2020 Buying / Gift / Life Round Up:

I am a bit sad I missed out on the Helloween, WASP & Rammstein concerts I had booked, but I’ll live. Its still been a good year for music. I don’t have much to add to the internet noise about this year in terms of news/health/politics. Work has obviously gone crazy this year and free time is limited due to the bundle of joy, so there hasn’t been as much blogging as usual this year. I’ve just spent most of it head down working and parenting, with a killer soundtrack. I’ve decided today while I have some downtime to condense all the blogging I probably WOULD HAVE done into one digest. The following is a round up of what I’ve been buying/gifted/generally listening to since last Xmas:

Def Leppard – Pyromania, Hysteria, Adrenalize, Retro-active, Slang, Euphoria. – I’ve had the band’s heavier first two albums for years, and got Pyromania and Hysteria for Christmas 2019. I’ve been really getting into the since then, getting Adrenalize for my birthday and expanding to the other albums slowly since then. I have to say I’ve enjoyed them all so far. Maybe too many ballads, but the same can be said of lots of bands I love, like Helloween.

Sepultura – Quadra, Machine Messiah & A-Lex.  – You only need to check out my reviews to know how much I’ve been gushing about the band’s recent output. I was really taken aback by how much the band have improved, evolved and hit-it-out-of-the-park in recent years. Its surprising they’ve taken such a proggy turn in recent years, but its great they haven’t forgotten to Thrash out and groove when needed.

Death Angel – Humanicide, The Dream Calls For Blood – Well after that amazing Covid infested concert back at the start of the year, I couldn’t NOT buy more Death Angel, could I?

Testament – Ritual, Low, Demonic, The Gathering, Titans Of Creation – Headliners of aforementioned concert; their first 4 albums have been staples of my listening since I was old enough to need to shave, and I’ve been lapping up new releases since I was old enough to vote, but I’d been sleeping on the intervening period and it was time to fill in the gaps. I already knew ritual back to front from borrowing, but its nice to finally own my own copy thanks to a gift from my brother, and I then looked into the less popular post-grunge years which I’d not given a chance before, turns out there’s a lot of good material there too! …and of course I had to pick up the new album when it dropped. (Which slays as usual, they haven’t made a bad one since I’ve been a fan)

Exodus – Force Of Habit. – The best band at aforementioned concert, I already owned basically all their output so there wasn’t much left to get. I bought myself Force Of Habit one day this Summer and was surprised that it was a lot better than its reputation.

Power Trip – Nightmare Logic. – Speaking of Thrash albums not from the 80s…  I had been planning to buy this album for ages as my favourite podcast gives it such warm praise on a very regular basis, and they were going to be supporting Kreator when they toured near me, but when their singer passed away I figured its time to pull my thumb out and stop waiting. I figure you’ve probably read enough praise of it already recently that I won’t add my voice to the echo chamber, except to say, if like me you were looking forward to that Kreator tour, then pick yourself up a copy of this if you haven’t already.

Riverside – Out Of Myself, Love Fear & The Time Machine, Eye Of The Soundscape, Wasteland. – I’ve had these Polish progster’s 2^nd-5^th albums (and several EPs) for years, and decided recently it was time to fill out the missing albums in my collection. Turns out they have never made a bad record. Utterly fantastic band.

Haken – Visions, Affinity, L1ve. – My bestie set me up with the British equivalent of Riverside’s Live DVD for my birthday and I then expanded to some studio albums off the back of that. They’re a lot more eclectic than some prog bands, coming across as a mixture between Anathema, Distorted Harmony and Dream Thetater but with strange diversions into 80s pop and Gentle Giant worship. I’ll need to listen a lot more until I full absorb it, but I’m positive on it so far.

Opeth – Heritage, Pale Communion, Sorceress, In Cauda Veennum. – I’ve been trying on and off for about a decade to get into this band. You may remember some of my posts from years ago about it. I’ve definitely gone full tilt on them in the last year and a half.  I can’t remember exactly when I started buying them up and if it counts for 2020, but I’ll include half the albums I bought in here just in case.

Hammer Fall – Crimson Thunder, Threshold. – Another example of fleshing out an existing collection. You know I like Hammerfall if you read my reviews. These are some key albums I was missing. Surprising really, I didn’t own the one with “Hearts On Fire” on it? Well, mistake rectified now.  

Iced Earth – Burnt Offerings, Plague Of Babylon, Incorruptible. – I was looking at my patch jacket one day, and was wondering if all the bands featured on there were still worthy of inclusion, and I noticed that I hadn’t been keeping up enough with Iced Earth in recent years, and hadn’t gone back enough. My collection started with a gift of their seminal Something Wicked album many years ago, but I never had their first album with the classic line up, and hadn’t been picking up the new releases since then. Time to expand my collection.

Cannibal Corpse – The Bleeding. – Speaking of patch jacket guilt purchases, I have had most of Cannibal Corpses output for a while yet, I stopped collecting the newest albums after a few years, but I still like the band and feel fondly of them. I’ve been spending a lot of time listening to first-four albums by Morbid Angel, Deicide, Obituary & Death and I felt weird that I had never got a copy of Cannibal Corpse’s fourth album. Now when doing a first four DM playlist, The Bleeding isn’t missing.

Orange Fucking Goblin Baby – Rough Read Live & Loud, The Wolf Bites Back, Back From The Abyss, A Eulogy For The Damned, Healing Through Fire, Thieving From The House Of God, Coup De Grace. –  I saw them live with Down once many years ago and was lukewarm on them, but I caught them live with Corrosion Of Conformity about 1.5-2 years ago and was totally captivated and converted. I’ve been working my way back through there catalogue at each Birthday/Christmas since. Not discovered a bad record yet. They’re like 90s Clutch without the humour, mixed with a sweaty Motorhead vibe.

Ozzy Osbourne – Ordinary Man, Live & Loud. – Ozzy’s new album does not live up to the hype, but is better than you would expect too (if that makes sense). I also figured that only owning the Randy Rhodes era live album wasn’t enough for me and wanted to try out one with material from No More Tears & No Rest For The Wicked on it, and hey, if its got a live version of the songs “Bark At The Moon” and “Shot In The Dark” on it, well all the better for me to relive that surprisingly good performance at Download Festival 2018 that reminded me why I like Ozzy so much. I also like how differently Zakk plays the older songs from Randy, making it worth owning two different albums. I mean Randy is obviously better, I’m not an animal, but its nice to hear his tunes reinterpreted rather than just badly imitated.

Motorhead – Aftershock, Motorizer, Overnight Sensation, No Sleep At All – Speaking of Lemmy and the boys. Well, you can never have too much motorhead, can you? One day I’ll have it all. Just slowly building up my collection, having time to absorb it. I was looking through my old concert tickets, and I’m still gutted that Motorhead concert I was going to see in Manchester got cancelled, and then they never came back before Lemmy passed. I did luckily get to see Phil Campbell and Fast Eddie Clarke play motorhead songs live at solo gigs, but never the real deal.

Type O Negative – The Roadrunner Years Boxset. – I’ve also spent a lot of this weird depressing unpredictable year listening to Pete Steel and co’s weird, depressing, unpredictable music. The band can go from 70s Black Sabbath doom, to 80’s New Wave romanticism, to 60s Psychedelia and snotty late 80s hardcore punk irreverence and back within the same album (and sometimes the same song!). A truly unique band. I don’t love everything they do, but when they do line up with my tastes, its truly magical. When you have a bad day, its quite fun to just turn up “Life Is Killing Me” and pretend to be driving a garbage truck around New York with a dead pet as your co-pilot, letting the misery wash over you. Your day can’t be that bad if the music is this good and you haven’t lost your marbles like Pete.

Danzig – 1-4 and the Thrall EP. – Speaking of unique bands, I don’t know why I had never heard Danzig before, I remember reading about them in Marilyn Manson’s biography, and seeing their logo and artwork a lot, but I had never heard a second of their music until last year. Once I got that debut as a gift, I knew I needed more. Some kind of bizarre, Elvis/Jim Morrison crooning with punky ethos, and stoner rock-esque 70s-worship with 90s production. “Tired Of Being Alive” sounds like Heart’s “Sing Child” through a Kyuss filter, then add in the one and only Glenn Danzig’s incomparable vocal style and you have a pretty interesting rock album. The only problem I’ve encountered so far is that the song “Sadistikill” on the fourth album is intolerably boring (and that’s coming from a prog fan) but the majority of what I’ve heard to far has been great.

The Misfits – The Static Age, Walk Among Us, Earth AD/Wolfsblood. – After reading a metallica biography, getting into Danzig, and checking out HMO’s reviews, I thought I’d dip my toe in the Misfit’s waters too. They have some real killer songs, it’s a shame I knew so many already from covers from the likes of Metallica, Volbeat, Orange Goblin, Cradle Of Filth and more, as I like the cover’s better for most of them. Its awesome when you find one that hasn’t been covered that you like and can just revel in the glory without prior knowledge. “All Hell Breaks Loose” and “Texas Is The Reason” are highlights so far. I have a lot of 80s Hardcore Punk and borderline/debatable Hardcore Punk albums, and rarely are any such bands as catchy as the Misfits.

Man, I didn’t realise how much music I’d been consuming this year until I started this blog. I don’t have all day here! In terms of 80s thrash: I’ve picked up several missing pieces from my collection. More output from Sodom, Destruction, Xentrix, Atrophy, Sacred Reich & DRI.  I’ve also gotten into Hirax, Coroner, Exhumer, Whiplash & Acid Reign. Not quite thrash, but I’ve expanded my Armored Saint collection too. They can deliver.

In terms of new releases: I’ve also picked up Parkway Drive’s live album, Trivium’s newest album, Lamb Of God’s newest album, Protest The Hero’s newest album & Five Finger Death Punch’s new album. I also got King Diamond’s latest live dvd.  But of course I’ve reviewed them in detail recently already. You can see what I think of those by clicking on the links or scrolling down.

Most surprising of all though, is Creeper’s new album, which has gone from absolute hatred/disappointment to one of my most listened-to albums of the year. I put that think on almost every work day lunch, and I listened to it every single day in the first month and a half after its release. It wasn’t what I was expecting, but damn did I end up entertained by it.  Luckily for me, their singer has been busy recently, and made a side-project called Salem basically putting out what I did expect from Creeper. The first single ‘Destroy Me’ is a catchy, energetic blast of pop-punky fun and the debut EP is just about to drop in a few days. I’m looking forward to more of the same hopefully.

On a personal level its been a weird year. If anyone knows me personally, I work in a job I can’t talk about because of various social media policies, but suffice to say I spent most of the last decade sticking tablets, tube and needles in various sick people’s mouths, veins and other body cavities. If this epidemic had happened a bit earlier it would’ve been me on the frontline. Recently, to accommodate for having a child I’ve moved to a cushy computer based job. Now I’m basically caught in a vortex of survivor’s guilt and parental protectiveness and don’t know whether to stick or twist career wise. Its come at the same time as an expensive relocation, which makes it even more difficult to know what to do. Wasn’t it great in February when all you had to worry about was whether you could get enough time off work to see Sepultura live so close to the other concerts you had booked?

Due to the planned house move, I’ve made some very non-me decisions regarding music. I’ve first of all sold off a lot of my collection. Secondly, of the things I’m keeping, I have been recycling the boxes and just keeping the booklets and discs in storage boxes, and the same with concert DVDs into DVD wallets. My music collection once took up a whole man cave, but could soon fit into the corner of a home office. Not something I would have contemplated as a teenager, but times change. I’ve also decided to mainly buy digital from now on, unless it isn’t available digitally (Why does no one sell mp3s of Motorhead’s Bastards album? Its got “Born To Raise Hell” on it for goodness sake!). I’ve been a staunch cd dinosaur and defender for years, but its getting to the point I could build a house out of them, and with the move, the baby and the pandemic, I finally have the mental window of opportunity to let go (or partially let go, as the case may be). I’ve also been using Spotify a lot more this year. I’ve adopted a bit of a try-before-you-buy approach to albums I’m 50/50 on getting. I wouldn’t go full streaming as the artists don’t get paid enough and there’s no sense of curatorship and collection, but using it as a research tool is a new development for me.

That’s a lot of new music this year. I’ve also had to make a lot of time to listen to some of my favourite bands, like C.O.C, Slipknot, Queensryche, Helloween, Pantera, Machine Head and I’ve also been taking out time to listen to ’70s prog bands in the morning with breakfast. Its important not to forget the stuff you already like.

What’s planned next music wise? Probably mop up more albums by bands like Alice Cooper, Aerosmith and ZZ Top that I’ve been concentrating on last year, and collect more missing prog and thrash albums that I haven’t gotten around to. Often I just get the first 4-5 albums (or failing that specific eras; like in the case of Black Sabbath – I only have Ozzy, Dio and Gillian albums, but none with other singers), but I may round out some of the smaller collections a bit more going forward.

As well as music, I’ve also been getting my way through lots of band / musician’s audiobook biographies and good old fashion paperbacks. Rick Wakeman’s is quite funny. Rob Halford’s is illuminating due to the LGBT rights angles. KK Downing’s is great for your basic band story. A few fictional books too. See, I can do some things that aren’t music (not very many, but it does happen from time to time). I have a bit of a book backlogue, but I’ll soon be coming up to Rock And Roll Children, by WordPress’s own 80s Metal Man, very much looking forward to that as well.

That’s my mind dump for the moment. Have a good weekend, readers!

Sepultura – Machine Messiah Review

Machine Messiah is an absolute rager of an album. In terms of quality, this is one of Sepultura’s best albums period. Of course you’ve got Chaos AD if your ears work, then there’s always either Arise or Roots depending on if you are a Thrash or Nu Metal fan and that’s more or less the way the Metal history books have kept it for years. Now however, this album and its follow up Quadra should rightly be considered absolutely essential Sepultura listening. (In fact, personal preference and sacrilegious though it may be, I would argue this and Quadra and joint second place behind only Chaos AD).

When you look at the cover image for this record, you could reasonably expect it to be some sort of modern version of Arise, like how some veteran bands tend to harken back to old covers when they are going back to their roots. However; stylistically, this album is a whole new kettle of fish.

There’s quite a bit of variety. The album opens with a slow and moody title track with clean vocals. Midway through there is a very proggy instrumental with melodic sweeping virtuoso guitar work. Towards the ends there are a few tracks with additional musicians, like violins and horns, creating a very cinematic and grand sound.

The core sound of the album though, is just really well written, modernised and exciting variations on the band’s signature Groove Metal style, but with much more twists and turns, syncopation, swing and outstanding levels of musicianship. The drums and lead guitars in particular are beyond impressive. Eloy Casagrande is arguably the best drummer they’ve ever had and Andreas Kisser hasn’t just stagnated as a guitarist, he has pushed himself to new heights. This is leagues above anything they were putting up in the first decade after Max left.

I’d usually like to list highlights at this point, but to be honest, there isn’t a wasted moment on the whole disc. ‘Phantom Self’ has the riffs, ‘Iceberg Dances’ and ‘Cyber God’ have the solos, ‘Vandals Nest’ and ‘Resistant Parasites’ have the drums, ‘I Am The Enemy’ and ‘Silent Violence’ have the vocal hooks, and ‘Machine Messiah’ and ‘Alethea’ just have the general cool factor. Its one of the best single collection of songs the band has ever produced.

Clocking in at a tidy 46 minutes without overstaying its welcome and featuring just 10 songs every single one of which is memorable, this is as close to a perfect album as you can get. The best thing is that it just gets better the more you listen to it. I thought it was good the first time I heard it, but the more I spin it, the more I discover. The more I discover the more I love. It just keeps on giving.

Overall, this is a superb album that I whole heartedly recommend without hesitation or caveat. In fact, if you like any other Sepultura album but don’t own this, I downright insist you check it out.

Sepultura – Quadra Review

I have been meaning to review this album for weeks now. However, I feel rather unqualified to write about it. Sometimes I feel kind of unqualified to listen to it. My good friend said of it, that it was intimidatingly good. I completely agree.

Now, Sepultura are such a weird band in Metal’s history, and mine. Their earliest material was influential to the development of Death Metal, what followed that was some very beloved Thrash Metal that you’ll find in any good list of best Thrash albums. Personally; I initially didn’t know about any of that (‘Old School Seps’) stuff though, for a few years at least, as although I knew about the Brazilian band and occasionally heard music from Sepultura in the background from before I even became a metal fan*, I always associate the band with Groove Metal albums with Max Cavelera… specifically Chaos AD and Roots. About 2-3 years into being a metal fan, it was a surprise when I found out about their faster, heavier, rawer past.

(*My cousin was a huge fan in the early ‘90s and my older brother rented a cassette tape of Roots in the mid-‘90s and kept it so long we eventually had to pay huge late fees as it was kept for nearly a year, when I was just a preteen. I knew the name Sepultura before I knew the name Iron Maiden or Judas Priest, just due to family coincidence).

Then of course, the band lost their frontman, in a horrible bitter situation best read about in the ex-singer’s My Bloody Roots biography (I got it for Christmas this year, well worth a read!), and hired replacement singer Derick Green. Ever since, legions of fans have been turning up their noses at new Sepultura albums with a verve normally saved for Bailey-era Maiden or Ripper-era Priest, but with a duration equivalent only to Derris-era Helloween.

Every so often, I’d see someone who really liked a Green-era Sepultura album, or an album like Dante XXI get a positive review in a magazine, but on the whole, the vast majority of the public seem to have decided that the band was over when Max left. Me included until about 3-4 years ago, when I bought their Live In Sao Paulo DVD on a friend’s recommendation and slowly started collecting the studio albums with Derick (I’m only missing two now, which I would have got recently if not for the coronavirus situation at time of writing).

When I started collecting Green-era albums, I felt almost like a bit of a weirdo collecting them though, as despite my one good friend’s fandom, I almost fear I am wasting my money on albums so ignored and dismissed by the public. 90% of the time if I read something about Sepultura it was about how great the olden days were, or about how unloved the latter days are.

Then something interesting happened.  In 2017, Sepultura released Machine Messiah, and it seemed like every review, blog, facebook comment and stray discussion was positive. Not just ‘good for a modern Sepultura album’ but full on, unqualified praise. Good, period. Sepultura, the band who could do no right in the public’s eye, had released an album everyone if not liked, then at least agreed was good. Maybe it was the Dream Theater influenced ‘Iceberg Dances’ that swung the pendulum of public credibility? Who knows. The bottom line was Sepultura were praised again (rightly so, that album is a banger, come back for a review of it too in the future).

I don’t know if aforementioned praise has revitalised their confidence, or they just landed upon the perfect line-up and got better with each album featuring that line-up, or indeed if its just inexplicable lightning in a bottle no one could predict… but 2020’s Quadra is a masterpiece. Its not ‘good for a modern Sepultura album’ its more like ‘possibly the best Sepultura album.’ This is undeniable album-of-the-year material, but more than that. You know when you hear an album, and you just know its special. Crack The Skye? The Blackening? Endgame? Sometimes you just get that ‘I’m hearing something special’ feeling, you know it’s a classic even before time has passed.

Its damn tempting to say the secret to this album’s success is drummer Eloy Casagrande. The man is quite possibly the best drummer in the genre right now. He throws in latin and world music beats sure, it is Sepultura after all; but he can also Thrash like Dave Lombardo, prog out like Thomas Pridgen and bounce like John Otto. Just listen to drum-centric ‘Raging Void’ and then all out Thrasher ‘Isolation’ one after the other to see what I mean. The man is amazing.  

Another thing that its tempting to attribute the albums startling quality to, is the bells and whistles. Its almost like a Fleshgod Apocalypse album at times with the God-Of-War style hell-choirs and apocalyptic sounds, guest female vocals and dynamic production job. The album sounds gigantic. It sounds like an actual giant. Just listen to album closer ‘Fear, Pain, Chaos Suffering’ to see what I mean. It sounds like a videogame boss-fight where the player faces off against a giant/titan/colossus/take your pick of huge thing.

For a while, I also thought the secret to this album was the lead guitar. OK, I like Andreas Kisser, and for the past few years I particularly liked his rhythm work on tracks like ‘Choke’ and ‘Sepulnation’ …but I’d never consider him an amazing guitarist.  Over the years however, he has clearly been listening to a lot of prog metal and become a crazily good lead player. Some of the guitar solos and leads on this record are fantastic. So unique, so interesting, so invigorating. Just check out the instrumental ‘The Pentagram’ or the track which follows it ‘Auetem’ for solid guitar gold.

All those factors certainly contribute to what elevate this album to that ‘special’ place, but I guess the main factor is simply the song-writing and the flow. Every song is needed. Every song contributes something new, but works well against the previous material. There’s no filler, but there’s no repetition either. It strikes a hell of a balance.

Furthermore; Where some other Sepultura albums like Nation or Kairos are jumbled and too varied for their own good, and others like Roots and Against are bloated and in need of an editor, this album just feels like one perfect, consistent, cohesive, singular journey. Wikipedia states it is structured in four parts, to represent the four classical arts, but it really flows like one story from beginning to end. It starts out fast and mean as hell, turns groovy, gets varied then turns prog. Sort of a summary of their career over the course of one record.

Overall; this is one hell of an album. A monster against which all their future efforts will be judged. An amazing sequel to the lauded Machine Messiah and a new standard for quality for aging bands in general. If you had told me in 2005 that Sepultura would release an album this brilliant this late in the game, then I’d have been very sceptical, but I’ll be damned it seems they’ve only gone and released arguably one of the best albums in their whole career

(Ps. For context; as above, this is coming from someone who spent the better part of the last 20 years thinking this band essentially began and ended with Chaos AD and the first half of Roots, so you can trust this is not just blind fanboy devotion).

Sepultura – Live In Sao Paulo DVD review

Sepultura have a good few options if you are into live material. There is the Chaos DVD with the Under Siege video on it with the band touring Arise and playing all their Thrash era songs. There is the Under A Pale Grey Sky cd with the last ever gig of the Max Cavelera line-up on it, playing a lot of material off of Roots and Chaos AD. There is the newer Rock In Rio DVD with the Les Tambors Du Bronx percussion group augmenting them. There’s also plenty of live material on bonus tracks and compilations.

Best of all however, is Sepultura Live In Sao Paulo. It was the first video album with the Derick Green line-up, the first time you got to see and not just hear live versions of material from Roots and Chaos AD and its the only place to hear straight up unaltered versions of material off the Derick Green albums. It was released in 2005 when they were touring Roorback, back when they were still a Gold-selling band.

You get to hear an amazing blend (21 songs!) of material all the way from their earliest EPs and albums with early material like ‘Necromancer’ and ‘Troops Of Doom’ beside the mega-hits from the ’90s like ‘Territory’ and ‘Roots Bloody Roots’ mixed in with more modern gems like ‘Choke’ and what has to be one of the band’s best ever songs in ‘Sepulnation.’ (For me, its in the top 5 songs they ever recorded, any era).

Visually, the album is great. Its really well shot and edited, with no fancy distracting weird camera angels or lenses and no too-fast music video style choppy cuts. The stage set up and tasteful circle of lighting around their tribal ‘S’ logo banner looks really great, and the soundjob and mix are perfect. Sometimes the guitars or the vocals can be too quiet in a live recording, or some times the drums have way too much reverb, or sometimes you can’t hear the crowd’s energy; but here everything is perfectly balanced hear and it all sounds thick and chunky.

The band’s performances are excellent and it really shows off what great musicians they are. I never ‘got’ how good a drummer Igor is until I saw this! I didn’t much care for Derrick Green as a frontman before I saw this an it utterly changed my mind.

It looks great, it sounds great, the tracklist is great and the band play great. What more could you possibly want? Oh well, if you still do want more there is an absolute tonne of extras, with music videos, more live songs, a short making of documentary and biography, a bigger documentary about the band from 1998–2005 and other stuff as well (photogalleries etc.)

Overall; this is a damn strong release from a very important band, and there’s so much on it its great value for money. If like me you were skeptical on them without Max in the band, go on youtube and check out live versions of tracks like ‘Chaos AD’ and especially ‘Sepulnation’ off of this and just try not to be converted! If you are new to the band altogether this is a great starting point blending the best parts of all the eras together.

Get (Into) What You Paid For – Round 4: Episode 1 Day 7 (Part 2)

Now that I’ve covered the spend/temptation/distraction aspects of Get (Into) What You Paid For, its time to cover the titular aspect, by which I mean I’m getting back to reevaluating old purchases which I overlook, and try to get my money’s worth out of them.

S- AHiG

In honour of the return of Slipknot, I’ll kick things off by re-listening to their fourth real album, 2008’s All Hope Is Gone.

It opens with “.execute.” Their first two albums had clearly “intro” intros, and on their third they essentially made a proper song instead but acted like it was an intro. Here, they take the route Lamb Of God took on Resolution and confusingly stick the drum-introduction to a song (track 2, “Gematria (The Killing Name)”) in a previous track (track 1, “.execute.”) while simultaneously sort of re-doing the intro to “Pulse Of The Maggots.”

A few thoughts…. I wonder if Craig titled this intro? Why not just have this be part of “Gematria (The Killing Name)” like they did with “Pulse Of The Maggots”? When they play “Gematria (The Killing Name)” live, do they actually play that drum intro, or play that bit over the speakers and start where the CD cuts the two tracks?

[Quick side note – In my iTunes, “Pulse Of The Maggots” is now split into two different tracks, “Pulse Of The Maggots” preceded by “Intro Of The Maggots” which separates the speech into a separate skippable track, because… song.

Also, I do the same with Slayer’s “Hell Awaits.” The intro is “Awaiting Hell.”]

Anyway… The song opens nicely, with a sort of complex intro like they liked to do so much on Vol. 3 The Subliminal Verses. I like all the pinch harmonics. I think the quick d-beat bit is really out of place. I remember my brother really hating the lyric about “cigarette ash.” Listening to the song now, apart from the vague idea that it is pretending to be heavier than it is, I like this song. I like the fact that it has guitar solos. I like the DJ scratches. I like the catchy bits and the heavy bits. I like the big groove around 3.40. It might better (tighter) if it ended after that instead of continuing, but I think it’s a good song nonetheless.

Next up comes “Sulpher” which was never off music TV when this album came out. I remember being so sick of this song due to how overplayed it became. Now? Nice Death influenced intro. Brilliant main verse. The radio chorus, despite y’know…being a radio chorus… is awesome! I forgot that. I remember it being a sort of two-faced light/shade affair, but I didn’t remember that both sides were good. Nice guitar solo too, and the part under it is neat. Again, the Machine Head influenced big groove (which actually IS the ending this time) is awesome.

OK. Another good song. Call that the first two songs and it’s a 100% success rate so far. I’d easily put both of these in a “Best Of Slipknot” tracklist.

How about track four? “Psychosocial.” I remember thinking that this was trying a bit too hard to replicate the success of Duality. The main riff is actually kind of Ministry or Rob Zombie flavoured if you pay attention. The chorus, hmmm…. Its delicious but so out of place. Oh well, I like it. Who am I trying to please here? Some Blabbermouth troll in an Obituary t-shirt or MY EARS?

More lead-guitar goodness. Hoorah. The midsection with all the snares is cool. A bit “Hey, people enjoy The Blister Exists, what else can we do?” but hey, its cool. Get over it My Brain!

Also luckily, now, its been so long since I’ve watched music TV that its no-longer overplayed AND I’ve forgotten the viral video where its mashed-up with Justin Beiber. So its just a song. A good song.

Next up is “Dead Memories.” “Dead Memories” is awesome. Really nice drums. Some of the best Corey clean vocals in this band. Even though I struggle to accept this song as Slipknot and not Stone Sour and have a sort of principle thing against it, this song is excellent and I love it. Also…boy, oh boy was this thing overplayed at the time.

Wow. I’m really enjoying this record actually. I always think of it as their worst. The career nadir. Its not that bad, and I’ve just listened to the “one with the stupid lyrics” and the three overplayed ones. Now come the deep-cuts!

First up – “Vendetta.” Swirly, death-influenced intro riffs. Stompy feel. Kicks into a great main verse. It could do with having heavier vocals, I remember that being a discussion point against it at the time. I remember the first time I listened to it, in a cramped, smelly room. I remember thinking the band have lost their heaviness.

I think the song also takes a bit too long to get to the chorus. I like the chorus though. Could do with better lyrics… but whatever. I really enjoy this song. I don’t ever remember that this one is called “Vendetta” but I do remember every second of music. I like 80% of said music. This is a good track. The worst thing I could think about it at all is that some of the segments change jarringly, but even that’s stretching it.

“Butcher’s Hook” comes next. The first “weird one.” The Skunkworks one. All Slipknot albums have a few “weird ones.” Going right back to the demos, there was always a love of creepy, off tracks. Every album has a “Tattered And Torn” or “Skin Ticket” or “The Virus Of Life.” The ironic weird thing about this weird track is that it weirdly has a commercial chorus of sorts and despite its clear and obvious weirdness, it is somehow a normal song. If you follow. Its either deceptively digestible despite its progressive nature, or only weird in a token check-box way but actually a normal song. Either way, every part of it is good. I like it. I think of it as this album’s “The Shape.” “The Shape” was weird as balls but could fool you if you weren’t paying attention. But then I guess that’s this band. If you don’t concentrate, you miss the depth and subtleties of a nine-member band who hate conventional song structure and sneak in odd time-sigs without boasting about it.

“Gehenna” is next. It is a slow, creepy one. The lyrics feel like a sequel to the track “Iowa” but the music sounds like a sequel to “Vermillion” with a bit of “Virus Of Life” style synth in there too. The slow, drony verses have a Sci-Fi feel. That one bit where they keep throwing in the heavy snare rolls but going back to the slow dirge is cool. Then it does its own version of a clean chorus (kind of) and becomes a normal song. It kind of steals the song’s weirdness. But the vocal specifics and the part which follow it make me think its trying to be like Antichrist Superstar’s pained outcast artist vibe, and that its all a bit “Minute Of Decay” and we’re unfairly treating it as “Everlong”

Who is we? … cripes, I’m going a bit crazy here! You know what I mean right? I think on the one hand it seems deceptively commercial, but on the other hand it isn’t, its just clean prog not noisy prog. There! I’m not crazy, I’m just dorky! (And trying to please an imaginary, disapproving, super-nerd by protesting too much… totally a normal thing to do!)

Anyway, that song is fine. Not great, but not worth cutting either.

“This Cold Black” follows. This seems like a nice “Metabolic” or “Deluded” or “Welcome.” The good Slipknot. The deep cuts. The “this is Slipknot at their most Slipknot” Slipknot. That Slipknot.

I like this song a lot. The variety in the vocals is cool. I wonder if its Clown or Chris doing the backups, or just Corey putting on a funny voice? The chorus is a bit odd. Sort of jagged, and out of nowhere, and yet its catchy, and when it leaves it makes the next bit sound cooler by contrast. That and the build up with the broken key lyrics over it is cool. A build-up that doesn’t build up? Nice one!

Also, hooray for guitar solos and fast parts! Then that staccato part is nice. And the deathy transition riff doesn’t feel forced either. Definitely one of the better songs on the record. Shame it won’t get played a lot live.

“Wherein Lies Continue” comes. Comes like creepy mutant. Well, not that creepy actually. Pseudo-creepy. This is oddly tame, but still clearly another Skunkworks type thing. Its quite “Virus Of Life.” The heaviest of the three, its like Tattered And Torn if that wasn’t creepy. It does that clean chorus trick the previous ones did. The clean chorus is good though, so what’s the problem brain-jerk? The bit that follows that chorus is awesome. I love those multi-percussion bits in Slipknot. Then, wham! Another Machine Head influenced groove ending! Its not the ending…but, y’know it should be. And then it is, later, when it comes back…because OF COURSE IT SHOULD BE. Also some trippy robot-duck guitar hidden in there too, because layering.

“Snuff” follows. It is awesome. It has always been since first listen my favourite song on the album. Interestingly, for someone with so much difficulty accepting the clean vocals and commercial leanings of the album, my unashamed, un-ironic, honest favourite thing on the whole record is a ballad. A brilliant, powerful, non-cheesy and totally dramatic cinematic ballad. It is awesome. A masterpiece. Well done for writing it Slipknot! No matter what score you’d award this album, it is hugely boosted by this gem. There is more brilliance here than on the full rest of the record combined…. Kind of like how Motely Crue themselves think about Home Sweet Home/Theater Of Pain.

Then to close up the album, comes the final track, the Title Track, “All Hope Is Gone.” It has one of those Vol. 3 complex intros. It has speed. It has DJ scratches. It has noisy blast beats and death influenced riffs in the verses. The chorus is strangely a weird rolling post-chorus. Its quite impressive actually. Oh, that’s why, because its not the chorus, because there’s a groove, with a clean vocal instead. The whole bit before and under (during) the guitar solo is awesome, even if the solo itself isn’t amazing. Then a bit that is so massively Slipknot that it defies further comparison. What did Slipknot add to music that wasn’t there before, you ask? That! This bit!

OK. That song is decent too. This third and final time the chorus comes in its actually cool. I wonder would the song be better if that was the only time it was there though? Oh who cares…stop being so picky, jerkwad. This is a good song. This is a good album. Its still their worst. But now only by a hair instead of by a considerable margin. Jerk off, jerky jerk-impression! Your false memories, prejudice against Corey’s clean singing and sickness at the overplaying of the singles is now not how this album is. How this album is, is good!

PS. Oh yeah, and the bonus track, “Child Of Burning Time” which is pretty much Vermillion again. Only better. Maybe this should’ve been on it instead of “Gehenna” and also should’ve been a single? Considering that enjoying money is a thing…

Also, the decision to put a remix of a song from a track from a previous album in-between two proper songs from this album’s sessions is insane and so I’ve disallowed this madness from my iTunes. That song is put on the end of Vol. 3. The next song here is “Til We Die” because that makes much more sense.

“Til We Die” starts out like a creepy-ass sea-side song, in an alcoholic’s memories. Then suddenly turns into a powerful, real-song version of the intro from Vol. 3. (More real, I mean). It is awesome. This, the previous one, Dead Memories and Snuff are the best material here. They are better than all the ones that actually sound like Slipknot. Maybe they should’ve sold out harder…not tried to hide it with blast beats and death riffs.

[Or maybe it’s a good balance you knee-jerk reacting jerkhole. Maybe they aren’t “covering it up” but rather just mixing two things they enjoy.]

STOP HITTING YOURSELF, NUTCASE!

E – BbB

Next, from something with lots of derision to something with universal credibility in our world; Think 1985… Exodus’ Bonded By Blood.

At the time, even in the deepest throes of my Thrash-passion, from my first days of Thrash Obsession, I always felt that this album was poor. The title track was one of the best songs ever written by anyone and then the rest of the album was dull repetitive cack and the band were much better off on the fantastic next two records, Pleasure Of The Flesh & Fabulous Disaster.

Well; one listen and yup, the Title Track is fantastic. Perfect. No further comments, your honour. The defense rests.

The next song, the song actually called “Exodus,” opens up with a riff that kind of sounds like Dave Mustaine. The vocals are weirdly produced, painfully too-loud and kind of in a metal box. Not Metal. Just metal. That Mustainey riff is fun. The bit of the chorus with the “Get In The Way…” is catchy and sort of punky. I also like the little Iron Maiden-esque jangle before “…and Exodus attack.”

The song has a great guitar solo too. If the vocals were produced normally this would be a pretty perfect Thrash song. The deh-neh-nay-ne-neh thing sounds like early Overkill, which is a bonus. And some of the drum fills here are absolutely bad ass. The song only seems dull and repetitive but all the little touches really make it.

Then there’s the nuclear-themed “And Then There Were None” which opens up with a nice chugging riff augmented by a Tom pattern that I’m sure turns up on Nirvana’s Bleach album somewhere. Love Buzz, maybe? This is perfect mid-paced Thrash. It would be good DVD menu music. Or good under-the-narrator in a Thrash Documentary music.

Its kind of weird that the backing vocals just sing the melody. Like at an Iron Maiden concert…but in the studio. “AAAAAH, ah-ahhh-ah-ah-a-a.”

The whole adventurous mid-section and the fast bit which follows are excellent. I love it during the solo. This is a good song. I remember always wanting to turn the record off afterward though. I think it has that problem of the last few Exodus records that the song is just slightly too long. Of all Exodus records. Sometimes they have a song that’s just too long. They’re awesome, but sometimes they need an editor. Only sometimes.

Next comes one of the band’s then-signature songs (the other being “Piranha”) if my memory of various magazine articles from the time I bought this holds up, “A Lesson In Violence.” I remember resenting this song as a teenager for not being as awesome as it should be given how fond the band seemed to be of it. Interestingly, looking back now, these two are the two shortest and presumably therefor tightest tracks on the album. Free from that too-long thing then!

Oh yes, and the chorus is catchy and awesome. I remember hating the lyrics at first impression (essentially rhyming “lesson in violence” with “lesson in violence”) but now that I’m used to it for years and years, its just music, and that music is good. Also, I like the riffs, the speed and the solos. This is a good song. Bonded by Blood is better but this is still a deserving signature track. Consider me converted. Its great not being 14 anymore, isn’t it? 12 years in the future is a beautiful thing, ey?

Next comes “Metal Command” which I remember thinking sounding dodgy, but now it is charming and NWOBHMy and a sort of missing-link moment like early Overkill. Also the production on the solo is awesome and the brief little neoclassical noodle at the very end of the solo is neat. This song just got stars in my iTunes.

The aforementioned “Piranha” makes its appearance next. This song’s opening riff is kind of Slayer/Sodom/Kreator. It is for the mean-Thrash crowd. The people who don’t necessarily like Anthrax as much as they might. Then it kicks into a more bouncy part. The chorus is catchy. There are way too many effects on the vocals, but that’s a very minor complaint. Also, nice solo. The H-team always were awesome at guitar solos. This album in general is way better than my first impression of it was. I wonder if it was just the whole line-up changes thing messing my brain around with Exodus, causing side-choosing.

[Side note: Ohhh, ooooh. Remember that whole intro thing, like “Awaiting Hell”? etc. I do that with Exodus’ “Deranged” because…that intro makes me skip the whole of Deranged when really I should only skip the intro.]

Next up, a nice bit of variety. “No Love” opens up with a nice, fancy, tasteful Spanish Guitar, clean intro. That was a big thing on Thrash openers wasn’t it? – Sometimes separate tracks, sometimes not. – Pleasure To Kill, Alice In Hell, Ride The Lightning etc… they all have that. A little bit of Spanish guitar before the Thrash. I wonder why they didn’t make this the first track then?

Maybe they did, and then they realized that the title track was so absolutely fantastic that nobody had time to wait for it, and so that just HAD TO be the first track?

Anyway, once the Metal-bit starts, it’s a bit more midpaced again. In a slightly off time-sig that reminds me of a specific Dream Theater moment on Awake which I can’t remember right now. Also, the way he say’s “The Darkness Is My Lover” is clearly influenced by Accept. I would have never noticed that before. Also it sounds like he says “Leather” and not “Lover.”

Oh, there’s a neat NWOBHMy bit around 2.40. Then a neat solo. This song is full of surprises. And some bad-ass fills once it slows down around that next set of solos. This song is what we in the Thrash fan world call a mini-epic, and I never even realized. Shame. I wish I realized how good it was at the time I got it. Oh well. I know now.

Next up is “Deliver Us To Evil” which by its two-minutes-longer duration might actually be a mini-epic. It has some nice little touches. With its stop-start bit, and bouncy drums. It also has slightly choppy, but proggy complexity, which at the time I mistook for “not playing properly.” Woops. I guess my brain wasn’t developed enough when I got this initially.

It has a really fun Maideny/Priesty bit underneath the solos around the four-minute-mark. Some really fun riffs!

Lastly, the fast one. Back in the day, instead on ending on the obvious closer… they would usually end on a super fast, shorter song. That happens here. This speedy track could easily be described as a “teeth kicker.” This is pure Thrash. Absolutely pure. Almost too pure? I remember thinking this was too simplistic at the time. I was WRONG at the time. Good song, good album, good band. Good subgenre.

Oh yeah, and here’s a TOP 5s thing for Thrash:

Exodus :
1. Bonded By Blood
2. Fabulous Disaster
3. Brain Dead
4. Chemi-Kill
5. Seeds Of Hate

Testament :
1. The Preacher
2. Souls Of Black
3. Into The Pit
4. Practice What You Preach
5. Apocalyptic City

Metallica :
1. Blackened
2. Creeping Death
3. Master Of Puppets
4. Eye Of The Beholder
5. Ride The Lightning

Forbidden :
1. March Into Fire
2. Forbidden Evil
3. Twisted Into Form
4. Hypnotized By The Rhythm
5. Infinite

Kreator :
1. People Of The Lie
2. Coma Of Souls
3. Terrible Certainty
4. Stream Of Consciousness
5. Pleasure To Kill

Annihilator :
1. Alice In Hell
2. Road To Ruin
3. W.T.Y.D
4. Stonewall
5. I Am In Command

Anthrax :
1. I Am The Law
2. A.I.R
3. One Man Stands
4. Lone Justice
5. Death Rider

Megadeth :
1. Rust In Peace (Polaris)
2. Set The World Afire
3. Hook In Mouth
4. Peace Sells
5. Mechanix

Slayer :
1. Postmortem
2. Raining Blood
3. Blood Red
4. South Of Heaven
5. Crionics

Nuclear Assault :
1. Survive
2. Brainwashed
3. Critical Mass
4. Nuclear War
5. Game Over

Overkill :
1. Overkill
2. I Hate
3. Elimination
4. In Union We Stand
5. Feel The Fire

As for the bands who I don’t feel I can make a Top 5 for, my favourtie Sacred Reich song is “Whos To Blame.” My favourtie Death Angel song is “Veil Of Deception.” My favourtie Vio-lence song is “World Within A World.” My favourtie Exhorder song is “Un-born Again.” My favourtie Heathen song is “Pray For Death.” My favourtie Onslaught song is “Thrash Till The Death.” My favourtie Sepultura thrash-era song is “Beneath The Remains.” My Sodom song is “Agent Orange.” My favourtie Voivod song is “Tribal Convictions.”

Get (Into) What You Paid For: Vol. 3. Day 52 – The Memory Remains

Its day 52 of my third Get (Into) What You Paid For challenge. There’s ten days left. Even though it got extended to be an extra month long, I’ve been adhering to the challenge and haven’t broken it yet thanks to the Christmas gifts I discussed last time, which have taken the urge to buy myself stuff away for a while. I’ve been working through it. I’ve watched Sound City, I’ve read Joey Shithead’s autobiography, I’ve been heavily listening to Porcupine Tree’s Deadwing and Tesseract’s new album. I’ve been playing Arkham Origins. The entertainment part of my life is pretty well serviced.

I’ve also finished the comics that I got for Christmas from my friend Magnum, and am in the mood for more. Which leads us to the part of the article where I discuss what I would buy if I wasn’t on the challenge not to buy things:

I remember when I first planned to buy comics, I wanted to read three stories. Year One, Knightfall and No Man’s Land. This was due to reading the Wikipedia page for The Dark Knight Rises movie.

I got given a lend of Year One by my friend Magnum straight away. I have never gotten around to reading the other two. After having played the three Arkham games, and just recently finishing the campaign mode of Arkham Origins, I really want to get around to reading them now.

There’s two problems with that though… first off, postage and packaging. Second off, Knightfall is three books and No Man’s Land is five books. So; in order to read these two stories, I need to buy eight books, and eight sets of postage and packaging. You add them to your basket and then think…oooh that’s a bit too much for me right now, and then the postage comes on top and it’s like…hmmm, definitely not now.

The same thing happens in a value for money way. I have a weird notion that I want to buy the first three Poison albums, but for under £1 each. Which is possible on amazon at times, but then the postage for three albums is about six quid, and then suddenly its not worth it anymore. I worry that it’ll be completely terrible but I’m kind of fascinated. I think that people will feel the same way about Limp Bizkit in a few years (Nu Metal is very much the Hair Metal of my generation and Emo is the Nu Metal of the next generation after me, and I’m sure there’ll be some Dubstep-infused-Post Hardcore movement starting to take off soon that will be the one for today’s twelve year olds).

Y’know what else I’d like. More Son’s Of Anarchy. I watched the first four seasons which are available on Netflix over the Christmas break and now I want to see the next three seasons. At first I wasn’t actually keen on the show, but I really got into it and now I really want to see more. I can’t decide if I should buy a boxset or wait until its all finished and buy a complete set or wait until more goes up on Netflix. I don’t know if that’s a thing that happens. Is it? Tell me in the comments if that’s likely to occur.

But I’m trying not to buy those things; so instead, I’ll use the things I already have. Money for comics and campy Hair Metal songs would be much better spend on rent, electricity, food and other essentials, right?

With that in mind, here is the section where I discuss the things I listened to that I already owned:

So onto the aforementioned listening-for-distraction stakes; I’ve put on Fair To Midland’s proper debut album (or third album if you count independent releases), the lengthily titled Fables From A Mayfly: What I Tell You Three Times Is True.

I got their follow-up to this, Arrows & Anchors because the internet buzz was that if you liked Rishloo or Coheed & Cambria, then you should check out Fair To Midland. I do like Rishloo and Coheed & Cambria. I like them a lot. So… I checked out Arrows & Anchors and really enjoyed it. It took me a while to get around to picking up this one.

Its less instant than Arrows & Anchors. Its less driving, less powerful. It takes a lot more time to soak in. Its an album you have to give a lot more time to, in order to get the same sort of return back from it. But the return is definitely there to be had.

It feels a lot longer than it is though, at forty-eight minutes it feels like its about an hour and a half in duration. Not because its bad or anything. I guess, in a way, its kind of dense. Not Neurosis dense. But still… there’s a lot to it.

I like this album a lot, but its more of an whole-album-in-one-sitting affair than the other one, it’s the kind of thing where you have to put on the whole record and pay attention to it, rather than knowing the song titles and having a favourite song. Its just as good, but its less fun, if that makes any sense.

I’ve also been re-listening to Kreator’s Pleasure To Kill album a lot recently. Its one of those albums that you always read is absolutely brilliant, but which I’ve sometimes had a bit of a grudge against.

I know that Kreator’s next three albums are brilliant, well-written catchy Thrash records with many parts that sound like Forbidden, Anthrax and Megadeth and not just grim, heavier versions of ‘Chemical Warfare’ by Slayer on repeat. For some reason though, that’s exactly how I find myself thinking about Pleasure To Kill. I think its just a constants stream of d-beats over one buzzy riff and some ’80s death-vocals, with no variety.

I think this may be because the kind of people who told me Sodom’s Obsessed By Cruelty or Sepultura’s Morbid Visions were good, were the same people who recommend this. (Two albums which I find incredibly dull, repetitive and not to my tastes, by the way). Naturally, I’m suspicious of it. It also doesn’t help that the first song (excluding the intro) is the sort of high tempo, frantic pounding sort of thing that confirms this suspicion. Also, its just one of those things were you made your mind up about it once, years ago, and it never occurred to you to challenge the notion until just now.

Recently though, I’ve been listening to it over and over, and noticing parts that don’t sound like Obsessed By Cruelty. Lots and lots of parts. Over half the damn record. It’s a really good, creative Thrash album with lots of tempo changes, breakdowns, Anthraxy parts and all that good stuff that the next three Kreator albums that I don’t write-off all have.

Woops.

Oh well; at least I know now. I paid for it, it’s a good job it turned out to be good. Even if I was late to realize it.

Maybe I’ll go back and listen to Obsessed By Cruelty and find out its just as fresh and fun as Among The Living and that this whole relentless pounding thing was all a bad dream.

You know what else I did? I listened to Dark Side Of The Moon again. It seems like an obvious thing to do, but I can’t actually remember the last time I listened to it. When I first got into Pink Floyd I listened to them so, so, so much, and watched their DVDs so, so much, that it kind of feels like, I don’t need to listen to them again sometimes. Like, I’ve listened to them so much its just imprinted in my brain forever and its redundant to listen to them any more.
Its kind of such an obvious thing to do, that I don’t even think of it anymore. Should I listen to Pink Floyd? – Well, are you alive? – Yes, I am alive – Then of course you should listen to Pink Floyd. In fact, you are probably already listening to Pink Floyd, just pay more attention.

Maybe all the Porcupine Tree and Riverside had been filling my Floydism receptors in my brain and I didn’t realize I was missing any. Anyway; I remembered to listen to them again.

What a good album. You don’t need me to tell you that. Nobody ever has to say it again. Yes; this and Led Zeppelin 4 are good albums. We know.

I enjoyed myself. I must remember to listen to Pink Floyd again. Sure, it may be for the thousandth time, but its always going to be good.

You know everything I just said about Pink Floyd? Well yeah, that again… only for Pantera. This album is so good, so fundamental to what I like about music, has so many of my favourite songs on it, that I absolutely forget to listen to it.

I’m not sure whether this, Master Of Puppets or Reign In Blood would be considered the Dark Side’ of Metal by the public, but for me, its definitely up there. I was going to start listing the things I like about this record, but it ended up being every single one of the things about this record. The only thing at all wrong with this is that ‘By Demons Be Driven’ has one chorus too many. Otherwise this is a flawless, perfect album. Every riff, every solo, every vocal line. The charming production. The performances. The variety. Its all exactly what I want out of music.

How good is the And Justice For All-sounding clean bit at the start of Hollow? How good is the heavy bit of Hollow? How good are Phil’s clean vocals on This Love? How good are Phil’s grunts, growls and screams on Fucking Hostile and Regular People? How good are the drum fills? The guitar solos?

I guess the take home message is, remember to listen to your favourite albums. They are your favourite albums, remember?

The Scott Burns Project II – Sepultura: Beneath The Remains

I once had a cherished copy of Beneath The Remains on vinyl that I received for Christmas not long after I’d started my very first job. Around that time, I’d started collecting rarities released by my favourite bands, and amassed an impressive collection of LPs, EPs, cassettes of demos and other assorted curios that I’ve sold since then with some amount of regret, simply because back around 2003-2006, rare stuff just wasn’t rare. A week wouldn’t go by with a copy or two of the Cradle Of Filth Coffin edition of Dusk…And Her Embrace popping up on eBay. Prices were still high, but at least you could find the things. Now, it’s a different matter altogether. It’s been a while since I’ve seen any of the metal rarities I once called my own on Ebay. My Beneath The Remains LP was particularly prized because it was autographed and came with an excellent poster of a very young Sepultura which took pride of place on my bedroom wall. What I liked about the idea of it being signed is that it captured  a moment that could no longer happen naturally. Now, a copy of Beneath The Remains signed by its original players could only be obtained by selective autograph-hunting. Whenever this copy was defaced, it meant nothing that those four men signed it at the same time. It wasn’t necessary to snatch it away from another person, pen in hand, because they didn’t play on it. Plus that poster was REALLY cool.

I never, though, got all the way into Beneath The Remains. Like Napalm Death’s Fear, Emptiness, Despair, it’s very much a Side A record. After Mass Hypnosis, I just lost interest. That was probably down to the fact that, thanks to live recordings of those songs, I was just more exposed to them. Let me run a little mental tic by you, here. Have you ever felt that songs from an album that aren’t either singles or at least recorded live on one occasion for commercial release are less worthy? It only applies to bands with lots of output, and in the 90s live B-Sides were a huge deal, but still, it always came across to me that if it wasn’t worthy of live play or having a video being made, why was it included on the record? I don’t think that so much now, and it never applied to albums I loved all the way through like Fear Factory’s Demanufacture, but for a band like Speultura, whose Arise, Chaos AD and Roots albums in particular were very extensively covered in live recordings, it became a bit of a thing for me. It wasn’t a choice, as such. I didn’t opt not to listen to the songs because they were beneath me. It just felt like there was less reason to listen to them.

So here we are. I know “Beneath The Remains”, “Inner Self”, “Stronger Than Hate” (which cheats, by being wedged between those other three live staples) and “Mass Hypnosis” like the back of my hand on each relevant air-instrument (and on actual drums, too), but the second half of the album is like a cousin I never see. I know the face, I know the name, but I don’t know what music they like or what their favourite book is. Time to find out, methinks, and with this last paragraph in mind, the only comment I have on Side A of Beneath The Remains is that that one section in the middle of Stronger Than Hate (it starts around 3:58 and lasts for about 20 seconds) is what I’d isolate to show someone like my dad, a priest, or a space alien (or “alien”) who wanted a succinct aural definition of the essence of thrash metal.

That poster I mentioned, handily obscured as though its seller didn’t want to part with it

First thing I need to mention is the production. This was an early job for Scott as producer, having already mixed a few recordings for the likes of Death and Nasty Savage. He was flown to Brazil at Christmas in 1988 to work nights because no-one else from Roadrunner wanted the job. Obviously it worked out for him, as with this and Obituary’s Slowly We Rot dropping in 1989 it really announced him as a go-to-guy for metal production, particularly for emergent sounds like Seps’ third-world aggression and Obituary’s groove-heavy death and improvised vocals. The production is very clear, a first for Sepultura, and nothing is lost in the mix. The guitars have a clean buzz to them and the riffs and solos are perfectly defined. The drums are another matter, with the toms sounding too, um, I guess “note-y” is the word I’m looking for. Perhaps they’re too highly tuned. There’s also this bizarre sensation that occurs when a crash cymbal and the bass drum are hit at the same time that appears on Death’s Leprosy and Spiritual Healing albums which is very hard to describe but doesn’t sound naturally possible, like the sound opens like a flower in some way your brain can only just comprehend and that had to have been added artificially in post. Hmm. If I find a specific example, I’ll point it out. Let’s start, though, with the oddly titled “Sarcastic Existence” (which is sadly, and I mean that, fucking SADLY, not a audio biography of Chandler Bing)

It kicks off with faded-in lone drums, which I like because I’m always excited to hear instruments in isolation on professionally recorded albums, and most especially the drums. The thrash riffing that’s going on here isn’t making me regret my decision to ignore this track for all those years, but there’s a nice lead section layered over it that speaks volumes about Sepultura’s knack for arrangement that led to them becoming one of the best metal acts in the world over the course of five years and after an endearingly laughable debut.  When the vocals kick in after nearly two minutes after a fade-up vocal thing, it really does feel like those very minutes were a complete waste of time. The sensation of “WHAT was the point?” is keenly felt. There’s a breakdown with a double-bass/ guitar pairing that’s pretty cool and I’m reminded how vastly better this is to Schizophrenia. Sepultura’s confidence on this album is infectiously exciting, for sure. They’ve idea’s to match their playing ability and I can see why this became so big. I should also confess I never got into thrash in a big way and it’s because of repetition the genre is built on, but there’s enough variation WITHIN the necessary repetition on BTR that it’s reputation is easily justified. Another awesome bass-and-hats section also proves why Igor is the standout musician of the group (though it was Max’s STILL-unique vocals that won fans over). The ending is particularly cool, with a you want a time signature? HERE’S FOUR IN AS MANY SECONDS tom roll thing and then a cut to silence.

Just the worst piece of merchandise that exists

“Slaves Of Pain” has another one of those 50-second-nonsense-intros, but when it gets to the chorus it’s like you’ve been waiting the whole album for it. It really does have that ‘it’s here’ sense about it.  Like when the chorus to “Don’t Stop Believing” comes in after three odd minutes of music. There’s a really short lead/solo bridge and then that awesome chorus again, before going back to the verse, and it occurs to me that this song has been nearly symmetrical so far, which is totally self-imposed but awesome nonetheless. Then, some soloing. Andreas has a good combination of shredding and note-noodling that I always liked. There’s a really heavy breakdown with a close-to-industrial riff, and then another of my favourite tricks in music, which is keeping the riff the same but doubling the tempo (RATM’s debut has several good examples of this). The next section is an album highlight, with an incredible riff and great drumming by Igor which has more ideas in twenty seconds than the rest of the song. Then the chorus again, a few bars of drum fills, two cymbal catches and CUT. In, out, down. Very efficient.

The timing on “Lobotomy” is very ambitious, but not showoffy, and works very well at adding another dimension to the thrash. I don’t care at all for the main verse riff, but I’m an asshole, so I let them away with it. There’s a cool section in the middle which sounds like a Disney villain deflating at a film’s climax, but I’m largely not involved in this song, so let’s talk about Michael Whelan’s amazing cover image of a man surrounded by great big stones and bigger-still flowers with a giant bat face, and all on a smoking skull YEARS before Stone Cold Steve Austin was WWF champion. Man, that was WORTH having on wax. I might get another copy just for that art (as this site’s owner, the esteemed Mr. K.C.Prog, would do ). Fun fact – the cover for Obituary’s Cause Of Death, another Whelan painting, was originally intended to serve as this album’s cover. Book nerds (like….YOU, right there!) also might recognize Whelan’s work from his Dark Tower illustrations for Steven King. He’s badass. I must see about getting a book of his work.

Shit, another song started, Jesus, a minute ago! More thrashing with personality, but my interest is definitely waning here. I’ll tell you one thing, I wish the hi-hats were a little more open. I hate the one-note feel they have here. It sounds too much like keeping time. Man, maaaan, that’s what the RIDE’S for, man. Hats is for groove yo. Let that shit breathe, Cavalera baby.

Seriously friends, I love Igor Cavalera so frigging much. This man is my drum idol. I’d say the vast majority of what I’ve stolen from other players comes from him, as does a great deal of my drumming body language. He’s my messy little dyed-blonde Brazilian batteria. Heart emoticon.

By the time “Primitive Future” (another awful title!) comes in, ’89 Seps have neatly settled into that category of bands I’d love to see live, at the time, preferably buzzing off energy drinks and good company, but wouldn’t listen to on record. Like post-Harmony Corruption Napalm Death. A night’s wreck-necking, no strings attached. Insert fellatio joke here, and mail to “Your mom, My Bed, Lawl’z Avenue, Tooting, America”

The chorus from “Slaves Of Pain”, no wait, that’s stupid, that whole song would have been a much better ending. All said and done, I’m keeping only two tracks – “Stronger Than Hate” and “Slaves Of Pain”. I’d have figured more, but so doth the cookie crumbleth. So long.

Next time – All FOUR of Burns’ collaborations with Deicide. Note – if you’re a Deicide fan, you might want to skip it… In the meantime, check out THIS article I wrote over at my own blog about how Beneath The Remains’ sleeve was edited for no damn reason at all when the album was re-released on CD in 1997, and happy tidings, Internet chums…