MetalSucks

Los Angeles psychedelic-doom drivers Ancestors are already back with another new album after last year’s acclaimed two track debut Neptune With Fire, and this time around they’re  arguably even more ambitious. On the eight track Of Sound Mind, the band expands their scope and continues their doom-laden trip down nostalgia lane, with plenty of prog rock inspirations. And lots of guitars.

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I’m in my bunk. Everyone else is asleep. We’re riding through some windy dark mountain roads somewhere in Germany on the way to the next show. I’ve got “Ghost of Perdition” by Opeth blasting on my headphones. Figured that I would give that a spin. I haven’t really listened to them very much lately. I kinda burned out on them for a while. I never stopped loving their music, but I think I just had more than my brain could handle. When I got into after the release of Blackwater Park, all the way through the release of Ghost Reveries, I’d say that Opeth were on my iTunes at least once a day. They are a band that I’ve listened to, and listened to again, and again, and again. There’s always something new to find in their music. Not only did I listen my ass off but I went to their shows whenever possible. I saw them at least six times before I even met them. I ended up dating a member of their crew for a little while, so that meant more and more Opeth shows. Basically, I know my Opeth, and from the musicianship to the composition I think that they are one of the greatest bands of all time.

That said, I haven’t decided to listen to them in about a year before tonight. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Albums that I just absolutely love, I would consider and just be like, naaah. Maybe it’s the mental equivalent of a water-soluble vitamin like C. Once you have your dosage, the rest just gets released with your urine. Maybe your brain can only handle so much of one type of stimulus for so long before it shuts off to it. I mean that’s happened to me with other bands.

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As I mentioned earlier, Kip and I went to see Porcupine Tree (and King’s X!) this past Thursday. Porcupine Tree was good, if not spectacular… they’re all great players, they write good songs, have an excellent sense of composition and are certainly quite accomplished; but at no point during the performance was I at all wowed.

Except when I realized that “Time Flies,” Movement IX from the first disc of the band’s new record The Incident, is a dead rip-off of Pink Floyd’s “Dogs” (from the Animals record, a personal favorite of mine). Now, Steven Wilson has certainly never been shy about his love of Floyd, and even if not for that it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s heard Porcupine Tree’s music before that the band bows down in the alter of Floyd. But YO, this is like, too similar for comfort. Check it out:

Porcupine Tree – “Time Flies”:

Pink Floyd – “Dogs”:

I’m not crazy, right? The staccato-strummed acoustic guitar, the keyboard swells leading into each chord change, similar vocal melodies, the verse that starts “and after a while…”. The only real difference is that the P-Tree riff is in 3/4 instead of Floyd’s 4/4. Sorry Steven, you rule at producing Opeth and you’re a talented musician, but for this you get a big, fat, epic FAIL.

-VN

Since its inception in the late ‘80s, black metal has been one of the most rigid genres in terms of evolution and change. While bands like Cradle of Filth, Dimmu Borgir, and Behemoth trumpet the genre through its larger than life, orchestral origins, black metal’s “elite” have gained their notoriety through either a) being a part of the original church-burning generation and altering their sound as little as possible or b) miming the original church-burning generation as closely as possible, right down to the tape hisses and wall of buzz saw guitars. But after nearly two decades of existence and reverence in the metal and music worlds as a whole, many bands have moved away from their restrictive lo-fi roots and come to embrace different influences, resources, and inspirations. The band that has best exemplified this move from their base to the outer limits is Enslaved, one of Norway’s longest running black metal bands. Before American upstarts Nachtmytsium made it cool to melt your Burzum and Pink Floyd records together, Enslaved were dabbling in the dark power of psychedelia on Below the Lights and ISA. Though those who take black metal seriously insist that sticking to their guns has been the key to longevity, its shifts in sounds and ideologies has been what’s kept it alive. Those shifts have been most solidly illustrated by Enslaved, and has resulted in one of the most impressively consistent discographies in metal, right up through their latest genre-bending triumph Vertebrae.

Grutle Kjellson, Enslaved’s bass player and lead vocalist, has been with the band since the beginning. In an interview he was kind enough to grant MetalSucks via phone from his home in Norway, he talks about the importance of looking forward creatively, what influenced Vertebrae, working with longtime bandmate Ivar Bjornson in Enslaved and their experimental metal side project Trinacria, the overall importance of Pink Floyd on his band’s sound, and the fans that only want to hear songs off of their early ‘90s demos at their shows.

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It’s with great sadness today that I report that Pink Floyd keyboardist and co-founder Richard Wright died today of cancer at his home in Britain at the age of 65. [NYTimes.com]

If there was no Pink Floyd, there’d be no metal. I firmly belief that. And for me personally, if Pink Floyd hadn’t sustained me musically through the nu-metal years, I may well have completely lost interest in progressive music or anything good. Who knows. So if you don’t think Pink Floyd news belongs on a metal site, you’re wrong. And besides, it’s my website. So fuck off and start your own.

If you need further convincing (or just wanna jam to some timeless tunes), check out a post I wrote a few months back with some mp3s of metal bands covering “Welcome to the Machine.”

More of my thoughts on Rick Wright after the jump…

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Nachtmystium’s Assassins: Black Meddle Part I is every bit as good as all the hype. Axl and I both placed it on our very-preliminary 2008 Top 10 lists and have waxed ecstaticly about it on multiple occasions; and earlier today, new MetalSucks contributor Sammy O’Hagar wrote a glowing 4.5/5 horns review. I recently had the opportunity to email Nachtmystium singer/guitarist/brainchild Blake Judd a bunch of questions, and wouldn’t you know it, the fine Chicagoan answered them. For Judd’s thoughts on Assassins, his Pink Floyd fetish, black metal, and other interesting tidbits click through the jump.

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“A Seed for Suffering,” the first proper song on Nachtmystium’s last album, Instinct:Decay, felt like a thrown gauntlet. After almost four minutes of pretty good black metal, the following three are a wall of psychedelic guitars all looping around a riff that wouldn‘t sound out of place on an early Burzum record. In a world as narrow as that of black metal, it was akin to handing out British flags in the dingiest pub in Belfast, Northern Ireland. This, of course, lead to two years of anticipation for their next record, to be put out on Century Media with an actual budget. After months of reading overwhelmingly positive press for the album, it only left one to wonder whether or not the band would collapse under the weight of their own hype or continue to establish a solid link between psychedelia and black metal.

Gods be praised, it’s the latter.

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Nachtmystium’s new record Assassins: Black Meddle Part 1, which drops June 10th on Century Media, is such a solid record that it’s sure to be on a lot of people’s year-end Top 10 lists, as Axl wrote about a month ago. If you’re one of those (like me) who are usually turned off by most black metal because of its sameness and lo-fi-for-the-sake-of-lo-fi production values, this is the record for you. If you like your metal heady and smart, this is the record for you. If you’re a fan of Pink Floyd, boy oh boy is this the record for you.

Any Floyd fan should recognize the homage in the album title immediately. Opening track “One of These Nights” is a sinister-sounding black metal interpretation of Meddle opening track “One of These Days.” The three-part, album-closing epic “Seasick” is an obvious nod to the 22-minute epic “Echoes” from that same album. And the comparisons go on from there.

Guitar World’s MetalKult blog is doing a 7-part “In The Studio” video series chronicling the recording of Assassins: Black Meddle Part 1. The first entry features the band members talking about the role of mushrooms and beer in the band’s writing process, as well as some other studio shenanigans and behind-the-scenes footage.

This is a fucking fantastic album. You owe it to yourselves to pick it up on June 10th.

-VN

For some reason metal bands have particularly taken to covering Pink Floyd. Actually, pretty much everyone has taken to covering Pink Floyd because, well, they’re one of the best and most important bands of all time. But of all metal covers of Pink Floyd tunes, “Welcome to the Machine” seems to get the nod more frequently than most. There’s something about that plodding rhythm that is just so visceral and brutal and ripe for metal renditions.

Invisible Oranges recently posted the original along with Queensryche’s version from their 2007 release Take Cover and Shadows Fall’s version from The Art of Balance.

Pink Floyd – “Welcome to the Machine” (Wish You Were Here, 1975)
Shadows Fall – “Welcome to the Machine” (The Art of Balance, 2002)
Queensryche – “Welcome to the Machine” (Take Cover, 2007)

Which do you prefer?

-VN

This is the news that Axl, myself, and approximately 7 other guitar dorks worldwide have been eagerly awaiting. Steve Stevens — Billy Idol’s guitarist for years, Vince Neil’s guitarist on the Exposed album, and king Brooklyn Jew (birth name: Steve Schneider –take a look at that shnoz!) — will be releasing a new solo album, Memory Crash, on January 29th via Steve Vai’s Magna Carta record label. Doug Pinnick of King’s X makes a guest appearance lending his soulful voice to one track, as does Billy Idol / ex-Ozzy bassist Brian Tichy.

Those who have followed Steve Stevens closely over the years as I have — and I’m guessing there’s maybe one of you who has — know what an underrated and incredible guitarist he is. In addition to writing all those classic Idol riffs (”Rebel Yell,” “White Wedding,” etc etc etc), Stevens absolutely tore it up on Vince Neil’s Exposed record, his 1993 post-Motley solo debut. He wrote some amazing songs, and fuck did he ever go nuts on the guitar on that album. He’s also done a bunch of experimental stuff over the years (Bozzio / Levin / Stevens) and some studio work here and there.

Stevens says about the record, it’s “a journey through another dimension, It’s virtually musical cinema.” Citing influences such as prog-rock giants Pink Floyd, Yes, King Crimson, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer, he continues, “I’ve always loved that about the prog records, like Dark Side Of The Moon. You enter this little theater of the mind. It’s a true headphone experience.”

Cool.

-VN

Fridays are usually a great show and someone usually smokes us out ’till we’re stupid. Most of the time we don’t actually play this song but about an hour after the show when we’re driving and the van is all quiet, someone will yell out “Vera, Vera? Does anybody else in here feel the way I do?” Nonstop laughing ensues.

Pink Floyd – “Vera” (from The Wall [Disc 2])

Visit Arsonists Get All the Girls on MySpace.

[We want to sincerely thank Arsonists Get All the Girls for helping us out this week. That was fun, fellas... stop by anytime! - The MetalSucks Dudes]

People so often get caught up in the mind-blowing masterpiece — hell, career-piece — that is Dream Theater’s 1999 release Scenes From a Memory, that the band’s next release, the double-disc Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence, often gets overlooked. Disc 1 is fantastic Dream Theater fare, but its Disc 2 that is truly special, another conceptual piece that never got its due because of its predecessor. And it’s this disc, a couple of tracks of which were played over the PA at last night’s Avenged Sevenfold show in NYC, that has inspired me to bring back the long dormant Album of the Day column.

Disc 2 of Six Degrees isn’t a conceptual album in that it follows one story, but rather tells the individual stories of many, troubled folks linked by their struggles with the banalities of daily life. In this respect Disc 2 is a whole lot like Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, but the music runs the gamut from the sweet, full-on orchestrations of “I. Overture” to Dream-Theater-at-their-heaviest “III. War Inside My Head” to the progged-out “IV. The Test That Stumped Them All” to the beautiful, incredibly well-arranged (what else would you expect?) “VI. Solitary Shell,” the latter of which inspired me to write this post last night. And it wouldn’t be conceptual if musical themes didn’t come back around also — “VII. About to Crash (Reprise)” brings back the original of the same namesake from the beginning of the album, just as “VIII. Losing Time – Grand Finale” does to the orchestral overture, bringing things full circle.

While Scenes From a Memory may have stolen the show in the minds of most DT fans, SDOIT (especially Disc 2) should absolutely be mentioned in the same breath.

-VN

Seriously dudes… this band is fucking sick. They channel the spirit of Pink Floyd and Dream Theater, but are neither as trippy as Floyd or masturbatory as Dream Theater, yet somehow manage to rock harder than both. If Ty Tabor from King’s X went off and formed a band with Mike Portnoy it’d probably sound something like this. I was sitting around stoned with some friends last night, and this song came on accidentally on my iTunes; “Shallow” from the album Deadwing. It had been so long since I listened to the Tree that I had completely forgotten about their awesomeness. Enjoy this as you sip your morning coffee.

-VN

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