Philthy Rich's "Feel'n like Pac" (featuring E-40 & 2pac)
by The Wizard on Aug.25, 2010, under Music, Music Videos
With each passing day, Deegan becomes more and more entrenched in the East Bay Hip-hop community and I love it. Regular readers and friends will immediately recognize Deegan in this video, but for those of you that don't fall into those categories, you have two options.
1) Click on the "Deegan" tag at the bottom of the post and find the recurring dude in all the posts.
Or...
2) Look for the only white dude in the video.
Also, wow, this whole "shot on a 5d2/7d" look sure has become easily recognizable. Not that it's bad, but definitely recognizable immediately.
Anyway, neat, if simple, video for a song I really feel nothing about. I'm just waiting for Deegs to show up in a metal video. That would be amazing.
Los Rakas' "Abrazame"
by The Wizard on Aug.18, 2010, under Music, Music Videos
My friend Deegan for being such a die-hard metal dude, sure does mix a lot of non-metal stuff. Like this for example. What would you call this? I don't even know. I also can't tell if these guys are good at what they are doing. It's just so far out of my realm of understanding that analysis is impossible. It's like asking a person who's been blind his whole life to describe the difference between red and magenta. Impossible.
Anyway, check this video out. Maybe you'll have more luck than I have, but maybe not. Regardless, support my homie and listen to his hard work. And then pay him to do some mixing for you. His son needs to eat.
HI DEEGAN!
The Freshmen's "Hello There"
by The Wizard on Jul.03, 2010, under Music, Music Videos
Not my style exactly, but mixed by my dear friend Deegan, so check this shit HARD with the hurry-upness.
My friend Deegan playing his role as "The White Guy in the Corner Mixing With Gloves On."
by The Wizard on Apr.01, 2010, under About Music, Music, Thoughts
Breaking from the wilds of the East Bay, CA, here's a video from BigVon.com featuring E-40 talking a little bit about the production of his new double record and sipping from a keg cup.
More important that a Bay Area hip-hop legend's musings on the dopeness of getting Björk sample cleared is that my old, old buddy Deegan is at the helm of the mix, taking care of a room full of rappers, hangers-on, and other folks. Yup, that's Deegan in the gloves with the beard. Good job, Deegs!
Help my friend get his gold record and buy one of each of E-40's new records.
E-40 - Revenue Retrievin: Day Shift
E-40 - Revenue Retrievin: Night Shift
Do it! Help Deegan retrieve enough revenue to pay his son's bills. You know you want to. I just did.
Fuck you, Event Horizon.
by The Wizard on Feb.24, 2010, under About Filmmaking, Film
I first saw Event Horizon theatrically way back in the late 90s (remember those?). I was with some friends, probably Deegan, and I remember walking out after the film thinking that it was the biggest piece of shit I'd ever endured. But time eases such pains and since 1997 I've heard from someone whose opinion I trusted that it's actually an all right film. I thought that perhaps I'd judged the film too harshly. Perhaps I had missed the obvious brilliance within the film. Perhaps some of the subtext had flown right over my 15 year old head.
I threw the film onto my Netflix queue and it arrived yesterday in the mail. After doing the dishes while listening to Hall & Oates and making myself a sensible dinner, I sat down to give Event Horizon a second shot. I am nothing if not a giving man. I placed the blu-ray disc into the PS3 and waited for my mind to be blown.
Well, if you have taken anything from the title of this post, my mind was not blown. I mean, the movie blew, but my mind remained entirely unblown. Event Horizon has to be one of the most formulaic pieces of crap I've ever had the extreme misfortune of forcing upon myself. If you haven't seen the movie, let me ruin it for you.
It's the future! People live in space! A few years ago the government sent a super secret spaceship to the far reaches of outer space and it disappeared! Zip forward to now, which is still the future, and a small, rag tag group of ethnically-diverse soldiers are on a spaceship going to investigate a distress beacon on the far side of the solar system! A scientist rides along with them! Uh-oh! After they get out of hypersleep or whatever they call it, the scientist tells them, in a feat of unrivaled expository pseudo-science, that the distress beacon belongs to the Event Horizon! The ship was a super secret experiment in faster-than-light travel and on its first trip out, it disappeared! What happened to it?! The rescue crew boards the ship and all sorts of really spooky things start to happen! Hallucinations! The lights flash on and off! Bloooooooodddddd! Soon after boarding things start going to hell—literally! Turns out when the ship's experimental drive punctured the fabric of the universe it went to hell and came back alive and evil! Really! That's the actual plot point! The original crew is all dead! Scary! The scientist along for the ride who, coincidentally built the fancy engine thing, gets pulled into the evil will of the ship and then starts to sabotage their efforts to escape! Oooooh! Then the captain and the scientist have a stand off and the scientist gets sucked into space! But the ship brings him back to life! Convenient! Then they have another stand off and end up traveling through the darkness dimension but we never find out what happens to them! The end! It actually says "the end"!
I think I can sum up the whole film and my feelings about it with one photo and a related caption.
Oh no! Your eyes! What happened?! Oh, you saw Event Horizon? I understand.
Indulging in every stupid horror cliche, Event Horizon is so mired in banality that I couldn't even see through to the positives that it does have. It's a well designed film, to be sure, but that's not enough for me to get past just how fucking awful the script is. Every single word made me cringe. And I LOVE bad science fiction. It's great. But this is bad science fiction trying to be GOOD science fiction and GOOD horror and it just doesn't have the chops to do either. It just plain sucks. Every time there was a dramatic pause before one of the characters revealed something.... dramatic, I wanted to punch the TV in the face. I wanted to fly to England, grab Paul W. S. Anderson, and punch him in the face over and over and over. And then I want to punch him in the face for the Resident Evil films, for Mortal Kombat, and for the rest of his fucking trash body of work. It's like he's taking other, better films, distilling them to their common beats, making those beats dumber, and then making the movie over again ineptly. Just terrible.
Do yourself and favor and never see this movie. I'd ask for my two hours back, but I'd only waste them.
A letter to Sierra Nevada's Bigfoot Barleywine Style Ale.
by The Wizard on Feb.04, 2010, under Letters, Writing
Dear Sierra Nevada Bigfoot,
Why? I remember the first time I drank you. It was at Deegan's house in Portola Valley. His parents were gone and we were maybe Seniors in high school. We'd been drinking Red Tails and then he decided to bust you out. I took only a few sips before I called it quits and decided that it was no longer worth my time to force you down.
And then age happened. And I discovered what beer could be beyond the stale, miserable experiences I'd had as a youth. I learned there was more to the world that Coors Light and Hamm's Gold and Natty Ice. I learned that beer was an art, an experience to be had, not just the easiest way to get drunk without poisoning myself on hard liquor.
Oh, Sierra Nevada Bigfoot, you are one of my favorite seasonal brews. I thank God every day that I can find you on the East Coast. Sure, you're no Six Point Righteous Rye, but that doesn't mean you don't have a place in my heart. You do. I love you.
As I sit here tonight, on my second bottle, I am reminded that I've been given a gift. And that gift is strong beer. When everything around me is crumbling and horrible, I always know that somewhere, somehow, someone is making beer that will lift me out of the darkness and make everything all right.
So, Sierra Nevada Bigfoot Barleywine Style Ale, I salute you.
Sincerely,
The Black Laser.
Power Metal & Me, or, Why I Cannot Take Myself Too Seriously
by The Wizard on Jan.26, 2010, under About Music, Music
Over at Invisible Oranges today, Cosmo Lee is further exploring his distaste for power metal. Personally, I like power metal. It's cheesy and stupid and ridiculous, but it is also totally awesome. It's like you've got a bunch of dudes sitting around after an epic campaign of AD&D (2nd ruleset, duh) and they're all talking about how to make the most epic metal ever.
"Well guys, we probably need operatic vocals," says one.
"And probably powerful sweeping guitars," says another.
"And the guitars could have solo battles with the synthesizers," says a third.
"Yeah, that would be rad," says the first.
"And we probably need a constant barrage of double bass drums," says yet another.
"And our lyrics should be about elves and unicorns and dragons and shit."
And thus was Power Metal born into this world. If ever there was a metal genre filled with earnest as hell guys pursuing the impossible dream by making the silliest, unicorn-filled music ever, it is Power Metal.
Here is a selection of some of my favorites of the genre. Let's start with Rhapsody, perhaps THE awesome, MOST ridiculous Power Metal band of all time. Even better, they're Italian. This is "Power of the Dragonflame." Is that not an awesome song title?
Next is Demons & Wizards, probably my first intro to true modern Power Metal. My friend Deegan came over one day and was all, "Dude, do you have Napster?" and I was all, "Over dial up, yeah," and he was all, "Dude, find a song called 'Poor Man's Crusade' right now," and I was all, "Ok." Well, I did and it was AWESOME.
This song, "Fiddler on the Green," is from the same record. It is, I think my favorite song on the record and has a 3 and a half minute build to insanely powerful power metal magic.
Star One is a one-off side project by Anthony Arjen Lucassen of Ayreon. The record, called "Space Metal," is a Power Metal concept record based on Science Fiction movies.
Wait. Read that again.
A POWER METAL CONCEPT RECORD BASED ON SCIENCE FICTION MOVIES. What the fucking fuck? That is so awesome. Films include Stargate, Star Wars, and fucking Dune. Honestly, I can't think of anything that combines dork and awesome more perfectly.
Here's a fan-made video for "Eye of Ra" from that record.
Dream Evil, who I posted one below this one, is a Swedish Power Metal band I saw for the first time live playing with Carnal Forge, Testament, Immortal, and Rob Halford—a strange line up to be sure. But they totally rock. Here's "Fire, Battle, Metal!"
Hammerfall is another band doing epic heavy cheese as well as anyone and they totally rock. This is "Renegade."
With this light survey of Power Metal under our belts, what do we now understand. For me, Power Metal is awesome if you are able to relax and not take yourself too seriously. While I think that there are guys in this scene who live and breathe this shit, I also think there's a significant contingent of guys who are laughing right along with the fans. Sometimes you can make and enjoy things just because they're fun. That, more than unicorns and dragons and elves and trolls, is what Power Metal is about for me. I love Pig Destroyer, but my music doesn't always have to be so serious.
The Black Laser enters MEAT SPACE.
by The Wizard on Jan.20, 2010, under Thoughts
Dearest Deegan,
Thank you for the incredible birthday gift. I know that I actually received this a while ago, but I felt like today was a good day to post it. There's only one, and I've got it. Fuck yes.
To be perfectly honest, it took me a while to start wearing it out mostly because it feels like being in a band wearing its own t-shirt—a serious no-no in the metal community as we both know. But then I started to think of it as determined self-promotion and thought, "You know what? Fuck anyone who'd bust my balls for wearing this awesome shirt of my own equally awesome website." And there you have it. Interestingly enough, a post yesterday on Invisible Oranges called "The rules of metal t-shirt wearing" confirmed some of the things I've already been feeling.
But you still won't ever catch me wearing the band's shirt to the show.
Anyway! Thanks for the shirt, dude. It slays.
Sincerely,
The Black Laser.
Indubious Cosmic Seed
by The Wizard on Nov.04, 2009, under About Music, Music
I don't know who these guys are or what they're about except kicking out hot Reggae jams from their home planet of Oregon, but my wonderful, old friend Deegan produced and mixed this record for them. Check them out.
Aside from spending a few days three years in a row at Reggae on the River in youth, this is not exactly my scene or the type of music I prefer to blast when I need to work or write or relax or get pumped up. But, some people really like it and who am I to begrudge them that? Like what you like, I think, just don't ever make me listen to Dave Matthews Band or that one song by the Kings of Leon. Ugh.
Apparently these gentlemen also have some sort of deal Dutch Brothers, the drive through coffee chain in the Pacific Northwest. Isa hyped them up super hardcore when I was up there this summer, but I was sadly disappointed to discover that their coffee was extremely forgettable. At best. But it's cool that these guys have the hook up, low quality coffee or not; you've got to promote yourself however you can these days.
Go checkout their music and buy a cd or something. Awesome.
Thy Will Be Done's "Earth's Final Embrace"
by The Wizard on Jun.07, 2009, under Music, Music Videos
If this band had come along in, say, 1995, they probably would have been one of my favorite bands ever. Now, though, I am filled with swells of nostalgia. I mean, the mid-90s influence is obvious here. Through Silver and Blood t-shirt? Arise t-shirt? They might as well have put me in a time machine and taken me back to being a teenager. Let's just compare to one of my favorite bands of the era, Machine Head's "Blood for Blood".
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Do you hear it? Of course you do. This song makes me feel like I'm 14 again, hanging out with Deegan, trying to figure out the hell I'm going to get some beers, thinking about girls abstractly because I have absolutely no idea what to do with them or how to approach them, watching Friday for the 800th time, worrying that my sweatshirt still smells like pot, and avoiding my shitty high school homework. Any metalheads reading this will know EXACTLY what I'm talking about.
I have been on a metal buying spree as of late
by The Wizard on Jan.23, 2009, under About Music, Music
Between last Friday, the 16th, and Tuesday, the 20th, I purchased quite a few heavy metal records. 9 to be precise. I thought it might be nice to share a little break down of what I thought about these purchases.
Architect - Ghost of the Saltwater Machines
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The first Architect record, All Is Not Lost, came out of nowhere. It was a recommendation by my friend Deegan who is always a consistent source for bands I need to check out. That first record completely blindsided me with it's pure intensity. I was blown away. And then, while browsing the record store on Friday for some death metal (sometimes you just need it), I saw that Architect had a new one out. Done and done. I had to get it after how amazing their last effort was. I was not disappointed. In fact, I'd say of the whole haul, that this is far and away the best record I purchased. It's not as heavy as some of the others, but it is just too awesome for words. Any fan of extreme music owes it to themselves to go out and get this right now. You will not be disappointed.
Belphegor - Bondage Goat Zombie
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I encountered Belphegor on Blabbermouth a week or so ago. I had heard of the band before in metal magazines and the internets and wherever, and always thought "Belphegor" was a pretty sweet name, up there with Borknagar. I watched the video and thought it was a pretty decent mix of black and death metals, which I am down with. I'm certainly no purist when it comes to metal genre; it would only limit my intake. After getting the album, it's obvious that the members of Belphegor have a 6th grade metalhead's sense of humor, evilness, and sexiness. The album title is ridiculous, the song titles are ridiculous, and the liner notes are riddled with badly Photoshopped photos of evil sexy chicks with horns and bondage gear and shit. Lame. I mean, "Bondage Goat Zombie"? Seriously? Is this, like, some sort of concept album for 12 year old Norwegian retards with a leather fetish?
The irony of this is that the record itself, the music—the whole point—totally rocks. If you can get past the silliness of it, it's actually pretty good. Funny how that works.
Bloodbath - The Fathomless Mastery
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Sometimes the thing that will draw me to a band is its name (as we will see later), and Bloodbath is no exception to that. These guys are some sort of Swedish Superstar death metal band with members of Opeth, Katatonia, and some other bands filling their ranks. Their website states that the original intent of this band was "to thrash out some classic death metal in the style of early Entombed, mixed with some of the US Florida death metal scene bands."
Now, if I had read that description before buying their record, I probably would have gotten in ages ago. Entombed? Floridian death metal? Thrash? I love all those things. What's not to love? Does this record live up to that massive hype? Hell no. Does that mean it's bad? Of course not; in fact it's a quite adept death metal record, but it's nothing all that special. It's a good listen and if you're looking for something new, check it out, but be prepared not to be amazed. It definitely puts off that old school death metal vibe though. Listening to it as I write this, I get flashes of old Dismember, Deicide, Malevolent Creation, Gorguts, Suffocation, definitely Morbid Angel, with a slight twinge of a more modern, more Swedish sensibility. Even their band photo looks like something Deicide would have taken in 1990. Cool, if you were into that shit. I don't know, listening to this even more, I might be wrong and this might end up being totally awesome. We'll see. It's making me feel all nostalgic.
Brain Drill - Apocalyptic Feasting
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Holy living fuck, this album is gnarly. And by "gnarly", I mean "awesome". And by "awesome", I mean "totally fucking awesome".
I was on the phone with Charlie in the record store, browsing through the Bs, when I came across Brain Drill. Remember when I wrote about how sometimes all I need is a good name? Well, here it is. First, great name. Second, great album name. Third, great song titles. Fourth, fucking great album art. I am a total sucker for this kind of horror movie gore death metal. It's just awesome. I was a HUGE Cannibal Corpse fan back in the Chris Barnes days, and The Bleeding is still one of my favorite death metal albums. I think one of the things that prompted this whole "heavy as I can find it" music search was that I felt like folks just aren't making metal records like that anymore, and I most certainly don't see coverage for bands like that on MetalSucks, Lambgoat, or Deciblog. Luckily, I knew from my childhood that finding bands like this is usually as easy as finding the holy trifecta of offensive band name, offensive album name. and offensive song titles. You are almost guaranteed with those three things in place that you have a death metal album on your hands. The history is there and these guys are definitely carrying on the legacy of some of the great old death metal bands. Even better is that their brand of death metal is clearly informed by Grindcore, another extreme music subset that I cannot get enough of. All in all, the heaviest record of the bunch. It might not be as technical as some of the other ones, but in terms of pure brutality Apocalyptic Feasting shines.
Cattle Decapitation - The Harvest Floor
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Probably my favorite vegan death-grind band from San Diego, I was really excited for this release. Maybe too excited after 2006's Karma.Bloody.Karma. The Harvest Floor, while a fine album in its own right, does not stand up to their previous effort, but, really, I'm picking nits. This is a serious, no-nonsense party death metal record that does not skimp on the harmonized growls (YES). If Cattle Decapitation had never released Karma.Bloody.Karma, I might feel more strongly about this new one, but I can't get the old one out of my head. It's a good record, a really good record, but it just misses the mark set by the last one and that is disappointing. Definitely pick this up and give it a listen or thirty as it is still one of the best metal records I've purchased in a while.
I don't want to come off as harsh. This album is brutal. You will like it.
Decapitated - The Negation
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Decapitated, as you would rightly expect, is a death metal band. This is another highly capable death metal band, like Bloodbath, that is good, but not really all that special. They do everything right, except stand out. One great thing about this record is their cover of Deicide's "Lunatic of God's Creation"—I love the original SO MUCH. I remember being in 7th grade or whatever and knowing every single word to that self-titled album by Deicide, which, for me, is still the best thing they've ever done along with Once Upon The Cross. There is so much good metal history for me with Deicide that the cover on this album automatically gives Decapitated points for good taste.
The Faceless - Planetary Duality
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When I described this band to Charlie, I referenced Protest The Hero, which I think is pretty fair, if Protest The Hero was a death metal band. Maybe these guys should be called Prog-Death Metal? Did I just make up a new subgenre of metal? The Faceless are probably my new favorite Prog-Tech-Death-Robot-Metal band, but not to be confused with my all-time favorite Prog-Tech-Robot-Metal band, Genghis Tron. Get it, the difference is DEATH.
This record is great, filled with technical flair and interesting song structures, yet still capitalizing on the pure, straight ahead awesomeness of double bass drums and harmonized growls. And to appease the electronic music dork in me, they liberally throw the vocoder into the mix, which is great. They even have Candiria style jazzy interludes. How cute!
My one complaint about this record is that the lead singer commits, for me, the most grievous sin one can in metal: he sings without the ability to do so. What could have been a truly classic release is relegated to the "Pretty fucking good" category for numerous bad-singing-in-metal-songs infractions. Too bad, The Faceless, you were so close. Maybe next time!
Origin - Antithesis
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Another Origin record, another wall of hyper-technical death. If you're into this kind of stuff, you already know all about Origin and you don't need me to convince you. Why do I buy these? I already have Informas Infinitas Inhumanitas. Shockingly, the title track "Antithesis" actually has something approaching a groove that's not just a wall of blast beats. Possibly worth the price of entry for that track alone. Luckily for you, that was not the track I posted so you don't get some sort of deluded opinion of this release.
Severed Savior - Insurrection
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Drunk on my recent acquisitions, I listened to a handful of 30 second clips of this record on Amazon and when I saw it in the store, I threw it on the stack. Even more so than Bloodbath and Decapitated, this album is totally average. At least the former two have something going for them. Severed Savior is just boring compared to the other records in this list. Maybe it's an issue of context. If this was the only metal record I had purchased while buying a bunch of other music, or if I had made the mistake of buying a Misery Signals record when I meant to buy a Misery Index record, then perhaps this album might feel more special. As it is though, I am totally underwhelmed by it. It does absolutely nothing special. It is technically good, but it's kind of like the band you see before the band you went to see and you bob your head to the music and you clap, but you're sure as shit not down there in the pit and you're not going to be heart-broken if you miss a song while getting a beer or taking a piss.
In the immortal words of Nuutti, this band is pretty all right.
I know a lot of you out there will read this and listen to the tracks and think, What the fuck is Joe talking about? All of these songs sound exactly the same. Well, I say you just don't know what you're listening for. I promise that if you had spent half your life listening to heavy metal, you'd understand every single thing I've written. In particular, I'm looking at Charlie and Austin, Deegan if he reads this. You guys will understand. The rest of you, I'm glad to have shared yet another tiny sliver of the mess inside my head.
I think Charlie's header image says it all.
Listen to death metal.
Cathedral's "Hopkins (Witchfinder General)"
by The Wizard on Dec.19, 2008, under Music, Music Videos
In a previous post I mentioned the Earache My Eye tape. This video by Cathedral was one of the videos on that tape and always seemed totally incongruous because it's not very heavy and it has a very showy style that didn't fit in with the videos by other bands like Godflesh and At The Gates. I remember it always being the video I would fast forward through on the way to Carcass or whatever was next.
My friend Deegan just posted it in a comment and, looking back on this, it's actually a pretty fucking sweet ass video. It's got intense ass Barbarian metal babes, the Devil doing some crazy shit, Vincent Price, and who knows what the fuck else.
All in all, pretty bad ass. Check it.
See? I officially give it The Seal of Approval.
-
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The home of Joe Dillingham—pugilist, raconteur, dragonslayer.
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