Singles Roundup: Halestorm, Dream Theater, Iron Maiden, & Santana ft Rob Thomas

This week, we have some new songs from huge names. What do they say about what is yet to come? Or what we have already experienced? Let's find out.

Halestorm - Back From The Grave

It's no secret one of the things I've most been looking forward to this year is Halestorm's return. They haven't said when the album is coming yet, but the first new song of this chapter is upon us, and I'm plenty satisfied. The frustration of the last two years bristles through the heavy riffs and Lzzy's passionate delivery. A song about mental health, and not letting your demons get the best of you, the song does indeed sound like a 'screw you' to anyone and anything that stands in your way. "Vicious" won Album Of The Year, but the singles from that album weren't Halestorm's best songs. This track is better than the last batch of singles, so might that mean this album could be even better?

Dream Theater – The Alien

Yet again, Dream Theater have found themselves utterly predictable. This first single for their new album is made up of all the cliches of their songwriting, but stretched out longer than it needs to be, and without a memorable chorus. We know Drema Theater is going to deliver amazing musicianship, but songs like this prove that isn't enough to carry the day. Not only have we heard everything about this song before from them, but we've heard it better as well. Dream Theater is a prime example of the Prog vs prog debate, and this song doesn't tell us anything about whether the new album is going to be worth the time.

Iron Maiden - Stratego

The second single gets us back to a more classic Iron Maiden sound. Steve Harris' gallop is on full display, but the main feature of the song is the keyboard that comes up in the chorus. Bruce is singing a pretty good melody, and he sounds better on this song, but that keyboard is jarring. The sound is so alien to the organic sound of a modern Iron Maiden record, it almost feels like it's stabbing me in the ears. I don't know if it was necessary at all, but a better tone could certainly have been found. The song is good, but it would be far more enjoyable to my ears without those seconds of uncomfortable noise.

Santana ft Rob Thomas – Move

"Smooth" is one of the biggest songs of all time, and two decades later we are getting a sequel, of sorts. What is notable about this song is absolutely nothing, or perhaps that it proves "Smooth" was a magical moment in time, and that's what songs really are. The same people can't recapture the spark that made for their biggest song, even if they do try to copy the feeling and sound that got them there. This is a pale imitation, with weaker guitar playing, flatter singing, and a duller melody. Everything that was great about "Smooth" is missing here, and it makes me sad to hear them failing to achieve what they wanted, but still putting it out anyway. It would have been better to realize the past can't be recreated, and leave the magic trick to stand for itself. Now we know it was an accident.

Album Review: Leprous - Aphelion

Leprous is one of the few progressive bands that is actually progressive. They keep shifting and changing their sound, refusing to sit still and give the fans more of what they want. In that respect, I admire their attitude towards making music. On the other hand, I have been completely confused by the poing of their last couple of albums, where they have adopted a cold and synthetic sound that is not inviting, and has led to songs which no obvious appeal. In their search for artistry, they have lost the plot when it comes to songwriting.

That is still the case here, as "Running Low" opens the album without a care for writing a decent song. It spends the first few minutes cycling through the same weak melodic line in various ways, and when the heavier cathartic section finally does come along, they repeat the same line over and over, again showing no skill whatsoever. They are beating a dead horse at that point, and the horse is the lucky one in this scenario.

"Out Of Here" starts out as almost chamber-pop, with the music barely rising above a whisper. The vocals croon another flat melody, and there is nothing to the instrumentation to even notice until halfway through the song. Einar does some high vocals runs in the heavier section, but they sound more like warm-up exercises than composed melodies, and I am not entertained in the slightest by them. He's trying to be dramatic, but there is no drama to the music. It's sort of like someone ripping their heart out and writing in blood, only what they've written is the instruction manual for a coffee maker.

This is what Leprous has been doing for several albums now. Einar and the band sound detached from one another at times, as if they are playing and singing different songs. The band is still playing mechanical prog metal, when they're allowed to play at all, while he is singing as if he is on a theater stage trying to emote to the back row. The two simply don't go together, and both look worse for it.

Albums don't need to be up-tempo all the time, but they do need to have some sort of energy to carry us through them, and Leprous once again comes up short. The proclivity for slow, soft moments takes over too often, with the songs spending minutes at a time barely crawling until an unsatisfying release. There is so much waiting involved for something, for anything to happen, that nothing the band does at that point could ever be good enough to calm the frustration.

After a while, I'm left with the impression that what they are actually going for it something like the sound of Phil Collins' hits of the 80s. "In The Air Tonight" would fit the tone of this record, and would also put it to shame, since that song is actually good. There isn't anything on this record that has a drum fill, let alone a guitar riff or a vocal melody, that is memorable in the least. Listening to "Aphelion" was like running a Brillo through my head. Any remnants of this album were scrubbed right off and completely forgotten.

So yes, Leprous is still making confoundingly bad albums. My biggest question is why metal fans still like them.

Album Review: Jinjer - Wallflowers

I don't believe happenstance is anything more than that. Coincidences don't have to mean anything, nor are they hints from the divine that somehow are showing us a path if we only pay enough attention. No, sometimes similar words or images pop up for no other reason than because we have a limited number of them to work with, and it's bound to happen. That's what is happening here with the new Jinjer album, which is called "Wallflowers", and comes not long after the return of the band The Wallflowers, who are an old favorite of mine. I don't think there is anything to glean from that, but I found the confluence amusing enough to give Jinjer another chance, after they have failed to impress me previously.

The singles from this album strike me as being divisive for their fan-base. Both "Vortex" and "Mediator" take a slower and less aggressive approach, blending in some of the meek sadness that a wallflower would be feeling. The throat-shredding harsh vocals are still there, but they are not as in the forefront as before, with more emphasis being put on Tatiana's singing ability, and melodies that are more soothing and inviting than before. This is far from Jinjer going mainstream, but they are giving more attention to expanding the range of people who can enjoy what they do; including me. "Motivator" is the sort of song where the harsh and clean work together beautifully, and the song never wanders away from its core appeal.

That balances out the opening "Call Me A Symbol", which bursts out of the gates with progressive riffing, blast beats, before later shifting into the moodiness that is the hallmark of this record. The band rages through the song, processing the anger and frustration of the world, then settling into the uncomfortable realization that we are stuck in this mess for longer than we need to be. This isn't a completely different Jinjer, but the subtle shifts are enough to make this record sound entirely fresh.

The balance of the record still tilts toward the harsh and metallic, maybe a bit more so than necessary. With the enhanced moodiness and Tatiana's improving sense for her clean vocals, leaning into that new area would have made the record even more interesting. Aggression is rather one-note, while the extra elements can add so much color and shade. I know the cover is monochromatic, but the music doesn't need to be.

Maybe I'm just not an angry person, so the raging sections of the band's music can't speak to me on the same level as others. Where I am most intrigued is when Jinjer explores the more nuanced side of darkness, not the blood stains soaked into the carpet, but rather the psychology that sees geometrical beauty in the violence. Jinjer had the chance with this record to dive deep into the psyche of harsh music, and extract the melancholy and depression that we can sometimes can only translate as rage.

They don't quite get that far, but "Wallflowers" is the most interesting Jinjer album yet, because they are trying to tap into more elements of our minds. Not every experiment is going to work, but they can be worth hearing. I hear far more depth in Jinjer now than I ever have before. There's something to this record, even if I can't quite put my finger on it.

Album Review: Neal Morse Band - Innocence & Danger

Neal Morse is nothing if not consistent. After two double albums in a row with The Neal Morse Band, we got another double album (sort of - that's too confusing to go into again) from Transatlantic, and now yet another double album from his main band. There was a solo album thrown in the middle of all that, but you get the point. Neal has been stuck on making double albums for a while now, and I have to be honest and say it has dulled a lot of my enthusiasm for the music. Neal is my favorite prog musician, and Transatlantic my favorite prog band, but double albums are just too much music for me. Sitting down for an hour and a half, or more, is usually out of the cards.

This time around, however, we can treat the two albums as almost separate entities, since there isn't a concept tying the two together. That means we have one record that is mostly digestible short songs, and one record that is two epics. I can deal with that.

The first record kicks off with "Do It All Again", which you might have heard as the first single. It's everything great about the group now christened NMB. The music is uplifting, the three-part harmonies glorious, and the music inventive while being anchored in wonderful melodies. It's the sort of prog that finds the right balance between being for the musician and being for the listener.

Not every decision the band made works out as well. One of the main conceits of this band, versus Neal's solo albums, is that everyone gets their turn to sing lead. As is the case in Transatlantic, not everyone should be singing lead. Neal is Neal, and Eric Gillette has a strong voice (if a bit bland), but Bill Hubauer's voice has never sat well with me. His timbre is strange, and every time he gets a section in front takes me out of the proceedings. He was responsible for writing a large chunk of this album, but I have said with each and ever NMB album that I would prefer the band to only have one singer. That hasn't changed.

On the first record, the shorter songs have an 80s feeling, a bit akin to Peter Gabriel's solo hits. There's more obvious synths, and a louder mix than usual, which play into that feeling. That louder mix, and the vocals sometimes sounding a bit strained to be heard above the fray, also leave some of the melodies not sounding as up front and immediate as most NMB albums. The songs are shorter, and you would assume more direct, yet they are less inviting than I'm used to.

There also happens to be a cover of Simon & Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water", which puzzles me. I'm not sure why they decided to throw a cover song on the album at all, but if you remove that song, the album could have easily been condensed down to just under the eighty minutes to make it one disc. I don't think it was so vital a song we needed to expand this whole package just to include it. (The feeling I get is the album was too long to be one disc, but not long enough to be two, so the cover was included to pad things out. Padding is never the right decision.) After all, there's also no need for the three minutes of lone acoustic guitar that is "Emergence". There's eleven minutes of music that could be cut without missing anything right there.

If you're making a double album, it's imperative that every second be of such high quality I can't say what I just did in the previous paragraph. Time is valuable, and if you're asking for the one hour and forty minutes this album does, don't give me any reason to want to do anything but listen to your music. There are those two very obvious spots where my attention shifts to other things I could be doing, and that feeling only hurts how I think about the album. There has never been a double album that couldn't benefit from editing, and this isn't going to be the first.

The first of the epics on the second record tries to play around with the usual formula. They do a better job of making it sound like a cohesive whole, rather than three songs stitched together, but I'm completely thrown for a loop when the big final time around the chorus comes, and there's still five minutes left in the song. Those minutes, full of quasi-ambient guitar noodling, stretch the song out without doing much that makes it mandatory listening. That's where editing would have been a godsend, because a quarter of the song is the cool down after you've hit the emotional high. We get what we want, and then there's so much more before the song ends. I find it frustrating.

If I sound perturbed, it's because I am. "Innocence & Danger" is an album chock full of bad decisions that add up to a long and frustrating listening experience. The album is needlessly long, bloated with some filler, and self-indulgent in places that could easily have been trimmed down. Just because you have a hundred ideas doesn't mean you have to throw all of them on one album. If you cut this down to the best hour of music, it would be a fine prog album. In this form, though, I can't say it's worth the amount of time it takes to listen to everything. This isn't the best material NMB has come up with, so if you're going to invest the time in one of their long albums, I would have to point you to "The Similitude Of A Dream" well before this one. I would call it a big disappointment, but I had a feeling I wasn't going to be thrilled with yet another double album.

I was right.

Album Review: Warkings - Revolution

I try to be as honest as I can when writing these reviews, so let me start out with some honesty; I did not want to write a review of this new Warkings album. I reviewed their first two albums, and after the second one, I found myself beyond fed up both by the lackluster mediocrity of them, but also by the glorification of war and violence that was inherent in the concept. When the world is full of pointless violence that shows we are not so far removed from our animal nature, making albums that glorify the worst aspects of humanity is not something I think we should be doing. Even if you try to spin it as honoring the people who fought for freedom, it still means we were so horrible we had to shed blood to escape tyranny. Often tyranny derived from unprovable ideas that are pretty much the same, if you take a step back and think about the stupidity of it all.

But the music gods were not good to me, and I did not have many other options for albums to cover this week. I don't want to become one of those people who only talks about old music, so here we are.

The two singles for the album don't signal any real change. "Fight" advocates exactly that, shouting about fighting for freedom (good), and fighting for 'our kingdom' (bad). In one sentence, they sum up everything that's wrong with this dumbass gimmick. They promote violence in the name of a monarchical government, while trying to say it's in the name of freedom. No, those two things are incompatible. A kingdom cannot be free, and I'm not sure if these guys aren't smart enough to realize that, or they just don't care. Whichever the case is, I want to strangle them for feeding into the authoritarian strain that is infecting countries around the world. Way to go, guys.

That gets no better on "Kill For The King", where the lyrics talk about the heroism of murdering people in the name of a monarchy. Maybe this is a vestige of Europe, where their figurehead rulers hold some weird psychological appeal, but swearing your allegiance to a king is not something to be proud of now that we have a little thing called democracy. Warkings are pining for the days of servitude and shorter life-spans. No thanks.

And what pisses me off the most about Warkings is that they don't need to go down this road. We all know who the leader and voice of this band is, and he's more than capable of writing songs that stick in your mind. He does that here a few times. "Spartacus" does have a chanting section I don't think works too well, but damn if the chorus of the song isn't smooth and catchy as hell. If they could just not write lyrics that emphasize everything wrong with humanity, they could be good. Of course, his main gig already does that, so there really isn't any reason for this side-project.... which is an issue.

The chanting is the least agreeable part of the album. "Sparta Pt II" is bare-bones power metal that builds up to a chorus of voices shouting the title city-state, which doesn't make for a rousing moment for me. It's the sort of thing that would probably play better at a live show, but on record it's boring to listen to more than once.

So what this album boils down to is whether or not the good melodies on certain songs are enough to outweigh the weaker songs, and the stupidity of the gimmick. Like the first two albums, the answer is no. There are certainly good songs here, but not enough of them, and I can find decent power metal in other places that isn't so obviously pandering to the most toxic aspects of masculinity. If it wasn't for the historical nature of their gimmick, this album gives me the impression the lead single would be about fighting for your freedom not to wear a mask in the middle of a pandemic.

I'm just not interested in what Warkings is selling. Go listen to some...... Serenity instead.

Album Review: Oceanhoarse - Dead Reckoning

I've had my issues with what we today call 'modern metal'. That doesn't even have to do with how the 'modern' in that term extends back at least a decade, so it's not really all that modern anymore. No, my real issue is that what is now accepted as standard operating procedure for metal bands has pushed the genre further and further away from having the ability to cross over. More and more elements from extreme metal have crept in, and that leaves a bigger chunk of metal than ever impenetrable to all but the most dedicated of heavy listeners. It shoots the genre in the foot. If you want to know why people say 'rock is dead', it's partially because bands are making music that doesn't appeal to anyone besides their fans.

Just look at how Oceanhoarse starts out this album. After the pointless intro, "Locks" opens up with screamed vocals and a breakdown riff. If you aren't the kind of person who loses their voice in a mosh pit on the regular, this holds no appeal for you. Look, I get that metal bands making metal albums for metal fans isn't a controversial thing. However, you can only grow if you're expanding your audience, and songs like that aren't going to do the trick. Least of all without a big, hooky chorus to make the rest of the song worth sitting through.

Like a lot of modern bands, the riffs Oceanhoarse builds their songs from are of the mechanical variety, without much to them you can remember. One chugging pattern isn't much different than the other, nor are the angular runs of notes melodic in any way you are likely to hum to yourself. That puts all the onus on the vocals to deliver the bits that will make the songs memorable, and the band just isn't up to the task. "One With The Gun" is a perfect example of this, with vocals that go from strained to shouted, and all without even trying to put together a melody worth listening to.

As the album plays out, the whole affair sounds like a flatter version of the old metalcore sound. The band isn't as heavy as those groups were, they can't play with any groove, and the vocals are devoid of the sing-along hooks that propelled that genre. This sounds like an imposter trying to convince you it's the real deal, but it's obvious they're wearing a fake nose and glasses.

The appeal I see to Oceanhoarse is simply that if you love metal and only care that your music is heavy, they can fit that bill. If you're actually interested in hearing well-written songs that hold strong appeal, and that you might remember after hearing them, "Dead Reckoning" is not the album for you. And if you really like the album's title, go listen to the Threshold album of the same name. That one is far better than this.

Album Review: Venues - Solace

I'm a little bit surprised by the way certain things unfold. I remember the metalcore movement beginning when I was younger, and I spent a chunk of my college time listening to "The End Of Heartache". What amazes me is we're getting twenty years on from the start of that wave, and various forms of metalcore are still not only around, but are thriving. I see countless records tagged as metalcore still, and I often wonder what about that genre allowed it to persist beyond being the fad we thought it was going to be.

That leads us to Venues, a band in the latest evolutionary step of metalcore. There has been a growth of bands either mixing metalcore with emo or post-hardcore, mixing male and female shouting and singing, or a combination of all of it. New wrinkles are still being found.

With new clean singer Lena joining to balance the shouted screams of Robin, the clean/harsh dynamic is accentuated with the male/female one, which takes us down a new road where modern metal and metalcore meet the beauty-and-the-beast metal of the more symphonic world. Venues has the feeling of being an alternate reality, modern rock version of the music Epica has perfected. But rather than using operatic and classical music as the axis to forge their metal around, Venues uses radio rock. It makes their music more powerful, and I would also say more relatable.

Venues also picks up on the thread that has been tying quite a few albums together in recent years, with these songs being the therapeutic way they have managed their emotions during tumultuous years. As the title suggests, this album is riding the crest of the wave back to shore, rather than drowning with their hand outstretched for what they cannot reach. Even though the music is heavy and aggressive, Lena especially gives the songs an optimistic tone that is defiant in the face of issues, and soothes the healing wounds.

From "Rite Of Passage" to "Uncaged Birds" to "Shifting Colors", the band alternates deeply heavy modern riffing with sharp clean choruses that accentuate each other. Both sides of the coin shine brighter because of the other, with the dynamics at play giving us a wider scope to view. While some bands wind up sounding small, because their power is focused so narrowly it can only be seen from one perspective, Venues is multi-faceted, and you can pick up on new angles and details every time you listen to the record. To that end, their music is more fitting of the human condition than the more aggressive bands who have not mastered the art of balance.

"Solace" is the type of album that we need more of. It is a vehicle we can scream out our frustrations with, but there is s sense of songcraft that elevates it above metal for the sake of metal. I started this review talking about metalcore, and I'll end there as well. What made albums like "The End Of Heartache" special was that they were able to take angst and anger, but package them in emotional songs that wrung out the worst parts of us. They drained us to put us back in touch with our better angels. That's the spirit Venues is tapping into with "Solace", and I'm sure the generation they are representing will feel the same way about Venues and this album as I do the glory days of Killswitch Engage. That's pretty darn good.

30th Anniversary Conversation: Metallica - The Black Album

 

D.M: "Number of the Beast."  "Screaming for Vengeance."  "Hellbilly Deluxe."  "Among the Living."  "Rust in Peace."  "Holy Diver."  "Danzig."  "Reign in Blood."  "Battle of Los Angeles."  "Don't Break the Oath."  "Demanufacture."  "River Runs Red."  "Nihil."  "No More Tears."

That list could run on ad nauseum, but the point is this: not one person reading this doesn't know those albums.  They're the formative, permanent pillars upon which the entire history of the metal genre rests.  Each is a timeless, instantly recognizable classic, above reproach, beyond criticism, transcendent and untouchable.  Yet, there's an album that sits atop them all, an album deserving of its own introspective conversation, for its musical value, for its omnipresence, and depending on who you talk to, for what it sacrificed to get to that point.

We're talking about an album that has sold over 30 million copies worldwide, which puts it in the lofty company of Led Zeppelin's "IV," The Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," and the original motion picture soundtrack to "Grease."  

Metallica's self-titled record, more commonly known as The Black Album.

Look, let's be real here.  Love it or hate it, and there are plenty of people who do both, The Black Album is likely the most important album in the history of metal.  While there were other records that established a beachhead for metal to make inroads in popular music, this 1991 release, which elongated its popularity with no less than six radio singles, outshone the entire grunge movement and made it possible for a metal band to sit at the table with the superstars of pop that dominated the airwaves.  There's no other album in the history of the genre, no matter how lofty, that boasts those same accolades.

Metallica completely reinvented themselves for the record, teaming with producer Bob Rock and leaving behind the bloated, thrash dirges of "...And Justice for All."  Instead, they gave the world an album of twelve accessible, easily digestible rock-and-metal anthems that had been produced to a high mirror shine.  The public devoured it, with the album debuting at #1 on the US charts, and going on to sell more than 16 million copies in the United States alone.  And that's not to say that it's the best metal record ever written, merely the most successful.  

All that success came with its own price, as scads of metal purists declared the band had sold out and betrayed their fans and their image.  A select group of fans turned their backs on the band that had carried all their hopes as the vanguard of the genre, refusing to ever acknowledge Metallica or their past greatness ever again.  Ties were severed as the band sipped champagne from gold chalices.

I've said many times in different columns that I believe there are only two bands who can rightfully lay a claim to sit upon the throne of metal - Black Sabbath and Metallica.  They are the eternal titans, the two bands who the story can't be told without.  The Black Album, more than any other single thing, is what gives Metallica the ability to reach to that lofty height.  Even the prolonged popularity and creativity of Iron Maiden can't propel them to that level of fundamental importance of the genre.

When I think of The Black Album, probably contrary to the memory of most, I think first of Jason Newsted's impressive, smoothly deep intro to "The God That Failed."  Both because it is the first song I learned to completion on bass, and also because it is one of the rare moments in the history of Metallica where the bass player was not buried so deep in the mix as to be lost.  Still, when I think of it, my heads starts to nod involuntarily and my fingers pluck the air.  Whether through a breakthrough in songwriting style, or through some Faustian bargain the likes of which we'll never know, that kind of mnemonic recall represents the staying power of the simple riffs of a catchy album.  "Ride the Lightning" will probably always be my favorite Metallica album, but even those well-worn and comfortable songs don't rattle around in my brain like the singles of The Black Album.

As such, that's why we're here - to discuss the anniversary of a record that has yet to be matched in the annals of metal's history.  What does The Black Album mean to you, and what comes to mind first when you think of it?

CHRIS C: The first thing that comes to mind when I think of The Black Album is thinking I was going to break my neck. Let me explain that, because it ties in with what you were saying about the album's unique power. In the early ‘90s, I had a neighbor with one of those oversize trampolines. There would usually be an album playing as we bounced around, and as I was figuring out whether or not I could pull off a backflip (eventually, yes), The Black Album was one of the handful of albums we listened to most often.

That I can tell such a story is why we're talking about this album. At the time, I didn't know the first thing about metal, and neither did my neighbor. What we knew was "Enter Sandman" and "Sad But True" were all over the airwaves, and we liked what we heard. Metallica was able to infiltrate the mainstream by not being stubborn, by realizing that having more people listening to your music doesn't say anything about your character. In a scene where so many were obsessed with maintaining their image and their 'cred', Metallica wanted to be the biggest band in the world, or at least get their music to as many people as they could. Somehow, the latter of those claims rang heretical to some of the metal scene.

What The Black Album means to me is an entire side of my musical personality. I trace back my fandom of heavier rock and metal to a particular episode where I sat in on a friend's college radio show and heard a song that changed everything. That isn't a false memory, but I was primed to get there because of Metallica. Those times absorbing the music in the background tied the neurons together I would need later on. Even the act of having a copy on my shelf for the last twenty-five years or more made metal a possibility even when I wasn't actively thinking about it.

So if I wouldn't be who I am without Metallica, I can look back now and say it was only possible with The Black Album. "Master Of Puppets" would not have had the same effect, because whether you like Bob Rock or not, and we'll get around to discussing him later on, it was with this album that the keys to songwriting were discovered. And that's what I think about first and foremost now when it comes to the album; would metal have ever developed the kind of songwriting I enjoy most if not for Bob Rock being able to guide Metallica to where they wanted to go?

I've said before, and I've heard the same sentiment from more knowledgeable people, that it's harder to write a simple and memorable song than it is to write something complicated. For as exciting as metal was in the 80s, we weren't seeing a lot of great songs, from a compositional standpoint, that is to say. For as much as I love "Angel Of Death" or "Raining Blood", it's not as if you could sit down and casually play a Slayer song. You could with most of the songs on The Black Album.

Metallica set the standard for metal success, but also metal songwriting, and metal production as well. The Black Album is the blueprint by which the entire genre elevated itself, and it's still being used in all three settings as the standard we judge everything by. Think about that. Black Sabbath is no longer the standard of heavy. Slayer is no longer the standard of extreme. But The Black Album is still the standard of metal speaking to the masses. That's impressive. Whether or not it should be those things is what we have to figure out.

D.M: A brief sidebar, if you'll allow it, since you mentioned your transformative experience with the trampoline and The Black Album - I was recently in a conversation where someone was asking me what musicians influenced my musical tastes and formed the basis of my music fandom today, and my interlocutor started laughing when I said MC Hammer - but it's true!  Without "Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'em" and "Too Legit To Quit," I don't know how or when or in what condition I would have been introduced into rap, and established that it was an art form I like.

Anyway...

On top of everything you've pointed out above, a lot of which we'll dissect in greater detail, particularly the production, there are two other points which feel notable to me and suitable to the conversation.

First off, and maybe the production is part of this - but I have always found it fascinating that The Black Album managed to outshine all of its contemporary releases - with the exception of perhaps Nirvana's "Nevermind," which has also sold roughly thirty million copies.  Even with that, The Black Album boasted more radio singles than any album of the era I can think of, with the exception of Soundgarden's "Superunknown," and what makes that even more remarkable is that that latter album came two years later, and The Black Album was still going strong in radio play.  It almost seems like Metallica's release happened in a parallel reality to the dominance of the grunge era - the two are almost never mentioned in the same breath, and yet while the grunge era is the ultimate musical impression of the early part of the '90s, Metallica ran counter to all of that. Their album thrived on glossy production and clean guitars and slick presentation...not a stitch of flannel in sight.  

Now sure, it's easy enough to point to Public Enemy or Madonna or, well, MC Hammer as other artists who found great success in the grunge era, and many of them have greater staying power than the flame of grunge, which burned brightly but quickly.  But what makes Metallica's record stand out from that pack is that it happened in, for all intents and purposes, the same genre as Nirvana and Soundgarden and Alice in Chains, and just kept setting the pace among them all.

Now to do that, and this brings me to my second point, Metallica re-invented themselves, and while we'll spend a lot of time talking about the musical end of that, there was a thematic element to that as well.  Thrash had come of age in many ways as protest music during the Cold War era, and by the time The Black Album is released in August of 1991, the Berlin Wall had already come down and the end of the Soviet Union was imminent.  

So suddenly, the entire genre found itself missing a huge piece of its formative identity (except for Slayer, who had always done things by their own rules, and thus stuck to their thematic guns,) and in response to that, Metallica releases an album which artistically questions the end of their world as they knew it and also, probably accidentally, set the tone for the entire genre for the next three decades.  Nearly every song on The Black Album, except for the catchy but somewhat clunky "Don't Tread on Me," is about the journey of the individual, and their place in new, unfamiliar surroundings.  A world they don't yet understand.  Grunge had some of this, too, but was focused more on the suppressed rage of a generation raised under the thumb of nuclear threat and the legacy of the Vietnam Conflict.  Metallica was bothering to ask the follow up question - "what do we do now?"

Since this time, the common themes of heavy music have turned inward, becoming more an examination of the inner workings of the mind and mental faculty, but it was Metallica who first focused on the plight of the individual at all.  Looking at the purely metal releases around the same time, The Black Album is the only one to really do so.  Not "Seasons In The Abyss," not "King of the Kill," not even "Cowboys From Hell."

And so beyond just the musical shift and production legacy of The Black Album, it broke ground in ways that I don't think people even realized at the time.

CHRIS C: The stories of how we wind up where we are, listening to what we listen to, can be fascinating. If we didn't have the radio on at a certain moment in time, or if we didn't see a friend use a lyric as an AIM away message (dating ourselves here), or we didn't randomly read a certain review, what would we be listening to? Those all pointed me in directions.

I think Metallica avoided the grunge period because they were running on a parallel track. They were absolutely not a grunge band, but you could listen to "Sad But True" back-to-back with "Man In The Box", and they went together. Though they weren't wearing flannel or being dour in the same way, Metallica's ‘90s records were still tapping into the same sensibility. That actually ties into where you ended up. That sensibility comes from Metallica's first-person writing. If grunge was largely thought of as the sound of personal misery, Metallica was also writing about the personal experience. They were less miserable, and looking more for the way to get out of those downward spirals (pun only partially intended), but the zeitgeist of the day absolutely carried through. A lot of the country was looking for the answer of what came after the turmoil of the 80s, as we entered the relative peace and prosperity of the 90s, and that's what both grunge and Metallica were trying to answer.

It may have been unintentional, but it speaks to how Metallica was always smarter than other metal bands. Go all the way back to the beginning, and look at the decisions that were made. They dumped Dave Mustaine, a smart decision. They didn't force the issue to call the album "Metal Up Your Ass", a smart decision. They re-wrote "The Mechanix" into the deeper and more sophisticated "The Four Horsemen", a brilliant decision. For a band that was called 'Alcoholica', they were cagey and wily beyond their metal image. They have a song titled after the monster from HP Lovecraft's pulp horror fiction, after all. You had metal bands still trying to write about partying, and others writing about wanting to punch people, while Metallica realized neither of those was ever going to age well with their audience.

Their reinventions were also a byproduct of their intelligence. Ok, "St Anger" wasn't, but we'll ignore that one. Their other shifts, whether minor or major, were always in search of what else they could add to their repertoire. After they made "Master Of Puppets", which was pretty much the same album as "Ride The Lightning", they knew the audience would get bored if they kept doing that. After "And Justice For All", they were smart enough to know there was nowhere else for them to take their music to metal extremes, and they also knew they had maximized their audience with that sound. They saw things first that other bands would need to see Metallica do to understand.

Which brings me to The Black Album itself, and Bob Rock's influence. Let's get this out of the way early; Bob Rock didn't ruin Metallica. They were going down that route anyway, and all Bob did was show them how to do it in a way that didn't suck. We've talked about 

songwriting before, and Metallica is a great illustration of my larger point; writing a concise song that speaks to people is far harder than writing a progressive song with no hook. Some of the stuff on "Justice", when the songs are riff after riff after riff, are actually easy to write. What is hard is to write that one riff that needs no others, or that vocal line the casual fan will remember even when they weren't paying full attention. Bob Rock helped point them in that direction.

Bob Rock also gave Metallica the sound that would define the 90s, and is still felt today. I will let you handle that issue first, if you would like to, but I will tee it up by saying this; after hearing the remastered version of "Enter Sandman" that was previewed from the anniversary edition of the album, the sound is actually incredibly dated. I hadn't noticed it as much before, but hearing the new master just once showed me just how much I don't like how a lot of The Black Album actually sounds, despite its legendary reputation.

D.M:  I'm glad you brought up the sound of the '90s, because that dovetails nicely into something that I think hovers over this entire conversation.  Metallica's idiomatic shift to a new sound in 1991 was, as you demonstrated, a necessary part of their continued evolution and viability, but it also was representative of their intelligence about the emerging sounds of the decade in front of them.

What people always recall about the abrupt transition to the explosive, emotive fury of grunge is that it overthrew what had been the previously unassailable fortress of hair metal, which had dominated the airways since the end of what would become known as the classic rock era.  Grunge perhaps deserves the lion's share of the credit for hair metal's demise, but beneath the waves, Metallica deserves some credit for, in all, likelihood, seeing the cracks that had already formed in the foundation.  

Seen in individual moments, David Geffen would bring Nirvana over from Sup Pop Records and force the evolution of 'alternative' radio in 1991, but four years prior to that, he had already seen the kernel of what was to come when he brought the world Guns 'n' Roses' "Appetite for Destruction."  GnR still obviously possessed some of the glam of their forebears, but the sound and the attitude was new and brash and different.  Two years later, out of that same Los Angeles blast furnace, Nine Inch Nails puts out "Pretty Hate Machine," and successfully moves electronic music away from the shadow of disco and available to a new, harder audience.  Then, a year after NIN, Pantera, also in a reinvention, comes out with "Cowboys from Hell."  Those are hardly the only three albums that are germane to this conversation, but you see what I'm getting at.  The musical landscape was already starting to shift before grunge and before The Black Album, but where Metallica was brilliant was in recognizing and capitalizing on it.

And yes, I recognize that the term "capitalizing" is a charged word when talking about Metallica.

I am going to admit something that no music journalist, even if I can barely lay claim to that term, should ever admit, which is that I've never been someone who can make great distinctions in album sound beyond "this sounds great" and "this sounds awful."  I have always sort of assumed, with the exception of old punk records that all sound like they were recorded in the back of a garbage truck, that the sound of an album reflected the intent of the artist.  So, I've never had a particular issue with The Black Album on that regard, although I recognize that it is a totally separate sound from everything Metallica had done before.  I am willing to admit the duality that I think to some regard I treat Metallica as two different bands, with The Black Album as the debut of Metallica 2.0, and also that I idly wonder what The Black Album would sound like, and how it would have been received, if everything about the songwriting were the same, but the guitar tone had been more representative of the one from "Kill 'em All."

Can we talk about "Enter Sandman" for a second?  What made that the most famous single from the album?  I took an informal poll of co-workers a couple years back, and what I found, perhaps predictably, was that people who did not identify as metal fans, but liked Metallica, all picked "Enter Sandman" as their favorite song, while the metal fans almost always picked something from either "Master of Puppets" or "Ride the Lightning."  (There was one metal fan whose favorite Metallica song was from "Death Magnetic," which I applauded as a bold choice, as that album is underrated in Metallica circles overall.)

Now, some of this probably comes from oversaturation, but if I am listening to The Black Album, I rarely get through the whole thing of "Enter Sandman."  I mean, the intro is cool, but the actual meat of the song is merely okay to me.  If you were asking me to rate the songs on the record, I would have it as the seventh best song on the album, just below "Holier Than Thou" and ahead of "Of Wolf and Man."

And since that begs the question:

1 - Wherever I May Roam
2 - Through the Never
3 - The God That Failed
4 - Sad But true
5 - The Struggle Within
6 - Holier Than Thou
7 - Enter Sandman
8 - Of Wolf and Man
9 - Don't Tread on Me
--end of the songs I actually like --
10 - My Friend of Misery
11 - Nothing Else Matters
12 - The Unforgiven

So, anyway - you're a songwriter.  What makes "Enter Sandman" work?

CHRIS C: You're absolutely right that while "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was the moment when the water finally came over the deck and sank hair metal, the boat started going down when "Appetite For Destruction" hit. It's hard to believe now, given how little anyone has paid any attention or care to Guns in thirty years, but they were arguably the biggest band in the world from their breakout until Slash left. You can't have a band be that big, that ubiquitous, and not have an impact on the larger music scene. I'm not saying Nirvana wouldn't have broken through the way they did if Guns N Roses hadn't come first, but they made it far easier. We were already primed to accept a grittier, more 'real' version of rock n roll. It's actually a bit of a surprise that happened, since with the Cold War ending, you would think we would be in a happier place, and looking for music more like the hair metal that was being replaced. But things were reversed from expectations, maybe because we have a nagging thought in our head we're not supposed to feel that good, so we tried to keep ourselves on an even keel, first with happier music when things looked bad, and then with more angry music when things were better. That's an intriguing idea.

I'm not exactly an audiophile either, but I've played around with recording enough to pick up a bit of an ear for certain things. My ear can't tell you what key a song is in for the life of me, but I can hear the tricks of the trade of production pretty clearly (I can also say virtually all CGI in movies still looks fake). I totally get why The Black Album has been treated as a benchmark in production circles. It does sound great when you compare it to a lot of the records that were coming out at the time. Metal production during the ‘80s was, let's be frank, lousy. Between the adjustment period to CDs, and the underground nature of the music, metal albums from that time mostly sound thin and brittle. The Black Album was a massive sound if you played it back-to-back with anything of the time.

Sound is definitely important. Why did "Reign In Blood" break Slayer out? Was it really worlds better than "Hell Awaits"? Probably not, but just listen to that record. The production of the record stripped away the reverb, and put everything right in your face. In a different way, The Black Album did the same thing. It took Metallica's sound and presented to you on record the scope of an arena show. They sounded like superstars, which helps us to think of them that way. It's no surprise that the biggest records of all time are almost always expertly produced. The Black Album was, "Back In Black" sounds phenomenal, "Nevermind" is the most polished thing Nirvana ever did, "Appetite For Destruction" also sounds great. We might not always be able to put our finger on it as easily as, say, when Baroness releases two albums so garbled they become unlistenable, but there is a subliminal draw to great production that leads us to consider those albums better.

To answer your question more directly, if The Black Album had the raw production of Metallica's early days, there's no way we would be sitting here having this conversation. The album still would have sold, and it would have had a few hits on it, but they would never have been so massive, because the mainstream audience that made Metallica the biggest band going wouldn't have been as interested in repeatedly listening to an abrasive record. Hell, even I never listen to "Kill Em All", because I find it too unpleasant to bother with. Sneaky amazing production; Black Sabbath's "Heaven & Hell". Listen to how clear and balanced that record sounds, and realize it came out eleven years before what we're talking about. Damn.

Why "Enter Sandman" is THE hit song is an easy one to answer. It comes down to two main things (there's also the nursery rhyme bit already being in a lot of people's heads, but that's minor); hummability and the hook. Let's start with the latter. The chorus of the song is so simple, it's easy for people to sing along with. You can hear it once or twice and get it, and then everyone at a show can raise their voice and sing along with Hetfield when it's the right time. That kind of interactivity is important. The hardcore fans do it with "Master Of Puppets", but a lot of those earlier songs are far harder to sing in unison, and require more listening to fully grasp. You can go to a karaoke bar and sing "Enter Sandman". You can't really do that with "One".

But the biggest factor is the riff. It's weird to hear me saying that, since I'm a vocals guy, but it's true. That riff is one of the handful of greatest in metal history, because it simultaneously hits on the two things that it needs to do; be hummable and establish a groove. The most iconic riffs of all time have those qualities to them. They are usually simple, and they have an internal melody you can hum to yourself, or to a friend when you're trying to remember where it came from. You can sing the riff from "Enter Sandman", you can sing the riff from "Sad But True", you can sing the riff from "Wherever I May Roam". As much as I too like "Through The Never", you can't really sing that riff. Nor can you really sing "Holier Than Though" or "Don't Tread On Me". It's not a surprise at all why the big singles were what they were. Most listeners don't have either the knowledge or the attention to digest complicated musical structures, so anything with too many notes or too much speed goes over their heads. "Enter Sandman" has a simple hook to the riff, and it also has a groove. You can sing it at the same time you band your head to it. That makes it the perfect riff to lure in people who aren't already into metal. There's a reason they basically re-wrote the song again as "King Nothing". It worked.

I won't bother ranking the entire album, but I'll more or less agree with your list there. I'll have "Enter Sandman" much higher, but I'm in total agreement "Wherever I May Roam" is the best song here. That reminds me I don't think I ever learned how to play that riff, which I'll have to correct.

So now I'll ask the big question; Would Metallica have been better off in your esteem, not in commercial success, if The Black Album had never happened? If Metallica 2.0 never existed (I would say there's also Metallica 3.0 - the current day where they have given up on being forward thinking, and are happy to try and recapture their old spirit), would you like them more or less? My answer is simple, and you already know it, so I won't draw things out. I'm not much of a fan of the first four records, even if I can appreciate "Ride The Lightning" and "Master Of Puppets" for their greatness. I'm also not much of a fan of "Load" and "Reload" outside of the singles, so Metallica is mostly The Black Album for me.

D.M: A brief, meaningless aside, as we start to turn this to a conclusion.  I don't think I have ever been to a gentleman's club (not that I've been to a lot, but I've been to my share of bachelor parties,) without hearing "Sad But True."  Which is weird, right?  I mean, sure it's got a grindy rhythm and heavy downbeat that lends itself to that...activity, but it's not the kind of song you'd normally associate with...that.  I'm going to stop talking about this now.

The more I read your argument, the more I think that part of the reason I like "Through the Never" so much could be because it's the track on The Black Album that sounds most like Metallica 1.0.  Which leads me to a larger personal point, and this is where my personal tastes and objective analysis divide, which is that I think my lines of Metallica's different eras are probably drawn differently than the general populace.  I understand that intellectually, the first four albums mark one phase, then the next four a second, and he last two a third.  For me though, because of the age I am, The Black Album was my introduction to Metallica, so I generally mark off the first five as a single era.  Plus, it feels disingenuous to associate The Black Album with "St. Anger" in any capacity, for reasons that aren't entirely clear other than that the latter album was an abomination.

And so long as we're here discussing counter-intuitive points, if you were to ask me to make a list of which five Metallica albums were the best, I would have an easy five...but not the same ones as conventional wisdom would suggest.  For me, "Justice" was never the achievement that others see it as - it has great moments, but it over all too thin and too wandering to hold my patience.  So, take the first three, then The Black Album, and then "Death Magnetic," and now you have something.  The last of those is an important piece of the puzzle which is too often discarded.  The return to previous form, but combined with the catchy ethos and success of the 2.0 years, combined in some ways to provide us with a version of the band we've never heard before, backed by the peerless directive hand of Rick Rubin.

Anyway, none of that is what you asked - which is a two part question, since it links into the legacy of The Black Album, which can't be understated.  And I'll actually deal with that part first.  Metallica was solidified in the greater consciousness by The Black Album, perhaps the single most titanic rock album of the '90s, with only "Nevermind" even worthy of the conversation.  It's also the album that cemented Metallica's place on one of the thrones of metal, with only Black Sabbath as their peer.  Taking those two things into account, it's hard to argue that Metallica would have been better off if they had never made the decision to trend in a completely different direction following "...And Justice For All."  But more than that, I don't know what heavy music would be like in the absence of that single, transcendent effort.  Would we have been ready for Rage Against the Machine in 1992?  Maybe - rap had made some other inroads in the metal community (Body Count comes to mind,) but again, it's possible The Black Album made us ready to accept new ideas we hadn't considered.  Would Pantera have found equally soft footing for "Vulgar Display of Power"?  Would the John Bush era of Anthrax have found any footing at all (who by the way, did exactly what Metallica did, but on a smaller scale, and they take no criticism for it.)  Would Helmet have had a career?  Even Soundgarden, titans of the grunge movement, probably owe some of the success of "Superunknown" to the accessibility of The Black Album.  Even Godsmack, all those years later, borrowed some tenets of Metallica.  And of course, they can't all be wins - is it possible that the reach of the album had such long consequences that it ultimately gave rise to the post-grunge alternative movement, and thus helped spawn both Creed and Nickelback?  Sure, that's on the table.  But legacy is about impact in all directions, not just those we find most palatable.

As for the second part of the question, as it pertains to the band itself, this feels like a permutation of a conversation that you and I have had before - that of creative energy and innovation.  Let's say The Black Album never happened - what would the band have done?  How many more thrash albums did they have in them?  "Justice" had already swollen to the seams with something resembling thrash-prog, and on the heels of "Master of Puppets," the band was clearly headed in that direction already.  Would fans have accepted another album in that same stripe?  Even if they had, there's no way that it would have landed with the same impact and gravitas of the album they made instead.  A change was in the wings if the band was to survive and continue - to some degree, whether or not that change made them commercially successful was secondary to the necessity of it happening.  As we saw, in the gap between "Justice" and "Death Magnetic," it took twenty years for Metallica to rediscover that form.  

As a closing thought, Henry Rollins once said of Sting that we could sell out a show wherever there was electricity, and he could plug in.  Metallica is in that lofty stratum.  And they are there because of The Black Album.  Hard to argue that the band would be better off without it, despite the protestations of some of their hardcore fans who felt betrayed.

CHRIS C: The more I think about it too, the more I could also make the case Metallica never actually deviated into a Version 2.0. Here's what I mean; the same restless mindset of the first four records led to The Black Album, so that doesn't have to mark the start of a new phase. "Load" was actually more creative and experimental than we might remember, since no one still listens to it, so that doesn't have to be the time either. "Reload" is actually in the same spirit as how "Lightning" and "Puppets" are incredibly similar. So perhaps where we actually draw the line is with "Death Magnetic", where for the first time Metallica doesn't feel like they're moving forward. That record is certainly worthwhile, like you said, albeit in need of some serious editing. "All Nightmare Long" is one of their best songs, but has at least five too many sections in it.

I really don't think we would have been ready for all those other bands in the ‘90s without The Black Album. When "Enter Sandman" became such a hit, that was the first time metal in the mainstream was both popular and serious. Whether it was "Come On Feel The Noise", or "You've Got Another Thing Comin'", metal wasn't what metal would be until Metallica changed the mainstream view.

Without The Black Album, we get to the psychological divide yet again. Do we want more of the same, or do we want something familiar yet new? Metallica never would have grown into the behemoth they are if they kept being a thrash band. Like you said, there wasn't room to grow any further, and two or three more records of the same style would lead to diminishing returns. It always does. As much as Slayer fans take pride in how that band stayed in the same lane for their entire career, Slayer is less interesting for that very fact. You can have long conversations about each and every Metallica album, and they all have a story to tell. You can't do that with Slayer. There's nothing to say about any of the records after "Diabolus In Musica" that you can't say about the earlier records.... that isn't an insult.

So here's my closing thought; The Black Album has been controversial for thirty years, and that's part of the beauty of it. Perhaps the biggest sin music can commit is being boring, and Metallica has never been that. Whether you like The Black Album or not, everyone has an opinion, and it still remains one of the biggest cultural touchstones in metal. That is remarkable.

"King Of America" Has Reigned For Thirty-Five Years

Simplicity is a virtue.

That can be hard to keep in mind living in a world of excess, but sometimes the most daring thing we can do is to strip away all pretenses, all bells and whistles, and let the pure and raw reality stand on its own. We have spent centuries coming up with new ways of masking the world as it truly exists, slapping coats of paint, makeup, and autotune on all our creations to make them appear as something more than they are. More is better, or at least that's what we are constantly being told. But what if that's not the truth?

In 1986, Elvis Costello had already done nearly everything he could. He had explored so much sonic territory over his early run of classic records there wasn't much room left for him to move into. With the power of The Attractions, they were a hard-hitting new wave punk band, a retro soul outfit, a pub rock group, all the while dabbling in mature songcraft and even old-fashioned torch songs. At just 32 years old, Elvis Costello had burned through so many layers of sound he was ready for a break.

The radical experiment he embarked on resulted in "King Of America", a record which celebrated its thrity-fifth anniversary this year, though it sounds even older than that. Elvis came to America, he worked with members of Elvis Presley's old band, and he largely took up the cause of radical minimalism.

"King Of America" is a crucial record in my own life, because it taught me lessons about what makes a great song. Often we will hear a song with layers of guitars, or keyboards, and we get caught up in some of the details of a lush production. It takes time to realize those things are nice, but they are unimportant. The sound of a recording is the polish that obscures whether the nails have been chewed down to nubs. What is truly important is what lies underneath, whether the bones of a song are strong enough to last forever, or if they are so brittle they dissolve if you shine a light upon them.

Through most of the record, The Confederates support Elvis with bare-bones instrumentation. Often, you can only hear Elvis voice, his acoustic guitar, and the rhythmic clap of the snare drum. Like one of the one-light small towns these songs could be about, we can imagine this record being recorded with the band huddled around one microphone, necessitating Elvis being put front-and-center. These songs are entirely about his poetry and vocals, with everyone else there to do the minimum required to make the songs fleshed out enough. If it was a solo record of just Elvis's voice and guitar, we would lose very little. That's why it's genius.

With the sound stripped to almost nothing, there is no hiding Elvis' country influences, or his penchant for betraying his sincerity with a pun or a joke he couldn't resist. Whether that's him singing "she said she was working for the ABC News, it was as much of the alphabet as she knew how to use," in "Brilliant Mistake", or "she's so contrary, like a chainsaw running through a dictionary," in "Our Little Angel", Elvis is always a bit of an asshole. That's never more apparent than when he ruins some people's childhoods with his rendition of "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood", singing the sunny pop tune with a ragged voice that exposes a different side of the lyric.

And the lyrics; Elvis has written myriad clever songs, but I don't know if he ever wrote a better album of them than this one. "Indoor Fireworks" is a painful ode to the ugly side of passion, and the lines in the third verse, "I'll build a bonfire of my dreams and burn a broken effigy of me and you," say so much with a single image. That is Elvis at his absolute best, and those words would have lost their power if Steve Nieve's fingers were dancing over the keys while they were sung.

Similarly, the imagery when Elvis sings, "if they had a King Of Fools then I could wear that crown, and you can all die laughing because I'll wear it proudly," is beyond most popular songwriters. But perhaps no line sums everything up as does, "I don't speak any English, just American without tears." Elvis rips open the divide between his side of the ocean and ours, revealing how even with a shared language, even when he adopts the sounds of America, we don't ever quite understand each other.

"King Of America" is a beautiful reminder of what songwriting is. Songwriting isn't about making sounds, it's about using your voice to say things that need poetry or a lyrical lilt, things we struggle to put into conversation. There's the old adage about a great song being great even if it's played with just a voice and an acoustic guitar. That's essentially what this record is, and it proves the point.

It proved that in 1986, it proves it now thirty-five years later, and it will for as long as the recordings endure. Great songs are great songs regardless, and "King Of America" is filled with them.

Singles Roundup: Guns N Roses, Soen, Lucifer, Fozzy, & Journey

Today is another day where I feel like taking a few minutes to talk about some individual songs, since there might just be a lot to say about this crop.

Guns N Roses - Absurd

After nearly thirty years, we get the first Guns N Roses song with both Axl and Slash on board, and it.... absolutely sucks. Sure, it's a reworked version of a horrible "Chinese Democracy" era song, but that everyone involved in Guns as both a band and a business saw fit to make this the first new music we hear from the reunited lineup is a decision I cannot fathom. It's a song from the band's least popular period of time. It's a song that doesn't sound like anything Slash would have ever written himself. It's a song that doesn't even have a damn chorus. There's no knowing how old the vocal track is, but whenever it was recorded, Axl still sounds like the hollow voice that replaced his classic rasp. Slash is only there for a solo. The riff of the song is boring, the lyrics are Axl throwing around f-bombs because he still thinks 1992 edgy is going to get him attention, and there isn't a catchy bit to be found anywhere. This song isn't even bad in an interesting way. Maybe they shouldn't try to make a new record, after all. Not if they think this is good enough to release.

Soen – EMDR/Thurifer

This summer, Soen is releasing three tracks from the "Lotus" sessions as part of a special edition of the album, and the first two are now available online. That won Album Of The Year from me, and as great as it is, these songs could have made it even better. The ballads on the album are good, but perhaps slow things down a hair too much. These songs have a wonderful balance of their trademark riffing with slower and more dramatic moments. Even the material Soen was cutting from their recent albums is fantastic. I listened to a playlist of the best "Lotus" songs, paired with these tracks, and it's an epic experience that is almost without compare. And there's still another song yet to come.

Lucifer – Wild Hearses

I like Lucifer. I don't love them, but they have a unique sound that can do some amazing things. Lucifer III was their best album yet, because it dialed back on the doom elements, and instead focused on their stoner/occult melodic rock. This song feels like them trying to bridge their two sounds. The main riff is doomy, and the crawling verses could use more pep. When they hit the chorus, Johanna's vocals hit that detached tone that is perfect for Lucifer. The song is both proof Lucifer is great, but also a bit misguided. We'll have to wait and see which one wins out on the record.

Fozzy – Sane

Fozzy has had a few songs that are good, but let's be honest about them; if they weren't fronted by a 'celebrity', they wouldn't have the success they do. They've never made a great record, they only have one truly good single, and Jericho's voice leaves a whole world to be desired. This latest single is Fozzy doing the least they can, knowing it doesn't matter. They have enough of a name now that all their singles will get a certain amount of airplay, and this one will test that theory. It's a song, I suppose. I can't say any more than that.

Journey – The Way We Used To Be

For as much as we often complain that old bands often don't bother making new albums anymore, there are sometimes good reasons why they don't. That's what Journey is proving to us with their first new song in years. This doesn't even sound like the same band that gave us "Don't Stop Belivin'", "Faithfully", and "Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)". Whatever songwriting magic created those gems is gone, and so too is their hearing if they thought this was the best thing they have written to put out as a single. It doesn't grab your attention, since there's almost nothing to the song. The melody barely exists, and it sticks in your mind even less than old AM radio static. Ten years, and this is the best Journey could come up with. Maybe they should just stay a nostalgia touring act. Yikes.

Album Review: Night Ranger - ATBPO

I'm not entirely sure why, but a lot of older rock and metal fans don't like to admit that their favorite bands were never as big as they seemed at the time, or they were only big for the wrong reasons. Night Ranger was not big, but they did have one real hit, and that makes people mad. "Sister Christian" is an enduring classic of the 80s, but it's not a rocker, so you hear plenty of people whining that it's all people know about the band. That's just how things work. Of course people who hear a ballad on the radio aren't always going to be interested in hearing that same band playing harder rock stuff on their albums. You have to put up with the more casual fans, but how many of the following Night Ranger albums never would have been made if not for the success of that ballad?

All these years later, Night Ranger is still together, and still putting out records. They seem to be less bothered by their lot in the rock world than a lot of the fans are, so I have respect for them continuing to do what they do, even if they're never going to rise to a higher level again.

This record is full of songs that will go down well on the State Fair concert circuit, assuming the people don't have their heads buried in their phones at the mention of "a new song". Night Ranger is a band of their time, but their 80s styled rock doesn't sounds nearly as dated as a lot of the younger bands who are trying to capture the same spirit. I will say, though, that I get a little taken out of the moment when the chorus to "Bring It All Home To Me" comes around. It starts with "baby, baby, baby", and while there isn't anything unusual about that, I was in the particular frame of mind to wonder why we use that term. Calling your partner 'baby' is creepy, if you really stop and think about what you're saying. Anyway...

There's also "Hard To Make It Easy", where the band is going full-on Think Lizzy, both in the twin guitar harmonies and the vocal lines. It stands out from the rest of the album, and I'm not entirely sure if that's a good thing. It almost doesn't sound like Night Ranger, compared to the other songs. It's one of those experiments you often see bands tack on at the end of an album, where you can easily ignore it, but this one is front-and-center.

Night Ranger is essentially known for one song, and this album explains a lot of the reasons why. There are plenty of good songs, yes, but there isn't any one song that snaps your head back and makes it clear it's a hit in waiting. Also, the album's stylistic diversity can be an asset for many, but it does make it harder to embrace all the various bits that makes up Night Ranger's identity. There isn't one sound that embodies who they are.

When we boil it down, "ATBPO" is a fine album, but it doesn't have many songs on it that rise above the usual 80s rock revivalism. Night Ranger fans will be happy with another album added to the collection, but the rest of us are going to still be a bit confused why Night Ranger is so often held up as a case of a band that deserved so much more. I enjoyed this album just fine, but I don't hear anything more than that.a

Shifting Opinions: Rise Against, The Wallflowers, & Transatlantic

What we don't always remember is that when we give an opinion on something, it is only a marker of what we are feeling at that particular point in time. Especially with music, there is a period of understanding that comes along, where the more we hear a record, the more it can grow on us. Or the more it can sour. The point is that music is not intended to be listened to just once, only to move on to the next thing. We listen to these albums over and over, and seldom do we get the chance to go through all the stages of development before we voice an opinion.

I have become pretty good over the years at being able to form quick judgments that tend to be accurate, which is actually an underrated skill, but every so often I miss the mark. It's inevitable, but what's interesting to me is that I have done so three times this year already, which is more than I would expect. Let's take a moment to explore how this happened.

Rise Against - Nowhere Generation

My initial review of the album was positive, but certain this was a pale imitation of their previous album, "Wolves". With the chance to give the record more spins, the differences between the two records have become more clear. "Nowhere Generation" is a more varied (relatively speaking) album, and it was the slight steps off the straight-and-narrow that originally led me to say it was a lesser record. The more I listened, the deeper the hooks were able to sink their teeth in. So while I still would say this might be a slightly less immediate album than "Wolves", it is not at all lesser. It's an album of tired frustration more than righteous anger, and now that I see that, everything else makes sense.

The Wallflowers - Exit Wounds

You would expect, given the review I wrote, that I might have given up listening to this album. My disappointment was all I could think about in the moment, and that has long since evaporated. I do believe my commentary on the form of the songwriting is still accurate, but not as important now, because the songs have blossomed regardless of the form they take. The writing is indeed a bit more subtle than some previous records, and a lot of what I wind up listening to these days, so it took more time for the petals to open up. Now, I can hear the tones of classic Wallflowers records, albeit played through the lens of a band older, and perhaps more mature, than before. The trees are there, once I was able to stop seeing the forest. "Exit Wounds" is becoming one of my favorite records of the year.

Transatlantic - The Absolute Universe

I doled out plenty of criticism of this album as well, but that was mostly due to the questionable formatting and decision making process behind it. As for the actual music, I was still incredibly fond of much of what I was hearing, and I was posing the question about whether or not a compiled version could rightly be considered an Album Of The Year contender. We don't have to worry about that anymore. Over the last few months, even as I have eschewed listening to anything but my own version of the record, I have grown increasingly frustrated with what I'm hearing. Even cut down, there is too much wasted space, too many vocals that shouldn't have been given over to lesser voices, and not enough songs I need to hear again. Like the universe, it seems to get darker the further away the edges get.

Album Review: Long Shadows Dawn - Isle Of Wrath

Doogie White has sang with Rainbow, a few of Michael Schenker's projects, and he's the current singer of one version of Alcatrazz. The common thread to everything he's ever been on is that it's..... music. Doogie has a solid voice, but either he is not much of a songwriter himself, or he has been in groups without a great songwriter in their ranks, as everything I've ever heard has been rather boring. So we can start this off by saying I am not excited by the prospect of getting a double dose of Doogie, with this new collaboration coming out now, and an album with Alcatrazz following in a couple of months. All of these musicians in multiple bands need to do a better job of spacing out their releases, because being too present is just as bad as being absent. But I digress.

The idea of this project is to make the sort of music Rainbow was known for in the Joe Lynn Turner days. That aim does give the project needed direction, and it was smart not to aim for the original Rainbow sound, because that wouldn't be possible to capture. Doogie dosn't have Dio's vocal charisma, and Emil Norberg doesn't have the same flair and panache Blackmore did, so sticking to the simpler, more radio friendly version of Rainbow is the best course of action.

Perhaps there is something to be said for making your influences completely obvious. By writing in the style of 80s Rainbow, there's a blueprint already in place that gives these musicians a structure to work off. For being a singer I have always found to have utterly boring melodies, Doogie is much more appealing here than I've ever heard before. The bits of AOR that creep in not only make the album that much more appealing, show a different side of Doogie. Since there would not be a point in having yet another band doing the same thing he always has, I find it interesting how the minor shift leads to more dramatic results.

As the album unfolds, it doesn't have the fire or the energy of a young and hungry band, but it does bear all the hallmarks of a quality, veteran record. It's an album of solid songs that evoke the exact feeling they are shooting for, and I get a feeling of exceeded expectations all throughout. By the halfway point of the record, I'm already declaring this the best record Doogie has been on that I can remember. That phrase is important, actually, since I don't remember much of the others I've heard. That's the problem.

In some respects, I think this album is what the Sunstorm record from earlier in the year was supposed to be. Both have the DNA of Turner-era Rainbow in them, but this album makes that clear, while Sunstorm's talk sounded more like a rationale to explain the changes that were made.

So there are a couple of conclusions to draw from "Isle Of Wrath". One is that Doogie White finally has a project that gives him a proper way to showcase his talents. The other is that if you're going to be doing 80s nostalgia, there are ways to do so that don't horribly date your music. By choosing Hammond organs over artificial synths, you can totally hear the time Long Shadows Dawn is aiming for, but this record doesn't sound like an artifact out of time. I'm sick of the 80s wave, so thank heavens for that.

That means "Isle Of Wrath" is a perfectly enjoyable record.