“Between the velvet lies
There’s a truth that’s hard as steel
The vision never dies
Life’s a never ending wheel”
- Ronnie James Dio “Holy Diver”

If you haven’t heard yet, Ronnie James Dio died this morning at age 67. The cause of death hasn’t been announced, but he’s been battling stomach cancer since last year. Until that’s confirmed though, I’m just going to assume that the real cause was dragons. Those bastards.

There’s always a tendency to inflate a celebrity’s death into something more than it is, or to turn it into a personal thing. I’m certainly guilty; when Hunter S. Thompson’s died it put me into a real funk for a few weeks. It’s always terrible when anyone dies, and when it’s someone who’s made a major impact in a lot of lives, it’s easy to treat it as a big thing. But I don’t think that’s fair.

We, by which I mean pretty much all heavy metal fans, will remember Dio for the music we love. He’s in that rarefied echelon of artists whose influence can be seen in almost everyone who came after him. He’s absolutely one of the best vocalists of all time, and he helped define the style and substance of the entire genre. When we say things are “metal,” we’re saying it’s something Dio would have done.

He also popularized the devil horns, which is almost on par with inventing the high five.

In a world where most frontmen are histrionic man-children, from Ozzy Osbourne to David Lee Roth to Axl Rose and anyone else you can name, Dio stands out for never trying to be bigger than the music. Sure, he had the outrageous costumes and over-the-top videos (see below), but that always felt fun.

I guess my point with all this is that Dio never needed to be anything more than what he was in life, so let’s not make him something more in death. I’m just gonna crank up Holy Diver and rock out the way he would have wanted.

]]> http://www.seitzwrites.com/2010/05/16/the-world-just-got-a-little-less-metal/feed/ 0 http://www.seitzwrites.com/2010/05/08/seit-recommends-the-zune-hd/ http://www.seitzwrites.com/2010/05/08/seit-recommends-the-zune-hd/#comments Sat, 08 May 2010 23:07:42 +0000 Seitz http://www.seitzwrites.com/?p=497
Sub-recommendations: Bison B.C., Shure SHR840s, cheap furniture

I made some misguided decision that I wasn’t going to use this space to review things. But clearly I’ve enjoyed writing about the things I love (or the case of Peter Travers, hate) so I might as well get around to doing a post about my single favorite gadget. I bought this sweet little drop of awesome way back in September and the intervening months have been enough to convince me that Imade the right decision. Enough so to enforce my opinions in blog form at least.

What you need to know about the Zune HD as far as statistics and specifications are concerned can be found on the Zune website. I’ve got the 32GB model, because the 64GB wasn’t out at the time and they don’t make 128GB. Thoughts follow:

By means of background, I’ll have you know that I once owned this thing:

The Diamond Rio PMP300: It’s the “fake Holy Grail from Last Crusade
that killed a guy” of MP3 players.

I had this bad boy back in the sixth grade (1999 for those unfamiliar with my biography). It could fit ten songs, provided they all held their breath and behaved themselves in the back seat. The display only told you the song number. It connected to the computer via a parallel port. It was bigger than an iPod. I loved it to death.

I went on to own an iRiver, a Rio Volt MP3CD player, a Creative Zen Touch, and finally an iPod (Video, maybe?). So I’ve seen the lows and supposed highs of the portable media player market. I also have a music collection that, as of this writing, is just about to hit 120GB, a surprisingly large portion of which came from legitimate sources.

So after all that, I can say unequivocally that the Zune HD is the best music player I’ve ever used.

Now I stress “music player” because while the Zune HD also does video, pictures, radio, podcasts, internet and apps, 95 percent of my usage is music and music is what it does best. The reason it does music best is because it has the Zune Pass, and that’s the sort of “Game, Bitches!” feature that Microsoft should be pushing front and center of any marketing campaign involving the entire range of Zune products. Because it isn’t, let me explain:

For $15 a month, I get unlimited music.

Before I bought it my inner naysayer assumed that I would never be able to find the music I wanted (Metal) on the service. I told myself that I’d return it and buy an iPod Touch the next day if they didn’t have any good metal available. They did, so I didn’t.

(A shortlist of bands I’ve found and fallen in love with since September: Between the Buried and Me, Pig Destroyer, Arsis, Keelhaul, Nachtmystium, Katatonia, the aforementioned/pictured Bison B.C., Woe of Tyrants, and whatever else Decibel features each month.)

I say this not to label it as a satanic hellforge from which spews forth the rumblings of the dark one unto this mortal plane (feel free to use that though Microsoft!), but to illuminate that if I could find all the metal I wanted on there, imagine how much of whatever lame bullshit you listen to that you can find. That $15 also gets you 10 downloads that you can keep forever each month. I assume that this is how the Zune Pass has always worked but again, Microsoft never pushed the Zune strongly enough as an infinite music box from the get go, relying instead on a brown finish that they’ll never live down and a “Hey guys, us too!” social feature.

Part of that could also be that until the Zune HD, it wasn’t an “infinite music box.” Because until the HD came out, you could not, in fact, download infinite music from the box. And that’s called a transition, which I’ll use to brings us to the Wi-Fi.

With Wi-Fi, you can connect to a network and search through the marketplace from the player.  Which means you don’t need to sync the player to add music. Which means I’ll be able to download Nachtmystium’s new album Addicts: Black Meddle Part 2 (June 8th) and listen to it while taking a shit. Technology rules.

In addition, whenever you download any music, it automatically pulls in artist photos that show up as backgrounds, as well as a biography (usually from allmusic.com), both of which you can view offline. That sounds lamer than it actually is, but trust me that it does improve the overall experience.

You can also download apps straight to the player. And for those of you who couldn’t see the dismissive wanking motion I was making as I typed that, let me explain: The Zune apps feature is a joke. I don’t even want to count, but I think there’s 12. Twelve Apps. That’s more than the number of wins Jamarcus Russell got as a starter in Oakland, it’s also less than the number of donuts he ate in the time it took me to come up with this joke.

There are a couple of apps worth having. Audiosurf Tilt is a fun one that generates a tilt-sensitive game that’s a cross between Rainbow Road and Guitar Hero out of any song (which is especially fun with Napalm Death’s “You Suffer.”) There’s also a bowling game, and Project Gotham Ferrari. And a calculator that does standard and scientific modes! (Seriously, my forearm is killing me.) The Twitter, Facebook and Weather apps are ok if you have wi-fi available, but useless without.

Oddly, while you can download apps and music straight to the player, you can’t download podcasts or videos. I can kind of understand the video, because you actually have to pay for those. But the podcasts I don’t understand. There is sort of a workaround, in that you can wirelessly sync the player with your computer over wi-fi (not bluetooth), but you have to be on the same network to do it. So if you were, say, at work or on vacation you wouldn’t be able to do it.

And last of the media components is that most cutting-edge of technologies, Radio! Yes, Radio: You too can hear voices beamed over the airwaves without any wires. Boy that President Roosevelt sure is swell, isn’t he? But seriously, it does pick up HD radio stations, which means you can double or triple the sadness of a dying medium on a single spectrum. And since Boston has two NPR news stations now, I can get a double dose of liberal entitlement on a daily basis (the two phrases I hate myself most for ever saying are 1.) “I heard a story on NPR this morning about …”  and 2.) “There was an article in the New Yorker about …”).

There’s also an Internet browser, and it does what it does. Occasionally I’ll use it to look up album release dates.

But enough with all that, let’s talk software, and show you all what you really came here to see: Hardware nudity!

First up, this is the homescreen. It really doesn’t come across in the pictures how amazing the OLED screen is. The blacks are blacker than the blackest blacks you’ve ever seen on a device, and the colors come across brilliantly. The font for all of the options is a generous enough that you can read it clearly and tap on the option you want cleanly.

The Homescreen.

Next, one of my favorite features is the music navigation screen. When you go into the music screen you get a list of artists, and you can tap on the heading letters to get to this screen. Tap on any of these letters, and go to that section. It’s so stupidly simple that it’s brilliant, and it works better than the usual “scroll through the letters” functionality of other players.

I don’t know why, but I love the look of this navigation system.

I showed this same screen back at the top, but this version gives you a better sense of the size of the player in reference to my ape mitts.

The “currently playing” screen.

You can see two of the hardware buttons in this one. On the face of the player is the Home button, which takes you back to the homescreen that I showed earlier. On the left side, near my thumb, is the media button, which brings up the screen showed here. This is where you can change the volume, or skip forward/back, and play/pause. I think it’d be nice to have a hardware volume rocker at least, but this isn’t bad at all. (There’s also a power button up top.)

On-screen volume and playback controls.

Another shot of the “Now Playing” screen, this time with the player looking a little more modest in a DLO Action Jacket silicone case. I was a little bothered that the 32GB player only came in silver (unless you want to custom order it) but this renders the point moot. I also picked up a screen protector, as much to improve traction as to protect the screen.

Action Jacket silicone cover.

And modesty is out the window with this shot of the player’s naked backside. You can see the Zune insignia, along with the industrial-looking screws. You can’t see it too well, but the back is all brushed aluminum.

The backside, with Zune insignia.

And finally is a shot of the player in the desktop dock. They do make a dock that will let you play 720p video through a TV, but this is the basic one that just hooks up to my stereo. It also charges the player.

The Dock.

So I think I’ve covered this thing as well as I can for what I use it for. I’d love to talk more about the video playback, but I don’t watch videos on it (I need the space for music). I’ve also said nothing about the social feature, but that’s already more than I want to say about it. Point being: For me it’s perfect. If you’re looking for an amazing music player with some other extra features, it’ll be perfect for you too. If apps are more important, get an iPod Touch. I hate to make it sound that simple, but it really is.

Programming Note: Yes, the previous post wound up being a little too ambitious. I do have a few more gadgets that I’ll be writing about, and we’ll see where it goes from there.

Image via Metalsucks.net

So I took  a couple days off there, but I’m back with the cover art for the upcoming Skeletonwitch Album “Breathing the Fire,” which showed up on MetalSucks the other day. I’d lay more praise upon the band, but I think I already did that plenty a few months back. Besides, I think those guys already summed it up well enough for me.

Which brings me to my next point. I’ve been making that whole Google migration over the last couple of weeks, and I’m pretty damn impressed with all of it so far. In fact, I was completely blown away when I discovered Google Apps. It completely changed my whole concept of what Google has been doing, and frankly, I  think they’re on the right path.

The main idea is to use things like GMail and Google Docs for the Apps concept (basically it’s a way to load these online applications as if they were programs on the hard drive, not online), but Chrome lets you make an App out of anything. For instance, I’ve got the WordPress Dashboard saved to my desktop as an App, so I can launch right into that and post updates any time I want (not that I use it that often, but still).

The other App that I’m big on now is the music player from Lala.com, which is pretty much the greatest site ever with the worst name ever. Basically, my music is almost all on the internet now, so I can listen wherever I want  (without needing the external hard drive to carry all 103 gigabytes). I highly recommend checking it out. I’m basically off of iTunes now, thanks to this. You can even buy web only songs for 10 cents each (I swear I don’t work for them).

Obviously, this isn’t actually that huge. I mean, essentially, it’s just a shortcut. But for some reason, looking at things this way makes so much more sense to me. Like I said, it’s about changing the way I use the internet.

Alright, this has been a pretty scatterbrained post so far. Thanks for bearing with me, but I think I’m just going to close it off here.

So what have I been doing in the two weeks since I last wrote here? Well, if you read my last post, you probably have a pretty good idea of where I was and what I was doing, but I suppose some sort of follow up is order. So I’ll address my latest activities in a wholly arbitrary manner selected only to assert my editorial dominance.

First of all, I’m working full time (plus some) and, surprisingly, it takes more effort to write up a blog post after a day spent writing than it does after a day of doing nothing. I’m going to stick by my decision to not write about my job, suffice to say that it’s going well and I’m slowly getting back into the groove of writing news stories on a regular basis.

As a result of this, my long-gestating Phase II of the “I Hate Peter Travers” project will have to wait until I find the time/motivation to finish designing the website. Sorry to all those waiting on the IPO.

In fact, the only other writing I’ve been doing lately has been some PR stuff I did for my good friend and technological consultant, Paul Rausch, owner of Greenwire IT. Since I get a lot of hits from Florida, I figure it’s worth giving him an extra plug here as well. If you’re anywhere in the Southwest Florida Area, I cannot recommend this man enough. He helped me set up this site, and I’m willing to bet that he’s one of the only IT guys in the world who can set up your computer, cook you a delicious meal and educate you on the undertones of racism that fueled the Franco-Prussian war at the same time. And do it in your choice of four languages.

But since I’m now working full time in a town 30 minutes away, I also had to make my epic 1500+ mile road trip from Fort Myers to Boston, by way of Washington, DC. The first 1000 or so was done in one straight shot, by the end of which I was no longer able to hold a clear thought in my head. I was basically focusing everything on driving, especially during hour 14 when I was cruising through Richmond alongside every trucker on 95. Good Times.

By the way, Washington, DC is an awful driving city. I already hated rotaries, and I did not need to deal with DuPont circle after 16 hours on the highway.

I also got a chance to head up to Baltimore to see the Rays take on the Orioles. I was, of course, dissapointed to see the Rays lose, but Evan Longoria hit two home runs, so it was kind of worth it. Camden Yards is also the nicest stadium I’ve ever been to, especially with $6 admission on college night. To hell with all the tradition, they really need to rebuild Fenway so I can watch my out-of-town team in better comfort.

In other news, today was the Boston Marathon, which, in years past, would have meant drinking enough to make watching people run for hours interesting. Instead, I worked.

And finally, BU won the national championship. It was quite possibly the greatest single sporting event I’ve ever seen, much less attended. For those who don’t pay attention to such things, you missed out. Trailing 3-1 to Miami (Ohio) with a minute to go, the Terriers proceeded to rip of two goals, go into overtime, and win on as flukey a shot as I’ve ever seen. As is the custom around these parts I went out drinking in the same bar as the team after the game. Go me.

Fun fact: This was the fifth national championship won between UF and BU in the last four years. UF and BU also have two of the oldest registered .edu domain names on the internet (ufl.edu and bu.edu, respectively), and both were registered on the exact same day.

But as cool as it was to see BU win another National Championship, I feel like that weekend was the official end of my time at BU. Sure, I technically graduated back in May, but I was one of the only people I knew graduating. As far as I’m concerned, that was as much for my family than it was for me. But being in DC and seeing that game with all my friends gave as good a sense of closure as I could ever expect to get from college. I’m ready to move on now.

In the words of Roger Murtaugh, I’m getting too old for this shit.

This is Matt Gilroy. He’s the Senior co-captain of the Boston University Men’s Hockey Team. He’s the only player to named an All-American in the last two seasons, and is well on his way to the third. He’s currently one of ten finalists for the Hobey Baker Award (along with fellow Terrier Colin Wilson), awarded to the best player in the country. He was profiled in the New York Times earlier this year (the source of the above photo).

Tomorrow, he will be leading the Terriers into the first game of the 2009 NCAA tournament against Ohio State in Machester, New Hampshire. As of right now, BU is the number one overall seed in the tournament, after winning three regular season tournaments (including the Beanpot), claiming the regular season championship, Hockey East regular season championship, and the Hockey East Championship.

I’m going to be there.

The last time we were in this position was my freshman year. We had claimed all the same honors and were playing in Worcester, Mass. We took the bus out to the first game, where we destroyed the University of Nebraska-Omaha in a 9-2 victory. That became a night of infamy for the BU program, because when we got on the bus for the second game the next night, against Boston College (possibly the biggest rivalry in college hockey) we were informed that any swearing at the game could result in a bench minor penalty for the team. Turns out that cheering “Fuck ‘em up, Fuck ‘em up, BC Sucks” for every goal (cumulatively, so we cheered it nine times on the ninth goal) and for every power play can get you into trouble with the NCAA. That was the end of “the cheer” for BU, which became the subject of Rick Reilly column in Sports Illustrated.

We then lost 2-1 to BC. That was the longest bus ride home I’ve ever taken.

This year, we’ve been absolutely dominant all season. We’ve won every game that we needed to win, and I have so much faith in this team to bring home the National Championship. If that happens, that will give my two teams (the other being UF) five national championships, in three sports, over the last four years. Additionally, three of those would have come at the expense of Ohio State.

This is going to be a long weekend, but it will be worth it.

While you were off doing whatever it is you do at 1 p.m. on Tuesdays, I was out at Newbury Comics buying the new Mastodon album, Crack The Skye. Yes, I not only spent money on music, I actually received a physical disc (with bonus DVD) in exchange for that money. I wouldn’t do something wild and old-fashioned like that unless I was confident that I was going to get something worthwhile out of it. Fortunately, worthwhile is a woefully inadequate a word to descibe this album. Essential might be a little more appropriate.

Before I get into strange bouts of nerd-ilepsy (which will take place on the other side of the jump), I want to point out something that I haven’t seen anyone else mention. I read a lot of comments saying that the cover of the album was a little cheesy and disappointing (The image above certainly looks that way, but the actual cover looks much better. the inks and colors just interact better than the pixels of light do.) but nobody has thanked Mastodon for bringing back the strangest movie villain of all time: Lo-Pan.

It’s not a complete match, but it’s always nice to see Big Trouble in Little China get a nod.

And now, onto the nerd-ulation:

There was a lot of talk that Mastodon were going with a more progressive, hard-rock direction for this album.  Considering that the talk came from the band itself, I’d say that’s a pretty accurate description. But it still sounds like Mastodon, inasmuch as any of their albums really sound like they came from the same band. It’s a good bet that if you loved the last two albums (Leviathan and Blood Mountain), you’re going to have your head destroyed by Crack The Skye.

Imagine if the last four Mastodon albums had been distilled down to only their best elements and combined into one song. You’d still have all the wild rage and testicular fortitude of the Call of the Mastodon and Remission, along with the spaced out prog-rock concepts  of Leviathan and Blood Mountain. Now, pretend that instead of one song, it seven songs. That’s Crack the Skye.

It’s everything that made Mastodon the best band of the last decade, without the zone-out parts that made people question that assertion. Only, they’re even better this time out.

The biggest difference is with the vocals. The two-singer dynamic of Brent Hinds and Troy Sanders has been expanding with every album, and they’ve both only become better singers with time. There’s less screaming and growling than on past releases, but I’ve always contended that there’s nothing wrong with a little more melody.

This is also, by the way, easily the best guitar album anyone has put out in years. First of all, it’s a gear head’s wet dream. There are so many different tones and sounds throughout the album, from the typical high-gain sludge to trippy Pink Floyd lead tones, and they’ve actually turned down the gain knobs so you can hear everything. Somehow, it’s clean sounding and immensely powerful all at once.

(Unrelated personal aside: this is my bedroom, circa Junior year of high school/2004:

That picture doesn’t even cover all the other random gear I’ve bought and sold throughout the years. You can see why I love the gear head aspect.)

But all the guitar tone would be useless if this wasn’t also a player’s album. There are so many guitar solos on this album. Brent Hinds has always been a good guitarist without really being considered a guitar hero, but this is a huge boost to his resume towards that end. My only complaint is that there aren’t as many huge riffs as there were on previous efforts, but they’ve been replaced by a stronger focus on melody and grooves.

Like their last two, there’s an overarching concept to the whole thing. As Drummer Brann Dailor (who wrote most of the lyrics) explains on the DVD included with the deluxe edition, the story is about a parapalygic who experiments with astral projection but gets lost in the ether until he reappears in czarist Russia, where Rasputin rescues him and brings him back to his body. Or something like that. All told, it’s pretty much on par with Blood Mountain.

One really interesting thing is that seem to be basing all of their albums on elements. The back cover of the liner notes has a graphic with the logos of their four albums, which appear to signify fire (Remission), water (Leviathan) and earth (Blood Mountain), with Crack the Skye as air. Presumably their next album will be about Ma-Ti and his monkey, with their final opus simply being a 50 minute cover of the Captain Planet theme song.

Personally, I didn’t realize that there were enough drugs out there to come up with this stuff. I’m glad somebody’s crazy enough to take them all at once though.

But for those of you who have not dived into the miasmic world of job searching during a recession, or who are already comfortable in jobs, let me tell you that it is awful. More than that, it’s depressing and absolutely robs you of any will to do anything. I spend hours looking through every job listing site I can find, sending out resumes and cover letters that are met with…nothing. And nothing is not, as it turns out, a real cool hand. I’d rather have the HR manager call me up and laugh at me than hear nothing back. A simple no would at least let me know that someone is out there, and is actually looking at my stuff.

So imagine my absolute delight when I got an email back yesterday from Dynasty Marketing asking me if I could come out for an interview today for a Marketing Sales Representative position with their company, which works with Sports and Entertainment venues. Of course, I called and told them, that would be great. 2 P.M. you say? I’ll see you then, and thank you so much for considering me!

You’ve probably already assumed from the post title and my general tone that this is going to be a story about a bad job interview experience. I’ll tell you right now that red flags started popping up almost immediately after I scheduled this interview, but I figured that at the very worst it would give me some experience with the interview process.

Yeah, not so much…

Here’s how desperate I am to get a job right now. Given a day’s notice about an interview in Burlington, Mass, I had my suit pressed at Men’s Wearhouse, booked a Zipcar for the afternoon and prepped a list of references for the interview. I spoke to both my parents to tell them that I had an interview, and even discussed the possibility of bringing my car up to Boston if I did get the job. I woke up early so that I could trim up my beard, eat some breakfast and make sure that I looked presentable. I had directions printed out and CDs ready for the drive (I picked Maylene and the Sons of Disaster for some good vibes heading out there).

Then my Mom calls. She’s did some google searching, and read something about how it was all a rip off. She had a website up for a different Dynasty Marketing, so I figured it was just a coincidence. Funny how those things work out.

Things went askance pretty quickly. I got all dressed and walked around the block to pick up my car, which wound up being a bright red Toyota Matrix. I knew the make and model, but I wasn’t expected it to look so much like an oversized Playskool pedal car. Turns out this car also has some of the worst blind spots I’ve ever (not) seen. I almost took out a Chrysler getting onto the Turnpike.

After some minor trouble finding the place–whoever designed the highway system in Massachusetts should be forced to wander it for all eternity–I arrive at their office. It’s in a rundown industrial park in that great American no man’s land known as “near the mall.” The front room has a widescreen TV with CNN blaring (I’d later–as in just now–realize that it’s to provide background noise when people call), some very cheap looking furniture and a lot of unmarked doors. When I asked to use the bathroom, I was led through a maze of gutted offices to the bathroom, which had a shower in it.

So I fill out a quick little application, sit down and wait with two girls that they scheduled for the same time. The warning sirens are absolutely deafening at this point. I spent half an hour watching bullshit “news” coverage (some woman in S. Korea has failed her driving test 771 times, apparently) which was punctuated by a daily press briefing from the white house. Finally, I get called into the interview.

And then I left the interview. I spent at most five minutes talking to this woman, who explained that they buy up free vouchers for sports and entertainment venues, then sell them at conferences, school, stores, etc. I am given almost no information about what the job will entail, asked only the most basic questions (do you prefer an office or being out in the field?) and sent packing with a promise that I’ll hear whether or not I move on to the next interview sometime soon.

So when I get home, I look into it, and it’s all basically a huge scam. Well, scam probably isn’t the right word. They’re not trying to get money from me, they’re just trying to get me to go out selling coupons for commission, which will give them money while giving me next to nothing.

Apparently this company, or another independent branch of it, pops up in every town and starts spamming job boards with promises of “Marketing Experience” and “Rapid Advancement. ” It’s all entry level, so they can grab kids in college or just out of it and put them to work for a little while. If you stick with it and advance through their “Management Training Program,” you eventually get to move to another backwater hellhole and try to rip off other kids fresh out of college.

So I won’t be going back for that next interview. Back to the job boards for me.

God this sucks.

I’ve been trying to avoid writing straight up reviews with this site. I generally don’t read them, because I think it’s a boring format, and most of the time they just come down to a number/letter/star rating with some weak justification to explain it, so why bother writing them? However, the lack of interesting things happening in my own life has consistently pushed me towards writing about art/media kinds of issues. So I’ve been trying to offer criticism, rather than just reviewing because I like to write about what the I think about a subject, not just whether or not it’s any good (this is also a minor semantic debate, and it makes me sound like an ass, so consider yourself lucky that you don’t lay awake thinking about these things at night). I think that all art can and should be judged by itself. It’s kind of like that thing about the tree falling in the forest, except I’m more curious about why the tree fell than what it sounded like.

Which, somehow, brings me to Skeletonwitch and their album Beyond the Permafrost. I’m just going to throw that whole last paragraph out and tell you that this band rules. Their name rules. That album art up there rules. If that doesn’t make you want to listen to this band then I’m afraid you’re beyond the kind of help I can give. There’s really not anything I can say that will give you a better idea of what the band sounds like than you could get just by going to their myspace and listening yourself. However, in the interest of writing something interesting, I’ll make an attempt at getting in depth after the jump.

If there was ever a genre of music that needed to be measured solely by its own merits, metal is it. If you compare it to just about any other kind of music, metal’s basically a joke. It tends to come across as a bunch of macho-posturing, with everyone trying to be louder, faster and heavier than everything that came before it. It probably doesn’t help that the only metal that ever gets popular is inevitably the worst representation of the genre (with the possible exception of Guns ‘N’ Roses’ Appetite for Destruction and Metallica’s Black Album). Hair metal, rap metal and nu-metal were pretty much the last examples of metal to go mainstream, and that stuff was awful.

Skeletonwitch probably isn’t an exception to that. There’s a certain suspension of disbelief that you have to adopt in order to really enjoy it. It’s sort of like watching a horror movie. You know that you’re going to be subjected to all kinds of stupidity and unbelievable situations, so you’ve got to just shut off that part of your brain and go with it.

So what do you get with skeletonwitch? Well, on the top, you’ve got lyrics about demons, witchcraft and the like, along with song titles like “Sacrifice for the Slaughtergod.” I think, to some extent, nobody is meant to take that stuff seriously. Since Black Sabbath, almost every band in the genre has just been recycling the same themes for their songs, because you couldn’t exactly sing about love and peace over this kind of music. That said, I think there are some moments in this album where they push it to the limit almost for comedic effect. For example, the song “Fire from the Sky” has something to do with demons taking over the earth, and there’s a line that goes “Evil now rains down upon us/with fire from the motherfucking sky.” It’s funny in a Dethklok kind of way. There’s also a point in “Within my Blood” where singer Chance Garnette introduces the guitar solo by saying “Cannot escape what is within my blood. Two, Three, Go!” almost in a demented blues style.

But that, in my opinion, is all pretty much ornamentation. The real focus of the album is the guitar work of Nate Garnette and Scott Hedrick. This album is nothing if not a clinic of metal rhythm guitar. It’s not just the typical palm-muted open E and power chord riffs that most people stick with. There are seamless harmonies all over this album, my personal favorite being the opening of the aforementioned “Within my Blood,” along with intricate, technical rhythm fills that almost upstage the lead work. One refreshing thing about this album is that it’s all guitar, drums and bass, with almost no effects or even downtuning present. When seemingly every other band is bringing in all kinds of synths and tuning down as far as C, it’s nice to hear a straightforward album with just the band playing their asses off.

So yeah, you should really listen to Skeletonwitch. I’m now going to go back to not writing reviews, because this took way too much effort.

Update:
I just found this interview with Metal Hammer and this road blog by guitarist Scott Hedrick from Revolver, so I felt like sharing.

I first saw this over at Metalsucks, where Corey Mitchell called it his sight unseen nominee for best metal DVD for 2009. I’m inclined to agree with him, but I guess we’ll both find out for sure whenever it gets released (Amazon has a book of the same name slated to come on out March 12, 2009. Let’s hope the DVD will follow shortly after.)  Apparently, the movie has been screening at festivals, been nominated for a couple of awards and generated some positive press, but like I said, I only heard about it a few days ago.

Watching the trailer, I honestly thought that this was another Spinal Tap-esque mockumentary at first (I mean, one of the guys is named Robb Reiner, and Anvil is already such a great fake band name), but a quick wikipedia search revealed that no, Anvil is a real band (and I’ve been worried that my site looks bad), and they’ve apparently been pretty productive while languishing in obscurity.

I love music–metal in particular–and I’ve been playing guitar for years, so you can imagine why I’d be interested in seeing a movie about underdogs chasing a dream as rock stars. There are so many bands that fell by the wayside over the years, but it looks like the guys in Anvil are legitimately making a run at relevance in this movie (of course, being Canadian, their only real competition in their homeland is Rush). I’m also glad to see movies about unheralded bands being made. The world really doesn’t need another Some Kind of Monster (There’s a reason why the movie was called Rocky and not Apollo, if you get what I mean).

When I heard about Anvil though, I started to get curious about why there aren’t more good rock movies. This is Spinal Tap and “Metalocalypse” are the only two that come to mind, the former for the same reasons listed in the last paragraph and the latter because it so easily mocks everything about metal and stardom. The thing is, every band out there seems to claim that their lives were no different from Spinal Tap, so I guess maybe filmmakers just don’t see a reason to make them. I think I was trying to hint at this in my “Legend of Master Legend” post, but a lot of rock bands exist in near-fictional worlds or arrested development anyway. We expect them to play music and entertain us, but there are very few bands I would actually want to watch in a film context.

(I hate to keep harping on Metallica, but that movie almost ruined the band for me as much as St. Anger did. I don’t want to watch anybody go through real therapy. I’d much rather watch fictional therapy, where all you have to do is have Robin Williams repeat “it’s not you’re fault” until Matt Damon cries and everything is fine. I don’t want to see a band that writes songs like ‘Seek and Destroy,’ ‘Fight Fire with Fire’ and ‘Harvester of Sorrow’ suddenly start taking themselves so seriously once they get to their 40s. The only good part of that was seeing Dave Mustaine cry. He has to be the only person who makes Lars Ulrich sound reasonable.)

Where was I going with this? Oh yeah. There are, of course exceptions to bands I’d want to see onscreen. Chief among them is Every Time I Die and their “Documentary” DVD Shit Happens. Those guys don’t take themselves seriously at all.

The other movie I really want to see made some day would be an adaptation of Henry Rollins’ Get in the Van. That would be the anti-Spinal Tap. Instead of getting lost behind stage, they’d get beaten by a bunch of skinheads behind stage. Or instead of having Stonehenge be too small, they have the show broken up by police. And instead of talking about amplifiers going to 11, Henry would just talk about how much he hates everyone.

But maybe I’m the only one who wants to see that one…

This is the Gibson Dark Fire Les Paul. Gibson says that it’s the most technologically advanced guitar that they’ve ever built. It features their “Robot Guitar” autotuning technology, as well as the new “Chameleon Tone Technology,” which is supposed to let you get any tone possible with a single guitar.

It’s a sign of how far behind I am on guitar technology that I’ve only just recently heard about this.  I used to keep pretty up to date on the newest stuff, especially when I used to work for a guitar company. First Act came out with some cool stuff while I was there, especially a couple of eco-friendly green guitars, one of which was made largely out of bamboo. Those were still traditional guitars though. This Dark Fire business is something else entirely, and I’m not sure how I feel about it.

A little background: I’ve been playing guitar for about nine years, and I probably own as many guitars. I’ve opened up all of my electrics and customized the wiring and pickups to my liking. I wouldn’t say that I’m an expert, but I know enough about this stuff to get me by.

I have to appreciate this Dark Fire guitar on one level because it’s a true extension of the work Les Paul did with the electric guitar. Paul was one of the biggest innovators in the history of music technology (he invented mutli-track recording, among other things) and I’m sure he appreciates the way Gibson is carrying on his legacy. From a design perspective, I also have to say that the carbon-fiber pickup covers are a nice touch, and you really can’t go wrong with the Les Paul.

The auto-tune technology is also a great idea, as easy as it may make it to joke about kids not being able to tune their guitars. Tuning is just one of those hassles that you learn to deal with, but I definitely can’t say that I wouldn’t be excited about never having to tune my guitar again.

I guess my problem with this is the whole Chamelon Tone Technology business. I can’t find an exact list of the different tones available, or a solid explanation of how it works. All Gibson says is that it “allows you to change your guitar’s tone to match countless environments and to recreate any guitar sound you ever lusted after,” and that doesn’t really say anything. I’m going to assume that most of the tone changes you’d be able to make would involve coil-tapping, series-parallel switching, phase switching and/or pickup blending, combined with some kind of active EQ system. If that’s the case, I guess it’ll be kind of like the old Fender Jaguars, or Gibson’s own Les Paul Recording, which was only in production for two years (although apparently it’s the preferred model of Mr. Paul).

Until I hear and play one for myself (which will probably be a while, seeing as the first run has already been delayed and they’re likely to get snatched up as soon as they become available) I’m treating their claim to get “any guitar sound” as suspect. I’m sure you’ll be able to get a serviceable impersonation of any sound you want, but I can’t think of any way they could completely alter the tone enough to make a Les Paul sound like Strat, Danelectro or hollow body.

With any guitar, the pickups and circuitry are only going to do so much. The construction and design have a lot more to do with the real character and “tone” of the guitar. Take a strat, for instance. The classic sound that’s associated with the guitar is partially from the pickup arrangement and the wiring, but you can put that same wiring into a different guitar and it’ll sound (surprise surprise) completely different. The sound that comes out of the guitar does come from the pickups, but the pickups can only interpret the vibrations of the guitar strings. Everything that affects the string vibrations is going to have some impact, even how you hold the neck and fret the notes, to some extent (hence the phrase “tone is in your fingers”). Since the strings are connected to the body and the neck, the type of wood that each is made out of is going to affect the tone. The type of connection they have to the body is going to affect it. The size and shape of the body are going to affect it. That’s just physics, and there’s not a lot that Gibson can do about it.

Of course, I am a little obsessive about stuff like this. I don’t think the average person is going to care if it doesn’t sound exactly like another guitar. In a typical live situation, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. All the same, I’d just as soon have a nice Les Paul Standard (or Explorer, Firebird, Telecaster Deluxe, etc.) without all the technology and put the extra cash towards an amp.

But like I said, it is refreshing to see some serious innovation in guitar technology. Relatively little has changed since the first electric guitars were developed, but this has to be one of the few industries where it’s almost impossible for new technology to be widely adopted. There are so many wonky little things about guitars that we stick with just for the sake of tone (vacuum tubes? 60-cycle hum?), but they’re still around because they work. Blame it on Occam’s Razor, but I don’t see this Dark Fire being anything more than a niche market.