alternative metal

Record #980: Moodring – Stargazer (2022)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

We all knew the nu-metal revival was inevitable. As soon as I started seeing Gen Z wearing wide-legged pants with fishnet tops, I knew it was dangerously close.

But I didn’t expect that it would come out of the shoegaze scene—or that I would be so into it.

Not that it got its hooks in me right away. When I first listened to this record—recommended to me after I got into Blanket—I got to the second or third track before turning it off. But after Loathe, vein.fm, and Fleshwater softened my initial resistance, I gave Stargazer another listen. And this time, it got me, and it got me good.

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Record #978: Fleshwater – We’re Not Here to be Loved (2022)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Over the years, an awful lot of digital ink has been spilled debating the question of whether or not Deftones are numetal. For a while, it seemed that the consensus was “No, they’re not numetal because they are good.” However, since Covid broke, it seems that there has been a group of young bands offering a rebuttal: “Yes, Deftones is numetal, and that is what makes them good.”

One of these acts is Fleshwater, featuring three members of metalcore outfit vein.fm, themselves no strangers to numetal adjacency (their newest record even has a turntablist). And while their walls of fuzzy guitars and laid back vocals have definite influences in shoegaze and space rock, their riffs are rife with both the heaviness and grooviness that dominated the JNCOs clad sounds of the turn of the millennium.

And, uh, it kinda rules?

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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.

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Record #880: Blindside – Silence (2002)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 1 Comment

I’ll admit it right now—when Sweden’s Blindside first captured the attention of America’s disaffected youth (groups) with A Thought Crushed My Mind, I wasn’t that impressed. I had several friends who were absolutely obsessed (particularly with the manic refrain of “I’M A VAMPIRE!” from “King of the Closet”) but it didn’t do anything for me. Which is odd, considering that 1) they were the undisputed third member of a trinity that also included Project 86 and P.O.D.—two of the bands that got me to care about music in the first place—and 2) I most certainly wouldn’t have “known better.”

But a few years later, while watching the skateboarding film Grind, I was entranced by a band performing during a competition scene. I did some digging and realized that this was the same Blindside that did the goofy vampire song. Everything about it entranced me. I even asked my amateur stylist girlfriend for the lead singer’s haircut (we didn’t quite get it). I tracked down a copy of both Silence and the following album About a Burning Fire and wore them out. And I’m not afraid to confess that I rebought CD copies of each as recently as last year.

And I’ll further own up to the fact that I spent exactly zero seconds deliberating over this reissue—bizarre new cover art aside. And though I expected to enjoy “Pitiful” and a couple other tracks and cringe through the deep cuts, I found it far more consistent than I remembered it being.

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Record #877: Incubus – A Crow Left of the Murder (2004)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

I don’t remember the events that led to me acquiring this CD as a seventeen year old. I don’t know if there was a music video I saw or a friend who grabbed me by the lapels and forced me to listen to it. Maybe I just saw the psychedelic album art and a band name I recognized and bought it blind.

In either case, this album of mystical, vaguely funky alt-rock managed to capture my attention when I was up to my ears with bands like Thrice, Thursday, Sunny Day Real Estate, and Fugazi. And now, eighteen years later, it still holds up.

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Record #785: Lantlôs – Wildhund (2021)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Lantlôs is German for “homeless,” or “without homeland,” and that name is certainly apt. Throughout their career, chameleonic German metal band has been stretching the borders of heavy music, unconcerned with citizenship in any genre. Their earlier albums, such as .neon and Agape were indelible entries in the blackgaze canon, featuring Alcest’s Neige on vocals. 2014’s Melting Sun was a transcendent work that shed itself of any of heavy music’s trope to create an album that was blissful while still being entirely heavy.

Seven years later, Lantlôs returns with Wildhund (German for “Wild Dog”), an album that uses all the same sonic textures to create what is almost a pop record. And even with all the band names they’ve dropped in the press materials, Wildhund sounds as without peer or homeland as they ever have.

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Record #717: Deftones – Ohms (2020)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 1 Comment

It took me a while to get into the Deftones. The ebbs and flow of my opinion of them are well-documented on my social media: a few years ago, I took it upon myself to figure out how I felt about them once and for all, and dove headlong into their discography, taking detailed track by track notes of each album, which shift between aggressive alternative metal and dreamy shoegaze. Their discography sometimes feels like a fight between these extremes, heavy riffs sitting uneasily against the more billowing songs on the tracklist.

But here, Deftones frontman and admitted The Cure fanboy Chino Moreno opens the record singing, “I’ve finally achieved balance.” And then the band spends an entire album proving that they’ve one just that. Over thirty years into their career, Ohms might be the most cohesive and consistent record in their catalog.

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Record #565: Hopesfall – Arbiter (2018)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Despite my love of mid-2000s Christian post-hardcore (exhibit A, exhibit B, exhibit C…it goes on), I had somehow missed Hopesfall during their heyday. I remember hearing the name tossed around, but I always lumped them into the same pile of hyped bands that I didn’t have any interest in, like Haste the Day, As I Lay Dying, August Burns Red, etc. (someone is going to tell me I need to listen to them now, I can feel it).

So when a friend recommended their most recent release, I was expecting a warmed over Underoath clone (their place on the Equal Vision roster didn’t help).

I was absolutely not expecting the best mix of hardcore and space rock this side of Cave In.  Continue reading →