Stone Temple Pilots - End of an Era

I love a group to carry on despite line-up changes, it sometimes forces a band to maybe progress in a direction they may not have had things all stayed hunky-dory within the dichotomy of the artists. Sometimes, depending on who is replaced, that shift is more radical than it needs to be. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. Stone Temple Pilots have taken, in my opinion, a huge step backwards by replacing their very versatile vocalist Scott Weiland with the fuckin' guy from Linkin Park. Unfortunately, this is only compounded by the fact that they're also doing their best to not only retain their classic sound, but harken back to the glory days of their success by writing songs with similar structures to their first two (and coincidentally) most successful albums.

Mind you, this is all only based on a 5 song E.P. release that came out in 2013, which to be honest - still wasn't as bad as I'd thought it would turn out. So I can't write them off completely; but never-the-less it feels like the end of an era. Stone Temple Pilots got a bad rap as being both clingers to the wave of alternative rock that swept through radio land in the first half of the nineties, as well as writers of rock-radio friendly songs that gave them no merit. Unfortunately, while the first half of that statement may have credibility, the second has none. Here is my list/eulogy of my favorite/best Weiland-era STP albums; perspective....

#6 - Core (1992)

Not what you expected eh? Core is solid no doubt, it's got an instantly identifiable sound and the songs are really well written and drip with trademark characteristics of a little bit of everything that tickles your fancy about the golden era of Grunge. It rocks, it grooves, it contemplates and at times charmingly makes no sense to the listener at all. This album is a classic to most, and unfortunately mostly for the wrong reasons. Following in the wake of newly revealed heavy hitters in the genre like Pearl Jam, Nirvana and Alice In Chains, looking back Core could be construed more as an L.A. chapter's strategic attempt to strike while the iron was hot using a hammer with the most comfortable grip than a watermark in the genre that helped propel it's popularity to a self-imploding apex. It's only upon the gift of hindsight 20 plus years into the band's catalogue that we experience what they're capable of, and how Core falls short of anything really inspiring and in it's true reflection is simply paint-by-numbers rock n' roll for the 90s.

That's not to say that I don't lose my shit when 'Dead and Bloated' kicks the fuck in, boogey the F out to the beginning of 'Naked Sunday' everytime it comes on, or yarl like a ninties rock god all the words I think I know to 'Plush'. On it's own away from the other children in the discography Core is still a good/great record, god bless the restraint of the mid-paced Grunge waltzes like 'Where The River Goes' and to a degree 'Sin' - complete with mandatory acoustic breakdown three fourths the way through. Call it a foot in the door for the group, or perhaps the early stages prior to their evolution, Core is still fairly one dimensional - as is most obvious in Weiland's singular vocal delivery from front to back, a type of Vedder-like deeper sing-style he would all but abandon by the time the group released their final album as a whole. I would wager this album is a lot of people's favorites more for it's nostalgia and accessibility than anything else, which I can be guilty of as well no doubt, the key is to make sure you're not confusing a favorite work of a group, as opposed to their best. Never-the-less, had STP come out of the West Coast gate pumping an album like Tiny Music to the masses back then, none of us may have ever heard of them.

#5 - Purple (1994)

For a long time after this album's release - well into the rest of the group's catalogue - I made the mistake of dismissing this album as nothing more than a sort of Core part 2. It was only a few years ago that I came back to it appropriately and was forced to applaud it as a proper evolutionary step in the band's career. Everything here minimally hints at what's to come, and also pays maybe a bit too gratuitous tribute to what already had gone. If you were to tell me that this was the best thing they've done I couldn't really argue it because I'd understand. It retains the thick grunge rock of it's predecessor ('Meat Plow', 'Vaseline', 'Lounge Fly') while also utilizing that sound to write different kinds of songs ('Interstate Love Song', 'Still Remains') thus in effect beginning to conceive a sound and style all their own. All of the songs however display a more versatile range in Weiland's vocals that wasn't present in the monochrome Core and add a very enjoyable looseness to the tracks which in turn helps in perceiving this album a bit more multi-dimensionally.

All that being said Purple's formula still doesn't stray from it's predecessor, and in turn does wind up sounding a bit more like a big budget sequel to their debut in it's totality. 'Meat Plow' takes the place of the lumbering 'Dead and Bloated', 'Vaseline' flaunts the rock of 'Sex Type Thing', 'Lounge Fly' arguably mimics the pattern and structure of 'Sin', 'Pretty Penny' is the mid-album acoustic interlude that 'Creep' acted as (though the former is superior), 'Big Empty' is the anthemic radio song that 'Plush' was, 'Army Ants' vs. 'Crackerman', and 'Kitchenware and Candy Bars' serves up the same kind of closure that 'Where The River Goes' did - and for the most part they're all located geographically in the same spots on the tracklist. So maybe I wasn't too far off on my initial generalization. Purple feels like baby steps out of the shadows of the peers in the scene that may or may not have influenced them, but they ended up sounding a whole lot like anyways - for that reason alone I appreciate a movement in any direction rather than standing still, and Purple raises the stakes by having better written songs than their debut. But in the grand scheme of things I could argue that Purple is merely a roided up, more conditioned version of Core.

#4 - Shangri-La-Dee-Da (2001)

Shangri-La-Dee-Da has always felt like the most epic, bombastic performance from the band to me. A characteristic I attribute to the huge production sound on the record, not to mention the more subtle yet lush instrumentation that fills in the less layered spots here and there that you may be privy to miss if you're not tuned into it. It's an interesting perspective considering the whole middle of the album is very chilled back. It's also bookended with a pair of thick-ass swinging anchors almost giving the batch of songs a sort of harkening back to the early days, the album's writing and pace feel like an almost back-to-basics approach, comparable to the formula of Purple. The opener 'Dumb Love' is arguably the heaviest thing the band has ever spat forth, possibly rivaled only by No.4's 'Down'. Followed up by the juxtaposition of the up-beat radio anthem 'Days Of The Week'. I'd go out on a limb and say Shangri-La-Dee-Da's four opening songs are as a batch the best first four opening songs on any of their releases. Nearly everything after the opening gallop never manages to get passed mid-pace, which is a slight unbalance that's evened out with each song's near-grandiose presentation. 'Bi-Polar', 'Regeneration', 'Coma', 'Wonderful', and 'Hello It's Late' all feel magnanimus to me, and longer than they actually are (in a good way). I still can't decipher whether or not it's a testament to the production on the album or a misconstrued first impression that I never got over. Here's something else I can't get over, unfortunately: 'A Song For Sleeping' - I absolutely can't stand it when a band, or perhaps more specifically a lyricist pens a song on an album specifically to his child/wife or whatever; utilizing a name drop in the lyrics and thusly negating any relation that could be conceived from an objective listener; especially considering how beautiful both the instrumentation and melody are with that song. Save that shit for home, nobody else cares except for the handful of listeners with kids of the same name. Staind's fucking 'Zoe Jane' is the same shit.

It's a fantastic record none-the-less, and a shame I have to put it so seemingly low on the list - but it's just a testament to everything else the band has done in the rest of their catalogue because Shangri-La-Dee-Da is still a beast of a rock record. I also think it's got some of the best compositional melodies going on in the background of the songs and is Scott Weiland's best vocal performance. Perhaps I'm a bit biased towards the seemingly less calculated approach, less produced sound the two albums that preceded it set as a standard. I actually like this record better than 2010's epononymous album, but can't sit here and tell you that it's better than it in terms of all the songs both individually, and packaged together as a whole. Shangri-La-Dee-Da was originally planned by the band to be a double-album, until the record company quickly refused to back that idea, I'd still love to hear twice the album this could have been; probably would have wound up pacing a whole lot better and truly been a monster of a sonic journey. Placing the raw, Seattle grunge-influenced rock of Core on one end of the spectrum, and the 60's influenced alt-pop trip of Tiny Music on the other, I'd say Shangri-La-Dee-Da would land you somewhere in the middle in terms of the evolution of their sound, yet still retains an identity and discernible vibe all it's own.

#3 - Stone Temple Pilots (2010)

The band never reached the pinnacle again the way they did in the couple of years that followed Purple; the last couple of albums prior to their self-titled were a bit under the radar in comparison to how they came out of the gate in the early nineties. Tours cut short due to the singers substance abuse issues and the problems with the law that ensued restricted the proper support to keep them on top. When they reformed in 2008 and confirmed that they were in fact working on new material for release I got really stoked, mostly because I had the opportunity to truly appreciate the body of work they'd done up to that point and had come to realize that you'd never really be able to put your finger on what exactly new material from STP would sound like, and that's an excitable trait for me. By this time I'd begun to view them as the 'Grunge' version of Faith No More; songs like '12 Gracious Melodies', 'So You Know', 'I Got You' and 'Atlanta' were evidence of a group with really progressive ideas that didn't mind experimenting a bit and throwing the listener a curve ball that may or may not go over well, all the while retaining their identity and sound beneath it all. A lofty perspective on my part considering the new trend of 90's bands reforming after extended time away and trying to replicate the 'glory days' of whatever the most successful album was in their catalogue through the medium of  a new album. Stone Temple Pilots did not disappoint.

Stone Temple Pilots was damn near as ninety degree an angle in their style as Tiny Music was upon it's release. While the first two tracks are the absolute embodiment of what had become the traditional STP sound ('Between the Lines', 'Take A Load Off'), the rest of the album was peppered with songwriting that went beyond showcasing influence and felt more like paying tribute to the bands that motivated them at their roots. 'Huckleberry Crumble' felt like the channeling of Aerosmith (whose guitarist Brad Whitford was an admitted influence of Robert Deleo), 'Dare If You Dare' seemed latter day Beatles-esque (a track not surprisingly written during the Talk Show sessions), 'Cinnamon' borrows from the pop-side of Cheap Trick's body o' work, and 'First Kiss on Mars' sounds like Bowie. You can throw 'Peacoat' in any tracklisting after Core and not bat an eye at it's fluidity, and everything in between is the band continuing to stretch their sound. The whole thing comes off as a stained-glass mosaic of styles and influences, making for one hell of an enjoyable listen.

Considering the praise I give Tiny Music for a lot of the same shift in effort, you'd think this would end up even higher on the list than it is. This is, to me, a stellar record - but the hold up I have with it is that some of the songs just don't feel as strong as past practice in my opinion. Both 'Bagman' and 'Hickory Dichotomy' could be plain fuckin' annoying to a casual listener, an opinion I shared for a while there upon the early few ingestions of the album. And while I love the fact that 'Cinnamon' is a track that more than a few would be (or were) hard pressed to identify as an STP song on first listen without prior knowledge, the lyrics just seem a bit underwhelming to me, even though upon recent listens it feels like they're simply reflecting the simple pop sensibility that the song was written to represent. In the end it is, especially considering the 9 year hiatus, a strong and ballsy four-star record, that keeps you excited to hear what's to come on first listen, and a yearning to hear it all again on subsequent indulgences. I will say that while 'Maver' is per their tradition a fantastic final track on the album they should have kept 'Samba Nova' on as the closer and not regurgitated it as a bonus track - that shit is butter.

#2 - No.4 (1999)

Following a failed tour, legal problems, the drastic sonic variation that was Tiny Music, and a side project that was basically STP minus Scott Weiland (Talk Show), not to mention the thick wake of  Nu-Metal's rock popularity sweep, STP's fourth album - appropriately titled No. 4 - slipped into the scene with barely any fanfare. Perhaps both the tribulations that came before it, as well as it's low profile in the mainstream subliminally added an element of pleasant surprise to it's presentation, because No.4 winds up being a complete consolidation of all of the band's musical strengths, in turn showcasing everything that STP was and was to be in a blueprint of sorts.

No.4. fronted a bass-heavy lower tone in the thicker songs here, an arguable influence of the aforementioned popularity of Nu-Metal at the time (let's not forget Scott Weiland's guest appearance on Limp Bizkit's 1997 album Significant Other), most notably in the slow-swinging wrecking ball that is the album opener 'Down'. While the band has always been able to flaunt a fantastic low range, on No.4 it sounds so much more organic and not overproduced than anything else they've done, a huge trait that keeps this album's tone magnificently palpable and almost dirty. The over-all sound is a perfect congelation of the thick power chords that dominated early albums, and the thinner more natural production reminiscent of Tiny Music. And with that perfect concoction of sound they run the gamut of their capabilities here. The thick stomp of 'Down', the heavy gallop ala 'Sex Type Thing' of 'Heaven and Hotrods', the art-rock of 'Church On Tuesday', the punk rock of 'Sex and Violence', the trippy folk swirl of 'Sour Girl', the soaring melodies of 'Glide', lounge-influenced 'I Got You', and closing with the phenomenal sunset serenade that is 'Atlanta'. In the end this record winds up sounding like a greatest hits of Stone Temple Pilots without actually being that; all of their best qualities and styles spread across 11 fantastically versatile and eccentric songs.

#1 - Tiny Music... (1996)

STP was virtually on top of the radio world with the success of Purple and more specifically songs like 'Interstate Love Song' and to a lesser degree 'Big Empty'. Remembering that lofty positioning only serves to amplify the greatness that is Tiny Music, as it not only presents as a ballsy experimental shift in sound, but also a kind of push back against all of the big business execs and mainstream hangers-on that were most likely trying to convince the band to rest on their laurels. Instead of going bigger and more bombastic, STP thinned out their sound, toned everything down - including the production, and even added more eclectic instrumentation into their songs in the form of organs, electric harpsichords, vibraphones and clavinets. The end result is a trippy little rock gem that feels like it does whatever the fuck it wants, including two idled down instrumental pieces ('Press Play', 'Daisy'), a trumpet solo ('Adhesive')  and a borderline lounge samba number ('And So I Know') which I believe to be one of the best songs in their catalogue (which most in my limited experience tend to skip right over, dummies). Weiland completely changes his primary vocal style for this record, only distancing themselves further from their previous trademark sound and it works on every level.

Written, produced and engineered to sound like the influences it's cut from which is 60's rock, but filtered through a mid-90's alternative rock conduit, Tiny Music sounds timeless. It ultimately has no edge to it (barring the aforementioned against the grain attitude by which it was conceived), even the "heavier" tracks on the album feel like they just sort of float about on a cloud, a bizarre juxtaposition to the real life events paralleling the records creation; which was the chronic substance abuse problems that led to the singer's multiple arrests and cancellation of a tour. Never-the-less Tiny Music flows wonderfully from start to finish and with it's highs and lows feels like the end of a fun little journey when it's over (maybe it parallels more to the effects of being high as a fucking kite)  - and oh how it ends. Arguably the best song the band has ever done, 'Seven Caged Tigers' ties the bow like a syrupy rock epilogue, it's final dissonant, reverberating chords drift off in such a beautifully haunting way; reminding me of the end of Led Zeppelin's 'Over The Hills and Far Away' - a procession I often wish would go on for another 10 minutes or so. Tiny Music is genius; it has the ability to give me comfort in it's sounds without ever losing any of it's muster, even after all these years. The saddest part about this record - besides the fact that it only resonates the awful truth that Stone Temple Pilots as we know it is done, is that I was only allowed to hear it for the first time once.

*If you dig this record as much as I do, and haven't checked out Talk Show yet maybe do so. It's a one-off album that's basically STP minus Weiland, and was written at the same time as Tiny Music. The Deleo brothers even admitted to splitting up the thirty or so songs they had done as either going to be an STP song or a Talk Show song by writing the singer's name on each track's demo tape. Barely compares in my opinion, but is still an enjoyable chapter to experience.

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.