Alternative albums

This photo is not recent. It’s actually from last year, not long after I’d acquired another stash of alternative album CDsfrom JB Hi Fi. This lot is from the greatest record store on earth (that I’ve been to anyway), HeartlandRecords, and was purchased entirely with record store vouchers that given to me by my family.

Underground albums. Well, most of them. Since taking this shot I think I've almost
figured out how to take pics without excessive flash reflection.

 Despite being several months old, I still haven’t managed to properly listen to the lot. I’m yet to open one item from this list while with the others I’m still “familiarising” myself — as one does with new music — before I can genuinely decide if it’s good, bad, ok, a grower, an instant hit, or “where has it been all my life”.

Funnily enough, the process of getting to know new music is literally something that can be quantified — in my case, I do this by checking the stats on my Last.fm account (feel free to say g’day and add me). That’s because when buying a CD, the first thing I normally do is copy it to my media library. Not only does it satisfy my inner obsessive-compulsive, it has also resulted in me becoming really “consistent” if not downright uptight about my music listening. For example, I can’t bear having a song not play through in its entirety and thereby not registering as a full scrobble on my listening stats. This probably explains the funny looks I get from my fiancée whenever I get home from work, pull into the garage, and then take forever to get out of the car as I wait for the last minute of the song to play through its last 40 seconds.

Anyway, when I got these CDs, my plan was to compile reasonably detailed impressions and thoughts on every one of them. Naturally, so far I’ve managed to do that for all of one of these releases. So here’s the CliffNotes version.

Nattefrost: Blood & Vomit

Dirty, filthy, somewhat juvenile and silly but nonetheless still-nasty black metal. Contains “that” infamous recording of Roger Nattefrost throwing up. And another one of him taking a leak. The track is subtly titled Nattefrost Takes a Piss.

True story.

Dead Kennedys: Give Me Convenience OR Give Me Death

Best of compilation for this revered and highly influential punk outfit. Like so many people I love Holiday In Cambodia and California Über Alles. However, I’m still getting my head around the rest of it. Would a better understanding of the socio-political context of the time help?

Iron Maiden: The Wicker Man

Iron Maiden is the greatest band there ever was. No don’t argue the point. Brave New World, the album from which this single is taken, isn’t quite my favourite Maiden release, but meh, I dig the b-sides, especially Maiden vocalist Bruce Dickinson singing the Blaze Bayley-era track Man On The Edge (Iron Maiden vocalist who lasted two albums). Like a true Iron Maiden nerd, I trainspotted how in the live version he changes the line “A briefcase, a lunch and a man on the edge / Each step gets closer to losing his head” to “Each step gets closer to losing his hair”. Yeah, no one else noticed either.

32Crash: Y2112Y

A quirky, covering-all-bases kind of electronic project that tries to sound like a bit of everything. Front 242 vocalist Jean-Luc De Meyer and members of Implant (EBM industrial kind of guys) are behind this project which has a lyrical theme based entirely on science-fiction. I loved the previous album in the 32Crash discography, Weird News From An Uncertain Future but this one doesn’t seem to have the same creative spark and richness. Shame really. Maybe it’ll grow on me with more listens?

Iron Maiden: The Reincarnation Of Benjamin Breeg

I told you I was a Maiden fan. Why else would I buy an out-of-print single from my least favourite (you mean least awesome) Maiden album?

Wumpscut: Dried Blood Of Gomorrha (technically it should be “:Wumpscut:” with two very industrial colons, but then that would mean it would be expressed as “:Wumpscut::” which looks totally wrong)

Classic German ’90s electro industrial. This was a case of an artist doing more with less, in that this release had a lot going for it despite what sounds like a limited amount of gear and technology to work with. Hard to believe that Mr. Wumpscut, Rudy Ratzinger, transmogrified into a slick merchandise and album factory, releasing a new and generally mediocre full-length studio album every year since 2004, while perpetually repackaging special limited ultra hero imprint deluxe hand farted re-re-re-presses with one super extra special bonus track from a broken demo tape he found under his pillow.

Fear Factory: Resurrection

I totally managed to actually blog about this one. Click on Fear Factory right here.

Hocico: Dog Eat Dog

Stompin’ Mexican electro industrial mayhem, this was the lead single off Hocico’s 2010 album, Tiempos DeFuria. This song embodies everything that Hocio does best: mediocre production; unimaginable darkness and vitriol; unintentionally funny lyrics; and general all-round pounding ass kicking. The title track and b-side are good but the remaining remixes were all a bit too similar to the original. Hey, if it ain’t broke, why fix it?

Gothic Compilation Part 56

These budget compilations from Germany embody value for money. You usually get two discs, with one side tending to be more gothic and guitar-based, while the other is electronic and industrial. They’re a great snapshot of what happens to be “in” at the time in the alternative music mothership that is Germany. Heartland Records had half a dozen or so of these to choose from so I ended up picking one with a music video bonus disc (there’s a Shiv-R music video on there, so I thought I’d give it a crack…). Turns out there’s also a prolonged gothic fashion shoot video on the same disc, which I have absolutely no interest in.

Soulfly: 3

Ex-Sepultura vocalist Max Cavalera’s Soulfly project got played an awful lot on heavy metal radio stations I listened to so much when I was younger, but I never really followed through. I recognise some of the tunes off this one but it seems like a mixed bag. Interesting fact: Soulfly were only accepted onto MetalArchives in 2012… because their eighth album was finally deemed to be metal enough. Talk about picky…

Hocico: Wrack And Ruin

Like the previously mentioned Dog Eat Dog lyrics, so too does this Hocico album’s title make zero sense. But that’s ok because it’s a killer album. It always amazes me how these two butt-ugly angry Mexicans can create sounds that, well, sound so evil and sinister. Maybe living in Mexico does that to you? This album also contains one of my favourite EBM-electro-industrial tunes of all time: Born To Be Hated (Original Odium). Well, the first half of this song anyway.

Venom: At War With Satan

I’m getting towards the end of this list and my fingers are getting tired from typing. So I’m going to quote a relevant Facebook post instead: “I got At War With Satan and bonus tracks, mostly because of all the hype and “special” mentions it gets. I can appreciate its historical significance but geez, it certainly hasn’t aged well. And that’s me being diplomatic about it.”

A friend who also happens to be a big Venom fan offered this insight: “I've always thought the problem with At War with Stan was that they wanted so badly to make an epic album — a legacy (it was too soon after Black Metal for them to realise they actually already had). So they put so many good ideas and riffs into one song that didn't quite come off as well as it deserved [the main track going for just under 20 minutes]. Consequently, they had nothing left for the second side of the album and were rushed to write filler. They were on the road all the time at that point. Had it come out a year later, it may have blended well with some of the more atmospheric and energetic tracks of Possessed which came just the following year — and again had so much filler.”

This didn’t stop the album from influencing thousands of skinny Norwegians. Like Nattefrost and pals.

Lacuna Coil: Our Truth

Two-track single for a band I’ve heard so much about but never really checked out properly. I suspect this release is not indicative of their sound.

The Baroness And Love Lies Bleeding: Dark Beauty

This was the first “true” electronic gothy industrially album I ever bought (well, except for one of those countless suspect Cleopatra Records “A tribute to” compilations). The Baroness was (is she still going?) a Melbourne-based performer and (I think) was also involved in promoting the infamous and now defunct Abyss nightclub. While this album does contains some fantastically cheesy darkwave, this was the album that got me into the whole darker side of electronic music. Specifically, the track, Dark Beauty (actually not a bad track if you like electro gothish darkwave) , which got played on a late-night community radio show.

I used to own my own copy of Dark Beauty but a former girlfriend never returned it (along with a whole bunch of other stuff). So I finally shelled out $10 to relive the whole thing all over again.

Judas Priest: One Shot At Glory... the best running song ever?

So a mate recently talked me into doing a 10km charity run this July. I’m kind of unfit at the moment and I don’t get many opportunities to break a sweat in my sedentary office job. Well, not unless something goes wrong with our websites... The point being, this run will be the toughest physical challenge I’ve ever attempted and so I’ve been training hard. Apparently once you break 5km, getting to 10km isn’t as relatively difficult. Just need to get to 5km first.

Naturally, I play the music I love when I’m jogging and as it turns out, the classic heavy metal album by Judas Priest, Painkiller, was apparently made specifically for jogging — especially its closing track, One Shot At Glory.

I mentioned the other day how I never quite managed to get into Judas Priest, even though I’ve loved metal for 20 years. Not too long ago that all changed, however, when I acquired a copy of the Painkiller album and finally got to understand what it was all about.

It’s not just the aural expression of power — the themes of glory, defiance and adversity-overcoming magnificence; the shredding riffs; and the inhuman ear-piercing vocals — that make this album and specifically its closing track so perfectly fitting for the strength-sapping and willpower-demanding task that is running a quarter of a marathon.
It’s way more than that. While the entire album is essentially the heavy metal equivalent to Vangelis’ Chariots Of Fire theme or Eye Of The Tiger, it’s the very speed and recording tempo of the closing final track, One Shot At Glory, that clearly makes it a running song.

I’ve been told I’m a tragic nerd when it comes to my music collection because I’ve recorded and written down the track BPMs (beats per minute) on many of my industrial music albums. A mate who once tried to play a DJ set with my CDs complained that he couldn't see the cover artwork due to all the bits of paper with hand-written scrawled numbers slipped into the jewel cases (below). So yes, I’ve spent plenty of lot of time listening to song tempos. I even have an iPhone beatcounter on me. Just in case.

There are people who listen to music. And then there are people who listen to music.

As it turns out, Judas Priest's One Shot At Glory is at the precise constant tempo that also happens to be my personal running tempo sweet spot, around 150bpm in my case.

Now keep in mind that it’s even been scientifically proven — and by “scientifically proven” I mean “I read it on a Cracked.com list” — that music can affect the brain and body in all sorts of crazy and awesome ways. From its ability to supposedly help prevent seizures to improved memory, music can do all sorts of wonderful things. And yes, increased endurance has to be right up there (even if, oddly enough, the indisputable evidence that is a Cracked.com article doesn't explicitly mention this fact, I think it's safe to assume that it's fact anyway, simply based on the virtue of its existing awesomeness).

But wait there’s more…

If the tempo and riffing and cheesy but-oh-so-epic vocals aren’t enough to get you racing, those One Shot At Glory lyrics will surely do it. Like this passage…

Fighting on with dignity
In life and death we deal
The power and the majesty
Amidst the blood and steel
I still hear the battle cry (extra high scream here)
The call goes on and on
I still see the banners fly
The battle's always won

Cheesy beyond belief, yes, but awesomely epic nonetheless. When your body burns energy and your heart rate increases, that energy is diverted to muscles and away from ‘less essential’ jobs like digestion and brain power. That is to say, your mind is less likely to ponder the intellectual merits of corny Judas Priest lyrics.

Moving right along, there’s this increased heart rate -inducing chorus:

One shot at glory
Driving hard and seeing red
Destiny calls me
One night of fire
One shot at glory

I run laps around my local oval and on several occasions I’ve been ready to call it a day, only for this song to come one — where as a direct result I’ve literally managed to push myself further and harder.

Judas Priest: Painkiller is an awesome heavy metal album in its own right. But, rightly or wrongly, there are some out there who don’t quite agree. To that I say: if Painkiller isn’t utterly marvellous because it can literally have a physical effect on one’s body, then what is?

Finally, here’s a dubious ‘fan’ video that steals the music and then lazily
superimposes it over a fight scene from 300. But weirdly enough it works. A bit.

Judas Priest: Painkiller…finally got around to discovering this classic heavy metal album

As I’ve mentioned previously, I’ve recently been digging up a lot of classic heavy metal albums, particularly from the golden ’80s age of metal. In doing that, late last year I enquired: what is the best starting point for Judas Priest (and am I showing my ignorance or what)? Iron Maiden is the greatest band that ever was (don’t argue the point) and I love traditional heavy metal. Yet I just kind of never got into Judas Priest.

According to my sources, Painkiller was the definitive item in the Judas Priest discography, whereas the Screaming For Vengeance album was the most commercially successful. I promptly Painkiller album and not long after was left with a feeling comparable to “where has this album been all my life”.

I won’t go into excruciating detail about what I think makes the Painkiller album so great or why it’s so fantastically memorable — and so utterly goddamn metaaal! People who have been banging heads to it longer than I have can give you a view that’s better informed than mine, or even one that dissents from the usual praise norm.

That silver bloke on the cover? He’s that Painkiller chap you’ve heard so much about.

Historically, Painkiller was Judas Priest’s glorious 1990 move to heavier, proto-power and speed-ish metal after a couple of albums spent meandering around what was touted as a dated and overly happy or even synthy sound. Many fans nowadays feel it contains some of the best Judas Priest songs ever recorded, or at least some of the most popular, what with several cuts going on to become Judas Priest live staples. Personally, my favourite element on Painkiller is Rob Halford’s soaring operatic voice. It’s genuinely extreme — not because it sounds brutal or guttural (which it totally doesn’t), but because his almost comical high-pitched vocals manage to re-create inhuman sounds that most of us would never even contemplate attempting with our mere mortal vocal cords. Add to the mix the fact that Halford is wailing a dozen tales about, metal, leather, defiance, fire, come uppance and more metal, not to mention the fact that there’s all that other stuff going on, from the tremendously heavy opening drums on the title track to the superbly tight guitarmanship and, and, and… the whole experience is just so goddamn freakin’ METAL.

Painkiller is widely regarded as belonging right up there with classic metal albums. At the risk of getting all academic on the topic, I feel it’s a romanticised embodiment of everything that is great about heavy metal. And I’m a better for finally coming across a copy.

Not bad for an album that’s 23 years old

Heavy metal cat

This photo is from just after Christmas. Every year as the festive season approaches and friends and family inevitably ask what I want for Christmas, the response I give is always the same: gift vouchers from record stores

My birthday is close to Christmas so I often manage to accumulate a critical mass of vouchers — and no, in case you were wondering, I don’t get double the amount of presents. I can (if I’m especially well behaved) get away with combining both days into one 150 per cent above average size gift, but twice the volume would be greedy.

Still, it all makes for what is every music collector’s dream of awesomeness, that being a record store shopping spree.

While my preferred source of vouchers from those who are generous enough to get one (or more) for me is from HeartlandRecords, just outside of the Melbourne CBD, not everyone is able to go there in person, so I often end up with vouchers from elsewhere. In this instance I ended up with $100 in JB Hi Fi vouchers, resulting in the following album haul (read on why the cat's in the shot).

• ·         Judas Priest: Painkiller
• ·         Eizbrecher: Eiszeit
• ·         Devin Townsend Project: Epicloud
• ·         A six-pack of early Motörhead albums (what's not to love about Motörhead?
• ·         Manowar: Hail To England
• ·         Megadeth: Th1rt3en

Heavy metal cat.

As I was laying out the CDs for the pic I managed to snap all of one photo before Patapuss generously decided to ‘help’.

Now he’s a lovely cat and after stretching out and announcing his presence with a meow (he does that) he then decided he’d have a little scent of selected CDs.

I noticed the Devin Townsend Epicloud album received most of his attention, and a little bit also went to the Manowar album.

Just heavy metal.

I pointed this out on a Facebook post and the person who recommend Epicloud to me in the first place remarked that this was evidence of Devin Townsend’s awesomeness. I then pointed out that Patapuss didn’t so much as even touch Dave Mustaine's Megadeth CD.

“Clearly a cat of discrimination and good taste,” was the response.

Ouch!