Apocalypse Later Music Reviews: USA

Showing posts with label USA. Show all posts

Tuesday, 25 February 2025

Bumblefoot - ...Returns! (2025)

It's almost impossible to categorise this ninth album from Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal beyond calling it guitar music and, given that he's a guitarist, that's kind of a given. Whether you know his work from Guns n' Roses, Sons of Apollo or from solo releases, there will be something here that you'll never have heard before, because he very deliberately trawls in whatever style of music he feels will work for a particular piece.

The opener, Simon in Space, is probably the closest to what you might expect. There are plenty of heavy note bending sections wrapped around more laid back solos and even those laid back solos are intricate and virtuosic. It's the sort of track that tends to sit on albums like this whether they carry the name of Bumblefoot or another guitar wizard like Steve Vai or Joe Satriani rather than a shredder whose tracks are faster and more deliberately awe-inspiring. He's going for mood and feel not technical genius, but there's plenty of technical genius used to get there. Eight minutes of that leads into five more of Planetary Lockdown, which is a little lighter and sassier but in the same ballpark.

And then things go off the rails, as it were. Moonshine Hootenanny is the lively bluegrass knees up that its name suggests, Bumblefoot's guitar variously playing roles that might otherwise go to banjos or lap steels. Sure, there's some of that heavy notebending a couple of minutes in and it leads into a more traditional rock guitar solo, but the bluegrass returns quickly enough. That's followed by Chopin Waltz Op64 No2, which is a well known classical piece. There's another one of these later on in Funeral March, also written by by Frederic Chopin, but while the former is just a transcription to electric guitar, starting with the frantic bit, the latter is a guitar and violin duet with an ominous backdrop.

That highlights that he doesn't do everything here himself, though I'd guess that he does come close. Ben Karas, best known for Thank You Scientist, is the guest violinist who combines so well with him on Funeral March, but household names like Steve Vai and Brian May also show up for guitar duets. Vai's on Monstruoso and May's on Once in Forever. Guthrie Govan may not be quite as famous as them, but he's played with Asia, ironically after asking May, Steven Wilson and Hans Zimmer, with whose band he's been playing live for almost a decade now. He's on Anveshana.

Of those, it's Anveshana that I like the most. Monstruoso is an experience, with heavy and fuzzy electronica almost dominating, enough that it gets a brief reprise in Monstruoso II (Departure). Once in Forever has a country tone without necessarily becoming a country song in the way that Moonshine Hootenanny absolutely becomes a bluegrass song. Anveshana benefits immediately from a tasty groove and the guitar melody feels like it's singing rather than soloing. That combo makes it a highly accessible piece but it stands up to a deeper dive too.

However, it's far from my favourite piece on the album. Funeral March tops that list for me, even if it's the one song that most prominently features an instrument other than the guitar. Cintaku comes pretty close to it though, with its organic beat and melodic guitar line. Like Anveshana, it seems like the guitar is transcribing lyrics. I could believe that this is a Journey song with lyrics in a parallel universe and Bumblefoot's tapped into that for an instrumental version in ours. Oddly, the solo in the middle feels more spacy without apparently trying than on earlier songs where it was absolutely trying to live up to that delightfully weird cover art.

And, with a brief mention for the delightful Andalusia, on which Bumblefoot appears to only play one note but continues to bend it in different directions forever—at least for forty-nine seconds, because that's how long the piece lasts—then there's The Thread, which seems like it's the epic of the album, even though it's three minutes shorter than the opener.

It's an old school instrumental of the sort we might expect to hear on a Jeff Beck album and, as it evolved, building smoothly to explosive moments, I realised that it's echoing what Roy Buchanan did with The Messiah Will Come Again, sans vocals. Once I caught that, I realised just how much phrasing feels very similar. It surely can't hurt to bear comparison to one of the greatest guitar pieces ever played, even if it inevitably comes off as lesser. It's still very tasty indeed.

And so there's surely something here for every guitar fan, even major use of the most seventies technical gadget, the talkbox, on Griggstown Crossing, but, like so many guitar albums, it's all so varied that it's mostly going to impress actual guitarists.

Monday, 24 February 2025

Jason Bieler and the Baron von Bielski Orchestra - The Escapologist (2025)

This is the third album from former Saigon Kick main man Jason Bieler and his Baron von Bielski Orchestra, which has coalesced into Andee Blacksugar and Edu Cominato, plus a bunch of guests on bass and all sorts of other contributions. It's very much what you might expect from Bieler, if what you expect is rooted in the Beatles-like melodies and grungy guitars that Saigon Kick often displayed but with songs veering off into what seems like every other genre possible at the drop of a hat. Industrious is precisely this, infectious melodies over grungy riffs but with an unusually repetitive lyric, almost a song built around a single repeated verse.

Now, it's not just that, because it goes instrumental soon into its second half and I found myself falling into this section on repeat listens. It explains why Blacksugar is credited on "extra guitars, noises and solos" because that pretty much covers what we hear. There are strong solos on Stars Collide and Violent Creatures too, to which I'm leaping ahead right now because I need to point out that both of them are worthy songs on their own merits. Even on my second time through, I deliberately skipped Savior to test this. Violent Creatures is better than Stars Collide, because it starts out with a lovely slow riff and later brings in tasty escalations, but both are decent songs. Cue them up on YouTube and you'll enjoy them.

The reason I mention that is that, if we listen to the album in order, as is surely intended, we'll be listening to Savior before them and suddenly they get lost in the mix. Savior only runs three and a half minutes, but its impact lasts for triple that, if not more, and it's literally hard to listen to a different song while it's partying in our skulls. If I hadn't deliberately skipped Savior, there's just no way I'd have even registered Stars Collide and it took a lot of effort from Violent Creatures to grab me back again. Savior is that dominant.

Needless to say, it's my favourite song here and it's a worthy first single. There's plenty else that deserves praise here, from the tasty guitar solo on Hollow to the grungy riff on Zombies & Black Swans, from the jaunty beat on No Real Goodbyes to the weird noises on Space Debris, but there isn't anything to even come close to Savior until the final two songs, Sacred Cow and March of the Vikonauts, which are very different indeed, both from each other and from Savior.

Sacred Cow flows delightfully and effortlessly until it gets jaunty in its second half. Somehow it's able to soar like Extreme singing a power ballad but experiment like Mark Ribot playing jazz and both happen in the same song without ever seeming out of place. To be fair, we never quite know what to expect from Bieler expect incessant melodies that are so effortlessly infectious that we wonder why anybody else even bothers to try to compete with him. This unuusal combination is a relatively straightforward one for him.

March of the Vikonauts gets serious with guitar, Blacksugar taking us into Joe Satriani territory. Even though his guitarwork would be a highlight in any other song, it's the groove of this one I'd call out the most. It's all over the map in the best possibly ways, trawling in lots of Led Zeppelin, the expected Saigon Kick and even some classical mindset, all of which flow so naturally that we have to concentrate to realise just how damn clever it all is. It's also a song that's good during its first half but which finds whole new levels during its second.

All of which means that this is another excellent album from Bieler, which doesn't remotely shock me. I gave the previous two Baron von Bielski albums recommended 8/10s and there aren't many albums I'd rate higher than Saigon Kick's Water. I can't see any reason why this shouldn't warrant a third 8/10 in a row, which is a fair acknowledgement of just how consistently good Bieler is, and, of course, his set of eccentrically named collaborators. I'm happy to live in a world where people named Diatribe Impossibles, Nigel Biggles, Renaldo Eclipse Jr., Pleasant Strife North, Steambath McCrarey, Wilhelmina Waistaway and Bernadette Babbles are credited on the same album.

But back to Savior. There's a mere hint of world music before Cominato launches into a beat that would have been worthy of an Adam Ant song but is even more in your face. The brass punctation and steel drums fit that approach too, as does the guitar solo, whistle and backing vocalisations giving encouragement. The lead vocals are quintessential Bieler, but everything else feels to me like something Ant and Pirroni might conjure up and given that they're the only songwriters I'm able to name who write songs as infectiously catchy as Bieler, bringing these mindsets together is a slice of heaven.

The only catch is that, once you've heard Savior, you won't be able to hear anything else without serious effort for a long, long time. That's my first candidate for song of the year right there. In fact, now I've heard it again as I polish off this review, I'm going to stop listening to all the other worthy songs here and throw on Friend or Foe. It's only taken forty-three years for something to match it.

Thursday, 20 February 2025

Dream Theater - Parasomnia (2025)

My youngest is ecstatic that drummer Mike Portnoy is back in Dream Theater, because he wasn't in the band when we saw them supporting Iron Maiden in 2010. His return coincides with a return to form and a return to a more emphatic mindset with stronger drums and heavier guitars. How much of that is his work and influence is open for debate, given that he only wrote one of the six songs. Guitarist John Petrucci, however, wrote three of them and vocalist James LaBrie the other two. Add an instrumental intro and a sample driven interlude and this is a generous seventy plus minute album that's surely the best and most authentic release Dream Theater have put out in a long time.

After that instrumental, In the Arms of Morpheus, which is enjoyably patient but inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, even at over five minutes, the opening single Night Terror sets the stage very well indeed. It's patient too, running a breath shy of ten minutes and covering a lot of ground in that time. By this point, we've come to expect long instrumental sections that provide various band members with showcase opportunities and, in between them, a vocal section or two that hopefully find and milk strong hooks. We don't get all those things as often as we'd like but it does happen. And it happens here.

The first two minutes of Night Terror are relatively basic for Dream Theater. There's a churn that reminds of Anthrax. Beware the walking dude, right? But then Portnoy plays a patented Portnoy run and we're firmly in business. The vocal sections are decent and the hooks good, but it's when the band starts to jam that things really comes alive. Petrucci doesn't show off too much on this one but does make his presence known. Portnoy has that early moment. Keyboard wizard Jordan Rudess gets plenty of solo time in the second half, one of which is a virtuoso moment. Petrucci is tasked with following it but it's his more sedate soaring that works best.

In short, it all works and that bodes very well for the rest of the album, which I'd say lives up to the challenge. The worst aspect is probably the half hearted attempt at a concept. This isn't a concept album in the traditional sense because these songs don't progress us through a story. However, it does have a concept, merely a thematic one in which the songs explore the same subject matter in different ways, namely the parasomnia of the title, or in less fancy language, the weird disruptive crap that happens in our sleep, like night terrors and an inability to tell if we're asleep or not.

The worst moments for me were the samples, not only in the interlude that's built on samples but within other songs. We're conditioned to see samples that last more than a moment as narrative material and that can work great on a true concept album. Just look at Operation: Mindcrime, an album that I'll come back to shortly. Here, though, there is no progression so the samples have to serve only as ambience, which they don't do when they take over a song like Midnight Messiah at the beginning, so we wonder if that's all we're going to get.

Fortunately it isn't and Midnight Messiah moves on to become an actual song. I particularly enjoy the chorus, when the pace ratchets up, the guitar is vibrant and the hook absolutely spot on. It's a sort of Deep Purple plays speed metal vibe like Space Truckin' with modern production values, but the verses are more sedate, as if a band with this amount of shared technical ability is choosing to play in slow motion.

And that goes double for Bend the Clock, the most atypical song here, which feels far more like a Queensrÿche concept album song (I told you I'd get back to Operation: Mindcrime) than a Dream Theater one. The whole album has been notably heavier but this piece tones all that down for seven minutes and change. Mostly I'd call that a bad thing but the saving grace is Petrucci's extended solo during the second half, which is the tastiest such anywhere on this album. It gets virtuosic towards the end—really, says, the sarcastic devil on my shoulder; on a Dream Theater album?—but it never loses its feel. Even at its most intricate, it builds on melody first and foremost. It's an utterly delightful solo.

But enough of what isn't typical. There's much here that is. A Broken Man starts that, getting all jazzy and sassy around the six minute mark. It's more complex and progressive, the solos there of course but with much more focus on structure and innovative songwriting. Dead Asleep follows in its wake at greater length and even more success, doing much in its eleven minutes. It starts out like an orchestral take on the Tiger Lillies with acoustic guitar, but grows into modern metal with much decoration by Judess's keyboards. It ends in a peaceful Mediterranean lull.

And, much later, after everything else, there's The Shadow Man Incident, the album's true epic, a nineteen minute workout that makes the nine, ten and eleven minute earlier pieces almost seem insubstantial. It may not be the best song here but it's the one that fans will gravitate towards, as it gives abundant opportunity to every band member to showcase their talents and they all have a lot of fun living up to that. It has a classical opening that reminds of Holst's Mars and escalates in wonderful style at seven minutes and change, but it's the instrumental section in the second half that takes it and this entire album home.

Welcome back, Mike Portnoy. With no disrespect to the highly capable Mike Mangini, who did the business for thirteen years, Dream Theater feels whole again.

Monday, 17 February 2025

Pentagram - Lightning in a Bottle (2025)

It's great to hear Pentagram again and with such a strong return. This is their first studio album in ten years and they clearly want to Live Again, given how bouncy the opener of that title is. This is doom metal for sure, but it's also a lot of other things. There's a punk attitude to a lot of it. There are all sorts of nods back to the classic rock era, not only to the seventies and eighties but back to the sixties as well. Bobby Liebling is on vocals, as we expect, having apparently cleaned up his act personally—part of the band's absence was due to his jail sentence for elder abuse—but the rest of the band is brand new, everyone else having joined in 2024.

Live Again is a strong opener, but it's not my favourite track here for a number of reasons. One is a very memorable repeated section that's lifted from UFO's Lights Out, just instead of rolling on as Michael Schenker solos, the riff is given a way to stop and start again. I wasn't expecting that on a Pentagram album, but it shouldn't be that surprising. Their particular brand of doom was always a fluid thing, trawling in influences from all over the musical map. Another is the odd drop right at the end of the song, which doesn't work for me, unlike every other drop on the album.

I should note as an aside, given that it's absolutely not a third reason, that I also mishear one line of lyrics every time. "I'm walking the tightrope," sings Liebling. "Never gonna fall, like a cat with Maine Coon paws." It's a great line, but I could swear blind that he actually sings "like a cat with Maine Coon balls." Now, that subtle alteration really says the same thing, but in a very different way, one that arguably features far more attitude.

The first half is very strong, with guitarist Tony Reed delivering a good solo on Live Again and even better ones on In the Panic Room and Dull Pain. There are more on the second half, in I'll Certainly See You in Hell and Lightning in a Bottle, but they're sparser. Liebling is also on top form here, not least on Lady Heroin, the album's standout track, which feels acutely heartfelt. He isn't singing a set of lyrics here; he's pouring out his soul.

Lady Heroin is an unusual song, because it truly revolves around the vocal performance instead of a killer riff. I've never shot up with heroin, but I wonder if the songwriting mimics what Liebling is feeling when he does. Initially, the music barrels along behind him, led by Henry Vasquez's drums, like a nightmarish rotoscope. Later it drops into a mellow section, as if the fury has abated and an element of welcoming calm replaces it. Eventually, it finds a doomy grind, as if the calm is always a transitory thing and that's the catch to the whole thing. Liebling starts out channelling Ozzy, as he sometimes does, and that returns during the mellow section, but he moves beyond that into some sort of dark soul outpouring far more bleakly and honestly than Glenn Danzig ever managed.

Given that it's as much psychedelic or even progressive rock as it is doom metal, I should point out that there's plenty of psychedelic rock here. The delicious drop in In the Panic Room is right out of psychedelic rock and the one in I Spoke to Death isn't far from it. I adore this drop, though it's only one reason why this is my favourite song. The opening riff is the best one on the album for me and it does have competition. I appreciate Vasquez's patience too, because I expect him to kick in hard much sooner than he does and he catches me out every time. This is the most traditional Sabbath-esque the album gets and that's not a bad thing.

Talking of old school influences, the second half kicks off with I'll Certainly See You in Hell, which is even older. It reminds me just how long this band's been active, Liebling and Geof O'Keefe putting it together in 1971, while this grandfather of ten was busy being born. It's doom with a strong punk attitude and a drive that comes straight out of Love. Remember Seven and Seven Is? Love put that out in 1966 and it's still inspiring new songs almost sixty years later.

I don't find the second half as strong, but that's an exception, as is the title track, which is calm in the verses and jaunty in the chorus. The tempo picks up, of course, but it's another good one. And then there's the other real surprise for me, namely the closer, Walk the Sociopath. It's a very slow song, which might sound redundant for a doom metal album, but remember this is a lot of things as well as doom. It's shockingly slow, in comparison to the ten songs before it. It does pick up late and it's a very good song, but it feels like an odd and surprisingly isolated way to wrap up.

All in all, this is a strong return for Pentagram and I'm going to go with an 8/10 but only just. Some of it is clearly not up to the quality of the rest, not necessarily filler material but songs that aren't ever going to hit as hard as the others around them. The new fish are great, not just Vasquez and Reed but bass player Scooter Haslip too, whose playing is easily delineated in this excellent mix. A more surprising note perhaps is that Liebling sounds fantastic here, given how much he's been his own worst enemy for a long, long time (and one to others too, including former bandmates). Lady Heroin may be his finest single performance ever. So it's more like a 7.5/10 but I'm rounding up not down.

Wednesday, 8 January 2025

Blood Incantation - Absolute Elsewhere (2025)

Country: USA
Style: Progressive Death Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 4 Oct 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | YouTube

Here's an album that's made a lot of top ten lists for 2024, unsurprisingly given how much buzz has surrounded Blood Incantation lately. I reviewed their previous album, 2019's Hidden History of the Human Race, in January 2020 because it had similarly made so many end of year lists. The general consensus of the critics is the same for each: they're both masterpieces that move death metal in new directions. What's odd is that I found myself happy to agree with them last time but not this. There are the roots for a masterpiece here, but it just doesn't hold together for me.

There are two tracks, The Stargate and The Message, presumably broken up over the two sides of the vinyl release, and each of them is broken up into three parts named Tablets. That's hardly an unusual approach, but I can't figure out why any of them are separated the way they are. Tablet I of The Stargate, for instance, features three utterly distinct parts that aren't separated at all yet the ambience that ends Tablet I flows right into Tablet II as if there shouldn't be a gap. I can't see what Blood Incantation are trying to do.

By utterly distinct, by the way, I mean utterly distinct. Tablet I starts out with bubbly synths but a jagged guitar quickly joins in as if this is a Voivod album. Thirty seconds in, it's clearly technical or progressive death metal and that settles down within the next minute and we're off and running at pace. It's all good stuff and it's building. However, it all falls away at the two minute mark, so it can veer into something completely different.

Suddenly it's funk. Or reggae. Or soft rock. Or jazzy space rock. Maybe it's all those things at once, rather like a lively krautrock piece with a touch of Journey, especially once a keyboard solo shifts the feel firmly into space rock. Eventually, it evolves into Pink Floyd, a Dave Gilmour clone rocking out in a guitar solo. This is a wild and very interesting three and half minutes. Again, it's all good stuff, entirely instrumental, but if I have no idea why it's there at this point in this song.

What's more, it doesn't end with Tablet I. It just erupts back into prog death at the five and a half minute mark, rather abruptly too, as if someone realised that the radio station had changed from the metal station to the krautrock station and tweaked the dial back again. This closing section is, you guessed it, all good stuff. Everything here is well played and clearly placed very deliberately. I merely have no idea what it's supposed to achieve. I get the feeling that it's supposed to take me to a particular place but it doesn't. I'm stranded in the airport terminal wondering which of these planes to catch.

If the end of the part prompts the decision, then it's that krautrock plane to Berlin, as Tablet II is almost entirely told in that instrumental vein, merely with added samples for flavour. In fact, it's so krautrock that there's a guest musician here and it's Thorsten Quaeschning, the current leader of electronic pioneers Tangerine Dream. That isn't particularly shocking, because it sounds like a track of theirs all the way until it turns into pastoral folk rock three minutes in and eventually gets to a heavy prog metal section, sans the usual death components, at the end. That's a genre even a musical chameleon like Tangerine Dream hasn't tried out yet.

I could keep going at this level of detail throughout all three tablets of both songs, but there's no point. The same wild shifts happen and, while every section sounds great on its own, none of it has any reason I can figure out. What's that ethnic instrumentation on Tablet III, in front of the tribal drums? I have no idea but it sounds good and makes no sense. Why does Tablet II of The Message veer into jazz out of nowhere? Why does Tablet III open up in a clear thrash metal section, a nicely powerful one at that until the death growls show up and minimise it? Why does that shift into the same pastoral flute and soothing folk prog as the middle of Tablet II of The Stargate? I don't know.

It feels like I should like this. I tend to appreciate bands subverting genres by merging them in odd ways. I tend to love extreme metal bands dipping into unusual rock territory, especially with ethnic instruments to mix it up even more. I tend to like being bludgeoned here but soothed there. That's joyous to me. But it has to make sense. There has to be a reason for it to happen, lyrical or musical or whatever. Set a scene and paint it with music so I can see what it is. It seems like this is trying to do that but it doesn't know how.

And that's why, as beautifully played as this is and as fascinating as its musical shifts are, it simply doesn't work for me as an album. Hidden History of the Human Race was an easy 9/10 for me, even though I don't dish those ratings out like candy. This has to be a 6/10 because it makes no sense to me at all and I've listened through enough times for a sudden realisation to feel long overdue.

Monday, 6 January 2025

Little Feat - Sam's Place (2024)

The latest in a long string of bands who I had no idea were still together and releasing new music are Little Feat, who were founded back in 1969 in Los Angeles by alumni of Frank Zappa's band like Lowell George. They were talked up often by people whose voices I trusted, like Tommy Vance and Ian Gillan, both of whom played tracks by them on the Friday Rock Show, like Skin It Back and Dixie Chicken, but I could have sworn that they'd gone away before I found rock music in 1984 and they'd done that, splitting up in 1979, shortly before George died. What I missed was that the surviving members reformed in 1987 and they've been together ever since.

Back then, that meant five musicians, but time has whittled them down to three and Sam Clayton takes the mike throughout this album for the first time. The other two are Kenny Gradney on bass and Bill Payne on keyboards. Fred Tackett joined the band at the point of reformation in 1987 and guitarist Scott Sharrard and drummer Tony Leone are recent arrivals. The other reason that I have been blissfully unaware that Little Feat kept on rolling is that they haven't put out a studio album since 2012's Rooster Rag. As that featured songs by Mississippi John Hurt and Willie Dixon, maybe it pointed the way to this being fundamentally a blues album, albeit one that rocks.

Milkman is pure blues with a lovely groove. Clayton's vocals are delightfully characterful and the guitar solo is absolutely gorgeous. However, that's immediately outshone by my favourite track on the album, You'll Be Mine, which simply barrels along with punctuating horns, a lovely slide guitar and another quality guitar solo at the end. Third up is a stalker of a song, Long Distance Call, with a guest vocal appearance by Bonnie Raitt, a sleepy harmonica-driven vibe and old school country guitarwork. That's three different blues styles in three songs and they're all excellent. Little Feat have my attention.

They play with the tempo for a while, up for You'll Be Mine, down for Long Distance Call, up again for the rocking blues Don't Go No Further, down once more for Can't Be Satisfied and down again for Last Night. However, everything that follows goes back to Can't Be Satisfied to work in a more consistent style. There's a real bounce to Can't Be Satisfied that guarantees to make us move. The vocals are sassy, the harmonica follows suit and so does the rest of the album, in Why People Like That and especially Mellow Down Easy, which features two fantastic solos, one on harmonica and the other on guitar.

Nothing tops You'll Be Mine in my book, but Why People Like That comes close. It's a message song with a spectacularly simple message, pointing out that people do bad things and wondering why. The title is a question, even if it's shorn of punctuation, and we can't answer that question by the end of the song any more than Clayton can. Both are lively songs and, while this is studio work all the way through to the bonus track, a live rendition of the Muddy Waters standard Got My Mojo Working, it always has that live feel to it as if the band are just jamming in the studio. That's most obvious on the bouncy songs, of course, but there are two other reasons.

One is that Clayton's voice is gorgeous but deliberately unpolished. He's trying to sound dirty not clean and he manages it. We imagine that he's even older than his seventy-eight years, singing to us from a rocking chair on his porch. It's perfect for this material. The other is the solos, which just keep on coming. None of these songs are long, Last Night a breath shy of five minutes and the rest shorter, down to the sub-three minutes of Don't Go No Further, but they all have solos, often more than one. Everyone seems to get in on that action too, so it's not just the guitars; the harmonica gets a few and so do do the keyboards, Bill Payne especially rocking out on Last Night.

This is a joyous album. It may be that, over time, a slow song like Last Night might seem a little in the way amongst all the lively material, but I'm still loving every single track three times through and I'll be diving straight into a fourth. Now I need to check back to see what else Little Feat have been up to since their 1987 reformation. I see a huge amount of albums, but most of them are live. I'll have to figure out which are studio and see how they changed their sound across that span. But not yet. I'm listening to this again.

By the way, the album's called Sam's Place because it was recorded at Sam Phillips Recording, one of the most legendary studios in Memphis. The songs are mostly standards, even if a few were new to me, with Milkman the only original. You'll Be Mine and Mellow Down Easy are two of three that were written by Willie Dixon, so I should clearly dig deeper into his catalogue than I have thus far. Why People Like That is a Bobby Charles song, a white musician who pioneered swamp pop. I don't know his work well, though I have heard some of his more famous compositions, like See You Later, Alligator and (I Don't Know Why) But I Do.

Monday, 23 September 2024

Flotsam and Jetsam - I am the Weapon (2024)

I bought Flotsam and Jetsam's debut album on original release in 1986 but I hadn't moved to their home town of Phoenix by then; I was on the other side of the pond listening in my bedroom in rural Yorkshire. Given that I've been in Phoenix for twenty years now, it's about time I caught them live and I finally did so earlier this year. They were as good as I'd hoped they would be, given that they were touring on the back of two of the best albums of their career, The End of Chaos and Blood in the Water. This is probably the least of the three, but it's still a damn good album worthy of being on my Highly Recommended List for the year. I've played it a lot today and it's as fresh as it was on a first listen.

My primary note is that it's less thrashy than usual, continuing in the vein of Blood on the Water in combining thrash with power metal and good old fashioned heavy metal. Gates of Hell blisters out of the, well, gate, courtesy of some frantic drumming from Ken Mary, but it doesn't show up until seven tracks in and, when it does, it makes us realise a lot of what came before it wasn't remotely as fast. Cold Steel Lights blisters early too, so the band are still willing to get fast, but they tend to slow down a little to bolster the melodies and hooks.

As I pointed out in my review of Blood on the Water, the obvious influences here are to bands like Iron Maiden and Queensrÿche, with occasional nods to bands a generation further back. There's a lot of seventies on Beneath the Shadows, where the bluesy bounce of the riffs reminds of ZZ Top's La Grange and the chorus builds like Deep Purple. Sure, it finds some Pantera guitar moments late but it's a look further back than usual for the Flots. By comparison, Maiden are everywhere here, most effectively on Burned My Bridges and Beneath the Shadows.

Those two are among my highlights this time out, along with Cold Steel Lights and it probably isn't a coincidence that these three have the most successful hooks. The verses are memorably melodic and the choruses are even catchier. They all build emphatically well too, reaching powerful grooves that take them home, usually with impressive use of backing vocals to deepen them further. Back in April, my highlight from their live set was The Walls, from Blood in the Water, even above all the classics I've been wanting to hear live for almost four decades. These unfold in the same vein.

That means that, while I'm an old school speed metal nut and prefer my thrash metal to be as fast as possible, I apparently appreciate the hooks that Eric A.K. hurls out even more and he has plenty of those here. It might seem like a gimme, but he dominates this album. Usually, I'm just as caught up in the guitarwork on Flots albums, but I found myself focusing on the vocals more this time out. And that's even though Michael Gilbert and Steve Conley deliver the goods yet again. They do just as much that's worthy on Cold Steel Lights as Eric A.K. but it's that melodic vocal line that's what I keep following. He channels some Ronnie James Dio on this one and that's no bad thing.

Given that I'm raving about yet another Flots album, I should explain why I think this is a little less than its two predecessors. One reason is that a couple of songs feel a little weaker this time out, a problem that didn't manifest on either The End of Chaos or Blood in the Water. I'm not as fond of Primal or Running Through the Fire. I'm not as sold on the bounciness of Kings of the Underworld either, with Eric A.K. spitting out words rhythmically on the beat, almost like an old school rapper, even if he sings rather than raps.

Another reason is that I kept hearing moments of other songs, which was occasionally distracting. It probably doesn't help that it started on the opener, A New Kind of Hero. Was that a nod to a riff in Anthrax's Madhouse? Was that a vocal progression from Whitesnake's Still of the Night? It's still a powerhouse of a song, exactly the sort of thing that should open a Flots album, and it closes wonderfully too. They always knew how to end songs, which many bonds never quite figure out. But those moments are there every time I repeat. There are similar moments on Primal and the title track that sound eerily familiar, even if I can't place them yet.

With acknowledgement to The Head of the Snake and Black Wings, which continue to grow on me with repeat listens, I'd call this another strong album from the Flots. It's a bit slower than The End of Chaos but just as melodic as Blood in the Water. It's a little less consistent than either, but even the worst songs aren't bad; they're just not up to the admirably high standard they're working to these days. It's an 8/10 release for sure and I'm looking forward to hearing a few of these songs in a live environment. However, I gave Blood in the Water one of my rare 9/10s and I find I can't do that this time.

Wednesday, 11 September 2024

Nile - The Underworld Awaits Us All (2024)

Here's the tenth album for Egyptian metallers Nile and pretty much everything I said about their ninth, Vile Necrotic Rites, holds here, except perhaps for the bits about diverse instrumentation. This is more traditional instrumentally and perhaps that's why it doesn't quite match that album, the unusual string sound on a delightful interlude called The Pentagrammathion of Nephren-Ka notwithstanding and whatever's going on in the coda to Under the Curse of the One God.

The most diverse element this time is vocal, with a whole slew of guest vocalists joining guitarist and lead singer Karl Sanders and the other members of the band who chime in occasionally with a backing vocal. Tellingly, many of these are female, though not from singers known for their work for other bands, and they don't usually sound typical for metal. It would be fairer to say that they sound like they've been borrowed from opera or musical theatre or jazz. A few are male and more expected for epic metal, on songs like True Gods of the Desert.

The unusual female vocals aren't frequent but they're always prominent when they happen and none of them feel like they ought to fit, even if they're all in time with what's unfolding around them. Of course, they do fit, even if the abiding impression is that they're being performed next door in another studio but someone opened an ill advised window so that they bleed through at the precisely perfect time. Then the window is closed again and they're gone.

The first arrives in Overlords of the Black Earth, as if an opera is determined to spring out of that black earth and the band are the titular overlords tasked with performing a ritual to stop it. I'm sure that's not what's happening in the lyrics, even if "we utter the words of power" does rather sound like opera. That returns on Under the Curse of the One God, even if it's just for a couple of lines, while the guitar is warping in fascinating fashion, and on Doctrine of Last Things, the title track and others.

I should call out this warping because it's a fascinating approach, most obviously on Overlords of the Black Earth but also to a lesser degree on a number of other songs. As if their sound wasn't already an intense thing, Nile have bulked up to a trio of guitarists: founder Sanders, plus Brian Kingsland, who was on Vile Necrotic Rites, and one of two new fish this year, Zach Jeter (the other is bassist Dan Vadim Von). I have no idea who's doing this warp guitar thing, but it's a wild and experimental idea that gives the firm impression that the rituals that Nile are performing are opening or closing portals with a quirky and esoteric effect.

Of course, it's still Nile and that means that it's uncompromisingly brutal but also very technical, so that there's never a dull moment. Stelae of Vultures is a powerful opener, but the second track simply erupts out of the gate and I wonder if those should have been swapped around, especially given that the second track is done and dusted in under four blistering minutes while the opener extends out to six and change. It does that appropriately, I should add; it just accordingly fails to have the same impact as the shorter, sharper shock after it.

By the way, I say "second track" so I don't have to keep saying Chapter for Not Being Hung Upside Down on a Stake in the Underworld and Made to Eat Feces by the Four Apes, a title so drawn out it even gets abbreviated in the lyrics. If my favourite songs are the ones with strange vocal additions and unusual effects and codas, like the triple whammy of Overlords of the Black Earth, Under the Curse of the One God and Doctrine of Last Things, I also keep coming back to the second track for the most blistering pace and impact anywhere on the album.

And, of course, along with everything else I said in my Vile Necrotic Rites review that holds true on this one, there's one statement that abides above them all. That's that I'm far less a fan of brutal death metal than I am most other extreme metal genres, but Nile are probably my favourite band to work overtly within that style. My biggest problem with brutal death metal is that much of it is unable to distinguish itself from the rest. Nile are the emphatic exception to that rule. I like this, just not quite as much as its predecessor.

Monday, 9 September 2024

Los Lonely Boys - Resurrection (2024)

Country: USA
Style: Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 2 Aug 2024
Sites: Facebook | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia

Los Lonely Boys is made up of three brothers, the Garzas, and this is called Resurrection because it's a reunion. When Jojo Garza left in 2019, they went on hiatus, but he came back in 2022 and so they're back in business again. As they hadn't released an album for a few years before that split, this ninth album comes a decade after its predecessor. It's not only a good one, it's an agreeably versatile one, as fans might expect, because they're well known for combining rock 'n' roll, blues, country, soul and Tex-Mex into a commercial sound all their own.

The surprising song for me was the opener, Wish You Would, because the obvious influence here is the Beatles, who didn't venture much into the genres listed above. It's a rock song more than pop, but it's written exactly like Lennon and McCartney would write it and there are whole sections of music simply drenched in the Merseyside sound.

As if to counter that, it's followed by I Let You Think That You Do, which is far more ZZ Top, not just rock over pop with a powerful guitar solo, but firmly rooted in the blues and obviously flavoured with the Lone Star state. This is a song that you simply can't imagine originating from any other location, launched with harmonica and unfolding with pure Texas dirt. It wouldn't shock me if they recorded this outside in the desert with nothing in sight except for tumbleweeds and armadillos stomping their toes, except that I think they really moved all those into a roadhouse and recorded it there instead.

Much of what follows sits in between those two sounds, at least until we get to the majestic closer, Bloodwater, which returns us firmly to the blues.

Initially, it's lively in a party sense, a string of songs that are easy to dance to and often shift into a Spanish verse or two. Dance with Me is sassy and soulful, a quintessential Latin song, right down to strong brass and a Cuban beat. It takes a lot to not move to this one and, with different filters, it could be a Latin pop single. Send More Love is a textbook example of laid back country rock, with a timely hook in "This world is going crazy! Can you send more love?" Natural Thing is an engaging ballad, with a strong guitar.

As we move into the second half, things remain lively but shift more into rock 'n' roll, starting with Can't Get No Love, which is such straightforward piano and guitar driven rock 'n' roll that Elvis has to have sung it at some point. Painted Memories adds a strong dose of Latin flavour and country too, but remains just as fundamentally rooted in rock 'n' roll. Hooked on You is as different again as it can be without ever leaving that genre, sassing it up into a punchy pop rock song.

In between those three is See Your Face, which is a smoocher of a song even though it's not overt ballad material. The ladies have been dancing all the way through, but they will drag in their men for this one. But hey, let's leap past that and relish in the closer.

Bloodwater is a soft blues song with a very tasty intro indeed, shifting from dirty into smooth with effortless charm. It's somewhere in between Jeff Healey and the Neville Brothers, I think, with an excellent and patient organ providing the perfect backdrop. There are a number of strong guitar solos on this album, including on I Let You Think That You Do and Natural Thing, but this leaves all of them in the dust. This isn't just a Henry Garza solo, it's a magnetic gem, somehow laid back but still soaring, more B. B. King than Stevie Ray Vaughan. It's the jewel in an already glorious song, easily my favourite song, ahead of the very different pairing of I Let You Think That You Do and Dance with Me.

It's also a patient closer. Everything on this album is three minutes and change except for the final two tracks, because Hooked on You wraps up just a little early and this one stretches out into five langurous minutes. Of course, it has to be the final song, because nothing can follow it, except for a decision to listen to the whole album over again. Which I'm about to do once more. This is a good album by any criteria but it's an especially good return for a band who have been out of the studio for ten years and on hiatus for a few of those. Welcome back!

Monday, 2 September 2024

Jon Anderson & The Band Geeks - True (2024)

There's some history here to kick off with. Jon Anderson is the former lead singer of Yes, of course, last heard on 1000 Hands: Chapter One, a thirty years in the making album finally released in 2019. He's backed here by the Band Geeks, which are a project of Richie Castellano, currently working as the rhythm guitarist and keyboard player in Blue Öyster Cult. Band Geek started as a podcast but grew into a band that covered songs on YouTube, with a constantly changing line-up of friends and guests. Anderson appreciated their covers of Yes songs enough to tour with them covering classic Yes tracks. That collaboration has now reached another level with this album of original music.

So, it's not Yes, but it absolutely sounds like Yes and not only because it prominently features Jon Anderson's iconic voice. There are overt Yes moments all over the album like a rash, starting with the phrasing of True Messenger, but especially including the bass work on Shine On, the beat early in Counties and Countries and the acoustic guitar intro to Make It Right. Clearly these musicians love Yes and not just because they're backing Jon Anderson. The era isn't singular but is mostly a combination of late seventies and early eighties Yes, a point when the songs were shorter and far more commercial in the main.

That era is backed up by occasional hints at what Anderson did in Jon and Vangelis, Counties and Countries veering into a Vangelis-esque fanfare and some of Anderson's vocal approach from that project. However, it isn't for long and the song clocks in at a breath under ten minutes, so we've generally forgotten those moments by the time we get to the end, with a prominent jazzy keyboard solo that isn't remotely like anything Vangelis might produce. Anderson merely has a lot of history to draw on and clearly not everything here sounds like his best known material with Yes.

I should mention that not every song is long, with Counties and Countries the shortest of only two worthy of that description, the other being Once Upon a Dream, a sixteen and a half minute epic. In fact, three of the nine tracks are done under four minutes with four others ranging from four to six. Some of them are even relatively straightforward for prog rock, Shine On the most obvious of those, regardless of that elegant basswork from Castellano.

Even though the songs take different approaches, the album is consistently strong, though there are clear highlights. I'd call out Once Upon a Dream as the best of them, and I'll cover that shortly, but I like Make It Right a lot too. It's a slower, more deliberate song but it has a gentle majesty to it. Even when it ramps up somewhat in its second half, it keeps that majesty in the way that a band like Magnum almost patented. It's another simpler song too, without much that's progressive, but it's highly effective nonetheless, all the way to the gospel moments at the end. It's a song that we feel rather than marvel at, even if there are moments of the latter.

The gentleness of Make It Right also continues into Realization Part Two, one of the three minute songs, which also adds a mild African flavour. It's only hinted at in beats and late vocal harmonies, but it could easily be funked up and jazzed up to fit fairly on Paul Simon's Graceland album. If I had to pick another highlight, it would be True Messenger, which opens the album as it means to go on. It's a strong opener, but I'd rank it after these highlights but above everything else.

I should emphasise that none of the lesser songs let the side down. I can't say I'm a huge fan of the closer, Thank God, for instance, even though it opens like a Police song, but that's partly because it can't hope to do much in comparison to the sixteen and a half minute epic before it. And that leads me back into Once Upon a Dream, which is likely to be everyone's standout track, ironically given that much of the album's success is in starting and finishing things in far fewer minutes.

I love the vocal rhythms that open Once Upon a Dream, which hearken back to some of the songs on 1000 Hands originating in Anderson's vocal exercises. He has a great choice of words for their sounds and, while I'm not expecting vocal coaches to react to a song this long, I'd love to hear what they might have to say about this opening. Of course, there's time enough for a lot more than just vocals and it stands up to that expectatoin. There's a Rainbow-esque guitar solo early on and an angelic midsection with copious use of triangle, not to forget a particularly wild transition in the thirteenth minute. It's a gift that keeps on giving.

And that holds true for the album as a whole. I'd say that this is better than 1000 Hands, but not by much, maybe not by enough to get a higher rating from me. Should I round a 7½ up or down? Going up would mean it sitting on my Highly Recommended List for the year. I think I'm OK with that. The most important thing, thinking on a grander scale than just one album, is that this is easily better than the most recent Yes album, The Quest from 2021. And I see that Alan White has left Yes, so it has to be said that Steve Howe is the only long term member left. Maybe those reunion calls could get somewhere. And, on the basis of this, maybe they should.

Monday, 3 June 2024

Evildead - Toxic Grace (2024)

I liked United States of Anarchy, Evildead's comeback album in 2020, and actively talked up certain aspects that I'll quote right now: "it's full of unashamedly old school fast and heavy thrash" and "a great mix of technical proficiency, angry attitude and raw speed, just how I like it". The reason I'm bringing that up now is because I can't remotely say the same things about this follow-up, a fourth album overall for the Los Angeles thrashers, and that's highly disappointing.

It takes a little while to realise how disappointing but, the longer the album runs on, the more we can't avoid the conclusion that Evildead have seriously lost their way this time out. I hope they can correct course for their next album, because it shouldn't be a particularly difficult task. They were in fine fettle four years ago. What's changed since then?

Initially, it's not too bad. F.A.F.O. kicks off well, with a capable intro suggesting an imminent ramp up to fast thrash speeds but it never quite gets there. It keeps hinting that it will for quite a while, but we gradually realise that it's content to just chug along while Phil Flores tries to sound angry without the same level of effort he put into the previous album. Reverie starts out fast but calms down and Flores shifts into an almost hip hop vocal approach. He's not rapping per se, but he spits bars here, punctuating their last words, as often as he spits out lyrics.

Neither of these are bad tracks, but neither is what it could be, so we're still hopeful at this point and I remained hopeful even after a chugger like Raising Fresh Hell that's nothing but filler three tracks in with a poor chorus. There's some speed in Stupid on Parade, but only very briefly, even if drummer Rob Alaniz doesn't quite get the memo, and its brevity sparks a sinking feeling that only grows with the album, pausing only temporarily in Subjugated Souls during the first of the album's two real examples of excellent fast thrash that hurls out energy. The second arrives at the end of Fear Porn nine tracks in, with only a cover still to come at that point.

I talk a lot about songs on albums that I merely like on a first listen but appreciate more and more each further time through. These growers tend to sound good but carry depth that comes clearer in repeat listens and often those become my favourite songs on those albums. I have to say Stupid on Parade is the antithesis of that. I didn't like it on a first listen, with its chugging tedium and its manipulated vocals, but repeat listens make me realise just how bad it is. That's not a good thing. Neither is not wanting to listen to it again after three times through.

And so it goes. Subjugated Souls may be the best song on the album, musically speaking, but it's a rather awkward song lyrically. Now, Evildead have never been the best lyricists and even the prior album was hardly impressive from that standpoint, its songs hurling vitriol at all the usual thrash suspects like politics and religion. I can get past that for the most part, but this one feels like it's punching down instead of up, a product of old men bitching about a younger generation. That it's got some fair points to make and it's better lyrically crafted than the previous few songs doesn't make it feel any less cringeworthy.

So there's a delicate and tasty intro to Bathe in Fire? We know that Juan Garcia is a killer guitarist even if he doesn't try particularly hard this time out. The guitar solo on this song is easily its best aspect, because it's another mid-tempo chugger with an even more lazy Flores vocal delivery. He speaks some of these lyrics, chants others and adds more post-production manipulation. This was the point where the sinking feeling stuck. World ov Rats hints at energy with its opening riff and bassline. Fear Porn has that second blistering section that feels great until we realise how little the album has left to go. Poetic Omen does nothing. None of them are highlights, though.

In fact, there are no real highlights. I'd plump for Subjugated Souls musically, but the lyrics don't help its case. That probably leaves F.A.F.O. as the best original song, which it really shouldn't be, and the best song the cover that wraps things up. It's The Death & Resurrection Show, taken from Killing Joke's self-titled 2003 album, and I rather dig it, but it doesn't feel like it belongs anywhere on this album. Evildead covered Planet Claire by the B-52s on United States of Anarchy, so maybe they ought to release an unusual covers album. I'd be up for that.

How things change over such a brief period. Four years ago, I was glad to see Evildead back and I praised their vitriol and vitality. They felt rejuvenated and ready to play a part in the burgeoning thrash scene. Today, I'm finding the best of their new material average and the worst thoroughly disappointing, and thinking about them as a covers band. That's not a good career trajectory.

Wednesday, 8 May 2024

Pearl Jam - Dark Matter (2024)

I was born in 1971, so my formative musical years were the eighties, from the early post-punk days when my favourite artist was Adam Ant to my thrash years in the second half of the decade, where Nuclear Assault had taken over that mantle, via an incredibly varied ride through NWOBHM, hair metal and the various nascent forms of what became extreme metal. I'm also English, so my idea of alternative rock is the journey the eighties took from Bauhaus through the Wedding Present to the Stone Roses rather than what the US produced a decade later. In other words, I'm not really a part of the target audience for Pearl Jam.

However, all that said, I rather enjoyed this. I can listen to the big hits well enough, but they don't wow me. My favourite experience with Pearl Jam was the blistering stripped down version of Bob Dylan's Masters of War that Eddie Vedder and Mike McCready performed at Dylan's 30th anniversary concert. I'm not sure what I expected from a quintessential nineties band in 2024, but there's a lot here and very little of it fits with what I thought I might hear. That's a good thing in my book, just in case you're new here.

Scared of Fear bursts out of the gate like a hard rock song, with a real urgency to it. It may well be my new favourite of their original songs. That continues into React, Respond, which has an almost punky edge that's clearly alternative but kicks it like hard rock too. The bass of Jeff Ament is very prominent here, so much so that it leads the way for serious chunks of the song. The chorus is just as vibrant and bouncy as I tend to think Pearl Jam aren't. And, while Wreckage is softer, more laid back, that bounce never quite leaves the album. This is a much happier album than I ever expected it to be.

Upper Hand may be the epitome of just how upbeat it gets. It's not happy, not precisely, but it's a heck of a lot closer than the opposite. And, with that note that underpins this entire release, I can start throwing out names, because I heard a lot of other people here that I didn't expect from the band with a professionally downbeat singer like Vedder at the mike. Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of respect for his vocal talents and have no problem with depressing delivery. Leonard Cohen's first two albums are among my favourites, as are Joy Division's. However, I don't think of him as a singer who can be happy. It's simply not an emotion he channels. This proved me wrong.

It's also worth mentioning that he has such an iconic voice that he stamps his authority over every song he sings, whether it's Pearl Jam's or not. However, he drifts into territory already owned and I could easily hear these songs sung with different, just as established voices. Won't Tell is alt rock in the sense that U2 are alt rock. Can any of you remember that far back into the annals of musical history? Something Special has a pop mentality to it that prompts me to imagine Amy Winehouse singing it. Got to Give reminds me of Bruce Springsteen and the closer, Setting Sun, feels like it's a laid back seventies pop song with a country tinge, maybe something that Neil Diamond could sing, without changing the acoustic guitar and orchestration. And then the Boss could cover that.

Some of it remains entirely alternative in the particular sense that Pearl Jam helped to define in the nineties. React, Respond starts that and Dark Matter continues it with emphasis. This one's a far more edgy song than React, Respond. It's Vedder's vocals and Matt Cameron's drums that do it for me on this one, but much of it is driven by Jeff Ament's bass, just like React, Respond. Of all the alternative songs here, though, I think Dark Matter is the one that rings truest to what I was expecting, an edgier and more modern take on what they did back in the day. However, the one I'd pick over the others is Running, which is so full of energy that it's almost punk. It's absolutely not what I expected from them, but they do it very well indeed.

So I enjoyed myself and I'm continuing to do so five or six listens in. The songs get stronger and the feelings that this is upbeat and versatile don't go away. Now, I'll always pick the eighties over the nineties and my grounding is always going to remain British, which may explain why I tend to enjoy a lot more of what I hear from European bands today than American ones, whatever the genre. It has to be said right here though that this surprised me, enough that I ought to dive into the Pearl Jam back catalogue, which is a lot more substantial than I expected. I know of their nineties stuff, even if I haven't heard it all, perhaps up to 2000's Binaural, but this is their sixth album since then for twelve overall and maybe I'm finally getting on board. I wonder when I should have started to pay attention.

Friday, 3 May 2024

Pigeons Playing Ping Pong - Day in Time (2024)

It seems strange, given such a memorable band name, that I haven't heard of Pigeons Playing Ping Pong before, but they've been around since 2009 and this is their seventh album. Clearly I've been missing out. By the way, that name was taken from the description of a scientific experiment in a textbook, but that doesn't mean this is math rock. The Pigeons play funk rock that's almost always driven by the bass of Ben Carrey. The vocals of Greg Ormont are very clean and the sound is often poppy—the earworm chorus in The Town, the obvious single which opens up the album, reminds of Bruno Mars's Uptown Funk—but they also love to jam and I fell into a lot of these guitar solos.

Let's get The Town out of the way quickly, because it's the sort of song that's so infectious that it's easy to just slap that one on repeat and forget that it's actually opening up an album. There are a further ten songs on Day in Time, plus a thirty second outro that sounds like it was ripped from an old and warped cassette. I can't say that any approach The Town on the infectious front, but a few of these songs come close to being as perky, such as the title track and Fall in Place. I had a concert to attend tonight and I had The Town and Day in Time playing in my head all the way there.

Funk rock is usually driven by the bass and Ben Carrey is a thoroughly impressive bedrock for the band to build on. He's there on The Town and Day in Time, of course, but it's impossible to ignore him on Beneath the Surface and Sorcerer, let alone when he's stealing the spotlight with bass solos on tracks like Alright Tonight and Overtime. There are moments dotted here and there on the album, often in the intros to songs, when he doesn't do anything at all and it feels acutely like something's been lost. Fortunately he soon shows up and all is right with the world again.

Once Carrey has set down a bass line, many of these songs are tasked with a pretty basic question as to whether they want to be pop or rock. The more Greg Ormont's vocals nail a melody, the more pop it becomes, whether it's the funk of The Town, the disco of Let the Boogie Out or the reggae of My Own Way. The more Ormont focuses on his guitar and Jeremy Schon joins him—I don't see a credit to divvy up lead and rhythm duties, so I presume they swap them—, the more it turns into a rock album. Just check out Skinner, which doesn't just have the best guitar solo on the album; it's seriously extended because this is a five minute instrumental.

It's how they put those two approaches together to create one sound that makes this band work so well. The clean lines, whether we're talking vocals or guitar, suggest that this is what we might hear if Lenny Kravitz handed his guitar to Eric Clapton and his microphone to Robert Cray. Late in Feelin' Fine, there's a jam that's absolutely glorious but, prior to that, the song is so clean that we'd perhaps be forgiven for assuming that they're aiming for the blandest audience possible—like people who think the sun shines out of Jimmy Buffett's margarita glass—but just can't resist rocking out anyway.

And they rock out a lot here. The Town ought to be too commercial to do that but there's a tasty guitar solo in the second half; Alright Tonight boasts another one; and Day in Time has one more that comes right after a keyboard solo. That's three in three songs and there are a bunch more to enjoy before we get to that instrumental workout on Feelin' Fine eleven tracks in. Add to that an array of extra little touches, like the keyboard flurry late in Day in Time that reminded me of early Marillion; the reggae jangle of the guitars in My Own Way and Fall in Place; or the funky horns in Let the Boogie Out that elevate the whole thing.

It all made me recall a gig review in Kerrang! way back in the late eighties that sent someone to an Allman Brothers gig who clearly had no idea who they were. They fully expected granddad rock and were prepared to sit through it, but they got a blistering jam show instead that utterly blew their mind. That's how I imagine Pigeons Playing Ping Pong gigs to be, with grandmas showing up because they just sound so nice in the background of Murder She Wrote or some such show and hearing tight rocking jams instead that make them question what they've missed over decades.

And I'll shut up now, except to make a note for my future self to figure out what that phrasing is in Overtime that I absolutely recognise but somehow can't place. I listened to a couple of tracks late one evening to see if this was something I'd be up for reviewing. Obviously I was, but what I got on an eleven track album was so much more than I heard in that pair of openers, even though anyone listening to this would have to include The Town as a highlight. I'm one of those, though Skinner is my top pick and Day in Time and Feelin' Fine aren't far behind.

So I may be a little late, but I've caught up with Pigeons Playing Ping Pong and now have six prior albums to seek out. Have you caught up with them yet? You should. Your day will feel better for it.

Tuesday, 30 April 2024

The Obsessed - Gilded Sorrow (2024)

This may be an odd confession to make, but I don't believe that I've ever heard the Obsessed. I've heard their lead singer and lead guitarist, Scott 'Wino' Weinrich, because he fronted Saint Vitus in the late eighties and he appeared on Dave Grohl's overlooked Probot album. However, while he formed this band as far back as 1979, it only released some demos and a single before he joined Saint Vitus. After his time in that band, he reformed the Obsessed but their albums showed up in the early nineties when life was taking over from music for me.

If I ever heard them, it would be the track that was on Metal Massacre VI, but I don't recall it, so I get to finally catch up through their fifth album. The first three came out between 1990 and 1994 and four arrived another split and reformation later in 2017, soon before I started up Apocalypse Later Music. Clearly I need to go back to those earlier albums because I like this, not that it shocks me at all. What surprises me is that it took this long for me to catch up.

Well, there's another surprise in store with the opening couple of tracks, Daughter of an Echo and It's Not OK, because they're perky doom, downtuned but up tempo and I'd somehow got it into my brain that the Obsessed played more traditional doom but with punk influences. Maybe they did. I wasn't there. I like these tracks, though, which do have a punk energy to them but are played with metal precision. That punk energy extends to Wino's vocals, because the perkier a song gets, the more conversational he becomes in his delivery. Not everything adopts that approach here but it returns as an approach in Jailine.

That all changes on Realize a Dream, which starts out aiming to set a mood and shifts into more of a hard rock sound. The tone is the same, but the influence is less Black Sabbath and more the Cult, just slower, as if it's a single played at 33rpm instead of 45. Accordingly, Wino sings this song more than converses with us. Jailine is even more obviously Cult-inspired, with some Danzig in there for good measure and even a hint of Sisters of Mercy in the chorus too. It's all downtuned though and back to perky doom. It's a heady mixture and I like it a lot.

The title track is much slower and more overtly doom, with vocals that start out spoken word and endowing it with an epic wasteland feel. Maybe it and the similarly slow but bouncier Stoned Back to the Bomb Age and Wellspring are what I was expecting from the Obsessed. The former is bleak but the latter slow bounces with Wino returning to conversational vocals, loose but always firmly on point, even throwing in dismissive laughter in Stoned Back to the Bomb Age when the lyrics ask for it. It's not a happy song, raging against politicians.

There's more variety late in the album, with Lucky Free Nice Machine closing out like a hard rock guitar solo. It's only a minute long and it's entirely instrumental, Wino's guitar taking a moment in the spotlight but the rhythm section of doom bolstering him wonderfully. None of them are old time members, though drummer Brian Constantino was on that previous album, Sacred, having joined in 2016. Jason Taylor on rhythm guitar and Chris Angleberger on bass both arrived in 2022. Before it, Yen Sleep goes back to traditional doom, plodding along with just enough bounce to be engaging rather than bleak. It features my favourite guitar solo of any of these songs.

Oddly, though, given how much I like traditional doom and dip happily into funeral doom, most of my favourite songs here are the perky ones, most obviously It's Not OK and Jailine. I'm also fond of Realize a Dream and Yen Sleep, two very different tracks indeed. That means that, while I have finally heard an Obsessed album, I'm not entirely sure which of these sounds is their core one and I really ought to go back and dip into the earlier ones to see where this came from.

Friday, 12 April 2024

Blue Öyster Cult - Ghost Stories (2024)

Nineteen years elapsed between Blue Öyster Cult's thirteenth album, Curse of the Hidden Mirror, and their fourteenth, The Symbol Remains, so we probably shouldn't complain that it took merely four to get to number fifteen. However, this is supposedly their final studio effort, which makes it a little more worrying that it's not made up of new material. Well, it's new to us but it isn't to the band because, with one exception, it's material left off three older albums from the seventies and eighties. That exception is the closer, If I Fell, a Beatles cover, that they recorded in 2016.

The good news is which three albums we're talking about, because they're ones that contain huge songs. The oldest is Spectres from 1977, the home of Godzilla. Then there's 1981's Fire of Unknown Origin, which gave us Burnin' for You. Finally, there's The Revölution by Night, originally released in 1983, which features arguably their most underrated song ever, Shooting Shark. The bad news is that these songs were clearly left off those albums for a reason. They're not bad songs, not really, though some are just there. However, few of them could fairly argue about not being included on those albums, even if BÖC diehards consider them "lost gems", as the press releases suggest.

The best of them to me are almost bookends. Late Night Street Fight is a strong opener that has some real funk to it, not only through the prominent bass of Joe Bouchard, who isn't in the band now but was back then. Don't Come Running to Me almost at the end of the album, with only that Beatles cover still to come. It feels raw but I don't mind that, because there's an edge to it and I'm not certainly averse to BÖC with an edge. It's especially good because the edge isn't just courtesy of the guitars, which deliver some wonderful power chords, but also the drums, presumably from Albert Bouchard. These are the two that live up to the "lost gems" suggestion in my book.

Of course neither Bouchard brother is in the band any more, even if Eric Bloom and Buck Dharma are, and that leads to another odd feeling. We might think that the final album from a legendary band like Blue Öyster Cult ought to showcase their final line-up as a goodbye but this one doesn't, even if Richie Castellano, who's played keyboards and rhythm guitar with them since 2007, stepped in to plug some holes in the partial recordings, just as Joe Bouchard recorded a new lead vocal on So Supernatural, even if he isn't in the band. These weren't all complete songs in the archives. It's likely that most were partial recordings that needed not just remastering but completing.

Three of the songs are covers and they're all decent enough, but none of them does anything new that the originals didn't. Sure, there's a wonderful seventies organ sound on We Gotta Get Out of This Place, the old Animals classic, but Kick Out of the Jams is just there, even if it was a favourite on stage. It's not a patch on the MC5 orignial. The third is that newer take on If I Fell, an odd choice from the Beatles catalogue, from way back in 1964 on their A Hard Day's Night album. It's the shortest song on offer here and it's a studio jam done acoustically that feels a little out of place. It certainly couldn't have been placed anywhere else on the album.

Some of the other songs are worthy of note, even if they don't sit up there with the two highlights. Cherry aches to be commercial from the outset and unfolds in harmonies. It's like the Beach Boys doing old time rock 'n' roll, except there's a jangle to the guitar that they'd never sanction. Shot in the Dark starts out with a minute of intro that's spoken word monologue over piano jazz, as if the band were hanging out in a lounge bar. And talking of lounge, The Only Thing is extra-smooth, like it's a psychedelic disco lounge ballad. I'm not unhappy that I heard these, but I can see why they're not on those old albums.

The rest are just there, not particularly bad but without anything notable to add. They'd all count as filler on a regular album and so didn't make it onto stronger albums. Some of them could have served as B-sides for singles, though Soul Jive seems like an idea that hasn't been developed yet, even with whatever was done in the studio to finish these songs up. The only other song I ought to talk about is So Supernatural, the one with Joe Bouchard's new vocal. It felt weak to me initially, but it builds well and I found myself getting into it more and more as it ran on. Tellingly, listening afresh took me through the same cycle each time. The first minute is just there, but the chorus is decent and it gets better and better until it's almost another highlight.

And so this is Blue Öyster Cult's final studio album. It's not bad. It's interesting. It's no classic. The problem for me comes back to that single word: "final". If the band hadn't mentioned that, then I would bet that fans would welcome this a lot more than they seem to be doing. It's decent and it's a look back at a couple of eras in the band's output that could be seen as heydays. Sure, it's clearly an album for the diehards, but it could have reached further. However, weighing it down with that "final" word means that it's the end of a stellar career that's run over half a century and it's not an emphatic goodbye.

Monday, 8 April 2024

Whitecross - Fear No Evil (2024)

Country: USA
Style: Heavy Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 22 Mar 2024
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Wikipedia | YouTube

Here's another band who haven't put out an album in forever and I'm not sure why. The heyday of Whitecross was in the late eighties when the crossover success of Stryper proved that it wasn't an impossible contradiction to play Christian metal. They knocked out four albums between 1987 and 1989 and two more in the early nineties, but the only album since, 2005's Nineteen Eighty Seven, being primarily re-recordings of songs on their debut. So this is their first album in nineteen years but the first with only original material in thirty-two, following 1992's High Gear.

It's worth mentioning that the most recent three albums from their original run ended up with a Dove Award, which is the premier awards dished out by the Gospel Music Association. If that name raises an eyebrow, I should highlight that they've apparently redefined what gospel means in this sense. Whitecross don't remotely sound like Mahalia Jackson or Tennessee Ernie Ford. However, they do create music that meets the GMA's requirements for adherence to faith, which seems to be what counts most nowadays.

That's why there are songs here that are overtly Christian in outlook, Lion of Judah and Fear No Evil the most unmistakable among them. However, that's not everything here, because The Way We Rock is as lyrically generic as its title might suggest and others do their preaching in far more subtle fashion, building stories about people who find their lives lacking something or describing outreach to people who are struggling for some reason. They're still Christian songs but they may not immediately seem so unless you're paying attention. And, of course, you might not care.

Songs like The Way We Rock ought to fall flat as openers nowadays, because we've all heard that sort of lyric a thousand times and it had got old before Whitecross formed back in 1985. However, there's an element to elevate it here, which is the guitarwork of Rex Carroll, who co-founded the band and has remained in place throughout their existence, only missing a couple of years in the mid-nineties when vocalist Scott Wenzel took over and returning in 2000 when the band got back together properly.

His guitarwork carries a serious bite, lending this song the drive of something Dio might have put out in his early solo years. After Lion of Judah softens just a little, he steps into the spotlight for a raucous guitar solo appropriately named Jackhammer that's aware enough to avoid oustaying its welcome and so wraps up in a minute and a change. Carroll continues to be the highlight for me in almost every song, adding an edge even when new fish vocalist Dave Roberts, who joined in 2020, doesn't do so. He's a Dave Meniketti sort of vocalist, able to merge power and melody seamlessly but without as much soul to his delivery, with some Kevin Dubrow for good measure.

For the most part, the best songs are the up tempo ones where Roberts gets to soar and Carroll gets to blister. Jackhammer doesn't really set up Man in the Mirror, for instance, but Roberts has a powerful scream to do exactly that. Songs like 29,000 might have roots in the glam metal of the eighties but it's much heavier than that, pulling from regular heavy metal to drive forward with a serious emphasis, and it nods to the guitar shredders that took over a decade later, without ever getting indulgent. Carroll can shred all day long but he knows that these songs wouldn't be better for that, so he keeps that in check, adding edge when it's needed and going wild only when it's truly time for a solo or to bolster the build of a song to its finalé.

There are exceptions though, not to the quality but to the suggestion that it's only there in those up tempo songs. The most obvious is Blind Man, which sounds fantastic, even though it's built on mandolin rather than electric guitar. Roberts adds huge amounts of grit into his voice for this one and it works really well. Saints of Hollywood adds a southern rock flavour and Roberts shifts into Spanish at points, which works far more effectively than I would have expected.

I could even add Wishing Well to that list, because it's the power ballad of the album but doesn't annoy the crap out of me the way that so many power ballads tend to do. I wouldn't remotely call it a highlight but it's a decent song and I don't feel the urge to skip past it on repeat listens. One extra draw for Christian metal aficionados is that it apparently features three members of Petra, but that doesn't elevate it for me. The same goes for Carroll's acoustic two minute closer, Further On, which is just there.

All in all, this is a strong return for a band who have been absent from the studio for far too long. Much of it is the product a band full of energy firing on all cylinders, but they're not afraid to mix it up and, when they do, the results are varied. Of course, the Christian metal fanbase is devoted enough to not particularly care that much. It's a Whitecross album. They're on board already.

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