Frownland

Now that you're all metalled out, how about some jazz? Polar opposites.

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Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.

The Batlord

Not yet. I wasn't aware that it's been getting good reviews. I just remember listening to that awful single that Ki posted a while back and losing interest. I'm also lazy about listening to new albums in general, regardless of whose it is.

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The Batlord

One more suggestion that I would give you is to do an extended exploration of grindcore. You've partially cracked death metal and black metal, and the only extreme metal genre left to you is grindcore. I hated it at first, then liked the odd song/album, until there was a breakthrough fairly recently that I never thought would come, and now I love it. I think the only way to really figure out if you can take it is to immerse yourself in grind until it ceases to become just an endurance test.

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Trollheart

You should. Most of it is nowhere near as bad as "Speed of light" (though there are many flaws, as I pointed out in my extensive review) and I've even grown to sort of like that now. But you certainly need to hear "Empire of the clouds", if only so that you're not the only metalhead left who hasn't.
Believe it or not, I had considered three areas for "What's that all about?" next year, and they were metalcore, grindcore and avant-garde....

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

The Batlord

Come to me, my son, to learn about metalcore, lest you go down the forsaken path of Killswitch Engage and Bullet for My Valentine.

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Trollheart

So, metal or grind? I'm only gonna do one.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

The Batlord

There's metalcore you might actually like. Grindcore by its very nature will likely be repellent to you forever.

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The Batlord

And I meant to mention earlier, but can you at least admit that Ripper-era Priest was far superior to Blaze-era Maiden? Jugulator might not have been Priest as we knew them, but it was still a badass album.

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Trollheart

Oh that goes without saying. I would listen to Jugulator again, but not X-Factor. Yuck.

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Trollheart

Before the year is out, time to fufil my promise/boast/commitment from last year and complete the third of my discographies. Having already written full discographies for Tom Waits and Marillion, this one holds a lot of personal significance for me, as this was the first band whose records I ever collected, and the one that got me into progressive rock. A byword for some for boring, lazy and predictable music --- and that is hard to deny after the mid-eighties, in fairness --- but for others an iconic band who pushed the boundaries almost before those boundaries were there, who developed a reputation for intricate, complicated and interesting music and for elaborate lightshows, and who would be among the first to use multimedia, and one who in the seventies were in the forefront of the new movement sweeping music as progressive rock was born.

Though I constantly get sneered at for liking them, the band recorded what I believe to be some of the most important albums in the subgenre, and many of their contemporaries today owe a debt of gratitude to them. Sure, they sort of imploded under the weight of their own self-importance and a partial betrayal of their principles near the end, but they remain my favourite band ever. So without further ado, let me introduce you to the music of


And where else would we begin but, In The Beginning...

From Genesis to Revelation --- 1969 (Decca)
As I've said many times before, I do not consider the debut Genesis album anywhere near progressive rock. Whether it was the youth of the guys (all nineteen bar Anthony Phillips, who was eighteen; is there any significance to the fact that every member of the original Genesis lineup, bar Phillips, was born in 1950?) which led to a lack of confidence in themselves, or the rigid control exerted by Jonathan King, or even indeed the fact that they were yet maturing as songwriters, From Genesis to Revelation has more in common with a folk record than a prog rock one. It's not even that good: I can pick out a handful of decent tracks, but most of the rest is pretty dire, and there was at that point no real indication of the heights these guys (well, three of them anyway, with a fourth to join later) would scale and the mark they would make on music in general, and progressive rock music in particular.

Genesis believe they owe a great debt to King, who did after all discover them and, though losing interest as they refused to conform to his idea of what the band should be (ie one that would make him money with hit singles) and leaving them to hook up with Tony Stratton-Smith at Charisma Records, it has to be admitted and accepted that without King's patronage and yes, money, Genesis as we know them today would probably never have existed. Stop cheering there, Frownland! Mike Rutherford has pointed out on record that back in those days, just getting into the studio to record was a huge deal, and actually landing a recording contract, especially at their young age and with no background or body of work to look to, was little short of a miracle. However, Genesis would only begin to come into their own the next year, when they released what I, and most fans, see as their first real album.

But back to this one. It opens on a very hippy guitar and keyboard line, with Peter Gabriel's soft, cultured and very English voice exorting people to ”Come and join us now.” Choral vocals (which I have to assume, back then when synthesisers were really only in their infancy, are made by the boys themselves singing) clash somewhat with an almost Latin kind of rhythm before Tony Banks's piano takes the tune, and though this is 1969 theres' still a lot of the hippy flower power ideal in the lyrics here, lots of getting back to nature, living with the animals, love and peace, man and so on. Finger-clicking now as the song heads into its conclusion, fading out on a nice bassy piano from Banks, but it's hardly the first salvo in a barrage that looked destined to take on the world!

The Wiki entry mentions that King wanted this album to be a concept one based on the Bible, but other than a title or two here, I really don't see it, and never have. To me, it's just a loose collection of songs with the odd theme running through them, such as nature, innocence, peace and love. Very simple, very dated, very formulaic, even for the time. All that said, “In the beginning” has quite a dark little bass line and skips along on a nice organ line from Banks, Peter's voice stronger and starting to betray the Hammillisms that it would develop on the next album, the kind of harsh, angry, almost sneering quality he could turn on and off at will. This song has at least got some teeth, whereas the other was just so weak and annoying. We get to see what Rutherford can do on the guitar as he actually rocks out a little, and there's much more energy about this. Nice little bass solo, short but effective, and the song itself is clearly based on the likes of The Beatles and Herman's Hermits, that sort of thing. Maybe the Animals.

One of the standouts comes in the form of “Fireside song”, which opens on a soft piano line that would later become inextricably linked with Tony Banks and would run such songs as “One for the vine” and “Please don't ask”, but that fades out and acoustic guitar is married to rather lovely strings (arranged by King, and in fairness he knew what he was doing, as they really make the song) as Gabriel reverts to his soft, almost apologetic vocal style, with some really nice vocal harmonies coming in on the chorus. I always find it amusing how English singers are so careful to pronounce every word properly: whereas an American or other singer might sing “Once upon a time there was confusion, disappointment, fear and disillusion”, Gabriel uses proper diction, singing “Once up-on a time there was con-fus-ion, dis-ap-point-ment, fear and (never an) dis-ee-loo-see-on.”Oh yes: every “t” and “d” is perfectly pronounced, not a usage of “while” once it can be “whilst”. Those crazy English, huh? Be that as it may, it's a lovely song and it's well titled, the first time when I initially listened to the album that I felt there might actually be something here. Mind you, then the longest track is “The serpent”, and it's kind of like listening to someone trying to copy Jim Morrison, but working in entirely the wrong medium. The song even has a faux start with a kind of guitar/bass opening that then just completely fades away and plays no part in the song that follows. And yes, I get the Biblical reference again. I didn't say there weren't Biblical songs on the album, just that I don't see it as a concept based on the Good Book.

The organ plays a very prominent part in this, but really only succeeds in making the Doors comparisons even stronger, while “Am I very wrong” has another lovely soft piano intro and a gentle vocal from Gabriel, with what sounds like flute --- I know he plays it, so I wonder is it him? The song then gets a little harder as Banks hits the piano keyboard more forcefully, but it returns to the softer style then. It's probably a good example of how versatile Gabriel's voice would get, not quite changing from soft whisper to unhinged cackle here, but you can tell he was going to be a rare talent in the future. However if there's a real glimpse of what he would become it's in “In the wilderness”, which is about as close to a song from Trespass as you can get, even invoking memories of the later “Visions of angels” from that album. Definitely one of my favourites on the album, and again it has that string accompaniment which really makes such a difference. This is actually a song I would prefer to be longer, but it's quite short, with a lovely piano outro too.

This motif is then taken up briefly by Rutherford on the guitar as we head into the hippy-inspired “The conqueror”, which does little for me. It kind of has elements of early Floyd in it, I feel, and again Gabriel's vocal is strong and powerful, but the song itself is unimaginative and quite repetitive, while “In hiding” has a lot more of Gabriel's presence in it, even if it does have a kind of too-jangly guitar, which the strings soften well. Naive as it may be lyrically, “One day” is another standout, and the addition of trumpets works surprisingly well on the chorus. I hear elements of later “Stagnation” here and maybe even “Harlequin”. Lots of that affinity with nature I spoke of earlier in this song, and again very effective backing vocals, something that in fact Genesis would pare back after the next album, leaving Gabriel to drive the songs in his own inimitable way.

A nice kind of jangly piano opening “Window” (hah!) with some more of that flute, though lower register this time, so I have a feeling it's part of the orchestration, maybe clarinet or oboe or something. Another gentle vocal, very hippy/mother nature in the lyric, and yes it's another standout, one of the better tracks, and yet would disappear in the face of the much longer and more complicated song structures that the band would pursue from 1970 onwards, though it would resurface in shorter tracks like “More fool me” and “For absent friends” among others. “In limbo” is very wishy-washy though, too much of the jazz and touches of soul in it for my tastes, but then the almost classical piano on “Silent sun” is quite nice, though that's about as much as I can say about it. It's pretty obvious that it was intended as a single. And it was. And failed. Miserably. The album ends then on the shortest track. “A place to call my own” runs for three seconds short of two minutes, and it's a really nice, low-key ending to what is generally a pretty low-key album, and on the face of it, probably exists as something of an embarrassment to a band who went on to find such fame.

TRACKLISTING AND RATINGS

Where the sour turns to sweet
In the beginning
Fireside song
The serpent
Am I very wrong?
In the wilderness
The conqeueror
In hiding
One day
Window
In limbo
Silent sun
A place to call my own

As I said, if you had been listening to Genesis prior to this album and only went backwards later, as I did, to check out the earlier stuff, you might be hard-pressed to believe this was the same band. It's quite incredible really how much and how startlingly they changed in less than a year, and by the release of their second album they had parted company with Joanthan King, cut their first proper progressive rock album, and were on their way to spearheading the first wave of progressive rock in Britain. Of course, they would not achieve fame until much later, but before that happened they would release a slew of classic albums that would make the memory of this third-rate debut a very dim and thankfully forgotten one indeed.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018