Tag: metal

Tales From The Stage – Crowbar and Spirit Adrift

On By bigbadburchIn live music6 Comments

Back on Tuesday, July 26th, I took in what was – uh, I guess it’s actually my first metal show since the pandemic. Probably since some time in 2019. Some kind of metalhead I am, right?

Anyway, so I drug my poser ass out to a show. There was no way to ignore this one – Louisiana sludge legends Crowbar were in town and they brought one of doom metal’s hottest current names with them, Spirit Adrift from Texas.

I was all about the show when it was announced, but then the realization set in – it’s a weekday show and I’m in my mid-40’s. It wouldn’t have phased me in my 20’s or even 30’s, but dammit I’m old and cranky and need my sleep. Yes, yes, I know that people older than I do the road warrior shit for shows to much further extremes than me going to a place that’s honestly 2 miles away from my house, but that didn’t stop that weariness and dread from setting in a few hours before the show.

But alas, I manned up and went to the show. Two local acts played – being unable to tell time, I missed the first one. The one I did catch was named Martyaloka, they are a newer act local to Springfield and this was my first exposure to them. They do a very noisy and nasty take on death metal with sludge-like riffs that were very much at home at a Crowbar show. I haven’t been in touch with the local metal scene since the pandemic hit and tore everything apart, I’ll have to keep an ear out for these guys in the future.

It was straight into Spirit Adrift after a quick line change. It does amaze me how quickly even small clubs execute their gear changes now – back in decades past it could take eons for gear to get swapped on stage, now it’s like a Formula One pit crew.

Anyway, Spirit Adrift are a band I’ve been jamming out to the past year or so and I was really excited to see their name on this tour. While plying their trade in doom, this isn’t the slow and downtrodden “everything sucks” kind of doom. Instead it’s a riff-filled journey that hits the right groove and translates very, very well to a live stage.

Spirit Adrift played a great set from songs pulled from their four studio albums and handful of EP’s. There was no “big hit” or anything like that, the group is very consistent and the set was killer from start to finish. The band got their set in despite time running a hair long, but we’re talking a matter of minutes, no Axl Rose drama here to delay anything for hours.

Below is a full set video from a SA performance earlier in the year. I haven’t found any suitable video from this specific tour.

After Spirit Adrift it was on to the main event. Crowbar are celebrating over three decades in existence and continue to pound eardrums with their heavy-as-hell sludge and doom. While never “famous,” Crowbar is known the world over as masters of the metal scene and they retain a solid fanbase after all these years plugging away from coast to coast.

To anyone’s knowledge, Crowbar had never played in Springfield before the show a few weeks back. Kirk Windstein had been through town as a member of Down, but this was the first time Crowbar had been booked here.

Crowbar ran through a career-spanning set, including stuff from their latest album, 2022’s Zero And Below. They are at that point where they have to make some choices, having 12 studio albums to construct a set from.

The band ran through tunes old and new in the death-dealing heat of southwest Missouri in late July. It was stupid hot, both inside and out. I had to duck out once or twice to catch some air but thankfully I remained upright for the set’s duration. Even Louisiana native Kirk Windstein commented on the heat, and it’s something he’s probably used to.

It was a great show from Crowbar and one that the crowd ate up. I’ve noted a lack of energy and movement from Missouri concert crowds over the decades, but the lot at the Crowbar show that night was into it and having a good time. It’s pretty easy stuff to get into when you can literally feel the riffs pounding through you.

Seeing Crowbar and Spirit Adrift was a great way to get back into the show scene, something sorely lacking from life since COVID changed all the rules two years back. (And no, despite being in a small room with a lot of people, I or no one I know fell ill to it or anything else). I might not have caught a ton of sleep that night, but hey, sacrifice is what life is all about. We don’t get a ton of shows our way these days, or at least stuff I’d like to see, so having this one was pretty awesome.

Here is a performance from Crowbar on the next night of the same tour.

Voivod and At The Gates – We Are Connected/Language Of The Dead

On By bigbadburchIn collecting2 Comments

Today’s single is another split release. It features two bands both well-known and heralded in metal’s lexicon, though in different aspects. Both bands were labelmates with Century Media Records in 2015 and that is the likely reason for this single being in existence. (Both still are with CM, as far as I can tell). One band is a Canadian group revered for their strange yet masterful takes on music, while the other group is a Swedish outfit hailed as a pioneer on the melodic death metal front.

The single was released in three versions – 1,000 copies on black vinyl, 500 on white and 500 on red. Red is what I went for, and now trivia time – red is my favorite color. If you press a record on red, I will go for it. Overall I’m cool with whatever vinyl colors and I dig the wide variety of stuff available, but just like Sammy Hagar, I’m gonna go for red when it’s out there.

I pre-ordered this when news of the split first came down and I’ve had it since release. Slapping At The Gates on a record is a sure-fire way to get me to buy it.

Voivod – We Are Connected

This 2015 song was initially a standalone release. The song would appear a year later on the EP Post Society. Voivod has also aired the song out live.

I won’t even bother trying to describe what Voivod sounds like. It is a useless task and words, especially mine, won’t do any justice to Voivod’s music. They are one of the most unique entities in metal and really all of music.

We Are Connected is a nice jam that extends over seven minutes, not a common runtime on the 7-inch/45 release format. It is weird, in keeping with the band’s traditions, but yet this one doesn’t go to any really challenging places and can be taken in without a ton of effort. There’s a bit to chew on and digest here but it’s a well-presented package.

At The Gates – Language Of The Dead

This song from the Swedish death metal legends was originally available a year prior to this single, as a bonus track on a deluxe version of their 2014 comeback album At War With Reality. It was the band’s first album since 1995, the juggernaut Slaughter Of The Soul that still casts a large shadow over metal to this day.

Language Of The Dead is the case of a bonus track song that people ask “why the hell was this a bonus track?” I mean, don’t get me wrong – I love At War With Reality. Hearing ATG be able to record viable music decades after their moonshot album was a thrill.

But this song is just absolutely great. It has the old-school feel that calls back to the band’s glory days while still sounding fresh and new. I don’t know how or why bands and labels choose songs to be on a record or to be cast aside for bonus material, but I agree with many others that the song could have easily slotted on to the album.

But hey, it doesn’t matter. I have the album and I have this single also, it’s all there. The two bands seem an unlikely pairing but both are revered in many circles and the end result works very, very well. This is one split that offers something a bit more than the sum of its parts, even if it was born of the convenience of having both bands on the same label.

Motörhead – Ace Of Spades (the song)

On By bigbadburchIn S-Tier Songs4 Comments

This post was part of a series that I called S-Tier Songs. I later decided to abandon the series in favor of a simpler Song of the Week format. I am keeping these posts as I wrote them but removing the old page that linked to the list of S-Tier Songs, so that is why these posts might look a bit odd. Enjoy.

Motörhead – Ace Of Spades

This homage to gambling would not just serve as a band’s hit, it would become the signature song associated with one of heavy metal’s most influential acts. Motörhead would not find massive commercial success, but after decades of recording and tearing up the pavement all the world over, they would become a stud in the crown of metal music.

Ace Of Spades was a single release a month ahead of the band’s fourth album of the same name. The song got noticed and hung out on the UK charts for a few months, it would also receive a UK gold certification for sales in excess of 400,000. The album Ace Of Spades would chart modestly well throughout Europe and also go gold in the United Kingdom for sales over 100,000.

And those fairly modest sales figures would be one of the biggest commercial successes of the band’s 28-year career. Motörhead were never a super popular or financially successful act, yet they endure as one of the heavyweights of the metal genre. Bassist and vocalist Lemmy Kilmister, praised in many circles as God, would make far more money writing songs for Ozzy Osbourne than for his own band.

Yet, when all comes due, it is Lemmy’s vehicle Motörhead that remains as a bastion of heavy music.

And even among the “great unwashed” who aren’t radically familiar with the music of Motörhead, it’s a damn safe bet that a lot of people have heard this song. It’s known far and wide as one of heavy metal’s greatest tunes.

The song is pretty simple in its premise – it is a buzzsaw, but with enough subtlety to distinguish it from the later-to-come death and black metal. It embodies rock, punk, speed and thrash, the latter two terms not even yet existing when it was released in 1980. Motörhead were already an edgy gambit in the few years leading up to this release – this song would cement a young legacy.

The tale of the song’s construction is fairly simple, and told in great detail in this 2017 article by Louder Sound. Drummer Phil “Philthy Animal” Taylor and guitarist “Fast” Eddie Clark were jacking around in the studio with producer Vic Maile, who was familiar with Lemmy from the latter’s time in Hawkwind. A series of riffs had been thrown around and the band worked them up while Lemmy was out on the prowl.

The lyrics would come from Lemmy later – he truly just slammed a bunch of gambling references together. It might have been in the back of a van while speeding along a freeway as he recalls, or it might have been on the shitter, as Phil Taylor would guess. Either way, the band had their title track down.

And in the wake, one of heavy metal’s immortal songs was born. Again, there is no mentioning Motörhead without Ace Of Spades. And there isn’t a lot of what we call heavy metal without Motörhead – everyone was influenced by the speedy, punkish outfit. This blend of nasty, noisy rock would give way to thrash in just a few year’s time, and by the end of the 1980’s, extreme metal was well on its way to being more than just a footnote in history. And much of all this noise owes its presence to Motörhead and principally Ace Of Spades.

It’s fair to say that this is Motörhead’s most famous song. Hell, their second most famous song is probably a pro wrestler’s theme song that the band didn’t even write. The group never really “got their due” in terms of huge success, yet they are almost without exception mentioned as a forefront influence on the music that has come from the decades since 1980. And while the band have a hefty catalog with several worthy albums and songs to choose from, there is little doubt that Ace Of Spades is the calling card that rallies all points home. When anyone mentions Motörhead, no doubt it is this gnarly riff and Lemmy’s gruff vocal delivery about losing your ass at cards that first enters one’s mind.

Why is this an S-Tier song?

Ace Of Spades is the banner by which Motörhead flew under for decades. It is a barnstormer of a song that both used and defied the music of the time to offer a new construct upon which much of the heaviest music of the ensuing years would be based off of. Everyone knows that Lemmy and Motörhead kicked ass, and everyone knows that Ace Of Spades is the signpost for the ass kickings.

Album Of The Week – August 8, 2022

On By bigbadburchIn Album of the Week5 Comments

This week it’s back to 1993. It was a bit of a strange time, the vacuum left after the events of 1991 wound up being filled by some interesting stuff. One consequence for the years after was that heavier music was getting noticed and would even see mainstream chart success. Today’s album is from a group who’d been known as pioneers of the heaviest possible sounds, and this album provided a template for the shape of metal to come.

Sepultura – Chaos A.D.

Released September 1993 via Epic/Roadrunner Records

My Favorite Tracks – Refuse/Resist, Amen, Territory

Brazil’s Sepultura had captured the attention of the world with several albums of thrash bordering on death metal. By 1993 the band had worn out on the sound and looked to change up the formula some. The results would be downtuned guitars, more groove-based riffing in place of a thrash assault, and drums incorporating tribal and samba influences. It was as if Sepultura timed their move from thrash at the same time the rest of the world did.

There are 12 songs with a run time of a fairly lean 47 minutes. Should be pretty easy to get through.

Refuse/Resist

Opening with one of the album’s three singles (all the first three tracks are), this heavy hitter is an anti-police/authority song that has come away as one of the record’s signature anthems. Even with the band’s move away from thrash, this song is a chaotic, frantic mess. It does its job well of being a protest anthem, and in a time when protests and riots would see a big uptick.

Territory

The second single and most likely the best-known song from the album. Territory is a slow, plodding affair that looks at relations between leader/dictator and the people. Topical footage from the Israel-Palestine conflict is used in the video. Sepultura’s new groove-based music was being matched with incendiary political content, something that would get noticed in the same time frame that bands like Rage Against The Machine got big.

Slave New World

The final single from the album, this song was co-written with Biohazard bassist/actor Evan Seinfeld. The song tackles the issues of censorship and what it means to be “free” in modern society. As with the other two singles, this song is a common staple of the group’s live sets.

Amen

Though apparently not said outright, the song is a look at the Branch Davidian cult of Waco, Texas. The cult and its leader David Koresh were burned alive by US federal agents in April 1993 after an extended standoff. The song handles both the point of view of the cult leader and a more distant perspective that outlays the apocalyptic consequences.

Kaiowas

We arrive at an instrumental and all-acoustic performance, featuring only guitars and tribal percussion. The album’s liner notes pay tribute to a Kaiowas tribe in Brazil that committed mass suicide in response to government taking tribal lands. I have not done the proper scholarly research to corroborate that information.

Propaganda

A song about …. uh, propaganda and confrontation, I guess. It’s a very nice song but I have no idea what Max Cavalera is on about here. Sometimes you just have to quit paying attention and headbang along.

Biotech Is Godzilla

Here is a track with guest lyrics written by Dead Kennedys frontman and alternative icon Jello Biafra. The song gets into the issue of biotechnology and its more insidious uses. The song offers a conspiracy theory that the US government sent lab techs to Brazil to experiment with germs and chemicals on unsuspecting citizens. While the song is brief at two minutes it packs quite a punch and a lot of information and conjecture in its slim timeframe.

Nomad

An ode to the tribal and traveling peoples of the world, and an appropriately harsh, doom-ridden tune to weave that tale with.

We Who Are Not As Others

Another slow, doomy number that literally just repeats the title as its lone lyric over and over again. And it doesn’t suck. Pretty good job on making that better than a throwaway track. I mean, sure, it’s kind of damn dumb but it still works.

Manifest

An interesting twist on a metal song, this track provides a spoken-word account of a bloody news item from Brazil – the Carandiru prison massacre of 1992, in which military police handled a prison riot via the slaughter of 111 prisoners (who were pre-trial and not yet convicted). Max Cavalera does offer a few brief, one-word choruses along with the spoken account. It is an interesting and different approach to a metal song that is also obviously really fucking depressing.

The Hunt

We wind toward the close with a cover song – this originally being an offering from 1986 and the English group New Model Army, an act that can be called “rock” but honestly defies most specific categorization. No real matter here, as Sepultura twist this song’s form into their own. It is a tale of street justice and vigilantism in the face of the criminal underworld, a song very fitting of Chaos A.D.’s themes.

Clenched Fist

Bringing it home with one of those tried and true, defiant ’till the end and I’m angry and gonna get busy with it metal songs. It’s an anthem for weightlifting, running or whatever other crazy exercise shit people do (I do cycling myself).

Chaos A.D. saw Sepultura reinvent themselves and their new form landed squarely in the 1993 metal marketplace. The album went gold in the US and three other countries and saw top 20 or better action in several nations’ charts. Sepultura would tour the US with Pantera in 1994, just as the latter obliterated the Billboard charts with their own Far Beyond Driven. Groove metal was here, a “new” metal approach that beckoned great change on the horizon.

This would not be Sepultura’s greatest success – they truly conquered with their next effort, the multi-platinum Roots. That album would lean harder towards the “new” metal approach and was a benchmark for new trends in heavy metal. The band themselves would not enjoy the full fruits of their labor, as frontman Max Cavalera would depart the group in acrimonious circumstances at the end of 1996. While both Sepultura and Cavalera press on in various incarnations, there has been no heralded reunion of the band’s classic lineup that overtook mainstream attention with their very harsh sounds.

But for all that would come after, Chaos A.D. remains as a staple of the band’s catalog. It helped that one of extreme thrash’s most promising bands helped usher in the new age of metal (though some old-school keepers of the gate did not take to the new sound..) and also that the band incorporated specific, real-world examples of big issues in society as opposed to abstract cackling about bad stuff. It is as much a thinking person’s album as it is a vehicle of aggression, and its combined form is a force to be reckoned with.

Emperor – Thus Spake The Nightspirit/Inno A Satana

On By bigbadburchIn collecting4 Comments

Today I’m gonna dig out a single I’ve had since its release in 2009. So 13 years, if my math is right. It’s one of those “fun” but totally unnecessary things that was put out as a “limited bonus.” I was very, very excited about the albums being released and so I went whole hog and ordered the LP’s, a CD and DVD set, and also this 7-inch single.

The occasion was two live album releases from festival reunion shows of black metal stalwarts Emperor. The band split up in 2001 and reunited in – uh, 2006, which in the grand scheme of things is not a long time at all. But back then it was really exciting stuff and the hype was unreal. Even now as I’m looking over this paltry 5-year time gap for the first time I’m a bit taken aback at just how amped up I was for this. But hey, that comes with age I guess.

Anyway – the band began playing sporadic shows in 2006, and in early 2009 they announced a few LP and CD releases of two 2006 live sets – performances at the Inferno and Wacken festivals. The records were packaged separately, but a big CD and DVD bundle was released called Live Inferno. Oddly enough, the DVD had the Wacken performance on it.

Anyway, again – also as part of this series of releases, this 7-inch record was put out. Released on gold vinyl, it is a limited edition of 2,000 copies. This release didn’t spell out the specific number of the release by hand-numbering or anything, but I can rest comfortably knowing I’m one of 2,000 people who have this. (FYI, it is readily available on Discogs at the same street market value it sold for 13 years ago…)

Enough of that. I’m not really complaining but I am having a bit of fun with this. Whatever happened, I have this two-song single from the Live Inferno set. The two songs are among the most celebrated of Emperor’s work and my two personal favorites of their entire catalog, so that worked out well. Both performances are from the Inferno festival and are both included on that full live album – this isn’t unreleased content.

Thus Spake The Nightspirit

The A-side features a standout track from the band’s 1996 opus Anthems To The Welkin At Dusk. It was the album that first got me into black metal and this song is my absolute favorite of the group’s entire catalog.

I wont’ delve too much into the song itself here – simple fact is that it will be an S-Tier song someday and I’ll just save the discussion for that. For this version, it is a fantastically-captured live version that sounds absolutely great. You don’t really hear the crowd on it until the end, but that’s to be expected – even in a huge festival setting, black metal isn’t “stand up and shout” music. But the band’s sound got reeled in well that night and it’s easy to see why they chose to release it as a live set.

Inno A Satana

Not the version from the 7 inch

The B-side features a track from the band’s true debut full-length In The Nightside Eclipse. It’s the album that put the band’s name on the map just as all the murder and church-burning stuff made black metal famous (acts that some members of the band were involved in).

Inno A Satana (Hymn To Satan, if you were wondering), is one of the group’s many lush, majestic passages that offered something more to the listener than the chaotic lo-fi frenzy of most black metal of the time. Another of their greatest tracks and also a likely candidate for future evaluation as an S-Tier song.

That covers the two songs from the single. My copy did arrive from Europe with a few bends in the cover, but it’s not that big of a deal really. There is a funny story as to how many times the copies of the full live set LPs changed hands between me and a buddy of mine, but I’ll save that for another time. This single has remained in my collection the entire time and it’s a cool thing to have, even though it could be considered rather useless in some instances.

Upcoming Releases – The Next Few Months

On By bigbadburchIn Upcoming Music3 Comments

I set this aside for a moment as the new stuff wasn’t coming out with as great a frequency, but of course I wait a little more than a week and it all hits at once. Plenty from across the spectrum to talk about this time around.

Dieth – In The Hall Of The Hanging Serpents

An interesting and unexpected opening salvo here. Two-thirds of the lineup makes sense – Gullherme Miranda, formerly of Entombed AD and Michal Lysejko, late of Decapitated, have formed a band. One would expect death metal, of course, and one would get just that. What one probably wouldn’t expect is for Dave Ellefson to be throwing down on bass for this. I know Dave has been involved in a wide variety of projects over the years, but to take up death metal after his dismissal from Megadeth? That’s pretty big.

There is no album information yet but it appears they’ve already been in the studio. They sound like they know what they’re doing, it’ll be interesting to hear what a full project sounds like. Dave Ellefson has several other projects coming up, including an album with Jeff Scott Soto, but I’ll wait until new music from that comes out before getting into it.

Sammy Hagar And The Circle – Crazy Times

This fresh new song is the title track of a new Circle album due September 30 (later on vinyl). Sammy and this outfit of Michael Anthony, Vic Johnson and Jason Bonham had a pretty big hit album in 2019 and are now back after pandemic-related shutdowns. This incarnation of Sammy sees him get back to rocking out and leaving behind his Jimmy Buffet-like persona of earlier years. Not that there was anything wrong with that, Sammy can do whatever the hell he wants, but it’s nice to hear the Red Rocker back at it.

Taipei Houston – As The Sun Sets

This new indie-ish rock offering is a standalone single for now. The new band is a two piece of brothers Layne and Myles Ulrich, who do also happen to be the kids of Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich. It’s a curious call to go in as a two-piece but hey, I’m not here to tell people how to run their bands. The song is pretty good and does leave me interested in hearing more. It’s certainly its own entity and now owing to Lars’ gig in any way.

David Lee Roth – Nothing Could Have Stopped Us Back Then Anyway

Another standalone single, this is a track John 5 recently put out as a tribute to Van Halen. It’s a sappy, sentimental song with a video showing photo highlights of Van Halen’s career. It’s not a song that will feature on DLR best of list but it also works well for its intended purpose. There were some recording sessions that were supposed to be a new DLR album, no telling if the complete sessions will ever see the light of day.

House Of Lords – House Of The Lord

A name I know but couldn’t tell you a lot about, the melodic hard rock outfit is back with their eleventh studio album. The record is called Saints And Sinners and will be out September 16. These guys have stuck true to a sound that became dated just a few years after the band started out in 1988. It’s not the sort of thing I would fall all over myself to get but it’s also pretty good execution and I know these guys have had a fair share of buzzworthy albums over the years.

Goatwhore – Born Of Satan’s Flesh

The New Orleans extreme metallers are prepping to release their eighth studio album, Angles Hung From The Arches Of Heaven, on October 7. Goatwhore have made quite the name for themselves in recent years and it sounds as though they are ready to get back on the attack after a five-year recording absence. They are firing on all cylinders here.

Charley Crockett – I’m Just A Clown

The hardest working man in country music is inevitably releasing his second album this year (and fourth in two years) with The Man From Waco, due September 9. This single from the new album dispenses with pure country and offers some boogie, swing, soul, I don’t really know. It’s a pretty cool track and we’ll see what the full album has in store in a few weeks.

The Cult – Give Me Mercy

Ending today’s list with a new track from one of rock’s most enigmatic bands. The Cult will be back with their first album in six years – Under The Midnight Sun hits on October 7. Give Me Mercy offers some of the same atmospheric alt-rock the group have been employing in the second half of their career. I’ve enjoyed the past several Cult releases so I don’t expect this to go down any differently.

That’s all for this month. We’ll see what’s up in the next installment of upcoming releases – quite possible that Kerry King’s post-Slayer band will be among them.

Album Of The Week – August 1, 2022

On By bigbadburchIn Album of the Week12 Comments

Last week I covered one of the most significant albums in heavy metal history. Let’s go 2 for 2 on that front.

Iron Maiden – Powerslave

Released September 3, 1984 via EMI

My Favorite Tracks – 2 Minutes To Midnight, Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, Aces High

This release marks Maiden’s fifth studio album and the one where the band truly became a worldwide phenomenon. The album and resulting tour would get the band in front of audiences across most of the civilized world.

And of course, it usually isn’t an Iron Maiden album without an epic cover. Powerslave does not disappoint on that front. Our friend Eddie was worked into a pharaoh sitting atop his throne and the Derek Riggs cover is one of Maiden’s most celebrated art pieces.

Discussion is a fairly easy task with eight songs coming in a hair over 50 minutes (and also I’ve heard this album a billion times), though the huge epic looms at the album’s close.

Aces High

The album’s opener would also serve as the band’s long-time concert opener. Maiden’s sound was now dialed in and this energetic track showcases the rumbling bass, galloping guitars and soaring vocals the band are known for. The lyrics recreate British air forces during the Battle Of Britain in World War II. It is one of the most well-known and loved songs from the groups catalog.

2 Minutes To Midnight

It’s a song that employs the world’s simplest yet most effective rock riff and tells a tale of destruction through the military industrial complex. The title references the Doomsday Clock and the close setting to midnight, which would signify atomic destruction.

This also is my favorite Iron Maiden song. I don’t really know “why,” just that it is.

Losfer Words (Big ‘Orra)

This is an instrumental and (I think) the final one the band ever did. It’s a very nice song that certainly could have been something with vocals but does just fine on its own. It fits the sound of the album perfectly.

Flash Of The Blade

A two-song mini arc about swordfighting starts here. A young kid plays with his toy sword, then becomes a real swordsman after his family is killed in an attack. He sets out for revenge against the killers with his real sword skills as an adult. The chorus is a pretty clever twist on “live by the sword, die by the sword.”

The Duellists

A pretty simple premise – the song is about a sword duel. The two combatants fight in the lyrics through Maiden’s pummeling musical delivery. Both of the swordfighting songs sometimes get dismissed or overlooked but I’ve always enjoyed them.

Back In The Village

This song isn’t entirely clear but it is another reference by Maiden to the old British TV show The Prisoner. The band had already recorded the song The Prisoner on The Number Of The Beast inspired by the show and are revisiting the setting here. I’m not familiar with the show but here are a handful of direct quotes from it in the lyrics here, such as “I’m not a number, I’m a name,” also words worked into The Prisoner song.

Powerslave

The title track heads to ancient Egypt and visits with a dying pharaoh who is not happy with the premise of mortality. The pharaohs were considered gods, yet here this dude is about to kick the bucket. Probably a startling conclusion to a worshiped and revered figure. Maiden kicked the track length up a bit here to 7 minutes, though even Powerslave pales in comparison to the journey to come.

Rime Of The Ancient Mariner

We arrive now at the album’s close, but it’ll be awhile before we get to the actual finish. This song, a direct adaptation of Samuel Coleridge’s famous poem of the same name, clocks in at 13:45. It would be Iron Maiden’s longest song until 2015, where Empire Of The Clouds from The Book Of Souls would dwarf Rime’s runtime (and The Red And The Black would come very close).

The song and poem’s plot can be summed up in concise fashion – ship gets lost, bird helps ship out of ice, guy shoots bird, guy is cursed for shooting bird. Sure, there’s a hell of a lot more to it than that but it’s the gist of the story.

Maiden makes extensive use of movements and arrangement to convey the poem in song form. An unfamiliar listener could be forgiven for thinking this is more than one song, at least until the curse is lifted in the song’s final few minutes. I’ve even had my mind wander off and forget what I was listening to when playing this album in the background.

While doing a song of such scope posed risks, Iron Maiden was all the better for it. They were not ever a radio hits band, so a lengthy epic based on a poem was eaten up by the fanbase. To this day it is listed among their finest works and no shortage of people have it at the top of their lists.

The Live After Death performance

Powerslave was an immense triumph for a band already on the rise in the mid 1980’s. The album charted in many countries and has several platinum and gold certifications. The resulting World Slavery tour took Iron Maiden all over the world and culminated in their first live album, the immortal Live After Death.

Iron Maiden’s ’80’s run is widely hailed as a series of classic albums and performances, yet Powerslave may be the cornerstone of that era. The two singles Aces High and 2 Minutes To Midnight are constant live presences, the title track is a celebrated epic, and of course Rime Of The Ancient Mariner is hailed as a masterpiece. The album’s influence is inescapable – hell, it’s even used by some to criticize other periods of the band’s work. Even as the band has endured and carved a unique legacy within heavy metal, the shadow of Pharaoh Eddie looms large over Iron Maiden’s work.

Also the Live After Death performance

Disfear and Doomriders – All Paths Lead To Nothing, There Is Only Death

On By bigbadburchIn collecting7 Comments

It’s that time of the week to dig into another offering from my singles collection. Today it’s the good old split single – two bands each offer a song, the vinyl gets pressed and here we are years later looking over the results. Split singles and even albums have been a consistent feature of the metal underground. I was never one to splurge on such things but I’ve wound up with a handful in my collection.

Today it’s a double dip into some very noisy territory – Swedish D-beat merchants Disfear are paired alongside American metal act Doomriders for this 2008/2009 split. Sometimes these split singles get their own “album” names and other times they don’t. In this case the single does have its own title completely separate from the two songs.

This isn’t necessarily an “unlikely” pairing but there is a common thread to tie these bands together – both groups recorded albums in this timeframe at GodCity Studios. GodCity is the brainchild of Kurt Ballou, who plays in Converge and has also produced a great deal of work at the studio. Ballou is also bandmates in Converge with Nate Newton, who is the head of the Doomriders project. (Note – the Disfear song on this release was recorded among themselves and not part of Disfear’s album at GodCity)

A lot of metal band trivia here, and more to come – but in reality there are only two songs to discuss here, so let’s have at it.

Disfear – Fear And Trembling

Disfear is an unsettling proposition, owing its sound to the crust punk and D-beat scene. It’s a very underground affair with English group Discharge as one of its primary pioneers. The music is very, very unsettling, noisy and not for the faint of heart.

Disfear themselves have a long history, though broken up in phases. They were around in the 1990’s but would go on hiatus and reform under a very different line-up in the early 2000’s. Two original members would remain and would be joined by Swedish death metal royalty – Entombed guitarist Ulf Cederlund and At The Gates vocalist Tomas Lindberg helped Disfear into a new millennium.

Our song today is, as far as I can tell, exclusive to this release. It was not featured on their 2008 album Live The Storm and the band haven’t done any further releases so I suppose this single is the only place to get the song. As luck would have it, this split is still in print for anyone who stumbles upon this and just has to have it.

As I’ve said, this music is not for the weak of ear or constitution. It is a noisy mess. Even for the standards of Swedish death metal, Disfear makes those bands sound like orchestra music. Lyrically it is apparently a dissection of Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard’s work of the same name. As lyrics and background info are hard to find for this song, I can’t source that claim, but I saw it in a YouTube comment so it’s probably true. And knowing how Tomas Lindberg likes to source such material, I would feel safe in the assumption.

Again, I’m pretty sure this is something most of my regular readers are not going to be into. This song is a headache in vinyl form. But this is my series of singles and well, here you are.

Doomriders – Crooked Path

Out to something still harsh and noisy but perhaps more conventional, we have New England’s metal/sludge outfit Doomriders. The group is the conception of Nate Newton, who is a member of the aforementioned Converge, as well as Old Man Gloom and presently Cave In.

When I first got this split, which was way back in ’09 when it released stateside, this was the song that pulled me in more. I was familiar with Disfear but not with Doomriders and this was a sound I was pretty well lacking at that time. It is gruff but also groovy and well performed. I was very much into stuff like High On Fire around this time and this was a worthy compliment to that.

Crooked Path did see release on an album – the Doomriders’ 2009 Darkness Comes Alive. This single that I purchased for the involvement of Disfear led me to the Doomriders and it’s been a fond listening relationship since.

That’s about all for this one. The single was packaged in somewhat unique fashion – instead of a slipsheet or cardboard holder, a massive poster is folded into the 7 inch sleeve. I wouldn’t dare unfold it because I’d spend the rest of my life trying to get it back in to the sleeve, but it’s a nice touch for a cheap, out of the way single. (Actually not, it’s really easy to open and put back together as it turns out…) Stay tuned next week for another oddity from my collection of 7 inch single horrors.

Megadeth – Night Stalkers

On By bigbadburchIn Upcoming Music3 Comments

I had to switch post order up a bit, the reason why will be clear in a few weeks. This was originally supposed to be about Woodstock ’99, but with a new additional documentary about to hit streaming, I decided to put off my post about the existing one. Instead I’ll talk some about a new song from one of the bands that closed down the ill-fated festival.

Today I want to go over the new Megadeth song a little bit. Night Stalkers is the second single released from the upcoming album The Sick, The Dying And The Dead!, out September 2nd. The song is really good, Megadeth have established that they are going to be heavy as hell on this record. Both singles shape up for a nice album coming in just over a month.

There are a few odd and/or funny talking points going around about the song. I thought I’d dive into a few of them.

Dave Mustaine’s voice – shot?

The biggest topic of discussion has been Dave Mustaine’s voice. This isn’t new – the conversation came up during the Dystopia album release and tour cycle. Dave is now 60 years old and, well, I guess the pipes just aren’t what they used to be?

Honestly, I’m not hearing any huge impact here. Yeah, dude is old and also battled throat cancer in the late 2010’s, but nothing I’ve heard on either new song gives me any pause. He still carries a tune and also, it’s not like anyone was listening to Megadeth for Dave’s vocal prowess anyway. He’s always taken shit over his voice and while his snarl is unmistakable, it never was Megadeth’s calling card. But even with this new stuff I’m not having an issue with it. I don’t know. We all hear things differently, sure, but I do think sometimes people just like to find things to bitch about.

And even if Dave can’t carry a tune like he used to, the band is playing in such fine form that it doesn’t deter me much at all. Let the old man warble a bit over some of the hardest-hitting metal he’s recorded in ages.

Ice T is on this?

Yes – Ice T makes a guest appearance on the song. He does a brief spoken-word part that fits the song’s narrative and isn’t some weird bit that detracts from the track at all.

It’s almost like Ice T knows his way around a metal song, which of course he does. He has fronted Body Count for decades now, and in fact BC and Megadeth toured together in the early ’90’s. This was around the same time Mustaine heaped praise upon Ice T as a great artist.

And that relationship didn’t stop back then, either – in 2017, Mustaine provided both a spoken word intro and a guitar solo to the opening track from Body Count’s 2017 album Bloodlust. Civil War is an awesome song and here’s my very high opinion of the album overall from when it was Album of the Week awhile back.

The point is this – there is nothing strange about Ice T being on a Megadeth song, it might be called long overdue if anything. And there certainly is nothing wrong with it, even if some amount of keyboard warriors seem to think so.

The origin of Vic Rattlehead

The most exciting part about the new Megadeth video was something I’d heard about when the first song was released but nothing was really confirmed. This video arc, clearly meant by Mustaine to tell a story, is giving us the origin of Megadeth’s long-beloved mascot Vic Rattlehead. At the end of the first single We’ll Be Back, a soldier carries an atomic bomb into the sea in an apparent attempt to save people from certain destruction.

In Night Stalkers, this soldier is in some form of afterlife that resembles the river Styx and the ferryman Charon, though is also termed Hell in official preview clips. The shrouded figure transforms the soldier into the well-known mascot, then Vic returns to the mortal realm to unleash some hell on shadow agents hunting his family (or something, I’m not entirely sure).

It is really cool to see a Vic origin story after decades of his existence. I’d wager Vic is the second most famous heavy metal mascot, behind only the ubiquitous Eddie from Iron Maiden. And with this video arc we get far more of a story for Vic than we’ve ever gotten for Eddie.

I’m really looking forward to see where this story goes. Vic often appears as a tyrant or arms dealer type of baddie on old Megadeth album covers, and his story is clearly linked to some very dark military shadow operations, so we’re bound to get some really intriguing stuff in the upcoming arc. I love stuff like this that gives albums a bit more meaning and lore behind them, and it’s especially great to have this with one of heavy metal’s most recognized (drawn) figures.

That’s where we are with the preview songs for the new Megadeth album. We get some wondering about Dave’s vocal state (fine by me), some clowns questioning why Ice T is on the album, and some cool lore behind the long time mascot of the band. All that’s really left to do is see where the story goes and to get ahold of the new album here in several weeks.

A quick refresher on We’ll Be Back and the origin of Vic Rattlehead

Album Of The Week – July 25, 2022

On By bigbadburchIn Album of the Week8 Comments

This week’s pick is one that was always going to wind up here, the only question was when. I could write about the album in my sleep and I could probably write this without hitting play on it (though I will). But all the fuss raised up over the title track’s use in a hit TV shows means the time to talk about it is now.

Metallica – Master Of Puppets

Released March 3, 1986 via Elektra Records

My Favorite Tracks – Damage Inc., Disposable Heroes, Welcome Home (Sanitarium)

Metallica’s third album would showcase some polish and a very consistent approach. The band would make waves after its release as the record gained momentum without the benefit of radio or MTV play. It would go one be considered one of the band’s finest moments, even as tragedy cut short the album’s touring cycle.

It’s a fairly lean track list with eight songs but there’s almost an hour’s worth of music to get into. Let’s dive in to one of heavy metal’s most noteworthy albums. Also, a note – the videos posted are all live performances that may not reflect everything discussed in the post, and were also performances after the death of Cliff Burton.

Battery

Opening with one hell of a thrash attack. The song is a scorching track that pays tribute to the band’s fans, being the “battery” that Metallica draws from during shows. It’s also a reference to San Francisco’s Battery Street, where Metallica roamed in their early days. This song showcases how Metallica were able to retain the savagery of their early career while also refining their sound.

Master Of Puppets

The title track is a mammoth epic clocking in at 8:36. The long runtime did not deter fans – the song is one of the band’s most popular and stands as the track played live the most in the group’s 40-year career. The song tackles the issue of drug addiction and how the drugs wind up being the master controlling the user.

Master Of Puppets was the only single released from the album. The song did ok on the charts for a single not supported by video play at all and very light radio play, thrash wasn’t a radio gem in 1986. The song would chart again in 2022 when its use in a pivotal scene in the hit Netflix show Stranger Things sent the world to discover or re-discover it again.

The Thing That Should Not Be

A slower number that sees Metallica again visit the H.P. Lovecraft eldritch horror universe. It is a suitably heavy, doom-laden track about a sinister horror driving victims to madness. It is a track that gets flack in some circles but it’s one I enjoy. The song was massively influential to one Brian Warner, who would go on to become Marilyn Manson.

Welcome Home (Sanitarium)

A noted highlight from the album comes in the form of a song similar in form and spirit to Ride The Lightning’s epic Fade To Black. Making use of slower and haunting instrumentation, the song paints an explicit picture of being abused inside a mental facility. The song was reportedly influenced by the movie One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.

This is another showcase of how Metallica were able to do far more than just beat the listener into submission. The song does ramp up the aggression after a long build but its desolate harmonies in the early verses are its calling card.

Disposable Heroes

Another marathon busting the 8-minute mark, this titanic effort tackles a soldier being sacrificed on the battlefield by a ruthless, uncaring leader. It is a stark look at the horrors of war, a subject often brought up by Metallica. Even with the long run time, this song is fast and unrelenting throughout.

Leper Messiah

This song slows things down a hair but doesn’t let up on the heaviness at all. It is a look at a conman preacher, a favorite target of ’80’s metal bands (who were often the favorite targets of said preachers). The song does pick up the pace as it goes along, establishing a series of movements and an ear toward arrangement and composition beyond the usual scope of thrash.

Orion

Metallica had one instrumental song on each of their prior releases and kept the ball rolling with this one. The song is a trippy, out there track that is the brainchild of bassist Cliff Burton. Much of the unconventional noise is coming from his bass. Parts of the song do thrash along in more standard ways.

Damage Inc.

The album closer is an absolutely pummeling affair that starts attacking the listener just after a quiet intro ends. The song describes a corporation (Damage, Incorporated) that mows over humanity in its quest to get bigger. It’s cool that the band were able envision these dystopian kind of horror scenarios that don’t reflect reality at all…

Master Of Puppets would serve to further the career of Metallica and lead the group to new heights of success. The album sold well out of the gate and the band landed a coveted opening spot on Ozzy Osbourne’s American tour, playing arenas for a five month haul.

As the band were trekking Europe that September, a bus accident in Sweden would claim the life of bassist Cliff Burton. The band decided to press on, hiring Flotsam And Jetsam bassist Jason Newsted as the new member.

Though the tour cycle for Master Of Puppets was cut short, the album has gone on to hold a significant place in the band’s catalog and in heavy metal overall. This album, alongside Slayer’s Reign In Blood, Megadeth’s Peace Sells…But Who’s Buying? And Anthrax’s Among The Living would establish the “Big Four” of thrash metal. Thrash itself would see a huge spike in popularity through the remainder of the decade and Metallica were often hailed as the ultimate practitioners of the craft.

Master Of Puppets is often regarded as a “perfect” album and the quintessential thrash record. It is toward the top of countless “best of metal” lists and sees a spot at or near the top of most any Metallica album ranking. Its legacy is immense and casts a massive shadow over the world of heavy metal.

And that legacy continues on. 36 years past its release and long after the band set aside thrash and became one of the world’s biggest musical acts, the song Master Of Puppets has taken on a new life through its use in Stranger Things. Not that Metallica necessarily needed the rub, but the frenzy from the show has copies of the album flying off record store shelves again. A new generation of fans are jumping in to the pit, and so it goes for the titans of heavy metal.