Hola. Here's a quick wrap up of albums I bought somewhat recently. Details after the jump!
Alice In Chains - The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here - I don't remember it. Check out the previous album instead.
Carcass - Surgical Steel - Pretty good. It's blasphemy to question how necessary this is, and some of it would feel "more of the same" if "the same" weren't 15 years ago, but I bought it and there's some really good cuts on here.
Pelican - Forever Becoming - Really awesome. Not a total surprise because all their stuff is pretty much awesome, but I was worried. Worry not: this is another amazing album by Pelican. The end.
Okay, longer reviews after the jump!
These are my opinions. Don't be all hurt n stuff.
Alice In Chains - The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here
There's a lot of AiC fans who think that without Layne Staley, this band shouldn't be anymore. I was one of those persons, and was terrified to give "Black Gives Way To Blue" a remote chance in hell until a friend reminded me that A. it's Jerry Cantrell's band, pretty much, and B. I listen to AC/DC's Back In Black all the time, and THAT'S without the original singer. So I bought their return album with a new singer who's not Layne Staley and was pleasantly surprised. I really dug it and I still listen to it, moreso than previous releases (I'm also one of the few who doesn't care about Facelift-BLASPHEMY!).
This new album came out around the same time the new (and laid-back) Queens Of The Stone Age came out, and maybe it was just too many "laid-back" albums by bands I used to rock out to in one sitting. This sounds more like their self-titled album, in that the songs are pretty long and there's no real surprises here. Not that I say you should be listening for surprises but it's hard to remember anything from this album. I'm re-listening to it as I type just to make sure I didn't write this out of indifference and I swear I thought the first two tracks were the same song. I just seem to lose patience with some of these riffs and verses that go on and on, with some slight change to indicate a chorus. Thank goodness for their pretty and slightly freaky voices, but other than "Breath On A Window" (which is well midway through an album I'm having a hard time keeping my attention through) there's not much here after a couple of listens I can grab on to. Maybe my tastes will change and this will get a 2nd shot down the line, I don't know. I'm sincere about "Black Gives Way To Blue," so whatever hangups I had about replacing the late Staley are well gone, and I'll give whatever they do next a shot as well.
Carcass - Surgical Steel
Carcass broke up in, what, 1995, and released two posthumous albums (Swansong and a compilation called Wake Up And Smell The Carcass, which featured five songs left over from Swansong along with all the B-sides and EPs). I was DEVASTATED but the writing had been on the wall: hard rock and metal were on the decline thanks to Grunge and Indie and College Rock and President Clinton and whatever else you want to blame it on. I have my theories. But as my friends complained about Metallica "selling out" and releasing lame rock albums, specifically "they're not heavy anymore" and "they're not fast anymore," I would say "well listen to this album Heartwork."I'd always hear the same thing: "That's too heavy" or "That's too fast." And as my metalhead friends failed that test, Carcass, who were getting a little bit of success with Heartwork, signed a multi-album deal with Sony (Columbia) for...SOME REASON.
I wish success for the bands I love, but c'mon, it's 1995 and here's my deal with Carcass: pre-Carcass-in-my-life, I would read along to the lyrics as that shiny new death metal band growled and screamed about atrocities and politics and who knows what else. With Heartwork, well, forget it. After that I basically just gave up trying to understand death metal bands, and gave up remembering lyrics to ANY performer. What's the point? The riffage alone was worth my head exploding all over the place.
Many albums have blown my mind and when they do I go all out to hear everything. Sometimes I'm amazed by that band's output or sometimes after the 3rd or 4th import I hunted down I realized I should have stopped with that first album I was made aware of because that band got lucky that time. I'll just say it: At The Gates. WTF is with that first awful album?
I wouldn't have had At The Gates in my life if I wasn't exposed to Heartwork, which became my brand new thing in my life that spoke levels above what I could comprehend (I was 18, shut up) and featured music that I assumed to be on a technical level not heard since Megadeth's Rust In Peace. It sounded DENSE from start to finish. I'm not sure if they were the first band I listened to that tuned down to B, but holy bajeezus when a band tunes down to sound heavy, it's because they want to chug and not thrash. Or do simpler powerchords. This was a band, I would later find out, that did so just to be even NOISIER.
When I began my search for their early stuff, I found myself on quite the wild ride. I found a damaged copy of Symphonies Of Sickness with included most of Reek Of Putrefaction. I had heard short, badly recorded punk songs, and these were short and badly recorded, but if you're a metal band you make up for badly recorded with epic nonsense. This was epic NOISE, and the underground, even the non-metal, praised them loudly for it (they'd have to: it was really noisy). Symphony sounded more complicated and gut wrenching than Reek. But it was with the addition of Mike Amott, later of Arch Enemy, where the band shined a light on what sort of wonderful noise you could produce while competing with the modern technical thrash masters of metal metal metal. METAL!
Heartwork, especially for me, is far and away one of the best things to come out of the 90's as hair metal was laid to rest next to the woolly mammoth, so that's probably why some people missed out on that. Plus, it was pretty extreme, even compared to Slayer and the harder than hard Pantera. The first half of the album featured the slow prom dance material, of course. And by that I mean "no it didn't." But it did have two songs that got some videos, the slower "No Love Lost" and the thrashariffic title song whose opening riff will always be one of the most incredible rock riffs ever. It takes a whole band to make it work, and they make quite the calamity doing so. The 2nd half of the CD stood out less to me at the time but like the title track they were quickly paced (and unlike the first half, shorter) and relentless songs, and after nearly 20 years they actually feel superior to the material I would use to try to turn people (unsuccessfully) on to. Oh well.
Then Sony (who distributed Heartwork in the US) threw a bunch of money at them or something. I don't know the story there but I am sure there was a twinge of regret from both parties when those first demos for Swansong rolled in. Perhaps Sony was hoping for the next Megadeth and instead got what Megadeth used to be, plus some singing that sounded like something from a horror movie not starring anyone human. The masters were returned and for the next decade or so Earache records would release Swansong and the other albums several times over.
I hadn't listened to Carcass in the last few years because those albums are in fact a holy racket. Also, now that I'm married, it's REALLY hard to utilize their music as background party music. Because then the only ones having a party are whoever are on that CD. This is not music for lightweights!
I have to wonder if I (BLASPHEMY ALERT!) outgrew Carcass. If the music hadn't held up since, well, Heartwork. Swansong was an attempt to be somewhat more accessible and it was definitely a turn-off for the hardcore fans who had already dealt with album-to-album progressions up to that point; a LIGHTER version of Heartwork, even with some meaty riffs (and you know what? Some really good material. Shut up.) was itself a form of blasphemy, especially when the metal scene needed some kind of savior. I personally, in the last 10 years, had been enjoying surf music, the Ramones and a lot of other punk I had ignored during my musical upringing, some band called Pelican, oldies, some slightly more eclectic things since the band that ruled my metal consciousness broke up. When your other favorite bands disappoints you with something like St. Anger, well, THERE ARE OTHER BANDS OUT THERE, YOU KNOW.
I tried following the further adventures of the band members after Carcass broke up. Again, I was quite the completist, and stomached a few slightly less-metal acts. If there was an example why Sony might not be behind Jeff Walker's vocals, it'd be Black Star (in the United States, add "Rising" to the end). That was a few of the Carcass members on a small metal label belting out a strange, but at least interesting, rock album. Mike Amott, who had left after Heartwork, had a 70's inspired rock band called Spiritual Beggars and I have one of their albums and it's pretty good. I wish he kept on that path because his band Arch Enemy cranked out riffage after riffage filled metal albums and none of them had a lasting impact...at least on me, and I must be wrong because AE is still pretty popular, even moreso with their female singer. I mean, she joined on or after the 4th or 5th album? So they already had more material that Carcass in a much shorter amount of time. Jeff Walker also did a rock/country album, where he sang in his course barely-in-tune Jeff Walker rock voice from Black Star Rising. Most impressive, however, was Bill Steer's band Firebird, which generally was Bill Steer and two other guys and I don't recall them being the same backing band to Steer's 70's blues rock. Steer played guitar and sang...and it's REALLY GOOD. I would recommend No. 3 as probably the best of the material that I know from that band.
I wasn't too shocked when Steer, Walker, & Amott announced that they'd be touring (drummer Ken Owen had suffered a stroke a decade prior and, though recovered, hasn't been able to play the drums...LIKE THAT). At The Gates did a few reunion tours, so why not the OTHER band that influenced the New Wave Of American Heavy Metal? But when Walker & Steer announced that they had already RECORDED a new album, not that they were thinking about it...well, was I in a coma? How the effing f did I miss THAT?
I heard a few tracks and now that I finally got the album (a few weeks ago) I have...opinions. They promised an album somewhere between Necroticism and Heartwork and sure enough that's pretty much what it sounds like. Mike Amott isn't part of the new lineup and a few fans might disregard this as a real reunion, but Amott didn't play rhythm on the albums he was part of. Steer played all the rhythm guitar parts so that they would have consistency from track to track. Ken Owen makes a vocal appearance, so that's cool.
If you were in a cave for 15 years and refused to buy any new music until Carcass got back together and made more Carcass music, then you will be 100% happy with it (provided you made enough money in that cave to buy the album). And there should be some major kudos to bands that say "we wanted to get back to our roots" when the jazz collaboration with Cindy Lauper didn't work out and do in fact get back to their roots. But BLASPHEMY ALERT I wasn't locked up in a cave, and neither were they. Part of me, the fan of yesteryear, wants to leave well enough alone. Those were amazing albums that show an insane level of progression in production, songwriting, and instrument proficiency to the point where you wonder if they're wizards. Another part of me says "Okay, our lives are all different. You guys are different, and engaged in some musical exploits that, not always spectacular, showed some depth, range, growth...you name it. Whatever is your hearts, you should do, and we know it will be different but it will still be a Carcass album. Even if Cindy Lauper is on it for some reason."
Carcass was not a typical thrash band or even an above average metal band or even a great metal band. THEY CREATED AN ENTIRE GENRE OF NOISE METAL, FOR CRYING OUT, AND THEN THEY SAID "LET'S MAKE A SECOND ALBUM." This is CARCASS. Why REPLICATE what you USED to do?
Because the rest of me says "Holy crap, they still got it." They did in fact make some weird retro-bridge between their two "regular" metal albums. And one of the big riffs in "Mount Of Execution" is the same opening riff in "Edge Of Darkness," but it's their music and they can recycle what they want, and they reached all over their catalog to create something new. It's not pleasant, there's no groove to it, no one tries to sing pretty to offset the screamy screaming, and the tempo ranges from fast to faster. So, hey, a new Carcass album! Dude in cave, did you hear?
Some of the songs are a little long, but at least there's a crapload going on in every song, even the shorter ones. Some of the solos are a little too cheesy and out of place for the crazy noise beneath it. But the rest of it, and this is why you'd love a band like Carcass, switches from impressively wild guitar mastery to wildly impressive mishmashes of noise and blastbeats. And Jeff Walker sounds just like he did in...you get the idea. Because it basically sounds like a forgotten Carcass album, some of it might not stand out. And some of it does so magnificently, with "316L Grade Surgical Steel" a lost gem fitting on the albums they were trying to replicate.
I bought this album digitally with no lyric sheet, because following along with the lyrics to a Carcass album without a thesaurus or medical dictionary is pointless. However, at one point "The Granulating Dark Satanic Mills" it sounds like Walker is singing a bunch of numbers. Um, "Jenny?"
So, the only new ground here is that it's a new Carcass album. It won't make me think about what I know is heavy music like previous Carcass albums (even Swansong) but it has a lot of wonderful stuff going on within. And it's still not an album for lightweights.
Thank you, Carcass, for ruining singing and lyrics for me forever. Because speaking of which:
Pelican - Forever Becoming
I love this band. And with the exception of Australasia and maybe some of the spacier EPs prior to City Of Echos, I love their albums that I consume, listen to over and over, own on different formats for some reason, find something new every time I listen...you name it. These guys can't do any wrong, unless of course for some reason their lead music-writer would quit for some OH DAMMIT.
So I was a little worried. They seemed like a tight bunch of bandmates even if there was physical distance between the members (half live in LA, I think, the other half in Evanston, IL?) and I assume this because their music is the kind of tight and powerful stuff you'd get from four musicians being on the same page. I had heard some of the new stuff at some recent live shows and it was pretty good. But pretty good is not the same thing as Pelican, because if you're an instrumental band that plays 8 minute long songs that alternate between barrages and somber explorations, you had BETTER be awesome because otherwise you're insanely boring. I don't know them but if their lead music writer steps down, his replacement and remaining members had some very big shoes to fill.
That's also not fair at ALL, because these guys can clearly write material of great merit, and the proof is this album. It's just if the tone or music or just about anything were off, it wouldn't sound like Pelican. Call it something else, you know? I just worried needlessly that it wouldn't be a PELICAN album and I shouldn't have because this is another amazing Pelican album.
Pelican Pelican Pelican.
Following the slow moving, quiet-guitar with oddly EQ'd drum & bass opener where you think no one really knows where to go next with it, "Deny The Absolute" takes the album to quick, heavy, and melodic place. "Immutable Dusk" and "The Cliff" sound like material that could have come off of The Fire In Our Throats Beckons The Thaw, an album I think should get more love. "Threnody" and "Vestiges" stand out the most, the former featuring some hauntingly beautiful guitars buried in the background as a quiet interlude before the band opens up again with their powerful and heavy sound, and the latter featuring one of their more driving melodies the band builds more around without changing the core of it.
I wonder that my expectations were low but I really can't find anything dull/boring about this. And like I said, the risk of being boring with 8 minute long instrumentals (and incredibly pretentious sounding titles) is less a risk and more a likelihood, so that they continue to create music that sounds interesting, and even better, with every listen is amazing. Seriously great stuff from a great band.
Also, I have the vinyl, and it's two 45rpm LPs. Meaning that I will have to play them at 33 1/3rd for a completely different experience.
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