Job For A Cowboy-Ruination

I say the same thing about Job For A Cowboy now that I said about them when I first heard of them, which is that their name is pretty fucking great for a deathcore band. "Job For A Cowboy". It's awesome. I wish I could say that about Ruination, their sophomore effort, which doesn't really accomplish much (anything), but I'll get to it in a minute.

This is "technical deathcore", kids, and I gotta admit, it's pretty damn technical. It's mega-heavy, that's for sure, and there's some pretty intense breakdowns in here (hence, "core"). Also, I know I should stop being impressed every time I hear the death metal drummer du jour play insanely difficult and demanding stuff through a whole album, but I can't help but be impressed with Jon "The Charn" Rice, the drummer on Ruination. This dude is sick. And the guitarist, who I'm too lazy to Google, also does a damn fine job. I may not like this album, but I would never call it lazy, because it can't be easy to play with such perfect stop-start precision with such fast parts and stay together. Other then that, though, Ruination doesn't have much. It's gotta be a damn job just to remember which song they're on, because they all sound pretty similar. The songs, as I said, all blend together (and they don't really stand out from the masses of other technical death metal bands flooding the landscape). The two best songs are the longest, March To Global Enslavement and the title track, which makes you wonder why they didn't try writing some more actual songs, as opposed to collections of aaaaargh and downtuned guitars. I find it hard to review these guys seriously, because I doubt people listen to this stuff seriously. If you like this kind of über heavy samey-ass death metal, then you'll love Job For A Cowboy, but honestly, I wouldn't say this album is worth even illegally downloading if you're not a teenager with hair dyed jet black and skinny jeans. Still, though, the level of technical precision and sheer heaviness gives me hope that Job For A Cowboy can one day make an album that stands out from the legions of albums like this. Maybe they should rip off Meshuggah; they've got a cool sound going. In any case, pass.

An Announcement

No one reads this blog, but just in case anyone accidentally does on a search for Internet porn, I'm starting reviewing again. And I'm changing my format, to be more for people buying records that people who sit on a computer all night and write reviews. My reviews will be shorter, there will be more of them, and hopefully they can be helpful to a dude in a CD store (okay, let's face it, iTunes) wondering what to buy, or a dude looking through the CD racks at Hot Topic wondering what the fuck he's doing at Hot Topic. Misguided porn searchers and maybe, just maybe, someone, enjoy.

Taking A Break

Since summer's starting, I'm taking a bit of a break. Be back sometime. In the meantime, please, I don't know, go outside or something.

Avantasia-Lost In Space Parts 1 And 2

Avantasia-Lost In Space Parts 1 And 2

Grade: 35/100

Link: http://rapidlibrary.com/download_file_i.php?qq=lost%20in%20space%20rapidshare&file=3166414&desc=Avantasia+-+Lost+in+Space+.zip

Avantasia's Lost In Space Parts 1 And 2 is actually a compilation of two different EPs, but they're being released as an album and that's what I'm reviewing. Just a heads up.

I pride myself on not being the sort of metalhead who only enjoys metal that's brutal and angry, like the kind of metalhead who says that all symphonic power metal sucks and is cheesy, then goes and listens to Deicide. I really do pride myself there. So I was giving Lost In Space Parts 1 And 2 a fair shot. Especially because I knew next to nothing about it. I didn't know that it was the new project of Tobias Sammet, the singer for Edguy (who I like), or that it featured ABBA covers. All I knew was that it was two EPs and it was symphonic power metal. So I came in with open ears. Then "Lost In Space" came in.

Put quite blatantly, the problem with Lost In Space Parts 1 And 2 is that in between good material, it features mind-blowingly retarded decisions. A good song or good moment is uniformly followed by something that just makes you wonder what the hell Tobias was thinking. For instance, look at the opening of the album. The title track comes first, and it's genuinely good. It's catchy, it's well written, it's smart, and it's memorable. And it's sung very well by Sammet, who has quite a set of pipes. Top of the line stuff, really. And then the next song comes in, and it's "Lay All Your Love On Me", by ABBA. And outside of a guitar intro that's promising, the song is just not good. It isn't cool, it isn't metal, and it's not awesome. And you gotta wonder, what was going on there?

It's like that through the whole album. "Ride The Sky" and "Promised Land" are both very good, two good songs in a row. Then they follow that up with "Dancing With Tears In My Eyes" and "Scary Eyes", which are just...well, not good. They're lame. "Dancing With Tears In My Eyes" is promising for like fifteen seconds, but it really just goes downhill fast, and it doesn't get better. The whole thing is wildly inconsistent.

And it's very badly sequenced, or paced, or whatever. Listening to it straight through feels like whiplash. It moves from good, heavier stuff ("Another Angel Down") to weird-ass stuff like "This Story Ain't Over", then it moves it more rocking stuff like "Ride The Sky". It ends on an inconsistent note, with the not particularly good "In My Defense", then two more versions of "Lost In Space". The problem is that it's EPs. On EPs, you can do covers, you can do stuff like this, you don't really have to work on pacing it and it can still be really good. But these two things just slapped together don't work.

There's good material here. Now in the iTunes generation, this album does better. If you like symphonic power metal, download the title track, "Another Angel Down" (best song here), "Ride The Sky", and "Promised Land" and you're fine. Maybe get "Scary Eyes", but that's about it. The good stuff here is very good -- for instance, "Ride The Sky" was a '70s vibe and some sweet organ trills, and it's great. "Promised Land" has a truly awesome guitar solo. And it's all very well sung; Tobias Sammet is legitimately a good singer. But a few good songs do not an album make.

I bet that Avantasia can make, and maybe even have made, really good stuff. They have the skill and smarts to, and I hear The Metal Opera was actually quite good. But these two EPs are simply not worth the work Tobias put into it or your money. No thanks.

Scale The Summit-Carving Desert Canyons

Scale The Summit-Carving Desert Canyons

Score: 40/100

Link: Couldn't find any

Scale The Summit have made quite a name for themselves over the Internet, with a hugely visited Myspace page and email updates and all sorts of things -- they've even landed a spot in Guitar World magazine. Those things, plus recommendations from a friend, prepared me for a listen to the Houston-based instrumental prog metal band's new album, Carving Desert Canyons. And with that level of recommendation, I expected Carving Desert Canyons to fucking kick ass. I liked the song titles, I liked the cover, and my friends said they were great, so when I hit play, I was ready for some seriously great metal. And I gotta say, Carving Desert Canyons doesn't live up to that. This album is okay, but based on this work, Scale The Summit (however young and tech-savvy) aren't the future of prog metal.

The main thing that stood out to me was the lack of things that seemed to matter, things that lodge in your mind and make you gasp. Although clearly inspired by Joe Satriani and Steve Vai (Eric Johnson too), Carving Desert Canyons didn't have many of the soaring, flying sounds I associate with that trio of masters. There are a few, like on the vaguely ballad-ish "The Great Plains" and the highlight "Age Of The Tides", but mostly the guitars (and this is an instrumental band, so the guitars handle a lot of this) never seemed to take flight the way Satch's and Johnson's did. This is a problem.

And where their predecessors like Satch and Johnson wrote great songs, Scale The Summit seem to be great believers in the art of noodling around. Where Satch's albums (and any good instrumental band with guitars like this' albums) would have songs that were well written, songs that had a structure and were able to leave an impression, Scale The Summit's does a lot of kind of wandering around, always with the same tone, kind of floating up and down. This doesn't leave much of an impression. It all blends together.

Of course, the similarities to Satch and Vai are almost only in the guitars. Scale The Summit are a good deal proggier then Satch. This prog sensibility is largely due to their drummer, Pat Skeffington (quite technically skilled), who has a penchant for odd time signatures and rapidly changing beats. But also, it shines through in the unconventional song structures, which also change rapidly and fluidly. The songs seem to be constructed of drum beats and guitar solos, cut-and-pasted together, sometimes repeating, sometimes branching off into nowhere. The best prog metal I've heard was able to stay unified, able to stay together. Listen to Opeth. Or Dream Theater. They managed to have ten, eleven, nineteen-minute songs that sounded more together then this one. In trying to be interesting, Scale The Summit has succeeded in sounding like the most technically skilled four-year-olds in the world.

And Opeth and Dream Theater bring me back to the same point -- this album lacked things that really made me want to sit up in my seat and be amazed, things to listen to over and over, things that had scope. Where Dream Theater are crushingly heavy, Scale The Summit aren't very heavy by metal standards at all -- much heavier then Eric Johnson, but by prog metal standards, barely heavy. And if you're not going to be heavy, or have any riffs (which they don't), then you're going to need to consistently soar, and fly; make sounds that really sound like desert canyons, great plains, cities in the sky, glacial planets (these are song titles from this album). To really sound like climbing to the top of a mountain, or scaling a summit. And they just don't. They don't have it. It just sounds like noodling, not probing the farthest reaches of the mind. And that means that Carving Desert Canyons doesn't end up being that memorable.

Granted, there's some good stuff here. I liked "City In The Sky", which has a sweet bass solo. "Bloom", the opener, is good. And one thing I will say is that the band is extremely technically proficient, so if that's your boat you might want to pick this up. Most of all, I respect Scale The Summit for trying to do something original. I feel bad rating this lower than a fifty because that means "below average", and this album is different then the norm. But I can't bring myself to give this more then that, because higher then fifty means worth paying for, and unless you really, really like technical, instrumental prog-guitar rock and Eric Johnson, I wouldn't recommend buying this. Scale The Summit have the potential to make some really good music, and I look forward to seeing how their future goes. Good luck with that.

Top 10 Thrash Metal Bands

Because I'm bored-

1. Megadeth-I don't care if you disagree with me, which all 2 people who ever read this will. Megadeth outgunned, outran, and outhrashed everyone on the scene, and Rust In Peace is the greatest thrash album of all time. Their best periods were better and their worst periods were still a lot better then, say, Metallica's or Kreator's. Nobody thrashed the way that Megadeth did, and they're still going. Besides, who can resist "Wake Up Dead", "Set The World Afire", "Sweating Bullets", or "Take No Prisoners"? They outdid everyone -- in style, in rage, in skill, and in power. How could it go to anyone else? 

2. Slayer-For fucking brutality. While contemporaries were making "Fade To Black" style ballads or horribly produced things pretending to be brutal, Slayer were making music more evil than anything until black metal eight years later. For sheer rip you face off intensity and awesomeness, Slayer are the absolute kings. And Show No Mercy to Seasons In The Abyss is probably the greatest run in thrash history. Not to mention the fact that Reign In Blood remains the other greatest thrash album ever. Normal bands are obliterated under Slayer.

3. Metallica-Talk as much as you want about their slide into lameness, but Kill 'Em All to ...And Justice For All are unbelievably good. They were the original innovators and no one could touch them for a loooong time. If they had sucked even a little less, they might be higher. Ride The Lightning in 1984 is still a candidate for the best thrash ever, and the first four are all undisputed must owns. Too bad about post Black.

4. Anthrax-While Slayer made their name through speed and Megadeth made their name through firepower, Anthrax got there by simply being the most fucking fun thrash band ever. The hardcore influences and awesome lyrics were a large part of what made them great, but they also made some of the most headbangingest straightforward thrash ever. Besides, they've showed actual progress and different styles, moving from Kill 'Em All style early thrash to their own punky thrash sound to eventually progressive thrash at their peak. Hard not to love Anthrax.

5. Exodus-Bonded By Blood remains some of the best thrash ever written, and Exodus get major credit for both being there at the start and still making great thrash today. Fabulous Disaster? Impact Is Imminent? Pleasures Of The Flesh? Abso-fucking-lutely. And you could make a case for these Bay Area legends being the best around today, with awesome shit like Shovel Headed Kill Machine. For pure thrash firepower, Exodus are the top.

6. Pantera-Say what you will about Pantera, they were the logical next step from 80s thrash and they have some fucking power. They had attitude in boatloads and an ability to write slower songs just as macho and intense as any Exodus. Besides, Dimebag Darrel and Phil Anselmo together are one of the all time great teams, and Pantera managed to kick ass without changing through trend after trend. Cowboys From Hell through Far Beyond Driven are unbelievably awesome.

7. Kreator-These Teutonic thrash legends turned the intensity up a notch and managed to make some of the best, and most individual thrash metal ever. Almost death metal, Kreator took absolutely no shit and made some amazing thrash -- and continue to be pretty damn good.

8. Testament-Yeah, they sound a lot like Metallica, but Testament have some of the best thrash metal around to their credit. They were a dyed in the wool, tried-and-true thrash band, and their best work rivals nearly any other. Listen to classics like The New Order and Practice What You Preach.

9. Sepultura-Okay, they're pretty death metal too, but counting Schizophrenia-Chaos A.D as thrash, they still are one of the best around. The Brazilian influences and their crushing heaviness stood them apart from the pack, and Beneath The Remains remains unrivaled in terms of pure kickass.

10. Over Kill-One of the most consistently ass kicking thrash metal bands ever, they came from the same scene as Anthrax and have been releasing balls-out, evil sounding thrash since Feel The Fire. Hard to argue with a band with as much great work to their name as Over Kill, especially The Years Of Decay and Under The Influence. Not to mention their stellar post-Nirvana groove metal work.

Napalm Death-Time Waits For No Slave

Napalm Death-Time Waits For No Slave

85/100

Download link: http://www.4shared.com/file/73889409/b52907af/NAPALM_DEATH_-_Time_Waits_For_No_Slave.html

Listening to "Strong-Arm", the opening track of grindcore legends Napalm Death's new album, gives you a good representation of what will lie ahead on the pioneers' fourteenth album, Time Waits For No Slave. 

"Strong-Arm" opens with an alternation guitar and drums stabbing out a rhythm, before erupting into a full-fledged destruction fest. Filled with blastbeats (the drumming is quite insane on this album) and a great performance by perennial voice of death metal Barney Greenway, one of the qualities that also stands out along with the general outstandingness of the song is the complete removal from the grind style that gave Napalm Death their name. Make no mistake about it -- Time Waits For No Slave is well produced. It is loud. It is mixed well. The guitar sound like steamrollers (which is pretty amazing, for a guitar). And no song is below three minutes but one, at 2:57. This is not a grind album.

No, this is a fucking death metal album. This album is brutal, but it is also smart. True to Napalm Death's form, Time Waits For No Slave is legitimately smart death metal, and it's not smart like Dream Theater/Rush/Opeth smart, with twenty minute song suites and synths. It's smart not just because of their typically serious and political lyrics, but because of the level of variety and diversity of influences and ideas to be found, and that's what makes this one of the best death metal albums I've heard in a while.

"Work To Rule" is a good example of this sensibility. Harmonics, of all things, open the song, at ultra fast tempo, alternating with blastbeats and screams. In 3:17, it packs in several different sections and riffs, each of which is quality (no metalcore breakdowns, either). The song is among the most intense on the album, and that's saying something. Brutality of this level is so rarely combined with such well-constructed songs, and such great performances by Mitch Harris on guitar and Greenway. And it takes a few listens to fully sink in, a quality that most death metal wouldn't have a chance at achieving. 

But most importantly, it's brutal. Time Waits For No Slave is a brutal album in every sense of the word, and when I say brutal, I don't mean stupid kind of brutal, the kind where the production sounds like it was recorded in a trash can and the lyrics are about shitting on a corpse. It's brutal like steamroller, face-melting, ear-raping brutal. It's brutal like "Feeling Redundant", one of the standout tracks. Filled with blastbeats and riffs, the song barrels along like a freight train of death. Chaotic yet strangely harmonic (not melodic musically, but fitting together well), "Feeling Redundant" is a tour de force; in violence, in technical skill, in sheer brute metal power (not power metal). This album is nothing but songs like "Feeling Redundant". 

And Napalm Death get credit for varying it up, too. This album has influences from different fields and many different sound and tempos contained. For one thing, the whole album has an almost punk vibe to it. Listen to "On The Brink Of Extinction". As opposed to stuff like Deicide, the song is almost thrashy if not for the increased level of intensity and the stomach churning vocals. But elsewhere, there's black metal sounds to be heard, harmonic sounds and pure heaviosity, midpace tempos and incredible blastbeats. Time Waits For No Slave is extremely well made.

And that may be most telling of all. Napalm Death have a long and varied career, and this album stands above the others -- in brutality, intelligence, and performance. Give this to someone who thinks Slipknot is metal, and their brain will melt. Time Waits For No Slave is genuinely among the best death metal albums I've heard in a while, and I would recommend it to anyone who either wants to find out what death metal is all about or is a seasoned metal fan already. This is great material right here. If you have an interest in extreme metal, you owe it to yourself (and Napalm Death) to check out Time Waits For No Slave. Now go out and get it, then get ready to be assaulted!