All We Ever Were. Just Zeroes And Ones.

Nine Inch Nails – Year Zero

It was a Christmas miracle. Not only did Trent Reznor release a new Nine Inch Nails album a mere two years after the last one (four years ahead of schedule), but at the same time he put out a live DVD, masterminded a brilliantly original promotion campaign for the record and started an international tour (Sydney show reviews coming soon!)

Calling the Year Zero promotion a marketing campaign is a little dismissive, it's really an extension of the album itself in which the plot and setting behind the album's concept are fleshed out and explained by a cluster of secret websites. The album on it's own probably wouldn't make much sense out of this context and reading the websites is a fun experience in itself, not to mention the liveliness of the little community that has sprung up around trying to unravel the clues to reveal the next site and piece it all together.

Before I even get to the album there are three things that need to be mentioned about how well Trent handled the release of this album. Firstly, he's been very savvy about the use of the internet in promoting his music and in his handling of piracy. While most of his peers in the music industry are still, even five years after this stuff went mainstream, viewing the internet with mistrust, as if it were some kind of fad that they just have to weather until they can deliver DRM strong and draconian enough to make your computer grow legs, jump out the window and run down to the police station to report you if you try to play anything that you haven't paid for. The Year Zero ALG (dopey terminology but it's the only name we have to describe this stuff for now) got the online fanbase onboard in promoting the album before anyone had even heard it. The deliberate leaking of a few songs well in advance turned out to be a smart move too. But the thing that impressed me most was how on the very day that a high quality leak of Year Zero appeared online, the whole album was made available for streaming off the official website. Rather than being tempted to download it I just listened to it once off the website and then waited for the proper album release. I doubt it made a lot of difference to how much the album was pirated but it's probably the smartest thing that can be done about it in this day and age.

The second thing that impressed me was the very idea of the Year Zero ALG itself. Trent has been bitching for years about how no one does proper album art any more, the days of big beautiful LP artwork are long gone and it looks like even the cramped, small confines of the CD case shall soon be a thing of the past. I've been waiting for someone to click and realise that with online distribution they now have the whole internet as a canvas on which to supplement their music. I should have guessed that NIN would be the first ones to do so.

Lastly I have also been impressed by this Open Source Resistance thing that they've started up. It's worse than a cliché when a band stands up and rants about politics and the state of the world, but rather than just bitching Trent is actually using his fame and influence to actually try and start something that could make a difference. It remains to be seen where this OSR business will end up going, but even if it does nothing more than to promote peace and art then it will be a worthwhile endeavour. At the very least it will make a refreshing antidote to Rage Against the Machine's uncomfortably violent exhortations.

It easy to dismiss artists taking pot shots at the powers that be. They don't have any power to change anything and it sometimes seems like they never make any real difference. But while listening to Year Zero I realised that the fact that I believe the things I do is at least partially attributable to the fact that while I was growing up people were willing to stand up and say “Hey this is bullshit” when they saw it, either directly or via the medium of popular culture. It might not seem like much on it's own, but little by little the influence of these things does accumulate and does make a difference in shaping the world.

The dystopian future world of Year Zero is fairly unoriginal. Climate change is starting to cause real harm, the western nations are embroiled in war in the Middle East and their governments are taking increasingly aggressive moves to curtail the freedoms of their citizens. Yes, the future is just like today, only more so. Such a generic sounding story would be a little thin for a movie or novel but it is perfectly suited to being the concept for a rock album where a more complicated narrative would drag things down.

So anyway, onto the music. If you've heard the single 'Survivalism' then you know pretty much what to expect. Trent has kept the music pretty uniform in texture for the duration of the album; crunchy, minimal, electronic and totally laptop-mungus. This is an appropriate (if not commercially savvy) decision, as it reinforces the message of the album's concept and it makes the few spots where the music departs a little from that style so much more striking.

The album opens with 'Hyperpower!', a short instrumental prologue in the vein of a military march which is the closest thing on the album soundwise to Nine Inch Nails' previous output (possibly because the screaming in the background reminds one of 'The Becoming' or perhaps something off Broken).

Most of the tracks on Year Zero are, like those on With Teeth, short, succinct and to the point. This suits Trent pretty well as he has always had a flair for putting his dirty industrial instrumentation in pop arrangements. 'The Beginning of the End' and 'Survivalism' are the best examples of this (the former track has a beat lifted straight out of 'My Sharona'), and most songs on the album exude a wealth of catchiness.

The next few tracks stretch out their running time a little more, 'The Good Soldier', a gentle song with violent lyrics, ends with a sweet guitar solo that is one of my favourite moments on the album. In contrast 'Vessel' (a dirty, sexy song about drug addiction that recalls 'Closer' and 'With Teeth') ends with a freaky electronic glitch out which is also very satisfying.

As a whole I think this album has some of the best lyrics Trent has ever written. I'm impressed with how well he has succinctly and unpretentiously presented the story behind the concept while also making each song at least somewhat relevant and interesting on it's own. Sure this is kind of easy because every element of Trent's freaky dystopian future nightmare is drawn straight from today's headlines (imminent environmental catastrophe, authoritarian governments keeping the population stupid, kids taking lots of drugs) but it's still very well done. The lyrical highlight of the first half of the album is the tremendous (and tremendously unsubtle) 'Capital G':

I pushed a button and elected him to office and ah,
He pushed a button and he dropped the bomb.
You pushed a button and could watch it all on television,
Those motherfuckers didn't last too long.

That's a pretty cool opening stanza, but it gets better. It's immensely satisfying to hear someone so sharply stick it to all the right wing media blowhards who have sold their integrity in order to brainlessly toe the party line no matter how inane, stupid or dangerous it gets.

Later on the music starts to deviate more from the style and mood established early on. 'The Greater Good' is one of the best tracks on the album, a creepy ambient piece with whispered lyrics describing brainwashing in both overt and more subtle forms. After the brilliant 'The Great Destroyer' (in which a crazy ex-soldier gone terrorist announces his intention to “murder everything”) comes 'Another Version of the Truth', a peaceful piano piece (no NIN album would be complete without one). Is it just me or is the motif of the first half straight out of Chopin's 'Mazurka'? It's not the first time I've heard a snippet of a Romantic composers work in a Nine Inch Nails song.

The last two tracks, 'In This Twilight' and 'Zero-Sum' are sad album closers in the vein of 'Hurt' or 'Right Where It Belongs'. At this point in the album's story the world is literally coming to an end, although it remains unspecified exactly why. At various times it is suggested that it is either by environmental catastrophe, the vengeance of God, the vengeance of angry aliens or perhaps the work of the psycho narrating 'The Great Destroyer'. I like the implication that from a certain perspective these are all the same thing; “...and all of this is a consequence, brought on by our own hand, if you believe in that sort of thing”. In terms of sadness the lyrics of these songs give even 'Hurt' or 'Something I Can Never Have' a run for their money. Honestly, the first time I heard 'Zero-Sum' I almost started crying. At work.

And the sky is filled with light,
Can you see it?
All the black is really white,
If you believe it...

from 'In This Twilight' is sad enough, but then you get to 'Zero-Sum':

And I guess I just wanted to tell you,
As the light starts to fade,
That you are the reason,
That I am not afraid
And I guess I just wanted to mention
As the heavens will fall
We will be together soon if we
Will be anything at all.

Sniff sniff...

A maudlin ending to a Nine Inch Nails album is no surprise but this time Trent has found a way for his miserable message to become one of hope. The internet sites associated with Year Zero reveal that they, and the album, are actually artifacts sent back in time from the date of this future armageddon in the hopes that those of us who receive the message can do something to avert humankind from the course it is on. We'll try future Trent!

Year Zero may not be quite up to the musical standard of The Downward Spiral or The Fragile but it's not far off and it's concept along with the brilliantly well done supplemental material raise it's profile to that of a pretty legendary album in my estimation. Plus it has a song about George Bush dying and finding himself in hell. Awesome.

Sunday Night Satanic Head Fuck

Sunn O)))
Boris
Live in Sydney, May 6^th

I just came back from another mad weekend. At least this time I stayed within Sydney and it's immediate environs but I still ended up snatching only a few hours sleep on Friday and Saturday. This meant it was time to unenthusiastically shuffle along to another concert on the Sunday night, with a part of me wishing I was in bed but knowing that I would regret missing either of these bands.

The show was at the Factory Theatre in Enmore, which I'd never heard of before but turned out to be a very nice, spacious venue. The audience were generally an odd mix of metallers and hipsters, with black rimmed glasses and 'Trve Norwegian Black Metal' t-shirts combined comfortably in the same outfit.

You can't really tell from this picture but he's playing a double necked headless guitar, with one neck normal guitar and one neck bass guitar. Cool.

Boris were up first. I'm not that familiar with their stuff currently (although this will be remedied soon because they were fantastic) but I have been exposed to a fair amount of it via an old flatmate. These guys are a three piece from Japan and their music is pretty hard to categorise. The first half of their set comprised of a couple of long slow doom metal songs. Sparse vocals, moody melodies and long drawn out ambient build ups erupting into bursts of heaviness. After about half an hour of this stuff they suddenly launched into a set of high energy, upbeat numbers, which were punk in arrangement but retained a good dose of screechy electronic strangeness. In both modes they completely rocked my pants off. They're an absolutely brilliant live band in every respect (all three of them stunned me with their technical chops), with the drummer providing all the over the top stage antics expected of a Japanese band.

Cute petite Japanese girl played some seriously mean guitar. Awesome.

Also, it was nice to go to a metal gig with no moshing. Everyone was headbanging enthusiastically so there was a good vibe, but it was a pretty arty, geeky crowd and it was a welcome relief not to have to battle a thousand smelly meatheads just to hear some music.

Sunn O))) are named after a brand of amplifiers. Makes sense, they sure use a lot of them.

Next up were Sunn O))). These guys are an American drone metal band, and for this tour their line up featured the drummer from Boris on percussion and Attila Csihar (vocalist for Mayhem when they recorded De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas!). It was a very unique performance. Four of the musicians basically just stood there and let their guitars feed back for the whole hour, pausing only to occasionally twiddle knobs on their amps and effects decks, and very occasionally to play a note or two, while the percussionist rumbled away on a huge gong and Attila chanted ominous nonsense. To be honest while watching it I was pretty bored. It's a cool concept but there wasn't enough going on to keep the audience interested and in my worn out state I really just felt like going to sleep (it probably would have been better to have been seated for their set). Even just a couple of minutes into the set when only one member had appeared on stage and was just playing two bass notes over and over again I was tempted to turn around to my friend and sing 'Booooooooooooooringggggggggggg' along with the music. I didn't because I felt it would have been uncharitable that early on, but it did prove to be a fairly accurate prediction for the set ahead. There was one cool bit near the end when the drummer got to get up front and do a bit of screaming, posturing and crowd surfing, which injected some much needed dynamism into the act, but for the majority of the set it was much of the same.

Attila with the bass player. Like all good satanic monks they are dressed in spooky red robes.

On the other hand once you just let your brain switch off it became quite meditative. These guys like to play pretty fucking loud (although it wasn't as loud as I was expecting) and the constant drone of feedback is a pretty intense sort of sound (I could feel my trousers vibrating against my leg from the bass) so that the concert becomes as much a physical experience as a musical one. I have to admit my head is still ringing even now, and even though at the time it was a bit boring it's an experience that effects you on a subconscious level (I certainly had some interesting dreams about satanists dressed in red robes that night) and something about it has stayed with me in a way that Boris hasn't.

Time for a spot of ominous gong bashing.

Still for me (and from what I could tell for the rest of the audience too) Boris were the highlight. Those guys rocked out like motherfuckers and they're a contender for the best concert I've seen this year.

New Music In Brief

A few musicians I'm interested in have released new songs recently:

Marilyn Manson. I had vague hopes that this might be a return to form but it's not to be. Much to my dismay he seems to be courting the emo crowd. Dude, you made Antichrist Superstar and Mechanical Animals! You're so much better than that!

Korn. To no ones great surprise their new song is a big pile of shit. Only these knuckle heads could enlist the likes of Terry Bozzio and still end up with crap music. He does get an awesome solo in the middle but other than that you'd barely realise that it's him. I don't think I can listen to this album, it'd just be too depressing.

Thank god for Jordan Reyne, who we can still rely on for total brilliance.

And in the interest of keeping abreast of everything Tool related. Watch this, even though it's seven or eight years old.

You're Still More Of A Man Than Anyone I've Ever Known

Casino Royale
Directed by Who Cares

I'm not much of a James Bond fan, but this was the only film I was tempted to watch on the airline's playlist when I flew back from Auckland (they only had the same Family Guy ep I watched last time and no Simpsons! Disgraceful!). I've seen most of the Pierce Brosnan films in theatres and in an incredibly stupid action movie kind of way I found them satisfying, scratching that masculine urge to see things go fast, blow up, drink cocktails and show cleavage, not necessarily in that order.

This one fucking sucked though. There was not enough action, terrible pacing and boring villains, basically the plot was rubbish. Daniel Craig makes a decent enough Bond, but the story is paced like it was the debut novel by a second rate potboiling hack. Oh wait, it was. At any rate I don't know what soulless audience-testing money hungry multinational picture company greenlighted a script in which the titular climactic casino scene is over by the two thirds mark and most of the rest of the film is a long drawn out hug and kiss between Bond and his new girlfriend, during which he may as well have written 'target practice' on her forehead.

Which brings me to another topic, the confused error of the writers in assuming that James Bond should have a personality or human motivations. In the recent films at least James Bond is not a person, he is an emotionless robot consuming Martinis and releasing them at high velocity in the form of bullets, ejaculate or one liners as the situation requires. Any attempt to humanise what is really only a laughably shallow Hollywood projection of a hyper masculine Ur-Male is misguided in the most amusing way possible. Which is why when the female 'lead' (why even bother with the indignity of the term, any woman in a Bond film is there only to be fucked and/or die (OK except for Judi Dench, but I bet the studio execs are wishing they could replace her with a man)) utters the line “If the only thing left of you was your smile and your little finger, you'd still be more of a man than anyone I've ever known,” I had to resist the temptation to turn around, wake up the old lady sleeping beside me and gesture at the screen saying “Can you believe this shit? How stupid do they think movie goers are today?”

I Know That I Suck

Skinny Puppy – Mythmaker

I was ready to bag this album. The Greater Wrong of the Right had engendered some high expectations, but just yesterday I gave their latest album, Mythmaker, one last listen and found that it had suddenly raised significantly in my estimation. Maybe it was because I was jogging when I listened to it this time (a bit of adrenaline can be just what some music needs to be appreciated), or maybe it was because my shitty iPod earphones finally gave up the ghost on Friday (ripping them to pieces was ever so satisfying) and I bought new ones; cheap ass thirty dollar Sony jobs but they still sound like a chorus of angels when compared to Apple's headphones, which do their best to reproduce the acoustic properties of an epileptic beating a trash can lid during a violent fit.

Whatever the reason, I've decided it's not so bad. It's certainly a departure from their signature sound (even more so than The Greater Wrong of the Right or The Process) and even though it is a logical progression from their previous album, it sounds more than anything like the fractured dance pop of Oghr (vocalist Ogre's side project that he worked on during the years that Skinny Puppy were broken up). Compared to what would be considered their classic albums it's extremely poppy and far less edgy or abrasive, but there's still quite a bit of interesting stuff going on musicwise. As usual these guys are masters of electronic texture and crazy beats that still somehow come out catchy.

A few tracks really stand out. 'Pedafly' is absolutely brilliant, with an awesome talkbox style hook that ranks among the most infectious things I've heard all year. It's followed by 'Jaher', based around a pretty acoustic guitar riff which showcases their downbeat, moody side. It's a bit of a weird album and not what I, or probably what anyone, expected from Skinny Puppy, but while it's certainly not amongst their best albums it has it's moments and is worth a listen.

Bigger. Heavier. Woodener.

Lamb of God – Live in Sydney 19^th April

Setlist:
Hourglass
Again We Rise
Walk With Me In Hell
Ruin
Pathetic
As The Palaces Burn
Descending
11^th Hour
Blacken the Cursed Sun
Bloodletting
More Time To Kill
Now You've Got Something to Die For
Laid To Rest
--
Vigil
Redneck
Black Label

(Completely accurate for once.)

Turns out you can take better photos from outside the moshpit.

Things were not looking promising for the Lamb of God concert come Sunday night. I'd had a bit of a mad weekend and had in fact flown in to Auckland on the Saturday, partied all night, flown back Sunday afternoon got straight off the plane and off to the concert. I also made a bit of a miscalculation in regards to how far away the venue (the Roundhouse at UNSW) was and it took me about three quarters of an hour to walk there. By the time I arrived I was pretty much ready for bed. The opening band, Sydonia, did nothing to change my disposition, despite assuring the impatient audience that they had been personally asked to support by Lamb of God themselves. They were competent but everything about them felt like something I'd heard before and they did nothing to overcome my weariness. Fortunately a few stiff drinks gave me the energy to shuffle off to the moshpit, and Lamb of God themselves did the rest.

On the other hand photos from in the moshpit probably convey a little bit of the smelly, sweaty experience of being there.

As you might recall I saw these fellows last year opening for the shit-tastic Killswitch Engage. Even though if I were to give an interpretive dance performance to demostrate my opinion of Killswitch Engage, it would involve me vomiting on a pile of my own faeces and then wiping it all over my face, Lamb of God gave a satisfying (but not outstanding) performance. So I was a little surprised when they appeared onstage this time around and rocked out like motherfuckers from the word go.

"You guys have heaps of cool shit over here in Australia. Nice beaches, good weather, some weird fucking animals, but the best thing about this country is your hot fucking women!" Your humble reviewer didn't have the heart to tell the skanky metal mum screaming her heart out next to him that Randy wasn't talking about her.

The audience was great. When I first arrived I was a little nonplussed upon realising it was an all ages gig because there's nothing I hate more than having to rub shoulders with teenagers all night, but I must concede that the little shits mustered together a pretty decent moshpit, wherein I had a lot of fun even in my zoned out, cranky, tired state.

It's called the Roundhouse because it is ROUND.

There's not much to say about the band themselves, they can only be described as metal done metal, but they do it brilliantly. Vocalist Randy Blythe is genuinely witty with his intersong banter and the entire band delivered nothing less than a flawless and energetic performance. The highlights were (again) 'Blacken the Cursed Sun', for it's brilliant singalong part and 'Walk With Me In Hell' for rocking out just a wee bit more than everything else.

"I dunno what the hell you call people who live way out in the outback and get drunk all the time over here, but back home we call 'em REDNECKS!"

Fucking excellent concert, these guys are now on my 'must see at any opportunity' list.

Random Link: Lazy NZ And Back In 36 Hours Edition

The fifteen best unintentionally hilarious comic panels. Via the A.V. Club.

Angel Tears

Pelican – Australasia

Poor old Pelican are most commonly compared to Isis, and it's a comparison that they will inevitably suffer by because while they're a good band, they'll never be as awesome as the band they are obviously most influenced by.

Isis and Pelican are both ponderously heavy and slow, but whereas Isis' music sounds like the world crumbling to pieces Pelican have a solid streak of uplift running through them, evoking solitude and beauty not unlike the cloud swept landscapes found on the CD sleeve. There's nothing wrong with such a mood (and in fact it can come as a welcome relief after Isis' doom laden grimness) so that's not a meant as a criticism of them at all.

What is meant as a criticism though is that they also skew more towards the 'rock' side of post- music rather than metal, which robs them of the power they could achieve, and at times some of their riffs even seem a little indie (hisss! We hates it!). Australasia is a nice enough album but it can't help but suffer in its unavoidable comparison with Isis.

Teh Funny Interwebs Thursday Installment

Lore Sjöberg's ideas for geek reality TV. They're all funny but OS Swap cracks me up.

Two Last Best Hopes are Better than One

Sunshine directed by Danny Boyle

Last week I made one of my infrequent trips to the actual movies in the actual movie theatres. The movie in question was Sunshine, the latest from Danny Boyle, director of 28 Days Later and Trainspotting. It had received an unenthusiastic review from the Sydney Morning Herald by someone whose knowledge of sci-fi began with Star Wars and ended with Alien, so I took that as a good sign.

The plot: for some mysterious reason the Earth's sun is going out (yes really) and a team of spacefarers is sent to fix it with a huge big fuck off bomb [manly grunting noises]. At this point most sci-fi aficionados will be shaking their heads and remembering such staggeringly moronic desecrations of the medium as Armageddon or The Core, but if you bear with it it pays off far better than you'd expect from such an inane premise. Like Alien, 2001 or even Red Dwarf the story fixes on a small group of people trapped in confined and stressful conditions. Like Blade Runner or Cube there are no aliens or way out freaky goings on so once you're past the highly implausible setup it's a very down to earth (so to speak), character driven film.

And it's just fucking great. The film winkingly acknowledges it debts to sci-fi films of the past with numerous references to the films I mentioned in the previous paragraph (although not Red Dwarf, but Babylon 5 is accounted for (see title)) especially to 2001, which is an obvious source of inspiration. It more than lives up to its ancestors, inheriting their focus on the human condition in spite of the fantastic setting. The view of humanity it portrays isn't exactly flattering as there isn't a single human character in the movie who doesn't fuck up pretty bad at some point or other during the film, but it is sympathetic, and it paints a highly affecting portrait of people facing the end, either of their lives or of the world, or more likely both. However the message it promotes is that silly creatures like us, with our morbid fascination with our own destruction (surprise, the name of the spaceship is Icarus II, and the phrase 'staring into the sun' gets a thoroughly literal workout several times during the film) perhaps invite this fallibility by deliberately sabotaging ourselves. Coincidentally it perfectly complements Nine Inch Nail's new album, which I've been listening to fairly constantly for the last week and a half.

Great film. Highly recommended.

Newsflash!

Jeremy likes beer:

Australia at its Most White Trash

Mastodon Live, Sydney 17 April 2007 (oh yeah and Slayer played too)

Following my experience the preceding Friday, I took my time getting to the Mastodon/Slayer gig on Tuesday. Dumb idea. I completely missed the first opening act (Mortal Sin, who I know nothing about) and I arrived only just in time for Mastodon themselves. In fact, if the drinks queues outside hadn't been so long that I went into the main stage area in search of sweet sweet alcohol, I might not even have noticed that those first few thunderous chords belonged to the band I was there to see.


Setlist:

• The Wolf is Loose
• Crystal Skull
• Capillarian Crest
• I am Ahab
• Circle of Cysquatch
• Iron Tusk + extended outro (actually a whole song which I didn't recognise, something off Remission perhaps?)
• Aqua Dementia
• Colony of Birchmen
• Blood and Thunder

The Blood Mountain stuff is right, but I might have the names of some of the Leviathan tracks wrong or mixed up. I only bought that album a couple of weeks ago.

The moshpit was a lot busier than I expected, as I thought that it would be full of munters waiting impatiently for Slayer to come on, but a lot of kids seemed to be there primarily for Mastodon and even the older guys in Slayer t-shirts seemed primed to go nuts for any opening act that provided the requisite heaviness, even one as quirky and unpredictable as Mastodon. Despite the violence and the huge metaller motherfuckers delivering it the pit was pretty enjoyable. It just goes to show that when everyone adheres to proper moshpit etiquette we all have fun, from the biggest meanest tough guys to the littlest goth chicks.


It would probably be far better to see Mastodon on a headlining tour, as they would almost certainly put on a brilliant stage show. All we got here was random sound clips being played between songs and Troy (the leadman) doing his best Cysquatch impersonation at the end of the appropriate song.

The music itself was for the most part good but not great. They had less energy than I expected, except for the last two songs which went off in high gear. 'Colony of Birchmen' was delivered with intensity and I took the opportunity for a good, passionate singalong. It was followed up by 'Blood and Thunder', which closed the set with a totally nuts rock out and the catchiest singalong chorus ever; “White! Whale! Holy! Grail!”

Then it was time for Slayer. I was expecting a bit of a dirty muntery crowd and I wasn't wrong. I hate to sound like an elitist but it was fucking white trash city out there, and the smell of sweaty armpits and stale beer lingered all over eastern Sydney for the rest of the week. Still the vibe was really good and everyone was having a good (and very intoxicated) time.


Slayer put on a good show but I wasn't that fussed about it. They're one of those bands who I don't know particularly well but when they started playing I found myself saying 'Oh I know this song' more than a few times. For the first half hour I quite enjoyed their set, but it wore a bit thin by the time an hour and a half was through, as they also happen to be one of these bands that have a formula and never deviate from it.


It was a fun gig, but Mastodon really need to come back and do a headlining tour...

(Dammit. Wanted to use the 'Ravenous Flying Lizard Sharks' tag again but Mastodon (surprisingly) didn't play 'Hunters of the Sky')

New Flat

Before I moved I promised to put up some photos of my new apartment. They're only six weeks late but here they are:


Not that exciting eh. There's a nice view from the roof though, I might take some pictures of that this weekend.

Here's a special bonus photo of my new bookcase which I paid far too much money for:

Take Me Down to the Cities of the Future

Random Concert of the Month:

Infected Mushroom – Live in Sydney 13^th April 2007

On a whim I decided to attend Infected Mushroom this Friday past. I didn't even realise they were playing until Tuesday so it was a bit of a last minute escapade, but I liked the album of theirs I had on my computer until a few months ago (although I'm buggered if I can remember what it was called) and I was keen to see what kind of show they'd put on.

9pm

11pm

1am

The ticket said 8.00pm so I dutifully showed up at 8.30, the kind of timing that has served me well at rock concerts for many years, only to find that the band weren't actually playing until 1.30. I should have expected this, because it's a rave, not a rock concert, but it meant I had five hours to kill and I had neither the energy nor the inclination to fill those hours up with an alcohol fuelled bender (the standard solution to being at a party with nothing to do). Fortunately I randomly ran into people I knew, and there were some pretty good DJs playing, but it was still too long to wait (during this time I was asked no less than half a dozen times if I was selling acid, which appeared to be in high demand and short supply). Given that most of the was spent dancing I was getting pretty tired by the time the band walked on stage.

Infected Mushroom try to put on the appearance of being a live band, with not only an MC but acoustic drums, keyboards and guitar. I appreciated the attempt but they're still not fooling me, I could tell most of the music was still pre recorded. The guitarist was a real show off, kicking their set off with a series of wanky little solos and playing with his teeth. I've tried that. It kind of hurts.

Infected Mushroom

Having a live band play dance music is a really cool idea, but I don't think Infected Mushroom really use the format to its full potential. In fact, a lot of it seems to be just for show. The vibe was a little too cock rock, or at least a hippy raver's cheesy idea of cock rock, there was no crowd surfing but plenty of girls sitting on guys shoulders and waving their arms, which looked kind of weird in an indoor venue. Part of the reason I like these guys (and this genre of music) on record is because it's moodier and more evocative than your standard pill popping clubber's trance or house, but this concert wasn't like that at all. It was all wave your hands in the air bouncing up and down fun times. It was still fun and worth going to, but it didn't deliver quite what I wanted.

A Busy Few Months

Not featured: Lamb of God... apparently it came in the mail months ago but I can't find the fucker. Lets hope I do by April 29th!

Give Me Benzin!

Rammstein – Volkerball

Rammstein's Live Aus Berlin is quite easily the best music DVD I've ever watched. There's nothing particularly clever or unique about it; all they've done is taken a camera and pointed it at one of the best live acts in existence. It was therefore with great anticipation that I first put on their new DVD Volkerball, and I was not disappointed.

Live Aus Berlin was released when Rammstein had only two albums to their name; Herzeleid and Sensucht. It's now three albums later so the setlist and stageshows are completely different. The direction of the video is a little different this time around too. Live Aus Berlin focused (predictably but understandably) on their incredible stage show and the pyrotechnics that made it famous, whereas Volkerball is more about the performance and especially the audience. After all, Limp Bizkit liked to use pyrotechnics in their show and it didn't become nearly as legendary as Rammstein's. Obviously this is attributable to Limp Bizkit being shit and Rammstein being awesome. The stage show might help but the real reason these guys are so great in concert mostly comes down to the dancy, anthemic nature of the songs and the powerful, enthusiastic delivery of the band. It's well over six years ago now but one of my fondest concert memories is being literally forced to mosh to these guys by both the power of the music and the corresponding audience response back before I even had much idea of who they were.

Of course the cool setpieces are still present and accounted for on this disc. Expect loads of shit to get blown up and everything that can possibly be set on fire to be immolated. There are also plenty of other cool things they do that don't involve violent conflagrations; the moshpit row boat makes another appearance and there's an elaborate stage setup made to look them like sailors for the opening song 'Reise Reise'. However the highlight is easily 'Mein Tiel', in which Till (vocals) and Flake (keyboards) re-enact the grisly incident that inspired the song; the Armin Meiwes cannibalism case. Oh yeah and I mustn't forget, Flake gets all new gimp dances too!


All these shenanigans can sometimes distract one from the fact that even besides the spectacle these guys are musically an incredible live act as well. In this performance they infuse the sad songs like 'Ohne Dich' and 'Stripped' with even more pathos than the album versions, and the rock out anthems like 'Amerika' and the aforementioned 'Mein Teil' just go off the fucking meter with energy. My favourite track has to be 'Los', the quirky country/metal track from Reise Reise, transformed here into a heavy but groovy bluesed up version of it's former self that sounds like something the Doors would have written if they had been a metal band and Jim Morrison had been a barrel chested Teutonic ogre.

There's hours of concert footage here, the majority of it from a single performance at Nimes, France, but also including some cool footage from England and Japan, and an awesome (and almost pornographic) version of 'Moskau' performed in, of all places, Moscow. The special edition also comes with interviews and a 'Making of Reise Reise' feature, which are all worth watching (it's a wee bit sad seeing the change in Till's personality from the interviews on Live Aus Berlin, the pressures of fame and all that). Don't bother with the audio only version, it's just not the same and they've cut out all the ballads because of space considerations.

I know I often overuse superlatives on this site but seriously, I'm sitting here right now watching them play 'Benzin' as I type this and I honestly can't believe how much it rocks! If you like Rammstein you really need to get this disc. And for fucks sake! Would they please tour Australia again soon! Six years is far far too long!

Weird

A very weird but very cool flash site. I never figured out what it was for. (via Neil Gaiman).

Twelve Unjustly Maligned Albums Part 3

Part 1
Part 2

Wow it actually took me less than a week to write all of these. It's an Easter miracle. Anyway, here's the last four:

4. The Smashing Pumpkins - Adore

Adore was at least reasonably well appreciated by critics but it was a total commercial failure, coming as it did on the heels of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, one of the most successful albums of the Nineties. The reasons for this are fairly obvious; on this album Billy Corgan abandoned a more familiar heavy grunge sound in favour of subdued electronica, acoustic guitar and piano to the tune of millions of angsty teenagers hitting the 'eject' button.

It's still a great album, and even though music snobs generally seem to recognise this I'm still surprised by how many people I meet who claim to love the Smashing Pumpkins but hate this album.

Bold Statement: Adore is better than Siamese Dream.

3. Pink Floyd - The Final Cut

As with A Momentary Lapse of Reason, the drama of Roger Waters leaving Pink Floyd probably soured people on this album more than it deserved, but at least in this case there are also stylistic reasons to explain why it is so disliked as all of the electronics and ambience that found Floyd the success of Dark Side of the Moon and it's immediate successors has been stripped away and replaced by orchestral arrangements.

If you can tolerate the change in musical medium it's still a great album; similar in subject matter and style but less bloated than The Wall, and full of plenty of humour and quirks in the traditional Pink Floyd style.

I must admit however that it did take me a few listens to appreciate it. In fact if I recall it wasn't until the first time I listened to it on headphones that I thought “Wow, this is really good!”

Bold Statement: The Final Cut is better than Dark Side of the Moon

2. Skinny Puppy - The Process

It's no surprise that this album is universally hated by Skinny Puppy fans, as it has a history far more full of unpleasant details than the juvenile shenanigans of Pink Floyd breaking up. Not only were the two founding members, Ogre and cevin, barely speaking to each other while recording, but the third member, Dwayne Goettel, actually died of a heroin overdose while the album was being made. On top of this the record company (American) applied a lot of pressure to make a more commercial album and generally shafted the band so the results were (somewhat understandably) a huge disappointment to fans after the crazy noisefests of Too Dark Park and Last Rights.

It's too bad, because besides a regrettable early attempt by Ogre to sing (rather than growl or squeal) on 'Cult' this album is actually pretty good and the first four tracks are absolutely brilliant as long as they're approached as the best Nine Inch Nails songs Trent Reznor never wrote rather than genuine industrial. The standout track is 'Death'; my conception of the Platonic ideal of an industrial song. No album that contains a song that good deserves the bashing that The Process gets.

Bold Statement: 'Death' is better than anything on Last Rights.

1. Barnes – Drunken Karaoke to Radiohead

If you can look past some small difficulties with the high notes, Barnes' rendition of Radiohead's 'Let Down' after half a bottle of vodka captures the plaintive ennui at the heart of the song; that muted sadness found when the initial buzz of intoxication has worn off and you realise that you're just drunk (again). “Just let down and hanging around.” Critical response was unnecessarily harsh, leading to disparaging reviews along the lines of “Oh God Barnes and Jon are drunk and singing along to Radiohead again”, but those in the know recognised it for the understated gem it was.

Cool Music Video

Sent to me by Ryan. Featuring very nice use of acoustic guitar.

Edit: What the fuck, lets embed this shit.

The Twelve Most Unjustly Maligned Albums List Part 2

Part 1

And we're back. Through the magic of long weekends I have actually written the second post of this series in a timely manner.

8. Deftones - Deftones

Self titled albums confuse me a bit. I can understand why a bands debut album may not have a proper title, but I'm not sure quite what inspires a band well into their career to decide to name an album after themselves. It seems to imply that it will be a completely forgettable placeholder in their discography.

That's how most people view the Deftones' self titled, but I've always felt that it deserves better. As I see it the main problem with Deftones is that they were too stoned while writing it and forgot to put in any hooks, write any lyrics that made sense or think of a proper title. If you can look past that the songwriting is actually pretty good.

Part of the reason that this album gets dissed is because the first single was the relatively mellow 'Minerva', which turned off the meathead demographic (who apparently didn't remember 'Be Quiet and Drive'), but it's hard to see how even the most noise headed munter would fail to enjoy the likes of 'Hexagram', 'When Girls Telephone Boys' and 'Bloody Cape', which all rock out something wicked.

It's a dense album that you have to give attention to in order to appreciate (i.e. a stoner album), but it's worth the effort.

Bold Statement: Deftones is better than Adrenaline.

7. Pulp - We Love Life

Pulp's last album followed the massive success of Different Class and This is Hardcore and the band were therefore ripe for a critical backlash. This is a bit of a weird album for me. If I listen to it from beginning to end I'm inclined to agree with the critics; these guys have lost the spark and are just foundering, trying to rediscover the magic they once had. On the other hand if I have my ipod on random and a track from We Love Life comes up I usually love it.

I'm at a loss to describe why this is, but maybe it's because these tracks are all breezy pop songs in format (although not in subject matter) and listening to an hour of them is a bit much. It's nowhere near as good as This Is Hardcore, but it doesn't deserve the critical bashing that it's received.

Bold Statement: Jarvis Cocker looks like a dork.

6. Marilyn Manson - Mechanical Animals

Poor old Marilyn Manson will always be remembered for a couple of catchy industrial rock songs off Antichrist Superstar followed by a subsequent slide into obscurity, but it's sad that his best album, Mechanical Animals, gets lumped in with Holy Wood and The Golden Age of Grotesque (which were at least somewhat deserving of their dismissal).

Manson lost a few fans with a conscious switch of genre from hard rock to glam, but despite the David Bowie inspired veneer of the music it still at it's heart was good catchy industrial rock, merging angst and (only slightly ironic) grooviness quite nicely, and all without the helping hand of Trent Reznor to rely on.

Bold Statement: I harbour hopes that Manson's new album (due out later this year) might be worth listening to.

5. Pink Floyd - A Momentary Lapse of Reason

I'm not quite sure why this album is so hated. It is the first release since Roger Waters left the band so that probably has something to do with it. It followed the also maligned The Final Cut which is probably relevant too. It contains the unbelievably cheesy songs 'On the Turning Away' and 'Learning to Fly' which are not points in its favour. But even despite all that, if you simply listen to the music unencumbered by the accompanying baggage, you'll find that it's a perfectly serviceable Pink Floyd album (which translates to quite a good album in absolute terms), with no true stylistic differences from their earlier albums. Well OK, it is a bit slicker and a bit more Eighties.

Although you're not likely to enjoy it if you have an aversion to long guitar solos. At least half the tracks on this album finish with a fade out to one of Gilmour's accomplished but wearisome solos. I always imagine the studio technicians slowly turning the volume knob down and slowly backing out of the room because Gilmour's been going for the past two hours and they want to get back to the wife and kids.

Bold Statement: I kind of like The Division Bell too.

The Twelve Most Unjustly Maligned Albums List

If there's one thing musos like to do it's make lists and I am no exception. If there's one other thing musos like to do it's bag on other people's lists. In this series of posts, which shall hopefully take me no longer than four or five years to complete, I shall attempt to do both.

It is impossible for one to say with complete confidence that such and such an album is a band's best or worst, because there's always some contrarian clown who will disagree virulently. However a general critical consensus can usually be determined, and in this series I will take upon myself the role of the aforementioned clown and point out the most notable cases where everyone in the world bar myself has gotten it all completely wrong.

12. System of a Down - Steal this Album!

Most people barely remember that this album even exists, being instead content to argue the merits of the self titled, Toxicity or god forbid Hypnotize and Mezmerize. Perhaps it is because it's a b-sides album or perhaps it is because it's more melodic than their other releases but even people who are big fans of System tend to dismiss Steal this Album! as of no consequence.

However I would confidently rank it as their best album (narrowly edging out the self titled). For it's first half the disc shows off the bands heavy side with all of the humour and quirkiness that made their first album so good and only a touch of the self importance that in the end turned them to crap. The second half is more melodic and personal, and 'Highway Song', 'Roulette' and 'Streamline' are among the best things they've written.

I should also note that not only does this album belong on this list but that System of a Down themselves would be close to the top in a list of unjustly maligned bands. When your peers include Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park it's hard not to end up tainted by some of their stinky odour but at least up to and including this album they were actually a pretty good band with more in common with their predecessors such as Faith No More than the meatheaded proponents of the genre they ended up lumped in with.

Bold Statement: Toxicity is a good album too.

11. Rage Against the Machine - Evil Empire and The Battle of Los Angeles

Sure Rage's first album is pretty good, but I've never understood why it's rated so much higher than their subsequent albums. Renegades deserves dismissal but the dislike for The Battle of Los Angeles is quite mystifying. Yes these two albums both contain a bit of filler whereas the self titled is consistently good from beginning to end, but the good songs on the later albums are really, really fucking good. Any album that opens with 'People of the Sun', 'Bulls on Parade', 'Vietnow' and 'Revolver' or that contains 'Sleep Now in the Fire', 'No Shelter' and 'Maria' is already fucking awesome even before you consider the brilliance of 'Ashes in the Fall' or 'Down Rodeo'.

The weird thing is that I don't hear much different between these albums and the self-titled. If anything they're technically better in terms of production and songwriting, Zach's lyrics have improved and Tom Morello is never less than awesome. What strange cabal has decided that the first album is the only one worthy of respect?

Bold Statement: 'Ashes in the Fall' and 'Down Rodeo' are better than all of the self titled put together.

10. Korn – Untouchables

In over ten years they still haven't made an album that didn't contain at least a few embarrassingly dreadful tracks, but in Untouchables Korn come pretty close to making a genuinely decent record. One of the reasons this album gets dismissed is because despite a strong lead single in 'Here to Stay' the brain eater ensured that they followed it up with 'Thoughtless', the most dreadful of the aforementioned dreadful songs on this album and probably one of the worst things they've ever written. The third single was the ballad 'Alone I Break', which I think is decent but turned off the neanderthal munter crowd pretty quickly. The other reason this album gets bagged is because it's by Korn, who it must be admitted have truly earned their reputation as the shitty music of choice of said neanderthal munters.

Nonetheless this album is the only thing they've ever done which I consider genuinely worthy of merit and not just a guilty pleasure. In a move that's far cleverer than anything they've done before or since Korn managed to infuse their conventional stompy headbanging anthems with a good dose of sensitive balladry and what's more actually do both aspects well and make them blend harmoniously together. If that's not enough there are also the goofy but fun metal anthems 'Beat it Upright' and 'Wake Up Hate'.

Bold Statement: Pretty much anything good I say about Korn counts as a bold statement.

9. The Doors - Waiting for the Sun

Conventional wisdom holds that The Doors released two good albums, their début and L.A. Woman, which bookended a largely regrettable career. While The Soft Parade deserves almost every bit of bad press it gets and I have no strong desire to pick up Morrison Hotel, Waiting for the Sun is total brilliance from beginning to end. Sure everyone loves 'Five to One' but if you can believe it this album gets dismissed for not being as edgy as their older stuff. Compared to my normal diet of Burzum and Coil the relative edginess of The Doors' albums is a bit of a non issue so I'm free to appreciate the gentle beauty of songs like 'Yes, the River Knows' and 'Summer's Almost Gone' on their own terms. And do I need to even mention the brilliance of 'Not to Touch the Earth'?

Bold Statement: Jim Morrison wrote good lyrics.
Bonus Embarrassing Admission: I really like 'Hello I Love You'.

That's enough for now. Hopefully in a few days I'll have the next post in this series up, featuring 66% less nu-metal and 100% fewer bands with over rated self titled début albums.

NIN!

Listen to the new Nine Inch Nails album. You won't regret it.

It's Done

I've finally run out of things to post that I wrote while I was internetless. Now we're on to the list of funny youtube videos that I've built up over the same period. May God have mercy on you all.

First up: Bizarre fucking Microsoft ad from the 80s. It should be already skipped forward to the weird bit. (Via Uncertain Principles)

The Ladies of Grace Adieu

by Susanna Clarke

Some time ago I read Susanna Clarke's gargantuan fantasy novel Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, and found it quite enjoyable although I feel that, as capable a writer as Clarke is, the conceit of a comically prim fantasy had worn out much of its humour by the end of nine hundred pages. The Ladies of Grace Adieu is a collection of eight short stories from the same setting as Jonathan Strange and again while they are well written I can't help but feel that this collection is just the same old trick being trotted out for a victory lap on the coattails of the substantial commercial success of the novel.

Nevertheless if more of the same is what one is after then The Ladies of Grace Adieu will not disappoint. The first few stories are a bit lackluster and tend to run a bit long but the second half of the book improves greatly in terms of wit and although the stories still lacked for brevity they were a breeze to read. It's an enjoyable book but a little unnecessary if you've already read Jonathan Strange.

It's Just A Question Of How Much You Want It To Hurt

24 Season 5

I'm not entirely sure why I keep watching this show. In a lot of ways it's pretty stupid. There are only so many times in twenty four episodes you can think of new and exciting scenarios in which Jack Bauer has twenty minutes to save the president's dog from terrorists. Yet somehow it manages to deliver some good action and enough interesting plot twists for the better part of every episode, so it's worth sitting through the occasional scene where Keifer Sutherland emerges from the flames of a burning building while bombastic, patriotic music swells in the background to get to the good parts.

This has been one of the better seasons, with plenty of good twists and turns in the plot and a surprising ending. Not only does it end in a cliffhanger for the first time, it also doesn't reveal the true identities of the terrorist masterminds, who remain at large for more shenanigans next year.

The frustrating thing about the series is how although it deals with real political issues, namely terrorism and how to deal with it, it never actually offers any kind of insight to or commentary on these topics. This would be fine if they were merely offering a nonpartisan presentation of the imagined possibilities, but the writers actually seem to have little more in mind than smugly attempting to push the buttons of both liberals and conservatives.

I'd imagine the conservatives would have more to be offended by in this season. While the show seems to display a strong authoritarian bias (not an episode goes by without a terrorist suspect being tortured while being gleefully informed by Bauer that his civil rights are currently meaningless), it's hard to look past this year's mid season revelation that defined the story arc; that the terrorists are being directed by no less than the president of the USA as part of a plan to secure oil supplies.

As amusing as this was, and for all the schadenfreude gained from Gregory Itzen's performance as the president (sure he looks just like Nixon, but surely any resemblance between this gormless weakling suddenly thrust out of his depth and into a position of responsibility he is in no way suited for and any current US president you may think of is purely coincidental), the writing is just a bit too snide and it grates, even when it's reinforcing your own prejudices.

The character of Jack Bauer is similarly problematic. It's hard to empathise with his plight in being forced to torture his girlfriend when his fanatical willingness to do whatever it takes for the past four years incline the viewer to believe that he's secretly rather enjoying it.

But hey, you know I'll end up watching the next season all the same.

Self

by Yann Martel

Way way back in the very early days of this blog one of the first posts I made was in regards to Yann Martel's Life of Pi, a Booker prize winning novel that I rather liked. Self is an earlier novel by the same author, and I didn't like it nearly as much.

The two books are in some ways quite similar, they both play little games with the narration and the reader's expectations, but in very different ways. This novel is supposedly an autobiography, although right from the start the reader is told this with a wink and a nudge. It is hard to say what parts are real and which are imagined, but I would guess that the bulk is probably true to life. Certainly the descriptions of boy's boarding school and university rang very true to my own memories of those kinds of places, but one can also be fairly certain that for example the scenes when the author spontaneously changes gender may not have happened in real life strictly as they appear on the page.

All the scenes and anecdotes in the book are rendered in clever post-modern literary type ways, but for every conceit that turns out to smart and witty there's another that is indulgent and grating. Most of the time it just gave me a desire to reread Dave Eggars' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, but unfortunately it's buried somewhere in a box back in New Zealand.

The ending of the book takes a sudden and disturbing turn to the genuinely horrific which is more than a little unexpected. I hope for the author's sake that this particular section is not truly autobiographical but it's rendered with such vividness that I fear that it may actually be factual. At any rate it's an upsettingly memorable way to end what is up until then a very wry, distant autobiography.

It is a clever book in a lot of ways, and I'm sure plenty of English classes could be spent describing the themes and structure (I did like the way that things would have played out the same for the author regardless of the gender he/she wore at any given point in the novel), but the writing is not quite strong enough to support it. It's seems as though the author had plenty of good, intellectual ideas, but not quite the experience to pull them off successfully on a gut level. Of course it's an early novel and any roughness to it can be more than forgiven considering how well Life of Pi turned out.

Death is the Road to Awe

The Fountain
Directed by Darren Aronofsky

Saw this one on a plane from Auckland to Sydney, which is probably far from the best way to experience it (it's a big screen movie), but at least I now have an excuse to buy it on DVD at some stage.

The Fountain is the latest film from Darren Aronofsky, director of two of my favourite movies Pi and Requiem for a Dream, and it does not disappoint even in comparison to its forbears. The storyline follows three sort-of parallel plot threads, one focusing on a Spanish conquistador, another involving a modern day cancer researcher, and the last in a trippy sci-fi setting where our protagonist (all three are played by Hugh Jackman), in this incarnation some kind of martial artist slash mystic, floats through space in a giant bubble enclosing a big tree. In each scenario Jackman is trying to save someone or something (played by Rachel Weisz); his country, his wife, or the aforementioned tree, and each scenario features a tree of life that grants immortality.

We spend the most time with the cancer researcher and the other threads merely shadow or influence this main thread. Despite the mystical hooha in the other threads the movie's point is a simple, relatable one, about dealing with the death of a loved one, both after the event and as it approaches, and about finding meaning in their life, both for those who remain once it's all said and done, and for the person who is dying before they go.

It's a tremendously sad but beautiful movie, not just because of the story but also because of the astounding visuals, rendered entirely without the aid of CGI, just old fashioned smoke and mirrors, and the results are stunning:


It was done this way because of budgetary constraints but it clearly worked out to the advantage of the film. Over the last few years we have become very accustomed to being bombarded by sleek shiny CGI that it's eye opening to see just how beautiful the old-fashioned, imperfect but detailed, analogue way of doing things still is.

All Faith Forever Has Been Washed Away

Opeth – Still Life

Jon is still not sick of Opeth.

I've been busy listening to other stuff but my progress through Opeth's back catalogue continues behind the scenes. Still Life is one of the most highly regarded of their albums. Musically it is not much different from their later work: a combination of death metal and classic prog rock, melodic and beautiful in both modes and supported by brilliant technical musicianship.

Unlike the other albums of theirs I've been listening to this one is a concept album, telling the tale of a person who returns to the town of their birth to rescue their long lost love from the malevolent church in charge of the town. The concept didn't really add much for me, Akerfeldt's lyrics on this release suffer a little from 'Scandanavian guy writing in English' syndrome (i.e. when ones vocabulary slightly outstrips one's familiarity with the language), but it's no detraction either.

I don't like this album as much as Blackwater Park or Deliverance, as the songwriting doesn't quite reach the stellar heights of those albums and about half of the songs are relatively forgettable in comparison to their other work. Of course average by Opeth's standards is still pretty fucking good. The opening track 'The Moor' is a fan favourite for good reason, and the acoustic ballad 'Benighted' is very nice too. The highlight of the album however is 'Face of Melinda', which starts out as a ballad before getting a bit heavy towards the end. It manages to be bittersweet and edgy at the same time, and in contrast to what I just said about the album as a whole has some really great lyrics.

It does bear mentioning that this album does excel in one area when compared with it's peers, and that's the guitar solos. Akerfeldt and his six stringed henchman Peter Lindgren acquit themselves marvellously on all Opeth releases but on Still Life they've kicked things far and away into 'holy fucking shit' territory. At it's worst a guitar solo is a five minute masturbatory exercise in the listener's patience, but at it's best (and virtually every track on this album contains a perfect example) an instrumental solo expresses all the nameless things that can only be said by music with all the articulation of a vocal line without being weighed down by the crude limitations of mere language.

On the Blood Red Snowy Ground

Burzum – Burzum/Aske

You may recall that some time ago I wrote about Burzum's most recent album Hildskalf (insert your own arbitrary germanic character accents). Burzum is the work of the infamous Varg Vikarnes, considered the godfather of black metal mainly for being one of the first to define the genre's current sound (even though he considers most of the current practitioners to be posers and sellouts) but also for walking the walk in regards to the antisocial behaviour expected of a trve black metaller (i.e. the church burning, the satanism/paganism, the murder, the neo-Nazism and so on).

As it happens Hildskalf was not in any way a black metal album so I went back to his first release (actually his first two EPs concatenated onto a single album) which is more or less a textbook example of the genre. Probably because these early Burzum albums are the textbooks which later black metallers composed by.

Seminal as this album may be, it's not much more than an average listen. Varg's vocals are impressive, being one of the few examples I've heard of the standard black metal howl/gurgle that doesn't sound stupid, and the music, which is so stripped back as to be almost punk in some ways, is agreeable but in no way inspiring enough to justify this guy's inflated reputation. However there are a couple of ambient/industrial tracks included which I quite liked (especially 'Dungeons of Darkness', rattley, scrapey goodness!). I suspect that this album and Hildskalf are not his best works so I shall continue on with the other albums.

Varg claims to have recorded the whole thing in seventeen hours and played all the instruments himself (save for a guest guitar solo on 'War' by, you guessed it, Euronymous, the dude Varg is currently in jail for killing). That's quite impressive (If it's true that is. It must be borne in mind that this comes from the guy who says things like “I'm not a Nazi because I don't believe in 'national socialism'” and “I was framed for the murder! The police said that they found my fingerprints on the knife, but I wore gloves when I killed him!”) and even I, lover of over produced technical death metal, have respect for the purism of his back to basics, one take (mistakes and all) approach, and the fact that he made such a professional sounding album even within those constraints.

In the Next War We Shall Bury the Dead in Cellophane

Old Man Gloom – Christmas

This album was a completely random discovery encountered during my mission to illicitly download some Converge. Much to my astonishment I was completely blown away by how brilliant it was. A quick wikipedia search revealed the source of the awesomeness; Old Man Gloom is a supergroup of sorts boasting the presence of, among others, members of Isis and Converge. Fuck yeah.

This album alternates minimalist ambient tracks with heavy hardcore songs, and the contrast is quite striking. The ambient tracks are moody and disturbing (but great), the best example being 'Something for the Mrs.', in which an unpleasant sounding male voice recites absurd but unsettling nonsense about religion and war over a brooding ambient soundscape. These tracks are in the main the ones that stay with you after listening to the album. Like all the best ambient music it's beautiful but laden with sadness and regret, and in this case with a little disquieting menace.

The heavy tracks are brutal and angry, but nowhere near as affecting as the quiet ones. Fortunately they make up for it with sheer rock-your-face-off brilliance. The best track is 'The Volcano', which is a genuine revelation to listen to. The preceding ambient track fades into a quiet but menacing guitar riff, which is soon complemented by the meanest fucking bass figure ever written, boasting what is the most pants-creamingly crunchy bass guitar tone I've ever heard. After a decent few minutes of this it erupts into screamy hardcore bliss, with riffs so fucking awesome that they'll melt your face. If you like heavy music, run, don't walk, to soulseek and download 'The Volcano' by Old Man Gloom. Best song I've heard all year.

Fragile Things

by Neil Gaiman

The non fiction books I spent most of last year reading were fascinating, but man did it take me a long time to get through them. However as soon as I finished them I quickly breezed through Neil Gaiman's latest short story collection in a couple of days. I didn't enjoy it quite as much as Smoke and Mirrors, but it's still a fine read.

In the years since the last collection came out Gaiman's style has changed very little. All the stories are fantasy (or maybe sci-fi) but with a solid real world grounding (and sometimes the fantasy elements are a pretty light touch), although this time around the stories are less clever or whimsical and more sinister.

The first story is 'A Study in Emerald', which is an original mashup of Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos and Sherlock Holmes. In most writers hands this would be a terrible idea but Gaiman of course infuses it with wry wit and makes it the best idea in the world.

In 'October in the Chair' the months of the year sit around and tell stories. It's a typically Neil sort of story idea, and it gets mentioned in most reviews of the book as one of the best, but I didn't like it. It possibly had something to do with the attributes of the months being the opposite to what I think they should be.

'Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire' is just as cute and self-referential as the title suggests but is fairly amusing all the same. It's followed by a selection of ghost stories, all of which are very effective. 'Closing Time' has that classic ghost story kind of creepy imagery that lingers in the mind, but 'The Flints of Memory Lane' is scarier, probably because Gaiman claims that it's a true story from his childhood, and despite the lack of anything truly supernatural or dangerous, the detail evokes memories of those times when, as a child, you find yourself completely spooked by something for reasons you can't explain. 'Bitter Grounds' is another weird one. Gaiman's short stories sometimes have a way of hitting you with an random event at the end, and then sitting back and looking smugly at you as if to say “What's the matter? Don't you get it?” while the reader scratches his head and says “Yeah kind of, but it just doesn't quite fit...” I have yet to determine if this is because (a) I am dumb, (b) Neil isn't quite as clever as he thinks he is or (c) it's meant to be like that because Neil just likes to leave the reader with a sensation of dissatisfaction that they can't quite articulate the reason behind. I'm leaning towards (c).

'The Problem of Susan' is also noteworthy, for it's nasty, disturbing take on C.S. Lewis' high school chaplain approved Narnia series. As unpleasant as it was to read, I have to admit getting a good deal of satisfaction out of seeing an areligious counterargument to Lewis' books, which have always pissed me off. Thanks for ruining a perfectly good fantasy series with your stinky fucking religion, jackass.

The highlights of the collection are 'How to Talk to Girls at Parties' and 'The Day the Saucers Came'. The former does the standard post-modern fantasy story thing and takes an everyday cliché (in this case that to an adolescent boy girls may as well be from another planet) and makes it literal. It made me wish that I could meet some girls who were actually from another planet. 'The Day the Saucers Came' is a short poem that merges wit and poignancy flawlessly.

Not every story is a winner, I thought 'Diseasemaker's Croup' was a bit boring and stupid, but the rest of the book ranges from good too brilliant. The last story in the collection is 'Monarch of the Glen', which is a kind of sequel to American Gods, checking up on its protagonist Shadow a few years after the end of the novel, although it's more about Scotland than Shadow, who doesn't really do much in this story. It's still a much better sequel than Anansi Boys though.

What If Everything Around You Isn't Quite What It Seems?

Nine Inch Nails – Beside You In Time

Assuming nothing goes awry between now and April 17th this might be the first year that the Wildebeest Asylum does not award the Trent Reznor Award for the Best Album That Was Supposed To Come Out This Year But Didn't to Trent Reznor. The new album is looking set for a April release and the new DVD is already out. Also, Trent is no longer even pretending that the Closure DVD will be out any time soon. He even quietly released a high quality version of the Broken movie. Trent's sobriety certainly does seem to have rendered quite a change in his work ethic.

The new DVD seems in some ways to be a little superfluous. And All That Could Have Been was released after the last tour, and it was a pretty solid effort; two discs packed full of drunk Trent at his best. Beside You In Time doesn't really contain anything that it's predecessor didn't, save for a different setlist and a different band, but it is cool to get a chance to see the stage show and the songs from the With Teeth tour that didn't make it to the Sydney show.

For example they do some very neat stuff with a translucent curtain that drops down in front of the stage during the middle of the show, using it to play videos while the band is still visible behind it. The videos themselves are brilliant. 'Eraser' is suitably freaky and disturbing, while 'Right Where It Belongs' is truly affecting, in that weird NIN kind of way, somehow making beauty out of the strangest components: mundane shots of suburban houses and supermarkets, slow motion nature show footage of animals eating one another, and even more unpleasant things, such as George W. Bush and his wife dancing. 'Beside You In Time' is another highlight, a song that I was sorely disappointed not to get at the Sydney show, but it's very cool at the climax when Trent throws his microphone stand through the curtain and the videos play an image of a glass screen shattering.

It's interesting to compare the band in this DVD with the old one. Josh Freese puts poor old Jerome 'competent but not very exciting' Dillon to shame as a drummer. The new guitarist, Aaron North, is a lot better than Robin Finck (I was especially impressed by his mastery of feedback), but there's just something about his style that I dislike. I'm probably just biased because he's so emo. I do miss Charlie Clouser on keyboards and Danny Lohner on bass though. Those guys were cool.

The disc also contains the music videos for 'The Hand That Feeds' and 'Only', the two most boringist Nine Inch Nails videos ever. The DVD is still worth a purchase, but I would have much rather have received Closure.

1001 Albums - Number 4

Louis Prima – The Wildest!

Despite a poor start the old 1001 albums list seems to be holding up OK. Louis Prima, while no major revelation, is good, fun listening, and 'I Ain't Got Nobody' (come on, you know it) is a genuinely great song.

Prima is a jazz trumpeter, although this takes back seat to his singing on most tracks, and this album bops jazzily along in an agreeable manner, aided by his sweet voiced wife Keely Smith (twenty years his younger, so scandalous!)

Unlike the grim and mournful Tragic Songs of Life, this album is bright and bouncy the whole way through. The subject matter is a bit dirtier than on the other albums from this era that I've listened to. '(I'll Be Glad When You're Dead) You Rascal You' is about exactly what the title says, and describes Prima's heartfelt desire to see this person (or perhaps it's an animal) dead in an extremely jovial tone.

This album is similar to the Louvin Brother's album in that, despite the poppy manner of the music, it's content (in this case a little bit of raunch, in theirs murder and edginess) has a little of the transgressive nature of later styles of rock music that would descend from it.

Dead Bodies Just Seem To Fall Before Me

Suffocation – Souls to Deny and Breeding the Spawn

In anticipation of their concert last month I went out and bought a few more Suffocation albums. Souls to Deny is their most recent release besides their self titled, whereas Breeding the Spawn dates all the way back to 1993.

Souls to Deny is fairly similar to it's successor in style, but lacks most of it's catchiness and spirit. They seem to have concentrated on technical achievement at the expense of everything else, and it's not nearly as much fun as the self titled.

Breeding the Spawn on the other hand is brilliant. Even fourteen years ago these guys were maniacs on their instruments (maybe not quite to the degree that they are now), and they have all the energy and talent that they showed on Suffocation. As this is one of their earliest releases it comes as no surprise that it suffers from some impressively shitty production, which unfortunately renders the cool bass work all but imperceptible.

This stuff is all good but I think three albums are enough, at least for now. I'm not so much of a noise headed death metaller that I can listen to this stuff all day and after a while I find myself really really needing a change of tone. Unless it's Opeth. I can listen to those guys for a week and not get tired of it.