That’s not the case with Iron Thrones, who recently won the Scion No Label Needed Contest that was hosted by MetalInsider.net.  Sure, the contest was an attempt to sell more cars from Scion’s perspective, but that’s fine with me because the winner, for once, is actually pretty good.

As the winners of this contest, Iron Thrones not only got their new 6-song EP, The Wretched Sun, recorded in a professional studio with a well-known producer, but they also met the guys in Shadows Fall in order to get career advice, took part in a professional photo shoot and subsequent press campaign, and received a new website redesign among many other things that bands signed to a big label probably take for granted.

Iron Thrones plays a particular style of progressive death metal that will be immediately evident to any fans of Between the Buried and Me.  In fact, The Wretched Sun sounds so much like a BTBAM record that you’d be forgiven for mistaking the two.  The major difference between the two bands is that while Iron Thrones captures the brutality, beauty, and complexity of classic BTBAM, their music never manages to be quite as brutal or as beautiful or as complex.  They are, in essence, the prog-death padawans to BTBAM’s Jedi-masters.  But that’s to be expected – after all, Iron Thrones is basically just beginning their career.

The six songs on this EP are really more like one long, extended track.  That’s because there are so many time signature shifts and stop-start transitions within the tracks themselves that the actual song breaks seem like mere formalities.  And these songs are dense.  This isn’t the kind of music you are going to want to put on in the background, because if you aren’t actively listening to it, it probably will just sound like heavy noise.  But if your ears are down for some deep digging, they will be richly rewarded by the complex melodies.

The singing is mostly heavy howls with a few instances of clean vocals added to the mix.  From what I understand, the lyrics are based loosely around the legend of Icarus, the theme of loss, and the story of a man fearful of his attraction to a woman.  That all sounds really cool, and I would have loved to explore those concepts more, but again, a metal band with difficult-to-hear lyrics failed to provide any written guidance.  Come on guys!

The Wretched Sun is a rock solid foundation to build off of in the future, and for once, it seems like the voters chose correctly in one of these contests.  Iron Thrones is just the latest proof that there are countless unsigned bands waiting to make the most of any opportunity they receive.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Click here to view the embedded video.

-Sam

Having been active in some way or another for close to 5 years now, these guys have built up a solid fanbase and live reputation in the UK, famous particularly for their jarring, synth-infused rhythms and frontwoman Eva Spence’s ferocious roar. They’ve been tearing up venues up and down the country, including high-profile support slots with The Dillinger Escape Plan and slots at the big summer festivals. A worthy live reputation causes problems for a lot of bands. The main issue being the difficulty of capturing the raw passion of a live performance on record. Rolo Tomassi, however, have no such issues.

Their spazzed-out tech-metal meets dance sound is perfectly captured on Cosmology,  which is a real relief considering just how easy it is to lose individual instruments and subtle arrangements amongst such a racket. Effortlessly switching back and forth from pummelling brutality to dreamy soundscapes,  Rolo clearly have the musical tightrope walking down. The beauty of title track/closer ‘Cosmology’ sits easily alongside the discomforting lurch of ‘French Motel’, and both are high-points. Lead-off single ‘Party Wounds’ is an absolute killer, displaying the prodigious vocal talents of Eva Spence, who straddles the line between angelic choir soprano and feral beast with a confidence rarely seen in metal music. When you throw in the fact that she’s barely out of her teens, it’s quite a remarkable performance. Throw in brother James’s yelping, and it makes for a fine dual-delivery that gives the album’s heavier moments real variety.

As is the case with some of the more experimental works of art, Cosmology  is at times a hit-and-miss affair. ‘French Motel’ is an impressive piece of music, but it manages to display both the strength and weakness of the band’s approach. One section sees the most unusual use of the synth amongst a discordant mess that really doesn’t add to proceedings – an example of how difficult Rolo can be to listen to at times – but that section precedes the brilliant use of the synth to emphasise the heavy riffs with a distorted effect, which absolutely pummels the ears. In fairness, those wrong turns are very few and far between. Rolo have polished their sound, focused their efforts, and produced an album which is a real step-up from mental debut ‘Hysterics’.

If you like your music difficult, dense and experimental, then this group of Sheffield youngsters will be right up your street. If you’re into hooks and melodies, steer clear if you don’t fancy a challenge. I like my music either way, and I enjoyed this album. Recommended.

He’s also the one-man wrecking crew behind the band Mose Giganticus – handling all the songwriting, lyrics, vocals, drums, and synthesizers himself with a rotating cast of characters backing him up on guitar and bass both live and in the studio – kind of like Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails.

Gift Horse is the band’s major label debut on Relapse Records.  The brand of metal that is put forth on this album is difficult to nail down.  It should be no surprise that a keytarist liberally uses synthesizers and vocoder in his music, but Gift Horse isn’t industrial metal in the vein of, say, The Downward Spiral; nor is it anything like the recent bastardizations of synth in metal like The Devil Wears Prada or Attack Attack! (or any other group of kids wearing neon shirts and sporting girls’ haircuts while banging on a keyboard).

Metal and synths have traditionally walked a fine line together, and the band that successfully incorporates one with the other is generally the exception rather than the rule.  But after all is said and done, Garfield has managed to come out on top in that regard, seamlessly mixing the electronic elements with the metallic into a combination as fine as chocolate and peanut butter.

Throughout the album, the electronics and guitars fade in and out of prominence with Garfield expertly substituting synths for lead guitars on several of the tracks (”Days of Yore,” “The Great Deceiver”).  On others, they play more subtly in the background, and because of that, this is definitely an album that rewards multiple close listenings.  You’ll pick up more textural sounds and details each time.  And while Garfield makes use of a vocoder for some passages, it’s never offputting  (think of how Mastodon has made use of it on their last two albums.)  And speaking of Mastodon, Garfield boasts an impressive voice that straddles the line between singing and yelling a la Troy Sanders.

The lyrical scope on this record is pretty epic.  The seven songs detail a dialogue between Jehovah and Lucifer.  Each side starts off the album by laying out their mission statement (”Last Resort” and “The Left Path”) and from there they go back and forth trying to determine who is “The Great Deceiver.”  You’d expect this sort of thematic confrontation to come to a head in a climactic manner, and you’d be spot on.  The album ends with “The Seventh Seal” which is easily one of the best songs I’ve heard in a while.  It starts off with an elephantine stomp and ends with an amazing riff that is brutal in its simplicity and catchiness.  Oh yeah, and there’s a killer proggy solo thrown in for good measure.  The lyrics are inspired by Genesis’ “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight,” as Lucifer proclaims “You’d keep telling me you’re going to help me / that you’re going to save me, but you won’t / and now I’m in too deep / all I have left is sleep.”  The emotion is palpable and the result is a perfect capstone to the album.

Mose Giganticus’ major label debut isn’t perfect – some of the more straight-ahead songs (”Demon Tusk”) come across as a bit dull – but that may just be because they are surrounded by a fresh sound that is rare in the world of metal.  This is one Gift Horse that you should definitely look in the mouth.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Click here to view the embedded video.

-Sam

Specifically, they specialize in the psychedelic and drone doom genres of metal.

Matador is the band’s fourth release, and by far it represents their best, most complete effort to date.

Zoroaster always flashed major potential on their first three albums.  The one major flaw, however, was that there would usually be a couple tracks that really stood out and grabbed your attention, but the rest of the album would devolve into endlessly meandering and dull experimentation (I mean these guys had a 14-minute outro track on their last album!).  This is a common pitfall of the drone genre since by definition it relies on loooong sustained chords to create an atmosphere, oftentimes in the absence of a readily identifiable rhythm.

On Matador, the guys ease ever so slightly off the droning and focus more on the psychedelic.  But even more important than that, they’ve upped the songwriting to a whole new level.  Let’s just say that Zoroaster wasn’t previously known for their songs so much as for the moods and ambiance that their songs create.  But Matador starts off with four legitimate songs that kick all kinds of ass.  In particular, tracks like the opener “D.N.R.” and “Odyssey” (which you can listen to below) heavily feature the reverb-soaked vocals of guitarist Will Fiore.  His ethereal, shamanistic vocals add a new dimension to the band’s music (he sang on previous albums, but never as well as he does here) and they serve as a great counterpart to bassist Brent Anderson’s blackened howl.  One gripe I do have, however, is that for the most part the lyrics are indecipherable and for the life of me I cannot find them anywhere.  I know a lot of people don’t care about the lyrics, and I’m sure they are probably just singing about ancient mythology and fantastical realms, but I’d still like to know.

Of course, after the opening four tracks, the pull of the band’s older sound gets the best of them and the tracks “Firewater” and “Old World” lapse into unbridled noise and/or tedium.  But the quality of the rest of the album makes it much easier to forgive a soft middle.  For the first time, Zoroaster has managed to put it all together.  Fiore busts out some scorching licks, Anderson’s bass rumbles along in lockstep, and Dan Scanlan shows why he may be one of the better drummers this side of Brann Dailor.  Easily their best record to date, Matador is the kind of album you put on and enjoy as its ominous soundscapes wash over you.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Click here to view the embedded video.

-Sam

She’s blazed paths on the strength of wildly fresh sounds and uncomfortable politics – inciting just as many death threats as dance parties.

But trailblazing as a career is tough to pull off.

And this is especially so for an artist like M.I.A., who is so heavily dependent on her producers to make top-notch beats.  Without them, she’s basically dead in the water.  And as /\/\ /\ Y /\ (henceforth called Maya) displays, even with a solid beat in tow, her provocateur personality sometimes comes across as blissful ignorance.

Maya kicks off in typical M.I.A. fashion with a little paranoid “Dem Bones”-style ditty about how the government is watching our every move.  But then she more or less forgets the politics for several songs and dives right into sex, drugs, and self-aggrandizement.  This schizophrenic hopping is characteristic of the album as a whole, which really has no recognizable identity amongst the mishmash.

And M.I.A.’s never had a problem with identity.  Heretofore she was the music business’ preeminent Carmen Sandiego, zooming around the globe and coalescing all those diverse influences into banging pop gems.  But recently she’s had to shoulder the role of new wife and mother, which I’m sure cuts down on the time she has to go jetting off to exotic lands and record with the locals.  Instead, a lot of this album sounds like M.I.A.’s struggle to reach those Euro-clubs she probably hasn’t visited in a while.

On “Steppin Up,” she boasts “I run this fuckin’ club,” but the beat – all piercingly loud power tools and clanging – just comes off like a half-hearted attempt to recapture the magic of “Paper Planes” and all of its fun sound effects.  “Teqkilla” is another club song that won’t be filling up dance floors anytime soon.  On the other end of the spectrum, but no more enjoyable, is “Born Free,” or what sounds like a little girl’s first paint-by-numbers punk song.

Surprisingly, the best tracks here are the subtler ones.  “XXXO,” “Tell Me Why,” and “Space” are crisp, simple, electro-pop tunes that avoid getting bogged down in murky sermonizing, and her reggae-flavored cover of “It Takes A Muscle” is great fun.  She keeps it simple on these tracks, saying, “I hate it when people ask me, hello girl what’s up? / I say age, tax, cost of living yeah boy ain’t that enough?”  Now who can’t relate to that?

Of course, this is M.I.A. we’re talking about, so you know she will feel compelled to stir the pot.  And the pot definitely gets a stirring on “Lovealot,” where she assumes the role of a terrorist and deceptively blurs the lyric “I really love a lot” into “I really love Allah.”  The lyrics also reference Dzhennet Abdurakhmanova, the 17-year old Islamic “black widow” who suicide bombed a Moscow subway station, killing 40 people, in retaliation for her terrorist-husband’s death which came at the hands of the Russian army.  M.I.A. repeatedly pumps out the refrain, “I fight the ones that fight me!”  as if terrorists are simply victims waiting to be dealt a blow before pulling the pin on the bombs strapped to their chest.  Yeah, killing those 40 innocent civilians going about their daily lives was really a morally unimpeachable act of retribution – at least according to M.I.A.

In the end, Maya is an uneven, spastic collection of electro-pop that would seem to suggest a former firebrand slightly losing touch with what made her so vital in the past.  Perhaps M.I.A. is more of a truffle-queen than she (or we) would like to admit.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

-Sam

That’s the question that has loomed large over Korn ever since they declared that their newest album, Korn III: Remember Who You Are, would be a return to the group’s early aural stylings after enduring several years and several albums worth of misguided experimentations and lousy music.

The first time Korn pulled this trick was with Take a Look in the Mirror.  That album was a reaction to what the band perceived as slow sales of Untouchables, and they wanted to bring back their hyper-aggressive sound.  But it wasn’t seen as a ploy because the finished product was actually pretty good.

The same cannot be said for Korn III.

If you didn’t know any better, you might think Korn III was some wannabe’s attempt to make a Korn record by slapping together as many “Korn elements” together as possible and calling it a day.  I mean, the effort that these guys went to in order to get the listener to recall mid-Nineties Korn is both mind-blowing and pathetic.  It starts most obviously with the title, setting up the album as some kind of weird second sequel to the band’s debut eponymous record.  Not only that, but they tagged on a ridiculous subtitle/mission statement which basically reads “Hey guys, sorry about those last two albums.  We promise we’ve remembered how to write songs like back in the day!”

But it hardly ends with just the title.  Nope, you’ve also got the cover art, which is of a creepy guy stalking a little girl.  Hmm, where have I seen that before?  You’ve got Jonathan Davis decked out in his trademark Adidas track suit again and he even manages to cry at the end of one of the songs – just like old times!  And to top it off the band brought back producer Ross Robinson who helmed both Korn and Life Is Peachy.  These insulting gimmicks would have been tolerable if the music actually backed them up.  It does not.

Korn certainly didn’t lie about their intentions to return to their older sound.  The music here is definitely heading in that direction and away from all the synth-wonkery that they were experimenting with in recent years.  But the actual execution is downright upsetting.

The blame has to lie in two very specific areas – the production and the simple fact that Brian “Head” Welch was a more important element to this band than anyone ever gave him credit for.  When you think of Korn, you think of huge down-tuned guitar riffs hitting you like hammers.  On this album (and this is no joke) the guitars barely even register.  Robinson has done a truly terrible production job here with the guitars so low in the mix that they are at times inaudible, especially over the drums which have been questionably shoved to the front of the mix.  The result is that most of these songs sound like hollow, incomplete demos waiting for the guitar parts to be added.  Of course, it’s also obvious at this point that James “Munky” Shaffer simply cannot carry this band on his own.  He was a great complementary player to Head, but he is abysmal as the sole guitarist.  His riffs are weak, his playing is uninspired, and it’s safe to say that Korn will never reclaim their original sound until Head is back in the ranks.

Korn has been at this for 17 years now, and it’s starting to look like they are at the point where they are primarily a live act – releasing albums so they can have a reason to tour.  We still know Korn can bring it live, and that’s why it’s so disappointing that they couldn’t translate that visceral feeling into this album.  They put on the kind of show where you can literally feel the music pounding your chest – surprising when you consider that this album registered not even a tap.

Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

-Sam

Back in April

And so while Sevendust’s self-titled debut album is not a huge sonic departure from the tunes they are cranking out today, it does represent the template for everything that has followed in a prolific career that began in the mid-Nineties.

And as they say, you only get one first impression so make it count.

Sevendust definitely did that with their debut, and as a testament to its lasting impact, the album has received the deluxe reissue treatment complete with new remasterings of the songs and some extra rare and live tracks added on.

The creation of Sevendust was intrinsically informed by the terrorist bombing of the 1996 Summer Olympic Games being held in the band’s hometown of Atlanta.  The anxiety-ridden climate that was left in the wake of the attack fueled Sevendust’s recording sessions and it is evident in the finished product.  This album is Sevendust at its rawest and heaviest.

Die-hard fans need not worry that the remastering drastically altered the original songs.  The differences are slight, with the main distinction being that the remastered tracks have a bit more added heft to them.

The bonus tracks, while all previously available in some form or another, are a nice addition.  “Breathe” and “Terminator (Breathe Remix)” were originally on movie and TV soundtracks.  “School’s Out,” a thoroughly unexciting cover of the Alice Cooper classic, appeared as a b-side to the Home album.  There are also two live tracks – “Bitch” and “Prayer.”

The Definitive Edition also includes a DVD which features a thirty minute concert film “Live & Loud.”  Sevendust make much mention of their live show and this film is a great window into the passion they display on stage.  The DVD also has some behind the scenes footage and an Electronic Press Kit from 1997.

Longtime Sevendust fans may already have the bonus material included on this version of the album.  But for those who missed the boat the first time around, this reissue marks the perfect opportunity to jump back and fill out your catalog.  Eight albums in, Sevendust still remains the benchmark for the band’s ferocity and aggression.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

-Sam

But then as the supposed release date got closer and closer, word started to spread of how disjointed and troubled the film’s production had become.  This movie was going through reshoots almost right up to its final release it seemed.  Composer John Powell was originally tasked with working with the band to incorporate the music into the film, but as the reshoots  delayed things, Powell had to abandon the project to begin work on other films he had committed to.  So the producers basically scrapped everything Mastodon had written thus far and brought in a new composer, Marco Beltrami, at the last minute and expected him to get all new music for all the new scenes that were being thrown together at the last minute.

Yeah, sounds promising.

I didn’t see this movie, and from what I’ve heard about it, I made a good decision to save my ten bucks.  But because I didn’t see the movie, I can’t say for sure how this music actually fit in with the scenes.  Regardless though, if a piece of music is only worth listening to as background music to explosions then it probably isn’t worth much at all.

Basically what you get here is four new instrumental songs and two “alternate versions” of the same stuff.  And this really can’t be viewed as a proper album so let’s just look at the songs individually:

• Track 1, “Death March” – You’d expect a near-nine minute song to be somewhat epic or at least include several tempo shifts and time signature alterations.  You’d be wrong.  This is essentially the same riff played ad nauseum from start to finish.  And it’s not even a good riff.

• Track 2, “Clayton Boys” – Pretty much the same as above, except this song is only three minutes.  It actually does pick up at about the two minute mark, but then the song ends, and all you’re left with is dashed hopes.

• Track 3, “Indian Theme” – This track isn’t horrible.  It’s got a decent riff but then once again it just goes on infinite repeat. This sounds like an extremely watered-down version of the ‘Don with no inspiration.

• Track 4, “Train Assault” – Finally, something worth listening to!  I could see this track being a part of one of Mastodon’s 12-minute epics.  Alas, it’s stuck here.

• Track 5, “Death March (alternate version)” – The “alternate” part of this song is that Brent and Bill actually get to play with their guitars, but just barely.  It’s definitely better than the regular version which leads things off, but it’s still nine minutes of not a whole lot.

• Track 6, “Clayton Boys (alternate version)” – There is so little different between this and the original version that you are basically getting the same song twice.  And they both aren’t good.

So there you have it – one song worth a damn and lot’s of diluted filler.  One can only imagine what the original score they wrote sounded like.  According to Brent Hinds, the scrapped version was “pretty heavy” with “vigorous shredding.”  When told to start over, he said “It was some of the best shit I’ve ever written in my life. Now I’m just trying to finish with as much patience as possible.”

Talk about a fucking tease.  Now I want to hear that stuff even more.  I hope they find a way to release it someday.

Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars

-Sam

It takes a lot of guts as an artist to scrap an entire body of work that is almost completed in favor of starting anew with a clean slate because the old material simply didn’t reflect who you are at the present.  Deftones recently were in such a predicament due to the serious injuries suffered by one of their members.  But that’s a much different situation than the one facing Eminem.

Em himself writes off his most recent work in “Talkin’ 2 Myself,” saying, “them last two albums didn’t count/Encore I was on drugs, Relapse I was flushin’ ‘em out/I’ve come to make it up to you now no more fuckin’ around.”

And anyone who’s seen a minute of Celebrity Rehab knows that when you’re on drugs and in the spotlight, some stupid shit can happen and proper decision-making processes probably aren’t happening.  That’s why it’s so commendable that Eminem was actually able to step back and take an objective look at his own situation, decide that he wasn’t on top of his game, and change courses.

This isn’t to say this his recent work was terrible.  It wasn’t (and mediocre Eminem is still better than 98% of the rappers out there).  But it wasn’t great either.  But this also isn’t to say that Recovery marks the return of Eminem to the top of his game.  It doesn’t.  He allows himself to get a bit too sloppy a bit too often  here (sticking “umm” at the end of a line just to fit the rhyme scheme, overusing word reversal).  What’s important is that the album marks a change in direction and a change in attitude.

Because, honestly, there’s only so many tracks anyone can put up with dealing with the same worn out subject matter of drug abuse and the pain and dysfunction that goes along with it.  However, pain and dysfunction are still very much alive on Recovery – after all, this is Eminem we’re talking about – but they are emotions that stem from self-discovery and cleaning up in the wake of a disaster rather than from overdosing on sleeping pills.

It really is refreshing to see Em take a look in the mirror and break himself down rather than attacking someone else (even though he does continue his streak of mentioning Mariah Carey; when’s that gonna end?).  The starkest example of this is, again, on “Talkin’ 2 Myself” where he raps, “I almost made a song dissin’ Lil Wayne/it’s like I was jealous of him ’cause of the attention he was gettin’. . . almost went at Kanye too, God it/feels like I’m goin’ psychotic, thank God that I didn’t do it/I’da had my ass handed to me, and I knew it.”  In a world built around self-aggrandizement and braggadocio, that takes maturity.

And he’s right – it is good he didn’t alienate Weezy because he absolutely slays his guest spot on “No Love.”  In fact, Em invited quite a few guests on this album, and for the most part (P!nk excluded), they all do a great job.  Rihanna’s emotional turn on “Love The Way You Lie” takes on new meaning when you realize the song deals with domestic violence.

As far as the beats go, none of them really stand out.  They definitely sound good and allow Em to work his dexterous wordplay on top with ease, but they are utilitarian.  And that’s fine by me.  It just shows that this record is more about the message than about creating a radio hit.

I’m sure a lot of people thought that getting clean would ruin Em’s music by removing the source of his pain.  But he’ll always have to deal with those demons – not to mention the still simmering love/hate addiction he seems to have towards his ex-wife Kim.  And if you don’t think he can mine new anguish in his struggle with responsibility and humility then you just don’t know Eminem.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

-Sam

Imagine my surprise, then, when I stumble across a band slamming through some sweet hardcore grooves whilst a couple of nutters shout/rap over the top. Bewildering to say the least. The band was TRC (The Revolution Continues), the song was entitled “London’s Greatest Love Story”, and upon seeing the video again the very next night, I started to understand where the appeal lies.  Clearly the band have a variety of influences, from the metallic bash of Hatebreed to the down n’ dirty sound of the UK grime scene, these guys channel all of their inspiration to create a furiously heavy combination of muscle and sleaze.

The obvious comparison would be Gallows. But the fact is, Gallows don’t threaten on record like they do in a live setting, whereas TRC’s sound stalks the speakers and blasts forth like an absolute juggernaut. Lyrically, there’s a lot of honest stuff going on and plenty of big shout-out moments that would doubtlessly make them a very entertaining live act. I’ll be looking to catch them wherever they may be touring next, but if you’re not lucky enough to do the same (head over to their myspace page to check out dates), then go purchase their latest, self-titled EP directly from them or from iTunes. Fans of dirty hardcore grooves will not be disappointed.