MAINSTREAM EXTINCTION V: Mastodon - The Hunter

And fuck you, Ma-Ti! Your element sucks!

Truth be told, because I hated Crack the Skye such an unfathomably large amount, I couldn't give even the minutest of fucks about The Hunter.  In fact, I didn't listen to it until I decided to do this series, and even then I didn't bother with it until I'd finished writing on the four previous albums, so as to not taint anything or potentially warp my old perspective of the band.  This was going to be a new experience for me, this was an entirely new album by a band I once really liked that had since fallen into the toilet, and the only bit I'd heard about it was that it was apparently lighter and more radio friendly.  That's all I knew, no other preconceived notions.

Frankly?  It's okay.  Certainly worlds better than fucking Crack the Skye, that's for sure.

At this point, Mastodon had proclaimed that they were tired of trying to be so heavy all the time (booo!) and instead were going to go in a direction that would allow them to have more fun with their music (yaaay!).  I love fun music, I don't care how silly that makes me.  It's why I listen to Blood Stain Child and The Decline and Gargoyle and Municipal Waste and Kvelertak and all kinds of other bands, because they're fun to listen to and I love that.  Mastodon had dashes of fun here and there on songs like "Megalodon" and "The Wolf is Loose", but Crack the Skye was a tedious chore, and even if you liked the album, you certainly don't list "fun" as one of its qualities.  That wasn't what they aimed for, so hearing that their new goal was to have some more fun with what they do for a living actually pumped me up quite a bit.

The final product here, with 2011's The Hunter, is actually pretty divisive, and yet at the same time pretty homogenous.   This is a clear departure from the more matured (dull) and adventurous (meandering) direction they were taking with the previous album, so a large contingent of fans are going to have issues with how light this is compared to anything they'd done in the past ("Curl of the Burl", despite having a very catchy, bluesy main riff, catches a lot of shit in particular for this reason) right off the bat, but personally, I find the commercialism is overstated.  I mean yeah, "Curl of the Burl" could be on the radio, but that's really about it.  The rest of these tracks are all either too heavy or two weird for any substantial airplay, and they usually do pretty well for themselves depending on what they shoot for.  There are some strange, trippy pieces like "Stargasm", "The Hunter", and "The Sparrow", and unsurprisingly those do pretty much nothing for me.  I suppose they work for what they are, and they at least keep themselves for being shorter than your average drone track.  Some tracks like to wander between the two styles on display, like "All the Heavy Lifting", but apart from the droning stoner chorus, that particular track is completely unmemorable.  In fact, most of the album apart from the first three or four tracks until the last two or so are pretty unmemorable.  Oh don't get me wrong, there are pieces that stand out, like the incredibly soothing "Creature Lives" (this song would have been terrible if attempted in a previous album. The laid back style and harmonized vocals work stunningly at this point in the band's career) or the blistering "Spectrelight", but most of The Hunter ends up being nary a blur after repeated listens.

Of the two styles, I find the heavier stuff is far more memorable.  "Blasteroid" is a Mastodon classic as far as I'm concerned, with an incredibly slick main riff, just oozing with bluesy charm, and the seemingly lost Blood Mountain b-side in "Spectrelight", which starts off blazing and never nods off.  And then there is the bonus track, "The Ruiner".  The fact that something incredibly tedious like the title track or "Thickening" wound up making the final cut while this fist pumping, bone crunching stomper was left out is nothing short of a mystery to me.  It carries the most memorable chorus on the album, for Greek's sake (Heavy weeeiiighs thuuh crooow-ow-hooowwn).  It's impossible to resist singing along with.  When Mastodon said they were going to go in a less intellectual and more fun direction, this is the kind of track I was imagining.  Leviathan/Blood Mountain mashups with big hooks and singalong vocal lines.  You see, this is the kind of Mastodon I miss.  The band that used to put all of their energy into every song, every bar, every note.  That energy, that oh-so-missed showboating percussion, it's all but absent apart from three tracks that exude it marvelously.  "Blasteroid", "Spectrelight", and "The Ruiner" are by far the best tracks on display, and the only other one I can even put in that same echelon (despite being a completely different style) is "Creature Lives".  Four tracks.  Four tracks from a band whose first three albums never dipped below six or seven total classics amongst a bunch of other pretty good songs.

Mastodon really reined it in here, and that rarely works to a band's advantage, especially when they built their base popularity around how aggressive and energetic the once were.  Taking a band like Sex Pistols and telling them to write something more akin to Snow Patrol is going to end up sucking, and the same thing happened when Mastodon decided to try to be like Genesis.  Thankfully, the overindulgence is mostly gone on The Hunter, but the tripped out psychedelic parts still rear their heads occasionally, and the still managed to not really work.  It's clear that this is what the band wants to do at this point, but they still never figured out how to do it well.  They've always been at their best when releasing all that energy they've built up, and yet their latest album finds them doing their best to avoid doing just that.  This isn't really as poppy or commercial as it's advertised, but it's still just a sort of diluted version of what the band delivered on their last two albums.  The huge dead streak in the middle of the album is a huge mark against it, but the first couple tracks are pretty decent, and there are four fantastic ones that would be live staples if I had my way ("Blasteroid", "Creature Lives", "Spectrelight", and "The Ruiner"), so it's not a worthless album.  They're just missing their best elements, which really drags down the idea they were going for.


RATING - 68%

MAINSTREAM EXTINCTION IV: Mastodon - Crack the Skye

LINKA!

I... I don't know what happened here.  I really don't.  Blood Mountain was a testament to what modern metal could be (I still don't know what to call Mastodon's style, so "modern metal" is just gonna have to be the big catch-all until I think of an appropriate title), and while each successive Mastodon release got a little bit less heavy (nothing was going to top the sheer weight of Remission, as flawed as the album may be), they were inventive and interesting and, most importantly, fantastic songwriters.  They could take all these elements I'd normally abhor and somehow craft very infectious and memorable tunes around them.  I really admired that ability, and no amount of overexposure or radio play is going to make me enjoy Blood Mountain or Leviathan less.

But the truth is, when Crack the Skye first came out, it pissed me off so much that I didn't listen to Mastodon at all for nearly four years.  From the release date of this fourth album until the day I started this series, I didn't intentionally listen to a single note from this band.

Yes, Crack the Skye is really that fucking bad.  All the kind of eccentric proggy elements I wasn't fond of but could appreciate how they made them blend with everything else before have taken center stage, and instead of aggressive barnburners and strong, catchy melodies and choruses, we are now inundated with long, spacy prog jams, and endless slow tapping melodies and 100% Mudvayne vocals.  It blows my mind how they could have spent their first three albums constantly refining their sound, perfecting the little details and carving out their own specific niche, just to reach this point and go "You know what?  Fuck all that, we want a more intelligent audience, so let's just drop the heavy influences we have and instead focus on Genesis and Dream Theater and the light Opeth songs".  I'm not crying because they changed (hell, every previous album was distinctly different from its predecessor), I'm crying because the change they made sucks like a turbocharged hoover. 

This reminds me a lot of what happened with Norwegian black metal hellions, 1349, with their fourth album (released two months after this here), Revelations of the Black Flame.  Both bands had started off pretty raw and unrefined and then nailed their particular sound on their third albums, and then for their fourth had apparently just decided that they needed a change and completely abandoned what they were good at.  1349 did not play to their strengths by abandoning the frantically brutal and straightforward black metal and instead focusing on ambient, and Mastodon did not play to their strengths by abandoning the punchy heaviness and strong, hardnosed aggression and melody by instead focusing on longwinded and melodic prog rock.  Mastodon taking a huge influence from Pink Floyd and King Crimson seems interesting at first, but when you actually hear it in action it just ends up horrendously depressing.  A band as frantic and energetic as this just doesn't translate well to this laid back style of songwriting.  The band never lets loose like they're so good at doing, and even Durgha spends all of his time in the background just giving very simple backing beats as opposed to the nigh endless showboating he's so well known for.

So the flair is toned down and it's a lot less showy, that doesn't necessarily mean it's inherently bad, right?  Most of the time, sure, but here it's proven pretty early on that when Mastodon wanders outside of their established home base, they just end up lost and confused and have no idea what in the hell they're doing.  All seven tracks here just kind of meander about without much cohesion between the individual instruments or the vocals.  And oh yeah, the vocals are at their all time worst at this point.  Not only is the Mudvayne voice the only real vocal lead (I still don't know which member sounds like individually, sue me, they're all similar), but it's also more nasally than ever before.  It's like he has a dastardly head cold that they couldn't wait to heal because they'd already booked the studio time.  The perplexingly popular "Oblivion" is a perfect showcase for such an issue, as that damn chorus repeats itself seemingly dozens of times, and his voice just grates and grates and grates and oh god make him stop Jesus Christ it's making my liver hurt somehow.  The vocals usually just drone over the top of whatever flittery psychedelic passages are noodling around in the background, and it just lacks any semblance of memorability throughout the runtime of the entire album.  It's bewildering, one of the band's main strengths in the past was writing the catchiest songs they could while using abrasive and seemingly incompatible elements, and yet here they focused on one style and managed to cock it up all-encompassingly.  Mastodon is not Pink Floyd, they can't write songs like this and make them work.  They tried, I can say they really obviously put their hearts into this album and I can appreciate such a personal and heartfelt effort, the problem is that it's totally ineffectual and they just can't get this sound down correctly. 

There are moments that are passable, like the "Let it gooo, LET IT GOOOO" chorus of "Quintessence", and the heavier part near the end of the same track that reminds me of "Capillarian Crest" from the previous album, and there are sections here and there in the way-too-fucking-long-because-we're-actually-a-real-life-prog-band-now-aren't-you-proud-of-us-yet-dad? "The Last Baron".  There's also one woefully short heavy segment about halfway through "Ghosts of Karelia" that works pretty well (probably because it's the most Blood Mountain-y segment on the album), but that's it.  Three or four short sections throughout a fifty minute psychedelic prog rock jam session, and that's an awful average.  Far too much of the album is spent trying to be all spacey and trippy and smart and it just ends up sounding so goddamn phony.  Yeah, I just said that they obviously tried very hard, but I still feel like this is insincere in a way.  To me, there are two ways this album came about; either the band was tired of the Adult Swim crowd they'd garnered and wanted to attract more "intellectual" fans, or they'd just finally reached cosmic levels of drug intake and decided to pay homage to all the pretty colors they'd been tasting for the last few years.  Either way, it was a shitty idea and no amount of genuineness can change that.  

Funnily enough, I feel like the band understood the problems with the album, as there are instrumental versions of each song floating around out there somewhere and they've since released an EP which featured shortened versions of the two needlessly overlong tracks.  Granted, the instrumental tracks were probably more to please the prog nerds/themselves and the abridged EP was probably the label's idea or their attempt to just cave in and please everybody, but either way they at least eliminate two of the bigger problems with the vocals and bad structuring.  But even with those cut out, the album is still flawed on a conceptual level and falls flat on its face straight out of the gate.  It's strange how when they take a bunch of different ideas and try mashing them up, they manage to craft some intense and hooky songs, but the instant they focus on one particular sound, they just completely bomb.  Crack the Skye is a bad experiment, and a terrible progression that just went against everything the band had been building to and working towards.  The laid back style doesn't at all work with the band's chemistry, and the album as a whole ends up sounding paradoxically unfocused and meandering despite being their first attempt to rein in their songwriting to one particular style.  This is honestly offensively bad to the point where I abandoned the band entirely upon first listening to it, and to the shock of nobody, time has not sweetened it.  They had been constantly improving up to this point, and then somehow managed to just wreck it in a fiery hodgepodge of shitty psychedelia and warbly nose-vocals.


RATING - 18%

MAINSTREAM EXTINCTION III: Mastodon - Blood Mountain

KWAME!

So if Remission got Mastodon noticed and Leviathan made them popular, I'd say Blood Mountain solidified them as a premier mainstream metal band.  Around this time, they were about as on top of the world as they could imagine.  They managed to jump ship from Relapse (one of the biggest and most recognizable labels in metal) to Warner Bros, which is most certainly not known for their impressive roster of metal bands.  So they went from a major label to a major label, and after ripping shit up on giant nationwide tours like Ozzfest, damn near everybody knew who they were at this point.

Prime ingredients for a sellout, naturally.

Blood Mountain says "Fuck that" and proceeds to hammer a whopping nine excellent tracks in a row into your skull before any real misstep.  All that fine tuning that took place on Leviathan was perfected on this 2006 release, to the point where I'm not even sure what to consider it from a musical standpoint.  I was never comfortable with referring to Mastodon as a sludge band, since to me, sludge is the stuff like Grief or Eyehategod, clearly worlds apart from our media darlings here, but at the very least I could understand why that tag got tacked on to them early on.  But here?  It's gone.  They're like mid-era Death where I guess they could be called prog metal if you wanted to call them that, but they weren't really all the way there.  I mean, there's still a huge High on Fire groove going on here, plus whatever other stoner and hardcore influences, but for the most part they've just kind of become their own nebulous entity at this point.  In fact, mid-late-era Death is actually a pretty decent comparison at times when you think about how frequent the harmonized leads play a central role in the music.  Almost every track is crammed full of minor tapping melodies and harmonized runs, very similar to what Chuck fell just a little bit too much in love with around the Individual Thought Patterns era.  And of course, Kali is still the drummer, so there are still an abundance of skin pounding theatrics.

I'll admit, I was being slightly facetious when I said that we get nine tracks in a row before the album ever stumbles, as "Sleeping Giant" is merely a shorter version of those long stoner jams I disliked so much on Remission, but it manages to keep pace with the rest of the album and doesn't overstay its welcome.  It ends up being a neat little idea as opposed to a flow breaking intrusion, so I can't really stay mad at it.  In fact, the album as a whole actually contains a lot of singular experimental ideas that I'd normally despise, but mostly work out pretty well, like the trippy jam of "Sleeping Giant", the weird talkbox insanity in "Bladecatcher", and most obviously that stupid fucking Tron voice that Cynic used so much on "Circle of Cysquatch".  Oh man that will never sound cool.  Seriously, somebody needs to sit on some council that reviews every single recorded album before it's released, and if they hear the Tron voice they should give the bands a light slap on the bottom with a fucking sledgehammer. The last quarter of the album suffers a bit too from being much more laid back than the rest of the album, not to mention a frankly bizarre vocal performance by the Mars Volta guy in "Siberian Divide".  Plus "Pendulous Skin" has that fucking stupid thing that bands do where they tack a bunch of silence on to the end of the album just to stick in some little joke at the end.  Man that shit can fuck itself with dynamite.  It's normally pretty easy to ignore but it's so bloody pointless that I can't help but get upset with it.

Those quibbles aside, everything else about the album is great.  There are an abundance of guitar solos (at least in comparison to their early work) and they're all tasteful and well done, the riffs are among the the most infectious they'd ever write, and the songwriting in general is just leaps and bounds ahead of where they were before.  I mean, nothing was written poorly on the previous album, but here it's written superbly.  Every track flows beautifully from one section to another, never feeling like a haphazard mess despite each track containing so many different ideas.  The overwhelming heaviness is mostly gone, replaced instead with a very infectious and aggressive, yet still fairly poppy mentality.  Everything here can pretty safely be considered inoffensive while still clearly being hard, heavy, and aggressive, and it's rare that a metal band can manage to strike such a remarkable balance between legitimacy and accessibility.  Mastodon here nails it, with the kinda-progressive-kinda-stoner-not-really-sure style lashing out both extreme melody, extreme aggression, and weirdly effective (for a change) psyched out trippy parts, though they're still the weakest link of the album.  The neat style of riffing that Mastodon had always used but never really established as their own finally comes to life here, coming off as a high energy mix of High on Fire and Between the Buried and Me.  "The Wolf is Loose" pretty much sums up the entire album in a nutshell, with it's blisteringly high octane pace, ascending bridges, and vocals split pretty evenly between the manic shouts of the past and the Mudvayne voice of the future.  The album on the whole seems to use that goddamn Mudvayne voice most of the time, but at this point it's still firmly in the territory of Mastodon, and doesn't sound as silly as it could.

Apart from that beast of an opener, there is the "hit single" in "Colony of Birchmen", which is a great, midpaced melodic number with a very catchy main riff and instantly memorable chorus.  It's moments like this that foreshadow the more melodic and accessible direction Mastodon was pointing towards, and yet it showed how great they could potentially be with such a mindset.  Then there are tracks like "Capillarian Crest", which show case a more progressive, aggressive style, rife with tapping leads and frantic melodies.  Again, it showed that they were pretty good at most of the styles they toyed around with, even though they were mainly just reaching to other areas for inspiration in their own defined sound, as opposed to trying desperately to appeal to everybody.  Despite it's weirdness, my favorite track my actually be the instrumental "Bladecatcher".  It flows in a very creative fashion from each disparate section to the next, and the fast part with the weird whammy-ing talkbox strangeness just manages to work masterfully.  I wish I could explain how so many different, noodly sections end up sounding so brilliant to me, a guy who generally can't stand noodly prog, but Mastodon somehow manages to master it by basing the music instead around an accessible stoner/prog/modernwhatever hybrid.  "Hand of Stone" also gets special mention for the surprisingly thrashy riff it closes on.

Blood Mountain can basically just be summed up as "Mastodon".  That's it, this is what Mastodon had been building towards since their inception, and it just reached its apex here.  I'm still not entirely sure what genre to classify this as, as to my knowledge it's a style that started getting aped later by horrid modern bands that Liquid Metal likes to fellate.  Give it a listen, if only for the fact that it's one of the few definitively "modern" metal albums I can think of that both completely exemplifies the new sound of heavy music in the mainstream and is also not utter shit.  Mastodon managed to somehow strike gold here, and they were certainly on the upswing.  They'd hit their stride, surely they'd ride the momentum and creativity from this album into an illustrious career as both media darlings and legitimately good songwriters, right?

RIGHT?!

RATING - 88%

MAINSTREAM EXTINCTION II: Mastodon - Leviathan

GI!

So while Remission gave Mastodon some mainstream recognition (being released on Relapse certainly helped, and "March of the Fire Ants" received decent rotation on music channels), it's really hard to debate that their real breakthrough album was anything other than Leviathan.  If you watched Fuse or listened to any hard rock/metal radio station or used internet radio or anything of the sort back in 2004, there was no escaping "Blood and Thunder" or "Iron Tusk".  This shit was ubiquitous, no doubt about it.  And that's great and all, I thought Remission was pretty decent but had a few issues with overlong stoner jams, so seeing that Leviathan only has one track I could consider to be of a long length (though it's twice as long as the longest track on the previous album) filled me with some rare optimism.

Long story short, yeah this definitely fixed my biggest problem with Mastodon's debut.   Gone are the overly dragging, droning, no-seriously-guys-we're-totally-a-prog-band jams ("Hearts Alive" not withstanding), replaced almost entirely with those mid to fast paced rockers I enjoyed so much.  Paradoxically, the hardcore influence has been toned down dramatically as well.  I still won't be upset at somebody labeling this album or the band as a metalcore band, but the noisy chaos is much more reined in this time around, with the riffwork being more controlled and precise.  It's more melodic on the whole as well, and is absolutely loaded with dueling harmonized lead lines, which eventually became one of the band's trademarks, if you ask me.  One element that was retained, thankfully, was Dailor's completely overdone yet charismatic drumming.  I understand why people hate this guy, but I personally adore his buttnards, fill-happy technique.  It gives the band identity (oh they're the band with the Shokan meth-head drummer, right?) and keeps the songs moving forward.  Mastodon is no stranger to the stoner metal tendency of repeating riffs far more often than they'd logically need to be repeated, but with Dailor's nonstop filling, it makes the music go by without dragging on, and that's wholly welcome.

Now then, if the stoner jams are toned down and the progginess is toned down and the hardcore is toned down, doesn't that mean we have a much more restrained and bland album on our hands?  In a way, kind of.  This is certainly much less off-the-wall than its predecessor, but I look at it as more "homogenized" or "focused" than "bland across the board".  To me, Remission had a ton of ideas, and only half of them really stuck, whereas Leviathan is the band learning from that experience and instead funneling their songwriting talents into the shorter, punchier tracks this time around.  There are remnants of that early fire here and there, with "Hearts Alive" being a thirteen minute jam, taking nearly all of the leftover elements they kept from shoehorning into the other songs and just cramming them all into one track.  The slight bluesy elements rear their heads occasionally as well ("Megalodon" is the most blatant example) and "Island" gets a giant helping of that chaotic noise that the rest of the album manages to shy away from.  But for the most part, this is a much more focused and song oriented effort, jam packed with memorable riffs and melodies.

However, there is one major, major issue that began on this album and would plague the band for the rest of their career.  That would be the fucking Mudvayne vocals.  I have no idea how I'm apparently the only person who hears the Chad Gray impression in the clean vocals, but if you can't hear it in "Naked Burn", then I have no idea what to tell you.  I get that Mastodon is a cool band and Mudvayne is a lame one so there's no way you can ever compare something good to something bad, but even huge opponents of the band who will find anything crazy to say about how much they suck and are a blight on the landscape of heavy metal seem to think I'm off my rocker with that comparison.  It only becomes more prevalent with subsequent releases, apparently due to the vocalist(s) blowing out his/their voice(s) and being unable to scream anymore, which is a shame but the point stands that the dirty croon of the clean vocals remind me of fucking Mudvayne so it can be distracting sometimes.

But other than that and the production being more polished (which normally doesn't bother me but it comparison to Remission this sounds kind of tame) and the songs being much less dense and heavy than before (thanks to the band abandoning the old tunings), Leviathan manages to be a good improvement upon its predecessor.  Where Remission had clear standouts ("Crusher Destroyer", "March of the Fire Ants", "Burning Man") and clear weak points ("Trilobite", "Ole' Nessie", "Trainwreck"), Leviathan stands as a more consistently enjoyable effort, with the only low point being the needlessly overlong "Hearts Alive".  Sorry guys, but you just are not as good at this long, drawn out epic style than you are at the short, to the throat rockers.


RATING - 79%

MAINSTREAM EXTINCTION I: Mastodon - Remission

WHEELER!

One of the biggest metal bands in the mainstream of today (and I mean the real mainstream.  The shit capable of charting and the kinds of bands that people who just watch MTV for Jersey Shore reruns might have heard of) is of course, Atlanta's Mastodon.  I decided to start this series for a few reasons.  One was that I used to be a huge fan of the band.  Really, their first three albums were always in fairly regular rotation from about 05-08, and I think it'd be fun for me to take a trip down memory lane.  The other is because the reason this is a trip down a long forgotten path instead of a simple retrospective is because I haven't listened to them at all for the last four years.  Yes, Crack the Skye was so unbearably awful that it somehow managed to make everything before it sound like shit to me.  It was like The Matrix sequels.  And since I've stopped listening to them, they apparently became the new Metallica, so curiosity is leading me to re-explore and re-evaluate the band's career in some attempt to understand how in the everloving fuck that wound up happening to a band that managed to squander away their songwriting capabilities so marvelously.  So welcome, my friends, to Mainstream Extinction: The Story of Mastodon, and BastardHead's Expert Opinion on Why You are Probably Wrong.

So in 2002, after gathering up a huge amount of buzz via their two EPs the previous year (Slick Leg and Lifesblood), Mastodon managed to sign to the legendary Relapse Records, and start their career already a few steps ahead of most young, innovative new bands.  And their debut, Remission, actually holds up pretty well, even a decade later.  What this presented was a very hungry young band, out to set the world on fire.  Remission manages to do just that, with it's insanely chaotic approach to extreme music, dashed with influences of hardcore, sludge, and bluesy southern rock.

Back at this time, for those of you who got into metal around the time Dragonforce was was wrapping up production on their fourth album (never has a young person felt so old than in the metal scene!), there really wasn't a whole lot like Mastodon in the early 00s.  There were chaotic bands, there were noisy bands, there were sludgy, heavy, and bluesy bands, but few that wrapped all of it up in such a nice, appealing package in the way that this band did.  Even less so getting frequent airplay on MTV and a major label hype machine.  So at the time, this really was a cool experience.  The long, psyched out jam in "Elephant Man" was so different from the thunderously heavy "Crusher Destroyer" which was so different from the unremittingly dense "Where Strides the Behemoth".  It's a very fun, flavorful album, with enough running threads and common themes between tracks to keep the varied experience cohesive.

The one aspect that absolutely cannot be ignored is Brann Dailor's absolutely frantic drumming.  Bill Ward once said that the reason he injected Black Sabbath with so many drum fills was because he had trouble keeping time, and so throwing in a fill every few bars gave him the ability to break into free time for a short while so he could collect himself and get back to where he needed to be.  I don't doubt Dailor is more than competent enough to be able to keep time like a human metronome, but he emulates Ward so closely in the frequency, diversity, and intensity of his fills here that I can't help but wonder.  One sad, lonely evening as a teenager, I actually sat down and listened to the first two Mastodon albums to see how long they went without a drum fill, and I'm pretty sure my calculations ended up being somewhere around "every four bars, twelve seconds being the longest gap between them".  He really ends up being the leader of this band despite being the only member not to contribute vocals.  His showy, flashy style ends up being one of the most memorable elements of the early albums, and this doesn't bother me in the slightest since he's very skilled, and it helps add memorability to his performance.  So even if I ended up fucking hating this album, at least I wouldn't forget it.  I would at the very least remember the complete spaz of a drummer.

And luckily enough, I don't hate this album. In fact I feel like it's quite good, and has managed to stand the test of time as an enjoyable modern metal album.  It's hard to pigeonhole Remission into any one particular subgenre of music.  There are definitely huge heaping helpings of High on Fire in here, such as "Where Strides the Behemoth" and "Trainwreck", and not to mention the slightly prog rock styled darkness of the acoustic segments in "Ole' Nessie", "Trilobite", and "Elephant Man".  Unsurprisingly though, I feel the best tracks are the shorter, faster ones; the ones where the band just completely lets loose and delivers a chaotic, frenzied experience complete with memorable riffs and melodies.  "Crusher Destroyer" is an absolute fucking monster of a track, as are "Burning Man", "Mother Puncher", and "Workhorse", and they contain some of the most memorable riffs of the entire experience (topped only by the more crushing, mid paced number of "March of the Fire Ants").  Unfortunately, they also stand out the most because the long tripped out songs are pretty fantastically dull.

Yeah, "Ole' Nessie", "Trainwreck", and "Trilobite" do a decent job of keeping the flow of the album going, but as tracks themselves they're just needlessly boring.  I get a feeling that the "progressive" part of their genre comes from tracks like this, the long ones that drone on endlessly with jazzy percussion and long sections of harmonized lead lines.  They don't make the entire album boring, thankfully, and they're each spaced out by putting a fast, catchy song in between them all, but if you're not leaving the album on in the background or something (like say... reviewing it), they can be really tiresome and frustrating.  The band's strength lies in the fast and the midpaced, and most of these songs are indeed midpaced, but when their ideas are stretched out for too long, they tend to lose their luster, and that sucks because it means the album periodically loses steam after the first four tracks finish. They're just... not very interesting to listen to, and when you couple that with the completely inconsequential vocals, you find yourself listening to drum fills for seven minutes at a time.  Yeah, the band would be better off in the future when they dropped the idea of putting multiple long droning tracks on each album.

Overall the first four tracks are all great, with a strong High on Fire type stoner metal vibe, mixed in with healthy amounts of noisy hardcore and a very subtle southern sludge flavor, with "Burning Man" and "Mother Puncher" doing the same on the latter half of the album.  The more progressive songs, on the other hand, are kinda lame.  You can do without the five tracks that aren't the six I just mentioned, as they're really inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.  If nothing else, it's a very dense and suffocatingly heavy album for most of it's duration, even during the boring songs, and it serves as a neat reminder of the band's roots in hindsight, because they never got heavier than this.  I most certainly would not have expected Mastodon to become one of the biggest and most popular ambassadors for heavy music in the media's eye based on this inhumanly thick and impenetrable album, that's for sure.


RATING - 68%

Killswitch Engage - Disarm the Descent

The same problems as All That Remains, but far, far less shitty

Something right off the bat: I know fuck all about Killswitch.  I never listened to them when they were at their peak because back then I'd react to a metalcore breakdown the same way I'd react to a hydroflouric spongebath administered by Kathy Bates.  I guess I know the "Holy Diver" cover, and I know that it's much better than many metal fans seem to give it credit for ("Oh golly they added a breakdown!  Dio was rolling in his grave three years before he even died!"  Shut up, covers are always more interesting when the covering band adds their own flavor to it, and Howard Jones is a fine vocalist and the rest of the band did a commendable job and paid the song no disrespect by simply having the gall to love it enough to want to perform it, untwist your panties), but that's it.  I can't name a single song and I can only name one or two albums.  So believe me when I say I'm coming into this with a fresh perspective.  I have no preference between Jesse Leach and Howard Jones because I barely know what either man sounds like, so this much lauded reunion doesn't mean a damn thing to me.  I'm coming into this with my only prior knowledge being that the band plays metalcore and that the guitarist is apparently a big deal as a producer, that's it.

And with that fresh perspective in mind, my final thought is "eh, it's okay".  You see, when it comes to modern mainstream metalcore, it's going to be hard to top As I Lay Dying's fourth-time's-a-charm An Ocean Between Us, and so using that album as a measuring stick, I'd have to say Disarm the Descent is pretty enjoyable when it's on, but really lacks staying power and is absolutely plagued with short term deja-vu issues.  I can't tell most of these songs apart after half a dozen spins, and many songs share similar riffs and vocal melodies ("New Awakening" and "In Due Time" share very similar main riffs, for example).  These riffs are almost all pretty decent high tempo melodeath riffs that the metalcore genre has certainly made their bread and butter over the years, and while they lack any sort of immediate creativity, they are pleasant and do their job pretty well.  I can definitely see a circle pit breaking out during the intro of "The Call" or just any moment really.  Disarm the Descent certainly keeps the pace up and the songs short throughout its duration, and I can certainly appreciate that since it at the very least keeps the album from dragging.  The songs may all be kinda samey but at least they don't just drone on and refuse to end.  The sole exception being the ballad "Always", which, unsurprisingly, is terrible.  I dunno guys, trying to shove all this emotion into a track with that goofy voice just kinda backfires, especially when the instrumental portion is dreadfully boring.

And with that I should probably bring up the vocals.  The harsh hardcore screams are pretty good, nothing particularly noteworthy and they're pretty inconsequential, but good nonetheless.  Where my issue lies is with the clean vocals.  Now, As I Lay Dying sports some of the most hilariously wimpy cleans in the history of heavy music, and they always struck me as the sound of some poor shlub who got picked on in high school ineffectually lashing out in his diary, so Killswitch here has at least managed to avoid that pratfall by having these at least sound like they're coming from a grown man.  My qualm with them is the fact that it sounds like they're trying so hard to be emotional that they just come off as hilariously phony.  He sounds like an amateur theater enthusiast trying to put on a fake accent.  Every time they surface they just project way more than they need to and end up sounding so incredibly forced and dorky.  They're kind of reminiscent of Shadows Fall, just... goofier.  I can't help but imagine him in a high school auditorium, hanging out of a cardboard window, shaking his fist to the other actors while he sings "REEEELEEEASE YOAH!  INUHBIIISHUuUuUNS".  It's so damn funny to me, seriously.

The album also has a strange dichotomy in where the first half is more melodic and obviously meant to be radio singles ("In Due Time", "The Turning Point", and "Beyond the Flames" are the most obvious to me), whereas the second half blurs together yet somehow manages to be more memorable.  Tracks like "The Call" and "All that We Have" most definitely stick in my memory more than something like "A Tribute to the Fallen".  It's kind of strange, because even though the album is front loaded with obvious radiobait and the back half is slightly more adventurous in the sense that the riffs get slightly heavier on average, the sense of melody is suffocatingly prevalent the entire time.  This music is the metal equivalent of the logical opposite of something like Portal.  It's about as consonant and poppy as you can get while still being undeniably based in some form of metal (in this case, the ever popular style of metalcore that vigorously molests the melodeath scene). 

And frankly, that's not for everybody.  The pop sensibility works to the band's advantage when they go for full on catchy melodies, but the songs with blast beasts and easily windmillable riffs tend to stand out the most simply because they sound like the band is having more fun with them.  That's really important in this case because the album on the whole feels somewhat rushed.  The songs give the impression that not a whole lot of time was put into any of them, with most of them being paint-by-numbers templates of how metalcore songs are supposed to be written.  Most of them are pretty formulaic and all but two of them fall within the same thirty second window in length.  It's just... kinda there.  That's why the album as a whole sort of fails, it isn't bad, it does what it sets out to do, but it isn't very memorable and doesn't feel like the band put their all into writing and recording it.  This feels like a rushed product, and that's disappointing for a band that's supposedly making their thunderous return with their original vocalist.  So in the end you can pretty much just burn through this once or twice and shelf it.  It's got some good tunes, I think "In Due Time" is definitely a good choice for a single, but again, in terms of mega popular melodic metalcore, you can do much better than this.


RATING - 61%

Gamma Ray - Land of the Free

The sun will shine for all of us again...

As my clock ticks downwards, I continue my quest to tackle albums that are special to me on a personal level.  And really, despite listening to this album for a decade, it's only recently reached that special sentimental level to me, and it really isn't because of any silly reason like "It reminds me of grandma" or "I lost my butt-ginity while 'Time to Break Free' was playing" or anything like that.  Simply put, this album just... makes me feel good.

Really, this is a very optimistic album.  I've mentioned in my review for The Crimson Idol that when I'm feeling down, I usually listen to equally depressing music that would allow me to just wallow in self pity for a time.  If I'm sad, I don't want to be cheered up, I'll feel better when life gets better, dammit.  And then there is Land of the Free, the glorious exception to the rule.  This, above any other metal album ever written, inspires feelings of hope and optimism.  Instead of "Life sucks, let's write about it", Kai seemed to approach this album with the mindset that "Life sucks and everything is unfair, but it can get better and you can help".  The chorus of "Man on a Mission" can nearly move me to tears if I hear it when in a perfect spot of emotional vulnerability.

What we need right now is a miracle on Earth...

Yeah yeah, I know the literal themes are the same thing Kai always goes on about, aliens and illuminati and such, but unlike darker, more bitter albums like Majestic, this shows the spirits of the band still being in rather high order.  Doomsday isn't here yet, and we can still prevent it if we all band together as brothers and sisters and stand up for what is right.  A lot of instances indicate that the efforts may be futile, but it's wishful thinking that keeps our spirits up before the big fight.  Land of the Free is basically just a giant rallying cry against... negativity in general, and I can really relate to such hopeless naivete and dogged well-wishing in the face of overwhelming bleakness.  Most people can, and even if they don't, there's a chance it could inspire such feelings (as it does for me, even when it the darkest of corners).

So the overarching theme, tone, and feel of the album are marvelous, but I must admit that it stumbles a couple times throughout the duration regardless.  The ballad, "Farewell", is heartfelt and genuine and features a great cameo from the mighty Hansi Kursch, but it's overall entirely forgettable.  The random forty second interludes that pop up from time to time are essentially useless and add nothing to the songs they tie into.  "Fairytale" is basically a fifty second fake-out ending to "Man on a Mission" that could have easily stuck on to the back of that preceding track and not felt out of place at all.  And the closer, "Afterlife" ends the otherwise stellar album on a pretty mediocre note, which is a bit of a bummer since the journey to reach that point is so wonderful.  And strangely, tracks that are great, high speed power/speed metal numbers like "Gods of Deliverance" and "Salvation's Calling" end up being forgettable in the grand scheme of things thanks to one of the more absurd and baffling problems of all time... the best songs are so good that the rest of the album feels somewhat flat in comparison.

Yeah, that amazing atmosphere of hope and optimism that I love so much certainly prevails throughout the course of Land of the Free, but the title track, "Man on a Mission", and "Rebellion in Dreamland", are all so thoroughly perfect that they obliterate the rest of the songs utterly and completely.  I mean, I love the mid paced epic in "Abyss of the Void", but damn it has nothing on the mid paced epic that is "Rebellion in Dreamland".  "Salvation's Calling" is an awesome speed metal song, but it's nowhere near as good as the awesome speed metal of "Man on a Mission".  Seriously, these three tracks make up 90% of the greatness on the record.  The trademark Gamma Ray formula of putting a huge, epic break/buildup in the bridge of all the best songs are present on these three tracks, of course, and all three of them are just stunning.  The solo in "Man on a Mission" is also nothing short of exhilarating. I'm willing to say that that track is actually one of the greatest power metal songs ever written.  And then there's "Rebellion in Dreamland", generally regarded as the band's best song, and I really can't take too much contention with that claim.  It's almost nine solid minutes of the most grandiose power metal ever recorded, and even nearly twenty years later I personally think it's still unsurpassed in terms of one mini-epic track.  The chorus is iconic, the middle break with all of the fastest riffs is incredible, the entire track is the result of taking that magical subbier-than-subniche of mid to late 80s German speed metal, polishing it up and honing it's precision until it juuuuuust becomes power metal, and then injecting it with a tremendous sense of scope and grandeur.  It's basically the entire album in a nutshell, and encapsulates the theme perfectly.  This is it, folks. The eyes of the world are closing forever, but we can reverse it.  Shit's about to go down, but if we all band together, we can save the world.  And the title track?  Essentially a combination of the two.  It's a short, fast, punchy power metal song with an iconic chorus and huge sense of wonder.

Let us walk away together...

All of the other songs on display have elements of these three masterpieces on display, but none of them are as strong.  "Salvation's Calling" has a great main riff that brings to mind Kai's early time with Helloween (think Walls of Jericho), but... but it just isn't as good as "Man on a Mission"!  "Gods of Deliverance" is another awesome, speed metal influenced number, but it doesn't hold a candle to "Land of the Free".  "Time to Break Free"... well that on I genuinely think is kinda bad, but that might have something to do with the fact that fucking Michael Kiske sings on it, and that man can't help but wussify every goddamn thing he touches with his stupid, syrupy voice.  That's really the only issue with the seven full tracks that aren't those magical three I raved about earlier, they're just... not those three songs.  It's not for lack of effort or ideas, thematically they contain everything I enjoy about this album and they're generally well executed ("Farewell" not withstanding).  They're just a bunch of little Torry Holts, while those monumental three songs are all Jerry Rice. 

On the whole, the album still manages to be greater than the sum of its parts.  "Rebellion in Dreamland", "Man on a Mission", and "Land of the Free" are all among the best songs in the genre, I can't stress that enough, and that unfortunately makes the rest of the songs seem somewhat tame in comparison, but as one big unit (hur hur) it works marvelously well and there's very little I would change.  The overarching theme of optimism and hope acts as a huge rush of fresh air from the darkness most metal was wallowing in during the mid 90s, and even within its own genre, as the fantasy element is quite underplayed here.  If you're anything at all like me, Land of the Free will put a smile on your face and a warmth in your soul, because listening to it reminds you that things are going to be just fine.  It's time to put The Crimson Idol and From Fathoms away, it's time to move on with life.  Land of the Free is the perfect soundtrack for that.  Life's not so bad, y'all.  I know you can't just snap your fingers and feel better or change your outlook on life at the drop of a hat, but if there's any non-pharmaceutical aid in such an endeavor, this album is it. 

I'm not kidding when I say this helped change my life.

Let the fairytale be real...


RATING - 89%

Megadeth - Countdown to Extinction

*BA DOW DOWT*

To me, Countdown to Extinction is pretty much the Megadeth album that most accurately and succinctly sums up the band's mission statement.  What would that be, you ask?  For my money, it'd be "Be more successful than Metallica".  Not "be better", not "be more extreme", but "be more successful".  Dave's undying resentment for being kicked out of Metallica for what he perceived as hypocritical reasons (matters of degree is a concept utterly incapable of existing inside a brain as malformed as Mustaine's) has never been a secret, but it seems like a lot of people seem to brush it off or view it as a kind of motivation to make much better music.  Personally, the first three Metallica albums are all better than the first three Megadeth albums, but ever since then Megadeth has pretty solidly had the upper hand.  I will not deny for one second that Rust in Peace blows pretty much everything Metallica has ever released out of the water, and it's a personal Top 10 All Time album for me, but Megadeth on the whole has always annoyed me for being a blatantly one-dimensional band with only one goal in mind, and no album illustrates that better than Countdown to Extinction.

You see, most Megadeth albums have a corresponding Metallica album(s), everything the band has ever done has simply been reacting to what Metallica was doing at the time and trying to beat them at their own game.  Admittedly, they usually succeed, but I just can't bring myself to respect the band (or really just Dave Mustaine, since he's always been the band) as much as their symbolic big brother.  Metallica did the whole sellout thing in 1991, we all know that, but after achieving that monstrous amount of money, fame, and money, they've always just kind of been doing whatever the hell they felt like doing.  They'd reached that point of security where they'd always be famous, people would always clamor to hear a new album, and so they started doing the whole laid back rock thing and whatever the hell St. Anger was.  Megadave on the other hand just seemed to go "Metallica's songs are getting longer and more adventurous?  Well so are mine!  What?  They play commercial hard rock now?  SO DO I!  They're getting heavier again?  Well two can play at that game!".  It's actually really frustrating to me to see a man with such immense songwriting talent and knack for assembling great musicians around him to tie his songwriting to the one-track mindset of "try to do the same thing this one band I have a grudge against does, but do it better than them".  I'd like to see the alternate universe where Dave was never a part of Metallica and instead just had a ton of his own ideas he wanted to unleash.

So around this time, Metallica had become one of the biggest metal/hard rock bands in the world, and so Megadeth of course had to follow suit.  When it comes to the album this was modeled after (The Black Album, obviously), I really like a few songs but overall think the album's just okay.  I think "Nothing Else Matters" is a pretty decent ballad, as is "The Unforgiven", and I really like "Through the Never", and I have a nostalgia-fogged love of "Wherever I May Roam" and "Of Wolf and Man", but I could go the rest of my life without ever hearing "Enter Sandman" or fucking "Sad But True" ever again.  Unsurprisingly, that view kind of parallels with Countdown to Extinction here, as the two big singles ("Symphony of Destruction" and "Sweating Bullets") are pretty far and away the worst songs on display.  It's not necessarily because of how overtly commercial and radio-friendly they are (the other big single, "Foreclosure of a Dream", is most definitely both of those things, and I like that song plenty), but more because they just sound half assed and written in half an hour.  They both ride on the most bewilderingly simplistic mid-paced chugs and place a huge emphasis on the vocals.  This has always been a giant obstacle for me, as let's face it, Dave Mustaine has a fucking wretched singing voice.  His signature snarl is pretty novel at times, and it's certainly recognizable, but as has been posited by people smarter than I, he's a voice you learn to get used to more than actually enjoy.  I've certainly gotten used to his voice I guess, but I still think it's ill-suited to hard rock/heavy metal on display in most of these songs, and is frankly just goddamn annoying.  Some high speed, punk tinged aggression like the first album?  Fine, it fits like a glove.  But for polished commercial mainstream radio metal?  Good god in heaven no!

Apart from the two chuggy, crappy "Sad But True" emulations, Countdown to Extinction also has a bizarro version of "The Unforgiven" in "Foreclosure of a Dream".  The main difference is that the Metallica song features loud verses and a quiet, acoustic chorus, whereas the Megadeth version flip flops it with acoustic verses and a loud, distorted chorus.  Otherwise they're structured pretty much the same apart from the fact that "Foreclosure" moves along at a higher general tempo.  I attribute this to Dave's eternal one-upsmanship, but I prefer this song to its Metallica counterpart so I'll cut it some slack.  The political bent that Dave's lyrics always seem to have is also here in full force, though it ends up being pretty funny in hindsight considering he now stands for the exact opposite of everything he championed on this album.  I guess his reactionary tendencies aren't just contained to writing music based on whatever Metallica is up to, but also to rally against just... whoever is in charge of the United States at the current time.

Past the three singles, I have to admit that this is actually an extremely solid album for a blatant commercial sellout.  I imagine most Rust in Peace fans were disappointed when this dropped since the band's ever evolving complexity has been stunted in favor of a more stripped down and simplistic approach.  The riffwork isn't nearly as creative as the previous four albums on the whole, though it's pretty inconsistent throughout the album ("Sweating Bullets" carries one of the most generic and half-hearted riffsets ever conceived, whereas "Ashes in Your Mouth" could have feasibly sounded at home on the previous classic record).  The guitar work on the whole is actually pretty stunningly hit or miss, hitting bullseye a few times (like the solo on "Skin o' My Teeth" or the chorus melody in the title track), missing the board entirely once or twice (the whole of "Symphony of Desctruction"), but mostly at least hitting 20 or double 15.  That's really what the album is when you pick it apart, it's a mixed bag of elements that they used to do much better, new ideas meant to coincide with the newer direction, and harbingers of some of the utter suckage to come later in their career.

To elaborate on that last part, take a look at "Architecture of Aggression", mainly the chorus.  It's really the first instance I can think of where Dave's lyric writing started being egregiously hamfisted.  I feel like he wrote down those lines as one long sentence, and then tried to find a way to awkwardly fit it into a four line chorus based on this riff he'd already written.  It doesn't match at all and feels like he just starts rambling off words that don't coagulate with the riffs in even the slightest sense.  This problem pretty much reached it's zenith in the mid 00s, with The System has Failed and United Abominations being just absolutely loaded with awkward vocal patterns that mesh with neither the lyrics nor the riffs.  Check out "Of Mice and Men" and "United Abominations" for the most preposterous examples.  This sort of rears its head on tracks like "Captive Honour" and "This was My Life" here, but the aforementioned "Architecture of Aggression" is the most obvious example of Dave trying way too hard to make a point and letting the songwriting suffer by not reworking the music, vocals, or lyrics to match the other elements at play.

I've been pretty negative so far, constantly knocking the band for being Metallica Jr and Dave's increasingly oddball songwriting decisions, but I can't stress enough that I like this album plenty.  "Skin o' My Teeth" is a high speed rocker worthy of any greatest hits collection, featuring an ear catching main riff reminiscent of the very early thrash records like Kill 'em All and Megadeth's own Killing is My Business.  "High Speed Dirt" follows in the same path, though it isn't as memorable (apart from the strangely well executed blues break), while "Ashes in Your Mouth" could well be the most "Megadeth-y" song on display, sounding like an outtake from the Rust in Peace recording sessions with the adventurous riffs, bouncy energy, instantly hooky chorus, and eye melting soloing sections.  Not even all of the dominantly groovy tracks are bad, as "Psychotron" is pretty fun and despite the wretched chorus, I think "Architecture of Aggression" is pretty sweet too.  And then there's the title track, which is somehow really, really good despite having all of the ingredients for a perfect trainwreck.  It's a very simple, almost power ballady paced ode to overt environmentalism with one of Dave's signature awkward chorus, but man they somehow nail this one.  Regardless of the message, usually a track with extraordinarily blatant political messages (not veiled in clever metaphors) are rarely well done enough in my eyes to actually get the message across, but this one manages to be okay by making the song around the lyrics so interesting that I never really need to cringe at the shoehorned message.  The bass line in the beginning is quite memorable and sets the stage for the moody subject matter.  The main draw for me is actually just one simple element, and that's the guitar melody in the chorus.  Holy crap, it's so good.  I have no idea what the lyrics are, I don't care, I sing along to the guitar part instead.  It's incredibly simple yet executed masterfully and ends up being on par with Amon Amarth in the realm of "making very basic, simple riffs/melodies sound fucking awesome". 

The strange thing is that I could also probably say an equal amount of negative things about the album, with the bad tracks alternating between being wholly forgettable ("This was My Life", "Captive Honour") and offensively annoying ("Symphony of Destruction", "Sweating Bullets"), but I really can't help but like the album on the whole.  Really, this is quite similar to Fear of the Dark in the sense that it's really inconsistent and not at all what the band in question is best at, but it was also my first exposure to the band so it'll always have a special place in my heart.  It's very accessible, much more so than the somewhat oddball So Far So Good... or the heavily dark Peace Sells.  At this point in time, Megadeth was doing the whole "do what Metallica do" thing just as obviously as always, and this is probably the most overtly obvious example throughout their whole career with how far removed it is from the previous album, but the popular consensus is correct this time, as it's superior to it's sister album in Metallica's discography.  It's more basic and restrained fairly inconsistent with a few high profile stinkers, but overall you could do a whole lot worse in the realm of commercial metal.  As far as mainstream metal goes, this is definitely a bit of a gem in the sense that the actual singles released into the mainstream mostly suck, but the rest of the album can be pretty good despite the formula not being that much different from said singles.  So basically if you can ignore or skip over the dreadfully boring tracks, it's a pretty solid commercial metal album.  Would I recommend it?  Not really, my love of it is pretty tainted with nostalgia.  Like, I'm sure "This was My Life" is a terrible song, but I like it anyways.  If you've got a hatred for The Black Album, chances are you won't like this instead, and those who say they do are simply being contrarian for the sake of it.  NOT NEGOTIABLE.  NO HYPERBOLE AT ALL.


RATING - 71%

Slayer - Reign in Blood

It'll have you down... ON YOUR KNEES

Okay, I know, nobody wants to read the fifteen zillionth Slayer review, I'm sorry.  I never planned on writing this, it'll be the 30th review currently on the MA page, and really, why bother with it?  Everybody already knows how awesome Reign in Blood is, it's the same reason I have absolutely no plans to review Rust in Peace.

Or so I thought.

Seriously, the amount of bullshit criticism this album has retroactively pulled in from dipshit kids is nothing short of mindblowing.  "It's two/three good songs and a bunch of filler".  No it fucking isn't, have you mongoloids listened to "Epidemic" or "Jesus Saves" or "Altar of Fucking Sacrifice Holy Shit You Dumb Cunts"?  "Hell Awaits was so much better because it was more adventurous and progressive".  Are you just saying that because it's the least popular of the first five?  Hell Awaits is awesome, but let's not start calling it progressive simply because it sports a couple long songs.  "Show No Mercy was so much better because of the NWOBHM  and Judas Priest influence".  Holy shit I'm about to staple your fucking lips shut and pour some Draino in your ears.  Show No Mercy is awesome (and my second favorite Slayer album), but the band continually evolved from that sound and that's part of what made it so special.  It was a primordial soup, a nebulous mash of influences that helped shaped a yet undefined genre, whereas Reign in Blood is the logical endpoint of what they'd started three years prior.  And Slayer was always at their best when pushing envelopes or just trying to one-up themselves.

I know it's stupid and unprofessional to make broad, sweeping generalizations about people's motives or opinions, but it seems to me like a lot of people who dislike this album seem to claim that Darkness Descends is more extreme and deserves this album's place in history (it doesn't), or they were born after 1989.  Yeah yeah, I'm a young guy who falls into that timeframe, and I've been into metal for a long time too, but I can't help but notice that the amount of people who dislike it that were around when the album first dropped is much, much smaller than the amount of people who grew up with the internet and a couple loudmouthed fools who just consistently told them how it wasn't very good.  Same obstacle Metallica's early work faces nowadays.  I can totally accept that some people just don't like it or that any given album didn't age well or something like that, but even if you take away the monumental influence the album had or it's stunning historical context, this is still the be all end all of thrash metal.  I will stick to that until the day I die.

Is this as "evil" as their previous works?  In a way I guess not, because it isn't quite as dark as Hell Awaits, but it's really only by a notch and it's because Slayer spent precisely zero time fucking around with anything that wasn't the most absurdly over-the-top madness they could conjure up at the time.  Fuck the three minute intro to "Hell Awaits", they can almost cram two full songs into that allotted time on this one.  In fact, if you take all of the long, drawn out intro sections with fifteen riffs featured on the previous album, it might last as long as a third of Reign in Blood.  This shit is fast, it is hungry, and it is focused.  It's twice the intensity in half the time, and despite what so many mouth breathing neckbeards seem to think, everything is fully developed and thought out.  I don't know where the fuck this idea came from that 70% of the tracks are brainless filler, perhaps from jilted Hell Awaits fans who are bummed that nothing here pushes seven minutes like "Crypts of Eternity"?  What the fuck else could you add to these songs?  Do you really think you can improve something like "Criminally Insane" by making it longer?  It's just fast as hell with a ton of riffs and ideas crammed into it.  What do you want?  To slow it down and rob the riffs of their intensity?  To let the riffs breathe by repeating them more often and ruining the pacing?  Evolving them by adding more variations to them and thus fucking up the theme and turning the songs into an even more literal collection of riffs like you already complain about?  There's nothing you can do to make these songs better, and if you already don't like them simply because you want them to be something they aren't, then you'd be best to just fuck off to your lounge chair, postprandial handrolled and finger of grappa, you sophisticated creature, you.

This is the most hard nosed, to-the-throat thrash album to ever exist, and it was done by simply removing every element that didn't immediately lend itself to deranged neck-wrecking.  Not one moment is wasted, if the music ever slows down or cuts out for an intro (which pretty much only happens in "Criminally Insane" and "Raining Blood"), it's only for a short time, and it's only so the pummeling percussion and batshit nardcockingly rigid riffs hit you that much harder when your false sense of security gets obliterated.  And while it would later be surpassed in terms of heaviness by Epidemic of Violence and brutality by Tapping the Vein, nothing puts the whole package together like Reign in Blood.  This is a violent, rabid album, completely off its own hinges, swinging wildly at anything and everything.  I would say that every element comes together perfectly, but really there's only one element at play, and that is "violence".  You'll see the phrase "watered down" thrown around a lot when talking to somebody who doesn't like this album, and that is potentially the most bewilderingly stupid comment one could make in regards to Slayer.  This is the most concentrated attack the band has ever put to tape, much more so than the awkward attempts at melodic songwriting on South of Heaven or the feeble attempt to please everybody on Seasons in the Abyss.  They have but one goal in mind: to unleash the most profane, raw, and blistering essence of pure aggression ever recorded, and all four members give the maximum effort to achieving this goal, and it shows.  How in the living hell can something be watered down when it's diluted with literally nothing.  It's pure hatred concentrate.

Another element that gets trashed a lot is the soloing, and I just have to refer to two paragraphs ago, what the fuck do you people want instead?  In technical terms, Kerry King's solos are garbage.  There's no phrasing or skill beyond picking and area of the fretboard and hitting as many notes as you can while paddling your whammy.  Hanneman is much better in a technical sense, but he still flails forth naught but utterly atonal chaos.  And again, what would improve them?  Michael Romero?  Kirk Hammett's pentatonic wah-wahrbling?  The leads need to be equally as chaotic as the frenzied riffs and vocals, they need to be as high tempo and relentless as the drumming, what they do here is perfect, nothing less.  If you'd prefer this to be more thoughtful or artsy or feelsy, then feel free to not listen to a thrash album and congratulate yourself on not looking for love at a carnival.

Speaking of the vocals, they also feature Tom Araya at the top of his game.  Again, he was technically better early on, with more ear penetrating shrieks and vocal acrobatics, but he followed the form that Hanneman and King set with their songwriting and stripped it down, focused on one aspect he was good at, and just went all out with it.  He shouts for all but three high pitched wails, and it works perfectly for what the rest of the band was doing.  I love the falsetto in "Necrophiliac" as much as any Slayer fan should, but man that wouldn't fit anywhere in "Reborn".  He focuses on spitting as much vitriol as possible, and gives no thought to finesse, which is great because the last thing this album needs is something fruity and not completely berserk like finesse.  He crams so much blasphemy and hatred into each line, to the point where I'm convinced he's just shouting gibberish because that's the only way to accurately sum up just how much he hates Jesus.  I'm going to try to transcribe the chorus to "Jesus Saves" without cheating, to make my point:

Jesus saves!
Doneetaprydagodolonegwaitooseems you've lost your waaaaay!

THAT IS FUCKING AWESOME.  He's like a tape on fast forward, enunciating every syllable, all sixteen of them in a vocal pattern that should logically fit six.   This is the embodiment of simply not giving one solitary fuck, and I wouldn't change that for the world.  Essentially every song is loaded with classic riffs or vocal patterns, and if you can't hear that, I really don't know what to tell you.  As I alluded earlier, "Altar of Sacrifice" is one of the best songs the band ever wrote, and that chorus is just magnificently infectious, as is the main riff to "Epidemic".  It saddens me that so many people get lost in the meat of the album thanks to the monolithic opener and closer.  Yeah, "Angel of Death" is potentially the band's best song, and everybody knows how fucking awesome "Raining Blood" is, but the fact that so many people seem to focus on those two (and sometimes "Postmortem", if their minimum time limit on a song is three minutes instead of four) and miss out on all of the brilliance in between them for stupid petty reasons like "they're too short" or "it's just speed and nothing else" makes me such a sad panda that I might as well be on the endangered species list.  One theory I've heard on this (from a person who isn't a goddamn dolt) is that the reason for such a view is because those endpieces of the album work great on their own, whereas the rest of the songs only work in context of the entire album.  I can see why somebody would feel that way, but then again I could also see why some people believe vaccines cause autism.  Sometimes something can make sense to you, despite the fact that you're factually wrong in every way.  The only track I think you can make a case for that applying to is "Piece by Piece", which is the only song that isn't stellar from start to finish, riding on a pretty basic riff and a not entirely interesting chorus (unsurprisingly, this was the only track written solely by King), but if you can listen to "Altar of Sacrifice", "Epidemic", "Criminally Insane", "Jesus Saves" or anything else and say "eh, it's just speed and I can only enjoy it if I hear twenty more minutes of it, otherwise it's worthless", then you deserve to be slapped with an entire country.

I know I've been defending one of the most popular metal albums of all time like it's been unfairly treated by the majority of listeners.  Believe me, I realize I'm preaching to the choir when it comes to people who know their shit and can understand how near flawless the idea and execution is here, but it really does blow my mind when I see such ridiculous criticism so frequently directed at something for doing exactly what it sets out to do better than anybody else.  Yeah yeah music is subjective and everybody has an opinion, spare me your crocodile tears.  The point is that there is a vocal contingent of metal fans (especially amongst the younger crowd, for whatever reason) who seem to believe this shouldn't represent thrash as a whole (despite being one of the purest thrash albums ever written) and that it is woefully overrated, and it was definitely something that I feel needed to be addressed.  If you're one of those people who abide by the belief that tracks 2-8 are pointless filler, all I can say to you is "I'm sorry, that is incorrect, please try again".  Go into this with the mindset that you've been a goddamn idiot up until this point in your life, and instead pay a little bit more attention than none at all.  Every last one of these songs has an identity, nothing is a faceless blur of chaotic atonality and double bass, everything is instead masterfully crafted with blistering, frenzied riffwork designed to both pulverize and stick with you for years to come. 

Teal;Dear - This is pure and unadulterated havoc, and it succeeds wildly at what it sets out to do and still stands as a testament to what Slayer stood for and was capable of.  Even if you ignore the fact that it was monumentally influential within the established genre of thrash and the then-not-quite-existent death metal, this is still just about flawless on the whole.  "Piece by Piece" is the only small stumble, with it's "meh" chorus that kind of drags the rest of the song down a notch, but that's literally the only moment of Reign in Blood that I'm not in love with.  Everybody knows that "Angel of Death", "Postmortem", and "Raining Blood" are Slayer classics, but I'd be a happy camper if I saw a setlist that also included "Jesus Saves", "Criminally Insane", "Necrophobic", fucking "Epidemic", and "Sweet Mother of Christ Altar of Motherfucking Sacrifice".  And I haven't mentioned it yet, but I'm assuming most of you are familiar with the 1998 reissue that fixes the tracklisting error between "Postmortem" and "Raining Blood", and this is a good thing because the faster, rerecorded version of "Aggressive Perfector" that is included as a bonus track on that version is actually my favorite Slayer song of all time, despite how much I've jerked off "Epidemic", "Angel of Death", and "Altar of Sacrifice". 

If you're one of the people who doesn't like this because it's just speed for the sake of speed and the solos aren't pretty or melodic enough or the vocals are too one dimensional and the only dynamic is blastissimo, then just go to the playground and listen to Testament's first album, because that's essentially what you're asking this to be instead.


RATING - 98%

Bolt Thrower - Those Once Loyal

I can't think of a Warhammer pun, forgive me

Okay, two things really quick, you following me?

1) Bolt Thrower is awesome

2) Bolt Thrower is overrated

Still with me?  Good.  Now, I don't mean "overrated" in quite the same sense as when I use the term in reference to Overkill, because most Bolt Thrower fans will readily admit that Mercenary and Honour Valour Pride are nowhere near the level of quality that the band is capable of and would regularly produce between the years of their inception and 1994.  And I don't mean to imply that their good albums aren't as good as people say they are either, absolutely not.  I jerk off The IVth Crusade and Realm of Chaos just as much as the next fanboy.  When Bolt Thrower is on point, they are on point.

No, what I mean is that I believe the band has two structural flaws, and while they're big enough for me to notice and wish weren't there, aren't enough to really deter my enjoyment of their classic works.  Oddly enough, they're the result of two of the more iconic members of the band, Karl Willets and Jo Bench.  I mean come on, let's be real here, Willets was never a particularly gifted vocalist.  He sounds like somebody's dad making fun of that devil worshipping music you kids listen to.  When it comes to music as heavy and crushing as this, I feel it could really benefit from having a vocalist who sounds more like a raging behemoth or an undead bringer of vengeance, and less like the villain from a particularly bad anime dub.  Bench's bass also tends to get a ton of kudos, on this album in particular, and I just can't bring myself to agree.  Bolt Thrower has always been really bass heavy and I won't deny that it's one of their defining features and also one of the reasons they're so damn good in the first place, but it has more to do with the guitars and how everything coagulates into one sound than it does her bass in particular.  Any time it gets a break where we get to hear it solo, I can't help but think that it sounds like an underwater fart.  "It sounds like a rumbling tank", yeah that's cool when used metaphorically, not when it literally sounds like a rumbling combustion engine.  It's just way too distorted and has very little tone of its own when not complimented by the guitars.

Now, those are both legit complaints that I feel keep this album from being perfect, but those are my only two complaints.  Those Once Loyal is the album that killed the band's studio career because they feel like they personally can't top it.  I can't help but agree with them.  Every single song has at least one instantly classic riff, be it one of their super fast ones like "Entrenched" or "Symbol of Eight" (the second best bonus track of all time), or one of their groovier numbers like "The Killchain" or "Salvo".  It's hard to really describe it, but every ounce of praise they earn for their riff writing is 100% deserved.  For a death metal band to have not used a blast beat since 1991 is pretty goddamn daring, and indicates that for them to still be monumentally popular and relatively successful (as successful as you can be in that nebulous realm of death metal that sits in between the mainstream like Cannibal Corpse and the underground like Fetus Stench) they need to be pretty damn good at some other aspect of their sound.  Fortunately, they really are.  Pretty much everything they do here ends up being instantly memorable, from that opening melody to "At First Light" to literally every single time a riff is being driven along by double bass.  I'm not even kidding when I say that the verse riff for "At First Light" (the one at 1:27) is my favorite non-trad metal riff of all time.  I've been spinning this album for years, and yet I was able to recall almost every track's main riff after the first two runs through.  This shit is hooky, and I love that about it.  It's the same impossible-to-describe quality that makes None So Vile such a classic.  It's brutal and relentless, but betwixt all the dark violence, it's also loaded with melody and hooks and bouncy riffs.

I know it's the most cliche thing in the universe to compare a Bolt Thrower album to something war related, but seriously, they really embodied the whole WWI theme of the album by making it so fucking groovy.  What do you think of when you hear WWI?  Mustard gas and trenches.  How would you musically personify deadly poisonous gas and deadly hidey holes?  Suffocatingly heave grooves, that's how.  There's very little "flair" here and almost zero technicality.  It's the exact opposite of "all style, no substance", and yet while it's very stripped down and basic, it's so incredibly well written and focused that it becomes its own style.  They've been reveling in this exclusive style for roughly fifteen years at the time this album came out, and still to this date I've heard almost no bands that sound anything like them. 

It's difficult to really go on at length in regards to Those Once Loyal.  It's the culmination of everything the band had been working towards up to this point in their career.  They've kept this lineup stable, and they've admit to themselves and to their fans that this is their best work and they won't disappoint anybody with a half-assed album, so this will continue to be their last album until they're fully convinced that they've written something better.  Frankly, I don't see it happening, this is the best their songwriting ever got.  Despite it's basic approach, it's extremely varied in execution.  The churning title track contrasts with the blisteringly fast "Last Stand of Humanity", and there are even whiplash inducing tempo changes within the tracks themselves (see: "Entrenched") that work marvelously.  The extraordinarily bass heavy mix and signature sound of the band do every possible favor for the songwriting, and it all ends up as this cohesive, well oiled machine.  I get tired of hearing Bolt Thrower get jerked off at every possible opportunity, but whenever I listen to them I can't help but find myself parroting the praise.  Believe the hype, kids.  If you only hear one Bolt Thrower album in your lifetime, make it this one.


RATING - 93%