English legends, Deep Purple, formed in 1968 and quickly gained a following on the merits of their debut, Shades of Deep Purple, and its hit single, a cover of the Joe South song "Hush". Back then, they were a psych-infused pop rock band in sound, but with a bold classical music references. Their obvious chops and musical self-indulgence along with the psych and eventual hard rock leaning of their sound in that first incarnation are reminiscent of a band they toured with early on: Cream. Purple really began to hit their stride when they recruited replacement bassist Roger Glover and vocalist Ian Gillan from the band Episode Six in 1969, and took a turn toward the heavy. The "Mark II" lineup released four fantastic studio albums, one of the best live albums of all time, and the fascinating Concerto for Group and Orchestra over the four years that followed, cementing themselves as one of the greatest hard rock bands of their fertile time. In the years after Gillan and Glover split again in 1973, Purple has produced some interesting music here and there, introducing vocalist David Coverdale to the world, reuniting the Mark II lineup in the mid 80's for a couple of decent prog/hard rock albums, and recruiting the amazing Steve Morse on lead guitar for the past 20 years, but their output during those four years in the early 70's was something special.
As I've been doing lately, I'm going to include two examples of their work below. First is a live TV performance from 1970 of the progressive and heavy "Child in Time". It illustrates the afore-mentioned self-indulgence, classical music influence, the cutting edge chops of keyboardist Jon Lord and guitarist Ritchie Blackmore and the inimitable vocal stylings of the great Ian Gillan.
For the past couple of months, I've been catching up on albums released last year, and I'm finally ready to give you a list of the best 10.
2014 was a good year for metal, with album releases by a number of long-time heavyweights and some of progressive favorites as well. In the former category, Arch Enemy, At the Gates, Behemoth, Black Label Society, Blut Aus Nord, Body Count, Crowbar, Down, Exodus, Eyehategod, Godflesh, Judas Priest, Lacuna Coil, Machine Head, Overkill, Slipknot, Triptykon and Vader all had releases last year. There was even a Grammy favorite tribute album to the late great Ronnie James Dio. And some fantastic and well-established progressive metal bands also had 2014 releases: Agalloch, Animals as Leaders, Cynic, Mastodon, Opeth, Threshold, Devin Townsend and Vanden Plas.
Despite the albums put out by all of those excellent bands, my list of the 10 best come from relatively new, varied and underexposed acts. I'm putting them in alphabetical order because they're too difficult to rank, but these 10 definitely stood out to me as the top of a great class.
Beyond Creation - Earthborn Evolution
This Canadian quartet achieves great balance between melodic and technical, brutal and progressive on this fantastic tech-death album.
Conquering Dystopia - Conquering Dystopia
Okay, so maybe it's not completely fair to call this a new or unknown act. I mean it is but guitarist Jeff Loomis has had a pretty full career playing with Nevermore among others. And bassist Alex Webster of Cannibal Corpse is no hidden talent either. This album of instrumental metal features blistering neo-classical shredding atop tight, heavy and fast riff-oriented death metal. If instrumental music is your thing, check this out. It's one of the best of that type I've ever heard.
Dimesland - Psychogenic Atrophy
This is zany, left-handed death metal a la Canadian greats Gorguts and Martyr, but originating from California's bay area. There's plenty of jazz and thrash thrown in there too. In fact the only thing you won't find is the kitchen sink... and the melody can be hard to find too. Highly recommended for anyone who likes twisty, experimental music.
Fallujah - The Flesh Prevails
Another San Francisco band. And another great technical death metal album, this one and Beyond Creation's (above) are the two most similar on this list. This one is perhaps a bit more polished and not as overtly jazzy.
Ne Obliviscaris - Citadel
Interesting and enjoyable mix of metal styles from Down Under with unusual prominence of the violin reminds me of a modernized and more varied Tristania.
Soen - Tellurian
Another "supergroup" like Conquering Dystopia, this excellent release features a rhythm section of drummer Martin Lopez (of Opeth) and bassist Steve DiGiorgio (of Death, Testament and Sadus) and sits solidly between legendary proggers Tool and Opeth.
Spires - The Whisperer
Grandiose extreme progressive metal from England features long compositions, strong playing, choral and string orchestrations and varied tone. I'm not a fan of the clean vocals, which populate much of the album, but it's such a strong effort otherwise that they're more than made up for.
Troldhaugen - Obzkure Anekdotez for Maniakal Massez
Another Australian band, these guys are obviously having a bit of a laugh. But besides being quirky and irreverent, it's interesting and well-played folk metal with some old-school video game influence thrown in.
Verse Vica - Endeavor
Unfortunately, this awesome band from North Carolina is probably the least-discovered here (along with the equally amazing Dimesland). Their very proggy release is reminiscent of newer and highly successful bands, fellow NC'ers Between the Buried and Me and instrumental act Animals as Leaders. I hope these guys can break out in terms of exposure.
Xerath - III
Another English band, this expansive, symphonic metal reminds me of a more interesting Devin Townsend, both compositionally and vocally. As popular as Devin is, if you like him, check this out. I think it's better.
Ok, so the timing on this isn't very good. It was just about a month ago that the Grammys once again completely offended the metal community, this time by awarding the "Best Metal Performance" of 2014 to the comedy duo, Tenacious D. But bear with me here. I think the Grammys might have been able to get away, generally, with granting their only award in the genre to The D if they hadn't done a number of other things wrong to lead to that moment. Metal fans generally like Tenacious D. They're pretty good musicians with an uncanny knack for mimicking the genre, while both parodying and paying homage to it. Songs like "Dio" and "The Metal" do a great job of distilling the qualities of fervent, innocent loyalty, theatrical melodrama, zealous devotion to musical integrity and bombast that make metal equal parts ridiculous, endearing and impressive. Plus, they're hilarious.
But the Grammys have a long history of insulting the metal community, mostly in that the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences hasn't the faintest clue about the genre and refuses to make the slightest effort to learn, despite years of criticism and miscue after miscue. It started when the award was first introduced in 1989. In that year, Jethro Tull's unremarkable prog rock album Crest of a Knave (and I like Jethro Tull) beat out releases by Jane's Addiction, Iggy Pop, AC/DC and, shockingly, Metallica's fantastic ...And Justice for All. They then overreacted to the blunder by awarding the next three Grammys in the genre to Metallica, including one for a cover of a Queen song, somewhat inappropriate in a genre where the recording artist's musical composition is at least as important as the recorded performance. Overall, Metallica has won the award six times. It seems the voters are just glad the one band they've heard of is nominated so they can quickly cast their votes and get back to Beyoncé. Since that first fateful award, the recipients have generally been great bands, but the most widely recognizable names whenever there's the slightest piece of production by any of them: Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Slayer, Ozzy Osbourne, Motörhead, Nine Inch Nails and Tool have won almost all of them and been nominated multiple times. This year, Tenacious D's winner was a cover from a Dio tribute album from which another band (Anthrax) was also nominated. Talk about lazy. And again, neither of them actually wrote the music.
Back to The D. First, let me warn you that the links and videos below are not for anyone offended by foul language or adolescent humor. I first heard Tenacious D (or rather, saw them) back in 1997 when they first appeared on an HBO sketch comedy series called Mr. Show. I was playing in a brass quintet + drummer in San Diego, and the drummer brought a VHS tape (remember those?) with the first episode on it to a rehearsal. We all loved the show, but the best part was a ten minute skit at the end of the episode featuring none other than Tenacious D in "The Search for Inspirado". They later appeared at the end of another episode with the equally hilarious "Angel In Disguise". These two skits later combined for the first episode of their own, short-lived television series about a pair of delusional losers who believe themselves to be the soon-to-be-revealed Greatest Band In The World while meanwhile honing their craft at a sparsely attended open mic night at the local bar. Their cluelessness and immature bravado are hilarious and over-the-top, but more subtle is their surprising musical understanding, nuance and chops, further revealed on their debut album in 2001. The album featured many songs revamped from the TV series, performances by the brilliant Dave Grohl on drums and guitar and Page McConnell of Phish on keys plus some really funny short comedy bits. I'm going to share with you my favorite, and probably the most popular, song on the album, "Tribute". The song chronicles the duo's encounter with a demon who challenges them to a rock-off a la "Devil Went Down to Georgia", and tells of their musical masterpiece, "the greatest song in the world", composed and played on the spot to defeat the beast. Unfortunately, they've forgotten the song and so wrote "Tribute" as an ode to that great song. It's really funny and nails the rockin'-against-the-devil cliche, while simultaneously actually rocking, displaying some clever writing chops and paying a little "tribute" to Led Zeppelin. The same clever understanding masked by sheer idiocy is also apparent in the opening sequence from their movie The Pick of Destiny. The song, "Kickapoo", tells the story of a young Jack Black, raised in a conservative family environment where his passion and talent for the rock are woefully misunderstood. Punished by his unappreciative father (played by Meatloaf), he cries out to the image of Ronnie James Dio on his wall poster, a surrogate father figure who charges him to follow his dream in the "land of Hollywood". Unfortunately, he doesn't tell him that it's not Hollywood, Florida, nor is it Hollywood, North Carolina. Now go my child, and ROCK!
Mr. Bungle's a hard band to categorize, as their music traversed multiple genres, often within a single song. And that's another thing: many of their "songs" aren't so much songs as sonic montages overlaid with maniacal vocal performances, particularly on their second release, Disco Volante. One genre that can definitely be applied, although it's a broad one applicable to about any style, is "experimental". Probably the next most appropriate tag is "alternative", followed by "metal". So that's what we'll call them, experimental alternative metal, although you'll hear everything from techno to contemporary classical to ska, punk, lounge and jazz in their music too. Mr. Bungle cultivated a schizophrenic sound that mixed eerily and coherently with their irreverent and satirical performance style, creepy and ironic lyrics, and evil-clown stage personas.
I'm going to share with you a track off of my favorite of Mr. Bungle's three equally compelling yet disparate albums, their self titled debut from 1991. I like it because it's the most song-oriented, the most metal and consistently uses a two saxophone horn section, something not often heard in rock music, particularly of the heavy variety. I think this album was the beginning of vocalist Mike Patton's long collaborative relationship with avant-garde composer and saxophonist John Zorn, and his contribution as producer may be part of what makes this album so interesting and enjoyable. But make no mistake, these guys are smoking musicians in their own right, and they pull off some amazingly complex and difficult music as though it's second nature. And this was before there was a whole lot of experimental metal around. Here's "Carousel" from Mr. Bungle's first and great album, followed by a live performance of "Stubb A Dub" from the same period so you can get a taste of their weird stage show.
One of the earliest and most important bands in the history of metal, Judas Priest not so much burst as eased on to the scene in and throughout the 1970's, starting with their foundation as a bar band in Birmingham, England in 1969 and culminating in their breakthrough record, British Steel in 1980, which featured mega-hits "Living After Midnight" and "Breaking the Law and also my daughter's favorite Priest song, "You Don't Have to Be Old to Be Wise" (She's a year older than I was when that album was released!) The band stayed at its commercial peak for a few years, which included album gems Point of Entry, Screaming for Vengeance and Defenders of the Faith, and singles "Heading out to the Highway", "You've Got Another Thing Comin'", "Electric Eye" and "Freewheel Burning". As great as their output over those years was, I don't think I'd be that big a fan if it wasn't for their preceding and following phases. In the 70's, they mixed all kinds of styles, covering songs by Joan Baez, Spooky Tooth and Fleetwood Mac, with a pioneering twin guitar sound and, for the time, astounding vocal range and vibrato. Those early years influenced a host of thrash and NWOBHM bands for years that followed. In the 90's, they recruited speed metal band Racer X's drummer, Scott Travis, whose level of technique was well beyond the rest of the band's, and twenty years after their formation, guitarists K.K. Downing and Glen Tipton buckled down and learned advanced lead guitar solo playing - particularly sweep picking - and upped the proficiency level of the band by a wide margin. I've always been really impressed that they took the kind of time and expended the kind of effort that it must have taken to do that so late in their already successful careers, and that's one of the reasons I admire them as much as I do.
I mentioned Judas Priest's transformation over the years, and also their fantastic lead vocalist Rob Halford, who is unquestionably one of the most influential and talented singers in the history of heavy metal. I'm going to give you a taste of both, with one of my favorites from their second album, 1976's Sad Wings of Destiny, "Victim of Changes" followed by one of their best from the first post-Scott Travis addition album, the title track to 1990's Painkiller. Enjoy the classic progressive and the blistering speed metal of this seminal band.
For any of you wondering when you were going to get a band you've heard of, here you go. Metallica may be the biggest name metal band of all time, and not without reason. One of the earliest thrash metal bands, they generated considerable buzz in the burgeoning underground metal scene in 1982 thanks largely to their enormous energy on both stage and record. Like a lot of people, I didn't hear Metallica until they already had three albums in the can, one of them certified gold, and had played shows for tens of thousands despite minimal radio play and having never (yet) released a music video during MTV's heyday. Metallica wasn't just speed and bluster though. Their first four albums, aside from their huge influence on the decades of heavy rock that have passed since, were musically inventive and flirted with some of the characteristics that became associated with progressive metal, specifically longer and more elaborate compositional forms, and use of mixed meters. With their fifth album in 1992, Metallica changed direction, aiming for a more accessible and commercially viable sound, more obviously embracing their punk and alternative musical influences and the widespread acclaim that had built up around them. I kind of lost interest in them soon after that, but for their fantastic first four albums and the fact that most modern metal has their stamp in it, Metallica remains one of my all-time favorite bands.
A lot of people view 1986's Master of Puppets album as Metallica's pinnacle, and I think an argument could probably be made for any of their first four. For me, their recording career highlight is 1988's ...And Justice for All, probably because it's the most progressive of their releases. The songs are long with frequent tempo changes, and the production is colder and more clinical sounding than on their earlier albums. My favorite song on it, and probably my favorite in their entire catalog, was their biggest hit to date when it was released. It's hard to imagine a song like this having the kind of popularity on release that it did then. It's just too demanding of the listener. "One" tells the story of a soldier horribly maimed in battle awakening from his coma to the realization that he's been left with no limbs or means of communication with the world around him. The music tells the story as much as the lyrics, beginning peacefully, somewhat blearily, and rising to despair, desperation and finally rage perhaps tinged with madness. It's a rare work, one in which popularity and art somehow managed to meet in the same place at the same time. Give it a listen below, and I'll also include an old live performance from before their first album to give you a sense of why these guys were so infectious in their formative years. As you watch it, contrast with what you can remember listening to in early 1983 (if you can remember that far back).
When one thinks of "Progressive Metal", if one knows that that actually is a thing, the first band one probably thinks of is the enormously influential New York band Dream Theater. The last of the proverbial "Big Three" (along with prog metal godfathers Queensrÿche and Fates Warning), Dream Theater blew open the commercial doors typically closed to progressive metal in 1992, with their surprise hit "Pull Me Under" off of their second album, Images and Words. Between their initial release, When Dream and Day Unite, and this follow up, they had jettisoned their first singer, Charlie Dominici, and settled on an approach with relatively wide appeal, embracing occasional rock ballads, occasional AOR anthems and, less occasionally, mind-boggling feats of musical acrobatics alike.
I've always held some ambivalence about Dream Theater. There's no denying their incredible musicianship and technical prowess. They've done as much as anyone in popularizing challenging rock music. Aesthetically, though, I have a tough time with some of their music. Some of it is just too croon-y and light for my taste. I think my biggest problem is with long-time vocalist James LaBrie. He's a gifted singer, no doubt, but his at-times breathy delivery is tough for me to take. On the other hand, there are moments of true metal heaviness... in fact, pretty much all of the album Train of Thought rocks extremely hard, and is still rhythmically and formally imaginative. And almost all of their albums at least have moments like that. When they're good, they're among the best in the business. Even when they're not, they're in the conversation. For me, their highlights include the afore-mentioned Train of Thought, most of their third release Awake, and especially their EP A Change of Seasons, which follows. As ever, all five members of the band are in rare form on this song. In particular, you'll get a taste of band leader Mike Portnoy's soloistic drumming style (although he left the band in 2010). It also features a lot of twisty instrumental ensemble sections and solos by smoking guitarist John Petrucci and personal favorite keyboardist and fellow Burbank resident Derek Sherinian. It's my favorite DT moment (if you can call a 23 minute epic a "moment"), but every one of their thirteen albums is recommended, and for the best live video recording of a rock band I've ever seen, check out Live at Budokan. Without further ado, here's the progressive metal masterpiece "A Change of Seasons".
