Music, A Movie, & Rewriting My Life

Editor's Note: Today's essay is only tangentially about music, and is entirely self-indulgent. My apologies for both, but writing this is far more interesting to me than finding a thousand words this week to describe an album I wasn't actually interested in listening to.

And thus:

Our relationship with music can become complicated to the point of knotting, the threads of thought winding around themselves so often finding the way back to the origin can be impossible. Of course, there is music that exists as nothing more than a good time we bop our head along to while never pondering if it has any meaning to life beyond reminding us how ridiculous we look when trying to dance. That might explain a lot of people, but it doesn't explain me. When music gets under my skin, I start trying to unravel the how and why, and in the best of circumstances I discover something I had not yet figured out how to put into words.

That is true of the music I listen to, but it was also true of the music I made. Or attempted to make, if we want to be more realistic than generous. Music was not just a hobby, it was a form of therapy that allowed me to speak the truth without worrying about anyone hearing it. The metaphors and melodies obscured the message enough that I was free to be honest without incurring any of the judgment that comes along with saying things I would otherwise find too uncomfortable to mention. It worked well, until it didn't. Eventually, I learned that my assessment of my own talent was grossly exaggerated, and the very act of trying to pry music from myself became self-inflicted depression I could set my watch to.

Even after setting down my pen as a musician, and as a writer of prose and stories, I could not shake the nagging voice in my head that tells me I need to be creating something. I tried my best to ignore it, and to find what my next chapter would be, but that was wishful thinking. Eventually, when a certain scene kept playing out in my head as I was trying to sleep, it became clear the only way to excise that demon was to write it down. As fate would have it, when I sat down to do just that, I realized it was the key to unlocking the ultimate cliche of the wannabe writer; the screenplay.

Film is not my preferred medium, but there has always been something about the movie "High Fidelity" that has stuck with me. I didn't understand it when I first saw the movie, but the years have shown me that despite the character Rob Gordon and I being entirely different, we also share pieces of our psychology. As such, the idea had occurred to me at one point to write my own version of that movie, if for nothing else than to go on my own journey similar to Rob's.

I never did that, but I did write script pages that were intended to be a sitcom set in a record store. It amused me, but it felt self-contained, and I had no idea where to take the story if I wanted to write more. That was true... until that recent episode.

With a plot point in hand, I was able to quickly sketch out the remainder of where the story should go. What started as the thought of writing my own version of the movie became something different, but in actuality exactly what I intended all along. I was not writing pages to catalog my own history of failure in a ranked form, but the writing did become about working through aspects of my story.

The writing went quickly, and within a week I had completed a screenplay that feels perhaps more satisfying than anything else I have written over the years. Writing a novel is a massive undertaking, but a purely fictional story has a level of detachment that lets me forget about the very act of writing it. The songs I've written were more honest, but since I cannot voice them in any way I want to ever hear again, they too exist in a recess of reality I often overlook. This script, though, is something I was able to pour my psyche into that I enjoy playing through in my mind.

We write fiction for many reasons, some of which are only apparent to our subconscious. Only after I was finished did I realize what I was doing the whole time was using the format to write an ending to a chapter of my life. When I stopped writing music, it was anticlimactic. Something that was so important to me ended with a whimper, and left me with an empty feeling. I was done writing music, but I didn't feel like I was done with music.

My script is a fictionalized version of myself, where giving up was not the end of the story. In the pages, I work through the fact that sometimes quitting is more an act of trying to convince ourselves than anything. Despite the pain it causes, there is still hope that it might work out in the end. More than that, I wrote a line that was far more honest than I intended it to be. Upon hearing his artistic fantasy brought to life, he realizes that fantasy has always meant more to him than anything we would typically call a fantasy. He didn't care about the more lurid or intimate things ever as much as he cared about his music. I know the disappointment of being without that dream fulfilled, but I didn't realize until penning the line that I not only regret that failure more than my personal embarrassments, but that it means I may have locked away the possibility of ever truly being happy.

More than that, the pages also fictionalize a happy ending for a connection I know I should have let fray along these years. It has been unhealthy for me, which I have admitted not just to myself, and the act of writing the words down was akin to telling myself the lie enough times to begin believing it might be more real than reality. Writing an ending, even if it exists only in my head, might let me move on from being stuck in that desperate cycle. That's wishful thinking, perhaps, but that's the point of writing fiction.

Much like how writing lyrics allowed me to say things without people understanding, writing truth in the form of jokes allowed me to be honest while claiming to be able to laugh at myself. It counts even if I'm laughing at the absurdity, right?

Music has been a constant companion, in both relationships, and it seems all too fitting that music was the key to letting me find my way back to being a writer. Music is supposed to connect us to something in ourselves, something in other people, that is otherwise difficult to put into words. It would be too dramatic to say music saved me, but it certainly has kept the water from rising past the drowning point. In this case, music led me to write something that showed me what it is that truly matters to me, what it is I should and shouldn't care about... who I should and shouldn't care about.

That's giving a lot of weight to jokes I wrote without any of this psychology behind them. I was trying to amuse myself, but there is an old saying about how great jokes have a grain of truth in them. That is what happened here, and I'm thankful for it.

I've written essays here about some of these issues, but that was me talking to/with myself. Writing a screenplay put my words into a character's mouth, and that minor distance lets me hear them differently, or perhaps hear them at all. Nothing that this year's new releases have to offer is going to be able to impact me the way this experience did, but it all gets thrown into the pot.

My colleague here was struck by the concept when I wrote that music is "my currency of thought". Even when music seems to be behind me, it paints the way forward, which only goes to prove the point. Reality may never live up to the fiction I have now written for myself, but having that story to live inside is a sense of comfort, if only because I have a better idea of what I want the remaining pages to look like.

That's not bad for a bunch of jokes I thought I was writing just to amuse myself.

Still Waking Up To The "Nightmare Of You"

The anniversary of the debut album from Nightmare Of You came and went without me saying anything, because by the time I realized I should have been saying something about the record, I had already shut down for the year. This record is one of those things that has lingered in the back of my head for the last twenty years, often seeming like a curiosity, but etching the lines deeper with each passing year. Over the last few months, it has been a more important album than it ever has, and to talk properly about it would entail saying things I felt like I was done talking about.

My fascination with the record may have started simply from the band's name, because if there is a recurring truth in my life, it is that there have been several people who could be 'you' who have made me question the difference between a dream and a nightmare. It has not necessarily veered into the philosophical/psychological territory wherein I say that the dream coming true is the worst thing that can possibly happen, and that 'yes' is the worst thing someone can say to me, but it is pulling water from that well.

Next came "Dear Scene, I Wish I Were Deaf", which was a millennial retelling of The Smith's "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out", a song that once carried great meaning to me. When the lyric talks about having "jerked the steering wheel to the median/joking that we'd end out lives/but we weren't joking all the time", it carries a cynically unromantic variation on Morrissey's story about dying with the person you love not being such a bad way to go. Finding something more cynical and morose than Morrissey was interesting, both for realizing the limitations of his contrarianism, but also for understanding the way those thoughts were able to exist in my own head.

"I Want To Be Buried In Your Backyard" is a second chapter to that story, carrying through the ramification of not getting that 'happy ending'. The desire is to remain close even past the end, hoping the pain of being gone can feed a flower to serve as a beautiful reminder of what could have been. I used a different metaphor when I wrote something taking up a similar fear of being forgotten by the people I was stupid enough to care about, but the sentiment was similar. There is something uniquely painful about throwing your entire weight into something, only to realize you could not make someone's heart budge in the slightest.

I've been thinking bout this record for that very reason. Lately, I've been as detached and cynical as the characters in these songs, but for very different reasons. When the opening song sings, "if it feels like your heart's dried up, I can relate to that/and if you need someone at your side, I am out there", I hear the words in my own voice. It makes me wonder if it's possible for love to be classified as a long-term heart attack, given the damage both are capable of causing. That's the appropriate level of cynicism when listening to Nightmare Of You.

I could pick a few more lines to illustrate the connection, like when it is sung, "I scoured your town completely aroused, making love to your memory", but I think I've made the point enough. This record is a collection of sad and macabre stories on how love and connections are various shades of horror movies, but for some of us it gets even more cynical than that. The psychological abuse done is not shameful for the effect it has had on us, but shameful instead because it is the strongest desire we have. We want to suffer through that, because at least that means we had the experiences of life at all. When the lyric says, "I do want to fall in love, but I just don't know how to", it is absolutely something I have said to myself.

That isn't to say this album speaks to me like a kindred spirit, because there is a sense of irony baked into them that is very much a performance, whereas my feelings are all too real. No, the reason the record has continued to resonate with me is because I find it cruelly amusing that it took cynical fiction for an album to capture my own feelings. If we use stories and parables as ways of sifting down to the truth, there aren't many sieves fine enough to let such faint light fall through.

It's a story of inertia, and how a record can move closer slow enough to not notice the collision course until it's too late.

Singles Roundup: VK Lynne, Weezer, & Dogma

Some weeks require a bit more thought than others. We're going to dig a little deeper this time.

VK Lynne - Desperation

"There's desperation in the air. It leaves a stain on all your clothes, and no detergent gets it out." Those words were sung by Meat Loaf back in 1993, but the concept of desperation has taken on a much more present place in our lives in recent years. It's quaint to think about the malaise of the grunge years, and the mystique of sadness, and wonder what those bands would have come up with if they had to live through the shit-show every waking day is now. I'm not sure Jim Steinman, or myself, are cynical enough to find the humor in any of it.

VK Lynne's new single deals with the primal force of desperation, venturing as deeply into the groove of metal as anything she has done since Stork, creating a sound I am dubbing 'crushingly ethereal'. With a guitar riff that grinds the low strings into a buzzsaw, her voice floats and cries above the din like an angel who realized no one would feel like they were actually in Heaven if they had to listen to harp music all day. Whether cooing the truth about desperation, or belting the chorus about fury, there's a quality in VK's voice that melts our armor.

What exactly the desperation entails is unimportant, because we are all desperate for one thing or another. For some, it is desperation to control the world around us. For others, it is desperation to feel accepted for who we are. For yet others, it is desperation for the fires in our minds to be put out, even if only for a day. The reason we say things 'reek of desperation' is because it brings out the worst in us. That might entail gaslighting someone until they believe you, drunk dialing someone you know should be in your past, or chasing someone down the street the way Chandler Bing did after confessing to being "hopeless, and awkward, and desperate."

Musically, "Desperation" is a performance about performative rage, and the ways in which we beat our heads against the wall (or a dead horse in this case) when confronted with a post-truth world. We can choose to scream into the abyss, or belt out a message of warning instead. The question at hand is whether we are desperate enough to ask for help. VK is imploring us to be better, and to remember art tells us truths that may not have even been intended by the artist. Who among us hasn't taken solace in a song, only to learn the meaning was a needed invention of our mind? In this case, VK is slapping us back to reality. The taste of blood in our mouths isn't so bitter, now is it?

Weezer - Shine Again

The way I think of Weezer these days is a bit like flipping through my high school yearbook; they are a part of my past, and I only take note of them to see how poorly they have aged. As "Pinkerton" hits its thirtieth anniversary this year, my attention is finely attuned to how far Weezer has fallen, which is a feat when you consider how flawed and shameful even their heights turned out to be.

This new song is everything I have hated about Weezer over the last twenty years. They crank the amps a bit more to try to sound like the old days, but it's without the irony of "Blue", or the true ugliness of "Pinkerton". They are play-acting as themselves, but it doesn't work on a song this sterile, and facile. Rivers is singing the first verse about his 'honey-do' list, including dropping his kids off at school. That's not exactly fertile ground for a rocking song, now is it?

But that's the thing about Weezer. Rivers has spent his entire career living in 'cringe', but not able to control when he's leaning into the joke, and when he's being absolutely sincere about his legendary uncoolness. This song falls on the wrong side, where he sounds legitimately proud of performing his chores, but within the confines of a song that lacks anything that sounds inspired. It's a bit like taking the detached attitude of "Green", but trying to be honest, only to realize you have nothing of importance to say.

What all of that means is that once again Weezer reminds me I still hate myself for all the time I've spent listening to them over the years. You don't always want to see your ex find happiness, but you probably don't want them to sound this miserable either.

Dogma - Fate Unblinds

Music is supposed to be an escape, or a form of therapy, so I don't like it when music leaves me with a skeevy, uncomfortable feeling. Last year, stories came out that the people behind the 'band' Dogma were predatory businessmen taking advantage of the women who were the faces of the group. Their contracts paid them as little as possible, and took the rights to their very likenesses. The entire lineup has turned over multiple times because of this, and I'm not sure if I was encouraged that the story got as much play as it did in the metal press, or if I was more disappointed the industry didn't blackball the whole project right away.

Dogma is now back with a new lineup, and perhaps new people behind the scenes. There isn't any information to go on, which leaves us in a rather unfortunate space. I don't know if I'm supposed to treat this as more exploitation of musicians trying to make their way, or if it's a genuine effort to make right what wrongs have occurred. It reminds me a bit of the situation when Manowar was too tight-lipped about the status of their own predator.

That all being said, perhaps the reason all of that psychology is so frustrating is because there's something to Dogma that could be great. They were positioned as being akin to early Ghost, and that carries through on this new song. The band's image is what gets pushed front-and-center, but this song displays the same knack for turning terrible occult method-acting into hard rock flush with meaty hooks. The song is a memorable sing-along, the guitar playing just flashy enough, and the vocals sound great. This should be an easy recommendation, and a promising teaser, and yet... I'm more uncomfortable about Dogma themselves than the song talking about giving birth to a demon.

Wait... does that make this a meta-song about the birth of Dogma? I really need to stop thinking so much.

Album Review: Xtasy - Phoenix

When last we heard from Xtasy, they were epitomizing a phenomenon that occurs in music. No matter our preferred genre, there are bands that stand above all the rest, even when we can't explain exactly why. There are dozens of bands that will all use the same building blocks, but one will hit us in a way the others do not. What makes this even more interesting is when collaboration gets involved, and some of the same players and writers get different reactions with different bands.

Xtasy worked in collaboration with Erik Martensson of Eclipse on that record, and again on this record. That is notable, because Eclipse has been gaining stature in the melodic rock world, and yet I have gone back to "Eye Of The Storm" again and again, while Eclipse has done exactly what their name implies. There's something about Xtasy's sound that is brighter, sharper, perhaps more exotic, and it leads to a band that stands out in a crowded field.

Much of that focuses on Silvia's voice, which is the unique piece of this puzzle. Her tone is unlike most everyone who sings this kind of music, a piercing siren with the ability to put just enough rumble into her voice to keep the band's sound from getting too light and airy. She keeps this melodic rock from becoming soft rock.

"Can't Get Enough" embodies Xtasy at their best, with gang vocals that anchor a chorus you would be humming to yourself long after the record is over, and a guitar solo that offers just enough shred to tell us there's more they have to offer than what we're being shown. Moments like those make clear they are playing for the sake of the song, because the most impressive thing is to write and play songs that stick with us. Xtasy certainly did that on "Eye Of The Storm", and they're doing it again here.

Xtasy makes the whole package sound easier than it is. Writing memorable songs is hard, and so is selling them to the audience. I think that's actually what separates them from Eclipse, as Erik's vocal performances can't match the charm Silvia has. Some of her deliveries come with something close to an audible wink, which invites us in to be part of the music. There's no effort to convince us how hard they're trying, which reads with an authenticity I certainly appreciate.

In the six years since "Eye Of The Storm" came out, and despite the incalculable number of bands and songs I have heard since then, I never forgot Xtasy. Every time a melodic rock album came out that impressed me, what it did was remind me of the benchmarks of the genre, which include Xtasy for me. "Phoenix" has a lot to live up to, and it does. It doesn't have the ability to catch me by surprise the same way as when I first heard Xtasy, but the harder task is to impress us once we know what to expect. "Phoenix" picks up right where the band left off, and that they can keep the momentum flowing without missing a beat is impressive indeed.

"Phoenix" sees the band rising up once again, this time hitting a little harder, rather than subduing us into submission. Both approaches work, and which one you prefer will be entirely up to you. I, for one, am just glad to have Xtasy back.

Jim Steinman Is Forever "Bad For Good"

The year was 1981, and it had been nearly four years since "Bat Out Of Hell" became the most unlikely best-selling album of all time, four years of wondering how Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman could possibly top their over-the-top spectacle of a record. In that time, Steinman was developing his grand idea for their next statement, while Meat Loaf was developing vocal problems. The relentless touring schedule, combined with Meat's dedication to giving all of himself to the performances, left his voice broken and battered.

Meat's voice was clearly in no state to be recording another timeless classic (which we would hear later in the year on "Dead Ringer" - his voice would not recover for another decade), but there were songs that needed to be sung. Steinman was in his all too brief productive period, and letting the songs sit any longer could have brought a premature end to his creativity.

Jim Steinman was not a frontman. He did not have the theatricality, despite writing theater pieces, nor did he have the voice/image to fill Meat Loaf's shoes. Steinman was quirkier, weirder, someone who would have fit in decades later in the alternative/artistic scene. For 1981, and for a big-budget follow up to a massive hit, he was the wrong actor cast in the wrong part. But the show must go on, and half the songs he had been writing became his one and only solo album, "Bad For Good".

To listen to Steinman's music not filtered through the voice of another artist is to get the purest sense of his personality. There is no one here to hold him back from making exactly the record he wanted to, which is both its greatest asset and it's worst downfall. Another singer would not have thrown their voice into muppet-esque trembles the way Steinman did, and perhaps some of the language would have sounded suave coming from someone with charisma. It's a variation on the Cyrano story, where the person responsible for the sentiment isn't always the best one to deliver the message.

The ensuing decades would teach us this lesson, as much of the record would get re-recorded by Meat Loaf in bits and pieces. Those versions would be more polished, more 'professional', and would be smoother deliveries that did a better job of carrying the romantic melancholy of Steinman's stories. When Meat Loaf belted the chorus of "Surf's Up", it was a more powerful statement than Steinman could manage (We'll get to how that sentence is wrong in a moment). Likewise, his take on "Rock And Roll Dreams Come Through" was a more desperate sounding plea to the power of the rock gods that eclipsed the original for obvious reason. A great song is always a great song, but legend is when a great voice is paired with it.

Jim Steinman knew he was not the voice for his songs. That was why he worked with Meat Loaf in the first place, but it's why even on his own solo album Steinman is not the voice we are always hearing. Session vocalist Rory Dodd takes the lead on several tracks, and makes clear the singularity of Steinman's writing. Dodd is a capable singer, but his voice is too clean, and lacks the personality and power for the scope of Steinman's vision. Steinman's music is not 'nice', but Dodd's voice is, which is a clash of styles that cannot be ignored.

The spoken-word piece "Love And Death And An American Guitar" makes its first appearance here, and Steinman's dramatic reading makes that point all too clear. He throws himself into the performance, shifting from whisper to scream, his voice struggling to keep up with as much emotion as he wants the piece to have. It's a man on the edge, losing control, which is exactly in line with the theme. That is what Steinman brings to the songs he sings lead on. His songs have always been the voice of desperation screaming at the gods for love (or sex, usually sex) to come his way, and that is what he sounds like more than anyone else who ever sang his songs. The singers who had fame, and charisma, and confidence, could never embody the character of Steinman the way he could for himself. It's a character I am well-acquainted with, and I hear in his voice what my inner monologue used to scream into the wind as well.

Steinman's baritone was able to project an undercurrent of madness and depression that not even Meat Loaf could manage, and when he sings of being lonely and desperate in "Stark Raving Love", I believe every word he says. Compare Steinman's take on the lines "there are no lies on your body/so take off your dress/oh, I just want to get at the truth" to Meat Loaf's. Steinman is nearly animal, not singing as much as begging and pleading. It's stark, and all too familiar.

The most remarkable moment of the record comes right at the start. The opening title track is the rare instance where Meat Loaf could not bring more to a song than Steinman himself. Meat attempted the song on "Bat Out Of Hell III", but his voice was beginning to thin out by then, and he appeared not to understand the song at all. He sang the song, but he did not live it the way Steinman did. Voiced by Steinman, the song is nearly nine minutes of a man turning his feelings into the most epic drama he can conjure. It isn't real, but Steinman convinces himself the connection is as grand and powerful as nature itself, even if it lasts only one night.

The song is a chronicle of a man's self-loathing, wanting to be someone else, someone the girl will want to be with. his pleas that they will both wind up "bad for good" is almost a confession that anything they would do together could be considered a sin, but he knows a sin is only worth the punishment if it lasts longer than the flash of a bad decision. And yet, one night is all he is asking for, because when you're that desperate, sins of the flesh will kill you just as much as the mortal ones. You hear none of that in Meat Loaf's perfunctory version of the song, because Meat could never understand what it meant to 'be' Jim Steinman. I'm being presumptuous here, but I think I do. It's the difference between acting and living, and that song is the best example of it I may have ever heard.

"Bad For Good" is an album steeped in melodrama, building a stairway to heaven just so Steinman could knock on the door and ask what the deal is with the meaning of life. It is as flawed as Steinman was, as self-indulgent, and yet it is the best illustration of how he was more responsible for Meat Loaf than Meat himself ever was.

If this record was made in 1978 with Meat's undamaged voice, the rest of music history might be entirely different. Perhaps this album is another massive hit, perhaps Steinman keeps writing at this pace for many more years, perhaps he burns out completely even earlier. There's no way to know, but if everything happens for a reason, it seems clear to me the reason "Bad For Good" exists is to show us who the man behind the music was. It would have been a shame to only know his music diluted through the voices of the singers he worked with.

"Bad For Good" is perfectly imperfect, and if nothing else, I would be worse off if I didn't have these songs to remind me of these things.

Singles Roundup: Geoff Tate, Foo Fighters, Rexoria, & American Vanity

No pretext, let's just jump in this week.

Geoff Tate - Power

One of the things we have the 'pleasure' of looking forward to is a third installment of the Operation: Mindcrime storyline. Now, given that the second one was already poorly received, and Geoff Tate has been shredding his own reputation with everything he's released in the last twenty years, I'm not sure what, other than the prospect of the name bilking money from a few sucker fans, gave anyone the idea we wanted another episode.

Still, the first track is now out, and anyone hoping for a return to glory is going to be feeling jilted like someone standing at the alter when their betrothed has fled the scene. These three minutes encapsulate everything wrong with Tate's music for many, many years. The chorus is trying to be an anthem without being memorable. The gang chanted "Power!" sounds pretty weak, his "the world is whatever the fuck I want it to be" is lazy writing, and his vocal gives me pause. When Tate works with Avantasia, he sounds far better than when he works on his own. Interesting, no?

It's definitely more interesting than this song, which just exists. For all the flack "Frequency Unknown" took at the time, it at least gave us one really good song in "Cold". I don't think he has that in him anymore.

Foo Fighters - Caught In The Echo

Dave Grohl mentioned that the upcoming album was the result of finding a thread in the noisy instrumentals he had been recording. Noisy... that is the right word. Dave is getting lost in his affection for fuzz again, with the hazy guitar tone pushing everything about his writing into less accessible territory. He's back to writing more angular riffs, screaming more, and eschewing the charm that made Foo Fighters into as big a rock band as exists. This song is definitely better than "Your Favorite Toy", but they both point to the same problem, which is that Dave has spent too long focusing each album on a theme/gimmick, rather than making one when he has a batch of songs that need to be recorded/released. 

For a long time, Foo Fighters sound like they write songs because they have an idea for how to record, rather than recording because they have an idea for what to write. It's a backwards way of looking at music, and it's led to a long time of feeling disappointing to these ears.

Rexoria - Break The Wave

Power metal is a stale genre, but certain bands are able to cut through that. Rexoria did with their last album, which made my year-end list, and featured "Faded Rose", which is one of my favorite metal songs in years. A new album is coming, and the first single has arrived. What it tells us is that Rexoria isn't messing with what works. Everything about this song sounds like a continuation of what they were doing on "Imperial Dawn". The tempo has just enough kick, the guitars just enough crunch, and the chorus hit hard with  's powerful vocals. They aren't reinventing anything, but they don't need to. When you do it this well, it's clear why the old standards are the old standards.

American Vanity - Poison In Your Cup

What has been noticeably missing so far this year is anything of note coming from the emo scene. Everything I've been hearing has either leaned heavily into screaming, or has taken the post-ironic tact of writing the most boring songs possible, because engaging music isn't sad enough, or something of the sort. What makes this song so great is that American Vanity is tapping into the best bits of emo, alternative, and pop/punk to fuse jaded irony and justified anger into two-and-a-half minutes of fist-pumping elation. They understand how to craft a song that invites us in to join the pity party, rather than ask why we don't want to look at the art they painted with their own blood. A little bit of fun makes it much easier to hide our sinister desires, and maybe the target of the song won't see it coming when it runs them over. Good stuff.

Metallica, Slayer, & Forty Years Of Disappointment

There's an uncomfortable truth that comes along with being a fan of any kind of metal; to the majority of 'popular opinion', the music we listen to is never going to be as good as it used to be. There's a joke in The Simpsons where Homer mentions "Everyone knows rock attained perfection in 1974. It's a scientific fact." For metal fans, the same thing is often said about 1986. For forty years, we have been watching what seems like a ball rolling downhill toward mediocrity, trapped in a nostalgia cycle we created and cannot break free from.

1986 was a year that gave us classic albums in the form of "Peace Sells... but Who's Buying", "Somewhere In Time", "Slippery When Wet", "Epicus Doomicus Metallicus", "5105", and "Rage For Order".

It was also the year that gave us "Master Of Puppets" and "Reign In Blood". Enough said.

But not really. Metallica and Slayer set the bar for all metal that would come thereafter, but it isn't clear whether forty years of slow decline is more revealing of how great those high water marks were, or of how willing we are to settle for mediocrity. Both bands spent decades basking in the afterglow of being the ones to set the standard, all the while they stopped jumping to break the barrier again. They became bands content to, like us with our aging bodies, brag about the time they used to be able to touch the rim, even as our knees hurt enough that we never leave the ground anymore.

Metallica and Slayer were the keystones of 'The Big Four', and remained the most important bands of the entire thrash movement straight through the brief attempt to bring all of them together to celebrate the past. Despite it being decades later, it went without much contemplation that few people who were there cared in the slightest what those bands were doing in that moment. Everyone wanted to hear the old classics as if it was the old days, which is both a pat on the back and a knife in it.

"Master Of Puppets" is often cited as the greatest metal album ever made, but it comes with questions regarding how many people saying that have ever listened deeply to the music, because Metallica was not a thrash band by any current definition of the term. "Master Of Puppets" plays with tone and tempo in a way that is more nuanced than an audience that equated cutting of your hair to cutting off your balls could handle. Metallica had speed, but they also had doom, oppression, and a yearning to be something more than mere blinding fingers and blinding rage. The genius of the album is not in its power, but in its ambition.

"Reign In Blood" is the album the common discourse thinks the entire thrash movement was. Thirty minutes of pure speed and chromatic noise, the only nuance Slayer was capable of came in the form of the painting adorning the cover, which was more artistic than metal tended to get. Slayer stripped away all the pretense of the decade, turning their music into a razor-sharp assault, and remaining one of the few records from that time that doesn't sound the slightest bit dated. Slayer made a record that stifled their own career, because it would always sound as fresh as what they would do after, with the shadow never fading.

The same is true of "Master Of Puppets", although in that case there is a degree to which the momentum of already being considered classic has ensured its status will never be questioned. Much like how incumbents in politics have a re-election rate of 90% even when they are terrible, our classic albums remain classic albums on name recognition alone. There is nothing that can be said about "Master Of Puppets" that will change its place in metal history.

That's what makes albums like these interesting to listen to. If we can do our best to put on fresh ears, are they still records we would hold up as classic? In many cases, I find myself saying 'no' more often than I'm sure most people will. When metal was in its nascent stages, we may have had lower standards, because we hadn't yet seen what metal was capable of. These records were pushing the genre to its limits, but we would soon learn those boundaries had plenty of elasticity left in them. What was extreme in the moment is so tame these days Metallica and Slayer are family-friendly entertainment. Think about that... Slayer is a corporate brand. Ugh.

The point isn't to harangue the past, but to ask ourselves why we insist on living in it. I say this without judgment, as I do it as much as anyone. During the lulls in new releases, I am listening to the same batch of albums I have for the last twenty, sometimes thirty, years. When I do that, I like to think I am doing so with the understanding that I am not judging those records to be musically superior to everything that has come after, but with the perspective that they have years of extra emotional weight to hit me with.

As these records turn forty years old, I am looking at them with the same existential questions I faced when I hit that milestone. For as much as "Reign In Blood" has been the album I point to as the biggest outlier among everything  would say I truly love, I can just as easily admit it can feel like eight similar scraps throw between the two complete songs Slayer actually cared about. I can say we would dismiss a record that short, that one-note, if it came out today. That's the thing about classics; they are not untouchable, they are not beyond questions and criticism.

It's by asking ourselves if the work holds up that we are able to properly assess if we are remembering our own stories properly, but also if the road ahead is as bleak and dire as it might appear. Another "Master Of Puppets" is not going to be just around the corner, but that's ok if we know it was an album great for its time, but not definitive of all time. We see this when we look as historical figures who did amazing things that moved society forward, but who also were retrograde in ways we consider moral failings today. I'm not saying these records are failures by any means, merely that our perception of what greatness is has evolved as much as anything else.

So after forty years, perhaps the reason Metallica and Slayer lived in the shadow of their greatest moments is our fault, is because we turned the light up so bright they couldn't stand to look up anymore, we couldn't stand to look at ourselves and grapple with the reality of aging.

It's just a thought.

Album Review: Evermore - Mournbraid

We've had the discussion more than once regarding which particular niche in the metal world is the most retrograde, the most stuck in the cliches of the past. Often, the answer comes down on power metal, which not only has many bands fully content on never moving past the sound of the early days, but fully content to recycle some of the same melodic ideas. That makes power metal an easy genre to be a fan of, if you don't get tired of the same-ol'-same-ol', but it makes for a trying time if you don't need to hear the same thing for the hundredth time.

Every so often, though, power metal delivers something that hits the nostalgic spark in just the right way. It's in those moments we're reminded of why we loved the music when we did, and it also brings to mind questions about how and why we've changed over the years. That might be a bit weighty for this particular discussion, so let me cut to the chase.

Evermore have delivered to us an album that echoes from the past like one of the early Edguy albums. The grit of the guitars and some of the melodic choices are hugely reminiscent of "Vain Glory Opera" and "Theater Of Salvation", which are the exact albums that sent me down this path twenty-plus years ago. To hear that sort of music again doesn't feel stale to me the way the myriad Helloween clones do, perhaps because Edguy is a less common influence to hear, or perhaps merely because Edguy was always my favorite of that wave of power metal bands. You might hear early Hammerfall in all of this, and that would be just as accurate, but my perspective is my perspective.

The biggest asset the album has is a dedication to the mid-tempo. By keeping things a touch slower, the guitars have more power and crunch, and the choruses have more time and room to swell. This is power metal with a bit more 'oomph' than the lighter and happier variety. Especially with the old-school guitar tone, avoiding the fastest picking prevents the fuzz from washing over the riffs and turning them into a mash of noise. When they do settle into a chunky and muted groove, the thump hits just the way it should.

The one spot where this doesn't work for me comes in "Armored Will", which uses the double-meaning to claim their strength comes from being made of "heavy metal". I know it's a cliche of the genre, but the insistence on metal people constantly telling everyone how metal they are is the sort of thing that strikes of projection. Psychologically, I can see how it is as much to convince themselves as it is to convince anyone else, but I don't think it conveys the power and strength they think it does. Quoting Edguy's "Babylon" in the early verse of "Ravens At The Gates" tells me more about what metal means to them, to be honest.

Overall, "Mournbraid" is an album that does nostalgia the right way. These songs draw from the past without sounding stuck in it, and they pull from source material that hasn't been the subject of a hundred copies already. Edguy moved past this type of power metal very quickly, so it's interesting to hear an echo of it so many years down the line. In one sense, it's a nice reminder of what felt like a simpler time. In another sense, it's a peek into a parallel universe where Edguy didn't first evolve into a different kind of band, and then evolve into Avantasia.

Maybe I wouldn't have stuck it out for the ride as long if they hadn't, but I am enjoying this reminder of where we started. That's good enough for me.

"Moontower" & Memory

We like to think of our memories as history filmed in our minds, kept in reels we can play back whenever we so desire. that's far from the truth, as not only is our memory too fragmented for such things, but what we remember is not the truth as it existed. Our memories are a version of the truth we have been telling ourselves for years, massaging to better fit the narrative that gives us peace. The gist will be the same, but we wind up constructing many of the details out of fiction, rarely realizing what we have done.

I was recently re-writing the stories of memories I had committed to paper years ago, and doing so was a lesson in the ways memory fails us. As I read those stories and shifted the language to better represent where I am right now, I tried to revisit those moments. What I found was the visions I had were exact matches for the words I had written previously, so much that I knew what I was remembering was the memory I had written down, not the moment as it actually was. Trying to find the truth under the narrative was far more difficult, because it is shreds and shards buried under the sands of time.

What's comforting about music is that we have the songs and albums always with us, so the memories stay fresh as often as we listen to them. We don't have to imagine what a favorite old record sounds like, we can pull it off the shelf and relive the experience another time. We have to daydream what it was like the moment that music made its connection to us, but the rest of the story is there, exactly as it was.

But what if it wasn't?

As the last part of reissuing his catalog, Dan Swano has finally made "Moontower" available again, complete with a remastering that brings the album into the present day. As these things go, it's a gentle remastering that doesn't fundamentally alter the experience of listening to the record, but any change to the memories we have is disconcerting. If I listen to this album and hear it slightly differently, it reminds me that I can't trust anything I think I remember, because I can't ignore the ways in which those memories fade and change like old ink left in the sun.

The other aspect to this is that "Moontower" did not need to be updated. The record not only sounded brilliant in its original form, but was a record meant to sound older than it was from the moment it came out. To pull time forward is to do it a disservice, because our interpretation of what "death metal in 1972" would sound like is nearly three decades further removed from the experiences that created it. We've all been subjected to remasterings and remixes of classic records from the likes of Led Zeppelin and The Beatles so many times that it's difficult to know when we are remembering the original versions, as opposed to all the glossier and louder interpretations that tried to scream so we could hear them through the fog of our memories.

This new version of "Moontower" is still brilliant, but it almost feels to me as if it is one of those old photos that has been 'upscaled' into faux-HD. This version has a clarity that wasn't present in the original, which perhaps adds too much detail for the ear and mind to process. That isn't to say it sounds any worse than the original, because it doesn't, but there are subtle shifts in the frequencies that play with my perception. This is nothing like the 'uncanny valley' effect the updating of Green Day's "Warning" produced last autumn, but it is enough to raise questions about how well I know a record I thought I have loved for many years. Listening to the new version, I don't quite trust my hearing, because my expectations miss the mark just enough to hit the edges. Likewise, I was struggling to trust my memory, because as I attempted to fill in the gaps in the details, I realized the best I could do was give my present-day interpretation of what I was missing.

That's what Dan Swano is doing with this remastering of "Moontower". He is giving us a new interpretation that is the same music, but as he remembers wanting it to be. That isn't exactly the same as what he actually intended in the moment, and neither he or I can know precisely the disparity.

What I do know is that having "Moontower" back in print is a gift for all of us, regardless of which form it takes.

Singles Roundup: Blank Era, Jasmine Cain, Xtasy, & Cuddle Death

We just celebrated International Women's Day, so in honor of that, let's use it as the focus of this week's look at new songs.

Blank Era - Apology!

Described as a song for when you're "out of fucks to give", Blank Era is again feeding upon the demons that inhabit our minds. This time, Jaycee is belting her way through a song that gives the finger to the sort of person who balks when they aren't allowed to dictate the terms of any kind of relationship. Whether friends or lovers, we have all encountered one of those people, the ones who only reach out to you when they need you or have no other option, and who brush off anything that doesn't fit the way they want to interact. Jaycee's voice is gritty as she tells this person off, apologizing for putting herself above the harmful treatment, telling them "sorry, not sorry" if they don't like it.

Screaming those words must be cathartic. I wouldn't know, as the people I feel that anger for either have dropped out of my life entirely so I can't confront them, or still have enough power over me I can't bring myself to tell them what I actually feel. That makes a song like this one powerful and relatable, and the reason bands like Blank Era are important. Jaycee is giving voice to something we don't hear enough of in the mainstream, and what a voice it is. This a band on the rise, for sure.

Jasmine Cain - Hurt

This year marks the tenth anniversary of Jasmine Cain's album "White Noise", which was one of those records I thought was going to be a sign of things to come. I still love it, and play it with some regularity, but I haven't felt the same connection to the music Jasmine has made since. Her newest song strips back the modern edge, going back to the sound of that album, or even "Highway Prophet" before. Shimmering guitars and twinkling piano notes are a subtle backdrop for her smokey voice, which emotes and resonates the story about the effects of being hurt on the people we turn out to be. I like Jasmine best when she is being honest and authentic, and pulls back on the volume to allow the arrangements to highlight her voice. This is very much what I heard when I first discovered her, and it's a very welcome return to the familiar.

Xtasy - If I Fall

The second single from the band's upcoming album is another example of their brand of uplifting melodic rock. They take the sound established by Erik Martensson in Eclipse, but give it a warmer tone that is far more inviting. Rather than sounding like they are trying desperately to be heavy and edgy, Xtasy feel more comfortable being themselves. What could have been a cheesy gang chorus instead becomes more of a rallying cry, where the band joining in comes across as genuine camaraderie. The key to this remains Silvia's voice, which is able to project melody while retaining a sharp tone that cuts through the mix. There's just enough grit when she pushes to make her performance sound passionate, without going so far we lose the authenticity. Xtasy's last album was great, and it's good to hear the wait seems to have been worth it.

Cuddle Death - Sorry/Smush

This is one of those groups whose name might make you do a double take, but look past your initial impression. It's hard to take a band seriously with the name Cuddle Death, but they play with a punk fury, and feature the screaming voice of Renee Phoenix, who you might know from Fit For Rivals. This group pounds ahead with volume and energy, wanting to dig into our heads through sheer power. They manage to do that, with thick guitars and rough vocals still able to hit the hooks in a way that reminds me of the old days of pop-punk, if those were pressed on vinyl that has collected dust to get between the record and the needle. This is rough and gritty, and the sort of music that makes you reconsider the value of anger. When it sounds like this, it's a far healthier emotion.