The Benja-man Is Verbose

I asked a few questions last time about how my relationship with  At The Expense Of Humanity  would evolve, whilst presaging that I probably wouldn't have anything interesting to say about why it is or isn't power metal.  So let's get that part out of the way.  You've got speedy riffs that change notes more than they change keys, and usually a baseline of Helloween-style drumrolls.  Granted, sometimes it skews more towards just plain old metal, including the parts with a Maiden-style mix of galloping riffs and power chords.  The basic chord structure consists almost exclusively of riffs that're versions, maybe a bit simpler, of what you'd hear on an Iced Earth record circa The Dark Saga , which most people would call a power metal record.  So okay, it's not a stretch at all to slot  Expense  in amongst the classics of our little subgenre here, moving on. I think that's actually what I need to explain the dichotomy I'm hearing when I try ...

Previous exposure to this artist/album :  See below I have a bit of a weird relationship with Judicator, in that I first became aware of their existence a few years ago when checking out new music and I clicked with their quirky 2022 record, The Majesty Of Decay.  I learned just enough about the band to know that Majesty was a bit of a departure, thanks in no small part to John Yelland basically becoming the band's sole creative force, whereas main guitarist and bassist Tony/Alicia Cordisco had been pretty much the composer previously, and so this was this big reinvention in trying to write songs without her.  Thing is, I quite enjoyed The Majesty Of Decay  for what it was.  Whereas, I'd also listened to one of Alicia's post-Judicator projects, Project: Roenwolfe, and at least their EP, well, I wasn't mad at it but I didn't really connect with it.  And then the new version of Judicator went on to put out Concord , a record that supposedly saw them sounding ...

I don't know whether there's universal agreement on how people frame different Zevon "eras," but Mutineer has to be considered late-period, right?  After Learning To Flinch , Zevon was in full wizened-troubadour mode, making less produced music with a few handpicked collaborators from a home studio.  I feel like the four years between the trio of records that ended with Mr. Bad Example and Mutineer seems like a pretty clear place to draw a line.  Whether or not that's the standard understanding, that'll be mine.  Mutineer seems considerably closer to me to the record he'd release five years later than it does to his past work.   (As reader may have gathered, I'm quite familiar with Life'll Kill Ya , whereas really everything except the title track of Mutineer was totally new to me.) Track One:  "Seminole Bingo" Despite the preamble above, I didn't necessarily have the impression of a big stylistic shift when first playing Mutineer ....