Album Reviews

[binnie]

From the vaults: The Afghan Whigs – Gentlemen (1993)

It’s a disturbing cover: two kids – one in bed, one on the edge of the bed, restless and loveless – displaying all the pathos, all the quiet despair of a dying a relationship. Silent, but deadly – just like the music. Part Nick Cave, part The Doors, part Creedence, The Afghan Whigs fourth album was a concept record based upon one man’s failure in a relationship. And it was dark. Take ‘Be Sweet’:


Now that I'm ashamed, it burns
But the weight is off
Now that you're out of the way
I turn and I can walk
You showed no sympathy, my love
And this was no place for you and me to walk alone

Ugly and honest was what Greg Dulli did best. Stuck somewhere between hippy and misanthrope, he propelled a sound not of fury or rage, but of the sense of something dark being restrained and accruing menace in the process. It’s all down to THAT voice – like honey rubbed into old wounds. ‘When We Two Parted’ – a lament on love stretched to the point of abuse – is as eerily Byronic as the title suggests, whilst ‘Debonair’s’ take on lust sounds dusty and creaking and ‘Gentlemen’ is the sound which Queens Of The Stone Age have made a career of: part funk, part funk, and a lot of blues. The guitars don’t thrust or strut – they interlock delicately, capturing space and creating a sound which is vast.

It’s an uneasy listen – tense, and yet sexy. But it’s honest and intelligent, and you wonder why more REM fans weren’t listening to this in 1993. If you’ve never hear this band, you need to – the sound is as affirming as it is challenging.

[binnie]

From the vaults: Everclear – Slow Motion Daydream (2003)

Everclear were not really grunge in the same way that Cheap Trick were not really hard rock – the sense of melody and of grandeur sets both bands somewhat apart from the genres with which they are associated. Their particular vision of American dystopia centres around songs of love, loss, despair and glee – far from the mopey woe-is-me angst which bedevilled the longevity of so many ‘90s rock bands, Everclear had a knack of projecting very personal tales into the ether, spinning from humour to heartache on the flip of a hook and always biting with relish. Thus we get the tongue in cheek ‘Volvo Driving Soccer Mom’ – a tale of ex-porn stars turned Republican voting housewives – next to the bitter social critique of superficiality in ‘Want To Die A Beautiful Death’ – songs worlds apart on paper but wrapped up into one band’s very unique take on rock ‘n’ roll.

It’s the subtlety which marks them out. Sure, ‘Blackjack’ is the sort of raucous and bitter tune the Foo Fighters dream about, but the yearning of ‘A Beautiful Life’ is delivered through luscious, almost Springsteen-esque, arrangements. Hook after tar-thick hook is delivered over crisp, chiselled guitars and delicate harmonies makes for a rewarding and uplifting listen. It’s drenched in emotion – ‘Science Fiction’, ‘New Blue Champion’ and ‘Chrysanthonam’ is music to melt too, and mark Art Alexakis out as one of the song-writers of his generation. More Tom Petty than Kurt Cobain, nothing here is overcooked or over-sold – the melodies breath themselves into your life.

‘Slow Motion Daydream’ did not have to clout of debut album ‘Sparkle & Fade’ or the sonorous perfection of ‘So Much For the Afterglow’. But it is a record in which each song is distinct, dripping with passion and oozing humanity. What more could you want from a rock band?

The best band you’ve never heard of.

[binnie]

Three Inches of Blood – Long Live Heavy Metal


The uninitiated just won’t hear the beauty in this. The musical equivalent of Dungeons and Dragons, this is a world with its own rituals, codes and practices at once insular and empowering. It’s a Heavy Metal formula at once classic and clichéd, drenched in Helloween, Maiden, Manowar, Priest and Mercyful Fate. Check out the lyrics to ‘Metal Woman’:

Do not betray a Metal Woman
You'll be the prey of a Metal Woman
Don't turn your back on a Metal Woman
She stalks the night the Metal Woman
Do not cry out for a Metal Woman
The cold steel eyes of a Metal Woman

Three Inches of Blood don’t celebrate the clichés so much as revel in them, penning new tunes in an old vocabularly and offering up 1985 attitude in 2012 production. Sheet metal riffs, demonic leads, and hellion vocals and offering up a pervasive whiff of King Diamond. The sheer joyous power of ‘My Sword Will Not Sleep’ – which ends in a ‘fuck you’ crescendo – is invigorating and offset by the twists, turns and power metal glory of ‘Men of Fortune’. The Accept style proto-thrash of ‘Leave It On Ice’ is aggressive in a positive way, whilst ‘Look Out’ – an anthem and an epic wrapped up in one operatic take on the Heavy Metal palette – is perhaps the perfect tribute to Ronnie James Dio.

Cam Pipes vocals will either be loved or loathed, but the hooks they propel WILL be in your skull for days, and Shane Clark and Justin Hagberg’s millita riffing with leave your neck soar. More consistently brilliant than most of their influences, Three Inches of Blood deliver lashing upon lashing of well written, gigantic, riff driven heavy metal of almost symphonic proportions.

[binnie]

Cancer Bats – Dead Set On Living

Cancer Bats are always going to be plagued by the fact that they made a classic album. Their sophomore record – ‘Hail Destroyer’ – was such a compellingly vicious amalgamation of metal and hardcore delivered with the perfect balance of raw power a rock ‘n’ roll abandon. It was so good that the follow up – 2010s ‘Bears, Mayors, Scrapes and Bones’ – was almost doomed to be underwhelming. Not a bad record by any means, but when you’ve made an album principally remembered for a cover – admittedly a pretty bitchin’ cover of ‘Sabotage’ by The Beastie Boys – you know you’ve got a problem.

It’s refreshing, then, to see that the Bats are back. Well, partially at least. DSOL is a record in which some absolute gems are set amidst a glut of mediocrity. Indeed what strikes you about opener ‘Rats’ is how much it sounds like a modern US metal band – there’s a sense that the punk rock has been dialled down, and with it some of the fury has been subsumed. It continues with the mid-paced ‘Bricks & Mortar’, which is awash with Lamb Of God style blues-hewn riffs and rolling groove. You can hear Pantera, for sure. But you can hear metalcore, too.

But then we get a glimmer of the old friend we loved so much. ‘Road Sick’ – a nitro-charged hardcore-rock ‘n’ roll amalgam – is bombastic ode to the road-dog lifestyle which is bound to become a live favourite. As they kick up into the title-track the demented groove they’re known for is resplendent in its glory, and Liam Cormier delivers some infectious vocal melodies. By the time you’ve finished ‘Drunken Physics’ and ‘Rally The Wicked’ your screaming ‘FUCK THE WORLD’ with a glorious, demented smile on your face.

Less frenetic and more focussed than in the past, Cancer Bats have delivered a series of focussed and distinctive songs which makes DSOL a much stronger and more rewarding affair than BMSAB was. But doing so has seen them pursue a sound closer to the conventions of modern metal, and it has lost them some of their patented power. It’s certainly something of a return to form, but it’s a sad fact that any Cancer Bat’s record will always suffer from the weight of expectation which ‘Hail Destroyer’ has left on their legacy.

[binnie]

From the vaults: Pantera – Vulgar Display of Power (1992)

If Metallica’s ‘Black Album’ was something a Trojan horse which snuck a much, much heavier form of metal into the mainstream via a superlative production, Pantera’s ‘Vulgar Display of Power’ – released just six months later a debuting a no. 1 on the Billboard Charts – kicked the doors down, torched the joint, and screamed ‘where’s the women?’ Twenty years on, and it’s still a masterpiece.

Straight out of the bulging veins of Phil Anselmo’s then shaved cranium, this was a record bristling with street smarts, hard knocks and underground cool. It was a moment in which heavy music changed. Permanently. Not just because of Anselmo’s distinctive vocal style – which has been shamelessly copied by pretty much every metal singer since without anyone coming close to the perfect synthesis of brutality and emotion – or Dimebag’s revolutionary guitar playing, but because it marked an aesthetic change in what it meant to be metal. There are no comic book demons, melodramatic soundscapes or dungeons and dragons escapism here – Pantera served up a sound based upon the positive application of aggression as a form of catharsis. We might call it ‘overcoming’ – a synthesis of lyrical themes which pushed beyond crass anti-authoritarianism and blunt force musical power which energised, expelled and inspired. The thrash bands had paved the way, but Anselmo showed how lyrics could enhance the impact through a pursuit of balanced honesty than never teetered over into meandering introspection. It was a fist to the wall, not a therapy session, and 95% of metal bands since have been emulating it:

‘My strength is a number. And my soul lies in every one’.

BOOM!!!! Fuck Nirvana, THIS put the heart back into heavy music.

If 1990’s ‘Cowboys From Hell’ was the sound of a band still shaking off the shackles of their influences – namely Judas Priest and Metallica – ‘Vulgar….’ was the culmination of that process. Brimming over with hulking riffs, bowel-shattering aggression, and solos which were both dazzling and memorable, what set Pantera apart was the ability to tie everything down to a huge groove. That prevented the sound becoming cluttered, and made it utterly captivating. You know these tunes – they’re part of the bloodstream of metal. From the body blow swagger of ‘New Level’, the soundtrack to a riot which is ‘Fucking Hostile’, or ‘Walk’, the Smoke-On-The-Water of thrash, Pantera had jewels-a-plenty. But 20 years on, it’s the deeper cuts that feel sharpest. The tortured, twisted tale of control which thrusts forward ‘This Love’ is a power ballad which marks Anselmo out as a hell of a singer; whilst ‘Rise’ has such a weighty groove despite its speed it is the aural equivalent of a baseball bat beatdown. And when you hear the ode to anger which is ‘Live In A Hole’ – with the riff to end all riffs – it’s over. Few could come close.

And, of course, there’s Dimebag, metal’s ‘Eddie Van Halen’ moment. Pick up a modern metal record and you’ll hear his style – it’s transcended into the vocabulary of the genre. But no-one can touch him for riffs, tone or feel in our world – he’s up there with the Iommis, the Hetfields and the Mustaines. What really marked him out, however, was his ability to resist over-playing. Pantera was always a BAND, not a guitar player. They laid down a sense of togetherness, a sense of belonging to something bigger than yourself – and that aesthetic was a huge part of why they made the big time. ‘A Vulgar Display Of Power’ was not just a great album packed full of great songs – it was innovative, and it changed the game by making music this heavy blast into the mainstream. Without it, no Korn, no Slipknot, no Lamb of God. Taking the history of heavy metal from c.1970-2012, this might not quite nudge its way into the Top 5 best records of the genre (although it’d be close) – but it would damn sure be near the top of the 5 most important.

[binnie]

From the vaults: Zico Chain – Eponymous (2006)

This self-titled EP was the debut release of a British three-piece who possess the remarkable ability of blending together their influences – Nirvana, Mudhoney, The Wildhearts – into a flavour which is distinctly their own. Opener ‘Rohypnol’ comes out slugging like it has one shot at the big time and it knows it. Sounding like a ‘Bleach’ era Nirvana juggernaut, this is dirty, dirty rock ‘n’ roll that’s just sweet enough to stick. Oh, and it has hooks. Big, juicy ball swagging hooks – just check out ‘This Thing’ if you don’t believe me. Elsewhere, ‘Brain’ steps outside the tradition power-trio formula to deliver something more akin to angular alt.rock which shows what this band can do when they step down from full tilt – but it’s the schizo pop-face-fucking-metal fury of ‘The Lonely Ones’ that truly shines. 6 songs, 15 minutes – wham, bam, thank you man.

Was this perfect? Hell no, but the warts ‘n’ all approach creates a sound as vibrant and vital as the first time you ever heard rock ‘n’ roll. This has all the naivety of a young band starting out, and it sounds like a joyous riot in a tin shed. It’s a glorious, life-affirming racket that you should track down – and while you’re at it, grab hold of their two full length records too.

[binnie]

Wolfsbane – Save the World

It happens about halfway through ‘Blue Sky’, the opening tune on Wolfsbane’s first album in almost 20 years: you’re gone – smiling, jumping, bouncing around the room like a drunken reunion of old friends. The Howling Mad Shitheads are baaaaaack and boy does it feel good. HUGE choruses, power chords, screaming solos and a delivery which has bollocks by the truck load, Wolfsbane’s charm was always meat and potatoes metal served up by a bunch of misfits with their own distinctive ethos, humour and charisma. The autobiographical ‘Smoke And Red Light’ oozes defiance, whilst ‘Teacher’ is a pure dirty old man grin.

On the smooth ‘Who Are You Now?’ the sound is not quite as dirty as it was back in the day – it’s a little crisper, a little richer and Jase Edwards’s guitar finds reference points a little wider than the metallic palate – but this band was always unflinchingly honest in their approach to their craft, and attempting to simply replicate the sound of the early ‘90s wouldn’t be true to that. But during the more mature ‘Illusion Of Love’ you realize that NO-ONE sounds like this – Wolfsbane make a distinctive brew from the bric-a-brac of heavy metal. Oh, and if anyone doubts that Blaze Bayley can put a song across, they should check out ‘Starlight’ to see that he’s as convincing soft as he is hard.

If you don’t fall in love with songs as raucous as ‘Everybody’s Looking For Something Baby’ and ‘Did It For the Money’ then you really are mental. Wolfsbane may be the unluckiest band in metal – let’s hope that fate treats ‘em more kindly this time because the world needs more Howlin’ Mad Shitheads. I know I’ll hear better records this year, but I doubt I’ll encounter any that I enjoy more.

[Dave's Bitch]

From the vaults: Pantera – Vulgar Display of Power (1992)

If Metallica’s ‘Black Album’ was something a Trojan horse which snuck a much, much heavier form of metal into the mainstream via a superlative production, Pantera’s ‘Vulgar Display of Power’ – released just six months later a debuting a no. 1 on the Billboard Charts – kicked the doors down, torched the joint, and screamed ‘where’s the women?’ Twenty years on, and it’s still a masterpiece.

Straight out of the bulging veins of Phil Anselmo’s then shaved cranium, this was a record bristling with street smarts, hard knocks and underground cool. It was a moment in which heavy music changed. Permanently. Not just because of Anselmo’s distinctive vocal style – which has been shamelessly copied by pretty much every metal singer since without anyone coming close to the perfect synthesis of brutality and emotion – or Dimebag’s revolutionary guitar playing, but because it marked an aesthetic change in what it meant to be metal. There are no comic book demons, melodramatic soundscapes or dungeons and dragons escapism here – Pantera served up a sound based upon the positive application of aggression as a form of catharsis. We might call it ‘overcoming’ – a synthesis of lyrical themes which pushed beyond crass anti-authoritarianism and blunt force musical power which energised, expelled and inspired. The thrash bands had paved the way, but Anselmo showed how lyrics could enhance the impact through a pursuit of balanced honesty than never teetered over into meandering introspection. It was a fist to the wall, not a therapy session, and 95% of metal bands since have been emulating it:

‘My strength is a number. And my soul lies in every one’.

BOOM!!!! Fuck Nirvana, THIS put the heart back into heavy music.

If 1990’s ‘Cowboys From Hell’ was the sound of a band still shaking off the shackles of their influences – namely Judas Priest and Metallica – ‘Vulgar….’ was the culmination of that process. Brimming over with hulking riffs, bowel-shattering aggression, and solos which were both dazzling and memorable, what set Pantera apart was the ability to tie everything down to a huge groove. That prevented the sound becoming cluttered, and made it utterly captivating. You know these tunes – they’re part of the bloodstream of metal. From the body blow swagger of ‘New Level’, the soundtrack to a riot which is ‘Fucking Hostile’, or ‘Walk’, the Smoke-On-The-Water of thrash, Pantera had jewels-a-plenty. But 20 years on, it’s the deeper cuts that feel sharpest. The tortured, twisted tale of control which thrusts forward ‘This Love’ is a power ballad which marks Anselmo out as a hell of a singer; whilst ‘Rise’ has such a weighty groove despite its speed it is the aural equivalent of a baseball bat beatdown. And when you hear the ode to anger which is ‘Live In A Hole’ – with the riff to end all riffs – it’s over. Few could come close.

And, of course, there’s Dimebag, metal’s ‘Eddie Van Halen’ moment. Pick up a modern metal record and you’ll hear his style – it’s transcended into the vocabulary of the genre. But no-one can touch him for riffs, tone or feel in our world – he’s up there with the Iommis, the Hetfields and the Mustaines. What really marked him out, however, was his ability to resist over-playing. Pantera was always a BAND, not a guitar player. They laid down a sense of togetherness, a sense of belonging to something bigger than yourself – and that aesthetic was a huge part of why they made the big time. ‘A Vulgar Display Of Power’ was not just a great album packed full of great songs – it was innovative, and it changed the game by making music this heavy blast into the mainstream. Without it, no Korn, no Slipknot, no Lamb of God. Taking the history of heavy metal from c.1970-2012, this might not quite nudge its way into the Top 5 best records of the genre (although it’d be close) – but it would damn sure be near the top of the 5 most important.

Fantastic review Binnie

Since reading this i have been blasting the album non stop.I love Pantera.I think Phil is one of the best metal singer's and frontmen.He knows when to sing (And has a really good voice) and when to rough it up.

Great review,Great Album,Great band

[ashstralia]

hey bin, listened to the new cancer bats album?

i'm diggin it.

[rockhead]

are any of the remaining members still talking to one another since Dime's passing? as i seem to remember Vinier Paul and Phil had a stouch at one stage.

[binnie]

hey bin, listened to the new cancer bats album?

i'm diggin it.

Look at page 499 on this page

[binnie]

are any of the remaining members still talking to one another since Dime's passing? as i seem to remember Vinier Paul and Phil had a stouch at one stage.

Phil and Vinny do not speak.

This had something to do with Phil saying in an interview that Dime 'deserved to be beaten' (or words to that effect) only a few days before the murder. There was bad blood from the reunion.

Rex played bass in Down for years, so I guess he and Phil are reasonably close. He has recently left that band, however.

[Dave's Bitch]

are any of the remaining members still talking to one another since Dime's passing? as i seem to remember Vinier Paul and Phil had a stouch at one stage.

Rex Brown was in Down with Phil up until last year

[Dave's Bitch]

Phil and Vinny do not speak.

This had something to do with Phil saying in an interview that Dime 'deserved to be beaten' (or words to that effect) only a few days before the murder. There was bad blood from the reunion.

Rex played bass in Down for years, so I guess he and Phil are reasonably close. He has recently left that band, however.

Ah beat me to it

[ashstralia]

Look at page 499 on this page

thanks heaps mate; really appreciate your work.

i'm a bit busy atm to be scrollin through many pages..