Reviews

Record #777: Stryper – To Hell With the Devil (1986)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

To paraphrase Larry Norman, “Why should the Devil have all of the [heavy metal]?”

Thus is the guiding principle that founded Stryper, who were young Christian rock and roll fans who loved heavy music but hated all of the debauchery and occultism that pervaded much of the lyrics.

It’s certainly not a unique story (see also: Resurrection Band, Petra, Larry Norman again, the Christian music machine in general), but To Hell With the Devil is maybe the most emblematic distillation of the ethos of what Christian metal is. And it does so without compromising on either their Christian faith or their metal riffs.

It worked too: it went Platinum, spawned numerous hits on MTV, and remains one of the most important albums in the genre.

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Record #776: Chevelle – Wonder What’s Next (2002)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

One of the surest signs of maturity is allowing yourself to enjoy the music that you liked before you were “too cool” to know better. As I’ve been getting a bit older and realizing that life is too short to heed the jeers of elitist snobs, I’ve been revisiting a lot of the Edgy Teen™ music I loved as a fourteen-year-old.

While a lot of it has proven just as try-hard and toxic as I had dismissed it for being, one band has gained a whole new appreciation in my eyes. That band is Chevelle, whose ability to weave heavy riffs and sweet melodies raises them head and shoulders above their early-aughts alt-metal, radio rock peers.

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Record #775: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – B.R.M.C. (2001)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

The phrase “style over substance” is often thrown out as a pejorative—especially in music critique. But to use that phrase as an insult misses just how much weight style can carry when done right.

Take, for instance, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, shoegazer-garage rock revivalists whose appeal is often distilled with a simple, “they’re just so freaking cool.”

That isn’t to say that there’s no substance here—there’s plenty. But these songs wouldn’t be nearly as irresistible if they weren’t marinated in the Cool factor and slow-roasted over a fire of leather jackets and Wayfarer jackets for a full twenty-four hours.

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Record #774: Lantlôs – Agape (2011)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

The very first time I heard Melting Sun was a revelation. From the very first listen, it captured me in a way that very few records have. That record changed the way I thought about heaviness as a sonic element, especially as a guitarist.

When I went back to the albums before it, though, I found them to be abrasive and unappealing, traditional black metal that lacked any of the atmospheric and melodic sensibilities that drew me to Melting Sun in the first place.

But then I gave Agape a deeper listen. Much to my delight, everything I loved about the record that followed it is still here—just with some sharper edges.

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Record #773: Kyuss – Welcome to Sky Valley (1994)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

In the late 1980s, a young group of musicians in Palm Desert, California cut their teeth playing “generator parties.” Small crowds would gather in the desert with gasoline generators and copious amounts of beer and cannabis. And into these sparse, potsmoke filled wastelands, stonerrock pioneers Kyuss would play directly to the crowds, free of the politics of club owners and venue promoters.

Welcome to Sky Valley was recorded a long way from those desert fetes. It was released on a major label, for crying out loud. But three free-flowing, organic spirit of those early performances is imprinted directly into this album’s DNA.

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Record #772: Kowloon Walled City – Grievances (2015)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

There is a misconception I see sometimes that the better a song is, the more difficult it is to play. After all, anybody can write a simple song, but it takes someone with real talent to write something complicated. It takes real talent to play an intricate solo. It takes real talent to write a song with lots of different chords and multiple time changes.

However, there are numerous examples across the world of recorded music that disprove that theory. Bands like The Ramones or The Jesus and Mary Chain.

Add to that list Kowloon Walled City, a Oakland CA outfit that creates huge monoliths of sludge metal without much complication. While other bands might be tempted to speed these songs up or fill them with gratuitous guitar solos.

Kowloon Walled City resists these urges, trusting the strength of the crawling riffs and passionate songwriting to make Grievances a chilling statement—and rightly so.

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Record #771: Kellen – Lowercase God (2018)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

One of the things about having friends that run record labels is that sometimes, you’ll get curated bonuses thrown in with your orders. This is especially true of my friend Rob who runs Friend Club Records, who always includes trading cards of hockey players and handwritten notes with the cassettes I buy from him.

But sometimes, he’ll toss a record my way, which is how I was introduced to Kellen and their brilliant genre-bending EP Lowercase God.

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Record #770: Boston – Boston (1976)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

After decades of these songs being staples of classic rock stations and karaoke bars, it’s tempting to lump Boston in with the throngs of arena-ready, prog noodling bands often labelled (derisively) “Dad Rock.”

And yeah: your dad probably loves this album. But to dismiss it as dad rock is to miss the truth…

This is one of the greatest DIY records ever made.

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Record #769: Fiddlehead – Between the Richness (2021)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

In 2018, members of hardcore legends Have Heart and post-hardcore heroes Basement released Springtime and Blind, a stunningly tight and catchy piece of post hardcore that was as catchy as it was urgent. Despite its clear hardcore roots, there was a remarkable pop sensibility that injected each song with throat-shredding singalong passages, all wrapped up in a 25-minute package.

At the time, it seemed like a lightning-in-a-bottle record. The kind of record that was singularly excellent, even if you couldn’t quite describe why. And usually, these sorts of records prove incredibly difficult to follow up. After all, capturing lightning once is almost impossible. But twice?

Apparently it’s not that hard for Fiddlehead.

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Record #768: Elder – Lore (2015)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

I’ve been a huge fan of Massachusetts psych-metal outfit Elder from the moment I heard the opening chords of 2017’s Reflections of a Floating World. They combined elements of Black Sabbath’s lurching doom, Kyuss’ sprawling stoner rock, and Rush’s meandering prog in a brilliant package and wrapped it all in a coat of Can’s Krautrock psychedelia. I was powerless to resist it.

Since then, I’ve been searching for copies of their back catalog, and outside of a few high priced copies in Europe, the pickings were slim. But lucky for me, in early 2020, Elder repressed their entire back catalog with the intention of selling them on a world tour. Unlucky for them, that tour was canceled when the pandemic shut the world down. In either case, I have finally acquired their third full length, Lore, which found the band stretching more fully into prog and psychedelic elements. And to incredible success, I might add.

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