DOOM.

Album: Doom Jazz

Artist: Swami LatePlate

Genre: Doom Jazz

Year: 2007

Label: Veal Records

Over the years, Jamie Saft has proven time and again that he will not be confined to just one music box. He wants to inhabit them all and has undertaken a number of strange and sometimes bewildering projects (Whoopie Pie) in order to stretch himself and the minds of his listeners. I’ve written about a few of them. I initially knew Saft for his piano work with The Jamie Saft Trio, an acoustic Jazz group featuring Greg Cohen (bass) and Ben Perowsky (drums.) Knowing only this side of Mr. Saft, I was surprised when I encountered Veal Records and The Beta Popes. Veal Records is a label that Saft started in order to release various side projects of his, all of which have some kind of dark bent to them and The Beta Popes is a trio he formed with drummer Bobby Previte and saxophonist Skerik. But The Beta Popes don’t traffic in Jazz, they do semi-improvised Death Metal and Saft plays a really crunchy guitar with them. Don’t hold your breath, it only gets weirder from here.

Exploring Veal Records further, I found that Saft had several other gloomy projects of interest on the label, but none piqued my curiosity more than Swami LatePlate, a duo that Saft formed with Bobby Previte from The Beta Popes. The group takes both players back to their Jazz roots, but with an M. Night Shyamalan-like twist. Swami LatePlate plays self-proclaimed “Doom Jazz.”

I know.

Sounds awesome, doesn’t it?

The basic Idea is this: Doom Metal is a brand of Metal based around slower tempos, crushing low-end sound and lyrical themes that evoke… well… a sense of doom. Saft and Previte decided to take that formula and apply it with a Jazz mindset and instruments. In this case, Previte finds himself in his rightful place behind the drum kit and Saft plays both the piano and the electric bass. From what I’ve heard of the duo’s live show, Saft sits at the piano with the bass on his lap and plays them at the same time, but I’m not sure if that’s how they did it on the record. It sounds a little too tight sometimes for that to be the case, but who knows? Ultimately, it doesn’t make a lick of difference whether Saft is in fact playing both at once, he plays them both beautifully and that’s all that matters.

The music on the appropriately titled Doom Jazz is exactly that: Doom-laden Jazz music. I mentioned Metal earlier? This isn’t Jazz meets Metal so much as it is Doom Metal formula meets Jazz. And the great thing is that it works out perfectly. This is an album of shadowy minimalism, of haunting echoes and shifty looks over your shoulder into the darkness beyond. The slow pace and low tuning of the music allows for sense for a sense of dread that is unfamiliar in Jazz. It has a very noir feel to it, and in my personal experience it makes for great night driving music. From the opening drum roll of “Malignant Cloud” to the final piano chord strike of the last and title track, Doom Jazz takes you on a journey through the darkest corners of Saft and Previte’s minds.

There are no words, but the titles of the songs and the liner notes tell a story of a 1984 like prison world where a man named Frank tries desperately to escape from something evil which is keeping him and his fellows prisoner. I don’t know the outcome of Frank's story, but do know that the track “Escape” is followed by the title track, which implies to me that either Frank did indeed escape and this is the credits music, or the Doom Jazz is the very thing he was fleeing from and it has finally caught up with him. I’m shivering just thinking about it. I’m also writing this review in pitch dark and listening to the record as I do. It feels appropriate.

Another thing I don’t know for sure is how improvised is this project. Saft and Previte are both accomplished Improv artists, but some of this sounds too tight to be completely off-the-cuff which makes me think that it’s probably somewhere in between.

There is something about the Doom Jazz concept that isn’t entirely original though. Actually it’s been done before and for a while. A German band called Bohren & Der Club of Gore have been playing a very Doom-like form of Noir Jazz since the 90’s and have released several albums in that style. I’ve even written and posted about one of them on my old blog. But if I had to choose between Swami LatePlate and Der Club of Gore, I’d have to pick Swami LatePlate and here’s why: Bohren may be talented band with a lot going for them but what they don’t have is dynamic drumming or really, dynamic anything. Every single one of their songs uses essentially the same two or three drum sounds and it gets really old, really fast. They have a fantastic saxophone and keyboardist, but their rhythm section just kind of sits there, doing the same thing for minutes on end. If anything, their music can be too minimal. Swami LatePlate on the other hand manages to be both dynamic and spooky, with full kit work from Mr. Previte and Saft’s chilling piano and bass work.

Describing the individual tracks is a little beyond me because they all follow the same formula and still manage to sound different, but I know that my favorites are the opening cut “Malignant Cloud”, “The Forbidden Border” and The already quotation marked “The Bearded Man Cannot Help You.” Of all the Veal Records releases, Swami LatePlate is the one with the most interesting sound and also just the flat-out most listenable. It’s probably my favorite of all of Jamie Saft’s weird little projects and if you like Jazz, you should get this album. If you like Doom, get this album. If you like Bohren & Der Club of Gore, get this album, it’s way better.

Swami Lateplate's Doom Jazz On Myspace

A Live Rendition Of "The Bearded Man Cannot Help You" On Youtube

A Live Rendition Of "Escape" On Youtube

Veal Records On Myspace (Where You Can Buy The Album)

(Making Up For Lost Time) The Horror... The Horror...

STOP: I Highly Recommend That You LISTEN TO ME Read You This Review. The MEDIA PLAYER Is Located Near The Bottom Of The Review, Before The Links. Enjoy!

Album: Primary Colours

Artist: The Horrors

Genre: Death/Shoegazer Rock

Year: 2009

Label: XL

The Horrors seem to have the world in the palm of their hand. Critics love them (NME, Drowned In Sound;) they’ve got cult-like followers and the admiration of elder statesmen of the music world (Geoff Barrow, Trent Reznor). On top of that they’ve got a great sound, chock full of gothic darkness and shoegazy textures and, as if that weren’t enough, they’re young, having only existed for four years. All of that is fairly respectable and makes me wonder what’s wrong with this picture. But even I’m quashing my inner cynic for this one, because, ultimately, I like The Horrors. Sure they’re not my favorite band in the world, but I’ve found this album, Primary Colours, strangely addictive and fun to listen to and since anyone worth their salt would need more convincing than that, I’ll take you on a tour as best I can.

We are living in an era of Post-Punk revivalism, as clearly demonstrated by bands like Interpol (Joy Division,) Bloc Party (Gang Of Four, whether they like it or not,) Romance (Sisters Of Mercy AND Gang Of Four) and now, The Horrors who don’t so much revive Post-Punk as they break into the graveyard where it’s buried, unearth the coffin and make off with it into the night. They then take the corpse down to the lab, where, using a mixture of dark science and a borderline unhealthy dose of guitar feedback, they resurrect Post-Punk. Then, they begin to begin to tinker with it.

The Horror’s sound is not unique by any means, but it is a fun amalgam of what has come before, in this case Gothic Rock mixed with Shoegazer. The darkness of the sound and the lyrical themes recall Goth at it’s best, but the guitars and synths come from the My Bloody Valentine side of the park. As with MBV, The Horror’s guitars and synths are all about the texture. They want you to not so much hear the sound, as they want you to feel it. And you do. Listening to (and feeling) the music is sort of like being immersed in shimmering waves of darkness and light that warp and twist around you like smoke in the wind.

The darkness is not oppressive, however, and unlike My Bloody Valentine, whose guitar waves threaten to drown you, The Horrors seem to understand restraint. Or, more accurately, Geoff Barrow (of Portishead) knows how to restrain them. In his role as producer, Barrow seems to have allowed The Horrors to blossom into a dark flower, that only here and there needs trimming. From what I understand about their relationship, Barrow’s job was to reign in The Horrors when they took something too far, rather then to help shape their sound. Ultimately, Barrow’s greatest contribution to the album may be that his stamp of approval is one of the things that convinced me to pick it up.

The problem with The Horrors first album, Strange House, with the exception of their cover of the Screaming Lord Sutch song “Jack The Ripper,” was that none of the songs were particularly memorable and the band’s choice of influences to display made them sound like a bad combination of Christian Death and the Ramones. It would be fine to try and combine those two, but the overall effect of Strange House was one of monotony. Primary Colours is a welcome change in that all the songs manage to sound different from one another and Faris Badwan, the band’s vocalist, has, for the most part, dropped the horrible scream he employed on so much of Strange House in favor of a more varied delivery. His voice is a gothic drone on the epic love song “I Only Think Of You,” an agonized bark on the deranged “New Ice Age” and a dream-like mutter on the synthesized wash of “Scarlet Fields.” All of these voices are still noticeably Badwan though, and that’s a good thing.

There are a lot of great cuts on Primary Colours. All the songs I’ve previously mentioned are good ones but my personal favorite is the dark spiral of “I Can’t Control Myself” which sounds like the band on a ship, sliding and slipping on the wet deck as they try to cling both aboard and to their own sanity. Another excellent cut is the eight minute closer “Sea Within A Sea” which apes the atmospherics of Joy Division and the synthesized shadows of Suicide and combines them into one of the Horrors’ best songs and a great way to close out the album.

Sadly, this album is not a perfect masterwork and is, rather incredibly, nearly done in by a single track. That track is the third song on the album: “Who Can Say” which begins as a simple apology song to an ex-girlfriend, but during the bridge I nearly lost my shit. The music mostly stops, except for the drums and a distorted guitar line. Over this Faris Badwan speaks “and when I told her I didn’t love her anymore, she cried” and then “and when I told her that her kisses were not like before, she cried” and continues “and when I told her another girl had caught my eye, she cried” and finally “and then I kissed her with a kiss that could only mean goodbye.” Then the music starts back up again like nothing ever happened. My description isn’t going to do it justice; you’ll have to hear it to fully understand just how pretentious he sounds when he does this. He doesn’t sing it, he speaks it and there’s an echo effect on his voice. It sounds abominably insincere and makes you want to gag. It is with this song that I’m reminded of how ridiculous this band can be. I really hope that they weren’t taking themselves seriously with “Who Can Say” because if they were, that’s cause for alarm.

But overall, Primary Colours is still a great album chock full of great songs. It is thus far the band’s best work and it stands up to repeated listens, which goes along way towards The Horrors being more than a flash in the pan. Just please, for the love of god, skip “Who Can Say.” This album would have worked just fine without it and you’re not missing anything (except maybe some cringing) by not listening to it.

The Horrors On Myspace

The Album Is (In Pieces) On Youtube

Band Website

Buy the Album

Jubilee: ROCK'N'FUCKINGROLL Part. 2 (Five Weeks Later...)

(This review will make much more sense if you've read the one previous to it.)

Picking up right where we left off…

Album: In With The Out Crowd Single

Genre: Hard Rock

Year: 2008

Label: Buddyhead

Consisting almost exclusively of hard rockers, The In With The Out Crowd Single has a far heavier sound to it than Rebel Hiss did. It (of course) starts off with the title track, a song about being stuck in L.A. with all the people who go to L.A. to make it big and wind up working in diners or something. It’s a more down beat song than the explosive “Rebel Hiss” but it rocks just as hard, featuring more fuzzy, distorted guitar goodness from North and Lynn. The first b-side on “In With The Out Crowd” takes a turn for the more experimental direction. Sounding more Industrial than anything else Jubilee has thus far set to tape, “I Don’t Have An Excuse, I Just Need A Little Help” features programmed drums from Trent Reznor and backing vocals from Maynard James Keenan of TooL, both of which, along with Michael Shuman’s rough bass line and North’s jagged guitars, make it the darkest sounding Jubilee song in existence.

The third track is the humorous “Jenny Artichoke” which lyrically sounds like something The Presidents Of The United States Of America could have come up with and even features hand claps. It’s the most fun and funny song Jubilee’s recorded work, which contrasts heavily with “I Don’t Have An Excuse, I Just Need A Little Help.” Following that is the bone shaking, ground pounding “Pioneers Get Shot With Arrows” which stomps up and down the room just daring for someone to challenge it to a fight. It could kick your ass too. The final song on the single another cover, Jubilee’s take on The Who’s “Someone’s Coming” which to my knowledge is not a famous Who song at all. But it’s a good one, or at least the Jubilee version is, bent and twisted as it is by North and Lynn’s guitars.

The music of Jubilee is undeniably fantastic; it’s all the stuff after the music that causes confusion. Shortly following their tour of England, Shuman and Lynn left the band to go back to Wires On Fire (which doesn’t make any sense to me, because compared to Jubilee, Wires On Fire suck,) so North hooked up with Tony Bevilacqua (of Spinnerette, formerly of The Distillers) and Jenni Tarma (of Har Mar Superstar.) He also got a permanent drummer in the form of former Icarus Line drummer Troy "Boy" Petrey. This new line-up actually doesn’t sound half bad, but they’ve yet to tour and Jubilee hasn’t released anything new in a while. Which brings up the question: where’s the album? It’s been close to two years since the first single was released and if the album’s going to be anything like it, then it’s bound to be good. So what are you waiting for North? Hit us with this bad boy!

End of Review.

Note: If you want to make purchase of Jubilee’s material, you can only do it from their website. You have to be a member of their online club thing to get The Who and Replacements covers, but if you just want the first four tracks from each single, it rounds out to about $6.00. Good deal for this music.

Jubilee: ROCK'N'FUCKINGROLL Part. 1

Artist: Jubilee

Somewhere between the fall of Grunge and the rise of Indie Rock, I feel we as a people lost our faith in good, loud, RockNFuckingRoll. Jubilee is a band that, without a doubt, restores that faith. There’s something extremely life affirming about nice, fuzzy chords played at 11 and this band provides plenty of them. Led by Aaron North, Jubilee has already gone through several line-ups and incarnations in its short lifespan, but now the dust seems to have settled and they’ve come to a place of stability. Which is good, but the incarnation that provided us with these two singles is gone, leaving me to wonder if the new incarnation will be as good. But the truth is that, while Aaron North is in the band, you’re in good hands as long as you’re not a guitar. In that case, I’d start worrying about whether or not I’m going to get smashed.

Aaron North used to be in a Punk band called the Icarus Line, which is where he started to develop his mastery of feedback and distortion drenched guitar antics, but he’s probably best known for being the lead guitarist of Nine Inch Nails between 2005 and 2007, during which he destroyed an unfathomable number of guitars, amps and mic stands. Because he could. He was a very appropriate guitarist for Nine Inch Nails too. Clad in black leather, perpetually greasy haired and destructive as fuck, Aaron North was one of the highlights of my very first concert experience: Nine Inch Nails at the Key Arena in 2005, during which I watched him practically dance with his guitar. Granted, it was a very violent dance and it ended with him impaling an amplifier before pushing it off stage, but it was awesome. A musician friend of mine noted: he doesn’t so much “play” as “use” the guitar and he uses it very well.

After leaving Nine Inch Nails, North joined up with Michael Shuman (Queens of The Stone Age & Wires On Fire) and Jeff Lynn (Wires On Fire) to form the absurdly happy sounding (in name) Jubilee. Unlike the skuzzy Punk of The Icarus Line or the Industrial Rock nihilism of Nine Inch Nails, Jubilee is a Rock ‘N’ Roll band with a fairly wide palette of influences that they bring to bear. An early self-promotion for the band described them as sounding “something like The Replacements, The Stone Roses, Neil Young, Blur, Jane's Addiction, Bob Dylan, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and The Verve, all sliced ‘n diced together quite nicely." That’s a lot to try and incorporate into your sound at once and while there’s truth in what they’re saying, to me, they just sound like a really loud Rock ‘N’ Roll band. Which suits me just fine. Aaron North is, again, at the core of the sound, being the lead vocalist and guitarist. His choice of guitar sounds range from “loud ‘N’ fuzzy” to “extremely loud ‘N’ fuzzy”” and it sounds awesome.

Album: Rebel Hiss Single

Year: 2008

Genre: Hard Rock

Label: Buddyhead

In preparation for the up-coming album, the band has released these two five song singles, each one featuring a song from the album as well as an assortment of B-sides and a few covers. The band at the time had yet to find a stable drummer, so revolving doors of talented skin-hitters play on the singles. The length of the two singles causes them to come off more like EP’s but that’s fine, the more music from this band the better. The first of these two singles is the Rebel Hiss Single, the title track of which is an explosive and surprisingly up beat Rock song that introduces the band very nicely and features the drum talents of Josh Freese. Aaron North’s voice isn’t the most spectacular thing you’ve ever heard, but it falls into that place that Iggy Pop once talked about in reference to Lou Reed and Himself: “He can’t sing! I can’t sing! Let’s Sing!”

As an opening single, “Rebel Hiss” gets us off to a great start with it’s uplifting guitars, but it is immediately shown up by its first b-side “Fuzz Are Down” which starts off quietly enough, just the ticking of drum sticks, before it bursts into Jubilee’s absolute best song thus far. Featuring tumbling drums courtesy of Loren Humphrey and some excellent feedback warping from North’s guitar, “Fuzz Are Down” is actually somewhat ironically named, given the amount of fuzz on the track. The bridge of the song is a great demonstration of this, with North’s guitar having a little fit as it’d brought too close to it’s amplifier. It’s kind of funny to me that the first b-side of the first single is actually better than the single itself, but it doesn’t seem to do any harm so there’s no problem.

The rest of the Rebel Hiss Single consists of one more original Jubilee song and two covers. The original song is the almost acoustic “The Fool On the Pill” a short little head-nodder about drug addiction, featuring North at his calmest. The two covers are both fairly ambitious in the form of Neil Young’s “L.A.” & The Replacement’s “Androgynous.” I’ve never heard the original of “L.A.” but Jubilee’s version is another strong rocker with Aaron North singing odes to Los Angeles and asking “Don’t you wish that you could be here too?” The Replacements cover, though, I have heard before. It pleases me that Jubilee’s version is just as good as the original, though some people will probably balk at Aaron North singing it seeing as how Paul Westerberg has a bit of a less ragged voice. But I think North’s voice fits the song well. Instead of a piano, Jubilee performs the song on two acoustic guitars and a harmonica, which gives it a folkier feel than the original. Overall, the Rebel Hiss Single is a great introduction to Jubilee and will rock your socks off, but if it’s possible to believe, the second single, In With The Out Crowd, rocks even harder.

To Be Continued…

Jubilee On Myspace

Band Website

Jubilee Store

My Inner Goth Is Crying

Album: Walking With Strangers

Artist: The Birthday Massacre

Genre: Synth/Goth Rock

Year: 2007

Label: Metropolis Records

I’ve made a bet with myself. I win if I can get through this entire review only referencing the clothing store Hot Topic once.

Ahem, where to begin? The Birthday Massacre are a… err… “synthgothrock band” from Toronto, Canada. I put that in quotes because their worthiness of the title of “band” is questionable at best. I knew the first moment I heard those initial gaudy 80’s synthesizers that this band would be trouble, but I also knew that this would be fun to write, so let’s not waste time. The Birthday Massacre is one of those bands that make me start to lose faith in humanity. They’re not Creed or Limp Bizkit bad by any means, but they’re a candy coated ear sore that’s just waiting to turn into a full blown infection. You know the kind of bad, the kind that causes headaches, dizziness and insanity. Yeah, that kind of bad. If Wikipedia is correct, the Massacre has been going on for aboot (Canada joke) ten years now and that sort of frightens me. Mainly because this album, released in 2007, sounds like it was born out the worst elements of the eighties if those synth sounds are to be believed. Good thing I don’t believe them. No really, this is bad. We’re supposed to have progressed beyond the programmed synth pop that polluted the 80’s airwaves, but this band seems intent on resurrecting that corpse.

With The Birthday Massacre, I’ve found a lot to hate in a very short amount of time, to the point where I hardly know where to start. I’m not apoplectic at how bad this is, just stunned. The problem here is a combination of highly synthesized over production, cheesy musicianship and, my absolute favorite part, bleeding heart vocals that just about make me want to slash my wrists. Which is, of course, exactly what The Birthday Massacre wants, seeing as how they fall into a place awkwardly reserved between emotional scene kids, glitzy 80’s pop creatures and Hot Topic Goths.

Uh-oh.

Relying on synthesizers in your music isn’t a bad thing when done with class, but The Birthday Massacre wouldn’t know class if it came up and bit them in the ass. Hey, that rhymes. I didn’t actually know that emo could sound this glitzy but apparently you can do anything with a bad synthesizer.

There came a day some time ago where we made the split between Industrial Rock and Industrial Dance Music and very rarely do we see the two brought back together effectively anymore, and I feel The Birthday Massacre are doing an excellent job of FAILING at this task. Songs like “Science” try to make Industrial Synth Rock poppy and it comes off in the most sickening way possible. That’s not even the worst example though. The opening track “Kill The Lights” has possibly the most gut wrenchingly cheese ball synth intro of anything on this album. I know I keep referencing the eighties disparagingly in this review, but that’s what the sound calls to mind, on “Kill The Lights” more than any other song. I can’t help but imagine the opening credits of the worst eighties movie you’ve seen rolling as it plays. That and the “Take On Me” music video… Anyways…

The thing that ties all this cheesiness and insincerity together is the blasted vocals. Most of the members of The Birthday Massacre go by aliases. The vocalist calls herself “Chibi.” Small and cute huh? I think not. From a pop standpoint, this girl’s got a great voice, because it’s non-threatening. She sounds like she could even be one of those horrible, plastic, dancing… things… currently being passed off as musicians. But no, here she is trying with all her might to be the female Marilyn Manson circa Mechanical Animals. And failing. Chibi’s vocals are in a strange way, the absolute worst part of the music, because they convey the lyrics to us. The band is trying really hard to get this Alice-in-Wonderland-Gone-Wrong story arc across and it just comes off as a bad B-movie script, and I don’t mean Misfits or Schoolyard Heroes B-movie cause that would be fine. This is more like Paris Hilton in House Of Wax bad. If Chibi really wanted us to feel terror, sympathy or sadness, then perhaps she should try experiencing some of those emotions. She sounds like she’s reading these words off the page for the first time. The combination of insincerity in the vocals and the horrible “bad fairy tale” vibe of the lyrics bring this whole mess to a screechy halt. Another awful example of this band’s transgressions against music is track 5 “Red Stars” which is an attempt by the band to mix Industrial Metal with Pop vocals. I wanna say… DO. NOT. WANT.

Okay. I think I’ve made my point, but just to summarize: this is the kind of band scene kids listen to in order to think themselves dark and tormented when in reality, they’re just mall Goths with too much time on their hands and not enough understanding of what brought us to the current trend in gothic music. I don’t think that The Birthday Massacre effectively understands their forefathers or mothers either. This is depressing to me. Once upon a time, being a Goth meant you listened to bands like Killing Joke, The Birthday Party, Joy Division and Siouxsie & the Banshees. Now, if it means something like The Birthday Massacre, I want no part of it. My inner Goth is crying, I think it’s his bedtime. Hopefully, The Birthday Massacre will get a clue and put themselves to rest before more harm can be done.

BTW. I win.

I'm required by professionalism to provide these inks:

The Birthday Massacre On MySpace

The Whole Album is on YouTube

Band Website

(Don't) Buy The Album

Everything Must Converge

Album: Axe To Fall

Artist: Converge

Genre: Metalcore/Mathcore

Year: 2009

Label: Epitaph

Heavy music and I are good friends; it gives me good records and I give it my praise in return. It amazes me to think back to the beginning. System of a Down, Nine Inch Nails, TooL. The heavy bands of my youth still earn my respect and praise, but over the years my tastes have warped and changed as I continue to research and grow. I’ve gone through various phases in this journey through music. I’ve done Metal, Industrial, Punk, Noise and everything in between. I feel that my experiences with the various genres I’ve been obsessed with have taught me many things, I learned I liked things heavy from Metal, I learned I liked darkness from Industrial. Punk taught me that you didn’t have to be a world-class musician to make good music and Noise taught me that our conceptions of what good music is don’t have to fall into the Pop song box. I feel as though today, I’ve reached a point of eclecticism that allows me to jump from Sludge Metal to Outlaw Country to Folk Rock to Noise Punk and back again. But the heavy darker sides of music will always have a strong place in my heart.

I’ve been told twice recently that Death Metal isn’t music, twice I’ve had opportunities to defend heavy music and twice I’ve kept my mouth shut. Now, I may not love Death Metal per say, but I hate it when people write off an entire genre of music based on the fact that it is both loud and heavy, two things which I think make lots of music great. Seeing as how I faltered in the line of duty as an opinionated music putz, I thought I’d share with you a piece of heaviness that landed on my foot recently and nearly crushed it. When I picked it up, I realized it was a new album by Converge, whom, if you think Death Metal isn’t music, you should stay the fuck away from because they put Death Metal to shame. Converge is, for me, part of the trifecta of Metalcore/Mathcore that also includes The Dillinger Escape Plan and Botch. While Dillinger is the culmination of the Jazz influenced Mathcore construct and Botch is the logical conclusion of any band forced to grow up in Tacoma (loud and angry,) Converge is quite possibly the most powerful of the three as they have longevity, iconography and raw musical ferocity backing them up.

Converge has been around since 1990 but didn’t enter into my orbit till last year, when, while doing research on the history of Mathcore, I ran across their album Jane Doe, which has been hailed as their best album by many. After listening to it a few times, I can see why. What Converge established with Jane Doe was the benchmark by which all Metalcore and Mathcore must be measured. Something like what Sleep’s Dopesmoker is for Stoner Metal, Jane Doe is for Metalcore and Mathcore. It’s even more impressive to realize that all of the albums they’ve released since Jane Doe have lived up to the standard they themselves set. I haven’t heard You Fail Me, but I acquired No Heroes on the basis of Jane Doe’s brilliance and was not disappointed. But this new album, Axe To Fall, has done something theoretically impossible by taking the benchmark Jane Doe set and raising it higher. To put it simply, Axe To Fall is better than Jane Doe.

Jane Doe’s biggest weakness was its production values. They were good for a Hardcore Punk band, but in creating that album, Converge stepped out of the confinements of that genre and into something new entirely. Since then they’ve been better, but Axe To Fall is the best they’ve ever sounded. The clearness of sound allows you to better visualize the impending destruction about to be visited upon your head by Jacob Bannon and company. On Axe To Fall, Converge sounds like the pain and misery of a beaten and broken human being turning into blades as his chance for revenge on the world that wronged him comes within his grasp, and it sounds sweet. The album kicks off with the awesome “Dark Horse” which establishes two things: 1: Converge haven’t gotten any less angry. 2: If you can’t handle this, you should leave now because the punishment is only just beginning. “Dark Horse” is one of those songs I could listen to for hours, its driving rhythm and cutting guitars having burned themselves into my brain on the first listen. It’s up there with “Homewrecker” from Jane Doe in terms of favorite Converge songs of mine.

“Dark Horse” is also one of the few tracks on the album not involving a guest musician. Axe To Fall features an armada of Converge’s friends and allies, some providing backing vocals, some taking up guitar duties and some just standing around looking cool. I’ve gotten the impression that Converge could have pulled off this album without any guests, but wanted to include their friends in the making of this masterpiece. That’s fine, seeing as how they don’t detract from it and rather add to some of the already epic songs by making them even more epic. This band has been together a long time and they play like a whirlwind of glass shards and razorblades, each one screaming as they slice through the air and your ears. Jacob Bannon, the voice and visual mastermind of Converge, is a screamer to be sure, but his scream sounds far from human most of the time. It’s not a screamo scream (he could eat those fuckers for breakfast,) it’s more like listening to the cries of some great bird of doom as it descends upon its prey. It’s the kind of thing you don’t want to hear late at night as move across the open plains because if you do, it means your body is about to get cleaved messily in twain by a massive pair of talons. On Axe To Fall, Bannon has moments of utter clarity though, where it is possible to not only separate the man from the bird, but even understand what he’s saying. If anything, he’s getting better at singing, though the great bird does make appearances and they are most welcome.

Axe To Fall comes off as an album without a weak track, though some do rise above the rest and one requires a little explaining. Some of my favorites include the slower death march of “Worms Will Feed / Rats Will Feast” which is another song that features only the core members of Converge. The track is a perfect example of slow Converge, with Kurt Ballou laying down riffs of heaviness that will make your blood shiver. Bannon is in top form on this take as well, alternating between his main bird scream and a more human howl. Clocking in at close to six minutes, it’s one of the longest songs on the album, but its weight makes it one of the best. Another favorite is the aggressive “Reap What You Sow” which features ex-Hatebreed guitarist Sean Martin on lead guitar. I may not be a fan of Hatebreed, but Sean Martin earned my respect as the main collaborator on Cage’s Depart From Me, so I’m certainly willing to let him have this one. Good thing too, as his slice of guitar malice is wicked.

Again though, there isn’t a weak track on Axe To Fall, but there is one oddity for Converge. The slower, acoustic (yes you read that correctly) “Cruel Bloom” sounds less like Converge than it does something that would have come out of a Supermachiner session or maybe something Nick Cave would have recorded during his Doom Folk phase of life, if he’d been able to get the Steve Von Till of Neurosis on vocals, which the boys from Converge have for this take. The piece is lilting and haunting, and eventually explodes into proper Converge pyrotechnics, but still sounds unusual for them. However, it does sound like it belongs on the album and it comes in pretty close to the end, providing a bit of respite from the rage and fury of the rest of the album, like the calm after a storm.

Overall, Converge have crafted another masterwork that everyone with an appreciation for heavy music should give a listen. To all haters of things heavy and loud, beware, Converge is out there and they’re coming for you.

Here are some links for you to follow:

Converge On Myspace

The Whole Album Is On Youtube

Band Website

Buy The Album

Cage: Beyond Bizkitism

Album: Depart From Me

Artist: Cage

Genre: Underground Hip-Hop

Year: 2009

Label: Definitive Jux

Rarely have I seen such division between fans as I have between Cage fans. One camp desperately clings to the past, because according to them, Cage “used to be” a dope MC, he “used to be” awesome. To them, Movies For The Blind was Cage’s finest work and everything he’s done since then is shit, Emo and boring. They see the steps Cage has taken to get a hold of life and career as some sort of detriment and the brilliant work he has done recently as somehow backwards. And then there’s the other camp, the one I occupy, who understand that the aforementioned camp is a bunch of mentally deficient assholes that listen to Insane Clown Posse and think they know everything. All joking aside, Cage is an artist who has impressed the hell out of me. Considering how strong his last album, Hell’s Winter, was, I’m more than a little stunned that the new one, Depart From Me, is even better.

Cage was once a Horrorcore stuntman who knew how to do little else besides trying to gross you out. These days, he’s still out to give you chills, but not in the shocking for the sake of being shocking sake kind of way. These days he’s all about storytelling and while the stories are still dark; the nature of the beast has changed. Even on Hell’s Winter there were still moments of gore and shock for the sake of gory shock. But Depart From Me has almost completely dispensed with both gore and shock entirely. The result is that this is the strongest Cage has ever been lyrically. I like poetic Hip-Hop and Cage seems to finally have realized his potential in this department. Additionally, Cage’s stories have become a bit more… accessible. Where as most of the stories on Hell’s Winter were specific to his life and therefore hard to identify with sometimes, Cage has adopted a way of talking about things that allows more people to tune in. He’s still telling stories about his life and woes, but I personally found it easier to grasp this time around.

The other major change this time is the structure and form of the music. Hell’s Winter was all over the place musically, mainly due to the fact that there were at least five different producers working on it. Depart From Me feels much more focused as the majority of the production and music comes from one source. That source is probably Cage’s strangest collaborator to date, Sean Martin, the guitarist of Hatebreed. I’ve never listened to Hatebreed once in my life, and while I doubt highly that this album sounds anything like them, I have to tip my hat to Martin for some brilliant production. Some people (who will not be named) claim that by indulging in more live instrumentation and relying more on synths and guitars rather than sampling, Cage is regressing back into Rap Rock or something horrible like that. Calling this album Rap Rock is about a laughable as calling it Horrorcore for it is neither. Just because you have an actual guitar and like to rap isn’t a sign of Bizkitism, really, people can be so closed-minded some times.

Cage’s delivery has morphed to fit the music better too. He still Raps most of the time, but he also speaks, screams and even sings. He’s blurring the line between Indie Rocker and Hip-Hop artist in a fascinating way. This album is not genre defying, but it certainly is genre bending. Cage has created something that combines Underground Hip-Hop, Indie Rock, Pseudo-Industrial, Spoken Word and Punk. What the fuck am I supposed to call that? Anyways. Another interesting thing about the album is that, unlike Hell’s Winter, Depart From Me has no features. This is Cage’s show in its entirety and he doesn’t give up the mic for anyone. Good thing too. This being Cage’s strongest work, no one could possibly feature on the album and not seem to be intruding.

Now, Highlights. At fourteen tracks, the album is littered with great songs and very little filler. In fact the only track I would define as “Filler” is the 2:09 long “Kick Rocks” which seems more like a skit than a song. Every other track feels strong, even the short ones. You’ve got the bitter opener “Nothing Left To Say” which is both our introduction to this evolved Cage and a requiem for Camu Tao, a deceased Rapper and friend of Cage’s. Cage has claimed that “Nothing Left To Say” sounded a bit like Nine Inch Nails, but I disagree. The track that really apes NIN is track 13 “Depart From Me” the chorus and chords of which sounds like it was written by Trent Reznor for Cage to sing. Funny thing is, it sounds great on him, so much so that I think Reznor should produce Cage’s next album… or EP… please?

Three other great moments include: “Captain Bumout” which demonstrates Cage’s maturity more than any other track, being about how there is more to life than “being in a club and getting drunk.” “Fat Kids Need An Anthem” I don’t know whether or not I’m allowed to think this is funny, but it’s Cage’s story of how he used to be overweight it’s the only moment of reprieving humor on the album amongst the gloom. “I Never Knew You” the closing track on the album is by far the most unsettling song I have heard in a long time. The intro states that “this song was written by a serial killer” and it sounds like it. In the song, Cage sings from the perspective of a man stalking a woman to her house, where he breaks in and kills her, because he’s in love with her. Obviously fiction, it’s still a really scary song and is probably, musically, the best track on the whole album. The chorus gives me chills every time I hear it: “it’s like the sky opened and God gave you directly to me.” If Depart From Me is Cage’s Downward Spiral, then “I Never Knew You” is his “Hurt.” If that makes sense. Cage’s evolution as an artist is a powerful thing to witness and from the sounds of it, he’s not slowing down anytime soon. If you like dark music, Underground Hip-Hop or both, I strongly recommend this album to you. Enjoy.

Cage On Myspace

Assorted Depart From Me Related Youtube Videos

Buy The Album