A Spectrum Beyond Black

Much as I love metal and it's myriad subgenres, it suffers from one big sonic problem in particular, namely an extreme paucity of imagination when it comes to guitar sounds. Playing thrash or death? Boost the bass and the treble, cut the mid and compress it to fuck. Worked fine for Slayer et al in the 80s, but come on people, that was 20-odd fucking years ago, surely you could have thought of some new sounds by now. Just because you've spent ages writing an incredibly convoluted series of riffs and chord progressions it doesn't mean you can then just drag out the same fucking guitar sound as everyone else.

Black metal is probably the worst offender in this respect, 90% of bands having that same buzzing droning Peavy amp with the midrange and presence redlined guitar tone*. Done right its an awesome sound, but Beherit, Darkthrone, Burzum** and all the other old school loons patented that sound a long time ago. Obviously there have always been exceptions to the rule, like Enslaved or Blut Aus Nord, but you've always had to search through a mountain of shit to find the blackened pearls underneath.

But there is hope (obviously not contained within the grooves of the records, this is BM after all) in the shape of groups like Melechesh, Haemoth, Meads Of Asphodel, Nortt and in particular, the USBM underground hordes such as Xasthur, Absu, Leviathan/Lurker Of Chalice and my current favourites, Nachtmystium, whose new album, Instinct: Decay (Battle Kommand/Southern Lord) is a whirling blackened kaleidescope of throbbing and flailing psychedelic brutality. And when I say psychedelic, I mean it in the true sense of the word, this really is some mind-expanding shit. Imagine (the sadly defunct) Craft getting Helios Creed and Simon House in on guitar and synths respectively, allied to a skill for songwriting and arrangement that's still all too rare in what passes for the "experimental" end of BM. Expansive and dynamic, Nachtmystium's pallette is broad enough to encompass some truly stunning acoustic passages that avoid the normal "folkloric" pit that too many BM groups fall into alongside Barrettesque echo laden disorientation and some monstrously good spacerocking that Hawkwind would have been proud of alongside the normal icy tremolo guitar, throat-shredding shrieking and bellowing and drums of splintering bone. The fact the fact that the intro sounds like it could have been lifted from a prime Chrome album doesn't hurt either. Nactmystium have raised the fucking bar with this release. Go listen.

*The worst offenders D.I. their guitars in the studio. Dudes, this shit is supposed to be heavy. If you ain't got any fucking air moving your sound ain't gonna have any weight.

**Yes, I know that Grishnackh is a convicted murderer and a hideous cross between Hitler and Phillip Glass, who makes atrocious digital synth viking-ambient records from prison***, but the vile little fucker did make a few killer albums before going completely fucking apeshit crazy.

***Which some could use as evidence in an argument against liberal prison regimes...

Mr Blessed Blue Wings

We all have a little corner of our record collections that other people just shake their heads at. Many people find my love of Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers completely inexplicable, and I in turn am guilty of similar eye-rolling behaviour and piss-taking whenever I come across ELP, Yes, Genesis or (insert name of other macrobiotic muching neoclassical progwankers here) in friends record collections. So it's always reassuring when you discover that even the mightiest of musicians listen to some real toe-curling bollocks when no-one's looking. Sometimes they even name their bands after said shite. For instance, I was reading this rather fine interview with Des Kensal, High On Fire's drum maniac, over at PitRiff.com, and made the horrifically brilliant discovery that HOF are named after a fucking ELO song, namely Fire On High. Who'da thunk it?

The Doctor Is Back, Not That He Ever Really Went Away...

Back to normal blogging service now, and I don't mean that I've fixed my spacebar*.

It was pointed out to me that my guitars tend to breed when I'm not looking, and the electrics have been it like knives again. The guitar stork will be dropping the baby on the left down my chimney sometime in the next month or so. I know. I don't need another guitar. But fucking hell, look at that bastard. The Gibson Firebird is still, for me anyways, the single most beautiful (solid body) electric guitar ever and even if it sounded like shit I'd still have to get one. Fortunately it sounds like heaven with a bottleneck, possibly even better than my '56 Gold Top, which, given that the first time I plugged that sucker into the Orange, slipped a slide on my finger and let rip it sounded exactly like Elmore James, is fucking going some.

Greenwich is a random place to live sometimes. Particularly on No Car Day. Woman in silver unitard** and matching hat attached to giant silvery-white globe helium balloon doing acrobatics anyone? The appearance of a man riding a metal elephant mounted atop an electric go-kart with a motor so weedy he needed his mate to give him a bit of a shove over a 3inch high speed bump being followed by a fat kid on a BMX*** making hooting noises every time the elephant trumpeted was pretty good, but my favourite moment was the arrival of the heavenly rapid response unit. We were sitting dozily in the sun, on the steps of the old naval college between the chapel and the painted hall, when the sound of classical music could be heard getting increasingly louder from somewhere hidden off to the right. I thought no more of this until an angel on wheels**** (not a bike, parallel wheels) whizzed along the path in front of us at a fair old clip, pausing only to do a quick 360 and to chat briefly to some tourists before speeding off on presumably holy business elsewhere, all the while blaring the aforementioned classical music from it's arse. It was one of those moments where you turn to each other and say "did you see that too?" at exactly the same time, and are deeply reassured to find out that, yes, they did, meaning that either you're both equally crazy (this is a distinct possibility) or an angel on wheels did just whizz past...

*No, I'm still having to paste spaces and a few punctuation marks in because I still haven't bought a new keyboard after my old one decided to succumb to alcoholism. As to the back to normal service bit, if you know what I mean you know what I mean and if you don't you're not meant to. Nosy sods.

**Alright, it was a leotard, but leotard isn't nearly as snigger-inducing a word as unitard.

***BMXs (how do you pluralise BMX? Fucked if I know) always look too small for the person riding them, no matter how tiny they are. WhatTheFuck? The other thing to bear in mind is this was on a practically deserted backstreet.

****Not a hell's one either, but one with wings and halo and shit.

Twenty Albums To Enjoy Kippers With

Skullflower - Tribulation (Crucial Blast)
Armando - Trax Classix (Trax)
False - False (Plus 8)
Mastodon - Blood Mountain (Reprise)
Various - BC01 (Basic Channel)
Bo Diddley - His Best (Chess)
Ramleh - Homeless (Freek)
Phuture - Classix (Trax)
Ellen Allien - Thrills (Bpitch Control)
Plastikman - Closer (M_Nus)
Boss Hog - Girl+ (Amphetamine Reptile)
Various - Acid Classix (Trax)
Rory Gallagher - Live In Europe (Capo)
Blight - Detroit (Touch'n'Go)
Various - Pebbles Vol.5: Various Morons (AIP)
Christian Vogel - Rescate 137 (Novamute)
Hound Dog Taylor - Natural Boogie (Alligator)
Art - Supernatural Fairy Tales (Island)
Silverfish - Organ Fan (Creation)
Ellen Allien & Apparat - The Bubble Orchestra (BPitch Control)

BewareTheBunny

ISpillBeerOnMyKeyboardOnce AndTheFuckingSpaceBarStopsWorking, SoHowComeThisFuckersStillWorks?