1. That's what we do.
2. Napalm Death are the greatest! And it's a tough catalog to just dive into -- very dense and daunting -- so a detailed primer like this is intended to help people find their way around with some guidance.
On one hand I agree with you, but once the shock has worn off and the salacious elements are put into context, I think we'll both eventually be so happy this book exists. I kinda wish all great rock stars would write their memoirs. They are priceless historical documents. I'll be a little disappointed if Thurston doesn't eventually write one, too. Not in a "gotta hear both sides" way, but just because I want to hear ALL of HIS stories in his voice, and have those stories preserved for posterity. Like, these people aren't going to live forever, and even the most diligent biographer can't provide those tiny personal details, those random memories and asides. I can't wait to read Billy Corgan's book, too, whenever that arrives! Don't you wish we had Kurt Cobain's memoirs? Elliott Smith's? Layne Stayley's? (Etc.) Man, I sure do.
But Vitalogy IS sorta punk! Eddie always had punk aspirations (even though the rest of the PJ guys seemed pretty indifferent to it). Billy has absolutely no punk DNA. He was influenced by metal, classic rock, '60s psychedelia, pop, prog, and new wave. His closest-to-punk influences were, like, the Cars and New Order. (And Jimmy Chamberlin was a jazz drummer!)
Re: "affair": I was quoting Kim. "Courtney asked us for advice about her 'secret affair' with Billy Corgan." I know they were together openly at points, too, but Kim appears to be referring to an instance during which Billy and Courtney were engaged in something illicit.
I think she's really criticizing Courtney Love. Like, Kim and Courtney were these very cool punk-rock women, and then all of a sudden Courtney Love was having an affair with Billy Corgan, so Kim was like: "That dude is lame and whiny and not punk, and it's gross that you would want to be with someone like that."
But who knows? Maybe in the context of the book this is presented totally differently.
(Again, I love the Pumpkins, so I'm not hating on Billy.)
I'm a huge fan of both bands, too, but I don't think she was just randomly trashing the Pumpkins for not being authentically "punk" or something ... they didn't even have punk influences, much less punk aspirations. I think she was saying that nobody in her cool punk-rock circle (which included Courtney Love) liked the Pumpkins: partly because Billy was a "crybaby" and partly because the Pumpkins weren't, like, cool.
That was actually a little inside joke for Tom's benefit. He and I were trying to decide who should write the story, and we decided he should take it, because I was getting unnecessarily, pointlessly worked up about it. And Tom said something like:
TOM: "It's just a funny story, not a BURN IN THE HELL YOU BUILT story."
To which I replied something like:
ME: "Haha, nah, you're right -- that would be, like, my exact wording, too, right down to the all-caps!"
I wasn't really trying to condemn Wes Borland to hell, just trying to make Tom laugh. Still always an honor to be in the top comments!
Well, Roots was very much a nu-metal-sounding album, and after that frontman Max Cavalera left Sepultura to do Soulfly, which was unapologetically nu-metal (Fred Durst is on a few tracks on their first album). No one would argue that classic-era Sepultura is nu-metal though.
I have a pretty complicated argument behind this, one that's admittedly tied up with a lot of emotion, but I don't have time to get into it right now. I'll try to address it here at some point, but if not, maybe I'll flesh it out in the next Black Market or something. I should note though that some bands popularly defined as "nu-metal" -- Machine Head, for instance -- get praise from critics today. Deftones and System Of A Down have ALWAYS gotten praise from critics. You could make an argument that RATM were a "nu-metal" band. Irrespective of my personal feelings about the music made by those bands (I'm not a huge fan), they worked hard to raise the level of discourse and challenge listeners. It's not an across-the-board thing, and I made a mistake suggesting otherwise, for which I apologize.
Haha yeah that's Sufjan. That pic just surfaced like a week ago. I was just including it to illustrate that Cobalt's music engages some people who are not themselves troglodytes -- because it's challenging, intense, visionary MUSIC -- whereas Limp Bizkit catered directly to the lowest common denominator, and somehow even pushed the denominator even LOWER. (That said, I've never heard Sufjan talk about being a Cobalt fan or anything; this pic is my only evidence of his fandom.)
The difference is that Phil McSorley made two of the best records of this millennium.
That's not a defense of hate speech, cyber bullying, or troglodytes. I think Limp Bizkit fans would take offense at being lumped in with Phil and vice-versa. Just so we're clear on my stance here: Troglodyte behavior SUCKS. And you see a lot of it in metal.
The difference is, Limp Bizkit encouraged it and profited off it and they basked in it. They acted like troglodytes till acting like troglodytes no longer made money for them. Then they acted like something else.
Phil McSorley makes music as a hobby. He's been in the army for a decade-plus, and he has literally put his own life at risk and KILLED PEOPLE serving his country. That's his job. He has extreme views and has said some truly despicable stuff to people who truly didn't deserve it.
Then he got kicked out of his own band for his troglodyte behavior.
The difference is, Limp Bizkit's music was never better than illiterate, pandering, opportunistic garbage. Cobalt made two of the best records I've ever heard. I'm sure some of their fans are troglodytes, too, but some are not. And if nothing else, their fans have good taste in music.
Borland seems like a really cool and down-to-earth guy and I would probably rather hang out with him than many of the metal musicians whose work I get behind and write about. Some of those people seem a little aloof or elitist or overly intense or unreliable or unpredictable or dangerous. Borland does not seem like any of those things. He seems like a good, smart, pragmatic, humble, and funny person, and those are some qualities I value deeply in the people I hang around with.
I think if he thinks metal is boring, he's not really listening to much metal, or the right metal. I think he's very, very off-base about that.
I think he's also a little myopic or revisionist about just how destructive a force Limp Bizkit were. They weren't just a bad band making bad records -- although they were that, and then some. They were also directly responsible for Staind -- IMO The Worst Band In The World Circa Like 2001 -- and Puddle Of Mudd -- a pretty strong contender for that same crown. Limp Bizkit INVESTED in those bands. Limp Bizkit BROUGHT YOU those bands. You have Limp Bizkit to thank for that stuff DIRECTLY. Those two bands have sold more than 22 million records. That's Limp Bizkit's legacy every bit as much as "Nookie," one of the worst songs of my lifetime. Fleet Foxes have a long way to go to get to that point.
But I think Wes Borland should listen to more metal because I think he'd like it, because I think he likes good music -- even if his band doesn't produce or support good music. I think he wouldn't find it boring at all. I think he'd get stoked on it!
Doug's excellent writeup doesn't need my addendum, but here it is anyway: The note in the press kit that first got me excited about this record was this:
"[Der Weg Einer Freiheit is] the future of German Extreme-Metal" - Mille Petrozza, Kreator
!!!
There are a lot of good Belgian metal bands! E.g., we covered the hell out of that Emptiness record last year -- they are from Belgium, and they're great.
http://www.stereogum.com/1722663/the-50-best-metal-albums-of-2014/list/attachment/nothing-but-the-whole-emptiness-2/
I meant to mention this in the intro but forgot, so I'll do it now. Among the December 2014 releases that got short shrift here (IMO) is Striden Hus, by the Norwegian band Taake. We actually covered its first single, "Det Fins En Prins," in October's Black Market, but the album came out too late (mid-December) to be considered for our Top 50 Metal Albums list. If I'd heard it in time, it would have placed HIGH on my ballot. (I actually saw a print ad for the album in this month's Decibel that spotlighted a pullquote from my writeup of the song. The pullquote in question was, to my mind, fairly generic and even a bit non-commital. If I'd heard the album earlier, I would have written something much more detailed and effusive!) Anyway, the album is a total hook factory -- every song is just insanely catchy. I cannot stop listening to it, and if you haven't heard it, I strongly recommend you do so. This is its opening track and I love it SO MUCH.
I should have said this earlier, btw, but thank you for the kind words -- that applies to everyone here who shared kind words. I'm honestly humbled to hear this stuff, and I can sincerely tell you guys that this kind of feedback only makes us work even harder and care even more about the work we do. Thank you!
I dunno how anyone engages with this column, but in case you might skip it: I am begging you all to watch that Nasty video -- it is the weirdest fucking thing I have seen in ages; I have no idea what to make of it (Doug's writeup does a nice job of trying to parse it). The song crushes, too, so your time will be well spent.
I meant that Death Grips comp on several levels: There are definitely abundant sonic similarities, but also, much like Death Grips, this version of Liturgy feels (to me) more like a situationist conceptual art project than a band.
I didn't read that but yeah, you can hear that in the music IMO. But vocally it's almost like dancehall in that he's actually "singing" just without much if any use of melody.
This what I meant about how you could read it as a deconstruction of black metal: He's doing a clean vocal but sorta delivering it the way you would a black-metal-style scream/hiss/growl vocal, i.e., without using the voice as a melodic instrument but a rhythmic one. He just sort of sings one note the whole time. It's a really weird choice.
Hard to say. Maybe? I have to stress that I find this to be an extremely weird record. Maybe Liturgy would have made a different, less-weird record if Sunbather had never happened? Or maybe they never would have made a third album at all? It's impossible to say without just asking HHH. Musically though they're nothing alike and they're from two different scenes/cities, so it's not like a Metallica/Megadeth thing.
I saw them touring for No More Stories and got a shirt with that album's cover art at the show. My wife won't let me wear it in her presence because it freaks her out too much.
Because it's almost four months old? I wrote like three thousand words on it when it actually came out, and most of them were laudatory.
http://www.stereogum.com/1708116/premature-evaluation-weezer-everything-will-be-alright-in-the-end/franchises/premature-evaluation/
Way more unwieldy than a car actually: even a shitheap car has resale value. A piano is more like a pinball machine or something. You could probably go on Craigslist right now and get yourself a free piano if you were willing to pay for the cost of shipping.
I just saw somebody mention Smarf somewhere and it reminded me: I made this image as a goof to go along with our Too Many Hooks graphic but I couldn't find a way to pull it off for this list's title card (plus Michaela Schuett gave us an awesome illustration of her own). But I wanted to share it anyway.
And I still voted for the record! If everyone else had voted for it with as much enthusiasm as I did, it woulda been top 5. But truthfully I probably won't listen to it again unless I have to write about it or something. That did sour me on the album.
Hey man, five guys voted on this thing, only one voted for Triptykon (yours truly). Did I give him EXTRA points for publicly trashing one of my favorite bands? I did not. I think he came off like an idiot. I would be pretty surprised if At The Gates (the band) had anything to do with keeping him from playing any non-tour shows. I would NOT be surprised if a booker/promoter kept Tom from playing those shows, and was enforcing terms of a contract Tom himself signed, in order to not devalue those tour dates. Do you really think Tompa Linderg sent an email to Tom G. Warrior saying, "Hey man, all five members of At The Gates have talked it over, and we have decided that you cannot play those Swss dates"? And then Tom went back to his band and said, "I'm outraged! I never wanted to do this tour in the first place! But this is a democracy after all. You guys make the call." And then his bandmates OVERRODE his vote?
These are great questions! They get at what I was talking about in my intro essay. Trying to define "metal" has been an ongoing issue for years, basically since DRI and the Cro-Mags. There really are no hard lines. Are Swans metal? Shellac? If not, why not? Another commenter applied the old Potter Stewart standard above ("I don't know how to define it but I know it when I see it") and that's how a lot of people approach it. To me, for something to be categorized as metal, it has to be part of a metal lineage and/or self-define as metal. Wovenhand include elements of metal but DEE comes from a folk/alt-country background and he gets to metal by way of goth, post-punk, and post-rock. He's never (AFAIK) said Wovenhand is a metal band. The guys in his band right now played a very metal-leaning style of screamo-noise in PMFS, and Deathwish releases some records by metal-based bands (Deafheaven, YITTW) but Wovenhand seem to me more of a band that uses metal sounds (along with lots of other sounds) in order to achieve something totally singular. I think decent analogues would be Man's Gin or Dax Riggs, except those guys came to that sound FROM metal (Cobalt, Acid Bath) and FWIW I still don't define them as metal. But like I said up top: "I’m not calling anyone out on their definitions of metal, not saying anyone is wrong; I’m not the metal police over here. If there’s a problem, I’m part of it. It’s up to you. What do you think?"
That Wovenhand record is dope, although in the context of this comment it is sort of ironic to note that the band that played on that record also comprised half the Colorado screamo band Planes Mistaken For Stars. (NB: No shade, I fucking LOVE Planes Mistaken For Stars.) Also it was released on Jacob Bannon's label, Deathwish. It's not a screamo record by any means! But also not really a metal record.
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