Trollheart

Title: “Retribution: Storm of the light's bane”
Format: Album track
Written by: Jon Notdvedit, Zwetsloot (?)
Performed by: Dissection
Genre: Black Metal
Taken from: Storm of the Light's Bane
Year: 1995
Acclaim: n/a

Black Metal, eh? Well, Batty is always trying to slide the old extreme metal into my journals; sometimes it works, sometimes not so much. We'll see how this one goes. This band are broken up, apparently mostly due to the suicide of their leader and founder Jon Nordveidt, who was very active in a Satanic organisation dedicated to opening the gates of Hell and welcoming the Big Guy to Earth. Good for him; it's important to keep yourself busy. Nice easy run in, not. Hammering drums, slicing guitars, but I have to say a lot of what I recognise as melody. As Batty would say, bitchin'. Great riffs being set up here and there's a real sense of power and energy about the piece. Any vocals? Yeah, there they are. Kind of growly but hey, not too bad for BM! Can't say I hate this, not at all. It's clear this guy could sing, for certain. Might have to look into that album. Possibly.

Things I like about this :

1. The power of the riffs
2. The general melody

Things I don't like about this:

1. Not crazy about the vocal, though I don't hate it. Not entirely.



Rating:

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Trollheart

Title: “Stormwarning”
Format: Album track
Written by: Gary Hughes
Performed by: Ten
Genre: AOR/Melodic Rock
Taken from: Stormwarning
Year: 2011
Acclaim: n/a

And now for something exactly the same. Well, not quite. This is the title track from my favourite band, Ten's, ninth album. When I heard it first I wasn't as impressed as I had expected to be, but on repeated listens I've grown to really like it. Thing about Ten is though, for me, I usually liked their albums on first listen, so to have to allow one to sink in is a new feeling for me. This was especially galling as I had waited five years for a new Ten album since their previous The Twilight Chronicles. Nevertheless, this song has the classic Ten sound, with Gary Hughes on perfect form as ever and a very melodic/AOR style chorus that grabs you, rocking along nicely. Kind of song that should have played really well on radio, but, story of Ten's career, they never get near the airwaves. Hey, it's the world's loss. Maybe.

Things I like about this :

Everything.

Things I don't like about this:

Nothing.



Rating:

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Trollheart

Title: “Storm corrosion”
Format: Album track
Written by: Steven Wilson and Mikael Åkerfeldt
Performed by: Storm Corrosion
Genre: Progressive Rock
Taken from: Storm Corrosion
Year: 2012
Acclaim: n/a

Of the many solo projects Porcupine Tree's Steven Wilson has been involved in, Storm Corrosion is the only one I've heard which I was unimpressed with. A collaborative effort with Opeth's Mikael Åkerfeldt, the band only released one album, and this is it. The title track, which this is, runs for over ten minutes so I'm taking a chance I may like it more this time around. OK, well it's very pastoral progressive rock, almost folk in its way, very soft and meandering. Nice restrained guitar work by Åkerfeldt though I have to admit, three minutes gone by and nothing much happening. Oh, there are the vocals. Nice enough. Have to admit, it's very relaxing. At the seventh minute already and now there's some odd little experimental/psych weirdness. Now we're back to acoustic guitar and singing. Yeah, it's okay but a little all over the place and I still don't feel I'd particularly remember it ten minutes after listening to it. Meh.

Things I like about this :

1. Nice guitar
2. Nice overall atmosphere
3. Decent vocals


Things I don't like about this:

1. Perhaps a little on the boring-nothing's-really-happening side of things
2. The psych bit from 7:20 onwards. Bit pointless and seems out of place.



Rating:

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Trollheart

Title: “I've been dreaming up a storm lately”
Format: Album track
Written by: Jim Steinman
Performed by: Pandora's Box
Genre: Progressive/Art Rock
Taken from: Original Sin
Year: 1989
Acclaim: n/a

Finish up then on a quirky little one. I loved the Pandora's Box project, even though they only released the one album, and some of the material made it into future Meat Loaf albums. There are three spoken pieces on the album, of which this is the second, and I think the best. It has no music, apart from some guitar feedback (I think) and wind sounds, and is driven by Steinman's increasingly manic voice as he describes the life of a man who believes that magic mirrors are forcing him to go out and kill. “They create a reflection”, he tells the unnamed victim, “and then I have to go out and find the real thing that matches it. And almost always, when I put the real person in front of the mirrors it is not nearly as beautiful as the reflection that came first. And at that point I have to destroy the real thing.” I love the way his voice almost cracks into a growl on the word “reflection”; you really get the idea he is twitching, fighting back the urge to lash out, and it's a perfect study of a man on the edge and about to topple over, who believes in his crazy fantasies and refuses to take responsibility for the murders he perpetrates, blaming his compulsion on the mirrors.

Things I like about this :

1. The different idea of speaking the whole thing
2. The unhinged voice of Steinman
3. The minimal sound effects
4. The way he seems to make you hear mirrors scream
5. The storyline
6. The rhythm and cadences of his voice; you could almost hear this being sung

Things I don't like about this:

1. I'm not crazy about the opening lines, but that's about it.
2. Actually, I don't like the throwaway last line either.



Rating:

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Trollheart

And as I say, that's it for storms. Next theme up...

Yep, that's right: killers, especially serial killers. So go on Batty, you know you want to!

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The Batlord

I told you, bitch. I was trying to get you to listen to this way back when you didn't like any extreme metal as it's a brilliant gateway album to pure black metal. Obviously you now like atmospheric BM, but this is still a great album for getting you into regular BM. That's not even the song I would have rec'd you, but I remember there was a storm theme. You don't have to review it or anything, but just listen to this track. If you like black metal and Iron Maiden then there's no way you won't love it, vocals or not.

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Ol’ Qwerty Bastard

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Trollheart

Title: “Killer on the loose”
Format: Single
Written by: Phil Lynott
Performed by: Thin Lizzy
Genre: Heavy Metal/Heavy Rock
Taken from: Chinatown
Year: 1980
Acclaim: Reached no. 10 in the US and no. 5 in the UK. Also, more infamy than acclaim, garnered significant outrage as it was released during the height of the reign of terror of the Yorkshire Ripper.

I'm the first to say I don't rate Chinatown very highly, especially coming after two such stormers as Bad Reputation and Black Rose, but Lizzy picked it up for the three following albums, their last three, leaving this one, for me, somewhat in the middle as a poor cousin right smack in the centre of their golden period. It has its moments – the title track is excellent of course - and this is one of them. Based freely around the legend of the nineteenth-century infamous lady killer Jack the Ripper, it's a rocking, headbanging tune with the growling voice of Lynott leering out at you from the music, but as mentioned above it was either badly timed or very well timed, being released as a single during the hunt for the man known as the Yorkshire Ripper, who, unlike his Victorian counterpart, was caught and imprisoned. Naturally, the lyric enraged many women, as did the, shall we say, less than sensitive video, but even at that it was a major hit.

Although Gary Moore was only with them for the one album, the aforementioned Black Rose, I still find Snowy White a poor substitute for the departed (literally now, sadly) axeman, though as ever there's Scott Gorham there to pick up the slack. A powerful song and, if you don't get your knickers in a twist about its lyrical content, a lot of fun, it even features cover art (for both the album and the single) by the great Jim Fitzpatrick. How cool is that? And how can you not smile at a line line “Some people they call me Jack/ Some people they call me insane!”? Ah, good times!

Things I like about this :

1. The opening guitar riff, chugging along madly
2. The guitar solo
3. The general melody
4. Lynott's warped vocal as he reveals who he is (as if we weren't supposed to know)
5. That maniacal laughter at the end

Things I don't like about this:

1. Nothing really, but when I read about the bad (or good) timing, I can't help but tsk at the lads.
2.


Rating:

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Trollheart

Title: “Maxwell's silver hammer”
Format: Album track
Written by: Paul McCartney
Performed by: The Beatles
Genre: Pop/Psych
Taken from: Abbey Road
Year: 1969
Acclaim: n/a unless you count how many Beatles fans apparently hate it, also that just about any track on this album is considered gold.

I had never heard Abbey Road at all before last week, when I came across it in my History of Prog Rock journal, and I instantly loved it. Every track. Even this, which a lot of people seem to hate. I like it possibly for the same reasons many people hate it: that cheerful, whistly, twenties-sounding style, the fact that it is such an upbeat song while being essentially about a serial killer. There's nothing dark about it on the surface – we're not talking Slayer here – and indeed, when Maxwell kills it's illustrated in the lyric by the words “Bang bang” and in the music by the hitting of an anvil. There's something innocent about it, and the very incongruity of a song about a killer being so cheerful and almost childlike (“granny music”, as John Lennon called it) appeals to me.

Things I like about this :

1. The oddly upbeat, cheerful way it's sung and played
2. The lyric

Things I don't like about this:
Nothing really.

(Look, I haven't included a video as there appear to be no originals out there, and the only one I found was some stupidly disabled (by which I mean the sound was partially disabled) version. I'm sure most of you know it already, if not check it out on Spotify.)

Rating:

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Frownland

You're thinking of "Octupus's Garden" on the fan hatred.

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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.