Best of 2014 in Metal and Hard Rock – Part I

Starting a countdown of the best albums for this year
By Peter Lindblad

Separating the wheat from the chaff from 2014's heavy metal and hard rock is not really difficult, demanding work, but it does call for the kind of stupid courage that comes from drinking heavily.

These are dangerous times in the blogosphere, a wild west where expressing a harmless opinion is likely to set off gunfights of moral outrage and blistering condemnations. This is music, though, a thing that is said to soothe savage breasts and all that. Of course, talking about it can be akin to conversations about politics or religion.

In the spirit of throwing gasoline on a fire, here's a best albums list for 2014, starting with Nos. 6-10. The rest come later. You've been warned.

Cavalera Conspiracy - Pandemonium 2014

10. Cavalera Conspiracy – Pandemonium: What do you want from Max and Igor Cavalera at this point? A reunion of the classic Sepultura lineup? Jake E. Lee has a better chance of getting Sharon and Ozzy to give him writing credits on "Bark at the Moon." Just give Cavalera Conspiracy's Pandemonium a chance. It is devastatingly violent aural chaos, a mad, multi-layered symphony of thrash-metal ferocity and rusted-out, punishing industrial grind for frustrated children of the digital revolution that'll make your head explode.

Judas Priest - Redeemer of Souls 2014

9. Judas Priest – Redeemer of Souls: Not ready just yet to fly off into the sunset on sad wings of destiny, Judas Priest confounded expectations with this monstrous beast of a record. They sound as hungry as ever on Redeemer of Souls, an unholy communion of epic, expansive melodies with menacing, rugged riffs and electrically charged solos and dual-guitar flights that scream like tortured souls bound for hell. God bless this Priest.

California Breed - S/T 2014

8. California Breed - California Breed: Nobody knew Andrew Watt from Adam before hitching his wagon to Glenn Hughes and Jason Bonham – the drummer having bailed on the project just as it was gaining traction, only to be replaced by former Queens of the Stone Age punisher Joey Castillo –  in the vibrant new power trio California Breed. A young guitar slinger with great feel, fiery versatility and raw ability, Watt is the partner Hughes has been waiting for all these years, able to wring out soulful leads, tough riffs and blazing solos with ease on a debut album that pays off with surefire hooks, lean and mean Zeppelin-like stomp and swaggering groove, and some of the best singing of Hughes' career.

KXM - S/T 2014

7. KXM – KXM: Another trio, this one a supergroup made up of King's X front man dUg Pinnick, former Dokken axe man George Lynch and Korn drummer Ray Luzier, KXM came out swinging on their emotionally powerful eponymous debut. Just as happy grinding out rough-and-tumble, slow-burning riffs as he is reeling off sizzling solos, Lynch seems comfortable in the grungy world of KXM, where Luzier's complex drum patterns and Pinnick's grumbling bass provide a pulpit for spiritual profundities, damaged introspection and sharp socio-political commentary.

Revocation - Deathless 2014

6. Revocation – Deathless: Immensely talented, the technical death-metal outfit Revocation upped the ante with Deathless, showing off dizzying musical chops on a record that was both frenzied and brutally heavy. And yet, amid the controlled chaos there are strains of melody that somehow survive all the destruction and carnage going on around them. Down the line, they'll be using the word "seminal" to describe Deathless.

CD Review: Emigrate – Silent So Long

CD Review: Emigrate – Silent So Long
Spinefarm Records
All Access Rating: B+

Emigrate - Silent So Long 2014

In danger of being forgotten, having sat idle since launching their self-titled debut album all the way back in 2007, Emigrate has emerged from a long exile to release Silent So Long, another fine example of slick alternative-metal engineering masterminded by Rammstein guitarist Richard Kruspe.

The impact of the Emigrate's sophomore record is felt immediately, as Kruspe and company load Silent So Long with enough pulsating punk energy, misanthropic electronic menace and industrial, metallic crunch to excite and unnerve even the most stoic and cynical of scene observers.

Clean, urgent and modern, Silent So Long is bolstered by the contributions of several big-name guest vocalists. On the sexy and seductive "Get Down" the always provocative Peaches slithers over throbbing, creeped-out cyber funk that somewhat resembles Massive Attack's "Angel" and the whole thing explodes when the bombing campaign of crashing guitars is initiated. With Korn's Jonathan Davis' subversive intonation, the closing title track is just as sinister, as dub undercurrents quietly rumble and roll in the song's deep recesses. And then there's the gravelly voice of Motorhead's Lemmy Kilmister adding grit to the racing, but almost weightless, "Rock City" flying down musical straightaways.

Somewhat innovative, although not a great leap forward in that respect, Silent So Long is, nevertheless, a modern-rock, radio-friendly monster, the big, irrepressible hooks and heavy, driving momentum of "Rainbow" and "Giving Up" tailored for such programming. In a perfect world, so would the swaggering opener "Eat You Alive," featuring a devilish Frank Delleti, from the popular German band Seeed, on the mic and giving '70s glam-rock stomp a futuristic makeover.

Emigrate's first album cracked the Top 10 in Germany, and it's not a stretch of the imagination to believe this one will, too. While it could be the soundtrack to some sci-fi film noir experiment, the multi-layered Silent So Long is, at its core, an album based around strong beats, surging rock riffs and impenetrable song structures, and that's always an appealing formula for luring listeners.
– Peter Lindblad

CD Review: KXM – KXM

CD Review: KXM – KXM

Rat Pak Records

All Access Rating: A-

KXM - S/T 2014

For his last solo record, the rocky, almost impassable, road that was the decidedly downcast Naked, dUg Pinnick turned inward to explore depression, an affliction the King's X front man has long battled.

A heroic attempt to illustrate, in stark and rather ugly tones, its effects on his art and his life, Naked was an emotional bloodletting, with stories and darkly soulful melodies that rarely let in any light.

Working with Korn's Ray Luzier and former Dokken guitarist George Lynch in the new supergroup KXM has, at least for now, brightened his disposition somewhat. An inspired collaboration, KXM welds gnarly guitar riffs to eclectic, but hard-hitting, drumming and some of Pinnick's toughest, and most tenacious, bass lines on the trio's grungy, groove-laden self-titled debut for Rat Pak Records.

Redemption songs like "Rescue Me," "I'll Be Okay" and "Faith Is a Room" are life-affirming expressions of belief and vulnerability, these almost religious awakenings that borrow a cup of King's X's sunnier psychedelia to bathe them in dirty radiance. A flashlight shines on the dark subject matter of "Sleep," exposing domestic abuse to the light of day in soulful, slow-burning build-ups that add emotional weight to every lyrical line, while "Do It Now," "Love" and "Burn" are similarly paced, prowling in the bushes or surging ahead rather than running full out, with the angry, in-your-face first single "Gun Fight" – this provocative defense of Constitutional and human rights – blazes with intensity and digs its hooks into you. (See the video for "Rescue Me" here):

More concerned about the riff than ever, Lynch balls them up into meaty, wicked fists of sound, while still tearing off searing, agile solos. And while Pinnick's vocals are captivating and passionate, it's Luzier's stick work that's the real revelation here. Freed from Korn, he explores a wide variety of textures with KXM and displays surprising skill, all while making the songs move at whatever gear they want to shift to. And while a couple of songs do not coalesce as tightly as they should, the great majority demand attention and keep it. Looking for a "Gun Fight" of the sonic variety? You'll get one from KXM.
– Peter Lindblad

CD Review: Andi Deris and the Bad Bankers – Million Dollars Haircuts on Ten Cent Heads

CD Review: Andi Deris and the Bad Bankers – Million Dollar Haircuts on Ten Cent Heads

Armoury/earMusic

All Access Rating: A-

Andi Deris and the Bad Bankers -
Million Dollar Haircuts on
Ten Cent Heads 2014

The Occupy Wall Street movement has a sympathizer in Helloween singer Andi Deris. Disgusted by the obscene, unchecked greed and corruption of a diseased banking institution that's somehow escaped punishment for its sins against humanity, Deris' anger is palpable on his first solo album since 1999, recorded with his band, the aptly named Bad Bankers. 

A hard-hitting protest record that gets in the gutter with its subject matter and beats it with brass knuckles, Million Dollar Haircuts on Ten Cent Heads has a grimy, contemporary metal edginess and visceral crunch that fuels his rage against fat cats and tyrants. At heart, though, Deris is still a power-metal proselytizer, prone to sculpting melodic curves out of walls of guitars and crushing rhythms to make dramatic statements in the sweeping "EnAmoria" and the equally expansive "Must Be Dreaming."

Nevertheless, with its brawling guitar riffs and sneering vocals, the punishingly heavy opener "Cock" doesn't mince words, couching its indignation in thick, grinding machinations, before the prowling, seething grooves of "Banker's Delight (Alive or Dead)" express their frustration in a particularly vicious manner. Embracing nu metal samples and other production enhancements that bands like the Deftones and Korn make such effective use of, Deris and his rabble-rousers raise hell in a dark, blustery "Blind" that turns moody and watery, as does "Who Am I." More scathing, "Don't Listen to the Radio (TWOTW 1938)" is straightforward traditional metal with a hooky chorus and driving, slightly scratched-up guitars, and it's a song of sturdy construction and strong opinions, the kind that leads to fist-pumping and other expressions of rebellion.

Even if all it amounts to is street-level sound and fury that, although it does actually signify something, never comes close to reaching deaf ears in corporate boardrooms, hearing Deris' impassioned, well-articulated call to arms is, if nothing else, a direct and forceful shock to a financial system desperately in need of an overhaul. And Deris is in fine voice, expressive, charismatic and wide-ranging, clearly warming to the task he's undertaken, and sounding especially vital when he gets his dander up. http://www.eagle-rock.com/; http://www.ear-music.net/en/news/
– Peter Lindblad

Video Review: Korn's 'Spike in My Veins'

New Korn video addresses privacy, cult of celebrity

By Peter Lindblad

Korn - The Paradigm Shift

Orwellian paranoia runs rampant in Korn’s new video for “Spike in My Veins,” which premiered this week at rollingstone.com. And the Nu Metal revolutionaries attempt to make the case that privacy is being eroded in this age of the 24-hour news cycle and Internet overstimulation with their own version of the Ludovico technique, that horrifying aversion therapy that Malcolm McDowell’s character undergoes in “A Clockwork Orange.” Korn’s treatment is far less violent, but almost as disturbing.

Rather than setting out to make its audience impotent, there’s a sense that Korn is sounding an alarm with a bombardment of images that haven’t yet exceeded their expiration dates in the public’s ever-shrinking consciousness. There’s Seahawks’ cornerback Richard Sherman yelling into the camera after the Super Bowl. There’s Justin Bieber and then there’s Justin Bieber again, with his smiling mug shot and a scene of him in tough-guy mode wanting to fight all comers while being pushed into a limo. Tongue stuck out in full twerk, Miley Cyrus, like Bieber, is everywhere, as are egomaniacal rapper Kanye West and disgraced Toronto mayor and noted party guy Rob Ford, dancing without a care in the world and caught by a surreptitious camera making insane threats to do somebody bodily harm.

There are a lot of puzzle pieces that beg for context in "Spike in My Veins," but it's not long before it starts to make sense. All those scenes of cops in riot gear beating people up and press conferences of government officials shamelessly trying to counter the very serious accusations of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden suggest totalitarianism isn’t just a Russian or a Third World problem. Although it's not the wildly creative game-changer "Freak on a Leash" was, it’s a fairly effective statement put forth by Korn and director David Dinetz, as well as his creative team at Culprit Creative – the idea being that our obsession with celebrity and scandalous media firestorms are preventing us from confronting very immediate and devastating attacks on privacy in this country, just as junkies avoid reality by shooting up.

Quick cutaways lend the thought-provoking video a sense of urgency, hammering home the sense that it is well past time for action and that apathy is more dangerous than ever. What is being spiked in our veins is not heroin. It’s the constant stream of salacious garbage the media spews like vomit that's dulling our senses. Of course, this sort of thing has been done before. Public Enemy, U2, Ministry … the list of artists who have made similar socio-political indictments through the medium of video is lengthy to say the least. But, if nothing else, at least Korn is staying up on current events.

And they are growing more adept at building tension in tracks like “Spike in My Veins,” as the verses simmer to a roiling boil here, thankfully lacking the momentum-killing down-tuned silliness and irritating vocal histrionics of Korn's past. With its explosive, shattering chorus, strong grooves and thick riffs, “Spike in My Veins,” off the critically acclaimed album The Paradigm Shift, crashes into your living room with the kind of raw emotion and intensity that children of the Korn feed off. Still, as far as the video goes, it's mostly just Korn performing in front of a wall of TVs, even if the parade of familiar cable news touchstones is smartly arranged and edited to both incite and excite. And for those wanting some stunning visual effects to go with their sensory overload, the “Matrix”-like effects that make an octopus of Jonathan Davis’s wheeling arms are pretty bitchin’. Keanu Reeves thinks so, too. 

Metal Evolution - "Nu Metal"

Metal Evolution: Nu Metal - Episode 108
Sam Dunn
VH1 Classic


All Access Review: B+

Woodstock ’99 was burning and blame for the mayhem was placed squarely on Fred Durst and the rap-metal hooligans of Limp Bizkit. Destruction of property, flat-out arson, even the reports of rape that allegedly occurred in the mosh pit – at least in part, Limp Bizkit was responsible for all of it. Witnesses for the prosecution, some of whom give their testimony in “Nu Metal,” the most recent episode in Sam Dunn’s “Metal Evolution” series, which appears on VH-1 Classic, say Durst, in particular, fanned the flames of the riots that forced organizers to prematurely bring Woodstock ’99 to an ugly end. Even Korn’s Jonathan Davis, a one-time Bizkit ally, turns on Durst, telling Dunn that instead of attempting to calm a crowd that was growing increasingly mad, Durst egged them on. He exhorted the crowd to “break stuff,” and the mindless thugs followed his lead.

Durst, unapologetically, remembers things differently. Expressing little, if any remorse, Durst recalls the Bizkit Woodstock ’99 show as the “greatest concert ever.” And then, showing a little of that adolescent petulance that Durst is infamous for, he sulks about how nobody ever wanted Limp Bizkit playing in the same sand box as the nu metal children. The rap guys didn’t want to be lumped in with metal and the metal guys didn’t want anything to do with hip-hop, continues Durst. That’s too simple of an explanation of why Limp Bizkit has been ostracized from the music community since the violence at Woodstock’99. Battles with other bands, the departure of guitarist Wes Borland and lukewarm albums in the aftermath of Three Dollar Bill Y’All and Significant Other all combined to doom Bizkit, and to his credit, Durst admits to Dunn that this monster that he created called Fred Durst could have handled things better. Clearly, some anger management counseling would have done him a world of good. Or, maybe he just needed to grow up a little.

The story of Limp Bizkit dominates much of the second half of Dunn’s look at “Nu Metal,” and with good reason. Bizkit blew up in the late ‘90s on the strength of Significant Other’s massive single “Nookie.” As crazy as it sounds, considering his explosive temper, Durst even became a label executive at Interscope Records – that fact escaping Dunn, along with the failure to mention that Bizkit’s Woodstock ’99 performance came a day before the disastrous riots. Still, there’s something unsatisfying about placing so much emphasis on Limp Bizkit, especially considering there are far more influential nu metal bands Dunn could have spent more time on. Ah, but perhaps that’s just a personal preference, even though you get the feeling from “Nu Metal” that Dunn – who plainly admits to not being a big fan of nu metal, while also reluctantly admitting that it does, indeed, have its place in the history and developmental of heavy metal – also wish he could give more attention to the Sepulturas, the Korns, and the Rage Against The Machines of the world.

All of them get their moment in the sun in “Nu Metal,” and this is where Dunn gets it right. Where the Limp Bizkit segments seem to focus too much on the controversy surrounding the band, when the subject turns to Pantera, Rage, Korn and Sepultura, Dunn digs his fingers into the groundbreaking nature of nu metal. With Pantera, Dunn’s interest lies with the band’s adherence to deep grooves and an unyielding devotion to what Phil Anselmo refers to as the “money riff.” As for Rage, it’s the combination of music and message that gets top billing, with guitarist Tom Morello also talking about the band’s meshing of ‘70s hard rock riffs, thick grooves and his own role as a sort of DJ bringing his six-string “eccentricities.” And Korn’s Fieldy and Davis discuss at length about the band’s Sacramento origins and its innovative use of detuned strings.

But, it all goes back to Anthrax and the band’s monumental summit rap-metal summit with Public Enemy on their collaborative 1991 reworking of “Bring the Noise,” and Dunn starts his exploration of “Nu Metal” there before moving on – at Scott Ian’s request – to Faith No More. Even if nu metal has its detractors and those who aren’t so sure that the integration of metal and rap was done as artfully as it could have been, there were, and still are, bands that do it well. Dunn’s interviews nicely hone in on what was crucial to the rise of nu metal, and his dexterous use of concert images and video footage, as always, is on display here, as is Dunn’s singular ability to make you feel as if you are accompanying him on this journey and that his interest in the subject matter is genuine and sincere. Time, again, is his enemy. There’s only so much a filmmaker can pack into an hour’s program, and Dunn’s fills to the brim with insightful commentary and well-paced storytelling. Woodstock ’99 may have been nu metal’s Altamont, but as Dunn shows, it didn’t end there. And neither does the story of heavy metal.

-        Peter Lindblad

Metal Evolution Nu Metal

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