MetalSucks

We here at MetalBlows take our retro obscure seriously. Not simply the passing fads of ‘ain’t-it-oh-so-hep’ genre rehashes-of-de-moment, but I’m talkin real-deal old-school underground shiz…naturally, this holds especially true when it comes to classic psychedelic prog.

And therefore, I am honored to present to you this long-stuck-in-the-crates (or hard drive, rather) Japanese gem from yesteryear. I first heard this album one early weekend morn at the infamous Shit Factory (well before the first phase of the MS Mansion was even under construction), after a long night of galavanting about in the nether regions of Brookland — and I’ll be damned if it didn’t take me one hell of a minute to find it at my music-gathering place-of-choice, our many internets.

I recently got into a debate with the esteemed rebbe Anton Oyvey(sky) about obscure 70s psych-prog bands, which fast turned into a challenge, then eventually a bit of a pissing contest, and finally a bet…needless to say, I brought up The Flower Travellin’ Band, and he’s since become the only head of a rabbinical studies program at a renowned yeshiva with a handlebar mustache. Mucho props to you for going through with it, buddy!

And so I turn to you, our hate-mongering tripped-out readers, and suggest that perhaps this would be a good afternoon to unearth that frozen 8th of fungi, whip up some of Grandpa Wingerschmidt’s World-Famous Mushroomz Tea, put on this album from start to fffinish, begin cleaning your home, and have a good ol’ fashioned buggout when you get to the back closet…yelp!!

After the jump, in its entirety, Satori.

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The influence and importance of Gothenburg, Swedish’s In Flames is familiar to devoted metalheads but bears repeating to the rest: along with At the Gates and Dark Tranquillity, In Flames pioneered and refined the sound that would later become known as melodic death metal (or “The Gothenburg Sound”), directly influencing hundreds of bands from their genesis in the early ’90s to the myriad metalcore bands that walk the planet today. By combining death metal with Maiden and Judas Priest-influenced guitars and their own astute songwriting sensibility, Stromblad and co. hit a chord that still rings loud today. The band is now nothing short of an international metal sensation and they continue to take their blistering live show on the road year after year. I’d venture to say to that In Flames, through their unique sense of melody, aggression and songcraft, are more directly influential on today’s metal scene than any other band, even the much-celebrated At the Gates.

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(In preparation for Tuesday’s release of *ObZen*, the new album by Meshuggah, the following is a repost of one of the first pieces that yours-motherfuckin-truly ever wrote for MetalSucks — yay.)

Ahhh, alliteration… awesome, aye asshole? All literary snickers aside, this band is an absolute MUST for any serious metalhead, especially those folks who have more progressive leanings…but don’t go thinkin this is gonna be a walk in the park–getting into Meshuggah can be quite a demanding process for many, myself included.

The first few times I listened to Meshuggah (which incidentally means crazy in Hebrew), I walked away feeling more than just slightly ill; something about the stark, staccato, rhythmically assymmetrical (yet surprisingly largely in 4/4) sound made me noticeably queasy. As we have recently learned from the esteemed Rabbi Vincent X. Neilshteinawitz, vomit is occasionally induced by the sickest of bands (after VN’s infamous run-in with Blackwater Park in my Brooklyn apartment a couple weeks ago, my porcelain palace of puke will never be the same), and my first few experiences with Meshuggah were pretty similar. Except even without the dark demon whiskey lurking in my belly, I still felt nautious after a few songs. Then I grew a goddamn pair, and my musical bar for the tightest, proggiest (in a good way), and most syncopated metal was raised once again.

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So this week we lost another extremely solid musician. For those of you who don’t know, Buddy Miles was a super-thick backbone groove drummer who played early on with The Delfonics and Wilson Pickett, but was ultimately best known for his contributions (not only behind the trap kit, but with vocals on a few tracks as well) on the seminal live recording Band of Gypsys, which also featured some dude named Jimi Hendrix on guitar and the always-dependable Billy Cox on bass.

The 6-track album was culled together from parts of the last two sets the trio did over their New Year’s Eve/Day 1969-70 four performance-run held at the Fillmore East, and Band of Gypsys was the last Hendrix-authorized album to be released before his unexpected death in September 1970.

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Dude. What fucking kind of music are you supposed to tell people Converge play? I know the traditionalist answer is “hardcore,” and there’s certainly no shortage of that subgenre’s DIY mentality within the band (to say nothing of their raucous live shows, which certainly have the aesthetic and feel of a hardcore gig), but that doesn’t seem to really cover all the ground; the band are confessed metalheads and the Slayer element is undeniable, although to call Converge “metalcore” somehow seems like an insult in light of all the negative connotations that go with that tag.

So why don’t we just go with “extreme?” Because no matter what type of music Converge are playing – and their history shows they have a much wider range than many give them credit for – it exists, always and without fail, at the outermost reaches of the aural spectrum.

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Seminal Boston band Cave In have an intruiging history, one that took them from sweaty basement DYI hardcore shows to spaced-out progressive mettalirock to major-label bidding war and then all the way back, all within the span of a few short years. No heavy band from the Northeastern US seems to be as widely loved and respected yet criminally overlooked as Cave In.

Cave In started out playing a blistering, dense hybrid of hardcore and metal and morphed into progged-out, cerebral space-rock seemingly overnight. The band’s early sound filtered Metallica and Slayer riffs through aggro-calculus-core chugga-chugga akin to Converge and Dillinger Escape Plan, two bands whose histories are closely intertwined with Cave In. But what made the band so interesting was the way they grew over time to weave art-metal experimentation, melody and psychedelia into their otherwise brutal, mind-bending assault. The result was a truly progressive, artistic, brutal and most importantly one-of-a-kind sound that was unmatched during the band’s run and remains astonishing and relevant to this day.

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I mean, really — come on. There is no other truly progressive contemporary rock band unafraid to make such new sounds and defy all sense of traditional song structure that is this much in the public eye. Any which way you look at it, that’s pretty damn impressive. The band’s first full-length album, De-loused In The Comatorium, captured the intrigue of just about everyone you know, and for good reason: way back then (2003) it was fresh, something we had never heard before, like a latino Led Zeppelin from outer space. Fucking amazing.

And then, almost immediately, The Mars Volta evolved at ludicrous speed and became extreme-art spazz prog noisters on ther next record Frances the Mute, with the last song clocking in at just over 30 bloody minutes — goddamn. Understandably, many people were turned off by the ultra-prog/experimental nature of Frances, but several listens later, the album is undeniably amazing (at times) — I just don’t think that most people gave it enough shots. But there are rewards aplenty, and every song is densely layered and uniquely structured; a thinking man’s emotional/loud music project, appealing rock in so many ways.

Even the recording was its own controlled experiment — each of the players specific parts was tracked separately, forcing every member of the band to have faith in the collage-to-follow and complete song to emerge on the other side. A method occasionally employed in the past by Miles Davis, the results were slightly uneven, but the overall concepts came through quite clearly, and the album plays extremely solidly (never disjointed, as one might expect). A valiant sophomore effort that never once tried to emulate the tone or song structures from the first record but instantly surpassed it for anyone willing to really listen, that album at that point from this band is a testament to the ongoing artistry of The Mars Volta from the beginning until now — there is nothing to invariably compare them to; each record is its own concept and creation, proving just how important it is when experiencing an artist’s next project to release any previously preconceived notions and let the new work unfold itself to you.

Amputechture, their third full-length studio offering, ought best be approached in this way (5 of the 8 tracks are 9+ minutes long, all the way up to 16 at the lengthiest) — almost everyone I’ve talked to on the subject can’t stand the damn thing, but again I suspect that very few were willing to listen to it repeatedly enough to soak in the sopping thick songs. And I admit it was difficult for me as well at first, but I have come to realize that the band has evolved in an extremely natural and perfectly impressive way throughout their career, and Amputechture is currently my most listened-to of the three. Yes, it’s largely because I basically wore the shit out of De-loused for a couple years and am now simply happy to continue to get to know (and thereby appreciate) the more recent MV recordings. But that said — Amputechture is really incredible, and if you don’t think so, you truly need to twist a J and make nice with that album. The more I listen and let myself trust the tunes, the more I want to revisit the whole damn thing in one go instead of skipping around as I often do. Understandably hard to commit to the album as a whole, but no reason to write off its abundant strengths.

And so now we are upon the next Mars Volta album, The Bedlam In Goliath, due out on Tuesday. And what less should we expect at this point than something revolutionary? I for one can’t wait, and have full well faith that this shit is gonna explode, unevenly or not.

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Once upon a time, these guys were amazing, in a very specific, granddaddies of math-rock kinda way. Sure, some of the jams would go on for a really long time, often repeating a rhythmic guitar loop for ages while the octopussian drummer, Damon Che, would thump and pound concentric circles around yr ass, but the music would wax and wane, shift and progress, each section creating a strong distinct mood — almost always fascinating but not always so interesting, nawmean?

In any case, Don Caballero holds a vital spot in the history of…well, in the history of math-rock, even though they apparently hated that genre name (especially in reference to their trigonometric music). But honestly folks there’s no other way to describe it, as their sound usually seems straight out of an AP Calculus textbook: complicated, quite textured, and haughty (for the most part). Extremely impressive, not the most listenable band out there. And the last time I saw them play (with a mostly new line-up) the set left a lot to be desired.

But now, a small handful of years later, some way, somehow…Don Caballero seems to have gotten awesome again.

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Legendary guitar player/frontman Scott “Wino” Weinrich led this rippin’ doomy metal outfit for two solid runs (’77-’86 and ‘90-’95; in the hiatus Wino moved to California and joined St. Vitus), and from the beginning, the band somehow found a strange balance in the burgeoning DC punk scene — longhairs who bro’d down with the skinheads. Rare, and somehow touching; the raw earnest strength of Wino’s playing/vocals clearly went a long way, and won over the hearts and ears of so many seminal musicians and fans of the era.

But don’t just take my word for it — listen to (and see) praise straight from the horse’s mouth, namely in the heavy personfication of Henry Rollins, Phil Anselmo, Ian McKaye, and many, many more…I am referring to the scratchy, faded 1994 Sony Music Entertainment rockumentary on The Obsessed (linked after the jump), a very effective and amusing anecdote-laden portrait of one of underground metal’s most serious well-kept secrets. The photography is totally blown-out, but the message comes across loud and clear: The Obsessed are truly what’s up.

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Okay, so Vince may have beaten me to the punch in reminding y’all bout the strength of seminal Soundgarden in light of recent/impending poop from lead singer Chris Cornell, but I simply cannot remain mum on the subject given just how f’n AWESOME the band was — here’s a fistful-o-tunes to get yr weekend started…

I still can’t get enough of this band. What a milestone and a treat it has been to experience the magic of Soundgarden; who else is writing songs with this much dynamic and range that r-o-c-k so fucking hard? This is some of the smartest and most heartfelt aggressive songwriting EVER.

And there’s no question that Chris Cornell was the 90s Robert Plant — a title that Cedric from The Mars Volta rightfully earns (so far) for the 21st century — similarly, Cornell can wail and sustain for so goddamn long, at such a high register, that from time to time it’s hard not to wonder if he is indeed a castrati. Girl can sang!

SOUNDGARDEN – “Hands All Over”, from Louder Than Love (1989)

**SOUNDGARDEN – “Birth Ritual”, from Singles Soundtrack (1992)

SOUNDGARDEN – “Rusty Cage”, from Badmotorfinger (1991)

SOUNDGARDEN – “Jesus Christ Pose”, from Badmotorfinger (1991)

SOUNDGARDEN – “Mind Riot”, from Badmotorfinger (1991)

SOUNDGARDEN – “Holy Water”, from Badmotorfinger (1991)

SOUNDGARDEN – “Let Me Drown”, from Superunknown (1994)

SOUNDGARDEN – “Fell On Black Days”, from Superunknown (1994)

SOUNDGARDEN – “The Day I Tried To Live”, from Superunknown (1994)

Enjoy — but leave the frickin flannel in the back of the closet, fer chrissakes!

-KW

BONUS!!

Checkacheckout Soundgarden’s first-ever music video, for “Flower”, from Ultramega OK (1990):

So this guy Jeff Mueller, and the three seminal bands he formed over the last ten + years, Rodan, June of 44, and Shipping News, has/have greatly influenced the stark, melodic guitar-heavy drone meets aggressive post-rock world, and truly spoken to this guy right here.

I wish I could say I was one of the kids back in the day who really appreciated these forward thinking, understated bands like June of 44 or Slint, but to be honest, at the time, in addition to grungetronica, I was pretty preoccupied with bands like this and a dude they will forever call the G-father. It took me many years before I discovered the abundant fruits of the post-post scene, which often admittedly sound like something coming out of some random basement as you walk by a paint-chipped house in some random city like Portland or Milwakee, but herein lies the charm as well…in this case Louisville is the home of the sound (as well as the birthplace of Slint), and my prolific man Mueller has outdone himself with these three bands.

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John McLaughlin is perhaps the most purposeful shredder I have ever heard. And nowhere is that more apparant than in the opening tracks of his supergroup’s seminal albums.

Check out these choice ’70s heavy prog-fusion cuts:

1) Mahavishnu Orchestra - “Birds of Fire”, from Birds of Fire (1972) – This was my favorite album by the ‘Vish when I was in tenth grade, and it still is. Goes well with ganja.

2) Mahavishnu Orchestra - “Meeting Of The Spirits”, from The Inner Mounting Flame (1971) – This is the perfect song to seduce a vampire to.

3) Mahavishnu Orchestra - “Eternity’s Breath Part 1″ – from Visions of the Emerald Beyond (1974) – For those who’ve found Jesus in the form of Krishna with a fuzz box. To be immediately followed by “Eternity’s Breath Part 2″, no exceptions!

-KW

Visit John McLaughlin’s new-agey yet comprehensive website

Welcome to the inaugural edition of the Sunday Spotlight, in which prolific masters of yesteryear get their just due…first up: the almighty Opeth, whose live double CD, The Roundhouse Tapes, comes out this Tuesday.

I thought that when Alpha-Boy first introduced me to “The Moor”, the opening track on Opeth’s timeless classic album Still Life, and my balls finally dropped, the music couldn’t get any better. How could this unrealistically epic band trump what had to be their crowning achievement? I now realize in retrospect that in a way, A.B. chose the perfect introduction; from Still Life, there were a few unique directions to go in: the shockingly perfect aggressive groove of Deliverance, the mellow come-down of Damnation, the rough, throw-back sound of My Arms, Your Hearse, and of course it wasn’t long before I discovered Opeth’s true masterpiece, the indefatigable Blackwater Park.

For those that get it, there is no greater progressive metal outfit; Opeth perfectly defines what intelligent, brutal, precious power in the form of electric music ought to be. Be forewarned — this band is often so unbelievably overwhelming that uncontrollable reactions may occur. I will admit that they do take themselves quite seriously, which some could offer a snicker towards, but they actually deserve to…in this genre we call metal, no other band strikes as perfect a blend of the sublimely pretty and darkly gutteral (allbeit groove-heavy). Talk about dynamics!

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