Scott Stapp
Happy fucking New Year all.
The beer was swilled, the wine was quaffed and the whiskey (two fingers worth) eyed suspiciously as it sat in the glass over ice and plotted to give me the usual migraine level headache.
I can honestly say that music wasn't a heavy feature of the festive season for me this year...
I drove around Wiltshire listening to my legal CD copy of Monster Magnet's 'Mastermind' feeling smug to be fueling Dave's pie addiction and drove back to a thawing Devon whilst the misses cranked Slash's originally titled 'Slash' album and wondering how much better Miles Kennedy would sound if anything other than dogs could hear him.
All of which led me to try ABIII again, or Alter Bridge III for those of you not quite down with it.
Now this album's mere existence is a puzzle to me.
The timeline for Alter Bridge's existence runs like thus:
Moody Jesus botherer and professional Eddie Vedder impersonator Scott Stapp who fronted million billion selling State side bores Creed decided he was better than everyone else and was going to duet with the Lord so disbands the second generation Grunge plagiarists to go solo (I call this the reverse Welch).
The talented members of Creed are suitably unimpressed by this and, in the Christian tradition of helping those who help themselves, roped in squeaky voiced pretty boy Miles Kennedy and embarked on a succession of increasing successful girlfriend friendly stadium rock albums. Not ground breaking, but better than Creed anyway and condemned males everywhere to stand bored at festivals hugging their girlfriends and agreeing through gritted teeth that of course this is 'our song'.
In short the new Incubus (credit to The Voice Of Doom for this observation).
Somewhere into this run Stapp came crawling (no doubt over water for added effect) back and maybe it's because Creed loving Christians buy their albums as opposed to those demonic downloading Alter Bridge fans, but God's personal whipping boys went running with open arms to welcome him back.
No doubt there was hugging, turning of cheeks and forgiveness all round.
All of this left infinitely superior vocalist Kennedy out in the cold. Rumours abounded of him joining singerless GnR rhythm section Velvet Revolver, but instead he opted to guest on 'Slash',and toured with the Top Hatted one promoting the album and promising he would handle all the vocals for the next album.
He clearly didn't fancy slipping into Scott 'Increasingly erratic not a junkie, Honest Guv' Weiland's snake skin trousers and making himself a bigger rent-a-vocalist than Tim 'Ripper' Owens.
Either that or Duff and Co figured their show would become even more boring if they tried to jam any Alter Bridge songs into their encore.
Salvation was found though. As quickly as it came Creed's reunion was done, bank balances topped up Stapp went back to make his second solo album (really, yes really!?!) and Alter Bridge came out with ABIII.
Back in the real world this album topped various polls for 2010, had people I actually know in fits on Facebook extolling how 'heavy' and 'dark' and 'amazing' it was and my good lady was under orders from friends of hers to listen to it.
All I can say is 'What's the big fucking deal?'
They are boring and samey, Kennedy has this trademark quick, quick, sooooooooar! thing going on with the vocal melodies on every song. It appears no heavier than 'Blackbird' which had at least one good song on it and is just run of the mill.
I'd usually take my word for it, but I confess it's nearly kept me awake at nights (the question, not the album) but fortunately even my girlfriend was bored by it.
Ha!
Justin Foley
Anyway I've rambled enough already and not got to the point, although it does at least give a bit of history...
My focus today is on the future.
As the title suggests Justin Foley, skin beater for used to be great Killswitch Engage and people have only heard of us because our singer joined Killswitch Blood Has Been Shed, has stepped in to help Boston metalcore behemoths Unearth record their new album in light of Derek Kerswill's departure.
Unearth has suffered from a Spinal Tap-esque drummer issue in recent years with this being the third album in a row to feature a different drummer since they fired Mike Justian during the Eyes Of Fire tour cycle who in turn had only come in on The Oncoming Storm cycle replacing temporary drummer Tim Mycek.
This has no doubt had an impact on the band, whilst III: In The Eyes Of Fire (2006) was a strong release as was The March (2008), purists (well me and about 5 other guys on the internet) will tell you that they effectively trodden water since their 2004 Metal Blade released breakthrough album.
Hopefully this membership problem arrested temporarily the band can concentrate on writing material knowing they have (in theory) a technically astute drummer. Although given that Killswitch have released two straight up lame ducks in a row (As Daylight Dies and self title 2009), not to mention they stopped playing straight forward bludgeoning metalcore in favour of slightly whiffy emo metal, you'd hope that part of the new tub thumpers initiation is to be beaten with his 'End Of Heartache' Grammy.
Hard.
Still other wise it is business as usual for Unearth as they return to the studio with cape wearing, show ruining, man child, producer extraordinaire and Killswitch guitar player Adam Dutkiewicz.
As much as I love Unearth it is now time to step up and deliver a mammoth album that sees them restore their place at the top of the pile as the whole metalcore genre seems to be suffering from fatigue. Shadows Fall are stagnating, All That Remains and As I Lay Dying are not setting the world alight, Diecast have all but gone and plenty of other bands are feeling the pinch of over saturation.
2011 is a watershed year in terms of expectation for Metal, the past couple of years have thrown up some great music but you feel there needs to be some fresh challenge; bands have gotten faster, heavier, more technical, blurred more lines, but just with many of the giants of metal retiring or resorting to nostalgia the whole genre needs an overhaul - adapt and survive - for the future of the music I love.
As an aside:
In my run down of worst albums for 2010 I dubbed Dave Grohl 'The Nicest horse In Rock' and feel the need to elaborate on this.
I know that anatomically he looks more like a donkey, but I felt at the time that was a derogatory term I would usually reserve for West Ham's number 10 so promoted Grohl to a horse as he plays with the silky skills of a thorough-bred stallion.
It's just a shame it wasn't on display on that album.
Zing!
How does it go?
'First you giveth, then you taketh awaaaaaay...'
Sorry Dave...
Stay tuned, next time I'll actually talk about something I like.
No comments:
Post a Comment