The Heart of Everything

How have I had this blog for a year and a half without reviewing anything by Within Temptation?

I first learned about Within Temptation from a Facebook ad recommending them based on my love for Nightwish. I've since learned to listen to those ads, because that one was dead-on. Fans of Nightwish's epic, symphonic bombast and "beauty and the beast" vocal approach will be delighted by this group from the Netherlands. Obviously there are differences between the two--Within Temptation doesn't use real orchestras as Nightwish is in the habit of doing, they are absent of folk music influences, and their sound is more gothic than Nightwish's power metal. If you're looking for epic, grandiose, and beautiful metal, Within Temptation (particularly this album) is a recommended first stop.

First track "The Howling" starts quietly, like a lovely flower opening up, until it EXPLODES with the sound of epic choirs laid on top of booming guitars. The chorus further adds Sharon den Adel's lovely vocals to the mix. There is an extended, orchestral, semi-ambient section in place of a solo. This song pretty much exemplifies the album and was a fine introduction to Within Temptation for me.

"What Have You Done" is a duet between den Adel and Life of Agony singer Keith Caputo, which turns out exceedingly well. Other album standouts would be "Our Solemn Hour", which has some of the best choral vocals of the album and samples from Winston Churchill, of all people; the title track, which combines the guitar riffing with majestic strings so well it sends chills down my spine; and epic "The Truth Beneath the Rose" (in the sense of being 7+ minutes long; every song on the album is already epic). The recurring instrumental section combines the usual choir and orchestra with deep operatic male vocals, which is simply pretty cool. I've also found "Hand of Sorrow" and "Final Destination" especially enjoyable.

In summary: The Heart of Everything is packed with beautiful, huge-sounding metal that you should probably listen to. Especially if you enjoy Nightwish.

Alcest

Oh my goodness this is even more beautiful. I think I have found a new genre of choice in this atmospheric post/black metal.

Falling Snow - Agalloch

Oh my goodness this is beautiful.

The Reckoning

Well, the new Needtobreathe album is out. Since I got really into them last Fall, I was extremely excited for it. I've listened through it five times so far and have enough of an informed opinion to write about it. So, how did they do?

What I really enjoyed about The Outsiders was the raw, earthy feel of the whole thing--the abundance of stomping, clapping, shouting, and banjo that gave it a down-to-earth quality not found in many other more polished, "ordinary" rock bands. The Reckoning sees them explore this familiar style further, with songs ranging from anthemic to intimate to downright funky. At every turn they prove themselves adept at their blend of electric and acoustic guitars, piano, banjo, organ, harmonica, mandolin, and of course Bear Rinehart's distinctive vocals. At the same time they expand their lyrical subject matter, though I'm not sure how necessary this was.

On the one hand The Reckoning has some of Needtobreathe's biggest songs yet. "Keep Your Eyes Open" layers electric guitar and bass riffing over a swirling piano melody, with the rest of the band adding to Bear's vocals for even more punch. The transition from the quiet bridge to the truly fist-pumping final chorus is almost hair-raising. But the third track "Drive All Night" outdoes even this. It has no relation to the Bruce Springsteen song of the same name, but seems more like The Boss' style than his own song. The entire band absolutely gives it their all on this song: the drums stomp and crash, the guitars evoke the beauty and power of classic rock, and Bear just sings his heart out, becoming increasingly impassioned as the song goes on. The soul this song has is absolutely amazing; it's definitely the standout of the album.

The drums on this album are more prominent and varied than on their previous ones, doing plenty of interesting stuff in the vein of "Through Smoke". The distant, booming drums on "The Reckoning" recall this; combined with the lyrics about "the middle of our reckoning time" and piano melody it's quite epic. The plodding rhythm, accented with cymbals, on "White Fences" works well with the beautiful-sounding guitar chords and piano. (Not sure how exactly it couldn't) The eccentric rhythm, minor-key guitars, and paranoid lyrics on "Maybe They're On To Us" sound like they could belong in a spy film. Steady bass stomping starts off "Slumber" and continues accompanied by a knotty acoustic guitar riff; in the end the song goes for grandeur as in "Keep Your Eyes Open".

As I mentioned above, the lyrics on The Reckoning are even more diverse than on The Outsiders. The band's Christian faith is even more under-the-surface this time, with the Biblical allusions and metaphors out of plain sight. Quite a few more lyrics about love this time around as well. They're certainly still good (lines like "Never run away a boy/When you can walk away a man" on "The Reckoning"), but overall I miss the themes of The Outsiders.

The Reckoning sees Needtobreathe go in all manner of new musical directions, many of them pleasant. Similarly they boldly explore new lyrical territory. Unfortunately their experimentation had mixed results, with some real standout tracks and some (in my oipnion) duds. Maybe I'm just spoiled after The Heat and The Outsiders, on which nearly every song was amazing and memorable, or maybe this one just needs more time (unintentional reference) to grow on me. The album is a big step forward for the band, but it's a shaky one and I feel like they've lost some of what made their previous albums so memorable. Let's hope it's not gone forever.

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".