It's A Hard Knock Life

It’s hard being a super mega nerdo fanboy these days. This is a rough life I lead. Burdened with the responsibilities and expectations placed on me by my friends, my family, myself, and my adoring throng of loyal readers…all like, 8 of you. I struggle through each day scouring the interwebs, the airwaves, and magazine stands pulling tidbits and factoids, soaking up information and knowledge like a leathery old broad who against all better judgment STILL sits out at the beach in the sun reading grocery store rags yelling at kids who kick sand on her towel all the while leering at the lifeguard who has no choice but to watch all the idiots in the water who think that since they’ve got a boogie board they’re impervious to the powers of the ocean. What are they thinking? Do they know how big the ocean is? Do they understand the force they’re dancing the dance of fate with? A sharkbiker could totally annihilate one of these kids should it be in the area and have the taste for flesh. Not that the life guard could really do anything about it. Sharkbikers are WAY more adept in water. It’s like they’ve lived there for thousands of generations! I mean, if a shark was on land and tried to start it with me, I’d TOTALLY be able to punch it right in its sharkface and run away cuz what chance does it have on land? None. We dominate the land. But I digress…

What do I do with this information I’ve gleaned? I digest. I analyze. I blatantly make stuff up and speak with conviction and surefootedness (Holy crap that’s a word? If spell check doesn’t pick it up that means it’s a word right?) in hopes that nobody questions the ridiculous claims I make.

So with this in mind, I’ve been doing my due diligence and do a pretty above average job at keeping all the inter-pages in my recent history, perusing the music magazine aisle at the book store, and keeping my ear to the ground for any tremor yet unheard. And what ho?! What’s this I hear?! The dawn of the new season! You’re damn right! New music season!

Let’s be honest, there’s no season for this, but somehow bands seem to put music out all at the same time…I think it has something to do with the average half life of Matthewkatzium…it’s the 111th element. No need to look it up. It’s fact. Either way, plastered all over MySpace, PureVolume, ReverbNation and all the respective record label websites (victoryrecords.com, ferretstyle.com, roadrunnerrecords.com, etc etc) are album presales! Woo!

For any music idiot super fan boy/girl, this is the golden harvest. What’s this? The CD I could buy in the stores for $10? Except that now, for the added cost of $9.99 (plus shipping and handling of course) I could have the VERY same CD but with an exclusive t-shirt?! A t-shirt that no one else will have unless they too feverishly refreshed their myspace page too? I. Must. Have. This. Immediately.

We fan-people don’t deal in dollars and cents. We deal in “making-of DVDs” (in one of Killswitch Engage’s presale offer packages), “limited edition t-shirts” (Poison the Well’s presale goodie), “signed screen printed posters” (as featured in Darkest Hour’s presale), “limited edition packaging” (one of the better gimmicks…same cd…different box), “exclusive 7 inch record complete with never before heard b-side recording and alternate version of a song already on the record” (unnecessarily part of August Burns Red’s presale bundle), and the ever popular bonus tracks as featured in pretty much EVERY pre-sale come-on ever.

Do I resist? Never. Do I nerd out about every single piece of paraphernalia? Absolutely 100% yes every time. Will I ever stop? Signs point to no.

This is one of the August Burns Red pre-order packages. I hate them for making me choose between the bundle with the t-shirt + poster and the one with the 7" vinyl. Decision: pending.

Wars and Rumors of Wars

Every so often an album is dropped on the unsuspecting public that rattles the very foundation of what the masses know and don’t know about music. Genre-bending, mind-expanding, and soul-clattering, these albums go down in the annals of history as pieces of musiclature (non-political science majors can make up authoritative sounding words too) that are timeless in their own right. The album “Wars and Rumors of Wars” by the Chariot…is not one of these records.

The Chariot, formed by the original singer of Norma Jean, a mainstay of the Christian hardcore scene in the turn of the millennium, present this furious half hour (plus or minus) feedback-ridden, instrument-smashing, rhythmic train wreck to the unknowing masses in the setting of a changing scene. As the hardcore, punk, and metal scene runs its natural progression towards melody, structure, and a general broader appeal in hopes of lending itself to a larger, more mainstream fan base, The Chariot has remained true to their initial musical vision. Their latest record doesn’t try to make any huge leap across difficult genre lines or redefine their existing style.

This is by no means a bad thing.

This record viciously assaults and batters your ears like a gang of soccer hooligans. They yell, they pound, they generally raise a ruckus about things you’re not completely convinced are actually worth getting this worked up about. But your own lack of understanding about all the fuss only seems to make the rage-ridden even more red-faced. Alas, I suppose this is what happens when you give hardcore kids and art students a soap box to stand on and an instrument to wail on.

All ranting aside, here are some particularly rad things about this record:

-It doesn’t sound much like anything else I’ve heard released in the past year or so.
-It’s nice to hear what Norma Jean would sound like if they hadn’t replaced members.
-It’s fun trying to pick out the melodies and rhythms heavily masked in the distortion.
-The live tone of the guitars and drums are EPIC. They must have tracked most of this record in a gymnasium sized room, mic’d everything close up, then put room mic’s WAAAAAY back in the room and turned them WAY up. It’s like you can hear the natural reverb of the snare drum move all the way around the room. Pretty awesome!
-The guitar tones, while maintaining their brutality, have a cool Texas style twang to them. It sounds like fresh, crisp strings on a classic Fender…then put in a blender of distortion! Yowza!
-The packaging concept is cool and unique. Each CD is packaged in a heavy-gauge printing paper envelope thing with the cover art stamped on. So whoever did the cover art made it into a stamp then the band themselves hand stamped, numbered, and initialed each copy. It gave a pretty cool, unique feel to each individual album. Props for thinking outside the box boys.

The Metal Show! Part 2...

Holy sweaty sweet Jesus tap-dancing monkey balls!! Last week I had the privilege of going to another metal show! I know right!? It’s been a good couple weeks. Needless to say, right around the time my ears healed from the onslaught brought by the Canadian beard aficionados in Protest the Hero and the Milwaukee metal monsters in Misery Signals, I got my head pushed back in by the Australian group Parkway Drive (www.myspace.com/parkwaydrive).

So…given I missed the first couple bands, I was told by my very capable metal buddy that they all blew ass…it’s a technical term in the biz for “terrible.” I’m getting really sick of bands getting on their soap box and preaching at the crowd. We go to shows to see music. Not get a damn sermon about religion or politics or whatever. Play your songs damnit! Alas, I digress. The point I’m making is that the opening bands were terrible. They’re not even really worth mentioning much beyond that. It’d be wasted text…and then the terrorists would win.

Eventually Parkway Drive came on and we’ll just put it this way…I thought my days of being “that sweaty dude walking out of the metal show” were over…apparently not. Usually, when I’m at a show, I’ll hang out at the back and take in the whole scene, show, and performance. I watch the band, listen for what’s going on, take note of particular expressions of technical prowess, watch how the crowd reacts and how the band reacts to the crowd’s reactions…you know, this kinda thing. Not that night!

If you’re bored (and have a free moment where people aren’t walking by long enough for you to listen to a loud crazy metal song for a sec) you should/could check out their myspace page and listen to the song Boneyards. It’s probably one of their more brutal and fast songs. This was their opener. Well…they took the stage aaaaand pretty much turned Chain Reaction upside down, inside out, and backwards. People lost their ever loving minds. It was sweet. Bodies were flying, stage was rushed, massive pitting all over the place. It was literally all out mayhem for those first 3 minutes and 15 seconds…and it continued pretty much uninterrupted through the end of their set. What always makes this level of chaos WAY cooler is when the crowd and the band feed off each other. The dudes on stage were all smiley, bouncy, and fun to watch which in turn made the crowd that much more active as well. I love love LOVE when bands look like they’re having a good time on stage. Anyway, after Boneyards, the singer was totally floored. He was looking at the rest of the band members saying things like “Oh my GOD!…wwwwwwwwwHAT just happened?! You guys [the crowd] went NUTS. That was just the first song…! How are we going to top that?” It was like the first song of the set brought the energy that usually the last song brings…that final, last hurrah, leave it all on the floor type energy. UGH! So sickies!

By the end of the set I had gotten all wrapped up in it and had pushed myself up to the front. At hardcore/metal shows the singers like to do this thing where they’ll shove the mic down at someone’s face so they can scream a line or two or whatever…it’s kinda awesome…connects the band to the crowd. Anyway, I got to scream “dead by first light” with the singer (at the end of the song “The Sirens’ Song” that they ended their set on). That was fun. Oh ya, I also did a flipping stage dive. I think I landed on some little kids…possibly girls. My bad. Sorry. Life kinda happened for a second. Buy your ticket, take your ride. Right?

Soooo that was very atypical Matt behavior at concerts. But what can I say? It happened.

By the by, I can’t emphasize enough how awesome it is that these dudes look like they’re having a blast on stage. They’re all smiles. They look like 5 total surfer dudes with lots of tattoos going out of their way to play the most brutal music they can muster. Oh ya…and on top of the showmanship, they’re kinda stupidly solid. Other than one guitar losing signal for part of a song (which is more dumb luck than anything else) I didn’t see/hear many, if any, flaws in their playing. It was superawesomesweet.

A Photo Essay Of Sorts

Looking back at my posts here on Wolfbiker, I’ve realized I’ve been lacking something… Color! Flare! Panache! Of course I mean pictures! I talk about all this whacky, zany stuff but what does funny metal stuff really look like? Well…let me show you. I’ve scoured the internet (a little more than half-assedly) looking for photos of what I see as the goofy things that happen in metal. Given that I’m at the whim of what’s already out there, the following pictures characterize some of the more humorous aspects of a musical genre that is sometimes mislabeled as serious.

My first example is probably one of the most outlandish minds in metal, Adam Dutkiewicz (known lovingly as Adam D). Whereas he’s one of the most influential, talented, and anal retentive producer/engineer/mixers out there, on stage with his own band Killswitch Engage he is the biggest caricature of the metal genre there is. Everything he does is so outlandish and overstated that it can’t possibly be taken seriously…no matter how you spin it. Don’t be fooled though, this guy is a fantastically talented musician with a stranglehold on songwriting, music theory, and ultimate shrediness. For seriously.

Scrawny white guy wearing a cape flexing non-existent muscles? Sounds familiar… Note the neon green taped arrow pointing at his hand so you’re sure not to miss how awesome his shredology-ism is.

Viking helmet? Short shorts shorter than the boxers he’s wearing underneath? Licking the guitar he so shamelessly shreds proving not only his technical prowess but also his ability to do so while emulating the 80s hair metal that inspired him? Stupid stuff written on his guitar in tape? Check. Check. Check. Check.

Oh the denim rock god strikes. Taking the image of the “heavy metal guy who has rips in his jeans but doesn’t care because he’s so metal” image to the next level. Left the cape in the tour bus? A problem for mortals! Make do with what you have! …in this case, apparently a blow-up doll.

Metal and fire go together like koalas and cuteness. Greg Puciato from The Dillinger Escape Plan demonstrates this at some outdoor festival. Note the guitar player’s neon pink guitar…I’m pretty confident color totally effects the sound of the guitar. Probably has a bright tone. Punny.

This is Mike Schleibaum of Darkest Hour. Metal’s ultimate “dude.” The guy is a total gear head and can and will talk anyone’s ear off about tone, pedals, guitars, amps, or ANYthing really. Anyway, the guitar company Washburn made him a custom guitar named the Dude. They eventually made him a second one…called the Dude II. Note the headstock truss-rod cover.

I saw the Bled once at the House of Blues where the stage has a drop down curtain. When the first song started RIGHT as the curtain pulled open, this is what the crowd saw. Aside from having a full frontal assault of raucous hardcore to the face, there seemed to be something horribly wrong with the singer. Soon everyone caught on. You could literally hear the laughter over the music…which was saying something…cuz boy howdy it was loud.

Ken Susi plays guitar for Unearth…really well. Apparently, he also plays the air horn. I like that at a loud metal show, the air horn still makes him wince like a baby.

The Unearth guitar players are just lil’ guys…which makes them perfect for stage antics…like mid-song push-ups, mid-song beer chugging, mid-riff high-fives, and mid-song 100% fun-time acrobatics…like this! Buz McGrath rides John Maggard around like a metal totem pole. Gross. Awesome. Gross.

I’d like to finish this little photo journal with the consistently wittiest and goofiest band I’ve seen. Every Time I Die is a silly band…specifically their guitar players. Andy Williams is a massive loaf of dude with the ability to sneeze facial hair out of his face. To top it off, he’s probably one of the nicest, most genuine dudes ever. For example, he went through an entire US tour advertising the fact that he’d be outside at every show offering hugs. What a teddy bear. Last time I saw them (I think…or maybe 2 times ago?) they took the stage to play their southern rock inspired metal wielding these guitars. Andy played the pink zebra striped one and Jordan played the light blue guitar that has a painted-on caricature of Andy’s face.

Andy also went the entire length of Warped Tour one year making a shirt for each show…here’s one sporting the Queen song/lyrics “Fat bottom girls make the rocking world go ‘round”.

So that’s pretty much that...hopefully you enjoyed the visual hilarity that this music can inspire! Now imagine all this in motion. How can you not laugh?

The Handicap of Knowledge

Without getting too philosophical about things, because God knows there’s already WAY too many people being WAY too serious with their blogs, I think there could be something to the statement that (I’ve made up) knowledge can confine the mind. Of course I’m limiting my bs-thesis (thes-bs? Pronounced thees-bee-iss) to the realm of music knowledge.

We all know that there are countless trained musicians, or at least people who study music and music theory, who go on to logically make really incredible music. I mean, of course there are in turn trained musicians who boggle the mind in their ability to make really crappy music as well, but these people aren’t worth the breath, or typing-energy, to talk about. That would make for boring reading… “Hey, you know that one guy with the degree in music theory from the Berklee School of Music? Ya? Aren’t his songs good? Ya. They are aren’t they.” Booooring.

What baffles the mind, and makes for more interesting reading, are those who with NO musical training or anything defy the odds and make some pretty cool music. Crazy stuff. There are even some out there that have SOMEhow seemingly redefined the art of their instrument. The best example of this would have to be Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers who is arguably (as in I’m sure there’s an argument for it…but I don’t know what it is) one of the best alternative-rock/funk bass players ever. And the guy has taken like, zero lessons. THAT is pretty damn impressive.

Metal has its own heroes as well. The guitar players in Norma Jean, one of the founding hardcore staples, are probably one of the bigger hardcore bands to have come from absolutely nil musical background. The two founding guitar players picked up the guitar and basically tried making the instrument make sounds like those of their influences in the hardcore-punk scene of the 80s and 90s. The style of play was abrasive, heavily rhythmic, and not strong on melody. Even though I feel that over the years they’ve been a band they’ve strayed from where they started more towards the mainstream-middle ground of music, their roots lie in the discordant, off-beat, and heavily rhythmic roots of early hardcore. One band that, despite meager musical forethought, has turned my mind inside out has been August Burns Red. These Pennsylvanian kids have all but blown the doors off of conventional metal and metalcore. Picking up where bands like Norma Jean left off with their heavily rhythmic guitars and experimental time signatures and such, ABR has generated a style of their own by infusing more “metal” elements like breakdowns, a very slight movement towards song structure, and more breakdowns.

I think it’s important to point out what this lack of musical background has given these guys. Both bands I’ve mentioned approached their song writing process from a place of making their instruments make sounds and progressions that sound “neat.” Without having to operate under the confines of knowing that the notes they’re putting together don’t fall into the same scale or don’t technically belong together, they’re able to assemble a song or riff that for no explicable reason (at least until you drink a pot of coffee and stay up to tomorrow listening to the same passage over and over trying to understand what exactly just happened…not that I speak from experience in this or anything…I need a hobby…and to leave this aside behind and get back to whatever I was talking about) sounds freaking SWEET! They don’t have to worry about counting out a time signature or mapping how the tempos ebb and flow because without knowing the exact framework of how music “works” they just play what they feel. That is a powerful powerful thing that can often be hindered by the knowledge that what you’re making shouldn’t, by any good reason, work.

Obviously the number of bands that can function beyond these confines with any level of success are FAR outnumbered by those who can probably write a successful dissertation on the ability and technique of failing miserably. However, it’s worthy to mention and recognize those that beat these odds. And I salute you with this keg of coffee and pounding headache…as I try to decipher this beautiful chaos that is the music I love.

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.

A Lapse In My Infinite Knowledge

HA! Me. Knowledge. Infinite. Hilarious. I mean, realistically speaking there must be one or two things I don’t know right? I suppose so. Either way, I found one recently. Let me share.

Rap music. I don’t understand it.

I mean, beyond the culture of it all, which is just worlds away from what I know and experience on a daily basis, the music is so weird to me. I spent a lot of time in various clubs this past weekend…most likely the reason that it’s taken me until Thursday to develop the mental capacity to pen another entry on this little e-journal of mine. Needless to say, all weekend I was facially assaulted by club-music. Now, some of it is admittedly not rap. It would probably fall under various foreign categories like house, trance, electronic, etc. I can’t even pretend to joke about what it’s classified as because I literally know that little about it.

What I want to understand (someday or somehow) is HOW the music is made. Based on the knowledge and experience I’ve garnered playing/writing/listening to the music that I’ve been listening to since my childhood, I can listen to almost any pop, alternative, punk, rock, metal, or really any genre who’s core instruments are guitars, bass, and drums and figure out, or at least understand how someone could write a riff or song. I’ve fiddled around on guitars long enough to understand that sometimes it takes a flub in a scale to create a riff. Or sometimes drawing chords out of a hat to make a progression will actually stick (done it…). Or sometimes you’ll be driving around Isla Vista delivering pizzas when in a moment of surreal clarity and divine intervention on behalf of the pizza and metal gods, you develop the sickest riff in your head and have to call your drummer to IMMEDIATELY meet you at the practice studio (studi-HOOOOO) to hammer it out and get it down on paper. These things happen. This is how I have written songs. This is how I can understand that by fiddling around with these instruments you can write music.

The disconnect I guess comes with the instruments themselves. I don’t understand how DJs create music. I’ve heard rap songs where the music behind it was a series of bed-spring squeaks spliced in with, like, car horns and accented by, I dunno, some weird digital bloopy-bleep-o sound. What baffles me is how a guy can be sitting at a computer with a seemingly endless bank of singular sounds and be able to formulate a rhythm, melody, and song structure. It’s crazy!

So needless to say, after a long weekend’s worth of rap/club immersion, I ran home and flushed my system with some Iron Maiden. Nothing like “The Trooper” to purge Fiddy Cent. Lather, rinse, repeat.