I first discovered Corrosion of Conformity during the mid-’90s Pepper Keenan (guitar/vocals) era; by then, they had fully traded in the crossover thrash of 1985′s Animosity album in favor of the swaggering, metallic southern rock of Deliverance and Wiseblood. That’s the COC I had come to know and love over the years, so I was admittedly apprehensive upon hearing that the band had reconvened without Keenan at the helm to record their first new material since 2005′s underrated In the Arms of God. Would they abandon the smoked-out stoner-isms that had made COC so near and dear to my heart in favor of revisiting the crossover days of yore? Would Keenan’s absense leave an unfillable hole in their sound?
Continue reading
Tag Archives: hard rock
Behold! The Monolith – Defender, Redeemist (self-released, 2012)
I’ve always been fascinated by power trios. It surely has something to do with my love of all things raw and stripped down, since it doesn’t get any more stripped down than tres hombres against the world, brandishing only electric instruments and bad attitudes. The power trio is the bare minimum of musicians needed to produce a full and complete sound within a rock or metal format (although I’m sure there are plenty of duos who would beg to differ… eh, fuck ‘em); it’s all about maximizing the minimal, and I’ve often found that power trios are inherently heavier and more powerful-sounding than these bands that feel the need to have three guitarists, two vocalists, four drummers, a percussionist, a keyboardist, a DJ, an acrobat, a lion tamer, etc… just listen to Motorhead, Venom, High on Fire or Hellhammer and you’ll catch my drift.
Continue reading
Black Pyramid – II (Meteor City, 2012)
The world needs real rock ‘n’ roll more than ever. Have you listened to the radio lately? Go on then, have a listen to some of the limp-wristed, candy-assed, sub-Nickelback horseshit that passes for mainstream rock music lately and you’ll hear what I’m talking about, a bunch of preening jackasses who look like they stepped out of the pages of the Abercrombie & Fuckface catalogue, playing songs about having sex with sluts, drinking, doing drugs and having sex with more sluts. And I don’t mean that in a filthy/sleazy/awesome Venom or Motorhead way either. I mean it in a soulless, sac-less, nauseating, pristinely produced and utterly contrived faux-grunge frat-rock way, replete with vocals that sound like a cross between Eddie Vedder and a goat with a cob up its ass. Yes folks, we need real rock ‘n’ roll more than ever.
Continue reading
THKD’S NUCLEAR NEW YEAR’S EVIL GIVEAWAY!
Thanks to you, the loyal readers, 2011 was the best year ever for That’s How Kids Die. I can’t believe the great response the blog has gotten over the course of the last year, and I’m honored that so many of you are willing to take time out of your days and nights to read my incoherent ramblings on all things heavy metal.
So, in the spirit of giving something back to you, the readers, and to kick off another year of THKD with a bang, I am proud to announce our first ever giveaway!
Continue reading
Blitzkrieg #8: Oooh Baby I Like it Raw (from the Trashmen to Transilvanian Hunger)
In a recent conversation about music, my wife pointed out that I tend to gravitate towards stuff that is very raw and simplistic. I believe “garagey” was the term she used. She’s absolutely right. I guess this has long been the case, but I had never really thought about it consciously until she brought it up. I mean, I’ve certainly done my fair share of writing and espousing the virtues of raw, primitive music, but I never really considered just how much my listening preferences are dominated by these characteristics.
Continue reading
Alice Cooper – Welcome 2 My Nightmare (Universal, 2011)
“The first one is the best.” This is widely regarded as a universal truth when it comes to films, books and albums that are part of a series. Certainly there are exceptions to the rule; I’ve always preferred The Empire Strikes Back to Star Wars and Aliens to Alien, although I’m sure that many will disagree. But by and large, the first piece of work in a series is superior to its sequels, as it is typically the freshest and most original installment, breaking new ground and setting the tone for everything that follows. It also sets the bar, often setting it too high; the more highly regarded the original becomes, the more difficult it is for sequels to do anything but pale in comparison. Continue reading
Opeth – Heritage (Roadrunner, 2011)
I’ve never been able to understand why musical evolution is largely frowned upon in extreme metal circles. It’s as if something went horribly awry back when rock music begat heavy metal and then heavy metal begat death metal, black metal, thrash, etc. That essential aspect of rock ‘n’ roll’s spirit which calls for constant change was almost completely stamped out in favor of a stunted “different is bad” philosophy that continues to permeate the scene today. Granted, “different” doesn’t always equal “good” either, but in order for any artistic or cultural movement to survive it must continually progress through trial and error, or risk degenerating into irrelevance and ultimately dying out. Yet somehow, metal’s more extreme genres have managed to remain in stasis for nearly three decades. Of course there are many exceptions, but for every one innovator there are literally hundreds of bands that have progressed their sound little (if at all) over the course of numerous albums, lineup changes, etc. Pillars of the various extreme metal subgenres, such as Transilvanian Hunger, Heartwork, Left Hand Path, Rust in Peace, etc are all around the two decade old mark, and yet bands are still contently copying them, and acting like they’ve achieved something of note on their own in doing so. When metal went extreme, it forgot that the bands from which it spawned, the Black Sabbaths and Led Zeppelins and Deep Purples of the world, never released two albums alike or even two songs alike. Production values may improve, bands may become more technically proficient (and in some cases even these two will cause severe backlash), but stepping outside the imaginary, self-imposed boundaries of a chosen metal subgenre is largely verboten.
Continue reading
Today is the Day – Pain is a Warning (Black Market Activities, 2011)
The American Dream is in the shitter. If you don’t think so, you’re either rich or comatose. Most of us work at jobs we can’t stand for low pay, have health insurance policies that don’t cover anything, are buried under a mountain of debt and lead largely unfulfilling lives that are subject to the whims of a government run by a bunch of wealthy, over-privileged scumbags that couldn’t even be bothered to piss on us if we were on fire. In many other countries, these same conditions would spark a full-scale revolt, but Americans are far too complacent, too content to keep eating shit until they die from it.
But for all of us that are content to ride atop the avalanche of feces that was once the American Dream all the way to the bitter end, there are a few that are mad as hell and aren’t going to take it anymore. Steve Austin, mastermind behind Nashville-based power trio Today is the Day is one of them. But what does a musician with a large collection of high-powered firearms and a penchant for creating some of the most intense and abrasive metal/rock known to man do when they’ve had enough? Instead of going postal, Austin has channelled his rage against the dying of the light into a hellishly harsh rock ‘n’ roll record called Pain is a Warning.
Yes, you’re reading that last sentence correctly. Pain is a Warning is first and foremost a rock ‘n’ roll record. In fact, it’s probably the most rocking album Today is the Day has ever recorded. It rocks hard and heavy. It rocks like a goddamn motherfucker. It also sounds like it wants to rip your head off and shit all over the bloody stump, and that might be what really separates Today is the Day from 99.999% of the bands currently professing to play rock music. This isn’t limp-dick radio rock about doing coke and banging sluts. This is real anger, real hatred, real emotions harnessed into pure negative energy and unleashed through guitar, bass, drums and vocals.
Music this brutalizing needs the right production to help it along in getting the point across. For Pain is a Warning, Austin wisely chose to enlist Converge’s Kurt Ballou to sit behind the boards. The result is Today is the Day on steroids. Never has the band sounded so crushing, so ready to come through the speakers and grab you by the throat. Bringing in Ballou has also allowed Austin (who usually also produces) to turn his attention completely towards crafting the music itself, resulting in the most consistent, focused and visceral Today is the Day album in years. While there are a few subdued moments, such as the psychedelic “Remember to Forget” and the almost-country “This is You”, Pain is a Warning is mostly an ultra-noisy hard rock inferno with nods to metal, punk and hardcore. Tracks such as “Death Curse” “Wheelin’” and “Samurai” are violent and pummeling, but also rife with hooks and barbs that will lodge themselves in your memory, forcing you to press the play button again immediately after the album has ended.
Pain is a Warning is every bit as gnarly lyrically as it is musically. Austin sounds so intense delivering lines like “I’m so broke / I can’t feed you / It’s cold / I can’t heat you” and “iPhone iPod iPad PS3 / My life my heart bleeding endlessly” it’s almost as if he has been revitalized by the crumbling of the American Dream. Of course, one could argue that a brand new band lineup (featuring Curran Reynolds and Ryan Jones of Wetnurse on drums and bass, respectively) and a new record label might have something to do with it, but the truth is that Austin has always been this way, he simply needed to have the other pieces in place for Today is the Day to be fully realized in such an effective manner.
Hard times often breed great music. I can’t imagine them getting much harder than natural disasters, a corrupt government, a tanked economy, rampant unemployment, holy terrorism and not even being able to get on plane to escape from it all without potentially having to go through a full body cavity search. With Pain is Warning, Today is the Day have delivered one of the strongest albums of their career, while the doomsday clock ticks ever closer to midnight for the good ol’ US of A. Steve Austin and Co.’s brand of homicidal smash-mouth-super-rock might be too caustic to inspire revolution in the God, guns and government-fearing masses, but it will surely add some fuel to the fire for the chosen few.
http://www.blackmarketactivities.com/label/bands/todayistheday/
Ace Frehley ist Krieg.
Fuck Paul and Gene. Ace Frehley should’ve been writing entire KISS albums. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a KISS fan, but part of being a KISS fan is admitting that there are some horrifically shitty songs in their catalogue and that Paul and Gene are responsible for those shitty songs. This wouldn’t have happened if Frehley had been in charge. Don’t believe me? Just take a listen to his 1978 solo album. That year all four members of KISS released solo albums, of which Ace’s was the best selling and had the highest charting single. Granted, that single was a cover of Hello’s “New York Groove”, but make no mistake, the Frehley originals gracing the album are no slouches either. Just listen to “Snowblind” “Ozone” and “Rip it Out” and try to convince me that Frehley wasn’t the most gifted songwriter in KISS.
The few KISS songs that are credited to Ace, such as “Parasite” “Cold Gin” and “Shock Me” are among the best in the band’s catalogue, but it is on the solo album that Frehley steps out from behind the shadows of the Simmons/Stanley musical dictatorship and really shines as a player and songwriter. The main riff from the aforementioned “Snowblind” (which could have been a Black Sabbath song and ironically shares a title with a song from that band’s fourth album) alone is worth the price of admission, but the album as a whole is about a hundred times more enjoyable front-to-back than just about any of the early classic KISS albums, giving even their rough ‘n’ raw debut a run for its money.
It isn’t just the songs or the makeup or smoking guitar solos that make Ace Frehley great or that made millions of young men and boys paint their faces and pick up guitars both real and imaginary. Ace embodies an idea, the idea that a regular schmuck can can become an icon, a superhero. According to Wikipedia, some of the jobs held by Frehley prior to joining KISS included furniture deliverer, mail carrier and cab driver. From cab driver to motherfucking ROCK GOD. It’s the kind of story we all dreamed of as kids. It will never happen to most of us, but at least there was a time when mere mortals could live vicariously through men like Ace.
Rollins Band – Weight (Imago, 1994)
In 1994 I was a freshman in high school. A good boy who followed the rules, got good grades and showed up to work on time… on the outside. On the inside I was a fucking maniac, an animal caged inside a pressure-cooker that wanted to kill, fuck or destroy everything in sight. A ball of hormones and confusion, tightly wrapped in a nice little Catholic school attending, grocery bagging for $4.65 an hour package. I couldn’t wear my black jeans and Metallica shirt to Catholic school, I didn’t have the strength or the self-confidence to stand up to the privileged, pampered, future white collar asshole scumbags of America that ran the place and I definitely didn’t have the courage to be anything more than friends with the ladies.
But alone in my room, cranking Weight on my first stereo at as close to top volume as I could get away with, yelling along with Henry Rollins:
“You’re pathetic and weak / You’re a fake and you lie / I’d like to crush you like an insect / But I don’t want to do the time / Do you really want to confront me? / Do you really want to deal with me? / No! / I didn’t think so!” – “Step Back”
I felt ten fucking feet tall. I felt like Rollins was speaking directly to the war going on inside my head, like maybe at some point he too had been a scrawny little nothing that quietly went about his daily business, keeping his head down and trying not to draw too much attention to himself, all the while wishing he could be something more, wishing he had the stones to “fuck on the floor and break shit” (to borrow a phrase from the man himself, see the Henry Rollins – Up For It DVD).
Of course, it also helped that the musical backdrop for Rollins’ vein-popping pep talks was an incredibly rich one. In fact, referring to the music as a backdrop is to do it a great disservice. Rollins Band drew from the entire spectrum of sound as I knew it at the time; rock, metal, prog, blues, funk, punk/hardcore, Weight had it all in spades, making for an album that was crushing but also funky and danceable in some bizzaro-world kind of way, all without sounding silly or contrived. These were men that held Black Sabbath’s apocalyptic doom dirges and George Clinton’s bop gun-fuelled freak-outs in equal esteem. Chris Haskett, Sim Cain and Melvin Gibbs played with the same intensity and conviction that Rollins put into his words, a perfect soundtrack for raging hormones, sexual frustration and a pent up desire for reckless abandon that an existence in the bowels of the Midwest could never hope to gratify.
Even today Weight is an inspiring album for me. Being a little older and wiser(?), I have a better understanding (I think) of where Rollins was coming from with his lyrics, as well as a deeper appreciation of the vast ocean of musical influences Haskett, Cain and Gibbs were drawing from/destroying with. When the pressures of my everyday existence (corporate job, crazy relatives, bills to pay, etc) start to get me down, I still find myself reaching for Weight, still trying to find “grace in times of friction”.
—————————————————————-/
In case you were wondering, yes, this was at least partially inspired by the recent Invisible Oranges interview w/ former Rollins Band bassist Melvin Gibbs, which can be read HERE.
If you’re still feeling nostalgic like I am, here are the two well known music videos from Weight, for the songs “Disconnect” and of course “Liar”.
