Time Isn't A Flat Circle, Love Isn't A Pie Chart

How much of an artists catalog do we have to love in order to justify ourselves as a 'fan'?

It sounds like a silly question, but if you've spent any time around the music scene, you know all too well the gate-keepers out there who dictate the when, where, and how of being a fan. Open your mouth, and you will inevitably be told that 'real fans' like everything an artist does, or they own everything even if they don't like it all, or they will always prefer the 'classic' era to everything else. And so on and so forth.

Things get so ridiculous that people will sometimes even tell us that being a fan of music means you must listen to music a certain way. I have been told more than once that 'real' music fans listen to the drums, then the guitars, and they leave the lyrics for last.

That is complete and utter bullshit, of course, but it's the kind of bullshit that arises when you dare to disagree with people who are so pathetic they feel the need to control everyone else. We've all heard about those schmucks who go up to people wearing a band t-shirt and ask them to name more than one song, haven't we?

What makes this all the more frustrating is that we are treating art differently than we are the people who make it. When we fall in love with a person, we don't love everything about them. We love people in spite of their flaws and foibles, and the annoyances that come along with the fact no two people are ever exactly the same. We seem unable or unwilling to be as generous to art and artists, which is a phenomenon I can't quite explain.

To get back to the point; What percentage makes us a fan?

Am I a fan of Black Sabbath if I love the three albums they made with Ronnie James Dio so dearly, but I don't care in the slightest about the years with Ozzy or Tony Martin? I know there are people who look at it the other way around, who will say you can be a fan and love only Ozzy's era. It doesn't make much sense to divide things up where only one era matters and the rest don't, right?

Many fans of Van Halen will take the position that they are two different bands, and Sammy Hagar's era can be completely dismissed, even though the band was just as popular then. The truth about all of this is that people are making it up as they go along, trying to write a set of rules to justify whatever they already think. No one wants to be seen as contradicting themselves, so we find ourselves tied up in knots in an effort to have both ends of the string pointing in the same direction.

Here's the truth; a fan is anyone who finds enjoyment in someone's music. It doesn't matter if you have every song they've ever recorded, the handful of albums you like best, or just a greatest hits compilation. Music is not a competition, and you are not a 'better' fan for knowing more of the minutia than someone else. People who look at it that way are not just missing the point, they are actively working against their own interest. If you love an artist, and you want them to have even more fans and acclaim, ridiculing and putting down people who don't meet your strict definition of a fan is only going to push them away.

All of this was prompted as I was listening to Pink recently. As I have said many times, there are certain voices that elicit a physical reaction when I hear them. Pink is one of them, but unlike most of the others on that small list, my relationship with her music is not as deep or involved. I can't remember the last time I listened to one of her albums in full, and I have not been overly enamored by her recent work as the entirety of the pop music scene has drifted away from me.

However, there is a compilation of songs I absolutely adore. When I listen to songs such as "Just Like A Pill" or "Long Way To Happy", it feels like I love Pink as much as any artist. Thinking about life, we realize love is not a constant. It ebbs and flows, sometimes disappearing completely, always making us question our sanity for chasing it down. Some love is deep, some love is intense, and some love is imagined. They all leave the same impression on us.

I look at music proselytizers the same way as the religious sort; Why are they so insecure about their own beliefs that they need to convert everyone else to agree with them? Much like how the relationship with God is supposed to be personal and not a performance of public spectacle, our relationship with music is felt entirely within ourselves. We might find ourselves in a community sharing our thoughts and feelings, and bonding over what we share, but at the end of the day we only know the emotional stir within ourselves.

Music is very much like existentialism that way, and it's why I'm comfortable saying I love Pink in whatever form that happens to take. I would say anyone who wants to judge can save their breath, but I have a feeling they're stupid enough to need to be reminded to breathe anyway.

Album Review: Blind Equation - "A Funeral in Purgatory"

Today, we’re going to talk about the band Blind Equation and their new album “A Funeral in Purgatory.”  Well, we’re going to use their new album as a vehicle to actually talk about keeping an open mind and being willing to engage in new experiences, which feels increasingly important in a world that seeks to algorithmically keep us in our comfort zones, away from contrarian thinking.  So, really, we’re probably not going to talk a lot about Blind Equation, with all requisite apologies to them.

I am forty-two years old. (For those of you who didn’t click away immediately as soon as I said that, thanks for staying.)  I’ve been doing this, whatever this editorial exercise is that I’m engaging in, dare I pretentiously call it music journalism, for some seventeen years now.  It doesn’t feel too presumptuous or conceited to suggest that I could be regarded as an expert in my field.  I have a pretty good handle on a wide array of musical styles and genres, and I also have a fair grip on what I like, and what I look for, in new music.

It is inevitable that eventually there’s a sense of redundancy.  I’ll hear a new record, and I’m closed off to it, simply because it sounds like a couple hundred records I’ve heard before.  The thrill of unearthing a gem remains, but as I hear more and more gems, I can’t help but wonder what the value of novelty is, or what’s the intrinsic importance of good timing?  At least three times this year alone, I’ve listened to an album where I thought to myself “if I had heard this record before I ever heard Soilwork, would I like this album more?”  

(I promise we’re getting to Blind Equation.  Hang in there just a moment more.)

That gets into a thousand existential questions about music and fandom and memory which we don’t have enough time to dissect here, but it’s safe to say that the concept is a constant struggle in the life of a music journalist (there’s that term again.)  And yet, because I know what I like, and because I know what I look for, it’s hard to find the time in a busy life to organically stumble across something new.  Time is our most valuable commodity - would I rather spend it with things I know I like, or potentially squander it on a risk?

When I saw the press release for Blind Equation, their listed genre was ‘cybergrind.’ And for the first time in a long time, I said to myself “I don’t even know what that is.”  The very brevity of the name suggested to me that it wasn’t simply some bullshit made up to sound more exclusive or important, like the alleged distinction between ‘doom’ and ‘funeral doom’ (spoiler, there’s no difference.)  So, I took a flyer on ‘cybergrind.’

“A Funeral in Purgatory” has some hallmarks of other musical touchstones that I have experience with.  It is in some part industrial, chiptune and hardcore, though it is none of those things singularly.  It is not completely far afield from Tayne’s album earlier this year, “Love,” which I quite enjoy, though try to imagine if Tayne’s album had been written and arranged by Al Jourgensen.  

There’s a song on this record called “Flashback,” featuring backing vocals from the artist Strawberry Hospital (great name.)  At its base, this is a death metal song with some thrash leanings, but it also has hyper-pop (a term I just made up,) backing vocals and also sounds a little like you might be questing to find the Master Sword?  It’s a trip, man, there’s a lot of layers to this song, and the production is loud as hell.  It’s a cacophonous maelstrom of sounds and aural textures.  It’s the kind of thing Steve Albini (RIP) would have adored.

Skip along to “This Eternal Curse,” and it’s kind of like the Browning, but…not?  More synth, more artistry, more discordant sounds mashed together to make new combinations, and all with an easy dance beat that’s hard to ignore.

And nestled within all this chaos is “Still,” a hauntingly beautiful little three minutes of music that sounds out of place, except that the eclectic nature of the record means nothing sounds out of place.  I dare myself to make less sense.

It feels cheap and pedantic to try and encapsulate Blind Equation by comparing them to other, more familiar bands, but it’s the only tool I have to try and communicate effectively something foreign to me.  “A Funeral in Purgatory” is part Ministry, part Browning, part Combichrist, part Ghostemane, part sixteen-bit era “Final Fantasy” soundtrack, and a dash of…hell, I don’t know…dance pop?

Is “A Funeral in Purgatory” a good cybergrind album?  Damned if I know.  But it struck my interest.  Parts of it are good to my sensibilities, but I’m not even sure if I’m evaluating those parts properly.  It’s opened a door for me that I didn’t know existed, given me a new subject I can talk about at the water cooler (much to the horror of my colleagues.)  Would I call myself a cybergrind fan now, following this experience?  Probably not.  But could I see myself as a cybergrind fan in the future?  Sure, absolutely.  There’s something tucked away here in this music that’s worthwhile, that has merit and value.

Which is all a long way of saying this - stay curious.  Ask questions.  As we get older and busier, it’s natural to start to constrict our curiosity - we barely have time to enjoy the things we know we like, who has time for more? - but that ends in stagnation, and that’s just not a healthy place to be.  You haven’t heard it all before.  You haven’t seen it all before.  There’s this great Bill Nye quote that I think of frequently: “Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don’t.”

So, go find the new Blind Equation album.  Sit down and let it play.  Approach it with an open mind.  You might not like it in the end, and that’s okay, too.  What’s important is that you took the time and tried to expand your horizon.

Album Review: Ashes Of Ares - New Messiahs

Iced Earth disappeared into the great nothingness when Jon Shaeffer was arrested as part of the January 6th insurrection. He had always been a fringe political lunatic, but descending into literally trying to overthrow the government of the country he professes to love meant that even if he weren't in jail, there was no audience left for Iced Earth outside of bars and restaurants owned by Kid Rock.

I say that because Iced Earth is in better shape than Ashes Of Ares.

Seriously. I have been massively critical of this project since it first emerged, and they have given me reason to think I will run out of adjectives to describe just how awful the experience of listening to their records can be. Let's put it this way; one of the songs the press materials has been touting is an Elton John cover (Not even one of the hits - some poor saps who never listened to "The Captain & The Kid" might think the only decent song on the album was written by these guys). That's how much confidence they have in their own songwriting abilities. Worse than that, Matt Barlow's voice is completely shot, so we get a performance of the song that sounds worse than if Elton had recorded the song during a drug-fueled orgy. At least having a mouth full of... whatever would explain why the vocals are this bad.

Barlow has no range or clarity left, so all he can do is bellow his way through these songs with 'grit' that sounds more like throat damage to my ears. I was never the biggest fan of his during his glory days, but I at least could hear why others were so enamored with him. That's not true any longer, as now he resembles a bad Zak Stevens (of Savatage fame) impressionist. It's uncomfortable to listen to him strain this much, especially as the songs themselves are written around his limitations, and he still can't make anything of them.

Beyond my concerns about Barlow, the record isn't a good metal album anyway. The songs pound away with a mix of death and thrash riffs that aren't particularly notable, and are played with a tone that feels like it belongs on one of the more poorly produced albums of the 80s. This record doesn't sound like it exists in the same world that has seen massive improvements in the ease and quality of making recordings. I have said this before, but it's not a joke to claim that albums put out on genuine labels should not sound worse than what we can produce with a laptop and some free plug-ins. There's no excuse for this record to sound this bad.

I've never wanted to be famous, because attention makes me uncomfortable, but it has to be nice to know that fame means you will always have somebody willing to support you no matter how much you're struggling with your art. This band can only exist because Barlow is still remembered fondly from his time with Iced Earth. I can think of no other reason why Ashes Of Ares keeps getting to release albums on a label.

I could say more, but I don't want to pile on. The warning to stay away from this album is the important part. I took the bullet on this one to save you from accidentally giving it a shot.

Man, I'm glad I never became an Iced Earth fan. Everything that band ever touched has turned to shit.

Album Review: Palecurse - Dark Room

"History doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme."

That's a common way of expressing that seldom do we run across anything truly new and unique, and that we should learn from the past. That is obviously not true, as we see ourselves making the same mistakes time and time again. It gives us plenty of reason to doubt the philosophical description of humans as being 'rational animals'. Rationality may just be a recessive gene like being left-handed. Hmm... does that mean the ambidextrous like me are prone to being semi-sane? I digress.

A few years ago, I was rather taken by the band Dream State. They put out the "Remedy" EP and the "Primrose Path" album, mixing modern alternative rock and post-hardcore in a way that was anthemic, cathartic, and a hell of a lot of fun. Most of that came down to their vocalist, CJ, who could shred her throat while also delivering huge hooks. It wasn't emo, but it was hugely emotional as an outlet for our mental struggles.

I say that because Palecurse reminds me so much of that sound. The geography might be different, but Palecurse is mining the same world of angst and frustration, pouring it out through songs we can shout together. Likewise, the key to Palecurse is Brittany's vocals, which push the edge between singing and screaming, all the while staying melodic with a welcoming tone. This isn't screaming at us, it's screaming about us. We all have the urge sometimes, but our own voices might not be strong enough to push that much air. She is doing it for us, giving us a form of musical therapy we desperately need.

The record opens up with a string of bangers. "Fever", "Duplicity", and "On My Knees" are all songs with crunchy guitars and sing-along hooks that will cause a mosh pit and a gang chorus at the same time. Riding the edge between being aggressive and memorable is a difficult one, and songs like these show Palecurse doing it with ease. I've been recommended a lot of bands that try to do this by algorithms, and few are as good. With Spiritbox being one of the biggest metal bands out there right now, I can say easily Palecurse have a better ear for songwriting, no question about it.

At a tight thirty-four minutes, "Dark Room" is an album for binge-listening, short enough that you want to dive back in and get another dose before moving on. Like a therapy session, you need enough time to work through your issues, but no so much time that you find you can fill your entire day pulling on the threads of your discontent. You don't want to unravel the entirety of your soul, and a band like Palecurse doesn't want to hit us with so much we get overwhelmed. They find the right balance, leaving us satisfied but still wanting more.

Records that embody this spirit of actualization and self-discovery have been a staple of my year-end lists for a while now. Dream State made it one year, Yours Truly topped the list another. Palecurse has taken up that mantle, giving us a record that embodies the attitude that scars are as much badges of survival as they are reminders of pain.

These are the kinds of records we need more of.

Albums I Regret Buying

"Regrets, I've had a few. Then again, too few to mention," Frank Sinatra made famous. Regret is one of those universal feelings we cannot escape, and which we can apply to nearly every aspect of life. Some of us live in regret, both for the things we have done and the things we have not. Perhaps the most infuriating situation is to find yourself regretting the decisions you have made, and yet believing that making the other choice would have been no better. Ah, regret.

Musically, regret comes in the form of wondering how we did not see or know the people we would later be, acquiring albums that spoke to us in the moment only to fade to the point of being unrecognizable. It is an unfortunate fact that we don't know ourselves nearly as well as we like to think, and finding titles on the shelf we haven't pulled out in decades is a solid reminder of that.

So do I regret spending $3.99 on a copy of The Backstreet Boys greatest hits? Actually, not for a damn second. I probably should, but nostalgic pop is absolutely a thing, and I heard those songs so much they seeped their way into my brain.

Here are a few I do regret buying, for a few different reasons.

Queens Of The Stone Age - Songs For The Deaf

When this album came out, I bought into them the way so many others did. The hit singles were great, and it was something new and different to my ears. I didn't know what desert rock or stoner rock were, but I knew that a band that wrote "No One Knows" should be good for something more. As it turns out, that wasn't exactly true. The album is a solid affair, and I can still get some enjoyment out of it, but the reason I regret buying it has more to do with options. As I held it in my hands for the first time, I was debating between it and Fall Out Boy's "From Under The Cork Tree". I made the wrong choice. It was later rectified, but I missed out on time with an album that resonates far more with me today than Queens Of The Stone Age ever did. I took a chance on predicting the future, and I got burned... slightly.

Bruce Springsteen - Born To Run (30th Anniversary Box Set)

The talk around 'classic' albums can be toxic to our mindsets, as it brainwashes us into believing things before we ever give them thought. When it comes to Bruce Springsteen, the adulation "Born To Run" receives is massive. I could not escape hearing about it again and again, and eventually I got worn down and told myself I needed to have the album. After all, "Thunder Road" and the title track are both fantastic. When I saw the box set edition with a documentary about the making of the album, and a full live show on DVD, it seemed like the perfect way to engross myself in The Boss.

Nope. As it turns out, my fascination was short-lived, and soon thereafter I realized the Springsteen I actually care about is "Darkness On The Edge Of Town". And of course, the similar box set for that record sells for far more these days. Oh well. The point is that I didn't trust my own wariness about Springsteen, and I would up with something that doesn't fit on the shelf, and that I haven't pulled out in several years.

Tool - Lateralus

I don't know if I wanted to be cool, or if I was in a phase where I was seeking out the heaviest things that were still acceptable to me, but I was very much into Tool when this album came out. "Schism" and "The Grudge" were unlike anything I had ever heard before, and back then I thought it was clever they wrote a song based on the Fibonacci Sequence. I know better now, and I have spent the years since being bored by Tool time and again. Their focus on math over melody has not just bored me, but also infuriated me, and convinced me that many times knowing too much about music ruins everything about making the art. I will still enjoy "Schism" if it comes on, but I haven't tried to listen to the whole of the album in so, so long.

The Wonder Years - The Hum Goes On Forever

This was my Album Of The Year winner in 2022, so why do I regret buying it? No, it isn't that the album has faded in my esteem in the time since then. I still consider it a great record, but at the same time it is a terrible one to actually own. The packaging is the cheapest and flimsiest slice of cardboard imaginable, formed with no spine and at a size that doesn't fit on the shelf with all the other CDs. Additionally, it comes with only a fold-out picture, and not lyrics and liner notes. The whole thing feels barely better than burning a CD of your own, and not at all worth the money spent on it. Despite liking the record, I do wish I hadn't bothered getting myself a physical copy.

Metallica - St Anger

Here is the biggest embarrassment of them all, and I know exactly why I bought this album. I was new to metal as it was coming out, so I could profess ignorance of the subject. In a way, I didn't know any better. Metallica was the biggest metal band in the world, and they had a new record, so someone getting into metal would obviously be drawn to it. That's one side of it, but another is that I was also a nascent guitar player at the time, and as the singles preceded the album, I found that they were songs I could actually play. That was a bad sign, but I also didn't know that at the time. The incredibly simple 0-1-2 riff of the title track made me feel as if I knew what the hell I was doing on the instrument, when all it really did was show how little Metallica had put into making the record. 

Nothing makes you feel stupid like buying a terrible album, eh?

Heroes Aren't Real, But We Need Them

As a culture, we are obsessed with the concept of heroes. It seems like you can't turn on a tv without a superhero movie either playing somewhere, or a commercial for the next one filling the ad break. Theaters are filled with the latest exploits of groups of progressively lamer and more forgettable 'heroes' saving us from imagined perils specifically engineered so only the people wearing those specific ridiculous costumes could stop hell on earth from starting. It's all a bit much after you've seen in a few times, isn't it?

We extend this notion into our lives, often calling an actor, an author, or a musician we like a 'hero' of ours, even when such terms shouldn't apply in the slightest. If we are not engaged in the same activity, exactly what we are looking up to is a bit difficult to put our finger on. There is a chasm between liking what someone does and considering them a personal inspiration. I'm afraid we have lost all sense of what words mean, and apply them so liberally they have become nothing more than artificial decorations we throw on people, like the fool's gold and costume jewelry you can get out of a claw machine at a bowling alley. (I'm always rather annoyed when I see a headline about a 'star' of this or that who was merely a supporting player, or how I once received a press release about a 'legendary' band who had one hit single and only two albums to their name. Ugh.)

The other aspect of having a personal 'hero' is the fact we don't truly know these people beyond their works, so we may not like the people themselves who gave rise to the art we so admire. You've probably heard it mentioned as common wisdom to "never meet your heroes", and that's precisely why. How many Harry Potter fans dedicated so much of their youth to the books and movies created by someone who now reveals themselves to be consumed by hate for people who simply want to live their lives in peace? For all we know, there are so many more people we supposedly admire who fall into similar traps.

That is to say that I don't buy into the idea of having personal heroes. It is both natural and acceptable to have inspirations, to admire the artistic work of people whose creative voice has matched our own and/or taught us things about ourselves, but putting them on a pedestal as something more is a dangerous tactic.

Now that I have given up on my own artistic ventures, I can see this more clearly than ever before. As an author, I never had anyone who guided my way. I backed my way into writing, so I had not looked at any particular style or writer as a model for what I wanted to do. My voice evolved as my own, simply because I was not reading a lot of other work looking for bits and pieces I could bring into what I was doing. It helped that my ideas were few and far between, so even if I had something in mind I wanted to try, it would fade away or morph into something of my own devising by the time I was ready to write it.

As a musician, things were different. There is one writer who meant more to me than any other, whose work was always in the back of my mind as I wrote my own songs, who I would have been tempted to elevate to a higher status. That person, unsurprising to anyone who has read almost anything I have written over the years, is Jim Steinman.

His music was the first that spoke to me and pulled me into the world of fandom, and it is his that still resonates with me more than any other all these years later. I have said on many occasions I feel that I can trace a good portion of my personality to his sarcasm and futile melodrama. Like in his songs, my own thoughts are centered on the idea of dreams and hopes that never quite come true, and the raging at the gods that comes from asking why I seem fated to suffer without knowing what any of the pleasures of life will ever feel like.

Those thoughts might drive my thinking, but they don't necessarily come through in my writing. I took the over-the-top nature of Steinman's writing, and put a more poetic spin on it. This might have been to couch those thoughts and feelings enough that no one else quite got to the point of what I was trying to say, or it might have been that I felt I needed to say things with pretty turns of phrase to cover up that what I had to say wasn't interesting or important enough to listen to. If you're going to say nothing, at least say it in a way people will remember. I think Steinman would like that line.

As I wrote more and more songs, I would start to let my guard down, and more puns and snarky wordplay would start to creep into the lyrics. I was particularly fond of one song that played off the phrase 'manifest destiny' as a way of talking about issues regarding fate. Steinman had directly referenced The Three Stooges, so I felt well within my rights to be a bit of a jerk in that case. I wrote about jealousy being a 'green-eyed monster' that stands in 'the limelight', which still brings a wry smile to my face.

My most direct homage was writing a song titled "I Can See You When I Close My Eyes (But Not A Second Before)", which is a title that not only played into his penchant for contradictions, but into the idea that what we want may only be possible in our own minds. It fits the theme when Steinman wrote about how "we see what we want to see" when "It's All Coming Back To Me". An intentional nod, although my version of the song was far less horny. Likewise, my version of the ending of "Paradise By The Dashboard Light" was not soaked in as many souring hormones. While he wrote "I'm praying for the end of time, so I can end my time with you", I phrased mine as the more demure "I love you to death, but after that we'll see".

All of this is to say that while Steinman is undoubtedly a musical inspiration of mine (despite me never learning to play piano), and his influence is felt in my work, I do not consider him to be a 'hero' of mine. His life was kept private enough I don't feel as if I have ever known enough about him to make any judgment about whether or not I would like him, and a few stories that have been told in certain circles paint an unflattering picture. This seems to be a case of it being better to see someone as we want to see them, as is useful to see them, rather than as they actually were.

That's not a bad thing, by the way. In existential philosophy, the world is as we experience it. Our truth is filtered through our senses, and the way reality is interpreted by our minds and emotions. When someone enters our life and is able to be the mortar filling some of the cracks in our souls, we don't need to look any further than that. They have served an important purpose, and it would be foolish on our part to give up on that because of a need to dig where the dirt needs not be disturbed.

Hero worship is unhealthy not because we shouldn't look up to people who have brought good into our lives, but because it leads us to thinking some people aren't as flawed as the rest of us. It's important to remember that everyone who helps us get through to the next existential crisis has likely faced the same demons and had people of their own to help them through. We are merely a knot on a line that stretches as far back into the past as human lineage does. We are not alone, nor are we unique, despite how much either can feel true at times.

What makes these people feel like heroes to us is that they are always there for us, while the actual people in our lives are not. Mere presence can seem heroic when faced with the realities of fractured attention and everyone else dealing with as much as we are. We turn to art because it can mirror our emotions, it can calm our nerves, and it can tell us things that are hard to put into words.

Some of us are used to being disappointed by the people in our lives. Sometimes it's family that not only acts as if you're dead to them, but can't even remember that they're the ones who severed the ties. Sometimes it's friends who will take weeks to respond to your honesty, which creates a cognitive dissonance between their claims and actions. Sometimes it's people who completely disappear from your life with no warning or explanation, even after you told them about your issues with people having done that before.

There are not always many people we can count on to be there for us when we need someone to listen, someone to remind us that feeling in the shadows means there has to be a light somewhere, someone who remembers the good things about us when we can't see them for ourselves. These last couple of years have been revealing in this respect, which has made me more insular, more withdrawn. That has pushed me closer to music, but only the music that has always been with me.

Jim Steinman's music has been the one constant in my life. For these thirty-plus years, I could always pull a CD (ok, I started with cassettes, I'm old enough to say) off the shelf when everything felt too much. Steinman's music felt like hearing a kindred spirit, the only person I knew who saw the world in many of the same ways I did. Now that I realize my mind probably isn't exactly normal, it makes all the sense in the world that I would hold dear to the one voice that sounded like my own.

I often have feelings of being rather alone in my experience of this world. Those songs give me reason to think maybe I'm not irredeemably broken.

As Steinman wrote, "When you really-really need it the most, that's when rock and roll dreams come through."

What's more heroic than that?

What Happens When "The Bat Strikes Back"

Art can be a difficult thing to wrap our heads around, because we bring our own conceptions and biases to the proceedings. The art doesn't exist merely as the art, it must be filtered through the way we look at it, which creates layers of issues that have nothing to do with whether or not the music we're listening to is good or not, and yet we find ourselves making decisions based on the flaws of psychology. It is only natural, but that doesn't mean it holds up to logical scrutiny. Humans have been called 'rational creatures', but that was a bit of projection we have seldom been able to live up to.

When music is made explicitly as a pastiche/homage/tribute, do we give it enough credit? That's the question I'm contemplating today, as I was thinking about the album "The Bat Strikes Back" put out by Dean Torkington fifteen years ago. Torkington was the self-proclaimed #1 Meat Loaf tribute artist at the time, and used that 'fame' to write and release an album of original songs.

Original songs... by a tribute artist... a recipe for disaster, no?

'No' is the correct answer. As a tribute to Meat Loaf, Torkington was slightly miscast. He had the right tone, but his voice was more reminiscent of the period in the 80s when Meat's voice was damaged and had not yet recovered. Whether intentional or not, the album he wrote fit into that same period. These were songs that knew they could not reach the Steinman-esque level of bombast, so they focused on replicating Meat's more rock-oriented direction in the fallow days of the 80s. Those are albums that even Meat's fans often have trouble with, me included, but it leaves more room to impress us.

And impress it does. Torkington has the right vibe to channel Meat's defiant 'I don't need Jim Steinman (even though I do)' attitude, and the songs work because they are copying people who were badly copying Steinman's approach. That is something that could be done, and here it was done well.

The opening title track is the most Meat Loaf-ian song of the bunch, and is as much a follow up to "Bat Out Of Hell" as Steinman was able to come up with for "Dead Ringer". It isn't epic to the Nth degree, but it serves the purpose. More interesting is when they veer off the beaten path, as they do with "Last Survivor", which is an odd ballad that ends with a harmonica solo that brings to mind Elton John circa "I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues". That may not be a coincidence, since Torkington later shifted to being an Elton John tribute act. There is something here beyond merely copying the past, even if the ties are to thick its hard to see past them.

That brings us back to the main point; when an artist is not even trying to be themselves, what are we to make of them? We take for granted that a musician has a personality of their own, and their performances are trying to reveal that to us, whether they have written the songs or not. Singers aren't actors stepping into established roles, they are performers trying to make a connection with the audience. Tribute singers are not that, they are trained to replicate what people already know for the explicit purpose of filling a role the name in question no longer does.

When "The Bat Strikes Back" came out, no one was clamoring for new Meat Loaf music. He had failed to generate a third act in the mainstream, and the world no longer needed what his music had to offer. You could argue that Meat never understood what made his own music work, and I would probably agree with you. (One of these days, I will write about all the music Meat made without Steinman, and why much of it never stood a chance.) Torkington does understand that, or at least does understand what Meat should have been doing in the 80s.

"Midnight At The Lost & Found" and "Blind Before I Stop" are terrible albums. Meat sounds bad, and the songs aren't good. They were mistakes that had to be made just to keep his name out there, even if they did lead people to think Meat was more of a joke than they already did. If "The Bat Strikes Back" had been the album Meat put out at that time, I don't think he would have turned his career around sooner nor had any extra hits, but he wouldn't have fallen so far in the public's estimation. His career would not have been pock-marked with as many potholes as it wound up being.

Again, this leads us to consider just what to make of "The Bat Strikes Back". Dean Torkington made an album that was better than two of Meat Loaf's worst, but it's not 'his' album, is it? Honestly, I don't know how to answer that question, even after writing this much.

What I ultimately settle on is that albums like this aren't made as artistic statements, so thinking in those terms is banging my head against a brick wall. This is fan-service, a bit in the same mold as fan-fiction, and if we think in those terms this was a rousing success.

It just isn't, and could never be, what we would want it to be.

Box Set Review: Bruce Springsteen - Tracks II: The Lost Albums

"Kill your darlings" is one of the first pieces of advice given to any aspiring writer. The idea is to tell writers not to get too attached to their creations, because the audience will not be as appreciative of your genius as you are. They will want you to get to the point, and give them only what they need to get the gist. If brevity is the soul of wit, editing is the heart of writing.

At least that's what we tell ourselves. The fact of the matter is that we are often the worst judges of our own work, unable to separate ourselves from the art we have created. Some of us are born critics, and have less trouble thinking everything we have accomplished is worthless, but drawing the line between our best ideas and all the rest is a complicated task. Too often, we find artists who will put anything and everything out into the world.

Bruce Springsteen is not one of those artists. He meticulously crafted his classic albums, putting aside dozens of songs that may have been better than some of the tracks that made the records, simply because they didn't fit the theme and narrative he was trying to achieve. During the 90s, he was largely absent from releasing albums, but not from making them. He was toiling away at writing songs, piecing together albums that would not see the light of day... until now.

"Tracks II" is a seven album box set containing those lost albums Springsteen had never felt were the right songs at the right time. It's an overwhelming abundance of music, and a unique insight into the creative process of someone who cared so much about his art... and also the business process of someone who now seems intent on wringing as much money as he can from his life's work.

Each disc in this collection is a different experience, whether an acoustic album that blends "Nebraska" and "Born In The USA", or littered with drum loops that only appeared on "The Streets Of Philadelphia". Springsteen spent these years trying to find the sound that would carry him through the years, but never quite managing the task. You can hear bits of these songs pop up later, like how "Maybe I Don't Know You" giving us a glimpse of what "Nowhere Man" would sound like when "The Rising" finally brought Springsteen back to the mainstream.

More than that, though, what is interesting about this collection is the realization of how sometimes no amount of editing can save an idea. Over the course of 83 songs and over a decade of writing, Springsteen is showing us he didn't write enough great songs to fill one album, let alone seven. By not releasing any of these albums, he saved his legacy from being that of another artist who kept making records that were forgotten as soon as they were heard. His big comeback was only possible because he had stayed out of the spotlight during the years inspiration was not finding him.

I don't think it's a coincidence that Springsteen's three heights all came in times of turmoil. The post-Nixon years were a country struggling to figure out our morality. The Reagan years were the realization we were going to lie about how selfish we truly were. The post 9/11 years were an existential reckoning with how the world was going to coexist as technology made every threat one close to home.

Without something to rail against, Springsteen's writing became aimless. Song after song, albums after album, these tracks have almost none of his usual flair for guitar lines or vocal hooks. It's passive poetry played over somber music again and again. Some of these songs could have been Savage Garden singles, if you care for that insult.

That means this collection is more of a curiosity than anything worth truly sitting down and digging into. The gems, if they are here, are buried under so much mediocrity that it would take all your energy to clean them off so they can gleam in the sun.

And then we get to the biggest issue here. Bruce Springsteen sells out concert tours charging top of the market prices. He has sold his catalogue for hundreds of millions of dollars. And yet, this collection of records Springsteen himself didn't think were worth releasing is being sold to us for anywhere between $250-350, depending on format and store. That works out to over thirty dollars per album on CD, nearly fifty dollars on vinyl. He's charging us more money for rejects than he does for his proper albums.

I'm sorry, but there is no ethical case for gouging his fans like this. These records don't need to recoup recording costs, as they've been sitting on the shelf for years. So what's the point of making this so expensive? I would say it's to keep people from actually listening to these albums, but they're going to be available to stream, so that can't be the case. I'm struggling to come up with any explanation beyond pure greed, which is not a good look for someone who has spent his career crafting the image of a working class, blue-collar fighter.

Inflation doesn't mean filling a balloon by talking out your ass.

Look, Springsteen can do whatever he wants with his music. That's his right. And it's my right to be one of the (I presume) rare voices who will not tell you what an example of his genius these songs are. What we get are hours upon hours of Springsteen crooning tuneless nothings at us.

What I can say is this; the smartest thing Springsteen ever did as an artist is not release all of these albums.

The Best & Worst Of The Year... So Far

We make the mistake of thinking anything bisected will be of two equal halves. Symmetry is not guaranteed in nature, let alone in art. When we sit down to look at the first half of the year, we are merely seeing where we are in relation to expectations. There is no way for us to know what is to come, so trying to extrapolate from what we have heard to what we are going to hear is a logical fallacy easy to fall into, but as wrong as any other.

The first half of 2025 has been disappointing, but also not as bad as I had initially feared. That seems a bit contradictory, which is entirely the point. I haven't gotten much of a handle on the year, let alone on myself. Everything is a bit jumbled, so to make sense of where we are, let's run through the categories, in alphabetical order to avoid too many spoilers.

The Good Stuff:

A-Z - A2Z2

I'm not sure I even listened to the first A-Z album, but the reunion of classic Redemption with Ray Alder and Nick Van Dyk got me interested, and I wasn't disappointed. This band streamlines the progressive metal down to a more intricate form of melodic metal, with a more optimistic tone and energy to go along with the more concise running times. That means this feels like the Redemption we haven't gotten recently, but at their most melodic and engaging. This fills a needed void.

Avantasia - Here Be Dragons

In time, I tend to find the good in even the projects Tobias Sammet puts together that initially feel disappointing. That has happened here, as more time spent with the album has revealed a set of songs that have managed to grab hold on me. The project could still use a bit of re-invention, but it's hard to complain about an album that goes down this easily. Tobi is rarely matched in this field.

Ginger Evil - The Way It Burns

This band answers a question not many people have ever asked; what if Pink sang for a rock band? That's the key to their sound, but it wouldn't be enough if they didn't deliver songs to match the vocal prowess. Mixing classic rock with hints of early 00s pop, they deliver memorable songs and amazing vocals to give us an engaging record that is better than the majority of both what we call modern pop and modern rock.

W.E.T. - Apex

After "Earthrage", it would have been a lot to ask W.E.T. to reach those heights again. "Retransmission" didn't, but "Apex" nearly gets there. This album is as good as melodic rock gets, and the sweet sounds and uplifting tone is just the tonic we so often need. Somewhere, someone could be writing "for a good time, listen to W.E.T." on a bathroom stall.

The Disappointing Stuff:

Dream Theater - Parasomnia

I'll be honest; Dream Theater had their flaws before Mike Portnoy left. That he came back is a big story, but not necessarily a big deal. I liked most of the albums without him quite a bit, so hearing the band trying to amp up the heaviness too far again is not what I would have wanted to hear. The balance of heavy and melody is askew, and most of this record sounds to me like why people criticized albums like "Systematic Chaos" and "Black Clouds & Silver Linings"... not that anyone remembers anymore.

Ghost - Skeleta

Ghost has only delivered one consistently good album, "Meliora". They come firing out of the gates here, with three of the first four songs being amazing bits of 80s schlock filtered through the Ghost aesthetic. Thing quickly fall apart, as the songs bog down, the hooks get weaker, and Tobias starts singing about 'love rockets'. Ugh. Ghost is a singles band, and I'm going to continue thinking of them as such.

Katatonia - Nightmares As Extensions Of The Waking State

After delivering the AOTY, Katatonia is now the most disappointing thing I have heard this year. Gone is the energy, and hope, and the beauty of "Sky Void Of Stars". The band is back to slogging through slow and turgid songs where Jonas' voice is not enough to carry the day. The sound is there, but muted to the point the songs require focus not to drift away from. It isn't a nightmare, per se, but it might be a bit sleep inducing.

The Bad Stuff:

The Darkness - Dreams On Toast

As I said in my review, when a band writes a song about literally trying not to shit the bed, they deserve anything terrible we can say about them. The worst thing I can say is they aren't worth talking about anymore, so I won't.

Ethel Cain  - Perverts

This release left me wondering if I even know what music is, so I suppose I have to give it a small bit of credit for at least making me think. Unfortunately, the answer is that no, this is not music. It's tuneless drone that fills our ears with boring noise that doesn't give any reason why it exists. I would say you have to be a masochistic variety of pervert to enjoy this, but it doesn't hurt, it just bores us to bloody death.

Spiritbox - Tsunami Sea

I have tried several times now, but I simply do not get why Spiritbox is as popular as they are. Courtney is certainly a talented vocalist, but the band's songs are devoid of any of the hooks that made the original wave of metalcore as big as it was. These songs churn death metal riffs and boring crooning into a mix of heavy and soft that are both as flaccid as the other.

Steven Wilson - The Overview

Leave it to Steven Wilson to turn the feeling of awe in looking down at Earth from outer space into the most boring 'prog' imaginable. I use the quotes because in addition to being utterly forgettable music, it's the kind of 'prog' that glues short songs together and claims to be epic. No, and no. At this point, Wilson should stick to remixing classic records... that way I can forget about him.

The Conversation: 2025, So Far

The midpoint of the year comes just after the summer solstice, which is the longest day of them all. That means the most sunshine, and metaphorically the most optimism. I'm not sure it works that way, but let's go with that for a minute. If we're being optimistic, there is still music out there overcoming out general sense of ennui, which is a harder and harder task with each passing year. That segues us nicely into...

THE GOOD

Chris C: For most of these six months, I've been lamenting the lack of albums that have made me care, thinking this could be the worst year in a downward trend. But a funny thing has happened, as a couple unexpected albums have dropped into my lap, and a couple of others have gotten better as I've listened to them more. I'm not saying the roster of good ones is remarkable or historic, but it's more satisfying than I would have told you just a month ago. My old stalwarts Avantasia put out a record that disappointed me some when it came out, but that I like much more now. It isn't one of their absolute best, but it does what I want. W.E.T. might have put out the best uplifting album in several years, so that was a wonderful step up from their last one. Then there's the surprise of A-Z, who I not only didn't care about when they put out their first record, but who added a guitarist/songwriter I have personal animosity toward, and yet the record is damn good. I've bene listening to those three a ton, as well as the three good songs from the Ghost album. We'll get to that in a moment.

D:M: You know, I feel like I haven't said this in a while at the mid-year point, but there's been a fair amount of good so far this year.  To that point that I already have nine albums that I would feel pretty good about putting on some manner of year-end list.  (And possibly one more, the new Helm's Deep album, which I'm listening to as I write this.  It's cheeky as hell, but also very smooth and catchy in that old-school Judas Priest way that so many bands try and fail to emulate.)  It's also been a satisfying mix of the new and and the familiar - newcomers to my ears like Dunes and Tayne have given me a lot to think about, while old friends Arch Enemy and Lacuna Coil both submitted strong efforts.  I want to single out Year of the Cobra.  I kept going back to their album from February, and I couldn't figure out why, until it finally fit me - they are, in many ways, a grunge band.  Which is a) a sound near and dear to my heart, and b) a sound that after thirty years of dormancy, deserves another chance..

THE BAD

Chris C: Not yet. First, let's just say that the worst album of the year, bar none, is from The Darkness. Any album with a song about literally trying not to shit the bed is too stupid to exist. Steven Wilson wrote an album about the immense feeling of awe and wonder you get from seeing Earth from outer space... and turned that into the most boring thing you've ever heard. I also continue to be utterly flummoxed by why people think Spiritbox is a good band. I didn't even get all the way through their album without needing to turn it off. And then there's a 'pop' artist named Ethel Cain who put out a record called "Perverts", which is a modern update of how insulting Lou Reed's "Metal Machine Music" was. I'm not sure either can rightfully be called music.

D.M: I have a feeling you're going to have Ghost's album under the "Disappointing" category, but I'm going to drop it here.  It's just bad. I suppose 'bad' is generally reserved for albums of low expectations that are of poor quality, while 'disappointing' is more for bands that didn't meet a high standard, but the first word I think of when I think of the new Ghost album is 'bad.'  It's a captive animal - humbled, de-clawed and muzzled, a shadow of its wild relatives.   

THE DISAPPOINTING

Chris C: This is the biggest category of the year. It starts with Ghost, who have three amazing song on their album, and the rest is as bland as the rubber masks Tobias wears to distract from how absurd Ghost has become. Dream Theater's big reunion was paint-by-numbers, not as good as most of the 'dark' period where they weren't themselves, and doubly disappointing for how it memory-holed the fact that many fans didn't like what they were doing before they split apart. Katatonia's album might be the most disappointing of them all. They went from putting out an AOTY winner to one that I barely got through enough times to write a review. I guess I was the only one who wanted them not to be a sad-ass dirge band anymore. Also disappointing were the Killswitch Engage album, and Avatarium not knowing what to do with their sound. I could go on, but let's save some space.

D.M: This is where I start to get sad.  This year in particular, it feels like there a lot of musicians in this category for whom a rebound may not be possible.  Their disappointing efforts this year are representative of more than a misstep.  Warbringer leads the list.  After this many years and this many albums, they may really be done as a creative concern, and may never regain their spark.  Misfire, borne from the ashes of Diamond Plate, the same.  Bumblefoot, who I adore in many of his guest appearances on other albums, released a milquetoast guitar record of no particular inspiration.  Spiders remain a one-hit wonder.  Volbeat...well, your review more or less said it all.  I would have liked to see a more legit album from Red Fang than a compendium of previously unreleased material.  There's nothing wrong with it, it's fine as it is, but that always feels like a band that's trying to get out of their record deal.  The list goes on.

WHAT'S NEXT

Chris C: The big deal is, of course, the upcoming Halestorm album. The two singles so far have both been very different, but in a great way. I'm still a bit wary overall, but nothing else has my attention the way they do. In fact, I'm struggling to come up with anything else confirmed for the rest of the year I know I'm excited to hear. I know I saw a mention last year of a new Dark Element album, but nothing has come of that yet. Just going by the usual schedule, I wouldn't be shocked if a new Soen album arrived in the fall. Otherwise, I'm really not sure my focus on nostalgia is going to be turned around and focused on the future again anytime soon.

D.M:I, too, am looking forward to Halestorm.  That's the biggest release in the near future that I'm concerned with.  I'm curious to see if this grunge thing becomes a real revival or not.  Year of the Cobra is great, but they're not alone - Pyres and Benthic both sounded like the radio station that played on my middle school bus (Z Rock, 102.3, RIP,) they just weren't great albums like YotC was.  The nostalgic in me is hopeful that maybe more bands will pick up that gem and see what they can do with it.  And I'm also, if I'm being honest, hopeful that we'll get some honest-to-goodness protest music.  There's enough going on to merit some, as we well know.