Review: Devin Townsend's Ziltoid the Omniscient

There’s good news, and there’s bad news. The good news is that Ziltoid the Omniscient is the work of one single man: the shamelessly talented Devin Townsend. The bad news is that for everything he is, a drummer is not one of those things. Therefore, all the drumming on this album is programmed, sampled. Don’t let it get to you.

Ziltoid is a space opera, a metal musical that tells the tale of the titular Ziltoid, an alien overlord who comes to Earth demanding the ultimate cup of coffee. Within the first track, By Your Command he gets the coffee, hates it, and decides to destroy the planet in retaliation. And that’s where it gets weird, with space-pilgrimages to space-Buddhas and Ziltoid’s endurance of multiple existential crises. I would also advise to not let the story get to you, because this stuff is pure B-grade 1950’s, boyhood fantasy alien invasion sci-fi at its cheesiest, with everything turned up to 10.

What I find most impressive is the sheer theatricality of the album. Townsend repeatedly displays his skills in multiple nine-minute songs that shift effortlessly, perfectly, between time signatures and keys. By Your Command starts out as a chugging, double bass avalanche backed by the roughest vocals this side of Dethklok, and transitions into a gentle, wafer-thin lament with a classically influenced arpeggio line.

At other times, the music is set to events in the story, specifically battles. Ziltoidia Attaxx!!! narrates the battle for Earth, and captures the hectic gunfire and pounding boots with a marching guitar line and machine gun-fast drumming. Hyperdrive and N9 detail the flight of Humanity through space, and their battle with Ziltoid against the glow of a nebula. The echo is turned way up, and the plodding of spacecraft through the stars fills Hyperdrive. As Ziltoid springs his trap in N9, frenzied drums and a howling chorus wail like banshees as the navies battle in the void.

Multiple songs are conversations between two or more characters, and Townsend establishes a separate musical style that each character ‘talks’ in. Ziltoid prefers the thunderclaps of metal, humans a more ethereal and introspective sound and so on. Stylistic touches like this really turn the album into more than just a cheesy, lame sci fi story, and help it become a cheesy, lame, badass sci fi story.

As said before, towards the end, the story takes a backseat to the music with our closing track The Greys coming into the picture long after I’d lost track of what is happening. Nonetheless, it’s a very soothing melody put to a repeating V – I cadence that captures every element from the whole record into a four minute summary of style.

Ziltoid is a great album from start to finish. Takers must be okay with some harsh vocals and willing to put up with some very extended and repetitive outros to a few tracks, but it is a small price to pay to listen to such a finely crafted work of music. There’s a little something for everyone to enjoy here, and if you can find something here to latch onto, you’ve got a foothold into exploring a very interesting album.

Review: Andrew W.K.'s I Get Wet

Here’s the thing. Andrew W.K. loves partying. He loves it a lot. In fact, it doesn’t matter who you are, or what you have, or what you do. Your wife, children, career, maybe the house you’ve built with your own two hands. You will never love anything as much as Andrew W.K. loves to party. That’s what this entire album is about, partying, and the girls at parties, and how much fun it is to party.

It’s barely thirty minutes long, just one full-out rock song after another, every one of them in the most traditional of structures of verse-chorus-bridge. No deviation anywhere. But it’s great, and I’ll tell you why: This is glam-laden rock and roll in the exact vein of Motley Crue, Ratt, Twisted Sister, and countless others.

The constant glamorization of the nightlife, sex, and booze is instantly displayed in the song titles themselves, Party Hard, Take It Off, Party Till You Puke, Fun Night, et cetera. Every song is essentially the same as the one before it, and the tongue-in-cheek humor of the whole thing is laid on a bit thick, Andrew’s party-lust never, ever lets up.

Thankfully, the lyrics aren’t too bad, and the songs are written pretty well, and the vocals are strong and catchy. Guitars, drums, and keyboards and pianos make up everything you’ll hear on the record, and it’s only very occasional that all instruments aren’t on full blast, the very nice opening of She Is Beautiful is a perfect example of the potential for shredding and even greater rocking out that is sadly not a part of the album as a whole.

There’s very little to say about I Get Wet. It’s a rock album that is exclusively about partying, puking, and fucking. If you enjoy the 80’s material (Motley Crue’s She Goes Down comes to mind) it’s derived from, then you’ll do yourself a solid by giving W.K.’s debut album a listen.

Review: The Apples in Stereo's Travelers in Space & Time

An indie rock band form Denver, The Apples in Stereo have been at it for fifteen years, and 2010’s Travelers in Space & Time is their seventh studio effort. It is a delightfully cheery indie/rock/electro/dance/lightly experimental album that, in almost every instance, mixes this wide collection of styles with skill and grace. Elements of rock and roll are found in this album that are just barely removed from the blues, and lyrics that definitely aren’t.

The fifth track, Dance Floor is a perfect example of everything that’s right with this album: A strong, harmonized hook right off the bat. Quick tempo moved along by unobtrusive, but still energetic bass and drums. Twangy, muted guitars. Appropriately vague and mushy lyrics given great delivery, and laden wonderfully with highly vocoded harmonies and echoes. It’s an immediately catchy love anthem that’s far enough off the beaten path to stand apart from the mainstream, but built strongly enough upon the same fundamentals that it’s just as good, for all the same reasons. I defy anyone to listen to the song and not begin dancing in their seat: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6-m6ZgD670&feature=related

A wide range of instrumentation fills the album, from strings both steel and synthesized, horns, guitars, and auto-tuned electro-spacey vocals, the brief Strange Solar System is a pleasant little foray into the realm of auto-harmonized choruses. Throughout, though, it’s clear that these guys prefer their guitars and acoustic pianos most of all, with a groovy piano-rock line propelling the opening Dream About the Future.

Not all of the electronic elements work as well as they could, though. C.P.U. is led by a highly dissonant, extremely computerized melody, the bass drones, the drums thud, and the whole track is very muddy and plodding. I listened to it quite a few times, trying to find something to latch on, but to no avail.

There are a few other instances where the electronic arrangements don’t quite fit, but as stated earlier, the vast majority of this album is simply a joy to listen to. The Apples in Stereo have made an infectiously catchy, constantly upbeat, popping fifty minutes of music that will grab your attention with its simplistic presentation, and keep you coming back to seek out all the little accents and melodies that fill the background of every single track.

Review: Planetoid's Shadow of the Planetiod

I'm not exactly sure how to introduce this band, so here it is, free from prose: Planetiod is a band made of two intergalactic warlords and a drumming robot who are intent on taking over the planet Earth by using their music to literally melt our faces off. Think of Rush, meets Coheed and Cambria, meets AC/DC, and the fundaments of understanding Planetoid's brand of music are in place.

Their debut work, Shadow of the Planetoid, is by all accounts thoroughly impressive. Planetoid's only three dudes, with Locrius, the bassist doubling up on vocals, but the depth of sound that they've managed to produce with only ten strings, a few pedals, and a drumkit borders on damn near impossible. Across the length of the record, there are precious few instances of any layered guitars, axeman Ovatus content to weave his riffing and background grooves into one flowing line of music. Frequently though, the bass will forsake the lower frets and take over the melody, immedietly exemplified in the opener Lord of this Asteroid. All throughout, each song struts its own individual style, catchy, slightly-off kilter, 80's proggy melodies, and the gritty vocal delivery of Locrius.

Locrius sings like Def Leppard's Joe Elliot filled with the conviction and intonation of an Alabaman firebrand preacher, and he's absolutely aware of it if his monologue that kicks off Church of the Overdrive is any indication. His delivery is gritty and rough, straight from the back of his throat. And the rough edges in his voice compliment the entire band perfectly, because it's important to note that Shadow is steeped in garage band DIY recording funk, which so very often plagues a band's first album by not having production value enough to do the songs justice. But in Planetoid's case, my god it works.

Maybe because all of their songs are meticulously arranged to hell and back, maybe because the editing is so basic, it's obvious that they're doing massive swaths of the song all in one take, which is not as easy as it sounds, or perhaps because it has an incredibly personal, human feel; as the cymbals ring, you can hear the metal vibrating and warping the sound; the high fret bass riffing feels properly chunky, as the extra-thick strings struggle to do the work of melodies written for .10's. The album isn't so much polished as it is rehearsed, you can almost feel the musician's satisfaction in their playing after doing however many fudged takes and finally getting the part right.

Bottom line: The warriors of Planetoid know how to get a whole lot of sound out of little instrumentation. The album is packed with literally intergalactic music, and the aforementioned garage band feel evokes a certain echoing, hollow emptiness that brings out the vast expanses of the vacuum their lyrics are set in. A trio of highly skilled rockers, Planetiod is a refreshing dose fantasy and grandeur and flat out weirdness that is all too uncommon in the music of today.

*The members of Planetiod uniformly deny any relation to, compassion for, or origination from humanity.

Review: Fair to Midland's Fables From A Mayfly

Fair to Midland is a progressive rock band in a contemporary sense, and their third album Fables From A Mayfly: What I Tell You Three Times is True is a progressive rock album. In a contemporary sense. Think of the difference between 80’s rock, which was nothing but cocaine, sex, and guitar solos compared to 2000’s rock’s heavier emphasis on chugging riffs and its close relationship to pop. Now do the same conversion, applied to the first spattering of prog rock acts, and you’ll have a sense of what’s to come in this album. So, instead of an eight-part, fifty five minute song that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, we have a fairly standard set of eleven four-minute songs that make a little sense.

I’m not very convinced that ‘progressive’ is the best term for this album, though. There’s a lot of rock, but 95% of the time, there’s nothing but guitars, vocals, drums, and a few keyboards hanging out in the background. The lyrics are unconventional, yes. Some of the ways the instruments are arranged are unconventional, yes. One song ends on a 90-second carnival themed waltz, which is more unannounced than practical because it interrupts a very strong series of songs for no reason.

So that’s some of the bad, but what about the good? Well for one, nearly every moment of every song on this album is solid. Not outstanding, not mind-blowing, but solid, competent, well-executed rock music minimum. Which means it can only get better from there, right? Well, it does.

The vocalist, Darroh Sudderth, has an impressive range, and even more impressively, the ability to control his voice all across it. The heavier, shoutier moments are a bit forced and phlegmy, and the highest, shrillest moments sound strained and lack the fullness he otherwise has, but for the majority, this guy makes the band. He sings like a rusty, handmade violin in Tall Tales Taste Like Sour Grapes, bringing a truly creepy, thinner-than-air vibrato that works perfectly with the washed out buzzing guitar counterpoint. Another great moment is a majority of A Wolf Descends.

The rest of the band is just as solid as the vocals, but nothing rises above the clamor quite like Darroh’s graveyard bellowing. Guitars are heavy and the bass and drums are forceful, but in every case, each instrument stays safely in its arranged space, nobody sticking his head out, no explosive shredding, but maybe some beepy boopy keyboard ambience here and there.

All told, Fables is a strong album. It’s arranged, though. Constructed, highly deliberate. All throughout, the step-by-step march of the music carries you from one track to the next, no improv here. Which is fine, it’s a very classical, baroque vibe, which I think is kinda cool. Just know that, before diving headfirst into the album, and you won’t be disappointed.