You’ll forgive, I hope. I know it hasn’t been that long since I closed out a week with Type O Negative, but it’s over a year, they’re an all-time band for me and I’m trying to connect to something and pull myself closer toward out of what I’ll generously call a persistent malaise as regards totality. Life is Killing Me is a surprisingly rousing record.

And not just in its trilogy let’s-be-Ramones-now metal-punkers “I Don’t Wanna Be Me,” “I Like Goils,” and “Angry Inch” cast across its sprawling, CD-era 15-song/74-minute runtime. By the time Type O Negative released this sixth album in 2003 — it would be their last for Roadrunner; their final LP was 2007’s Dead Again, on SPV — I thought they were done. When it first came out in September of my senior year of high school, I thought 1999’s World Coming Down (discussed here) was a huge letdown after 1996’s landmark October Rust (discussed here), and I guess I thought that between drugs, the shifting trends in metal of the day, and their own widely reputed misery, they probably wouldn’t do anything else.

Life is Killing Me was released 21 years ago. I was in college. The promo CD from Roadrunner came to me at WSOU — it came to everyone; Roadrunner was tight with the famed NJ-based college radio station; it made us feel important — and had an audio watermark I can still hear in my head over some of the songs because I listened to it so god damned much. “Type O Negative, Life is Killing Me. The new album, in stores this June” in a plainspoken woman’s voice. This was an anti-piracy measure that also just happened to, for many, ruin a given listening experience. There wasn’t a ton that was going to keep me away from hearing this record though, including that.

This was inarguably the most Beatles they ever were in their crucial Beatlesabbath pioneering goth metal/doom approach. Songs like “Todd’s Ship Gods (Above All Things),” “Nettie,” “(We Were) Electrocute,” closer “The Dream is Dead” and even the ladies-of-classic-television rundown in “How Could She?,” delivered with signature humor in Peter Steele‘s lyrics has a sense of nostalgia or looking back that, 20.5 years after its initial release, I find is a nostalgia I share for the tracks themselves. So be it. The sitar-and-tabla-inclusive “Less Than Zero.” The ahead-of-its-time healthcare commentary and playfully gloomy atmosphere of the title-track. Those songs tightened Type O Negative‘s songwriting approach to a degree that October Rust and World Coming Down could only hint toward, and took the loss of Steele‘s parents — specifically the subjects of “Todd’s Ship Gods  (Above All Things)” and “Nettie” — and found comfort in unpretentious pop hooks (sometimes also laughably pretentious) and affectingly sincere lyrics.

Bolstered by an emergent dynamic in their sound that found guitarist Kenny Hickey contributing more on vocals alongside Steele on his way to sharing more of the songwriting credits on Dead Again and the always stellar organ/keys and backing vocals from Josh Silver — of course the band was completed by drummer Johnny Kelly, but had a thing for drum machines in the studio until the last album — the emotionality of Life is Killing Me comes through mature and sincere even in its winking irony and willful mischief. And though one doesn’t always think of them as a catchy band, “…A Dish Best Served Coldly,” “I Don’t Wanna Be Me,” “Anesthesia” — fucking “Anesthesia”; there it is; the declaration “I don’t need love” before two songs before they cap with “Another lonely Valentine’s Day” in “The Dream is Dead” — as well as “(We Were) Electrocute” and “IYDKMIGHTKY (Gimme That),” among others, take on pop with a rare boldness for anything heavy.

Like a lot of what they did during their years together, which effectively ended with Steele‘s death in 2010, Life is Killing Me has aged better in sound than politically. “I Like Goils” comes off as a kind of weak troll in hindsight, even if it’s Steele laughing about being hit on by dudes after appearing in Playgirl that time, and their take on “Angry Inch” from the musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch is only loving if you hear it with those ears. They courted controversy in a way that, now, is the provenance of genuine assholes, which perhaps the surviving former members of the band — Hickey and Kelly play together in EYE AM and Silvertomb, and Kelly has drummed for Danzig, plays in Patriarchs in Black, Quiet Riot, and A Pale Horse Named Death with prior Type O drummer Sal Abruscato, who adds vocals on “I Like Goils” here — would say he or they all were. Fair enough.

But I’ll tell you this. After listening to Life is Killing Me for over two decades now since it came out, I just this morning heard the organ “I Don’t Wanna Be Me” in a new way on my headphones than I’ve ever heard before. Just sounded a little different, but it’s still something to appreciate and something unexpected from a release with which I think I’m familiar. But that’s how it goes sometimes with an album. You live with it and you hear things differently because you’re different. No way I hear “Todd’s Ship Gods (Above All Things)” and “Life is Killing Me” and “The Dream is Dead” with the same ears I had when I was in my 20s, but as with the best of things, Life is Killing Me doesn’t evaporate the span of years but grows into something richer with them. An evolving relationship to the music. And if you’re nostalgic about an album, doesn’t that mean you’re still getting something from it?

So, if you want to call it an indulgence on my part to dig into this one again, fine. It’s what I needed this week and in my deepest, most honest self, I see value in connecting to the emotion as well as the craft, hooks, and so on. This was a formative band for me, and this was the record they did that taught me not to count bands out until they were actually done. I am better for it. And better for having dug in, so thank you.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

—

Dog slept in kid’s room again last night. It worked this time, which I think might mean that happens forever now. Only matters if she pees on the floor, chews the American Girl doll, or whathaveyou. Until then, it’s crisis-anticipation, which is surely the healthiest way to parent.

Hey, it’s worked for me for the last six years, except not really.

This week featured a couple profoundly shitty, overwhelming days. It was MLK on Monday, so no school. Then it snowed and Tuesday had off and Wednesday had a delay and by Wednesday I was just about ready for a cinderblock to the face. Yesterday after school was therapy, which as I understand it has led to just about no discussion of feelings, which The Pecan at age six will sort of acknowledge having but has no real vocabulary for expressing beyond getting mad — my fault — and which is winding down its corporate-appointed 10-session run having perhaps nearly built a rapport. Today The Patient Mrs. is going to Wherever The Hell for a school board training and she won’t be back until Sunday, which makes the weekend full-on on-duty. Then next week is another week.

There’s no break coming. Ever. That month, year, decade you feel like you need where you’re catatonic and you just sort of sit there and stare straight ahead until you have your Buddha moment isn’t coming. It’s never going to happen. It’s going to be a grind until it’s nothing. No meditation, not even the daily yoga challenge, is going to change it. In fact, they’re just more shit you’re obligated to in the day. More more more. How on earth can that be a solution when the problem is everything is too fucking much?

And that’s basically where I’m at. Everything is too much. Everything. I am overwhelmed all the time. It’s not just about music or oh I get so much email because I’m somebody blah blah. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about simple fucking tasks that humans do that I crumple before. Getting gas. Going to the grocery store. God damn. The Patient Mrs. and I took like 25 minutes to go to the hardware store yesterday and it felt like the ceiling was going to collapse on me. Safe spaces are hard to come by. Not-anxious quiet is hard to come by. And as always, the problem is in me, is me. I’ve wasted the better part of the last 30 years shoveling chemicals into my body looking for some kind of ‘answer’ to myself and I still get more out of listening to fucking Type O Negative than I’ve ever had from an antidepressant, anti-anxiety med, whatever, psilocybin notwithstanding.

I’m gonna leave it there. That says what I want to say about music, about the way a record, a band, just a song, can make your life better or more livable, or whatever it is. It can fill a space in you maybe you didn’t know was there.

Have a great and safe weekend. Watch your head, hydrate, stay warm or cool depending on where you live, and don’t forget to breathe. Back Monday.

FRM.

[So, about half an hour after I finished writing this, The Pecan took a spill off the side of the couch, not only landing on my computer, but overturning my full iced tea cup onto it as well. It is, of course, dead. While I try to recover data from it, I’ll be on Little Red, my tiny emergency backup Chromebook, but that’s something I wanted to mark as having happened because, well, it’ll probably be at least another week before the situation is resolved. Cheers.]

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Thirty years of River Runs Red hardly seems like enough, which I suppose makes it fortunate that the count will keep going. The debut album from Brooklyn four-piece Life of Agony, released in 1993 through a very-much-not-owned-by-a-major-label Roadrunner Records — though I seem to recall getting the CD from Columbia House, so distro was on point — is not shy about showing its age. Produced by Type O Negative‘s Josh Silver with that band’s former drummer, Sal Abruscato, on drums with a sound that will be recognizable to anyone who’s heard Bloody Kisses, which came out a couple months before — August as opposed to October — LOA‘s first record was ahead of its time in a few ways in the manner in which it borrowed toughguy swagger and thud from New York Hardcore (and I capitalized the genre name there because ‘Hardcore’ was a sixth borough back then) and blended it with an emotional fragility that aligned the band in perspective with the then-nascent sing-about-your-crappy-upbringing nü-metal movement as typified by the emergence of Korn‘s debut the next year and the boom it would help inspire through the remainder of the 1990s.

They could be brash like knucklehead forerunners Biohazard with the intense and maddeningly catchy opener “This Time,” “Respect” or the semi-rapped “Method of Groove” — the rap-rock thing, also just getting going back then; words like “cultural appropriation” didn’t exist yet — deeply weighted as in “Words and Music,” with its gang-shout chorus, righteously preaching in “Underground,” or they could showcase some genuine fragility, as also done in “Bad Seed” or “Words and Music” with their barely audible keyboard (a daring inclusion at that point) and soaring, wrenching vocal performances, particularly in respective second-half slowdowns, or “Through and Through,” the chorus of which seems to embody the ethic put forth in “Words and Music,” finding support in community, friendship, and volume. And they did it while remaining consistent with a thickness of sound and aggressive spirit that the band — then comprised of Abruscato, who stuck around for 1995’s brilliant Ugly before departing for 1997’s Soul Searching Sun (he now plays in A Pale Horse Named Death), as well as bassist/principal songwriter Alan Robert (anyone remember Among Thieves?) vocalist/keyboardist Mina Caputo (anyone remember Freax?), guitarist Joey Zampella (anyone remember Stereomud?) — would never have again. It was a one-time thing; a record made by kids that hit enough of a nerve that they came through here like two weeks ago touring it for the anniversary. There’s a big part of me that wishes I’d gone; I was all over River Runs Again in 2003 when they first got back after their breakup. Alas.

Running 13 tracks — 10 songs and three ‘skits’ titled after the weekdays “Monday,” “Thursday” and “Friday” in which an unnamed teenaged protagonist loses his job, girlfriend, gets shit from his nasal-voiced NY-accent mom, and, finally, slits his wrists in a bit of proto-ASMR that’s still jarring to hear — and 50 minutes, River Runs Red is definitely a CD-era progression, but the material invariably holds up as one would hope for a classic album, speaking to the point at which they were written and by now more than a little nostalgic, but still aurally forceful and heavy in its procession. Suicide is the theme, whether it’s in “River Runs Red” itself, or “My Eyes” — “Just give me one reason to live/I’ll give you three to die” — “Through and Through,” “Bad Seed” or pre-“Friday” finale “The Stain Remains.” Opening with its longest track (immediate points) in the 5:41 “This Time,” the language of depression almost immediate in the lyrics as delivered by Caputo, who channeled youthful disaffection into a rousing, dynamic and distinct performance, just as able to dwell in the quiet space of the intros to “Bad Seed” or “The Stain Remains” as the coursing shove of the title-track and the anthemic “calling from the underground” that set so much of the tone for the record. Whether brooding, raging or soaring, River Runs Red is a dense-toned gamut, and it remains visceral these three decades after the fact.

I hear it with different ears as an adult, and different ears as a parent, especially as relates to the conversations happening between the songs themselves, as with “Bad Seed” dealing with the fallout of a parent killing themselves and “My Eyes” a few songs later not seeing the devastating effect the speaker’s own suicide would have on those around them, or in the community celebration of “Underground” and “Words and Music” when taken together, the talk of brotherhood, etc., emblematic of the band’s roots in hardcore while taking at least in part a new direction in sound. Even the way “Bad Seed” and “This Time” form a narrative (reversed order in the tracklisting, but still) of a broken home and a kid who — even before the current teen mental health crisis — needed help and didn’t get it, further conveyed in the three skits, which like “Method of Groove” or “Respect” or even “Underground” are a hallmark of their day but interact with the surrounding material in complementary ways, forming the linear story that ends with “The Stain Remains” seeming to pick up where “Bad Seed” left off lyrically. Therapy for everyone.

I won’t claim to have been on board with it from the time of the release — my only excuse is I was 11 — but I recall as clearly as I can through what was a resoundingly beery fog hearing it with new ears when I got to college and was on staff at the radio station WSOU, where Life of Agony were a mainstay. And amid strong associations there of being a part of something bigger than my own ego, I have loved this album deeply. Between the aforementioned River Runs Again 20 years ago, the major-label flirtation of 2005’s return LP Broken Valley or the seeming acceptance of where they came from in their most recent work — 2017’s A Place Where There’s No More Pain and 2019’s The Sound of Scars — the legacy of their debut looms significantly in the arc of their career as more than just memories of who they were when they started. It’s not timeless and it would be wrong to expect it to be, but there was precious little like it when it came out and 30 years later I’m just thankful it exists at all to be revisited like old friends and, maybe, family.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

—

A frustrating morning after a frustrating week with which I would be glad to be done if it being the weekend made any difference in terms of relief, which it doesn’t.

And rather than go on, I’m gonna leave it there this time. Thanks for reading, have a great and safe weekend. Next week is full and I’m already behind on news so there you go. Wa. Hoo.

FRM.

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When Jerry Cantrell, best known as the guitarist, vocalist and principal songwriter for Alice in Chains, put out his second solo album, Degradation Trip, in 2002, it had only been four years since the prior Boggy Depot, but what a four years. As the country went from the-late-1990s-ideal-that-the-machines-used-to-make-the-Matrix to post-9/11 paranoia and began what would become an entire generation’s span of war, Cantrell was four years deeper into the loss of Alice in Chains‘ frontman, Layne Staley — who is mourned throughout the record — even though the whopping 25 songs in the two-plus hours of the special edition Degradation Trip Vol. 1 & 2 were written before he actually died; this makes sense if you’ve ever lost somebody to heroin addiction; they’re gone first, then they’re dead. I seem to recall there was a divorce in there too, but don’t quote me on that and all I can find in searching for info on it is about his parents splitting when he was a kid.

In any case, the story goes that Cantrell locked himself in the house for four months and wrote the demos for what would become these songs on his guitar. I’ve only interviewed him once, in 2005, when Alice in Chains — Cantrell, bassist Mike Inez, drummer Sean Kinney and vocalist William DuVall, who had previously toured with Cantrell‘s solo band and played in Comes With the Fall — got back together for a VH-1 tribute to Seattle legends Heart, but in that interview, I asked if he’d ever release those demos. It was a long time ago, but I seem to recall he might’ve laughed as he said no.

Even in their finished forms, the tracks of Degradation Trip — issued by Roadrunner, first as a single disc, then a few months later in the 2CD Degradation Trip Vol. 1 & 2 — have their raw moments. “Solitude,” “What it Takes,” “Castaway,” the dramatic solo instrumental “Hurts Don’t It?,” and so on. For a record with a professional-style production, a largely untouchable rhythm section in bassist Robert Trujillo (who’d join Metallica the next year) and drummer Mike Bordin (Faith No More), who had been playing together in Ozzy Osbourne‘s touring band, and such hooky, single-ready fare as “Angel Eyes,” “Anger Rising,” “She Was My Girl,” “Give it a Name” “Hellbound,” and others, there’s also room in its massive runtime for a song like “Feel the Void,” which rolls out in a more thoroughly doomed style, melodic but working on a linear structure and with a patience that even the acoustic “Gone” at the end of the first disc and “31/32” at the end of the second — both gorgeous — can’t match. Songs throughout reach brazenly over seven minutes or eight in the case of the nodding “Pig Charmer” but are balanced against the more traditional, straightforward songs — “Pig Charmer” for example, has “She Was My Girl” before it and “Anger Rising After.” Its Vol. 1 get-weird counterpart, “Feel the Void,” follows the catchy “Pro False Idol” and leads into the breakout chorus in “Locked On,” so yes, there is symmetry between the two parts of the album, which was reissued as a 4LP in 2019.

That actually might be a good way to experience Degradation Trip, with all the breaks and side flips inherent in a vinyl listen. Taken front to back, Degradation Trip Vol. 1 & 2 is a powerful, consuming and quite possibly overwhelming way to spend the better part of an afternoon. Cantrell weaves in and out of different styles but wraps all of them in his own weighted approach, be it the hard-riffed “Bargain Basement Howard Hughes” or “Mother’s Spinning in Her Grave (Glass Dick Jones)” or “Owned” or the mellower-but-miserable “S.O.S.” or the purely Alice in Chains-style harmonic engagement of “Spiderbite,” “Siddhartha,” the lead cut “Psychotic Break” and “Dying Inside.” Even the most out-there stretches of Vol. 2 are Cantrell‘s own, expanding on ideas brought later to Alice in Chains and digging in in a way that feels especially bold for someone who had spent the last decade-plus in a professional, commercially viable and successful band. I suppose on the scale of underground heavy, it’s all still relatively accessible — dude was never going to do screamy sludgecore or something like that — but for the scale of release, there are plenty of moments that feel brave.

And as he had already long since proven, Cantrell is one of the best rock songwriters of his generation. That comes through from “Psychotic Break” onward, and apart from the unifying factor of melody in the material whatever might be going on structurally in a given track, Cantrell finds ways to hone memorability, be it the soaring leads of “Hurts Don’t It?” or the lyrical wistfulness of “31/32.” A big part of what makes Degradation Trip Vol. 1 & 2 so powerful is the emotionality, and taken in combination with the fact that there’s just so much of it in the two-volume edition, that too-much-on-the-brain feeling comes through all the more in ways perhaps even Cantrell himself wouldn’t have intended. Ups, downs, through and behind, this album goes places that one of the most storied careers in rock music — period — had never gone before and hasn’t gone to since.

I’ll rarely go to bat for double-CD releases. A 2LP?  Well, that can be anywhere from 50 minutes to almost 90, so there’s a range there — a lot of 2LPs still fit on a single CD — but 2CDs more often than not are excessive and could either be a full-length and an EP or, as in many cases, just two full-lengths released in succession, or a bunch of tracks get held back for other uses in service to a great single album. To wit, I firmly believe The White Album — and yes, I know that’s not the official name but you fucking know what I’m talking about — should be a single LP. Degradation Trip works better as two full albums, but had they come out separately, so much of the strength of the release, the gone-so-deep-you’d-be-lost-if-the-songs-weren’t-so-good atmosphere projected across the span is what would be sacrificed, and even as firm as I am in my opinion on double-albums, I have to acknowledge the periodic exception to every rule, even my own.

This is a record that I love in a personal way. I hadn’t listened to it in years and still was singing along by the time the verses started. It’s that kind of thing.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

—

Writing from the train at the Turtle Back Zoo, staple of any Northern New Jersey childhood, certainly my own. Thankfully it’s been redone since the ’80s when I’d have come here with my mother and no doubt there were all sorts of poisonous lizards running around loose roaming lions, no science, etc. We’re here with the Pecan. He earned it.

Monday was his last diaper. We had told him it was coming and it was two of the hardest days I’ve yet had as a parent, but where nothing else worked, he now pees and poops in the toilet. It’s only been two and a half years.

But yeah, the train ride is ending and then it’s off to face painting and then maybe I think eventually to see an animal or two, pony ride, sprinkler, carousel, etc. Sun is burning.

He also got Lego monster trucks, ice cream and I let him steer the car while I worked the pedals. Right now he’s trying to pee with The Patient Mrs. in the zoo ladies room, which will be a first in-public pee. I feel like it’s a milestone for me more than him.

Next week, tons of shit. I have notes, couldn’t even tell you where they start. Thanks for reading, great and safe weekend. Hydrate. It’s hot out here.

FRM.

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It had been probably a decade since I put on World Coming Down, the fifth album from Brooklyn, New York’s Type O Negative, but I still knew every word to every song. That’s a special record.

Type O Negative — principal songwriter Peter Steele on bass/vocals, Johnny Kelly on drums, Kenny Hickey on guitar/some vocals and Josh Silver on those oh-so-essential keys — were coming off an absolute masterpiece in their prior offering, 1996’s October Rust (review here), which saw them transcend the goth metal stereotype to which they’d been lumped in part rightly and truly bask in the possibilities for what they might offer in their impossibly-individualized blend of Black Sabbath and The Beatles. In a time when metal was beating its chest to the Panteras of the universe, Type O Negative was apologetically sexually transgressive, and they defined their own course and their own career on October Rust.

Yeah, all well and good, but then you have to make another record, right? Throw that pressure, Steele‘s well-under-way cocaine addiction, various personal losses and traumas, and the result is probably the darkest work Type O Negative ever released. Sure, songs like “Who Will Save the Sane?” and “Creepy Green Light” and “All Hallows Eve” seemed to speak to some of the same post-goth elements as October Rust, but when you put those alongside “Everyone I Love is Dead,” “Everything Dies” — who the hell let both of those on the same record? — and the slog of an opening that the album gets with “White Slavery,” and the affect is just miserable from the outset. Type O Negative had certainly trafficked in downerism to this point, but World Coming Down — even its 11-minute title-track, which is high among the best songs this band ever produced — felt more real, more personal, and at times the weight it seemed to put on the listener could be a lot to take.

A product of its era, it runs 13 songs and 74 minutes long with a Beatles medley at its conclusion after “All Hallows Eve” and “Pyretta Blaze” — which one might accuse of being a cynical redux/answer to the likes of “My Girlfriend’s Girlfriend” or even “Be My Druidess” from the prior album — and is peppered with death in the three interludes “Sinus,” “Liver” and “Lung,” which of course allude to cocaine, drinking and smoking. If this was the band’s excesses catching up with them, then fair enough, but the difference on World Coming Down is that what was gallows humor is instead just misery. If that seems like a fine line, Type O Negative demonstrate clearly by the end of “White Slavery” that it isn’t. Of course, Steele was still a songwriter at heart, so the clever chorus, “Let me say, Pepsi Generation/A few lines of misinformation/Watch your money flow away oh so quick/To kill yourself properly coke is it,” is just that — clever. And catchy. But the underlying message isn’t lost just for being couched in an accessible package, and, even the uptempo piano lines of “Everything Dies” can’t mask the plainness with which Steele delivers, “Now I hate myself, wish I’d die.” This, right before the flatlining of “Lung.” A radio hit about hair dye, it ain’t.

There was no question that World Coming Down was informed by both the creative and the audience success of October Rust. From “Skip It” at the outset pulling a prank on the listeners to the lushness of melody in “Everything Dies” and “Pyretta Blaze.” The pre-medley closer “All Hallows Eve” seems to echo the sparseness (at least initially) of “Haunted” from the album before it as well. Each Type O Negative record was its own beast, from 1991’s Slow, Deep and Hard to 2007’s Dead Again, but neither were they ever shy about self-awareness, and that manifest throughout World Coming Down as much as anywhere. Even with the title-track as the centerpiece, it’s not a record I’d reach for before, say, 1993’s Bloody Kisses, October Rust, or maybe even Dead Again or 1992’s still-formative The Origin of the Feces, famous as much for its cover art as for any of the songs it actually contained. That’s not to say World Coming Down doesn’t have an appeal, just that, again, it can be a lot to take in. It is an album of meta-heaviness. They sound no less weighted down than the guitar or bass tones.

When Type O Negative were at their most ‘goth,’ on Bloody Kisses, they were tongue-in-cheek about it. There are some moves made to have the same perspective on World Coming Down, but somehow the humor is undone by the surrounding sincerity. As Steele intones during a break in the the title-track, “It’s better to burn quickly and bright/Then slowly and dull without a fight,” paraphrasing Neil Young in the process, it’s hard to know whether he’s working to convince himself or the listener of what he’s saying. World Coming Down is a gorgeous record, make no mistake, but its beauty has the arduous task of finding expression through a range of pains that comprise the recurring themes: death, addiction, inability to cope, etc.

The Beatles medley, with pieces of “Day Tripper,” “If I Needed Someone” and “I Want You (She’s So Heavy),” is fair enough ground for Type O Negative to tread, having made no bones throughout their career of being influenced by — or as they might put it, “ripping off” — that group at various points. They also did a number of Beatles songs live, including “Back in the USSR.” And their penchant for matching parts of different songs together could easily be seen as an extension of the individualized takes they brought to “Hey Pete” or their version of “Paranoid” earlier in their career. It’s a little out of place on the album, tacked onto the end, but if I’m not mistaken, Roadrunner Records had a mandate at one point that everything they put out had to have a cover on it. Fear Factory did “Cars.” Type O Negative did “Day Tripper.” Fair enough.

Thinking about Nine Inch Nails‘ The Fragile (discussed here) last week — which came out the same day as World Coming Down; Sept. 21, 1999 — prompted a revisit here, and while the context of Steele‘s death in 2010 adds a spin of tragedy to everything Type O Negative did, as someone who was a fan of the band at the probably-too-tender age of 11, and who called Q104.3 so many times to request “Black No. 1” that they knew my name, I’m glad for any excuse to listen to them when an excuse to do so happens along.

—

We’re in Connecticut, came up yesterday. I’ve got to wrap this up in like 10 minutes so we can hit the road. Dropping off The Patient Mrs. and The Pecan at her mother’s, then driving north into Rhode Island about an hour and a half to buy chicken from a farm up there, then back down to grab them and back down again to NJ, hopefully all by naptime, but we’ll see. It’ll be a busy day.

Next week — Quarterly Review. I’m supposed to watch the Candlemass live stream this afternoon and review that too. It starts at 2PM. That should be up Monday, but other than that, it’s QR all the way. Not much news lately, so it’s a good time for it. Of course I say that and next week will probably be flooded. Whatever.

But since I haven’t even managed to brush my teeth yet — already changed a poopy diaper, made the kid breakfast (admittedly half-assed), and got two posts up! — and there’s still packing to do, I’m gonna call it. The Gimme show is a repeat this week, but if you feel like listening, it’s always appreciated.

It’s 4th of July weekend. I don’t have much to say about it, but if you’re proud to be an American in 2020, you’re either fooling yourself or an asshole. We should hang our heads and mourn the unnecessary dead this year. Have fun at the fireworks.

Whatever you do with it, a day off is a day off. I hope you have a great and safe weekend. Enjoy yourself from a safe distance.

FRM.

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Type O Negative, October Rust (1996)

I hereby claim this album in the name of doom. Do I have any right or authority to do that? Nope, but it’s out there now and there’s no going back.

It’s not such a stretch anyway. Type O Negative released October Rust on Roadrunner Records in 1996 as the follow-up to 1993’s Bloody Kisses, an album that at least in the New York market produced successful radio singles in songs like “Christian Woman” and “Black No. 1.” Seems unfathomable now, but a quarter-century ago, that kind of thing happened, and I remember it distinctly because I was a 12-year-old boy calling Q104.3 incessantly to request them. The station even let me on the air a couple times in recorded intros to the songs on their nightly top-five countdown or whatever it was. They said I sounded good. Pubescent-me was stoked in a way that still makes me smile.

I was in high school when October Rust came out and the album hit me as few have. It was a bridge between my Beatles fandom and the appreciation for heavy metal I couldn’t help but develop as the wake of grunge found my weirdo-dork-ass looking for something angrier to relate to. By the time October Rust was released as the Brooklyn band’s fourth overall full-length, they weren’t as aggro as they had been on, say, “Kill All the White People,” but songs like “Love You to Death,” the woefully catchy “Green Man” and “Red Water (Christmas Mourning)” were lush in a way that was enticing, their arrangements thoughtful, sweeping and commanding while still remaining heavy in tone and presence. The bass fuzz from Peter Steele at the start of “Be My Druidess” remains a swaggering showcase of unmatched tone: “Here it is, fools. Good luck trying to top it.” And if anyone has, I’m not sure who it would be. Where Bloody Kisses, 1992’s The Origin of the Feces and 1991’s Slow Deep and Hard were all pretty raw in their basic sound, October Rust didn’t shy away from being over-the-top in its production any more than it did in the sexual mischief of “My Girlfriend’s Girlfriend,” “Be My Druidess” and “Wolf Moon (Including Zoanthropic Paranoia),” etc. The album’s 15-track — three of which are gags; I always thought the phrasing in track two of “We’d like to thank you for picking up our latest recording of October Rust” was a little odd, as though there’d been some earlier recording of it — and 72-minute runtime is daunting but never monotonous, the songwriting of Steele and his ever-malleable low register vocals complemented by the guitar/voice work of Kenny Hickey, the drums of Johnny Kelly and the keyboard/backing vocals of Josh Silver, who remains the unsung hero of the band in songs like “Love You to Death,” “Red Water (Christmas Mourning),” “Die with Me,” on and on.

But as to what makes October Rust doom, the arguments are myriad and largely pointless. Yes, Type O Negative play slow. Yes, they tune low. Yes, they’re clearly influenced by Black Sabbath as well as the aforementioned Beatles — they covered “Paranoid” by the former and “Day Tripper” by the latter, daringly bringing their own take to both — and like a lot of releases that were outliers while still being considered under the general umbrella of “metal” at their time, October Rust is never overly aggressive. Closer “Haunted” stretches just past the 10-minute mark and is among the most atmospheric songs they ever composed, and though the earlier stretch in “Be My Druidess,” the dance-y single “My Girlfriend’s Girlfriend” and their cover of Neil Young‘s “Cinnamon Girl” are uptempo, the crux of the album, especially in the context of what was then happening in the band’s echelon of heavy music — certainly Kyuss were on a major label and Black Sabbath were about to reunite with Ozzy, but there was nobody really bringing goth theatricality and doom together in the way Type O did — remains more about composition than aggression. They were a standout. More than two decades on from this album’s release, they still are.

Does it matter? Not really. The language of subgenre didn’t really exist at the time in the way it does now — the internet, social media, blah blah — but the bottom line is any angle you take it from, October Rust plows through whatever critique you might want to apply.

Much of the focus on it remains on songs like “Love You to Death,” “Be My Druidess,” “My Girlfriend’s Girlfriend” and “Cinnamon Girl,” but for me, the greatest impact comes between the latter two in that list, with the three-song punch of “Die with Me,” “Burnt Flowers Fallen” and “In Praise of Bacchus,” each of which shows a character, emotionality and craft that’s simply in a league of its own. I still can’t enter a European airport without hearing Steele‘s verse, “Hey KLM, AT&T/The UK post-system/Do you still love me” play in the mental jukebox from “Die with Me,” and the hooks of “Burnt Flowers Fallen” were deceptively simple and surrounded by guitar and bass brimming with tonal vitality pushed forward by drums (or was it drum machine?) at a pace that filled the gap between the slower and faster material around it. And “In Praise of Bacchus?” It stands as one of the best songs Type O Negative ever wrote, and they wrote a few good ones along the way. That 21-minute stretch has come to define for me everything that works best about October Rust in melody and the poise of execution that makes the record so enduringly special. It was never just about the hits.

They come back on after “Haunted” to let Steele say with typical performed self-deprecation, “I hope it wasn’t too disappointing…” and while an afterthought, that little bookend with the untitled second track after the white noise goof of “Bad Ground” winds up tying October Rust together with a sense of completion that shows that as far into the wash as they go at the end of what’s essentially the album’s grand finale — if one suddenly cut off; cold endings abound — they never lose sight of their overall purpose. I don’t know if it would be right to call October Rust mature given the pervasive sense of multi-tiered chicanery at work, but it was a huge step forward in their approach and aesthetic even from where they’d been three years before and a rare instance in which a band took commercial viability not as a cue to water down their output to reach as many people as possible, but to expand their sonic palette and create something richer on the whole.

They would answer October Rust in 1998 with the After Dark video and 1999’s World Coming Down, which chronicled Steele‘s cocaine addiction in “White Slavery” at the outset and made a running theme of it from there on. 2003’s subsequent Life is Killing Me was a triumph, casting off the residuals of goth in favor of a well-claimed sound and songwriting process that was entirely their own, and 2007’s Dead Again offered an actually-mature Type O Negative in songs like “The Profit of Doom,” “September Sun” and “Tripping a Blind Man” while seeing Hickey come to the fore on vocals more often in complement to Steele with a riffier approach overall. Steele of course passed away April 14, 2010 — I was in a depot in the UK waiting to take a ferry to the Netherlands for my second Roadburn Festival when I heard; all flights were canceled owing to the volcano Eyjafjallajökull — and Hickey and Kelly (the latter of whom also joined Danzig) went on to form Seventh Void which eventually begat Silvertomb, who toured last month with fellow Brooklynite Roadrunner vets Life of Agony ahead of a presumed eventual album release.

Being as seasonal as it is, I felt the need to get this one in before October ends. Doom or not, it’s a record that feels like home to me. As always, I hope you enjoy.

—

Yesterday was The Pecan’s first birthday. One year. He spent most of the day refusing to nap, but had a little bit of brownie before the bedtime ritual — we put toys/books away, change diaper, brush teeth, sing “C is for Cookie” and then say goodnight — and we sang to him like you do. The real parties were last weekend in New Jersey and this weekend in Connecticut, so it was kind of just a little thing on this end. We gave him a pillow shaped like a grilled cheese sandwich and a clacker out of a toy instrument pack we bought last weekend. He seemed to dig both and demolished the brownie, so there you go.

Thanks to any and everyone who has yet checked out The Obelisk Show on Gimme Radio. That’s been a lot of fun to put together thus far and I’m going to keep it going for as long as they let me.

And thanks to any and everyone who’s bought a shirt from Dropout Merch so far. I’ve been talking about getting another design or two together, so I’ll hope to have more news on that front soon.

Next week, there are premieres coming from Frozen Planet….1969, Craneium, Holy Grove and Empress as well as a review of the new album from Castle, but I might go hit a show this weekend, so that would bump the schedule of other stuff and you’ll pardon me if I don’t do full notes as a result of that. I got invited and sometimes it’s nice to go someplace when you’re invited.

I’ll leave it there since this post is already longer than I intended and it’s past 5AM. I pushed my alarm from 2:30 to 3AM all week and it did me much good. Going to keep that up for a while and see if I can get away with it and still make it through the day.

Okay. Thanks for reading and please have a great and safe weekend. Don’t forget to check out the forum and radio stream.

The Obelisk Forum

The Obelisk Radio

Various Artists, Burn One Up: Music for Stoners (1997)

21 years ago, Roadrunner Records gathered together 15 bands on one compact disc, slapped a picture of an 18-wheeler truck in the desert on the front of it, and called it Burn One Up: Music for Stoners. It’s not easy to find a copy of it these days — I looked for a while before finally getting it in London in 2010 — but with bands like Queen of the Stone Age, Karma to Burn, Sleep, The Heads, Cathedral and Fu Manchu on board, it’s worth the search. Dig the full tracklisting:

1. Queens of the Stone Age, 18 A.D.
2. Karma to Burn, Ma Petit Mort
3. Fu Manchu, Asphalt Risin’
4. The Heads, GNU
5. Spiritual Beggars, Monster Astronauts
6. Floodgate, Feel You Burn
7. Slaprocket, Holy Mother Sunshine
8. Leadfoot, Soul Full of Lies
9. Celestial Season, Wallaroo
10. Cathedral, You Know
11. Acrimony, Bud Song
12. Blind Dog, Lose
13. Sleep, Aquarian
14. Hideous Sun Demons, Icarus Dream
15. Beaver, Green

It’s easy to argue that, as far as “stoner rock” goes, these are some of the bands who would most shape it. Yeah, Slaprocket never got an album out, but the New Jersey-based outfit divided into Solace and The Atomic Bitchwax, and both of them continue to make their mark to this day. Europe is represented through Dutch outfits Celestial Season, Hideous Sun Demons and Beaver, Sweden’s Spiritual Beggars and Blind Dog, and the UK shows off some of its best in The Heads, Cathedral and Acrimony. The aforementioned Slaprocket speak for the Northeast, while Floodgate hail from Louisiana, Karma to Burn from West Virginia and Leadfoot from North Carolina, so the Southeast is accounted for as well.

And of course we wouldn’t even be talking about the genre if it weren’t for California, which brings Fu Manchu, Sleep and an early incarnation of Josh Homme‘s then-new, on-the-rebound-from-Kyuss outfit, Queens of the Stone Age, which featured a frontman known only as “The Kid”. That’s a particular point of fascination unto itself, but with a first-album-era vocalized Karma to Burn as well and an off-album track from Cathedral, there’s plenty of fodder to make Burn One Up worth seeking for anyone who’d do so, but while the comp wouldn’t serve as a debut for Cathedral, or Celestial Season — who followed a similar path from doom to stoner rock and didn’t stick around long enough to make the turn back before reuniting in 2011 — or Acrimony or Sleep, etc., it’s still amazing to look at it and think of the legacy many of these bands cast. Shit, Sleep just put out their first record in 15 years and took over the world. Would instrumental heavy rock be where it is today without Karma to Burn? And Slaprocket through their already noted ties and Floodgate‘s vocalist, Kyle Thomas (also Exhorder) is currently fronting a little band called Troublem so you know, not exactly minor shakes there.

Blind Dog put out two records through MeteorCity before splitting up, closers Beaver would soon have a split out with openers Queens of the Stone Age via Man’s Ruin Records, and this would be the final appearance for Hideous Sun Demons, who released their only album, Twisted, in 1995. Spiritual Beggars gave an early look at their third album 1998’s Mantra III, with “Monster Astronauts,” while The Heads showcased how far out aural weedism could go with “GNU,” inarguably the trippiest cut on the release.

And The Heads are just one of the several bands who continue to make an impact. Fu Manchu. QOTSA. Karma to Burn. Sleep. Spiritual Beggars. One could argue the only dude missing here is Wino, and he would’ve been coming off The Obsessed and just getting going with Shine — later Spirit Caravan — so that could just as easily be a question of timing as anything else. Okay, maybe a bit of Orange Goblin and Electric Wizard would’ve been cool. You can’t have everything.

As with most compilations, the sound is somewhat disjointed, as the material was recorded by different players in different studios often enough in different countries, but Burn One Up gives an amazing summary of where the genre was in the wake of Kyuss‘ breakup and as it looked forward to developing in the 21st century into the multi-headed beast it is now. You can hear the crunching influence of grunge in Beaver, Floodgate and Slaprocket, but clearly these bands and the rest were on their own wavelength already, and whether new or old, whether they went on to lead the aesthetic or folded soon after — that reminds me, I need to break out those old Leadfoot discs — Burn One Up: Music for Stoners shows an admirable prescience in its picks and is a true piece of treasure for anyone who’d seek it out in its summary of what heavy rock and roll was at the time and what it would go on to be.

As always, I hope you enjoy.

—

Went to bed last night around 8PM. I’d been up since one in the morning, so somehow it made sense, plus The Patient Mrs. was having trouble getting The Pecan to go to sleep and she had half a cocktail to finish, so it seemed only fair to tag in. I’d woken up early on account of said Pecan as well, his sort of nighttime mumblings varying between actual fuss, crying and a kind of sleepy coo, and decided to spend the extra hours organizing stuff on my new laptop, which I’ve dubbed The Silver Fox. Because it’s silver, you see. Yes, we’re all very clever over here.

Anyhoozle, kind of another rough night with the baby last night had me up at three. He was in the bed — something I swore up and down I wouldn’t let happen and then of course did — and had rolled toward me in such a way that I was against the wall pretty much pinned. By a kid who, at seven months, weighs about 18.5 pounds. Life does funny things to you. I woke up, enjoyed the snuggle-time for a bit, and then got up to work on the above post. Circa 5:30, The Patient Mrs. came out of the bedroom carrying the again-complaining baby — whose diaper I’d already changed at some point — and kind of at a loss for what to do. I went back to bed with both of them and sort of rocked him while standing up, a gentle bounce with his head on my shoulder and swayed back and forth until he was falling asleep, then got into bed while holding him basically the same way and he went out. We all caught a solid two hours of rest in that position and it’s early yet to call it (a little after 8 as I type this), but I think that might be the difference-maker on the day.

We’ll get in the car soon enough and head south from Connecticut, where we drove to yesterday for two magical hours of screaming-baby-in-the-car fun, to New Jersey, where once again we’re basically setting up shop for the summer. We’ll be back and forth between there and CT to hit the beach probably on weekends and/or various other times, and there’s still stuff that will need tending to in Massachusetts — The Patient Mrs.’ work commitments and the like — but it’ll be a lot of good family time over the summer with my people and her people and I’m looking forward to being in the New York area for probably the greatest amount of time in the half-decade since we moved away.

Around here, things will likely proceed as normal, if there is such a thing. Notes for next week look like this currently, but these things can and do change as you well know by now:

Mon: Demande a la Poussiere review/track premiere; Dust Lovers video premiere maybe.
Tue. Oresund Space collective review; Kal-El live video.
Wed. Orange Goblin review.
Thu.: Currently open. Maybe Astrosoniq review.
Fri.: King Heavy review/album stream.

Plus plenty of news and whatever else happens my way.

Ups and downs this week as ever, but I’m getting through. That’s the story from here.

I hope you have a great and safe weekend. Thanks for reading and stick around as there’s more good stuff to come. All the best. Forum and Radio.

The Obelisk Forum

The Obelisk Radio

Solitude Aeturnus, Beyond the Crimson Horizon (1992)

It’s like staring into the very gates of doom itself. Solitude Aeturnus weren’t the first American doom band, but they were definitely among the earlier pioneers Stateside playing doom metal, and when it came to the second part of that equation, they offered it in abundance. With heavy influences from Candlemass, Trouble and of course Black Sabbath, the Arlington, Texas, five-piece got their start with a well-received demo in 1989 before signing to what was then Roadracer Records — soon to be Roadrunner Records — for the subsequent 1991 full-length, Into the Depths of Sorrow. From where I sit, that record is also a classic, but the 1992 follow-up, Beyond the Crimson Horizon, is widely hailed as both their pinnacle work and as a standard-bearer in US doom. Aside from the massive influence it would have on the development of metal, doom and heavy rock in Texas’ own fertile underground, it’s a record that helped clearly demonstrate that American outfits could capture the same kind of majesty their European counterparts had been bringing to the style for years in the wake of Candlemass‘ Messiah Marcolin era, which by then had hit its peak several years before. I’ll gladly argue that not only did Beneath the Crimson Horizon prove this thesis, but it showed a path by which that influence could lead to individualized growth and progression, that doom — that slowest and most morose of metals — need not stagnate or lack energy to be effective in its atmosphere.

Not only that, but Beyond the Crimson Horizon gave outlet to influences from the NWOBHM in cuts like opener “Seeds of the Desolate” and immediately met them head on with grittier chugging in “Black Castle,” setting up a dynamic that would continue to play out across its span. It wasn’t any more afraid to thrash out in the second half of “The Hourglass” than it was to directly confront the march of Candlemass‘ “Mirror Mirror” in the preceding “It Came upon One Night,” a seven-minute highlight of the record distinguished by its epic flourish of gong and spoken vocals from otherwise soar-prone frontman Robert Lowe, who would remain a defining presence in Solitude Aeturnus for their duration along with guitarist John Perez. Both shine in these tracks, it should go without saying, but the drumming of John Covington, the guitar of Edgar Rivera and Lyle Steadham‘s bass aren’t to be discounted either, as much as the latter might be mixed down as was the wont of the era. For what was still just their second album since forming in 1987, Solitude Aeturnus presented themselves as a complete, cohesive unit with the poise and confidence to execute their material in the face of otherwise-leaning trends both in and out of the underground and metal as a whole. To listen to a song like the Trouble-style “The Final Sin” or the penultimate chugger “Plague of Procreation,” one can hear the band’s reach expanding even as the tracklist makes its way from front to back, but at no point do Solitude Aeturnus relinquish their hold on a melodic sensibility or crushing atmosphere, the latter shown by the Metallica-esque stomp in the midsection of “Plague of Perception.” They would save the slowest and most grueling nod for last in the closing semi-title-track “Beyond…” and add suitable funeral bells over a long fade that dirge-plodded the record to its finish.

Dramatic? Oh yeah. Of its era? Most definitely — but also a blueprint from which future US doom metal would be and still is derived, either directly or indirectly. With Perez and Lowe as its founding anchors, Solitude Aeturnus would go on to issue Through the Darkest Hour in 1994 before embracing more of a groove metal feel on 1996’s Downfall and 1998’s Adagio, and a 2000 EP titled Justice for All would be their final release until 2006 brought a return both of the band generally and of their classically doomed form on the righteous Alone, which was offered through Massacre Records and topped an hour of prime darkened reveries that showed Solitude Aeturnus‘ core approach was not just still relevant, but vital in Texas metal and the wider sphere of what doom had become and was about to become in the social media age. Alone was followed by a 2009 live record titled Hour of Despair and the 2011 In Times of Solitude compilation, and Poland’s Metal Mind Productions had done a series of maybe-licensed reissues of Solitude Aeturnus‘ material, including Beyond the Crimson Horizon, in 2006, but as essential as Alone found Solitude Aeturnus to be, it hasn’t received a proper follow-up in the 11 years since. Perez works as a tour manager — he’s been out with Saint Vitus and Venom Inc. and recently accompanied Candlemass on the road — and Lowe did a stint in Candlemass from 2006 through 2012 after their fallout with Messiah Marcolin, but Solitude Aeturnus has languished, their final album (to-date) a testament to what Perez and Lowe could still accomplish if they decided to move forward with a new batch of material. One continues to hope that at some point they do.

Doom on and enjoy Beyond the Crimson Horizon. Thanks for reading, as always.

—

This was a four-day week for me and it was still too long by at least a day. Possibly two days. My work situation has devolved to the point where in about an hour when I go to the office I’ll be bringing my cheapie tablet with me in order to spend the bulk of the day playing and maybe even finishing Final Fantasy V. I took Monday off for a doctor’s appointment and since Tuesday have basically spent the days reading downloaded Shatnerverse ebooks and listening to baseball games (Tigers vs. Angels yesterday was a good time unless you’re a Tigers fan). Sounds like paradise except for existing in a cubicle. They’re still paying me until next Friday though, so I’ll be there.

Whatever. It’s almost over.

Then it’s back to being broke. How’re we gonna pay the mortgage? How’re we gonna pay the oil? How’re we gonna feed this baby? And so on. All completely valid questions, by the way, and the only reason I didn’t include the tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of student loan debt The Patient Mrs. and I share between us is because it makes me too sad and/or panicky to think about it. So yeah. Back to that.

But at least I won’t be going to an office anymore. Losing two hours every day to a commute. Missing out on life in the meantime. More time to write. More time with the Little Dog Dio. Time with The Pecan when he arrives in October. All of that is good. Will be good.

Five workdays left.

Plenty of Obelisk stuff to keep me busy in the meantime. Here’s what’s in the notes for next week, subject to change of course:

Mon.: Top 20 of 2017 So Far; BardSpec video.
Tue.: Radio Adds; The Necromancers video premiere.
Wed.: Lee Van Cleef Six Dumb Questions; Witch Charmer video.
Thu.: Destroyer of Light track premiere; Wren video.
Fri.: Abrams Six Dumb Questions; hopefully some other audio premiere or review.

That’s about where we’re at. Put my head down, keep writing. Everything else is distraction.

I hope you have a great and safe weekend, whatever you might be up to. I’ll be in Connecticut tonight and tomorrow and then back to Massachusetts on Sunday. I have some travel coming up in the next few weeks — Maryland for a wedding next weekend, then down to North Carolina, then back up to New Jersey before finally heading back home; family stuff all — so it will be a bit of an adventure coming up, but I’m looking forward to getting through next week and getting to it. I’m sure we’ll have some fun in the meantime.

Thanks again for reading, and please check out the forum and radio stream.

The Obelisk Forum

The Obelisk Radio

Karma to Burn, Karma to Burn (1997)

They weren’t yet the band they wanted to be, and it’s important to acknowledge that at the outset. Seven years ago, when I spoke to now-former Roadrunner Records A&R head honcho Monte Conner about his label’s involvement with the makings of stoner rock in the late ’90s, Karma to Burn were bound to come up. In addition to having issued the Burn One Up: Music for Stoners compilation in 1997 (which featured the West Virginian outfit alongside a very early appearance from Queens of the Stone Age with a different singer, as well as The Heads, Gnu, Sleep, Blind Dog, Fu Manchu, Spiritual Beggars, Slaprocket and others), and though they were of course known more as a metal label and were releasing the likes of Type O Negative, Life of Agony, Fear Factory and Sepultura at the time, Roadrunner was the party responsible for bringing Karma to Burn‘s self-titled debut to public attention — part of a kind of under-the-underground involvement in what was then a burgeoning post-Kyuss movement of heavy rock. In the almost two decades since its release, and of course in light of all the instrumental work the band has done since, the narrative about the label forcing them to get a singer has become an essential piece of context. Here’s what Conner had to say in 2009:

“Basically, we saw Karma to Burn for the first time here in New York at a club called Brownies, myself and Howie Abrams, the guy who led the charge in signing the band. We saw them as an instrumental trio and were just absolutely floored at the power. You could listen to Karma to Burn even without vocals and it was still captivating, at least for one record. It might wear thin after a while, especially with songs called ‘Thirty-Nine,’ ‘Forty,’ ‘Forty-Two,’ it’s a little hard to keep track at that point.

But we did see Karma and we were absolutely floored and we thought, ‘God, if these guys get a singer there’s gonna be no stopping them!’ At the time we signed the band, the whole courtship process and signing the band, the band at that point did want to get a singer and agreed to get a singer, and it was only after frustration of not finding someone that I think the band realized, ‘Hey, maybe we’re better without a singer, we’re more unique this way, we don’t need a singer.’

At that point, they told us ‘No singer,’ and we were objecting because we signed them with the intention of getting a singer, and as I said, that was laid out from the beginning and when we signed them, they said, ‘Yes, we are going to get a singer.’ So they kind of changed the game on us, and they had already recorded the entire record prior to having a singer, figuring, ‘We’ll get the singer and he’ll just go in and lay down the tracks.’ Eventually, due to pressure from us, the band still couldn’t find a singer and had a local friend of theirs, Jason Jarosz, come in and put down vocals.

Not traditional vocals at all, but these really sinister, kind of strange — as you can hear on the record — kind of weird vocals, that we thought were cool, even though they were not typical vocals at all. It kind of gave the whole thing an eerie, avant garde feeling. So we accepted it, we were okay with it, but I think in the end, it really wasn’t the type of vocals we imagined. I think we were settling at that point, just because we wanted to get the record out.

The band went along with it to appease us, but in the end I don’t think they liked this guy’s vocals. They were very rebellious and were like, ‘Fuck this, we don’t want a singer,’ so they basically parted ways with this guy and decided to continue on as an instrumental band and at that point we weren’t interested in continuing, so we dropped them…” — Monte Conner (more here)

I think my favorite part about that entire quote is “They were very rebellious,” since it basically encapsulates the entire career of Karma to Burn and particularly their sole remaining founder, guitarist Will Mecum, whose perspective seems to have always been a middle finger in the face of anyone who’s going to say otherwise on just about any issue. I don’t know if I’ve ever spoken about the band, who released the Mountain Czar EP (review here) and toured with The Obsessed this year, without calling their sound “bullshit-free,” and indeed, I consider that to be their defining sonic feature. Right up there with “riffs.”

They are and have for a long time been the straightest line to heavy rock and roll, and while records like 1999’s Wild Wonderful Purgatory and 2001’s Almost Heathen provided the defining hours for their approach — Mecum along with bassist Rich Mullins and drummer Rob Oswald — the self-titled has always been by its very nature a standout from everything that followed it. Jarosz‘s vocals, quieter and less burly than what, say, Sixty Watt Shaman were doing at the time, had an attitude all their own, and while one might find some politically suspect lyrics in “Mt. Penetrator,” there’s an underlying sad blue-collar poetry to the words that gets lost in a lot of modern Southern rock, which is more about the boozing, the womanizing, the party-as-escape. Karma to Burn‘s self-titled, which also introduced the band’s signature numbered instrumentals with “Eight,” “Thirteen” and “Six” after the landmark hook of opener “Ma Petite Mort,” undercut that impulse to a degree and came across as an emotionally richer and somewhat more honest offering because of it.

Maybe don’t tell that to the band. In 2012, they’d revisit this material and release it completely instrumental as Slight Reprise, a fitting swansong for the then-reformed Mecum/Mullins/Oswald lineup. Mecum has of course carried the band forward, working now with a strong European focus and the rhythm section of bassist Eric Clutter and drummer Evan Devine. Their last full-length was 2014’s Arch Stanton (review here) — Clutter was not yet in the lineup — but they’ve been reborn as a touring act. This fall, they made the rounds in Europe and played Desertfest in Athens as well as Keep it Low, and having been fortunate enough to see them this summer at Maryland Doom Fest (review here), I can attest to the drive and push they emit from a stage being as middle-finger as ever, and so, true to the foundation they laid with this self-titled debut.

As always, I hope you enjoy.

—

How was your week? Mine went by in a blur of corporately-tinged workflow process acronyms — letters that meant nothing to me until a few months ago (and some that still don’t). Made me think maybe I should come up with important-sounding abbreviations for what I do here. “Why did you get up at 5AM?” “I had a big RWM to get through,” where all RWM means is “review-writing in the morning.” Or, more appropriately, “I had to finish the FFL.” Friday Full-Length.

You get the idea.

However, since I don’t really talk about the site with anyone, it would pretty much be an inside joke with myself, and that seems kind of sad in this context.

Before I forget — THANK YOU to everyone who has submitted their best-of 2016 list so far to the YEP (Year-End Poll). If you haven’t yet, please do. As of right now, the tally stands at 370 submissions. I hope by the end of the weekend to pass 388, which was last year’s total for the entire month of December. Not bad for being less than half the time. I am humbled and deeply grateful.

You might’ve noticed the Album Covers that Kicked Ass in 2016 list didn’t go up this week. I had crazytimes at the office and though the piece about that Comet Control track being my favorite song of the year turned out to be a doozy in its own right, it required much less time on the back end than tracking down and laying out different art jpegs would. I’ll get to work on it this weekend — I also have some fest writeups to do — and have it up on Monday, disaster pending.

Speaking of “subject to change,” here’s the rest of what’s in the ol’ notes for next week:

Mon.: Art list (who knew?) and new video from Sun Blood Stories. Don’t miss either of them.
Tue.: News on the SonicBlast Moledo fest and new recordings from Australia’s Merchant, an album stream from Elbrus and video from Crippled Black Phoenix. Don’t miss any of that either.
Wed.: Track premiere from Indian metallers Rudra.
Thu.: Review of the new Sgt. Sunshine.
Fri.: Review of the new T.G. Olson.

We get kind of tentative there toward the end of the week, and I’m basically doing myself favors at this point in terms of picking what I want to write about. Anytime you see me covering something from T.G. Olson or his main outfit, Across Tundras, you can pretty much guess that I’m doing so in order to maximize enjoyment of the day. Not that I don’t dig writing about most of what I write about — no point to the site otherwise — but as you know if you’ve already made out your top 20 and turned it in for the Year-End Poll, these things are relative.

Hey, have a great weekend, alright? Please do that.

Largely at the insistence of The Patient Mrs., I went ahead and took Monday off from work (will make sure to put up my “OOO”). She rather correctly asserted that I needed a three-day weekend. No argument, I just don’t get paid for the time I don’t work, so it’s money out of my pocket to stay home. Still, money ain’t everything and sometimes those hours are worth their weight in gold. So I’ll be around. In my pajamas. Sitting on ass. Hopefully playing Final Fantasy. And writing. And that’s my plan.

Whatever you’re up to, please be safe and have a great time. Thanks for reading this long-ass post if you have, and we’ll see you back here Monday. In the meantime, please check out the forum and radio stream.

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