Morbid Angel: Illud Divinum Insanus

Morbid Angel's new album, Illud Divinum Insanus, comes to us after a eight years. While Trey and David Vincent have been reunited for quite a few years, and playing shows, we're only now hearing new offerings. It's not safe to say that an album eight years in the making will blow minds and be perfect. A rejoining of one of the best duos in death metal also doesn't mean that the album will be perfect. The new Morbid Angel album is, well, um, it's new.

The album's opener, Omni Potens, serves as an intro, but can easily be thrown away. The first real track, Too Extreme, is too extreme. Lets forget for a moment that Morbid Angel is the band that brought you such classics as Alters of Madness and Blessed are the Sick. The opening lines to this song are, "This is a warning." No shit. It's not secret that Trey Azagthoth has an affinity of electronic music, and it shows on this album, a little too much (sometimes you shouldn't bring you hobbies to the office). It sounds like Morbid Angel was listening to Ministry, a lot. The drums sound like they were sampled from a Berzerker album. Before this track is over you're scratching you head wondering why after eight years of waiting you get this. You feel like you've been wronged.

Don't fret, the next four songs will reassure you that the Florida deathsters haven't ran off the deep end. These are the tracks remind you of who this band is. Think Domination era, Vincent's vocals are as good as ever. However this moment of rejoicing is then broken up again by the song Destructos Vs. The Earth - Attack, an even worse attempt at industrial music. Radikult is even worse, take the lyrics from Body Count's Cop Killer and place it over really, really bad industrial rock. Hearing Vincent scream 'Kill a Cop' makes me uncomfortable, not that he'd kill cop, but a Morbid Angel album is the last place you'd hear something like this.

Nevermore has been well heard for the past few years, and should have been the album's opening. Vincent's roar is like a lion who has just reclaimed his throne. It's as if he never left. While videos of this song have been all over the web, hearing the studio version is welcomed with open ears. It served as insurance to the fans that we'd see another album. Unfortunately, Tim Yeung's fill in spot is not as exciting. As amazing as this Yeung is (winner of the fastest feet award), this guy was born and raised on Florida death metal. He does a great job sounding exactly like Pete 'The Feet' Sandoval'. He was hired because he could replicated Sandoval's work

I'm sorry to say it, but this album shows why musicians should start side projects. The industrial tracks are completely misplaced. If he has released them under another moniker, then we'd all be happy. This album is a mixed bag, the good tracks are good and what you'd expect. The problem is, it's a new album. Hearing this album is like seeing a friend who'd been away for years and is the same, but with a few new quirks from their travels. Why Trey and the gang decided the infused what should have been a good return with confusion is beyond me. This is not to be confused with the a fan's demand for the familiar and same old. Perhaps this was the only way These new sounds would get heard, and quickly ignored.


The video below was taken from Metalsucks.net
"A few years ago there was this popular internet meme in which people took a scene from Downfall, a movie about Hitler’s final days, and re-did the subtitles so that, instead of reacting to the news that he was losing the war, The Führer seemed to be freaking out about some horribly insignificant bit of nerdery (e.g., that the end of The Watchmen movie wasn’t exactly the same as the end of The Watchmen graphic novel, etc.).

Like most memes, it got old after awhile. But our friend Mark sent us the below one over the weekend, and, well… I don’t think I have ever typed these words before, nor am I likely to ever type them again:

Skulls sell

Bad ass poster by clint, shameless self promotion for a rad show.

Struck By Lightning: Serpents

From time to time there comes along an album that manages to find a happy medium. Too often are bands described using a shopping list of adjectives that really just covers up that fact that either a band lacks a focus (not always a bad thing) or are just beyond description. Too often are genere's mashed together to create something unique but still fall short of allure ( Folk metal and deathcore). The comes along a band that just gets it. Struck By Lightning does just that.

The debut album from these Ohio crushers, lead by former Mouth of the Architect Axeman Gregory Lahm, takes progressive sludge ala early Mastodon and adds 90s hardcore to conceive a post NeurIsis masterpiece (see what I did with that sentence? Hahahaha!). Serpents came to me shortly after its release. It took me to see them opening for Weedeater to witness their magic. Lahm's departure from MOTA only helped him. The sticker on the wrapper said something along the lines of "the soundtrack to a Blues Brothers style chase scene." Sold. This album has teeth. Heavy and complex. Lots of d-beat style hardcore, some melodic parts, lots of heavy crushing sludge. The complexity of Converge with the power of Tragedy and His Hero is Gone. Struck By Lightning seem to be more focused on writing fast and heavy rather than slow thick. You can't tell whether the hardcore is influencing the sludge or the other way around, but you don't care. You're too busy enjoying the music. This album comes at a time where a lot bands of a similar nature seemed rather lost. These guys have a good ear for what works and what doesn't. 'Becoming Earth', while on the sludgier side of the coin, opens with probably one of the coolest riffs I've heard in years, and displays some great rhythmic parts. They could have easily sped this jam up, but let it soak in the gravy just for a little longer. Having come up with music from the late 90s and the early 00s, this brings a lot to the table that I haven't heard in a while. You can tell why a lot of hardcore kids started listening to Neurosis and all that stuff.

May 21st, 2011... can I get my money back?

It's May 21st we're all going to die, maybe. According the Family Radio grand poo-bah Harold Camping we will. I won't go into the exact details, the Internet and other forms of media will provide everything you need to know. What you essentially need to know is that by using passages from the Bible an mathematical equation was created to pin point the exact day in which the rapture will happen. Math. It should be noted that Camping tried to scare us with this 'Biblical Math' back in 1994, and failed.

While I do appreciate one's love for math to the point where one can pluck passages, numbers, etc. from a BOOK and say this is when EVENT X will happen, let's be real. Didn't they try and do something similar in the movie Pi? Oh wait, they tried to find the 'true' name of god. I appreciate the dedication to math and god, but c'mon. From reading all the recent hype, there's no place in the Bible that states the date and time of the rapture. So what makes these equations right?

I was living in Eugene, OR when 6/6/06 came around. Mind you, this was small town and it happened to be the season religious loonies preaching the good word at the University of Oregon's Student Union. I remember reading articles which sited religious figures claiming that the devil would ascend to earth and bring his wrath, blah blah. On that day nothing happened. Deicide was to release two exclusive songs on iTunes, but that's as close to the rise of the devil as it got. I read the online papers that night and the next day, nothing. There's no devil, there's no god to stop the devil.

I'm Jewish, by birth (not choice), we don't have an end of days or rapture. We don't even have a hell. We don't live in constant fear of god's wrath. No confession, just a day of repentance and then we get on with our lives. The mere fact that I don't believe in the Christian god or Jesus means nothing will happen to me. I'm a believer of non-absolutes, ie, no one true god. I believe that God, Allah, Odin, Ganesh, the Giant Turtle in the sky all exist, at least in our minds. The sheer fact that there are so many possible, conflicting views of what god is, means that there's not one god, no right or wrong god, if there even is a god at all.

As I write this, this whole '6pm' time frame has already failed in New Zealand, where a big ass Earthquake would hit. That already happened a few months ago. I guess Camping got the math wrong, again.

I strongly suggest for everyone to go to your closest church and remind people that the rapture isn't coming. They fucked up. Bask in this momentous 'I Told You So' moment. It's 10:30am in San Francisco, it's a sunny day outside. Go have a No Rapture Party.

Kyuss Lives... not Kyuss: Thoughts on Reunions

In a 2007 interview with Music Mart's Joel McIve Josh Homme(Queens of the Stone Age, Them Crooked Vultures, founding member of Kyuss) stated:

"The offers come in all the time. They're getting more and more expensive, and more and more elaborate. The money is crazy, but I've never been tempted - I don't really care about the money, I never have. That's not what Kyuss was about, so to punctuate the end of our sentence with that would be blasphemy. Kyuss fans are so fuckin' rad, they're fuckin' badass but to me, reunions are just not necessary. It's not what it was, it's what it is, and Kyuss was a really magical thing and if you weren't there, well, you weren't. That's just the luck of the draw. I don't feel the urge to do it for somebody who didn't have the opportunity to see us, or just didn't take the opportunity to see us. I'll let other bands alter their great legacies. Kyuss has such a great history that it would be a total error. I like that nobody saw Kyuss, and that it was largely misunderstood. That sounds like a legend forming to me. I'm too proud of it to rub my dick on it." (The whole interview can be read HERE)

The Kyuss reformation all started at 2010's Hellfest festival in France. Kyuss vocalist John Garcia was playing essentialy under the guise of a Kyuss cover band, Garcia Plays Kyuss, and Brant Bjork and Nick Oliveri happened to be playing the same day with their respective bands, The Bros and Mondo Generator. As luck would have it they decided to join Mr. Garcia on stage to jam a few of the old tunes for the fans. A very touching and unexpected moment for kyuss fans. I even got a little excited and basked in the crappy cellphone/iphone/etc footage.

Flash forward to this year and 'Kyuss' is back in the spotlight. Kinda. Garcia, Oliveri and Bjork are united once again under the banner Kyuss Lives. Having read Homme's comment above, it came as so surprise that he would not be attending. Aside from his moral conflict, Homme's music career is at full throttle and probably has no time to slow down for 'old times sake'. Bruno Fevery has stepped into Homme's shoes as the hired gun.

Homme's above mentioned quote definitely says something about reunions. I can't say for sure how many bands do it for the money or because, as Sleep once put it, there's something that feels unfinished. I can clearly get down with the later.

Homme, however brings up an interesting point. While current bands are either paying tribute to previous generations of music, or building upon it, many of these 'influences' have risen from the dead, so to speak. It's as if countless time capsules has been opened. Some of these bands never went away, they're riding on a second wind. Other bands never went away in that their members, even after a breakup, continued their careers with other bands. Although people like Homme are still turning out vasty different jams than before, he's still a living testament to what once was. Sometimes just being able to see members of your favorite bands in the flesh is enough. Matt Pike, Josh Homme, Wino, are all living reminders of glorious moments in music history. Sometimes basking in the memories is enough.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't care about many recent reunions. Recently I saw St. Vitus and Sleep. Both shows were amazing. But was it the real deal? No. For starters, both bands had different drummers. While I'm not complaining that having Neurosis' Jason Roeder bang on the skins to my favorite Sleep tunes, it just wasn't the same. Sure, it was Pike and Cicneros on the same stage, that alone was special; but the lack of Hakius left a void the experience, only in hindsite.

More importantly, reunited bands are like time capsules in that they're playing out of context. Like Homme said, "if you weren't there, you weren't there." At first I thought that was a shitty thing to say, but he's right. There's a certain magic, a certain element to being there, in the prime. What you're seeing on stage, at the reunion is a reenactment of the good ol' days. You're merely looking at a copy of an original. It's usually a more convincing copy when the musicians are the same ones on the album. Reunions exploit the hype around the band's legacy. Reunions kind of take a bands greatness for granted. Of course, most of the time bands that reunite are awesome, but it feels like their greatness only got bigger because they reunited. "I'm glad that nobody saw Kyuss," says Homme. So then how did they come to such legendary status? The point here is that there are those who help create a bands greatness and those who are told of a greatness, like lore.

The same, in a sense can be said for bands that haven't broken up, but have been playing for 30 years straight. Look at Slayer: In recent years vocalist Tom Araya has opened up about his Christian faith (Read that article here), yet continues to sing songs telling of certain blasphemy. Tom Araya is not the same guy he was when the band started, but that hasn't stopped him from doing business. Being open about your faith in a band that's known for its anti-faith shows a change in the rift. I still enjoy my Slayer, but knowing that for Araya Slayer is a really fun day job, has definitely changed the way I see the band. Slayer is not the same as it was before. The guys in Slayer are merely trying to keep up appearances working as the personality of Slayer.

Now while a small tid bit of information is not the same as a reunion, they both share the same idea. After a some time, what you see on stage is not the original product. Time and place is extremely important in music. While most people my age are going to grumble over the fact that they were old enough, or born, to see St. Vitus and Black Flag; or Kyuss and Metallica; we just have to deal with it and experience the scene currently surrounding us. When we're older, we can brag about all the cool shit we saw.

Ronnie James Dio: R.I.P. (One Year Later)

On May 16th, 2010 Ronnie James Dio passed away. This was a day beyond sad. Ronnie was one of the most positive guys in metal. His words touched my ears like magic. Dio never let me worry. I was too busy in a far away land. I saw him only one, opening for Iron Maiden. He was the smallest thing I've ever seen, especially from the lawn section of the Chronicle Pavilion. He'd prance around the stage like an elf or something of a mystical nature. When he sang, it was like he was telling you a story. His words and music were good medicine. He's been miss and will continue to be missed.

Here is a mix I made a year ago, after Dio passed way. Much Respect. Enjoy. \m/

Os Haxixins

Awesome garage rock/organ worship from Sao Palo, Brazil. Pretty fuzzy, totally gritty. If you're a fan of Brazilian music from the 60s and 70s or just a fan of rad garage rock, Os Haxixins will do you right.


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