Amalgamation

We all know that the first four Black Sabbath albums should be required listening for every man woman and child on earth. That's a self-evident truth. But what about the others? Mid-period Sabbath is often criminally overlooked due to the drug-fueled excess, legal wrangling and just plain bad ideas that plagued the band from 1973-1975. As much as the band's personal lives may have been falling apart at the time, there was still enough left in the tank to produce two great albums in Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath and Sabotage that are only disappointing if held to the impossibly high standard the band had already set for itself during the incomparable main sequence of Black Sabbath, Paranoid, Master Of Reality and Volume 4. Until 1976, it was never a lack of good material that hampered the band, but rather an abundance of half-baked ideas and poor decisions. The torrid pace with which the earlier material was cut compared to the 2 year layover between Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and Sabaotage suggest not only that the ideas may have been slower in coming but also that they were more heavily laboured upon when they arrived. At that point in their career a very successful band, Sabbath was given access to studio time and equipment that had previously been unavailable, and the temptation to make use of it caused a shift in their sound towards something denser and more progressive. Not that this was necessarily a bad thing, as such studio flourishes like Geezer's nifty overdriven echo-wah bass on "The Writ" or the acoustic coda to "Symptom Of The Universe" make clear, but the case I'm making with this here riff sandwich is that Sabbath could still move mountains when they just locked in and did what they did best. Hey, no one's done torpid, doomy drug rock better than these guys before or since, so why not listen to some of their lesser-beloved material with a fresh set of ears?

Side A
Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath
Symptom Of The Universe
Killing Yourself To Live
Megalomania

Side B
Hole In The Sky
Sabba Cadabra
A National Acrobat
The Writ

How's that for a smokin' platter of rock n' roll? No "Fluff," "Who Are You," or "Superczar," just slow, heavy riffs and titanic drums with everyone's favorite acid-blasted hippy pleading for peace and love. And really, isn't that all you ever wanted?

Canterbury

I was jamming on Caravan's In The Land Of Grey and Pink and couldn't help but notice that the side-long suite that formed one half of the album was much more interesting than the whimsical ditties on the other. I think the thing that turned me off early 70's prog, especially the less guitar-centric strains, was that when I was younger I couldn't get past the silliness of it all. To me, songs about having golf balls raining down on you just isn't as cool as summoning the fire witch to the court of the crimson king. Some of that stuff just strikes me as too precious. Rush might be something of a laughingstock, but those guys knew where their balls were until at least Signals. They've since found 'em again too, which is more than someone could say for Eric Clapton these days.

It's symptomatic of what was happening to rock music in the mid '70s. Too many bands got hung up on trying to make records with songs for radio when they should have been following their more otherworldly impulses. If anything, Pink Floyd proved this kind of thing could be profitable, but most others were not as lucky or as good. And Pink Floyd still had balls even when making commercially successful records. The result was a lot of partly-interesting records that are broken up by embarrassing radio tracks. This goes for lots of different kinds of rock, not just prog, and it was one of the reasons rock seemed to run dry by the late 70's. The exploratory spirit of the early psych, space, garage, prog, and protometal bands was strangled by the demands of the radio mafia. This is why punk, and more importantly heavy metal had to happen.

I these days, vintage sounding 70's prog rock is being made by bands like Astra, Diagonal, Litmus and Zombi to name a few. Most of them have latched on to the stylistic signifiers of their fore bearers while adding some much-needed muscle. This generation has grown up with hard rock as a part of its basic diet, unlike many early 70's musicians who came at things from a folk, blues, jazz, classical, experimental or psychedelic background. Heavy riff passages are alternated judiciously with spacey drones, off-time jamming and phasered up guitar solos. Its heartwarmingly authentic, but these bands are synthesizing the best of their influences into a sound that is powerful and exciting again. Prog rock may not really be progressive anymore, but that doesn't mean there isn't anything worthwhile to be gained from continuing to mine the style. Even more established acts like Black Mountain have allowed this style to influence their work. It seems that bulking up has done wonders for the musicians in these bands.

Commerce

Everyone who liked indie rock in high school grew up and got a job at a marketing firm.

Rekindle

Turns out university is actually a lot of work. But here's a little something for you: Julian Cope's Japrock sampler top 50. Read his book Japrocksampler and have your mind blown.

Thanks to J.P. for finding this.

Continuity

So I am back from my trip, good times were to be had. However, I've decided to focus my energies into something that is longer than the blog format will allow. I'm writing a retrospective of the decade in rock music. Also, school is starting once again, and I'm currently obsessed with playing the World War II campaign in Civilization II. Operation Sea Lion was a success! Anyways I'll probably post it on here when its done, but the more I do, the more I find that needs coverage. Anyways, I'll probably be updating about as often as I usually do, which is to say, not very.

Here's a few capsule reviews for ya...

Jesu - Jesu (2006)
Justin Broadrick's opus. The man has spent the better part of three decades redefining metal, as a member of Napalm Death, Godflesh and other shorter-lived projects, but this is my favourite record of his. All votes for Scum will be counted though. This record is absolutely colossal. Each titanic track marches at a snail's pace, like fog rolling inexorably across the horizon. Broadrick uses dense waves of distortion and syrupy atmospherics to craft music that is titanically heavy yet soothes the listener like a warm blanket. It's easy to get lost in the haze, but it's not really difficult listening. A bliss-out metal record.

Candlemass - Nightfall (1987)
I've always been a huge fan of Candlemass's debut, Epicus Doomicus Metallicus, but had never really spent much time with the later records featuring Messiah Marcolin on vocals until recently. While Nightfall does not top Epicus in terms of doomy ambience or quality material, fans of Marcolin's more operatic vocals may prefer this release, which combines the darkness and gloom of prime Sabbath with the grandeur of classic heavy metal. Bassist and main songwriter Leif Edling possesses an astounding supply of awesome riffs, and the advanced guitar heroics of Lars Johansson conjure majestic cathedral spires.

sHEAVY - Celestial Hi-Fi (2000)
These Canadians do a cool heavy rock thing better than most of their stoner-rock contemporaries. Singer Steve Hennessy is an absolute dead ringer for Ozzy, so the Sabbath comparison get's tossed around a lot, but this record is spacier than the masters themselves ever got. sHEAVY can write a song, so the best tracks allow the band to rise above mimicry, but we're never too far off from Sabbath Bloody Sabbath territory. If that's not a problem for you, then this is a fine hard rock album. When the band stretches out, as on album-closer "Tales From The Afterburner" their ensemble playing really shines. Most of the songs here are in the 5 to 6 minute range, so there is plenty of space for the songs to roam without ever losing the listener's attention. Other standout tracks are "What's Up Mr. Zero?" and a re-recorded version of "At The Mountains Of Madness" which was previously released on their 1996 album Blue Sky Mind.

Sabbatical

I'm fed up with working for the man, so I'm going to go explore the British Columbian wilderness for about 3 weeks. See you guys when I get back. I'll definitely have lots to discuss when I get back, because I'm pretty much going to be tuned in to some heavy frequencies the whole time. In the meantime, enjoy a completely unrelated video of wintertime driving to accompany Sun Araw's excellent "Heavy Deeds." Hell, I didn't even watch it, just dig the groove, maaaaaaan. Turn it up and let it wash over you while you do something else. Droney Psych -- it's the new sound.

Saint Vitus - Born Too Late

Band: Saint Vitus
Album: Born Too Late
Label: SST
Year: 1986
Rating: 93%

Saint Vitus may have been the most important rock band in the world in 1986. Although their commercial prospects at the time were negligible, their moment, while it lasted, (About 1986 to 1990) had as lasting an influence and was as brilliantly powerful in its own way as any rock band's ever. Lasting from the amicable departure of original vocalist Scott Reagers (the band continued to use some of his lyrics on Born Too Late) until the more acrimonious defection of his replacement, Scott "Wino" Weinrich, Saint Vitus's classic lineup produced 3 albums, an EP and a live album. While the Replacements and Hüsker Dü charted the shark-infested waters of major label politics, Sonic Youth was busily marrying its avant garde noisescapes to the traditional rock song format and Metallica and its cronies were barreling ahead towards world domination, Saint Vitus presaged the aesthetic and ideological return of the riff to the rock form. No-wave's noise exploration and thrash metal's relentless grooves and rabid shredding may have been the most notable contributions of those bands and their respective associates to guitar music, but with the benefit of hindsight it is clear that neither of these stylistic innovations had nearly the same bearing on rock music as a whole that the return of the riff would. (As for the world of metal, which would continue to develop as a form of music distinct from rock, the re-emergence of the riff would have to wait until extreme metal bands in the early 90's had exhausted what interest there was in pushing the thresholds of speed and brutality.) Although collegiate critical darlings like the Pixies and Dinosaur Jr. would later receive much of the credit for the loud-quiet-loud dynamic that would come to swallow the rock song format whole in the coming decade, it was Vitus who most clearly predicted, by exaggerating and emphasizing the riff as an end unto itself, the shape that loudness would take. And nobody ever listened to rock because of the quiet parts.

Every alternative, grunge, hard rock and nu metal band of the 90's would come to embrace both the loud-quiet-loud songwriting philosophy as well as the focus on riff construction that Vitus had rescued. To be sure, Vitus's dirges have their antecedents, the most obvious being early Black Sabbath and other `70s proto-doom hard rock bands like Pentagram, Necromandus, Lucifer's Friend, Warhorse and Jerusalem. There were also like-minded revivalists during the 80's. Witchfinder General made overtly doomy records heavily indebted to this era a decade later during the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, and Chicago's Trouble and Sweden's Candlemass were contemporaries of Vitus who, though distinctly more metallic in their embrace of neo-classical composition and histrionic vocals, were just as heavily indebted to the grooves of Master Of Reality. Even Wino's own trio The Obsessed had been hinting at a similar sound before he disbanded the group to join Vitus. Meanwhile, members of the punk/hardecore axis were slowing down their hectic tempos and letting their music breathe. Black Flag, Flipper, Across The River, The Melvins and Soundgarden are all notable in this regard. What made Vitus unique is that they were the first band to move beyond the realm of Sabbath copycats and create something wholly new. Most importantly, they played slower, and more heavily, than any band before them.

Originally flung upon unfriendly punk audiences while opening for Black Flag in the early 80's, Saint Vitus were as punk rock in attitude as a band could be. (It should be noted that these same audiences were just as hostile to Black Flag's sludgy makeover on their My War album as well.) Authentic throwbacks to an era that for most punks was a happily forgotten childhood memory, Saint Vitus were as uncool a group of guys as could be in the punker-than-thou American underground of the mid-`80s. Thier long, greasy biker hair and demim jackets drew the scorn of the nose ring and shaved head set, to say nothing of the teased hair and makeup of MTV hair metal. The truth is, they never had a chance.


Born Too Late is the purest distillation of the Vitus aesthetic. The band's attitude can best be summed up by the album's opener, the 7-minute title track. To this day, nothing matches its defiant power as a doom anthem. It is an avalanche of sound, suffocating the listener at a glacial pace. Throughout, crushing, insurmountable walls of heavily distorted guitar are tuned so low that they are subsumed into Mark Adams' bass frequencies. The song never speeds up, not even a little. Instead, it agonizingly crawls along in slow motion as Wino intones his tales of isolation with a knowing bellow that is instantly recognizable and impossible to replace.

Every time I'm on the street,
people laugh and point at me.
They talk about my length of hair,
and the out of date clothes I wear.

They say I look like the living dead,
they say I can't have much in my head.
They say my songs are much too slow,
but they don't know the things I know!

I know I don't belong,
and there's nothing that I can do.
I was born, too late,
and I'll never be like you....

Then, the band unleashes its secret weapon; lead guitarist Dave Chandler takes off on a long, highly melodic solo extrapolated from somewhere between Ron Asheton's primitive wah-fuzz freakouts and Tonny Iommi's slightly more nuanced appropriation of heavily overdriven and detuned Hendix licks. Though not particularly advanced as a technical player, Chandler possesses an extraordinarily musical sense of melody and counterpoint. As the principle songwriter of Saint Vitus, Chandler never forgot to keep his playing a component of the overall band voice, only playing the notes that needed to be played, and squeezing the maximum amount of emotional resonance out of them. His tone and sustain are masterful throughout, and frequently his playing dissolves into howling noise and feedback only to rise once again like a phoenix from the ashes with a beautiful melody line emerging from the sonic destruction surrounding it. After the final verse, Chandler again takes off on a solo, only this time it sounds like he's actually attacking his amplifiers, so jarring and physical is the effect he gets out of his battered SG.

If the rest of the album was only mediocre but for the title track, Born Too Late would still be an important record. Thankfully it is not. Although none of the other songs quite reach that level, there are gems throughout. "Clear Windowpane" ups the tempo a little and provides the band with one of their most hummable numbers and was also a frequent live favourite. Elsewhere the album is much more ominious. "Dying Inside" moves like a funeral march as Wino revels in the misery of the bottle, while "The War Starter" sports visions of global holocaust. "The Lost Feeling" alternates a groovy bassline with palls of overdriven guitar and spinechilling tales of addiction and depression straight out of Sabbath's "Hand of Doom." However, unlike Sabbath and other more indulgent hard rock bands, the ensemble playing here does not make room for any but the most minimal embellishments on the part of the players. Mark Adams keeps his playing steady and streamlined throughout while Armando Acosta's timekeeping and fills are precise and powerful. One may be tempted to dismiss the musicianship as amateurish, but to these ears it sounds highly disciplined, every player filling his role in service of the band.

Saint Vitus at their best typify the band ideal. In any rock band, the more the players' egos are subsumed into the overall voice of the band, the heavier that band may become. Saint Vitus were the heaviest band in the world for a time, and through them a direct line can be drawn through The Melvins, Cathedral, Sleep, Earth, Boris, Burning Witch, Khanate, Sunn O))) and any other purveyors of monolithic sonic destruction that have come since. Their next two albums, 1988's Mournful Cries and 1990's V continued to explore this dynamic and are almost as impressive demonstrations of power and craft, although they lack the overall level of quality songwriting and the original creative spark that made Born Too Late a truly classic album. This belongs in the collection of any music fan who has even a vague interest in heavy music.

*Note* The SST CD reissue that I own came with the 3-song 1987 Thirsty & Miserable EP also on the CD as bonus tracks. The songs here are equally as impressive as anything on Born Too Late, though maybe somewhat more sprightly in tone, and the quarter-time Black Flag cover alone is worth the price of the admission.