UFO – Live Sightings

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junkheadv1tmbUFO – Live Sightings

For most bands, four disc live sets are never a good idea. There’s going to be too much track overlap, the original versions were better anyway, the singer sounds like he’s panting like a dog in heat half the time, the guitarist misses some crucial notes. That studio magic will always trump a sound board guy in some sweaty club in Raleigh.

That’s where UFO proved the world wrong. Their album Strangers in the Night raised the bar for all live albums to come by drastically improving the flaccid mixes of their studio work. UFO was always a little too tight for their own good and more than a little bland in their riffs, but get them on a stage and it’s like unleashing a starved Malawi Terror Beast out into a massive crowd of children and elderly people. Even clunkers like “Mother Mary” and “Too Hot To Handle” become rock ‘n’ roll juggernauts, morphing prosaic riffs into metal poetry.

So when Michael Schenker left UFO in 1980, the band took a huge plunge. After Strangers hit the UK top ten and US top fifty, the prospect of more mainstream success was like the band eating tons of cheese without their fiber supplements: the studio productions sounded more constipated than ever before. As far as listeners knew, UFO was the shittiest band in the world and couldn’t dump anything good if they tried.

That’s why Cleopatra desperately needed to release this collection. The post-Schenker era needs a brief revisiting, and their studio work is not the place to do it. These four sets from ’80-’82 will reveal the real truth of how the band sounded when Paul Chapman took over Schenker’s lead guitar spot. I mean, isn’t that why he’s prominently on the cover wagging that guitar over his groin?

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The Chicago ’80 set that kicks things off is absolutely ball-breaking, at times better than Schenkers in the Night. The guitars are bloated and overpowering throughout, pushed up to the front right next to Phil Mogg’s never faltering voice, setting the tone for most of the following discs. Chapman’s solos are also the perfect blend between mid-range wankery and high-pitched meedly-mee, and the high-hats bleed into your ears in a way that only the most professional bootleg can. Most of the songs are Schenker-era tracks, but this proves the band were still power chord heroes after he split.

The second disc is another Chicago show from ’81. The opening tracks end up being the standouts, but this is mainly due to the continuously dropping sound quality. The first tracks are crystal clear, but the further you get, the more everything sounds like it was recorded on an answering machine strategically placed in a ventilation shaft. The closing classic “Doctor Doctor” gets totally neutered, a shame considering this is its only appearance.

A year later in St. Louis, the recording sounds almost studio quality. While it has a much needed harder edge than their then recent Mechanix album, every element is clearly mixed for maximum audibility. I’m proud to look at Chapman’s groin when I hear the solos, now mostly stuck in a higher register but keeping things melodic enough to hold interest. Almost the entire set is now Chapman period tracks, showing how awesome these songs are in the hands of real rock producers and not executive whores. If you’re interested in this era of UFO, this is easily its finest hour.

The final disc from Cleveland circa ’82 is pretty clean, but it’s only a little better than most modern cellphone recordings of Beyonce’s Super Bowl MXVLLIIILVMX performance. The set list is largely identical to the St. Louis recording except it sounds crappier.

Regardless of the redundancies, this really puts Chapman UFO in a new light. It proves the band wasn’t the Michael Schenker Show gone bust, with solid new tracks and a bruising power guitar sound. It’s essential listening for anyone who loves UFO, and while the uninitiated will scratch their head wondering why they have to listen to “Too Hot To Handle” four times, they have no taste in music and I hope they accidentally scratch their heads so hard that a finger sinks through their skull and pushes the part of their brain that makes people want to rock.

Individual disc ratings:

1: A-
2: C+
3: A
4: C-

Final rating: B

WHITENING TEETH WITH WEEZER

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ayholev1tmbWeezer

The white album is out and sending out the vibes. But what vibes? Let us melt those wax wings and dive into the California beech rock boys new release.

Musical style? Classic on most tracks in full emulation of every commercial success since “Say it Ain’t So.” But Cuomo says it is so in an iheartradio interview. “…it’s a straight up super sunny ‘Weezer at the beach’ album.”

Lyrical content? All the post-classic radio single themes are back: Lifting up girlz to angelic status while referring to them as being the antagonist in an abusive relationship and calling them evil; encouraging reckless-abandonment without planning into selfish indulgence and one sided fantasies; a whole song about smoking pot; pontificating on dartboard style fledgling fascination with random sciencey sounding Big Bang Theory level content. The final song, “Endless Bummer,” is a ballad about being generally upset about a relationship with a nineteen year old responsible female presumably with self-confidence and ownership of a car along with a moral deference with the song writer whom I hope is not trying to get a date with girlz less than half his age.

In comparison to the good Weezer albums, one might notice a lack of work ethic, self-realization, respect for other people’s dreams, and recognizing the female sex as an equal part of the human species to male. There also happens to be a continued fascination with Greek mythology, the type that lifts man up as the apex of beauty.

What vibes? Anything popular. I am convinced that if this album was written months later then there would be content about gravity waves, Brussels bombing, and something demeaning about Trump. Anti-misogyny is popular in part to Weezer’s past albums, but whatever the opposite to misogyny is might be the inspiration for much of the lyrics. Crippling self-doubt, anyone? It’s all the rage on Facebook.

I have listened, painstakingly, to every one of Weezer’s albums. The first four were great and that is why I keep coming back: because there is a flash of hope with every release that one might feel the embrace of bleeding heart stoicism and identifiable songwriting. 2014 brought hope, but it was a Trojan horse.

If lyrical content is important to you, avoid this album. You might end up depressed that you are not Weezer or a girlz.

Track 5 Conspiracy: A Bound Bridge is a Sound Bridge

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ayholev1tmbSouthern Empire – Southern Empire

The first track is just for foreshadowing. The second is to get attention. The third track is boring. The fourth sounds like it belongs in an early 80’s feature length animation montage.

But the fifth track, “The Bridge That Binds,” is what this album is all about. It is written in with many different sections, giving it a very symphonic feel. The lyrical content is all about learning your place in the universe and stuff. Out of the 28 minutes, the introduction feels like the first 29. Eventually, classic Sonic the Hedgehog progressive jazz fusion kicks in and things are good.

There is a great build about a quarter of the way through bleeding into a smooth saxophone solo that Danny Lopresto had to sing over to keep the track under a half-hour, which is okay because the smooth saxophone comes back after some smooth guitar and some smooth drums and smooth bass which should have continued for the remainder of the bands career, but then they would just be a smooth jazz band.

Which is still okay, because after a brief vocal interlude the Aussie’s go full swing into a classic prog-rock break down. There is a hand-holding-kumbaya that adds lyrical content and 8 repeating chords. The kumbaya ends with an excerpt from a Vincent Price film and jumps into a rockin’ synth exposÉ with a capital É because that was the only accent I could figure out. Alas, it ends too soon, again, and there is something about letting a river run red screamed over a heavy metal chug.

Finally, there is the revelation and resolution, where Lopresto has decided it is all up to me, uh… him. What classic prog-rock album would be without the flute, an ostinato strings, and overall orchestral syncopation? Not this one.

Even though the lyrical content is a little bleak and open to interpretation, the ending section could be the strongest part of the whole album, which is why it was foreshadowed in the first track. There is a brief revisiting of all of the lyrical content from the last two deca minutes while the band builds to a very short cadence that is literally one eighty-fifth of the entire song length. So close to one hundred.

The final track is a very typical progressive rock song and probably designed as filler.

Honestly, the entire album should just be “The Bridge That Binds.” As one track it is long enough to stuff an entire 33 and almost as long as the entire remainder of the album. But I will tell you why Southern Empire made the other tracks. Because they wanted “The Bridge That Binds” to be contender for track five of the year. They even stuck in track six just to seal their candidacy.

If you like prog-rock, listen to conXious. If you want more, listen to track five of Southern Empire’s self titled debut.

Micro-Reviewery 5: Catacombed, Cranial Crusher, October Falls

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And yet even more stuff from the past few weeks that deserves no more than a brief paragraph.

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Catacombed – Cave Beast

This one track does it’s best to sound like a cave beast in some catacombs and gleefully succeeds. In reality, it’s just a french guy recording echo drips and bass blorps, but the guttural sewer monster vocals really help the listener suspend disbelief.

B+

Cranial Crusher – Necrópole

Pretty generic thrash from Brazil. The best thrash never experiments, but here something’s off. Maybe the song’s suck. The last track in particular manages to bury itself over the course of six minutes with its repetitive riffs. Still, over the fourteen minute run time, only sixty seconds are slow.

C

October Falls – Kulo

There’s a small group of metal bands that want you to believe that hundreds of years ago, acoustic guitars were the shit. Everyone crowded around medieval campfires eating their greasy turkey legs and drinking mead out of goblets studded with random gems, listening to some guy pluck one some strings while the wind blew through the wooded forests and castles of yore. They’re wrong, and so is this two track single.

D

Black Kirin – National Trauma

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junkheadv1tmbBlack Kirin – National Trauma

It takes a lot to weird me out. I’ll listen to hours of throat singing, musique concrete, harsh noise, whatever, and I won’t bat an eye. If anything, radio music is what makes me feel uncomfortable. What’s truly grotesque is the notion that mainstream music has a cosmic appeal and objective acceptance. Godspeed to anything that lashes out against the norm, at least I can relate to being anti-everything.

Even so, Black Kirin is pretty strange. Their first full length has a truly unique sound that sounds simultaneously familiar and foreign.

On the most base level, National Trauma is melodic death a la Carcass’s Swansong, a style that’s as palatable as extreme metal can get. The vocals are mostly high shriek, the guitars play tuneful and dexterous evil riffs. You’ve heard it a million times before, and there’s little imagination left in the style.

Normally I’d give it a D- and dismiss it as derivative, but the very dominant folk elements are impossible to ignore. Rather than hopelessly boring renaissance fair acoustic masturbation, Black Kirin is into traditional Chinese folk flourishes. For the western listener, it will initially sound very corny and cliché. Your great grandfather would probably say it sounds oriental. You’ll either love it or vomit all over. The first track bears all: if the dizu flutes and erhu guitars don’t turn you off, the strange woman screeching like a cat in heat will.

But both style’s are well integrated. If you took out the metal, the folk would play on and vice versa. After awhile, the flutes, plucked guitars, and pentatonic pianos end up being essential to the formula, and you almost wish the Carcass singer would go away so the scary cat lady could whine and croon you to the metal heavens. Easily my record of the year so far.

A

Em-Body The Happiness No One Deserves

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Tayholev1tmbhe Body – No One Deserves Happiness

This album starts out scary. I was listening to it while playing the classic hit, Ultima III: Exodus. I put it on right before I went into the Snake dungeon. The hardest part about the dungeons in Ultima games is remembering where you are. Even though I have played through other dungeons in the game, I keep forgetting to look at the compass. That’s what listening to No One Deserves Happiness feels like. One can be wondering around and looking for the Mark of the Snake when the torch blows out and all sense of direction is lost.

The entire album has distorted off in the distance youtube llama style screaming throughout. This is a very annoying sound. Eventually it will sound more like a llama and less like a deranged psychotic episode.

The first four tracks climb downwards into an increasingly unappealing mire of comforting horns and female vocals mixed with a high pitched squeal and lightly assertive pounding of samples and deep toms. Track two has a calm plateau at the end followed by grind and noise for track three. Track four is aptly named “Hallow / Hollow.”

After this, the whole feel starts to change. The next track, “Two Snakes,” is reminiscent of wondering in a dungeon, but more of an acid techno remix of one of the first tracks. “Adamah” continues down this track and sounds like the background music from an 80’s love making scene if the scene took place on a conveyor belt full of glass scraping against limestone rocks while Sinead O’Connor yells into a bottomless pit.

There is a super snoozer on track 8, which is just noise with atmosphere, but it serves as contrast. “Prescience” is mostly noise with a less interesting ending. The final track is a good ending to this atmospheric noise album. There is some lyrical content and a nice wind down.

Their bandcamp feels like it was written by someone who doesn’t really listen to noise. This certainly is not the “grossest pop album,” though I imagine someone thought that due to the textured layering of samples, singing, and instrumentation.

Like music that will never be on the radio? Give No One Deserves Happiness a shot.

The balron’s poison wicks away more life with each step and spent torches are tossed away like a trail of bread crumbs as foot prints circle in endless patterns like the white on black text of the Body’s bandcamp page.

Jesu/Sun Kil Moon – Jesu/Sun Kil Moon

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junkheadv1tmbJesu/Sun Kil Moon – Jesu/Sun Kil Moon

Collaborations are a big deal among the washed up underground rock star crowd. This one features the two main guys from the Red House Painters and Godflesh, albeit with their two post-’90s bands that nobody really cares about.

It’s the typical post-metal/shoe-gaze din, with bloated down-tuned guitars grinding away like the apocalypse happened yesterday and you didn’t even hear about it. Near the middle of the album, there’s a few crappy electronic tracks in a row and all of them are pretty boring. The whole thing struggles to be vaguely ambient with repetitious ten minute romps through the same synth lines, but mostly it comes off as boring and too structured.

The vocals aren’t much better, a shame considering that the Red House Painter guy never shuts the fuck up. He mumbles through spoken word observations on life, touching on various topics including women, life on the road, women, existence, women, and women. I’m guessing Red House Painter guy’s had sex with ten women his whole life and wrote each of the album’s ten stream-of-consciousness gabs about one of them. There’s a lot of nickel-and-dime romantic irony stuck deep in the ’90s, but at least it’s honest.

And that’s the one cool thing about Jesu/Sun Kil Moon: nobody’s lying here. Just two old washed-up indie-rock guys having a few brews and banging out an album. You can even figure out the middle-aged hipster conversations that went on during the production.

“Dude, check out this cool six second loop I made in FL Studios.” “Whoa! Man, loop that for eight minutes and call it quits, I have to stop off at Trader Joe’s and get some Organic Baby Spinach.” “Alright dude. Hey, have you tried their Cookie Butter? That’s my shit right there.”

“Man, I keep thinking about how me and my girlfriend circa 1988 listened to Candy Apple Grey by Husker Du all the time.” “DUUUUUDE, PUT THAT IN THE LYRICS!!!”

“Dude, it’s so hard to come up with good guitar parts when all I can think about is how I still need to grind my own coffee, wash my Miniature Schnauzer with some Purple Urchin soap, and ride my Amsterdam-style bike all about town.” “Whoa, what’d you say man? Sorry, I was spinning my own yarn to make this totally rad fleece. I can’t even imagine not using all natural fibers.”

C-

Micro-Reviewery 4: Lethargic Euphoria, Napalm Ted, etc.

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Still even more stuff from the past few weeks that deserves no more than a brief paragraph.

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Lethargic Euphoria – Standstill

Black-gaze is a genre so formative that you never really know what to expect from band to band. Lethargic Euphoria has an instrumental style like Ghost Bath for a good while, but the last twenty minutes is like ’90s emo without the whiny vocalists. As a result, I now understand that the only reason I didn’t like ’90s emo was the whiny vocalists.

B

 

Remember That You Will Die – Remember That You Will Die

Remembering that these guys will die brings me some solace. Vaguely experimental in nature, all four of these tracks are hampered by their repetitive structure: silly part that recalls another genre, black metal boredom, back to silly part. In order, the sandwiching sections are Depeche Mode gothic, crappy electronica, and Slint-style math rock times two. You’ll barely be able to get past the second track’s intro.

D+

 

Napalm Ted – Into the Black Ooze EP

Grindish blast from Finland, the high points are definitely the punkiest parts, which all die near the four minute mark of this twelve minute short play. After that, there’s way too much death metal in the mix, featuring a lot of that awful dun-dun-CHUG dun-dun-CHUG riff.

C-

 

Porreria – Noise Carnage EP

Weird noisecore album. First couple tracks are inaudible digital garble with a couple shrieks, breaking into a much more conventional grind noise sound. Rather than laying into power chords, the guitarist does a lot of high-pitched noodling with some dexterous finger randomness. When mixed with the ultra tinny cymbal sound and the vocalists shrill BLAH-BLAH-BLAHs, this can get pretty grating, but at least it’s something I haven’t heard. Pretty unique for such a worn-out genre.

B-

 

 

WARWICK LIKES PARENTHESIS (MORE INSIDE!)

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ayholev1tmbRicky Warwick – When Patsy Cline Was Crazy (And Guy Mitchell Sang the Blues) and Hearts On Trees

Ricky Warwick is busy. He is apparently always recording and touring with multiple bands, including Thin Lizzy and Black Star Riders. Him and and Sam Robinson’s new double album is split into band rock and roll and intimate acoustic feels.

The first LP starts off real good with classic anthemic Irish rock. The title track sounds boring at first but keeps going in the same direction until the listener becomes interested. Shove enough nostalgia down someone’s ear canal and they’ll miss Hank Williams, too. “That’s Where the Story Ends,” is a good cowboy rock with some decent spring reverb on the vocals and trumpets on the hooks. However, things take a turn with “The Son of the Wind,” which attempts to take to add a hard edge. Immediately after is track nine, which is okay simply because it has dual guitar hooks and an okay song structure. “Yesteryear” takes it back to basic rock and roll and is a semi-autobiographical piece about how life is what you make it. Sans the speed bumps on track 8 and 9, this LP is great old-fogey high energy rock and roll. Have I mentioned this is rock and roll enough?

The second LP has mostly singer-songwriter material. Ricky pours his heart out, per the usual, over four chords. He maintains a decent variety of sounds, as he should being as old and skilled as he is. It’s refreshing that each song has different material to it. The title track and the tracks after are, sonically, faster and more entertaining than the first three.

Of the bonus tracks, “The Whiskey Song,” low energy Irish pub rock, is the only mildly entertaining one on the first LP, and “Love Owes” and ” I Can See My Life (From Here)” have some cool lyrical imagery. The other bonus tracks are boring and difficult to focus on. I blame the melodies.

Warwick keeps things rockin’ and real on this Northern Irish release. You can get the double CD from Amazon for less than the MP3’s.

SOTO – Divak

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junkheadv1tmbSOTO – Divak

I was really, really excited about this album. Jeff Scott Soto should be a class act, having lent his talents to Yngwie Malmsteen, Michael Shenker, Axel Rudi Pell, and the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. After decades of rockin’, why hasn’t he been elevated to legend status?

Divak is a woefully pathetic answer to my question. Based on his pedigree, you’d figure this would be an epic, pompous slice of melodic rock. All the trimmings should be there, tuneful guitars, high-pitched vocals, the works.

Instead, SOTO sounds like Nickelback. Jeff Scott Soto puts on his best Chad Kroeger impersonation and lets it rip. I’ve never listened to Nickelback outside of whatever they play at Meijer when you’re looking for adult diapers, so I put my investigative journalist hat on to see if SOTO really was Canadian rock clonery.

I picked a random sample of Nickelback’s popular albums: Silver Side Up, All The Right Reasons, and Here and Now. All of them are pretty indebted to ’80s hard rock, but they’re way, way too polished. The hooks are never that good, a little too informed by grunge for comfort. They’re all calculated for mass radio support and lack any sort of soul as a result.

So yeah, that’s Divak.

D-