Textures - Silouhettes

Textures – Silhouettes

(Listenable Records, 9 tracks, 47 minutes, 28 seconds, reviewed by Adam McAuley)

Another work from a promising band is on display here though it doesn’t quite measure up to the stylistic virtues implied by the title, which implies an artistic powerhouse. Instead we’re left with a progressively slanted metal album that heavily recalls the likes of Meshuggah at many times. However, they have their own views which makes one want to be interested in their sounds towards a different slant.

We can see a rhythmically dense structure attempting to be created by the band which makes them wanting to skewered their thoughts into similar realms as the aforementioned Meshuggah. Textures have a way of pounding out a dense sound that they want to ingrain with the listener steadily, though its positive effect is sometimes questionable.

The sort of punishing vibe they demonstrate is shown nicely in "Laments of an Icarus" which starts off pummelling the listener in fine fashion and shows one of the more standout parts of the album, though there are fewer of them throughout than I found upon their last album Drawing Circles.

The lyrics that Textures utilize outline someone always wanting to find more interesting pastures in life which can be paralleled with the idea of Textures wanting to find a more solid grounding within the metal genre. The album thus brings together an interesting way at looking towards future circumstances that is key to their forward thinking nature.

How is my personal relationship to Textures elevated by Silouhettes? We can see them trying to satisfy an interest queued by their release Drawing Circles and they fail in this to some degree because it doesn’t supply as ingenious of a listen as its predecessor. Thus Textures are lumped into a slightly less than stellar status here though they remain solid.

Altogether, we can see that Silouhettes provides an enjoyable progressive listening experience on the whole, but doesn’t quite have the splendorous approach that can be seen from Drawing Circles, for example, and should have a slightly lessened fanbase to react to their undaring nature on this work. It is still worthy of a good listen though as we can see Textures delving into a slightly more tangible mindset.

Hollenthon - Opus Magnum

(Napalm Records, 8 tracks, 50 minutes, 44 seconds, Reviewed by Adam McAuley)

Egotistical symphonic metal with a flair for wanting to master techniques of epicness is present and brings a characteristically exciting sonic vibe that is interesting in how it grips the listener’s attention. It strengthens your relationship to an already great band, but makes you question whether they honestly could have done better when comparing the album directly to With Vilest of Worms to Dwell, for example.

Their specific approach on the album makes you wonder if they’re imposing any boundaries of maintaining a certain level of quality upon themselves as the Opus Magnus might suggest certain standards wanting to be upheld, but not a revolution in their sound by any means, which is something that strongly catches your attention here.

The ability to incorporate a keen classical flair is an aspect of the band that makes you want to strongly become attached to them in an ingenious manner. They have a method of incorporating horns and other instruments into the background in a way that makes them particularly appealing to people.

Along with this operatic vocals weave a bombastic flavour into the songs and make them stand out in a manner that makes them appealing. The melding of classical elements realistically with normal metal moments makes Hollenthon a strong out-being within the metal genre and one can see growth in these elements making us interested in the work.

In terms of incorporating a lyric aspect into their work we can see a sort of poetic style taken within epic stances and some mentions of dying to raise the overall standpoint of Hollenthon into a different level. This makes them feel like an elevated band in terms of using a strong style to go along with their already substantial music abilities and make them feel bloated because of it.

What are some of the standout elements that make one want to listen to this album with extreme interest. We can sense that “Dying Embers” brings your attention up with its acrobatic approach and makes you want to really listen to the band keenly much like songs like “Fire Upon the Blade” did in the past. Having standout tracks is a method of gaining the listener’s interest effectively.

Altogether, this album represents another splendid work for the band Hollenthon with songs that are about bringing together an extremely epic classical flavour towards their work, which makes them a particularly different band for the listener to fans of the metal genre. Fans of both the metal genre and the classical music genre should be able to relate to Opus Magnum from a stylistic standpoint and enjoy it equally although it takes a very small step down from the magnificent With Vilest of Worms to Dwell.

Thesyre- Exist!

Thesyre
Exist!
1 – 32:44

(review by James Edward Raggi IV, from the LotFP issue The Shameless, 2007)
It is amazing how often I am bombarded by messages telling me to ignore things I had no intention of thinking about in the first place. On the splash page of Thesyre’s site: “Thesyre is an ideologically independent band. We like to think that our visitors are intelligent people able to make up their minds based on what they can observe, hear and read and not upon all the lies, rumors and gossip circulating around.” The Schuldiner approach to deflecting criticism. Awesome. But when Exist! was released a few months back, funny things started popping up in sales catalog blurbs: “This Canadian outfit (with The Black Dahlia Murder drummer in its line-up) has a quite militant presentation when it comes to logo, layout and musicianship, yet they are not politically linked to any organization, and their releases should be reviewed on the music and intensity only.” Definitely interesting that those things were considered most important to tell potential buyers, eh?

As if that doesn’t set of alarm bells (the more effort someone puts into telling you something is not true, the more likely it is that it is true), there’s more! Call me naïve and easily influenced, but when a quick internet search finds band leader Eric Masicotte making it a point to say “I’ve read lots on and from Adolph [sic] Hitler,” when asked “What thinkers have influenced your philosophical and political worldview?” in an interview with ANUS, I’m not thinking nice and happy thoughts. And the topics of nationalism seem to come up in every interview I see with the guy. It’s certainly possible that the guy is not a racist or a Nazi in any way and is simply a provocateur, but it’s just as possible that the guy is indeed a fascist who is annoyed that people judge his work based on that understanding. Fact is that one way or the other he does care, because this sort of shadow does not follow the uninterested. Interesting quote from an interview with Vampire Magazine: “I might take the opportunity to mention that Thesyre is not a NSBM band either, hehe. I think that any form of culture deserves to be protected and cherished. This is what defines you as a part of a nation, this is collective identity! I can't understand why any minority organizing a cultural celebration gets a thumb up from the public opinion but when Europeans gather to celebrate their pagan past everyone sees hateful demonstrations of racism. I think we must thank a lot of right-wings organizations for that. People mixing racial hatred with nationalism gets it all wrong and only helps spreading stereotypes.” The truth behind Eric Masicotte requires a bit of digging.

The truth is entirely relevant to this album as Exist! is a call to self-awareness and individuality. The fucked thing is I thought the message was awesome before I started trying to learn more about the artist behind the art. Now? It bears a closer examination.

The crux of the album’s message is carried in the following lyrics: “Exist! / Manifest yourself / Don’t rely on someone else / Before you die / Experience life!” which is pretty much the entire message behind The Shameless (and why I didn’t bother caring whether Thesyre’s label is “too big” to fit into this issue’s concept). It’s a half hour of pure metal ideology of the sort that’s been repeated by lefties and righties forever, referencing everyone from Nietzsche (“The will of iron, the will to power”) to JFK (“Ask yourself what you can do / Not what the others could do for you”).

It’s easy to get behind this sort of message, isn’t it? “Exist! / Manifest yourself / Don’t rely on someone else / Before you die / Experience life!”

How about “For all these years humanity tried / To move away from its racial pride / We mixed our blood and generated a mess”? That’s from this same band, different release mind you, in a song called The Cleansing. Songs such as Elitism and Propagandart are little ditties you might find interesting. Yeah, that self-titled debut album certainly is quite revealing. The funny thing is, since I’m not plugged into this corner of the scene, I would have never thought to look for it if both the band and CD vendors didn’t bring attention to it. That the band did it is understandable, that a sales catalog did it is hilarious.

So that’s settled, but the reason I’m going into all of this is not to just point and throw “Fascist!” accusations around. Plenty of easier targets have just gotten thrown in the trash without comment here at LotFP headquarters. This is one of the few (I hope) that’s actually fooled me on first look.

It is an easy mark, I think, telling people that they need to take control of their lives. Telling them they should be somebody! “You are a beautiful, unique snowflake!” Yeah, man! Fuckin’ A! But it’s pretty easy to slip other messages in between the words that are easily agreed with.

Looking closer, even forgetting any connections in the wording between Exist! and past lyrics, it’s not all piss and vinegar for the waking of individuality in the listener. The use of “us” and “we” versus “you” or in this piece becomes pretty interesting when looked at with skepticism. Exist! opens up with the “us” and “we” being humanity at large, clueless and ignorant and destructive. Then they change the focus to “you”. Asking questions. Poking you. You’re not one of those people talked about in the first couple of verses, are you? Then it switches to talking about what “we” should do. Then it’s back to “you”, telling you that you are empowered and it’s your choice to be part of the problem or… something else. (You don’t want to be part of the problem, do you? Of course not.) Suddenly it’s a bit of talk about what “we” must do, and this is where “will to power” comes in. Suddenly the “we” isn’t some hopeless mass of humanity, but some group that can perhaps make things better. Then, this key bit of wording:

First prove your worth
Before you claim back what is yours
First you will serve then join the ranks that you deserve
Will you lead or will you follow
You take the path where you want to go
Ask yourself what you can do
Not what the others could do for you
…Meritocracy…

(“Meritocracy” gets repeated several times). This changes everything and is what I missed in my first glances at the lyrics. “Prove your worth” to who? For what purpose? To prove you’re taking control of your own life and shrugging off the shackles of a mentally comatose existence? Doesn’t that mean you don’t have to prove anything to anybody? “Claim back what is yours”? Are a few stanzas edited out or has the topic shifted to something completely unrelated to the rest of the song? “First you will serve”… what? Serve who? “Join the ranks that you deserve”? What ranks? Who’s deciding what I deserve?

What is the fucking point of such a statement as “Everything is possible if you can break your chains / There’s no one to be blamed… / You live enslaved or you make a change” (as appears earlier in the song), not to mention the “Don’t rely on someone else” sentiment I quoted earlier, if the end result of all of that is still serving, joining ranks, and having someone judge what it is you deserve?

I wonder what kind of civil service the “Ask yourself what you can do / Not what the others could do for you” line is supposed to inspire in this context.

Meritocracy is a brilliant concept, isn’t it? Everyone assigned a position based on their abilities. The word Meritocracy was coined by an author named Michael Young in the 50s, and his book The Rise of the Meritocracy portrayed the idea as a negative thing. As the writers of Is It Me Or Is Everything Shit? point out about the book, “…it would not necessarily be the ‘best’ who came out on top, just those who are most enthusiastic about standing on the faces of everyone else.” I’d hate to see how such a system really would deal with individuals who spent time and energy on listening to, performing, or worse yet writing about heavy metal. That’ll rate highly on the merit scale, I’m sure. The entire point of my philosophy is to escape these ridiculous systems to where I am not forced to contribute into them, and am not responsible for what happens within systems I do not support. It’s how I fell out of college, of office jobs and a “career path”, and any sort of future in the music industry. The constructs are crap and “getting ahead” would have meant participating in something that I thought was crap. Not interested. I could have been anything I wanted, really. I could have been a doctor or a lawyer if I’d have been really motivated, or more to my interests fifteen years ago, a computer programmer. One of these “network engineers” that listens to progressive metal, for sure. But all I really wanted to be was left alone. Give me the means to pay my rent, buy some books and albums, and publish my ranting to a couple hundred people every few months and I’ve got all the life I need. It’s not a formula for a great life, but that’s the point of freedom and individuality. I don’t have to care about any sort of life but what makes me happy.

I think Exist! is saying the exact opposite. The entire purpose of becoming aware and empowered in the world this album attempts to build is very ordered, and very smothering. But it is very different to the current way of the world and it is in that difference that I first found excitement in the concept of this album.

But it doesn’t end there. “Meritocracy” may be a key point in the lyrics of the album, but it serves merely as a change in the focus of the ongoing concept. It shifts back to “we” again, at first questioning in terms of “we, all of humanity” much as the beginning of the album, but changes almost imperceptibly to a “we, that are aware,” and finally quite obviously taking this last stance to mean “we, that are above the rest of humanity.”

I do not believe this language is arbitrary or a result of laziness or incompetence. I believe this language is very deliberate. And I believe it is very dangerous for people who do not fit into specific ideas of merit and worth.

Why is there so much hypocrisy concerning empowerment and individuality? Thesyre talks about freedom and empowerment but actually means trading one set of shackles (consumerism?) for another (fascism). The agents of consumerism tell you out of one side of their mouths that their products are for the beautiful and unique snowflakes of discriminating taste, while out of the other side they have you firmly mapped into demographic categories that obscure the fact that you’re a living, breathing thing at all. An organization can not promote the individual. The larger the organization, the flatter the individual is squashed, always, without exception. Remember that the next time you cast a ballot at the polls, the next time you punch in at work, the next time you get excited that your band has just been offered a contract from a larger record label. First you will serve, then you will join the ranks, but you will never have any claim to anything that is yours. Don’t believe me? The next time you have more than the most casual of conversations with your wife/boss/record label, see if you can make it through the conversation without showing support for something when you really don’t want to support it. See what happens when you have an idea that’s outside of the established procedures. Make a conscious effort to alter your daily routine for the next week and see what happens. See if you can simply tell the truth. You’re fucked, and so am I. I can accept that life is just like that*, but what you need to ask is, where is the line drawn and who drew it?

So today’s lesson is question everything. Every single fucking thing you ever come across. Even, or maybe even especially, the things that are appealing and agreeable.

We can’t forget the fact that there is music associated with Exist!, as it is presented as a music album. (Not that winning and satisfying people are options. If you talk too much about the music then you’re accused of the old “dancing about architecture” nonsense, and if you don’t talk about it then you’re guilty of not realizing that “only the music is important.” Yet in an interview with The Darkest Hours, Masicotte states, “We make music to please ourselves first and then to carry a message to the audience,” so I’ll lose no sleep in discussing the very thing the band says is their first priority towards listeners.) It’s all a very rhythm-focused piece based of various pieces of repetition, and in this way it feels more like a Ministry album than anything else. Everything stays very basic, and the vocals, even if raspy, are loud and clear the entire way through. There is a five minute “break” of looser material (clean and acoustic guitars with an absence of drums, really) around the middle of the album where Exist! shows signs of life, but that’s really all there is. You’ll see descriptions like “old school black/thrash metal” but this thing is so clinical/sterile that I can’t agree. I don’t expect to be listening to any more of this, for many reasons, after I finish typing this sentence.

* Life is not just like that. I read How to Be Free by Tom Hodgkinson at the very end of the production process for this issue. It’s an amazing book and I find that much of my lifestyle (if not his reasoning for it) already parallels his advice, and the book was most inspirational. You don’t have to work. You don’t have to do anything. The book is available through Amazon UK (and he even talks about why he didn’t self-publish within the book itself!) and more info on Hodgkinson’s work can be found at www.idler.co.uk. Highest recommendation.

In Praise of Levykauppa Äx

This store RULES beyond all concepts of rulership.

The timeline:

Maria and I were sitting around Sunday trying to figure out what Christmas presents we should get each other. We had a couple of ideas. She needed a new quilting ruler, and I still hadn't gotten the new double album from my favorite band, Hammers of Misfortune. We looked online at the usual Finnish distributors. Only one had it - Levykauppa Äx. There is a physical store in Helsinki, so...

Monday we go off shopping. We stop by that store during our trip. It's not on the shelf. Asking the helpful people at the counter (and they have always been helpful to me), they check and they only have a copy in their Kuopio location... I ask Maria but doing a 5 hour each-way train ride for a CD is out of the question.

Shit.

So we return home. At 3:13pm Monday afternoon we complete our online order for Hammers' Fields/Church of Broken Glass double CD.

At 10:15am Tuesday morning, just a few minutes ago... IT ARRIVED IN THE MAIL.

HOLY SHIT.

HOLY SHIT.

I guess this post is in praise of both Levykauppa Äx and the Finnish postal service.

Job well done!

Thank you Maria!

Now I don't have to feel like such a lame-ass because I don't have my favorite band's latest album(s)!

Formicide- Formicide

Formicide
Formicide
15 – 58:19

(review by James Edward Raggi IV, from the LotFP issue The Shameless, 2007)
People are such weak-willed fucking pussies these days. It’s not enough that everyone expects to not be offended, but it’s to the point that people expect to be praised for the insignificant nothing that they do. It doesn’t give the immediate gratification of manipulating some pixels on the ol’ X-Box, so it’s obviously not worth it.

Let me tell you a little story about what it means to do something for the sake of doing it, and not because you want your ass kissed. In the introduction of this issue, I mentioned that I, the publisher, don’t need you, the paid customer. This is true. I do this because I am driven to do it, by forces 100% known and accounted for. I’ve wanted to be a writer all my life. I was reading novels, real ones, at six years of age and scribbling stupid shit immediately after. It was all garbage, from the attempt to sell hand-made comic books to the neighborhood kids for twenty-five cents a pop, to passing around sub-quality sci-fi/fantasy adventure stories to co-workers in the 90s looking for critiques. Isn’t that the sorriest shit you’ve ever heard? Add heavy metal to the ears, and then add exposure to the independent press. Instant inspiration, instant output. The energy that heavy metal gives to me is indescribable, and it certainly is not containable.

My outlet is the written word, and it is my art and is my creation. This is the reason why I laugh when I’m hit with that great canard from some shit-ass priss musician, “Well where’s your album on this great big label, huh?” Such wisdom. First, if you’re confident in your creation, you listen to and reflect upon criticism, but you don’t get defensive and you don’t bitch like a four year old. The type of person who responds in this manner knows their career is built on publicity and playing financial grab-ass, and not on the principles of inspiration and creation. Judging your success (and apparent immunity to criticism) by what business entity you decided to sign the rights to your creation over to is pretty weak. (I’ve also released fewer bad albums than these whiners, so maybe I win the music race.) My ability to write about music has nothing to do with my ability to create it. If I was a creator of music, my opinion would mean even less, because it is a musician’s job to connect with a listener, not a peer, and a musician who doesn’t like what they hear should demonstrate, not illustrate, the deficiencies by creating music with these problems solved.

Let me tell you about criticism and under-appreciation. My [now ex-] wife refuses to read LotFP. The people I hang out with, if they’ve read it, haven’t been moved enough to say a single word about it. I’ll have to assume they hate it. Yet there is, scattered around this globe, a small group of people who appreciate it. Pay to receive it. Every so often I hear from someone that used to read in the better-distributed days and they tell me what bands they discovered because of LotFP. Once I even got a “star” reaction with a reader freaking out about meeting me when I went to DragonCon one year. There isn’t a country in the Western world where I don’t know somebody that will meet me and help me out getting around their city, or even halfway across the nation, if I need it. And my home is open to them if for some reason they need to stay in Vaasa for a day or two (house rules: No smoking, no drinking). Shit, I’m planning on putting my own mother up in a hotel when she comes, you know? A couple people have actually been inspired enough by LotFP to join the effort, and these guys pay into the costs of the mag to help produce it. No shit. This is why I think it’s funny when this past year people were saying that LotFP was “jealous” of Decibel and other mags when launching our assaults. Yeah, so jealous. When I hear the staff at Decibel are offering to buy a couple dozen extra copies and pass along a few extra dollars to help get the thing made, then maybe I’ll further consider the whole envy thing. And coming back to the readers, saying “I don’t need you” does not mean that I don’t appreciate you. Your comments are appreciated (especially relevant criticism), your subscription money a sign that I’m actually reaching people. But don’t you feel better knowing that LotFP will be LotFP whether or not you’re reading it?

There is a point to all of this, directly relating to Formicide no less, so stay with me. Andrew Westerhouse does the Aversionline and Blodårstid webzines/blogs. He’s passionate about music and has been writing for over half a decade. He decided to take this band, Formicide, that had never released an album, gathered up all their demo tapes, and released it as a CD. Didn’t even have access to the master tapes, it’s taken from the released cassettes (this is a good thing… no temptation to fuck with the sound, so it gets released sounding like it did when it was impressing him in the first place). The money and business part of the equation was so well-thought out that after the finished CDs arrived, he was talking about how he was going to get around to contacting distros about carrying it one of these days. The damn thing doesn’t even have a barcode on it. So the question is… why?

Because he’s a goddamn fan of the music and he thought it would be really cool to have this band out there, in a modern and convenient format, for the people who might be interested in it. He’s not concerned about business and finance, and the success or failure of this venture is completely irrelevant to his doing it. Even if this one doesn’t sell, there are still some other old bands he’s thinking about doing releases for, business be damned. (It’s in print now Andrew, so if you puss out on us I’m coming to rip your nuts off.) His criteria for what is worth doing are not determined by money, marketing potential, trends, or any insignificant bullshit like that. The truth is that a label with any sort of success can not be trusted, because the instant something becomes a success and the label owner sees money in his own pocket, the label changes. It does. New signings and all activity become all about sustaining success and worrying about money and what is good for business instead of letting the music and inspiration determine what is good and what is not. Fuck that. Commerce kills art dead. Financially unsound record labels are the only record labels that music listeners can trust.

Thing is, it’s bad enough when “industry professionals” (read: fuck-asses who are making money they don’t deserve while ripping off the people who actually produce what they manipulate other people into buying) and musicians who have had a taste of a bit of fame and monetary success fall into thinking that any of that matters. It’s fucking pathetic when fans act all concerned about the business moves of labels and bands like “good business” and “good music” have any relationship whatsoever. It gets even worse when fans pretend they are junior members of the industry who are helping promote the bands. Slave labor, right? Fool the consumer into thinking they are a provider. People… it’s this simple:

STOP GIVING YOUR MONEY TO BUSINESSMEN. THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU. THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT THE MUSIC. THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU. THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT THE MUSICIANS. THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU.

That’s all that “professionalism” is worth. Nothing. The ability to fuck you over with no sense of shame or responsibility. “It’s just business. Just doing my job. I didn’t make the rules.” Go fuck yourself and your soulless shell.

Of course, for the purpose of this review anyway, all of this is only relevant because Formicide is pretty good and will also appeal to people not named Andrew Westerhouse. It’s 80s American thrash, no doubt about it, with a sense of aggression and relentless riffing the likes of which seemed to stall in this time period as bands became more aware of MTV, money, and thinking Slayer and Metallica levels of success were really possible and desirable. That this album covers material originally recorded between 1987 and 1989, it’s impressive how the band ignores South of Heaven and And Justice For All’s slowed-down success and gets even more raw later on. It doesn’t stop, it doesn’t let up – it’s an album by metal for metal and nothing else. This doesn’t get in the way of the songs from being distinct and at times catchy. The singer (as opposed to shrieker or shouter) is quite articulate with real understandable words of apocalypse and being bellowed out with controlled anger. And if you don’t agree, the lyrics are all there in the insert in plain black and white. The sound is pretty damn effective for the material taken from the first two tapes. The third demo sounds like ass and there isn’t much saving it. A re-recording of some of those 1989 songs (done later that same year) get released on this album for the first time ever, and they do show a better sound quality, and highlight the longer and far more articulate (and important) lyrics the band was attempting. Formicide is everything good about what the American metal scene was capable of in the 80s. And they did it themselves.

Formicide only existed for two years. Why they didn’t last very long is unknown, but largely irrelevant. They did what they wanted to do, for as long as they wanted to, and the progression of the music shows absolutely no taint of outside influence in attempting to attract attention and get signed. Formicide serves two purposes – one, their music is worthy of listening on its own. Two, bands should treat their work seriously, for its own sake. You never know who is listening to that “promo” you are putting together, what effect it will have on them… or when. Formicide got what you just know they wanted back then – they got signed. Somebody put their record out. Should we feel it’s somehow irrelevant or “doesn’t count” because it was seventeen years later? Or should we just remember the real lesson: Make it good and shut the fuck up when the world isn’t beating down a path to your door. The point is to make something meaningful that connects with people, and the second you forget that in hopes of being an impressive line on some business’ accounting sheet, you’ve lost all relevance. Andrew Westerhouse is a thrash freak and he was moved enough to finance a proper album release of this material. Effectively, he liked it so much he bought a thousand copies. I’m not so much a thrash freak and I’m enjoying the hell out of it for its quality on a more general metal scale. How much more convincing do you need to be moved to investigate for yourself whether or not you should invest in Formicide?

Ascension Theory - Answers

Ascension Theory
Answers
10 – 46:04

(review by James Edward Raggi IV, from the LotFP issue The Shameless, 2007)
It takes a special kind of self-loathing to play, or enjoy, music that is nothing but a series of contradictions. Complex, yet song-oriented. Heavy, yet melodic. Aggressive, yet accessible. Metal, yet good-natured. It’s an impossible balancing act that even the best can never pull off for more than an album, maybe two.

The problem is that the people who play this kind of music, and those that listen to it as their music of choice, hate heavy metal for what it is and think this “progressive metal” style uses what is “good” about metal and discards what is “bad” about it. The result is a bunch of pencil pushers, data jockeys, and other corporate office professionals being “creative” and making “progressive” “metal” about “important issues” with a sound that contains no real anger (that would be immature) or frustration (imagine what the wife or boss would think… they’re suspicious enough as it is since a *gasp* electric guitar is involved!), and no real progression either. Because “progressive” is a genre with a set of rules, you see, not an adjective that means anything resembling progress or real creativity. And the people listening to it are a bunch of pencil pushers, data jockeys, and other corporate office professionals expressing their appreciation for fine, intelligent, upstanding music.

Basically, it’s a bunch of unhappy, repressed people involved in music that intentionally puts barriers between sound and emotion under the banners of intellect and maturity. It’s passive aggressive bullshit, all of it, and like most manifestations of passive-aggressive behavior, the best ways to deal with it are to just flash a bird and walk away, or beat the offending party to death with a nail-spiked bat.

Dream Theater has much to answer for.

And this brings us to Ascension Theory, a band that practices all of these contradictions and worships them by recording song after song with all of these problems on display. There isn’t a cliché left untapped by the three guys in the band, and every promise of heaviness is emasculated by some sort of floofery, puffery, or other some such faeriekin handicraft. They even have a song called The Way of Death, with an actual riff, and it seems like it’s going to be an actual metal song, but then some cooing woman starts singing about overpopulation.

The tragedy is that some of these songs are so filled with hooks and good choruses (Saturn’s Reign, for one) that if the band would just go for it, in whatever direction (just pick one!), they’d be successful (and I’m not using money or record sales as a definition of “success” here). They have riffs. They have sugary sweet melodies. They have instrumental prowess. What they don’t have is a cohesive vision, their own sound, or any real emotion in their music. It’s fatal to all their efforts, and this album is a few scraps of good ideas and a giant example of all of the problems inherent in a “progressive” “metal” band.

Judas Priest - Nostradamus

(Columbia Records/Epic Records, 23 tracks, 102 minutes, 42 seconds, reviewed by Adam McAuley)

Nostradamus represents an interesting change in pace for this band who had been throwing out albums of pure metal delight for years and to almost no equal. Here we see them changing their direction towards a concept album stance and this bodes for pompous results. As such we can see that Nostradamus is a slightly more uneven album because of its ambitions, however, and manages to throw in a lot of filler in between tracks to make it so. And thus the album fails to live up to their better comeback Angel of Retribution although it isn’t really a complete downfall by any means.

So, to start off, the structure of the album is a huge changing point over past works in its double album nature and its presence of many shorter intermission kind of tracks. This displays a different direction they want to take attempting to build excitement over lengths of time rather than hitting you on the head with one classic track after another. Nostradamus’ nature makes for moments of boredom throughout the work as the filler tacks fail to raise a pulse. They serve as just a minute of stationary waiting for the next exciting track, which comes by at reasonable frequency.

The standout tracks aren’t frequent, but “Revelations” and “Visions” were amongst their names. They have a slight feel of older Priest overwhelming them which raises them above some of the greater filler type tracks on the album. A sort of virtuoso flavour overwhelms the songs as well, which is a promising characteristic.

In terms of musical performances, we can see a fairly solid outing by the band, although one yearns for the classic feel of albums like Sad Wings of Destiny and Screaming for Vengeance slightly more than the slightly modernized tone presented here. Halford’s voice is starting to show a slight down-point compared to his early youthful vigour, but this was also demonstrated on the Angel of Retribution album and solo works as well, though his voice is still solid.

The concept album stance of Nostradamus tends to want to make it seem majestic at times, but here we’re left with a product that seems slightly more bloated in the long run because of filler tracks. In the stages of the band’s progression, an album of this type of a nature would be a reasonable idea for a change although we can see that it isn’t necessarily an altogether positive one at this point.

On the whole, Nostradamus is a step down Angel of Retribution or such classics as Sad Wings of Destiny, Stained Class, Screaming for Vengeance and Painkiller. However, it is a reasonably solid concept album taken from a purely musical standpoint despite the filler. This work is thus slanted towards people welcoming a change in Priest’s habits although they may not be entirely wanted, show even expansions of the band that could be helpful.