VK Lynne's Self "Sketch" Shows Us Everything

There's a weird thing about fine art that if the artist is too good at their craft, they render themselves redundant. Those who are able to create hyper-realistic drawings have turned themselves into cameras, and while the skill is fascinating, the end result is little different than if we took a picture instead. Part of art being art is the separation between our creation and the real thing. Our truth is found in the ways we distort reality with our talent.

The same is true of ourselves, where our self-images exist independent of the truth about who we are. I've explained it before as what we see in the mirror being a reflection, an inversion, so we are never able to truly see ourselves from the perspective and in the manner anyone else can see us.

On "Sketch", VK is taking that thought in the direction of a psychological test. A therapist may ask a child to draw a picture of themselves, because sometimes a visual representation can say things we don't have the words for. We pick up our crayons, and we scrawl color across the page, tearing apart rainbows so we may bleed in technicolor. As she points out in the lines, "crayons... only see primary colors... they don't reveal the fine lines, they don't detail the shadows," what a sketch will do is give us the broadest strokes of the outline. We often get lost in the details of our issues, missing that we are painting every emotion with the same shade of blue.

You cannot draw a person. You can draw their image, but that's all it is. No matter how lovely they may be to gaze upon, or what you think the color choices and outlines of tattoos might mean, only the artist knows if the pen traced the idea properly. Even that is a lie, though, as we as artists are as blind to ourselves as anyone else would be.

The moment of clarity when we realize these things is often presented as on film as time slowing down, freezing before our eyes as the flash of inspiration outraces the world into our eyes. I like to think that's the intention as the song reaches its chorus, slowing to a half-time drum beat to emphasize the empty space we are cursed to fill, because the silence lets doubts and fears echo without decay.

Diving into a lyric is a deeper swim, because while words can also fail to capture the breadth and scope of an emotion, they offer us a way of painting with more nuance. A box of crayons may have sixty-four colors, but a busy mind can spin up webs of thousands of words, combining them in ways the hard wax in the wrappers will never blend.

VK sings, "it's time to take the words instead, put this foolish thing into the air, toss it like a dove and hope there's peace our there." Some of us never develop our skills with a crayon or brush, so we are stuck seeing ourselves in the forms we established in childhood. Words grow more naturally, and as we turn in that direction, we can both bare the depths of our souls, as well as stick the dagger precisely in between our own ribs. No one knows how to hurt us more than we know ourselves, and when VK notes how the image she drew and the picture she hangs on the wall are so very different, the need is there to shift from emotion to reason.

It's one thing to write down what will make you happy and check items off the list, another to see a picture of yourself and recognize the smile lines of life's happiness, and yet another to be able to have lived that way enough to see it in your mind and commit it to paper through art. For most of us to draw a smile with our skills, it had to have cut a gaping chasm in our faces. How many of us have been that happy?

Self-image is a bit of a misnomer, because we can never see ourselves as we are, nor can any but the rarest few of us draw our emotional truth. These sketches are an outline, the bleeding color of spotlights we aren't comfortable with. Thanks to music, some of us can learn to embrace that warmth. With the pounding drums behind her, and the pulsing guitars hitting like a manic heartbeat, VK is telling us the best magic trick we can perform is to watch that sketch go up in flames.

If you remember at the end of My Chemical Romance's "The Black Parade" how the album settles into a slower, more resigned tempo, and Gerard sings melodies that are throwing his arms open as if to tell us he's given us everything he's got... that's the spirit "Sketch" has. This is the carriage to the dark side slowing down and waiting for us to hop on board. Who else is ready to see what awaits us once black is the only color left in the sky?

Album Review: Combichrist - "CMBCRST"

One can only speculate at the difficulties of being a band that folds so many sounds into a single whole, and shoulders the boulder of fan expectation that is made more cumbersome by the multiple ridges and sharp points of that self-same rock.  

There stands Combrichrist, an Atlas-ian figure in the industrial scene, who for much of the last decade and a half, have made moves toward accessibility in their music; an ideological shift away from the pure density of industrial that has drawn the expected amount of vacuous ire from the unwashed masses, usually couched in the stigmatic phrase “sold out.”

(Parenthetically, to accuse Combichrist of catering toward a popular audience is outrageously absurd – play their previous album “One Fire,” for your high school guidance counselor and see how it resonates.)

Even the most ardent of industrial purists, upon hearing Combichrist’s newest concoction, “CMBCRST,” should have no choice but to grudgingly admit that the entire paradigm shift they so reviled without cause may have been a learning experience.  Without those steps, it is nigh impossible to consider that “CMBCRST” would exist in the same form, as this new, burning furnace of metal bends the iron of the band back toward their roots, without abandoning all the recent gains.

It feels shallow to simply compare Combichrist at this stage in their careers to tentpole names from the genre, but this record is truly Andy LaPlegua and company becoming the standard bearer for industrial by combining all the successful elements of their contemporaries, while imprinting their own idiomatic maker’s mark on the style.  “CMBCRST” is a synthesis of all things KMFDM, Ministry, PAIN, Fear Factory, Nine Inch Nails and yes, Combichrist.

One need not get father than the album’s second cut, “D For Demonic,” to be reminded of the best ideas that “Nihil”-era KMFDM ever had, complete with, to steal that band’s phrase, the ‘ultra-heavy beat.’  The guitar is insistent and unyielding, the beat compelling and driving, accented with the kind of end licks, sampling and distortion that one would expect from Ministry.  Through it all, LaPlegua’s characteristic growl moves the narrative and ties the song firmly to the bedrock of the band playing it, thus creating a separation from those other bands while simultaneously alloying them.  

There’s more good stuff to come, but right after “D For Demonic” is where this record faces its only complication – there’s a stretch of about six straight forgettable tunes right in the middle of the record.  The staccato digital piercing of “Only Death is Immortal” is an interesting concept, but fades into a generic chorus.  “Northern Path” is a curious interplay of brooding melodrama and metal hammering, but “Bottle of Pain” from the previous album did the same thing better.  And PAIN fans will note that the opening riff of “Through the Ravens Eyes” sounds an awful lot like the opening section of that band’s single “Call Me.” (Sidebar: PAIN has also released an album recently, and we’ll hopefully discuss that next week.)

And then, “Not My Enemy,” and everything that happens from this point forward on “CMBCRST” is, for lack of a more eloquent descriptor, awesome.  Starting with “Not My Enemy,” the vocal cadence and phrasing of the building wave is catchy and uniquely constructed, never mind that the backbone of this song is a pure industrial beat of the highest order.  It’s quite a feat to combine a true and authentic metal breakdown with a hammering digital beat, what sounds like a drunken Speak & Spell, and also find time by merely saying “all eyes on me” to invoke fine memories of Tupac, but here we are!  There’s a lot of great stuff on “CMBCRST,” but this song is the crown jewel.

The album’s other single “Planet Doom” is novel for all the inspiration it takes from Italian horror soundtracks, combining that aesthetic with a gang chorus, a heavy-handed cymbal beat and a tempo that never allows the track to linger.  The album closes with the punchy and anthemic “Violence Solves Everything” a fitting coda to an album that tries to prove that point for almost an hour.

“One Fire” was a great album, a metal coming-of-age for an industrial band that was completing an evolutionary arc.  “CMBCRST” takes everything learned from that record, and indeed all the steps it took to get there, and synthesizes them into this new whole, using both the novel and familiar to create a record that, if perhaps a few cuts too long, still sets a high bar for any artist who aims to make a statement in the genre.  It is a worthy achievement.

My Favorite Bands/Artists Of All Time

There are a few standard questions you get asked when talking about music. What are your favorite songs? What are your favorite albums? Who are your favorite artists?

That last one has always given me a bit of trouble. For whatever reason, I don't have a lengthy roster of bands and artists with discographies I dearly love. It's true I often tend to think in terms of albums as opposed to careers, but I do that because of how often albums are preceded or followed by others I don't care for in the same way. To love an artist, they need to go above and beyond just having one or two albums that have spoken to me. It's a deeper, and longer lasting connection, and it isn't one I have with very many.

I will never be one of those people who can make a 'top fifty' bands list, because I can't lie to you and say I have deep affection for that many of them, as whole entities. Perhaps I set my bar too high, but that's where it resides, and I'm going to work with it.

With that being said, in no particular order, here are those I would call me absolute favorites.

Tonic: It has been more than twenty years since I would have first declared Tonic to be my favorite band. They are one of the three on this list who are essential to who I consider myself to be, and they are the only band where I can put on any of their records and be just as happy. "Lemon Parade" may no longer be my favorite album ever, but it's immeasurable how much Tonic's music has meant to me. I have been struggling lately with whether or not they are still my favorite band, but they will always be one of the most important. They are as close to perfect as any band has ever gotten.

Meat Loaf: As I have said many times, I might not have ever become a music fan if I didn't hear "I'd Do Anything For Love" on the radio. His voice, and Jim Steinman's songwriting, made me fall in love with music. Meat had his ups and downs, and there are a handful of records I try to pretend don't exist, but I can't describe what great Meat Loaf music makes me feel. I don't know who I would be without those records, and there's something about them that acts like a reset button, putting things right when I don't know what else will work.

Dilana: Love at first hearing doesn't have the same ring to it as first sight, but it's just as powerful a reaction, and it's the one I had with Dilana. I didn't need to know anything more than that voice to feel a rope being tied around my heart, and the slack has only been shortened as it gets pulled in with each passing year. When I complain about words not being capable of expressing the depth of a feeling, I am referring to experiences like this. I can say her voice resonates at the same frequency as my soul, but does even that say enough? She is the voice of conscience, love, and god, all echoing together.

Jimmy Eat World: As I get older, I realize mood swings are more shades of gray than they are different ends of the rainbow. Jimmy Eat World's music can be bright and shiny, or dark and heavy, but it always comes with a tone of melancholy I find myself living in. Like a little black dress goes with everything, so does Jimmy Eat World's tone. It might be the closest reflection of my mental state of any band, which explains why I find myself listening to them as often as I have in recent times.

The Wallflowers: As I have said before, there is an entire side to myself I may never have discovered without the "Breach" record. I don't know if I had ever given any consideration to poetry before, but Jakob Dylan's words sparked something inside me. As a lyricist, he is who I find the most inspiration in, even to this day. "Some flowers just bloom dead," he may have written, but Wallflowers are always in season.

Dave Matthews Band: When I talk about how important mood is, few things are better explanations than "The Lillywhite Sessions". The songs don't talk about issues that resonate with me, nor with words that particularly do, but there is a looming, pervasive sense of depression that seeps through every note of the record. That is something I connect with as much as I do the wonderful melodies. That worn out feeling is present more often than I remembered across the discography, and it's actually the last two records that have stoked the fires within me. Aging, eh?

Elvis Costello: I own more Elvis Costello albums than anyone else in my collection. He is a volume scorer, but despite the shooting percentage, the highlights are there and hard to turn away from. I learned a lot about songwriting listening to "King Of America", and the rest of his career has taught me lessons about the merits and the dangers of experimentation. When I thought myself to be an 'angry young man' (though I wasn't), early Elvis fed into that image. He matured, as we all do, and that has given his music the ability to be seen through more facets. Just like a diamond, eh?

Halestorm: Outside of the music I encountered in my formative years, nothing has made as much of an impression as Lzzy Hale's voice. She echoes in the spaces still left empty in me, serving as a reminder the sponge is not yet saturated, and there are still more feelings I can absorb. Having that reminder saves me a lot of internal struggle, and there is something oddly soothing when Lzzy screams the key line of a song at us. Music soothes the savage beast, whichever way around it happens to be working.

Ronnie James Dio: When I want to remember the grandeur and power of rock, there is only one voice that can do the job. "Stargazer", "Gates Of Babylon", "Heaven & Hell", "Fallin' Off The Edge Of The World", "I", and the list goes on. Dio was heavy as a philosophy. I might not be, but there are moments when we need something to convince us we are so we can make it through whatever we face. Dio does that for me, whether it's Rainbow, Sabbath, or a few of his solo band albums. Rock on.

Blues Traveler: "Four" was the first CD I ever owned, and I couldn't begin to count how many times I sat in front of the stereo rambling through the bridge of "Hook". Back then, I had no idea what the song was about, and these days I laugh at just how right it was. John Popper would teach me lessons about prison murder and Cyrano De Bergerac, and whatever form Blues Traveler took from album to album, his voice would often come perilously close to the one in my own head. "Miserable Bastard", from his solo album, is supposed to be an anthem, right?

Edguy/Avantasia: I can trace the exact moment I started to look at metal as a genre to hearing Edguy's "The Headless Game" playing as I sat in on a friend's college radio show. There was something special about Tobias Sammet's songwriting that caught my ear as nothing else heavy really ever had. Little did I know that over the next few years, Tobi would continue writing gem after gem, giving me a vision of a musical future I've been disappointed not to be living in. No one else has ever blended hooks and heaviness as easily, or as well. I'm no metalhead, but Tobi is the one songwriter who makes me at least reconsider before throwing the label away.

Graveyard: Despite my personality, I'm not much of a fan of the blues, or blues rock. Graveyard is the one band that stops time, that makes me understand the way music freezes memories in a form of amber, and that shows me the appeal of the past that is otherwise lost on me. They write simple songs delivered with a raw honesty that strips down the gloss and polish to the bare bones of what makes music so great. It's all about a riff, a melody, and a voice that can carry an emotion. Graveyard, especially on those almost flawless first three records, reminds me that you can scribble changes in every color under the sun, but the blueprint is written in ink for a reason.

Singles Roundup: Charlotte Wessels, Powerwolf, Orden Ogan, & Nightwish

The grab bag was overflowing, so we'll cover a few today, and we'll have plenty more for next week as well.

Charlotte Wessels – The Exorcism

The album doesn't come out until September, but we already have our first taste. I wasn't overly fond of her first solo album and it's off-the-beaten-path approach, but I would much rather listen to that again than endure this song a dozen times, if that's what the album is going to be. Charlotte wants to embrace her heavy side, with an artistic flourish, but I don't think it comes together as a song at all. The harshest bits don't fit with her vocal tone at all, nor do they feel entirely organic with the softer verses. There's a bit of a shoe-horning going on, and the glue that holds experimentation together isn't there; the song. Charlotte doesn't give her voice a solid melody to sing, and that derails the entire effort. It's a list of ideas that might be interesting, but they need to be the color, not the canvas. Man, that entire European symphonic metal scene really never did much for me, did it?

Powerwolf – 1589

With a new album on the horizon, it makes me wonder why Powerwolf put out their last effort, which was a half-and-half mix of new and old songs. It was a fine stopgap, but that's all it was, and now I worry it will further dilute my interest in the full-length. Case in point; this track, which is so Powerwolf there's almost nothing to say about it. Atilla sounds great, the chorus has the typical bounce and sway, and... it's nearly identical to every other up-tempo Powerwolf song. They have mastered a single style so well that everything starts to blend together. The only songs I can pick out from each other are their slower, more epic numbers. I keep waiting for them to lean into that side, but they never do. I enjoy this song like all the others, but it's difficult to say I'm genuinely excited at the prospect of more of the same exact thing.

Orden Ogan – Moon Fire

Speaking of the same exact thing, we have Orden Ogan. They also have found a formula, and they crank out albums with minor lyrical themes to differentiate them. I loved them early on, and have grown more and more disinterested as the albums pile up and I can't tell them apart. This album might be a bit different, at least judging by this song, which is among their weakest ever. It has the right trademarks in the chugging riffs and the layered choirs, but the chorus of this one is lacking any energy at all. I won't say it sounds lazy, but there is no passion, no fire, and it sounds pillowy soft, which cannot be what they wanted. This one is a swing and a miss.

Nightwish - Perfume Of The Timeless

It's always an event when Nightwish releases an album, although I can say I have never once been among those excited. I was easier to explain when Tarja was in the band, but these days it's hard for someone to say they don't think a 'genius' like Tuomas is actually that good of a songwriter. I say even worse things about Arjen Lucassen, but we don't need to get into that right now.

Strike one; it takes over two minutes to get to the first vocal, and that time is not spent building interesting motifs. It's a waste of my time. Strike two; Floor's voice is conspicuously low in the mix. I don't know if I'm alone amongst listeners, but I would rather hear the fantastic singer than the mediocre strings at the front of the mix. The chorus is completely indecipherable because of this. I don't really need a third strike. This song actually has a good hook to it, but those first two strikes make it not nearly enough to justify the bloat of the rest of the song. As a four minute rocker, it would be cool. As an eight minute extravaganza, it tests my patience too much.

Taylor Swift vs The Beatles; Bringing Out The Worst In Music Conversation

Why does making sense have to be so hard?

Recently, The New York Times published an article asking if Taylor Swift is as big as The Beatles. It's a fun topic for debate, but it isn't what I want to talk about today. No, as would be expected, any talk that modern music could be as popular or successful as that of the past brought out many of the same tired voices screaming that music today is inferior in almost every way.

Music professor, producer, and YouTube personality Rick Beato made a video talking about this subject, and used it to continue his long-standing rant against songs written by large numbers of people. He is not along in voicing his distaste for the practice, and I will admit to not always being impressed by what it says about some artists, but there is a very key point Beato either intentionally or subconsciously skips over:

The number of writers doesn't make a flying fuck of a difference to whether or not a song is good.

Do we give more artistic credit to a musician who writes a song entirely on their own? Of course we do, because it is impressive to be the sole creator of an idea. But does it effect the song itself if a dozen other people contributed? No, of course it doesn't.

We don't penalize movie directors for using scripts they didn't write to make their movies. We don't fault authors for having editors who help focus their books. So why would we hold a songwriter in contempt for taking advice and ideas that might make their songs better?

It makes no sense. In fact, it makes as little sense as when many of the same type of critics lost their minds and couldn't stop bitching that Metallica cut their hair, as if you could hear hair gel through the speakers when you put the record on. There are plenty of reasons to dislike "Load", but their hairstyle isn't one of them.

It goes beyond that, though. Going back to the comparison of The Beatles, they don't fit the auteur aesthetic that Beato and the others love to romanticize. McCartney and Lennon routinely worked on each other's songs, serving as co-writers who just so happened to be in the same band. If you're going to argue that getting help from someone in the band is any different as a writer to seeking out an outside co-writer, you're again missing the entire point. Furthermore, in today's climate, George Martin would have had songwriting credit on a sizeable portion of The Beatles catalog. His orchestrations and suggestions were critical to many of the band's biggest songs, and he would certainly be deserving of credit for them if producers were given the same respect in those days they get today.

Do we think any less of The Beatles for not being able to bring all of their ideas to life solely by themselves? Of course not, because that's not what art is. The end result is the only thing that matters, or at least it should be if we're honest about our motivations.

If the songs on Taylor Swift's newest album had their backing tracks created by a producer, how is that any different than George Martin putting "Eleanor Rigby" together for Paul McCartney? It isn't, but so many are incapable of accepting that there is more than one way to make music, and more than one kind of music that will be popular for the rest of time. The Beatles had their day, classic rock had it's day, and today's music is something entirely different. What these people need to learn to accept is that their parents likely were just as critical of the music being held up as the 'good old days' as these people are of today's music. It's a generational blindness we're too stupid (as a society) to ever get past.

So is Taylor Swift bigger than The Beatles? I have no idea, since they exist in entirely different world. The Beatles didn't have the ability to get their music into everyone's ears as easily as Taylor, but she has to compete with the entirety of recorded music history being available at everyone's fingertips. What constitutes success today has almost nothing in common with its historical antecedent.

The better question is to ask if Taylor's success comes on the basis of songs that are as good as The Beatles. There is a fascinating debate to have about that, touching on everything from the trite lyrics of the mop-top days to crossing genre lines as the world got more siloed. We can have that debate, and maybe one day I'll take that on here. What you won't hear from me is any suggestion that Taylor Swift working with other writers somehow speaks to the quality of the songs. Taylor has written great songs with the help of collaborators, while Lennon and McCartney wrote some rather dodgy garbage on their own.

Basically, this whole discussion comes down to one thing; 'serious' music fans who claim to put the music above all the trivial aspects of the business are no better at falling victim to their base preferences as any of the rest of us.

The difference is that at least I'm critical enough to know when I'm talking out of my ass.

Twenty Years, And Nothing Good Has Come From "You Are The Quarry"

I was going to sit own and write about how it's been twenty year since Morrissey released "You Are The Quarry", which was my first foray into the world of his music. But when I started to think about having spent half my life with his voice in my head, I was not filled with nostalgic thoughts about loving an artist and loving music. Sure, I still think that record is very good, and it serves as a soundtrack to a particular period in my life, but it also serves as a cautionary tale.

In both musical and personal terms, Morrissey is a reminder that having hope is often a terrible thing. Yes, I know that is about as cynical a thought as someone can have, and I'm not proud my head has been in that space for as long as it has. I like making the joke that both love and hope are 'four-letter words', but either no one else gets it, or I'm the only one looking at things from the dark side who is able to see the humor.

I was introduced to Morrissey by someone I spent an inordinate amount of time talking with. I was stupid and naive, and got caught up in something I should have known better than to allow. I was flooded with all the works of Morrissey, because apparently my personality was supposed to be in tune with his. Maybe it was, but I quickly figured out Morrissey wasn't actually a poet saying important things, but was the kind of person who thought he was smarter than everyone else because he could simply string a sentence together.

My time with both Morrissey and that person in question had the same trend; a period of getting swept up in something new and exciting, then realizing the connection was tenuous at best, then seeing the thread burn through as gravity pulled the ends apart. Yes, I fully realize that's a more elegant metaphor than anything Morrissey ever wrote in his life, and I dashed it off without even thinking it through. I've already written about Morrissey's lyrical shortcomings, so I don't feel like re-hashing every questionable line on "You Are The Quarry". That would take too long.

What does this have to do with hope?

When you meet a new person, or you find a new record you love, thoughts turn to the future. We think about all the exciting things that can come, how the feelings we have can continue to grow. We want to be optimists and believe the best is yet to come. It rarely is, and setting the bar too high only leads to us falling even further when our hand slips off.

In Morrissey's case, that came in the form of him becoming an intolerable boor. He's the sort of person who is not just an embarrassment to be a fan of, but genuinely makes me cringe. Whether it's his questionable reactionary politics, his insistence on treating his asshole behavior as some sort of crusade for artistic truth, or fighting with everyone who has ever worked with him (hence having at least two records held 'hostage' by a lack of record deal at the moment), it's exhausting to care about this man.

He certainly doesn't make good enough music to make it worth the effort. "You Are The Quarry" is the one time when I would say it is worth it. That record was a comeback effort that had to be Morrissey's best work, and it was. For the first and only time, he focused his writing on structure, and delivered songs that were not only pretentious, but filled with actual melodies. There are enough of them to make us sometimes forget about just how lazy and awful he became as a lyricist.

In my case, nearly everyone I've ever put hope in has led to disappointment. If I'm lucky, they fade away into obscurity the way Morrissey's record sales have. If I'm not lucky, they wind up doing or saying something that utterly crushes me soul. I suppose it's ironic that I get put in the exact position where Morrissey's bitterness should be of great appeal. Neither he nor The Smiths have ever been my go-to when the darkness gets too oppressive.

It's odd to look back at and album and see it as both a great work, but also a moment in time where we didn't know how bad things were going to get. "You Are The Quarry" is harder to listen to now, because we know how things turned out for Morrissey. These last twenty years have made it difficult to see the record as one last gasp of greatness, instead turning it into a cautionary tale of letting your guard down.

All of that is to say you shouldn't expect a more nostalgic look back five or ten years from now, if I'm still putting myself through this endeavor. If anything, Morrissey has reminded me of the need to repress large portions of the past. It may not be possible, but I think I'll start with him and see how it goes.

Quick Reviews: Kerry King and Marissa & The Moths

One good, one bad, this week. Funny how it's often the 'big' names doing the least impressive work.

Kerry King - From Hell I Rise

I fully understand that not every musician is capable of a world of diversity. Many of us are good at one thing only, and we don't want to show our failed experiments at anything else to other people. Believe me, the impulse to stay in your lane is strong and relatable. Yet, when it comes to Kerry King going solo after all these years, it isn't so much the lack of a new direction that frustrates me as it is how much this feels like he's intentionally cloning Slayer.

We know his writing is going to sound the same as it ever has. He's even warned us that what came after Slayer would essentially be more Slayer. What we couldn't have expected was that he would recruit a vocalist to essentially do an impersonation of Tom. That was the one place where Kerry could have given his new music some degree of differentiation from Slayer, and he decided a new voice wasn't necessary. Maybe so, but when the songs are exactly the same, and the voice is almost the same, so too will be how little I'm going to care. A couple of these songs are nearly identical clones of vocal lines and riffs from Slayer records, which only makes the echo ring louder.

Later Slayer was hit-and-miss at best, and much of the missing the mark came from Kerry's diminishing lyrical IQ. When he finally gets around on this record to writing that he's "in mental retrograde", I don't know if I can come up with a better way of saying how utterly unnecessary this record is to anyone but the most devoted of Slayer fans. I can't even say I'm disappointed by any of this, because it's exactly what I expected. Oh well.

Marisa & The Moths - What Doesn't Kill You

I remember finding charm in Marisa & The Moth's debut album, which was bringing back some of the tones of the grunge age, filtered through a Paramore reality. For album number two, the band has upped the ante across the board. With more songs, more music, and more focus, they have tilted their approach and pocketed the eight ball on the break.

We have talked before about the cyclical nature of music, and how we're due for a grunge revival any day now (it is underway, but it hasn't yet broken through). It will require more than a complete recreation, and instead update the feeling for a new generation. That's what Marisa & The Moths can do, and are able to do, with this record. The guitars are appropriately thick, and the atmosphere gloomy enough, but they remember that Kurt Cobain was essentially a pop songwriter at heart.

Marisa and her cohorts deliver a record that carries the tone, but on tunes that largely dig their hooks into you. Sixteen might be a couple too many, and I don't like the choice to start the record off with a slow ballad, but the core of the record is a lovely throwback to the kind of rock I remember from my younger days. You can hear some Seattle in their sound, and some "Blue Album" in the guitar tone as well, girding a nice collection of hooky and heavy rock.

They have grown, and improved, and made a fine record here.

Album Review: Hot Water Music - Vows

There's a concept in sports that you can only beat the competition put before you. Outside of the objective sports like track & field where you compete against clocks and measuring tapes, greatness comes in the form of being better than your peers at any given time. Some of the greatest of all time would fall short in other periods, but outpacing the competition still makes you a great. It opens up worlds of debate in the sports world, and perhaps there is something to be said about that for music as well. Is a great album today as great as one from a time I consider better? That's what I've been thinking about lately.

As I've been listening to new records, I'm comparing them to records I'm pulling off the shelf from years ago, and even many of my favorites of today can't out-muscle those that ranked lower in yesteryear. It's an interesting phenomenon, and I think it sometimes leads me to appreciate today's great music less than I should.

Today, let's talk about one of those great records. To do that, we have to start with one that isn't so great. Last year, I was massively disappointed by Spanish Love Songs and their follow-up to "Brave Faces Everyone". They went in directions I didn't understand, and hearing this album from Hot Water Music, my feelings make more sense now. Whereas that band took influence from the 80s and sucked the joy out of screaming for therapy, this band stays in the current millennium and finds the collective energy that comes with sharing an experience.

This music is still firmly in a territory you can call emo, but it's played with an almost optimistic bent in search of anthemic statements we can coalesce around. The vocals are shared, with one voice being so gruff it's almost a pastiche, but that voice is what makes the record work so well. It howls with frustration and pain, a deep echo that clatters in your chest. Not every band can make that connection, so that alone makes this a winner.

Then there are the songs, which largely hit the mark as the anthems of the downtrodden they aim to be. Yes, there is a misstep or two when they veer into 'whoa oh' territory, but I can forgive those. When they hit their best marks, like on "Bury Us All" or "Searching For Light", the band is delivering moments of clarity everyone is going to be able to see themselves in. There is a catharsis to pouring your pain out through song, especially in a way that has an infectious energy. While thinking about others going through the same things isn't an optimistic thought, sharing any experience can make it easier to get through.

That has been the through-line of my favorite records for several years now. It started when Dream State released "Primrose Path", continued on Yours Truly's "Self Care", and last year was imbued in Katatonia's "Sky Void Of Stars". Music that takes the pain and the dark side, but turns them into shimmering songs leading us toward the light at the end of the tunnel, is the rare gift that bridges where we are and where we want to be.

Hot Water Music hit that mark all over this record, with songs like "Remnants" being the fist-in-the-air moment that makes it feel like boxing with God can end with our victory. It won't, we know, but the moment of hope is enough to get us through another day. Often, that's the best thing music can do for us.

This year has been lacking in great music, and the competition is rather weak. Maybe that does help "Vows" rise toward the top of the list, but it would be too simple to say that without acknowledging a great record is still a great record independent of those factors. Hot Water Music has given us a great record, and it doesn't matter whether or not it would be contending for Album Of The Year in 1999 or 2005. It's a damn strong contender this year, and the spark of joy is all we need to worry ourselves with.

Singles Roundup: Jules & The Howl, Yours Truly, & Deep Purple

The singles grab-bag has been refilled, so let's see what we have this week:

Jules & The Howl - I Just Want To Feel Better

May is mental health awareness month, which is a fitting time for Jules to be releasing this song, which is centered on the struggle many of us have trying to keep our heads above water. It's a fact of life that pain leaves scars that never fade, while smiles only leave little wrinkles we try our best to avoid. When it is the hurt and the dark we remember most vividly, it's difficult to remember there is still a sun shining behind the eclipse.

Jules uses a different metaphor, singing about her mind being a merry-go-round that never stops, which is a familiar feeling. Catastrophizing does feel like the rush of falling toward the ground, and regrets can play in our minds as if on that loop, bouncing to the circus music like the meanest taunt of a scary clown.

Her questioning of fate comes in the form of a jaunty song, one that gives me feelings of the disco era, dressing up demons in sequined outfits to highlight how two-dimensional they are. As Jules sings the title in the chorus, along with layers of harmonies, it's a call for community, a reminder that many of us go through these times without anyone there to turn on the light and show us there's nothing hiding in the corner, under the bed, or in the shadows. Nothing but ourselves, that is.

The message of the song is important, and it's something I've written about myself. What I never managed to do was wrap it up in an uplifting package the way Jules has. This is absolutely one of her best songs, which sadly only seems to reaffirm the dangerous idea that great art comes from pain. Let's hope that is only correlation, not causation.

Yours Truly - Sour

To use those immortal words as a question, "I'm too old for this shit?" I'm being facetious, but the two songs released so far by Yours Truly for their sophomore album do have me wondering if the younger generation is indeed lost on me. As much as I loved everything they did through their early EPs and debut album, their recent music has taken a turn I'm not as in tune with. This song continues in that style, with a bit more aggression and a whole lot less fun. While "Self Care" felt like a cathartic breakthrough at the end of therapy, a song like this one feels like the seething initial recounting of why we end up on that couch. I miss the bit of optimism, yes, but what I really miss is the ability of the music to sound uplifting while the lyrics work through the issues. This simply isn't as enjoyable as a vehicle for the message, and I worry what it means for a record I so dearly want to love.

Deep Purple - Portable Door

On the one hand, I have to commend Deep Purple for staying so productive at this stage of their career. On the other hand, their commitment to coming up with the worst album titles makes it rather difficult to talk about their music these days. The first taste of "=1" is a short rocker that tells the story of the band at this age. Their style is locked in, so having a new guitar player makes very little difference to the sound. This is all about the organ and Ian Gillan's voice, which is perhaps what makes this song bittersweet. While it's a fine song with a solid hook to it, the line between sounding 'veteran' and sounding 'old' is fast approaching.

Alblum Review: Sebastian Bach - Child Within The Man

It's hard to talk about Sebastian Bach without mentioning the constant talk about a reunion between him and Skid Row, mostly because he won't shut up about it. He has spent at least a decade trying to guilt the band into bringing him back, which I could say is all about money, but I think Bach's solo career makes it clear it's more about him not really wanting to make new music anymore. His solo output has been sporadic at best, and he spends more time talking about is past than his present, so it's not hard to see all of this as something he has to do while biding time for what he really wants.

Just look at the cover of this album. Does that not tell you how little effort was put into making this? Bach wants to think he's still cool at his age, but that drawing is so horrible it would have been too cheesy even in the 80s. Oh, and let's not forget that he's also drawn as being at least three decades younger than he actually is. Perhaps reminding us so forceful of his man-child reputation isn't a good starting point.

The people Bach has chosen to work with continue his trend of making records that try to be heavier than Bach needs to be. His voice has always been rather high and thin, and going in the heavier direction only serves to highlight the limitations of that tone. He feels the need to go into rougher textures and even screaming at times, which either tells me he doesn't believe he can sell these songs with his natural voice, or he doesn't believe he has enough voice left to do it. Either way, hearing a once great singer screaming his head off is not a sign of quality.

This album comes down along the same lines as his other solo work; it's heavy rock that is supposed to impress up by being the heaviest thing he's ever done, but the songs aren't that great, and we all know in advance Bach is going to leave this behind once it's out. He isn't going to be flying the flag for this album for the next couple of years. It's something that reminds us he's still out there, and hopefully pushes a few more fans to bring his name up each time the slot in Skid Row comes open again.

Personally, I don't have a dog in that fight, but I do find it amazing how often the talk turns to how much money a tour would generate, with almost no one seeming to care that the rest of the band would be utterly miserable (by their own admission) to have to spend that much time with Bach. Shouldn't fans have more sympathy for what would make the band happy? I digress.

This record is firmly in the 'meh' pile. There are a few good moments, but I don't know if I would say any of the songs are great. It isn't a miserable experience, but it's also not anything I'm going to want to come back to. The main reason for that is actually Bach, whose voice grates on my nerves. Age has narrowed his tone, making it more shrill than ever, and I don't find it a pleasant sound at all. It almost sounds like he's whining half of these songs, and much like Chris Jericho in Fozzy, I simply don't want to listen to that for more than a few minutes at a time.

Bach may have been a great singer at one point, but time has not been kind to him. His voice is not pleasing, the attitude he takes on the record isn't engaging, and yes, I've never seen an interview with him where I thought he was actually cool.

I'll finish by saying this; if Sebastian and Skid Row ever did get back together, this record tells me it wouldn't be what anyone wants. Bach now is not a better singer than the last two who have filled that spot, so we just have to ask if nostalgia is really worth all this talk. Personally, it's so short-lived I don't see the point. I'll be kind and not say that about this record too.

Still Feeling "Blue", 30 Years On

I'm sure I saw the "Buddy Holly" video when it was in rotation on MTV, but the first time I remember Weezer being a focal point was in high school. Someone who was in my social circle would regularly wear a Weezer t-shirt, and at some point I was asked if I listened to them. At the time, I wanted to think myself too cool for such a thing, so I truthfully answered I didn't, all the while thinking they were too much 'nerd rock' for me.

As time would prove, that would be entirely wrong. Weezer may not have been the only starting point for that description, but they are the one for my generation that blurred the lines between the coolness of being rock stars and the utter lameness of being nerds/geeks/dorks/dweebs. I think what kept me from embracing them at the time was a misunderstanding of the rainbow of possibilities when it comes to being lame. My lameness came in a different form than the traditional stereotypes, and as such I was looking for a closer analog, missing the proverbial forest for the trees.

I didn't start listening to Weezer until "Hash Pipe" hit the airwaves, which is rather hilarious to me, considering that an Adderall-fueled song about cross-dressers on the street corner has precisely zero to do with me, my life, or my own proclivities. Until much later on when Rivers Cuomo went off the deep end, you couldn't have picked a song I would have less of a connection to, and yet it was perhaps the only one I would have been won over by.

I found myself in an online Weezer community, which was something I didn't know I needed as much as I did until it fell apart. Caught between the in-jokes and the other nonsense, the question we kept debating over and over was which album was better; "Blue" or "Pinkerton"?

Even today, I can go back and forth on that one. "Blue" is now thirty years old, which is a depressing fact. It means I'm older than I want to admit, it means I've spent far too much of my life listening to Weezer, and it means not enough has changed in all of this time.

What we couldn't have known at the time was how the record set up most of the Weezer story, and should have been a warning we were in for a bumpy ride.

Everyone knows "Buddy Holly", which is the song on the record that sounds most dated. The approach of filtering power-pop through grunge is palpable, but it is neither the production nor the pop-culture references that date the song. No,it's the bridge of the song, where Rivers sings in a rhythm that always felt to me like he was co-opting a different musical trend of the time. Little did I know that he was indeed dissecting everything popular to later use in cynical ways for his own songwriting. It sounded out of place then, it sounds calculated now.

Rivers was too smart for his own good. His audience was not watching old reruns of "The Dick Van Dyke Show" or listening to 50s rock and roll, nor were they likely to be reading Kerouac. It's that reference that makes "Blue" such a sad album to me. In "On The Road", Kerouac spends hundreds of pages tearing through the story of his life, and how he and his friends were on a manic quest to live as much life as they could. The story is ultimately depressing, because they travel from one end of the country to the other, again and again, never finding anything they could savor long enough to stay put.

That reflects in Rivers' career, where Weezer keeps getting reinvented in the quest to find the same level of success they started out with. "Hash Pipe" would get there, as would (sadly, I would add) "Beverly Hills", but what gets lost in the search is the core. Rivers would toss aside the idea of making music for any purpose other than finding success, as he famously stopped putting anything of himself into the songs after "Pinkerton" failed so miserably. Given what he wrote about on that album, having less Rivers isn't exactly a bad thing, but it stripped the passion out of Weezer so much there's no way to listen to him sing about how he can't stop partying without wondering if the only one he's ever attended was through a telescope from the other side of the street.

We need to reckon with the level of honesty on the record. There are certainly pieces of Rivers in these songs, with the references to his familiar issues and his love of KISS. How much of the record is true colors how I can think about it, because while at times he is playing the part of the hopeless romantic who hasn't found his place yet, there is also the "Pinkerton" foreshadowing in "No One Else". That song is controlling and nearly abusive, and was a warning of how ugly Rivers' views of women were going to become on the next record. This is where it would be nice to think "Blue" was just another of Rivers' academic experiments, but that doesn't quite mesh with the other songs. Rather, it sounds like a blemish that was the first sign of a toxic bloom that would soon come to the surface.

The three singles from the record are still staples of rock radio, and for good reason. Rivers was a key figure in bringing back the power-pop aesthetic into rock, and he did open doors for people who were never going to be conventionally cool. "Blue" became an album of anthems for those of us who didn't fit in, even if our own formula of uncoolness tipped the scales in different ways. It didn't matter if you actually wore horn-rim glasses, or wore sweaters, it was the idea of being together as outcasts that spoke to us.

"Blue" is the album that can still make us feel like someone else understood, whether we have moved past those days or not. While we would learn on "Pinkerton" that sometimes people are shunned for good reason, "Blue" is still the defining record of nerd culture.

As a quasi-member of that group, thirty years hasn't been enough time to figure out if I think that's a good thing or not. Some days...

Album Review: Anette Olzon - Rapture

Sometimes, reviews pain me to have to write. It's never fun when something you've been looking forward to disappoints you, and it isn't made much easier when you know what's coming. Anette Olzon is one of my favorite voices. Her unique tone is captivating, and between her work with Alyson Avenue, The Dark Element, and the Allen/Olzon project, she's been on some of the best melodically heavy music I've heard. My hopes and always high when she's going to release something, but these solo albums of hers aren't much fun for me.

With her voice, and with Magnus Karlsson once again writing the songs, this should be a record that turns around what has been a difficult time for my mood. That would not be the case, however, as this record follows suit from her previous solo album. For reasons I don't entirely understand, these songs feature bursts of harsh vocals, and the least hooky melodies on any of Magnus' current projects. Anette's voice is beautiful and soaring, and she's given very flat songs that don't play to her strengths.

Also not helping matters is the mix, where Anette's voice is not put front-and-center. She fades into the guitars far too often, and considering this is her solo album that should be focused on her, it's an inexcusable decision in the mixing process. Everyone involved here are highly respected, so I'm at a loss how Anette is not positioned as the star of her own album.

You get everything you need to know from the opener, "Heed The Call". You get a decent chorus where Anette doesn't pierce through the clamor, but also multiple sections of barked vocals that don't add to the melody, and even a quick interlude of a child singing. It's all bizarre, and tells us this is not going to be a record focused on delivering great hooks and melodic metal bliss. They are trying to 'experiment', and we all know you can't possibly win every time you try something different. Of course, let's aslo be honest here; the claim they are playing with various genres is a bit ridiculous. These are the same songs Magnus has always been writing, just with a growl here or there, or an extra keyboard.

What I can say in this record's favor is that it comes across better than "Strong" did. Whereas that record felt almost oppressive at times, and few of the hooks landed at all, this record is better at balancing the heavier and harsher elements with Anette and Magnus' traditional melody. These songs would still be better without any of the extraneous bits, but at least the core hooks are better this time around.

This is one of those cases where we need to draw the distinction between 'bad' and 'disappointing'. "Rapture" is a decent album. I don't hate it by any means. I can put it on and have a nice enough time listening to Anette doing her thing. "Rapture" is, however, quite a disappointing album. I know what Anette and Magnus are capable of, and this is not at the top of the list. Both of the albums she has done paired with Russell Allen are better, as are both of the albums she has done with The Dark Element, and none of those touch the one classic Alyson Avenue album. Even her first more pop-oriented solo album, which set her renaissance in motion, had one absolutely killer song in "Falling", which is more than "Rapture" can boast.

Having set high expectations is a blessing and a curse. It means I adore many of Anette's previous works, but it also means I'm not going to settle for second best. Unfortunately, "Rapture" is just far enough removed from what I want to hear from Anette it tends to feel that way. Good things can still make you sad, and a tinge of that is what I take away most from "Rapture".

What Twenty Years Of "The End Of Heartache" Shows Us

Genres are like fads; while they may never die out, they will never burn as hot or as bright as when they left their mark on the culture. Nothing can stay popular forever, not with society changing with each new generation that comes along. Twenty years after the fact, it can be difficult to remember what a paradigm shift felt like, because we have lived so long on the new ground.

Killswitch Engage pioneered metalcore in the mainstream, and no one ever did it bigger or better. While many will point to "Alive Or Just Breathing" as the impetus, that was not the record that conquered the world. No, that would be "The End Of Heartache", which amazingly is celebrating it's twentieth anniversary. When I stop and think about how that means I've spent half my life listening to that album, time no longer feels like a straight line.

Rather than sit here and tell you a story you don't care about, I would rather take a look back at what these twenty years have given us. It's rather interesting to have seen and heard how a band that blazed a new trail wound up digging their rut deeper and deeper.

It started with "The End Of Heartache". Killswitch Engage had a new singer, a new hunger, and they tapped into a well no one had ever drilled so deep into. Their music was heavier, the production stronger, and Howard Jones' voice more emotional. It combined to form a steamroller of an album that took the brutality of metal, the pain of emo, and a degree of songwriting few metal bands have ever possessed. The blend was perfect, the timing was right, and the result was the defining album of that time. No one could live up to that, and Killswitch Engage single-handedly dragged the entire metalcore genre into the mainstream. At least it seemed that way.

They followed that by trying to be more. "As Daylight Dies" is one of the best sounding metal records ever made, but in trying to be both heavier and more melodic, the two ends pulls the strings apart enough that we could see through the weave. Little did we know, but in one album cycle the genre had already fallen off.

The self-titled album over-corrected, going too far into melodic rock for most listeners (but not me). If this was metalcore moving forward, Killswitch Engage was marching alone. And indeed they saw the writing on the wall, as when Howard Jones left the band, they returned to their own past, dredging up the still fresh memories of Jess Leach's time in the band.

What is remarkable about this now longest period of Killswitch Engage's career is how... safe it all feels. The records come fairly regularly, they're all well-crafted, and they mostly disappear from the zeitgeist. It happens to many bands that they find a sound they are comfortable with, and they play the hits back again and again. The difference is that with the lineup change, it felt fully intentional to backtrack to their familiar sound. Again and again, the band makes records that sound like "The End Of Heartache", but never quite match the fire or passion that album captured.

Twenty years on, what has become clear is what we experience both from bands like AC/DC who essentially make the same record time and again, and also artists like Taylor Swift who literally make the same album again to get back the rights; songs are not everything - recordings matter. You can never recreate a performance exactly, and the magic you capture on tape once may never come again.

Killswitch Engage found that magic when they recorded "The End Of Heartache". The record stands up these years later as a fresh, vital, and stirring reminder of what you can achieve when you pour yourself into making music. It also serves as a warning, because it set a bar even they could not live up to. By reverting to form, and by churning out records that mine the same territory, they have in essence reminded us they'll never be as good as they once were.

That's true of everyone, but some make more of an effort to hide it. Of course, when you have one masterpiece to your credit, you probably don't need to shy away from taking your well-deserved credit.