Reset & Homecoming: A Dissertation...sans Homecoming post facto

One of the games I like to play when I listen to music is what I fondly call the “Whoa, what the hell was that?! Lets rewind and re-listen to that 4-second passage about 79 times so I can figure out, or try to figure out, what exactly just happened that sounded so cool/unique/different/strange” game. No, I didn’t just make that up. Yes, I play it all too often. Sometimes I play it to the extent that I never actually make it through and entire song, I just hear it as a selection of 3 to 8 second clips that are constantly rewound and repeated. By the way, I live in hyperbole.

Regardless, I do love doing this when I listen to music. It’s a different level of music enjoyment for me. It makes songs seem like puzzles and gives me the opportunity to try and figure out what the band was intending by putting together different passages or recording techniques. So with this in mind, I’ll play this game out loud for your reading enjoyment.

I’ve been fixated recently on two songs that blend together on Misery Signals’ most recent disc “Controller”. The songs ‘Reset’ and ‘Homecoming’ provide a stunning eleven plus minutes of musical composition. Through the two songs, there is an incredible display not only of technical prowess and musicianship, but also of tasteful producing and engineering on the part of Devin Townsend who produced, mixed, and engineered this record. I could sit here and wax poetic about the band and the producer, but that would viciously side track me in a post that’s already going to be WAY too long. So all nonsensery aside, let’s begin:

Reset (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDWWIkfSCJQ)
(0:00) The intro guitar part starts out as a non-reverbed, non-delayed riff. This keeps the space of the song very close to the listener, which will be immediately contrasted when the song picks up.
(0:11) The second guitar, drums, and vocals crash in, the mix fills out with reverb, delay, and an increase in volume. The second guitar’s big open chords (that ascend in scale) combined with the effects on this guitar open up the mix and ramp up the momentum of the song. This is accentuated by the snare roll that starts as having an accent in it and ends as just a straight quarter note roll.
(0:23 – 0:33) Here the first guitar stops riffing and plays big ambient chords combined with little scales, pick slides, bent notes, and other general hints at shredology that open up the mix even more. All the craziness that happens in the guitars and drums allow the song to build and introduces the main verse.
(0:39 – 0:42 and 0:49 – 0:54) The breakdown sounding bit here (“Nothing is picture perfect”) has the kick drum accenting the rhythm of the guitars. This draws attention away from the more ambient guitar before and after this section and makes this part feel heavier because all five instruments (the two guitars, drums, bass, and vocal rhythm) all sync up with each other.
(0:58) Oh man this little lick is so sweet! Everything cuts out, this delayed guitar plays this very staccato line and then we’re hit in the face with a SUPER fast, double-kicked barrage of down picked, palm muted guitar. Its like the song goes from a jog to a sprint! I love this change. Best part is that it’s reprised later.
(1:00 – 1:20) The drums in this part help emphasize the “sprinting” nature of this passage. However, what’s interesting is how the cymbals he chooses to play on change the voice of the passage. The drummer, Branden, starts on the ride, a bigger, darker (lower pitched) cymbal. Then he moves up and wails relentlessly on a crash which is a thinner, smaller, brighter (higher pitched) cymbal. To me, the higher pitch makes the voice of the song sound a bit more frantic/urgent. Then it moves back to the ride which brings it back down and back up to the crash. All this moving around doesn’t really hold some crazy significance, but it provides a bit of change that makes this part more dynamic and more interesting to listen to…even if you don’t immediately pick up what it is you’re hearing.
(1:21 – 1:37) The verse repeats.
(1:37 – 1:59) The interlude here separates the first movement of the song from the second with an alternating brutally heavy section and an equally ambient, spacey section. The heavy section is a departure from any established melody and builds on the rhythm that we’re first introduced to at 0:39 – 0:42 and 0:49 – 0:54. What’s interesting is that the way the drums play behind the repeating guitar parts changes the accent, tempo, and even timing of this rhythm. It starts with the drummer playing on the toms accenting the 3/4 timing. At 1:48 though, the drummer switches to a reaaaaally slow 4/4 count that slows everything down.
(1:59 – 3:09) BAH!! The great reprisal!! This is where Devin Townsend as a producer shines! Try to listen closely from here to the end of this segment. These are all parts of the song we’ve already heard before, but everything’s been changed in some aspect. After the re-introduction with the intro riff, we’re hit with a subtle keyboard-chorus line. Normally this would sound cheesy if it were the primary focus. However, Devin mixes it way down and uses it to compliment the open chords the rhythm guitar plays. This as well as the delay/verb used on the lead guitar opens the space of this song WAAAAY up. Also the drumming changes up the rhythm by dropping down to the china and playing weird ghost-noted passages that almost sound like a slow shuffle. This creates a compLETEly different feel in this song. Also, at 2:28 the lead breaks from the riffing style of playing that lick to playing the chord that he’s creating the little arpeggio out of…another cool change.
(2:34) All the chaos that’s created with all the space, delay, riffing, shuffling, and chorus and all gets cleared when the vocals come in. It’s like the muddiness of the song settles out and we’re left with a wide expanse of clear sonic space. The drums fall down to a simple open 4/4 beat while the guitars play matching open monster-chords.
(2:45) The transition from the chaotic openness, to the clarity when the vocals come in is used as a template to juxtapose that awesome lick from back in 0:58. Except this time they beef up the delay (which you can hear not only repeating, but panning across from left to right and back again making the notes swirl around your head) and repeat it a second time in a higher harmony.
(2:47) Aaaaand again! More reprisal! This time with that rad super fast face-blast of double kick. All the space in the song almost loses the listener. Parts start literally blending together and the definition of the song gets lost as it all kinda planes out into a huge soundscape. This all gets put in perspective by reintroducing the brutality of this (and the following) hard hitting guitar parts.
(3:09 – 3:42) This part of the song always confused me. I can’t figure out why they use SUCH a different part here. I don’t think I’m out of line saying that this passage doesn’t sound like it belongs in this song. But then again, maybe it’s the uncomfortable feeling of this segment that allows for the part that follows it to feel as good as it does. Cool note about the blast beat section (blast beat: when the drums play a rhythm that is just eighth/sixteenth/quarter/whatever notes of the kick drum, snare, and hi-hat/cymbal all at once) though: at 3:19 there’s a section where the drummer is playing three different time signatures at the same time. His right hand on the china cymbal is playing in a half-time 2/4 beat, his left hand on the snare is playing around a 3/4 rhythm, while his feet on the kick are playing all sorts of weird accented notes in 4/4…I think. I haven’t been able to bend my brain around the time-space continuum quite enough to fully understand what he’s done here, but regardless, it’s something incredible.
(3:42 – end) Ugh…this is why I love this band and this producer. Seamlessly they translate from a hard hitting, brutal metal song into a beautiful, ambient, acoustic jam…and then back. Right after the abrasive, uncomfortable bit, the guitars space back out (as Devin ups the verb/delay/panning of the guitars) and at 3:58, the guitars start fading out, holding one note and letting it slooooowly die out. By 4:22 you can hear the last of the distortion give way as the drums lighten and start dinking around on the cymbals. Everything gets so delicate that you can hear such subtleties as how loosely the guitar player is holding his pick (loosely, you can hear it hitting each string on the acoustic louder than you can hear the note of the string) to even the kind of sticks the drummer is using (a hard-wood tipped stick…if it were nylon tipped the cymbals would be pinging a lot more and if it were softer there wouldn’t be as much attack from the stick tapping the cymbal). At 4:51 we’re introduced to another, honorary, member of the band, the guitar player and drummer’s (who are brothers) dad. The guy is a member of some symphony as a trained percussionist. So there a bunch of chimes, vibraphones, and bells and stuff that accent the guitars. This all adds a depth to the ambience that you normally wouldn’t find. Other cool things happening here…in list form:

-Drummer starts alternating crash cymbals which spreads out the sound of the drum-sound-space.
-Drummer is playing with the snare chains off the snare which makes it sound like a tight tom.
-There’re really faint synthesizers playing in the background which opens up the mix even more.
-The final chime at the end of the song is met with a brutal attack of distortion and drums and screaming as the song after this begins. An interesting juxtaposition.
-The guitars layer and layer until there are literally about 5 or 6 guitars playing on top of each other.

You know what, I’ve gone on long enough on this one song that to go into the intricacies of “Homecoming” would be ridiculous. But take a listen to it. Put yourself in the mindset of listening behind the obvious melodies and figure out what is happening and why. There are some REALLY interesting things going on in the soundspace that these guys have created. Maybe you’ll pick up on them. There’s a whole world that (some) bands create behind the caustic assault of screaming and distortion. It’s your job to find it and appreciate it when it’s there.

Misery Signals play rock shows.

The Metal Show!

Oh man. I almost don’t know where to start. Sunday night. Metal happened. And it was aaaaaaaawesome! The date: Sunday, April 26th, 2009. The venue: Chain Reaction in Anaheim, California. The bands: The Number 12 Looks Like You, Misery Signals, Protest the Hero. The redux...

The Number 12 Looks Like You: These guys…I don’t know. They make strange music. I can’t say I was much of a fan. Let me explain. The band was made up of your standard line-up of guitar, bass, drums, and a singer. They were all obviously ridiculously talented musicians. Their songs were unfathomably complicated in their structure, their time signatures, and their style. The musicians displayed a pretty gnarly ability to not only keep the complexity of the songs straight in their heads but also showed an intense technical prowess over their respective instruments. What I didn’t like, quite plainly, was the music. It was like a weird mix of The Fall of Troy and The Dillinger Escape Plan. It was that same style of jazz influenced spazz-core type music. On top of the fact that the crowd largely wasn’t having it, the music was just hard to follow and generally unappealing. I appreciate the fact that this is an incredibly difficult style to play in, but honestly, no one can really play Dillinger type music better than Dillinger. And it should probably stay that way because unless you can dominate that style as it doesn’t lend itself well to an unfamiliar ear.

Misery Signals: Oh god. This was the show for me. It’s almost difficult for me to articulate everything I think and feel about this band. But for you…I will try. There’s a level of musicianship that these guys bring to the table, the metal table, which is not only unbelievable, but unparalleled. Their live act included all the positive and fun energy that I love in a metal performance combined with an extreme attention to musical detail. The front man of the band, Karl, has one of the more powerful styles of screaming/yelling/growling that I’ve heard. It’s deep, guttural, and through an appropriate PA, bowel buzzing…almost brown note status. So this combined with the way he jumps around on stage makes the guy larger than life. Every part of his appearance, his energy, and his voice commands the audience, which is exactly the job of a front man in a band. The guitar/bass players are ridiculous. Given that their song writing ability is just supidawesome, their ability to recreate the parts live was spectacular. I’ll give one example that pretty much speaks to their ability and detail-orientation through the entire set. There’s a part of one song (“Failsafe”) where Karl is screaming some line and there’s a sung background line behind him. It’s one of those long “ooo” kinda lines. However, in a live setting, it’s really hard to project and sustain a really long “ooo” on pitch. What usually happens is that either the guy singing will just cut it short, or he’ll force it out and it’ll sound all waver-y and bad, or the band will just play along with a backing track that has all the really pretty, studio edited “ooo”s and stuff...but that’s a cheap shot. When this line came up, while playing, one guitar player started singing the “ooo” and halfway through, when his voice started running out of steam, he would slowly back away from the mic while the other guitar player started HIS “ooo” and moved closer to his mic. So the effect was actually that the “ooo” not only stayed in key and on pitch, but panned across the stage as it faded from left to right. This kind of ability and awareness is NOT something you see all the time…especially in as raucous a genre as metal is. To cap it off, all the ambient parts that set their music worlds (literally…worlds) apart from other metal bands translated PERFECTLY on stage! It totally floored me. I was literally standing to the side with my jaw in my hands, keeping my chin off the floor while swaying back and forth to the awesomeness. I was definitely NOT expecting them to play or even pull off this ambiance. The highlight of their set was the equally brutal, spacey, complex, and ambient song Reset. Seamlessly this song fluctuates between a brutal, facial assault of metal and an ambient, bluesy , prog-rock anthem complete with chimes, acoustic guitars (clean-electric guitars live), and synthesizers. And they pulled it off beautifully. Literally…goosebumps just writing about it. I was talking to a friend of mine earlier in the week about this exact song and about how they’d pull it off live. My answer was that they’d probably play with a backing track or just not play the song at all. I have never been so glad to be so wrong. I’m not even going to talk about the drummer. The guy is unreal and deserving of a Wlfbkr posting in his own right. So I’ll save that for another time. All in all, this band is everything I could want in a metal band and they do it with equal amounts humility, grace, and metal-brutality. I can’t wait until I get to see Misery Signals again.

Protest the Hero: They are by FAR the beardiest band out of Canada. Sure Chris Steele in Alexisonfire has (or had) a pretty epic beard for a while, but no band I’ve seen can hold a candle to the face-pubes on these kids. Rody, singer, had probably one of the most disgusting neck-beards I’ve ever seen. The guy is cursed with the inability to grow facial hair much above his jaw line, but can grow a veritable forest below it. Gross. The other beards are pretty beardy and in the words of my brother, the Cowardly Lion (of Wizard of Oz fame) plays stage left guitar. Literally. So apparently in his time since the release of Wizard of Oz, Cowardly Lion not only found his courage, but also learned to SHRED…and moved to Canada. There was one moment of surreality (that should really be a word, I don’t care what spell check says) where I was watching the guitar players and their hands almost transformed into centipede’s legs. It’s ridiculous watching their fingers move. It’s beyond my comprehension how someone can make their brain work in time with their hands to consistently turn out a desired sweep or what have you. If I were to do that it’d probably sound like someone stringing up a gagged cat. In short (because I’ve gone on WAAAAY too long) these guys were equally as nuts as I was expecting. They played everything to damn near flawlessness and melted all the little hardcore kids’ faces RIGHT off. Being the greedy music aficionado I am, I can’t WAIT for their next record. What these guys have done with shredology is at the limit of my comprehension of what can be done with a guitar. So naturally, I want to see them go beyond that…even though they pretty much just put out Fortress, their last release. I want more. And I want it yesterday.

There’s one last thing I wanted to make note of… On a very superficial level, Misery Signals and Protest the Hero look like they belong together on stage as autonomous groups. Karl’s onstage activity (Misery Signals) looks like it was comfortable as he’s in a t-shirt and basketball shorts. The other guys in the band are wearing whatever jeans and t-shirts that suited them. They looked comfortable and looked like they belong on stage together. The same went for the Protest the Hero guys. There was no pretension in that they didn’t look like they needed to dress a certain way or project themselves to fall into a pre-fabricated style. The only reason I mention this is because the band before them, The #12 blah-blah-blah, had an awkward onstage “look” that only added to the awkwardness of their set. The singer was all emo’d out with his perfectly side-swept, straightened hair, his deep v-neck shirt, and his open vest. The guitar player looked like he was pulled out of a Hugo Boss casual-wear ad with some sort of light blue polo and slacks or something. The bass player was in normal jeans and a t-shirt and the drummer was metaled out with a sleeveless shirt and everything. I only bring this up because there’s something to be said about looking like you belong together on stage. It adds to the cohesiveness of a band. The four dudes in #12 didn’t look like they’d be hanging out outside of the band. The 5 in Protest and the 5 in Misery Signals look like they ran in the same crowd…which in turn makes them look more comfortable on stage and more comfortable with each other.

The Protest the Hero Cowardly Lion

Karl of Misery Signals commands the crowd. Epic. Word.

Cell phone picture = indisputable proof I was there. Fact.

I'm Back On The Wagon

Dear trusty reader(s?),

I fell off the wagon this past week. But it was with just cause. It was my birthday. I was...busy. But all is not for naught. I've come up with the following thing for your amusement:

Protest the Hero...and Misery Signals...are going on tour...together!

Yesssssss. If you've read at least any two of the last ?? posts I've posted (note the blatant refusal to use the word "blog") you've noticed my over exuberance regarding nearly ANYthing regarding either of these two bands. They. Are. Awesome! So so awesome. If there were a song written ABOUT these two bands, it'd be titled "Awesome" and would sound totally awesome.

So that being said, I recommend anybody reading this run to your local myspace page for either of these two bands (www.myspace.com/protestthehero or www.myspace.com/miserysignals) and find the nearest town on their tour schedule and go to that show. I know they're playing April 23rd at Slims in San Francisco, the 24th at the Knitting Factory in LA, 25th at Soma in San Diego, and the 26th at Chain Reaction in Anaheim. I can't wait. Neither can you. I'm pretty confident in saying that on your behalf trusty reader(s?).

That's all for now. More next week, and I promise not to disappoint.

Awesomest & Opposite of Awesomest of 2008

I may be a little late to the list-party, but I wanted to add my two cents before it's obnoxiously too late. There was a good amount of music released in 2008 and some of them were diamonds in the rough while others were unanimous turds...epic failures if you will. So I'm sitting at my desk surrounded by literal stacks of CDs and have sorted through them to pull out the ones from 08 and after spending TENS of minutes digging through liner notes looking for copyright/release dates I've come to the following conclusion:

2007 was way better.

2007 saw the release of some of my favorite CDs. Poison the Well released Versions which proved to be, in my own humble opinion, one of the most progressive records to hit the "hardcore" scene since its inception. There was also Silent Treatment by The Bled, a monument to hardcore that only The Bled can create. Wolfbiker by Evergreen Terrace...don't have to say anything more about that one... The newest edition of the Adam D wave of face-bashing-metal, Horizons by Parkway Drive which in my brother's words, "sounds just like everything else, and I love it." Ire Works by The Dillinger Escape plan came out too. You have to have a beautiful mind to understand that one, but once you figure it out, it's like the first time you taste Mexican food. Man...who else had outstanding records come out...Foo Fighters, August Burns Red, Underminded, Darkest Hour, As I Lay Dying, Every Time I Die.

Welp, no use dwelling on the past. On to 2008...which has also come to pass...

So even though 07 seemed to be more consistently good, there were a few CLUTCH records from this past year. In no order with the exception of numero uno, my top five for 2008 are (band - record title - song of note):

The Bronx - The Bronx (III) - "Knifeman" - This cd, well, this band, is a bit of a throwback to days of a simpler format of music. 2 distorted guitars, 1 bass with some fuzz, drums, and a spastic frontman-singer. I'll be posting something about these guys in the coming months...but long story short, they are some rock and damn roll! It's hard not to want to sing along with these songs. It's eerie how familiar these songs sound without ever having heard them before. www.myspace.com/thebronx

Shai Hulud - Misanthropy Pure - "Chorus of the Dissimilar" - On their first release after signing to Metal Blade (a significant metal indie label), Shai Hulud proved to be quite the little quartet of mathematicians. This CD is just stupidly complex, fast, intense, and heavy. I pretty much laughed my way through the first five tracks because it was like getting sucker-punched by Popeye. It kinda hurts at first, but then you realize how funny his squinty little eyes and corncob pipe are. The tone of the record is pretty nuts too. The drums are VERY up front as the rhythm drives much of their music. Whatever mix of amps they used for the guitars gave the sweetest, cleanest sounding distortion...if that makes sense...the note definition is not lost to distortion. This allows the mathiness of the songs to come out. Plus they have three guys named Matt in their band and that's just plain silly. www.myspace.com/profoundhatred

Bleeding Through - Declaration - "Declaration" - Hell ya Devin Townshend! Definitely a post on this genius coming up in the very near future. He's the mad scientist who produced/engineered/mixed this disk. Unbelievable. Bleeding Through is kind of a typical angry sounding metal band, but their keyboardist, Marta, really stepped it up on this record. She doesn't necessarily piano-shred so much as the compose the various orchestra, choir, and scary-noise parts...they added a rad dimension to this CD that set it apart from a lot of the other releases in this genre. www.myspace.com/bleedingthrough

Protest the Hero - Fortress - "Sequoia Throne" - The sophomore release for these Canadians turns my mind inside out. Apparently, if you're snowed in for like, 7 months of the year, and all you do is sit around and play guitar, play dungeons and dragons, and roll around in free healthcare this is what happens. Their bass player makes 4-finger-bass-tapping look stupidly easy (it's not), their guitar players' fingers move faster than I can think, and how their drummer keeps their mathed-out structure straight blows my mind. Then there's Rody, their singer...he's...well, Canadian. It's really worth listening to...I have trouble putting into words the things these guys do with their instruments... www.myspace.com/protestthehero

AAAAnd number one of 2008 would have to go to Misery Signals - Controller - "Parallels" - First, the tone. The guitars are equally crunchy and delicate. They're right in your face and ambient at the same time. It's a damn anomaly. The drums have the perfect amount of attack and resonance. The cymbals are glassy but not washed out and the room sound fills out the mix. Misery Signals combine heaviness with an ambient/spacey element that separates them from everyone else. Just past a minute into "Parallels" the song contrasts the heaviness by breaking into an acoustic passage that seamlessly blends right back into the forcefulness that began the song. Beyond being able to switch between these polar sounds, they blend the two. Controller is an incredible record that sounds like it was made just for me...sigh…they understand me. www.myspace.com/miserysignals

So that’s that. Although I’ve gotta give an honorable mention to Chromeo for Fancy Footwork. Buy this CD…now...and start a dance revolution.

Oh ya…and Guns’n’Roses new CD is terrible.