Blind Guardian, "Carry the Blessed Home"

12 Days to Find a Home



Chris Weingarten once wrote of today's music critics having "fairly pronounced predispositions for anything that reminds us of the golden-era hip-hop and grunge-era alternative rock of our youth (probably why we've been championing Killer Mike and Japandroids, respectively)." I understand and play into that sentiment, as a fan of both of those artists, but metal is different to me. As much as I enjoy neo-thrash bands like Skeletonwitch, Warbringer and Municipal Waste, I never feel much desire to listen to them when I already have the Big Four. I prefer metal bands to honor their heroes with innovation rather than imitation--to my ears, the Dillinger Escape Plan pays more tribute to Metallica than Machine Head does.

Likewise, you can keep your DragonForce and your Nightwish as long as I get to keep Blind Guardian. For about 30 years, these German badasses have been updating the Priest and Maiden formulas with more speed, pomp and symphony, complete with the songs to make it work. Most of their songs seem to be inspired by Valhalla and/or Tolkien, but "Carry the Blessed Home" is a wonderful piece of bombast that turns Stephen King's Dark Tower series into Legend of Zelda music from Asgard. If that doesn't sound up your alley, there's always the Decemberists.

Machine Head, Burn My Eyes

It has not been a good month for famous bands staying together, between Dave Lombardo leaving Slayer, Scott Weiland getting fired again and more recently Adam Duce leaving Machine Head after 21 years. It sounds like an awful situation, but not one that will cripple the band. Machine Head's best songwriting days are behind them, and as anyone who ever saw them on a 360-degree stage can tell you, Robb Flynn is the only one in the band with any stage charisma. They'll be able to tour on their great songs for the rest of their lives, and that seems fair.



Said great songs are nearly all on 1994's Burn My Eyes. I'm not a big believer in Machine Head's 2000s comeback. Writing long metal songs does not make them epics. But on their debut, Machine Head were better than any groove metal band that wasn't Pantera. Pushing the extremity of singable metal further than their thrash metal influences, while grounding themselves in thrash's double bass pedals, hardcore breakdowns and reality-based lyrics, Machine Head shaped the next two decades of metalcore and played it harder than nearly anyone else does today. Duce's controlled bass lines are at the forefront of many of the best songs, including "Block" and "Old." His place in metal history is safe.

Alice Cooper, "We're All (Clones)"

Few things piss off metalheads like the idea that their favorite musicians are hopping trends. KISS fans pretend that their disco song doesn't exist, even though it's one of their biggest hits. Machine Head's nu-metal years, the Page-Coverdale album and "Turbo Lover" are derided by everyone who remembers them. Even when a band jumps between sub-mainstream genres, such as the metalcore incarnation of Cryptopsy or Morbid Angel's industrial album, one would think that they'd have teamed up with Justin Bieber for the amount of bile that gets thrown their way. In the eyes of some headbangers, they may never redeem themselves.

But what if the trend-hopping songs are really great?



By 1980, Alice Cooper had already spent a few years releasing rehab-inspired ballads and rehashes of his early '70s ragers. But he roared back to life with "We're All (Clones)," a shameless jump onto the new wave bandwagon. Alice gets right into character with a piping sythesizer and reserved delivery to match Gary Numan's. Overzealous rock critics might point out that Alice was mocking the too-cool new wavers by aligning himself with clones. Maybe it was his chance to get back at Talking Heads, whose "Psycho Killer" was inspired by Billion Dollar Babies. More likely, he's just having fun being a robot.