Fives on Friday 3/8/2024

Melted Meters

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!

» » » » » GET REC’D « « « « «

Because I spent this week commuting up to the Bronx and back for rehearsals and spent my screen time working on Lamniformes stuff I didn’t have enough time to stock up any interesting links to recommend to you. Instead I’m going to tell you a quick story. One of my teachers in music school once told our class a story he’d heard about a trumpet teacher recommending that his student read War & Peace. “Will it make me a better trumpet player?” the student asks. “Maybe” the teacher responds. Well, I’m only halfway through War & Peace so I can’t say for sure whether it’s made me a better drummer yet, but it has repeatedly rocked my socks off for 700 straight pages. It’s also been much easier to read than some of my past Bronx commute companions (Moby Dick, Paradise Lost, Mason & Dixon). Does Tolstoy need anyone to recommend him in 2024? Whether he needs it or not, I’m doing it!

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

• Bellows, the indie rock band that I drum for, will make its triumphant return to the stage on March 15th at the Knitting Factory to open for Frog. Since our usual keyboardist Frank “Friend of Music” Meadows is out of town on a long tour with Fust we’ve invited Elijah Wolf to join us on guitar for this show. How exciting! You can get tickets here.

• Earlier this week I sent out a Super Secret Subscriber Bonus to my paying subscribers. If you’d like access to that bonus along with the full Drumming Upstream archives and other perks, consider becoming a paying subscriber now for only $5 a month! Your support is greatly appreciated.

• Since the Oscars are this weekend, you might be interested in my lengthy essay about Oppenheimer, Barbie, Satoshi Kon, and Dmitri Shostakovich. I guarantee you it will take less time to read this essay than to sit through an entire awards show, and will likely be far more edifying.

• If the idea of watching an award show in the midst of an on-going humanitarian crisis icks you out, then consider picking up a copy of For Palestine, a compilation organized by our friends at GUNK featuring exclusive tracks from a number of New York City indie artists including yours truly. All proceeds go to the Palestinian Youth Movement and Anera!

• This doesn’t quite qualify as self-promo but if you’re in the Sunset Park area on Sunday, consider popping over to Parley at 4pm for Priyo, a poetry and music open mic & showcase. I won’t be performing, but I will be attending, so feel free to say hello.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 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.

“You Mean So Much More Than Misery to Me (Phong Tran Remix)” by Massa Nera (D//Q//B(2.0), 2023)

Any heavy band releasing remix albums in the 2020s gets a nod approval from me, doubly so if both the remixer and remixee are dope musicians and lovely people to boot. I met Phong Tran through Massa Nera bassist (and, full disclosure, Lamniformes guitarist) AJ Santillan back in 2017. In the years since I’ve found Tran’s synthsizer sets to be consistently one of the best tickets in town. Phong Tran turned this Massa Nera tune inside out, stretching their guitars into organ-like pads punctuated by screams from the song’s inverted surface.

“Scavenger Prophets” by Woe (Legacies of Frailty, 2023)

Two weeks in a row I’m highlighting American black metal tunes with unexpected time signature changes. I really appreciate how clean the production is on the Woe song, makes it real easy to hear the interlocking melodic voices in the guitar parts and it also makes the time changes feel extra crisp. As with a lot of great extreme metal tunes the harsh exterior of “Scavenger Prophets” hides a surprisingly tender core. That arpeggiated line at the heart of the song is gorgeous, well worth enduring the sonic hailstorm preceding it.

“You in a Place for a While by Yourself” by Voice Coils (Heaven’s Sense, 2015)

Shouts out to Wolf Rambitz for recommending this EP in response to my Drumming Upstream entry about Mitski’s “Once More To See You”. Turns out that while she attended Purchase Mitski sang in an art rock band that also featured Cameron Wisch (ex-Porches, Frankie Cosmos) on drums and Kelly Moran on keys. Voice Coils don’t sound anything like what I’ve heard from any of its participants since, but the quality of the work certain lives up to their collective pedigree. A brain-bending pointillist take on rock instrumentation.

“Too Long At The Fair” by Mil-Spec (Marathon, 2023)

Though they aren’t strictly in my usual wheelhouse, I’ve got a fondness for Mil-Spec’s approach to hardcore punk. Tight, melodic, dry. It hit hards because it doesn’t hit that hard. Mil-Spec’s pulled punches land with a weariness appropriate to this reflection on the human potential wasted by caring a lot about records. The song’s finest moment, a neck-spanning groove about halfway through, arrives with a shrug. “Sure we know how to get kids moshing,” the breakdown suggests “but what good will that do us or anyone?”. A punk anthem for the tastemaker apocalypse of our times.

“No Self Control” by Peter Gabriel (Peter Gabriel, 1980)

Speaking of art rock super groups, get a load of this! Phil Collins on drums, Robert Fripp on guitar and Kate Bush on backing vocals. I’ve been on a major prog rock kick for the last few weeks, inspired by something I’m writing, and I decided I should get a better sense of what Gabriel got up to after leaving Genesis. I’m glad that I made that choice because this whole record slaps. Sort of like the missing link between Scott Walker and Trent Reznor. Creepy, texturally rich pop tunes with a harsh edge.

\ \ \ \ \ 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.

Traced In Air by Cynic (2008) - Progressive Metal

The momentous return of one of metal’s most forward thinking bands. Instead of repeating their 90s sound, this record pushed them even further into the future. I remember showing this to Jack Greenleaf and him describing it as what a metal band from Final Fantasy VIII would sound like. I still find it remarkable how musical this album is. Cynic sneak so many sly turnarounds, hooks, and counter melodies into compact and focused songs. The vocals might take some getting used to, but given the prevalence of auto-tune and vocal manipulation since this album, I’d argue that they were once again ahead of their time.

One Hour By The Concrete Lake by Pain of Salvation (1998) - Progressive Metal

A concept record about a weapons developer undergoing a crisis of faith that sends him around the world to see the ecological and political effects of his profession. This is where the Pain of Salvation style really clicks into place. Trying to convey real world sociopolitcs over such nervy and complex music can’t help but feel clunky and heavy handed, but Gildenlöw’s command of melody keeps things on track. This has some of the best “pure prog metal” playing of any Pain of Salvation record.

The Perfect Element by Pain of Salvation (2000) - Progressive Metal

My copy is signed by guitarist/singer Daniel Gildenlöw. A social melodrama about a doomed romance between two wayward youths on the outskirts of urban society. Deals with drug use, abuse, generational trauma, and the failure of institutions to prevent all of the above. Gildenlöw really lets his inner theater kid take over on this one, to great effect. I love this album. Even the goofy 90s rap rock parts. Gildenlöw relies on a lot of repeating melodies and motifs and all of them are good, each distinct and powerful in their own way. Part of my personal canon for sure.

Colors Live by Between the Buried and Me (2008) - Progressive Metal

The victory lap for the band’s breakout record. Hearing this cleanly recorded live version definitely clarifies how Colors was constructed, but I wish the crowd was more active. The clean singing bits would have sounded really exciting with a crowd behind them. The DVD version is also worth a watch, since it includes an encore of older material. Not to be too dramatic but this feels like the viking funeral for the version of BTBAM that I love and the birth of the more successful version of the band that doesn’t connect with me. The climax of “White Walls” remains their definitive statement to me. [Editor’s Note: This review was written before Colors II pulled me back in.]

obZen by Meshuggah (2008) - Djent

Meshuggah’s return to normal length songs, at least by metal standards. Includes their most famous song, “Bleed”, which became a rhythmic calling card for the band. Honestly, any number of these tunes could have become their signature track. While I prefer long form Meshuggah, this is easily the best case for their conventional songwriting. My hot take is that “Lethargica” is actually the best representation of their sound on this record, not “Bleed”.