Avenged Sevenfold - The Stage

After Vektor's Terminal Redux I thought I had had all the sci-fi metal I could take this year. Luckily Angry Metal Guy's blurbs about the surprising quality of The Stage, both from a songwriting and a production side convinced me to give it a guarded listen. The last time I heard an Avenged Sevenfold song Guitar Hero was popular and Bush was still president, so I'm not what you could call a fan of the group and was honestly more than ready to hate this record. Right out of the gates with the title track, though, I was hooked on A7X's new spacey sound and have been listening to The Stage on repeat more than I could ever have imagined.

I'm not familiar with Avenged's catalog outside of their big hits ("Bat Country", "Almost Easy"), but I can't imagine the compositions on this album are anything worse than the best they've ever written. The opening salvo of "The Stage", "Paradigm", and "Sunny Disposition" alone is one of the most enjoyable three song runs I've experienced in some time and offer an excellent serving of high-quality melodic... prog-thrash-metalcore? Whatever genre this technically falls under, the playing is tight as a vacuum seal and groovy to a fault with guitarists Synyster Gates and Zacky Vengeance (I did not make those up) locking in with new blood drummer Brooks Wackerman perfectly. Besides the freshly progressive numbers on display there is a good deal of variety scattered throughout The Stage that keeps things from bogging down too hard: "Sunny Disposition"'s jeering brass horns, "Paradigm"'s high-speed blastbeat chorus, and my personal favorite "Creating God"'s Layne Staley-esque vocal melodies and grungy beat all contribute a piece of the puzzle alongside a couple of slower tracks: "Roman Sky" is reminiscent of King's X's "Pleiades" in subject matter and slower tempo while "Angels" is pretty full-on power ballad. Despite the technicality and lofty subject matter (AI, Simulation Theory, space exploration, post-humanism) song lengths are wonderfully succinct and largely in the five-six minute range and the lyrics are actually pretty damn interesting.

While The Stage isn't necessarily breaking any new ground in the progressive metal arena the high level of musicianship coupled with the band's known skill at crafting hugely catchy, accessible metal mesh excellently here on this album. It's not quite flawless and it does drag a bit towards the end (and M. Shadow's vocals are the definition of love-it-or-hate), but not many metal bands can convince Neil Degrasse Tyson to write and perform a unique piece of prose on their album - and if he thought it was worth doing, I think we all can agree that The Stage is worth a listen.

C+ 

Dream the Electric Sleep - Beneath the Dark Wide Sky

I remember how I first came into contact with Dream the Electric Sleep's music in the summer of 2014 on the pages of some random blog tucked away in a far corner of the music web. They had released a new album earlier that year called Heretics and the eye-catching cover artwork combined with their sound being described as "Pink Floyd meets shoegaze" led me to give the recommended track, "Elizabeth", a song that immediately hooked me as did the rest of that fantastic Heretics record. While the Pink Floyd comparison turned out to be not super dialed in, Heretics blended an indie-style production and sound with shoegaze atmospherics and unabashed prog ambition as the record is a concept album about Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the rest of the Suffragette movement - not exactly your usual topic for this type of music. Now that I've finally given follow up CD Beneath the Dark Wide Sky some spins I'm happy to say that this Kentucky-based trio has delivered the goods here.

Working with noted producer Nick Raskulinecz, Beneath the Dark Wide Sky exchanges some of the group's progressive inclinations for a cleaner, more refined sound across the board. The songs here are all noticeably shorter with only two tracks moving past the six minute mark, while the album as a whole runs a quarter of an hour less than its predecessor did as the band has done a great job of distilling their sound down to its core elements, trimming the fat without stripping out any of the meat. This new approach is felt from the first note as opener "Drift" accomplishes in five minutes what took them over eight on Heretics' initial piece, before pivoting into the very Foo Fighters-esque rocker "Let the Light Flood In", again swapping out long-winded atmospherics for straight ahead hooks and a huge chorus. The rest of the material on Beneath the Dark Wide Sky follows the direction of these first two songs, trading big on guitarist/vocalist/lyricist Matt Page's better-than-ever vocals and an entire disc of spectacular drumming from Joey Waters, particularly on album highlights "Flight" and "Headlights". If you're worried that Dream the Electric Sleep have gone full-on pop then you'll be comforted by the presence of the dark and excellent instrumental "We Who Blackout the Sun" as well as the longest and most overtly progressive track on offer here, "Culling the Herd". Just like with Heretics the band has managed to write and pace Beneath the Dark Wide Sky so that not only does it not lose any steam after the halfway point, some of the best songs on the record are tucked back there: the chunky anthem "Hanging by Time" (Matt Page does an excellent Dave Grohl impression on this song), the grunge-laced "Black Wind", and the other ballad-type song on the album, the wonderfully Southern-flavored "The Good Night Sky", as the boys seal things up with the dreamy closer "All Good Things".

Just like King's did with Dogman with the help of producer Brendan O'Brien, Dream the Electric Sleep was able to achieve a similar reevaluation and reinterpretation of their sound with Nick Raskulinecz's help and have successfully retained the songwriting abilities and ear for genre-blending that helped make Heretics such a great album for Beneath the Dark Wide Sky. Catchy as hell, surprisingly heavy at times and without a second wasted, this album is hopefully the one that helps Dream the Electric Sleep break out of their niche and into the mainstream spotlight.

B

Mad Max: Photo Road

Some choice screenshots from my time with Mad Max, one of the most gorgeous games to release this generation. Enjoy.

Metallica - Hardwired... to Self-Destruct

Of all the things that happened in 2016, Metallica releasing a new album after almost a decade was not something that was particularly high on my musical radar. Metallica at this point is more of an American institution or cultural touchstone like McDonald's or Reaganomics than 4 dudes that make music. Their popularity and legacy have all been written and talked about to death and you would hard-pressed to find someone out their who hasn't already made up their mind about liking them or not. Regardless of your (or my) particular opinion on their material, this past year was full of enough strange/horrible/depressing shit to make some good old fashioned Metallica seem like just the comfort blanket we needed.

The band makes their presence felt right out of the gates with opener "Hardwired", which burns through its 3 minute runtime without a second wasted before moving into the first disc proper. The quality of the riffs here are way higher than they have any right be from a thrash group who have been going for 35 years, and Disc 1 of Hardwired... bangs past with only one major pothole in the drawn out closer, "Halo On Fire". The songs all run past the 5 minute mark (and frequently cross to 7) but the sheer quality of Hetfield's riffs (ahem) manage to keep the foundations from sinking into the quicksand of 10 minute instrumentals or power ballads. "Atlas, Rise!" and "Moth Into Flame" are, simply put, some of the best songs this band has ever written and the beefier production from Greg Fidelman really bring Hetfield and Ulrich into the spotlight, and depending on who you are that may or may not be a good thing. Ulrich's playing is fairly rote throughout Hardwired... unfortunately, and he tends to repeat his fills a lot which is probably news to no one. He isn't Pete Webber or even Jerry Gaskill but the compositions here mostly give him enough space to not drag the foundations down too much. Trujillo's bass is too quiet as usual but it's the absence of Kirk Hammett that really sets this record apart from the rest of their discography, as his solos are few and far between (almost.. tastefully spaced out?!) and I have to admit I lost track of him a couple times and wondered where he wandered off too as James and Lars chugged on without him.

And then we get to Disc 2 and the whole frame starts to warp and sag. Outside of the phenomenal "Confusion", "Here Comes Revenge", and "Spit Out the Bone" we have 3 6-minute chug-fests that just don't hit the same marks as the rest of the material. "ManUNkind" is probably the strongest of the bunch but major points deducted for that pun. "Murder One" is an ok tribute to Lemmy but its weirdly inoffensive and tame, whereas "Am I Savage" just doesn't fit the rest of the songs here and sounds like it was ripped from their Load/Reload era. In the end its more good than bad, but it is interesting that they considered the material here to be worth including in the end despite the higher costs passed on to both them and the consumer as shaving just one of these songs would've given them plenty of room for a single disc release. The whole thing ends as suddenly as it begins without a moment of hesitation and the overall impression I get after popping the disc back in its sleeve is of a band doing what they genuinely love to do. No, they aren't pushing any boundaries. Yes, the songs are probably too long across the board. Yes, Lars' drum sound and style is just as restrained and thin-sounding as ever. Ultimately though, Hardwired... to Self-Destruct rises above its brickwalled dynamic range and scattergun stylistic focus to deliver some truly excellent material that I think will be remembered for a long time as some of Metallica's best pieces of music. And amid all the death and suffering and flat out weirdness of 2016, it is cathartic to be able to enjoy a big, dumb, overlong album from one of music's remaining legends. Let's enjoy them while they're still around, huh?

C+

Bonus:
The artwork and packaging design of Hardwired...to Self-Destruct deserves special mention, I think. After seeing it for the first time you probably either reflexively laughed or sighed in disappointment, as I did. After looking at it more and more, though, it's started growing on me and now I believe it's one of the more interesting pieces of album design work that I've come across recently as it balances this stark black and white negative space with this bizarre, aggressive photoshop mishmash. Your eyes can't help but be drawn in to it and its almost hypnotic, like an optical illusion - you keep thinking you're missing something hidden in there but nope, thats really all it is. Obviously its not any kind of virtuoso display in a traditional sense, but it does a good job of catching your eye and fitting the tone of the album.

The packaging of the CD sleeve and booklet are very similar in tone, but just as "your mileage may very" in terms of effectiveness. Some of the image design work is actually pretty cool looking, but to me about 40% misses the mark and coupled with the very minimalist black-font-on-white-background motif, it doesn't leave much to grab onto if you didn't like the main design dominating each page. Definitely subjective, but whether you like it or not I think the artwork accomplishes at least some of its goals by making it stick in your mind.