Album Review: Krystal System - "Da Punch"

We’re all familiar with the axiomatic mixing of ingredients into some greater whole.  The most common refrain used to illustrate this concept is “you got peanut butter in my chocolate!  You got chocolate in my peanut butter!”

Now, take that as a basic principle, and add in rainbow sprinkles and a cherry, and you get something musically akin to Krystal System’s new LP Da Punch.

Like a musically self-aware Voltron, the French electro-metal duo (which hardly seems like enough of an epithet to encapsulate what the band displays, but that’s what they call themselves) folds in pieces of a veritable panoply of genres to make something new.  Pop punk, old-school industrial, electronic, rock, and even a taste of those big, atmospheric Fear Factory ballads all blend into a sugary album of ear candy that’s hard not to smile at.  And, oh by the way, half the songs are in French.

Certain constants of music remain immutable.  One of them is the intrinsic appeal of the descending scale.  Every band and every genre has played with it, from the haunting tones of Led Zeppelin’s “Dazed and Confused,” to the thumping bravado of DMX’s “X Gon’ Give It To Ya.”  Right from the beginning of “Someday,” Krystal System dives into that same pool, filtering it through distortion and airier vocals than either of those other two examples, creating a song that buzzes with venom, particularly as it moves into the thunderous pre-chorus and ultimately into the catharsis of the chorus.  Never mind the hints of alternative that color the margins.

Not to be outdone for versatility, Da Punch then moves into “Eclats Rouges” (“red flashes,” for the uninitiated,) which, with apologies to the band for saying so, is a pop punk song with a singalong chorus that just happens to have some electronic overtones.

Step by step, Krystal System moves from form to form, and without warning, the next two songs take us through a loving tour of KMFDM records from the early ‘90s.  We’re taken on a journey of both the pure industrial drive of “Iryna’s song” (think “Rip the System,”) and then the proto-industrial metal of “Neon Cage” (akin to the entire Nihil album,) right down to the machine-gun drum machine sample.

One last highlight - “Soleil Noir”...well, it’s gonna sound odd, but the best descriptor of this song is that it sounds like the Pixies covered the boss battle music from the old Raiden video game series.  In French.  Yeah, that makes no sense.  But trust us, for all that your instincts are saying that can’t work, this song is, as the kids say, a bop.

There are several bands who have been lauded on these pages for their ability to stretch the definitions of genre or outright exceed them by reaching for disparate elements and flexing their adaptability.  Where Krystal System and Da Punch differ from those bands is that they reach outside those boundaries, but rather than adapt to the form, they make the form adapt to them, cramming and mangling other styles into their own existing idiom until the machine hums with life.

It should be noted that even on an album such as this, creativity in this mold can only be stretched so far - and while Krystal System accomplishes a hell of a lot on this record, the songs we didn’t discuss here are fine, but are permutations of the twists and turns already mentioned.  Which is in no way a knock, more of a note for accuracy’s sake.

Da Punch is one of the finest albums to come out this year, hands down.  It is energetic, explosive, exploratory, expansive, and a bunch of other adjectives that don’t start with the letter ‘e.’  It’s hard not to get caught up in the infectiousness of the beats and the groove.

EP Review: The Bloody Beetroots - "Forever Part One"

Who knew?  Who knew an Italian guy in a Grendel mask (the comic character, not the villainous monster from Beowulf,) could take a bunch of rock and punk songs and make them into loud, overdriven dance fodder in such an entertaining way.

Look, for ease of argument, let’s lump rock, metal, punk, alternative and everything in between into a catch-all term that we’ll call ‘the aggressive music community.’  It seems high time, not only with the success of this EP from Bloody Beetroots, but with the prominence over recent years from acts like Dampf, Zardonic and the resurrected Nine Inch Nails, that the aggressive music community come to recognize that electronic music will have a hand in the genre going forward.  Best to embrace it now.  

What stands out the most about all of these compositions is the way in which Rifo (the man behind The Bloody Beetroots,) uses his unique touch to accent and enhance the songs.  It’s not a delicate touch - Rifo’s hand overwhelms each track when his particular flavor of sound hits - but that’s what makes the EP work.  Where Rifo shows restraint is in the measures where he takes his hand away completely.

There’s going to be a lot of backhanded commentary coming, apologies in advance.  Focusing for a moment on the single “NUMB” that features Tokky Horror, the first forty-five seconds is a perfectly average alternative rock song.  And then it explodes.  The juxtaposition of noise level (and bass level) is the kind of switch-throwing that makes Forever Part One work so well.  Two worlds are colliding in a way that’s both refreshing and unique.  Add in the fact that Rifo stays his hand and only brings his electronic wall full bore during the choruses (and the thunderous outro,) and he, in conjunction with the band, has made something special.

This theme extends for the duration of the experience.  There’s nothing that would truly draw a listener into the basic premise of “I’m Not Holy” until the song breaks out into a dance hall thumper (one is reminded ever so slightly of the opening of season 2 of The Venture Bros, which featured the Aquagen song “Everybody’s Free.”)  The same applies towards the end of the EP with the song “Free,” which builds and builds until it eventually sounds like the best moments of a Streets of Rage soundtrack.  This is the kind of thing electronic music has been mastering over the last, oh, say four decades or so; the ability to slow build until the tension becomes burgeoning to the point that catharsis is all that’s left.  To hear that applied to aggressive music is a touch that’s been…’missing’ is the wrong word, but underutilized, for sure.

Spend some time with this.  Soak it in.  There’s a lot to like, both in the pleasure-of-listening sense (the bass alone will make you feel something,) and in the academic sense (the ongoing fusion of aggressive music and electronic dance music, which is a separate breed entirely from industrial.)  If we endeavor as music fans to grow and find new avenues for our fandom, then the Bloody Beetroots is offering something novel and different for us to imbibe.

Album Review: Dampf - "No Angels Alive"

 

I hate Dampf.  Which is to say, I love Dampf, and I hate how much I love them.  (I promise this is the only part of this review which is about me.)

There are a lot of metal bands on the planet Earth.  More than can be named or reasonably counted, never mind actually listened to or documented.  But the number is high.  

And the sad truth is that many (trying not to say “most”) of them suck.  They’re either derivative or boring or uninventive, or their suffer some manner of ideological problem, like thinking that the only pure music is recorded live in a hotel hallway in downtown Dresden, Germany.  More often than we’d like to admit, metal devolves into a sound that is (sometimes literally,) like banging two potted plants together and recording the aftermath.

Enter Dampf.  A band started kinda on a whim when a friend of Swedish electronic dance artist E-Type dared him to write a metal album.  That was “The Arrival,” and it was so good and so catchy and so well constructed, that it necessitated a second album, and here we are with “No Angels Alive.” And it is just as well executed and fun to listen to as its predecessor.  

Which, frankly, the metal community should be embarrassed at the fact that for all their number, this electronic guy can so easily traipse into the midst of the genre and absolutely nail metal in a way that so few understand.

It’s clear that A-TRON (electronic stage name E-Type) has a blueprint for his metal songs, and then like a housing development from the ‘80s, has come up with a dozen variations of the basic blueprint.  Which is genius when foraying into territory that doesn’t feel like your home base.  

The plan goes something like this – huge, layered, singalong chorus, consistent, constant rhythm, high contrast melody, poignant guitar solo, upbeat inflections, high beats per minute in the verses.  The sliders adjust from track to track – a little more electronic here, a little more harsh vocal there, a little slower here, a little heavier there, and in the end, you have ten songs that all share the same blood, but all feel a little different.

And it’s damn near perfect.  “Masquerade,” the album’s prominent single, might be the catchiest song I’ve heard this year, just as “From the E-Ternity” was on the band’s debut album.

I will say this – “No Angels Alive” is a little more power-ballad-y than “The Arrival” was, and that colors the experience depending on your opinion of power ballads.  That doesn’t mean those songs are lesser in construction; “Heart of Darkness” is a fun listen that strikes a good balance between metal roots and cinematic melodrama.

Even if you’re not a fan of that though, there’s still plenty here to like, particularly as Dampf really reaches and spreads their wings for the power metal opus of “Mists of Avalon (Don’t Wake Me Up).”

Either way, it remains joyously embarrassing at how easily Dampf has arrived on the scene and smoked most of their contemporaries, especially considering how seriously metal takes itself.  This is too much fun to be ignored or discarded for so petty a reason as spite.

Album Review: Master Boot Record - "Floppy Disk Overdrive"

In these trying times, individuals find comfort in the familiar.  For me, and I’m sure for many others, a good chunk of that comfort comes in the form of music.  So it is that while I am locked in inside, held at an (understandable) arm’s length by my job and society as a whole, I while away the hours by scouring through promos and new music that come into my inbox.

During these days, I hoped to merely find something interesting, and in doing so I stumbled across two revelations – though revelatory for different reasons.  As such, consider this the first part of what is a two part review, with the second chapter to come (on the new release from The Heavy Eyes,) tomorrow.

One of the sublimely pleasing privileges of my meager station as a music reviewer is the unearthing of some new gem.  A heretofore unexplored genre or permutation that the world is yet to fully digest. 

Enter Master Boot Record.  While we here loathe the confining parameters of genre labels, it is a fun game to play in these instances when so many narrow definitions can be turned on their ear in an ultimately futile effort to describe the indescribable.  Master Boot Record, and his debut full-length “Floppy Disk Overdrive,” is both all of and none of a hundred different qualifiers, including electronic, thrash, dramatic, symphonic, industrial and video game.  It is the kind of construction that is clearly built on the premise of ‘what would sound good here?’ as opposed to ‘what progression does my idiom dictate?’  Sometimes, the best words to define music are words that are not exclusive to music – if asked about MBR (for short,) my answer would be ‘energetic’ or ‘oddly captivating.’

A friend of mine, who I had listen to MBR for a second opinion, said it better than I could have, and I’m paraphrasing, but her message was this – if Floppy Disk Overdrive had been released six months ago, I don’t know that I would have liked it.  But with the influx of electronic music into the metal scene, this is something we’re now ready for.

Indeed, much of the album dances with abandon on the line between industrial good taste and over-the-top video game nonsense.  It’s as though KMFDM were performing a cover of “Clash on the Big Bridge” from “Final Fantasy V.”  The music is heavy enough to demand serious attention, but there is a sense of unavoidable…I don’t know, whimsy?  Nostalgia?  Hard to pinpoint a proper term, except to say that it clearly evokes images of the video games my generation grew up on.  As a listener, if you are not attuned to that style already, know that you may have to battle against it in order to see the underlying genius of MBR.

Part of the beauty of this record is that is has stop-on-a-dime changeability.  Due to the keyboard programming, the entire record pounds ahead with a ferocity that human musicians would never be able to match, or sustain.  One imagines this is the kind of thing that Al Jourgensen is talking about when he’s discussed producing music so fast that the beats are indistinguishable.  And yet, as MBR shows in “DISPLAY.SYS,” he can instantly change from a Beethoven symphony played at warp speed to a section with the docility of an unaccompanied string quartet. 

Make no mistake though, the real attraction to “Floppy Disk Overdrive” is the adrenaline factor when the beat really gets going.  The bass is deep and the ‘drums’ are fast and relentless, as though this were the soundtrack to a thousand starfighters having a dogfight.  In the middle of the Crab nebula.  At speeds much faster than light.  Imagine watching all of that, and now tap your foot while it’s happening, and you’ve got the idea.

There are some flaws which should be mentioned for accuracy’s sake.  The album’s first eight songs all sound kinda the same.  Some of them are long, some are medium, some are short, but the album flows in such a way that it’s hard to tell where one ends and another begins.  So as a listener, you might get forty-five minutes in before you realize the track has changed.  That doesn’t diminish the fun of listening to them, but it does mean that if they show up on your music shuffle, you’re going to know it’s an MBR song, but not which one.

Finally, with “SMARTDRV.EXE,” we hear something that shines as a beacon above and beyond its brothers and sisters, but in some small part it captures attention because sections of it sound like an electronic cover of “Master of Puppets.”  Nonetheless, it’s the first ‘Wow!’ moment on the record, and shows MBR’s ability to blend high tones, low tones and measured beats into something beyond just workout fuel.

He extends this trend through the end of the album.  “DISKCOPY.COM” is a slower, more methodical and, dare I say, emotional approach that revels in dramatic effect, while “EMM386.EXE” is the album’s equivalent of that part in the “November Rain” video where Slash rock his righteous guitar solo out front of a dusty chapel with a wind tunnel blowing his hair around.

Pro tip – when listening to this record, don’t try and hear what it would sound like played with the instruments you picture in your head.  I made that mistake the first time through and missed what the album was actually all about. 

“Floppy Disk Overdrive” is a beautiful, fast-paced new thing, unlike just about anything you’ve ever heard and complete unique.  As we mentioned at the top, one of the singular joys of listening to new music, especially when you get buried under as much stuff as Chris and I do, is finding something uncomfortable and new and shiny and different.  Master Boot Record’s debut record is many things, but chief among them is different.  It’s a pleasant reminder that we can experience something novel while partaking in a familiar old hobby.

Album Review: Namo Maitri - "Withered Mind"

Occasionally in this human existence, we are encouraged to step outside our comfort zone and engage in an activity we otherwise would not.  It is the potential of the experience that lures us, for it theoretically promises two beneficial outcomes – either we have found a new experience that we enjoy or, perhaps more commonly, we are least granted some new sense of perspective on the activities we already enjoy so well.

All that preamble is meant to say this – I’ve taken a dive into electronic music.

It seemed the natural thing to do.  Music has been trending that way for a while, and with its recent invasion even into the fortress of metal, it was time to see what all the ruckus was about.  So, for the time since I sampled DJ Tiësto’s “In My Memory” roughly around 2002 (which speaks not only to my age, but to the idea that I have perpetually been six months behind new music even then,) I took the recommendation of a trusted friend and ventured roughly blind into the soundscape of Namo Maitri’s “Withered Mind.”

What’s most impressive, about Namo Maitri’s collection of songs, and what will become a theme here, is the range which they exist in.  The album begins with “Isolation,” an etheric wisp with a borderline tribal affect, which pleasantly quiets the mind.  This plays in stark contrast to the follow up title track, which begins (and is threaded through,) with a sample of Charles Manson’s (in)famous “Believe me…” quote.  The juxtaposition of the two songs is jarring, but serves to demonstrate the number of roads that Namo Maitri is willing to take us down, which is to his credit.

“Legacy” is where the album comes alive.  Everything that the artist has built up toward through his first three tracks coalesces here, with a well-paced trip-hop beat underpinning the slower and more melodic overlay we’ve come to expect through the beginning of the album.  The song is a hybrid of themes from various Halloween movies (I mean the holiday, not the specific slasher movie series,) and early 90’s west coast hip-hop pacing.  While that sounds like an untenable combination, this is where “Withered Mind” shows us its excellent potential.

“Old Milk” is the album’s opus, an eight-minute laid back banger that would feel at home rolling down a sunshine-beaten, downtown avenue with some friends in a hydraulically-equipped car.  Surprising for an instrumental track over eight minutes, the cut is never boring, as it moves between three separate acts; a scratched intro, a sparse but thunderous piano middle, and finally a fully electronic ending with layered beats in harmony.  The second act is the most effective as the piano provides pleasant discord from the airy beat underneath, lending the piece depth, but all three phases are bound by the simulated hip-hop clap and weave around each other.

The curious adventures continue with the next two tracks, as we get the guitar-composed “Shampoo Night” (featuring KMFDM’s Andee Blacksugar, who seems to be popping up in this column a lot lately,) which then turns into “Time to Go Back,” which I want to pause on for a moment.  This latter song spends half of its time influenced by the dance music of the Indian subcontinent, and then transitions into an almost proto-reggae.  I didn’t think I’d write any of that today, but it’s the kind of experimentation that (micro) Namo Maitri and (macro) electronic music can play with and come off sounding fantastic.

The most damning thing one could really say about “Withered Mind,” is that many of the songs are very short, and manage to just establish their central idea before the end comes.  In some ways “Withered Mind” is reminiscent of J Dilla’s “Donuts,” in that we are presented with the ideas of songs and musical postulations more than we are the completed evolution of those same ideas.  I would have liked two more minutes of “Time to Go Back” to cite one example.

For all that, the focus here really should be that Namo Maitri gives us an opportunity to explore a much wider landscape of music than is customarily combined on one album.  Furthermore, “Withered Mind” does so without making us wander through a dense slog of electronic production and over-permutated beats.  These songs are light and airy, easy to get into, simple to listen to and free to enjoy.  Particularly for an inexperienced metalhead like me.  So if you’re looking to wade into deeper water, Namo Maitri provides a fine portal.