From the 1990s onward, there seems to
be this particular scenario, which plays itself out all across
America time and again, that goes something like this: there is a
group of people at a party, either in their 30s or their 40s,
lamenting what they feel is the sad state of current music. After
discussing the situation for a time, they resign themselves to the
fact that the modern iterations of Rock that they hear will never
rival what they enjoyed from the days of yore, and, as a result,
their attempts at making merry at this party go as flat as a stale
beer.
Sadly, these fans are unduly
crestfallen for just a cursory search on the internet would reveal an
amazing slough of bands of recent vintage more than able to supply
new anthems for those, who yearn for the Rock of the AOR Era. One
such band is the Dutch group Candybar Planet.
Though only a mere five-song EP, the
quality of Candybar Planet's music does not disappoint, especially if
one needs a soundtrack for one's partying. This is evident on the
first track Five, which has
all the heaviness but none of the gloominess of its “Stoner Rock”
peers. This would be a perfect song to have in the background during
pagan frenzies of beer-guzzling and rabid twerking.
Then there is the
neurotic energy of Billy (I'm Gonna Get That Woman). Like
Kyuss before it, Candybar Planet knows how to write a propulsive riff
without resorting to a flurry of palm-muted sixty-fourth notes. This
would be a good song to play in the background at a party, where they
are trying to combine the limbo with moshing.
The third track WFO
gives one what sounds like an Areosmith riff supercharged on
Walter White's meth. A real barn-burner, this would definitely
enliven any lifeless party, prompting twerking so violent, it may
cause one's body to fly apart in several different directions.
Exposed starts
off with shimmering psychedelic chords and then launches into a
massively heavy shuffle. Obviously influenced by Desert Rock, the
band's riffs, though massive, are sugary enough to give one diabetes,
and it is precisely this merger of heaviness and melody that should
have made this band huge.
The final track Sun
Screamer has the honor of being the heaviest song on the EP, its
cyclopean riff making one's ears feel like they were just
pimp-slapped by the fluke of Moby Dick.
In sum, the EP by
Candybar Planet is more damning evidence that Rock is neither dear
nor in need of saving. It DOES,
however, need support, and supporting Candybar Planet is as good a
place to start as any.
In the early 90s, as the Seattle
“Grunge” scene was ascendant, there was another band emerging out
of Bakersfield California, which was going in parallel lines. Like
its peers 1,500 miles to the North, its sound combined heaviness with
melody. The band in question was named Kyuss, and the melodic yet
heavy sound it crafted came to be known as “Desert Rock.”
Though Kyuss never achieved more than
cult status in the United States, the seeds of its influence found
fertile soil in Scandinavia, where many a band was spawned in its
wake, one of which was the mighty Blind Dog.
On its record, Blind Dog Rides
Again, the band lets loose with
a tour de force of melodic yet heavy riffs, which can be heard on the
initial track Don't Ask Me Where I Stand.
A song about being caught in the No Man's Land of the Culture Wars,
it features a behemoth, single-note riff, which would put the riffing
of most Nu-Metal bands to shame.
Like a
truck-driver, jacked-up on Walter White's meth, barreling down the
highway at 100 MPH in an eighteen-wheeler, the song Iron
Cage kicks it up a notch and
goes into manic overdrive. Fans of Queens Of The Stone Age should
find this tune quite the delightful ride.
Slightly
more smoky and atmospheric than the first two songs, Let It
Go features great bass-work on
the part of Tobias Nilsson. Nilsson, who also sings lead vocals, does
a masterful job on the track of showing the softer side of his voice.
This would have been a great song to play on an episode of The
X-Files during one of Mulder's
pensive moments.
Picking
up where the first two tracks left off, Would I Make You
Believe continues the onslaught
of heaviness. Like a monster smashing its way out of a building,
pummeling riffs set to a relentless groove careen this way and that.
This track, like so many on this album, is damning evidence that the
assertion “Rock is dead” is 100% wrong.
The
next track (and this reviewer's favorite) is the song Follow
The Fools. Reverting to his
sprightlier, mellower vocal style, the tune Nilsson sings to is a
Jethro Tull-like gem. This is one thing that amazes me about Blind
Dog and many of its Post Commercial peers (Animalcule, The Want,
Witchcraft etc.): how they all are able to play songs influenced by
the AOR Era with such an authentic feel.
The
sixth track Back Off
has a swinging triplet-feel reminiscent of songs like Hole
In The Sky by Black Sabbath.
Especially impressive is the band's use of electric-piano, drenched
in tremolo, to create a dreamy atmosphere for the second part of the
song.
The
next track Fading Memories
shows what bands like Blind Dog do best: laying down incisive,
infectious grooves and riffs. One would think, after sixty years of
Rock, all the great riffs would have been played already; yet Blind
Dog, like so many of its peers in the Post Commercial Era, prove that
notion wrong time and again. Especially delightful is the second part
of the song with its Sabbath-like, double-time riff.
The
eight track is the savage boogie Unsellable.
Those, who like the Groove Metal of Pantera would be well to check
this song out.
Next
comes There Must Be Better Ways Of Losing Your Mind.
Something of a climax to the album, the riffs are just as dramatic as
the existential pain the lyrics deal with.
Lastly,
as a sort of epilogue, comes the track Be The Same.
A song about how we are all eventually ground down by conformity, its
subdued better-sweet feel makes it the perfect soundtrack for Blind
Dog to ride off in the sunset.
I started this blog
to rescue great records like this from being consumed by the fires of
obscurity. The Rock public can go one step further by putting out
those fires altogether.
As a guitarist myself, I know that one
of the questions a guitarist spends a great deal of time pondering is
how to effect the alchemy of fusing together everything one likes
into one seamless style. Obviously, the more disparate one's
influences are, the more challenging it can be. The fact is, being
eclectic in one's tastes and being open to “experimentation” does
not automatically vouchsafe that a great artist one will be. After
all, experiments can fail, and the lab blows up!
Like Zebulon Pike, I have always had an
equally abiding interest in both heavy bands like Black Sabbath as
well as “Art Rock” bands like King Crimson, and so, naturally,
when I heard the band's first release, the elegant way it fused these
two styles tickled my fancy.
In addition to this lovely synthesis,
which I mentioned, Zebulon Pike is also the undisputed master of the
lyrically heavy riff, which I am so enamored of, and, on its first
release, the band gets down to business doing both. Thus on the
initial track, The White Light Of Black Star,
one has one of the best lyrically heavy riffs I have ever heard
during the first part of the song and an equally adroit execution of
King Crimsonesque ideas on the second.
The
next track, humorously entitled Umlaut Overload,
is a spiraling staircase of riffs in odd meters. A lovely
interlarding of textures with heaviness, it is the kind of track fans
of classic Rush have been yearning to hear for years.
Then,
there is my favorite track (Behold) The Wizard's Fountain.
Like the first track, it contains one of the best lyrically heavy
riffs I have ever heard. It is the kind of thing that makes one
imagine the climax to an epic fantasy novel. Especially noteworthy is
the second part of the song, when it kicks into high gear; the riff
still manages
to be lyrical while being propulsive at the same time. This is no
mean feat to accomplish.
The
exhibition of both the band's deft arranging skills and its knowledge
of music continues with the track Under
Capricorn.
Here one has another beautiful, arpeggiated guitar-figure with
blue-notes thrown in, reminiscent of You
Know, You Know
by Mahavishnu Orchestra, except, in this instance, heavy riffs come
crashing in from time to time.
As
if Tony Levin and Adrian Belew sat in with Black Sabbath, Pillars
Of Hercules
continues the same mishmash of the heavy with the textural. However,
unlike many bands, who seek to merge heaviness with intricacy,
Zebulon Pike plays a piece that maintains cohesion throughout rather
than sounding like it was playing a bunch of riffs randomly thrown
together.
At the end of the day, people, who appreciate this kind of music,
need to stop doing the intelectually dishonest thing of saying great
music like this is not being made anymore. Rather, they need to get
out and support bands like Zebulon Pike.
One of the themes, which I shall be
visiting from time to time on this blog, is the erroneous notion,
held amongst many Rock aficionados, that 1994 was some kind of a
moratorium on Rock music. These misguided people believe that the
bands that came out of Seattle represented the last of their kind and
that stirring Rock music would never be made again. It is precisely
to combat this kind of thinking that I created this blog; so that I
could disabuse people of this idea by showing
them all the amazing newer bands,
which have been out and about.
The
fact is, out of the ashes of the Seattle scene sprouted the seeds of
many a
great group: one of which was The Golden Pig Electric Blues Band.
Sadly, this and sundry other groups were never able to come to
full-flower not because the talent was not there, but because the
Rock music community failed to be the sage gardener it needed to be
in order for them to develop.
Yes,
as brutal a truth as it is to accept, a seed cannot flourish very
well in the wrong soil, no matter how healthy the seed may be, and so
The Golden Pig Electric Blues Band were only able to put forth a mere
two albums in a climate bereft of support. The good news, however, is
that they were great albums!
Concerning myself with its self-titled release in this review, it is
an album that packs just as massive a punch as its Seattle peers from
earlier times. One can hear this straightway in the song Born
Again, which is like a massive pendulum of sound, swinging back
and forth and smashing everything in its wake. Also, like its
Canadian peer Sea Of Green, The Golden Pig Electric Blues Band
combines heavy-riffs with a Bohemian, hippie-like vibe, which, for me
at least, is a felicitous change from the forlorn qualities of
straight Grunge.
Next comes the song Vol. IV. An allusion to the Black Sabbath
album of the same name, it is a song about giving oneself over to
inner-wisdom and enlightenment. At first blush, the crushingly
heavy-riffs of this track would seem to clash with such a theme, but,
considering that Black Sabbath explored many of the same themes in
its own lyrics, one sees that they compliment each other quite
nicely.
The tasty riffs in Some Violet showcase something that is a
forte amongst many a “Stoner Rock” guitarist: that being what I
call the “lyrically heavy riff.” In my mind there are two kinds
of heavy-riffs.
The lyrically heavy kind is one that is expressive and paints a
picture just as vivid as what the song's lyrics are deputed to do.
The second kind of riff, what I call “the propulsively heavy riff,”
is much more rhythmic and groove-oriented. Over the years, as tempos
have increased, the propulsively heavy riff has gained dominance,
making the crafting of lyrically heavy riffs something of a lost art.
Fortunately, the guitarist of The Golden Pig Electric Blues Band is
able to do such riffs with great aplomb.
The lyrically heavy riffage continues in the song Old Man Of The
Woods (this reviewer's favorite). Hearing the riff's lumbering
gait, one can see clearly in the Mind's Eye a gnarled, troll-like man
wending his way through the weald. The song is even replete with a
ghostly harmonica solo! Using its Black Sabbath influence to its best
advantage, the bands sees fit to give the second part of the song a
bouncier, more upbeat feel: a technique Sabbath would use enliven its
own songs with from time to time.
Too smoldering and intense in the subdued parts to be considered a
power-ballad, Lightyears is a song about seeking escape
through oblivion. Featuring organ-figures, which float through the
air like musical smoke, this would be an excellent song to listen to
in a room festooned with psychedelic posters while on one's favorite
entheogen.
Channeling the happier side of the Black Sabbath aesthetic comes the
joyous Freedog. Ironically, though by trade a heavy band, this
track and many others by this group have a far more celebratory,
flower-power vibe than most of the pseudo-hippies did on the
H.O.R.D.E. Tour back in the 90s.
Like fellow Northwest band Y.O.B., The Golden Pig Electric Blues Band
can use heavy music to send one out into the vastness of the cosmos,
as the band does in the song Mizz Marvel. About a woman
blessed (or cursed) with super-powers, who saves mankind, the song
weaves a web of lyrically heavy riffs to help convey the story,
conjuring images of colliding planets and comic-book heroines
vaulting off into space to battle the forces of evil.
Not to be outdone by Our Lady Peace, The Golden Pig Electric Blues
Band released its own cover of Tomorrow Never Knows by The
Beatles. Not surprisingly, the band does a good job of recasting it
as a heavy song.
Lastly, is a live version of the song Prophecy Of Doom.
Starting out with a sultry, Jazz feel, it quickly assumes a heavier
posture. Especially noteworthy is Joe's meditative guitar-solo, which
does what a guitar-solo does at its best: to cause the listener to
lose oneself in the atmosphere.
So, for those Classic-Rock fans ever complaining there are no modern
iterations of the epic jams of yore, you have no reason to complain
because albums like this and many others exist.
Nostalgia. Even though it is not a
craving for a physical thing, the hankering for the felicitous
moments of the past is as powerful as the drives to survive, eat, and
procreate. Just about everyone experiences
nostalgia for something at some point, and this is understandable.
After all, life is transitory, and everyone will eventually lose
something of value they can never have again. Ultimately, though
nostalgia is understandable, it is debilitating because, if one
focuses only on the great moments of the past, the great moments that
can be had in the present
completely escape one's attention.
When
it comes to engaging in nostalgia as a music fan, I am, hands downs,
the world's worst offender. As an adolescent, I worshiped at
nostalgia's feet. For me the AOR Era was the greatest era in Rock. I
believed that there must have been something magical in the air back
then; something that does not exist today. Furthermore, I believed
not only were the Rock musicians of the AOR Era the greatest
musicians, but that they were the ONLY musicians
that could ever play epic Rock with the correct feel.
Fortunately,
as I grew older, I grew out of such quaint beliefs. The problem is
many Rock fans, who listen to the same kind of music I do, have
not.
For them, good music no longer exists until one of these classic
bands reunites for a tour. This is nostalgia at its most pathological
and toxic for this kind of thinking has meant Rock fans have ignored
many amazing bands, who are new,
thus robbing themselves as well as these bands of realizing equally
sublime musical moments in the present.
The sad fact is, so many bands of the Post Commercial Era have
suffered because of nostalgia, which is why I started my blog; so
that I, in my own small way, can help change that.
Thus, when I think of the mania, on the part of Rock fans, for a
reunion of the classic Guns 'N Roses lineup, I cannot help but to
think of the group Hell 'N Diesel, a Post Commercial group that could
easily have been more than a satisfying analog to Guns 'N Roses for
many of these fans. Sadly, because of the cloying nostalgia in Rock,
a band such as Hell 'N Diesel was doomed to tormented obscurity. Now,
mind you, I love Guns 'N Roses just as much as the next Rock fan, and
I am, in no way, putting the band down. All I am saying is: why
cannot Rock fans have both? Why not rock out to Hell 'N Diesel, while
waiting for the next Guns 'N Roses tour?
Obviously, since I seek to bring to light bands, who deserve
more recognition, a review of Hell N' Diesel's EP Tears For The
Wicked is in order. Though consisting of only three songs, this
release packs a massive wallop. Straightway, one is plowed over by
the title track. Making one feel like the Red Sea after being parted
by Moses, hard-charging riffs come barreling through like a herd of
rhinoceri. What is especially impressive about Hell 'N Diesel, like
many bands of the Post Commercial Era, is its use of economy.
Tears For The Wicked is not only a great track because it has
great riffs, but also because of the band's pacing for, even though
its members were very young, the group showed very deft arranging
skills on this track, making the music on the verses slightly more
subdued, so that, when the chorus kicks in, the song is even more
powerful.
Continuing the sonic stampede is the next track Rebel,
whose frenzied riff comes clawing toward one like Orcs trying to
scale the walls of Helm's Deep. Imagine a Guns 'N Roses with twice
the intensity, where Slash, Izzy, and Duff tune down five half-steps
to B for extra heaviness; that is what Hell 'N Diesel
is.
Rounding out the EP is the track Speed Devil. With its
simple yet massive Frankenstein-monster of a riff lurching forward,
the band shows yet again how judicious it is in its note selection,
choosing only the choicest notes for only the most devastating
tracks. Naturally, most music critics, being the dolts that they are,
have completely ignored a band like Hell 'N Diesel in favor of the
so-called “Rock revivalists.” What a shame another great band is
flippantly overlooked in favor of sub-par groups, who are little more
than also-rans.
And so, in closing, if you like Rock; I mean, if you really
like Rock, you owe it to what is left of your hearing to
check out this amazing band.
In hindsight, it was to prove
sadly fitting that Greenleaf entitled its album Secret Alphabets
because, even though the musical language it used to write the record
was a beautiful one, it was a language few seemed to understand, as
it was yet another great Post Commercial album that was, by and
large, ignored.
The
fusion of two stalwarts of the “Stoner Rock” scene: Dozer and
Demon Cleaner, the band is considered by some to be a mere “side
project,” but to think so would be remiss for the music, which
Greenleaf has tendered the public over the years, is every bit as
powerful, as the bands whence its members came. This can be heard in
abundance on the album's second track 10,000 Years Of
Revolution. The main
guitar-figure, with its slashing barre-chords punctuated by a
massively heavy end-tag, lays to waste all the so-called “Rock
revivalists.” Here too ones sees that, like many guitarists in the
“Stoner Rock” genre, Tommi Holappa and Daniel Jansson know how to
do guitar-tones right,
as their tones are warm and thick, a far cry from the brittle,
shrill, scooped mid-range sound, which is so in vogue amongst so many
modern, Heavy-Rock guitarists.
Like
the sonic equivalent of riding with Rob Zombie in his Dragula on a
mountain road with hairpin turns, Witchcraft
Tonight
is a twisting, turning, rollicking rave-up, making dark fun for the
whole family. Of special note is Bengt
Bäckes' bass-tapestries, which he weaves towards the end of the
song.
Starting
off with a very catchy Bengt Bäcke bass-line, which is doubled on
guitar, Never
Right
showcases Fredrik Nordin's versatility on vocals, as his voice takes
on a Paul Stanley quality. Always able to sing in a high and clear
manner in Dozer, it is even more impressive he is able to make
himself sound like another singer entirely.
Showing
its haunting, psychedelic side, the band's track The
Combination
features spectral guitar-figures drenched in eerie reverb and heavy
phasing. Together with an equally haunting vocal-melody on the part
of Nordin, this would be a perfect fit to a disturbing, atmospheric
horror-film.
The
album's sixth track The
Spectre,
is a lively poltergeist of an instrumental that seems to bounce off
the walls. Like Black Sabbath did in Rat
Salad,
Greenleaf deftly melds Jazz and Heavy-Rock as Holappa and Jansson
throw complex Jazz-chord underneath their tasty phase-drenched
soloing.
The
seventh track (and this reviewer's favorite) is the funereal
Viking-dirge One
More Year.
Drawing on their Nordic roots no doubt, the band abetts a slow,
solemn Sabbathy riff with Norse chanting, making for a devastating
combination of the atmospheric with the heavy.
Combining
Heavy-Rock with the feel of a military march, is Black
Black Magic.
A triumphal song of self-determination, the track finds Nordin
reverting to his Paul Stanley vocal-style once more.
With
its eerie, droning guitar-riff, which falls somewhere between an
Indian raga and Iommi's more meditative, heavy riffs, Masterplan
features
an achingly wistful vocal-hook from Nordin. The members of Greenleaf
make it seem so easy despite the fact that merging a great
guitar-riff with a great vocal-hook is no
mean
feat.
Lastly,
is the song No
Time Like Right Now!
A song about being resigned to the fact that one must press on, this
is a track, which features something that is virtually non-existent
in Rock: a lyrically heavy riff played at a slow tempo. So many heavy
guitarists have become so dependent on palm-muting open-strings and
playing them as fast as they can that they have forgotten the
riff-making approach, which Greenleaf clearly remebers.
All
in all, Secret
Alphabets
is another superbly crafted album, which has been carelessly tossed
into the Memory Hole by the cluelessness of most Rock fans. Let us
try to reverse that in our own small way.
There is an old maxim, which goes,
“The darkest hour is just before the dawn.” Apparently, when the
first rays of Northern Lights
began to poke their heads above the horizon, most Rock fans must have
been running west looking for a sunrise.
The
six-song EP from the Canadian band Sea Of Green, Northern
Lights was one of those early
landmark albums of the Post Commercial Era. Unfortunately, as with
the recordings of many of its peers (Animalcule, The Darkness, The
Want, Witchcraft etc.), it was a criminally underrated work that
escaped the attention of the oblivious Rock-world at large.
One cannot
stress enough what a shame it was that Sea Of Green's music was not
embraced by the Rock-community en masse because, like those
aforementioned peers, its music was like a superfood containing all
the nutrients in excelsis, which the music scene was (and still is)
gravely wanting in.
Pulling
no punches, Northern Lights
begins straightway with the track Move The Mountains.
Like a bulldozer festooned with flowers, it is massive, hulking slab
of Heavy Rock melded with a laid-back hippie sensibility. As with
many of its Canadian brethren (Rush, Triumph, Puddy, Tricky Woo,
Sheavy),
Sea Of Green
understands that pensiveness and heaviness can be fused seamlessly
without one detracting from the other.
Next
comes the song Look To The Sky.
With its gargantuan, wah-drenched riff, it is a song about either the
aftermath of an alien encounter or spiritual enlightenment, depending
on one's interpretation. Especially with its spacey middle-section,
this would have been a great song to be featured in an episode of The
X-Files. One can just see Mulder
running through the forest, while this track is playing in the
background.
Continuing
on with spiritual themes, If You Want My Soul
is another pensive yet heavy number, which shows the band's mastery
of the call-and-response blues structure. Like the scenery one passes
to and from work everyday, Rock has so much commerce with the Blues,
that is has often lost sight of the stylistic conventions the Blues
is composed of. The fact that this tune has an antiphonal form shows
that Sea Of Green, like many Post Commercial bands (Ryan Kickland's
Animalcule comes to mind), has deeper roots and a greater sense of
music history that have bands of earlier eras.
I suppose I
should digress at this point and specifically discuss the talents of
Travis Cardinal, the band's guitarist/singer. Like a strong cup of
coffee, Cardinal's guitar-tone is warm, fat, and rich. In addition,
his signing is high and clear with absolutely no yarlling, rapping,
or guttural Death-Metal stylings, making his voice a sound for sore
ears indeed.
Ever
relentless in its musical assault, the record next gives one Time
And Space. Here gain, Travis
uses the wah-pedal to devastating effect on the main riff, which
mercilessly creeps toward one like a sonic serpent of sound.
If
its heavy songs have a pensive, spiritual bent, one can be assured
the band's ballad will be absolutely ethereal. Called Change
With Me, the song features
soaring guitar melodies atop Cardinal's lissome arpeggios. Listening
to it makes one imagine sitting in a sylvan setting, such as what is
on the album's cover, staring at the Aurora Borealis and beyond.
Lastly,
one has the song In The Sun.
A heavy track, this time with a swinging, eight-note feel, it is a
celebratory song about the exhilaration of spiritual freedom. This
would be a great soundtrack to a bunch of blissed-out guys walking
around Oak Island on a warm summer day, soaking up both the scenery
and lore of buried treasure.
And so, in
closing, I would urge everyone to buy this record wherever one can
find it. Listen to it at home, in the car, at work, at your wedding,
or on vacation. Slip it to the DJ playing at your daughter's
homecoming or prom. The world will be a better place as a result.
When looking at the historiography of
Rock music, there are basically two countries, which always figure
into the sundry narratives discussing it. These countries are, of
course, The United States and Great Britain. This is both
understandable and appropriate, as the most influential and
successful bands hailed from either one or the other of these lands.
However, there was, nonetheless, Rock music made in other parts of
the world as well, some of which became successful in its own right.
One such country, who spawned influential bands, was Germany.
Combining a sort of mechanical minimalism with soulful melody, a
slough of German groups emerged out of the early 70s to influence
everyone from The Red Hot Chili Peppers to Radiohead.
Sadly, these groups (Can, Guru Guru,
Novalis, etc.) are largely unknown in America. In their own country,
however, they were able to inspire a new generation of bands to come
forth, one of which is a giant of
the Post-Commercial Era called Colour Haze.
Like
The Quill, Colour Haze has been around for twenty years and has
produced a catalog of massively stupendous albums, one of which is
Ewige Blumenkraft
(German
for “eternal flower-power”).
For the fans of AOR Rock, who feel forlorn in today's musical
climate, this band has everything needed to soothe their weary souls.
Like
a caravan of stampeding hippies, Freakshow,
the album's first track, comes bursting forth with raging
insouciance. Going from jangling chords to heavier parts, it still
maintains its joyous mood throughout. Unlike many guitar-heavy bands,
who tend to stay in the same somber mood, Colour Haze does a very
good job of running the emotional gamut on its albums, as this first
track illustrates.
Combining
German Rock's mechanical minimalism with heaviness, Almost
Gone is
also a lesson on to lay down a smoking groove with great aplomb. Play
this at a party, and one will see a conga-line from Hell take shape.
Switching
to a more dramatic mood, Smile
2 starts
off with tinkling, staccato guitar and bass-figures, which then gives
way to a massive avalanche of sound. Though full of atmospherics and
melody, a song like this proves the band is not
lacking
in heaviness.
Continuing
in the more dramatic vein of songwriting comes Outside,
whose main riff is one of the most poignant guitar-melodies I have
ever heard in my life. Unlike many heavy bands, whose songs contain a
clean, atmospheric part alongside a heavy part, Colour Haze is able
to be atmospheric during
the heavy part of the song, and Outside
is
a fine example of that. This song also showcases guitarist Stefan
Koglek as the master of the semi-hollow body guitar. Most guitarist
in heavy music eschew semi-hollow bodies because their sound is
deemed too thin. Koglek, however, is able to create a sound as warm
and thick as anyone, while also taking advantage of the guitar's
unique, vocal-like qualities.
The fifth track (and this reviewer's favorite) is the song Goddess.
If one was to look up the meaning of “epic Rock” in the
dictionary, there should be an audio excerpt of this song as part of
the definition. The rousing vocal-line, which Koglek sings during the
chorus, is the epitome of what a chorus of a Rock song should be.
This track would be great as the soundtrack to the climax of a High
Fantasy film.
Reverting to a more atmospheric mode, House Of Rushammon starts
off with shimmering, meditative guitar-figures and then shifts into
dark, funereal realms, the kind of feel most “Gothic” bands wish
they could aspire to in their own writing.
Going into heavy-groove mode once more, Reefer is a gleeful
romp celebrating all things marijuana. Simple and slow, Colour Haze
shows, like many a “Stoner Rock” band shows, one does not have to
sound like a swarm of angry locusts, whose buzzing has been dropped
down an octave, in order to make a great Heavy Rock track.
Like House Of Rushammon, the song Freedom has a
dirge-like quality to it, but spiced up this time with guitar-licks
that are part Deutschrock, part Raga, and part Hendrix. Replete with
a meditative guitar-solo, the song also shows how Koglek can take the
most hackneyed-sounding Rock-lines and make them sound completely
fresh, no mean feat after sixty years of Rock guitar.
Another heavy track, Smile 1 brings to the fore something that
is a forte of Clour Haze: the ability to create a mood that is
equidistant from (or transcends) happiness and sadness. It is this
mood that colors (dare I use the pun?) many of its songs.
Lastly, there is the track Elektrohasch. Like Ryan Kickland,
Colour Haze has a penchant for sprawling psychedelic jams, and like
Kickland's jams, Elektrohasch fails to disappoint. Here Stefan
Koglek really gets to strut his stuff as technicolor guitar-figures
ever undulate before one's ears.
Here is another band in grave need of our support; let us do all we
can to help Colour Haze out.
There is a school of thought afoot
amongst many a benighted Rock fan, which makes the claim that 1994
was some sort of terminus for supernal Rock and Roll: that Kurt
Cobain's death, in tandem with the diminution of Grunge, meant that
Rock was over and done with for good. To a point, it is
understandable (even though it is dead wrong) that this seems the
case. After all, Rock bands in high-profile contexts receded
precipitously in the ensuing years after Kurt's death, replaced by
boy-bands, pop-tarts, rappers, hipster bands, and the like. However,
that Rock is no more is only a
perception; any trip to the online music store All
Things Heavy
should disabuse one of such a notion.
Nonetheless,
as the sociologist Stanford M. Lyman once wrote, “If something is
perceived as real, it is real in its consequences.” Thus, if the
majority of Rock fans think the genre is dead, then they will be
oblivious to all the great groups out there now,
thereby relegating such bands to the margins, when those bands should
be playing arenas.
The reason I started this blog then was to champion such
beleaguered bands, and there is perhaps no better example of such a
band than The Quill. Having put out a slough of records over the past
twenty years, The Quill is everything that so many Rock fans complain
is lacking in Rock, and the band's debut album certainly makes a
strong case for such sentiment.
Starting off the record is the
anthemic song Dry. With its
stinging, single-note guitar riff, which gets its hooks into the
listener's ear and never lets go, the song then launches into a
massive Zeppelinesque groove replete with the glorious wail of the
Hammond B3 Organ (when was the last time that made
its presence known on a modern Rock song?). A tune about making the
most out of life before it is gone, it is also a great introduction
to the voice that
is Magnus Ekwall. Like Ryan Kickland, Justin Hawkins, and Kenneth
Leer, Ekwall is one of the most criminally underrated voices in
modern Rock. Not only is his timbre and pitch perfect, but the vocal
hook he penned provides a masterful counterpoint to an already
devastating track.
The
next song on deck is the track Homespun,
whose droning guitar riff merges seamlessly with Ekwall's vocals. If
this song was on Guns 'N Roses' Appetite
For Destruction,
it would have verily been its signature track for this
is
how so many of the Hard Rock bands from the 1980s should have went
about crafting their songs. A tune about being true to yourself and
returning to your roots, it is a song with powerful punch and joyous
abandon, redolent with the soulfulness that was much in short supply
with the band's distant cousins from the 80s. Also, unlike the Hard
Rock of thirty or so years ago, this and the other songs on The
Quill's record have a much more organic production style and thus are
not drowning in digital reverb and digital delay like so many
guitar-heavy Rock albums from that era. Additionally of note is the
warm, singing tone Christian Carlsson gets from his Les Paul during
the guitar solo, another thing one did not hear much from the 80s
guitarists (with the exception of Slash perhaps).
If
Homespun is
an example of how most Hard Rock should have been done in the 1980s,
Lodestar
is an example of how a power-ballad should have been written.
Ensconced within Anders Haglund's dreamy organ playing, Ekwall's
sultry vocals emote with real power,
a far-cry from the paint-by-the-numbers posturing of so many
vocalists who came before him during that decade. The difference
between former and latter is especially apparent when the heavy part
of the song kicks in, as Carlsson launches into a hulking guitar
groove that Iommi would not have minded nixing.
The
song From Where I
Am
shows that one does not need a wall-of-sound played at breakneck
speed to make a great heavy track, as the band takes a less-is-more
approach by engaging in a minimal, slow-groove slab of Heavy Rock.
Especially of note are the beautiful, arpeggiated guitar figures
Carlsson plays during the second part of the song.
When it comes to melding Heavy Rock with funkier grooves, The
Quill could teach a lot of bands from the 90s a thing or two as well
for The Quill understands that a funky groove, like any groove,
requires the notes to be put in the strategically right place for it
to be powerful. This is a far cry from the thinking of most bands in
the 90s for whom funk-laden grooves resembled a guy on meth
frantically trying to dislodge a turd. Fortunately, in a song like
The Flood, The Quill shows the world how it is done.
No less ferocious a groove is the song In My Shed.
Hearing this track (and every track on The Quill's album), I am
reminded of the quotation by Shakespeare, which goes, “Ripeness is
all.” Had this record come on in 1986, it would be
the iconic album from that era that everyone would be talking about.
What a shame that a band like The Quill (and many others) was
not given a proper context for its music and hence was not given its
just due.
Showing itself to be both eclectic and to have a sense of
history, the band does a surprising cover of A Sinner's Fame
by the heavy Christian band Trouble. Just as Hendrix did with the
Dylan song All Along The Watchtower and Metallica did with
Thin Lizzy's arrangement of Whiskey In A Jar, The Quill takes
A Sinner's Fame and imparts to it dimensions it heretofore did
not have, as the song has a darker, more relentlessly plodding
quality than does the original version.
Next comes the song Not A Single Soul. Another barreling
rocker, it is the kind of song that one hears fans of this kind of
music endlessly complaining is no longer being made anymore. Well I
am here to inform one that songs of this kind are being
made; it is simply the case of many people not getting off their lazy
asses to find them that they remain obscure. Just because a famous
band has not written it does not mean it is not there. Quite
fittingly, the song is about the despair of being forgotten.
Another lesson in amalgamating Funk with Heavy Rock is In The
Sunlight I Drown. With its soaring vocal hook and pensive lyrics,
it is a tune Perry Ferrell would not have minded writing when he was
in Jane's Addiction a quarter-century ago.
Next to last comes I Lost A World Today. A twin-sister to
From Where I Am, it is a tune where the band strikes a perfect
balance between a Heavy Rock groove and a sultry blues feel,
something that many 80s Hard Rock bands in Los Angeles tried and
failed to achieve.
Rounding out the Quill's debut album is the song Sweetly.
Though slow, pensive, and subdued, the grinding guitar riff Carlsson
belts out precludes it from being a ballad. Instead, it is a song
about a man tortured by the heartbreak of unrequited love, and should
more accurately be called Bittersweetly. Here too, one sees
The Quill, like many of its peers in Rock such as Animalcule, Dragon
Green, Zebulon Pike, Bongzilla, and The Want, as the masters of
devastating minimalism. Unlike many heavy bands with a more modern
feel to their music, The Quill chooses to use fewer notes but to put
them in the right place, ironically, making the song sound much
bigger than the wall-of-sound approach would do.
Long story short, THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THE STATE OF MUSIC
AS LONG AS BANDS LIKE THE QUILL ARE AROUND. If the music scene seems
to be lacking, it is only because legions of fans sit around and
focus on the music around them they do not like rather
than seeking out bands whose music they would like and consequently
supporting them. Hence, were all these whiners to support the bands
out there that are like The Quill, the music scene would seem like
what it should be.
It was New Year's Eve 2000; as the
Twentieth Century was drawing to a close, I found myself idling in
front of my Web TV unit (I was too poor to afford a computer at the
time), checking out a website I had discovered a few years earlier
called I.U.M.A. (short for Internet Underground Music Archive).
Before Youtube, Facebook, Garageband, and Myspace, I.U.M.A. was a
place to go to check out unsigned bands from all over the world. Each
band had its own page along with MP3 excerpts of some of its music.
Sadly, though I went on I.U.M.A. frequently, I must confess I did not
expect to hear anything great at that point. By 1999, I had resigned
myself to the fact that great, epic Rock was a thing of the past, and
that all there was left to do was to amuse oneself with the pathetic
attempts at making music that the average band of the day engaged in.
The search filter at I.U.M.A.
Enabled one to search for bands according to genre and then, once one
settled on a genre, one could further refine one's search by either
focusing on a region an artist was from or by the letter of the
alphabet that the artist's name started with. That night I decided to
search for Progressive Rock bands, whose name started with the letter
K. Other than resolving to play the guitar, it was one of the most
fateful decisions I ever made in my life for, by doing so, I
discovered the music of Ryan Kickland.
The I.U.M.A page Kickland had at
the time was showcasing the music from his first album 3D
Collapsing Star. I clicked on
the first track, and my jaw almost hit the floor. While most bands on
I.U.M.A. may have consisted of competent musicians, there was this
bar of quality that they could just not seem to clear. It was obvious
from the first listening of Kickland's music that he was able to
pole-vault way over
it. Perfect songwriting, perfect musicianship, perfect production:
the man had it all, and listening to the subsequent tracks only
confirmed that belief.
In
many ways, I feel 3D
Collapsing Star
was the record that kicked off what I call the Post-Commercial Era of
Rock, an era in which the kind of epic Rock, normally under the aegis
of the major-label system, struck out on its own, where it has been
ever since. Indeed, if one were to survey the musical landscape over
the past sixteen to twenty years, one would see dozens
of new, epic bands plying their trade such as Animalcule (Ryan's
subsequent band), The Want, Heaven And Earth, The Quill, Witchcraft,
Dozer, Danava, The Darkness, and The Sword to name a few. Sadly, it
seems it will only be in hindsight that these bands will be
appreciated. When one thinks of the various decades that get
name-checked by fervent Rock aficionados, the decade of the 2000s is
always at the bottom of the list. To be sure, if one only sees what
was on the surface of Popular Music during this period, it is
understandable that many an unenlightened Rock fan would think so.
However, in the distant future, when musicologists look back at this
time, it will be seen as something of a golden age. Though the
progenitors of epic Rock may have occurred in earlier decades, it was
in the decade of the 2000s
when bands en masse (such as the aforementioned ones) took all the
empirical knowledge accrued from all the past eras and parlayed it to
make a slough of solid, consistently amazing albums. What a shame the
average Rock fan has failed to see that.
I
started this blog to support such bands; so what better to start off
reviewing than 3D
Collapsing Star?
Starting
off the album is the song Now
Then.
A song about release and revelation, the track begins with guitar
dyads, which flutter about ones ears like golden yods being sprinkled
down from Heaven. Then, like a Hoover Dam's worth of pent-up
psychedelic energy bursting forth, Ryan's aggressively cascading
rhythm-guitar and haunting vocals kick in. Back in 1999, hearing such
an amazing song in such a musical wasteland was quite a moving
experience I can assure you.
Next
comes the sportive track Crumbling
Pages.
Like a modern-day sea-shanty, its rollicking guitar and vocal figures
playfully rise and fall like a piece of flotsam bobbing up and down
on the ocean. Using his Syd Barrett/David Bowie influence to its best
advantage, his song manages to be gentle and whimsical yet epic and
stirring at the same time.
Like
a lullaby for those about to engage in astral-projection, Space
Station sends
one soaring into the cosmos. Peaceful yet sublime, Kickland's guitar
and vocals weave a vivid picture in The Mind's Eye of floating above
the earth. Especially of note is Kickland's adroit use of the Morley
Echo Plus (a devise one hooks up to the electric guitar) to enhance
the spacey mood.
In
addition, ones sees in these first three tracks something that was to
be a hallmark of Kickland's recorded work: that of economy.
The sign of any great musician in not the quantity of notes he or she
plays but the quality.
In the case of Kickland, he can take the simplest of rhythm-guitar
figures and make it sound like a magnum opus once he adds the vocals
to it.
Next
is the instrumental track One
For The Road.
Starting off with Ryan's skittering, Indian-influenced
guitar-figures, this is a track where Patrick Ondrozeck's keyboard
playing really comes to the fore. The best keyboardist in Rock,
Patrick's dark and sonorous organ tapestries provide the ideal ground
for Ryan's guitar-rhythms to gambol. A tune that would go toe-to-toe
with the early instrumental compositions of Pink Floyd, it would be
the perfect soundtrack for a hippie van barreling down an old country
road on a warm summer night en route to Bonnaroo.
In
the song Earth,
one sees again the difference between a good musician and a true
artist. With just a simple arpeggiated guitar-figure, an incisively
placed vocal-hook, and light sprinkling of electric piano on the part
of Patrick Ondrozeck, Ryan is able to create a masterpiece.
Then
there is, perhaps, my favorite track The
Squire's Red Fire.
A song about a man with great curative powers, the brume of Patrick's
organ swirls around everywhere to create a deliciously eldritch
atmosphere. To put it another way, if this song were part of a
film-score to a Hammer Horror motion-picture, it would make the
soundtrack a very sought-after album.
Next
comes another instrumental Zulu.
A definite track for headphone listeners, it is easy to lose oneself
in its atmosphere of meditative urgency.
A
fully-realized player, in Siddhartha
Gautama
Ryan shows there is more to his guitar-playing than just strumming
and solos. A fingerstyle guitar-instrumental, his playing shows a
delicate intricacy reminiscent of a John Fahey or Jorma Kaukonen's
acoustic guitar-work.
Like
his musical hero Syd Barrett, Ryan has a penchant for taking
childlike emotions and imagery and crafting it into a psychedelic
gem, which he does with great aplomb in It's
A Bowievel.
With its trippy, bouncy guitar-track and woodblock keeping time, it
is the kind of song one would hear on the soundtrack to H.R.
Puffenstuff
or some other 70s psychedelic show a child would have watched back
then on Saturday morning.
The
final track Flying
Mad Music Machine
makes for a lovely synopsis to this album. His guitar-signal drenched
in the syrupy goodness of the Electro Harmonix Small Stone Phaser,
the song reminds one, ironically, how little Ryan needs by way of
effects or other equipment to craft classic songs.
All
in all, I would characterize 3D
Collapsing Star as
a dark record, but it is not dark the way or gory horror-film is dark
or a documentary about John Wayne Gacy is dark. Rather, it is dark
the way a warm and clear summer night is dark: vast and fathomless,
yet peaceful, inviting, and womb-like.
In
sum, 3D Collapsing
Star is
an album that shows everything that was right
about
the 2000s music-scene. What a shame it never reached a wider
audience.
