The Benja-man Is Verbose

I like the idea of being a Mark Lanegan fan.  I've tried to be one as few times.  Rarely came away from any of his music unintrigued, but rarely ever fell in love either.  My thing when I don't totally understand something and want to know it better is to write at ridiculous length about it, so I decided that this would be a great opportunity to try a track-by-track dissection of an artist I don't click with as much, and pick apart what does and doesn't appeal.  In a moment of temporary insanity (and not realizing at the time that the book would only cover through the late '90s), I then decided to get to know where the music was coming from too, and read  Sing Backwards And Weep: A Memoir.   Plus, who the hell else has a parallel book and music blog?  This is a new experience and I don't know how it'll go, but go it does.   I have read the book already, so consider this a second reading.  Here are my comments on the first few c...

(Slightly edited project premise copied from the '70s post .) Shortly after I decided to start my explorations of power metal  and had started blogging about power metal, after months of wishing there were a conveniently explained "starter pack" of bands or records to check out, I came across a list at metalstorm.com  created by writer "ScreamingSteelUS," that I've been low-key obsessed with ever since.  A collection of power metal records that uses a very big-tent definition of the subgenre for maximum diversity?  Sounds like what I wanted.  Kept to a convenient number - ten per decade - in perfect chronological order?  I feel seen.  With explanations as to what exactly each record represents and what aspects of PM it can highlight?  Yes, please.   Sure, one can critique.  With the biggest critique being that it's just one guy's list and is prone to the quirks inherent to that.  Of note, ScreamingSteelUS...

The Band:  Timeless Rage Origin :  Germany ( Villingen-Schwenningen ) This record preceded by :   Untold  (2022),  Forecast  (2013) Band members  (6): Lead vocals - Nicolaj Ruhnow Guitars - Michael Benk; Christian Pirch Bass - Daniel Wengle Drums - Klaus Buchfink Keyboards - Anna Keil  Founding members remaining : 3 Trying something a little different; just a straight up music review of a record that came out recently.  This was actually by request.  I don't know if I'll be writing on demand like this very often, but, well, why not do it once and see how it goes?  I'm not worried about conflicts of interest, given that it's not as though anyone's paying me to do this.  And if this makes me a little more ginger about negative criticism, or a little more anxious to like something... well, I should always be making a serious effort to like a piece of music for what it is, right?  And I should always be writing with ...

I thought of copying and pasting all of the "things I learned about..." sections at the end of each post, but that seemed a little annoying given that there are sixteen of those posts. *   Nonetheless, I've spent a lot of time thinking about power metal and occasionally even listening to it over the past year-plus of the "?Classics? of power metal" project.  And yeah, I do flatter myself into thinking that I've learned a few things. 1)  I like power metal The starting premise was that I liked the idea of the genre more than I liked actually listening to it.  I was struggling to reconcile why I, a listener who likes things too heavy to be a serious pop fan ** and too melodic to do anything but gravitate to the hookier side of metal, couldn't seem to connect with power, do more than appreciate it from a distance.  I think I was reacting to its roots in '80s metal.  Something about European men shrieking about wizards in a way that reminded me in their...

Past exposure to this artist/album:   I am already familiar with  Under The Veil Of Madness .     I got confused back in 2023 when I first heard this record.  I did know that I was impressed.  This was before I was a blogger, but I did do annual rankings for friends, and I ended up ranking it as my #10 record of the year.  The thing that threw me was that my first impression was the record's heft.  Veil  seemed like serious big kid metal, heavyweight stuff.  Yet, when I read reviews, even those who liked it a lot tended to emphasize, often in a positive tone, the cheesiness.  The excesses.  The melodrama.  The, well, power-metaliness of the whole thing.   Listening with that in mind, I could hear it, and get why others might consider Ascension cheesy.  My ears don't, and never have, heard them that way.  Why was power metal such silly shit, but this power metal not, to Benjamin?  You could say...