For this Thanksgiving (long) weekend, I thought I would take a moment to point out a couple of recent single releases, and explain why I am, and am not, thankful for what they are telling me about the future. Let's start with the good news first.
Soen - Ritual
"Lykaia" was my #1 album of 2017, and I still find myself going back to it. That record was Soen finding their identity, taking a huge step forward, and also delivering a record that I have been waiting for ever since Opeth decided to leave death metal behind. The first taste of their follow-up has been unveiled, and I am thankful to hear that they have learned the same lessons from "Lykaia" that I did. "Ritual" sounds like a natural continuation, perhaps because it is strikingly similar. The riffs in the instrumental passage are a near clone of how "Sectarian" did the same thing, while the ending borrows a hint of the outro from "God's Acre". They are good moments, so using them again is not unwelcome, although hearing two callbacks in the first song is slightly odd. Soen is one of the metal bands doing something unique and interesting, and given that they had changed radically between each of their first three records, I am thankful to hear the band I was hoping for on this song. I'm eagerly awaiting my opportunity to hear the whole album.
Slipknot - All Out Life
I have seen several opinions on this song that all rave about how this is Slipknot again at their most brutal, and how fantastic it is to hear them letting loose.... and I wonder how we are listening to the same thing. Is it brutal? Yes, it is indeed tough to sit through. Corey Taylor screams his head off while the band charges through two or three of the most basic nu-metal riffs imaginable. All of the musical development that Slipknot had gone through, whether you liked it or not, is gone. Whereas once you had to admit they were a talented group, this song makes it easy to say they aren't. This song is almost what you would expect from a bunch of 20 year-olds who wanted to make their own Slipknot band. It has no great riff, no interesting vocal pattern. It is angry noise for the sake of angry noise. And when I know they can do better, that's insulting. So I'm thankful to know I can skip any new Slipknot music without feeling like I'm missing something.
Weezer - Zombie Bastards
So Weezer has finally confirmed "The Black Album" will be coming out in 2019, and given the first two songs we have heard, it is already the front-runner to be the worst album of the year. Weezer has long been stuck in Rivers Cuomo's arrested development, but never before has his mid-life crisis sounded so hollow. Now he is trying to jump on drum-machine pop/rock, and populating his songs with slang that was dated even ten years ago, and a song about f'n zombies. Yes, I am that one person who didn't mind when he wrote a song about a spider ("Freak Me Out" - the lyrics are stupid, but the song was a chill pop vibe that an older Rivers should have leaned into), but this is too much. There is even a line where he says, "blah blah blah". And this is coming from a man well into his forties. Rivers has never reconciled making an old man's album when he was so young, so he has been chasing youth ever since. The problem is that youth cannot be caught, so all he does is sound increasingly more pathetic as his detachment from the audience he wants grows ever larger. This song is truly awful. I'm not thankful for it, but I am thankful to know having even a shred of hope for Weezer again is a mistake.
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