2008/09/17
I'm going to be honest here, the last complete Metallica album of new material I listened to was Metallica (a.k.a. The Black Album). I heard snippets of Load and Re-Load, and I heard Garage inc., but that was a covers album. I missed St. Anger entirely, mostly because of reviews, but I own the Some Kind of Monster DVD, so I've got a taste of that. What I mean to say is that I am not well versed in modern Metallica, but I own ...And Justice for All on vinyl and the black album on CD, and I have borrowed the previous three records from friends. So I know from fucking thrash. I know Megadeth, and Slayer, and Anthrax, and together with Metallica they made the holy quartet of thrash metal.
Death Magnetic is fucking thrash. No, it probably isn't Metallica's best album, Justice... will forever hold that title. What Death Magnetic IS is a return to form. I put the CD in, heard the first bar of super fast buzzsaw guitar and cranked that shit to eleven. If you want to compare Metallica to their contemporaries, they are doing better work than Slayer has done since the mid 90s, and than Megadeth has done since 1991. I think Anthrax is playing a few shows here and there, but they are still basically dead.
What seems to have happened here is that Rick Rubin re-invigorated the the band with the venom of metal. That bearded guru injected quicksilver into the blood and bones of each and every member of this band. The introduction of Robert Trujillo as a songwriting partner certainly didn't hurt either. I think the guys went home after touring on St. Anger and pulled out their old Mötorhead and Thin Lizzy records and remembered what it meant to rock again. And let's be honest, St. Anger was probably a "recovery record" for James anyway. Everybody gets one.
The track sequencing on this album is great. there are two almost down-tempo songs on here: "The Day That Never Comes" and "The Unforgiven III", yes another fucking Unforgiven song, but it's not all that bad. They are spaced three tracks apart, and create good breathing room between the brutality of the tracks that come before and after them. There is one instrumental track: "Suicide & Redemption" which is the band's first instrumental since "To Live is To Die" off of ...Justice... and at goddamned near ten minutes it has all of the ins and outs and intricacies, and slowness, and speed you could want from a Metallica Instrumental.
On the subject of negative fan reviews: I just don't get it. (shh don't mention that this is ostensibly a fan review too) I might be a bad barometer for this sort of thing because I have and listen to such a diverse selection of music, but my home base is always in metal and industrial. Maybe the problem is that the kids don't remember what Metallica was back in the 80s, and they only know post Black Album material. Which makes me wonder how people hated St. Anger and the loads so much. Hell, even the self-titled album was panned by hard core fans for being "too accessible." Let me tell you, "Death Magnetic" does not suffer this fate horrible fate of accessibility, and there was not a single bad song on Black. Then again Lily Allen's Alright, Still topped my best of 2006 list, so take that as you will. The fact of the matter is that metalheads hate everything. I'll bet you a dollar that they are all at home rocking this record every night for the next three months.
The one place Death Magnetic does suffer, however is that it is another victim of the "Loudness War". The Songs are good, they are heavy and they are loud; too loud. So loud in fact that no matter what I do with my equalizer I still get clipping on certain channels. Mostly in the high pitch of guitar solos and the bass drum. I am in no way an audiophile. As a matter of fact I have permanent hearing loss in both ears, but I can still hear the waves warping around the edges, and it isn't a pretty sound. It isn't hyper prevalent in every song, but there are solos in at least half of the songs in the album that just sound wrong because they are pushed into the mud of the rest of the mix.
You want a rating out of ten? 8.3/10 which is a passing grade on any scale.
2008/09/16
I haven't listened to any music for about two weeks, but I have been listening to, and reading a lot about the culture of the music business. I am somewhere around the bottom rung of the music business. I am a consumer. I also used to run an independent record label that managed thirteen artists. The bands were mostly death metal acts, but there were three industrial groups on the roster as well. The Label was also more of a co-op than a traditional label. We had distribution rights for the music we released, but we did not actually own the songwriting credits. Though I'm not sure that more than two of our groups were smart enough to register with ASCAP either, but that's neither here nor there since the publishing wasn't really our concern. Get an entertainment lawyer to explain it to you; I don't have the time, motivation, or expertise to do so myself.
Suffice it to say I know a little bit about the industry. I've made some money selling other people's work, and I do not feel bad for doing so. I am also a strident supporter of independent music, and also a massive downloader of "illegal" files. The funny thing is that the amount I download has very little effect on the amount of music I purchase on CD or Vinyl, but a huge effect on the specific artists and albums I buy. I am also not a fair weather music fan. If a group I like records a shit album I am still likely to buy it even though I don't like it, because I hope that the next thing they record will be better, and I want to give them a chance to do that. I should probably go to more shows than I do, but I live in a place where very few bands that I like will ever tour. I can go to Chicago or Indianapolis for shows, but it is a task to do either.
I do not think that I am in a particularly odd situation, being a person that buys music, goes to very few shows, and downloads a ton of music. I do think I am somewhat unique in my auditory consumption, however. At least in today's culture I am somewhat of an anomaly. When I listen to music I don't listen to a smattering of songs here and there from some artist or other, whatever, in the shuffling capacity that seems to have become the norm for average music consumers. I listen to albums. I have a very short attention span, so I have trouble buying this shit that attention spans are too short, and demand is only for one or two tracks, and no one cares about the whole anymore. Fans care about well constructed albums, and collective ideas. Those people downloading the "radio single" from iTunes are fair-weather, and don't place any real value on the music they are listening to. If those are the type of fans that a musician is going to have, I would say good riddance. But I keep hearing stories from musicians about how every kid in the crowd is singing the words to every song. So someone is listening the right way. Even the kids that aren't going out and buying the record are looking to their favorite band, and paying attention to everything they release.
I am being a bit convoluted, but that is my style. I keep hearing from artists, and I have heard this consistently since the day Kurt Cobain was murdered, that "Music is Dead", or that "the industry is dying." The latter might be partially true, but I think it is just altering. The former is something I think has been said about music since time immemorial. Because the next thing that comes along is either completely different, or exactly the same as something that happened however many years ago. Surely when change occurs in "the scene" it is on its deathbed. This is utter bullshit. There is no more or less good music being produced today than ever before, and the music of the past was no better or worse than what is being produced today. Tastes will absolutely vary, but the truth is that 90% of everything is crap. When consumers come realize that simple fact things start to align in ways that they never before thought possible. The impetus is on the purveyor of the arts to weed the good out from the bad.
A large part of the problem with modern youth is that they expect everything now. I think that as a result of the late 90s technology boom and instant access to good information the new generation expects good material right now for free. I am guilty of this to an extent, but I tent to let gatekeepers make a few decisions for me. I read a lot of interviews, and reviews, and blogs, and news sites. Then I download a lot of albums, but I get on board with some things pretty late in the game. I have this indie streak that makes me believe the bullshit lie that "nothing is any good if someone else likes it." I'll be honest, this is actually a decent metric by which to pick and choose what to listen to, it works a lot, but there are some exceptions to the rule. A few years ago I kept hearing about Interpol in the music press. They were touted as the saviors of indie rock, which wasn't really a big deal back when they were first releasing EPs, but has since become BIG business. So it wasn't until they were in the studio recording Antics that I finally bought Turn on the Bright Lights. In that instance I should have gotten on board earlier, as Interpol are now one of my favorite bands. Last year the new big thing was Vampire Weekend, and I didn't listen to their album until this summer, and well that I didn't because it isn't very fucking good. Yet again, taste is subjective, but how would I have known what to look for without someone "in the know" to tip me off to it.
I read an article, or a blog post, or an essay, or whatever by the lead singer of Hawthorne Heights today, and he espoused his distaste for the current culture surrounding music. I agreed with him on a lot of points, but I think he missed the mark in a few places. For one thing he didn't seem to express himself in a particularly cogent manner. Which doesn't surprise me because he's a Jesus freak from central Ohio, but I also think he wanted to make the world change its behavior. Which is something that is not going to happen. Listen, I think that licensing songs to Rock Band, and video games, and ring tones is hurting the industry too, but it isn't going to stop, at least not today. The simple fact of the matter is that these bands (and their labels) are fighting for every little scrap of exposure they can get in a rapidly decreasing market. Radio plays R&B/Hip-Hop and Top-40 (which equates to least common denominator pop in most cases). Radio no longer plays new music, or rock, or metal, or alternative, or jazz, or whatever else. This is a shame, radio was the primary outlet for new music in the past and it has become a dead end in my lifetime. I remember back in high school I could turn on the local "alternative" music station, and occasionally hear something new and very cool, but they mostly had a pre-gen playlist that was the same for a week or more.
There is no quick fix for the current woes of the music industry. No I will not deny that there are woes. Sales have been down dramatically for the past eight years running and Shawn Fanning and Napster are largely to blame for this current trend, but I do believe that it is just that, a trend. I also think that digital distribution is going to usher in a new golden age for music. The cream will always rise to the top, and the dead yeast is always going to filter to the bottom of the barrel. It is unlikely that bands will be selling ten or twenty million copies of their record, but I do think that people are willing to pay for something they like once a real value is ascribed to it. At this moment in history a lot of music is valueless, but I think that this trend will turn around in the next few years when your favorite band breaks up to go work at Baskin Robins to pay their fucking bills. When that happens a few hundred times and the culture starts to unconsciously understand what is happening the culture will start to course correct. Fare well to your favorite band that got crushed in the rise of the machines, but someone will be there to take their place. Then one of these days we will understand what it means to value art again.
By the way, I listened to Until There's Nothing Left of Us by Kill Hannah, in its entirety while writing this post.
2008/09/07
Everyone seems to be all fucking atwitter about Metallica's new Death Magnetic. I haven't listened to it yet, but I hear good things. The last good thing that Metallica did was the S&M album about ten years ago, and before that, well the black album. So I am understandably weary of this new one. What I have read is that it seems like a missing album from between And Justice for All... and the black album, which bodes well for the release.
In other news I spent all of yesterday watching episodes of The Sopranos, and the only music I listened to on Friday was Fall Out Boy's From Under the Cork Tree and half of Be Here Now by Oasis. I could post reviews, but I've reviewed both albums before. Suffice it to say they are both good records and if you like rock music there is space on your shelf for both.
2008/09/05
I am apparently listening to a lot less music this week. I have been watching football, and the Republican National Convention, and random YouTube videos. I'm also suffering from insomnia and my brain isn't working correctly. So these reviews, at least for today, will be very brief. I assure you I will expand upon them when I am feeling a little bit better.
Deerhunter - Turn it Up Faggot
Good, Shoegaze, owing a lot more to Sonic Youth than Slowdive. This album is better than their later releases with the possible exception of the Florescent Grey EP.
Band of Horses - Cease to Begin
Indie rock cum alt-country. A better album than their debut. It is different, more varied, and more interesting. The country influence is less prevalent than they claimed they would be, but it is a better album.
The Kooks - Konk
Cockney Cock Rockers grow up. I doubt that the band would really deny being called cock-rock. I also doubt that the band are intelligent enough to berate you with any real stinging insults, but Konk is much more grown up than Inside In/Inside Out There is nothing like "Jackie Big Tits" on this one. The songs are more relationship oriented.
2008/09/04
I somehow managed to listen to only one album today. The good thing is that it was an album by my favorite band. With Teeth was released on April 27, 2005 in the United States. Fans of Nine Inch Nails know that the band take five years between Studio albums. Trent took six between The Fragile, and With Teeth. He cited the reasons for the greater than usual gap being his recovery from drug and alcohol addiction, and being burnt out on the music business. Trent stated in many interviews that he wasn't sure if he had a point of view anymore, or even if the public would care if he did. In interviews for his next album Year Zero he would claim that he let his insecurities get the better of him, and allowed too many people to have input into the creative process of this album, and that the overall album suffered due to this insecure wavering.
The albums recorded by most post-rehab musicians tend to be weak, and ill-defined. A lot of artists go through rehab to find jesus, and lose their perspective. They just aren't sure what to do, and they don't know where to go from their "new beginning". Although Mr. Reznor seems to think he suffered this same artistic fate I don't agree. I also believe that the reason that he didn't suffer the horrible distress of recording an album lost in the emotions of "getting clean" is that he took three years to decompress before he stepped back into a recording studio. Reznor claims that his last encounter with illicit substances was July 11, 2001. In 2004 he decided that he still wanted to create music, and that he did have a voice.
The original working title of With Teeth was BleedThrough. Which one assumes is something of a double entendre having to do with the entrance of blood into a syringe after opiate injection, and the bleeding of noises from one channel to another. There are various other meanings that can be taken, and many of them are represented in the lyrics of this album where the most commonly repeated set of words is "bleeding through". It is an apt title, but Reznor scrapped it because "it was supposed to be about different layers of reality seeping into the next, but I think some people were thinking about blood or a tampon commercial." The new title fit just as well because on his way beck to the music world Trent came out with teeth bared.
I preordered With Teeth along with "The Hand that Feeds" single in March on Amazon. The album leaked to torrent sites about two weeks before the street date, so of course I downloaded it, but I did not listen to anything from the album until I had the DualDisc in my hand. The first time I listened to 2005's new NIN album was in 5.1, and I blew out a pair of my front channel speakers. I sat on the floor in my mostly empty living room of my luxury apartment in Orlando, FL with my PowerBook displaying the .pdf lyrics sheet in front of me in a dark room. That initial listen influenced every future listen I would ever have to this album. It ingrained a time and a place on my primary audio cortex.
From beginning to end With Teeth is a wave that lulls and crashes. The album opens with watery beats, and quietly sung lyrics wondering about who the singer is, and increases to a crescendo of guitars and heavy drumming. The next track "You Know What You Are" is the loudest, and heaviest song on the record. It begins with heavy programmed drum beats and then an arpeggiated synth line that cuts to the bone. Screams the words "Don't you fucking know what you are?" that might be directed at Trent Himself. The third track "The Collector" is a song about the peculiar habits of addicts. We have this tendency to start collecting random items for no apparent reason. It is simply a trait that many addicts have, and this simple fact made me connect with this song in a very personal way. "The Collector" is a bass and piano driven rock song, with less to do with industrial than Trent's adoration of tunesmithing.
By track four we reach the album's first single, and Nine Inch Nails' first No. 1 single in the United States "The Hand That Feeds" I'm not going to continue with this track by track description, it is unnecessary and it has been done better elsewhere. "The Hand That Feeds" is also where this album begins to fall apart for me. After three incredibly emotional songs a politically charged song strikes out at me. The song is also not all that great. It is a synth-rock song and is probably better than ninety per-cent of everything else at the time, but that isn't good enough for Nine Inch Nails. The album also had two other No. 1 Singles "Only" which was a kind of new-wave rocker was entirely deserving of the ranking, as was "Every Day is Exactly the Same" Which is another song about the daily behavior of addicts.
Most of the rest of the tracks on the album are very introspective, and downtempo. They are, in some ways, more interesting, but they rock less. Depending on my mood I really like "Sunspots" and "Beside You in Time" but they have a more experimental vibe to them than a lot of the rest of the album. Foreign releases had a few remixes tacked on "Right Where it Belongs v2" and "The Hand that Feeds (Ruff mix)." The former is an even more sedated version of "Right Where it Belongs" and the later is a Photek remix of "The Hand That Feeds" that makes the song worth listening to.
I have very mixed feelings about this album overall. While I'm listening to it I almost always like it until I get to around track ten. After that it sort of falls off into an endless abyss of lost focus and what was almost certainly Trent's "too many people giving input into how the record should sound" I think that he recorded these songs as a backlash to the "weakness" he had showed in the better songs that came before them. Some days I love tracks ten through fourteen with all of my heart, but it is a matter of mood. On that first listen "Beside You in Time" broke me down, but these days it seems like it is missing something and meandering. I still come back to this album more often than any other Nine Inch Nails album, though I wouldn't ever call it my favorite. I like Pretty Hate Machine, The Downward Spiral, and The Fragile better, but this album has an immediacy and a certain consistency that the others don't.
2008/09/03
I have been remiss in my music listening duties. I have been watching a lot of YouTube videos, and for some reason reading without musical accompaniment. I've also had a horrible bout of insomnia, which makes me less motivated to do anything than I would be if I had a good night's sleep behind me.
Droid - Droid
Droid are an L.A. metal band who are signed to Korn's guitarist's vanity imprint record label. Their bass player is the former lead singer/rhythm guitarist of The Deadlights, who were one of my favourite one-off bands of the Nü-Metal era. The problem with Droid is that they don't seem to have any of the variety, melody, or intelligence of the former band. If You are down with forty-six minutes of homogeneous screamy metal then by all means listen to Droid. But if you prefer a more dynamic sound in your heavy music this might not be quite the thing for you.
KMFDM / My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult - Naïve/The Days of Swine & Roses (single)
Back in the day there was a magical record label named WAX TRAX!. The WAX TRAX! artist were a tight knit group of Chicago-based industrial artists. There was a strong thread of performance art, and collaboration among the WAX TRAX! family. The side project between TKK and KMFDM was Excessive Force. In 1991 the album Conquer Your World was released. The Work that Sascha Konietzko did with Buzz McCoy on that album spawned this split remix single. The TKK remix of "Naïve" isn't that great. It sounds like a funkier, swankier, dirtier version of "Naïve", but it wasn't a great song to begin with, so I think it is more a mater of source material than ineptitude in remixing. "The Days of Swine & Roses" is a great song, and Sascha came in to KMFDM it up. The guitars are a lot harsher, the bass isn't as prevalent, and the song sound a bit more muted than the original, but it is still a good remix, just not as good as the original. Both songs are extended from their original length to 10:00 opuses.
Prince & The Revolution - Purple Rain (soundtrack)
The 80s were great, weren't they? At least the nostalgia of the 80s is great. In the 80s Prince was great, but he didn't really stand up over time, much like this album. "When Doves Cry" and "Let's Go Crazy" still hold up remarkably well, but the rest of the album is very dated. There was a very distinctive sound to New Wave music in 1984, and while the band is tight, and the musicianship is strong this album sounds like 1984. I have never seen the movie Purple Rain, but I'm sure it's a fin picture. At this point, however it is stuck in time, and not timeless like good art really should be.
Portishead - Dummy
Portishead are the second best trip-hop band after Massive Attack. Fortunately both bands are friendly, and they don't even really take up the same market-share. Massive Attack tend to be very outwardly political, and Portishead have a tendency to be introspective and emotional. Back in 1994 it was hard to find a copy of Dummy in the stores, but in the past 14 years Portishead have become a cultural phenomenon. With their new album (Third) debuting at no. 7 on the US billboard chart, and no. 2 in the UK album charts. Aside from having a very strong start Portishead had to travel a long and winding road to get public notice. After being away from the band for ten years the public was finally ready to accept Portishead, which seems like the epitome of ahead of their time to me. The Critical press has already lauded Dummy, and I don't know what I can add. This is a fantastic album, and probably the second best trip-hop album ever released. Again after Mezzanine by Massive Attack. It is down-tempo, and sad, and compelling. The samples come from music from old spy movie soundtracks, and blues and soul records. This is what it sounded like when you let English kids that lived by the sea get ahold of hip-hop music and do their thing.
Marilyn Manson - Eat Me, Drink Me
I got into Marilyn Manson back in 1994 around the first time I heard "Lunchbox". I am always excited when a new MM record is announced. Which means that I am kind of excited about the new MM album that he is going to be recording with Twiggy later this year, even if Steven Baird isn't going to be involved this time. Manson was always best when he was angry about something, and screaming about individuality. When he got depressed and lost his will to live and create that made his music a lot harder to listen to. There is a track on Eat Me, Drink Me that hearkens back to lunchbox by using a very similar guitar riff, and there is a song or two that are loud rockers, but this album suffers like its creator. The music is not the industrial-metal that most of the rest of Manson's back catalog is. The song structures are a lot more traditional, and I blame this mostly on Tim Skold not really wanting to reach into Manson's depressed headspace. The allusions to Alice in Wonderland aren't very helpful to the theme either. This is not a bad album, but it is Manson's worst.