Rob Halford & Pantera - Light Comes Out of Black

Speaking of Vinnie Paul, Pantera collaborated with Judas Priest's Rob Halford on a song for the soundtrack of 1992's Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie. Now, all I know about Buffy is that she fucks up Google searches for the band Slayer (solution: type in "-buffy"). I've watched but half an episode of the TV show, which is evidently hardly related to the movie. But seeing as how the cast includes a young Hilary Swank, a pre-Punisher Tom Jane, Rutger Hauer, and Paul Reubens aka Pee-wee Herman, I just might have to rent it sometime.

Rob Halford & Pantera - Light Comes Out of Black

However, it would not be for the soundtrack. Stay far, far away. Any album with Toad the Wet Sprocket is DOA. I could give a toss about Susanna Hoffs and The Divinyls (not playing their one song). The C+C Music Factory song is bad, even for C+C Music Factory. Mary's Danish turn in a downright insulting cover of "I Fought the Law." The Cult and Matthew Sweet phone it in, though cult Canadian rappers Dream Warriors make a respectable, if completely unexpected, appearance. If you're curious what Ozzy Osbourne would sound like with Van Halen for a backing band, look no further.

The one bright spot is appropriately titled "Light Comes Out of Black." My two favorite sounds in the world are a woman's orgasm and a cat's purr. (An ex pointed out that they have the same name.) #3 is probably Rob Halford's voice. This song really isn't that special; it's just Pantera doing straightforward metal. But when Halford's voice comes in, I know everything will be all right. The guy could sing about mowing the lawn, and it would still sound epic.

In fact, he probably is singing about mowing the lawn. The lyrics seemingly string together random fortune cookies: "Light comes out of black / Stand and face the fear / Give him eye to eye / Walk the walk right here." If Halford's lyrics made sense, I wouldn't like him half as much. No other singer has a higher awesomeness of voice to awfulness of lyrics ratio. Well, Phil Anselmo comes close - and he conveniently shows up here to sing backups. The Halford + Pantera concept would turn into an actual band called Fight, but in 1992, it was merely background music for Kristy Swanson.

Nocturno Culto - The Misanthrope (DVD)

The Misanthrope (Peaceville, 2007) is very much misnamed. No teenagers in corpsepaint here - Darkthrone's Nocturno Culto is quite the social creature. He goes ice fishing with his buddies; he goes camping with REI (or in Europe, probably Jack Wolfskin) endorsee Fenriz; he hangs out with an old guy named Knut; he shoots live footage of Gallhammer and Aura Noir; he plays board games with Aura Noir. This is a paean to community, not misanthropy.

Necroposers

Don't expect a Darkthrone documentary. Devoid of commentary and narrative, this DVD is basically a home video. We see beautiful shots of the Norwegian landscape, clips of Darkthrone rehearsal with Fenriz, artsy footage of Nocturno smoking, and baffling first person shots of cross-country skiing. The latter recall the video game Doom, in which your weaponless hand waves slowly in front of you. Footage of dragging around a coffin goes unexplained. Random jump cuts and cheesy visual effects abound. A cinematic masterpiece this is not.

Yet it's still watchable; a home video by Darkthrone is more interesting than most of our sad lives. The Gallhammer footage is awesome and too brief. Fenriz busts out with some trademark one-liners. Darkthrone in their death metal days appear in killer vintage live footage. There's that classic "toxic piss" scene I could swear I've seen in some black metal documentary. It's fascinating to see a way of life so different from the typical urban rat race. Those who live outside Scandinavia will get the most out of this.

Nocturno's soundtrack is truly ambient - pensive chords, hints of riffs, electronic noodlings. For background music, it's pleasant enough, and comes on a CD along with the DVD. At the moment, black metal documentaries are in vogue; thankfully, this isn't another one. It's just a bunch of snapshots with a-day-in-the-life appeal.

The Misanthrope is available in Europe from Peaceville, and in the US from Relapse, Amazon, and The End.

Mastodon - Cut You Up with a Linoleum Knife

Speaking of food as drummers, here is an oldie but goodie. For the intro to last year's Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie, Mastodon did a song called "Cut You Up with a Linoleum Knife." It welds King Diamond falsettos to Judas Priest power metal, and is my favorite work by Mastodon since Remission. Only Brann Dailor's difficulty playing a straight beat in the chorus gives away the band's identity.

There Will Be Blood - Soundtrack

The first thing I noticed about There Will Be Blood was how metal its title font was. In this case, though, the black metal was black gold. Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood scored Paul Thomas Anderson's portrait, loosely based on Upton Sinclair's Oil!, of oilman Henry Plainview. If you see one film this year, see this one.

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There Will Be Blood

Unlike most pop musicians entrusted with soundtracks, Greenwood doesn't just cobble together songs. He's using real strings and scoring the film's details. I'm wary of non-classically trained celebrities wielding classical resources just because they have money. But Greenwood got viola lessons as a child; more importantly, he got on-the-job training as BBC's composer-in-residence, which meant having the BBC Concert Orchestra at his disposal.

The training has paid off, as There Will Be Blood has fine music. Whether it has a fine soundtrack is debatable. The combination of emotionally wrenching movie and emotionally wrenching music is often too much. I don't like being manipulated, to be told, "Feel anxious, now feel sad, etc." But Greenwood does help raise climaxes to fever pitches. Perhaps they would have been even more devastating had he stayed silent (see Jim Jarmusch; see also the Coen brothers' No Country for Old Men, which has very little music).

Modern dissonance and microtone-heavy glissandos are jarring to hear over scenes of the Wild West. Perhaps such anachronism speaks to the story's timelessness. Capitalism and religion are still snakes as bedmates. I prefer hearing the soundtrack by itself (inexplicably, it omits the movie's most thilling music, an unforgettably percussive squall). But for better or for worse, its sounds are now inextricably tied to the best attempt at The Great American Film in years.

This soundtrack is available at Amazon, physically and digitally.

Resident Evil: Extinction - Soundtrack

I recently saw Resident Evil: Extinction, which I recommend halfheartedly (i.e., one invisible orange). Basically, it's Mad Max with zombies, with the girl from The Ring as an AI hologram (if you program your talking computer to appear as a girl, you'd think you'd make her not so needlessly creepy). I watched the first Resident Evil ages ago, liked it, didn't see the second one, and paid to see this third installment mainly because the silhouette on the poster seemed hot. I know I am not the only person to do so.

Shadows Fall - Stupid Crazy
Chimaira - Paralyzed

There's a storyline - barely - with Milla Jovovich as Mad Max in a desert-fied, post-apocalyptic, zombie-filled world, and Ali Larter leading a band of human survivors. But even though the movie is really about nothing (every character is a stereotype, with almost zero character development), it's entertaining throughout, which is all one can ask for these days from Hollywood. Disappointingly, the zombies are uninteresting (though in one part they have nifty Slipknot-esque jumpsuits), not fast nor smart, but Jovovich does a good job slicing and dicing them up. My three main impressions:

1. Are these movies how Milla Jovovich pays her bills? Poor thing.
2. For a desert-fied, post-apocalyptic, zombie-filled world, Larter's hair and makeup sure are perfect.
3. Why does Jovovich's character wear garters???

"If I hear one more garter joke..."

Like the movie, the soundtrack is a pure commodity. You can practically smell the ink drying on the licensing agreements it took to put this together. There's metal (Shadows Fall, Chimaira), hardcore/metalcore (Poison the Well, Throwdown), and electronic remixes of emo/screamo (The Bled, Flyleaf, Aiden), which aren't that bad, as they're merely new shells on something soulless to begin with. None of this music makes much of a dent on the movie, though Charlie Clouser's catchy main theme does its job throughout.

All this might sound like harsh criticism, but it's really not. I'm happy I saw the movie, if only for Ali Larter's hair. And the soundtrack is a similarly guilty corporate pleasure. With so much variety among the songs (which are all exclusive to this soundtrack), it's basically a mixtape. There's a perverse pleasure in seeing what Shadows Fall does with a song title like "Stupid Crazy." The track is decent, though its Shad-by-numbers and literally just peters out at the end. The drum work at the end is nuts; it's like if Jason Bittner said, "Screw yall's lame riffs, I'll just let it rip." And that descending chromatic riff is so like Megadeth's "Symphony of Destruction." B-movie with an A-movie budget - and the soundtrack follows suit.

Again, the black people die first

I don't normally get into bed with industry types, but free stuff is free stuff - the powers that be at Resident Evil: Extinction are giving away a free prize pack that includes (1) a copy of the soundtrack, (2) a T-shirt, (3) a military-style cap, and (4) a high-gloss poster. For a chance to win, email invisibleoranges at gmail dot com by midnight EST, Friday, October 5, with the subject header "Ali Larter is hot", and the following info: (1) your name, (2) address, and (3) T-shirt size. Giveaway only open to US residents. I will randomly pick a winner, and the powers that be will mail him/her the schwag. I will not share your personal info with anyone else. Simple as that.