MetalSucks

My piece on drum-triggering a few weeks back ruffled a few feathers and even prompted a defense from Eyal. But what about metal production as a whole? Cosmo Lee at Invisible Oranges just published his thoughts on the current state of metal production, and as usual he’s (mostly) spot on.

I agree with the general thesis Cosmo is putting forth, namely that different kinds of metal require different kinds of production. I’ve never understood people who frown upon anything that sounds polished — there’s a time and a place for big, loud, slick production, just as there’s a time and a place for raw, dry, dirty, band-in-a-room-jamming production. The right band for the right producer and mixer. The argument that spiffed up mixing makes bands sound fake holds no water; the minute you place a mic in front of an amp/drum/voice and record that sound, the mic and recording equipment fundamentally alter that sound. It then takes the finely-tuned skills of a mixer or producer to get the sound BACK to how it actually sounded in the room before the mic picked it up. Sure, there’s over-production too, and that’s a separate issue — I just think certain people are way too quick to cry foul on anything that sounds good (hey Iann Robinson!) when in fact certain situations/bands just warrant that kind of a sound.

Cosmo also points out that mixing and production are more important to fans of metal than fans of any other genre, and I wholeheartedly agree; we’re really fucking picky. There is one part of Cosmo’s piece though that I take issue with:

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The lovely ladies at Reign in Blonde found the below video, demonstrating a new shirt which you can play like a gee-tar. Aside from being incredibly dorky, it’s also thirty bucks, which I guess is about what you’d pay for a shirt at a big-time rock show anyways (actually, thirty bucks at a big time rock show might be a steal).

Anyway, if I was about nine, I’d probably think this is really cool. Of course, when I was nine, I also thought those shirts that change colors were really cool. But if all your friends are virgins and you want to really impress them, you can order the shirt from Think Geek.

By the way, with reference to my headline: no one should worry that these shirts mean kids will stop learning to play real guitar. That is an absolutely retarded concern. So just remain calm, okay?

-AR

Today I want to talk about acrostics. For those of you who didn’t waste ridiculous amounts of money on a college English degree, an acrostic is when the first letter of each line of a text spell out a message. For example, below is an acrostic from lines 510-514 of book nine of John Milton’s epic poem, Paradise Lost:

Scipio the highth of Rome. With tract oblique
At first, as one who sought access, but feard
To interrupt, side-long he works his way.
As when a Ship by skilful Stearsman wrought
Nigh Rivers mouth or Foreland, where the Wind…

This is pretty neat, and, needless to say, it’s not a coincidence. Milton was a smart guy – he read himself blind, for crying out loud. And, of course, acrostics have been used in lots and lots of other pieces of literature.

The reason I bring this up is two-fold:

1. Yesterday former The Panic Channel vocalist/MTV VJ Steve Isaacs tweeted about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s veto of a California legislative finance bill. It seems that the Governator used an acrostic to tell the California State Assembly “FUCK YOU.” Take a look for yourself here.
2. I re-tweeted Isaacs’ tweet, which in turn lead to longtime reader Saul Hudson shooting me an e-mail pointing out an acrostic in the lyrics to the title track from Chimaira’s Resurrection (video above).

If you’re not familiar with Resurrection, here’s a little background you need for the acrostic to make sense: the album was the band’s first after their acrimonious (or at least semi-acrimonious) parting with Roadrunner Records, and the lyrics to said title track (example: “Free at least/Finally tasting happiness”) are generally accepted as being about the split.

With me so far? Okay. So here’s the acrostic from the song:

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In theory, I should hate a band that has adopted the gimmick of being completely Star Wars-themed, but I’m a Star Wars dork and have enjoyed Buckethead’s renditions of John Williams’ awesome score many times in the past. So I’m gonna give a free pass to the UK’s Anchorhead, who not only do metal versions of Wiliams’ music, but apparently play dressed as various Star Wars characters. Seriously. Take a look:

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What exactly constitutes a “machine gun riff”? Rapid chugging? ‘Cause a couple of these just sound like breakdowns to me. Whatever it is, Jeffrey Nordin not only claims to know but claims to have the definitive list of the top 6 such riffs EVARRR. Explains Nordin via email: “Unlike the other myriad attempts at YouTube humor, this one is dry and witty and has one other gross advantage: It is factually accurate, because this is not just some random opinion, but my opinion which is demonstrably factual.” Well, let’s see about that.

Not a bad list! But oh hey dude, while I agree with your inclusion of “Remembrance” here, the band’s name is pronounced Go-JEE-rah, not Go-JIE-ra. Rhymes with pEnis, not vagIna. And as for your #1 most brutal machine gun riff of all time… so fucking br00tal dude! Great pick.

And I’m all the smarter for having watched this video: I now know what an “autodidact” is.

-VN

As we mentioned in our Djent-centric post in which we featured DC Sumeriancore outfit Haunted Shores, the band are currently in the studio with Periphery guitarist / studio wiz kid Misha Mansoor. Their latest is a djenty take on the theme music from Final Fantasy. My dork boner became raging hard the minute I pressed play on Haunted Shores’ MySpace and the sounds of that oh-so-sweet theme music filled my ears. Though my Final Fantasy experience stopped after the game’s very first NES iteration and this cover is purportedly based on VII, I still found the whole thing enjoyable… if you were ever into Final Fantasy, this is a must.

While you’re there please do listen to the rest of the music Haunted Shores have posted. And try not to wince at the above tattoo culled from the Webernets.

-VN

Raise your hand if you don’t think Brian Setzer is a fucking bad ass.

Those with your hands raised please never visit this site again.

Everyone else, please click through for a Setzer Shred Session (and oh hey his Orchestra band has a new album out!).

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Apparently the makers of Rock Band are now allowing fans to suggest which songs be included in the time-wasting game’s next iteration. Reads the official Rock Band website:

Request a Song: Got a band or artist you’d like us to know about? A song you’re dying to play in Rock Band? Go ahead—we’re listening…

The page has a form with three fields: Artist Name, Song Title, and Why It Rocks. We could really have some fun with that last one.

Let’s try and get Cannibal Corpse’s “Fucked With a Knife” on the docket for the next Rock Band. Write in the most ridiculous shit possible in the “Why It Rocks” field… how it inspired you to sexually experiment with knives, or some such real-life true stories nonsense. Go here to do so. Because selecting “Fucked With a Knife” at a party would be massively hilarious (and fun to play).

-VN

[Thanks: Adam Muirhead]

I’ve had this YouTube vid up in my browser for days because it’s simply awesome. This kid who goes by the name “Krimh” plays drums, bass and guitar himself on this track, filmed himself playing each part and cut it all together in this nifty video. The playing is top-notch and the composition is excellent — reminds me of an instrumental Textures. It’s kind of got a Sumeriancore feel to it but there’s also an element of black/grimness that pops up here and there. I also really dig the organic drum tones as opposed to the heavily sound-replaced tones that usually dominate this kind of music.

This guy is pretty much what I strived to be when I was in high school, a multi-instrumentalist composer — only I didn’t have a drumkit (or the space for one) and my crappy little Roland 8-track (which did service me quite well) wouldn’t have been capable of properly recording it even if I did. Today’s kids are lucky to have excellent recording software available at their fingertips so cheaply, I tells ya.

Check Krimh out on MySpace if you want more.

-VN

[Thanks: Chris Uber]

When MetalSucks correspondent Angela Gossowski interviewed recent Sumerian Records signees Periphery last month she asked them about the word “djent,” a phrase that appears on some of the band’s t-shirts (pictured above). Guitarist / band-mastermind Misha Mansoor answers thusly:

It’s basically just a guitar sound. It’s not even a word I invented, but it has become synonymous with the band. It’s something we appropriated because of the way we play our power chords. If you play guitar and you play a power chord and you use four notes… you use a big power chord and you palm mute really hard, it makes it really metallic sounding. There are some guitars and amps and pick-ups that are really conducive to that sound, which I’m a very big fan of. So I started describing things that I liked as “djenty,” because they had that characteristic. Just like you would say ‘bright,’ ‘dark,’ or whatever. It just seemed to have caught on for some reason. I actually heard the term from Meshuggah. They’re the ones who coined the term as far as I know. But for whatever reason people have been associating it with us… So if you’re in standard tuning, for all you guitar nerds out there, it would be 0-2-2-4. Or if you’re in drop tuning like we are, it would be 0-0-0-2.

So, Djent. It’s a term I’ve been hearing more and more lately as a result of the fact that it’s a sound I’ve been hearing more and more lately. It’s a staple of the Sumeriancore sound. And I can 100% get behind it! (for now). Here are a few bands that our readers have sent in that I’d definitely classic as djenty.

• Fuge - Scott Bahash sent this one in and wants us to know that it’s “just some guy from Hungary who makes some tracks at home but they blow away any progressive/djenty bands.”
• CiLiCe – Sent in by BTK 666. “Better than Tesseract??” he asks. Maybe so.
• Haunted Shores – The instrumental tracks up on this band’s MySpace page were actually produced and mixed by Mr. Misha Mansoor himself. They sound damn fine, and damn djenty.

Djent djent djent!

-VN

We hate these displays of pure speed because they lack heart and show only athletic-like, my-dick-is-bigger-than-yours abilities. We fucking love this kind of shit because it’s awesome!! You can tell this one hasn’t been doctored because the guy in the background’s movements clearly aren’t sped up. Long live shred.

-VN

Whenever people talk about modern metal production, the conversation inevitably turns to drum triggering. People always tell me that they think it’s bullshit and that they hate drum triggering, that they think it’s cheating. They’re wrong, and I’m going to tell you why.

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We all know Mr. Townsend as a top-notch writer, producer, guitarist and all around weird/awesome dude. But did you know the guy can fucking sing his balls off?? His vocal performances on all of the SYL records were always great, no disrespect meant there, but his vocals on the 4-album Devin Townsend Project suite show a whole new side of his musical abilities. Check out this self-recorded video, below, of Devin tracking his own vocals for the 2nd record, Addicted (out November 17th), which Devin posted on his MySpace page.

First thing you notice is how strong, steady and accurate his voice is. Then you notice that he’s holding the mic, as opposed to it being on a mic stand, and he’s getting perfect-sounding takes despite any potential variance in distance from his mouth and the lack of a popper stopper. This is obviously a man who records vocals this way quite often. Then you think… wait a minute… he’s not wearing headphones… isn’t he worried about bleed? To which the answer, I guess, would be “no, he doesn’t give a shit” which is quite curious to me. Maybe all the extra noise from the speakers makes the final product sound bigger, or maybe it’s insignificant. Then you realize the fluidity with which he records each take, and the attention to detail that he puts into every single word of his performance. Then you realize, once again, what a talented vocalist he is.

It’s quite impressive, really. I can see why bands seem to have a love/hate relationship with his production methods and why someone like Speed Strid of Soilwork insists on producing vocals with him. On one hand it’s got to be quite a grueling process, but on the other hand he’s quite obviously super-skilled and is definitely going to get the best result possible.

-VN

I actually think that Metallica’s Live Metallica website is a cool idea. Even if James’ voice sounds like shit and I’m pretty sure Lars is literally confused about what those sticks some roadie just shoved into his hand are for, a high-quality recording of a show you recently attended is both a cooler and cheaper souvenir than, say, and $400,000 t-shirt (or whatever arena rawk bands charge for merch these days). And I fully support their recent decision to allow single-song downloads. Yes, it’s kind of ironic given the Napster mishegoss, but, y’know, whatever. Metallica aren’t the titans of metal that they once were, but every now and then they do something right.

Now Metal Insider tells us that they’ve launched an iPhone app version of the site, called – duh – Live Metallica:

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When it comes to black metal guitar pedals my first choice bar none is the Valnøtt, made famous by The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley. But MS Maniac Joseph Griesel sent us a link to the new Dragonfly BM-1 Black Metal Guitar Distortion Pedal, so trve and kvlt that production is limited to just 666 units worldwide.

The BM-1 advertises itself as “A tribute to the first wave of Black Metal of the 1980’s. Raw, primitive, old school Metal Tone!” And against all expectations, the thing actually sounds pretty damn good… check out the demo below.

While the BM-1 does admittedly deliver a pretty killer tone, we much prefer the Valnøtt for its versatility as a bass, vocal and drum pedal in addition to just guitars. Check out Justin Foley’s Valnøtt demo video after the jump.

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Last week Axl posted a metal cover of the Super Mario Bros. theme song; it was pretty fuckin’ cool, but with all due respect I think Nylithia’s metal cover of the “castle” music theme, sent in by MS Maniac Scott Bahash, blows it away. You’ve got shred, you’ve got real drums (as opposed to programmed), you’ve got live video of the band playing, and I like that this version is way more interpretive as opposed to just a straight cover. The ending is absolutely epic, too:

MS Maniac Will Mellor sent in this 8-bit cover of Slayer’s “Angel of Death,” which is also pretty good:

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Ddddddaaaaaammmmmnnnnn!!!!

-AR

Thanks to UN_0P_P0_SED for the tip!

If you read this site regularly, then you’re probably aware that we are constantly confused by the difference between wigger slam and deathcore. Even after our own Satan Rosenbloom explained it to me and I spent time listening to bands that Metal Inquistion’s Sergeant D and Decibel agree are slam bands, I still can’t really tell the difference. At the risk of sounding like my old man, I really just can’t hear much difference between Devourment and Oceano. Sorry.

Luckily, the aforementioned Sergeant D – pretty much metal’s leading authority on wigger slam – has discovered a joke slam band band, Slamburglars, and in a Metal Inquisition interview, we get both name dropped and educated in the differences between the two genres:

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This video of Rhett Butler covering Joe Satriani is pretty f’n mindblowing. The guy is so dextrous and precise that he can tap out leads with both hands at the same time… how does he do that? In some respect I guess it’s not all that different than what a piano player does, but it’s still really fucking cool.

-VN

[Apologies for not crediting whoever sent this in... it's not personal, I just can't find the email.]

When we were in high school, Vince played guitar for a band called Steel Breeze. Yeah, I dunno what the name means either, but they were pretty good, all things considered. Anyways, I mention it not to embarrass Vince (that’s just a bonus!), but because they used to cover the theme music from Super Mario Bros.  And these dudes had the same idea, I guess.

I have no idea why it says System of a Down in the background. Do the mustaches strike the creators of this video as being particularly Armenian or something?

Two quick random thoughts about Mario Bros., while we’re on the topic:

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