The Hidden Masters

The Sword - Apocryphon
The Sword is a band that, despite releasing consistently strong albums, have been saddled with the unfortunate label of "hipster metal." I never really understood why they of all people got tagged with that particular appellation (and understood even less why one would use such a nebulous term to try to specify what the band sounded like). I assume that it has to do with the fact that The Sword received a lot of attention pretty quickly from the music press, and since they don't have any screamed vocals or blastbeats, people who wouldn't normally listen to metal were enjoying them. But doling out such an unhelpful label for that reason seems like lazy music writing, in that it ignores all the traits that The Sword share with the rest of the stoner metal genre in general, and in particular it shines a pretty harsh light on those critics' unfortunate inability to tell the difference between a band that clearly pours themselves into their craft with great attention to detail and influence, such as The Sword, and a band that doesn't (Wolfmother, I am looking in your direction).

The Sword made a name for themselves with their first album, Age of Winters, in 2006. Like many stoner metal records, it showed a clear love for Sabbath, and was filled to the brim with earthy references to the Norse pantheon and snow-covered forests, a theme their 2008 follow-up Gods of the Earth shared. By 2010, they were apparently feeling restless, and with the LP Warp Riders, they abandoned Earth for a much more sci-fi theme, which they pulled off with aplomb, adding some Judas Priest-style riffing to their Sabbath chops. The newly released Apocryphon finds the band somewhere between those two thematic extremes, with imagery that recalls the Hyperborean world of Robert E. Howard, where magic and technology meet in strange ways. If you're noticing a trend of the kind of sixties and seventies sci-fi/fantasy concepts that most frequently show up in airbrush art, you're not wrong. The Sword know what they like, and they use it well.

Musically, The Sword have been steadily improving with each new release, and Apocryphon is no exception. The riffs oscillate between brain-twisting complex and head-nodding simple, but the song structures remain fairly lean, which keeps the whole album surprisingly nimble. Everything is nicely balanced between getting to the point and serious riff worship. The record is fun, but also clearly not a joke; the band is serious about its influences, it's just that its influences are not always totally serious. The guitar work is excellent, as you might expect from a band like this, but the rhythm section is also to be praised for knowing just what to add and where. The aforementioned lazy critics sometimes seem to harp on singer JD Cronise's voice for being overly deadpan, but once again, this opinion betrays their lack of familiarity with stoner metal as a genre. What exactly do you need his voice to be doing that it isn't? If I need to cite precedent for a drier vocal delivery still being effective, I'll just throw out the first four Sabbath records and trust that will end the argument.

Ultimately, if you're familiar at all with The Sword or what they do, you know what you're going to get with Apocryphon: a quality record that delights in both the heavy rock stylings of the seventies and the desert rock/stoner metal sound of the nineties. If any of this sounds even remotely intriguing to you, then definitely listen to this record. It's fun and engaging, and if someday I ever meet anyone who actively doesn't like it, I will be forced to question their ability to understand the point of rock and roll in general.

Criminally Underrated: Zeke - Kicked In The Teeth

There are times when you need something loud, messy and impossibly fast. For those times I turn to Zeke. Founded in Seattle in 1993, they specialize in 300 mile-per-hour, out-of-control hardcore punk, and though all of their albums are worth having, my go-to LP is their 1998 release Kicked In The Teeth. As you can see from the title, subtlety is not really on the menu here, and it's a better album for it. To give you a sense of the pedal-to-the-floor-fun of Zeke, Kicked In The Teeth has seventeen tracks, and it's over in less than twenty-one minutes.

This is not a band that comes with particular acclaim from most music critics. That's because Zeke should only be listened to by people who actually like rock and roll music. The Allmusic review of Kicked In The Teeth says, "...it's a shame Zeke feels compelled to rely on speed alone to get by." This a textbook example of someone missing the point. Zeke isn't a band that plays fast because that's all they can do (their later albums, which do throw in some less frantically paced fare, prove this point), they are a band that plays fast because A) they are good at it, and B) it is awesome. If you start this record and don't feel your pupils dilate, then this was not made for you.

In general, hardcore punk has a tendency to view any displays of instrumental prowess as mere wankery, but Zeke has decided to go the other way and regularly find space in their minute-long compositions for some ultra-fast fret-blazing solos, which only add to the high octane madness. The rhythm section is relentless, keeping the hardcore and D-beats going without breaks even between the tracks in most cases. There are a few mid-tempo numbers in there to allow listeners to assess the damage, notably a fist-raising cover of Kiss' "Shout It Out Loud," but overall Zeke's work should require a safety harness of some kind.

If you really want the full Zeke experience and don't mind running from the law, listen to Kicked In The Teeth in the car. Everything will go red for twenty minutes, then you'll snap back to normal parked on your front yard and wonder why your windshield is cracked and why there's a police helicopter overhead. Good times for an otherwise boring Thursday, so ignore the critics, have some fun, and ride with Zeke.

This Heathen Temple Will Stand Tall

Pig Destroyer - Book Burner
I'm changing the review format for this one a bit. Explaining why this record is good isn't going to work, because even if a person academically understands why this album is of a certain quality, the music may well sear the flesh from their frames. Pig Destroyer specializes in creating music which can only be described in superlatives. Fastest. Heaviest. Scariest. Angriest. Most Disturbing. This is the kind of thing that separates potential listeners into two camps: Yes Please! and OH MY GOD NO MAKE IT STOP.

I imagine the amount of people on Earth who would enjoy this kind of thing hovers around a half a percent of the total, and that's being generous to your individual staminas. I myself happen to be of that group and therefore I find this release a bracing dose of Pig Destroyer doing what it does best: short bursts of aural psychosis. For the rest of you, just hope you never come across this record (or any of PxDx's oeuvre, for that matter) in a dark alley, because it will do things to you. Unpleasant things.

If you think this might be just the sort of thing for you, then by all means, give them a listen. They're streaming their new LP Book Burner here right now.

Alive in the Superunknown - Thoughts on Soundgarden's Masterpiece

RFF is currently stuck in a 90's grunge state of mind, and with Soundgarden recently reformed and preparing an album of new material, it's worth taking a look back at their high water mark and remembering what made them the band they became.

As the original grunge bands began to cede to rock and roll attrition, the imitators began to cash in. Nirvana, Alice in Chains, and especially Pearl Jam all had bands crawling out of the woodwork to try to bleed off fans looking for more of the grunge sound. But for all the interest in drawing out the fame that the Seattle music explosion created, there were very few who attempted to ape Soundgarden's style, largely because Soundgarden is the most difficult of Seattle's big four to imitate. Their specific brand of music pulled deeply from metal. There is a definite Sabbath feel, as there was with most of the original grunge bands, but Chris Cornell's wailing vocals seemed to come more from the Robert Plant school of singing, and Cornell seems to be one of the last (unironic) singers to be pressed from that particular mold.

Soundgarden's peculiar take on metal would add to the inimitable nature of their style as well. Their masterpiece, Superunknown, is perhaps the best example of this. Bizarre tunings and off-kilter time signatures abound on the record. Guitar magazine interviews from the time tell us that rather than the standard EADGBe guitar tuning, they used alternate tunings like CGDGBE ("Mailman" and "Limo Wreck"), EEBBBB ("My Wave" and "The Day I Tried To Live"), CGCGGC ("Head Down"), and CBGDGD ("Like Suicide"). Time signatures that were previously only the territory of the proggiest of prog bands were used: "My Wave" uses 5/4, "Fell On Black Days" uses 6/4 time, "Limo Wreck" uses 15/8, "The Day I Tried To Live" and "Spoonman" alternate between 7/4 and 4/4 sections, and "Black Hole Sun" makes use of both 4/4 and 9/8. The fact that these odd parameters were used for songs that were radio hits is nothing short of astounding, but Soundgarden's talent was such that they could form songs so natural and catchy from such twisted musical architecture. Not to mention that they did it all largely by accident, as the band maintains was the case. No wonder then that there were very few acts that ever wanted to try to imitate them. Sure, anyone could have tried to phone it in, but the result would never have anything near the same feel as the originals, and the effort of any serious attempt would have outweighed the profit.

Superunknown is an album that's easy to love, but hard to understand. Easy to remember, but hard to copy. The lyrics are either oblique or deceptively straightforward. There is anger and frustration in there, but there is a sense of confusion throughout. There is misery, but the lyrics come at it at strange angels compared to the upfront sort that Alice in Chains traded in to great success. Surreality is the norm on Superunknown, from the dream imagery of "Black Hole Sun" to "4th of July," supposedly a transcript of an LSD trip. The themes on the album are hard won, brought back from areas not normally accessed by the mind. Give Superunknown a spin and let it pull you back to 1994. It's worth the trip.

Blessed and Cursed and Won

The Smashing Pumpkins - Oceania
It's gratifying to be able to say the following sentence, as I was uncertain that I'd ever get the opportunity again: The new Smashing Pumpkins record is really good. Billy Corgan has said of the album, "...it is the first time where you actually hear me escape the old band. I'm not reacting against it or for it or in the shadow of it." Oddly, it appears that this escape from the fetters of the old incarnation of the Pumpkins has freed him up to deliver a sound that is more classic than anything he's done since the late Nineties.

Make no mistake, this is not a Mellon Collie clone. It's immediately obvious that Oceania is a different animal than Corgan's earlier efforts, but the songs here don't have the same forced quality that can be heard on the rest of the Pumpkins' 21st century output. Zeitgeist was a difficult record. It was difficult to penetrate as a listener, and I'm sure it was difficult to produce for Corgan and company. It may have been something of a disappointment to listeners, but looked at objectively, it was an understandable disappointment. It was a comeback album from a new band with an old name in a different century. Hardly surprising then, that few felt at home with the end result. On the other hand, Oceania feels natural, like Billy is letting himself be Billy, and the album became just what it was meant to be.

The first three tracks on Oceania offer some long-missed Corgan melodies with warm, fuzzed-out guitars. Fans made skittish by past disappointments should know that by the end of the first song, "Quasar," you can feel your guard coming down, and by the end of the third song, "The Celestials," you're just happy that things are back to normal in Pumpkinland. The next few songs are notable in that they're led by New Order/Depeche Mode-style electronics, which are backed with steady bass work, sweeping strings, and acoustic guitars to great effect. The last half of the album returns to more rock-oriented territory, with "Inkless" as a standout with a huge Siamese Dream-era guitar tone and passionate vocals. While the guitars are certainly still at the forefront of most of the songs, Corgan has done away with unnecessary heroics and overlong compositions, reaffirming his ability to make a tight, listenable album despite all the fuzzy dreaminess contained within its thirteen tracks.

There are legions of thirty- and forty-somethings across the world who will be overjoyed at Oceania, though its appeal should extend far beyond the legacy demographic. It may not quite reach the towering heights of Siamese Dream or Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, but it absolutely deserves to be a part of the same discography. It's a beautiful album that restores the Smashing Pumpkins name to its former glory.

-Review by TZARATHUSTRA

Weight of Days

A Broken Consort - Box of Birch & Crow Autumn
A Broken Consort is the musical brainchild of artist Richard Skelton, who works under many different names, each covering a facet of his musical explorations. I use the word 'explorations' here on purpose, because Skelton is more a craftsman of soundscapes and collages than anything else. As such, A Broken Consort satisfies a very specific part of his musical personality, a sepia-toned world of fading memories and half-remembered dreams, which, depending on how a listener feels about that sort of thing, can be interpreted alternately as awe-inspiring, comforting, or terrifying.

A 'broken consort' is actually a bit of Baroque musical terminology referring to an ensemble made up of instruments from different families, such as strings and woodwinds. This ties in directly with what Skelton creates under this name, as the sounds captured on the two records he has so far released are comprised largely of droning, looped string instruments mingled with clattering, distant percussion, meandering piano sounds, and what appears to be barely audible field recordings. The strings wail and sigh and sing, you can hear knocking against the wood of the instruments and the squeak of strings. There is no beat, no pulse, no rhythm of any kind. The sounds come unbidden and retreat when they've had their say. Despite that, the records are not ambient. The sound is very present and intimately recorded, and any attention paid to the records is handsomely rewarded with the atmosphere created by them.

Box of Birch was the first official release by A Broken Consort, followed by Crow Autumn. Both records are similarly executed, but to oddly different effects. Box of Birch tends to sound warmer and somewhat more comforting, while Crow Autumn is colder, more spare and unsettling. The first record is haunting, while the second seems haunted. On both, the music rusts and rots, the drones collect dust; it all seems impossibly old and yet somehow timeless.

It should go without saying that A Broken Consort is not for everyone. I imagine that most people, if exposed to these records, would think they sounded like a string section tuning up before a performance...for an hour straight. But there are a select few for whom these recordings will transport them somewhere else. There is an inexplicable power and charm to the sounds on these tracks that goes beyond mere strings and assorted sounds. Skelton has created something special with A Broken Consort, and the lucky ones that can access the magic therein will have found something unforgettable.

-Review by TZARATHUSTRA

Can't Stop Thinking Big

Rush - Clockwork Angels
There are a lot of ways to look at a new Rush album, but in the end it boils down to the fact that you have two groups of people who might be interested: Rush Fanboys and Everyone Else, and you have to tailor the review to one of those groups. As a member of Everyone Else, I'll be directing my energies in that direction. People who aren't avid Rush supporters are apt to ignore most of Rush's catalog other than maybe the really memorable releases like 2112 and Moving Pictures, and as such, they'd be largely unaware of the course he band has taken since the late Seventies. Again, I fall into this camp. Unfair, perhaps, but those are the risks you face as a prog band who has been working consistently for over 40 years. The just-released Clockwork Angels is Rush's twentieth LP, though the first single has been floating around the internet for close to two years now. The news surrounding this album's long delayed delivery was what initially brought me to give that early single "Caravan" a listen. I knew what I was expecting from it when I clicked the link on YouTube, but what I heard was somewhat surprising in that it was not embarrassing.

Somehow Rush has sidestepped the pitfalls of being a Seventies prog band in the world of modern rock music. The sound isn't dated. The guitars are thick and heavy, the mix is clear but edgy, and the composition isn't overly wanky or long-winded, but it does show obvious craft and attention to detail. Rush appears to have listened to and learned from the entirety of rock history since their heyday, and yet appear to have kept their individual soul as a band intact as well. They're still Rush, they're just 2012 Rush, which is as much as a person can ask of a band in their position, really.

Clockwork Angels is a good old-fashioned concept album, involving a plot that pits individuality against a totalitarian world with elements of science fiction and steampunk. I'll be honest, I've not fully absorbed the lyrical contributions and put it together as a cohesive story yet, but I'm sure the upcoming novelization of the album (written by sci-fi author Kevin J. Anderson) would help with that. I can say, though, that the music is interesting, with some inspired work from guitarist Alex Lifeson, whose and guitar tones and techniques help keep things interesting as the band travels far outside the verse-chorus-verse structure. Geddy Lee's vocals are expressive, but thankfully more understated than you might expect from a prog band, and his bass is further up in the mix than usual, which adds a Tool-esque dimension to the sound in some places. Peart's drums are reliably fascinating; the method of playing while being conducted orchestra-style by the band's producer Nick Raskulinecz has paid off. The musical ability displayed on the record is unassailable, and the only complaint I have is that after a while, things begin to sound a bit formless, but you could maybe chalk that up to the fact that prog is not, by and large, my go-to genre.

Overall, Clockwork Angels is a solid album worth a listen even for those without a serious Rush obsession, but for those with a high tolerance for proggy weirdness, this should be a feast.

-Review by TZARATHUSTRA

A Curse or a Blessing?

Wodensthrone - Curse
It takes a special kind of attitude to make black metal interesting these days. The strictures of the genre are fairly narrow, as such things go, and we've heard the angry guys with bullet belts do their thing for twenty years now. The unrelenting blastbeats and raspy screams are great, but bands now definitely have to walk a tightrope between "I heard this album ten years ago" and "this isn't even black metal." That's why, despite what the Kvltists would have you believe, I think the opening of the genre to more progressive, folk, and post-rock elements was a good thing. British black metal band Wodensthrone seem to agree as well, because their new LP Curse shows that they've successfully welded elements beyond spiked shinguards and facepaint to their icy Saxon darkness.

Between the release of their last album, Loss, and now, Wodensthrone lost their lead singer, but decided to split the duties amongst themselves. Since the remaining members clearly have the talent to pull it off, this was a great decision. Black metal vocals can easily become grating and tedious over an entire record player, but the multiple vocalists really keeps things interesting here. There are even clean vocals used to great effect in songs like the excellent "Jormungandr." Overall, the musicianship is top-notch, very precise and emotional, and most importantly, the extra musical elements are blended seamlessly with the scathing black metal. Wodensthrone clearly knows what they're doing, and they don't force listeners through awkward transitions. Just take a listen to how the bridge in "First Light" unfolds. The aggressive guitar and drum attack gives way to acoustic guitar and flutes, but instead of the shift being jarring, it becomes dramatic, a feeling that gets heightened even further as the electric guitars lay their leads over the bridge. All this is made possible by the clear, crisp production; this record is thankfully devoid of any tin-can recording techniques.

The best tendency to come from the expansion of the black metal genre is the downplaying of the play-acting Satanism and ridiculous theatrical overtures, and Wodensthrone is a great example of this. The music is serious and true, completely devoid of schlock, and willing to let aggression occasionally take a back seat to other colors in the emotional palette.

-Review by TZARATHUSTRA

Dead Sun Over Black Sands

Sólstafir - Svartir Sandar
Sólstafir is a band who has come a long way in terms of their artistic ability and musical intentions. They began as a Viking metal band, then morphed, as many Viking metal bands tend to, into an arty black metal band. Since then, they've gradually added more post-rock tendencies a la Mogwai or Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and now on their newest album Svartir Sandar, they've reached a new height of artistic mastery.

Sólstafir have been masters of building atmosphere since their excellent first LP Masterpiece of Bitterness, and they've always grafted that atmosphere to pummeling metal textures, making an art rock/black metal blend that sounded like no one else. Svartir Sandar is certainly heavy, but in a much different way than its predecessor albums. This heaviness is built very carefully, with nuance and fantastic attention to detail rather than speed and fury. Paradoxically, it feels like the album's passion comes from its precision, as though each chord and drum hit were carefully placed to perfectly build the drama and emotion necessary to each song, while making it all seem natural and effortless.

When considering arty post-metal, names like Isis, Neurosis, and Pelican immediately spring to mind, but Sólstafir's sound is entirely their own, perhaps owing to both their Scandanavian black metal background and the isolation afforded to them by their native Iceland. It's possible to hear the influences like The Cure, or some of the bleaker 90's rock bands, or perhaps even their countrymen in Sigur Rós, but the overall tone is so sunless and monolithic that it has to be heavily informed by the blackest of metal. The guitars range from gentle to vicious, the thundering rhythm section equals the guitars in their ability to bring the emotional content forward, and singer Aðalbjörn Tryggvason's voice pulls itself from a near whisper to a despairing wail at a moment's notice.

Words largely fail to describe the scope of what transpires over the two discs that make up Svartir Sandar. The sound is immersive, nearly cinematic. It's easier to describe the album as a place that one can go. It's like a continent, huge and dense, but with room to move. Moments that begin as just a wandering guitar line or steady cymbal beat evolve over time into a maelstrom of sound that evokes an atmosphere both unknown and somehow familiar, like a place you may have been in your more monochromatic dreams.

-Review posted by TZARATHUSTRA