Mammoth Volume
A Single Book of Songs
Music Cartel

Links:
Katatonia
Mammoth Volume

Katatonia is an extremely popular band, but I just can't get into the gothic doom scene. It's just too damn depressing. Peaceville proclaims Last Fair Deal Gone Down to be the best album Peaceville has ever issued. For those who adore gothic doom, this will cause a torrent of tears. For those who hate it, it will also cause a lot of tearing.

Mammoth Volume--how I love their debut disc, I missed the Noara EP, but how did it end up here? I Guess the guys have decided to go for the alterna-doom-pop route, but this isn't as rocking as the debut. It just seems a little too simple, too pretentious and too pathetic for me. Nice digipack--I knew I should have been suspicious. Good packaging, bad disc. Seriously, it sounds like Jonathan Richman has joined Mammoth Volume. If you've always wanted to hear Richman write doom, go for it. If you love doom, get their debut.

-Sabrina Haines
[ top of page ]

Links:
The Ladybug Transistor

Who am I to argue? For the first time since we loaded up in Iowa, the chickens are silent. I roll down the window and turn the music up. A feather lands in my hair and I leave it there. There it is: Marlborough Farms. I've never been here before but it looks like the music I've been listening to: A pocket of perfection in an otherwise noisy and crowded place. The Ladybugs are on the porch, sipping lemonade. "I heard your song on the radio." I say, and begin singing. I don't normally sing, but there it is. "But we just finished recording that song a few minutes ago." they say, "You couldn't possibly have heard it on the radio." I borrow a guitar and sing them the rest of what I heard. I don't play guitar, but the notes come and the voice I hear is not my own. I finish and the only sound is ice settling in a glass.

They look at each other and smile. This hasn't happened before, but maybe it is a sign of things to come? They want to know: "Where are you taking these chickens?" "A Chinese restaurant in Brooklyn." Jennifer smiles and shakes her head, "Pull your truck around back..." The backyard is small, grown-over with all manner of garden plants and tall vegetables; it's hard to see in, there could be anything in there. The truck beeps as I reverse the trailer into place, a trailer full of chicken crates. The gate swings open on rusty hinges--fields and trees and rivers as far as the eye can see. We start unloading the chickens. "I'm gonna lose my job for this." I say. The band consults a minute, then presses the master into my hand. This is for you to do with as you please, they tell me. And the chickens run over the hill.

-Rob Zverina
[ top of page ]

Links:
The Lies

I had seen a good few of The Lies first shows. There were only a few at first, and then it seemed like, "They have a record out already?" Actually, their record came out right before they started their first U.S. tour officially as The Lies. This I know 'cause I was fortunate to be in the band they were touring with. [click here for an excerpt of Dale's tour diary] Yeah, yeah, so I've a biased view... I've seen bands rest on their laurels for years: "Yeah we're getting ready to put out a record...soon!" The chemistry was already there though. So out comes their first record for Kill Rock Stars, Underdogs and Infidels, a fine garage/new wave/goth masterpiece.

Yeah, they wore their influences on their sleeves, and they were damn right proud. Tinges of Joy Division, The Fall, Eno, Tindersticks, the Cramps. Get the idea? I myself am always a little weary of bands embracing their influences a little to tightly, but this was the real deal, and the sound was familiar but it was definitely theirs.

So now 2001 brings us a new album. A bit of a long of wait if you ask me. I'd go to shows and ask, "Any new songs?" My queries were always met with, "We're working on some." Then two weeks later (I'm exaggerating a little) a new album. In the between time, Sadie Shaw had compiled two Kill Rock Stars video magazines. They featured all the usual suspects along with a Lies video on one and some of Sadie's short films. Sadie and Sarah have also just completed their film Charm. The soundtrack was also just released, on 5 Rue Christine, KRS' noisy counterpart label. So I went to the record release, heard some new fantastic songs and brought a copy of the record home.

Resigned is not just a record. I can't get "Accident and Emergency" out of my head, and, you know, I quite like it there. Further into the record comes "Sight and Sound," and that same melody comes in later for a reprise with cello and guitar being the fitting bed fellows. It's like an epic, a concept album, but even though the songs fit so perfectly together, it's not. Dale Shaw the band's vocalist and lyricist really outdid himself this time. The lyrics here are so involved. He has a more narrative than singing style that lends itself very well to the pace of the songs.

Ian Curtis (Joy Division) comparisons are bandied about a bit, but this album, I think, throws that one out the door. On "Perverse" the song drags a slow march through Dale Shaw's telling of the lost and the further slipping. The song builds in with strings and keyboards...slowly, very slowly. Out bursts "The light from the city was never a blessing in your eyes / That's why I live in safety there." You may still want to thumb-wrestle me about the comparison, but what the hell! Can't an Englishman sing sad songs without being compared to a dead guy? The whole thing kinda chimes of early Roxy Music anyway, back when they were a bit more daring. Sure the lyrics might be a bit more Curtis, but the approach and attach is quite Ferry-esque.

I'm beginning to worry how much I'm being drawn into this record. I've surpassed even thinking of how many times I've listened to it. It's kinda like a movie you see the second time, and see all this other stuff. Or, it's like a jigsaw puzzle, the kind where you have to solve a murder once the pieces are all put together. Whoa, time to stop writing. Well, Lies sometimes really aren't lies at all. They're just cleverly spun stories.

-Tiber Scheer
[ top of page ]

Living Sacrifice
The Hammering Process
Solid State Records

Links:
Living Sacrifice

Zao's self-titled disc is slab of dense, swirling metalcore loaded with hardcore influences. Sometimes it suffers from the all-the-songs-sound-the-same disease. The vocals are kind of screechy with a strong black metal influence. Zao needs to find ways to make individual songs stand out. It tends to mass together without texture or hooks to drive it along.

On the other hand, Living Sacrifice's CD, The Hammering Process, is a juggernaut of melodic metal. The Hammering Process is loaded with power riffs, hooks the size of King Kong and drum patterns that would make Igor Cavalera (Sepultura) blush. Lance Garvin is poised for the big time with his jumbo drum kit. The Hammering Process is in heavy rotation at my house. Living Sacrifice sound very similar to early Sepultura (maybe it's the drums). Standout cuts are "Flatline," "Bloodwork," "Not My Own," "Local Vengeance Killing," "Hand of the Dead" and "Conditional." Strangely enough, The Hammering Process blows away Nation easily.

-Sabrina Haines
[ top of page ]

Links:
Mogwai

"Take Me Somewhere Nice" is reminiscent of "CODY" in both lyrical feel and emotive musical nuance, with Stuart Braithwaite's singing softly set afloat by string accompaniment. It is the first of many tracks on Rock Action to have singing, and anyone who complains about singing on the album before they've given it a few good spins should be strung upside-down from the nearest tree. Mogwai have finally decided to finally put Stuart Braithwaite's voice to good use, and, frankly, it's about time, as his whispered approach to singing is the perfect compliment to the band's moody blues.

However, as for singing, "Dial: Revenge" is my favorite, with Super Furry Animals' Gruff Rhys taking over vocal duties. The nursery-like cadence of his Welsh singing pushes the band's music in a direction only hinted at previously. "01 Sleep" and "Robot Chant" are abbreviated excursions, brief interim snippets, while "You Don't Know Jesus" and "2 Rights Make 1 Wrong" find Mogwai at their familiar best: building slow, unhurried, luxurious musical textures to a frenzied height before gently bringing them back down again.

"Secret Pint" closes the album, with staccato drumming giving way to a quiet strum of guitar and hushed piano. Braithwaite's voice here, as with all the tracks on the album, are more an additional instrument, something clever that's there to add more color and texture than anything as lyrical focal point. The song is a soft whisper that quickly slides away just as you've enamored yourself to its lullaby.

And, like "Secret Pint," Rock Action itself quietly ends just as you've grown enamored with its lush sounds. Clocking in at a little under 40 minutes, Mogwai have realized that while even though Come on Die Young was fantastic front to back, its length made it a hard swallow to get through in one sitting. So instead they've created a perfect slice of musical bliss; just enough to sate your appetite, and just enough to leave you wanting more. To quote Edward Abbey, "Hunger is the best spice," and with Rock Action, Mogwai's music is indeed something to hunger for.

-Craig Young
[ top of page ]

Links:
Operator Generator

-Dan Cullity
[ top of page ]

Links:
Robert Rich

In the process of making the disc, Rich discovered some shortcomings of the technology, the greatest of which is that in order to give you track markers and the ability to move forward or backward quickly through the piece, you had to add video frames to your audio frames. What does that mean? It means that your available audio time is, essentially, cut in half. That's not what Rich set out to do. Somnium is a portable document of one of his fabled Sleep Concerts--events where he would create ambient atmospheres (specifically crafted to the specifications listed above) for large audiences who have gathered with their pillows and sleeping bags and hot cocoa and 'jammies for a nocturnal excursion. The whole idea is to take you through a night of sleep--to affect your dreams and lucid states with his expansive environments. To accomplish this, he wanted the best and longest sound he could get out of the medium.

So, the natural route for a reviewer would be to lie down with a tape recorder and a decent pillow and settle in. After the disc is over, he would get up and play back his tape (if he was smart, it would be voice-activated and set at a level where the music wouldn't start it) and record his comments. Well, not only do I snore, but I go really deep when I sleep. The only sound you would probably hear on the tape is me dropping into an apnea-state and my wife issuing the terse command of "Sweetie! Roll!" which serves to get me to roll off my back and start breathing again.

I can imagine that is not entirely what you're interested in hearing about. You're probably more interested to know that after an hour of drones and vast tones that environmental sounds creep into the mix: a steady buzz of crickets and wolves howling in the distance, water running across slick rocks, birds chirping quietly in wind-tossed trees. This is your first lucid state, after you've fallen past REM state and are open to suggestions. From there, it is a descent into subterranean vastness--a deep dark cavern (and let's hope your subconscious mind doesn't start thinking about Stalker--Rich's dark and spooky collaboration with Brian Lustmord--and totally freak out). Once you travel out of the underground darkness, you find yourself on a plain beset by haunted winds. Finally, after a long pull, the winds are submerged under a steady rain. And you sink again...

Somnium is an amazingly sustained work that sets a new standard for both technology and environmental ambient works. Where traditional CD media ends (around 80 minutes), Robert Rich is just getting started and, in the past, you would have had to made the journey to one of his all-night concerts to submerge in the vastness of his spaces. But, with the ability of DVD to hold such a greater amount of data, you can make this journey on your own-in your own mind, in your own space.

-Mark Teppo
[ top of page ]

Links:
Sound Team

Most of the album sounds like a school project involving Matt and Bill sequestering themselves for a long weekend in their dorm room, surrounded by several cases of Rainier, a big bag of weed, some Willie Nelson records, a couple "Dear John" letters from former girlfriends, an acoustic guitar or two, a sampler, and a 4-track to record the moment. Things open up with the boys fumbling around the microphone, trying to get the story straight on how to play the song, followed by a Casio keyboard-inspired drum beat, a sample of a black man saying, "This one is called 'Sex Education: Ghetto Style,'" and a chorus that goes, "I'm gettin' laid tonight." From there the songs follow similar themes of bumbling about, strange voice-over samples, and a singing style that sounds sneakily like Les Claypool.

When the mopey sounds of your indie-rock collection become overwhelming, and the chugga-chugga warp drive of your metal albums become a bit embarrassing, Sound Team delivers a welcome reprieve. Sit back on the deck, pop open a cold can of Rainier, crack a crooked smile at the old neighbor lady next door, and let Sound Team represent all your goofy awkwardness for you.

-Craig Young
[ top of page ]

Links:
Tool (official site)
Tool (art and influences)

Five years have now passed, and as the nearly 80-minute-long Lateralus still drips with umbilical residue, we find Tool summoning these elements, they had once only toyed with, to the forefront of a highly developed prog-metal hybrid. It's not a completely new direction, but a synthesis of newer sounds and old standards that is still undeniably worthy of the name "Tool" and all it has come to imply since 1992. Shock tactics have been given a back seat to dense, six to eleven minute sonic expeditions, as the band documents what has obviously been a period of active growth and transition.

The exotic tones of Adam Jones' guitar, whether it's lightly strummed or harshly snapped and choked, lie at the very aural center of what we've come to know as the Tool sound. One can clearly hear Jones' distinct, scythe-like method in the classics "Prison Sex," "Forty Six & 2," and "Stinkfist," to name a few. On Lateralus, he meets the challenge of filling nearly a double album's worth of music with a variegated sampling of textures that expands on that method and pushes the band's sound into new territory. The heavier riffs and rhythm figures may still cause whiplash in the unprepared, but Jones' subdued phrasing in between instances of brutality reveal a studied ear and undeniable growth as a musician. The main riffs of many of these tracks have been coaxed a step further than the already quite formidable and original riffs found throughout Aenima. Less distorted than what has driven the majority of past Tool songs but no less intoxicating is the opener to "Schism." Here, Jones' exoticism breaches the next level.

The depth of what has been created on Lateralus leads me to believe that, while Maynard Keenan explored his limits as a singer with A Perfect Circle, Jones, bassist Justin Chancellor, and drummer Danny Carey were hungrily exploring new techniques, rhythms, and sounds in preparation for Tool's rebirth. A word used for years to describe Carey's playing in Tool has been "tribal" and now it sounds as though the drummer spent the last five years sitting in with an Aboriginal drumming circle. Throughout the album, he intermingles echoing congas with a seeming six-limbed attack to completely saturate Jones' and Chancellor's already daring rhythms. Speaking of daring, who could even imagine the Tool of old spinning off a twilight séance like "Disposition", much less placing it within the density of Lateralus, where its twinkling harmonics, nimble congas, and soothing vocals somehow flow naturally. Starkly, at the very midpoint of the album stands the haunting two-song ode to fully realized love "Parabol" and "Parabola." On the former, beside a solemn rhythm pattern from Jones, Keenan soliloquizes on life's greatest mystery, drawing forth a serene delivery closely akin to Gregorian chanting. The forceful opening to "Parabola" kicks in before the final line "this body makes me feel eternal / all this pain is an illusion" has a chance to resonate. Lyrically, Keenan repeats much of what he brings forth in "Parabol," but here he is cast back into the eye of his bandmates' devilish storm. Not surprisingly, given his past performances, the gifted vocalist flexes his instrument to match the ferocity and intensity of the music laid out before him. Stepping back into the shrouded security of his first vehicle for musical success, Keenan eschews the growing fame that's accompanied the highly successful A Perfect Circle album Mer de Noms and the lengthy tour that followed--a commendable move when considering the strength of his performance within that band.

Fully revealing the power of his dramatic lyrics and unique voice, he quickly found himself in the spotlight, a place he always avoided as frontman for Tool. But Tool has always been a band whose scope and execution transcends the performances of the individual players, an ideal which calls to mind the very word "progressive." By digging in for another journey with his longtime cohorts, Keenan claims a victory for the wounded ideal of art over fame in rock music--"but I'm still right here / giving blood, keeping faith" he cries in "The Patient." With their intensely exploratory, nearly 80-minute-long epic, Tool does the same.

-Dan Cullity
[ top of page ]

-Hope Lopez
[ top of page ]

Roaring and lurching like a tidal wave of shattered granite, these fifteen tracks will rattle the foundations of neighborhood buildings and disintegrate small animals with the hammer of their weighty low ends. OCOSI's "Jackal Head" is a one-legged monstrosity banging around your kitchen, lurching off the walls and leaving craters as it pogoes about on your floor. Su8m3rg3d's "201" is the sound of tiny men who have infiltrated your air conditioner, their picks and hammers ringing against the battered aluminum paneling with a drunken patter; all the while the machinery wheezes around them, trying to expel them from the decrepit ducts. Alien Radio Station grabs a sound byte from the crown prince of shlock horror (that would be Jeffrey Coombs for those who traffic that row in the video store) to ground the whack sentimentality of their "Deep Inner Mental Forces." Larvae's "Red Line" begins with lost radio transmissions which are still trapped in the speaker and, as you bang on the surface once to loosen them, the tube erupts with a caustic loop of hard beats. Olivier Moreau who, traditionally, sonically assaults us through his Imminent project offers up "Dash Kop," a track of sparse beats over a skittering high end clatter-minimal for him, but still sinister in the way it moves across the room.

"Sinister" is a perfect complement to the phrase "dark hop," as each of these tracks delve into inky black realms with their beats and rhythms. Empty Light and Hushush have left the further definition of the genre up to the respective artists, allowing them to pull on their own backgrounds to flesh out the dark hop sound. Whether they come from hip-hop, drum and bass, IDM, rhythmic noise, or the ambient genres, each of these tracks definitely cross to the spooky side of the street and gleefully hang out in the malevolent darkness. If you've got the stones to step into the roadway, Low End Recon is a recommended destination.

-Mark Teppo
[ top of page ]

-Steve Weatherholt
[ top of page ]