Mr eel
Music
Communion by Septicflesh
I like a bit of symphonic death metal — blast-beats and choirs ftw. That said, I don’t actually like a lot of the stuff that I hear. Most of it is frankly ridiculous, but I can deal with that as long as the tunes are good. And therein lies the problem. It’s pretty boring to hear metal racket with some strings slung behind it. Too few bands explore the possibilities of orchestration, treating it as mere colour. Additionally too many give into the temptation of writing long tunes, perhaps under the impression that it makes them epic. Few tunes deserve to be ten minutes long though.
Which brings me to Septicflesh. These guys get it. For one, the songs are nice and short. Only a few push five minutes long. The constraint of writing shorter songs seems to have made them focus on songwriting and it’s really paid off.
At the core, these songs are structured like most rock songs. Verse, bridge and chorus. No stupid orchestra only break downs, no martial marches, no weepy acoustic guitar solos. Just short, sharp and epic songs.
And the tiny things matter… one of my favorite moments is the introduction to Sangreal. The double-kicks roll for a bar, then for the next bar hit on the up-beat. It sounds off kilter and distinctly mechanical. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s just one of those little things that keeps me listening again and again.
I can foresee this one being on heavy rotation for awhile now.
To: Mute Records
Hello,
I unfortunately have a complaint to make. Today I purchased a copy of Goldfrapp’s Black Cherry.
Tomorrow I’ll be returning it to the shop where I bought it. It was only when I arrived home that I discovered the disc uses copy control. This means that I cannot for example rip the CD and listen to it on my iPod — a perfectly legitimate use considering I _paid_ for the album.
I’m actually quite annoyed. I buy a good deal of music, going out of my way to find and purchase music I like. I don’t appreciate being treated like a criminal!
It amazes me, that at a time when record labels moan about losing money to piracy, you guys are actually going out of your way to stiff paying customers.
Here after I’ll be avoiding any releases from your label and I’ll suggest that everyone else I know does the same.
Regards,
Luke Sutton
Kickrush, Kickrush, Kickrush - I Love Metal
Spanning everything from slow, doom, sludge to high-speed thrash, Heavy Metal covers a lot of ground. If you like some heavy tunes, you’re guaranteed to find something you love. Even if you don’t there is still bound to be something that you can dig.
My non-scientific, incomplete list of favorites:
Mastodon
These guys often get tagged as progressive. I think that’s because they use… you know melodies and stuff. For a time metal was dominated by death, thrash and variants — loud and fast was the name of the game. Now minds seem to be opening up again. I absolutely love Mastodon. This is the thinking man’s metal. Good solid grooves, plenty of energy and some top guitar work. They also love a bit of conceptualising, which gives the music an interesting flavour — for example the album Leviathan is about Moby Dick. Highly recommended. These guys are fuckin’ awesome.
Chimaira
Yes the misspelling of the name is intentional, don’t look at me. Straight up fast and violent. This stuff is just plain capital-H Heavy. I recommend their self-titled album as a starting point. Previous to that release they had a slight nu-metal influence — that horrible metal/rap cross over rubbish — but Chimaira - Chimaira is almost a return to the roots of metal. If you dig Pantera and Slayer, check em out.
The Dillinger Escape Plan
Dear sweet Darwin, I can’t tell you how much I love this band, but I’m gonna try. Math-metal — they make heavy use of odd time signatures, mid-song signature changes and stop/start dynamics. They’re also flat out fuckin’ brutal. The LP Miss Machine gets heavy play from me. More energy and technical-chops than most. Thank you DEP for being totally awesome.
ISIS
Ahhh, sludgy. ISIS sit at the slower end of the metal spectrum. Most of ISIS’ music is built around a slow and steady build-up to a heavy wall of sound. It’s a dynamic they use repeatedly, but it never gets old. I recommend the album Panopticon in particular.
Other notables
Here is a few other albums that I’ve been thrashing lately:
- Year of No Light - Nord
- Behold… the Arctopus - Skullgrid
- The End - Transfer Trachea Reverberations from Point
- Neurosis - Through Silver in Blood
- Soilwork - Sworn to a Great Divide
Music in progress - Flake
I was going to post more music as I was working on it, but I got distracted and forgot. But perhaps I’ll try again. I might remember to keep doing it this time. Here is a little something I was working on tonight.
BASS!!11111eleventy
I only wish I could have been there. This track is solid solid solid. It’s made for a hefty system. I’m a big fan of The Bug and I’m really looking forward to his work on the new Warrior Queen LP.
Announcing The Modern Ghost
After a fair period of gestation my collaborator Chris Lee and I have decided to make some of our work public. We’ve been working on a Drum and Bass project called The Modern Ghost. We’ve finally grounded the project. It has a sound and approach that we’re really happy with and we are going to expand on it with more music.
In the meantime we’ve set up a page on Virb which has some biographical guff and some audio previews. We’ll be adding more music as we work on it. You can check it out here.
Missy Blood
Just lately I’ve been working on music more heavily. Typically I’ve got loads of different bits on the go at any one time. That’s good and bad. Good because I’ve always got something to work on. Bad because it can make it difficult to finish anything.
But oh well!
Here is something I was doing for kicks. After listening to loads of Acid tunes, I decided to make something kinda old school. Download Missy Blood.
Apple Hobbling the Music Industry?
Well, that’s apparently true according to this article on Business Week. The core argument is that it’s difficult for other music stores like Napster to compete with the iTunes store because of the popularity of the iPod and the lock-in that results — music purchased from the iTunes store can only be played in iTunes or on an iPod.
Well, it’s certainly true that iTunes/iPod audio files (DRMed ACC) aren’t open and inter-operable, they aren’t stopping competitors from selling music that can be played on the iPod. They will quite happily play MP3 and AAC files from any company, but here is the crucial point, as long as they aren’t DRMed.
So now we get right to the core of it. The only thing that is actually making life difficult for these stores, is the major record labels obsession with copyright protection schemes. DRM is not about protecting rights, it’s simply about limiting what music fans can do with purchased music. It’s also a perfect vehicle for creating a lock-in, which is what Apple has done — some people guess it’s so they can sell more iPods.
So, it’s the labels fault. Not Apple. They wanted the DRM schemes, they got ‘em. Now if it starts fucking things up, the labels are the ones we should be looking at.
Stupid greedy bastards don’t know it, but they’re making trouble for themselves.
Where Music Critics Get It Wrong
I’ve bagged music criticism on this here blog before, but like a good little pedant I-just-can’t-let-go. I was reading this article about John Peel’s top 20 albums and I came across this wonderful quote from Steve Albini.
“John Peel said something that I thought was really profound. He said when he gets a record from somebody and he doesn’t like it, he assumes that it’s his problem and that the band would not have made that record if there wasn’t something valuable about it.”
Too fucking right man! That’s basically where I think most criticism fucks up. Trying to make your likes or dislikes someone else’s problem.
If I Was Responsible for the Amen Break…
I would be the proudest son of a bitch on earth. Coz as over-used as it is; it fuckin’ rules.
Nice little doco about the break here.