Year End Blah 2009. Pt1
December 21 2009 at 09:11:57 AM
These are the good ol’ days? Sure can’t blame Saviors (!) on my more than excessive alcohol intake sometime late last August, somewhere in NYC basement of nth club doubling as dessert spot for folks into dressing like Cyndi Lauper. (“You guys ready to rock out with me? Etc.) Just had my head melted by one of Pat’s bands, Pollution, and far too north of glassy-eyed, jelly-legged. DePalma went down first. No shit. I have witnesses. Maybe he just wanted a floor view of the guitarist’s ‘Maiden Vans. Said shoes served as leitmotif for evildoers throughout lost weekend. Madness benign and malignant took turns running we bit players down the disease. (For the record, I’ve never felt more close to Zelda Fitzgerald’s
Crack Up than the post-show van drive back, a den of thieves and rogues fortified on
Saturday Night Fever quotations, whiskey sneaks, guts split and broken on booze.) Wee spits of iniquity: drunken boats adrift and sinking. Lady Liberty in the distance… dead, silent, green.
Shit as staid and pointless as statuary standing in for Sousa, Brook Farm, Federalist Papers et al. aint no different than a passel of Internet jockeys monkeyin’ around about how Metal’s become the people’s property, which is big fuckin’ QED when you see mag covers hawking Stray-Cat-Strut as your big bro’s basement skullduggery. Same as it ever wuz? Never was the same. Modern transgressions aside, no comparison. No one sees this. (With few minor exceptions that shall go unnamed.) When indignant penbanger #0016893 typed, “It’s never about the music,” the earplugs went in; people wrapped themselves around masts made up of texts ‘n’ tweets and blah blah blah’d until their blogs blew out.
It’s always motherfucking been about the music, kiddo. That’s all it’s ever been about. Everything else? Just gravy. Criticizing a band’s sound is King. But there’s more to that court –cover-art, lyrics, live performance, way the band looks, way the band’s fans look, way they (both band and fans) take crit (never like real men, mind you). When you hit, you hit hard. You burn the whole fucking village down. You do it in many ways. It’s positively against the little-known Internet Decorum Convention, and will result in lots of “fuck-yeah-we-gottem” responses, the catcalls: self-indulgent, pretentious, got-un-axe-to-grind. Sit back. Let fire stoke itself. Thing really gets going when the screen-names morph ‘n’ blur into pure crystalline understanding so robust it fails to recognize Big P Parody even when it’s weaponized and gagging them on “their” own two-bit hatred.
The “Best of 2009” will be forever marred by instance of bloggers maligning AC/DC and The Lord Weird Slough Feg in attempt to uplift the sonic wallpaper of Pelican, Mastodon, Baroness, Torche. Weirder things have happened, I’m told. But three cheers for an unlikely acquaintance: “Sometimes, you’ve got take out the trash,” he says, eyes Irish, smiling. (A shot of the good stuff for you…)
Won’t ever see Teitanblood on
Terrorizer’s cover. Can’t imagine
Rolling Stone revving up to do a primer on Dark Quarterer. And Jesus Harold Christ on crutches: That’s fine. That’s good. Stick to your guns, friends. Trust me, I’ll stick to mine. Truth is, Metal was never – and won’t ever be – a “genre of the people.” Stuff that’s called “Metal” today – at least by the “mainstream press” – ain’t. It’s simply just sketchy.
THE BEST:
TEITANBLOOD,
Seven Chalices
THE REST:
THE LORD WEIRD SLOUGH FEG,
Ape Uprising
CLAWS,
Absorbed in the Nethervoid
EXCORIATE,
On Pestilent Winds
IRON MAN,
I Have Returned
VILLAINS,
Lifecode of Decadence
THE GATES OF SLUMBER,
Hymns of Blood & Thunder
WRNLRD, Myrmidon
Listened to
TEITANBLOOD maybe too much. In the car. At home. While hitting the weights. If I were fucking gay enough to do one of those
OMG RECORDS OF THE DECADE LOL lists, this would be my cocksucking, assfucking, teabagging, taintlicking number one with a fistful of Canadian Pharmacy. Anything I put down now re: Seven Chalices is second-rate. Never match that sweet-tea fueled rant. I only wish I could publish complete correspondence between NsK, Tim Kittens, and myself. You think you need a Rosetta Stone now? Cry, baby…
THE LORD WEIRD SLOUGH FEG and
THE GATES OF SLUMBER both bear distinction of creating top-shelf music with extraordinarily clear aesthetic foundations. Something to be said for cliché when it’s worn well… If this music’s hackneyed, I never want to understand criteria for uniqueness.
IRON MAN nearly wins the unspoken battle for authenticity; making a record that filters Master of Reality era Sabbath through biker mythos so thick you need a fuckin’ oil change after two tracks. (“Gomorrah Gold,” wind chimes ‘n’ all: What Sam Kinison imagined when he set tables for consummate skinflute music. Flautists, prepare for blowing.)
CLAWS and
EXCORIATE hail from different loci but wholly intersect in Pazuzu’s urethra, a kiddie pool deep ‘cess of poorly recorded whoa-fuck-Death-Metal that forever aspires to Teitanblood’s brand of wind-through-Hell’s-atlas-pages-danse. It fails but wins in that “x and not x” way.
Points disparate of “Rock” constellation shine
VILLAINS and
WRNLRD, two bands with absolutely nothing like save for the playing of guitar in mere swatches and seconds. Neither adheres to template – endearing prima facie, sure – and both practically scream “Created in Vacuum” despite knuckle-walkers’ assertion singular tangential influences make able analytic substitute. If
VILLAINS = VENOM,
MASTODON = STEELY DAN. Hmm. Well…
WRNLRD fed on Doo-wop’s not-so-secret pathos, AM radio ghost planet, rained riffs from world’s roof. Lesser men will mention Bluegrass or Charley Patton. I’ll put $500 on Soupy’s Sales and raise Same Cooke a silver dollar.
But bets were off. That long hot August night spent saddled upon bar vacant and tweaked by 10-ton “Skin” asking not if, but when, I fancied fight… why I did so, etc. takes turn southerly and twisting despite many Ash Ra Temple records rocked as Tampa Nugget dampened on ears. Alpino snaps the shot. We laugh. I think we laugh. I did anyway. Another drink on the house. Goddamn. Jameson. Rolling Rock cans. He shows me the photo. Pat will never remember anyway. Can’t believe you’re here, Alpino says. Exactly what DePalma said last night. Joy Division does its floppin’ fish dance through club’s smoke. Who said the “Irish goodbye” was tasteless?
[Stewart Voegtlin]
[
Header photo by Chris Alpino. Preview photo by Stevie Brown.]
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If Katharsis hadn't fucked their own chances by setting the bar impossibly high with VvorldVvithoutEnd, I'd have Fourth Reich in the mix. Pretty much all other metal I've bought this year is either older, or ended up getting shelved.
There's just way too much Simon Cowell-esque, contrieved, whorish charadery going on in Metal these days, and I need the (percieved) authenticity of Teitanblood's or Bunkur's of the world.
James: Girl, you know it.
Ttnbld and kthrss certainly belong. I'll stick my neck out and admit that I thoroughly enjoyed das neue Nargaroth album. L'Eterno Maligno Silenzio and Ballade cuntre lo Anemi Francor were okay, too. But fuck Die Spanische, Die Deutsch, the Italians and the French. In the end, nobody beats the Finns. My choice for the year has to be Wisdom of the Few.
Thanks for all the Vans.
@ valter: Katharsis was fun, wasn't it? Great party, terrible cleanup afterwards. Still haven't cracked that RFRevenge disc. I guess I need to.
@ David: Always missed the pinata myself.
Weapon's DP is a good record, as is Beherit's Engram. Same goes for FM's Maranatha. But none of the three stuck with me as long as the records that made my list.