Review: Cartel's Cycles

October 20^th, 2009 was the date of Cycle’s release, the third album by the six-man Georgian pop-rock outfit Cartel. Forty minutes of unsophisticated love songs are contained in the eleven track span of the work. Let’s get down to business.

When I say this is pop-rock, I mean that in the most straightforward sense. This is as poppy and rocky as we’re going to find for a while. The first three tracks, Let’s Go, The Perfect Mistake, and Faster Ride are a trio of dangerously catchy tunes that I’m sure have slain the hearts of teenage girls in numbers too great to count with the ‘Me and you baby, true love’ lyrical style that each and every track boasts. Melodic, and strongly sung vocals from Will Pugh, who is arguably one of the more competent vocalists in this genre usually filled with waifishly-voiced effete men in tight jeans who can’t quite get to their notes without belting out, or throwing their voices toward the correct pitch and hope they don’t miss by too much.

It’s tough to say a whole lot about Cycles. It’s a (very nicely done) pop-rock album from a band that’s very good at this sort of thing after eight years of making this music. Every song is catchy, with good harmonies and just enough variation each time through the verses and choruses that there’s a definite evolution of the music over the brief length of each piece, as slightly more complex layers are added to the mix.

All in all though, the recording is tight, the songs are written well enough to stand apart from one another while still conforming to the very tight genre restrictions that Cartel has been married to for their whole career. In the end it’s not going to stand too far apart, or above any of the other artists in this field, like Boys Like Girls, All Time Low, or Tokio Hotel, because it really, truly is just too samey-sounding to say that any one group is really superior to another at this style of music. That said, however, Cycles is still an enjoyable listen, even if it won’t rock your world, at least it can rock your socks for forty minutes.

Review: Cradle of Filth's Darkly, Darkly, Venus Aversa

If British extreme metal band Cradle of Filth is not already on your radar, be wary; these guys are about as far out as heavy metal is going to get for a long, long time. And when I say that these guys are metal and that they don’t give a fuck, I mean that the band sells a T-shirt of a masturbating nun and the words ‘Jesus is a cunt’ written on the back. Now, about this album…

Darkly, Darkly, Venus Aversa is the ninth studio album by Cradle of Filth in twice as many years since their inception. Like many of their albums, this has an overarching concept – the story of the Biblical Lilith, first wife of Adam, returning to Earth and doing what a Succubus does best. For this album, there are two sides that must be taken into consideration, almost as separate entities; the lyrics, and the music.

Musically, we have two things happening at once: We have the double bass, blast-beat almost unlistenably- fast drumming, power chord flailing guitars and bass tuned so low, that it’s almost impossible to keep up with the chord-to-chord motion of the songs. Above these elements are all the elements that create the faux-Victorian, gothic, haunting sound of the album. Glockenspiel, harpsichord, clavichord, they’re all in here. Shivering, high strings and bellowing pipe organs and choirs all contribute to the record. And while the two styles of instrumentation laid atop one another might sound really stupid on paper, the end result is one of choice, because every track is almost two in one. One being the thudding metal side, the other the graceful, eerie orchestral half.

Now the lyrics. Keep in mind that this vocalist, Dani Filth, sounds like a car alarm being shoved into the bowels of a screaming cat that is being thrown into a wood chipper from the side of an exploding speedboat. And by that I mean that all of his vocals are of the screamed/spoken variety, which brings me to an observation I’ve made about this kind of heavy metal that features entirely shouted vocals: The lyrics are almost always really interesting to read. When the vocalist doesn’t need to worry about following a melody, then there’s no longer such a close relationship between him and the rest of the band, and the lyrics take on a much more Renaissance, poetic aspect. And this absolutely happens here.

Open the booklet for this album, and you’ll see probably a thousand to fifteen hundred words’ worth of lyrics, all somewhat along the same vein as this sampling from Deceiving Eyes: “Having torn at the soil like a man insane / He threw his fists at the poisonous cosmos / And from that pit of shame / He bore the coffin from her sorry lot / Neath trees whose eaves were knotted with rot / Through ornate chapel doors, unlocked / To splinter her sarcophagus / And gaze upon her face”. Beautiful poetry screamed horrifyingly over horrifying music. There is, though, a female vocalist on this album, making occasional appearances and most notable on the lead single and best track of the album, Lilith Immaculate.

All told, Darkly, Darkly is a good album. It’s a good story, the lyrics are very well written, and the musical arrangements are very nice at times, but it is not something that one can just grab casually off the shelf and start grooving to; contained within is a very intensely crafted work of art, and if you want to really enjoy this (Because it is not exactly enjoyable to just listen to), you’re going to need to lyrics spread out on the floor in front of you the whole time, and you’ll probably need to listen all the way through two or three times.

Review: Tool's Aenima

Confession time: This is the first time I’ve ever listened to a Tool album. A 20-year old progressive metal band from California, Aenima is their sophomore release, dating back to 1996. Winning a grammy for Best Metal Performance, and selling over three million copies, this is the work that began the growth of what is one of today’s most dedicated cult followings; talk to a Tool fan about Tool at your own risk, for if you are not a Tool fan yourself, you could quickly discover that you're on very thin ice...

So here we go with a progressive metal album from fifteen years ago – much closer to the source than today’s would-be proggers. In listening to the one hour, seventeen minute span of the record, though, I’m finding a balance between straight-up prog techniques, those being jumping between time signatures, keys, modes, languages, and the employment of unconventional instruments and samples, and a few songs laden with some carefully crafted sucker punches that trick the ear into thinking that some really weird shit is going on, when actually we stay in the comfortable regular-land of 4/4. I cite two examples:

Track three, H. and track five, Forty Six & 2 don’t ever, to my examination, leave 4/4 time, instead employing techniques of syncopation (Messing with the ordering of weak and strong beats to screw with your head) and hemiola (putting a pattern of beats into a 4/4 time signature that, after a few measures will create the brief illusion of 3/4or vice versa) to throw you off and make you think that there’s more going on than there really is.

Several other songs are much more straightforward in their confusing, almost seemingly arbitrary construction: two bars of 3/4, then a bar of 4/4 will repeat for a while, then a pause for a measure in 2/2, chorus in 3, bridge in 4… It all gets very difficult to follow at times. And like everything prog, we have the interlude tracks, like Cesaro Summability, which features a crying infant, indecipherable, robotic vocals, the motorcycle from Snow Crash revving in the background, and no time signature at all.

Our vocalist, Mr Maynard James Keenan, though appearing on nearly every track on the album, often mixed softer than the rest of the band. On the first few tracks this is very noticeable, and his crooning takes a pleasant backseat to the wailing and grooving of the guitars and bass, turning into a meandering, smooth hammock of sound to lie in and let the rest of the track wash over you. In some other instances, mostly the title track Aenima, Maynard is turned way the hell up, delivering a very standard, straightforward rock vocal performance, along with some well-written and humorous lyrics to boot.

Aenima is a good, solid album. I think it wanders about frequently, with songs that were very obviously written to accommodate the lengthy and frequently obtuse lyrics; like anything prog, beware the lyrics on the first listen if you don’t want to be entirely confused. Hooker With A Penis is a good example.

So if you’ve always been wondering what’s so great about those Tool guys and why all these people keep raving about them, I think a proper place to start your investigation would be 1996’s Aenima.

Review: Saves the Day's Stay What You Are

Stay What You Are is the third album by New Jersey’s Saves The Day, a band that has seen more lineup changes than a Soviet platoon in the 1940’s. Released in 2001 to minimal acclaim both critical and popular, the album has since gone on to become one of the staple examples of pop-punk/emo music with its concise execution, minimal riffage, lyrical content and vocal performances.

Important to note right away is that this album is tiny. Just over half an hour long, there isn’t a whole lot of music to talk about, and stylistically the track-to-track differences are pretty scant: Same levels of distortion on the guitars, same twangy, gritty bass, and Chris Conley’s singing is an unchanging presence.

The vocals could get pretty grating after a little while. Chris sings in the proper register for a poppy punky singer, and he unfortunately has the same issues that many of these vocalists have. Occasionally he’s straining too hard to reach his notes, and the overlaid vocals are often less harmony-driven and more ‘a bunch of dudes all singing’, creating a crowd-like sound that can clash with the nicely arranged guitars.

The opening (and easily my favorite) track At Your Funeral is a deceptively complex pop-punk anthem. The now-clichéd topics of modern rock are brought straight to the front. Guitars twang in the upper register, and the bass line here stands far above any other on the record, exploring the chords and really coming into its own light very satisfyingly.

It’s hard to believe that this album came out in 2001; it’s got a sound that’s inspired many, and the style it created has remained in use to this day, which is quite something to accomplish in an arena so nebulous and ever-changing as modern popular music. Stay What You Are isn’t going to be the greatest thing you’ve ever heard in your life. It’s short, unvaried, and frequently whiny. It’s also very energetic, tightly written and recorded. The quality, both musically, lyrically, and sound is unchanging front to back: no real moments of weakness or outstanding strength, aside from At Your Funeral. If you’ve got a spare half hour, there are many worse ways to spend it than by listening to this album.

Review: Pendulum's In Silico

In Silico is the 2008 studio album by Australian electro-drum and bass-rockers Pendulum. Ten tracks of thumping, drum-heavy, electronic rock. It’s a very straightforward album, and there isn’t a whole lot to say about it for one very important reason: it is a techno-rock album.

This is not a bad thing. What I mean by this is that, being a heavily techno-influenced work of music, you can expect a significant presence of looping, dancing beats and synths. The seven-minute Midnight Runner is the perfect example of this. Just a thudding beat overlaid with warping, bending synthetic tones that would be perfect in a foggy, laser-strewn club. On the very plus side, it’s not a drum machine, but an actual human drummer; Pendulum may be practitioners of thumping, spacey club tunes, but they’re still serious rock musicians on top.

All of the vocals are electronicized to hell and back, making for a frequent and richly layered harmonies. Unfortunately, many of the songs that feature vocals do not follow the standard verse-chorus-verse structure, so many of these very delightful melodies are not revisited, as the song moves into the next musical phrase.

Synthesizer and guitar compete for the spotlight the entire length of the record, with Mutiny boasting the best competition between the two: In this track lies a jumping, energetic bass and keyboard melody that would be right at home in any of the classic Sonic videogames, followed by a twangy guitar solo halfway through, with the rest of the song being a mosh-lite rock breakdown. And in Propane Nightmares, a pleasantly clean guitar backing gives the perfect accompaniment to what is, I think, the perfect song on the album to listen to first, for within it every aspect of the band is on display: the deep, repetitive drumline, edgy and distorted electronic and stringed instruments, and a heaping amount of vocals, both in lead and highly electronic background accents.

In Silico is a good album, and for different reasons than the other ones that I’ve written about. This is not the kind of music that will get you up and rocking all around the room, and it’s not going to make you think about the greater issues of our world. It’s non-invasive music that is simultaneously the kind you can dance to, and the kind you can very easily mellow out to. And as I have just learned, it’s great for writing to. So if you’ve wanted to explore the netherworld where rock and techno meet, here is the perfect leaping-off point.