Cosmo Lee on Metallica

Just a quick post here to say thanks to Cosmo Lee at Invisible Oranges—the site that launched my Heavy Metal Be-Bop interview series—for his outstanding ongoing series "Metallica: The First Four Albums." To bring you up to speed real quick: Cosmo is, in my opinion, hands down the best writer-about-metal on the internet, and for the past few years (five or so?), he's overseen the Invisible Oranges site. He's leaving IO in a few weeks to focus on other projects, and by way of a farewell, he's been running down the first four Metallica records track-by-track (one blog post apiece, i.e.). It's a really impressive project, and as rigorous as it is, it's not formulaic—he's basically taking each track as it comes, offering focused yet unfettered impressions filtered through his identity as a guitarist and through his lengthy Metallica fandom (i.e., how the music sounded to him as a teenager and how it sounds to him now). Here's yesterday's post on the classic instrumental "Orion"; you'll find the rest of the series linked at the bottom.

In particular, this series has reawakened me to the glory of Master of Puppets. My favorite Metallica album is …And Justice for All, but Cosmo has helped me to see that in a way, side two of Puppets is a prelude to Justice. During the "First Four Albums" series, he has written several times about the "anxiety" of Justice. It's not a word I ever thought to use to describe the album, but I know what he means: Justice is incredibly clenched, obsessive, maniacal in its detail, devoid of fun, exhaustive. The band members look joyless and battle-hardened in the inner-sleeve photos, and this makes sense when you hear the music.

This obsessiveness kicks into high gear on side two of Puppets. The track that grabs me the most is "Disposable Heroes"—stream it above—which has long been among my two or three favorite Metallica songs. I was just listening to it this morning and marveling at the enormous amount of CONTENT in the song. Same goes for pretty much all of Justice: You simply can't believe they're stuffing this much INFORMATION into a rock composition, and not useless technical detail. It all makes total, merciless sense. And set against this proggy maximalism is an anthemic-punk sensibility. At the same time as it was scaling new heights of technicality, Metallica was writing its catchiest songs to date.

Dig the prechorus thrash section in "Heroes"—it reoccurs in the song, but you can hear one example at 3:12—which follows a pattern of two bars of four, then two bars of three. The little rhythmic hiccups created by the three-beat bars are pure pleasure for me. This fast, techy build-up gives way to a brief lead-guitar passage and then a turbulent transition sequence before opening up into a total rock-out chorus (the "Back to the front!" part). This is just one of the countless little journeys that Metallica took its listeners on during this classic mid-to-late-’80s period: a perfect juxtaposition of Apollonian and Dionysian musical tendencies.

It's a pleasure to rediscover these albums that I've loved so long in the company of a writer as skilled and insightful as Cosmo. Read the posts and savor the glory of the music, the absolute pinnacle of metal.

Heavy Metal Be-Bop #2: Craig Taborn

I'm happy to announce that the second installment of Heavy Metal Be-Bop, my jazz/metal interview series, is live at Invisible Oranges. Once again, a big thanks to site honcho Cosmo Lee for hosting and for lending his editing and layout expertise to the project.

My guest this time around, Craig Taborn, is more or less the main inspiration behind the series, and I speak a bit about that (specifically Taborn's connection to the Gorguts universe) in the intro. I also mention Taborn's seemingly boundless metal knowledge, but I feel like I ought to note that this knowledge extends way beyond a single genre. Taborn has his iTunes hooked up to his TV, so I got a chance to check out his music library; I have to say, it might be the most diverse and comprehensive collection I've ever seen. I hope he won't mind me listing a few of the artists I spotted in there: Springsteen (Nebraska), This Heat, Thelonious Monk, Arcade Fire, Stravinsky, Sonic Youth, Henry Threadgill's Air, the Walker Brothers, Shudder to Think, Muddy Waters, Descendents. (He even had craw in there, which—as any regular DFSBP reader could guess—absolutely blew my mind. It turns out he went to college with their early-period drummer, Neil Chastain!) Looking at that list now, it doesn't scan as terribly unusual (everyone's got a world of music on their iPod these days), but the point I'm trying to make—a point hopefully illustrated in our conversation—is that Taborn is an especially deep listener; he really gets inside all of these different areas. That may be one reason so many different bandleaders call on him regularly. Dan Weiss, my first Heavy Metal Be-Bop guest, made all this explicit during a recent appearance on WKCR's Musician's Show. Listing the personnel for the new Dave Binney album, Graylen Epicenter—on which both Weiss and Taborn appear—he shouted out Taborn's insider nickname: Encyclopedia Tabes. Having spent time with the man, I assure you that it's an accurate moniker.

I hope you enjoy this installment of Heavy Metal Be-Bop. I have another interview in the pipeline, which I hope to publish soon, but I'm definitely on the lookout for future subjects. Can you think of anyone who might be able to shed light on the jazz/metal connection? If so, please let me know via e-mail or the comments.