Album Reviews

[binnie]

From the vaults: Sunna – One Minute Silence (2000)

The debut album from this British band saw heavy music fused with industrial elements, trip hop and the darker edge of dance music. No-one sounded like this before; and no-one has since. You can tease out some of the influences – Killing Joke, The Prodigy, Misery Loves Co. (remember them?) – but in truth, this was much more than the sum of its parts. The smokey vocals and grungy lament of the acoustic ‘Pre-occupation’ contrasts with the glorious hooks, frazzled guitars and loops of ‘I’m Not Trading’; and whilst the industrial stomp of ‘Power Struggle’ evokes The Prodigy mating with tar thick grunge, the dripping, drugged-out acoustic beats of ‘O.D’ and ‘Too Much’ offer something less instantaneous, but rich in all its seeping glory. Indeed, ‘Forlorn’ is music to melt too.

This was not metal – it eschews histrionic and wails of the that genre – but it is a warm and glistening record full of dark moments. ‘Instant Pulse’ combines a teasing vocal with the sonic boom of a distorted bass and the incessant mantra of ‘I wanna know if I wanna know if’ to drill itself into your brain. Powerful, delicate, and unique.

[WACF]

Really like the new Machine Head release.

Love their covers...thought this was outstanding...great to see them do a Rush song.

[binnie]

Machine Head and Mastodon reviews will be coming this weekend.......

[Seshmeister]

Really like the new Machine Head release.

Love their covers...thought this was outstanding...great to see them do a Rush song.

Not sure about the vocals on this...

[binnie]

I'm not sure about the vocals on most Rush records.....

[Seshmeister]

Take that back!!!!

[Shaun Ponsonby]

I firmly believe these guys peaked with Maybe I'll Catch Fire (which came out around 10 or 11 years ago) and have been treading water ever since. I mean, the follow-up to This Addiction is an acoustic covers album (Damnesia) of their own material.

Maybe I'll Catch Fire was as good (and in places, better) an album as Husker Du ever put out. For some proof of this, I offer a track from that album called "She Took Him To The Lake."

PLAY LOUD!

Saw Dan Andriano on the Revival Tour a few weeks ago. Great night. He was probably the weakest set of the four (Brian Fallon, Chuck Ragan, Dave Hause and Andriano), but then the fire alarm went off 3 times during his set...so I'm guessing he was a wee bit distracted.

[Mr Walker]

Not so much a review of the content... but IMO, they did an exemplary job on the remasters in the new Pink Floyd Discovery Box Set. In this day and age where 'remaster' means 'brickwall the fuck out of the source material to make it as loud as we fucking can'... these remasters are very dynamic and a real pleasure to listen to.

[lesfunk]

You're such an audiophile Jack...

[Mr Walker]

You're such an audiophile Jack...

A wannabe audiophile

[binnie]

Not so much a review of the content... but IMO, they did an exemplary job on the remasters in the new Pink Floyd Discovery Box Set. In this day and age where 'remaster' means 'brickwall the fuck out of the source material to make it as loud as we fucking can'... these remasters are very dynamic and a real pleasure to listen to.

Pink Floyd are a case some other bands I could name should learn from. A load of guys who loathe one another but still seem to manage to protect their legacy....

[binnie]

Machine Head – Unto the Locust

After 2007’s ‘The Blackening’ – awarded ‘album of the decade’ by UK magazine Metal Hammer – Machine Head’s next record seemed destined to disappoint. It’s is refreshing, then, to discover that ‘Unto The Locust’ is such an invigorating album. Choosing to move into new pastures rather than try – and ultimately fail – to top the epic grandeur of their previous release, Machine Head smash their thrash roots into progressive metal, and take their sound a long, long way from the post-thrash urban rumble of their 1994 masterpiece ‘Burn My Eyes’, and album which was – no arguments please – the most accomplished metal debut ever penned. If ‘The Blackening’ was Machine Head’s attempt to match the metallic majesty of ‘Master of Puppets’ for this generation, ‘Unto the Locust’ tempers the fury which the control and sonic tapestries akin to Maiden and – believe it or not – Rush, pointing beyond their characteristic bluster to paint in shades other than anger.

The result sees a band with one foot in the past, and the other striving purposefully forward. ‘Unto The Locust’ is not as devastatingly anthemic as ‘Burn My Eyes’, or as staggeringly epic as ‘The Blackening’. Yet it is ambitious and strident in its own way. Consider opener ‘I Am Hell’. A choral opening gives way to a bullish mid-pace riff overlaid with an harrowing chant, before opening up into a full on thrash cauldron which is as furious – and heavy – as Machine Head has ever sounded. Complex arrangements, beautifully held together by Dave McClain’s remarkable drumming, see the band evolving into a taut, lean and shit kicking machine overlaid with Flynn and Demmel’s frantic shredding. It’s dazzling, exhaustive stuff.

But it’s also a sign as the album as a whole. Early in their career Machine Head specialized in the metal anthem. Yet ‘Unto the Locust’ is not instantly gratifying – there is no ‘Davidian’, ‘Imperium’ or ‘Aesthetics of Hate’ – and rewards repeated listens. This is the sign of band not content to rest on their laurels, and to push the barriers of their sound. Thus ‘Darkness Within’, which eschews the thrashier assaults of their trademarks for a take on raw emotion. Here Flynn puts aside his typical visceral bark in favour of something tenderer, and the band, whilst still heavy, employs a series of arrangements more akin to Springsteen than Slayer. The result is something huge, something invigorating and almost operatic. Consider also album closer ‘Who We Are’, replete with prog leanings and a children’s choir (assembled from the band’s open children). Building and building towards its climax with a crushingly defiant chorus – ‘This is who we are/ This is who I am’ – it demands regular live treatment.

But you’d be mistaken if this desire to push beyond the thrash template has dampened the fury. ‘This Is the End’ is pure hard-core rumble, a hulking riff which most bands would sell their grandmothers to write propelled along at a dizzying speed by a frantic rhythm sections, before giving way to a series of tempos and melodic sections. ‘Locust’ combines a classic riff, instantaneous hook and huge groove into something truly special, and is the sound of a band in control of its compositional skills: pummellingly heavy and persistently melodic. Perhaps most impressive of all, however, is ‘Be Still And Know’. Another epic – and we mean EPIC – big, rolling groove of a crunching riff is given added dynamism by a beautiful and moving chorus. Powerful contrasts – beauty and the beast, metal and melody – work in near perfect symbiosis. Seven albums and almost 20 years in, you wonder where the hunger is coming from.

Slipknot’s Joey Jordison recently claimed that Machine Head are ‘amongst the top 10 metal bands ever’. That’s a big claim, and in truth it’s an overstatement. But in the modern-era – the era post-grunge – you would have to put them amongst the big hitters. Korn faded after their early promise; Max Cavalera-era Sepultura imploded after they hit their earth quaking stride; and Slipknot lost something when they branched into territories more melodic. Surveying the metal scene in 2011, it would certainly be fair to say that Machine Head’s peers Pantera and Fear Factory have undoubtedly been more influential on the blueprint of the modern sound – and the Texas groove masters certainly delivered more anthems – but I’m not sure even those metallic behemoths could claim to have tapped into the beating heart of positive aggression which makes heavy music so irresistible in a way that Robb Flynn and co. have. ‘Unto The Locust’ isn’t Machine Head’s best record - but it’s a damn fine solidification of their place at the top.

[binnie]

Suicide Silence – The Black Crown

The deathcore sub-genre has yielded attraction and repulsion in almost equal measures in recent years. Blending ‘traditional’ death metal with staccato burst of riffage which act as a pulse to the songs, the effect can be the aural equivalent of motion sickness. But it owns you. On ‘The Black Crown’ – their 3rd album – Suicide Silence deliver a collection of focussed and pithy compositions which push forward furious blasts of overkill which almost always manage to steer clear of overwhelming. Death metal purists will never be happen with anything which smacks of trendiness, but in truth much of the criticism levelled at this band focuses as much on their (trendy) dress sense rather than their music – indeed, only a wilful idiot would deny that ‘The Black Crown’ is a focussed, pulverizing blast of metal.

‘Fuck Everything’ – as puerile as it is pugnacious – would be anthemic in any genre. ‘Human Violence’ – with its downtuned, furious riffage and blast beats – achieves an almost inhuman speed, and is punctuated by tasty time-changes to adorn the fury with groove. ‘Slave to Substance’ is a mid-paced jack hammer, and the progressive passages of ‘Cross-eyed Catastrophe’ show the signs of band who could quite easily transcend their formula. Taking the courage to do so would be advisable, because as good as ‘The Black Crown’ is, for much of the time Suicide Silence are not terribly far away from Lamb Of God territory – in truth, The Black Dahlia Murder are doing much more in pushing the boundaries of death metal from within than SS are from the fringes. But it would be churlish to end on a note of criticism in the presence of such an accomplished record – indeed, you have to love a sense of humour in evidence in a band who put ‘muah’ in their lyric sheet! There is plenty of free thinking here. ‘O.C.D’ – an unusual subject matter for a DM band – is truly harrowing, whilst ‘You Only Live Once’ proves that DM can be uplifting and life affirming.

[binnie]

Mastodon – The Hunter

Realising that no-one – least of all the band themselves – could top the ever expanding temporal and sonic tapestries of ‘Crack The Skye’ without straining the limits of what composition can bear and leaping over the boundaries of taste headfirst into ‘up your own ass’ creak, Mastodon have opted to strip everything back for ‘The Hunter’. It’s a glorious middle finger to expectations, a collection of punchy and focussed forward-thinking heaviness from metal’s most copiously brilliant band, a reaction to their proggy leanings which proves that their song-writing talents can be realized in compositions of any length. Oh, and it’s also epically heavy.

Opener ‘Black Tongue’ is anthemic. A series of riffs most bands would sell an organ to pen are driven along by Troy Sander’s shifting, weaving percussive assault and overlain by the crisp, melodic vocals which the band have opted for on their recent records. It sounds like the birth of something which has been gestating in a swamp for millennia, something monstrous but also touchingly – almost achingly – human. It’s followed by a curve-ball of the most pleasant variety: on ‘Curl The Burl’ Mastodon delve into stoner vibes and gargantuan hooks, laying into some seriously heavy Kyuss-esque grooves which hit you in the chest like dawn air. It’s beautifully, spectacularly, uncomplicated in its brilliance. ‘Blasteroid’ – featuring another dazzling riff – grunts, swirls and pummels in a series of oft-kilter polyrhythms, and is easily the most aggressive the band has sounded since ‘Leviathon’ – it’s the sound of Sabbath smashing into Bad Brains through David Gilmor’s amp.

What impresses most is the variety of the band’s sonic palette. ‘Dry Bone Valley’ is outlaw punk; ‘Stargasm’ evokes the floating beauty of Jane’s Addiction, shimmering on the boundaries of what it means to by heavy in every sense of the term; ‘Spectrelight’ – featuring Neurosis’s Scott Kelly – is a slab of primal vengeance; and ‘Octopuss Had No Friends’ is almost a Wagnerian slab of weirdness. Perhaps most evocative of all is the title track, a choral, lyrical ode to loss and mourning which features a solo of such delicate power it thunders. This is a record of beauty, beast and barren, primal heaviness.

Where ‘Crack…’ existed in a timescale which was defiantly its own, ‘The Hunter’ sees a Mastodon which is altogether punchier, more anthemic, but still defiantly un-commercial. And yet, for all the brilliance in evidence here, this is Mastodon’s weakest studio record. In truth, ‘Remission’, ‘Leviathon’, ‘Blood Mountain’ and ‘Crack The Skye’ were all more than the sum of their parts – they contained a self-contained vision, and aesthetic, and sense of purpose which transcended the unique nature of each of their songs. In short, they were ALBUMS. ‘The Hunter’ is not a disjointed record by any means, but it’s more of a collection of songs than a self-contained whole, and it’s consequently not quite as unified aesthetically and emotionally as Mastodon’s other offerings. That being said, even a notch down from ‘kill’ mode, Mastodon can still deliver one of the best records of the year: they’re so talented you could punch them.

[binnie]

From the vaults: Baby Animals – Shaved & Dangerous (1993)

The Baby Animals were the rarest of things: a band that combines balls with pop sensibilities. ‘Shaved & Dangerous’ – their second album – combined huge hooks, sultry guitar work and no frills rock songs to immense effect, and the whole thing oozes class. Opener ‘Don’t Tell Me What To Do’ showcases Suze Demarchi’s smokey vocals, and introduces a sound which is both funkier and crisper than the raucous raw power of their debut album. ‘Buputa’ is a beautiful, twisted hard rock song which shows off the bands musicianship and sounds like the Red Hot Chilli Peppers with added grit; and ‘Backbone’ – with its whip-crack of a riff – is HUGE, passes from rock fury to Kate Bush folk. The combination of one too many mellower moments results in the album sagging in the middle, but with the likes of out and out rockers ‘Stoopid’ and ‘At the End of The Day’ (sung partially in French) around the corner, the Baby Animals soon redeem themselves. ‘Shaved & Dangerous’ was not as direct – or as much unadulterated fun – as their debut, but it is a record which rewards repeated listens and one of considerable substance and impact.