Fuck Your Scene

Now I appreciate that I am not known for tolerance, particularly of things I don't like. The older I get (and just having celebrated a birthday I am another year more cantankerous and single minded I guess) the less time I have for things that fall outside of my sphere of interest.
Maybe this is because the world gets smaller with more and more commitments from real life - work, home, partners, needy pets, what have you and as such I find myself digging in my heels and resisting things more and more.
As the good lady frequently says, I'm stubborn and if I don't want to do something, I wouldn't.
So anyway tonight I find myself back on the radio with Mr Glew.
The Midweek Alternative is covering for another show and as such we have a mammoth four hours to cover so this week I get 8 tracks as well as battling words with Grifter who are guesting.
After my initial foray into co-hosting/hanging around the studio and it's follow up were incredibly metal for an alternative show I wanted to go back on and just prove to the airwaves of Exeter that I am more than 'The Metal Guy'.
Why?
Well, despite it being my primary source of earache for 23 years and counting I have wider tastes - I was at school when the rave scene was well under way in the early nineties and whilst I can't say that I ever stood in a warehouse with a glowstick some of this rubbed off and personally I think that The Prodigy's early works like Experience and Music For The Jilted Generation stand head and shoulders above their transformation into Dance/Rock hybrid; I listen to Tom Waits and Johnny Cash; I have an album of Industrial Gabba, I love the early works of The Pet Shop Boys, I think one of the best bands I have seen at a festival has been Chemical Brothers... there are skeletons in my metal closet for sure.



The reason I feel for this is because the world was a more open minded place when I was discovering music and I feel that the decline of this largely lies with the popular media/press.
Over the past decade and a bit everything has been pigeonholed into genres - I mean let's stick with what the blog is about: Metal/Rock.
Today we have:
Metal
Thrash
Death
Black
Metalcore
Hardcore
Post Hardcore
Progressive (Prog)
Industrial
Nu Metal
Mathcore
Djent
Stoner
Doom
Sludge
Punk
Post Punk
New Wave
Indie
Shoegaze
Drone
Ambient
Goth
Nu Goth
Rap Metal
Grunge
Post Grunge
Ska

Fuck it there are probably a lot more, but after a while it ceases to be of interest and in reality, despite how much bile I spit into the ether there is no such thing as good or bad music, it comes down to personal taste. Yes, I think some of my friends have dreadful tastes in music, but as long as they can tell me why they like it you have to respect that.

However music journalists seem so desperate to succinctly sum everything up in a soundbite you can Tweet or whatever that it has become lazy and full of bullshit classifications that encapsulate a 'genre'. This is crap.
Machine Head, deftones, Fear Factory, Korn and Slipknot are all bands that sound very, very different yet foudn themselves lumped as 'Nu Metal' in the late nineties, despite two of those bands existing before the genre was invented.
Christ I remember Kerrap! Magazine trying to call deftones 'Power Metal' back in 96/97 - this didn't catch on and now that tag is given to widdly eurotrash bands whose singers can only be heard by dogs.

What does is it artificially creates a scene where people associate and identify with a look and an attitude first and the music second. My friends growing up were a mix of Goths, Punks, Chavs, Public School kids, Townies what have you. We had our connecting points, we had our drop off point.
We all went to Reading Festival (back when it was good) and you had a great and eclectic mix of music. One year we saw deftones, Monster Magnet, The Prodigy, The Beastie Boys, The Dwarves etc some people went and saw The Specials, it was great.
Nowadays we have specialist tours like Defending The Faith, Share The Welt and so on and it's full of individual clones, everyone rebelling by wearing Hot Topic clothing, sporting bad tattoos and a face full of shit.
Of course I sound old and 'it's my thing' but I couldn't care less if the music was any good - Bring Me The Horizon, Bleeding Through, Avenged Sevenfold for example, all these bands have huge followings but I fail to find any redeeming features - identikit bands, identikit looks and promoters fill a tour of four bands with nothing different. I was bemoaning last time I went to a gig that I rarely bother with support bands these days as they have such shit support. I am actively missing Machine Head this December because two of the above bands are in support along with the execrable Devildriver.
And all of these kids don't like stuff that's not Metalz...
It's sad and it permeates through society - bands getting booed off or being pelted with stuff because they 'don't belong a bill'. Sure some of them deserve it.
Festivals have also started mimicking the same stance.
The moaning about bands not belonging on Download - even about Linkin Park for fucks sake, yes they aren't good but they fit the classification - I will tell you hands down now that one of the best bands I have seen at the Hallowed Ground of Donington has been Pendulum.


A prime example of this negativity produced by Genrification is well timed as Grifter are coming in tonight. For years they laboured under the Stoner rock tag and as such they were constantly compared to the masters of the genres Kyuss. Well newsflash Grifter sound nothing like Kyuss, don't really listen or like them particularly and their connection lies with Black Sabbath so for years reviewers got it wrong and passed on the wrong impression to potential fans.

My point tonight is that the world was a much more fun place when it was less narrowly defined and I shall be using the pioneering touring festival founded by Jane's Addiction frontman Perry 'Drug Dustbin' Farrell back in the early nineties where the idea was peace and open mindedness an as such show cased some of the finest and most vibrant alternative acts I have heard in my life time.
And as such I shall be playing:

1. Jane's Addiction 'Just Because'
2. L7 'Pretend We're Dead'
3. Beastie Boys 'Intergalatic'
4. Stone Temple Pilots 'Interstate Love Song'
5. Moby 'Comon Baby'
6. Living Colour 'Cult Of Personality'
7. Nine Inch Nails 'Head Like A Hole'
8. Cypress Hill '(Rock) Superstar '

All very different bands and still falling under the Alt. Rock tag, I could have pushed it further to make my point but the likelihood I would either be preaching to the converted or the attention span of those I'm targeting would have gone.
In a world of instant gratification it is easy to flick to the section that says Metal (Or Wiggaslam, Cuntrock, Whatever) but sometimes in order to appreciate what you have you have to take a look around at other things too.

So what am I saying?
If you love The Metal let it go?
Maybe...
Or maybe my own narrow mindedness is saying my way is better, or that it's just that the metal scene has failed to throw up anything new that appeals in the last few years, but I don't want to go to a gig and see four clone bands and have to care about the fact that I'm not wearing the right shirt or name checking some douchebag band who are the in thing.
I'm sorry but I'm too old and too stuck in my ways to give a shit about what is troo or kvelt, whether it's Britney Spears or Bathory, if I like it, I like it and there's not a thing you can do to convince me otherwise.

Gods Among Insects

Well, it's probably taken me this long to get through/get over my humble pie experience so with the dust settled and everyone a bit more calm about the whole thing I thought I would offer my thoughts on the new Machine Head album in a blow by blow review.

So most people have viewed the juggernaut that was 2007 album The Blackening as a benchmark in modern metal or 'the sound of modern metal' as claimed by one pock marked, future Lou Reed collaborator at the time and no matter how much hyperbole surrounds that release, it remains one of , if not, the best album Machine Head have made, not least for the incredible 'Halo'.

In the four years since it's release the band have toured it into the ground through necessity; there came a time when they should have gone home but the opportunities could not have been turned down for a band on the comeback trail as they were. To be honest by the end I heard less than stellar reports of their usually impeccable live show and was only mildly disappointed that traffic in London made us miss their support slot to Metallica at the O2 because let's face it I've seen them so fucking many times (and three previous shows on that tour alone) that without fresh material it felt like groundhog day.

Earlier in the year I ran my mouth about the new single, the early release, rough mix... and how it was a bit 'Meh', for all the bold statements of experimentation, the talk of surprises and the unveiling of this track was a little flat for me.

Why in truth because it was a familiar touchstone - too straight forward and nothing particularly ground breaking, still like the proverbial child at Christmas I was all over the album like a cheap suit when it leaked onto the web (fear not my expensive Metal Hammer fan pack was already ordered, just waiting to turn up late not early and minus the special things I should have had for ordering before the deadline), and this is what I found...

Machine Head 'Unto The Locust'

I Am Hell (Sonata in C)

The album starts with a chorus of Flynn's singing a chanting acapella in Latin which is almost sanguine if not a little unsettling. As this draws to a close it gives birth to a monstrous down tuned chug as Flynn crashes back in, gone are the soothing vocals, now he is growling 'I am death...' in your ear.

As an intro it is block levellingly heavy, but by no means the end of Machine Head cranking the tension as about three and a half minutes in it changes to a furious thrash assault with a soaring chorus.

The musicianship has kicked on vastly from it's predecessor; no slouch on the drums in previous outings, here Dave McClain puts in the second best performance of his life...

It's easy to wax lyrical about music - I do it all the time for The Sleeping Shaman - but I did sit and listen to this track unfold in utter disbelief at how fucking nutty, how good and how downright life affirming it felt to be proved a paranoid Doubting Thomas as the tender classical strings usher this song to it's false ending.

Maybe not a Sonata in the strictest sense, clocking in at nearly nine minutes it is easy to see how Machine Head racked up 50 minutes with only seven songs...

Be Still & Know

Picking up from the fading notes of the opener the second track kicks off with some Maiden/Priest esque lead work that folds into one of those rolling, mid paced groove riffs that the band have done so well in the past, but instead of going head first for the bludgeon Machine Head open this up into a huge chorus that, having headlined Wacken (and will, if rumours prove true, do Download) and have booked an arena tour of the UK, has one eye on getting large crowds of drunken metalheads to raise their horns and bellow along like pirates belting out a rum soaked shanty whilst Flynn and Demmel engage in some of their finest fret pyrotechnics yet and Adam Duce keeps it contained with his predictably tight basslines.

One thing that is noticeable over the first two tracks is how much improved Flynn's clean vocals are as well - Never far from his trademark growl he also has increased his singing range and delivery.

Locust

And so to THAT song...

Having endured a complete sonic kicking and had style and expectations exceeded over the course of the first two tracks Locust makes sense now. Better production and sat where it is, the sinister guitar tone of the intro is perfect, the song itself fine. It fits, it doesn't sound out of place and suddenly it clicks.

It is a little Machine Head by numbers and will never be a favour of mine, but it is catchy as hell and as it says 'These hooks sink in...'.

This Is The End

Apparently the first song written for the album and one of the craziest pieces of drumming on a Machine Head record. The classical intro does little to prepare you for Flynn's 'Fuck You' song as it is heads down and charge from start to finish.

I have to say I love this song.

It shouldn't really work... the drumming is a lightning blur of shuffling beats - sychopated and blast - the chorus has a melodic, almost falsetto part that should make you wonder what drugs they were on, but the whole is simply fantastic, especially the biting sting of 'This is the end of our respect denied, Stand with us or stand aside'

Darkness Within

And so to the major talking point of the album. In the press build up the band were hesitant to spoil the surprise or try and explain this song and it was truly with deep curiosity that I listened to it.

It starts off starkly with an acoustic guitar and Flynn mournfully croaking like a man old beyond his years as he sings some of the finest lyrics he has ever written:

I see the damage that I've done,
And search for redemption.
But I am just a broken man,
Whose soul cries out to understand,
How the madness shatters me,
Upon the stage on bended knee,
I scream aloud at skies above,
That answer mute bereft in love,
I struggle not to fall from grace,
I sing the hyms of my disgrace.

The personal depth that is thrust up in the six plus minutes the track runs for is incredible; thinking back to those mid nineties interviews where it was all hard man talk about drugs, gang violence, now he honestly quite unashamedly sings this pean to music setting him free and it sends shivers up and down my spine.

Mysteries forgotten chords,
I strum in vain to please the lord,
But he has never answered me,
And faith has waned eternaly.
In empty men who pass along,
The woes of all religions wrong,
Now the shadowed veil it falls,
Heed the Clarion call.
So pray to music,
Build a shrine,
Worship in these desperate times
Fill your heart with every note,
Cherish it and cast afloat.
Cause God is in these clef and tone,
Salvation is found alone,
Haunted by it's melody,
Music, it will set you free.

Musically it is almost a power ballad, it is another song that clearly has one eye on audience participation in big venues, but fuck it. You do not hear that kind of honesty often enough in music, sure we get the 'poor woe is me' white middle class shit still - Christ listen to Limp Bizkit or Staind's new albums, but this is from the heart. And it's excellent.

Pearls Before Swine

The penultimate track is the closest thing to a straight forward Machine Head track of old. Compared with Locust et al. it is short and furious in the old school The More Things Change Way. It is another above par track in an album full of potentially great ones, but strangely because of it's straight forward nature falls short in the description... if you liked Spine, Frontlines etc then this is a track for you.

This Is Who We Are

And so to the final epic...

Starting disconcertingly weird with a choir of the bands kids singing the chorus to be before McClain launches the last march-like tempo... I have said this all throughout about headlining, but I can see this being the set closer before the encore type track.

It is mammoth; Flynn commanding his orchestra proclaiming 'This is who we are, this is what I am, we have no where else to go, divided we shall stand!'. This track is full of bombast, a statement of 'Fuck you, we are home' that brings a tear to even the most cynical (Hello!) and we can even forgive the slightly cheesy 'Into Glory We Shall Ride' part.

Why? Simply because it is the most joyful fucking celebration of acceptance, that's why.
This band has taken an absolute kicking in their time and if the North American reviews are to be taken on face value are still getting kicked by their home country, despite releasing Burn My Eyes, The More Things Change, Through The Ashes Of Empires and The Blackening, but are here they are strong and on top of their game defiantly telling you if you don't like it, then shove it up your ass, and I for one love them for that.

I'm not going to make the judgement over whether it is better than The Blackening here, I loved that album, the band loved that album and it is certainly special. They were keen not to make Part 2 and that they have achieved. To my ears they have made a fucking great piece of music that should help establish them at the top of the current metal bands pushing for the future of metal. After 20 years (yesterday) of paying their dues Machine Head are special, are brilliant at what they do and this album deserves to sell by the truckload.

It is different; it is not as furious; however it is sublime.

Next time I will be exhaling the vile though I am afraid as I take on Lou and The Reeders 'interesting project' Lulu.

Hey Joel/Caught Jasta?

I have been thinking of writing a positive article for a while now (shock horror) and as I am sitting on 'Unto The Locust' until I have lived with it for just a little more, it seemed the apt time to sing the praises of something else, but then I read the last issue of Metal Hammer and BANG! it gave me the perfect excuse to write my positive article with an angry slant.
As I was recently told that a blog is for ranting on the internet then I figured why fight the bile?

What got my goat was Joel McIver's interview in last months Metal Hammer (UK) with Hatebreed/Kingdom Of Sorrow frontman Jamie Jasta, but I'll get to that in due course.

At the tail end of the nineties I spent a fair bit of time with a guy who was into his hardcore music.
An awful lot.
Now don't get me wrong the hardcore scene has thrown up some great bands, but somehow it's never quite been for me; maybe it's because I am not that relentlessly angry - I don't go to the gym and work out until my neck is thicker than my head, I don't have enough tattoos or wifebeater vests and would fair prefer smoking a relaxing rock and roll cigarette and watching a band with a beer than axe kicking someone in the face in the pit or maybe it's simply that I just prefer metal music.
Still at some point in our friendship my shouty music loving friend handed me a copy of Hatebreed's Victory Records debut 'Satisfaction Is The Death Of Desire' (great title by the way). Now this solid album and kick started a career that is still going strong some 6 albums later and has survived a swap to the home of North American Metal trends, Roadrunner.
I quite liked it then and still spin it now.
It's about forty-five minutes of 3 minute anthems about being angry, yet with a message of positive empowerment running through. Again maybe this is another reason I can only have a passing interest as I like to, ahem 'cherish the darkness within' (thank you Machine Head) and sometimes I don't want to put on music and have self help therapy.
Still it sums up Hatebreed to me even now.
They have the same fairly one note path which they admittedly tread very well, but when they split up then I'll buy The Best Of... so I can get the stand out tracks like 'I Will Be Heard', 'Live Through This' and 'Before Dishonour' without having to sit through that albums batch of sound-a-likes.


As for Jasta himself well the narrow confines of his musical day job means that he is to me just the potato headed guy who shouts a lot. He has also been a VJ on MTV's Headbangers Ball, runs his own label (Stillborn records) and has his own clothing range (couldn't be bothered to look up the name).
To be fair he was one of thse people I universally thought nothing of until he teamed up with Kirk Windstein of Crowbar for the excellent Kingdom Of Sorrow debut.
That album really made me sit up and take notice - this was an excellent collaboration full of light and shade, Jasta's hardcore roar trading off against Kirk's more melodic whiskey soaked rasp.
On reading the liner notes I realised that this is actually more Jasta's baby than it is Windstein's and he actually contributes more to the writing and the melodies than my slanted view of him would recognise and this was something that increased on the second album, which is in my opinion the stronger of the two.
So this year I read that Jasta was releasing a solo album, now given my interest in the last Hatebreed album lasted approximately one and a half spins I thought I'd download it and see what the fuss was about.


In truth it is both surprising and great.
It sounds like neither KOS or Hatebreed - Jasta displays a deft song writing skill, a decent melodic voice and it isn't hindered by having two of my favourite contemporary metal vocalists - Rhandy Blythe of Lamb Of God and Phil LaBonte of All That Remains, - guesting as well as Wack Myldde (You know former Ozzy guitarist, Shuaron worshipping, Egg throwing, fake biker mong), Mark Morton (vocalist punching drummer for Lamb Of God) and Phil Vallely – Skateboarder, solo artist, and one time singer of Black Flag.
I liked it so much I ordered it after a week of listening to it non-stop, sent back the first one that arrived because the postman had mangled it and got another, I was that determined to have it as a nice looking piece of shelf furniture and I have to say it's one of the releases this year I have been most satisfied by thus far.
It got good reviews, fuck knows how much it will sell being on Century Media and the fact that people's opinion of it will very much be coloured by their views on Jasta's day job.

And here's the rub.
McIver's interview with him, to me, seemed obsessed by the concept that this was a solo album, why was it a solo?
Well as the man behind it clearly explains; the music on the disc doesn't sit well with either his day job or his side project. It would seem that for someone who I didn't have pegged as a song writer particularly Jasta produces tons of music - at home, on tour - he lives and breathes the life he has chossen and 'Jasta' the album is made up of songs that were on his hard drive begging for release but would never find the light of day in his two most famous incarnations.
He joked that by releasing it as a solo album he would lose less money in the long run.
This seemed to offend Mr McIver's principles somewhat and he branded Jasta a business man, whose very actions were lessening the spirit and purity of the music he was producing.
I have to say the tone of the interview got my goat frankly..
Jasta, in my opinion, has got this right.
Hatebreed aren't exactly the most forward pushing bands and their fans appear to want more of the same - they have their path and they tread it regularly. It's exactly the reason that puts me off them that keeps their fans loyal, because they give them want they want. Besides Hatebreed are a BAND, it is a collective decision and if the songs don't fit, they don't fit - their are five guys with families who make a living from this, why mess with it?
Artistically just because you or I or Joel McIver don't find it challenging enough does it matter?


Having heard the songs I would hands down say that they don't belong on Kingdom Of Sorrow either - that band does push themselves, but rather than melodic hardcore sludge are they suddenly expected to jam in 'Something You Should Know' a hard rock stadium type anthem?
Are they fuck. Kirk Windstien would have probably walked out at that point laughing.
And anyway, Jasta wrote these songs on his own to please himself, recorded them and helped mix them so why should he turn them over and potentially damage two bands with a decent legacy?
I'm sure in Joel's world the idea that a musician trying to earn a living seems a little soulless, but honestly for someone who writes for a magazine who are owned by the Future Publishing group it's a little churlish to berate or question the integrity of someone who the dedication and passion for music that Jasta shows - whether you like him or not.
Having witnessed the backlash against Morbid Angel messing with their sound, I think Jasta was well within his rights to release this collection without the scrutiny of the music press destroying Hatebreed's reputation.
The universal comment on the reviews?
Not as good as Hatebreed or Kingdom of Sorrow.
Case closed - There is a difference between selling out (like Hatebreed suddenly releasing a pop album) and trying to make a living...
It's hard to make any money from album sales in this business this day and age; for the man to fund it out of his own pocket and front up to the industry machine without the armour, prebuilt fanbase and backing of his previous incarnations is actually profoundly brave and remarkably unbusiness-like and maybe Joel should stick to writing about Avenged fucking Sevefold, or The Black Veil Brides or whatever current, trendy, major label, guy liner wearing, Hot Topic sporting, flash in the pan fuckwits are all over Scuzz or Kerrang! TV in between the endless repeats of Green day and Blink 182 that the editorial slant of Metal Hammer feels required to push this week.