Carl Begai

Quite possibly the ultimate hit and miss band, My Ruin have been slugging it out for over a decade, gaining a small but loyal following while leaving most of the distortion-loving masses scratching their heads over who and what My Ruin is all about. The former can be blamed on crap international distribution, the latter on the band’s stunning penchant for crossing between the old school and nu-skool without breaking a sweat. Ghosts And Good Stories – My Ruin’s sixth official full length album – is their strongest outing since A Prayer Under Pressure Of Violent Anguish from 2000, with vocalist / wordsmith Tairrie B. and guitarist-turned-multi-intrumentalist Mick Murphy having locked into and refined a definitive sound. The record is bookended by two shots of doom, ‘Diggin’ For Ghosts’ and ‘Deathknell’, contrasting Tairrie’s now-trademark spoken word elegance against a Black Sabbath-painted canvas. Second tune in, ‘Long Dark Night’, sets a death punk tone for the album that persists even when the songs drop to a half speed groove, and regardless of tempo Ms. B’s performance is always in your face. Her full-on screech was second to none before Pro-Tools screwed up the industry, and her performance on Ghosts And Good Stories (‘Excommunicated’, ‘Suicide Tuesday’, ‘Abusing The Muse’) serves notice to lovelies like Maria Brink (In This Moment) and Candace Kucsulain (Walls Of Jericho) that delivery is everything. And in this case, brutally effective. (continue reading…)

Bummer. The screech is back.

Call that a knee-jerk reaction to lead-off track ‘The Gun Show’, which features the lovely Maria Brink back to the banshee razorblade wail she made her trademark on In This Moment’s debut; something she all but abandoned on follow-up The Dream in favour of a gorgeous clean voice. Kind of off-putting actually, coming off as a painfully desperate one-dimensional stab at making it up to the fans who bitched about her missing edge last time out. Aggression for aggression’s sake. As the album progresses, however, things open up and it comes clear that In This Moment are far from stupid and their well of creativity is a long way from running dry. A Star-Crossed Wasteland is the next logical step in the band’s career – diehard followers should have seen this coming – taking elements from the first two records and bringing them together for a sonic orgy of epic proportions. Brink’s clean voice is unique, captivating and rich regardless of whether she’s belting out ‘A Star-Crossed Wasteland’, the choruses of ‘Standing Alone’ and ‘Just Drive’, or doing up closing ballad ‘World In Flames’. She’s also finds some remarkable middle-ground between clean and over-the-top screaming – and there’s loads of the latter all over the record – on ‘Blazin”, a track that sounds like it was yanked from Ozzy’s recording sessions for Scream. Added to all this are occasional male vocals (‘Iron Army’, ‘The Promise’) that work well alongside Brink, never coming off as Rogers / Parton cheesy or a cheap feminized twist on Soilwork. Neat trick, hinting at what Lacuna Coil with an identity crisis might sound like.
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It seems that not even death is capable of slowing Loudness down. King Of Pain marks the band’s second album since the passing of original drummer Munetaka Higuchi in November 2008 – a victim of liver cancer – their first with new man Masayuki “Ampan” Suzuki behind the kit. It’s a fitting tribute to Higuchi’s characteristic push (according to frontman Minoru Niihara) to make things louder and heavier with every new record. Having regained their footing since previous outing The Everlasting – a cold album overall featuring songs pieced together using archive Higuchi recordings – Loudness unleash a surprising ‘80s flavoured rip and tear on King Of Pain. It’s not the step back into the realms of nostalgia so many fans are clamouring for but it definitely pays tribute to the past here and there, making it the band’s strongest album since the 2001 reunion record, Spiritual Canoe. Lead-off track ‘The King Of Pain, ‘Power Of Death’ and ‘Rule The World’ feature classic ‘80s Akira Takasaki riffs and tones alongside Niihara’s much improved and grittier vocals, the first song swiping a page from the band’s Shadows Of War / Lightning Strikes era, the others a tip of the hat to Loudness staples ‘Crazy Doctor’ and ‘Esper’. (continue reading…)

An undeniably unique killing machine in the world of metal, Nevermore were on a collision course with themselves since the birth of The Politics Of Ecstasy back in 1996. Always a little bit heavier and touch more progressive with each album that followed, the band went over-the-top in 2006 with This Godless Endeavour, an album so overpowering in spots it was a chore trying to keep up with the wash of sound. That said, just how well The Obsidian Conspiracy fares depends on whether the diehards that claim heavier is always better can get past the fact the band has gone back to writing songs circa Dead Heart In A Dead World and the Politics record. Yes indeed, Nevermore have actually eased up on the group bludgeoning to allow their individual and collective performances shine rather than overwhelm people with the cold hard fact they do mayhem better than most chaos-buzzed black metal bands. (continue reading…)

By Carl Begai

Meguro Live Station, Tokyo – March 26th, 2010

As first impressions go bassist Taiji Sawada and his new band, Taiji With Heaven’s, made it clear with their live debut that they mean business. Dubbed The Birthday Eve – with a tip of the hat to Loudness – what could have come off as a desperate attempt to cash in on Sawada’s past turned out to be an intimate introduction to a band with the ability to dominate on the merit of its own work.

On the strength of their self-titled debut EP and the expectation of a surprise or two based on Sawada’s 25 year career – his past with X, Loudness, D.T.R. and Cloud Nine offering a wealth of extras to choose from – Taiji With Heaven’s played host to a full house of only 250 diehard fans. I would have hedged bets on a larger venue given Sawada rose to fame with X back in the ‘80s – a band that racked up album sales of over 20 million – and remains a revered musician in Japan, but this new outing has been very low key from the outset. The show, on the other hand, was anything but quiet… (continue reading…)

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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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…)

It’s probably considered bad form to use the term “wow” to describe a what is essentially a doom metal album but… well… wow. Not since Theatre Tragedy’s first two albums – which aren’t nearly as gothic as folks like to think – has a gloom laden record dug its hooks in this deep and dragged me in so completely. A lush and epic soundtrack to personal demise, Woods 4 features frontman / founder David Gold twisting things in unexpected fashion, having exchanged the black metal-inspired vibe of Woods III: Deepest Roots And Darkest Blues for a oft-times slower, brazenly progressive and ultimately heavier album. Very Devin Townsend of him in fact, as Gold continues his own tradition of not playing to expectation. Lines can be drawn to Candlemass and Solitude Aeturnus in particular, and the Theatre Of Tragedy comparison holds merit in that one doesn’t have to be a fan of the deep and dark to get into Woods IV. The band has concocted a record that blurs the “doom” line without disrespecting the required genre dynamics as outlined by the purists. Some will bitch of course, but I’m currently looking into patenting can-openers for the mind.
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As I Lay Dying girlie man Tim Lambesis’ shred-happy Ode To Arnold continues, picking up where Austrian Death Machine’s 2007 debut Total Brutal left off. More of the same out-of-control Suicidal Tendencies mile-a-minute Slipknot skate punk glorifying Mr. Schwarzenegger’s cinematic career, all tied together by grin-worthy between-song banter provided by Josh Robert Thompson. Call it the thrash version of a Conan O’Brien skit gone mad guaranteed to muscle the funnybone of anyone with a background in Arnie, bottom line being you can’t in all fairness carve on something done in the interest of having a bit of fun with the noise. And Lambesis is having a riot. Lead track ‘I Need Your Boots, Your Clothes, And Your Motorcycle’ is one of the ADM’s strongest songs to date, showing off his head for dynamics within the mayhem (he writes, sings and plays almost everything except for the solos), something that has been improved upon since the debut. ‘Who Told You You Could Eat My Cookies?’ sits at the other end of the spectrum, all piss and vinegar and Machine Head-ness. Fave tracks of the moment, however, are the Pumping Iron tribute ‘It’s Simple, If It Jiggles It’s Fat’, the Mr. Freeze-inspired ‘Allow Me To Break The Ice’, and ‘Conan, What Is Best In Life?’, which closes the first disc with the finesse of a truck kissing a brick wall.
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