Megadeth, "Foreclosure of a Dream"

By Dave

Hi Folks,

It's been a while, I've been busy working on my own musical mayhem and trying to be a bit more social... trying.... Anyway, today I'm finally getting around to writing up my favorite metal song of all time. I'm talking about “Foreclosure of A Dream” by Megadeth. Yes, I know Dave Mustaine is right up there with Geddy Lee in the halls of the most obnoxious voices in rock. However, his lyrical material has always stood out to me as being emotionally honest, politically aware, and articulate.

Let’s start with the first verse of the above mentioned song as a good example-

Rise so high, yet so far to fall

A plan of dignity and balance for all

Political breakthrough, euphoria's high

More borrowed money, more borrowed time

Backed in a corner, caught up in the race

Means to an end ended in disgrace

Perspective is lost in the spirit of the chase

In a few short phrases Dave, in my humble opinion, nailed down the manipulation, greed, reckless speculation, and political polarization that has characterized American economics and politics for the last thirty years. It is a multi-dimensional statement, not silly, empty headed sloganeering a’ la Rage Against the Machine or pretentious, preachy, intellectualism a’ la Bad Religion. I hear in these words a straightforward observation of political action and public reaction. Let’s move on to the chorus-

Foreclosure of a Dream,

Those Visions never seen,

Until all is lost,

Personal Holocaust,

Foreclosure of a Dream,

I post these lyrics thinking about how they resonate directly with the economic meltdown that has unfolded in the last couple years (the song was released in 1992). To me it highlights America's inability to learn from, and it’s indifference towards, the lessons of history. On to the next verse-

Barren land that once filled a need,

Are worthless now, dead without a deed,

Slipping away in an iron grip,

Natures scales are forced to tip,

The heartland cries, loss of all pride,

To leave ain't believing, so try and be tried,

Insufficient funds, insanity and suicide,

Mustaine continues, giving us a vision of Middle America as barren and lifeless after the loss of the family farm. It brings to mind the age of the great dust bowl and the environmental damage it wreaked in its time. The last line brings to mind the power of money, materialism, and the destructive impact it has on people who are found to be “economically unviable.”

This next section is my favorite part of the song, not only does the song present a problem; it also offers hope, and the possibility of a solution.

Now with new hope some will be proud,

This is no hoax no one pushed out,

Receive a reprieve and be a pioneer,

Break new ground of a new frontier,

New ideas will surely get by

No deed, or dividend Some may ask why,

You'll find the solution the answers in the sky,

I think the statements made here are crystal clear, and that is a big part of what I love about this song. A long haired, bullet belt wearing, crew of goofballs wrote a refined, mature political statement in this song on par with anything written by icons like John Lennon or Bob Dylan. The power of technology has empowered the average citizen in uncountable ways through the course of history and will hopefully continue onward down this path into the future.

As far as the music is concerned it is solid, focused and to the point. There are a couple short tasteful solos that add a bit of flavor to the song, but no extended over the top noodling, extended intros, or brutal mosh breakdowns. The riffs are solid and memorable and there are some nice musical transitions, but this isn't the flashy technical guitar-fest Megadeth is usually known for. This is simply an excellently played, well-crafted song, that to me, makes a powerful, mature statement about modern American politics.

RICK SPRINGFIELD, Working Class Dog (RCA, 1981)

By Class Warrior


When I was a wee lad, my mom stayed at home with my two siblings and me. I don't know how my mom and dad supported themselves and three kids on my dad's modest income, but somehow they did. I guess living in a single-wide trailer and eating lots of goulash (shudder) and tuna casserole (double shudder) cuts down on expenses. I can still taste that awful casserole if I close my eyes. Lots of hand-me-down clothing and shopping at second-hand stores and yard sales kept us dressed and furnished. And there was plenty of government cheese. God bless you, Reagan, for the yellow-dyed bounty.

I'm getting sidetracked. Mom started working outside the house as a motel housekeeper in about 1985 or so, but until then, she was a big fan of soap operas. All My Children and The Young and the Restless were two that she watched daily, but her favorite was General Hospital. Because she watched them, I watched them too. Most of the time, anyway. I recall that a new character came on to the show in 1981. He played a doctor or something. Mom thought he was great, then she informed me that he was a singer as well, and that he had an album out called Working Class Dog. Mom didn't buy the album, so I didn't think about it too much. As you can probably guess, this actor was none other than RICK SPRINGFIELD! I always liked "Jessie's Girl" and anything else I heard by him when I was young, but I didn't buy any of his albums. I missed his 1984 movie Hard to Hold. By the time I started to buy records, my tastes had changed radically away from top 40 stuff to hardcore punk. Fast forward.

Now it's 1999 and I'm living in St. Louis, Missouri. I spent my time trying to organize low-income tenants receiving federal housing subsidies (i.e., Section 8 assistance) into tenant unions. At the time, there was a big public-private relationship between Housing and Urban Development and apartment building owners - HUD subsidized tenants' rent if the owner reserved the apartments for qualified people. The contracts between the government and owners were starting to lapse, and activists saw what was going to happen - big real estate corporations were going to buy the buildings (if they didn't own them already), evict the low-income tenants, and turn the units into condos or upscale apartments. I was part of the effort to get people organized to fight against this. I was a terrible organizer, by the way. I was so shy at that point in my life that I just hid in the bathroom (a recurring theme in my life - I'm sure I'll end up there again) or read a book in the park because I couldn't face the tenants and talk to them. If management had found me in there, they would have escorted me from the premises. Too much risk of confrontation for good old Class Warrior.

During this period, I noticed that RICK SPRINGFIELD was going to play in St. Louis at a venue very close to where I lived. The ticket price was reasonable - RICK didn't command top dollar in 1999. I forgot to mention that I was an Americorps volunteer at the time, so I had almost no money. It's an interesting position, if you think about it. I was being paid by the federal government to organize beneficiaries of a federal government program, but I could have gotten arrested for trespassing at a federally subsidized housing complex! Funny. Anyway, I thought about going to see RICK. I weighed the costs of going to the benefits of how much I would rock out. I decided that it wasn't worth it. I was too punk at the time to pay money to see a mere pop performer. There are a few decisions I regret more in my life, but not many. This ranks up there with not seeing the Ramones when they were alive or missing a free fucking Eddie Money concert last year. (Fuck, I'm still pissed about that one. Eddie Fucking Money for free! Fuck! But I digress.) It was only a couple of months later that I realized the magnitude of my error. I turned on the radio and heard "I've Done Everything for You" for the first time in over a decade and was totally blown away. What a great song! Punk rock's influence on power pop and pop rock is crystal clear in this song - big guitars, no-frills drumming, and a great melody. If you substituted lyrics about alienation or fucking shit up for the standard love poem contained in the song, you would have punk rock. The song had such an effect on me that I remember exactly where I was when it was playing. After the song finished, I kicked myself (figuratively, not literally, as I was sitting in a car seat) and promised myself never again would I fail to rock out when I got the chance. I have violated that promise a few times, but generally I've held to its spirit. If it weren't for RICK SPRINGFIELD, I would be a real estate agent or something.

Working Class Dog is a tour de force of teenage-level love and despair over lack of love and/or loving the wrong person. RICK was over thirty when he released this album, but it's clear that he remembered how love-obsessed teens are, and he rode it to great success at the time. Each song (with a couple of exceptions) has energy, which comes from building tension or just plain guitar-driven rocking. Everyone knows "Jessie's Girl" and "I've Done Everything for You", so let's put those aside. The first track "Love Is Alright Tonite" rocks hard and features some scandalous lyrics (see below). "Hole in my Heart", a slow song, has some of RICK's best singing on the entire album. "Everybody's Girl" and "Daddy's Pearl" are very strong rockin' numbers that could have been hit singles. "Carry Me Away" and "The Light of Love" aren't as listenable as the others, but still bounce along at a good clip. You could do worse.

When listening to this album, note the subversive nature of the lyrics. RICK is out to not only have a good time, but also to turn your children into love-making, heart breaking, id-driven beasts from Hell. Check out this line from the otherwise tame ballad "Hole in My Heart": "You're keeping an eye on the horizon, looking over your shoulder / Must be some demon driving you". Woah, a demon! How'd that get in there? He's no Morbid Angel or GG Allin, but keep in mind that millions of teens bought this album and heard this line. It got more than a few kids thinking about Satanism, I'd wager! Here's one from the opening song "Love Is Alright Tonite": "With the night comes the feeling that I've got this incredible power." Warlocks, werewolves, and vampires have increased power at night - so do demons! That may be how they do things in Australia, RICK, but not in the US of A! Or how about this line from "I Get Excited", which is on his subsequent album Success Hasn't Spoiled Me Yet: "The fire's ignited down below, it's burnin' bright!" Is he talking about his nether regions or the Nether Regions? Either way, it's a guaranteed youth corrupter. These double entendres have a way of changing people's behavior in un-American ways.

The last two songs, "Red Hot and Blue Love" and "Inside Silvia", are horrible. Inexcusably bad. If you listen to these songs, you'll want to kill RICK. I just pretend they don't exist. If I had this album on vinyl I'd scratch them out with a rusty nail or something. They keep the album from reaching Get the Knack, Bad Religion-Suffer, or Ramones s/t levels.

Working Class Dog earns nine out of ten skinny ties. If you count the dog on the album cover and the small picture of RICK in the dog's shirt pocket, I suppose the album has eleven skinny ties. The last two songs are bad, but they're the last two. All you have to do is stop listening after "Daddy's Pearl" and you'll be fine.

OFF!, First Four EPs (Vice 2010)

By NULL

To start this short review, I will simply give a few facts.

This is who OFF! be:

Keith Morris (early Black Flag / Circle Jerks) - Vocals

Dimitri Coats (Burning Brides) - Guitar

Steven McDonald (Redd Kross) - Bass

Mario Rubalcaba (Hot Snakes / Rocket From the Crypt) - Drums

  

As the title states, this is a collection of the first four vinyl EPs released by OFF! in 2010. 

 Not one of the these 16 tracks exceeds two minutes.

At 55 yrs old, Keith Morris and the boys have returned to show the MTV-PEPSI GENERATION-MALL RAT- FUCK-TWATS WHAT PUNK ROCK IS ALL ABOUT.

When I first put this CD on, I was filled with utter joy and happiness. It is a very welcome reminder that I am not alone; it restores my anger (motivated by love), and fills me with a humanity that TV, corporate entertainment, frequent encounters with moronic, thoughtless assumptions that are whispered and expounded around me on an almost daily basis. To me, this has always been the affect and purpose of thoughtful punk rock. However, though this is an “old-school-classic-early-80s style” of punk rock; it is not simply a nostalgia trip. This music is relevant, and sits perfectly in its time and place. Social consciousness is not a fad but a life long struggle despite what the editors of Rolling Stone magazine may want you to believe.

The passion and frustration erupts in leaps and bounds from this short and beautiful record. The lyrics are a little hard to grasp on the first go round, but when they start to sink in, the record just gets better and better. In the first track Keith screams “what the fuck!” as he ponders why his mind is filled with “Black Thoughts.”  Later, during, “I Don’t Belong” Keith sings of our society being, “drunk on hypocrisy…right-wing mentality, god and democracy, rep carpet loyalty” as he is “standing in the shadows and pissing in the punch bowl,” which immediately brings to mind the brilliant Chumbawumba song “When High Society Sits Down To Dine” from the album Un, in which they sing,  “When fine society sits down to dine, remember that someone is pissing in the wine, Pissing in the wine, pissing in the wine.” Ahh, it feels good to be among my people. 

By the time the 4^th track starts, the music is so energetic and catchy I come really close to “po-going” out the fucking window. We are barely four minutes into the goddamn record, as the singer addresses the question you may be asking at this point, “You wonder why I’m always  SCREAMING, you wonder why I talk so LOUD,…you wonder why I’m always SHOUTING, you wonder why I’ve gotta YELL - Cause you turned this into a living hell!” The world is definitely “Upside Down.”

Later, in “Poison City” we learn of the of “Toilets clogged with Blackwater,” an obvious reference to the war contractors in Iraq. However, is he singing about Iraq or Los Angeles? The gap becomes smaller every day.

     
In “Now I’m Pissed” we hear about the system “building a better tomorrow for us, but the money’s not there,” then he asks “Who’s in charge? Who’s running this zoo?” He then reaches into his pockets to pay the rent, and finds only lint. The song ends with the singer shouting, ”Now, I’m Pissed.” Is it a warning or a call to arms as the populous begins to understand that they are constantly getting fucked; in all the dreams and promises of our great nation the hard reality is home foreclosures and unemployment as our benevolent leader is handed the Nobel Peace Prize. Which leads us into the track “Killing Away,” which feels like a sequel to the Circle Jerks’ “Killing for Jesus” and “Making The Bombs,” in which we, “Keep on repeating the Past!” 

There are also more personal songs like “Panic Attack.” In an interview, Keith talked about this song, he said it was inspired by the fact that at his age he finds himself waking up in the middle of the night in a panic, thinking “Why am I here!?” I guess some demons never die. He even has a great little song about his place and history in punk rock, it's kinda sweet. 

I won’t go through every track on the album. In the time it has taken you to read this review the album is already half over. I will reiterate that this is one of the greatest records I have heard this year, and I am sure it will show up on my “best of 2011” list. I just can’t get enough of it. And sure, Keith Morris has never been a great poet but he has often had important things to say in a very direct way, in fact, some of the songs on this album have very minimal lyrics, but that only makes them more powerful. Even though there is a lot of anger on the record and even a great song called “Fuck People” -  it is like all great punk rock - a humanizing effort. And I apologize for not speaking much of the other members of the band who I am fairly unfamiliar with, but let it be known, the band knows exactly what it is doing, and executes super catchy and energetic punk rock as good as any I have ever heard.  And thankfully, it is not over-produced!

If you feel a need to pop the painful zit of our diseased society, then pop that fucker with this brilliant album! It is wonderful reminder that makes my heart glow with the brotherhood and sisterhood of humanity; it reminds us that the common realities of our lives such as poverty, corporate control, dehumanization, and war are not to be accepted as part of our lives, but that they remain and have always been un-fucking-acceptable.

 The only negative criticism I have of the release is that there are only lyrics to five songs in the booklet. I am still having a hard time figuring out a few lines but hopefully they will come to me as I embark on my 160^th listen. I love this record.

Tom Robinson Band, Power in the Darkness (EMI, 1978)

By Class Warrior


I am a public employee and a union member in the state of Wisconsin. I realize that this admission tells everyone out there where I am, but good luck finding out who "Class Warrior" is. I'm sure all of you know what's going on here. The cuts to our pensions and insurance hurt a lot, especially for someone who is trying to pay off a mortgage (what kind of class warrior has a retirement account and a mortgage payment?). The biggest sticking point for my brothers and sisters, however, is the curtailment of bargaining rights. Putting aside for the moment that union activity should go well beyond collective bargaining and donating to democrats, it's still an important right to have. We are in danger of losing these rights that we earned through years of effort, years of blood and struggle, because capitalists have been winning the class war.

Now we have proto-Fascists like Scott Walker trying to break unions once and for all. It doesn't work that way, you son of a bitch. Last Saturday, over 100,000 people were in Madison to protest this wanker's attempts to take away what we have earned. (I wanted to go, but it's a long drive for me - Mrs. Warrior was worried that the little Warrior would have an emergency or something while I was gone.) Walker's bill may pass, but he will pay a heavy price. Fuckin' prick.

Why bring up all of this in a music review? Because I love protest songs, and events like the one I'm living through make we want to listen to as much of it as I can! Tom Robinson Band's (henceforth TRB) first album is full of great left-wing political rock. This album came out in 1978 at the height of first wave punk's popularity, but it wasn't a punk album. TRB's sound falls somewhere between punk and pub rock with a big dash of 70s keyboard-powered funk (especially on the title track). Most of the time the keyboard (set to "organ" most of the time) fades into the background, but one notices it on all the songs. Otherwise, the music is the guitar-heavy stuff you'd expect someone inspired by the seventies punk scene would produce.

The lyrics are outstanding. Some people believe that politics and music should not mix, but some people are idiots. Tom Robinson writes the kind of lyrics that I love to hear. I wish I would hear them more often from other groups. Direct and powerful- there's nothing subtle here that requires figuring out. With song titles like "Up Against the Wall" and "Better Decide Which Side You're On", you know what you're getting. TRB includes some songs about driving ("Grey Cortina" and the classic "2-4-6-8 Motorway"), but most of them are uncompromising radical diatribes. Robinson sings about gay rights, class oppression, race politics, hatred for Thatcher and the Tories, youth rebellion, and many similar topics. If you don't sympathize with their political stance, you're not going to like this record!

My favorite song on this album is the title track "Power in the Darkness". This is the kinda funky danceable one. It has a strong bass line and the omnipresent organ laying down a groove for the guitar and Robinson's voice. He sings of freedom for all in a time of despair (hmm, sounds familiar...). The best part is a spoken word piece toward the end where Robinson plays the part of a conservative demanding freedom from certain elements of society:
"Freedom from the Reds and the Blacks and the criminals,
Prostitutes, pansies, and punks;
Football hooligans, juvenile delinquents,
Lesbians and left wing scum!
Freedom from the niggers and the Pakis and the unions,
Freedom from the Gypsies and the Jews;
Freedom from the long-haired layabouts and students,
Freedom from the likes of YOU!"

I love that part. It makes my spine tingle.

I listen to this album when I need a lift. When my will is low, when my spirits are flagging, TRB's songs rock me hard and the lyrics give me a good boot to the ass.

Power in the Darkness made me tickle my taint for eight minutes. More importantly, it lets me know that I'm not alone in the struggle for equality for all. Pay attention, plutocrats and would-be dictators - events in Wisconsin, revolutions in Egypt and other middle East countries, and continuing social change in Central and South America are the beginnings of a worldwide movement. You can't wish it away. We're going to win.

Some people think Power in the Darkness is too heavy on the sloganeering. If you agree, here are some slogans for you:

An injury to one is an injury to all.

The working class and Scott Walker have nothing in common.

No war but class war!

From each according to ability, to each according to need.

Now in Spanish (with apologies for lack of accent marks and upside down exclamation points):

La lucha continua!

El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido!

Venceremos!

p.s. Fuck Scott Walker!

Celtic Frost, Cold Lake (Noise International, 1988)

By Jimmy “Explosive Diarrhea” B.

In 1988, I stood around with a group of young men listening to a cassette tape of Celtic Frost’s newest album, Cold Lake. The music blared from poorly wired Mustang, or was it Kraco, speakers from the back seat of a rust-colored wannabe muscle car, held together by duct tape, wire and love. We were appalled by what we were hearing. Celtic Frost sold out! They went from an underground band with sweet (by sweet, I mean nasty and grungy) songs like “Crypts of Rays” to getting MTV airtime with “Cherry Orchards.” Like many idealistic young men, we demanded our music be as rebellious, free, and hard as we were. I absorbed barbs and questions about my manhood from my friends for purchasing such a disgustingly mainstream cassette. We loaded up our gear and headed off for a night of sucking sawdust and inhaling forklift exhaust fumes in a sawmill where we pulled boards off the green chain for $4.00 per hour. For you city folk and residents of the plains, a green chain is a set of long chains running parallel to each other, about three feet apart, with hooks set in them; they deliver boards from the drop saws that cut them to length to the workers who separate them and stack them in bins.

Actually, I had been promoted off the green chain a month earlier. Now, I had the prestigious job of tallyman. I bound the lumber for transport, kept track of the total number of board feet produced, and decided where in the yard the lumber was stored. I also helped measure the uncut logs to determine how little the loggers would be paid for their labor. I accepted the bump because I believed it would be easier than stacking boards. It wasn’t. This was the job that made me decide to go to college.

A typical night on the job was split between several duties. First, and most important, I had to watch for signals from the guys on the green chain. You couldn’t hear shit in the mill, except the zip, zip of the drop saw, the squeak of the chain, and the continuous roar of the planer. Each board stacker was responsible for filling two bins, so when one was full it had to be emptied immediately – a board stacker with two full bins would get hopelessly behind, and might have to work through his break to get caught up. The stackers waved, jumped up and down, and sometimes threw wood at me to get me to come over and push the bin out to the middle of the mill floor, and bind it with metal strapping so the forklift could take it out to the yard. This was my least favorite duty. The bins with the fourteen foot boards were fucking heavy, and I had to use every bit of strength I had to move them. Second, I jotted down on a clipboard the invoice number I had just stapled to the lumber, and record in a ledger the length of the boards. Then, I had to run - there was seldom time to walk - outside and stack the dunnage (small three foot long slats used to separate the lumber being run through the planer). But every few minutes I stuck my head back in the mill to see if any bins needed to be emptied.

The fucking green chain determined my every movement. I wanted to go take a piss, but the green chained whispered, “not yet, not yet” in its squeaky metallic voice. I wanted to drink, but just as I reached for my cooler, a board end would land nearby thrown by one of my asshole friends alerting me to a full bin. The green chain not only controlled my working life, it also took over my non-working hours. When I got off work, I was exhausted. I spent all week looking forward to the weekend, and all weekend dreading going to work. Life had to be crammed into a forty-eight hour period at the end of each week.

My life belonged to the green chain. My bodily movements were directed by machinery and management. Neither I nor my comrades determined which type, or how much lumber would be produced. I contributed to the production of a product that didn’t belong to me, but I very much belonged to it. Rebellious young men my arse, we, like the green chain itself, were tools of the fat cats’ quest for profit. Luckily, we could turn to our heavy metal heroes for support, and an easing of our alienation.

In the late 80s Celtic Frost was gaining in popularity; they had a global fan base, drew big crowds, and were perhaps one album away from signing with a major label. But, like 99 percent of bands they were fucked financially. Things got so bad that their road crew, tired of not getting paid, held the bands equipment hostage until they received paychecks. Added to the financial difficulty, the band members were feuding. As if this wasn’t bad enough, Thomas Gabriel Fischer, a.k.a Thomas Warrior was locked in a legal battle with Frost’s label, Noise Records. In 1987, sick of the struggle, the band called it quits.

In short order, Warrior, at the urging of Coroner guitarist, Oliver Amberg, and producer, Tony Platt, re-formed the band with all new members. Platt, by the way, might be known to you Iron Maiden fans for pissing off Steve Harris, for pushing the band to record their one sell out song, “Women in Uniform.”

Warrior, sick of the struggle to earn a living, surrendered, and left control of the Cold Lake material in the hands of, Amberg and Platt. He believed the inclusion of Platt, would push the band out of the metal underground. Platt, a high-dollar producer, was so expensive that the album had to be commercial to get greater U.S. album sales to pay for his services.

Cold Lake was very much an album recorded under the pressure and necessity of earning a profit. To do this, creativity was shoved aside. Celtic Frost took up its position on the green chain to be prodded and maneuvered toward a bin full of glam metal shit. Warrior has the following to say about the Cold Lake record (click on the hyperlink to read the entire interview):

Cold Lake is the absolute lower limit of whatever can come from my mind. So there it is, at least one positive thing that can come from it. It’s probably the worst album ever created in heavy music. I’m not saying that to be cynical. This is my honest opinion. I have to live with this… It is an utter piece of shit, and that’s not crass enough to describe it.

As a nineteen year old in 1988, I had a small view of the world, a view I am now battling. I expected my heroes to be not only bigger than life, but be above the drudgeries of life so many of us experience. How fucking naïve. Why should we expect that rock-and-roll figures are totally independent in their artistic endeavors? These men and women are shackled to the capitalist green chain just like the rest of us.

So how is the record? It’s not nearly as bad as I remember.

Old Corpse Road, The Bones Of This Land Are Not Speechless/The Meads Of Asphodel - English Black Punk Metal (Godreah Records, 2010)

By Jimmy "Explosive Diarrhea" B.

If you read this blog regularly, you may have noticed that I tend to write reviews of music from the 80s. It was in the decade of Ronald Reagan, big hair (fuck, I miss big hair!), and MTV that I cut my musical teeth. In that sometimes terrible, sometimes wonderful decade, I went from a young boy to a young man, and my musical tastes migrated from The Eagles and Styx in the first part of the decade to Metallica, Exciter and Metal Church by its closing. Everyone’s life, I believe, has a soundtrack. Events, places, time, and emotions are tied together with music. For example, on an immensely silly night in 1987, I got drunk for the first time with Plainzero while listening to Black Sabbath’s Paranoid, which was also a first. When I hear songs like Paranoid, or War Pigs, I can smell the froth of Budweiser tallboys and see the illumination coming from the dashboard of Plainzero’s Gran Torino.  How can music from other decades compare to this kind of sentimentality? 

I am about to take a bold step, two bold steps actually. First, I will review an album that has only been available for a few months, second, I will write the review while listening to the album for the very first time. Reviewing the album this way presents some problems; first, it may be unfair to the artist(s), since I will be forming opinions based on a single listen - many musical intricacies will be missed - some albums require multiple listens to allow the listener time to adapt to the artist’s style (See Null’s Evisceration Plague review for an example of this).  Second, most sentiment has been removed, very little happened between my mailbox and my CD player. I say “most sentiment” because The Meads of Asphodel (hereafter referred to as The Meads) are already part of the soundtrack of my life.  The pages, paragraphs, and words that follow are merely the notes I took while listening to the CD, and are not meant to be viewed as a properly constructed or well thought out music review. Take a minute and get comfortable, while I remove the cellophane…  

The album cover is typical for The Meads of Asphodel; it portrays a battle scene. The cover is an interpretation of David’s victory over Goliath. The cover seems apt, since The Meads are an established band, albeit in the metal underground. They are, in my opinion, a powerful force to be reckoned with, much like the biblical Goliath.  Old Corpse Road (David) is a new comer in danger of getting overwhelmed by The Meads. Will Old Corpse Road conquer The Meads of Asphodel? Let’s find out together.

Old Corpse Road - The Bones of this Land are not Speechless

Before hitting the play button on my CD player, I read the lyrics, and Old Corpse Road can fucking write. All three songs are based on old English folktales of witches and demons. There is nothing original about this material in metal, but I am stunned at how well and how poetic the songs are written. There are none of the lame rhyme schemes we see in so much popular music. Each new stanza introduces a new action or provides us some psychological glimpse into the mind of the characters. It may be too soon to pile on this kind of praise, but Old Corpse Road’s lyrics put them in the upper echelon of metal lyricists.

The first song, "Hob Headless Rises", opens with a bit of keyboard and a fast black metal riff. The singer alternates between a screech and a growl. The song slows down into a bit of guitar plucking and piano, the vocals settle momentarily into a Gaelic folk cadence, before the whole thing blows up again into pure black metal noise.

There were some interesting moments in track one. I enjoyed the smooth timing changes, but was irritated by the overuse of keyboards.

Next up is "The Devil’s Footprint." The song starts with a nice guitar melody with clean and whispered vocals, but the cookie monster and screeching vocals start again. The melody and groove the band was establishing is quickly extinguished as the band again overuses keyboards.  I suspect Old Corpse Road have been influenced by Borknagar.  I am entirely dissatisfied with this song. The clean vocals were a welcome addition, while they lasted. Much of the vocals were in the form of screeching, and the overuse of keyboards is really starting to annoy me. Overall, this rather ridiculous song is fatiguing to the ear.

The last Old Corpse Road song is "The Witch and the Wookey Hole," which sounds dirty. What the fuck is a Wookey hole, and what did the witch do with it (or to it)? Holy Shit! This song starts out balls to the fucking wall. The drumming is in double time, the screeching vocals actually work here, and the ever present keyboards don’t feel as dominant or as out of place as they did in the other two songs. Oops, I spoke too soon, the aggression slowed down and the keyboards took over again. Fuck! These guys cannot seem to keep a groove going for more than thirty seconds without fucking it up. 

"The Witch and the Wookey Hole" is Old Corpse Road’s best song on the split. The ending is cool. Near the end of the song we get a glimpse of what this band can do; the arrangement improved. We hear a group of monks or priests performing an exorcist chant; the song transforms into a spoken word piece that sums up of the story of the witch (who is conquered by an angry Dirty Harry style monk). The spoken word part is backed up by acoustic guitar, which finally ends in a heavy metal dirge driven by drums and piano.

Old Corpse Road has a lot of potential.  They are very good lyricists. The songs are varied, and interesting at moments. Unfortunately for every part of the song I enjoyed, there was another that annoyed the shit out of me. Those fucking keyboards have got to go. If the point is to use them to set the vibe/mood, then for fucks sake put them back in the mix, out front they are distracting. 

I tickled my taint for  6.0 minutes.

The Meads of Asphodel - English Black Punk Metal

The Meads might be the only metal band who can overuse keyboards and effects and get away with it because the songs are so fucking interesting. Keyboards are a weapon the Meads use to help us, the listeners, understand that there is something in the song requiring our attention. In one of their songs (on another album) all music stops other than keyboards and effects while a simple chant is played over and over, “God, is fucking with you,” which after many repetitions becomes “God is fucking with you” which becomes “God is fucking you.”  This, my friends, is genius, pure genius. But, that is for another review at another time. The five songs on this split are all punk rock covers, which the Meads have, "fucked about with."

The first song, "The Embalming of Gods," opens with about two minutes of typical Meads of Asphodel, keyboards and an anti-religious rant. Then the Meads go to work. I love their vocalist, Metatron; if Lemmy ever decides to do black metal, he would be a dead ringer for Metatron.  The Meads of Asphodel like to mix things up in a weird way. Rather than having parts of the song merge into each other, they will often just come to a dead stop in the middle of a song and take off again at a different speed, sometimes with different instruments. This song has several of these dead stops, making it a little hard to follow. 

Next up is "On the Surface." This song opens with what I assume is dialogue borrowed from a horror film. I wasn’t listening close enough to catch all of it, but it has something to do with the “destroyer of worlds” – either a religious reference of some kind or perhaps a jab at organized religion’s destructive tendencies. The Meads frequently venture into religious politics. The song is a rocker, with another one of those abrupt stops in the middle where Metatron makes a speech about robes made of maggots, and smoking the pipe of peace, rape and war “until we breathe no more.” The word “more” is repeated a couple of times, then, with no warning, it’s balls to the wall metal again. This is a very entertaining song.  

The third song, "Same Mind," is a fucking rocker; the Meads go for it immediately. The speed here is much faster than we normally hear from them, and Metatron’s vocals are pushed to their limits; they are very strained. I feel like the Meads overreached on this one, their style just doesn’t lend itself to this kind of aggression. 

I don’t know what to make of the next song, "Nazi." It is driven by a nice guitar crunch and abused keyboards. I know it’s a cover song, and they are probably trying to stay true to the intent of the original performer, but the keyboards overtake the other instruments. But, it is only temporary, towards the end of the song the keyboards disappear and the guitar finally comes forward. Now it sounds a little like Iron Maiden.
  
"Protest and Resist" starts with a slow groove, but explodes into The Meads interpretation of a hardcore punk song, which means growly vocals. The lyrics seem to be about how to organize a mass into a political force, but I can’t make out enough of the lyrics to understand it. This is a cool song.  

"War Drum," is almost unrecognizable as a punk song. I am unfamiliar with the original song, but I feel like The Meads have introduced enough heaviness and speed to transform bring it into the metal realm. The vocals work well here. The speed of the vocals is not nearly as fast as the accompanying music. There is some exceptional drumming on this song. War Drum is quite good, and The Meads version of it reminds me of some of Motorhead’s faster moments.

Warning! Kinks fans may want to stop reading at this point. The Meads cover "You Really Got Me." If you are a fan of the Kinks then you will hate this song. On the one hand, the Meads butcher it. On the other hand, they are just having fun and it is obvious. I suspect they decided to fuck it up on purpose; Metatron uses more of a guttural cookie monster vocal style than usual.

There are some fun moments on The Meads of Asphodel’s part of this split CD. But, it is far from their best work. For The Meads, speed kills. Their style is somewhat clunky and the vocals do not work well when pushed forward at break-neck speed as they were on this album. 

I tickled my taint for 7 minutes.