Why Hatebreed, Why?

Hatebreed – For The Lions

If I made a list of records that were completely unnecessary, a covers album from Hatebreed would pretty near the top. For a hardcore band, the cover is an integral part of the live set. It gives everyone a chance to show off their moves, point some fingers and sing-along. So it stands to reason that Hatebreed would record the odd cover at some point in their career. But nothing says “contractual obligation>” more than a covers record, and at 18 songs long, I can’t imagine Hatebreed see For The Lions as more than just a cheap and easy throwaway release before they release their next album. 

Of the 18 songs, the majority are from classic hardcore bands, with a few metal songs thrown in for good measure. It’s these metal songs that fare the worst – Metallica’s ‘Escape’ features some very questionable T-Pain style autotune and their cover of Sepultura’s ‘Refuse Resist’ is easily the worst thing on here. With the hardcore songs they fare a little better, particularly on the NYHC bands such as Agnostic Front and The Cro-Mags. However, their take on Black Flag’s ‘Thirsty and Miserable’ is particularly bad. As the title suggests, I’m sure Hatebreed are well aware of the reception For The Lions will receive. The only people who should buy this are fanatical Hatebreed fans – if you are considering purchasing this record, spend the money on an album by one of the bands Hatebreed cover. For The Lions should serve only two purposes. Firstly, it should act as a handy reminder of what classic (and not so classic) hardcore records you need to fill out your collection. Secondly, it will allow Hatebreed a way out of their record contract. Expect them to release a live album in the near future. This record is an unnecessary waste of time, money and effort. Don’t buy it.

Review for Die Shellsuit, Die!

ATP: A Review

Last weekend I went to ATP Versus The Fans 2: The Fans Strike Back. For convenience, I shall refer to it as ATP for the rest of this post. But don’t be expecting some long insightful review from me, because there won’t be one. Not because I was too busy partying too hard to remember anything, as I wasn’t, but simply because my memory has failed me and I can’t remember what any of bands were like. Before I go any further, I would like to mention that although my introduction didn’t win, it was posted on a board along with some of the other entries. Which was nice.

At some point in the weekend I decided to employ the ‘watch twenty minutes of as many bands as possible’ technique, which is never a good idea. So here’s run down of everything I saw. 

The following bands I saw twenty minutes or less of, and felt that they were either boring, un-engaging, shit, or all three:

Casiotone For The Painfully Alone, The Acorn, Beruit (who I was looking forward to seeing, but was so dull I went for a terrible Pizza Hut buffet instead), Parts And Labor, Grails, School Of Seven Bells, Killing Joke, Young Marble Giants (more like Old Shit Giants amiright?), Shearwater, Jeffery Lewis.

The following bands were good:

HEALTH – I’d not seen them before and they didn’t disappoint. Though they come across as a tad contrived at times, they were still very enjoyable. Plus their drummer plays loud, which is always good.

Fuck Buttons – last year I thought they were very boring. This year they seemed a lot better. Partly because I was fairly drunk (OMGZ!!) and partly because with their new material they seem to have become comfortable with the fact that they’re more of an electro band than a noise band.

Future Of The Left – easily the best stage patter of the weekend (“FESTIVAL OF FLANNEL SHIRTS AND BEARDS”), but they suffered from playing on the atmosphere killing main stage.

Qui – I caught the last half of these and they were pretty good. Kind of blues meets Fugazi vibe. A nice surprise.

The Mae Shi – good not great. They’re a bit yappy at times. They got their sheet out. That’s it.

This Will Destroy You – post-rock that didn’t suck. I was as surprised as anyone.

Errors – like Holy Fuck but Scottish. An enjoyable twenty minutes.

!!! – they got a bit jam band at times, but still good for a dance.

Antipop Consortium – pretty cool it was too late for me to pay proper attention. Not as back pack hip hop as I thought they might be.

These bands were better than good:

Lords – not only was it very refreshing to see a good British DIY band play on a very American bill, but they were also very good. Like ZZ Top meet Fugazi or something. 

Harvey Milk – for reason I can’t recall, I only caught the last twenty minutes of these (it’s a theme) but what I saw was pretty damn good. I believe they were missing a guitarist. I didn’t notice. One of the best bands I saw all weekend. I’m a bit gutted I missed the beginning of their set.

Bands that were awesome but were not as good as The Jesus Lizard:

Devo – goes without saying really. One of the two reasons I bought a ticket. Probably the only band that worked well on the main stage. 

Andrew WK – the most bizarre set I think I’ve ever seen. It featured a guy named Bad Brilliance who had a large balloon for a head. All he did was yell “HOLY SHIT! BAD BRILLIANCE! HOLY MOTHERFUCKING SHIT! BAD BRILLIANCE!”. Andrew WK said “you can do whatever you want” at least twice. He said “party” a million times. Yes it would have been better with a full band. But it was still the third best thing I saw all weekend.

Bands that were as good as The Jesus Lizard:

The Jesus Lizard – you could see their families watching from the side of the stage. Imagine if when you were thirteen, your parents took you to a music festival because your dad’s old band were playing a reunion gig and then it turned out he was in The Jesus Lizard. What would you do? You’d be pretty fucking stoked. They played twice. They were awesome both nights. If you didn’t see them, you missed out.

Bands who I missed, but wanted to see:

Marnie Stern – she clashed with The Jesus Lizard on Saturday night. I choose to watch David Yow crowd-surf to the opening bars of ‘Puss’. A wise decision I think.

Sleep – technically I actually saw about ten minutes of these, but I was way to tired to pay proper attention so I gave up. You win some, you lose some.

 

And that was my weekend. Not bad, apart from when some guy called me a cunt because I didn’t have any beer. I hate festivals.

ATP: An Introduction

This is my entry for this years ATP intro competition. I was trying to play up to the fact that people also bitch and moan about the line up regardless of who’s playing and who asked them to play. More specifically, I was basing it on the Drowned In Sound message board. people will complain about anything. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t win. Probably because it’s not very good. Had I won, I would have picked Andrew WK who is now playing. So every cloud and all that.

ATP intro:

The world of indie music is by nature a fickle one; a world that thrives on elitism, sarcasm, bragging rights and a constant state of one-upmanship. There’s always someone waiting to tell you about some great new band they’ve found, that no one else has heard of, only for them to rubbish them as soon as anyone else catches on or professes to be a fan. New bands are worn like a badge of honour; the obscurer, the better. In this sense ATP is the perfect festival; and it is because of this that ATP should quit.

 This year ATP enters its tenth year as a festival. Ten years of booking a festival full of underachieving, pretentious, overwrought indie bands for a fan base of underachieving, pretentious, overwrought indie fans; a fan base who show almost no sign of gratitude and whose sense of entitlement is matched only by their elitism. Every move that ATP makes is welcomed with fresh criticism. People complain about the venue so ATP moves to a different venue but this is criticised for being too big and not intimate enough. People complain about the queues to see some bands so ATP builds a new stage big enough for everyone but people moan that it’s too light or that the sound isn’t good enough. However, the bulk of criticism is reserved for one thing, and one thing only: the lineup. As with any festival, no matter the size, the selling point is the lineup. The better the lineup, the more people are going to enjoy themselves. Of course, with ATP it’s more a case of the better the lineup, the more people are going to complain. The main point of contention is that the same bands get booked every year, which is hardly surprising, considering ATP’s booking policy, and the fact that it’s been running for ten years.

This year sees the second time ATP have let the fans curate the festival. If the first time was an attempt to let the fans have a say and avoid any criticism, it didn’t work. It seems that whilst people moan about watching the same band every year, when they’re faced with a choice of who they want to play, people end up voting for the usual suspects (Shellac again). This year, not only have ATP let the fans vote for who they want to play, but they’re only allowed to vote for bands that haven’t played before. You’d assume that the fans would be happy at the possibility of voting for someone new, but you’d be wrong. When faced with choice, the fans either voted for the overpriced (Kraftwerk), the ridiculous (Fugazi) or just the plain awful (MGMT), or they simply sat back and complained about the entire lineup. If ATP can’t satisfy its punters with new bands and its only other option is to fall back on the same old bands, then maybe it should stop altogether. Then you’d really have something to complain about.

Swim Team

This is without a doubt the stupidest review I’ve ever written. I’m not 100% sure it even makes any sense. Judge for yourself.

Swim Team – Make Notes, Have Plans

Stating your influences on your press release is pretty standard fair for a band. It provides a framework for the reviewer to place the band in and allows them a way of stating whom they think their contemporaries are and the bands which they feel they should be compared to. However, as a result of providing this framework, it can and often will lead to a very easy character assassination of said band. Take for example Swim Team. They cite only three influences on their one sheet, namely Minus The Bear, Coldplay and Arcade Fire. The question is how has this affected my expectations of Make Notes, Have Plans? Would my listening experience be different if they had an alternate set of influences? Am I already thinking of them in a negative light by expecting a hybrid of those three bands? Or is it a positive light? Has it raised the bar too high or too low when they say they “pay homage to the atmosphere these bands create”?

We must assume that there is a purpose to listing these three specific bands; that there is a reason that they choose to pick these three specific bands and no other influence. To dismiss it as a list of their three favourite bands would be a mistake. Even something as simple as a favourite band still plays a great part in shaping a musician’s style and approach to their chosen instrument. They would constantly judge their musical endeavours in regard to that of their favourite band. To dismiss our list of three bands as just a list of Swim Team’s three favourite bands would be missing the point. This leads to two possible premises, that either they provide these influences as a starting point for the listener, as a frame of reference in which to compare and contrast their output with that of their influences; or, that their list of influences should be disregarded and that Make Notes, Have Plans should be listened to with fresh ears, with scant regard to the accompanying press sheet and all that it promises.

Upon listening to Make Notes, Have Plans according to the first possible premise, Swim Team demonstrate their Minus The Bear influence from the off. ‘Ghost Animation’ begins Make Notes, Have Plans, where a flurry of hihats is coupled with a syncopated bassline bearing a large similarity to the style of the aforementioned Seattle five-piece. As the vocals begin, the Coldplay influence becomes apparent. The vocals soar and strain around a hook about “Jesus Christ and his ambition”, not dissimilar to a performance by Chris Martin. Over the course of the next eighteen minutes, Swim Team rarely deviates from this mix of Coldplay style vocals and Minus The Bear style drumming. In keeping with the reference points provided, Make Notes, Have Plans, stays a lot truer to the work of Coldplay than it does of Minus The Bear. The brief flirtations with the technical style that Minus The Bear are known for provide little respite to the debt that Swim Team owes to Coldplay. The combination of epic choruses, delay soaked guitars and earnest vocals that make up the bulk of Make Notes, Have Plans quickly outstays its welcome; at no point does it recall the work of Arcade Fire, and altogether fails to capture anything that makes these bands unique.

Now, let us return to second premise that Make Notes, Have Plans should be thought of independently of the three stated influences, and listened to and reviewed in such a way. ‘Ghost Animation’ begins Make Notes, Have Plans, where a flurry of hihats is coupled with a syncopated bassline, before giving way to a soaring, yet strained vocal hook, about “Jesus Christ and his ambition”. The vocals and drums are joined by delay soaked guitars providing a backdrop of fairly standard post-punk revivalist riffs, a style from which Swim Team rarely deviate over the course of five songs, a style which quickly outstays its welcome and fails to elevate Swim Team from anything but a slightly below average indie band.

So it seems that the same conclusion is always reached, be it by following the influence of their press sheet and its points of reference or be it by ignoring the provide framework of influences. If this reviewer may finish by providing his own point of reference for the reader, let it be this. Swim Team sound like Battle. That should contextualise this record better than their whole press sheet.

Review for Die Shellsuit, Die!

Empty Set – As Neat As A New Pin

Empty Set is a two-piece band from the Midlands, comprising of vocalist Tommy Ogden and multi-instrumentalist Daniel Simons. Though the first sound on As Neat As A New Pin may be an ukuele, to pigeon hole them as simply a folk-pop outfit would be doing them a disservice and would fail to give proper credit to Simons’ clever instrumentation. Throughout their debut album there are hints of distorted tape loops, dashes of synth and droning violas that provide a counterpoint to Ogden’s delicate vocals and save it from becoming a too twee folk album.

Their willingness to challenge themselves is best demonstrated by their take on The Jesus And Mary Chain’s ‘Some Candy Talking’. Staying faithful to the intent and form of the original, Empty Set manage to recreate the volume and intensity of the original with their fairly limited means. Soft, whispered vocals are paired with tortured viola strings and reverb soaked guitar to re-create the wall of sound approach of the Reid brothers.

The opening and closing song set the parameters in which Empty Set works on As Neat As A New Pin. ‘Portia, I Dreamt You Were Real’ appears in two forms. As the opening song, it begins as a gentle lament for voice and ukuele, before being joined by a rumbling synth and an eccentric violin line, recalling the folk meets fuzz of Neutral Milk Hotel. Appearing again as the last song on the album, and with the alternate title of ‘Portia, I Dreamt You Were A Princess’, the song is completely re-imagined with vocals being juxtaposed against a dense electronic soundscape, not dissimilar to that of The Knife or The Postal Service. It is between these two points that As Neat As A New Pin exists; sometimes it behaves as a typical folk album, all soft vocals and delicate ukuele, other times it veers off into a soundtrack of tape loops and droning strings. It’s this willingness to experiment, coupled with a lyrical slant as concerned with science and mathematics as it is with unrequited love, that makes Empty Set more than just another twee, folk outfit. 

 

Review for Die Shellsuit, Die!

Hey!Tonal – Hey!Tonal

 

Hey!Tonal - Hey!Tonal

Being able to tell where a band is from on the basis of what they sound like is not totally out of the ordinary – but when it’s an instrumental band it’s a bit of a surprise. With that in mind, Hey!Tonal sound like an experimental indie rock band from Chicago. They’re not an old band though; they’re an ‘ex-members of band’. In fact, looking at their line up, they’re almost a supergroup. Comprising of members from (deep breath) Storm & Stress, Sweep The Leg Johnny, Maps & Atlases, Joan Of Arc, ZZZZ’s, Rumah Sakit and Pinback plus many more, Hey!Tonal are an exercise in experimental recording.

Rather than recording and writing in the conventional way, Hey!Tonal constructed their songs piece by piece. Drums were recorded and then edited into song structures, before each additional instrument was added, all the while being constantly manipulated and re-edited in the studio. Producing a dense, layered record, Hey!Tonal only really revels itself after repeated listens. Parts that at first sounded like a mess of noise suddenly give way to hidden melodies and snatches of vocal appear behind clattering drums. Parts and songs flow into one another; long passages of math rock skronk fade away to be replaced by delicate guitar harmonics. ‘Skitch’ begins as the most abrasive of songs, with a chugging bass riff being paired with a manipulated drum beat that sounds like a helicopter taking off, before eventually fading into a tapped guitar melody.

Though they make an interesting racket, Hey!Tonal aren’t quite the sum of their separate parts. For every moment that sounds unique and engaging, there’s an opposite moment that fails to reach the heights that similar bands such as Joan Of Arc or Don Caballero have reached in the past. Hey!Tonal succeeds as a exercise in recording technique – but as a record, though it doesn’t fail, it certainly doesn’t meet its potential, and at times can come across as a little cluttered and lacking in focus. A good record, but not nearly as good as it could be.  

Hey!Tonal on myspace.

Review for Die Shellsuit, Die!

The Hold Steady

The Hold Steady - more like The Old Steady, amiright?

 This week The Hold Steady release their first live record/dvd A Positive Rage. This post has nothing to do with this, although I have listened to it on Spotify and I have to say it’s pretty good. Then again, I would say that because I love The Hold Steady. If you’re not a Hold Steady fan than A Positive Rage isn’t likely to win you over. If you’re already a fan, you’ll enjoy it. This post is about their cover of The Minutemen’s ‘History Lesson – Part II’.

Throughout The Hold Steady’s discography there are numerous references to hardcore and punk – of the top of my head, I can think of references to Youth Of Today, 7 Seconds, Dillinger 4, straight edge and matinee shows. Whilst the Minutemen aren’t a hardcore band in the musical sense, they were on SST and are easily one of the most DIY bands ever. Written by Mike Watt, ‘History Lesson – Part II’ is probably one of the most well known Minutemen songs, thanks in part to its opening line of “Our band could be your life”. A biographical account of Mike Watt and D Boon’s relationship and their experiences of growing up together, it details how “punk rock changed our lives”. For their cover, Craig Finn alters some of the lyrics, making it more specific to his and guitarist Tad Kubler’s time spent in Minneapolis, and gives a nod to their musical influences including Dave Pirner (Soul Asylum) and Paul Westerberg (The Replacements). There’s also a bit of accordion, which is always a nice surprise.

Assuming anyone bothered to read that, the download like is below.

The Hold Steady – ‘History Lesson Part II’

As always, comments are welcome.

HEALTH – ‘Die Slow’

 

HEALTH exist in two forms – there’s the HEALTH of their self titled debut album, a big mess of calculated noise and intense tribal drumming. Then there’s HEALTH//DISCO, the remix/dance music arm of the band, where the noise gives way to dance rhythms and snatches of melody. You could probably make an argument for HEALTH//FASHION being a third version of HEALTH, given how ubiquitous their t-shirts are. Too many deep v’s.

‘Die Slow’, HEALTH’s first piece of new material since last year, sees the band move away from the foundations that they lay with their self-titled debut album, instead moving towards a sound not unlike that showcased with HEALTH//DISCO. The furious noise and waves of feedback that made people sit and listen has been eschewed in favour of a more subtle and laid back approach. Focused around a straight ahead four to the floor disco beat, ‘Die Slow’ is a noncommittal meander around a reverb soaked lead vocal, that lacks the purpose or drive of previous material. Whilst in the past HEALTH releases have demanded attention with their aggressive noise rock, ‘Die Slow’ fails to deliver that jarring blow to the face, instead being more content with a friendly pat on the back.

 

You can listen to it on the Hype Machine here. HEALTH’s myspace is here.

Some more reviews

I’ve been away for the last week, hence the lack of updates. Obviously my readership of one got a bit worried but fret not, here are some words I wrote for Die Shellsuit, Die! to keep you going until another proper update. Reviews after the jump.

In other news, I still need a job. If there’s anyone on the blogosphere that can help me, please hook a brother up. I am currently listening to Mohinder, downloaded from the excellent Hardcore For Nerds. San Diego spazzy hardcore at its finest.

This Is My Last Resort

Recently I’ve started doing some music reviews for Die Shellsuit, Die! My first assignment was to review the new Papa Roach single and an album by a band called Passe Montagne. Unsurprisingly, the new Papa Roach single is shit. Passe Monatgne are pretty good though. If you like Oxes, Shellac or any other Math/Noise rock band, I would recommend that you listen to them on myspace, here. Maybe listen to them whilst you read the reviews below. Go on. Reviews after the jump.