Speakers and My Taste in Music

A discussion of how the quality of your media and speakers affect musical preference

I've gradually come to realize the importance of sound quality, and how it affects your musical taste. Vinnie Paul recently opined that rap music is popular because of modern, over-compressed production, and that if better production was the norm people wouldn't stand for it. I think it suits FM radio well, however, and for people who listen to a lo-fi format, well, maybe a one-dimensional experience is all they really want.

I've already documented on this site how I listened to a lot of mainstream metal while in high school. What I didn't mention then was that at one time, I got subwoofers in my car. In the late 90's, subwoofers were a big fad, at least where I grew up. It was cool to have Rockford Fosgate subs, and people were so proud of them that they put huge stickers in their back windows to declare that they had Rockfords. (Kind of like a huge sign that says two things: 1. I'm kind of a prick, and 2. Please break into my car to steal my stereo.)

Atlas of Metal: Afghanistan

Welcome to the first installment of the Atlas of Metal, where I'll be exploring metal from around the world. I'll discuss each country in the world where I can find a metal band, in alphabetical order.

Afghanistan is known as the Graveyard of Empires, because historically countries that have become involved there have fallen from greatness shortly thereafter. Graveyard of Empires would make a damn good album title, I think. It had until recently been ruled by the Taliban, a very strict but loosely associated group that outlawed many things: Including anything that produces music. That's right, any music at all. So you can imagine there were no metal bands under Taliban rule.

Dirge v. Cursed

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Grindcore is not a genre I listen to a great deal, but as I've mentioned in the past I do spin it now and again. Two releases in the genre have recently grabbed my attention, and the impressions I came away with were very different.

First off, Singapore's Wormrot has been getting a lot of hype lately, and their new "full-length" Dirge was released free on Earache's web site. The music is basically straight-up grindcore, with some metallic elements. Consisting of 25 songs and lasting only an anemic 18 minutes, it's basically just a blur. I thought grindcore was supposed to keep you off balance with frequent tempo and rhythm changes, and sometimes it manages to do that. But much of the time, this thing just blows past you. It's not change if you don't stay on one thing long enough to register a contrast.

Contrast that with Finland's Rotten Sound. Cursed (Relapse) is the deathgrind band's sixth full-length, and it clocks in at a much healthier 27 minutes with 16 songs. Some people say that "deathgrind" usually just means "death metal songs that are too short", but that's definitely not what's going on here. This is basically half each, with death metal style aggression and growls, the heaviness common to the best of both worlds, frequent tempo changes, and grind-tastic drumming. The songs stick around just long enough to groove, and then they move on to something else. They even manage to throw in a few solos.

The Verdict: I find in favor of Rotten Sound. Wormrot's Dirge (3 out of 5 stars) has some good parts, but they get lost all too quickly. It's an enjoyable listen, but completely unmemorable. Rotten Sound's Cursed (4.5 out of 5 stars), on the other hand, combines the best parts of grind with the best parts of death into a sleek, heavy, and memorable package.

Hexvessel: Dawnbearer (2011)

Review

A handful of metal guys are doing dark, folk-inspired, mostly acoustic work. Man's Gin, Scott Kelly, Dax Riggs, and Wino have all done it. So far, most of it has been very good, probably because only extremely talented people have attempted it. But it seems that only Americans have been going in that direction, until now.

Hexvessel is the side project of Kvohst, vocalist of a handful of black metal outfits mostly from the UK (but also including Dødheimsgard of Norway). In contrast to the Americans going in this direction, there isn't even hardly any rock in this. Instead of folk-rock, he's gone for straight-up folk, of the psychedelic variety popular in the 60's. The main instruments are acoustic guitar and violin, with the guitar chords sometimes shifting into weird dissonance to provide the psychedelia. But other instruments also make appearances (such as bagpipes and rarely used percussion, plus electric guitar on "The Tunnel at the End of the Light"). The vocals tend to be high-pitched, and all of them are clean.

Trap Them: Darker Handcraft (2011)

Review

Trap Them's third album Darker Handcraft was one of the most anticipated albums of the year. The band was definitely not on my radar before seeing all the hype, and that's for an obvious reason: they're not a metal band.

Trap Them play a style of punk combining crust punk, hardcore, and grindcore. I honestly know very little about any of these genres, aside from the places where they cross into metal territory. Metal and punk have had a long conversation, beginning at least as early as Motörhead. This album is similar enough to metal in a lot of ways that someone outside the world of punk or metal would be confused about the distinction. It's aggressive, riff-based music, and it's far heavier than most punk I've ever heard. But it's different enough from my beloved metal that I hardly feel qualified to write this review.

Metal Art: Antichrist Kramer

When I was in high school, I would draw the occasional picture with disturbing content. I remember one occasion in particular where I drew an elaborate arrangement of skulls and occult paraphernalia, implying some kind of demonic ritual. My teacher in that class (who was also a regular usher at my church) saw it and understandably had a concerned look on his face. It's not that I was serious about it, but it was cool to think about it and design it. Maybe that's how cults get started.

Antichrist Kramer's (or Antichristian Kramer) art has that kind of feel to it: fantastic skulls and evil stuff, drawn up completely out of the imagination, suggesting deeper meaning that may or may not be there. His more recent stuff is even better, executed with the kind of baroque detail I've never had to patience to work into my own drawings.

Kramer's work also seems to include--at least sometimes--obfuscated terminology and poetry to go along with the pictures. Above is his work for Inquisition's Ominous Doctrines of the Perpetual Mystical Macrocosm.

Grayceon: All We Destroy (2011)

Review

The Internet age lends itself to creating incredibly specific tastes in people. Famously, it does so for porn. But less obviously, it does the same thing for music. And I think I've developed an absurdly specific taste for avant-garde female-fronted metal bands featuring strings and signed to Profound Lore. That tells you a lot of what you need to know about Grayceon (and maybe more than you wanted to know about me). They are a trio: drummer, guitarist, and cellist/vocalist. All We Destroy is their third full-length.

The unusual setup leads to the creation of some unique music. I hesitate to call it doom, although much of it is at a slower pace. The guitar and cello don't have clearly defined roles, each one weaving back and forth between rhythm and lead. The guitar riffs groove, while the cello riffs can pull on your heart like great classical music or rock your face like the good parts of Apocalyptica. With all these instruments do, the drums are wisely kept low-key, almost never drawing attention to themselves.

On top of the unusual music, Jackie Perez Gratz delivers unique vocals. She can scream like a wildcat, but her husky clean singing voice belongs in an evening gown, stretched across the top of a baby grand piano in some dimly lit jazz bar. Sometimes the two styles are overdubbed to very strange effect (see "Dreamer Deceived").



Unique music can easily fall into the trap of being too weird for its own good, but that is not the case here. "Shellmounds" is a particularly great track, but each song on the album is compelling. They're full of hooks as well as progressive elements, blending beautiful harmony, clean melodies, and heavy grooving riffs with expertise. And it's enhanced by great production that makes everything perfectly clear without robbing it of its soul: you can hear the bow scraping the cello, and even the vocals sound like a superb live recording.

The Verdict: This will certainly prove to be one of the most distinctive albums of the year, with music that's extraordinary in both meanings of the term. I give it 4.5 out of 5 stars.

After-School Special: "Swarth"

I got to pick my son up from day care today. He selected Portal's Swarth as the "daddy music" for the ride home. After the first couple notes, his face lit up, and he exclaimed, "This is a good one!"



He has excellent taste.

Amon Amarth: Surtur Rising (2011)

Review

Surtur Rising is Amon Amarth's eighth full-length, and they never fail to deliver.

To describe the album best, all I can say is, it's an Amon Amarth album. If you don't know what that means, you need to do yourself a favor: go get With Oden on Our Side (one of my top albums of 2006). They are about as consistent as any band has ever been, in terms of both style and quality. With each album they've shifted gradually further away from your standard melodic death metal to a more anthemic sound, but with every release they get your blood pumping with great riffs, catchy songs that you can tell apart, and gruff vocals with lyrics about pillaging and whatever else Vikings like to do.

Opener "War of the Gods" is a perfect statement of what the band is all about, with a great opening riff, fast drums, and anthemic chorus. "Destroyer of the Universe" is the fastest and heaviest song on here, and "Slaves of Fear" is as catchy as the plague. And "A Beast Am I" has a great extended solo that's clearly about being interesting, not showing off. "Doom Over Dead Man" is a ballad and "For Victory or Death" has a distinct mainstream vibe, but both work. Sure, there are some missteps. "Live Without Regrets" is cheesy and built on riffs that should have been on the cutting room floor; "The Last Stand of Frej" is an experiment that didn't pay off. But those can be forgiven when the rest of the material is this strong.

The Verdict: Surtur Rising isn't my favorite Amon Amarth album. It might even be my least favorite. But that's like talking about my least favorite whiskey. It's still whiskey. I give it 4 out of 5 stars.

The Haunted: Unseen (2011)

The Haunted was formed from the ashes of the legendary At the Gates. I've been a big fan of their melodic death/thrash approach for a long time, as they were one of the first extreme metal bands I got into. And I was really looking forward to their latest, Unseen.

Before Unseen was released, they asserted that they had recorded a pop album. Like many, I assumed this meant they had injected even more hooks into the album, to make it even catchier than before. All their albums have become increasingly hook-laden, but they never abandoned aggressiveness and power. Until now.

When they said "pop", they really meant pop. The music is drained of anything dangerous or exciting and replaced with repetitive, lifeless garbage. There's no blood or fire in the riffs, which bear only a vague resemblance to any of their previous work because they kept the same guitar tone. There are no solos to speak of, and the drumming is workmanlike. The vocals are limp, and the lyrics are paint-by-number relationship angst, adding to the sense that they're gunning for a tour with Nickelback and Fuel.

But the thing is, this isn's even good alt-metal. I was more impressed with Stone Sour's latest album than this. And that sucked, too. This album really, truly, has no redeeming qualities.

The Verdict: After reforming At the Gates, I would have thought they would have gone further in that direction. Century Media ruins another once-great band in their continuing quest to court the Hot Topic crowd. I give it 0 out of 5 stars.