“Just call me angel of the morning, baby………..”

I love that song. Juice Newton had a good recording of it, but the Billie Davis version is much more believable, and her live performance on Beat Club is awesome. She just bleeds the song. Remarkable.

I like how the song shows the woman showing her independence and her free will, but also the darker side of self loathing. It is just deliciously emotional and yet intellectual. Even more interesting is that the song was written in 1967 (or so). The song was offered to Connie Francis, but she turned it down as being too risqué. Today it wouldn’t even be a blip on anyone’s moral radar.

Well, I do apologize for the delay between posts. I have pretty much come out from underneath the blue funk I was in, only to be slipping back into my normal holiday blahs. I just haven’t felt like writing much, even though I have had a lot of topics in my head come and go, so you’ll probably just get a meandering mish-mash of junk verbiage.

For those who care, I did go to my concert. Alone, of course. I had a decent time. I ate dinner and had a few beers at the Hard Rock Café, which is a few steps away from the front of the Verizon Wireless Theater. There were four bands:

1. High on Fire. Not a bad band, but not a superb one, either. They were a 3 piece, which is fine for punk music, but is silly for a metal band. There were gaps in the music as the bass guitarist had to do double duty doing bass and filling in as a sort of rhythm guitar. There should always be two guitars in modern metal. Black Sabbath they aren’t. Otherwise, they weren’t bad. The vocalist also was a bit distracted from singing to play lead. They need more members to really do some good.
2. Converge. A great band minus their lead. He sucked royally. He was more into the barking scream time of lyrics, but the problem is that he really DID sound like he was barking. People around me chuckled and snickered every time he “sang”. He sounded like one of those cheap sampling keyboards Casio made in the late 1980s. You know, the ones where you can sample your cat and play “Jingle Bells” in meows. Bark, bark, bark. And even when he was lyrical, he was so high pitched that it didn’t match the direction the band was going in the song. The rest of the band sounded good, and their vocals were great. They just need to ditch that awful lead and get a better vocal. Then they could probably start headlining events.
3. Mastodon. I had such high hopes for this band, and they disappointed. The acoustics and mix for this band was terrible. They played their new album. The…whole…thing. Problem is, their better stuff is earlier works, and the new stuff is more jam-band oriented. It was almost if Phish decided to play metal, with actual Grateful Dead members back from the dead. Never ending. My feet were killing me. Even the mosh pit guys were bored.
4. Dethklok. If you didn’t know, Dethklok isn’t a real band. A superbly talented artist/cartoonist/musician named Brendon Small created the band for a cartoon Metalocalypse. So, the concert had Brendon playing and singing with studioi musicians backing him up (really good ones at that), synced up with a large screen showing the cartoon band. It was awesome. Definitely worth the wait, but not necessarily the cost of the ticket. Perhaps if Mastodon was better. Perhaps.

I looked around. The vast majority of people were with other people. Friends, lovers, family. There were only one or two of us creepy, ineffectual males just standing around. It was very unsatisfying, and I felt very alone.

So, new rule for me: I must have someone to go to a concert with before I buy a ticket. I will not go alone again, nor will I waste 50 bucks on an unused ticket. I couldn’t find anyone to give the damn thing away.

I stopped with the ads and such. It was self defeating. The hope of finding people and not finding them was a vicious depressing cycle I needed to stop. Done. The profiles still exist, but I won’t be active on the sites.

I have been working on a lot of computers of late. People keep bringing them to me. Fortunately, I have been fixing them. Wild. Of course, I do not charge for services rendered. I just can’t. It is a bit hard to explain why, so I won’t.

I never found my original disks for my old computer, and with its hard drive issues, I bought a new 500 GB SATA drive and installed *gulp* Windows 7 Home Premium.

I…….

Like………

It…………………….

*yikes*

It isn’t a bad OS. It has its annoyances (one of them being its cryptic network setup, which I stumbled through). It is pretty slick. I have been impressed. I have one driver glitch for a co-processor (???), but it hasn’t affected operation. In fact, it runs pretty well, better than XP for the same setup!  I soon might convert the rest of the machines in the house (you can buy a 3-machine license, which would cover 3/7 of the remaining machines…)

Halloween sucked.

I have been toying with a podcast on one of my other blogs. However, it hasn’t been published yet as I have found I just can’t “wing-it”. I need to prep, but hopefully this blog will have some podcast editions. Stay tuned.

EVE is as fun as ever, although the 0.6 system next door to my home system has been getting a LOT of suicide raids. I haven’t seen one yet, just CONCORD flying around. Once I did see someone salvaging a wreck, but it appeared that the target was not blown up, or at least the cavalry showed up to prevent excessive looting. Who knows. I was targeted briefly, which usually means to back-off. Methinks they weren’t happy.

I made something like 500 shuttles from different races. I was traveling to another region to sell, but saw that some folks were getting jumped at one of the gates, so I have been a bit more cautious and infrequent in my deliveries. Not much profit, but is kinda fun.

I am currently 8 jumps away running missions for a different agent. I am contemplating of setting up a corporate office there. We’ll see how it goes.

Well, if I don’t post again, enjoy your Thanksgiving Holiday.

And yes, the Texans suck. Don’t get me started…

L8rs-

By Zach Shaw

While it isn’t exactly the mega historic tour featuring the big four (Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax) everyone was gossiping about, getting half of that lineup is still pretty unbelievable. Tickets officially went on sale last week for the American Carnage Tour featuring Slayer, Megadeth and Testament. The landmark tour will be taking place this coming January and February. Slayer and Megadeth already did the unthinkable by performing together (despite their slew of heated words for one another) on mini tours in Canada and Australia/New Zealand. So we can thank god that they are giving U.S. fans the chance to see both thrash titans share the stage once again. I myself have already purchased my ticket for their stop in Lowell, MA on February 14 (best part: I only spent a little above $10 for good seats!!! Haha).

Seeing Megadeth and Slayer on their own (let alone together) is enough to make fans storm to a venue. Combine the two with Testament … well HELLZ YEAH! As amazing as this lineup is though, I personally would have liked to have seen one more act added. Not that this line up needs another act to make it any better (umm, did I tell you that Megadeth, Slayer and Testament are playing together?!). However, it would be cool to see the elder gods of metal pass the torch to an up and coming metal band, as a way to put the spotlight on the future of metal.

So who should be the fourth addition who represents the new generation amongst a line up of legends? Well here are a few suggestions of likely candidates and bands I simply would love to see added:

-Machine Head: These guys would probably be everyone’s first choice for multiple reasons. 1. Machine Head already took part in Slayer and Megadeth’s previous tours. 2. Both Slayer and Megadeth have praised them not stop for their greatness. 3. fans simply cannot get enough of them (rightfully so) And 4. to simply put it: THEY ARE AWSOME!!! The only reason why they probably wouldn’t take part in this tour is because they have been touring non-stop for the past 3 years (you name the band, they probably were on tour with them recently). As much as I love The Blackening, I’d recommend that the band takes a tiny rest and record another great album. The more music from Machine Head the better!

-Shadows Fall: These guys would probably be one of my first choices. Hot off of their latest release Retribution, the boys from Mass have proven that they are ready to be the next big metal icons. Being part of such a major tour would be great exposure to a band who put on a top-notch show and have grown as musicians and song writers. Hopefully the band will get on Mayhem Fest next year (maybe we could also start a campaign to get them on this tour? I’d be down to push!).

-Suicide Silence: These guys would be a likely choice because they also served as openers (along with Machine Head) on Slayer and Megadeth’s previous tours this past year. They are an up and coming band who has received both critical and fan praise for their music and live show.

-God Forbid: Call me biased, but I would love to see my fellow NJ thrashers on such a line up. Not only do they put on an energy packed show, but they have continue to grow musically (I dare you to listen to their latest release Earthsblood and tell me it isn’t spectacular). God Forbid is a band that should be amongst the top of their generation (always just shy of getting the rightful exposure), and being a part of this tour would help get them there faster.

-Devildriver: Mixing melody with hardcore death metal, Devildriver has always stood out amongst the crowd. Always releasing incredible albums (listen to their recent release Pray For Villains asap!), they have always been just shy of getting the exposure they deserve. With their intense live shows, Devildriver would have made a great addition to an already amazing tour. Sadly, these guys will definitely not be apart of this tour for they just announced a tour with Suffocation that will occur during the same time. A shame, but hell: a Devildriver and Suffocation tour is pretty awesome as well!!!

-High On Fire: These guys are also likely candidates for being a late addition since they were rumored to be on the lineup before the American Carnage tour was confirmed (only to not be included in the official press release). While they wouldn’t be my first choice, High On Fire are a great band and know how to put on a hell of a show. Plus, with their sludge metal sound, the band would stand out in a lineup filled with thrash metal.

-Trivium: Admit it, once you saw the name in front of this you screamed out loud “Oh Hell Yeah!”. Trivium’s mix of screaming and melodic thrash would be a perfect addition to this tour (maybe too perfect if that’s possible). Add in their powerful performance (see my review of their show in Worcester, MA) and you’d get even the pickiest old metal fans believing they saw the second coming. As perfect as this may seem, this addition may be unlikely for Trivium announced the most recent leg of Into The Mouth Of Hell We Tour as their last tour in support of the album Shogun. Then again, I would probably change around my schedule if I got offered to open for Slayer AND Megadeth.

-The Black Dahlia Murder: After seeing them on Mayhem Fest this past summer, I have been hooked. Black Dahlia Murder’s music and performance would simply make them a great addition to such a lineup. ENOUGH SAID!

-Chimaira: The boys from Cleveland, Ohio would tear the stage apart night after night (see my review of their opening slot at Trivium’s show for more on their awsome live performance). With its mix of sludge and hardcore, Chimaira would stand out amongst the lineup of legends. Additionally, Slayer guitarist Kerry King has praised them many times over the past few years (thus making their chances a lot stronger).

So these are who I would suggest to be the new addition to an already amazing bill. To repeat, I am not saying that the American Carnage Tour needs to acquire an additional band (the three thrash gods are wwaayy more than enough). I am just saying it would be cool to see a newer band get the chance to be exposed to a wider audience.

Is there a band I left off that you feel deserves to be considered? Which up and coming band would you want to see go on tour with Megadeth, Slayer and Testament? Leave a comment and let your choice be heard!

High on Fire is one of the better bands around currently in my opinion, and thankfully that opinion has led to me seeing them headline or play more prominent positions on a few tours, since there was no possible way for me to arrive at 5:30 for their set (a time made even more ridiculous given that the entire show was aver by about 10). I will assume they rocked as usual though and plan to catch them on their next trip through.

Converge played a fairly lengthy set considering their lower slot on the tour, but I was glad to see it. As one of the only metalcore bands who releases CDs I consistently enjoy, it was interesting to see them live. In some ways the music seemed even more aggressive live, but I believe that in part that was due to the muddling of the instruments live which made it even more of a wall of sound (also the kick drum was ridiculously powerful). It was disappointing but not surprising to see so little of the sold-out or nearly so venue really getting into the music. It feels a little cheap seeing these guys on such a commercial tour.

Mastodon played a similar set to what they did when they last came through on a headlining tour, with the entirety of Crack the Skye followed by a couple of old songs. Given that they were not headlining though, the second set of songs was smaller and, frankly, the ones chosen were a bit of a disappointment. The background videos have been improved since last time and are much more coherent and involved in the songs. It’s a shame they didn’t have as good a video background on the last tour so that both elements of good could have occurred in the same set.

Dethklok was absolutely entertaining start to finish. Though I expected only a screen with music being performed off stage, I was surprised to see the screen going the entire time, but with the full band also on stage, though not interacting with the crowd at all (though Brendan Smalls got into characters for that which was fun). The videos were great, though possibly less entertaining for those who watch the show (I do not, so I have no idea if it was all excerpts or if it was original material). The inter-song videos were also quite fun and helped maintain continuity in the show while the musicians got their rest…much more effectively than most bands are able to pull it off in fact. This felt like a complete show start to finish. Quite cool, I’d see these guys live again even though I don’t love the music as much as many other bands just for the show.

As you may have gathered from my previous post, last night was a cause for great excitement and anticipation to me.  I was finally going to see Mastodon, one of my favorite bands and one that I have been listening to from the release of their first album.  Converge (a more recently-discovered favorite), High On Fire (one of the better bands on my obscure-music radar) and Dethklok (watch Metalocalypse if you don’t know who they are) are currently on tour with Mastodon and shared the stage with them last night at Austin City Music Hall.

Yesterday afternoon, after finishing an unavoidable, unfortunate in-class writing assignment, my compatriots and I (roommate Andrew, friends Justin and Jimmy) loaded up in my humble but dependable Dodge Neon and hit the road for Austin.  We made pretty good time (until we actually got into town, that is) and grabbed a bite to eat at my aunt’s house before heading over to the concert, earplugs in hand and hearts steeled for the musical onslaught to come.

Due to the delay in departure caused by the aforementioned writing assignment, we didn’t arrive at Austin City Music Hall until 7:30 or so (the doors opened at 6 and High On Fire had been scheduled to start at 6:30).  I was a little disappointed at missing High On Fire, but as we entered and I heard the opening strains of Converge’s “Worms Will Feed/Rats Will Feast” I knew that we were in for an incredible night.

Converge, in a word, are intense.  Jacob Bannon flung himself around the stage with abandon, swinging the mic wildly by its cord and catching it with a tattooed hand just in time to deliver one of his guttural near-shrieks that seemed to issue forth from some kind of possessed beast rather than a man.  From time to time he would bang his head wildly along to the cacophony behind him, releasing a spray of sweat and water in a vicious arc that shone in the stage lights like a liquid halo.  Kurt Ballou and Nate Newton were in perfect sync with madman drummer Ben Koller, as if the six arms playing the guitar, bass and drum kit belonged to the same man rather than three.

Converge dish out an inimitable blend of hardcore punk, thrash metal, and grind that’s intricately technical yet rippingly raw and elemental, and is a little difficult to come to grips with at first. In fact, the Austin crowd seemed to be unsure about how to react to the audio assault taking place onstage before them, and most people stood around trying to figure out just what to think about it.  Meanwhile, I threw myself into the experience as Bannon warned the crowd (in a disarming normal tone that was so completely opposite the raging harbinger of doom that we had just seen) that they had four more songs to throw at us.  Starting with “Dark Horse” from their latest record Axe To Fall, Converge tore into the last part of their set with ferocious energy, wrapping up with the impossibly raw “Concubine” from their seminal album Jane Doe.  The whole thing might have taken six minutes – that may give you an idea about their speed.

We were given a brief respite from more musical attack while Mastodon set up.  There appeared to be some problem with the video screen on the stage, and a technician spent a good 15 minutes trying to fix it back up again while crowd cheered him on when a section of the screen popped back into view.

Then the lights dimmed and Mastodon strode forth onto the stage.

The intro to “Oblivion” began, and the dynamic buildup of the song whipped the crowd (whose mosh pit had coalesced directly in front of where we were standing – how lucky) into a furor that crashed down in a wave of bodies when the first bars of the verse hit.  “I flew beyond the sun before it was time,” drummer Brann Dailor sang, and we sang with him.  Each successive track from Crack the Skye caused a greater and greater reaction, and I was sucked into the circle of headbanging, shoving fans more than once.

Behind the band, up on the video screen, a series of video clips played that correlated with each song, mirroring the spacey concept story of the album and upping the atmospheric factor of the show tenfold.  Each track was played flawlessly, each complex arrangement (including two tracks exceeding ten minutes in length) executed with energy and dedication.  Hearing the songs on CD is awesome, but hearing Mastodon unleash them live was something else entirely.  The heavier tracks (like “Ghosts of Karelia” and “Crack the Skye”) were so much heavier at the show, I could hardly believe it.

After somehow playing through all 50 minutes of Crack the Skye without missing a note or faltering in their vocal delivery, Mastodon exited the stage for a brief but moody keyboard interlude while they got their gear set up for the older tracks that I knew were coming.  I was probably looking forward to hearing those even more than I had been the new album, especially with the element of surprise – which songs will they play?

The band stepped back out on stage to a roaring crowd that wasn’t ready for them to leave, and then Brent Hinds kicked out the frenzied opening guitar lick to “Circle of Cysquatch” from Blood Mountain as that album’s three-faced demon-deer artwork appeared onscreen.  The change of pace to the older, more aggressive Mastodon instigated even more madness in the mosh pit.  When the weighty breakdown at the end of the song was over, there was a moment of anticipation before a great white whale filled the screen and Brent floored the crowd with the incredibly technical intro to “Aqua Dementia” from Leviathan.  I was once again astounded at the effortless manner in which they performed these complex songs at breakneck speed and reminded again why I like Mastodon so much.

After “Aqua Dementia” was over, everyone knew what was coming.  Mastodon would delve deep into their oldest debut-album material and absolutely flatten everyone with its sheer dirty Southern-metal brutality – and sure enough, as the exploding horse artwork from their 2002 release Remission faded onto the screen, they dropped “Where Strides the Behemoth” (one of my favorite tracks from that record) on us like a ten-ton hammer.  After shouting along to the closing lines of the song, I turned to Andrew and voiced my hope about the next track – would they?  Could the possibly play it?  Would I be so lucky?

I was so lucky.  The gristly, rust-covered guitar intro to “Mother Puncher” started and I jumped up and down like a little girl who just got told that yes, she really was getting a pony for her birthday.  The lengthy instrumental opening to the song gave way to the raw, sludgy verses that I knew every shouted syllable of and ended like a knockout blow in the dirtiest MMA fight you’ve ever seen.  Over 80 minutes of Mastodon.  This is definitely what I had paid for, and so much more.

I’ll spare you such detail about Dethklok (though they were hilarious and blindingly proficient on their instruments) even though most of you have probably stopped reading already.  They were certainly entertaining, and the crowd was nearly as responsive as they had been during Mastodon’s set.  They ripped through the most brutal tracks in the universe (as they would say) like “Murmaider”, “Thunderhorse” and “Pull the Plug” while animated music videos for the cartoon band played behind, ending with the fan-hating death metal anthem, “Fansong.”  There were several funny interludes, and the whole set kind of came off as one really long episode of the show, which is in no way a bad thing.

We left the venue with ears brutalized, our necks sore from headbanging, and our throats raw from cheering and shouting along.  This was, far and away, the best concert I’ve enjoyed to date.  My only regrets are missing High On Fire and part of Converge’s set (both unavoidable – thanks a lot, ENGR 482) and not having a camera, though being without one was probably wise given the moshy nature of the crowd around us.

I know this is an incredibly long post, so if you’ve made it here to the end, I congratulate and thank you.  I hope that I’ve given you an idea of how intense, how fun, and how metal last night’s concert really was.  There is no doubt in my mind – it was the metallest of them all.

This afternoon I’m headed to Austin City Music Hall to see one of my favorite bands, Mastodon, play by what all accounts should be a killer live show.  Not only will Atlanta’s premier prog-metal outfit be tearing it up, but they’ll also be supported by three eclectic yet undeniably appropriate and hard-hitting acts – High on Fire (whose sludgy galloping stoner-metal bludgeoning will kick off the proceedings), Converge (hardcore’s reigning princes of technically creative musical brutality) and Dethklok (the surprisingly proficient death-metal parody group from TV’s ‘Metalocalypse’).

A ridiculous lineup for the king of metal tours.

I can’t begin to describe to you how excited I am about this show – I’ve had my ticket for 2 months now.  Mastodon’s ‘Crack the Skye’ is by far one of my favorite albums of 2009, as is Converge’s latest, ‘Axe To Fall.’  Hearing and seeing songs from both of those albums played live…oh man.  Are you starting to get the picture?

I’ll try to retain as much info as possible so that I can give a full rundown tomorrow after the show (perhaps even with pictures) – I can promise in advance that it’s going to be the most intense, most brutal, and most metal experience this writer has enjoyed to date.

The House of Blues hosted some viciously awesome metal Wednesday night, as Metalocalypse’s Dethklok and Georgia’s Mastodon packed the venue to the rafters with jacked-up metalheads. Throw in a couple of amazing underground metal bands in High on Fire and the insanely creative Converge, and you’ve got a metal tour that literally kicks the crap out of the big summer geezer quilting parties like Cruefest and Mayhem.

Is there anything more effing metal than this guy?

Unfortunately for a large number of fans (and this reviewer), the show started at the unholy crack of dawn (6:30pm, which for all intensive purposes may as well have been 6:30am), meaning most of the sold-out crowd missed out on openers Converge and High on Fire. Damn: should’ve taken that imaginary start time more seriously.

By the time progressive sludge metal rockers Mastodon took the stage, however, the HOB was packed to the gills: while the majority of the (younger) crowd was probably there to see cartoon metal, every serious metal fan in the country would kick their best friend in the junk for a chance to see Masto-effing-don live.

For better or worse, the band’s entire set was more slow and ponderous than brutal: most of the songs off their newest album, Crack the Skye, sounded better on CD than live –although that may have had something to with the sound system, which featured the drums and a whole lot of indistinguishable fuzz. Towards the end of the set, when Mastodon went back to some of their earlier material, the sound was improved but the frequent and unexpected shifts in timing took most of the crowd out of any metal groove; after seeing Mastodon live, there might actually be such a thing as being too progressive.

While the band had no stage show whatsoever, they did spruce up the visual show (touring with Dethklok, you pretty much have to), spending most of the show playing in front of a silent movie-esque Rasputin Goes to Hell and Slays the Devil storyline, and later playing in front of their totally metal backdrops: the three-headed beast fetish from the cover of Blood Mountain, the massive white whale attacking a ship in icy waters from the cover of Leviathan, and the exploding horse from their first album cover, Remission. Much like the following band, Mastodon was seemingly content to blend into the foreground and provide musical accompaniment for the surreal visuals on the projection screen behind them.

Remember, kids: the more merch you buy, the more tours you'll get to see

Finally, at the decidedly non-metal time of 10:00pm sharp (say what you will about HOB, but they get their bands to start and end on time. As a performing musician myself, you have no idea how impressive that is), Dethklok took the stage. For those of you wondering how a cartoon band could “take the stage”, Dethklok’s solution was ingenious: have the real band play almost invisibly in the foreground, while full-length videos of the television show’s songs run on the big screen. It’s a herculean task requiring impeccable timing and musicianship, but Dethklok was up for the challenge.

The actual band centers around Metalocolypse’s creator/writer/director/songwriter/voices dude Brendon Small –you can listen to our interview with Small from last year’s tour here– and a motley cast of elite mercenaries, including wizened metal drummer Gene Hoglan, former Zappa guitarist Mike Keneally and bassist Bryan Beller. Despite playing second-fiddle to the cartoon characters behind them, the band itself actually put on quite a show, throwing themselves into the show with a surprising amount of stagecraft while never missing a beat.

The band played the popular songs with amazing precision –with one possible exception during Thunderhorse when the vocals and animation didn’t quite link up– and worked the crowd with Dethklok’s Queen-inspired brand of hooky thrash metal. For the most part, the show was little different from last tour’s, with a few new videos from the most recent season like Bloodlines, The Gears and Burn the Earth mixed in with older classics like Awaken, (the highly disturbing) Murmaider, Hatredcopter, Birthday Dethday and the Duncan Hills Coffee Jingle.

Almost as soon as the set started, however, it was over at 11pm sharp –likely just in time to let the younger members of the crowd get home in time for their favorite shows on Adult Swim– but I’m not faulting the 12- and 13- year old fans in any way. However you get introduced to the beauty and power of heavy metal, whether you grew up listening to bootleg tapes of King Diamond, accidentally heard Quiet Riot on the radio once, or (like me) was turned on to metal by Metallica’s Black Album –it’s all good.

Heavy metal’s primary contradiction: given a fanbase that is often concerned with detecting what is and isn’t “real” metal, so much of what constitutes “real” “metal” is made up of 100-percent pure fantasy. Sometimes this results in a certain cultural conservatism. But mostly it just means that the true-est metal fan is the one who is (at least mentally) young enough to even care about both ends of this contradiction.  Meaning that metal’s longevity – the way it has evaded becoming just another musical fad – depends largely on its ability to attract a continuously new fanbase, one that springs to life and puts its fork and knife on the (kiddie) table of metal consumerism.

By my measure, the most significant reinvention of metal in the last decade or so has been a complete fabrication: specifically, Adult Swim’s Metalocalypse cartoon. Its fictional death-metal anti-heroes, Dethklok, have set a new bar for consistently high-quality brutality that somehow manages to transcend the fact that the band isn’t “real.” With the metal underground currently undergoing a crisis of faith that has allowed similarly fake bands to rise to supremacy whilst eschewing things like songs, vocals, beats, riffs, and substance (substitute instead: a smoke and mirror show centered on naked amplifier worship, dry ice, capes, and hieroglyphic mumbo-jumbo), it’s rewarding to see a fake band that actually gives the kids what they want. The greatest death-metal band of all time could never exist in real life, so it had to be invented.

Dethklok is the creation of Brendon Small, and although he’s a cartoonist by trade, he is also an absolutely bitching guitarist. He has an almost superhuman ability to play dementedly complex riffage whilst simultaneously bellowing precision death-metal lyrics. His touring band, composed of former Zappa sideslinger Mike Keneally and a big dude on drums who was in Exodus or Testament or one of those metal bands whose logo was made to look like it was bolted together from shiny metal sheets, were absolutely shredadelic. They played in perfect syncopation with a gigantic screen depicting the cartoon band running through the song. In the live show, as in the Adult Swim television series, the editing favors an ever escalating series of quick cuts juxtaposing images of grotesquery – which effectively doubles as a strobe light matching time with the drummer’s blast beats. The effect is one of complete and utterly disorienting nausea. Each song built inevitably to a double-time conclusion of seizure-inducing visual overload coupled with the band’s own race toward speed-metal insanity, complete with wah-assisted lead guitar doodledy-doo. It was powerful, it was funny, it was fatiguing, it was beautiful.

Often during the set, I tried to pry my eyes away from the cartoon to focus on the human players. This proved to be a futile endeavor, since a) the visuals on the screen were always far more interesting, and b) watching the band was kind of like watching a pit orchestra during an opera. The band was there front and center to remind you that they were physically capable of playing their inhuman music in the flesh and matching it up perfectly with the video on the screen – and they pulled it off with a precision that was laudable but oddly mechanical. If there is one chink in the Dethklok armor, it’s that in sticking so close to a pre-determined script, they short-circuit the unpredictability that “true” metal has always promised.

Before Dethklok destroyed the universe, we were serenaded by three of metal’s current reigning titans: a dream bill that only a cartoon could have thrown together. Three hours before Dethklok hit the stage, we were assaulted with the galloping assault of High On Fire, a band born from the ashes of stoner metal pioneers Sleep. Lead axeman/vocalist Matt Pike is essentially stoner metal’s Mark Farner: a wild, shirtless, longhaired bohunk who leads his more-than-serviceable rhythm section through a stomping and energetic set that gives him plenty of opportunity to put one foot on the monitor as he mercilessly shreds to oblivion, hair in face, evil grimace revealing an impeccably crooked set of chompers. Pike is the kind of dude who, if stoner-rock hadn’t put a Les Paul in his mitts at a crucial age, would probably be halfway to becoming Dennis Hopper’s character Feck from River’s Edge, another Cali burnout marking time until that one crucial motorcycle wipeout puts him on painkillers for good. As it stands, he will go down as one of the more influential axemen of his era, mixing an ability to mercilessly bludgeon an audience with riffage upon wonderful riffage with a penchant for letting leads take flight into a bleeding sunset of Nevermore.

The audience seemed not too aware of who the band was. (At one point in their set, a woman next to me leaned over and asked “What’s this band called?”, an amusing query considering that the band’s name was emblazoned in 15-foot-high lettering on the screen behind them). Identity? Who needs one, when we’re all being crushed under the horsehoof thunder of crushers like “Cometh Down Hessian” and “Waste of Tiamat” (the latter a showstopper with its twin dropout drum solo stutter breaks a la Slayer’s “Angel of Death”). Concerns of metal recognition (T-shirt sales, even) became insignificant when it feels like orc hordes are storming the gates to lop your head off with dirt-crusted daggers.

I found it odd when “hometown heroes” Converge galloped onstage with the line, “It’s great to be in Boston!” and that sort of rah-rah nonsense. Frontman Jake Bannon was nothing if not a metal-punk posi huckster, walking a fine line between pandering-to-his-minions and sarcastically-mocking-the-uninitiated-who-were-flipping-the-band-off-for-the-crime-of-not-being-Dethklok. Converge is riding the cresting wave of hype surrounding its new Epitaph long-player Axe To Fall, and this tour is a parable for their career – in that it thrusts an idealistic hardcore-ish band into the juvenile world of mainstream modern metal.

Even more difficult than navigating that particular knife’s edge is the prospect of selling Converge’s knotty brand of math-wound spazz metal to a broad audience. Axe To Fall is in some ways a bid for greater comprehension, which probably explains why the band stuck to the new platter when plying new ears. Before the show, I was near the Converge merch table where I overheard a request for the new album on vinyl. The response (“Yeah, we don’t have it yet, they’re held up by the pressing plant in Prague, but dude they are going to be so SICK”) kind of summed it up: the band’s ascendence could come too fast for their typically fussy approach to keep up with. Album opener “Dark Horse” was a mid-set highlight, as drummer Ben Koller dispensed with his spastic King-Crimson-run-through-a-woodchipper polyrhythms in favor of a more direct approach – one that hit the audience like a two-by-four to the face. The set ended with some quasi-confrontational sludge, as the band morphed material from their Jane Doe album with a bizarre cover of The Melvins’ “Hag Me.” It was far and away the most trebly set of the evening, and maybe the most straight-up energetic in terms of pure human excitement.

Which led us to Mastodon, a band that, while amazingly accomplished, isn’t always the most exciting. I guess I’ve always found them impressive – but with an admiration that’s never flowered into actual fandom. And if I’m honest, their set – full of razzle dazzle and jaw-dropping proficiency – was not a game-changer, not even the frankly terrific runthrough, at the set’s closing, of Thin Lizzy’s classic “Emerald.” Maybe it had to do with this being months and months into the world tour supporting their new album, Crack The Skye. Just like the last time they pulled through town, this time they played the album in its entirety, a move that tends to alienate even hardcore metal fans, who view with suspicion anyone who hasn’t memorized a band’s entire recorded catalogue. In its defense, Skye is a dense work whose tunes work better in context than on their own — but it’s also an album best enjoyed with headphones, under blacklight, whilst perusing the album jacket for hidden hieroglyphics. In the flesh, the album is occasionally a chore to get through, and the band seemed to exude a sort of let’s-get-this-over-with weariness, even though they were playing with some bitching gear. (Lucite clear custom-made aluminum neck flying V’s? Fuck yeah!)

Things livened up significantly when they dipped into encores from Leviathan andRemission (and the aforementioned Lizzy cover). At which point I began to disagree with everything I just wrote and decided that this band is pure dynamite: possessing a near-telepathic ability to syncopate slalom-like guitar runs with impossibly complex drum fills, producing a form of metal combustion that, absorbed in one sitting, is incomprehensibly walloping. The new album has brought this band so close to having comprehensible songs that you just kind of wish that they would commit full-bore and ditch the show-offy pyrotechnics for a change. With their multi-media assault, they have already surpassed their heroes in Neuroses and are on course to supplant Tool in the technical-metal-overlords sweepstakes. And yet in the band’s tight harmonies and diversions into chug-boogie and atmospheric dry-ice ambience, you can see glimpses of what could be if they completely forgot to pander to a metal audience at all. Here’s to hoping that they continue this progression.

Slayer and Megadeth are rumored be touring the states together.

To make things even better, they may be supported by High On Fire and thrash legends Testament.

The primary contradiction in metal is that, given that its fanbase is so often concerned with detecting what is and isn’t “real” metal, so much of what “real” “metal” actually “is” is made up of 100% pure fantasy.  Sometimes that results in a certain cultural conservatism; but mostly it means that the true metal fan is one who is, at least mentally, young enough to even care about both elements of this contradiction.  Meaning that metal’s longevity, the way it has evaded becoming just another musical fad, depends largely on a continuous new fanbase springing to life and putting their fork and knife on the (kiddie) table of metal consumerism.

Arguably the most significant reinvention of metal in the last decade or so has come in cartoon form, as Adult Swim’s Metalocalypse cartoon.  Its fictional death metal anti-heroes, Dethklok, have set a new bar for consistently high-quality brutality that somehow manages to transcend the fact that the band isn’t “real”.  Truth be told, though, with the metal underground currently undergoing a crisis in faith that has allowed similarly fake bands to rise to supremacy whilst eschewing things like songs, vocals, beats, riffs, and substance (with a smoke and mirror show centered on naked amplifier worship, dry ice, capes, and hieroglyphic mumbo-jumbo), it is rewarding to see a band just giving the kids what they want.  The greatest death metal band of all time could never exist in real life, so here’s the next best thing, right?

Dethklok is the creation of Brendan Smalls; and although he’s a cartoonist by trade, he is also an absolutely bitching guitarist, with an almost superhuman ability to play dementedly complex riffage whilst simultaneously bellowing precision death metal lyrics.  His touring band, composed of former Zappa sideslinger Mike Kenneally and a big dude on drums who was in Exodus or Testament or one of those kinds of metal bands whose logo was made to look like it was bolted together from shiny metal sheets, were absolutely shredadelic.  They played in perfect syncopation with a gigantic screen depicting the cartoon band running through the song: in the cartoon, as in the live show, the editing favors an ever escalating series of quick cuts of juxtaposing images of grotesquery that effectively operate as a strobe light that works in time with the drummer’s blast beats.  The effect is one of complete and utter disorienting nauseau: each song built inevitably to a double-time conclusion of seizure-inducing visual overload coupled with the band’s own race towards speed metal insanity, complete with wah-assisted lead guitar doodledy-doo.  It was powerful, it was funny, it was fatiguing, it was beautiful.

Often during the set, I tried to pry my eyes away from the cartoon to focus on the human players.  This proved to be a futile endeavor, as a) the visuals on the screen were always far more interesting, and b) watching the band was kind of like watching a pit orchestra during an opera.  The band was there front and center to remind you that they were physically capable of playing this inhuman music in the flesh and match it up perfectly with the video on the screen– and they pulled this duty off with a precision that was laudable but oddly mechanical.  If there is one chink in the armor of Dethklok, it is that, in sticking so close to a pre-determined script, they are missing so much of the actual danger and unpredictability that “true” metal has always promised.

Prior to Dethklok hitting the stage, we were serenaded by three of metal’s current reigning titans, in what was really a dream bill that only a cartoon could have thrown together.  Three hours before Dethklok hit the stage, we were assaulted with the galloping assault of High On Fire, a band born from the ashes of stoner metal pioneers Sleep.  Lead axeman/vocalist Matt Pike is essentially stoner metal’s Mark Farner: a wild shirtless longhaired bohunk who leads his more-than-serviceable rhythm section through a stomping and energetic set of material that gives him plenty of opportunities to put one foot up on the monitor as he mercilessly shreds to oblivion, hair in face, evil grimace revealing an impeccably crooked set of chompers.  Pike is the kind of dude that, if stoner rock hadn’t put a Les Paul in his mitts at a crucial age, would probably be halfway to becoming Dennis Hopper’s character Feck from River’s Edge at this point, one of countless Cali burnouts marking time until one crucial motorcycle wipeout puts him on painkillers for good.  As it stands, he will now forever be one of the more influential axemen of his era, mixing an ability to mercilessly bludgeon an audience with riffage upon wonderful riffage with a penchant for letting leads take flight into a bleeding sunset of Nevermore.  The audience was, in general, not that aware of who the band was (at one point in their set, a woman next to me leaned over and asked me “What’s this band called?”, an amusing query considering that the band’s name was emblazoned in 15 foot high lettering on the screen behind them); but it didn’t really matter, when we were all being crushed under the horsehoof thunder of crushers like “Cometh Down Hessian” and “Waste of Tiamat” (the latter a showstopper with its twin dropout drum solo stutter breaks a la Slayer’s “Angel of Death”), concerns of metal recognition became insignificant when it felt like orc hordes were storming the gates to lop your head off with dirt-crusted daggers.

I find if odd when supposed “hometown heroes” gallop onto the stage with “It’s great to be in Boston!” and that sort of rah-rah nonsense; and Converge’s Jake Bannon was nothing if not a sort-of metal-punk posi-huckster, walking the fine line between pandering to his minions whilst sarcastically mocking the uninitiated who were flipping the band off for the crime of not being Dethklok.  The band is riding the cresting wave of hype surrounding their new Epitaph long-player Axe To Fall, which seems to, in some ways, put this band in an odd position of being a metalcore band with ideals thrust into the juvenile world of mainstream modern metal.  But even more difficult than navigating that particular knife’s edge is the prospect of selling Converge’s knotty brand of math-wound spazz metal to a broad audience; Axe To Fall is in some ways a bid for greater comprehension, which probably explains why the band stuck to the new platter when plying new ears.  Prior to the show starting, I was near the Converge merch table where I overheard a request for the new album on vinyl; the response (“Yeah, we don’t have it yet, they’re held up by the pressing plant in Prague, but dude they are going to be so SICK”) kind of summed it up: the band’s ascendency might wind up happening a tad rapidly for their usually fussy approach to keep up with the furor.  Album opener “Dark Horse” was a mid-set highlight, as drummer Ben Koller dispensed with his usual King-Crimson-run-through-a-woodchipper spastic polyrhythms in favor of a more direct approach that hit the audience like a 2X4 to the face.  The set ended with some quasi-confrontational sludge, as the band morphed material from their Jane Doe album with a bizarre cover of The Melvins’ “Hag Me”.  It was far and away the most trebly set of the evening, and maybe the most straight up energetic in terms of pure human excitement.

Which led us to Mastodon, a band that, while amazingly accomplished, isn’t always the most exciting.  I guess I’ve always been more “impressed” with them rather than an actual fan– and to be honest, tonight’s set, though full of razzle dazzle and jaw-dropping proficiency, was not really a game-changer, even with the frankly terrific runthrough at the set’s closing of Thin Lizzy’s classic “Emerald“.  Maybe, tonight, it had to do with this being months and months into the world tour supporting their new album Crack The Skye– like the last time they pulled through town, they played the album all the way through in its entirety, a move that tends to alienate even hardcore metal fans.  CTS is a dense work whose tunes work better in context than on their own– but it is also worth noting that the album itself is more of a listen-to-with-headphones-under-blacklight-whilst-perusing-the-album-jacket-for-hidden-hieroglyphics deal.  Translation: live, the album is dynamic but occasionally a chore to get through, and the band themselves seemed to exude a sort of let’s-get-this-over-with weariness, even though they were playing with some bitching gear (lucite clear custom-made aluminum neck flying V’s?  Fuck yeah!)  Things livened up significantly when they dipped into encores from Leviathan and Remission (and the aforementioned Lizzy cover)– and truth be told, this band is pure dynamite, with a near-telepathic ability to syncopate slalom-like guitar runs with impossibly complex drum fills to produce a body of metal combustion that, taken as a whole in a live set, is almost incomprehensibly walloping.  I guess the issue is that the new album has brought this band so close to actually having comprehensible songs that you just kind of wish that they would commit full-boar and ditch the show-off-y guityrotechnics for a change. With their multi-media assault, they have already surpassed their heroes in Neuroses and are on course to supplant Tool in the technical-metal-overlords sweepstakes– but in the band’s tight live harmonies and diversions into chug-boogie and atmospheric dry-ice ambience, you can see glimpses of what could be if they completely forgot to pander to a metal audience at all.  Here’s to hoping that they continue this progression.

Decibel Magazine is always a good read and definitely the the best glossy metal mag in the game. I’ve been meaning to scan some stuff from the December 2009 issue, so here ’tis. The Trouble interview and induction into Decibel’s Hall of Fame for their first record… a personal favorite of mine… is killin’ it!!! I also love the cutest kitties in metal and the High on Fire studio exclusive with a sick photo of Matt Pike rocking a ponytail and an acoustic guitar. \m/

By Zach Shaw

As a metal fan, seeing Mastodon or Dethklok performing on separate headlining shows would be thrilling enough. So when it was announced that the two metal forces would co-headline a tour sponsored by Adult Swim, you could bet your ass I was excited as hell. And from the look of the crowd who entered the House Of Blues in Boston, MA on October 27, I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t wait to attend arguably the most diverse and exciting metal tours of the Fall, 2009. The two headliners, with openers Converge and High On Fire, without a doubt delivered on the fan’s expectations. Whether it was Mastodon’s progressive technicality, or Dethklok’s animated death metal performance, the crowd received a hell of a metal night.

First up was the Atlanta metal titans Mastodon. Once hitting the stage, the band went full blast into the performance, not stopping to talk to the audience until the end of their set. With only a few color lights to set the mood and a video screen displaying part acid trip and part medieval Russian soap opera, the band stormed through their latest album, Crack The Skye, from beginning to end. The band showcased their mix of progressive and sludge metal through each riff and harmony, leaving fans gasping for air over their precise timing and technicality. Though the band didn’t banter with the audience in between songs, the band communicated through its music and instruments. Bassist/co-singer Troy Sanders possessed confidence and swagger as he kept a steady pace for Brent Hinds (also co-singer) and Bill Kelliher’s meaty guitar riffs. As intense as the three were, it was Brann Dailor’s drumming that took the sound of the band over the top. The only complaint one could have over Mastodon’s set was that they stuck to playing songs from Crack The Skye (only playing a four song encore that featured songs from their previous albums). While playing more well-known songs might have made the show better for some, hearing the band display their unique grasp of metal through Crack The Skye was pleasing enough.

Next up was Dethklok in the flesh. The live incarnation of the cartoon metal band from the Adult Swim show Metalacolypse proved that the music wasn’t to be taken lightly. Show Co-creator Brendon Small (who took lead vocal and guitar duties) acquired a lineup of senior musicians that included Gene Hoglan (ex- Death, Testament, Strapping Young Lad) on drums, Mike Keneally (Steve Vai’s backing band) on guitar and Bryan Beller (Steve Vai’s backing band) on bass. Needless to say, the band sounded extremely tight as they played songs that captured enough technicality and melody to make any metal fan go insane with joy. What made the band’s performance unique though was its mix of music and comedy. Extended animated music videos (many of which appeared on the show) were displayed during each song, while new clips featuring “the band” backstage and popular side characters were shown in between every other three songs. Showing footage from Metalacolypse with the already kick ass songs made the show even more fun to witness. The over the top animations didn’t distract the audience from the awesome musicianship onstage (as I was afraid of happening at first). If anything, it made fans more excited for each song being performed. The visuals made you feel as if you were watching your favorite band live, not just some joke band you’ve seen on TV. In a weird sense, it gave the audience the same electrifying rush you receive at a true metal concert.

Sadly, I was unable to catch opener High On Fire. However, from my past experiences seeing them in concert, I’m sure they didn’t disappoint. I also unfortunately was only able to catch the last song from Converge’s set. While it mainly sounded like scattered noise, the band’s energy was enough to catch my attention (at least for the remainder of the song). Despite this quick glimpse, I will reserve judgement on Converge until I become more familiar with them. Even without seeing the openers, Dethklok and Mastodon were enough to make the night a great metal experience. With Dethklok’s straight-up death/thrash metal and Mastodon’s progressive/sludge metal, the audience got the metal fix they were aching.

of death, dying and the evil of all hallow’s eve… that probably just about says it all for you… The mix starts out innocuous enough and dissipates into some brutal listens that should really shake your spine and leave you quaking in your boots. Sadly, some band’s could be a complete catalog without much effort, making cutting it down to a track an artist interesting. Spook you if you don’t agree… feel free to add in the comments your faves for the list

“Black Sabbath” Black Sabbath from Black Sabbath
“Welcome To My Nightmare” Alice Cooper from Welcome to my Nightmare
“God Of Thunder” KISS
“Highway to Hell” AC/DC from Highway to Hell
“Halloween” The Misfits from ‘Halloween’ single
“Knife in your Guts” Gwar
“Dragula” Rob Zombie from Hellbilly Deluxe
“Nightmare Be Thy Name” Mercyful Fate
“Halloween” Helloween from Keeper of the Seven Keys, Pt. One
“Dungeons are Calling” Savatage
“Devils Child” by Judas Priest from Screaming for Vengance
“Halloween” King Diamond from Fatal Portrait
“Pure Evil” Iced Earth from Days of Purgatory
“The Haunting” Testament from the Legacy
“Am I Evil?” Metallica from Garage Days
“Belly of the Beast” Anthrax from the Persistence of Time
“Dead Skin Mask” Slayer from Seasons in the Abyss
“Scream Bloody Gore” Death from Scream Bloody Gore
“Death Certificate” Carcass from Heartwork
“Slaughter of the Soul” At the Gates from Slaughter the Soul
“Diva Satinaca” Arch Enemy from Dead Eyes See No Future
“a Devil in God’s Country” Lamb of God from as the Palaces Burn
“Bloodletting” the Haunted from One Kill Wonder
“the Devil has Risen” Unearth from III: in the Eyes of Fire
“No Sympathy (for the Devil)” Skinlab from Disembody: The New Flesh
“Like this with the Devil” by Entombed from To Ride, Shoot Straight and Speak the Truth
“Blessed Black Wings” High on Fire from Blessed Black Wings
“Her Ghost in the Fog” Cradle of Filth
“Progenies of the Great Apocalypse” Dimmu Borgir from Death Cult Armageddon
“Demon of the Fall” Opeth from My Arms, Your Herse
“My Hope, the Destroyer” My Dying Bride from the Dreadful Hours
“You were but a Ghost in my Arms” Agalloch from the Mantle
“Fear of the Dark” Iron Maiden from Fear of the Dark
“Black Number One (the Little Miss Scare All)” Type O Negative from Bloody Kisses

and, although Diecide is WAY out of my listening, I’ll include the reference to them, if for no other reason than frontman Glen Benton might be a direct descendant of satan.

Did I miss anyone?

Dethklok — Oct 23, 2009 with Mastodon, Converge, and High on Fire at the Sound Academy.

So the hubby and I got a pair of tickets as a wedding gift, and were thus able to attend the show. The obscenely high price plus the unbelievable Live Nation service charge were the only thing keeping us from the show. We were very lucky to get these tickets. (I was uber-sad when I saw how much they wanted. Thank goodness for HeavyMetalAdam who gave us the great gift of tickets.

Going into the show, we expected a whole lot of brats. Both Dethklock and Mastodon are uber-popular, and thus draw out the jerks. Surprisingly, just about everyone behaved themselves (except for that one girl who thought that headbanging means falling backwards, and that one other very large girl [I thought it was a dude with a large ski jacket at first] who shoved us aside)

I saw High on Fire in London when the opened for Opeth, so I wasn’t too focused on them. Converge were more hardcore than we initially thought, so we were a bit disappointed. (the Hubby was especially looking forward to them, and thus doubly disappointed.)

Mastodon were Magnificent. I never really gave them a chance before, and wasn’t very focused on them for this show, but they drew me right in. They stole the show. I went for Dethklok, but if I had money for merch, it would have gone to Mastodon.

This was my first time seeing Dethklock, and I was very excited. I was a bit worried that my impression of them from the cartoon wouldn’t translate well to a live setting, but they really pulled it off.

I was familiar with some of the Music Video animations from the DVD’s, but some of the newer songs (i.e. Hatredcopter) I’d never seen, so that was good times. I enjoyed the bridging animations, but I’d heard that they were recycled from last time they hit the city. I enjoyed it all, but considering the ticket price, I’d have been PO’d if I had seen the last show with the same animations.

Overall I had a great time. The idiots that I expected in the audience never materialized, and I was unexpectedly enthralled by Mastodon.

Género/Genre: Stoner/Doom Metal

High On Fire es una banda de San Francisco, California, Estados Unidos, fundada en 1998.

Para comenzar definiendo su sonido, High On Fire es como una estampida de mamuts que destruyen todo a su paso. Son pesados, rápidos, fuertes, agresivos y especialmente capaces de producir excelente Metal.

Desde el primer momento se nota una blatante influencia de Motörhead, desde la estructura de las riffs a la voz, pero como pueden ver por el género de la banda, esto no se acaba aquí, ya qu al unir esa fuerte influencia del Speed junto con el pesado y lento Stoner/Doom, obtienes una banda aplastante pero excelente, con riffs algo repetitivos pero que nunca aburren ni cansas, y que simplemente vas a poder apreciar con facilidad por ser tan buenos.

La música además de eso tiene fuertes rasgos sureños de bandas como Corrosion Of Conformity, y además encontré cierta similitud en la voz con la del cantante de Mastodon, quizás porque Mastodon tiene fuertes influencias de High On Fire (Hasta el punto que los miembros de la banda dicha se conocieron en un concierto de High On Fire).

Me gustaría recomendar especialmente el último disco porque a pesar de que todos están en la misma línea, el último es un disco totalmente excelente de principio a fin, sin canciones de relleno ni basura, pero me repito, todos los discos siguen en la misma línea y todos son muy buenos.

En fin, una banda totalmente recomendada para los que hayan perdido su fe en el Metal moderno de Estados Unidos, una excelente banda.

The Art Of Self Defense (2000)

DESCARGAR/DOWNLOAD: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?ediltjydmud

Surrounded By Thieves (2002)

DESCARGAR/DOWNLOAD: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?yi2wtwwhelz

Blessed Black Wings (2005)

DESCARGAR/DOWNLOAD: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?mndtktk5kgd

Death Is This Communion (2007)

DESCARGAR/DOWNLOAD: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?jzgigdmidim

OUT WITH THE NÜ Metal, in all its spread-winged glory, is now enjoying an unlikely wide acceptance — and Mastodon are one of the genre’s most successful tall-tale tellers.

When you get down to it, most music is an attempt to create auditory allegories for our life experiences, whether they’re joyous Maypole dervishes or nightmarish St. Vitus’ dances of doom. As a subgenre of rock and roll, heavy metal leans in the latter direction, and in its nearly four decades of existence, it’s managed to create its very own idioms. Favoring instrumental mastery and dark themes writ large across well-worn jean jackets, metal has always risked ridicule from other rock forms in its unbending desire to remain true to its ideals of chaos and tribal loyalty.

But what is it that makes a certain band or song or album or riff “metal”? Lyrical themes? The timbre of the vocals and guitars? Is there a set of rules for how the instruments should interact? Is there some sort of semiotic checklist?

“Naw, it’s just music that’s really fucking brutal.” The voice on the other end of the line belongs to an individual who enjoys some authority when it comes to defining metal. In addition to having affixed “brutal” to “metal” for 13 years with knuckle-dragging sludge Neanderthals High on Fire, Matt Pike also manned the low-tuned guitar in doom pioneers Sleep — a power trio who played a major part in rescuing heavy music from the alt-friendly ’90s’ aversion to long flowing locks and brutal palm-muted riffage. He refines his definition of metal by citing his band’s forthcoming long-player, Snakes of the Divine: “It’s just, you know, hit-you-in-the-face stuff — just heavy and shit.”

Pike and company are currently hitting throngs of young uns in their collective faces as part of a tour that joins High on Fire with fellow down-tuners Mastodon, spazzcore local heavies Converge, and, to top it off, Dethklok — yes, as in the fictitious metal band from the Adult Swim cartoon Metalocalypse. Somehow, this tour, which comes to the House of Blues Tuesday and Wednesday, makes total sense: all three bands not only specialize in face-melting riff runs but are also merchants of metal’s continuously over-the-top allegorical æsthetic — even if the headliners amount to a pit band with animated corollaries projected on a screen that covers the stage.

Mastodon are arguably one of the most successful metal tall-tale tellers of all time. Their first major success came in 2004 with Leviathan, a loose concept based on Moby-Dick. This past spring they hit the Billboard Top 20 with Crack the Skye (Reprise), a dense song cycle revolving around Rasputin, astral travel, and Steven Hawking’s theories on wormholes.

“Our stuff, it’s all personal, you know, but it’s masked in this whole other story,” explains Mastodon drummer extraordinaire Brann Dailor. “We don’t want to be super-literal, because if we did, the audience would be like, ‘Oh, that is just something that happened to him.’ So it’s way better to create a new story with urban legends, Zoroastrian stuff, shit like that. Plus, it’s all great content for awesome metal T-shirts!”

HIGH ON FIRE: “I mean, yeah, I’m talking about my real life, but there’s dwarves involved!”

Pike likewise confesses to using metal’s fantastical bent to obscure the personal content of his songwriting. “We always inject realism into our songs, but they have, you know, a Dungeons & Dragons thing going on as well. Because all of these songs are fucking metaphors, you know? I mean, yeah, I’m talking about my real life, but there’s dwarves involved!” Amen to that: High on Fire, especially on the seminal releases Surrounded by Thieves (2002) and Blessed Black Wings (2005), created the audio analogue of, say, scenes from Ralph Bakshi’s animated Lord of the Rings: advancing armies of orcs, dark creatures spreading enormous wings and unsheathing unwieldy scimitars. And though the use of this imagery was hardly new in metal (thanks to fantasy-rock pioneers like Black Sabbath, Dio, Judas Priest, Motörhead, and, most especially, Derek Riggs’s iconic Iron Maiden mascot, Eddie), it had been driven far underground in the early ’90s as metalers of all stripes traded in their patchy denim for flannel and threadbare sweaters.

At this point, it’s clear that metal — unapologetic metal, brutal metal, metal full of fantasy and allegory and non-stop bludgeoning heavy-qua-heaviness — is back. The reason could have something to do with the rejection of ’90s post-hair-metal austerity. Or with the burial of the still-fragrant remains of nü-metal. Brendon Small, co-creator of Metalocalypse and guitarist and chief songwriter for Dethklok, started his project when he saw the scrawling on the wall. “For me, when I was noticing metal coming back, I was excited, because I grew up with it. When I was a student at Berklee, they didn’t teach metal, so I was happy to see people being technical and proficient while also doing all of this stuff that hadn’t been done before, advancing in heaviness and what not.”

Dethklok, as the fictional protagonists of Metalocalypse, could have been portrayed with brain-dead music to match the witlessness of the individual band members’ fictional personas, but one listen to either of the subsequent real-world Dethklok albums — 2007’s The Dethalbum and this fall’s Dethalbum II (Williams Street) — reveals not only the attention to detail but also a deep love for metal’s harmonious nature. “Honestly, doing this show is hard work, and every day of my life is about loud guitars and metal — so, obviously, I have to like metal a lot! I guess someone could have done this show with music that was really uninspired, but I really, for some reason, needed it to sound good to my ears.”

Small’s recipe for Dethklok’s mind-throttling chasm-fording riff salad is deceptively simple. “When I started coming up with Dethklok’s sound, I tuned my guitar really low, and then I started just, you know, throwing in Queen harmonies, ripping Brian May off. And then I threw in double kicks and guttural vocals, just trying to make everything melodic but also heavy and scary.”

Although the songs are in service to a comedy show, your average Dethklok tune will pass the Pepsi challenge with the crème de la crème of modern death metal; it might even transcend the genre. If there’s one sonic unifier of the bands on this tour, it’s a tendency toward hugeness. Time turns inward, movements speed and whip into a frenzy, and the lead guitar takes off on a soaring flight of fancy into a concentric void from which, it seems, there will be no return. That sort of thing.

Maybe it’s this brutality that unites modern metal. A cursory viewing of any episode of Metalocalypse reveals that “brutal” is a catch-all phrase for all things metal. Dailor concurs: “It’s just a perfect word to describe pounding drums, jackhammer riffs, down-tuned guitars — you know, it’s just ‘fucking brutal’! That word, it’s just so true — we all know what it means — it’s brutal!”

DETHKLOK + MASTODON + HIGH ON FIRE + CONVERGE | House of Blues 15 Lansdowne St, Boston | October 27-28 at 6:30 pm | all ages | $34.50-$45 | 617.693.BLUE or www.hob.com/boston

• Ik haat de soldenperiodes. Tenzij we ‘t hebben over platenwinkels. Bij Relapse is ‘t van dat. Hier werden ‘t plaatjes van Napalm Death (Leaders Not Followers), High On Fire (Live From The Relapse Contamination Festival), Pig Destroyer (Natasha), Harvey Milk (The Pleaser) en Today Is The Day (Kiss The Pig). Namen en titels spreken voor zich. Genoeg lawaai voor nu.
• Is dubbelparkeren niet bij wet verboden? Ik wil lijfstraffen voor overtreders. Dubbele dosis in Brussel.
•  De nieuwe Auster is de beste in meer dan vijftien jaar. Intussen word ik bruut van m’n stoel gekegeld door het withete proza van James Ellroy.
• Ook nog online, for what it’s worth, etc: recensies van Black Cobra (Chronomega), Om (God Is Good), Mary Halvorson & Jessica Pavone (Thin Air) en A.F.Th. van der Heijdens Doodverf.
• Morgen niet naar Sonic Youth. Wel naar een van de beste gitaristen ter wereld, die neerstrijkt in de Vooruit.

NP: Pere Ubu – Long Live Pere Ubu

Man kann es zwar nicht mehr Sommer nennen, aber der Herbst hatte gerade erst angefangen und es waren noch 30 Grad C, da hatt eich schon am 8.Oktober am Morgen eine riesen Ueberraschung, als ich meine Jalousie oeffnete und mir eine weisse Welt entgegenblickte. Es hat geschneit und die Temperaturen liegen im Moment tagsueber bei ca -3 Grad C. Also habe ich meine warmen Klamotten geschnappt und bin durch die Stadt gelaufen, um mir schliesslich eine Gitarre zu kaufen. Die Luft ist herrlich, doch der Wind, der mir ins Gesicht bliess, liess mir fast meine Nase abfallen. Aber fuer kanadische Verhaeltnisse ist das noch lange nicht kalt.

Schnee vor meinem Fenster

Schnee in Mill Creek Ravine, dahinter Downtown

Am Abend zuvor hatte ich einen tollen Abend auf dem Konzert verbracht. Die Show fand in der gleichen Halle wie die Messe “Everyone for Edmonton” statt und fuer Konzerte war die Architektur nun wirklich nicht gemacht (zu niedrig und zu viele Moeglichkeiten fuer reflexionen). Es kam mir vor wie ein Konzert in der Aula, bloss dass alles etwas groesser war. Die zweite Ueberraschung war, dass der hintere Bereich der Halle, der Barbereich, durch einen Zaun vom vorderen Bereich abgetrennt war. Man musste sich zuerst mit seiner ID ausweisen, um ein Armband zu bekommen, was dir erlaubt, den Barbereich zu betreten. Dort hat man sich dann ein viel zu teures Ticket fuer einen Drink gekauft, womit mann ein paar Meter weiter zum Barmann geht, um sein Ticket einzuloesen. Aus Platzgruenden in anderen Konzertlocations wird darauf hingewiesen, dass keine Minderjaehrigen das Konzert besuchen duerfen. Wow, sehr strikt, aber es funktioniert. Die Show begann mit “High On Fire”, die wir leider nur sehr verschwommen aus dem hinteren Bereich der Halle mitbekommen haben. Trotz verschwommenem Sound hat man gehoert, dass sie ein paar Timingprobleme hatten. “Converge”, die ein paar neue Songs gespielt haben, haben durch sehr gute Buehnenperformance, besonders durch den Shouter, ueberzeugt. Auf “Converge” folgte der erste Mainact, “Mastodon”, weswegen ich mir eigentlich das Ticket gakauft habe. Mich hat ihre Show besonders ueberzeugt, weil sie das ganze neue Album gespielt haben, weil sies technisch einfach drauf haben und weil die Atmosphaere fast durchgaengig stimmte. Was mich aus dieser Atmosphaere gerissen hat waren noch einige Unstimmigkeiten im mehrstimmigen Gesang bei 2 oder 3 neuen Songs. Ausserdem war “Mastodon”s gesamter Auftritt durch ein Video bzw im zweiten Teil durch das jeweilige Cover-Artwork des Albums unterlegt, von dem sie einen Song gespielt haben. Das machte den Auftritt sehr einstudiert. Ich haette mir vielleicht wenigstens einen Versuch der Kommunikation mit dem Publikum gewuenscht.

Vendor-Boy

Was danach folgte, war fuer mich eigentlich nur blanker Schwachsinn. Der zweite Mainact, “Dethklok” ist eigentlich nur eine Band, die in einer Zeichentrickserie existiert. Fuer Konzerte spielen Musiker die Musik dieser Band und im Hintergrund laeuft das Zeichentrickvideo ab. Ich kann nihct verstehen, wie so viele Leute wegen dieser Band dort waren. Es kam mir vor, als ob es allen nur um das Video ging, denn nihct die Band, sondern das Video stand im Vordergrund. Als dann auch noch in den Pausen ein Totenkopf zu den Massen gesprochen hat und von Merchandising gesprochen wurde, da tobte der Pit. Damit konnte ich mich nun garnicht identifizieren, was mich dazu bewegte, vorzeitig abzuhauen.

Subin @ Downtown by night

Den Heimweg habe ich zusammen mit Subin genommen, ein neuer Assistent aus Korea (war auch auf dem Konzert; Subin ist eig ein Maedchenname). Mit ihm und Yumi treffen wir uns in letzter Zeit sehr oft in unserem Haus, um den Abend zu geniessen, da unser Houseleader immernoch im Urlaub ist.

Es ist sehr verschieden, wenn man Assistenten zu Hause sind oder ob man jeden Tag einen oder zwei Supporter hat, die man auch erstmal kennenlernt und denen man viele Handgriffe, die fuer mich schon zur Routine geworden sind, zeigen und erklaeren muss.

Heute kam unser Community-Leader, Sister Pat, uns zum Tee besuchen, um einer Dame von L’Arche International ein Beispielhaus unserer Community zu zeigen. Mir kam es ein wenig komisch und suspekt vor, als die andere Dame auffaellig oft die Worte “great” und “terrific” benutzte. Waehrend diese zwei Damen bei uns waren, waren Henry und Letu immer noch an der Universitaet, denn dort haben sie fuer 3 ganze Tage an einem Leadership-Training teilgenommen, was ich sehr teffific finde (hervorragend).

Das Wetter macht muede, vor allem, wenn man seine Freizeit dafuer nutzt, rauszugehen. Ich wuensche euch allen Schnee, aber nicht solch eine Kaelte. Macht euch ein schoenes Wochenende. Am Montag ist Thanksgiving.

Dethklok @ The Big 4 Building Oct. 6/09. I totally missed High on Fire which was a bit of a piss off but what can you do. Converge were awful in my opinion. I just couldn’t get into there sound or vocals.

Mastodon was just as amazing as earlier in the year. They still play their entire new album front to back which is awsome. After the album they again play a variety of their past songs. A good hour and 20 minute set.

Dethklok are so heavy Live you can feel it through out your body. I was amazed how good they are live and the vocals are dead on seeing as he is the one who plays the character on the show. They had about an hour set and played about 12 songs.

Custom picks,

High on Fire: ???

Converge: didn’t see anything

Mastodon: Custom Dunlop

Dethklok: None, has had them in the past

Note: I recommend Stage Left and up close!

Rock Hard, Rock Loud & Rock On!

JR

The Adult Swim Presents tour, featuring Dethklok, Mastodon, High On Fire and Converge, have announced a few additional dates to their current tour which will hit 37 cities. Check out the dates and see one of the most metalicious tours of the year!

10/06/09 – Big Four Building – Calgary, AB
10/07/09 – Shaw Conference Centre – Edmonton, AB
10/09/09 – Great Saltair – Salt Lake City, UT
10/10/09 – Fillmore Auditorium – Denver, CO
10/12/09 – Uptown Theater – Kansas City, MO
10/13/09 – The Pageant – St. Louis, MO
10/14/09 – Val Air Ballroom – Des Moines, IA
10/16/09 – Roy Wilkins Auditorium – Minneapolis, MN
10/17/09 – Aragon Ballroom – Chicago, IL
10/18/09 – Eagle’s Auditorium – Milwaukee, WI
10/20/09 – LC Pavilion – Columbus, OH
10/21/09 – The Fillmore Detroit – Detroit, MI
10/23/09 – Sound Academy – Toronto
10/24/09 – The Fairgrounds – Buffalo, NY
10/25/09 – Armory – Albany, NY
10/27/09 – House of Blues – Boston, MA
10/29/09 – Hammerstein Ballroom – New York, NY
10/30/09 – Hammerstein Ballroom – New York, NY
10/31/09 – Patriot Center – Washington, DC
11/01/09 – Electric Factory – Philadelphia, PA
11/03/09 – The Norva – Norfolk, VA
11/04/09 – The Fillmore – Charlotte, NC
11/05/09 – Tabernacle – Atlanta, GA
11/06/09 – House of Blues – Myrtle Beach, SC
11/07/09 – Hard Rock Live – Orlando, FL
11/08/09 – Pompano Beach Amphitheater – Pompano Beach, FL
11/11/09 – House of Blues – Dallas, TX
11/12/09 – Verizon Wireless Theater – Houston, TX
11/13/09 – Austin City Music Hall – Austin, TX
11/14/09 – Brady Theater – Tulsa, OK
11/16/09 – Pan American Center – Las Cruces, NM
11/17/09 – Mesa Amphitheater – Mesa, AZ
11/18/09 – House of Blues – Las Vegas, NV
11/19/09 – Palladium – Los Angeles, CA
11/20/09 – Palladium – Los Angeles, CA
11/21/09 – Events Center – San Jose, CA