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%

With All My Hate - Dysthymic Disorder

Hooray for me!

Well, I tried to do something special for my 200th review, but I just can't.  I tried a huge review of my favorite album, and I can't quite put into words my feelings for it.  I considered a big "best of" list or a  retrospective of sorts and decided against it.  So really, I'm going to go against my natural attention-whore instincts and instead keep it low key, and instead of reining in my bicentennial with bombast and fanfare, I'm just gonna review a shitty, unknown one-man BDM album from Spain.  CUE THE FIREWORKS!

For real, With All My Hate is a strange anomaly in a way, because it's the one-man venture of surnameless Oscar, currently the vocalist for (the frankly great) Endless.  Dysthymic Disorder here is strange because this Oscar has apparently also played guitar in addition to vocals for Die You and Holocaust (two bands I haven't heard), and the reason that's so odd is because all of the instrumental work here sounds completely inept.  I get that brutal death metal is a chaotic, cacophonous style, what this sounds like he put practically zero effort into even making the parts line up.  The drum programming blasts away at the most inhuman tempos while the bass sweeps up and down in a nearly nonsensical fashion, complemented by guitars and chug and slam at a seemingly disconnected tempo.  This guy can apparently play the guitar, and has participated in at least one competent band with well written, cohesive songs (as brutal and chaotic as they may be), so why oh why does this album sound like it was written by a 15 year old after screwing around with Guitar Pro for one day?

That's not to say everything is bad, "The Tree of Woe" has some excellent tremolo sections, but it's broken up by damn near free-time drums and a riff that I swear is in 5/16 time.  Nothing here sounds like it was honed or tweaked or edited, Dysthymic Disorder is an incredibly sloppy first draft of an album that has potential to be a solid, if unremarkable, BDM album if it were to be run through the filter of better songwriters.  I feel like this Oscar fellow sat in his room, jamming away like we all do, and whenever he came up with a riff or lead that he liked, he would instantly record it.  He wouldn't tweak it in any way, he wouldn't play to a metronome, he would just record a handful of weighty chugs and hammering tremolos and sweeping leads, and would then just base the rest of the instruments around it.  The percussion almost never fits with what the rest of the instruments are doing, and it ends up sounding like some bizarre off-time trainwreck.  "Social Autism" and "Diseased Mind" are probably the best examples of this.  I can at least give the guy some credit for trying to be creative with the bass parts, but it still ends up being nonsensical bloodledoobloodles in the background.

I don't have a whole lot of positive words for Dysthymic Disorder, but I can at least say that this man's other band (you know, the one with other members who know how to rein in and contextualize ideas), Endless, is extremely good.  It blows my mind that he can perform vocals in a band who can take these brain-numbingly brutal elements and inject them with a hearty dose of melody and/or restraint, and then turn around and release this completely brainless explosion of half-baked ideas and sheer caveman-level idiot brutality and make it sound so unfocused and grating.  There's a good album buried here somewhere, the elements are all there, but the execution is so, so dreadful that it just doesn't stand a chance.  Flashes of brilliance pop up in "The Tree of Woe" and "Unanswered", but you aren't missing anything by skipping this.

RATING - 25%

Hammerfall - Legacy of Kings

Mediocrity shouldn't be named for a Queen song...

This'll be a short one, because come on, how much can you really say about Hammerfall?  They're the safest band in the universe, stamping out predictable, mid-tier trad metal since practically day one.  I'll admit, I haven't heard Glory to the Brave, but essentially every source I've stumbled across has made the same claim, they got worse as they went along and that's about as complex as their career ever got.  So with that, let's take a look at what should theoretically be their second best album, 1998's Legacy of Kings.

I'll make this quick, "Heeding the Call" is great and everything else is utterly forgettable.  Each and every Hammerfall album I've heard has had at least one "hit single" type song I can jive, with later albums having "Renegade" and "Hearts on Fire", and this here is no exception.  The style that the band has always tried to exemplify is pretty much summed up perfectly in that song.  Simple, speedy riffs, squeaky clean high vocals, and a giant, anthemic chorus.  I totally get the appeal, I see what the band is shooting for, because they hit bullseye on this one particular track.  Hammerfall is really just an extremely one-dimensional, bare bones, lowest-common-denominator type band, the fast food of trad/power metal, if you will.  But really, there's nothing wrong with fast food, I eat/listen to it all the time.  It's just that Hammerfall's brand kind of sucks.  Bloodbound is like the Wendy's of the style (greasy and awful for you but simultaneously delicious), whereas Hammerfall is more like Taco Bell (lots of options that are all made of the same low quality ingredients, and it only tastes good when you're drunk). 

Therein lies a huge issue with Legacy of Kings, the band lays out the template at the beginning and then steadfastly refuses to stray from it.  Which wouldn't really be a problem if the songwriting was any good.  The whole thing just goes in one ear and out the other and that's that.  It's paint-by-numbers trad metal with a ballad at the end and a faster song to start, with nothing else of note.  The vocalist is pretty middle of the road and the riffwork is as predictable as the tides and none of the leads are very interesting and no choruses apart from "Heeding the Call" and I guess "Back to Back" stand out at all and that's all there is to say.  Despite being a figurehead in the genre, one of the faces of the "revival" that heavy metal had around the turn of the century, and a huge influence to a lot of young upstart bands, they managed to sound tired and uninspired by the time their second album rolled around.  Throughout almost this entire disc, I never feel any sort of energy being put forth from the boys.

And really, that's more worthy of disappointment than anger or hate.  Legacy of Kings has potential, without a doubt, it's just that it's only realized on precisely one track before the album just completely loses steam and forgets how to rock.  It feels like a pop album, with one song chosen for radio airplay and a ton of effort put into it, surrounded by droves of half-hearted filler.  I mean, there's nothing offensive or even really bad at all here, everything is pretty competent, it's just fucking boring.  Most of the riffs are just standard late 90s power metal and 80s heavy metal riffs with no imagination put into them, and the vocals are high pitched and well done but really syrupy and inconsequential.  No songs stand out apart from the oft mentioned "Heeding the Call", and no individual band members stand out.  It's pretty much just a big grey mass of mediocrity, and really not worth your time.  The idea is good (strip down heavy/power metal to it's barest form and just have fun with it), but Hammerfall lack the songwriting skills to pull off such an endeavor.  You can safely skip this.


RATING - 45%

Motorhead - Bastards

GO LEMMY GO! GO! LEMMY B. GOODE!

February 11th is a special day for me.  There's no concrete date to when I began this whole reviewing shtick that I've been trying so desperately to make my internetical legacy.  But for my money, I consider it to be today, February 11th.  That was when I posted my (frankly terrible) review for Gojira's ode to Lunesta, From Mars to Sirius, and the reason I consider this to be my anniversary is because that was the first one I wrote as less of just a time waster and more because I just really, really enjoyed writing about music.  And so, with this in mind, I'd like to celebrate my five year anniversary (!!) as a reviewer with a bit of trivia: Motorhead is where "BastardHead" comes from.  Legend has it that when starting this new rock n' roll band after leaving Hawkwind, Lemmy had decided to name his band Bastard to reflect the kind of attitude he exudes so naturally.  His manager convinced him otherwise, saying "You'll never make it on Top of the Pops with a name like bloody Bastard", presumably immediately after his monocle popped out.  Lemmy, for the first and only time in his life, relented and changed it to the name we all know and love right now.

So obviously, Motorhead is a pretty special band to me.  I didn't grow up with them like other sentimental bands (Metallica, Guns n' Roses, Pantera, et cetera), but really getting into Motorhead truly does open a lot of doors for metal fans.  Lemmy, being the bottomless quote machine that he is, has always said that the band was never meant to be a metal band, they're a rock n' roll band first and foremost.  Most metal fans tend to disagree, but I actually tend to side with the creator here.  There's obviously a lot of heavy metal at play here (especially on this album, "Burner" is a fucking speed metal monster), but listening to the guitar work, the attitude, and the overall feel of pretty much any Motorhead album ever released (barring maybe Inferno) just makes it clear that the band has always been more about rock 'n roll sleaze than heavy metal thunder.

And that's one of the reasons Bastards is such a brilliant record in my eyes, it's both the most overtly rock n' roll album since Bomber, and it's also without a doubt the heaviest album they'd released up to that point in time.  The two best songs exemplify the two extreme ends of their spectrum, with "Burner" being a high octane, double bass, speed metal aggressor, while "Born to Raise Hell" is the quintessential rock n' roll party anthem.  The rest of the album runs the gamut set by those two extremes, with only one exception, which I'll get to later.  I won't lie and say nothing feels like filler, because "Devils" and "Lost in the Ozone" tend to go in one ear and out the other during most runs through the album.  But everything else stands as one of the most obviously varied experiences the band has ever provided listeners with.  The common attack against Motorhead is that all of their songs sound the same, which is demonstrably bullshit.  Chances are that if you abide by that belief, you simply haven't bothered listening further than "Ace of Spades", "Iron Fist", and maybe "Killed by Death".  Now, all of those songs rule, but to say those sound identical to "Born to Raise Hell" or "Liar" or "On Your Feet or on Your Knees" might as well be the equivalent of a bright green sandwich sign that says I DON'T KNOW SHIT ABOUT SHIT AND PROBABLY LISTEN TO ARCADE FIRE. 

Anyway, the point is that Bastards starts off on one of the strongest feet that any Motorhead album ever has.  Eight excellent tracks in a row, from "On Your Feet or on Your Knees" through "Liar", the album just charges forth at full speed before playing around with some more typical rock n' roll, the most shockingly dark Motorballad of all time, and even a sort of extraordinarily heavy quasi-blues track.  As much as I love this band, I really can't think of any other albums they've released that start off this strongly and stay this consistently good for as long as this does.  No album of theirs is perfect, but it takes a whopping nine tracks before this one stumbles in even the slightest, and that is definitely a commendable feat, especially considering how many of these songs are wildly different from one another.  "Death or Glory" is almost a straight up punk song to start, with minute set aside for a marching beat in the middle, "Liar" is preposterously groovy and almost feels like the song Satan would sing to blues musicians at the Crossroads, and "Bad Woman" is essentially a 1950s piano rock song ala Little Richard, except performed by four raucous party animals who reek of Jack Daniels and hand rolled cigarettes.  Bastards is basically just an amalgam of every influence the band has ever had (which to be fair, most of their albums are basically this, but this is one of the most blatant examples), and when most bands try to do a little bit of everything, they end up bland across the board.  But nope, turns out Motorhead is just fucking great at everything so pretty much every idea sticks.

Despite this being the heaviest album the band had put out at the time, it somehow manages to contain two ballads, one kinda power ballad "Lost in the Ozone", which ranks as the only track I out-and-out don't like, and then there's the almost entirely acoustic "Don't Let Daddy Kiss Me", which I'm... pretty conflicted about.  On one hand, it's an incredibly daring song, dealing with a horrifying subject matter that most bands tend to shy away from, and then nails the emotional impact by telling it from the perspective of the little girl, painting the scene in a very depressing, bleak, and most troubling of all, realistic light.  The verse about how if she tells anybody about what is happening, she'll lose her family and her home is just brutal.  This song is crushing on the most emotional level possible, and there's no happy ending to the story either.  There's no ending at all.  Dad molests/rapes his daughter nightly, he feels nothing, she's praying for death because she has nobody to turn to because even God hasn't saved her.

But on the other hand, as much as I admire such a brave and horrifying song from an otherwise irreverent group of wildmen, it's... well by a band of wildmen, right in the middle of a wild album about wild parties.  Following up such a heavy subject with "I KNOW YOU'RE A BAAAAD BAD WOMAN" just feels... wrong.  Maybe it's just personal preference here, but the rest of the album just feels somewhat uncomfortable after that harrowing dirge.  I don't know about you, but if I just discovered somebody was sexually abusing his small daughter, I wouldn't be able to so seamlessly shift back to partying.  But then again Lemmy is no ordinary man, so I guess such a hard left turn into Depressionville didn't seem out of place to him.  HERE I COME BABY WOOP DEE DOO!

Apart from the album's iHawk style "irreverent - maudlin" switch, and one or two songs that are ultimately pointless in the grand scheme of things, Bastards stands as potentially my favorite Motorhead album.  This one just does nearly everything it sets out to do just right, everything hits bullseye.  I'd honestly recommend this as a starting point over more seminal albums like Ace of Spades or Overkill or Another Perfect Day, because this one gives the best taste of everything Motorhead is capable of, and can help act as a guide for where to go next.  What was your favorite song here?  "Burner"?  Go to Inferno.  "Bad Woman"?  Go to 1916.  Et cetera and so forth.  For reasons I can't quite fathom (perhaps because 1992 is the last year that fans of 80s metal care about and this was released in late 1993?), Bastards seems to have ended up as one of the forgotten albums in the grand scope of the band's career, which is bizarre since it has the significance of being Mikkey Dee's first album and Wurzel's last, essentially being the last step before solidifying the power trio lineup that has persisted for the last 20 years, but hey, I guess they can't all be winners.  Bottom line is that Motorhead is awesome and Bastards is a brilliantly fun album, oozing with attitude and sleaze, and really what more could you ask for from this band?  Straight up, unadulterated rock n' roll with a punk and metal edge, just the way it should be.


RATING - 92%