Above, you will find 31 seconds of the first METALLICA/LOU REED collaboration to hit our ears. This track is called “The View” and, apparently, it will be the first single from ‘Lulu’, the collaborative album between LOU REED and METALLICA. The clip, while short, was very strange. It features Reed’s talking over a generic sounding metal riff and then Hetfield coming in singing what appears to be part of the chorus. The song sounded disjointed to say the least. However, I know that it’s important to hear a whole song before you pass judgement – a point that should be proven by hearing what’s going on in the 30-seconds that Warner Bros gave us here.
While I’ll hold my feelings until I hear a full song (or the whole album), this was a bit worrisome. Let’s hope that ‘Lulu’ is as awesome as we’ve all been hoping!
We all know that I am practically jizzing myself 24/7 regarding the new MASTODON album and I hope you are doing the same. Now, there is a video for the new track that we launched yesterday, “Curl of the Burl”. It’s weird, choppy and has a lot of kaleidoscope shots in it. Basically, pack your bong and check it out!
MASTODON will release ‘The Huner’ on Septement 27th!
There is no doubt in my mind that MASTODON will deliver the most un-fuck-withable record of the year when they release ‘The Hunter’ on September 27th. So far, the band has unveiled a song that I really fucking dig called “Black Tongue” and now they have dropped another stoner metal bomb on our asses with the release of “Curl of the Burl” this morning. The song is faster, muddier and even more impressive to my ears than “Black Tongue”.
I really have no idea what “Curl of the Burl” means but I am beyond stoked with this song and I’m sure you will be too. Press play goddammit!
1. Agalloch – Marrow of the Spirit (Profound Lore): The choice popular amongst fans, critics, pundits and the general hiperati. In other words, you’re a dipshit if you don’t love this record. Chief ‘loch, John Haughm has delivered a haunting album of Black Metal informed Post-Rock, the scope of which stretches from Emperor to Godspeed You Black Emperor!. This year’s hands-down classic.
2. Letlive – Fake History (Tragic Hero): So-Cal’s letlive take the post-hardcore ball from the likes of Thursday and Glassjaw and run with it. They already signed to Epitaph, who will re-release this album in 2011. Simply, letlive dodge all the usual cliches on their way to household-name success. Mark my words!
3. Dillinger Escape Plan: – Option Paralysis (Season of Mist): Benjiman Weinman gets the Thurston Moore Lifetime Achievement Award for looking at chaos as a valid part of pop songwriting. Possibly their finest, angriest and most career-defining moment. I still hear stuff in this one that eluded me the first 25 listens or so.
4. Watain- Lawless Darkness (Season of Mist): With the power of their onstage stench and mighty death-riffs, these Swedes ascend to Black Metal’s highest peaks. Whether they take the throne from the commercially aspirant Dimmu or the crash n’ burnt Gorgoroth remains to be seen. At the rate they’re going…
5. Tryptkon – Esparistera Daimones and Shatter EP (Century Media): Tom Fischer picks up where Celtic Frost’s brilliant and final death-grunt, Monotheist left off. Then exceeds it. I’ve included the Shatter EP as it feels like a natural part of the proceedings.
6. Ghost – Opus Eponymous (Rise Above/Metal Blade) Jimmy Page bought Aleister Crowley’s house. The Stones came with Goat’s Head Soup. Now Ghost take on three decades of hard rock and metal, offer it up to Satan and come up with a record already set to be the first metal “name-drop” for 2011.
7. Bad Religion –The Dissent 0f Man (Epitaph): The SoCal punks continue to craft paeans for the intelligensia with three chords and amazing three part vocal harmonies.
8. Cradle of Filth – Darkly, Darkly Venus Aversa (Nuclear Blast): Oh, darker my love! Dani’s dark mob strips things down to basics and have made their most lethal concept record since Cruelty and the Beast.
9. Dimmu Borgir – Abrahadabra (Nuclear Blast): The equivalent of any Michael Bay movie with a dark metal soundtrack. It’s big, cinematic and has little to do with conveying anything like plot or storytelling (like Transformers). Dimmu have survived and surpassed recent lineup changes only to make an album that comes closest to a bit of semi-Black Metal for the mainstream.
10. Fear Factory – Mechanize (Candlelight): Dino and Burton kiss, make up and make a classic Fear Factory album. Easily the one that should have been slotted right between Demanufacture and Obsolete.
11. Enslaved -Axioma Ethica Odini (Nuclear Blast)
12. Shining – Blackjazz (Indie/The End)
13. Black Breath – Heavy Breathing (Southern Lord)
14. William Control-Noir (Victory)
15. Demiurg – Slakthus Gamleby (Cyclone Empire)
16. Underoath – Disambiguation (Solid State)
17. Deftones – Diamond Eyes (Warners)
18. Danzig – Deth Red Sabaoth (The End)
19. Overkill-Ironbound (E1)
20. Integrity-The Blackest Curse (Deathwish)
And a record I spent a ton of time working on that came out earlier this year….
Mutiny Within – Mutiny Within (Roadrunner): Dream Theater played by Killswitch Engage with a singer that stomps all over James LaBrie in the passion department. Why this New Jersey sextet (with a couple members by way of the UK) hasn’t connected yet is beyond me. Of course, the record is just a few months old. Popular opinion’s still out on this one.
And of course…..
Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (Def Jam): If you don’t like this, then you’re one of “douchebags” he sings about.
BLACK SABBATH Paranoid (Classic Albums Series DVD) (Eagle Vision)
Do you remember where you were the first time you heard BLACK SABBATH’s seminal 1970 album Paranoid? Chances are you do and it changed your life forever. The sophomore release from four rough’ n tumble lads from the industrial streets of Birmingham, England is arguably the album that started it all; “it” being the beloved musical genre called Heavy Metal. The Classic Albums Series presentation of Paranoid is a 98-minute DVD that covers the making of the eight-song album that caused so many musicians to pick up a guitar and go for it…and still does today.
Masterfully edited and easily consumed in one, attention-focused sitting, the DVD gives you all the behind-the-scenes detail, as told by vocalist Ozzy Osbourne, guitarist Tony Iommi, bassist Geezer Butler, drummer Bill Ward, engineer Tom Allom, album appreciator Henry Rollins, and a host of journalists and supporting cast members. Each member offers his recollections of the creative process, often with instruments in hand (Iommi’s guitar demonstrations and Ward’s drum clinics are especially captivating). What comes across in a big way through the discussions with the fearsome foursome is just how magically everything came together, the ideas flowing and the quartet working in unison at lightning speeds, admittedly without even really thinking about it. You’ve no doubt heard that the song “Paranoid” was added to the album as its eighth track as little more than an afterthought; written on the spot after the realization hit that the album needed one more three to four minute song to fill it out. That the song was not even the first choice for the album title after Warner Bros. forbade naming the LP “War Pigs,” but also became a #1 hit speaks volumes about the creative juices that were so freely flowing during those sessions. You’ll also come away with a whole new appreciation for the sheer, groundbreaking musicianship involved.
In order to set context, the DVD covers the origins of BLACK SABBATH and the events leading up to the recording of Paranoid; from the blues rock beginnings of the act’s first incarnation as EARTH to the changing of the name to BLACK SABBATH (one offered up by Butler who was fascinated with the occult at the time) to the shocking popularity of the self-titled debut upon its release. (more…)
After the devastating news that drummer, Jimmy “The Rev” Sullivan passed away a couple days after Christmas last year, AVENGED SEVENFOLD released their fifth full-length album Nightmare (Warner Bros) in honor of their best friend/bandmate. For the past few weeks, thousands of fans have been uploading video commentaries on YouTube on their thoughts of the album just raving about how proud Jimmy would have been. Other blog sites merely giving the album and average score, and LA TIMES writers vaguely, and unjustly providing a negative point of the album and totally missing the point. So what else is there to say? Honestly, for a fan from the days of blasting Sounding the Seventh Trumpet and seeing them at Chain Reaction, what can you expect A7X to create after being in the game over ten years, especially, seven months after a key element dies?
If you had roughly 70 minutes to say goodbye to your best friend since the second grade before he died, lyrically, I would say it just like Nightmare was written. And, if legendary Mike Portnoy justifies The Rev’s void, the only criticism to have is that the creation of aggressive rhythms only has the band relying on safe melodic cliches,that might just make it their best, hardest mature album to date.
A vivid illustration builds up in the first track “Nightmare”. With lacerated guitar riffs to the ascending lyrics of “hate to twist your mind, but God ain’t on your side”, the songs instrumental break that leads into an expansive solo, for a first single seemed to disappoint- however, it’s overall catchiness it’s a good mood setter for the album. The low-D string in “Welcome to the Family” is a reminder of how amazing (Johnny) Christ’s double bass segues perfectly into those shredding solos. We all have happiness inside, we all have answers to find” chorus just adds to the emotions manipulated by Shadows delivery. “Danger Line” starts off with truculent drums which weave into a melody overworking percussion and uncompromising, equable, rhythmic guitar and bass that writhe their way of its starting point. The verse, yet minimal and a tad but unimaginable, does not show any emotion until the bridge, “I never meant to leave this world alone, I never meant to hurt the ones who cared. And all this time I thought we’d just grow old — you know, no one said it’s fair”, poignantly sets a tribute to Sullivan.
