Steve Austin strikes me as a singularly-minded sort of fellow, for better and for worse. Just read this Metalsucks.net interview; Mr. Austin might seem crazy, but no one could argue he is not dedicated to his work; Today is the Day is the story of that dedication. The band has seen a number of folk shuffle in and out of the lineup over the past 16 years, but for my dollar they’re one of the most consistently interesting “heavy” acts ever.

The question of what makes this body of work “experimental metal” – as was raised in the comments section of this post – rather than one of the other twenty-five available genres is a fair one. As a dilettante, I can offer a possible solution to this everlovin’ question of genre without too much baggage:

Today is the Day is weird. (“Atypical”, in other words.)

A perfectly useless cop-out, but apt enough, with songs that bounce between several styles in the span of a few minutes. That’s without getting into the odd twists and turns between full-length releases. Their first full-length, Supernova, is a smear of screaming and squealing – both voice and guitar – and has more than a few noise rock touches. As with most Today is the Day vocal performances, Austin’s strained and layered performance is a phasey haze of anger. He’s pissed. Even when he’s describing something perfectly nice, like love, it’s angry. Much like Michael Gira never ceases to sound like he’s laughing at his own misery, Austin is covered with a halo of rage.

His voice is not a traditional “menacing” metal growl or shriek; at first listen it mostly sounds ridiculous. I’ve described it as “a cartoon character having a panic attack”, which is apt enough for government work. It certainly takes a few listens to get what he seems to be trying to get across to the listener, regardless of whether it works for you. Lyrically, Austin tends to be somewhat fragmented and simple; variations on “you suck, i hate my life too, but you suck worse and here’s something about guns”.

But lyrics devoid of their performed context are always dumb, as I am fond of claiming, regardless of how “smart” a band is rumored to be. What’s important is the execution; the form is the function.

Supernova has a lot of “experimental” touches; long songs twisting around a simple riff or drone or little ditties of bleeping electronics and fuzzy bass sandwiched between more obviously metal tracks like album opener “Black Dahlia” and “Silver Tongue”. It’s fantastic and sprawling, if not where I’d start evangelizing.

Willpower is somewhat close to being a straightforward rock album, sorta. Just to make my handy generalizations about his vocals into a lie, he actually sings in several points. It’s still a layered smear and heavily processed, but it’s definitely singing, punctuated by growling and shrieking and the like.

This dynamic vocal performance sit on top of a psychedelic rock/metal hybrid featuring some great bass playing – particularly on “Golden Calf” (ignore the weird naked lady picture on this youtube clip) – or the radio-friendly-ish love song/stalker anthem “Simple Touch”.

The music is dotted with old movie samples acting as thematic lead-ins, a motif that is repeated across most of their releases to come; the memorable rant that beings “Spotting a Unicorn”off of In the Eyes of God is one of the more effective uses. It’s a pause before the next wave of BRRRR TAT TAT comes in.

This self-titled release from 1996 was the last before making the jump to Relapse – their subsequent breakup is chronicled in the song “Broken Promises and Dead Dreams” on Axis of Eden and is about as evenhanded as the title suggests – and is a push away from the psych-mindedness of Willpower, despite the heavy use of keyboards. “Bugs Death March” really does it for me, though – it may be accessible at this last.fm link – and packages everything I like about Today is the Day into five and a half minutes of pure quality. Sprawling, aggressive, weird and enjoyable; encompassing everything from claustrophobic drone and doom touches to a hint of epic metal, mountains-in-the-background style.

And the whole album is like that. It’s sweaty and paranoid, though not as depressive as Sadness Will Prevail. For beginners who like their music chronologically ordered, I’d start here. It’s punchy and cuts across a bunch of styles, if not moods, generally staying in the land of “sweaty and paranoid”.

Today is the Day is also an outstanding-sounding recording, despite the tenor of the content, though this is something that is largely true of their entire catalog. If you’re going to be unusual, attention to detail is important.

One of my favorite concert memories is seeing Today is the Day for the first time at the old Knitting Factory; Austin said “watch this” to his bandmates and then played the first few notes from “Temple of the Morning Star”. The crowd went nuts. I went nuts. It was a great show, with Derek Roddy on drums. (You can catch up on the gossip behind that parting in the Metalsucks interview linked in the first paragraph.)

Speaking of awesome live performances, the first time I heard “The Man Who Loves to Hurt Himself” (at Club Europa in Greenpoint, the Brooklyn indie metal venue of choice) I peed myself a little bit, because that opening sample – “Right now I want the attention of every God-fearing American citizen” – is both cliched and awesome, like the cover art.

This whole album is defined by being catchy; there are those who would say “but a sludgy post-metal thunder and wheeze filled with screaming, chuggy screeches masquerading as hooks is, by definition, not catchy.” And they would be wrong (as they always are), as can be seen from “Kill Yourself” and “Mankind” and “every other song on this album”.

It also has “Pinnacle”, which is a song about violating someone’s marriage from the back door. It is uncomfortable. (The song; the act requires only a passing familiarity with the work of Tristan Taormino and good communication.)

At this point Today is the Day is becoming what the Garden State guidos used to call “kill your mother music” (pronounced “kill ya mudda moosik” because they weren’t so hot with-a the Englaysh). It’s “brutal” in terms of being emotionally stark and evocative of pain and rage, though musically there are a lot of their usual change-ups and general harshness. It captures the sense of contempt that was intended by the ginos of my youth in describing “Angel of Death” or an early Metallica song, but “for reals”. You can really feel this in a live setting – and even if you hate the band, Austin’s live performances are worth watching. He has absolutely destroyed his own voice through years of screaming, an impressive marker of both his personal dedication and a living representation of metaphor for the overall theme of Today is the Day as a signpost for self-destructive, inwardly-focused and all-consuming obsession.

I’ve already reviewed the outstanding In the Eyes of God here, but this is just neat:

Good job!

We’re halfway up the mountain, so now it’s double album time. The fuzzy, wounded harshness of In the Eyes of God is further explored here – for two and a half hours. I like it, but it’s definitely rough on the old ears.

“The Descent” had an adequate video made for it but I can’t help but feel that Relapse (rumors about their business practices aside) wasn’t the proper culture for this kind of music. I wish I knew dick about the practical side of video production (rather than the mostly hateful side of post-production) because they deserve better than “stock weird video of angry band #4″.

But the real standout on this album is “Invincible”, where Austin’s strangled screaming chugs along to a memorable set of hooks before slowing down into a piano-driven moan-and-drone, combing together in a finale that combines both styles and feels far shorter than its seven minute runtime. Admittedly it is followed by “Aurora”, which is a delightful attempt at gentleness, and the album closer “Sadness Will Prevail”, which features Austin’s most complete vocal performance, though it does end with one of those silly “four minutes of silence” pauses followed by a dose of layered screaming. In the MP3 era, the whole “hidden track” thing is defeated by immediacy and easy searching.

The second disc tends to meander, which hurts some of these compositions. A few tracks seem like filler, but it also has some excellent instrumental compositions like “Your Life is Over”, a plonky piano-driven piece that falls into an uneasy background hum. The second disc is bookended with some straightforward songs like “Breadwinner” and “Flowers Made of Flesh”, but otherwise makes a good case for the “experimental” tag, being explorations of ambient and electronic landscapes, or the 23 minute grind-and-electronics workout “Never Answer the Phone”.

Kiss the Pig is only about 30 minutes long, all told, and has a somewhat smushed sound to it, whether by design or because the mastering engineer messed something up. It’s not terrible (unlike the job on Axis of Eden, which did damage the overall sound of the album.) Which is a shame, because it features a number of barnburners like the opener and…well, most of the rest of the album. It’s pretty harsh, all told, though one does get the impression that the strain on his voice has required a lot more vocal processing as the years have gone by.

Stripped down and well on the short side, the experimental (that is to say “atypical”) moments of Today is the Day were shortchanged somewhat. This quality also makes Kiss the Pig a good starter collection. It’s not too “atypical”, but it’s not stereotypically “metal” either.

Perhaps that’s the crux of the question of what makes something “experimental metal”, though it turns a murky and largely useless label into an incredibly low barrier to entry; is “experimental metal” merely “hipster metal” that isn’t very popular?

Two videos were produced from this record. Both are what you’d expect, but you have the good:

And the not so good:

It’s important to remember what a record company thinks of its fanbase sometimes. Or perhaps the distinction between patronizing and service is lost on me.

Last up are my thoughts on Axis of Eden. Short version: I like it, the recording quality/style kinda sucks, but I still can’t wait to see what’s next. “Broken Promises and Dead Dreams” is one of the more savage pieces in a body of work that is dominated by hyperbolic violence.

As a closing note, the only live record I have the Live Til You Die LP, which is ridiculously uneven in terms of quality. It has a great live version of “Pinnacle”, for example, but is largely comprised of mediocre audience recordings and a surprisingly not-terrible cover of “Wicked Game”.

I have a great deal of respect for this band, and count two of their live performances among some of the best music I’ve ever watched. Steve Austin’s idiosyncratic artistry is wrapped in ambient self-hatred, most of which I hope is catharsis and not a cry for help, and has led me back into an interest in metal. Most of what I’ve found has never come close to Today is the Day, so he’s both lifted my heart and ruined my taste, and for that I thank him.

Relapse is having some big sale on most of their backcatalog – which includes some of the above records – but their website is being stupid at the moment and as the hearsay goes, they’re not a particularly great company to support.

supernovarecords.net

Found this Simon Reynolds piece from way back when very interesting. (Despite being particularly unfamiliar with Sunn)

Followed that to this interesting essay (which I find apt, since most dubstep strikes me as dreadfully dull but I like what I’ve heard of Burial).

Yes, the conversation is a few years old, but the popularity of a few metal bands with the indie music nerd mainstream (and the general angst that produces in “metalheads”) is an ongoing phenomenon.

As an aside, describing metal lyrics as “intelligent” or, as a lesser prize, “more intelligent than pop music” is laughable and really, really beyond the point. You’re talking about a genre that encompasses both Municipal Waste and all those guys in clownpaint who got raped by the Swedish welfare state.

Intelligence is an ancillary issue at best.

Truly the greatest strength and weakness of American culture is it’s incredibly modular ability to de-fang brutal trends by transmuting them into less harmful forms.

Go hit their myspace and listen to the 7″ cut of the opener, “Surf Solar”. The whole album is like that, but longer and better.

Adding Andy Weatherall to produce was a good choice; this recording is a lot cleaner, at least in that there’s a lot more room for dirt. Plus it’s, like, mad techno-y and shit. Techno-esque. Technatic!

Fuck Buttons maintain their straight ahead and never look back approach to songwriting, in terms of both progression and overall length, but outside of a few questionable moments at the end of album closer “Flight of the Feathered Serpent”* where things get a bit too much live jam’d, there’s not a wasted moment here. Yeah, it’s all prom songs from the end of the world. And yeah, it’s pretty repetitive. But they learned a lot from Weatherall and Mogwai and even a bit from Coil, I think. The “noise” aspect is severely diminished, though it was never that strong to begin with. Having a lot of distortion isn’t necessarily noise, just noisy. It’s the difference between liking a Reverend Horton Heat album and dressing like a roadie for one of those alt-country types who likes heroin and puts punk rock stickers on his acoustic.

I challenge anyone not to like this stuff, even if they can only like it when no one else is looking because of “fucking hipsters something something something something” or whatever their hangups happen to be. I’ll be chillin’ in a rented tux at the end of time and they’re welcomed to come with.

* Yes, everyone really must get all pre-Columbian Mesoamerican exploitation flick for the next few years. Fucked if I know why.

The original article was indeed filled with some inadequacies concerning genre specificity, as more than a few commentors pointed out. It was interesting, if a bit overwrought, but I think most folks can sympathize with the general concept of catharsis via sound.

The follow up was basically shameless fan service, but some interesting patterns emerged.

You not only have genre snobs, some of whom were performing fact-checking (Slayer being thrash, not death metal) and some of whom were being jerks for the sake of being jerks. On top of that, you had the anti-snob folks who were also being helpful or jerky. That’s fascinating. Genre is such a powerful social divider that you have preemptive snobbery!

Also, please note that when cropped correctly, Tom Araya looks a bit like Abraham Lincoln.

Anyway, a more interesting point is that “death metal” means “loud, obnoxious, fast rock music” in popular culture, much like how kleenex is a tissue and a jeep is a four wheel drive vehicle. For some, this is a source of consternation. But how important is the difference between metal genres? It’s not like anyone misunderstood the original author’s point – not even those folks who showed up to go “Oh, I just don’t *get* metal and it’s so talentless and terrible anyway.”

Those folk understand catharsis better than anyone, what with the whole routine of dressing up in their mom’s old clothing and masturbating to their reflection while their favorite The Magnetic Fields songs play in the background.

Some of the comments also highlight my glib-but-true observation that metal passed from the domain of burnouts to the domain of nerds, as you can see in the “I’m not a stereotypical metalhead…” posts. You’re someone who listens to music but doesn’t dress like Alice Cooper? And you like reading? Wow!

Of course, some of this is a reaction formation to the whole “oh it’s so terrible and gruesome” thing, which is dang silly. But when that reaction is replaced with “but they sing about, like, philosophy and stuff!” – yeeeeeeesh. Both statements are about taste tribes – be it a music’s stupidity or “difficulty” or even its political acceptability – and not music. It ascribes far too much importance to the wide canopy of “metal”, either pro or con, and misses the larger point, which is that people are trying to describe their own relationship to music and episodes of their lives which encapsulated this reaction for good or ill.

In this light it’s completely ok that “death metal” is a synonym for “loud, obnoxious, fast rock music”.

When I was a young lad I’d listen to Seasons in the Abyss before every football game. The live double album Decade of Aggression was the first cd I ever bought. I probably called it death metal when trying to get my friends to listen to the still-amazing version of “Angel of Death”. And yet I never really got into metal proper, not really moving beyond Slayer and Metallica up to …And Justice For All.

A lot of this failure to follow through was having absolutely no roadmap or peers to help guide me or expose me to new sounds. The only other folks at school who listened to Slayer were burnouts who hated me due to a personality conflict with one of their clique leaders. The radio didn’t play other metal much beyond some Megadeth, whom I detested, and a bit of Danzig, which never really struck my fancy.* Other than that, ears were innundated with the NWOBHM stuff that was fast moving into “classic rock” territory. I did like later Led Zepplin and Black Sabbath’s first album, but I really knew nothing of what was going on.

My friends listened to soft rock – think Eagles or ABBA, no shit – or the cream of the new old school hip hop. Which is great because I know all the words to “2000″ by Grand Puba.

I really wish someone had given me a few of Death’s early albums, though.

Hell, that song still holds up now. It’s good! The vocals aren’t too silly, something which still murders my ability to enjoy bands whose instrumentation I otherwise approve of, and the drumming is sick as hell.

A few tips would have been helpful. A lot of the blame lies with my young, snotty atheism, and regarding the whole “evil satanic blah blah” aesthetic as being too religious and too silly – i.e. beneath me. Which it mostly was, but still. I missed out on some good things in there. More ha-ha funny is that I then mostly jumped into industrial rock for a while, which is just as silly in its own way.

So what does my story have to do with genre? Not a hell of a lot, beyond some cautionary words about dressing like King Diamond. (The cautionary word is “Don’t dress like King Diamond.”)

Thank god for the Internet, though.

* Glenn Danzig came to one of my football practices, having grown up nearby and being friends with one of the assistant coaches. He was nice, very built, and surprisingly short.

** Genrefication can also lead to discontent: http://www.anus.com/metal/about/metal/metalocalypse/

But I agree about “Show No Mercy”.

The rich multi-ethnic polyglot of northeastern Queens extends even to the “bass car” phenomenon. Not only are there genuine 80s hair metal fans still running about – bless their souls – but it seems as though every ethnic grouping here has their own preferred soundtrack to match their fast-riding, look-ma-no-eyes motoring about town.

Traditional Italian-esque “Goodfellas/Scarface” composite guidos have their KTU techno and freestyle, a zombified musical form that refuses all attempts to kill it with decent electro; various “Queens Shmoes” – white, black, Asian, etc – really do seem to love Queensryche with a genuine heart that will never be hard-of-hearing, no matter how many pedantic guitar solos it endures; an even wider ethnic blend enjoys the loud sounds of whatever passes for hip-hop as it coasts through its hair-metal phase right into the arms of neo-disco; arabica and bhangra beats abound; there’s even plenty of that hilarious Mexican style of music with all the accordions in it. Aside from driving like complete assholes, they share the heavier-than-heavy need to bleed from the ears. They do this to let everyone know they’re coming and going, as well as allow those equipped with sonar know their approximate density, speed and distance.

The one exception to this rule are the Hasidim, who prefer to do their peerless homicidal driving in a comparative near-silence – all the better to haunt my dreams as an army of Civil War reenactors dressed like obese Abraham Lincolns and guiding half-wrecked minivans towards my terrified family.

I now share the road with them all, having been a legally licensed driver in the state of New York for almost a week. But I have studied guidos and bass cars for years.

Studied and feared them. Not because they “have a crew”, or that their uncle owns a body shop in Bayonne, but simply because they exist. If knowledge dispels mysteries, it doesn’t always make fear more manageable, particularly when we’re giving weapons to people in the form of automobiles. I would rather they all have guns, for at least guns require some skill in aiming. Any moron can kill with a car, as can be seen every single day in the United States.

So how can so many people from so many walks of life share this one distinct trait? I believe this phenomenon has its roots in the New York City housing market.

Some of the blame can be pointed at the general popularity of hip-hop and the brickwall mastering we hear on nearly everything today; some can be given to the last twenty years of easy credit, which fuels not only car sales but drives down the price of both user modification kits and custom alterations.

But not all, not all! The guidos of my youth (a surprisingly diverse population[1]) in northern New Jersey would blast their freestyle from custom-painted Irocs, letting all know that a) they had money and b) a working radio or cassette player. That they lived at home and dated 15-year-olds was, of course, merely part of their particular life script, even as they passed into the heady days of their mid-to-late-twenties. What we all knew is tha they liked to move it, move it. One should no more begrudge them that lifestyle than one could begrudge a glacier for crushing the landscape it travels upon.

They are, after all, merely animals. To pretend otherwise is to misunderstand the nature of the guido [2] and its role in American culture.

But a major role has been played by the NYC real estate market. Consistently high prices encourage a lack of migration/leaving the basement; after all, renting is “just throwing money away” and familial connections can be leveraged within high-rent areas to ensure housing for their children and keep outsiders at bay. This also ensures that folks without too much going on in the career department have plenty of disposable income for the clothes and the clubs, as well as turning relatively small cars into relatively big deals.

There are a lot of folks just on my block alone who rock the bass car and fight with their parents despite being well into their mid-20s and (apparently) even their 30s. I particularly admire the overall shittiness of the gentleman with the shocker decal on the back of his car, something which never ceases to bring a smile to my face.

He is a poem written in hair gel and ethnic slurs; a walking, talking, overly-loud private conversation held in public. I know more about his relationship with his parents and underage girlfriend than I know about most of my family members, and I am both richer and poorer for his inability to even spell “decorum”.

That the kids – a term I only use evocatively, since a few of them are older than I – can balance their decaying relationships with their aging families with absurd fights and constant invocation of the regrettably-euphemistic “N-Word” against both themselves and their equally-fucked pasty friends is indeed a matter of wonder.

That I mostly wonder why they haven’t died of shame is a reflection of my own limitations and understanding of what it means to be an adult, and I am financially and spiritually poorer for it.

But back to real estate: their parents were either born here or moved to this particular corner 30 or 40 years ago and bought houses. They dugg in with the dwindling population of older Irish and Italian families and against the burgeoning Greek flood. Various Eastern European, Asian, Spanish-speaking and Arab populations followed.

I would not be too surprised to find some Eskimo guidos rolling around by Astoria Park in a bass sled, perhaps dragged by bass dogs.

What the children of these diverse immigrants all share is this need for volume. Hell, some of them can’t afford either cars or travel, so they turn their parents’ homes into bass houses. On the subway I may call them “earbud commandos“, but they’re merely manifesting their bass selves.

And housing prices rose, as they tend to in this uniquely-constrained real estate market, further penning in this new generation of the “working class”, ironically possessed of neither work nor class.

I feel them drive by every day, and each day I am reminded of a scene in the book The Godfather (adapted in the second film, if I remember correctly) where Michael Corleone asks his father why he would employ the brutish animal Luca Brasi. His father says, in short, there are people who walk through life begging someone else to kill them, and that men like Luca Brasi exist to fulfill this request.

And then I think about how, if some kind of strange postmodern fascist movement against guidos emerged, I would likely not speak out if they came for the guidos of all races and creeds. I would not speak out at all, I think. In fact, I would probably work the camps for free. Shooting attempted escapees, prying the gold chains from around their necks, pushing them into concrete bunkers with promises of Axe body spray delousing treatments – I can see myself doing all these things with a smile upon my face and a cheery song in my heart.

A song sung at an appropriate volume for a human being working to keep civilization from falling to ruin.

Perhaps we will find some use for the guidos, and not just as lampshades or furniture or cattle feed. Perhaps we can use them in future wars, to fight the guidos of all nations. Blowout hair shall kill blowout hair. It might help arrest this cultural drift, nudging us away from a mockery written in bad tribal tattoos and sexually transmitted diseases. Bread and bass circuses, in little bass ghettos, with just enough contaminants in the water to prevent fecundity but without causing too much cancer before their useful working days are over.

I too have a dream.

A bass dream.

I hate them for this bit of self-realization, a deep look into the eyes of my inner bass Nazi, and yet I feel as though I should thank the guidos that have decorated so much of the background of my life for setting me free. Free from the assumptions of the American Dream, and free from the illusions of civil society and its centrist values. Free from the obnoxiously obvious lies of voting and churches. Free from the idea that walking and talking makes something human, and not a doppelganger or a burlesque that breathes and shits and holds conversations with passers-by while parked at a 45 degree angle against a street corner, impeding all comers.

Guidos are the living proof that democracy is a farce, and that any attempt to set people free from the confines of culture and the circumstances of birth results in an obnoxious cage and a debased honor culture so hideously twisted it makes hip-hop’s calculated feuding look like genuine displays of grievance.

The future lies in a body politic forged into a single hand, turning down a human radio, forever.

[1] There were three Iranian guidos, all brothers, who insisted on being called Persian. These were the days of “ayatollah asshola” shirts, after all. They were also exceptionally vapid, even by guido standards.

[2] No longer an ethnic slur against Italian-American working class yutes, it is a category all its own, like “redneck” or “hipster”. Like those terms it is both pejorative and descriptive, amorphous enough to encompass any speaker’s sense of loathing.

As a postscript, I believe I can make the argument that the show Metalocalypse is, in some ways, a revenge fantasy for whitebread hipster types, both against the metalheads of their youths (back when they were burnouts instead of mathletes) and against the bass car phenomenon. A band so loud and obnoxious that it murders large swaths of their fans, and so popular as to be able to kill at will and escape any national or legal authority. They are both the epitome of the bass car – with billions of dollars at their disposal, of course – and its antithesis. There’s no guido-appropriate posing or preening to be found in blastbeats, being far too self-absorbed in their pursuit of “brutality” to thread an eyebrow or wax a chest.

When it comes down to it, while I can respect the huge influence that Cabaret Voltaire had on the growth of New Wave-y type sounds, the one CV album I still really enjoy listening to is The Conversation. Yup, their ambient techno double album, alternately ignored or hated by fans of their earlier work. While I do like some of their earlier stuff (see below), it’s usually overly long and poorly edited. As a general rule, the vocals are great for the first four minutes and increasingly less-great for the four minutes that follow.

What I like about The Conversation is that it is richly thematic, and the form actually lends itself to being too long and far too stingy with the edit button.

Anyway, things change, stay the same, etc etc and so forth:

Blacworld is one of the many names under which Richard H. Kirk records. The unifying theme of this recording, beyond the aesthetic reliance upon vague hints of panopticonic paranoia, is a muddy darkness. But structurally it shares that same tendency to avoid paring down that seems to run through everything the man touches.

If you travel back twenty years earlier:

It remains a thing, though Kirk’s more recent work isn’t quite as repetitive. I like “Crackdown”, mind you, but it’s really long.

I like this particular work because it is repetitive and minimal enough in both construction and tone to serve as a perfect landscape soundtrack. Numb trips by train on a dreary Sunday morning are colored with an epic weirdness. While it manages to be both memorable and forgettable – you’d not hum any of these while walking along, but you’d instantly remember any song after a few seconds of play – Subduing Demons in Southern Yorkshire is an interesting signpost in an impressively long career.

Today we’ll speak with someone who has seen the future that is our children. The future sez “Start buying krugerrands now!”

So…the kids these days. What are they listening to? How bad is it?

I think teenagers’ taste in music are as all over the place as they always have been, only they’re typically listening to the derivatives of derivatives. Very few of the students would be able to tell me who M.I.A. is, but they all have about 13 different songs that sampled her second album liberally.  Then you have some students who genuinely confuse me because they like groups that are just so…odd. Bone Thugs-N-Harmony? Really? Or like if a student tells me they LOVE Nine Inch Nails; I really have a tough time understanding how anyone under the age of say, 21, might even know who Trent Reznor is.

Then you have the “Guitar Hero Generation,” as in, kids who are into really shitty rock music that should have been forgotten over a decade ago, but has resurfaced via plastic toys. It has to be from these “music” “games” or from their live-at-home uncles who blast hair metal at their basement-white-power meetings.

Or maybe both. So, in short, it’s pretty bad.

I think you’re underestimating the majesty of Bone Thugs:

As someone with good taste do you find yourself offering suggestions to the wee ones in the hopes of being the cool older brother tastemaker figure you never had?

Absolutely, yes. It never really works out, though. I think my taste in music has become so obtuse at this point that I have trouble understanding what might be “too much” for most people. I think it’s like spicy food for me. At a party, my friend asked me if the Tostitos salsa was hot. I told her it tasted like tomato sauce, but then she tried it and proceeded to cry while dousing her mouth with beer.

So when a student tells me they’re into “metal” or “hardcore” and I proceed to put on something like Lightning Bolt, it has yet to really work out.  The recommendation makes sense to me, but I tend to forget that, even though Lightning Bolt is loud and aggressive, the lyrics are fairly inaudible and generally never talk about how parents are mean.

I’ve always been tempted to try to get some of my more open-minded students into Coil, but I’m currently untenured and afraid of lawsuits.

Lesson plans – what’s a good soundtrack? Or is the sound of industrial education the dead silence of John Dewey’s crypt?

I can’t tell if you’re speaking literally or figuratively, but I’ll just answer this in whatever way feels right.

I’m the type of person who has trouble doing any kind of writing while music is playing.  Music with lyrics, at least.  So whether I’m revising version #396 of that short story I’ve been writing or I’m attempting to create the most intricately-woven and spectacular lesson of all time (that encompasses every NY State Educational Standard), it has to be something driving, repetitive and not too much of a distraction.

Rapoon works pretty damn well in this regard or sometimes Godspeed You! Black Emperor.  “Motherfucker = Redeemer” tends to be my “get shit done right now” song.

On that note, is there a modern industrial music, i.e. something meant to contain, encompass and reflect the emptiness – real or imagined – of our culture? (I think so and its name is hip-hop)

While industrial music was pioneered by artsy people with artsy feelings about their not-so-artsy world, hip-hop is not only a reflection of current musical aspirations, but is the thing-in-itself.

But on a less mean note, I tend to think that this whole push towards noise in the current “underground” or “indie” or…well, whatever the hell we’re calling decently popular but not extremely popular music these days, is the logical extension of industrial. I don’t really think it’s a conscious thing so much as it’s the result of a generation that has become increasingly desensitized to melody and structure.

On a scale of one to ten, how hardcore is your crush on Trent Reznor? How were the NIN shows? You went to several dozen.

I’m going to have to go with a 9.5/10 on this one.  If I’ve had multiple dreams involving someone I don’t actually know, I’m going to have to assume I’m crushing on him big time.

The NIN shows are a bit hard for me to gauge. It’s always nice to seem them play, but none of the shows felt quite as “awesome” as shows in previous years had been. I partly attribute this to getting older, partly to having seen the band so many times, partly to an increasing lack of tolerance for ugly, large, sweaty and smelly fans and partly to a rather unchanging setlist throughout the years.

NIN is a band that has occupied a very undesirable space in the music world for a long time, I think. Trent is the kind of guy, I imagine, who really is in this gig because he loves to create and experiment with music, but his band is far too popular for the shows to be an all-out mind fuck. The majority of the people want to hear “March of the Pigs” or “Head like a Hole” and all the other popular songs. They aren’t bad songs at all, but there comes a point, for me at least, when I feel like I’m not sure how amazed I can be when I’ve heard a particular song live for the fifty-millionth time.

The last show I went to had some songs that had never been played before, some remixes and some covers. This was neat, but, in general, the shows lacked a certain amount of spontaneity that I’ve come to appreciate from concerts moreso than hearing a band play “that song.”

On that note, what’s the best show you’ve seen all year so far?

A father loves all his children equally, Mike.

Ok well we know that’s not true, so…let me think.

Hmmm…it’s pretty hard, considering I’ve seen a ton of great shows this year.

But…I’m going to have to say it’s a tie between Michael Gira and HEALTH. Both shows absolutely floored me in a punch-in-the-gut kind of way, but for wildly different reasons.  They were the type of shows that help reaffirm why I continue to seek out music and see it live.

Final question: juggalos. What is your perspective on the problem of the Insane Clown Posse? Are they merely Kiss but somehow shittier?

I think the Insane Clown Posse would be much less of a problem if it had more of a sense of humor about itself.  The fact that so much of it is deathly serious (to some fans, at least) makes it hard to see the group as anything other than a giant waste of time. ICP is like Tool, but like, the 99-cent Store version.

But knowing the type of kids who generally get really into them, in some ways it appears like the most structured thing that exists in their lives.

And that’s a bit more realistic than I was hoping to get with these questions.

T. is part of my e-minarchisto posse (much love for the gry massive) but sometimes he’d say things about music that would make me cry blood. This is my attempt to eff the ineffable.

You and I are ebony and ivory (I probably tan better than you do) musically-speaking. If you’re into it I’m out of it, and vice versa. However, we both seem to like James Blackshaw. How is this possible?

Both of us liking James Blackshaw is possible because the universe is a vast and confusing place.  I mean, it’s like electrons right?  No two in the same atom can have the same quantum state, but they can have a few quantum numbers in common.  Our tastes, well, they’re both in an outer shell around n = 4, but you’re l = 3 and I’m l = 2.

The local music scene here is okay.  Less in San Antonio than in Austin.  There’s a lot of country in SA, Robert Earle Keane and the like, not my bag (I prefer music in a discernible key that isn’t about losing your truck and marrying your sister).  But there’s some local jazz that I’ve heard in coffee shop sort of settings that’s been pretty good.  I’ve also been up to Austin to see a few post-rock bands like This Will Destroy You and a local outfit called MOM.  The latter was two dudes with orchestra instruments and a loop machine, it was pretty epic.  I really love guitar + good rhythm section which is why early metal appeals to me some, but a lot of classic rock really moves me (in particular why I think The Who >>>>> The Rolling Stones), so some music that really distills that down and strips out the vocals while still managing to have a powerful emotive or experiential effect is pretty boss.

We have bass cars here.  In fact the neighbors with the five chihuahuas sometimes exhibit bass-car-like behaviors, although thankfully not very late at night.  My favorite kind of bass car is the white trying-too-hard bass car. Because I’m a college student again, I’m spending a lot of every day on campus just kind of walking around and I’ve been seeing a lot of pretty nice cars that have been absolutely ruined by their conversion into THUMPA THUMPA mobiles. The most hilarious ones are tricked out Mitsubishi Eclipses or the like with bad body kits with some douchey suburbanite in the driver’s seat.  Popped collar and perhaps visor in full view.  At this rate generation veal will be too deaf to hear us screaming at them from the home.

This kind of reminds me of Aphex Twin / Richard D. James.  It also explains what Basement Jaxx were trying way too hard to sound like. It feels sort of incomplete however, like it’s an introduction to something and it never quite gets going all the way. I want it to go from this kind of static-laden collection of sounds with the occasional harmonic to something kind of organized with a discernible time signature, so I can try to make some sense of it.  In any case, it’s better than Stereolab.

Discernible Autechre certainly exists. I do find it odd anyone has anything remotely bad to say about Stereolab, though.

This I liked almost instantly.  The introduction is very mellow without being boring.  The guitar is very rhythmic, the bass line moves you along at a steady, relaxing clip.  And the vocal is wispy and insubstantial in a Rufus Wainwright or Sufjan Stevens kind of way, but without the same kind of purity, it’s just a little raspy and still on the high end of tenor, which is hard to pull off in a good way.  Jeff Buckley-esque, maybe?  The song itself reminds me of what Greensleeves would be like if it weren’t utterly awful in every way.  The video, well, I can take or leave that.

The video is more or less what you’re stuck with in this particular genre. Cute lady walks about with no shoes on because, like, nature.

Is this Swedish?  It sounds Swedish. I like the music, it isn’t my favorite thing in the world, but it has potential.  The vocal, however, makes me want to tear out my ears. There’s the screaming bit, and that’s just so terrible like “Oh look at me, I’m yelling and crap!  I sound so EDGY AND SHIT! LOOK AT MY COSTUME I AM FROM SWEDEN!  WE HAVE ALL WINTER TO DESIGN COSTUMES AND NO HOBBIES! SWEEEEEEEEEEEDEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN!”  Take out the chick screaming about whatever she’s yelling about and this has potential.  The more musical vocal parts are okay, but still kind of meh.

Someone took Coil and Duran Duran and smushed them up into one package. I never cared for anything from Health before this album, but there’s a depth and fractured 80s weirdness here that’s lovely. And lovely like Gold is the Metal…, not the totally shit return of New Wave DEAR GOD MAKE IT STOP routine that’s current pummeling us from coast to coast.

I am somewhat prescient when it comes to musical trends, and like I’ve told many a person popular music will be dominated by a disco/hip hop fusion (the beginnings of which can be seen with the rise – and fall – of vocoding and are manifested most succinctly in Lady Gaga aka Peaches 3.0). But for the rest of the landscape, much of it will be seeing the 80s experimental current come alive again, and not just at Throbbing Gristle shows. Hell, just look at the cover!

“Death +” is straight out of Coil’s legacy of mixing the strange and the abrasive in a way that approaches beauty. I am also loving the hell out of the weepy, wispy, melted vocals best shown on the almost post-punk workout “Before Tigers”. It has an almost gender-neutral quality that is uselessly mumbly but evocative of a grey saturday morning in a part of the city you’re not familiar with. They nudge toward “epic” once or twice, mostly with “Severin” and the album closer, “In Violet”, but Health seems content to dance around the weird odds and ends of rock music made with samples and synths.

Complaint time: Get Color is phasey as all hell and the bit-crushing gets a little monotonous at times, making things rough on the ears in an annoying rather than cathartic way.