FOZZY: Chasing the Grail

Produced by Rich Ward except *by Mike Martin

Released: January 20

Looking back, I reckon I was a bit hard on Fozzy's previous album, as it was much better than I gave it credit for. Even so, five years on and Chasing the Grail completely buries it in every way. This is without doubt the band's most complete and accomplished work to date, a grand combination of Chris Jericho and Rich Ward's vast influences and inspirations from the metal world into a coherent whole. It isn't perfect as "Broken Soul" and a couple of songs in the middle demonstrate, but trying to find a better example of powerful, aggressive pure metal in 2010 is going to take some doing.

Chasing the Grail shows how far Fozzy has become since their early days playing covers for a lark. It also confirms Jericho's abilities as a vocalist and songwriter, and Ward's devastating ability as a guitarist. The Duke's arsenal of catchy riffs is astounding and his lead guitar work is equally fearsome; there can be no question that he is one of the most under-rated players in metal. He's assisted here and there by Jeff Waters shredding the frets on a couple of tracks including the enormously grooving "Martyr No More", but this is not a guest-laden volume like All That Remains. This is Fozzy, pure and simple.

"Under Blackened Skies" is a huge opener that would overshadow every other song on an album by a lesser band, but Chasing the Grail is full of tracks just as good. "Let the Madness Begin" is a full-tilt rocker inspired by and sounding rather like Ozzy Osbourne around his Bark at the Moon period, "Pray for Blood" is complete savagery. Then again, "New Day's Dawn" is a misstep as it veers from poppy ballad (with Ward singing in a ridiculous falsetto) to a heavy grind and "God Pounds His Nails" is just OK. "Paraskavedekatriaphobia (Friday The 13th)" gets things back on track with some vicious cross-cutting riffs and "Revival" is also a keeper with a Gothic-sounding organ adding a second layer to the driving guitar attack.

As good as Chasing the Grail is up to this point, it is the final track that takes it to another level of awesome. "Wormwood" is Jericho's adaptation of the Book of Revelation, a 14-minute progressive power metal epic. Featuring a multitude of tempo changes, orchestration, a choir and some face-melting guitar from the song's composer and arranger, former member Mike Martin, this is the track that ultimately establishes Fozzy as a serious act, with no input from Rich Ward at all!

Chasing the Grail is a fabulous metal album, one of the best pure metal releases of this year for sure.

1. Under Blackened Skies
2. Martyr No More
3. Grail
4. Broken Soul
5. Let the Madness Begin
6. Pray for Blood
7. New Day's Dawn
8. God Pounds His Nails
9. Watch Me Shine
10. Paraskavedekatriaphobia (Friday the 13th)
11. Revival
12. Wormwood*

Rating: 89%

maudlin of the Well: Part the Second

Produced by Toby Driver
Released: May 2009

maudlin of the Well existed within a small niche of the heavy metal universe occupied by a very few: In the Woods... and Agalloch being two of the others. Their 2001 twin albums Bath and Leaving Your Body Map were experimental volumes that combined a wildly eclectic range of styles under the umbrella of the band's self-declared "astral metal" -- basically music created during experiments with astral projection, given emphasis by Jason Byron's dream-like lyrics. In 2003 the band split up after Byron left and Toby Driver formed Kayo Dot with three or four of the others (motW had up to nine members at that point). That band was/is essentially maudlin of the Well with all the aggressive metal aspects excised--the blast beats, the harsh vocals, the tremolo picking and the doom riffs--and the "astral" songwriting element replaced by a sort of abstract stream-of-consciousness approach. So, more or less the same thing only without the metal or the New Age woo-wooery. A year or so back, some motW fans got together and put up the dollars for Driver and some of his former bandmates to restore and record a bunch of early tracks that had never been released. This spectacular act of musical socialism allowed Part the Second to be released as a free download from the band's website.

And what a piece of work it is. Part the Second is five tracks of progressive chill-out music that sprawls majestically across almost 46 minutes. With none of the harsher, heavier metal sections of motW, this feels more like an early Kayo Dot release and logically bridges the gap between both bands. The epically titled first track "An Excerpt from 6,000,000,000,000 Miles Before the First, or, the Revisitation of the Blue Ghost" is an elaborate musical saga almost 12 minutes in duration that fuses 70s-style prog with post-rock elements, a diverse array of acoustic and non-rock instruments and whispery lead vocals. The next song opens on bells and vibes in the dreamlike tapestry of an avant-garde film soundtrack, becoming even stranger with the injection of violins later on. Strings and piano dominate "Rose Quartz Turning to Glass" which also features some interesting vocals.

Part the Second leaves its greatest treasures until the final track, "Laboratories of the Invisible World (Rollerskating the Cosmic Palmistric Postborder)", which swells into a glorious extended guitar solo about halfway through that is reminiscent of Pink Floyd's more transcendental moments. This is perhaps the most maudlin-like track on the album and a final confirmation on just how great this band was. That Part the Second lacks motW's more extreme musical elements is only slightly disappointing as it was the precise juxtaposition of the various styles that made the band's music so special; however, even without them this is an exceptional album of fluid musical experimentation and dexterity. And it's free, so you lose nothing by checking it out.

1. Excerpt from 6,000,000,000,000 Miles Before the First, or, the Revisitation of the Blue Ghost
2. Another Excerpt: Keep Light Near You, Even When Dying
3. Rose Quartz Turning to Glass
4. Clover Garland Island
5. Laboratories of the Invisible World (Rollerskating the Cosmic Palmistric Postborder)

Rating: 95%

DAYSEND: Within the Eye of Chaos

Released: Yesterday

After almost three years, Daysend has at last unleashed album number three. Both of the previous albums still get high rotation around the Sound Cellar so I was looking forward to Within the Eye of Chaos with particular interest. A few listens later and I have to admit that I'm not as excited about it as I was for The Warning nor for Severance, which remains one of my favourite Australian metal releases.

Yesterday I reviewed Tirades by labelmates Dyscord, and noted that with each subsequent release they strive to get heavier and further away from their early commercial pretensions. Daysend appear set to do the exact opposite. Within the Eye of Chaos is the most accessible album they've issued so far, the closest they have come yet to the ultimate model of popular melodic metalcore. It is perhaps the album this band has always aimed to make, the starkest combination yet of their distinctly metal background influences and clearly marketable aspirations.

Stripped down to a four piece, the guitar sound does seem slightly sparser but the band is no less heavy and Aaron Bilbija's astonishing gift for catchy riffs remains as potent as ever. While they still haven't managed to quite top "Born is the Enemy" in terms of memorability, "See You in My Nightmares" is the perfect album opener with a hook that's hard to shake. It's likely this one is already a crowd favourite. Daysend's penchant for vicious riffs is clearly evident, and Mark McKernan's clean vocal style is further developed. This makes the band's insidious melodies even more prominent but as the album goes on, it also drags them towards the generic style of so many other groups; indeed, after a few choruses I had to check I wasn't listening to All That Remains by mistake.

Tracks like the ferocious "Mindless" show Daysend hasn't shed their more metallic aspects just yet, but then the very next song "The Coldest of Disasters" opens immediately on clean melodic vocal lines that shows a distinctly different and more obvious personality. Somewhat more expansive cuts like "Simple Minds" hearken back to the style of The Warning, but it's clear that on Within the Eye of Chaos Daysend has set their sights on a much wider audience. All said, this is another very good album from Daysend, but one that clearly delineates the departure point from one dominant style to another far more accessible one. This may not be to the liking of fans who've been with them from the beginning, but it's possible Within the Eye of Chaos will net Daysend their biggest audience yet.

1. See You in My Nightmares
2. Mindless
3. The Coldest of Disasters
4. Questions
5. Simple Minds
6. Without Tears
7. In This Moment
8. Acid Laced Fiasco
9. Down This Hole
10. Edge of the Line
11. Recoil

Rating: 72%

DYSCORD: Tirades

Released: Today

The band with the longest and funniest "influences" list on MySpace returns with their second and much improved album, Tirades. While it wasn't a band album in itself, I wasn't overly impressed with the previous album Dakota as I felt it stumbled along the lines of generic safety and familiarity a little too much. This new instalment doesn't stray far from the last one's musical style, but two years and a bunch of live work later, Dyscord sounds much more comfortable in their own skin.

Notable almost immediately is that Dyscord is now a remarkably much heavier band, and the clean vocals that let them down in the past have been totally ditched. Tirades also sees the band move away from the saturated and stagnated metalcore arena completely and instead focus their energies on groove-heavy death metal, a growing abundance of guitar solos and much more memorable songs. One of the things I noted about Dakota was the band's level of consistency and this rings true once again, yet while it remains the case they still seem to recycle the occasional riff here and there on Tirades the tracks stand out from each other a lot more. The album's best and longest cut "The Murderhorn" shows just how far Dyscord has come from their frankly formulaic debut EP back in 2006, constantly changing tempos with a flagrant disregard of conventional structure. Closer "The Apparatus" is equally as impressive, moving from an omnious chugging riff with a menacing melody line then exploding into double-kick frenzy and James Herbert's multi-tracked roars. The very experienced Jason Suecof pulls a typically excellent sound, highlighting Dyscord's melodic strengths and groove-laden power.

They may not be the most original or groundbreaking band but these nine tracks confirm Dyscord's real potential as a burgeoning force on the local metal scene. Tirades is everything they've promised in the past and more.

1. Behold
2. You Sir, Are a Gentleman and a Scholar
3. The Flaming Catharsis
4. Beneath the Callous
5. The Murderhorn
6. Saguntum
7. Divergence
8. Hard Times Make Virtuous People
9. The Apparatus

Rating: 78%

WATCH YOU BLEED: The Saga of Guns N Roses

by Stephen Davis

Published by Penguin

In his autobiography, Slash basically calls Stephen Davis' Led Zeppelin chronicle Hammer of the Gods self-indulgent bullshit. Davis most likely read that as part of his "research" for this, his 400-plus account of the career of the 1980s' last great rock band, which could account for why he spends so much of this book slagging off the guitarist and the rest of his dysfunctional crew of egotists, control freaks, junkies and boozehounds. Guns N' Roses may well have been among the most selfish and dispicable group of musicians ever to sleaze out of a Hollywood gutter -- misogynistic, drug-addled, violent, unrepentent, obnoxious and disgraceful -- but a biographer's job should be to provide balance. Whatever their faults, and there are many, Guns N' Roses still stands as one of the greatest bands of all time, a band whose Appetite for Destruction album is still the highest-selling debut record by any artist ever. 23 years after it came out. So GnR may well be scumbags, but they deserve a much better biography than this.

Watch You Bleed, for all its readability and occasional jaw-dropping moments, falls down on a number of levels. And it falls hard: Davis, the man who co-wrote an Aerosmith biography, incorrectly identifies the release year of that band's Draw the Line album as 1979. He refers to Paul Stanley as "the bass player from Kiss", calls Skid Row a trio from Philadelphia with a Canadian singer, and claims that Slippery When Wet was Bon Jovi's debut. He gets dates wrong (like Axl Rose's birthdate), misidentifies locations and even suggests Hendrix burned a Les Paul at Woodstock. I do more fact-checking when I write a review than this guy did writing an entire book. Worse, every mistake I just listed should simply have not even been made by a dude who wrote books about Zeppelin and Aerosmith. But really, Davis didn't so much as author a book as string together a bunch of interviews and chapter-long personal opinion pieces about their work.

I loved Guns N' Roses (still do!) and devoured everything I could find about them, so re-reading masses of quotes from Kerrang!, RIP and dozens of other mags from the period was a nice trip down memory lane, but nothing I didn't already know. Indeed, there's almost nothing here that a long-time Gunners fan wouldn't have read or heard about somewhere else: magazines, Slash's and Mick Wall's books, TV. Davis tries to compete with The Dirt by dedicating a few hundred pages to the various members' debaucheries, but it rings hollow because The Dirt was actually written by Mötley Crüe. No one from Guns N' Roses had any input into this book at all.

Not only is this an unofficial cash-in, originally released in hardback around the time Chinese Democracy was released, but it's a lazy one. Even with the possibly that Davis was probably only given months to complete this in time to coincide with the launch of the most anticipated album in rock history, Watch You Bleed is pretty half-arsed. It did make me want to listen to Appetite for Destruction again though, so some good did come out of it.

ROB ZOMBIE: Hellbilly Deluxe 2

Produced by Rob Zombie

Released: February 2, 2010

For a while it seemed as if Rob Zombie had forsaken his musical career in favour of auteuristic film-making, but after more than a year sitting in a can somewhere, his fourth solo album has at last seen the light of day. Hellbilly Deluxe 2: Noble Jackals, Penny Dreadfuls and the Systematic Dehumanization of Cool is the logical companion to his 1999 effort and is a direct return to his signature sound after the darker and unpopular Educated Horses album.

The original Hellbilly Deluxe was one of the most rambunctious albums of its year of release, a fun and catchy if imminently disposable slice of gaudy schlock rock. Its "sequel" -- if the word can be used -- tries to be the same yet doesn't quite pull it off. Recycling the original's campy, B-grade, sexploitation-film style artwork and the standard trashy grooves he's used on everything he's ever done, Hellbilly Deluxe 2 is pretty much the same style-over-substance vibe of stripclub horror metal as before, but without all the hooks. Where the first Hellbilly was dominated by memorable, shout-along tracks like "Dragula", "Meet the Creeper" and "Superbeast", this one doesn't really stick in your head. "Sick Bubblegum" gives it a go, but after the fifth or sixth "Yeah, motherfucker, yeah motherfucker, yeah!" it feels as if his heart just isn't in it. "Werewolf, Baby!" (one of two --two! -- songs about werewolves) is a throwback to the punkish grooves of White Zombie and the bluesy acoustic guitars of "Mars Need Women" are a nicely interesting touch.

John 5 does some very cool 60s surf-guitar inspired work on "Werewolf Women of the SS" which results in the catchiest song on the album, although it's a bit late in the playlist to save the rest of it. "The Man Who Laughs" is pretty hook-y too but Zombie overplays his hand (naturally) by including a pointless, not-very-interesting four minute long drum solo that totally ruins it. In the end, it's catchy enough, and it's Rob Zombie so there's fun to be had, but doesn't stand up to the first one.

1. Jesus Frankenstein
2. Sick Bubblegum
3. What?
4. Mars Need Women
5. Werewolf, Baby!
6. Virgin Witch
7. Death and Destiny Inside the Dream Factory
8. Burn
9. Cease to Exist
10. Werewolf Women of the SS
11. The Man Who Laughs

Rating: 62%

FEAR FACTORY: Mechanize

Produced by Rhys Fulber and Fear Factory
Released: February 12

Fear Factory was perhaps my favourite band in the mid-90s. I used to listen to Demanufacture every day, saw them everytime they came out including their first Big Day Out appearance where they simply owned and even wore the tour shirt until it fell apart. That said, everything after Obsolete pretty much sucked (although Digimortal isn't as bad as it's painted--take "Back the Fuck Up" off it and it's much better), and I lost interest in them for a long time. It was always going to be interesting to see what they would create after Burt Bell's astonishing announcement last year that he and Dino Cazares were mates again and working under the Fear Factory name once more at the expense of Ray Herrera and Chris Wolbers.

In some regards, Mechanize is an astounding album, the likes of which many probably believed this band would never make again. In the 15 years since Demanufacture, entire movements in the metal genre have risen and fallen, including the nu-metal scene that album's basic sound inspired, so the question was always going to be whether Fear Factory could return and still be relevant.

And the answer is yes, because Mechanize is the heaviest, fastest, most vital and best album they've made since 1998. Like their classic albums, it opens strongly, persists with bursts of controlled brutality fired one after the other with equal precision, then drags toward the end thanks to the uninspired "Designing the Enemy" and pointless interlude "Metallic Division". These are quickly forgotten however thanks to "Final Exit", a brilliant fusion of dynamics, melody, melancholy and crushing heavy metal that is easily one of the best songs they've ever done. Elsewhere it seems that Cazares has dug himself out of his safety bunker a little, coming up with a bunch of new riffs for the Fear Factory machine. My criticism of him in the past was his seeming reliance on a handful of patterns, but on Mechanize he stretches himself further than he has in a decade or more, even squirting out a solo in "Fear Campaign", a track that has a bit of everything including a spoken growl through the breakdown and a fearsome scream of rage right at the beginning. For his part, Burton does what he's always done vocally but at the lyrical level he's changed focus. His writing was always subversive but he's stripped away the Philip K. Dick-style metaphors for the more direct approach he first used on Soul of a New Machine. It's great to hear Rhys Fulber back too. His contribution to Demanufacture is one of the main things that turned it into a landmark and here again, especially on "Final Exit" and "Christploitation", he helps add that layer to the Fear Factory sound that it has lacked for a long time.

Some have accused the band of playing it safe here, and that's fair. Despite a couple of stylistic divergences like a guitar solo, this is very identifiably Fear Factory: the militaristic beats, the rhythmic groove, tight staccato riffs (though somewhat less repetitive than before), the alternating growled/clean vocals--all the things this band originally brought to the genre. But this is what their fans have wanted for a long time and they've shown they still do it better than anyone. Fear Factory is back to being heavy and relevant again. It's almost like the twelve years since Obsolete never happened.

1. Mechanize
2. Industrial Discipline
3. Fear Campaign
4. Powershifter
5. Christploitation
6. Oxidizer
7. Controlled Demolition
8. Designing the Enemy
9. Metallic Division
10. Final Exit

Rating: 78%

TABERAH: Live... ish

Produced by Paul and Josh Flood
Released: 2009

Hobart's Taberah wanted to do something different for their first official release, so they went to the village of Deloraine in the north of Tasmania and played live to tape in a theatre there. The resulting EP "Live... ish" is six tracks of enthusiastic metal delivered with a youthful exuberence and immediacy that might otherwise have been lost in the surrounds of a real studio. The vocals and overall songwriting tends to let them down, but what they lack in some areas they more than make up for in energy and musical chops.

The EP opens with "Brothers of the Fire", an old-school power metal tune delivered with a brash, disarming cheekiness that negates the cheesiness of the lyrics ("metal in our hearts/fire in our veins/Do! Not! Mess with us!/You'll never be the same") and sets the tone for the entire release. Jonathon Barwick's vocals are under-developed and the band's style is similarly imperfect, but Taberah bristles with urgency and enthusiasm. Their attempt at "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" was ill-advised, the lyrics to "The Reaper" are so bad they actually spoil the good work the band does musically and "Stormchild" is blatant Dungeon worship. Yet it's hard not to like them because they're obviously having a blast.

Whether they realised it or not, cutting live-to-tape was precisely the right thing for these guys to do. A proper studio recording would have sounded contrived and probably shown up their weaknesses a lot more. "Live... ish" allows them to play to their strengths--youthful on-stage abandon and catchy riffs and melodies like those in "The Call of Evil". Taberah still have some growing to do, but they haven't made that bad a start.

1. Brothers of the Fire
2. The Call of Evil
3. Stormchild
4. Freedom or Death
5. The Reaper
6. Crazy Little Thing Called Love

Rating: 65%

SE BON KI RA: One Thousand Ways to Be

Released: 2009

"One Thousand Ways to Be" is the debut EP for Adelaide thrash quintet Se Bon Ki Ra. After five years or so together, they've been kicking around for a while and have done plenty of opening spots for touring bands and played some higher profile shows. The five songs here presented show a good band with a solid grip on the modern thrash genre, with thick guitars, coarse vocals and heavy grooves. That being said, the EP is probably just a little bit too generic to really stand out among the other bands that are also doing this equally as well.

Out of the five tracks, the title cut is undoubtedly the highlight as it creeps and builds from a slow acoustic intro towards heavy twin-guitar melodic thrash metal. This is clearly Se Bon Ki Ra's best song, and one that's so good it outshines every other track on the EP. The rest aren't bad by any stretch of the imagination, but they just seem to suffer from a lack of a real original flair or a truly memorable hook. Stylistically, they sound to me a little like a less-technical version of Switchblade (who in turn often remind me of Arch Enemy), especially the croaky vocals of Chad Cosgrove, but currently don't have that band's now keenly-developed sense of catchy songwriting.

Se Bon Ki Ra aren't lacking in a few ideas however, as the epic and outstanding title track and the closing section of "Shades of Hate" show. Yet while they can unquestionably play and have clear potential, "One Thousand Ways to Be" hasn't quite captured it. The next release will be better.

1. Lesser Than
2. Chasing the Vulnerable
3. One Thousand Ways to Be
4. Deconstruction Therapy
5. Shades of Hate

Rating: 68%