The Haunted are at the top of the hardcore-crossover-Gothenburg-death-metal heap, but it is a very old heap and starts to get boring after the first five or ten albums. Maybe it's just me, but I'd sure like to see these guys try their hand at something new and exciting for a change. The most distinguishable tracks are "Bury Your Dead," "Leech" and "Hollow Ground." The rest of the songs are great, but really do sound alike. If you like one, you'll like them all. If you are a fan of melodic-death-hardcore-metal, The Haunted Made Me Do It will kick your ass for hours. If you are looking for something new and exciting, keep waiting.

-Sabrina Haines
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Jazzanova

Part of the larger Sonar Kollektiv, the lads of Jazzanova came together during the run of Delicious Doughnuts (once located in Berlin). Buoyed and strengthened by their matched mindsets, they sought to maintain their groove and found release in the art of crafting their visions onto the works of others. Whipping the cream of Ski's "Fifths" into a fine froth is only an invitation to dive into the fluffy effervescence of Ursula Rucker's "Circle." Koop's "Absolute Space" is given a frenetic stick and upright bass edge and Ian Pooley's housey "What's Your Number" is transformed into a nocturnal jazz excursion. 4 Hero's "We Who Are Not as Others" is given a rotund vibrancy that elevates the normal static nature of jazzified drum and bass. They do an even keeled dub drop on Marschmellow's "Soulpower," and Incognito's "Get Into My Groove" is splintered and rewrapped for tighter emphasis on the underlying rhythm.

Ever since Kruder and Dorfmeister demonstrated there is such a beast as the "sound of the remixer," the signature of the remixer has become a viable force in the propagation of musical genres. Jazzanova scrambles cultural idiosyncrasies into a global mélange that becomes a recognizable sound all its own.

-Mark Teppo
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-Sabrina Haines
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Madonna

She has a brand-spankin' new DJ, too. And they waste no time getting to the point with the album opener, title song and single, "Music." French darling Mirwais Ahmadzaï uses every techno trick in the book with Swiss precision on more than half of the album, while William Orbit fills out the rest.

There is a lot of guitar on this album. Mostly acoustic, looped and tricked out with rhythmic stutters, giving it a sort of '80s dynamic. It's perfect for Madonna. It all turns up a damn fine party/dance album that gives everyone in popular music a serious run for their creative money. And you would be nuts not to check out her website.

-Jeff Ashley
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Malevolent Creation

Malevolent Creation isn't melodic. They never find a middle ground, but it does appear they are comfortable within their standard framework of cacophonous grind-death. If you enjoy the sound of hippies being driven over by a tank repeatedly, you will love Malevolent Creation. If you enjoy the Carpenters, Chicago or even Fishbone, you will despise them...and they appreciate that level of hatred. Hate is such a big part of Malevolent Creation; it oozes from every fiber of Envenomed. Envenomed's bruising highlights are "Homicidal Rant," "Night of Long Knives," "Bloodline Severed," "Viral Release" and the title track "Envenomed." If you deserve a good pounding, this will suffice.

-Sabrina Haines
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Novembers Doom

Once you've heard The Knowing, you will fall head over heels for Novembers Doom. This is a highly recommended release for fans of symphonic doom gothic gloom metal.

-Sabrina Haines
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To be simplistic, I'm going to reduce it to a genre now: opera techno. In about two years, the genre will have played itself out and there will be so many subdivisions that it will be impossible to maintain any sort of overview of where the idea has been stretched and twisted (though I am going to be looking forward to tech-step opera when Charlotte Church puts out her first album under the Virus imprint--that'll be cool). But, at the beginning, we've got one earnest player. O: Volume 1, by its very name, purports to be the first of several forays into what they'd like us to think of as the next stage in the natural evolution of opera music. Let's reverse the positronic energy streams and make an important distinction: this is a natural evolutionary branch to dance music. To say that the Operatica project is going to save opera is to presume two things: 1) that opera is languishing, and 2) that it wants to be saved. I don't know about the rest of the world, but Seattle is hosting Wagner's entire Ring cycle in 2001 and every performance is already sold out.

O: Volume 1 has been put together with some dignity--a proper nod to the source material (including "Ave Maria" for crissakes!) and employment of a proper producer (though Lord Vanger is hardly a name that inspires confidence) who has a background in both disco and opera. (Don't ask. We've all got skeletons.) The result is likely to make opera purists cringe and, frankly, whenever I'm stuck in a chair at their houses with a cup of tea and a few crumpets in my lap and they're excitedly cuing up their latest Italian treasure, I know they're expecting the same reaction from me. It won't change the world, but it might even inspire an entire generation who have never been exposed to the majesty of well-executed opera. Bring it on, I say. As long as I can keep tapping my foot, I'll be listening.

-Mark Teppo
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PJ Harvey

As usual and thank god, Polly's gift for haunting melodies and intoxicating, sweeping stories is overflowing. Her obvious power is so subtle. Her songs joyously float and dart about only to come crashing down in in an amazingly focused energy that only the likes of Kurt Cobain could muster. The sound of her voice is like that of a ghost, an old soul long dead from the Mississippi Delta with a few bones to pick.

And as much as her music and persona seem deeply rooted in American blues based on its sonic depth and simplicity, she holds as much in common with bands like Deftones and Radiohead. Polly Jean is the consummate rock star. Someday I'll be telling my grandchildren about her.

-Jeff Ashley
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Reeves Gabrels

So it should come as no surprise then that Ulysses, his second solo release, showcases a musician with amazing breadth and virtuosity; someone who isn't concerned with getting his ego in the spotlight with his solo ventures as much as he's concerned with making challenging music. As expected, Gabrels tackles most of the singing and instruments himself, but he finds help from some well-known friends. Dave Grohl, Frank Black and the Thin White Duke contribute to "Jewel," while Robert Smith's work on "Yesterday's Gone" could easily be mistaken for a missing Cure track.

Ulysses is an amazing gem from an artist who has spent a good deal of his career working diligently on others' music. One would think that the influence of all those he's done time with would've rubbed off on him, but after listening to the album I'm now convinced that it's been his influence that has been rubbing off on them.

Oh yeah, Gabrels is also available for weddings, Bar Mitzvahs and the odd country gig.

-Craig Young
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Richard Buckner

The CD, one 34-minute track that winds its way through 18 of the poems--half existing only as instrumental tracks--shows Buckner at the height of his already daunting powers. The first three parts represent the tales of the 35-year-old Mrs. Merrit, her husband Tom Merritt, and the 19-year-old lover who, maddened by his desire, kills Tom. In the poetry collection, all three speak, but here, only the murdered Tom is given voice, sandwiched between instrumentals representing his wife and murderer. "Mrs. Merritt" is a slow, rusty organ with whispers of guitar feedback that builds in volume and then bursts straight into the relatively straight-ahead country rock of "Mr. Merritt," with Buckner singing the words of the jilted husband. The instrumental "Elmer Karr" completes the episode with a fevered romp through the young murderer's mind, with an old acoustic pounding like the blood in poor Elmer's temples and then, in the aftermath of murder, slouching into quiet moans of feedback and acoustic slide. In the poems, Mrs. Merritt tells Elmer, "Go away, Elmer, go far away, I have maddened your brain with the gift of my body: You will do some terrible thing." Buckner's music captures the young lover's emotional state perfectly.

Helping spur Buckner's unconventional vision to life are longtime instrumental cohorts Joey Burns and John Convertino (Calexico, Giant Sand) and producer J.D. Foster. The album was recorded by Buckner on an eight-track he received in his bitter parting with MCA Records (after 1998's alternative-radio-minded Since). Here we find a liberated Buckner fulfilling his muse. For a full taste of what that means, fast-forward 28 minutes into the monstrous single track: You'll find an acoustic guitar pounding out an ominous Appalachian rhythm while something hisses in the background like an old steam radiator. This is the tale of "Amanda Barker," who is made pregnant by a husband who knows she cannot "bring life / Without losing [her] own." Buckner howls her accusation against the tribalistic rhythm, unleashing an unforgiving jury of haints from the hills: "Traveler, it is believed in the village where I lived / That Henry loved me with a husband's love, / But I proclaim from the dust / That he slew me to gratify his hatred." Buckner chews on the word "hatred" just as a flurry of White Light/White Heat-era Velvet Underground guitar skronk brings The Bowery to Bluegrass. Magnificent.

Finally, something must be said about Buckner's voice, which developed from a mannered twang on his debut album, 1995's Bloomed, to a road-seasoned and deeply powerful instrument on 1997's Devotion + Doubt and 1998's Since. On The Hill, he makes another leap, showing striking expressiveness and versatility. His pipes move from the plaintive wonder in "Tom Merritt" to a high lonesome a cappella (straight from the pages of old Dr. Ralph Stanley) on "Ollie Mcgee" to the hushed intimacy of "Julia Miller" and the boozy purr of "Oscar Hummell."

Buckner seems to consistently be on the outside of the decidedly urban and intellectual "alt-country" movement, perhaps because folks weaned on the Exile on Mainstreet ponderings of Whiskeytown and (pre-Summer Teeth) Wilco don't know what to do with him. (I'll pause here to give a nod to country and bluegrass savvy friend Matt, who, when queried about some rig-rock rock music I was championing, offered sagely, "I hate that fake redneck shit.") This is just as well, for Buckner is a movement unto himself, slowly hauling his own personal zeitgeist around the country. He's a maverick spirit in the tradition of Townes Van Zandt or--even more obscurely--Blaze Foley (who was shot to death at the age of 39 while trying to defend an elderly drunk he had befriended). Unlike those icons, however, Buckner walks among us--he's probably converting a small crowd in some small, beery club right now.

-Erik Hage
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Delarosa and Asora
Agony
Schematic Music Company

Richard Devine--the latest wunderkind to be embraced by the binary DSP set--is out to take us on a journey of a mechanized body. I was going to say "sterile," but that just leaves the wrong impression. Much like the robots from Suction Records in Canada, Devine has found an organic element to the cold, robotic nature of the digital code stream and his music is a precisely crafted, machine-generated living entity. The opener, "Resource Leak," breathes with an oil-splotched life. "Patelle" glitches and trembles like a field of random electrons being shot across a transistor field--synapses firing in a call-and-response manner. "Route Increment" is a breath of expelled air through a vacuum tube before the clattering static gastrointestinal infusion of "Swap Trigger." "Kepter" hums at us with the wash of distant valves and pistons while electronic triggers tick in the foreground. "Lens Align" is the orchestral equivalent of the finale, the final structuring of the machine before it sets out to journey across blasted landscapes, the last tinkering and tightening of bolts and nuts as the machine lifts its head and looks out towards the smeared horizon.

It was Scott Herren's "Lily's Theme" which propelled Schematic to their Lily of the Valley compilation (most will argue their best release to this point) and it is only fitting that Herren provide the first full-length album to come out of the Schematic camp. More warm and overflowing with melodic reaches than Devine's Lipswitch, Agony brings to mind early Aphex Twin, same period Autechre, and the delightful static minimalism of Pole and the other stark dub-static seekers of the Germanic valleys. One can't help but think of Irving Stone's overwrought biography of Michelangelo, The Agony and the Ecstasy, if only for the sentiment expressed in the title alone. Buried in these twisted, glitched, DSP-ed beats and melodies is a genuine aspiration for blissful enlightenment. We may not be ready for such transcendence yet, but Herren seeks to paint a pathway for us with his music.

-Mark Teppo
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Stormtroopers of Death

If you purchase the DVD version (and have the desire to jump through hoops) you will get the opportunity to win a special prize package by going to a bonus part on the DVD locked with a six-digit code. The code will be available through a quiz on a specially designed web page that will be accessed only from the DVD and will be announced after a certain period of time (i.e. December 24) at the Nuclear Blast homepage (either http://www.nuclearblast.de/ or the sadly close-to-defunct Nuclear Blast America site.) The first buyer who cracks the code will win the special prize. It could be anything with S.O.D.--I might be afraid that the prize would be an ass-kicking from Billy Milano. I guess that could be funny.

-Sabrina Haines
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-Tricia Haber
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U2

All That You Can't Leave Behind is the sound of U2 playing it safe. It'll sell better than their last few albums, further ensuring that this will be the representative sound of U2 in the new millennium. A tragedy, and if you want to do your part in averting this disaster and feel the need to fill out some empty slots on your shelf, pick up their underappreciated Pop album or the fabulous break-away-from-the-pack effort of Achtung Baby or even the sublime The Unforgettable Fire. Leave this one behind as a protest vote for U2 to challenge themselves.

-Mark Teppo
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BSI has released records by Muslimgauze, Alpha and Omega, Systemwide, Sound Secretion, Bucolic, and the Rootsman over this last year and Docking Sequence is grounded by their presence. The triumvirate of BSI leadership has expressed pleasant surprise at the rapid growth of the label and has noted that once you score a couple of the old masters, credibility is given to your vision and the future is more easily gained. BSI is unafraid to tell you its mission--you can hear it on every record--they're out to chart the past and future of dub, chasing the splintered offshoots wherever they may spring. Docking Sequence is a superb snapshot of an exploding label, capturing the historical sound which brought them through their first fifteen records and slamming the listener with the heavy, fractured sound of the future. Dub has left Jamaica, burning up turntables worldwide now, and BSI is there to map out its influence for you. There is dub in Nashville (Phase Selector Sound), New York (DJ Spooky, Raz Mesinai), the Pacific Northwest (Acroyear, Onry and Oldominion), Jamaica (He-Man), England (the Rootsman and Dubcreator), the Netherlands (Twilight Circus), and San Francisco (DJ Collage, J. Boogie, and Otaku). There is dub everywhere, the echoes rippling and ringing in your head.

-Mark Teppo
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What Happens Next?

D.R.I. put out an album called Crossover a bunch of years ago. It certainly wasn't their best, but important all the same. You see, Crossover was not just an album, but it defined a style of music. A mixture of punk and metal. I miss those days. Punk was no longer the three chord simpleton. A hot fuel injection of speed and dexterity was shot into those veins and brought about quite a monster. Now, people still dismiss the influence of metal in punk, but you know I always thought all that NY hardcore stuff was just metal anyway. Okay! Getting off the track a little? Let's leave the defining to the newsprint 'zines, why don't we.

So out of the whole crossover thing came about this thing called "thrash." 'Twas some pretty serious shit. Mosh your ass off and keep your skate out of the circle pit. What Happens Next? are pretty much exactly what I've been missing. Spearheading the "bandana thrash" movement, about a year in, this is their second album bookended by a myriad of singles. Formed by Devon, Craigums (both of All You Can Eat), Maxxx (Spazz), and Robert (Artimus Pyle), they've been touring the globe since their inception--taking the best and most positive aspects of skate rock, straight edge hardcore and thrashcore and pounding it into the ground.

Most bands remain pretty cryptic in their wanting you to come up with your own take on what the songs are about. Not WHN?. The accompanying booklet with amazing artwork by Tom, who's done stuff for Outo and other bands, clearly states the intended meanings. "To Define Not Divide" addresses the need for unity within the "scenes" and within yourself. "Violent Expression, Sexual Repression" questions why society still sees the human body as something that should be hidden and shamed, but murderous images are accepted as okay. Even though there are some pretty heavy topics, they're all about having fun. This is one of the best records to come out in a while, from one of the hardest working bands in the world. The Stand Fast Armageddon Fighter CD includes performance from a festival in Chicago, too.

-Tiber Scheer
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