Happy Metal Boy

I remember Halestorm’s debut album making huge waves in 2009 (and the band being incessantly speculated as a 21st century incarnation of Joan Jett and the Blackhearts), and with a fiery classic hard rock/heavy metal single like “I Get Off” leading it, how could it not? After listening to the retro-indulgent debut album, however, and only hearing a few songs I thought were alright, I didn’t really pay much attention to Halestorm. None of the singles from their two albums following ever really rekindled my interest, and I very nearly passed this album and its singles up. But some spidey sense or something told me this one was going to be different, and really it’s not that different, it’s just better. While the band’s first album and the pieces I had heard from the previous two all kind of stuck to the fierce attitude of early metal and classic rock, the compositions and the kind of dated mid-2000′s production that the songs were processed through held so much of the band’s natura...

Prophets of Rage’s self-titled debut album, Ministry’s  AmeriKKKant , and now Otep’s  Kult 45  arrive kind of late to the social protest/anti-Trump concept album party. Just as Prophets of Rage and Ministry conjured up lazy and unoriginal criticism of the current presidential administration, Otep follows suit with pretty much exactly what I had expected and worried about coming from her after seeing the album title. While band leader Otep Shamaya has never been one to shy away from expressing her left-leaning political views and experiences as a lesbian in her music, she’s always been pretty inconsistent in doing so poetically without stumbling into the kind of try-hard edginess that unfortunately frames her equally, if not more, negatively than the many issues and people she attacks. Her reputation within the metal community precedes her, as well, and not necessarily for her music. Shamaya has found herself at the center of several controversies within the metal com...

The losing and replacing of bandmates is one of the less cherished realities of most bands, but it becomes far more than inconvenient and awkward when mired in alcoholism and violent behavior. And that is a major part of the context surrounding this album, as it is Skeletonwitch’s first with new vocalist Adam Clemens and first without original singer Chance Garnett (who helped start the band with his brother Nate) after a confusing and not very amicable split between the singer and his bandmates in early 2015. The three years since then have probably involved a lot of processing by Chance and the rest of Skeletonwitch, which I can’t say I’ve kept the closest eye on, and has now come to this:  Devouring Radiant Light . Skeletonwitch’s sound has always been a puzzling one to me, one I’ve tried so many times to grasp the appeal of, but after a delayed surprise adoration for Sleep’s  The Sciences  this year, I figured I had better take my time to try to figure out what the...

I suppose it’s kind of fitting that Daron Malakian has changed the name of his long-held-up side project to more accurately represent the focus on his vision being enacted on this project given that none of the members that performed on the band’s eponymous debut are part of Malakian’s current touring ensemble and that Malakian apparently performed all the instrumental parts of this album during its extremely short recording period in 2012. It was reported that this album contained material that was originally intended for a potential, long-awaited System of a Down album that seems less likely to happen soon if at all given the surfacing of yet another roadblock in the band’s creative process. Nevertheless, the material made its way here and of course provided some consolation-level hype for this album. I have always found Daron’s vocals to be a highlight of System of a Down’s music, and I always liked how much vocal interplay he and Serj Tankian integrated into their band’s music...

Getting to this album has been a challenge. Well, I should rephrase that, I’ve been listening to it a lot and taking breaks from it a lot ever since NPR streamed it the week before its release. Articulating my feelings about this album has been the challenge, and it was always going to be a challenge since even before it came out, not just because I have been a fan of Deafheaven since their groundbreaking 2013 release,  Sunbather , but because so many other publications seem to be fans of theirs as well.  Sunbather  was a completely unforeseen critical success, and from the moment the stone that begat the ripple hit the pond, nearly every publication discussing Deafheaven has seemed to want to lather them with highly spiritual praise. And the deviants from the critical flock have of course been no less restrained in their expression of disdain for the band, be it the childish black metal purist mentality Deafheaven subverts by mixing bright ambience with blast beats and ...