Fives on Friday 1/5/2024

Recommendations, fresh new tunes, and archived micro reviews!

Happy Friday! Congratulations on making it to the end of the week. As you head into your weekend, here are five recommendations, five track reviews, and five album micro reviews. Access to these curated links and tunes will only cost you your time and five pieces of self-promotion. Maybe you’ll find something new to read, listen to, or do this weekend. See you next week!

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1. I enjoyed this recent episode from Zero Brightness, starring Lamniformes Radio guest and Another Heaven guitarist Ali Jafaar, about the experience of growing up reading genre fiction (sci-fi, fantasy, etc) from a Lebanese perspective. Unsurprisingly, stories about rebels fighting off an evil empire or marginalized groups trying to prove their humanity read quite differently from that point of view than an American one. Click play for “Star Wars is about Palestine” and stick around to the end for a laser-guided critique of the imperialist politics of The Last of Us 2.

2. Ian Chainey, whose work at Stereogum and Plague Rages have graced these recs before, launched a new weekly newsletter late last year inspired by this very Substack. If you’d like even more weekly recommendations for tunes, movies, and reports from live concerts, give Wolf’s Week a follow!

3. Evan Fusco, who has also appeared in this series a few times, used a recent TikTok trend as a jumping off point to talk about Rebuild of Evangelion. I typically only see the Rebuild series discussed as an addendum to the original Neon Genesis Evangelion series, so I appreciated Fusco taking it on as a separate work.

4. I’m on record as a pretty big fan of the video game Dark Souls, but if I’m being honest I’m not the biggest fan of the game’s music. That’s why I appreciated this recent video from 8-bit Music Theory about the way the game’s score reinforces the series’ themes by hammering the hell out of dominant resolutions. The endless procession of V-i movement definitely drives home the sense of inevitability that underlines so much of the Dark Souls experience.

5. My mom recently clipped out and sent me this review by composer John Adams in the New Yorker of Time’s Echo, a new book about four pieces of 20th classical music written in response to the atrocities of World War II. Adams’ perspective is particularly interesting here, as he reflects on being commissioned to write his own memorial work in the wake of 9/11. This makes the piece a worthwhile read on its own, but it also got me thinking about how some future composer would handle the responsibility of responding to our current moment. This led me to realize, distressingly, that even if the war on Gaza ended precisely as I type these words, from a future perspective a genocide¹ has already occurred. To the composers of the future we have already failed, what remains to be seen is how well we can mitigate that failure. I don’t say to discourage any action, obviously. But if you ever find yourself uncertain about what to think of a current event, you might find the thought exercise of viewing it from a future perspective clarifying.

# # # # # The Self Promo Zone # # # # #

• For my first gig of the year I’ll be playing drums for Laughing Stock at Windjammer on January 20th! Come through if you enjoy post-punk, goth rock, and shoegaze with very loud drums.

• New Lamniformes music is on the way soon, as in like, this year. If you’d like a hint at what that music is going to sound like, consider checking out “Prayer of the Open Plain”, the first unofficial single from my upcoming record. As the title suggests this one was inspired by the experience of hurtling across the vast emptiness of the American west. Perfect for your next road trip, or for more internal journeys.

• If you need new Lamniformes tunes right this minute, good news! I contributed a cover of The Style Council’s “A Stone’s Throw Away” to the compilation For Palestine, organized by the good folks over at GUNK. All proceeds for this massive compilation go to Palestine Youth Network and Anera.

• If you liked the Zero Brightness podcast that I recommended above, you might also like my interview with Ali on my podcast Lamniformes Radio. The two of us talked about PT Cruisers, gear consumption, the Twin Cities music scene, and how his band Another Heaven took a massive leap during the pandemic

• Finally, I noticed that I gained some new subscribers over my Drumming Upstream break in December. Welcome aboard! One of the big changes to the newsletter this year is that Drumming Upstream, the project in which I learn how to play every song I’ve ever Liked on Spotify on drums, is now behind the paywall. If you’re a new paid subscriber, you can explore the full Drumming Upstream archives through the Drumming Upstream Leaderboard. If you’re a new free subscriber, you can continue on to the rest of this letter’s Listening Diary and Micro Reviews!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Listening Diary ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Here are five songs that I enjoyed listening to recently! You can find a playlist with all of this year’s tracks at the bottom of this section.

“Unnatural Law” by Final Gasp (Mourning Moon, 2023)

I’ve been intrigued by the sudden prevalence of bands playing old school metal with a gothic twist. I’m not sure how to account for this trend. Has metal become a decaying monument to its former glory, now covered in cobwebs and obscured by fog? Or were Tribulation just way, way more influential than I gave them credit for? In either case, Final Gasp are a great addition to the roster. Less traditionally catchy than Sonja, less macho than Unto Others, and not quite as melancholic as Sumerlands, Final Gasp instead come across as the grody, weeks-old-dirty-shirt-and-neck-tats version of this sound. “Unnatural Law” is like Metallica covering Killing Joke. Not in the hypothetical sense, I mean it literally sounds like Metallica’s cover of “The Wait”, and that rules.

“Angel” by Another Michael (Wishes to Fulfill, 2023)

Always psyched to hear new tunes from this band. I had a blast on the road with them back in 2018 when I filled in on a Bellows tour before I officially joined. Wow, that was a long time ago! Another Michael’s lineup has changed a few times since then, but the top notch songwriting remains intact. The verse melody on this tune is so good that on first listen I started getting anxious that they wouldn’t be able to match it on the chorus, but of course they nailed it all the way through to the bridge. Really precise, relaxed playing with some tasty unexpected chord choices.

“Pitchfork Impalement” by Cannibal Corpse (Chaos Horrific, 2023)

My theory after the last Cannibal Corpse album was that they should cycle in a new guitarist regularly, say every three albums or so, to reinvigorate the band’s iron-clad formula. The Erik Rutan era, now two albums old, is already making me extend that range. Nothing has fundamentally changed, but since Rutan joined the band the riffs have just gotten an extra 12% sharper. The phrasing is so considered and polished that these tunes, as gnarly and gross on the ears as they are, go down smooth as butter. That might make “Pitchfork Impalement” (is that what you call it when they give your album less than a 6.5?) sound like a passive, brain-off, experience, but it’s way more fun to follow the guitars closely just to hear the clever turnarounds Rutan sneaks into the faster passages. Death metal’s best argument for incrementalism.

“What Dreams Are Made Of” by Pusha T (Fear of God II: Let Us Pray, 2023)

Research for DU#37. Before diving into “Mercy” itself, I wanted to brush up on what each of the featured rappers’ solo material prior to the team up. I’d say there’s a lot about rap production from the early 2010s that hasn’t aged well, except that I thought the dinky indie pop pianos on songs like Big Sean’s were annoying at the time too. What I had not remembered, or maybe not even consciously recognized in the moment, was that Pusha T’s whole Ric Flair impersonation was part of his rebrand as a solo artist after Clipse broke up. He’s been doing it for so long that by now I had taken it as something he’s always done. Why is it that when I write about Pusha T I always start talking about marketing? Something I’ll have to consider when I eventually cover Clipse in Drumming Upstream.

“Painless” by KEN Mode (Void, 2023)

Speaking of revisiting the early-ish 2010s, this track by KEN Mode brought me right back to the rush of hearing Entrench for the first time in 2013. As good as KEN Mode are at lurching at slower tempos, I prefer them when they straight up hurtle. At this pace everything comes as a surprise, from the sax that takes up the lead halfway into the guitar solo to the bone-crunching breakdown that rushes in right after it.

\ \ \ \ \ Micro Reviews / / / / /

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.

Slaughter of the Soul by At the Gates (1995) - Death Metal

THE melodic death metal blueprint that every American metalcore band in the 00s borrowed riffs from, whether they knew it or not. Hearing this and learning to trace its influence through metal history was a formative critical project for me. I always forget how fast this thing moves, not a wasted second on this record. It’s an incredibly listenable and tuneful album, which is a big part of its lasting appeal.

Leprosy by Death (1988) - Death Metal

The first Death record I bought after having been repeatedly told how crucial they were to extreme metal history. This was before they developed the technical style that I think most people point to as their best work. I really enjoy this one. Great songwriting, obviously horrific subject matter but written about with a real voice. The music is extremely direct, but surprisingly bouncy and almost danceable? Good classic death metal.

Bleeding Through by Bleeding Through (2010) - Metalcore

Can you think of a case of a band releasing a self-titled record after being around for a decade and the results being good? Never seems to go well in my experience. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why this doesn’t work since it isn’t super different from Bleeding Through’s best stuff. I think the mainstream hardcore scene had just moved on from this sound. You can hear Bleeding Through chasing deathcore and djent, but they don’t catch either. The songs feel jumbled, unfocused.

To Mega Therion by Celtic Frost (1985) - Heavy Metal

A big record for me when I was 17 and playing in a gnarly punk-ish band fueled mostly by resentment. This gets cited as a big influence on much more grandiose versions of metal, but in its blunt ugliness it feels closer to metallic hardcore. Like Celtic Frost’s first album, To Mega Therion teeters on the brink of disaster, but keeps its balance through sheer confidence. The falsetto vocals are hilarious in a good way. Very fun.

Bloodflowers by The Cure (2000) - Alternative Rock

Part three of The Cure’s “trilogy”. I had no context for this record as a teen. I thought it was good but a bit of a bummer for reasons I couldn’t put my finger on. Thanks to Ian King’s excellent retrospective on this record I now understand this as The Cure’s “facing mortality” record. So yes, it hits different in my 30s. I still don’t think its their sharpest songwriting, but that’s also sort of the point.

1. If you want to quibble with my choice of words here, I encourage you to consider the Armenian genocide, when citizens were also forced out of their homes and marched into the path of certain death, and ask yourself whether there’s anything substantially different going on in Palestine right now.