Album Review: Edguy - Monuments

Time flies by, doesn't it? That's the first thing that comes to mind when it's pointed out that Edguy is celebrating their twenty-fifth anniversary as a band. It's a big milestone, and one that makes me feel old, considering how long my relationship with the band is, and how it only constitutes half of their existence. That's remarkable. And to celebrate the occasion, the band is putting out this new package, which is two parts greatest hits, and one part new material. Let's start with the old stuff:

Making a greatest hits for a band that doesn't actually have what you would call hits is difficult. Aside from the live favorites, picking a track listing from all the albums that will satisfy everyone is practically impossible. Older fans are going to feel upset that "Theater Of Salvation" doesn't get more tracks on the album, while newer fans are going to wonder why so much of the more traditional power metal still has a place in Edguy's world. I get it.

That being said, they've done a good job of finding the right balance between the two sides of the coin. The most important early tracks are here, and no album gets put into the spotlight. Myself, I would try to lobby for one or two more from "Tinnitus Sanctus", which is my favorite, but the inclusion of some of their EP only tracks makes up for it. Those deserved to be given a second chance. "Holy Water" and "Judas At The Opera" should have been on an album long ago.

As for the new songs, they try to fuse the old and the new. "Ravenblack" is the one that sound most like Avantasia, but it's an absolutely killer track, so any similarity is more than forgiven. "Wrestle With The Devil" is a more modern, and groovy take on Edguy's usual sound, with a more subdued chorus that is more of a grower than usual, while "Open Sesame" and "Landmarks" are more old-school in their approach. The latter, along with "The Mountaineer" are rock solid Edguy material, but I will say that I'm not as keen on "Open Sesame". As his wings have spread, I've felt that Tobi's writing hasn't worked as well on the speedy numbers in recent years, and that's what happened here. It's not a bad song, but it's just not as engaging to me as the rest.

Overall, though, the new material here is more very good Edguy music that fits right in, quality-wise, with "Space Police". Edguy is comfortably in who they are, and that's what the deliver. If you've liked Edguy all along, the hits are still awesome, and the new songs are a nice present. Sure, I would have preferred waiting a little longer for a whole album, but new Edguy is new Edguy. "Monuments" has plenty of reasons to give it a listen.

The Conversation: 2017, So Far

Chris C: Here we go again. It seems like the blink of an eye, but we already find ourselves at the mid-point of this year, which means it's a good time to take a stp back and try to figure out what the heck just happened. The passage of time isn't a topic up for discussion here, but in a way it also is. The acceleration of each impending sunrise does add more and more momentum onto the release schedule, which makes each trend reverberate even harder, and die out even faster.

To the topic of this year's music; The main takeaway I've had so far is that this has been a unique year in terms of the strata of rankings. I've managed to find a very solid number of great albums that I would have no problem putting on my list at the end of the year, and I've also suffered through more downright terrible albums than I can remember in recent years (and that's without all the extreme metal I don't even sample). What I haven't found are enough of those mid-level albums that give a year depth. To use a sports analogy (since we seem to love them), there are a lot of max-level albums, a lot of veteran-minimum albums, and very few that would bloat the salary cap with their perfectly acceptable performance and salary.

The reason that has been such a focal point for me is that the albums falling on the terrible end of the scale are mostly ones from big name artists who have been among the most hyped. When all that hype sinks in (and I'm not immune from getting my hopes up), and then the album is a crushing disappointment, those hopes make the suffering feel even worse. We're talking about bands like Iced Earth, Pain Of Salvation, and Danzig (Oh, Danzig. Would you like to talk about how far he's fallen?). Talk about those albums was everywhere, and once I heard them, I felt like I was watching a bad CGI movie, and I was the only one who could tell. Is the key to put your fingers in your ears and pretend an album doesn't exist until you actually hit the play button?

Couple that with decent but criminally disappointing albums from favorites of mine like Jorn, Fastball, and House Of Lords, and we get a crowded list of reasons to think 2017 might actually be even worse as a year (in total, not just music) than 2016. And that's a hard feat.

But there has also been plenty of good to talk about, but before I get into that, I'll let you give your impressions.

D.M:   So, I think I agree with you that this year has been strange for rankings purposes, but not necessarily for the same reasons.  Let me add the caveat before I get too far that my personal year has been so full of other major life-altering goings-on that I have to admit I’ve been fairly distracted from making entirely cogent critiques of music and have had the opportunity to really dig into fewer things.  With that, allow me to launch into it.

I admit that to this point I have only found four or five records in total that I am truly willing to go to bat for.  So continuing your apt analogy, there are some max-level players out there (though without spoiling it, if I were to pick an album of the year right now, it would be an instrumental record, which for me is nearly insane to even consider,) but I find that those max-level records are all max for different reasons.  To continue down the analogy rabbit hole, I have a point guard, a shooting guard, a power forward, a small forward (is scoring forward the fashionable term now?) and a center.  So I’m willing to pay them all top dollar, but they all do different things.

And even among that cream of the crop, there’s really only three albums so far that if you caught me on the street at any time and said ‘what albums do you love this year?’ I would think of their names.  (Though, jumping ahead, I did really like the Soen album, though now some months later, I can’t really recall why, so I may have to revisit it.)

I also have found this year that among the lower strata of good albums (talk about a backhanded compliment,) that they are generally intriguing because they either do something new, or try a style I haven’t heard in a long time.  Recently, I’ve been spending some time with The One Hundred’s record, which may or may not be great (and perhaps the fact that I haven’t decided is indication enough,) but I find myself drawn to it because it’s the first attempt at honest, new rap metal I’ve heard in a long time.  Notable mostly because yes, trends in music ebb and flow, but by the end of its short life, rap metal had become so reviled and ridiculed that it seemed the genre would never heal.  And yet, twenty years down the line (shit, I’m getting older, aren’t I?) here we may be again.  Lest someone get the wrong idea, this is not a nostalgia trip for me (outside of Rage and Orange 9mm, me and rap metal never really got along,) but it is refreshing to see a band try to resurrect a genre from my youth that I never thought I would see again.

There’s more I can get into about genres come home to roost, new bands versus old bands and some thoughts on Chris Cornell, but I’ll save it for now and toss it back – what trends are you seeing this year?

CHRIS C: Rap metal, eh? I saw that album come across my desk, but I will readily admit I never even bothered to sample a single song from it. One of the things I've found out over the years is that as I've gotten older, I have less and less tolerance for music that misses what I think are the main points of making music. Rap metal would almost exclusively fit into that category. Or maybe Limp Bizkit just ruined everything for everyone for all of time. I wouldn't put it past them.

I will leave it to you to carry the ball with Chris Cornell's passing, since I was never really into any of his projects, but there is one thing I would like to say. I truly dislike the way that we, as a society, have usurped the word 'tragedy', and turned it into a synonym for 'sad'. They are not the same thing, and it does a disservice to both the memories of the truly tragic, and the push to avoid the sad, to confuse them. Buddy Holly dying in a plane crash was tragic. Chris Cornell's death is terribly sad, but I wouldn't put it in the same category, because calling it a tragedy gives it a connotation of being unavoidable, like an "act of God". It was anything but, and I'm afraid that the misuse of terms is going to make it harder to use his memory to increase awareness and prevention of drug abuse. Now that would be a tragedy.

To be honest, I don't really see any trends that have taken hold this year, other than the increase in really bad albums by artist who should know better. Perhaps we're in an odd time between the death of djent and whatever will come next, but there isn't any one dominant thing out there that has caught my attention. In a way, that lack of a trend is a trend in and of itself. Bands might finally have the opportunity to use that open space to carve out a unique identity for themselves. I've seen that a touch with Creeper, who don't look or sound like anything else going on in the punk/emo scene right now. It's almost a return to horror punk, which would actually be something I would like to see.

You mention Soen, and while they completely dismantle the point I was just making, I too love that record. But what I love about it is how they pretty blatantly take Opeth's "Blackwater Park" sound, strip out the death metal, and streamline it just enough to be different. I know you haven't, but plenty of people have spent thousands of words complaining about how Opeth's evolution has ruined that once great band. What's interesting about Soen right now, at least to me, is that "Lykaia" is actually the exact album people wanted Opeth to make when they started to change. I can't recall many times a band has taken up the sound and essentially replaced another. I find that fascinating.

Actually, there is one trend I've noticed, but it's only for my own sake, since I've been the dissenting voice for a long time now. This year has actually been better for metal than the last few. Sure, there are a few bombs to avoid, but metal might be swinging the pendulum back away from the djent and death metal that has infiltrated the biggest of names. Or maybe we're just lucky and all those bands are off-cycle this year. Either way, it's nice to not be screamed and growled at quite so much.

Let's hear your take on Cornell, and I'll ask you a question I asked myself not long ago; has this year had no giant releases? I can't think of any that, whether you like them or not, EVERYONE felt they had to hear and comment on.

D.M: Rap metal is a finicky thing to judge, because it almost takes the characteristics of rap more than it does of metal, in that who is performing the art defines the art more than the nature of the art itself.  That probably sounds like the most pompous thing anybody's said today, so let me try to re-tread and also add the caveat that this is one lilly-white guy's opinion.  'Metal' as we know it has a number of different subgenres that are defined by their aural principles - too many subgenres, in fact.  And while the quality of any given metal record is still very much defined by who is making it, there are discernible flavors to every genre even if the performers are crappy.  'Rap', by contrast, is entirely dependent on the individual creating the art.  If the MC is somebody of high quality (Chuck D, KRS-One, Rakim,) then the rap is good.  Absent that, rap that is executed by a so-called 'whack' MC is entirely tasteless (meaning without flavor, not meaning offensive or in poor taste,) like a canvas simply painted gray.  Rap metal follows the second trend more than the first.  So when the music is being played by people of skill (Tom Morello, who I know you are more lukewarm on than most,) it is excellent, but when it is left in the hands of hacks (Fred Durst,) the entire banquet suffers (despite the notable talents of Wes Borland, respect where it's due.)

But I told you that story to tell you this one - my brother, who is seven years older than me, was going through high school right in the heart of the early nineties.  And while everyone was singing the praises of grunge, the last days of hair metal and Metallica's Black Album, he had one friend who was listening to a little band from Los Angeles called Rage Against the Machine, and their sound, love it or hate it, was totally revolutionary at the time of inception.  So there is merit to the genre, when done properly.

That said, thanks for Limp Bizkit, the genre is now an object of ridicule, and I can never use the expression 'just one of those days' ever again.

On to more serious matters - the pain of Chris Cornell's death comes in the form of the realization that our understanding of mental health remains woefully inadequate.  This is just another example of a situation where someone we all thought was in perfectly fine shape was actually suffering greatly on the inside, and had simply become adept at hiding his pain.  And it'a a hard thing to think about - because even those trained to look for the signs of mental distress or turmoil may have missed any exhibitions of Cornell's plight, and perhaps even he himself had become accustomed to a feeling of familiarity about the whole thing and didn't understand how deep down the rabbit hole he was.  Man, in layman's terms, it just plain sucks.  It's another talent gone before his time, and moreover, another human life wasted without cause.  My sadness at his passing partially resonates from his influence on me as an artist and performer, but also just comes from the sadness that always accompanies a suicide.  From a life standpoint, before I get accused of speaking way above my pay grade on the issues of mental health, the lesson is to reach out to your friends both if you need help, or suspect that they need help.  We're all in this together.

From a more objective musical standpoint, I think the loss registers most in the sense that grunge was arguably the last of the truly mainstream, broad-sweeping trends, and now many of its major familiar faces are gone.  We had already had to cope with the loss of Cobain, Staley and Wood, but we thought Cornell would stick around, and even if the genre was never to be resurrected to its glory, at least we would share the memory of the important days with him.  But now, (aside from Pearl Jam, who hardly qualified as a grunge band anymore (double parenthesis - and there's nothing wrong with that, it's just a fact,)) the once powerful and tidal force of grunge is figuratively, and perhaps literally, voiceless.

The lack of a trend does make for an interesting trend, because we haven't seen anything like this in recent memory.  Even in the absence of mainstream promote-able trends which have more or less gone the way of the dodo, the underground genres have always been tied to waves from geographical locations, be it Gotherburg or Montreal or Boston or whatever, and those came with their own sound.  Right now, and perhaps for the last two years, there's been no guiding principle in metal that has dictated the pace of the genre's progression.  The only possible addendum one could make to that is that there seems to be a greater emphasis on stoner and more ambient metals, but there's an argument to be made that this has always existed ever since the debut of Black Sabbath, and so may be experiencing a resurgence more than a rebirth.  So, we're seeing still more callbacks to the rock trends of the seventies, from twin guitars on down, which isn't a bad thing.  That said, those trends are popularizing stoner metal, but stoner metal hasn't reached beyond its bounds to influence anyone else yet.  For example, no one expects the upcoming Galaktikon album (which I am immensely excited for, by the by,) to exhibit stoner influences.

So now we've talked about the return of seventies rock trends, rap metal, the-style-Opeth-should-have-had, and if you listen to the new album from the Corroded and obfuscate your hearing just a little, it sounds like someone might be trying to make Rob Zombie-style metal again, which has been all but silent ever since "The Sinister Urge" (and yes, I realize Zombie has released several records since then.)  So if you are a listener with a variety of taste in your palate, this is potentially a golden dawn.  Let me follow up with this, though: why AREN'T we seeing a trend?

As for the lack of a major release, no, there's hasn't been one yet.  But there will be.  I don't know what it's going to be, but metal journalism is nothing if not predictable, and so I say with absolute faith that there will be some album from Mastodon or Behemoth or Ufomammut that everyone will be climbing all over each other to self-importantly bloviate about.  You and I both know that metal loves nothing more than to find some album that people with sense want no part of and then expansively dictate to the audience about why that album is the most important album in a hundred years.  THAT trend, much as we would prefer otherwise, recurs with depressing regularity.

CHRIS C: Your commentary on Chris Cornell was apt, and wise. Mental anguish is, in different terms, one of the thing that has always bothered me about metal, and why I hesitate to call myself a big fan. So much of metal intentionally focuses on the side of life that either causes or results in that kind of mental state. I'm not sure it's healthy for bands or listeners to spend so much time inundating themselves with so much anger and depression. I've mentioned this to you before, but I definitely noticed a difference when I cut much of that kind of music out of my life. In some ways, metal can often find itself a negative reinforcement, which is the last thing most people need.

Grunge is something that, despite living through the time, I don't understand. You just said that Pearl Jam wasn't really a grunge band, and heck, I'm not saying you're wrong. But combine that with the people who say Alice In Chains wasn't really a grunge band (they were metal), nor was Nirvana (pop), I have to ask; who the hell WAS a grunge band? It seems grunge was a word that got thrown out there to describe a fashion choice more than a musical one, and that really it all comes down to who wore unbuttoned flannel shirts. Has a genre ever been dependant on clothes before?

If I can play armchair psychologist here for a minute, I think the reason we aren't seeing a trend ties into the subsequent point about their being a lack of huge releases this year. In order to get a trend going (cynicism alert!), someone needs to demonstrate that there is money to be made selling those kinds of records. Since Ghost came out, I haven't seen anyone trying anything new that has broken through and shown a profit potential. Djent only blew up once Meshuggah and Periphery started raking in decent money. I feel that's what we're going to need before another trend really takes off.

The funny thing about the lack of huge releases is that we've had plenty of albums from what you would think were big enough names. Mastodon put out an album, but they've severely damaged their own brand, to the point they barely registered to a lot of people. Kreator had an album that was well-received, but it was much of the same, and not 'true' enough for many, so they didn't either. Then again, maybe we've just finally hit the point where we are too fractured for any one record to do that across the spectrum. I find it hard to believe that any fan like me can really be intrigued by a black metal record, or those fans by a power metal record. Metal is somewhat meaningless now. Dive a bit deeper, and each sub-group has big releases.

So now that we've gotten that out of the way, let me ask what has surprised you so far (good or bad), and what you're looking forward to for the rest of 2017.

D.M: Let me clarify a little - Pearl Jam certainly used to be a grunge band, but in the intervening years, they've veered away from their root sound.  That's not an insult or strike against them, although that comes with the admission that I more or less lost interest in them after "Vitalogy," when their sound began to evolve and they became pioneers in the cardboard-CD-sleeve march.  Their temperamental shift is likely a result of time as much as anything else; who's to say that if Soundgarden's timeline had remained unbroken, they wouldn't have done the same? 

To address your concern, though, I think grunge, as many underground movements that become popular do, suffers from some brush back by adherents who now find the genre to be overexposed in retrospect.  So, their reaction to trying to hold grunge close to the vest is to attempt to cut off the limbs that people can hold on to.  There's also a geographical element involved in grunge that exists in few other mainstream genres.  I, for one, however pretentious this may be, have never considered Stone Temple Pilots or Smashing Pumpkins part of the grunge movement, since they originated in San Diego and Chicago respectively, not the original Seattle scene (although make no mistake, while I never liked the Pumpkins, I do have an affinity for the first two STP records.)

Corollary to that, grunge can be hard to define because it was comprised mainly of facets from other genres, and was more an amalgam of those sounds than a truly new movement or innovation (which sadly may be what is presently dooming the genre to relative obscurity as newcomers seem to have bypassed the movement for inspiration.)  But grunge was borne of punk, rock, metal, blues, an ambitious use of amplified gain, flannel shirts and teenage ennui.  So, no single identifying marker exists.

For the record though, when I think about the core of 'grunge bands,' these are the club's ranking members (in no order): Soundgarden, Nirvana, Pearl Jam (then,) Alice in Chains, Mudhoney, Green River, Screaming Trees (who will forever be underrated,) Mother Love Bone, Tad, Temple of the Dog, and I know King Buzzo hates it, but the Melvins are inextricably tied to the genre whether or not they matched it musically.  That's pretty much the list.

And in answer to your actual question about genres and clothes - I can't think of one.  Was there a specific shoe tied to shoegaze?

Real quick before I go on, speak of the devil!  Ufomammut just announced pre-orders for their upcoming album.  Let the self-aggrandizement and fatuous preening of the reviewers lining up to fawn begin!  (Members of Ufomammut, if you happen to be reading this, it's not your fault.  We're cool.)

Much to my own surprise, I actually agree with you that 'metal' as a single label has very little meaning now, with the exception that perhaps Rob Zombie or Godsmack or Disturbed fit no other qualifiers and the term 'pop metal' just feels wrong.  That said, I would offer one note of caution about the fractured audience.  You're right, of course, the audience now, in perhaps all genres and not limited to metal, floating away from each other at an alarming rate, but it's been that way for a while now, and then all of a sudden there was Ghost.  So while it happens with less and less frequency, it can still happen.

I think the thing that surprises me most this year actually has to do with me.  Responsibilities in my life have caused me to have less time to monitor the goings-on of music, and even less time to actively review it, as attentive readers have no doubt noticed.  The part that surprises me in all that is that there have been a number of releases by prominent old school artists that I found I just had no interest in.  It felt like a waste of time to even launch the most cursory examination of their product, for I knew that I would either find nothing new, or be disappointed.  As such, I haven't heard the new Mastodon, or the new Kreator.  I didn't listen to Danzig's album.  I didn't even blink at Iced Earth.  And what feels weird is that I don't feel the slightest bit guilty about it.  I think the omission of Danzig from my curiosity is the most shocking, only because I harbor such love for the first three Danzig records, and of course, the Misfits.  But there it is.  There appear to be some bands I'm simply done with.  The rule isn't universal, as I'm very much interested in the upcoming Arch Enemy record and also rushed out to hear the new Dragonforce, but a lot of bands are starting to fall off the cliff for me as my free time just won't allow the indulgence.

As a side note, one other surprise - while I agree with the criticisms in your poignant and thoughtful review, I really did enjoy The Night Flight Orchestra.

So, as we begin to wrap up, what are you looking forward to in the year's back half?

CHRIS C: I will let you have the last word on grunge. I was still off in different musical worlds at the time, so I can't speak with anything but backwards looking knowledge of the scene. I get what you're saying about Pearl Jam. They are certainly more of what you would call 'classic rock' these days. I suppose that brings up a question; does a band's genre change over time as they evolve, or is it locked in place by their formative records?

Was Metallica always a thrash band? Is Opeth still progressive death metal? These are the sorts of things that drive metal nomenclaturists nuts.

Ghost did hit, but even their stunning success needs to be measured. Yes, they have achieved far more than anyone would have thought for a band of their kind, but they haven't come close to the heights that rock and metal bands used to. Aside from one late-night performance, they haven't come close to breaking into 'the mainstream'. Twenty years ago, the buzz they've generated would have led to filling stadiums, and at least one song crossing over to become a minor hit. Today, I'll guarantee you anyone who doesn't actively follow the metal scene would never have even heard their name. And now that there is a legal battle, and the masks have been pulled off, I'm afraid the gimmick might have run its course. I'm not sure the band is nearly as interesting knowing it's Tobias and the studio musicians.

You aren't crazy for how you're thinking. All of those big-names you mentioned weren't releases I was interested in listening to either. They are all bands that have hit the point of diminishing returns. They have either fallen from grace, or released so many albums at this point that another one can't possibly offer up anything new. It's a dilemma that artists face. There comes a certain point where the only way to please your fans is to quit. And let's face it, Iced Earth was kind of boring even at their best. Danzig I only listened to because of how shockingly bad the first single was. I could hardly believe what I was hearing, and needed to see how much the big magazines were paid off to claim it was a good album (answer; a lot).

The Night Flight Orchestra album was very good for what it was. The problem is that it was copying a style of music that never had much great songwriting. There has been so much nostalgia for the 80s lately (and why? I recall everyone younger than a boomer hating the Reagan years), and I'm a bit burned out on the sound.

My surprise of the year, if you're interested, is Harem Scarem. Here's a band that has been cranking out boring melodic rock since reforming, and they come out with an absolutely killer album this year. Bands that have been around twenty-five years aren't supposed to make their best music, but they went and did it. I've lost count of how many times I've listened to it.

As for the rest of the year, there isn't much on the horizon yet that I know of. I'm looking forward to the new Serious Black album, but considering it will be barely a year since the last one came out, I'm quite nervous about this being a rushed pile of leftovers (though Graveyard did the quick turnaround spectacularly, so what do I know?). The other big one is the long-awaited return of Nocturnal Rites. The first single just came out, and it's fantastic. Power/melodic metal might be getting a nice shot in the arm here. At least I hope so.

I'll give you the final word, and ask what you're looking forward to, and what you would like to see, if you were in charge of the world. Myself, my wish is the same one that I've had for several years now. I desperately want to see both Graveyard and Tonic finally get around to releasing DVDs. I don't know what the market for them is anymore, but I for one would love to have a document of a show, since I'm probably never going to get around to actually seeing them. Come on people, help a guy out!

D.M: Interestingly enough regarding Pearl Jam, I have often asked not only that same question, but how often a band suffers the opposite problem - where the band stays the same in sound and tone, but the expectations of their genre change underneath them.  Like, when Bruce Springsteen started, he was rock, but now, he hasn't changed a single iota and his genre has devolved where he's now 'crap.'  (Woohoo!  Checked the 'cheap shot at Springsteen' box!  Just under the wire!)

As for what I am looking forward to the remainder of the year, I just found out that the Offspring have a tour date near me, and while I may well be twenty years too late, I've still never seen them, so the chance to cross them off is exciting.  As for actual album releases, I am interested in both the forthcoming Arch Enemy release, and the upcoming Galaktikon album, the latter more because I'm curious to see if it sounds like Dethklok (which has been hinted,) or Galaktikon (which would be awesome, considering I don't think anyone foresaw a follow-up coming there.)  Because it still hasn't been released yet, I am contractually obligated to mention that I am still awaiting the final Blackguard album, "Storm."  And also, it's been four years since the last Turisas record, so I am now checking their various social media and web accounts about once a fort night to see if there is any progress there.  They keep announcing more concert dates, which is great, but no new music yet.  I await with baited breath.

Chris C: And with your ritual shot at Springsteen now completed, I think that's a wrap for this discussion. It's been an odd year, and we have roughly six more months of it to go. Will it get better, will it stay weird? We'll reconvene in December and figure that all out. Until then, back to the music!

Album Review: Corroded - "Defcon Zero"

It’s entirely possible that you may have heard Corroded without ever knowing that it was Corroded.  The band came to some fame after writing some music for the Battlefield series of video games, and once you pop in their new album “Defcon Zero,” the mental links start to get made.

Corroded lives at the intersection of Disturbed, Rob Zombie and Texas Hippie Coalition, an intersection of roads that has found itself mostly populated by tumbleweeds and dust in this new millennium.  There was a time when this straight-ahead, accessible and thumping brand of metal was all too common and all but ruled mainstream alternative radio.  Somewhere along the road there was oversaturation, too many one-offs and one-hit wonders like Drowning Pool and Union Underground, and ultimately a glacially slow, agonizing death at the hands of bands like Puddle of Mudd and P.O.D.

There have been blips of hope that the once proud and downright dominant style may not lay dormant forever.  The Showdown, Meldrum, the early days of Five Finger Death Punch, even Volbeat and PAIN have tapped back into the vein and allowed just enough blood to flow to keep the heartbeat low but detectable.

Corroded, releasing their first album in five years, is helping to keep that heart beating.

The first five songs of “Defcon Zero” by these ambitious Swedes are all capable of burrowing into your brain and demanding that your foot tap their easy beats while you’re working or studying or drinking coffee or whatever.  Each one may not seem like an aggressive earwig when you first hear it, but allow your brain to settle and don’t be shocked when the riffs and hook-laden choruses come flooding back.

The record begins with “Carry Me My Tired Bones,” which plays into a lot of stereotypes of melodic metal, but executes them well and proves why they’re stereotypes.  There’s a gentle, fragile acoustic opening that flits along for almost a minute until the first signs of a dark-clouded riff loom in the background, eventually overtaking the melody with driving percussion and a muddy guitar sludge that slops out notes.

Jumping past the next two cuts (only for time, not because they’re not worthy of comment,) we land on “Fall of a Nation.”  The song is the album’s battery, even among an album of batteries.  The action is nonstop, the vocals of the chorus are delivered with a wry precision that recalls an amalgam of several different familiar vocalists, and we hear throughout the track a slow double kick which does not seek to blow us away with tempo, but instead provides the song an intelligible and infectious heartbeat.  The medium-paced double kick is an often-overlooked tool in the metal arsenal, seemingly mastered and employed only by Overkill, though now Corroded demonstrates that they also understand its value.

Rounding out the first five cuts, the album arrives at “Vessels of Hate,” which comes equipped with a ready-made chanting chorus and a simple riff that allows enough open space for the chords to breathe and create an atmosphere of energy.  The song is really just a vehicle for the lofty chorus, but as lofty choruses go, it’s a strong entry.

Backing off the praise momentarily, here’s the other side of “Defcon Zero”: Corroded does such an impressive job of building momentum and carrying it through the first five songs that the rest of the album can’t possibly maintain that pace and execution.  “Day of Judgment” takes its foot off the gas for just a moment, and the album’s stride stumbles.

This gets paired in tandem with the earnest but frankly mundane and comparatively tame power ballad of “A Note to Me,” and after that “Defcon Zero” never really recovers.  The songs that come after attempt to pick up the pace and re-assert the album’s strength with some success, but the damage of “A Note to Me” has been done, especially in light of the fact that the last four cuts are fine, but not superior to the first five.

Anyway, let’s be clear, and let this be the takeaway – “Defcon Zero” is an album with five absolutely badass songs on it, and that’s more than enough to declare the album great.  It just so happens that all five songs are stacked at the front of the record, which makes for an efficient listen if nothing else.  While the songs aren’t revolutionary, they don’t need to be, either – their resurrection of an almost dead style, however momentary, is reason enough to celebrate.

Album Review: Ten - Gothica

I believe I first heard the name Gary Hughes in connection with the solo albums he wrote for Bob Catley. I then saw just how many albums he has had a hand in over his career, and while that amount of music was overwhelming, I knew without even digging deep one truism; if you make too much music, it will vary wildly in quality. There's a reason why few artists are massively productive while still being consistently excellent. It's hard to write good songs, and I believe most writers only have a certain number of great ones in them (I speak from my own experience there). Hughes, I fear, may have run out long ago.

I was actually a fan of "Stormwarning" a few years back, but Ten's subsequent attempts have done nothing at all for me. This album, with it's lyrical focus on Gothic storytelling, is appealing, but the songs have a lot to live up to.

What I feared happening is what Ten throws themselves headlong into here; namely, the mentality that darker topics and atmospheres mean there's no need to have the big, warm melodies Ten is known for. That's a crock, and it ruins this album. Ten is not a dark band, nor a heavy band. They don't need to be, because at their best Hughes is one of the great melodic writers and singers in rock/metal. But by focusing on making this album 'dark', he's toned down the best aspect of his writing. He's handcuffed himself here, and then goes so far to make it a point of pride that he's done so.

And that's without getting into a gripe of mine, as someone who is a writer by trade. "La Luna Dra-Cu-La" is a mediocre song as it is, but the entire hook of the song is dependent on a mispronunciation of the character's name. There are times when I'll cut a band a bit of slack, because English isn't their native tongue, but Hughes damn well knows better. If the rhyme isn't perfect, you either find a different one, or you live with is being a soft rhyme. That's the way songs have always been written. You don't get to twist the language to fit your bad poetry.

But that nitpick isn't the only thing wrong here. This is, easily, the most boring album I've ever heard from Hughes. It doesn't really rock, and it's not fun to sing along with. His hooks on this album are so weak that not a single one of them is memorable. If you had told me this was a collection of the songs cut from the last couple of albums I didn't enjoy that much, I would believe you. That's how weak this material is, compared to what I know Ten can deliver.

Maybe this was just an experiment that didn't work out, but "Gothica" is a hugely frustrating album. It offers none of Ten's best traits, and focuses on things they have never been good at. It's a huge miscalculation, and an album that almost made me angry.

Album Review: Goatwhore - "Vengeful Ascension"

In “Hamlet,” Shakespeare’s Polonius tells us “This above all: to thine own self be true.  And it must follow, as the night the day.  Thou canst not then be false to any man.”  It’s sage advice from The Bard, and has become the stuff of scholarly study, life coaching and millennial tattoos.  So too it must be with music, and thus we are faced with Goatwhore’s new album, “Vengeful Ascension.”

The press releases accompanying this album speak a great deal about Goatwhore wanting to produce the most honest, Goatwhore-est album to date, allowing for little outside influence and promising simply the unadulterated chaos of the songwriter’s ambition.  A laudable goal for a band who’s managed to stick around in the underground for nearly twenty years.  It probably stands to reason that after six albums, the band would want to take their seventh to return to the touchstones which made them establish their career in the first place.

So we come to “Vengeful Ascension” with the realization that what we have here is a raw version of the already blue-rare music that we’ve come to know and love from Goatwhore over the years.  And yet, this is where the dilemma comes in…

Frankly, this album isn’t as good as the band’s two most previous works, though it’s equally hard to condemn because it’s clearly the kind of album that Goatwhore wanted to make, essentially a return to the mold rather than a breaking of it.

Now, let’s not be hasty – there are some great moments.  “Under the Flesh, Into the Soul” has exactly the rumble that modern extreme metal, or thrash for that matter, so often lacks.  The defining character of the song is the stop and go riff, which utilizes empty space to make the notes pop and add some dimension above the thorough pounding of the drums beneath.  This is where Goatwhore has always excelled, in the accessibility of their guitar riffs that concentrate on something other than simply playing fast.

This same thing goes for “Mankind Will Have No Mercy,” which could have passed for a cover of an early Anthrax song minus the grisly lyrics.  Similarly though, we hear the punk influence in the drums and quick, staccato riffing that move the narration of the song without losing the audience.  If the album could have stuck to those tenets exclusively, “Vengeful Ascension” could have been great.

The issue is that too much of the album, and stop me if you’ve heard this before, simply descends into a paroxysm of smashing and banging.  Much of what one supposes were supposed to be the heaviest, most intimidating and visceral bits of the record lack flavor in the single tone of their execution.  “Where the Sun is Silent” and “Decayed Omen Reborn” manage to leave the launch pad, but never really deviate from a ho-hum flight plan.  The attempt was obviously to show a more deliberate dynamic with the band’s music, but it doesn’t come out as anything all that interesting.

By contrast, we’re faced with several selections such as album closer “Those Who Denied God’s Will,” which give the impression of simply wanting to be black metal songs.  And there’s nothing necessarily wrong with Goatwhore wanting to write black metal songs, but it seems outside the wheelhouse of their strengths.

So in the end, there’s a distinct conundrum when one considers “Vengeful Ascension.”  The album falls short of the relatively lofty bar set by “Constricting Rage of the Merciless,” and is also shy of the pinnacle that was “Blood for the Master,” but for all intents and purposes appears to be the music that Goatwhore honestly wants to make, and its hard to criticize any professional artist for following their passion.  Nobody here is going to tell Goatwhore they can’t do what they want, but the truth of the matter is that we’re also within our rights to not enjoy it as much.

Album Review: Xtasy - Second Chance

When we talk about melodic rock, specifically the kind that makes great reference to the 80s, there's something about the music that is usually charming, but often underwhelming. I'm not sure why, but a lot of the artists trying to recreate those days are able to match the production techniques of the time, but they lack the songs. Or rather, what is really happening is that these bands remind us of how much we overrate the music from the 80s. If you actually give an honest listen back to a lot of those songs, they aren't nearly as good as thirty years of memories would have you to believe.

Xtasy is a newcomer to this world, but they're one who caught my attention when I came across the video for their single, "Into The Fire". That song opens this album, and it's a blistering bit of melodic perfection. There's a hint of crunch to the guitars, but it's all about the shimmering synths in the background of that classic hook. The song has one of those choruses that you find yourself humming along with by the end of the first time you listen to it. It's this kind of track that people are thinking about when they talk nostalgically about the 80s.

There's a certain touchstone Xtasy reminds me of. Between the pacing, the tones, and Silvia's vocals, I can't help but be reminded more than a bit of Alyson Avenue, particularly their album "Presence Of Mind". Considering that I feel that album is one of the most underrated gems of the early 2000s melodic rock scene, rekindling that spirit is undoubtedly a good thing.

The opening run of tracks, "Into The Fire", "One In A Million", and "Under The Gun" set the stage with a crunchy, arena-ready sound that would have ruled the 80s. The hooks on the songs are sweet melodies, big enough to have crowds singing along in one of those poorly-produced, black and white slow motion music videos from back in the day. I definitely feel like I've stepped into a time machine.

"Said And Done" is, if possible, even more stereotypical of the time, and is one I could easily hear being a companion song to "Heaven Is A Place On Earth". If you told me it was a Belinda Carlisle song, or someone like her, from back in the day, I would absolutely believe you. The one track I'm not sold on here is "Broken Heart", and not because it's a bad song. The way it's produced, with Silvia letting the backing vocals carry much of the chorus isn't something I would have done, because they don't have the power her voice does to do the heavy lifting. I know what they were going for, but it didn't quite work there.

Overall, "second Chance" doesn't need to be given one. If you like 80s rock at all, this will appeal to you. There's a lot of bands that try to do this kind of music, but aren't very good at it. Xtasy definitely are. This is one of the better 80s sounding records in a while. "Second Chance" is a throwback in the best sense of the word. Call this one a nice little surprise.

Album Review: Riverdogs - California

Let's get this out of the way early; I don't like Vivian Campbell. Never have, probably never will. There has never been a Def Leppard song I like, his attempt to resurrect DIO with The Last In Line was pretty bad, and if I'm being honest, I prefer the DIO albums with Craig Goldy anyway. So it doesn't get me the leeast bit excited that another band of Viv's is back from hibernation. I don't get the appeal of the guy, so I'm not going to be one of those people running to praise anything he does just because it's him. Even though the early DIO albums are good, I don't really put very much of the credit in Viv's hands. He's always been a second fiddle, which makes anything where he's the star a hard swallow.

This time, we get an album of hard rock that veers a bit more towards being bluesy, instead of glam or metal. Really though, you aren't going to hear that much of a difference. All the projects are built from the same basic structure, just with slightly adjusted guitar tones to make them 'unique'.

One of the things that's disappointing about this album is that, when it's done right, bluesy hard rock can have some of the biggest, most swaggering riffs of all. But that's not the case here. Viv and his cohorts stick with the more generic approaches to the music. There really isn't anything, guitar-wise, here that would pique anyone's interest. Viv is a big enough name that you would think you should be able to pick out great Viv moments, but I would never have known he was in this band if it hadn't been plastered on the promotional materials. Viv, at least for twenty-five years, has been a completely anonymous guitar player.

Even that would be forgivable if the rest of the band was helping to deliver songs that transcend their generic nature. Unfortunately, that's not what we get here. These songs don't have interesting riffs, nor rhythms, nor melodies either. Rob Lamothe has a nice voice, but few of his melodies have any energy behind them. "Golden Glow" is a fine enough song, but it's so laid-back you can almost hear him doing the vocals at three in the morning when all he wants to do is go home and go to bed.

Bluesy rock, when done well, can be phenomenal. Bluesy rock, when door poorly, is among the most boring of genres. This album falls closer to the latter category. It's not terrible music, but it never makes an argument for its own existence. It feels like a band going through the motions of making a record. As long as it's been since the last Riverdogs album, I would expect that if they reunited it was because of their passion for the music. I can't hear any of that on this album. "California" is a tepid collection of songs that has no new tricks up its sleeve, and doesn't pull off the old ones very well. It's another Vivian Campbell disappointment, which is exactly what I was expecting.

Album Review: Barb Wire Dolls - Rub My Mind

I don't spend much time diving through the waters of punk music. I never went through a punk phase, nor was I ever someone consumed with the anger necessary to fuel that kind of attitude. I had my forays with The Offspring, and there is the one non-punk Bad Religion album I love, but for the most part, anything that is described that way has remained far off my radar. That would include Barb Wire Dolls previous album, which I was aware of but never actually listened to. But this is a different year, the world is a different place, and it's dedicated to the memory of Lemmy, so how can I say no to giving it a shot? If there is ever the right time during my life for punk, this has to be it.

The album kicks off with "Back In The USSA", which is a more clever take on the current political reality of one of our major parties than I had come up with on my own. But for a song with that viewpoint, there isn't enough venom in the delivery. It almost has a hint of power-pop in the saturated guitars and layered "whoa-oh" vocals. I was expecting spitting bile, and that's not the approach the band took. While it doesn't really work on that track, it does on "If I Fall". It's a throwback to the garage-punk of the Ramones, with a raw energy and a bouncy chorus. That's the kind of punk I can get behind.

"Desert Song" is appropriately named, as the laid-back feeling evokes the imagery of the desert, and the sound given to it by Kyuss. When the build up finally reaches its crescendo, it's a genuinely stirring moment that caught me off-guard. There's evidence of some real nuance in the band's songwriting that the little bits of their music I had heard before didn't contain. If the growth is real, and not just a figment of my limited experience with their music, I'm mighty impressed.

There are a few rough moments, though. "We Are Champions" spends its already short time repeating the same two ideas over and over, to the point where it reaches boredom in less than three minutes. If it was going for the psychology of drone, maybe it makes sense, but all I know is it wasn't at all interesting to listen to. Much better is "Fade Away", whose riff borrows just a touch from "Mary Jane's Last Dance". Pulling influence from Tom Petty is never a bad thing.

I think what threw me about the album is the description that came along with it as being from "raucous rockers". That terminology doesn't fit this album at all. There are the influences of early punk in here, but the delivery is executed in a way that everything comes across rather calm and subdued. That's not a bad thing at all, but it leaves a bit of cognitive dissonance between expectation and reality.

Ultimately, I like "Rub My Mind" for what it is. It's a hybrid of stoner, punk, and seventies power-pop. I think it works better like this than if it was the fire-breathing punk record I was expecting. This record sounds more timeless than a teenager's rage, which I think will help down the line. "Rub My Mind" is an album that can grow with you, even if you grow out of the feelings that fuel it. That's a pretty good trick, so it's worth checking out.

The Best & Worst Of 2017... So Far

As we approach the halfway mark of the year, I can't help but take a step back to do some accounting on what we've already heard this year. Coming off what I considered to be a slightly weak 2016, I was looking forward to seeing if that was a blip in the radar, or if there was a trend of weakening quality. There has actually been a bit of both, which makes this an interesting, but frustrating, year to sit through. The quality at the top of the market has been strong, but there have also been more unacceptable albums than I can remember in recent years. In alphabetical order, so as not to spoil anything, let's take a look at the best and worst so far.

The Worst:

Adrenaline Mob - We The People

There's an old saying that you can never go broke underestimating people's intelligence. That's what Adrenaline Mob is banking on, releasing one of the most flaccid albums and shameless attempts to hold on to their dying youth in recent memory. The only upside is that it's better than their previous album.

Danzig - Black Laden Crown

Danzig used to be captivating, but like many artists, he's lost sight of himself over the years. He can't hear that his voice is completely shot, nor can he hear that his production abilities are far below par. This is a terrible sounding record of boring songs.

Iced Earth - Incorruptible

Bands rip each other off all the time. What is less common is a band ripping themselves off, but that's essentially what happened here. Iced Earth has become a tribute band to themselves, rehashing the Matt Barlow era so much that this album might as well not even exist.

Pain Of Salvation - In The Passing Light Of Day

Prog can have a reputation for having its head up its ass, and for good reason. Where Daniel Gildenlow got the idea that anyone would want to listen to an hour of his tuneless warbling while the band thumps out bland riffs is beyond me. There's barely any music to this at all.

Steel Panther - Lower The Bar

The joke was funny the first time, and the songs were good. With each passing album, both have gone downhill. Now, I want to know why I'm supposed to think the same tired dick jokes are supposed to be funny. They've run out of ways to talk about banging strippers, so now all that's left is their mediocre music. Lower the bar, indeed.


The Best:

Creeper - Eternity, In Your Arms

Meat Loaf meets AFI, Creeper has done something amazing by packing massive amounts of (melo)drama into three minute songs. These are pocket-size punk operas, and add up to an album that is ear candy with surprising depth.

Harem Scarem - United

Coming out of nowhere, these veterans have put out their best record ever. Song after song, they deliver massive, candy-coated hooks that play over and over in my head. The guitar playing is quirky enough to catch your attention, sounding like a more streamlined version of The Winery Dogs. A phenomenal shock.

Nightmare - Dead Sun

We can quibble, since it came out in Europe last year. Either way, Nightmare has delivered an album that is as heavy as power metal can get, while retaining a strong sense of melody. Maggie Luyten injects life into the band, with her vocals stealing the show. She is a superstar in the making, based on this performance.

Orden Ogan - Gunmen

In the world of power metal, Orden Ogan is currently one of the very best. They've never disappointed, and on this album they kick their game up a notch again. Their second-best album, "Gunmen" is nearly an hour of killer metal that is heavy, epic, and beautiful. Blind Guardian wishes they sounded like this these days.

Soen - Lykaia

This is what Opeth should have evolved into. Soen takes a massive leap forward here, delivering their best album by a mile. The riffing and vocal tone might be a bit too close to Opeth for some people, but I love hearing a style that has fallen by the wayside. Musically inventive and hauntingly melodic, Soen has come into their own.

The Warning - XXI Century Blood

Three young ladies have earned their acclaim for this one, an album that delivers mainstream rock better than many of their major-label competitors. Listening, you would have no idea their ages. When you find out, you wonder how in the heck these three can make an album this good, while Halestorm squandered every opportunity in the world on their last album. One heck of a debut.

Album Review: 42 Decibel - Overloaded

Rock and roll is, in essence, about pushing the limits. It started out by taking the music of the day and making it louder, heavier, and more obnoxious to the older generations. There's nothing new about trying to be more than everyone else. But there is something worrying when this new 42 Decibel album comes along with an explanation that the band recorded it by trying to push the equipment into the red line. Even without hearing a note, I was conjuring up images of distorted recordings and unlistenable songs. That's what happened to Baroness' "Purple", which was utterly ruined by a hatchet-job production. Putting that in my mind before listening was not a good idea.

Thankfully, they don't take things to that extreme. The sound is rough around the edges, but never to the point of distractions. The guitars have that slightly swampy tone that an under-powered amp being pushed to its limits gets, which is slightly fuzzier than the music needs. If they cleaned it up just a bit, there would be more bite to the riffs, which I think would make things hit just a bit harder. It's counter-intuitive, but sometimes turning down the gain makes the guitars sound heavier.

But production aside, the real issue to have with this album lies in the songwriting. Simply put, 42 Decibel aren't delivering at the level they need to. There are a few decent riffs, and the vintage sound is good, but there are no vocals or melodies here that are worth listening to. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but I'm failing to see the point of taking this kind of music, and more or less screeching atonally over the top of it. The vocals aren't good at all, and what is being sung is boring as well.

You would think a rock band would take one of two approaches; either have big melodies like an AOR band, or lock in with the riffs to drive simple hooks the way that Ozzy did with Black Sabbath. Instead, the eschew any rhyme or reason, and instead caterwaul completely separate from the rest of the band. It's such a waste of any potential, and it just strikes me as being lazy.

Because of that, I can't say that "Overloaded" approaches being a good album. The vocals are such a distraction that there's no chance the songs can overcome them. This is the kind of record that gets made because someone has the idea music that sounds like the 70s will sell, but they don't have any idea how to make that kind of music. "Overloaded" is anything but. It's underwhelming.