The Benja-man Is Verbose

Past exposure to this band/record :  None beyond seeing the band's name over and over, both in lists of best power metal records and in primers about PM.  So I come in with the basic understanding that Running Wild are one of the institutions of europower, one of the defining bands from the Hamburg scene.  My understanding is that doing any kind of survey of PM without knowing anything about Running Wild would be almost as bad as doing so without knowing Helloween, hence this pick for the project.  And also that apparently they were doing the "pirate metal" thing before it was cool.     Well, let's get one thing out of the way first: whatever else one may say about the unimaginatively titled * Death Or Glory , it rocks. I don't actually have much else negative to say about it.  I was expecting things to maybe be a little basic, a little knuckle dragging.  Instead, principal impression here is that Death Or Glory is polished in a good way.  I...

Flying stark in the face of my late-career loving ways, commercially speaking Zevon peaked early.  He got some attention with the self-titled, then Excitable Boy was the big smash, then   Excitable would persist as the high, the proverbial dragon that he'd spend the rest of his career chasing.  "Early" is relative, though, when one considers how long WZ spent bumming around trying to make the music career happen.  The actual recording of that first record that nobody wants to talk about happened a full nine years before "Werewolves Of London" blew up.  By this point he'd paid his dues, and it was about time to land something that'd keep him eating - or at least, less likely to run out of money - over the next few decades of following his muse. Excitable is one of only three non-compilation Zevon records that I owned on CD back when that was a thing, when I was making my first attempt to get into him.  It's interesting going back to hear t...

I know music is a business and that it couldn't work this way... but I kinda wish there were a way to guarantee everyone two chances.  Sure, some artists have one great record in them and then are done ever being interesting once they're tasked with cranking out more on short notice, but so many others have the raw materials without the seasoning that they'd need to make a masterpiece.  Many of my favorites didn't hit their stride until record #2, or #3, or even later.  It usually takes time and experience to develop a signature sound and/or sort out what exactly it is that you're good at and/or cultivate a fanbase.  I love having access to first efforts by future legends, watching them figure it out.  In my perfect fantasy world, there'd be some mechanism for those who're interesting to get multiple shots to find an audience. * In the actual world, you get artists like Adramelch releasing a record that's weird, a little different, and if the...

The National's annoying refusal to release many official live recordings means that last year's Rome is the first traditional "live album" from them, taken from, as the title suggests, a portion of a 2024 gig in Genoa. *   Obviously YouTube and the like exist, but sticking with official releases, it's been slim pickings until now. The National did do an NPR "Tiny Desk Concert" in 2013 - not on-brand for them at all, right? - playing acoustic versions of a few songs from the then newly-released Trouble Will Find Me . Setlist 1)  This Is The Last Time 2)  I Need My Girl 3)  Pink Rabbits 4)  Sea Of Love This format is a good showcase for Matt leaning into the role as frontman because so much of what they can do comes down to the volume and inflection of the singer; his range goes from wispy whimsical indie stuff to a gritty, bluesy delivery that reminds me a little of Ben Ottewell. **   Without meticulous studio editing, how do the National sound as ...

Past exposure to this band/record :  None at all.  The reason I know about Irae Melanox is because in my perfunctory scans of the review scene, the few people who knew Irae at all really liked it and couldn't stop going on about how singular a record it is compared to anything else.  Sounded like a good fit for this project... I pay a lot of attention to how a record chooses to introduce itself.  In this case, that would be "Fearful Visions."  Creepy choral opening full of organs yields a rather frenetic chromatic guitar scale, until that settles into a doomy groove, until the guitars take over into more of a standard metal groove, until we get a singer whose vocal delivery I don't know if I can describe.  First he's reeling off heavily accented poetry with a mouth full of marbles, then he's screaming out the pre-chorus more in a manner more typical of a European gent fronting a power metal band.  And that's all in the first three minutes of...

In 1976, Warren Zevon (no longer just ZEVON) resurfaced with a record that is kind of a testament to the cult of personality and art.  This perpetually drunken yet literate guy wrote these weird songs, his more famous friends knew there was something there and were willing to push to get it made, and, backed here by an absolute rouge's gallery of Eagles, Fleetwoods, and Jacksons (Browne, that is), we got a record.   Track One:  "Frank And Jesse James" The first thing one who's familiar with Zevon's greatest hits will notice is that, well, way more so than anything on Wanted Dead Or Alive , FAJJ sounds like a Zevon song.  Here's a prominent piano line.  Here's a a vaguely country-rock vibe.  The focus is always the deep-voiced guy who's, well, not quite talk-singing exactly, but sticking with a chatty vocal delivery that has way more words than it does notes.  Musically, it sounds like Zevon has arrived.  Maybe some excess instruments; not too bad ...

It took forever to come up with a big summary statement about Laugh Track .  (Spoiler:  I like it.  But if you don't want eighty-three thousand words attempting to articulate exactly why, then why are you reading this blog?)  It's been some time since I've had this hard a time putting my finger on my exact opinion of a record, though.  Even late listens vary as far as which songs connect more or less with me. Interestingly, another listen to First Two Pages Of Frankenstein helped clarify things.  First Two Pages feels kinda unified in having a big open sound, all the more to fill with heavily orchestrated things, guest vocalists, and so on.  Which can be fine, if many of the songs are good, which they are.  Having that as a unifying element does kind of get in the way of their attempts to bring a little more grit, as "Grease In Your Hair" sounds tame despite trying to be big.  So, not a perfect system.   Returning to Laugh Track , d...

The once a year occasion in which I blog about a weirdo movie festival!  For those somehow here through music, this one specific post is not about music; it's about an annual B-movie festival that I've been attending since 2004.  For those here specifically to read about B-Fest, hi, I'm Benjamin, this is my blog.  Normally I nerd out about rock music and try to put my impressions into words.  I like to think that I blog about the most random assortment of rock-related topics possible.  So, I'm close to the end of a series about my first listens to each and every album by indie-rock institution The National, and I've also written at length about my discovery of folk/death-metal greats Eluveitie, and I've also also done an album-by-album deep dive/fawning hagiography about the music of Scottish prog-rock writer and singer Fish.  More recently, I've just started up a series of posts going through Warren Zevon's discography, and a different series of posts...