Album Review: Faith No More - 'Sol Invictus'

There are a few top-shelf magazine critics out there who gave this album a less than mediocre review upon the eve of it's release, from the ones I read they were all expecting and/or hoping for an album's worth of material that sounded like a modern day version of the band's most popular records The Real Thing and Angel Dust. To put it bluntly, they are fucking idiots. One of them even went as far as to call the groups last two releases prior to Sol Invictus; King For A Day..., and Album of the Year "nigh unlistenable". That guy shouldn't be a critic, obviously has no grasp of the concept of what Faith No More is about - and is a fucking idiot.

Before you read the rest of this you should know that prior to Sol Invictus I'd rate FNM's albums best to worst in the reverse order of their release. Which means I think Album of the Year is the best thing they've done and so forth down the line. Yet Sol Invictus, while feasibly sounds like the logical next step in the audio journey of Faith No More's discography, fails to better the two albums that came before it. This record is as acceptable today some 19 years after their last release as it is/would have been in the year 1999. I didn't have the hype built up for it that others may have had because its Faith No More, and you have no idea what to really expect - the whole thing could have wound up being a cover of German folk songs done in spoken word over Polka music and I'd have shrugged my shoulders and thought 'whadda ya gonna do?'.

It succeeds in what it is as it is it's own self-contained monster, just as all of their other albums can be perceived. We Care A Lot was the New Wave / 80's Punk - Funk answer to the Red Hot Chili Peppers at the time. Introduce Yourself wasn't much different in it's being. The Real Thing held onto the monotone synth heavy bottomless end from start to finish. Angel Dust's musical mosaic-like dichotomy was it's own incomparable characteristic at the time. King For A Day... stuck to it's faster, more rock-oriented roots, and Album Of The Year was as everywhere as Angel Dust only serving more as a Greatest Hits album by being a consortium of everything they'd done up to that point delivered in a brand new bag of goods.

Sol Invictus feels like the most grandiose of their albums in each songs presence and as a whole collection of songs. The song writing here is fantastic, the unmistakable totality of the instruments harkens back to the unique sonic presence of the group's first four albums. Patton pulls from his bag of a thousand voices several times in each song without ever sounding contrived. It is in all angles of it's being a solid Faith No More entry - so in that aspect this is a four star album.

On a personal level, I would have loved to have heard a lot more variation between the songs. While the first track serves more as an intro than anything else, "Superhero" truly starts the album off perfectly as a near epic rock song, borrowing from the pensive determination of "Last Cup Of Sorrow" and the free-wheeled drive of "Get Out". Its a fine kickstarter to massage your ears in prep for the sound of FNM some 19 years later.

 It becomes a bit formulaic for Faith No More after that: "Separation Anxiety", "Cone Of Shame", "Rise Of The Fall", "Matador" and even "Sunny Side Up" to a point all feel very similar in their structure (though I dig "Matador" the best). They all seem to follow a fuse to a climax, even teasing at it after the first verse before letting it give way after the second. Granted their methodology and writing is top notch, but 'formulaic' and Faith No More shouldn't be two words married together often. "Motherfucker" sticks out here like a sore thumb, in a good way - but put it anywhere on Album Of The Year or Angel Dust and it would feel a whole lot less like a square peg and even add to those efforts' fluidity.

The acoustic guitars that drive "Black Friday" help keep that song from blending in too much with the others, even though it's structure feels just as similar as it's surrounding peers, and album closer "From The Dead" is a nice change of pace too, sounding damn near like Faith No More covering a Stone Temple Pilots number - also in a good way. I really enjoy the album, it definitely feels like the biggest thing they've ever done, like I said - grandiose, but the extreme music asshole in me kept wanting them to take it further, waiting for an 'Ugly In The Morning' or a 'Got That Feeling', but I suppose that's what Fantomas and to a degree Tomahawk is there for. Never-the-less I'd be a hypocrite if I said I expected anything with any degree of confidence from Faith No More, which is the monolithic characteristic of this band that's always made them great.

6/10

You Make The Call: Wrong - 'Stop Giving'

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but that old adage can often and arguably rightfully be dismissed as unoriginality in the art world. There is a fine line between being inspired by an artist and simply trying to ride that gravy train. But what about when a really distinct and genre-defining band falls apart? When they stop putting out new music or worse yet just start to really suck? Is it appropriate for a group with no personal affiliation with said defunct band to blatantly attempt to fill the gap? Or can the argument be made that attempted torch carrying is truly an end result of inspiration and nothing more, I mean - isn't that how genres are spawned? Obviously motives vary. Everything is inspired by something else.

Vertigo Index make no effort to hide the direct influence Discordance Axis had on them by naming their band after one of DA's songs, and the small army of Carcass clones that were exhumed after that group went tits up only solidified them as the seed to the over-saturated (and ridiculous) gore-grind genre that's still expanding today. There's a whole generation of people out there who respond to the word Godsmack with a reference to a shitty hard rock band that thinks they're better than they really are and not the bad-ass palm-muted withdrawl-trip that slaps you in the face halfway thru Alice in Chains' Dirt!

So what's wrong with indulging in something that sounds exactly like something else if that something else is done being? Nothing I suppose, you could argue it's sort of an easy way out - like covering a song note for note that was already popular once. But you could also argue that it's throwing a bone to a whole group of fans longing to hear something new that sounds like something old, and then letting them decide if they want to chew on it. That's what Wrong have done.

Helmet - lets face it, Helmet just isn't the formidable figure that they once were, and it isn't necessarily because they've been ripped off to oblivion by a genre of lemmings. They're still active and putting out music, but from what I can gather most people just can't get over that holy trilogy that is Meantime, Betty, and Aftertaste. Wrong offers you the option to go back to that in their debut E.P. Stop Giving. The catch here is that you need to get past the pneumatic roof nail in the eye that that isn't Paige Hamilton singing, and these aren't his songs, and this indeed isn't Helmet... So the question is, can you indulge?

http://wrongriff.bandcamp.com/releases

Under The Radar: Electronic Phantasmagoria

I really do appreciate low budget 60's and 70's horror flicks: the grain, the psychedelic imagery, heavy shadow, the lo-fi synth laden tribal soundtracks - an unsettling yet nostalgically comfortable experience that yearns for the Cthulu-like tendrils of late night UHF to embrace it like a prophesized apocalyptic spawn.

I also appreciate the ambient noise genre and some of it's offspring. Drawn out movements of droning keyboards or walls of warbling feedback - awkwardly patched together and balled up within an atmosphere all it's own. Journeys of sound that can draw you down tunnels in the dark if you close your eyes and let it.

So it stands to reason that I really appreciate the efforts of an unsung internet hero who took the time to record and compile specific soundscapes from his favorite films of the golden years of grindhouse exploitation horror, clean them up and present them as a bad acid trip into the dark woods of ritualistic virgin sacrifices and witchcraft conjuring up bad things from the demonic fathoms of blood orgies and unexplainable neon lights in the fog. Run-on sentence and I don't even give a hoot.

The tracks aren't marked, so it's unclear as to when one piece begins and another ends, but forget about all that. These kinds of spooky dirges into noise are best experienced as a congealed whole anyways.

Per the author/creator/aforementioned unsung internet hero:

"A collection of commercially unavailable electronic soundtracks from the 60s and 70s. All taken from low budget sleazy horror films. I ripped my favourite pieces of Moog madness from the audio tracks then mixed them together into a one hour long phantasmagoric soundscape.

None of these pieces of music have ever seen an official release.

As these are ripped from the audio track the sound quality varies. Expect some hiss, crackle, sound drop outs, distortion, abrupt editing and freaky dialogue. "

and here is his site:

The Ghost of the Weed Garden
http://theghostoftheweedgarden.blogsp...

Under The Influence; Episode I

If you've ever spent time trying to write a riff or come up with a melody chances are you've had to sit and ponder whether or not the first few things that made their way from your cortex to your fingers to your 4 track have already been used - because a lot of that stuff we pump into our conscious likes to bury itself in there to the point that it plays on repeat in the background of everything we do and we don't even realize it, or I'm just borderline schizophrenic.  I don't necessarily think anybody ripped anybody off here, nor may have been directly influenced - sometimes coincidence is just that, and sometimes the familiarity is purely accidental and probably not even realized until the record is on the shelves, but it's still fun to point out:

Gwar: 'Pussy Planet' (1992) & Nirvana: 'Rape Me' (1993)

Burnt By The Sun: 'Dracula With Glasses' (2002) & Pig Destroyer: 'Baltimore Strangler' (2012)

 

Mad Season: 'I Don't Know Anything' (1995) & Silverchair: 'Slave' (1997)

Biohazard: 'Cornered' (1994) & Type O Negative: 'All Hail and Farewell To Britain' (2007) - specifically the 3:43 mark...

Eyehategod: 'Blank' (1993) & Dr.Doom: 'Prophesized Disaster' (2012)

 





Temple Of The Dog: 'Times Of Trouble' (1991) & Pearl Jam: 'Footsteps' (1991)

This one doesn't really count as it was pretty much written by the same persons; never-the-less remains as two different songs from two different groups... 

 

 

 

 

 

Jumped The Shark - Anthrax

Sometimes I feel like the only one who is really unhappy with where Anthrax have gone. I'm used to it - I'm alone on a lot of things, and it's shockingly not to just simply be the guy who goes against the grain with what your opinion is. I'm certain every musical example of this will be brought to light here somewhere down the line, but in the meantime lets stay right here, or better yet let's go back to 1989...

I made a cassette copy of all three versions of 'I'm The Man' from the EP of the same name after hearing it from my brother's room because I liked all the swearing in it (I was in fif grade). Sometime not-so-shortly after that, Megadeth's 'Take No Prisoners' sired me from a giggly little spectator who borrowed his mother's Walkman for the long bus trip to Catholic School to a wickedly curious and budding fan of the genre who was beginning to feel as though he'd found a niche in something that tapped into a part of him that wasn't so giggly. Naturally, from my previous brief exposure and access to my older, more jaded and mad-at-the-world brother's (man I miss that guy - no, he's not dead - he just smoked so much weed in College that it permanently morphed his temperament from the pissed off psychofuck Buzz Osborne-looking bad guy in the original Mad Max to Jeffrey Lebowski on a Quaalude drip) thrash-heavy cassette collection, I gravitated towards Anthrax's Persistence Of Time.

POT was an amazing record, and to be fair, still is an amazing record all things considered I guess.  That led to the back catalogue, and I indulged in all of it (except for Fistful of Metal and Armed and Dangerous - just never did anything for me)... Spreading The Disease, State Of Euphoria, Attack Of The Killer B's had just been released, Among The Living - which rivaled the amazingositousnessessess of the aforementioned POT. My brother, reveling in a new found kinship with his previously fucking pest of a brother saw the flower opening and stuffed it with a whole bunch of other goodies, including S.O.D.'s Speak English or Die, which he thought I'd enjoy seeing as he was always having to remove his Anthrax albums from my deck when he wanted them. I was a fan of the band.

I still have a very vivid memory of a phone call that took place between my then-friend-now-brother-in-law Jeff, that took place on May 25th 1993. It was the day Sound Of White Noise came out - Anthrax's first album with a new singer. The new single 'Only' had been out for a few weeks and was pretty fuckin' good, but we were all a bit apprehensive about the final product and what to expect. This new Anthrax certainly didn't sound like old Anthrax. Neither of us had the album yet, we were waiting for our Moms or siblings to free up to drive us to Sam Goody to buy it, but it was a deep conversation between two fourteen year olds about the unavoidable miasma of doubt and disappointment that lay dormant in our senses of uncertainty that ebullient spring afternoon - "what do you think it's gonna be like?" "I don't fuckin' know, man".

Well without getting too much into it let me just say that it was really good. Yeah, they changed - and looking back they changed with the times. What do we call that when you change your sound to stay relevant? Selling out? I didn't see it that way then - probably because my tastes had already changed to the stuff that was relevant. Pantera, Prong, Biohazard, Fear Factory - I was soaking in the groove-laden heaviness of 90's metal, and Anthrax was too - and it worked. The new sound was so much less monochromatic than anything they'd previously done. Actual emotions were actually being conveyed! There were more dynamic to the songs during the years that Bush fronted them as a band, songs like 'Catharsis', 'Black Lodge', 'Burst', etc wouldn't have had the power, emotion, and inspiration in their beings had the formula remained what it was prior to 1993... Before Sound Of White Noise anything that was released outside of it's one-toned thrash element was a B-side or just something completely silly - and it was never anything that Belladonna sang on: 'Startin' Up A Posse'? 'Bring The Noise'? (Dallabnukifesin is an exception) Even as far back as 'I'm The Man'. Belladonna is a singer, not a vocalist. When did he ever sound like he was even remotely desperate or pissed off? And isn't that what heavy music is really all about? I don't know - I guess it really is all subjective, my argument wouldn't hold water in a sewing circle with hardcore Belladonna advocates... For me personally, there was no going back after Bush - because I just kept imagining what those songs would have sounded like with his little bit of rasp and lack of range (which he more than made up for with a certain amount of realism behind his vocals) - a little grittier, a little more emotional, better (and which I got in 2004 with the live studio re-recording of the 'classics' in The Greater of Two Evils). Somewhere along the second half of the band's existence I just came to realize that stylistically in the genre Belladonna was a fossil, whose delivery just seemed too caked in the over-the-top bullshit cock rock singing of some of the 80's more popular 'Heavy Metal' bands.

Granted, my tastes were getting heavier... And by the time Volume 8: The Threat Is Real (1998) had come out Anthrax wasn't a go to group to get my hair standing on edge and my vessels dilated. Instead they'd become a really fun hard rock band that was consistently making enjoyable records start to finish. I started to realize I was almost never going back to visit those older albums, because they didn't have a place for me any longer. If I wanted speed, groove, thrash and moshable rhythms I had a shitload of other bands that were doing it better as a whole package than what Anthrax had done back then. To feel all those aforementioned qualities come rolling at you like a stomping boot, that introduction and build up, letting the catharsis swarm onto your conscious like flies on shit in a mass grave - and then Injun Joe comes bouncing in with his fuckin' hair and his falsettos "Paranoia time!", bleeargh.

Sometime after 2004 Bush decided that he didn't want to tour anymore, he had a kid at home whom he just wasn't seeing grow up and felt as though he wanted to take a break from music. Anthrax moved on. They hired Dan Nelson, from a band called Devilsize as the new lead vocalist. Years went by and eventually new songs began to make their way onto social media in live form. I gotta tell you, I wasn't missing Bush one iota when I heard 'em. This guy even felt like a step up! But it didn't work out, in less than a year Nelson was already out of the band, reasons unknown (and it sounds like a settlement out of court will make it reasons unknown forever). Anthrax went back to Bush who had a new found fire lit under his ass and played a few shows that the band had committed to, he was ready to come back full time from my understanding but wasn't ready to just sing over the songs that were already written with Nelson in mind, which is what the band wanted him to do. So Bush flew the coup again...Anthrax called up Joey Belladonna, who had been sitting at home the last 26 years curling his hair in anticipation of this moment....

This is where I stopped listening and paying attention. The record hadn't even come out yet and I could give a shit. It had been snowballing for some time unfortunately - especially considering that the group had released a ridiculously underwhelming four studio albums of new material in 21 years. Even if I had been on the fence about whether or not I was still interested in Anthrax, this little ditty from an interview with Scott Ian circa 2010 pushed me to the other side:

 "I don't think people should worry so much about what's going on in the band. I understand being a fan and I understand loving a band and being dedicated to a band, 'cause I'm a huge fan of many bands. But I don't have any control over whether or not FAITH NO MORE's gonna make a new record. I want FAITH NO MORE to make a new record, but I can't control that, [so] I don't worry about it. There's bigger things to worry about in life. So if you're a fan of the band and you like what we do, just have faith that eventually we're gonna make a record and it's gonna be a great record. I don't think we've ever let anyone down in the last 26 years of making records and touring. Yes, I understand it's taken us a while to get to a new album, because we've been through some crazy circumstances, but that's just the set of circumstances we're in, and there's no reason for us to rush anything. That would be the biggest mistake, 'cause if we rush something now, then we risk putting something bad, and then the fans would really be upset."

I don't know, I just kind of felt like he was telling all the people that put him there to fuck off. I mean, it had been 7 years since the last album; maybe for your fans that's a legitimate gripe Scotty.

Belladonna came back with his stupid fuckin' nightstick microphone and gladly sang over all the songs that became 2011's Worship Music. I can totally understand the excitement here for a lot of folks, I mean I'd say welllll over half of the band's fan base were spawned from the early days when Joey was the front man, so hearing that he's coming back after over two decades and then some was probably a really cool notion for those peeps. At the time, for me however, I felt like the ulterior motives were being ignored. Metal bands from the 80's and 90's had been following this fucking bullshit trend of stopping their forward motion and going backwards. There were so many groups who had begun playing their best - and by that I mean their top selling - albums in full front to back totality as a tour package. There were bands like Slayer, who got their original skinsman Dave Lombardo back into the fold, recruited the guy who did the art for their early albums, and then released a record that tried to look and sound like the shit they put out in 1986 (this was after a tour of playing Reign In Blood in it's totality) because that was the pinnacle of their career and that's what the "fans wanted". It's what your fucking wallet and ego wanted. Remember Metallica going back to their roots for Death Magnetic? Oh you fucking assholes. Megadeth's 'Rust In Peace' tour? Fear Factory making amends with Dino Cazares after they eviscerated each other in the press and getting Demanufacture producer Rhys Fulber back in the fold for 2010's Mechanize? Korn III!? Is that really what the fans want? To watch these bloated, fifty year-old creatively dried up fucks striding purposefully backwards to their glory days to inflate the narcissistic longing to hear those ballrooms chanting their names again before the encore? I guess you gotta put food on the table. Anthrax's reunion with Belladonna felt like a move in that direction to me. And hey, it even got them on that Big Four bill!

And then, all those now forty-something year old patched jacket dudes who set up camp in 1987 with their arms folded and scoffed at anything that pushed outside of the realm of Thrash suddenly felt their dicks move for the first time since 'Unforgiven Too' hit the airwaves. They were all into it again, Anthrax was back and the new album was Amazeballs. But why? Admittedly, I was wrong. Worship Music wasn't the total wanna-be nostalgia trip that I thought it would be, and how could it be? The songs were written with a different vocalist, somebody new who would help the band's sound move even further forward. Musically, Worship Music was what I would expect, and even be impressed with as, the follow up to 2003's We've Come For You All. But as I listened to it every song just got filtered through my brain with the distant sounds of how much cooler each track would be with John Bush singing, or even that peon Dan Nelson. Yet those aforementioned thrash dudes chained to a tree in 1987 who hadn't turned an ear to anything after Attack Of The Killer B's were now singing the praises of Anthrax's latest release, despite the fact that it's still kinda sorta a Bush-era album, just sucked of all it's life by Injun Joe.

It makes perfect sense, as both an artistic move and a business move I suppose. The new guy is out, John Bush is out, why not take advantage of the aforementioned trend and kill a few birds with one stone (though I do recall strong rumors of Slipknot's Corey Taylor being in serious talks with the band as a fill-in before Belladonna got the call). In my naïve and stupid little world, if circumstances had been the same after Nelson's premature exit stage left routine, I would have loved to see Anthrax do something different than reach for the third stringer with dollar signs in their eyes. They've always been good at pulling off really cool shit for the fans (4 albums in 21 years - not one of those things): Dimebag filling in in the studio when Dan Spitz quit, the cool re-recording of the old shit with Bush, the B-sides album before B-sides albums were really a thing, even the 'Ball of Confusion' track with both vocalists singing together. The band had an album done and no vocalist - how cool would it have been to just have a compiled work of their peers stepping up and singing on different tracks. Corey Taylor, Phil Anselmo, Max Cavalera, Tom Araya, Mike Patton, shit even John Bush would contribute for a song in that fashion - the guy's not an asshole, and throw Belladonna a bone too. Yeah, it would be different, and may not sound wholly like an Anthrax record - but what a cool and unprecedented move for an established band like that. Also probably a contractual nightmare with an ocean of red tape to cut through so it would never work, not to mention scheduling conflicts and label drama, but that was a scenario I was childishly clinging to before they dropped the bomb about whathisface coming back. Fuck it why didn't Ian just fuckin' yell the whole album? Schnarf.

I just don't like Joey Belladonna's voice. I could have saved us all a whole bunch of wasted time and just typed that. Am I the only one? Because it certainly feels that way out there in internet land. I only listened to Worship Music maybe twice, minus the un-excusable and horrendous Refused cover they did as a bonus track - I'm fairly certain every time somebody plays that god-awful piece of shit butchering of a song a child's puppy turns inside out and dies slowly somewhere. So maybe I didn't give it a fair chance, but I think my Belladonna days are just over. You know how you just love Chinese food, like it's your favorite food and you always look forward to eating it and then one day you're just done with it - but everyone still thinks you like it so they keep fuckin' ordering it, and then you grow to actively, maybe even passionately dislike it? Belladonna. Nails on a fuckin' chalkboard. Shit, maybe worse than Fred Shneider...You get the point.

I will say this, I'll put my big hobbit foot in my big stupid mouth and say this: I went back as I was writing this and listened to those old Anthrax records with Joey properly for the first time in probably like some 12 years or so. God that songwriting was good, and his voice does offer a very unique take to that kind of thrash music, it's definitely a combination of sounds that is identifiable as it's own thing - and filtering it that way in my brain may offer the ability to rekindle an ember deep in there somewhere, so maybe I owe it to myself to stick my toes back in the pool in an effort to fan the flame. I mean a man can change and then change back in a matter of 12 years - scientists say with the constant shedding and re-growing of cells our body does as an act of homeostasis that technically we are physiologically a completely different person every 7 years. Look it up. So I guess I also owe it to myself to give Worship Music a proper listening to as well I suppose, another chance as I am starting to like Chinese Food again. Respectfully, I should do it before I post this to be fair, ahh fuck it....

Album Review: Vision Of Disorder - The Cursed Remain Cursed

I don't know why it always takes me so long to sink my teeth into a Vision Of Disorder release, they always seem to deliver once you give it a chance. I remember first hearing 'Element' on some Road Runner sampler release and being really impressed with it. That first self-titled record was the only album from them that I never really dug, file it away as finding your footing I guess, or my own. Two years later I bought 'Imprint' on a complete spur of the moment and was completely blown away by it, five star fucking album. Those raw, swirling guitars and that relentless momentum throughout the whole thing - such a unique and identifiable sound. It was a seizure happening somewhere between NY Hardcore and West Coast Skater Punk - kind of sounded like something those five guys you knew down the street growing up could have bulls-eyed with after decades of garage rehearsals.

Their third official LP 'From Bliss To Devastation' was a leap away from it's predecessor, fronting a more polished sound and a more hard rock direction; I bought it hoping for another 'Imprint' and needless to say shelved that fucker after a couple of rotations. It was a good three years until I came back to it, and when I did I was able to embrace it for what it was, genuinely. It's really a hell of a hard rock album, still wielding their unique sound, but a bit more dynamic and clear enough to really see all the dirt underneath the fingernails. Slower and with a way more structured and traditional songwriting approach, but still wielding sharp enough of an edge to cut you, balancing a sonic and thematic line somewhere between the sleaze of Appetite-era Guns N' Roses and the dark of Alice In Chains' 'Facelift' (not comparing, just combining) - and once I kind of observed it in that light I wound up really getting off to it.

From what I understand from internet sewing circles, that change in sound not only drove away a number of fans, but also ended up splitting the band. Bassist Mike Fleishmann and drummer Brendan Cohen went on to form a band called Karnov (best...band name...ever), and vocalist Tim Williams and Guitarist Mike Kennedy became Bloodsimple, whose two releases front a similar sound to the writing style on 'From Bliss To Devastation', only a bit more commercial (this song rocks though).

Well, 11 years later the band got their shit together and released 'The Cursed Remain Cursed', and I gotta say it's pretty fuckin' good. All those layered little dynamics that made 'From Bliss To Devastation' seem so polished are gone again. This record  sounds like five guys plugged in, hit record and started playing the shit they just wrote and rehearsed an hour ago - in a good way. Compared to their previous full lengths the sound is thin on 'The Cursed Remain Cursed', and admittedly it takes a couple of tracks to get used to - kind of like when Biohazard's 'Mata Leao' first came out - but once you start breathing that fluid this album is a blindfolded roller coaster ride jumping the track. VOD are amazing at zigging where you expect a zag, and that's one of the characteristics that made 'Imprint' so memorable, well there's a lot of that here. There's a song on 'Imprint' called 'Jada Bloom', and in it the band pieces together something kind of beautiful made completely out of ugly parts - VOD really hone in on that on TCRC - but not so much so that it becomes tired or predictable, the opposite in fact - something comes along amongst the spit flying hardcore/thrash frenzy that really rises above everything else, and then it's gone. You'd like to hear it again, but in order to do so you have to manually go back - so it leaves you impressed and wanting more.

This is one of those records where, except for a couple of watermarks here and there, on the first couple of listens all the songs kind of blend in together. There's not a whole lot of effect pedal wanking going on (but when there is it's awesome - check out a third of the way thru 'Annihilator') and I dig that from a band like this, because it just makes the whole thing seem like letting the song writing speak for itself. It can also be a bit exhausting, by the time track 9, 'New Order Of Ages' plays through I felt myself starting to get a bit numb to the whole experience, but VOD save some of the best for last in both 'Beat Up On It' (were those gang vocals!?) and the closest-thing-to-not-a-ballad on the album 'Heart And Soul', which dangles you in the air for a bit before swinging you into a brick wall - spoiler alert.

That being said, I also feel that TCRC is a front to back listen. Sampling a track here and there was the mistake I was making for the last two years, every song on here lends energy to both the tracks before it and after, a sum of the whole if you will. Nothing on here is a ball-crusher by itself (maybe 'Annihilator'), but together they serve as a concussive buckshot to the temporal lobe.

'The Cursed Remain Cursed' is a nice mix of their two previous efforts - and by that I mean it feels about 65% Imprint and 35% From Bliss To Devastation - you can figure out which parts when you hear it (though 'Skullz Out' feels like it came almost directly from the latter's sessions). After the hiatus I'm pleased to hear them come back this way - with a thousand little cuts rather than trying to steamroll over you, because it's what they do best. Once you're in and going you're slapped with the realization of that unique Vision Of Disorder sound, and you can't help but feel that this is it stripped away of all it's bells and whistles. 'Imprint' to me is a hard record to top, but I gotta admit after just a few listens this fucker lasts the rounds. Ask me in another 11 years and I may have a different answer for you.

Top Ten Fav's of 2013:

I don't always listen to albums when they're released. It's not that I don't get around to it - it's just that most times a flavor is best savored for a certain time of the year. Moons align, winds change, seasons whither - everything has it's soundtrack. In turn, sometimes that leaves a two year window for which to satisfy my sonic palette, especially when a record is released just after it's most appropriately designated epoch. So consider this a list in arrears. These are my favorite ten albums that were released in 2013:

10. Jesu - Every Day I Get Closer To The Light From Which We Came

With each Jesu album sole member Justin Broadrick seems to step further into a comfort zone of post-metal electronic shoegaze - and consequently the material he continues to release keeps getting better. Like a chromatic butterfly emerging from the putrid papal sac that was Godflesh, Jesu takes the cold industrial tones of it's previous form and sheds it of it's chains, carrying the sounds to places where the sun can reach, and it's never in a hurry to get there - which is a good thing.  EDIGCTTLFWWC stands out from it's previous releases by sounding like more than just a man and his computerized audio interface. Broadrick adds what sounds like genuine organic instrumentation to some of his pieces here, including the piano intro on "The Great Leveller", a flying Woolly Mammoth of a song that is so magnanimous in it's presence it makes the rest of the album sound as though it was written around it.

9. Blood I Bleed - split w/ Lycanthropy

Sometimes (more times...), I just need that primal, unhinged surge of recorded-in-one-take, go-for-the-throat Powerviolence/Grind, and Blood I Bleed is pretty much the Slayer of that. They do what they do and you know what it's going to be, and that it's going to cut.  Like being dropped into the center of a turbulent hive, with 11 songs in less than 10 minutes Blood I Bleed's half of the split is an insane barrage of crazy little fists pummeling you faster than your senses can maintain.  The band sounds like the title of this blog. Music with this kind of frenzied ferocity has it's best effect in this kind of format - being either a split or an EP - where it can get in, rattle the brain, and then blast through it's exit wound leaving you dazed and confused and not overstay it's welcome or allow your Central Nervous System to adapt to it's poison. Too many of these kinds of bands are unfortunately at the mercy of their labels, requiring them to put out something over a certain time limit and forcing the album to possibly draw itself out, not allowing the artist to strike hard and strike deadly. Plug this fucker in and you'll swear you can feel that spittle hitting your face. Oh, and the Lycanthropy half ain't a bad grind either... Wouldn't let me post the vid: so here's a link...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hon1tDU2Bw

8. Palms - Palms

 

Sounds exactly like you'd think it would, Chino Moreno singing with the dudes from Isis - because that's what it is, but it still works. To me the music sounds like the album's artwork (job well done), painting sonic palettes of fading sunsets and the expansive oceans that lull them to their edges. 6 to 10 minute glides of lush atmospherics undulating beneath gently plucked guitars and occasional power chords that soar hand in proverbial hand with Moreno's wonderfully unique crooning. It's hard to separate this project from either of the entities' full time gigs at times (and the criminally under rated Team Sleep), but with enough repetition and heavy meditation in it's swaying melodies you may find yourself letting go of all of that and simply watching your shadow barely keep up with you on the water far below.

7. Matt Elliott - Only Myocardial Infarction Can Break Your Heart

Elliott's latest output is his most stripped to the bones body of work yet, probably the logical place to go after the absolutely phenomenal and potentially unsurpassable 'The Broken Man'. There are very little of those subtle and haunting atmospherics lurking in the shadows this time around, as are usually present deep within the muck of elegance on previous efforts. OMICBYH showcases more of  a straightforward early 19th century no frills acrobatic flamenco as is toned in the album's 17+ minute opener 'The Right To Cry'.  While violins and xylophones do sparsely pepper this album in all it's right places, and Elliott's trademark multi-layered low hums do occasionally come sweeping in to carry us to a climax here and there on the record, it still sounds almost sunny when compared to the rest of his body of work as a solo artist. Well, maybe partly cloudy. And more importantly it still sounds like Matt Elliott, and nobody else does. The last song on the album, 'De Nada', is in my opinion one of the best things he's done to date.

6. The Dillinger Escape Plan - One Of Us Is The Killer

TDEP continue to tear faces off with creatively spaztastic riffs fighting against stuttering time signatures and occasional lurches into mainstream rock hooks and melodies. Unfortunately it's their fifth album, and the first one to feel like it's rehashing old formulas in it's totality. For a guy whose been listening to the group since their inception and still finds Calculating Infinity to be their least exciting record, I'd love to hear a whole lot less of the hooks and a whole lot more of the seizures. One Of Us Is The Killer is the first album DEP have released that sounds like they're standing in the same place as the record before. That being said, nobody really comes close to touching the palpable energy these gents translate onto their bodies of work on anything they've done, so it's still pretty fuckin' awesome and still wickedly creative.

5. Pearl Jam - Lightning Bolt

Ever since George Dubbya Bush got pushed out of office PJ's sound seems to have eased it's grip on itself and become a whole lot less tense. Lightning Bolt - while still an evolutionary step for the band - sounds like a sequel to a movie that takes over right where it's predecessor left off, and that's alright by me because Backspacer was a breath of fresh air in the band's catalogue. Despite the heavy theme of the inevitability of aging and the consequences of reason, wisdom and ultimately the death that comes with it, PJ sound like they're having a lot of fun on Lightning Bolt. I must admit I was never drawn to this band for the harder rocking songs they put out, and always enjoyed the slower, seemingly more crafted efforts they write - so Lightning Bolt may be a bit more up my alley than for most. But I'm getting older, they're getting older, and the route they're taking sonically in the last decade is a parallel line for me to travel along as I go. Dig a little deeper into some of the songs on here and you'll get a lot more out of it - always a trait of a really good album.

4. True Widow - Circumambulation

True Widow continue to creep along in their dark and engaging vortex of smokey reverb and distortion, a sound I hope they never try to do anything new with. I'd honestly be hard pressed to tell you what album what song came off of at completely random listening to their discography, but it doesn't matter when it's as sonically infectious as this. Circumambulation, however, showcases the band incorporating - dare I say - a bit more of a groove in their stalking rhythms. I don't think I'll ever tire of new material from True Widow, especially if it continues to sound like everything they've ever done before it.

3. Bleeding Rainbow - Yeah Right

What sounds like well produced, free-spirited Grunge-Punk straight out of 1994 turns into a layered haze of Shoegaze at the drop of a hat on 'Yeah Right'. When the band combines the two you end up being served a thick and fuzzy dose of chromatic sugar pop rock that is both driving and hypnotic at the same time. It's the kind of thing you'd think would congeal from the afterbirth if Sophia Coppola and Kevin Shields sonically procreated. It's a fun album to listen to in it's spirit, and a pleasing album to listen to in it's sound. Picked it up completely on a whim with no preconceived notion and was very pleasantly surprised. It is both nostalgic and forward thinking in it's delivery.

2. Mazzy Star - Seasons Of Your Day

I'd be hard pressed to pick a favorite Mazzy Star album; though I can say 'She Hangs Brightly' is easily out of the running, the fact that the group's first release in 17 years stands as tall - if not taller - than both 'So Tonight That I May See' and 'Among My Swan' is impressive, and all the more so if you consider the two grand Hope Sandoval releases that floated about during their hiatus. Which means it wasn't necessarily an album that was 17 years in the making.  Mazzy Star sticks to the formula of snow falling on strummed guitars and warm, fuzzy, soft power chords reverberating under what has become one of the most iconic female voices in alternative rock (despite the imitators beginning to surface - I'm talking to you Widowspeak). The nuances that separate this album from the rest of the group's discography are subtle to say the least. Unseasoned ears will tell you it's more of the same, but like most bands on this list you don't need to prove yourself when you're king of the mountain - especially when you're a band who's less is more and a whole lot more than the people trying to pull your flag. 'Seasons Of Your Day' does echo from a sort of 'Welcome home' vibe considering the aforementioned hiatus, meaning the traditional and original sound that Mazzy Star have etched is always nice to hear in the manifestation of new material especially when it's been so long. But I'd like to think that even a casual fan of the band, which I consider myself to be, would be forced to admit that this album would be just as good today as it would be if it were released in 1999.

1. Deafheaven - Sunbather

Gripping the buzzsaw speed and dissonance of traditional Black Metal, and twisting it out of it's fixed distorted positioning in the dark recesses of bleak coldness and forcing it upward towards the sky, Deafheaven are spearheading the evolution of a yet-to-be-named subgenre and thusly pissing off thousands of corpsepaint donned, spiked-gauntlet wearing, Dark Lord worshipping virgins across frozen tundras worldwide. There has always been an appealing ambience to even the most decent yet still purposely under-produced Black Metal, that merging of speed and tremolo guitar that turns itself into something more than it's simplistic parts, but Deafheaven actually use that formula to drive riffs and (dare I say) melodies that are already uplifting in their original form. The end result winds up sounding something like Marduk covering My Bloody Valentine.  While the band's previous record, 'Roads To Judah' leaned more towards Explosions In The Sky-esque canoodling as the juxtaposition to the dark shredding, Sunbather's movements are much more cohesive, giving a subtle element of winding shoegaze shimmering beneath it's surface. Throw in a couple of strategic, ambient droning pieces that could easily be mistaken for anything from Godspeed...You Black Emperor, and in it's entirety you have an epic, exciting, emotional and introspective journey into sound that has Black Metal elitists quivering in their bullet belts at the whiplashed cracks of Hipster heads turning a listening ear. Whether or not you can file this record and/or this band away as Black Metal is a whole 'nother discussion (and probably not one worth having), but there is one thing I am certain of - This album alone has the potential to send waves of imitators into the studio to pump the very vitality of it's essence from the veins of it's amniotic sac and into an ocean of diluted run-of-the-mill mediocrity. And when that begins to happen we musn't lose sight of how it once was, and who it was that honed it's craft best.