The idea of a long-established rock band coming back at a modern time and releasing new material amongst a range of newer bands used to be a really cool idea that you could instantly get behind and claim to be a victory for classic rock and roll. And then as you grow older and realise them strength of many new bands, you have to look at long-established rock bands making a comeback and all you can really see is an inability for these names to keep up with the bands they've inspired. And it just gets a bit sad. It's already happened with KISS and Lynyrd Skynyrd this year. Maybe the young-blooded bands are just doing better than the bands that everyone in the public knows one or two songs from this year. So when I discovered that Aerosmith were to be releasing their 15th album Music From Another Dimension! today, their first album since 2004, I was cynical and not really expecting it to be some grand comeback. After all, in between then, Steven Tyler's turned 60, become a judge on American Idol and broken his teeth while in the shower. All classic signs of becoming a mellow old man right?
So does Music From Another Dimension give heartless bastards like me a reason to be cynical? Well, not really. The Bad Boys from Boston were clearly aware that their age was going to attract such cynicysm and have really made an age defying collection of blues-ridden hard rock songs that will leave you dancing and banging heads. With it's science fiction inspired opening featuring a voice over that will promise to move your senses, the opening hooks of Luv XXX actually manages to deliver it's promises as gutsy guitar work from Joe Perry and Brad Whitford gives us hook after hook. The pair are effortless in delivering solid solos and riffs after one another giving the likes of Out Go the Lights and Legendary child that fun loving spirit of good times rock and roll that rocked the 1970's.
Of course, it's Steven Tyler that provides the album of it's main source of charisma as always. Even on some songs where there seems to be an apparent amount of auto-tuning being used to support his vocals, he still boasts through his bold domination on these songs. The narrative styles of Street Jesus makes his performance all too gripping, while he manages to unleash a surprising amount of anger on Lover Alot, a performance that really does defy age and that youthful passion can still exist. On closing track One Last Goodbye, Tyler unleashes the full extent of his vocal techniques and it's a nice reminder that what he can do is essentially superhuman.
Of course One Last Goodbye is one of the cheesiest most cringe-worthy ballads I've ever heard and man, are Aerosmith a band that love their ballads. A lot of the ballads on this album are probably top notch, but you know that once again, I'm a heartless bastard that hates ballads. So songs like What Could Have Been Love and Can't Stop Lovin' You featuring guest vocals from country pop star Carrie Underwood are painful at best. The worst on offer is undoubtedly We All Fall Down, a ballad devoid of anything rock and roll that sounds like Tyler taking influence from people he judged on American Idol. And of course, the band insist on presenting this stomping hard rock song/weepy ballad dichotomy across the album, so there's an equal balance between the good and the lame.
I guess this means Music From Another Dimension! is not an album for heartless bastards. But if you like your rock and roll and you can handle your ballads in full force, then Aerosmith have returned with another stomper of an album. It's no Rocks and no rap rock bangers featuring Run-DMC are to be found anywhere but this is definitely a solid collection of songs that satisfy a good release from a long-established rock band releasing new material amongst a range of newer bands. And when a band can make songs as solid as this so late on in their career, maybe age is just a number.
Aerosmith's Music From Another Dimension! is out now via Columbia
I'm desperately in need for some good old hard hitting rock and roll to lift my spirits right now. I assume I'm not the only who over the past few days has been mainly listening to Suicide Silence. And so something with more melody, hooks and old rock and roll fun is in order. And this is what I've recently been hearing I can find in London hard rockers Zodiac N Black and the blasting hard rock you can find on their debut album The Aftermyth. And if a band wants to rock out like it's 1976 and throw in some 90's influences as well, it's a halfway uplifting album surely?
Yeah, pretty much. In spite of what emotional tone the band play it, from uplifting, to romantic to utterly grim, this is a band that seems convinced that nothing new happened in rock music after 1995. And as opener Bastinado rises into action with a selection of distortion drenched riffs, so begins the work of a band that wears their influences so distinctly on their sleeves.
As the album goes on, shades of Soundgarden, Led Zeppelin and Pearl Jam flow past with the absorbing lead guitar backdrops of A Necessary Evil and Who's the Fool (Part 1) that boasts the same kind of detailed crafts as Prosperina's Faith In Sleep, the best Welsh album... ever. The immense detail also shines through emotion welling lead vocals that bring out a sense of romance on the bluesy Lights On Blues,while creating a sense of utter melancholy on The Joke is On Us. The vocal style not be to everyone, sounding like a hybrid between a garage sale Eddie Vedder and Blaze Bayley, but in carrying a strong emotion, it still works.
In terms of carrying a strong emotion, their frontman really is fighting against the emotions. While bands like The Answer would like to convince you that they sound like they've recorded the album in the back of a bar when actually recording in a professional studio, Zodiac N Black genuinely sound like they've been recording in their local pub, as riffs come compact and filth infested. It makes the juddering Bad Pills feel more like a rumbling journey that leaves you on the edge of your street as to what's happening next. At times, tracks like Making an Enemy and Better Off Dead has the riff-heavy roughness of the Queens of the Stone Age debut but the condensed production stops it from reaching it's full potential.
This musical combination of soft romantic melodies and crunching hard rock poundings makes The Aftermyth an album that you can clearly grip with. Zodiac N Black have enough of an impact to change your mindset as they charge through on their grungy rock and roll journey. It's not made of absolute perfection by any means, the production levels stop them from reaching their full potential certainly and makes the final effect sounding like Soundgarden lite. But this is a definite sign of a debut of a band with high potential who will go on to be a great kick ass rock and roll band.
Zodiac N Black's The Aftermyth is out now via STM Records.
The world of metal came together today to mourn the loss and celebrate the life of Suicide Silence frontman Mitch Lucker, who tragically passed away in a motorcycle accident in California at the age of 28.
While we all have differing opinions on the music, I'm sure you'll agree that Suicide Silence were a band that managed to touch a widespread amount of metal fans and that in the case of any individual, 28 is far too young an age for someone who has so much signs of life, a loving family and a future in becoming a star to have their lives taken from them in a flash. And Lucker was a man with all of this with a solid reputation that he built up with his band since 2008 with the release of three incredible albums that have gone on to inspire a series of new bands.
With his fellow bandmates Chris Garza, Mark Heylmun, Alex Lopez and Dan Kenny, Lucker brought the deathcore genre to a higher mainstream attention with Suicide Silence. You can hear it in the raw and monolithic collection of doom laden metalcore that is 2008's The Cleansing. Opening with the frenetic Unanswered the band quite clearly laid down their mission statement. From there, the band's crushing display of metalcore breakdowns given a more death-metal esque brutality on the likes of The Disease, the straightforward Bludgeoned to Death and deathcore anthem No Pity for a Coward with it's yell-along hooks of "Seconds from end/ What's it gonna be?/ Pull the trigger bitch!", Suicide Silence proved they were a new face of fear, hate and brutality at a time when the big names in metalcore were beginning to slip. (Killswitch Engage's second self-titled album anyone?) The following year, the band were fairly quick in following it up with No Time to Bleed, a continuation of the non-stop brutality made clear with the opening of Wake Up, the first song that truly put them into the prominence of everyone, as well as featuring one of my personal SS favourites Lifted, which shows the band at their boldest and most emotional at their songwriting. It was still a crushingly heavy song though. Suicide Silence were never going to be the kind of band that would write their own Sunff. And rightfully so.
It was last year however that the band released their most accomplished work in the form of The Black Crown, one of the year's most blinding metal releases that left many different thoughts cast in many different directions regarding what is possible when you're in Suicide Silence. While not being as forceful as the first two releases their was a greater focus on proper songwriting and craft on creating absorbing backdrops to make the sense of grime so much more encompassing. It was also one of the first deathcore albums that proved that it was okay to be influenced by the late 90's/early 00's wave of Nu Metal and still create music that can be taken seriously. Thus, The Black Crown was as reminiscent of Slipknot and Deftones as it was of Deicide and Obituary. And while Lucker yelled his lungs out throughout the album. it was the three duets across the album that showed the three different parts of metal the band took their influences from that served as one of the centerpieces of the album. There was the collaboration with Jonathan Davis of Korn that showed off their nu metal influence, the collaboration with Alexia Rodriguez of Eyes Set to Kill that showed their knowledge of what was happening in the current world of metalcore and their collaboration with Frank Mullen of Suffocation that showed they weren't messing around when they talked about their death metal influences.
And it was with the release of The Black Crown that Suicide Silence became unavoidable in the world of metal. They may have been decisive and may have found themselves an easy target in the eyes of the trve metal crowd but the people that did show their love for the band did in full force and in particular, their love for Lucker and his lyrics, with numerous quotes and tattoos appearing of his lyrics and approval of his commanding frontman role, approval displayed for his commanding force displayed during any live show with the ability to essentially start a moshpit at the snap of a finger, and even a high amount of respect gained from the people that spend most time visiting gigs for real hardcore bands, a crowd I like to trust more than the trve guys.
Outside of bringing a new brutality to the world of metalcore and taking nu metal influences and turning them on their heads, Lucker often presented himself as a true gentleman and a man that cared about those around him whenever talking in interviews. Often he would take time to talk positively about his life as a father to his young daughter Kenadee and his complete devotion to supporting his wife and daughter. If you want evidence of the entire band showing their caring side off, all you need to do is watch the Toys for Kids video from Christmas 2011, a video that shows Suicide Silence to be a band with hearts of gold.
So it's little wonder that such widespread devastation has been displayed on metal websites worldwide regarding the death of Mitch Lucker. When I discovered the news, I just stopped all I was doing. I couldn't find the words or possible way to explain that this wasn't happening in my head. I remember feeling similar to the way I felt when I read that Paul Gray had died, but back then I didn't understand Slipknot like I do now. After a long time of getting to fully appreciate Suicide Silence, the tragic death of Lucker is the first time I've really been taken back by reading about the death of a musician.
Suicide Silence have actually provided me with some really good moments of my life. They were the band that I would constantly talk about with several friends that were in the year below me at school, with whom I continue a friendship to this day. I remember the first time I talked with the first member of that group, he asked me if I knew of Suicide Silence and I told him I vaguely did. As soon as I saw him the following day, he gave me his physical copy of No Time to Bleed for em to listen to. It was months before I got a chance to talk to him again and when I did manage to talk to him again, I was surprised he remembered who I was, but we immediately began talking about the band again and less than 24 hours later, The Cleansing and The Black Crown were also in my music collection. From then on, blossoming metal-related friendships grew and I spent much of my final school year talking about bands with that guy and his friends, and it was brilliant. And I owe it to Suicide Silence. I think a big regret in my life will be that I will never be able to get these fine gentleman together to see them live.
It's going to take some time for me and thousands of other fans across the world that Mitch Lucker inspired to realise the true extent of this terrible tragedy and it will most likely take at least a couple of years before I can comfortably listen to their songs again. At Ramblings of a Rock Fan, I send my thoughts out to Lucker's friends, family and fellow bandmates and I hope anyone that reads this does likewise. The pain they feel can't even begin to compare to what we feel as music fans.
May you Rest in Peace, Mitch Lucker. You were taken from this world far too early, but in your short time on this earth you accomplished so much.
Be honest, how often do you actually find yourself becoming hooked with a new band from the second you hear them? It doesn't happen a lot, you'll need several listens before a band can really mean something to you. And then there are other cases where you fall in love with a band straight away and they mean a lot to you from one song and onward. The best example I've had of this for ages has been with Norwegian mentalists Blood Command, whose 2010 debut full length Ghostclocks was alive with massive songwriting and the distinct sound of boundaries being pushed at in all they did.
So to learn that they'd be releasing a follow up this year was the stuff of pure excitement for myself and after some frustrating weeks of trying to find a place to listen to the album. But after finding the time to listen to Funeral Beach in full, the sound of boundaries being pushed and extremities in crafting dynamic works in modern rock and roll have been reached even higher.
As Pissed Off and Slightly Offended! opens the album with injections of adrenaline packed hooks, the band display a confidence in becoming the driving force of your senses for the next 40 minutes of your life. And thus your life becomes a blitz of filthy rock and roll with a crystal clear production that brings out the crust stains in a clearer form.
The dirt comes out best in the band's blasting riff-athons that fuel the belting punk raging from the likes of Cult of the New Beat and High Five For Life from Yngve Andersen who fills the album with meaty guitar work with a real amount of backbone behind it through pulsing basslines and drumbeats from Simon Oliver Økland and Sigurd Hakaas. Their performance is packed to the brim with tightly formed intensity that never slows down in it's boldness, sense of danger and further sense of atmospheric grace.
Of course, the central piece to the band's assault of rock and roll thunder is the commanding frontwoman tones of Silje Tombre, whose piercing voice lights up Death to All But Us! and Here's Next to Murderous with a voice that effectively sums up the sense of danger and violence Blood Command effortlessly display but having a soul that listeners can uncover as well that adds a certain beauty, sleekness and even a sultry quality to the songs. It's with those credentials that Blood Command pull off a commendable musical perforamance but with Funeral Beach and throughout the group's work there's always something a little more that makes the songs that bit more special. Amongst the fierce post hardcore influence that shows off the best of the genre's bands (Cult of the New Beat is New Noise on steroids.) there's always something resembling the quality of 10-year-old boy fantasy in their songs. Every song sums up icy imagery of gun fights, car chases and other adrenaline packed scenes straight out of a James Bond movie. And I think the fact that that imagery bursts through music that sounds genuinely heavy and written with pure sincerity is the coolest thing ever. It puts a smile on the face of 10-year-old me and puts whiplash in the neck of 17-year-old me.
And this makes Funeral Beach a surprisingly special offering of 2012. Blood Command use their skills in crafting pure rock and roll into full hearted performances that manages to sound as genuinely beautiful as it does ferocious that brings back feelings of childhood excitement while upholding the hardcore fury that all the older kids love so much. Maybe it's the combination of full hearted dirty rock and roll, fierce poundings of hardcore riffage that gets perfectly heavy and the beautiful sense of 10-year-old dreams of winning gun fights and exploding the bad guys cars that makes Blood Command the kind of band you can fall in love with straight away and when they make an album of music you fall in love with straight away, is it little wonder that this confidently passes as one of 2012's most breathtaking releases.
Blood Command's Funeral Beach is out now via Fysisk Format.
Your favourite Scottish band loves Sucioperro. The Ayrshire trio have made firm name for themselves through touring the UK with some of the most influential names in modern underground post hardcore and have gained major respect in the eyes of my lovely homeland's biggest names, being a regular namedrop in interviews with Twin Atlantic and Biffy Clyro. But while those two have found themselves scaling new heights, the Ayr boys are still an underground force. But if small clubs are the place for the kind of explosive performances displayed on their latest effort Fused then we really can't complain.
On reflection of Fused, there's actually a good chance that the band had a similar thought to the one I had at the end of my introduction because the songs written for the album were made to be played in tiny rooms. The album is a sufficient collection of dirty rock and roll songs played heavy. From the pounce in opener River of Blood to the blast of What a Fucking Champ, the higher emphasis of downtuned riffs and basslines from frontman JP Reid and Stewart Chown serve as a crucial tool in not only making the band's efforts heavier than before but adding a genuine sense of brutality. And with the sheer bluntness and directness from Reid in repeating the phrase "What a fucking chump" over and over again and outpouring his fullest emotion on Discipline Office, the band manage to unleash their brutality in a clearer way than many of the more aimless names in deathcore have managed to.
The increase of heaviness and brutality on this release is focused on in some detail even coming into the lighter moments, with the prominence of Chown's bass on Glass Cable. However, the bands reputation of begin an alt rock band with pleasant alt rock tunes is effortlessly upheld across the album as well. There's the melodic delicacy of Rabbits in Boxes, the albums shot of having a ballad-like song which upholds Reid's vocal tones from the album's heavier offerings and still causes them to translate in a more delicate style. There's even some radio friendly indie rock in the form of the album's title track, however the calmness of the song is a refreshing feature following the storm of riffs and emotion before the album emerges into the trippy dream inducing You Should Get Some Sleep, which sees the band performing in a way that brings their instruction to the listener. It's a soothing way to finish an album of grand filth.
Who knows if "grand filth" serves as an appealing album description? I think in the base of Fused it works very well. Sucioperro have looked more at the idea of making a dirty rock and roll album free of polished production that will manage to unleash it's grimy riffs and basslines in intimate venues and create the perfect storm of mental gig viewers and they've finally created the music for it on this album. It displays the same kind of step up into heavier territory that anyone who heard Bloc Party's Four a few months ago will have experienced. And even amongst this extra face shredding, there's room for absorbing melodies that reflect their earlier work for people to fall in love with. It's with this considered that it's little wonder that your favourite Scottish band loves Sucioperro. They're our countries main source of real rock and roll.
Sucioperro's Fused is out now via Medals for Everyone.
You may have noticed by now that it's been a hell of a year for metalcore. Whether it's the return of the British contribution to the genre setting new standards courtesy of my unending favourites While She Sleeps and Bury Tomorrow, the best in the world of American electronic metalcore bands unleashing their best bands courtesy of Adestria and My Ticket Home or the return of some old school heavy hardcore favourites from Vision of Disorder, the whole pounding breakdowns and high melody methods have finally been making a real name for themselves. And now it's time to see a contribution come from one of the most consistent bands in the genre, Australia's own Parkway Drive.
You may know Parkway Drive to be the main band that have allowed metalcore to be viewed as respectable in it's darkest of times and prove that just because something's been done before, it doesn't mean it can't be executed with any kind of class and pristine brilliance. Well, that's what fourth effort Atlas is all about, only the ambition has been upped even more. This isn't just about making a great metalcore album. This album is about injecting listeners with a real vision of misc, a real vision of life and through this a real vision of the world like an atlas.
It means that this album isn't just about big riffs and breakdowns and why should it be? The band have proved themselves to be premier songwriters of this modern age of metal, but the kind of grand soundscaping on this album takes things to a new level. The album opens with the first notes of Sparks which sounds like the backdrop for a proper blockbuster film complete with a fully mournful atmosphere, while the beautiful melodies that form interludes of The River and grand closer Blue and the Grey have a less brutal more angelic quality within their graceful passages.
But you know as well as I do that these moments are the calm before the storm and man, what a storm Parkway Drive unveil here. As a band cited by many as the figureheads in making the perfect metalcore album, they even outdo themselves here with Luke Kirkpatrick and Jeff Ling's powerhouse riffage creating the perfect hardcore rushes on the likes of Swing and Sleight of Hand with much abrasive fury, while Jia O'Connors bleak basslines makes breakdowns in Old Ghost/New Regrets and Dark Days form a new level of darkness and excitement that also shows Parkway Drive to be figureheads in being heavy now especially with the drumming of Ben Gordon completing the rhythm section with a new craft in playing blast beats formed. With this, the band form themselves as one of the most real metal bands in the world, even across the albums moments that some would look at cynically, from the grand symphonic backdrops of the album's title track to the decision on The Slow Surrender to characterize the moment of bleakness with an out-pouring of Sid Wilson-esque DJ scratching, a fearsome sign of nu metal influences.
And then there's the growling. The violent screams of one of metalcore's most engaging and entertaining frontmen Winston McCall have never been anything less than genuine but this is a chance to hear him at his most visceral and most real. And just as the power of the vocals can be identified as he bellows over the band at their hardest, it can be identified in the recording of the vocals amongst the album's softer sections. The extent of the realism of genuinely shocking and surely beyond the expectations of the band's hardest fans.
Parkway Drive have never been shy of delivering the full package to listeners but with Atlas we have a full package that goes on to think outside the box. Relentless amounts of chaotic brutality presented through bleak soundscapes is enough to make a full album but for a band to constantly come up with new ideas with this combination sounding refreshed with every new song allows the band to leave most of their contemporaries in the dust is a truly awe-inspiring feat on any account even if you already expect them to deliver the goods. All this makes Atlas Parkway Drive's most accomplished release to date and finally launches them into the land of the big leagues, without any hope of coming back down. And in a year where metalcore has been at it's A game, that's the perfect way to round things off.
Parkway Drive's Atlas is out now via Epitaph. The band will tour the UK in November with Emmure.
They might call themselves The Hipsters but you don't need to be a hipster to know that Deacon Blue are one of the best bands to come out of Scotland of the past 25 years. With countless singles that have gained them a name for themselves since their platinum selling debut Raintown, they've been a constant inspiration on what it is to be a good pop band. And with a number of recent live shows that have been praised by everyone from The Times' David Sinclair to... my Dad, everyone's falling in love with them all over again.
And that's not surprising given the amount of time it's been between this latest release and 2001's Homesick there is a high amount of people looking to see Deacon Blue once again. And with this album they certainly deliver in the delivery of lush power pop tunes with strong melodies. And it's one of those rare albums were the simplicity of the songwriting can still deliver engaging results in a pop music context, it's actually quite a rare thing these days.
It of course makes the charismatic performance of frontman Ricky Ross the standout feature of Deacon Blue's performance throughout the album which on grand opener Here I Am in London Town reveals that in Ross' time away he has matured like a fine wine, with a dustier vocal performance that matches the finesse of the musical backdrop. And that's really quite unexpected because they're from the West End of Glasgow and wouldn't know what wine was. The closest thing would be Buckfast. Man, I'm funny.
In it's grandeur and crystalline production, the rest of The Hipsters drifts along with an air of grace and warmth, as listeners are immersed within the shrilling backdrops of Stars and britpop reminiscent melodies of The Outsiders, while becoming much more emotionally gripped within the powerful emotion packed into the stirring balladry of She'll Understand awash with the delicate harmonies of Ross and Lorraine McIntosh, one of the few husband wife duos that have actually, well, lasted. And as the album ends on the melancholic tones of This Year's Drug of Choice, you've learnt once more that Deacon Blue hold they key to writing pop songs with class, subtlties and charm.
So to hand out the kind of critique that everyone gives to bands like Deacon Blue when they release an album in this modern age, it's not an album with a powerful killer single. There's no Dignity or Real Gone Kid on this album. And the fact is, they don't need to have songs like that anymore and if you think there needs to be, you've clearly not absorbed their back catalogue enough. The Hipsters is the sound of a band that have spent the past years struggling to show the world what they're made of and now that they have they're chilling back and playing nicely written pop songs. So indeed, no song on the album is a game changer like previous material has been seen as. But it's a beautiful set of songs on it's own that should surely satisfy even the most stern of listeners. Anyway, if you say band things about Deacon Blue, I'll have to take it as a personal insult against my family. An that's another thing that makes it good listening.
Deacon Blue's The Hipsters is out now via Demon Music Group.
