Five & Five on Friday 9/22/23

Happy Friday! Congratulations on making it to the end of the week. As you head into your weekend, here are five recommendations and then five micro reviews of albums from my high school CD collection. Maybe you’ll find something new to read, listen to, or do this weekend. See you next week!

1. On the latest episode of Lamniformes Radio, I interviewed Joseph Schafer, singer of the thrash metal band Colony Drop and, full disclosure, my co-host on The Human Instrumentality Podcast. I’ve had Joseph on the podcast before in his capacity as a music critic but this time around I wanted to focus on Joseph the musician and performer. We talked about Colony Drop’s excellent debut album Brace For Impact, his thoughts on the state of metal vocals, and why he finds writing lyrics based on Mobile Suit Gundam and Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure creatively satisfying. Check it out!

2. This is going to be a busy weekend for me. First up on Saturday night I’m drumming for Bellows at Alphaville. We’re opening for the jokingly self-described “dirtybag twee” act Precious Human, and we’re busting out some brand new material along with some old favorites. This will be my first time back at Alphaville since 2019 when Bellows played there at the tail end of my first full US tour with them. A lot has changed since then, but I’m glad to see that this standby of Brooklyn Indie is still standing.

3. Next, on Sunday night I’m drumming with Laughing Stock for their first ever show at Bar Freda in Queens. This band has really hit the ground running, when I joined they already had an EP’s worth of material written and we’ve nearly doubled that since. While I’ve long been a fun of post-punk I’ve never had many opportunities to play that style with other people, so I’ve been relishing the experience of playing with these guys. Give our demo a listen and if you dig it, come through to Queens!

4. On the same day that I dropped my ridiculously overworked essay on Barbenheimer (which I’m very proud of, to be clear!) Scott Tobias of The Reveal published a much more succinct essay about the trend of “brand cinema” and the collapsing distinction between mass art and advertisement. Tobias gives an even handed assessment to the slate of films discussed, but never shies away from how dire this trend looks from a bird’s eye perspective. If you wanted to get to “the point” of my essay without suffering through thousands of words about Dmitri Shostakovich and semi-obscure anime, this piece will do the trick.

5. My friend and Bellows bandmate Frank Meadows sent me this interview with music critic Kelefa Sanneh. Sanneh is probably most well known for his essay about rockism from 2004, which is largely credited with starting the critical shift towards poptimism over the last twenty years. As this interview proves, Sanneh is a much more nuanced thinker than the legacy of poptimism suggests. He takes the softball questions in this interview and launches them straight into the stratosphere. Well worth a read.

Now, onto the five micro reviews. Long time Lamniformes Instagram followers will recognize these from my stories back in late 2020, however they’ve been re-edited and spruced up with links so that you can actually hear the music instead of just taking my word for it.

Scenes From A Memory by Dream Theater (1999) - Progressive Metal

My first Dream Theater album, signed by bassist John Myung. Thanks John, and my apologies for the following: I do not like this album at all. If you’re going to write narrative concept record, it might help to actually come up with a narrative. Instead we get this “instrumentalist bros try and write a broadway musical” disaster. The best moments on the record are the instrumental tracks where the band is honest about what they are interested in.

Lateralus by Tool (2001) - Progressive Metal

Another birthday present, I believe. Thanks, Mom! I treated this record with grave seriousness and heaped nearly religious importance on it as a teen. These days? It’s good. I don’t find its LSD-mindfulness revelations to be particularly inspired, but I can see how they would galaxy-brain someone who hadn’t come across that stuff before. More importantly, this is the best example of what made Tool such a compelling rock band, musically speaking. Danny Carey played out of his mind here.

A Twist In The Myth by Blind Guardian (2006) - Power Metal

This album feels like it’s caught in limbo. It scales back the bombast of the previous two Blind Guardian records (fewer vocal layers/symphonic elements) but doesn’t restore the aggression of their early work. I wish this was even more streamlined, I bet this band could have made a killer hard rock record. Cool dragon, though.

…And Justice For All by Metallica (1988) - Thrash Metal

By the time I heard this I was already a certified Metallica fan, so I was predisposed to love it. Getting past the admittedly weird production and the knotty song structures took some time, but that was time I was willing to spend. “Blackend” is my favorite Metallica tune, “Dyers Eve” is up there, and “One” is an indisputable classic. I legit think that Lars plays great on this album too. Incredible.

Tarkus by Emerson, Lake, and Palmer (1971) - Progressive Rock

I bought this CD used as a goof because, well, I mean just look at it. Think about how many people had to look at that album art and give it the thumbs up, how many people then saw it in stores and thought “I need to hear this”. The music is subpar prog rock, but who cares? The Tarkus rumbles on.