LORD: Set in Stone

Produced by Lord Tim

Released: August 2009

While often exploring the darker side of human nature, LORD's songs can also be positive and empowering but without going into that cheesy "happy metal" area of their European kin. So it is that they open their latest album in typical style, an uplifting anthem in the shape of "Redemption", pure metal that should get heads nodding from the outset. It's clear right away that "Set in Stone" is a LORD album. It has that distinctive sound, bristling with loud crunchy guitars, booming drums and soaring vocals. Then the band goes into a melodic heavy rock direction in "100 Reasons" with its amazing pop-laced hook. After this is the big epic metal of "Eternal Storm" and the driving title track with its catchy riffing and duelling lead guitars.

By now you get the feeling that LORD is building to something, and so they are. "Someone Else's Dream" is a surging progressive melodic thrash juggernaut with all the band's colours on display including Lord Tim's much-developed harsher vocal style that contrasts starkly with the massive choruses. This song is much like something Soilwork used to do before they stopped being interesting. And LORD continues to keep everyone guessing, with "Forever" deceptively belying its dark subject matter by opening like a typical over-wrought power metal ballad before exploding into guitar violence. The surprises don't stop there, as LORD unleashes a mountain of guests for the ridiculously shred-laden "Be My Guest", with people including Craig Goldy, Glen Drover, Olof Morck from Dragonland, Chris Brooks and members of Harem Scarem, Angra, Argument Soul, Paindivision and Vanishing Point all trying to melt each other's faces off for the sake of heavy metal. Because essentially that's precisely what Set in Stone is: a glorious heavy metal album that doesn't have pretensions of being anything else.

Lord Tim has an amazing knack for pumping out consistently high quality metal, but I've been waiting for him to match the pinnacle that was Dungeon's A Rise to Power for quite a while. With LORD's Set in Stone, he's finally done it.

1. Spectres of the Ascendant
2. Redemption
3. 100 Reasons
4. Eternal Storm
5. Set in Stone
6. Someone Else's Dream
7. Forever
8. Beyond the Light
9. The End of Days
10. Be My Guest
11. New Horizons

Rating: 95%

JIMMY BARNES: Freight Train Heart

Produced by Jonathon Cain, Desmond Child and Mike Stone

Released: 1987

A conversation on Facebook the other day put me in mind of just how much I love this album. It's both a shame and a surprise that Jimmy Barnes wasn't able to crack the American market with Freight Train Heart because it is easily one of the best examples of radio-friendly AOR ever recorded. Anyone who doubts this should first take a look at the list of people who played on this (half of Journey, the singer from Guiffria, Huey Lewis and the guy who would replace Gary Richrath in REO Speedwagon), and then just randomly play any track off it. This is finely-tuned, shiny hard rock that showcases the immense power of Jimmy Barnes' vocals like nothing he's done before or since but it's also one where he and the various musicians around him work as a complete band to create a collection of fantastic songs. Considering the problematic recording process that used three studios in two countries and dozens of session players and the arguments Barnes had with Cain and his US label over who should play guitar on "Too Much Ain't Enough Love" (among other things), it's surprising that anything so cohesive could have resulted. Four singles came from this album, but really all ten of them are hits.

Freight Train Heart opens with some mean, bluesy David Lindley slide guitar as Barnes echoes the blue-collar rock of his previous album with "Driving Wheels", the ultimate ode to truckies. Then, with the help of some of the guys from INXS and the Angels, Jimmy turns an obscure Ronnie Wood song into an absolute blues rock ball-tearer; "Do or Die" is similarly raucous, like Cold Chisel at their most fired-up, but even louder. In between these two is the smouldering "Too Much Ain't Enough Love", one of Jimmy's best songs with one of his best controlled vocal performances. Neal Schon plays all over this and does such a killer job you can understand why Barnes defied company executives who wanted Robert Cray instead.

Later on there's the pop-laced "I Wanna Get Started With You", another riotous rocker in "Lessons in Love" and the majestic "Last Frontier", Jimmy's tribute to the battlers who built his adopted country. And then there's the power ballads, and if ever there was a guy who could put power into the rock ballad, it's Jimmy Barnes. In "I'm Still on Your Side" he hits notes that float somewhere in orbit and unleashes a scream that must have just about blown the roof off wherever he was at the time, and not once does he go out of tune. "Waitin' for the Heartache" is almost the perfect radio rock song, but the real gem is "Walk On", an undiscovered slice of brilliance from Desmond Child and Joe Lynn Turner that Jimmy Barnes takes to a whole new level of awesomeness. It's the perfect closing moment to one of Australian rock's perfect albums.

1. Driving Wheels
2. Seven Days
3. Too Much Ain't Enough Love
4. Do or Die
5. Waitin' for the Heartache
6. Last Frontier
7. I Wanna Get Started With You
8. I'm Still on Your Side
9. Lessons in Love
10. Walk On

Rating: 100%

METALLICA - The Club Dayz 1982-1984

by Bill Hale
ECW Press

Bill Hale is a Hawaii-based rock photographer who was lucky enough to be where plenty of us probably wish we could have been 27 years ago: hanging out on the San Francisco metal scene. He got to see, and document, the birth of one of the greatest bands metal has produced. Regardless of your opinion of Metallica, without them it's unlikely metal would have become the institution it is today, and in this book Hale captures the embryonic days of a band that has since become one of the world's biggest musical acts.

The first few pages are reminiscences from some of the others who were there: John Strednansky from Metal Rendezvous, Ron Quintana -- the zine editor from whom Lars stole the name Metallica -- and Scott Earl from a band called Culprit, whose drummer got into a fight with Dave Mustaine at Cliff Burton's second ever Metallica gig: "Mustaine basically threw my guitarist's pedals into the corner in a big ball of duct tape. I guess we weren't getting out of their way fast enough." There's nothing from any of the members of Metallica themselves, so this probably hasn't been sanctioned by the band but even if it's not, the photos are Hale's and history belongs to everyone, so no one has any reason to object.

The tales of the band's early days, in which Mustaine features very prominently, are pure gold. But the good stuff - the great stuff, the stuff that really shows us how it began and what it was like - that all really begins on page 25, with a series of shots from a gig in September 1982, when Metallica was still based in LA and opening for Bitch. There's Hetfield, wearing a bullet belt and a Venom shirt, flipping the bird. Later on, there's a bunch from Burton's first gig, headlining over Lääz Rockit and Exodus, with Cliff in his bell-bottoms, clutching his Rickenbacker, another from backstage of Hammett and Mustaine side by side. Further on, Kirk's in the band as they open for Raven and near the end, a slightly blurry candid picture of Dave and Cliff, hanging out after a Megadeth show in August, 1986, six weeks before Burton was gone forever. What strikes you the most is how fresh-faced, fun-loving and rebellious everyone is: in a backstage shot with Burton, Mustaine's wearing an inverted crucifix in his ear, elsewhere there's Lars yakking it up with Gonzo Sandoval from Armored Saint.

There isn't much "art" to Hale's shots, and almost none that can be called "posed". Even the publicity pics were of shirtless, beer-swilling reprobates with cheesy, cheeky grins and enormous pitchers of amber fluid. Just like the music the band was making back then, Bill Hale's photos are raw, urgent, immediate and vital, capturing the young Metallica's very essence. For anyone who was there, or wishes they were, this is a great book.

PLATINUM BRUNETTE: Platinum Brunette

Produced by Lord Tim

Released: 2009

Platinum Brunette is kind of like being punched in the face by a nun. You simply don’t expect something that looks so harmless or so silly to make this kind of an impact. Dressed like some sexually-repressed transgendered nightmare, this band is one of the most spiteful parodies in circulation, a punked-out melodic metal suckerpunch with venom-barbed lyrics about love gone wrong and being generally fucked over.

Both mainman Justin Sayers and guitarist Lord Tim were once in Dungeon, and to some degree this sounds a bit like that band’s early work given an angry, punk rock twist. Tim’s guitar work is as formidable as ever but more understated than usual and Sayers’ vocals are melodic and raw; the choruses are big and punchy and the hooks are everywhere. If you’ve ever heard the original version of Dungeon’s Resurrection, just imagine something like that, but with sneered vocals and songs about how much you fucking hate everyone. Seriously, Platinum Brunette is one majorly pissed off unit, with the upbeat, clean but raw metal hammering belying the sheer vindictive, sardonic irony expressed in the lyrics of tracks like ‘Surrounded by Idiots’, ‘Get Someone Else’, ‘Your World’ and, really, virtually every song on the album.

Platinum Brunette might look like the world’s worst drag-queen act, but behind the costumes is a serious band simmering with caustic sarcasm and seething ire.

1. Surrounded by Idiots
2. Braindead
3. Get Someone Else
4. Slam
5. BMW (Bitch Murder Whore)
6. My Own Way
7. Rise
8. Ex
9. Your World
10. Wake Up
11. Your Funeral
12. Pretty Vacant

Rating: 82%

KILLSWITCH ENGAGE: Killswitch Engage

Produced by Brendan O'Brien and Adam Dutkiewicz

Released: June 30, 2009

Killswitch Engage virtually pioneered commercial metalcore and have consistently led the way ever since. They've been able to do this by gradually tempering their sound toward mass acceptance with each new release. While they haven't fallen as from the tree as In Flames (whose path from greatness to sheer blandness makes Metallica's mid-career shift look like a mere swerve) Killswitch Engage's second eponymous album is their most accessible yet, about as far from the inferno of rage that was 2002's Alive or Just Breathing as they can get and still be recognisable as the same band.

The first four tracks set the tone for the whole album. "Never Again" is the aggressive, guitar-fuelled opener in which KsE wants to show their older fans that they can still be a heavy band. But they then switch straight to emo mode for "Starting Over", a teenage heartbreaker written with airplay in mind. You can just picture some dude with a fringe getting all teary over this one as he remembers the time he dumped for the guy with the Dimebag tatt. Following that is "The Forgotten", where the band plays the heavy card again, this time with some pretty convincing (if fleeting) old-school thrash moments and Howard Jones really bringing back the hardcore rasp. "Reckoning" then is the totally generic pissed off metalcore song that every band KsE has influenced in the past seven years has done. For KsE themselves to be still doing this, and no better than anyone else, is the real measure of this album.

Because, essentially, Killswitch Engage is just those four songs, redone in slightly different ways enough times to fill up a 40-minute playing time. Some of the tracks are heavy and angry (but not too heavy), and others are more melodic and angsty; sometimes Jones screams more than he sings, and sometimes he sings more than he screams. Adam Dutkiewicz and Joel Stroetzel mimic classic Murray/Smith guitar harmonies but steadfastly refuse to bust out into real soloing because everyone knows nothing breaks a kid's concentration on the mosh more than a guitar solo, and lyrically they're trapped in the silly twilight world of adolescent angst. Like Twilight, actually, but for guys. Who wear eyeliner.

The songwriting hasn't really changed much from where they were with As Daylight Dies three years ago but if anything Brendan O'Brien's production has highlighted the commercial aspects even more. It's immaculately done, but in the end it's just mosh-friendly metalcore by numbers, which means that KsE now don't sound any different to any of the bands who've been ripping them off for the past five years. Hopefully, the upcoming Shadows Fall release will hand these guys their arses on a plate.

1. Never Again
2. Starting Over
3. The Forgotten
4. Reckoning
5. The Return
6. A Light in a Darkened World
7. Take Me Away
8. I Would Do Anything
9. Save Me
10. Lost
11. This is Goodbye

Rating: 68%

SERPENTCULT: Weight of Light

Produced by Greg Chandler

Released: October 2008

A few years back, the members of Belgium's Thee Plague of Gentlemen were gearing up for their second album release when their singer got arrested for being a child rapist and thrown in the can, hopefully to never see freedom again. The rest of the band did what any self-respecting group of people would do when confronted with a truth such as this, and utterly disavowed all association with the guy. They did hang on to a few of the songs they were working on, though, as well as the name of the album: SerpentCult. Two years on, with Michelle Nocon handling the vocal duties, Weight of Light surfaced from the sludge, recorded under the guiding hand of Greg Chandler, the vocalist from Esoteric whose first album, Epistemological Despondency, is one of the greatest doom albums of all time.

Where SerpentCult succeeds is that they manage to combine immense, sludgy guitars with a distinctive undercurrent of groovy bass lines and a singular vocal style that sets them apart from many of the other bands of their style. Where they fail is that, like many other bands of their style, the songs eventually blur into the sameness of huge, slow, similar-sounding riffs. They don't succumb completely, but SerpentCult is a band playing a genre of metal that is stylistically limited.

On Weight of Light, they are something like a cross between Cathedral and Pentagram, with the occasional experimental aspects of Electric Wizard added in for good measure, particularly in the swirling, psychedelic closing passages of the final track. "New World Order" begins in a big fuzzy rocking mode and Nocon's raw, bluesy and ballsy vocals really stand out. The next two songs highlight SerpentCult's doomier aspects but the aggressive vocals still ring out and the pulsing groove helps drive them along. After this, the pace of the album slows down considerably. "Awaken the Kraken" and "Arkanum" merge subtly into one another, but it feels rather like the middle act of an otherwise decent movie where it all starts to get bogged down in plot. "Arkanum" trudges on for over five minutes before Nocon gets to do anything and without a nuance of lead guitar anywhere it's like standing in the surf getting pounded by half-arsed waves waiting for a decent one that never comes. Finally, "Red Dawn" arrives and Weight of Light is back on track, keeping itself both within the confines of doom while subtly pushing its boundaries.

This is quite a good debut from a band that isn't afraid to try things that are a little different. Hopefully they will continue to try even harder and make something truly spectacular.

1. New World Order
2. Screams From the Deep
3. Weight of Light
4. Awaken the Kraken
5. Arkanum
6. Red Dawn
7. Templar
8. SerpentCult

Rating: 75%

JUDAS PRIEST: A Touch of Evil: Live

Released: July 14

Judas Priest don’t have the catalogue of live albums that Iron Maiden has (but then, who does?), yet even so A Touch of Evil racks up their fifth, recorded over the course of their last two world tours. The most immediately noticeable aspect is the album’s brevity: while the other two live documents I've reviewed recently are double CDs clocking over ninety minutes, A Touch of Evil is barely an hour, and that’s with three songs longer than seven minutes apiece. The other thing is the track-listing, an unconventional collection of newer tracks and lesser-known older tunes like "Riding on the Wind" (it's from Screaming for Vengeance) that deliberately omits most of their best known songs. Priest deserve credit for this, because it would have been easy to go the Maiden route and just fill two CDs with hits we’ve all heard thousands of times (this is a band who have also never felt it necessary to do a "heritage" tour either, something else that would have been quite easy for them to do). Even better, while three of these tracks have been on live albums before, none of them were with Rob Halford's vocals. So what this lacks in playing time it makes up for in being essentially a rather unique set.

The great thing about this is that even without all the "hits", Judas Priest has still managed to fill this album with great songs, including some of their truly heaviest moments like "Between the Hammer and the Anvil" and particularly "Dissident Aggressor" which was, for its time, one of the most crushing songs ever. "Death" is arguably the only misfire here, an unweildy behemoth of a track that lacks the energy of "Riding on the Wind" that precedes it and the hooks of "Beyond the Realms of Death" that follows. It was one of the better songs on Nostradamus, true, but that's not saying a lot. Thankfully, the only other song from that album here is "Prophecy". "Painkiller" closes the set, and it's clear that Halford has some problems with his pitch here although most of the time he's great (better, it has to be said, than Dickinson on Flight 666, though to be fair Bruce still moves on stage like a guy half his age and Rob barely moves at all) and the rest of the band cannot be faulted.

A Touch of Evil is a pretty good offering as far as live albums go, especially as it does give some of Priest's lesser-known but still killer tracks an airing. The only realy criticism is that it's so short. Another disc with stuff like "Starbreaker" and "Rapid Fire" on it as well would have been ultra cool.

1. Judas Rising
2. Hellrider
3. Between the Hammer and the Anvil
4. Riding on the Wind
5. Death
6. Beyond the Realms of Death
7. Dissident Aggressor
8. A Touch of Evil
9. Eat Me Alive
10. Prophecy
11. Painkiller

Rating: 80%

DREAM THEATER: Black Clouds & Silver Linings

Produced by Mike Portnoy and John Petrucci

Released: 2009

A couple of weeks back, I made a post on the UM forums in which I said that Dream Theater is one of the most over-rated bands in history. This band's fans are amongst the most rabid in music--reviews of their albums on Metal Archives waffle on about John's guitar solos and Jordan's keyboard melodies for about as long as some of the songs they're in, and that's usually a pretty long time--so even though I was half-joking, I expected to get flamed like a rotisserie chicken. Instead, almost everyone who replied agreed! It was almost as if I'd finally said what everyone had merely been thinking all these years. And before a dozen Portnoy fanbois turn up here and make stupid anonymous posts like the The Boy Will Drown fan a few weeks back (seriously dude, they're fucking awful), I actually like DT. I just don't believe they are the be-all and end-all of modern music.

Black Clouds and Silver Linings proves this once again. Let's face it, any album with a song as bland and uninspiring as "Wither" on it is hardly a masterpiece, and the shameless cutting and pasting of regurgitated elements from past works makes Gore Obsessed by Cannibal Corpse sound vital and fresh by comparison. OK, it's not that bad, but was it really necessary to make "The Shattered Fortress" fit into the Twelve Step Suite by cramming it with riffs and themes from all the other parts? It's almost as if they (Portnoy and Petrucci at least) stood back afterwards, looked at each other smugly and said, "Check out what we just did! Aren't we just the cleverest fuckers in metal?" And the thing is that Black Clouds and Silver Linings isn't even that bad, it's just that for a band whose reputation was built on invention and originality, this isn't anything remarkably different from the last few albums. Better, perhaps, but not significantly different, and above all else, Dream Theater is supposed to be a progressive band.

Still, Black Clouds and Silver Linings has plenty of good things, and this review so far has probably made it sound far worse than it really is. First of all, the songs are truly epic in scope, with only two coming in at under 12 minutes in length, and resplendent with the band's trademark virtuoso playing and grandiose arrangements. "A Nightmare to Remember" is DT at their heaviest and most dynamic. Portnoy's growling vocals are jarring and try-hard, but vocals have always been the weakest link on this band's albums; LaBrie's efforts this time are, however, far from terrible. "The Best of Times", Portnoy's tribute to his late father, has some truly poignant moments and very finely crafted classical sections highlighted by some fantastic work from Rudess and the violin work of Jerry Goodman. The album's true high point however is "The Count of Tuscany", a staggering nineteen minute-long saga which seems to have drawn lyrical inspiration from Poe's "A Cask of Amontillado". The epic build-up in reminiscent of no one more than Rush. Petrucci does some of his best work on this track (and that's saying a lot) and the twists and turns into the extended ambient section and the triumphant finale where the guitarist out-does himself is among Dream Theater's finest achievements. "The Count of Tuscany" is Dream Theater at their very best, and is enough reason to get this album in itself.

Black Clouds and Silver Linings definitely shows how magnificent a band Dream Theater can be when they really put their minds to it, but it's inconsistent and at least two of the songs--the aforementioned "Wither" and the generic "A Rite of Passage"--could have been left off without anyone noticing. The triple CD version features an album of covers and another CD of "instrumental mixes" which is pointless beyond imagination and the "deluxe" boxed edition also includes a double vinyl version, a lithograph of the album artwork, a mouse pad (!) and yet another remixed version of the album, as if it was needed. Still, this is Dream Theater we're talking about, so this level of overkill is more than expected.

1. A Nightmare to Remember
2. A Rite of Passage
3. Wither
4. The Shattered Fortress
5. The Best of Times
6. The Count of Tuscany

Rating: 83%