Deals & Steals: Call the Dealer

Now, the dealer in question might be to help with the pantload of stoner metal I just received. He might also deal in speed, sleaze, machinery or poisoned bibles by the looks of things. All prices $US.

High On Fire – Snakes For the Divine $5.59, Death Is This Communion $8.78, Blessed Black Wings $6.39, Surrounded By Thieves $6.39. I’m late to the party on these shirtless riffy wonders, so I pulled the trigger on the whole back catalogue. Awesome fun.

Destroy Destroy Destroy – Devour the Power $6.39. More side project silliness from the American core kids. I’m sure I’m meant to enjoy this Manowar parody stuff ironically, so, shhhhhhhh……

Lazarus A.D. – Onslaught $3.99. One of the finest young bands working in retrothrash today.

Scum of the Earth – Sleaze Freak $3.00. The Rob Zombie soundalikes actually made a second album. Not an original note on it, but kind of fun anyway.

KMFDM – XTORT $3.48. Because I’m a Chris Connelly fan. Also, this is a reissue that allows you to skip the stupid bonus track.

Anaal Nathrakh – Domine Non Es Dignus $6.99. Woah. Seriously nutty industrial black metal from the UK. Like Cradle mixed with old-school Earache Records.

Powerman 5000 – Transform $1.48. Can’t believe this radio-ready bit of nothing got released and Doomsday didn’t. Oh well, price was right.

And now for my new favourite thing:

Doomriders – Black Thunder $5.58 and Darkness Come Alive $6.39. This side project of Converge has a bit of everything good. At their best they sound like the entire back half of Iron Maiden’s Killers being performed by Danzig. If that description appeals to you, run don’t walk to see them.

Album Review: KMFDM “Kunst” 2013

  Like Zeno’s Arrow, KMFDM have been making each album for the past decade or so just a little bit worse than the one before, like an infinite series that never quite hits bottom.

Kunst comes closer than ever.

I’m a long-time KMFDM apologist, loving their if-you-don’t-like-it-you-don’t-get-it BS approach  to faking it until you make it. But this is getting tired. The band kicks things off with the title track, a KMFDM standard constructed lyrically from bits of random doggerel and the band’s own song titles through the ages. They do this every damn time, and the only new bit of life in “Kunst” is a throwback joke to the ancient controversy over the group’s mysterious name.

After that, things just kind of meander. The bands political hearts remain in the right places on “Pussy Riot”, and there are some interesting collaborations with the Morlocks and William Wilson (no surprise, allowing guest artists to steal the show is one of Sascha K’s better qualities) as well as “I ♥ Not”, a tale of obsessive love with samples by toddler Asia Konietzko. That’s right, it’s a family business!

A sausage factory entry from a band that can be angry, silly, audacious and infuriating, Kunst tries a bit of unwise unfamiliar territory by daring to be dull. 4.5 out of 10

Deals and Steals: Ladies Up Front, Gearheads Live

  Live industrial sounds and female-fronted bands for the first shipment this year, along with some great TV. All Prices $US. Only $5 shipping but I was dinged with a $17 customs bill thanks to a random inspection. Boo!

Dimension Zero – Silent Night Fever $3.19. Awesome Marduk/In Flames supergroup thrashback.

In This Moment – A Star-Crossed Wasteland $5.59. A perfect mix of their earlier aggression and new lush production.

Wicked Wisdom – S/T $2.54. Jada Pinkett Smith has a metal band. They warned me, but I needed to know. Meh, it’s not terrible.

KMFDM – WWIII Live 2003 $3.20. Basically because I wanted to hear Lucia Cifarelli sing “Juke Joint Jezebelle”. I could have lived my life without it.

The Corner $11.99. This is the TV miniseries that The Wire was based on, and The Wire is the best thing to happen to television since they decided to put a screen on one side. Can’t wait to dig into it.

Rome: The Complete Series $60.99. I needed something to fill that Deadwood void. Came in a nifty book-binding type of case, like a history text full of gore and manipulation.

And the funnest deal of the bunch:

  Ministry – In Case You Didn’t Feel Like Showing Up $3.58. Indispensable live document of their glory days!

Deals and Steals: Juggling Genres

  This shipment from Second Spin is all over the place. Those fine folks missed two of my selections (Eluveitie and Suicidal!) due to an online inventory problem, and actually went to the trouble of emailing me an apology and a coupon. Not bad! Here we go, prices in Cashitos Americanos with nada shipping :

VNV Nation – Of Faith, Power and Glory $8.99. Electronica masterminds continuing down the path of pop.

Prong – Scorpio Rising $4.99. Good price on a “lost” record. Review is already up!

Junkie XL – Radio JXL: A Broadcast from the Computer Hell Cabin $8.99. This is the Koch records version, which I’ve been looking for since I found out my Roadrunner version omits the Elvis remix on the disc pressing. Further inspection reveals other serious differences in tracklists. Stuck with keeping both!

Insane Clown Posse – Bang! Pow! Boom! $7.99. It’s fine. I’m an aficionado of pop culture. It’s not like I go to the Juggalo Gathering or anything. It’s fine.

Behemoth – Evangelion $8.99. Decent pricing on digipak with bonus DVD. Heavy as shit, too.

Deicide – Best of Deicide $7.99. Glen Benton’s contributions to Roadrunner United provoked some curiosity to hear more.

Ozzy Osbourne – Essential Ozzy Remastered $10.99. Nice selection of goodies when the mood strikes to remember when he was a working musician.

And the big enchilada of my unwittingly latin-flavoured batch of spiciness:

  Excessive Force – Conquer Your World $8.99. If you’re a KMFDM fan or someone who wished the recording of the early side-projects was better, rest assured the remasters coming out of Metropolis records are serious improvements with bonus tracks, better artwork and extensive liner notes.

Decade Review: Ten Bands that Rocked the 2000’s

Decade Review: Ten Bands that Rocked the 2000’s 

This isn’t a best-of, more of a reflection on who had a good decade in my musical universe. Some artists are old masters making a comeback, some are newer bands that hit right around the Millennium, and some are just hard-working dudes who cranked out a good ten years’ worth of tunes without having any kind of meltdown. 

1. Amon Amarth – With every record, they just keep getting better and better. Not too shabby, especially when they keep banging them out every 20 months or so like clockwork. While the past few years have been their time to shine, AA’s pagan thunder has people excited to see what’s next.
2. Ministry – After starting the decade in rehab and stumbling out of the gate with Animositisomina, Al Jourgensen roared back into focus with his “Dubya Trilogy”. Ministry’s best moments have always been collaborative, and these supposedly final slabs of finger-pointing are fortified with the likes of Tommy Victor, Burton Bell and Paul Raven (RIP). If he really is done this time, the Alien has capped off his career with head held high. 
3. Iron Maiden – In early 2000 I received a promotional postcard with a picture of Eddie on one side and one sentence on the other: “Bruce is Back.” Exciting, but that wasn’t the whole story, as Dickinson brought songwriting partner Adrian Smith with him and the band kept bonus guitarist Jannick Gers. Now a six-piece, the big boys of metal released three albums in the Zeroes. All of them are long, noodling and by no means The Number of the Beast, but at the same time they are consistently better than anything since Seventh Son. Maiden were also smart enough to realize that the new material isn’t as rousing onstage – their solution was elegant and ingenious: Dust off your ass-kicking 1985 World Tour gear, pack it on your own  jet plane and just do it all over again. This is captured in all its glory in the highly recommended documentary Flight 666.  
4. KMFDM – In 1999 KMFDM released Adios, their farewell album. They’ve cheerfully made fun of this while making six studio albums and about a bazillion singles, remixes and side projects since. Bringing in Lucia Cifarelli brought an end to hired-gun female vocalists as well as adding another songwriter to the fold, and the often underrated Tim Skold had his fingerprints all over their third decade of bold-faced rip offs “conceptual continuity”. Still political, still angry, KMFDM have nonetheless loosened up a bit, presenting a little more Blackadder than black leather. 
5. Amorphis – If Entombed and Chrome Division define Death n’ Roll, Amorphis created a kind of DoomPop with Tuonela, a record filled with the rich textures, lyrical imagery and saxophone (!) you’d normally get from artists associated with the singer/songwriter world. It’s the heaviest U2 album ever made. After that, things got a bit weird with two straight-up psychedelic releases before Eclipse, Silent Waters and Skyforger returned us to the land of the Kalevala with Tomi Joutsen as our upgraded tour guide. By mining the national epic for narrative, Amorphis became a band with stories to tell, the Neil Young of the metal world. 
6. Arch Enemy – Obviously, it’s been a good decade for the “A” section of my shelves, and AE really got cooking with the addition of pint-sized punk menace Angela Gossow. Debate as you will about who did what first, Gossow has become the poster girl for female contributions to extreme metal. She’s made enough of an impression that the Arnotts have retroactively made her the sole vocalist of the band by putting her up front in early-hits redux record The Root of All Evil. Sorry, Johan! The band put out four studio albums in the Aughts (two great, one good, one so-so), toured relentlessly and recorded tons of live material. We don’t know what the Teens will bring, but as of right now, they are Kind of a Big Deal. 
7. Rob Halford – I wonder if the Metal God likes to make lists? If he made one for the 2000’s, it might look a bit like this: Reunite legendary metal band Judas Priest – check. Successful solo records praised for their heaviness (thanks Roy Z!) – check. Clothing line, recording studio – check and check. Just for fun, make a well-received Christmas album – check. Do all of this as a gay man in his fifties – ka-check!
8. In Flames – I’m still learning to love 2004’s Soundtrack to Your Escape (and might never), but otherwise it’s been full speed ahead for the Jesterheads. Arguments over which of Clayman or Reroute to Remain is better are futile, since both are excellent. The choruses have gotten punkier over the years (they do tour with hardcore bands a lot) but the band still lays a firm claim to their piece of the Gothenburg Sound.
9. Danko Jones – He’s “big in Sweden”! Thus Danko complains to typically lackluster Toronto crowds whenever he plays at home. He can be moody with his non-emotive Canadian fans but it hasn’t stopped him from releasing several chunks of straight-up rock. They’ve all got some great numbers on them, and very little filler. Danko’s also one of the few guys operating today who sings about girls without sounding either emo or femicidal.  
10. Apocalyptica – There’s that “A” again. 2000 was the year Apocalyptica stopped depending on cover songs and took off on their own with Cult. Each subsequent release added new elements to the cello quartet’s classical sound: Reflections has drums and a touch of piano, Apocalyptica throws in some vocalists and Worlds Collide finally fully embraces the big goth-rock mess of the genre they basically invented. I’m not as much a fan of the latter album, thinking that they lost some of their unique charm by putting too many kids on the vocal side of the teeter-totter. As a whole, however, they make this list by rising above the tide of “A Gimmick X Tribute to Band Y” to become their own masters.

 Honourable Mention: Motörhead, but then, it’s always their time.