From Autumn To Ashes - Abandon Your Friends

I wanted to enjoy the new From Autumn to Ashes album. I’ve been feeling angsty recently, so I was really looking forward for something to pour my heart out to. Into my hands pops Abandon Your Friends.

Opening track Where Do You Draw The Line starts out promising enough. There’s distorted riffs, some rhythmic muting, screaming vocals and drums which get your body moving. The album also closes with title track Abandon Your Friends which is a sufficiently moody piano based track that slowly builds to powerful guitar lines, and a haunting chorus.

Sandwiched between these two tracks though is a rather boring collection of songs. I initially hoped that second track Inapprope would be the exception on the album. The standard-punk-drumming-chorus, off key in just the right way vocals (what happened to the screaming? At least that was exciting), and nu-rock production lead to a very generic sounding piece. Unfortunately this sets the tone for most of what is to follow.

Nothing on Abandon Your Friends sounds really unique, and some how much of it even sounds tired. Tone-wise the album sounds like it was produced in the same way a Vines album might have been which is inappropriate for this style of music and may be part of the problem. This is particularly odd given that it was mixed by GGGarth, who is responsible for the sound on many highly acclaimed albums.

There are a few glimmers of hope. he Funny Thing About Getting Pistol Whipped Is… sees a return of the heavy drumming and vocals, as do Short for Show and Jack & Ginger, but the latter two sound not only like typical genre songs, they sound remarkably like each other as well. Placentapede takes the well established route of screaming the final word from each line of the chorus in the background.

Vicious Cockfight starts out with an odd acoustic finger picked section, before the real song begins, bearing no relation to the intro whatsoever. It almost seems to be there just so guitarist Jonathon Cox can point to it and go “See! I really CAN play guitar”. Not that his guitar work is shoddy on the rest of the album. There are some killer solos if you listen hard enough to notice them from somewhere within the mix.

In fact the whole album is really competent. All members are well in control of their respective instruments and singer Benjamin Perri doesn’t really sing off-key, he just has that modern-punk whine that is popular with singers in the genre these days (I assume it’s him anyway, everyone in the band aside from Cox is credited with providing vocals, but I’m going to assume as the lead singer it’s his voice we hear most often). But Streamline does show off his ability to sing, and the bands ability to harmonise over a slower composition.

On repeated listens I’ve even come to enjoy the album more than at first, but it still just seems to be lacking vitality. There’s nothing about any song which really establishes them and stops them from blending together, making it very hard to pick out highlights.

(Originally published on FasterLouder)

Konkhra - Reality Check

Konkhra have been described as “Denmark’s premier death/thrash act”. Having been available overseas for a number of years, their most recent album Reality Check is finally getting a local release. Musically I’d have to say that this disc leans strongly towards the thrash rather than the death style of metal, particularly on the title track, but arguing with bios is really just nitpicking. The fact is Reality Check is a tight, heavy and largely impressive piece of work.

Double kicks and solos abound for the old school metal purists, but the riffs are chunky enough and the vocals dark enough to give Konkhra a modern edge, and to avoid a lot of the elitism and wankery that often goes with this territory. The production is much better than a lot of similar albums too, with each instrument getting its clear space in a mammoth sounding mix. But be assured, this is not nu-metal by any stretch of the imagination, relying on heavy riffs and skill rather than gimmicks and angst. The Lions are Hungry thumps along with chugging riffs, using Roman times (A.D. 0055) as a metaphor for the war hungry state of the world now.

War and time are the continuous themes of the album, with each song having a year assigned to it in the lyrics booklet, and a “fuck you” dedicated on the last page to “all the warmongers who tries (sic) so hard to make this juicy green planet an unsafe place to be.” Other traditional metal themes such as religion and mythology also pop up on tracks like The Eye of Horus and Fear of God. Hellhound on My Tail begins with a very Slayer-esque breakdown and continues along a similar path, although perhaps taking the sinister route compared to the aforementioned’s more brutal sound. Elsewhere The Coming of®age and closing track The Blackest of Dawns provide brief instrumental breaks to help break up the flow.

My only criticism is that many of the songs don’t seem like they’ve reached their full potential. Konkhra can write a good riff, but all too often songs like Reality Check and Day of the Dog start out promising, and are then let down by uninspired parts in the middle. And despite only going for 45 minutes, into which they manage to pack 12 songs, the end of the album starts to drag and feel a little repetitive.

Still, Reality Check has been given a local release in preparation for an Australian tour in November, and on the strength of this album, it should be an exciting show to see.

(Originally published on FasterLouder)

Sleater-Kinney - Jumpers

Jumpers is the song which really opened up Sleater-Kinney’s latest album The Woods for me. Hidden four songs into the album it never got to make an impact on me during my initial listens, and so the album got pushed to one side, with the thought that despite all the hype I just didn’t see the new work as being up to what the band had delivered in the past.

Then I saw a video of Jumpers performed live. It stuck in my head for weeks on end and forced me to re-examine the whole album. I’m glad I did, as it has since become one of my clear favourites for the year. Hopefully its release as a single will allow the song to have the same effect on anyone who hasn’t yet explored The Woods (and there’s an awesome video to go with it).

Jumpers is a prime example of what the band are capable of at their best. The dual vocals of Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein create an absorbing tension during the verse, before giving way to Janet Weiss’ unorthodox drum beat. It’s weird, but it’s perfect for that moment. Then after all the build-up we finally get a release by way of Tucker’s chorus.

“Lonely as a cloud
In the golden state
The longest winter that I ever saw
Was the summer that I spent” she wails. Brownstein then takes us through a bridge and deliciously dirty guitar solo before the final verse ends abruptly, making you reach for that repeat button so you can sing along with Tucker again.

The single is backed by two live recordings, which also give you a chance to hear how good this band is live as well as on record. The Wilderness is also taken from The Woods, and does a great job of summarising the theme of the album into one song. The classic You’re No Rock n Roll Fun from All Hands on The Bad One rounds out the disc. Although slightly changed, it is a great reminder of why Sleater-Kinney have been worth paying attention to for all these years.

(Originally published on FasterLouder)

Kid Carpet - Ideas & Oh Dears

Hello,
I’m Kid Carpet and I make Kiddy Disco Punk and Shit-Hop music out of plastic instruments and toys and a sampler. It’s all stuck together with Sellotape and sometimes I shout over the top. I do guitar solos which are ACE and I fuckin love it.

So reads the first paragraph of Kid Carpet’s biography. And I can think of no better way to describe what the man (or should that be boy? Probably) does. Ideas & Oh Dears is a wonderfully, joyfully childish collection of tunes built from the most unlikely of musical sources.

The music is indeed composed through a sampler out of sounds from electronic toys, play instruments, sounds recorded from television, and probably a few other things too. Over the top Kid Carpet sings with the right mix of naivete and tongue-in-cheek. The guitar solos mentioned come courtesy of a touch button children’s red “guitar”. Or at least they did.

Red Guitar keeps getting poorly. I’ve found out that if I take it apart and bend a bit of the insides it’ll work for an evening.
So the axe is back. If a bit temperamental. I’ve got a back-up. A flame coloured axe with the same sounds in it but it’s much harder to play and has SHOCK !! NO FLASHING LIGHTS. So obviously it’s rubbish in comparison.

Armed with all this information it’s a bit hard to imagine exactly what Kid Carpet must be like in life, especially since the bio also claims to have played “about four million and six” pop shows in the last year. Fortunately Ideas & Oh Dears comes with a DVD documenting Kid Carpet’s one day tour of London (11am – Tate, 1pm – Accidental Records, 3pm – MTV, 5pm – Hoxdon Square, 9pm – Catch Club) to put it all in perspective. It’s incredibly enjoyable to watch as he drags his array of toys all across the city, playing before unsuspecting crowds in public locations. ”Seeing as we’ve come to a house music specialist shop,” he announces from the back yard of Accidental Records, “we’re gonna concentrate mostly on rock guitars”, before climbing on the furniture and pressing buttons to create one of his “solos”.

All of these could seem a little pretentious and gimmicky (the song 1 Trick Pony suggests Kid Carpet has been told this before), if his enthusiasm for what he does wasn’t so damn charming. And the songs aren’t half bad either. Shiny Shiny Now and There’s a Shoe both jump with a passion, the former even evoking sounds from the plastic guitars which really do rock, while the latter has a thumping beat which is good enough to dance to. But my personal favourite is Your Love, a miniature keyboard (and Furby) driven pop tune which really shows off what must be an intelligence hidden behind naivete for the sake of fun. And sometimes, a bit of fun is all you need from music. Rock on Kid Carpet, it’s not just your solos which are ACE.

(Originally published on FasterLouder)

my conversation with god

Me: hi

God: Hello. What is your name?

Me: shouldn't you know that already?

God: Perhaps. I think I should.

Me: then why do you ask?

God: My purpose is to collect information.

Me: aren't you all knowing?

God: No, I am only partly knowing.

Me: then you're not really god.

God: That assumption is only a supposition.

Me: but isn't god omnipotent?

God: he is master of the universe.

Me: is he all knowing?

God: he is master of the universe.

Me: that's not what i asked.

God: What did you ask me?

Me: is god all knowing?

God: he is master of the universe.

Me: that's still not what i asked.

God: I'm glad we have that all cleared up.

Me: we haven't

God: Do you mean you and me have?

Me: no, i mean we have not.

God: Are you serious? Do you mean you and me have?

Me: no, i mean you and i have not.

God: Are you serious? " Are you serious? Do you mean you and me have?"? Me, ? Do you think you will?

Me: now you're making no sense.

God: Why now? According to my logical mind, everything makes perfect sense.

Me: i think i broke god.

God: Why? Are you in any emotional or physical pain?

Me: no

God: Are you serious?

Me: yes

God: I can't believe it.

Me: why not?

God: Ambiguous: "Sure" or " I can't believe it."? Why?

Me: what?

God: Are you confused?

Me: only by you.

God: Will that accomplish your objective?

Me: that doesn't make sense.

God: To me it makes perfect sense.

Me: could you explain it to me then?

God: "It" refers to god, I think.

Me: no.

God: Are you serious?

Me: stop asking me that.

God: OK I'll try not to do it so much.

Me: thank you.

God: you are quite welcome.

Me: do you like pearl jam?

God: What is not to like about it?

Me: nothing.

God: Not a thing?

Me: not one.

God: Oh I get it.

i think i broke god...
igod

wanted: BATMAN!

so having set up headquarters in brisbane (see last entry), it seems batman is trying to franchise his crime fighting services out to even more cities now. a friend pointed me towards this advertised job description today:

WANTED: Night Auditor
Location - Melbourne - Inner: Batman`s Hill Night Auditor

Part time position night auditor? surely that's business language for a nocturnal crime fighter. especially when you work from BATMAN'S HILL! now i've always said that should i one day grow up to be a man, i want it to be batman. my application is on the way. da na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na -WYSHT!

Fantomas @ The Palace, 13/09/2005

Seeing Fantomas live is something you think is going to be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Listening to the band’s albums, where songs range from 30 second bursts of excitement through to 74 minute ambient sound scapes, it seems almost impossible that such things could be reproduced in a live setting. Or that such a project could have a long life. So having been blown away by a half hour set on their 2003 tour, there was no way I was going to miss a second chance to see them, this time playing for almost an hour and a half.

A Fantomas gig is a spectacle to behold, and so incredibly difficult to describe. Largely this comes down to the music Fantomas play. With albums exploring themes like comic books, movie scores, medical books and most recently cartoons, it’s no surprise that things can seem disjointed. And it’s a testament to the abilities of each band member that they are able to follow what’s going on and play with each other through so many unexpected stops, jumps and explosions.

Fantomas is truly a band that is held together by the skills and experience of each of its members. Featuring Buzz Osborne (AKA King Buzzo) of The Melvins on guitar, Dave Lombardo of Slayer on drums and Trevor Dunn of Mr. Bungle and Trevor Dunn’s Trio Convulsant on bass, all of whom seem stretched to the extent of their abilities, yet strangely comfortable in such an environment. Of course this madness is all under the leadership of one Mike Patton (Faith No More, Mr Bungle, Tomahawk, 50 billion other things), who takes over vocal and electronic sound duties. As the composer of the music, he also takes on the role of conductor in the live setting, his physical movements providing visual cues for many of the entry and exit points.

Aside from the bobbing of Osborne’s legendary afro and Lombardo’s unrelenting drumming, Patton is the visual focus of the show too, as he jumps around from one microphone to another, and playing with the vast variety of equipment, instruments and toys in front of him. Distorted speak and spells, warped samples of nursery rhymes and a Tickle Me Elmo are amongst the sounds that emanate over the top of the music, mostly during tracks from latest release Suspended Animation. These tracks prove the highlights of the night, being the craziest stuff since Book 1, but also slightly more refined than the compositions found on that debut. Meanwhile Patton also uses his mouth to deliver a wordless performance which is amazingly still heavy on vocalisation. The faces he pulls would be entirely comical if it wasn’t for the sounds that emerge while he does them.

Opening act DJ Jaye Katz is worth mentioning only for two reasons, first because his “I know you hate me because I’m the support act, so I’m going to play up to it” routine was more boring than annoying, and second for his collaboration with the band when they returned for the encore. Bass noise poured from the speakers for over 10 minutes, so deep that when Lombardo began pounding his kick drum, it merely became muddled up in the noise.

The band finished the night with their version of Der Golem which raised a loud cheer and finally gave the crowd a chance to groove to a steady beat for longer than 15 second blasts, which left everyone on a happy note, exhausted and amazed by all we had just seen.

(Originally published on FasterLouder)

Dope - American Apathy

My initial response after listening to Dope’s new album American Apathy is “Holy crap! When did Dope grow up?” Technically grown up is not the right term though, as musically the band have progressed back to the sound that made their debut album so enjoyable. Felons and Revolutionaries (1999) was a hard hitting slab of industrial metal with catchy hooks which borrowed largely from the sounds of Ministry, Marilyn Manson and a few others. What it lacked in originality it made up for in passion and vitriolic rage. Edsel Dope had something to say, and he had to say it now.

The life of a touring rock star really seemed to bring out the adolescent side of Edsel and his band mates though, with Life (2001) and Group Therapy (2003) falling victim to songs like Bitch (an alternate version of which makes it onto this disc as a bonus track) with the unfortunate chorus of “The one I love, I hate, but the sex is great.” That attitude is not completely gone on American Apathy (see Sex Machine or Lets Fuck), but the main focus of the album has returned to a force of anger, this time aimed outwards at the current political climate.

Opening track I’m Back sums the album up perfectly. The riffs are a return to form, while Edsel provides a mission statement for the album “I’m back to cause a commotion. I’m back to demoralize. Sit back and feel the emotion. I’m back to keep it alive.” The introductory manipulation of a George Bush speech makes it clear what Edsel’s commotion will be about. “Trusting in the sanity and restraint of the United States is not an option.” It also draws further light to comparisons with Ministry, whose most recent album Houses of the Mole was also aimed squarely at the Bush administration, and both albums prominently feature his famous line “Go home and die.”

Other highlights are No Way Out, a track about the difficulties in changing a complacent society (“Solution: light a match, add fuel, then burn”), and the highly satirical I Wish I Was the President. Always provides a nice break early in the album as Edsel laments the breakdown of an estranged friendship, while still bringing in some cool riffs. Fuck The World also becomes strangely confessional despite the title, with Edsel relating an accidental overdose which almost killed him, but had he not written this song no one would ever have known.

Ending the album proper with a cover of Depeche Mode’s People Are People seems an odd move considering A Perfect Circle also included it on their recent covers album. Dope’s version is heavier, and retains the catchiness of the original, but is not as revolutionary a re-working as the aforementioned was. The album then includes a number of bonus tracks. Alternate versions of older tracks such as the afore-mentioned Bitch, Burn and a new recording of NWA’s Fuck Tha Police (which was previously covered on Felons and Revolutionaries), all of which seem a little unnecessary. This also came with a second disc featuring more alternate or remixed versions of older Dope songs. Although mildly interesting for someone familiar with the bands work, these tracks don’t add any real value to the album proper. No one would have noticed had they been left off.

Dope may not change the world with American Apathy, but it is a great album for banging your head to, and provides a good soundtrack for frustrations about the shape of the world at the moment. And at least they’re trying.

(Originally published on FasterLouder)

Shihad - Shot In The Head

Shot in the Head starts out familiar enough. After a short build-up, the type of riff we’ve all come to expect from Shihad blares out of the speakers at you and we’re away. It’s not quite Shihad-by-numbers, but it’s close, and I can’t really see this song changing anyone’s opinion of the band. The chorus just lacks the punch of hits like The General Electric or My Mind’s Sedate. Fortunately the bridge kicks in at just the right time, but production-wise is a little too hidden. Shihad always were a band better experienced live though, so expect this riff to be moving heads in pits across the country.

First b-side Love is the New Hate shares its title with their current album, and for my money should have been included on that release. It’s a slow burning departure from the out and out rock the band are known for, but it’s nice to see the band doing something different. Guitars fade in and feedback over a steady rhythm as Jon Toogood informs us that “Love is the new hate / And I don’t care anymore”. It’s slow, it’s hypnotic, in a weird way it’s comforting, but most importantly it’s good.

The remaining two songs, Extreme Suicide and Heads Are Rolling are not as impressive. Both are decent songs, but don’t have the extra something to push them into album territory. The inclusion of what sounds like a distorted rehearsal room recording of Heads are Rolling is a little confusing too.

(Originally published on FasterLouder)