Album Review: "Nightmare Logic" by Power Trip

POWER TRIP

*Nightmare Logic*

(Southern Lord)

Power Trip’s song “If Not Us Then Who” really should be named, ”If we aren’t the ones to release the best thrash album of 2017, then who will?” The eight-song, 33-minute ripper of an album “Nightmare Logic” makes a strong case not only for best of 2017, but for best thrash album since Metallica and Slayer first released genre defining albums in the mid-1980s. Thrash as a movement was relatively short-lived, and Power Trip’s latest effort reminds listeners there is still much to explore. Songs “Executioner’s Tax (Swing of the Axe)” and “Firing Squad” combine uptempo shredding with urgent, anxiety-filled lyrical content and delivery. Compelling thrash combines accelerator-to-the-floor riffing with repetitious grooves, and all songs deliver in fresh ways. And amid all the sonic aggression and lyrical fixation on mortality, the band offers this motivational anthem on “Waiting Around To Die”: “‘Human being’ has lost its meaning when you refuse to fight / If I don’t force your hand it could cost you your life /  You’re waiting around to die and you’re all right with it / Just waiting around to die and I can’t stand for it.” Translation: there is hope in this nightmarish world.

9/10
Click this link to see print version of this review--in the April 2017 issue of Illinois Entertainer. Navigate the PDF file to page 24.

Album Review: "Oczy Mlody" by The Flaming Lips

THE FLAMING LIPS

*Oczy Mlody*

(Warner Bros)

For some Flaming Lips’ fans, this will forever be the album most associated with the band’s collaboration with pop star Miley Cyrus, the album they released after serving as her backup band for her tour the previous year. “We A Family,” the last track on their latest effort (the 14th album since 1986), features Cyrus on backing vocals on one of the most upbeat and optimistic tracks of the 12. Singer Wayne Coyne, vocals heavily distorted, sings amid chirpy synth effects and over-fuzzed beats, eventually letting Cyrus take over singing duties, ending with the repetitive and saccharine chorus “we a family...we a family.” The majority of the other tracks are slower tempo drug-themed explorations, arranged mostly with layers of electronic instrumentation (long gone are the days of the Lips’ analogue art punk sound). Some song titles are more interesting than the songs themselves--“Listening to the Frogs with Demon Eyes,” for example--with “How??” and “The Castle” representing the band’s best songwriting efforts. “One Night While Hunting for Faeries and Witches and Wizards to Kill” is interesting for its layered percussion (from taps to distorted kettle drums) backed by cricket and frog night noises. It’s an enchanting backdrop for Coyne’s languid vocal delivery as he weaves his psychedelic tale. But that’s balanced by the more pretentious “There Should Be Unicorns,” featuring guest vocalist Reggie Watts lecturing listeners in a pseudo-intellectual hippie persona: “...And we will be high and the love generator will be turned up to its maximum. And we’ll get higher, when at last, the sun comes up in the morning and we will collapse under the weight of the ancient earth...And it will be the end of the world and the beginning of a new love.” It’s a little much, but the Lips were never about moderation. 5/10 These "fearless freaks from Oklahoma City" will be in concert April 17, 2017, at the Riviera Theater in Chicago...Jill and I will be there.
Here's the link to the print version of this review, on page 24 of the February 2017 issue of Illinois Entertainer magazine.

Song Review: "The Clarity" by Sleep

SLEEP

“The Clarity”

(Southern Lord)

Sleep’s cult status as the trendsetter in stoner doom metal continues to grow despite the lack of new music released this millennium. That the band continues to actively tour (around guitarist Matt Pike’s High On Fire commitments) only contributes to rumors of potential new music or even a new album. For now, though, fans have “The Clarity.” Originally released digitally as part of the Adult Swim Singles program in 2014, the song still represents the only new track the band has released since 1998’s ill-fated “Dopesmoker” album, an album originally rejected from the band’s record label because it featured one epic 60-minute song (it became an instant genre classic once it did get released). The re-release of this single, slated for Feb. 10, will get the 12-inch, 180 gram vinyl treatment. The B side will feature the iconic spaceman artwork used by the band.

Staccato guitar notes herald the beginning of the nearly 10-minute track, eventually giving way to a repetitive, two-note power chord. But therein lies the song’s genius and appeal: the power chord is elemental, and combined with the bass and drums--heavy on the snare and crash cymbals-- leads to metal transcendence. Singer Al Cisneros doesn’t sing the lyrics about mind altering adventures, but rather chants them with cryptic and choppy word choice: “Toward the weed fields / to that which holds the worlds / walks the sinsemillian / refutes death / remains stoned constantly.” About halfway through, the trance is broken by a soaring guitar solo, only to dive back into the mid-tempo riffage and eventually come full circle to fuzzed-out guitar notes to let listeners down easily at the end. Although certainly different in its arrangement and sound, the track plays like a tighter version of “Dopesmoker” in other ways.

8/10
Link to Sleep concert review

Album Review: "Dead To The World" by Helmet

HELMET

*Dead To The World*

(earMUSIC)

Helmet, certainly not dead to the world, just won’t go away. And that’s a good thing. The band’s eighth album since 1989 is another uptempo alternative metal effort that showcases singer/songwriter/guitarist Page Hamilton’s catchy tunesmithing. The chorus of “Bad News”--“all news is bad news”--seems to reflect the tenor of the times, doing so in a repetitive pop rock way. The guitar work on “Red Scare” and “Drunk In The Afternoon” displays more of the edgy and groovy Helmet swagger first set down on 1992’s definitive album *Meantime.* “Green Shirt” is a throwaway, quirky song, out of place amid the tight riffing and discordant lead guitar style of Helmet’s usual sound. “Die Alone” better showcases Hamilton’s crisp yet distorted guitar work, as he disdainfully delivers the lyrics, biting off each word in frustration: “Last to first, people are the worst / Die alone, honey, you don’t need them.”

6/10
Link to print version of review in December 2016 issue of Illinois Entertainer magazine. Navigate PDF file to page 44.

Appearing Dec. 16, 2016 at Metro, Chicago. I'll be there...you?

Album Review: "The Violent Sleep of Reason" by Meshuggah

MESHUGGAH

*The Violent Sleep of Reason*

(Nuclear Blast)

Meshuggah is, in a word, otherworldly. The aesthetic of the latest album--the eighth in a 25-plus-year career--heavily resembles H.R. Giger’s alien surrealism style, furthering the extreme Swedish metal band’s exploration of futuristic themes and sounds.

Off-kilter, syncopated rhythms and frequent time changes, done with maximum percussion and riffage, disorient the listener on the best of tracks. “Monstrocity” builds chaotically until a downward spiral riff progression repeats with singer Jens Kidman deliberately barking out the syllables “Monstro....City!”

“By The Ton” is a mid-tempo beast of a song, heavy on thudding bass and bordering on sludge metal. Another repetitious and downward spiral chord progression is mined in “Ivory Tower,” a warning against putting faith into false institutions, which has H.P. Lovecraft-like allusions to inevitable horror: “The construction is our penance here / tumorous growth chiseled in white / when the darkness comes to slay the day / enters horrors that you’ll be wishing away.”

“Stifled” is another mid-tempo track that shows a slightly groovier side to the band’s brutality. But the title track, opening track “Clockworks,” “Born in Dissonance” and “Our Rage Won’t Die” (with an opening drum line that can only be described as a game of Whack-a-Mole) will satisfy the fans who prefer uptempo shredding.

9/10
Link to print version of review in December 2016 issue of Illinois Entertainer magazine. Navigate PDF to page 44.

Deer Season 2016: Early Action

An Indiana five-pointer

Being a deer hunter is mostly about being in tune with the passage of time--the passage of time between hunting seasons, the passage of time from the start of the season until the end, and the passage of time from sunrise to sunset. Hunters obsess about time passing, and this hunting season for me was one of the shortest I've experienced.

Not hunting on the opening weekend of firearm deer season in Indiana is a fate I've come to accept. Due to work commitments that take me out of town, I suffer by having to wait a week to finally get into the deer woods; I'm fearful that I'll miss the peak of the rut and be relegated to watching the silent woods for hours and days on end. That my dad took an 8-pointer on the property on opening day added to my anxiety.

With these thoughts I climbed into my tree stand that overlooks the prairie on my family's plot of land in northwestern Indiana (Porter County). It was 5:30 a.m. on Nov. 18, 2016, and nothing was visible at that dark hour. The temperature was 55-degrees, certainly warm for that time of year, but it would rise to 75 by mid-afternoon. A rain storm was predicted for later in the day, with a 35-degree drop in temperatures by the next morning. I was hopeful that deer would sense the weather shift and be on the move ahead of it.

A few minutes after settling in my seat 17 feet above the ground, I heard a rustling in the dry leaves below and to the left. It was too dark to make out any detail, so I was left only with my ears and imagination: due to the steady and light gait, it must've been a coyote. And even if it were a deer, it wasn't yet dawn, which marks the start of legal shooting time. So I waited some more.

At dawn, at the first gray light, I heard a different noise: the splashing of feet through the creek that flows from the west (and my extreme left), flowing toward me until it curves behind me and meets the bigger creek that flows south to north. My tree stand, pointing north to overlook the prairie, sits in the crook of this confluence.

I looked down and, 30 yards to my left near where I heard the first rustling, there was a buck crossing the creek from the north. It was slowly creeping by in the same footpath used by the buck I had shot last year. Only this buck was heading south; last year's was heading north.

I shouldered my Savage 220 bolt action slug shotgun and centered the sights on the buck's vitals. Thoughts of how I missed the first shot on last year's deer--shooting high over its back--flickered in and out of my mind...

I fired and the buck ran south toward the tall swampy weeds and woods that border the main creek. I thought I missed, again, an easy shot. But, as I strained to peer into the weeds seconds later, I saw the waving of a white tail. Normally, this means a deer is running away with the raised and waving tail a flaming white warning to any other deer around. However, the tail wasn't moving away from me. It was waving in place, as if the deer was just standing there. Then it disappeared.

I waited a moment, thinking that if I had mortally wounded it, it would be better to let it lie down and die in peace, as opposed to chasing it wounded. But I was too anxious and knew the circuitous route I'd have to take would give the deer plenty of time for peace. I could not take a direct route through the creek and into the weeds, but would have to walk through the prairie, across a farm field, down a hill and into the weedy, wet and woodsy patch where the deer disappeared.

When I got to the spot where I saw the white tail waving, there was nothing. I walked a quick grid, searching the ground for blood. A few minutes later, I found a blood trail and despair over thinking I had missed the deer turned into hope. It was a steady trail in the browns, greens and reds of the ground vegetation. I found the deer about 50 yards from where I hit it. The five-point buck died a quick death due to the double-lung shot it had suffered. The slug also passed through the liver and exited the other side.

The third buck in three years taken from the same tree stand.

I hadn't missed, and the suddenness of the season's end washed over me with relief. It was only later after I took care of the deer that disappointment set in: disappointment in that I would not be sitting in the woods anymore practicing the hunter's zen of quietly being in the moment, attuned to my surroundings in the deepest ways possible--ways not achievable for me in any other activity.

But that was only a small disappointment that I could not let be a distraction as I had much work to do after finding the buck. Once again, just like the year prior, I had to drag the deer from the  weedy, swampy edge of the creek, up a wooded hill and across the farmer's field. After that would come two days of processing and butchering. At least I had ample time to get it done, thanks to an early arriving buck on my opening day.

Snow would've made this task easier.

Concert Review: Baroness at Metro

Baroness at Metro (Chicago): Aug. 21, 2016

You just can’t help but root for Baroness: the band recently released its best (and fourth) album, *Purple,* which represents a come-back after a horrific tour bus accident in 2012 left them broken. And John Baizley is not only a gifted singer and guitarist, he’s also a brilliant painter, having done artwork for his own band and others, from Kvelertak to Metallica.

All that would be moot if they didn’t bring the goods live. They brought it at Metro with a 90-minute set that had everyone in attendance reveling in how fun heavy metal can be. The band played *Purple* in its entirety (not in album order and omitting the brief instrumental that closes the album), proving that recent collection of songs to be all killer, no filler. Hard rockers “Shock Me,” “Try To Disappear” and “Desperation Burns” were highlights from the album, and the crowd--which maintained the friendliest mosh pit around--reacted just as lustily by singing along  to the album’s ballad, “If I Have To Wake Up (Would You Stop The Rain)?” Baizley and guitarist Peter Adams were technicians on their respective guitar parts, with the two of them in perfect harmony during the numerous twin lead guitar solos, especially on “Fugue.”

Baizley, with his near-bald head, long black beard and gleaming white eyes and teeth--was a true frontman, exuberantly delivering his vocals and flashing smiles to the audience, as if he was in on some joke about how fun it was to play a rock god on stage. It was hard to tell who was having more fun: the audience or Baizley. And bassist Nick Jost, with ‘stach and mullet, looked like he stepped off stage with the Scorpions, circa 1989, as he rumbled his five-string bass and did double duty on synthesizer, taking the spotlight for the “Green Theme” instrumental.

Older tracks like “March To The Sea,” “Board Up The House” and “The Gnashing,” which ended the main set, were also delivered with bombast.

“Take My Bones Away”--an outstanding track from the *Yellow* album released just before the fateful bus crash--closed the three-song encore, with Adams telling the audience to “get home safe.” It was a reminder of what was, and what almost wasn’t.

SET LIST

Kerosene

March To The Sea

Morningstar

Shock Me

Board Up The House

Green Theme

The Iron Bell

If I Had To Wake Up (Would You Stop The Rain?)

Fugue

Little Things

Chlorine & Wine

Try To Disappear

Desperation Burns

The Gnashing

ENCORE

Isak

The Sweetest Curse

Take My Bones Away

Link to *Purple* album review.

Link to Illinois Entertainer magazine webpage, where this review was also published.