Metal

Live Review: Black Sabbath in Dunedin

Black Sabbath The End Tour Forsyth Bar Stadium Dunedin
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Black Sabbath

w/ Rival Sons

Forsyth Barr Stadium, Dunedin

Saturday 30 April 2016

 California’s Rival Sons started off the night with a great set. They had a bluesy swagger to their brand of rock music, akin to acts like The Black Keys and Led Zepplin. Every one of the five musicians stood out as talented, adding flourishes and details to the already excellent music. They garnered a great response for an unknown act, with the audience far more into it than you’d usually see during an opening act. It seemed that nobody enjoyed their set more than an individual nicknamed “Nambassa Guy”.

I dedicated a paragraph to Nambassa Guy in my review of the 2015 Homegrown festival, when I first became aware of his notoriety. The open shirted legend is frequently seen at rock concerts around the country, spinning and strutting along to the music, and infectiously spreading his joy wherever he goes. My two mates who I was sitting with had never seen him before, but they both agreed that witnessing his magic was one of the highlights of their night.

Compared to Rival Sons groovy music, heavy metal pioneers Black Sabbath were grim and depressing. And it makes sense, when you consider their origins. Formed in Birmingham in 1968, Black Sabbath are widely acknowledged as the founders of heavy metal. The band started with the premise that if people paid money to get scared watching horror films, then surely the same people would love a band that played scary music? Their unique sound can be largely attributed to guitarist Tony Iommi, who had lost some of his fingertips in an accident working at a sheet metal factory. He used leather and plastic from melted bottle tops to compensate for his fingertips, and needed to alter his technique to allow for the lack of feeling, giving him a unique tone when he played guitar.

There are stories about women fainting and people freaking out at shows when Sabbath first started. I found this hard to believe at first, but after hearing them play the doomy eponymous “Black Sabbath” as the first song of their set last night, I can better understand the stories.

Three of the four members of the original lineup were present, with Tommy Clufetos (a drummer with experience playing for both Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne’s solo band) taking Bill Ward’s place on the drum throne, and additional musician Adam Wakeman rounding out the sound with guitar and keyboard.

At first I thought it was a bit inappropriate to have Clufetos playing “Rat Salad”, Bill Ward’s signature drum track, but “Salad” morphed into a more original drum solo that allowed Cufetos to show off his chops, and also allowed the elderly members of the band to have a breather.

Geezer Butler also treated us to a bass solo, drowning in pedal effects. But the star of the night was Iommi, the man behind the riffs that inspired thousands of metalheads worldwide. He came across as humble, downplaying his importance when Osbourne introduced him, but we all know that Iommi is Sabbath.

Ozzy’s voice was as good as ever, and he appeared more coherent than I have come to expect, based on interviews and his reality television show, The Osbournes. The Prince of Darkness didn’t bite the heads off any bats, but he sure put in a lot of effort trying to work the crowd up. He would ask us to clap and cheer and scream, shouting “I can’t hear you” every single time. Poor chap, he must be so deaf after all those years of fronting rock concerts.

It didn’t seem like it, but their set lasted almost two hours. They played a range of hits selected from the more notable albums recorded under the original line up. With six of the eight tracks from Paranoid being played, there was no way that they could disappoint. Although I called them grim before, there is another side to their music. We got the heavy metal, but we also got blues and psychedelia too.

The concert was not especially flashy or showy. There were lights, and some screens, but this was a band that relied on the songs rather than gimmicks. They’re old men now, and I think that they are lucky to have lasted so long. After the recent deaths of some of their contemporaries (David Bowie, Lemmy), it has become apparent that not all good things can last forever.  This tour has been announced as their last, and after a few Canadian dates were cancelled due to ill health, it’s a believable announcement.

I was thrilled to finally hear some of my favourite songs in a live context, and I think I can speak for everyone when I say that everyone in attendance was thankful that they took the opportunity to experience a vital part of music history.

Joseph James

Live Review: Iron Maiden at Horncastle Arena, Christchurch

Iron Maiden Book of Souls tour
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Iron Maiden

w/ The Raven Age

Horncastle Arena, Christchurch

Friday 29 April 2016

I missed out on seeing Iron Maiden in 2009 when they last came because I was at a school camp. Ironically enough it was a camp for my music class. One boy from my class skipped the camp to attend the concert, and I’d argue that he learnt more about music from attending the concert than he would have at the camp. Then again, another boy who came on the camp now tours the world playing music in Broods, so maybe my idea of worthwhile musical education isn’t accurate.

It was some consolation that I managed to see the original Iron Maiden singer, Paul Di’anno, play live when I moved to Wellington the following year. It was a good night, but not enough to make up for missing the full band.

Fast forward five years and I finally got the chance to redeem myself. Iron Maiden were returning to New Zealand to promote their latest album, The Book of Souls, and there was no way I was going to miss them this time around.

The most impressive stage set I had seen until now was Rammstein’s, at Big Day Out 2010. They had big cauldrons, and multiple levels of staging with a heavy, industrial look. This was enhanced by all the pyrotechnics that the band is famous for.

Iron Maidens set up made Rammstein’s look like child’s play. In keeping with their new theme, the stage was decked out like a Mayan temple, with Mayan imagery carved into the walls, jungle vines hanging from the lighting rig, and multiple layers of staging for frontman Bruce Dickinson to run about on. Large backdrops set the scene, while vessels overflowed with dry ice and vases spat fire onstage. Drummer Nicko McBrain could not even be seen behind his enormous drum set, with a larger than life array of cymbals and toms enveloping him. It was as if everything was prepared for a blood sacrifice to be made to the gods of rock.

Dickinson was the most theatrical, running about and yelling like a man half his age. This was especially impressive, considering his recent battle with throat cancer. Not that you could tell, with his operatic voice as epic and impeccable as ever. He donned a number of different costumes throughout the night, decked out in a red coat and waving a British flag during “The Trooper”, swinging a large noose around (and hitting the crash cymbals on the drums with) during “Hallowed Be Thy Name”, and even donning a luchador mask at one stage. The most popular though, was when he rocked an All Blacks shirt with his surname printed on the back, towards the end of the show.

Bonus points for entertainment also go out to guitarist Janick Gers, who never let up his wild stage moves as he played. For the most part he could be found right of stage, doing the splits over a speaker, but he also ran around spinning, swinging and flipping his guitar with abandon.

The set revolved mostly around the most recent album The Book Of Souls, but Maiden kept the older fans happy by playing the “legacy songs”, as Dickinson put it. He laughed at the age variation of the crowd, noting that many of us would not have been born when their song “Children of the Damned” was written.

Of course everyone’s favourite mascot made an appearance. An enormous zombie Eddie the Head walked onstage and started swinging his axe at the band members. He got into a tussle with Dickinson, who managed to tear poor Eddie’s heart out of his chest, before spraying the blood from it over the front rows in the audience.

Eddie managed to come back later, with his head and chest the size of a hot air balloon rising up from the back of stage. An evil goat figure with folded arms arose in the same manner during “Number Of The Beast”, staring out over us mortal beings with disdain.

Iron Maiden more than delivered, with both stunning musicianship and immense stage presence. They’ve been going at it for a long, long time now, and they’ve made sure not to let their quality slip. This has earnt them a loyal fan base, and just to prove it, it seemed as if 90% of the crowd were wearing Iron Maiden merchandise. Finally seeing Maiden live was just as good – if not better -than I expected. Their show was just as long, fantastic and spectacular as their songs. I doubt that I’ll see any other band surpass this kind of quality for a very long time.

Joseph James

Album Review: Killing Joke – Pylon

Killing Joke Pylon Cover Art
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It was inevitable that I would become a Killing Joke fan.  Funnily enough, one of my teachers at high school introduced me to them.

This teacher probably made one of the best impressions on me in my last year of school. He made of point of looking out for me and we often discussed our mutual love of music. He was from Birmingham – or “the town that GBH were from”, as he’d say. He loved telling me about the festivals and concerts he’d attended. Glastonbury was a perennial favourite. He’d attended Foo Fighters Wembley show that I had a DVD copy of. And most of his stories were about the early days of punk. I loaned him a few punk CD’s of bands I’d recently discovered – stuff like Rise Against and Anti-Flag – and he loaned me a few Killing Joke records in return.

I remember him showing them to me in class one morning. There was the original eponymous album, along with the 2003 album of the same name, with the bright colours and the creepy clown on the cover. He also had the second album, What’s This For?, and possibly Night Time. He gave me a cheeky grin and explained that this was the music he liked to play loudly when his wife wasn’t home.

I was transfixed when I gave the CD’s a listen. Listening to the music was like taking part in some kind of cult ritual.  It was raw, heavy and unique. The way that frontman Jaz Coleman hissed, shrieked spat and shouted his lyrics was so unconventional. The primitive tribal rhythms of the drumming was so powerful. The guitars were heavy and dynamic.

I quickly sought out my own copies of albums that featured two of my favourite drummers – Pandemonium, featuring Tom Larkin from Shihad, and Killing Joke [2003] featuring Dave Grohl. I read more about the band. It turned out Jaz Coleman was New Zealand citizen. He owned York St studios, and his influence as producer was obvious in the first Shihad album, Churn (and more recently, FVEY). I bought each successive Killing Joke album that the band released, and attended the Wellington gig of their first ever NZ tour in 2013.

Killing Joke

Pylon is studio album number 16, and third in a triptych along with Absolute Dissent (2010) and MMXII (2012). It follows the same formula that we’ve come to expect – crushingly heavy and abrasive post-punk with lighter new wave moments. There are the typical doom and gloom dystopian themes of paranoia, mistrust of the powers that be and protesting against surveillance. What are the odds that all four band members have prepped for the apocalypse, each owning bunkers filled with protective tinfoil suits and enough emergency supplies to last them a few decades? But in all seriousness, at least the lyrics contain some substance. Give me protest music full of conspiracy theories over mindless pop music any day.

Album opener “Autonomous Zone” signals a return to the familiar KJ sound. The bridge is especially good, with a drum solo leading into a driving middle eight. Listen out for the stunning bass guitar fills as well. “Dawn Of The Hive” is relentless, with a synths in the chorus sounding glossy yet dangerous. We have the same barrage of sound found in Absolute Dissent married with some of the poppy catchiness of Night Time.

What I like about Pylon is that despite the subject matters and heavy riffing, it isn’t too oppressing. There are more electronic sounds than I would have expected in light of their recent albums. “Euphoria” sounds, well, euphoric, along the lines of “In Cytheria” and “You’ll Never get To Me”. “New Cold War” features a Nine Inch Nails styled offbeat dance beat. “New Jerusalem” borders on jangly. The brighter new wave style brings balance to the music, and prevents it from becoming a boring sludgefest. This is not to say that the band has gone soft on us, but too much chugged riffing can start to grate.

In this current technological era Killing Joke could be seen as irrelevant cynics – old men angrily yelling at clouds. But then you consider their legacy, influencing and inspiring bands like Metallica,  Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana, Shihad and Tool and it becomes clear that their importance doesn’t correlate with mainstream recognition. And if anything, Killing Joke should be celebrated for being underground and different. They’re not quite punk, metal or industrial. They’re not conventional. And their insistence on forging their own sound is what makes them so special.

After 16 albums, you could have forgiven Killing Joke if they had started to sound a bit stale. But they don’t. MMXII wasn’t my favourite, but Pylon is able to stand up on its own merit. It’s dense, murky and aggressive, without being overly depressing. It’s a visceral roar that pummels your ear canals. It’s paranoid and dark, subversive and political.  It’s the sort of music to blast when the wife is out.It’s exactly what you want to hear from Killing Joke.

 

Joseph James

Buried Treasure: Probot – I am the Warlock (hidden track)

Probot Album Cover Warlock
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Buried Treasure is a semi-regular feature that explores some hidden musical gems – the rare and forgotten B-sides, covers, hidden tracks, live versions and alternative takes that deserve some recognition.

Probot – I Am The Warlock

The big single from the Probot album was the track ‘Shake Your Blood’, featuring Lemmy from Motorhead. The first time I’d ever heard the track was when Lemmy came onstage to guest on the song on the Foo Fighters Hyde Park DVD. I hadn’t heard of Probot at the time so I was confused about why I couldn’t recognise the song. I had every Foo Fighters album, so why didn’t I know this song?

After some further research I learnt about the Probot album, one of Dave Grohl’s  many, many side projects. The basic premise behind the album is that Grohl had written a bunch of material that was too heavy for Foo Fighters, so he decided to make a dedicated heavy album featuring frontmen from some of his favourite metal and hardcore bands.  Because if you’re rich and famous and bored, why not make a metal album of with the most influential singers of your childhood?

In many ways, this paved the path for later Foo Fighters releases like Sound City and Sonic Highways, both of which featured guest musicians heavily.

The Buried Treasure from this album is the hidden track ‘I am the Warlock’, featuring Jack Black. It’s the last song on the album, playing after four minutes of silence after the final listed track ‘Sweet Dreams’. It’s funny because even though I know that the song is coming, it always gives me a fright when it starts.

Black and Grohl are long time collaborators. Grohl drummed on Tenacious D’s studio albums, and Grohl and Black have featured extensively in each other’s music videos. Tenacious D also opened for Foo Fighters when they set off earthquakes in 2012 at Western Springs.

‘I Am The Warlock’ is predictably juvenile, like almost anything that Black touches, but hey, it’s metal, so not worth taking too seriously anyway. If you can get past the crass content, the sludgy metal is pretty cool.

During the bridge you can hear weird whispers that remind me of something you’d hear in a horror movie (maybe something like Deathgasm?).Grohl has done this another time. The bridge in ‘Everlong’ by the Foo Fighters features three unidentifiable recordings played over each other.

It’s no secret that Black has musical skills. School of Rock was brilliant, and having seen him front Tenacious D in both rock and acoustic settings, I can confirm that he’s very talented. It seems a shame that he chooses to make such a joke out of the music he creates, but at least it’s fun.

Joseph James

EP Review: Oscillate – Skepticism

Oscillate cover
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I first met Conor Coleman – the man behind Oscillate –  when he was drumming for now-defunct local band As Legends Rise. We had a lot in common: we’re both drummers, we both work in teaching roles, and we have some similar tastes in music. I remember one time we were at a Datsuns gig at San Fran and he got concussed somehow. I was pretty worried for him, but in typical Conor style he just laughed it off.

Conor was at my flat getting a home-job tattoo from my flatmate (he got two: a bear on his chest, and a zombie skull on his shoulder) when he introduced me to djent – technical metal with focus on angular syncopated riffs. When he asked me to check out one of his side projects I expected something along those lines, something heavy and influenced by bands like Periphery and The Contortionist.

And it is. Music that Conor has released under the guise of Oscillate is undeniably djent-y. But I was impressed that the music is also far more multifaceted than that.

Most of it is tight and technical progressive metal with complex rhythms. But there are some more tender moments as well. I love the twinkling piano parts in ‘Skepticism’. ‘I Slept Through The Noise…’ has some enormous sounding ephemeral interludes. ‘And I Dreamt’ is a brilliant dreamy track with an electric drumbeat reminiscent of triphop music like Massive Attack. It has tender piano and reverberating guitar that makes you forget that you were listening to articulate metal riffing a minute beforehand.

I asked Conor about a sample of Tommy Lee Jones talking in the film No Country for Old Men. He told me that he chose it in part because he loved the movie, and because it explored how he felt at the time of recording, seemingly stuck with limited options forward. Themes of existentialism and inevitability run throughout the EP, like the musical equivalent of The Matrix (not that there are any lyrics to show this).

Cloudkicker is the most similar act that I can think of – a one-man post-metal project. Other similar sounding bands include Northlane, Dumbsaint and Russian Circles. That’s no small achievement for a 21-year-old solo musician. Conor has proven himself as more than just a metal drummer. This Oscillate EP shows off his skills as a multi-instrumentalist and composer, and reveals great potential for more to come.

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