Roller Coaster Review: Maxx Force, Six Flags Great America

Not since the 2014 debut of Goliath has Six Flags Great America in Gurnee, Ill., had the chance to tout a new roller coaster. Maxx Force boasts three world records: fastest launch roller coaster (obtaining 78 mph in under two seconds), fastest inversion and tallest double-inversion. 

But given the 20 second total ride time, the coaster should have been named The Flash, which would be in line with other D.C. comic-themed rides in the park. The launch is a thrill for sure, but the ride is over too soon.

I rode Maxx Force twice on Thursday, July 25, 2019, about three weeks after its debut. At 1p.m. I only had to wait 35 minutes, which made me seriously question the ride’s appeal. Later at around 5:45, I had to wait 1:15 minutes to ride, which included a 20-minute delay in service.

Here are my thoughts about each aspect of the ride:

The Launch: Anticipating the take-off and acceleration to 78 mph in two seconds is the best part of the ride. The operators keep you guessing--there is no countdown to launch. When it occurs, everyone around the park knows it: a deep “boom” marks the moment, adding to the anxiety of those waiting in line. On the ride, one doesn’t really hear the boom, only feels the g-force of being pressed back into the cushy seat. And, since riders are being launched up and into the first inversion, there are no stomach-flipping drops to endure.

The Inversions: Due to the ride’s speed, the inversions are smooth and over quickly.

The Seating: The coaster is designed like a race car (with faux wheels front and back seats like those in a car). Riders are secured by a lap bar (as in Goliath) and hold onto handles in front. Each train only holds 16 riders. A second train is loaded even before the first is launched. It’s a comfortable and secure ride.

The Waiting Area: This ride was erected at the park’s entrance, in the footprint once occupied by the Pictorium (touted as the “world’s largest motion picture experience” and Chicagoland’s first IMAX when it opened in 1979). The line area is compact and unfortunately architects didn’t include any shade for those waiting in line.

Bottom Line: This is a better ride than the past two revealed by the park in 2018 and 2017: The Mardi Gras Hangover is billed as the world’s largest loop at 100-feet tall, but is just a one-trick pony. And The Joker is an aptly named schizophrenic track that lacks multiple ride appeal.

Link to POV footage of Maxx Force.

Link to my review of Goliath

Link to my review of “Justice League: Battle for Metropolis”

Album Review: "Gold & Grey" by Baroness

BARONESS
*Gold & Grey*
(Abraxan Hymns)

Baroness's glorious new double album wastes no time announcing what it is all about: perseverance. Singer/guitarist/songwriter/artist John Baizley declares in the opener "Front Toward Enemy"--a hard-charging, bass-driven rocker--"we're headed for disaster...we can only fight front toward enemy." It's a frantic start to what turns out to be one of the most heart-felt hard rock albums of its time: this is about survival, hope and desperate measures, a theme that makes sense in the band's timeline after a near-death and life-changing bus accident in 2012.
The second album since that accident, 17 songs in length, establishes Baroness (Baizley as the only original member) as survivors. Baizley wails on the ever morphing rocker "Seasons," "we fall, we rise, we bend, we break, we burn, but we survive" before breaking into thrash riffage along with new guitarist Gina Gleason, Baizley's nimble foil whose interplay meshes perfectly with the band's uptempo and emotive instrumental aesthetic. 
Short, free-form instrumental explorations bridge the gaps between sprawling compositions, a highlight being "Tourniquet": "Somebody throw me a tourniquet, I'm openhearted." Once again, a thudding bassline provides the backbone to Baizley's wear-it-on-his-sleeve, full-throated singing. "Throw Me An Anchor" ups the hard-rock tempo and furthers the theme: "This is an emergency." The mid-tempo tracks on the album showcase the band's subtlety best: On the sprawling "Borderlines," the band's tightness is on display--evidenced by the dueling guitar solos and Baizley's plaintive realization: "Borderline, get me out alive...When it rains, I am right where I belong."
9/10
Appearing July 23, 2019, at Durty Nellie's in Palatine, IL
Link to print version of review in July 2019 issue of Illinois Entertainer magazine. Navigate PDF file to page 28.

Album Review: Pelican's "Nighttime Stories"

PELICAN
*Nighttime Stories*
(Southern Lord)

There might not be a more thrilling trio of instrumental hard rock songs than three found on Pelican's new full-length album, the first since 2013. About three minutes into "Midnight and Mescaline" through the end of the song, the post-metal pace slackens and allows the band to explore stunted power-chord riffing amid a groovy, repetitious beat. It's that rough, groovy texture that Pelican has honed like no other band over a near two-decade career. The mesmerizing end to that track quickly transitions into the bouncy pop rhythm of "Abyssal Plain," which soon transitions into grindcore and then to wide-open mid-tempo jamming of layered guitars and headbanging time changes--and back to grindcore again. "Cold Hope" finishes the trifecta--a bottom-heavy and relentless burner with even bigger grooves and riffage than the previous two. It closes out the trio with air-raid siren guitar solos. The six other tracks help cement this offering as the band's best, most complete album: the title track ups the ante on the dirty-sounding, distorted riffage, and "Full Moon, Black Water" shows the band's widest range of hard rock styles over its eight minutes in length. At the four-minute mark of this track the band once again breaks it down into the muted and frantic riffing for which it is best known, only to end with a shoe-gazing passage that evokes the pleasurable feeling of awakening after a long night of dreaming.
9/10
Link to the print version of this review in the July 2019 issue of Illinois Entertainer. Navigate PDF file to page 28.

Concert Review: Mudhoney at Lincoln Hall, Chicago

From left: Guy Maddison, Mark Arm, Dan Peters, Steve Turner.

Concert Review: Mudhoney at Lincoln Hall, Chicago, May 26, 2019

Thirty years after releasing their debut Sub Pop EP “Superfuzz Bigmuff”--the seminal grunge album--Mudhoney is on the road in support of 10th studio album “Digital Garbage,” a scathing rundown of current social-political flash points. The sold-out crowd of 40-somethings enthusiastically embraced the Seattle legends who ripped through classics as well as at least seven songs from their latest effort.

The first half of the 90-minute set featured singer Mark Arm playing rhythm on a black Gretsch guitar, flanked by red-shirted lead guitarist Steve Turner and bass player Guy Maddison, with the relentlessly nimble drummer Dan Peters behind. Genre-defining songs “Touch Me I’m Sick,” “Here Comes Sickness,” “Suck You Dry”  and “You Got It”--released decades ago--still bristled with manic fury and seaminess and heavy reverb, the undeniable superfuzz-bigmuff aesthetic and nostalgia compelling those close by the stage to form an old-school mosh pit.

Arm discarded his guitar about halfway through the set and, as if suddenly free from the confines of playing rhythm guitar, channeled his inner Iggy Pop on new song “Paranoid Core,” singing “I stoke the fire of your paranoid core / I feed on your fear.” “Evangelical hypocrites / laying hands on a pile of shit” were the target of Arm’s ire on “21st Century Pharisees,” representing the band’s most blistering religious commentary. “Prosperity Gospel” allowed Arm to lament everything from the industrial-military complex to the mortgage crisis to the greed of Big Pharma, backed with angst-inducing post-punk/grunge immediacy. These topical tracks from “Digital Garbage” were received slightly less fervently from the crowd, even if Arm and the rest of the band never let up their intensity.

“Kill Yourself Live,” about social media addiction, is the best song--musically and lyrically--on the new album. The live version lacked the backing organ on the studio version--an organ sound that harkens back to 1992’s “Piece of Cake”--but the energy of the instrumentation and urgency of the message was felt.

But in the end, it wasn’t the progressive social-political commentary that worked up the crowd the most. It was reveling in the edgy, no-bullshit Pacific Northwest mystique that tweaked the crowd into writhing action: to acknowledge this, the band’s multi-song encore featured “In ‘n’ Out of Grace,” with Arm snidely biting off the naughty lyrics amid Turner’s furious--and fuzzy--powerchord riffing: “spill my seed, suck my waste / sliding in and out of Grace”...suddenly, it was 1989 again and the musical possibilities were endless.

Link to set list.

Bonus fanboy/geek-out moment: As I was watching opening band METZ--an energetic noise rock/post-punk outfit from the Sub Pop stable--from the balcony, purely by chance Mudhoney bass player Guy Maddison appeared next to me. No one around seemed to notice him but me.

At the end of the next song, I awkwardly said to him, "Hey, man, great to see you," and he politely shook my outstretched hand. I then said, "I'm really looking forward to tonight's show."

A few songs later, I asked him how the tour was going. He said fine, that they were headed back home Tuesday, and that he "had to go to work." I laughed and said, "me too."

As if that wasn't cool enough, I next found myself standing next to Mudhoney singer-guitarist Mark Arm. It was at that point that I realized I was in the part of the balcony closest to the green room. I was standing next to grunge royalty--next to someone just as responsible (if not more so) for pioneering this culturally influential musical genre as Kurt Cobain or Eddie Vedder.

I turned to Mark, shook his hand and also told him how much I was looking forward to Mudhoney's set. I told him how much I liked the new album ("Digital Garbage") and how much I appreciated the lyrical messages too.

Lastly, I told him I was a fan from way back. He said, "I could tell from your shirt." I was wearing a Mudhoney shirt purchased from their tour in support of 1992's "Piece of Cake."

Speechless.

Deer season 2018: Opening weekend success

     

A Northwest Indiana four-pointer

     The opener for this year's firearm deer season was different for a couple reasons: I was able to hunt the opening weekend for the first time in years, and an early winter storm guaranteed snow cover. These conditions led to success.
     The season opened on Saturday, Nov. 17, where I hunt in Northwest Indiana, and I had taken the previous day off from work in order to get comfortable at the cottage and scout the property for deer sign. While hiking around the property the day before the opener, the two-inch snow cover revealed numerous deer tracks crisscrossing the property, including all over the 10-acre prairie in which I hunt.
     I made sure both tree stands (one on the north edge of the prairie and one on the south edge) were still there as I had lost the north stand to thieves last December. Chaining and padlocking the stands, including a new one erected on the north end late in October, secured them.
     I had two other "deer encounters" that day. First, while gazing out the kitchen window of the cottage at the hill across Scales Pond, I saw a small deer (doe or buck, I couldn't tell) walk along the base of the hill. It quickly disappeared. Then later, while standing on the deck well after nightfall, I heard a deer snort/grunt a couple times. The sound came from the treeline south of the cottage. It was all very encouraging.

OPENING DAY
    I was in the south tree stand early Saturday morning (by 5:30 a.m.), well ahead of sunrise. The temperature hovered just under freezing, and very little moved in the snow-covered prairie all morning. Canada geese, a great blue heron and squirrels entered and exited the landscape I constantly surveyed. I switched to the north tree stand late morning, but it didn't change my luck.
     I retreated to the cottage for a break from late morning to mid-afternoon and resumed sitting in the south tree stand from the afternoon to after sunset. Ducks and muskrats, oblivious to my presence 12 feet above the ground, frolicked in the creek directly behind me, but no deer moved all day. My only other entertainment was an opossum that ambled in and out of sight 30 yards from my position. I spent about seven hours in the stand that day with occasional frozen precipitation.
     After nightfall, I had to run an errand into town, and while making the mile trek down the driveway, I spooked a big buck (12 pointer at least)--it disappeared from the arc of my car's headlights, bounding from the west to east.

SUNDAY MORNING
     The next day broke cold, windy, and I experienced all the precipitation: rain, frozen rain and snow. I climbed into the south tree stand (from which I had harvested bucks for four years straight) by 5:30 once again. This day, I wouldn't have to wait long to be successful for five years running.

The snowy tableau of the prairie, as seen from the
south tree stand. The buck first appeared near the
willow tree at center/top of photo.

     At 7:12 a.m. I saw the deer: it was creeping along the mowed trail that rings the prairie, creeping towards me at the 10'clock position. At first, I thought it was a doe. It looked small in stature and I didn't immediately detect antlers. It stepped into the tree scrub and I lost sight of it for a minute or two.
     Then, it stepped back onto the mowed trail and walked toward me. I raised my Savage 220 slug shotgun to peer through the scope and saw it--antlers. Although young, perhaps a year and a half old, the deer was a buck--at least a four-pointer I could tell.
     Some hunters might've passed on this buck, hunters who are looking for the trophy. They would say, "let it pass; let it live, grow and harvest it (if you get another chance) next year."
     That's not me. I'm not in it for the trophy or ego boost--I'm in it for the challenge, and for the meat. Furthermore, since I was the only one hunting the property this year, I know there are plenty of other bucks who will live, grow, breed and prosper. I'll see them next year, or the next after that.
     So, at roughly 75 yards, I centered the cross-hairs on the buck's vitals. It was standing in an oblique position from me. Not the best angle, but I never like to let an opportunity go--I've been burned by waiting for a better shot in the past.
     I shot, and the buck reacted like it had been hit: it jerked erratically, crashed through the tall prairie grass only to tear back onto the mowed path and run back the way it had come. It disappeared around a corner, 50 yards from where it had been shot, and I thought I saw it go down in the treeline.
     I did what hunters are supposed to do in this situation: I waited to let fate take its course.
     After about 15 minutes, I climbed down the ladder and walked to where I had hit it. There was a foot-wide blood trail tracing a path in the snow from there, around the corner and to the treeline. The buck was lying there dead. I had shot it in the heart. It had died a quick death, after its 50-yard dash to the treeline.
     My early estimation was correct: It was a young, healthy four-pointer. A fork-horn.
     I spend the rest of the day locked in manual labor: I gutted the deer and drove the John Deere tractor to the prairie to make extraction easier. After getting the tractor momentarily stuck in the soft ground of the prairie (snow covered slick grass), I had it hanging on the deer pole by 9:30 a.m. Later, skinning and butchering occurred.
     Now I have a freezer full of meat, a five-year harvest streak intact, and I am already dreaming dreams of all the other bucks that are out there--including the 12-pointer I spooked in my car the night before. He's the one I hope to see next deer season.

Album review: Mudhoney's "Digital Garbage"

MUDHONEY

*Digital Garbage*

(Subpop)

Mudhoney is mad as hell and isn’t going to take it anymore. No political or social topic is off limits on the 10th studio album from these grunge legends. Singer Mark Arm seems to take aim at Trump supporters and other vapid types on “Hey Neanderfuck” and “Paranoid Core,” but the most scathing criticism is left for hypocritical Christians (“21st Century Pharisees”), social media whores (“Kill Yourself Live”) and mass murderers: Arm pleads over and over again on “Please Mr. Gunman”: “Before you kill us dead forever...consider our afterlife / We’d rather die in church.” Even climate-change deniers get called out on “Prosperity Gospel”--kicking off with the declaration “Fuck the planet, screw your children / Get rich, you win”--and “Next Mass Extinction,” with a harmonica lead-in to these cynical thoughts: “Don’t worry your head / the earth will see peace / the world won’t end cause we will be / replaced by nothing in the next mass extinction.” Musically, the band’s superfuzz/bigmuff sound reverbs as good as ever, with opener track “Nerve Attack” sounding like a song from 1991’s “Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge.” “Kill Yourself Live,” a sardonic command to those addicted to social media “likes,” features the most satisfying instrumental progression, thanks in part to an organ riff backbone among the guitar chord progressions and angsty themes.

8/10

-Jason Scales
This review is published in the December 2018 issue of Illinois Entertainer magazine. Click link and navigate PDF to page 28.

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