MetalSucks

Skeletonwitch has been a welcome anomaly these past few years. Amidst a resurgence of thrash and 80s throwback nostalgia, the band managed to stand head and shoulders above most emerging, like-minded acts, no doubt many thanks to their inclusion of equal parts thrash, N.W.O.B.H.M. melody, black metal vocals and Nordic nods in the quintet’s riffing and tempos. Breathing the Fire, their new Prosthetic Records release, further codifies these styles and influences, and confirms The ‘Witch’s music as both original and refreshing.

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If the only thing I got from Beasts Among Sheep was a newfound respect for Javelina’s biggest influence, the defunct sludge-punk troupe Buzzov*en, that would be enough for major props-giving. But hot damn, does this Philly band have a lot of other stuff going for them. Least of which is that they’re easy to believe. There’s no polish to Beasts Among Sheep, no foundation for artifice, just eight tracks of mud-caked riffs and cantankerous dispositions. Producer Sanford Parker gives the album that first-take raw vibe that this kind of light-on-subtlety metal requires.

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Philosopher and academic Paul Hegarty began his 2007 tome Noise/Music: A History with the following description: “Noise is not an objective fact. It occurs in relation to perception–both direct (sensory) and according to presumptions made by an individual… Whether noise is happening or not will depend on the source of what is being called noise–who the producer is, when and where, and how it impinges on the perceiver of noise.” Such a definition is necessary in order to reasonably assess Chicago-based deathcore act Oceano.

While heavy metal has previously been appropriated–and, arguably, misappropriated–by artistic outsiders with agendas and ideologies, alongside nostalgic or even fetishistic sentiments, deathcore is a rare internal and naturally occurring movement that adopts the typically academic precepts of noise music inadvertently and almost entirely by chance. Indeed, as a subgenre, it is intolerable to most self-described heavy metal fans. It is safe to posit, given the lineup’s youth (at least one member is apparently still below the legal drinking age), that Oceano (and their deathcore ilk) are wholly unaware of and uninitiated in the legacy of noise that came before them, beginning with the Futurists and Dadaists of the early 20th century, continuing with the Fluxus artists of the 1960s and the avant-jazz musicians of the 1970s, and ultimately exploding worldwide in the latter fifth of the 1900s with performers like Merzbow and Lustmord paving the way for today’s stars like Christian Fennesz and Stephen O’Malley. It is a testament to Oceano that a manifestation of their talent for noise emerges even as they genuinely attempted to write an album’s worth of listenable heavy metal songs.

Frontman Adam Warren honors the vocal tradition of Yoko Ono (a participant in Fluxus even prior to her marriage and music with John Lennon) as much as he does Chuck Schuldiner. On “Slaughtered Like Swine,” Warren reproduces a stunning approximation of a porcine squeal. “Empathy For Leviathan” ostensibly mines the pelagic and oceanographic themes suggested by the band’s name and album title, though its lyrics are so inscrutably delivered that they could have very well been recorded underwater. Tracks like “With Legions” and “Samael The Destroyer” involuntarily lampoon heavy metal conventions with gratuitous noodling and tempo shifts, the latter of these permitting Jason Jones a three second bass solo. Oceano sound their best on “District Of Misery,” where the cacophony rarely lets up over its three minute duration. Here, bestial braying, irritatingly ticking drums, and insufferable low-end dominate, ending with the sound of an exploding septic system.

My sole, albeit minor criticism of the otherwise irreproachable Depths pertains to its six-and-a-half minute long title track. This melodiously repetitive, comparably exoteric diversion–perhaps an unconscious nod to the early looping experiments of Pierre Henry or Karlheinz Stockhausen– both well meaning though ill-advised and should be chalked up to the occasionally misguided ambitions of youth. I won’t posture as a seasoned deathcore aficionado, and I’d postulate that some of the more experienced fans of the subgenre may be disinclined to agree with my ebullient assessment of Oceano, perhaps favoring antecedants such as Suicide Silence and Whitechapel. Even still, Oceano’s Depths delivers on the promise of its title and offers an immersing aural experience for fans of La Monte Young and Job For A Cowboy alike.

In his aforementioned book, Professor Hegarty not only chronicled the role of noise in 20th and 21st century sound but also adumbrated a “future culture” based in some measure upon it. Going forward, I cannot possibly any credibly anthropological survey of such a culture without reference to Oceano, the undoubtedly reluctant new aesthetic leaders of noise.

(5 out of 5 horns)

-GS

[Gary Suarez is serious. He usually manages the consistently off-topic No Yoko No. Say, why don't you follow him on Twitter?]

The hype around Congregation of the Damned is that it’s a return to Atreyu’s older metalcore (excuse me, “metallic rock”) outings. This is bullshit. Congregation is another ham fisted arena rock failure posing as one of Atreyu’s metalcore albums.

Now, inevitably, some punk is gonna come around here and say “Atreyu’s sound could never stay the same forever, and why would they want it to, and blah blah blah, pee.” To which I say: well, I’m not the one going around telling people this album is going to sound nothing like Lead Sails and a Plug-in Vagina. The dudes from Atreyu are.

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The notion of a remix album is a strange one. First of all, what purpose do they serve – to provide intriguing reinterpretations of their catalog, or to throw a bone to fans hungry for a new album? Secondly, are remixes to be judged on their own merits as songs, or do they need to be permanently attached to their point of origin? Third of all, what in the fuck IS a remix, exactly? In the hip-hop community, it’s the same backing track with a slew of different rappers of wildly varying quality contributing new verses along with the original artist. In the pop world, it’s the original song with a throbbing nightclub beat thrown underneath. In the metal world, it’s a weird prospect: it’s either a collection of ambient, noise, or ambient/noise pieces built upon the tiniest shred of the source material, or a rearranging of the original tracks into a violent, messy reimagining (For the latter, see Justin Broadrick’s take on Isis’ “Hym” for how it can be done well, and his take on Pantera’s “Fucking Hostile” to see how it can be done horribly). Needless to say, metal remix albums tend to be geared toward metalheads with noise sympathies or strictly for fans only, if not both. The Melvins’ new remix collection, Chicken Switch, appears to fall into both, but actually falls pretty hard into the latter. Those in search of a worthwhile remix album should probably ignore this one.

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Skinlab… in 2009? Some fifteen years after the band emerged from the Bay Area thrash scene – mostly thanks to jocking from Machine Head’s Robb Flynn when both bands were Bay Area up-and-comers – Skinlab is back with The Scars Between Us… for better or worse. The band’s fourth full-length release and seventh overall (including an EP, a double-disc album containing alternate and live versions of songs, and a full-on live album), The Scars Between Us is Skinlab’s comeback album of sorts – and first for new label Stand And Deliver Records. The question is: can they resurrect a career after seemingly treading water, like Machine Head did a few years back after the one-two punch of nu-metal disasters The Burning Red and Supercharger before returning to the metal press’ pages of high praise?

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As rabid Converge fans chomp at the bit for the imminent release of the highly anticipated Axe To Fall, bassist Nate Newton presents something far more accessible to digest in the brief interim with Darkness Come Alive. Perhaps the most viable and visable of that New England hardcore act’s side-projects, Doomriders treat the “doom metal” tag fairly loosely, using it more as a jumping off point than a modus operandi. Distinct from the fawning nostalgia of acts like Gates Of Slumber or The Sword, the project is a satisfying hodge-podge of classic metal influences tempered by a more modern framework.

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While Despised Icon didn’t show up early to the deathcore party, they did manage to show up right on time with 2005’s laudably solid The Healing Process. Squarely at the intersection of technical death metal and tough guy hardcore, the band provided a then-fresh perspective on both genres with remarkable precision. Fast forward to 2009: deathcore is (relatively) big business now, and has, in its short existence, become a polarizing and ultimately tired genre. Any kid that grew up listening to breakdown-fueled hardcore can throw on a Suffocation shirt, meet a few other dudes that spend 8-12 hours a day practicing guitar, find a drummer one can trigger out of existence, and – BOOM! – you’ve got an honest shot at being signed to Sumerian or Victory. And yet, The Healing Process retains its fresh sound. This is, perhaps, the greatest disappointment in terms of Despised Icon’s latest outing, Day of Mourning: while there are certainly salvageable bits, it veers close to sounding like tired, triggered deathcore overall. Trying to keep up with the times has ultimately made the band a victim of them, and in a genre as massively overpopulated and interchangeable as deathcore, it’s an unwise decision to sound like anyone else.

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Despite being such a huge fan of Big Business’ Here Come The Waterworks, 2009’s Mind The Drift honestly doesn’t stand much of a chance of making it into my year-end Top 10 list. The same cannot be said, however, for Sculpted Beef, the brief vinyl (and digital) debut from White Shit, Jared Warren and Coady Willis’ side-project with Andy Coronado of Wrangler Brutes and Monorchid. Contrasting significantly with the slightly proggy art-metal Warren and Willis explore with their other bands, White Shit make brash, lo-fi hardcore in the Black Flag/Minor Threat tradition. Here, sprawling riffage and avant-garde percussion is violently tossed aside and replaced with filth, fury, and snot-nosed wit. And it’s all done pretty fucking well.

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Those that felt underwhelmed by Every Time I Die’s The Big Dirty (a company of which this writer is a part) need not worry – New Junk Aesthetic, their new album, has the energy, texture, and savagery the prior record lacked. And this isn’t to say The Big Dirty was a massive, St. Anger-style failure; it was just an alright album in the company of the splendid Southern-fried rock of Gutter Phenomenon or their debut, the up-there-with-Jane Doe lost metalcore classic Last Night in Town. And when viewed in retrospect, Big Dirty appears to be the band’s “growth” record: where they fumbled around, sounding somewhat bored and uninspired (though admittedly still pretty entertaining), perhaps even unsure of what to do next. New Junk Aesthetic is a band completely comfortable with itself, and pushing different boundaries because of that. Vocalist Keith Buckley belts out ridiculously catchy vocals hooks with his same refreshingly smarmy lyrical approach, while guitarists Andy Williams and Jordan Buckley tone down their Southern riff attack to eschew the risk of sounding like a novelty. The album finds the band at its most likable while occasionally incorporating a riff that wouldn’t sound out of place on their debut. If you liked Every Time I Die before, you’ll probably find reasons on this record to like them more. Click to read more…

Are Living Colour feeling doubtful about their own identity? The band’s first studio album in six years, The Chair in the Doorway, deals largely with questions of self. “Gonna strip it all away,” vocalist Cory Glover repeats over and over again during album opener “Burned Bridges.” “I am the role I play,” he declares on “The Chair,” before wondering “Who am I today?” On “Out of My Mind,” he talks about “losing myself” and “shedding my skin.”

If Glover and his band mates – guitarist Vernon Reid, bassist Doug Wimbish and drummer Will Calhoun – really are feeling doubtful about themselves, they’re being neurotic for no reason. The Chair in the Doorway cements the band’s identity as one of the best American rock bands of the past two decades.

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Recording the first album without a previous vocalist is usually a curse on a band’s sound, cred, and whatever dork-speak you want to talk about the guys that spout, “Well, their first X number of records where good at least” (where X equals how awesome you are at liking metal, hardcore, and the heavier side of the musical spectrum), right? With co-vocalist Jamie Hooper sidelined by recurring throat problems and now out of the picture, high-pitcher Cam Pipes is the sole vocalist this time around (aside from guitarist Justin Hagberg’s backup growls). That results in lending 3 Inches of Blood an even more traditional sound on Here Waits Thy Doom, the band’s Century Media debut after a brief few years on Roadrunner. The group no longer has any original members… but their heart (and metal) is still in the right place.

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There’s a sad, interesting desperation to a lot of new metalcore, especially the material released by bands that were doing it before it got over-saturated. A sense of eleventh hour panic has set in, and the guys who once had it made on Victory, Prosthetic, Metal Blade, and the like now have to fight for their place, pulling out all the stops to do so. This has resulted in surprisingly effective and revelatory shifts in approach (Poison the Well, to a much lesser extent As I Lay Dying), somewhat endearing adherences to a tried-and-true formula (Killswitch Engage), and the kind of crap that reminds you as to why metalcore stopped being interesting to begin with (almost literally every other metalcore band I didn’t mention). Evergreen Terrace, in terms of that scale, fall a little into all three categories, releasing a craptastic new album full of familiar-but-fun breakdowns and the occasional flourish of melody or jangling post-hardcore guitar to keep things from tasting stale and same-y. But the craptastic element casts a long shadow over the good parts, and leaves one wondering whether a band like Evergreen Terrace can ever truly make it out of the mall and into maturity. Almost Home, their new album, tries to reach the latter, but just winds up next to Banana Republic in the former.

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I suspect that, save for the weirdos and closeted avant-jazz heads lurking among our readership, many of you are unaware of or oblivious to the work of Trevor Dunn. Of course, any Mr. Bungle fan will instantly recognize the name of that seminal band’s bassist. Produced by the influential and infamous John Zorn, its 1991 self-titled debut might be one of most bizarre albums in my collection of bizarre albums, blending bombastic hard rock, demented circus music, and freak jazz with thematic wit, irreverence, and depravity. In subsequent years, the Mike Patton-fronted group took a proverbial backseat to the vocalist’s work in the comparatively more successful Faith No More, leaving Dunn and his cohorts to pursue other musical ventures including Secret Chiefs 3. Though Mr. Bungle ultimately and mysteriously disbanded after the release of its third album California, Patton and Dunn would continue their musical partnership in the experimental metal supergroup Fantomas–a still technically active quartet that also includes Melvins’ esteemed axeman Buzz Osbourne and Slayer’s revered drummer Dave Lombardo–as well as the related Fantomas-Melvins Big Band and Zorn’s “Moonchild”. Separately, Dunn has spent much of this decade as a major player in New York’s avant-jazz community, featuring in countless groups and albums including his own Trio-Convulsant. MadLove, however, might be the most extraordinary (and frustrating) release of Dunn’s career given its curious straightforwardness and accessibility.

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If Church of Misery stick around long enough, there is always the possibility that they will run out of serial killers to write songs about. While that would be good news for humanity, it would be a shame for metal, because the Tokyo band’s lyrical obsession is one of the great trademarks in metaldom, rivaling countrymen Corrupted’s insistence on singing every song in Spanish. It’s also one of two factors that distinguishes them from their many, many stoner/doom peers, the other being the fact that they kick unholy amounts of ass.

That second factor turns out to be pretty important in Houses of the Unholy, Church of Misery’s fourth platter of splatter. Behind all the sampled news bytes of their subjects’ heinous crimes, and shouts of “Blood sucking freeeeeeeak!!!,” Church of Misery fire off heavy, psychedelic rock ‘n roll as explosive as the shotgun blasts of James Oliver Huberty, the mass murderer who inspired “Shotgun Boogie.” The psychopath gimmick never really feels like a gimmick, thanks to the wooly jams that shit sparks all over the album.

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At this point in time, unless you’ve lived in a cave for the past few years, you know that Municipal Waste’s previous three albums (and an EP) have been steeped in thrash, beer, and partying… in no particular order. In that brief time, Municipal Waste’s impending retro-thrash throwback almost single-handedly inspired a plethora of seventeen year-old kids to buy Reeboks and shamelessly – and unfortunately – unintelligently “borrow” Kreator, Exodus, and D.R.I. riffs coupled with an emphasis on party-centric lyrics and sharp, speedy riffs.

To The Waste’s credit, though, they’re one of the few bands that manages to bring something new to the table on a consistent basis. Over the course of the band’s brief history, Municipal Waste has shown evolution and gradual, albeit slight, updates and innovations to their sound, culminating in Massive Aggressive, which – as cheesy and clichéd as it is dub it this – is probably the band’s most mature offering to date.

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Slipknots For Jesus.

(2 ½ out of 5 horns)

-GS

[Gary Suarez would like to apologize to Corey Mitchell for stealing his bit. He usually manages the consistently off-topic No Yoko No. Say, why don't you follow him on Twitter?]

Metal faithful, perhaps you can explain to me how a genre more rooted in classical music than most rock – from the lower-than-low register compositions and general epicness of Wagner and Mahler to the virtuosity of Bach, Vivaldi, and Paganini – so often lends itself to mangled attempts at integrating keyboards into the mix. Whether it’s the silly attempts to nudge metalcore hacks like Bleeding Through and Winds of Plague into grandiosity, trying to create a macabre atmosphere that just winds up sounding like a Wal-Mart Halloween display like Abigail Williams or latter day Dimmu Borgir, or the occasional yet still sad missteps of Emperor and early Dimmu Borgir, incorporating synthesized orchestration into extreme metal more often than not results in over-the-top wanking for wanking’s sake and/or keyboard effects that sound embarrassingly dated before they’re even put to tape. Whether it’s interludes or providing a counterpoint to the rest of the band, it more often than not comes off more Danny Elfman than Beethoven. I can’t understand how one can think keyboard acrobatics sound remotely metal.

That being said, when presented in the context of metal with extra cheese, they usually put whatever band that’s employing them over the top, launching them into a land considered either fun or grating (see: Dragonforce). This is the case for the inclusion of keyboards in Swedish melodic power/prog/death metallers Skyfire, who are often swallowed up by cheesiness in both the good and bad senses on Esoteric, their latest.

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Extreme-kin Park.

(two out of five horns)

[Corey Mitchell (AKA "The Old Fart") is a best-selling true crime author, founder of the #1 true crime blog, In Cold Blog, and sad about the recent death of my friend and fellow true crime author, Dale Hudson. RIP.]

Kittie Porn.

(3 out of 5 horns)

[Corey Mitchell (AKA "The Old Fart") is a best-selling true crime author, founder of the #1 true crime blog, In Cold Blog, and sad about the recent death of my friend and fellow true crime author, Dale Hudson. RIP.]