THE HETFIELD AND ME

I have recently modified my facial hair in a small but decisive way. I've had a goatee for years - about 15 years, in fact. At some point about a half-dozen years ago, maybe a little less, I grew an accompanying mustache. I believe this combination is called a "Vandyke." Well, a month or two ago, I decided that with the warm weather coming soon (yeah, right - it just arrived this week) it was time for another change. So I shaved out the middle part of the goatee, leaving me with a mustache that goes clear down to my chin. Apparently, this look is known as the "Hetfield."



Yes, it's a look probably most familiar to frequent viewers of COPS. And for a week or two, I didn't see anybody else sporting it on the streets of Manhattan. But in the last couple of days, I've seen quite a few Hetfields on my way to and from work. This probably surprises me more than it should - metal's back, after all, and the Hetfield is the most metal of all facial-hair options. (Those long-ass braided/dyed/beaded goatees that came post-grunge were just horrifying, and I'm glad they're mostly gone - the only prominent headbanger still sporting one is the bassist from System Of A Down, and his fashion sense is not to be trusted, since his race, the Armenians, gave the world the tracksuit-and-dress-shoes combo.) So I feel like my Hetfield makes me part of something larger than myself. Which is one of the great things about the brotherhood of metal. Plus, my wife digs it. So I guess it's here to stay, for awhile anyhow.

PENTAGRAM

I wrote about the new Pentagram 2CD set (which could easily have been a single disc, but never mind) in the Voice this week.

HORNS (AND MUGS OF MEAD) IN THE AIR!

Awhile ago, I wrote this review of Falkenbach's Heralding The Fireblade, which is a really great Viking metal album though not as good as Korpiklaani's ass-rapingly great Tales Along This Road, which I just got the other week. In the interval, though, The Wire changed reviews editors - David Stubbs left, and was replaced by Nick Cain, who used to edit the online zine Opprobrium (was there ever a print version? I think there might have been). Anyway, he chose not to run the Falkenbach review. So here 'tis.

FALKENBACH
Heralding The Fireblade
Napalm

Falkenbach is essentially a one-man show; vocalist Vratyas Vakyas recruits instrumentalists as necessary to realize his vision of a Metal-rooted music that will offer fitting tribute to Viking culture and values. Four of the eight tracks have English-language titles (“Heathen Foray,” “Of Forests Unknown,” “Roman Land” and “Heralder”), and all have an epic sweep. Over the course of the three releases preceding this one, Falkenbach’s sound has changed substantially, from an initial Black Metal primitivism to a more folk- and classical-tinged sound with stirring keyboard fanfares and even some choruses with which one could quite happily hoist a horn of mead and chant along. It’s still very much Metal, of course; the guitars are heavy and the drums thunder like they’re meant to inspire banks of rowers to ever-greater feats of exertion. Tempos occasionally get up to Death Metal speed, but for the most part Vakyas is more interested in grandiosity than wild headbanging. For similar reasons, clean vocals are dominant – Black Metal screeches don’t make an appearance until the fourth track, “Roman Land.” There’s also a dramatic appearance by a woman (!) at the climax of “Skirnir” that nearly makes the album worth owning all by itself. Viking Metal cannily avoids overt embrace of the fascism Black Metal frequently fetishizes, choosing to celebrate manly paganism instead. Where white-faced Black Metallers lurk in caves and forests, sword-swinging Viking Metal bands stride forth in sunlight, as bearded heroes. Falkenbach’s music, like the best of the genre, is proudly extroverted, fist-pumping stuff.

THE FULL HORROR

Remember that statue of Britney Spears giving birth? Remember how you could only see a front and/or side view of it in the publicity shots? Well, here's what you've been, uh, "missing."

I'M ON THE FLOOR LIKE "HOLY SHIT"

The new Ghostface album has so many lines on it that will make you wanna shake a random stranger passing by and scream "Listen to this fucking shit!" that I could fill the whole front page of this blog with 'em. But I think the two that are destroying my world with the most vigor right now are both from "The Champ":

"He's a bulldozer! With a wreckin' ball attached!"

"Niggas want me dead but they scared to step to me/Rippin' out they guts like a hysterectomy"

Go buy Fishscale right now. Come back and read the rest of this entry later.

Other things that are kicking my ass, to a much lesser degree:

First, the new Boris album Pink. (Pink should have called her new album Boris. Missed opportunity there. Oh, well.) Boris have bored me in the past; I tried to like Amplifier Worship and Absolutego and their Merzbow collab Sun Baked Snow Cave because all the right people worshipped them and I wanted to be down wit it, but they were just pastiche artists like too many Japanese performers, grabbing random riffs from the Seventies Hard Rock bag and making sure they had just the right amps and guitars and pedals and haircuts. This became even more clear when I saw them live at the Knitting Factory. They wanted to be Grand Funk Railroad so fucking bad that night, and simply weren't. I bailed about half an hour in. My buddy swears they got better after I left, but he said that about the Mars Volta, too, and the first two hours of that show were possibly the greatest live rock experience I've ever had, top five easy, so I know he's lying because if they had actually gotten better after what I saw, he would have dissolved into pink goo and been unable to report back to me. But anyway, Pink is a really good album. The first track is beautiful almost shoegazery psych-doom, then the majority of those after it are ultra-fuzzed but also skull-powderingly heavy garage-rock stomp-attacks. Everything you've always read that they are, they actually became this time. It'll be out soon on Southern Lord - it's currently available, with no extra tracks, as a pricey import. Hold out.

I'm also digging Rodrigo y Gabriela. They're a pair of Mexican acoustic guitarists who play what sounds like flamenco influenced by Yngwie Malmsteen, and the latter comparison is probably more accurate than the former; inside the CD, they swear they're not flamenco players. They cover Metallica's "Orion" and Led Zeppelin's "Stairway To Heaven" on their new CD, but their originals will make you wanna peel off your skin and jump into the nearest stucco wall.

Dub Trio remind me of Blind Idiot God; their new album New Heavy has big riffs, nice cymbal/hi-hat work during the dubby bass breaks, and vocals by Mike Patton on the weakest cut.

Nuru Kane is a guitarist from Dakar who plays music that's somewhere between the North African desert and Junior Kimbrough's trance blues. His album Sigil (Riverboat) is fucking gorgeous. Etran Finatawa do something similar, with a little more Tinariwen to 'em; they're just okay.

I bought the Bug's latest thing, the 2CD set Killing Sound, credited to Razor X Productions. If you wish dancehall sounded like someone setting off a shape charge in your transverse colon while a belt-sander gently caresses your ears, this is your album. The first disc is crazed singles featuring deejays like Daddy Freddy, Warrior Queen, Mexican and a bunch of others; the second disc is dub versions. The louder you play it, the more your neighbors will gnash their teeth and dream of setting their dogs on you in your sleep. Especially if they like "regular" dancehall.