I'm not sure how many readers of this site listen to Lady Gaga, but I do. And it's somewhat interesting to me that people have accused Gaga of stealing lots of ideas from Goldfrapp. Anyway, here's the new Goldfrapp video, which makes me wonder if Lady Gaga will be sporting black metal corpse paint soon.


 

On the eve of a U.S. tour in support of their excellent 2008 album Wavering Radiant, "post-metal" band Isis have announced that they are disbanding. Last night, a post went up on the group's blog, stating in part:

"ISIS has reached an end. It's hard to try to say it in any delicate way, and it is a truth that is best spoken plainly. This end isn't something that occurred over night and it hasn't been brought about by a single cataclysmic fracture in the band. Simply put, ISIS has done everything we wanted to do, said everything we wanted to say. In the interest of preserving the love we have of this band, for each other, for the music made and for all the people who have continually supported us, it is time to bring it to a close. We've seen too many bands push past the point of a dignified death and we all promised one another early on in the life of the band that we would do our best to ensure ISIS would never fall victim to that syndrome...Our words can never fully express what we feel, but we hope that our music and the efforts made to bring it into being can serve as a more proper expression of gratitude for this life and for everyone in it. Thank you."

To my ear, Isis had their ups and downs on record. The early EPs were okay but clearly the sound of a band finding itself. The first full-length, Celestial, was another step on the way, though it still owed a lot to the work of Godflesh's Justin Broadrick (who collaborated with the band, remixing some tracks, and later worked with frontman Aaron Turner in Greymachine). The second album, Oceanic, and its attendant remixes (originally released on a series of 12"s and later collected on a two-CD set), were for me where the band really peaked. Panopticon was a rehash of Oceanic, with diminishing returns, and In the Absence of Truth was just boring. But Isis staged a major comeback on 2008's Wavering Radiant. They went prog, in a way, embracing a more organic and less mechanistic sound; the songs really had an astonishing flow to them. It seemed even at the time like an apotheosis, and it was hard to see how they would top it. So from that angle, it's good to see them going out at the top of their game.

I've seen them twice. The first time was way back in 1999, when they were barely known and were opening for mathcore gods Botch. Isis was extremely experimental back then; their set included a long improvised duo between one guy playing a theremin and another guy playing a didjeridoo. It was an awesome show. The second time I saw them was almost a decade later, on their 10th Anniversary tour, and it wasn't nearly as exciting or fun. In fact, it was boring as hell (the opening act, Jesu, was just as terrible—sorry, but I've just never gotten the love for that band), and I left early.

I think I'm gonna see them one more time when they play New York, though. I still like them, even if I don't listen to them that often, and they're playing with the Melvins, who kick a lot of ass live and whose new album The Bride Screamed Murder is awesome with a side order of bizarre. (It's out June 1; get it.)

Here are the tour dates, in case you've never seen Isis live or want to say goodbye:

May 26, 2010 The Casbah, San Diego, CA w/ Jakob & Tombs
May 29, 2010 WOW Hall, Eugene, OR w/ Jakob & Tombs
May 30, 2010 Capitol Theater, Olympia, WA w/ Jakob & Tombs
May 31, 2010 Rickshaw Theatre, Vancouver, BC w/ Jakob & Tombs
June 01, 2010 Neumo's, Seattle, WA w/ Jakob & Tombs
June 02, 2010 Doug Fir Lounge, Portland, OR w/ Jakob & Tombs
June 04, 2010 Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA w/ Jakob & Tombs
June 05, 2010 The Troubadour, Los Angeles, CA w/ Jakob & Tombs
June 12, 2010 Bonaroo Music Festival w/ Melvins, Clutch, The Flaming Lips, etc.
June 14, 2010 40 Watt Club, Athens, GA w/ Melvins
June 16, 2010 9:30 Club, Washington, DC w/ Melvins
June 17, 2010 Theater Of Living Arts (TLA), Philadelphia, PA w/ Melvins
June 18, 2010 Webster Hall, New York, NY w/ Melvins
June 19, 2010 Music Hall Of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY w/ Melvins
June 20, 2010 Paradise Rock Club, Boston, MA w/ Melvins
June 21, 2010 Paradise Rock Club, Boston, MA w/ Melvins
June 22, 2010 Port City Music Hall, Portland, ME w/ Cave In
June 23, 2010 Club Soda, Montreal, QB w/ Cave In
 

Despite having lost one of its greatest voices (RIP Ronnie James Dio), metal goes on. Here are this week's new releases of note.

Cynic, Re-Traced (Season of Mist): This is a short EP that includes one new song, "Wheels Within Wheels," and reworkings of four songs from the band's 2008 album Traced in Air. Those who felt TiA was a step too far in the direction of ambient/noodly jazz fusion and away from the progressive metal of the band's 1993 debut, Focus, will likely find this EP even more disappointing, as it's even lighter than its predecessor, with only "Wheels WIthin Wheels" even nudging up against metal-ness. If you like jazz fusion, great, you'll probably like this. But if you're coming to it hoping for a return to a more Focus-ed sound, you're gonna be horribly disappointed.

Exodus, Exhibit B: The Human Condition (Nuclear Blast): Exodus's return to relevance is now fully underway. As its title indicates, this is a sequel to The Atrocity Exhibition: Exhibit A, but where that album was a head-down thrash effort with side trips into Pantera-esque groove metal, Exhibit B is much darker and more epic in feel. The songs frequently run in the seven-minute range, with "The Sun is My Destroyer" getting close to the ten-minute mark. And the band's performances are powerful, filled with rage and dramatic delivery from vocalist Rob Dukes, who's really proved himself a tremendous asset to this veteran band. Even if you weren't a fan back in the old days (I wasn't), it's hard to deny that Exodus has a lot to say to contemporary metal audiences.

Harvey Milk, A Small Turn of Human Kindness (Hydra Head): I don't get this band, but I know a lot of people—mostly other music critics—who love them. This album is one head-crushing dirge after another, with plainspoken and despairing lyrics laid over doomy riffs that move as slowly as cooling lava. Vocalist/guitarist Creston Spiers has a hoarse, Southern-rock howl that suits the sludgy riffs the band emits, while drummer Kyle Spence bashes the drums like they're keeping him away from something he'd rather be doing and bassist Stephen Tanner makes loud rumbling noises that kinda remind me of Algis Kizys' work with Swans in the late 1980s, except that Swans were 5000 times better than Harvey Milk could ever hope to be. But hey, if you're in the market for a 37-minute wallow in barely-formed despair, this is probably the album for you, right now anyway.

October File, Our Souls to You (Candlelight): October File like Killing Joke. A lot. This UK act has the same throbbing basslines, ultra-distorted guitar riffs, tribal rhythms and full-throated, apocalyptic vocals as the legendary postpunk group, but they've upped the intensity somewhat. Killing Joke, for all their fearsome reputation, were only rarely interested in pure sonic brutality—their full-length debut, 1990'sExtremities, Dirt and Various Repressed Emotions and 2007's Hosannas From the Basement of Hell are my personal favorites. October File take that side of KJ as their template, and deliver a roaring, percussive assault that offers occasional moments of subtlety (the guitars at the beginning of "Our Souls to You, Part 1," for example) but mostly come at you like an enraged, steroid-abusing gorilla. There's also a bonus disc with four tracks remixed by Justin Broadrick of Godflesh and Jesu, which sound pretty much the same, just with a little more static and distortion. Of the four albums discussed here, this is the one I'm gonna be listening to the most.
 

Legendary metal singer Ronnie James Dio passed away early Sunday morning, May 16, from the stomach cancer he'd been battling since November 2009. The 67-year-old Dio had one of the greatest and most recognizable voices in metal history. His career began in the 1950s, fronting various rockabilly and R&B groups (Ronnie and the Red Caps, Ronnie and the Prophets) in upstate New York. "When you start, you do cover material, and whatever happened to be around, we did it," he told me in an interview last August. "We did a lot of blues, a lot of R&B material very popular back East—people like Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson, the Isley Brothers, James Brown, those kinds of people. You did what was put in front of you."



Dio really found his niche in the early '70s, though, first with the boogie/Southern-rock​-style band Elf and then alongside former Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore in Rainbow. With his theatrical outfits and dramatic, sweeping gestures, not to mention his astonishingly powerful voice, he established a persona far larger than his relatively small physical stature, stalking the stage and commanding the audience's attention at all times.



After leaving Rainbow in 1978, he moved on to front Black Sabbath, and in so doing reshaped that legendary band in his own image. "When we did 'Children of the Sea,' I think that was the first one we wrote together, and that showed that I was more than capable of doing it," Dio recalled about taking over as Sabbath's lyricist. "And Geezer [Butler, bassist and primary lyricist during the Ozzy years] really didn't want to write. When I came in, he said, 'You're gonna write the lyrics, aren't you?' and I said, 'Well, I certainly hope so,' and he said, 'Oh, thank God, that's one job I never wanted.'"



Where the band had been focused on doomy rock and relatively down-to-earth lyrical concerns with Ozzy Osbourne up front and Butler doing most of the writing, when Dio joined, he brought his own interest in heroism and myth to bear on the albums Heaven And Hell, Mob Rules, and Dehumanizer. Last year, that lineup of Black Sabbath, now renamed Heaven And Hell, released one of 2009's best albums, The Devil You Know—a stunningly heavy, operatic meditation on mortality and doom, by four guys who helped invent a genre and got back together to show the youngsters how it's done.

But no matter how heavy the music was, Dio's fundamental optimism always shone through. "None of the songs end with 'OK, and now we're going to die,'" he told me in that conversation. "My manner is always to let people know that someone out there feels the same, and luckily I've got a stage to speak for them."

Of course, Dio also achieved solo stardom in the '80s, with albums like The Last In Line, Holy Diver, and Sacred Heart, and classic metal anthems like "Rainbow In The Dark," "The Last In Line" and "We Rock." I was lucky enough to see him live three times—first on his Sacred Heart tour in 1986, then as the middle act on the bill (between Motörhead and headliners Iron Maiden) in 2003, and finally in 2008, fronting Heaven and Hell on the Metal Masters Tour with Judas Priest, Motörhead and Testament. The latter show was my then-eight-year-old nephew's first concert, and I'm really glad he was able to see a true legend perform. The world of metal has suffered a great loss; we'll never see another performer like Ronnie James Dio.


 

Norwegian black metal band Immortal will release a live DVD, The Seventh Date of Blashyrkh, this summer. It will contain footage of their performance at the Wacken Open Air Festival in Germany from August 2007—so no songs from their killer 2009 album All Shall Fall will be included.

Here's some footage from that show:



In an interview with About.com, Immortal lyricist Demonaz said of the band's future plans, "We already have three songs for the next album. We'll be working on the album this year. And we have material for a lot of other songs, so maybe in August we'll be finished with half the album. But we haven't come so far that I can see the end of the album...I think we'll try to work with the songs and make them classic Immortal songs...The next album will be different than All Shall Fall. I think the songs will come off as one package. Every album is different for us, but we won't try too many new things. We'll stick to the plan and make the music we like. Don't expect something revolutionary."
 

Were you aware of the International Day of Slayer? Yeah, me either. Well, apparently it's a real thing that's been happening each June 6 since 2007, starting at 6 A.M. (for that crucial 6/6/6 element). There's no formal celebration; all you do to observe Slayer Day is blow off school or work and stay home listening to Slayer. There's even a website at nationaldayofslayer.​org.

(Where will Slayer themselves be on International Day of Slayer 2010? Glad you asked. They'll be in Nurnburg, Germany, performing at the Rock Im Park Alternastage.)
 

On Monday night, Limp Bizkit performed the song "Take a Look Around" on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Here's the video.



The song they're performing comes from 2000's Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water, the last studio album to feature guitarist Wes Borland. Gold Cobra, the band's first full-length album since 2003's Borland-less Results May Vary (they also released the EP The Unquestionable Truth, Part 1 in 2005, though there's been no Part 2 to date), will be released later this summer, but the band has already unveiled the cover art and the track listing:



01. Introbra
02. Douchebag
03. Why Try
04. 90 to 10
05. Rock Ship
06. Brand New Meaning
07. Shark Attack
08. Darkside of the Moon
09. GFY
10. Venomous (LBGC)
11. Walking Away
12. Loser
13. Dance Floor
14. Back Porch
15. Angels
16. Middle Finger
17. Thank You
18. Outrobra

The new album is supposed to feature guest appearances from rappers Raekwon and Paul Wall. But more importantly, it will feature Limp Bizkit, who will be pretending it's still 2000.



"I think that, in a nutshell, we came in staying true to ourselves and doing what we do," apelike frontman Fred Durst told MTV News. "We make heavy music that has rapping in it. We're a rap-core band. Through the years, it felt natural to try and explore and grow beyond that, and inevitably, it led us in different directions. And what our coming back together represents is us having figured out that, you know, evolution is great, but we need to do what we do. And this new album, this is what we do. The evolution has brought us full-circle. We're Limp Bizkit. And if you didn't like it before, you're not going to like it now. If you don't want to hear a band that plays super-heavy grooves, with an MC rapping over it, then you shouldn't listen to Limp Bizkit."

Well, I don't like it. I never did. And I almost take the return of Limp Bizkit as an insult. People lined up to see their NYC show (granted, it was free) last week. Seriously. Is there nothing so shitty that it can't get a second hearing from the American public?

Look, Limp Bizkit are artistically indefensible. Fred Durst was (and remains) a wretched lyricist, whose rapping makes my gums throb and whose singing is even worse. Their rhythm section seemed capable of nothing more than a jagged, thumping roar. Their DJ defined "inessential." And Wes Borland, who the group's defenders grabbed onto as the "proof" that the Bizkit had some talent squirrelled away (they just chose never to display it, live or on disc)...how great could he be, given the half-assedness of his non-LB projects and his willingness to hang with his douchebag bandmates?

Every Limp Bizkit song sounded the same—a formless wave of rumble and skree over which Durst would be his lumpen self. Well, except for the ones that didn't even pretend to be rock-related, but were instead just worthless, clumsy rap. But their greatest offense was their petulance and pre-emptive defensiveness.

Look at the song they performed in the clip above. They're making their return to national TV after nearly a decade out of the spotlight, and the lyrics they choose to reintroduce themselves with are about how much people hate them and how that makes Fred Durst feel bad. This from a man who will turn 40 in August.

The sound of Limp Bizkit is the sound of a grotesque man-child, endlessly whining about perceived persecution—and it winds up being a self-fulfilling prophecy, because the more you hear him sucking his own dick about how awesome he is and how much everyone else sucks because they're mean, the more you're filled with the burning desire to punch him in the neck.

He's not alone, either. There's a new Korn album coming out, and if a track-by-track review I read is any indication, it's more of the exact same whining and downtuned thumpa-thumpa that group was pumping out in the late '90s. There's absolutely no indication that Fred Durst or Korn frontman Jonathan Davis have had a moment of self-reflection in the decade since anyone gave a shit about them, no clue, however small, that they see it as even slightly...unseemly for grown men, men who are themselves parents, to be consumed with the inchoate, egomaniacal rage and self-pity of childhood.

It's worth remembering that in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Durst and the rest of Limp Bizkit were straight-up assholes. They were the obnoxious clowns of the rap-metal/nü-metal scene, a feat that took some doing. While some of the bands that came up in that scene, Disturbed, Linkin Park and Deftones in particular, strove for—and many would say achieved—seriousness​ and artistic credibility, most were lowest-common-denomi​nator, knuckle-dragging thugs, and Limp Bizkit were the lowest of the low. They titled albums with insipid dick jokes, crawled out of a gigantic toilet onstage, and generally tried as hard as possible to be the worst, most obnoxious band you'd ever heard of, let alone heard.

And yet, they had hordes of fans and even some critical defenders. Indeed, Limp Bizkit's grotesque, obnoxious, self-pitying moment in the spotlight was an undeniable commercial bonanza. They sold so many records around the turn of the millennium that frankly, I think the metal community needs to form a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, like they had in post-apartheid South Africa. We need to know who supported them, so we can keep it from happening again. Because if Limp Bizkit has a hit record in 2010, I really won't know what to think.


 

You may have noticed I didn't do a New Release Roundup last Tuesday. There just weren't that many noteworthy discs - the new Soulfly, the new Order of Ennead, and a bunch of reissues, basically. This week, though, a virtual barge-load of awesome CDs are hitting stores. So here's a longer-than-usual rundown.

As I Lay Dying, The Powerless RIse (Metal Blade): I haven't spent all that much time with this metalcore band's back catalog, but they're hyped to the skies by fans of the genre, and folks who spend way more time than me listening to metalcore swear this is their best album, the one on which they've upped their songwriting game significantly and are cranking out ferocious performances. I'll leave that up to others to decide. All I'll say is that this album has, to my ear, some fairly classic metal riffs and plenty of breakdowns to set the pit a-spinnin'. So yeah, if you like AILD or metalcore in general, this is gonna be one of your big summer albums.

Brain Drill, Quantum Catastrophe (Metal Blade): This, on the other hand, is technical death metal so complex and squiggly it makes your fingertips hurt just listening to all these frantically tapped solo outbursts. Brain Drill have been through a lot of shit in only a couple of years—in the wake of their debut CD, 2008's Apocalyptic Feasting, guitarist Dylan Ruskin and vocalist Steve Rathjen split with bassist Jeff Hughell and drummer Marco Pitruzzella. They've got two new players (Ivan Munguia on bass and Ron Casey on drums) for this disc, and the music is every bit as manic and blasting as Feasting was. If you're a fan of video-game guitar solos, ultra-broooooootal death metal vocals, and machine-gun blast beats, this is the album for you.

Judas Priest, British Steel: 30th Anniversary Edition (Sony): I've been talking about this disc for a couple of days already—I discussed the liner notes on Friday, and interviewed guitarist Glenn Tipton yesterday. But what about the actual music? Well, if you've never heard British Steel, you should absolutely pick it up; if not this reissue, then at least the 2001 remaster. The album's absolutely packed with killer songs, from "Breaking the Law" and "Living After Midnight" to "Rapid Fire," "Metal Gods," and "Grinder." This version, though, is notable because a) it comes with a bonus live DVD (or, if you buy the super-deluxe edition, a live CD and DVD of the same performances) which is pretty excellent, Priest being a very entertaining live act; and b) it restores the original European running order. When British Steel was released in America, "Breaking the Law" was moved from the #3 position to album opener, and "Living After Midnight" became the first track on the second side, rather than the second. That marketing-based decision has been remedied on this version, and the album flows better for it.

Misery Index, Heirs to Thievery (Relapse): These guys have been around for almost a decade at this point; this is their third album for Relapse, and their fourth overall. Their brand of politically engaged death/grind owes a lot to Napalm Death, Assück, and Dying Fetus, but I like them better than either of the latter two bands. (I have blood relatives I don't like as much as Napalm Death.) This album is fierce and crushing, with some squealy guitar solos, maniacal grindcore drumming from Adam Jarvis, and genuinely awesome cover art. This is one of the more face-punching albums you'll hear all year, and I mean that in the best possible way. If you like Napalm Death, Terrorizer, Resistant Culture, or pretty much any other death/crust/grind band out there, and you're not already a Misery Index fan, you're going about this all wrong. Get this record.

Also out this week:

Attila, Rage (Razor & Tie): Not a reissue by Billy Joel's old band (go look it up), just the debut by some deathcore act from, I think, Atlanta.
Harvestman/U.S. Christmas/Minsk, The Hawkwind Triad (Neurot): I told you why you should worship Hawkwind; these three bands agree, covering their songs on this disc.
I Am Abomination, To Our Forefathers (Good Fight): Decent metalcore with squiggly guitar solos.
Karma to Burn, Appalachian Incantation (Napalm): Instrumental stoner rock. I talked about this band the other day.
Skyforger, Kurbads (Metal Blade): Pagan/folk metal from Eastern Europe (Estonia, maybe?). The usual drill—polka rhythms, obscure stringed instruments, lyrics about conquest and whatnot.
UFOMammut, Eve (Supernatural Cat): Italian psychedelic doom, weird and kinda awesome.

Go spend some money!