Sultans of swing

Happy belated 50th to one of the best bands, full stop. I took the opportunity to delve into the jazz roots and swing tendencies of Black Sabbath, with help from Bill Ward, Henry Rollins and others. This one was part of a mini Sabbath bonanza of sorts over at RS, for which my friend and colleague Kory Grow, a true black-belt Sabbathologist, went all out, shedding new light on the circumstances of the iconic debut and the heretofore mysterious cover art. Hope you dig.

Thank you as always for visiting and reading. More soon!

PS: For anyone keeping track, the Heavy Metal Bebop Podcast is not defunct, just on a little break. In the meantime, please check out the 2019 backlog if you haven't already.

The Heavy Metal Bebop Podcast #10: Bill Ward

Hard to put into words how meaningful it was for me to sit down with one fourth of the original Black Sabbath. Bill's warmth and sincerity are disarming. He's just an absolute joy to speak with. I hope you enjoy this interview.

You can listen via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or the Podbean player below:

Recently

A few updates and links to share:

*On Friday, I made my debut as the live drummer for Psalm Zero. I love this band, and I'm honored to be working with them. Friday's performance marked my first time using a double kick pedal at a show. As a metal fan, I've enjoyed double-bass drumming for 20-odd years, but as a player, I come more out of the post-hardcore tradition—and later the Zeppelin/Sabbath lineage—where single-pedal performance reigns. Rehearsing over the past few months, it's been nice to complete this circuit, so to speak, and help bring songs from The Drain, PZ's excellent 2014 album, to life.

Our next show is April 15, opening for Liturgy at Saint Vitus. (Friday's show was also at Vitus, and I should mention that it's a serious thrill to perform on a stage where I've seen so many of my metal heroes play.)

*I've also had a blast playing live with A. Rex & J. Rex, a rock & roll band co-led by my friend and Time Out New York colleague Andrew Frisicano, over the past ten months or so. Our next show is April 29 at Black Bear.

*My primary musical project, STATS—in which I handle drums and some vocals, and share composition duties—is currently in its 13th year of activity. We've recorded plenty during that time, but we've never released a full-length album. That changes this year with the late-summer/early-fall release of Mercy, a 40-minute set recorded in the summer of 2013, via the awesome New Atlantis label. I can't wait to share this music, the latest document of my ongoing collaboration with two of my best friends: guitarist Joe Petrucelli and bassist Tony Gedrich. Heavy, structurally ambitious prog-punk, now with more vocals! More news on this soon.

*I'm thrilled to be relaunching my 2014 Craw Kickstarter project in early May with the help of Northern Spy Records. Full update here. More news via Facebook.

*Two recent Time Out interviews that I was really happy to land: Jason Moran on the 80th anniversary series he curated for the Village Vanguard, during which I saw that amazing Charles Lloyd performance I raved about previously; and Antonio Sanchez on his fascinating solo-drums score for Birdman. It was a pleasure speaking with each of these gentlemen.

*I profiled one of my favorite drummers, Slint's Britt Walford, for Modern Drummer. The piece isn't online, but the issue is out now.

*Two recent "classic rock" primer pieces for GQ, on—surprise, surprise—Sabbath and Zeppelin. As anyone who knows me well will tell you, I'm constantly finding excuses to rattle on about one or the other of these bands during my daily life, so it was healthy for me to have these outlets.

Please do me favor and watch the 1969 Danmarks Radio performance linked at the end of the Zeppelin piece. For years, I've hunted in vain for Zeppelin footage that's not plagued by excessive Plant/Page-centricity and/or stupidly ADD-ish editing, i.e., footage where one can actually Watch Bonham Slay. This video is the holy grail. The Bonham-focused bit from 4:00–4:20 is heart-stopping.

2013 metal top 10

My 2013 metal-only top 10 is live now, appended to Brandon Stosuy's year-end Show No Mercy countdown at Pitchfork. Several of these records overlap with my overall top 10 and a 2013 death-metal round-up I recently put together for Noisey, so I'll link inward/outward where applicable.

Here's a Spotify playlist including all the records below, including the honorable mentions, aside from the Pentagram Chile and the Six Feet Under.

1. Carcass Surgical Steel

See 2013 top 10.

2. Suffocation Pinnacle of Bedlam
See 2013 top 10.

3. Black Sabbath 13 
See 2013 top 10.

4. Gorguts Colored Sands
See 2013 top 10. Incidentally, seeing Gorguts perform this entire album live at Saint Vitus—see here or here—was thrilling. What an incredible group of songs, and… this.

5. Sorcery Arrival at Six
See 2013: A Year in Death Metal.

6. In Solitude Sister
I have been a huge Danzig fan for the majority of my life. There's not a lot of other music that gets me anywhere close to that place—that lair, more like it—that is the Danzig soundworld. That place where rock is shirtless, sensual, musty, musky, snarling, evil, shamelessly bountiful. This record goes there, folks. The term "gothic" is just a genre tag these days, but this record is dripping with the atmosphere of the occult—red candle wax, black robes, pallid skin. This is rock at once mournful and beefy, forlorn and savage. If all of Sister were as stupefyingly great as the first half, this would've been a serious contender for my all-genres-in-play top 10. I dig the whole thing, but I do feel there's a bit of a drop-off after track 4. That said, I think this record is very nearly a masterpiece, the kind of album you plunge into, anoint yourself with. Such crafty, manly music, like Danzig III infused with Thin Lizzy and the Cult. Terrifying and awesome, and a great companion to my No. 1 album of 2012, Christian Mistress's Possession, another record so earthy, it sounds like it has moss growing on it.

7. Voivod Target Earth
As I've suggested before, Voivod is all about total aesthetic immersion. It takes a while to get on this band's weird, flamboyantly proggy wavelength. But while some past Voivod records only make sense in context, this one seems to stand unusually strong on its own merits. It almost seems like blasphemy to say so, given that Target Earth is the first Voivod record not to include any contributions from the band's late guitarist and co-mastermind, Denis "Piggy" D'Amour, but this record really oozes that weird Voivodian flavor, summed up perfectly by the garish color scheme of the album cover. As he did with Gorguts on the way-underrated From Wisdom to Hate album, Daniel Mongrain, Piggy's replacement, really takes charge on Target Earth. As Mongrain discusses here, this is one of those situations of being so steeped in a band's musical grammar as a fan and disciple that one is able to join up with their heroes and actually compose fluently in that style. (For more on this phenomenon, see Justina Villanueva's crucial "Join Your Idols" interview series.) It's a pretty impressive feat, and it's resulted in a total re-energization of this deservedly legendary band. Voivod is still an acquired taste, and may they always be so, but I can think of few of their records that distill their appeal so potently as Target Earth does. Fun and weird and epic and quirky and shredding and geeky as hell, just like Voivod should be.

8. Immolation Kingdom of Conspiracy 
See 2013: A Year in Death Metal. See also my Pitchfork review.

9. Pentagram Chile The Malefice
See 2013: A Year in Death Metal. I strongly suggest getting your hands on the 2-CD version of this if at all possible. The bonus disc, containing re-recorded versions of Pentagram's early cult-favorite demo tracks, is an excellent addition to the package. Heck, there's even a great extra track on disc 1, "King Pest."

10. Six Feet Under Unborn
See 2013: A Year in Death Metal.

/////

A trio of honorable mentions:

Convulse Evil Prevails
Evil Prevails was on the main list above until a late-inning rally from In Solitude unseated it. Was bummed not to be able to find a place for this record, because I love it. But I was happy to be able to throw a bit of ink Convulse's way via 2013: A Year in Death Metal, not to mention my Maryland Deathfest recap and subsequent post on the brilliance of World Without God (which also touches on the Sorcery record cited above). Evil Prevails isn't quite as gruff and relentless as WWG, but it's a super-satisfying return to that general ballpark, with some nifty enhancements here and there.

Vista Chino Peace
You'll recall …Like Clockwork, the latest Queens of the Stone Age disc, ranking among my general ’13 top 10. Well, this is what some of Josh Homme's old Kyuss bandmates have been up to. They were originally operating under the name Kyuss Lives! but had to drop that moniker following a lawsuit from Homme. Honestly, that was probably the best thing that ever happened to them. They got down to business and wrote a great set of songs in the old Kyuss mode, which should satisfy longtime fans while at the same time vaulting the band out of the nostalgia bracket. Such grit and soul in this music, thanks mainly to vocalist John Garcia and godly drummer Brant Bjork. A very worthy addition to a killer body of work that also includes Blues for the Red Sun and Sky Valley, both adolescent faves of mine that have held up well. This is one to crank and savor.

Philip H. Anselmo and the Illegals Walk Through Exits Only
Another old friend, listening-wise. Haven't been so into the various Anselmo projects—most prominently Down, but also Superjoint Ritual and a bunch of others—that have come down the pike since the demise of Pantera, whom I consider to be one of the greatest metal bands of all time. But Jesus, this is a hell of a corrective. This music is super nasty and caustic but also blackly funny and bizarrely introspective, almost like Anselmo had gone Woody Allen, or something. I really admire what an extreme statement this project represents—this is exactly the kind of thing you'd hope to hear from a lifer who can basically do whatever he wants at this point. Anselmo is indulging his sickest musical fantasies with the Illegals, and it sounds fucking great. His constant repping for metal's cult underground is no mere lip service; he actually goes there with this band. See also my TONY preview and Ben Ratliff's excellent live review. I missed that show, but I really hope to see them live soon. I should also add that the band's follow-up Scion single is every bit as good as the LP, with "Pigs Kissing Pigs" maybe even topping anything on that release. Can't wait to see what happens next with this project.

/////

Metal shows of the year:

3.30
Incantation at Saint Vitus
I previewed the mighty -tion trio for TONY back in March and was very happy to see all three of these bands live in 2013. John McEntee and Co. were the rawest and nastiest. Was great to hear a few of the Vanquish in Vengeance songs live. Video.

4.5
Suffocation at Saint Vitus
See also the aforementioned -tion preview. They completely owned, of course. Amazing to see them in a small room. Frank Mullen was in a particularly goofy mood. Dug the Exhumed opening set, but not as much as I've been digging the badass, bar-raising Necrocracy. Video.

5.24, 5.25
Maryland Deathfest
See my recap.

6.5
Cannibal Corpse + Napalm Death + Immolation at Music Hall of Williamsburg
The Corpse seemed a hair less ferocious / more perfunctory than at previous shows I've caught. Napalm Death were their usual mayhem-sowing selves, and it was great to finally see Immolation bring it (-tion preview). Love that they're leaning hard on Kingdom of Conspiracy in the current live set.

8.4
Black Sabbath at PNC Bank Arts Center
Don't listen to anyone who tells you that the current Sabbath incarnation is an embarrassment, either  on record or onstage. Seeing Ozzy, Geezer and Tony live was an amazing experience, period. I loved hearing 13 tracks like "Age of Reason" interspersed with the old warhorses. Do I wish I had seen Bill? Of course I do. But to sit out on this would've been a really bad idea.

9.25
Carcass + Immolation at Saint Vitus 
As discussed in the Deathfest lineup, Carcass circa now are scarily pro. So insanely crisp and powerful, and again, seeing them in a room this size isn't an experience I'll soon forget. Another raging Immolation set was the icing. Video.

10.6
Deicide + Broken Hope + Disgorge at Gramercy Theatre
I've been a Deicide fan for roughly 20 years but had never seen them live until this show. Their live sound is super-weighty and punishing, and man, do those songs from the first couple albums hold up. As with Carcass, very, very pro. Broken Hope didn't impress me here *quite as much as they did at Deathfest, but I still consider myself an overnight fan thanks to the D-fest set and the awesome Omen of Disease. Disgorge, meanwhile, were downright scary.

10.9, 10.10
Obituary at Saint Vitus
The stompingest, most rifftastic show I saw this year, so much so that I went back for seconds the next night. Video.

11/12
Morbid Angel at Irving Plaza
Morbid Angel is friendlier and campier now than they were two decades ago, when they were my chief musical obsession. (Or at least, that's how I imagine their early-’90s incarnation stacking up against their present selves, since I didn't see the band live till after their mid-aughts reunion with David Vincent.) But the playing is still dead-on, and my God, those songs! Covenant in its entirety + one song apiece from every other album, including the non-Vincent ones + typical Azagthoth insanity = a very satisfied fan. Again, the drummer issue: Wish it had been Pete, but what can you do?

11/14
Eyehategod at Saint Vitus
And yet again, drummers: Rest in peace, Joey LaCaze. I felt weird about seeing an EHG show so soon after his passing, but Mike Williams and the rest gave him a very loving tribute at this gig, complete with "Jo-ey! Jo-ey!" chant. I was skeptical about anyone ably filling LaCaze's shoes, but Aaron Hill is the right man for this job. The sludge is intact. Video.

11/15
Kvelertak at Irving Plaza
There were two other bands on this bill, but the boys from Norway towered above them, making rubble out of the stage.

12.7
Revenge + Mausoleum at Saint Vitus
The closest I've ever been to one of the most unhinged musicians on the planet. Seeing Revenge at Deathfest was cool, but this was total lunacy. Had no idea I'd be seeing the masterful Jim Roe live as well, with Mausoleum.

12.21
Gorguts at Saint Vitus
See Colored Sands entry in albums list above.

2013 Top 10

TONY's "Best albums of 2013" feature is now live. That link will take you to a composite top 10 list, assembled via mathematics and compromise out of the individual top 10s chosen by myself and my colleagues Steve Smith and Sophie Harris. We all had totally different takes on the year in music, but there was enough overlap that we arrived at a decently representative selection.

My personal top 10 list, briefly annotated, is here. Some further thoughts:

More and more, my listening is compulsive, instinctual. I gravitate to records made up of songs I love. It's a simple process. The records I've singled out here are ones that I lived with, played in all sorts of different settings: at my desk at work, walking to/from the train or across town, in the car, at home. Alone, or with my wife, friends and family. They're records that may have at one point been objects of formal consideration—i.e., I wrote about them. But over time, that arm's-length engagement gave way to a happy, voluntary invitation—me choosing them and them choosing me. It's not until the end of the year that one goes about assembling a list like this, but the list is assembling itself throughout the year. Sometimes you've got that in mind—you have a moment with a record and you think, "This might be a top 10 candidate" and you make a note of it—but in retrospect, a list like this is, for me, more about transcribing than about calculation. It's just what happened to me. Since my immersion in music is so constant, I don't even have to qualify that. Of course, there was a soundtrack at all times, and these records were it, or a big part of it.

In terms of the statistics, the breakdown, what's here and what's not, I'd like to cite something Drew Millard—a fine writer with whom I briefly crossed paths at TONY; he's now kicking ass at Noisey—wrote in his own excellent and very funny best of 2013 round-up the other day: "I mostly put rap albums on this list because I like rap music the most…" I like the tautology, the self-justification of that. For me, the center of gravity this year wasn't rap but metal. Therefore, there's a lot of it on my list. There's no jazz. There was one near-miss on that front, which I chose as my No. 1 pick in the two jazz-only polls in which I participate. (My jazz-only list is here; I hope to annotate it on DFSBP soon.) As implied above, that's not meant as a slight; there simply weren't any 2013 jazz albums that captivated me, imprinted themselves on my world, as much as the 10 records I chose for my all-genres-in-play list. I will say, though, that some of favorite live-music experiences of the year were jazz/improv-oriented; I cited two of them on TONY's Best NYC concerts of 2013 list, assembled by myself, Steve, Sophie and various other colleagues. DFSBP readers probably won't be too surprised that my choices were the Paul Motian tribute (3.22.13) and the Graves/Lovano duet (12.6.13).

Re: what did make the cut:

1. RVIVR The Beauty Between
This is one of those "I feel like I've known you all my life" records. I don't know what it is about these consummately sincere, tough, vulnerable, searing punk albums—well, actually, I sort of do, since this style was a big part of my musical upbringing—but when they get me, they really get me. (See also: my 2009 No. 1, Propagandhi's Supporting Caste.) I fell hard for RVIVR this year. I saw them live three times, including two sets in one day back in April. I wrote about them a good deal. In terms of summing up what they mean to me, I'm happy with this TONY preview, which I expanded upon here. And then there's this quick, ecstatic follow-up. My 2013 is inextricable from this band, and the reasons are all right here in this record, which I think is basically perfect. My friend Joe summed it up best in a Tweet from one of the two RVIVR shows we attended together:

"RVIVR at Union Pool: this is a punk rock utopia. Every song an anthem, everyone here completely in the moment. This band will be famous"

Re: the "famous" part, who knows? I certainly do hope so. Re: the "punk rock utopia" part—hell, yes. There is such magic and idealism in these songs, such loving craft and raw sentiment. The Beauty Between is the sound of a brilliant young band exploding into its Moment. And whether RVIVR's politics/scene (reductively: radical, pro-queer punk in the hallowed Olympia, WA tradition) or their chosen idiom resonate with you, I'm confident that you'll hear what I mean if you give this record a chance.



Note 1: For some reason, the RVIVR Bandcamp player defaults to track 2. I highly recommend clicking back to track 1 and taking the full ride.

Note 2: Unlike the RVIVR, albums 2 through 10 are all on Spotify. To hear a sample track from each of these records, check out my TONY list above. In case you want to dive all the way in, here's a playlist featuring these nine LPs in full.]

2. Haim Days Are Gone
Unstoppable. You know that priceless line in Tom Petty's "Into the Great Wide Open" that goes "Their A-and-R man said, 'I don't hear a single'"? Well, out of 11 tracks here, I hear roughly nine singles. Days Are Gone is a resurrection of the ’70s/’80s pop ideal: airtight, hook-hungry compositions matched with shit-hot playing. Except instead of a calculating producer, a stable of faceless songwriters and a bunch of cocky, well-powdered session cats, the responsible parties are a trio of badass L.A. sisters who grew up playing covers and studying popcraft with their parents' loving encouragement.

3. Carcass Surgical Steel
Stunning, and for any Carcass fan, so much fucking fun. Here's my full take.

4. Diarrhea Planet I'm Rich Beyond Your Wildest Dreams
Like the Haim record, this is a deliriously pleasurable LP. At first I found myself wishing that it were only that—I couldn't get with the obvious care that DP took in pacing the album. But I'm Rich really bloomed for me over time. There is the rock, yes, drenching you with its maximal awesomeness ("Lite Dream," "Babyhead"), but there is also the reflection ("Kids," "Skeleton Head") and this sort of soulful dopeyness ("White Girls [Student of the Blues, Pt. 1]": "I may not write a symphony but / I will always save the last slice just 4 U") that socks me right in the heart. This record is maybe a smidge long; I think it'd be a stronger statement without "Togano," for one thing. That said, I still think it's a triumph worthy of the joybomb that is the Diarrhea Planet live experience, which I experienced on two consecutive nights this past August. More on DP via TONY.


5. Queens of the Stone Age …Like Clockwork
This album is slow-burning and seductive as hell. I saw QOTSA perform a long, frequently thrilling show at Barclays Center last Saturday, and I've been re-immersing in …Like Clockwork ever since. If I were settling on a final order for my 2013 top 10 today, this could've been as high as No. 3. As with I'm Rich, there's some delayed gratification going on here: It's not as mercilessly ripping as Songs for the Deaf or as lean and impossibly cool as the self-titled debut, but I'm still comfortable pegging it as my favorite Queens album. …Like Clockwork isn't a particularly long record, but boy, does it take you on a journey. Further thoughts via TONY.

6. Suffocation Pinnacle of Bedlam
The Long Island enforcers return. If the production on this record were a hair punchier and less synthetic-sounding, I'd say it was one of the, say, five best death-metal records I'd ever heard. Hell, I might say that anyway. I cannot believe what a great set of songs this is, genre aside. So commanding, so memorable, so fucking pro. I already loved this band, but I think that with Pinnacle, they've made their definitive statement. More on the mighty Suffo here.

7. Black Sabbath 13
Speaking as serious Sabbath fan, I can say that despite its flaws—and its admittedly tragic Bill Ward–lessness—this record feels to me like a real gift. The generalized slagging it received in the press bummed me out. Kudos to Steve Smith, Phil Freeman and Rhys Williams for refusing to take this bit of heavy-metal manna for granted. Here's my review of 13 and some follow-up thoughts. (I should say that while I dig the bonus tracks, I think this record works best in its stripped-down eight-song incarnation.)

8. Daft Punk Random Access Memories
Until I heard this record, I felt like there was nothing in the realm of impossibly hip dance-pop that was really for me. I've never warmed up to, say, LCD Soundsystem, and I'm not even sure that pre–R.A.M, I could've even named a Daft Punk song. But the ultra-polished geekery of this record spoke to me immediately, probably because it recasts disco as an offshoot of prog. The supporting cast (Julian C., Panda Bear, Nile Rodgers, Giorgio Moroder, etc.), and the integration thereof, are extraordinary. "Get Lucky" is, of course, a perfect single, but "Instant Crush"—with its mechanized melancholy that instantly puts me in a Drive or ’80s Michael Mann or "Eye in the Sky" mindset—is the track that best sums up why I'm so taken with this record.

9. The Men New Moon
I wrote about songs up above. This record has so many good ones. The Men throw a lot at you, stylistically. There are some strummy heartbreakers here ("I Saw Her Face," "Half Angel Half Light"), some raw, driving, unfettered rockers ("The Brass," "Without a Face") and plenty of ambling folkishness. At the same time, like the last, equally great Men record, Open Your Heart, New Moon isn't haphazard—all these tunes feel like they're coming from the same hive heart/mind. It all feels very free and elemental to me, i.e., exactly what you'd want from a band with such a balls-ily monolithic name. More on the Men, via TONY.

(I should say here that while my friend Ben Greenberg joined the Men a couple years back and made significant contributions to this record, I don't feel like I'm playing favorites in citing New Moon; I loved the band before he was a member, and I'm confident that I'd love what he brings to the band even if I didn't know him. Speaking of which, the new Hubble record is a killer as well.)

10. Gorguts Colored Sands
A majestic roar from the perennial phoenix that is Luc Lemay. A tech-metal opus filled with peaks and valleys that do justice to its (literally) lofty Himalayan subject matter. Also: an intergenerational bear-hug of the highest order. Here's my review.

The ecstasy of the present: Gorguts and Carcass return

For sheer big-event-ness, no metal comeback record this year can compete with 13. But for those of us obsessed with death metal and related styles, Colored Sands and Surgical Steel—the respective new ones by Gorguts and Carcass—are each pretty damn momentous as well. My Pitchfork reviews of these titles are linked above.

As I did in my reflection on the experience of reviewing 13, I'll take off my ill-fitting critic's hat here. From a fan perspective—really the most important one, in the end, especially when the subjects are two legacy acts in an especially fan-driven subgenre such as death metal—I'm ecstatic about these records. The respective trajectories (not to mention aesthetic priorities) of Gorguts and Carcass vary, but one thing these two bands have in common is that, as of roughly the mid-aughts, we had no reason to believe that we'd ever hear from either again. And yet even stacked up against each band's classic back catalog, these records are outstanding—they're statements not just of sustained proficiency but of sustained excellence.

Each in its own way, Colored Sands and Surgical Steel—and, now that I think about it, 13 too—is about coming to terms with the weight of history, then shrugging it off and embracing the ecstasy of the present moment. These LPs are meaty statements: dense, info-packed, loud, wild, weird, fucking fun records, and also ceremonies of communion between first-generation extreme-metal practitioners (Luc Lemay of Gorguts, Bill Steer and Jeff Walker of Carcass) and younger virtuosos (Colin Marston, Kevin Hufnagel and John Longstreth on Colored Sands; Daniel Wilding on Surgical Steel). In short, any quibbles I've aired aside, they're exactly what they should be. These are the kinds of albums that reaffirm fandom as a lifelong pact: "As long as you keep making music, I'll keep caring." I love them.

Listening from both sides: fan vs. critic

Had some nice catch-up chats with other writers at the Jazz Journalists Association Awards this past Wednesday. (Shout-outs to David Adler, Nate Chinen, Patrick Jarenwattananon, Laurence Donohue-Greene, Ethan Iverson, Ted Panken and Howard Mandel.) My conversation with Nate got me thinking, as I often have been recently, about Black Sabbath and my changing relationship to their new album, 13, discussed in the last DFSBP post.

Nate, always good with a provocative inquiry, asked me what I thought of 13. He knew well that for a writer and fan of my disposition, that was no simple question. I told him that I really liked it and then I began rambling about, among other things, how I'd come to know and love the record as a fan (i.e., having moved far beyond the supposedly objective "critic" stage, in this case). I've been thinking about that concept as it pertains to my profession, and I wanted to share a few thoughts here.

I've written on DFSBP before about how a key moment for me in my daily/weekly process of music consumption is the point at which I load a record onto my iPod for outside-the-office use. For the vast majority of music I consume in a work capacity, I'm perfectly content to listen in a controlled environment—my desk at Time Out NY, say. I listen to the degree that I need to in order to complete the task at hand, and then I set the album aside. Sometimes I'll go back to the record in question; sometimes not. This isn't intended to be a cynical revelation; just an admission of the fact that there's often just not time or brain bandwidth available to devote to careful second, third, fourth, etc., listens to a given work. Obviously this varies according to the assignment. If I'm writing an extended review, I'll do everything I can to listen as many times I can, and in as many settings as I can, in the time allotted.

What I'm saying, though, is that when I'm "on assignment," I'm looking at music in a certain way. I'm making notes; I'm building an argument bit by painstaking bit. The process sometimes takes weeks, or even longer if I'm working toward a far-off deadline. If I'm lucky, I'm able to synthesize my scattered, sometimes cryptic notes into a coherent piece, one I feel I can stand behind, one that—and I guess this is key; it's a lot harder than it sounds—accurately sums up how I feel about the work at hand.

What I end up with when I write a review is a public record of my consumption of a given album. But it's important to note that in many cases, there's a whole other side to that consumption. Re-enter 13. I was fortunate to have the chance to review this record in a visible forum. I had a wonderful time working on that piece for Pitchfork, and I'm happy with the review as it was published. At the same time, it's important to note the sort of jettisoning that took place once the review went live. You blast off carrying a certain amount of cargo—the music, for one, and also the materials of your writer's preparation. Upon publication, you get rid of the latter, and you're left with the music itself. Sometimes you may choose to jettison that, too; as stated above, you might not go back to it.

Sometimes, though, in rare and beautiful cases, you jettison those writer's materials—and more abstractly the "responsibility" of having to form coherent, verbally expressed thoughts, of having to, in some respect, justify how you feel. At this point, you can just be a fan. You can rock out; you can engage with the music on the street, in the car, in the company of friends and loved ones. You're no longer playing the hermit's game. The music has, in a crucial sense, entered your life. You're coexisting with the music in question rather than dissecting it. You have begun to, as it were, let it be.

For me, this only happens a precious few times per year. Much of the music I consume in my free time is old music—just catching up on this or that. But sometimes, a new record just catches fire for whatever reason, leads you into that blessed fan zone described above, that place where you can take off your "person who's paid to coherently express their opinions about things" hat and just love unconditionally—or if not unconditionally, at least without concern for backing up your feelings with anything but other feelings. You feel how you feel, and that's that, and nothing anyone says or writes or Tweets or blogs can invalidate that.

All this is to say that for the past couple weeks, I've been right in that zone with 13. Do I still have some lingering critic-y "issues" with the record? Maybe. But that perspective means very little to me now. I'm in another place with it, hanging out on Planet Enjoyment, in a phase of "I'm just happy this exists and I don't want to think too much more about it." Do I think 13 is a great record, in the long run? Fortunately, in publishing my review, I've relieved myself of the obligation to further address that question or even pay it any mind. The album is working for me right now. I'm playing it practically on repeat in various settings. I'm grooving to it, singing along to it, air-drumming. In short, I'm doing what fans are supposed to do when confronted with worthy new music. (I had a similar experience at this year's Maryland Deathfest; as I wrote on this blog, to be there not on official assignment was thrilling; in the moment, it was about pure love instead of any kind of "processing.")

Does this mean that the reviewer perspective, the consideration of music in an "official" capacity is somehow less true? I really don't think so. I think there's something very valuable in having to gather up your thoughts and present them formally. It's a mental exercise—one that takes a lot of discipline—and it's fun to go through that process, to pay witness to others doing the same and to engage in whatever kinds of stimulating back-and-forth might arise from that discourse. At the same time, though, I think it's vital to make time to take off that thinking cap, as it were, to get to a place where feeling is all that matters. As I imply above, you can't force that; it's not every record that's really worth loving in that way—or rather, to get away from the idea of music's inherent worth, which is a bit bogus, it's not every record that strikes every writer/fan that way. Again, that transformation, that shift from head-focused, "person-on-assignment" consideration to heart-focused, "civilian" passion is a profound thing. It definitely entails a sense of relief—as though you've known someone only in the office and then you have a drink with them and realize you can just drop all the formality and hang with them like a friend.

While I think that critical, on-the-record consideration of an artwork is just as valid as deep-feeling fan consideration of same, I think the former is often incomplete without the latter. Especially in the case of a band like Black Sabbath, which has such a devoted following stretching back four decades, any view of the record that doesn't take into account what it feels like to be a fan, either passionately supporting or rejecting the music at hand, can't really be said to be complete. It's important to remember that just because it might be someone's profession to comment on something, that doesn't make the fan's perspective any less authoritative. On the contrary, it's us, the "media" who are on the outside, who have to justify why we're even here at all. The fans will always have their place at the table, just by virtue of their love for and support of the artists. When an artist looks out into the crowd at a packed show, by and large, he or she isn't staring into the faces of critics, you know? I think that's something everyone writing about music needs to keep in mind. You may a be a great writer and/or a great thinker, but if, when you get down to it, about 98% of this pursuit—the real "Why you do what you do" at the heart of it all—isn't coming from your fan's heart, I'm wary of your perspective.

Speaking for myself, I like to think of these two states of being as symbiotic. I love devising and expressing formal statements, and I also love just letting the words and the arguments and the reasoning go. People say that writing about music spoils music, and maybe in some isolated cases, that's true—I've felt that way when out on assignment at certain live shows, for example. But ideally, it's just a regimented prelude to more loose, organic relationship with an artwork. When you've gone through that process, listened from both sides, as it were—as I have this year with 13, with RVIVR's The Beauty Between and, in a slightly different way, since I didn't write about it in a formal setting, Suffocation's Pinnacle of Bedlam—you feel a deep closeness to that music. It's a complex feeling, and it's one that I love.

P.S. One sub-point to the one(s) I'm trying to make above: While we, as reviewers, might be obligated to couch our opinions in definitive, absolute language, it's pure fallacy that published reviews (esp. timely day-of-release ones) represent some sort of final word. If other music writers are anything like me, we second-guess ourselves constantly, and I think that's healthy. In other words, ideally, publishing one's thoughts on an album isn't the end point of one's relationship with that album; it's just a best-we-can-do ante-up, to be revised constantly—if only in one's own mind—in the days, weeks and even years to come.

Recently, again

*Black Sabbath review at Pitchfork. It's been a bumpy ride, but the new Sabbath album is finally here. I'm thankful that I had the space to muse on it at length. I'll echo Stereogum's Michael Nelson, who graciously shouted out my piece in his write-up of the new "God Is Dead?" video, and point out that the discourse surrounding this record has been especially lively. I disagree with Ben Ratliff and Adrien Begrand's evaluations, but they both make solid, compelling points—Ratliff re:, e.g., the oft-overlooked "insane party" aspect of Sabbath 1.0; Begrand re:, e.g., the tough-to-beat sturdiness of Iommi and Butler's last go-round with Ronnie James Dio under the Heaven and Hell moniker.

For a true expert opinion, I highly recommend Steve Smith's NYT Popcast discussion with Ratliff. I doubt there are many commentators covering 13 who have a more detailed working knowledge of Sabbath's entire history than Steve; I'd like to offer a special note of thanks to Steve for abetting my own last-minute crash course re: Sabbath's shadowy non-Ozzy, non-Dio years. I'm still immersed in those seven LPs, trying to make sense of the weird, divergent sprawl. For starters, I'm beginning to feel like Born Again and Headless Cross are both real keepers.

P.S. Phil Freeman's review went live after I published the round-up above, but that's well worth a look too. Again, I'm not on board with every one of his points—e.g., while I do hear Brad Wilk deliberately playing it safe, I (thankfully) don't think there's oppressive ProTools looping/"gridding" going on here; you can hear the patterns/fills fluctuating throughout the songs, in ways that you wouldn't if all the drum tracks on 13 were subject to a ruthless, industry-standard cut-and-paste job—but this is a very sharp evaluation with a provocative conclusion.

*Milford Graves preview at Time Out New York. I've had Milford on the brain lately, largely due to call it art. The lineup for Wednesday's Lifetime Achievement showcase—opening night of Vision Festival 18—is insane; I can't wait.

*Black Flag preview at Time Out New York. As Ben Ratliff has eloquently noted, in another thinkpiece/Popcast combo, the current bifurcated reunion is insane. When I interviewed Greg Ginn last July, he was playing to near-empty rooms with his Royal We project, which I caught twice (once at Iridium, of all places) over the course of a week. The situation is somewhat different now. I look forward to seeing how it all goes down.

Shapeshifter: In praise of Bruford/Wetton/Fripp King Crimson

Over the past few years, I've spent a lot of time self-educating re: rock from the ’70s. We always hear about the ’60s, specifically the end of the ’60s, as a rock heyday, but the next decade seems to me to be the One, when all the warning shots had been fired and the premier bands were all just, to use a term coined by Damión Reid, showing up to crush. As usual, I speak only for myself, oriented according to my inescapable biases, biases that go by names like Black Sabbath (who started out strong but attained some kind of exalted state of fried-mind excess around the time of 1975's Sabotage), Thin Lizzy (who issued their own fireball of a record that same year, just one of at least five all-time-great LPs they'd release throughout the decade) and Led Zeppelin (let's stick with the ’75 theme, and take a moment to reflect on two of the sickest grooves ever recorded: exhibits A and B).

I will love all of these bands/records for as long as I am on Earth, but at this point, they are like comfort food to me: known quantities with a predictable, though not commonplace effect, i.e., they yield ecstasy the way great coffee yields a buzz. But much of my RLT (recreational listening time) over the past week has been spent chasing down a different kind of feeling, furnished by a band that thrived contemporaneously to the woolly rock mammoths enumerated above, but was on, as they say, a whole different trip.

I'm speaking about King Crimson, specifically the version of King Crimson that existed—with more or less stable personnel, give or take percussionist Jamie Muir and violinist David Cross—from (I think I've got this right) the summer of 1972 through the fall of ’74. Aside from perennial KC mastermind Robert Fripp, this lineup was all about bassist-vocalist John Wetton and—I feel like I need to cross myself while typing this, so large does this musician currently loom in my personal pantheon—drummer Bill Bruford, who reported for Crimson duty as soon as he had finished laying down tracks for this prog monster.

If this specific version of King Crimson occupies a different galaxy than the Rock Gods I mentioned above, the Sabbaths, Zeppelins and Lizzys, it also has surprisingly little to do with what I think of as capital-p Prog. I love much of the output of the aforelinked Yes, as well as that of Rush, who really came into full flower later in the ’70s on albums like Hemispheres (some will point to 2112 as the Rush landmark from that period, but that was just the icebreaker), but at this point, those bands too are known quantities, both to me and the World of Rock. They really do exemplify most of the traits they're said to exemplify: long-ass songs, foregrounded virtuosity, helium-voiced vox, etc. (Those descriptions aren't loaded in any way; they're simply neutral catalogs of what those bands sounded like at that time.)

But BWFC (Bruford, Wetton, Fripp Crimson) is, again, something other, and I've spent the last week or so trying to get to the bottom of exactly what that is, or at least observe the full range of its behaviors. I'm finding those tasks extremely daunting but at the same time, I'm enjoying myself immensely. This is not a band you comprehend right away, and that is primarily because BWFC is a shapeshifter. You cannot get your head and heart around it via conventional means, i.e., albums; you have to experience it, live with it, in the wild—that is to say onstage. For several years now, I have really enjoyed the BWFC studio output, namely Larks' Tongues in Aspic, Starless and Bible Black and Red. (I included the first chapter of the two-part Larks' title track in a math-rock mix I compiled a couple years back.) But to be honest, at this point, I'm considering this trilogy as little more than a digest version of BWFC. I feel like I never knew the band until very recently, when I started digging into the band's own immaculately maintained live archives, known as DGM—i.e., Discipline Global Mobile—Live. (Search 1973 and 1974 here to get a sense of what a treasure trove this is.)

So far, I've picked up three shows: 10/23/73 in Glasgow; 3/30/74 in Mainz, Germany; and 6/28/74 in Asbury Park—the latter of which is heard, in edited/meddled-with form, on the USA live album. (It's funny to think about how in June of ’74, Asbury Park's most famous musical export, Bruce Springsteen, a.k.a. prog's antithesis, was in the process of becoming a star.) My knowledge of these official bootlegs is no means encyclopedic—Steve Smith, the most avid/learned Crimsophile I know, is your man—but I can vouch for every one of these shows, and more specifically, for the way they complement each other. Yes, there are song overlaps—I'm starting to sound like a Deadhead here, and though I'm no die-hard there either, I do love me some cherry-picked live Dead—but these are three completely different concerts: different energies, different trajectories, different purposes. I was hoping I'd purchase three of these boots and feel like that was enough, but sadly (for my bank account, i.e.), I think I'm just getting started.

So what is it about BWFC? What's the big deal? I really wanted to link the Glasgow version of "Easy Money," one of BWFC's signature jams, here, so the music could do the talking, but it isn't on YouTube. I just put on a snippet of said track, to get the scent back in my nose. What is it? It's ear-bleeding art-funk, primed for maximum timbral abrasion, gritted-teeth extremity, with harsh and peculiar textures protruding from every strata of the sonic spectrum. That latter point is key for me. One of the chief joys I derive from BWFC is how strange and utterly distinct each sound you hear is. The timbres of the various instruments don't comfortably jell, as is the case in, say, Sabbath or Zeppelin; they war and clash. You've got the flopping, distorted, ungainly beast that is Wetton's bass tone in the low register—like the grotesquely exposed metal skeleton of a sci-fi cyborg—then you have Fripp's merciless high-end fuzz, scratching at your right ear like steel wool; and then there's Bruford's multifaceted soundmaker—I hesitate to call it something so mundane as a drum kit: the ugly wash of the hi-hat; those way-tight toms, which sound like crude timbales; and that piercing snare, softening often into a Tony Williams–y press-roll caress.

The band does kick and slam as one but what makes BWFC special is the way they elude and toy with the groove—each player off on his own orbit like a planet in a solar system—as though no one member wants to be caught playing it straight. Bruford in particular seems to love the delicious tension that comes from hinting at a metallic stomp; he could easily Bonham (to coin a verb) his way through the grooves—"Larks' Tongues in Aspic, Part One" comes to mind—but so often chooses to keep the beach ball in the air, so to speak, giving the band the low-end kick it needs but satisfying his own improvisational drive with destabilizing fills and other purposeful inconsistencies. He is not exactly a busy drummer; it's more that he's a restless one. The lumbering doomgroove in the middle of the Red track "Starless"—the definition of a musical slow burn—is a great place to hear what I'm talking about. During the Mainz show, the band draws out the off-kilter riff for more than two ominous minutes, with Bruford limiting himself to minute cymbal taps, before kicking in. But even when Fripp and Wetton near their crescendo, the drummer is still strutting and stuttering along, totally unperturbed; he increases his volume and power, but rarely goes two measures without throwing in some sort of ungainly fill or daring syncopation. In this section, Bruford makes me think of a train-jumper who toys with a slow-moving freighter for miles, flamboyantly hopping on and off as he pleases, never content to simply pick a car and ride. (You get a sense of what I mean around 6:30 in this 1974 TV clip, though the out-of-sync-ness of the audio and video bums me out sufficiently that I held off on an embed. You can view the full four-song performance in excellent fidelity on the 2009 CD/DVD reissue of Red.)

All the band members' performances during this period—my apologies for short-shrifting the often-breathtaking David Cross, whose keening violin is a key feature of these gigs I've been checking out—tend toward the same controlled-chaos brilliance, to the extent that it's easy to forget just how special the material itself is. The variety is simply awesome. Yesterday I marveled at the four-song run at the end of the Mainz show: After "Starless," you've got the relatively concise "Lament," maybe the single strangest piece in BWFC's repertoire. It starts off exemplifying one of the band's key song types, i.e., the brief, ballad-like, almost stagy ditty (I wish I could think of a more dignified word), in which Wetton—whom I've begun to regard as quite possibly the most compelling singer in so-called progressive rock, and one of the most underrated in rock, period—plays the husky yet tender straight man to lyricist Richard Palmer-James's wry satirist. Then, much like in "Starless" itself, the scene changes completely: after a brief instrumental interlude, the band explodes in a deranged art-funk riff fest, with Wetton sounding like he's coming completely unglued. Next up is "Improv Trio," one of the many impromptu interludes that marks this period of Crimson; these pieces take all different shapes (there are four very different ones in the Mainz show alone), but this one is like a pastoral bit of drumless soundtrack music, on which I believe Fripp and Cross are both playing sparkly Mellotron while Wetton lays down a chilled-out bass skeleton. The piece leads into the grandaddy of BWFC's many balls-out jams, the aforementioned "Easy Money," rendered here as stumbling, seething, drunken death funk, with Wetton's signature scat episode at the beginning coming off as a burlesque of airheaded rock & roll. "Easy Money" is always a set highlight, but this version is particularly dire and ragged—a noisy morass. And this very punk element of BWFC is part of what sets them apart from any other contemporary band that you might be tempted to label prog: BWFC understands the value of pure amplified slop, and how effective it can be when juxtaposed with a very British kind of proper-ness and refinement (I think of other brief, chill tracks of the "ditty" variety," such as "The Night Watch"). And there are so many other elements and imperatives at play in the BWFC repertoire: quirky, riffy, Woodstocky blues-rock (see "Cat Food," a track from the pre-BWFC Crimson album In the Wake of Poseidon, which closes the Glasgow show) sits next to obsessive-compulsive epics like "Fracture" and "Larks' Tongues… Part Two." Anyone with even a passing interest in math rock needs get familiar with the former (the Glasgow version is tremendous); the juxtaposition in moods—from notey geekery to flailing violence—is something later exponents of the style have rarely been able to capture in such an organic way. And I'm still getting my brain around the many improvisations that dot these set lists.

There's something very unusual going on in these performances—a marriage of prog's grandeur and virtuosic flash with an almost proto–mid-’80s–Black Flag live-wire scrappiness—that I'm not sure you hear in any other band of the period. Mahavishnu does skew "punk" on their first two records, but they never let themselves sound as frenetic, as hungry, as wild (or on the other hand, as unmoored or abstract) as BWFC do in these performances. This version of Crimson seems to embody the Apollonian and Dionysian impulses—each one pushed to the limit—in a single uncanny unit. I've yet to really get to know Crimson before or after this period, but from what little I do know, BWFC was a unique episode in the history of the band, and maybe of music, period, at least the Western styles I know and love best (rock and jazz).

BWFC was a meteor shower, smashing the airlocks that separated the proto-metal space station from the fusion one and the postbop ones and setting all those impulses free. Pretty much everything I love about music from the mid-’60s through the mid-’70s is here somehow: the mercurial looseness of the Davis/Shorter/Hancock/Carter/Williams quintet, the bombed-out bash of early Sabbath, the D&D-presaging sweep of Yes, the white-hot shred of Mahavishnu and even an undercurrent of especially grimy funk. It didn't last, of course, but for that glorious moment, BWFC had it all, and we are extremely fortunate that the fossil record is so complete. If you need me, I'll be in the DGM archives…

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P.S. Speaking of archives, a mammoth new Larks' Tongues in Aspic box set—bulging with extra live audio and video—is coming 10/15. Scroll down a bit here for details.

The Dio Effect: Pallbearer live

Many years ago, I first heard a particularly ineffective cover of Black Sabbath's "War Pigs", by the Providence death-metal band Vital Remains. Revisiting it now, it seems to me that while the musicians could use a lesson in groove, they sound fine—hitting their marks, executing as needed. The vocals, on the other hand, still present a serious problem. As in Vital Remains's original material, the frontman opts for a distorted growl—not even close to the most guttural and unintelligible register heard in death metal, but still a refutation of the idea that "notes" are a vocalist's concern. So what the cover does is willfully rob this classic song of half its melodic juice; all the beauty and the wonder of Ozzy's vocal melody, it's simply absent.

Now, I listen to a lot of death metal. I enjoy the style immensely, even—and, lately, especially—in its most primitive and conventional forms (Obituary and Immolation, to name two). Sometimes, what people often refer to as the Cookie Monster vocal style works fine for me. Some of my favorite metal records—Morbid Angel's Covenant, for instance—wouldn't work with any other approach. But sometimes you hear something that reminds you that, "Oh, yeah—singing matters."

I had a transcendent experience hearing Pallbearer live last night at Saint Vitus. They're one of the bands I'm talking about. Their singer, Brett Campbell, is all about pinched, pained, soaring melody, in the vein of early Ozzy. To hear his bright, clear voice leaping out across the vast, doomy expanse he and his band lay down is downright startling, like witnessing a splendidly colored bird flying across a grey, postapocalyptic sky.

I'm realizing now that the Vital Remains comparison might be a faulty one, simply because in Pallbearer's chosen subgenre—I'd call it traditional doom metal, i.e., the kind that makes no effort to disguise its Sabbath worship—so-called clean vocals are pretty common. It's in death and black metal that the growls and shrieks hold sway. But this whole notion occurred to me last night because I've been taking my metal all on one plate lately. Saint Vitus is about a seven minute walk from my apartment, and over the past year, I've seen a bunch of metal shows there, in many different styles: NYC caveman-death veterans Mortician, Richmond grind-thrash fantasists Deceased, riff-forward Washington-state black-metalists Inquisition. Seeing Pallbearer last night, I realized that I'd become numb to the idea that a vocalist is, in fact, allowed to use his or her voice to contribute to the song of the music, to make any kind of melodic statement.

You start to forget about the Dio Effect of metal, that sort of "Weary monarch alone in his chambers, lamenting the sorry state of his kingdom and maybe his life" pathos that can be the province of metal, if metal so chooses. (Sabbath's "Falling Off the Edge of the World"—with, yes, Ronnie James Dio at the mic—has been my go-to gold standard of late.) Often, modern metal chooses the opposite: total subhuman bludgeon. "We are not men at all; we are monsters, even demons."

But the two new metal records that have spoken to me the most this year—aside from Loincloth's vocal-less masterpiece—are Christian Mistress's Possession (go here and scroll down a bit) and Pallbearer's Sorrow and Extinction, both of which thrive on unadulterated Dio-ness, that certain quality of metal that makes you want to bend your elbow and curl your fingers into the time-honored invisible-orange gesture, clenching into a fist for emphasis. It's not too surprising that I'd be seeking out the Dio Effect in new metal, given that Sabbath—especially the Dio records Mob Rules, Dehumanizer and (under the Heaven and Hell moniker) The Devil You Know but also, more recently, the almighty Paranoid—has occupied a huge swath of my listening during the same time period.

What the Dio approach, i.e., the decision to have the vocals go out on a limb melodically, to really present musical information the ear can use and respond to, beyond mere assaultive static, allows for is the possibility of multiplication, the chance for the music and the voice to fuse into some irreducible, alchemical third medium. With the Cookie Monster approach, or any vocal style that negates melody, it's like band vs. listener, wherein everyone onstage is coming directly at you. With the Dio approach, though, you get this marvelous inter-band conflict; the inherent struggle of metal is contained within the music, so that it takes the form of a joust or some other kind of stylized (or maybe even not so) struggle.

That struggle played out on the Saint Vitus stage last night. Pallbearer conjured its gargantuan riffs as a unit, collectively summoned them forth from Middle Earth, or Vulcan's forge, or wherever it is that the slow-moving magma of great, Sabbath-derived blues metal spews from. And as these riffs raged and rolled, washed outward from the stage in monster waves, there was Brett Campbell, stepping to the mic like a man on the mount, daring to cry forth in the face of God's deafening roar.

I felt compelled to throw up the invisible-oranges with almost alarming regularity. The music crashed around me with Greek-tragic gravity. It just felt so unbelievably weighty, and I found myself thinking that this is the essence of this music, this is what has been missing in so many of the extreme-metal performances I've witnessed recently, this element of human struggle, when the voice is not disguised with layers of Halloween-y play-acting, the aural equivalent of the face paint that turns black metal into evil Kabuki. But, God forbid, to hear the heart bared on the battlefield, to hear the sorrow within the slaughter. It was almost too much.

Even when Campbell wasn't singing, the Dio Effect was present, because the key is that you know there's a voice out there in that wilderness. It isn't merely the wilds of riff-land, where guitars and drums construct these impossibly tall, forbidding trees, clustering together in a lightless forest. What you realize when you see a band like Pallbearer is that that effect is more or less exactly half of what great metal is capable of. The other half comes when you know there's a human, preferably a solitary, wretched one, lost within that wildnerness. One who may have lost possessions, loved ones, even faith, but one who hasn't lost the ability to cry out, to lament, to emote. To sing.

Pallbearer didn't say much to the audience other than "Thank you," but the band exuded pure graciousness. After each song, fists would raise in the crowd, and the band members would hoist their beers and nod as if to say, "We know. We're here with you. We feel it too." What it is, is this metal phenomenon that makes you feel like you're tapping into something old and elemental, participating in an ancient ritual. You don't know how or why this combination of 1) volume, 2) darkness, 3) human perspective in the face of a cold, unforgiving universe (gaze at the album cover at the top of this post as you ponder that notion), yields a feeling of cleansing grace, of having been touched by something huge and terrifying yet also unspeakably beautiful. All you know is that the band feels it, and when a show is really right, the whole crowd feels it too, and gives back. Maybe they're just hoisting beers; maybe dudes are grabbing fellow dudes and throwing horn signs with their hands; maybe they're headbanging, convulsing in time with the stone giant's every earth-shaking step. Maybe, as I did last night, they're closing their eyes, bending backward, facing the ceiling, getting outside the room, the city, the world. At that point, you're not just listening; you're communing.

That's what great metal does, and the Dio Effect makes it all possible.

Dealbreaker: On the Black Sabbath "reunion"

If you haven't been following the saga of the latest Black Sabbath "reunion," I'll fill you in. Basically, the band's original line-up made a big fuss of announcing its re-formation last November. A press release went out, promising a new Rick Rubin–produced album due in 2012, plus a world tour. Many grumbled that Ozzy, for one, was in terrible shape and that the effort would be a wash. Personally—as I said on the radio—I was thrilled at the prospect of getting to see one of my favorite bands live, since my Sabbath obsession bloomed too late for me to catch any of their late ’90s or mid-aughts Ozzfest shows.

The whole thing went to hell this past February, though, as drummer Bill Ward went public about the un-"signable" contract that the band's management had handed him. A few months of back-and-forth followed, and yesterday, Ward finally put the matter to rest. Barring a miracle, he won't be participating in the reunion. You should click that link and read the full statement; it's really pretty wrenching. Ward tells the story of an acquaintance of his brother's, whose son was dead-set on seeing Ward perform with the band.

My heart sank when Jimmy told me about this young boy. I know this boy is going to be disappointed, and I don’t know how to amend it, other than to put my arms around the boy and tell him I love him. Sabbath fans have a voice and a face, to me you’re human, you have families and despair. You have ferocity and emotions and graciousness, and at this moment as far as I’m concerned you are also that young boy in England.

There's another intense moment near the end:

Since Spring of 2011, I’ve waited patiently and hopefully for a signable contract, you know the rest. I stand for the boy in the U.K., for the coming drum student, for all the drummers, who write their parts out and get stiffed on the publishing, I stand with the Sabbath fans chanting “Bill Ward” and asking “why?” and I stand with Tony and Geezer and Ozzy.

Of course, this is a statement of drummer's rights, for one—a "We're not gonna take it" manifesto, with haunting echoes of the late Levon Helm's decades-long vilification of Robbie Robertson for unfair royalty-royalty hogging with respect to the Band's catalog. ("…Rick [Danko]…died with his money in their goddamned pockets… People ask me about The Last Waltz all the time. Rick Danko dying at fifty-six is what I think about The Last Waltz."—This Wheel's on Fire) But it's also, as I see it, a statement of consumer advocacy: In part what Ward is saying, or at least implying, is that just as band members deemed less than essential need to stand up for their essential-ness, fans have a right to an "Accept no substitutes" policy when it comes to endeavors like this latest Sabbath reunion.

Ward has remained admirably humble throughout all this. He hasn't called for any kind of boycott of a Sabbath reunion that continues in his absence. But his frankness about his treatment by management sends an important message, i.e.: Fans want the real thing. I certainly know I do. Now, I can't say for sure what percentage of the world's Sabbath-fan population agrees with me. The band has gone through so many lineup changes over the years that maybe at this point, there's a huge swath of that community that couldn't care less who's behind the drum kit; they just want to go to a big festival and hear Ozzy sing "War Pigs" and "Iron Man." But without getting into some kind of "casual fan"/"true fan" distinction, I know for a fact that, for many, there is no "Black Sabbath reunion" without Bill Ward.

And I say this with no ill will, and in fact, quite the opposite, toward the Heaven and Hell effort of a few years back. What I loved about this reunion—which revived the incarnation of Sabbath that subbed Ozzy and Ward out for Ronnie James Dio and Vinnie Appice, respectively—was the respect it showed both the musicians and the fans. That 2.0 Sabbath was, as I've come to realize over the past few years—during which I've probably listened to The Mob Rules and The Devil You Know (two albums by the Dio/Appice line-up) as much if not more than any of the Ozzy material—(A) a great band but also (B) a different band, one deserving of the distinctive name it eventually earned. The message is simple: You change the personnel and you change the band. Anything less than the whole thing is not, in fact, the thing.

Now of course this principle doesn't apply in every case. Some bands can sub out a member and retain their essential mojo. (Though, at the moment, I'm trying and failing to think of an example of a truly great band that changed members and continued undiminished.) But—and I say this as a member of a band that's cycled through four different bassists over the course of a decade, all of whom have contributed vitally to the sound of the project at their respective juncture—sometimes, no one is expendable. The classic example is, of course, Zeppelin. As I understand it, the rest of the band didn't even think of continuing after Bonham died. You could argue that it's because his drumming was in many ways the band's central feature, but I don't think the surviving members would've reacted any differently if it had been, god forbid, Jones, Page or Plant had passed. There simply was no band once there was no Bonham. For a less prominent but equally clear-cut case, look at the Jesus Lizard. They did soldier on after original drummer Mac McNeilly left, but as David Yow has so often said, it just wasn't the same.

Now, again, Sabbath has been in many ways the polar opposite of one of these "All or nothing" ensembles. Tony Iommi has kept the band running for four decades, often with no other original members included. And I'll fully admit that as much as admire Iommi and respect his willingness to see the project through, I've still yet to warm up to (or more fairly, fully investigate) the greater part of the non-Ozzy, non-Dio Sabbath, of which there is a whole lot. But the crucial point here is that what was promised at the press conference back in November of 2011 was the original Sabbath. That's a very clear-cut thing, and you need all four members in order to deliver as promised. Sure, Ozzy's the figurehead, with Iommi probably being the second most famous in his own right of the other three, but a Ward-less "original Sabbath" reunion is simply not an original Sabbath reunion. Given the band's endlessly complicated history, no one can argue with Osbourne, Iommi and Geezer Butler's decision—assuming they go through with it, which they appear to be doing—to go ahead without Ward. But the message that Ward's sending is that fans have the right to see and hear what they were told they'd get to see and hear, namely the Osbourne/Iommi/Butler/Ward line-up.

Bill Ward, to me, is not like John Bonham, this towering colossus whose contribution to the instrument transcends his band, transcends all of rock & roll, really. But as The Drummer in Black Sabbath, he is a hero to me. When I think about his time feel on the verses of "Snowblind," that gloriously draggy slog, or the stoner's shimmy he busts out during the "War Pigs" prechorus breakdowns, or his jazzy ride-cymbal tapdance on the uptempo interlude in "Electric Funeral," I want to weep. (If you don't know the 1970 Paris footage, you need to sit down and give this your undivided attention; buckle up around 1:40, when Ward starts busting out those gut-punch fills during the stop-time section.) What he does is so natural, so perfectly integrated, so goddamn rocking, so integral to the flowing blues-metal magma that is early Black Sabbath. (For the record, Ward sounds just as good—maybe even heavier, actually—on the 2000 reunion video The Last Supper.) Money matters aside, you just can't separate Ward out and still pretend you're selling people the genuine article.

Ward's stand isn't a matter of ego; he's speaking for the fans as much himself. All he's saying is: A band is a band is a band. As the Band demonstrated, the songwriting is only a tiny piece of the puzzle. Rock & roll is about a sound, and whether or not you consciously notice every specific member's contribution at any given time, that contribution is part of your sense memory, part of the holistic DNA of these songs and albums that we so cherish. Band-dom is, in the end, what makes rock music rule, and when that's compromised, you don't just gloss over it. You make a fuss about it. You stand up for a fan's, let alone a player's, right to the genuine article. I think of the whole Funk Brothers endeavor, to bring to light all the anonymous session geniuses that served as the engine of the Motown hit machine. The last couple decades have in any many ways been a vindication of the idea that it only takes one pretty-faced/-voiced singer to make a song, as more and more of these "supporting players" are given their due (I think of ?uestlove's incessant championing of Bill Withers drummer James Gadson). You need cohesion; you need a team. And you forsake that principle at the expense of the music, the band—and, more crassly, the brand—the fans and the legacy. For an endeavor like this Sabbath reunion, a missing drummer is not merely a bummer; it's a dealbreaker.

P.S. I riffed on the Sabbath un-reunion in a TONY preview of this Saturday's Pallbearer show, written a week before this latest Bill Ward dispatch appeared.