Media Meditation #8: What The Fuck

Demilich
Nespithe (1993)

Tracklist:
1. When The Sun Drank The Weight Of Water (3:43)
2. The Sixteenth Six-Tooth Son of Fourteen Four-Regional Dimensions (Still Unnamed) (3:30)
3. Inherited Bowel Levitation - Reduced Without Any Effort (3:23)
4. The Echo (Replacement) (4:27)
5. The Putrefying Road in the Nineteenth Extremity (...Somewhere Inside the Bowels of Endlessness...) (2:40)
6. (Within) The Chamber of Whispering Eyes (4:13)
7. And You’ll Remain… (In Pieces In Nothingness) (3:12)
8. Erecshyrinol (3:17)
9. The Planet That Once Used to Absorb Flesh in Order to Achieve Divinity and Immortality (Suffocated to the Flesh That It Desired...) (3:18)
10. The Cry (3:43)
11. Raped Embalmed Beauty Sleep (3:43)
Free legal download here.

The title here says it all. When I first found this band, downloaded their album, and listened to it, those were my first words. Well, probably after “Guys, I found this band called Demilich, and”. Their debut and only album, Nespithe, released in 1993, is one of the strangest things I’ve ever heard. Not strange in the sense that they use a lot of weird instruments, or that they have awkward and confusing lyrics (they do, but I didn’t know at the time). Instead, strange in the sense of melody, song structure, and vocals.

The first thing most people are going to hear is their vocals, which can best be described as a frog throwing up and getting run over by a dump truck. In slow motion. Somehow, they did these without any digital effects. Yes, their vocalist actually sounds like that, and can still reproduce it live, as proven in their short 2005-2006 reunion tour before they disbanded once again. Second, if you can get past the low belched vocals, you’ll notice the guitars. This is sort of like discovering that beneath that dead frog is a nest of maggots. The guitars has a thick, low, almost slimy tone, and shiver and weave through the riffs like worms. The frequent leads have a similar tendency, and float over the riffs with a similar, weird melodic sensibility. The drums are pretty standard for death metal, though they do throw in some interesting lines here and there. Syncopation in both the drums and the guitars is frequent, and strange time signatures are thrown around like they’re going out of style. The production is thick and raw, and makes it difficult to tell what is happening if you don’t have a developed ear. The bass, as in most poorly produced metal, is sadly inaudible.

The lyrics, though nearly indecipherable in the music, can be found online easily. Like the music, they are dark, twisted, and cryptic. For example, "The Putrefying Road in the Nineteenth Extremity (...Somewhere Inside the Bowels of Endlessness...)"’s lyrics are simply three verses:

After too many dimensions
arriving to the last one
A road covered with the dying
Shadows masticating them

Walking ahead
Torture spreading on the way
Dismembered human beings
Flying souls fading away

You find no escape
Walking just around and around
Flying shadows slaying and torturing
Will they also rip your soul away...?

The other songs have similar odd lyrics. Many of them read like a short story, split up into lines of poetry. The concepts illustrated in them are cryptic, to say the least. "When The Sun Drank The Weight Of Water" is about a “War of elements/Water against the Sun” in which the sun burns all the water off the earth. "(Within) The Chamber of Whispering Eyes" is about the eponymous chamber and the whispering eyes that tell you to eat yourself and “Show your allegiance. Munch yourself, be our servant forever.” The lyrics easily match the music.

And because of all of this, I love the album. It is one of the most unique albums you’ll ever hear, and so far I’ve found nothing else like it. It is most certainly not for everyone, and I’m sure many people will hate it, perhaps even just because it’s death metal. However, Nespithe is, at least for me, a landmark in both death metal and weird, off-kilter music.

Media Meditation #7: Time For a Hike

Buckethead
Inbred Mountain (2005)

Tracklist:
1. In Search Of Inbred Mountain (3:26)
2. Johnny Be Slunk (8:43)
3. Lotus Island (6:34)
4. Flock Of Slunks (4:30)
5. Advance To The Summit (6:03)
6. Plastination Station (5:47)
7. Escape From Inbred Mountain (8:21)

In case you’ve never heard of Buckethead, I’ll fill you in: He’s a solo guitarist who has been producing an ungodly amount of material since his debut album Bucketheadland in 1992. Since then he’s released twenty-seven more solo albums, two DVDs, three videos, two demos, a trio of music videos, three more special release albums of old, unreleased material at the time, a thirteen-disc improvised album collection, and sixty one albums with other artists in an important role. He’s also guest starred on too many albums to count. He’s an incredibly prolific musician, and while he is most widely known for his guitar playing, even coming in at number eight in GuitarOne magazine’s “Top 20 Best Shredders of All Time” list, he plays a multitude of other instruments including drums, bass, banjo, and more. And this is just the facts.

Inbred Mountain is his sixteenth solo album, released in 2005 as his second album only sold on tour. It has since been sold at the label TDRS Music, along with the rest of his tour only CDs, each appearing a few months after it becomes available on tour. In my opinion, it is also one of his finest CDs to date. It covers all the styles and techniques that Buckethead has become notable for, such as intense shredding, experimental song structures and instruments (particularly on the eight-and-three-quarters-minute musical exploration "Johnny Be Slunk"), and powerful, emotional solos on "Lotus Island" and "Plastination Station". These last two songs stand out from the rest as fantastic, focused instrumental rock tracks, whereas the other five tracks can at times be too experimental or meandering to handle. Despite this, overall I think it is one of his strongest albums. Some of his albums can become too much like collections of riffs rather than songs, but even the twisting passages of "Johnny Be Slunk" still feel like a single song. When I listen to it I even feel as if Inbred Mountain is a concept album, though there are no lyrics or information to suggest that this is true. There is an epic scope in the three Inbred Mountain songs that links them in the way the titles suggest, with each being a portion of a story involving a hypothetical Inbred Mountain. The interesting album art and Buckethead’s penchant for odd melodies and overdubbed contrasting guitar lines all add to the creepy, rural feel.

Listeners can be very split on Buckethead’s music; some think his music contains too much shredding or is otherwise uninteresting, which I find surprising considering that little of his music nowadays contains a prominent amount of shredding, and others dislike it because it is too experimental and difficult to listen to. While I can sympathize with both of these arguments, I find Inbred Mountain to be a great piece of music in it’s own right.

Media Meditation #6: Head in the Clouds

Cloudkicker
The Discovery (2008)

Tracklist:
1. Genesis Device (2:10)
2. Dysphoria (4:45)
3. Avalanche (5:15)
4. Everything’s Mirrors (2:02)
5. Viceroy (4:44)
6. segue: (3:00)
7. The Discovery (8:17)
8. Covington (2:31)
9. Triumverate! (1:04)
10. States (6:08)
Free legal download here.

Let me get this out of the way. Go to that link and download this album. Go ahead and download the other two EPs on that site as well; they are just as good as The Discovery, and more so even at points. They are all free, and you can get them both in MP3 format and the lossless audio format FLAC. Cloudkicker is the work of one guy who makes all his music free, as he owns his own recording equipment. It’s free for him to make it, so it should be free for you to listen to it. I cannot possibly recommend downloading this enough.

But enough of that, down to the actual music. Cloudkicker is instrumental metal with a strong progressive and atmospheric tinge to it. Or rather, it is atmosphere with a strong metal feel to it. The songs are mostly average length, with the exception of the eight minute title track, but they carry you places. It is all built with a huge wall of sound in mind, and produced perfectly. There are so many layers to the music that you could listen to each song ten times without noticing everything. The progressive side of the music is also very clear in the complex rhythms in songs like “Dysphoria,” which opens with a guitar riff in 15/4. The guitar usually plays rhythmic riffs, usually in strange, syncopated rhythms doubled by the bass drum. The keyboards are everywhere, and inundate the music with huge, swelling chords and tiny, flitting melodies like fireflies swarming around the music’s lantern. The music’s force lifts you up and washes you away, like a tidal wave. The entire album flows from song to song perfectly, and if you aren’t paying attention it can seem like it is all one song. This is not to say that the album is extremely similar. There are quiet, spacey intervals such as “Everything’s Mirrors” and “segue:”, as well as huge, hard-hitting songs like “Dysphoria” and “Viceroy“. The riffs are very interesting and certainly not like anything I’ve ever heard before, and between that and the immense wall of noise, Cloudkicker has a very strong and original style.

B.M. Sharp, the mastermind behind Cloudkicker, has a bit of solo work that predates Cloudkicker, released under his own name. It’s all for free download, like Cloudkicker, here. It has a more post rockfish feel to it, lacking most of the heaviness of Cloudkicker and being in general more laid back and quiet, content to take an idea and develop it slowly through the song. While in my opinion weaker than his work in Cloudkicker, his previous work is solid and worth a listen if you enjoyed Cloudkicker. A friend of mine has a thorough review of B.M. Sharp’s earlier work, as well as Cloudkicker’s two EPs that I haven’t mentioned in specifics here. All in all, Cloudkicker is truly great music, and with a price like nothing it’s a crime not to get it.

Media Meditation #5: Scariest Album Ever

Lustmord
Heresy (1990)

Tracklist:
1. Heresy, Part 1 (7:26)
2. Heresy, Part 2 (10:16)
3. Heresy, Part 3 (16:04)
4. Heresy, Part 4 (6:35)
5. Heresy, Part 5 (7:47)
6. Heresy, Part 6 (14:42)

Now, Lustmord is an entirely different beast than the music I’ve looked at so far on this blog. He doesn’t play any sort of rock music, not even rock thinly disguised as techno. Rather, Lustmord, whose stage name is a Swedish term for “Lust Murder“, is a composer of dark ambient music. In fact, he is frequently credited as the founder of the dark ambient movement, and his first recordings date back to 1980. His recent forays have included collaborations with minimalist composer Robert Rich and sludge group The Melvins, as well as a pair of remixed Tool songs, which were released on their DVD in 2005. His latest album, [ O T H E R ], had guest appearances by the guitarist of The Melvins and Tool, as well as the guitarist of post-metal band Isis. His 1990 album Heresy is considered a landmark in the genre of dark ambient, and indeed it is dark as pitch and it will scare your socks off.

Lustmord’s music is characterized by his use of field recordings from underground locations such as caves and crypts, as well as slaughterhouses and more. He has also included ritualistic incantations and samples of screams and moans, as well as the use of Tibetan horns. These sounds all wander through a landscape of deep drones and spacey, minimalist synth sounds. Lustmord’s music sounds huge and empty, similar to how the cold blackness of space would sound if it were burned into an mp3 file. Very few of his songs maintain a constant melody or motif, choosing to instead slowly form and recede like objects in the darkness. The tremendous, dismal drones sway to and fro, like planets weaving through space or boulders slowly descending into the depths of the ocean.

Heresy is the epitome of this sound. While many of his other albums are fantastic in their own right, Heresy is head and shoulders above them in a black depth all it’s own. While some of his recordings can become too empty, or too full, Heresy straddles the line with just enough happening at any one point to maintain interest and atmosphere without damaging either. Fancy literary imagery can only go so far; if you’re in the right mood, get this album, get some good headphones, and turn off the light. Heresy might not be packed with screams and gore like horror movies today, but in terms of real scariness it blows them out of the water.

Media Meditation #4: Musical Nostalgia

IAYD
Supergalactic (2009)

Tracklist:
1. Subatomic (1:08)
2. Between Multiverses (2:53)
3. Physics (4:20)
4. Tycho Brahe (4:44)
5. Redshift (4:47)
6. Super galactic (4:42)
Full legal download available here.

IAYD, also known as I Am Your Destruction, is a one-man 8-bit music project. If you’re wondering what 8-bit music is, then let me direct you to the 8 Bit Peoples, an internet label of sorts that specializes in 8-bit music. But what is 8-bit music? It’s the colloquial term for music created with old gaming systems such as the Nintendo Game Boy. The 8 Bit Peoples even contains an R&D division that works on creating more hardware and software in order to make the creation of this music easier. They’ve been in operation since 1999, and the majority of their vast catalogue is for free download on their website. I can’t say that I’ve listened to it all, or even a statistically significant fraction, but if you have the time to browse their site and download a few albums, you might find something you like. Such was the story for me and IAYD’s Supergalactic.

Supergalactic is, from the 8 Bit People’s album notes, “an invitation to get punched in the face by light-speed melodies and sound barrier-breaching beats.” This is an entirely accurate review of this album, and much more concise and direct than the one you are reading right now. Nevertheless, I will go on because this is the internet and if you didn’t want to read my ramblings then you wouldn’t be here now, would you? While Supergalactic is a very upbeat and danceable album, there is a surprising amount of variation. Each song sounds dramatically different, and though I am no connoisseur of techno music, there are many very interesting sound effects all over the place. From a musical standpoint Supergalactic contains some very unique melodies, and though the rhythm section is what you’d expect, it sounds more like what you’d expect from a rock drummer than from a dance techno artist. It may be my nostalgia for 8-bit music, born from hours and hours of Game Boy play, but I find the music to be very evocative as well, painting visions of space like those on the album cover. From a live standpoint, it’s clear that IAYD makes music to dance to. Or at least, music to party like hell to. You be the judge.



Look at him go! I find it difficult to listen to this music without feeling happy and upbeat, and if the goal of music is to engender emotions in the listener, then Supergalactic is definitely fine music.

IAYD’s second EP, Dirty Electricity, is available on his LastFM page, also for free download.

Media Meditation #3: Technically Crazy

Blotted Science
The Machinations of Dementia (2007)

1. Synaptic Plasticity (5:57)
2. Laser Lobotomy (5:21)
3. Brain Fingerprinting (3:34)
4. Oscillation Cycles (1:38)
5. Activation Synthesis Theory (8:10)
6. R.E.M. (1:12)
7. Night Terror (4:51)
8. Bleeding in the Brain (4:57)
9. Vegetation (1:29)
10. Narcolepsy (2:53)
11. E.E.G. Tracings (4:04)
12. Sleep Deprivation (0:37)
13. The Insomniac (3:56)
14. Amnesia (2:24)
15. Adenosine Breakdown (3:10)
16. Adenosine Buildup (3:10)

The first thing you may notice about The Machinations of Dementia, if not the odd album title, is the song titles. "Laser Lobotomy"? "Bleeding in the Brain"? "Adenosine Buildup" and "Breakdown"? Not exactly standard song subjects, but Blotted Science is not exactly a standard band. Sort of a clichéd statement, but it's true. The band consists of the instrumental trio of Ron Jarzombek on guitars, Alex Webster on bass, and Charlie Zeleny on drums. Together, they’ve created an album only possible in the digital age: throughout the entire writing and recording of The Machinations of Dementia, none of them were ever in the same room together. It was done entirely online, by recording individual lines and passing them between each other, rewriting, recording, and sending them back. Jarzombek did all the production and mixing for the album as well, and it was released on his own label EclecticElectric. The first time they all met was after the entire album was completed and on the shelves, for a short tour of live shows. Here’s a quick video of one of their rehearsals.



The technical prowess of the members should go without saying. Jarzombek has been playing weird progressive metal in his solo band Spastic Ink for more than eleven years, while Webster was a founding member of death metal band Cannibal Corpse. Zeleny plays drums for Behold… The Arctopus. If the name doesn’t ring a bell, which it very well may not, then a quick youtube search will find gems like this, with as off-the-wall drumming as in Blotted Science. With all this technical ability the band could easily fall into the trap of constant baddabadda drum blasts and doodlydoodly guitar lines, but thanks to the songwriting ability of Jarzombek and Webster, they avoid this pitfall (most of the time).

Despite being an instrumental band, the conceptual side of their music, namely the various brain disorders listed as song titles, shows right through. The frantic, dissonant guitar runs on songs like “Synaptic Plasticity” and the low chugging riffs throughout make the music very intense, and the deep low tuned guitar (a seventh string tuned down to A standard, for anyone interested) adds a crushing heaviness to the music. Other songs like "R.E.M." and "The Insomniac" have a spacey clean guitar, which creates a dreamy atmosphere which goes perfectly with the sleep-oriented song titles. The low, jangly bass tone rumbles audibly in the background, and though it isn’t as far in front as the guitar, it has a few times to really shine. The drumming is extremely diverse, and goes between high-speed death metal blast beats and jazzy fusion rhythms at the drop of a hat, usually several times in the same song.

The musical complexity of the album is difficult to properly explain without devoting a lot of time and space to it, and for some it can detract from the enjoyment of listening to the music. Even though there’s a million things happening at once in this album, the production is nice enough that isolating a single thing isn’t too difficult. I highly recommend this album to anyone with an interest in technical or progressive music, and with enough patience to listen to it a few times. Trying to take it all in at one time is simply madness.

Media Meditation #2: A Splendid Time Indeed

Disillusion
Back to Times of Splendor (2004)

Tracklist:
1. …And The Mirror Cracked (8:28)
2. Fall (4:54)
3. Alone I Stand In Fires (6:53)
4. Back To Times Of Splendor (14:39)
5. A Day By The Lake (4:54)
6. The Sleep Of Restless Hours (17:03)

The best thing to compare Back to Times of Splendor to is Lord of the Rings. Lyrically the album is straight high fantasy, with a healthy dosage of cheesiness. That isn’t the real reason it is similar to LotR, however. The epic scope, the interlocking of so many pieces, all of this is found in both the books and in Disillusion’s debut album.

The album, though a mere six songs, is nearly an hour in length, and if it weren‘t for the interesting arrangements and structures it would be a chore to sit through. Isolating a single best thing about it is a chore, because all of it is on such a high level. The two guitarists frequently play different riffs layered over one another, with one playing a rhythm line and the other playing a melodic lead or a harmonization of the original riff. The guitar riffs are unusual in that many of them stretch on for several bars, only resolving and repeating at the end of the entire phrase. Usually, riffs will repeat two or four times within a single phrase. The bass is almost inaudible, however, and follows the guitars exclusively. The drums are fantastic here, and accent the music well without becoming too excessive. The beats are mostly standard, though a bit souped up with faster bass drum or snare work, aside from some nice work here and there. Melodically, the album stays almost exclusively in a safe minor key. This isn’t to say that the melodies are simple, however. The two guitars, keyboards, and intermittent piano all make counterpoint a very strong portion of their sound, particularly in the dueling guitar riffs. The arrangements and melodies also have a classical feel about them, particularly in the complex passages when all four of these melodic voices play at once.

Back to Times of Splendor is such a complex piece of music that it almost comes as a surprise that one man did so much of it. Andy Schmidt, who uses the stage name Vurtox, is the primary songwriter and only lyric writer of Disillusion, and plays guitar, acoustic guitar, vocals, and keyboards on this album, as well as programming the symphonic elements. He is a very accomplished vocalist, and though he doesn’t have a very wide range he uses a lot of different deliveries. In addition to all the musical strength he contributed to the album, he produced it himself. It’s a fantastic production job, which keeps the guitars heavy and powerful as well as all the other instruments audible (besides the bass). Since Back to Times of Splendor Disillusion has grown to a four piece, adding Matthias Becker on bass duties. Before that, many other musicians have been hired for Disillusion’s live tours.

Disillusion’s debut album is a mighty one indeed, rich in melody and energy. Their sound has since changed dramatically, and their second album Gloria in 2006 sounds completely different to the degree that it seems like a different band, but with the same vocalist. Still, Back to Times of Splendor is a fantastic album, certainly worth a listen by anyone with a taste for heavier music.

Media Meditation #1: Birth of the Earth

The Ocean
Precambrian (2007)

Disc One:
1. Hadean (3:48)
2. Eoarchean (4:46)
3. Paleoarchean (2:46)
4. Mesoarchean (5:20)
5. Noachian (5:24)

Disc Two:
1. Siderian (1:57)
2. Rhyacian (10:57)
3. Orosirian (6:29)
4. Statherian (5:58)
5. Calymmian (8:19)
6. Ectasian (8:58)
7. Stenian (8:20)
8. Tonian (7:18)
9. Cryogenian (3:32)

Precambrian is sludge metal band The Ocean’s third full length album, released in 2007 as a double disc set. Between the smaller first disc and the second, it clocks in at an hour and twenty three minutes, and is a concept album about the earth’s Precambrian era. This is clear enough from the song titles, which are all stages in that period. A lofty goal, to say the least, but the music certainly delivers.

The first disc is a short, frenzied affair in the loud and rhythmic vein of Meshuggah or Gojira. The dense mix makes it difficult to hear anything beyond the vocals, drums, and guitar, but all of these are crystal clear. The keyboards and a few sparse lead guitar lines are usually buried, but help create a wall of sound. These first five songs are much more direct than the rest of the album, and eschew most of the additional musicians that appear in the second disc. Despite this, there are eleven musicians credited on it! Six of them only provide vocals for a few tracks, which seems like it would make the vocals extremely diverse if most of them didn’t resort to a similar shouting or screaming. All in all, this first chunk is pretty solid.

Immediately upon starting the second disc, it’s clear that the next hour is going to be very different. "Siderian" is a quick instrumental that sets the mood with a slow clean guitar riff and some tribal drumming, with a saxophone solo in the background. Most of the songs on the second disc start in this fashion, either with clean guitar or piano. The keyboards and samples are more apparent in most of the songs, and take center stage in some tracks, like the opening of Stenian. A number of other musicians are featured playing unusual instruments (at least for metal), like the violin or glockenspiel. The piano in particular shows up in five tracks very prominently, and a viola appears in every track besides the first. Once again there are a number of guest vocalists, only this time there is much more variety in their delivery. The music is, astonishingly, all written by the musician Robin Staps, apart from some of the lyrics here and there which are sections of poetry or prose from other authors. Included on the first disc are poems from Charles Baudelaire, Comte de Lautremont, and on the second disc there’s sections from the writing of Friedrich Nietzsche, a poem by Georg Trakl, and samples of Kevin Spacey from his role in The Life of David Gale.

The second disc is far stronger than the first, and truly sends you on a journey. The music develops beautifully through each of the long songs, and through the album as a whole. "Rhyacian", for example, begins with the clean guitar riff from the intro track, and soon adds in contrasting clean and shouted vocals. The music builds up, adding a piano, glockenspiel, and additional guitar lines, before cresting briefly at two minutes and then returning to the busy counterpoint between instruments. Violin, viola, and cello all make an appearance as well, adding to the shifting textures of the song. Halfway through, a short guitar solo brings the song to a climax, exploding in a wall of thick, heavy riffing and crashing drums. Just as quickly as it begins, it drops down to just drums and a synth effect that sounds identical to a Theremin. Shouted vocals contrast against the quiet background, and just before the end of the song it reaches a second climax, with a reprise of the pummeling passage from the middle. The very end of the song breaks from the all the business of the previous ten minutes with a few simple low piano chords, and a Theremin-sounding melody. The variety and complexity here is matched in each of the following songs, and the atmosphere it generates is tremendous and mournful. It feels like the history of the earth, mirrored by the history of mankind. The philosophical lyrics seem to support this, if only as a metaphor. The lyrics themselves are dense with melancholy and sadness, which goes well with the music. This is not an uplifting album by any means, but it is not one I’d ever miss.