The Benja-man Is Verbose

Prior exposure to this band/record :  Nada.   When I first started blogging about music, the premise was that I'd "react" (think of a text-based and less engaging version of the YouTube semi-professional "reactors")  in some simulation of real time.  That way, my reader * could trace the evolution of my relationship with a work of music.  I've moved away from that to a degree, ** but I do hope that these early-impressions posts do capture an interesting moment in time in which a listener hasn't totally absorbed the music yet.  On this occasion, I'd like to work through, as best as I can remember, my basic reactions to  The Shadow Cabinet . First listen, part I (tracks 1-4, while walking) My big summary statement upon starting the first track was "I was not prepared for this!"  I keep expecting folk-metal to be gentler or more lilting, but clearly Wuthering Heights are aggressively metal first.  The keys, used mostly for bombast, got my ...

Unlike pretty much everything that came before it, which has a bit of a reputation ( Sentimental Hygeine  as the one with R.E.M., the sober record, the revival after a down period, etc.) I didn't have any particular expectations coming in to Transverse City  other than some off-peak Zevon.  We're fully mired in the period that's only for the die-hards, where Zevon just wasn't on the world's radar.  He still made music, though! Track One:  "Transverse City" I'm not much of a fan of a lot of things about the '80s, and although some great music happened there, the decade-specific pieces of the overall audio aesthetic rarely fail to make me cringe. *   To me, "Transverse City," both the song and the record, get off to a bad start with the first sound being synthesizer.  Sure enough, synths soon envelop everything, with the analog instruments struggling to get heard.  That type of sound, which I guess once sounded slick and futuristic (especia...

So here I am once more, in the playground of the broken deadlines.. I kinda like that it worked out that there'd be so long between posts #1 and #2, as though I needed days upon days to absorb the record or something.  To be clear, the entire gap since my last blog entry was not, in fact, spent digesting and thinking about  Temple Of Shadows .  (Lots going on, didn't get to listen to any music of any kind for a whole two weeks at one point.)  However, there's a little truth to the idea that this one needed some extra time to percolate.  I have in my head the unwritten rule that if something is proggy enough, it's going to take me one or two more listens compared to a less proggy record to understand it at exactly the same level.  I instantly identified  Temple Of Shadows  as a possible grower. Now, what exactly is and is not "progressive metal" is not a line in the sand that I'm particularly interested in drawing.  However, of the power ...