Last month, the University of Melbourne sent out apress release regarding a study recently completed by Dr. Katrina McFerran. Entitled “Heavy metal music has negative impacts on youth,” the press release claimed that Dr. McFerran’s research demonstrated that “Young people at risk of depression are more likely to listen habitually and repetitively to heavy metal music.” The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley took issue with this study and the subsequent press release in an editorial we published on Tuesday; then Dr. McFerran herself responded yesterday; and now, in what we swear up and down will be our last word on the topic, Justin will respond to the response in his post below. Enjoy, and try not to go cross-eyed.

TL;DR – Just read the first paragraph.

Dr. McFerran’s reply, while appreciated, is totally inadequate.

I was careful not to point to her directly in the previous piece I wrote.  Other than expressing some skepticism about the way that the data was analyzed, I kept in mind that the whole problem could have been the result of the University’s PR department going off the rails and hijacking the results of her study.  While this may still be the case, Dr. McFerran has had at least two opportunities to clear the air on a misinterpretation of the work that she and her team did, both in yesterday’s post on MetalSucks, and on Metal Insider.  In both cases, she dodged the question about why the University trumpeted her study as saying that heavy metal causes negative impacts. She seems very nice and the thoughts she shared on her field of study are interesting, but that’s all beside the point.  And the point is that she’s part of this dishonesty.

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TL;DR – University of Melbourne announces a recent study saying it proves heavy metal is a negative influence.  Justin reads the study and says the University announcement is basically one big lie.  He covers some of the detail in longer sentences than usual (yikes), then says the University should get it shit together on this.  Also, it turns out Van Canto have a new record out, and they are still terrible.

Popular media was busy last week trumpeting the announced results of a recent University of Melbourne study.  A lot of the hype was around the claim made in the headline in the University’s press announcement that “Heavy metal music has negative impacts on youth.”  It states that Dr. Katrina McFerran, a senior lecturer in Music Therapy, has found that young people at risk of depression are more likely to listen to heavy metal in a negative way.

A quick Google news search for “heavy metal” “study” this morning yields twenty-two separate stories (about three weeks later), and all of them are about this.  Surveying of these stories shows some range of content, from the study’s correlation between liking metal and high risk for psychological distress all the way to linking metal with potential suicide.  In any case, they all draw from the language in the press release about the new study McFerran has done.

I asked Dr. McFerran for a copy of the study, and she was kind enough to provide one.  I have spent some time reading through the study and can tell you this:

The press release is complete bullshit.

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“It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” – Abraham Maslow

TL;DR – A software company lets you sound like you can play bitchin’ guitar.  Periphery fans may wring their hands, but Brian Eno probably wouldn’t care.  Justin thinks it’s fine as a toy but uses the expressed complaints as a way to hate on Autotune.  Also, Van Canto is terrible.

Axl tweeted a link to an interesting article the other day from the Heavy Blog is Heavy about a piece of software by 8Dio called “Progressing Metal.”  This program makes you to sound like Meshuggah without having to go through the trouble of playing a guitar.  Instead, you just plink something into a keyboard, run it through the magic bits and, presto, you’re Fredrik Thordendal.  Sorta.

This freaks some people out.  The accompanying blog post, for instance, ponders a question: is this just too much?  Like, if some guy can sit down at his computer with a whole lot of patience and a software program and, some time later, pop out the next Chaosphere, then… well, something bad, right?  Because that seems… unfair?

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[Justin Foley -- MS columnist, guitarist/vocalist in The Austerity Program and... <scoff> Yankees fan -- was so inspired by yesterday's The Top Fifteen Reasons That Metallica Are the Yankees of Metal post that he decided to write a response. Here it is! -Ed.]

Vince,

It’s really sad that you just won’t let things go.  So you like the Mets.  But they’re losers.  So you hate winners.  Just keep reading those three sentences over and over until they sink in.

Metallica are not the Yankees of metal.  Consider just this: the Yankees are still playoff contenders every year and likely have many more WS rings in front of them.  Metallica … what could the future hold for them?  I’ll tell you what: one thing – Gene Simmons.  Gene Simmons is right now just waiting by his phone for them to call him so that he can take over.  He’ll talk to them about staging a ‘Nothing But Denim’ tour, partnering with novelty acts for marketing purposes and then, when it’s time for your target demographic to consider it, ease into casket promotion.  He’s ready.  Everything else at this point is just postponing the inevitable.

So let’s review your reasons and why they’re (mostly) wrong.

15.  No. The Yanks have had ups and downs, but at least several Golden Eras. In the late 90′s-early 00′s, for example, the Yankees were a legitimately incredible baseball team. But anything after “And Justice…” is basking in the glow of an earlier light.

14.  Huh?

13.  The Yankees have the biggest payroll in baseball and the best championship record of any professional sports team.  Maybe Metallica have the same?  I don’t know.  But also keep in mind that the Yankees have always been in the Bronx.  Although it seemed to require a full raping of the city/state funds to do it, they still remain on 161st Street.  Can’t say that about the Dodgers and Giants.

12.  Absolutely.  And that’s why they’re both successfully ripped off by bootleggers.

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Left to right, in front of the Baltimore Marriot: Hozi, Ben, Quan, Dana, the bellhop.

Helms Alee have put out the best record of the year so far with Weatherhead. I am thrilled that their tour gives me the chance to interview them, because it means I get to do things like write this opening paragraph, and maybe one person in the world will read this article and then go listen to them and be blown away by this band like I am. I cannot think of any real band that so deftly covers such a wide range. With the same three people playing the same three instruments, the most recent record continues what they did on 2009’s Night Terror – shifting from an ethereal shimmer to a massive whallop to a hypnotic drone, often in the same song. And while others seem to do so much less trying so much harder, Helms Alee is truly fantastic in part because their choices never seem forced or artificial. This band is incredible and if you can see them live, see them live.

They’re currently in the middle of a month-long tour with Torche and Big Business. I called them on the phone on Monday while they were in Baltimore. On the line were drummer Hozoji Annie Matheson-Margullis (aka Hozi), guitarist Ben Verellen, bassist Dana James, and merch man Quan. They also said that their ‘business associate’ Mike was on the line, but I don’t think that he said anything.

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Our number one homie Justin Foley is just completed a mini-tour with his band, The Austerity Program, and graciously offered to do a tour blog for us. We can never say “no” to Justin and wouldn’t much want to anyway, so we agreed! You can read his account of days one and two of the mini-trek here, day three here and day four here; the fifth and final day is below… enjoy!

Saturday, May 21, 2011
New York City

Back at home after the whole thing is over.  Here’s one of the many things that no one ever tells you about when you think that you want to be in a band: some time not too long after going out on some sort of tour, you should set aside a few hours with a bucket and a bunch of rags and then just wipe all of your equipment down.  I spent the better part of Saturday afternoon doing just that and boy, the water in that bucket gets nasty quick.  What lives on the floors of these clubs that we go see bands in?  What calls those puddles of stale beer its home?  What foul creature sneaks into venues late at night and hides stage monitors deep in its own crevices, so that they are bathed in the funk of the undead?  Well, the amps are clean anyway.  Sitting back in the practice space, ready to make more music.

I figured I’d take the last of these entries to talk about the best case scenario for playing a show.  Thursday night is a good enough example of that. We were third out of four.

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Our number one homie Justin Foley is currently doing a mini-tour with his band, The Austerity Program, and graciously offered to do a tour blog for us. We can never say “no” to Justin and wouldn’t much want to anyway, so we agreed! You can read his account of days one and two of the mini-trek here and day three here; the fourth day is below… enjoy!

Providence, Rhode Island

We are in the capitol of the smallest state in the US, the Ocean State.  Tonight’s venue is nestled into the downtown, combining an art gallery with a restaurant with a bar with a place for bands like us to play.  Charming little city you got here, Rhode Island.  Nice place; you should keep it.

Funny thing that we’re playing P-town tonight.  A few years back when we put out our first record, we didn’t understand too well how this whole ‘marketing and promotion’ thing worked with records.  So, rather than put out some materials that talked seriously about how important our artistic vision was and how we were for fans of this band and influenced by that scene, we chose instead to make up some bullshit story about how we were suing our record label because they wouldn’t allow us to issue patents on our song.  I don’t know what we thought we were going to accomplish by this, but we thought it was a fun little goof and that no one would actually believe it.

Wrong.  Turns out a bunch of people were mad about some assholes from New York City that no one had ever heard of loudly broadcasting legal action against the beloved label that put out records by Cave In and Botch.  Man, the things people will send to a total stranger over email… it’s just unkind.

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Our number one homie Justin Foley is currently doing a mini-tour with his band, The Austerity Program, and graciously offered to do a tour blog for us. We can never say “no” to Justin and wouldn’t much want to anyway, so we agreed! You can read his account of days one and two of the mini-trek here; the third day is below… enjoy!

Wednesday, May 18, 2011
New York

Philadelphia, PA last night, aka Quaker City.  We arrived in town with hunger in the belly and a bit of time to kill.  This second thing nearly killed us.  Thad and I never have time to kill; work, family, odd projects, people who need setting straight on the Internet – all of these things consume more time than we have and so things like leisure and friendships are usually left unattended.  And so, an hour or two after getting ‘the best vegetarian cheesesteak in Philly’ (it wasn’t bad – the bread’s the key thing) we had a few hours to burn.

We got a couple of beers (in daylight!  I mean, that’s straight up “Theatre of Pain” decadence right there) we ambled over to catch an early showing of Takashi Mike’s 13 Assassins.  Coliseum had seen it recently and said it was like ½ as good as Thor which means they thought it was awesome.  (The band is completely bonkers about Thor.)

Thad and I settled in to a theatre sparsely populated by seniors and the unemployed and were soon completely assaulted by the film.  I’m not going to spoil the movie for those who haven’t seen it, but it was pretty obvious that the whole thing was written backwards.  Basically the cinematic equivalent of a good Helmet song: here’s the gigantic riff that we’ll kill them with at the end, so what else do we need to put in the song to get to that riff and make it destroy?  Props to the movie also for giving us our theme for the trip: TOTAL MASSACRE. (Sometimes “massacre” isn’t enough.)

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Our number one homie Justin Foley is currently doing a mini-tour with his band, The Austerity Program, and graciously offered to do a tour blog for us. We can never say “no” to Justin and wouldn’t much want to anyway, so we agreed! Below please find his musings on the first two days of the mini-trek…

Monday, May 16, 7:43 AM
New York City

It’s early.  It always takes me a few hours to get to bed after playing, as the electricity of it needs a bit of time to bleed from my system ,at least enough for sleep to take hold.  Since we got back to the house pretty quick last night I just stayed up until 3 or so doing dumb shit like paying my bills.  Then, when my daughter was up at 7 I leapt up to get her.  So, yeah, now she’s watching the end of Elmo’s World and I have hit that “whut the fuuuuck” thing that happens when you’ve gotten 3 and a half hours of sleep and got the whooole day ahead of you.

Last night was us playing our New York residency, a little music box venue called Union Pool.  I like the place a lot – it’s a small enough venue with a bit of a weird theatrical feel to it: little light bulbs frame the stage for black-t-shirted bands like us.  We always have to play Tetris with our amp setup and barely manage to figure it out each time.

The load-in for an event like this is always some low level of absurd.  Four sets of guys, all dressed pretty much the same way, all wheeling and carrying amp after amp after amp into a not-so-big room, all to be stacked on top of/behind/in front of one another and quickly rearranged when it’s some band’s 26 minutes to play their music.  Certainly some rational observer would look at it all and say “why don’t you all just take the best collection of those boxes and just all play through that?”  For some reason, rational observer, it just doesn’t work like that – and I say this as the band that is about the worst offender of the “lbs of heavy shit per band member” rule.  And so we all politely and determinedly got our piles of gear in and sort of settled.  The sound guy bit his lip as it all unflolded.

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I was hanging out at a friend’s house a few weeks back and the conversation drifted to a favorite topic of mine – the ridiculous text that labels often use to sell bands.  I thought I’d seen it pretty bad on some Relapse topspines, but my friend started laughing as he strolled over to his bookshelf.

“I mean,” I said, “some people are apparently unaware that words have meanings and that language has conventions.  These are the basis of verbal communication.  Riffs don’t tear buildings down.  I’m sorry, but they don’t.”

“Ho ho, just you wait,” he said, flipping through pages and pages of the same promo photo that all metal bands take these days.  “Hold it… hold it… aha!  The Profound Lore ad.”  He started reading it aloud.  An hour later we had both burned through all copies of his four-year subscription. We were nearly hoarse from laughing and reading out in our lousy Vincent Price imitations.

Okay, before I get into this, I want to say that I am not picking on Profound Lore because I don’t like the label.  I’ve got a bunch of stuff from them and a lot of it — especially Krallice — is amazing.  Really – amazing stuff.  I also don’t think that they’re alone in writing abhorrent promo material; it’s worth talking about because almost every metal label tries to sell their bands with this approach.  In fact, if you follow the PL Twitter feed, you’ll find they consistently work a compelling message about what they’re up to in 140 characters.  And although I would murder everyone at Hydra Head if they tried this kind of shit with us, I don’t see it as a reflection of the band at all when someone at their label decides to start telling tall, tall tales.

But please allow me to introduce Exhibit A, the only exhibit we’ll need: ONE SENTENCE from a write-up for a Profound Lore release.

Ahem.

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Mark LeVine is a professor at the University of California, Irvine, who has spent the better part of his life trying to understand and teach about the Middle East and Muslim world.  Part of this has been fueled by his interest in music – Mark is both a performer and fan of heavy metal (and other, lesser genres).  This interest led Mark to write Heavy Metal Islam: Rock, Resistance, and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam, a book that upends the simple “us vs. them” ideas about the Islamic world that tend to lead to things like war and death.  The book’s stories and message have proven so compelling that a CD of the music covered – Flowers in the Desert – and an upcoming documentary continue to tell the story, as does Mark’s website.

I was able to grab an hour of Mark’s time over the phone on Friday.  I peppered him with some questions around a topic that has plagued Americans for over a century – “What the hell is going on over in the Middle East?”

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Allan Horrocks and Andee Connors run Aquarius Records in San Francisco, CA. It’s the best record store in the country, especially if you don’t live right next to a record store and especially if you like metal. I interviewed them a few months back for the ongoing Taco Riff series, and figured they’d have a good take on all of your holiday shopping. I called them up to get their wrap up on their favorite metal of the year. Although they took notes on what they were going to say, they ignored them entirely almost as soon as we began.

Before we begin, you should sign up for their bi-weekly (now becoming weekly) mailing list of favorite new releases. It’s mindblowing.

We started with me trying to type what they said, but they were going way too fast.

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I looked at BBG this morning and saw that they had some free music available by Magrudergrind. I’m not too familiar with the band, but was a bit surprised to see that they have released the record through Scion, the car company. And when I say “a bit surprised,” I mean the kind of surprised that reminds you of what you had for breakfast because it’s figuring on making a repeat appearance.

Before I begin, please let me note a few things. First, these are people with whom I am generally simpatico – they play abrasive, heavy music, they take the time to think about what they’re doing, and they’re not doing stuff that, on the face of it, is simply wrong (like lobbying for the weapons industry or hiring scabs or kicking puppies). They seem like nice guys. And really: this is small, small potatoes in a world that includes starvation, disease and the cultural cancer of Dancing with the Stars. I also recognize that this stuff is interesting to talk about because it cannot be reasonably argued by appealing to absolutes; this topic is a world of various shades of gray (which, by the way, doesn’t mean that things can’t be right or wrong). So let’s all take this with a grain of salt, right? Perfect.

That said, this Scion record stuff is gross and I think Magrudergrind is dead wrong for doing it.

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Kurt Ballou is the guitarist for Converge and runs/is Godcity Recording Studio. In both of these capacities he has been a big part of making some of my favorite music ever. Screw the commonly used term “arguably” – Converge’s last record is their best/hardest record yet. And Kurt’s recording style presents live-sounding documents of aggressive bands that includes a ferocious midrange bite (see Young Widows, Disappearer, or Ghengis Tron, for example). It’s a compelling antidote to the heavily-edited/eq’d ProTools default deployed by most heavy music. He’s also an unabashed music fan who’s given some thought to what he likes.

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Legendary stonebags Sleep are resurrecting their monolithic Holy Mountain this weekend here in the NYC metro area. That record is pretty amazing – less a collection of songs and more a riff delivery program. As is the trend these days, those who didn’t hear them tour on the record in the mid-90s will get a second chance to drink it all in. It will be a moment: everyone in the room will know the songs, the band isn’t going to be too stoned to play and even the opening bands will be watching from the side of the stage, happy to finally hear these songs the way they’ve always hoped to hear them – live, loud and in front of them.

This reunion stuff… I’ve got mixed feelings about it, like lots of folks. I guess it’s better to happen than not to happen. I guess. But bands performing dated works has a sense of nostalgia to it that doesn’t give the charge it did when it was all first going on. This itself may be a fiction – appreciation for a band may grow after they’ve decided to call it quits, and maybe they just weren’t that good a live band when they came up with their classic material. Sleep, for example, was opening for Cathedral at the goddam Limelight (a Mid-town cocaine dance club for those who aren’t familiar) when they were touring Holy Mountain. Still, the thrill of hearing Al Cisneros roll through the opening lines “Dragonaut” just can’t be the same as when it was all happening the first time.

Which is funny for us here in NYC. Because that exact thrill of a totally amazing, mindblowing show happening in a cramped basement by sweaty bands surely at their peak will also be happening Monday night. As 1,000 joints of light are ignited uptown, those lucky enough to cram into the basement of the Lower East Side’s Cake Shop to see Young Widows and Helms Alee are going to be there as it’s all happening for the first time. Each band has put out an underappreciated classic records in the past few years, reports on the new stuff for both say they’re even better and they can each fully fucking bring it live.

Young Widows is a blistering three piece. I guess you could describe them as a rock band, the same way you can describe cheese grater as a kind of loofa. Maybe someone has a complaint with their twin fridge-amp/light show presentation, but not me. It all gives them the visual appearance and sonic presentation of the business end of a Peterbilt truck on a midnight Interstate. I haven’t heard the new shit they will be playing so I’ll hold off on raving about that, but if they’re still ending their set with the transcendently awesome “Swamped and Agitated” from their last record, we will all be leaving that room changed for the better.

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Derek Riggs is an illustrator based in California. His website showcases the album art he’s done over the past thirty years, including his absolutely classic work for Iron Maiden. Derek is opinionated and funny; the half hour you will spend looking through the entire site shows that clearly. In 2006, he put out Run For Cover: The Art of Derek Riggs, a book that includes a bunch of his best stuff as well as several interviews.

I was hesitant to call him and ask him about his work for Iron Maiden, as that’s an old chapter in his life and he’s put a lot of that behind him. But then I thought, “Fuck it, it would be fun to call Derek Riggs, let me see if I can talk to him.” He was game, so I took a deep breath and asked him a few questions about his past.

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Andee Connors and Allan Horrocks run Aquarius Records in San Francisco. Their bi-weekly mailing list is simply one of the greatest things on the Internet – an opinionated, enthusiastic and overwhelming review of the latest releases and reissues that includes sound samples. From major pop releases to the absolutely most obscure/limited/cassette-only cave dweller metal, if it’s good the list will be championing it (and probably calling it out for sucking if it does suck). Any metal fan – any music fan – must sign up for it (and, duh, buy from them if they like it).

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Jon Fine’s best known band was Bitch Magnet, a (usually) three piece active from the late 80s to the early 90s. Though hardly a metal outfit, Fine was a vocal apostle of heavy music in the independent circles the band traveled in, deeply knowledgeable and conversant in obscure, loud shit going back to the early 70s (and earlier). I met Jon at a number of shows in NYC and read a bunch of his enthusiastic and thoughtful posts on the now-dead Chugchanga mailing list and figured he’d have an opinion or twelve on this. Jon also played in Vineland, Coptic Light and even did some time in Don Caballero.
These days Jon pays rent as a media analyst. You can find him on Mediabistro, CNBC and Twitter (where he has about eleven times as many followers as Gary Suarez).

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Wino – the nom de guerre of Robert Scott Weinrich – has been making heavy music for nearly 35 years. Starting with War Horse, Wino has since been in a string of incredible bands: The Obsessed, St. Vitus, Spirit Caravan, The Hidden Hand, Palace of Skulls and now Shrinebuider. Wino has also released solo material (Punctuated Equilibrium was released last year) and, as everyone who I have ever spoken to about him has said, is an incredibly down-to-earth, friendly and funny guy.

What’s the greatest Taco Riff of all time?

Wait, I think I know what you’re talking about. I’ve got a few that I’d say right away:

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(Email exchange after being asked by a reader to check out a Taco Riff)

Me: Oh. No. That is a generic breakdown riff. We’ve got to be able to come up with a name for that. Feel free to give it a shot.

Axl: A Taco Bell Riff (like a taco in theory, but completely disgusting, generic, and bad for you).

Me: I do like the Run For The Border aspect. Let’s keep that one in a holding pattern. We maybe could call it the Triple A riff. You know, what you resort to for everyday breakdowns.

Axl: That’s pretty funny.

I’ve got to hurry up and type fast. It’s 9:15 PM on a Monday  and I’m giving myself four hours to see if I can get this little experiment done.

I’ve done a pair of posts now on trying to find the perfect Taco Riff, and do note that I’m hunting for something I haven’t done a very good job of describing. That’s due in part to my limits as an explainer, but more due to the elusive nature of what we’re seeking. So before we spend some more time talking about what a Taco Riff is, let’s talk for a second about what it’s not.

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