Posts Tagged ‘Nine Inch Nails’
Mose Giganticus – Gift Horse Album Review
Matt Garfield is just a man with a keytar and a hankering for metal.
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).
After Trent Reznor retired the live iteration of Nine Inch Nails in late 2009, he assured his rabid fan base that he was not done recording under the NIN moniker. He also mentioned that he had several non-NIN projects percolating for the future.
Now we know what one of those projects is.
Reznor is teaming up with his new wife, Mariqueen Maandig (formerly of West Indian Girl) and frequent NIN contributor Atticus Ross in a group called How To Destroy Angels. They’ve got a website set up with some teaser videos of what the music sounds like, and it seems as if they are planning to release a six-song EP this summer.
Truthfully, I had never heard of Maandig before she married Reznor and I still haven’t listened to any of her older music. If any of you guys know her stuff, let us know how it is. Judging by the teaser videos and the song “A Drowning” posted over at Pitchfork, How To Destroy Angels will sound very similar to recent NIN material, heavy electronics, distorted guitars, only with Maandig singing instead of Reznor (and she has a really pretty voice). So far, it sounds pretty kick ass.
http://www.vimeo.com/11421911-Sam
“I do no longer believe.”
Those words are the crux of Heliocentric, the scathing first entry in a two album set by German progressive metal band The Ocean, designed to critique Christianity and its influences. Heliocentric deals with the formation of the idea that the sun is the center of the universe with Earth revolving around it rather the other way around. Anthropocentric, the companion second album set to be released in October, will reportedly take on creationism and fundamentalism.
This is all heady subject matter to be sure, and quite honestly I cannot imagine any genre other than heavy metal being able to pull off a philosophical concept album of this nature.
Although in actuality, this album is less of a heavy metal album and more of a swaying, orchestral hard rock album by a heavy metal band. And of course it took a bunch of Germans to pen some of the clearest, hardest-hitting lyrics I’ve heard in some time (don’t worry, it’s all in English).
Hat tip to “theonlyone” who posted this awesome musical subway map on Flickr and to MetalSucks for leading me there.
Just pretend each rock genre had its own subway line and the connectors were determined by genre compatibility and you get this:
You’re likely going to have to visit the site to get a larger version of the map in order to read all the bands, but it’s definitely worth a couple minutes of your time.
Most of the designations are pretty spot on, although I don’t know what Death Cab for Cutie is doing on the Punk Rock line or what Nine Inch Nails is doing on the Heavy Metal Line.
-Sam
What’s Your List?
Back in March 2005, Esquire Magazine ran a column written by John Mayer discussing the top songs he remembers from growing up. It started a string of emails, first from my oldest brother and then throughout the family, discussing what songs were important to us. Growing up in a music hip household, you get exposed to various genres and types of music. There are songs that maybe your favorite, but then there are those that just hold a special place for one reason or another.
As you grow up, your taste in music expands and refines. Some believe that to listen to mainstream “pop” music is to dance with the devil. To some, finding out the next “it” band first is more important than actually enjoying the music. To me, music is all about emotion. It is there to help you at all times, with joy and pain and everything in between. So what’s your memorable songs? Remember, these may not your favorite ten of all time, but those songs, that when you hear them on the radio, illicit the most emotional reaction!
New Nine Inch Nails in 2010
So that Nine Inch Nails retirement, or whatever the hell it was, seems to be a bit over.
Frontman Trent Reznor recently posted a message on the band’s website stating that there will be new NiN album material released in the coming months. Reznor didn’t give any more album details.
Trent Reznor stopped touring Nine Inch Nails last year.
The band released their latest album, “The Slip”, last year as a free online download, then physically in July.