The Three Ages of Metal So Far: And the New Dark Age

If you don't read this blog for metal, you'll want to skip this one. If you do, gather round, and listen to tales of yore by your metal elders!

Metal has actually run in cycles from its speciation as a genre until now, with dark ages and Cambrian explosions alike. Here I argue that we're probably entering a new dark age but that the coming-online of parts of the world who've not yet contributed to global metal complicates this and may save us from the 2010's answer to Nu Metal.


The Iron Age of Metal and the Big 3: 1970-1975

I'm not going to rehash the Central Dogma of Metal, except to note that the early days of metal in the early 1970s were really dominated by 3 bands: Sabbath, Zep and the unfairly underemphasized Deep Purple, who often sound more like the bands that followed in the 80s than the other two. (For my money Zep is the least impressive of the bunch.)


The First Dark Age: 1975-1983

In terms of bands which inspired the next wave of metal, after the mid-70s there was an 8 year lull with the notable exception of Iron Maiden. Little is known about this era or the other bands that populated it, much like the Sea People of the ancient Near East.


The Golden Age of Metal: 1983-1994

This coincides with thrash, speed, etc. metal (which were stupid terms because they were all equivalent, since none of them ever distinguished any characteristic of any band from any other band), and contains the Big 4: Megadeth, Anthrax, Slayer and Metallica. The dark age here snuck up on us: 91-94 was the initially non-obvious backside of this curve. The genre was no longer underground once Metallica started appearing on MTV and the radio. Carcass went to Sony, then was shown the door. There were some ominous motifs noted even at the time: album covers and videos started being overrun by old men. Perhaps the genre knew its energy was flagging.


The Great Dark Age: 1994-2001

1994's Slayer release was not up to their usual standard, perhaps because it was Lombardo-less. Wearing on into the mid-90s, Danzig IV was bad (and don't even ask about Blackaciddevil). Sepultura broke up. Worst of all, mosh pits formed at a Belly show outside my dorm window. Everywhere were signs of decay. Bands began dabbling in every other genre, whether for broader acceptance or a need for unlistenable, super avant-garde originality (think of Pestilence, Mordred). I was so traumatized by this that, now that I'm seeing similar trends in prose in works like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies I tremble for the future of literature in general. This was to be metal's Mannerist Period, except instead of long necks, it was mongrel metal.

There were bright moments during the interegnum. Carcass put out Heartwork at the tail end of the Golden Age and Swansong came out in '96; thereafter Carcass disbanded, an immoral act if ever there was one because it deprived us of future art. Also during this period there were solid releases from one of the Big 4, specifically Megadeth putting out Youthanasia and Cryptic Writings; but Load and Diabolus in Musica didn't give the world what it needed. (Semen on the cover of an album? Did that really seem like a good idea gentlemen?)

Meanwhile, filling in the gap by the late 90s/2000 we had the dreaded nu metal*, the likes of Limp Bizkit, Kid Rock, Korn and Slipknot. These were truly desperate times. In '94 the metal depression was not obvious but in '96 it could not have been denied.


Recovery and the Silver Age: 2001-2009

(Keep in mind that in 2001 I was already 27 and a little out of the metal demographic. So forgive me if these dates are a little later than they were for you.)

The early waves of NWOSDM reaching the U.S. in the late 90s were a real bright spot. In Flames gave me hope that the light of metal was not yet extinguished (by the way, if you think I'm being a little stupidly melodramatic, go read some Billzebub interviews and then come back with your palate cleansed.) In the U.S. the New England metal scene was producing commercially successful bands, but nothing hard except for Hatebreed (and that Seth Putnam comedian was still staggering around.)

There was a major non-music factor that drove the recovery: technology. Metal sites like Blabbermouth appeared that supported the community like never before. During the golden age, there were a couple usenet groups and a couple magazines, but there really was very little two-way communication outside your little circle of 4 metal buddies from your high school or dorm. Culturally I think it helped that metal fans relaxed and started having fun at shows, and appreciating when musicians had fun - instead of trying to impress everyone with how mean and evil and angry you are all the time. (Granted, this was and still is polluted by irony to some degree; some people will do anything to avoid appearing to be made happy by something!) The best early example I saw of the "return to fun", for want of a less stupid-sounding term, was at the Grocery in Manhattan in 2002, which had a weekly live metal karaoke night. What a blast!

Again, as with the beginning of the dark age, the beginning of the recovery and the death of nu metal was not obvious at the time - Limp Bizkit opened for Metallica as late as 2003 - but it was coming, and the recovery had started in retrospect by 2001. I had expected metal would get an infusion from punk and hardcore, which happened - at the Gilman in Berkeley in 2000-2002, if you asked kids in the bands whether they were metal or punk (because they sounded the same), their answer mostly correlated with whether they liked Bad Religion or Pantera better. By 2003 I heard Avenged Sevenfold blaring out of a house in my neighborhood and knew the recovery was on.

2 other minor innovations: it seemed like metal bands had exhausted every cool noun or noun phrase to use as a name by the late 90s, so I wondered if they weren't going to start using verb phrases (As I Lay Dying, Avenged Sevenfold, etc.) I'd also expected metal to start raiding other religions for novel eschatology and theodicy vocabulary, and was satisifed to see this had happened when I saw Shadowsfall open for In Flames at the Glass House in L.A. ("the First Noble Truth"). (Side note: they had TVs embedded in every surface, including the floor, and were cycling the eye-slicing scene from Un Chien Andalou. Try to relax while that shit's playing before you've had your second Guiness.)

Before moving on, a word is required for the excellent upper Midwestern metalcore scene in the mid-aughts; Dead to Fall and Black Dahlia Murders come to mind. Other innovative American acts that are still with us include The Sword, Pelican, Mastodon, along with a peppering of excellent cerebral European metal (Lyzanxia). By the mid-aughts it seemed that musicians composed innovative metal while recognizing that there were rules of composition they could choose to deviate from, or not. Conventions had been set. Silent Civilian, for example, strikes me as an outstanding band that's dead-set on producing great metal, rather than neurotic about "originality" (think of Handel: was he worried about "originality", or about writing good music?) While it might've been hard for me to admit this at 18, this is to the genre's credit (and Silent Civilian's - listen to this and try to tell me it's not excellent. This is pretty cool too.)


Descent Into A New Dark Age: 2009-?

A new world not quite so brave, one might even say - in fact, right on the edge. (One of my top rules for living: always work in Carcass lyrics when you can.) But what happened? Again we've lost our way. By Cloud Connected, In Flames had turned into Abba. For that matter, name a band that became well-known in the past 2 years that you really dig and expect to be around in another 2 years. By the end of the last decade bands were making claims that they had written Ride the Lightning Part II (sorry Trivium), and fallen far short. So I have some bad news for you: we're now at the beginning of another metal recession. It's never obvious for the first couple years, but here we are. I don't know who will save us (are you a kid playing metal? maybe you!). Unfortunately I might be too old the next time around the block.


My Predictions For the Next Wave of Metal

- Metal will be composed and performed by accomplished musicians (often professionals from other genres) with no axe to grind and no need to prove to people that metal is a real genre. There will also be recognized and not-resisted well-established rules of metal composition - metal has been around long enough at this point that there's no debating it, and the overstated obsession with "originality" will decrease. The downside is that, even though metal will be more ubiquitous, there may not be a metal "community" as such anymore. This is partly a result of the internet, which means that subcultures don't scare people anymore - they're too easy to look up on Wikipedia.

- We'll move away from the myth that metal bands are primarily a live phenomenon (Metallica in particular believe this about themselves and it's flatly false). Given piracy, certainly to make money, you will have to do live shows. So studio recordings will have to be either passion-driven and available free, created by kids in high school and college (and hopefully, a searchable online metal resource so the crowd figures out what's good so you don't have to wade through crap); OR, more records will end up being crowd-financed by the distilled fanbase that reads the Twitter-stream equivalent. (This is happening already with movies.) We're also going to see a lot of metal that never came out of a guitar.

- I think the emotional space of metal has been pretty swept-out. It's modern war-dances, and there are only so many variations on that theme. I have no predictions for the direction that sweeping-out will drive it.

- I keep predicting that the rise of middle classes around the world and the internet will result in metal from elsewhere, twisted in unique ways by local tastes. The international brotherhood of metal is ever stronger, but still there are no bands getting to us from China or Argentina. Why not? I largely credit NWOSDM with salvaging metal during the Dark Ages, but I see no emerging non-Anglophone metal scene to save us! This is why we need a directory. Malay metal! Salvadoran metal? Here a plug for the metal scene in Calgary, Alberta, which I stumbled across, and which is awesome - but I never would have known about it otherwise. (By the way, I'm not as active a metal-seeker as I was and if this does exist, please direct me to it.) I imagine there's a lot of pent-up anger in all those new or soon-to-be Middle Eastern democracies - here's a directory of their metal.

- If I'm going to draw another art history analogy, I would say that music in general (outside of the academy) hasn't really been that strongly influenced by computers yet (by that I mean its production, not its distribution). Maybe this is limited by the bandwidth of the human ear and brain; if not, we're going to see a chance in the next decade parallel to what happened when art became abstract in response to being supplanted by photography a century ago. What it might mean to decompose metal into planes, I don't know, but a) it would be cool and b) I eagerly await metal's Picasso and Dali, as opposed to its Michelangelo and Velasquez who have already come. (Meshuggah may already be its Cezanne.)


*Speaking of nu metal, Lars Ulrich once said P.O.D. (remember them? Me neither), a nu-metal band, copied Hallowed Be Thy Name by Iron Maiden. I don't have the axe to grind with Ulrich that a lot of people seem to, having randomly met him once in San Francisco and talked to him (he was nice enough). But I do think he had a lot of chutzpah on this specific point, considering that Ride the Lightning closely tracks Powerslave and Number of the Beast in song structure and lyrical theme, if not direct melodies.

The BNR Death Metal Tournament; Or, the Triumph of the Classics

Older records on average did better in BNR's death metal tournament. The average age of the releases in each round increased as the tournament moved toward a champion.

You'll note that I adjusted the y-axis from 0, because even in the first round (with the on-average newest releases) the average age was still 16 years old. That's right - the youngest group of records, on average, came out in 1995.

Why might this trend exist? The following possible explanations assume that the number and accessibility of metal releases has remained roughly constant since the late 80s (easy to argue with, more below) and also that the voting represents actual opinion.

1) Maybe the old sh*t is better. This is the most interesting possibility, especially if it generalizes to other areas of art. ("I liked Dali's early stuff but he sold out man.")

2) It's rare that people become metal fans and then later stop liking metal, but as people age, they do stop getting into new bands. Also, most metal fans aren't old enough to be lost through death, and it's not growing any faster than it ever was; so by the population dynamics of metal, most metal fans should have been metal fans for a while. Therefore there may be a tendency for more people to like older stuff. Note that if this is true, the average age should stay constant. So in other words, if they run this tournament again in 10 years, the average age of the first round should stay about 16 years, but then it will mean a release date of about 2005, not 1995.

3) In Fooled by Randomness, Nassim Nicholas Taleb expresses something like Sturgeon's Law ("90% of everything is crap") as it applies to art over time. If 90% of everything is crap, the older something is that has remained accessible and current, the better it's likely to be - assuming quality has even a slight positive correlation with retention of interest in the work over time. Hence, instead of constantly digging for what might be a great work of art or literature or music (but probably won't be), a reliance on classical canons is a good crowd-sourcing strategy. And it's the rare death metal connoisseur who won't enjoy Death's Leprosy, the winner of the tournament.

4) Again generalizeable: maybe early successes in a genre define the genre. These constraints then sow the seeds of the genre's stagnation, because if future works stray from those constraints, they aren't as good; and if future works remain within those constraints, they're boring and not as good. That Leprosy is not compared against Megadeth's Rust in Peace (which won BNR's separate tournament for "regular" metal) but is the winner of its own category is interesting, because it's clearly being measured differently. This might be a good definition for speciation in the arts.

Note that if anything, metal releases have become more abundant and more accessible since the 90s and certainly the 80s. Therefore, if changing accessibility has an effect, it should skew toward the later releases (assuming quality is constant, we would find more good metal albums later, just because there are more metal albums later). So that can't explain what we're seeing here.


Other comments from this peanut gallery, which you should probably dismiss as being expressions of personal taste only:

- I'm surprised that Deicide got as far in this competition as it did. Even when I was 17 it was mostly good for a laugh, although carrying around this tape in school was enough to get me the nickname of Satan, which stuck for years.

- I love both Obituary's Cause of Death and In Flames' Jester Race but if I had to pick one I'd go with the latter. Looking at how the voting went, the neoclassical NWOSDM sound seems to be fading at the close of the metal Silver Age.

Middle Eastern Metal Is Coming. Are We Ready?

Recently Boing Boing reported that Bahrainis were feeling "triumphant, warlike, metal" based on their top download, Fates Warning "Ivory Gate of Dreams" from lastmood.fm. Somehow I had grown up a son of late 80s/early 90s metal without listening to much Fates Warning. Because of Bahrainis' enthusiasm, I have corrected this. So now Middle Eastern metal kids, you're influencing the rest of us. With your newfound freedom you must pursue the one sure path to enlightenment: METAL! Maybe it will be Middle Eastern metal that saves the rest of the world from the encroaching metal Dark Age.

And it occurs to me that in simultaneous service to freedom and metal, the metalheads of the free world should start checking out Middle Eastern metal. Without further ado, here's what I done found. (If you know of any others please comment.)


BAHRAIN:
- The Voice of Metal in Bahrain on Facebook
- General rock and metal site on Facebook

EGYPT: A whole sh*tload at metalunderground.com.

IRAN: There's a whole frickin blog of Persian metal bands.

IRAQ: Acrassicauda of course! (Here on Facebook too.) (5/29/11 at Brick by Brick in San Diego!)

JORDAN: Bilocate

LIBYA: Disrooting

OMAN: Arabia (that's the name of the band)

PAKISTAN: somebody put together a video summarizing their 10 favorite Pakistani metal bands.

SAUDI ARABIA: Crossroads Arabia, SA death metal magazine

SYRIA: Trendkill

TUNISIA: Barzakh

YEMEN: couldn't find any! Do you know of some? Let me know!

Chinese Metal Is Here to Save/Destroy Us

Seriously. Driving back up to San Francisco over the New Year I asked my handy co-pilot to do a little Spotify searching while I was driving to see if there are any solid Chinese metal bands. And you know how that goes: typically it's novel to find a band or two from a non-traditional metal country, but they're unimaginative, badly produced, and don't introduce any local elements.

But that's not what you should expect to find in a country with a three-millennium history of music, a population twice the size of the U.S. and Europe put together, and plenty of things to be pissed off about. The Chinese metal scene is fucking amazing, it preserves and extends the best of metal, and how it hasn't so far penetrated the rest of the world more is beyond me. (Here is a Youtube channel for Chinese metal, and another one; also a Chinese metal wiki and here's a blog; as Mirai Kawashima of Sigh says, help spread the plague of Eastern terror.) Sure, many of the bands are technically outstanding versions of metal sub-genres, including those which Western bands seem to have abandoned, but some of them bring in an East Asian melodic sensibility, and some traditional elements like the erhu and throat-singing in more than just a "look, non-traditional instruments" sense. (Of course Taiwan's Chthonic has used erhus for a while.)

#1: Filter (from China, not the 90s American one.) Bands keep saying they're going to record the next Metallica album, because Metallica isn't, but they keep not doing it. I explicitly proposed a bunch of bands getting together to record "the next Metallica album" before, but you can forget about it because Filter has done it. I never knew until now what James Hetfield would sound like if he sang in Mandarin. I love these guys. Someone is finally writing Justice songs again, although there's a healthy dose of Load sensibility too. Here is Filter's No way:



#2: Last Successor is another fantastic band that's described as progressive metal, although they're better described as a very Chinese metalcore band with progressive leanings. And that said, I'll commit sacrilege against John Huntsman's favorite band, Last Successor are a better progressive metal band than Dream Theater. Know why? They don't let their work get bogged down in unexciting, non-metal displays of musicianship, though their chops are clearly there. (Ever miss blistering leads from the old days? Try these guys; their soloist is quite Skolnickian.) They use a lot of keyboards and aren't afraid to put them right in front; despite the keys' prominence, they never lose that drum-plus-rhythm guitar alchemy that metal is about. A good intro is this song from/about World of Warcraft (just "World"):



Abyss also has a lot of nice erhu, as does Release, which takes off right away. If Last Successor has a flaw, it's that in their ballads they veer off a little into schmaltzy East Asian pop land (as in See Jasmine Again), but the same can be said for Western metal ballads wading into sappy lighter-holding territory.


#3: Die from Sorrow is pretty much the Chinese Avenged Sevenfold (which is fine with me). Here's Andromeda:




#4: Hell Savior - Imagine a faster, thrashier Judas Priest with the offspring of Greg Graffin and Axl Rose singing, and somehow working. Here's Guardians of Glave:




#5: M-Survivor - A solid metalcore band like As I Lay Dying. Here's Don't Give Up:




#6: Tiefutu has some nice crunchy bits but you find yourself humming the electronic parts more than anything. (Deceptive, guys. Nice.)




#7: Samans sounds like a more electronic Rammstein. Here's Death March:




#8: S.A.W are the most crunchy bastards ever. Again in the vein of As I Lay Dying, but with some cleaner stops.




#9: Suffocated - aside from the vocals, these guys are the most thrash-like of all the bands I've posted here, and they get right into on this one, When Dreams Entwine:




#10: Ego Fall. I promised you throat-singing and here it is. (Here's some on this blog from before; traditional Western death metal singing is essentially just sloppy vestibular vocal cord vocalization anyway.) Throat-singing is usually done in a tempo and rhythm that has a real gallop to it and this ("Sounding the Horn") is no exception.




#11: Nightmare - Self-destruction




You might also want to check out Dark Haze and From the Red.

Unexpected Philosophical Positions in Metal

I ran across this bit at Agent Intellect when looking for (of all things) a post about religion and psychoanalysis. In it the author notes a surprising preponderance of Christians in metal. I was interested to find this because this is an observation I have also made. I should note that the blogger in question fills his blog(s) with an odd assortment of topics, among them metal and science fiction, a conjunction which may seem familiar. Consequently I emailed him to congratulate him on the obvious excellence of his character. I recommend you visit but don't stay too long, or the Christians will get you. (This is the kind of thing I plan to tell my children to make them do their homework.)

Mr. Intellect mostly discusses the curious case of Megadeth, and Dave Mustaine specifically. If I'm recalling my metal history correctly, just prior to Rust in Peace Mustaine went through rehab and not surprisingly produced his best album to date at that time (because the production budget didn't all go up his nose or into his veins; BTW, some of the best metal ever written is on that record and especially on Countdown to Extinction, Youthanasia, and Cryptic Writings.) Perhaps also not surprisingly, after his twelve-step program he found religion, which is controversially associated particularly with AA. You might imagine my chagrin when James Hetfield also went through rehab a few years ago. On that front, despite the influence of an infamously Cosby-sweater attired therapist on the lyrics, the give-it-up-to-a-higher-power kind of themes seem not to have unduly influenced later Metallica lyrics. Hetfield is still writing lyrics about Lovecraft stuff at least.

I had long thought that Mustaine's Christianity was common knowledge, especially since Megadeth fans have never tired of informing me of it, like the pleasant mob in the beer line I talked to at Gigantour in Sacramento in 2005, but particularly one Catholic metalhead college girlfriend (is there anything hotter than a smart female who's into metal? Yes, exactly one thing: a smart female who's into metal and went to Catholic school. Grrrr. I debate whether to include these little sexist comments but Zaphod told me I had to make my blogs more personality-driven. Yes, Zaphod is a real guy, not one of my voices. My voices give much better advice.) In any event, I would not have expected Mr. Intellect to be surprised by this.

The traditional lyrical subject matter of metal - the end of the world, taboo topics of violence and anger having to do with negative masculine emotions - would certainly seem on its face to put off modern Western Christians, who (even at the cynical reading many of us take) at least work hard to appear to eschew these associations. In fact I would argue there are underlying reasons why metal's draw to young Christian males should not be at all surprising. But before we worry too much about whether it's surprising that metalheads are ever or often Christian, first it's worth stepping back for some cultural criticism. Shouldn't it seem odd that we assume this kind of association between artists and any philosophy or religion? For example: are we concerned with Lawrence Welk's position on Zoroastrianism? Or Cezanne's position on the bimetallic standard? Or whether Mozart was an adherent of the phlogiston theory? I personally blame this association between musicians and pseudo-intellectual/supernatural belief-systems on the Beatles' going to India; that's really the first time you see it. No one especially cared whether Elvis read Nietzsche. At least this gives us a potential Monty Python sketch: imagine if surrealists and futurists developed certain hairstyles and styles of dress to mark themselves apart from the general public, and then they regularly got into fistfights at museums. Seriously: is that really any more ridiculous than punks and metalheads fighting at clubs in the 80s, identifying each other by short and long hair? The anesthesia of the familiar is powerful stuff.

A second observation is that we not only associate musicians with philosophy and religion at all, but we associate them with specific controversies in those realms, i.e. morality, theology, and eschatology. (Eschatology is the study of the end of the world. E-scat-ology is the study of the end of the world ending because of poop. HA! Get it? I try to keep things light.) That anyone, even young people, looks to musicians to explore these kinds of questions is weird, but metal isn't the only place where such an odd conjunction exists. To take two personal favorites, many libertarians assume implicitly that politics is largely the province of economists, and many atheists believe philosophy is the largely the province of biologists. Whether these arrangements are true and useful is a separate question - my point is that they're rarely recognized explicitly.

In my experience there are quite a few Christian metalheads, and this isn't strange at all. Why might this be? A large fraction if not the majority of metal lyrics take the form of moral outrage, either against some perceived moral infraction of a black-and-white moral principle, or regarding a specific abstract moral issue. There's very little real nihilism or amorality in metal. It's mostly angry idealists whining that the world and its inhabitants don't conform to their moral categories. Consider: how many metal songs take the form of second-person missives about some vague moral affront by a friend or ex that is clearly infuriating-to-the-singer, even if you don't really know what happened? It's no surprise that second person is so common in metal but not in other prose or verse: it's the most confrontational way of writing, and metal is largely a musical threat display, right down to reinventing war-paint. What's strange is that we pay for songs and concerts where the singer stands at the microphone telling us in second person he's angry at us and is going to hurt us. That said, second-person moral anger is more compelling art than nihilist shock-artists, be they in-jokes like GWAR or unfortunate souls like Seth Putnam; either way they're good for a laugh but that's about the end of it.

Considering all of this, some of metal's angry idealists, among both composers and consumers, are bound to be Christian. Any direct, simply-structured art form with a sense of clear moral principles and outrage at hypocrisy would likely be appealing to many young Christians - and young males in general. There is further theorizing to be had here, namely that the reason this kind of thing appeals to young males is that they are high-testosterone and this leads to underwired frontal lobes and temporal-lobe dominance resulting in quickness to anger as well as a more rule-based and less socialized understanding of morality. In even the most stunted males (like your blogger) by the late 20s the frontal lobes finally catch up and all the posturing and moral anger in the lyrics becomes harder to take seriously. Geschwind syndrome and autism can both be thought of as hyper-male personality phenotypes - and both are exhibited by strongly religious or anti-religious people. But now we're more in the domain of my atheist or cognitive science blogs, if you're interested in that sort of thing - I wrote there recently on many of the cognitive similarities between atheists and principle-oriented (rather than tribe-oriented) Christians.

I must confess I feel a little dirty after all that Christian talk. So this year, remember the reason for the season: Slayer!

The Hot Alberta Metal Scene. Seriously.

Who knew Calgary (and Lethbridge, and Edmonton) had such an awesome metal scene? People in Alberta, that's who. Having just returned from the Great White (or at this time of year, green) North I must spread the word. Last week I was in Alberta, mostly in Jasper and Banff National Parks, so when I passed through Calgary I unfortunately didn't have time to take in a show. But the writeups in the local free papers were many. Of the names I gleaned, here are a few stand-outs:

Akakor - Hot technical Death metal! Imagine a heavier more metally Dillinger Escape Plan. Personal favorite track, Perceived to Be.

Enceladus - Described as Lethbridge power metal (a south Alberta city). I'm partial to showboating neoclassical stuff with melodic vocals (e.g. Symphony X) so I dig these guys too, although they could do with better vocal production and mixing. Check out the other bands at their CD release party. (No offense to Lethbridge, in fact congrats to Lethbridge, but how can San Diego not have a scene like this?!?!? If it does please direct us all to the right resources.)

Mark of Cain - These guys are slightly more technical than average and are helping move death metal past the point of trying to out-shock and out-gore the next band. Plus they like robots, and anyone who combines science/fiction and metal is making the world better.

JJS3 - Fun pentatonic neo-hard rock bordering at times on doom-metal. (Though from the Yukon rather than Alberta. Is there death metal in the Yukon? I spend too much time wondering if there's anything about certain cities that contributes to the musical style aside from contact with other bands; maybe in a massive territory like YT with only 30,000 other people the population density is too low to get really angry.) I find myself listening to Warrior Warrior repeatedly. The guitar tone and style reminds me of Crysknife in some ways, along with the simple arrangements and catchy melodies.

Kataplexis - Perpetual Apathy is my fave. Technical bordering on black death metal.

Striker. Excellent! Imagine Black Tide meets Hammerfall; ergo, not at all like the 80s hair band the name makes you think of. Check out "F*ck Volcanoes", an ode to that unspellable Icelandic eruption this summer, musically given the full serious-minded operatic hard rock treatment, but lyrically, er ah, not: "F*ck volcanoes! Spewing shit into the sky / Stupid assholes, Iceland why don't you go die / F*ck volcanoes, you're seriously killing my buzz / Motherf*cker." Believe it or not, it works! You will also smile when you listen to "The Keg That Crushed New York".

Divinity's record is called The Singularity, which is also a good union of metal and sf. I would say they're a slightly less grating Meshuggah, but you can hear the influence, even in the vocal style. About time for a generation of Meshuggah-influenced bands to appear.

Also check out Ominosity and Viathyn.

I don't know about you but when I find an excellent metal scene in an unexpected part of the world and I'm checking out their tunes I'm like a kid opening presents at Christmas. Enjoy!

Good Old Pennsylvania Christian Death Metal: Believer, Extraction from Mortality

A few weeks ago I was going through and digitizing my remaining cassette collection* and realized I still had Extraction from Morality, by Believer. I had saved it because these guys were good but obscure, and it's aged well enough that I took the time to do a digital transfer song-by-song, so I could put it online for this post. Little did I know some other cats had already posted them on Youtube. Enjoy:



Believer was (in?)famous for being a Christian death metal band in the early 90s when death metal itself was still fairly novel, and Christian death metal unheard of. Whatever else I might have thought of them, I've always thought that Believer was one of the most original and talented early death metal acts out there. I wish more Pennsylvania boys would have had the cajones and drive to get out there and create something new and technical like they did. In 1991 it was much braver to include non-conventional, genre-defying content on death metal records. It's a very mature style now, but two decades ago the genre was still forming its identity and deciding on the rules, and as such, style solidarity was valued, and dissent was not well-tolerated. Since Believer was Christian maybe they reasoned they were an outgroup anyway so who cares.

In any event they put this composition in their title track; in all honesty, most of the time extra-genre inclusions on metal albums are low-quality filler, worth more as signaling than real content (i.e., "Look! We're talented because we can compose in in this other respected format. Now you must acknowledge that we're legitimate and metal is legitimate!" The same thing happens in other genres too. Was Body Count really a good metal album, or was it just novel for Ice-T to show that he could do metal too?)

Believer didn't stop with the classical part. There's a reggae bit pasted into a song that sounds more like Suicidal Tendencies-style hardcore ("Stress"; listen here) and a screwy but intense lead-in to Not Even One.

*I have Quarteto da Pinga and IR8 too. Yes I'll be posting them. And I had to go to Singapore to get them (yes, really) back before you could download things. The internet ruined tape trading conventions.

The Evolution of Metalheads, Or Metal as Confrontation - A Review of Immolation

I've written before about metal as a modern war dance. We'll come back to that in a second. I was listening to Immolation's Kingdom of Conspiracy, which has received great reviews.



Briefly: music is organized sound that evokes emotion - specifically, sustainable non-aversive basic emotions. That is, the basic emotions that you can experience at length and that don't make you want to get away. That means in music we have happiness, sadness, anger, but not fear, disgust or surprise. That does explain most music. And interestingly, this German-Canadian research study comparing the reactions of Europeans vs. Pygmies listening to each others' never-before-heard music shows that a given piece of music might stir different emotions, but a) they would still activate basic emotions and b) they would do so to about the same extent. That is, maybe when Pygmies are listening to Beethoven they get sad instead of happy, but they got sad to the same degree the Europeans get happy, and the Pygmies didn't get contemptuous or disgusted. I found this fascinating because these two groups of people are not only culturally isolated, they are also about as genetically unrelated as it is possible for two groups of humans to be.

Until the mid-to-late twentieth century, there was a hole in Western music in the sense that anger was not represented. Sure, we have military marches, but those are limited in exposure (because most of us are not warriors, and most of us don't have warriors in our families), and associated with large institutions that young males in need of angry music probably don't want to submit to. (Although it must be said, many metalheads also like military marches, myself included, and some metal sounds like military marches.) So it might not be surprising that in the West we re-invented war dances, right down to the posturing, threats and war paint. Seriously. Watch the by now, fully established faces and movements of metal performers and then listen to a Lakota war song or watch a Maori haka. The angry young males of the West had a vacuum in their experience and metal filled it.

So what does this mean when those angry young males become less angry, and much less young? Listening to Immolation, I wondered about two things that have changed in many venerable metalheads' appreciation after decades of listening, for art generally, and metal specifically.

1) For art generally, you become acutely sensitive to structure and format.

To this end, most death metal described as "technical" or "innovative" actually doesn't depart much from the standard format of rock in general established over half a century ago (and frankly dating to blues before that). Intro, verse chorus maybe another verse chorus, bridge, maybe solo, verse chorus outro. (The leads on this record are my favorite thing about it, but they're not new. They're kind of Kerry King meets Michael Amott.) These are the rules of metal, and deviations are reckoned against them. But the reality is that if music deviates too much from a recognizable format, it's not enjoyable, and it's hard to follow; see much of modern classical or avant garde music, which you can't remember immediately after listening to it. All nervous systems have a balance between recognizing patterns, but having enough novelty (mismatches or otherwise unexpected elements in the information) that it causes more attention to be paid. This becomes an increasingly difficult feat as a genre's possible space (given its rules) is swept out by compositions; maybe this explains why new genres tend to appear in big bangs of punctuated equilibrium as a new compositional space is broken into, rather than being best predicted by artistic gradualism. But I notice that us old metalheads, explicitly no longer value novelty like we did (or claimed we did). Someone is intentionally going to write a Part II to Reign in Blood? Sign me up! (Sadly, occasionally bands say they'll do something like this, but then they don't.)

2) For metal specifically, I'm tired of the confrontationalness of it.

As mentioned, metal songs are for the most part modern war dances. And you get past that. If you can't see the performers or the music as intimidating, you can no longer appreciate this part of it; and there's not much else to say on this front. The fantasy of powers that the music projects, either from direct threats and claims of strength or gaining power through taboo violation (a known theme in anthropology) becomes harder to take seriously; there are people and things in the world to be legitimately afraid of, and at a certain point, your boss getting angry at you or your kid getting hit by a car become much scarier than any corpsepaint ever could be, even in some state of suspended disbelief during a show. It also bears mentioning that for young genre music enthusiasts, consuming that particular genre does part of the job of establishing your identity (why should being a metalhead or hip hop fan have anything at all to do with how you dress or any other aspect of your life but what's on you iPod? But clearly they do.) As music fans get older, their identity gets filled in by other things - in particular, profession and family. You hope. Unless that profession is "musician".

The point is not to say, "I'm too old to like metal anymore, and soon you will be too." It's a call to performers and consumers to recognize that innovation for its own sake is not usually productive and it's actually preferable to focus on writing killer music within the rules; and also to establish new rules not for their own sake, but to produce new material that relies on tonal and rhythmic interaction (which itself can make you angry or scared; heard of Opeth?) and not how scary everything is supposed to be.

Oh yeah, the Immolation review. Like I said, I mostly liked the leads. There were a couple big, hummable riffs too.

A Metalhead Binge-Listens to Led Zeppelin's Entire Catalog For the First Time

Abstract: despite a life of listening to metal (not just thrash and death metal, but 1970s "iron age" metal like Black Sabbath and Deep Purple) somehow I'd avoided Led Zeppelin, beyond what a normal American male my age would get through pop culture osmosis. What finally prompted me to fix this was the curious disconnect I've noticed between the frequent assertions in rock writing that Zeppelin albums had less filler than Black Sabbath, as contrasted against the modern explicit impact of Black Sabbath measured by people today walking around with T-shirts that say "LISTEN TO BLACK SABBATH". Ongoing attention to Led Zeppelin almost five decades later does not approach this intensity of worship. Consequently I set out to binge-listen their full catalog.

Methods: Over a couple weeks, each time I sat down, I listened to at least one full album at a time. While I tried not to explicitly evaluate them as a metal band, my bias of course comes through in the type of material that moves me. I did not include bonus tracks that were only available on later releases of albums. While I did read about the reception and background of the albums, I did not do this until after I listened to them, to make my listening experience similar to that of people in 70s, who couldn't read the Wikipedia article before the album came out.

Results: from their whole catalog, I dig about a dozen of their songs, especially When the Levee Breaks. Given the number of songs in their entire catalog, it is therefore inarguable that they have a lot more filler on their formative (first 4-5) albums than Sabbath.

Conclusion: the more direct and congealed-into-riffs appeal of Sabbath may be the reason for Zeppelin's decreased prominence today. And applying the most meaningful criteria - has Zeppelin become a formative influence of my adolescence?* - they have failed. All hail the mighty Sabbath. That said, Zeppelin was making up modern rock as they went, and they were also to some degree a victim of their success, as modern vocalists and the modern guitar solo are often taking their cues from Plant and Page.

*Yes I do expect time travel. Black Sabbath could do it. Their heaviness is such that it pierces time and space.





THE SHORT VERSION

Favorite albums: Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin IV, and Physical Graffiti.


LZ: Very strong songwriting and guitar work for a debut album. Favorite songs: Communication Breakdown

LZII: more mellow, down-tempo and bluesier so far than the first one. I would call this blues rock more than proto-metal. Favorite songs: none stick out

LZIII: Overall III is weaker than I and II. Less memorable, and lead guitar is unpleasantly in the background. Favorite songs: The Immigrant Song

LZIV: they remembered they were a rock band, and found their distortion pedal and faster tempos again. Favorite songs: When the Levee Breaks (my favorite of their entire catalog), Stairway (duh), Misty Mountain Hop, Black Dog

Houses of the Holy: A LOT of the slow-to-mid-tempo songs that rock just doesn't do well, with a minimum of distortion. A slightly better Led Zeppelin III. Were they bored with their formula? Feeling as if they HAD to innovate? Or just thought they can sell more records with this shift? Moments of vocal effects that make the album sound much more modern than '73. Favorite songs: No Quarter, The Ocean

Physical Graffiti: their last strong record. Again they find their distortion pedals. Favorite songs: Kashmir, In My Time of Dying, In the Light

Presence: my favorite songs are the only two I would ever listen to again. Mostly filler. Favorite songs: Achilles, Nobody's Fault But Mine

Coda: they sign off with some actual rock, but there are too many 80s-ish moments to really like this record. Favorite songs: Walter's Walk



FULL REVIEW BELOW.

Metal confession time: until the last few days, probably the only Led Zeppelin song I'd heard all the way through was Stairway. And I'd heard bits and pieces of 4-5 others, frequently from commercials. How did this happen? Unclear. My taste in rock began with Metallica-Slayer-Megadeth, then went back to Maiden, Diamondhead, Sabbath and Deep Purple, and stayed with continuing developments up through 2005 or so (In Flames, Meshuggah, Avenged Sevenfold, Silent Civilian). Zeppelin never appealed, in fact seemed positively thin and boring and didn't smash my face in the way I always wanted music to do. And now that I think back to early 90s high school, it seemed like they drew different kinds of people as fans.

So, after a lifetime of metal, in my early 40s, I listened to their entire catalog in the space of a few days, and immersed myself in the mythos. Yes, that's right. I've watched Spinal Tap, and listened to bands cover their music, and known Zeppelin vaguely through pop culture references, e.g. the pie chart above - I knew there was a lemon-squeezing line and remembered the song that starts with the land of the ice and snow. Sure, I have a passing knowledge, but certainly compared to my experience with Sabbath or even Deep Purple, I really know next to nothing about their catalog. So I sat down to listen to the whole thing. Binge-listening! (Lifelong Zeppelin fans are no doubt horrified by the superficial commoditizing impression that binge-consumption of beloved media invariably invokes, not to mention an uptight middle-aged professional like myself opining on their work after such an experience. Anticipation of which reaction, I have to admit, pleases me greatly.)

But you can relax, because I freely admit that such an exercise is perhaps doomed to disappointment, for me. This post is kind of a reverse Chuck Klosterman piece. No matter how transcendent these albums are, at this point they obviously can't define what music should sound like to me the way Paranoid and Justice For All did, and become the formative influence of my adolescence. I can't have the experience of running home from the record store and dropping a needle onto black vinyl and reading the liner notes and arguing with friends about it and imagining how much my out-of-it parents will hate it. But I can still avoid pre-contaminating my impressions, so I tried to only know about each album what you would know before and while listening to it. To maximize the experience I read about the band's history and I knew the year that each album came out, but I intentionally didn't look at the contemporary reactions to each album until after I'd listened to them, to avoid being influenced by them. I also didn't listen to later-released bonus tracks (and none of them seem to have taken the world by storm anyway). My overall reaction is that they certainly blazed some trails, but they're not consistently impressive. Without further ado, here is my detailed reaction to the Zeppelin catalog, by album.



from Ultimate Classic Rock
General Background: reading about their progression from the Yardbirds days to Zeppelin, I get some of the early bio bits from Spinal Tap. More and more when I read about drug-related deaths of musicians, I see how mundanely similar they are. Bonham had alcohol use disorder and choked on vomit, as they often do. (No talk of whether or not it twas or twasn't his own vomit.) Kurt Cobain had garden-variety opioid use disorder with some signs of personality pathology who escaped from a rehab a few days before - whaddaya know! - he completed suicide...and the list goes on. Randy Rhoads's FWI (as opposed to DWI, which is bad enough) was probably the most interesting from this era in terms of the spectacular stupidity that set it apart from the rest. I also went looking for an online version of Ars Magica Arteficii by Gerolamo Cardano, from whence comes the ZOSO symbol, but only found the Ars Magna, which is essentially 8th grade algebra, finally imported into Europe in the late Italian Renaissance from the Islamic world. A guy who's stuck on algebra, and this is the dude that inspires your magic symbol? Not really that spooky guys. (At least do differential equations, there are at least Greek characters in that.)


Led Zeppelin (1969)

Overall the guitar work is more complex than I would expect from a debut album but they'd been in other professional bands before. One online Sabbath vs Zep debate I saw said Zeppelin's records have "less clunkers" and on this record at least, I agree. Zeppelin maybe influenced hard rock more than Sabbath, although Sabbath more directly hit the nerve and that's what generates the obsession in metal. (Better to be loved by few...) Babe I'm Gonna Leave You is good. Dazed and Confused is familiar. Communication Breakdown is a classic and I'd heard the riff before. Later on Zeppelin moved away from building songs in the modular style familiar from later metal, which you can view as a positive or not. (My vote: not. I live for good riffs.) I've heard Metallica cover How Many More Times and not known where it was from. There were moments throughout the album where the drum sound reminded me of the parts of Kashmir I'd heard before. Reflecting on Plant's personal and vocal style, he's an early David Lee Roth. He can project but it's his confidence in his delivery that lets him do what he does.


Led Zeppelin II (1969)

Early in the record, more mellow, down-tempo and bluesier so far than the first one. I would call this blues rock more than proto-metal. The Lemon Song - ah, there's the line about the lemon. And that exposes the rift between hard rock and metal and why Zeppelin is more of an influence to the former: sexuality as a theme (or at least "normal", non-threatening, non-taboo sexuality. Pantera can sing This Love because it's scary, but there's always an overtone of moral judgment. Not many metal bands that use pathological sexuality seem to want you to think that they actually do it, or approve of it.) One study showed that metal and classical fans have a personality makeup similar to each other, and different than people who like other genres of music. Classical and modern metal are in some sense more abstract, absent personalities in the performance, more often instrumental. Maybe that's what draws the different sorts of people. Hard rock (today, basically a dead genre) owes more to Zeppelin than metal does. Still, can you imagine Tom Araya talking about his sex life?

As for the songs, Heartbreaker's intro riff is solid. Living Loving Maid is also familiar. That's more the tempo I'm looking for from a band claimed as the, or at least a major, progenitor of metal. (Yes, there are slow tempo metal bands. They're not doing the same thing mood-wise that Zep is doing in their slow songs.) Ramble On is the best of the three hobbit-themed songs they've written, partly because Robert Plant is actually saying phrases that approach poetry. The song reminds me of the best moments of Credence.


Led Zeppelin III (1970)

The Immigrant Song: there are those Vikings. Now that I hear it I may have listened to this one all the way through. Zeppelin really did not have a good crunch (my own personal taste? that's the objective reality of where metal went.) Sabbath's Paranoid came out within a month of this and had a better crunch. I couldn't wait for Friends to be over. It kind of meanders. It sounds like a studio jam that should've been cut. Overall III is weaker than I and II. Less memorable, and lead guitar is unpleasantly in the background. Going back to read about it, it got deservingly bad reviews.

Out on the Tiles has that low crashing punctuated motif, but the guitar just isn't strong enough to bring it off, and the riffs are weak. Slide guitar in Tangerine is a brave choice, but overall doesn't rescue the song (apparently about his 1960s girlfriend from Kentucky). That's the Way was worse than having a cavity filled. As much as Zeppelin anticipated hard rock, their accoustic bits and half-assed ballads frankly suck. 80s power ballads do what they're trying to do much better than the soft ones here, i.e., it pains me to say I would prefer Bon Jovi to anything, but this song pained me more than enough to say it. Bron-Y-Aur Stomp is also a different move but at least it has energy. It seems like by this album they were already getting bored with writing rock songs. Bands don't usually move into their "mannerist" periods so quickly (often characterized by ethnic overtones; Metallica's country style on Load, Sepultura's Latin percussion, and here Celtic flavor from their lair in Wales.)







Led Zeppelin IV (1971)

A dramatic improvement over its predecessor. Black Dog is another classic. This is Zeppelin's answer to War Pigs. Given the strength of the riff, the addition of major third harmony later in the song, and the driving tempo, this is arguably proto-metal. There is an interesting rhythm change during the key change in the main riff. When Rock and Roll started, I thought good, Zep is back (to playing rock) as opposed to the inchoate ballads on III. Amazing how prominent Bonham's drums are, to good effect too. Unfortunately, the record loses momentum because the Battle of Evermore is a repetitive waste of time, Middle-Earth-themed or not.

And THEN Stairway, the ancestral power-ballad. Their other amorphous slow numbers can almost be forgiven. I skipped this because I already know it. I'd heard parts of Misty Mountain Hop before but didn't know it was Tolkien-inspired. The verse has that strange chromatic triplet pattern. Come to think of it, Zeppelin does anticipate this aspect of metal (weird scales) better than Sabbath, whose jarringness is mostly from low register and diminished fifths. Going to Califoria is annoying, because Robert Plant is annoying when he's trying to sing about sensitivity and introspection. I'd heard parts of When the Levee Breaks before, and it always reminds me of Scarecrow on Ministry's NWO. This song is in "creepy" territory, rare for Zeppelin. This is definitely my favorite song on this album, and maybe now, of Zeppelin's entire catalog.



from lawyerdrummer.com. Did you know Zep just won a big
plagiarism suit a few weeks ago? About Stairway to Heaven
being a rip-off of Taurus, by Spirit

Houses of the Holy (1973)

As a whole, this album has its moments but Led Zeppelin IV it ain't. It has a LOT of the slow-to-mid-tempo songs that rock just doesn't do well, with a minimum of distortion. This is a slightly better Led Zeppelin III. Were they bored with their formula? Feeling as if they HAD to innovate? Or just thought they can sell more records with this shift? (If so, it worked.) There are moments of vocal effects that make the album sound much more modern than '73; despite this, by this point I'm getting sick of Robert Plant. He's not a bad singer but he's no Chris Cornell; he's also not selling his personality as much as David Lee Roth. Of course they're both influenced by him, and specializing in aspects of his performance (is it fair to compare an archaeopteryx with an eagle and an ostrich?) so in that way Zep and Plant are victims of their own success.

Onto the songs: It quite escapes me why so many people claim to like The Song Remains the Same. Until now my only contact with it was a lyrical reference in a Carcass song, and had the situation remained this way my life would have been better for it. At moments it reminds me of Rush's Villa Strangiato but less imaginative. Rain Song does establish a nice "rainy mood", but I was worried that this one would go nowhere, and it kind of doesn't until the drums and strings start later in the song. The recording of Bonham's drums often sticks out and this song is no exception (might actually be the most interesting thing here.) In Over the Hills and Far Away, the verse's vocal melody is quickly recognizeable but there's really not much else to this song. Lots of heavily bent notes imparting an almost country style here (not just in this song, throughout the album).

The Crunge - I will never get this 3m15s of my life back. Reminds me of Jane's Addiction, who I also don't care for. (Clearly, every time I think they sound like a later rock band, you can make an argument for influence. But this song still sucks, and so does Jane's Addiction.) The trance-inducing riff in Dancing Days is immediately recognizeable. Somehow this doesn't get old, although certain elements of the song bother me when they're outside country or Southern rock (is that slide guitar again? I didn't like it when Kirk Hammett started doing it on the Loads either.) D'yer Mak'er is not a rock song, but it's very unique. I don't know how I'd even describe the main riff. I still like it. Where I'm critical of the incoherent, un-memorable attempts at originality elsewhere on this album, this song feels like an actual song. A darker-sounding song, No Quarter is the "When the Levee Breaks" of this album, that has a steady development and some sustained discord and unhurried but solid riffing. I like this one a lot; maybe my favorite on the album. The main riff of The Ocean is instantly recognizable. The bizarre rhythmic pattern of it keeps it interesting and the little a capella section in the middle is nice.


Physical Graffiti (1975)

Better than Houses of the Holy. At this point, every second album is solid, and the others are weak, much like Star Trek movies. But Physical Graffiti has a lot of cuts leftover from LZIII and LZIV; I was not surprised on learning this. Physical Graffiti is also the first record on the Swansong label, and the quality drops after this one. Because they're now more isolated from sales concerns? I know this is anathema to suggest in art and especially in rock, but come on, incentives matter to human beings. (There's an analaogous drop in the quality of output from scientists who win the Nobel.) In Custard Pie I'm happy to hear that they found their distortion pedal again and it feels a little more drum-driven; otherwise not blown away.

In The Rover I don't mind the bent notes because again, it grooves, and the drums are driving. Apparently there's a phase effect added to the guitar but I can't hear it. In My Time of Dying is an unambiguously good song. The quiet intro is nice, and maybe I like it because the main riff reminds me of Danzig's Twist of Cain. And there's a fast section in the middle with some solid lead work. Looking at the Wiki article, a lot of similarities in the recording to another favorite of mine When the Levee Breaks. Lyrics are the usual bluesy last minute prayers to the Lord, which normally I'm partial to, but "Oh, Gabriel, let me blow your horn", I mean come on Robert.

Onto the songs - Houses of the Holy - interesting that this is here and not on the previous album. The hummable melody and cleaner (but still more prominent) vocals immediately suggest a deliberately radio-friendly song. For no fault of its own, Trampled Under Foot reminds me of other songs that I can't name, that I keep expecting it to shift into. Of course it does not which gives it an uncomfortable itch. (Green Day songs have a habit of seeming familiar the first time you hear them too.) Another problem with this song: the main riff has an unfortunate Zep pattern of busy then stop (open few seconds with bass/drums) busy then stop (open few seconds...) that I find very disjointed, not in a deliberate Meshuggah way either, but rather like it can't decide whether it wants to be a rock march or groove.

As for Kashmir - I've heard large parts of this one before and always liked it. See, this is a good song. This song is a rock march and knows it. The well-placed exotic scales and brass parts somehow don't seem to stick out. I had heard previously that Bonham played out in the hallway to get the right drum sound for this song, and they do sound more distant (perfect for the song), but this may be why I find myself always listening to the drums in many of their songs. You can hear the phase effect (most overt right at the end). I'd also never counted to figure out what's going on with the meter but it sounds like it's basically in 3 (unambiguously for guitar, kind of cheating on drums by making it 4+2 so they line up in multiples of 6). Reading about the composition, I'm not surprised that they took their time composing it; this is clear in the way it's so full of well-developed ideas.

The keyboards at the start of In the Light had me a bit worried (a little too 70s "look we have a Moog!") but then there's that main riff that starts at 3 minutes and is outstanding. (This is the first time in the whole catalog that I wanted to go get my guitar and learn it.) I like Bron-Yr-Aur and the metal strings, but for some reason when there's an (apparently) accidentally muted note on an acoustic piece like this it really bugs me because it sounds sloppy. Maybe that's what Page was going for but for me, it mars an otherwise nice clean relaxing interlude. ("But that makes it sound more 'live'!" you object. Yes! Correct! And you're not in your mom's garage anymore! Do it over!) In Down by the Seaside, the flange and the slide guitar are too much, and the melody and echo make me think I'm listening to Dolly Parton or something. And then at 2m12s, Dolly is replaced by...a mess. ++Ungood. The ending of Ten Years Gone feels like a power ballad that never quite takes off. Unsatisfying. Night Flight starts with Plant right away which can't be a good sign. The best thing I could say for this one is "filler". Mostly written by John Paul Jones. Sorry bro.

The Wanton Song is a classic busy-open-busy Zep riff but I like it. I quite like this song. I think the internal structure of the riff makes the whole phrase feel more organized. Often you'll hear rock bands picking strange chords to try to be original and think it's a phenomenon of modern rock looking for something new, but strange chord choices are found throughout Zeppelin's work (here in the chorus) so if today it's done out of boredom and a desperate search for originality, well, it was already happening in the early 70s. Boogie With Stu - alright, this one doesn't sound like rock but I have to admit it's fun. But the loud echoed vocals damage the old-timey mood. By the time I get to Black Country Woman, I'm too tired of hearing about Robert Plant getting laid to pay attention. Leaving the little spoken moments in at the beginning and end of the song create some intimacy that was probably much more rare when this was released. (Think of the rattling of the snare in response to the guitar on Metallica's St. Anger; a rough edge rare for them.) Sick Again - Okay, even if this is another one about Robert Plant getting laid, at least there's pity and shame involved. Some good lines in this one. Lyrically, maybe my favorite song in the catalog.





Presence (1976)

This record has only two songs I would ever listen to again, and one of them was a cover of an old blues man. There were bonus tracks released later but I wanted the experience of the original record so I didn't listen to them until after I was done with whole project. If that kid on the right side of the album cover was 10 when it was released, he's 50 today (although the baby from the Nevermind cover still makes me feel older). Achilles Last Stand immediately takes off with a not terribly distorted but relatively heavy galloping riff. The guitar melodies between the riffs are the best part of the song. The dramatic martial snare stop-rhythm during the guitar solo is nice. The classic theme doesn't hurt but as always it seems to be Plant complaining about women, now embellished with a reference to Atlas. This one wouldn't be so close to ruined by Plant's singing if there weren't such a prominent echo; cleaner recording would have helped.

For Your Life has big open sections that disrupt the rhythm and don't work here, and the slide doesn't keep it interesting. The descending riff that makes its first appearance around 2:30 isn't bad, but this song has the modular riff-based feel of later metal without the quality in the riffs to sustain it. And, yes it's my bias in favor of an extremely distorted solid state guitar sound (think Pantera or Obituary) but I just can't take the half-assed twangy distortion of the riffs outside the solos. (The solo here isn't bad, for what it's worth.) Judging by the fact that Royal Orleans just ended as I was typing the last sentence and nothing caught my attention, forgettable. Nobody's Fault But Mine opens with a nice guitar and hummed vocal melody, a good strong bluesy pentatonic riff that then adds harmonica. #2 favorite on the record after Achilles. Only later did I see that it was adapted from an old Delta blues song. I would've believed it for a Zeppelin original but this origin explains its strength (both a compliment to Delta Blues, and not a compliment to late-era Zeppelin.)

Various aspects of Candy Store Rock make it seem as if they are doing a half-assed Elvis impression. Reading later, they did indeed intend it as a rockabilly tribute and took an hour to write it (and as Michelangelo said of the hackish and deadline-driven paintings of Georgio Vasari, "one can tell".) It was released as a single and did not chart in the US, which is a credit to the tastes of the American rock-consuming public in 1976. Regarding Hots On For Nowhere, is this pop? What is this? What are they even trying to do? Overall a mess. Tea for One has a promising opening. Strange riff and grooving rhythm that work well together. Out of nowhere it slows down and the slow blues section is nice but the lead work at times feels crowbarred in, and the whole thing could be about three minutes shorter. Seems like the equivalent of Sabbath's Faeries Wear Boots.


Above: from Wikimedia. Meanwhile, Ozzy was at the Correspondents Dinner already in like 2002. Below: the older Robert Plant always reminded me of Sark from the original Tron. Yeah I have weird associations with people, so sue me.




In Through the Out Door (1979)

Review in a nutshell: Why couldn't Bonham have died before they recorded this? (Really.) It's not surprising at all to read that both Page and Bonham were in the depths of substance problems at this time, and to read interviews with Page justifying this album out of the side of his mouth, he doesn't say much about that (frequently an addict has poor insight into the disease's effect on them.) As for the record itself: that endlessly repeating slow-paced jangling guitar riff in In the Evening makes me want to die, and not in a good way. Is South Bound Suarez a Billy Joel song rescued (without reason) from the cutting room floor and covered by Zeppelin? The impending approach of the 80s is strong in this one. Not surprisingly, Suarez is one of the few Zep songs not to be at least partly written by Page (i.e. Zep's McCartney) who was apparently doing more heroin at that point than Kurt Cobain on payday. Goddamn but Page's "lead" is sloppy in this song.

I've definitely heard Fool in Rain before and I'm shocked that it's Zeppelin. You could make an argument that a lot of these songs I don't like are just their less rock-ish versions and show Zeppelin's range...yeah, their range of suckitude! This one is more like Paul Simon or something. As of this song I'm starting to think this record is Zeppelin's version of Rush's Hold Your Fire. As regards Hot Dog: once in Durango my wife and I had dinner at an old Western-themed bar with an old-timey piano player. That was enjoyable. The best thing I can say about this song is it reminds me of that dinner. Wow, to make Carouselambra they bought a keyboard! Sounds like the song my friend Matt wrote in junior high. Or maybe something for the credits of a 1970s Doctor Who episode (you know when they had like 200 pounds Sterling for each episode). All of My Love is the only recognizable one on the record. The keyboard solo is maybe my favorite moment on this tumor of an album, maybe just because anything is better than Page's messy guitar work here. A slightly better In the Evening but Plant's vocal weakness is shining through. As for the last song, I'm Gonna Crawl, yeah to a bridge and jump off if I have to ever listen to this song again.

Above: Come to think of it, Plant looks like St. Vitus too.
But not like Thomas Sydenham, who looks a little bit
like John Paul Jones if he kept his hair long
(neuropsychiatry in-jokes, hahaha!)
Besides St. Vitus Dance is a Sabbath song.

Coda (1982): definitely has song strong moments, because they again remember they're a rock band, but there are some soft spots and "welcome to the 80s" moments too. We're Gonna Groove has some strong bits (strong, as in coordinated punchy guitar and drums) but no part or riff from this song stands out. Poor Tom is poorly organized and otherwise sounds like another of their whatever-it's-called Bryn-Mawr Welsh bits (checked: yes, recorded during their "Welsh period"). I Can't Quit You Baby is a nice bluesy piece with a lot of hyperactive soloing, which fits poorly and would normally piss me off but here I enjoy it (and of course, turns out it's an Otis Rush piece). Walter's Walk begins with a promising tempo and has a nice little rising tail of a riff first heard at 1m45s, and then really takes off at 3m25s. Finally! Ozone Baby again sounds very early 80s in a bad way, and while the modular more riff-oriented design of songs on this album is also heard in this song, the riffs aren't good. On the next song Darlene, clearly as a joke someone snuck an REO Speedwagon song into this playlist. Which is sad, because it opens with a pretty cool riff and has not terrible soloing! Bonzo's Montreaux starts as an all-percussion piece, a nice surprise that I wasn't expecting; not sure what the other instruments are, and I have to hand it to Page, his early interest in electronics (for a rock guitarist) enhances this piece. Wearing and Tearing is fast, which about the best thing I can say for it, and was apparently intended to compete with punk bands. I find it a sad end that the last song on a real Zeppelin album was a (not good) attempt to compete with punk, although I like the way Bonham's drums are the last sound to fade out.

Two Metal Proposals: New Metallica and AI Metal

1. A group of bands should get together and record the next Metallica album, each contributing one track. (Because Metallica isn't doing it.) Not covers. New songs. Like you think they would've written, say, during the Master or Justice eras. No concerns about originality, because you're intentionally trying to sound like Metallica. Imagine, we'd have Justice part 2! And we'd know a bunch of new bands good enough to create it!

2. Evolutionary metal. There have been a few articles bouncing around about algorithmic music, where simple loops of code produce music. Couldn't someone develop genetic algorithms to automatically create awesome metal? (Another post on AI and metal composition here.)

I'm sorry Dave, that bridge section doesn't crush enough.

Or on the contrary, it would be cool to do something reverse-engineering riffs, to see what the underlying grammar of a metal riff is. In any event, Ville-Matias Heikkila is "trying to crowd-source music discovery" and it's plausible that there will be an end-result similar to the former if there's a separate forum for exclusively metal feedback. Here's an example of his stuff:

Crysknife, Mesozoic (2026)

(Full disclosure: I know these guys and have sent reviews directly to them previously. This time I told them I'd post it on my blog, so that my overwhelming readership will all listen to them. If a turn of phrase doesn't seem to make sense, you may safely assume it's an in-joke.)

This is the cover of a previous album, Mythos. I'm putting it here so a Megadeth album cover isn't the first thing that comes up.

This is the fifth release for Crysknife, which consists of brothers Steve and Tom Campitelli, and features a drum session from Bullet for my Valentine's Jason Bowld.

How would I describe Crysknife in the context of metal? Due to the keyboard instruments and sense of melody beyond power chords and dissonant intervals, it sometimes feels prog adjacent, but doesn't have the weird meters or modes to fully cross into that genre. It's hard to call it thrash - it has heavy, crunchy moments but these aren't the majority. It's never been death because it lacks the blast beats and growls. The lyrics are generally not dark or angry; in fact it struck me this time around how visual the lyrics are.

1. Hardpan - This one starts off sounding like a mid-tempo Bad Religion song. Bridge riff synths are nice but more atmospheric than a solo and I could use them higher in the mix. There's a true solo at the end of the song.
   
   
2. Red Lodge - The piano intro is nice - in point of fact Steve is a classical pianist so I always feel a bit cheated that there isn't more. One of my favorite Crysknife songs opens this way.
   
   
3. Last Echo - The first time I listened to it the intro was a little too quirky for me, but when the guitars in it kicks ass. I dig the stops after the second refrain.
   
   
4. Stand as One - I don't think I've heard keys with this style of guitar (or type of riff) before. My favorite part is the bass and piano bridge section. Also this is the refrain I catch myself humming during the day.
   
   
5. Zen and Murder - Predictably my favorite, because it's the heaviest. The second riff (the main vocal riff) reminds me of Helmet, in fact much of the song does. This is also the one that makes me most want to see the lyrics.
   
   
6. Worlds End - A down-tempo one with a more open main riff, problematic only because the title sets you up to think you're about to have your face melted
   

A Note on the Value of "Albums"

This album was a long time in the making - 10 years I think, the Chinese Democracy of Crysknife as it were. A non-metal fan once said that the metal fan's focus on albums seemed to detract from the value or quality of individual songs. Incorrect (you can't have a good album without good songs), but now it's worth asking: what even is an album, or was it, back in the album's golden era? That I'm still worrying about this is far into the era of streaming and accessible home or local recording suggests that I'm old, which is in fact the case; my examples clearly betray me as a Gen X metalhead, raised on the single-less media of cassettes and CDs. Fight me. As I listened to these songs, I realized how arbitrary it could be to call a collection of songs an "album", even in an era when that was more relevant for reasons of industry structure. I am told there might be two more songs coming from Crysknife - associated with this, batch, I guess? (Searching for a way to describe it besides an album.)

Among other things, the inherent value of an album, outside of constraints forced by production and marketing structure, consists in the following:

1. Consistency across the album. The guitar tone for example (sometime play the game of hearing one second of a metal song, and guess not only the band but the album.) This creates a coherent overall listening experience. It's not just the instruments and production. Tool's Undertow carries a consistent emotional tone throughout the record that's a big part of its value.
2. Lyrical themes - both intentional and otherwise. Part of this is references and callbacks within the album - think of the opening and closing of Maiden's Seventh Son, which in isolation would offer very little of value.
3. A snapshot of where the band is at that moment. To me, the oft-savaged St. Anger's principal value is as a historical document of the dynamics in the band. Early 90s metal suddenly had old men everywhere in their imagery, possibly subconsciously presaging one of metal's interregna.