Category: Uncategorized

Code Orange-Forever

Here’s an album that came out earlier this year and just slipped past me.  I’m going back now to revisit it since it has been garnering some serious acclaim and press of late, including a Grammy nomination.  I felt it’s an album that needed a proper listen.

This is a hardcore group that is attempting to pull the genre into the modern era.  You’ve got the basic building blocks of all hardcore music (pounding rhythms, screaming vocals full of rage and hatred) with the added flourishes of industrial noise, some pop sensibilities and some seriously off-kilter stop-and-start time changes.  Put NIN, Prong, Refused and Converge all in a blender and you can kind of get a feel for the sound on this album.  There are some cool ideas floating around on here and I really enjoy the anger of the overall feel.  I think the only thing really holding me back in endorsing it higher is that hardcore isn’t my natural resting place.  If you are an angry late teen or early 20-something, this is going to hit your sweet spot and will probably be one of those really important albums of your formative years.  Seeing these guys on a double bill with Power Trip would probably be a fairly decent affair.

3.5 flip flops out of 5

Moonspell-1755

Moonspell is another of these bands which has been around for a really long time, but for some reason has just never managed to make much of an impact on me.  Most of their career has been spent in the gothic metal vein and their past catalog never really captured my attention.

This year they put together a massively epic album centered around an earthquake that hit their home country of Portugal in 1755.  This is also the first album they have recorded that is sung entirely in their native tongue of Portuguese.  Maybe it is the subject matter of the album that helps propel this release into one of my favorite Moonspell moments.  The music is death metal, but it is death metal with the bombast and the drama kicked up a notch.  You’ve got symphonic elements and lots of choir-backed choruses that help crank up the intensity of the production.  This is one of those albums that will be very cool to see in a live setting.

I’m going to have to go back a revisit some older Moonspell albums now.  I feel I may have overlooked a pretty cool band.

4 flip flops out of 5

Mayhem, Immolation and Black Anvil at Mohawk, Austin, TX, 11/21/2017

Couple of days before Thanksgiving.  The weather is starting to get a little bit chilly and the daylight hours are getting shorter and shorter.  This is the perfect time for a trifecta of grim black metal to descend upon our fair city.

Mayhem is one of those bands who reminds me of the boogeyman of your childhood.  They were the first and most notorious of the 90s era Norwegian black metal bands.  You’ve had suicide, murder and church burnings associated with these guys all before they released their first proper album.  I’ve never been a huge fan because these guys have always seemed more important for the influence they spread to other bands rather than for the actual quality of their output.  However, on this latest tour, they have been playing their classic first album, De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas in its entirety.  Granted legendary frontman Dead and guitarist Euronymous are no longer with us (due to suicide and murder, respectively), you’ve still got the original rhythm section of Necrobutcher and Hellhammer and the vocal stylings of Attila, who replaced Dead during the recording of the first album.  Honestly, I expected a little more of an over-the-top kind of show.  In the past, their stage show has included actual pigs’ heads on spikes.  The current show had the spooky lighting, corpse paint and ominous costumes you would expect out of a black metal show, but at no point was I in fear of a portal opening up to one of the lower circles of the pit of hell.  Out of respect for the band who issued a pre-recording request at the start of the show that everyone refrain from taking out their phones, I didn’t film any of their performance.  If you’d like to get a taste of them in action, you’ll just have to buy a ticket next time they come through your town.

Now, I was actually more excited this evening by openers, Immolation.  Immolation is a super technical death metal band from New York who has been pushing their chosen sub-genre forward for many years now.  This was my first chance to see these guys ply their wares in a live setting and they did not disappoint.  Seeing guitarist Robert Vigna play live was truly a revelation.  The dude is just on a different plane in regard to a lot of death metal guitarists.  I would put his lead work up against anyone in the metal community today.

Also on the bill were long time New York death/black metal band Black Anvil.  They put on a short, gritty and earthy set.  These guys have more of a rock n roll sort of angle on the black metal theme.  You could see these guys growing up as fans of Motorhead and putting those kinds of riffs to the black metal aesthetic.

Immolation-The Distorting Light

Immolation-Above All

Lynch Mob at Come and Take It Live, Austin, TX 11/17/2017

Well, lookie what we have here.  Mr. Scary comes rolling into town on a Friday night and the nostalgia just comes back in waves.

Man, I was a huge friggin’ Dokken fan back in high school.  Sure, they were hair metal.  Sure, they were associated with one of the most atrociously cheesy album covers in the history of time (Google “Under Lock and Key”…I had that image on a tour shirt and wore it with pride).  Sure, Don Dokken was a gigantic sap and his singing left quite a lot to be desired.  Buuuuuuttttt, they had this dude named George Lynch and he made up for everything wrong with this band.  George was truly one of the quintessential 80s era guitar heroes.  I was discussing Dokken the other day with the punk rock fiancée and told her that the Dokken albums just don’t quite hold up as they did when I was a teenager.  But dammit, once Don gets finished butchering a lyric about having a jaded heart or going on about his heart burnin’ like a flame or some other saccharine nonsense, Lynch would just take over with a guitar lead that would just bash your face in.  They may not be great songs, but Lynch’s guitar solos will always stand as some of the most searing moments from hair metal era of the 1980s.

Right before the show started, I had a memory that came crashing back.  This was one of the seminal rock n roll images from my childhood and, in many respect, just represents everything that is awesome about metal.  So, it was either 1988 or 1989 and Dokken was opening up for Aerosmith at the Erwin Center.  Back For the Attack had just come out.  I remember running kind of late to the show and my friends and I were freaking out because we might miss Dokken’s set.  Luckily, we made it to the arena just in the nick of time.  We were actually walking down the aisle to our seats when the lights in the arena went black.  The crowd erupted.  All of a sudden a single spotlight hits the stage trained directly on Lynch.  He is on one knee with his guitar raised in the air and he just starts ripping into the opening riff of Kiss of Death.  I was frozen in place.  This was the absolute coolest and most heavy metal thing I had ever seen.

Anyway, Friday night wasn’t quite as epic as that memory, but Lynch proved that he is still an absolute bad ass with a guitar in his hands.  He and his Lynch Mob compatriots ripped through a nicely balanced set of choice Dokken and Lynch Mob cuts.  It wasn’t a very large crowd, but those in attendance were boisterous and had a hell of a time.

Lynch Mob-Street Fighting Man

Dokken-Into the Fire

Dokken-Mr. Scary

Malcolm Young, 1/6/1953-11/18/2017, R.I.P.

He was the blue-collar workman of rock n roll.  No flash.  No bullshit.  Just the master of power chord after power chord that you would never be able to get out of your head.  Angus was the focal point with searing leads, school boy outfit, unending goose step and never-waning well of energy.  Bon was the rakish scamp of a front man.  Brian was the holder of the bombastic steel wool screech.  Malcolm was the backbone.  He was the foundation for everything that AC/DC was.  I’ll always remember him perched at the back of the stage in front of his wall of Marshalls just holding everything down and pushing the music forward.  AC/DC is one of those bands who first pulled me into the life of Metal.  Malcolm’s songwriting was so simple, but just so effective.  There is just something powerful in the simplicity of a Malcolm riff.  There won’t be another one like him.  R.I.P, Malcolm.  Thanks for the music.

Converge-The Dusk in Us

Converge is one of those bands that seemed to pass me by.  I know they’re critical darlings.  I know many people who I respect who hold these guys in high regard.  I’ve actually seen them twice in concert.  But for some reason, their music just never fully resonated with me.  This happens with a lot of the hardcore/post-hardcore kind of bands because that style of music isn’t exactly in my sweet spot.  Bands that play this kind of music just seem to be an acquired taste for me.  But I’m trying!

So, in that light, when I saw that Converge was putting out a new album, I decided to give it a fair shake.  And you know what?  It’s pretty damn good.  I don’t think I’m ever going to be a super fan of these guys, but I do understand the hype surrounding them.  Kurt Ballou’s reputation as a producer probably stands taller than his own personally musical output, but his guitar work on this album is a study in controlled fury.  It’s tight.  It’s to the point.  It’s ever-present and just drives the album forward.  Jacob Bannon’s vocals are another study in wailing pain and emotion.  He’s all over the place and he just lets everything just hang out.  I have a feeling this dude has to be completely wiped out and exhausted after performing these kinds of songs live.  Overall, this album give me a very Dillinger Escape Plan type feel.  It’s controlled chaos.

If you’re a hardcore kid, you’re absolutely going to eat this one up.  If you’re an old school curmudgeon like me, get out of your comfort zone and give this one a shot.  It’s metal with a punk twist.  Don’t be afraid.  You’ll dig it.

3.5 flip flops out of 5

Cattle Decapitation and Revocation at Come and Take It Live, Austin, TX 11/15/2017

I have a tendency to develop crushes on smaller, up-and-coming bands that I feel should have a bigger audience than they actually do.  It’s the sentimentalism that I feel for the underdogs of the world.  Revocation is one of these bands in which I hold a very soft spot.

These guys just remind me of the Megadeth of the new wave of thrash/death metal bands going today.  David Davidson is just one of the true auteurs of heavy metal guitar.  Take a metal kid who is influenced heavily by Dimebag Darrell and send him to music school to be trained in jazz technique and the resulting monstrosity is David Davidson.  His playing is just so effortless and clean compared to so many of his contemporaries.  To me, he is continuing the tradition of Mustaine and Friedman.  Their opening set tonight was a jam-packed 45 minute set that featured songs from throughout their career.

And then Cattle Decapitation came out.  Damn.  It’s been a long time since I’ve had to tap out of a pit.  I was only able to manage one video clip of the opening song and then felt it wise to put the phone away.  Once I saw a dude actually sporting a mouth guard, I knew this was not a crowd to be fucked with.  I’ll be honest and say that me and my ever-faithful flip flops headed for higher ground after around five songs.  The number of times people hit the floor hard was really high.

In all seriousness, here’s an idea for metal club owners:  you know when you watch college basketball or the NBA on TV and there is a collision and big sweaty dudes hit the floor.  Well, they employ these kids with squeegee mops to come out on the floor and mop up the wet spots.  You should really employ some mop kids to come out in between sets and mop up the pit floor.  Not to sound like the middle-aged man that I am, but someone is really going to get hurt.  Think of it as a little protection against liability.

Cattle Decapitation’s set was just brutal.  I mean, seriously, this shit is truly almost unlistenable.  It’s kind of like turning on a band saw and a chain saw at the same time and just smashing them into each other repeatedly.  It’s cool for blowing off a momentary blast of aggression, but it’s definitely not the soundtrack for a summer picnic at the lake.

Revocation-Teratogenesis

Revocation-Copernican Heresy

Cattle Decapitation-The Carbon Stampede

Cannibal Corpse-Red Before Black

Well, the Cannibal Corpse train just keeps on chugging.  We’re on album #14 now.  Did they change things up this time around?  Is this a more mature and introspective Cannibal Corpse?  Have they introduced keyboards?  Clean singing?  Introduce fairy tale endings to their jaunty little ditties?

Fuck no.

This is fucking Cannibal Corpse, you dolt.  Murder, mayhem, dismemberment, disembowelment are on the menu as usual.  Cannibal Corpse are simply the AC/DC of gore.  They do their thing.  No surprises.  No left turns.  Just crunchy infectious metal overtop some seriously messed up lyrics.  But for fun, you know.

At this point, it’s really hard to slot a new album from these guys in with the rest of their discography because it all just sounds so similar.  I’d probably smack this new one right in the middle somewhere…maybe a smidge closer to the front of the list than the back.  It’s good.  It’s tight.  It will smash your face.

3.5 flip flops out of 5

Annihilator-For the Demented

Well, we’re back to the basics for Annihilator.  Annihilator has always been Jeff Waters and on this most recent release, he just stripped away the pretense and just handled everything on the album himself.  Sure, there are band photos of Jeff and some dudes that look like they can’t legally drink yet on the album liner.  However, let’s cut the shit.  There is only one band member.

I hate to be an ass, but I’m ever so glad that vocalist Dave Padden has gone on his merry way to a non-Annihilator life.  Nothing against the guy personally.  I’m sure he is a wonderful person, but his vocal style just never translated for me.  His style always teetered on an over-the-top sort of jokester vibe.  Like, this whole metal thing was just sort of a tongue-in-cheek endeavor for him.  It just brought the quality of all of the Annihilator albums he appeared on down a notch or two.

So, with Padden out the door, Waters has re-assumed the role of lead vocalist in addition to lead everything else.  Results?  This isn’t going to rank among the greatest of the Annihilator catalog, but it is definitely a step in the right direction.  It’s by far the best Annihilator album since 2001’s Carnival Diablos.  Waters’ hyperactive guitar riffs and searing leads are all present along with multiple songs dealing with mental health issues.

This isn’t the album I would recommend for someone just getting into Annihilator, but for long time fans who are wanting a fresh dose of that Waters aggressive thrash, this’ll do in a pinch.

3.5 flip flops out of 5

Trivium-The Sin and the Sentence

Trivium’s career up to this point has been kind of a scattershot endeavor.  Each album seems to aim for a different sound.  However, instead of feeling like an intentional change of course, for some reason it always feels like Trivium is blindly searching for that perfect place to exist.  And this is kind of weird for a band as established as Trivium.  I mean, they are eight records into their career at this point.  Are they melodic death metal?  Are they deathcore?  Are they traditional metal?  It’s really hard to say after listening to their eighth official release.  There are aspects to all these sub-genres running around in their sound, but it just seems like there isn’t a confident head space in which these guys like to live.

Given this seemingly unsure course for the band, their albums over the year have been all over the place in terms of quality.  A few years ago, I really thought these guys hit pay dirt with 2011’s In Waves.  That album was confident as hell, had mad riffs all over it and was just downright infectious.  However, in the two subsequent releases, Trivium failed to replicate the quality of the songs they created.  It seems as though the band was playing for more of a crossover pop metal sort of sound and, in my opinion, it didn’t quite work.

Which brings us to the latest platter.  I’m happy to report that even though it doesn’t quite match up to In Waves in terms of quality, it is definitely a step in the right direction.  There is an aggression present that hasn’t been heard in Matt Heafy’s vocals in a long time.  The guitar work, as always, is slick and flawless.  It’s almost sickening how smooth the playing is on this album.  And the songs just click like they didn’t on the past couple of albums.  This is the direction to head, boys.  Stay true to this vision and the highs will continue to get higher for you.

And, a small request, if I may?  Can we try to stick with one drummer for more than one album?  You guys are very close to reaching Spinal Tap level ridiculousness for the revolving slot on the throne.  I really hope the new guy doesn’t spontaneously combust on the touring cycle for this album.

3.5 flip flops out of 5