A.D.D.

I'm gonna take this time to write about something else that's been getting on my nerves quite a bit lately. It does have something to do with music, but at the same time it affects everything in my life at least a little bit.

I'm not professionally diagnosed, but I really believe that I have A.D.D. I have a lot of trouble focusing when I'm in class and the teacher is giving a lecture (this could really hurt me in college unless I constantly take notes). Even when I'm not in school and I'm honestly listening to something that I'd want to hear in the first place, my mind always goes other places. I realize five minutes into a story that Renee is telling me that I haven't been listening the whole time. It's really hard to focus after that, but I still try to pick up the pieces and figure out what she's talking about. More often than not, I have to ask a really obvious question and she realizes I haven't been listening and gets pissed off. It's not that I don't care, it's that I really, honestly, have a lot of trouble focusing.

It's worst with music. I have to change what I'm listening to constantly. I very often listen to an album that I would find all around good if I was on Ritalin, but instead I only like the first two or three tracks and find the rest boring because my attention span is so short. This only really applies to albums that are track-based, with each song having verses and choruses and whatnot. I have absolutely no trouble listening to an album like Feedbacker, which isn't track based or 'catchy' at all. I have, on an unrelated note, realized that the new Mastodon album is really quite fantastic, but it took a while for me to really swallow the whole thing, as my attention completely wanes before the third track is over. I have to stop listening for a while and go back, starting halfway through in order to really enjoy anything past the very beginning. While this isn't a massive inconvenience, I'd really prefer to be able to listen to it from beginning to end consecutively, but if I try that, it just becomes background noise to my aimless thoughts.

It's a real bitch.

Hammers of Misfortune - The Bastard

I tackled another album today, and decided to write a blog because of how strange it was. It was nothing completely new and unheard of, which is why it was so odd to me. It was a rehash of several genres of metal -- a sort of progressive bend to folk/power/doom/black metal. But at the same time, it felt so fresh, even though nothing completely original had been explored on this release, but it didn't matter. It was really solid anyway.

It was Hammer of Misfortune's The Bastard. I suppose I was drawn to this album because the first and second tracks are both great hooks, as well as the fact that I looked it up and found that it was a concept album. After studying the lyrics, this 14-song (a lot for this type of epic metal) metal-opera had a surprisingly complex story.

Act I:
The Bastard, who seems to be half-tree half-man and hates mankind, awakens the great dragon goddess in a dream to ask her about how he was born. She tells him that his villainous father left him to die in a battle. He had to fight for his life. His father destroyed an entire village, and now sits on the throne. The Bastard must kill him to get the throne himself. The tyrant is traveling down the road when The Bastard stands in his way. The king tells him if he doesn't move, he'll be killed. Act I ends with the anthemic "You Should Have Slain Me", in which the Bastard finally threatens to exact revenge on his father. A prophecy is said by the surrounding villagers:
"When the Ax is freed from hell
A single stroke shall break the spell
When the Ax is free again
A brutal reign shall meet its end"

Act II:
The Bastard has journeyed far and wide to seek the Ax of the prophecy. The earth all of a sudden gives way and swallows him, sending him deep into Hell. The Dragon-goddess, now in person instead of in his mind, Ax in hand, asks the Bastard his business. He requests the Ax. She tells him that he must promise to do whatever she asks if she gives it to him, no matter what. He swears and takes the Ax. The track "The Blood Ax Speaks" seems to be an ominous intro for the weapon, its lust for blood has waited seven thousand years to claim another life. The Bastard immediately returns to his father, killing all of his guards and finally him with the bloodthirsty weapon. Act II: draws to a close with the children of the forest dancing and rejoicing, for the tyrant's reign has come to an end. When it seems like everything is through, we have a twist.

Act III:
The short and aptly titled track "The Prophecy Has Two Meanings" has some of the most cryptic lyrics on the album:
"This prophecy has two meanings you see
There is:
One for the Boatman, one for the stream
One for the dreamer, and one for the dream
One for the victim, and one for the blade
One for the blood, and the sacrifice made"

Meanwhile, the Bastard sits on his throne, but desires only to go back into the forest where he belongs. The people want a king, and he knows it can't be him. The Dragon-goddess returns for the favor that she was promised when she gave up the Blood-Ax. She orders the Bastard to simply cut down one tree and she will be appeased. He curses her, saying that he'll do it, but he'll take his own life when he's done. When he does it, the sacrifice (mentioned in "The Prophecy Has Two Meanings") is made, and the forest is uprooted, the spell that kept them stationery, gone. It appears that the Dragon-goddess knew all along that a sacrifice needed to be made. The trees and rocks all get up and slay all of the men in their path, for they hate the way that men desecrate the forest that's sacred to them (for lumber, for meat). In Act III's final track, it is realized that for the people of the forest, freeing the Ax wouldn't end the cursed reign of the Tyrant, but of mankind itself. The Bastard sits on his throne as the ones made of wood, wind, and stone slay his kingdom, sparing everything non-human. He wonders why, since these people are his people, he doesn't feel compelled to stop the slaughter. He is told by his new subjects that he is one of them, and in fact, is their god and always has been. He has a void to fill in heaven.

It appears as though the Dragon-goddess knew this all along, and only told him that he was the son of the Tyrant so that he would break the spell. Perhaps she created him in the first place.

It's interesting that Hammers of Misfortune only has two vocalists, but the somehow make a discernable difference in the speaking voices on each character. The Bastard is voiced with a deep and hearty voice by the male singer. The Dragon-goddess is voiced by the girl singer in an operatic tone. The Tyrant is done with harsh vocals by the male singer. The townspeople are a male and female chorus. The Blood-Ax's voice is a combination of clean female vocals and harsh male vocals. The trolls of the woodlands are a chorus of harsh vocals.

I also like the fact that a certain riff accompanies the dragon-goddess whenever she speaks.

All-in-all, great story and great music. 9/10.

Boris.

There's so much to say.

The other day I took a walk and listened to Rock Dream, which is a collaboration with Japanese drone/doom/psychedelic/rock band Boris and Japanese noise artist Merzbow. I had heard a bit of it while I slept on the bus on the way home from my competition on Saturday and decided to take a walk and give it a full uninterrupted listen. I expected it to be good, but I really had no idea. I've never been one to be all "deep" and talk about how much the music that I listen to affects me, but I was just speechless. On the album, there are, of course, several songs from Boris' cool rock phase, which Merzbow adds his trademark static harsh noises to. I thought that he more or less detracted from the real energetic songs, which were just meant to be raw guitar, bass, and drums through fuzz pedals and Orange amps.

The less friendly songs of Boris included on the album are a 35 minutes rendition of Feedbacker, which (knowing how much of a faggot I am for Feedbacker, you should see this one coming) was no less than absolutely epic. It's followed by a handful of shorter songs, and then the second disc kicks in.

The real gem of this album is on the second disc. The fourth track on disc two is the energetic fan favorite "Ibitsu", which is very fast and catchy, with that psychedelic Motorhead vibe that can be found in Pink, Heavy Rocks, and Akuma no Uta. Just when you were ready for another real headbanger, they kick off the shorter-than-expected A Bao A Qu, which, while being quite captivating, seems to serve as more of a sedative to get your mind off of the stoner grooves played earlier in the concert. Immediately when The Evil One Which Sobs kicked off, I could really feel it. It was like nothing I had ever heard before. It was so mournful and morose, but it was absolute bliss at the same time. All thirteen minutes of it were nothing like I had ever heard before. I never thought I'd hear noise doing anything but, well, being noisy, but it serenaded the beautiful repetition and slow evolution perfectly, resulting in nothing less than a masterpiece. I've never felt so strongly about a composition before. I forgot everything else, I just kept listening, and it came to its noisy-yet-subtle climax. I was no less than floored. I looked around, saw a plane in the sky, and felt sorrow for them for being so unaware of this amazing world inside my head where nothing went wrong. It was like nothing else. Then it ended, and I felt satisfied. I wouldn't have complained if it had gone on longer, but it ended right where it should have.

They went on to play a newer song, Flower Sun Rain, from the Smile album. The vocals are back now, but they sing a more nostalgic and sad tone than on the grooves like Pink and Ibitsu. The rest of the tracks on the album are tastefully and perfectly layered with Merzbow's quirky but not orderless noises, and it fades off with the appropriate "Farewell" from the Pink album.

When I first heard them say that they would rather not think of themselves as a band, I thought it was rather pretentious. After really giving albums like Absolutego, Feedbacker, and now this one, I'm kind of starting to understand where they're coming from. Band or not, they're definitely not your average psychedelic band with a greatest hits album (if they did have a greatest hits, it would probably just be a re-release of Pink). They're more like an ever-changing need for the artists to express themselves as diversely as possible. An artistic force, if you will. They're geniuses.

On another note, I think I know why I haven't reviewed Feedbacker or even thought about giving Rock Dream a full review. I'm just not sure if I really grasp it. Maybe I'm giving too much credit to an almost purely instrumental album as being 'too deep for me'. I mean, I'm only eighteen and am already a pretty seasoned fan of music. But every time I listen, I feel like I never have before. I don't know why it is. Possibly it's just that they do such an incredible job of passing on a feeling through their instruments, that it just hits me. You can't review pure emotion, can you?

Shallow versus Profound

Most music out there, underground or mainstream, has a very shallow nature. I suppose there's nothing wrong with that, there's beauty in shallow music and I'll never doubt that. I suppose why I like doom metal so much is because of its profundity. I mean, of course, my ears enjoy the music, but it just affects me in a much deeper way than silly thrash or death metal. That's not to say that there's not shallow doom metal, and of course, not to say that I don't enjoy a huge amount of it (hello, Electric Wizard).

I can definitely enjoy thrash or death metal for their sheer energy, zest, and balls-out catchiness, but not for their content. You can throw a million tekkie-DM bands at me, and I can tell you that not one of them has any real substance. Comparing death to doom in terms of lyrical content isn't too different from comparing a pulp magazine to Shakespeare. From what I can understand, most fans of thrash and death metal like it for the same reasons I do, but also the musicianship. Which is fine, of course, I can't argue with that, but how many truly feel like death metal has affected their views on what music should be like? How many of them really feel like death metal has done something to them?

This is why doom will always be my favorite. There's something present among all the sustained notes and truckloads of feedback that satisfies me in a way that simple shredability and fast riffs never will.

An annoyance.

I have a very regular and irritating habit of really getting into a band after I see them. I suppose this wouldn't be a big deal at all if I hadn't heard of them, but this really only occurs with bands that I go to see (even if I don't know their music all that well).

Anyway, I suppose there's really no better way to get into a band than to see them live as long as you already know what their style is, but sometimes I really feel like I could have enjoyed the show a lot more just a few days after I go. The fact that almost all the bands I like are European doesn't help either, because the lord only knows the next time I'll see them.

If you keep up with this blog (yeah, right) you know that I saw Swallow the Sun last weekend. I've been really into their music since then, almost listening nonstop actually, besides my sudden love for Primordial. It's just not fair. One day I'll be that guy that's at every show that knows all the words. I was sort of that guy at the Moonspell show.

I'm gonna have to prepare more for the impending Kylesa, Black Tusk, and Skeletonwitch show.

Primordial

Today, I was listening to Priestess and didn't really know what to switch to once I was tired of them. I unknowingly happened upon something really special when I decided to just choose what was closest by.

Before you could blink, Primordial's The Gathering Wilderness was playing in my headphones while I idly played flash games in my period aiding for Mr. Collins (he never gives me work). Primordial efficiently produces a sound that I am always looking for and eager to hear more of. I'm hesitant to call it 'folk metal', even though it has heavy celtic folk influences, because of what the term suggests. When I think of folk metal, I think of sugary sickening sweet stuff like Ensiferum, Turisas, or Vintersorg, which are all on the upbeat side. They're not really my style; I was never really into all of the war chants and uplifting choruses that want to sound like an army of bearded raiders on their way to an honorable battle (and victory). I think it's interesting that the music would lead you to believe that the Vikings fought for honor and to protect their people and way of life, when they really just raped, pillaged, and murdered most of the time. The only time they had an honest battle was when retaliation was on the way.

Anyway, enough of the history, let's get back to the metal. Primordial has a musical aesthetic that, however rare, is present in a handful of bands that I've had the pleasure of hearing. It's definitely folky, but I would rather describe it as 'heathen folk', as it has nothing to do with Vikings. In addition, it has more of a morose and nostalgic feel to it. In this way, they have a much more epic and thick sound. It doesn't use crappy gimmicks like the odd flute or violin that are utilized many too many times and almost never effectively, but just has a very straightforward sound reminiscent of Wolves in the Throne Room, but doesn't try as hard and succeeds more. Like Wolves, there's a dash of black metal thrown in, but not enough to call it a black metal band.

If you're into anything like Agalloch, Wolves in the Throne Room, or Negura Bunget, this is very worth checking out.

Concert.

I visited Renee this past weekend. This has no relevance to this blog besides the fact that we attended a concert on Saturday. The headliner was Soilwork, but we, like any underground metalheads, went solely for the opening bands and weren't really interested in Soilwork. They're an okay band, but they play such a tired style of music. Maybe they're good live, we don't know, but regardless, it's worth the seventeen dollars.

Swallow the Sun started off the four band set, and theywere the band I wanted to go and see the most. They play a unique style of aggressive yet tranquil and melancholic style of doom metal, obviously influenced by melodic death metal. They came on under a Darkane banner, so I thought they were Darknane until they played. It didn't take long to recognize that the style wasn't, indeed, testosterone packed thrashy melodeath that Darkane plays. Besides all that, the band played their set flawlessly with "Don't Fall Asleep" being the centerpiece. The crowd, who probably expected to just get drunk during the sets of some shitty Soilwork knockoffs, got instead a rare treat of very nicely layered keyboards, clean guitars and distorted guitars. The venue was so small, you couldn't possibly miss any of it, and many people were coming from the bar to watch the band in awe. The drumming was also a high point, with the fills being done with mastery and finesse. The only disappointment was that they only got a half hour.

Daylight Dies didn't disappoint either, with a style of music not completely different from that of Swallow the Sun, but sans the keyboard and most of the clean vocals. We had a good laugh during Daylight Dies, because the leadsinger was throwing his hair back and forth right into the faces of the guys in the front row. It smelled like a flowery meadow. Only badasses use Herbal Essences, I guess. But that's besides the point. I don't have much to add about Daylight Dies, but it's hard to play a memorable set in between such great live bands.

Darkane was third, and as opposed to sending depression over the audience like a storm cloud, they blew the place apart with riffs, quick tight drumming, and good old facemelting solos every ten seconds. Their set was upgraded to 45 minutes after the previous two only getting 30, but they still didn't waste any time. The guy next to me tapped on my shoulder, made a mosh pose, and we rushed each other. Before you knew it, seven or eight people were battling to stay up and make themselves known in the pit. It's the greatest workout ever, after two minutes, you're sore all over. Everything was just like thrash should be: catchy, tight, technical, and full of energy. If this band doesn't get you moving, you either don't like the style or you're wheelchair-bound.

Soilwork came on and just showed that after seven studio albums and a share of mainstream success, you tend to slow down, gain weight, and don really gay schoolboy uniforms. We left before their second song was over.

It was all in all a good night. On the way home, I listened to Boris' Absolutego for a change (usually I do Feedbacker both ways because it's such a fucking masterpiece and I don't get a lot of chances to listen to it all the way through before I have to stop what I'm doing). It tired itself out before it was completely over, mostly because they last fifteen minutes or so just seem like the same industrial noise over and over. I always say that there's beauty in repetition, but only if the sound evolves noticeably. It's hard to keep my attention when you lay an hour long song out for me, but again, if there's evolution with soft spots, buildups, and catharses, I can definitely enjoy it. Feedbacker is an hour long song, and it's my favorite album of all time. I'm gonna have to review it one of these days.

Anyway, back to Absolutego. I can honestly say that I'm done with all of the bad stuff that this album offers. I never expected such a run-of-the-mill drone album to be so dynamic. It starts off like any drone/doom album should, with a single and extended guitar chord. It repeats, eventually adding another guitar, a bass, drums, and at one point, even vocals. I will listen to this again eventually and add more about it, but I was generally impressed with all of the climaxes the album offers. It's a solid slab of drone, definitely.

Concerning the Lords of Chaos

Besides listening to Sunn O))) and Mayhem all day and realizing that Flight of the Behemoth is a pretty poor album, I don't really have a whole lot of thoughts building up regarding music today.

However, I did have a bit of an interesting conversation with Riverdale's art teacher, Mr. Greenblatt. See, it all started when we were talking a bit about the Lords of Chaos in my sixth period. If you don't know who they are, I can briedly explain. They were basically a group of kids who all went to my high school in 1996. They commited some pretty heinous crimes. Besides shoplifting (constantly), mugging one of the member's landlord, and planning on arming themselves and robbing a nearby gas station, they stole dozens of propane tanks from a Starvin Marvin and place them around an old Coca-Cola bottling factory. They then placed a 25 foot fuse inside a Pepsi can filled with gunpowder and watched it all explode. There was over $100,000 in damages. In addition, they also set on fire a cage with two parrots in it at a nearby tropical themed restaurant (The Hut Restaurant, still open) as well as many not-so-famous instances of arson.

However, their most famous act occured one night when 4 of the 8 members broke into the Riverdale auditorium one night and stole some insignificant items. The Riverdale Master of Bands at the time, Mark Schwebes caught them planning to tag the school with spray paint in several places. He recognized them and told them that the enxt day they could expect a visit from the police. Their ringleader, Kevin Foster, said that they had to go kill Schwebes that night because they didn't want to get in trouble. They found his house via directory assistance and knocked on his door at about 11:30 PM. Kevin Foster shot him in the face with a 12 gauge shotgun, killing him instantly. The boys were all arrested. Foster got the death penalty (he chose it over life without possibility of parole), Derek Shields and Chris Black got life with no possibility of parole, and Peter Magnotti (who only sat in the car while it was all happening) got 32 years.

I've read a lot about them, but I was excited at the prospect of having access to people who were around them for four years -- their teachers. I could learn things form them that I could never read in books or on the internet. So begins my interviews of teachers who were around when it happened (there's only a handful that remain).

Today, I talked to the art teacher, Mr. Greenblatt, about Peter Magnotti. He didn't really know the others all that well, besides the fact that some of them hung around the art room when Magnotti was painting. He talked for a while about the group as a whole. They were basically social outcasts who were led astray by the obviously deranged Foster, who would take them into the woods to shoot some of the guns they had taken from his father's pawn shop. They liked the way it felt. They would commit little petty crimes as initiation, like stealing silverware from Burdine's, or setting off a smoke bomb in Wal-Mart. He said that Chris Black wasn't unlike Aaron Preston -- emotionally unstable, short, chubby, an obviously unaccepted person, and an easy target for Foster, who a the time of the arsons, had already dropped out of high school. However, Greenblatt has always been one who is close to his students, and knows a lot about Peter Magnotti that no one else does. He said that Magnotti was a really smart kid... one that he'd leave behind to watch the class for a while. He was very shy, a good artist, but again, wasn't very well accepted by the popular kids. Greenblatt was even asked to testify for him, but he couldn't.

There's even some art left in the room that was done by Magnotti. There was a sculpture that had been in the art room for 12 years, and broke just last year. There are some simple and innocent sketches on the wall that Greenblatt attributes to Magnotti. But the real juicy stuff is hidden well. Greenblatt says that he found some art of Magnotti's right around the time of the shooting that was disgusting. It depicted people getting their heads blown off, getting torn in half, having their guts and brains spilled out. "It was enough to make you nautious," he says.

The principal at the time asked him to destroy the art in order to eliminate the possibility of anyone in the press finding out about it and it generating further bad press about Riverdale.

He didn't.

Sublime music.

I realized something today. I, like anyone else, listen to music that I like. Every day. I don't bother with the stuff I've already decided is crap. I listen to it all the time, marveling at all of the great riffs and rhythm sections coupled with vocal sections like a kid in a candy store. It just doesn't get old. And then, all of a sudden.... it does. I don't think of it as a tendency to over listen and make things boring for myself, I think of it as simply my instinct to enjoy something over and over until it loses me, because that's just how I work. In that sense, I don't try to stop it.

But I also have another instinct. Anyone who's ever asked me what my favorite band is, I always explain to them that there are bands that I love right now and am really into, and bands I will always love no matter what trends my crazy little mind goes through. But I've found that there's sort of... a third category that seems to transcend everything. A band that goes in this category is very rare, and in my eyes, has something that they should be proud of. This category is that of music that moves me in the deepest way possible, which leads me to what I intended on saying upon opening this old blog back up. The music that moves me the most, the music I could call sublime, I rarely listen to. Almost never, actually. I call it another instinct. Besides the one that wants so badly to listen to great music over and over again until it tires itself out, there is another more conservative one. One that wants to keep the music I find the most moving sacred. I mean, it is, of course, amazing music, but there's something deep inside me that tells me not to listen to it unless I'm in the perfect mood and can really enjoy it to its full potential.

The album on my background is an example of such an album.