cooltunes

When Chris, a blogger who infrequently contributes here, left to seek his fortune up north, he left behind some cacti. I came across this

and it’s definitely Chris.

When I was very small, someone read to me a story of either a mountain king or an elf king. The hero of the story was a small boy who somehow got into the great hall, and had to escape. I’m not sure of the origin, there seem to be several variations of this story. At the time, it scared the daylights out of me.

Many know the music from Edvard Greig’s Peer Gynt, but Peter Lorre’s character whistles it in the movie M, and that is a most haunting version. He can scare the daylights out of me too.

Out of the blue tonight, sorta, I’m watching Apocalyptica’s video.

Over at Musical Warfare, Chris can discuss Apocalyptica much more intelligently than I, when he is not talking about other metal groups. They’ve been around for awhile, but cello metal is very new to me.

Formerly with The Scorpions, he became influenced by Jimi Hendrix. The Wikipedia entry calls his music ‘neo classical metal’, and discusses his custom instruments. Here is Roth playing Concerto D’Aranjuez:

They covered some songs the crowd didn’t quite expect, including Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms and Rare Earth’s I Just Want to Celebrate.

Where else would you find Metallica, Jerry Lee Lewis and the Kronos Quartet in the same lineup?

Last night as my neighbors, both front and back, methodically went through a seemingly bottomless cache of illegal fireworks, I decided to listen to Sonata Arctica.

This surprised the metal guy here at Cooltunes, Chris.

The sounds of shelling, mortars and other percussive devices went on for hours.

Unlike Norway, Sweden, Finland and the like, Poland is not a country one normally associates with metal. However, metal is certainly a worldwide phenomenon, and Poland is no exception. Probably most metal fans are by now aware of Behemoth, especially now that they are touring with Ozzfest. Their sound is a formidable mix of black and death metal, and hopefully they will get the exposure they deserve. Vader is another well-known band out of Poland, having basically played their same distinctive style of straightforward death metal for close to 20 years.
A couple of my favorite Polish metal bands seem to have flown well under the radar. The first is Lux Occulta. I’ve only heard their album “The Mother and the Enemy,” since it’s recently been re-released in the US. My high expectations were actually exceeded by this album. It’s a fascinating mixture of black metal, math-metal technicality, a bit of jazz stylings, and a handful of interesting non-metal tracks with female vocals.
Kobong is another under-appreciated Polish band. I haven’t heard a full album from them, only a few songs. From what I can tell, they are akin to a funkier, weirder version of Meshuggah. Their music is full of strange rhythms and grooves, except instead of Meshuggah’s atonal yell they feature some crazy Polish guy yelling over the music. The sound is very weird overall, but since I have a weakness for ultra-rhythmic bands who can actually write good music, Kobong works for me. They apparently did a music video for the Polish version of Trainspotting, which you can view on YouTube here. Getting ahold of their records is even more difficult than finding Lux Occulta’s - in fact I’ve never seen any Kobong CD available anywhere, whether online or in a retail store, except perhaps for some weird European sites I can’t read. If anyone knows how to buy their CDs please let me know!

The Swedish government will be paying disability benefits to a man who claims that his fondness for heavy metal renders him unable to work from time to time.

Swedish occupational psychologists obviously were not consulted on the matter.

What is it, and where did it come from?

Parents of gifted adolescents will be happy to hear that listening to metal doesn’t automatically make your kid a follower of Satan.

After a meeting of minds, an amazing mike stand is created.

Dexter Gordon is Lars’ godfather.

What is the connection between Lars Ulrich and Dexter Gordon?

Answer tomorrow unless you want to google it.

I’ve been re-reading Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho on my train ride to work, and to liven things up (not that the book needs anything additional to entertain me) I decided to keep tabs on the music Bateman listens to and is exposed to in the book. So far, aside from the obvious artists Bateman spends full chapters expressing his opinions of (Genesis, Huey Lewis and the News, Whitney Huston), he also listens to the Talking Heads, Stephen Bishop, and Christopher Cross, and is also exposed at various times to several other 80’s artists: The Crystals, The Ronettes, The Shirelles, INXS, and Belinda Carlisle, to name a few. Some of them I have never heard of, but I guess that’s not surprising.

A couple of other music-related experiences I’ve had related to the book - first, I happened listening to The Axis of Perdition during one of the more gruesome parts while reading the book for the first time. The song contained a sample from the horror movie Event Horizon, and I felt that the sample along with the violent nature of the music was a pretty good complement for the book. More recently, I was reading it while listening to random Melt-Banana songs, which was an awesome experience.. the frenetic, bizarre music and Yasuko’s chipmunk-on-speed vocals went well with the book’s dark humor and Bateman’s occaisional hallucinations. It is kind of hard to concentrate for very long when listening to them though.

A writer from The Observer gets enthusiastic about the group from Atlanta.

I saw Tool and Isis this month with my brother at the Oakland Colliseum.

Not a big fan of Isis’ vocalist but they put in a good 30-minute warmup. From what I can remember most of what they played was from Panopticon, although if I’m wrong Chris will probably pipe in and correct me. They started with the first track on the album, So Did We.

Tool managed to put a huge smile on my face by opening with the track that made me buy Ænima 10 years ago (!), Stinkfist. Rather than heavily favoring tracks from their new album, they played a pretty even distribution of songs from all of their last 3 albums, including Sober from Undertow. Encores were Vicarious and Ænima.

Maynard James Keenan has a pretty bizarre stage presence. He was shirtless and had a spiked mohawk. He was also wearing a cowboy hat at times, and I’m not exactly sure how that managed to not crush his ‘hawk.

He kept to the back of the stage mostly, and all I can say about his movements was that he… undulated a lot. That’s the only way I can describe it. Oh, and there was a lot of pelvic thrusting during Ænima, for some reason.

Maynard quote of the night, directed at the moshers in the general admissions area:

“What are y’all doin down there? Rugby? Football?

… or do you just like grinding up against other guys?

It’s just fucking rock songs people, don’t hurt each other.”

Experimental underground composer Rhys Chatham performed works influenced by drone metal at a recent concert.

A selection of fashion, skin adornment and scalp reworkings from music fans. Borderline NSFW, depending, of course, on where you work.

How metal is forging new territories via SunnO))), Six Organs of Admittance, Wolfmangler and Cadaverous Condition.

Written by Screamin Jay Hawkins, who eventually performed it while wearing a black cape after rising out of a coffin onstage. His crazed singing style influenced Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper, Nick Cave and Marilyn Manson.

The lyrics are very simple, and the version I’ve listened to most is Nina Simone’s.

The answer to yesterday’s quiz is DragonSlayer.

I attended the Unholy Alliance Tour yesterday in San Jose at the HP Pavillion, the first of many concerts this summer that I will be attending. The line-up was Slayer, Lamb of God, Mastodon, Children of Bodom, and Thine Eyes Bleed. I missed Thine Eyes Bleed due to traffic and parking, but I didn’t really mind. For some reason Slayer concerts always seem to start on time, and this always surprises me (maybe that is just because all my other concerts are at The Pound, which is notorious for late starts). So here are my thoughts on the rest of the bands:

Children of Bodom was the first band I saw play. I don’t really like their style of music, but they seemed to have quite a few hardcore fans at the show, and it’s always cool when talented bands from Europe make their way over to play here. They had one song in the middle that was pretty good, the rest I thought were just OK, but the crowd was pretty into them.

Mastodon came on next, and they were pretty entertaining. Apparently they don’t tune their guitars very low, but somehow they manage to get a very bassy, extremely HEAVY sound. Their drumming was alot more interesting than Children of Bodom’s, and although I wasn’t really familiar with their material at all, they put on a crushingly good live show. I was right next to the pit and people were going nuts; at one point a guy with blood running down his face pushed his way out of the pit and through the crowd, so I guess the moshing got pretty violent. Also from my vantage point one of the guitarists looked alot like Will Ferrell, so that was somewhat amusing.

Next up was Lamb of God. Again I wasn’t familiar with their stuff, but pretty much the entire rest of the crowd was I guess, and so the floor was packed full when they started playing. Their style didn’t keep my attention as well as Mastodon, and I eventually got bored and wandered out to concessions to grab a snack (and get ripped off). For some reason the event staff wasn’t letting people back onto the floor, I guess it was crowded to the point of being dangerous or something, so I ended up missing the remainder of Lamb of God’s set, which didn’t really bother me that much.

I managed to get back down to the floor in time for Slayer, and was pretty close to the stage when they started. As soon as they started playing, people began pushing from all directions and everyone was mashed shoulder-to-shoulder for the first couple songs, and going crazy headbanging etc. One thing about Slayer shows - there are alot more big sweaty shirtless guys in the audience than at most shows I go to, and so it was hard not to get other peoples’ sweat rubbed all over you during Slayer’s set. After a few songs things calmed down, and the audience didn’t go nuts again until Slayer played some classics like Raining Blood. Saw a guy with his nose bleeding wandering away from the floor. Slayer put on an entertaining show as usual, but I think I somewhat spoiled it for myself by reading some reviews of the show online that included the setlist and descriptions of some of the theatrics. I will have to remember not to do that next time…

What was Slayer’s original name?

a) Godslayer
b) Monsterslayer
c) Dragonslayer
d) Soothslayer

Answer tomorrow.

Helicopter crews hum Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries as a journalist remembers the soundtracks to stints in Sierra Leone, Tikrit, Baghdad, Falluja and Kandahar.

So what exactly is it, and where does it come from?

You know you’ve always wanted to. Here’s how to get started including tips for women.

Judging by the Top 10 Heavy Metal Album Covers posted earlier, metal artwork has evolved quite a bit since the days of glam bands and such. A few artists have gained a foothold in the metal community and are responsible for quite a bit of the dark, unusual, and sometimes violent imagery found on metal CDs. Here’s a small selection:

Dan Seagrave - if you listen to death metal, you’ve undoubtedly seen his artwork for bands like Suffocation, Entombed, Malevolent Creation, Pestilence, Dismember, and Morbid Angel.

Niklas Sundin - guitarist and founding member of Dark Tranquillity, he’s also a pretty competent graphic designer. He’s done the artwork for several of DT’s recent releases, as well as work for In Flames, Green Carnation, Arch Enemy, and numerous other bands.

Jonzig - a tattoo artist who has also done quite a bit of artwork and logos, mainly for underground death metal bands like Pessimist, Pyrexia, Odius Mortem, Severed Savior and Disgorge.

Wes Benscoter - chances are you have probably seen his work on at least one album. He’s done art for Mortician, Hypocrisy, Sinister, Cattle Decapitation and Broken Hope, among others.

Travis Smith - his work seems to be almost everywhere lately. He is responsible for the majority of Opeth and Katatonia’s recent artwork.

Honorable mention goes to Miram Kim, who created the disturbing artwork on most of Incantation’s albums. She has also done some artwork for X-Files.

I should also mention My Dying Bride vocalist Aaron Stainthorpe, who I think is now handling the artwork for all of MDB’s albums, although I really don’t think too much of his style.

The top ten as judged by the folks who directed Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey.

He plans to run in 2010. Residents troubled by the overpopulation of white-tailed deer in the state will be relieved to know this.

Portions of the article are not suitable for reading during a meal.

It’s Friday. Sometimes a short week can seem like forever.

Extol - Gloriana
Extol - Soul Deprived
Meshuggah - Elastic
Meshuggah - Concatenation
Candiria - Dead Bury The Dead
Candiria - Work In Progress
Disbelief - Sick
Disbelief - Floating On High
Emperor - Ye Entrancemperium
Heaven Shall Burn - Architects Of The Apocalypse
Heaven Shall Burn - Weapon They Fear
Samael - Rebellion

An interview with the NYT in which the band members talk (among many other things) about musicians who influenced them. These include Stevie Wonder, Philip Glass and Steve Reich.

Green Carnation - A Place For Me
Green Carnation - Purple Door, Pitch Black
Katatonia - Leaders
Katatonia - Deliberation
Riverside - Artificial Smile
Porcupine Tree - The Creator Has A Mastertape
Porcupine Tree - Blackest Eyes
In The Woods - Cell
In The Woods - Generally More Worried Than Married
Ulver - Blinded By Blood
Tool - H
Tool - Jimmy