What Are You Listening To?

[Nasty_Cabbage]

3 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

It's pretty damn good Cabbarella, would buy if I had my computer. But it skews much more death than black. I don't even hear much black at all here really. This is death metal. Not complaining about that, and it doesn't really matter, I'm just pointing it out to be a dick. I'm generally happy to take my black/death mix in whatever ratio it comes in. I'm curious though, what about this says black metal to you?

 

Necrophobic – In the Twilight Grey, new one, now this skews more black, or maybe 50/50. Love Necrophobic, but they might be starting to repeat themselves. It's good, obviously, but I can't say I'm too excited about it. I guess this album from a 30 year legacy band to me is like the new Pweest is to the mainstreamers.

 

The tonality was pretty clearly within the range of black metal for me. The percussive elements of death metal are partially there, and that's not to say that death doesn't work within a tonality of it's own that can also at times stretch into black metal's turf. I found myself noticing the rhythmic elements were very often on open resonant chords that would descend in scale by a half step (or a flat/sharp if you prefer) of the major key root note and work back and forth between them to springboard from riff to riff. Death metal does this as well from time to time, but not to the point where I'd consider it a defining characteristic of the sound. In fact I've been to a point before where I was very tired of typical death metalish guitar solos that almost always slip by default right into Phrygian scales because it just works better. To be fair there's definitely a slight lean away from tremolo picking and a few other elements that you'd expect of black metal, but to put it simply, if the music was played as a contest between death and black metal the team with home field advantage felt like black metal to me.

Necrophobic is a band I've only ever encountered in a fly by passing or two through the years. Never really felt one way or another about them, but given their age may be worth a bit of a deeper dive this time around. Wouldn't want to short them their due diligence.

Now as far as lyrics/music and their interaction with the listener is concerned, this is one of those areas I've softened a bit on over the years. I used to be firmly planted in the camp that thought lyrics really don't matter at all, not just in extreme metal, but in music all together. I mean if your primary musical appeal has to do with something physically corporeal, or even being "about" anything observable it just seemed like a wasted effort. The notes, rhythms, tones, and nuance of the performance are what truly matters, and finding words that describe the expression fittingly within the meter of the song it could be argued aren't a musical expression at all. I felt this way for a long time because I thought people in general had a hard time communing with anything abstract largely due to a cultural decline in what once seemed like an absolutely pivotal part of being human: the imagination. This has softened somewhat not because I've noticed any abatement in the devastation of the modern imagination. We are still a slothful and blissfully unaware sounder of penned swine to be sure, but more because even though the subjugation and crippling of the raw envisioned image continues, the answer is not to beat people over the head with abstractions. That only serves to drive others away; people who still have that potential and simply struggle to put it to use through no real fault of their own. The answer is to acknowledge it where it's executed skillfully and gradually use it as a bridge to the abstract we've lost touch with.

That probably reads like a bunch of conceited faux-intellectual bullshit, but putting things that way sometimes keeps me from falling into pure nihilistic defeatism, which is not healthy for me. I don't want to play gatekeeper to anyone's enjoyment of music on any level. So you'll have to forgive my pretentiousness from time to time. 

[Nasty_Cabbage]

1 hour ago, Kristiko said:

Static X - Cult of Static (album)

One of the very first concerts I ever went to. It was a massive radio-rock festival, and well... They were Static-X. Not a whole lot going on below face value for them. Still glad I saw them though. I'm pretty sure most of us liked some bands in high school or junior high we'd be embarrassed about now. I definitely gave myself heat stroke at that show. Outside temperature was 103 degrees without being in an angry overstimulated crowd. They finally got spray water to us about halfway through the set, and I felt like one of those peasants at the start of Mad Max: Fury Road when he shouts "Do not become addicted to water." When I got home parents freaked out because I was apparently near delerious and purple from heavy strain on my circulatory and respiratory systems. The moral of the story is clearly: If you want to enjoy static-X the way they're meant to be enjoyed, be sure to push yourself to the absolute brink of death, and then the music isn't so bad.

NP: Gorod - A Maze of Recycled Creeds

A MAZE OF RECYCLED CREED | GOROD | LISTENABLE RECORDS (bandcamp.com)

What more can be said about these guys. One of many almost perfect albums from one of the best bands kicking it out there right now. Every time I go back to this one in particular it shocks me how well rounded it is. There's no stacking of 'good' songs on the front or back. Just incredible quality nose to tail.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

4 hours ago, markm said:

You like to play the part of the rube, but anyone that reads your posts know that you are highly intelligent. We've engaged in a range of convos on your takes on history, left wing politics to the complexities of economics. You like language and culture. So, don't play the knuckle dragger with me! Your tastes are questionable, you like to instigate debate and can be annoying AF at times but your intellect is not in questions, sir. 

We have vastly different views on lyrics. Here's what I would say on the subject-first off, metal lyrics by and large don't add much. That said, in regards to extreme metal they sometimes help draw me into the world of the artist. You don't need to read the lyrics to The Ramones or Judas Priest. And most extreme metal lyrics are a throw away, but I've found that some artists really take the time to put a great deal of thought  into their lyrics. It's an odd thing-introspective lyrics that no one can understand-but that's part of the riddle of extreme metal. Most artists want success. Extreme metal is the opposite. There are self imposed barriers to limit entry like the code to get into khazad-dum. It requires effort on the part of the listener. In a way, that's part of the appeal. 

That's partly why I like physical media. I'll typically take a few minutes to look at the artwork and the lyrics and often don't read past the first couple of tracks. But, I just figure songs are combination of music and words and artists, no matter how primitive might want to say something or at minimum create an atmosphere where language plays some part. BM in particular has a way of taking the listener to other dimensions where the artwork and sometimes the lyrics can add to the mystique they try to envelope the listener in. 

Extreme metal can be complex and dense and the lyrics can be used to punctuate a point in the prose or storyline if there is one.

Beginning with Metallica and Anthrax per my listening, those artists were making great music but also talking about real societal things-racism, the criminal justice system, mental health drug addiction, the futility of war. Lemmy was actually an underrated lyricism. Beyond the sex, drugs and rock and roll culture of many of his songs, his lyrics were often hilarious and quite poignant writing about his disgust at the wealthy and powerful, disingenuity of elitists, his intolerance of the lies hoisted upon all of us by those that pull the strings in our world, the stupidity of war and and religion.  

Ihashn wrote some really interesting stuff on Anthems that took the power of their symphonic black metal and fused it with more than Satanism-but with occult mysticism that was genius for a teenager. I know you're not an Opeth fan,  Mikael Åkerfeldt basically wrote dark poetry that he set to music. I can't imagine listening to Blackwater Park or Ghost Reveries without taking a peek at the lyrics. He's a great example of using extreme metal to punctuate his lyrical themes. Neurosis is another band who took wild, ambitious ideas both sonically and lyrically using samples and ideas from myth and psychology. Arioch (both with Funeral Mist and Marduk) does some pretty intelligent things to the old Satanic tropes of BM inverting Christianity with some twisted shit. DSO is famous for their existential essays posed as intellectual Satanism set to music. I've noticed in recent years that DM sometimes brings in elements of eastern religion, particularly Buddhism and bands like Vastum (and definitely doomy post metal bands like Subrosa) pull from literature and in Vastum's case write some twisted, thought provoking disturbing shit.

I know you don't have any interest in any of that stuff, but my point is in a small percentage of metal, the time and talent put into lyrics enrich my enjoyment. It's like the dead sea scrolls or the Davinci code-only available to those that put the effort into deciphering secret runes. Enough said!

I wouldn't say the part I'm playing is one of a "rube" as I'm a very cynical and jaded, some would say a grizzled old New Yorker. I'm not educated or refined or cultured or traveled or high falutin like Doc though. I'm just a common man with simple tastes who flunked out of university within a year for being lazy and disinterested, and then went back home and performed manual labor for many years. I'm what they call downwardly mobile. An extreme underachiever. Neither my parents or any of their parents ever performed manual labor. So you can't conflate my having a fairly decently developed vocabulary and knowing the difference between there, their and they're with me being highly intelligent. Being reasonably proficient in English does not in and of itself necessarily make one highly intelligent. It's all relative.  Every time I find myself in a convo with or in the company of someone who is in fact highly intelligent, it becomes painfully obvious to me very quickly that I'm not on their level. I sometimes wish I was more intelligent as I do value intelligence over most other things. But I'm not. So instead, I prefer to think of it in terms of how most people are just incredibly, monumentally fucking stupid. Dumb as a stump as I like to say. So that might leave me as just a bit smarter than many of your average 'rubes' and typical dumbasses relatively speaking, but certainly nothing even remotely approaching 'highly intelligent." Remember, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. I suppose that could be seen as an arrogant 'elitist' attitude to have that I dismiss most people as being dumb as shit, but I reckon it's true so fuck 'em.

But anyway yeah man, I do understand that many people such as yourself get quite a bit from metal themes and lyrics. I figure you're probably well in the majority on that front. I haven't actually run into that many other fellow lyric dismissers or lyric deniers in my time. My boy Navy comes to mind as one, but we're outliers to some extent I think. And I know I've said this a thousand times but just to be clear, this holds true just for extreme metal only. I figure if a band goes to all the trouble of making their vocals/lyrics completely unintelligible, then I will happily ignore them and just focus on the sound and the timbre and the rhythm of the voice itself as an instrument. And I think we can all agree that the human voice can be a wonderful and very powerful instrument. I do often listen to the lyrics in other genres of music though, and I've even been known to sing along. I have a pretty shitty voice, but I never let that stop me. I'll sing in falsetto a lot, but then I'll also try to hit all the low notes (and fail) singing along with Pete on Type O songs or Andrew Eldritch on SoM songs. I frequently find myself alone in the kitchen singing lyrics to songs that I can't even remember which decade I might last have heard them. Which means those inane lyrics had been bouncing around somewhere inside my head taking up bandwidth for decades. A mind is a terrible thing to waste. Or to taste.

But I think you know I totally respect everyone's right to enjoy whichever aspects of music give them the most pleasure, be that lyrics, or themes, or artwork, or scrutinizing liner notes, or the band's makeup and costumes, or the display of accomplished musicianship, or the actual music itself, or the fact that it pisses off their parents, or watching live performances or just watching the vinyl go 'round and 'round on the turntable or whatever combination of those elements it may be. That's the beauty of music, we all have the freedom to enjoy our music in whichever ways we want to. Rest assured I'm quite aware that I'm generally looking to get different things out of my music than what most people are, even most other metalheads. But then I am a 1%er, a 'counter-culture' guy as you've called me. And as such I'm acutely aware that I'm just not like everyone else. I have my own shit going on over here, I look at things differently, I'm on my own wavelength, my own frequency, I march to the beat of my own drummer, I care about and concern myself with different things than most normies care about. I'm not bragging though and I deffo wouldn't expect others to aspire to be like me. Because when you're different, a lot of the rubes don't/can't understand where you're coming from so they just assume that guy must be a little crazy. But that's fine, I'm totally cool with being different and doing my own thing up in my little corner of the woods here. 

And by the way I do like me some Opeth every now and then, BWP, MAYH, GR, they were one of my gateway bands. OK maybe not as much in recent years, but in the past I had. No it's Emperor I can't stand. Maybe Nightside but that's it. Teenage prodigy or not, I blame that Ish dude (whose name I can never remember how to spell) for the proliferation of symphonic black metal, which in my holy book is a mortal sin.

 

 

NP: Seraphic Entombment - Sickness Particles Gleam, Alabama 2023. Keep going back to this one.

 

Disma - Towards the Megalith, 2011

 

[RelentlessOblivion]

I think you’ll find in the land of the blind it’s the one with the longest cane who rules the proverbial roost, mostly by virtue of tripping over the least shit…

the proverbial roost, mostly by virtue of tripping over the least shit…

Also, all us headbangers more than a little bit crazy? I know I am.

I had a third point, but I forgotten what it was going to be. Probably something as equally unfunny as the first so perhaps it is best forgotten…

 

NP: Sadistik Exekution - We Are Death, Fukk You

[GoatmasterGeneral]

Encoffination - Ritual Ascension Beyond Flesh, death/doom Atlanta/San Diego 2010. This was their best album, sadly they were never able to come close to touching this debut ever again.

 

Lie in Ruins - Towards Divine Death, Finland 2014. This is one of my personal favorite badass death metal albums ever. At 70 minutes it does get some flak for being a bit long, but I could listen to it twice or even thrice in a row once I'm in the zone, and I have. 

 

 

2 hours ago, Nasty_Cabbage said:

The tonality was pretty clearly within the range of black metal for me. The percussive elements of death metal are partially there, and that's not to say that death doesn't work within a tonality of it's own that can also at times stretch into black metal's turf. I found myself noticing the rhythmic elements were very often on open resonant chords that would descend in scale by a half step (or a flat/sharp if you prefer) of the major key root note and work back and forth between them to springboard from riff to riff. Death metal does this as well from time to time, but not to the point where I'd consider it a defining characteristic of the sound. In fact I've been to a point before where I was very tired of typical death metalish guitar solos that almost always slip by default right into Phrygian scales because it just works better. To be fair there's definitely a slight lean away from tremolo picking and a few other elements that you'd expect of black metal, but to put it simply, if the music was played as a contest between death and black metal the team with home field advantage felt like black metal to me.

Necrophobic is a band I've only ever encountered in a fly by passing or two through the years. Never really felt one way or another about them, but given their age may be worth a bit of a deeper dive this time around. Wouldn't want to short them their due diligence.

Now as far as lyrics/music and their interaction with the listener is concerned, this is one of those areas I've softened a bit on over the years. I used to be firmly planted in the camp that thought lyrics really don't matter at all, not just in extreme metal, but in music all together. I mean if your primary musical appeal has to do with something physically corporeal, or even being "about" anything observable it just seemed like a wasted effort. The notes, rhythms, tones, and nuance of the performance are what truly matters, and finding words that describe the expression fittingly within the meter of the song it could be argued aren't a musical expression at all. I felt this way for a long time because I thought people in general had a hard time communing with anything abstract largely due to a cultural decline in what once seemed like an absolutely pivotal part of being human: the imagination. This has softened somewhat not because I've noticed any abatement in the devastation of the modern imagination. We are still a slothful and blissfully unaware sounder of penned swine to be sure, but more because even though the subjugation and crippling of the raw envisioned image continues, the answer is not to beat people over the head with abstractions. That only serves to drive others away; people who still have that potential and simply struggle to put it to use through no real fault of their own. The answer is to acknowledge it where it's executed skillfully and gradually use it as a bridge to the abstract we've lost touch with.

That probably reads like a bunch of conceited faux-intellectual bullshit, but putting things that way sometimes keeps me from falling into pure nihilistic defeatism, which is not healthy for me. I don't want to play gatekeeper to anyone's enjoyment of music on any level. So you'll have to forgive my pretentiousness from time to time. 

Excuse me but could you elaborate on what "tonality" means as you're using it here? I'm afraid I don't understand. I'm a little rusty on music theory. Or no not rusty, but just ignorant I guess. I will say from my perspetive that black metal's not a musical style, it's a concept, a feeling, an attitude. Has nothing to do with tremolos or phrygian scales or whatever.

42 minutes ago, RelentlessOblivion said:

I think you’ll find in the land of the blind it’s the one with the longest cane who rules the proverbial roost, mostly by virtue of tripping over the least shit…

Also, all us headbangers more than a little bit crazy? I know I am.

I had a third point, but I forgotten what it was going to be. Probably something as equally unfunny as the first so perhaps it is best forgotten…

 

NP: Sadistik Exekution - We Are Death, Fukk You

If you had a longer Johnson, you wouldn't even need the cane.

And just in case there's a US/Aussie slang barrier, by "Johnson" yes I do mean your blue-veined one-eyed custard chucker.

[markm]

1 hour ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

 

 

I dig that Disma album. 

[GoatmasterGeneral]

5 hours ago, AlSymerz said:

I like lyrics that tell a story. If I'm not 100% focused on the music, i.e doing something else at the same time, the music can be just about anything, but a good song is definitely more than just a good tune.

For me most of the fossil songs that keep getting mentioned are still listenable and enjoyable because they have good music and lyrics. They don't all have to have a good story behind them but many do. I also don't mind silly lyrics or lyrics of a comedic nature. I still listen to a few instrumentals from time to time, most aren't metal, but lyrics nearly always seem to make a song better.

I don't mind if the lyrical themes are of a silly nature, but I still want the underlying music to be serious. My problem with the fossilized metlez of yesteryear is that too often the lyrics were so fucking banal or just plain stupid as to be a distraction for me, or they could even a total deal-breaker in some extreme cases. With black & death metal I don't have any of those concerns. And since nowadays I find that most albums are solid all the way through, I no longer have any need to learn or remember the stupid song titles to know which ones I'll need to skip, because I very rarely skip any. In the 70's & 80's albums were so incredibly uneven in quality, quite often you could really like a few tracks and then really hate some others on the same album. Fossils like Priest and Maiden routinely gave me albums that had as many or more skippers on them than they had good songs. What a fucking rip-off!

[AlSymerz]

I don't think I own too many albums where I would listen to them all the way through every time I listen to them.

[AlSymerz]

Atrophy - Asylum

[Thatguy]

2 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

I'm not educated or refined or cultured or traveled or high falutin like Doc though

Guilty as charged except for 'high faultin' - no Australian is 'high falutin' - whatever that means

50 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Fossils like Priest and Maiden

Let sleeping fossils lie.

As for lyrics - it's like most things in life for me, it depends on the context. So, sometimes I do (care) and sometimes I don't. I like singing along to lyrics that inspire or amuse me, but most extreme metal lyrics do neither and it doesn't matter.

And it's one-eyed trouser snake, GG, thought you probably knew that. Like much of the Oz argot that we think is ancient folk sayings, this expression was invented by Barry Humphries. 

NP - BLEMISHES  - Ambivert. Just trying it out and it's a nah.

So, GOROD next.

[AlSymerz]

Just now, Thatguy said:

Guilty as charged except for 'high faultin' - no Australian is 'high falutin' - whatever that means

 

Someone highfalutin would say that.

 

1 hour ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

I don't mind if the lyrical themes are of a silly nature

NASCAR metal! Silly in nature. Silly in lyrics. Just silly all round, but it's still a bit of fun too.

 

[markm]

Slimelord – Chytridiomycosis Relinquished-2024-categorized as swampy death/doom-need to spend more time with this, but after one listen, I'm reasonably enthusiastic. It ticks a lot of my boxes. 

Judas Priest/ Invincible Shield-I'm in deep. If this were recorded by some rando power metal band, the power metal blog nerds would be screaming AOTY! Sure there are some weaker moments, Priest, the like the Rolling Stones have great songs but a lot of inconsistent albums which make them in my mind perfect for compilations. For all their 80's brilliance, you've got suffer through a lot of filler. screaming for Vengeance reaches heights of grand euphoria and then deliver duds like Fever (sorry Jon) and Pain and Pleasure. I spent unfathomable hours in high school listening to  Defenders which gives us terds like Love Bites, Eat Me Alive and Night Comes  Down. Today, I'd have to rate Sad Wings as their finest hour over all. British Steel is probably top to bottom their most constant album. Stained Class is also pretty consistent for me. 

After 3 listens and looking at the track list-the first four tracks have classic JP goodness- Panic Attack, The Serpent, the King and invincible Shield, Devil in Disguise and Gates of Hell. 

Things slow down with Crown of Horns,  and then get passable but generic with As God Is My Witness, trial by Fire Escape from Reality. But then they roar back with the last two tracks, Sons of Thunder, Giants in the Sky.

Given this late stage in their career-Invincible Shield is a triumph. 

Went through my Soundgarden discog this weekend and looked up some reviews to reorient myself to their place in rock history. Here's my take:

Louder than Love-I don't have a copy of this anymore. It holds up pretty well for me. At the time this album was seen as one reviewer I read said, a mixture of The Stooges, MC5, Killing Joke and Sabbath and Zeppelin with Cornell wailing over the entire affair and I think that gets it about right. They still had what I'd call an 80's alternative rock sound which I didn't initially love but this album helped bring me closer to punk and alt rock. I had roommates in college that were really into R.E.M. but they sort of thought my Motorhead albums and Metallica were cool. And for some reason, they liked the Cult's Electric which is where we met musically. So, they'd try go get me to listen to Dinosaur Jr. and Sonic Youth, both bands I'd grow to like years later. Louder than Love gives me a bit of the Sonic Youth/Dino Jr. vibe with  an emerging metal adjacent sound-but still sounds like an un underground heavy alt rock album to me even though this was their major label debut. Of all the grunge bands, Soundgarden were the grunge band most rooted in 70's hard rock and psychedelia and that neo Sabbath/Zep sound filtered through alternative rock and a little punk was the hook for me. 

Badmotorfinger is where I became a big fan. The first 4 tracks are absolutely untouchable bangers even though I've heard the songs ad nauseum -Rusty Cage, Outshined, Slaves and Bulldozers and Jesus Christ Pose-are full blown metal afic. The bottom heavy heavy riffing and 70's influence was a kind of proto stoner metal before Kyuss ever hit the scene. The back half of the album goes back to what I'll just call  call heavy alt rock and if I'm being honest isn't as good but still enjoyable. This is an album of a band firing on all cylinders, innovating and fusing multiple genres and a huge influence on alternative metal.  

Superunknown -Jon refers to as probably their masterpiece and GG states is a normie favorite of his-relistening to this it's clear this is their Abby Road, their Daydream Nation-a meticulously crafted, radio friendly tour de force. The songwriting is tight as a drum, but it's not nearly as heavy as Badmotorfinger. They sort of do what I think a lot of you love about Type O Negative, a band I just kind of passed on-they combine what I'd call a very "produced" beatlesesque melodicism (Uh, Black hole Sun) with the thick Sabbath riffs-alternating heavy/melodic but it's a little too perfect for me, a little too produced. Lyrically, a very dark album from Cornell and an excellent album.

I haven't really listened to Down on the Upside in years and relistening was a breath of fresh air. This is their messy, White Album, their Physical Graffiti. Doing a little online research, Cornell wanted to incorporate acoustic elements and move away from the heavy "stoner" (my term) riffing which was their stock and trade and caused friction in the band. They decided to self produce as they thought the producer for  Superunknown brought some cool elements but also caused headaches and tweaked their sound in a way that wasn't natural. So here we have an eclectic mix of heavy moments with a lot psychedelia, strong emphasis on vocal harmonies and a variety of styles including hardcore influences on tracks like Ty Cobb and elements of  folk rock, so maybe it's their Zeppelin III. It's less polished than Superunknown and while not as heavy has a rawer, more organic live sound that honestly make me think of The Minutemen. The album has a loose, sort or unplugged,  jammier sound and the stoner rock comparisons that I found online actually make sense. 

Soundgarden is my favorite grunge band. I liked Alice In Chains a lot but I think they were mischaracterized as grunge-they were more of a hard rock/metal band.  Soundgarden were real innovators, with tremendous technical skill that melded genres in a similar way in my mind that Metallica did and in both cases, grunge and thrash got over saturated and played out but Puppets, Ride the Lightning, Badmotorfinger, Superunknown remain defining albums from my 20's. 

I was born a year after Cornell. His death shook me up.  I guess I think of him as one of the last of my peers who reached rock stardom back when rock stars were a thing who seemed to have the world in his hand-I consider him the best rock vocalist of my generation and one hell of a songwriter and talent. Cobain and Cornell-rock and roll casualties who were perhaps not meant to last in this world, perhaps too fragile, but brought us some pretty great music. 

[GoatmasterGeneral]

30 minutes ago, AlSymerz said:

I don't think I own too many albums where I would listen to them all the way through every time I listen to them.

Right, that's my point. Almost all my 20th century albums were rife with skippers. Songs that just didn't make the grade so after the first couple of play-throughs you'd just end up skipping them. If a typical album had 8 to 10 tracks you'd often consider it a success if even half of them were good songs. Because so many albums only had 2 or 3 good songs on them. If you had an album with only one or two skippers on it that was a great album. An album with no skippers at all was quite rare indeed, your Ride the Lightnings, and To Mega Therions and Reign in Bloods and Epicus Doomius Metallicuses. I don't think Judas Pweest or Maiden have ever made an album that I would even consider playing straight through in its entirety. Theirs were the ones where I was lucky to get 4 good songs off of.

But nowadays I don't ever have to skip any songs on the black & death metal albums I buy. Or very very rarely. The albums play straight through unhindered by human interference. If anything nowadays there might be a track or two that are just so  good that I end up playing them two or three times. Not sure why that is, I guess it tells you there was just more variety in the songwriting back in the day with rock and traditional metal and thrash than there is now with black and death. Now normally when I hear one or two tracks off an album and like them, I can be fairly certain I'll like the whole album. And visa versa, if I hear a track or two and don't like them, then I can be pretty sure I won't like any of it. Makes it easier to know what you'll like and what you won't. But I'm still a little annoyed at all of those fossilized bands that I bought multiple albums from back in the day only to end up with maybe an hour's worth of quality music in the end. An hour's worth if I was lucky.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

1 hour ago, markm said:

Slimelord – Chytridiomycosis Relinquished-2024-categorized as swampy death/doom-need to spend more time with this, but after one listen, I'm reasonably enthusiastic. It ticks a lot of my boxes. 

Judas Priest/ Invincible Shield-I'm in deep. If this were recorded by some rando power metal band, the power metal blog nerds would be screaming AOTY! Sure there are some weaker moments, Priest, the like the Rolling Stones have great songs but a lot of inconsistent albums which make them in my mind perfect for compilations. For all their 80's brilliance, you've got suffer through a lot of filler. screaming for Vengeance reaches heights of grand euphoria and then deliver duds like Fever (sorry Jon) and Pain and Pleasure. I spent unfathomable hours in high school listening to  Defenders which gives us terds like Love Bites, Eat Me Alive and Night Comes  Down. Today, I'd have to rate Sad Wings as their finest hour over all. British Steel is probably top to bottom their most constant album. Stained Class is also pretty consistent for me. 

After 3 listens and looking at the track list-the first four tracks have classic JP goodness- Panic Attack, The Serpent, the King and invincible Shield, Devil in Disguise and Gates of Hell. 

Things slow down with Crown of Horns,  and then get passable but generic with As God Is My Witness, trial by Fire Escape from Reality. But then they roar back with the last two tracks, Sons of Thunder, Giants in the Sky.

Given this late stage in their career-Invincible Shield is a triumph. 

Went through my Soundgarden discog this weekend and looked up some reviews to reorient myself to their place in rock history. Here's my take:

Louder than Love-I don't have a copy of this anymore. It holds up pretty well for me. At the time this album was seen as one reviewer I read said, a mixture of The Stooges, MC5, Killing Joke and Sabbath and Zeppelin with Cornell wailing over the entire affair and I think that gets it about right. They still had what I'd call an 80's alternative rock sound which I didn't initially love but this album helped bring me closer to punk and alt rock. I had roommates in college that were really into R.E.M. but they sort of thought my Motorhead albums and Metallica were cool. And for some reason, they liked the Cult's Electric which is where we met musically. So, they'd try go get me to listen to Dinosaur Jr. and Sonic Youth, both bands I'd grow to like years later. Louder than Love gives me a bit of the Sonic Youth/Dino Jr. vibe with  an emerging metal adjacent sound-but still sounds like an un underground heavy alt rock album to me even though this was their major label debut. Of all the grunge bands, Soundgarden were the grunge band most rooted in 70's hard rock and psychedelia and that neo Sabbath/Zep sound filtered through alternative rock and a little punk was the hook for me. 

Badmotorfinger is where I became a big fan. The first 4 tracks are absolutely untouchable bangers even though I've heard the songs ad nauseum -Rusty Cage, Outshined, Slaves and Bulldozers and Jesus Christ Pose-are full blown metal afic. The bottom heavy heavy riffing and 70's influence was a kind of proto stoner metal before Kyuss ever hit the scene. The back half of the album goes back to what I'll just call  call heavy alt rock and if I'm being honest isn't as good but still enjoyable. This is an album of a band firing on all cylinders, innovating and fusing multiple genres and a huge influence on alternative metal.  

Superunknown -Jon refers to as probably their masterpiece and GG states is a normie favorite of his-relistening to this it's clear this is their Abby Road, their Daydream Nation-a meticulously crafted, radio friendly tour de force. The songwriting is tight as a drum, but it's not nearly as heavy as Badmotorfinger. They sort of do what I think a lot of you love about Type O Negative, a band I just kind of passed on-they combine what I'd call a very "produced" beatlesesque melodicism (Uh, Black hole Sun) with the thick Sabbath riffs-heavy/melodic but it's a little too perfect for me, a little too produced. Lyrically, a very dark album from Cornell and an excellent album.

I haven't really listened to Down on the Upside in years and relistening was a breath of fresh air. This is their messy, White Album, their Physical Graffiti. Doing a little online research, Cornell wanted to incorporate acoustic elements and move away from the heavy "stoner" (my term) riffing which was their stock and trade and caused friction in the band. They decided to self produce as they thought the producer for  Superunknown brought some cool elements but also caused headaches and tweaked their sound in a way that wasn't natural. So here we have an eclectic mix of heavy moments with a lot psychedelia, strong emphasis on vocal harmonies and a variety of styles including hardcore influences on tracks like Ty Cobb and elements of  folk rock, so maybe it's their Zeppelin III. It's less polished than Superunknown and while not as heavy has a rawer, more organic live sound that honestly make me think of The Minutemen. The album has a loose, jammier sound and the stoner rock comparisons that I found online actually make sense. 

Soundgarden is my favorite grunge band. I liked Alice In Chains a lot but I think they were mischaracterized as grunge-they were more of a hard rock/metal band.  Soundgarden were real innovators that melded genres in a similar way in mind that Metallica did and in both cases, grunge and thrash got over saturated and played out but Puppets, Ride the Lightning, Badmotorfinger, Superunknown remain defining albums from my 20's.  I was born a year after Cornell. His death shook me up.  I consider him the best rock vocalist of my generation and one hell of a songwriter and talent. Cobain and Cornell-rock and roll casualties who were perhaps not meant last in this world but brought us some pretty great music. 

Nice write-up and in-depth analysis of the Garden there Marky Mark. Not gonna pick apart your post, you didn't say anything off the wall or that I took major issue with. I just wanted to say that if there's one tune on Superunknown I'd skip, it would be Black Hole Sun. Good song way back when, but I've long since grown sick and tired of hearing it.

Also I think Blow Up the Outside World off DotU is one of their very best songs, I really love that one. I think that album while not great, is still a lot better than many people gave it credit for.

Might have to give side 1 of Badmotorfucker a spin here in a bit and see what I think now as its been many many years since I've taken that one out for a ride. Never thought it was terrible, the individual songs just never really resonated or stuck with me. Guess I prefer the brooding darkness of Superunknown, even if it was a bit more polished and yielded like 8 radio mega-hits. Like I've said, 4th of July, Just Like Suicide and Head Down were the standouts for me on that one. None of those were the radio songs though.

Louder than Love was the first one I'd bought off the hope born of some good press, and then I just could never get into it at all, it sounded like noise to me at the time I thought it was so bad. Should probably revisit that one too one of these days just to see what I think of it now all these decades later.

And finally, all of the major selling bands we all think of as being part of the 90's Seattle 'grunge' scene were mischaracterized as grunge. The 'Big 4' in particular, Nirvana, PJ, Soundgarden and Alice. That's not grunge. That's slickly produced bigtime corporate rock. The real 'grunge' bands that started that scene were a bit too raw and punky for mass consumption and most casual rock fans have never heard of any of them. As much as I dig Soundgarden, Alice is by far my favorite band from that scene though. Hands down, no contest for me, a no-brainer. Meanwhile I absolutely despise PJ, if I never heard them ever again it'd be too soon.

I did end up listening to most of Badmotorfucker while typing up this post and yeah, I guess this is probably a bit better than I'd remembered. But it still takes a backseat to its successor. Side 2 as you've said gets a bit lost, a bit bogged down in the weeds, a bit hum-drum. Not completely without merit or unenjoyable to listen to, but I won't be able to remember any of these songs in 15 minutes. Except maybe Good Eye Closed, I was digging the groove on that one. Funny how so many bands did that back in the day, put all the good songs on one side so you never had to flip the records over to play side 2. 

 

Soundgarden - Blow Up the Outside World

 

[AlSymerz]

1 hour ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Right, that's my point. Almost all my 20th century albums were rife with skippers. Songs that just didn't make the grade so after the first couple of play-throughs you'd just end up skipping them. If a typical album had 8 to 10 tracks you'd often consider it a success if even half of them were good songs. Because so many albums only had 2 or 3 good songs on them. If you had an album with only one or two skippers on it that was a great album. An album with no skippers at all was quite rare indeed, your Ride the Lightnings, and To Mega Therions and Reign in Bloods and Epicus Doomius Metallicuses. I don't think Judas Pweest or Maiden have ever made an album that I would even consider playing straight through in its entirety. Theirs were the ones where I was lucky to get 4 good songs off of.

But nowadays I don't ever have to skip any songs on the black & death metal albums I buy. Or very very rarely. The albums play straight through unhindered by human interference. If anything nowadays there might be a track or two that are just so  good that I end up playing them two or three times. Not sure why that is, I guess it tells you there was just more variety in the songwriting back in the day with rock and traditional metal and thrash than there is now with black and death. Now normally when I hear one or two tracks off an album and like them, I can be fairly certain I'll like the whole album. And visa versa, if I hear a track or two and don't like them, then I can be pretty sure I won't like any of it. Makes it easier to know what you'll like and what you won't. But I'm still a little annoyed at all of those fossilized bands that I bought multiple albums from back in the day only to end up with maybe an hour's worth of quality music in the end. An hour's worth if I was lucky.

I don't think fillers only exist on old albums or thrash albums, or trad metal albums or even pop albums, I think they exist on every record in every genre. But for me those songs might change over time and a song I thought of as filler once could become a song I don't want to skip.

The only bands that I would consider to have written albums that I listen to start to finish all the time, over time, unchanging, are bands that I played with or worked with years ago. It wont be every band and I'm sure it's got more to do with familiarity of hearing the same songs every night for several months than it does how good or bad the album might be.

It doesn't make me dislike every new album. it doesn't even make me judge new bands more harshly, its just fact that for me it's easy to sit down and enjoy something familiar than it is to make something else familiar. But to become familiar it's still got to have hooks like decent lyrics, decent music and something that doesn't put me to sleep.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

2 hours ago, Thatguy said:

And it's one-eyed trouser snake, GG, thought you probably knew that. Like much of the Oz argot that we think is ancient folk sayings, this expression was invented by Barry Humphries. 

Yeah, and when was that Doc, 1935? I've heard it as trouser snake and trouser mouse. But either way no one under 60 has used that tired old expression in 40 years. No one in this country has used the word 'trousers' in any context in 50 years. We say pants.

 

1 hour ago, markm said:

Went through my Soundgarden discog this weekend and looked up some reviews to reorient myself to their place in rock history.

You might find this interesting:

Chris Cornell interview. An unedited interview with Chris Cornell about the Seattle music scene and the early days, success and the (temporary) end of Soundgarden. Ending with Chris' thoughts on Beck's Loser. Circa 2006.

 

[Nasty_Cabbage]

3 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Excuse me but could you elaborate on what "tonality" means as you're using it here? I'm afraid I don't understand. I'm a little rusty on music theory. Or no not rusty, but just ignorant I guess. I will say from my perspetive that black metal's not a musical style, it's a concept, a feeling, an attitude. Has nothing to do with tremolos or phrygian scales or whatever.

Sure I suppose. The easiest way to think of it is to think of an 'X' sounding melody that might be regional or representative of a certain time or place. Phrygian scales in particular tends to be associated middle eastern sounding tones and melodies. You could probably make up a really simple melody using notes entirely on a Phrygian scale, but if it doesn't sound like it you will likely not associate it with that particular tonality. I was getting black metal vibes specifically from the way the melodies are written in a consciously minor key format where the chords shift down or up by a measure at certain points. When discussing meter and rhythm those points in a given song will largely use a sustained (i.e. holding the note longer) moment when they're about to shift creating tension. That's of course not exclusive to black metal, but it's just one of those "you'd know it if you heard it." things.

The thing about it being an attitude and not a style can seem to hold water for a time, but the ear when you're hearing a melody is constantly searching for a way to for that melody to resolve regardless.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

2 hours ago, Thatguy said:

Guilty as charged except for 'high faultin' - no Australian is 'high falutin' - whatever that means

2 minutes ago, Nasty_Cabbage said:

Sure I suppose. The easiest way to think of it is to think of an 'X' sounding melody that might be regional or representative of a certain time or place. Phrygian scales in particular tends to be associated middle eastern sounding tones and melodies. You could probably make up a really simple melody using notes entirely on a Phrygian scale, but if it doesn't sound like it you will likely not associate it with that particular tonality. I was getting black metal vibes specifically from the way the melodies are written in a consciously minor key format where the chords shift down or up by a measure at certain points. When discussing meter and rhythm those points in a given song will largely use a sustained (i.e. holding the note longer) moment when they're about to shift creating tension. That's of course not exclusive to black metal, but it's just one of those "you'd know it if you heard it." things.

The thing about it being an attitude and not a style can seem to hold water for a time, but the ear when you're hearing a melody is constantly searching for a way to for that melody to resolve regardless.

Thank you Cabbaronious for the explanation. Now if you could please explain what 'resolve' means in this music theory context, because I've heard that before, and I have absolutely no idea what that's supposed to mean, I don't understand the concept of resolution at all. I'm not a musician or music theorist so explain it to me like I'm 8 years old.

[RelentlessOblivion]

that’s the funny thing about taste, though isn’t it? Not only does our own shift overtime, but it will be completely unique to the taste of those around us, thus we will view what is and isn’t filler on an album differently. I.e I consider My Dying Bride’s Feel the Misery to be entirely filler, with the exception of, and my father left forever, while I happen to know a former user here regarded that record as among their best work.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

29 minutes ago, RelentlessOblivion said:

That’s the funny thing about taste, though isn’t it? Not only does our own shift over time, but it will be completely unique to the taste of those around us, thus we will view what is and isn’t filler on an album differently. I.e. I consider My Dying Bride’s Feel the Misery to be entirely filler, with the exception of, And My Father Left Forever, while I happen to know a former user here regarded that record as among their best work.

Absolutely. It's all totally subjective to each of our tastes, which as you say are all going to be unique to ourselves. Which is why you can't take most of these friendly little arguments/discussions/debates we have here too seriously. Obviously when I'm talking to Orca or Doc or Mark or Jon or some of the other members here we have such drastically different tastes in music that it's almost a miracle that we have ever actually heard enough of the same music over the years to even be able to discuss anything coherently or in any kind of depth. 

[RelentlessOblivion]

My friend there is very little that goes on here I take seriously,

[MacabreEternal]

Afterbirth - In But Not Of (2023)

 

[Nasty_Cabbage]

3 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Thank you Cabbaronious for the explanation. Now if you could please explain what 'resolve' means in this music theory context, because I've heard that before, and I have absolutely no idea what that's supposed to mean, I don't understand the concept of resolution at all. I'm not a musician or music theorist so explain it to me like I'm 8 years old.

Ah. This one's pretty easy as it's about how our brains process music. A musical phrase "resolves" usually when it ends on a note that more or less demarks it's conclusion as a single musical statement within the song like a single sentence in grammar. So if you were to take Twinkle twinkle little star / How I wonder what you are, the resolution is the note that the word "Are" is sung over. Note we're going one syllable per beat. Line one line goes up three times in a row so: twinkle/up twinkle/up little/up, star/middle, and the second line goes down how I/down wonder/down what you/down are/down, with the fourth down breaking pattern from the first line and resolving the phrase (and for what it's worth I wasn't choosing a children's song as some sort of taunt. It's just a melody everybody knows). Of course it's music so there's all manner of complications that can and will come into play, but that's the basic idea. It's also possible to create songs without neatly resolving melodies like Nina Simone's rendition of Langston Hughe's poem Strange Fruit.

Note that the piano behind Ms. Simone here begins with a relatively simple four chord series that moves and shifts as the song goes on because it needs to be malleable and not static or neatly timed out to use the exact cadence the poem necessitates.

I hope that helps some. The way human pattern recognition works, whether we like it or not, is moment to moment, and a big part of our enjoyment of music is following this kind of thing (often subconsciously) with it's surprises and it's predictability going hand in hand. I also think you're perfectly fine enjoying music on a much less analytical and much more visceral level. Bringing the music nomenclature into it just helps me with articulating some of this stuff a little more exactly. I don't need anybody to think that I'm insulting them by throwing that kind of language around. It's really more for my benefit than anyone else's.

[Thatguy]

5 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

No one in this country has used the word 'trousers' in any context in 50 years. We say pants.

Then you miss out on the lovely idiom - 'he trousered it' - meaning he nicked it, innit? And Barry Humphries was very old when he died a year or two ago, so he had plenty of time to do what he done.

I am many things, not all of them worthy, but I ain't 'high falutin' and I reject the existence of that strange North Americanism in my world.

Today...CORPUS DIAVOLIS - Elixiria Ekstasis

YFEL - Beneath The Mountain's Vigil

COAST - Live 2023

NP - LYCIA - In Flickers

[markm]

6 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Nice write-up and in-depth analysis of the Garden there Marky Mark. Not gonna pick apart your post, you didn't say anything off the wall or that I took major issue with. I just wanted to say that if there's one tune on Superunknown I'd skip, it would be Black Hole Sun. Good song way back when, but I've long since grown sick and tired of hearing it.

Also I think Blow Up the Outside World off DotU is one of their very best songs, I really love that one. I think that album while not great, is still a lot better than many people gave it credit for.

Might have to give side 1 of Badmotorfucker a spin here in a bit and see what I think now as its been many many years since I've taken that one out for a ride. Never thought it was terrible, the individual songs just never really resonated or stuck with me. Guess I prefer the brooding darkness of Superunknown, even if it was a bit more polished and yielded like 8 radio mega-hits. Like I've said, 4th of July, Just Like Suicide and Head Down were the standouts for me on that one. None of those were the radio songs though.

Louder than Love was the first one I'd bought off the hope born of some good press, and then I just could never get into it at all, it sounded like noise to me at the time I thought it was so bad. Should probably revisit that one too one of these days just to see what I think of it now all these decades later.

And finally, all of the major selling bands we all think of as being part of the 90's Seattle 'grunge' scene were mischaracterized as grunge. The 'Big 4' in particular, Nirvana, PJ, Soundgarden and Alice. That's not grunge. That's slickly produced bigtime corporate rock. The real 'grunge' bands that started that scene were a bit too raw and punky for mass consumption and most casual rock fans have never heard of any of them. As much as I dig Soundgarden, Alice is by far my favorite band from that scene though. Hands down, no contest for me, a no-brainer. Meanwhile I absolutely despise PJ, if I never heard them ever again it'd be too soon.

I did end up listening to most of Badmotorfucker while typing up this post and yeah, I guess this is probably a bit better than I'd remembered. But it still takes a backseat to its successor. Side 2 as you've said gets a bit lost, a bit bogged down in the weeds, a bit hum-drum. Not completely without merit or unenjoyable to listen to, but I won't be able to remember any of these songs in 15 minutes. Except maybe Good Eye Closed, I was digging the groove on that one. Funny how so many bands did that back in the day, put all the good songs on one side so you never had to flip the records over to play side 2. 

 

Soundgarden - Blow Up the Outside World

 

I'll take a look at the interview when I get a chance. Yes, Down on the Upside holds up pretty well actually and has some great tracks. Agreed it's not as complete a package as Superuknown and is somewhat of a hot mess but there's aren't any tracks I feel like skipping either.