The Benja-man Is Verbose

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...