Soundtrack to a Silver Lining

My thoughts on the new Dream Theater CD, Black Clouds and Silver Linings:

Like many Dream Theater albums, and a lot of progressive music in general, this one is kind of a grower. I'm going to buy any Dream Theater album, but I read a few reviews before getting this one, and most of them printed up adjectives like 'accessible', 'dark', 'heavy', etc. etc.

Any of those descriptors could be good or bad for you depending on why you listen to Dream Theater. They have their soft, wimpy CDs and they have their harder, more metal albums and they tend to more-or-less alternate between those two ends. And I'm talking about overall feel on each album... obviously a soft album might have a heavy song, or vice versa.

So I was surprised reading the reviews, because Systematic Chaos was considered a heavy album in DT terms, so we were due for the traditional wimpy one, in the vein of Octavarium or A Change of Seasons. Being the stalwart metalhead, I prefer the heavy episodes.

Playing it though... enh. Not so heavy. Or so I thought at first. The first song on a DT album is almost always the heaviest, even on the softer albums it can be pretty rockin'. But after that inital cut the rest of it just seemed... well, 'typical'. It wasn't bad or anything. Just not the generator of such superlatives as 'heaviest yet' and 'really dark'.

Dream Theater is one of the bands some music periodicals like to call nerd-metal. It isn't nerdy in the sense of some power metal or progressive metal bands with their fantasy-drenched lyrics (think Symphony X or for the really over-the-top Rhapsody of Fire). Its more the intricate musicianship, with its time changes, multi-part epics, and acoustic interludes all adding up to an obtuse listening experience that makes the fans feel exclusive if not elite. People who listened to Yes or King Crimson in the '70s felt the same way, but they weren't tagged as nerds yet. There's actually a lot of weird, opaque, but accomplished music out there and it usually has a core cadre of diehards as fans of the New York Dolls, the Mars Volta, or VAST can tell you.

Its all nerd music. Anyway. I'm not hearing the heaviness. The album even includes a CD of covers that range from Queen to Dixie Dregs so that ain't really pushing up the metal quotient (Iron Maiden cover notwithstanding) though the DT renditions are not less rockin' than the originals. But the edition I bought also includes an instrumental CD of all the originals. When I put THAT one on, suddenly the heaviness came through.

Huh? Is the music on there different than the primary disc? Not really. There is just something about vocalist James Labrie's singing that softens it all up. I never cottoned to that fact before. Although singers for power and progressive metal bands have to be pretty versatile... so that means they have to be able to sing softly and way high up in the pussy registers... James isn't really a wuss-puss singer. He does a really passable Freddie Mercury impression at the end of the Queen cover on the other CD, but in the main he doesn't have a flowery voice. He doesn't really look wimpy either. He's kind of a big guy and has a really huge mane of long hair with these sort of straight eyebrows that make him look a bit put off all the time. He's a good singer. Nothing wrong with him. But without his vocals the album is a lot more metal. It made me re-listen to the regular CD, and now after quite a few listens THAT one seems heavier too. I'm catching the metal behind the vocals that I'd missed before.

Maybe there's such a thing as listening to a band so much that your expectations actually occlude what you are hearing.

Anyway. NOW I'd throw myself into the heavy camp describing this album. The music is NOT accessible in the old radio-friendly sense. The songs are long, and wend there way through hard and soft passages as progressive rock/metal does. The musicianship is superlative as usual with this band. I thought they'd kind of put the metal back into their music with the last album but this one actually goes quite a bit further. There's really only one track that doesn't have some thrash passage or serious double-bass (if that's your measure of metal) and that's the song Wither... which is the shortest song on here.

So it sounds like the Berklee boys had metal for breakfast. Their jacket photo looks like they are trying to convince us. But the music says that well enough. Wouldn't say it is album of the year for me, but its up there.

Color Me Not Impressed

Warning! Mainstream movie review, but serious gut-cloggingly nerdy moments included!



Took the kids to see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen a few days ago and it left me disappointed.



I've never been a real Transformers fan. When I was a kid, the robot animation I was into were the so-called super robots (aka Shogun Warriors in the USA) like Mazinger Z, Getter Robo, and Brave Raideen. I kind of kept a little knowledge of the Transformers in the periphery of my fan slobber because in their heyday you really couldn't be in a comic shop without some exposure. I'd also seen a few of the shows, knew who the major characters were, and had some general recollection of the overall storyline and background.

Fast forward to modern times. My son is a bigger Transformers fan than I was. Not HUGE, mind you. Mobile Suit Gundam is his show of choice, though he'll soak up anything to do with robots and fighting. So it was quite the event to take him and his sister to the first Transformer movie a couple of summers back. And we were not disappointed. The kids were going to like it no matter what, and once I got over my kids watching the teenage sexual jokes, I found myself remembering a lot about the old shows and enjoying the references... in addition to the spectacular visualisations of the Transformers themselves.

In the sequel, those same visualisations are about all the movie has going for it. I know there is a huge segment of the population who says 'its a summer popcorn flick, stop trying to watch it critcially'... but there's a limit to how far I can be pushed to accept a movie based on special effects. Certainly it is the old story when it comes to blockbuster sequels that always try to out-do the earlier episodes in terms of bigger and louder, but rarely improve on them in all the ways that really count.

My biggest problem really is that for all you have to suspend a certain amount of belief to buy into the Cybertron mythos, the first Transformer movie held to a certain logic-- internal movie logic though it was. It didn't SEEM to play fast and loose with any rules because some of the rules hadn't been written yet. And the film just built on what was established. The new film completely ignores 'the rules' established in the first film and really, REALLY suffers for it. While I'll give the producers props for not inventing any of the stuff in the film (they actually mined past Transformer material for the characters and events) they've twisted it so much that it no longer resembles much recognisable from the admittedly complicated Transformer universe. They also undermined a lot of the significant aspects of the first film.

You can find whole huge lists of problems and plot holes from a number of online critics, but the ones that really glared at me while watching the film:

There's a 'greater' evil than Megatron. That really diminishes Megatron's threat and power from the first film. I wouldn't mind an OLDER evil that THOUGHT it was using Megatron, but I'd rather Megatron had just been using The Fallen. This is one thing the Star Wars movies got right. When you found out Darth Vader had a boss, it still didn't diminish his badassedness. Most audience members felt when it got right down to it, Darth Vader was the apprentice because he let it be that way, that's just how the Sith work, not because the Emperor was a real threat to him. And Revenge of the Sith doesn't do anything to dissuade you from that. Anakin either outclasses the Emperor when he turns or is well on his way to doing so, fancy dark side lightning or no. In the Transformer universe (as it exists in comics and films) there ARE older and greater evils than Megatron, BUT they aren't revealed until many stories in, and only after Megatron has been well-worn as a villain. And even THEN Megatron usually manages to come out not being just a toadie.

The prototype railgun that destroys Demolisher on top of the pyramid. WTF? The humans spend a lot of the film being largely ineffectual against in Transformer battles and the evil government human takes Optimus to task for not sharing Transformer war technology. There was a point in the film where said evil government human breaks the contract between the Autobots and PEST, the human special forces in charge of hunting rogue Decepticons... and I was confounded because the Autobots are the only ones that can easily battle other Transformers. NOW I get it. Evil government human must've known about the railgun AND had a plan in place to equip these bad boys in all sizes to PEST. Seriously though? Why wasn't THAT thing used more than once?

The Pretender. The Decepticon masquerading at the college hottie. There actually IS such a thing as organically-skinned Pretenders in the Transformer universe... and this one supposedly flashed on an Alice in Wonderland animatronic to get its non-robot form... but with all that dropped from the onscreen plot, the character becomes just an excuse to have Sam involved in more comical sexual hijinx.

In fact, A LOT of the comedy was way more broad than I could appreciate. Probably culminating in the geriatric old Transformer found at the Smithsonian (which incidentally opens out onto a huge airfield in the back-- DC skyline nowhere in sight). And I already had the uncomfortable squirmies over the humor in the first one. Now I'm no prude... far from it. But there is a certain age appropriateness that you expect with a movie about Transformers. Look at who the toys and previous incarnations have been aimed at. Movie number one had a fair amount of cussin' but it also was pushing it a bit with the masturbation humor. The second one really overdoes it. Apart from all the overt seduction the Pretender throws at Sam, the capper might be his STONED Mom lipping off to strangers about overhearing her son losing his cherry.

I think this movie just tried too hard, and lost its focus. Plot was an inconsistent mess, with holes you could drive Optimus through. Tried to be a dirty joke movie, bleah (a Transformer has testicles? Right.) Stupid robot chracters undermining the actual cool robots. And there were cool robots with awesome battles. Optimus (being a better fighter than the first film) and taking out the huge Devastator at the beginning as well as battling multiple attackers (including Megatron!) at once was just cathartic fanboy joy. It just isn't enough to hide the really bad parts.

At least my kids thought it was cool. Hopefully though they won't think too much about the scen with Pretender trying to shove her mechanical phallus-tongue down Sam's throat.

Movie Roundup

A quick summary of movies I've seen in the last few months and what I think of 'em:

Taken: I liked this more than I thought I would. Doesn't do anything new, but it does it all well. I was surprised by the intensity it reached for being PG-13, though I know that rating is pretty effing vague. Some poignancy lent to the 'upset' scenes for Neeson because I watched it just after his wife died.

Up: A joy. I highly recommend this movie. Managed to have more heartfelt emotion in a few-minute sequence than any five live-action dramas put together. Almost felt more for the adults than the kids, but a lot of Pixar stuff comes off that way.

Monsters vs Aliens: Amusing, but mostly a throwaway unless you are a huge fan of B movies of the 50's, where some of the humor resonates. I am, so it was enjoyable. Otherwise, The Incredibles hits most of the same notes but better.

Star Trek: Although I am not a Trekker, I am a really big fan of Classic Trek, the original series. Huge. So this film had me praying to movie Jesus that it would be good (like LOTR was) and not shitty (like almost any other TV-based adaptation). I am bearing in mind that other Star Trek films have been made, some of them decent... but those usually had the original cast in them. I was very pleasantly surprised. A lot of my relief probably stems from the overused, but here very necessary time-travel gimmick. I'm looking forward to more from this franchise. Thank you, movie Jesus.

Watchmen: Huge fan of the comic. Really surprised at negative reviews that said it was too much like the comic. And even more surprised that I felt a little like that myself. I LIKED the movie. A lot. BUT. Apart from a necessarily-altered/simplified ending and some slight updates to the costumes, this movie is EXACTLY like the comic. For maybe the first time ever, I've wanted to see a bit of the director's vision seep through... but in this case his vision was to hew right down the line to Alan Moore's story. See my previous Alan Moore post too. He should absolutely drop the dickishness over THIS movie. It is as much of his story as could fit into a really long film. Movie Jesus did his job too well.


Terminator Salvation: Got exactly what I'd hoped for and expected. Good movie, and again kind of intense for a PG-13, if you compare it to Nancy Drew or the Harry Potter movies. I really must write up an entry about the ambiguity of this rating. Director McG really brought his own style, that will not be everyone's cup of tea. He hit all the notes, answered a few questions, and then injected a cool new twist to everyone's understanding of the SkyNet chronology.

Angels and Demons: Okay. I'm kind of a book snob. I'm such a book snob in some ways that I think (ssshhhh) JRR Tolkein is a mediocre writer. That also means I don't think Dan Brown is a good writer at all. I read Angels and Demons followed by The Da Vinci Code because the collective fan-consciousness of America made me do it. I didn't like either book, but I thought Angels and Demons the better. Same could be said for the movies. I didn't like either REALLY, but I thought this one superior. Props go to Ron Howard for daring the subject matter yet again, for portraying the catholic church more sympathetically than anyone might've expected, and for doing whatever it took to get the filming done, including completely CG-faking the interiors the vatican wouldn't let him use.

Gran Torino: I want Clint Eastwood as my grandpa.

Valkyrie: Oddly lightweight considering the subject matter. As usual, difficult to accept Tom Cruise in an odd role. He's okay in it, doesn't do anything wrong, but like Al Pacino, or even Will Smith, his public persona colors, if not overshadows his roles. I actually don't like myself for even thinking that way. Every actor deserves a chance to take on something different or challenging. No one really cares in this case, except Tom because all of America goes to his films, but have written him off as a egomaniac nutjob.

Bleagh.

Holy shit. Kimchee belches are really fucking foul.
And I am talking about my own. I can hardly stand to be around myself.

Napalm Death, Dazzle Me

Genre music releases seem to come out cyclically. I couldn’t tell you exactly what that cycle is, but we seem to be back ‘in’ one after the first several months of this year being very dry… at least for the heavier more subversive stuff. Thank goodness for itunes, though. Much as I hate Apple’s customer service (I’ve had nightmare ipod repair stories), living in a cultural wasteland as I do, I don’t have a brick-and-mortar corner record store to go dig up older music to round out my collection while waiting for new releases. But with itunes I can poke around and almost always find something worth getting.
In any case the dry spell ended a month or two ago, and in the last week or so I picked up six CDs all worth the money. I want to ‘blog specifically about Napalm Death’s Time Waits For No Slave, But in my inimitable style I’m going to wax pedantic with history and observation before I actually the probably-important-only-to-me point.

‘Napalm Death are utterly badass’. That descriptor doesn’t come that easily from me. I’ve been into heavy music for a long, LONG time. I’m something of an old dude. Throughout its history metal has progressively gotten heavier. As with any art form with legs, the repeat audience wants more. More of everything. In the same way that horror movies have gotten more graphic since the good ol’ days of Universal’s dominance pre-WW2, or literature has pushed the bounds of good taste (and social criticism) since the breathy days of Wuthering Heights, heavy music has pushed onto the next frontier and the next with each passing year. There is also a sort of endpost that tends to be reached where the art form doesn’t go any further and all that seems to happen is that a lot of the other artists just catch up to the pioneer who took it there in the first place. I’m really generalizing. Obviously in any creative sphere there are artists who work in ‘traditional’ spaces or keep to the old(er) ways.

With heavy music, the subgenres of grindcore, black metal, noise/drone (the metal version), and mathcore came into existence years ago, but there’s never been anything created since then that has really been more extreme. There are just a lot more bands doing it now in proportion to metal as a whole. There’s only so fast you can play, only so guttural you can make your vocals, only so dense a wall of sound, and only so disjointed you can make your song structures. The signature sound of each of these styles is practically unlistenable to an untrained, mainstream pair of ears, but the best bands or musicians in each of these styles have learned that you need to mix in tempo changes, and references to other styles to keep the music interesting, i.e. Dillinger Escape Plan puts jazzy interludes into some of their craziest, most angular songs or Immortal having a thrash-based middle eight breaking up a hyperblasting number. It makes for a more dynamic, ‘cooler’ listening experience if you give the listener something of a rest, making the return to the ‘intense parts’ almost cathartic. This need to breathe and change is also one of the reasons why grindcore songs, arguably the most extreme music form, tend to be so short. Many of the tunes just blur by in a minute or two.

Back in the day, when I was growing up and banging my head, I would, like many fans, move onto the next heavier or more extreme thing when it came out. In hindsight, there really wasn’t anything literally heavier than Black Sabbath’s albums Master of Reality and Sabotage until Metallica (and the other thrash bands) came along. Venom, before thrash, was heavy in its way, but they also were just plain sucky. Metallica, Anthrax, and Megadeth opened a floodgate. Forget the Hetfield of now, and go back and listen to Metallica’s Kill ‘Em All. Those are harsh, barked vocals, and rhythm playing far faster than almost any mainstream release of the day. And it took some getting used to. I liked Metallica from the get-go, but it was largely for the music… which was just an extreme extension of what I was already listening to. The vocals were quite unlike metal up to that point. But they caught on. With me and the rest of the heavy music fanbase.

Nowadays Metallica’s early albums are good, but almost quaint sounding. The roots of the most extreme metal styles are almost all there, but the speed, vocal violence, and production punch have all gone through the roof in the years following. Thrash, as the style has come to be known (through a number of name changes I’m not interested in going into for this post), was a fusion of punk sensibility, political bent, and speed with metal’s attitude and musicianship. Thrash is still considered, along with the basic genres death metal and black metal, to be one of the ‘extreme metal’ forms.
Grindcore, like thrash, has roots in punk, specifically hardcore. While it developed in a different way, grind has so much in common musically with death metal that it has been absorbed by it for the purposes of discussion, marketing, etc. Parallel evolution in a sense, grindcore is pretty much considered the most extreme version of death metal, though its lyrical content still hews to the political and social commentary of its punk and hardcore lineage.
When it was first starting to hit the metal venues (and record store merch racks) I had no interest in grindcore. I even saw Napalm Death, considered amongst the masters and originators of the style, in concert and was decidedly unimpressed… I’m not sure whether they actually had a good show because my ears were not up to the task of deciphering the style. It was just, as it would be to 99.9% of the population, a blur of speedy noise. But gradually, as the years have gone by, driven by acclaim by critics, a desire to push boundaries, and awesome album covers, I’ve grown accustomed to and even appreciate the more extreme forms of metal. This may seem odd to today’s extreme metalhead, who has grown up on Opeth, Lamb of God, or Dimmu Borgir, to name three bands who can be found in any popular music store, and that all play music far harder than anything I could’ve bought when I was a teen.
So I’ve been buying grindcore albums for awhile now. Not tons of ‘em, mind you. It isn’t a style that incorporates a lot of variety. But I have a few bands I go to for a guaranteed good listen when I’m in the mood for utter metal extremity.

But perhaps because of my bad experience in concert all those years ago I never put Napalm Death into the buying list. Which is retarded really. Even bands I’ve always liked have had live performances that pale next to their studio albums. I read a review (in Terrorizer I think) that was just jizzing about Napalm Death’s latest. And something about that review made my conscious brain rebel against the dislike of Napalm Death that had been imprinted on my cerebral cortex. I read a few other columns and everyone and their grandmother was all about this album. In fact, apparently the last few Napalm Death albums had represented some return to form for the band (not one I was aware of, shunning their work), and the latest was the greatest.

So I bit. In the years following that ill-fated show, I’d purchased albums by Nasum, Gadget, Cephalic Carnage… all grind staples. I was ready to reacquaint with whatever blastbeats and throat-shredding Barney Greenway and ND was ready to throw, but the album exceeded my expectations. Most of the better grindcore bands have incorporated a somewhat modern development mentioned above, the incorporation of ,dynamics, into the songs. This could be speed or tempo changes, or incorporation of another style (something the critics usually call ‘groove’). In the case of this particular album, the dynamic injected is thrash. Which is actually cool and very resonant with me, since the thrash heyday is when I first heard Napalm Death. Almost every song on the album either cuts the grindcore blasting liberally with thrash sections or is completely a thrash song but with grind aspects. AND Barney’s got a lot of different vocal deliveries going on too. Most of it is still harsh, but there’s a lot of variety. The whole thing just smacks of veterans who know exactly what they are doing, and I don’t mean that in the phoned-in performance sense. I mean it all clicks together and they make it sound easy. I’ll point a finger particularly at Barney’s vocals and the drumming. Grindcore drummers have one of the most punishing jobs in all of music. Like drummers for black metal and death metal bands, they need to be machines. But this guy, again, makes it seem easy. Within the grind style, the songs go so fast that it is hard to discern a lot of musical creativity. Skill yes. It takes a lot of skill, and stamina, to play what they play. But creativity in the ‘jazz drumfill’ sense doesn’t really get all that apparent in grindcore. It may be partially due to the thrash bits, but the drumming on this album is definitely a clinic for wannabe extreme metal drummers.

I’m not saying this album is going to make someone a fan of grindcore, or as some people might qualify this thing, death metal (its on the less extreme end of grindcore). But what a great listen if you are already attuned to extreme music. I would challenge anyone not to bang their head when the tempo changes hit in this CD. I’m over my Napalm Death embargo.

Smoking in Hell

On a recent trip stateside I had the pleasure of visiting a real honest-to-goodness tobacconist. That might be a ‘so what’ moment to most others, but you have to understand what a barren wasteland I live in culturally, and that includes a lot of things typical Americans take for granted, including a lot of common basic shopping outlets. I’m an occasional cigar smoker. I don’t like cigarettes, though I can tolerate the smoke just fine. The chance to indulge this vice really only comes ‘round during the four month stretch of warm weather we get here. Can’t smoke ‘em indoors, and winter is just too brutal for smoking something that can last you upwards of an hour or more (if smoked slowly/properly). So summer it is. A very short summer.

If you visit the stores that carry cigars here you will find scant selection, questionable humidification, and incredibly high prices… sometimes triple the costs you can get a stick for in the states or over mail order, even with shipping figured in. So I have some stuff in storage in North Caroline where I made a trip to try to get things organized, and while I was there I got to visit some malls and stores the like of which my current town of residence doesn’t supply. Having lived in the Baltimore area for years this sort of consumer super-overload wasn’t unfamiliar, just hadn’t been around it for awhile… ‘civilisation’ as I often call it.

So I looked around this clean, shmancy cigar store, overwhelmed by the selection and the low costs and ended up buying only one because I needed to rethink my strategy; at these prices I should be purchasing a box of twenty-five or more and I didn’t have space for that in my return luggage.

So upon return I looked up the website for the store I was in, but the website wasn’t up to the impression left by the shop. It was mostly trying to sell the store’s special brands and I’m particular to some global marks. One online retailer, a huge popular one, just had incredibly high shipping rates to Alaska. The point of ordering the cigars online is not just to get ones I can’t get here… which frankly, is just about every cigar of quality… but to also NOT spend the money I’d have to here. Finally (and sure I’ll plug ‘em) Famous Smokes in Pennsylvania turned up and they will ship via the post office for nominal rates.

I just wanted a basic go-to smoke. Nothing super-fancy, and it needed to be medium-bodied/strength, since I was only getting one box to start… and that might be all I’d manage to get through this summer since I don’t smoke ‘em every day. I’d never know when an opportunity to light up would present itself and a really heavy full-bodied cigar is just not appropriate all the time. Basic doesn’t mean crap though. I had some experience with different brands and I understand cigar terminology, sizing, and all that, so I decided on a box of (Dominican) Partagas Almirantes. Medium to large-ish cigar with decent width (ring gauge) so it’d be a cool smoke, last a decent while, but not so big it’d be obnoxious-looking in casual company. Natural wrapper. I’m familiar with these, though from quite awhile ago.

The trick to great cigar experiences is not to rush anything. Light ‘em slow, smoke ‘em slow. Lighting them so you toast the end as opposed to charring the shit out of it is the first step. Then don’t huff the motherfucker like its an oxygen mask. One puff every minute or so… a slow puff. With no significant inhaling.

So I get this box in the mail that worked out to only $4.60 a cigar after shipping and everything, and these things are just the best cigars I’ve smoked in a long time. I handed some out to people at work—and showed them the right way to light and smoke them, and you’d think I was giving away cards for free blow jobs. After two weeks, I’ve only got half my box left, but they were so cheap I don’t even care.

Understand. Cigars are a luxury item. When I say cheap, I don’t mean ‘comparable to cigarettes’. Good cigars are expensive but you can’t equate them on a smoke-for-smoke basis with cigarettes because the two have completely different roles. Cigars are not habitual for most smokers. They are more like the occasional glass of good scotch. Not the beer you drink almost every day.
I’m sure I’ll be hitting that smoke shop up again pretty soon, though. Paying one-third for your smokes finds you looking for opportunities to smoke more often!

Go Buy Some Clutch

Originally hailing from Germantown, MD... near my old stomping grounds but far from my current culture-starved locale... Clutch is one of the largely unsung greats of the rock 'n' roll universe.



Depending on the album, they careen around between blues, stoner rock, and beer metal, but always with a groovy heaviness and a really fat sound. If you listen to them for about thirty seconds or less it might be easy to dismiss them as a 'typical' (though not really so common these days) but tight bar band. But give them just a little time, and their genius becomes apparent.



Neil Fallon has an appealing whiskey-soaked delivery but his lyrics are what will really get your attention. Lots of wordplay, literary and mythological allusion, and cultural insight all fittting music that seems about as far from an appropriate vehicle for it as is possible to get. But it works. Very clever stuff. And the music works a similar angle. If one could use the word 'progressive' within the bar band sound then that might be a correct tag. Clutch really 'explores the space' (sorry BOC) of the stoner rock/metal sound and always keeps things interesting.

If you like bands like Brand New Sin, or to reference something more mainstream Black Stone Cherry, Clutch is like a mind-bent cousin, in the same way Corrosion of Conformity might be but without the harshness that band sometimes pushes.

Get on itunes and check out From Beale Street to Oblivion, their most accessible album, and if it appeals work your way up to their magnum opus Blast Tyrant. You really can't go wrong with any of it. Along with King's X these guys would probably be on the top of my 'have to see them in a bar' list. I've seen King's X multiple times in all sorts of settings and was spot-on with THAT call... so I'm guessing Clutch would be the cat's ass close up with booze.