YES! Stream The New The Black Keys Album

I love me some The Black Keys and their new album Brothers comes out next week. You can stream it in it's entirety on NPR. I gave it a listen this morning and was digging on what I was hearing. Below is the video for first single from the album, "Next Girl". It is a cool song and the video has a dinosaur puppet and cute girls in bikinis in it, so what more could you possibly want?

Tuesday May 11, 2010 New Music

As I Lay Dying "The Powerless Rise"

I love the first three As I Lay Dying albums, so I pre-ordered their fourth album, The Powerless Rise with no hesitation. Amazon has once again failed to get a release to me by street date, so I haven't had the pleasure of hearing it yet, but by all accounts I've heard it is a logical follow-up to their previous material....in other words, it is another excellent As I Lay Dying album.

The Dead Weather "Sea Of Cowards"

I didn't love The Dead Weather's debut album Horehound, but I didn't hate it either. Now that they've had some more time to gel as a band after a lot of touring since last year, I'm hoping maybe the new album will sound more realized and cohesive as opposed to sounding like a bunch of musicians from other bands who threw an album together. I'm a fan of Jack White, so I will give Sea Of Cowards a shot just out of curiosity.

Howl "Full Of Hell"

I became a Howl fan the instant I finished listening to their 2009 self-titled EP. I pre-ordered their debut album, Full Of Hell along with a t-shirt (so that I can wear it when I go see them play live) from their label, Relapse and got both in the mail last week well ahead of street date (are you reading this Amazon?). The album smokes. If you are into the whole Mastodon, Baroness, Neurosis, Eyehategod, etc. sound, then this will be right up your alley. Definitely a contender for metal debut of the year.

Japandroids "No Singles"

Japandroids are a hype band. I tend to be weary of hype bands because 75% of the time they don't live up to the hype. Especially when it is yet another post-The White Stripes, post-The Black Keys duo. A couple weeks ago I got a free track from Japandroids courtesy of Amie St. and was prepared to be underwhelmed. Turns out that I really enjoyed the song "Darkness On The Edge Of Gastown" and wound up buying their new album No Singles from Amie St. this morning. I haven't listened to it all the way through yet, but the snippets I heard were pretty entertaining. This is apparently a combination of two EPs that they had released in the past and isn't reflective of their current sound, so if I wind up really liking this, then I'll have to proceed with caution if and when checking out newer material.

The National "High Violet"

Yet another album I pre-ordered is The National's High Violet (it is on the way in the mail with the As I Lay Dying album). I LOVED their last album The Boxer and am hoping this record is at least on par with it.

Cry For The Anthrax Fans

Anthrax was one of my favorite bands growing up. Spreading The Disease, Among The Living, State Of Euphoria and Persistence Of Time are all classic metal albums in my humble opinion. One of my funnier memories from high school is going to see Anthrax opening for Iron Maiden right when Persistence Of Time had come out. My friends and I all bought Anthrax baseball hats at the show that had the band logo, a skull and crossbones type of design and the acronym "P.O.T." on them. The acronym was of course for Persistence Of Time, but the teachers at our Catholic high school all took it to have a different meaning haha. There was about a dozen of us that wore those hats constantly. I even have a picture taken in '92 of myself wearing mine and a Pearl Jam t-shirt that is hanging up in my apartment. Hilarious stuff. Anyway, when lead vocalist Joey Belladonna was fired after Persistence Of Time, Armored Saint vocalist John Bush was brought on and Anthrax released The Sound Of White Noise, which I also consider to be a classic. After that, they pretty much lost me. Some good songs here and there on overall fairly bland albums. After 2003's We've Come For You All, things in the Anthrax camp have been turbulent to say the least. Members fired, members leaving, members rejoining, etc. at a dizzying pace. For the purposes of this post, I'll just stick with the lead vocalist drama: They did a reunion tour with Joey Belladonna from 2005-2007, but Joey quit the band again at the end of that tour cycle. John Bush was never confirmed as being completely out of the band during that time, but then he was officially replaced in 2007 by a guy named Dan Nelson who was the singer for some metal band from Long Island. Nelson recorded an album with them called Worship Music, left for a European tour to promote the upcoming release and was subsequently fired or quit. No one knows. Or cares. John Bush then returned to the fold for a few European festival dates and speculation ran rampant (among Anthrax fans at least) about what would happen to the album recorded with Dan Nelson. Was Bush rejoining and would he re-record the vocals for Worship Music or would they go back and rewrite the songs or scrap the album all together and start fresh? Then last week, drummer Charlie Benante and bassist Frank Bello were spotted at a show in NYC with Joey Belladonna and rumors began that Belladonna was coming back to the fold. Today those rumors were confirmed. He is apparently going to do a couple European festival shows with the band this summer and then they are coming back to the U.S. to record a new album that is expected to be released in 2011. Got all that? Yeesh.

I'd be lying if I said I am not curious to hear this album (that is assuming they even actually make the album), but at this point I have no high hopes for it whatsoever. I saw the reunion tour with Belladonna a few years ago and his voice is not what it used to be. Besides that important factor, he is also a bit hard to take seriously as it appeared that he had a pretty terrible wig on and had obviously stuffed his pants with a pair of socks ala the cucumber gag in Spinal Tap, but minus the comedic value or intent (and don't think it is bizarre that I noticed....everyone in attendance noticed because his pants were so ridiculously tight...maybe he needed the help hitting the high notes?). He looked like a guy that was frozen in the glory days of the 80's and it was kind of sad really.

It is a shame that Anthrax wasn't able to maintain the kind of career that their peers in Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Testament have been able to. Those bands are still putting out relevant and most importantly GOOD records and enjoying the fruits of their labor (well, maybe not Testament so much, but the other three most definitely). Perhaps a better peer comparison would be Exodus who have had similar vocalist and member change issues, but have managed to keep cranking out albums, actually gotten faster and heavier in their sound and even developed a newer, younger fanbase for themselves. Maybe Scott Ian should sit down with Gary Holt and get some 101 lessons in how to not let your band turn into a joke after multiple line-up changes.

Fingers crossed I'm proven completely wrong when the album comes out, but I'm fairly confident that it will be a stinker.

Do You Want The Lights On?

I had almost completely forgotten about Interpol until I saw a tweet from Pitchfork this morning mentioning that the band was giving away a new song "Lights" from their forthcoming album. You can grab the song here. On first listen it sounded good. Not amazing, but certainly far from bad. I thought their last album Our Love To Admire was incredibly boring, but the second album Antics is an amazing record and their debut Turn Out The Bright Lights is pretty good too. I'm hoping they get their momentum back on this new album and deliver on the promise that Antics showed.

Also, apparently their bass player Carlos D. has left the band and they are opening some select dates for U2 this summer. I wouldn't mind seeing them live, but they are not playing the NY/NJ date that I'm attending. As for the bass player, I don't know enough about the individuals that make up Interpol to have an informed opinion about his departure. He did record the album with them, so I suppose no one will know until the next record (if there is one) how much of an impact his departure will have on their sound.

Nevermind What God Thinks, What Will The Supreme Court Think?

CNN posted an article yesterday about the Rev. Fred Phelps that is a pretty interesting read and yesterday evening, ABC's Nightline did a segment about the group he leads and one of his estranged sons. If you aren't familiar with Rev. Phelps, then he is the leader of the Westboro Baptist Church group who is notorious for their "God Hates Fags" message. They first garnered national attention when they picketed Matthew Shepard's funeral. Shepard was a Wyoming college student who was gruesomely murdered because he was gay. Phelps' group showed up carrying signs saying that Shepard was rotting in hell because he was a homosexual. Needless to say, this was a horrible act on their part and could only have made an already tragic situation even worse for Shepard's family and friends. In 2006, Phelps' group showed up at the funeral of a Marine who was killed in combat in Iraq to protest and were claiming that American soldiers being killed was a sign that God is angry with us for being tolerant of homosexuality in our country. They had no connection to the solider's family or any real reason to be there other than to draw attention to themselves. The soldier's family sued Phelp's church (and rightfully so) for invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress and civil conspiracy and was eventually awarded $5 million in a jury trial. The judgment wound up being reversed when Phelps appealed. The father of the marine subsequently appealed that ruling and this past March, the Supreme Court decided that they will hear the case. As CNN stated, "The court is being asked to address how far entities such as cemeteries and churches can go in restricting demonstrators' right to free speech."

This is obviously going to be a huge decision by the Supreme Court. Freedom of speech is something that we as Americans cherish greatly, but we will probably debate until the end of time if and when a line should be drawn. As much as I despise Phelps' message, he most certainly has the right to express his opinion and if he wants to do it in a public forum, then he also has that right. That being said, I do not defend his right to disrupt the funeral of a complete stranger to push his agenda. Could you imagine if someone close to you passed away and these nut jobs showed up at their funeral screaming about your loved ones death being a sign that God hates homosexuals? An already painful moment made infinitely worse by the selfish and vile actions of complete strangers? The mere thought of it makes me livid. This is akin to the pro-life groups that harass women and doctors as they enter abortion clinics. Again, they have the right to assemble and protest in public and voice their opinion, but do they have the right to harass innocent strangers? (Most pro-lifers would probably argue that the people they are harassing aren't "innocent", but that is a whole other debate all together.)

It is hard to say for certain where the Supreme Court will go with this, but I really hope they create some measures that allow churches, cemeteries and authorties the ability to keep these kind of protests out of the the eyesight and earshot of the mourning families.

Here is the segment from last night's Nightline if you would like to watch it:

Late To The Party: Anaal Nathrakh

I had seen Anaal Nathrakh's name mentioned in metal magazines and websites a few times in the past couple of years, but never really paid much attention. With a name like that I assumed they were probably some extreme metal band with silly corpse painted faces and lo-fi production that wouldn't appeal much to me. Late last year, Decibel Magazine put out a special issue that listed their Top 100 greatest metal albums of the last decade. Being the music geek that I am, I studied the list closely to see if any of the albums listed might be glaring omissions from my collections. Coming in at #34 was Anaal Nathrakh's 2001 release The Codex Necro. The description of the album really intrigued me, so I decided to take a plunge into the unknown and use some of the precious dollars from an Amazon gift certificate I had been given and purchase the album. This was one of those albums where it was love at first listen. I didn't need to spend time with it to get it....I got it right away.

In metal journalism, "soundtrack to the apocalypse" is a popular description for many a band's sound and/or release(s), but in the case of Anaal Nathrakh, it is actually 110% accurate. They are the audio equivalent of a big budget Hollywood blockbuster about the end times except in this movie the acting (musicianship) is of a caliber that it isn't all special effects without any genuine heart and soul. After having my face melted off by The Codex Necro, I immediately picked up three of their other albums: In The Constellation Of The Black Widow (2009), Hell Is Empty And All The Devils Are Here (2007) and Domine Non Es Dignus (2004). While I don't have their complete discography (yet), my understanding is that I am only missing one proper studio album, Eschaton (2006) which I plan on picking up sometime in the not so distant future.

The band has evolved over their releases from sheer grindcore-esque brutality on The Codex Necro to more "melody" and clean vocals in the spirit of black metal on In The Constellation Of The Black Widow. Again, I haven't heard the album that is smack dab in the middle of the five studio albums, but the progression seemed natural, fluid and most importantly, highly original. I would recommend this band to anyone who enjoys extreme metal and is looking for a band that can't simply be described as sounding like band A combined with band B.

Ear Candy Classic: Transport League "Superevil"

I'm not sure if Transport League is still around (it is hard to tell for certain from their Myspace page...it could go either way) or if any of their other albums are good, but 1998's sophomore release Superevil is a highly underrated underground masterpiece that holds up extremely well 12 years later.

The easy description of what this album sounds like would be "desert rock Entombed", but the more detailed (and attractive) description would be to say it sounds like post-Wolverine Blues era Entombed combined with post-Blind era Corrosion Of Conformity or Swedish death 'n roll mixed with Southern fried metal, if you will. For those that only like early Entombed and COC material, that most likely sounds like a horrid combination, but for people who enjoy the aforementioned eras of both bands, then this album will be right up your alley. The vocals lean more towards the Entombed side, but break it up with a few crooning moments akin to what COC does (but not at all like the good cop/bad cop vocal style). Gosh, all this talk about Entombed and COC is making me want to spin some of their records....and that certainly isn't a bad thing.

Besides the fact that it is solid from beginning to end, there is not much else to say about the album as the above description sums it up perfectly. If the above description was Greek to you, then hunt down COC's Deliverance album and Entombed's To Ride, Shoot Straight And Speak The Truth to give yourself an idea of what kind of influences you'll be hearing or simply cut straight to the chase and check out Superevil. I highly recommend it.

This Ain't Archie Comics

Don't have any idea what is going on with the above image? Me either! My friend sent me a link this morning that led to a page with that image and the following description:

Starring super-notorious musclebound punk/metaldudes Glenn Danzig and Henry Rollins (with a little help from super-notorious soft-rockdudes Hall and Oates) Henry & Glenn Forever is a love story to end all love stories! The premise of this Cantankerous Titles-released comic is explained at the front of the zine: “Henry and Glenn are very good 'friends.' They are also 'room mates.' Daryl and John live next door. They are satanists.” What follows is ultra-metal violence and cryfest diary entries, cringing self-doubt and mega-hilarious emo-meltdowns. Who knew Danzig was such a vulnerable, self-conscious sweety-pie? Who knew Rollins was such a caring spouse? Who knew Hall and Oates were so infernally evil—yet so considerate? Well, illustrating/writing team Igloo Tornado (featuring super-awesome comixdude Tom Neely) did and they kicked down 64 fully-illustrated pages with it. Genius on all fronts. Terrifyingly cute. Cutely terrifying. As the real-life Rollins says, quoted on the back cover, “Has Glenn seen this? Trust me, he would not be impressed.”

You can purchase this here. I'm on the fence. This could either be brilliant or completely idiotic. For only $4 it might be worth finding out though....

Rediscovering Gwar

I've never been and probably never will be the biggest Gwar fan in the world, but I owned and enjoyed both Scumdogs Of The Universe and America Must Be Destroyed on cassette in high school. I picked up a CD version of Scumdogs many years ago, but had largely forgotten about America Must Be Destroyed. Decibel recently did an overview of the history of Gwar and that reminded me how much I liked the song "The Road Behind" from that album. I was going to pick up just that song, but then read a review of the album on Allmusic.com that said the album was actually pretty good. That didn't seem far off from how I remembered it being, so I found the album for around $5 used (including shipping and handling) on Amazon and snatched it up. As it turns out, this album has quite surprisingly really stood the test of time. "Ham On The Bone", "Have You Seen Me?" "The Morality Squad" and of course "The Road Behind" are just some of the highlights of what is a thoroughly enjoyable heavy metal record. Gwar is often written off because of their costumes and alien gimmick (and probably rightfully so), but this is one album where they proved that they could actually play and write great songs. This isn't going to all of the sudden turn me into a huge Gwar fan, but I am quite happy to have this and Scumdogs Of The Universe in my record collection.

"The Road Behind" (check out the random cameo from Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers in the beginning of the video):

Fruits Of My Labor...That Labor Being Hours Digging Through Used CD Bins

On my recent trip to San Francisco, I made a point of visiting Amoeba Music. Amoeba is famous for being "The World's Largest Independent Record Store". I haven't been to their Hollywood or Berkeley locations, but the SF store used to be a bowling alley, so you can imagine just how massive their collection of music for sale is. One can quite literally get lost in there for hours digging through the used and new CDs and vinyl. My basket became so full at one point that I simply had to cut myself off, return a few items to the shelves and go get in line for checkout before any further damage to my wallet was done. But of course even the escape to the checkout line ended in some impulse buys as right next to the beginning of the checkout queue is a couple racks of used vinyl. I wound up adding vinyl copies of Phil Collins' Hello, I Must Be Going and Styper's To Hell With The Devil to my basket before finally getting in line. I'm telling you, this place is dangerous for music enthusiasts, but mostly a little slice of heaven on Earth.

Of the 19 CDs I purchased that day (and that number either sounds incredibly high or modest or a little low depending on your point of view), I wound up only being "meh" on one of them which is pretty impressive. The other 18 all wound up being purchases I was happy to add to my collection and a healthy chunk of them have been ones that begged for repeat listens. Some of my favorite finds:

Having been on an Accept kick recently, I had done some research about what, if any, albums by their original vocalist Udo Dirkschneider's post-Accept band U.D.O. were worth getting. The general consensus seemed to be that Timebomb was well worth tracking down. The album is hard to find for a reasonable price as it is only available as an import or used at very high prices, but low and behold, Amoeba had it for $10. Turns out that it was worth every penny. Being a huge fan of the Accept classics Restless And Wild, Balls To The Wall and Metal Heart, this albums fits in nicely with that trio of classics. If you are an Accept fan and have never heard this album before, then I highly recommend you hunt it down.

Don't remember Nightstick? Don't feel bad because I doubt many people do. If memory serves, then I first heard this band on a Relapse Records sampler in 1999 on which their song "In Dahmer's Room" was included. I loved, loved that song, so when I saw this album for $1.99 at Amoeba, well that song alone was worth the money. Turns out the rest of the album is pretty fun too. They were sort of a space rock, sludge, stoner rock band that never really found an audience with any of the aforementioned  genres' fans. If they came out today, then I wouldn't be surprised if it worked out a little better for them, but maybe they would fall upon deaf ears again. Who knows. Either way, I'm very happy to have this undiscovered gem in my collection.

Blood Duster was another Relapse band from the late 90s, but I had never actually heard them before although I had always been curious. They are from Australia and supposedly played grindcore with groove. When I saw Brutal Truth earlier this year, their singer was wearing a Blood Duster t-shirt and that reminded me that I should check them out. I had their Str8 Outta Northcote album on my Amazon Wish List, but found it in Amoeba right next to Nighstick in the cut-out bin for $2.99 and immediately snatched it up. And what a great find this turned out to be! Definitely grindcore and definitely groovy. Apparently the band never tours outside of Australia, so I'll most likely never see for myself if they can pull this off live (unless my much hoped for journey to Australia ever happens and they happen to be gigging at the time), but at least I have this album to enjoy.

Not particularly hard to find or expensive if you do find it, this was definitely an impulse buy. I own three Descendents albums and had two more that I wanted to add to my collection of which I Don't Want To Grow Up was one. Nothing particularly special about this album except that it is the Descendents proving once again why they are so highly regarded in the punk genre. All killer, no filler and a fine addition to my Descendents collection.