So thanks to a crazy amount of traffic and hotel getting to most of Saturday was missed. When got there in time for most of CAGE THE ELEPHANT on the Fuel stage. Then it was time to head to the Damage Inc. stage for SUICIDAL TENDENCIES! I’ve NEVER seen them before and holy hell, were they good! Everyone in that band is a beast! Especially the rhythm section of drummer Eric Moore (T.R.A.M.) and bassist Tim Williams. Kicking it off with “You Can’t Bring Me Down”, they set off a steam rolling crushing set, playing hit after hit up until it was time for an INFECTIOUS GROOVES mini-set with Robert Trujillo on bass. It made the hassle of getting there well worth it!
Over thirty years in the game and Mike Muir of S.T. and INFECTIOUS GROOVES still rules.
I got to check out KIRKS CRYPT. A little museum of Kirk Hamments’ horror memorabilia collection. From vintage posters to painting and full sized costumes and masks. It made me very jealous! It To top it off, Linda Blair was there as well! I look forward to October for the release of his book, TOO MUCH HORROR BUSINESS about this collection. I caught most of ARCTIC MONKEYS headlining set on the “Fuel” stage, and boy are they very British! Granted they are, but still, they reminded me of BLUR and OASIS mainly. A good chunk of the crowd dug them a lot.
Then it was time for METALLICA on the “Orion” stage….
Whaddya mean no “Orion” at Orion Fest?
Starting with “Hit the Lights” they ran through four more songs as the warm up to playing the entire Ride the Lighting album. After a brief and kick ass intro video, they came out ass backwards! No, really! They started with“The Call of Ktulu” all the way to “Fight Fire with Fire”. I Enjoyed “Fade to Black” and “Escape” the most. They came back with a nice three song encore of “Battery”, “One” and “Seek and Destroy”. To much grief from a lot of people about no “Orion” The song, famously attached to the late CLIFF BURTON, for which this fest is named for. I guessed they’d save it for tomorrow.
Kirk shared his horror collection and then some guitar solos.
Set List:
Hit the Lights
Master of Puppets
The Four Horsemen
Sad But True
Hell and Back
The Call of Ktulu
Creeping Death
Escape
Trapped Under Ice
Fade to Black
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Ride the Lightning
Fight Fire With Fire
Nothing Else Matters
Enter Sandman
Encore:
Battery
One
Seek and Destroy
DAY TWO:
THY WILL BE DONE tore it up early on day two.
Now due to a lil health issue, I had a short visit to the ER that morning. As a result I missed GHOST, Oh well, would’ve been weird to see them in the daytime anyway. Some bands just work better at night. I was really bummed to miss LANDMINE MARATHON. I’ve wanted to see them for awhile.
Bummed I missed this band. I heard they were awesome.
So when I finally arrived I caught BEST COAST, like with ARCTIC MONKEY’S it was nice to hear something a little different and mellow. I got to see this cool new band called THE TRUJILLO TRIO, on the “Vans Skate Ramp”. Robert Trujillo & Family put on a dirty, crusty, grindy, punk rock show. I hope something gets released soon!
Robert Trujillo was a triple threat this weekend.
It was good intro to the insanity for THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER! I ended up pitting my ass off throwing crowd surfers left and right. Haven’t really done that a in awhile, holy cardio workout Batman! It felt great!
Ripper Owens and CHARRED WALLS OF TH DAMNED were amazing!
I had to sprint across to the “Frantic” stage to catch the first show of the year for CHARRED WALLS OF THE DAMNED! Ripper Owens’ and Richard Christy’s unstoppable juggernaut! They were awe-inspiring to watch. Then back to “Damage Inc.” for the headlining set from SEPULTURA! They are in the midst of a tour over in Spain, but flew in just for this. The pit felt like a UFC match and some douche was decked out in gloves and a mouth guard. It was a rough pit. Now musically, this band is amazing! DERRICK GREEN has been in this band long enough that I forgot someone else used to sing for them. New drummer Eloy Casagrande, that kids a monster! He even broke a bass pedal. after that I checked out the sick car show there while AVENGED SEVENFOLD closed the “Fuel” stage. They like fireworks and pyro just at much as METALLICA does.
AVENGED SEVENFOLD likes to blow shit up!
After a cool video intro, METALLICA started of the set with “Hit the Lights” and “Master of Puppets”, like last night, then went to “Fuel”, “For Whom the Bell Tolls” and “Shortest Straw” before starting “The Black Album” (Metallica) in reverse. I don’t know what it was, but “The Black Album” just sounded better then Ride. Mind you I haven’t heard this about in over ten years. They just sounded tighter on this material. The encore this time consisted of “Blackend” and “One” and then a James spoke about the festival and dedicated the last song to Cliff, “Seek and Destroy” wait what!? Not “Orion”!? What the hell!? This is bullshit! That’s some of the comments I heard around me. My best guess as to why no “Orion”: maybe it’s kind of a bummer to play it and they didn’t want to end the festival on a downer.
Set List: Hit the Lights Master of Puppets Fuel
For Whom the Bell Tolls
The Shortest Straw The Struggle Within My Friend of Misery The God That Failed Of Wolf and Man Nothing Else Matters Through the Never Don’t Tread On Me Wherever I May Roam The Unforgiven Holier Than Thou Sad But True Enter Sandman Encore: Blackened One Seek and Destroy
Day two was more enjoyable than Day One, overall.
All in all, it was a great family festival. It was really good seeing kids there. I’ll most likely bring mine next year. There was enough different musical styles to keep everyone happy and it was worth the long trip to Atlantic City. I want to go back again so lets hope for an Orion fest in 2013!
When I first heard about the collaboration between LOU REED and METALLICA I felt in my heart of hearts it could go either way as far as being a success or a failure. It is not a typical album for either artist and for the most part the two of them working together doesn’t mean the finer qualities of each would necessarily rub off on one another. Most metal heads don’t know Lou and why he is important to rock history and I also doubt any longtime or recent fans of METALLICA would necessarily sit down and listen to Berlin, Transformer,Rock N’ Roll Animal or The Blue Mask. Lou’s Metal Machine Music also has nothing to do with metal for those uninitiated newbies. I have been a fan of Lou’s career both with the VELVET UNDERGROUND and solo and no matter how I feel about the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame, there is a good reason why he is in there twice. As much as Lars Ulrich loves the idea of this and feels the band is free to do what they like, James Hetfield was smart enough to publicly state “this is not the next METALLICA album”. Making a high concept art rock/poetry album is high stakes proposition creatively for anybody, but when you are under a microscope like METALLICA has been, it isn’t dangerous as much as it is a curious oddity. The story is solid: a siren type of women ruins many men with her charms and fickleness until she meets a tragic end. Concept albums are only great if the music is as good as the concept. I took a deep breath, jumped in with both ears and gave the album several attempted full spins before jotting down the notes that became this review.
Anton Corbijn can still shoot nice photos. Yippee.
Now where to begin? Slow, disjointed and generally all over the place like a bad YouTube mash-up, Lulu is not going to please fans of either camps right off the bat. It’s going to be one of those records that has its day briefly, but only because of the power and success of the principles, not on the merits of the music. Lou’s often brilliant poetry and grave baritone voice are often lost against the dross of the songs. His laconic word style aside, he spends much of the sedate portions of the songs pattering about vocally and when the volume rises and the rock parts enter he struggles to stand out. Lou apparently brought in the basic songs to the band and they did their thing with it. The results of which are an album that sounds unfinished and unfulfilled. The tepid tempos and boring chord structures are perfect for one person here and that is Lars, who continues to put out a minimal drumming effort for whatever reason unknown to me. James Hetfield has some decent parts to hang his hat on here and there, but nothing really outstanding at all. Barely a solo can be found from Kirk nor an inventive bass line from Robert Trujillo can be heard, both obviously ignored in the creative process.
THE BLUES BROTHERS....they are not.
As for the songs themselves there are a few decent riffs and moments, but mostly just passable and some of it is even downright terrible. “Pumping Blood” and “Mistress Dread” have some acceptable parts, especially when they try to rock out for a bit. For the most part it all sounds like Lou was glued on top of the band’s music circa the Load-era and barely enjoyable for that matter. “Iced Honey” kind of sounds like “Sweet Jane” musically (minus the soloing) and has a few nice lyrical nuggets in there. Still, the track isn’t anything to smile about either. The arty and expansive structure of “Cheat On Me” calls to mind a TOM WAITS song, but misfires with it’s stunted delivery. Lou’s ability as a story teller and his Dylan-esque ability to articulate the emotional into the absurd and obtuse are always welcomed. However, a true mesh of the two styles of artists doesn’t really ever arrive with Lou barely holding it down and the band holding themselves back. Late album cuts like “Frustration” (maybe the best track of the bunch), “Little Dog” and “Dragon” briefly flirt with thrash and rock, but again the results are mixed and unnaturally awkward sounding.
Looking at the album for what it is and not any kind of metal record, it still fails on a lot of levels from what I think they were trying to accomplish. The sad part is that I am the typical fan (supporter of Lou’s, lover of poetry, still on the METALLI-bandwagon somewhat) they might have been trying to court. And I hate it. Personally, I never want to hear this album again, similar to how I felt about St. Anger. Perhaps they would have been better off with their original plan of the band backing the legendary singer on a revamped greatest hits collection rather than waste everybody’s time with this mess. No doubt the many sheeple among the newer fans of METALLICA Incorporated will run out and the first day/week numbers will be huge by today’s standards. Lars will talk in the media about how he was right again and we will all go on with our lives, not caring. The good news is that soon this will be in the rear-view and hopefully all of this pretentiousness will leave the band as they prepare a proper 10th Metallica album.
David White is one of the most identifiable and consistent lead singers in all of American Thrash metal. As the front man for the majority HEATHEN’s history, he was part of the birth and rise of Bay Area Thrash and watch as it grew into a phenomenon. On the comeback trail of late with a re-energized lineup, they dropped The Evolution of Chaos (Nuclear Blast) last year and are on their first full North American tour since 1998. Directly after getting off the stage in Boston, David graciously sat down with me to talk about the present tour, their past history and the future.
MAA: You just played your first show ever in Boston. How is the tour going?
DW: It’s been good. This is actually our third tour in the last year. We’ve done two tours of Europe and this is our first American run since 1988. Touring with DESTRUCTION has been great. We toured Europe with them and shared a bus with them a couple of months ago on the tour with OVERKILL. We’ve known them for a long time. They are great friends of ours and we get along with them really well. We had some different things happen at the beginning of the tour. We have a new road manager, trying to whip him into shape. He’s a really young guy, a little bit green and of course he thinks he knows it all. But he doesn’t really know it all yet. He’s getting better. We had a shit bus to start off the tour, all kinds of crazy problems, popping tires, breaking down. Then our driver didn’t have a passport so he couldn’t get into Vancouver, so we had to get another driver. But we got a new bus after a breakdown in Barstow, right after playing San Diego. We waited all day at the repair station in the middle of nowhere and then we got a new bus at 12:30 AM. We had to make a bee-line straight to Denver. The driver only stopped to use the bathroom a few times. We arrived at 10:30 and both bands played on WARBEAST’s gear just so we could do the show. Ever since then it’s picked up and been better.
MAA: What’s the crowd reaction been like since you guys are back after a long layoff?
DW: San Diego, there were some people there and the people that were there were really into it. But it wasn’t a big crowd because it was a Monday night or something. But it started to pick up and we’ve had some really good shows. Ottawa and Montreal were amazing! Chicago and Cleveland were really good. Detroit we didn’t get to play since there was a double booking with THE CAVALERA CONSPIRACY and the promoter didn’t want to pay all of the guarantees. So that sucked. We still had a nice little day off. Then we came down to Baltimore. Good show, but a small crowd which was a bummer since we had two good ones, maybe three in a row so that was a bit of a lull. Then last night we made it to New York and it was a crazy good show at a big venue. Coming into Boston for the first time was a big deal for me because I’m a big baseball fan, football fan and hockey fan. So I tried to trip around the city a little bit, checked out Fenway Park just up the block and took the tour which was cool. Unfortunately, the Sox are out of town. What was really cool was in Baltimore a few of us took a cab to Camden Yards, bought cheap tickets and saw the Orioles play the Seattle Mariners. Nice ballpark. As for Boston, the kids tonight…. it was just a different intensity coming off from the crowd which was nice. It’s a nice, intimate little club (Church). There was good crowd in the front and a nice pit there in the middle with a bunch of people in the back too. I could just see that everyone was into it. I just felt the vibe from them. When we feel that from the crowd then there is just no stopping us and we just plow right through the set. I would have loved to keep playing, but we had some time constraints. The kids are great here! We loved it!
HEATHEN, led by David White is back and better than ever!
MAA: With several classic albums to choose from, how do you come up with the set list for the tour?
DW: For this tour our drummer Darren Minter couldn’t make the tour so we hired a replacement drummer in Jon Dette (SLAYER/TESTAMENT). He only had so much time to learn the songs. A lot of them are long and complicated. So we gave him a list of songs and we really wanted to push the new album because it’s still fresh. And then the older songs we do play feel fresh too, because we have played them for so long. But we only had so much time and Jon didn’t have enough time to learn all of those. We predicated the set on what he could learn in a short amount of time and have tightened some things up along the way as we go.
MAA: Do you almost have to play “Death By Hanging” every night?
DW: (Laughs) We’ll you know we just played the Europe tour with OVERKILL and DESTURCTION and we had only thirty minutes to play every night. We only played new songs. We did “Dying Season”, “Controlled By Chaos”, “Arrows (in Agony)” and “No Stone Unturned” and that’s how it ended. You know the kids were like “whaaaat”, but that’s all we could do constrained by that amount of time. And you know Schmeir was like (imitates Schmeir’s thick German accent) “Why you don’t play “Death By Hanging”? You have to play that, you have to play that!”. So we made sure to pull that out of the hat on this tour for sure.
MAA: The Evolution of Chaos album is really strong all the way through. What was the writing process like for the album and how did you ratchet the HEATHEN machine back up again?
DW: It was kind of a slow process. There were some riffs that we had that Lee actually came up with before we ever split going back to 1992-93. Stuff we’d been hashing around for a while. I remember that time frame from when we decided were gonna put the band back together right before the “Thrash of the Titans” show (2001) and before we did Wacken. After Wacken we decided “let’s fucking do this!”. I remember Lee calling me on the phone and shouting “I got it, I’ve got my Emerald”. See THIN LIZZY is one of mine and Lee’s favorite bands and Lee had come up with the part to “A Hero’s Welcome”. He played it to me on an acoustic over the phone and I heard it and went okay! We had something there! Sort of like an evolutionary process. We did a shoe-string tour of Europe in 2005 with NUCLEAR ASSAULT, but when Lee joined EXODUS things slowed down, a lot. But we kept shopping the demo and forging ahead. I had done some session work with Kragen’s (Lum) band PROTOYPE and Terry had left so Kragen came into audition. He was so well prepared we didn’t even try out the guys scheduled after him. Kragen wrote a new song and then another one and another one. Our bassist Jon Torres wrote some, one of which made the album. While Lee was away and busy I spent a lot more time on my own and actually wrote a few songs on pro tools with Jon. I had to throw down some ideas and then show them to Lee later on. So we could have been a little better prepared at the start of the recording. And there was a lot of arguing and fighting and agreeing and disagreeing, but what you have is a pretty crushing record. I am very proud of it. I’m proud of the guys for what they put down musically, but I feel it is my best vocal set I’ve ever done. Lyrically I think came across as much more personal from me. It talks more about my life experiences and our life experiences as a band, so it’s much more grounded in who we are as people.
MAA: “Bay Area Thrash” is going to be thirty years old soon. What does that mean to you?
DW: It’s funny because I played in a band called BLIND ILLUSION and we weren’t thrash at all. EXODUS had their own scene and they were first to go in a more metal direction. I went to high school with all of those guys. We used to have EXODUS come play with us because we played halls and parties and parks before doing clubs. They were more influenced by The New Wave of British Heavy Metal like IRON MAIDEN AND JUDAS PRIEST, while we were more into RUSH, KING CRIMSON, BLACK SABBATH, DEEP PURPLE and LED ZEPPELIN. They were more on the cutting edge and they really were the ones that started it in the Bay. METALLICA had started doing it in LA too, because Lars was very in tune with the British heavy metal trip. When they first came up they did some shows with EXODUS. And a lot of people were affected by those two bands and started doing a similar style. METALLICA decided to stay when they got Cliff Burton in the band. This is before Kirk Hammett even joined. Different bands started to pop up like DEATH ANGEL and MORDRED. I left BLIND ILLUSION and Lee had started HEATHEN with Sam Kress on vocals. And actually I was going to jam with and audition for RUFFIAN which was more like, not posers but more of a rocking type metal band and not thrash. Good band though. And I ran into Leah Schecter, who was Lee’s girlfriend at the time and she was like what are you doing here? I said I’m here to audition for RUFFIAN. And she was like no, my boyfriend’s band is looking for a singer you should call him. And I’m sitting here now. I joined in 1986. HEATHEN then entered the fray at that point too. Then VIO-LENCE popped up and FORBIDDEN. A lot of new bands formed around that time.
MAA: Is there a time table yet for another album?
DW: We are definitely going to be doing a new record. We have material already that was not on “Evolution..”. Not that they weren’t good enough for “Evolution”. Certain songs that were ready were focused on for that record. But songs that weren’t fully developed will be finished off for another record. Kragen’s got new stuff already. We’re already 30-40% done with material. But since (the tour) has been going on we haven’t got in a room and said let’s do this! We’ve been focused on pushing this record as far as we can and getting the band in the right position before making the next one. We’ve made some lineup changes, management changes, um there could be some other changes in the future too like booking agents, who knows. We want to be in the right position with HEATHEN so we can keep doing it as much as possible. I would say we should have a new album out within the next year.
MAA: That’s awesome- thanks for taking the time to chat!
DW: No problem.
(Special thanks to Dave White, Kragen Lum and Lee Altus of EXODUS, Liz Civarella-Brenner of Earsplit PR, and Aaron from Return to the Pit).
By all accounts, the NWOBHM spitfires Savage really SHOULD have been much bigger than they were with the release of the absolutely BLAZING ’83 debut, Loose ‘n Lethal.
Although the Mansfield-based group have proved to be relatively stalwart over time, releasing a solid string of full lengths up through 2001, none of them ever really touched the sheer electric power of Loose ‘n Lethal, the definitive sonic portrait of this influential lot.
Indeed, if there was any question as to how much ass Savage kicked, one needs only to look towards a little band called Metallica for proof, with Loose ‘n Lethal serving as one of the premier sonic templates-along with Diamond Head-for the quintessentially European sound our American heroes would eventually emulate on their own ’83 debut, Kill ‘Em All.
While it’s no real secret that songwriters James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich were highly influenced by the NWOBHM scene, a Metallica song such as “Hit the Lights” owes a real sonic debt to the groundwork laid down by Diamond Head’s “Helpless” and Savage’s own “Let Is Loose,” both of which were covered by the Bay Area bashers early in their career. Since said covers were still relatively new (and fortuitously obscure) at the time, no one ever questioned whether or not they were Metallica originals, and voila! an American metal institution was born.
Of course, I come to praise Caesar here, and it’s a bit far-reaching to accuse Metallica of any real sonic plagiarism. Rather, we must simply acknowledge the fact that there’s a clear line of influence from the attack of Savage’s early demos-with its heavy metal melody and punk fueled tempos-and American metal’s own thrash obsession. Savage and the NWOBHM were kicking out the proto-thrash jams, with Loose ‘n Lethal was right on the forefront of greatness.
From the irresistible speed metal mastery of “Let It Loose” to the dirty, filthy riff magic of “Cry Wolf,” “A’int No Fit Place” and “On the Rocks,” to the bombastic closing gallop of “The China Run.” Loose ‘n Lethal is an legit metal classic which, front to back, magically transports the listener back to those most innocent of times.
METALLICA’s latest album, Death Magnetic, was officially certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on June 28, 2010 for shipments in the United States in excess of two million copies.
METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich told The Pulse of Radio in an October 2008 interview that he didn’t understand the controversy that had broken out over the audio quality of Death Magnetic shortly after the LP’s release. Some fans and publications had accused the group and producer Rick Rubin of mixing the album at such a loud volume that the music is distorted and difficult to listen to. But Ulrich said that he’s more than happy with the way it turned out. “I listen to this record, and I listen to it every couple of days,” he said. “And when I hear it, it puts a smile on my face and it blows me away, and I don’t understand what people are talking about. Somebody told me the other day that there were 12,000 people that had signed a petition to remix the record. We’ve sold two and a half million copies [worldwide] of Death Magnetic. You do the math yourself.”
A number of fans said online that they prefer the versions of the CD’s tracks prepared for the Guitar Hero video game, which are mixed differently.
Ted Jensen, the engineer who mastered the album at Sterling Sound in New York, responded to fan complaints that the CD is too loud and the audio is pushed to distortion levels by writing, “I’m certainly sympathetic to your reaction, I get to slam my head against that brick wall every day. In this case the mixes were already brick-walled before they arrived at my place. Suffice to say I would never be pushed to overdrive things as far as they are here. Believe me, I’m not proud to be associated with this one, and we can only hope that some good will come from this in some form of backlash against volume above all else.”
Mastering is the process of preparing and transferring recorded audio from a source containing the final mix to a data storage device, the “master,” from which all copies will be produced.
Blame for the sound quality has been laid at the feet of the band itself, producer Rick Rubin and his recording engineer, Greg Fidelman.
METALLICA will end the “Death Magnetic” world tour later this fall with shows in Australia and New Zealand before taking a break.
