In Which Ihsahn Becomes My Favorite

While I've written a bit in the past about my love for Emperor, I really haven't said all I should, particularly when it comes to Ihsahn. After years of waiting, I finally got my chance to see Emperor on their reunion tour two years ago, an event that left me drooling at the mouth at the sheer awesomeness of the evening, despite its brevity.

Ihsahn impressed me that night by emanating the sort of evil that you see in creepy psychotics in psychological horror films; more Norman Bates or Hannibal Lecter than the cartoonishly garish "evil" represented by black metal bands in corpse paint and spiky armor (although Ihsahn pulled that look off pretty well back in the day, too). It wasn't that I expected him to kill anyone, but more that he looked like someone who could offer intelligent discourse on the aspects of extreme individualism in Satanism and not sound like a douchebag when doing it. He had gravitas.

Anyway, not long after that he released Adversary, which was very good, and now he's just released angL, which defines new levels of awesome and makes me wonder why I thought I could ever write music in the first place (seriously, it's that good. Buy the album and listen to it while driving through some dark, snowy coniferous woods or something similar and discover new emotional depths in your soul. Maybe if enough of us do so, he'll come tour the album in the US and make my year). Today, though...today Ihsahn reached new levels of awesomeness in my esteem.

About a month and a half ago, I had a dream where I hung out with Mike Portnoy, and I woke up wondering what we would have really talked about. Today, I watched the second part of a documentary done by two guys from MetalKult, who flew out to Norway and toured Ihsahn's studio while he explained the uses of each piece of gear. The charismatic front man with the on stage heart of black ice turned into the recording gear geek, talking about how he'd sequenced "Opus a Satana" in Cubase 2 hooked up to a Roland synthesizer because he wanted to learn how to use the equipment, or how the microphone he just bought is a special edition full of tubes they don't make any more. It was glorious, and now I know what we'd talk about if the two of us were ever to grab a beer: we'd geek out about studio equipment.

Mathias Nygård is the Finnish Dio

Afterwards, I felt a little bad for Ensiferum. Here they were, headlining one of the most consistently excellent shows (opener to closer) I've seen in a long time, and they weren't even close to the best thing I'd seen all night. They weren't dogging things, either, but after Tyr, Eluveitie, and Turisas all worked the crowd into a hopping, dancing, bashing frenzy for some three hours straight, the headliners needed something a little extra - something they didn't quite have - to really push their show over the top.

Not that I'm complaining: Ensiferum's "not quite good enough" still really rocked. But I think the band's problem stems from something they lack; something the other bands, especially Eluveitie and Turisas, had in spades (or maybe spade?): a really strong front man. Petri Lindroos started to get the idea by the end of the set, but either he lacks the charisma or the experience - which seems a little surprising for a guy who's been a professional musician for at least six years - to know how to get a room packed full of people to really move.

Mathias "Warlord" Nygård is another story. The Turisas founder/singer/producer/genius not only has the goods behind the mixing board, but on stage as well. I might mention that I bought the ticket for this folk metal festival specifically to see Turisas, so I had some high expectations; expectations that grew exponentially when I learned the band had decided to include "In The Court of Jarisleif" on their set list, as I was looking forward to celebrating the madness of drinking metal. Of course, they delivered - or I wouldn't be writing about them in such glowing terms - but none of them would have been met without Warlord's masterly approach. About halfway through the set - around when he divided the crowd in half to do some competitive singing - I realized who he reminded me ofy: the great Ronnie James Dio. Not in singing style, or singing ability, because the combination of the crappy BB King's acoustics and his own reticence made half of the singing inaudible, but in sheer showmanship ability: the man just knows how to run crowds. He mentioned at one point that Paganfest was their first US tour, but if they generated that kind of energy every night (and drew the same capacity crowds) I have no doubt they'll be back for more.

One final item of note: As a part of the frenetic pacing of "Jarisleif," I was looking forward to seeing this man rock the accordion solo, but he decided he was going to disappear into the wilds of Amsterdam a few months ago, so Turisas hired Netta Skog, who looks a lot like Elizabeth Röhm, as a stand in. She played the parts perfectly, so the hiring was a good choice, but either a.) she found the spectacle of a few hundred idiots hurling themselves into each other really funny, b.) she was having a really good time, or c.) someone told her you need to look happy on stage, because she had a big grin on under her warpaint the entire time. Looking happy while you're playing is so unmetal.

Retrofit: Throwdown - Venom & Tears

When writing my album descriptions, there are times when I have to listen to the CD a few extra times just to find something that makes the music unique enough to add a sellable spin to it. That's not to say that I don't like what I'm hearing - otherwise I would just take a pass - but I have a hard time coming up with something to say if I can't trick out an angle, particularly when I'm listening to (and trying to write about) something that's more than a little derivative.

Take Throwdown, a band out of southern California that finally achieved success (of the Billboard type, anyway) after more than a decade of music with Venom & Tears. I liked what I heard from these guys, but it was obvious after one listen that they'd taken everything they knew and loved about Pantera, Lamb of God, and (to a lesser extent) Machine Head, threw them into a blender, and poured the result into a CD master: Singer Dave Peters sounds like Phil Anselmo when he doesn't sound like Randy Blythe, the music is carbon copy of the traditional groove metal sound, etc. On the surface, it was a tough sell: How can you convince someone they want to buy this album without outright lying, sounding like a snake oil salesman, or omitting the striking lack of originality that made Throwdown seem like a groove version of Godsmack?

Maybe there was some self-delusion in the process (although I listened to the album again recently, some two months after writing the description, and I still like what I hear), but with enough digging, signs of creative thought began to appear. The intro to opening track "Holy Roller," for example, gets positively thrashy before it settles into a body-rocking groove, and when Peters actually sings like himself instead of like a Phil Anselmo clone, he's got a unique enough sound. However, the highlight of the album - and the one piece that really sold me on the idea that Throwdown has a future as something more than a cover band - is Cancer, a short, haunting instrumental that uses a very simple progression to convey the loneliness of dying by degrees in a hospital bed. Sure, it may bear more than passing resemblance to Fear Factory's Echo of My Scream, but it's progress. If Throwdown can build on that type of variety but continue to rock, I don't doubt that Venom & Tears will be but one part in a string of successes.

Alcohol, The Emo Kids, And Me

Much has been made (among my friends, at least) of how In Flames' latest record does an excellent job of pandering to the whiny teenager set, at the more maturity variety of subjects covered in their earlier material. I had the opportunity to write up an album description (as a part of the new gig) for A Sense of Purpose... (or is it Sense of Purpose? or maybe A Sense of Purpose without the ellipses that so clearly grace the cover?), so I had to struggle with the undeniable change in the band's style - and determine whether or not I liked what they were doing - before writing up the description. I ended up doing it, because I decided I liked the album enough to want to keep it and (more importantly) want to write positive things about it, for reasons that I won't go into here because they're outside the main point of this post:

Tuesday morning, following a particularly vicious combination of tequila, beer, no dinner and a three-hour period where I passed through what astrophysicists (when they develop the instruments sensitive enough to record what I experienced) will some day call a time/alcohol continuum, I woke up with a hangover. It was not the worst hangover I've ever had, but it was pretty ugly, and as I was stumbling around my kitchen looking for foods that would nourish me without making me sick, I had a moment of connection with one of A Sense of Purpose...'s more emo moments (from "The Mirror's Truth"): "I feel like shit/but at least I feel something."

Stuff of whiny 14-year-olds with LiveJournal blogs and chips on their shoulders it may be, but damn if it didn't ring a little true after my rock star morning-after.

Metal Thought for the Day

Running in the rain - particularly in a hard rain - seems like one of the more metal things you could do on a regular basis, particularly if you're listening to something appropriate ("The Long Distance Runner," for example, or anything fast and brutal). At least it does to me, but I look at running through the rain as being some sort of test of man versus nature, even though a.) I'm running through Brooklyn, one of the most controlled natural settings on the planet and b.) I'm running through rain and not something really hardcore like hail. In any case, throw in something metal as the soundtrack to the sound of pounding feet and all of the sudden I'm a mythical hero, locked in struggle against the titanic will of the gods.

You should note that I'm not a big fan of running in the first place, so anything that keeps me motivated - no matter how outlandish - is worth trying.

Ministry at The Fillmore NY / Irving Plaza

I didn't like Ministry's last album. I didn't dislike it either, and I still have the copy I got for the review I wrote, but The Last Sucker is no Psalm 69, or Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste, or Land of Rape and Honey (Al sure does cook up some great album titles, doesn't he?). For this reason alone I was a little disappointed when I saw the set list from Ministry's final tour: a disappointment written by the preponderance of Bush Trilogy song selections and then sealed by the news that openers Meshuggah would be playing a paltry 35 minutes because of an impingement in the drummer's shoulder.

That's the great thing about low expectations, though: they're so very easy to surpass. I'm pretty sure Meshuggah played 45 minutes, for example, treating us all to the unexpected delight of watching musicians head bang in synchronization to different time signatures: the singer in a half-time four, the guitarists in whatever weird compound time signature they were playing in. It's very impressive to see, but I figured out the band's secret: I happened to spend their set a few feet back from the venue's computer-equipped soundboard, and noticed that their engineer had inserted a digital plug in Dark Essence into the mix. In absence of further evidence, I will assume that Meshuggah uses Dark Essence to insert the proper amount of distilled digital evil into their music. Highlight of the set: finishing the night with a face-melting version of "Future Breed Machine" that inspired one drunk patron - a gentleman with a shaved head and a long camouflaged skirt (Army/Navy surplus, no doubt) who'd been boosting himself up onto the barrier separating the sound and video engineers from us mere mortals all during the set and screaming, "Fuck the mainstream!" - to start an impromptu pit with two young women who were otherwise happily engaged in not moshing. He missed, one of them fell, and the other kicked him in the ribs until someone else dragged him off. It was a good scene.

But Ministry...man. I mentioned about a year ago that KMFDM / Pig in 2003 was one of the loudest shows I've ever been to. After seeing Ministry - incidentally the first industrial / industrial metal show I've seen since those far-off Boston days - I have a theory: when it comes to ear-splitting intensity, keyboards > guitars. Seeing Ministry live, with all volume knobs set to eleven, sound clips and weird synth sounds and pure noise pouring out of the keyboards, and buzzsaw guitar riffs cutting holes in the sonic atmosphere made even the new material sound very kick ass, and when the band pulled out the classic material for the encore, the show made the transition into Experience, melding hipsters, metalheads, and gearheads into one seething mass, all screaming "So what!" at the tops of their lungs, all moving at the behest of the guy up front with the black dreadlocks, Ozzy Osbourne sunglasses, and top hat.

After my friends and I skipped out before the second encore (replete with covers) ruined the evening, we passed other concert goers on the street speculating about the seriousness of the announcement of Ministry's purported demise. After that night, I don't think there's any question: if the goal is go out on a high note, this concert seals the deal. Ministry may be dead, but they sure as hell went out with a bang.

Mocking Boring Thrash

In addition to writing (independently now - woo!) concert reviews, I've picked up some work writing album descriptions. They're a bit like reviews, except I can't write anything negative (or anything too negative) because they're written for a retailer, which is in the business of selling CDs, not informing the public about their musical value. It's an interesting creative challenge, because it can mean finding the good in things that are, well, mediocre. Fortunately, thanks to MySpace, I can filter out the real trash before it comes to me, so to this point, if I'm writing to recommend something it's because I actually like it - which is why I bother linking to the reviews from my clips page.

Of course, there are always the ones I was happy to let get away, or the pieces I wrote that omitted my sharper criticisms for the sake of the client's request - but there's no rule that says I can't talk about those albums here. In other words: new feature, where I bash crappy metal albums, or cover the other side of my reviews. Let's begin.

Flash back to a couple of weeks ago. I'm perusing the weekly list my editor sends me with the week's additions. All of these albums either are or were on the Billboard 200 in the past year, and because I'm a Clear Channel-hating luddite who has way too much nostalgia for rock radio from the mid-1990s, I've generally never heard of three-quarters of the artists on the list because they're (presumably) on the airways and I'm not listening. In any case, unless I get lucky and something like ObZen or Ghosts I-IV gets on the list, I'm going to need to do some research through Google, Wikipedia, and MySpace.

This particular week's pull is pretty grim. There's Down's third album, which I really want to like because I like both Pantera-era Phil Anselmo (despite his being a huge douchebag) and Corrosion of Conformity such as they were when "Albatross" was a single, but I can't because it's legitimately terrible. There's Atreyu's latest release, but I liked them better when they were called Van Halen. And then there's a group called Black Tide.

Wikipedia tells me that Black Tide has an average age of very young (well under 20) and that they have a throwback late 80s thrash sound. Equally much seems to be made of their youth and their sound, which should set off alarm bells: I liked Silverchair when I was 14, but not too long afterwards I released how terrible that first album was and how part of the hype was that it was a rock album recorded by sixteen-year-olds. Anyway, I'm intrigued, so I find their MySpace page and take a listen. Very quickly, I am appalled. Even worse, I grow bored.

There's no doubt that Black Tide is a very talented group of musicians, with a pair of shredders who can play much better than I ever could. They even have a cool name for their lead single (if that's how you can describe a MySpace track): "Warriors of Time." Here's the problem though: take every NWOBHM and thrash cliche you can think of - twin guitar harmonies, fast paced palm mute riffs with thin, crunchy distortion, backing vocals that can easily be chanted by a large crowd - slap a nice production veneer on it, and you've got Black Tide. Their music is a faithful, boring reproduction of metal from twenty years ago, without any new touches or twists (besides the better recording quality) that would help them stand out from a crowd. I hate boring music. I will not review boring music. I will make fun of it instead. So, Black Tide: if you can cook up something new and interesting for your next album - even in the thrash vein - I will gladly give it a listen. Until then, you're getting far more attention than you deserve.

Gigantour III at Hammerstein Ballroom

I was pretty excited about this show before going; it was Megadeth, after all, and even though I've seen Dave Mustaine and his latest group of instrument-wielding henchmen far too many times over the past three years (Six! Six! What the hell is wrong with me?), they've made up for my terrible first viewing so many times at this point that it's hard not to get psyched up about the upcoming thrashing. Then I found out that Children of Bodom was on the bill.

As I've mentioned in the past, Children of Bodom exerts a strange and powerful influence over me, not unlike that of Megadeth. Putting the two of them on the same bill was a stroke of pure genius, and while people make jokes about a show being too much rock to handle, in this case it was nearly the truth: I thrashed and banged so hard during the two sets that I couldn't sleep properly for the next two days from my aching neck and shoulders and had to call in sick. It's a measure of a good old metal time when you're not only physically exhausted but slightly damaged, too.

What's odd - for me, anyway - about seeing any band (whether I know them well or not) live is that I don't remember very much of the music afterward. Take this show, for example. I know Job for a Cowboy played some wretched-sounding sludge that made anticipating Bodom that much sweeter, like an upcoming feast for a starving man (seriously, they were that bad). I know I was making up words to "Angels Don't Kill" and "Sixpounder" because I was so hyped up I had to scream something, even if they weren't technically the right lyrics. I know my friends and I retreated to the downstairs bar while In Flames played because they were in serious danger of becoming the crap sandwich between two buns of awesome and we had some bullshitting to do. And I know I nearly removed my skull from my neck during "Hangar 18," and that I thought that Chris Broderick did a better job on the Spanish guitar bridge in "Holy Wars" than Glen Drover, and seemed to have more stage presence, too. But I don't really remember much else, and when I try to think of the songs I do know, I just hear the studio versions. Soon enough, the mental pictures from this show will merge with those from other shows, and - if I'm lucky - I'll be left with one framing shot from the whole night, and the feeling that I had a great time.

Conversations with Rock Stars

Last night, I dreamed that Mike Portnoy and I were hanging out in his bedroom, which for some reason was a cramped fishbowl-type layout with enormous windows on the first floor of a building in midtown Manhattan. People were walking by and looking in with idle curiosity as we talked. It was a weird scene - not because of the geographic locale, or because there were two beds crammed into a space not much larger than a closet - but because Portnoy was simultaneously his current age - early 40s, married, kids, successful - and in high school, and we were hanging out in his bedroom because that's where kids hang out before they have places of their own with things like living rooms. At one point Mike's family did show up, and then Dave Grohl stopped by, but he was looking for something in the kitchen. In the background, the Midtown location slowly shifted to some lodge high up in the mountains. Meanwhile Mike and I talked about music, and it was a good time. I attribute all of these dreamed oddities, by the way, to listening to portions of In Utero at some point yesterday, and reading through most of the Images book of Lifting Shadows before going to sleep last night.

When I woke up, I spent a good half an hour wondering about what I would have really talked about. I met Jordan Rudess once, when he was doing a demo for Mark of the Unicorn at the 2003 AES convention, and I couldn't think of anything to say to him except that I really liked his work with Dream Theater and that I'd written my senior thesis in college on Scenes From a Memory. I came to the conclusion that what I was really looking for was not to talk to him as a journalist, because there'd be no connection, and not as a fan, because I would feel I was imposing, but as someone else who really loves music. No doubt that would help me get past the intense, irrational intimidation I felt about interviewing someone in my sleep.

Testament at B.B. King's

It's incredible how a good band can get past the limitations of a terrible venue and play a great show. It's also incredible how much I've come to dislike seeing shows at B.B. King's, and yet I still continue to subject myself to the occasional appearance because I'm willing to sacrifice things like sonic quality to see a band. It's a common enough problem for any concert goer I'm sure, and I should probably consider myself fortunate that the three shows I've seen there - Emperor in 2006, Symphony X in 2007, and now Testament in 2008 - were all excellent despite the venue. I'll go into that more in a minute, but first: Testament and their awesomeness.

Not ten months after I said Testament refuses to tour anywhere near New York City they very kindly made me a liar, and came to headline B.B. King's at the head of another group of local acts I had no desire to see. Once again, my reactions bordered on hero worship: Chuck Billy is larger than life and should take up air guitar competitions as a side gig, Alex Skolnick is a shredding demon who's still the man even though he bounces around on stage like a teenybopper, and the set list (see below) was quality. Seth had teased me with reports of inclusions of "Demonic Refusal" in earlier gigs, but it seems like either New York wasn't Satanic enough to warrant the inclusion, or Testament still hasn't quite come to terms with their past.

To be honest, I'd love to know why they don't play more from that album: is it musically too far outside of where they want to be? Too demanding on the voice? They gave us "Low" instead, which kinda jives with the heavy groove thing they're putting into the new record, but it's not like Demonic was bad album - give us more of it! Maybe they'll bring back some more when they open for Priest/Heaven and Hell this summer. I think three appearances in the same area in less than a year warrants some set list experimentations.

Anyway, B.B. King's: I don't like the place because unless you're right up front, taking the risk of having someone's boot planted in your face as they go crowd surfing by, it's difficult to see, as your view will doubtless be blocked by one of the room's odd architectural features (like the thick columns spaced a third of the way out from either side of the room's walls), and if you're shorter than six feet, you'll be looking at the stage through gaps in shoulders. Then there's the sound problem: sound must get trapped in weird corners of the room and die, because it's not making it to the back. I took my earplugs out during the second song to see if that gave me more of an impact, but that only lead to my discovering what everyone else in the club was enjoying: highs so shrill they'll cut your head off. Good stuff. Like I said above: I've yet to see a bad show at B.B. King's, but I get the feeling I'm never going to enjoy it there.

Set List

1. Over The Wall
2. Into The Pit
3. Apocalyptic City
4. Practice What You Preach
5. The New Order
6. Electric Crown
7. More Than Meets The Eye
8. Low
9. A Trail Of Tears
10. Henchmen Ride
11. Souls Of Black
12. Evil Has Landed
13. The Preacher

----------------

1. DNR
2. 3 Days In Darkness
3. Alone In The Dark
4. Disciples Of The Watch

Iron Maiden at IZOD Arena

Definition of a good show: when you're pissed off at Ticketmaster for screwing you over on your tickets but still have a great time. The scene: the IZOD Arena in the Meadowlands, which has become the more convenient version of the Nassau Coliseum to put on shows of this magnitude: too big for music halls in the City, too small to book at PNC or MSG or Giants Stadium. I saw Maiden there a year and a half ago from a well-placed set of seats, but this time around, I opted - along with a large group of other people I knew through a friend - to do the floor option instead. Little did I suspect that either the fix was in, or Ticketmaster made their ticket purchase page really confusing, but the end result was the same: when my wife and I got inside, we found that our tickets said "floor back" and our friends' tickets said "VIP." Functionally, this meant we were in the back half of the floor, and the rest of the lucky bastards got to work their way up front.

Here's the important point, though: getting stuck in the back pissed me off something fierce, because it put us in literally the worst spot in the whole arena, with the exception (maybe) of the poor souls all of the way up and in the back, who probably paid less than we did for the pleasure of watching a music video with a few glimpses of the band on stage. However, despite the crippling limitation on sight lines that left us mainly at the mercy of the venue camera director and whatever they decided to project on the screens, we still had a really good time, because Maiden put on such a good show. Playing about three quarters of the tracks from the Live After Death DVD, Maiden surrounded themselves with hieroglyphed tablets, mummy statues with red-glowing Eddie eyes, and enormous gorgeous backdrops with art from Powerslave, "The Trooper," "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," and Somewhere in Time. This was a conscious attempt at a big rock show, too: an Eddie robot, steam jets, flame jets, fireworks, a crowd of Maiden fans brought out to sing the bridge of "Heaven Can Wait." Then they blew us all away by almost apologetically promising us more with a return of the tour in June, hooking everyone on the spot for the next go. My favorite part of the night: "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," one of my favorite Maiden songs, done in all of the epic majesty it deserves.

And Bruce...Bruce Dickinson has reserved a special place in my heart. Far more than he did in the 2006 show - and in a way that reminded me of Russell Allen when I saw Symphony X last June - Bruce was storyteller as much as singer, adopting simple costuming - a red uniform jacket and Union Jack for "The Trooper," a shredded black cloak for "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" - and mannerisms and movements to bring his characters to life. Then there was the stage banter: self-mocking about his trademark "scream for me," teasing us with convoluted introductions ("Does anyone here like birds...or mythical creatures?"), telling stories during equipment changes that kept the pace of the show on track. If there's a bard of metal, it was Bruce that Friday night.

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.

Henry Rollins at Warsaw

At some point during Braveheart, Robert the Bruce and his father are having one of their creepy fireside chats where Mel Gibson beats us over the head with the internal evil/external corruption symbolism that the father's character represents. No one would deny that the elder Bruce is not a loathsome person, but he makes an interesting point during this particular conversation. As Robert gushes over William Wallace's passion and contemplates joining the revolt to establish Scotland's independence, his father silences him with a salient bit of wisdom: "You admire this man, this William Wallace. Uncompromising men are easy to admire."

I've applied that piece of thinking to my own measurements of admiration many times, and the same truth always emerges: as someone who embraces compromise with perhaps a bit too much alacrity, uncompromising men are always easy for me to admire. That doesn't mean I agree with their principles - I express admiration for both Gene Simmons and Ted Nugent though I find Simmons' thoughts on music as art shortsighted and Nugent's ideas on cultural values disturbingly unenlightened - but I do admire their confidence of expression.

Henry Rollins, though...Henry Rollins is different. I've written in the past about how much I admire the man and his work, but Rollins is the exception in my list of admirable celebrities, because he consistently states his principles in a way that invites discussion, not defiance. "Don't let anyone else live your life for you or make your opinions for you," his stories say, and not because it's the "right" or "wrong" thing to do, but because you'll have a less fulfilling life and miss out on so much. His principles aren't swinging dick objectifications, but just a desire to really live life to the fullest in the way that makes the most sense to him. It's inspiring, not bull-headed.

That inspiration was on full throttle last night at Warsaw, a converted Polish social hall in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn where Rollins performed on one of the first stops of his Provoked spoken word tour. For three hours, Rollins became a conduit, his stance in an aggressive foot-forward position of the hardcore singer (with but the occasional deviation of movement to illustrate a point), his gaze locked on a point at the back of the hall as the stories flowed out in rapid-fire succession, connecting through complicated segues that all somehow resolved themselves into a single theme he brought up at the beginning of the performance: exercise your critical thinking skills, because the moment you don't is the moment you're vulnerable to influence from fear. He talked about his lifestyle, how he's channeled his energies into a work ethic that keeps him going from job to job and city to city so that he's always doing something, always kicking life's ass. He talked about his fundamental curiosity about other people that motivates him to visit Islamabad and Damascus and Beirut and Tehran and Johannesburg and Cape Town (all in one year) just to see what other people are like, shake their hands, make connections, and try to bring everyone a little closer together, despite the perception of danger. He told stories about how meeting his rock idols turns him into a self-conscious music nerd, about the sad, beautiful story of Paul Fox and his goodbye benefit concert, about how he obsesses about making every performance as awesome as possible. He spoke without whining or preaching about his deliberately lonely lifestyle, and how he uses his lack of deep personal connections to motivate himself to go out and do more.

It was a powerful performance, a pure and simple demonstration of Rollins' ability to capture an audience with the truth and beauty of his storytelling and communicate a point, to inspire new thoughts and personal reflection. If you get the chance to see Rollins on this tour, go: immerse yourself in the flood of energy from the stage and revel in it.

Raging With the System

A confluence of factors - an impending street cleaning, an evening class, and my possession of the household's sole drivers license - found me walking along a street near my apartment at 9:45 on a cold night, listening to Rage Against the Machine's first album. I love this album; every track (with the exception of "Settle for Nothing," which never sat right with me) is an excellent song with a host of things to recommend it to the ear over and over again. The associations I've added to most of the track over the years don't hurt, either: "Bombtrack" became the all-too appropriate theme song for a table top game campaign I played in high school; "Killing the Name" and "Freedom" were radio staples with a powerful influence on my impressionable ears; a friend inscribed the final line ("All of which are American dreams...") of "Know Your Enemy" on a doorway in the cabin at a camp I attended in high school; hearing "Wake Up" at the end of The Matrix made for some of the most appropriate film closing music ever chosen, and I left the theater wanting to fight someone or something...and on and on.

Silently mouthing the words of "Bullet in the Head" - I'm not much of an exhibitionist, and don't care to attract the stares of passersby - while they screamed through my skull at the high volume I reserve for only the most special songs, walking along that nearly empty Brooklyn thoroughfare, I pondered why I still felt any attraction to the ideas that De La Rocha's lyrics express. I'm no longer a teenager, and much of the hard-headed idealism that I felt when I was younger has been tempered by the all-too pragmatic realization that no one can see everything the same way, and that compromise is the only route to true progress. It's not disillusionment, but more what Hüsker Dü talked about in "Real World": "You want to change the world / By breaking rules and laws / People don't do things like that / In the real world at all / You're not a cop, or a politician / You're a person too." At the same time, though, I don't just love Rage because the riffs get me pumped up. Besides, I'm an MBA student, and I live in a yuppie neighborhood - why would I want to overthrow the system?

Then I came to the end of "Know Your Enemy," to De La Rocha's litany against the dark side of the American Dream: "compromise, conformity, assimilation, submission, ignorance, hypocrisy, brutality, the elite" and I realized what still appeals: I may have submerged myself into the life of the middle class American, getting the job, the family, the aspirations towards future success, but that doesn't mean I've bought in to being anything other than me. I won't be the person who looks back in 20 years and feel like I've wasted my youth, and I won't become the power whore who sells out everything he believes in, neglects his family and destroys his friends to the top. It's not something that's ever far from the surface of my mind, but it felt good to have music I love bring those thoughts to the surface and remind me of what matters.

Like the Rules of Fight Club

Through circumstances at the day job, I came across a guy who writes for a metal site called BrainGell Radio. Following up on his portfolio, I came across this article on Arch Enemy singer Angela Gassow...and irritated sensibilities soon followed.

The article, which turns into an interesting - if sloppily written - profile on Angela's rise to metal fame from her troubled roots as a teenager in Cologne, starts out with this gem: "What can you say about this incredibly beautiful woman? If you have seen her, you know her icy blonde hair and piercing blue eyes betray exactly what she is deep in her soul." Ignoring the rather ludicrous statement about someone being so shallow you can know everything about them just by looking at their hair and eyes, it's the objectification of Angela as a woman first and a singer second that bothers me. Why are her looks even mentioned (especially when they wouldn't come up if she were man); it's her kick ass vocal abilities and her larger-than-life stage presence that should not only get front billing, but the only billing. Way to be a Neanderthal, dude.

I was discussing my disgust with my friend Seth, who in his wisdom had the perfect response: "I thought we all collectively made two decisions as metal fans: #1 to not bash halford's gayness, #2 to not constantly remind angela she's hot." So congratulations, writer guy: you broke one of metal's unspoken rules. You're so out of the club.

When New Knowledge Comes...

When I was in college, I did my best to form bands. It was not a particularly successful exercise, for a multitude of reasons - the college's lack of practice spaces, the limited number of musicians who were neither jam-band loving hippies or too-cool-for-rock jazz freaks, the flakiness of those I did meeting, my (in retrospect) inability to play either guitar or sing particularly well - but it did prove instructive, and contributed to my eventually moving to New York. The reason I bring this up: one of my more successful attempts at band forming occurred when I was sophomore, and met a drummer named Eric.

Eric was perfect for what I was looking for: he was an excellent drummer, liked similar music, and had a kit in his dorm room, which he'd somehow been able to play without causing firestorms on the other sides of the thin dorm walls. We met early in the Fall 2000 semester - which might explain his drumming in the dorm success - and I brought my stuff over to his room, where we jammed and we talked. This happened to be not long after I had seen Pearl Jam for the first time, and I was high on the band and all of their albums for the first time in four or five years. Eric happened to have gone to a show on the same tour, but his reasons for going had entirely to do with Matt Cameron, the ex-Soundgarden drummer who'd joined Pearl Jam for Binaural. Eric thought Cameron was one of God's gifts to drumming, and he'd gone to the show - even though he didn't particularly like Pearl Jam - just to see him live.

Ever since that day, I've listened a little closer to the drumming Matt did on Soundgarden's albums, and sometimes I dig far enough down through Chris Cornell's magnetic voice and mind-bending lyrics, through Kim Thayil's discordant power riffing, to get a sense of the deeper layers that make those songs really work. This morning, Badmotorfinger came on my iPod, and I got that sense again, diving through the sounds of "Jesus Christ Pose," prying apart the surface and diving to the chugging of Ben Shepard's bass, playing the same main riff through so much of the song, staying steady and true whether Kim joins him, plays a bridge, or just freaks out. Realizing in the process that Soundgarden was so good on Badmotorfinger and Superunknown that they could have the bass player keeping time and the songs still flow so well that you don't know that Matt's playing some mishmash of polyrhythms unless you listen for it. The 1 is in there somewhere, but Matt'll never tell you where - you just have to feel for it. And when you do feel it, and you know you're feeling it, you feel really good.

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...

Megadeth at Irving Plaza

It's a good night to be out; the weather is cool without being cold, with a little too much humidity that makes any time outside uncomfortable only with some exertion. We're not outside for any real extertion; we wander with a purpose in the Union Square area, waiting for the 9:45 hour, when the bands with metalcore names leave the stage and Megadeth comes on. We sit in a bar, and drink, and talk about music. The sound system is high-end, large sound-reinforcement type speakers dominating a room so shitty-looking it could be out of a punk documentary. The speakers and the room are diametrically opposed in quality; they shouldn't be in the same two block radius, let alone the same room, but the whole thing works. Maybe it's because of the weird mix of tracks: Jawbreaker, Minor Threat, Embrace, James Brown. I'm told to expect "The Trooper" to come on at any second. We talk about Ian MacKaye and his DIY ethic, Blake Schwarzenbach and how he now teaches English at Hunter College. It's a good way to warm up for a concert; a much better way than listening to whatever crappy bands Roadrunner's packaged on this tour.

Seeing Megadeth has become a common occurrence; five times in two years far outstrips my frequency for any other band. It's a little ironic; I remember thinking after I heard that Dave had hurt his wrist that it sucked I would never see that band live. Maybe I'm making up for lost time.

Irving Plaza is packed, almost to the gills. We start out below the overhand, where the sound sucks and for some reason they're not using the extra speakers they've added. As Megadeth takes the stage we squeeze our way through the crowd and into an open area near one of the doors. The difference in sound between the overhand and the open room is palpable. The sound still sucks, but it's gone from a dull roar to a wall, a wall of high frequency fuzzed harmonics and deeper guitar distortion, interspersed with the rhythmic smashing of the drums and the indistinct wailing of whomever is singing. It's like having your head cut off with a sound wave. The air is electric and it feels good.

Mustaine has a cold, or some sort of sick thing that makes it hard for him to sing; he apologizes but tells us he didn't want to cancel. We love him for it and we let him know, just like we let him and the band know how happy we are to be there after every song. The crowd - whatever the capacity crowd is for Irving, small but not insignificant - doesn't sound like 1,000 people in a club when we cheer, but 5,000 or 10,000 or more in an arena or a stadium. It's huge; it reverberates from the ceiling of the old concert hall and startles me every time it happens. It adds to the atmosphere, to the excitement of seeing this band do their thing and do it well once again.

Megadeth, as always, plays a mix of the very new and the very old; think "Washington is Next" meets "Hangar 18" meets "Kick the Chair" meets "In My Darkest Hour" meets "Symphony of Destruction" and you'll get the idea. The crowd doesn't know the new material as well and no one can hear Dave, so the new tracks turn into respectful silences and physical breaks for the crowd, who throw everything they have into every old track the band plays. I sing at shows, when I know the songs; it helps me let myself go into the music more. I'm singing - but I'm always singing - but it feels like everyone else is, too. It's communal, unifying, and it makes the show that much more memorable, because we're all getting our faces melted together and we all know it. They play the new version of "Toute le Monde," and I realize that Dave's little remake trick must be working; there are a lot of women in this crowd. They play "Tornado of Souls" and the fifth time I hear it live is just as good as the first. I lose my shit; I love that song.

It's 11:20. The night's over, the set finished just on the cusp of going too long. We stumble out into the street, swap stories of other shows and other good times built around music and metal. I walk back to the subway, thoughtful. Nights like these are why I go to shows, I decide, in search of the high that only good live music can bring. It's a good addiction.

Super Happy Metal Fun Time!

I work in the editorial department of an online publishing company, and we get a lot of random stuff from PR agencies: books, CDs, press kits, product samples; we even got a bunch of cleaning products in a wooden coffin once, which was a little odd. Since our writers work off site we need to determine whether or not to send this barrage of material on to them; most of it goes on its merry way, but some things, especially the stuff that's misaddressed (sent to one of parenting writers, say, when it really should go to one of the home & garden writers), stay in the office and join our collections of Weird Desk Stuff. I'm the Metal Guy of the editorial department, so when the Heavy Metal Fun Time Activity Book by Aye Jay Morano came in, addressed to our classic rock writer, I snagged it and added it to my desk display, which includes, among other things, a model of this place, a signed print of this online comic, and a postcard promo of this album I picked up outside of an Opeth show in 2005.

Of course, I opened it first and delighted at cheekiness within. Besides an endorsement from Dio, who no doubt loves metal enough to laugh at the music and the culture at least once in a while, the Heavy Metal Fun Time Activity Book features an introduction by Andrew W. K. (he's metal now?) full of insipid thoughts about the nature of reality, and then the centerpiece: page after page of all of those pen-and-paper activities you did as a kid, all with a metal twist. There's a word seek with songs by Neurosis; a maze where you help the members of Spinal Tap get to the stage (get it?); two pages where you can color in the 1983 and 1989 versions of Metallica; etc., etc., etc. My favorite is the Death Metal Sudoku, where all of the pre-filled numbers are sixes.

For the retail price of about $10, the Heavy Metal Fun Time Activity Book doesn't price up to a car ride diversion like the books it's modeled upon, but that's not really the point. I don't want to fill out the activities in my copy; I just want to open it up every once in a while and smirk my way back into a good mood.

Short Meditation on Street Sounds

Walking down into the subway this morning on my way to work, I heard the strains of a solo violin, playing something in a classical figure. Street musicians abound in New York and even though the MTA makes anyone playing in subway go through a licensing process to improve the quality, they aren't always good. This guy, though...something about the silence of the morning as people waited for their morning train, the chill air outside and stuffy warmth down by the tracks, the stone-lined surfaces that turned his concert hall into a miles-long reverberation chamber; all of it made the sound so pure and so sweet that anyone who could hear was happy to just listen and anyone who couldn't feel some sort of tug at their soul is as dead to the world as a freshly departed corpse.