The End Machine-The End Machine

Man, there was a time when this album would have been a big fucking deal.  The End Machine is the original lineup of Dokken, but instead of Don on vocals we have Robert Mason, formerly of Lynch Mob and currently of Warrant.  This album actually came out back in March, but was so far under the radar that it made out without me noticing it.  And that’s a fucking shame.  In junior high and high school, I was a huge Dokken fan.  George Lynch was just everything you wanted in a metal guitarist.  I always had fantasies about what the band would be like if they could ever just get rid of Don and his notoriously weak vocals.  Well, here it is.  And like so often is the case, the fantasy just fails to live up to expectations.

Bottom line:  This is just a sad sack of an album.  And it’s really surprising because Lynch has been putting out some really creative and quality stuff of late with his collaborations with Doug Pinnick and Ray Luzier in KXM and with Corey Glover in Ultraphonix.  Here, however, it’s like the band has tried to recapture some of that 80s metal sound, but they are trying to present it what sounds like an attempt at putting a mature/adult rock spin on it.  The result is just a vanilla flavored slab of limp sounding songs that contain no inspiration or spark.  The whole thing just sits there like a slug.  And it’s not for lack of talent.  Mason sounds great on the mic and Jeff Pilson’s backing vocals are as strong as they ever were.  Mason’s work harkens back to the second Lynch Mob album that he was on, but his performance is just wasted by a lack of good songs.

Shit, man.  If you were going to go this route and basically reunite the Dokken band, why not just go all in.  Just own your legacy and put out a blistering 80s style guitar barnburner.  That’s what we want to hear.  Not this watered-down half-assed dad rock.  If you want to something in this vein that is done in a much better manner, go pick the Lynch/Pilson release Wicked Underground.  That was a cool, but laid back album of songs that were somewhat in the same vein as The End Machine, but they just had hooks for miles and some really crunchy guitar highlights.  Leave this one alone.  Just go put on Tooth and Nail instead.

2 flip flops out of 5

Russian Circles-Blood Year

It doesn’t really feel like it, but it has been three years since we last had new material from Russian Circles.  I think it is probably because these guys never seem to stop touring.  It just feels like they are always around in some capacity.  I think that’s why it feels surprising to me that it has actually been three years since the last album.

The instrumental dudes from Chicago have picked right up from where they left off on their last release.  Russian Circles just has this particular sound that is purely theirs.  I’m not sure how they pull it off, but their instrumental landscapes are just interesting sonic journeys.  The latest album shouldn’t be consumed piecemeal.  Like all of their other work, it works best viewed as a single piece of music with each track comprising a different movement rather than a collection of separate songs.  This latest album is one of their stronger efforts in my opinion.  There is a focus and a driving energy behind this one that just propels the album forward.  It feels as though the creative space it came from is a little darker than past albums.  This is a special one and one that you shouldn’t ignore.  Go buy a physical copy of it today.

4.5 flip flops out of 5

The Claypool Lennon Delirium at Emo’s, Austin, TX, 8/12/2019

“Fuck bottomless popcorn!”-kernel of wisdom from Les Claypool

Yeah, it wasn’t exactly highbrow repartee from the Delirium last night, but it was all in keeping with the darkly comic and twisted visions from the duo of Colonel Claypool of Primus fame and his cohort in crime, Sean (Shiner) Lennon.  This project is pretty much exactly as you would imagine coming from the musical brains of Primus and the spawn of John Lennon and Yoko Ono.  It is Primus toned down a bit in intensity with a psychedelic sheen sprayed o’er-top with a hint of some of the more hippy-ish moments from The Beatles.  In other words, it’s amazing.

Last night’s set relied heavily on their latest album South of Reality with a few choice covers worked in to balance out the set.  It was evident from the irreverent and ad-libbed stage banter that these two guys enjoy each other’s company and have created this project out of a shared vision of musical weirdness.  Good way to spend a Monday evening.

Little Fishes

Wormwood-Nattarvet

Can you imagine Pink Floyd playing black metal?  There are places on this latest Wormwood album that give a bit of a glimpse of what that would sound like.  I’m not saying this is the black metal Dark Side of the Moon or anything, but there are pieces placed here and there on this album that make me wonder if David Gilmour didn’t lay down some guest licks on here.  Seriously.  I’m going to post the song The Isolationist at the end of this post and you tell me if there aren’t parts on here that don’t remind you of Floyd.  Maybe it’s just me.

Anyway, this is a slab of fairly pagan-influenced black metal from Sweden with about half of the lyrics in Swedish and half in English.  Nothing on here is as abrasive as your traditional Scandinavian black metal.  This album reminds me a little more of some of the black metal coming out of the U.S. these days than of the European strain of black metal.  Overall, there is a lot to enjoy about this record.  It varies greatly in its presentation from song to song.  I’ll mention The Isolationist again.  This album probably won’t end up being album of the year for me, but The Isolationist may end up being my favorite song of the year.  This is just epic and melodic black metal done properly.  I just cannot get enough of this song.  Just a beautiful piece of art.

4 flip flops out of 5

Tomb Mold-Planetary Clairvoyance

Tomb Mold came blasting out of nowhere (well, Canada, to be exact) with last year’s Manor of Infinite Forms.  I absolutely fell in love with that album from the very first spin.  It was death metal as death metal should be.  Aggressive, but not to an abrasive extreme.  Crisp and inventive riffs throughout.  And it appeared as if I wasn’t alone in my sentiment regarding this band because the positive buzz surrounding them just continued to grow as the year went on.

So, capitalizing on the positive energy and response from the last album, Tomb Mold regroups and puts out their next slab of destruction in a year’s time.  The new album kind of solidifies in my mind that Tomb Mold is kind of like a Cannibal Corpse-type band with a bit of the aggression turned down and with the concept being less focused of grind/gore and focusing more on a sci-fi bent to the proceedings.  I think the Cannibal Corpse comparison really comes from the hideous death-gurgle of vocalist/drummer Max Klebanoff (yeah, singing death metal drummer…fucking nuts, right).  It just sounds like Max is Corpsegrinder’s soulmate as far as vocal stylings go.  All in all, I don’t feel as though the latest album quite reaches the impact of Manor of Infinite Forms.  It’s strong and is very much a solid release that should further propel Tomb Mold’s burgeoning career forward, but it just doesn’t have that certain unique spark that the previous album had.  It’s a very slight criticism because the metal contained on here is still really good and blows away a great majority of the death metal coming out today.  These guys are one of the bright new stars.  Jump on the bandwagon now.

4 flip flops out of 5

Torche-Admission

Torche has an AC/DC kind of vibe.  Not really in their core sound, per se.  But more in that Torche isn’t really going to surprise you much with their output.  You can pretty much expect them to provide you with a solid listening experience, but don’t expect a ton of diversity in their foundation of sound.  Bright, bouncy fuzz.  That’s Torche in a nutshell.  If you dig on hooks for miles in your songs that have an almost pop-tinged simplicity, Torche is the band for you.

I say simplicity and I don’t mean that as a dig at all.  Torche has managed to craft a sound that is deceptively basic.  You’ve got your rhythmic drum/bass/guitar patterns with Steve Brooks’ understated and almost monotone vocals over top as usual.  But, goddamn, once it worms its tentacles into your brain, I’ll wager that you won’t be able to let go.  First listen, my impression was “Hmmm, alright.  Not shabby.”  By third listen, I’m completely hooked and am humming and bee-boppin’ along to the whole shebang.  Now, I still don’t think this latest platter rises up to Harmonicraft or Restarter, but it is definitely in the same area code as those albums.

3.5 flip flops out of 5

Abbath-Outstrider

Ever since Lemmy passed away, it feels like metal hasn’t really had a real-life mascot.  Sure, we’ve got Eddie, but we don’t really have a person that is universally viewed as the physical embodiment of everything for which metal stands.  Lemmy was brash.  Lemmy was unapologetic.  He lived hard and loud.  He was simply a hearty “Fuck You” to the world with a cockeyed grin on his face.

So, in light of this fact, I’m officially starting a campaign to nominate Abbath as our new Lemmy.  I feel as though his enthusiastic embrace of his metal persona through his infamous corpse paint design and colorful stage presence and antics that he is someone who can fully take the mantel of Lemmy’s legacy.  Let’s face it.  At his core, and especially at the later stages of his career, Lemmy ceased to be an actual human being and became more of a symbol than anything else.  Sure, Motorhead delivered some seriously classic albums and their influence on the creation of thrash metal solidifies their place of importance in the history of metal.  But Lemmy simply became bigger than that at the end.  Abbath’s previous band, Immortal, may not have been as ground-breaking of a band as Motorhead in terms of their impact on black metal, but they were a very important band in making black metal a little more accessible to the masses.  They and especially Abbath in particular, were playful and over the top.  They brought a fresh air of lightness to a genre that many times becomes too focused on remaining TRVE BLACK METAL (looking at you Mayhem and Gorgoroth) instead of keeping in mind that at the end of the day this is entertainment.  Abbath is metal personified.  And I can’t really think of anyone out there today that possesses that over-the-top infectious metal persona that exemplifies what we are all about.

Enough of that.  On to the album at hand.  This is album number two for Abbath since he split with Immortal.  His first foray on his own was an album that I really enjoyed.  It didn’t really try to be anything different than an Immortal album without the Immortal moniker.  He kept the same look.  He kept the same guitar sound.  He kept the same creaky, guttural vocals.  With this second album, it is really more of the same.  If anything, this one sounds even more insistent and brutal than the first album.  It’s almost as if the band is in a rush to get to the finish.  Each song blisters and is just straight-ahead black metal with a bit of a rock-n-roll spin to it.  No fillers.  No frills.  And I think the album suffers a little bit because of it.  This one just seems to be missing a little bit of the personality and spark of the first album.  It just feels a little too harried in the end to have a real impact.

3.5 flip flops out of 5

Ashbringer-Absolution

Technicolor black light album cover for technicolor black metal.  So, I’m old as shit.  Probably a lot older than someone who crafts a heavy metal blog on the internet should reasonably be.  But there you go.  Everyone needs a hobby.  Anyway.  Being an old fart, I remember the days of going to Spencer’s Gifts in the 80s for the sole purpose of perusing the collection of metal posters they used to have in the back corner of the store.  Sure, there were the shots of Heather Thomas and Heather Locklear in various states of undress, but I was there for the Maiden artwork, dammit.  At the end of the rack of posters, it always seemed like there was a small section of trippy blacklight posters.  Anyway, the album cover for this latest Ashbringer release just brought those memories back.  Is Spencer’s still around? Fuck, I hope so.  I really do.

On to the metal.  Ashbringer is hailing from the Land of 10,000 Lakes and the music they produce is appropriate for the place in the U.S. that is most like Scandinavia in terms of frozen weather.  Ashbringer plies in a black metal that tends to bring a little more of a jazzy element to the genre than most of its practitioners.  There is a lightness of touch running through the production and the playing of the instruments on this album.  It doesn’t go full Panopticon with a blending of styles, but the drumming and the various keyboard/programming elements of the record just add a bit of a jazz spice to the thing.  This is definitely an album that has been growing on me with each listen (currently on spin #3 while I write this).  There’s a lot going on to absorb on here.  So, give it some time.

3.5 flip flops out of 5

The Lord Weird Slough Feg-New Organon

So, I’m finally back from vacation and am ready to take the reigns of this dorky little metal vehicle once again.  During my time off, I had occasion to visit my first meadery.  Mead.  A drink for the middle ages.  A drink to be enjoyed from a Viking’s horn.  A drink to be found in a bawdy rustic cottage tavern where wenches and sell-swords drink and sing and engage in all kinds of unspeakable debauchery.  Mead.  The perfect drink to pair with the music of The Lord Weird Slough Feg.

They started out as The Lord Weird Slough Feg and then shortened it to Slough Feg for simplicity sake, but now have appeared to gone back to the full-length proper name.  It’s all very confusing, but roll with it because these guys simply rock and rock good.  Put the best riffs concocted by Thin Lizzy and Iron Maiden into a blender and layer o’er-top of this tasty mixture a vocal delivery very reminiscent of Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson (but, sadly, no flute to accompany the proceedings).  Lyrically, these guys provide tales of mayhem and mischief straight out of Medieval times.  It’s rowdy and very Celtic sounding in its presentation.  Which is even more strange since they guys hail from San Francisco.  Anyway, the whole thing just works and is just a fantastic rocking good time.

4 flip flops out of 5

Memoriam-Requiem For Mankind

Man, if ever an album was a complete and total palate cleanser, this would be it.  Just back to basics, mid-tempo classic European death metal done in such a fine fashion that all I could do during my first listen was just sit back and nod in recognition.  Well done, boys.  Well done.  It’s nice to hear a death metal album that isn’t so focused on speed and is happy to tread that middle ground of grind without becoming abrasive.

So, it took me a bit, but I finally jumped on the Memoriam bandwagon.  I’m not entirely sure why I didn’t do so from the get go, but seeing as how prolific these dudes have been from their formation (formed in 2017 and have put out an album every year of existence), I decided it was high time to finally give them a legitimate shot.  Basically known as the post-Bolt Thrower band of Karl Willets, Memoriam really follows in the same footsteps that Bolt Thrower laid down.  Lots of songs about warfare delivered in Willets’ crusty and weather-beaten English growl.  The guitars just lay down an absolute warm blanket of percussive riffs that seem to hit that perfect semblance of everything heavy metal is and should be.  This is simply a heavy metal album.  Raise your fist and be counted and go buy this fucker today.

4 flip flops out of 5