A Thousand Suns

A quick disclaimer: if you were to ask me what kind of music I enjoy, my canned answer would be "good music". That is, music I enjoy. I no longer purposely avoid music just because it happens to be popular, but I tend to have more luck finding good music I enjoy outside the mainstream. Whether a band is trying to be indie or "selling out" for mainstream popularity isn't a sure indicator of quality--there are plenty of genuinely brilliant bands that are rightly popular, probably even more junky bands that no one has heard of, or should. I'm not worried about listening to the "right" music, but only music that is true and enjoyable.

That said, I have become obsessed with Linkin Park this summer.

Linkin Park's refusal to let their "popular" sound define them has won them my respect. Their first two albums Hybrid Theory and Meteora were pretty standard "rap metal", hugely popular. Minutes to Midnight was even more radio-friendly alternative rock. And I do enjoy all these albums. But in my opinion their latest effort, A Thousand Suns, tops them all. It combines the rap, metal, and alternative influences of their other albums with (at times) ambient music, dance pop, reggae, and honest-to-goodness progressive rock to produce an album as artistically brilliant as it is enjoyable. It's supposedly a concept album, addressing themes like class struggle, social issues, and nuclear weapons.

The first two songs are both basically an extended introduction. "The Requiem" packs on ambient keyboards and strings, with GLaDOS (actually Mike Shinoda's voice pitch-corrected beyond all recognition) singing part of the second-to-last song, "The Catalyst". "The Radiance" has more ominous sound effects and features a sample of J. Robert Oppenheimer's famous "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds" quote.

Then we get into the first full track, "Burning in the Skies", which despite the title is an exceptionally mellow alternative rock song. It's a bit monotonous, but beautiful with great lyrics. Cool, audible bass during the verses, and great contrast in Chester Bennington's vocals between the verses and chorus. "Empty Spaces" is largely ambient filler with another quick sample (Francisco Franco? I'm not sure) that segues right into "When They Come for Me". It's one of the two fully rap songs on the album, built around a "one-two" beat that eventually gives way to a more ambient section dominated by the vocals. Very cool; I got into this song long before I enjoyed Linkin Park in general.

"Robot Boy" starts with a dramatic piano riff, which continues throughout much of the song. It's definitely one of the more "proggy" songs, very spacey with a keyboard section towards the end. Very interesting work unlike anything on Linkin Park's previous albums. "Jornada del Muerto" is largely just an extended outro to it. Then possibly my favorite song of the album, "Waiting for the End", which wears its reggae influences on its sleeve. It alternates between rapped and sung vocals until the last minute or so, which is just incredible. The first three minutes of the song all seem to overlap and become asymptotically better for it. Glorious.

And then right from reggae to dance pop. At least, that's what "Blackout" is until you get to the screams and crazy record-scratching/skipping. It's the sound of a band trying to alienate all its listeners at once and failing miserably. After the song finishes remixing itself, it mellows out to more poppy singing, which is still quite good.

"Wretches and Kings", a straight-up rap song, begins and ends with samples of Mario Savio's "Bodies upon the gears speech". Pretty cool, though I more prefer LP's rap when it's mixed with several other things. "Wisdom, Justice, and Love",another transition track, samples Martin Luther King Jr., eventually repeating the same line with increasing amounts of distortion until it sounds demonic. Yikes. "Iridescent" is definitely the most radio-friendly track of the album, singing about hope in the midst of the chaos the other songs bring up.

The last ambient track, "Fallout", repeats the chorus of "Burning in the Skies"--a counterpart to the flashforward in "The Requiem". "The Catalyst" would be a majestic album closer if it were the last track, bringing together musical elements of previous songs with multiple layered electronic beats, keyboard ambiance, screeching guitars, and both vocalists singing in unison. Quite epic indeed. Rather than end the album there, though, it continues into "The Messenger", with an acoustic guitar as the only instrumentation to accompany the anguished vocals. Very personal-sounding, stripped-back, and quite unlike the rest of the album, which makes it stand out more--combined with the title, maybe the repeated lyrics "When life leaves us blind/Love keeps us kind" is meant to be the moral.

A Thousand Suns is a huge leap forward for Linkin Park, reestablishing them as a genuinely artistic band deserving of their popularity. I can't think of another album with as much variance in style between songs--Pain of Salvation mainly only changes styles between albums. The full-length songs are pretty much all memorable and enjoyable, particularly because of how varied they are. Though good, the shorter, ambient/sampled tracks kind of come off as filler, and I wish there were a few more full songs instead.

The SCHOBS Scale

Today our worship pastor preached a fantastic sermon on worship and music and such. Once the link is up I highly recommend listening if you missed it. Anyway, it got me thinking about music; evaluating the lyrical content for truth. Also on the musical style, which, he was sure to emphasize, doesn't matter in worship music. Uh...I'm going to skip a few steps here and say that this led to me coming up with a scale for quickly, fairly completely describe the general style of a song, album, or artist. With my brilliant talent for coming up with acronyms, I call it the SCHOBS scale, and it looks like this:

I tried to find attributes that add up to provide a general, complete picture of musical style. I also tried to ensure that they were independent, i.e. none are correlated or interrelated.

Size: How "big" or bombastic does a song feel? Is it sparse and intimate or booming and epic? Symphonic elements, choirs (particularly chanting in other languages), lots of instruments, and reverb effects increase this score.
Complexity: In a nutshell, how intellectually challenging/stimulating/progressive a song is. Does it stay well within the mainstream songwriting conventions of its genre, or does it buck trends or have an intricate, well-thought-out structure?
Heaviness: In essence, how rough, heavy, or distorted a song is. In rock music, soft acoustic or piano rock falls on one of the end of the spectrum, extreme death metal/grindcore on the other. I'm not sure if this transfers to all non-rock genres.
Organicity: How "natural" or earthy does the song sound? Simplistic mixing techniques, acoustic/folk instrumentation, and unaltered singing increase this score, electronic effects, keyboards, or altered vocals decrease it.
Beauty: This one is pretty self-explanatory. Mainstream songs usually have plenty of this, but they don't have a monopoly on it.
Speed: Also self-explanatory. Is it a crawling ballad or a furious speed metal song with double-bass sixteenth notes?

Just to emphasize, none of these attributes are "good" or "bad", they are only descriptive. There are songs I highly enjoy that fall all over the map in all of them. I've realized most of my reviews simply describe the musical content of the songs; I think this scale will help save me some repetitive descriptive words and focus on why I really enjoy the music I listen to.

Two Tragedy Poets

Elvenking is an Italian folk-metal band that never takes itself too seriously. They combine epic metal action with all manner of delightful folk-inspired melodies and instrumentation. Compared to the better-known Korpiklaani, they're less metallic and their youthful-sounding vocalist Damnagoras (they all go by mononyms) couldn't be more differerant than the gruff Jonne Järvelä. But anyway, Elvenking is a gilded, magically-locked treasure barrel full of fun and I haven't been able to stop listening to their 2008 album Two Tragedy Poets...And a Caravan of Weird Figures lately.

It seems to be a "thing" among folk metal bands to do an acoustic album to let their folk influences shine. Finntroll and Eluveitie have also made "unplugged" albums, but neither is nearly as memorable as Two Tragedy Poets. Despite being acoustic, this album manages to be fiery, lively, and generally a good time, proving that Elvenking has nothing to hide behind its metallic sound.

"The Caravan of Weird Figures" is the first of two shorter, more ambient tracks that I wish had been full-length. With its swirling drums and rousing shouts, I can picture it being the vehicle that transports you to the wonderful world of folklore, spellcraft, and really cool-looking trees that Elvenking lives in. Then "Another Awful Hobs Tale" comes on and it's folk rock at its finest. True, there is an electric guitar, but unlike in their other albums (and certainly their last one, The Scythe) the focus is elsewhere. Everything has the raw, garage-band feel--the drums rock out without relying on excessive bass pedaling, and the violin and acoustic guitars carry the melody. Meanwhile the lyrics are all about the search for a four-leaf clover. Delightful.

"From Blood to Stone" is another strong folk-rock tune. Somewhat quieter, it showcases Damnas' vocal range and still packs in a rousing chorus. Despite its lack of distortion, it rocks plenty hard, making it an example of what I would call "acoustic metal". "Ask a Silly Question" pushes even the acoustic guitars to the background and is a delightful blend of string and woodwind sounds. The lyrics, about playing Pass the Pigs and being a smart aleck, are some of my favorites.

Then "She Lives at Dawn" is an amazing, ambient piano break from the livelier songs. Would possibly be the standout track of the album if it were full-length. The band follows this up with two covers, the first one of...well, themselves: the title track of their 2006 album The Winter Wake. It definitely benefits from the acoustic treatment, as well as better production and a cool spoken-word intro. The electric guitar solo is, of course, replaced by a violin solo. Next Elvenking covers "Heaven is a Place on Earth" by Belinda Carlisle, former singer of The Go-Gos. As cross-genre covers go, it ranks somewhere in awesomeness between a melodic death metal cover of "Everything Counts" and the symphonic metal cover of "Don't Stop Believin'". The Allmusic review mentions this cover gives the song the Bon Jovi treatment, and now I can't stop hearing similarities between it and "Livin' on a Prayer".

"My Own Spider's Web" and "The Blackest of My Hearts" are both slower songs with even more focus on folk instrumentation. "My Own Spider's Web" is just beautiful, and "The Blackest of My Hearts" is built around a pounding drum loop with plenty of strings layered on top. Meanwhile between them is "Not My Own Final Song", a song about rocking out at your own funeral and possibly the most energetic on the album. Capping the album off are "The Wanderer", another acoustic cover of The Winter Wake, and the upbeat "Miss Conception".

Two Tragedy Poets manages to be an absolutely beautiful treat for the ears while remaining a lot of fun to listen to and never taking itself too seriously. The livelier, rocking songs and slower soundscapes provide a nice contrast that make this album the perfect break from Elvenking's more metallic body of work, if not a standalone reason to check them out. Everyone: do yourself a favor and look into it. If you need more proof, test-drive "From Blood to Stone", "Ask a Silly Question" or "My Own Spider's Web".

The Unseen Empire

Scar Symmetry may not have helped invent the "Gothenburg sound" of death metal, but they've done more to refine and reinvent it than possibly any other band. They're one of those bands that take just about everything I like in metal (melodeath metal, power metal, and progressive metal in this case) and throw it in a blender. For five albums they have somehow managed to combine technically ridiculous guitar riffs and rhythms, almost pop-level melodies, and plenty of brutality. Similarly contrasting is their brilliant blend of clean vocals and death grunts, formerly both done by Christian Älvestam, a vocalist so talented it took two people to replace him. It's far from seamless--the craziness and dissonance are part of their souund--but it works, gloriously.

The Unseen Empire is their latest release from earlier this year. I've been enjoying it just about nonstop ever since. I'm told it's a concept album about reptilian overlords taking over the world, which is pretty much standard Scar Symmetry fare. This album really takes all the disparate elements of Scar Symmetry's sound--their melody, their crazy brutality, and their technicality, to further extremes.

Nowhere is this better seen than in the second track "Illuminoid Dream Sequence" (by the way, Scar Symmetry has possibly the best song titles I've ever seen). Starting off with a slightly industrial synth intro, the drums and guitar both slowly build an atmosphere of tension. This is quickly exploded by the highly melodic chorus riff, which almost sounds like random notes being played, only they fit together perfectly. If that's not progressive metal, I don't know what is. The band's two vocalists trade off, with Lars Palmqvist singing a narrative in the verses and Roberth Karlsson doing the voices of the demonic forces in the dream. The bridge of the song features some of the band's most ridiculous shredding ever, making the subsequent solo seem tame by comparison. Overall it's one of my favorite secular songs ever--probably top 5. Highly worth checking out even if you pass up the rest of the album.

But this would be a grave mistake, because then you'll be unprepared for the takeover of our reptilian overlords! But seriously, the rest of the album is generally cool as well. It's hard to make sweeping statements about the album beyond what I've already done, so I'll just mention some standout tracks. The third track "Extinction Mantra" slows down somewhat, with the guitar still managing to do plenty of acrobatics over the plodding drum beat. The highlight of the song is the distinctive start-stop chorus riff, which almost simulates the track skipping. "Seers of the Eschaton", on the other hand, is fast and brutal, with the rhythm of the guitar chugging and blindingly fast double-bass drumming clashing most interestingly. "Astronomicon" (which I swear didn't directly influence the naming of my game) is another standout that showcases SS's ability to blend all the elements of their style together. Great, precise riffing, melodic/brutal vocal contrasts, and an extremely impressive solo.

Overall, The Unseen Empire is a solid release by a solid band that easily meets the high bar set by their earlier albums while being more accessible. Highly recommend this album first if you're new to Scar Symmetry, and definitely if you're into technical bands like Periphery, Meshuggah, or Into Eternity, or just Swedish melodic death metal.

Until We Have Faces

No, sorry, I'm not writing about the book. (Wrong blog anyway) Time for a review of an album that came out early this year and has really been growing on me lately.

I often mention RED in the same sentence as Skillet and Thousand-Foot Krutch. Like their better-known contemporaries, they play a brand of "Christian metal" with excellent songwriting and generic-enough lyrics to appeal to secular audiences. They distinguish themselves with their blend of symphonic-tinged alternative metal and their vocalist's blend of sung and screamed (largely sung) vocals.

The musical and lyrical approaches of "Until We Have Faces" go hand in hand. "Feed the Machine" opens  the album with a heavily distorted, dissonant guitar riff, creating a harsh, dystopian atmosphere that is nonetheless entertaining in its deliberate ugliness. The largely distorted or screamed vocals emphasize the often draining, demanding, and futile nature of modern life. And this is a Christian album?

Next, "Faceless" addresses the loss of our true identity in Christ if we fall away from Him. Despite the overall Christian perspective of the song, I think everyone can identify with the tension in lines like "I'm not myself, feel like I'm someone else/Walled-in and faceless, so hollow inside". This tension builds on the dark world laid out in the opening track. Musically it's less nightmarish than "Feed the Machine", but still excellent aggressive, melodic alternative metal on par with anything secular bands are producing.

"Lie to Me (Denial)" deals with regret for past ways of life and the aftereffects of lies and betrayal, either from ourselves or others. Musically it's one of the better tracks, with a great, heavily symphonic chorus that exemplifies RED's current style. "Let It Burn" is somewhat slower and mellower musically, and sounds like an agonized plea to a God you want to believe is there. "Buried Beneath" turns up the volume again, and continues building the tension off the previous tracks. The lyrics deal with life crisis, breaking down, and building life on a faulty foundation.

After the anguished darkness laid out in the first five songs, the symphonic ballad "Not Alone" bursts onto the scene with the answer, a reassurance from God that "I am with you, I will carry you through it all". The beauty and positivity of the song couldn't contrast more sharply with what came just before. The first step of convincing anyone of the truth of the gospel is convincing them that sin really is a problem, and a similar setup approach is seen in this album.

And then we're right back to the dark songs. "Watch You Crawl" is sung from the perspective of none other than the devil himself, a gleeful taunt on his power to destroy us. If the whole album was inspired by the similarly-named work of C.S. Lewis, this song could have been inspired by The Screwtape Letters. "The Outside" is a response to this threat, rebuking lies we allow to drag us down. The relentless guitars and driving tempo of the song parallel the fury of our struggle with sin.

"Who We Are" is the kind of upbeat, fist-pumping ballad that would make Thousand-Foot Krutch jealous they didn't think of it. "Best Is Yet to Come", another softer song, is even more hopeful, expressing a deep hope in a glorious future that can only be explained by the concept of eternal life. This song has really been giving me hope lately. Finally, the quiet piano ballad "Hymn for the Missing" seems a bit out of place, ending the album on an uncertain note of loss, possibly of a relationship.

"Until We Have Faces" has a sharp dichotomy running through it. The first half is about the darkness, futility, and ultimately despair of life (or lifelessness) in a fallen world. The second offers a positive alternative: a relationship with Jesus Christ, which, while not without its own challenges, ultimately offers hope and an eternal promise. But this album is much more than just a gospel pitch. Songs like "Feed the Machine", "Lie to Me", and "The Outside" are excellent modern metal and deserve a listen whatever you think of the lyrics. I highly recommend this album to anyone who enjoys metal of all kinds.

We Rule the Night

I'm being terribly unjust reviewing this album. Sonic Syndicate started off as a fine melodic death metal band; Eden Fire was a very impressive and solid release from the Swedish youngsters, a modern example of the Gothenburg sound. Only Inhuman and Love and Other Disasters were less outstanding, but still passable. We Rule the Night really doesn't qualify as MDM and is a huge departure from their previous sound, with considerably more clean vocals, less heavy/furious songs, and super melodic guitars and keyboards. In short, the band sold out. However, this album is enjoyable/memorable in its own awful way as well as hilarious, so here goes.

The secret to enjoying We Rule the Night is to go into it with no expectations. Don't expect the next Eden Fire. Don't expect a Sonic Syndicate album. Don't even expect a metal album. If anything, expect a pop album with some occasional heavy guitars. Gone are the furious, churning melodeath riffs and prominent death screams of their older work. Clean vocals dominate most of the album, with harsh vocals mixed somewhere between just behind them ("Plans are for People", "Burn This City") to barely audible ("Mile Apart", "Black and Blue") and usually echo the clean vocals or are unintelligible. Similarly the heavy guitars are usually mixed pretty far down. What is left is effectively alternative metal with a heavy dose of programmed drum beats and synth melodies.

"Beauty and the Freak" pretty well sets up expectations for the album, starting with an electronic beat mixed far above the guitars. The harsh vocals are quiet and pretty much just repeat the clean vocals. But hey, it's catchy! "Revolution, Baby" is largely in the same vein. "Turn It Up" goes even farther and is effectively dance music with some heavy guitar and screams. The honest-to-goodness ballad "My Own Life" entirely drops both these elements and wholeheartedly embraces radio-friendly, album-oriented rock. It's hard to believe it's by the same group that just five years ago brought such intense, brutal melodic death metal as Misanthropic Coil to the table.

There are a few nods to their old style, though. "Burn This City" has some screams and heavy guitars in the verse, though the chorus is right back to their poppy clean vocal fare. The album closing title track has some of the best (i.e. loudest) guitar mixing in the album and is genuinely decent. "Break of Day" is the only song I would classify as truly being MDM, and only barely; the chorus is still all clean vocals, but the harsh elements are actually mixed at a good level.

Overall, this album has been a guilty pleasure of mine and a humorous interlude from real music. I really hope Sonic Syndicate comes to their senses for their next album, though, maybe applying some of this synth action to their old Eden Fire-era fury.

Once

At least until their next album/movie comes out next year, Nightwish is slightly in danger of being a one-album band to me. (Which makes it all the more impressive that they're my fifth-favorite band) But their penultimate album, Once, is impressive in its own right; it just has the misfortune of being vastly overshadowed by its successor. Musically, it's the previous step in Nightwish's gradual transition from their earlier folky style to their current theatrical bombast. Also of note, it's their last album to feature their beloved original vocalist Tarja Turunen, and a fine job she does.

Like Dark Passion Play, Once was recorded with the assistance of a full orchestra. The opening track "Dark Chest of Wonders" is possibly the quintessential Nightwish song, with roughly an even mix of pounding metal aggression and symphonic flourishes. Far from the best song on the album, but it showcases their distinctive style quite well. The rest of the album has the band drifting all over the metal/symphonic spectrum--there are some slower-paced orchestral songs, and some truly metal ones. The single track "Nemo" is a good example of this, kind of the spiritual predecessor to "Amaranth". "The Siren" has a middle-eastern sound remeniscent of "Sahara" (I'll try to stop comparing the album to Dark Passion Play now) and "Higher Than Hope" is a slow, majestic finish to the album. "Kuolema Tekee Taiteilijan" ("Death Make An Artist") is both entirely orchestral, with no metal instrumentation, and sung entirely in Finnish, both fine in my book. The epic "Creek Mary's Blood" is pretty neat, contrasting quieter parts with loud, mostly instrumental sections and cool tribal chanting. The song ends with Native American musician John Two-Hawks reading a poem in Lakota; very cool indeed.

The album has fewer really metallic tracks, but they are generally good. "Planet Hell" starts off with a choir chant and string intro that builds tension that is promptly annihilated by the heavily distorted main guitar riff exploding onto the scene. It is an example of the "beauty and the beast" style of metal in two ways: Tarja's singing versus Marco's snarling, and the melody of the orchestra and keyboard versus the ultra-heavy guitar. "Dead Gardens" is similarly heavy and riff-based, but it loses points from me for its outro. Okay, playing the same three-note riff for the last 50 seconds and then ending abruptly a la Dream Theater is interesting musically, but it sounds kind of annoying, at least to me. "Romanticide" touches on a bit of alternative metal in its outro. "Wish I Had An Angel" is heavier, but also takes some cues from industrial/electronic dance music, a bit like "Bye Bye Beautiful" (sorry). Like "Planet Hell", it also features Marco's half-screaming, half-singing prominently, of which I heartily approve.

And finally, "Ghost Love Score", which like "The Poet and the Pendulum" deserves its own paragraph. The epic choir at full blast joins the orchestra for an intro that already sounds like the climax of many an epic fantasy tale. Things get even better when the band joins in, before transitioning to a quiet verse of Tarja's ethereal vocals. Then the chorus, sung by the choir and recalling epic soundtracks like "Duel of the Fates" and "Neodämmerung" from The Matrix in its bombast. After a few verse-chorus repetitions, a lesser song might call it quits. But no, not "Ghost Love Score". It transitions to a quieter, slow midsection with a nice, leisurely guitar solo, which fades out as the orchestra takes over. It slowly builds in intensity before the rest of the band comes back for several of the most epic minutes in music, period. If it were the soundtrack to a movie, it would have to feature Gandalf and Darth Vader as super saiyans, dueling for the fate of the universe on the crow's nest of the Black Pearl during a curse-powered storm for the fate of the universe as the sun expands and threatens to engulf the earth, all in the fourth level of an Inception-style dream. Since no movie nearly this awesome exists, this video comes closest to properly accompanying it. Finally, the epic chorus just repeats until the song fades out around the ten-minute mark. Now that is real music.

If you haven't heard Nightwish before, listen to Dark Passion Play. Now. If you like the sound of Nightwish (reborn or otherwise), Once should certainly be your next stop in their catalogue. Get excited for Imaginarium next year!