By Sean Palmerston

Things are a little quiet this week at Hellbound as a bunch of us are away in Baltimore, MD at Maryland Deathfest. So, since we are away, here is a reprint of a story I did on one of this year’s headliners, DOWN, for their second album. They were supposed to play in Hamilton, Ontario with System Of A Down and Meshuggah on an Ozzfest off-date on August 1st, 2002 but bailed at the last minute. Only their merch actually made it to the show…

DOWN with System Of A Down, Pulse Ultra and Meshuggah
Thursday, August 1 • 7 p.m.
Copps Coliseum, Hamilton ON

The New Orleans–based Down is a metal supergroup of extreme proportions. The quintet, compromised of Phil Anselmo and Rex Brown of Pantera on vocals and bass, Corrosion of Conformity’s Pepper Keenan and Crowbar’s Kirk Windstein on guitar and Eyehategod guitarist Jimmy Bower on drums (Bower also played drums in both COC and Crowbar at different points), recently released their second album, II: A Bustle In Your Hedgerow, and are taking part in this summer’s traveling Ozzfest as second stage headliners.

The album is only the band’s second in their ten years together. Their first, released more than six years ago, is now recognized as a classic major label metal album of the ’90s. When it was originally released, the band had little time to support it, and ended up playing only 13 shows in support of it. This time around, explains guitarist Pepper Keenan from a New Jersey Ozzfest stop, the band is planning to play as much as possible.

“We did a full U.S. tour, when the record was released, as ‘An Evening with Down,’” says Keenan. “We played two hours every night with no openers. Now we’re doing Ozzfest and as soon as this ends we’ll be touring Japan, Australia and Europe before coming back and doing another American tour.”

When asked why it took so long to record another album, Keenan explains logistics had more to do with it than anything.

“Pantera took COC to Australia with them last year to tour so four of us were there, we sat down and decided it couldn’t wait anymore.”

“We made the time where everyone could get together. The time was right, Pantera just finished supporting their last album and nothing was immediately planned for Corrosion of Conformity or Crowbar. We set the time aside to concentrate on Down.”

The sophomore DOWN album is a little more ’70s rock–sounding than their debut. Recorded in a barn on Anselmo’s Louisiana plantation, the album (whose subtitle is nicked from Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven”) is the band’s ode to the masters of their craft.

“[The subtitle] was a little smart ass little thing that we decided to put into the title,” jokes Keenan, “but we were totally in that sort of frame of mind when we did the record. Last time we made a metal record, this time we wanted to make a record that was more like the classics we grew up on, like Led Zeppelin IV or Black Sabbath’s Paranoid.”

“It was so exciting and it felt to me what it might be like for someone like Black Sabbath to be doing their second record or something, when they knew that they were on to something. We knew that there was no one doing anything like this so we just went for it.”

“It wasn’t like we were trying to be Led Zeppelin but I think the way that we were recording it might have had the same kind of feel to it that Zeppelin had when they were doing their early records. It was just so off the cuff and just straight; just playing music and not over-thinking it.”

Keenan says the band’s set as part of the System of A Down bill will be longer than their usual daily Ozzfest sets and should clock in around 60 minutes. Expect some bang for your buck.

Originally published 25/07/2002 in VIEW Magazine, Hamilton ON

By Bill Adams

The problem with requiems – especially requiems made in tribute to celebrities – is that everybody involved always feels compelled to make sure their voice is heard loud enough that theirs is the one associated with the event. That such a personal thing as a requiem and remembrance is ever co-opted by the vanity of others is a little remarkable (and tactless) at best and a little disgusting at worst; and there’s no good reason it should happen – not really. For example, when Ron Asheton‘s sister Kathleen organized the tribute concert for her brother which happened on April 19, 2011 at Ann Arbor’s Michigan Theater, the cathartic sense was touching and genuine but, when a multitude of celebrities with little connection to the guitarist (if any at all) descended on the proceeding, the event began to look less like a memorial and more like a spectacle.

What purpose, for example, did director Jim Jarmusch think his being interviewed for this concert film would serve? Why does so much screen time get afforded to Henry Rollins – who was the emcee for the event – before even a note of music is heard? It’s a little indulgent to see these men parade through the opening of this film and, conspicuously, it’s worth noting that no member of The Stooges appears among those interviewed. That makes sense (the band wrote songs about it, but The Stooges’ stance was always one of laughing in the face of it – not addressing it seriously), and giving it a lot of discussion seems a little contrary to that spirit now – so the end of Ron Asheton’s life does not get much talking about here. The most discussion of death that does come out comes when drummer Scott Asheton addresses the crowd briefly right before The Stooges take the stage, but as soon as Mike Watt, James Williamson, Scott Asheton and Henry Rollins open the show with “I Got A Right” and sets off a firecracker-sized explosion in the minds of viewers, and absolutely when Iggy takes the mic from Rollins and issues the first in a series of megatonic explosions with “Raw Power,” all the pomp that opened the DVD is summarily forgotten. This performance immediately becomes a celebration of life at that point.

The celebration of life that happened at Michigan Theater on April 19, 2011 never slows down for a second throughout The Stooges’ show and Iggy really does feed off it in the finest imaginable fashion as he just seems to run through the crowd and the excitement of the moment at fast-forward. Within the time it takes the band to make it through “Search And Destroy,” “Gimme Danger” and “Shake Appeal,” Iggy Pop has danced across the stage multiple times, caused his mic stand to collapse a few times, gotten in the faces of those in the front row of the venue and invited them all up onstage to dance with him (which they take him up on). He doesn’t really slow down after that either; not until he gets into the crowd during the extended jam that the band falls into during “Funhouse” and the singer takes a second to look around and observe the energy that he and his band have transferred over to the audience. Then, he appears perfectly impressed with the band’s handiwork – but, as soon as The Stooges kick into “Open Up And Bleed,” the singer spontaneously gets wound back up and shoots to thrill some more.

Iggy Pop never slows down again after that – not when a string section just seems to materialize from nowhere on a riser behind the band and not even when younger men would likely collapse from exhaustion – until he breaks to address the crowd, talk about his friend Ron and debut an acoustic blues number with James Williamson called “Ron’s Tune.” That moment – when Iggy sits down with Williamson onstage to deliver a slightly ragged ballad dedicated to Ron Asheton – is the one which really leaves the greatest impact and means the most; the rest of the show is great and is absolutely worth seeing, but that moment when Williamson picks up an acoustic guitar and Iggy croaks out a new song to immortalize his collaborator is special, touching and genuinely sweet. It is the immortal moment on this Tribute to Ron Asheton DVD, and is the truly great requiem the guitarist deserves.

(MVD Visual)

Bill Adams is the editor-in-chief of groundcontrolmag.com

By Laura Wiebe

A few days into April, Sarah Kitteringham and I loaded into Adam Wills’s car for a heavy metal road trip to Bowling Green, Ohio. Our destination wasn’t a concert, although live music was involved. We were headed to Bowling Green State University for an international academic conference on Heavy Metal and Popular Culture. Both Sarah and I were presenting (Sarah on women in extreme metal and on metal community, me on Voivod and science fiction); Heavy Metal Adam was along for the photos and the ride (he also tweeted some of the events with the hashtag #bgmetalconf).

The four-day conference involved a range of events, from individual talks to round table discussions, a visual arts and media exhibition, and multiple panels featuring scholars and specialists speaking on diverse aspects of metal music and culture. Evening activities included the aforementioned live music from local performers, plus a special research presentation on the heavy metal t-shirt and a short documentary film called Motörhead Matters. A planned keynote by Dan Spitz (ex-Anthrax) and concert by his band Red Lamb fell through near the last minute when Red Lamb’s spring tour was suddenly cancelled.

As the conference opening remarks indicated, the field of academic work that has come to be known as “metal studies” is most often traced to the publication of two books in the early 1990s: Deena Weinstein’s Heavy Metal: A Cultural Sociology (1991, revamped as Heavy Metal: The Music and Its Culture in 2009) and Robert Walser’s Running with the Devil: Power, Gender and Madness in Heavy Metal Music (1993). Walser didn’t make it for his opening keynote – Niall W. R. Scott from the UK stepped in with a paper on ecology and black metal called “Blackening the Green” – but Weinstein was present for many of the events, adding her voice, insight and metal appreciation to a round table on the Origins and Meaning of Heavy Metal as well as to the Q & A discussions following each panel.

Other keynote talks took place as planned and were both provocative and satisfying – demonstrating a deep understanding of the worlds of metal, the strengths and weaknesses of these worlds, and the challenges metal genres, scenes, and communities face.

Author (and Hellbound contributor) Laina Dawes gave a keynoted titled “Race, Gender, and Cultural Authenticity in Extreme Music,” introducing the audience to the subject of her recent book, What Are You Doing Here?: A Black Woman’s Life and Liberation in Heavy Metal. Moving with ease between intellectual authority and street credibility, Dawes outlined enough of her writing and research to cover several important issues shaping the experiences of black women who are metal musicians and fans. But she also left us understanding the need for more research and wanting to learn more.

Keith Kahn-Harris, author of Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge, provided the other conference keynote, a thought provoking talk titled “Metal Beyond Metal: What Happens Next?”. Kahn-Harris addressed the purpose of metal studies and its relationship with the metal scene(s), suggesting that metal scholars ought to play a role in helping metal look and adapt toward its own future. Finding value in metal beyond a core of highly recognizable musical and cultural conventions, Kahn-Harris urged us to consider how metal might avoid the threats of dissipation and ossification, and asked us what it might mean to extend the definition of metal beyond this historical core. (I’m speaking abstractly, but Kahn-Harris is developing these ideas in a forthcoming publication, which I’m sure will explain them much more cohesively than I can represent here).

Out of the other events, I’d have a hard time pinpointing particular talks and panels that struck me more powerfully than others, and if I were to list and describe my favourites I’d end up reciting most of my notes (many pages of handwritten scrawls in need of some serious deciphering). But in general I found myself enthralled with the wealth of new information I gained about metal performance and appreciation as these things manifest across and among so many (and so many different) worlds and communities – to mention examples like Madagascar and black women guitarists is to give you only the tiniest glimpse of what I’m talking about. In addition, some of the round-table discussions – on metal origin stories, community in metal, and the Toledo metal scene – most clearly brought scholars and non-academic metalheads into conversation, a valuable form of interaction that enhanced the conference’s overall value.

Importantly, the presentations often approached a generalized assumption that some group or groups of people hold about metal music or culture only to complexify the issue, demonstrating how research in particular locations, milieus, and demographics reveals the diversity in the ways people understand and engage with metal. It was also significant that not everyone at the conference was a diehard metal fan, not even necessarily a fan at all though generally a sympathetic ally. It became clear that outsider perspectives have something crucial to add to and ask about the metal studies conversation, and we’d be foolish to shut ourselves off from that kind of dialogue.

I gather that not everyone, metalhead or not, agrees that metal is a field that should be studied. I’m not surprised, but thinking back to my own introduction to academic work on heavy metal I don’t remember ever questioning whether this stuff should be done. I was just amazed and thrilled that it could be. And I immediately wanted to contribute to this work myself. Well, I’ve been doing that for a while now, and the Bowling Green Heavy Metal and Popular Culture conference reminded me why. I came away from the four days reinvigorated by the creativity and vitality of metal music and culture, a vitality challenged but not diminished by the less savory aspects of the scene. I also left reminded of the creativity and complexity of the work being done in metal studies, with my own commitment to metal music, culture and scholarship reaffirmed.

For more information of the burgeoning field of metal studies, check out The International Society for Metal Music Studies and the forthcoming journal, Metal Music Studies.

Lychgate reside in the space of stylistic description found between the world of funeral doom and atmospheric black metal. The meeting of plodding, syrupy doom and scathing, frostbitten black metal speed results in an album bent on breaking the listener’s will to exist on the band’s self-titled debut.

A keyboard-driven intro opens the blackened ritual with an authoritarian presence, commanding attention and obedience to the enveloping display of dismal discourse to follow. Organs and punishing low end crunch propel the mouth of madness from the depths on “Resentment”. Thunderous double-kick accelerates the heart rate to a fevered pulse by invoking a sense of terror similar to Evoken but with far more urgency.

Vocals howl through the ether borne on the souls of the damned, lording over funereal plodding with gently undulating guitar waves dancing above the surface. “Against the Paradoxical Guild” surges ahead with a frantic desire, fleeing desperately through oppressive forests of gloom. For all Lychgate’s maniacal and diabolical vocalizing, an underlying despair permeates the album. Soaring tremolos rise from the gloom on a cloud of hope leading into the carnivorous carnival keys and blast-beaten black metal destruction of “In Self Ruin”. Solos walk the line between sanity and madness as a twisted jester’s evil revenge drips from every pore.

Working the balance of pace, blazing percussion and windblown low end and methodical higher frequencies advance through the murk of consciousness. The listener is affected by a sense of fear and apprehension blanketed in a fog of longing (“Sceptre to Control the World”) in a frantic attempt to escape the overwhelming feeling of dread introduced by the haunting keys. Choral chanting and eerie organs provide angelic reverberations and organic vibrations which transcend the physical plane. The martial beat of “Triumphalism” leads to a headlong flight into the heat of battle. Swirling riffs entwine the listener, mentally crushing your essence to a pale husk to be carried away the winds of ugliness.

At a slightly slower pace, the swelling riffs of “Dust of a Gun Barrel” push out at the membranes of sound with melancholic and forlorn acoustics. Despondent cries, pounding drums and crushing guitars hammer away at your mind threatening to bathe your world in pain. Closer “When Scorn Can Scourge No More” sees a headless horseman galloping away bearing the souls of the jaded and broken, transporting them to feed the blackened mass throbbing in the underbelly of humanity. Clean tones and doom-drenched bottom end are laced into the track balancing the two on a fulcrum of hate and disgust.

A clarity of production ensures every malicious sound is heard. Imperial-sized black metal drags the listener down a black hole of loathing and anguish into the gaping maw of Lychgate’s infernal majesty. Lychgate is a harrowing experience not for the faint of heart guaranteed to shrivel your soul into a black mass with its dense sonics and disorienting vocal ministrations. Open the Lychgate and beware.

(Gilead Media)

After the all-out assault of April activities, May has been pretty quiet so far.  In fact, I haven’t seen a band or drank a beer in over three weeks.  Craziness!  And while early June promises to be punishing, it’s worth noting for those who are stuck in the city this long weekend that Oxbow is playing Toronto tonight.  For the first time.  Ever.

Of course, the on-again, off-again noise-rock (which is apparently the new name for not-quite-sludge) outfit doesn’t tour all that often.  As Eugene Robinson told a recent interviewer, “very few jobs will give you 5 weeks of time to go off and play music. Most jobs give you 2 weeks of vacation.”  Alas, this evening’s gig appears to be a one-off, making it even more exclusive.

And for those afraid of being assaulted by Robinson, actor, author and mixed-martial artist, he clarifies in the same interview that he never throws the first blow.  It’s only those that deserve it who get what’s coming to them.  And here I was hoping to have him hit a hipster.  Oh well…

On a side note, this will actually be my first time seeing local openers Godstopper in person.  I’ve been enjoying their sounds since the early demo days, but never got the chance to catch a concert until tonight.  I’m told that Mike Simpson doesn’t actually play every instrument when they play live–which would have been impressive, albeit impossible.

Oxbow, Thighs, Godstopper, White Ribs @ The Garrison, 1197 Dundas St W, Saturday, May 18th.  Doors @ 9, first band @ 9:45.  $15.

Peace,

Greg

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Blowing Up The Lakehead Playlist For May 6th (and 13th) 2013

11-11:30 Slayer – Fight Till Death (Show No Mercy) Slayer – Die By The Sword (Show No Mercy) Slayer – Tormentor (Show No Mercy) Slayer – Hardening Of The Arteries (Hell Awaits) Slayer – Necrophiliac (Hell Awaits) Slayer – Angel Of Death (Reign In Blood) Slayer – Postmortem (Reign In Blood)

11:30-12 Slayer – Behind The Crooked Cross (South Of Heaven) Slayer – Spill The Blood (South Of Heaven) Slayer – War Ensemble (Seasons In The Abyss) Slayer – Death’s head (Diabolus in Musica) Slayer – Bitter peace (Diabolus in Musica) Slayer – Overt enemy (Diabolus in Musica)

12-12:30 Amon Amarth – Deceiver of the Gods (Deceiver of the Gods) U.D.O. – Metal Machine ( Anthrax – Anthem (Anthem) Byzantine – Soul Eraser (Byzantine) Coldsteel – Blood Secrets (American Idle) Flotsam and Jetsam – Rabbits Foot (Ugly Noise)

12:30-1 Gama Bomb – Legend Of Speed (The Terror Tapes) Hatchet – Fall From Grace (Dawn Of The End) Newsted – King Of The Underdogs (Metal EP) Philip H. Anselmo – Conflict (War of the Gargantu) SODOM – Epitome Of Torture (Epitome Of Torture) Voivod – Mechanical Mind (Target Earth)

1-1:30 Hexen – Defcon Rising (Being And Nothingness) M:PIRE OF EVIL – Kissing The Beast (Crucified) Mortillery – Creature Possessor (Origin of Extinction) Monsterworks – It’s Alive (Album of Man) Hatriot – Murder American Style (Heroes Of Origin) Lich King – Wage Slave (Born Of The Bomb) Deaflock – CLASH (Courage To Expose All) 1:30-2 Beatallica – Come Together (Abbey Load) Accuser – Cannibal Insanity (Diabolic) Birth AD – Burn L.A. (I Blame You) Blood Tsunami – The Brazen Bull (For Faen)

Iron Maple Playlist For May 7th (and 14th) 2013

10-10:30 Beyond Creation – Chromatic Horizon (The Aura) Beyond Creation – Omnipresent (The Aura) The Nautilus – Ol’ Mighty (The Nautilus EP) Display of Decay – Intestinal Intercourse (Display of Decay) The Unconscious Mind – Beyond The Black Star (Where Philosophers Fall) Black Pestilence – Uprising (In Defiance) Csejthe – Dorko, la malveillante (Reminiscence)

10:30-11 Cryptik Howling – Dead Trees (Synthetic Ascension Design) Northern Aggression – Duel with the Devil (Abducted by Jesus) Thrawsunblat – Goose River (Mourners’ March) (Wanderer on the Continent of Saplings) Thrawsunblat – Bones in the Undertow (Wanderer on the Continent of Saplings) Wilt – Empyrean (Wilt)

11-11:30 PITH – Baptisms Along the Acheron (Baptisms Along The Acheron) Teramobil – Molecular Spectometry (Multispectral Supercontinuum) Psychotic Pulse – Asylum (Psychotic Pulse) Baptists – Still Melt (Bushcraft) Greber – Twenty Nine Years Old (Split) KEN MODE – The Terror Pulse (Entrench)

11:30-12 Walk As Chaos-Impasse ( Orchid’s Curse – Provisions For A Journey (Words) Placate The Masses – New World (Conquer All) City Of Fire – Bad Motivator (Trial Through Fire) My Broken Hero – Man of Science (Man of Science, Man of Faith) Aquila – Memoria (Demo) (Valle Mortalitatis (Demo 2013)) The Northern – Circadian Effect (Imperium)

12-12:30 Transcend the Skies – Centauri (Paradigm) Vacant Eyes – Vacant Eyes (Vacant Eyes) Witch Of The Waste – Taking The Penguin For A Walk (All Other Voices (EP)) Take the Earth Beneath Us – Hookworm (2012 – Singles) Calculate – Apotheosis (Apotheosis) Semantic Saturation – Make Believe (Solipsistic) Pomegranate Tiger – Stars (Entities)

12:30-1 Edge of Attack – Demon (Of The Northern Seas) feat. Ivan Giannini (Edge of Attack) ECLIPSE PROPHECY – Through The Storm (Days of Judgement) Anciients – Falling in Line (Heart of Oak) Teethmarks – I Once Knew Slash ( Teethmarks – Rattler)

As usual you can find both shows for download (as well as some of the older shows) by going to: http://luradio-server.lakeheadu.ca/2013/Witchfinder%20Radio

By Bill Adams

As of this writing, it will have been about forty years since Iggy and The Stooges released their seminal 1973 album, Raw Power. More specifically, it has been 14685+ days since Iggy and The Stooges’ first album hit new release racks and started growing within the mainstream (underground or above ground is irrelevant); ultimately reshaping a portion of the pop music landscape in its own image. The album’s impact and influence on pop culture has been incredible and, as a result (combined with the fact that Raw Power was the last album of new material to bear The Stooges’ name in any capacity at all for thirty-four years), it has become an incredibly difficult act to follow. To this day, Raw Power is the standard by which new releases by The Stooges, by Iggy Pop in his solo career, by James Williamson and more (many, many more) have been judged. Those standards haven’t always made sense, but they’ve become the default setting because Raw Power is the sort of classic which deserves the appreciation it gets. It is timeless rock music and sounds as good in 2013 as it did in 1973.

Appreciating the name and legacy of Raw Power is all well and good – everybody does – but when Iggy and The Stooges announced that they’ve recorded a new album and it will be the follow-up to Raw Power (which, chronologically, it would be – Iggy and The Stooges featured James Williamson on guitar – a key sonic aspect to the group – and Ready To Die is the first album of new material to once again feature Iggy Pop, The Stooges and James Williamson), they had the have known that they’d be poking a very large critical beehive with a very large and pointy stick. So why’d they do it? Making such a claim is an instant attention-getter and conversation-starter; everyone who likes anything about The Stooges and the other semantic variables on the name and member lineup will have an opinion, so saying that Ready To Die is the long-awaited follow-up to Raw Power basically ensures that everybody with a potential opinion is going to be paying attention. Some will be waiting breathlessly because they want to hold the claim up, and others will be waiting breathlessly because they want to burn it down.

All of the above is just common sense right? More ridiculous would be to assume that invoking the name of Raw Power would somehow cause the pit of Lazarus to erupt from the ground and Iggy Pop to emerge from it, twenty-seven years old and ready to pick up precisely where Raw Power left off; ready to roll in glass and nearly impale himself on mic stand while out of his mind. It might be inconvenient for some readers to note that Iggy Pop is now sixty-six years old and, while he still has an incredible presence and still crowd surfs nightly at shows, he’s still sixty-six years old. Keeping that in mind as one listens to Ready To Die, it’s easy to hear that the raucous spirit of Iggy and The Stooges is alive and well here and James Williamson’s awesome guitar work drives these ten songs as it did on Raw Power too – but the unhinged, untamed, drug-addled and at least occasionally blathering fury and fervor of that album has been tempered and focused by time. Ready To Die is not a kamikaze run like Raw Power was; it is sleaker, more streamlined and more certain than its predecessor.

That Ready To Die is more streamlined, solid and certain doesn’t mean it starts strong though – the best that could be said of “Burn” is that it starts Ready To Die. Here, Iggy sticks more to his “crooner” vocal tone than his “rock singer” tone, and it really does coast on top of the “slightly too static” wall of guitars. There’s a general lack of fire and frenzy here that wouldn’t necessarily be seen as out of place on one of Iggy’s solo albums (an easy comparison would be “Preliminaires” off Avenue B), but it feels disconcertingly wrong for an Iggy and The Stooges album; it feels staid and sterile. “Sex & Money” (the song which follows “Burn”) is a bit of an improvement – the singer doesn’t seem as disconnected or outside the mix – but he’s still not in it yet either and, now two tracks in, fans who play the record sequentially on their first time through will be getting good and nervous that maybe the only thing they can hope for from Ready To Die is that it won’t just be the biggest farce they’ve ever heard.

Those unnerved by the questionable start of Ready To Die will start chastising themselves (I did) the second “Job” rolls over and locks into a fantastic stride. There, Iggy breaks off the croon and raises his register, Williamson ignites the venomous guitar tone that just can’t stop itself from seeming like it’s growling and Steve Mackay’s sax asserts some presence and starts searing a few senses. NOW – three songs in – it feels right, and Iggy and The Stooges are earning the right to call Ready To Die a return or a follow-up to Raw Power or whatever they like.

The band keeps earning that right regularly through the rest of Ready To Die’s runtime too. Very possibly the closest (in spirit, tone, vibe and Motor City drive) to Raw Power is “Gun,” where Iggy forgets about not being anti-social and starts waving a gun around (with bombs going off in Boston! It’s perfect from a ‘chaos of the times’ standpoint) while Williamson and bassist Mike Watt get a perfect Motor City swagger swinging in the rhythm guitar and bass parts of the song. After that, both the title track and “Dirty Deal” amp up the volume and get close to “Burn” again but, now, Iggy sounds right in the thick of the mix with the band – not riding on top of it – and the songs cut listeners just perfectly.

All that sounds pretty good right? It IS good – but there’s no denying that Ready To Die isn’t perfect. “Unfriendly World” and “Beat That Guy” aim to be the next emotionally stunted, acoustic and sombre answers to “Gimme Danger,” but both of them miss, and “DD’s” tries to get a little randy but fails to get it all the way up. Some detractors will point to those tracks and say, “SEE?! It’s not perfect! How dare anyone even attempt to call Ready To Die a followup to Raw Power?” but the truth is (and those who get it will understand) that no Stooges album has ever been perfect; in fact, one of their greatest charms is that they flaunt their imperfections as much as they wear their greatness on their sleeve. The flaws are what make it real and make the great songs that much better.

So who ultimately wins and was right then? Were the fans right to hope for a “follow-up to Raw Power” and did they get that, or were the detractors right that “there is no way to follow up Raw Power”? Well, this writer contends that this album serves both perfectly; Ready To Die has some great moments which live up to the standard of Raw Power, and some which fall so short it’s laughable. Some may curse and call that contention a soft option, but wasn’t the dichotomy that Iggy and The Stooges – and The Stooges before them – always straddled? Weren’t they they band who rocked like hell, even as they were shooting themselves in the foot, rolling in broken glass or setting themselves on fire? Wasn’t it all as fun, silly, stupid and lighthearted as it was dark and dangerous? Yeah – it was. Ready To Die is too – that’s why it’s the perfect follow-up to Raw Power, or the next in line after The Weirdness or even just the next chapter in the story of Iggy and The Stooges.

(Fat Possum)

Bill Adams is also the editor-in-chief of groundcontrolmag.com

By Matt Hinch

A sky burial is a Tibetan Buddhist practice in which the deceased’s body is left on a high plateau to be eaten by vultures and thus returning the body’s nutrients to nature. It sounds like a gruesome endeavor but since we Buddhists believe the “soul” has left the body leaving it an empty vessel, it is seen as basically no different than regular burial or cremation. (Although I might have a hard time convincing my non-Buddhist family to do this with my body when I take another.)

The concept of a sky burial aligns well with Sky Burial, the Relapse Records debut of Richmond, VA’s Inter Arma. While the sky burial may be a brutal and grotesque sight, there is an understanding and peace of finality in the ritual. Inter Arma’s Sky Burial can at times be brutal, in a monumental way, yet there is an underlying peace to be found within its frigid soundscapes as well.

Inter Arma’s strength is in the creation of mood and weight as referenced on opener “The Survival Fires”. Mammoth riffs rumble forth as if mired in tar, plodding ahead beneath a heavy burden of despair. Blackened, effect-laden vocals cry out with visceral anguish in hopes of an end to the torment. It’s an aural picture painted in varying forms throughout the album and gives the listener a feeling of monument, as if the gods themselves are responsible for the aggressive sounds and detached screams emanating from the sky. As all encompassing as they can be, Inter Arma often strips down to the acoustic level (“The Long Road Home (Iron Gate)”). This relays a decidedly Americana feel when accompanied by lap steel guitars. It’s not exactly melancholic so much as reflective and lamenting.

It all comes back to gigantic sludge in the end. The acoustics of “The Long Road Home” carry into its second part until the façade of acceptance ruptures into full-blown black metal destruction. Tortured screams of deep pain flay the skin from the bones after a soul rending passage which builds and builds upon stacked layers of guitars and desperately emotional soloing.

“Destroyer” is a reimagining of the same named track from their previous EP. Here though, that layering effect takes the track to a different level. Still droney and buzzing with energy, the track is extended giving the bellows and shrieks of a winged predator room to breath before a triumphant finish.

The most immediate track is “’sblood”. Intensely drum driven with straightforward riffing, it pounds the listener into submission. And when everything drops out leaving the guitar to its isolation, the effect is striking and possibly the best moment on the album.

The ominous sludge and slow-building doom of elephantine riffs that is the hallmark of Inter Arma continues with the stomp and easy sway of “Westward”. Acoustic serenity and haunting theremin embody “Love Absolute”, giving way to the album’s epitaph in “Sky Burial”. The closing track is packed with riffs. Steely, acoustic, massive, frantic and harried. The effect-heavy vocals cascade through the track as if from a distance, howling through the darkness. A myriad of emotion floods the listener in the form of the aforementioned pain and despair, trepidation and eventual catharsis.

At over and hour in length, it can be a challenge to get through but for those with the mental stamina to absorb all Sky Burial has to offer the reward is worth the effort. Beneath the roiling black clouds thundering amid the highest peaks, the process of death’s bodily finality plays out its bloody and peaceful last act. Sky Burial is an intensely powerful, emotional album best enjoyed as a whole. Open yourself to its pleasures and let it reside within you. Enlightenment is near.

(Relapse Records)

According to those who were there, the Milwaukee Metalfest was one of the premier events of its kind in the ’90s, not just in North America, but anywhere.  Sadly, it’s said to have taken a huge nosedive since the turn of the century, and there are all kinds of horror stories about shitty sound, pay-to-play schemes and lack of promotion that plagued the event to the point they had to pull the plug.  I won’t get into any of that here, but you’re more than welcome to read about it in your spare time.

In any case, a new metal festival has emerged in the Milwaukee suburbs, and while it’s much more subgenre-specfic, tis perfectly suited to a doom-metal elitist such as myself:

Dream Death and Penance and Victor Griffin?  Oh my!

Originating in the much-smaller city of Kenosha, the two-day doomfest moved to Milwaukee last year, mere miles from the airport.  Suffice to say it’s still somewhat small-scale–even I haven’t heard of some of these bands.  But if your idea of a good time is two days of downtuned, depressing despondency, I don’t doubt you’ll dig it.  Me, I’m especially stoked to see the reunion of not one, but two Pittsburgh cult acts (even if I already saw Dream Death in their hometown last year), and check out what Victor Griffin’s up to these days.  Not to mention that TGOS and Iron Man are always awesome, and catching Orodruin is always special, since they can no longer come to Canada.

I’m also pretty stoked to see Pale Divine for just the second time–it’s been four years–but my sleeper pick of the fest has gotta be King Giant.  The Virginia-based band made some noise with their debut Dismal Hollow, which combined civil-war themed lyrics with slow southern doom… oh, and zombies.  They’re set to take the stage just before dinnertime, at 5:15 on Saturday.  I’ll hafta skip dinner cuz there isn’t anybody worth skipping afterwards!

Days of the Doomed III @ The Blue Pig, Cudahy, WI, June 21st to 22nd.  Check out their website for more info.

Peace,

Greg

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Live review by Sean Palmerston; Concert photos by Mike Bax, lithiummagazine.com

It was a Friday night not to be missed: one of my favourite Swedish metal bands playing as close to my house as they’ve ever been. Again.

I kicked myself last time around when I opted out and decided against going to see Opeth and Katatonia play just up Highway 6 in Guelph at the Guelph Concert Theater. Having never been to the venue, I had been told it didn’t have great sightlines so I decided against it, only to regret my decision. My friends were raving for days afterwards about the venue being intimate and small with a decent view almost everywhere, so this time when it was announced both bands were coming back I figured I’d better go.

Katatonia has been a point of frustration with me for the past few albums. While I like what they have been doing since becoming a more melodic metal act, I have never clicked with any of their modern albums in the same way I did with Brave Murder Day and Discouraged Ones nearly fifteen years ago. A lot of that had to with the production on the new albums I discovered after seeing them play some of their newer tracks live. The newer songs seemed to take on a new life live, with the guitar tones exhibiting just enough grit that I’ve had to go back and revisit their most recent album this past week. A nice surprise.

After hearing mixed reviews of the previous Opeth show here at the beginning of the Heritage tour cycle, I was more than prepared for the possibility that this could have been a very mellow, more prog rock set than the other times I have seen them. This wasn’t really something that concerned me, for I have always been of the opinion that Heritage is a fantastic album. I was delighted when they opened the set with an excellent rendition of “The Devil’s Orchard”, but I was absolutely over the moon when they followed it up immediately with “Ghost of Perdition” and, this was a real shocker, “White Cluster” off Still Life. I wasn’t expecting anything that old to be played at all, so witnessing this live was a wonderful thing.

The set continued on with a few more gems as well: Damnation track “Hope Leaves” was a nice surprise, but hearing them do “Demon Of the Fall” in an acoustic format was simply stunning. It was something completely unexpected. The set ended with a rousing version of “Blackwater Park”, something I was hoping they’d do but didn’t actually imagine they would. Yes, for me personally this was a good night.

I’d feel amiss if I didn’t mention how Mr. Akerfeldt remains one of the funniest front men in metal music. His dry sense of humour is really very Scandinavian but it is also so hilarious. If someone were to put out a record of just his in-between banter I’d buy it! He had a few zingers this evening: making Axe play 12 bars of a Root song with him when a fan upfront yelled for “Freebird” (!), making his lead guitarist do the Rudolf Schenker backwards strut and claiming it as important as Chuck Berry’s duck walk or Abbath’s crab walk, and – the funniest part of the night to me – singling out my pal that I went to the show with for being from Gothenburg, Sweden. My pal Mikael had been yelling at them in Swedish all night, so just before “Haxprocess” Mr Akerfeldt says “the only person in here that will know what I am saying is the guy from Gothenburg who has been yelling at us all night, but this next song is called…”

On the way home my pal asked me if he heard him right, which I told him he did, and then he bitched to me about how Akerfeldt introduced everyone in the band in Swedish, but then called himself “Michael”. Ah, I guess you had to be there, and if you weren’t you missed out on a great show to boot!

All photos are used with permission of Mike Bax and lithiummagazine.com. Please check them out online!