Victhor The Viking

I have been listening to side two of Jane’s Addition’s Ritual de lo Habitual. It made me think of when what I was doing when this album first came out and the music I was listening to at the time. I was not all that into Jane’s Addiction at the time. I was more into thrash metal and hardcore. But when I heard the first single “Stop” I thought hmmm, there is something special about this album. I bought it on cassette and I had one of those old (at the time it was top of the line) Sony Walkman Sports. It was heavy duty plastic and water proof. Everything in the end of the 80’s, at the end of the hair metal days, was made in bright colors. The Walkman was yellow with yellow writing on it. REALLY obnoxious.

So I put this album on and, at that time all I did was ride a 24 inch BMX cruiser, and started riding around Austin. So this is when we had two sides to an album. Before CD’s really caught on and way before MP3’s and iPods. Having two sides to an album really brings a different perspective on the music. With Some albums it is like have two different albums.

So back to Ritual, when I first listened to it I was fascinated by how different it sounded.  It was new and fresh to me.  It seems to me I never really heard anything like that before. Ritual was a Ritual for me.  I would put it on and begin my ride in the hot Austin summer.  Putting it on would drown out everything else around me.  I was in the moment.  Side A would get me to downtown and I lived about 12 miles from downtown Austin.  Listening to Side A, I would feel the music moving through me.  Getting me motivated like nothing could stop me from getting downtown.  I would slip through the narrow spaces in between cars, jump curbs like I was fucking Evel Knievel.  I would sing out loud, people probably thought I was a crazy man.  “I’m white dread and I’m white dread so, Ima got a ring and I hang it through my nose…”

By the time I got downtown I was pumped.  By that time the cassette tape would automatically flip over to the other side if I had the Walkman set to do that.  When I first heard Three Days I felt like I was moved into a higher plane of consciousness.  When you look up Epic in the dictionary Three Days is one of the things that it is used to describe Epic.  That song would put me on a spiritual high. But it is also a very melancholy song – telling the story of Perry Ferrel’s friend and her death.   I was just beginning to get into the Hare Krishna movement about that time and so I would ride and contemplate the cycle of death and rebirth.   When the song would start it would slow me down and I would actual start looking at the world around me.  Music makes everything have a different perspective.  If I was riding around right before twilight I would look at the long shadows the sun would throw on the buildings downtown.   The trees seemed to be getting ready for the evening slumber and it would bring a peace to the turmoil in my mind.  I would take a break from riding and just watch the trees fall asleep and get a better perspective on my life.

When the lyrics “Burnt out, grass scorched by the sun. The buildings remain. We will beat them all to dust.”  on Then She Did… would bring me back to a time when I had no cares in life.  Back when I lived in southern California down in Imperial Valley.   I was really young but I remember this time, and I don’t remember how I got there or how I got home, but me this native American kid were walking around this abandoned building that was just a skeleton of what it once was.  The thing I remember the most is this metal triangle – like the kind you use to call people for chow – was hanging on the side of the building.  I just remember staring at it the triangle and thinking about what it had seen while hanging there.

Ritual de lo Habitual will always be one of my favorite albums of all time.

This is a great article on black metal from Brooklyn Vegan.  The article includes an interview with Hupogrammos from Dordeduh.  Hupogrammos and Sol Faur are both former members of Negura Bunget.

Greetings and a happy new year! Looks like a very promising one for Dordeduh by the way: first live appearance, first EP later to be followed by a debut album, and both to be released by a very respected German label at that, maybe even a European tour to promote all of this. 2010 doesn’t look so bad…could we speak of an abundance of optimism?

Hupogrammos: Happy new year to you as well, and may it be a revealing one for us all. Well, optimism takes its shape from the way you create your path. In Dordeduh’s case, lots of work still remains to be done to achieve the things you speak of. Our first live date should be known to the interested public by now, the EP will be ready by March, then we’ll announce the debut album’s release, to be followed by the supporting live dates.

2009 has been an extremely agitating year for you, one of severe disappointment. Following Negura Bunget’s split we see two camps having formed, each being eager to see what the other has to offer, not only structurally, but also conceptually. Do you think that what didn’t kill you made you stronger? What does the future hold for Dordeduh, from the prism of NB’s formation to its split, both ? Or perhaps we should see everything from a completely different point of view, unrelated to the past?

Throughout our personal history there’s always been a natural continuity with our past; we’re not going to make a secret out of the fact that the split from Negura Bunget has not only been the most difficult moment in our musician-related lives (and I mean Sol Faur and I), but in fact, the greatest disappointment in our personal lives. It just shouldn’t have ended this way. It’s what hurts us the most, the way it was handled. Of course these events speak volumes about how much we have to learn about ourselves from our own personal experiences, and I’m also speaking about the modesty needed to approach such teachings with, so that they can be integrated in the best way. But these events surround our personal lives. Yes there is a lot to be learned but I’d rather the listeners saw Dordeduh as a new and definite entity, capable of seeing the future and learn from the past without being neither of their captive.

read the rest of the interview at BrooklynVegan.

I could not close out the year without adding a few albums that are pretty damn good.

Astra’s debut album The Weirding is an incredible album.  Astra is a straight up progressive rock band from San Diego.  And when I say progressive rock I do not mean this weird modern shit but something that could have been recorded in the early 70’s.  If you are going to Roadburn make sure you take time to check them out.

Nachtmystium’s put out an superb metal album a few years back that is a high point of the decade.  Assassins: Black Meddle, Part 1 is Pink Floyd and Darkthrone’s love child.   The last three songs on the album are epic!  Nachtmystium put on a hell of a live show too.

Another tattooist/artist/musician, Danial Higgs and Lungfish are a band I just got turned onto this year.   So I did not want to include them in the my top 10 even though they are pretty damn bad ass.  Being from the tattoo world I did not know that the Lungfish Danial Higgs and the Tattooist and Artist Danial Higgs were the same person.  My favorite Lungfish album to date is probably 2006’s Love is Love.  I am just got hep to them so I am way into them right now.  Great album!

Doom supergroup Shrinebuilder are a powerhorse force of doom greatness.  Shrinebuilder features Scott Kelly (Neurosis), Wino (The Obsessed, St. Vitus, Spirit Caravan) Al Cisneros (Sleep, OM) and Dale Crover (The Melvins). This self titled LP is doom at it’s finest.  Each member adds a little something to each of the songs.  Killer.

Danny Barnes is one of the most prolific song-writers in the music business today.  With his albums with the Bad Livers and his solo albums he just keeps putting out more and more stuff every year!  2006’s Oft Mended Raiment is a smorgasbord of sound and wonder.   I love the use of samples on this record along with Danny’s high lonesome vocals.  A contrast that works will.  Also this years, Pizza Box, is awesome!  He is the master of the claw-hammer.  The highlights for me are the title track, Sleep, and Charlie.  Danny is an awesome story teller.  Many Hailz Danny.

I could go on and on but I won’t…I can’t wait for the next.

Enslaved is another band that came out of the second wave of black metal that has gone beyond the standard black metal riffs and add something more to their music.  If you listen to a their older albums, there has been an evolution to a more progressive song structure and sound and lyrical content.  Where the songs on their earlier albums were straight forward telling of the Norse mythology, the later albums are a more inner search and understanding of it’s meaning of the mythology.

2001’s Monumension in my opinion is one of Enslaved’s finest albums to date.  I feel that this one was the first of there albums that is straight ahead prog metal.  The mellotron is one of the highpoints to this album.  The sound on this album could have easily come from a Led Zeppelin/King Crimson era band.  The first song, Convoys to Nothingness starts with a rockin’ and ends with a 4 minute meditation in time and space.  I have had to pleasure of hearing track 2, The Voices, live and I would have to say it is one of my favorite songs of all time.  Three major highlights of this album are Hollow Inside and the bonus track Sigmundskvadet.  Hollow inside is just a spaced out truely unique song that takes you on a trip across the cosmos.  Hollow Inside along with Sigmundskvadet feature vocals by Norwegian punk rock pioneer Trygve Mathisesen.  Sigmundskvadet is an actually old Norse chant that Trygve learned word for word from a Norse tribe that live on an island off the cost of Norway.   What a way to start of a decade of metal for Enslaved.

Vertebrae is a perfect way to close out a decade worth of music.  The production alone is incredible!  Cato Bekkevold’s drumming is superb.  It adds so much dimension to each track.  Vertebrae has a great balance between Herbrand Larsen’s clean vocals and Grutle Kjellson’s growl.  Herbrand has a Eric Woolfson (Alan Parsons Project) feel to it.  Vertebrae also takes the listener on a journey.  But this journey is more of an adventure.  From the start the listener travels on fast pasted romp through the elements. My favorite song on the album is New Dawn.  Cato’s ride on that is spastic and unique.

What a way to begin a decade and end it.  Thank you Enslaved!

Ulver’s Shadows of the Sun is a mediation of sound and wonder. Mournful and somber.  Ulver has gone from extreme metal to something very unique and wonderful.   Like Enslaved, Ulver has broken free from the brick and mortar black metal clique.  Ever since Kveldssanger, they have been moving the genre they started in and have created some very unique and inspiring music.

Shadows of the Sun is another step in the move.  It is more mellow than their previous album, Blood Inside, but is works.  Garm’s (Kristoffer Rygg) vocals are soothing and mantra like.  Unlike the vocals on Blood Inside, the vocals are a touch like David Sylvain from Japan.  The album includes a cover of Black Sabbath’s Solitude.  A great touch to a already great album!  A album that everyone should have!

There is prog and then there is prog. During the 80’s and 90’s prog kinda went on the wayside. There are bands out there that are called prog, but none of it really jumped out at me and said, “Wow that is awesome!”  Then something must have gotten in the water in Europe and the UK, because seemingly out of no where there has been a progressive rock explosion.  From Sweden you have Witchcraft, Graveyard (which I consider both to be prog and more than doom), Seina Root, and Asteroid.  Germany has it’s own resurgence of Kraut rock with bands like Samsara Blues Experiences.

And then there is the U.K.  Along with neo-heavy folk band Circulus and space rock upstarts Litmus, Brighton’s Diagonal have picked up where Van der Graaf Generator, Pink Floyd, Genesis, and Yes left off.  There debut self-titled record is a progressive rock masterpiece!  Right from the first song you know it is going to be good.  Alex Crispin’s vocals are awe inspiring!  The beautifully maudlin start to Child of the Thundercloud is epic and the harmonies during the whole song are luscious.  Then midway through the song it takes a psychedelic turn.  Luke Foster’s drum fills through out the whole album remind me of John Bohnam on Physical Graffiti.

With a song title like Deathwatch you would imagine something being epic and grim.  But the grace that comes through the speakers is astonishing!  I am a sucker for a Fender Rhodes so I was instantly sold.  The spastic bass and sax on Cannon Misfire are too groovy for my mind to comprehend.  I would keep and eye on Diagonal.  If there debut album is this good, there is no telling what they can do.

From avant jazz to avant metal, if you do not have Trinacria’s Travel Now Journey Infinitely, then you are missing out on something unique and spectacular. Trinacria was originally a composition by Ivar Bjørnson of Enslaved and Maja S. K. Ratkje and Hils Sofie Tafjord, commissioned by Rikskonsertene for a concert series. It is a pleasant cacophony of metal, doom, and industry.

I personally think it is stands out in the because it has quite a mix of music on it. Part I: Turn-Away is colossally doom. Iver Sandøy’s blast beats and the sound effects add volume and weight to Part II: The Silence. Grutle’s vocals on are perfectly grim as always. I think the highlight of the album for me is Part IV: Endless Roads. A 10:00 minute doom masterpiece!

Great album all around. Hail to Trinacria.

What can I say about Tom Waits that hasn’t already been said. An incredibly prolific songwriter of Avant-garde and strangely beautiful jazz (and I use jazz lightly).

I put Alice and Blood Money together because seem to be from the same mold. Alice is contains songs written for a play of the same name. The play is tail of forbidden love between Lewis Carrol and Alice Liddell, for whom he wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Each song tells it’s own story and each song has a unique flavor. From the title track to alluringly tragic Flower’s Grave to the volkstümliche musik inspired Kommienezuspadt, each song on Alice leads the listener on a ride through the looking glass.

Blood Money is also contains songs for a play. This one is an adaptation of the play Woyzeck by Georg Büchner. Where Alice mournful and languishing, Blood Money has a dour and surly feel to it. The production on Blood Money does not seem as polished as Alice which adds to it’s ambiance.

Out of Tom Wait’s double aut album’s these two are my favorite and they are two of my favorite albums of the decade.

When I first heard Kid A I was like, “What the Fuck?” I was not sure if a dug it or not. I listened to a few times and then put it back on the shelf. Then about 6 to 8 months later I came back to it and boom! It hit me. Wow this is a groovy album! The songs are so complex but also simple. (I know weird). Take A National Anthem for instance. The song does not change that often in chord structure, but the different layers of instruments adds so much to the song that it sounds more complex than it really is. The baritone sax is killer.

Thom York’s vocals rival the greats like David Gates, Brad Delp, and Jon Anderson. Jonny Greenwood’s use of guitar effects has a lot to do with the oddness of the album.

Radiohead’s Kid A is truly a masterpiece.

Lucker of Chalice is the shit. Period! Wrest (Jef Whitehead) is one of the best all around musicians in extreme metal. He is one of the best drummer out there. His blast beats are fucking insane! His guitar work is chaotic and beautiful. As for vocals, creepy as fuck!

This self titled album is one of my favorite albums of all time. It so melancholy and creepy I can listen to it every day and not get tired of it. The album starts off with the funeral march I, and quickly moves into hypnotic drone of Piercing Where They Might, but my favorite song on the album has got to be the 10 minute epic This Blood Falls As Mortal Part III. The samples add so much dimension that I could meditate with this song on repeat for hours.

This album and the Leviathan album A Silhouette in Splinters go hand in hand even though the Lurker of Chalice album is a little more metal.

If you are looking for another The Tenth Sub Level of Suicide this is not it. But if you are in the mood for some misanthropic meditation, then Lucker of Chalice is your album.