The Benja-man Is Verbose

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...

In my attempts to write about music, I've been fond of the idea of "something extra" to try to put my finger on why when song X and song Y have many of the same elements, song X is just okay while song Y absolutely smokes.  I feel like Open The Gates is full of songs that have the same elements as many relatively low-fi bass heavy thrash-adjacent metal tracks from the mid '80s yet find ways to stand out. Let's go back to the first two tracks, again.  "Metalström" * is an average song for me, one of the only truly average cuts on the record.  It has a decent riff with lively drumming, a decent tune sung with conviction but not any particular skill, and rides those few things to the end; a metal song like many others of its time.  "Open The Gates" (the song) is a cut above.  I find it hard to tire of listening to the one, over and over.  What's different?  Well, there's a special something somewhere!  OTG has a killer simple but powerful...