A Day of Dio

Inspired by falsity of the Dio Death Scare this morning (I had "Wishing Well" of all songs stuck in my head afterward), I've been listening to Dio in his various guises - lead singer of Rainbow, lead singer of Sabbath, fronting his own band - all morning. It's been a wonderful time: I had forgotten how good Holy Diver is as an album, I had an excuse to give Heaven & Hell another listen, Cozy Powell and his crazy legs of steel impressed me once again on "Kill the King," but the real find was when I was trolling YouTube looking for live versions of "Gates of Babylon" and came across a copy of the recording of Dio and Yngwie Malmsteen did of "Dream On" for an Aerosmith tribute album. It's a really excellent cover, with plenty of places for expansion that where both Dio and Malmsteen take advantage, but my favorite addition is the far more baroque bass line that's evident from the beginning:



Best wishes to the man who sings it all, hoping that he'll be doing sets for years yet.

Saving the Day With Black Sabbath

The weather has turned ugly again here in New York; uglier than usual because it's so unusual for May, when I should be enjoying the few remaining days of NYC's tolerable season. Instead it's cold and raining and I'm fighting a bitter guerrilla war against an occupation by an invading virus. Prisoners are not taken, my friends. Quarter is not given.

I knew I had to find a way to keep a productive work day from spiraling into a black metal-fueled disgustfest - an event that nearly happened anyway after hearing the peripherally-related but still ultra-downer opening strains of Placebo's "Peeping Tom" - and I knew there was only one guaranteed way to do so: put on the Black Sabbath. Any album would have worked, but Mob Rules happened to catch my eye first and I knew as soon as I heard the opening strains of "The Sing of the Southern Cross" that everything was going to be okay. And also this song makes me feel like a Viking.

Riding the Night Train, Soon to Return

It's Friday. It's the end of the work week. You've made it, you've survived to the weekend and even though it's seasonably cold out here in NYC (which is a real bummer after last week, let me tell ya), warmer days on their way and you've earned the right to celebrate their coming. Or so I feel, anyway; but I'm headed to warmer climes for the next week, so I'm feeling especially feisty. I was listening to Appetite for Destruction for the first time in ages earlier, remembering once again how well it's stood up to the last 20+ years, and decided that there was no better way to celebrate the end of this week than a live rendition of "Nightrain," featuring Axl looking a bit like Donna from That 70's Show and Slash opening the song by explaining that this song is not about drinking or drug addiction but actually about a walk in the park. You know, the way "Sweet Leaf" was about a packet of cigarettes. Enjoy and happy fucking Friday:

As the Palaces Burned: Black Sabbath - Cross Purposes

On September 24, 1991 Nirvana released Nevermind. Nine years later, a reunited Iron Maiden played Madison Square Garden. The time in between was one of metal's bleaker periods, where the genre's mainstream face all but disappeared and it retreated not just underground, but underwater. To celebrate the rare gems of this dark time - and remember our fortune now that metal has ceased to be such a dirty word - we present As the Palaces Burned, a weekly series published every Wednesday that covers notable metal albums released between 1991 and 2000.

Today's entry is Black Sabbath's 1994 album Cross Purposes.

One of my pet causes when discussing music with like-minded Metal heads is raising awareness of how awesome much of the Tony Martin era of Black Sabbath really was. This album was released in 1994 right after Dehumanizer, the reunion record with Dio. You can hear a lot of that sound on this album. And although he can sometimes sound a bit too much like Dio, Tony Martin is an amazing singer with just enough soul in his voice to make it work.

Iommi is the riff king no matter what lineup he is playing with, and this album is no exception. "Virtual Death" opens with a classic Geezer dirge on the bass which is the perfect appetizer for a delicious meal of slow murky Iommi riffing. Bobby Rondinelli who was also in Rainbow provides the simple but extremely powerful drumming we've all come to expect from this version of Sabbath. He doesn't stray very far from the template written by Vinnie Appice and Cozy Powell, which is fine.

This is extremely solid Black Sabbath with a couple of unexpected members. After you get hooked on this album go back and listen to the Headless Cross. That album is the jam, and the absolute pinnacle of Tony Martin's vocal powers.

Virtual Death



Evil Eye (co-written with Eddie Van Halen)



Cross of Thorns

You Could Bid on the Master of Reality Transfers - But Why Would You Want To?

I don't normally pay much attention to announcements about the auctions of memorabilia: either it's something I'd want to own but have no hope to afford, or the knowledge of its existence is so meaningless as to be wasting valuable brain space I'm hoping to reclaim, but either way it's not worth the time to blog about. But there's something different about the auction for the master tapes - or the transfer tapes, as the picture of the label to the left indicates - for Black Sabbath's Master of Reality, although for the life of me I can't figure out why I find the idea of owning a master tape so striking. Maybe it's because it's such a functionless piece of memorabilia: it doesn't make for an interesting display piece, like a guitar or an album cover would; you can't play it without access to a tape machine (and possibly a soulless lack of respect for perishable artifacts); and the copyright holders might object if you started pressing your own copies of the album for sale. I guess you could buy the tapes and deed them over to Tony Iommi, but I suspect that if he really cares about owning the transfers, he'd be in the bidding.

All of this discussion, of course, ignores the question of whether or not you'd want to buy an item from a company with no feedback score that can't tell the difference between masters and transfers.

A Look At Ihsahn's Cover Art

After, the ultimate release in the trilogy of Ihsahn recordings that started four years ago, isn't nearly as accessible as its predecessors; the inclusion of a Coltrane-style jazz saxophone over-top many of the album's black metal stylings ensures it'll take more than a few listens to pry apart the shell and gain access to the sweet juices within. There is one thing about the album that's odd enough for both Seth and myself to note it immediately: in a game of one of these things is not like the other, After cover artwork seems like it would be the odd art out (in order of release):


Notice in particular the large pink stain on the cover of After, which is the biggest indicator that the art direction seems to have gone awry: the covers of The Adversary and angL are so dark; why the pink and white that suggests some sort of black metal princess cake? In addition, the photo seems a little incongruous: as Seth pointed out, using a cross makes the album seem like it's crossing in Black Sabbath territory. On closer inspection, I think there's a bit more linking the three, like the transition of living angel to angel statue to cross, the inclusion of color on the cover of The Adversary, the different mediums of the artwork (chalk drawing, sculpture, and photograph) and the bleakness of the photo on the cover of After, which I suspect is a reference - along with those dirgy saxophones - to the album's title. Still haven't figured out what that pink stain is supposed to mean, though.

Review: Heaven and Hell "The Devil You Know"

The devil you know, indeed! The long awaited new album from Black Sabbath with Dio is exactly what you expect in a very satisfying way. You are getting an awesome slice of pizza, a great cheeseburger. Not an exotic new take on an old favorite, but something you love done extremely well.

The first thing you will notice is the stellar production. The guitars are crisp and placed really well within the stereo field. Long gone are the early Sabbath days where a single guitar track could make your ears feel lopsided when listening in headphones. This record screams its way to you with thumping drums, hyper present bass and those great stereo tracked guitars.

However the crisp digital production is the last nod to anything remotely modern. This album exists in a time warp that seems unaware of not only any music that came after Sabbath, but that the power of classic Sabbath spawned several genres of its own, like Doom and Stoner Metal. The Devil You Know could have been released in 1986 or 1993. Don't expect the masters to come back and show the kids how to further the Sabbath sound. This is staunchly classic Sabbath for better or worse.

So what did the dream team of Iommi, Butler and Dio bless us with? A very solid 10 track effort of mid-paced rockers which would all fit right at home on Dehumanizer. This album doesn't have a "Neon Nights" or a "Turn on the Night." The closest you get is track 7, "Eating the Cannibals" which would have made an amazing opener. It kicks a ton of ass and I look forward to seeing them play it live. For the rest of the album, from the thumping "Bible Black" (which I do like a lot more in context than when I heard it as a single) to the tasty hooks of "Double the Pain," you can feel the proverbial hand of doom holding this album together.

"Follow the Tears" is probably the best recorded example this lineup has made of their gothic metal hybrid. The tritone is in full swing as are the orchestral synths, spooky atmospheres and nonsensical Dio lyrics. And if sung by anyone else the chorus vocal would be horribly emo, not completely bad ass: "If you want to know where I've been hiding all these years/follow the tears."

In summary, this is the album everyone has been waiting for. You are not getting a revolution, barely even an evolution. But that is not the point now is it? Black Sabbath has made a new record. Iommi's riffs are killer, Dio's voice is killer, and Butler holds it all together like a champion. Consider yourself blessed by comfort food from the depths of hell.

New Heaven and Hell single is kinda meh....

I am super excited about the new Heaven and Hell record coming out soon, The Devil You Know. I love all three Dio era Sabbath albums including the often maligned Dehumanizer. Shit, I even like the new tracks on that best of which came out in 2007.

So I was psyched to see the new single called "Bible Black is streaming here.

Take a listen for yourself. It sounds like typical Sabbath. Probably a little *too* typical. It is not super catchy and doesn't get me amped up for the album. Honestly, with the clean guitar intro and slow paced plodding riff it could be any of those secondary cuts on a Dio solo record. You know the ones I am talking about. Tracks like "The End of the World" or "Better in the Dark." It makes me nervous that this is considered the single. I am getting visions of the weaker end of Dio's recent work and a lot of uninspired Iommi/Butler workouts that all sound like retreads of Heaven and Hell. These guys have been playing amazing live shows for the last two years and there hasn't been a proper Sabbath album since 95 so I am still hoping for the best. But this single just isn't doing it.......What do you think?

Is Therapy Metal?

Reading up on Rob Flynn of Machine Head's description of how he and bassist Adam Duce are in therapy because they were otherwise ready to break up the band and it made me wonder: do we want our rock stars going through therapy? In part, therapy seems like the sort of soft-touch thing the machismo side of metal would never want to hear about, let alone contemplate, but I think there's also a touch of self-reliance that metal fans expect to come from the music. After all, we've all got stories about how the music got us through some tough times, and maybe there's an expectation that it should be able to help us through anything, no matter how difficult.

That's one side. The other side is comparing what happened with Machine Head - Flynn quits the band in Paris and prepares to board a flight back home the next day only to change his mind after Duce calls him up and says they need therapy to repair their relationship - with what happened to, say, Black Sabbath, where band members kept getting fired because they were trying to solve their problems with drugs. Frankly, I think I'd rather see stability.

Opeth at the Nokia Theatre

Via MetalSucks: Nachtmystium announced that they've left the Opeth/High On Fire tour due to "issues beyond [their] control." I suspect those issues were due to label support, or at least to the need to fire their merch agents: I went to pick up a copy of Assassins in between sets, only to find that the only copy left was a Japanese import with an extra track (for $10 more than the American edition). A friend of mine also scoped out their stock of t-shirts and found that while they had a bunch of cool designs, they had almost no stock whatsoever.

Musically, on a scale of leave the room or rock me out, both openers scored a "stay and stand in judgment." I had spent some quality time with Nachtmystium's Worldfall EP (but not, it should be noted, Assassins), so I was expecting something...bigger. The crowd didn't get the band at all (which, in retrospect, doesn't come as so much of a surprise) and the band didn't have the wherewithwal to generate their own energy in the face of so much emptiness, so they just seemed flat. They'll get another chance from me, though.

I saw High on Fire on Gigantour III earlier this year. While they didn't make enough of an impression on me to garner an inclusion in my review, I didn't remember disliking what they did. This time around, I found myself forming some very definite negative opinions, which eventually resolved themselves into one judgment: I like High on Fire better when they're imitating Motorhead than when they're imitating Black Sabbath, but either way their songs are consistently two or three minutes too long.

Opeth was everything that I had hoped for, right down to the stage banter: Mikael telling a story about trying to blow Morbid Angel off the stage in the late 90s while touring Morningrise, describing the album as froufy minstrel metal trying to compete with the brutality Domination, or spending several minutes during the encore introducing the band by pointing at them and demanding solos. Thinking about it, it seems like Opeth's tagline could be, "Come for the music, stay for the antics of the world's funniest black metal band," because somehow they make both parts of their set work in equal measure. I had the requisite bangover the next day as tribute to the band's musical energy, but I needed the doses of odd, funny Swedish frontman just as much as I needed the music to make the night complete.

Dio > Ozzy

Listening to the Live Evil portion of Rules of Hell, the box set Sabbath just released of the Dio-era recordings and I have come to the conclusion that when he wants to, Dio absolutely slays Ozzy on the Ozzy-era tracks. I'm thinking "Black Sabbath" specifically; up until now, the benchmark for evil in that song was the Type O Negative version from Nativity in Black, but Dio's rendition totally blows that away. Seriously: I have chills. The man knows how to channel (or accentuate, according to some reports) the very badness that the lyrics of "Black Sabbath" conjures up.

The Berzerker: Doing the Ultimate Indie

Bravo to The Berzerker for trying to take the Internet for all its worth (as a distribution system, anyway): they announced today they've ditched any ties with Earache, their former record company, and will be launching their fifth album via the website of their company, Berzerker Industries, without any outside distribution. The announcement, which comes via YouTube video clip, complete with Metalocalypse-style animation of their frontman giving the news, also includes what they considered the nail-in-the-coffin statistic: more than 50 percent of a CD's costs go to the retailer who sells the music.

Music distribution businesses are funny things that I don't know a whole lot about, so I'll resist giving an opinion one way or another about the pricing breakdown, but I will say that logic would suggest that bands playing music in a subgenre with a lot of grassroots support (like metal) would be likely to have more success using the Internet to go completely independent. Of course, that band would have to tap into those grassroots first, but once they do, it seems like metal fans have the kind of loyalty - not to mention the kind of fanaticism - necessary to support a band trying to stay afloat on their own. After all, we're the people - or their spiritual decendents, anyway - who created the legend of success brough to three decades of metal acts (from Sabbath to Metallica to Pantera) on the back of unlimited touring and nary a top 40 radio hit. The Berzerker seems like they've got the tap in place - they got Blabbermouth's attention, after all - now we'll see if they can prove the logic, too.

Who's the Sucker Now?

Yesterday I had the pleasure (so to speak) of getting a promo copy of Cover Up, Ministry's real swan song record (The Last Sucker not withstanding, apparently). Enclosed was a lengthy, rambling press release stating the record's raison d'etre through the faux-cool language PR people always seem to use when promoing a record: dancing around the edge of hyperbole, chock full of disconnected adjectives, etc. Seems that Dr. Alien Jourgensen decided that going out on a Bush-hating no fun bang wasn't good for his image, so he and Burton C. Bell and various members of the Revolting Cocks and Ministry and anyone else who was around decided they'd record all of the songs that motivated them to kick ass when they were kids. Since "when they were kids" means the late 60s and early 70s, the selections are from the same time period, and include some previous releases ("Supernaut" was on the first Black Sabbath tribute CD, and "Roadhouse Blues" came from The Last Sucker, because releasing the same song on two different albums less than a year apart is a great idea).

As you can probably tell from the hints in the previous paragraph, I'm not a big fan of this record, and my ire goes beyond Jourgensen stealing the name I used for a mix CD of covers I made about seven years ago (although he took cover up in the conspiracy context, using a pre-assassination picture of JFK, and I took it in a porn context, Photoshopping black boxes on a Playboy playmate). If you've been following along, you've probably guessed the reason: Ministry is an industrial band, and the songs he chose are about as straight up rock as you can get. Now, I have no problem with some genre-bending cover action; I think it takes real talent to remake a song in a totally different image and still have the result make sense to those who know the original (see Queensryche - Take Cover for a good example). But Ministry's covers don't innovate, they destroy.

Take "Black Betty," for example. The original song rocks because the solo guitar riff (especially the breaks in the solo guitar riff) grabs your attention. It's the definition of a hook. Ministry's cover of "Black Betty," however, tosses in an electronic double bass line in the background, cutting the power of the hook in half. The rest of the songs - the ones I could stomach listening to, anyway - have similar issues, all coming back to the same basic problem: these covers lack the grit that makes the originals so good. These aren't songs you wash up and take home to Mom; they're balls-out rockers that smoke, drink, and curse their way through three minutes and thirty seconds, and polishing them up - even as you try and make them kick ass in a very modern way - just makes 'em lame. And in the end, that's Cover Up in a word: lame.

Playing the Tongue-in-Cheek

The Onion has it right:

The gentleman they "interviewed" for this piece on the wonderful diversity of heavy metal is spot on - I've spent today listening to Anthrax (Greater of Two Evils), Queensryche (Operation: Mindcrime II), Black Sabbath (The Mob Rules) and - my newest joy - Blind Guardian (Nightfall in Middle Earth and Somewhere Far Beyond) and feel like a better person for having done so. So hats off to you, Curt Webber of Logansport, Indiana; you're a righteous, open-minded dude in my book.

Hold that thought: you're a cretin for liking nu-metal and hating on all rap metal. Sure, a lot of that stuff was crap, but doesn't mean you need to discount Rage, you narrow-minded freak. Fred Durst is ok, but Zack De La Rocha gets no love? What a loser.

Metal Mutability

My wife and I had a party at our apartment this past weeend, which isn't relevant to this blog except that it means lots of cleaning, which in turn means I spend time listening to music and pontificating while my hands get the manual labor done. On Saturday my wife was out for the day, so I had the place to myself while I cleaned up the kitchen. To keep me company, I loaded up the stereo with Black Sabbath's Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and Nirvana's In Utero (in that order) and soon fell to thinking about Sabbath's influence on Nirvana and then - just to make things interesting - metal's mutability.

By mutability, I mean the music's incredible ability to successfully meld with almost any other style of Western music you throw at it, making metal like type O negative blood, the universal music donor. Think about it: how many different types of metal can you describe just by combining metal and some other type of music, like mixing chemicals in a vial? Here's a few I came up with off the top of my head:

• Thrash: metal and punk rock.
• Grunge: also metal and punk rock, but Sabbath-style 70s metal instead of 80s style NWOBHM metal.
• Hair Metal: take metal, glam and pop, mix together, shake vigorously. Serve with a cocaine chaser off the back of a stripper.
• Rap Metal: mix metal and rap. Spend years ripping off Rage Against the Machine. Be proud of it.
• Metalcore: metal and hard core. Metal and punk rock mixes tend to be very popular, because punk is almost as diverse as metal.
  
• Progressive Metal: metal and classical or jazz, depending on the artists. Not the same as jazz fusion.
• Industrial Metal: metal and the more hardcore aspects of electronica. Can't see the same thing happening with house music, though.
  

See, isn't this fun?

I'm the Muthafucking Prince of Darkness!

Ozzy Osbourne fascinates me. He's metal's original anti-hero, a guy with long hair and funky glasses who somehow looks like a more decrepit version of himself from thirty years ago. He's got Black Sabbath god status, the solo career, the footage from Decline of Western Civilization II where he can't, for the life of him, pour his orange juice properly, The Osbournes, the feud between Shannon and Bruce (which always make me imagine Ozzy sitting in the background, looking confused as to what's going on), that whole speaking thing where you can't figure out what he's saying - and probably wouldn't want to anyway - and Ozzfest. Can't forget Ozzfest - the tour that launched a thousand careers.

This year Ozzfest gets a new wrinkle: it's free. According to CBC.ca, Ozzy made the announcement yesterday by spray painting FREE on a poster at a concert industry trade show in LA; confirmation is on the Ozzfest Website. The reason, according to Sharon, is to combat the rising ticket prices of summer festivals - Ozzfest sees itself to be a leader in this area and making the tour free for 2007 might reverse the trend.

From what my friend Seth tells me, Ozzfest was always pay to play for second stage and lower main stage bands; he worries that making every band play for free (except for merch sales) will kill the possibility of any major act besides Ozzy signing up to do the tour. I don't know for sure how the payment structure for Ozzfest works - whether or not being a high-profile band means you get paid instead of paying for the pleasure of touring and whether there's a scale depending on your manager/label's negotiating ability - but I think there's some validity to his point. My feeling is that either this year's tour will be Ozzy and a host of unknowns, or Ozzfest will end up paying for major acts to fill out the bill when necessary and add that as another small drop to the total revenue loss on the tour.