Ufotogenetiske Sjumilssteg

The Sword - Age of Winters

Postet 01:12, 9/12 2006
Kategori: Musikk | Rock
Nøkkelord: Age of Winters | AMG | The Sword
Kommentarer: Ingen! | Skriv

Coming to grips with the Sword’s unlikely genesis in the alternative music Mecca of Austin, TX, leads one to wonder whether heavy metal has finally become hip again.

Depending on your generation, nothing will seem as simultaneously preposterous (Gen-X’ers who came of age during pop-metal’s heyday and don’t recognize it as an unrepresentative anomaly) or obvious (everyone else) when discussing a genre that’s spent the bulk of its 35-year history on the absolute fringe of rock culture.

If that isn’t “alternative,” well, what is? In any case, glorifying heavy metal’s prototypical qualities is exactly what the Sword is all about, and their 2006 debut, Age of Winters, sees them joining California’s High on Fire, Sweden’s Witchcraft, and Australia’s Wolfmother (to name but a few) at the forefront of what’s gradually become known in the mid-’00s as the “heritage” or “retro-metal” movement.

No, not stoner rock — that’s sooo ten years earlier! The only thing the Sword and their ilk have in common with most ’90s stoner rockers is recognizing that all heavy metal empires are sprung from the Black Sabbath cornerstone, and the token signs can be readily heard in these songs’ ominous doom chords (just listen to opener “Celestial Crown” and “Lament for the Aurochs”), pummeling, down-picked staccato riff-runs (”Barael’s Blade,” “Ebethron”), lyrics about fantasy and legend (”Freya,” “The Horned Goddess,” etc.), and, finally, those borderline-inadequate, zombie vocals first made acceptable by Ozzy himself.

The Sword’s singer, JD Cronise, is certainly guilty of the latter, but then that only helps to focus one’s attention upon the album’s main attraction: its megalithic guitar work. For the record, the Sword spins the evolutionary clock as far forward as ’80s thrash, on occasion, resulting in colossal, galloping onslaughts such as “Winter’s Wolves” (complete with howling wolves, naturally) and “Iron Swan” (prefaced by delicate melodies of a medieval feel).
Yes, you’ll probably have to be a certified, stainless steel metalhead to really appreciate the skyscraping riff constructions of “March of the Lor” (an instrumental in eight movements!), but the vast majority of what’s on-hand proves remarkably well-balanced and almost suspiciously immediate to the ears.

As such, Age of Winters provides neophyte (errr — alternative?) listeners with as good an entryway as any into the “retro-metal” universe, while also managing to sound refreshing even to calloused heavy metal ears — this is no small achievement.

(AMG)

Hvor er de Gamle Heltene?

Postet 02:34, 8/12 2006
Kategori: Musikk | Rock
Nøkkelord: hardcore | master | Norsk | punk
Kommentarer: 2 | Skriv

Jeg har ofte fundert på hvem som sitter på master-tapene til klassisk Norsk rock, punk og hardcore.

Idag har jeg bestemt meg for å gjøre alvor av å plage fremmede mennesker i inn og utland for å undersøke muligheten for å få gjenutgitt disse perlene på CD.
Jeg plukker frem noen favoritter fra min egen platesamling og begynner med dem.

Anarki og Kaos: Norsk punk 79 -81
Utgitt på Voices of Wonder (VOW029).

Blitz Hits
Jeg sender avgårde en mail til Blitz og spør.

Cirkus Modern - Trøst
Gitt ut på Sonet.
Fant en hjemmeside som virker lovende, mail sendt.

Corporate Deathburger - We’re Just In Hell For Fun
Ble gitt ut på Progress Records (Pro003).
UFFA-relatert. En annen link.
Sendt mail til kontaktperson i Progress.

De Press - Produkt
Siberia (SM2)

Fire Fæle Fyrer - FFF
Gitt ut på Intence Music (FF1289).
Se Kafka Prosess.

Kjøtt - 79-81
Fant en hjemmeside som virker lovende, mail sendt.

Life… But How To Live It? - Day By Day
Life… But How To Live It? - Life But How To Live It?
Gitt ut på Konkurrel (K047/126) og (X-Port X-008).
Jeg sendte dem en melding på MySpace.

Munch - Munch
Fant en hjemmeside som virker lovende, mail sendt.
Ble først gitt ut på eget selskap (T23), mitt eksemplar i klar vinyl er gitt ut på Tyske Dossier (DLP7560) i 1000 eksemplarer etter det jeg vet.
Ble gitt ut på CD av Tatra i 1993.

Stengte Dører - Alt Er Alt Ingenting Er Mer
Stengte Dører - Hver Dag Er En Perfekt Dag
Gitt ut på Beri Beri (BB008) og Double A (AA021).
Mitt eksemplar av Hver Dag… er på gul vinyl.

Within Range - Take Care
Within Range - WR
Gitt ut på Knall Syndikatet (KS043) og (eget?) (WR001).
Fant dem på MySpace, sendte dem en melding.

Ym:stammen - Dvergmål
Tatra ga den ut på CD i 1987.
Jeg spør Tormod Opedal, kanskje han vet.

Slik. Da er det bare å ta på seg ventehatten, kanskje jeg får napp.
Om noen har disse tilsalgs, ta kontakt.

Electric Wizard - Dopethrone

Postet 23:47, 27/6 2006
Kategori: Musikk | Rock
Nøkkelord: AMG | Dopethrone | Electric Wizard
Kommentarer: Ingen! | Skriv

As Deep Purple’s Roger Glover once said, “Heavy isn’t about volume, it’s about attitude.” And no band better illustrates this statement than England’s Electric Wizard — the reputed heaviest band in the universe — whose every album has managed to push the boundaries of down-tuned, grinding, monolithic doom metal to unprecedented depths.

Sure, they pack plenty of volume as well, but none of it could possibly work without the band’s uncompromising worship of weed and all things gothic and malevolent. After a long hiatus (during which they were no doubt traveling the cosmos without ever leaving their parent’s basements or putting down their bongs), Electric Wizard finally returned to action in the year 2000.
The resulting dirge masterpiece, Dopethrone, delivers walls of sound so dense that at first they seem too big to fit into your ears. At a paltry three minutes, the opener “Vinum Sabbathi” may be the Wizards’ first true candidate for an actual “single,” but it really serves as a teaser for what’s to come.

Introduced by short spoken intros taken from B-movies a la White Zombie, extended riff-monsters like “Funeralopolis,” “I, the Witchfinder,” and the three-part colossus “Weird Tales” are vintage Electric Wizard.
Though they never exceed a snail’s pace, they somehow manage to build in intensity, from single note guitar lines to huge power chords with deliberate, maddening certainty. First-time listeners will find it easier to cope with more compact offerings like “Barbarian” and “We Hate You,” but with time, they’ll see the light and embrace the obscenely heavy title track, with its patented “Iron Man” oscillating riff. In short, with Dopethrone, Electric Wizard has raised the bar for doom metal achievement in the new millennium — good luck to the competition.

(AMG)

Various Artists - Virus 100

Postet 16:27, 26/6 2006
Kategori: Musikk | Rock
Nøkkelord: AMG | Dead Kennedys | Virus 100
Kommentarer: Ingen! | Skriv

Leave it to Jello Biafra — he is the only one who could get away with putting together a tribute to his label and his band (the Dead Kennedys) and not come off as egotistical.

Actually, Virus 100 is a fitting tribute to an era of punk rock that is long gone. The participants are not afraid to put their own unique stamp on the songs that they cover, and it emphasizes the widespread influence of Biafra’s musical vision.
Nomeansno put in an a cappella version of “Forward to Death” that needs to be heard to be believed. Napalm Death rages through “Nazi Punks Fuck Off,” but despite being one of the fastest bands on earth, they do not beat the original version’s one-minute time frame. Faith No More turns “Let’s Lynch the Landlord” into lounge jazz, Mojo Nixon turns “Winnebago Warrior” into country, and Kramer even turns “Insight” into chamber music!

All of these efforts are very good, but the most interesting turn is the Disposable Heroes of Hipoprisy’s amazing remake of “California Uber Alles.” Already one of the strongest numbers in the Kennedys’ book, rapper Michael Franti updates the song for California governor Pete Wilson, twisting the hardcore anthem into a Public Enemy-style affair.

Elsewhere, Alice Donut, Sepultura, Neurosis, the Didjits, and Steel Pole Bath Tub put in respectable, faithful renditions of Kennedys classics. Only L7’s uninspired take on “Let’s Lynch the Landlord and Victims Family’s dull “Ill in the Head” drag the album down, and they are easily forgotten when held against the rest of the album.

This is a fitting tribute to an underrated band and serves as an excellent introduction to their music.

(AMG)

Black Sabbath - Paranoid

Postet 15:31, 26/6 2006
Kategori: Musikk | Rock
Nøkkelord: AMG | Black Sabbath | Paranoid
Kommentarer: Ingen! | Skriv

Paranoid was not only Black Sabbath’s most popular record (it was a number one smash in the U.K., and “Paranoid” and “Iron Man” both scraped the U.S. charts despite virtually nonexistent radio play), it also stands as one of the greatest and most influential heavy metal albums of all time.

Paranoid refined Black Sabbath’s signature sound — crushingly loud, minor-key dirges loosely based on heavy blues-rock — and applied it to a newly consistent set of songs with utterly memorable riffs, most of which now rank as all-time metal classics.
Where the extended, multi-sectioned songs on the debut sometimes felt like aimless jams, their counterparts on Paranoid have been given focus and direction, lending an epic drama to now-standards like “War Pigs” and “Iron Man” (which sports one of the most immediately identifiable riffs in metal history).

The subject matter is unrelentingly, obsessively dark, covering both supernatural/sci-fi horrors and the real-life traumas of death, war, nuclear annihilation, mental illness, drug hallucinations, and narcotic abuse. Yet Sabbath makes it totally convincing, thanks to the crawling, muddled bleakness and bad-trip depression evoked so frighteningly well by their music.

Even the qualities that made critics deplore the album (and the group) for years increase the overall effect — the technical simplicity of Ozzy Osbourne’s vocals and Tony Iommi’s lead guitar vocabulary; the spots when the lyrics sink into melodrama or awkwardness; the lack of subtlety and the infrequent dynamic contrast.
Everything adds up to more than the sum of its parts, as though the anxieties behind the music simply demanded that the band achieve catharsis by steamrolling everything in its path, including its own limitations.

Monolithic and primally powerful, Paranoid defined the sound and style of heavy metal more than any other record in rock history.

(AMG)