Album Review: Amorphis - Borderland

I've said this before, but it's worth repeating; things can be too perfect. When you think about it, if something is perfect, it sucks the optimism out of the air. If things can't get any better, why would we ever need more of that thing? Logically, you wouldn't, and I find this phenomenon appearing more often these days with music. As productions continue to get slicker and slicker, we've reached a point where some bands have a sound so pristine that it actually sucks the life out of their music.

That isn't to say metal needs to sound like it was recorded on a potato, as the old joke about black metal goes, but there is something about a bit of roughness that is necessary for our eyes to focus on the core, and not the glossy sheen meant to trick us from seeing the hollow emptiness.

Amorphis is not hollow by any means, but as I have listened to and/or reviewed their last three or four albums, each one comes to us with a sound even more immaculate than the last. They are metal done to absolute perfection, which is what makes it interesting how little I have returned to those albums in the time since each has been released. Everything tells me Amorphis is among the very best to do what they do, but there is an almost eerie lack of humanity to their recordings that makes them easy to slide out of my train of thought.

This album follow in exactly that path, blending melancholy and melody with aplomb, giving us beautiful clean choruses punctuated by absolutely guttural moments of death metal fury. This is an even slicker version of when Opeth was at their best, and in many ways is done better than Opeth could have ever imagined. Tomi Jousten's vocals are gorgeous, but as is the case with the production, perhaps too clean for their own good. The choruses are beautiful, but they don't have the soul or gravitas of a rougher-hewn singer. He is, in a way, too good.

The songs deliver exactly as they should. The opening trio of songs hit hard, give us big hooks, and if anything dial down on the melancholy a bit to make this an 'upbeat' album by Amorphis standards. Releasing in the summer rather than the fall might have been an indication that the band was trying to look more on the bright side, which certainly sounds to be the case.

With that being said, if you ask me to differentiate this album from "Under The Red Cloud", which floored me the first time I heard it, I'm not sure I could do so without having to break down statistics about the percentages of clean and harsh vocals, and soon and so forth. Amorphis is doing what Amorphis always does, and they're damn good at it. I'll never discount the ability to write great metal songs, which Amorphis does each and every time.

I can only say that as good as Amorphis is, their music does not tend to stick with me long after the albums come and go. Perhaps it's the shimmering perfection of the recording, or perhaps it's the lyrical focus on stories of nature rather than human emotion, but there is a disconnect between what Amorphis delivers and what I'm looking for out of new favorites.

All of that is to say I would certainly recommend "Borderland" to any metal fan who is looking for something new that is of hte highest quality, but I can't guarantee I will find myself loving the record at the end of the year as much as most people will. I'm in a weird place, and clinically impressive metal isn't the medicine I need. That doesn't take away from how impressive Amorphis is, especially this deep into their career. They deserve all the praise they'll get.

"Braver Than We Are" Was Cowardly

I have often said to myself that the worst thing anyone could say to me is 'yes'. There are times when we need to be told 'no', because we cannot see for ourselves that we are headed down the wrong path. Saying 'no' is not an easy thing, and it can lead to hard feelings and strained relationships, but honesty is often the thing we need the most. Much like how a mirror gives us an inverted image of who we are, our own perception of ourselves (and our talents) is similarly skewed by the limits of our senses.

When we make a mistake that is so glaring, and so avoidable, it is one of the saddest things we can see happen before our eyes. Or our ears, in this case.

Meat Loaf wanted to pay tribute to his musical partner Jim Steinman before they ran out of time. That's an admirable goal, and it makes everything I'm going to say from here on out sound a bit mean, but oh well. The result of that desire is not just one of the worst albums ever recorded, but something so pitiful and depressing it works against its own goal, shifting from an ode for a decades-long friendship to a burned out chunk of coal that reminds us how cold and dirty we feel digging through the soot and ash of the now dead fire.

There are two factors that made this record the equivalent of a true-crime podcast; 1) The songs, and 2) Meat's voice.

Let's start with the songs. Jim Steinman is my favorite songwriter of all time, and he is the only person I might use the words 'musical hero' to describe, and yet I am able to sit here and say that he also wrote plenty of garbage. His early musicals were filled with scraps of ideas that either never worked, or needed to be put into new context. He was famous for recycling himself, in part because his well of inspiration dried up relatively early in his life. I have gone through the exact same thing, so I certainly sympathize with that position, but it doesn't make the bad ideas any better.

For this record, Meat Loaf scraped together whatever residue of ink was left from Steinman's pen. He pulled out "Going All The Way", which had been recorded in demo form as a potential album anchor for a female singer, and the classic "Loving You Is A Dirty Job". They are real songs, and good songs, which were meant to be joined by Steinman's last great composition, "What Part Of My Body Hurts The Most?", although it seems Steinman was protective of letting a broken Meat Loaf anywhere near that one.

The rest of the album is made up of bits and pieces from the old musicals, none of which work as full songs, nor do they have anything to do with the Meat Loaf sound. They are Steinman, yes, but they are theater, not rock and roll. We do not want or need to hear Meat trying to sing Vaudeville numbers, especially when they use the 'turn around' motif from "Total Eclipse Of The Heart" before Steinman knew what to do with it.

The bigger issue, though, is Meat Loaf himself. His voice at this point was completely shot. He sounds like a red-lined recording, but he isn't. His voice warbles, croaks, and has a fluttering strobe of silence that will make you think you speakers weren't working properly. They are, it's his voice that wasn't working.

What's worse is that they pair him for three duets, all of which highlight just how decayed his voice became, as the other singers are cock-slapping him (metaphorically) with their talent, akin to the boner joke in "Speaking In Tongues" that is the worst one Steinman ever wrote. We can't write this whole thing off as an unprofessional bit of recording failure when we hear the other singers, especially Ellen Foley from the original "Bat Out Of Hell" album, still sounding so good.

It's a crime against music that no one was able to stand up to Meat and tell him he didn't have it anymore, and shouldn't have been recording. You can hear the creeping specter of death in his voice, which makes this album less about the potential loss of Steinman and more about the inevitable loss of Meat Loaf. He might have had years left to live, but the character died making this album. Meat Loaf was no more.

What pisses me off the most about this album isn't just that it's terrible, or that it sounds like elder abuse and exploitation, but that it tarnished my memories of Meat Loaf. His music has meant more to me than anyone else's, and I can no longer hear his best work without knowing it ended this way. We don't always get to choose our final words, but we are in control of what we say, just in case our time is up. Meat Loaf used what were his last musical words to tell us all he had no shame, no pride in his output, and that he actually thought this was a tribute to Jim Steinman.

Did this album only see the light of day because the music business is a business, and someone saw money in the project? I don't know, but what I do know is that if the industry actually was what people claim it to be, there would have been people there to protect the legacy of their investment, and to stop them from making an album as sad as this one.

It wasn't brave to make "Braver Than We Are", it was cowardly. It was a damn shame no one could convince Meat Loaf, the producer, the band, the guests, or the label, that this simply wasn't good enough. It was an embarrassment, and I say that knowing full well the look people give you when you say you're a Meat Loaf fan. Most of the time, I wear that badge with pride. When I think about this album... I can only think about the compulsion for self-harm.

That's what this album is to me.

Singles Roundup: Soen, Amy Lee and Company, & Spock's Beard

We're moving into that awkward zone when the years begin to blend together...

Soen - Primal

The one hope I had left for this disappointing year was for Soen deliver an album late in the year to rescue us from so much mediocrity, as their usual cycle would have made possible. Instead, they are waiting for the start of the new year in January to release the record, being the first big name we will encounter with fresh ears. That brings them back to the position they occupied when they first caught my ear.

This first single continues the trend Soen has been on for almost their entire career. With each album, they have been refining their sound, stripping away their early prog influences for something simpler and more powerful. The wall of guitars may have never been louder than here, and the rhythms being played have little of the off-kilter flair that made songs off "Lykaia" and "Lotus" such an interesting spin on modern melodic metal. It isn't a problem that the band is moving in this direction, but it does mean they have to nail everything else to make up the difference.

They mostly do that here. The song's riff is crushing even if it doesn't have as much groove, while Joel delivers a stirring chorus. The red-lined production fits the theme, as the band takes on the state of the world in the lyrics. Writing about politics can be tricky, and some of the language they use is a bit awkward. The message of fighting back against a ruling class who exploit our financial insecurity and fear of the unknown for their own benefit is one we should all be able to get behind. Politics being what it is, though, I'm sure some people will miss the point and prefer the band to keep their beliefs to themselves.

This song is very much in line with the initial singles from both "Memorial" and "Imperial". You could say Soen has settled too much into a formula, and I wouldn't necessarily disagree with you. I haven't gotten tired of that quite yet, so as long as the songs are still of this quality, I'm not going to complain. I might not feel quite the same if the album feels like the third carbon-copy in a row, but considering the state of music right now, I can think of a whole lot of things that would be worse.

Poppy, Amy Lee, & Courtney LaPlante - End Of You

I know in some circles this collaboration was talked about as being absolutely massive. Frankly, I like one or two Evanescence songs, but by and large why these three have become so beloved is one of those things that escapes me. I tried listening to a Poppy record when people were raving about her genre bending, but it was some of the worst songwriting I've ever heard in my life. I've tried to listen to Spiritbox, and I find them duller than dishwater, because there can be interesting spirals of colored dirt as that goes down the drain.

So imagine my surprise when this song was actually good. It doesn't do anything we wouldn't expect from a radio-rock single, and the three women don't really bring different enough personalities to make their presences all necessary, the song delivers where it counts. Amy, in particular, is stirring on the chorus, which immediately gripped me more than the last couple times I tried to listen to Evanescence.

I always say everything comes down to songwriting, and this is a prime example. When given a compelling song, Poppy and Courtney's talents are easier to hear and appreciate. That's a pretty good accomplishment.

Spock's Beard - Invisible

With most of the band currently in the lineup of Pattern Seeking Animals, and with that band's songwriter being a big part of the last twenty years of Spock's Beard, it's a bit curious that both bands are putting out albums this year. The album doesn't come from the band's usual writing teams, which is an interesting twist, and will be partially conceptual about a post-apocalyptic world. Oh fucking joy.

This first song gives me reason to think I may not actually subject myself to the whole of that experience. While I liked " " when it came out, Spock's Beard hasn't really sounded like themselves since Ted Leonard took over on vocals. Now with a different writing voice, this song doesn't feel much like Spock's Beard as I listen to it. The tones are right, but the song itself doesn't really go anywhere. There is prog, but it's not impressive prog. There is melody, but it's not a memorable melody.

I get worried when the first song picked to highlight a new album is this forgettable. Time will tell if that worry is on the nose or not.

"Happy Birthday, No One Cares"

"Happy Birthday, no one cares."

So sings Jakob Dylan in The Wallflowers' song "Witness". On this day last year, I found myself playing that song, and being caught off-guard by how perceptive my subconscious was being.

Birthdays are not occasions for celebration to everyone. While the image we are presented with is one of friends and family gathered 'round to show their appreciation, if not love, reality is not painted in such bright colors. For some of us, birthdays are yearly reminders that we are unable to stop the flow of energy and people out of our lives. They exist to taunt us with the knowledge that our dreams are as far away as they have ever been, coated slick with another layer of stardust.

Last year, my birthday hurt in a way it never had before. While much of my family had abandoned giving a damn when I was young, and the way a 'friend' attempted to make the day special in my college years was my introduction to full-blown depression, nothing prepared me for how it felt to have the one person I consider most special forget the day. I never expect much, but there are a small handful of people I count on to remember I exist, so I can remember that fact myself. To be forgotten was soul-crushing, and the ensuing apology came to mean very little when my Christmas gift was later ignored for months.

That lyric hit me hard, because often it does feel as if no one cares. Expressing that thought has gotten me in trouble in the past, but considering that virtually every relationship I have is entirely one-sided, and I run what I call an 'energy deficit' because I put in far more than I get out of those friendships, I don't think I was wrong to make the claim. 

If I can't count on people to be there for me, what I can count on are the important records of my life. Those are always sitting on the shelf, ready for when I want to spend time with them. In that respect, records can be our best friends, because they are dependable, and they don't disappoint us once we learn to love them. "Breach" is one of those records that I find myself going back to time and again, because I continue to discover new wrinkles that apply to where life has taken my psyche. The reasons I love it now are not the same as when I loved it then, but being able to evolve and develop together deepens the bond.

"Your wishes won't be coming true this year
Now darling don't you cry
We're gonna teach you everything
Where you'll learn to get by
Now lesson number one in homicide
Is emotional murder's no crime"

The best way to prevent yourself from being the victim of emotional murder is to not invest your emotions in anyone or anything. That is not exactly a healthy way of living, but neither is putting yourself in situations that are destined to beat you down again and again. 'Get back on the horse' they say, as if a horse is a lightning strike, and it can't throw you off a second time and injure you even worse. Hope is a lovely concept, but at a certain point it loses its potency when we can no longer remember the last time it paid off.

This year comes with the new wrinkle of blowing out the candles on dreams. Perhaps it was foolish to ever have them, but the time spent pursuing even the most basic version of them has ripped open emotional wounds I thought my creative work had sealed shut. What I was once proud of has become the bane of my existence, the identity I held for myself has become a costume that no longer fits. As such, I am giving up on those thoughts that I could make anything of my work. When the world tells you often enough that they don't care, and you can no longer stand to listen to your own lies convincing you that you even care yourself, the lesson eventually sinks in.

The only birthday wish I have made for most of the last twenty years is for it to not be the worst day of the year. Seldom has that been the case, and in all honesty it doesn't help when it isn't. That day didn't manifest in a better way, there were just others that dragged me down even further.

And so I spend this of all days with this essay, hoping that putting these thoughts into words might get them out of my head.

"You come around here, you'd better bring a witness
Everyone in here's on the guest list
When you're gone you won't be missed
Keep one eye open when you kiss"

At times, it feels like the only person who notices when I pull away is me, because I miss the times when I wasn't quite as dispirited by people. I will spend the day tallying the numbers of who does and doesn't remember, or can't be bothered to click a button or type a couple of words when they are prompted.

Relationships seem to inevitably wither on the vine, and not just with people. I find myself not loving music the same way I used to, but despite that fact, the guest list for my party is a collection of my favorite albums. Maybe it's better that way.

Happy f'n birthday to me. 

Album Review: Year Of The Goat - Trivia Goddess

I was pleasantly surprised when Year Of The Goat released "The Unspeakable", as occult sounding vintage rock is not exactly something I'm known for being a fan of, and yet their take on the genre was fresh and lively. That album delivered everything I could have asked for; organic sounds, hints of sinister energy, and memorable melodies that were sly invitations to the invocations. Their next album didn't hit me the same way. The pieces were still there, but the songs were further into the darkness, and lacked the sweet melodies that won me over the first time. I'm a fickle listener, I realize, but there was a bit less spark to the proceedings, and I haven't felt the urge to revisit that record in several years.

Six years on from that, the band returns with an album dedicated to telling stories of women's history, specifically relating to witchcraft. That's an interesting direction to take, and the band starts off by dealing with the original sin of misogyny; Eve. "The Power Of Eve" tackles the misconception that she is to blame for any of the sins of the world, rightfully declaring "God is the only one to blame". Think about it; an all-powerful being could have made humans without the urge to sin and break rules, and he could have simply not put the forbidden fruit in the Garden, but instead He chose to set in motion the nature of humanity He himself had created. How is that Eve's fault for behaving as she was made?

Perhaps I'm digging too deep into theological philosophy here because the songs on the album aren't giving me as much to talk about from a musical perspective. Despite the claim that this pulls in new influences, "Trivia Goddess" sounds very much like the band's previous works. There are slight differences, like the different vocal in "Kiss Of A Serpent", but those aspects are not changes for the better. The more I listen to Year Of The Goat, the more it seems "The Unspeakable" was a one-off moment of inspiration.

Albums like this one are enjoyable enough to listen to, but they don't leave a mark on me when they're done. The Scooby Doo-esque doom riff on "Kiss Of A Serpent" is nice, but when the song doesn't blossom into a memorable melody, the notes get lost as my attention drifts off. That happens most during "Met Agwe", the most doom song of the bunch, and one that drags on without a compelling musical idea for eight solid minutes. It's all angst without any of the underlying justification, a howling that never gives me a reason to care.

I suppose when it comes to the dark side, I prefer to be able to have a bit of tongue-in-cheek fun with it. That's what makes the "Dracula: Swing Of Death" rock opera one of the best albums of the last decade, and what is missing from most of this album. If you are trying to make the occult sound like a good option, you have to make it sound and feel like more fun than the path of belief. "Alucarda" does that, sounding the most like one of the songs form "the Unspeakable", and it makes the rest of the album feel dull by comparison. The harmonies are on-point, the melody is sticky, and the band has enough energy in their playing to sound like a concert in a pitch-black forest I would actually want to attend. Funny how that helps, eh?

After six years, I was expecting more from Year Of The Goat. Rather than writing an album that candy-coated their occult perspective with hooks upon hooks, they turned more toward traditional doom. Maybe that will work for more hardcore metal fans, but it doesn't work for me. I was hoping for Futurama's Robot Devil, and instead we got Calculon playing the devil. Similar, but not the same. Year Of The Goat is still good, but this is far from their best.

Album Review: Beth Blade & The Beautiful Disasters - Vintage Rebel & Trauma Bond

You can't have a shadow without a light, despite how it might feel sometimes. In order for there to be darkness you notice, there must be a place where we can see the light shining. We might be barred from getting there, and it might feel like a trick spawned by a demon, but it has to exist. To put it another way, as I did in a song I wrote; "Even a dying filament can reveal how dark it's been."

Beth Blade is leaning into the duality with her band's newest album, which is sequenced as two short episodes that swing on either side of the pendulum. "Vintage Rebel" uses its six songs as a throwback to the old days of rock and roll, the days before we really had an understanding of what is happening to our mental health. Those are the songs about being out with friends, having a few drinks, and enjoying the sound of a good band. It's a necessary part of life to find little moments of joy, and to balance out the moments that eat us alive, but in all honesty it doesn't make for as compelling a set of songs.

The "Vintage Rebel" songs try to be uplifting and fun, but that era of classic rock is one I never experienced in real time, and it's one I never went back and learned to love either. Songs that pull from the sound of classic Aerosmith and Kiss, often written about drinking and revelry, aren't going to have much appeal to me.

I'm much more interested in the "Trauma Bond" portion of the record, as much of the last year has felt like emotional trauma to me. Music is a healer, but more in the sense of giving me the emotional context to process my own thoughts than in getting me to lift a beer. Frankly, I've never had one, and I'm not going to start now.

The sound turns darker as the subject matter does, which is a more fitting palate for Beth's voice. She sounds more natural belting out songs about pain than she does about drinking, although the production of this record doesn't put her voice to the forefront the way I would like. A trauma bond is a human connection, and that is harder to do musically without the vocal up front and center for us to latch onto.

"When will I see myself as more than broken," she sings, working through the emotional damage of a controlling relationship. This is when Beth is at her best, showing us her truth as an act of bravery. She isn't covering her past in metaphors the way I would, but rather using honesty as a superpower to beat back the demons that never seem to fully die off. Being able to get through those episodes, and turn them into compelling rock music, is what connects us and gives us the collective strength to keep going on.

Beth deals with issues of self-image in "Dysmorphia", which bookends with "You Never Screamed" to show how common abuse is in this life. If we aren't suffering at the hands of others, we wind up doing it to ourselves. The idea of happiness is one of those things we might have created because it was necessary to believe in, even if there was no evidence it was real. We have come up with far more ways to torture ourselves and others than we ever did ways to make life easier and better. Life can feel like a zero-sum game, one played by zeroes, which amounts to a whole lot of nothing.

Beth wonders if she has perhaps found the light at the end of the tunnel by the end of the record, but it comes in the form of an eclipse, which is a spotlight cast behind a curtain. We might think there is something better waiting for us, but we don't know until we lift the veil. That is always the danger lurking in the back of our minds.

All of this leaves the record with an odd feeling. I don't know if the conceit doesn't work, or if it just doesn't work for me because half of it is out of my character. What I can say is that the "Trauma Bond" half is compelling, and thought-provoking, and stands up with the music Beth and her band have made in the past.

This is her therapy, and that it helps her find her way is all that really matters.

Good "Trouble", Even After 35 Years

Do we feel special when we are fans of a 'cult classic'? I wonder if there is something unique about the experience of knowing we are among a select few who see the greatness of a certain piece of art, especially when the influence of that art is felt in strains of the mainstream that are completely unaware. Perhaps it gives us reason to be proud of our taste, or perhaps it gives us reason to question the taste of all those who missed the boat.

Of course, the real answer is that luck plays more of a part in life than we like to admit. Much as people talk about pulling yourself up by the bootstraps, and manifesting the destiny you want, the truth of the matter is that being in the right place at the right time is as much a factor as anything else. All the talent and drive in the world means nothing if you don't have someone who can open a door to success, and people with open eyes and ears to embrace what you have done.

Thirty-five years ago, Trouble underwent an extreme rebranding under the tutelage of Rick Rubin. Much as he had stripped Slayer down to the studs for the concentrated and clinical "Reign In Blood", he took the same approach with Trouble. They were a big name in American doom, but that scene was so small you would be forgiven for not knowing it even existed. Trouble was eyeing something bigger, and Rubin was the person who could guide them toward that future.

The result of their collaboration was the 1990 self-titled album, which remains a seminal album in the trajectory of doom and stoner metal, as well as one of the truly great 'guitar albums' of all time. Trouble's driving force was always the guitar duo of Bruce Franklin and Rick Wartell, who blended crushing doom riffs with hints of groove and psychedelia, giving their music a sense of swing that was often missing from straight-ahead metal. Combined with a guitar tone that was a thick, gritty soup of distortion, Trouble was one of the heaviest bands on the scene.

Or they should have been.

Trouble was not impressive when I first heard them, and I the same is true for many others, because the early days of CDs were often a failed experiment. The sound we heard was not Trouble as they should have been heard, but a thin replication of what needed to be put on a vinyl record to make the result sound right on massive old hi-fi systems. The album was a brittle production, dry by most standards, but without the razor-sharp clarity of "Reign In Blood". Trouble was actually heavier than Slayer, but didn't sound it, due to the terrible transfer to the new medium.

I did my own remastering of the record, and boosting the bass frequencies opened up a new world of sound. Suddenly, Trouble's sound was as thick and powerful as anything from that time period. The chunky muted riffs in "R.I.P." became percussive blasts, while the ending to "All Is Forgiven" closed the album with crushing distortion. The same complaints have been leveled against "And Justice For All", but no amount of fan-made restoration has had as much an impact in that case.

The only thing Rick Rubin has ever been good at shines through on this album, which is his ability to convince bands to strip away the excess in their writing, and to focus on writing the most direct songs possible. Trouble doesn't waste time cycling through riffs that drone on, or playing endless solos that go nowhere, instead penning songs that are only doom by the band's prior reputation. This is the genesis of stoner metal, and a yin-yang with the early Danzig albums. The balance of fuzz and clarity was perfect, as was the balance between guitar excess and striking hooks.

Whether a riff or vocal, every song on the record makes an immediate impact. The pounding rhythm in "R.I.P.", Eric Wagner's piercing vocal in "The Wolf", the band was not wasting any time on songs that put mood over substance. Much as Slayer had pared down their early songs into two-minute bursts of fury, Trouble were using every piece of their songs to prove their worth as a band deserving of more attention than they had received.

In guitar circles, they achieved that. Guitar players and metal fans know Trouble, and consider this album a stone-cold classic. In the wider world, though, Trouble is a band that never made the leap. They didn't have the speed or controversy of a band like Slayer, nor the touring tenacity of Metallica, so they languished in the underground as one of the best kept secrets around. They would follow this record with "Manic Frustration", which was nearly as good a record, but perhaps played a little too obviously to a mainstream audience.

"Trouble" was a singular moment in time when a band fused all of their influences together in a lightning storm of inspiration. I would argue Slayer did the same with "Reign In Blood", which may or may not be a coincidence. Between you and me, I don't think it's much of a contest. "Reign In Blood" might be legendary, but the middle eight songs blend together in a way that makes the thirty minutes sound as if the whole album is just three songs. "Trouble" holds up from beginning to end as a masterclass in how you can make a guitar album that works as more than just a guitar album.

Eric Wagner's shrill, piercing voice is not for everybody, but Trouble isn't trouble without him. When they would later try to make an album without him, it simply wasn't the same. Wagner's occult-hippie vibe was the sharpness that created the cracks for the band's hammer to pound mercilessly.

Some cult classics are adored by a small clique for obvious reasons, because there was something about them too off-putting for the mainstream to ever embrace them. "Evil Dead 2" was never going to be a blockbuster, because the masses won't get the appeal of watching a man sever his own hand with a chainsaw, and then get into a slapstick fight with it. "Trouble" is not a cult classic in that sense, because there is no obvious reason why people who were buying Metallica albums by the millions couldn't have also loved Trouble. Maybe it was simply bad luck.

"Trouble" is one of my favorite metal albums of all time, and is one of those albums that set a bar few modern bands have been able to scrape with their fingernails as they reach. Metal doesn't always understand what the mission is, but Rick Rubin showed Trouble the path to musical enlightenment. Thirty-five years later, "Trouble" is still a stunning achievement.

*In 2020, a remastered edition of the album was finally released. That is the mandatory version of the album, as it fixes the issues the original CDs had. Listen to that version, and maybe you'll hear what I always heard, maybe you'll join the cult.

Singles Roundup: Erik Gronwall, MSG, Alter Bridge, and Dr Smith & The Night Shift

Stay to the end, and I swear I have something good to say. This is the most depressing stretch of the year (I'll have something to say about that soon), but I'm not incapable of finding something worthwhile. 

Erik Gronwall - Black Velvet

I usually don't bother with the people who put out covers upon covers to generate content, but I happened to see this recommended by the algorithm. "Black Velvet" is one of my favorite songs of all time, so much so I wrote my own song that borrowed the title. Hearing a 'moody', rocking version of the song could open up new ways of appreciating and understanding an old favorite...

Or it could remind me of a couple truths about music. The first and foremost of these is that music is a human thing, and the emotional connection we make with music and musicians is very real. It is also really lacking in this version of the song. Erik's voice is great, and I'm sure his performance is technically flawless, but it doesn't give me the same feeling of passion that Alannah Myles did. Her version of the song was gritty and passionate, while Erik's sounds like someone trying to nail the notes without needing Autotune (which he doesn't, I would bet).

Erik's version might be closer to my taste, and it might do everything perfectly, but it's the imperfections that make music what it is. I've been listening to "Black Velvet" for thirty years, and it hits as hard as ever. I'm not going to remember this version a week from now.

MSG - Don't Sell Your Soul

Speaking of Erik Gronwall, he joins forces with Michael Schenker on this track. At least I think he does. To be honest, I didn't recognize his voice the first time I listened to the song. It sits in an uncomfortable place in his range, or the production is highlighting the wrong frequencies of his voice, but he sounds incredibly tired on this song. He sounds just fine on the previously mentioned cover, so maybe Erik realizes Schenker's music is as by-the-numbers as I do. There's not much here to recommend, and I wouldn't even mention it if not for the obvious comparison.

Alter Bridge - Silent Divide

How often does a band get to play the self-titled record card before we get to call them out on it? Weezer does it as a joke at this point (or at least I hope they do), but why would a band with some actual credibility release a self-titled record as their eighth album, when they already have one quasi-eponymous record in "AB III"?

Thankfully, we've had a bit of time since both Myles and Mark have released their own albums, so this return-to-form for Alter Bridge doesn't sound as played out as it could. To be honest, the two of them have put out so much music that I was getting rather tired of hearing them, whether together or apart. The breather has helped, although knowing Myles has already recorded an album with Slash that won't see the light of day for a year-and-a-half is ridiculous.

Alter Bridge is usually good, and this song is too. It is to the point, though, that the machinations and distractions give me more to talk about than the actual music. Not sure that's a good thing.

Dr Smith & The Night Shift - House Call

A sparse arrangement is daring, but it can reveal an artist with massive core strength. To put a vocal front-and-center with little else to carry the proceedings is to dare someone to find fault with what you have accomplished. This first song from Dr Smith & The Night Shift does just that, highlighting the impeccable vocal and the lyric that contemplates the need for human compassion being greater than the need to keep living. To feel seen and heard, to feel cared about, can be the only thing that matters when we are trying to assess if life has been worth the effort. That is the feeling captured by this song, and it's one that resonates all the deeper for being given the space to do so.

It's rare for a song to make such a perfect first impression. This one manages to.

Twenty-Five Years Later, Dilana Is Still "Wonderfool"

Nostalgia is a powerful drug. We often look back at our youth, and the way the world was, and pine for days when things seemed simpler, when things seemed to make more sense. What we often forget is that nostalgia is very much like the rose-colored glasses we talk about in metaphor; it gives us an illusion of history filtered through polarized lenses that push the inconvenient memories to the background. That's if we're lucky, of course. Remembering the past as better than it was is the preferable alternative to only remembering the black clouds and not the silver linings.

Twenty-five years ago, I was not listening to Dilana's first declaration of herself. I was turning seventeen, and I was playing Tonic's "Sugar" album on an endless loop while falling in love with musical poetry as The Wallflowers were on the verge of releasing "Breach". Dilana was, quite literally, half a world away from me at that point in time. And yet, when I think about the past, I often think about it in terms of the eras themselves, of which "Wonderfool" is certainly a part.

The turn of the millennium was an interesting time for music, with a fascinating blend of gloss and angst percolating in the mainstream. We were still living in the echo of Alanis Morissette's raw honesty, and Meredith Brooks hitting the charts by calling herself a bitch, but it was done with shimmering guitars and productions that put a candy coating on the truth so we didn't realize our demons traveled with us no matter how peaceful the world might have seemed. These were the times that gave us "Torn", where we heard a lovely pop song, and didn't register that it was about being so heartbroken that depression teamed with gravity to make it impossible to get up off the floor and keep living.

That was the time in which Dilana released "Wonderfool". Her music wore the costume of guitar sheen the same way the pop princesses of the day wore the costume of 'fuck you' attitude. They were opposite avenues leading toward the same focal point, toward the audience that wanted to feel like they knew the musicians they were listening to, while fully aware they didn't actually want to know what extended beyond the image on a poster hanging on the wall. Some artists were pin-ups to display, others possessed voodoo dolls in which they stuck pins in our hearts. A few plunged so deep they remain stuck there to this day.

From the very start, Dilana had an ability to communicate her soul through her voice, whether she had penned the message of a song or not. Her performance on "When You're Around" remains a highlight of her career all these years later. What could sound like a simple love song is something far deeper because of her, as the texture of her voice tells us a complicated story. There is the warmth of love there, but also a keen understanding of how love falls apart, how it crumbles and floats away if we blow a kiss too hard in its direction. No matter how many times I have heard that song, I am still captivated by how much her voice is saying, how honest that sound is irrespective of the words. Her life's story is contained in her vocal, if you know how to listen.

On "Secret Of My Soul", she sings "When I hear your voice I get shivers down my spine". That's the sensation she has always given to me, and it's more of an admission than a line in a love song. She is tapping into a reality of life wherein some people connect to us on deeper levels; chemical, even electrical. It is as if they are the batteries needed to power our hearts, and without them our blood comes to a standstill. The true secret of a soul is that they are all cut in curious shapes from the image of God, and we spend our lives searching for one that fits along the edges of our own.

"Kissed A Butterfly" and "Do You Now" were the front-and-center pop songs that were meant to power the album's climb up the charts. They do their job, giving us sweet and sticky melodies for Dilana to use to smirk and snarl her 'over it all' attitude. There are hints in these songs of knowing where music was going to go, and knowing she was not destined to be a part of that scene. This was an album discretely giving the finger to the cultural powers that be, the ones that were never going to appreciate someone who didn't fit inside the mold. Dilana was too strong a personality, and too unique a person, for such things.

In that way, "Wonderfool" was Dilana's subversive way of finding her true self by showing how ridiculous it would be for her to try to fit in with the mainstream. She was a beauty who could look the part, but she would never be that plasticine, nor able to sing vapid songs written by men behind the scenes who literally put syllables together without considering what they meant. "Wonderfool" is an album of its time, but it's the one true mirror in the funhouse, the one time we get a glimpse of reality in a panorama of distortion.

Over the last twenty-five years, Dilana has grown and evolved, and these songs are not the woman she is today. They are the woman she was, and they tell an important chapter in the story. Without "Wonderfool", Dilana may have never found her voice, may not have fought to be able to bare her soul with us as she has. The experience of trying to be what was expected showed the perils of taking the same road as everyone else. There is so much traffic you get lost, you miss your exit, and no one sees you amidst the sea of humanity.

"Wonderfool" was an album for the people who saw what the world was, and wanted someone who could cut through the absurdity with a sharp one-liner and a delivery full of snark. Dilana was a heroine for everyone who knew music could be more. Her jagged little pill was prescribed to fewer people, but it lives on in our blood.

We can sum things up thusly; I'm a fool for Dilana, and she's a damn wonder.

Album Review: Helloween - Giants And Monsters

I've written multiple essays trying to explain the connection I have with certain voices, and it comes in the form of talking about the good ways singers can burrow their way into my heart. The opposite is also true, where certain voices rub me the wrong way, making my brain itch as I'm listening and trying to understand how other people find the sound so wonderful. Speaking ill of the dead means I'll probably never write anything about how much one person in particular reminded me of the sound of Styrofoam rubbing against itself, but I can mention Michael Kiske without poking a body with a stick.

Kiske is a legend of power metal, and has popped up as a guest on several projects I have listened to over the years. No matter the context, I have always hated his voice in ways that are hard to describe. Even as bad a singer as I turned out to be, I think I would rather listen to myself than Kiske. So when Helloween brought him back to bring all the eras of the band under one metaphorical roof, it was the only think the band could have done to make me less interested in what they were doing.

Look, I like "The Dark Ride", but otherwise Helloween has never spoken to me. They are a rare band that manages to sound as if they are trying too hard while not coming across that heavy, and who are cheesy without any of the tongue-in-cheek fun that usually comes with the term. Maybe it's a miscommunication of senses of humor across the ocean, but Helloween's appeal is something I have a hard time discerning.

The entire genre of power metal has been accused of re-writing "Eagle Fly Free" hundreds of times, but Helloween has contributed their share of similar melodies over the years. The opening pair of songs on this album both go for the same soaring vocal approach, but they don't hit the stratosphere, nor do they move with a notable sense of melody. They're flat, but also not showcases for vocal heroics. It leaves the songs sounding quite generic.

"A Little Is A Little Too Much" is a better song, taking more of a hard rock approach. The synths add layers, but it's Deris' hook that is the improvement. The song appears to be about something... premature, but I didn't have to worry about Helloween getting me too hot and bothered too early. It was certainly a choice to write a song about that, though. At least it wasn't a song about how hard they rock, if I can play on words a little bit.

I also like "Into The Sun", which is a semi-ballad dripping with drama, as the piano and strings gives a stirring backdrop for the singers to both take turns and harmonize. It reminds me of a song like "If I Could Fly" from their past, and it the best use of the three singer approach, rather than trading off from one song to the next. Their interplay gives the songs layers and dynamics, and if they did that sort of thing more often, it would only make things better.

The good things the album does get weighed down by the generic power metal, which I can't muster any interest in anymore. "Universe (Gravity For Hearts)" comes along with eight minutes of exactly that, culminating in a chorus that finds the vocal ascending on an awkwardly phrased "you-knee-verse" that hits my ear in an uncomfortable way.

You might be wondering why I'm reviewing the album if I'm not much of a fan of Helloween or Kiske. The answer is that their reunion received wild praise from all corners, even though I didn't listen to it. When I saw the new album come across my desk, I figured I would see what I was missing out on. As it turns out, the answer is nothing I didn't already suspect. More power to the people who love this, but Helloween, especially in this incarnation, just isn't for me.