Today’s pick is a monster, to say the least. Everything about it is contradictory.  Everything about it is incredible.  First off, the album artwork is full of neon colors and looks like a cross between Alice in Wonderland and all the best circuses you’ve ever imagined, yet the music is anything but sterile and cute.

The opening track, Silence Fiction, starts off slowly with an ominous sound something between the darker side of Marilyn Manson (but trust me, it’s a good thing) and Mike Patton’s tamest works. Within two minutes though, the band is thrashing and shrieking and the course for the rest of the album is set for the extreme.

I hate to draw parallels to another album, because this really does stand on its own, but if you’re acquainted with the Irony is a Dead Scene EP by the Dillinger Escape Plan, you’ve got a pretty good idea of what is going on here. The music is so full of shifts in time signature and mood that you can barely grasp what’s going on by the time the next change knocks you off your feet. Violent guitars fade into ambient passages and high pitched screams seamlessly lead into gorgeous baritone crooning.

In fact, the vocalist of this band is so damn good, he needs specific mention. Chris Negrete is so like Patton it’s scary, but he never treads any territory that feels like imitation or ripoff. The lyrics he writes are often cryptic anecdotes about animals acting against humans.  Tick.Tock.Tick. is about beavers taking revenge on loggers and When Animals Attack is about oppressed circus animals releasing themselves from the control of an evil ringleader, to name a couple.

All in all, this album is probably one of my favorite recordings by any band, especially with the endless seas of garbage that metal and hardcore releases have become in recent years. If you like your metal a little jagged and quirky, you’ll fall in love with this album. While the band is currently defunct, you should check out their vocalist’s new group, Shrimp! They’re pretty swell.

If you’d like to hear more from these gentlemen, you should purchase Wonderland from your local record store! The packaging definitely makes it worth the cost.

Visit their myspace to hear tracks from this album and to make purchases directly from the band!

This is where things start to get out of hand. This album is the soundtrack to every breakup, every addiction and every delusion you’ve ever dealt with. You just don’t realize it yet.

For those not yet acquainted, Oxbow are a highly unique rock group from San Francisco and are signed to Hydra Head Records. They’ve been around for about twenty years and still manage to make some of the most disturbing, yet listenable, music I’ve ever heard. Yep, misery and self-loathing now can get stuck in your head with the help of Oxbow.

This album, their newest release, was my introduction to this group.  I caught them opening up for Jesu and was sold before the end of the first song. The music is shockingly simplistic and minimal, yet the passion and intensity were unrivaled. Oxbow are definitely not a metal band, but they’re possibly the heaviest group I’ve ever seen. Frontman Eugene Robinson spent most of the time pacing furiously, intimidating the audience and stripping his clothing off until he was in his undergarments.

That said, this album is a monster. It starts off simply with an intro piece into the off-kilter blues of The Geometry of Business, which sets the pace for the rest of the album. The four-piece group is accompanied by a small orchestra and makes great use of it.  As stated earlier, this is clearly the soundtrack to misery and delusions. The melodies are so subtle and gorgeous, yet there is a complete sense of misanthropy and self-loathing in every second of this album. From the disgruntled mumbling kicking off the opening track to the frantic wailing of A Winner Every Time, this album reeks of desperation and desire.

This is probably not the album to put on if you’re going to have a cheerful social gathering, but if you want to learn just how deep human suffering can go, you’ve got to check this album out.  The arrangements are impressive, the vocals are layered and emotive in a way so many popular artists try to achieve but could never hope to understand and the entire atmosphere is just tolerable enough to keep depression from forcing you to hit the eject button. I highly recommend this for anybody that’s enjoyed any of my previous albums.

If you’d like to hear more from Oxbow, I recommend you order their album from your local record store or their website. Even better, if you get the chance you should catch them live. It’s an experience unlike any other.

Watch a live video of the track “Down a Stair Backward” from this album, and catch the full effect.

Visit Oxbow’s official myspace (they update far more regularly here than on their website)

Thanks to all three of my readers for your patience.

I am very sorry for being so negligent. I have recently had a change of residence and am not fully settled into my new place. When I am (it should be within the week) I’ll have my PC set up and be using a more efficient wireless connection than I previously was. This will make blogging the relief I imagined it would be rather than the tiresome wait for my decrepit laptop to catch up with my speedy typing and ramblings about music.

Hopefully I’ll be sharing the best the musical world has to offer with you once more within the next few days. Best wishes.

Please send me your favorite  albums, and I’ll review  them. Send me your  band’s album, and I’ll review  it. Send me something you hate, and I’ll review it. Thank you.

-Ben.

I begin this review with an apology.   This is definitely not the album submitted for my thoughts.  However, the album submitted to me will require a bit more time, as it’s quite  interesting to me and I want to adequately summarize it. So without further ado, I bring you a modern death metal classic.

Paths of Possession already have an edge on most other bands competing for your ear  simply based on their other musical ventures.  Vocalist George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher also lends his immense vocal talents to the group Cannibal Corpse.  Guitarist Richard Brunelle has earned his metal points with legends Morbid Angel. You may think you know what you’re in for. You probably don’t.

While this album is certainly more straightforward than other albums I’ve mentioned to this point, this is not the brutal facemelter it would seem to be. Amidst the chugging guitars and blastbeats there are soaring melodic leads and the lyrics actually deal with things aside from amputation and the like. While the Florida death metal sound is still  dominant with this bunch, you can hear the classic metal influences (a la Maiden and Mercyful  Fate) creeping in more than most bands of this nature are usually comfortable with.

The lyrics to this album seem to be pretty intense,  though sometimes it’s hard to piece  together.  Opener Memory Burn is a horror story straight out of Iraq, describing having to indiscriminately kill anyone and everyone, children included.  The Ancient Law is about killing someone over an act of infidelity.  The band says there is a lyrical concept tying it all together.  I’m not fully sold on that yet, but the words are memorable and more well put together than most death metal can claim.

In summary, this album is not going to be the release that pushes metal to new boundaries. This isn’t going to cause new bands to form worldwide.  The End of the  Hour is simply a perfectly crafted death metal album by seasoned veterans of the genre.  Leave it to the old men to remind us why we’re here.

If  you would like to hear more of this album, please purchase it from the artist directly  or  from your local independent record store.  I invite your thoughts and  recommendations. Thank you for your time.

Listen to the song Memory Burn from this album

Visit Paths of Possession on myspace (official site)

Thanks once again for reading and supporting me. I really appreciate it.

-Ben.

First, since not all of you are familiar with Tomahawk, a bit of background information may help explain their off-kilter brand of rock music.  The group was founded by vocal legend  Mike Patton (of Faith No More and Mr. Bungle fame) and cult guitarist Duane Denison of  The Jesus Lizard.  Rounded out by  John Stanier of Helmet fame on drums, the album Anonymous is their first release without a bassist.

Without a fourth member for this release,  the group set out to make a highly ambitious record: taking ancient Native American songs and reinterpreting them with modern rock instrumentation.  But this is hardly your standard world music album.  Dark soundscapes ring out in the track Ghost Dance, distorted guitars frequently make themselves prominent  and a number of songs have the frantic stop-start dynamics Patton’s other group Fantomas is often known for.

When I first heard this strange album, I wasn’t sure what to make of it.  On the one hand, I was clearly dealing with talented musicians and knew I should appreciate what I was hearing.  On the other, I felt I might be dealing with self-indulgent oddities from musicians tired of playing for the masses. After repeated listens, something clicked.  I  found myself walking through town humming Crow Dance to myself and I realized the genius.  I decided to delve back again and found everything I’d been looking for but had failed to see.  If you want to be taken to another time and place by an album, you should check it out for your own sake.

If you want to hear more of this  album, please purchase it at your local independent record store or directly from the artist. Please leave me love letters and comments  regarding this album if you found it of interest.

Listen to the track Antelope Ceremony from this album.

Go to the artist’s official site.

With three weeks until their  new album, The Great Misdirect, what better time to take a look at Between the Buried and Me’s prior release?  While earlier releases saw the gents in BTBAM letting slight prog influences mingle with their unique brand of (dare I say it?) hardcore metal,  Colors was the album where they established themselves as modern metal’s bastard child of Mr. Bungle and Queen.

The two opening tracks that comprise the song Foam Born set the pace for the album, slowly building from subtle piano towards a monumental tech-metal opus more in common with The Red Chord than the rock opera it initially sets the stage for.  From the Patton-esque waltz section in Prequel to the Sequel to the anthemic chants closing the  album in White Walls,  Between the Buried and Me come across as seasoned professionals rather than a band trying out many new styles.

What also sets this album’s standards so high are vocalist/keyboardist Tommy Rogers’ lyrics. Stating artistic intent is not uncommon for many musicians that are in  love with their jobs, but the lyrics on Colors show a different side of it.  Dealing with fans’ expectations for more of the same and their own desire to continually expand at the same time brings about such lyrical gems as “They want to be fed…fed a simple replication of past greatness.”  Pretty ambitious for a group  putting an album out on Victory Records, a label mainly notable for churning out tasteless and uninspired hardcore and emo. This album is good enough to make me believe that if only more bands would dare to put  music as a whole above their one genre of choice…the world would sound a lot better.

If you are interested in hearing more about this album, please purchase it directly from the artist or your local independent music store. Thank you.  Your thoughts and  comments are welcomed.

Hear the track Sun of Nothing from this album

Between the Buried and Me on Myspace [it is their official site