Back in March a few friends returned from SXSW with real good things to say about a couple bands they caught down in Austin. One of those bands was Eagle Twin, the new project from former Iceburn "collectivist" Gentry Densley. At the time I was not aware of the connection and, really, there isn't too much to suggest one—aesthetically anyway—between the two. The Iceburn Collective was, for the sake of brevity, a music-major's hardcore band that, over time, morphed into a sprawling avant-garde jazz ensemble. I'm not familiar with their whole catalogue, but what I know never ceases to impress; straight-up punishing, heady, hardcore jazz in the early days to free-form jazz improv later on. Good stuff that I need to get further into, but I digress...
Eagle Twin, on the other hand, is a far cry from the cerebral hardcore-cum-jazz of Densley's former work. Here, with his baritone guitar, he has teamed up with drummer Tyler Smith to form a wondrous hybrid of doom on their debut, The Unkindness of Crows. "A hybrid of 'doom' and what?" You may ask. That's where this duo gets interesting.
As they hail from Salt Lake City, there is a noticeable lack of the "sludginess" found in their peers from more humid climes. Eagle Twin, much like Kyuss or Earth's Hex album, is a strictly desert West affair. Wind howls, blows sand and tumbleweed and carries your scent off to the scavengers who've taken brief refuge from the sun. This is monolithic stone, canyons and salt flats; a harsh, yet majestic landscape that holds a deep echo of banditry, solitude, peace and foreboding. Think of the forgotten country Americana of Hex occasionally interspersed with Kyuss-ian grooves and you'll have a rudimentary idea of Eagle Twin.
While the Kyuss comparisons might be a bit of a stretch, their low-end fire rumble was always Dr. Gonzo tearing through Death Valley. Eagle Twin keeps toward a slower, Earth-like pace, but with more growl and grime—here a mixture of sand and motor oil—seeping through. These towers of doom happen to also be new labelmates, as The Unkindess of Crows is being released by Southern Lord. I highly, highly recommend picking this up and checking them out live, as they'll be touring with Earth (yay!) and Pelican (blehh, boring) later this fall.
Following the breakup of Middian after numerous hassles and setbacks, Mike Scheidt has returned with a reformed YOB and a new album. Though bassist Isamu Sato left for good following 2005's The Unreal Never Lived, drummer Travis Foster is back with new Middian (I'm an idiot) bassist Aaron Reiseberg filling Sato's spot. The result of this collaboration is The Great Cessation, an album that could just as easily been dubbed a Middian record (if not for those sue-happy jackasses in Wisconsin) as much as a YOB record. Given that I can listen to The Unreal Never Lived repeatedly without ever remotely glimpsing boredom, it would take quite a feat for this trio to top that record with their new release. Still, I'm finding The Great Cessation to be a very enjoyable listen. It's not as demanding a listen, the riffs being generally more straightforward with less overt psychedelia, but there is something to be said for this record's simplicity.
I know a few people whose major complaint with YOB had been their tendency to meander and repeat excessively. There is little of that here; the songs are shorter and more focused, much like those on Middian's sole release, Age Eternal. However, the tempos have slowed again to proper YOB levels, eliciting those strains of dread and feelings of being gradually dragged ever downward.
So far my only issues with this record is the lack of immediately memorable riffage. For all its supposed excesses, The Unreal Never Lived had these in spades and some of the major themes and phrases on The Great Cessation seem more like b-side material from those sessions. They're all still really good, but they don't blow me away. Perhaps with some time and a few more listens I'll find myself humming these at work or something, but at the moment it's still too new.
Despite any minor complaints that I have at the moment, I like the album and consider it a continuation of good form. It's not perfect, but I wouldn't have expected such right off the bat. If these guys gel—which, given their somewhat shared histories shouldn't take long (again, dumb by above implication)—a follow-up to this record could be the cat's tits. Regardless, I'm gonna keep my eye out for any tours because I've never seen YOB live and I wouldn't consider catching these songs any sort of disappointment. This may not end up being one of the top records of the year, but I highly recommend picking it up because it could be a rather impressive grower, if not an immediate "whoa!"
Have you read Oryx & Crake yet? Well you have until September 22 to pull your head out of your ass and digest it. And while you're at it start taking survival courses because, if civilization continues to head in its current direction, we'll all be needing them. Atwood's near future feels a lot like the one whose soundtrack was written by GodspeedYou!BlackEmperor.
The coasts have drowned, deserts have expanded, urban zones have devolved into ghettoized brownfields and the upper echelons of society dwell in fear behind the heavily-surveiled walls of scattered corporate compounds. Governments are no longer relevant, if they even exist. Here, in the compounds, the brains work towards creating a plasticized, genetically-altered "utopia". To anyone who has read Oryx & Crake this landscape and the horror of the book's finale is all too familiar.
While Jimmy and Glenn (of O&C notoriety) play out their destinies in the compounds, out in the "pleeblands"—the decimated, near-anarchic urban wastes—the tales within the Year of the Flood are being fleshed out. They reveal, over the course of twenty-five years, the first-person accounts of several people affiliated to various degrees with God's Gardeners, a religious sect whose leader, Adam One, has perfected a sort of squatter-punk synthesis of deep ecology and gnostic christianity. The gardeners are trying to preserve an unadulterated human relationship with nature and its mysteries, however misguided it may at first appear, though they may be the last hope when the technological world collapses.
Margaret Atwood, being Margaret Atwood, is going to make you think and at the same time make you incredibly uncomfortable with your own beliefs. Think religion is a sham and a waste of human energy? Prepare to loathe Adam One for his blatant hippie charlatanism whilst agreeing with some of the more radical tenets of the gardeners and the revelations of their theology. As an atheist who makes solid attempts to live in an ecologically-sound manner, this all gave me fits.
Fits are all well and good, but what about the causes of this near-future societal and natural collapse? Humans are clearly to blame, but not necessarily for the reasons so many would argue presently. Sure, warnings about climate change went unheeded as did those of overreliance on technological innovation to solve human problems. The main culprit of our problems has been an inexhaustible hubris; that we think we can outsmart and manipulate nature as we study its ways. There is clearly value in learning, studying and admiring nature and its processes, but it's when we begin to think we can control for an outcome we desire that the hydra appears.
Just as today too many people have an uncomfortable—if not downright hostile—attitude towards the presence of chaos in nature, Atwood's future of the "waterless flood" (which is better understood if you're already familiar with Oryx & Crake) is a security nightmare on account of this obsessive-compulsive disorder, much like if the first world suddenly plunged into the third. Frankly, the scenarios outlined here don't seem that far-fetched because there's no reason why it won't happen. Do-gooder organizations are constantly trying to plan for this type of future, but this future cannot be planned for and that is THE problem to which humanity has to acclimitize.
The easiest thing to do, of which I'm certainly guilty, is to laugh and shrug off the corny pseudo-religio-environmental spiritualists because most of their philosophies are half-baked and specious. However, as is clear with God's Gardeners there is merit in such philosophies (hence a major reason why religions are still around) because they allow people to act even when they don't fully understand why they're acting. If this makes sense then it should be clear why I was having fits and yet loving this book at the same time.
I'm not sure the last time I felt so completely intellectually challenged by a book that, simultaneously, so fully entertained me. There is constant action—often with disgustingly violent outcomes—and the ending never gives itself away, suspense building until the finale. This "review" does so little justice to a book that I hope receives major plaudits when it hits shelves. We were lucky enough to get an advance copy at work and I took my time reading it because I didn't really want it to end. I just read Oryx & Crake a few months ago and that blew me away. Now this arrives as a sort of companion volume. I'm not sure how they're going to market it, but it stands alone as a novel and there doesn't seem to be any indication that it will be marketed in connection with O&C.
So mark your calendars for September 22. I have to stop rambling because this will just get more and more disjointed if I continue. Margaret Atwood, you are an absolute genius. The type of genius that crushes my spirit by writing the best goddamn book (fiction or poetry) possible that, yet, inspires me to wrack my brain for something 1/10 as worthwhile and hope it means something to someone. Bravo. Again.
For those who are not aware, today is—besides International Weed Smoking Day and Hitler's Birthday—the 10th anniversary of the "incident" at Columbine High School. It's an odd trifecta of coinciding anniversaries and, added to the gloomy weather here, unhelpful in distilling any sort of positive vibes from the day. This particular Columbine anniversary also means that it's been ten years since I graduated high school, as I was also a senior when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold attempted to "out-mayhem" Tim McVeigh's demolition of Oklahoma City's Murrah Federal Building. What? Did you just ask me to define "out-mayhem"? Why didn't I just call it a "school shooting" like so many people have done for the past ten years? Well, I'll leave the nuts and bolts of this to journalist Dave Cullen, whose new, exhaustively researched book, Columbine explains nearly everything you could possibly want to know about this seminal closing event of 20th century America. I say "nearly everything" because there are some things nobody will ever know about this, but Mr. Cullen seems to know all the rest.
Having come of age during a period of media-induced fear and hype over school shootings I'm sure I'm not alone in being a bit morbidly fascinated with them. Combine that with my sociology background and picking up this book was a no-brainer. I had done some minor researching into Columbine a year or so ago and it was Cullen's original stories for Slate that initially caught my attention (though I didn't make the connection when I first picked up the book) and had me thinking differently about the whole ordeal. Columbine wasn't a school shooting perpetrated by some disaffected loners; this was a botched massacre whose plan was hatched by one popular, intelligent—though psychopathic—kid with an intense hatred of mankind and his suicidally unstable friend.
The evidence for this is now overwhelming, but it wasn't easy unearthing it. Though Cullen was there from the beginning, he outlines how the county sheriff mangled the investigation and did a similarly poor job trying to cover up that fact. Many myths surrounding the shootings that are still taken as gospel are exposed to extreme scrutiny and none of them survive. The mass media—a few local papers excepted—did an incredibly poor job of separating facts from a good storyline and it was those early mistakes faulty judgment that spiraled chaotically into the school shooting narrative familiar today.
Cullen's book is valuable not only as a history of the actual event and a record of all the threads that became knotted this day ten years ago, but also as social reading of mass media and information dissemination. The narrative took on a life of its own that defied clearly contrary evidence and fed back into the ongoing tale of sterile, fearful suburbia. Utilizing the personal effects of the two killers, Cullen revealed the true nature of Eric and Dylan, the psychopath and the seeker who practically dared the folks around them to discover their heinous plot. The two who, because of the faulty profiling of the "school-shooter type", were able to plan their attack because, frankly, most people never suspected them as the loners ready to snap (one mother, whose warnings were ignored, excepted).
Columbine is one of the best non-fiction works I've read in a while and there's little doubt that Cullen poured all his energy into making it a work of art. His portraits of all the involved parties, from the parents to administrators to teachers to fellow students to law enforcement, are sympathetic and caustic in all the right proportion. And while there are clearly parties that are more at fault than others, Cullen never sinks to any immature blame games. The descriptions of psychopathy are engrossingly chilling and the pain of all the affected families and individuals bites the reader no matter how much you try and disengage. A commendable achievement in journalism and a noteworthy work of social history.
Last night, as most nights at this Polish dance club-cum-hardcore venue, was an odd one. Six bands on a lineup that featured three who hold their own as headliners. According to the bill there were to be three bands (Ceremony, Rise & Fall, Pulling Teeth) before even Genghis Tron took to the stage. Coliseum was to follow GT and then Converge would top it all off.
A rather large cohort of us pregamed while the openers did their thing. None of us had heard of any of them (not that that means much), but we figured with limited energy to use, we'd rather spend it all on the big fellas. We got word that GT was playing at 11, so we headed over just before that. When we arrived some medicore hardcore-ish band was playing and nobody could tell us who they were (which should say something I think).
Tron set up their lights and keyboards then proceeded to rock. I went to college with these guys and even played with Hamilton (in a band called Storm the Bastille, hence the name of this blog). Though I supported these guys early on, I wasn't a huge fan of their early material and it really took me until last year's Board Up the House to enjoy their work. That album is pretty brilliant and now I'm getting more into Dead Mountain Mouth though I think their latest is a much more coherent, enjoyable listen. It's still challenging and disparate, but the elements all congeal perfectly whereas the earlier stuff was a bit jagged and awkward.
Anyway, I'm super stoked that GT have done so well for themselves and made a record that a lot of folks pegged for best of '08. They are awesome live and if anyone is on the fence about them, take a listen to Board Up the House. Oh, and they threw in a Big Black cover for good measure. I can't remember the title, though, because I'm lazy and stupid. But it was awesome.
When GT's set was done, they shocked the whole lot of us by announcing that the mighty Converge was on next. What happened to Coliseum? The shitty band we entered to, though they were using Coliseum's equipment, was emphatically not Coliseum. This was a huge letdown, as a bunch of us really wanted to see them. The last time I tried to catch them—at the old NorthSix—I got booted for immaturely bodyslamming a guy who kicked me in the back during the set. I don't really engage in pit antics, especially now, so I figured I'd last the whole bout this time. So it sucked that we missed them. The end.
Converge came on and took maybe three breaths between songs their whole set. It was one into the next which made for a pummeling, energy-filled performance. I've been lucky enough to have seen these guys for quite a few years now, but this was one of their best shows. The pit wasn't overwhelming to the point of ruinous, so that was a major plus, but they also pulled out the usual crowd faves like "The Saddest Day", "Locust Reign" (a particular favorite of mine), a couple from Jane Doe ("Concubine", "The Broken Vow"), a few from You Fail Me ("Last Light", "Eagles Become Vultures", and a bunch of new ones from No Heroes ("Heartache", "No Heroes"). I know I'm forgetting a couple at this point, but they also managed to squeeze in two brand new as-yet-untitled songs from the album they'll be recording in May. Both were fucking rippers, so there's no sign of letup from these guys. As long as Jacob refrains from singing on the upcoming record it should be all gravy.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
It would be remiss of me to mention the origins of this blog and not post the actual song. Sure, I'm totally exposing Hamilton's pre-GT life (sorry dude), but I can also lay my claim to being GT's 4th member, as I'm 87% positive that my (lack of) drum skillz led directly to Ham's use of programmed drums. (No, I no longer play drums, as a few years ago I returned to the guitar, which I am much, much better at.) If anyone likes this Storm the Bastille (not to be confused with the PA screamo band) track, get in touch.
Man, I've missed seeing Kylesa the past couple times they've come through town and now I'm feeling kinda silly about being lazy like that. In some fashion or another I seem to have missed every advance review of their latest, Static Tensions, that just came out yesterday. I knew it was coming, but I just didn't read anything about it. That's probably for the best anyhow, since my ignorance left me with no biases going into this listen. Gotta say I'm quite pleased. They still have the awesome sludge/psychedelic/hardcore thing going on, but they up the ante a bit by throwing in some more metal riffs into the mix. I've always enjoyed Kylesa's vocals; Phil's and Corey's gruff, tuneful deliveries contrast beautifully with Laura's haunting, angel-of-doom-in-a-nightmare singing. I also love that Laura just plain piledrives her own growls in there for good measure just to revel in the fact that she can sing and scream in equal measure. I could be mistaken but I think she has more parts on this new one than I remember, though I'm most likely wrong. Anyway, I really dig it.
When I first heard that they'd be opening—alongside Intronaut, whose latest, Prehistoricisms is rapidly growing on me—for Mastodon I was a bit taken aback. There's the whole heavy Georgia thing they share, but Kylesa has always been more "hardcore" in my mind than "metal" (not that they're exclusive). This album changes that for me, as it's a much more "metal"-ish release and snuggles them nicely in that ambiguous zone between labels that's often the signifier for an original, noteworthy act. Not sure why they have two drummers, still, as I couldn't notice any points where it's actually necessary (no Dale & Coady f'n around anywhere to be heard) and, thus, is superfluous. But the drumming is solid, if unspectacular and provides a foundation for the other three members to experiment a little more (perhaps this aspect is why they're still "hardcore" in my head).
Definitely worth picking up, in my opinion, and this may have pushed me back into the "yeah, I'll hit up the Mastodon show after all" camp. Well done and now I know what I'll be listening to on my way to work tomorrow.
This afternoon, in between working on some posts for Tilzy.tv, I've been taking in another listen to Mastodon's latest to see what kind of effect it has on me during non-drunken weekend hours. It's not as terrible as I originally thought, and "Divinations" (the song with the awesome video) is pretty rad, but overall this is an album of filler material.
While chatting right after the first listen, I made the comparison of Mastodon to Tool, with the caveat that Mastodon was able to squeeze in one more awesome album before releasing a steaming pile of overproduced radio bollocks. I absolutely hate everything Tool released after Ænima and although I'm enjoying Crack the Skye more than Lateralus (10,000 Days was just an abomination in my book), that isn't saying much.
As I said in my initial post a lot of the vocals on here are just too saccharine and radio-safe (though I'm typing to Scott Kelly rocking on the title track and this part I do like, until the background comes in and ruins it). One thing that's apparent is that these guys are trying new things and experimenting. While that's great and ultimately necessary, I'm wondering why nobody told them that they don't have the chops to sing, nor does the vocal style they've appropriated fit with the rest of their sound.
The most egregious examples of all my issues with this album can be found in the fourth track, "The Czar". This track is little more than consumer pabulum and makes me question a lot of the decision-making of everyone involved in its production (kinda like the film Showgirls). Every track on the album (the final track, "The Last Baron", was not on any pre-release copies, so I've yet to hear it) has at least a few parts that rip, only to be pulled back down by what is presumably an experiment gone awry, but after a decent intro "The Czar" afterward fails in almost every respect.
After Blood Mountain came out it was pretty clear that Mastodon had crossed a bridge. No longer were they going to be beasts of sludgy, hardcore-influenced prog metal, but that was fine. A maturation process occured for them as a band and, though it took me a couple listens to really get into parts of that album, I really came to love it. I don't get that vibe from this latest effort at all. With a few more listens I'll come to accept it and enjoy parts of it, but overall I'm just not happy with the results. I was expecting something different, but they took some different turns than I would have.
In an email about this to my boy Wayne over at Hooks So Big I mentioned that the vocals weren't my biggest problem, but after this listen, I think they actually are. "The Czar" sucks and all, but the title track and the opener, "Oblivion" could have been fucking killer ripping tracks that were undone by shitty vocals (Scott Kelly excluded). I concluded that email to Wayne by saying this:
I NEED THEM TO ROCK ME LIKE AN AFGHAN ADULTERER not rock me to sleep. you know what album has great clean(er/ish) vocals, great melodies and harmonies and also rocks the fuck out? Enslaved's Vertebrae. i can't stop listening to that motherfucker and it keeps getting better. that's what i was hoping from mastodon and they didn't really deliver.
So I guess these are my final thoughts on the matter for a little while. As a topic of conversation this album has certainly been on many, many people's lips, which is a good thing. Intelligent disscussion about music is always a good thing, some measure of consolation here at least. I'm still torn on whether or not I want to see this performed live, but as far as I know the shows are sold out or anything, keeping my window of opportunity open lest I decide to take the leap through.
Anyway, time to put on some Morbid Angel and get back to writing for work.
It's everybody's least favorite phrase to hear, but it must be uttered; "I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed."
The other night—last Friday, to be precise—Nick, Sam and I were engaging in our usual bout of drinking post-BSG. At approximately 4AM, sufficiently greened and oated, we put on a copy of Crack the Skye that Nick had gotten (actual album drops 3/24). Here are the unedited notes that I jotted down about 6/7ths of the way through the album:
it kinda blows. i'm disappointed i r can make and will make a better album than this. there is no ROCK! you left it all out and overthought. some passes, phrases, riffs work, but not for length
right now i'm still kinda freaked out because these are the first Mastodon songs I've ever disliked. No Good. Ugh.
You heard that correctly, I did not like it. Sure, I saw the (awesome) video for "Divinations" and that song is pretty good, but let's all admit it would have been one of the weaker tracks on Blood Mountain. As it turns out that is the best song on the album by a distance. I'm not at all sure what the fellas were thinking, perhaps they were thinking too much. Nick's theory was that they all got carried away with people discussing all the singing on Blood Mountain and went that direction. While the singing was a little much (almost, but not quite as bad as on Cynic's new record Traced In Air, which is instrumentally great and vocally horrendous), I'm most disappointed in Brann. His rhythms are far too straightforward here, like he decided to dumb himself down so that people could groove on the guitars or something. Well, the guitars don't really groove and a lot of the passes are unremarkable and boring; the rhythms are tweaked just as a cover-up attempt at making a bad part more interesting.
For the past few days I've avoided posting anything regarding the album because I needed to do a bit of grieving. Now, I've accepted the fact that Mastodon have made a bad album, it was probably just a matter of time. If they're as good as we've all thought and seen, they'll follow this up with something spectacular. Unfortunately, this spark of hope does nothing to help me resolve my quandary over whether to attend their upcoming Brooklyn show in May. It's the day after my birthday and Kylesa (whose new album I've yet to hear) and Intronaut (whose latest, Prehistoricisms is pretty good, but a bit too wanky and disjointed) will be opening. I'd really love to see them. The major question is if I want to listen to Crack the Skye in its entirety and upon this listen, I'd rather not...
As far as I'm concerned, and I've never been there, Los Angeles is a cesspool of filth flarn filth. However, that doesn't preclude a few beautiful flowers rising out of the poop from time to time. For anyone who lives out there, there are a couple comedy groups worth paying some mind...
I wrote about these guys about a month ago for Tilzy.tv and thought their stuff was great. Unfortunately it was my first article for that site and pretty much a piece of turd. So my apologies, fellas, for being a shitty writer. Anyway, the other night I went back and watched some of the shorts that I hadn't had a chance to view. Great stuff.
Keep an eye on them because, according to Rob, they're working on another interactive feature, a tv pilot and maybe more episodes of The Alibuys (which is hysterical). I'm excited, you should be as well.
Alright, so this long-form improv trio happen to be good friends of mine from college. They're also fucking improv champions. How good are they? Well they won the UCB cagematch 44 times in a row. If they had continued their streak they would have broken a little-known physical law established Richard Feynman (Fernie gets his science wrong here) which would have caused the trio to implode immediately upon their 45th victory.
Anyone who lives in LA needs to go see these guys so you can say you knew about them before they blow up (possibly literally) to become supergiants (although they will inevitably become white dwarf stars).
Luckily for anyone reading this (especially Mr. Alex Berg, the blonde one above) I'm not at home or else I would definitely post a picture of Berg's nuts on the internet (yes, I do have one, it's awful). But I'll save that for any future blackmail purposes. WATCH YOUR BACK, BLONDIE!
Late December is the time of year when people who write about things make up lists about the best things (or worst) things they had to write about for the previous 360 days. I'm not really going to do that because that's not something I enjoy doing. However, I am going to write about a few things I missed over the course of the year. This mostly refers to music, as I try to keep up, but even people who make that their full-time addiction do it with great difficulty. For a great compendium of this year in metal, go check out Brandon Stosuy's "Show No Mercy" column at Pitchfork. I don't generally follow that site, but SNM is worth keeping tabs on (in this "Best of '08" he got some lists from players themselves). What follows are some of the things that either completely passed right by my broken radar or things I didn't get to say enough about earlier in the year.
Krallice. Local Brooklyn supergroup makes epic "transcendental" black metal. It has been noted elsewhere that American black metal bands tend to be much more experimental with their compositions. There's a good dose of truth to this, as they're not bogged down with the need to be "trve" or "cvlt" in a manner that hinders European outfits. I was fortunate enough to see these guys at Silent Barn in April and it was, literally, jaw-dropping. The album, which I only recently got my hands on, has rightfully made a bunch of "Best of '09" lists and is phenomenally beyond words. Here's video of them from September, when they played an empty lot in Bushwick right around the corner from my apartment (while I was at work, of course).
Nachtmystium. Speaking of American black metal, I never got around to doing a proper review when Assassins came out earlier this year. I began one and apparently forgot to finish, because I just found the unfinished and unpublished post while looking for my own link. Mea maxima culpa. When I heard Instinct:Decay I thought that was progressive for the genre, but for sheer out-of-the-box thinking their latest album surpasses that effort by quite a margin. Assassins makes no bones about being a Pink Floyd-inspired work where, in a few tracks those psychedelic overtones lead toward Kylesa territory: sludgy yet vaguely anthemic. In the final reckoning the Chicagoans produced one of the most intruiging albums I've (and others) heard in quite a while.
Enslaved. While my head was focused on books (where it's spent a great deal of the latter part of this year), Norwegian viking-prog-metal geniuses Enslaved put out Vertebrae. Very little of what these guys do nowadays could be even remotely considered "black metal" other than some vocal passages. But as far as being a progressive metal powerhouse is concerned, few outfits can match their combination of awe-inspiring harmonic beauty and intricate rhythmic changes with sheer head-banging rockness. Generally when people say a band "is maturing as songwriters" said band is just getting old and lame. Instead, Enslaved are perfecting the methods mastered by Unwound, though hopefully they continue to make amazing albums into the forseeable future. Vertebrae hasn't made the same immediate impact on me that Ruun did, but it's still a new listen and my affection is growing by the listen.
Torche. I don't think I need to say much more than what I already said here. Now you can use the time you would have spent reading to watch this live video of them that happened to be shot on my birthday. And then watch more.
Mouth of the Architect. I didn't realize it until this past week, but MOTA's album Quietly was released this year. When I got my hands on it a couple months ago I thought, for whatever reason, that it had come out last year. Not realizing how recent and relevant it was I failed to write up a proper review. These Ohioans have taken the path I wish Isis would have taken after Oceanic and may have just claimed the heavy-ambient-metal genre all for themselves (Pelican is crap and can suck it). This band is criminally underknown and deserve far more attention than I've seen them receive.
Melvins. In the grand scheme of things, as awesome as Nude With Boots is, it may not stack up as one of the best albums of the year. Then again, just because it failed to make most lists doesn't mean it wasn't awesome. I've realized lately that a good number of noteworthy albums were released this year, more than I had initially remembered. Then again, I had noted in my review Buzz's lament that this album would be overlooked as just another great Melvins record. I fear his take was all too prescient. Regardless, the ferocious 1-2 of Melvins/Big Business live continued to demolish all comers, so there's that at least.
So that's my shortlist of awesome things that happened in 2008. Here are a few other notables worth remembering:
• Dinosaur Jrlive. I finally got to see my favorite band. • At The Gates reunion tour. Incredible. • Metallica released a pretty good album and it only took 20 years. • Made Out Of Babies released The Ruiner which was a damn fine album.
Now I have a mission to go get a bunch of new releases that I've yet to hear and have a listening party with myself. These bands also released new stuff in 2008: Jesu, Boris, Earth, Harvey Milk, Mogwai, Electric Wizard, and Meshuggah (which most everyone says is awesome).
Here's to everyone that put out great music in 2008 and hoping for an even better crop in 2009 (Mastodon, I'm looking at you).
Back in early June, I had made note of some thoughts I had (yeah, it happens) about the search for a "Theory of Everything". I try to keep abreast of current work in cosmology and high-energy physics, particularly if new work appears that's crafted for the education of the layman, "because that's who I am, and that's who I care about." Anyhow, I made the notes regarding the nature of what a theory of everything actually is. Fundamentally, it's a religious pursuit undertaken by ostensibly secular physicists and mathematicians. Why do I call it a religious pursuit? Mainly because in order to reduce the workings of the universe to a comprehensible, elegant mathematical function one must know far more than I think we're capable of understanding (i.e.; initial conditions for the grand event that birthed our universe).
Now there are reasons why I don't think we can know these, and that's where Cambridge mathematician/cosmologist John D. Barrow comes in. New Theories of Everything is an update of a book he wrote in 1991 and provides incredibly clear explanations for a vast array of mathematical and cosmological concepts. (As in frightening, geniusesque clarity.) It's exactly the high-end pop-science book I've needed to read for a while, because while Barrow's grasp of physical phenomena is tight, his deep knowledge allows him to be critical of certain directions many of his peers are taking.
The main premise of the book revolves around the idea that there is no reason to think that the physical properties of our universe can be distilled into one mathematical function. While our universe may have a mathematical skeleton, there are many aspects of its existence that are chaotic and non-linear and other aspects (think closer to home à la the arts) that don't seem to have mathematical explanations at all. Without knowledge of the exact states of initial conditions of these chaotic phenomena we have no way of predicting how future states will turn out (thus negating the ability to confirm the accuracy of an equation or experiment). Symmetry breaking also gives theorists headaches for similar reasons, but I just mangled that last explanation so I'll leave this one for the expert (read the book) to flesh out.
Lastly, I must mention—and I'm cutting this review off because I'm obviously not a physicist and I've also been enjoying some scotch—this book left me a bit baffled. Not by the content per se, as it was expertly explained and I highly recommend reading it, but by the author himself. You see John D. Barrow is a religious man, of a specific christian denomination. Now it may be obnoxious of me to go down this path, but after reading such an obviously brilliant explanation of some of the most conceptually difficult material for humans to comprehend, I cannot help but wonder how its author holds such traditional christian beliefs (i.e.; that jesus our savior, the viability of the trinity, etc.) and is able to reconcile them with all he knows of our universe—not to mention the possibility of an infinite multiverse of which our universe is only one small bubble. I find this realization more troubling and difficult to comprehend than the ideas of infinity or nothingness. But maybe I'm the weird guy.
Anyway, regardless of my ever-dyspeptic responses to the continuing presence of nonsensical religious beliefs in today's world, read this book if you have any interest whatsoever in quantum phenomena, chaotic systems, universal origins, multiverse theory, string theory and any aspects of mathematics. The latter almost always forms a stumbling block for laypersons and Barrow's ability to explain various mathematical concepts made me want to strangle all the terrible math teachers I had growing up who never explained a single fucking thing.
This year's Man Booker Prize-winner is Indian-born debutant novelist Aravind Adiga. The simplest summary of The White Tiger will tell you that it's the story of entrepreneur (and murderer!) Balram Halwai; a tale that reveals the conflicts underlying contemporary Indian society as it strives towards 21st Century technological and economic superiority. But of course that's the nutshell version.
Adiga has produced a panorama of modern India in the foreground of which narrator and protagonist Halwai "rises" from a lower caste to become a successful businessman. I qualify the term "rises" because it is a conflicted and controversial notion in a multifaceted nation still mostly understood in the West according to aged stereotypes. This isn't the crunchy India of spiritual enlightenment and millenia-old cultural tradition. Those attributes are present, of course, but any discussion of India today is incomplete without recognition of South Asian political realities and the tension between social classes; the entrenched and rigid markers of status that have been slowly breaking down over the past half-century. Adiga brilliantly displays the conflict—particularly salient among the lower classes—between adhering to family and tradition (the social world found here in "The Darkness") and attempting to create a life as a successful individual in a technologically advanced democratic society.
The India that the narrator inhabits is disgustingly corrupt, bigoted and backward-looking; characteristics highlighted ever more by the growing influence of American-style malls, pristine Bollywood shlock and the remnants of English colonialism. For Indians like Balram Halwai who attempt to supercede their anonymous (his parents actually don't bother to name him, simply calling him "boy") upbringings in "middle" India, there is almost no trickle-down of wealth from the upper strata of society. Halwai really only achieves success because he is an adept observer and learns how to undermine his bosses and understand the proper etiquette of corruption.
What makes the tale of the White Tiger ever more salient to a Western reader is not so much how Adiga portrays the many facets of Indian society for the uninitiated, but how he is able, as a child of both East and West (he spent some youthful years in Australia and attended university in England and the US), to critique modern democratic technological society as a whole. Adiga has not focused his criticism solely upon his native, growing India; the more abstract targets are supposedly "democratic" societies that tout their cultural breadth, scientific prowess and economic advancement as proof of their superiority. The past eight years of the American experience have demonstrated the fallacy of such beliefs. Adiga has situated his novel in a "new" India, but the themes he presents are as salient in modern America (and probably the UK, France, etc. as well) with our extensive poverty, crumbling infrastructure and corrupt—however hidden—politics.
After the electoral events of this past week, this novel only becomes more curiously topical. While detailed explanation of what I mean would be far too long for me to present here, the short of it revolves around the idea that the future is "browner", "darker" than most would have believed before November 4, 2008. Obama's Presidency-elect is a marker of future directions that Mr. Halwai hints at in his letters to the Chinese Premier that frame the novel's narrative. The era of White/Christian/Western (read as conservative, traditional Aryan Hindu in the novel) hegemony is coming to a close, though its effects will continue to be felt for some time and the actual changes that will occur in the world are impossible to predict. Halwai's "liberation" in the novel is one manner of portraying how these changes may occur, but as the author has stated, it is still fiction. Social upheavals have their newsworthy markers, though the tangible effects are more often arise through slow, painful, ambiguously moralized rendings. I'm not positive if this is what Mr. Adiga intended with this brilliant work, but it's the sea in which Balram Halwai's eventual prosperity left me floating. ____
addendum: In light of what I wrote above, this article in today's NYTimes Week In Review presents an interesting snapshot of Mumbai. While The White Tiger takes place in Delhi, Bangalore and several small villages, the details here give a good bit of context for Adiga's story.
I know this has been out for a few months already and the dudes have been touring in support of it, but I just got my hands on it. Let me say it is super crush smashed face floor writhing awesome. Get it if you don't have it. Could you call it "stoner pop post-metal"? I don't know, I think I just did. There are vocal harmonies, catchy dirge riffs, slow parts, fast parts. Hell, it's almost like it made me forget how to write out complete thoughts.
Dude, this record will Palin-ize your brain! Yowzers!
After a couple days of letting Friday night's big event simmer in my brain (read: procrastinate), I will now attempt to do justice to the awesomeness that Dinosaur Jr and Built to Spill. To begin, let's discuss the venue, Terminal 5. This is not a fun place to get to given its location in the middle of nowhere in Manhattan's far West 50s. Inside it's not necessarily a bad place, though I recommend heading up into the balconies for better sound. You can see alright from the floor, but your ears will not enjoy it. I'm not sure what this place was before it became Terminal 5, but I get the impression it was a run-of-the-mill club kinda place. Those places aren't so much designed for the acoustics as they are for listening to shit sounds on coke. Anyway, I digress...
Arriving late for the 7:30 kickoff, we missed probably 85% of Meatpuppets set, which kinda sucks 'cos for the last 3 songs they were bounding around the stage like the three old crazy people that they are. Then...
Falling into a twilight zone in which my 27yr old universe is suddenly transposed onto my 14yr old universe, J Mascis, Lou Barlow, and Emmett Patrick Murphy appeared on stage, fiddled with their gear and turned the time machine's knob to 1987. "The Lung" was first up and for no particular reason thought it an interesting choice. They followed that by warping to the future with two tracks off Beyond and then zooming back for more early stuff. We really had no idea what their setlist rationale was going to be heading in; all early stuff from the first three records?..mostly new material from Beyond?..a smattering here and there of everything?
Well, it turns out it was the latter, as they played at least one track from every album except Hand It Over, and that was basically a J solo album anyhow so no real loss. I can't claim to remember everything they played, but they got in "Out There", "Feel the Pain", "Freak Scene", "Repulsion" (one of my personal favorites), "No Bones", "The Wagon" and one or two more (maybe "In A Jar"?). I'll admit I screwed my memory up by a) getting stoned before the show, and b) listening to the original three albums in a row on Saturday. Do I keep a notebook on me at all times? Yes. Did I write down what they were playing while they were playing it? Of course I did not. The important thing is that I finally got to see my favorite band (and guitar hero) live and kicking ass with a cheshire grin slapped on my mug. Oh, I should also mentioned they closed with two covers, "Just Like Heaven" and an early hardcore song that nobody could place at all. If anybody knows what they played, do let me know so that I can feel stupid when I read it and say to myself, "Why didn't I recognize that?"
While we tried to stretch our aging legs and keep too much blood from pooling in our feet, Built to Spill hit the stage in a six-man triangle formation: their usual quartet augmented by a cellist/keyboarder and a third tour guitarist. They played 1997's Perfect From Now On from start to finish; a spectacular, if subdued, performance marred only by Doug fiddling with a broken guitar strap during, ironically, "Stop the Show". Their decision to perform this particular one is curious given that though it's an amazingly lush, considerate piece in it's entirety, it doesn't really "rock" as hard as Keep It Like A Secret. I'll also admit that until fairly recently I wasn't as familiar with Perfect... as I was with Keep It... since the latter had come out just before I went to college. They did perform an "encore" of sorts with three tracks off that album, though, which got the crowd pumped up.
The grand finale occurred as BTS jammed out their set and J Mascis wandered on stage, jazzmaster in hand. Everyone was expecting him to start playing along, but then out of nowhere Kurt Kirkwood usurps the drum throne setting in motion a chain of events that included Chris Kirkwood impromptu "storytelling" then wrestling guitar-Brett from BTS and culminated in an awful jam session that pretty much everyone wanted to end, but none of the dudes on stage could really figure out how. An utterly glorious catastrophe to behold, though a proper encore would have been much preferable.
Overall a fantastic show simply because of what it was. Of course I would have maybe prefered to have been a teenager again with that sort of energy during Dinosaur's set, but hell, when I was a teenager the original lineup had long since disbanded. So I don't mind taking what I can get now and wallowng in its reinvigorated awesomeness.
This work was a long time coming. People everywhere (that care) have been all up-in-arms saying, "Metallica is BACK!" and then making minor qualifying statements about certain elements of the album. I have to agree to an extent, this is far closer to pre-Black Album Metallica than anything they've released in the 20 years since ...And Justice For All. The guitars are thrashy, punchy, crunchily distorted with none of whatever garbage that Bob Rock threw into all of the mixes when they joined forces with him. Hetfield's "bark" is back, or as back as it could be since his long locks are long gone. The lyrics are adolescent, but that was predictable since they've never been that interesting to begin with. Kirk lays down some serious riffage and has brought back the "late '80s thrash solo" which merely means, "I'm solely going to play a ton 32nd and 64th notes right here so deal with it." And while there will never be another Cliff, Robert Trujillo is more than capable of making himself heard and seems to have been allowed a far greater role in writing than Jason Newsted ever was.
As far as any of the above go, it's really what most people have already written. Amazing, really, because the reviews have been so consistent to point out the exact same things while each review exclaims, "Yeah, Metallica is Back!" Well, here's the problem; as much as I agree with all of them that this is a little bit exciting and that this is way better than anything since '88...Lars is still the drummer. Let's face it Lars sucks. He's the shittiest drummer in any notable metal band and has been since Metallica charged out. He got away with his weaknesses for a while but by the time ...And Justice... dropped it was clear that he had no chops. It's unfortunate that at the same time that they lost Cliff they also had to try and cover up for the fact that their drummer had run out of ideas and had been holding them back. We'll never know what Metallica could really have become because of these two factors, but it's clear on this album that there was a ceiling and they hit it by '88. Some of Lars' drum parts are so juvenile and simplistic that anybody familiar with a drumkit has to acknowledge that he's just not a good drummer; there are some beats in here that are not there for any effect other than, "Shit, I can't actually do anything awesome here, so I'll just play this."
But whatever, in the final observation all that anybody cares about is that this is the first Metallica album in 20 years that's worth cranking. Somebody should have stoned Bob Rock to death long ago, but I guess none of us understood that he was the major issue in their album construction because of the several other glaring issues present. Rick Rubin has brought out the good old Metallica, so proper gratitude must be floated his way. Death Magnetic doesn't get super high marks, but it's definitely worth picking up...er, downloading. Definitely download it. Do it for Lars.
As always, a brilliant display by the hands-down best functioning, most entertaining rock'n'roll unit out there today. Here's a quick rundown for those who missed it...
• Lacklustre opening set by Porn (featuring Tim Moss and Dale Crover); it just wasn't very interesting and went on for too long.
• Big Business came out roaring and it looked like Jared Warren shed a few pounds since the last time they came around. I think he's smaller than Buzz now. Other than the poor sound during the set and the jackass in the Clutch t-shirt who started a fight, their set was predictably great. I don't know what it is with soundguys and venues these days, but they've become incredibly inconsistent.
• "I'm getting too old for this shit." Kids love jumping around and whatnot, but it seemed like a first concert for some of these folks. Seriously, I had two young'uns posting up on me like I was Shaq trying to keep them from the stage. I'm fucking 5'8", guys, settle down. And of course the dude who started a fight because...ah, honestly I have no idea why. He probably has aggression issues. His stupidity, which it took several of us to break up, forced Jared to stop mid-song.
• I've already posted my feelings on Melvins' latest, Nude With Boots so is it even worth mentioning that it's brilliant to watch live? Sure! "It's brilliant to watch live." There ya go.
• Really, the openers were quite poorly named, as the dual drummer attack of Dale Crover and Coady Willis is, as my friend Chris aptly put it, "pretty much drum porn". After the hassle of being up front during the BigBiz set, we decided to retire to the old folks' home up in the mezzanine and watch from there. Turned out to be a great move since it allowed watching Dale and Coady without being leapt upon by overeager puppies.
• Two of the best covers ever done: a molasses-paced, Melvinized version of "My Generation" and the raddest "Star-Spangled Banner" since Hendrix. The latter was a capella until the drums kicked in for some proper pomp at the end.
• They closed with "Boris" which I thought was a nice touch after heavily concentrating on the two latest records for the majority of the set.
For anybody who is going to tomorrow's show at the Bowery Ballroom, expect a great show and hopefully your sound is better than ours was tonight. There was a constant bass buzz that was overshadowing Jared and mucking up the toms, almost like the subs were blown out. I expect better out of a such a newly redone venue, then again, I'm not at all surprised if they cut corners to save money when designing their sound system. Whatever...in general I'm pleased because at least these fellers bring their A+ game every time so it's always worthwhile.
I'm almost a month behind the ball (John Kruk testicle draperies?) on getting my act together regarding the latest installment of Melvins-Are-The-Greatest-Band-On-Earth, so please pardon my tardiness. My first listen to Nude With Boots just wrapped up and the sun started poking through the clouds and I have a bit of psylocybin that awaits: my mood is rather dandy. Now because it took me so long to get my hands on the record (hell, I got my tickets to see them over a week ago), there's not really any point in me "reviewing" the album. Plenty of other folks have done that already so you can go read what they wrote. I'm just here to tell you two things:
1) Buy Nude With Boots 2) Get your tickets to see them immediately
Now a bunch of folks have given this record less than stellar reviews—to Buzz's dismay as well as mine—but no matter, any person with a modicum of good taste in aural delights is sure to realize what a knockout we have here. It was pointed out by the band themselves that if some upstart young band came out with this album we wouldn't need to worry about global warming floods because the amount of saliva gushing from the mouths of music writers would inundate major coastal cities. Alas what we have is another amazing Melvins record in a long line of amazing Melvins records. (A) Senile Animal was awesome, particularly because of the added Big Business section, but now that they've toured together nearly non-stop for two years they've learned how to read each other as practitioners of the true ancient sorcery. Folks who have already got to see them on their current tour have responded more than favorably which is why, if they haven't come through your area already, you need to seriously take my advice from advice-point #2 above and buy your ticket.
In related news, thanks to Hank over at Dark Forces Swing Blind Punches, I was turned on to the Paper Thin Walls site. If you head over there you can stream the whole album and read about some of the songwriting quirks behind this album. Go check that out.
Thanks for stopping by, enjoy the rest of your sunday, and have a great week (I'll probably be working 6 days, which will be kinda boring, probably). Also, Red Sox, for the love o' Pete, please beat the fucking Yankees today.
I'll just go ahead and say it: Rushdie's latest is one of the most enjoyable books I've ever read. It just might be the greatest I've ever read (though I'm not keeping score). Equal parts historical fiction and illusionary dreamscape, I found myself as enchanted by this read as those inside were by the Qara Köz (Lady Black Eyes).
The Enchantress of Florence weaves together fictionalized accounts of the lives of the Mughal Emperor Akbar the Great, Niccolò Macchiavelli, Antonin Argalia (Argalia the Turk) and Amerigo Vespucci's cousin, Agostino. Extensive research was conducted to delicately place each of these men in space and time—Renaissance Tuscany and Mughal India—so that their historicity provides the backdrop upon which the existence of a mysterious lost Turkic princess unfolds. While it undoubtedly takes talent to develop complex characters who exist only in the imagination, to breathe life into long-passed historical figures is an even more noteworthy accomplishment.
Recent readings in eastern philosophy (by way of modern physics, no less) illuminated more of this text than I think I would have otherwise discovered. The ancient vedic concept of maya plays a major role in the story of the Mughal Emperor, Akbar. The Western translation of this word as "illusion" tends to lose the nuance of the concept; as opposed to, say, a figment of the imagination, maya should more accurately be viewed as an outlook that deceives reality. Sure, Akbar's most beloved queen is certainly imaginary, but she is as much a part of his conception of the world as any actual physical entity. Our eyes play tricks on us and we interpret the world through our senses. Senses can be deceived and what constitutes "reality" may be far more than what our senses perceive.
Concepts like maya have not been a part of Western philosophy at all, and so when our reality deceives us we have often blamed them on the work of some outside actor instead of seeing them as a natural part of our universe, our human existence. Pre-Enlightenment Europe was continually privvy to witch-hunts and inquisitions that sought to find the living causes of our own misfortune and fate. The mind/body divide is present in Florence, but not in the seat of the Mughal Empire, Sikri.
What Rushdie is able to do in this novel is demonstrate the same-ness of these two approaches to understanding our existence. Though others may purposefully deceive us, just as often we are to blame for deceiving ourselves in our feeble attempts to explain what evades. However helpful human religious outlooks may be in navigating daily existence or providing meaning for events, the answers are always illusory and deceptive. The rogue traveller and storyteller Niccolò Vespucci—the Mogor dell'Amore, the "Mughal of Love—endears himself to the emperor, Akbar, with his near limitless ability to understand his environments and intellectual uncanny. Ultimately, he is undone by his own tale, for he has an important fact wrong and Akbar knows the truth. Of course, even this truth hides another story. ~~~~~~ Literary themes aside for a moment, I just read the review in the NYTimes and thought the critic totally missed the point. Then again I'm a complete fiction novice and thought the magic and imagination quite charming. (full paradox disclosure: I play D&D and I loathe Tolkien) Anyway, for a rationalist non-fiction reader to be so enchanted by such a book must mean something, right? Well, even Mr. Gates concedes that it helps to be in the right mood to enjoy this, so presumably he was in a foul mood. Naturally, as a student of history I was caught up in the settings and historical figures and didn't let any "claptrap" bother me. What can I say, sometimes I'm in a good mood and this book helped keep me there.
I had seen the name Made Out Of Babies floating around on show listings for some time, but I hadn't given much thought into looking into them at all until recently. A few days back I read a rather promising interview/review of their latest record (it officially drops tomorrow, 6/24), The Ruiner. The band members' pedigree plus the fact their earlier work was released by Neurot intrigued me, so I was pleased to find that my roommate had a promo copy.
Beyond being pleased by the relative ease with which I landed the album, I thoroughly enjoyed what I heard. Let's not kid ourselves, Made Out Of Babies is a less-than-stellar band name, but whatever, it works for them and they seem to be doing just fine with it (there are worse names, to be sure). The review that I had read only vaguely hinted at the music imprinted in those tiny grooves, so all I knew to expect was female vocals from a band that, to paraphrase, jelled through a shared love of The Jesus Lizard. Now I must say that this record hardly sounds at all like that band (though early records may, I haven't gotten those yet), but it is dark, it has a distinct AmRep feel to it and it definitely rocks. Really, the first notable comparison I made was with heavier, later Milemarker sans-dance beats. The low end here is quite prominent with a chunkier bass distortion that contrasts perfectly with the flowing nature of the bass lines. The drums complement the bass as well, with constant pummelling rhythms emanating from some primal urge. As far as the rhythm section goes, the cavepeople cover art makes complete sense. I wouldn't immediately say the same for the guitars, but on second thought they are properly buzzed and melted together into a grafittoed wall, maybe early cave art; you can make out the details, however primitive at points, and the riffs are solid as rock.
What really ties the room together, however, are the vocals. I don't mean to harp on the fact that they're, "ooh, how novel, female vocals on a heavy record!" Singer Julie Christmas has the haunting voice of some childlike demon you don't want to encounter on your own. Hers is the siren voice that lured ancient sailors to their last breaths. Strong presence overall and a featherlight touch when necessity beckons, she really makes this band, because I can't imagine how male vocals could work with this material and really do it justice. She is the perfect counterweight to the leaden machine behind her. A really well engineered and produced record that should easily make it onto "top album" lists at the end of this year.
I can't hear anything right now for, I think, two reasons: a) my allergies have corrupted all my internal functions, and b) I didn't have my earplugs in last night for one of the best shows I've seen in recent memory. Most of the shows I've been to lately have been larger venue affairs for Converge/Baroness and Neurosis/Mastodon. Not last night. Last night I finally got back out to a house show at the Silent Barn, hosted by the ubiquitous Todd P. To save my ailing, sinus-troubled brain from overwork, here's the rundown (in set order):
Maw: These three fellas are good friends of ours and play some sort of chunky, thrashy math rock. It's super fun and they played what may have been their tightest set ever. Keep your eye out for these guys, I think they're gonna be recording with Colin Marston soon.
Animal: Another local instrumental group, this duo is in a similar vein to Hella or Lightning Bolt, but far more listenable than the latter. This is a band that anybody can get into and they still rock. Girls and guys were dancing (in a good way, too, not some cheap ironic shit) and rocking out and it ruled.
Dead Child: Surprise guests of the night featuring members of Slint and Lords, they played throwback thrash from the 80s. I was wasted at this point and thought it was pretty good. The smoke added flair, too. Unfortunately, I didn't find anything they did worthy of actually purchasing their album. So...um, maybe next try?
Krallice: Having missed their last show (which may have been their first? dunno), I had no idea what to expect from a 'black metal' project featuring Mick Barr and Colin Marston. Well, there was little to be found in the shred/noodling department, but man, this was fucking relentless, bleak, tortured, melodic black metal. I don't know what it is (besides the Colt 45 I was enjoying), but great black metal puts a huge, goofy grin on my face. I don't know how long they played, but time pretty much stopped. Enjoyed every second of it.
Behold...The Arctopus: I've been seeing these guys since I was introduced in 2003(ish) and my unprintable galaxy they are possibly the most talented and most underappreciated band on the planet. If there was any fairness in this universe these guys would be billionaires and have just over 6 billion adoring fans. Unfortunately, the world is full of idiots with no taste, so these guys press on making obscenely complex, jaw-dropping metal fury for those of us who care way too much. For pete's sake buy their new album and get yr brain melted.
