MIXTAPE: No Epiphany – 2008 In Alt-Metal
like this, but without good producers
Here’s a fun piece that, along with 20 other year-end pieces by different critic types, was killed by Idolator. Very metal props to Matos who assigned and edited this thing. zShare link inside!
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2008 in the Mix: METAL
by Christopher R. Weingarten
To celebrate the year in music, Idolator asked a number of writers to put together a single CD’s worth of 2008’s best songs based on genre or theme. We begin our 2008 in the Mix feature with longtime headbanger Christopher R. Weingarten’s look at the year in metal–or, as he hears it, alt-metal.
1. Melvins, “The Kicking Machine” (Ipecac)
2. Double Dagger, “Pissing Contest” (Stationary Heart)
3. Jarboe, “MahaKali, of Terrifying Countenance” (The End)
4. Made Out of Babies, “Invisible Ink” (The End)
5. Helms Alee, “A Weirding Away” (Hydra Head)
6. Torche, “Across the Shields” (Hydra Head)
7. Fucked Up, “No Epiphany” (Matador)
8. Harvey Milk, “Decades” (Hydra Head)
9. ASG, “Right Before Death” (Volcom)
10. Fight Amp, “Dead Is Dead” (Translation Loss)
11. Clouds, “Feed the Horse” (Hydra Head)
12. Dianogah, “Qhnnnl” (Southern)
13. Don Caballero, “Celestial Dusty Groove” (Relapse)
14. Tweak Bird, “Shivers” (Volcom)
15. Jucifer, “Behind Every Great Man” (Relapse)
16. Black Horse, “Shake Shake Shake” (self-release)
17. When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, “It’s Not the Heat, It’s the Humidity” (Chalk Circle)
18. Young Widows, “Old Skin” (Temporary Residence)
19. Black Elk, “Hospital” (Crucial Blast)
20. Drunkdriver, “Dick in a Mousetrap” (Parts Unknown)
21. Boris, “Statement” (Southern Lord)
22. Black Mountain, “Stormy High” (Jagjuguwar)
23. Danava, “The Emerald Snow of Sleep” (Kemado)
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After a brief, stylish honeymoon, heavy metal in 2008 returned to its rightful home: in the margins. There were no fashionable, blogger-endorsed places to dip your toe into the way there had been in 2007’s Peeber-tossin’ thrash revivalism, 2006’s agoraphobic black metal, 2005’s seismic drO)))nes, and 2004’s, er, Mastodon. Now working outside the attention of dilettantes–who’ve moved on, for whatever reason–metal went back to doing what it does best: making real metal for real metalheads. Most of the celebrated records were perfectly pragmatic headbanger fare–excellent, unsurprising records made for people who like what they like.
In 2008 we got serviceable thrash (Metallica, Testament), serviceable death metal (Gojira, Amon Amarth), serviceable art-chug (Opeth, Meshuggah), even a surprising amount of serviceable goregrind (Bathtub Shitter, Throatplunger). Switching your style up and working outside your listeners’ comfort zone is as risky a proposition in metal as it is in hip-hop. To keep an audience who want exactly these things, it’s best to play it hard, heavy, and familiar. Hyper-technical death-metal mind-fuck Cryptopsy dove headfirst into melody and clean vocals and were universally panned; conversely, black metal formalists Nachtmystium started toying with incense-and-peppermints psychedelia, and will no doubt top many year-end lists.
Killing is still their business, but business was mostly business as usual. So, deep in a climate of purism, every alternative metal record seemed like a revelation. With no one to really put it under the microscope, alternative metal flourished–easily the best year for brainy brawn since the days when bands like Soundgarden, Helmet, and Faith No More mixed the anything-goes mentality of Lollapalooza nation with the muggy metal chug that raised them (and their loyal following of less-artful monosyllabicists–Prong, Clutch, Tool, Korn, Dink, Stick, etc.) When rap-metal made this stuff ultramega-uncool in late-’90s, college radio turned to Belle & Sebastian, and alt-metal bands had to cater to the metal underground, where they still fight to be heard.
So why don’t we begin with the survivors of alt-metal’s last golden age? The Melvins’ 19th album, Nude with Boots, is on par with just about any of their others. The band’s influence looms large over 2008’s alt-metal crop as long-enduring scene misfits who dodge expectations with every turn, and as veteran mixers of pop and sludge–a sound that can be heard most starkly in Jucifer’s concept rock, Tweak Bird’s bog party, Black Horse’s sexy bloozcrunge, and the mighty Boris, who named one of the songs on their spacey new album after the Melvins’ King Buzzo (as if having named their band after a Melvins song wasn’t enough).
When it came to sludge and pop, alt-metal label Hydra Head almost overdid it. And some of their bands really overdid it, with triumphant, howling, fist-balled-at-the-heavens power-goop, hooks ready for college radio, waterfalls of unholy distortion to massage you gently into paralysis: sunshine-and-lollipops shit you might (but probably shouldn’t) call “life metal.” Seattle’s exultant heavy-hitters Helms Alee took fellow sludge revivalists Big Business’s harmonies to almost Meat Loaf levels of histrionics; Florida’s sickly-saccharine Torche come up with enough big hooks to become the next Foo Fighters, and could do it with just a minimal amount of studio tweakery. Clouds is happy metal from the space-cadet guitarist of defunct Massachusetts space-rock legends Cave In; even veteran tar-layers Harvey Milk entered their 12th year with a bizarre slice of bipolar art-quirk Zeppelin that mixed their usual bursts of dissonant doom-rock with their catchiest songs to date. Fucked Up–not on Hydra Head, more hardcore than metal–topped them all in spirit by getting Brooklyn’s three-way-harmonious neo-girl-group the Vivian Girls to push their luminous “No Epiphany” to heavenly heights of floaty euphoria.
On the other side of the tracks, the sons and daughters of ’90s noise-rock miscreants Unsane and Jesus Lizard produced seething, taut, two-minute blasts of nu-pigfuck that rode the classic alt-metal formula with razor precision: heavy enough to wound, not macho enough to look like jock caricatures or dungeon masters. This charge was led with lean records by the uneasy Black Elk, the savage Young Widows, the playful Double Dagger, the goofy When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, and the downright disgusting Drunkdriver. The latter band could easily ball with trendy no-fi mutants like Times New Viking if their drummer wasn’t such a beast.
Tearing down the walls of their own pigfuck past, Brooklyn’s Made Out of Babies wanted you to feel their pain instead of just watching them scratch at their sores. On “Invisible Ink,” lead singer Julie Christmas using her impressive, emotive vocal range to reinvent herself as an alt-rock siren, alternately crawling on the floor and rising like a voice-cracking phoenix in true Polly Jean Harvey tradition. Having abandoned their Neurosis-y roots for a more atmospheric sound, Made Out of Babies so stubbornly bucked the metal orthodoxy that they embodied the “alt-” to fantastic degrees. They proudly played up all the elements that made them odd ducks–the personal lyrics, the imprecise vocal lines, the Jesus Lizard bass, lyrics closer to Waits than Lovecraft, the overall weirdness. They’re the best non-metal metal band of the year–a margin all its own.