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.

Butterfly Boucher Said, "I Can't Make Me", But She Can Make Us Think

For all that poets and philosophers have written over the centuries, we are still incapable of accurately diagnosing and describing what we call 'love'. It is a complex melange of chemicals and psychology, an indescribable gravitational pull toward another person that is as inescapable as a black hole. We sometimes struggle to say the words to another person, because doing so is to commit to the unknown, to admit someone else has an almost magical power over us. That is a vulnerability we are not always ready or able to admit to, one that scares us into the desire to control the ephemeral.

History is littered with myths and stories about this. Love potions, love spells, Cupid's arrows; we seek to exploit and control love, because we know few pains as intolerable as being drawn to someone who notices our presence as much as Jupiter notices the fragments of rock we call its moons.

We seldom stop to think about the ethical ramifications of these urges. If we were to use divinity or magic to will someone into loving us, what have we accomplished? Love is not valuable if it is forced, nor would it feel the same to know it only existed because we created it for ourselves. What makes love special is knowing the other person has chosen you, of all other people, by their own free will. Removing that from the equation leaves us with nothing more than an organic automaton, which is as sad as those who have mastered technology for the sole purpose of creating their own artificial companions.

Ethically, things get even murkier. To force someone to love you is to assault their free will. Coercions of that kind are not notably different than using physical force or psychological abuse. The difference between controlling someone's heart and mind, and controlling their physical body, are matters of degree. Perhaps it should not come as a surprise that we have struggled to come to terms with how to deal with the most severe cases, if we still consider the more 'gentle' forms to be somehow romantic.

We have countless songs we can point to that describe love in its most noble form... or at least try to. Many of those songs also cross the line into creep territory, where the narrator doesn't understand or notice the entitlement to another person they are describing. What we don't have many songs about is the truth about love; the messy, difficult, complicated reality of two people coming together at the right place and right time.

Butterfly Boucher gave us one of those songs in "I Can't Make Me". The thing about love is that not only can we not control someone else's affections, we cannot control out own either. We may want to love someone, but our heart remains stoic. We may want to forget someone, but emotional cement does not stick in the etching of their name.

"I can't make me love you, and you can't make me either," the lyric tells us.

That is a fascinating admission to make in a song, and precisely the kind of nuanced thinking we get so little of in music. Butterfly is telling the subject that she knows they are sweet, and she does see the good in them, but that isn't the same thing as being in love. She refuses to lie to them, and more importantly she refuses to lie to herself.

"It's not a hurry that we're in. It's the pollen, it's the Spring."

Only time can tell if love is real. There are other emotions that come and go in the span when love is still finding its legs. Demanding we commit to the most intense and personal confession we can make is a sure sign the love was never real to begin with. That person pushing upon us is showing their 'love' is concerned only with their own experience. To truly love someone is to let them find their happiness in whatever form it takes, even if that does not include you.

When Butterfly is telling the subject to have patience, because she needs time, it is a test they are not aware of. True love would allow her to find her way to them on her own. Are they willing to wait?

The song is also interesting if your mind, as mine does at times, flips the pronouns. To think about a song saying we can't make the object of our affection love us is perhaps the lesson we all most need. Butterfly's song gets us halfway there, if we are intuitive enough to ask the follow-up question to it.

All of this means "I Can't Make Me" is one of the most interesting songs I can point to for deep thought, and what a wondrous bit of fortune it was to have happened upon it all those years ago.

Singles Roundup: Halestorm, Creeper, & Rise Against

There's a lot to talk about in this group of new singles. Let's not waste any time.

Halestorm - Everest

The second single for the upcoming record continues to show us Halestorm is moving in a very different direction. They lean fully into Dio-esque epic construction, letting the song build from one section to the next, taking us on a ride that feels more epic than the four-plus minute running time might indicate. Lzzy matches this with her vocal, which goes from soft cooing with the piano at the beginning to nearly screaming her lungs out as she belts the chorus.

That chorus... Lzzy tells us how her journey to the person she now is compares to climbing the highest mountain, and she does so by throwing in the pun of metaphorically summiting Mount Everest being an endeavor in which she won't "ever rest'. The pun seems obvious, but also completely unexpected among an album of songs that dig into the journey of healing yourself. This might be an example of laughter being the best medicine, and the nod-and-wink joke being an indicator that Lzzy is now able to look back and laugh at the path that brought her to today.

Either way, like "Darkness Always Wins", "Everest" is the sound of Halestorm opening up and becoming more artists in addition to a rock band. There is nuance and power to this song they have not explored in this way before, and it's a fascinating twist on their usual approach. Their first shift occurred on "Into The Wild Life", and this signals their second. So far, this shift is sounding like they already know the way forward, and there won't be any growing pains along the way.

Creeper - Headstones

I did not enjoy "Sanguivore" at all. Other than the Meat Loaf inspired opening epic, the goth rock of that album was a sound completely lost and/or wasted on me. I found it dull, and far more forgettable than either of the sounds Creeper had taken on before. That makes the idea of a sequel album a less than appealing thought, but that is what we will be getting in the autumn. The first taste of that is "Headstones", and I'm rather surprised.

While there is still a bit of goth in the sound, this is more of a makeup job over the original Creeper sound than a pure attempt to emulate goth of the olden days. The guitars retain their punk energy, the vocals don't get bogged down in the deep resonance of croaked goth, and we get a hint of comedy that at least tells us Creeper knows how ridiculous their entire career has been.

Leading into the chorus by chanting, "give us head.... stones", is the sort of terrible joke that Jim Steinman would have loved to have written himself. That this is the band's most propulsive song since their debut might indicate they realize they had drifted too far from their identity, and made it difficult for some of us to feel like we know who they are as a band. Adding color to the original, rather than painting with a whole new palate, sure sounds a whole lot better to me. I'm not burying them just yet.

Rise Against - I Want It All

I know many Rise Against fans have not been overly fond of the band's recent work, but I am in the camp that thought "Wolves" and "Nowhere Generation" were great records. In fact, the bonus EP "Nowhere Generation II" is even better, and is one of the few EPs I truly love without feeling disappointed it isn't a full-length experience. With all that, I should be excited for a new Rise Against album, but songs like this one make it hard to say such a thing.

The production choices are a key in that. The guitars are dirtier without sounding heavier, which push the vocals back in the mix a bit. With some filtering in the chorus, it all makes me wonder if it was a choice to hide age creeping in. Regardless, it leaves me with the impression this is a noisier take on Rise Against's sound, one that comes with less in the way of hooky melody. The stop-start chorus doesn't grab me, and the rest of the track is merely a means to and end. After hearing three songs from this record, I'm not feeling very good about the rest of the songs salvaging this one.

Album Review: Byzantine - "Harbingers"

Cutting to the chase, there’s a sentiment surrounding this Byzantine album that seems to be a common trend across the metal spectrum in 2025.  The listener may find themselves wishing this was just a little bit more.

Byzantine has been toiling for nearly twenty-five years now, having at one time been discovered by Lamb of God’s Chris Adler.  They’ve added a fifth member for this, their seventh album, “Harbingers,” and the band returns with their usual flavor of strong melodic metal that intersperses with singalong choruses and just a touch, just a touch, or prog at the edges.

We’re going to start halfway down the album with “The Clockmaker’s Intention.”  This is the perfect example of both everything that’s right and everything that’s wrong with “Harbingers.”  There’s a big, chunky, Candlemass riff that sets a great scene, and this get juxtaposed with the clear, airy guitar of the chorus, creating a rather enjoyable duality…but that’s it.  The song spends nearly six minutes going back and forth between those two things, but never adventures farther, and in the end the riffs and the chorus wear out their novelty.

Two songs down, “Harbinger” brings it with this really cool outro riff/solo combination, and for ninety seconds, the skill and musicianship of Byzantine shows in a tangible, impressive way. [Editor’s note: “Harbinger” is not technically a title track.  The album is plural, the song singular.  I had to check ten times to make sure I wasn’t going crazy.]  But that last ninety seconds doesn’t extend to the rest of the song, which is fine, but is a totally boilerplate modern metal song.

Same goes for the last three songs on the record, “The Unobtainable Sleep,” “Kobayashi Maru,” and “Irene.”  That last is particularly notable, as the middle section of it breaks into this proto-Ghost breakdown, with ethereal vocals and a heavy, undercutting riff, but again, the same issue - before too long, we’re back to basics.

“Harbingers” is a frustrating record because there are these little moments of brilliance tucked away within, but they don’t stack on each other or build together into something more cohesive and enjoyable from beat to beat.  The talent is there, Byzantine shows that without issue or hesitation, but in the end, six or ten compelling minutes of music on a forty-five minute record does not for necessary listening make.

Album Review: Volbeat - God Of Angels Trust

For as long as Volbeat has been around, one thing has always been true about them; they are inconsistent. Both from album to album, and within each one, there is a massive gap between their best and worst songs. They write some of the most unique and catchy metal out there, but they also write some of the most generic as well. It has meant I have always been somewhat of a fan of theirs, but I have never been able to fully commit to calling myself one.

I was worried as this album cycle opened, because in the time since Volbeat last released a record, Michael Poulsson put out a record with his death metal side-project. I was afraid of that approach creeping into Volbeat's sound, dragging them into something that doesn't play to their strengths.

I hate to say I was on the right track when those thoughts arose. There are fewer of Volbeat's typical hooks, and more moments where the songwriting veers wildly from one riff to the next as if a riff collage is the point of the song. Poulsson's vocals get layered to the point of obscurity in some places, and overall there feels like less focus on the melodies than has been present in quite a while. Death metal songwriting is something quite different, and I don't like hearing it in Volbeat to this degree.

The worst offender is "In The Barn Of the Goat Giving Birth To Satan's Spawn In A Dying World Of Doom", which not only has an absurd title that makes me cringe, but jumps from part to part with no concern at all for how it all works together. The first single, "By A Monster's Hand", offended me as a songwriter. The song speeds up the tempo when the solo comes in, then drifts back down for the final chorus. What? If the tempo is going to be shifted, it should carry through the final chorus to carry through the extra energy. By reverting back, it gives the impression they had a solo section already written, and threw it into this song without bothering to make sure it fit.

Little things like that make the difference when the core ideas aren't shining so bright as to blind us from seeing the flaws. These songs are not Volbeat's best by any means. A big issue is that so many of the riffs and melodies are sounding like bits from their past songs. I've lost count of how many times they're basically re-written "Sad Man's Tongue", which they essentially do for the opening of a song here again. We're a far cry from the days of "Guitar Gangsters & Cadillac Blood", which might be the last time Volbeat sounded like they had new tricks up their sleeve.

Volbeat is a mixture of thrash/groove metal and old time rock. When they get that right, there's nothing like Volbeat, and they don't need to do anything but follow the blueprint. When they get in trouble is when they try to drift too far into their heaviness, because doing so sucks the fun out of the melodic component. Their chugging riffs are fine when the songs are hooky, but they aren't interesting enough to be the core component of the song we're supposed to remember. Unfortunately, Poulsson's foray into death metal has brought too much of that into Volbeat.

I can't say I'm disappointed, though, because I learned long ago that counting on Volbeat to deliver does not come with the best odds. I wanted more, but I didn't expect it.

"Jagged Little Pill" Hasn't Been Sanded Down By Time

We use the phrase as an illustrative Mad Libs, where filling in any nouns or adjectives will give us a dichotomy to begin a discussion. There are indeed two types of people... and in this case we can begin with the 90s sitcom "Full House". Yes, really. There are two types of people; those who heard the stories about Alanis Morissette's "You Outta Know" being written about Dave Coulier and were aghast at a beloved family show actor being included in such things, and those who heard the stories and laughed at one of the actors in a cloying and annoying piece of schlock being as unlike his character as all of us who were sick of the moralizing sitcom tropes.

"Full House" was a defining piece of life for that period of time when it aired, which makes it ironic that the period just after was in part defined by "Jagged Little Pill", an album that tore down the conventions of playing nice in pop music, ushering in an era of confessional truth that would drown "Full House" in the tub just to have the corpse to play with as a bath toy.

Pop music has been many things through the years, with 'honest' and 'raw' rarely being among them. Pop is escapism, it is music to leave behind our worries for three minutes at a time. That might feel good, but it means an entire genre is mostly empty calories. Even when it felt like everything had changed when Nirvana released "Nevermind", it was only a feeling. Look over the lyrics Kurt Cobain was writing, and it becomes clear that if he was the 'voice of a generation', it was a generation with nothing to say.

The turning point in bringing truth back to pop music was not him, it was Alanis Morissette. "Jagged Little Pill" was a revelation because she was the rare artist who was telling the full truth of her story through her songs, not manufacturing an image or hiding the pieces that were uncomfortable to show the world. Her music was not designed to go down easy, as the title makes clear, but rather to rip us open so we could not ignore the uglier side of life any longer.

People have been arguing for decades about whether "Ironic" is truly ironic, which misses the entire point. Whether or not the situations described in the song qualify under the technical definition is irrelevant, because the irony is that it is a song about feelings that aren't defined by academic versus colloquial usage of a term. Alanis was writing about the feeling of getting punched in the gut by life again and again, sarcastically asking whether it was the feeling of misery or the misery itself that came first. It is a song that takes on the question of why bad things happen to good people with more than a degree of skepticism that good people even exist.

Perhaps it was ironic that Alanis would set the stage for this revolution in music, and the next few years would come to be defined first by Shania Twain's hyper-corporatized "Come On Over", and then the wave of teen pop and boy bands. One dose of Alanis' honesty was what we needed, but was almost too much for our senses. After having music confront us with the reality of the world we were creating for ourselves, we needed to revert back to a safer space, one where we could look upon plasticine stars and feel as if we never had a chance.

Alanis' most defining trait was her relatability. She was an artist of the people, rough around the edges the way we all are, not posturing as anything but herself. That let her music connect with a massive audience who turned "Jagged Little Pill" into one of the defining records of the time, but it also meant we could see in her how small the gap between artist and audience truly was. While most of us could never imagine being the ultra-polished star with the airbrushed looks and auto-tuned voice, we could have been an artist like Alanis. We can all write down our feelings, we can all vent our frustrations with life and scream them out. By bringing music closer to us, and making clear how we could be her if for a few bits of fate and luck, it drove us to push music further away again. We need the distance to keep us from wondering why we haven't made any art of our own worth a damn. Do we have nothing to say for ourselves?

All of this is ironic, no? It's a bit of a cheap question, but it returns us to the heart of why we are still listening to "Jagged Little Pill" thirty years after it came out. Pop music is often disposable outside of the earworm melodies, so no matter how often Shania Twain's songs might have gotten stuck in your head, they seldom made you think while they were there. Alanis' songs were in a unique voice, and they stirred in us something more authentic than we expect from pop music.

Over the years, we have gotten glimpses of raw honesty since. Every time a song comes out with a searing lyric that makes us believe it is written from a place of true hurt, every time a song makes us consider our own place in life, it owes a debt to Alanis Morissette for making it possible for such music to be accepted as part of the mainstream. Maybe even more than "Nevermind", "Jagged Little Pill" was an album that came out at a time when we didn't know what the next chapter was going to be, and we didn't know how to explain why we still felt so frustrated and angry.

Alanis Morissette was the one who showed us how to turn inward. That didn't last long, as soon the world would start to burn once again. Maybe it's healthier for us to have global crises rather than existential ones. Massive problems may be easier to cope with than our internal ones. That's ironic, right?

Album Review: Katatonia - Nightmares As Extensions Of The Waking State

Evolution is a continual process, taking us from one step to the next as time passes through the hourglass. Nature does not let us stand static, neither in the quest to freeze our genetics in a single moment nor in the vastness of space. Life, existence, is entirely based on the forward movement toward whatever unknown comes next. Science may try to stop the process, but as of yet we are unable to overcome the laws of physics and biology.

Katatonia has been evolving throughout their career, shifting from extreme metal progenitors to melancholic masters to progressive provocateurs. They have always been interesting for that reason, and the proverbial cocoon finally cracked open with "Sky Void Of Stars". That record was Katatonia emerging as the epitome of what their blend of sounds could be, giving us music that was dark and emotional, yet uplifting and optimistic. I named it my Album Of The Year, and marveled at how a band so far down the road was able to make their greatest work.

Things have changed in the two years since then, with the band's founding partnership dissolving. The track the band is on does not change with that move, but it reinforces the knowledge that Katatonia was not going to stand still, no matter how much I would have liked to hear at least one more record mining that same ore before the next gold rush was discovered.

I was concerned with the first single "Lilac", when listening to it gave me none of the spark the previous album did. The lush melodies and captivating energy was not there, instead replaced by a slower and more insular atmosphere. It was the same components, but with the polish and paint stripped off. "Temporal" was very much the same case, feeling like it was cut from the same cloth, but only after it had sat in the sun and had the color bleached into a new, pale shade. This was the Katatonia of "City Burials", not "Sky Void Of Stars".

Digging deeper into the record, my concerns only grew. "Wind Of No Change" was more of a slow doom lament, which in and of itself isn't a bad thing. However, when the underwhelming chorus of the song culminated in a lyric calling to "hail Satan", it felt out-of-place for the emotional territory I expect Katatonia to explore. There is a fine line between being cheesy and campy in a way that is fun, and doing so in a way that makes the edges of your nose cringe. This is the latter, and if anything made me appreciate Scorpions even more for making an anthem complete with whistling into a classic. "Wind Of Change" is beyond capable of Katatonia's grasp here.

My disappointment continues throughout the record, as the tempos stay so slow that the momentum is like pushing a Nerf ball across Velcro. "Sky Void Of Stars" worked so well because Katatonia was subverting the melancholy of their natural sound with the swelling melody of happier music. It was gorgeous, infectious, and the most engaging they had ever been. This record, though, pulls back on the reigns, trudging through ten tracks that suck the life from the experience. Too often, the verses resort to bass and drum 'rhythms', but the notes are so sparse Jonas Renske is left to croon over beds of near silence. As unique and evocative as his voice is, that is not the right setting for it.

In evolutionary terms, everything about this album, including its overwrought title, feels like a recessive allele that had been buried in the gene pool. Through happenstance it has emerged, and perhaps like folklore creates stories about those afflicted with the resulting traits, we will one day try to reason how Katatonia veered so far from where they had just been.

Even though "The Fall Of Hearts" faded in my esteem, I still hear what it was trying to do. "City Burials" took years to unravel its approach, but I came to appreciate that record as a lovely transition. "Sky Void Of Stars" was an immediate gem. This record... this one I'm having trouble seeing the silver lining in. It doesn't do any of the things I like about Katatonia as well as they have been done before.

I figured it anything could reach me as I have been stuck in my own darkness for much of this year, it would be Katatonia. I was wrong, and that might be the most disappointing thing I have to say all year.

Album Review: Miley Cyrus - Something Beautiful

An artist 'finding their voice' is usually a metaphorical statement about them discovering the particular focus that lets them get the most out of their talents. In some cases, though, it's a literal statement. That's how I felt about Miley Cyrus, who found her voice when "Flowers" became the song that let her make the transition to full-fledged adult pop star. The album that followed suit was a mixed bag, with two distinct halves that did not work together at all, but the whole thing was an interesting dynamic in how the unexpected can be exactly what we need.

Let's be honest about something; Miley's voice is not what it once was. How much of it is natural versus abuse is a question to debate (she has explained a medical condition), but her tone has become rougher and grittier with each passing year. I would not argue with anyone who says her voice is damaged and lessened, but her new tone fits my tastes better. "Endless Summer Vacation" was the first time I found Miley interesting.

That brings us to today, with this musical experience being presented as a 'visual album'. That's a phrase I hate, because there is something almost offensive to me about the idea of needing to stare at a screen to get the full experience of music. Maybe there's something of an inverted version of synesthesia, but crossing visual and aural pathways feels unnecessary to me, and a bit like an artist telling us in advance they aren't sure the music can stand on its own.

That worry was exacerbated by the title track, which is a slow burning torch song that explodes into a modern electronic drop. Her vocal runs through filters as the song lurches to get started again, and the resulting melody was nowhere near exciting enough to smooth over the rough edges of the composition. "End Of The World" boomeranged us in a different direction, with an almost disco swell behind its pop grandeur. That song hits the right marks, letting Miley shine as she delivers a song that sounds like it has life in it.

'Cinematic disco' is an apt term to describe the sound of the record. The combination of beats and strings pulls from the glossy heyday of the 70s, and ironically feels more current than the modern pop that has sucked all the color and energy out of what used to be fun music. Miley is painting with a wider palate, but the thicker brush makes the details harder to get just right. While the sound is bigger and bolder, and the record gives off the air of being a statement, the songs themselves can't consistently live up to that standard.

After the one-two punch of "End Of The World" and "More To Lose" showing us the best side of Miley, the remaining tracks push harder into dance-pop, rather than soul. For my money, Miley is better suited for the more emotional and confessional approach. When we get to songs with spoken interludes and synths at the forefront, I struggle to embrace the vision she and her producers have in mind. Rather than sounding like Miley putting herself forward, the impression I'm struck with is a sound that is putting her in the background of her own album.

The differences between this album and "Endless Summer Vacation" are more in structure than in sound. They mine much of the same territory, but in different ways. "Something Beautiful" is more focused, and more decided on what it wants to be. Ironically, that works against it, because it was the dichotomy of the previous record that let me enjoy as much of it as I did. If she had committed to pop throughout the whole of the last record, I would have been disappointed, because it was the torch songs that defined that one. This album has fewer of those moments, and so while the pop bits might be better this time around, they make up a bigger portion of the pie.

With all that, I'm left feeling disappointed that Miley wasn't able to find a way to combine the glitz and glamour of the production with vocals and melodies that bring out the best in her. I know it can be done, but this record doesn't quite get there.

Album Review: A-Z - A2Z2

What's in a name? When it comes to A-Z, that's an interesting question. The band already had the connection made between them and Fates Warning, with Mark Zonder and Ray Alder being the driving forces. The ties to the past only become stronger on this second album, as guitarist Nick Van Dyk joins the band, who spent many years writing and playing with Ray in Redemption. Now, with all three of them mixing the elements of the past, A-Z almost feels like two timelines that have merged into one.

The first album was intended as a celebration of melodic hard rock, filtered through a bit of their old prog habits. I will be honest with you and say that record slipped past my attention. This record shifts their sound, bringing more of those prog elements into the playing, which in a way makes this album both better and worse.

The good side is that the music is more interesting for the new players. While the basis is still focused on making melodic rock/metal, there is more to this than the usual approach. Hints of thrash and prog creep through the guitar playing, toeing the line between being rock and metal. Melodic rock can often get too 'fluffy' when the wrong assumptions are made, and these veterans are able to wisely push in the other direction.

The bad side is that the combination of Ray and Nick make this sound like a more focused and streamlined Redemption album. Those albums they made together are perhaps my favorite prog metal, so I'm not complaining about that, but having the two bands sound so similar raises questions in my mind about the necessity of both. Regardless, A-Z has found a sound that is befitting of everyone involved.

That necessity comes in the form of tone, as the main difference between A-Z and Fates Warning, Redemption, or Ray's solo albums is in the brightness. All of their previous work has mined the darker side, with atmosphere being at the forefront. This record is the brightest and sharpest sounding bit of music I've heard from them. I don't know if I can call it optimistic, but it's certainly more upbeat and dare I say fun. In that way, it draws from much the same well of inspiration as Katatonia's fantastic "Sky Void Of Stars" a couple years ago.

As the record unfolds, there is something special about the connection Ray and Nick have, as they bring out the best in one another. Ray never sounds better than when he's belting out melodies over Nick's guitar playing, and Nick's songs simply don't have this kind of life when Tom Englund is singing them. Ray's voice is deeply emotional, but still able to find the bright side to these songs. That lets them be not only maintain that human connection, but also cry out for return listens. The closing "Now I Walk Away" is one of the best songs of the year, and it leaves me wanting to come back to the album. That only happens when something is bordering on greatness.

Existential questions aside, A-Z have stepped up their game considerably on this album. They not only have made an album that will appeal to fans of melodic rock/metal, but they have also provided a landing spot for people who are disappointed in Fates Warning's retirement and/or Redemption's output since Ray left. This isn't the same thing, but it serves as the other side of the coin to Ray's solo albums to fill the spot some of us, myself included, see as empty.

Part of me wanted to dislike this album for personal reasons I won't get into, but I was won over by the end. I don't know if this album can ever have the level of emotional impact as Redemption's best work, but that isn't the point. Redemption could never be a 'good time' listen, so A-Z has done something worth noting. They have also, as the midpoint approaches, made one of the more enjoyable albums of the year. Color me surprised.

U2 & The Mandela Effect

Few concepts in pop psychology are as fascinating as The Mandela Effect, because it makes us question both our perception of the world, but also whether reality exists as being independent of our own conscious and unconscious thoughts. The Mandela Effect is the ultimate expression of existential philosophy applied to the world, as it places our experiences in conflict with those of others, and we must question whether we believe ourselves or the evidence we collect along the way. It is, in essence, an embodiment of the quote, "Who are you gonna believe, me or your lyin' eyes?"

I cannot claim to have ever given much thought to most of the classic examples. Either I was a keen observer of reality, or I am not able to make myself care enough about them to prompt my own self-doubt. There is an example of a Mandela Effect in music, which is being brought to the surface this year. That is the case of U2's album "All That You Can't Leave Behind", which is celebrating it's twenty-fifth anniversary in 2025.

What is the Mandela Effect here, you might be asking?

I was not prepared for this anniversary, because in my memories, this album was U2's version of "The Rising"; an album-length response to 9/11. "Beautiful Day" was an anthem to remind us we were still alive, and to focus on the good things we still had. "Walk On" told us to carry on and not let anything stop the progress of life. "Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of" was obviously the song acknowledging the trauma we were going to struggle to move beyond.

It all makes such sense in my head, and the memories feel vivid. But they aren't real.

"All That You Can't Leave Behind" came out a year before those events, and while U2 was still riding high on their career resurgence on that day, the connection seems to exist only in my mind. If I didn't know about The Mandela Effect, I might be inclined to think I was crazy, having slipped through some wormhole in time where the only difference between universes is that U2 took one extra year to overcome their career nadir.

If I did not remember the album's origins, do I remember the album itself very well? That is another question that leaves me a bit perplexed. I remember the talk about the record being U2's return to form, and I remember hearing the singles all over tv and radio. Those memories include "Elevation" being U2's most rocking (at the time) song I could remember. As I recently listened to the album again, I was left puzzled by my own memories, as that song barely rocks at all. The entire album fits that mold, actually. While U2 was never a heavy band, the middle-aged gloss of this album has only cured with additional time.

It became cool to hate U2 when they pulled their stunt with Apple and iTunes, but I was disinterested in them long before that. I am one of those people who has never listened to their classic 80s albums in full, because the singles from that time have always struck me as mostly being dull. "With Or Without You" and "I Finally Found What I'm Looking For" are interchangeable dirges of boredom, where the most interesting aspect is how The Edge can go so long avoiding playing a chord.

But there was something about that moment in time when even I could not avoid embracing U2 a bit. I dearly loved "Walk On", and I found comfort in the way Bono's voice nearly breaks when he has to sound more passionate than ironically cool. Someone I cared about had pointed me to "In A Little While", where his similarly cracked vocal tried to tell me something about what love was supposed to do to us. It was not an album I would say I loved, or that I put in regular rotation, but it was always there when I was in a particular mood. The fact Bono is unable to sing a harmony gives U2's music a unique sense of loneliness and isolation, which has been appropriate far too often in my life.

Looking back at this album, I'm left with a few thoughts. 1) U2 is a quintessential singles band, because if this album is truly a comeback, they were never great at consistent greatness. 2) They wasted their second chance by buying into their own self-importance. They may still be a huge band, but they are no longer an essential part of our culture. 3) The passage of time grows harder to wrap my head around.

What this album does is make me think about time, memory, and all the ways my own past is lost to me. Much like how I misremembered the details of the album's existence, I misremember elements of my own. I have long threatened to turn my college experiences into a comedic novel, and for that purpose I wrote down as many memories as I could a few years after they happened. I read through those again this past year, as I was struggling and needed to remember times when things seemed easier. As I did so, many of those stories felt foreign to me, as if they happened to someone else. There were details I had completely forgotten, or mixed up, or had turned into personal Mandela Effects.

That is to say perhaps existential philosophy is both right and wrong. Life is as we experience it, but also as we remember it. The path may change after we have reached the destination, and it doesn't actually matter if we know this or not. We are where we are, regardless of the route we took. Questioning what cannot be changed is pointless.

And yet, that seems to be all I do. Thanks a fucking lot, U2. You always ruin everything, don't you?