image that would burn itself in to my brain.  A thorn-crowned Jesus figure with a joint hanging casually from his lips with dark shadows for eyes, nearly drowned in monochrome roughness.  A relatively mainstream metal fan in those days, I found the extreme metal scene to be foreign, out of reach, and filled with noises my ears couldn’t understand.  I was intrigued by what I heard, but I didn’t know why, and ended up backing away from it for years.  While Down aren’t extreme metal, this picture on the back cover of their first album, NOLA, generated the same subconscious response.  This was not my usual fare.  It had an underground feel to it despite the familiar and influential names involved.  While Down was comprised of Pepper Keenan of Corrosion of Conformity, Kirk Windstein and Todd Strange of Crowbar, Jimmy Bower of Eyehategod, and Phil Anselmo of Pantera, something about the independent, DIY image that the artwork, logo, and track listing conveyed had me questioning if it was going to be something I could handle.  Problem was, I was hooked on the band already, I just didn’t know it.  I anxiously walked by the CD several times until my curiosity completely consumed me, and I ended up laying out £15 for it in 2000.  That’s £400 new money.  I had entered a new world.

As “Temptation’s Wings” filled my room with 60s and 70s-inspired, metal-edged hard rock and Phil Anselmo’s growl, I was simultaneously relieved, disappointed, and incredibly excited.  Relieved that this wasn’t some bizarre, experimental side project that I might have to pretend to like; disappointed that it wasn’t exactly that and a bit more; and excited that I had just found a band that represent everything I’ve ever wanted from music.  The riffs are big but aren’t trying to be heavier than they need to be.  The drums are concerned with feel and gentle details as much as getting your head banging.  The leads and harmonised guitar parts are about emotion and storytelling rather than showing off any technical prowess.  The vocals are aggressive but with a crooning quality to them that provides this stoner rock with punch and melody.  This is all wrapped in the swampy production that has become associated with the Nola scene in general, and more specifically with the self-generated lore of band production base, Nodferatu’s Lair, to create a sound that nods to influences but is stirringly unique. 

By the time the final riff of “Temptation’s Wings” blended into the sharper opening of “Lifer”, I was committed.  I remember nearly breaking my neck on first hearing this song.  Bower’s insistent percussion mandates ferocious headbanging, and to this day I consider “Lifer” a pit-starter with soul.  It’s familiar lyrical and thematic territory for Pantera fans, but with this Southern Rock setting the edges soften, the puffed-out chests deflate, and honest emotion starts to seep through.  It’s heavy metal that wants you to snap your neck, but look after your soul and the souls of those around you.

My memories of hearing these first two Down songs are so strong that I often struggle to look beyond them for my favourite tracks, but “Stone The Crow” steps right up and demands its place alongside these tracks.  If anything, it ups the Southern Rock vibe, gently caressing you with its lilting down home guitar, while simultaneously hitting you hard with lyrics that only hint at the strain in Anselmo’s heart regarding his Southern upbringing, identity, and his place in a culture that is inherently racist.  While Anselmo’s racist outbursts have tainted Down’s career, the band’s identity is not entirely caught up in false or blinded notions of the Good Ol’ South.  For some, it’s more about Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, guitar riffs, and a lot of weed.  While crushing odes like “Eyes of the South”, with its incredible jammed-out intro, gigantic bass sound, and unstoppable twin guitars, revel in imagery of the South and love of it what it offers to some of its inhabitants, Down’s true identity is found in “Hail to the Leaf” and Nola’s defining track, “Bury Me In Smoke”.  In the former, the sound of a bong bubbling away undercuts the heavy riff and more aggressive and direct drumming to intertwine with Anselmo’s tortured lyrics and create an atmosphere of clouded judgement and self-hatred.  In the latter, we find Down’s declaration of greatness.  “Bury Me In Smoke” is a huge and confident song fuelled by weed and driven by brilliant guitar riffs.  It brings together all the elements Down displayed in the preceding songs, but knows where this album’s, and this band’s, heart truly lies: In allowing the main riff to fade away then briefly reprising it before the album finishes, Down remind us that at its core, this is music for people who love heavy and honest guitars.  All the drugs, self-hatred, and ideas about the South can step to one side: Hail to the riff.

52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #37

Opeth – Deliverance

(Music For Nations, 2001)

Buy the album here

Opeth existed at the crossroads between death metal, folk music, prog, and pure evil.* It is easy to imagine Mikael Åkerfeldt, primary songwriter for Opeth and amusing bloke, standing at such a crossroads and signing a contract with the devil to assign him unmatched talents in this field.  The crossroads would have been isolated in a barren landscape, the sole tree, grand yet lifeless, hanging over the road as if waiting to hang a victim.  As the grey clouds closed in, masking any remaining light, the devil would have approached to whisper hell in your ear. 

That’s what listening to Opeth is like: gothic horror in which the lightness of touch only intensifies the darkness of the subject matter.  This is true for all of Opeth’s truly great albums, My Arms, Your Hearse (1998), Still Life (1999), Blackwater Park (2001), and Deliverance.  This was the Opeth album that found me first, and opened my mind to the possibility of brutally heavy death metal that soothes with acoustic guitar, wandering passages of musical exploration, and satanic lullabies.  Ironically, this is Opeth’s heaviest album, and deliberately so, with Damnation being released as a companion album only months after Deliverance to fully explore the “clean” side of Opeth’s music, and further cement Åkerfeldt’s relationship with Pavement maestro, Steve Wilson.  Approaching the Deliverance/Damnation project as a double album allowed Opeth the freedom to intensify and even exaggerate their characteristics on each record, and produce two distilled versions of what the band had become.  Deliverance is concentrated evil.

You can feel the intent on first track, “Wreath”, with its scarily abrasive sound and pitch-black death growl.  There is no warning here.  “Wreath” lurches out with razor sharp guitars and Lopez’s incredible drumming, precisely balancing double bass speed with restrained snare and cymbal use, and propels the listener into the black hail that is Mikael    

Åkerfeldt’s vocal: “Falling inside again / The nightmare always the same”.  The title track rides in on building waves of guitar punctuated by that solid snare, only to give way to a riff that would have long hair in metal venues worldwide spinning in unison supported by Lopez’s sustained and perfectly produced double bass pedal sound.  “Deliverance” gives the listener little glimpses of respite with a softer overall guitar sound than “Wreath”, experimental passages, gently delivered melodic vocals, and thoughtful lead guitar colour.  Coming in at over 13 minutes, alternating dark and light, Åkerfeldt’s repeated demonic delivery of the line “all over now”, the subtle use of keys, and ending on the album’s signature, and seemingly never-ending, drum beat, this song is the definition of prog death. 

The punishing tension that is built during this epic is dispersed by the softness of the album’s second act.  In “A Fair Judgement” and “For Absent Friends” we learn that even when writing a purposefully heavy album Opeth are unafraid to take their listeners on long, melodic journeys.  Åkerfeldt’s forlorn tone on the former is beautiful, enhanced by delicate rhyming couplets, and allows the lengthy traded solos to stand out fully, while in the latter Opeth simply let the gentle tones of the guitars do the talking.  It’s the last moment of objective beauty that this album will offer you. 

The opening of “Master’s Apprentice” does away with the complexity, the play of light and dark, the beauty, and opts for a giant metal riff and punishing vocals.  It’s an explosive moment on the album that will break your neck and your larynx.  Even the meandering and expressive bridge section later in the song is rudely interrupted by that unmistakable growl and provides only minor reprieve during the closing act.  In the album closer “By the Pain I See in Others” the quiet moments seem intent on simply making the heavier sounds more punishing, every moment of relaxation more and more brief, every false end to the song both difficult to endure and invigorating, like scaling gruelling, false peaks on a Scottish mountain but be provided with an ever more stunning view with each one.  Despite both songs in this final act exceeding 10 minutes, and incorporating multiple approaches to music and wide-ranging instrumentation, they comprise the most direct work Opeth had produced since “Demon of the Fall” and are a fitting finale to their heaviest album.

Opeth’s heaviness sounds natural, as if it had walked out of Scandinavian forests in to your ears, and blends seamlessly with their progressive, gothic, and folk elements.  It is important to acknowledge, however, that it is not natural, and that Åkerfeldt’s stellar songwriting, lyrical imagination, and awareness of tone make this blend work.  He is decidedly unnatural.  Other bands have tried to do what Opeth do, but none have managed to so perfectly occupy all these spaces at once without ever seeming out of place or forced.  It seems to me that Åkerfeldt’s contract with the devil worked out well.  Damnation may await his soul, but at least we’ll always have Deliverance.           

*They still exist, it’s just they’re pretty much 70s prog now.

52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #44

Steve Von Till – If I Should Fall to the Field

(Neurot Recordings, 2002)

Buy the album here

Steve Von Till is a teacher, a father, and a musician. In listening to his second solo album, If I Should Fall to the Field, it is important to recognise his place in the world, in his family, and in his art. For his folk songs express not only his reverence for art and music, but also the concept of lineage, both cultural and familial. Von Till ponders, in his writing, in the choices of songs he covers, and in the tone and imagery he employs, how he has received these musical traditions, but also his standing in his family history, and what he may leave for coming generations. As a guitarist and vocalist of Neurosis, he has become one of the most influential artists in the hardcore, post-rock, and post-metal sub-genres, releasing more than ten crucial albums for fans of this music since 1990. However, it is in his solo work that we come to know the heart of the man, the passions that drive him, and the things he holds dear. It is a moving piece of music: a family heirloom, an ode to generations past, and an expression of nature, life, and death all found in the human body.

“To The Field” beautifully encapsulates this permanence of human life through a connection to nature and the food it provides us: “On my sustaining life,/I will be as yew, with the grain.” It's a message that Von Till seeks to convey with quiet and almost imperceptibly building instrumentation. The gentle acoustic guitar introduction is joined by his sonorous voice, before electric guitars, organ, and drums gather to burst into life with the album's most dramatic crescendo. Warmth and contemplation in his voice are replaced in this moment with an anguished, wordless wailing that feel as if carried on the changing winds mentioned in the opening of the song. It's a song that contemplates human death feeding the earth, and in that way finding eternal life. This sentiment finds its partner in “This River” where “dreams were washed out to sea”, and “blood like fuel is fed to the fire”; and a similar wordless outro carries us on waters that flow to “the edge of the earth”. In these songs human life seeps in to the earth and in to the waters, feeding nature and finding permanence and renewal. The untempered expressiveness shown in these crescendoes is rare on an album that otherwise exercises restraint, preferring to allow the simple instrumentation, rich vocals, and dark, poetic lyrics pull us in to its contemplative atmosphere.

Von Till is clearly contemplating his place in the folk tradition. For hundreds of years folk songs have been passed from generation to generation through performance, re-writing, and re-recording. The authors of many of these songs remain unknown, but respect is shown to the traditions of folk music by artists who find new ways to perform old songs, or old songs to convey new thoughts. By including a beautiful cover of Neil Young's “Running Dry” and a fiddle-heavy rendition of traditional folk song “Am I Born To Die”, he inserts himself in to a folk tradition that is simultaneously looking back for inspiration, grounding, and belonging and reaching forward to the next generation, offering them this rich history. Von Till's “Am I Born To Die” carries with it, in his tortured and strained voice, the weight of the history it has seen, and for some reason has always reminded me of “America the Beautiful”.

At its heart, the history this album presents is one of family, of belonging, and of acknowledging the sacrifices of previous generations. As such, “Hallowed Ground” and “The Harpy” are its emotional core, portraying Von Till's admiration for both nature and his forefathers. The two seem inextricable on this album, and “Hallowed Ground” is its high point. The beautiful atmospherics reach new heights on this song built around stark imagery, gently repeating acoustic strumming, and punctuating electric guitar. Von Till's deep voice is bold and portentous, filling the song with a sense of impending doom. But it is revealed that this doom is perhaps in the past:

Grandfather's hands bled for us here

Hallowed ground forever.

His admiration for his forefathers has led him to include a recording of his grandfather reading “The Harpy” that was made by his father in 1961. A poem originally written by Robert W. Service in the early twentieth century is read here with the old time, rural feel that has informed the sound of the entire album. While the backing music is almost inaudible, the coming together of three generations of Von Tills is a fitting end to an album that interacts with its traditions, both of folk music and family. The serious, contemplative music of If I Should Fall to the Field inspires a desire to connect with nature, with music history, with other generations of our families, and ultimately to Steve Von Till himself. A teacher, a father, and an incredible musician.