#the nu metal is just straight up nostalgia

[theninjazebra]

Because of The Stresses and Horrors I've the very specific brain thing where there is only one (or two) things I want to listen to, on repeat, every moment I'm conscious.

Unfortunately that thing is 2000s nu metal and/or club bangers (2000s defined roughly mid 90s to mid 2010s. It's a vibe not a strict definition of time).

Anyway. Humbling to be "oh this song! The new song from - nope, minimum 12 yr old song." Fml.

[watching-pictures-move]

Movie Review | Queen of the Damned (Rymer, 2002)

I put this on because it was about to leave Tubi and I was craving some garbage early 2000s vibes out of some misplaced sense of nostalgia. As far as nu metal cinema goes, this has a lot of nu metal music (including everyone's favourite track "Down With the Sickness", you know, the one that starts "Wakakaka! Ugh Ugh!") but little nu metal energy. Some of the problem can be attributed to the weird pacing. Aaliyah's tragic death during production is probably partially to blame, as there isn’t much Queen of the Damned in Queen of the Damned (although I understand principal photography had been completed). And maybe I was zoning out more than usual, but all the stuff about Lena Olin and her law abiding vampires is introduced way too late in the movie, and the climax feels thrown in with very little buildup.

I will say that the movie has its charms. I got a good chuckle out of the bit where Stuart Townsend sits beside two groupies and then crawls up to the ceiling and swoops down to bite them... when he could have just stayed seated and bit them as they were already right beside him. I guess scaring your victims makes their blood taste better. Jeez, I hope nobody quotes that out of context. Also, there’s a goofy motion blur effect during the action scenes, leading me to believe that vampires all gyrate spasmodically when in combat. But as Ebert points out in his review, “the filmmakers labor under the impression that Anne Rice's works must be treated respectfully”, so the movie mostly feels too staid to be all that fun.

Maybe the movie’s obvious failings are beside the point. On a certain level, this is meant to be appreciated as eye candy, for the audience to get an eyeful of all the hot gothy vampires (and hot non-vampiric goths) standing around giving each other smouldering looks and slithering line readings. And given all the choker necklaces, fishnet tops and tight pants, it probably delivers on that level. But I do think it has the fatal problem of having no chemistry between the two leads. Ebert once again nails the problem, this time more amusingly.

“The Lestat-Akasha romance suffers by being conducted in declarative mode, with Akasha addressing her lover with the intimacy Queen Victoria would have lavished on her footman. Lestat digs her, though, because when he drinks her blood, it makes him wild. Nothing good can come of this.”

Aaliyah would have been pretty inexperienced as an actress, and she does try to sink her teeth into the role, but the bigger problem is Stuart Townsend, best known for doing everybody a huge favour by getting fired from The Lord of the Rings. Listen, as a straight man I’m not going to be susceptible to his obvious charms, but imagine if he hadn’t been fired from that other gig and we got Viggo Mortensen in this role instead. Picture the menace and sexual potency Mortensen would have imbued into his smoulder. Townsend’s smoulder has no teeth. We deserve a better class of smoulder.

[hey-have-you-heard]

Hey have you heard these 50 songs from 2019

I really enjoyed this last year so going to give it another go for ‘19. I put quite a lot of thought into what actually a ‘song of the year’ for me when I was first constructing and then heavily editing the playlist that came to be my Top 50 of 2019. I think the most important thing is that above all it’s a track that I’m glad exists, sometimes this is because of the songwriting or composition, sometimes the performance, sometimes the lyrical importance and sometimes just because it sparks joy.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6bFJOjL8b8Zc2s5r1oJbsk?si=UJdqSXOTR3SQ8D3IwcmV2g

Explanations for each tracks inclusion below the fold…

100 gecs - 800db cloud 100 gecs channel a mix of Crystal Castles and Sleigh Bells with a Death Grips level appreciation for noise. It’s an absolute rush and that outro is just absurd.

Natalie Evans - Always Be Natalie Evans soft melody and sing song vocals are sublimely sweet on this heartfelt track of lost love, longing and nostalgia.

Petrol Girls - Big Mouth “If you fight back or disagree you’re the one with the fucking problem” this hits home, hard. Big Mouth is a rallying cry to speak out against oppression and discrimination, to raise you’re voice and be heard, not to be controlled.

Charli XCX ft. Lizzo - Blame it on your Love Charli has a midas touch when it comes to pop, combine that with Lizzo who has just about been the most fun thing in music this year and you’ve got a 10/10 banger.

Poppy - BLOODMONEY Poppy’s music just keeps going further down the rabbit hole. Originally playing with blending elements of nu-metal with bubblegum pop, she now seems to have transcended genre altogether to create whatever BLOODMONEY is, it’s absolutely ridiculous and I love it.

Body Hound - Bloom Get on that GROOVE! So proggy it hurts, this track from Body Hound is a technical wonderland of metamorphosing rhythms, gargantuan riffs, and just the tastiest of chord progressions.

Can the Sub_Bass speak - Algiers Word of warning, this is not an easy listen. A freefall tumble through genre and tone accompanies a stream of consciousness monologue full of racism, prejudice and political and artistic critique.

Elohim - Buckets Buckets is an onslaught of trap influences, emotional outbursts and aggressive distortion. I’m a big fan of this sound.

VUKOVI - C.L.A.U.D.I.A I know very little about VUKOVI as a band, but that riff is absolutely massive and this track has been a constant throughout my year on that basis alone.

Show Me The Body - Camp Orchestra Apparently more hardcore bands should use Banjos, because this is a damn good sound. Slowly building from a single bass line this track builds into a powerful demolishing force.

clipping. - Club Down Having thoroughly proven themselves able to do afro-futurist scifi on the Hugo nominated Splendor and Misery, clipping. now turn their considerable talents to horror core and unsurprisingly nail it. Daveed’s flows are tight as ever as he brings to life a decaying city backed by tortured screams.

Dream Nails - Corporate Realness YOU ARE NOT YOUR JOB. WORK IS NOT YOUR LIFE. YOU ARE NOT WHAT YOU MUST DO IN ORDER TO SURVIVE. Dream Nails are great and exactly what we need right now.

ControlTop - Covert Contracts This track positively bristles with an anxious energy. A fitting sound for the subject of the information overload we find ourselves locked into everyday.

Cherry Glazerr - Daddi There’s an icy coolness to ‘Daddi’, a disconnected sarcasm that falls away to reveal the anger and torment in the chorus, it’s a masterful bit of emotional storytelling through musical tone.

The Physics House Band - Death Sequence I Listening to Physics House latest release, the Death Sequence EP feels like a physical journey. This opener is a perfect example of this, as you’re plunged straight into a heady and disorienting mix of rhythms and counter-melody’s, the Sax guiding you through the turbulence until you land in a placid midsection, before that bass riff drags you forward through rhythmic breakdowns into an absolutely absurd brain melting saxophony and then it just keeps on going from there…

Witching Waves - Disintegration I saw WW back in the early summer, they were a bassist down so it was just a guitar and drums duo. They started with this track and it was one of the most pure punk things I’ve experienced, drummer/vocalist Emma Wigham bashing the absolute shit out of her kit . A great no-nonsense lo-fi banger.

Lingua Ignota - DO YOU DOUBT ME TRAITOR Another, not particularly easy listen here. DO YOU DOUBT ME TRAITOR is a dark and angry brooding track, building in intensity to release the primal rage, fear and horror of the abused. Its deeply chilling and instantly arresting. This track and the entire CALIGULA album stands as an absolute must listen.

Carly Rae Jepsen ft. Electric Guest - Feels Right I love the instrumentation on this one, those chunky piano chords and screaming guitar lift the track out and make it the highlight of an already great album to me.

Orla Gartland - Figure it out Dialing back the intensity slightly, Orla chronicles the frustrations of having to deal with someone in your life who you’re done with. The choruses burst forth in beautifully fuzzy explosions of noise. That vocal flair at the start of the final chorus is chef kiss.

Battles - Fort Greene Park Battles are at their best when they keep things simple. This is evident on 2019′s Juicy B Crypts which features some incredibly cluttered moments, but this just makes Fort Greene Park stand out all the more. A delightfully spacious piece of math rock, from some of the best in the business.

Dogleg - Fox Boy howdy, do I love me some midwest emo. Catharsis in musical form, it just makes me want to mosh my troubles away like I’m 16 again.

Tørsö - Grab A Shovel Tørsö go hard, I can appreciate that. An absolutely brutal track about the destructive power of depression and self-loathing.

“Pijn & Conjurer playing Curse These Metal Hands” - High Spirits “We were like, are we Pijn and Conjurer, or are we Curse These Metal Hands? I think we’ve settled with ‘we are Pijn and Conjurer playing Curse These Metal Hands’ …whatever that means!“ what it means is one of the most joyously triumphant pieces of metal music I’ve ever heard. Some of the guitar lines in this absolutely soar.

Lizzo - Juice Lizzo has won 2019, her message of self love, acceptance and body positivity has won her both critical and cultural acclaim and permeates her music in a way that makes it impossible to not love.

COLOSSAL SQUID, AK Patterson - Kick Punch Colossal Squid is the name given to Three Trapped Tigers drummer, Adam Betts’ experimental project. After a solo album of percussive wizardry Betts has now teamed with vocalist AK Patterson to give us something else entirely.

Evan Greer - Liberty Is A Statue Evan Greer uses the a folk punk sound to deliver an essay on the damaging influences of cis-normativity and social inequality. Of course I like this one.

Taylor Swift - Lover I wasn’t on board with this song for a fair while, but then I kept listening to it and kept coming back to it because of a roughly 50 second section which ties the track and the whole album together. Yeah, this is on here purely for the bridge, which is just beautiful.

Dodie - Monster Monster is an incredibly well written and delivered study on how perception changes with resentment and it makes me cry.

The Y Axes - Moon Moon is a delightfully dreamy piece of pop that glitters with infectious melodies, it’s lyrics a blissful embracing of cosmic nihilism, need I say more?

Ezra Furman - My Teeth Hurt My teeth hurt is a song about tooth ache, about that pain you carry with you everywhere and can’t get rid of, that ruins your days and and is one hell of a mood. Yeah it’s about gender dysphoria.

Nervus - No Nations Speaking of things being a mood, this track hits the nail squarely on the head.

Cultdreams - Not My Generation "Everyone ignores me Unless I’m on a stage talking Because they put me on a pedestal And pretend I’m just performing“ Lucinda Livingstone calls out the misogyny in our culture with a singular ferocity.

Lil Nas X - Old Town Road If there’s one song that’s dominated 2019 this is it right here. Who ever had the idea of putting that NIN Ghosts sample to a trap beat and cowboying over the top of it is an absolute genius.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Planet B It’s impossible to predict where King Gizzard’s sonic influences are going to take them next I doubt even they know half the time. Whatever they turn their hand to though they do it as if they mastered the sound decades ago Planet B is an all out thrash track with a strong environmental message.

Kesha - Rich, White, Straight Men Okay, I’m about to compare Kesha to John Lennon here but HEAR ME OUT… As ‘Imagine’ asked us to consider a world without conflict or capitalism, Kesha now posits that we should tear up our conceptions of our society based on its formation by a privileged group and imagine what kind of utopia could be built if we gave the underprivileged and minority groups a say.

Allie X - Rings A Bell The chorus here sounds like it could have been off Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories, and I’m all about that sound. Combined with Allie X’s dreamlike vocals make this a certified bop.

Poly-Math - Sensors in Everything Sensors in Everything is a beast of a track spanning over 14 minutes of absurdly dense prog. Having recently enlisted keyboardist Josh Gesner. Polymath make use of the new sounds and textures available to them, at times imitating a sort of Hammond sound not unlike John Lord to the chaotic maelstrom of noise.

Calva Louise - Sleeper Big hooks on this one. Sleeper has a confident swagger to it’s sound which stands apart for the bands previous work. It’s an absolutely huge track.

Slipknot - Solway Firth Slipknot didn’t disappoint after the tease of 2018′s “All Out Life”, following up with an album which blended old and new aspects of their sound to create one of their best to date. Solway Firth is a perfect example of this matching the punishing heaviness of Iowa with the melody driven sound of All Hope Is Gone.

Clt Drp - Speak To My Seeing Clt Drp perform live was one of my highlights of the year. The filthy guitar tones, powerhouse vocals tight as heck drumming and the _grooves. _Absolutely like nothing else I’ve seen. Just an incredible band that deserve so much more recognition.

Black Country, New Road - Sunglasses Black Country, New Road released two tracks this year and now I just want more. Dense wordy lyricism plays off against ever evolving instrumentation to present a raw cut of emotional storytelling.

Her Name Is Calla - Swan Her Name Is Calla are a band that have always been on the edge of my radar, my Dad is very fond of them and saw them live a couple of years ago, but never went back to relisten to any of their stuff, then they started an album with this. I was sold instantly.

black midi - Talking Heads Talking Heads (the band) are an obvious inspiration on this track. Both David Byrne’s vocal style and the Talking Heads penchant for sharp angular melodies are on show here. But given an extra ounce of chaos through Black Midi’s delivery.

Amanda Palmer - The Ride The ride is ten minutes of bundling up all your fears and anxieties of where we are and where we’re going and just, accepting them as part of the ride. Written off the back of a prompt from Amanda asking her fans what they were afraid of right now.

Kim Petras - There Will Be Blood Okay, let’s have some out of season spookiness. Love the squelchy synths on this, there’s a huge amount of energy on this track and with it’s commitment to the horror conceit it makes for a super fun bop.

Kate Nash - Trash Kate Nash’s sound is like bathing pure nostalgia,here she spins the toxic-relationship narrative central to her work to deliver a bigger story about humanity’s, quite literally toxic relationship to our planet.

American Football & Hayley Williams - Uncomfortably Numb The other side of the “midwest emo” coin. A melancholic song built on a soft bed of arpeggiated chords and clean harmonics, Uncomfortably Numb is a heartbreaking track of losing everything and of cycles persisting thorugh generations. Employing the clever metatextual trick of referencing Pink Floyd’s comfortably Numb to mirror the generational similarities.

Glenn Branca - Velvet and Pearls Disclaimer, Glenn Branca was a musical hero of mine, his approach to music and composition being solely responsible for influence a vast number of my favourite bands. Released posthumously, Velvet and Pearls is taken from a live performance by Branca’s ensemble and perfectly captures the sense of sonic disorientation, conjuring aural illusions through an assault of intricately crafted noise. It’s an exhilarating piece that should be played as loud as humanly possible.

Brutus - War The raw emotional strength of Stefanie Manneart’s vocals instantly made me pay attention when I first heard this track. Then the song exploded into a barrage of riffs and breakneck drumming.

Valiant Vermin - Warm Coke Another slice of throwback pop, Valiant Vermin proved with “Online Lover” how much of an ear she has for pop and has proven it once again with Warm Coke. Is a real good bop.

———

Welp there it is, 50(+1) songs, I had to limit myself to one track per artist in the main 50 because according to Spotify I listened to [checks notes] 1082 new artists this year. There are a small handful of tracks I wanted to highlight from the same artists though as they offer something quite different to the tracks in the playlists, so here they are quickly with 3 word descriptions.

Petrol Girls - Skye (dead dog, sad) Amanda Palmer - Voicemail for Jill (Talk about abortion) Ezra Furman - I Wanna be Your Girlfriend (Trans Torch Song) Battles ft Jon Anderson & Prairie WWWW - Sugar Foot (Batshit Prog Insanity) Poppy - Choke (Dark Minimalist Pop) Show Me The Body - Forks and Knives (Anxious nightmare punk) Lingua Ignota - CALIGULA (the whole album.)

———

Closing Statement

Cultdreams - Statement

There has been a shadow over the entertainment industry the latter half of this decade. Whether film, music, TV or video games, the late 2010′s are filled with stories of people coming forward to bravely tell their stories about being abused and manipulated by men in positions of power. The #metoo movement as it’s come to be known has been a powerful force in giving marginalised people a voice and the ability to call out oppressors and in starting the groundwork to root out the misogyny in the seats of power, but this is a battle far from won.

While there are thousands of stories out there I want to focus on one in particular.

In 2016 a number of women spoke out about various forms of abuse by a well-known musician in the punk scene. It’s now over three years later and this group of women are in the midst of a long fought claim of defamation from this musician. If this case goes through it sets a precedent for silencing marginalised voices in the industry. They have been fighting for so long and with no legal aid available for the case they have had to finance their defense from their own pockets.

This is where Solidarity Not Silence comes in. Solidarity not silence is a crowdfunding effort to help take the case to trial without the women bankrupting themselves entirely so that they don’t have to give in to this mans demands.  You can read more about Solidarity not Silence and make a donation (if you feel so inclined) here: https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/solidaritynotsilence/

You can also follow them on twitter here https://twitter.com/solnotsilence

[omegatheunknown]

...In which I thoroughly (yet naively) survey Metallica.

More than a month ago I finished reading Masters of Doom, which in addition to being an interesting history of PC Gaming’s pioneering id Software and stirring nostalgia about the halcyon days of 90s first-person shooters, made frequent and compelling reference to the influence of heavy metal on the aesthetic sensibilities of John Romero (though he’s ultimately more of a Dokken fan, which I can’t speak to.) Listening to the actual soundtracks of Doom, Doom II, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D led me straight into a curious survey of Megadeth, then Metallica, briefly Slayer, Anthrax, back to Metallica, Exodus, Sepultura, Suicidal Tendencies, Overkill, back to Megadeth and then back Metallica, over and over Metallica. I am listening to Metallica now. 

Can’t say I’m sure why. Without meaning to sound condescending, I’d always assumed if thrash metal appealed to me, it might have happened when I was a teenager. Perhaps environmental factors were at play, but at my most susceptible and angst filled years, the garage rock revival was in full swing, as was something of a (perceived? I will never know if this was a widespread thing. I wasn’t nearly as online then) grunge renaissance. Grunge was locked in as tonal and aesthetic sensibility and my friends’ bands were grungy pop punk with a bit of emo sprinkled on top. As I said, the questionable excesses of youth, complete with pretension about what is good (The Stooges, The Pixies, The Strokes and NIRVANA) and what is silly and ridiculous (Nu-Metal’s relative strength and the silliness of bands like Korn and Slipknot did not help Metal’s esteem.) A respect but low level of enthusiasm for Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden didn’t manifest anything serious any time in the last fifteen years. Thrash’s underground roots put some doubt in the mind re: whatever vague supposition my teenaged peers and I had about the opposing forces of punk and metal (though I do remember actual arguments with a fan of what I described as ornate but soulless arpeggios who thought PJ Harvey’s oeuvre was unsophisticated and boring.) There’s a lot of grunge’s DNA in early Metallica. Which kind of makes it all the more bewildering that I haven’t been here before. All that wasted time listening to Mudhoney! Also, not to spoil the ending, how bewildering it is that Metallica absolutely fell to pieces in the 90s.    Kill ‘em All is a stupidly exciting record. Had I been around to hear it in the 80s, it would’ve melted my brain. I assume if I heard it in the 00s it would’ve done the same. I think part of the issue with Metallica is that when I was a precocious kid/tween they were not nearly at their best and the only second hand exposure you get to a well-established but no longer thriving band is their hits, and even post-survey I don’t particularly care for ‘One’ or ‘Enter Sandman.’ (Then again, at the height of Metallica v Napster you’d think young Zaq would’ve been a little more curious... and those mp3s would’ve be right there...) Anyway, Kill ‘em All: devastating and fun. Imagine if Mötley Crüe was ever any good (were they?) No, that’s insane. And gives a person very little to go on. High energy from the jump, utter shred. Reminiscent only of a slower, hopelessly outclassed version of the same thing, which is to say I think if you slowed a track like The Four Horsemen down you’d end up with a dreary sounding Sabbath number but why would you want that? (A different day perhaps.) Definitely the sexiest of the Metallica albums, just a little bit of the electricity of hair metal bleeding in at the edges, though the most wicked excesses are in flurries of virtuosity. “Bass solo, take one” -- much as I enjoy ‘Hit the Lights,’ ‘Jump in the Fire,’ ‘Seek & Destroy’ (and other imperative calls to action,) I think the bass solo ‘(Pulling Teeth)’ that splits the album is my favourite bit. Ride the Lightning -- actually, speaking of Cliff Burton, he of the improbable bass solos -- supposedly he planted the seeds of music theory/actually thinking about the music in his bandmates’ heads, leading to acoustic guitars, curious instrumentals and harmonies winding their way into the sophomore album. This probably also led them to getting way ahead of themselves and veering out of their lane, but in the meantime, Ride the Lightning is a lot more varied to listen to than their debut. Yes, it continues to wail, but it wails in new and exciting ways. ‘Creeping Death’ and ‘Trapped Under Ice’ are the choicest tracks. ‘Fade to Black’ is a pretty good song by the standards of a power ballad and is a nice dimension to add to the album but I’d point out that it portends Metallica’s inevitable doom.  Master of Puppets is considered (nearly anywhere I’ve looked) the undisputed champion of thrash metal albums. I would kinda love to have a dissenting opinion here, but it feels impossible to deny. It is stunningly heavy and loud and kinetic. It’s definitely a twin to its predecessor, they share a layout, right up to track 4 being a power ballad. As a set they’re the Pokemon Red/Blue of Thrash. Anything other than the subtle evolution in the playing and production would’ve been weird as hell -- album number three and they nearly perfect the genre. On the subject of Metallica’s power ballads, I’d make the point that ‘Welcome Home (Sanitarium)’ is the pinnacle of their efforts -- gorgeous and grotesque in equal measure. And like Ride the Lightning follows ‘Fade to Black’ with an extra-heavy track, ‘Sanitarium’ is followed by the vicious gatling gun of ‘Disposable Heroes,’ as emphatic an anti-war song as one could imagine. Again special mention to a Cliff Burton feature -- ‘Orion’ is an oddity in the Metallica canon, can’t imagine there’s anything else like it that I’ve missed. It’s the most appropriate space marine soundtrack I’ve ever heard, it previews a much nerdier version of Metallica that starts writing about horrors from outer space. My impression is that long after I’ve moved on to another passing phase I’ll retain a fondness for their instrumentals, all five of the main ones are excellent.   ...And Justice for All just isn’t as good as the previous two. This is becoming less about Metallica and more a tribute to Cliff Burton, but fact is -- his phenomenal bass lines are the secret sauce, and in the absence of Burton (and apparently due to Ulrich’s hearing loss?) the bass is often lost in the mix. It still wails, though relying more on arpeggios and prog-y tempo changes and layered arrangements -- with ‘loud’ as the governing principle in the mix, the instruments all have a bit of a unnatural synthetic quality, the effect is much more processed than the earlier albums and it occasionally sounds like a flat wall of sound... which is about to become a theme, oh boy. Though it does convincingly sound like a mutant off-shoot of the Ride the Lightning/Master of Puppets aesthetic, just a shaggier and excessive cousin prone to wild mood swings. Seven of the nine tracks are at least six and a half minutes long. At 9:48, ‘To Live is to Die’ is the first song in the catalogue that I would consider straight tedious (Though the title track is about the same length and it’s quite good!) At the end of the album, ‘Dyers Eve’ appears as a great redeemer, probably the best expression of what they were trying to do here. Oh yeah -- ‘One.’ Honestly it gets there. It’s a very pretty song. I think what I don’t like about the ballads is Hetfield’s voice when he’s singing (as opposed to when he’s growling, yelling, barking) may as well be someone trying to do a Brad Roberts impression. Though maybe that’s not the issue, I always enjoy The Crash Test Dummies. Metallica/Black Album. I don’t like this. Or, I don’t like it very much but I recognize it’s pretty good. Definitely has its moments (’Of Wolf and Man,’ ‘Through the Never.’) Seems like an odd stumbling block. This was a massive hit. ‘Enter Sandman’ is a classic rock song. Of sorts. It ain’t thrash, though it’s definitely still a heavy metal album in the vein of Black Sabbath and the like. Reading about the composition I understand they were tired of what they had been doing, they felt like impostors and wanted to strip it back some, and in that sense it’s an accomplishment. It’s dark and heavy and somber and pretty sad in parts. I feel like if Metallica had collapsed into the sea and never been found afterward/gone their separate ways this would’ve been an interesting finale, but as it stands, through the lens of history I have to reckon with the fact that this is the first of four albums produced by Bob Rock and it’s easily the best of them. It’s going to get worse before it gets... less worse. Which is not to say I don’t appreciate the orchestra and the cellos and a bit more variation in the compositions but... whither Thrash? ‘Holier Than Thou,’ silly as it is, captures a bit of the lost spirit, Maybe it’s exhausting to be that band for too long. It’s a perfectly natural thing to want to progress and not make the same album over and over again, but I can’t help but feel like they abandoned their perch atop a style where they were the greatest of all time to be (at first) a pretty good metal band and then a ‘hard rock’ band. This is Jordan switching to baseball and then for some reason trying ice hockey. I’m reasonably sure ‘Nothing Else Matters’ sucks pretty viciously, though Metallica writing a love song has a conceptual appeal and I could understand people liking it. Load. Gosh, what an appropriate title. I think if you asked Chad Kroeger what his favourite Metallica album is, he’d absolutely say Load. Metallica skipped over grunge and went straight to post-grunge. It’s also so long! There’s so much of this very mediocre album.  Reload. What the fuck is this. It starts off with the Soundgardenesque (well, Rusty Cage-esque) ‘Fuel’ with its fun but asinine chorus, it doesn’t do anything particularly interesting after. Just like its sibling, it’s almost eighty minutes long of sluggish, middle of the road 90s rock.  Garage, Inc is amazing by comparison to anything else put out by Metallica in the 90s. Two discs, the second compiling covers from as far back as 1984, 1987′s Garage Days EP and the b-side to some awful Load song that’s just four Mötörhead covers. ‘Whiskey in the Jar,’ of course, but also ‘Am I Evil?’ Sabbath’s ‘Sabbra Cadabra’ and an exuberant cover of Queen’s ‘Stone Cold Crazy.’ It’s not solid gold but there’s a lot of stuff to like. S&M (Symphony and Metallica, but... you know.) Definitely has it moments, particularly with the older stuff -- ‘Call of Ktulu,’ ‘Master of Puppets,’ ‘The Thing That Should Never Be’ with symphonic accompaniment is very cool.   St. Anger is the big ‘comeback’ album that came out when I was 15 and thus acutely aware of big music releases. I feel like I could’ve skipped the opening paragraphs of this essay and just written that as explanation of why I didn’t care about Metallica. I’m sure there was some good heavy metal happening around the turn of the century but at the time this was happening, Limp Bizkit, Saliva, Staind, Kid Rock, Godsmack, Sevendust, Slipknot, Drowning Pool, Korn, Trapt and Linkin Park (probably the best of the bunch? right?) were the biggest things in metal. Hence, in 2003 we are gifted... Nu Metallica. The title track is very bad. There are no guitar solos to be found. There aren’t any ballads to be found (that’s mostly fine.) I’ve done three tracks. I’m not listening to the rest of this. It’s just not worth it. Death Magnetic was a big surprise as a I soldiered on. Bob Rock is gone, Rick Rubin is in. Say what you will about Rubin (another time, perhaps) but for whatever reason, after a twenty year hiatus (1988-2008,) the thrash is back. I was beginning to grapple with the idea that Metallica had been past their prime my entire life, and while that’s still probably true, here they are at least dabbling with the style that made them such a big damned deal. Which is not to say this is an amazing album. It’s good though! But you can hear, even on the opening track, how exceedingly compressed the sound is. Everything is loud on this album! Without exception! All the time! It’s all peak! Consequently it’s a tiring thing to listen to all the way through. Apparently there are different versions available that turn down the mix a bit, but the Spotify version is evidently the original, as it is just a brutal onslaught of noise. It’s not a great album to sit through, but individual tracks are welcome. There’s even an instrumental for the first time since ...And Justice For All. Lulu (with Lou Reed) -- Laugh all you want, I don’t think this is as bad as Load and Reload. It’s really god damned weird, sure, and it’s not ‘good’ by any conception of (what is ‘the good,’ etc) but it’s at least interesting here and there.  Hardwired... to Self-Destruct suggests a certain inevitability to the path. With or without the play-acting in the 90s (Hetfield has speculated that Ulrich and Hammett were interested in being a U2-sized band complete with the frivolous and monolithic pretensions) they might have ended up here anyway, a bunch of dudes in their 50s making a heavy metal record that is doomed to be nowhere near as vital and electrifying as the groundbreaking stuff of their youth, but is practiced, professional and what the fans have come to expect. It’s pretty good, but there’s no chance it’s their best work. Read a review that called it their best work in 25 years, which is... damning with faint praise, but definitely true. Anyway they’re in the zone. ‘Moth Into Flame’ is a pretty good example of what we’re dealing with here -- thesis, antithesis, synthesis, in this case, arriving at ‘generic Metallica.’ If there’s more Metallica on the way it’ll be pretty much like this, chugging along like Springsteen or the Rolling Stones. It seems super unlikely they’ll ever surpass their first five albums, but I think that’s true of just about every band ever.  In conclusion, I’m not doing this same process for Megadeth. :P

[lyingaboutazaleas]

RIP

IDK how much enthusiasm I’ll manage to keep for this because I’m just back from a work shift and it’s obviously emotional so here goes.

A lot of people right now are going to reflect on Chester Bennington’s life and talk about the tragedy of suicide, depression, mental illness and all the associated things within Linkin Park’s music that made it vital for it’s fans. Many of who found it when they were young (as did I) and needed a form of catharsis through all of the angst permeating in that music. Right now I do not know how to process that nor can I, but instead I’m settling on something my mind instantly gravitated to.

Only a day or two ago, I was in a debate with a friend about what ‘rock’ means in 2017. A boring topic but I mentioned their recent single “Heavy” with singer/songwriter/producer Kiiara. In a way, the single has little to do with the band that I’d discovered as I started to enter the teenage years, and in many ways beyond Chester’s vocal I couldn’t tell you if it wasn’t more than bandmate Mike Shinoda and Chester trying to adapt to a rapidly changing musical climate where not only are nu-metal bands like them and the acts who influenced them incredibly out of vogue, but rock bands in general. More and more, ‘indie’ leaning acts or even singer/songwriters who essentially focus closer to ‘pop stars’ rather than ‘rock artists’ seem to fill that space for younger fans. Of the younger bands who do become popular, it’s acts such as TwentyOne Pilots, Imagine Dragons, The 1975, Hey Violet and others whose names either escape me of I’ve yet to discover who work closer to the construction of rock in the style of the more popular genres such as EDM or the darker ‘Indie Pop’ sounds in order to make sense.

On the one hand, Linkin Park very much predated this approach. They were a popular rock band aimed for an adolescent fanbase who took influence from left-field electronic musics like glitch/turntabalism/IDM, rap, and Nu-Metal (itself not really ‘metal’ but an outgrowth of the more experimental tendencies of the metallic hardcore scene of the late 80s and early 90s). On the Grooves & Jams blog, I once joked that Linkin Park was spiritually closer to a band such as The Pop Group than they ever knew or would commonly be recognized but I think Mark Stewart would concede that Linkin Park reached more ears and perhaps challenged more people’s expectations of what music could sound like. In a time where music was still segregated by ‘who listened to what’, Linkin Park undoubtedly exposed listeners of one genre primarily to a whole different realm of possibility.

But on the other hand, Linkin Park in it’s recent days felt like a culmination of a peculiar trend. Their identity as a band had been shaved down further and further, members such as Rob, Brad, Joe & Dave had little in the way of recognizable contributions to the sound of the band as the initial formula that had defined them had fallen so out of vogue. As much as I was not a fan of their singles past Meteora as a teen and naturally would later become dismissive of them in my rush to become as ‘informed’ a music listener as possible, I can now recognize that they did so out of a necessity to keep up with the times while still being some form of Linkin Park. But by the very end, the band felt (and may continue to feel should the remaining members determine they want to proceed) like Linkin Park had become more of a familiar brand for radio placement. “Heavy” was to me, like Maroon 5 past a certain point or the recent Chainsmokers and Coldplay single, not an exercise in Linkin Park working to other’s definitions rather than their own.

This is not  meant as some inappropriate attempt in the wake of this death to try and take shots at the creative decision of a band whom I hold a nostalgic appreciation for one specific era... It’s an attempt to try and memorialize this music in the right way. Because around the same time Linkin Park and other things in music made me start wanting to learn more, I also learned how ‘uncool’ this was in the music press, or among in-the-know musical fans. As far as critical consensus was concerned in the early 00s, cool Brooklyn Indie made by people with money or cultural capital was the Essential Art while nu-metal and it’s bizarre cousin & offspring, the ‘scenecore’ boom of metalcore/post-hardcore/emo or whatever you’d call it, was the music of Dumb Kids or white trash or just generally people with no taste. It didn’t matter that comparatively The Strokes made music that was regressive as far as experimentation with genre or redefining mediums/instrumentation... This was the way. And don’t get me started on the elitism of trad metal press who swore by their old Sabbath albums, or the snobbishness of the hardcore/metalcore experimental wing who found meaning in the instrumental rock of ISIS and Pelican.

In music fandom and the culture surrounding it in the press, or blogs, or what have you, we’ve often talked about the concepts of Rockism & Poptimism without acknowledging when we’re upholding those same principles. TwentyOne Pilots might be a rock band, but they do things musically that reflect a comprehension of modern musical vogues and also speak to a great many kids who want to relate to something musically. Compare that to the musical nostalgia/conservatism and elitist culture you can find of something so seemingly straight-forward and poppy as Carly Rae Jepsen’s fanbase, and I don’t think you’d see the rules are quite clearly as defined as some of us like to be. I personally find good and bad in both, so it’s not to say I have any stake in a direction. But as poptimism tries to find overdue justice for Britney, does that same olive branch occur for Linkin Park and bands of their ilk who at the time weren’t considered ‘real enough’ to satisfy the world of Rock Culture? Do the millions of teens who loved that band get the recognition they deserve for actually perhaps seeing something good?

Chester Bennington is gone, and while his musical legacy is tragically punctuated by this end as far as what he was able to do, I will miss him because I look back on my life and recognize that him and his music affected me in so many more ways than just liking an album could do. The choice of deciding I loved that band as a teen, and the subsequent reflection of what it could actually mean to be a ‘fan’ and affiliate myself with that music socially, affected how I look at the present, the future, and the past. He did more for me than I can begin to describe, and I’ll forever be grateful. I simply wish the gratitude I and so many felt at any given time could’ve been enough for him, and hope that perhaps not at the final moment, but in his life, he was able to take pride and comfort in that.