Carl Begai

With all eyes on Canada and our “owning the podium” at the Olympics in direct spite of the fact the homeland suits decided the campaign had FAIL! written all over it, I figured it was a good time to remind people (yet again) of Canuck musical genius, mastery and general ass kickingness. And so, for the faithful that think my head is screwed on at an off-kilter yet strangely attractive angle, a few recommendations to get you through to spring…

Big surprise (not!) that I’d be thrilled to announce that two of the four lovely ladies from the Carl Begai In Hell house band, Scarlet Sins, have returned with a new project called When Forever Dies. Vocalist Sylvya NuVynska and bassist Tanya Nicklaus have been writing and recording demo tracks since Scarlet Sins called it quits in November 2009, and the music I’ve heard thus far is great. Very promising indeed. It’s a no-brainer that Sylvya and Tanya would take care of unfinished business with When Forever Dies, particularly given Syl’s unique vocal style. Scarlet Sins fans won’t be disappointed, One of the tracks I’ve heard, ‘What Have You Become?’, takes the lessons learned from the Sins experience and kicks things up a notch or three with grittier vocals, big harmonies, a guitar solo (!), with a piano (!!) thrown in for good measure. Things have become decidedly more metal since the break-up; so much the better. Add to this the return of Rush producer / engineer Rich Chycki for the debut album and it’s safe to say this is going to end up sounding huge.
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Jive Bunny.

Two words combined that are enough to make my brain itch uncomfortably, like poison ivy on one’s naughty bits. It feels like there’s a bug walking around between the inside of my scalp and my skull; it shouldn’t be in there but I can’t get it the fuck out.

Folks old enough to remember cassette tapes as a form of audio entertainment will recall the Jive Bunny phenomenon. The actual name was Jive Bunny And The Mastermixers, a moniker worn by a glorified mash-up project in 1989 spearheaded by a medley entitled ‘Swing The Mood’. It featured instantly recognizable ’60s tunes smooshed up against and mated with Glenn Miller’s classic ‘In The Mood’, all remixed, spliced and remixed again into dance-able tracks of varying length. Not quite techno; just classic melodies poked and fluffed into swing-ish updatedness so as to draw anyone with too much booze in their system onto the dancefloor.

Perhaps you see where this is going…
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By Carl Begai

Bassist Taiji Sawada can lay claim to having belonged to two of the most popular metal bands in Japanese history. From 1985–1992 he was an integral part of X – better known as X Japan after ’92 – recording three albums before musical differences led to him getting the boot. To date the band has sold well over 20 million records, all without record label support outside Japan. Following his dismissal he was snapped up by Loudness, long known the world over as Japan’s premiere metal act, recording one studio album and a live record before calling it quits in 1994 for personal reasons. Since then Sawada has made his mark with Dirty Trashroad (affectionately known as D.T.R.), Cloud Nine and assorted smaller projects, but his latest outing Taiji With Heaven’s stands to gain a serious large-scale following if it receives the proper push.

Taiji With Heaven’s has been Sawada’s pet project for the last several years, finally come to life with a five-and-a-half song self-titled EP. (continue reading…)

By Carl Begai

Foreword: I first became aware of Van Canto when a fellow journalist made an offhand remark at some point last year about going to see if an a capella metal band could deliver the goods live. Initially I figured she was being a smart-ass, but a few days later while at a record store I recalled having heard about a German band called Van Canto that did in fact do up metal songs a capella. A quick headcheck led me to their second album, Hero, and I was appalled to learn that they did cover versions of Iron Maiden’s ‘Fear Of The Dark’ and Nightwish’s ‘Wishmaster’. Surely it had to be a gag. Two minutes into the Maiden track and I was sold on Van Canto as a real band.

In gearing up for the release of their third album, Tribe Of Force, Van Canto’s new label Napalm Records wisely decided to re-issue Hero and the debut, A Storm To Come. Following is an interview with founder Stefan Schmidt, who took the time to discuss the band’s humble beginnings, offer some insight into what makes a capella metal work, and illustrate the proper use of the word “rakkatakka.”

“It’s too bad I’m not able to tell a significant story about how Van Canto got started,” says Schmidt. “It wasn’t like we were all sitting around one night and somebody stood up and said ‘Hey! Let’s start an a capella metal band!’ We started this as a project because I wanted to do something vocal-oriented after the split of my regular metal band, but I didn’t know it would turn out to be an a capella metal band. It was meant to be like a choir project with regular instruments, but as we moved on we noticed that it sounded interesting having all these voices together. It was something new, so we decided to give it a try. We never expected it to grow this fast, though.”
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Second-tier hair rockers Keel pretty much fizzled out after their self-titled fourth album from 1987, not even the sign-of-the-times high rotation ‘Somebody’s Waiting’ video and a Bon Jovi support tour able to muster a “Hell Yeah!” from folks outside the band’s loyal fanbase. Frontman Ron Keel and guitarist Marc Ferrari have been kicking around ever since, there have been understated returns to Keel territory (Larger Than Live in ’89 and and Keel VI in ‘98), but Streets Of Rock N’ Roll is the band’s first real noteworthy sign of life in over two decades. Playing on the fact the band struck their loudest chord with second album The Right To Rock, the new outing is dubbed a 25th Anniversary comeback but only hints at the old days beyond the classic line-up minus one. Diehard fans can forget hearing Ronnie’s trademark ‘Speed Demon’ howl, and all traces of reverb-pumped ‘You Think You’re Tough’-era Ratt metal have been traded in for a straightforward simmer-to-boil-and-back rawk direction. Not a bad thing if you’re willing to go in with an open mind.
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A close friend of mine recently suggested I check out a Canadian band he’d come across in his travels. We’re always sharing our musical discoveries, so I trusted his judgement when he pointed me in their direction. I wasn’t “Why-in-the-hell-aren’t-they-signed?” bowled over by what I heard, but they didn’t make me feel like I’d just wasted my time wading through the usual MySpace layout hiccups to get to the audio samples either. What really grabbed my attention, however, was the band’s biography. In a nutshell, if my presence on that page had been a scene in a splatter film I would have been ripped apart by a bag of exploding adjectives.

It was two or three paragraphs shovelling the required industry bullshit about how much the band rawked and smoked and was the best thing since ketchup-flavoured Crispers. The piece was loaded down with so many descriptives and flowery turns of phrase that it read like a car salesman’s Scrabble tournament. I couldn’t get through it without laughing. (continue reading…)

By Carl Begai

The name Sarah Jezebel Deva will forever be associated with Cradle Of Filth, but that hasn’t prevented her from striking out on her own. The first shot came in 2006 with the unfairly overlooked Angtoria debut, God Has A Plan For Us All, and following an extended silence that included her official – if downplayed – departure from the Filthdom she has returned with a full- fledged solo release, A Sign Of Sublime. It’s a move that caused a certain amount of confusion amongst her diehard fans when word first came down in early 2009 given Angtoria had really only just gotten off the ground, and convincingly so. Sarah remains unapologetic in the her decision, however, making it clear that it had nothing to do with wanting more of the spotlight. A Sign Of Sublime was created to fulfill her need to make music on her own terms. Angtoria, meanwhile, is alive and well, to be revisited when the time is right.

“A Sign Of Sublime has nothing to do with Angtoria, not a follow-up,” she says. “It’s just music. Just an album, be it good, bad or just OK, I love music and I love singing. Angtoria is still together, people are just busy building a life for themselves and family. When you’re struggling to pay your bills and support your family you must put everything else above music and that’s what people have had to do. So one day it will happen and we’ll get Angtoria back and push it further. As for ‘unfairly overlooked,’ well, you have to remember everything is about money. People won’t do things for free and it’s all about what’s in and what’s popular and will make them (the record labels) money. In the ‘80s it used to be about the music, about the metal. Now it’s about numbers and dollar signs. (continue reading…)

I love boobs.

Yes, it’s true. Like any healthy heterosexual male or a woman that loves women, I have a great respect for chesticles of the female variety. I consider Anvil’s anthem ‘Show Me Your Tits’ a classic and I’m always ready to sing along with and add to ‘99 Words For Boobs’, drunk or sober. I am also in total agreement with 3rd Rock From The Sun star Kristen Johnston’s assessment that they do in fact have more power when they collide.

This little tribute was brought on by something of a serious nature, however. A friend recently drew my attention to a couple clips on YouTube featuring Bif Naked performing a short live acoustic set (with Machine from Death Match Union and ex-Neurosonic frontman Jason Darr) at a breast cancer charity event in September 2008. It’s significant because Bif was undergoing treatment for breast cancer herself at the time. Watching those clips (see below) I was reminded of the interview I did with her back in May 2009 – after she’d been given a clean bill of health, knock on wood – and how forthcoming she was with the reality of going through chemotherapy and everything that went with it. She didn’t paint a pretty picture, and in the end my jaw was somewhere on the floor. I wouldn’t wish what she went through on my worst enemy.
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For the record, I was one of those people that bitched and screamed and wondered what the hell Blaze Bayley had done to my Iron Maiden when he stepped in to replace Bruce Dickinson in 1995. Never mind that Steve Harris had slammed head first into a writer’s block and couldn’t pen his way out of a paper bag at the time; as the new pipes in the Church Of Ed the unfortunate Bayley took the lion’s share of abuse for The X-Factor and Virtual XI. The fact he’d torn up some decent stretches of road in fine fashion with Wolfsbane prior to his tenure didn’t help matters. His firing from Maiden in ’98 was a blessing in more ways than one, however, because from my first time through his Blaze debut Silicon Messiah in 2000 Bayley came off as a talented, driven and even charismatic vocalist. The very last thing his detractors had expected. He’s held the course for the past decade, through five “solo” albums and a swamp of professional and personal issues, leading him to put out the finest work of his career thus far on Promise And Terror.
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As if in response to all the New Wave Of Wannabe Soilwork Death Metal bands that spent most of the last decade running amok, educated old school no-nonsense rock ‘n’ roll has resurfaced in recent years to an unexpected degree. Never mind the (warranted) Chickenfoot hype and the fact that Airbourne are allowed to exist in spite of being an illegitimate beer swilling bastard cousin of the AC/DC franchise right down to the Australian postal code. Quality acts The New Black, David Chastain’s Southern Gentlemen and new-era Sinner have earned themselves some well deserved mileage by keeping things simple, concerned far more with having fun with the music rather than bludgeoning folks into submission with their oh-so-righteous aggression. Add the bare-bones DareDevil Squadron to this growing list, an act that has learned their Thin Lizzy and Iron Maiden lessons well to the point that they see nothing whacked about combining the two. (continue reading…)