Rocka Rolla! Judas Priest’s Surprising Redeemer of Souls

I didn’t know what to make of the K.K. Downing announcement way back in 2011 declaring that he was hanging up his guitar and retiring from Judas Priest —- and apparently, music altogether. Maybe this makes me sound like a jerk, but I wasn’t really bothered one way or another, because unlike the recent albums of Iron Maiden, which have individually enthralled me in their own wonderful ways, Priest hadn’t really wowed me with any of their recent post-reunion work. Okay, I’ll admit that I really loved hearing some of the Angel of Retribution songs in concert when the band played Houston with Heaven and Hell back in 2008 (in particular the ballad off that album, “Angel”, really was something incredible live). But the follow-up in 2008, Nostradamus, was a head-scratcher of a conceptual album —- the sound of a band overreaching their abilities. Look, there was little chance of anyone ever mistaking Judas Priest for Andrew Lloyd Weber (or heck, Queensryche circa 1988), but save for a couple pretty good songs in “Prophecy”, “Persecution”, and the catchy title track I found that the rest of the album was a wash. I think that there were a couple problems with Priest’s comeback plan in general, the first being that they simply waited too long to make a reunion happen, whereas Maiden’s timing with the dawn of the millennium was nigh-perfect, and secondly the artistic output wasn’t coming fast enough. By the time Downing left the band, Priest had only done two studio albums with Halford —- hardly the amount needed to redevelop a writing partnership. ‘Priest classic’ was back for six years, and apparently only six.

 

So Halford and Glenn Tipton had to pick up the pieces of this whole situation. Not only were Priest down a guitarist in a distinctively two guitarist band, but they also had lost a major songwriting partner in Downing. They recruited Richie Faulkner to fill in on guitar for the Epitaph world tour (remember all that noise about it being Judas Priest’s last world tour?), and during that trek they began to realize that they had stumbled onto a potential candidate to permanently replace Downing. The real test would be the writing process, of which they purposefully slowed down and refused to declare a release date to the press. Faulkner was not averse to writing ideas on the road, which was new to Halford and Tipton. The results of jamming on the road followed by spending the next two years carefully working together as a newly gelling writing team resulted in a lengthy delay to, well, July 2014. And its finally here, the first Judas Priest album in history to not feature K.K. Downing’s riffs and songwriting, and Priest’s first new album in six long years. And here’s the funny thing, I wasn’t anticipating this album at all, had marginal hopes for it at best, and had already developed a nitpicky pre-release criticism about the artwork looking too “on the nose” —-  yet here I am, writing the following words that will tell you that this is the best Judas Priest album since Painkiller. I’ll put it another way, this might very well be a classic Judas Priest album. Unbelievable.

 

If you’re haven’t listened to this album yet and am wondering what’s behind such an audacious claim, I’m going to point to Ritchie Faulkner himself. The new kid’s (he’s only 34) contributions to the songwriting process course all throughout every song on this thirteen track long reinvention of the classic Priest sound. That it’s thirteen tracks long and of a high caliber throughout is perhaps the most surprising feature of Redeemer of Souls, I got past the first six songs with a goofy grin on my face and thought “well its probably gonna slip a little from here on out”, but no, it just kept going strong! There’s an infectious enthusiasm running through these songs that is impossible to not be affected by —- a very tangible sense of joy and euphoria and revelry in sounding fresh and revitalized. Faulkner is the key behind this, because he plays off Tipton in a far more wild and uninhibited rock n’ roll way than Downing ever did. That isn’t a knock on Downing —- he was of course crucial to creating the Judas Priest sound we all know and love —- but there were patches of staleness over the past four studio albums. Faulkner is well versed enough in the classic Priest guitar attack to be able to fall into lock step alongside Tipton for the band’s trademark dual rhythm assaults, but he’s also a freewheelin’ riffer/soloist that is capable of adding in unexpected frills and runs to further complement Tipton’s ever razor sharp attack. This is some of the most impressive guitar work as a tandem in Priest history.

 

The album opens with a track that proves as much, as Faulkner and Tipton are all over “Dragonaut”, an anthemic beast of a song that matches classic machine-precision Priest riffage with blazing tradeoff solos. The bottom end is beefed up as well —- the band simply sounds heavier than I remember, an attribute accentuated by carefully crafted songwriting on display here, where guitars are allowed to breath, Halford has plenty of space to work with, and the hooks land right in your gut. It’s followed by the pre-release title track single which I somehow managed to avoid listening to in the months preceding the album release, a likeable mid-tempo stomper that clears the palette for one of the best songs on the album, the truly inspired “Halls of Valhalla”. I love everything about this song, from the distant echo-ing intro to the aggressively complex stick work of Scott Travis, to Halford’s most satisfying lyric and vocal take since the Painkiller days. He sounds ageless here, unleashing classic Halford-ian panoramic screams you didn’t know a sixty-something had in him, while delivering deft vocal work on the verses segments, a grand metal orator. It would perhaps be a misappropriation to say that Priest were influenced by modern trad or power metal, but one can’t help hearing hints of Blind Guardian for example on a song like this (and not just because of the “Valhalla” reference). That perfect song is followed by the nearly as epic “Sword of Damocles” which features one of the most surprising misdirections in Priest history: A bluesy bend to the guitar passages makes you think we’re in for a road-warrior type anthem, but the chorus unfolds with an uplifting, surging melodic hook with a Manowar-ian lyric, “Truth will find its reward / If you live and die by the sword!”. Somewhere in Jersey, Joey DeMaio is shaking his fist in a jealous rage.

 

There are simply too many good to great songs on here to get into a lengthy track by track discussion —- and the thing about a good Priest album is that its meant to be experienced, not dissected. This isn’t intricately layered and produced extreme or progressive metal, its simple, straightforward traditional metal with the expected Priest tendencies. Songs like “March of the Damned”, “Crossfire”, and “Hell & Back” are your steady mid-tempo, fat riff led British blues-metal rockers. But you’ll also get a few really excellent uptempo, speedier cuts of the Painkiller era cloth like “Metalizer”, and the truly inspired “Battle Cry”. And they deliver the goods on the classic Priest metallic take on the power ballad (being that there’s more emphasis on the power than the ballad) on the complex yet accessible “Cold Blooded”, the moody and dark “Secrets of the Dead” (I love the guitar work in the middle solos), and the album closer “Beginning of the End” is one of the more unique Priest tracks ever, an electric guitar led ballad that recalls the opening sections of “Blood Red Skies” —- Its a nicely calm way to end what is a very frenetic, non-stop album. Halford seems to speak of the band’s future on that final song when he sings “Its over now, because I know its the beginning… of the end”. Can it Halford, the fans deserve at least at least one more Faulkner infused Priest album, hell, maybe you make up for the atrocity that was “Lochness” and give us two more! But I’m being selfish and petty —- we should just be grateful for … nope, I’m okay with being selfish and petty.

 

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shwOv_J7QGo&w=560&h=315]

 

Another Night in the City: The Return of Chicago’s High Spirits

Longtime readers of the blog will have by now taken note of just how much the seasons tend to shift my listening habits around, and they’ll also note just how much I dislike summer in general. If you think that’s an unusual attitude to have, I’ll remind you that I live in Houston, Texas —- but there are silver linings to the oppressive heat and humidity of a Texan summer. One of which is just how well wild, classic styled hard rock pairs with the rising mercury, case in point being the timely arrival of You Are Here, a new album by the Chicago based rock band High Spirits. Okay, they’re in a band in that they play live, but in reality High Spirits is the work of one highly motivated musician in Chris Black. You may have heard his other work before as well —- he moonlights as the drummer for Pharaoh, whose 2012 album Bury the Light came in second on that year’s best of list, and he’s also the sole mastermind behind Dawnbringer, whose excellent Into the Lair of the Sun God placed eighth on that very same list! I guess you can say that I’m a fan of the guy. I was enthralled by the last High Spirits album, Another Night, as much by the music as well as the throwback album cover featuring a very eighties logo design slapped on top of a neon splashed portrait of nighttime Chicago. All of that combined was the very essence of the “Big City Night” that one Klaus Meine once sang about, and if you’re not getting a serious Scorpions vibe when you listen to High Spirits, you’re hopeless. The German greats, alongside a heady dose of Thin Lizzy, Iron Maiden, radio ready Rush, and classic NWOBHM spice make up the ingredients of Chris Black’s rock n’ roll cocktail.

 

In the past half decade, retro metal has seemingly come and gone en vogue, and from my point of view, very few of those bands managed to stamp their own identity on their music. What separates High Spirits from the pack is that while the music has sonic touchstones to classic bands and eras bygone, there is no attempt at emulation —- in other words, Black is making music for today, not in a vain attempt to recreate 1982. I think that one of the aspects of Black’s musical design here that most vividly brings to mind the past is his complete lack of irony, and his utter disregard for what happened to rock music in the 1990s (you know, when a great deal of joy was sucked out of it). Hipsters be wary, this is genuine rock music made with honest intentions —- Black has stated his desire to see High Spirits grow, for them to be able to tour longer and more extensively. Again I’m reminded of the Scorpions, a band born of a time when there was no shame in hoping to play bigger venues, to have more intricate staging, to play wild rock n’ roll in the manner it was meant to be played in. I’ve read that High Spirits live shows are unabashed in their sincerity, both from band and audience alike, they are an active experience, not an event to be afraid of publicly showing your love for a style of music that a lot of unwitting people think is dead.

 

Whats utterly bananas about Chris Black and his work in High Spirits is that he is everything that you hear on the albums: All instruments, all vocals (including harmonies and overdubs). As I mentioned above, he has a band that he takes out live for small runs of select dates, but on album High Spirits is an entirely one man show. It doesn’t sound like it, and that’s testament to Black’s songwriting skills and overall artistry in understanding band dynamics in aspects of rock music —- as in the interplay between rhythm and lead guitars. Take the album opener “When the Lights Go Down”, with its loose yet tight riffing complemented by scorching lead fragments at the tail end of choruses. The songwriting here is razor sharp, Black has a wonderful and rare ability to pen adrenaline soaked, speedy choruses that outpace their verse section anchors (for further proof, check out “Full Power” on the band’s debut album). These are the kinds of songs that cause speeding tickets. Black slows down the tempo a touch on the next track, “I Need Your Love”, where the swinging rhythm guitar and the amped up speed in the pre-chorus bridge just smacks of the classic riffing of Rudolf Schenker. Black’s vocals are unusual for this type of music, while he’s skilled enough to carry melodies and hold notes, his tone is raw, punky even, and his delivery is borderline laid back. If I can provide some adequate frame of reference, its basically the exact opposite of Sebastian Bach’s histrionics —- Black’s approach to singing is workmanlike in serving the song only (I mean that in a positive way).

 

There’s plenty more in the way of good songs on offer as well, most notably the eponymous “High Spirits”, an infectious high speed rocker with crunchy riffs and a propulsive rhythm bed, and a chorus that lives up to its name. Its a jubilant song, like much of the material on You Are Here. The closest thing to a ballad on the album is the slightly moody “I Will Run”, with its juxtaposition of lonely solo guitar patterns in the intro followed immediately by a slamming riff bed upon which Black paints a bleakly romantic picture of gritting one’s teeth in the face of adversity, to “take to the stars and the streetlights”. Of course all this praise isn’t to suggest that the band has no critics or its share of criticism, the biggest being Black’s tendency to live in worlds of relatively lo-fi production. If you’re expecting booming bass, thundering drums, and intense dynamics you’ll be disappointed. Black tends to like his guitars compressed and a tad fuzzy, with the lead parts mixed up top while the vocals at times seem to sink beneath everything else. There are moments when a chorus could be made to “pop” more if it was simply mixed to be more up front, but this is a production choice that benefits the album in particular moments as well. If you’re used to listening to fuzzy alt-rock, or indie dream-pop or even old school early proto metal bands of the 70s, you’ll be able to handle High Spirits’ production. This is great summer music, evocative of the sound of car tires and beer bottles clinking, the dirty, mucky feel of hot concert venues, and of walking out of those venues to smell the nighttime rain on steaming pavement. My associations of this band’s music with this time of the year are so strong that to be honest… I’m not sure if I’ll be listening to it come November, but for right now its pretty much perfect.

 

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOe-QQ-7LYo&w=420&h=315]

 

Falconer Rising: The Return of Power Metal’s Best Kept Secret

If you’ve been needing something to be thankful for lately, here’s something: Stefan Weinerhall, guitarist/songwriter of power metal’s mighty Falconer is still writing and recording music. I only bring this up because it appears that this was in doubt for quite a long period of time following the release of the band’s last album, 2011’s Armod. For a short while, all we had to go on in terms of evidence that points to this was Weinerhall’s own cryptically worded message in the latest press release announcing their new album, in which he stated, “After an eight-month complete break from music on the verge of quitting it, I finally returned with a feeling of hunger, power and commitment to the songwriting.” But in a recent interview with Zach Fehl of Metal Insider, Weinerhall expanded on that slightly by making reference to the years since Armod being punctuated by personal tragedies, the pluralization there seemingly emphasizing just how much of a personal crossroads Weinerhall found himself at. But he explains that the time apart from music made the heart grow fonder, as it does, and nostalgia kicked in for him and the result was a journey back through music, resulting in the eighth and newest Falconer album, Black Moon Rising. I’m glad that Weinerhall made it back from his personal and musical abyss, because there are power metal bands by the dozens and dozens, but none of them sound anything like Falconer. They are one of power metal’s uncut emeralds amidst ordinary gems.

 

Some of you might remember my earlier feature on Falconer, in which I aimed to present to the reader ten select cuts from the band’s discography in an attempt to make a fan out of them. It also might have demonstrated that my love of the band has run long and deep, and that the promise of a new Falconer album is a major metal event in my world. I’ll preface my comments on Black Moon Rising by saying that I found Armod to be a satisfying listen, if not an ultimately compelling one. I think part of it was that the Swedish language vocals were somewhat inhibiting for a band that I’m normally accustomed to understanding every word and syllable (with Mathias Blad’s non-metal, theatrical approach towards singing, that vocal clarity has become something of a band trademark —- it’s “absence” was noticeable). The other factor might have been that Armod was distinctively heavier, faster, and more aggressive than any other album in the band’s discography up til that point, even at times approaching the stylistic tendencies found in black metal (blastbeats anyone?). It heralded the full realization of a musical shift that had started to develop on 2008’s Among Beggars and Thieves, on songs like the excellent “Pale Light of Silver Moon”. I wasn’t opposed to Falconer getting faster or more aggressive —- they were always a heavy band from their debut onwards, but where songs on Among Beggars and Thieves would merely dabble in a little extra ooomph, Armod went whole hog with it and the classic melodic trademarks we were all used to got pushed to the wayside.

 

With all the previous talk of nostalgia and a band returning from the brink of death, you’d expect Black Moon Rising to come off as a slice of classic Falconer (and if you need a discography reference point, I’m referring to the triumvirate of Falconer, Chapters of a Vale Forlorn, and Northwind), but startlingly enough this album sounds like its picking up exactly where Armod left off in terms of musical direction and overall aggressiveness. Yes I know its sung in English and that should make it different enough, and on the whole its a fairly good album, but its not a great album —- its missing so much of what makes a classic Falconer album. The last of those classics, Northwind, was a diverse collection of songs with different tempos, styles, dynamics, and ever changing song structures. A frenzied track like “Spirit of the Hawk” would be immediately followed by the slow, stomping, almost Oriental sounding “Legend and the Lore”, itself followed by the mid-tempo Celtic-tinged wistful rocker “Catch the Shadows”. On Black Moon Rising, the album passes by like a blur of frenetic tremolo riffs over blastbeat level percussion with nary a moment to pause and catch it’s breath. I am aware of the irony of a review on a metal blog decrying an album for being too fast, too aggressive, too… well, heavy, but in Falconer’s case its coming at the price of their innate melodic strengths. Its a detriment.

 

As I said above though, this is still a good album, a testament to Weinerhall’s skill as a master songwriter that he’s still able to hammer out at least one classic and a few close-to’s here. The classic comes in the form of the most obviously Falconer sounding song on offer, “Halls and Chambers”, a rare moment where the tremolo riffing ceases long enough to provide sections of space and structure to a chorus that the album’s best. This could’ve been an outtake from the band’s debut or Chapters From a Vale Forlorn, its that evocative of the musical spirit of that era. Fellow guitarist Jimmy Hedlund and Weinerhall even get to indulge in a wild, unbridled classic Falconer styled guitar solo after the chorus and later on in the song, a bit of delicate acoustic guitar on a quiet bridge. Similarly, “At the Jester’s Ball” is a welcome departure from excessive aggression and speed, with its playful tempo shifts and almost waltz-like rhythmic structure within the chorus, where the always unhurried Blad delivers one of his most dexterous vocals to date in his lyrical verse to refrain transition: “I am dancing in the waltz, come join in one and all”. I love the way he leans on his inflection of the word “dancing” there… its a sleek and smooth maneuver that eases in the rest of the line like a see-saw shifting down towards one side. Speaking of Blad himself for a moment, the man is as expected on top form here, seemingly ageless it seems, a boon granted by his non-metal vocal approach —- he still has incredible range, and his delivery is all his own within the metal world, no one touches this guy.

 

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAURLVemHnA&w=560&h=315]

 

My favorite song of the moment is “In Ruins”, a moderately fast song that slows down long enough for some classic Dio era Sabbath-isms on guitar, as well as a chorus as sharp as the sword’s edge. Weinerhall knows how to conjure up some beautiful drama, as he shows on his expertly crafted opening line during the refrain, “In Ruins —- are the pillars of eden!” Following just behind are “There’s a Crow on the Barrow” and “Dawning of a Sombre Age”, the former one of Weinerhall’s ultra-speedy, tremolo laced cuts that manages to keep its melodic integrity perfectly preserved with its injection of Blad’s expansive, cinematic vocalizations during the refrain. The latter is a slow building, surging, and oddly anthemic song (given its title and lyrics), where Hedlund and Weinerhall trade off hard rock-tinged riffs and melodic twists to satisfying effect. I also have to mention how the album closer “The Priory” has been growing on me —- its an odd bird of a song but its diversity here is the key to its success, Blad sounds incredible on the refrain (can’t tell if those are vocal effects or if his voice is just that awesomely capable). What I do miss on this album is the presence of a good, old school styled Falconer ballad. They give it a shot on “Scoundrel and the Squire”, but it just sounds like a b-side grade cousin to Chapters From a Vale Forlorn’s “Lament of a Minstrel”, down to the mid-tempo pace and heavy, thudding riffs. The difference is that the latter had beautiful melodic thru lines and rock n’ roll swing and verve, while the former just plods along. That being said, even if it had worked, I would still have missed Falconer’s penchant for acoustic laden balladry… I hope those come back.

 

So there it is, after many many repeat listens, the most fair verdict I can lay down for a new album by a band that I’m simply relieved to have back. I’ll reiterate, its a good record, but one for existing fans only. If you’re new to the band, check out one of the three classics I mentioned earlier in the review, you can’t go wrong with any of them. Wow, this is sounding like a sales pitch… not where I usually like to go in writing but dammit, this is Falconer, a merely good album by them is considered a career misstep, so you should probably check yourself if you haven’t ingratiated yourself into their discography by now.

 

Quick Takes: Floor Jansen’s Open Letter, Paul Allender Leaves Cradle of Filth, and Opeth’s New Single

Sorry, I didn’t have a better title than the above, sometimes just getting to the point works better than anything. I don’t normally comment on news stories (even though I just did with Metallica a few weeks ago), but some things have popped up in the past few days that caught my attention and I felt the need to dish some opinions on them:

 

 

Floor Jansen’s Open Letter: As I’m sure most of you are aware through Blabbermouth’s eye catching select headlines feature at the top of their site, newly ordained Nightwish (and ReVamp) vocalist Floor Jansen recently posted an open letter to her fans explaining her point of view on personal fan interaction. Blabbermouth extolled the virtue of their name by naturally extrapolating the most quotable line from said open letter to headline their article, ” Nightwish singer Floor Jansen: “I am not an arrogant bitch”. For the past few years the comments sections of Blabbermouth articles have been more of a draw than the articles themselves, a tendency that didn’t waver even when the site implemented commenting through Facebook profiles alone (thus precluding anonymity). I read the original article, and then braced myself for the hellstorm that awaited when I scrolled further down. The comments were as expected, highly divisive and vitriolic in the extreme.

 

There’s a twitter profile out there called Don’t Read Comments, which pops up periodically on my feed once a day to remind me and thousands of others in a sagely manner that its not worth our time to read internet comment sections. I mentally nod and agree with the tweet, appreciate its usually humorous undertone, and proceed to wind up reading a comments section somewhere on the internet within the next ten minutes. I’d blame myself if only it wasn’t such a scalded in reflex by now. The very notion of social media is based upon the contextualization of comments, Facebook and Twitter are collections of our own comments and those of others that we’re interested (er… in seeing comment). If you’re about to go back to the original article and make the same mistake I made by reading the comments, put the brakes on you sadist. I’ll save you the trouble by telling you that you’ll come off with a lower impression of metal fans. I certainly did.

 

I’m not going to put up a counterargument to what Jansen wrote in her open letter, because she has every right to feel that way and to set boundaries that are within her comfort zone. I’m taking a guess here, but its likely that her appointment to Nightwish’s storied vocalist position has increased her profile to such a degree that she’s encountering a higher volume of fan interactions. That’s to be expected, and if you notice the first sentence of her letter, she makes references to “nightmares and many worried thoughts” —- unless that’s for dramatic effect I’d think that this has the makings of an alarming situation. She’s been on tour in the States with Iced Earth and Sabaton, opening their countrywide trek and finding herself in a strange position. Jansen is arguably the most famed individual on the tour, yet her band opens first, and there’s a tendency to expect that as the opening band, you’ll make yourself available to anyone and everyone after your set (this isn’t my expectation mind you, but a familiar tradition within metal shows anywhere). I saw the Houston date of this particular tour, and sure enough Jansen and her band were meeting people by the buses well after Iced Earth had finished playing. Jansen seemed comfortable and took photos with people and signed stuff, and generally everyone seemed pretty happy.

 

I was with a couple friends a short distance away, one of whom was intent upon meeting Jon Schaffer (he never came out of the bus, but we did get to have an extended conversation with Stu Block next to a food truck strangely hidden behind the venue). At one point Jansen had drifted off towards the direction of her tour bus, standing a good distance away from the throng of waiting fans. The same friend now urged me to go meet Jansen as she was by herself and had actually turned around scanning the crowd while smiling as if waiting for one last person to run up to her for a photo. I waved off his obnoxious urgings, simply because I felt no real necessity to meet her, and it might’ve taken away time from someone who really did (as it turned out no one else stepped up and she ended up scooting back to her bus). I’m not telling you that to make myself look better, but just to paint a picture. She struck me as someone who was personable, affable, and was genuinely enjoying the experience. I wonder if other tour stops on the trek were as laid back and pleasant, or if they became uncomfortable and she had to back off. If this tour was in South America I could understand, as fans there are super passionate and that can be construed as aggressive behavior — but us meek North Americans? Really? Its hard to comprehend.

 

Perhaps this open letter is more motivated by something else she indicated —- internet rumors of her being “rude”. If that is what has really gotten her upset, her open letter is only adding fuel to the fire. Her letter was written in English, and its very readable and clear. What it lacks however is levity, a casual tone, and perhaps even a hint of self-deprecating wit to soften its impact to the hordes of internet readers that have already formed an impression of her one way or another after reading it. I say that knowing that some things shouldn’t be softened —- but as I pointed out before, I have no problem with her message. But as her bandmates in Nightwish learned through brutal experience, posting an open letter is a form of PR, and in this case, its a heady dose of negative PR for Jansen. I think she’d have been better off by avoiding the open letter route, shrugging off the rumors (which only a small percentage of people tend to take seriously anyway), and going about her policies when meeting fans. Look there’s no way around it, telling someone who’s stoked to meet you to not touch you is just going to come off badly. Jansen is absolutely within her rights to make the request, but she has to realize that there will be fallout from it, and thanks to the internet, a lot of people will hear about it. I hope she finds a way to persevere through this. She was the right choice for Nightwish, hopefully she finds that Nightwish was the right choice for her.

 

 

Paul Allender Leaves Cradle of Filth: Not to sound like a jerk or anything, but why didn’t this happen years ago? Cradle of Filth have been in a creative tailspin for the past half a decade (possibly longer, depends who you ask) and one of the major reasons I feel is that their songwriting began to stagnate. Dani Filth may be the creative force behind the band, but it was Allender who was doing the bulk of the riff writing since 2000’s Midian, and therein was the problem. I saw them with Satyricon back in 2008 and it looked like Allender didn’t even want to be on stage, and frankly I found myself agreeing with him —- I wanted him off too, he was bumming me out. Its not yet confirmed whether or not Allender left the band of his own volition as my headline suggests or whether he was forced out, but either way, I hope that Dani finds a replacement that has some creative fire to infuse into a sound that is now an echo of what it once was. I have never really written about Cradle on the blog, but they were one of the extreme metal (hard to call them black metal these days) bands that I took a shine to in the late nineties and I still love their classic records.

 

By classics I’m referring specifically to Dusk and Her Embrace, Cruelty and the Beast, and the gloriously Maiden-ized Midian, Allender’s sole indisputable riff packed masterpiece. They had a couple interesting moments during the aughts with a few scattered songs here and there; certainly “Nymphetamine” was a great track (I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Liv Kristine may just be the best guest female vocalist in metal), and I didn’t mind certain songs off Thornography (including their cover of “Temptation”). Their last three albums just left me feeling rather unmoved however, and it wasn’t for lack of trying. When you finish listening to an album and can think of nothing to say about it one way or another, that’s a bad sign. The chart positions have declined, as have sales, and Cradle are no longer guaranteed large audiences —- somewhere along the way, their shtick wore thin because the music backing it was no longer compelling. I’m not particularly fond of the gothic, Tim Burton-esque trappings that came with the band, but I accepted it as part of the package. Perhaps now its time for a rethink, for Dani to redefine himself as a vocalist and explore his range more (no more high shrieks for high shrieks sake). A new guitarist that could double as a cooperative songwriting partner should be someone who seeks not to replicate the band’s existing sound, but tear it all down and build something new. Its long past time, I hope it happens.

 

 

Opeth’s New Single, “Cusp of Eternity”: If you were reading the blog a few years ago, you’ll remember that I wasn’t very fond of Opeth’s last offering, the retro-psychedelic Heritage, and not because I was one of those disappointed by Mikael Akerfeldt’s retreat from all things death metal. The idea of that album that were bandied about before its releases were actually rather intriguing to me, and I was looking forward to it, having loved the softer moments on various Opeth records throughout their discography. I hoped that it would not be a repeat performance of Damnation, their nearly all acoustic album that ended up being a bit of a yawner in retrospect. But Heritage fell flat with me on all levels, the songwriting just wasn’t there —- songs were disjointed, lacked bridges and overall musical continuity. When the negative fallout occurred over that album’s release, I didn’t go out of my way to burn the band, but suffice to say I didn’t go see them live when their setlists revealed that they were avoiding older material. Through the press it seemed that Akerfeldt had tired of metal and was even at times close to disparaging it. Its hard to hold that against a guy who’s given us so many monumental death metal records, so I let it all slide. But I knew that there was no going back for this band, that in their hearts, they’d moved on from metal.

 

Turns out my intuition was correct on that front, the new song isn’t metal in the slightest, in fact its seemingly a continuation of the Heritage born exploration of progressive rock sounds of the 70s (perhaps that is an oversimplification, but I’ll make amends for it when I review the album as a whole). But here’s the thing: I actually really like “Cusp of Eternity”! This is a compelling, rhythmically heavy uptempo song with a set of great guitar tones, fluidly melodic patterns, and lush Steven Wilson produced vocal arrangements. Akerfeldt himself sounds fantastically eerie, and I love the distant effects on the guitar outro following the chorus, something I feel I haven’t heard from Opeth in forever. I’ve been playing this on repeat quite a bit today and its just working for me. I know I’m supposed to be a music reviewer and talk about this in greater detail, but screw it, my mind is half shuttered on a Monday so I’ll just let my more immediate reactions come to the surface. The truth is that I haven’t felt this excited about a new Opeth song since “Coil” from Watershed. If Pale Communion turns out to be one of the best albums of the year, there will be few others as greatly surprised as myself. You’ve got my attention Akerfeldt —- well played!

I’ll Pretend Its Autumn: Insomnium’s Shadows of the Dying Sun

Finland’s melodic death metal brush artists Insomnium are perhaps my most beloved metal “discovery” within the past few years. I stumbled across them some time after the release of their 2011 album One For Sorrow, an elegiac, melancholy touched masterpiece. I think its easy for writers to throw that term around often, it happens quite a bit within metal reviewer circles —- but I really mean it in relation to that album. I was transfixed by every note within, and when I worked my way backwards through their discography, eagerly devouring the similarly styled Across the Dark (2009) and the noticeably more aggressive Above the Weeping World (2006), my appreciation for the band grew stronger and deeper. By October of 2012 I had my first opportunity to see the band live, who had an opening slot for Alestorm (the very idea) and Epica. I’ll never forget that show, I wrote earnestly about my experience that night in an admittedly unnoticed article published later in December of that year that discussed the musical links I traced between Insomnium and Sentenced. Reading it over now, I wonder why I didn’t discuss how deeply I felt connected to the band’s music that night, even on the drive to and from the venue, racing along the highways while staring out at a rapidly darkening, grey-clouded autumn sky. I’m not a religious person for the most part, but something spiritual was going on that day, it was as if Insomnium’s music was painting in the world around me as I perceived it.

 

After Insomnium had played, I thought I might stick around for Epica since I’d coughed up over twenty bucks for the ticket, but Alestorm made me throw in the towel, and I headed outside into the cold night chill. I was walking towards my car and had to move around one of the nightliner tour buses parked outside, and as I rounded the corner I walked past a couple guys that looked familiar. I stopped after a few steps while craning back to look at them, only realizing after my eyes had adjusted to the dark that I’d walked past Insomnium. There they were, all four of them, just casually hanging outside like they hadn’t just put on one of the all time great live performances that I’d ever witnessed. I sauntered over to them and we all said hellos and shook hands, and we began to converse about the typical things —- how they liked the audience,  how was the tour going, etc. They were quite friendly, seemingly rather surprised that some fan had apparently only come to see them play, and they talked at great length. At some point during this conversation, I remember just actively realizing what a vivid impression their music had upon me in various ways that day and its a memory haze blur as to how exactly I told them of this, but I did. I think I behaved like a normal human being (fairly sure), but I briefly let them know, and they replied with genuine appreciation. They shook my hand again after hearing of it, and I told them good night. When I got in my car and pulled out onto the road I felt invincible, and that somehow for a few hours that night, the world made sense to me.

 

 

I tell you all that not only to rectify the lack of detail in that older Insomnium/Sentenced article, but to express to you just how deep my personal roots have grown with this band. I’m writing an album review on the surface, but I’m almost pained to write one for fear of deconstructing the album past the point of —- well, the way I want to enjoy it. In keeping with the way I handled my previous review, for Sabaton’s Heroes, I’ll just come right out and declare this: This is a great Insomnium record, filled with the kind of emotionally charged songwriting and artistry that we now expect from the band. But then haven’t I already expressed that I felt their past three albums were great? Yes I have, and if that nullifies any sense of relative objectivity for you then I’m sorry. And really, what else can I say? This is a band on a roll, with an unshakeable sense of identity and a musical nucleus of guitarist/vocalist Ville Friman and vocalist/bassist Niilo Sevanen that is perhaps the strongest in melodic death metal since the Stromblad-Gelotte pairing during the classic In Flames era.

 

Speaking of identity in particular, Insomnium weren’t preternaturally gifted —- their first three albums were made of good, solid melodic death metal with some certain flashes of brilliance; you can see retrospectively that some unpopped kernel was there, trying to figure its way out. It happened with their fourth album, Above the Weeping World, their first truly great record where they began to trickle in this flood of musical melancholy —- a robust sense of definable emotion that was inherently very Finnish. Their next two albums, Across the Dark and One For Sorrow fully revealed the extent of this transformation —- all traces of Gothenberg removed from their take on melodic death metal as the band’s songwriting had transitioned away from being built around riffs. Instead they created songs by first painting with melodies, even allowing vocal melodies to carry the weight of choruses through clean vocals; there was a sense of space, of delicacy, and of musical texture. Tempos were slowed, there was an noticeable eagerness in their wanting to craft songs with unorthodox rhythms and percussive patterns —- they were in short redefining what melodic death metal could sound like.

 

Those albums also seemed to be the apotheosis of that particular avenue for the band in that I regard them as musical siblings, they share musical and structural commonalities and seem to fit together —- so much so that I suspected it was unlikely that they’d attempt a third repeat performance. In confirming my hypothesis, Shadows of the Dying Sun is as much a departure as it is a continuation of its immediate predecessors. It is simultaneously a further exploration of the softened melodic brush strokes of Across the Dark and One For Sorrow as it is a throwback to the sheer brutal intensity of Across the Weeping World —- and its a near faultless marriage. I’m not sure whether or not it was a conscious decision, but the band have definitely increased the tempos and aggression on an almost album wide basis. There’s a songwriting move back towards sharp, tight melodic riffs while still keeping the new-era layers of expressive clean guitar melodies. The semi-introductory track “The Primeval Dark” is a big hint towards this trajectory, with its soft atmospherics serving as a tension heightening backdrop to the marching, grinding, half growled/half instrumental passages that act as a build up to the kickoff of the album proper.

 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBZ5SLJmfdw&w=560&h=315]

 

 

That kickoff being the multifaceted “While We Sleep”, which starts off with some melodic vocals courtesy of Friman before transitioning into Sevanen’s monstrously deep death vocals, all while Friman and fellow guitarist Markus Vanhala create beautifully swirling guitar patterns juxtaposed over sharp, cutting riffs. I love that the mid-song guitar solo here isn’t kicked off in a wild Scorpions-esque electric overdrive, but builds slowly, with gently fluttering acoustic guitar chords that usher in a vivid electric guitar solo sans distortion. Its just one of the ways in which Friman is a thoughtful composer, he could’ve really gone for the big Slash-styled moment there, but tempered it back in accordance with the credo of only giving the song what it needs at any given moment, and in keeping with the tone set by his pensive lyrics. As we segue into the final outro where Sevanen growls the despairing lyric “We need to slow down, so I can catch you / We need to slow down, so you can catch me”, the lost wild rock n’ roll guitar solo finally shows up and its a stunningly expressive emotional release —- one of my favorite moments on the album. Looking at these two songs as a pair its worth noting that they’re keeping in the tradition of the past three Insomnium albums having similarly styled one-two punch opening combos.

 

The next two tracks, “Revelation” and “Black Heart Rebellion” are as starkly contrasting as day and night; the former is a dreamy blend of acoustic guitars and slower, patient tempos with crescendoing clean electric melodic runs, Sevanen’s vocal performance at times softening to a near spoken word whisper. Its a startlingly spiritual lyric at work here too, a Sevanen penned hymn that seems to touch on the Cosmos-themed concepts of being aware of one’s own place in the universe, that “This is the gift of man / The key to see it all / The hidden wonders / Hope in despair”. Alternately in both music and lyrics, “Black Heart Rebellion” is perhaps the most punishing and brutal track on the album, with its black metal like flurry of near tremolo riffs, blastbeat percussive tempos, and Sevanen’s vicious growling about the parallels between “Morning star, angel of the dawn” and “Desolate is the path of self-believers”. Yet Friman still writes in moments of space for quiet melodic reflections, such as Vanhala’s hushed solo at 4:53 —- the kind of thing that is such a distinctive Insomnium signature, their musical calling card if you will. The lengthiest track on the album is the similarly black metal-touched “The River”, where I love the way the guitars anticipate the vocals by a fraction of a second at the 1:27 mark and the resulting effect crackles with excitement. Those stately verse sections unleash into a tremolo riff fueled chorus section with some surprising melodic change-ups.

 

The untarnished gem on this album is “Lose to Night”, a song with an achingly beautiful chorus and note-perfect encapsulating verses. This is my most listened to song on an album that I must have spun at least a few dozen times by now, its the track that practically bleeds out the core musical identity of this band. Everything about it is perfect to me, from its tribal-esque intro drum patterns, to the circular guitar melodies within the verses where Sevanen growl-speaks about a litany of regrets, to Friman’s shining clean vocal performance in the chorus with that delicately hook laden vocal melody. I love that during said chorus, subtly buried in the mix is an electric guitar gently echoing Friman’s vocal melody beat for beat, along with Sevanen’s distant growls adding just the right touch of stormy intensity. I love that its a song about the decay of a relationship, but Friman’s prose is sparse and interpretative enough for it to apply to any circumstance —- the narrator could be speaking to his parents, or his sibling, or his past. I love that instead of associating a barren heart with romance, Friman dishes a curve ball by singing “No more fear in me / This heart’s stone inside”, while adding that “Every day must lose to night / Fade and die”. Perhaps I’m reading too much into this here but these strike me as very Finnish in their inherent nature —- slightly gloomy yes, but beautiful sentiments despite their despairing tone. I think back to my article linking Insomnium and Sentenced, and how these lyrics could have found their way onto The Cold White Light.

 

 

I have other favorites as well, “The Promethean Song” being chief among them, its chiming acoustics and slow tempo-ed bed of bass heavy guitars preceding a Sevanen/Friman vocal trade off where the latter opens up his pipes to higher ranges than we’ve seen from him before. He sounds good, really good actually, and he knows how to write vocal melodies that suit his tone (a rare skill in guitarist first songwriters). I adore the bridge section that occurs at the 4:00 minute mark with accented drumming, Sevanen’s harshly barked out vocals and perhaps the album’s best guitar solo. Then there’s the title track serving as the album closer, its a bass driven, rumbling beast of a song where heavy guitars suddenly swing up and crunch down to usher in a rather inspired Sevanen / Friman vocal duet on the refrain, “And I feel it in my heart / And I know it in my mind / That’s all there is, ever will be”. Its another song where Friman ruminates upon the stardust-y nature of our existence, a sentiment I entertain myself with on occasion and feel rather connected to. Incidentally, Friman makes his rent by working a day job as a scientific researcher, so if you’ve been wondering at the inclusion of science meets spirituality themes within the lyrics, that goes a long way towards explaining it. And of course there’s “Ephemeral”, which we heard late last year as a standalone single, and its dressed up here in a few more layers of guitars and production work, but still sounds just as vibrant, fresh, and ear wormingly catchy as it did originally. It features my favorite lyric on the album, “Dying doesn’t make this world dead to us / Breathing doesn’t keep the flame alive in us”, and its a rarity among Insomnium’s catalog —- a truly anthemic song.

 

I’ll curb this now to prevent it from being a track by track dissection, its already more review than I ever wanted it to be. On a personal level I’m still just allowing myself to experience the album as a continuum where the band’s musical sound palette affects me on a raw emotional level. That’s the kind of thing that I’ll never really be able to express within the context of a review, and its where the large majority of my enjoyment of Insomnium comes from. I was asked by a friend who was eager to hear the album how I thought it stacked up when compared to One For Sorrow, and apart from mentioning the obvious uptick in aggression and overall heaviness, it was a question that I really couldn’t answer. I loved One For Sorrow not only because I thought it was a masterpiece, but because it was the album that reintroduced me to this band and made me a devout fan, and because the music on that album came to me at the perfect moment in my life when I was receptive enough to appreciate it. That’s a lot for a follow-up album to live up to, and that’s why I’ve chosen not to compare Shadows of the Dying Sun directly to it —- its a beautiful, inspired album on its own, and that’s enough. I’m sure that others won’t have a problem giving a more objectified opinion, but there’s a fine line I’m walking here in regards to discussing personal connections to a band’s work. Music can often serve as a mask, a way for you to have your feelings expressed without opening your own dumb mouth. There’s that Oscar Wilde quote, “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”

Into the Fire: Sabaton Begin a New Era with Heroes

There’s so much to discuss in regards to Sabaton’s newest album, Heroes, a ten track paean to specific acts of heroism in wartime, and a strong contender to be the band’s best album to date. Let’s just get that out of the way first: Heroes is a great Sabaton record, not perfect… but really, really great. I usually avoid disclosing my overall consensus on an album until midway through a review, because after all, I’d like you all to keep reading throughout. Yet the story of this record is worth discussing in depth even though you know where my opinion stands. Its simultaneously a story of the self-driven perseverance of two friends and band mates and their vindication in the wake of what could have been crippling circumstances; as well as a collage of moments where humanity triumphed over the waste and destruction of warfare. Regarding the latter, this is a turning point for Sabaton, whose previous albums were largely made up of metallic anthems either depicting the intensity of war and its participants (for example, “Ghost Division”, “Into the Fire” or “Primo Victoria”), or paying homage to war heroes exclusively (“White Death”). There’s a bit of that on Heroes as well (certainly the cover art reinforces that), but surprisingly enough the album largely consists of songs honoring those moments when non-violence prevailed over all.

 

The last time Sabaton released an album was in 2012, with the thematic departure of Carolus Rex, whose release was clouded with inter-band strife —- resulting in four of the band’s members departing shortly after the recording sessions were complete. An American tour was coming up, and remaining members vocalist Joakim Brodén and bassist Pär Sundström had to scramble to assemble a new lineup. It wasn’t even certain if these new guys would last through the duration of the album’s touring cycle, much less stick around to participate on any future albums. I was there at the Sunday night San Antonio gig that kicked off the Carolus Rex world tour and served as the debut of new Sabaton guitarists Chris Rörland and Thobbe Englund, and drummer Robban Bäck. The new guys were obviously nervous, but so were Broden and Sundstrom. When they took the stage to a relatively small crowd of about fifty of us, they played as though they were in front of thousands —- Broden and Sundstrom leading the stage performances. By the end of that show, the nerves had noticeably dissipated, Broden was communicating his appreciation for the strong support, and I was marveling at just how well the new guys were gelling live in such a short time.

 

 

It was an inconspicuous debut —- though an auspicious one. The tour plowed on, and when I caught the band almost a year later back in Houston, they were firing on all cylinders, the new guys even equaling Broden in their stage performances. I’ve seen them a few times since then, most recently the other week opening for Iced Earth, this time with another new drummer Hannes van Dahl as replacement for Bäck who had to leave for paternity reasons —- and my impressions were further reinforced. Having seen both eras of their lineups, I feel that the current incarnation is the definitive lineup, and that’s not to discredit former band members, but the new guys just seem to “get” what Broden and Sundstrom have in mind when it comes to their live performance. The real question however that lingered throughout was just how this massive lineup change would affect a new recording? In terms of songwriting, there didn’t seem a reason to be concerned since Broden has always served as Sabaton’s musical scribe, but he composes on keyboards and leaves the guitars to his bandmates —- how would the new guys mesh with what he gave them? Exceedingly well as it turns out, and I gather this not only from my takeaway from listening to the album itself, but from comments made by Broden and Sundstrom themselves, who in a recent interview with Spain’s Metalovision mentioned their surprise at how quickly their new guitarists figured out and recorded their parts (apparently in only four days). It wasn’t guaranteed that Heroes would be a great album —- that Sabaton have accomplished this is a testament to the artistic bonds formed while touring Carolus Rex.

 

As far as what makes it great, listen first to five absolutely excellent standout tracks in “Night Witches”, “No Bullets Fly”, “The Ballad of Bull”, “Resist and Bite”, and album closer “Hearts of Iron”. In typical Sabaton fashion, what makes these songs so great is not only their precision honed array of hooks and musical ear candy, but the interesting subject matter and Broden’s skilled ability at lyric writing. One of the most gripping back stories is found on “No Bullets Fly”, honoring an incident in which a crippled American B-17 was escorted back to friendly territory by a German ace fighter pilot named Franz Stigler who was one confirmed kill away from qualifying for the Knights Cross. He said that he maneuvered alongside the  B-17 and could actually see through the damaged air frame and look directly at the faces of its injured pilot, Charles Brown and remaining crew. He made a choice that could’ve gotten him executed had his superiors found out —- he escorted the B-17 back to the North Sea, his presence preventing German anti-aircraft batteries from firing upon the American craft. Upon reaching the sea Stigler saluted the American crew and turned back. Forty-seven years later, the two pilots would finally meet and became good friends.  As a kid I grew up wanting to be nothing more than a fighter pilot, and I loved reading about the history of aerial combat —- and I’m torn between being annoyed with myself for not hearing of this particular story earlier, but very gratified that I got to hear about it through Sabaton’s monstrously epic, adrenaline pounding celebration of human decency. It sounds like an odd juxtaposition because it is: Group shouted vocals yelling “Killing Machine!… B-17!” during the chorus envelope the humanitarian sentiments of “Honor in the sky!… Flying Home!… Said goodbye to the Cross he deserved!” Its quickly become one of my favorite Sabaton songs.

 

 

I’d be remiss not to discuss in greater detail my love of the songs “The Ballad of Bull” and “Hearts of Iron”, two songs about non-violent humanitarian action in the middle of utter chaos. Again its refreshing to hear Sabaton’s scope increasing, their views on the concepts of heroism being greater than just focusing on combative actions. Broden’s lyrics are often startlingly direct, and they certainly are here, but I feel that it works better for the song —- what could he possibly couch in a metaphor? Some may be put off by the former’s piano drenched balladry, in fact a fellow metal critic/radio host friend of mine stated that he thought the piano on it was too “processional”, or too formal for his preferences. I can see where he’s coming from, but for me, that is precisely why I love it so much. I love that the heavy emphasis on naked piano seems to evoke a musical pastiche of the 1940s (or at least my impression of it), and its heavily pronounced major keys seem fitting to match such a near mythical tale of gallant individual heroism. Maybe its also that I simply love piano as an instrument, and amidst an album full of heavy, breakneck guitars, its arrival is a welcome contrast.

 

As for “Hearts of Iron”, its a song concerning the bravery of the German 9th and 12th armies in late April 1945, who facing certain destruction at the hands of the Soviets ignored orders to stand their ground; instead they fought to create and protect a corridor headed west across the Elbe river through which 25,000 civilian and soldier refugees could escape to surrender to western forces. It takes a certain amount of guts to pen a song in which you depict heroism from Nazi German forces, but as a lyricist Broden is deftly aware of this, “It is not about Berlin / It is not about the Reich / It’s about the men who fought for them / What peace can they expect?” Its one of Sabaton’s most tragic yet uplifting songs, with a chorus that tightens your chest with its noble sentiments, “Its the end / The war has been lost / Keeping them safe til the river’s been crossed”. Broden has made a career out of painting lyrical portraits of the vivid shock and terror of battle through multiple narrative perspectives and points of view —- on Heroes he branches out as a lyricist with a very un-metal-like appeal towards moments of human morality (just so there’s no confusion, I consider that to be a good thing).

 

 

Of course, that’s not to suggest that the band have entirely left tradition behind, as “Resist and Bite” is one of the band’s best songs to date and falls in line behind old classics like “40:1” and “Uprising” as us against them celebrations of sacrifice (though in this case it’s about the Belgian infantry resistance to the Nazis). I was driving along the spaghetti bowl of Houston freeways listening to the album this past weekend, and when this song came on I blew past the speed limit and barely saw a highway patrol car on the shoulder just in time —- a very close call! Its got that kind of adrenaline surging, pulse poundingly dramatic (and ultra-catchy) chorus that defines epic and makes you look like a maniac to other passing vehicles. The guitar solos in this track are worth mentioning —- on the entire album in fact, Englund and Rorland trade back and forth wildly melodic, furious soloing that is always complementary to the primary melody at work. Similar in old school theme is “Soldier of 3 Armies”, about Lauri Törni who as the title suggests fought for Finland during the Winter War, Germany in World War II against the Soviets, and the United States (in Vietnam as a Green Beret no less… and man, did this guy hate the Soviets or what?). Its a strong track that is a spiritual cousin to “White Death” from Coat of Arms.

 

The rest of the album fills up nicely with solid songs brimming with catchy hooks, interesting one-off musical moments, and of course loads of melody. I’m not sure if “To Hell and Back”, a song about the legendary World War II hero Audie Murphy, was the best choice for the lead off single (“Resist and Bite” fits the bill better), but its a good song nonetheless and its whistling motif has a real Scorpions call back to it. If there’s a tune on here that can merely be described as decent or good, its “Inmate 4859” —- about Polish resistance hero Witold Pilecki. Its a bit lumbering, the chorus is a touch too close to the verse in tempo, structure, and design (a very un-Sabaton quality), but it does have a nice guitar solo led bridge in the middle that is very pleasing to the ear. Again, not a bad song by any stretch, but it and a track like “Far From the Fame” just don’t live up to the high bar set by the other truly classic songs here —- but seriously, for any metal record seven out of ten isn’t a bad ratio.

 

My spirits have been buoyed by the artistic success of this album, I now know that Sabaton will be able to sustain any major lineup shocks and upheavals (though here’s hoping no more come). This is one of the most impressive bands in metal, they’re self-managed, they tour like they’re possessed, they have a great respect for their American audiences and actively seek to make a dent in the market Stateside, and they’re aware of their own identity in a way most bands are not. And they’ve also released one of the best records of the year so far, something I wasn’t predicting a few months ago. They get a lot of flak from more than a handful of popular metal sites, whether its for their subject matter, or their major key melodicism, or their pristine productions —- all criticisms that are actually the band’s biggest strengths. Critics will be critics, metal bands can’t all sound purposefully lo-fi and full of black metal tropes. Sabaton’s growing popularity is a testament to the honest nature of their audiences —- that there can be metal fans who are unapologetic about what qualities they enjoy in their heavy music, unaffected by trends or flavors of the month. I noticed it when I turned in any direction towards the crowd at the Iced Earth / Sabaton show the other week, real enthusiasm untempered by internet angst. There’s hope after all.

 

Edguy’s Space Police: Does Tobias Sammet Rebound?

Edguy_Space-Police-300x300_zps0f723504If you’ve kept up with the blog over the past few years, you’ll know that I’m a pretty big Tobias Sammet fan. Yet my unabashed fandom has not prevented me from listening with a critical ear to his songwriting in both Avantasia and Edguy, and in doing so I’ve begun to notice a certain track that his recent works have been taking. There was a noticeable decline with Edguy’s Age of the Joker and last year’s Avantasia offering, The Mystery of Time, and it could be argued that the seeds of this decline for Edguy in particular began with 2008’s Tinnitus Sanctus. That in itself I find rather revealing, because 2008 also ushered in the release of the first Avantasia album in the largely brilliant Scarecrow trilogy —- which suggests that it marked the start of an era in which Sammet began to reserve his best material for the Avantasia records, by default giving Edguy second priority. Sammet himself would balk at that very suggestion and has gone on record stating that the songwriting periods for both projects do not intersect. Hey I’m a fan of the guy, I’ll take him at his word, but I will argue that its fair to suggest that his main musical priority had shifted to Avantasia within the past six years. Its in the math guys: since 2008 —- four Avantasia albums to three for Edguy.

 

I understood the importance of the Avantasia project to Sammet, and since he was delivering great records I was perfectly willing to tolerate a slight quality hit on the Edguy stuff, which weren’t bad albums by any means (there were a few gems on those records). But when The Mystery of Time happened, I began to see that there was a possibility of the well running dry in terms of Sammet’s seemingly endless capacity for penning excellent songs. It falls then to the newest Edguy release, the typically tongue-in-cheek titled Space Police: Defenders of the Crown, to show that Sammet has rebounded from the songwriting lethargy that has plagued his two most recent releases, and more importantly —- to bring some measure of importance and individuality back to the name Edguy. He can accomplish the former by of course delivering some truly knockout songs, but achieving the latter is a far more ambiguous task —- after all, a side effect of Sammet being the sole songwriter for both bands is that they have begun to blend together in styles. When Edguy records started showing noticeable hard rock influences, Avantasia records followed suit —- so it begs the question: What is Edguy anymore?

 

The answer appears to be right in front of our faces. Pick up your copy of Space Police and take a long gander at that ludicrous album cover. For the record, I do enjoy the artwork, but that image of a 70’s motorcycle cop pastiche holding an alien (in the most awkward way possible) is the codex that we can use to decipher how Sammet now permanently perceives his work in Edguy. There was a long period of time dating back to the band’s inception when Edguy wrote serious albums about relatively serious subjects. However levity and comic relief became a subtle tradition within Edguy albums dating back to 2000’s mostly dark and serious Mandrake, where a track called “Save Us Now” comic-riffed on drummer Felix Bohnke’s nickname of “Alien Drum Bunny”. Since then we’ve gotten songs about morning wood, self-referential ideas about superheroes, a fantasy of joining the mile high club as a way to deal with flight anxiety,  and of course a bonus track about the life and times of… a bonus track. I’m barely scratching the surface here, and I’m marveling at my own obtuseness in not realizing that Sammet has rather conspicuously separated the veins of his songwriting approach into his two ongoing projects. Since 2006, Avantasia would receive (and monopolize) the far more serious, artistic vein, while Edguy’s increasing blendings of hard rock with traditional power metal served as a perfect soundtrack in which Sammet could further indulge his wacky, silly, Scorpions-inspired vein.

 

edguy-400x300_zps6e8bd9a9These are permanent changes, and I suspect that Sammet realizes this, but I’m not sure that most of his fans have. If you’re one of the few that can accept the compartmentalizing of his songwriting career, then you’ll be able to accept Space Police for what it is —- namely, the strongest Edguy record of the past eight years. Sammet has successfully shaken off the dust of his past two recordings and delivers some pretty great songs, the most apparent of these being the title track itself. With its tension building, slow-burning verses and propulsive prog-pop chorus, Sammet has penned one of his best Edguy songs to date. Its subject matter is ironic in that its poking fun at fans, or critics (or in my case, one and the same) that tend to demand that the band stick to a particular set of stylistic rules or structures —- all while featuring some of the silliest voice effects on any Edguy song ever (remember the “sung” guitar solo from years ago… its back in a weird way). There’s also the standout single, “Love Tyger”, one of Sammet’s catchiest songs ever, with its “La-La-La-La-Love Tiiiger” refrain becoming perma-stuck in my head for the better part of two weeks now. I love the backing vocals on this tune, with its complementing mix of male and female vocals in what is by now becoming a Sammet trademark, they add a lushness to the sound that is supremely enjoyable. Another gem is the unconventional power ballad “Alone In Myself”, where Sammet trades the usual dramatic build up and Slash-esque guitar solos for an almost soul-influenced lead vocal backed up by some fantastic gospel tinged choir vocals during the refrain. I’m pretty big on Sammet’s ballads, I think he’s one of the best at penning them genre wide, and I love that he’s finding new ways to explore this particular avenue in his songwriting. What an astounding song.

 

With those three tracks as the pinnacle of a pretty strong album, I’m left wondering why the band (or perhaps more accurately, Nuclear Blast) decided upon “Sabre & Torch” as the lead-off single. Its not a bad song, but its nothing spectacular either (its very construction reminds me of the similarly underwhelming “Ministry of Saints” from Tinnitus Sanctus), its appeal is all but extinguished after a couple spins and I have no real desire to hear it again. I was more than impressed with the guts it took to release “Sleepwalking” as the first single and video of the last Avantasia album, so why go the safe route with Edguy (which is ostensibly a far less conservative project)? I can only assume that its an overt play towards metal fans en masse as opposed to only Edguy/Sammet fans, who I believe would’ve been far more impressed even with the crudely titled “Do Me Like A Caveman”, which for its utterly throwaway title does sport a rather focused, serious sonic palette and a truly vibrant chorus. Likewise goes for “The Realms of Baba Yaga”, where a pretty good groove and some solid riffs help in distracting you from the vagueness of the lyrics (my stab in the dark at them is that its a very Iron Maiden-y “Number of the Beast” type of motif, except with a figure from Slavic myth instead of pitchforked devils). But credit where credit’s due, all parties involved were wise in keeping the Falco “Rock Me Amadeus” cover buried as a deep album cut, right in the middle of the tracklisting in fact. Its placement is well chosen, its execution is amusing and truly evocative of the spirit of the original, and as far as covers go, its an imaginative choice.

 

 

tobiassammet_zpsa1237831Filling out the rest of the record are some solid album cuts; “Defenders of the Crown”, the second half title track has a chorus that is slightly lacking, yet the rest of the song is packed with enough interesting musicality to make it worth many repeat listens. Same goes for “Shadow Eaters”, an uptempo mix of power and trad metal elements with a pummeling double bass furor throughout, its easily the heaviest track on the record (you know… if that’s the kind of thing you enjoy hearing about). The closing track “The Eternal Wayfarer” attempts to be the epic of the record, with its just under nine minutes in length, but it comes up short of meeting the criteria to be placed alongside past Edguy epic-length classics. Not for lack of trying however, because I should mention that the song is near spectacular from 5:03 to 7:00, where an extremely well written extended bridge features the kind of swirling lead vocal layering that we haven’t heard since the classic title track from Theater of Salvation, a blast of nostalgia that is tastefully done and just plain fun to hear! So there you have it, no real clunkers, and a handful of gems, I’d call that a pretty good outing for Sammet and a rebound for him in the quality department. I’ve noticed I haven’t mentioned any of the other band member’s performances, and that’s not meant to be a snub, as those guys do their job really well and sound great as always. This is a band that lives and dies on the songwriting skills of Sammet, and until they decide to get involved in that realm themselves, it will always be that way.

 

So its worth reiterating once again, Edguy is Sammet’s lighthearted rock n’ roll playground, and fans should start getting used to this being the way things will always be. The days of serious Edguy records are long over, since 2006 it seems —- so you’d figure we’d all be accepting of this by now, except one of the more unfortunate traits of metal fans of all stripes is an unwillingness to accept change. Check out the YouTube comments for any of these new songs, and you’ll find someone bemoaning the fact that the band has abandoned their classic style and gotten silly. But maybe they’re responding to the hard rock and trad metal influences, which are slowly taking over the sound of a majority of veteran power metal bands. I do feel that power metal is in need of another round of classicism, a re-appropriation of the sound that once defined a generation of bands in the nineties. When Silent Force’s new album sounds closer to Whitesnake than classic Helloween, you know that the state of the genre is in considerable flux. But when it comes to Sammet, I think he’s far removed from the rigidity of the classic style/sound that many of his fans crave (the biggest hint was his subtitling the last Avantasia record “A Rock Epic”, as opposed to “The Metal Opera”). The best that you can hope for as a listener and fan is to find something redeeming about his songwriting on every new release, and thankfully he’s never let me down in that regard.

Spring Cleaning Part Deux!: New Music from Dawn of Destiny / Sinbreed / Gamma Ray / Eldritch

Hey everyone, back again with the second installment of my attempt at plowing through the rather intimidatingly high number of noteworthy metal releases that have come out in just this first quarter of 2014. This really is becoming the year of power metal releases (although I’m told by someone in the know that the new Blind Guardian won’t be out until early 2015, major bummer). Power metal has dominated so much of my metal listening time as of late that I’ve only been able to review one extreme metal album this year (Behemoth’s The Satanist, in the first part of this feature). That of course will change with the upcoming Insomnium album (I’m like a kid on Christmas Eve anticipating that one), and hopefully the new Opeth album will arrive on time and make me love that band once again, but I’ve got enough to be going on with until then! Yes I know the Dawn of Destiny review is a tad longer than the others, but it was worth the extra white space. Straight to the point then:

 


 

 

Dawn of Destiny – F.E.A.R.: Almost every year, there’s a band that appears on my radar from seemingly out of nowhere, stunning me with an album so good that I have to kick myself for not realizing that they’ve been in existence for more than a few years already. Its the “cream rises to the top” metaphor in action —- a good band producing excellent work will ultimately reach my ears due to word of mouth. Its how most of us get to know the bands we love in the first place amidst a flood of metal releases. Its impossible to listen to everything, and if you try to get in on the ground floor of every promising new band, you really do run the risk of burning yourself out (as well as preventing yourself from enjoying what you’ve already heard), particularly if you make a habit of writing about metal bands.

 

Case in point is Germany’s Dawn of Destiny, a female fronted power metal band with a propensity for dark, moody drama. Fair warning, this is the only album I’ve heard from these guys as of yet, so I can’t review it based on its relative progression from its predecessors, but I can honestly say that I’ve been listening to it regularly for a few weeks now. What makes them stand out to me from the ever lengthening laundry list of female fronted metal bands are equally the vocal style of Jeanette Scherff, and the hook-minded songwriting of bassist and band founder Jens Faber. Scherff is unique in the area of female metal vocalists in that her voice avoids the polarities of being either commandingly operatic, or delicate and breathy. She resides in what is a largely unexplored middle ground, sounding at times like Ann Wilson fronting a metal band —- she certainly has the same level of power as Wilson, and at times an uncannily similar tone. Faber also contributes vocals, his abilities spanning from doomy death grunts to a rather uniquely strained clean vocal approach, he’s actually a good complement to Scherff.

 

Their individual talents are obvious, but its the quality songwriting by Faber that really melds everything together in an incredibly appealing way. He’s a confident songwriter, one who knows his melodies and hooks are so strong that he can allow himself to play around with some prog-metal ideas like tempo shifts, abrupt sideways ventures, and playful key changes. There are so many standout songs here, such as the goth-tinged “End this Nightmare”, with its softly building verses that glide over muted riffing and desolate keyboards to explode in a wonderfully grand chorus where Scherff’s vocals soar in a bombastic crescendo (Tuomas Holopainen would be proud!). Just as impressive are the lighter, poppier songs such as “Finally”, where Scherff and Faber trade off verse fragments only to join together on lead harmonies during the chorus, an impressive display of frenetically delivered precise enunciation over accelerating drum tempos. The finale of that track segues almost seamlessly into “Prayers”, another pop gem, where Scherff’s strong, confident vocals command your attention throughout (particularly on those strident verses). I love how unafraid Faber is of indulging his pop instincts here —- “Prayers” sometimes comes off as a tune that could fit in perfectly on the soundtrack to The Neverending Story, and that’s meant entirely as a compliment!

 

Its worth noting that the song off this album that initially caught my attention was actually one that paired Faber on co-lead vocals alongside guest vocalist Jon Oliva. Titled “No Hope For the Healing”, it serves as the centerpiece of the album; a wild Savatage-worthy epic with a chorus that grabs you by the throat. Faber’s vocals interplay excellently with Oliva’s chilling leads, particularly on the chorus where he sings the primary lyric hook with a soaring delivery —- both guys do a great job. Outside of Avantasia, I find that male/male duets are infrequent within metal, particularly ones this well executed (Oliva’s presence seems to inspire many songwriters, see his star guest spots on the Kamelot and yes, Avantasia records). Faber also takes center stage vocally on the lengthy “One Last Time”, which clocks in just under ten minutes. Normally these types of attempts are misses, but Faber nails it by packing in a plethora of relentlessly catchy refrains amidst his numerous tempo shifts and section changes.  But Scherff dominates the bulk of the album, and I really can’t get enough of her voice, she’s that good, and a breath of fresh air in a rather same-y female vocal arena.

 

The best thing I can say about F.E.A.R. is that I can play it straight through without skipping a single track, impressive for a record of thirteen songs. Bonus points to the band for having a big fat ZERO for the number of instrumental interlude tracks that they could have easily thrown on here —- this is after all a concept album (or at least a storyline driven affair, from what I gather lyrically). However I really could’ve done without the first 1:12 of the opening song “And with Silence Comes the Fear”, where the band commits what is by now becoming a bit of a Metal Pigeon no-no, the dreaded spoken word section. The music that comes right after it would have been a perfect start to the album, and I have to remind myself to fast forward ahead to it (as I’m sure anyone who listens to this record will). If any of you read my previous post, a review of Sonata Arctica’s new album, you’ll know that I’m beginning to have a rather low tolerance for spoken word shenanigans in my metal. Its rarely done well, and usually fails to offer anything in the way of replay value (Blind Guardian’s intro for Nightfall in Middle Earth is compulsory listening however!). Still, its only one misstep. Dawn of Destiny have released one of the best records of the year, a certain contender to make my Best of 2014 list, hopefully more people and media take note and these guys get some proper attention.

 

 

Sinbreed – Shadows: You’d be forgiven for never having heard of these guys before Marcus Siepen of Blind Guardian fame decided to join up with them. He wasn’t the first link to the mighty bards however, as Sinbreed has actually been an ongoing project of current Blind Guardian drummer Frederik Ehmke’s since 2005, together with vocalist Herbie Langhans, and guitarist Flo Laurin. They released an album back in 2010, and I’ll totally admit to missing that one (hey, Blind Guardian’s own At the Edge of Time cast a pretty large shadow over my listening time that year). What really got my attention, and that of many others was Siepen deciding to participate in this project —- after all, we’re talking about a guy who has been content to play only in one band for nearly thirty years with practically zero interest in doing anything else outside of that. Siepen is often forgotten when people pontificate about the supreme awesomeness that is Blind Guardian, as lead guitarist Andre Olbrich tends to take most of the glory (and to be honest, as a primary songwriter he probably should). However Siepen has been the Izzy to Olbrich’s Slash throughout Blind Guardian’s discography, at least playing-wise, being a razor sharp rhythm player who can deftly interplay with Olbrich’s twists, turns, and Brian May-isms.

 

On Sinbreed’s Shadows, he continues his blistering rhythm guitar attack but gets more time in the lead guitar category by the band’s tendency towards songwriting with lead harmonies in mind. This is meat and potatoes, riff-packed Euro-power metal like you’d expect, but slightly heavier and more minor key aggressive than many other bands in the genre. Think modern day Accept (particularly with Langhans dead-ringer vocal similarity to Mark Tornillo) mixed with the bottom heavy crunch of Falconer. And if that sounds like something that would bore you out of sheer familiarity, you might really want to give Shadows a try. There are some pretty good songs on offer here, no real duds, and awesome riffs a plenty. I’m particularly fond of “Leaving the Road”, where the band lets in a few rays of major key melodicism in the chorus as Langhans really shows off the potential of his range. Special kudos for the title track as well, which features an earworm of a refrain sandwiched between the most thrashy verse sections on the entire album. I also rather enjoyed the NWOBHM-ish intro to “London Moon”, a song that seems like it could’ve been a Maiden b-side in the Killers era (for the record I love Maiden’s b-sides).

 

This isn’t a complex album —- well, some of the riffs can be, but songwriting wise this is as basic as metal tends to get. But simplicity can be a hard thing to pull off, particularly in terms of delivering conviction. Sinbreed do an admirable job in that regard, and while this most likely won’t be a record that makes a lot of year end lists, I’ll probably be adding a few songs from it to my “road metal” playlist. Here’s hoping that this isn’t the last we hear of Siepen and Ehmke in 2014 —- new Blind Guardian album please! Don’t break the four year circle guys (wink)!

 

 

Gamma Ray – Empire of the Undead: Sometimes the problem writing reviews is that you stumble across an album where you really just don’t know what else you can state other than the obvious. I’ll shake my head and say, “No dummy, remember we’re assuming the reader hasn’t heard this album yet”, and force myself to continue. Now other than that you know I sometimes talk to myself while writing, you’ll perhaps empathize with me when you remember that Gamma Ray simply hasn’t changed much from album to album in the past decade. In fact, increases in production quality aside, Gamma Ray albums have been fairly linear affairs from one to the other, and that doesn’t mean that they haven’t been good —- but it does get hard to discuss in any remotely in-depth manner the particular intricacies of a new Gamma Ray offering.

 

You know Kai Hansen, you know how he writes for this band, and if you’ve forgotten then song titles like “Hellbent” (for metal, in case you were wondering), or “Empire Of The Undead” (what is this the Walking Dead? I’d like something a little more substantial from a guy like Kai, not horror cliches) will remind you soon enough. But being Kai Hansen, he will throw some curve balls our way that will either make you admire his free wheeling devil may care approach, or shake your head at his shenanigans. Take “Time For Deliverance” , a surprisingly mellow, Freddy Mercury inspired piano ballad that even features Queen-like layered backing vocals. When I first began listening to this track, I found myself rooting for it to work midway through, but sadly it lacks the required knockout hook in the refrain that would put it over the top. Everything sounds pretty, and Kai’s attempts at mellow vocals are not half bad, but without a strong chorus all these surrounding elements are simply cast adrift (also I’m not so sure Mercury himself would be utilizing words like deliverance, but I digress). I applaud the attempt, because its one of the only interesting things happening here.

 

I think my problem with modern day Gamma Ray (and I’m including the halfway successful attempt at a sequel to Land of the Free from a few years ago) is that Hansen seems so caught up in this idea that Gamma Ray had to “heavy” up their sound in the past decade, and in turn its led him down some songwriting dead ends. What made Somewhere Out In Space so truly great was its sense of wild, playful, uninhibited fun. The songwriting was a loose blend of classic power metal and 80’s Euro rock, the guitars blurring the line between riff and sustained melodic figures —- an insane song like “Beyond the Black Hole” felt like the sound of your head lifting off from your body. That particular era of Gamma Ray’s discography was close to perfect, and perhaps its unfair of me to compare new records to it (I suppose it brings to mind the discussion we had on Sonata Arctica last time). But that’s where I am with the band; I’m always interested in hearing their new stuff, I’m glad they’re still around and wish they’d tour the States more often, but their new stuff makes me long for the past, especially since those sounds of the past are getting harder and harder to find among any of the power metal elite.

 

 

Eldritch – Tasting the Tears: Eldritch have long been Italy’s metal secret, a band not named Rhapsody or Lacuna Coil that sails under the radar whilst releasing quality prog/power metal albums in fairly rapid succession. They don’t get a lot of press, not even in their home country, the glory being left for their overhyped and overblown countrymen. I myself always forget that Eldritch are from Italy, not the UK or Stateside, mainly due to Terence Holler’s vocals sounding like a blend of James LaBrie and Sebastian Bach. I have to admit I missed their last album Gaia’s Legacy, so I’m not sure how this new one measures up in terms of progression, but it certainly sounds like the Eldritch I remember. Take the more metallic side of Dream Theater, tone down the progressive noodling, increase the emphasis on catchy vocal hooks with some fairly strong melodic twists and you’ll have a good idea of what to expect here.

 

Much like Sinbreed’s Shadows, Eldritch deliver a consistent experience here, no real lows and a few standout cuts: I’m particularly fond of the title track, with its rather old school Stratovarius styled keyboards and Megadeth gun-metal grey guitar tones. And I wonder if I’m not the only one who feels that album opener “Inside You” could’ve been culled from Dream Theater’s Falling Into Infinity, down to the extending vocalizations of “I—-” in the chorus and the overall prog-meets-catchy song structure (really love the guitar solo that follows the instrumental break). Speaking of catchy songs, its worth noting that four cuts from this album clock in at under four minutes each, a rare feat for a prog-metal band, but something that I rather like. Rather than load down good songs with unnecessary instrumental baggage, Eldritch keep them lean and straight to the point, such as in “Waiting for Something”, which comes the closest to resembling a song you could hear on modern rock radio. If there’s a slight misstep here, its in the piano laced ballad “Iris”, which isn’t a bad song at all but just feels lacking —- piano ballads really need greater definition in their melodic hook (a bell curve instead of a small wave). As such the Goo Goo Dolls still hold the crown for greatest song with that name. Overall Tasting the Tears is a satisfying listen, if not quite a spectacular one.

Sonata Arctica: Pariah’s Child and the Reality of Expectations

I wonder if every new Sonata Arctica release shouldn’t come with a warning sticker on the front. I’m not quite sure exactly what the wording of the message would be, but it’d have to get its point across succinctly since there would be an obvious character limit. Perhaps we can impose some self-made restrictions upon ourselves to keep it short and sweet —- a twitter style 140 character limit then? Yeah we’ll go with that. Perhaps by the time I arrive at the conclusion of this review we’ll have a message for that sticker that does the job. But why the need for a warning sticker at all…? Its because post-2007 Sonata Arctica have the misfortune of being saddled with the weight of rather grand expectations, and perhaps because as fans we see our expectations through the 20/20 vision of hindsight.

 

If you enjoy Sonata Arctica’s music, you do so despite the occasionally cringe or giggle inducing lyric, the often clunky song titles, and Tony Kakko’s uniquely melodramatic worldview. You’re drawn in for the same reason everyone gets drawn in —- through Kakko’s ABBA-esque sense of melodicism, his knack for pop songcraft, and his ability to cut through typical metal bravado and interject a little pathos through emotionally transparent storytelling. When you listen to a classic like “Tallulah”, a shimmering ballad from their glory era, your heartstrings swell from the honeyed melodies and gorgeously layered backing vocals, regardless of the lyric “I see you walking hand in hand /With long haired drummer of the band”. You don’t view Kakko’s heavily Finn-accented English as a drawback, but rather part of his charm as a charismatic vocalist. That the band’s following has seemingly rivaled that of elder Finn-metal statesmen Stratovarius speaks to just how much of a profound impact they’ve made upon the sometimes ultra-finicky power metal fan community worldwide.

 

So when Tony Kakko goes on record and states that this new album will be a return to form (even down to the return of the original logo), its understandable that a fan’s expectation of this promise is defined by their own personal best-of Sonata Arctica playlist. We tend to remember the highlights of what has been a rather lopsided discography, one marked by a stellar beginning but continued on through a series of spottier efforts. I speak from personal experience here, having created my own best of Sonata Arctica iTunes playlist many years ago, usually adding a couple tracks from every subsequent new album since then. I humbly consider it to be a rather terrific kaleidoscope of the tiny details that makes Sonata Arctica one of metal’s most endearing artists. If I took the time to compile another playlist from what was left on the cutting room floor (so to speak), I’d imagine the impression one would get from that playlist would be of a band high on ambition, yet uncertain on how to achieve it, often to disastrous results. See this is a band whose highs are mountain peaks, while their lows often go below sea level —- maddening for their fans for sure, but perhaps better in the long run than being stuck in the staid plod of mediocrity.

 

 

And that’s a fairly accurate (if crude) way of analyzing each new Sonata Arctica album since 2007’s Unia, a line of demarcation for the band where they decided to branch out their sound and songwriting with some far flung experimentation. Its been a rocky ride ever since. Sure there have been gems on all these experimental era records, “Only the Broken Hearts (Make You Beautiful)” and “Alone in Heaven” from 2012’s Stones Grow Her Name come to mind immediately, but there’s a been a lot of “cutting room floor” playlist material as well. And if you take a look at the band’s discography, you’ll notice that with the release of Pariah’s Child, the band has evened up the number of albums in this post-2007 experimental era to those of their classic, golden era —- four a piece to be precise. Yep, I’m including this “return to form” album with the experimental era because Tony Kakko —- who has spent these past seven years experimenting —- can no longer relate to the natural boundary of tunnel vision he had during the band’s early years. He’s an internal songwriter at heart, and as a result suffers from a lack of external separation… simply put, its likely that he doesn’t see the experimenting we hear as being all that experimental. But to us outsiders, it seems for all the bluster about how Pariah’s Child would be a no-nonsense, classic Sonata Arctica power metal album, there sure is a lot of nonsense here.

 

Let’s just get the really bad stuff out of the way first, because its hard to ignore such a recklessly provocative song like “X Marks the Spot”. Fellow Sonata fans, ever wish you could be in the studio during the mixing process of the band’s albums and could jump up at any moment and slap the engineer’s hands away from the console, and possibly force him to delete entire tracks? Because that’s what I wish I could do every time I hear some godawful, corny dialogue stain the very fabric of what could be a decent song. This has become an alarming trend with this band, and those familiar with their discography will know of the many stained moments I’m referring to. This is the worst one yet: A Finnish guy who sounds like a born again televangelist from Texas (I should know!!!) speaking about how rock n’roll has saved him. The song underneath isn’t spectacular by any means (and parts of it sound far too similar to “Alone in Heaven”), but it could’ve been a passable album track without all the horrible spoken word audio. Instead we get the poster-child for the very worst of Tony Kakko’s inexplicable need to do crazy, crazy things to his songs. Its a song ruined, a track we’re all likely to skip over, keep off playlists and generally speaking try to forget. Thanks Tony.

 

Speaking of annoying spoken dialog, I can’t neglect to mention “Blood”, where we’re treated to monotone droning of scientific explanations of animal biology. The crime in this case is that this is actually a pretty good song, a warmly melodic verse that builds up into an aggressive bridge with frenetic percussion to a pretty fantastic chorus. Again, I have to ask —- Tony, why are you subjecting your songs to these distractions? Let the music speak for itself (a lot of bands could use this advice, I’m looking at you Seventh Wonder!). Unfortunately, its not simply those questionable decisions that detract from this album’s attempt at classic status. There’s the woefully overwrought and lyrically cliched ballad “What Did You Do In The War, Dad”, and yes the title is obviously indicative of the approach Kakko takes in the lyrics, that is, a back and forth dialog between a father and son. The real shame here isn’t so much the missed opportunity on Kakko’s part by addressing such a potentially rewarding topic with fists instead of surgeon’s hands, but the fact that underneath those on-the-nose lyrics are some really affecting melodies. This could’ve been a great song, and I’m disappointed that it only reminds me of another old clunker, “The Boy Who Wanted To Be a Puppet” (I’ll volunteer to help you with song titles Tony, I know I could do better than these).

 

 

I’m sure the most baffling track on the album is “Half A Marathon Man”, which actually has a nice Deep Purple/Rainbow-ish approach for the majority of the song, but they’re undermined by Kakko’s pointed lyrical American-isms. That in itself isn’t a deal breaker, but the sheer rock n’roll throwback approach is jarring, especially in the context of this supposed return to their power metal glory (of which I’m sure it’s abundantly clear by now that Pariah’s Child is not). And I can’t neglect to mention the utter mess that is the purported epic of the album, “Larger Than Life”, where the first five and a half promising minutes are blown completely out of the water by hearing an operatic choir sing the lines “So don’t take life so seriously”. Look, I tolerate a lot with Sonata Arctica, but I have a hard time swallowing the juxtaposition of an epic sounding collection of professional voices singing such mundane phrases. It simply doesn’t work, and tellingly the song unravels immediately after that, a directionless blast of orchestration and guitars that get blander as they go on…. at one point you realize that nothing is actually happening in the song, its just elevator music over tepid riffing. This song desperately needs a melodic motif that it can go back to or utilize in increments throughout —- instead it just comes off as a collection of leftover ideas that were cobbled together against an orchestral arrangement in the hopes that it would mesh together well. It didn’t, and instead can be officially considered the worst Sonata Arctica “epic” to date.

 

Thankfully, there are some gems on Pariah’s Child, ones that I’ve already added to my permanent Sonata Arctica best of playlist. The sharpest of these is the lead single, “The Wolves Die Young”, which sounds better on the album mix than it did for the video (maybe the fact that the video was terrible clouded my judgement?). Credit to commenter Garret, who told me to give the song a little bit of time to open up. It certainly did, with its effortlessly melodic chorus and nicely layered backing vocals, its the kind of pop song that Kakko writes so well, and that encapsulates the very best qualities of Sonata Arctica. I’m also quite fond of “Running Lights”, despite its silly car screeching sound effects at the start (completely unnecessary, this isn’t Operation: Mindcrime), its the kind of romantically nostalgic lyric that recalls the best moments of the band’s Ecliptica/Silence era, “And they enter the night when /The young ones need no sleep / Laughing at the lights they keep running /Becoming color of the night”. And I have to admit that “Cloud Factory” has grown on me, its melody is charming and invokes an almost Japanese quality, but again we have to deal with a questionable Kakko experimental songwriting moment when he caps off a rather brilliant mid-song bridge with a wild jaunt into big-top circus territory. A minor gripe perhaps, but its the kind of silliness that makes you think twice before adding the song to the road trip playlist you’re assembling for you and your buddies.

 

It was with great relief and an almost yearning joy that I embraced the most unadorned track on Pariah’s Child, the sparse, delicately folded ballad “Love”, perhaps the band’s greatest to date. So excellent is the songwriting at work here, so confident is Kakko in his lyrical approach that his vocals kick in before the :01 second mark, over beautifully soft piano melodies. This is Sonata Arctica! What a fantastic song —- nothing I say about it could do justice to its status as a diamond among gems. You wonder why Kakko couldn’t employ a similar display of subtle imagery that he offers in the lyric “Oh I love the face you try to hide in your hands” in songs like “What Did You Do In The War, Dad”. Maybe one of the things we’re learning is that Kakko is at his best when he’s writing about love, the losing or gaining of (or in this case, the appreciating).

 

Certainly we’ve learned that he’s to be taken with a grain of sea salt when making claims of returning to any type of classic Sonata Arctica era. The reality is that experimentation has slowly become a habit of his that he’s unable to ween away from, just as expecting another Silence or Winterheart’s Guild is a habit that we as fans have made, well, habitual. Perhaps the warning label we were considering earlier should be something like:

 

 

 

Or maybe it should simply read, “Old habits die hard”.

 

 

Metallica’s Baffling Decision Making

I’m sure some of you read the various news items about Metallica debuting a new song during their gig in Bogotá, Colombia on Sunday, March 16th. The new, presumably unfinished track was presented as “The Lords of Summer”, and it was captured on a variety of mobile phones and even a professional camera crew (apparently standard operating crew for Metallica these days). Its not surprising that the mere inclusion of a new song in the band’s setlist would attract a lot of media attention —- this is after all a band that has only mustered up enough creativity to release four proper studio albums in the past twenty-three years. If you detect some snark there, well —- I won’t go out of my way to keep it hidden. That this is the first time I’ve written about the biggest metal band in the world, Metallica, on what is a metal blog is admittedly strange, but I’ve only written about Iron Maiden once before and they’re my favorite band of all time (fingers crossed for a new album this year!).

 

Full disclosure will reveal that I was a pretty rabid Metallica fan in my formative years, as I would wager a lot of us were. I was even a fan of their Load/ReLoad period, though I wasn’t too much of a Metallica apologist to not be able to concede that those two albums should have been released as one, distilling the best from both. My fandom waned in the next six years after that era however, particularly with the fascinating mess of St. Anger, an album so abysmally remedial that I barely even recognized what I was listening to. I still remember my brief flashes of denial —- trying to listen to “Frantic” and simply will myself into enjoying it. It was a lost cause, not helped by the fact that I had by then heard too much in the way of far superior metal of all types being released by talented artists who were also capable of releasing records every other year. It was a sad commentary on the state of Metallica in 2003 that the documentary on the making of their new album was far more compelling than their music. What happened to the band that just a half decade prior had penned “Bleeding Me”, or “The Outlaw Torn”?

 

A brief aside: I am a firm believer in the hypothesis that it was Iron Maiden, not Metallica nor any other band, that spearheaded the resurgence of all things metal around the turn of the millennium. I’d have to get into a fairly lengthy explanation to detail my thinking behind that statement (and perhaps I will one day), but I feel that Maiden’s reunion had a tremendously positive affect on the metal community and associated industries all around the world. It wasn’t just the major media attention that Maiden’s resurgence attracted; it was partially responsible for the sea-change in temperament towards metal that affected the disposition of American promoters who became willing to take chances on booking European metal bands for their first Stateside treks. Or that cleared the pathways for previously mail-order only metal labels like Century Media or Nuclear Blast to ink retail distribution deals with companies like Caroline or EMI. It became tremendously cheaper and easier to be a metal fan living Stateside after the Maiden reunion —- look I know it wasn’t all due to Maiden. The success of European bands like Hammerfall, Nightwish, Dimmu Borgir, etc, etc (the list goes on) certainly helped as well but again, it was Maiden’s resurgence that made new opportunities possible for many of those artists.

 


Swinging back to Metallica now and fast forwarding to 2008, they decided that perhaps the best thing to do in a resurgent metal landscape of 2008 was to record an album of material that harkened back to an archetypal Metallica sound. It may seem on paper like a smart decision, and even retrospectively I’d still think that it was the only reasonable direction they could have ventured in —- except that it didn’t work out that way. Oh sure, Death Magnetic has its defenders, supporters, and apologists —- but lets call a spade a spade, this was a dim shadow of what Metallica once was. Most of the songs were lifeless, one of them was a motif recycled not for the second, but third(!) time, and there was a distinct sense of uncertainty and lack of direction in the details (even in the cover art and album title…. seriously, what are they trying to convey?). I remember wondering if it was just that my own tastes in metal had moved on, but that idea was negated by the fact that I still enjoyed the hell out of new Iron Maiden albums, and always found something to enjoy in new records by other bands of the same era such as Megadeth, or Helloween. So what was it that made Metallica’s new music come off to me as uninspired and clunky?

 

I think the answer, ultimately, is that there was little in the way of artistic continuity. Metallica’s writing sessions for the Black Album took place in 1990, and after its gargantuan mega-tour the Load/ReLoad sessions occurred around 1995 with some touch-ups in the two years afterwards. Touring and various projects such as S&M and Garage, Inc took up the intervening years. Metallica wouldn’t work on a collection of new material until those dysfunctional, therapist guided, captured on documentary sessions for St. Anger a whole seven years later. It would be nearly six years before they reconvened once again for Death Magnetic —- simply put, this is a band that tours and tours and tours, and I’ll argue that despite its financial benefits their incessant touring has come at the cost of their artistry. I’m not suggesting that its wise for Metallica to scale back its touring, these guys obviously understand where their huge paychecks come from. What I am saying however, is if the band is interested in making continually better original music, they would do well to realize that they need to attempt its creation more often. How do they relate to one another musically speaking when they haven’t attempted to write new material in half-decade long spans? At what point do you overdo touring?

 

 

I’ll argue that the case in point that answers that question is the band’s current touring activity —- that’s right, Metallica is on a South American tour as we speak. In fact, they have tour dates lined up all through the spring and summer up to August. Promoting what you ask? I dunno… Metallica I guess. This is a band that has waffled on going back to the studio for a proper studio album, only pausing in their incessant tour schedule to commit ear murder with their ill-conceived and executed Lulu album with the late Lou Reed (for all our sakes I’ll just avoid talking about it at all here, suffice to say it was a time-sink —- as in black hole, the astronomical object). So now, in 2014 every band member has finally mentioned something in the press as to this year being the perfect time for Metallica to start cooking up a new album, okay, great! Except that they’re not in a rehearsal room, and certainly not in a recording studio. How do you write an album on the road when you’ve been unable to do so in the past? Does this mean that the next Metallica album won’t start getting assembled until the fall of this year, when the band is finally off the road? Does any of this sound like the plan of a band hell bent on delivering a truly great work of recorded art?

 

Coming back to what happened the other night then, when the guys figured that a stadium full of fans who in their heart of hearts really just want to hear anything pre-Black Album at the show, would be perfect guinea pigs to ear-test this raw version of a new song they’ve been working on. A couple things: The debuting of new material in a live setting before the release of the recorded version has been a pet peeve of mine for countless years, no matter what the band, no matter what the subgenre. Metal is a form of music that is best appreciated on record —- there may be some of you that will instantly feel the need to argue against that, but think for a moment of where your metal fandom began. Most of you will attest that it began upon hearing the studio version of a song, whether it was from the actual album itself, or as heard on a music video, or hell even on an episode of Beavis and Butthead. My rock and metal fandom began with hearing studio versions of songs by Bon Jovi, Guns N’ Roses, Metallica, Megadeth, Iron Maiden… I didn’t see those bands live until after the fact.

 

You may go to a metal show, see a support act you’ve never heard before and walk away impressed enough to go check out their record —- it happens to me too. But I guarantee you that you’ll enjoy that band way more the next time you see them live, having had time and opportunity to listen to their recorded albums, so that you recognize and know the songs when they’re played live in front of you. Its always a more rewarding experience to have some familiarity with a band’s music before you see them live —- they have the possibility of becoming transcendent experiences. Because of metal’s usually complex nature, there’s a lot going on within the music that your ears need to decipher. Most great metal records need more than a casual spin to reveal themselves to you, with all their carefully layered instrumentation and intricacies. Metal has spread, persevered, and made its greatest artistic advances as a form of recorded music —-less so as live performances.

 

 

When a band plays live, there are so many factors that can audibly affect the performance of a song, the acoustics of the venue, the noise of the crowd, bad mixing, the sound guy sucks, etc. I was mildly annoyed when Kamelot debuted their first Tommy Karevik era song at a European festival —- crap sound and all —- when you took a listen to the versions plastered over YouTube you could hardly make heads or tails of anything. I’m sure it was worse for the fans in the crowd, what exactly were they supposed to be hearing that they could comprehend, if anything? When you take a look at some of the videos of “The Lords of Summer” performance, you’ll see some of those lucky fans that got to be invited on stage to watch the gig from the wings, and most are cautiously bobbing their heads during the song. A few just look confused, and you can imagine how many people are taking the moment to head to the concessions or hit the head. And this brings me to the moral of this little quibble, and this goes for all metal (and rock) bands: STOP PREVIEWING NEW SONGS LIVE! And to Metallica, this tour leg of yours is called “Metallica By Request”, no one in Bogotá requested a demo!

 

The actual song itself is described as “epic” by Rolling Stone, those experts of all things metal. I’m going to have to keep myself in check when using that term in the future if that’s what it means. I’m not trying to come off as a curmudgeon, though I probably am, but I hear no difference in the aimless, wandering, mediocre riffs of “The Lords of Summer” than those heard on the past two Metallica albums. Its boring, uninspiring, and frankly comes off as a parody of a Metallica song. Lars Ulrich has stated that there’s no guarantee that the song will remain in its current state, and he stated a prior instance in 2006 where Death Magnetic demos were aired live before before the album’s release. The demos were chopped up and transfigured by the time they actually made it on the album. Which begs the question: Why play these demo songs live at all —- what is to be gained from this? I don’t understand the creative thinking behind this, especially when its yielded the results it has for the past few albums. Ulrich states, “We like to leave the studio and get out and be inspired by playing some shows…We’ve done that a lot in the last few album cycles. So getting out and playing is a vital part of writing and creating.” Huh? What were the other four to five years of touring behind Death Magnetic about then?

 

 

This is a band that doesn’t understand how to continue as a creative unit anymore. Years wasted on vanity projects (the 3-D movie, the atrocious S&M, Lulu) and overkill on touring has depleted their sense of what it means to be individuals in a metal band playing metal music. I would even go as far to suggest that their lifestyles make it difficult for them to relate to their fans, largely a blue collar bunch. When you live in a mansion on the coast of the richest neighborhood in the Bay Area, with a multimillion dollar art collection on hand and bottles of wine at the ready, its hard to relate to a fan of yours that works a soul crushing job with terrible pay. That’s not Metallica’s fault, nor their responsibility. What is their responsibility however is to own up to the fact, and perhaps reassess how they approach songwriting, perspective, and what it is they want to express through words and music.

 

I mentioned enjoying a good bit of the material on the Load records, and I feel its because I could sense the band was still writing about things that mattered to them personally, that musically and lyrically the band was exploring and allowing itself to evolve. St. Anger was a confused mess made worse through horrible production, but one album amidst a band crises could be forgiven. Death Magnetic however was a devolution, a move towards fan service that betrayed the guiding principle that should carry a successful band through its later years. You can still remain true to your sound as long as you are writing songs with conviction and belief —- there are many other multimillionaire artists out there that continue to do so (Iron Maiden included). When I listen to Death Magnetic, I hear sounds that remind me of what Metallica sounds like, but I don’t hear the passion and fire that molded those sounds into moving music. They’ve lost something in that sense, and they’re not going to find it on the road.

Scroll to top