About Junkhead Josh

http://blahblahmusic.com

Posts by Junkhead Josh:

Brotherhood – Turn The Gold To Chrome

12985415_1049372195102189_6547701139846585895_n

junkheadv1tmbBrotherhood – Turn The Gold To Chrome

Few things can match the first time I heard Cleopatra Record’s Goth Box back in ’97. It opened my little ten year old eyes to a genre plagued with misconception. I figured popular metal junk like Type O Negative was the be-all-end-all, but the compilation featured bands from Bauhaus to Beat Mistress. It helped me develop a taste for goth music that’s only grown over time, a respect that makes an album like Turn The Gold To Chrome so appealing.

In many ways, Brotherhood is a saucy love letter to those ’80s and ’90s goth bands. They combine all the elements that made the Sisters of Mercy so wonderful: pounding beats, brooding vocals, and those catchy single-note guitars melodies. The strange thing is that retro-memorandum bands don’t normally top their influences, which Brotherhood often does.

“End of Time” is a driving opener, but you won’t realize you’re onto something great until track two, “Abigail”. “Sha-na-na-na-na/That’s what she said/Sha-na-na-na-na/As she walked away” is the kind of catchy melancholy that’ll be branded in my mind for weeks to come. Later, “Lost” mixes rolling acoustic strumming and shimmering synths to perfection. “So Many Stars” elevates the typically tepid slow burner style to great heights with a gorgeously droning male/female chorus.

Things get decidedly more poppier sounding during the second half, with sections of “Sleepwalking” and “Over and Over” introducing elements that remind you more of Depeche Mode than Death Ride 69. “Question and Answer” takes this to the absolute extreme, dominated by a bouncier beat and bubblegum guitar/synth riff. The change keeps things from getting stale, showing more songwriting range from the group and giving listeners more to chew on.

Basically, Brotherhood is any goth fan’s second honeymoon: it recalls everything that made you fall in love with the genre in the first place, reviving an old paradigm with careful songcraft. So yeah, I’ll take a Turn The Gold To Chrome over a Vision Thing any day.

B+

https://brotherhoodsweden.bandcamp.com/

Axel Rudi Pell – Oceans of Time

junkheadv1tmbAxel Rudi Pell – Oceans of Time

There are some big name guitarists in the world of rock. Joe Perry, Keith Richards, and whoever gives a fuck are all names you hear thrown around by non-elitists. News flash: elitists like me know those guys are awful. The real totally awesome guitarists are the crazy blonde-haired German dudes. Amongst this group, Michael Schenker, Uli Jon Roth, and Axel Rudi Pell are the official holy trinity.

Probably the most obscure amongst non-European audiences, Pell originally played in the largely generic band Steeler throughout the ’80s before breaking out on a successful solo career. After five albums, including a trilogy with veteran singer Jeff Scott Soto, Pell tapped Hardline vocalist Johnny Gioeli to take over on his 1998 release Oceans of Time. Aside from a revolving door of drummers, this establishes the same line-up that Pell has today almost twenty years later.

In a way, Oceans of Time also solidifed Pell’s style. It continues the direction of his previous album Magic but with better songs. The clearest influence is Dio and Rainbow, with Gioeli’s vocals and the storming high fantasy sound. Wizards, oaths, demons, and everything in between dominate the lyrical content and the searing guitar follows suit.

Still, the approach is re-shuffled in interesting ways. The emphasis is on ultra-epic riffs and simple arrangements that keep everything going well past the seven minute mark. Even more interesting is how gloom-and-doom these high energy tracks really are: “Carousel”, “Gates of the Seven Seals”, and “Oceans of Time” all stick to minor melodies and atmospheric synths that keep the rockin’ positively bleak.

Between these rockers are a large number of monster power ballads punctuated by mid-range melodic solos, with the ten minute “Ashes From the Oath” being the best of the bunch. Half the track is dedicated to monumental fretwork that wraps around your mind, never growing repetitive and topping the ho-hum vocal melodies.

There’s a couple straightforward upbeat tunes buried under the larger-than-life behemoths. “Ride the Rainbow” and “Pay the Price” are awesome headbanging material. The latter features the corniest synth-choir vocals that crank the already over-the-top sound to full throttle. “Prelude to the Moon” goes even further: keyboardist Ferdy Doernberg rocks the harpsichord setting while Pell rips through the only outright shredding on the whole album.

And honestly, the whole album really rips. Pell knows what makes fantasy-themed metal great and he channels it better than most Iced Earths or Blind Guardians could ever hope to. I wish the drums were a little further up in the mix, but there’s a simple solution: turn this shit up until your ears bleed.

Oceans of Time is receiving its first ever vinyl release on June 3rd. I’d import this baby real quick before you accidentally buy something that sucks.

A-

http://www.axel-rudi-pell.de/

RüN – Psychic Love

junkheadv1tmbRüN – Psychic Love

In the late ’80s, short song noisecore became a popular genre. Bands like 7 Minutes of Nausea, Meat Shits, and Anal Cunt were releasing ten minute EPs allegedly containing hundreds of songs, all of which were short atonal blasts of guitar, drum, and vocal noise. The ’90s slowly took this to an obnoxious extreme, with groups like Deche-Charge making every release filled with thousands of half-second blorps. Noisecore faded back into the underground’s deepest depths, a place where it remains to this day.

RüN is a one-man project that revisits the style of noisecore’s pioneers, although there is some deviation. In between the noise are strange synthscapes and the moans of men in ecstasy, a reflection of RüN’s queer band identity. Previous album covers prominently feature graphic male homo-sex, which is honestly nothing shocking in the world of underground demos, but those albums also had more of a tinny, programmed blast-beat sound and varying vocal styles. There was little direction and the quality suffered as a result. On Psychic Love, the cover shows an image of Adam and Steve biting an apple. Just like Adam, RüN received a small taste of knowledge that pulled his head out of his ass. The grand realization is here: old school noisecore is the only way to go.

This release contains two tracks, each a collection of many thirty second noise assaults. The obvious digital recording makes everything a garbled mess, but RüN understands traditional noisecore enough that the awful sound plays to his advantage. Blast beats are replaced with random snare pounds and dominating cymbal crashes. The vocals are low goregrind barks, and while I’ve never been a fan of the toilet growl style, it actually works here with the treble-less assault.

I’m hoping RüN expands on this release, as I’ve perused the rest of his catalog and was only really impressed by Physic Love’s enraged aural explosions. This is true anti-music, abandoning all preconceived notions of listenability. It might not be the most original sound, but at least it never abandons its singular cause: fuck melody.

B-

https://rnmusic1.bandcamp.com/album/psychic-love