3 GREAT 2022 ALBUMS: KINGS, CAVES AND CROSSES

Posted on December 20, 2022 by kevinsmusicblog

Festive greetings all! ’tis that time again and we’ve had some proper cold for once, which makes everything better and more seasonal and better and more seasonal. As does a stollen bread carbo-coma.

But what’s kept the music fires blazing through the year?

Here are three metallic diamonds (?) from 2022 – not a definitive shortlist but certainly albums that caused much excitement AND lived up to it. That’s what we’re looking for right now: true musical love and long-term listening, so let’s start with the big one from a very strange year.

KING’S X – Three Sides of One

It starts badly. Really badly. What in the name of Satan Clause has happened to Dug’s voice?

Hang on – wrong speed. Amateur Hour over here, the record’s a 45rpm-er. Anyway, King’s X. First new album for 14 years. Fan froth. Where will it sit in their staggering back catalogue?

Chances are it’ll slide right up towards the top of the King’s X table because it’s got the very things the first four albums had and XV somewhat lacked. Stylistic range. Acoustic guitars. Choppy riffs and rhythm shifts. Dark and light, not just groove, and – of course – heaviness, melody and harmony all over, aka the KX factor.

Record one, side A: Let It Rain rings out a pounding apocalyptic vision before Flood Pt 1 cranks a jagged riff as heavy as they’ve ever done and Nothing But The Truth takes you back to Dogman’s very own Flies and Blue Skies.

Not a bad start? No, a bloody great start – and so it goes on. Driving hard rock singalongs (Festival), glacial bass-heavy vibrations (All God’s Children), Hendrix-y screamers (Give It Up) and early-days recreations (Watcher). Swipe Up repeats Flood Pt 1’s punishing riff, but without the Beatles-esque sweetener this time around, it hits even harder.

So, again, there’s every chance that Three Sides of One will turn out to be a top-tier record. On first listen it’s the most King’s X-sounding record since 1992’s King’s X, at least to me – don’t know why exactly, not over-analysing it either, it just somehow brings back not only the sound but the feeling of that album. After a couple more plays, fragments of songs and riffs worm into your head and stick. Just how we like it.

Whatever issues Dug Pinnick, Ty Tabor and Jerry Gaskill had during the making of XV, they’re straightened out now and if this ends up being their last record then it’s a rich, vibrant, complete send-off.

King’s X are back. 100%.

CAVE IN – Heavy Pendulum

Who’d have thought there’d be a follow up to Final Transmission? Me neither. Heavy Pendulum is Cave In’s first album of new material without the late Caleb Scofield, but with credits on three tracks and artwork space in the booklet, he’s still present. Nice. Brother-in-arms noisemonger Nate Newton keeps the bass close to home and the band carve out another molten post-hardcore trip. Tracks like Blood Spiller and Floating Skulls shred with barbed riffs and open aggression while Heavy Pendulum drops a proggy descender of a riff so sublime you wish it’d never end.

As is often the case with Cave In and their collaborations and crossovers, the slower tracks have a knack for nailing a transcendent, awesome beauty and we get two of those to close out the album. Reckoning‘s unplugged heaviness feels fit for a campfire ritual, while album finale Wavering Angel burns a 12-minute pathway to the ether. Only Cave In themselves know if it’s an epitaph for their departed bassist but it sure as hell feels like one, traversing from acoustic picks to juggernaut chugs to full-circle convergence. Class.

DEAD CROSS – II

32 minutes and 11 seconds. That’s all you need for Dead Cross’s 2022 OTT hardcore goth-creep assault and it’s a grinningly perverse, relentless beating from Michael Cain, Justin Pearson, Mike Patton and Dave Lombardo. How can you not succumb to Nightclub Canary‘s full throttle discharge and skipped beats? Or Christian Missile Crisis with its sneaked-in Slayer riff? Or Imposter Syndrome‘s insane realisation of art-thrash/punk expression?

There are plenty of non-solos and shadowy breaks peppering II – the Tomahawk vibe oozes through in those moments – but, for the most part, Dead Cross don’t hold back. At all. Prepare to be flattened.

And there we have it, a trio of faves from 2022. What are yours? Do share – after all, it’s the season to give.

’til next time …Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

F*CKED UP PIGGY POP: TRACKS OF THE MONTH

Posted on November 30, 2022 by kevinsmusicblog

NOVEMBER REWIND: IGGY, PIGSx7 AND F.U. MAKE RAUCOUS ROCKS AFORE FESTIVE NICETIES

Cramming a few blinders into a November Rewind before the end-of-year madness kicks off (like it hasn’t already) but … we can’t get straight into it because of some very late, very huge news.

Metallica.

They dropped a brand new single on us yesterday, which you’ve surely checked and got giddy with its old-school speed – very much a Garage Inc cover vibe – like the rest of the world. New album announced, too. Who knew??? This is way too much excitement for one day. But, having fallen into yet another Metallica phase my very self last week, it’s strangely timely.

Right then, back to the Rewind with some brand new beasters to see November OUT.

FUCKED UP – Strix

This is nasty. Like, demonic nasty. There’s something un-right at the ruptured heart of Strix and, not knowing much about Fucked Up beyond a few distant spins of The Chemistry of Modern Life, it’s a total head-turner. Metallic punk yes, but charred, blackened metallic punk. Hardcore diabolus. Check it right here.

PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS – Mr Medicine

Did anyone else not quite feel it for 2020’s Viscerals as much as King of Cowards and Feed the Rats? Was it the concise tunes, shorn of sprawling damaged excess? If so then Mr Medicine won’t really change things as it’s at the bouncier end of All Things Pigs and has no length, but let’s see. It’s still a mighty slab and Pigsx7 always punch big. New album Land of Sleeper due out in February.

IGGY POP – Frenzy

More tales of the unexpected – new Iggy Pop tune, new album due in the new year. This one’s a filthy throwback to the Beat ‘Em Up/Skull Ring days, all pissed off attitude with music to match. Raging and unsophisticated, Frenzy hits like a cathartic vent from a guy who’s got the fidgets for a fight after a few years of respectability. Pop at full tilt.

CATHERINE GRAINDORGE – Iggy

More Iggy? YES. And no. At the same time. Composer and violinist Catherine Graindorge made a four-track EP The Dictator with Mr Osterberg and this is the closing track. But Iggy’s not on it. Iggy is instrumental – and it’s a beguiling, seductive mix of emergent drones, strings and ascendant swirls. Stunning.

CROSSES – Vivien

They’re called Crosses but how do you type the name out in symbols, as it’s meant to be? The best I can do is +++ , but that would be Pluses, which is shite. Anyway, in contrast to this month’s mostly grubby expulsions, we have Chino Moreno’s electro euphorics in Vivien. It’s all very catchy and clean and, if we’re honest, a bit too reminiscent of The Matrix BUT… it’s a slick mood shift, it climbs like a club anthem and Moreno’s yearning vocals fit those fulsome beats pretty well.

LEATHERETTE – Dead Well

Dead Well lurches like a jazz-punk sax-topped dirt-fuzz goblin, luring you towards carnivalesque madness where bad things happen … messy and low-budget hallucinogenic, this is Leatherette from Bologna. A wayward trip for sure.

’til next time!

WALL: Wall / Vol 2

Posted on June 5, 2022 by kevinsmusicblog

DESERT STORM BROTHERS BUILD INSTRUMENTAL RIFF ACTION

They like to be busy, those Desert Storm fellas. Not content with being the best metallic band in Oxford, Desert Storm are striving to be the best TWO metallic bands in Oxford.

How so?

Because drummer Ryan Cole and guitarist Eliot Cole have built a no-vocals home of riffs and called it Wall. Last year they added their second EP, the Sabbathly-named Vol 2, to their first EP Wall. Let’s stack ’em up and go check.

Wall – Wall

WRATH OF THE SERPENT kicks off with a sludgy poundalong, which you’d probably expect given the Coles’ parent band. Give it two minutes though and we’re bullied off track by pacy thrash pickups, 5/4 riff interjections and headbanging slams, introducing us to the idea that Wall is perhaps the rougher, twitchier relative in the Storm clan. SONIC MASS plays the mid-tempo card, as does OBSIDIAN’s brutish Pelican-channelling-Godflesh beating, but LEGION is where Wall really cook, its ultra-weighty Karma to Burn-style riffage with added growl wiping a smile across your face. No disrespect to Karma to Burn RIP, who we love, but this is exactly the kind of energised attack that K2B’s later records lacked: a bit of spike or pace, something fresh. With Legion, Wall push the Karma legacy forwards.

Ending this EP is Black Sabbath’s ELECTRIC FUNERAL and, as a cover choice, it’s bang on – not too obvious, and Grand Mal voice Dave O is as Ozzy as it gets. No reworkings here, just a faithful tribute to one of Wall’s spiritual building blocks.

Wall – Vol 2

Another cover makes it onto Vol 2, this time by long-time Desert Storm touring buddies and mentors Karma to Burn. No doubt NINETEEN honours the late Will Mecum, who passed away in 2021, but before that we get AVALANCHE and THE TUSK. Avalanche continues the tone of Wall’s first EP, while THE TUSK veers more towards classic metal – faster rhythm picking, twin-axe style guitar licks – but the surging groove is never out of reach. Ditto SPEEDFREAK. Busy, tight.

Then we get our three minutes of Karma – no words needed, literally. It’s an instrumental band covering an instrumental band and it rocks mightily. Feels right.

Vol 2 ends with a Wall anomaly: FALLING FROM THE EDGE OF NOWHERE, a hazy acoustic skit teased from the dried bones of a supernatural Western. Problem? It’s too short. If Wall stretch out to an album one day, can we have a big acoustic psyche-doomer on there? Please?

Anyway, there you go. Two EPs packed with zero-indulgence riff-only rock, short and sweet-ish. Get both EPs and you’ve got a solid album’s worth of music, 42 minutes. And catch Wall live, too – they supported Boss Keloid the other week at Oxford’s Jericho Tavern and totally delivered. But if you’ve seen Desert Storm, you’d know they always do.

(for more background, check this Sleeping Shaman interview with Wall from last year)

BARKMARKET: Lardroom

Posted on March 4, 2022 by kevinsmusicblog

ARTFUL NOISE ROCK PACKS DOWN-TO-EARTH PUNCH

Brooklyn’s Barkmarket are now probably better known as a footnote in the production career of hollerer-guitarist Dave Sardy, but footnote is an F-word we’ll not allow. There’s no way this band should be reduced to footie status. So let’s rewind to 1994 when, after three albums, Barkmarket opened the door to their Lardroom.

Lardroom by Barkmarket — Lardroom: home comforts AWOL

Back then, bands like Rollins Band, Helmet, Quicksand and Cop Shoot Cop were probably as popular as they were ever going to get. They hit the festivals, got their videos aired and, in the Rollins Band’s case, tapped briefly on the mainstream’s outer window. These bands had a street-smart intelligence to match the physicality of their music.

Barkmarket grafted in the same neighbourhood, forging a blue collar slab-shifting pummel that’s experimental yet never pretentious … just honest. Creative. Rocking, always. Strange, often. Surreal round the edges, factory-line solid in the centre.

I DROWN kicks off this 15-minute EP with an Opiate-era Tool/non-staccato Helmet blend that runs a fluid groove, especially when it ramps up the body slam at the end. Time signatures shift around but we’ve only got 3 minutes, so you know there’s no indulgence. It’s too rooted in punk and post hardcore sensibilities, but that fluidity of movement within and around the 4/4 is what sets this stupendous track apart. The riffs almost moan but it’s a heavy, girder-like moan. And Sardy lays a voice to match, howling with opaque wordage.

The rest of the EP (except the PUSHIN’ AIR collage goof-off) has the same unwavering aesthetic: freewheeling riffs that take no shit, occasional detours that elevate and separate from brawn-heavy metal. DIG IN’s megathick bass pulls us down some dank Louder Than Love grunge hole, LITTLE WHITE DOVE packs on-off thrash charge and JOHNNY SHIV ends the show with chords that bend and warp, like something being built, hammered and sculpted into being. Got a real sweet groove, too – offbeat and tough – before breaking down to a failed-engine ending.

Where did Barkmarket go from here? Not far. The L Ron album followed in 1996 and then they called time. Dave Sardy went on to produce about a million other bands and score films. No idea what happened to the other band members. No idea about their first two albums either, though Gimmick and L Ron both get the vote. But this EP? A pure shot of golden-age noise rock with sideways smudges.

Released: 1994 on Def American

Length: 15 mins 11 secs

Tracklist: I Drown – Dig In – Pushin’ Air – Little White Dove – Johnny Shiv

For fans of: Helmet, Quicksand, Rollins Band, early Clutch, Kepone, Jesus Lizard, Cement

MUSIC 2021: GIFTS AND GIVING – PINNICK, PLANT

Posted on December 24, 2021 by kevinsmusicblog

CHRISTMAS WISHES, all! What’s your album of the year? Robert Plant and Alison Krauss?

Correct.

Bye, then. See you next time

ah, but not quite. Let’s divert for a winter ramble for a few minutes as night outruns day and strings of lights blink into life. Let’s evade the best-of-the-year music rat race and run with the spirit of the season:

Gifts and giving.

Whether it’s a time-of-life thing or a COVID-rooted acceleration, I don’t know. But music seems to mean more and get more special with every year, as do those who make it. They’re the givers of true gifts.

One album which won’t be troubling any end-of-year lists (because he never does) but fits the theme is Joy Bomb by Dug Pinnick.

Why the big love?

BECAUSE IT’S DUG PINNICK.

Yep, the guy best known for being the singer and bass groover in the unfathomably magnificent King’s X put another album out.

Listening to both the Faith, Hope, Love and King’s X albums again today, 30 or so years after they came out, was an exercise in time travel and euphoria. Any King’s X fan knows this. The band inspires unconditional love and those records are exalted rock territory. It doesn’t need explaining, even if you could put it into words. And though they never quite hit the same creative peaks later on, they’ve always been consistently great.

So, it was a buzz to hear about a new record from the ever-prolific Dug (many other projects on the go, not least the harder edged KXM). The guy is 71 now. How does Joy Bomb fare?

Well, it’s pure Pinnick – voice fulla soul, snaking bass-led low end, melodies you can’t shake, varying degrees of rock-funk-soul depending on the track. Key Changer stomps an upbeat funk while rocking too hard to be funk, but it’s in there. As he says himself in interviews, everything comes out through a Dug filter and this is very purely a song about music. Equally Divided is a zombie singalong lurch, a bit gluey, a fraction slow. And if there’s a slight dip two thirds the way through the album, it picks up again with The Poison‘s beat-messing groove and the jerky, heavy, unsettled funk jabs in Making Sense of the Bones.

Some nicely unleashed solos throughout as well. Shades of KXM/George Lynch.

But however this album goes down, the point (today) is this: having Dug Pinnick in the world releasing music is, in itself, a great thing. That’s the gift. Especially when everything’s a little bit fucked.

Another record generating a bigger-than-music vibe is far higher profile and it’s no surprise, given the opening paragraph, that Robert Plant & Alison Krauss’s Raise the Roof is a record of the year.

I say this with all the confidence of a slacker who’s only played it twice

but yes, the quality is that obvious. The special something, the huge inner glow, is fired up as soon as the stylus hits touchdown, and how many records each year really do that?

Maybe it’ll be a lesser record in a few spins, who knows. Doubtful, but possible. Right now though, there’s no rush to Raise the Roof. No need to listen in haste and cram it. Better instead to create a moment and be open to the overlapping musical histories it spins.

So, there we go. A couple of non-reviews of special records from 2021 this Christmas. Maybe we’ll throw a few others out there in a more typical look-back in a few days, who knows.

But if not, HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

Plant-Krauss and Dug Pinnick - gifts of 2021 — Spreading the joy bomb

2020 MUSIC: 4 MORE ALBUMS

Posted on December 20, 2020 by kevinsmusicblog

Did you check these three beast albums of 2020 in a previous post? Feeling stuffed? Nah, course not. IT’S CHRISTMASSSSS…. so here’s some extra musical scoff from 2020. Non-metal this time, but still rocking hard like Rudolph on ‘roids.

JEHNNY BETH: To Love Is To Live

Savages’ Jehnny Beth out-savaged her band with I’m the Man‘s distortion fest, the first single from her solo album. No wonder Atticus Ross pops up throughout. No wonder she was down to support Nine Inch Nails this year. But, as with NIN, there’s a ton more variety and nuance here, from the icy sky-scraping opener I Am to the heart-acher piano and hushed breeze of The Rooms. But it’s Heroine that steals it, the kind of skitty jazz flutter that could have blown out from Bowie’s Blackstar band. A soulful, magnetic trip.

WIRE: Mind Hive

This could be a companion to Jehnny Beth’s album. Articulate, artful and fully capable of menace but opting for classy restraint, it’s well clear of one-dimensional ruts. But this is Wire, so this is obvious. Biggest surprise? The addictive Cactused, whose backing vocals make Wire-y pop perfection.

GIL SCOTT HERON & MAKAYA McCRAVEN: We’re New Again

Gil Scott Heron’s I’m New Here is so good that its 10th anniversary spawned two new collections. One is an expanded version of the original with an extra disc of tracks. The other is this, We’re New Again: a re-imagining by jazz drummer Makaya McCraven. And if that’s not the perfect frame to look again at Gil’s poetic street wisdom, I don’t know what is. The original’s cool electronics get switched for organic beats and tough swing, especially on New York Is Killing Me and Me And The Devil. I’m no jazz buff and hadn’t heard McCraven until this. But it’s a very smart reworking of an already great album.

JULIAN COPE: Self Civil War

Yeah, this was a welcome start to the year. Back when lockdown hadn’t been invented, the Arch Drude dropped Self Civil War and, cliche alert, it was a return to form. Cope is always essential, but not all of his recent projects sustained longer interest beyond the first fawning, as noted here. But this one does. Bookended by a couple of stretched out guitar sprawl epics like he used to do, Self Civil War earns repeat listens. Puts a smile on, too – see You Will Be Mist and Berlin Facelift. Much needed this year.

So that’s that for another year, a few highly nutritious non-pork scratchings from 2020. And I couldn’t even write words for Clipping’s album Visions of Bodies Being Burned, because I don’t know how to.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS! And check these other 2020 records and music highlights if you haven’t already.

2020 MUSIC: 3 GREAT ALBUMS

Posted on December 20, 2020 by kevinsmusicblog

Festive greets to anyone who found this post! If you want exhaustive 2020 music tips, go to a proper source. If scant and quick is more your bag, here are three beasts that go down heavier than a frozen turkey on Christmas Day.

Ready? Let’s get stuffed. More to follow in later posts.

MR BUNGLE: The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny Demo

You know what it’s like when you haven’t played Slayer for a while and then, when you do, you’re left grinning and pulverised by their OTT? Giddy disbelief at the relentless ferocity in a song format. And it feels so good because it’s like coming home.

This is what Mr Bungle 2020 captures too. Despite, or maybe because of, the pant-shittingly brisk pace whipped up by three core Mr Bungle mentalists and two Big Four godheads, it’s probably the feelgood album of the year. It’s frantic, vital and comes with a shitload of commitment and prep. Scott Ian said that to nail the complexity of the riffs, he broke them down into 1-2 minute parts and spent days at a time on a single fragment. Said he changes what he’s doing 93 times during Sudden Death. Said that only when he got up to 214bpm in warm-ups was he ready for the shows. Said he got arthritis from practising so hard. Coming from one of the longest serving riff meisters in thrash, this says a lot about the work that went in and you can really hear it. Theory nerd and scales master Trey Spruance had to learn how to play metal again so he could get through a track, then a gig, of intense metallic shreds.

Weirdest of all, they did all this to service a bunch of tunes by their 1986 teenage selves. Could it join the all-time thrash greats given that it’s both 30 years late AND of the time? Who knows. But the one thing you can’t escape is the love and affection oozing out of these speed metal grooves – love for the genre, for the source demo and for each other. This is not a band going through the motions.

And the more you learn about the backstory, the more magical the whole thing becomes. One day it might even become mythical: like, did it actually happen? It’s a proper sideways take on a reunion. But Bungle had the tools, brains and work ethic to do it. Treat of the year.

OLD MAN GLOOM: Seminar VIII Light of Meaning and Seminar IX Darkness of Being

The late Caleb Scofield was honoured post-humously on Cave In’s last album, Final Transmission. Now his distinctive bass force and song-crafting talent is honoured again on this double release by Old Man Gloom. Fucking hell. Every Gloom album is an event, such is their absurd mix of metalcore, drone, static, sci fi terror and primate myth-making, but these two albums hit a combined gear that shifts them nearer to their peak Seminar II-Seminar III-Christmas run. Has the loss of Scofield given the music a heavier purpose? Very likely.

Old Man Gloom Seminar XIII Light of Meaning — Snow Man Gloom: noise to the core

Across the two discs we get the full range of OMG moods and modes, amplified by Nate Newton, Caleb Scofield and Aaron Turner all sharing vocal duties. Also getting a mic spot and shaping the music is Stephen Brodsky – not a previous Gloom member but absolutely blood family. And the Cave In touch is obvious on tracks like Final Defeat and especially Death Rhymes, an acoustic sledgehammer to the gut and a peak moment from both sets. At the other end of the OMG spectrum, By Love All Is Healed‘s lyrical sensitivity is obliterated by Turner’s sub-human roar. And so it goes on. 11-minute sprawls, one-chord hammerings, deep space terror, super short concrete blasts, aching heavy beauty – all the Old Man Gloom elements you know and love, spread across two full-lengthers. Headphone bliss.

HUNTSMEN: Mandala of Fear

Never heard of this band until Stuart Maconie played the track Ride Out on his Freakzone show. Here are my words about the track from that month’s Rewind:

‘YES. Not the opposite of no, but Yes the band – because if that early vocal doesn’t remind you of Jon Anderson, you’ve never heard Jon Anderson. And if you have heard him, you’ve never heard him over a super dense prog thrash attack that’s Rush-taut (how tightly packed is that rhythm guitar?) but way heavier. Shit me, it feels good. Of course, Huntsmen’s Anderson is part-time and gets blown into next decade by a metalcore breakout, making this one of the most exhilarating tunes of the month.’

It’s all still true. And the rest of this double-disc album? A monstrous metallic rock effort. Doom and prog tinged but not remotely downer or indulgent. Aggressive vocals and clean harmonies. Flashes of brutality balanced by space-psyche soar. Everything in its right place. If Pelican had more range AND male-female vocals, this might be where they’d end up. A proper hidden gem.

Huntsmen Mandala of Fear — Huntsmen: just say Yes

So that’s that, three masterful metalworks from 2020. Check the next couple of posts for other 2020 music highlights.

’til then!

VAN HALEN: Fair Warning

Posted on October 24, 2020 by kevinsmusicblog

BEFORE THE CABARET: A DARKER TURN

Note: This review was started and left unfinished months ago, long before Eddie Van Halen left us. But the notes informed this EVH post and some of its sentiment will be repeated here. RIP EVH.

Why are we wrapped up in Fair Warning?

This time, it’s because of Music Blues. The suicidal filth scuzz guitar draaaaag Music Blues. The Van-tithesis Music Blues. How so? Well, by my amateur reckoning, the diabolical dirge crawling out the back end of Things Haven’t Gone Well – reviewed right here – just has to be a deranged warping of Van Halen’s strangest moment, and that moment happens to be on Fair Warning. Which means it’s Fair Warning replay time. Again.

Every time I play this 31-minute 17-second gem, bought more than a decade after my first Van Halen love-in (a summer ’91 purchase of I, II, Women and Children First, and the then-new F.U.C.K.) wore off, it’s a reminder of how much it caught me off guard. Still does. It’s Shock and Awe with a smile, as the best Van Halen always is, but with less sunshine. With Fair Warning, you get no cover versions. No ballads. No cheese. No synthy rock-lite breezers. Even the artwork tells you a different mood is lurking … how un-Halen is that painting on the cover? Absolutely nothing like the action band shots of before. Fair Warning is where Van Halen Gets Serious – well, as much as they ever could – by turning the VH attack into something a little tougher and meaner …

…which brings us to track 1. Mean Street.

Fading in fast on a cosmic fretboard wave, Eddie’s unaccompanied intro swoops and hangs for a second like a UFO beaming an unearthly rock entity into your brains. GAWP TIME. But the best comes next – a standalone riff, pure A.F., bridging to an almost-funk full-band VH groove that drives HARD. No indulgence, no hanging around. Just effortlessly dextrous interplay which shows that Eddie’s liquid rhythm is easily the equal of his virtuo-so-hot leads.

For a masterclass in how to use space in a rock song, check the breakdown at 3′ 20”. It’s one of their weapons: knowing when to break down, drop out and rebuild a song is a massive part of their explosive early vibe. It’s what separates Van Halen from itself, too – those first four albums are a stylistic block, distinct from what came later. There’s a precision around each instrument that’s ultra clean and cut-throat sharp, yet there’s no bleed.

And let’s not forget that, with Mean Street, Fair Warning has a track #1 that matches the insanely high bar set by Van Halen’s previous album-starters Running With the Devil, You’re No Good, and And the Cradle Will Rock. Heavy menace radiates from each.

From that colossal start, Fair Warning doesn’t falter. “Dirty Movies” rubs sliding riffy sleaze up against Michael Anthony’s totemic bass, Sinner’s Swing! shifts like a rough Hot for Teacher prototype, and the 2′ 44” breakdown in Hear About It Later is one of many Eddie Moments – check that rhythm play, just before the solo. Sweet. Every track brings its own moments, too many to go into, so let’s skip to the un-Halen ending for a minute.

So This Is Love? is the last track of lit-up harmonies before a two-part downer finale, starting with Sunday Afternoon in the Park – the one copped by Stephen Tanner in Music Blues, the electronic instrumental that’s part symph, part dying cyborg. Really? Yeah. You can see where 1984 (the track) came from, right here in this John Carpenter-ly chill. Then One Foot Out the Door fades in with a couple of verses and two Eddie solo flurries that absolutely burn before the fade to black. It’s as if they decided halfway through that they didn’t need a proper song so they ditched the lyrics and Eddie just played the shit out of what was left, calling it a wrap in under 32 minutes.

This is what makes Fair Warning a really great Van Halen record: the unresolved ending and the out-of-character electronics that sign off half an hour of hard-rock manna. Sure, there’s a lot more to peak Van Halen than just Eddie, especially the rhythm section and vocal harmonies, but the joy you get from hearing him play gives you a lift, even when you’re already flying. It’s fucking exciting. And you’re struck by how much he plays too, never stopping but never overplaying either. Room to shine? Absolutely. Out of control? Never. Look how short the running times for those early albums are. All virtuosity is within the structure of the song.

No-one’s pretending Van Halen are the band you’d take to your grave, even though many will. But if you haven’t heard Fair Warning, either because you just never got round to it or because Van Halen are a joke to your metal sensibilities, you’re missing out. It’s Van Halen with zero weaknesses – and not even the debut managed that (hello, Ice Cream Man). If it doesn’t convince, fair enough. But to me, Fair Warning is the strongest eruption from the white-hot years.

And if it’s good enough for Music Blues …

Van Halen: Fair Warning (Warner Bros, 1981)
Mean Street
“Dirty Movies”
Sinner’s Swing!
Hear About It Later
Unchained
Push Comes To Shove
So This Is Love?
Sunday Afternoon In The Park
One Foot Out The Door

MUSIC BLUES: Things Haven’t Gone Well

Posted on September 28, 2020 by kevinsmusicblog

HARVEY MILK SOLO MAKES MUSIC FOR BREAKDOWNS

An absolute hulk of a slow-chord surge opens the album in short but wildly heroic style. 91771 is slow enough to be doom but nowhere near sombre enough as it pulls you into the euphorically funereal, if that makes any sense. Drone and sustain pumps your veins with noisy nutrients. Feels good.

This is Music Blues, the solo project of Stephen Tanner, Harvey Milk bassist. 2014’s Things Haven’t Gone Well is his first, and so far only, solo record.

Shame. Things Haven’t Gone Well belongs in anyone’s sludge-noise collection, down at the squalid end where the fuck-ups and failures hang out, and Tanner trades on two strands of guitar-driven dronedoom: one is total pessimism, the kind that beats you down with airless oppression. The other is total pessimism piss-streaked with rock-ist uplift, like 91771 (Tanner’s birth date), and it’s those rock-acknowledging downers that make the record work, though you gotta be patient. Aside from those, a couple of short clips from the Tom Waits School of Freak keep the album broken and fragmented. There are no vocals.

The autobiographical PREMATURE CAESAREAN REMOVAL DELIVERY follows straight on from 91771’s colossal awe, but the euphoric touch has evaporated to leave skeletal chords slamming. HOPELESSNESS AND WORTHLESSNESS and FAILURE’s Sunn O))) stylings lift the mood not one bit, and wedged between them is TRYING AND GIVING UP. Get through the defeated first drag and you’ll hear a guitar morph from death-slow one-chord reps to a rough-as-fuck blues lick drowning in diesel dregs. It’s the slowest, grimiest 12-bar you’ve never heard. ZZ Top on a dying battery.

Seven tracks in, you might feel there’s not much to grab hold of. You’d be right. 91771 and a mutant Texan blues tip is scant return.

But IT’S NOT GOING TO GET BETTER is where it picks up (relatively) after the ghostly DEATH MARCH interlude. Here we get guitar breaks and a real human touch instead of blackout basement isolation. Thick, sludgy beauty with light. It crushes, but it’s the crush of a communal gig pile-on.

Then the big one: TREMENDOUS MISERY SETS IN. Tremendous misery – nice. TMSI is final proof that, even on an album as depressed and damaged as this one seems, Stephen Tanner has a Propensity to Rock Out and here his Harvey Milk spilleth over in that Corrosion of Conformity-channelling-Thin Lizzy way, but inebriated, messy and mournful. ’tis majesty on a slow repeat. Then THE PRICE IS WRONG conquers all with a massive Rock ending, completing the album’s transformation from No Hope to Slight Hope.

The closing BONUS TRACK just has to be a Van Halen tribute – not Massive Hits Halen but Weirdo Least Halen, aka Sunday Afternoon in the Park from their toughest (best?) Fair Warning album.

Which means we’ve got a noise rock record that ploughs mental breakdown and dark autobiography, touches on ZZ Top and CSNY (Teach the Children) and ends with a Van Halen freakball …

… sounds about right. Things Haven’t Gone Well comes across as a journey through grief – it nails the slow, draining, disorienting feeling and physicality that grief brings, yet it’s distracted and sketchy too. Music Blues might be depression as expression, but in the end Tanner can’t restrain his need for primal oversized riffs. You can’t keep that down.

Things Haven’t Gone Well (2014, Thrill Jockey Records)
91771
Premature Caesarean Removal Delivery
Teach the Children
Hopelessness and Worthlessness
Trying and Giving Up
Great Depression
Failure
Death March
It’s Not Going to Get Better
Tremendous Misery Sets In
The Price is Wrong
Bonus Track

THE DAMAGE MANUAL: 1

Posted on September 17, 2020 by kevinsmusicblog

INDUSTRIAL POST-PUNK LEGENDS FORM A YEAR-2000 SUPER COLLIDER

When A Perfect Circle did When the Levee Breaks for their eMOTIVe album, they pulled off a smart reworking that stripped it of Zep’s defining feature – Bonham’s heavy authority – and completely rewired it. Instead of thunder, we got rain. Gentle, hypnotic, tinkling rain. It’s a classy, masterful take.

Damage Manual offer no such subtlety on SUNSET GUN, the opening shot from their 2000 EP, 1. The Levee lift is huge.

Which would rightly be condemned as a lack of imagination IF the band didn’t already have 20-plus years of experience, weren’t among the most influential musicians of the post-punk generation, and didn’t convert it into a super-amped contemporary crossover. But they do, they are and they did. A jittery cut-up intro unleashes a Headley Grange-sized beat while a swirling riff channels the Four Symbols Page drone.

Who’s behind this collision of tech-ness and beast rock?

Geordie Walker, Martin Atkins, Jah Wobble, Chris Connelly.

Killing Joke, Public Image Limited, Revolting Cocks.

Damage Manual.

Credentials or what?

After that killer start, DAMAGE ADDICT pulls a big-time Wobble with some enormo-dub space bass that bottles the PiL spirit but, crucially, is less cold, less austere. Instead, it carries a real sampler’s vibe. Smell the RevCo.

And with those two tracks, you’re set for the rest of the EP. It does sound like component parts pulled together, but the result is far more organic and flowing than factory line assembly. It zips with fresh edge, psyche trips and beat-heavy production. Whether it was the vigour of the mid/late 90s crossover scenes that re-energised these 40-ish year-olds, I don’t know, but Damage Manual sounds free and vital. Definitely got a kick.

SCISSOR QUICKSTEP discharges mechanised punk over playful bass, while BLAME AND DEMAND is another bass and drum monster where Geordie’s guitar burns hard through early PiL-style rhythms. Possibly the EP’s defining track.

Wrapping up the session before a couple of remixes is LEAVE THE GROUND, an end-of-gig trashing where Connelly’s up-front falsetto falters like gutter Bowie while industrialised rhythms beat the melody down. “More human contact will just make you ill…” is Connelly’s fading refrain. Oddly apt for our COVID-19 days, two decades later. And Geordie is more unleashed here than you’ve ever heard him.

Anyway, that’s it: 1 by Damage Manual. All songs are credited equally to all four players. Sunset, Damage and Blame distil the PiL/RevCo/KJ spirits most obviously, while the other two – remixes excepted – bring the quirk and the range. But what really grabs when you listen to it again is the force of Geordie Walker’s guitar tone. He’s always been His Own Voice, but with Killing Joke on a continuing cycle of top grade albums, it’s easy to forget just how distinctive he is. Seeing KJ live is one way to keep your complacency in check. Hearing him somewhere else – like this – is another.

But I mention Geordie only because his is the parent band I’m most familiar with. Every player here is a full-on personality and you get it all. No-one dominates. No-one sits back. Vital stuff. Prepare to be sucked down a Killing Joke/PiL/Waxtrax sinkhole when you’ve played it.

Damage Manual: 1 (2000, Invisible Records)
Sunset Gun
Damage Addict
Scissor Quickstep
Blame and Demand
Leave the Ground
Bagman Damage
M60 Dub

Damage Manual put a self-titled album out the same year which is equally worth checking. The four remixes on the end dull the album’s impact a bit – perils of the CD age, they’d be better off on a separate disc – but the core nine tracks are maximum Damage

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