Album review: High On Fire's "Electric Messiah"

HIGH ON FIRE

*Electric Messiah*

(E1 Music)

No metalhead seems to be working harder than guitarist/singer-songwriter Matt Pike: Fresh off the success of his other band’s first full-length release in 20 years (Sleep’s “The Sciences”) comes the eighth studio album from his more linear outfit. Opening track “Spewn From The Earth” and title track “Electric Messiah” are uptempo burners with a relentless drumline and fuzzed out power-chords reverberating to the point where it’s not clear where notes begin or end. Pike’s beyond gruffy vocal delivery is lost in this sludgy mix to hypnotic effect. Mid-tempo tracks like “Steps Of The Ziggurat/House Of Enlil” (clocking over nine minutes) and “Sanctioned Annihilation” allow space for the tribal drumming to build. The latter track features the most rhythmic instrumentation with its use of double-bass drumming and syncopated chord strumming. “The Witch And The Christ” is another textured and multi-tempo arrangement that allows drummer Des Kensel to lead the way amid Pike’s fully throated declarations. Where Sleep’s droning ethos causes introspection and daydreaming, High On Fire is the much-needed rude awakening that always seems to follow.
Link to print version of this review that appeared in the January 2019 issue of Illinois Entertainer. Navigate PDF to page 24.

7/10

-Jason Scales

Album Review: Deafheaven's "Ordinary Corrupt Human Love"

DEAFHEAVEN

*Ordinary Corrupt Human Love*

(Anti-Records)

Deafheaven’s fourth album *Ordinary Corrupt Human Love* is the band’s least brutal, the album that more evenly balances the beautiful guitar harmonies with the incoherent Banshee wails of singer George Clarke. Grindcore passages still exist during the seven-song, one hour playtime, but grooves instead of brutality seems to take precedence, most evident on “Honeycomb.” Opener  “You Without End” sets this tone as a song with a piano riff backbone amid guest vocalist Nadia Kury reading passages from a short story by Oakland author Tom McElravey--passages that celebrate the ordinary yet sublime moments of life, such as a flock of geese flying by. The early guitar interplay on “Canary Yellow” is an audio example of this seemingly ordinary beauty, with hardcore metal movements developing later during the song’s 12-minute playtime. “Near” is a dreamy, shoe-gazer ballad featuring clean vocal harmonies, and “Night People” again relies on piano and female vocals for maximum atmospheric effects.

The original print version of this review appeared in the October 2018 issue of Illinois Entertainer magazine: Click link and navigate the PDF file to page 55.

Album review: The Something Brothers' "Apollo"

The Something Brothers

*Apollo*

(Argosy Records)

The Something Brothers have gotten the band back together again. After first gaining national attention in the early 1990s, the Bloomington-Normal based five-piece returns with a crisply produced 10-track album *Apollo.* The title track is a soaring appeal for refuge from a crazy world: “Apollo help me hide away / where I can find some peace from this insanity,” frontman Scott Lee Wilson sings over richly layered guitar, drum and bass. “Fuzzle” is an exuberant rocker loaded with 1980s pop culture references and the catchiest guitar chord progression on the album. The band can be quirky too, as on the upbeat and rockabilly-twinged “Tree Full of Bees.” The guitar interplay is hectic and herky jerky and matches the lyrics, at times sung with a slight country twang: This metaphorical tree of bees “makes us smile /It keeps us young / Just like good drugs / It’s something not to be afraid of / It’s alive.” “Semi precious” is a self-deprecating, tears-in-my-beer rocker about hard-knocks. The lyrics “it’s been one on the chin after one on the chin after one on the chin” fade into a wall-of-sound guitar finale. The Bros get edgy and topical on “Burn The Evidence,” a rollicking help wanted ad for a “gun for hire”: “What to do with the body of the President? / Roll it up in a rug and burn the evidence.”

Appearing Dec. 15 at Martyr's in Chicago. Visit band's webpage for more information about album sales, including formats available.

Link to the original version of this review--appearing in the October 2018 issue of Illinois Entertainer magazine. Click the link the navigate PDF file to page 26.

Concert Review: Sleep at the Riviera Theatre, Chicago

SLEEP
Riviera Theatre, Chicago
Aug. 1, 2018
Roughly 24 hours prior to, and seven miles north of, a sort of anti-Lolla pre-party occurred at the Riviera Theatre. Not that Sleep is officially opposed to outdoor festivals, it's just that you can be assured that the 25-year veterans of (take your pick) sludge/doom/stoner metal would never be a part of Grant Park's Lollapalooza. Wrong crowd, different worlds.

Matt Pike

Coincidental scheduling aside, Sleep is touring to support its album "The Sciences," the band's first full-length release in 20 years. During a 90-minute, eight-song set, the three-piece of guitarist Matt Pike, bassist-singer Al Cisneros and drummer Jason Roeder, played four of these new songs.
After 15 minutes of pre-concert recordings of NASA astronaut chatter over the PA, the band punctuated its spaceman motif with opener "Marijuanaut's Theme," a bombastic power-chord trip through space that layers crashing cymbals, thudding base and fuzzed-out guitar reverberations built around elemental blues riffs. 

Pike's deliberate down-strokes accentuated the slow grooves on "Sonic Titan" and other songs, but at times the momentum ground to a halt, especially at the end of 10-minute "The Clarity": Cisneros's sludgy bass solo, although captivating in its crunchy sound, left the near-capacity crowd stunned into submission. These lulls in energy perhaps are inevitable when song compositions reach a certain length: Sleep builds such momentum with repetitious and mesmerizing riffage and drum rhythms that oftentimes song endings harshed the crowd's buzz. The band of course needed a breather between each marathon.

Al Cisneros

Instrumentals are the band's forte (Cisneros's vocals were mixed a tad low), and "The Botanist" allowed ever-shirtless Pike space to forgo chords for extended solos in a nearly anachronistic display of guitar god prowess.
"Giza Butler," off the new album, closed the concert with its tale of the CBDeacon performing his cannabis sacraments, references not lost in the crowd above which, swirling in the green and purple lights, hung a smoky haze since the first notes of  "Marijuanaut's Theme" rung out.



CONCERT SET LIST
Marijuanaut's Theme
Holy Mountain
The Clarity
Sonic Titan
Leagues Beneath
The Botanist
Dragonaut
Encore: Giza Butler 

Link to review of the album "The Sciences"

Album Review: Poster Children's "Grand Bargain!"

POSTER CHILDREN

*Grand Bargain!*

(Lotuspool)

The current political-social climate has inspired many artists to add their voices to the din: so enter Poster Children, the darlings of the Champaign-Urbana alternative music scene since the late 1980s. The band has always been socially conscious and now, nearly 15 years since their last album, they prove to be again. In the title track, in the band’s vintage post-punk style, singer Rick Valentin points out, “In the land of the free market and the home of the wage slave / It’s not the robots you need to worry about, it’s the corporate humans.” “World’s Insane” tries to rally hope in the face of confounding events (“We are standing upright in a world turned upside down / We have got to stick together / We have got to stand our ground”). With a slower rocking tempo, “Devil And The Gun” takes a more pessimistic approach (“Find a quiet place for the ones you love / There’s no escape from the devil with the gun”). Valentin’s urgent vocals seem to hit a manic crescendo in “Brand New Country”: “Who are these strangers who let all these heretics in? / Where are the heroes? And where are the true citizens? / I think it’s time this experiment came to an end.”  Issues aside, the band is at its musical best when vocal harmonies between Valentin and bassist Rose Marshack are featured, as on “Lucky Ones,” a brooding, pure pop rock track, and on “Hippy Hills,” an upbeat, nostalgic trip to childhood that has the duet singing: “The best years of our lives / I’m going home / The way things never were.”

7/10

Link to print version of this review that appeared in the July 2018 issue of Illinois Entertainer magazine. Click the link and navigate to page 32.

Poster Children at Lincoln Hall in Chicago, June 29, 2018.

Concert Review: Primus and Mastodon, June 6, 2018--Chicago's Northerly Island

Concert Review:  Primus and Mastodon--Huntington Bank Pavilion at Northerly Island, Chicago, June 6, 2018

On paper and in concert, this is an odd bill: Primus, a quirky and influential alternative band from the 1990s, touring with Mastodon, a contemporary metal band at the peak of its career. In common, both bands stuck to their artistic visions.
Headliners Primus, led by bass virtuoso Les Claypool who virtually reinvented how to play the instrument, mixed songs most fans came to hear (from 1989’s “Frizzle Fry” album, for example) with songs from its latest album (“The Desaturating Seven”), which most fans merely humored.

The band’s ninth studio album is an indulgent art-rock project from Claypool: a concept album based on the children’s book “The Rainbow Goblins.” The story goes that these goblins have robbed the world of its color by stealing it from a rainbow. The tracks are mostly free-form instrumentation--Claypool explores the sonic possibilities with his electric bass while relating the tale of these goblins in singsong voice. It’s a tedious affair with enough flashes of songwriting brilliance to reveal a band favoring artistic expression over commercially minded songwriting. Primus fans expect no less.
The crowd revelled in the older songs featuring classic Primus storytelling amid rumbling bass, soaring guitar leads and uptempo drumming. Songs “Tommy The Cat,” “Too Many Puppies,” “My Name Is Mud” and “Jerry Was A Racecar Driver” are seminal alternative rock songs that have cemented Primus as one of the most original and influential genre-blending bands of its time.

Mastodon's Brent Hinds and Bill Kelliher

MASTODON’S OPENING SET

Mastodon opened its set with “Sultan’s Curse,” winner of the 2017 Grammy for Best Metal Performance, and from there gave the crowd a survey of songs from albums spanning 2002’s “Remission” debut to 2017’s “Emperor of Sand.”

“Crystal Skull,” “Black Tongue,” “Bladecatcher” and others are requisite songs at a Mastodon show, but the band also played a lesser-known track from 2017’s “A Cold Dark Place” EP: “Toes To Toes” featured a more mellow and melodic approach compared to the band’s more hard-rocking aesthetic.

Newer tracks “Show Yourself” and “Steambreather” energized the crowd the most as lyrics sung by the audience drowned out Troy Sanders’, Brent Hinds’ and Brann Dailor’s miked vocal efforts. [Link to review posted on Illinois Entertainer magazine website--photo gallery included.]

Primus setlist:
Too Many Puppies
Sgt. Baker
Those Damned Blue-collar Tweekers
Tommy The Cat
Southbound Pachyderm
From “The Desaturating Seven” album:
The Valley
The Seven
The Trek
The Scheme
The Dream
The Storm
The Ends?
_________
Welcome To This World
My Name Is Mud
Jerry Was A Racecar Driver
Here Come The Bastards
John The Fisherman

Mastodon setlist:
Sultan’s Curse
Divinations
Crystal Skill
Ancient Kingdom
Bladecatcher
Black Tongue
Ember City
Megalodon
Andromeda
Toes to Toes
Sleeping Giant
Show Yourself
Precious Stones
Roots Remain
Ghost of Karelia
Mother Puncher
Steambreather

Album Review: Sleep's "The Sciences"

SLEEP

*The Sciences*

(Third Man Records)

Sleep’s surprise release of *The Sciences* (six songs, 53 minutes total) is remarkable for many reasons: it’s the band’s first full-length album in 20 years; it was released on 4/20; and its themes of cannabis culture seem perfectly timed with the changing attitudes about the drug, both for medicinal and for recreational use. In other words, Sleep has never been more relevant. “Marijuanaut’s Theme” tells the adventure of an astronaut--an “inhaler of the rifftree”--bound for “Planet Iommia,” while “Giza Butler” relates the earthbound tale of “The CBDeacon” performing daily sacraments, including “salutations to the cultivators...bless the Indica fields/grateful for the yields.” But the lyrics (not necessarily sung, more like chanted or recited) are secondary to The Riff--the super-fuzzed-out, repetitive power chords that are the backbone to every Sleep song. The deliberate downstroke picking of guitarist Matt Pike allows each fuzzy chord time to ring out and to resonate. “Sonic Titan,” mostly an instrumental composition, builds like other past Sleep songs, such as “Holy Mountain” and “The Clarity,” with a bare, blusey riff that is tweaked and explored during the song’s 12-minute runtime. For a different approach, “The Botanist” instrumental track relies less on this type of riffage and more on guitar leads and single-note progressions, which results in a more cerebral sonic appeal. “Antarcticans Thawed,” a song played live for years, is the most glacially paced composition on the album and relies on lyrical allusions to H.P. Lovecraft’s story  “At The Mountains of Madness.” The 14-minute track represents the band’s most complex arrangement, with more frequent tempo changes and the most freeform, discordant guitar solos on the album.

9/10

Link to print version of this review. It appears on page 28 of the June 2018 issue of Illinois Entertainer magazine.