Many years from now when nerds everywhere look back at the year 2012, they will fondly remember it for many things. Will it be remembered as the year for geek movies like The Avengers, Prometheus, and The Dark Knight Risescame out. IPhone 5 perhaps? Or maybe when Diablo 3 was released? The Facebook IPO? Nah. It will go down at the year MIKAEL ÅKERFELDT and STEVEN WILLSON put out their long teased about Storm Corrosion album. It sounds neither truly like OPETH or PORCUPINE TREE which were the groups that brought these great artists together. Nor does it sound too much like Wilson’s solo high quality work. While there are hints of the talents and styles of each titan, the blend of the two is something new, if not unexpected. It is definitely not the progressive rock masterpiece fans (amd I) have dreamed of and that likely is either a plus or a minus depending on your taste.
The album as a whole is more like a series of emotional peaks and valleys rather than the bombastic riff fests these two are better known for in their earlier, more metal-related careers. “Drag Ropes” begins as a somber affair sonically with some gentile keyboards and guitar. ÅKERFELDT’s chant like delivery of pastoral chords sets the table mysteriously. When Wilson’s voice comes in later it is magical. They contrast and compliment each other well as they have for years. There is also some interesting guitars that resemble neo-folk sounds almost like a movie sound track. In fact it does almost sound like the sound track to one of the past Diablo games. Trippy! Further along the music draws you into a mantra like chant like classic music cannons. Not only are these masterfully done parts of songs, the melody’s will stick with you for days. Some sparse drumming is provided by PORCUPINE TREE ace Gavin Harrison and the track fades back to the beginning after some interesting restrained guitar solo/synth parts. Overall the production is as neat and crisp as you could imagine from this pairing. The title track is next and even though is never gets beyond a hush volume wish, it can be described best as epic and jazzy. The lyrics are thoughtful and also as delicate as the performances. Wilson’s voice leads first with his partner in crime second. Their jazz harmonizing is on a special level. Wilson in particular shows off a surprising amount of soulfulness vocally without falling prey to a rote blues style that another might try. The guitar and keys interplay is again intricate and tasteful. There is a bit of early GENESIS/PINK FLOYD style music-concrete in the end of the track that adds some horror movie tension. “Hag” is almost like listening to two different songs A-B tested against each other. Åkerfeldts’ voice leads here and you have another piece that builds up into something special. From a eerie, creeping tone poem into a bit of a waltz the track definitely takes you out of yourself. You wonder what the faint laughter is about in the background. Fancy dinner party or insane asylum. You never know with these guys. “Happy” is anything but happy sounding. It is very sad and foreboding even with the la-Dee-dah vocalese at the end adding a ray of hopefulness. “Lock Howl” is an all instrumental piece that also sounds like the soundtrack with no movie. Without falling into a gallop beat, it definitely has the feeling of the road traveled, rhythmically and sonically. The final cut, “Ludjet Innan” is a spacial, shoe gazer that will even call to mind good 1980s Brit pop! More great guitar work and peaceful bass and drums. The tones just call to you with remnants of 60s and 70s psychedelic references. Although there is no ceiling on what these fellows can do, it is their stylistic and musical choices that really make this album a winner. It is about as far from metal as they can get collectively. But if you, like them, love great song writing and story telling, this album is for you.
Metal Army caught up with legendary drummer and artist Michel “AWAY” Langevin of prog metal masters VOIVOD. We talked about many topics including their current live album, the writing of their next album, drumming influences, artwork and much more. What follows is an excerpt of our chat.
MAA: Warriors of Ice (Sonic Unyon) came out in June. Tell us about the decision to put out a live recording now?
ML: Well when we reformed in 2008 we ended up playing quite a bunch of shows until the end of 2009. We had a show in our hometown of Montreal and we had the opportunity to us a mobile studio with Glen Robbins. He has produced a few VOIVOD albums. It was mainly to have something in between albums. As people know, VOIVOD albums are far apart. (laughs) So it was also away to have something to promote on this tour. In 2011 we’ve toured a lot. The same with last year actually, in 2010 too (laughs). It was cool this year to go across Europe and Chile and have a live album to promote at the merch booth. I believe this is album number sixteen and counting. We have started writing some material for a new album and we hope to be recording during the winter and hopefully we will have a new album in the Spring so we can hit the road again in 2012.
MAA: When you have a long career like you do how do you choose what to include for a live record?
ML: It was particular for this project. We had decided when Blackie rejoined the band to perform more of the 1980′s thrash metal on the road. This is also with Dan Mongrain of MARTYR on guitar. But at the same time this is also when Snake (Belanger), Jason Newsted and I were busy finishing up Infini. What happened was in 2009 we were touring and playing the thrash metal material from the80s, but at the same time we had Infini coming out with a different lineup of Snake, Jason, Piggy (D’Amour, R.I.P.) and I as well and we wanted to do some of the Infini songs live. So what we have with Warriors of Ice is songs from War and Pain to Angel Rat and two songs from Infini.
VOIVOD headlined one night of Maryland Death Fest 2011 this May.
MAA: How do you get such a distinctive drum sound both live and on records?
ML: I don’t actually have any scholarship in music so its really just a feeling. It has been quite interesting over the years because my drum set has shrunk year after year. (laughing) I have to replicate what I was doing back then, but now with just two toms. One tom and one floor tom only. I really like the range of just the two notes. It’s really kind of a retro way of playing in a way and what I do in a sense that it I was influenced a lot by 1970s rock and prog rock. It’s not as mechanical as some of the metal approach. It’s hard to describe, but I really try to capture every musical moment, every micro second and try to find the vibe for it. Usually the stuff that is more tribal is influenced by KILLING JOKE and the more alternative bands of the 1980s. The backwards beats were more influenced by obscure progressive rock bands like VAN DER GRAAF GENERATOR. My main influence back then was Clive Burr and Phil “The Animal” Taylor. The first IRON MAIDEN album and Ace of Spades byMOTORHEAD’s had a huge impact on my way of playing. Also some hardcore bands like DISCHARGE and BROKEN BONES were involved too. Most people are very surprised when they see my kit. Especially when we went to Japan for the first time in 2008. We did two shows with TESTAMENT and FORBIDDEN in Tokyo for two nights and we recorded and put out the DVD. The journalists in Japan were really surprised at how little my kit was compared to the other drummers in that show. (laughs)
MAA: I understand the band played a new song on tour this spring called “Kaleidos”? How is the writing for the next album coming along?
ML: We have a bunch of songs, nine or ten in progress. Four of which are pretty much done. We performed on of the new songs on the last tour in Europe and also at the Maryland Death Fest. And that was “Kaleidos”. It is quite intricate and very reminiscent of the Blackie years meaning prog metal wit ha thrashy side of again. A lot of psychedelia too. I don’t want to say it’s going to sound like this album or that album, but it is more reminiscent of Dimension Hatross and Nothingface than anything else. The last three albums we had a different approach to writing with Jason. I guess with the new lineup its going to be a different story which is great. The Jason years to me were great because they were based on a groovier way playing. With Blackie back, it’s another approach which is more intricate and weird music. I love playing both approaches. I also really like the Eric Forrest years also where we were playing a heavier, almost a hardcore metal. That was fun too.
MAA: Your artwork and imagery you have created is synonymous with the band. Do you care to talk about the Worlds Away book?
ML: It was years in the making and actually long over due. I had promised that many years ago, like in the mid 1990s. After working on it for a while I proposed it to many publishers. Some said yes, but it was difficult because it costs like 50,000 dollars to produce 2000 copies. It was difficult to find someone who would do it. In early 2002 we reformed the band with Snake and we were opening for MOTORHEAD in Montreal and Toronto. Backstage one night I met Martin Popoff (Brave Words and Bloody Knuckles) who was produced many books about metal and we was really interested in working with me on my book. Quite a few years later he got back to me sometime later and told me he had contacted someone from Spider Publishing who put out the IRON MAIDEN art book by Derek Riggs. I finally got the offer in 2007-2008. Then it still took me a year and a half to finish it, put the files together, scan everything, draw the cover. But it is quite a thick book and when people see it they understand why it took so long. I am now working on a second book right now.
VOIVOD expects to release a new album in the Spring of 2012.
MAA: Are there any plans someday to release any more archival recordings or videos with Piggy on them?
ML: Well we are slowly releasing bits of it. We have some of the demos on out DVD D-V-O-D-1 and some on out latest DVD, Tasumaki: VOIVOD Japan 2008 . We also released some of the demos on the 20th Anniversary of War and Pain in 2004. Now we have three of the demos, from three hometown shows in Montreal called Spectrum 86, Spectrum 87 and Spectrum 88. They are coming out for Christmas as well as remastered reissues of Rrrroooaaarrr, Killing Technology and Dimension Hatross. There is also a double vinyl of our first demo To the Death `84. There is no scheduled date yet, but it will be this year. We are trying to put everything out slowly, but it will come out. We pay tribute to Piggy’s music everyday, so it’s all good.
For the fourth year in a row THE ATLAS MOTH has put out something new that confounds and astounds me. Doom, psychedelia and in general other mind-bending material comes into play when these guys strap it on. They don’t make music for mainstream consumption, but they do have a knack for writing songs that worm their way into your ear, lay eggs and spawn some interesting feelings. The main thing I think about when I hear their music is authenticity. Nothing is forced, but everything is deliberate and in its place like a road map. On the haunting An Ache For the Distance the band continues to mine these ideals and break some new ground in the process.
“Coffin Varnish” starts off the proceedings and the track encompasses everything the band excels at. Heavy as heavy can be, trippy yet brooding the song just drips with the residue of dementia. The laconic drone of the guitars transports your mind to somewhere else and you don’t need any “medicine” to make that happen. The track is just a hint of what is to come on the rest of the album. “Perpetual Generations” is like a lost NEUROSIS song, deep and muddy. The band is led by guitarist/vocalist Stavros Giannopolus, armed with a three guitar assault and multi-layered vocal attack really sucks the listener in to their world. Guitarist Andrew Ragin (who also produced the album), guitarist Dave Kush and bassist Alex Klein fortify those string arrangements in new and creative ways. Waves of notes crash like tides in your head. “Holes In the Desert” (which I am convinced is a reference from the movie Casino) is hypnotic and has all sorts of intricate little parts going on in it. Just brutal and sweet all at once. Definitely the top track here. “Gemini” features some of the delicate keyboard work from Ragin who is really underrated. Indian-scales and motifs call to mind the PINK FLOYD song “Set The Controls For the Heart of the Sun”. Of course the vocals grind away like gargled glass, really sending the shock of anguish into your soul. The title track follows next and it is really a moving, aspirational piece of music. Starting off with a the band favorite six-string drone, it breaks down into a bleak, bluesy dirge the likes of which I don’t think I’ve ever heard before. The equally gripping “25′s and the Royal Blues” is another slow boil jam. An underrated element of the band is how many different styles of singing the band can pull off. It really gives these songs a lot of angles to work instead of the typical one singer/one style types you often hear. “Courage” is a little slice of an acid-fueled daydream of a tune. These little detours really make the album very deep character-wise and inform the heavier songs that much more so. “Your Calm Waters” has a nautical theme both musically and lyrically. The closing track “Horse Thieves” just punishes you into oblivion with effected vocals and a wayward and sad saxophone riffs. Like the entire album, you feel as exhausted listening to this last song as you do mentally energized. You really appreciate the force and thought these guys put into their craft. THE ATLAS MOTH implores you to buy the ticket and take the ride into the inner recesses of your mind, no matter how scary that may be.
THE ATLAS MOTH deals out more than just psychedelic brutality.
I knew practically from the first few minutes of Witch Mountain’s latest that I was gonna dig the band’s satisfyingly vintage take on proto-metal riff madness.
Possessing more than a bit in common stylistically with Canada’s OTHER Mountain, Black, as well as Toronto’s Blood Ceremony and America’s own Jex Thoth, Witch Mountain nevertheless stresses their own, unique take on neo-psychedelia via a down ‘n dirty blues influence which permeates the fuzzed out riffiness of it all.
Elsewhere, frontwoman Uta Plotkin channels her inner Joplin and Maggie Bell via an impressively impassioned delivery of raw, fractured emotional power. Her voice isn’t exactly one of consummate training, or even control…yet, even when Plotkin drifts in and out of tune, she pulls in that note-via falsetto or just plain, raw power-with enough effort to make that fucker sound good. This effort does not go unnoticed, and indeed does wonders in making the listener believe in Witch Mountain’s apparently tireless efforts in making their music sound refreshingly vital and legit inspired by 1970s blues-rock fury.
Of course, given the fact that Witch Mountain’s history actually goes way back to the doom hipster-free 90s, it becomes easy to see where the band’s journey has taken them over time. There is a distinct lack of ego lurking here within South of Salem; a refreshingly badass explosion of rock power which is defiantly UN-retro, created through a sheer joy of the source material. Check this one out.
Many people will tell you despite all the evidence to the contrary that rock is dead. LENNY KRAVITZ, MARILYN MANSON and many others have declared rock dead in songs and many scribes have done the same on paper. People still love to shovel dirt on the grave of a style of music that for almost sixty years has grown, transformed, mutated, endured and come out on the other side with many offspring, coming back like a zombie over and over again. Well if your faith in music almighty has ever flagged, fear not my brothers and sisters! MONSTER MAGNET has released their eighth album and it proves once again that the true music of pure, wild-eyed and crazy rock rebellion cannot be erased from the world. Ever.
From the first notes of the fuzzed out, distorted bass line of “Hallucination Bomb”, Mastermind just overflows with heavy songs, great guitar solos, droning riffs and just plain lyrical deepness. As usual all of the bands’ classic rock, proto-metal, and psychedelia influences are on display. The first song itself sounds a lot like a lost BLACK SABBATH outtake: brooding and disaffected. Dave Wyndorf remains one of the most uniquely talented, yet enigmatic frontmen in music. His bluesy trickster low register is a great compliment to his stream of consciousness screaming chorus parts. The more uptempo second track “Bored With Sorcery” has a distinct MC5-ish punk rock tempo and a catchy refrain, but is no less heavy.
Wyndorf has has his share of much publicized tough times the last few years, but he seems rejuvenated and refreshed here. When he sings lyrics like “I don’t wanna rape the world today” you can’t help but smile at the return of the master. Although he uses tons of psychedelic ideas juxtaposed together lyrically he always ties the threads together in the end. Third track “Dig Hole” declares a death, but instead of music it pays respects to the long dead modern American society. “Gods and Punks” is the song that has the most in common with previous hits like “Space Lord” and “Negasonic Teenage Warhead” in terms of swing and potential to reach the most ears. As he does throughout the album lead guitarist Ed Mundell’s tube amp heavy, ode to Iommi, Page and Blackmore lead lines just flat out smoke. Shades of the influence of PINK FLOYD can be heard in the slight detour music of “The Titan Who Cried Like a Baby”.
Next is a return to the hard and the weird side of the coin with the title track. “Mastermind” is the chance for the entire band to flex its considerable muscles with fine playing by underrated bassist Jim Baglino and drummer Bob Pantella. Other songs you will dig are “Perish In Fire”, the sad balladry of “Time Machine” and the slow churning grooves of “When The Planes Fall From the Sky”. MONSTER MAGNET hasn’t tried to reinvent the wheel or themselves and that is a very good thing to my ears.
