Album Review: The Night Flight Orchestra - Give Us The Moon

Every once in a while we find ourselves confronted with the question of when a side-project stops being a side-project. There are cases where they clearly eclipse their origin point, sometimes to the degree that they become the only band left standing. That happened when Avantasia subsumed Edguy (much to my dismay). The same has not yet happened for The Night Flight Orchestra, as Soilwork is still around, but it's hard to deny that they have traded places.

The Night Flight Orchestra is here with their seventh album, while Soilwork has been slow in releasing new material. There are reasons for that, of course, but I think part of that we have to accept is that 'metal for life' is not the attitude everyone is going to hold to. Bjorn Strid would not have done seven albums of this old-school yacht rock if it wasn't what he wanted to be doing. I gather from listening that there isn't much fun left to be had in barking out his more metal and tortured side. Fun is more fun.

The other thing about The Night Flight Orchestra that is hard to put out of mind is how much they remind me of a rock version of Gunther & The Sunshine Girls. The full-time female backing vocalists are why, as they give the proceedings a glossy layer of camp that Strid alone would not be able to achieve. While they aren't singing comedy in the same way, it's hard to take lines about 'shooting velvet' entirely seriously. I mean, just look at their outfits. This is so camp they have a season pass at a national park so they never have to take down their tent.

The only question we need to answer is whether or not the band has enough songs in their glitter cannon to make this the fun ride it needs to be. "Shooting Velvet" certainly is, serving as the perfect sing-along for a yacht that has a high-powered engine to tear across the open seas. These are songs you could imagine playing during the montage of the villain's hedonism in an old episode of "The A-Team". It sounds so fun, but also makes you want to punch the people who live that kind of life all the time.

Music as escapism is an old tale, and perhaps I don't always give it the respect it deserves. I was forged listening to camp of a different variety, but the years have frayed the edges of the Big Top. As I listened to this album, the sunny days ethos was exactly what I needed to hear as I was blinded by sunlight bouncing off the snow outside my window.

This record is well-timed for another reason; January has been a slow and depressing month for music. Every day has felt like a snipe hunt for something exciting, so getting an album that is at least a toe-tapping bit of fun is a needed relief. I know there has been a cultural reassessment of disco in recent times, and perhaps rock is due for the same reckoning. Some of these songs have beats that are pulled from the same thread KISS used on "I Was Made For Loving You", and it's startling how good they can sound when compared to the dourness of so much rock we have to endure.

The Night Flight Orchestra has been one of those bands I appreciate without embracing. I have admired their dedication and their craft, but the music has never hit me in a way to win me over. I don't know if that has quite happened this time, but I had more fun listening to this record than any of their previous ones. Perhaps it is timing, but that's true of everything. We don't like to admit how much luck plays into everything that happens, but record need to be in the right place at the right time.

For The Night Flight Orchestra, perhaps that right time is right now. This is the closest they've ever come, if you ask me.

Intelligence, Philosophy, & Feeling "Dizzy"

The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer wrote much on the topic of genius. Despite our advances in both the hard and soft sciences, our understanding of how the brain works is still limited. Genius is a still unexplained phenomenon, as can be the way genius interacts with the rest of the world. Schopenhauer studied this very relationship, coming to an all too depressing (and keen) observation:

"A man must still be a greenhorn in the ways of the world if he imagines that he can make himself popular in society by exhibiting intelligence and discernment."

What Schopenhauer is saying here is that a genius is actually an idiot if they thinks their intelligence impresses most of the people they will come across. Rather than be a source of esteem, they will be resented for their intelligence, because everyone else will naturally be inclined to resent the 'superiority' inherent in intelligence. For Schopenhauer, this need not even be overt. The same reaction is true whether the genius flaunts their abilities, or whether the people who are not on that intellectual level merely assume such to be the case.

"They thereupon secretly and half unconsciously conclude that his interlocutor must form a proportionately low and limited estimate of his abilities."

Much as romantic comedies have tried to tell us that men and women cannot be platonic friends without sex coming into the equation, Schopenhauer is telling us that the genius cannot coexist with the rest of society without resentment coming into the equation. The smarter you are, the more you are destined to be ostracized by 'normal' society.

"The more distinctly a man knows, the more intelligent he is, the more pain he has; the man gifted with genius suffers most of all."

You might be wondering why I am spending this time talking about philosophy. When I recently encountered this line of thought for the first time in many years, I was struck by the way it intersected with a song that is threatening to break into my list of all-time favorites, and the situation my life finds me in right now.

In their song "Dizzy", Jimmy Eat World provide us with a line that boils Schopenhauer's philosophy into a single line:

"If you always knew the truth, then the world would spin around you. Are you dizzy yet?"

Knowledge is power, but it exists on a curve. Knowing is better than not knowing, but only to a point. When you reach Socrates' point of understanding the wisest man knows he knows nothing, the futility of thoughtful reflection becomes immutable. When you reach Schopenhauer's point of understanding society will never truly embrace those who can see and think things beyond the norm, the futility of socializing becomes suffocating. When you reach God's level of omnipotence, the pressure of having all of existence relying on you becomes a curse that cannot be taken off.

This is far more than Jimmy Eat World were contemplating when they wrote "Dizzy". That song is one about a relationship fracturing, but it gives us threads to pull on. As the line I quoted mentioned, knowing is power, and we live our lives in search of that very power. Not knowing is a hell of its own, a situation that tears our brains apart as the synapses burn through trying to imagine which of the infinite possibilities is our reality.

Right now, I am sensitive to this subject. There is a connection I have that has been fraying for longer than I realized, and the last threads holding us together may have lost their battle against entropy. The word 'may' is what set my mind down this path. I don't know if I am now screaming through the vacuum of space, or if enough of a filament remains to construct one of those soup-can telephones.

Not knowing feels like the worst possible outcome, but is it? As much as it has set my mind on fire worrying and fearing what is to come, there remains the possibility for repair. The full array of outcomes are still out there, are still available if we both choose the same direction.

To know that the ties have been severed would be worse, because endings necessitate the beginning of a new story, and some of us don't have enough ideas to start over again. In this case, I am the idiot, the blissfully unaware sort Schopenhauer and Socrates would both tell us has the advantage in this scenario. And yet, I find myself needing to be restrained every day from trying to learn the answer. I am smart enough to know the answer is most likely going to crush me, but I cannot stop myself from wanting to know.

So tell me, is intelligence actually all that smart?

"Respectfully, some honesty I'm asking now..." the song goes on to say.

What I think this song sums up, and why it has become so important to me, is that we're all idiots in some way. And no, that is not a comforting thought.

Album Review: Avatarium - Between You, God, The Devil & The Dead

Though they are not exactly similar bands, Avatarium and Lucifer have both spent their entire careers as talented groups whose potential has outweighed their actual output. Lucifer righted that equation last year with their fifth album, and now we turn to see if Avatarium can do the same thing. The doom collective has had moments where it felt like they were on the verge of breaking through, most notably on their "The Fire I Long For" album. That was when I heard what they could be, and I was convinced they would get there.

That they did not follow that record up with the step forward I was expecting was disappointing, but perhaps not surprising. The band was still weaning themselves off the connections that helped start their career, and finding their footing as a wholly separate entity may have just required a bit of time. They deserved a break.

This new album finds the band leaning more into their doom roots than they have for the last couple of records. The guitars have a layer of fuzzy grime that is unmistakable as anything else, and the song lengths make obvious the tempos rarely pick up. That sets the stage for Jennie-Ann's voice to deliver a more dramatic performance to fill the space, which she attempts to do. Her voice is something different for the world of doom, and has always been what makes Avatarium appeal to people like me who are not aficionados of the genre.

Jennie-Ann's vocals drip with the mix of sweet and bitter that comes from burning off alcohol into a caramel. There is an echo of the past in her voice, raising questions of whether the doom we feel is time looping back on itself so the mistake we have made are ahead of us in the distance. That's all rather melodramatic, but we're talking about doom here, so a bit of that is warranted. When you listen to the scuzzy guitars and swirling organs in "I See You In The Dark", it all makes sense. The swell into the chorus, and the haunting harmony vocals, make it a hypnotizing bit of work that evokes everything I've ever loved about Avatarium.

Recently, a new adaptation of "Nosferatu" came out, and the lessons of film history can teach us something about music as well. The original movie was made in 1922, and cannot be mistaken as anything but of that time. Yet, despite a remake in the 70s and the new version just out, there is something unsettling about the original that cannot be captured with the better cameras and technology that came later. Cleaner cinematography and more believable makeup do not make for a better movie, they actually remind us what we are watching is in fact a recreation of real life. The limitations are what made the original so terrifying people believed its star must have been an actual vampire.

When it comes to doom, that same distance is important to keep in mind. When the music becomes too clean, it loses the gripping power of melancholy. There needs to be enough fraying of the heartstrings to feel the pain, but not so much that the cords are fully pulled apart. It's a delicate balance.

That is what Avatarium has always been best at; setting the atmosphere in a way that is both soothing and off-putting. They control the darkness with aplomb. Unfortunately, they don't always paint those colors on the most captivating of songs. Yet again, that is where Avatarium leaves me wanting. The opening tracks are wonderful bits of their doom, but soon the record sets into five and six minute dirges where Jennie-Ann does not sing with enough melody to raise the buoys from sinking into the depths.

Every time Avatarium releases an album, I want to love it. I nearly did with "The Fire I Long For", but I fear that will be the high water mark of their career. Other bands with sounds I love have managed to hone it for one amazing album. Lucifer did it, as did Katatonia, and I will hold out hope Avatarium will be able to join their ranks. Few bands are as captivating as proprietors of sound, but sound is not what we are listening to. We are listening to music, which means songs, and Avatarium needs a few more great ones if they are going to be worth spending so many words on again.

Guilty Pleasures & Misplaced Shame

Guilty pleasures. We all have them. They are those bands or albums we love listening to, but aren't quick to admit to other people are part of our music psyche.

The idea of the guilty pleasure is rooted in shame, namely in the shame we think we should feel for being fans of something that either isn't a normal part of our personality, or more likely isn't 'cool' enough for the people whose esteem we want to be held in. We fear being ostracized for our tastes, ridiculed for not following the consensus opinion, and so we hide certain pieces of ourselves away from others. To know someone completely is more than most friendships are capable of, because we have rather crude terminology to draw distinctions between those we are truly closest to, and those who are acquaintances we see too often to completely keep at arm's length.

I am fascinated by the concept of shame. There are some people who live their lives seemingly without the idea ever having been explained to them. We see it in politics, where people of all stripes will do or say anything to reach their goals, even when they know they will eventually be exposed for the scam they are running. These are the people who will lie to your face, and then lie about the lie when they get caught. The word 'apology' is read as 'apostasy' in their minds, and the rest of us have to suffer their lack of conscience regulating their behavior.

It extends beyond that, of course. People without shame are the neighbors who never close the curtains when they are doing things no one wants to see, the people you pass on the street practically screaming their proclivities into their phones for the whole world to hear, the people who were never taught the ego-centric model of the universe was disproved by science centuries again.

I have known at least one person of this kind, and witnessing the absence of shame is one of the more remarkable things I can say I have seen. I can tell stories about this person involving turning pants inside-out after sitting on a banana (as if that would help), claiming to have used an elevator as a urinal, begging for help picking out fetish porn, and (saddest of all) asking me rather than Google how to tell if they were circumcised.

Shame is an essential part of life, because it is a tool to guide us away from behaviors that are risky and inappropriate. We feel shame when we have violated the norms of society, if not our own sense of right and wrong. Shame is a powerful ability for us to admit and accept that we can be wrong, we can learn, and we have humility. Or we should.

What shame is not is important in the musical sense of things. Whether or not we like a certain band, album, or style of music is utterly irrelevant to the kind of people we are. Good people listen to music we think is terrible, and terrible people listen to music we think is good. If the people in our lives are going to think that much less of us for our musical choices, it begs the question; are we more ashamed of the music, or being friends with those people?

I don't generally have much use for the term 'guilty pleasure' when it comes to music. Perhaps because I have actually spent time thinking about these things, I know what shame should be reserved for, and music isn't one of them. So when I tell you that I not only own a Backstreet Boys greatest hits CD, but I still play it more than once a year, I am not ashamed of that. I understand it makes me uncool, and will lead to ridicule, but thinking a well-written song is a well-written song isn't a source of shame.

Musical shame feels trifling and silly when compared to the shame we can feel for consequential parts of our lives. This is something I have too much experience with, having never felt what it's like to have the tide recede enough to uncover pride. There are many traits in myself I feel shame about, several haunting memories, and countless things I have done and said. Shame is always there, always reminding me of the ways I have fallen short of being the person I want to be. Even when that is out of my hands, as I have realized much of it is, the shame remains.

So I ask the question; how many of us are in a position where the music we listen to is important enough to feel shame about?

I'm guessing the number is too small to measure, and yet we find ourselves ashamed of the wrong things all too often.

We should be as ashamed of that as I am for that groaner of a pun.

Album Review: Sons Of Silver - Runaway Emotions

There are certain artists who are singular, who you seldom hear anyone try to sound like, because doing so is to invite comparisons you will never live up to. Or, perhaps it's because some sounds are so idiosyncratic they can't be replicated on the regular. Bruce Springsteen is one of those people you often see listed as an influence, but don't often hear in the style of those who include his name. The Gaslight Anthem is one of the few times when the connection is obvious, and I think it may have worked against them more than anything after the initial surge of attention their debut album received.

When your sound is reminiscent, it's hard for the mind not to slip back to the memories of what we already know. Given how nostalgia works, and anything new having to dig through extra layers of time, it becomes a science of futility to seek what has already been found.

Sons Of Silver are in that boat, with this debut album evoking the memory of "The Rising" era Bruce Springsteen at nearly every turn. There are instances where an entire song's feel is borrowed, and other times when it's merely the vocal tone uttering a 'sha na na' that carries the haunting feeling of familiarity. In either event, what it means is that I cannot hear this record without thinking about Springsteen, "The Rising", and how much that record has grown in my esteem over these last few years.

Springsteen himself would never follow that record with anything that hit with the same impact. In fact, the only record of his I liked after that one was "Magic", which was a light-hearted romp through 60s pop, and not at all the weighty rock and roll that tugged on our hearts. Sons Of Silver are taking up a task too difficult for even The Boss, so how do they do?

That's a difficult question to answer, to be honest. They nail the tone of the album. There's a bit of darkness creeping in around the edges, but the melodic base stays in tact. The guitars have crunch, but pluck out nearly spy movie lines to keep our ears perked. The vocals are weary, but rarely rise to the gravelly roar Springsteen would punctuate his songs with. The writing is solid, but features a bit more repetition and nonsense syllables than the songwriter in me would ever allow myself to include.

Sometimes, it's the little details in songs that make all the difference. "Baby Hang On" is the most classic rock and roll bop of the album, but it's sung with a filter on the vocal, and that stops the chorus from being able to shine and stand out. It's a bit like putting a blanket over the speaker of a great pop song. You'll still hear the melody, but it will be flatter and duller than if we let the whole thing ring out. Those sorts of things need to be used with discretion, and for effect, and it goes too far here.

That song is followed by "Ghosts", which features a repetitive chorus that never feels melodic at all. Together, they form a low point in the middle of the record that turns it into an inverted bell curve. Perhaps we can consider it a roller coaster instead, where the momentum of the beginning has to be enough to carry it back up the next climb. I don't think it quite manages that feat, which is a shame.

The band has managed to build a great sound, and there are songs here to tell me they have it in them to make a great record, but this one isn't that. There are moments that could have been, but the record can't maintain that standard through the whole of its running time. With a bit more 'pep', a bit more focus, and some extra words to fill the spaces the vocals just make noise, I would be saying something different. This album is a nice little start to the year, but the potential was there for it to be more than that.

It took me two decades to fully appreciate "The Rising" for what it is. Maybe that leaves the door open for "Runaway Emotions" to grow on me by the time this year ends. We'll have to wait and see.

What If? Following Up "Bat Out Of Hell"

One of the most confounding bits of pop philosophy is our ability to put our consciousness to the worst use, asking ourselves in nearly every situation, "What if?".

If we believe in multiverse theory, the answer to the question is that any scenario we conjure has indeed come to pass, merely in a time and place we cannot see the result. If we are grounding ourselves in this reality, the answers will never be anything but untestable hypotheses, the sorts of guesses we argue about with a terrifying level of fervency. We talk as if an argument can be made so persuasively that an alternate history is undeniable by anyone with half a working brain. It's foolishness on our part, and yet our desire not to live in the darkest timeline encourages us to take on these tasks in the search for a way of understanding the world that makes the inevitable feel like a choice instead of a fate.

Knowing this, I still find myself asking that very question sometimes. When it comes to events from my personal life, I have long come to the conclusion that any decisions I could have made would have led me into the same state of mind. While I don't believe in fate as a concept, I do believe there are immutable truths about ourselves we cannot change, or at least cannot give the appearance of change until we fully understand the costumes we must wear to do so. I did not have this knowledge until recently, so I see no way I could have taken a path that did not wind up exactly where I am. Every idea looks in hindsight like it would have been a bad idea.

We all know "Bat Out Of Hell" as the most unlikely album on the list of best-sellers. It is an absurdity that never should have worked, and yet it is one of those records that has endured for decades as a keystone to what life in that time was like. Following that album would always be a monumental task, but the failure that ensued would echo for an entire decade, wiped away only when an even more absurd comeback gave rise to our theory of the twenty year cycle of music.

Did it have to be that way? Could there have been an album Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman made that would have been enough of a success to change the course of history?

The answer to that seems obvious to me; no. By the time "Dead Ringer" came out, the world had moved on to the beginning of the digital 80s. Meat Loaf was already a relic of the past when "Bat Out Of Hell" came out, and he sounded even more out of place after the next decade set in. Another album mixing 50s rock and roll with Wagnerian opera and Broadway melodies was not going to stand up against the New Wave. Couple that with Meat's vocal issues that left him sounding like a shell of himself, and he could not have even recorded such an album if one was given to him. The deck was stacked, and he was probably always going to fall into obscurity.

The better question to ask is not whether Meat could have continued his chart success, but whether he could have made an album that cemented his legacy among his fans to such a degree that he and Steinman would not have spent so much time working apart. Would we look at Meat Loaf differently if he has put out back-to-back classics right from the start?

Jim Steinman had that album in him. It took four years of writing and waiting for Meat's voice to heal, but 1981 gave us a glimpse of what could have been. Meat Loaf released the disappointing (to most, not to me) "Dead Ringer", while Steinman was so fed up he recorded his own solo album, "Bad For Good". Between them, if things had been different, there is an album to be found that not only could have lived up to the legacy of "Bat Out Of Hell", but might have even been better.

We can start with the obvious choices. "Read 'Em And Weep" and "Rock & Roll Dreams Come Through" would both become hits later on. If even Barry Manilow can't make a song uncool, I believe that makes it undeniable. And while in this scenario we would never get the music video with a young Angelina Jolie, or the fragment of slap bass I have always loved, that trade-off would be worth it. Add to those the song "Dead Ringer", the duet with Cher that was a hit in European markets, and this imagined album would have had more radio potential than "Bat Out Of Hell" ever did.

We could have followed the pattern set by "Bat Out Of Hell" by opening with an epic statement. That would come in the form of "Bad For Good", which I consider the quintessential Steinman song. It is eight minutes of cheese and bombast, with guitar solos and pleas to the rock gods. When it did eventually get recorded by Meat, it was a pale imitation that only made me take up this mental task with more urgency. My imagination has only partially healed that disappointment.

We also have our multi-part melodrama in the form of "I'll Kill You If You Don't Come Back". Like "Paradise By The Dashboard Light", it starts as classic rock and roll before moving to a new section. This time, rather than the epic call and response that ends with wishing for death, we stay in high school drama as Steinman writes about the girls who find out the disappointment of spending so long building up what will only take a minute. It may not be the karaoke staple of its predecessor, but there is a resigned sadness that plays well against the fiery passion.

Then we get into the songs for the Steinman devotees among us. "Surf's Up" is one of Steinman's greatest songs, using a massive build-up and soaring guitar solo to mask the fact the song is about an erection. That is the heart of what makes great Meat Loaf music great Meat Loaf music, and it would have been one of those wonderful bits of insider trivia that elicits chuckles when it goes over the heads of casual listeners. And lest we forget, we could also include "Left In The Dark", which might contain the single best line Steinman ever wrote. "There are no lies on your body, so take off your dress/I just want to get at the truth." It is undeniably horny, certainly corny, and one of those bits that has echoed in my head for decades.

That gives us an album with a track listing such as this:

Bad For Good
Rock & Roll Dreams Come Through
Dead Ringer
Love And Death And An American Guitar*
Surf's Up
I'll Kill You If You Don't Come Back
Read 'Em And Weep
Left In The Dark

*spoken word

Those are all Steinman classics, and if they could have been sung in Meat's classic voice, make up an album I would choose over "Bat Out Of Hell". Despite being an institution, that album is flawed. "Heaven Can Wait" can sometimes drag, "All Revved Up With No Place To Go" is too old-fashioned for its own good, the baseball narration gets old on repeated listens, and "For Crying Out Loud" goes on too long with its false endings. "Bat Out Of Hell" truly is an album of four all-time great songs, and four that are more mid-tier.

This possible follow up does not have that problem. From beginning to end it would be the very best of Meat and Steinman.I can hear this record in my head, and it hurts to know it lives only there.

Of course, that leads us to the further question of what would have come after. We never would have gotten "Bat Out Of Hell II" as we know it, and perhaps the songs Steinman wrote and produced for others through the 80s ("It's All Coming Back To Me Now", "Total Eclipse Of The Heart", "Loving You's A Dirty Job", and "Making Love Out Of Nothing At All") would have all been Meat Loaf songs on yet more great albums.

I doubt that, though. After 1981, Steinman would only write one(ish) full album ever again. Despite success, or perhaps because of it, he began recycling his ideas in new permutations. I fear he did not have the songs left in him to continue the run for album after album. This imagined world does not give us more great music, just a different configuration of it.

So would it be a better world? Actually, I don't think it would. While the unnamed record would potentially be one of my all-time favorites, we would miss out on "Bat Out Of Hell II", and the songs that popped up on the other Meat Loaf records. We would also miss out on the 'lesser' songs from "Dead Ringer" and "Bad For Good", which are still worthy additions to their catalogs.

We can ask "What if?" all we want, but sometimes the answer turns out not to be any better. Maybe we are where we should be.

Album Review: Tremonti - The End Will Show Us How

We often talk about traits as being either good or bad, independent of the reality in which we live. A strong work ethic is a good thing, we say, even though there are time in which it isn't the best thing for us. That's the case in point today, as we address the new album from Tremonti. Between this project, Alter Bridge, and the reunited Creed, Mark Tremonti is nearly always hard at work on something. That is commendable, but when the cycle goes straight from one project to the next, with little to no time between them, the question needs to be asked whether this is in fact the best was of going about things.

Last year say Creed reunite and go out on a tour far more successful than it had any right to be. Seriously; does anyone else find it odd that Creed is more acceptably popular today than when they were actually at their height? Regardless, that tour was interspersed with the writing and recording of this new Tremonti album, which is coming out right as Alter Bridge is getting ready to write and record their next album. You see where I'm going with this, right?

Not only does that mean Tremonti never has a break for his creative muse to refuel, the constant churn is drawing the projects closer together with each passing album cycle. Tremonti sounds more like Alter Bridge which sounds more like Creed than ever before. There used to be a point to each of these projects being its own thing, but that is getting harder to discern. The songs all blend together, and it starts to become too much. I said the same thing about Myles Kennedy when his album came out last year, and I stand by it.

As the album opens, the initial songs bog down in the sludgier part of metal. The guitars are tuned so low the notes are slurs of distortion, while Tremonti's baritone adds no high end to the mix. The entire thing comes across sounding a bit dull and lifeless, because everything is sitting in the lower end of the register. A bit of brightness would liven things up, as my ears fatigue hearing nothing but bass frequencies for too long. Combined with the tempos, it doesn't get the momentum rolling in the right direction.

We hit the nadir with "It's Not Over", which is a slow burn that never ignites. The clean guitar arpeggios sit under a brooding vocal, and when the distortion kicks in... it barely kicks in. The entire song feels like it's waiting for the hook to come, but it never does. It's "Waiting For Godot", but without the meta-joke inherent in the premise.

The entirety of the album has that same feeling, where the songs never reach their top gear. They don't feel as powerful as they should when the band is hitting hard, and they don't feel as melodic as they should when the choruses come along. It's a very... subdued album for being as metallic as it is.

This where we could blame all the time spent playing Creed songs for the disappointment of this album, but I don't think that's fair. Creed actually had many songs that were more lively and engaging than these. I think it's more likely that Tremonti has simply written so many songs that the constant churn isn't producing the best results anymore. That has happened for so many artists, and I know for a fact some of them never admit it has happened. Tobias Sammet used to churn out albums every year, until he couldn't. Magnus Karlsson has written multiple albums every year, and now they're all mediocre. That's the route Tremonti seems to be on, and it's avoidable.

"The End Will Show Us How" is one of those albums that isn't bad at all, but there simply isn't anything about it that stands out, that I will remember, that I can say you need to hear. I hate to say it, but this album is a soundtrack to creative malaise. Knowing that Alter Bridge is already in the process of making their next album only makes this more difficult to listen to. It's not a harbinger of the future, is it?

I'm Almost Ready To Quote: "Thank You, Fuck You, Bye".

It was just last week that I wrote about the future of Bloody Good Music, and how I didn't know what it entailed. I was being honest then, and I'll be honest now.

Yesterday was a day that made me think about quitting.

Someone in a different corner of the musical world asked a question about the legacy of glam metal. I answered it harshly, yes, but truthfully. The best part of glam metal's legacy is that it was the last time we lionized rock 'stars' for being addicts, assholes, degrading women, and both the figurative and literal lusting for underage girls.

What I was met with was a response calling me an asshole for not focusing on the music, despite much of that music indeed being about getting drunk and treating women like garbage. But it went beyond that, because the poor grammar and lack of nouns in the response meant it could rightfully be read as insinuating I only cared about the last issue I listed because I already spend my time thinking about it.

Yes, really. This person may have accused me of that. I didn't stick around long enough to ask a follow-up and find out just how terrible they wanted to make themselves look.

The point of this isn't to garner sympathy, but to explain my seething rage. I have always kept an arm's reach between me and 'rock' and 'metal' as tags identifying my personality. It's for exactly this reason. Despite the outward appearance of those cultures being accepting and dedicated to sticking it to those in power, they are actually as conservative and unwelcoming as any group I have ever come across.

Look, I know I see the world differently than most people do. That was the lesson that kept me mired in depression most of last year. I understand that people aren't going to agree with me all the time, and I really don't care if they do. But I am beyond sick and tired of being part of a community where the people are not even decent anymore.

This isn't the first time such things have come up. A few years ago, Serious Black released an album with multiple songs calling the writer's ex a whore, and blaming her for everything that went wrong in his life. It was textbook misogyny, and the furthest thing from being a 'man'. I wrote about this multiple times, and I was the only person in the entire metal-adjacent world that noticed, let alone had any problem with the band's language and attitude toward women. When I brought it up on a forum, other people there literally cheered the band on for how they were treating her.

It was sickening then, and it's sickening now. I'm so goddamn tired of everything becoming a fight, when all I want it a bit of respect and decency.

It pisses me off when bands get away with treating women like disposable objects. It pisses me off when people pine for the old days when bands were literally writing songs about wanting to fuck children, let alone putting naked kids on their album covers. It pisses me the ever-loving fuck off when prominent metal 'journalists' laugh along with Ted Nugent as he calls people he doesn't agree with 'sub-human mongrels'.

Who are we? Apparently, the answer is that we are the lowest-common denominator. We are the worst of humanity not so slowly leaking out into the culture, all because people who don't understand what manhood actually is have gotten scared that their whims aren't catered to every minute of the day.

I'm done with it. I will never hold back from calling out the toxic aspects of rock and metal, but I have to admit that I'm just tired of being hated for doing it.

Yesterday, I seriously thought about quitting this pursuit. I realized that other than one or two friends who read words when I tag them, I've spent twelve years screaming into the vast void. No one hears what I say, and on those cases where I speak in a forum where people do, it makes me the pariah.

So why should I bother anymore? It's clear rock and metal fans want nothing to do with me, and I'm sick of them. Maybe the best thing for all of us is if I give up, admit defeat, and let them continue their circle-jerk.

It all seems fruitless when you're dealing with people who cannot understand that wanting a blowjob while insulting a woman for doing it is a self-defeating personality trait.

The 'State Of Bloody Good Music' Address

My fellow music fans...

This year was an odd one in every sense; personally, culturally, and musically. You may have noticed that manifesting in the work we do here, which underwent a few shifts in both tone and format. We covered fewer new albums than possibly ever, as the release schedule did not offer up as much fascinating new music for us to talk about. Some of the albums that did pique our interest did so in ways that didn't lead to in-depth discussion, so the 'Quick Reviews' series became more of a focus. It was a way of covering albums that didn't test our sanity by making us try to come up with 800 or 1,000 words to say something was merely adequate.

Statistically, this year saw me listen to the least new albums since we started out on this journey. The number has been declining for a couple of years now, and I fear it is a lagging indicator of an uncomfortable truth. My concern is that I have hit that proverbial wall, wherein I have heard so much music over the course of my life I don't have room for much more to occupy the important slots. That isn't to say there isn't still great music, or that I don't enjoy some new albums immensely, but I would be lying if I said more than two or three records from the last five years will even be a thought the next time I re-organize my list of all-time favorites.

What that has meant for you, the reader, is an increased focus on the esoteric and philosophical aspects of music. This autumn, I have been writing more about older records, and the way music and life interact as both cause and explanation. To be quite honest, that writing has been far more interesting to me than worrying about having thoughts for the latest melodic rock album that sounds like every other one. I am an over-thinker by nature, and the dearth or worthy new music has given me even more time than usual to dig into the depths of music's meaning.

I say all of this as preface for the future.

I don't know what the next year holds for us here at Bloody Good Music. By no means are we giving up, but I cannot make a promise that new albums will once again become the vast majority of what we talk about here. That will be up to the bands and artists, and is out of my control. I will discuss any record that catches my attention, but the days of having weeks with three new reviews may be a thing of the past. It isn't burnout in the sense that the work of writing is too much to handle, but rather an ennui that I don't have enough music I am feeling passionate about. I don't want to talk just for the sake of talking.

Instead, what seems likely is a continued mix of content. We will have our traditional new album reviews, and our roundup of the latest singles. We may venture back into making a few more lists of various topics, and hopefully we can manage a larger collaborative effort or two. I would also like the latitude to continue writing about the philosophy and sociology of music, because I think there are still things to learn about ourselves by taking time to examine the choices we make in soothing and entertaining ourselves. I have certainly been one who has made realizations through this kind of writing. They are perhaps more necessary now than ever.

We are at an inflection point, where many of the bands we have spent our lives listening to are slowing down if not over, and we are waiting for the next generation to take charge and demand our attention. I don't know if that divide will ever be bridged, or if perhaps music is beginning to pass me by. What I can say is that I will still be here chiming in where I can, and hopefully having something worth listening to.

I don't want to become one of those people who only talks about the past, but I also realize we may be the ouroboros beginning to swallow its own tail, re-setting the timeline. It will be interesting to see what that looks and sounds like.