Carl Begai

By Carl Begai

Music journalists / writers are often pegged within the industry as frustrated musicians that didn’t have the chops or couldn’t take the heat. Not entirely accurate, but you need only to glance through a malicious self-serving review or half-hearted article to find the guilty-as-charged. Author / journalist Joel Gausten is far from being one of the disenchanted, boasting instead a successful catalogue of books and a long and colourful music career that shows signs of picking up even more steam. To date he has written books on Black Sabbath, Prong, Killing Joke, The Undead and The Misfits, and a tome on Satanism. His punk / metal credits include an extended stint with The Undead, The Misfits, Pigface, Electric Frankenstein, and a work-in-progress under the name Effectionhate. In all, an impressive little empire that shows every sign of continued growth, largely because the brain behind it is bolted in place and his vision is crystal clear.

“I’ve always been very, very interested in writing,” Gausten says, beginning a two part interview on his escapades. “It’s something I’ve always loved and it really started for me in grade school. As a young kid I has some speech problems, so I always found it more effective to write in terms of plain old communication. I guess it was about Grade 5 where I really started to discover music, and I was into what I guess you could call the popular hard rock music of the day. Gun N’ Roses was just starting to get noticed, stuff like that, so I actually published my own ‘zine (laughs). It didn’t really have anything in it; it was just regurgitating stuff from real magazines, and I sold it in my school through the student council and raised 13 bucks at a quarter each (laughs). That’s when I realized ‘Hmm, there might be something to this.’ That was my first big success.”
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When TMZ.com and their tabloid ilk first ran “stories” on Bennifer I quite honestly had no idea what they were talking about. It took a few revolutions of my brain to realize they were referring to Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez in the happy throes of their eventually doomed relationship.

Neat play on words, I thought. It works. The end.

Not.

The mental midgets who feed the tabloid media don’t know when to quit, of course, and will flog a horse until its bones have been reduced to powder. Thus they gave us K-Fed, J-Lo, and the infamous Brangelina, thinking they were oh-so-innovative and cute in giving the world a blanket term for Hollywood’s most popular power couple, dumbing down anyone who dared come near a celebretard “news” report. But, whatever, let ‘em have their fun. It’s not like the morons who use their magic Scrabble boards to come up with this shit are doing me any real harm.

Until now.
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By Carl Begai

Dubai-based death metal bashers Nervecell are all about crushing stereotypes. Their agenda is entirely musical in nature and not at all politically or culturally motivated, contrary to what the mainstream media would have you believe about everything and everyone coming out of the Middle East. The whole “Nice guys finish last” adage has likewise been squashed, as the humble and soft spoken quartet – when they’re off stage, at any rate – have spent the summer and will be closing out 2009 as the first Middle Eastern metal band ever to tour through Europe. It’s a journey Nervecell earned with all-important European one-off festival shows in 2007 and 2008 and their Preaching Venom album, having made enough of an impression to warrant more dates, bigger crowds, and a growing fanbase. At press time the band was gearing up for an appearance at the prestigious Wacken Open Air in Germany, considered to be the metal equivalent of a “Yes We Can” banner. The world being what it is, however, it’s fair to say that Nervecell’s origins make them a something of a novelty on the European scene, resulting in a great deal of dubious curiosity and head-scratching prior to the inevitable full blown acceptance.
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By Carl Begai

News that guitarist / vocalist Chris Caffery had signed with AFM Records for the European release of his new album, House Of Insanity, came as no surprise to the diehard fans. With his Savatage bandmates in Circle II Circle and Jon Oliva’s Pain having called the German record label home for the last several years it was considered a move long overdue. So it goes that while the focus is on House Of Insanity as far as Caffery and the label are concerned, Savatage fans clamouring for a reunion believe his signing with AFM is another step towards that goal. And while Caffery has gone on record saying he’d take part in a Savatage reunion without hesitation, his primary goal is to remind people he has his shit together as a solo artist. By all accounts the fans are enjoying what they hear. Reactions to House Of Insanity since its 2008 digital release have been positive for the most part, which has added up to bigger sales in comparison to Caffery’s last outing, Pins And Needles. He isn’t rolling in money (yet), but pushing the album more or less on his own has definitely paid off.
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Oy!

Just a quick heads up to keep your weekend more interesting.

For starters, I have an EX DEO story up on a brand new metal site called Metallus Maximus. In case you’ve been living under a rock, EX DEO is a concept-based project kicked-off by KATAKLYSM frontman Maurizio Iacono based on the Roman Empire. The debut album, Romulus, has been getting rave reviews across the board, this site included (check out my review here). My interview with Iacono is worth the read, if I do say so myself Click here to check it out.
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You Know You Have Too Many CDs When:

— they outnumber your woman’s shoe collection 8 to 1.

— you’re able to lean comfortably on the pile stacked beside the CD player with your shoulder and it remains upright.

— they are found in every room of the house including the bathroom.

— you don’t think twice about using them for scraping the remnants of dinner off your plate and into the garbage.

— you’ve discovered they can be used to ensure maximum and uniform coverage of peanut butter on toast. The only problem is getting the peanut butter out of the jar, although the inlay cards seemed to have solved the problem quite nicely.
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A couple weeks ago I was trolling YouTube in search of pre-work amusement and stumbled upon Daughtry’s acoustic rendition of Lady Gaga’s ‘Poker Face’. While on the page – realizing that a good song is a good song in spite of my disdain for most things techno – I spotted a thumbnail claiming “Lady Gaga Performs Live In The Studio.” Having already seen footage of Ms. Bad Hair Month Germanotta doing up ‘Poker Face’ live on piano in classic Tori Amos fashion I was intrigued. Alas, it was the original techno version performed in some dinky European morning show studio that probably doubles as a dentist’s office after 9:00am, but she did indeed pull it off live and proved she has the chops.

I scrolled through the comments on the page, knowing full well the keyboard warriors lurking about flaming one another are always good for a laugh. I came upon an entry that read as follows:

“When she’s (performing) live I hate her voice! It’s just not what I’m used to when I listen to her songs on the radio.”
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I’ve been planning to do a Retro Fit of Transcendence for quite some time, as it’s easily in my Top 5 Metal Albums You Need To Own Or Get Out Of My Yard chart, but with the tragic death of frontman Midnight (real name John Patrick McDonald Jr.) on July 8th , 2009 it’s become a tribute to greatness. This would still read as a gushing letter of fanboyship if Midnight was with us, though, because Transcendence was an album that took everything I thought I knew about guitar / vocal / prog shred at the time and twisted it sideways. The band wasn’t being overly experimental or increasingly off-the-wall compared to their self-titled debut from ’86; there was just more of everything. Big, open air production (it could have done with more bottom-end, but them’s small potatoes), twin guitar leads for miles backed by insane shred-ability that never fell into the future Dream Theater trap of being too damn technically proficient for its own good, ballsy and unique song arrangements, and a vocal performance that remains unmatched within the genre. (continue reading…)

By Carl Begai

As first albums go The Agonist’s 2007 debut, Once Only Imagined, was a decent start. In spite of the unfortunate title – it’s memorable for the fact you can’t say it even one time fast – and a bumpy track sequence, the album put the band in people’s faces by yielding the brash single and video ‘Business Suits And Combat Boots’ and enabling them to jump on several different North American support tours. Of particular interest was frontwoman Alissa White-Gluz, both for her Gossow-meets-Scabbia vocal acrobatics and her looks, to a point where the music and the guys behind it were often reduced to an afterthought by the press. As if to call these people out The Agonist’s new album, Lullabies For The Dormant Mind, is everything a sophomore record should be, expanding on the ideas and performances put down on the debut in ways nobody could have imagined. This includes the band who, according to Alissa in a 2008 interview with BW&BK, weren’t sure of the direction their second album would take, with guitarist Danny Marino wanting to go down a more melodic avenue with his playing while she was determined to make things heavier. Turns out they both got their wish, although the record does favour Alissa’s frame of mind
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By Carl Begai

When it comes to music guitarist Jed Simon doesn’t do things quietly. From his early days with Armoros and Caustic Thought to a crushing decade in Strapping Young Lad and his continued work with Zimmers Hole, Simon’s life has been about being louder than everyone else. The mission continues in 2009 with the birth of Tenet, a solo project bubbling beneath the surface for the past 13 years that mutated into a band of familiar faces with an agenda based on grab-you-by-the-face brutality. Teaming up with ex-Forbidden guitarist Glen Alvelais, re-uniting once again with Zimmers Hole / ex-SYL mates Gene Hoglan (drums) and Byron Stroud (bass), Simon has unleashed a full scale old school thrash album entitled Sovereign that recalls the days when aggression wasn’t disposable paint-by-numbers kid stuff. It is the real deal, based on roots and feel rather than example. Tenet is not the answer to whatever gaping hole that may have been left in Simon’s life with the demise of Strapping Young Lad. It’s his next logical step as a musician who lives his metal rather than merely playing it.
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