Full Circle: "The Way of All Flesh" Album Review

Album: The Way of All Flesh
Artist: Gojira
Genre: Progressive Death Metal
Length: 75:07
Release Date: October 14, 2008
Label: Listenable (Europe), Prosthetic (America)
Producer: Joe Duplantier

I’m not going to lie and say I have the most “believable” taste of music in the world. For all I complain about band X or praise artist Y, I usually find myself at the losing end of most debates because of the giant schism between me and the average (read: sane) consumer. However, I’m not going to blame anyone for not liking Gojira; they are the kind of artist with a learning curve as steep and impenetrable as a canyon wall, even for genre fans. But just as the most accessible tunes often possess the depth of a tablespoon, so does Gojira present an ocean of opportunities by being so dense and original.

Gojira (whose name is the rōmaji spelling of “Godzilla”, fittingly enough), first truly made a name for themselves on 2005’s astounding From Mars to Sirius. It was a brilliant concept piece that established everything that makes the band unique, talented, and, well…difficult to accept. Their goal is not as much to satisfy their listener as it is to punish them, not quite unlike the progressive death-jazz idols Atheist. But while Atheist overwhelmed listeners with a mixture of blinding speed and bizarre time signatures, Gojira simply bashes their heads in with the kind of raw power you wouldn’t think four guys could create alone. The riffs are thick, the drums precise with blast-beats galore, and the vocalist produces a strange new sound somewhere between a hardcore shout and death-metaller’s growl. They provide the occasional breathing room in the form of instrumentals and experimental noodling, but rest assured the majority of the Gojira experience is claustrophobic, melancholic, and perhaps even frightening, so much so that you would never believe these guys were French.

Yes, it’s a progressive death metal band from France. I wouldn’t lie to you here.

Understandably, when one goes about creating a new style, it comes with a great burden. Thus, the immediate question to ask is whether or not the band’s most recent release, The Way of All Flesh, can possibly compare to the album that defined their careers just three years ago. And if you had asked me a mere few days ago, I would have answered “no”. But with enough time and patience I have come to understand all the subtleties and experiments that make this album every bit as excellent as From Mars to Sirius, if not more so. Not only does it provide a more versatile thrill-ride, it’s the perfect entry point for anyone who wishes to subject themselves to their impeccable brutality.

It immediately succeeds to a certain degree merely by sticking to the principles outlined above; it’s powerful, extreme, and technical the way we expect. But it’s the subtle points that make The Way of All Flesh a transcendent experience: the peculiar mix of synths and vocoder vocals on A Sight to Behold; the surprise guest vocals on Adoration for None; the atmospheric and haunting, atmospheric, four-minute ending to the title track (try listening to it at night, trust me); and most importantly, The Art of Dying. This amazing song opens with a mix of tribal instruments that perfect matches the album’s Aboriginal-esque cover art and ends with a riff that resembles a section of the next track in the set, Esoteric Surgery…played backwards. In between are some of most suffocating moments in Gojira’s history (and remember, that’s a good thing here). And while a few moments on the album feel a tad samey after the big jump in quality that was From Mars to Sirius, the album’s general innovation makes it stand out. Even were that not the case, certain songs on TWoAF represent both the fastest (Esoteric Surgery) and slowest (Vacuity) extremes in music, saving it from feeling anything less than truly special.

If any of this attempts to imply that Gojira only works on the technical and instrumental front, that would be quite the lie. Yes, Joe Duplantier’s growling is easily the biggest obstacle to enjoying the album, but there’s no denying it matches the rest of the ensemble perfectly. And while TWoAF lacks the conceptual storyline that tied all of the songs on the previous album together, it also possesses a much stronger theme: the band’s personal beliefs in life and death. The previous album cemented the band's skill in evaluating tough global issues, namely those relating to mankind's atrocious treatment of the environment; thus, Gojira does not dissapoint in tackling this prickly and bold topic. The subject permeates everything on the album, even the song titles: Oroborus refers to the cyclical, never-ending property of existence associated with Buddhist beliefs, and Yama’s Messengers refers to the Japanese lord of death. Likewise, each song's lyrics are all remarkable pieces of poetry, thanks mostly to their phenomenal imagery. In addition, the album’s biggest musical innovations, as mentioned above, seem to have an other-worldly mannerism themselves, which makes the brutality of the music much more emotive.

As stated earlier, almost none of these magical attributes may be noticed on the first spin of the disc. Perhaps more so than any other album I’ve listened to, TWoAF requires time and patience, almost like watering a dried-up plant with the promise of delicious fruit. Guaranteed, most people will just give and walk away…actually, most people will probably run away and cower in the corner for a few minutes trying to recovery from the pure intensity of it all, but that’s hardly the point. All in all, those of you out there with a taste for pure power and a tolerance for some initial whip-lashing will walk away with something truly memorable, full of substance, and one of the best metal releases of the year.

Youtube Links:

Oroborous: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v50wkoofl-4&feature=related

Toxic Garbage Island: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAw5nWJBNrM&feature=related

A Sight to Behold: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXfdRLPA9is

The Art of Dying: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xEYz74bMHA&feature=related

Vacuity Music Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gv7fo6mefo (WARNING: this is probably one of the most disturbing music videos ever made. Don't say I didn't warn you)

Daysed and Kunfoozed: "Midnite Vultures" Review

Album: Midnite Vultures
Artist: Beck
Genre: Alternative / “Indie”
Length: 58:24
Release Date: November 23, 1999
Label: DGC
Producer: Beck Hansen, Tony Hoffer, Mickey Petralia, The Dust Brothers

A stage name. Intentional misspellings. More oversaturated neon colors than a 80’s nightclub. And worst of all, the prominent depiction of tight leather pants…pink ones, I might add. Yep, I think it’s safe to say this album’s cover art couldn’t make me want to listen to the music less if it were covered in thorns and had a shrieking, carnivorous maw. But by no means was that going to prevent me from giving it a decent and equitable shake to the best of my ability. Turns out, however, the cover’s aesthetic actually does point to an attribute of the music that I so greatly fear: overt pretentiousness.

Now, before you decide to force-feed me my own words, I should note that this is my first exploration into the musical enigma known as Beck. From what I could initially gather, the man is some sort of alt-rock idol, and he clearly possesses the eccentricity to receive such a nomination. Alas, idiosyncrasy does not a great musician make, at least not by itself. So I walked into Midnite Vultures, purportedly one the most upbeat Beck releases, expecting bizarre genre transfusions, liberal sampling, and lots of electronica influences. What I didn’t expect was for all of this to be true, but not at all more engaging for the efforts. In fact, for all this man does to keep the wool over my eyes from start to finish, Midnite Vultures is unbelievably shallow.

Many would claim Beck’s style isn’t too readily defined, but I’ve got one word to do just that: schizophrenic. Indeed, so insistent is he to mix so many different genres and instruments under a single album that whatever magical recipe he could have created is quickly soured. Ironically, the core traits of each track – tempo, tone, and even length – don’t vary much at all, so we are forced to rely on his cheap tricks and gimmicks just to keep pace. Take the starting track Sexx Laws for instance; it kicks off in a much more engaging manner than most of the other songs by mixing together repeating keyboards with a soul-flavored jazz ensemble, but repetition already starts to sink in by the bridge and my attention starts to wane off accordingly. That’s when, from seemingly no logical location in space or time, a full-blown banjo riff kicks in. Raised eyebrows not-withstanding, the cocktail of soul and bluegrass just doesn’t flow or make sense…but it’s here anyway, because Beck said so. And it’s only one of many “WTF?” moments that randomly pepper the album, from the laugh-worthy beat-boxing in Pressure Zone to the sudden appearance of below-average hip-hop in Hollywood Freaks. Yeah, it’s great to be diverse, but such a trait must be managed and controlled, not splattered all about like the paint on a monkey’s self-portrait.

And on the subject of inconsistency and incompetence, we come to Beck’s lyrical capabilities, which is indeed where the aforementioned pretentiousness is showcased to a spit-shine polish. I truly went into this album perceiving Beck as a potentially intelligent individual, but from his music I would guess that he’s either very confused about the way the English language works or he advertently has his face crammed right up where-the-sun-don’t-shine. To put it bluntly, they defy reason and intellect in favor of a working rhyme scheme, something that is usually associated with much more mainstream acts than this guy. The result is that any chance of comprehending them from a listener’s point of view is locked up, caged away, and sealed within a cube of building bricks bathed in cement. The first verse from Nicotine and Gravy, for example, sounds like it could be the arrangement of lines from other random songs that in no way relate: “I'll be your chauffeur on a midnight drive / It takes a miracle just to survive / Buried animals call your name / You keep on sleeping through the poignant rain”. What?! Please, someone inform me if you can find any lucid meaning to that jargon. Then, by contrast, you have a song like Mixed Bizness (what did I say about intentional misspellings, huh?), that has “linear” and “dull” written all over it. In other words, it’s a single, and you’ve actually probably heard it before; I know I did. Sadly, it’s also a syrupy, mindless rant about dancing and sex, which is hardly new. Between these two extremes, it’s hard to walk away from this album feeling any sort of emotion, almost like an hour-long elevator ride.

Suffice it to say – and this really should go without saying at all – there will always be an audience for that sort of thing, who will find what I see as superficial to be brilliance instead. And indeed, if you’re looking for an album that carries such a multitude of styles under one roof, you might just have the key that unlocks this album’s potential. Sadly, I couldn’t even lockpick the frickin’ door to said potential because I was too distracted by generic song structures dotted with conceptual and lyrical inconsistencies. I’m sure that in between his song-writing sessions that involve a combination of liberal drug-use and smashing his head against a brick wall, he’d like to refute some of these harsh and perhaps rashly made lashes against his work, but rest assured that if he speaks anything like he writes poetry then he’d probably be better off communicating to me by drawing on an Etch-a-Sketch with his toes.

Great Gig in the Sky, Indeed: "Dark Side of the Moon" Review

Album: The Dark Side of the Moon
Artist: Pink Floyd
Genre: Progressive Rock / Psychadelic Rock
Length: 42:59
Release Date: March 17, 1973
Label: Harvest (1973), Capitol (20th Anniversary), EMI (30th Anniversary)
Producer: Pink Floyd




It’s a sad fact of life – at least in the world of music, anyway – that the greatest and most important creations and developments are often sadly overlooked. I can expect anyone to know who Britney Spears is, but I still get raised eyebrows when I ask someone about Iron Maiden, and I guarantee most people have no idea what a “Grandmaster Flash” is. In such a world, it’s become increasingly difficult for me to take anything that’s remotely popular or mainstream seriously, which has in part lead to my more “alternative” taste.

Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon is, in all respects, a glorious exception to this rule. Once my initial skepticism was pushed aside, I was overjoyed to find it to be one of the elite few truly deserving of its success and praise. And that goes beyond its purely financial achievements; at the time of its conception, DSotM was (and I am not exaggerating in the slightest here) an album destined by its inherent brilliance, creativity, and originality to define its era and deeply influence those to come from here to eternity. Whether that’s a statement that everyone wearing the Pink Floyd T-shirts they bought at The Gap can agree with is beyond me, but against impossible odds the fans and the critics – myself included – seem to agree, and so should you.

What’s truly magnificent about Pink Floyd is that the fame they acquired was due solely to the music they created, as it should be. DSotM is probably the best of their works to represent their ability because it is simultaneously their most experimental, so much so that it went on to define a genre that revolves around experimentation: progressive rock. Unlike their later rock opera classic The Wall, the album wallows in a sort of ethereal state, passing fluidly from one phase to the next, hard to grasp yet impossible not to be sucked into, like a musical vacuum. For this reason it’s hard to definitively break down DSotM into parts and infinitely easier to look at it as a whole, where the division of the album into songs only exists to divvy up the conceptual lyrics.

And conceptual the album is, dealing with some of the broadest and most complex issues: life, death, and that which takes place in between. Speak to Me / Breathe is the embodiment of life, represented by the throbbing heartbeat that ushers in the album, and the brief Eclipse ends it with a bold statement about free will. The remaining songs cover all kinds of territory ranging from religion (The Great Gig in the Sky) to greed (Money) to ethics and moral conflict (Us and Them), and are all delivered beautifully through David Gilmore’s spectacular vocals.

The guitarists and drummers do their task marvelously throughout, never overly technical and always in sync with the rest of the sound, but the real star here is the keyboard, courtesy of (recently deceased) Richard Wright. They are, indisputably, the key that unlocks the album’s almost ghost-like and oftentimes eerie sound, and this is clearly the album to which Wright contributed the most. Apart from that, the album’s atmosphere is accentuated by masterful mixing in of various sound effects and other oddities. The exact reasoning escapes me, but when a metronome syncs perfectly with the starting riff in Time, or when a melody of ringing cash registers and jingling coins kick in Money, it seems to make the song more meaningful.

Of course, the album does have its flaws. If you haven’t inferred this by now, know that it takes a patient and open mind to fully enjoy what DSotM has to offer. For something that has garnered so much attention, it’s surprisingly slow and lacks the focus and immediacy of most other music; many of its greatest second-long moments have buildups that can take minutes, as is the nature of progressivism. On the Run symbolizes this well; its long and repetitive keyboard noodling, accented only by odd sounds that pass in and out, may be as exciting to some as it is coma-inducing to others. Ironically, another potential fault can be found in its ending, which is sudden and lacks the explosive punch you would expect such an epic album to end at. In most other regards, though, DSotM is excellently paced and mastered.

Of course, maybe I’m being overly analytical (not like that’s a surprise to anyone). Bluntly put, The Dark Side of the Moon perfectly captures the time and place of 1973, perfectly summarizes a handful of life’s most vital aspects, and is a blast to listen to, all in one handy package. Beyond being the most important proof that music that impresses the public and leaves a massive mainstream mark is almost always made without the intention to do so (see also: Nirvana), its an album that actually received what it deserved. It’s a pity more albums don’t.

And R.I.P. Richard. We think you and your band may have written your own best eulogy for you: "And I am not frightened of dying, any time will do, I don't mind. Why should I be frightened of dying? There's no reason for it, you've gotta go sometime."