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 - #11

Monster Magnet – Dopes to Infinity

(A&M, 1995)

Buy the album here

There are albums that always feel like you’re coming home when you listen to them.  You’ve been away a long time, and the welcoming familiarity of those sounds brings back relaxing and reassuring memories.  But it’s not just the nostalgic comfort it brings, it’s the quality of the sounds, and that sense the music, like your home, exists within you the whole time.  Dopes to Infinity is one such album.  Monster Magnet accomplished this simply by not trying.  They weren’t trying to be anything, they only wrote and performed the music they were destined to make, with no pretensions, no posturing.  While the band lost that natural feel over the next four albums – Powertrip was an attempt to become hard rock icons (and did this brilliantly); God Says No came off as a self-aware diversification of their sound; Monolithic Baby! was a disjointed mish-mash of the previous two albums; and 4-Way Diablo felt like they were lacking direction or inspiration – they would regain it spectacularly with the release of Mastermind.  It’s the spaced-out, laidback, drug-fuzz of Mastermind and Dopes to Infinity that is the best of Monster Magnet.  On these albums the notes, echoed vocals, organic solos drift from one astral plane to another, combining corporeal pleasures, metaphysical meanderings, dream-like imaginings, and modern cultural references to form a space rock cornucopia.

Title track “Dopes to Infinity” is a clear example of this, effortlessly sliding from dense stoner riffs to floating on heavenly clouds through the gentle hum of the backing vocal and the perfectly mixed guitar lead.  That’s without mentioning how utterly righteous Dave Wyndorf’s voice is, and its ability to imbue words like, “We are all here my friends/Alive and spaced but all so beautiful”, with both cool and gravitas.  I haven’t always understood what Wyndorf is singing about, but I’ve always felt like it means something.  The seamless transition into second track, “Negasonic Teenage Warhead”, takes us to Monster Magnet’s first notice to the world that they could write incredible rock anthems.  Essentially conveying Wyndorf’s disappointment at Kurt Cobain’s elevation to rock star and the accompanying saddening of rock ‘n’ roll, Monster Magnet wanted to remind the mid-90s that it was ok to rock out JUST FOR FUN.  Big bass, killer riff, cyclonic theremin sounds (?), rock screams, and a giant pogo-ing chorus all combine to create the foundations for giant rock hits on next album Powertrip.  In 2001, Scottish comics geniuses Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely used the track title to name their new teenage X-Men trainee character, who was subsequently brilliantly re-imagined as a disaffected teen with explosive powers in the 2016 film Deadpool.  These things seem to exist in meta-textual harmony as Monster Magnet used a Jack Kirby Marvel character to name the fifth track here, “Ego, the Living Planet”, most recently seen depicted by Kurt Russell in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.  I have it on good authority that Kurt Russell is a huge Monster Magnet fan.  It’s all connected…

“Ego, the Living Planet” is built on a cosmically repetitive, driving stoner riff with monk-like chanting and frantic lead woodling lying just below the surface.  The only vocals are the briefly repeated line, “I talk to planets baby”, and the screams of presumably planet-devoured souls.  Wyndorf’s love for and fascination with the epic sci-fi and philosophical work of comic writer and artist Jack Kirby inspired him to create a song about one of his most innovative characters, a living planet.  The size of the riff and the cosmic feel to the whole song perfectly capture the feeling of awe such a character can inspire.  But Monster Magnet being Monster Magnet, they pivot in the following track, lulling us back to comfort with gentle strumming and loving vocal melodies in “Blow ‘Em Off”.  Monster Magnet are in such a perfect groove on this record that you never notice the changes of tone, the shifts from quiet to loud, or the difference between hallucinatory visions and very real observations from the world of 1995.

It is difficult to pull out favourite tracks from Dopes… because each song has at least moments that near perfection, but Monster Magnet reach levels of undeniable stoner excellence in “King of Mars” and “All Friends and Kingdom Come”.  In the former, Wyndorf shines the light on another comics influence, Edgar Rich Burroughs, by referencing two of his most iconic creations with the single line, “And I can crown me Tarzan, King of Mars”, while taking us on a journey through soundscapes of heavy, reverberating, open string strumming, gentle leads, booming bass, and perfectly unnoticeable drums.  “All Friends and Kingdom Come” seems to describe the megalomaniacal actions of another comic character from Evil Ernie, who, having been given Armageddon-like superpowers, holds the future of humanity in his psychotic hands.  Where “King…” displayed the brilliance of Ed Mundell, Joe Calandra, and Jon Kleiman on their instruments, “All Friends…” presents the subtle melodies of Dave Wyndorf’s voice as the focal point. 

“King…” keeps us hooked with detailed soundscapes, “All Friends…” with simplicity and immediacy, but both display how completely interwoven the band’s various sounds, tones, and ideas are on this record.  The experience of listening to this record is one of seamlessly flowing sounds, images, tastes, smells, and touch.  It is the gentlest of trips because, even though it rocks incredibly hard at times, it never forces things, never pushes things where they don’t want to go as musicians, and where you as listener rather they wouldn’t.  It is undoubtedly healthy for artists to push themselves into unfamiliar territory in the pursuit of new forms of art, but sometimes it is more enjoyable to witness artists working at the peak of their ability within their limits, simply riffing on what they already know and bringing us along for the ride.  As with the brilliance of White Zombie, there is little point trying to discuss all the detail that goes into a record like this, all I can suggest is finding a copy of Dopes to Infinity and letting your mind be blown to kingdom come.  

    

52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #19

Mars Volta – Frances The Mute

(Universal, Gold Standard Laboratories, Strummer, 2005)

Buy the album here

Mars Volta exist outside my comfort zone.  Watching me trying to discuss this band must be horrible viewing.  I desperately want to know what I’m talking about, and I feel like I have so many things to say, but in the end I just stumble around saying “prog” and “jazz influences” a lot, hoping nobody notices the bead of sweat on my forehead or the nervous twitch in my eye.  A work colleague, after I had recommended them the band, once asked me, “what’s with all the long stretches of just weird noises?”.  My response began confidently, “Mars Volta are trying to…”, before the idea withered in the air between us, fell to the floor, and died an ignoble death.  I had nothing.  In all honesty, I don’t think I have much more now, but Frances The Mute is a joyous, mind-bending, challenging, fun, and insanely catchy record.  So I’ll try not to think too hard. 

The ease with which the music transports me from setting to setting without my awareness is the most powerful attraction.  One moment I’m in a Humphrey Bogart film set in a bar in Argentina, the next I’m in Outer Space watching the birth of a star, without a hint of turbulence on the journey between the two.  In among all the weird effects, extended ambient passages, and “wankery” are incredible musicians capable of the most delightful melodies, stirring guitar rock, and captivating string arrangements.  Omar Rodríguez-López is one of the most talented songwriters of his generation; Cedric Bixler-Zavala’s vocals are unique, bewildering, and seemingly limitless; and there are incredible guest contributions from David Campbell, Flea, and John Frusciante.  The latter’s solos on “L’Via L’Viaquez” are charged explosions of pure energy that galvanise the entire song and help to prepare the listener for Bixler-Zavala’s wild, soaring Spanish vocals.  The cultured trumpet work on “Miranda That Ghost Just Isn’t Holy Anymore” comes from Back To The Future II’s very own Flea, and is backed up by the excellent string arrangements and performances of David Campbell.  Some may argue that having to wade through seemingly endless minutes of “noise” at the start of that track is more trouble than it’s worth.

But I disagree.  For me, I’m still running the previous melody in my head while these ambient stretches transport me to the next.  Being given the time to enjoy the textures, to play with them, change them, reform them as my own is a rewarding listening experience.  The beauty of the sounds with which Mars Volta emerge from these various soundscapes, squeaks, and effects is gauged to perfection.  The delicacy of the trumpet that re-awakes us about four minutes in to “Miranda…” is sublime, and the ongoing peaks and troughs of “Cassandra Geminni”, originally intended to be a single track, are expertly managed.  The suite, comprising the final eight tracks of the original CD release, is the album’s most emotive and is built on the most up-front drumming on the record, frantic guitar solo and vocal sparring, epic riffs, bat-shit crazy bass playing, and all the weird synthesizer squeaks Omar Rodríguez-López can think of.  It might seem like songwriting by splatter gun to some, but all I know is that for the final 30 minutes or so of this record I am in complete thrall to all of Mars Volta’s sounds.  Even when it sounds like Ron Burgundy is playing jazz flute in the background.  If all of that seems like too much hard work, simply turn to “The Widow” with its high drama, passion, and melodic immediacy.  Mars Volta are more than capable of hitting you with vocal hook after vocal hook, or insidiously catchy riffs, or even strings so memorable they’ll be running through your mind for days, but they give these moments the space to transform in your mind to something far more meaningful.  

Mars Volta divide opinion.  There were those that preferred At The Drive-In and found Mars Volta to be an obstruction to their return.  There are those that point to their self-indulgence and pretentiousness, especially live, as reason enough to discard them.  At the same time, Mars Volta have captured the imagination of many fans who perhaps the miss the grand ambitions of older prog and psych bands.  In fact, Q, Mojo, and Classic Rock have all included this album on various “best of” lists, while other publications have derided its, and the musicians’, absurdity.  Perhaps it’s that absurdity that helped open my mind to the transformative potential of music outside my normal sphere of operation.  It was, at least, a new beginning for me.  There’s something here, it’s just not everyone sees it.  They’re probably thinking too hard.

52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #22

Meshuggah – Catch Thirtythree

(Nuclear Blast, 2005)

Buy the album here

Catch Thirtythree is a mind-numbing, obstinate, confusing brute.  It’s wilfully bleak, esoteric, repetitive, violent, and it has no concern for your sanity or wellbeing.  Choosing to listen to Catch Thirtythree is like choosing to eat granite for dinner, washing it down with acid, then lying back on a bed of nails to experience the pain in your gut.  Everybody knows you don’t digest well lying down.  Possibly due to the burning darkness inside me, this album instantly jumped inside my brain and has refused to leave ever since.  This appears to be the case for many others as well.  Meshuggah’s popularity/ubiquity (it’s hard to tell) in metal steadily grew with this and next record, Obzen.  Trying to understand why is the purpose of this blog post.

Ostensibly set out as a single suite concept album, the track names that make up the whole piece are little more than signposts along this bizarre journey.  If a listener approaches this album expecting hooks, choruses, or even “songs”, they may very well quit before the end.  Meshuggah give you the bare minimum with which to hold on, pulling out long passages of repetitive “djent” guitar rhythms or eerie atmospheric tracks in between moments of pummelling heaviness which are relieving in their relative catchiness.  The drums are all programmed from samples of Tomas Haake’s actual drumming, and it lends the whole album a punishingly robotic feel.  This is balanced by the sheer demonic power of Jens Kidman’s death growl which is varied, dynamic, and impassioned.  The earth-shattering bass sound on this album doesn’t make it a warmer experience, but definitely contributes to the intimidating size of the sound.  All told, Meshuggah have better albums with better songs on them.

But there is something perspective-altering about the determined and brutal delivery of this concept.  There is a line that can be drawn from the first note through the entire piece to its culmination, around which Meshuggah have created never-ending variations on a theme.  The music never strays from its ultimate mission to surreptitiously pull the listener in to this unforgiving world of paradoxes, so that as the final act of this piece (represented by “Shed”, “Personae Non Gratae”, “Dehumanization”, and “Sum”) plays we are no longer aware of how we got here or why we stayed.  Nothing is what it seems: track beginnings and ends are mostly indistinguishable; dynamics seem to build to imminent catharsis before being discarded unfulfilled; Jens Kidman’s anger is more existential struggle than angst or rebellion; even the drums don’t “exist”. 

Repeated rhythms cast a spell over your mind, pulling you deeper than you could ever expect to go with such unwelcoming music.  It’s like being in a darkened room with a green laser blasting right in to your eye, yet you can’t look away, can’t even turn your head.  Trying to draw out highlights from such an experience is difficult, but the surging pace and riff of the first three tracks, “Autonomy Lost”, “Imprint of the Un-Saved”, and “Disenchantment” are breath-taking, while the sickening breakdown feel of “The Paradoxical Spiral”, “Re-inanimate”, and “Entrapment” is insanely addictive.  The monstrous sounds and robotic soliloquy of “Mind’s Mirrors” are the hinging point of the whole record, before Meshuggah launch themselves head-first in to the hellish explosion of “In Death – Is Life”.  The anticipation alone is enough to survive on, but the song itself is a brilliant standalone track that would not be out of place on Chaosphere.  The protracted hammering of “In Death – Is Death” is a masterwork of controlled dynamics and perfectly sets up the more immediate final act that I discussed above.  But I don’t think that “how good any of the songs is” has anything to do with why I like this album so much.  It’s about its purity of vision.  It’s about the fact that Meshuggah do not care what you expect, or what the rules are.  It’s about having something completely new.  Even if it is sick, disgusting, and completely messed up.  

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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 - #25

Cynic – Traced In Air

(Season of Mist, 2008)

Buy the album here

I can’t remember first noticing Cynic or even hearing them for the first time, but with Traced In Air I have reason to never forget them.  Existing somewhere in the space formed by an equilateral triangle between Tool, Mars Volta, and Gorguts, Cynic are sensually lush, at times complex, and powerfully melodic.  Traced In Air is equally effective patiently building sparse soundscapes or dynamically layering instrumentation in self-propelled, existential, proto-death prog.  It’s an album that completely changed my understanding of heavy music, the place of death metal style vocals in other settings, and the conceptual limits of lyrics in heavy music.

“The Unknown Guest” is a perfect example.  Rolling in on the faded-in, reborn rhythms of “Integral Birth”, laced with Sanskrit mantras, backed by vicious death growls, and bearing beautiful, transitional passages of delicate light in amongst the tightly packed riffing and fill-heavy drumlines of the verses, “The Unknown Guest” takes us on an exploration of how spiritual discovery can reinvigorate physical life.  “Adam’s Murmur” introduces yet more stylistic experimentation with near robotic vocals that contrast the chakras-inspired contemplation of man’s creation.  It’s a bold decision to express these ideas in such “synthetic” ways, but the delicacy of the delivery along with the balancing earthiness of the backing vocal allows the song to hit its mark.  “King of Those Who Know” also balances these synthetic sounds with clean guitar tones and death growls to produce an equally vicious and soothing take on spiritual awareness.  Stretches of layered vocals, rolling double bass drumming, and skilfully picked riffs pack the idea-filled verses and choruses to the brim in order that the near-empty bridge sections and lulls are near-necessitated moments of quiet contemplation.  The thoughts inspired by this music come thick and fast but Cynic also want to provide you with the space and time to consider how you’ve received them and how you might turn them back out in to the world.

Discussing individual tracks is difficult though as the enduring image of this record is of a musically and thematically unified concept of human existence deftly and confidently scrawled, like the light reaching from star to star in a night sky.  Much like Blast Tyrant from last week’s post, this is music that will have your head in the clouds, feeling weightless, carried away, and disappointed to have to come back down.  The light musical touch combined with the intellectual weight of centuries old philosophical thought creates a welcoming yet challenging expression of humanity’s place in the cosmos.  It simultaneously makes humanity seem insignificant in the scope of the universe yet intensely meaningful and unique.  Songs like “Adam’s Murmur” and “Evolutionary Sleeper” put contemporary humanity on a gigantic spectrum of evolutionary science while also acknowledging the philosophical and existential impact of spirituality and religious beliefs in our creation.  In delivering this balanced message, Cynic explore the full extent of their skills as musicians.  Each song is crafted from a diverse palette where little seems off limits.  Vocal distortion is frequently used alongside noteworthy guitar pedal combinations to create incredible audio effects that somehow feel organic and electronic at the same time, like the firing of synapses.  Paul Masvidal and Tymon Kruidenier trade clean vocals and death growls, and Amy Correia provides moments of gentle, background melody, while the guitars skilfully switch from delicate untouched tones to distorted metal brutality.  The rhythm duo of Sean Reinert and Sean Malone pack a lot of work in to short passages, providing attention-grabbing rumbling foundations, while also delicately accenting the quieter moments. 

Two of these quieter moments bookend the entire album.  “Nunc Fluens” and “Nunc Stans” are two interpretations of existence and the “eternal”: the former is the flow of time and there being no beginning or end, the latter understands that all things are now and that there is no past or future.  While Cynic may have intended something greater or more specifically spiritual with this structure, for me Traced In Air is a beautiful reminder of how we should listen to and experience music.  Much like the yoga that seems to have inspired “The Space for This”, the record is about channelling our focus, filtering out distractions, and giving our all to what we are experiencing now.  By giving ourselves completely to the moment, to the music, to the experience, we are closer to ourselves, more open to other possibilities, and ready to accept ideas that challenge our beliefs.  Heavy metal might not seem like the most likely place for this line of thought, but in embracing spirituality, science, simplicity, complexity, melody, and brutality Cynic have crafted an album that is all things at once, while somehow more focused than most other music.  Traced In Air teaches us that music can surprise, usurp established norms, and live on in how we approach and understand our existence. 

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 - #27

Primus – Frizzle Fry

(Caroline, 1990)

Buy the album here

As with so much of the music I love, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey deserves the credit for bringing Primus into my world.  A rat-tailed Les Claypool screaming and grumbling about some cat called Tommy was unlike anything I had heard, and I can remember rewinding the soundtrack cassette over and over to try and get my head round it.  The whole thing felt dirty and weird, like some sort of anti-music to my 10-year-old ears.  I don’t think I knew if I liked it or not, but it was the most intriguing song on an album I still listen to today.  And while that film’s soundtrack sent me in the direction of Primus, Primus also guided me towards Frank Zappa, Tom Waits, and Buckethead.  Their influence on my ears has been immense and undeniable, and no album has caught their attention more than Frizzle Fry.

From start to finish Frizzle Fry is the band’s most accessible album, punctuated with catchy “hits” like “John The Fisherman” and “Too Many Puppies”, yet it still displays the full Primus portfolio.  “Mr. Knowitall” and “Pudding Time” contain all the irreverence you would expect from a band that created the theme song for South Park and named a record Brown Album.  “To Defy The Laws of Tradition” and “Sathington Willoughby” play with tropes of gentlemanly white male norms with which Primus often clash.  Bassist and singer Les Claypool bumps up against imagined histories in much of his work and can be seen equally drawing inspiration from and usurping ideas of any collective past we might share.  Things get slow and strange with “Frizzle Fry” and “The Toys Go Winding Down” before Les turns brutally honest or scathingly cutting with “Spegetti Western”.  All of this is wrapped in the bass-heavy alternative punk-metal madness that made Primus so unique in 90s mainstream heavy music.

The middle stretch of this album contains a flurry of phenomenally groovy, catchy, and intriguingly odd tracks.  While “Too Many Puppies” may have to bear the blame for Korn existing, it is an insanely catchy and heavy stomper on an album that isn’t afraid to be direct.  “Mr. Knowitall” continues this approach with its pounding bassline, heavy guitar riff, and near perfect lyrics: “They call me Mr. Knowitall/I am so eloquent./Perfection is my middle name/And whatever rhymes with eloquent”.  Up next is the exquisitely judged “Frizzle Fry” which combines Les’ popping bass sound with Larry LaLonde’s squealing guitar to maximum effect, and goes on to display the unbelievable prog jamming talent of both them and Tim Alexander on drums.  “John The Fisherman”, with its downright memorable likeability, and “The Toys Go Winding Down”, imbued with foreboding and creeping oddities, round up this flow of youthful and creative genius with a reminder of the range of Primus.  They drew from all sorts of sources and allowed themselves to go in any direction they wished.      

If you don’t know Primus, trying to describe their sound is particularly tough.  It’s like Frank Zappa, The Stooges, Minutemen, and Metallica all mashed together, but delivered by a bass-wielding genius who’s simultaneously voicing all the animal characters in a twisted cartoon about what goes on when humans aren’t around.  I once said to a friend about “Too Many Puppies” that it made me want to strap a platypus to each foot and go stomping around the pit.  Sadly, I don’t think this blog post does any better a job than that one sentence does of encapsulating the bizarre and primal power of Primus.  They can worm their way into your brain almost against your will, and before long you’re hooked on the mutterings of madmen, the basslines of faux-historical figures, and the unreal world of a band who undoubtedly defy the laws of tradition. 

Oh, and I almost forgot… Primus sucks.

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.