Album Review: Tardigrade Inferno - Hush

Hmm.  Here we are, faced with Tardigrade Inferno’s new record Hush, their third full-length since their debut effort in 2019.  And while we are normally loathe to compare albums by different artists directly, it’s hard not to look back a week in time at Rob Zombie’s The Great Satan and remark: “this is what that should have been.”

Such a casual comparison is patently lazy, but it paints the necessary framework of how Hush should be viewed.  Tardigrade Inferno describe themselves as ‘dark cabaret metal,’ and while metal needs another subgenre like it needs a second coming of nu-metal, the epithet is essentially correct.  

By now the reader has put the pieces together - Tardigrade Inferno, originally hailing from St. Petersburg, Russia, have conjured the kind of dark carnival that Rob Zombie blazed the path for with such aplomb some twenty-five-plus years ago (and yes, I am purposefully ignoring the Insane Clown Posse, thankyouverymuch.)

Where TI (which we’ll abbreviate from here forward,) advances the cause is in their dedication to crafting an image within the music.  It’s more rare than ever to listen to a new record, particularly in the digital age without the benefit of liner notes, and feel swept into the proceedings in a tangible way; but close your eyes and it’s easy from the first strains of “The Final Show,” the album’s introductory cut, to feel the harrowing sunset over the abandoned amusement park, that ethereal transition as bright day gives way to the machinations of haunted night, and the hidden, clanking mechanics of the monsters of the midway (not to be confused with the Chicago Bears,) come rusting to life.

An overly dramatic description? Sure.  But also the point.  That’s the kind of twisted, tormented reality that TI presents with skill and conviction, the kind of the layered scenery it deliriously and thoroughly chews on with a broken-glass smile, daring you take the journey alongside.

The linchpin of the entire proceeding is vocalist Darya Rorria, who can vacillate skillfully between teasing laugh and brooding terror as easily as she breathes.  She tempts like a siren, appealing to your inner evils with a saccharine sweetness that entices and disarms, even as she openly sings about cannibalism on tracks like “Goor.”  

There’s an inherent sultriness to both Rorria’s performance and the rhythmic, heavy undulations of the music as a whole that separates TI’s brand of dark metal from their contemporaries.  It’s a rare intersection of roads when a band can be both as menacingly descriptive as Slayer, as literally brooding as Type O Negative and as playfully dangerous as 6:33, but that’s where Hush lands. (For Deep Purple fans out there, you’re going to be disappointed - there is no cover of DP’s 1968 classic of the same name.  Though TI should absolutely give it a shot.)

Which is not to say that TI sounds quite like any of those three in whole - rather, their music takes on, at the risk of being redundant, the affect of a dark cabaret, something like an adult version of the mysterious carnival from Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes. Whether the long-nailed threat of a faux whimsical tune like “Deadly Fairytales,” or the out-and-out, fiery adrenaline of “Hide’n’Seek” or the title track, Hush comes at the listener with a lot of different attractions to lure every taste.

For all the subtle variations in style, there is a thematic consistency to Hush that ties the entire effort together - it attempts to give a window to the demons within, a catharsis to all the greedy, less-than-socially-acceptable thoughts we’ve ever had.  And with Rorria at the helm, blood and darkness and evil never sounded so sexy.  Or, with apologies to classic romps like “Dragula,” so fun.

A small splash of cold water - there are gaps in the proceedings.  Cuts like “Dead Fish Smile” and “I.C.D.” get lost in their own message and founder about too much, subtracting from the album’s overall flow.  There’s nobility in the attempt of these songs, but the band leans hard into their heavier side for them both, and it subtracts from their demonstrable versatility.  And “Goor,” well…as fun as it is, it is about cannibalism or something like it, so that’ll be a tougher pill for listeners who prefer something slightly more metaphoric.

That said - it’s been a long time since there was a metal album that drew the listener into its world like this - that so successfully captured the imagination and took the beholder out of their own reality and into the one the band creates.  If music is an escapist activity designed to make us either channel our troubles or forget them, then Tardigrade Inferno’s Hush is a pure example of that escapism.

Album Review: Morrissey - Make-up Is A Lie

Let's start this discussion with a simple statement; I hate Morrissey. I still listen to his music, of course, but there are three ways in which I hate him. I hate Morrissey the person, because he is a self-righteous curmudgeon who isn't smart enough to keep his problematic opinions to himself. I hate Morrissey the musician, because over the last twenty years he has been such a poor lyricist that it hurts my artistic sensibilities to know he is still praised by as many people as he is. I hate Morrissey the idea, because I know his music is tied up in knots of self-loathing, and it holds too much appeal for me to ignore. Yes, I hate Morrissey, mostly because my inability to throw him in the 'dead to me' pile is an example of the ways I often hate myself.

Morrissey's music came into my life at a moment of personal weakness, introduced to me by someone I cannot guarantee was not a hallucination of my subconscious. Sometimes, I wish Morrissey had been the more questionable part of reality, as much of the last twenty years have been spent in an argument with myself on what I ever saw in him. The records that followed "You Are The Quarry" grew lazier and more trite, to the point where even I didn't hate myself enough to keep listening to his latest drivel.

Instead, I dug backwards. I pulled out a string of his singles from early in his solo career, and I sifted through The Smiths' catalog for the gems it contained. Listening to that music was my way of atoning for what Morrissey had become, but it kept his name in the back of my mind enough that as the rumors of a new album finally seeing the light of day grew louder, my curiosity forgot how much I had grown to hate the man.

The single "Notre Dame" encompasses all of this. In three minutes, Morrissey delivers a succinct argument against his own continuation as an artist. The song glides along on a pedestrian electronic 'groove' that is alien to anything the last forty years have primed us to expect, while Morrissey's voice strains and cracks to sing another of his tuneless 'melodies'. His writing is the biggest insult, as he pares the song to the bare minimum of words, repeats them without emphasis, and focuses the 'story' of the song on a racist conspiracy theory that makes it impossible to forget his turn into the more disgusting side of political commentary. He tried to massage the lyric from the live version he had been singing for years, but changing one word does not erase the history and genesis of the song, which is Morrissey at his ugliest.

The key lesson "Notre Dame" reaffirmed is Morrissey's laziness. He has had a few of his classic quips and bon mots over the last twenty years, but now he rarely tries to write anything that feels like a fully fleshed out song. He introduced this chapter with the title track, a song so lyrically bereft I struggle to see if he is trying to use it as a metaphor, or if it is literally a song about not wanting women to wear as much makeup as he does. Either way, his verses are so threadbare the title might as well be the entirety of the song. He has always done this, going back to when "How Soon Is Now" and "Shoplifters Of The World" repeated entire verses, but he had more panache back then, so we were forgiving of his occasional laziness. Now that it dominates his personality, forgiveness is a grace he does not ask us for, nor deserve.

Morrissey treats us to a cover of "Amazona", because after shelving multiple albums during his time fighting the record company system, he must have felt he didn't have a full record's worth of good enough songs, to which I would agree. When "Headache" reaches into the bag of cliches for several recitations of "la la", and then "Boulevard" finds Morrissey repeating the same word again and again while searching for a way to fool us into thinking it's a melody, what we are left with is akin to a piece of pop art. Like the works of Warhol, Morrissey is essentially giving us multiple tints of the same piece, none of which is an original idea, but merely a recycling of someone else's work. In this case, that work is Morrissey's own history, but plagiarizing yourself is only clever when you do it well.

The album is a fitting example of Morrissey's shallowness. He used to write songs making reference to Keats and Yeats, but he never wrestled with the meaning of the works he was name-dropping. The act of telling people he read those writers was enough to make him feel smart, whether true or not, so it didn't matter if he understood the message. And thus we reach the point; Morrissey has rarely had a message of his own that's worth the amount of ink that has been spilled dissecting his words.

Even now, the main theme of this album is Morrissey venting his anger at the music industry for not catering to his every whim, as if he played no part in sullying his own name. "Kerching Kerching" finds Morrissey making the sound effects of a cash register, but any criticism rings hollow, because the reason this album didn't come out years ago was Morrissey's refusal to accept a record deal that put the onus of making money on him making a good enough impression to convince people to buy a copy. No, Morrissey would rather take critics to task for listening to the very words he has spoken.

Morrissey is a shadow of the man he used to be, but this record does tell one truth in its title. Make-up may indeed be a lie, and Morrissey is applying none of it to himself. We hear the age in his voice, we hear the narcissism in his lyrics, we feel the dour tempo grow more and more oppressive as the album slogs its way through a dozen tracks that wouldn't have been good enough for b-sides in his heyday. It's only on "The Monsters Of Pig Alley" that any trace of the old Morrissey can be found, and that's only because it most resembles The Smiths. He ends his album-long musing by informing us "once you've tasted fame, nothing else will do". That is quite the telling statement.

It must drive Morrissey nuts that in nearly forty years of being on his own, he's never given us anything that doesn't make us want the one thing he hates even more than himself; who he used to be.

Album Review: Lost Society - Hell Is A State Of Mind

Let this be an object lesson to everyone in the music sphere - artists, labels, editorialists, promoters, fans, everyone.  Gather ‘round, kids, it’s story time.

When Lost Society debuted in 2013 with Fast Loud Death, it was easy to see the band’s appeal - a throwback thrash band capable of putting out a lot of wattage, who understood the genre and its essential aspects.  The album was enjoyable for what it was, but mostly functioned as a promise of music to come.

The band followed that up with Terror Hungry the subsequent year, and it was much more of the same - good, solid, back-to-basics thrash.  Fun, fast, talented; but not revolutionary or genre-breaking in a significant way.  Lost Society was another thrash band living in the shadow of the legacy of Lazarus A.D, and the brief but stratospheric rise of Power Trip.

It was easy back then to tacitly nod and say ‘well, that’s what they are.’

Here at BGM, we talk a lot about the evolution of artists - how to ride the nearly impossible balance of sounding like yourself, but not being stale within that sound.  Few artists even attempt to make alterations mid-career, and the bands who have achieved it in the metal sphere are luminary and few - Metallica (for good or ill,) Iron Maiden, Anthrax (during the Bush era)...without wasting undo time ruminating on it, those are the ones who come to mind.

Lost Society has defied the odds.  Not just an evolution, but a complete re-invention.

And so we come to their new record, Hell Is A State of Mind, and for those who left the band behind as settled law after their initial run, make sure to come back and try them again.  Somewhere between 2014 and 2026, the band went back into the lab and cooked up an entirely new affect.  Their new brand is still metal, surely, but more melodic, more accessible, borrows more from rock, and does a superior job of creating a feeling than all their thrash grasping ever did.

To go back into their catalogue now is to see the steps - 2020’s self-released No Absolution, and then 2022’s If The Sky Came Down show the birth pangs of the re-invention, but what they really do is speak to the six-year (and probably more,) meandering, experimental journey to get to the point of this new record in 2026.

First point first - that is not to say that Lost Society is no longer a thrash band.  Halfway down the record is “Kill the Light,” and even with the big chorus and the brittle melody, Lost Society leaves no doubt in the chugging riff that this is still a band who can get down with a buzzsaw guitar and a headbanging anthem.  That’s only the first half, though - the back half of the tune is something else entirely - an anthemic power romp with keyboards, chorused vocals and something approaching stringed instruments.  Thrash, sure, but something indelibly more.

This kind of melding synthesis is present throughout Hell Is A State of Mind, including on what may be the album’s best cut. “Synthetic.”  The band pulls every string they can think of and weaves them together into something dramatic, heavy and dire.  It’s as unique and enjoyable an amalgam of sounds as ideas as any metal band has released in recent years.

That’s the key here - the blending of elements into a greater whole - and the title track, placed last on the record, is the culmination of all nine songs that have come before.  It’s a thrash version of something that would sound at home capping off a Lord of the Lost album, with all the gravitas and rafter-rocking that comes with that comparison.

Okay, there will be a camp out there that says “doesn’t this kinda sound like Avenged Sevenfold?”  And that’s not without merit.  The counter to that, though, is 1) is that so terrible? And 2) never mind the heavy use of synth orchestrals that A7X has never truly dipped their toe in, the undercurrent of true thrash chops that Lost Society brings to bear and builds this album on, gives it an edge, a grit that few other modern, melodic bands can readily compare to.

Not every song on the album is perfect, that goes practically without saying - but there’s an awful lot of admirable songcraft here, as it seems every second or third song makes the listener go ‘huh, didn’t see that coming.’ And when a band can do that, can make the listener guess at what’s next when they’re already more than a dozen years into their career, that’s cause for celebration.  Let that be the object lesson - never assume you know all that a band can be.

Take Two: Neal Morse Band - L.I.F.T.

It doesn't happen very often, but every now and again a review I write will ring hollow as I spent more time with an album. Every piece we write is merely a snapshot in time, expressing how we are thinking and feeling in that moment. As we know, life does not stay static, and our relationships with music change as much as anything else. Some records will grow into unexpected favorites, while others will lose their luster as the banality sets in with repeated listens. We do our best to extrapolate how we think the curve is going to develop, but the truth of the matter is that we're not going to be right every time. This is one of those times.

Recently, my review for this new Neal Morse Band album was trying to balance the relief and comfort of hearing something that reminded me of the Neal Morse music I've loved with the distraction and angst of some choices Neal makes when putting these albums together. Nothing I said wasn't true, but I didn't have enough time to let the scale come to a stop before judging which side weighed down the other. I'm not taking that review down, but I'm adding this one for better context.

A recent project I was undertaking for myself brought me into my past, and reminded me of strands of psychology I was talking about with a layer of dust on my memories. While I understood the theory of the message in "Shame About My Shame", I had lost some of the visceral emotion from when that lesson was learned. Getting that back, the album began to unfold for me as something more important than another preaching prog record. This one hit on thoughts and doubts that have haunted the back of my mind for decades, just as I was trying to emerge from an existential crisis about the very kinds of "hurt people" hurting me the band sings about.

The five years that have passed since this collection of musicians has released anything was spent mostly ignoring Neal's output. The break means that now I'm hearing the familiar choices and sounds with fresh ears, and I'm finally ready to dive in and embrace their particular brand of excess. There had been the occasional song like "Breath Of Angels" that cut through over the last decade, but Neal had put out so much so quickly that keeping up with his releases wasn't that different from doom-scrolling.

The key to this is the psychology, as I found a piece of myself in "Shame About My Shame". Hearing the lyric echoing in the memories I was writing about was the entry point, while Neal's epic and emotional guitar solo was the hook that pulled me back in. So much music comes and goes, dismissed before it ever gets a chance, that I can sometimes forget how much a great moment can affect us. That's what the two dramatic ballads here, the other being "The Great Withdrawal", do. I haven't had that kind of reaction to Neal's music in years, largely because his writing usually is coated in such a thick layer of preaching schmalz that the contrarian in me instinctively turns away.

This record focuses on pain, regret, and the ways people treat us leave lasting scars we have to learn how to live with. That's the through-line of my memories, so we are dealing with a moment of serendipity where the person I would perhaps least expect to offer words I relate to has put out a record that absolutely speaks to the hope I'm still struggling to find. I still take issue with the theological ramifications of Neal's declaration on "Love All Along" that suffering is for a purpose, though now I can hear the joy at the end not so much as a thumb in the eye of those who haven't gotten to that point, but rather as a lacking I can feel shame about that is more healthy than hating myself for being myself.

It helps that this album features the most consistent songcraft the band has put to tape yet. While they've done plenty of good things in the past, it was always fragmented in packages that held way too much music for the cream to rise to the top. Presented with albums too long to have the patience for, Neal was inadvertently sending me on a journey to other musical avenues, which I might not have been ready for this album without. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, they say, and I feel that is what happened here. 

While my initial review was positive with plenty of caveats, I can throw most of those aside now. Nit-picking can still be done, but the whole is greater than the sum of its parts in cases like this.

As I learned from telling my stories again, there is a lot of the past that carries through the present. Sometimes, we forget how to look past the scars to see that whatever good we have in this life, as it wouldn't be there without having been through what we have. I don't consider that a gift the way Neal does, but accepting that fact, and choosing to focus on those few good things, is the message I needed to hear.

I suppose all of that that makes "L.I.F.T." the front-runner for Album Of The Year, which is not a bet I would have taken.

Singles Roundup: Arch Enemy, Foo Fighters, & Masterplan

We've got some news to talk about in this batch.

Arch Enemy - To The Last Breath

Once again, we find Arch Enemy beginning a new era with a new vocalist. And once again, the band is not going to be making waves with their pick. After they set the standard and found their fame with Angela Gossow, they have done nothing to rock the boat. In fact, there were even rumors going around that Angela might be returning to the band in the wake of Alissa's departure, but that turned out to be fever dreaming from the online community. Instead, we see Arch Enemy welcoming Lauren Heart into the fold, which comes with an admission that must be made; both because of the nature of harsh vocals and the band's adherence to formula, there really isn't much of a difference between Angela, Alissa, and now Lauren.

That's good news if you like Arch Enemy, because nothing has changed on this first taste of the new era. Michael Amott is still writing the same style of anthemic extreme music I have taken to calling 'arena death metal', and this is one of their better examples of it. The verses thrash with fury, leading to a chorus that begs to be screamed by a stadium full of sweaty metal fans. It's perfect Arch Enemy, if that's the sort of thing you like. Personally, I admire the craft of the music, but I can only stay interested for small doses. This being one, I'm rather impressed. It reminds me a lot of Angela's version of "Pilgrim", which remains my favorite Arch Enemy song by a mile.

Foo Fighters - Your Favorite Toy

I have to think long and hard to remember the last time Foo Fighters weren't disappointing me. That would be "Wasting Light", which is further in the past than my memory would like to admit. Since then, the band has gone through terrible gimmicks, a songwriting drought, and personal tragedies. Perhaps it shouldn't be a surprise they have struggled to maintain an identity through all of that. Every time they pop up again, they seem to be putting on a new mask, a new persona, something that tries to kick them back into a creative state. I thought their previous album, which was the return-to-form after Taylor Hawkins' death, would start a second period of remembering just who Foo Fighters are... but that was an illusion.

This song finds the band trying to be a dirty, lo-fi version of themselves, but that's not who they are. Foo Fighters are mainstream. Hell, Foo Fighters are the very definition of rock in the mainstream. For them to pretend they're still playing in a garage somewhere is ridiculous, and it actively insults the millions of people who turned them into the stadium sized band they are. They tried something similar on "Wasted Light", but back then Dave Grohl still had a few good songs left in him. Those songs were less polished, but they were built with hooks upon hooks. This song is grit and nothing else.

An identity crisis is not an easy thing to go through, especially not in the public eye. I have sympathy for that, but Foo Fighters have essentially been going through this same thing for over a decade. At this point, if they haven't figured out what the next chapter is for them, it might not exist. The fact of the matter is this song, along with everything that has come before it, might just be evidence the band is running on fumes.

Masterplan - Chase The Light

Speaking of comebacks, Masterplan is returning for the first time in years, but with a completely different story to Foo Fighters. Rather than being in crisis, Masterplan is trying too hard to be who they used to be. The band is so dedicated to the original template of their power metal that it feels as if time has stood still, which only highlights the ways in which it hasn't. This first song from their upcoming album sounds like classic Masterplan, while sounding nothing like classic Masterplan.

The guitar tones and the pacing are right, but the ideas are not there. The song lacks the memorable hooks their first two albums had, falling flat even before we get to the disappointing chorus. What's worse though is that the weaker songwriting exposes the fact that the band's main appeal was always Jorn Lande, who took all of the band's cache with him when he left years ago. Rick Altzi is a capable singer for some things, but this kind of power metal is not that. His rasp is not the smooth and powerful one Jorn possesses, instead venturing into strain and a bit of ugliness.

Masterplan was born out of the wake of Helloween, and both bands have embraced their past to find their future. I didn't like Helloween's efforts, because they are too clean backward looking to feel vital in the current day. I don't like this Masterplan effort either, because it doesn't actually sound like the band they are trying to be.

Singer might get too much credit or blame, but there's a reason. When you lose one who is definitive, you can't recover. Masterplan took time away, and they didn't figure out how to get over that hump.

Album Review: Rob Zombie - "The Great Satan"

Okay, deep breath…I think what we’re about to engage in is an earnest exercise in damning with faint praise.  Here goes.

Much like the collaborative work of John Carpenter and Kurt Russell, there’s an untouchable trinity of Rob Zombie musical efforts - Astro-Creep 2000 with White Zombie, Hellbilly Deluxe, and The Sinister Urge.  Not before, and not since, has anyone produced music that sounds quite like those three, and it’s a niche that the market has been failing to fill ever since, with apologies to the early works of Rob’s brother Spider and Powerman 5000, and if we’re being generous The Sickness. (Sidebar: The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China and Escape From New York, for those trying to wrack their brains.)

Then for a while, Zombie kind of wandered in the woods musically.  In his defense, he was embarking on a bankable film career, and how much creative juice does a person really have at any one time?  Anyway, what we got in the interim was the up-and-down (mostly down) Educated Horses (though I adore the excellent The Scorpion Sleeps.) The various and sundry albums that followed are numerous and immemorable.

And so we get to The Great Satan, Zombie’s newest offering.  It pulses with promise - the cover art is a needed throwback to the days of some of Rob’s best imagery, the  carnival-turned-twisted-pop-art that’s worked well for him for so long.  The early singles and accompanying videos promised a balance between Rob’s bombastic costumes of the past and the overdriven punk rock that propelled him to superstardom.  If Zombie needed a comeback, and if it was ever in the cards, The Great Satan held the most concerted promise of it.

There are…glimpses…of Zombie’s great potential on the record.  “Heathen Days” is the first cut that seems like it could have come from the same universe that produced “Superbeast.” Would that the mix were more guitar-forward, as the riff is simple but hooking, and leads into the chorus with an aggressive bite that deserves more space amidst the trademark Zombie morass.

“Out of Sight” is a virile rock romp that comes across like the logical evolution of where Zombie’s sound could have (and evidently did,) go after 1998.  The track is a little more muted than the explosiveness Zombie so often exhibits, but the changing beats and descending scales only serve to make the chorus pop all the more.

Then at the end we get served “Unclean Animals,” and there’s a song like this on all Zombie records - think “Blood, Milk and Sky” or “Return of the Phantom Stranger” or “House of 1000 Corpses,” or “Lords of Salem,” and you’re on the right track.  It’s big, it’s brooding, it’s dark, it shambles along with re-mixed vocals and appropriate dread.  It does the job.

Maybe that’s the real takeaway here - The Great Satan does the job.  That’s about it.  It has some pitfalls - for only having twelve real songs (there are some throwaway interludes, as one is wont to do,) and for having none that are longer than 3:46, the record feels too long.  Whether that’s because it simply runs out of gas, or because there’s a thematic and aural similarity between many of the tracks is to be determined, but it drags in the back half.  Also, no one would ever say Zombie was a particularly erudite lyricist (“Demonoid Phenomenon / Get It Out / Get it On”)  but he had a way of creating a bizarre, fun, otherworldly vision that seemed spooky but attractive.  If there was ever any nuance there, it’s been replaced on this record by Zombie’s heavy reliance on profanity, and as we all know, profanity is the crutch of the inarticulate motherfucker.

Again, back to where we started - damning with faint praise.  This could be Zombie’s best album since The Sinister Urge, certainly on par with Educated Horses, but as discussed, that’s a low hurdle to clear.  Only “Heathen Days” rings with the kind of energy that demands to be listened to again and again.  The Great Satan can’t consistently carry the energy and aggressiveness that Rob is, or was, capable of, and while it’s not a terrible record that reminds of Zombie’s halcyon days, it’s also a disappointing one, because it reminds of Zombie’s halcyon days.

Album Review: Neal Morse Band - L.I.F.T.

Not merely because Valentine's Day just passed by recently, I had been thinking about the very concept of love. It's one of those words I use, but I'm not sure how much I actually know about the subject. I listen to other people talk about it, and experience it, and it always makes me wonder if there need to be more words to explain the spectrum of feelings that exist for normal people... and for people like me.

There was a time I loved Neal Morse's music. When I first discovered his brand of prog, I went down the rabbit-hole, and his interpretation became what I expected prog to be. Whether it was the whirlwind of epics like "Seeds Of Gold", or using Transatlantic's talent pool to make the most of "We All Need Some Light", Neal was establishing himself as one of my favorite songwriters. I say was, because while I still love that period of music up to either "Momentum" or "Kaleidoscope", the last decade has found me feeling cold toward everything he has attempted.

Of those attempts, it is NMB I am warmest too, if perhaps because it felt more like a continuation of what I loved. But as each album came, I couldn't muster the energy to be excited anymore. The flaws and nit-picks were at the front of my mind, and the music wasn't distracting me enough to push them down. Perhaps a few years away from this particular combination of players will make a difference, although seeing the way Mike Portnoy's return to Dream Theater played out for me, I wasn't getting my hopes up.

This record is conceptual in the way "The Whirlwind" was, leaving behind the need for a half-hour epic to justify things. These thirteen songs are stitched together as more of a singular piece, although I've never actually liked that way of thinking about these albums, especially when the writers (and this goes beyond just Neal) later admit at least one of the tracks wasn't actually written to fit the concept. Between that, and the need to still include filler instrumental 'interludes' that don't further the story, I sometimes think concept albums are more the concept of making an album than truly conceptual.

The band has been vague enough about the theme/concept that they claim the title means something different to each one of them, which reminds me (in a bad way) of the ridiculous decision Neal and Mike made to put together two different versions of the last Transatlantic album. There's something about hearing an artist not know what their own work means, or what form it takes, that raises serious questions. Perhaps that is on me, or maybe we shouldn't be told that a band only spent a couple of days together writing the whole of an album.

I mentioned those nit-picks before, and they are hard for me to ignore as I listen to this album. The one that bothers me the most is the one Neal is perhaps the biggest offender of among the music I listen to; masking vocals with unnecessary layers of studio crap. Nearly every single vocal line on the record has effects turned up too much, distorting the natural sound of their voices to the point I hear the artificiality more than anything else. And when the album is about the trials and pains of life, taking the humanity out of the vocals is a cardinal sin. No matter which of thm are singing, the vocals are a distraction. In fact, I hate to say this, but I've heard plenty of AI music where the vocals sound more authentic and emotional than what these guys are able to deliver with this intentional distortion. Sorry, not sorry.

Even though the production on the record sounds smaller and flatter than usual, the songs try their damnedest to win me back. There are plenty of moments that are full of the usual Neal-isms, and that comfortable feeling is what works so well. Neal has always had a penchant for big sing-along melodies, and this album has more of that than the last few. This isn't exactly a 'return to form', but it's the closest NMB album yet to feeling like one of Neal's solo albums from the 'glory days'. The more I listen, the more these songs started to dig in. Ok, I still find "Hurt People" tries too hard, but the rest of the material is the kind of prog only Neal Morse can make.

The song that resonates with me most is "Shame About My Shame", which deals with what in philosophy we refer to as 'second-order' thinking. It's one I have found myself with many times, and sometimes it's a bit hard to explain that we can feel just as hurt by our own reaction to something as we are by the thing itself. To use a slightly different word; I have had many regrets, some of which I regret the fact that I regret, and a few I regret regretting my regrets about. In other words, when we have a society that tells us to keep quiet and not share when we are feeling sadness, it stops being a normal chapter of life and becomes something we believe we should be above. That's absurd, but it's the way we have convinced ourselves to talk about what is going on inside us.

Ok, that's enough of a tangent. Back to the music, "Shame About My Shame" is a great song because it's a simple melody with a complex message, and it provides the backdrop for the most emotional guitar solo on the album. It isn't as grandiose as "The Breath Of Angels" was as the centerpiece of "The Similitude Of A Dream", but it fits the same mold. Right now, that's my favorite variation of Neal's music, along with the uplifting power of "Carry You Again". Those work far better for me than the attempts to write songs that are heavier, or more technical, or that bounce between sounds like sketch comedy.

Overall, the album leaves me with a much warmer feeling than "Innocence & Danger" did, and is the closest thing to the Neal Morse albums I love than anything he's done in at least ten years. While NMB have always been good at what they do, their penchant for bloating the running times and not self-editing has made it difficult to enjoy sitting through the albums as full entities. This album is still seventy minutes, but it feels tighter and more self-contained. The biggest problem I have is not musical at all, but comes in the psychology of the ending, where Neal and the band sing of giving themselves to God, and realizing they were "loved all along", because there was "a purpose for my pain". After talking about the anguish and emotional toll of life, we're told we should now worship the very entity that caused us to go through that pain. I'm sorry, but I cannot understand the mindset that gives all the credit for the good things, but none of the blame for the bad things.

To have the album end on that note actually pisses me off, because it reaffirms a belief that there is 'a plan' that involves us suffering. If that's true, it is as cruel as anything the imagination can conjure, and it utterly belies the resolution the album is supposed to be leading us toward. It's also a strand of thought people of faith rarely seem to contemplate, which is just another reason why it should be illegal to proselytize.

That's not a joke.

But still, this is Neal's best album in a decade, and once that frustrations settles down, this could easily wind up being one of my favorite albums of the year. 

Album Review: Michael Monroe - Outerstellar

We have with this album a confluence of two phenomena; one is the law of diminishing returns, and the other is being at the wrong place at the wrong time. When Michael Monroe released "Blackout States", it's sleazy throwback sound and razor-sharp songwriting caught me completely off-guard, and is still a record I go back to. It was a perfect bit of old-school rock that didn't sound the least bit dated, and I would probably say bests anything from the old Hanoi Rocks days. The records that followed were also good, but I could hear in each one the magic slowly leaking out.

The law of diminishing returns came to mind, which put me into alert mode as the rollout for this latest album began. The three singles that were released in advance felt flat, maybe a bit hollow, and with each new one my hopes for the album dropped accordingly. Was I simply tired of the band treading the same water? Well, a listen back to "Blackout States" told me I still love that one just as much as I ever did, so I'm not sure that's the answer.

To paraphrase Hamlet; Ah, here's the rub. Michael and his band continue to make sleazy rock and roll songs that remind us of the dirty stories of the filthy streets of the old days. That is so quaint, and honestly antiquated, when we're faced with existential crises every time we look at the headlines. I'm not saying artists like Michael should be writing songs that sound like preaching the gospel of modern times, but the wistful feeling about the days when we praised rock stars for being addicts and assholes doesn't play as well when we're all just trying to survive.

But again, none of that would matter if the songs were still as sharp and hooky, which they aren't, at least on the first half of the record. Look no further than "Black Cadillac", which is a slow dirge where the chorus is merely chanting the title, done so with backing vocals that reverberate in a way that masks Michael's voice. That makes the 'gang vocal' actually sound small, and not powerful at all, which goes against the entire way the song is constructed. I don't think it would be all that great anyway, but the choice doesn't help matters.

"When The Apocalypse Comes" trades in a chorus for a single line, which doesn't really work for me as a release after the verse, and especially when the cadence of that verse is one of those moments I swear I've heard before in one of his songs. There's the law of diminishing returns put on display. The same is true of "Painless", although that song at least has a tempo and chord droning that is a little something different for Michael. It distracts a bit from the lack of a compelling melody.

When we hit the middle of the record, "Disconnected" and "Precious" dip into what makes Michael's music so much fun, with "Pushin' Me Back" forming a trio of songs that make me wonder what I had spent the previous twenty minutes listening to. The shift in tone is jarring, as all of a sudden the band sounds alive, the songs have punch, and we've got ample reason to headbang and sing along.

That leaves me asking myself an interesting question; is it better to have a full album that's merely 'ok', or an album that is half forgettable and half really good? That's the difference between this album and the previous one. The second half of this album is really good, and I would probably put ahead of almost all of "I Live Too Fast To Die Young", but the first half is the most tepid group of songs I've heard from this era of Michael's career. I can't say I love either album in full, and I'm not sure I have an answer to the question I just asked. I will likely get more replays out of the good songs on this album, but I might be less eager to put it on knowing what it will take to get there.

My biggest takeaway from "Outerstellar" is disappointment, not so much because of the quality level, but for hearing in it the band still has plenty of great songs in them, but for some reason makes us sit through their worst material before we get to hear it. I don't say this often with records that are only forty-three minutes long, but taking two of those early songs off to make a thirty-six minute album would have made this a better record, and one I'd be far more excited about.

Quick Reviews: Austen Starr & Joel Hoekstra's 13

There are a lot of things I know I don't understand about how people and the world work. Among those seems to be scheduling. Whether it's television programming or album releases, the ways in which the people trying to maximize attention and profit choose to release their work to the world often leaves me puzzled as to why they make the decisions they do. Many times, those choices are self-defeating, at least to me. It's certainly possible that I'm the weird one here, but the two albums we're here to talk about today are an example of just this phenomenon.

Austen Starr's "I Am The Enemy" and Joel Hoekstra's 13's "From The Fade".

There are actually two issues of scheduling I feel need to be addressed, so let's start with the most obvious of them. Both of these albums feature the guitar playing and songwriting of Joel Hoekstra. The same label is releasing two albums featuring his work in the same month, which I suppose could be them trying to piggy-back attention from one album to the other among his fans, but it seems to me more likely to burn us out on his playing. I complain often about musicians who are popping up too frequently while doing the same thing, which waters down their trademark sound, leaving at least me feeling less excited every time I see their name.

That isn't quite the case here, as the two albums do take moderately different directions. Austen Starr's album is more compact, more melodic, and has hints of emo creeping in around the edges. Joel Hoekstra's album is heavier, more guitar-oriented, and gives everyone more room to stretch their talents. The basic tones are the same, and Joel's guitar playing ties them together perhaps too much if you listen to the records back-to-back as I did, but these are not clones in the way many other projects from this particular label tend to be.

Both albums feature expert playing, but the difference in voice and approach make for wildly disparate experiences. Austen's voice cuts through the mix, her melodies the focal point of every song. The band is great, but they are serving her songs. Joel's album is all about the guitars, as Girish's voice is often put just low enough in the mix that it's difficult to pick out exactly what he's trying to tell us. Personally, when a production makes me strain to hear important pieces of the song clearly, it makes it difficult for me to enjoy the experience. Girish serves more as texture than anything, with his Axl Rose-isms catching my ear more than any lyric possibly could.

Listening to the albums together, it becomes an obvious matter of philosophy. Do you prefer songs or sound? I am one of those people who listens to music to hear melodies that get caught in my head, which leads me to prefer Austen's album. Joel's is the more impressive album from a musical perspective, but the songs don't shine through in the same way. Even if they were are hooky, the saturated sound of the production is taxing on my ears.

This brings us to the second issue of timing. Girish appeared on America's Got Talent with his band over this previous summer/fall. I am dumbfounded that the label knew he would be on the show, and they did not work to have something in the pipeline to take advantage of that new audience. This is, as far as I know, the first record since then Girish has appeared on, and it doesn't even have his name in the title. I can't help but think this was all a missed opportunity. That's not to say I think sales would miraculously soar, but when you're dealing with what is essentially a niche genre at this point, every little bit can help.

Leaving my self-indulgent musing aside, what we have here are two albums that are both solid efforts. I would not be surprised if more people gravitate toward the heavier rock album, but I'm going to be honest and say the winner of this little bit of circumstance is Austen Starr. Not only do I enjoy her album more, but I come away more impressed that she bested an album filled with veterans.

It's always the songs.

Album Review: Hoaxed - "Death Knocks"

It takes a minute.  Do that thing that’s so hard to do in our modern society of up-to-the-minute shitposting and instant gratification and new, uniquely unfulfilling content around every rhythmic click of the second hand.  

Be patient.

That’s how you’ll get the most out of Portland’s Hoaxed and their new album Death Knocks.  Don’t look for the big bang, the rumbling earthquake, the thundering catharsis.  There’s a certain kneejerk desire to compare Hoaxed to, say, Royal Thunder, and while there are similarities, that comparison is a misstep.  Hoaxed wins by playing the long game.  This is, if it can be said, low-fi dark rock beats for the discerning ear.

Instead, listen for the quiet, defeated desperation of Kat Keo’s vocals, the slow burn, the simmering boil that the album employs again and again.  Be patient.  It’ll come.  Give the record two complete listens.  Three.  Six.  Close your eyes, ignore the distractions.  Put your phone away and get lost in the swirling sea of the record as it takes the first three songs to build to the crescendo of the fourth, “The Fallen.”  You read that right - it takes more than ten minutes and three songs of clever layering, brooding harmony and slowly building might to get to the album’s first release point.  

There’s an interlude called “Looking Glass” (sadly, not a cover of the sublimely excellent song of the same name by Cave of Swimmers, which I bring up only because I would ADORE it if Hoaxed sank their fangs into it and came up with their version,) and even that interlude is crafted and thoughtful and an inexorable piece of the whole.  It’s haunting and cinematic and tangentially reminiscent of the work Goblin did for Dario Argento in the late ‘70s (watch Suspiria.  Thank me later.)

All that, all that just to get to the album’s best song, “Dead Ringer.”  The cut rolls out with an Iommi-ian riff, and then bridges into something dark and staccato and threatening, until the chorus erupts into a strained, chaotic singalong.  It’s one of the few choruses on the album that does so, which makes it stand out all the more.  If you’ll pardon the vernacular, it’s so damn cool.  Hoaxed shows us a glimpse of their power in a way that would make last year’s darling Year of the Cobra look at each other and say “maybe we need a guitarist.”

There are no bad songs on Death Knocks. No wasted space.  If there is a criticism that’s fair to levy at all, it’s what we discussed in the opening part of this piece - the listener must be patient with Death Knocks.  It’s not going to explode out of the speakers at you.  That’s not how it’s designed, not what the band is going for, and not what Keo’s vocals are meant for.  There are calculated moments of power, like “Dead Ringer,” “Kill Switch,” or the outro of “Where the Seas Fall Silent,” but Hoaxed purposefully doesn’t show that hand all the time.  If you’re looking for an adrenaline fix in your rock, best move along.

If you have the patience and the right ear for it, though, Death Knocks is a deeply rewarding album that should have something novel and enjoyable to offer for fans of all the bands we’ve already mentioned, plus Blood Ceremony, Type O Negative, Ghost, Nim Vind, and you get the idea.  

But be patient.  Close your eyes.  Breathe in your nose, out through your mouth, and wait for the music to come to you.  It will.