Drums and Guns

Illustration by J. Jokilehto Click to enlarge

Found, on Hail of Bullets' forum, an illustration of drummer Ed Warby exercising his Second Amendment rights (if he were American). It gives a whole new meaning to "blastbeat" and "drum triggers." The artist is a "J. Jokilehto." Click on the image to enlarge - it's a beaut.

Bring back 80's speed metal

Metal dreams

Illustration by Dan O'Connor Click on image to enlarge

I have dreamed of metal only twice. The first dream was a Ludicra show. Singer Laurie Sue Shanaman had cut her hair, and they were playing new songs, which ruled. My subconscious is evidently good at writing Ludicra music. Ludicra, write new songs! Too bad I can't remember your awesome ones from my dream. Otherwise, I would teach them to you.

Enter Sandman (Lullaby Rendition)

The other metal dream I had was recent. I was hanging out with Lars Ulrich, showing him photos of Metallica from an old magazine. There was a certain one I wanted to show him, but I couldn't find it after several minutes of searching. Lars grew impatient. In exchange for waiting for me to find the picture, he said I had to come see him in a play he was in. Surprised, I asked him what he did in the play. "Marimba," he said proudly, a big grin spreading across his face.

Do you dream of metal?

- Cosmo Lee

RIP Cursed

Bad news from Canada's Cursed. Say it ain't so, Joe.

Yeah, you heard. Apparently, it gets even worse. That's all I know or even want to know for now. We got robbed at the very end of tour in a totally unreal, extremely sketchy series of events that still makes no sense at all, only leads to paranoia, anger and a total loss of faith. Passports, money, all the costs of the tour. Either way, whoever did it, it was a bullet in the head, the end of the line. A sudden and totally fucked up way for it to end, which I know will be fitting when I look back on it. All we could do was play the show, badly, and go our ways with whatever money we could muster. I hitched a ride back to Prague with Tomas. Since I can't do a fucking thing about it, I'm going to hang out with my girl, and friends, stare at some Czech mountains and try not to think about it. Needless to say, all outstanding plans are off. All this shit aside, thanks to everyone that helped out and travelled from all over for the shows on this tour, all the kids and bands we played and stayed with. Minus a few fucked up shows, it was probably the best tour we ever had. Thanks everyone for your good wishes. I'll elaborate when I'm home next week, for now - yes it's true, and yes it's over.

Heartbreaking to hear from a band that meant what they said, whose sound roared their name. III: Architects of Troubled Sleep (Goodfellow, 2008) was that rare record I was afraid to review. Words couldn't do it justice. How do you review storm clouds and dirt clods? Part me of wants Cursed to live on. The other part wants them to honor their own words in "Antihero Resuscitator": "All my antiheroes are dead, gone to far-off beds / And I got orders – Do Not Resuscitate / Leave them in the ground, we’ve got our own frustrations." May you find the peace you never had.

Antihero Resuscitator

Buy:
Relapse
Interpunk

Metal hockey fight songs

Illustration by Dan O'Connor For the glorious full-size original, click on the image

I love metal; I love hockey. The two should go together, right? Well, maybe. Darkest Hour recently threw together a fight song for the Washington Capitals that makes Ministry's for the Blackhawks sound like "Bohemian Rhapsody." Even for a fight song, it's moronic. Rehashed At the Gates riffs with unbearably repetitive chanting? Let's hope it's a one-timer. Pantera didn't do much better with "Punk-Off," their Dallas Stars fight song. But that rhythm section! The "Cowboys from Hell" quote is cute, too. In punk, The Boils made an EP devoted to the Flyers, and there's the Bruins-fonted Slapshot (though to my knowledge, they never made a Bruins-centric song). Someone get a metal fight song for the Atlanta Thrashers, stat!

Pantera - Punk-Off (Dallas Stars fight song)

In minor league hockey, Unearth recently wrote a fight song for the San Antonio Rampage. You can hear it here. Andrew W.K. also did a ditty for the Arizona Sundogs; see here.

Soiled Work

The artwork for Soilwork's new album, Sworn to A Great Divide (Nuclear Blast, 2007), is a complete rip-off of Stephen Kasner. At first, I thought he did the cover, but I emailed him and found out this was not so. It straight-up bites Kasner's artwork for Himsa's Hail Horror (Prosthetic, 2006), down to the serpentine theme. This isn't homage, it's theft. Why haven't more people flagged this? In other venues, plagiarism is grounds for expulsion, decertification, etc.

Maybe this is karmic "payback" for having been ripped off before. Delphian's Unravel (Lion Music, 2007) steals the stream of butterflies of 2002's Natural Born Chaos. Who OK's these decisions??? What self-respecting artist would want to take another's style? What band would want their album to look like another's? Absolutely shameful.

Visions of the Beast: Metal's Mythmakers

Pig Destroyer - Phantom Limb Original painting by John Dyer Baizley

Up at Stylus today is the final installment of my metal artists feature. It features John Dyer Baizley, who's done artwork for Kylesa, Torche, Pig Destroyer, Magrudergrind, and The Red Chord, among others, as well as the Skeletonwitch EP I reviewed some time ago.

He also sings and plays guitar for Baroness, who has a crushing split out soon with Unpersons. Baizley is one of the few artists today with an instantly recognizable style, and I'm thrilled to have talked to him.

Actually, I'm thrilled to have talked to all the artists in my feature. They've done iconic work, not just in metal in general, but also for me personally. I love the music and artwork for, say, Reign in Blood or Annihilation of the Wicked, and speaking with the artists behind those images added yet another layer of appreciation.

Some of these guys were hard to track down, so I thought I'd end this week with a special treat - clips of them talking.

Orion Landau, on the Coldworker layout and Reign in Blood
Larry Carroll, on why Slayer didn't rehire him after the '80s
Stephen Kasner, on doing the Khlyst cover
Dan Seagrave, on the cover for Entombed's Left Hand Path
John Dyer Baizley, on how he doesn't want to do skulls anymore

Seance - Fornever Laid to Rest

I wonder when Dan Seagrave will start swatting away the metal writers that keep interviewing him about his work from over 10 years ago. Luckily, he patiently and good-naturedly answered my questions about his death metal years. Seagrave's newer covers are just as epic as his old stuff, if not more so, and he recently finished a short film called Shadowline. His interview and artwork are now up in my metal artists feature this week at Stylus.

Reincarnage
Necronomicon

For maximum Seagrave-ness, I thought I'd revisit Fornever Laid to Rest (Black Mark, 1992), the debut album by Sweden's Seance. The cover is hardly Seagrave's best work, but it's unmistakably his style, and the album is one of the lesser-known gems in his "discography."

Seance graduated three members to Satanic Slaughter and then to Witchery, with Patrik Jensen also joining The Haunted. However, the band itself was a force, releasing two albums of raging, old-school Swedish death metal. Fornever's raw, natural production captured ripping performances and righteous riffs; the album is a joy to hear, with none of today's overcompressed bullshit.

Amusingly, the band's original GeoCities website is still up, with awesome text like "With this album SEANCE did penatrate [sic] their fans ears to the limit," and "Seance are still looking for a bassplayer, if you are a bassist over 22, have your own equvipment [sic] and are into the metal of death, send them a mail for more info."

Martin Grech - Unholy

The art of Stephen Kasner is one of the best things that's ever happened to me. Although I'm now familiar with his style, it still d/haunts me. It's a "take a deep breath and leap into the unknown" proposition, which I prize but find so rarely. I'm honored to have spoken with him; his interview and artwork are up today in my ongoing metal artists feature this week at Stylus.

Guiltless

Kasner did the cover for Martin Grech's Unholy (Island, 2005). It's the inverse of a Rothko take on a cross - not religious, but dirty, gauzy, fading. The image fits the the album, which pairs Grech's Jeff Buckley/Thom Yorke/male Bjork vocals with ambient alt-rock and occasional metal a la Tool or NIN. Like an M. Night Shyamalan movie, the result doesn't always work, but it's atmospheric as hell. "Guiltless," one of the album's singles, is a lush, slow burn.

Below are some outtakes from my interview with Kasner.

Do you think there's misanthropy in your work?

I think in terms of the darker side of nature, the darker side of man, buried thoughts, nightmares, regret, things that we as humans often try to bury - things that psychiatrists make a lot of money on.

In your album artwork, you often focus on a central element instead of playing with the edges of the frame.

In my paintings in general, I usually have a central focus or various groups of focus, and there's also areas that are not focused. They're unrefined, and I don't mean that in a negative way. It's almost like pinhole photography, where you have a focus, coupled with areas of distorted image.

I've always been fascinated by early photography. Some of the most powerful images I've ever seen have been in early photography or portraiture, where things are as refined as they can be, but the tools and techniques they employed at the time had a natural distortion to it. There's something about that to me that's so melancholy and so beautiful. Not to read too much into the edges of my paintings, but I think it's part homage to these photographic images.

Are you one of those people that prefer vinyl to CD's?

I most certainly do. But CD's and MP3's become very handy in the studio. If I'm working in the studio, I'm working for many, many hours. My work is pretty dirty. It's pretty hefty work. I don't paint in a very controlled environment. A lot of times I'm throwing huge buckets of paint and washes on my work. It's very tactile and messy. So it'd become inconvenient to always be flipping vinyl. But I do have a vinyl collection that I appreciate very much when I'm at home.

Jedi Mind Tricks & Ill Bill - Heavy Metal Kings

My metal artists feature at Stylus today highlights Larry Carroll, who did the covers for Slayer's Reign in Blood, South of Heaven, Seasons in the Abyss, and Christ Illusion. He's also doing the cover for The Hour of Reprisal, the upcoming album by Ill Bill of Non Phixion fame.

It's no coincidence that the title is a Slayer lyric. Ill Bill and his brother Necro once played in a death metal band called Injustice, and Non Phixion's logo was a tribute to Voivod's. His MySpace has a song that's hip hop lyrics over full-on metal, but the flows don't mesh well with the riffs. Bad Brains' H.R. and Daryl Jenifer contribute to The Hour of Reprisal, which evidently will include vocal hooks from Max Cavalera and Howard Jones of Killswitch Engage.

The metal doesn't stop there. Ill Bill dropped a verse on Jedi Mind Tricks' "Heavy Metal Kings," in which "heavy metal" refers to guns, not music. But JMT'S Vinnie Paz says, "We're basically trying to convey the energy of old-school metal, real rugged shit - but in hip hop." The single's cover is totally metal, as is the title of its album - Servants in Heaven, Kings in Hell. The album even takes song titles directly from Slayer, Venom, Amorphis, Sinergy, and Trivium.


Ill Bill's verse features the lines, "I'm a Slayer album personified," and "Blast the black metal at you like Danny Lilker." The latter is technically true, as Lilker has done time in black metal bands Hemlock and Overlord Exterminator. BM is hardly Lilker's calling card, though, so maybe Ill Bill's metal knowledge runs deep?

In the song's video, Paz wears shirts of Iron Maiden and Terror (he seems to be rocking Nike's Iron Maiden trainers in the making-of video below, ). A limited edition of the album even had a remix of the song with Terror on guitars. R.A. the Rugged Man makes a cameo in the video; he's oddly reminiscent of SFU's Chris Barnes. The making-of video below is quite enjoyable, so check it out.

V/A - Contaminated 5.0

At Stylus this week, I have a feature (URL updated) on artists who do metal album artwork. Each day will publish an interview and artwork for a different artist - Orion Landau, Larry Carroll, Stephen Kasner, Dan Seagrave, and John Dyer Baizley. This blog will host supplementary materials and interview outtakes for these artists.

Neurosis - The Tide

Arguably, no label has an in-house graphic designer on par with Relapse's Orion Landau. He mentioned that John Heartfield was his primary influence, which prompted me to look him up. Turns out that Heartfield was a German named Helmut Herzfeld who made powerful anti-Hitler collages. Landau lifted the face from Heartfield's Italy in Chains for the cover of the Contaminated 5.0 compilation, as well as artwork for Relapse's Contamination Festival.

Italy in Chains

The CD itself doesn't need review, as each Contaminated is basically a Relapse greatest hits at the time. From the comp, I've posted "The Tide" by Neurosis (one of Landau's favorite bands) to, uh, tide you over while you read the feature. The interview outtakes below are from a discussion of when Landau first started working for Relapse.

What year are we talking about?

Around 2001.

I actually lived in San Francisco for some time around then.

Oh, cool! Where'd you live?

I was living in the Lower Haight, right next to the projects.

Yeah (laughs). I lived down there for a little while, too.

The prices went up probably because of the tech boom.

Yeah, that dot com explosion happened. What happened was, San Francisco became the Internet news hub of the world. We had a shop for $1500 that we were sharing with a couple other people off of Market. We lost our lease, and our [rent] went from $1500 to $22,000. I was, like, "I'm done, I need a break" (laughs). I'm not a business person; I like doing art. It was really appealing to go somewhere where people who were good at business would do business, and I could just focus on the creative end of things.

Is there some resource where I can see everything you've done?

Oh, god, I'm so unorganized (laughs). You know what? I have no idea how you would do that, sorry.

Are there any creations of yours you particularly enjoy?

I have such a hard time looking at my work. Sometimes I'll come back to something a year later and go, "Oh, wow, that was all right." But I always feel like moving on to the next thing. Recently, I was pretty happy with the Cephalic Carnage and Coldworker layouts, because I felt like I was pushing myself as hard as I could go for unusual packaging.

It must be hard to avoid your work, since it's in stores and on people's shirts.

Oh, yeah (laughs). It is a nice reward. But I don't do any of this for that. Why I do this is I really enjoy working with bands and other creative people. I'm just excited to get to work every day.

Paul Romano offers prints of some of his album artwork for sale. Do you do anything similar?

No. I've been approached by a couple people. I have considered it, and I may do that in the future. I love Paul's stuff, he's a really great artist.

When I am rich, I will buy Dave Lombardo

Bar menu, Berlin, DE

One day here in Berlin, I stumbled across a bar called "wenn ick reich bin, ick koof mir Dave Lombardo." The waitress said that it was local dialect for "when I am rich, I will buy Dave Lombardo."

Now, that hardly makes sense. And other than its name and logo, the bar was pretty much the same as any other. Still, the fact a bar is named after Dave Lombardo is one reason why I heart Berlin.