So Metalsucks (here too) and Nonelouder are posting their half-year top tens already, and too bad only one of them had the sense to include the new Meshuggah. Here's the absolute, definitive, no-questions-asked top rekkids of the year so far.
In alphabetical order:
1. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! Nick Cave’s newest was so good that it inspired me to check out some of the records that made me a fan, like From Her to Eternity and Tender Prey. This one’s even better. The year’s best record so far by a mile.
2. Disfear, Live the Storm Few bands have blurred the line between punk and metal so expertly. The best elements of At the Gates (who's singer’s here) and Converge (who's guitarist produces) blend into one awesome song that’s good enough to hear nine more times.
3. The Giraffes, Prime Motivator The most exciting and creative hard rock band to emerge this century throws down enough riffage to give their room-wrecking shows an ideal soundtrack. Surf rock infected with metal, waltz triplets and circus music would be all the rage if anyone else had the chops.
4. Local H, 12 Angry Months Two long-suffering musicians take a shot at Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks title and land somewhere in the top ten. An unapologetic and unpretentious concept album that proves that there are still grunge-era survivors who haven’t lost their teeth or their hooks. 5. Meshuggah, obZen Sweden’s heaviest write their most song-driven album since Destroy Erase Improve, remember that there’s no drum machine that can compete with Thomas Haake, and become the early frontrunners for metal album of the year.
Something tells me that the Melvins, Amon Amarth, Gojira, Mastodon and Metallica are going to shake things up before 2009.
Cut a few of those prog-rock tendencies and they could move in on Mastodon’s fan base, shorten some of the songs and they could thrash with Arch Enemy. Get an operatic singer and extended solos and they’d co-headline with Dream Theater now, or indulge their acoustic side and they'd write a bitchin’ medieval record. But Sweden’s most popular metalheads (sorry In Flames) pander to no one, and they continue to make atypical, challenging and sometimes great records like Watershed.
The acoustic “Coil” is a strong, bare bones is a strong start to the album, even if “I can see running through the fields of sorrow” was an unwise choice for the chorus. It leads nicely into “Heir Apparent,” a signature Opeth track with copious progressions, unyielding percussion assaults and an acoustic breakdown that could soundtrack any Lord of the Rings movie. New guitarist Fredrik Akesson (of Arch Enemy) provides some nasty solos, and relatively new drummer Martin Axenrot sounds right at home. Most metal bands could have made full-length albums based on the components of the organ-laced “Burden” or wailing, relatively accessible “Porcelain Heart.”
As expected for a metal band on their eighth album, there is more singing, acoustic segments and orchestration than on previous albums. “The Lotus Eater” starts with Akerfeldt’s soft humming and a keyboard-spawned violin sound, and it features a chamberlain melody and a truly awesome electric keyboard breakdown further down the song. “Hessian Peel” tries to throw all the band’s best jazz, folk and metal elements into 11 and a half haunting minutes, and it can afford to be excessive by never running out of hooks. This is strictly a headphones record, one that rewards multiple listens and would be better suited for your lonesome self than your next kegger.
The album never sounds anything less than great when it’s playing, although the songs don’t stick the way they did on Blackwater Park and Ghost Reveries. Bandleader Mikael Akerfeldt might want to give some of his ideas more room to breath on the next album, perhaps focus more on one specific indulgence and let it spotlight. That may not be a popular move with his prog-rock fans, but since when has Opeth done anything to be popular?
It's a forgettable expansion of the TV show, wittier than it is funny, and has the best introduction of possibly any movie since Detroit Rock City. Don't talk, watch.
Yes, that's Mastodon as concession food impersonating King Diamond. If theaters played this in place of Fandango ads, I'd start showing up to movies early again.
Someone working on ATHF must be a metalhead--Zakk Wylde, Ted Nugent and Glenn Danzig have all appeared on the show. But this is by far my favorite of their cameos.
The newly reunited Rage Against the Machine recently headlined Day One of the Electric Weekend festival in Madrid. Lest one think that almost ten years away from a recording studio had calmed them down at all, the band showed up dressed as Guantanamo Bay detainees.
This comes 15 years after RATM introduced themselves to much of the world by giving up their Lollapalooza time slot with a none-too-subtle message.
Rage Against the Machine officially released only 34 original songs, all politically charged and all awesome. One of the first-ever to meld rap and hard rock, Rage became a rock band for metal fans to like, a metal band for rock fans to like and the whitest band that was OK for hip-hoppers to admire (and tour with, in the Wu-Tang Clan's case) since the Beastie Boys. They're also unchallenged as the most politically active rock band of the past 20 years.
Rage benefits from one of the best singer/guitarist combos in the world. Harvard graduate Tom Morello is one of the most inventive axemen of our time, especially with a pedal, and fiery, confrontational rapper Zack de la Rocha has one of the most distinct and forceful barks in the world. He can't sing or even rap very well, but funk metal never had a stronger vocalist.
Some folks find Rage Against the Machine's compliance with huge corporations like MTV and Sony BMG hypocritical. Maybe a band of pinkos that covers Ian McKaye should be expected to shun those organizations, but I thought it was pretty cool how RATM infiltrated the media to get their voices heard. Did the producers of the last American Godzilla movie realize that their soundtrack's lead single attacked consumerism, packaged rebellion and the movie itself, which de la Rocha calls "pure motherfuckin' filler?"
During the band's 1996 SNL performance (with host Steve Forbes!), NBC cut the band's set to one song and removed two upside-down flags from the stage. But somehow, it was still OK for them to perform their anti-weapons industry hit 'Bulls on Parade.'
Was there a single Clear Channel radio programmer who thought there was something odd about giving airtime to 'Guerilla Radio?'
Whenever the media were ingested and promoted Rage's music without grasping just how subversive it was, it was always through the media's ignorance and not the band's subtlety. Not that they never got in trouble for their activism--the filming of the Michael Moore-directed video 'Sleep Now in the Fire' got the band escorted off the Wall Street by security, and caused the New York Stock Exchange to close (watch here.)
Although their left-wing and free speech activism is usually admirable, the band has expressed misguided support for terrorist South American organizations, advocated the release of some questionable convicted killers and are frankly as blindly leftist as Ted Nugent is conservative. Their 1984-quoting hit 'Testify' is a great song, but the "Bush and Gore are the same person"-themed video is shameful propaganda. It's infuriating to watch nowadays, when one considers the current administration, and I really hope no one abstained from voting (or supported Nader, who appears at the song's end) because they saw this video.
It doesn't seem like they've learned their lesson--Tom Morello recently refused to support Barack Obama for being too right-wing.
As bothersome as it, there's no way around the fact that Rage Against the Machine were one of the most powerful and original mainstream rock bands of '90s, and one of the best. And in a time where it's patriotic to keep your mouth shut, Rage's music is refreshing and invigorating. No matter how hard you try, you can't stop them now.
No, Bo Diddley is not a hard rock or metal artist. But were it not for the one-chord, 2-bar beat he popularized, we might not have some incredible music by Led Zeppelin:
Guns N' Roses:
Hüsker Dü:
or the Stooges:
Even one of the songs I wrote about yesterday encompasses a Bo Diddley beat. Fact is, there's been barely any rock n' roll in history that hasn't taken from the late Ellas McDaniel, inadvertently or not. In case you're wondering, that's because Bo Diddley was a wicked guitar player, a mean songwriter and a rebel with more class and attitude than any given legion of death metal wannabes. Plus, this guy walked 47 miles on barbed-wire and used a cobra snake for a necktie.
A few years ago, I saw Bo Diddley perform live in Times Square (my college radio show that week had been an hour of all Bo Diddley and High on Fire). The overpriced, chotchke-hawking excuse for a venue was packed with middle-aged folks who occasionally looked up from their dinners to clap for the guy playing guitar. It would have been perfectly reasonable for the man who once said that he was "out to destroy the audience" to break someone's head with a square guitar, but instead he performed a lively, cheerful set that included great-sounding new songs, a few good dirty jokes and, I kid you not, a freestyle rap that was shockingly rocktacular. Oh yeah, he also played "Bo Diddley," "I'm a Man," "Mona" and a few more of the greatest rock n' roll songs ever written. In case you forgot.
Chances are, you missed the here today-gone today flick Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny when it reached theaters a while back. But watching the trailers for Tropic Thunder and Kung Fu Panda put Pick of Destiny back into my consciousness (briefly), and it reminded me that said movie actually had a pretty metal beginning and end that were worth checking out.
No, the movie's not very good, and I'm saying that as a big fan of Tenacious D (the guys, their music and the TV show), Liam Lynch, rock n' roll and bad movies. A friend I saw it with summed up the movie's blunders perfectly--the band had come up with a plot and struggled to create songs around it, rather than the other way around. A patched-together movie based around their already great songs would've been a midnight classic, but instead Tenacious D wrote some just-OK music about a story that wasn't bad enough to be good. Still, you could never tell that this movie would suck based on the intro, which stars the incomparable Meat Loaf and the most excellent Ronnie James Dio.
A bunch of stuff happens in between that and their final rock-off with perhaps the best-ever onscreen Beelzebub, played Virginia's greatest son since George Washington. Or at least since GWAR.
That 666 drum kit really takes the cake.
In fairness, it's probably a good thing that the movie tanked--what would become of ultimate underdogs Jack Black and Kyle Gass if they started having #1 movies, MTV Awards and Rolling Stone cover stories? Instead, we get a couple of good moments, and hopes that Dethklok and Flight of the Conchords will be more careful.
1. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!
2. Disfear, Live the Storm
5. Meshuggah, obZen
