Top 10 Metal Albums to Play in the Summertime

Ah, summer is here at last. Time to shake off the dreary weather, put on your shorts, and hit the beaches. Or in my case, try to keep my 6 year old busy and not trying to burn the house down while he's out of school.

Summer is not usually a season associated with metal. We tend to usually think of autumn and winter, with its grey clouds, freezing winds, and overall dreariness. Summer is usually just too damn happy and light of a time; and the same usually goes for spring, except that here in eastern Washington, our spring has been more like autumn (it was snowing in mid-April for fucks sake!). Of course that doesn't usually keep us from blasting onslaughts of brutality from our speakers, car stereos, etc from dawn till dusk, but sometimes (if you are like me), there is a certain degree of wanting to listen to music that fits your surroundings. Or maybe not, maybe it just seems that way to me, but whatever...

Here in no particular order, are my top 10 albums to rock out too during the lazy days of summer. The criteria for this list is pretty simple. These are albums that either have some sort of groove factor to them, have more of an upbeat feel, give of some sort of feeling of being in warm climates, or just sound good blasting from your car stereo while you cruise down the freeway on a sunny day with your windows down. You get the idea...

Enjoy!


(1) Kyuss - Welcome to Sky Valley

In my opinion, the quintessential summer metal band. Might be a bit obvious since they're from the desert, but oh well. Really you could probably pick any of their offerings here, but 'Sky Valley' is probably just the one I go to the most. Queens of the Stone Age also warrants consideration, but there's more debate on whether or not they can be classified as "metal" so I went with Josh Homme's earlier work instead.

(2) Windir - 1184

Wait... a Norwegian band, for a top ten of summer list? "Really," you say? Yes really. Here's why. Although they're put into the "black metal" genre, Windir have a very unique sound that combines Scandinavian folk music with grim black metal. Okay maybe its not that unique nowadays, but Windir were one of the best at what they did. 1184 is a vibrant and lively trance through a land of wonder and fantasy, and one that just sounds summery to me. Call me crazy, but this album just seems like it would be perfect to take on a summer nature hike.

(3) Finntroll - Jaktens Tid

*sigh* Okay yes, I realize that I'm putting another Scandinavian band up here. Sorry, can't help it, Finntroll fits the list all too well. Much like Windir, Finntroll use traditional folk music mixed with fantasy lyrics in their unique brand of metal. The main difference being that Finntroll are a little bit less serious in their music and a bit more fun. Not that Windir aren't fun, well.... whatever you get the idea. Finntroll's sophomore effort 'Jaktens Tid' might not be as popular as its follow up 'Nattfödd', but its one of my personal favorites.

(4) Pantera - Far Beyond Driven

In my opinion, Pantera gets a bit of a bad rap in the extreme metal community. The major complaints are that they are too commercial, too groove oriented, and are loved by jocks and rednecks. As far as the last complaint goes, I can understand, and that is fair. On the other hand, the same could be said for Slayer and those same people will still back Slayer up, so...... I get it, but come on, unless you're still in high school, a certain demographic liking a certain band shouldn't be a reason to blow off said band. As far as the music goes, all I can do is argue Pantera's merits muscially. So I'll just say if you don't like it, try giving it another chance. This disc SCREAMS summer to me. The beginning track 'Strength Beyond Strength' has an almost punk rock feel to it.

(5) Agalloch - Ashes Against the Grain

I've made little secret of my love for this band. I'll just say it again.... I LOVE THIS BAND!!! Some people might categorize Agalloch in the 'folk-black metal' genre, but I disagree. They definitely have folk elements, but 'Ashes Against the Grain' has several different musical elements that make it totally unique. Blending indie rock, doom, black metal, and folk elements, Agalloch's third offering is dark, but still has a very triumphant and warm feeling making it a great album to listen to on a sunny day.

(6) Children of Bodom - Follow the Reaper

Yes, back to Finland again. This one may not seem very summery, but its infectious grooves, blistering solos, and relentless aggression are what make it a perfect album for summer. Another one that is great for cruising down the highway with. CoB are another band that kinda gets knocked on for being too commercial, but again, I base my tastes on the merit of the music, not how popular they are (or are not).

(7) Kreator - Extreme Aggression

Speaking of relentless aggression, we have 'Extreme Aggression' from German thrash masters Kreator. By most fans' accounts, this is Kreator's best work to date, and I would have to agree - even though Kreator have put out great records on a consistent basis. If you are unfamiliar with Kreator (and you shouldn't), they basically make Metallica look like U2. Not that I have anything against U2, but you get my point.

(8) Faith No More - The Real Thing

 

I have such weird love/hate relationship with this album. I love it because.... well.... it fuckin' rocks! But the reason I hate it? One word: Epic. Not the kind of Epic used to describe the album (which it does), but Epic as in the second track on the album which turned into a radio hit. Don't get me wrong, its actually not a bad song, but...well let me give you an example: I have a Faith No More t-shirt with this exact logo on it, except on a black background. Everytime I am out and about some douchebag looks at my shirt and goes "Yeah! Those guys rock!" and proceed to belt out "Yooooooou waaaaaaant it aaaaaal but you can't have it..." and I go, "Yeah, Zombie Eaters is awesome too," which usually elicits a confused look from said douchebag. But I digress. Listen to the lyrics of the title track, its fuckin' poetry man!

(9) Napalm Death - Scum

Arguably the first grindcore album ever, 'Scum' is a 33 minute pummeling to the cerebral cortex. It makes me want to go burn down a McDonalds..... or maybe a Bank of America. Okay not really, only kidding. (if the FBI comes and takes me, then tell me wife I love her, and my kids I love them too... 'now go to bed!') From the beginning growls of "MULTI..... NATIONAL...... CORPO...... RATIONS........ GENOCIDE........OF THE......... SOVEREIGN.......... NATIONS!" you know that this is an band that doesn't fuck around. What better way to kick off summer than blasting a record that is essentially a huge middle finger to the establishment?

(10) Electric Wizard - Dopethrone 

Kinda like Black Sabbath on pot.... and even dirtier. Electric Wizard are a band that I am just finding out about and pretty much think all their stuff is gold. This album was voted "Album of the decade" by Terrorizer magazine and made Decibel's top ten of the decade in their top 100 albums of the decade. Great to listen to after (ahem) a little 'tobacco' smoking and sitting out on your porch on a warm summer night looking up at the stars.

BONUS: Anything by Iron Maiden

I mean lets face it, Maiden are great anytime, but they're just great to rock out to in the summer months.

There ya have it. If you have any comments, disagreements, or amendments to this list, feel free to leave a comment. I love to talk about this stuff, and I totally value others opinions and views on metal, so please feel free to let me know if there is an album you think I should have included here, or if you totally disagree and think that any of the aforementioned albums are in fact NOT good for summer listening, or even if you just think I'm totally full of crap and don't like summer at all and think that the world should just live in a perpetual state of winter and darkness, with nothing but the bitter cold blackness surrounding us all. 

In which case if that's you..... I think someone needs a hug!

-J

Album Review: Origin's 'Entity'

Note: Was originally going to review the new Morbid Angel album, however I refuse to pay for it until I hear it in its entirety due to extremely mixed reviews I have been getting. Instead I am opting to go with Origin's latest opus.

Band: Origin
Album: Entity
Release Date: June 7, 2011
Label: Nuclear Blast 

Origin have a very special place in my black heart. Two summers ago, when I was working a shitty ass job as a convenience store clerk, I found time to make it to the Summer Slaughter Tour; which that year featured this band as well as Dying Fetus, Necrophagist, and (the ultimate icing on the cake) Behemoth. I enjoyed most of the bands (there were a few that were either decent or just crap), but Origin put on a hell of a show. Not only that, but my buddy Cameron had made some contacts with Paul their lead guitarist, and so I got to hang out and talk with him for a little while. And the guy was really cool! He was extremely gracious, and incredibly humble; and I don't know about you, but if I could play guitar that well, I would have a hard time being that humble. 

Origin's latest album comes comes on the heels of their 2008 release Antithesis, an record which garnered praise from fans and critics alike. The biggest difference with Entity is the absence of vocalist James Lee, now replaced by the relatively unknown Jason Keyser. Lee's abscence from the record is definitely a mark against them, though to be fair Origin has had a tough time keeping members due to their obscurity and lack of proximity to each other. Keyser is serviceable at best; he is able to keep the signature Origin sound alive, but has nowhere near the amount of emotion and high/low contrasting range which Lee brought on Origin's previous releases. 

Aside from that, Entity keeps the signature Origin sound alive. The sweeping arpegios, maniacal time signatures, and machine gun double bass drumming are back with a few surprises mixed in. For the most part, the tracks hit you hard and fast - only four of the eleven tracks clock in at over three minutes, and of the four that do, two of them hit the six minute mark. One of these tracks, 'Saligia', is an epic journey dotted with staccato riffing laden with double bass grooves. The guitar leads have an almost middle eastern feel to them, akin to American death metal brethren Nile. Two tracks later, 'Fornever' uses the same type of exotic riffing but also includes a very slowed down guitar riff over lightening fast double bass patterns. Its also nice to see a throwback to the classic Celtic Frost/Bathory style intro in the song 'Banishing Illusion' - which later takes another strange twist when it moves into a folksy sort of dance riff almost akin to something you'd find from Finnish folk metal provocateurs Finntroll.

There is definitely some good variety here, however a lot of the tracks are pretty basic; not that being basic or simple is a bad thing, but for Origin - a band known for their technical prowess - its somewhat of a letdown. There are also times when they throw new sounds in that just don't work. Take for example the high-pitched guitar squeals in 'Committed' that might be considered adventurous, but to me they just sound a bit annoying. There are also times when the bands chaotic swarms of sound can get a little bit too chaotic, such as the appropriately titled 'Swarm'. That might be a misnomer when we're talking about a band like Origin, however there is definitely an argument to be made that Antithesis and it's predecessor Echoes of Decimation were able to pull it off, whereas parts of Entity seem to use chaotic time signatures simply for the sake of being chaotic.

As a whole the album is strong, though there is a not a whole lot that is new here. In the case of a band like Origin, I do understand that they have a particular sound, and they really are not the same band unless they adhere to said sound. Having said that, if you are looking for classic Origin, you will not be disappointed. I personally would like to see a little more growth from the band; I look at Entity as being more of a transitional record. They seem to be trying to regroup and find their direction going forward, and Entity is most definitely a solid release. I just didn't 'WOW' me like Echoes and Antithesis did.

OVERALL SCORE: 8 out of 10


-J

Metal Rant of the Month: Metal Snobs

I'm sure many of you have experienced this before: you're on some metal forum from a certain metal magazine (I won't say which one), and you see a comment such as this one:

    "All the identity has been sucked out of the forum. It might as well be the revolver forum" - direct quote

Sorry, not trying to throw Revolver under the bus here, but you see my point. That one's not bad compared to this one though.

     "the new dimmu borgir album is horrible and they should kill themselves for making it. talk about           overproduction of bad material!"

Actually I kind of agree with this guy, but killing themselves for making an album? That's a bit harsh. How bout this gem....

     "this has to be the poorest excuse for black metal in the history of the genre. it's not heavy enough to qualifiy for metal anyways, I've heard green day play more brutal songs"

Actually this one was taken from a youtube video comment, but the douchebaggery remains in tact.

This is pretty much what I imagine some of of these assholes looking like... or maybe this....

Yeah that looks about right. Okay you all get the point,

"But It's the fucking internet," you say, "Its basically the mouthpiece for any idiot that things he's hot shit but really not, and wouldn't ever even consider telling his own mother to go fuck herself for fear that she may kick him out of the basement. I mean any asshole with an internet connection can start a blog up and spout of his opinion like he thinks anyone really cares about it!"


(silence)......



Um, right. Forget I said that one, moving on....


Its true that no matter what you are talking about in cyberspace, be it music, movies, television; even candle making for fuck's sake (yes, I know someone that was on some candle makers' boards and they do the same thing), there will always be people who wanna be haters. Most of us choose to do the responsible thing: ignore them. However when it comes to the world of heavy metal - and I understand its not exclusive to our world - it seems that life imitates cyberspace in these situations.

Well at least it seems to where I live. Here in Spokane Washington, there is a very small but dedicated contingent of extreme metalheads. When I say extreme metal heads, I mean the those that are into extreme metal. There are plenty of mainstreamers that are into the usual Slipknot, Lamb of God, Black Label Society, shit like that. Not that there's anything wrong with that music, just not exactly my cup of tea for the most part.

So we extreme metalheads are few and far between. You'd think that we'd be a tight knit group, but that isn't really the case. To be fair, I don't really know many of them personally. The few that I do know are actually really cool people. Its the one's that I see or casually talk to at metal shows that are usually the uptight snobby pricks that tend to dot the landscape of extreme metalheads. I hate to make this comparison, but extreme metalheads are like hipsters in the indie rock crowd; or as I call them, music snobs. They feel this strange obligation to defend the world from bad music (or at least what they consider to be bad) and feel like the fact that they love some obscure indie rock band from Oregon makes them better than everyone else. The strangest part is that on the one hand, they will totally trash you for your musical tastes, but at the same time they don't really want you to get into their music, as they will completely abandon it once it becomes "commercial." The best example in the metal world that I can give is Cradle of Filth. Throughout the early to mid-nineties, Cradle were considered on of the premier extreme metal acts, and everyone I knew that was into the genre loved Cradle. Admittedly, I didn't know that many people that were into extreme metal at the time, but I can safely say at least that those I did know listened to, if not worshiped Cradle. Then Cradle got big, and started changing their sound. "Fuck those guys" was pretty much the reaction. Now admittedly I'm not a huge fan of the stuff Cradle has been putting out recently, but I know some metal fans that denounce anything past 'The Principle of Evil Made Flesh' because it started getting too "commercial."

Maybe that's a bad example. Lets take it a step further. Lets look at a genre with (in my opinion) the snobbiest of the metal snobs as fans: black metal.

Dammit! Whose idea was it to forge an upside down cross out of razorblades anyway?

Black metal is extremely near and dear to my heart because it is what got me back into extreme music. I must admit something here: I am an extreme johnny-come-lately to the extreme metal scene. It has only been in the past three to four years that I have really been immersed into it. I had dabbled with things like Cradle of Filth, Morbid Angel, and Cannibal Corpse in high school, but none of it really stuck with me at the time. After high school the most extreme stuff I was into was Slayer, other than that it was mostly mainstream metal that I was into. Keep in mind this is Spokane Washington, and I was in high school from 1996 to 2000; a time period highly regarded as the dark ages of metal. This is after all the period which saw such great bands as Limp Bizkit, HedPE, Slipknot, and Drowning Pool were rising to prominence. (I know, shoot me now right?) Sure there was some stuff happening deep underground, but I didn't know anything about it because everyone in my high school was listening to Limp Bizkit, Korn, and ICP; I had a few friends that were in stuff like Slayer and Sepultura, but that was it. Couple that with the fact that I was a practicing Christian at the time, and there was absolutely no chance of any cool extreme metal sticking with me.

With that being said, I know I don't have a whole lot of ground to criticize black metal's followers, but I'm going to anyway because it needs to be said. This whole garbage about "true kvlt black metal" needs to fuckin stop! Again, I love old school black metal. When I discovered Mayhem, Burzum, Emperor, Darkthrone, and Enslaved, I thought I had just discovered gold. I was hooked! I started finding other bands like Xasthur, Nachtmystium, Marduk, Watain, Antaeus, Gorgoroth, Carpathian Forest, and Judas Iscariot (to name just a few). Then I started doing some research into black metal's history, and seeing how it has evolved into the present day.

Today, black metal is certainly not what it started out as, but it has evolved, changed, experimented, and branched out. You have bands like Wolves in the Throne room and Agalloch (both from here in the pacific northwest I might add) who have added influences from indie rock and folk music. You have bands like Enslaved and Nachtmystium who have added progressive rock and psychedelic sounds to black metal. And then you have a band like Deathspell Omega, who.... well.... they're just fantastic! They've taken black metal to the next level. Even bands like Darkthrone and Burzum, though sticking to a lo-fi DIY type formula, have changed and evolved over the years.

Agaolloch's 'The Watcher's Monolith' from their latest album 'Marrow of the spirit. I dare you not to love it!

"True kvlt black metal" just does not exist anymore, or if it does, it exists in the extreme underground. Bands like Carpathian Forest and Gorgoroth are of course still (mostly) adhering to the black metal style and staying true to the original sound; and that is great. I have nothing against it, and I think that the black metal sound still withstands the test of time. On the other hand, these defenders of the "necro kvlt black metal' sound or whatever they wanna call it continue to rail against the new breed of "post" black metal bands that come out and dare to put their own spin on it. And while we're on the subject, I'm sick and tired of all this bashing on Cradle of Filth and Dimmu Borgir. Yes I understand they drastically changed their sound and went commercial, but honestly, who cares? Critics say, "They're not black metal!" but the thing is Cradle and Dimmu don't even call themselves black metal; same goes for a lot of the post black metal acts out there today. So what the fuck are you whining about? Either listen to it or don't. Cradle and Dimmu are going to continue to do their own things. I'm not necessarily into it myself, but I don't sit there and cry about them on the metal forums because I think they're sullying the good name of black metal or some shit.

Same goes for most extreme metal today; whether you're talking about death metal, grindcore, thrash, or whatever. There are people out there who long for the days of early Cannibal Corpse, or Deicide, or Morbid Angel, or Darkthrone, or whatever. So if that's the case... then just listen to those early albums and shut the fuck up. Either you like the new breed of stuff coming out, or you don't. If you don't then you are entitled to your own opinion about it, just keep in mind that not everyone wants to hear about it. But pining for the days of extreme metal circa 1989-1994 is not going to make it come back. Metal cannot go back, it can only move forward. 

-J