The Benja-man Is Verbose

A Sultan's Ransom  is kind of a tale of two records.  Or at least, Cloven Hoof sound like they're being pulled in a few different directions whilst they try to provide a variety plate of '80s metal. One version of this post would have fervently wished that the whole record sounded like "Astral Rider," although I won't go quite that far given how the other songs grew on me.  Still, "Astral Rider" is something special and goes to heights above and beyond the rest of the record.  On this track they demonstrate that having killer basic song components don't keep one from throwing in other elements to keep things interesting.  We've covered some great bands from this era who usually stop once they have a riff, maybe a big prechorus to offset what's about to come, and a big chorus (and musicians with the chops to pull off the solo).  "Astral Rider" already has those things, and didn't inherently "need" to repeat the titl...

Remember how in my last post about  A Pleasant Shade Of Gray  I noted being frustrated by the lack of forward momentum, the way I'd want in a concept album?  And I hinted that I'd have a longer discussion about the contrast between proper rock operas that talk in complete sentences, have characters, versus this record offering basically a series of samey poems about rumination?  I was going to quote some typical lyrics, like: Stare from the darkness Hear the silence call Devise divisions; * delay decisions Watch the hours crawl Let nothing bleed into nothing, and do nothing Let nothing bleed into nothing, and do nothing at all And follow up with a pithy comment like "do nothing, indeed." Well, you can go ahead and forget about all that.  My stance now is that in its way,  Pleasant Shade  is absolutely an epic, on equal footing with whatever your other favorite prog-rock/metal records are serving up. Prog being prog, it was around listen #4 or #5 tha...

After just a few listens, my categorization of a record isn't going to be crystallized, and I may or may not know how much I like it  - that's kinda the whole point of these "early impressions" posts.  Those posts in which I'm uncertain what I'm hearing aren't all the same.  Sometimes you get something as entertaining (to me, anyway) as that time I came into a Wuthering Heights record without context and just had no idea how to even process what I was hearing.  Other times, it's more that I have some broad impressions but I can't say exactly why.  Main impressions of  A Sultan's Ransom  - I like it, and it seems somehow unusual. The part about liking it is pretty easy to explain - it's good solid metal.  Lively energetic songs, good vocal performance from Russ North, numerous hooks that I'm pretty certain are going to grow on me big time.  Boom, that's my early impression.  This'll be a short post! But not quite that short.  ...

3:  "Seduced, Fucked" In what seems to be a clearer assocation in his mind than it is to this reader, Lanegan starts this chapter about getting fucked over in the music industry machine by talking about sex a lot.  Here it's nice that he favors vignettes rather than limiting himself to just generalities about his life as a low-wage grunt in a tense relationship, and then living in squalor due to need to get out of said relationship.   Notwithstanding some somewhat freewheeling anecdotes about the formation of the band Earth, and going out of his way to shit-talk one of (future collaborator) Dylan Carlson's friends and contradict some ancient allegations about him that nobody has ever heard or cared about to begin with, we get a fair amount of detail, by this book's standards, about the creation and release of solo debut  The Winding Sheet.   That story really begins with Lanegan's surprising chill warehouse job and his discovery of "mainly acoustic, perso...

We haven't even gotten to all of the slagging the Screaming Trees' indie records get in Lanegan's book.  The next chapters of Sing Backwards And Weep , that I haven't written about yet, just keep piling on the abuse.  Besides continuing to go out of his way to emphasize that his "only contribution to Screaming Trees songwriting had been attempting to change the most egregious of Lee Conner's lyrics to something less embarrassing to sing," he has a few more digs at how his perception that their work was second rate shaped everything that he did at this point.  He describes mortification every time he hears one of their songs in the wild, hammering on his involvement in this band as a source of humiliation.  Pretty strong stuff.  This is what he's reacting against when talking about trying to make something that was authentically his with  The Winding Sheet .  So given that Lanegan himself is almost violently dismissive of his own breakthr...

Just a little standalone ?Classics? Of Metal reaction for you me.  I've been wanting to do this one for awhile, * ever since discovering  Awaken The Guardian  as a little side trip during my ?Classics? Of Power Metal series.  I don't know that I loved (or love)  Guardian .  I'm listening to it again in the background as I type this up, and my impression remains that it's definitely an interesting record full of good stuff that doesn't quite sound like anyone else, and that I don't quite get it.  Well, a cursory summary of info about the act responsible for that record told me that hey, not only did this band teach the world that you can do something more than the obvious with a power metal riff, but that this band kinda invented prog-metal.  Further, apparently they got a new singer and made a bunch more records, evolving into something that sounds nothing at all like  Guardian , leading up in some people's opinion to an alleged masterpi...

When writing about one of the standards of the subgenre like a Keeper  record, one would think that my niche as a relatively newer fan - discovered Helloween less than ten years ago, and really started picking apart the history of power metal less than two years ago - would be to divorce the album from its context and listen to it simply as a piece of music.  It's impossible, though.  The retroactive narrative that Helloween invented power metal as we know it with this record is too pervasive.  So listening to Keeper II , I spent a lot of time wondering when it became obvious to listeners at the time that Helloween were, well, what they were. I envy the astuteness of those who talk about Helloween's early work - confidently called by Wikipedia "speed metal rather than power metal," although I know many would dispute that - as having immediately stood out to them for its sense of melody and/or its sense of humor.  How and when would the average bear have realized...