Reviews

Record #932: Black Sabbath – Heaven and Hell (1980)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 1 Comment

There’s no question that Black Sabbath is one of the most important metal bands—nay, bands, period—in the history of recorded music. But for most fans, that legacy comes with a few asterisks.

The first six records are universally regarded as essential and indelible classics. After that, it gets a little fuzzy. Between the unmoored experimentation of the late Ozzy era to the frequent lineup changes in the decades to follow, later Sabbath is a bit like panning a spent river for gold.

However, there is one bright and shining nugget of an exception in the throng of so-so releases: Heaven and Hell, the first record to feature new vocalist Ronnie James Dio. His arrival brought an irrefutable shot of energy to the legendary metal outfit, bringing their best record since Sabotage.

But there’s a pretty big problem with this record: it just doesn’t sound like Black Sabbath.

Continue reading →

Record #931: Lesser Care – Underneath, Beside Me (2022)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

It doesn’t seem like post-punk and hardcore would have much to do with one another. Besides both being offshoots of punk, they went in very different directions. Post-punk took a more cerebral approach to punk’s minimalism, while hardcore turned up the volume and the violence. To anthropomorphize them a bit, if you took them to a party, post-punk would spend the night leaning against the wall and silently people-watching while hardcore would be drunkenly rough-housing.

But despite the disparate gaps in personality and ethos, there is a common ground to be found. Take for instance El Paso newcomers Lesser Care, whose debut combines the insular, brooding aloofness of post-punk with a pent-up aggression that is palpably a few moments away from bursting.

Continue reading →

Record #930: Boris & Uniform – Bright New Disease (2023)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

You never know what you’re going to get with Boris. While they have a few go-to tendencies—such as their propensities toward drone, noise, and doom, they stray far and often from these touchstones.

And so, even as much as I love Boris, I really shouldn’t blind-buy any of their albums. Especially collaborative albums. Especially collaborative albums with bands I don’t know.

Still, while Bright New Disease sounds almost nothing like what I was expecting it to, there is a feral energy here that is as compelling as it is abrasive.

Continue reading →

Record #929: MØL – Diorama (2021)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

I’m not sure exactly who it was that drew such rigid lines around metal. While pioneers like Sabbath and Maiden were wide open to other influences, somewhere along the lines, metal shored itself up and went to war with other music. It’s not just softer styles either—metal fans and hardcore fans often come to blows with one another. Even subgenres within metal itself have split into warring factions.

But there is a growing movement in heavy music in the last decade or so to lay down the purity tests and elitism and infuse a wider range of influences into their work. One of the most exciting acts in this realm that I’ve discovered is the Danish quintet MØL. While they might lazily be tossed under the blackgaze umbrella for lack of better categorization, there’s a lot more going on here than Alcest worship.

Continue reading →

Record #928: Amulets – Blooming (2021)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Ambient music isn’t typically noted for being accessible. The sheer textures and static atmospheres often eschew the most basic elements of melody and rhythm in favor of defiant non-movement. Notes are stretched to infinity, filling a room with sound like a beam of light shining through a window. It is often, by very nature, devoid of emotional resonance or what the common man might consider musicality.

And by reading the descriptions of Amulets’ 2021 record Blooming, you might expect the same thing. There’s a lot of talk about manipulated art installations and endless sound scapes, tape loops manipulated and  magnifying the imperfections of the technology.

But while Blooming is certainly a patient and cerebral bit of ambient music, there is a deep emotional core that gives these eight tracks more weight than your typical ambient fair.

Continue reading →

Record #927: The Get Up Kids – Eudora (2001)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

I’ve previously said that I wasn’t a huge Get Up Kids fan as a teenager. There was a single reason for that: nothing could top my entry to the band, which was this, the Eudora compilation, which I bought specifically the track “Central Standard Time,” which is a top ten emo song, and spun on repeat for months at a time. As great as their studio albums were, nothing else grabbed my attention like this compilation.

As for why I hadn’t purchased this record until this week though, I can’t tell you that.

Continue reading →

Record #926: The Anniversary – Designing A Nervous Breakdown (2000)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 1 Comment

They say hindsight is 20/20, but I’m not sure that’s the case. The lens of nostalgia often glazes over details with a broad brush, homogenizing the intricate diversity of moments in time into a monotone.

Take, for instance, the second wave of emo. While revisionist history might paint a scene of twinkly guitars and angular drumming (thanks, American Football), the view from the ground was far different. Emo was not nearly as much a matter of a sound as it was an ethos.

One of the best examples of emo’s diversity is The Anniversary. While emo was undoubtedly rooted in punk and hardcore, their debut record Designing A Nervous Breakdown borrows much of its palette from decidedly non-punk sources, offering up a heaping helping of hooks, harmonies, and synthesizers. While it doesn’t sound like what anyone might think of when they imagine emo, it remains one of the most well-loved emo records of the era.

Continue reading →

Record #925: …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead – Source Tags & Codes (2002)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

In the summer of 2005, my high school band played a show in a dude’s parents’ garage (that dude is now a member of the excellent band JAGALCHI). In between bands, a song was playing that gave the same sort of frantic post-hardcore as At the Drive-In. I was transfixed and asked what it was. The answer was a band called …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead. A couple years later, I stumbled upon their album Source Tages & Codes in the used CD section of my local record store. I bought it without hesitation.

But as I listened to it, I found it a bit too scattered to get my head around it. There were moments of the chaotic bliss that grabbed my attention, but they were brief and rare among a bevy of anthemic emo songs, theatrical prog, and, to my dismay (then) power pop songs.

With the space of two decades between my first impression and finding it for free on The Sound of Vinyl’s Father’s Day sale, I’ve realized that what I initially saw as scatterbrained is actually sprawling, offering a snapshot of the early 2000s alt scene that includes bits of every subgenre’s tendencies.

Continue reading →

Record #924: Black Sabbath – Black Sabbath (1970)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

There is perhaps no more unlikely group to change the course of music than Black Sabbath. Originally called the Pulka Tulk Blues Band, and later Earth, the working class quartet from Birmingham cut their teeth playing in blues clubs with a sound not unlike the blues rock of Cream.

But somewhere between forming and recording their first album, a series of events caused them to morph into one of the most ferocious and influential bands of all time. And while Black Sabbath still retains a lot of their blues jam tendencies, the nucleus of their legendary career—and heavy metal as a whole—is impossible to miss.

Continue reading →

Record #923: Blanket – Modern Escapism (2021)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Kids today don’t appreciate how good they’ve got it. Back in my day (groans), it would take hours to download a single song, so you would have to carefully weigh what you were interested in hearing so you could make the most of your download time. If you just discovered a new emo band, you would typically spend your precious time downloading other emo bands, only rarely straying beyond that.

Now, thanks to streaming platforms and high speed internet speeds, you can jump from Sunny Day Real Estate to My Bloody Valentine to Slayer to Body Count to 100 Gecs instantly. The floodgates are open.

One of the most interesting byproducts of this unfettered access to the whole of recorded music is the widespread cross-pollination of scenes and genres. I’ve been around long enough to see how shoegaze, metal, and hardcore have interbred to create heavier shoegaze (or gazier metal?).

I listen to a lot of that sort of stuff, so it takes a bit for me to be impressed anymore. And “impressed” is a weak word for my reaction to Blanket, whose second LP Modern Escapism recently grabbed me by the lapels and demanded my attention.

Continue reading →