Black Rebel Motorcycle Club-Beat the Devil's Tattoo

2010; The Basement Studio, Philadelphia; Vagrant

http://www.blackrebelmotorcycleclub.com/

Like my review for Fang Island's self-titled debut earlier in the year, I'm going to preface this by saying that this is going to be a pretty quick review. Unlike that review, it's going to be short because at least 80% of Beat the Devil's Tattoo is the same Goddamn song.

Go listen to the title track. It's the first one on the album, it's pretty short, and it's pretty cool. You may now feel free to ignore the rest of this album forever, because everything else on it is a worse version of that song. For a Kings of Leon album, concentrated doses of mediocrity is nothing to damage the spirit, but this fucker is 65 minutes long, and maybe-MAYBE-10 of those minutes are worth caring about. Rarely does one run across an album where the vast majority of the material is filler, but Beat the Devil's Tattoo goes above and beyond in supplying the listener with reasons not to care about it.

Is it at least fun? A little bit, in small doses, but you'll have to stop yourself from nodding off 15 minutes in even if you're listening to it on shuffle. And keep in mind, I've only talked about the songs that are inoffensive but dull. I haven't even brought up the two embarrassing folk-rock experiments that crop up, or the absolutely abhorrent closer "Half-State", a ten minute, shambling dullard of a song with no buildup, tension, emotion or drive whatsoever.

Beat the Devil's Tattoo is the album Jack White would make if he cracked his head on the sharp corner of a table. No risks are taken, no power-trio dynamic isn't abused and stultified, and every song runs about three minutes longer than it needs to. It is, in short, a dud, and the only reason you'll remember it at all is the pins-and-needles sensation of your ass falling asleep.

Too short? Blame Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. They didn't exactly give me a lot to work with.

-CJ

John Wiese - Soft Punk

2007; Troubleman Unlimited; Los Angeles, CA

www.john-wiese.com

there comes a point when the inciting motive is no longer why you continue. When you realize that the punks are no longer in it because they're angry and misunderstood, that the hippies are no longer using drugs to induce a spiritual experience, now they're just using them to get high. And that's something I had to confront when listening to John Wiese, because lets be honest here, he doesn't extract the same passionate emotional response that Wolf Eyes does, nor the fierce irreverence and protest of no-wave. He doesn't intoxicate like Magik Markers or Yellow Swans. I came to straight noise music because I was angry in a way that no other music could capture, which is not something that Soft Punk does to any great extent. So I have to fess up and say that the passion and the emotion is no longer the sole reason why I'm here, that it is possible that I actually just like this stuff. I've gone from someone searching for help to somewhat of a fetishist. and that kind of scares me, it should.

Soft Punk begins with thirty four seconds of manipulated static that twitches and jumps for lost moments and then a steady clicking beat as if someone was teasing the drum mics, and then all hell breaks loose.... or, wait, no it doesn't. or well it doesn't quite make it. the music scratches its head, turns round and gives it another go. and, well, just misses once again. And thats the brilliance of this pink lp, it doesn't give you what you want, it keeps you on your toes. While Wolf Eyes traffics in a gloriously self-indulgent growl, giving everything they've and then some, yelling until they pass out from their lack of inhalation, Wiese brings the listener to a point just before orgasm, and then pulls out. And so for the forty-four minutes of the album we are constantly left unsatisfied, anxiously waiting for the next turn to fulfill us. And before you know it the forty-four minutes are up. And you want to listen again. And this, I'll be quite honest, is not something that can be said about any other noise full length that has ever existed - that it passes without exhausting you or loosing your interest.

Of course besides for the dynamic make-up of the disc there is a lot to keep you paying attention. While pioneers like Merzbow traffic in long drones of ear-splitting sound, Wiese goes the other way. He delivers a glitchy sampled brand of high-fidelity noise that never stays still for more than a few seconds, switching off between the kind of growl and broken glass that you'd expect from works of this genre and more pulsing subconscious ambiance. It's just never what you expect.

And so it's not hard for me to say that Soft Punk is the best noise album I've ever herd, and perhaps that I just need to come to terms with my enjoyment of the genre as a whole. I mean, it might not be that spiritual anymore, but at least I'm getting high.

no fun

A Token of My Extreme: Big Black- The Hammer Party /The Rich Man's Eight Track Tape/Songs About Fucking (1986/1987/1987)

1982-1985/1986, 1986/1987, 1987
Touch & Go Records

Yep, that's correct, I'm reviewing all three records out of Big Black's discography up in this bitch. As they are one of my favorite bands of all time, it didn't feel right to pick and choose.

Born in staid Illinois and without a doubt the most confrontational, caustic and brutal indie band of their era (even amongst other pillars of '80s No-Wave/noise rock such as Sonic Youth, Swans and The Birthday Party), Big Black was both the launchpad of righteous DIY curmudgeon/recording engineer/guitarist Steve Albini and celebrated independent label Touch & Go, which went on to sign numerous excellent experiments in noisy terror such as the mighty Jesus Lizard and quieter but no less intriguing bands like Don Caballero, Polvo, Dirty Three and Slint.

With aluminum-bodied custom guitars tuned for scathing feedback and metal-on-metal clang, a drum machine (credited as "Roland") providing the jackhammer backbeat and lyrical topics focusing on white trash depravity and crime, Big Black were uglier than the audience of a monster truck rally. They were the sonic equivalent of a John Waters film or Lynch's Blue Velvet, skewering and exposing things you didn't want to look at, things you didn't want to know about, the shadowy aspects of seedy small town life and filthy trailer parks. They brought the cauterizing noise bath of artsier predecessors like Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire to the masses, infusing a sense of songwriting and minimalist groove from post-punk bands such as Suicide, Wire, Gang of Four, Killing Joke and Naked Raygun (whose vocalist/bassist Jeff Pezzati and guitarist Santiago Durango ended up playing for Big Black) to make it even more direct and bludgeoning. The result is clearly not for the timid, and was extremely controversial at the time--Albini's pointedly offensive, epithet-filled rants got him labeled as racist and misogynist (which he isn't) and along with the brutally cathartic live antics (such as setting off bricks of firecrackers on stage) the band got booted out of several clubs. In spite of this, they managed to build a surprisingly large underground following.

The Hammer Party, Big Black's first record, is a collection of EP's--1982's Lungs, 1983's Bulldozer, and 1985's Racer-X. Lungs is actually the closest thing to a Albini solo record available--just him, his guitar, Roland and an 8-track in his living room, and the result is about as crude as you'd expect. Still it results in at least one excellent track and future staple, "Steelworker," and set the stage for the next two EP's with the full lineup of Pezzati, Durango, and Urge Overkill drummer Pat Byrne. Bulldozer was a more fully developed version of Lungs' sound, with redneck sagas "Cables" and "Texas" along with the neurotic "I'm A Mess" being the highlights. Racer-X broadened the band's visions a little, with a sleeker production quality and even some proto-math rock leanings like the track "Sleep!"

However, none of the three EP's can compare to their first proper LP, the landmark Atomizer (which was bundled with the EP Headache and "Heartbeat/Things To Do Today" single for The Rich Man's Eight Track Tape release). Losing Pezzati for new bassist Dave Riley only hardened the band's assault, as his funk-inflected basslines were an excellent counterpoint to Albini and Durango's even nastier guitarwork. The lyrical topics followed suit--"Jordan, Minnesota" is quite simply one of the most terrifying songs of all time, documenting the sordid tale of a Midwestern child prostitution ring from the molester's point of view. The equally brutal "Kerosene" depicts the trailer park pastime of being so bored and sick of everything that self-immolation becomes entertainment, and "Big Money" is a Swans-like rumination on the abuse of police authority. The (slightly) quieter "Bad Houses" is an interesting departure, and probably as reflective as Big Black ever got. While the bonus material is a slight step down from the heights of Atomizer, the punishing high-speed barrage "Ready Men" (to this day my favorite Big Black song) and the gruesome hitman vignette "Things To Do Today" are as good as anything else they did.

By 1987, Big Black was starting to erode due to internal struggles. Few bands had the balls to announce their breakup before releasing an album at the height of their popularity and a worldwide tour, but being beholden to none, Big Black did just that. And then dropped the (AWESOMELY TITLED) swansong Songs About Fucking, their biggest commercial success and to many a fan the band's best record (this reviewer prefers Atomizer by a slight margin). "The Power of Independent Trucking" kicks the album off with a bang, a furious assault of screeching guitars and thundering drum machine over a fuzzed-out Albini vocal. This is followed by an incrementally more sedate but still bitterly sarcastic and sleazy cover of Kraftwerk's "The Model" and the filth and fury continue with trademark asshole anthem "Bad Penny," psychopathic surf-rock "Columbian Necktie" and the venomous proto-industrial grind of "Precious Thing" and "Tiny, King of The Jews." By the time Cheap Trick's (one of Albini's favorite bands) "He's A Whore" is subjected to Big Black's sexual predator treatment, you'll want to hear the whole album again.

Big Black were defiantly unorthodox in their business dealings, hated the digital compact disc format, and released no videos on MTV, yet their recorded output will survive forever in the collections of lesser noise rock and industrial bands and for good fucking reason. Shocking and polarizing even today, their discography remains the widely emulated creme de la creme of noise rock and an essential touchstone for fans of independently made and independently minded music.

Translation:

If you already like mid-period industrial bands such as Ministry and Godflesh, or post-punk mainstays Gang of Four, Killing Joke and their modern progeny these albums are no-brainers. Otherwise, I would recommend Wire's Pink Flag, Killing Joke's 1979 debut, Naked Raygun's Jettison and maybe PiL's Second Edition as preparation for these.

-SJ

Sigh-Scenes From Hell

2010; The End Records

I'll be up front: In terms of extreme metal, you generally have to put a little bit of a spin on your music in order for it to catch my attention. Unless your black metal is symphonic or your death metal has progressive elements, I'll likely become bored pretty quickly. There are exceptions to this, of course, but by and large these genres have to do something different in order to keep me listening.

Sigh's Scenes From Hell, thanks to manic saxophonist Dr. Mikannibal and a stunning orchestra ensemble , separates itself from the fold immediately and jumps to the front of the pack for (admittedly early) consideration for best metal album of 2010.

"Zany" is a word I'm slightly remiss to use in describing the first portion of this album, but I fear it might be the only word that truly describes the sound that Sigh has concocted here. Thumping drums and growling, raspy vocals smash head first into classic rock-tinged guitar solos and brass arrangements that might be described as peppy to create a sensation composed of equal parts anxiety and jubilation. "L'art de mourir" probably has the most memorable chorus of the album, something not unlike if Mr. Bungle and early Emperor had a child, and "The Soul Grave" sounds as though all Hell's demons started jumping out of the floor right below you, and they're having a grand old time of it too, thank you very much. If anything, the first three songs probably describe the feeling of being on the street during a Godzilla attack: It's pure terror and bedlam, but you just have to smile because, come on, this can't actually be happening. It's one of those rare albums that's close to impossible to sit still while listening to. This is music you'll want to put on when you need to go for an angry walk, or just as an appropriate sonic background while you lose your mind.

Scenes From Hell then moves into a pair of similarly titled dirges called "The Red Funeral" and "The Summer Funeral". They move the album into somewhat darker territory, as the classical arrangements both become more prominent and less bouncy, and the whole tempo of the album slows down a bit for the fourteen minutes these songs take up. This is not to say that Scenes From Hell loses even a modicum of intensity during this middle third. Indeed, the Gothic leanings that these songs take present an image of Apocalypse and fragmentation that is at once unnerving and undeniably exciting. "The Summer Funeral", in particular, mixes waltz, folk and black metal elements that explode into the bleakest, most romantic cocktail this side of a Godspeed You! Black Emperor album.

The final three songs eschew the classical/movie soundtrack elements a little bit and go head-on towards more traditional black metal fare. These are, predictably, the weakest songs on the album, but since Sigh is still an exhilarating band with or without their orchestra backing them up, these songs still thrill more than 80% of black metal could ever hope to. "Musica In Tempora Belli" is more or less typical moshpit fare, but the violin solo and spoken word segment that arrive in the middle of the song call back fond memories to earlier in the album(and yes, you won't even have time to finish it before you have fond memories of Scenes From Hell). "Vanitas", sadly, close to completely abandons the brass and strings that made the rest of the album so memorable, and in effect it becomes the least memorable song on the album. Thankfully, the title track wraps things up with a stirring horn section and breakneck pace that summarizes the whole experience and puts a nice bow on it, to boot.

Scenes From Hell is essential listening. If you've never gotten into metal before but have an open mind, this could be a great place to find out what the big deal is. And if you're already a hardcore metalhead, well, there's absolutely no reason-none whatsoever-for you not to have this in your collection. Sigh has created an utter triumph that mixes the avant-garde with indispensable metal fundamentals and sounds like nothing else on the scene today. Scenes From Hell has set an incredibly high bar not only for future metal albums of 2010, but for all music to come out this year, metal or not.

-CJ

Iron Maiden Was the Shit: A Rundown

I went to see Iron Maiden with some friends on Sunday. It was, as the title might suggest, the shit. Here are the particulars.

• Any concert will pull in a fair amount of miscreants, but the sheer variety and ubiquity of the yahoos and malcontents present for the Final Frontier World Tour at Concord's Sleep Train Pavilion was almost inspiring. You had white trash, tremendous fat people, abrasively terrible haircuts as far as the eye could see, and you even had some teenagers who looked like they were waiting for Ace of Spades to hit record stores circa 1980-studded jean jackets, hair down to the ass and all.
• Just outside the gates, there was a Christian group(three whole people!) protesting the concert, which in many ways was not a huge surprise. What was a surprise was when one of them said, "Yeah, you ARE a slave to the power of death!" For those not in the know, this is a paraphrased quote from the song "Powerslave". So not only are they familiar with the material, they're using a line from an Iron Maiden song to make Iron Maiden fans...feel bad about themselves? What was going on in that guy's head? Hypothesis: Not a ton.
• By any objective standard, opening act Dream Theater's performance was mediocre at best, but compared to what came after them, they completely bit ass. Their stage setup was a joke, and they only played about five songs to boot, with their traditional lack of pizazz when it comes to their live shows. You're in a progressive metal band, you fucks! Put on a cape or something!
• Thankfully, once Iron Maiden started the atmosphere positively detonated with excitement. After an opening involving a menacing classical music score, a video series of constellations and other outer space displays, and a whole ton of red mist that draped the front of the crowd, the band let loose with an exhilarating rendition of "The Wicker Man". It's also worth noting that the stage was built to look like the control deck of a spaceship, which is awesome.
• Bruce Dickinson proceeded to talk up Iron Maiden's new album The Final Frontier a little bit before playing a track from it, "El Dorado", and went on a rant against the entire idea of MP3s: "Some people are saying that this song sounds like shit, and when you hear it on a CD, what you were supposed to hear from the studio, it sounds fucking amazing. But when you hear it on your little earbuds on a machine powered by a little fucking battery made by Steve fucking Jobs, yes, it's going to sound like shit. For the record, this is what it's supposed to fucking sound like!" And then they totally ripped it out, giving possibly the most energetic performance of the night.
• A confession: I'm not terribly familiar with Iron Maiden's newer material. I mostly listen to their golden age albums-Number of the Beast through Seventh Son of a Seventh Son-so I was a little bit scared that, given that they would mostly be preforming songs off of their last three albums, I would be lost. This turned out to not be the case, as between the light show, Dickinson's impassioned vocals and Spiderman-esque leaps from end to end of the stage, Janick Gers' guitar showmanship and a stage background that changed with every single song, I found myself enraptured throughout the entire show, whether I knew the song or not. Thankfully, they did play a couple that I knew from their past few albums-"Dance of Death" and "The Reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg"-and those were by far two of the funnest songs of the evening.
• Later in the show, Dickinson made a little speech about the brotherhood aspect of being an Iron Maiden fan before taking a moment to honor the memory of Ronnie James Dio: "I know we've got some bad blood due to the World Cup or whatever, but it doesn't matter what your skin color is, whether you're a dog or porpoise[which he pronounced "poor-poyss] or whatever...if you're an Iron Maiden fan, you're family." They then launched into a rendition of "Blood Brothers" and not only was the entire audience singing along with the chorus, they were harmonizing, myself included. It was honestly a pretty touching moment.
• To close out the "official" part of the show before the encores, Iron Maiden preformed "Fear of the Dark" and "Iron Maiden". The first song was tremendous fun, given that one part of it that's so easy to sing along with("Woah-oh-oh-oh, Woah-ohhh-oh-oh"), and I just about snapped my neck headbanging once the song kicked into high gear. During "Iron Maiden", a gigantic alien version of Eddie lumbered onto the stage and stole Dave Murray's guitar. My friend Jack was saying "un-fucking-believable" for the entire time this was going on.
• For their first encore they played "Number of the Beast", wherein everybody in the crowd, myself included, went absolutely clownshit. They then moved on to "Hallowed Be Thy Name", my favorite Iron Maiden song. I was described by my friends as having "completely freaked out" as soon as I heard the opening notes to the song, which is actually understating my reaction a little bit. They finished the whole thing off with a jam version of "Running Free", during which somebody threw a bag of weed onto the stage and Bruce Dickinson, somehow, managed to procure a police hat and jokingly chastise the crowd. It was a funny end to a wonderful show.
• Traffic sucked getting out. It was not quite as bad as it could have been, however.

If you hear Iron Maiden is going to be playing in your area, I wholeheartedly recommend going to see them. Even if you're not particularly fond of their music, they put on such an impressive show that you'd have to have a heart of stone not to be thrilled by the sheer energy of their performance. Combine this with incredible production values in terms of lights and staging and you have a concert that'll raise the bar for all others this year.

-CJ

A Token of My Extreme: Einsturzende Neubaten- Halber Mensch (1985)

1985; Some Bizarre Records/Potomak
http://www.neubauten.org/

Einsturzende Neubaten's name means "Exploding New Buildings" in English. As early pioneers in the art of brainpan-eviscerating industrial noise, this West Berlin act has lived up to their name while steadily refining their sound over the past thirty years. Their performances have always been a combination of highbrow Euro performance art, improvisational insanity and the joy and freedom of making a huge goddamn racket, and even though they've actually discovered an excellent sense of melody and subtlety over the years (probably adopted from frontman Blixa Bargeld's other band, Nick Cave's Bad Seeds), they are still determinedly unconventional as evidenced by their predilection for makeshift instruments such as pneumatic air tubes, sheets of metal and barrels used for percussion, power saws and drills, etc. If you ask dyed-in-the-wool EN fans where the evolution from brutal clanging sonic terrorism into nuanced songcraft started, they may point to 1989's Haus der Luge (whose "Feurio!" became an underground club hit and the topic of several remixes) or they may cite later opuses such as 1993's Tabula Rasa or even 2000's Silence Is Sexy (which remains my favorite album of theirs).

However in this reviewer's opinion it starts right here with Halber Mench. Early EN recordings before this were basically straight jackhammering with no melody whatsoever, with found objects, construction implements, rudimentary synths, even Blixa's voice, all reduced to a single role: percussion. It's fun stuff, albeit in small to moderate doses. While there's still plenty of crazy scraping, clanking and crackling noises in Halber Mench, the core membership of Blixa, Alexander Hacke, Mark Chung and crazed percussionist FM Einheit had discovered how to incorporate a sense of structure into their junkyard madness, and there was even some prominent guitar in a recognizable state of tune (!), a semi-melodic pop song with noise solo (!!) and a borderline dance tune (!!!). Blixa's voice was no longer all harsh Teutonic screaming, either--on songs like "Seele Brennt," "Letztes Biest (Am Himmel)" and "Sehnsucht" he revealed a menacing whisper and some poetic, baritone singing--elements that he would expand on over the course of his career. These art school kids were growing up, as were their musical ambitions.

The album begins very strangely even for these guys. The title track is a haunting, shamanic chant, completely a capella. Its alien quality carries across the rest of the record, even as the vocals yield completely to sheer mechanical clatter as they do on "Das Schaben"--a nine and a half minute noise bath that is the clear centerpiece of the album and hour-long movie (also named Halber Mensch) depicting their 1985 tour of Japan--like Germany, a place once similarly ravaged by war and post-industrial decay. Coincidence? Don't think so. All over this album you can find themes of death, deconstruction ("Desire comes out of chaos"), Cold War sociopolitics and existentialism/nihilism in the Nietzschean tradition proving that under the din, EN always had something intelligent to say. If you can speak German. Don't worry, a translation is provided.

Halber Mench is essential to an understanding of the development of this extraordinary outfit from a bunch of angry Teutonic punks with power tools into the amazing, cinematic sonic juggernaut they are now. Along with Throbbing Gristle's D.O.A., Foetus' Nail and SPK's Leichenschrei no discerning rivethead should be without this early industrial document in their collection.

Translation:

If you thought that Rammstein or even KMFDM was the epitome of scathing Germanic noise, well.... you may want to put this album on hold for a little while. Try Silence Is Sexy, Perpetuum Mobile or Tabula Rasa first before coming here. You don't have to hear SPK or Throbbing Gristle beforehand, but that can't hurt either. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Yes I know that is a Nietzsche quote, I'll cut this review off before it gets any more pretentious.

-SJ

The Next Guitar Hero's Track List is Perplexing

This is essentially what it sounds like. I'm mainly posting this because nobody has said anything in like a week on this blog, but this is music related after a fashion, and it caught my attention in a pretty significant way.

I think we can all agree, if we care about rhythm music games at all, that Guitar Hero 5's track list was kind of stupid and weird. It was largely composed of a few songs that were awesome and totally fun to play on a fake guitar("2 Minutes to Midnight" by Iron Maiden, "Sultans of Swing" by Dire Straits), songs that were terrible("In My Place" by Coldplay, "Plug In Baby" by Muse), songs from guitar oriented bands that weren't actually all that guitar oriented at all("Make It Wit Chu" by Queens of the Stone Age, "Sweating Bullets" by Megadeth), and songs that were awesome but had no business at all being in a guitar game("Superstition" by Stevie Wonder, "Under Pressure" by David Bowie and Queen).

Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock is taking a weird approach to solving that problem. The good part is that a lot more of the songs look to be guitar oriented. The bad part is that a lot of those songs suck. And still, there are a couple of outliers that don't really have any business being in the game at all.

On the one hand:

• Been Caught Stealing-Jane's Addiction
• Bloodlines-Dethklok
• Children of the Grave-Black Sabbath
• Money For Nothing-Dire Straits
• Stray Cat Blues-The Rolling Stones

Whoa! Those are five awesome songs that will be awesome to play on the plastitar! I mean, "Stray Cat Blues"? Shit yes, son!

But then you look a little closer, and there's:

• Bat Country-Avenged Sevenfold
• Bleed it Out-Linkin Park
• Bodies-Drowning Pool
• Dance, Dance-Fall Out Boy
• Feels Like the First Time-Foreigner
• I'm Not Okay(I Promise)-My Chemical Romance
• Love Gun-Kiss
• Uprising-Muse
• Wish-Nine Inch Nails
• Psychosocial-Slipknot

Good Christ, that's a lot of completely terrible shit! With those two setlists combined, it's like if you won the lottery, only to find out that the money is only valid in Botswana.

And then you have a couple where you don't even really understand what they're doing there. Like:

• Bohemian Rhapsody-Queen
• Sudden Death-Megadeth
• Indians-Anthrax
• Sharp Dressed Man(Live)-ZZ Top
• Aqualung-Jethro Tull

Okay. "Bohemian Rhapsody" is mostly piano. "Sudden Death" isn't even out yet. "Indians" is by far one of the easiest, least remarkable songs from the otherwise pretty guitar-driven Among the Living. "Sharp Dressed Man" already appeared in their first game, and they ripped "Aqualung" from Rock Band 2's track list.

Should it really be this difficult to make an excellent game based on songs that have guitar playing at the core? I know there are a lot of things to take into consideration-licensing and lawsuits and so forth-but there's been such a humongous library of guitar music made over the last 50 years, it should be impossible not to please everybody.

I dunno. Do you want to make a better one? You should try, I bet you could. The full track list for the game hasn't been announced, but let's see how many people we can get to make a better set of songs then the folks who decided the tunes for Warriors of Rock.

This is assuming anyone who reads this blog has any interest in this kind of thing at all. If not then I might just make a list myself at a later date, since I love doing shit like this.

Anyhow...if you have ideas for some tracks you'd like to see, sound off in the comments section!

-CJ