5 posts tagged “prog”
Soup was not raised by wolves.
I should probably hate The Sound of Animals Fighting. A pretty large percentage of members and former members have been in a lot of bands I frankly can't stand. Over the years, it's featured members of Saosin, Circa Survive, Chiodos, Rx Bandits, and Finch. It's sort of a mainstream scene-core dude supergroup, if you will.
And thankfully, their new album and
Epitaph debut, The Ocean and the Sun, is
so, so, so much better
than that description makes it sound. This album sounds like what
their last album, Lover, The Lord Has Left Us,
probably should have been. The unnecessarily experimental wank has
been washed away, leaving some pretty cool songs behind. Gone are the
earsplitting chants (well, technically, more like mixed down to a
tolerable level), the unlistenable half-baked experimentation, and
all the other things that made the last album so tedious, and the
line-up has been trimmed down to match, the most notable absence
being that of Chiodos singer, Craig Owens. The line-up of musicians
has been pared down to about half what it was, with the bulk of the
actual performance being carried by the original four-piece lineup.
So what are we left with? The intro track is someone reading a poem in Farsi in a studio. To be honest, I feared the worst when I heard this. Thankfully, instead of putting the chanting and backing vocals way too high in the mix like they would've done on the last album, all the vocals on the title track are beautifully layered. The whole thing sounds almost like something Thievery Corporation would do. The outro features a kinda cool ambient keyboard/spoken word thing that leads into “I, The Swan.” This track has a really cool slithering guitar backbone to it and a kind of downtempo feel contrasted by busy drumming and children providing little spoken word bits that aren't nearly as cheesy as they could be. The loud/soft dynamics on the second half of the song are used economically enough to sound fresh. “Another Leather Lung” takes its cues from OK Computer-era Radiohead right down to the vocals. It's actually not bad, though, despite being something that's been done a million times before. A little bit of The Cure creeps in here and there, providing a kind of cool contrast that I really dig. And then they tear it all apart like The Blood Brothers might have, adding their own touch by dragging it through the streets a little bit before cutting the rope and riding away. The next track, “Cellophane” is kind of boring until the last couple minutes where it builds up into a feedback'd-up guitar solo. The intro to “The Heraldic Beak of the Manufacturer's Medallion” has a cool glitchy sound with some nice key changes going on. After that, it turns into a pretty standard modern post-hardcore sort of thing. The contrast between the slow vocals and the fast music is kind of cool, though. “Uzbekistan” has a really cool keyboard and drum backbone that gives it kind of a frantic, chaotic feel. Bursts of static, butt rock guitar leads, and odd manipulated vocals round it out into one of the best tracks on the album, although it also kind of sticks out by being so different from most of the rest of it. The outro almost reminds me of A Silver Mt. Zion's first album, with spoken vocals slowly overtaking the music (which is appropriate, because they're obviously fans – the last album even featured a track called “Horses in the Sky”). It seems appropriate the the next song, “Blessings Be Yours Mister V” should be more of a straight-up rock song. And it is, and it's kind of faceless up until about a third of the way through where glitchy, mathy guitars take over, and then the whole thing breaks down and gets weird, eventually stopping altogether to make way for harmonized vocals that introduce an almost dancey section with some glitched out drum machine programming going on. “Ahab” is the only interlude actually listed on the back sleeve (there are two others; the intro track, and one entitled “Lude”), and it's a one-minute chunk of static that leads into the delay and reverb drenched intro to “On the Occasion of Wet Snow,” which features tastefully mixed male and female vocals behind a thick wall of sound. Psychedelic guitar leads reminiscent of Built to Spill give this part a pretty cool feel to it. The guitar leads turn into more of a straight-up post-hardcore thing but without much of the hardcore. This is definitely my favorite track on the album, and a pretty good end to it.
There don't appear to be any tour dates coming up or anything, but more info on these guys and where you can get this album can be found at the band's website, of course:
Soup rocks out like Yngwie
I always love getting Sensory Records releases for review. None of them really should be my cup of tea, and they seem to be built around taking everything I personally dislike in metal and making entire albums out of those things. And for some reason I always like them! So I'm going to talk about the two I recently got: When Time Fades by Suspyre (the more “ordinary” of the two), and the soundtrack a Norwegian band, Xystus', new rock opera, Equilibrio. Yes, they sent me the soundtrack to a rock opera. I'm stoked!
I'll talk about the Suspyre release first, since it's the more straightforward of the two. These guys hail from New Jersey, and they definitely have a classically influenced thing going on. I'm not talking just adding some strings or something on a couple songs like some bands do, but this could almost be a classical piece structurally, and really, a lot of the musicianship here has nothing to do with any form of popular or folk music. The musicianship here, as on pretty much all Sensory releases I've heard, is mindblowing. Lots of speed, every note crystal clear and cleanly played. Singer Clay Barton sounds great, with both great range and the ability to sound emotive when he needs to.
There's also a lot of stylistic variation going on here. From straight up power metal, to classically influenced prog metal, from thrashy sections to prog-rock off-time sections, from straight-up clean vocals to robot voices. Pretty much any time signature you could imagine is played in here, and almost anything goes. This is a pretty great release. Fans of bands like Dream Theater or Blind Guardian will probably be into it.
Also, these dudes have a few shows coming up. They're playing ProgPower 2008 in Baarlo, Netherlands. Then they're playing on the Prog Palace radio show in Gaithersburg, Maryland on October 11th. A little farther out, there's the Hellstock Music Festival in Palmetto, Florida, on January 17th of next year. And a little farther out than that, they're playing the Upper East Side Music Festival in New York City on February 28th.
Now onto the next release! It's a collaboration between Norwegian prog rockers, Xystus, and the US Concert Orchestra. As, quite literally, a rock opera, Equilibrio seems awfully elaborate for something by a band I've never heard of. I can't help wondering just how much it cost to put this thing on. This thing sounds like something only the richest bands could have afforded. But then, I really don't know much about putting on theater productions in Norway, and I really have no idea how popular Xystus are outside of the US (they said 4,000 people attended the shows in the liner notes, so they must be at least somewhat popular), so I'm probably dead wrong. The liner notes have pictures of the cast of the production in costume, a group picture of the “over... 130 people” who participated in its making, lyrics, and a picture of the band. So, of course, I'm going into this expecting something completely epic. Like over the top! And, well, these guys deliver!
The opening orchestral section of “Equilibrio Overture” sounds like something from one of the best fantasy video game soundtracks ever. The band themselves come in about halfway through, and really don't do much more than augment what's already there with rock instrumentation. Surprisingly tasteful, and yet, still incredibly over the top.
Of course, the next track, “Act 1, Sc. 1: My Song of Creation” features one of the actors (Simone Simons as the character, Lady Sophia) on vocals over an orchestral backdrop that sounds like something out of the Lord of the Rings movies.
“Act 1, Sc. 3: The Traveller” (sic) starts out by bringing back the theme from the overture, but with a more pronounced rock backing. The vocals this time are courtesy of the band's singer, Bas Dolmans, as Diegu the Traveller.
This leads into “Act 1, Sc. 5: Last Breath” on the album (I guess it should be noted that a lot of scenes appear to have not been included on the CD). This one is more of a rock track. A little more of a chaotic edge is present. The track is a dialog between Diegu and Death (George Oosthoek). Appropriately, Death's vocals are represented by, you guessed it, death growls! And he's pretty good at it, too.
The album kind of goes on like this. I mean, it's a rock opera, that's kind of to be expected. The next track, “Act 1, Sc. 6: Divided We Stand” (yeah, I cringed a bit when I read that title, too) is a dialog between Aveline (Michelle Splietelhof) and Primos (John Vooijs).
Really, I'm pretty sure everyone gets the idea here. This is as much an opera as it is rock, and although the vocal styles are definitely more slanted toward heavy metal styles, and the song structures probably take a lot more from rock, the way the instruments are used – both those of the band and the orchestra they're collaborating with - is both tasteful and yet completely over the top at the same time.
One thing I kind of wish had been included is a story synopsis. Just listening to this, I can get a vague idea of what's going on in any given scene, but the big picture is really unclear from the music alone. I'm sure it would be a lot clearer watching it onstage, but I'm just not getting it here. Regardless, the musicianship is top notch, all the vocalists are quite talented, and at the very least, what you're getting here is a pretty enjoyable listening experience that won't be lost on you if you're into this kind of music.
Unfortunately, it doesn't look like they're actually performing this anymore, and apparently they've just had a backing vocalist onstage to cover all the parts the band can't for smaller scale shows. The next scheduled show for them is a DVD release party, though, at Verkade Fabriek & W2 Concertzaal in North Brabant, Netherlands on January 11th of next year. So if you're in the area, keep a look out for that, 'cause it might be pretty awesome.
And more information about both bands can be found at their official websites, of course:
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These podcasts keeps getting longer and longer! I promise to cut it down next week.
Download #22:
Download this episode (71 min), subscribe over at weheartmusic.mypodcast.com
Some bands/music that we used in the podcast are: Philanastasia, Inga Swearingen, Sal Kimber, Beatnik Turtles, Canvas Solaris, and Ladyhawke.
PART ONE: News topics covered are Michael Jackson goes on secret dates with Pamela Anderson, Guns N Roses wants blogger to "rot in jail", Album leak welcomed by Metallica, Heart Lash Out At McCain Campaign’s Use of “Barracuda”.
PART TWO: Meet the Meat Extender, Alex and Brian talks to us about their punk band.
PART THREE: I originally requested the Music Success book to compare and contrast to The Indie Band Survival Guide, but having read both books, I have to say that these two books are not really in the same league. Both are written for different audiences, and both are worth looking into if you're thinking about promoting your band.
MUSIC SUCCESS IN NINE WEEKS
by Ariel Hyatt
cyberprbook.com
  Music Success in Nine Weeks Book (2008) |
Billed as a "step-by-step guide to supercharging your PR, building your fan base and earning more money," this 2008 book comes in both print and electronic version, and retails for $34.99 (there is no discount for the e-version, the last time I checked).
The book reads like a self-help book and generally is a breeze to get through. On a quiet evening, you can get through this 128-page book in a matter of hours. Don't let the 100+ pages discourage you, if you take away non-essential spacing or "notes" and exercise, I would guess this book is no more than 50 pages of solid reading.
The things I like about this book is that it's very easy to follow and read. No pretentious tones, and it's written through the eyes of Ariel Hyatt, a publicist who's been in the music industry for at least twelve years. Sometime her writing falls too much on the personal side (dealing with her past experiences or mentioning she's married to a blogger), but I sometime think that's part of the charm.
I also liked her money-saving tips, from free website endorsements to doing your own PR work. Writing your own biography and networking seem obvious to me, but if you're new to this, then reading the step-by-step guide is essential.
Like most self-help books, this book really depends on your participation. I would only recommend getting the printed version and following the instructions explicitly, otherwise the book might not work for you.
As an exercise, I did try and apply some of the tips to promoting W♥M: for instance, I will only give out my business card if someone asks what I do (instead of bringing up what I do in conversations). I have also thought about building the email list, which I think might not work for us (since people already subscribe to our RSS feed or via the neighborhood networking)... but I really should be more aggressive in promoting our Twitter which you can subscribe via email or text messages. Ironically, this account was setup by Ryan in the UK and twitter recently dropped their option to text to UK mobiles.
THE INDIE BAND SURVIVAL GUIDE
by Randy Chertkow and Jason Feehan
www.stmartins.com
indiebandsurvivalguide.com
 The Indie Band Survival Guide Book (2008) |
Billed as a "complete manual for the Do-It-Yourself musician", this hefty 300+ book by Randy Chertkow and Jason Feehan, two members of the band Beatnik Turtle, details their experiences and success in this essential guide.
The book is very affordable ($14.95, but obviously you can get it lower online), so there is no excuse to not owning this book. Although it's written for the musician, I think this book can apply to anyone interested in the music industry or work in promotions.
The book is broken into two sections: Get Prepared and Get Fans. The first part focus mostly on your image/branding and web presence, while the second part focused on publicity, distribution and getting booked. Between the two, I felt that the second part is the big hurdle, so you may want to focus more on the first part - which goes into details from picking a searchable band name to your website's content.
The book is very detailed, so as a guide book, which is not necessary cover-to-cover read, I suggest skipping to topics that interests you. You can get lost in all the details, for instance it goes into image color formats (RGB, CMYK, Black and White Line art and Grayscale), which I found very interesting - but might not apply to you.
From a web developer, I liked reading over the band website chapter. They stressed over the 'contact page', from their experience (and mine), that there are many opportunities that present themselves just by making contacting you easier. They also noted that if you're comfortable, you should also include a telephone number, as ABC Family/Disney (aka traditional media) still does business through the telephone. From a promoter's point of view, I can tell you that I have passed over some band because there was simply no way of contacting them.
Other interesting thing I discovered reading the second part (since this is the part that is most unfamiliar to me), that you can actually have your CDs in smaller stores as consignments (where they pay you only after they sold your CD). Even if you don't sell any albums, it works as a small advertisement for you as people will start recognizing your name. It even goes into detail about giving an extra store copy as a promotional device - really great tip.
For emerging bands there is a section to have banter or "stalling banter" prepared, in case you break a string on your guitar. Personally, I have always enjoyed when a band is talkative, and it really does help add to a band's showmanship.
They do admit in the forward that this book is best used by acting and doing, in addition to using the book as an idea or theory. The low cost and invaluable guide, I highly recommend this book to anyone remotely interested in music.
Links:
www.weheartmusic.com news.weheartmusic.com podcast.weheartmusic.com
So the two albums out of the pile I want to talk about today are the prog albums! Hence, the name of this article! Vu sent me The Atomized Dream by Statesboro, Georgia's Canvas Solaris (the way less metal one) and Dark Deceiver by Pleasanton, California's Zero Hour (the way more metal one) to cover. Both have really different sounds, but both kind of fall into a “prog” sort of thing, although in totally different ways. So hey! Even though they'll definitely appeal to different kinds of music fans, I figure that's enough excuse to just talk about both bands in one post!
The first band I want to talk about is Canvas Solaris. These guys remind me of The Fucking Champs, but more technical and less jokey. Apparently at some point in time, these guys were a death metal band. Now they're just strange and awesome prog rock without vocals. The first track, “The Binaural Beat,” focuses on sort of Mega Man-esque electronics with guitars providing a nice flourish to them. The musicianship is awesome, but with an excellent sense of restraint. The second track, “Reflections Carried to the Mirror” has more of a metal vibe to it, but in that really “prog” sort of way, where it sounds like the background music to an awesome 80's video game played through the best sound card money can buy. I love this sort of thing. The breakdown has a really cool vibe to it that I can't quite describe. “Chromatic Dusk” has cool, syncopated percussion and an almost-dance guitar riff going on. The keyboard tone reminds me a little bit of early Boards of Canada. “Patterns Spiral Into Swarm” starts out just sounding like a Fucking Champs song, but then breaks down repeatedly with weird synth parts played over a combination of what sounds like both live and programmed drums. “Heat Distortion Manifest,” on the other hand, just throws ambient synth parts right out there from nearly the beginning with the guitar breaking them up. Eventually it builds up into an awesome divebombing guitar thing. Then halfway through, it breaks down again into ambient territory before not even bothering to really build up, so much as just instantly switch gears in that cool way that only a really tight band can pull off. “Photovoltaic” is one of the longer songs on the album. It starts off with a kinda chilled out acoustic guitar/piano/drums thing and then almost dead on, halfway through the song, the distortion kicks in and it gets louder. The flanger effect is pretty cool, as is that cool fast bass riff in there. The last couple minutes are more straightforward, with plenty of weird rhythms, but also a lot of that “I'm playing Mega Man!” vibe. The next track, “Solar Droid,” is all about the glitchy rhythms and crazy guitar work, sort of in the vein of early Dillinger Escape Plan, in that there's not a lot of obvious repetition. The last track is the longest. “The Unknowable and Defeating Glow” starts off with what sounds like hand drums and an electric guitar playing a repetitive lead bit while the synth builds up under it. This track is pretty much what the rest of the album seems to have been building up to. It's epic as hell, with lots of cool synth effects, glitchy rhythms, and progressively louder and longer chaotic bits breaking them up. This track is awesome.
Unfortunately,
it doesn't look like these guys are on tour. But I would definitely
recommend checking them out if you're into things like Dillinger
Escape Plan, The Fucking Champs, Mr. Bungle, or things along those
lines. You can also go check out the samples on their MySpace page.
Secondly, Dark Deceiver. Based on the cover art, I didn't really think I'd be into this at all, and even though it's really not the kind of thing I'm really into, I have to give these guys props for the sheer technicality of this thing. This is a good thing. This is on the heavier end of prog-metal, with lots of distortion, thrashy but complex riffing, and a vocalist that reminds me a lot of Dio when he lets it fly. This guy's range is actually pretty awesome. The drumming is really heavy on double bass. Really, half or more of this album probably has fast double-bass going under it. The first track, “Power to Believe,” alone has more time changes and guitar solos than some entire albums. But, of course, it's prog-metal, so that just kind of comes with the territory. The title track, “Dark Deceiver” has some really “prog” vocals going on. Most listeners will either find them hilarious, or be able to at least appreciate the technicality of them. I don't know how much in-between there is for something like this. The guitar on this song is just insane shred. These guys definitely have their technical skills down, and this album seems to be all about them. The next track, “Inner Spirit” takes a good two minutes for the vocals to come in, but it's a twelve minute song, so that's kind of excusable. It kind of has a De-Loused in the Comatorium vibe in a few places. After that are a couple shorter tracks. A welcome breather. This album is pretty well sequenced. “Resurrection” is a kind of slowed down track. It's still pretty damn fast, but for this album, it's a “slow” track. The guitar riffs are cool, and kind of snake around each other in an oddly enthralling way. “Tendonitis” is also pretty short, and I'd assume named after the consequences of recording this thing. It's also got a silly-ass little sample at the beginning and end that makes me thankful these guys aren't taking themselves too seriously. “The Temple Within,” at this point, is the longest track left on the album. It's full of strange tempos that would probably make most bands' heads spin. Kind of like the whole album, really, but they're particularly strange here. “Lies is a shorter track. It's more straightforward than most of the other stuff here. Definitely not one of the album's stronger tracks. “The Passion of Words” makes up for it, though, with more of that rhythmic complexity that makes this band so cool. The last track, “Severed Angel,” opens with a quiet ambient noise bit that builds up with blast beats getting progressively louder before everything else comes in and just kinda starts playing along with it. It's the second shortest track on the album, and to be honest, it doesn't really go anywhere. It just keeps doing that for two and a half minutes, before going into something that sounds like an intro, and then back into blastbeats. An odd ending for the album, for sure.
Anyway, the album is out now, and these guys have a couple live shows coming up. On July 12th, they're playing the South Texas Metal Fest. Then in October, they're heading to Baarlo, Netherlands for Prog Power Europe on the 4th, and they're playing shows on October 31st and November 1st in Copenhagen at the Rock for Prog Power Scandinavia. If you like your music fast, heavy, and technical, these guys might be up your alley. And, of course, they have a MySpace page you can check out.
-Soup
Zambia's Witch is a really awesome recent discovery of mine. I recently found myself bored with newer music, and of course, moods like that usually lead to explorations of music in the past. I was looking through some blogs, and happened upon an article on these guys. There's really not a lot to even prove this band existed, aside from a single LP, entitled Lazy Bones!!, which came out as a private pressing by a small, local label in 1975. The band is a 5-piece, featuring a slight Afro-rock vibe buried under garage rock rhythm guitars and progressive psychedelic experimentation. The vocals are in English, but don't sound as bad as foreign dudes with thick accents singing in English usually do.
Highlights include the opening track, “Black Tears,” with a slow, proggy, opening riff and solid vocal harmonies throughout, “Motherless Child,” which is based around a cool garage rock riff, some awesome, syncopated drumming, and lots of fuzz and wah on the lead guitar, and “October Night,” with its sweet wah-soaked intro riff, and some of the most soul-influenced sound on the entire record.
The recording, for obvious reasons, is pretty raw, having been recorded for a small label in the mid-70's in Zambia, and more or less forgotten and un-remastered. In fact, it's a wonder any of it survived as well as it has. And I'm pretty glad it has.
-Soup
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