Damn You, Mr. Akerfeldt

Music-loving guy that I am, in addition to listening to music and writing about music, I also play music. So I enjoy guitars for their utility. I also happen to love them for their aesthetics: one of the best museums trips I've seen was an Art of the Guitar exhibition that came through Boston ten years ago or so. I also have that well-documented love of Opeth. So when I saw the guitar pictured to the left, the part of my brain tasked with impulse control melted a bit through my ears and the uncontrollable lust to purchase seized me. Never mind that I'd never held the instrument in question to see if I was comfortable playing it - although it's a Paul Reed Smith, so problems seem unlikely - or that I can't really afford to spend the money on a guitar right now, or that I have no space for another guitar; it's shiny and beautifully contoured and has that lovely, lovely Opeth logo on one end...

Irrationality is a terrible, terrible thing.

This Week in The Man: Travis Smith

And just like that, BBB turned into an album art blog.

After seeing the cover for Nevermore's upcoming release The Obsidian Conspiracy, I think I might have a bit of a hard on for the artwork of Travis Smith, whose credits also include Nevermore's Dreaming Neon Black and This Godless Endeavor and Opeth's Blackwater Park, Ghost Reveries, and Watershed, which are all pretty sweet pieces of album art. Looking over Smith's full portfolio, I suspect he gets work because he knows how to make covers that fit the band's style, but what draws me to the covers I linked to above is how he's developed visual representations of each band's musical aesthetic that, even when they rely on metal art's more standard cliches, present something new to contemplate. Let me give you an example of what I mean:

Nevermore's covers all go for a bit of shock value, whether it's the hand of someone drowning, a baby with a stamp on its head, a death mask, or feral children, which match the rather bleak outlook of the lyrics. But that shock value becomes far more interesting when Smith gets involved - compare the cover of The Politics of Ecstasy (which Smith did not design) with that of The Obsidian Conspiracy:


















The baby in the fire with the "Controlled" stamp has some impact (innocence subverted, the manipulation of the illusion of freedom), but has all of the subtlety of a brick wall across a superhighway when compared with the creepy Cthulu children and their post-apocalyptic Washington, D.C. The cover of The Politics of Ecstasy wants to make a point; the cover of The Obsidian Conspiracy hints at a really awesome story. To my mind, it's the later that makes for really good album art in metal.

Dirge for Spring Weather

It's taken me a while to recognize how good My Arms, Your Hearse really is and I really only warmed to the album after hearing pieces of it on The Roundhouse Tapes. Either way, it made for an excellent accompaniment to today's dreary weather, providing a perfect compliment to the rain that washed away this weekend's glorious sun. But it's "Credence," with its dreamy acoustic riff, half-time beat, and morose lyrics ("Strange silhouettes whisper your thoughts, scream your sadness/And they all turned away, unable to face more of this death.") that really brings the point home:

Enslaved and Opeth at The Grand Ballroom

I don't generally pass up an opportunity to see Opeth, but I opted to show up early - and stand outside in the chill for 30 minutes because the Manhattan Center can't seem to efficiently process people through their gates - because I was curious about Enslaved.  It turned out to be a worthy use of my time.

Prior to about a year ago, my only exposure to Enslaved was the knowledge - not the experience - of the existence of the split they did with Emperor way back in the day.  Then Vertebrae came out, I got a good enough vibe from the MetalSucks review to check it out, and risk turned into a pretty decent reward.  I didn't dig any further into the band's back catalog, but having seen them live, I think I realize where there might have been a hangup: if Tyr is the Soundgarden of pagan metal, Enslaved is the Soundgarden of black metal, requiring a fairly dedicated amount of digging to get through the layers of sound and pull out something cohesive to enjoy.  I look forward to exploring them more.

Enslaved also had an ancillary benefit: much as I had hoped, this show was pretty much douchebag free, perhaps proving in the process the superiority of European black metal over the American variety.  Opeth also made a point of pandering directly to the hardcore, playing a set made up of songs from every album except Orchid and Blackwater Park and mainly avoiding the more popular cuts for rarities like "Karma," which received its New York City debut over ten years after its initial release.  Once he warmed up, Akerfeldt was his usual charming self, bantering with the crowd between songs as he retuned his guitar.  Overall, the performance was pretty much what I wanted, but there was still something missing, and to be honest, I think it was the space.

The Grand Ballroom, you see, is enormous.  Constructed on two levels, with a floor space that has to be a good 100 feet in length, it has a stage at one end that sits high above the crowds below and sports a decor grand enough for Akerfeldt to comment at one point that the place looked like it could have come out of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining.  Filled to capacity with Opeth fans, it seemed a pretty logical place for the band to successfully peddle its baroquely-dark sound, but some combination of the huge space they had to fill, their distance from the audience, and perhaps most of the crowd's unfamiliarity with the older material made the energy a bit flatter and the show a bit less intimate than it should have been.  Compared with past efforts, it was good, but it wasn't great.

Opeth in a Wooden Box

Good to see recession pricing hasn't hit the collectors market: for a cool $171, you can get part 1 of Opeth: The Wooden Box, a collectors box with:

• Copies of Orchid, Morningrise, and My Arms Your Hearse on vinyl,
  
• A pretty kick-ass looking shirt,
• An Opeth stencil (for all of your tagging needs),
• And alternate album artwork of some sort,

all in a wooden box. Good stuff, but the collection seems a little thin for the cost. Perhaps the idea (or at least the pricing) was inspired by the success of the Josh Freese distribution package?

Norway, pioneers of Socialist Metal!

Oh Norway, previously Nazi occupied country, apple of my eye.

With your beautiful fjords and state sponsored Metal. Yes, Norway is using Government money to bring Opeth, who are Swedish, over to tour. Not just the big cities, but the smaller towns where promoters couldn't afford to bring a band like Opeth.

The circular nature of this is awesome. Norwegian Black Metal bands burn up State churches, cause national havoc and wind up in the Norwegian prison system. Then the Government spends more of its tax dollars to bring in a band from Sweden heavily influenced by those same Norwegian Black Metal bands to small areas in Norway to create a new generation of church burners.

Money quote from the article (picture Tom Daschle saying the same thing): "Opeth has been on our radar for a long time, and with the success of the 'Watershed' album, ongoing touring and a dedicated fanbase, we regard this as a jackpot, but also the result of focused work."

Requiem for a Dream

I see that Opeth is taking their tour back to the US again this Spring, which is great, because I wouldn't mind establishing the same see-once-a-year pattern with them that I've done with Dream Theater or Megadeth. They're bringing Enslaved with them, which is also cool because a.) I wouldn't mind seeing what those guys can do live and b.) while the metalgaze/black indie metal tag-team of High on Fire and Nachtmystium wasn't so much of a musical stretch paired up with Opeth's progressive black magic, going with another Swedish act might keep the douchebags at bay, or even - one can only hope - out of the auditorium entirely.

However, I'm also sad, because Opeth's tour announcement puts the final nail in the coffin of one of my fondest hopes: an Opeth/Ihsahn double bill. I won't give up hope, though; some day, I'll see these two play together, even if I have to travel to Oslo to do it.

An Ihsahn Setback

Well, fuck:

"A previous announcement confirmed that Ihsahn would support OPETH for the majority of shows on their forthcoming Norwegian tour in March. However, more detailed production planning has revealed technical and practical difficulties at many of the smaller venues, and it has proven near impossible to run the necessary production. This means that Ihsahn will only be performing at Rockefeller/Oslo on March 10."

And I had such high hopes for this mini tour and its possible implications for a trip to the US. I suppose it's possible that US clubs might not have the same "technical and practical difficulties" - whatever that means - as the ones in Norway, but if the man can't mount a tour in his home country, the chances of his doing one here in the States seem greatly diminished.

Open Letter to Ihsahn

Dear Ihsahn,

Blabbermouth tells me that you've decided to open up on a few of Opeth's Norwegian shows, finally taking the time to perform some of your killer solo stuff in front of an audience, and "travel with a great band like Opeth while doing it." I'm very happy to hear this announcement, but I ask that you do one thing: have an awesome time. Seriously, have a kick ass time playing in front of all of those crazy Norwegian metal freaks, rocking out to "Called by the Fire" and "Will You Love Me Now?" and "Elevator" and "Unhealer" (and by all that's unholy, do take advantage of the presence of Mister Åkerfeldt to do that duet) and whatever else you decide to play. Why all of the good wishes? Well, I have a confession: I have some very selfish reasons.

You see, although I'd love to see you play live again very, very much, I can't come to Norway and I'm sad I won't be able to see what has to be one of the best bills ever. I'm hoping you enjoy your short road trip enough that you decide you want to take the experience Stateside, because I think Opeth has the kind of fan support here that they could make another tour - with you as the opener - a reality in 2009. Opeth with Ihsahn would be an automatic, soon-as-its-announced ticket purchase for me...and I'm sure I'm not the only one. So please, have a good time on the road, and come to the US when you're done.

Sincerely,

Baroque, Bleak, Brutal

Top 10 Albums of 2008

It's probably late enough in the year to do one of these, right? These albums aren't in any particular order - I'll happily take the coward's way out and avoid the extremely difficult apples to oranges comparison that comes from trying to compare relative musical merit, particularly across genres - and aren't all metal. To merit possible inclusion on this list, the album had to meet two criteria:

• Have a US release date some time in 2008
• Have a siren-like ability to get me to listen over and over again, month after month.

Here's the list, with some commentary:

1. Rise Against - Appeal to Reason. I've had this album since the middle of October and I can't stop listening to it. Originally a Walmart project, it broke precedent by staying in my at-work iTunes list (reserved for albums I'm demoing for possible inclusion in my permanent collection home) for weeks after I turned in the description, because I needed it around to get a quick fix. I'm pretty sure every glorious track of this 13-song release has gotten stuck in my head at some point, no doubt because of the dozens of times I've played it. Really the most perfect piece of melodic hardcore I've heard since The Offspring put out Smash.
   
   
2. Metallica - Death Magnetic. Even though I have problems listening to this album all the way through because of the terrible mixing problems, the songs themselves are too good to ignore - and as I've commented on one occasion, they've acquired extracurricular meanings as well. Death Magnetic has seen enough controversy since before its release that I don't need to describe it any further: you've made your decision and chances are, you either love it or hate it. I think it's not only the best thing the band's done in years, but is a really strong Metallica album in its own right.
   
   
3. Opeth - Watershed. I think I'm well beyond the point where I'm able to speak objectively about Opeth, but that didn't stop me from trying with Ihsahn, so why not continue the charade? What I love most about Opeth is that although every album, when played in chronological order, fits into the progression that the band has followed up into Watershed, there's still something that makes the album stand out not only from the band's peers, but from its own siblings. In the case of Watershed, who would have thought that Black Metal and 70's AOR rock would mix so well and so convincingly? Brutality, majesty, a bit of the psychedelic aesthetic, the counterpoint guitar lines, and a hundred other little details that take hours of pleasurable listening to pull apart, all weaving together to create a magnificent addition to the catalog that is both unique and uniquely Opeth.
   
   
4. Eluveitie - Slania. These guys impressed me so much at Paganfest that I was a little concerned that their recordings wouldn't live up to the impact of their live show. Fortunately, I was dead wrong: Slania is gorgeous and powerful mix of metal and folk music, offering up singalong choruses (in English and Helvetican), dancable/slammable tunes, a heavy emphasis on swirling melody that doesn't sacrifice the potential for balls-out rawk, and an edge that makes the whole thing seem slightly mysterious (in an "entering another world" sense), not hokey. Check out "Slanias Song" for a good representation of how awesome this album - and the genre as a whole - can be.
   
   
5. The Dresden Dolls - No, Virginia.... What continues to amaze me about this album is that it's made up of remnants, b-sides, and compilation tracks - you know, the trash of recording sessions that's not quite good enough to put on the album but still worthy of salvaging - but it's still fucking fantastic. And not in a "that's good for a compilation" sense, but in an honest to goodness "this stands on its own as a strong album" sense. Quite possibly as a "best of The Dresden Dolls catalog" sense, which is pretty significant. I originally picked this one up as a Walmart assignment in June, loved it, then took a break for a few months. A couple of weeks ago, I cued it up again and remembered why it's so amazing. If you love The Dresden Dolls it's a must-own; if you've heard good things (or want to know how in the world a piano and drums can make really good punk rock), No, Virginia... is an excellent place to start.
   
   
6. Keep of Kalessin - Kolossus. I believe I have the guys at Metal Sucks to thank for turning me on to this album. Why do I love it? Black metal, in my opinion, is a genre just begging to mix it up with progressive rock idioms: the common love of the grandiose in both genres makes a natural fit. Keep of Kalessin not only gets this idea, but they understand how to weave the two elements together to create progressive black metal that's actually still black: Kolossus is ripe with well-placed blast beats, a strong mix of bleak arpeggiation and high-speed riffing, and lyrics about individual struggle against titanic forces - and empire building on the backs of a thousand corpses. The whole package is probably best exemplified by "The Rising Sign," which moves from a brilliant syncopated opening riff to an Amon Amarth-style explosion to a chorus with one hell of an epic hook to an acoustic bridge that rivals Ihsahn for atmospherics with envy-creating ease.
   
   
7. The Sword - Gods of the Earth. I know these guys are basically Black Sabbath for the new millenium, but between the sledgehammer riffs, the distant wail of J. D. Cronise on the microphone, and the songs about war, frost giants, and George R. R. Martin novels, I don't particularly care: I'm in love with the music, dammit, and we're moving in together next month. Turn on "How Heavy This Axe," crank up the volume, find a suitable stimulant and drift off into fantasies of braining someone with a large piece of sharp steel.
   
8. Gama Bomb - Citizen Brain. While it's true there are plenty of thrash revival bands out there these days, Gama Bomb seems to have this - admittedly derivative - genre down to a science on Citizen Brain: every song thrashes in the best head banging style, the singer sounds like he takes himself just seriously enough to sing properly while still having fun, and the songs...let's just say that any album that has fun songs about rampaging zombies, using time travel to commit crimes, being sentenced to thrash, RoboCop, Krang from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and General Zod gets a big gold star in my book.
   
   
9. Ihsahn - angL. I've read from interviews that Ihsahn is a huge perfectionist who is never happy with the recordings he puts out because they never quite live up to his expectations. I imagine each of his recordings to be like darts hitting an already small target of tremendous results: with each throw, he gets closer and closer to that point of menetal perfection. angL is the majesty of the Emperor recordings mixed with beautiful, bleak atmospherics that tempt you to step inside - and possesses your soul once you do. The duet with Mikael Akerfeldt in "Unhealer," where Akerfeldt's clean vocals, supported by a simple chorused guitar line and - of all things - a fretless bass build into the alternations of Akerfeldt and Ihsahn scorching out the chorus makes for a haunting, theatrical glory, almost akin to a gothic 19th century horror - and that's just one among equals.
   
   
10. Nine Inch Nails - The Slip. It's possible this album ended up on this list because of the concert this summer - which goes to show you how important touring can be - but I think what originally sold me on The Slip - besides liking Discipline enough to listen to it once a day after I originally downloaded it - was the rehearsal video of 1,000,000 NIN.com put out in June. As I said at the time, that video was like a four minute tutorial on how to rock...and it proved to be not only a very effective prequel for the live experience in August, but an excellent representation of this album's elegantly simple (if slightly schizophrenic) outlook. Soon enough, I was waking up with the chorus of "Echoplex" stuck in my head, or humming the tune to "Lights in the Sky." In other words, I was hooked for good.

Honorable mentions:

1. Arsis - We are the Nightmare.
2. Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts I - IV.
3. Protest the Hero - Fortress.
4. Emarosa - Relativity.
5. Testament - The Formation of Damnation.
   

Rethinking Victory Songs

I was going to use the word "apology" somewhere in the title of this post, but I see that I never bashed Ensiferum (in this blog, anyway) outside of my comments on their Paganfest performance. I've been trying to be more organic in my listening patterns lately, selecting those albums with whatever song has gotten stuck my ear today, rather than forcing myself to listen to something new or relatively new or otherwise not sufficiently explored (have I mentioned I'm a little odd about my music geekery?). This change has resulted in some self-perpetuating selections - I listened to nothing but Ihsahn, Emperor, and Opeth yesterday because I woke up with portions of "Depraved" running through my mind - but it's also led to the resurgence of Ensiferum's most recent album, Victory Songs, in my esteem.

I liked Victory Songs enough to hold on to it after I downloaded it, but at the time, flush with the riches of my post-Paganfest discoveries, I couldn't help but feel that Ensiferum was Turisas-lite. Fast forward to this past Friday, when their album cover jumped out from my iTunes list and I decided to give them a second chance. 50 minutes later, I was a fan: the songs are sufficiently epic, the hooks of tracks like "Ahti," "One More Magic Potion," "Raised by the Sword," and "Victory Song" sufficiently strong, the energy sufficiently infectious to get me bopping around the room, dreaming of sword-in-hand victory. As it turned out, the attraction was strong enough to last several days: when I got to work this morning, "Wanderer" was running its way through my head, setting up a reprise and this blog post. Victory Songs might suffer a bit from overreliance on the same set of tools, but I'm glad I hung on to it.

More Thoughts on Lords of Chaos

Towards the middle of the book the authors interview two men who write for what the book describes as Norway's "cultural newspaper," Morgenbladet: a Satanist of the old (Aleister Crowley-influenced) school and a Christian who writes on theological matters. They were both discussing the rise of the association between Satanism and Black Metal in Norway and had some interesting theories, but what I found resonant enough to write about was their comparisons of Ihsahn and Varg Vikernes; how after speaking with Ihsahn, they both found his beliefs to be far more sophisticated in both their level of development (more because he had abandoned the idea of evil for evil's sake and settled on a philosophy that was pro-Satan and not just anti-Christ) and their desire for elegance. After reading their thoughts, I realized that the same desire for elegant evil was what I find so attractive about Ihsahn's music, both with Emperor and as a solo artist.

I'm a big fan of evil music - if that wasn't obvious from the blog's title - but I also need my evil music cloaked in different forms (which should also be obvious from the blog's title) to keep it interesting. Alternation between different types of metal certainly does the trick, but a closer examination of the albums I come back to time and time - Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk, Blackwater Park, Images and Words (to name a few), and more recent additions like angL and Kolossus - reveals a fascination with brutality mixed with elegance. Beat me over the head with high-speed shreds, thunderous bottom ends, and bone-crushing pounding of drums; screech your images of destruction, alienation, and soul-destruction into my ears; put me through the mill of your sonic pain machine, but while you may earn my respect, you'll only win my lasting love if you mix that assault with elegant constructions that emphasize the beauty in your chaos.

Baroness at The Bowery Ballroom

Saturday night was my first conscious experience of the phenomenon of indie metal and - to my memory - my first experience with the unexpected comforts of the Bowery Ballroom, a venue whose Lower East Side location and suggestion of significant age (I don't think they build ballrooms anymore) had always conjured images of a far scuzzier building to my mind. Maybe they cleaned the place up recently, but I didn't fear the acquisition of infectious diseases on contact with the air and the acoustics were really quite impressive.

I mentioned indie metal above; I think the most interesting part of the whole night was the idea of a bunch of fairly unevil (if slightly crazed) looking dudes playing loud music that only people who weren't metalheads would identify as metal. That's no knock against Baroness or opening act Coliseum, but merely an observation of the oddity of seeing one's subgenre coopted in ways that - for all of metal's versatility - only barely fit within the confines of the genre. Did I bang my head, pump my fist, and jump around a bit? Sure. Could these guys acquire the label of post-punk just as easily as that of metal? Definitely. There was some riffage and technical skill on display, but it - and most of the people watching it - were light years away from the old school uglies I saw this summer in New Jersey or the kids beating the crap out of each other a month ago at the Hammerstein.

Perhaps the biggest evidence of a stranger in a strange land mentality was the clothing of choice. I was with two of my bandmates (both big Baroness fans who'd convinced me, a virgin to their sound, to go); we were wearing t-shirts from Opeth, Darkthrone, and Celtic Frost. We spent most of the night playing a mental game of counting the shirts of bands like Mastodon and High on Fire all around us. At one point, Seth came back from the bar and said he'd seen some evidence of true metal: a kid wearing a Children of Bodom shirt. Later on, I wondered about the possible results of an ethnomusicological study of the indie metal community.

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.

Seriously: Who Moshes to Opeth?

To the gentlemen with the enormous earrings, hooded sweatshirts, neckerchiefs, backwards baseball caps moshing at the Opeth show last night:

1. You're missing the point by slamming into each other and everyone else watching the show. See, Opeth has these things called dynamics changes, where the music can go from loud to soft at the drop of a hat (see "The Lotus Eaters" for an example). Coupled with these other things called changing time signatures, the music ends up moving around a lot, so you just end up looking like a bunch of idiots as you run around in a circle. You seem new to the game, but here's some advice: believe it or not, not every metal band operates on the blast beat/breakdown model. Also: don't start moshing before the music even starts. That's just the ultimate in douchebaggery.
   
2. If you must mosh, flailing your arms around like you're at a hardcore show really misses the point and makes me want to hit you in the head repeatedly with something heavy. For all of its energy, Opeth is pretty cerebral music: bang your head, jump around a bit, but if you want to run around flailing, go see Whitechapel or As I Lay Dying. Seriously: get the fuck out.
   

Suddenly I feel a kinship with the kid with the noseplugs from Hype!.

Jeff Wagner Plans Book Release, Solves a Life Mystery

I saw this headline and I did a little dance of glee: "Former METAL MANIACS Editor JEFF WAGNER To Author History Of Progressive Metal." See, I'm not just a metal nerd who loves himself some Opeth and Dream Theater: I actually have a history with the non-existent history of progressive metal.

Back in 2002/2003, I was a senior in college. I was a music major - no surprise there - and because my aptitude was in analysis (and because I thought I was going to go to study ethnomusicology) I decided to spend the year writing a lengthy senior thesis in music. On Dream Theater, Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes From a Memory, and the history of progressive metal. Like I said, huge metal nerd. Or maybe just nerd in general.

I wrote the history part first, as part of another paper I had to write for a colloquium class I took in the fall (doubling up was the way they kept thesis writers from going insane and strangely enough, it worked). As it turns out, there are no good histories of progressive metal out there. In fact, from what I remember, my options came down to the short blurb in the All Music Guide, whatever was up on anus.com, and the BNR metal pages, none of which actually answered the fundamental question: what exactly prompted all of these bands to mix progressive elements into their music? Lacking access to any of the artists in question, I did the next best thing: took a history of progressive rock, a history of metal, and came to my own conclusions. The result was, well, it's probably wildly inaccurate, but I look pretty smart doing it, and I get to say I wrote a 120+ page page while in college. The ladies were impressed, believe you me.

Reading all of that history should give you an understanding of why I'm excited to read this book once it comes out next year: if Jeff Wagner really did his homework, he might just come up with a common root for all of the experimentation done by bands as diverse as Dream Theater, Celtic Frost, and Voivod and answer the question I failed to answer five years ago. And you know what? I'd really appreciate that.

Remember Tomorrow: The Cover Competition

Deciblog just posted a comparison of two covers of "Remember Tomorrow": Metallica's recent treatment for Maiden Heaven and a much older version by Opeth. The question: which one is a better cover? The answer is obvious - Metallica wins hands down because they follow the first dictum of recording a cover (thou shalt make the song thine own whilst keeping to the spirit of the original) - but it seemed like a bit of an unfair contest because of the dates of the recordings. Metallica's always been a pro when it comes to covers, but you have to figure that an Opeth with more of its stylistic shit together (i.e., a band in its more recent vintage) would put a more creative spin on their interpretation, giving them a better shot in the competition.

Anyway, since these cover competitions are kind of fun, take a list to the first two, then compare them to the version Anthrax did five years ago for yet another tribute CD. Make sure to listen to Anthrax get points for putting a pretty authentic 'thraxy spin on the chorus.

Strange Dreams and Dark Imaginings

I'm listening to Opeth's recently released live album, The Roundhouse Tapes, for the first time. It's not quite the cherry-popping experience of hearing an album by previously unheard (by me) artist, where I have to test the limits of my acceptance for something I haven't really heard before; after all, I know I love Opeth, and Roundhouse is a live album, so I know all of the songs. And love them - did I mention that?

I find listening to Opeth - particularly anything from Blackwater Park and after - is a complete sensory experience; it generates vivid visions and feelings, like this one: Imagine a massive courtyard in the middle of a stone palace at midnight, light by torches or by the soft glow of phosphorescence emanating from the walls. Mist swirls in from the arcades on the side of the courtyard, and collects in the middle, over an enormous reflecting pool ringed by moss-grown statues of weeping angels. The water in the pool is black as pitch, a deep darkness that speaks of limitless depth and terrifying unknowns, but it calls to you in a soft voice that soothes and comforts you and draws you in. You dive into the water, and find that the depth is no illusion: you can't feel the base of the pool with your bare feet, just the strangely warm water and the swirl of the thick water plants that lurk beneath the water's surface wrapping around your toes. Everything's quiet, and you finally begin to relax, slipping deeper and deeper into the water's embrace, until you realize with horror that the plants are wrapping around you, pulling you down, away from the life-giving breath on the other side of the water's surface...