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.

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.

Missing links

In a couple of hours, I'm headed west with Laal in search of the Boognish. I wish everyone a wonderful Labor Day weekend. I leave you with some links to recent Time Out pieces that I'm happy with:

*As you can see above, I attended last week's Heaven and Hell (a.k.a. Black Sabbath 2.0) show and spent a few minutes standing less than ten feet from Tony Iommi. It was magical. More pics and a review here.

*Central Market, the new Tyondai Braxton solo album that comes out in a few weeks, is really awesome. I interviewed Mr. Braxton and wrote a profile of him in advance of the Warp20 celebration going down this weekend in NYC.

*Sadly I didn't make it out to one of the Nine Inch Nails shows. I did however write a longish preview of the run. It was interesting to think about how much I'd adored NIN in high school, and how unlikely it was that Trent Reznor had managed to keep people interested for so long.

*The new Mount Eerie album is very creepy and cool. Here's my review.

*On the TONY music blog, the Volume, we have a weekly video series featuring in-office performances by local artists. Some recent ones I've really enjoyed: Wild Yaks, Marcus Strickland Trio, Sharon Van Etten, Mike Watt (!) and Shilpa Ray. You can view the full archive here.

*****

Lastly, how insanely cool is all this Michael McDonald business? From pop-cultural punchline in The 40-Year-Old Virgin to oracle of the shifting zeitgeist in just a few short years!

"When I was with the Doobies, the style of music was that we all went over the falls with chord progressions, trying to make things as complex and interconnected as possible. The punk movement swung towards being as primitive as possible, but now it’s back to where these guys are good musicians. I never thought that would come back around, but it has.”

Boy has it ever. "Cannibal Resource" on Letterman anyone? Prog is back in the mainstream where it belongs! [Used to have a YouTube link here, but they yanked the vid.]

And for something completely different, check out a brutal new Ted Kennedy-themed Blouse jam here. Joe from STATS guests on guitar.