Flushing the pipes: Channel Orange and the art of speed-reviewing

Here, via Time Out New York, is my review of Frank Ocean's Channel Orange.

This version of the piece, the same one that appears in the current print issue of TONY, is actually my second stab at an assessment of Channel Orange, and the one I'm much happier with. At the end of the review linked above, you'll find a link to the first review I published, which went live the day of the album's surprise-attack midnight release.

The short answer to "Why are there two?" is that soon after I published the first one online, I realized that it had been a rush job. I spent more time with the album over the next couple days, and it steadily grew on me. I realized I could still complete a new version of the piece in time for our print deadline, and thanks to my patient and understanding editor, Steve Smith, take 2 is the one that ended up running.

This sequence of events sounds pretty straightforward, but the fact is that it kind of drove me insane last week. (My wife could certainly describe this state of mind in greater detail.) My initial response to the record—the follow-up, I should add, to my favorite album of 2011—was mixed, and as the rave reviews started rolling in, I started to second guess myself, not because I felt like my take needed to mirror everyone else's, but because I realized that I simply hadn't spent sufficient time with the record.

During my career, I've had to write surprisingly few rush reviews. Typically if I'm reviewing a record, I have the music weeks or months in advance. With the Ocean, though, that wasn't an option. I heard it for the first time when everyone else did, last Tuesday morning. As soon as the reviews started going live—i.e., pretty much immediately—I felt compelled to jump into the fray. I was talking about the album with some friends and fellow music writers over e-mail, but that didn't suffice; I felt, for no reason other that that journalists in the internet age tend to feel that they're late on a story (even something as in-the-grand-scheme-of-things trivial as a review of a newly released work of art) mere hours after the window on said story has opened, that I needed to publish immediately.

The problem with that urgency is an obvious one: First impressions are iffy. (I should state another obvious point here, i.e., that there's no such thing as a "correct" record review, only one where the writer has had sufficient time and space to get familiar with the album in question and work out their formal impression of it—the argument they want to make.) This is a constant pitfall of deadline-oriented writing-about-music (or writing-about-art, period) and this particular instance certainly wasn't the first time I'd published a review and second-guessed it. What was special in this case, was the intensity of my bummed-out-ness re: that second-guessing: not exactly the feeling that I had let the artist down (because, let's be serious, my Channel Orange review was one of approximately a zillion that have been published; in the end, what I said matters to relatively few people aside from myself), but the feeling that I hadn't given myself the time and space I needed to simply do a good job on the piece, to come up with something I could stand by and be happy with going forward. The latter criteria, incidentally, do apply to the second version of the review, the more positive one you'll find at the link above.

Along with the aforementioned bummed-out-ness came a painfully complete understanding of why I felt that way, and what I needed to do in the future to avoid feeling that way again. Film reviewers may very well have to settle for one pass through the movie in question, simply because of the logistical impracticality/impossibility of watching the entire thing again in time for their deadline. But music reviewers tend to have the luxury of at least a couple spins, and here's the reason why we ought to take full advantage of that luxury (or at the very least, why I plan to in the future): When you're hearing a record for the first time, especially a record that you've looked forward to, by an artist you already know you care about, you're not really hearing the record. You're hearing some kind of composite sonic image: the record you hoped you'd hear, overlaid on the actual thing. In many cases, and I think in the case of my Channel Orange experience, your expectations are so extensive and so powerful that they simply drown out the sounds that come out of the speakers. Listen a few more times, and you can begin to edge that essentially meaningless set of expectations out of the picture; you can, in other words, hear the record on its own terms rather than on yours. Now again, I'm not saying that at that point, whatever you write is somehow "correct." What I'm saying is that at least you're engaging with the given record in a fair way; you're giving it ample chance to reveal itself.

Record reviewing is no exact science. There may, in fact, be few more inexact sciences. But as I said above, it really comes down to the writer's own feelings. If others get something out of the piece, that's all the better, but as a writer, you simply want to be able to stand by what you wrote, to feel afterward that it accurately expresses, in an objective way, how you feel, what you'd meant to say. As any writer could tell you, sometimes that isn't the case, for a variety of reasons. Sometimes you finish a draft of a piece and it appalls you. If you're on deadline, you might hand it in anyway, because you have no choice, but you don't feel a sense of proud ownership. And that sense of proud ownership is all I mean to ponder here, i.e., how best to end up feeling that way. In the super-specific case of a record review, I think it's important to take one's time, or to take as much time as one has, because you're more likely to end up proud of what you've written, or at the very least to feel comfortable standing by it. Now, of course, there are plenty of records that have taken me far more than a few spins to warm up to—several years' worth of spins, in some cases—but I'm speaking here about a deadline-oriented situation. What you want to do in these cases is make sure you've flushed the pipes—that is to say, eroded as much of your essentially irrelevant and potentially insidious expectations as possible—before you drink the water. That's when you're doing your job, i.e., writing about the thing in front of you, rather than the version of the thing you've been carrying around in your mind. I was fortunate enough to get a second crack at Channel Orange; I hope that next time, I'll have the good sense to wait before taking my initial swing.

The misery/mastery of Asphyx and other recent raves

A busy spell has kept me away from DFSBP for more than two weeks. Here's a top-heavy summary of what's been on my mind, musicwise.

Asphyx
In my Maryland Deathfest round-up, I mentioned some new friends my wife and I made that weekend, a metal-obsessed couple from Wisconsin. During the whirlwind "Dude, you need to check this out" discussions I had with H.S. (the male half of the pair) at MDF, he was more fired up about the Dutch outfit Asphyx than any other band he recommended. I'd heard samplings of their stuff in recent months—material from the new album, Deathhammer—but hadn't yet spent good time with any of their records. A few weeks after the fest, I received a package in the mail from H.S. containing a few old-fashioned mix CDs, one of which featured a whole bunch of Asphyx songs, including a few from their 1991 debut LP, The Rack. These tracks sent me into a delirious Asphyx obsession. I respectfully took temporary leave from the mixtapes and went burrowing into their discography, not coming up for air for something like two weeks.

While the early stuff hit me hard, it was the more recent material—Deathhammer, which came out this past February, and 2009's Death…the Brutal Way—that really ensnared me. As DFSBP readers may have noticed, old-school death metal—or more specifically, recent work by old-school death-metal bands such as Obituary, Cannibal Corpse and Immolation— has formed a major pillar of my listening over the past few years. A lot of what I've been craving this sort of gruesome primitiveness, expressed most purely in Obituary's work. It's an anti-evolutionary stance, a commitment to improving as a band without "progressing" in obvious, easily quantifiable ways. (I also touched on this in my recent Unsane review.) It has something to do with becoming more and more one's self as a band without messing with the core formula. Having stacked the old Asphyx records up against the new—and I'm specifically talking about the work they've done with their signature frontman Martin Van Drunen, i.e., two early-’90s LPs, and then these two latest ones, made after he rejoined the band in 2007—I can say that they are a perfect example of this. The latest Asphyx records sound a thousand times crisper and more hi-fi than the band's ’90s output, but they also have this unquantifiable x-factor that I also hear in recent Obituary. I can only describe it as the weight of years. Like Obituary, Asphyx thrives on the concept of anguish. The simulation of pain and suffering and ponderous psychic weight is their bread and butter. These new Asphyx records are among the most sheerly pained I've ever come across in the realm of death metal. Even at fast tempos, the band—and especially Van Drunen, who has one of the most genuinely dire, soul-vomiting deliveries I've heard coming from a death-metal frontman—sounds like its being driven against its will through frozen wastes, the music serving as a "Why have you forsaken me?" outcry.

The Asphyx songs that hit me the hardest were the slow ones, grim death marches like "Minefield" from Deathhammer. Like much of Asphyx's recent material, this song deals with a horrors-of-war theme. Martin Van Drunen (along with current Asphyx guitarist Paul Baayens) also plays in a World War II–themed metal band called Hail of Bullets, and he's funneled that same obsession into Asphyx. Here's a stream of "Minefield"—play it deafeningly loud, I implore you—and a sampling of lyrics:

Crawling through barbed wire
Into no-man's land
Soil soaked in blood
The crying of men
Terror unveiling
In between the lines
They scream mutilated
Detonating mines

You wouldn't think twice about lyrics like this if you read them out of context. I guess that's kind of a "Duh" observation, but I think it's worth pointing out. More than many bands I could name, in any genre, Asphyx is about raw sensation. Formally, i.e., when it comes to the on-paper aspects of what they do, they could not be more straightforward or potentially dismissable. They play some of the most easily pigeonhole-able death metal I know; basically they pick a tempo, either crawling or galloping (in the hardcore-derived sense—no blast beats here), and just let Van Drunen loose over it. But the sensation they give off, this feeling that you get from "Minefield," of trudging depression, of men being ground mercilessly into dust by their own savage impulses, of the cold unforgiving-ness of the universe, is the furthest thing from commonplace. In terms of pure feeling, I can think of very few metal bands that sock me in the gut the way Asphyx do. I love the minimal structures of their songs, the way they only shift gears when they really mean it. The first 2:20 of "Minefield" is straight crawling-on-hands-and-knees molasses doom, and then at that point, they switch into this woozy, lumbering shuffle groove. I can't get enough of this relentless drive, the way the band gradually flattens you with one texture till you absolutely can't take it anymore, and then switches to another and does the exact same thing. Death metal should feel like this: endless, vast, utterly miserable. You should want to tap out because it's so unrelenting. It should make you wince, as if against a biting wind, and Asphyx at their best have that effect on me. Crucially, they can also bring me to the verge of tears. Listen to the downshift back to trudging misery that happens at around 4:25 in "Minefield." Here Baayens blindsides you with an incredibly majestic lead, an Iommi-worthy elegy that lays aside brutality in favor of epic sadness. This is some funereal, bell-tolling, hand-of-doom shit here, people. It sounds to me like an epilogue to the gruesome war depicted in the main body of the song; you imagine a surviving soldier standing beside a mass grave as the rain drives down on him, realizing he's no better off than the ones who perished. (I should note here that Asphyx named their second LP Last One on Earth.)

If these sorts of sensations appeal to you—maybe "appeal" isn't the right word; it might be better to say, "If you feel the pull of this cold, dark, gritty art the way I do…"—I encourage you to check out Deathhammer in its entirety. The great thing about Asphyx is that they're not a one-note band; maybe a three-note band, but definitely not a one-note band. Aside from the molasses-paced, war-is-hell-and-so-is-life vibe they're working with on "Minefield," latter-day Asphyx has also been digging into this meta-metallic theme, i.e., the idea of actually pairing death metal with lyrics about death metal. It's an idea that's no so uncommon in, say, hip-hop, where part of the point is to rap about how good one is at, well, rapping. Asphyx does something very similar on their two latest albums. It's important to understand that the titles Death…the Brutal Way and Deathhammer refer not simply to dying, but rather to the craft of death metal itself.

Here's how drummer Bob Bagchus (the only remaining original member of the band) put it in a Decibel interview:

Decibel: What is the Deathhammer?
Bob Bagchus: Deathhammer represents the book of death metal. Our view on real death metal. It’s like the rules of what real death metal was supposed to be. Death metal was supposed to be hard, raw, dirty, creepy, dark and brutal to the bone. Music to be scared of. Just listen to bands like old Venom, Messiah, Slaughter, Hellhammer, Possessed, old Death, Autopsy, Necrophagia, early Mayhem, Necrovore, Incubus (Florida) etc., and you’ll know what we mean. During the last decade, it seems that death metal has turned into this hyper-blast technical nonsense bullshit that they dare to call “death metal.” In fact, it’s a contest of who can play the fastest bpm or riffs (sometimes 10 in 1 single song) and they seem to forget about the song itself. I mean, where’s the song? Where’s the catchiness and where is the atmosphere? Nowhere! And this is supposed to be death metal? It’s a joke! We say, “Go listen to Hellhammer’s Triumph of Death and discover what real death metal is!” So we thought that there should be a sort of guide book to remind those people of the essence of real death metal. We, of course, don’t want to be arrogant—hell no—but since death metal is in our hearts and souls, we hate to see it destroyed by those technical-bullshit-musically-graduated-soulless bands, pretending they know it all. Death metal comes from the heart, not from the mind.

As if the album's title track weren't already a perfect summation of these principles, dig how van Drunen growls, "This is some death metal, you bastards!" during the guitar break around :37:



The point that Bagchus makes above might seem like sort of an obvious one, but the truth is, it's an important gauntlet to lay down. Over the past 15 years or so, death metal really has bifurcated to an almost absurd degree. You've got this staunchly primitive, slither-through-the-muck-and-bang-your-fuckin'-head aesthetic that reemerged old-schoolers like Autopsy (and, I'd argue, Obituary, though I'm not sure whether or not they'd have a place in Bagchus's death-metal "guide book") and a bunch of neo-old-schoolers (I'm not knowledgeable enough about that movement to name names) champion, and then on the other hand, you've got this noodly, absurdly intricate technicality, as perfected by bands like Necrophagist. Now I absolutely love Necrophagist, and I also love Atheist and a ton of other bands that I'd place in that latter category, but listening to a super-techy but, to me, hard-to-really-love band like, say Origin, or a million faceless typewriter-blast-beat outfits, it's hard not to agree with Bagchus's polemic. Fortunately, this is music not war, and no one has to take sides. I'm sure that whenever the new Necrophagist album drops, I'll be happily indulging the side of my death-metal brain that can't get enough speed, precision and virtuosity, but lately, my compass has been pointing straight toward Aspyhx's shaggy, mud-smeared version of the truth.

P.S. I leave you with a a further illustration of Asphyx's lovably nerdy death-metal orthodoxy, a lyric excerpt from the title track to Death…the Brutal Way, which actually narrates the band's 2007 comeback gig at Germany's Party San festival. (Note that "Vermin" and "The Rack" are Asphyx song titles.)

Krushing at the Party San, hear the hordes rejoice
Filth to feed the Vermin, 'n beer to oil the voice
We'll beat your eardrums useless, and tie you on the Rack
Bones and nerves are grind to pulp, we are fucken back
Again we set the standards, get the message clear
Leave the fucken stage bitch, no room for you here
Mercy won't be given, as we enter our domain
Endlessly you'll suffer, on the altar of pain

Merchants of brutality, death our only rule
The doctrine of true metal, gods of the old school
Die by fucken Asphyx, ultra loud we slay
Skinned alive you humbly beg for death the brutal way!

/////

Other recent raves:

Marc Ribot Trio
I adored the Marc Ribot Trio set I saw at the Village Vanguard last Friday. Thank you to Nate Chinen (and to G.G., who dropped me a breathless 2am e-mail the next night) for encouraging me to attend.


Rush's Clockwork Angels
The new Rush album is outstanding. I will always be a Rush completist, but I've been mixed on their most recent studio output; I love 2002's Vapor Trails but I find 2007's Snakes & Arrows a little ponderous. This new one, though, is a straight killer: brisk, muscular, extremely varied and catchy across the board. It might be my favorite since 1993's Counterparts, which I consider to be the gold standard for their late-period sound. The title track is a standout, combining the Police-style pop-reggae lilt of their '80s work with the ass-kicking power-trio-ism they've excelled at since the late '70s:


Nick Sakes
This man needs no introduction 'round this parts. (If I'm wrong about that, go here.) Just this week, I discovered a guest-DJ segment that Nick did for WFMU back in March, via the Diane's Kamikaze Fun Machine program. Go here to check out an extended on-air interview and various musical picks from one of my favorite living musicians. (The Sakes portion of the program begins a little over an hour into the stream; WFMU's pop-up player allows you to navigate there easily.)

News: Ween and Frank Ocean
Ween breaks up! Frank Ocean is gay! I've been a little dismayed lately by the sensational treatment of stories like these, especially since said instances concern artists that mean a lot to me.

In the case of Ween, I think it's best to exercise a little patience before we nail the coffin lid shut. The facts are simple: 1) Gene and Dean have been pursuing separate lives/careers for a while now—you know of Mickey's Guide Service, yes?—and Ween has really been more of a sporadic touring project over the last few years. 2) Gene has recently sobered up, not for the first time. He's got a cool new solo record out, and he probably just wants to put a little space between "Aaron Freeman" and the drug-fueled caricature that the Gene Ween persona has become in the minds of a lot of fans. 3) Both men have families, and Ween live shows are presumably their main respective sources of income. It makes a lot of sense to me that the project would be taking a little breather right this second (and even that the hiatus might hold for a few years), but the idea that Ween will never perform/record again seems a bit far-fetched to me. It sort of bugs me how people fall all over themselves to write these grandiose epitaphs in such circumstances. Aaron Freeman is a troubled guy who's obviously developed a bit of a love/hate relationship with the band that made him famous, but that has also been his personal undoing in many ways. So he has no plans to record or tour with Ween for the time being—so what? Let's give the man some space to come to terms with his demons. If in, say, five years, Freeman's solo career is thriving, Mickey is still out on his fishing boat full-time and there's been no further word about Ween qua Ween, then yeah, maybe we'll have a clear answer. Right now, at least as far as I—a serious Ween enthusiast and devoted fan—am concerned, this "break-up" is still a temporary hiatus.

In the case of Frank Ocean—who made my favorite album of 2011 and whose new one, Channel Orange, I can't wait to hear—why reduce such a beautiful and elliptical personal statement as this to a mere black & white revelation of sexual preference? The more important revelation is the continued intensity of this dude's self-inventory, and the fascinating methods through which he's seen fit to share that process with his ever-growing audience. I'm proud to be a Frank fan.

Baroque riff serration: In praise of late Cannibal Corpse

 In 2001, Gary Giddins wrote:

"Let's be bold: The David S. Ware Quartet is the best small band in jazz today. I realize that I will almost certainly hear another quartet, or trio or quintet or octet, this week or next, that will make me want to backpedal. But every time I see Ware's group or return to the records, it flushes the competition from memory."

I loved this proclamation when I first read it—the definitiveness of it, the employment of critical license (whatever that might be) to say, "This thing that I think simply is so." Over the past week or so, I've been feeling like making a similar statement re: the realm of metal (specifically death metal, though I'm comfortable with the "extreme" qualifier):

Cannibal Corpse is the best band in extreme metal today.

Some of my greatest musical pleasures over the past few years have involved reengaging with bands I'd previously thought I'd apprehended entirely and moved on from. (One biggie would be Obituary; I also recently awakened to the glories of Immolation, though in the latter case, I was starting from scratch.) Cannibal Corpse definitely falls into that category. Growing up as a death-metal fan, I was blinded by my love for Morbid Angel. Around the time of their 1993 masterpiece, Covenant, Morbid had reached peak arrogance. I remember reading interviews with them where they'd dismiss the entire genre of death metal with a sneer, and simply state, in so many words, "We are the best, the only, practitioner of this music that matters." At the time, and for many years afterward, I tended to agree. I listened to a lot of other death metal in the early-to-mid ’90s—Deicide, Obituary, Cannibal Corpse, Disincarnate, etc.—but when I wasn't spinning Morbid records (Covenant and Domination, in particular), it was like I was taking a break. I agreed completely with their self-assessment; Morbid's output did in fact sound 1000 times richer and more distinctive to me than all the rest. They had the most memorable songs ("God of Emptiness," "World of Shit," "Nothing But Fear," "Dawn of the Angry," etc.—all still some of my favorite metal tracks, "extreme" or otherwise), the most outlandish personalities (Trey Azagthoth, the death-metal guitarist who dared to thank not only Anthony Robbins but characters from Street Fighter II in his liner notes) and, on Covenant at least, the most brutal, immediate, uncanned production. Other death metal, to me, was really a competent and—since I happened to be an insatiable metalhead at the time—moderately effective fulfillment of a certain set of conventions: blast beats, growling, lyrical and visual garishness, etc.

I should say, though, that Cannibal Corpse's fourth album, 1994's The Bleeding—an album that A) contains songs such as "Fucked With a Knife" and "Stripped, Raped and Strangled" and B) was purchased for me at Streetside Records in Overland Park, KS, by my mother as a reward for attending a Jewish Sunday-school retreat—deserves an honorable mention in that regard. No, it wasn't Covenant, but it was, and still is, an uncommonly varied, well-crafted and enjoyable set of death-metal songs, about three fourths of which I can still sing the riffs from on command ("Staring Through the Eyes of the Dead" features one of the grooviest death-metal riffs you'll ever hear, while the title track boasts a head-smackingly simple yet completely unshakable low-to-high caveman guitar part). I had the three prior Cannibal Corpse albums as well, but they all seemed to pale in comparison to The Bleeding. I didn't spend enough time with the debut, Eaten Back to Life, to develop a real bond with it, and aside from the immortal "Hammer Smashed Face," which, as everyone knows, appears in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, 1992's Tomb of the Mutilated and 1991's Butchered at Birth seemed to have little to offer than shock. Simply put, the playing wasn't that good, especially on Tomb; the band just sounded thin and flimsy to me: a rickshaw in comparison with the unstoppable tank that was Morbid Angel. And the production was simply godawful. Really all there was to fixate on was the unspeakable offensiveness of the song titles ("Entrails Ripped from a Virgin's Cunt," e.g.) and the absurdly low cavebeast growl of frontman Chris Barnes.

I now realize that in this era—again, as demonstrated particularly well on The Bleeding—Cannibal Corpse had one of the more impressive guitar tandems in extreme metal: Jack Owen (who later went on to play in Deicide) and Rob Barrett (who rejoined the band in the mid-aughts and still plays with them). But my real loyalty was with Barnes—along with Deicide's Glen Benton, probably my favorite non-Azagthoth death-metal "character" (and that's how I thought of these guys then, like action figures or something, because I never got to see any of these bands like at the time; my exposure to them was entirely through reading Metal Maniacs, Rip and various smaller fanzines). Barnes was/is an affable, pot-loving dude with a terrifying presence/delivery and a sick, sick mind. (I should say here that I really like Undead, the new album by Barnes's still-thriving post-Cannibal band Six Feet Under.) In the latter regard, the Tomb of the Mutilated chapter in Precious Metal is well worth your time.

Anyway, so right about the time I started drifting away from my first phase of die-hard death-metal fandom in favor of what I'll call, for lack of a better term, a wide variety of "indie" music (ranging from craw and Dazzling Killmen to Hoover, Fugazi, June of 44, Karate—whom I just listened to last night and found to be awesome—Slint, Tortoise and what seems like 100 others), Chris Barnes left Cannibal Corpse. I remember hearing Cannibal's first post-Barnes, post-Bleeding release, 1996's Vile, and feeling crestfallen. It seemed to me that just as Morbid Angel did when they first split from classic-era frontman David Vincent (who's been back with the band since the mid-aughts)—read more about my gradually evolving opinion on Morbid's post-Vincent period here—Cannibal Corpse had backpedaled into generic-ness, a state of contentment re: simply executing a subgenre rather than defining or expanding it. I didn't give Vile much of a chance at the time; after all, as described above, I was fixated on other styles, other avenues of underground, rock-based intensity. But all the same, I knew that the time had come to take a break from caring all that much about what the Corpse was up to.

Flash forward a decade, to 2006's Kill. Somehow this record ended up crossing my desk at Time Out New York—"somehow" is probably a bit of a stretch; I probably heard about the album and sought it out for nostalgia's sake—and I remember being straight-up shocked by how tight, aggressive and musically ambitious it was. Kill was still, in its way, a relatively straightforward death-metal statement, but unlike Vile (and again, I'm still basing my statements on that record on my contemporary opinion; I've yet to go back and revisit it, and I really need to), it sounded ferocious, overwhelming, utterly state-of-the-art—even progressive, which is a description I'd never thought I'd use with respect to the Corpse. I suddenly realized that a band I'd condemned to second-rate-ness was nothing of the sort.

I'm still playing catch-up re: their discography between The Bleeding and Kill—four full-lengths, from 1998's Gallery of Suicide to 2004's The Wretched Spawn, all featuring vocalist George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher, who's still in the band and who at this point has been with them a lot longer than Barnes was—so it's hard for me to pinpoint exactly what went down between the Corpse and me. Did I just happen to reawaken to the glories of death metal right around the time that they put out Kill? Or was Kill really a major quantum leap for them? Again, I haven't really spent good enough time with those ’98–’04 releases to answer that accurately—aside from the records themselves, which I've got a date with, the awesome and exhaustive Corpse documentary Centuries of Torment is a good source to consult—but I will venture that Kill was an important chapter marker in the Cannibal Corpse saga. For one, it marked the return of Rob Barrett, who had played on both The Bleeding and Vile, and secondly, it was the band's first collaboration with producer Erik Rutan, best known to many as the guitarist-vocalist-mastermind of Hate Eternal, but best known to me as the auxiliary guitarist in Morbid Angel around 1996 and the composer of some of the strongest, most moving material on Domination.

To bring things up to date, this past March, Cannibal Corpse released Torture, their 12th proper LP and their third in a row with Rutan at the helm; that's the album cover you see at the top of this post. It is an absolutely outstanding record, a leading contender for the best metal album I've heard in 2012. (And, like the previous two, it sounds gloriously crisp, full and alive.) It's had the effect of rendering me completely addicted to this latest Corpse renaissance; for the past week or two, aside from various obligatory, assignment-related (and, I should mention, not remotely unenjoyable!) listening and some choice pop (Gotye! Carly Rae Jepsen!), the only records I've voluntarily subjected my ears to are Torture, Kill and the record that falls between them, 2009's Evisceration Plague. I'm starting to feel that this trilogy (for now, at least; hopefully, the Corpse will continue to release excellent records for years to come) represents the peak of what I value in contemporary death metal. Artists such as the ones I mentioned above, Cannibal Corpse included, defined the genre in the late ’80s/early ’90s, and after that initial burst, the genre seemed to calcify, to cease its rapid evolution (a few freak outcroppings like Death excepted). But hearing these records, I can definitively state that late-stage death metal has become its own beast.

Cannibal Corpse may have a relatively limited sonic domain. In other words, their progression doesn't entail obvious face-lifts such as those you might see in the work of, say, Mastodon—the kind of facelifts, I'm slowly realizing, that may elicit a bunch of Oohs and Aaahs off the bat but that don't really amount to all that much in the end. But on the micro level, since the early ’90s Cannibal Corpse has evolved as impressively as just about any rock band I can think of. Most prominently, their work now has a kind of tech-forward giddiness that it never had in the early ’90s, a delight in acrobatic precision. At the same time, though, the band has retained that essential caveman edge that made classic Corpse jams like "Stripped, Raped" so much fun. And though I still don't think that Fisher is as distinctive or compelling a frontman as Barnes, his sheer power and almost comical relentlessness perfectly fits the steroidal direction the band has taken on Kill and the two subsequent releases.

I mentioned "tech-forward giddiness" above. At the end of the day, my favorite thing about these three Corpse records, and about most metal that's dear to my heart, is the sheer quality and quantity of RIFF. Just about every song on these albums features some kind gonzo stunt riff, repeated enough times and articulated clearly enough that it sticks in your mind's ear like melted chewing gum. These are the kinds of riffs that you hear once, and you're like, "What in the fuck was that?!?" Then you hear them a second time and you're like, "Oh, hell yes." Like many of my favorite rock bands, Cannibal Corpse boasts multiple songwriters; in the current incarnation, all members except for Fisher—Barrett, guitarist Pat O'Brien, bassist Alex Webster and drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz—are writing, and there's a sense in which they're trying to outdo each other, to see who can achieve the perfect balance of complexity and catchiness. (And let's not forget variety; Evisceration and Torture feature some colossally heavy slow songs—"Evisceration Plague," "Scourge of Iron"—that perfectly complement the uptempo burners.) Not every track succeeds in both respects, but very few songs on any of these three albums feels anything less than ragingly committed.

Watch a feature-length Corpse vid like Global Evisceration and you'll see that what they really are, in the end, is a fan's band. You'll rarely hear from a group that seems to have a better appreciation of the privilege of making a living playing underground music, and along with that appreciation comes a very high personal standard. In Global Evisceration, you'll hear the band talking about set lists, and how they always make an effort to play at least one song from every one of their albums during their headlining gigs. Their records aren't just obligatory merch items; the band is committed to building a quality catalog, both because that's just what long-running bands ought to be doing and because it makes for killer, jukebox-style live shows.

To go back to the Morbid Angel example: It's been a long, slow process, but in the end, I've had to admit to myself that Morbid's 2011 "comeback" effort isn't ultimately a very good album (nor is it total crap either, though!). A cool diversion, maybe, but it says a lot that the band isn't paying it much mind live; when I saw them at Deathfest last month, they were great, but they did not behave like a band that was terribly proud of their newish album. They played two songs from Illud Divinum Insanus, squashed in the middle of what was essentially a greatest-hits set. Cannibal Corpse, it could be argued, simply doesn't have as many "hits" as Morbid does; they didn't produce a trilogy of early albums as world-beating as Altars of Madness, Blessed Are the Sick and Covenant. But if you were to ask me who was the more vital band today, at this very moment, I would say Cannibal Corpse without hesitation. As you can hear on Torture, Cannibal is a band that is as psyched to be crafting straightforwardly fulfilling death metal as their fans are to consume it. And if they're not evolving in immediately obvious ways, they've taken huge steps when it comes to the details. In terms of not only speed and precision, but also re: sheer exhilaration of riff and the ability to bottle that lightning into fully coherent songs—that latter part being, again, the ultimate criteria by which I judge most metal I listen to—I don't think there's a better active-duty extreme-metal band in existence.

Here are five great tracks from the Torture/Evisceration Plague/Kill trifecta. (I hesitate to say they're my "favorites" because there are very few selections on these records that I don't unequivocally love.) I encourage you to buy these albums, because they really benefit from a proper-fidelity listen.

"Intestinal Crank" (Torture):

Key riff sequence begins at :30; it consists of two 5/4 groupings, each with a straightforwardly pounding beginning and a cool flourish at the end. The first time around, that flourish is just a little squiggle, but the second time (listen specifically at :43), it's grotesquely elongated, a writhing, trilling worm of a pattern. (Also, can't beat that five-beat stomp during the intro, a fave device in late-period Cannibal Corpse.)

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"Beheading and Burning" (Evisceration Plague):

Note esp. the irregularly squealing eel of a 9/4 riff that begins at :32. (There's something about the current Corpse guitar method that always gets me thinking along serpentine lines.) The squealing eel comes back in a mutated form around :59 (this time, the riff's in 10/4, I think) and then spirals out into proggy delirium. Some death metal wants to suffocate you, but this style is all about the quick, exacting slice.

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Make Them Suffer (Kill):

A classic Corpse fist-pumper here, maybe the catchiest track of their late period. So many tasty details in the early part of the song, including the drama-heightening guitar break at :28, but what really gets me is the whole breakdown section, which starts in earnest around 1:25. You get this neck-snapping, almost rappish slam riff, followed by the rapidly jostling 1-2-3-4 "Make them suffer!" repeated accent. That sequence returns again after the 2:00 mark, preceded as before by a weird groaning, squiggling variation (around 2:10). From 2:17, it's just head-kick after head-kick, till you're flattened. 

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Rabid (Torture):

These three albums all have gems buried deep within the tracklists. The chugging, filigree-choked pattern that starts around :15 into "Rabid" (the 11th track out of 12 on Torture) makes me deliriously happy. It just. Keeps. Going. Unspooling into total madness. In these riffs, I hear the kind of friendly competition that inevitably arises in a multi-songwriter band. Each composer is constantly on the hunt for the sickest riff, the one that will send the other members, not to mention the listener, reeling. The section is both completely excessive and impossible to forget.

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Scalding Hail (Evisceration Plague):

Nothing too fancy here; just a textbook late-Corpse slammer. But then you get another ecstatic squigglefest around :25 seconds. I love how this band crams so many wrinkles into such a small amount of musical space, and how each one is so starkly audible. Yes, Cannibal Corpse is a technical band, but you'd never describe them as "tech metal." What they really are is a turbocharged thrash band—in the current issue of Decibel magazine, Alex Webster says something to the effect of "If you don't hear Slayer in Cannibal Corpse, you're not listening hard enough"—forever fixated on ingeniously baroque riff serration. You always know they're going to come back around to these patterns, give you another crack at them, and give them another chance to worm their way into your brain.

Vision Festival: NYC North Star

Last night, I caught an extraordinary set by the Darius Jones Quartet at Vision Festival 17, which runs through Sunday at Roulette. (I very much enjoyed what I saw of the Farmers by Nature trio—with Craig Taborn, William Parker and Gerald Cleaver—and Parker's own In Order to Survive quintet, but the Jones band hit me the hardest.) The performance centered on a series of heart-rending ballads. Jones sounded as precise and openhearted as I've ever heard him. Every time I go see him, I'm struck by the care and gravity he puts into each phrase; even if the passage is a delicate one, he gears up, bears down, applies enormous psychic pressure. The notes have a vocal cry—smooth, yet with rasp always threatening to creep in around the edges, like peppered honey—but they're sculpted and purposeful.

The same goes for Jones's suitelike compositions. By "free jazz" standards, they're compact and accessible; they have movement and narrative drive. (The episodic, busy-to-sparse "You Have Me Seeing Red" and the tender "The Enjoli Moon" are two that stuck in my head.) When they work up to a screaming peak, that peak is earned, contextualized. The rest of the band—pianist Matt Mitchell, bassist Trevor Dunn and drummer Ches Smith—sounded really alert and attuned, but each time Jones entered, I felt a different kind of grip on my brain and heart. He's entered a new phase of maturity with this project. Its emotional spectrum is total. (Hear for yourself on Book of Mæ'bul (Another Kind of Sunrise), out now on Aum Fidelity, which celebrated its 15th anniversary at last night's Vision gig.)

As I listened I thought about my history with the Vision Festival, and how I might not have appreciate a set this nuanced and straightforwardly beautiful had I seen it back in 2000, when I first attended the event. (I volunteered at the fest that year, via my DJ-ing gig at WKCR, and I remember a fun afternoon spent folding programs in the company of heavy players like Alan Silva and Mat Maneri.) At that time, I had a real stake in the idea of avant-garde-ness in music. I was looking for a kind of assault, the freer, longer, more difficult and abstract—and often, louder—the better. I remember countless variations on this idea from various Vision Fests: a set by Peter Kowald's trio with drummer Gunter Sommer and a monster of a David S. Ware solo performance at a space above St. Marks Place; the 2 Days in April band with Fred Anderson, Kidd Jordan, William Parker and Hamid Drake at a cavernous venue in Soho (and a variant of that band minus Anderson, plus Henry Grimes many years later); mammoth Bill Dixon and Sam Rivers ensembles at Angel Orensanz; Peter Brötzmann in various settings at Abrons Arts Center last year.

Though my tastes—i.e., exactly what it is I'm looking for when I attend a jazz performance—might have changed somewhat, I treasure all those memories, not to mention the longevity/consistency of the Vision Festival, which has been something like a personal North Star in my NYC concertgoing life. I may have been guilty of taking the fest for granted the past few years. (Talking between sets last night, a friend and I were struck anew by the fact that many people travel from out of town for the event, which has come to seem to us like an everyday neighborhood hang.) Last night, I did my best to appreciate the awesome bounty of this event—for one thing, Roulette might be the ideal Vision venue; the sight lines and sound were about as good as I've ever found them to be at any previous edition—especially the fact that after so many years, it still had new joys to offer. Sure, there was an element of old-guard free-jazz stampede to be found in the In Order to Survive set, but the Jones performance (and in a very different way, the Farmers by Nature set) gave me hope that younger practitioners of what is often called "this music" are looking for ways to shatter the wall of impenetrability that surrounds the subgenre, to retain the gut-busting passion while at the same time putting on a warm, relatable show, one that avoids improvisational bombast, that places a premium on sensitivity and experiment (not just a pat idea of what's "experimental"). On the latter tip, I think of the drowsy impressionist blues that ended the Farmers set—a major surprise to me and, I think, the musicians themselves, and a definite highlight of the evening.

There's little more to say other than this: Check out the Vision Festival over the next few days if you can. (Joe McPhee and Sonny Simmons play tonight, Wednesday.) Go back next year and the year after, even if you think you've got this territory fully mapped. Like any great cultural institution, Vision can grow with you, and you with it.

Goodbye, Big Steeve

In the midst of Deathfest insanity, there was no time to report that the death-metal community lost a beloved innovator a few days ago: Mr. Steeve Hurdle, best known for his work in Quebec's Gorguts (specifically, on the awe-inspiring 1998 album Obscura) and in the spin-off project Negativa. My sincere condolences to his family and friends.

Despite all the amazing work he did during his lifetime (see above; that's Hurdle on the right, playing guitar and singing lead—in that inimitable anguished, sobbing style of his—throughout most of the song; the footage was posted by Hurdle himself, in tribute to Gorguts' then-drummer, Steve MacDonald, who had committed suicide in 2002), I can't help but think of a missed opportunity when I think of Big Steeve, as he was known. A little over two years ago, Steeve was scheduled to perform at the Stone in NYC, both solo and in a duo with Craig Taborn, but he was turned away at the border and the gigs never happened. I'll never forget how bummed I was when I heard the news. I was worried then that I'd never get to see Hurdle perform live (I got into Gorguts only well after he'd left the band and, as far as I know, Negativa never played in the U.S.), and it turned out to be true.

When I had the opportunity to sit down with Craig Taborn last year, I grilled him incessantly about his experiences working with Steeve. The two had met on MySpace, of all "places," and connected in person when Taborn played Montreal with David Binney in the mid-aughts; then Toby Driver of Kayo Dot booked the NYC Hurdle gigs, and Taborn visited Hurdle the week before the show was scheduled to occur. At that point, the two jammed. Taborn described the session to me in an e-mail:

"Steeve and I did not record that day, unfortunately; at the time, we were expecting to play the next week in NYC and I knew that would be recorded. It was fun, though, playing with him, especially [once] we got past the idea that i was a 'jazz' guy and so certain things had to happen a certain way. We fused immediately, maybe more because his way of playing sounded so comfortable to me, because I have really listened to those recordings for hours on end and learned everything, so it felt very home-like to me."

Of Steeve's work with Gorguts, Taborn said:

"Obscura really turned my head around about a lot of things compositionally and in terms of sound. Really a groundbreaking album and still full of secrets for me."

I corresponded briefly with Steeve himself after the Stone cancellation. I couldn't help asking him what he had been planned for his two sets. This was his reply:

From: Steeve Hurdle

Date: February 20, 2010 3:48:12 AM EST

To: Hank Shteamer

Subject: RE: sorry to hear about cancellation

Hello Hank,
sorry about the delay man...


What did i have planned for the stone concert was, an improvisation with Craig, we actually met the week before as Craig had a concert in Ottawa and the day after he just drive to montreal, to my rehearsal place and we had that really good improvised jam together.As for my solo set, i wanted to play the NEGATIVA album, all the songs that are gonna be on our first CD.....Unfortunately, this gonna be for another time...:S


I knew Craig from the internet, we've been writing to each other for the last 4 years.The first time i met him, he was playing, along with Dan Weiss in the David Binney band, back in 2007.


 As you said, Craig is a unique musician,lots of respect for him!


Thanks for writing and hopefully we will have the chance to meet one day...


Steeve

I remember feeling so disappointed and tantalized re: the NYC Hurdle show that never was. Now, it's hard to feel anything but sadness.

Steeve Hurdle's body of work is small but timeless. (It really just comes down to Obscura, an incredible three-song Negativa EP, some live material and early work with the band Purulence; speaking of the latter, anyone know if Hurdle appears in this clip? Hard to tell…) I have no doubt that open-minded listeners will continue to discover it and marvel at it. Hurdle showed me a new frontier in metal, something feverish, hallucinatory, terrifying at times, soul-plumbing, mercilessly extreme. Listening to, say, the excruciatingly drawn-out prog-doom dirge "Clouded" from Obscura (a track on which Hurdle was the sole composer; on much of the album, he collaborated with bandmates Luc Lemay and Steve Cloutier), you could tell that this was an artist who was going to keep pushing and pushing, whether anyone followed him or not. The grotesque array of squiggles, scrapes and squeals that made up Hurdle and Lemay's guitar vocabulary on Obscura and beyond—one of the most insular, unmistakable musical languages I've ever heard— screamed the message that metal was a limitless form of expression.

Whatever I could write here pales next to what you'll see and hear in the Negativa clip below. (Big Steeve is the first person that shows up in the vid, jokingly requesting that the viewer "Be quiet" when entering the studio; he's also the one starting off the song with the insane fretboard tapping.) Innovative technique in the service of unfettered imagination; from-scratch invention of form and content; willing something into being that has never before existed. There is no higher achievement. Genre is irrelevant here. It's simply creativity, and Steeve Hurdle was a master creator. Let us honor his memory.

P.S. Go here for some info on Hurdle's life outside of music.
P.P.S. Invisible Oranges has posted a moving Hurdle tribute by Doug Moore of the band Pyrrhon.

Maryland Deathfest X

 I. Communion

This past Monday afternoon, I returned from Maryland Deathfest X, a four-day metal showcase in downtown Baltimore. I feel completely daunted trying to translate this experience into words. I did contribute text to a slideshow of images by the excellent photographer Josh Sisk (who also took the Morbid Angel pic above and all the photos you'll find below), which you'll find at the Spin site, but there's more I need to say. The fest got to me in a personal way. I'm tempted to allude to that cliché of an experience "awakening feelings one hadn't remembered one had."

I'm not sure that's entirely accurate. Prior to this past weekend, the fact that I loved metal and had for roughly two decades was no secret either to myself or to anyone who might've read my writing. What Deathfest did stir up for me, though, was this deep, primal connection I feel toward the genre, something that goes way beyond "fandom" or "preference" or any of that. I can only describe it as a call that I feel, like I'm being overtaken and compelled by the music, like I'm regressing into a primitive state in which thought is thrown out and volume and impact and gravity and darkness are the only stimulae that matter. I guess it's not that different from what a club-music enthusiast seeks when they hit the dance floor. You want to be overwhelmed.

And I was overwhelmed many times this weekend, in the presence of many, many bands. (I'm not sure exactly how many sets I saw, in full or in part, but it had to have been something like 40.) I don't think I'll ever forget Morbid Angel's headlining set on Saturday. I've blabbed incessantly about this band on DFSBP, so I'll forgo the long version of the story and simply say that Morbid Angel is (a) one of my favorite bands, full stop, and (b) my favorite band in the subgenre of death metal, and that (c) their 1993 album, Covenant, is my favorite metal album of any kind. I've loved them since I was about 15.

Anyway, so I wanted to experience their show from up close—in the pit, as it were. Along with my wife, La'al—my constant companion throughout this metal odyssey and an insanely good sport re: the four straight ten-hour days of standing up, eating shitty food, inhaling way too much second-hand smoke, etc.—I spent much of the weekend avoiding the pit, i.e., standing either to the side or behind or, in some cases, in front of the typically very clearly demarcated area where people deliberately and gleefully kick the shit out of each other as they listen to a band play.  In the case of the Morbid Angel show, though, I wanted to be right up there in the mix, not necessarily to "mosh," but more to just feel that electricity and turbulence that you only get at an extreme-metal (or maybe hardcore) show. I was up there with some new friends that La'al and I made over the weekend, an extremely cool and metal-obsessed couple from Madision, WI, and we were all ready for the insanity, and the insanity did come, as soon as the band kicked into its customary opener, "Immortal Rites" (first track on their first LP, of course). What happens is that you're being completely jostled and squashed from all sides, but these "ground" concerns pale in comparison to the aerial ones, namely the ever-present threat of being kicked in the back, head or neck by a crowd-surfer. Anyone who's ever stood up front at a metal show knows that feeling of being suddenly, unceremoniously landed on. So what you do is, you look back every few moments to make sure a boot isn't headed your way. Sometimes you get lost in the music and you forget to check, and you're punished with another sudden smash. I received one of these on Saturday, which hurt a little more than average because the dude who landed on me just happened to be wearing an enormous spiked armband that dug into my shoulder.

I remember that I got out of the pit soon after that last incident and went to stand with La'al on the sidelines (though not at this particular moment, she was up there with me plenty, especially during Eyehategod's ultra-chaotic Thursday set, which simply could not have been more fun). I thought I was done, that I'd had enough, that I was content to watch and listen and not necessarily to feel the show physically. But then frontman David Vincent announced "Sworn to the Black," one of my favorite songs off Covenant, a badass midtempo steamroller of a song, and I was straight up magnetized right back into the pit. Not being up there wasn't an option. It was like being pulled in by a tractor beam, regressing to a Neanderthal state, that primal mind, the one that wants only loudness, physicality. I remember headbanging in concert with another dude I didn't know. I was where I needed to be at that moment.

Metal can be as high-minded as any other style, but that caveman-izing phenomenon shouldn't be discounted. It's like the music mutates your genetic makeup temporarily, regresses you to a place where merely hearing isn't enough. You want the sonic impact to have a counterpart in the physical world. You want it to kick your ass—"it" being not only the music but the combined force of the others around you who have been likewise caveman-ized. You want to know the music bodily. You want communion.

II. The music

 Confessor live at MDF X
Photos graciously provided by Josh Sisk

Maryland Deathfest is special for one principal reason: the booking. Bands that may have released an album 20 years ago that's become a cult favorite show up at Deathfest and receive a hero's welcome. (I think of a group like Finland's Demigod, covered in the Spin slideshow, who devoted their show to a beloved 1992 full-length, Slumber of Sullen Eyes.) And bands that exist in fans' minds only as a grainy vintage photo on a demo tape (or blog) suddenly materialize in the flesh. (This year, Pentagram, a Chilean death-thrash band—i.e., not the Virginia doom institution—also discussed in the Spin feature, was one of these.) When I think about all the past Deathfests that I've missed, all these once-in-a-lifetime materializations (e.g., a 2006 set by the fantastically out-there Finnish death-metal band Demilich), I get a little sad. For the enthusiast of the metal underground, this event is pretty much unmissable.

Whatever I might have missed at past unattended Deathfests, at least I got to see Confessor this year. DFSBP readers might recall some raving on the subject of Loincloth. Confessor shares a drummer, Steve Shelton, with Loincloth; or, more accurately, Loincloth shares a drummer with Confessor. As anyone who's heard the recent Loincloth LP could tell you, Shelton is as true an original as has ever played the kit. I was fortunate enough to be able to interview him recently for a magazine profile that might not be out for a while; rest assured, I will keep you posted.

Confessor's MDF set, as far as I know, their first in roughly six years (not counting a warm-up gig they played in their hometown of Raleigh, NC, the week before the fest) was the draw that made 2012's Deathfest unmissable for me. I'd had serious designs on MDF in the past, but when I heard that Confessor was playing, I knew I simply had to be there. I first heard the band's debut album, 1991's Condemned, maybe five or six years ago and quickly flipped for it. It enthralls me even more now: unrelentingly knotty doom metal with high, clean, piercing vocals. I know that bands as prominent as Lamb of God have claimed Confessor as an influence, but there's nothing else even remotely like them in the fossil record, as far as I know. They belong to no scene.

As mentioned above, I was on assignment at MDF. So the entire weekend, I did my best to strike a sometimes tricky balance between experiencing the music—bodily, emotionally and even, I'd say, spiritually, as was the case with the aforementioned Morbid Angel set—and processing it journalistically, either via Twitter or my trusty notepads. I didn't worry about the latter during Confessor's Saturday set; I knew that there was a good chance this would be the only time I'd ever see this band perform—even in their early-’90s heyday, they never really toured in the U.S. outside the Southeast—so I wanted to be fully present.

The set was, simply, outstanding. It was such a blessing to be able to hear these songs—every single one, minus a lone track ("Defining Happiness"), from Condemned, plus two from the 2005 follow-up, Unraveled, and an intro riff that according to Steve Shelton dates from the earliest days of the band—up close at a deafening volume. Condemned boasts one of the strangest mixing/production jobs you'll ever hear; it's bone dry, insanely drum-heavy and ultimately kind of thin-sounding. I've grown to love the album's obtuse sonics, but live, the songs just bloomed. I marveled anew at how, despite their obsessive complexity, the band always finds a way to lay back and cruise in their grooves. One of the two guitarists, Brian Shoaf, was wearing a Skynyrd shirt during the set, and while Shelton informed me during our interview that he hates Southern rock, I couldn't help viewing that as a new key to the Confessor aesthetic. They certainly don't flaunt their Southern-ness the way, say, Eyehategod (who floored me with their Thursday set, documented in the Spin slide show) do, but there is a kind of laid-back swagger to their riffing, even at its most mad-scientist techy, that squares with their native region. And while Shelton punishes his kit (especially the toms) he also exudes relaxation while he plays—strange given the tense, OCD nature of his beats.

Another thing that struck me is Confessor's astonishing multivalence. During our conversation, Shelton also mentioned to me the idea that his parts often ran so counter to what the guitarists were playing—completely by design, mind you—that they quickly learned to ignore his drumming entirely when executing the songs. You could really see that live. Bassist Cary Rowells (who also played on all the Loincloth material release to date, but as I understand it, is no longer involved with the project; he currently keeps busy with Parasite Drag, which features Dave Dorsey of the short-lived Confessor spin-off band Fly Machine, whose slim discography was recently reissued by Divebomb Records, who also put out a cool Confessor demo compilation—check out the package deal if you want to buy both) is in a way the heart and soul of Confessor, the relay man who conveys info between Shelton and the guitarists. Shoaf and the other six-stringer (a new face to me but apparently an old friend of the band—unfortunately I didn't jot down his name) seemed to take their cues from him onstage, studiously blocking out Shelton's treacherous syncopation and beat-flipping.

And, as on the records, frontman Scott Jeffreys is in his own world. He knows exactly where to come in—God knows how—and it has to be an act of pure will, the vocal equivalent of muscle memory, because there's nothing intuitive about the way his parts mesh with the music. I know Jeffreys is a sticking point for some, an obstacle to their enjoyment of Confessor, but I've come to truly love what he does. As far as Saturday's show, I was blown away by how undiminished his voice is; he still sounds as pained and expressive as he ever did, not to mention as high. His voice is truly ear-bending. It first hits the ear like a dog whistle would a canine's, but ultimately I find an eerie beauty in it. Like the band as a whole, it sounds like nothing else in metal.

Bonus tracks:

[I prepared the first three blurbs below for the Spin slide show, but they didn't make the final cut. The latter two are new. Again, Josh Sisk has graciously provided his images.]

Negură Bunget

 One of the biggest surprises of Friday's lineup, Negură Bunget made a private ritual chamber out of Sonar's indoor stage. The Romanian black metal band offset its frillier elements (symphonic synths, a pan-flute-assisted invocation, actual singing) with ferocious impact, juggling dynamics as well as any other band at the fest. Frontman Chakravartin was a gracious host—you could tell he was thrilled to be on one of extreme metal's most prestigious stages—and a couldn't-take-your-eyes-off-him lightning rod, projecting a charisma that put some of the more-traditional corpsepainted types of the weekend to shame.

Morbid Saint

 Hailing from the distinctly un-metal-ish burg of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, Morbid Saint delivered one of the fest's most satisfying leather-and-denim blasts, a complete rundown of their fan-favorite 1988 LP, Spectrum of Death. "It has no political message, but it's pretty fuckin' fast," frontman Pat Lind admitted before one track, perfectly summing up the band's M.O.: steroidal, air-tight thrash with snarled vox that sound surprisingly close to black metal's trademark register. In between songs, Lind played the ham ("Are we stalling ’cause we're hot? You betcha!") and tossed Morbid Saint beer koozies and other merch goodies to the adoring crowd. This set was a front-to-back, only-at-MDF blast.

Unsane

 Many seemed a little bewildered by the Yankee-capped New Yawk vibe of this veteran noise-rock trio, but by the time Chris Spencer & Co. kicked into their head-bobbing recent classic "Against the Grain," the crowd was fully on board. Unsane usually seems like the meanest act on any bill, but here, their cathartic tales of urban rot came off as surprisingly tender. The failed-relationship waltz "Decay," from this year's fine Wreck, was a balm to bleeding ears, the closest thing to a ballad we'd hear all weekend.


Morgoth

I owned this band's 1993 album, Odium, for a short while during adolescence, but I'll be damned if I can remember much about what it sounds like. So I was pretty much coming to this MDF set fresh.  It turned out to be one of the more enjoyable gigs of the weekend. These Germans played a death-metal-leaning brand of extreme thrash—a style I associate with At the Gates, though Morgoth's Marc Grewe has a much gruffer vocal style than ATG's Tomas Lindberg—with massive riffs and an infectious rock & roll attitude, the closest thing to an old-school biker vibe that I witnessed at the fest. (For the record, I'm pretty sure much of the material was drawn from ’91's Cursed.) Nothing really out of the ordinary going on here musically, but the energy was great and perfect for an outdoor daytime set.

Ulcerate

 There's been a huge buzz building re: this Auckland band recently. While their records haven't entirely clicked with me yet, their MDF set was badass. They strike me as sort of a more atmospheric update on From Wisdom to Hate–era Gorguts, combining that band's choppy, gritted-teeth technicality—with micro blast-beat passages that leap out briefly rather than just droning along—and spacious atmospherics. They were one of the tightest bands I heard all weekend; there wasn't a lot of variety to what they were throwing down, but I definitely enjoyed it.

It was interesting to note that the room was only about half full during Ulcerate's set; the day they played, Sunday, was dominated by doom, and much of the crowd was outside checking out Church of Misery when Ulcerate was onstage. (I watched a bit of each set, which made for a fascinating juxtaposition.) On the whole, I felt like the more technical acts at this year's MDF—specifically Ulcerate and Confessor—kind of threw the audience for a loop. The more stripped-down, old-school, mosh- and headbangable stuff (e.g., the aforementioned Pentagram) seemed to be what most of the attendees were really hungry for.

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.