2 posts tagged “metal”
I recently spent a week in Presque Isle, Maine, the northern-most point I've visited in the continental US, being roughly 2 degrees of latitude north of Minneapolis. Traveling on business and being unused to the snow and early sunsets, I didn't get much of a chance to explore, though I did get very familiar with a couple of miles of the main road. I was there to learn, and learn I did, though not just about the job.
I learned that even when it gets "cold" in Louisville, it's not cold. The temperature was 22 degrees below zero when I arrived and 23 below when I left, though it did warm up to a balmy 8 degrees in the middle of the week. I have never felt temperatures so cold, and it's unlikely I will again for some time. Having the congenial attitude of a taoist, I actually enjoyed the cold, though I was glad it was temporary. I didn't risk offending my coworkers, but I wondered why anyone lives in this place. The winters are unforgiving, the summers short. The town is tiny, lacking any decent coffee and, more importanly, a live music scene of any sort, even including shitty bar bands. I would go insane. The people seemed relatively happy, though, at least from the little interaction we had. I'm sure friendlier weather conditions would have impressed the charm of the place upon me more than the bitter cold I was met with.
I learned that I actually like cable. Sitting in my hotel room, eating fried cheese and sucking down a Coke, I hopped back and forth between Fletch Lives and some Peter Fonda number that involved a lot of driving, criminal protagonists, and power-mad backwater cops. Afterwards, I watched The Hunt for Red October, Bill Maher's show, and some special effects featurette on the latest Die Hard movie. If I'm going to be watching TV, I sure as hell would rather be watching that stuff than most of the crap I end up watching.
The most profound thing I learned on my trip -- more important than any of the work-related information I absorbed, more self-affirming than successfully navigating six flights and five airports on my own, more sublime than learning what it's like to be a complete stranger in what might as well be a foreign land -- is that Danzig II: Lucifuge is one of the best hard rock albums of all time, sitting comfortably with Back in Black and Led Zeppelin IV. Some could argue that Lucifuge is a metal album. Like Black Sabbath's Vol. 4, it does fit within both genres, and I won't argue that point. In my mind, though, it's a hard rock album and as such, it's one of the best hard rock albums ever made. I'll grant that the vast majority of music I think of as hard rock is total fucking garbage. Van Halen, Aerosmith... I'm looking at you. Still, I count Zeppelin, Sabbath, AC/DC, and many other great bands among the hard rock legions, and for my money, Danzig and Co. are sitting right alongside those hallowed names with this album.
As I've written about before, I cut my teeth on metal, but I grew up on punk, more specifically hardcore. These days I don't actually find myself listening to much hardcore music, and it's becoming more of a rarity for newer hardcore bands to catch my ear. It's simply a side effect of having a taste that grows to include more types of music while simultaneously becoming more selective within genres or styles. Whereas 17 year old Bigtime spent his time listening to nearly any youth crew or traditional style hardcore band that came around, 28 year old Bigtime mostly hears a bunch of unoriginal clones regurgitating meaningless hosannas to the holy trinity of pride, unity, and pride (with some extra unity and pride for good measure). Still, due likely as much to nostalgia as to the quality of the music, a select few hardcore records have stood the test of time for me, regularly finding their way back first into my CD player and now into my iPod playlists.
Gorilla Biscuits, Beyond, 108, and Shelter all have the dust blown off every month or two to spend some serious time in rotation, but Cause for Alarm possibly trumps all of them with Cheaters and the Cheated. While I still enjoy other music from the Cause for Alarm catalogue, Cheaters, released originally in 1997, eclipses the little that came before it, and everything that came after. While many hardcore bands at the time aspired to get as brutal as possibly, sacrificing songcraft for heaviness, CFA stuck to a more traditional New York Hardcore formula, blending old school thrash speed with youth crew and crossover rhythms. Adding the slightest bit of dynamic to their tempos, the songs end up with just enough breathing room for catchy hooks, half-time breathers between circle pit igniting verses, and pile-up singalongs. With much of the album having been written by former member Alex Kinon (also of Agnostic Front), it's telling that the following albums never again managed to find this perfect balance of hardcore and pop sensibility.
From its inception in the early 80s to its demise in 2000, CFA revolved around vocalist Keith Burkhardt, whose clear, expressive voice has always stood out of the hardcore pack. His lyrics here (again, some written by Kinon) beat some of the typical drums of more socially or politically-minded hardcore, railing against materialism, hypocrisy, and vague oppressors, both political and economic. There are strong hints, however, of the more overt Krishna devotion that would come on the following albums, including one catchy but laughable song about the origins of the universe. Followed by a song inspired by Anne Rice's Interview With A Vampire, these six minutes definitely turn the WTF knob up a few notches. Still, I'd rather have something to disagree with or just wonder about in a hardcore band's lyrics than nothing at all.
