Slammin' Saturday Live Roundup Hoedown XXXTreme

The Perfect Saturday

Saturday was totally sweet.  First of all, I got to go catch Mitch Fatel's live standup comedy act, which was hysterical.  He included in his act a real think-piece about shooting jizz on a lady's face that raised philosophical and existential questions that rattled me to the core.  No, he just made a funny face.  It was awesome though, and if you haven't ever heard his live act, you should find somewhere online to steal his albums from; homeboy can write the shit out of a dick joke.

The meat of my Saturday was spent at Red 7 in downtown Austin at the Skeletonwitch/Withered/Landmine Marathon show.  I had been anticipating this show for quite some time; my cash flow just recently got revived and I wanted a night out on the town and a totally kvlt Withered shirt to make me feel like a big man.  Thankfully for me I wouldn't have to go it alone, as a couple of my crusty, cake-y homebros from Crustcake (Andy Wilhelm and the WZA'd, from the metal blog you should be reading instead of this garbage) came through and helped me do some sausage-party rocking.  It was a recipe for some br00tal fun and wholesome kvltitude.

Arriving just after 10 o'clock, I caught Landmine Marathon's set in its entirety, which totally rocked.  I wasn't so floored by their newest album, Sovereign Descent, as I anticipated I would be; something about the production just didn't really do anything for me.  Luckily, there wasn't a producer in sight as Landmine thundered through a brutally heavy set.  It is a revelation finally getting to see Grace Perry perform.  I had heard that she brings the FUCKING FURY when she performs (moreso after dipping into Ol' Grandpa's Cough Medicine apparently),  and the rumors proved true.  Her voice was very impressive in a live setting, and the band as a whole should not be missed.

Withered was the band that I showed up to the show for, as I have experienced the tightly focused thrash attack of Skeletonwitch shortly after the release of their latest album, Breathing the Fire.  Withered was the band supporting a brand new album on this go 'round.  I have yet to experience their latest black/doom metal opus (titled Dualitas), but I do know that I'm cuckoo for Withered, and what I've heard from the album proves to be at least as stellar as their last outing (Folie Circulaire).  Their set was as tight as any blackened-doom band could be; fuzzed out bass interludes gave way to washing-machine drumming and maelstroms of bilious hate.  Their signature smoke machine was conspicuously absent from this set, but they offset that by burning incence on the mic stands, which made the stage area smell like a Hot Topic.  It was unsettling (in a bad way), which detracting from the normal good kind of unsettling that accompanies listening to Withered.  And to answer your question, hell yeah I got my shirt.  Sheeeeit.

Skeletonwitch was great.  They played a tight set that suffered only from the bass being painfully low in the mix, which detracted from The Heavy; however, their song selection was impeccable and played with the fervor and gusto of a hungry band; since they are a metal band, I assume it's because they are quite literally malnourished (beer apparently has very few vitamins and minerals).

The greatest moment of the night was actually a surprise for me.  As I walked into the show, I happened to glance upon the bill that listed the bands and the times they were to start playing.  Second from the top, where I expected Withered to be, I beheld the two greatest words any person can read: TRAP THEM.  Hell yeah!  A little background for the uninitiated: I am gay for Trap Them.  Their supercharged grind attack gets my D-boner raging so hard I can feel my heartbeat in it.  I have only seen them 3 times now, which is not nearly enough, considering I would pay them to follow me around on a papier mache demon float and play their music all day long if it were fiscally possible.  They played a great set with a new/fill in drummer who totally slayed, with choice cuts from Sleepwell Deconstructor all the way through their latest EP offering Filth Rations.  Speaking of which, they are currently carrying with them a limited run of Filth Rations, the previously vinyl-only EP, on Compact Disc, so get your ass out to the show and pick it up like I did, because it's amazing.  In fact, Filth Rations will be the focus of tomorrow's post, so stay tuned to watch me jack my spicy D-boner all over it, because it rules that hard.

Happy Monday, slaves!

Dillinger Escape Plan-Option Paralysis

I'll be the first to concede that I didn't give Dillinger Escape Plan's newest album a very fair shake this year.  Don't get me wrong; I got it when it came out, I listened to it a few times, and I remember thinking to myself, "Yeah, that's a Dillinger Escape Plan album all right," while I drove my work van through the wild southwest of Spicewood, TX.  I then stopped off at a gas station that I frequented at the time to buy a Peace Tea and take a monster whiz.  These are, unfortunately, the feelings that I have attached to Option Paralysis, which doesn't seem very fair, since so many other, lesser albums that I own are associated with memories that involve less boredom and bodily excretions in general.

Dillinger's music has always been that way for me, though.  I remember when I bought their previous (and stellar) offering Ire Works, I was working at W.A. Thompson in Bakersfield, CA.  That album really has some lame memories attached to it; I first really discovered the joys of Greg Puciato's clean singing voice at a time when my life was work and school, and realistically consisted of little more than a cycle of hangover, being really sweaty in a cold place, getting drunk again and falling asleep on the couch.  The cycle itself was little more than a series of unpleasant tasks punctuated by horrible, diet soda-induced bowel movements and the recurring thought, "Uh oh, I'm too drunk for this."  All this nonwithstanding, Ire Works was in extremely heavy rotation at the time, and holds a special place in my heart, since it showed me that the inclusion of clean singing, properly approached, can actually help the dynamic of an album rather than just being a failed songwriting mechanic aimed at garnering more fans who think that screaming is icky.

Now, for Option, Dillinger takes their songwriting to the next level.  Option takes the dynamic shifts from Ire and intrigrates them more fully into their sound.  Now, instead of having a bunch of Dillinger-style clatter-grind with a couple of brief (and surprisingly well-written) sing along interludes, Dillinger has appropriated that style into their compositions at large.  The album at large has a more seamless ebb-and-flow, and comes across simultaneously slick and unsettling, like a polished wooden sphere dripping with semen.  (It's art, man!)  This shift serves the album quite well, and repeated listens reveal new facets of the experience every time.

The other association I make with Dillinger is the time I saw them live in Lancaster, CA, with Unearth and Zao (odd bill, no?).  I was there to see Unearth, (because they did and will always tickle my breakdown bone just right), but Dillinger, who I had only dabbled with on the most superficial level before writing off as "lame," completely stole the show.  This, I believe, was pre-Puciato Dillinger, which means that Dimitri Minakakis was in the front-man helm at this point.  I remember very clearly Minakakis climbing the rickety house P.A. and squatting between it and the ceiling, screaming at the crowd.  He wasn't up there long, though; the P.A. quickly got jostled by the goings-on in the pit, and Minakakis fell into the crowd, taking a sizeable hunk of the ceiling to the floor with him.  He then bounded up to the stage, not missing a beat, grabbed a crash cymbal stand, and jumped back into the crowd, playing the crash with his microphone while crowdsurfing across a sea of adoring fans.  The later realization that they had cultivated a colorful insurance-related nickname referring to their stage show (Dillinger Insurance Plan?  Dillinger Mutual of Omaha?  Something like that) came as little surprise having inadvertently experienced it firsthand.  That show is, in fact, what compelled me to give the band a fair shake to begin with, and I'm glad I ended up there.

Dillinger Escape Plan made a name for themselves by putting together relentless, cacaphonous songs that speak to the disturbing, chaotic world at large.  To think that they've come so far from their first full length, Calculating Infinity, which is a looming monument to technical dynamism and throat-shredding badassery, to the soaring peaks and nuanced valleys of Option Paralysis is highly impressive.  However, in the wake of all this reflection, I feel terrible for the band, because out there on the webulogosphere I stand, constantly comparing them to dumps that I took.  I'm sorry, guys, but if it makes you feel any better, I'm a huge fan.

The Ocean-Anthropocentric (With Bonus Wife Review!)

My wife has become (very much against her will) a connoisseur of the heavy metal arts; in fact, I would be willing to wager that she has listened to more heavy metal than possibly anybody who professes to dislike/hate/fear the genre, and has additionally formulated opinions of bands that nobody in her position would ever normally even be aware of.  She admits to "being able to deal with" Baroness, Mastodon (especially their newest album, Crack the Skye), and Isis.  She can even be quoted as liking Opeth.  Allow me to elaborate on this one, since I like the story so much: We were one morning driving to get some lunch at a local Cheeseburgeria, the indomitable Mighty Fine Burgers, and expressed her distaste for the more traditionally deathy-sounding hydro-grinders Cephalic Carnage.  Since I had heard that album a thousand times already, I made a motion to change the CD in car's CD player.  She looked over at me and said, "Put something good on this time.  Put on Opeth."  I almost crashed the car I was so surprised to hear something like that come out of her mouth, especially with the off-the-cuff nonchalance that I might inform her not to enter the bathroom for a while.

What does all of this have to do with The Ocean's newest fare, Anthropocentric, you might ask?  Well, allow me to first give you the inside skinny on The Ocean.

The Ocean is a band that has been getting a fair bit of lip service from Metalsucks, which is probably my favorite outlet for metal-related news items, and which unfortunately keeps me way-too-informed about Axl Rose and Ratt-related news.  Tragedy recently befell The Ocean in Europe, wherein they were bilked out of $8,200 dollars (or 16 Euros) by some phony foreign police officials.  See the Metalsucks article for details here.  As such, I felt compelled to take a listen to this band so that I could justify giving them some of my hard-earned ducats, which I don't feel so comfortable parting with lately (those dicks don't suck themselves, after all).

Disappointment is something that I have always stuggled with, and that everyone has to tackle from time to time.  Listening to Anthropocentric for the first time left me with that lonesome, let-down feeling, like when I discovered in my youth that most other kids didn't have to deal with a disciplinary "switch" made out of a length of extension cord with a fish hook taped to the end.  No, that's a joke.  My parents used a bag of oranges.

However, something about Anthopocentric drew me back a day or two later; something had stuck to me, and this time it wasn't a result of the bodily fluids I'm generally drenched in.  After a couple more listens, I found a lot of things to like about this album.  The music thunders and roars; The Ocean employ a familiar Neur-Isis shimmer to their sludge, which itself is dynamic and labyrinthine.  Anthropocentric surprises at different turns, including some up-tempo moments uncharacteristic of sludge in general.  My biggest gripe with this is the amount of clean singing that takes place.  It's not that The Ocean don't sound good when they sing clean; the cleaner, more dynamic vocal parts sound at turns like Disturbed (gross!), a less-whiny and resonably tolerable Emo band (oh, kill me), and Greg Puciato from the Dillenger Escape Plan (oh, that one isn't so bad at all).  And somehow, don't ask me how, The Ocean makes this good cop/bad cop approach not only tolerable, but powerful and wholly acceptable.

My favorite surprise on the album comes at the sixth track, the third movement in a song suite titled "The Grand Inquisitor," subtitled "III, A Tiny Grain of Faith." This track throws something wholly unexpected at the listener with a spacey, dissonant keyboard interlude that swirls and pulsates, accompanied by an ethereal soprano (in the modern sense, not the classical sense), and colored by a totally tasty violin that appears, tickles my pretension bone, and glissandos back into the universal ether from whence it came.  This kind of move would be schlocky and overly pretentious for most bands to pull off, but The Ocean doesn't allow this to turn into a music-school showcase.  It's just pretentious enough, and at under two minutes long, the track is gone as quickly as it came, having given me a welcome breath of fresh air from the suffocating, math-y sludge that bookends it.

All in all, I would recommend Anthropocentric to people who, like me, can't get enough Isis and had to buy a box of doughnuts to take into a darkened bathroom for a good cry when they broke up.  The music is highly dynamic without getting long-winded.  Help them recover from their recent monetary loss by purchasing something at their online shop to help them out.  Or you can easily just steal it.

Bonus!  My wife gave a great review to this record, which will be quoted in it's entirety right here:

"What is this?...Oh...This isn't as terrible as the music you normally listen to."

Two four-star reviews in one!

Gay or Not Gay?*--Winds of Plague

Every Tuesday I wake up early and got some breakfast with a group of friends of mine at the venerable Kirby Lane Cafe in Central Austin; since it's Taco Tuesday at my new job, I've stopped eating breakfast at Kirby Lane in favor of eating a thousand breakfast tacos purchased by my bosses.  This situation leads me every Tuesday into the uncomfortable realm of what I refer to as "the too-much-coffee effect," wherein I drink about a gallon of coffee and subject myself to the horrible aftereffects of diuretic overconsumption, namely several horrible-smelling bowel movements that suck up most of my morning.  Since this is becoming a Tuesday ritual for me, I decided that today would be a good day to post my inaugural edition of "Gay or Not Gay?*" where I explore the music of bands that people generally seem to hate (or at least on the avenues that I frequent) and dare to ask the question, "Is it actually horrible music, or are people trumping up a band's collective crappiness to reflect the musical times in which the tr00est and most kvlt of us exist?"  By special request, this first edition will focus on the music of Winds of Plague.

Winds of Plague are generally lauded as the worst that the once-lauded genre of metalcore has to offer; I've literally never seen Winds of Plague get any good press, so obviously I've never really listened to them for fear of growing and vestigial vagina or becoming brain-damaged to the point that I take up hardcore dancing and skinny jeans.  With the lingering memory of my most recent bodily evacuation in mind, I sit here before you, dear reader, and admit that I am currently engaged in listening to tracks posted on Winds of Plague's Myspace (when are they finally going to take Myspace out behind the barn and blow its brains out, by the way?).  What I'm hearing is...well...

Considering that I treat my body as a playground/dumpster for all of the most disgusting and poisonous consumables, I'm honestly surprised how little terrible music (at least to my sensibilities) I listen to anymore.  It's been a long time since I moved past the idea that symphonic metal (power, black, et al) is in any way acceptable, and even longer since I found the breakdown a vital part of any viable musical composition.  Winds of Plague exhibit both of these traits in spades, which takes me back to the days of yore when As I Lay Dying and Stratovarius were in heavy rotation (maybe I shouldn't have outed myself like that...) and irony was funny and not an irritating, overwrought lifestyle choice.  I might have loved Winds of Plague in my formative years; their accessible (read: boring) riffing colored heavily with keyboard choruses singing "ahhh ahhhh"'s and basses dropping like my pants after 8 cups of coffee.

Now, to address the original question:  Gay or Not Gay*?  Answer: Pretty gay, but not as bad as many metal news outlets would lead one to believe.  Allow me to explain, since I feel like this post is increasingly proving to you, fair reader, that I am irreparably False and Ungrim.  It's not really that Winds of Plague are terrible at what they do, it's more that what they do has been done much, much better.  There are some pretty tasty sweep-picking riffs on songs like "Angels of Debauchery," *cringing at that title*, which leads into a softer dynamic passage and epic lead passage that would be at home in any song written by Luca Turilli or Timo Tolkki (I'm not going to look up spelling for either of those names).  The song then descends into a passage that my old band would have been particularly proud of, which is a terrible, terrible thing.  The song "Reloaded," likewise begins with a laughable Ion Dissonance-style "talk-scream" salvo, followed by a riff that's okay from a distance, the way that girl walking down the street is kind of hot until you get a good look at her moustache and pants-bulge visible from twenty paces.  Their intentions are respectable-ish, but they fall back on outdated cliches of the genre while eschewing aspects like "good song structure."

When I accidentally clicked on the first song on Winds of Plague's Myspace player, it brought up a menu of "Songs Similar to 'Chest and Horns'," which displayed in the number three spot a song by The Devil Wears Prada.  This is a telling harbinger of severe mediocrity against Winds of Plague, since The Devil Wears Prada likewise appeals solely to twelve-year-olds and other people with poor taste in music.  That Winds of Plague manage to do certain passages very correctly is a surprise; however, if they were to pare down their music only to their good riffs, their discography might indeed contain two or three very short songs.

The verdict: They are no Chiodos, but Winds of Plague by and large meet the hype of being lame and uninteresting.  If you'd like something else that is Winds of Plague-related to offset the music you may have just subjected yourself to (like I did), go to Metalsucks and observe their former keyboard player's totally righteous hooters in all their glory.  I don't need to tell you it's NSFW, right?

*The term "Gay or Not Gay?" is not a libelous statement against homosexuals.  It is a colloquial term that describes something that is sub-par, unfortunate, or generally annoying.  So please don't be gay by denouncing my use of the word.

Since You Didn't Ask Me - Magrudergrind

Welcome to the inaugural edition of my hottest new segment, "Since You Didn't Ask Me," in which I will weigh in on the br00talest kvltroversies and all matters of general falseness without any prompting or anyone ever asking me what I thought.  I love the innerwubs!

Unlike most Americans, I spent today in seclusion from the outside world; the mere concept of Black Friday makes me sick to my stomach, and as such, I didn't so much as enter a gas station today just to be sure that I didn't get attacked by some old ladies for trying to buy the last Dr. Pepper or something.  I'm sure that all of you who would look at this agree that Black Friday all by itself is reason enough for every other nation on the planet to hate America.  What does all of this have to do with Magrudergrind, though?  "What are you getting at, you anti-American Obama-supporting terrorist?" is what I assume you just said out loud to your computer screen (I hear it all the time in face-to-face exchanges, at least).

See, the newest kvltroversy on the metallo-webs and all across the br00talsphere is that grind luminaries Magrudergrind, hailed as grind-genies for 2009's stellar self-titled effort, have crossed the grind-line over to the dark side, recording and releasing a free (!) album that was paid for and released by--wait for it--Scion, the car company that brought us such horseless carriages as the Purple Sparkly Refridgerator Box and, more recently, Sparkly Refridgerator Box REDUX.  That's right.  Acting against everything that Napalm Death has ever stood for, Magrudergrind allowed a large subsidiary of a larger corporation to subvert them by paying their recording budget, getting them promotions for the record, and even releasing it for free so that getting it for free (which we all would have done otherwise) is no longer stealing.  Outrage!  Intrigue!

Now, what does this all mean to us, the casual theives of the music that we love (but won't buy)?  Answer: Literally nothing.

That people are outraged by Magrudergrind taking Scion's offer to record an album and have them foot the bill is laughable at best, and completely retarded at worst.  Record labels "pay" for bands to make records all the time; the hook is that bands, upon recording said album, get to be under the label's thumb and won't make any money off a record until they recoup the label's investment.  Anyone who follows extreme music should understand how laughable a concept this is, since the biggest bands sell so few records that any American Idol participant would literally be burned at the stake by his or her own PR people for having such shitty sales.  Also considering the fact that most of the money that any sucker (like me) pays for a physical copy of an album on CD or vinyl or any medium goes to the distribution company, then pays the cost of producing the plastic (or whatever the physical medium is made of), and after a while the label makes $.60 off of my $18 purchase.  Finally, the labels get to promote themselves on the back of the record any band on their roster produces, as well as advertising themselves in any and all promotional materials for said band (and one band having an ad all by itself isn't very common anymore either).  But you already knew this, because you aren't one of the idiots I was talking about up there, right?  Right.

The most common and misguided argument against this arrangement that Magrudergrind made with Scion is that Magrudergrind are shilling themselves out to a giant corporate slug that just wants to crack a new demographic for their car sales, and it is therefore wrong to do business with them.  All of these people who think this is the case, I would like to be the first to welcome you to America, where literally everything is an advertisement, and literally nothing exists except for the sole purpose of making some anus-face money so he can buy things that were advertised to him by someone else.  Little known fact: I actually started this blog as a convoluted (and misguided) way to advertise for Keebler, which is the greatest company with the greatest products (gotta get me some of that E.L. Fudge!) on the planet.  As I reach for another delicious Club cracker, made with love and care by the tiny, poorly paid hands of cartoon elves in a tree, I reflect upon how few things in the United States are not geared toward getting someone to fork over their hard-earned cash in exchange for something.  The answer is....no, those things don't exist.

And, upon listening to the record, one has to admit that any accusations of "selling out" are mystifyingly unfounded.  I don't think Scion actually knew what they were getting into with Magrudergrind; they may have thought they were approaching Mastodon and made a terrible, terrible mistake.  Magrudergrind are seriously brutal, and their sound has not been compromised even a little bit by their partnering with Scion.  Also, so few people listen to Magrudergrind, the advertising is seemingly a waste.  If it weren't for the kvltroversy surrounding this whole situation, the ploy would be likened to paying an Afghani woman to get a Scion tattoo on her calf.  Literally nobody would ever see it.

As I sit in my comfy den, my lips glistening with the crumbs from another delicious Keebler Chips Deluxe Rainbow cookie, made with the best candy-coated chocolate to create a taste that kids and adults can both agree on, I realize that Magrudergrind is the first in what will certainly be a long line of bands to decide that letting a huge corporation foot the bill for recording while never having any pressure to meet recoup costs is better than being under the gun only to have your faggy fans subvert you by illegally downloading the same music.  Let it go, America; you can't have your rampant consumerism and eat it too.

As for a review of the record, Magrudergrind's newest effort is as good as the fun and fun-to-eat Keebler Scooby-Doo Graham Crackers, which have the fun shapes and satisfying crunch that with make your family smile.  In other words, it's badass.

Brooklyn Vegan had it up for download recently (which is how I got it).  Follow this link to see if it's still up; otherwise you're going to have to pay shipping and handling for it, or just wait four minutes until someone posts it somewhere for immediate gratification.

Here:  Live the Corporate Sponsored Thunder

Happy Thanksgiving, Slaves!

Thanksgiving is upon us, and as such, I'm going to spend the day testing the limits of how many deviled eggs I can eat before the rest of my family realizes that there are deviled eggs and making jokes about farts and boners with my brother.  It's going to be awesome, just like every other day of my life.

I hope that all of you have similarly amazing days, and avoid the D.U.I. (or, in Texas, D.W.I.) like you would avoid the Noid (if you were a pizza).  Whoever reads this is awesome, and should rest assured that I won't be nearly coherent enough to post anything else until the day that America shows just how greedy and terrible it can be, more commonly referred to as Black Friday.  Celebrate avoiding any and all major retailers that day with me, because I'm an angry loner and crave constant attention from anyone and everyone, including you.

Black Friday will, incidentally, be the debut of my newest segment, titled "Since You Didn't Ask Me."  This inaugural segment will feature my sentiments about the new Scion-sponsored Magrudergrind EP.

Eat something!  Out your cousin!  And let Reginald Veljohnson be the harbinger of your holiday season!

\m/ \m/

D.I.S.-Critical Failure (2010)

This has been a very crusty year for me.  The inclusion of Black Breath, Converge, Tragedy, Early Graves and D.I.S. to my lexicon of musical nerdery has stoked the flames of my decades-long mania for the purest and most beautiful convention of punk and metal alike: the hallowed D-beat.  Anybody who is familiar with me as a person will probably be well-aware of my frantic, insatiable desire for more D-beat; indeed, it could be empirically proven that I suffer from what top scientists have lovingly christened the "D-boner."  As such, I've been getting back into hardcore, the musical genre that I surreptitiously combed World Records for in my adolescence.  D.I.S. embody everything I currently and formerly adored about hardcore.  They straddle the line between the punk version of hardcore with vocals that harken back to Agnostic Front and F-Minus (also known as the clean-scream, the shout, or I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Mongo-Vocals), and the metal version of hardcore that features detuned guitars, double bass hurricanes and sweet, shreddy soloing.

D.I.S. came to my attention in an UpFront feature in Decibel Magazine earlier this year, and the columnist for my most revered publication used all the right words to describe the band to get my D-boner throbbing and begging for the touch of that sweet thundering drum pattern.  Early searches for the band to find some kind of myspace or stream so I could stroke my D-boner proved fruitless; such a non-descript name makes it hard to find information on Interwebbies, particularly if you're like me and give up immediately if what you're looking for doesn't pop up in the first five items in a Google search.  This didn't stop me, though (yes it did).  About a month later I was having a sweatlodge session in San Antonio and was handed off a copy of the new D.I.S. album, sending my heat-addled brain into a frenzy and causing me to pitch an immediate D-tent.  Thankfully, the music didn't disappoint, and my freshly renewed mania for hardcore were allowed to continue unimpeded.

In my favorite manner, Critical Failure wages war upon the senses and thunders through ten tracks of splendidly furious hardcore.  D.I.S. tend toward a punk rock style of riff, heavy on the power chord and light on melody.  The thick, thunderous din of Critical Failure would best be described by citing a heavier version of Disfear without the shredded-throat ruckus of Tomas Lindberg, or Tragedy without the meandering song structures.  If this record had come out when I was a depressive, mopey high-schooler, I would have eaten in up, and would almost certainly end up with a regrettable and ill-advised D.I.S. tattoo on my face.  Thankfully I discovered it as an adult, where the worst I can do is have dreams about the band that creep me out in waking and then keep to myself and ponder what it means to dream of being in a sleeping bag with five crusty heshers.

Now I have to go have a fully-clothed cry in the shower.