Black Country Communion – BCCIV Review

I absolutely loved Black Country Communion and was gutted when they split up. Their music was so fresh, vibrant and energetic despite its obvious homage to the past and they really were just about the best Hard Rock band doing the whole ’70s-worship sound of recent years. All three of their albums from before their split have at least five songs that are among my favorite ever songs and which are better than just about any of the classic ’70s band’s modern output for my personal taste.

How happy was I then, when I heard they were getting back together. I remember reading on Blabbermouth all around the time of their split (and yet again when California Breed, a band with some of the same members, formed) about how lead guitarist and occasional singer Joe Bonamasa was too famous and busy in his own right to give Black Country Communion the time, as his schedule simply wouldn’t allow it. I remember hoping for the day he’d have the time again. Well, thank goodness its all sorted and we have more from this band. You can see the phoenix on the cover illustrating the band’s reformation.

There’s a certain magic when Glen Hughes, Jason Bonham, Derik Sherinian and Joe Bonamasa get together, (only heightened by ‘fifth member of the band,’ producer Keven Shirley). The bass and drums match styles perfectly, the keys accentuate the vocals so well, the guitar and key solos fit well together, both vocalist’s styles gel, the guitar works so well with the rhythm section. Its all so perfectly balanced, and thanks to the roomy production it all sounds so big and warm.

Basically; this reunion record has a lot of expectations to live up to. On first listen its nice to hear they are keeping up the same style of music and doing the same sort of thing. Its not suddenly taken a rap or electronic turn, they haven’t chucked it all away and went pop or something. Its exactly what you’d hope for, stylstically.

There’s plenty of depth, characther and a fair bit of variety. A lot of the tracks stretch out a bit, many lasting seven or eight minutes. There’s a nice balance of slow and fast, of hard and soft, of thoughtful and of instantaneous. There’s moments that lean a bit more into each of the member’s individual territories and there’s moments when its a mixture of all.

After knocking you over the head (no pun intended) with two mid paced Hard Rockers, for example, they drop a very interesting folky number. If you liked ‘The Battle Hadrian’s Wall’ then you are sure to dig ‘The Last Song for My Resting Place.’ If you like things a bit slower, sexier and well, blusier then at the album’s midway point they drop ‘The Cove’ which has some seriosuly good guitar and very atmospheric keys. Eight-minute album closer ‘When The Morning Comes’ starts out on a slow and sombre note before kicking off.

If you like the band at their faster and heavier however (think ‘The Outsider’ or ‘Confessor’) then they’ve got that here too, on ‘Sway.’ ‘The Crow’ does it too, sounding initially like a rip-off of RATM’s ‘Bulls On Parade’ before hitting the gas and running away with the speed.

I think my favourite track has to be either ‘Over My Head’ with its fun stop-start verses and its catchy ‘yeah-e-eah’ hook, or else ‘Awake’ which doesn’t really sound like anything they’ve done before, it starts off jaunty and almost indie rock but has a kind of ‘Achilles’ Last Stand‘ vibe in the verses and then goes into a full-on Yes meets Dream Theater solo-trade-off.

Overall; BCCIV had a lot of high expectations to meet, and luckily it holds up really well. They do what they do best, they try some new things, they balance all the different shades of their sound well and present an entertaining record that keeps you guessing but that fits together into a stylish hour long journey. The quality of the material is damn strong, the musicianship is exemplary, the production job is of course perfect and even though I’m biased and just glad to have the band back, I’d say this is absolutely good enough to sit alongside their previous work. I’d recommend checking it out if you’ve ever been a fan!

Get (Into) What You Paid For – Round 4: Episode 2 Day 8

Hello and welcome once again my friends to the show that never ends this fourth round of my “Get (Into) What You Paid For” challenge, in which I attempt to not buy anything for a month, and reevaluate my opinion of records I bought previously but never really became a true fan of, taking this purchase-abstinence as a chance to finally “get my money’s worth” out’ve the more undervalued albums in my collection. That; and present thoughts and musings that don’t fit elsewhere on the blog.

Its now eight days into the challenge and yup…didn’t cave last night and buy anything. I don’t think I’m all that tempted at the minute. Maybe I am though. Who knows, maybe I’d sneak in during the middle of the night and buy Girls Girls Girls on eBay? I listened to Accept’s Balls To The Wall yesterday, that made me pretty tempted to pick up Restless & Wild actually. Ok…so maybe there are temptations. Get off my back!

A lot of my blog viewing this week has featured Savatage…maybe I’ll just quickly get the albums of theirs I’m missing?

No. Stay strong!… Ok. So. You’ll be glad to read (unless you’re an Amazon employee) that I didn’t do any of that. I’ve still been listening to that Motely Crue album I mentioned yesterday. Also a lot of Pantera. Boy do I enjoy Pantera. Sometimes you take them for granted and ignore them, and then all of a sudden you are refreshed and hear them again and its all like “Wow…how good are Pantera guys? Seriously!” as if it’s the very first time again. Excellent, timeless, brilliant band.

In non-music realms, I’ve been reading Batman Cacophony, a title (written by Kevin Smith) that I picked up and read over half a year ago but haven’t blogged about yet, but I’ve kept that in a separate post, in the Amateur Batfan series. Temptations-wise? Maybe I might buy Kevin Smith’s work on Green Arrow or Daredevil? I am curious… but, no, not now. Its still just Batman time for me.

So, what else is new then?

I’ve been reading a lot online today about the best selling Metal albums of all time. I would like to see how Avenged Sevenfold and Slipknot compare to Dokken and Quiet Riot…how Dream Theater did, if Anthrax or Exodus ever went platinum over time… things like that.

A few of the places to check out are: here and here, and also here. Furthermore, there’s here and here and here.

What I found out however is that there are massive, massive, massive differences in opinion/supposed facts/plain old lies about how well certain albums sold. Here are some examples of such disputed sales figures:

AC/DC – Back In Black: 49 x platinum (or 25/40 as reported elsewhere)
Pink Floyd – The Dark Side Of The Moon: 45 x platinum (or 22 as reported elsewhere)
Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin IV: 37 x platinum (or 29 as reported elsewhere)
Nirvana – Nevermind: 30 x platinum (or 26 as reported elsewhere)
Bon Jovi – Slippery When Wet: 28 x platinum (or 12 as reported elsewhere)
Guns N’ Roses – Appetite For Destruction: 28 x platinum (or 18/21/30 as reported elsewhere)
Linkin Park – Hybrid Theory: 24 x platinum (or 10 as reported elsewhere)
Metallica – Metallica: 19 x platinum (or 16/30 as reported elsewhere)
Pink Floyd – The Wall: 17 x platinum (or 30 as reported elsewhere)

How can there be such discrepancies? Some of these are nearly double the amount! That’s not something you can mistake in your bank account, or shipping company traffic.

Here are other some surprises however:

Kid Rock – Devil Without A Cause: 11 x platinum
Limp Bizkit – Significant Other: 7 x platinum
Limp Bizkit – Chocolate Starfish and the Hotdog Flavored Water: 6 x platinum
Quiet Riot – Metal Health: 6 x platinum
Guns N’ Roses – Greatest Hits: 5 x platinum
Guns N’ Roses – GN’R Lies: 5 x platinum
Alice in Chains – Dirt: 4 x platinum
Black Sabbath – Paranoid: 4 x platinum
Nine Inch Nails – The Downward Spiral: 4 x platinum
Linkin Park – Meteora: 4 x platinum
Disturbed – The Sickness: 4 x platinum
Godsmack – Godsmack: 4 x platinum
Metallica – Kill ‘Em All: 3 x platinum
System of a Down – Toxicity: 3 x platinum
Queensryche – Empire: 3 x platinum
Tool – Aenima 3 x platinum
Rage Against the Machine – Rage Against the Machine: 3 x platinum
Rage Against the Machine – Evil Empire: 3 x platinum
Cinderella – Night Songs: 3 x platinum
Cinderella – Long Cold Winter: 3 x platinum
Papa Roach – Infest: 3 x platinum
P.O.D. – Satellite: 3 x platinum
Audioslave – Audioslave 3 x platinum
Ozzy Osbourne – Diary of a Madman: 3 x platinum
Ozzy Osbourne – Bark at the Moon: 3 x platinum

P.O.D, Cinadrella, Papa Roach and Disturbed stand out to me as odd. These guys all sold more than Slipknot? My perspective is way off. They all sold equal to System Of A Down…really? Also, I never, ever thought Godsmack would be that successful… You just do not hear of those guys over here in the UK (Godsmack’s record here is MORE Successful than Black Sabbath, RATM and Ozzy Osbourne? Really?).

Tool sold so many despite being so proggy and weird? Good on them!

RATM sold so few relative to this list despite the enormous crossover appeal?

What’s with the large gap between Metallica albums? If you like Metallica enough to buy Ride The Lightning, why not buy Kill ‘Em All too?

Significant Other sold more than Chocolate Starfish? – It really didn’t feel that way at the time.

Audioslave?

Queensryche did that well? Why were they so unheard of two years ago?

An unwanted, cover-song-filled GNR compilation so, so late in their career outsold Toxicity and Meteora? They seemed sooooo famous at the time to me, while that compilation seems so throw-away.

But anyway, enough about sales.

DT – A

Here’s something to reevaluate. Dream Theater’s 1994 album, Awake. It’s their third album, it’s the third of theirs that I heard if memory serves. I heard Metropolis’ and didn’t like it (this has since changed), then I heard Images & Words and liked that, then I bought a boxset and listened to the other albums in that; which included Awake, Falling Into Infinity and Train Of Thought.

The album opens up with drums on their own, and kind of reminds me of Jethro Tull’s ‘No Lullabye’ in a very vague way. Opener “6.00” comes in and samples say “Six O Clock On A Christmas Morning” in a way that is sort of cool because they made it rhythmic and part of the song like Ministry might do, but also slightly annoying. Sometimes this part is offputting and sometimes I love it, depending on my mood. They pulled the whole samples and randomness thing off way better on the previous album during “Take The Time.”

I like the keys, this actually feels like there is a lot of 70s Prog in it. The drums are nice and flashy and awkward. Its kind of, with the exception of the pre-chorus though, its kind of cooler to appreciate than to actually enjoy. You sit with your minds eye, casting it over the different things going on, focusing for a second on each, like watching Slipknot on stage with your real eyes, and that process is fun. The song isn’t as good on the ears as that process is on the brain however.

I like it during the middle during the “Inside coming outside” bit where it goes a bit Misplaced Childhood. After this point the song is pretty bad-ass actually. The solo and the parts underneath are all excellent.

Much like Theater Of Pain I kind of think this album-opener is a bad choice. Its doesn’t set up a good first impression. I think you have to know you like the song before you hear it to trust it, otherwise its just gimmicky and overly bouncy without being memorable. Its not. But it seems that way until the half-way point if you are unfamiliar. It should be buried later in the album, where it would be the exact same song, but better, because you’re already warmed up. Do you follow?

Next up comes “Caught In A Web.” I didn’t know that at the time, because as a rule I think I hate “Caught In A Web.” I hear some Dream Theater song though… The first minute…awesome. (Well; awesome except the synth… a weird seering synth over the top that feels like its mocking me. I had problems with Camel’s fifth album in the past, when the toplines mocked me even when the bottom was cool. The bottom of this song during the first minute or two is awesome, but boy-o-boy do I dislike that top-part.)

Anyway, the first minute is more or less great. Nice, the same excellent sound from their previous record Images & Words, but maybe a little tiny bit slower and with a tiny bit more Pantera creeping into things. Then a really ugly, ugly, sheen-y chorus which just doesn’t fit. Oh, I guess its “Caught In A Web.” Damn, I don’t like it anymore…I think?

It then bounces into a cool Alternative Metal/Groove Metal riff that really reminds me of Pantera and Pissing Razors a lot. Then there’s bits when they prog out on that riff and it sounds like Death and Opeth because of the long winding, ever-shifting guitar lines aspects. The whole mid section is fabulous. The drum build-up is cool, the Eastern-tinged keys are cool, the guitars are rhythmic and interesting.

I often think I dislike this song, but this song is fabulous, its just got the wrong chorus for my tastes. I’d love to edit the chorus out of it, and then it would be one of my favourite Dream Theater tracks.

Next up comes “Innocence Faded,” which opens like some sort of Tennis Match montage music. Its clean and commercial and not unpleasant. It then goes down into a quiet, diamondy sort of sound like Donkey Kong Country levels in an Ice Cave. The next bit is cool, kind of Genesis-reminiscent. The chorus is a bit “nothing” …a sort of swing-and-a-miss, but there are many other cool parts. LaBrie is awesome around the 2.05 mark. The drums are nice and flashy between there and the chorus too. Very nice. After that there’s some very 80s Rush sounds. Rush albums later than Moving Pictures. I like it. Its not very Metal in any way, but in and of itself, its nice. It kind of reminds me of Van Halen’s “Jump” and Genesis’ “Turn It On Again” combined in some sort of The Fly situation.

The instrumental “Erotomania” is next. A lot of Van Der Graaf and King Crimson influence here. It opens sounding like a warning siren on a train track. Its quite nice to sit and concentrate on, but not really background music. Queensryche and Tool, and even Mastodon can make Prog that you can not even notice is all that complex if you don’t pay attention. This is more like The Mars Volta in that…no one’s mistaking that for simplistic. It gets really cool from 2 minute mark onwards, all these parts are way cooler than the start part. Its interesting the mix of 70s Prog, with 80s sounds and then also even a bit that sounds like its trying to be Zeppelin’s “The Rain Song” hidden in there in the background. Its also cool when it goes Neoclassical a minute later. This is the sort of thing you listen to a hundred times and never truly hear the same thing twice. I think two fans can hear it and their brains will tell them two completely different things depending on how closely each guy is paying attention.

The brief Metal bit towards the end, but before the repetition of the bits from the start, is cool. Also, the actual end-end really, really reminds me of both “The Trees” by Rush, and the bit in “2112” by Rush where it transitions from the heavy bit to the soft bit where the character discovers the guitar.

The lengthy “Voices” follows up. It is thunderous and reminds me quite a lot of “Suite Sister Mary” by Queensryche during the opening, but its a lot more technical and multi-faceted. It builds up quite slowly over almost the first three minutes, there’s sort of a “Don’t Leave Me Now” by Pink Floyd vibe to that build.

The those same bright ugly keys from the “Caught In A Web” chorus come in. The Metal bit which follows is really rather neat. I hear bits that would influence Protest The Hero in there. The ugly chorus is ugly to me. There’s a touch of the “Caught In A Web” problem, where this one part is causing a false impression of a good song and lowering my overall impression of it accidentally. Even though the rest of it is deadly, like the following part with double-kicks. I like the talk-boxy solo a little while afterwards. That whole section is excellent. The only problem I have is that this song really feels like an album-closer. But its track 5 of 11. Well it makes me want to stop listening because the record is obviously finished, only it isn’t, is it?

This album has a problem of being in the wrong order. That’s my diagnosis.

Anyway, next comes the brief, perfect ballad, “The Silent Man.” It is excellent; succinct, tasteful, memorable and interesting. Its just right, not too cheesy. A few more tiny hints of Zeppelin’s “The Rain Song” hidden in the mid-section. Deceptively varied and creative vocals. A neat little guitar lead. All good stuff.

“The Mirror.” Opens up in a huge and obvious Pantera tribute. Parts seems practically lifted whole-sale from “Domination” and “Walk.” Then it speeds up and some Phantom of the Opera chase keys come it, its all very intriguing. Then a fun guitar line that I’m sure inspired Avenged Sevenfold follows, the drums are fast and Metal. Back to Pantera.

I think this is my favourite song from the album. Maybe that’s just because I like Pantera so much? Interestingly though, its all the bits that don’t sound like Pantera which really make it cool though. I think I’ll change my iTunes tracklist of this album so that this and “6.00” switch places. This would be a much better opener.

It seamlessly transitions into “Lie.” That means “Lie” and “Caught In A Web” will have to switch places too, oh well.

“Lie” is really strong. Apparently it was a single. Its catchy enough. I love the Mary/Contrary/Promise/Doubting Thomas bit. That was always the one bit of the record that stuck out in my mind. I’ll have to remember that this song is the one with that in it.

Hey! A bit that sounds like Tool! That riff underneath the bit about leashes is reminiscent of Undertow-era Adam Jones. This is a nice song. Also the groove at 3.30 and the subsequent complex bit with the solo are possibly the most enjoyable Dream Theater moments that I’ve heard which aren’t on Images And Words. Skip to the 5-minute mark and yeah! That’s what I want to hear. This song is top notch! Yes, these two songs would make a much better album opener, get the blood pumped, the enthusiasm up, and then I’m ready to accept “6.00” because I’m in the mood now.

“Lifting Shadows Off A Dream” comes next, all broody, and seems as if its going to be Queensryche’s “I Don’t Believe In Love” for a few seconds, until it reveals its true intentions. Its almost a ballad, its almost a big build up. Its almost Hogarth-era Marillion. Its none of these things, its its’ own tasteful pop song with a lot on small toms and splash cymbals. Its kind of sprawling…its like King Crimson’s “Starless” in structure, but much, much, much, much more clean and bright and commercial. It sounds like a basket ball team in a movie winning its first victory whilst the dad shows up to see his son for the first time because he’s finally learned what’s important in life.

“Scarred” follows that. Also sprawling. Slightly jazzy flavoured but without any actual jazz. Full of mischief. Threateningly full of potential. Which way will it go? – Lots of ways it would seem. Groove parts. Staccato Metal parts (various ones in fact). Clean syrupy pop parts. Numerous time-sig changes. It’s a real “Hey, we can do a lot of stuff and we’re good at our instruments” piece. The clean chorus is a lot less lame than in either “Caught In A Web” or “Voices” though.

Then there’s another kind of chorus which feels like its got a sort of grunge influence. A touch of the “Evenflow”s about it, ey?

Do you know when bands say that their heavier stuff is heavier and their lighter stuff is lighter…this actually is. There’s not much on Images And Words that’s overly syrupy. Anyway… There’s also nothing as heavy as the part between the guitar solo in the 7-8 minute bracket.

Also, why does nothing Dream Theater ever play sound like Yes? I was promise Metallica meets Yes. Whoever promised me that (Classic Rock Presents Prog Magazine) doesn’t listen to much Yes… or Metallica for that matter.

This song could benefit from lots and lots of repeat listens, because there’s tons of cool parts to enjoy, but its lack of purpose or structure make first-impressions a bit confused.

Finally comes depressing album closer “Space Dye Vest” which I already know that I enjoy, but will listen to here anyway. Its moody, its tasteful, its got samples that are mechanical sounding instead of dialogue. Ok, actually it does have diagloue samples too… something Anathema do a lot actually… this reminds me of the whole Anathema rant about “Death is not the opposite of life, death is the opposite of birth, life is eternal.” I guess a woman is not a possession then, sample guy. Anyway, the end of the song is fantastic.

Ok. That was the album.

What do I think? Four awesome songs in “The Mirror,” “Lie,” “The Silent Man” and “Space Dye Vest.” The rest… good bits, but not good songs, or maybe good songs with bits that aren’t to my taste. Except maybe “Erotomania” which is good but just has an intro that makes me think I won’t like it.

Meh… Its worth owning. I think a lot more listens are required before it hits me properly. Or maybe, its just a case of I should listen to half of it a lot and ignore the other half because I could listen to better music instead? Who knows…

Hope that was entertaining. Now, continuing the theme established yesterday, and based on this article’s inclusion of the Prog Metal band Dream Theater… here are some Top 5s from some Progressive Metal bands in my collection:

Coheed & Cambria :
1. Apollo I: The Writing Writer
2. Far
3. No World For Tomorrow
4. Key Entity Extraction I: Domino The Destitute
5. Key Entity Extraction V: Sentry The Defiant

Dream Theater:
1. Take The Time
2. Metropolis Prt 1 The Miracle And The Sleeper
3. Strange Deja Vu
4. Honour Thy Father
5. The Silent Man

The Mars Volta :
1. Cotapaxi
2. Cygnus….Vismund Cygnus
3. Vedamalady
4. Goliath
5. Day Of The Baphomets

Mastodon :
1. Blood And Thunder
2. The Czar
3. This Mortal Soil
4. I Am Ahab
5. Crusher Destroyer

Porcupine Tree :
1. Anesthetize
2. Drawing The Line
3. Normal
4. The Sound Of Musak
5. Deadwing

Protest The Hero :
1. Turn Soonest To The Sea
2. Sex Tapes
3. Skies
4. Mist
5. Dunsel

Queensryche :
1. Revolution Calling
2. Roads To Madness
3. Where Dreams Go To Die
4. Murder?
5. My Global Mind

Rishloo :
1. Downhill
2. Weevil Bride
3. Alchemy Alice
4. Scissorlips
5. El Empe

Riverside :
1. Hyperactive
2. Celebrity Touch
3. Second Life Syndrome
4. Rainbow Box
5. Egotist Hedonist

Savatage :
1. Hall Of The Mountain King
2. Castles Burning
3. Believe
4. Edge Of Thorns
5. Of Rage And War

Tool :
1. 10,000 Days
2. Jambi
3. Eulogy
4. Ticks And Leeches
5. Vicarious

There’s dozens of others in my library, but for one reason or another I don’t feel comfortable choosing a Top 5 for them.

Get (Into) What You Paid For – Round 4: Episode 1 Day 7 (Part 1)

Hello and welcome to this fourth round of my “Get (Into) What You Paid For” challenge, in which I attempt (despite being an out of control, no discipline, shopaholic of sorts) to not buy anything for a month.

I also try and make this challenge easier by going back and paying more attention to what I’ve bought already, and try and get into more and therefore get my money’s worth.

Have you ever picked up five or six albums in one shopping session or received several videogames all at once for a birthday and then found that some products get used more than others? This series is designed to reappraise and finally get into those sort of underdog products.

JP – RoS

If I was going to break my challenge, what would cause me to do so?
Well, I’m damn tempted to but the new Judas Priest album, Redeemer Of Souls. I’ve read absolutely universal praise of it, and Judas Priest are one of the band’s I’ve listened to the most in the last four years. If its anywhere near as good as Angel Of Retribution I’ll love it. Most people say its measurably better than Angel Of Retribution. Sounds pretty good to me. Plus its topical and up-to-date, and I’ve been lost in the 80s a bit recently, and it would be nice to be up-to-date with something. I’ll get that feeling when my pre-oder of Accept’s Blind Rage arrives, but until then, I’m sort of out-of-the-loop with modern releases at the moment.

In the opposite direction of being up-to-date however, I was watching a Lynyrd Skynrd documentary this week and that put me in the mood to try out some Molly Hatchet and Black Oak Arkansas, and expand my Southern Rock collection further than solely Lynyrd Skynyrd and Blackfoot. This was compounded the next day when watching a Van Halen documentary that featured Jim Dandy (Black Oak Arkansas’ frontman) as a contributor (discussing press accusations that David Lee Roth stole his stage moves). Both of those guys have Original Album Series boxsets and I kind of want to pick those up… but boxsets are a dangerous game. I’m still in a boxset “get my money’s worth” mind-war with Thin Lizzy, Van Halen, Dream Theater, Faith No More, Foghat and Mountain (and to a lesser extent Motorhead and Saxon a bit).

VOD – BV

Bit of a left-field choice here, but I’m really tempted to buy Broken Valley by Life Of Agony. It’s the only album by them I don’t own yet, due to buying that Roadrunner Boxset, and I’ve been absolutely loving their first two albums these last few months. I’ve been really, really heavily leaning on tracks like “Damned If I Do,” “Bad Seed,” “Underground” and “Drained.” Their reunion put them back in the press and that reminded me of this missing album in my collection (I think there was an article saying they’ll not be making a new record so fans “better get used to Broken Valley”).

F – F&W

A fairly new “want” of mine is Free’s Fire And Water. Fairly new as in yesterday. There was a vintage music channel playing music videos on a TV in the background of where I was at yesterday. It was primarily showing videos of 80s pop bands like Duran Duran, Culture Club and Wham. Then out of nowhere; a Zepplinny, 70s-Sounding Hard Rock guitar comes in with charming production and suddenly I sit up and pay attention. It turns out to be “All Right Now” by Free, which is probably up there with “The Boys Are Back In Town” by Thin Lizzy and “Sunshine Of Your Love” by Cream as one of the most famous and frequently pub-covered songs in Rock Music, and yet I’d never really noticed it properly before. I was impressed. I’d like to hear a full album. Turn it from a “Smoke On The Water” into a “Machine Head” and find a few “Pictures Of Home”s… if you follow my meaning?

I’ve also been voraciously consuming Batman comics over this last year (in fact, August 2013 was when my good friend Paul bought me a load of Batman books for my birthday and in-so-doing kicked my casual “Ok, I’ll try some Batman” phase into an “I am a Batman fan” phase.) So I’d be tempted to buy just about any Batman tradepaperback I come into contact with. My current “top picks” to get are Ego, Odyssey, Black & White, Year 100, Dark Victory, Time & The Batman, Bruce Wayne The Return, Bruce Wayne Murderer? and all volumes of the New 52 Nightwing series.
When its released I want all volumes of Batman Eternal, Zero Year and I also want any stories where Jason Todd is Robin…. release some sort of retrospective please guys?

Anyway, enough about what could make me spend money, what’s been saving me money so far this month? What’s kept my hands busy and stopped by notorious spending habbits at bay?

M.C. – T.O.P

Well; Its August 7th, 2014 and I’ve currently managed to go the first week of the challenge without buying myself anything. Right before the challenge started, I picked up a copy of Motely Crue’s third studio album Theater Of Pain from a Charity Shop for £1.99, and that has pretty much kept me interested for a full week.

I didn’t expect much from this album to be honest. I thought it might be a bit rubbish. I’ve read bad reviews of it. I’ve read The Dirt (Crue’s biography book) and the album is slated in that book. I’ve watched Google Play’s Motley Crue documentary (see here) and singer Vince Neil rejects the album. It seems like it might be a bad product. A bit of a mistake. A bit like Kiss’ Music From The Elder Album.

But you know me, champion of the bad-album, lover of St Anger, contrary semi-hipster who always seems to love the album with the bad reviews (Ok. That’s an exaggeration; I often also dislike unpopular albums too, but whatever…). I thought to myself I’ll find a way to enjoy this album.

On first listen, this album was a mess. Opening with a slow doomy track, then into a cartoony cover-song (and I’ve never liked songs singing about School anyway), then a rock song and then a ballad. Its confused, its all over the place. I heard people say this album is just “some songs” and that “its not a party album” and that “they were too high on drugs and bereavement for Razzle to make a good album.”

Then I heard the songs “Use It Or Lose It” and “Louder Than Hell” and they just connected with me. Unarguably and instantly two of my favourite Motely Crue songs. So I realized there is definitely something going on here. I’ve been listening to it repeatedly, in different combinations and orders until I came across the perfect listening order:

Now its not a mess. Now it’s a party album! Now it is a well balanced set of rock songs with diversity but a steady sensible flow. It’s a journey. It’s a good record!

In this order, I’ve listened to and loved the album about a dozen times now. What a big difference that the running order makes. I recommend you try it out this way, it is a much better album.

I’ve also been listening to the rest of the band’s catalogue these last two weeks. In particular, Shout At The Devil is a good record, with “Red Hot,” “Bastard” “Looks That Kill” and the Title Track all being stand out moments.

I don’t much care for their debut apart from the fabulous “Live Wire” and “Piece Of Action” or even the mega famous Dr. Feelgood album all that much apart from its own Title Track and “Kickstart My Heart.” I don’t have Girls Girls Girls yet, so can’t make a judgement on that one, but I will explain that kind of the reason for all this Crue interest is because I’ve loved the single “Wildside,” ever since I saw Dwight enjoying it too much in The Office on my most recent re-viewing of the series in its entirety. (I’d heard it before, but that moment just made me reevaluate it.)

In honour of this new found acceptance of Motely Crue (band who I’ve really struggled to allow myself to like due to my disapproval of their sexism, drug abuse glorification, domestic violence denial, and general selfishness and rudeness) I’m going to list my five-favourite songs by the band, and all their contempories in my music library.

So consider this a Hair Metal/ Glam Metal / ‘80s Hard Rock special episode.

Motely Crue :
1. Louder Than Hell
2. Live Wire
3. Wild Side
4. Use It Or Lose It
5. Shout At The Devil

W.A.S.P :
1. I Wanna Be Somebody
2. The Torture Never Stops
3. Ballcrusher
4. Shoot From The Hip
5. Chainsaw Charlie

Twisted Sister :
1. I Wanna Rock
2. You Can’t Stop Rock N Roll
3. The Kids Are Back
4. Kill Or Be Killed
5. Love Is For Suckers

Quiet Riot :
1. Metal Health
2. Run For Cover
3. Scream And Shout
4. (We Were) Born To Rock
5. Sign Of The Times

Poison :
1. Look What The Cat Dragged In
2. Let Me Go To The Show
3. Play Dirty
4. Nothin’ Buta Good Time
5. Look But You Can’t Touch

Dokken :
1. When Lightning Strikes Again
2. ‘Til The Living End
3. Tooth And Nail
4. Live To Rock (Rock To Live)
5. Kiss Of Death

Bon Jovi
1. Bad Medicine
2. King Of The Mountain
3. You Give Love A Bad Name
4. Runaway
5. Born To Be My Baby

With only one album by Extreme and Europe, I don’t feel its fair to do them, but I’ll say that my favourite one song by each is “It (‘s A Monster)” and “On The Loose” respectively.

For each of these articles this time around, I’ll try drop a TOP 5s of a particular subgenre in there. It’ll give this round a unique feature, ey?

T.P.B

In other areas, I’ve been keeping busy by watching Trailer Park Boys on Mike Ladano’s recommendation, and absolutely loving it. Thanks Mike. Thanks Netflix. It’s a great show! – Not only for guest rockstar appearances from Sebastain Bach and Alex Lifeson, but for the superb sense of humour and brilliantly real life (in a way) nature of the show. Its not skinny Hollywood girls buying Porches. Its much more down to earth (although it does get too surreal at times to honestly call “realistic” in fairness, but you catch my drift).

The characters are really enjoyable, from humorously selfish and flawed, to ludicrously irrational and dysfunctional. Its hard to pick a favourite character because everyone has got something going for them… even minor characters like Ray would be the best character in some other shows.

In a more British mood, I’ve been watching the absolutely excellent Getting On. A British show about Hospital Nurses, very much in the style of (and featuring cast members, and written and directed by people from) The Thick Of It. Just like The Thick Of It was a really astute and well researched satire of the British political system, Getting On is basically the same show but about the NHS. Its fun though, because instead of some lazy slamming of the NHS and unfair complaints, its mostly just a comedy about flawed individuals and their own personal weaknesses interfering with their ability to do their job properly. Its not “This is why hospitals are bad”… its “How did this clown get a job in a hospital” and I appreciate that. Fair humour, that doesn’t play too much on the same old negative hospital stereotypes.

BS – I

What else? Just before the challenge started, I got a lend of and finished, and Platinumed the videogame Bioshock Infinite (my first attempt at, and success at Platinuming a game in two years, despite my previously huge interest in that area). The game? It is a masterpiece. Although in hindsight, in comparison to Bioshock 1 & 2, a lot of the gameplay depth, setting atmosphere and cool enemies are missing, but I absolutely loved the story and the effort and depth there. I sat and read practically everything written about it on the internet afterwards and was wowed by the fabulous artistic achievement that this game is.

I won’t go too much into it because of spoilers, but wow… what a brilliantly executed concept. And I love whoever online said that the fact that it is a game strengthens the point its trying to make and the effort went to by the creators to make a piece of art strengthened by the gaming platform. Bioshock as a series is absolutely one of my favourites. Each of the three games has had some flourish of genius or other.

New Slipknot

A few other thoughts then – There’s a new Slipknot song. Not the single, we have now learned, but rather a heavier mid-album track as a gift to the fans. We don’t know who’s drumming on it, although the internet thinks it might be Chris Adler from Lamb Of God or Jay Weinberg. It might even secretly be Joey and the whole thing is a publicity stunt… is that legal? It might be Clown or Chris taking up a full time drummer’s job.

We don’t know who is playing bass on it either. Lots of members of Slipknot also play bass so, probably they played on the studio version and someone else will play it live. Chris is also a bassist. Perhaps Chris is the new Bassist and Clown is the new drummer? That would be good.

Anyway, the song, The Negative One… kind of like when they debuted “New Abortion” before Iowa, or the All Hope Is Gone Title Track before that album, its not really a catchy single, it’s a deep-cut given unrealistic limelight.

It has an Iowa-esque approach to the production and mix, and the vocals are less melodic and Stone Sour-esque than on the previous two albums, and there is a lot more sampling and DJ scratching than the previous two albums as well. Other than that, what can be said? Not all that amazing. Its not “Wow, this is one of my favourite Slipknot songs.”

In fact, if I listed all the Slipknot songs that were better than it, it would be most of the Slipknot songs. But whatever… early days yet. I hope, on one level, that the album is in this general direction…you know, far away from Stone Sour. On the other hand, “Dead Memories” is a better song than this so I’ll take a more commercial Slipknot so long as its good. I’d rather have good music in a commercial style than dull music in a good style. I will give it this though… the additional percussion in it is really fun. Especially in headphones. The mix on the final version is a lot better than in that initial stream too. Maybe that, or maybe its the same version but my speakers are better here than where I first heard it. Also, maybe its a grower. I don’t think “Everything Ends” or “The Shape” blew me away on first listen but I sure as heck like them now.

Metallica had a similar new song a while ago and I didn’t blog about it, but the feelings I had for it are similar. Its in a good style but not super-special in and of itself.

Another quick observation… Green Day totally and massively stole vocal patterns from “On With The Show” and “Merry-Go-Round” on American Idiot album tracks. Seriously, give it a listen!

Buying Round Up:

Here’s a quick list, and series of thoughts, on all the blog-related purchases I’ve made in the last while. I haven’t had time to give them all their own articles yet, so I’m going to give them all a short round-up here:

Tesseract – One Review

Tesseract – One

Tesseract are a five-piece Progressive Metal band from England and 2011’s One is their debut full-length studio album. It was produced by Acle Kahney, Amos Williams, Francesco Cameli and released through Century Media.

The standard of musicianship here on this album is excellent, particularly drummer Jay Postones and bassist Amos Williams, who’s superb rhythm section forms the backbone of the record. The production job is flawless, and all instruments (and even individual bass strings, drums and cymbals) are clear and audible, amongst the textured guitar, vocal and electronic waves which float over the top.

There’s a nice balance of fast and slow, heavy and soft, straightforward and complex, and a cohesion and sense of purpose that makes the album feel like one, singular, well-considered piece of work.

Highlights include the catchy album closer “Eden,” as well as the lengthy multi-part “Concealing Fate” and the punchy “Sunrise.”

For fans of the band’s second album, Altered State its worth noting that Daniel Tompkins (of Skyharbor fame) provides lead vocals on this album, before their current singer Ashe O’Harra joined the band becoming the band’s fifth lead vocalist to date. Thompkin’s vocal style is in the same ball-park of lush, melodic and emotional clean singing, although different enough that you notice the change.

Musically, this album is noticeably heavier than its follow-up, and there aren’t any saxophones, but in general the band’s identity is more-or-less the same and if you enjoyed Altered State, you should easily enjoy One.

For newcomers to the band entirely, especially those skeptical of anything associated with the word “Djent” its worth noting that in the same way that Thrash Metal bands took the chugging of songs like Black Sabbath’s “Symptom Of The Universe” and spun-off on that idea developing entire songs and albums using that as a starting point from which to develop their own ideas; Here, you can hear the sort of guitar tones and complex rhythms that Meshuggah have been playing since the 90s used as a jumping off point.

Rather than the all-out punishing assault of Meshuggah and their progressive take on extreme Metal, Tesseract deliver that sort of rhythm mixed in with floaty melodic vocals in the vein of Tool and Rishloo, and subtle ambient electronics to create something else. It couldn’t have existed without Meshuggah, and it couldn’t have existed before Melodic Metalcore became a decade-long mainstay of the Metal world, but it isn’t one or the other.

If you are a fan of established bands like Dream Theater, Riverside, Opeth, Fates Warning, Tool or many other Progressive bands within the Metal spectrum, you will find little touches here and there that chime something with what you like already, be that in the use of dynamics or uncommon time-sigs, but updated and in a different shape. If you like bands like Sikth, Botch, Carbomb, Fellsilent, Dillinger Escape Plan, or anyone in the math-y end of the Metal spectrum you man find something you like, but updated and in a different shape, and well, the same goes for if you like Meshuggah. Its not impossible to like Meshuggah and Tesseract despite what a vocal minority may claim.

If you are a fan of bands like Periphery, Monuments, Circles, Animals As Leaders, Textures, Volumes, Structures, Intervals, Skyharbor, Vildhjarta, Miroist, Hacktivist, The Algorithm or The Safety Fire then you may recognize the shape already and enjoy another slightly different take on it.

Overall; Tesseract are a strong and interesting band and One is a strong and impressive debut that should keep fans of the band, fans of the subgenre and fans of the overarching genre happy. Don’t make the mistake of overlooking the band because of the movement they belong to, as you’ll miss out on some brilliant music if you do. This isn’t just a throw-away album from a flash in the pan trend, there’s a demonstrable artist weight to be found here.

I’ve Just Been To See Tesseract and Protest The Hero Live

I’ve Just Been To See Tesseract and Protest The Hero Live at the Manchester Academy, on Thursday the 6th of February 2014. Fuck me. What. A. Gig.

What a gig, and I almost missed it. All week, I’ve thought that this concert was on on the Friday, so today after Uni I had dinner then got undressed and into my pyjamas (well, I don’t own pyjamas, so, into the normal clothes that I wear if its too cold to sleep without clothes) and got ready to drift away to sleep. At the last minute, for no reason I can discern, I got up to look at the tickets. Not to check the date or anything, just to look at them, covetously. That’s when I noticed that the gig was on tonight, and had to get dressed and head straight out the door and walk to the venue. Luckily doors hadn’t opened yet, but I wasn’t in the que very long.

I got in, walked straight to front row center (well, two human body’s distance to the right of center, to be specific) while others where buying beer or t-shirts, and rooted myself in for the night. I remembered jerk crowds the last few time I was here in this section of the Academy (upstairs, not the biggest part that’s in a separate building, where bands as big as Megadeth get to play), so I expected thugs to try come and uproot me. It never happened. Much like the Queensryche crowd, this was the politest, most honourable crowd anyone could hope for. I was really pleased. A little faith in humanity is restored every time you spend a whole evening in the company of people who don’t act like assholes.

The evening was opened up by the Canadian Djent band, Intervals. I didn’t know much about Intervals (no songs, so that’s pretty little) beforehand, but they really won me over. They were really, really impressive. Their musicianship was incredible for an opening band, they had a pretty professional demenour and good songs. A very good band indeed. The sound didn’t really help them out, but they were so good you could tell through the bad sound that they were seriously talented. They were also kind of the heaviest end of Djent you can be, without using any Death Metal parts. Their singer was pretty charismatic and their drummer was straight up awesome (at one stage he hit a cymbal so hard, he broke a big wedge straight off of it and left it looking like a shark had taken a bite out’ve it). Great band. Go see them if you can.

Next up came The Safety Fire. Who were a British Tech Metal/Prog Metal/Djent band. They were also absolutely excellent. Their sound was a bit lighter, more radio-friendly in parts, and sometimes they actually played little guitar runs that sounded like Protest, or those bits on Periphery’s new album that John Petruci from Dream Theater played.

Their drummer was freaking incredible. He plays like he’s trying to pass an exam. Watching him drum was like playing a videogame without dying on the hardest difficulty. Everything about that band seemed on, but the drummer especially was hot, hot stuff. Plus, no Death Metal. They were more like if a Djent band listened to a lot of At The Drive In.

The sound for them was less muddy but the vocals were mixed very low. Again, luckily, they were clearly brilliant so it didn’t matter.

They were really good. Go see them if you can.

Then Tesseract came on. Tesseract are a fucking incredible live band. I took a punt on them just before Christmas and went to go see them live without knowing them, just because I like Periphery, and the two are often spoken of together (like Metallica and Megadeth). Also because Karnivool were headlining and Karnivool are often spoken of alongside bands like Cog and Rishloo, so I wanted to try them out too. Tesseract stole the show, hands down and unequivocally. That show was absolutely incredible (despite a small section of annoying honking fans making clown-horn noises endlessly) and completely sold me on the band. I got their new album for Christmas as a result and absolutely love it.

Seeing them tonight was even better than the first time. These guys are one of the best live bands going. They are like fucking superstars, from their casually cool world’s-tallest-man guitarist, to their Danny Carey’s-maths-homework drummer, their business-looking bassist and the friendly looking other guitarist. That and the new singer. My goodness. That man can sing. Remember what I said about Jesse Leach? Yeah, well double that!

That guy is the best live singer I have ever seen with my own two eyes (and I’ve seen Maynard James Keenan!). If I could give him some sort of award I would.

In fact, maybe I can.

I hereby award Ashe O’Harra the ‘Kingcrimsonblog Best Live Singer’ award

Done. (And well deserved).

Tesseract are such an incredible live band, they just really draw you in, they are so powerful and captivating, it really makes my enthusiasm for live music grow and both times that I’ve seen them, they have absolutely dominated. Furthermore, they had great quality sound. Thank you Tesseract’s soundman.

As if that wasn’t enough, I got to see Protest The Hero too.

If you’ve ever read this Blog before, you’ll probably know that I love Protest The Hero. Since I first got their debut album as a birthday present, I have listened to and talked about them absolutely constantly. Constantly! – According to my LastFM account, I’ve listened to them 1,361 times since August (at time of writing), and in that short time, they have become the band that I’ve listened to Eighth-most, in the entire last three-and-a-half years!

So, with that sort of context, you should be able to figure out that I was beyond excited for this gig. You may however have also seen my write-up about their Live DVD, which I was actually a little disappointed by. That made me a bit fearful that Protest’ were more of a studio band. I mean, their albums are some of the best ever made by anyone. Kezia, Scurrilous and Voltion especially. I mean, I just hammer those albums constantly!

Even if Protest’ were poor live, at least Tesseact had been headline-worthy.

Protest’ weren’t poor live though. Protest The Hero were one of the best bands I’ve ever seen. I had suuuuuch a good time. The energy level was off the charts. They were so good that they pulled out all my reservations. I’m more like a Japanese audience member than a western one usually, but boy did I make an exception. Ever since Lamb Of God’s concert, I’ve been getting more and more into things. I screamed my lungs out, I jumped about, air-drummed, air-guitared, gestured descriptively for all the lyrics and generally banged and danced away like I was having a damn great time (which of course, I was). I haven’t ever thrown more of myself into a gig since I was about 15. I had more enthusiasm here for that hour than I’ve had all year. I looooooved it.

But enough about me, the band, the band were unbelievable. Absolutely nailing such complex, multifaceted, incredible music like it was easy. Even the new drummer who didn’t write any of this bonkers material was absolutely phenomenal. Every musician was entertaining to watch and great fun to listen to.

The setlist was brilliant. They played more or less all of my absolute favourite songs, including ‘Underbite,’ ‘Mist’ ‘Sextapes’ ‘C’est La Vie’ and ‘Blindfolds Aside.’

The crowd seemed to be going pretty wild for them. Proportionately, it was probably the most sing-along concert I’ve ever seen, with the most knowledgable and into-it fans I’ve ever witnessed. It seemed like an absolute love-fest. Deservedly so. They make brilliant songs, and they’ve backed it up live with a stunning performance. I think the fact that they have some of the best and most interesting lyrics I’ve ever read also helps. People sang along like their lives depended on it, which I think is a big endorsement of the quality of those lyrics.

The sound for them was great too. Thank you Protest The Hero’s soundman too.

Roddy was pretty entertaining, commenting on a security guard being the world’s strongest man (which is not an unreasonable assessment) to the point where the bouncer even cracked a happy smile, joking about Buckfast, referencing WWF, WCW and Holywood Hulk Hogan, inviting a handsome crowd member up on stage to be ‘hunk of the week’ (the band played him a little specially-written hunk-of-the-week theme tune too!) and then joking about getting him into bed. He also started singing football chants about Stephen Gerard to annoy the football fans in the crowd, and fake-dedicated a song to Stephen Gerard. It was pretty amusing stage banter. I guess he takes what he written in ‘Underbite’ seriously.

The band’s performance overall was so, so strong. That DVD must have been an off-night, because what I saw tonight was a frigging phenomenal Live Band. It was such a good, good show.

It was such a good show I even bought a t-shirt afterwards (a thing my wallet has stopped me doing since seeing Queencryche Live – so you can tell how much I was impressed to be moved to t-shirt purchasing)

The gig, as a whole, is one of the absolute best I’ve ever seen. Two great Djent bands supporting Tesseract’s world-class superstar-quality live show and the most fun gig (Protest The Hero) that I’ve been to in the last decade.

If you have any interest in modern Metal, live music, or any of the bands mentioned, try and see them live. This was a fabulous bill and a brilliant night. The only way it could be any better is if Periphery also played, and Protest’ got a slightly longer set and were able to fit in ‘Dunsel’ ‘Skies’ and ‘Turn Soonest To The Sea’ – then it would have been the hypothetical best gig ever. As it stands it was pretty damn close.

“So How You Fucking Feeling Tonight?” – Boy, am I in a good mood!

Amateur Batfan: Vol. 5 – Batman: Venom

Batman

Hello and welcome to Amateur Batfan, a series of blogposts here at Kincrimsonblog where I try something new. Instead of writing exclusively about music like I usually would, I’m dipping my toes into the field of writing about comics. (At the minute that means Batman comics, but who knows what the future holds?). I’m fairly new to comics. You can read about my history with the comics medium in the first entry of the series.

Long story short, I liked comics-related stuff but found the whole idea of being a comics-fan too embarrassing, and some of the comics that I did try were lacking-in-depth, so I didn’t like comics themselves until my friend Magnum opened my mind, multiple times over the years until I finally allowed myself to enjoy them.

Magnum is sort of like my comics fairy godmother, or y’know, something manlier sounding… mentor? Role model? Alfred? I don’t know. Anyway, he’s the go-to chap for bat-chat. Hopefully, he’ll just start writing a companion series to this, only with, you know, actually informed opinions.

This is the fifth edition of the series. I finally got around to getting myself a copy of Death Of The Family, the at-the-time-of-writing newest main-series Batman title, and that’s put me in the mood to write another one of these articles. Right now I’m listening to Dream Theater’s Awake album and leafing through my trade paperback of Batman – Venom. So I’m going to write about it. I could have picked any of these book off the shelf really. I guess I chose this one to write about this time because I’ve been playing Arkham Origins recently and some of the enemies are using venom. Venom always reminds me of the version of Bane in the 90s movie; a slavering mindless goon with comically large musculature and bright green ooze pumped around him in see-through tubes. Hey, Bane and the venom baddies in Arkham Origins do have the green tubes too. In fact the comically big thing even happens later, because of Titan. (Which you may remember from Arkham Asylum.)

You can therefor kind of understand, that when I picked up Batman Venom, I expected it to be about Bane, and I expected to see green tubes. This was not actually a feature of the book Batman Venom.

Its actually a rather interesting story about how the invention of a drug destroys two-three human relationships. That and a bit of a sea-crossing adventure story. Its like injecting Batman into Uncharted Drakes Fortune with a focus on addiction instead of vampires. Or maybe its more like Gone Baby Gone meets Lost, on a small scale. OR… I guess its more like, Batman meets venom, on a graphic novel scale.

Batman – Venom:

– Writers: Dennis O’Neil
– Art: Trevor Von Eeden, Russel Braun, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, Willie Schubert
– Colours: Steve Oliff

– Continuity: Post-Crisis, Pre-Flashpoint
– Timeline Position: Year One-ish
– Batman is: Bruce Wayne

– Villains: Dr. Porter, General Tim Slaycroft

– Allies: Alfred Pennyworth, James Gordon (Police),

– Bystanders: Sissy Porter, Tim Slaycroft Jr.

– Story: [Spoilers, This is the entire plot:] The story begins with Batman failing to rescue a drowning child because he is physically unable to move the rubble obstructing his path to her. She drowns and Batman is haunted by her death, and moreso his failure. He starts obsessing over the issue of strength and when he is injured lifting weights and beaten up by a physically superior goon, he decides to start taking the Venom pills offered to him by the dead girl’s father, Doctor Porter, who is suspiciously emotionless about the death of his daughter.

At first the pills have steroid-like effects, allowing him to lift more weights and build more muscle, but eventually they start affecting his personality and judgement, turning him into a violent, aggressive, reckless goon, who beats the absolute crap out’ve people with less ethical consideration than he would without the drugs. They are also highly addictive and turn him into a stereotype junkie, desperate for another fix.

Doctor Porter is working alongside General Timmothy Slaycroft, a corrupt military official who wants to use Batman as a mindless henchman. He also has a son who seems to be a good person. Eventually Slaycroft and Porter ask Junkie-Batman to murder James Gordon in exchange for a fix, and this is enough to break the influence that the two have over him, and it causes him to go into seclusion and isolation until he has detoxed from the drug and beaten his addiction.

Slaycroft and Porter move to Cuba, taking Slaycroft’s son with them. Slaycroft’s son, Tim Jr., befriends a Cuban girl and seems to be developing a romantic relationship with her. Slaycroft then decides to use Venom on his son and turn him into a violent, mindless goon. It affects his relationship with the girl, who he eventually beats to death, despite previously having been a good person. Slaycroft then develops a whole squad of such monsters, and trains them in the South American jungle conditions, murdering peasants.

Porter himself is revealed to be using drugs similar to Venom, that enhance his mind instead of body, and has gone evil. He’s been evil since the book began basically, becuase the drugs stripped him of empathy (Remind you of James Gordon Jr’s empathy-stripping drugs plan?). Slaycroft and Porter have arguments. A power struggle ensues.

Batman, with the help of Gordon, tracks them down and flies to their headquarters and then heads there with Alfred to stop them. Their plane is shot down and Batman is separated from Alfred.

Slaycroft has captured Alfred and drags him around the island dangling from a helicopter to lure Batman out of hiding. Slaycroft and his posse of goons, along with Porter, tie Alfred to two stakes in the shark infested waters. Batman saves Alfred, fighting a shark in the process.

He is met on shore by Porter who offers him Venom pills, but when Batman refuses, Tim Jr. defeats Batman and Porter puts Batman in a trap that can only be escaped using the additional strength that Venom would provide, which Batman then escapes using his wits instead of the drug.

Meanwhile, while waiting for Batman to start using venom again, Porter and Slaycroft become enemies and try to kill each other, and Alfred escapes and radios Gordon for help. Batman bursts into Slaycroft and Porter’s conflict and despite trying to help save everyone’s life, Slaycroft gets killed at the hands of his own son. Batman takes Porter back to Gotham to be arrested by Gordon and reflects on the victims of the situation.

– Tone: The tone is completely serious (apart from Alfred’s traditional sarcasm) and balances realism with entertainment rather well. It’s the exact kind of tone I like the best. Bruce going out and cracking skulls without the Batman suit is a great way to display just how unhinged he has become.

– Art: Its kind of the highest quality of Art that you can get without being noteworthy as amazing art. Its very good looking compared to say, The Dark Knight Returns, although not as amazing as modern stuff like All Star Batman And Robin (art courtesy of Jim Lee).

The colouring makes it a bit dated looking I guess, as in, you can kind of tell when it was made just by looking at it, but not in a bad way. Think of it like Van Halen’s production jobs on the first three albums. You can tell when they were made, but they sound fantastic and timeless. The drawings themselves are detailed and interesting, there’s extra mise-en-scene that you mightn’t get in other books from the same sort of time.

Basically, a very good looking book. Better than Batman Gothic, better than Gotham By Gaslight, almost as good as Mad Monk or at least within reaching distance.

– Overall: I really, really like this book. Sure, the title makes the modern fan expect to see Bane, who is not featured here, and sure, Batman does fight a shark (which sounds close to jump a shark), but other than that, it is a very down-to-earth story with some nice psychological aspects and you can be made to feel some real emotions. Its top-quality stuff.

Plus Doctor Porter is an interesting character. Not massively interesting, but interesting enough. I wonder if he gets used again?

I’d recommend picking it up if you already read Batman books. It deserves a place in the collection of anyone who has a collection.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS Volume 68: Pain Of Salvation – The Perfect Element, Part 1

FIRST IMPRESSIONS Volume 68: Pain Of Salvation – The Perfect Element, Part 1 ”

Hello, and welcome to my Blog. Why is it called KingcrimsonBlog, the official Blog of Kingcrimsonprog?. Good question; It is called that, because I am called Kingcrimsonprog (or Gentlegiantprog) on most websites and forums. (You know, in the way you have to chose a name or “net-handle” when you register?). Back when this Blog was first devised, it was sort of a hub “digest” of all my various internet output, under one easy “roof.” So people could then tell that my things were not stolen from elsewhere on the internet, I kept my net-handle in the title. The name of my net-handle was simply chosen because I enjoy the Prog band King Crimson (and Gentle Giant) and is not in fact my real name.

I’ve been obsessing about music since about the year 2000. Over this time I’ve bought what must now be nearly 1,000 albums, and heard hundreds more through friends, relatives, streaming services and whatever else. I’ve also watched over a decade’s worth of music videos and heard countless individual songs on the radio, free covermounted CDs, websites and whatever else. All that, as well as read years and years worth of music magazines and websites.

I’m a nerd. Basically. Only, instead of Hentai or Manga, its Music that I obsess about. Lots of people are nerds and don’t even realize it. Sometimes its obvious; trainspotting, stamp collecting etc. Sometimes its less obvious due to presentation. Some (make that many) football fans’ depth of knowledge about players and transfer costs and club histories would make many tram-enthusiasts seem normal by comparison. The amount of information that some people know about Reality-TV celebrities and their sex-lives would easily overpower my knowledge of bands, or the most dedicated Gundamwing fan’s knowledge of Mechs.

But I don’t like Football or Reality TV or Trams or Warcraft. I like Heavy Metal music. That’s what this Blog is all about.

Welcome to my First Impressions series of articles too, incidentally. In this series I (or sometimes my friends, or readers) pick an album for each entry that I will listen to for the first time. I then write in depth about what I know about that album or the artist that created it and the genre and subgenre to which they belong, before describing the experience of listening to it in real time, in a sort of semi-stream-of-consciousness way intended for entertainment purposes. I also enjoy writing reviews of albums, but when I write reviews my goal is to be helpful and provide you with information with which to aide your decision about whether to try out an album or not. When I write a First Impressions article however my goal is purely to entertain the reader, explore how much I know about music and be my own psychiatrist in the process.

I may go into some very specific detail and assume you have heard everything I’ve ever heard and perceived everything in the manner I’ve perceived it, and call out very specific sections of music and draw comparisons between things that the casual listener may find completely unrelated. Don’t worry, most of these songs are on Youtube and most of the terminology is on Wikipedia and Urban Dictionary anyway, so if there’s anything that goes over your head, you can always get clarification in a second web-browser-tab (or ask about it in the comments).

According to the aim of the series, the albums are considered by the public and music critics knowledgeable about the subject to be Classic albums within Rock and Metal, or at least within their own Subgenres. Classic albums that I’ve somehow missed out on, despite my nerdly need to hear and understand almost every piece of recorded Metal music ever.

If you have an album that you’d like to read a KingcrimsonBlog First Impressions article about, please suggest it in the comments, I’m game, I’ll give anything a try.

So that’s the preamble out of the way, on to the article:

This is the sixty eighth-entry in the series. This time around I’ll be listening to the third full-length studio album, The Perfect Element Part 1, by the critically acclaimed Swedish Prog Metal band, Pain Of Salvation.

So. What’s my history with Prog-Metal then?

Well, you can pretty much piece that together by checking out my previous FI articles on the subject of Dream Theater , Queensryche , Savatage , Opeth , Anathema , Dream Theater again, and also things like my reviews of Riverside, as well as the reviews of modern Prog-slash-alternative bands (I’d like to start a new subgenre called Prolternative) such as Rishloo, Jurojin, Coheed & Cambria, Cog, Amplifier, Dead Letter Circus etc. Or the reviews of Queensryche once I’d gotten to know them.

[Side note: Looking back, I can’t believe I missed the opportunity to do a First Impressions article on Second Life Syndrome…what a waste.]

If you can’t be bothered to look through all of that stuff right now; I’ll try and condense it down a bit:

Since about 2005/2006 I’ve been a big fan of 1970s Prog (With a name like Kingcrimsonprog what do you expect?)

– For as long as that’s been going on, I’ve been told to check out Dream Theater.

– I got into a few Progressively-inclined modern bands around that same time (Mastodon, Tool and Coheed & Cambria being the main offenders, with others including The Mars Volta popping in and out of favour depending on my mood) and came to appreciate the progressive moments in the music I already liked, such as Iron Maiden and Metallica’s more inventive material.

– It started a trend in me of liking to figure out and discuss where each individual bit of a band’s sound comes from that situation endures to this day. I blog about it quite a lot.

– I tried out a band called Rishloo and became madly and fanatically in love with them. I like them almost too much.

– I tried out Dream Theater and it took a while for them to grow on me. Initially I wasn’t impressed and then slowly became won over.

– I tried out Queensryche and the same thing that happened with Rishloo, happened with them. I listen to and talk about them all the time.

– I tried out Opeth and it took a long while for them to grow on me, I still don’t own any of their music myself but am positively disposed towards them now. Not a giant fan, but nolonger in the dislike-them frame of mind.

– I tried out Porcupine Tree, Anathema and Riverside and liked them all, and am in the process of getting even more into each of them. Riverside are the favorite out of all the artists discussed so far.

– I find it interesting filing the bands in my brain differently. The ones from the 80s who started off as more traditional Heavy Metal or USPM such as Savatage and Queensryche, the ones who came out of a more Sludge basis such as Baroness and Mastodon, the Prolternative ones who don’t have a lot of Metal in their sound and share little in common with Maiden or Priest, the ones like Anathema and Porcupine Tree who take it even further in a mixture of Floydisms and Radiohead similarity that really step away from the Dream Theater template, the modern ones like Protest The Hero who are a bit of everything, and Djent bands that I haven’t listened to enough of yet. There’s also the ones who have their beginnings in Death such as Opeth and Death (and do Death “count” or are they more like Metallica, where they are Progressively-inclined but still part of their original genre?).

I love finding out how they all relate to one another. Hearing the parts on Queensryche’s album that make you understand the connection to Savatage and the other parts that make you understand the connection to Dream Theater. Hearing the bits of Dream Theater that go much closer to 70s prog like ELP and Pink Floyd and sound nothing like Savatage or Queensryche. Hearing a bit of Floyd-worship in Riverside and Porcupine Tree. Hearing Porcupine Tree’s Steve Wilson and Opeth’s Michael Akerfelt working on eachother’s records. Hearing parts of Protest The Hero that sound a bit like Coheed and other bits that sound a bit Djent. Hearing how much Tesseract’s singer reminds me of Rishloo. Hearing the similarities between Tesseract and Periphery. Hearing Dream Theater’s guitarist playing on the Periphery album.

Its interesting to compare something like Anathema’s “Wings Of God” to something like Coheed & Cambria’s “The Willing Well IV: The Final Cut.”

I then love hearing the bits in Helloween and Iced Earth that channel that early Queensryche sound with a completely different emphasis. I love hearing Stratovarius go really prog but never once sound like Queensryche for a second.

I like hearing when Queensryche went alternative-influenced, and then hearing the Prog bands who’s sound is originally based in alternative such as Tool and Cog.

I like seeing alternative bands like Soundgarden do things like difficult time-sigs, long song lengths and use additional instruments yet not be called prog. Tool are an alternative band with difficult time-sigs and long song lengths who do get called prog. Fun to ask yourself why? Are ‘Intolerance’ and ‘Rusty Cage’ really a billion, billion miles apart? Part of it is to do with marketing, part of it is to do with the band’s own perspective and what they say in interviews, and part of it is the consensus of the audience.

Is a band prog or not based on their own intentions, or on what we the listener think?

I like seeing alternative bands like Radiohead and Muse do things that are in turns subtly and obviously progressive and then seeing all the confusion and disagreement over whether or not you can call it prog and which of the different types of prog fans accept them, ignore them or outright boycott them.

I mean you look online and you can find prog fans who absolutely hate anything modern, love modern stuff but hate metal, love Prog Metal but hate anything old, and people from all of those groups that hate anything alternative.

Its just so damn interesting how it all connects and interacts and seeing where the lines are drawn and why.

– I’ve still got a lot more to learn. I’ve had a brief look at bands like Crimson Glory, Fates Warning and Blind Guardian and all are on my figurative “to-do-list.”

– Today, I’m crossing one more such band off of my to-do list, in the form of Pain Of Salvation. A highly acclaimed Swedish Prog Metal band, who always get mentioned in reviews about Riverside, and who have been described as some sort of less-cheesy Swedish Dream Theater. Seeing as I’ve been absolutely loving the Images And Words album this month and excitedly planning to get tickets to see Riverside in concert soon, they seem like a good band to investigate further. I got this album of theirs as a Christmas Present, hooray.

Apparently it’s a concept album (always a plus in my book. Even non-Prog bands can benefit from a concept album, such as the absolutely excellent Deep Blue by Parkway Drive) about two broken and dysfunctional individuals with a history of abuse and tragedy. Sounds interesting.

[Play]

The album opens up straight into some dramatic B-Movie sounding keyboards and rolling drums. It reminds me a lot of Mushroomhead. Wow. Wasn’t expecting that.

It then goes into a slow, dark, funk part that is incredibly similar to Faith No More. There’s a scream that reminds me of Roddy from Protest The Hero and then when the vocals kick in properly its slow creepy rapping again in the style of Mushroomhead, or Faith No More at their darkest. This wasn’t what I thought this band would sound like.

Then there’s a cool little staccato part where they repeat the phrase “Getting used to pain” over and over, with a cool syncopated double-kick and chug part that reminds me of this one part on Images And Words that I called out in that FI.

Then, after a very short run-through of that, this huge, hooky clean vocal interrupts and drags the song from the darkness into this shiny sort of Panic At The Disco/Fall Out Boy/Head Automatica sort of affair, with much more shimmery keys and I’m equally confused.

The dark funk comes back. The little squeaks that signal the end of each bar remind me of Mate Feed Kill Repeat, Korn’s debut and Angel Dust era Faith No More. Little guitar squeaks are an oft-overlooked calling card of Nu Metal. There were plenty on The Burning Red too. I wonder if there are lots on Roots? I haven’t listened to Roots in ages so I can’t remember.

Then they start mixing the chug stuff with the dark funk. Ok. I’m on board. Then “Getting Used To Pain” is re-delivered with a more pounding beat. Then that chorus comes back. Then as a post-chorus, the cool rolling part that was also the intro. Nice to have you back, sir.

Then out of nowhere. A glorious Riverside-sounding prog bit, with a very Camel-influenced guitar solo. Opeth fans would like this bit. Then it gets a bit more lift and a few Dream Theater style rays of sunshine get in there now and again. Oddly, some Geoff Tate influenced vocals come in over the top. Its like its trying to impress me. The Geoff vocals get left to hang at one point and turn into Mike Patton. The, the band introduce the “getting used to pain” line once more but in the form of backing vocals, lower in the mix and low pitched, but over the top of this glorious, soaring Riverside-style music and high pitched Patton-esque singing that’s getting really impressive at this point. It works really well. It transitions back to that opening Mushroomhead part with the rolling toms. Nice structuring. Do I detect a quick DJ-scratch?

Then some beautiful, clean, happy Keys that reminds me of Marillion’s “Kayleigh” come in as it starts to transition between this song and the next. You can’t sound like Marillion too, guys – that’s just cheating… leave some awesome for the other bands, you’re hogging it all.

“Used” turns into “In The Flesh” which is not, as you may expect on a prog album, a Pink Floyd cover, its actually an original. It starts off calmly; The drummer lets off a few little twiddles on the ride, building up slowly as a little guitar arpeggio keeps going off. Its very Marillion sounding. It then has this gorgeous little guitar part that sounds like its plucked with the thumb go off over the top of that and change the mood, that bit really reminds me of Camel or Yes. The bass follows the pattern. It sounds incredible.

When the vocals come in they really remind me of Marillion or Genesis. It starts building up tension. The way the building of tension works really reminds me of Second Life Syndrome by Riverside. There’s also something of Pink Floyd’s “Goodbye Blue Sky” to the tension-disrputing ‘So Fly Away Bit’ vocal line (but, then again, that also reminds me of Queensryche’s ‘Spool’ and ‘Chasing Blue Sky’ as well as Pearl Jam’s ‘Given To Fly’). This song sounds very different to the last one, except for the backing vocals, which remind me of Mike Patton and thus fit in with the previous track.

When it kicks off at last, its into this bouncy, piano driven part that really sounds like the halfway point between Camel and Riverside. That cool thumb thing plays in the background. The sweetness and colour in the keys reminds me of Distorted Harmony a lot.

Then it turns into this really, really gorgeous part. It is difficult to describe. It keeps accentuating particular bits with these brilliant notes and the whole shape of the section just makes my brain sing. It’s the bit where the lyrics are:

‘Sometimes the hands that feed
Must feed a mind with a sick need
And the hands that clutch can be
The same hands that touch too much
Eyes that hungrily stare
Read in an access that’s not there
While eyes close to hide tears
Or look away in fear
Run away!’

That whole bit is just magical. It then goes into that RiverCamel bit with more energy and extra guitar parts. The next time the lyrics come in, there’s this really cool key part underneath worth mentioning, and then it goes heavier, starting to really sound like Distorted Harmony and oddly I get a tiny hint of David Draimen in the vocals alongside the Patton sound.

Then it starts building up an atmosphere, with an increasingly tense part. The guitars are panned interestingly. The lead guy goes from Pantera style bends to Black Label Society style pinches to Dream Theater style running and then the music cuts off and this really emotional solo-vocal that reminds me of Marillion rings out. Dude’s got an incredible voice. Then a keyboard line in the shape of that bit I highlighted earlier, but with a gorgeous clean acoustic guitar lead over the top so the mood is completely different. The keys fade out and end.

Then to segue between that track and the next, there is a cool deep bassy part that sounds like a mixture of that bit of Marillion’s Misplaced Childhood where he sings about a spider and an obscure Scottish poet, with Mars Volta’s ‘Son Et Lumier’ intro.

‘Ashes’ starts. Its got a creepy baby’s mobile sound, (or the sound of a kid’s music-box), mimicked by the actual music, and then some Geoff Tate low vocals come in, with Camel-reminiscant bassy drones underneath. It reminds me a bit of both ‘Lady Fantasy’ and ‘Mystic Queen’ being mashed up with ‘The Lady Wore Black’ and then some electro drums come in and I’d also throw in some Mushroomhead in that mix too. There’s also something of a Pete Steel about it, in a way. When he starts a vocal accompaniment of husky whispers you think of Mike Patton too. Then it kicks off into its true form, and it has a fat wavy alternative rock guitar part. It reminds me of Porcupine Tree when that happens. When the song goes between the two a few time and ends, the guitar continues on in a broken little solo, that shambles along jazzily in a way that really reminds me of The Mars Volta. Rishloo also do it infrequently; most noticeably on ‘Downhill.’

Singer Daniel Gildenlow is something of a vocal chameleon. He has so many different styles. The band are similarly eclectic. Quiet an interesting band, really. I wasn’t expecting the Faith No More similarities. When people say to me ‘Check out “The Swedish Dream Theater” because they influenced Riverside so much,’ no part of that suggest to me that it will sound like Faith No More or Mushroomhead. Not that that’s a bad thing. Not a bad thing at all. Just a surprise.

‘Morning On Earth’ comes next. It opens up with that shape (or rhythm as its actually known) that I called out for attention from ‘In The Flesh’ delivered in that Marillion-esque way from the outro/seque into the next track. Cool. I like concept albums that actually have recurring themes and cleverly rework or reintroduce parts for artistic effect. “Theme And Variation” I believe its called.

I also caught the faintest hint of the opening guitar part from Roger Water’s ‘5.02am: The Pros and Cons Of Hitch-hiking’ hidden in there. Teased at. You guys know I love that part. Come on now guys, seriously.

Then it kicks off into this hazy, dreamy clean section that sounds like film score, mixed with ‘Fat Old Sun.’ The bit where he says ‘I’m Just A Child’ is really evocative.

Then he starts talk-singing and it really reminds me of Queensryche’s ‘Roads To Madness’ mixed with Misplaced Childhood era Marillion. The music underneath reminds me of Judgement era Anathema. Then that dreamy wafty part comes in, the strings that augment this bit remind me of floating on clouds. It’s a bit of a juxtaposition with the dark opener to have this really saccharine part here. It’s a cool song. There’s backing vocals that remind me of ‘Silent Lucidity.’ There’s lead guitar lines that remind me of ‘The Hound Of Blood And Rank.’ Good mix of things I like.

‘Idioglossia’ follows it up. It really makes me smile. Its got a squirming, shifty, part that reminds me of ADHD era Riverside with the bouncy, heavy, bombastic nature and impressive energetic drumming. This is what I thought they might sound like. I love it.

That part gets interrupted by a crazy bass line, which evolves into a fun gallop, a nice memorable double-kick part. Then this really interesting, driving and exciting part, that is like what would happen if you mixed Mushroomhead with Dimmu Borgir’s ‘Progenies Of The Great Apocalypse.’ When that bit ends, it turns into a Protest The Hero style ‘here’s a big bunch of notes’ bridge. This is a very good song.

Then its into a piano driven part with The Mars Volta’s shuffly drums and Anathema’s Cure-influenced attitude. Then Faith No More show up to the party. Then that dark gallop with the cool bass comes back. Then that driving bit. I love this song. Aaaah. That bit where he sings ‘Aaaanyone’ sounds so much like David Draimen its scary.

Then that shuffle-meets-Cure part comes back for longer, with a Camel influenced bass lead and a sweet whispy guitar solo. The vocals are incredible. It starts building tension along Riverside mechanics. Then a bouncy System Of A Down style drumbeat speeds it up, but the heavy thick keys stop it sounding out of place. Then thundering double-kicks and a guitar solo come in, speeding the whole thing up and driving out the bloody window. This is fucking incredible!

How better to end that, than by randomly jumping back to the two other two best bits from the song; that ADHD intro and the driving-bit only with extra fun drums and more intensity in the performance. They then manage to meld that bit together with the drums from the cool bass beat, it all starts layering over and over eachother, there’s different types of vocals panned all throughout your head, keys in every different part of your brain. It builds and builds until you barely know whats going on. It ends, just before your head explodes.

Damn! What a song!

‘Her Voices’ comes in next. The intro sounds like a mixture of 90s Anathema with ’99 Red Balloons Go By.’ Then it shifts into a sweeter part that reminds me of the more ballady tracks on the first two Genesis albums once Collins took over, like ‘Madman Moon,’ ‘Ripples’ or ‘Blood On The Rooftops.’ Its very emotional sounding. Their bassist is a damn genius. There are certain touches on the drums and keys that remind me of the better Dream Theater ballads.

Then these giant stabs come in, followed by cool slow drum fills.

Then back to the sweet part, only with bouncier drums. Ok. So we’re playing this game are we? The little guitar leads are incredible. So are the little key lines. There’s so much to listen to its hard to keep track. It’s the audio equivalent of watching Slipknot on stage. You don’t know where to look.

Then the big stabs. But transformed by slow doomy drums. And the inclusion of vocals. Then it kicks off into this cool build up with eastern influences and very skillful drumming. It reminds me a bit of early Soulfly because of that drum sound, but the music isn’t similar. It then goes through all sorts of cool ideas. Mars Volta and Riverside are the two bands it reminds me most of. Also King Crimson. Then a Flute comes in for the craic over the top and makes the Tull receptors in my brain light up. There are also guitar parts that really work along Melechesh lines. Then there’s like, a violin solo, with backing vocals that sound like Dave Gilmour.

This whole thing is just a massive tour of everything I like. Its hard to even point out all the things I like because the band seem to just tear through so many of them, and on each instrument, and its all panned around your brain so you’re getting different things pumped into your head at all angles, and you find yourself struggling to really absorb it all or even keep up, your mind being constantly delighted with new awesome parts, each of which are that both cool in-and-of themselves and that also reminds you of bands you already like. It delights the awesome-receptors and the recognition-receptors.

It ends by going back to the start, but playing it in this sad, acoustic style that sounds like dying cowboys. It has morphed into the next song, ‘Dedication’ which mixes that ‘Madman Moon’ stuff up, keeping the spirit the same, but delivering it in different ways. The vocals go through so many different styles. I absolutely love their drummer. The person who mixed the album deserves a lot of credit too, it dances around your skull magically. Definitely a “headphone” album.

You get these really beautiful little key parts that remind me of Camel and also the King Crimson ‘Peace’ trio, beside vocals that sound like the times where Matt Barlow of Iced Earth channels Geoff Tate, with drums that remind me of Anathema when they get lively, and then the themes from previous tracks coming in and out. Its masterful, masterful stuff. Actually captivating.

‘King Of Loss’ comes in next. Its getting difficult to come up with new ways of saying, the keys, guitars, bass, drums and vocals are all superb individually and each and every part they play is brilliant, reminds me of something cool and is cool anyway, sounds great when you concentrate on it, and works as part of a dense whole when you just concentrate on the song overall.

This album is a straight-up fucking masterpiece. No messing about, this thing is incredible. Every member is talented, tasteful and interesting. The band mix up so much of my favourite music and present it in combinations I haven’t heard it before.

This may seem contradictory, considering all the comparisons to other bands I’ve made so far, but these guys are really unique.

King Of Loss is a pretty incredible track. The guitar solos are absolutely incredible. The structure is great. The switching between light and shade is well done. The introduction of new parts, and then the return to the two main themes are really great. It’s a real “journey.” I can’t believe where it is on the record either come to think of it. On any normal record this would be the album closer.

‘Reconciliation’ blasts off. Its one of the best parts from one of the songs that have already played. But then it breaks down into this sort of mixture of ‘Jet City Woman’ and ‘Walk In The Shadows’ for quiet parts. It then throws in some Matt-Barlow-does-Tate vocals and even a hint of Draimen in a deep thwompy part. Then it does the softer Camel version of that awesome part. Then this powerful, exciting build-up part with this really great lead guitar. Then it kicks off again with loads of energy, great drumming and some cool emotional screaming and fades out as the drummer really starts laying into it.

If you want to know whether or not you’d like the album, listen to this song.

‘Song For The Innocent’ starts off like a pretty cheesy, saccharine ballad. It sort of reminds me of the cringy bit in Yes’ ‘Circus Of Heaven’ where the children starts talking, only good. Then it bursts into a cool, Comfortably Numb’s solo style bit with lots of passion and totally saves itself. Their guitarist really does his best to make me burst with happiness at this solo. I could see people saying it’s a bit too similar to Comfortably Numb’s if they were being dicks, but that’s a pretty awesome thing to be similar too.

The brief ‘Falling’ is next. Its also very Pink Floyd sounding. The song is more or less just a guitar solo with a lot of emotion over a key part that sounds like death and heaven in films.

The album closer, and title-track, the ten-minute ‘The Perfect Album’ crashes in next. It sounds absolutely huge already, I feel almost blown away. I’m sat on the edge of my seat, utterly taken in by this band.

It starts reworking parts you’ve heard before into it, into cool build-ups. All the different vocal styles from the whole album come back. There are great big, chuggy heavy grooves, there’s some very Tate vocals, there’s a Camel sounding lead. It all builds and builds, then at the three minute mark, it kicks into a fat alternative groove that reminds me of Tool, only with so much Neoprog synth and keys on the top that you wouldn’t recognize it as such, then that’s followed by a part that reminds me of Queensryche’s ‘The Hostage’ yet again touring everything I love. They drop that Tool groove in, but throw a guitar line over the top of it that reminds me of Floyd’s ‘Run Like Hell’ then an interesting acoustic guitar part runs off with your attention and the song morphs into this violin driven, emotional ‘Roads To Madness’ at-a-wedding affair. The vocals are beyond superb.

Then they start throwing in these big stabs with cheeky prog key runs as tails. That morphs into a few forms including one with fucking huuuuge chugs. Then things go bright and shimmeriy, you start to get an enormous feeling of well-being as this triumphant music builds-up all around you, swirling around your head in circles, it sounds like you are floating up out of your chair as the song carrys you away. When the tom based “dumdumdum pehhhsh, dumdumdum pehhhsh,” thing comes in I have a gigantic smile on my face.

Then they start channeling Mushroomhead again, but with the build-up still going, then all the extra drumming. Its like the non-death version of Opeth’s ‘Deliverance’ as the china cymbal keeps going off, then all the music but the massive reverby drums cuts right out, and those big drumbeats all circle around you, sounding like a tribal ceremony or world-cup theme tune. You want to scream at the top of your lungs but suddenly the drums are gone and then some pulsing industrial noises that must’ve been underneath it quickly fade out. Its over.

Fuuuuuuuck me. That was incredible.

So ummm,….yeah. If you like Riverside or Dream Theater or Opeth, Run out right now and get this album.

If you like Camel or Pink Floyd, or Marillion, run out and get this album.

If you’ve already got this album, go and listen to it again.

I’ve said it already; Straight-up, no messing-about MASTERPIECE.

Ok. I’ve got to go and calm down. I’ve got the shakes from listening to that. G’bye for now folks!

What is fame and what is Metal?

I’ve had a lot of free time this week to sit and read blogs. Some of them have really got me thinking. I read a list questioning which are the most famous Metal Songs and most famous Metal Bands. Generally; I love these sorts of things. But then you knew that already, didn’t you?. I read dozens and dozens of these sorts of lists, on blogs and in Magazines and on Rate Your Music or whatever else.

The thing I’ve noticed in dozens of them is that, there’s a sort of mythical set of perfect answers. Some of answers of course are pretty hard to disagree with; Metallica, Iron Maiden and Ozzy Osbourne for example. Ask everyone on a bus in the middle of Manchester to name as many Heavy Metal bands as they can think of, and I reckon those bands would come up quite a lot.

The thing is though, there’s quite a few other names that will regularly come up on the hypothetical average-list that are either controversial among metal fans as to whether or not they actually count as being metal or else are dubious as to how famous they actually are.

This isn’t necessarily a harsh criticism of metal fans and list-makers, but it does raise some interesting points that I think are worth stopping and thinking about. So; when considering who are the most famous Metal bands and Metal songs, you’ve got to ask yourself two questions. What is fame, and What is Metal?

Just a quick thought: Twisted Sister and Motely Crue are probably more famous than Bathory or Mercyful Fate. Bon Jovi are probably more famous than that. Limp Bizkit, Korn and Slipknot probably are too.

Machinehead, Avenged Sevenfold, Disturbed and Bullet For My Valentine are probably all more famous than Queensryche and Celtic Frost nowadays too.

I say “probably” because there’s really no way of knowing. Fame isn’t really a quantifiable concept, its more of an informed perception. We all know that Coca Cola is probably more famous than Only Fools And Horse, but we can’t really prove it on an individual level without gathering gigantic, unrealistic amounts of information that none of us could really be bothered to gather. To actually know for certain you would have to ask everyone on earth if they had heard of each, and then record and compare the answers. You would also have to know that they weren’t lying and that nothing was altering the results.

There’s another issue. The silent majority. You know when you go to a concert and its absolutely full. Think of how many people attend Download Festival every year, and then how many attend a single Motorhead concert. There’s more at Download.

Why does that matter? Well; There are so many people who are casual in their interest of Metal. People who don’t dress as Metal fans, don’t blog about it, don’t talk about it at work, but do know every word to System Of A Down’s Toxicity album. You can look at a Chemistry student who has no indicators of being a Metal fan and who does talk to you about a dubstep song they heard at the weekend, but they actually absolutely loves Disturbed and Bullet For My Valentine and just didn’t bring it up. You can find a girl in a nightclub listening to indie bands who will surprisingly be completely able to drunkenly sing all the lyrics of ‘Run To The Hills’ at you upon request. You’ll find people posting about how much they love pop stars on facebook and when you go into their bedroom there is a huge poster of Zack Wylde.

What I’m getting at, there’s a heck of a lot of people who listen to Metal that you wouldn’t necessarily expect. More than the readership of Metal Hammer Magazine, more than the crowd at your local sold-out mid-October Down concert. There’s hundreds of thousands of people who don’t even consider themselves a Metal fan that could tell you who Lemmy, James Hetfield and Corey Taylor are just from a photograph. My own mother could. Yours probably could too.

So. When we ask ourselves who are the most famous Metal bands; we need to ask “famous to who?” – because I’m pretty sure the average drunk stroppy teenage girl taking ecstasy tablets when asked to name ten heavy metal bands are more likely to identify Slipknot than Venom.

If you played somebody Helloween’s “Keeper Of The Seven Keys,” Judas Priest’s “Painkiller,” Pantera’s “Walk,” Limp Bizkit’s “Nookie,” Motely Crue’s “Girls, Girls, Girls” and Europe’s “The Final Countdown” I’m pretty sure more people can identify the last two or three than the first two. There may be a few generational differences, and there may be a bit of bias in the form of people not wanting to identify bands that they dislike (human nature, its annoying aint it?) but I recon more human beings know the answers to the less Metal-respectable bands on that list.

The easy way around that it to choose who you want “fame” to apply to. OK. Say, we only count people who have at one time owned a copy of Reign In Blood and have attended at least one Metallica concert? More of them will probably still know Marilyn Manson than King Diamond. More of them could identify “Welcome To The Jungle” than “Pull Me Under” by intro alone, because its still more famous overall, even if you are a serious Metalhead. Because you don’t live your entire life in a Metal-bubble.

Well, we’ve considered what fame actually means now.
But hold on a second. What even is Metal?

Are Europe a Metal band? Well, some people say they are a Hair Metal band. Hair Metal is a type of Metal. Therefore by that logic, they are indeed a Metal band. Not so fast though; Some people say Europe are a hard rock band. Some people say they are a Pop band.

Are Led Zeppelin a Heavy Metal band? A heck of a lot of people would say yes. A heck of a lot of people would say no. What about Deep Purple. Watch any worthwhile documentary about Heavy Metal and there’ll be talk of Deep Purple. That being said, nowadays most people on the street would call them “classic rock” rather than “heavy metal” even though the actual term was applied to bands like Zeppelin and Purple and AC/DC for years and years. So are they Metal or aren’t they? They themselves might call themselves “Rock n Roll” but so does Ozzy Osbourne and even Motorhead. If “In The Name Of Tragedy” by Motorhead is just Rock n Roll then I’ve seriously got to start checking out Buddy Holly.

Ok. Well what if you decide that Zeppelin aren’t Metal but Black Sabbath are. What about Queen. You go listen to “Dead On Time” and “Son And Daughter” by Queen and tell me with a straight face that it isn’t as Metallic or Powerful as “The Wizard” by Black Sabbath.

How about if we decide that the first ever Metal album is “Sad Wings Of Destiny” then? What after that is still Metal? Are Metallica? Are Helloween? Are Pantera? Are Machine Head? Are Slipknot? Are Bring Me The Horizon? Are Cannibal Corpse? Are Korpiklaani? Are Emperor? Are Limp Bizkit?

You can say Limp Bizkit aren’t because the vocals are not like Judas Priest and there’s an extra instrument (the DJ). Well, Cannibal Corpse’s vocals are very, very different to Judas Priest’s and Korpiklaani have extra instruments (Violins and Accordions).

I’ll admit some Limp Bizkit songs sound nothing like Metal. Ballads, and songs with electronic drums and effects and no distortion. What about Black Sabbath’s “FX” “Fluff” “Laguna Sunrise” “Changes” and “E5150” ? What about Judas Priest’s “Epitaph,” “Last Rose Of Summer” or “Love You To Death”? Ballads, songs with no distortion and incorporation of electronics on some songs.

Even at that, some classic tracks by Metal’s originators (which weren’t intros, experiments or ballads, but just normal songs) are still less-Metal than some Hair Metal and Nu Metal songs. I’d wager Limp Bizkit’s “Gimme The Mic” is much more Metal than Black Sabbath’s “Am I Going Insane?” or “Solitude” or even “Behind The Wall Of Sleep.”

Going the other way. I think that Korn’s “Blind” is closer to the sound and spirit of the original Black Sabbath tracks than Cannibal Corpse’s “Frantic Disembowelment” does. Hell, I think Twisted Sister sound a thousand times closer to the sound of Judas Priest than Darkthrone do.

Then there’s the people who don’t think Metalcore bands are Metal, either because of catchy clean choruses, or because of the incorporation of parts of Hardcore. Well, Chaos AD is incredibly Hardcore Influenced. Anthrax and Nuclear Assault were Hardcore influenced. Are they no-longer Metal?
Helloween and Stratovarius have some of the catchiest, cleanest choruses going, so are they no-longer Metal?

The thing is though? Who can really say? Metal-ness isn’t a fact. Its an opinion. Its a negotiation for consensus.

Half of the people who say something is not Metal but something else have no clear, quantifiable, non-contradict-able reason why. Its either just that they don’t like the band and have mistaken their own opinion with fact, or that its not something that can be definitively and incontrovertibly proven in the first place. There is no mathematical definition of Metal. Some people think death growls preclude you from being Metal, just read all the reviews of Children Of Bodom by Yngwie Malmsteen fans from the 80s who demand melodic falsetto singing. These people will swear until they are blue in the face that “cookie monster vocals” are the opposite of Heavy Metal. Try telling that to the audience at Hole In The Sky or Bloodstock festival though, they’ll give you a swift and unpleasant rebuttle more likely than not.

At the end of the day, there are people who think Krokus and AC/DC are Metal and that Limp Bizkit and Deicide aren’t. There are people who think that Immortal and Pig Destroyer are Metal but Poison and Quiet Riot aren’t. Heck, until about three years ago even I called pre-Dio Black Sabbath was just classic rock and not Metal.

What is and isn’t Metal is up to your own interpretation, apparently. Except Iron Maiden, nobody has ever said Iron Maiden aren’t Metal. Lemmy says Motorhead aren’t Metal but at least Steve Harris calls Maiden a Heavy Metal band. There’s at least comfort in knowing that whatever else in this world is up for debate, Iron Maiden are undisputed a Metal band (Although you could mistake “Prodigal Son” for a Boston or Rush song if you weren’t paying attention).

So. I guess where I’m going with this is that, there is an element of what the dedicated Metal fans want and indeed expect to be the most famous Metal music. It is based partly on the personal taste of a few Magazine writers, partly on actual consensus and partly on a self fulfilling prophecy of what we’re continuously told. The list seems to cover one arbitrary point of view and one arbitrary period in time. It isn’t full inclusivity nor is it completely strict and based only on true original Heavy Metal. Its often after the first Heavy Metal Bands go reclassified to “Classic Rock” but before other subgenres became popular.

I mean, I can’t tell for certain, but I’m pretty sure more people know and care about Bullet For My Valentine and Slipknot than have ever cared about Venom. But most people who actually like music to the point of making lists don’t want that to be the case.

Similarly, I think that year on year, Deep Purple, AC/DC and Led Zeppelin gain more new fans than Venom do. But we’ve all decided that they don’t count. For some reason. That is not particularly logical or fair.

Then there’s the really commercial bands like Linkin Park and Bon Jovi. Almost (not necessarily if you’re being pedantic, there have been flops, but you know what I’m getting at) by definition of being commercial, more people will know a band. A huge amount of us decide that if a band are too commercial, they aren’t Metal anymore. Why is that? Part of it may be based in truth, but again, part of it seems to just be based on what we want.

Take home message; when we ask ourselves which Metal songs, albums or artists are the most famous, I guess you’ve just got to ask whether or not they are Metal, or who you are being famous too that counts for the purposes of the list. You could spend years aggregating every list and reference to bands in every magazine, videogame, radio-show, podcast and television programme ever made and still only have a small, biased sample of a few people’s impressions of which bands were the most famous. You could count every Youtube view and LastFm scrobble ever recorded and still ultimately not know what’s in people’s heads or even who’s heads to look in.

After you to went all that effort to find the correct numbers, there’d still be debate on who “counts.”

And that’s just “famous.” It gets even muddier when we go onto “most-influential.” Oh well, at least everyone knows when it comes to “best” that its just straight-up unarguably subjective and we can all admit its just our own opinions. (Well, the sensible ones of us at any rate.)

So; With all that being said, I’d like you all to answer in the comments, who do you think are the 20 most famous Metal bands?