Speaker 1: Hello, everybody, Welcome back to That's No mat Alone. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to the album club pack. We are in the
Speaker 1: very end of April twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2: We are back with another one of these things. You
Speaker 2: know what we're here to do.
Speaker 1: We come to this place to revel in some sensational
Speaker 1: sometimes not sensational. But you know, with the ones we've
Speaker 1: got today, they're all pretty good, aren't they. Albums from
Speaker 1: rock and metal history. We're going to give you the
Speaker 1: deep dive with your infuse or all over these bad boys.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a nothing trouble need. Really, let's
Speaker 1: get into it. If we have album clubs from Negadiess,
Speaker 1: Rusting Piece, Killing Jokes two thousand and three, self titled Sunday,
Speaker 1: Real Estate's Diary, and Gore Guts, Colored Sands. If you
Speaker 1: don't know some of those albums and what they sound like,
Speaker 1: we're gonna tell you. But we are gonna start with
Speaker 1: an album that I think you probably do.
Speaker 2: Know what it sounds like.
Speaker 1: It's Megadeth rust in Peace. I could never quite figure
Speaker 1: out in the end trawling through the T and M
Speaker 1: archives if Rest in Peace actually has ever been done
Speaker 1: as an album club or not. But it certainly hasn't
Speaker 1: in the modern incarnation of this show. And when Elliott said,
Speaker 1: hang on, have we not done Rest in Peace? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I could have countered back saying that it would be
Speaker 1: funnier to do super Collider instead, or it would be
Speaker 1: more of a dark horse pick to do like so far,
Speaker 1: so good, so what, or even like euthanasia or something
Speaker 1: or whatever. But now we've been handed here an opportunity
Speaker 1: to talk about Rust in Peace is one of those
Speaker 1: like if someone and you know, places magazines frequently do
Speaker 1: put together like the top ten essential metal albums of
Speaker 1: all time, like Filtering Away your personal biases or the
Speaker 1: ones that you like, whatever, just those definitive Master of Puppets, Paranoid,
Speaker 1: Raining Blood, whatever eighties made an album would go in there.
Speaker 1: Of all of those bands, Megadeth are the one that
Speaker 1: do sometimes come with some sentience of like near Megadeth
Speaker 1: from some areas. So it is worth emphasizing as we
Speaker 1: go into this album club, this is categorically in that
Speaker 1: selection and practically immovable from that mountain for thirty five years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's not normally you've got I'm a Megadeth,
Speaker 3: I'm a bit of a Megadeth hater, you're not gonna
Speaker 3: get back today. Like when when hearing Annalysis, I was
Speaker 3: gonna look like Megadeth and I was like, yeah, no,
Speaker 3: it's rest in Peace in it, Like I can't pretend
Speaker 3: to hate this record like Sight Spoilers, But as Parents says,
Speaker 3: this is one of those just tightened albums of metal
Speaker 3: that you kind of just can't you got hands like, yeah, Megadeth,
Speaker 3: we're fucking on it for this one, and delivered a
Speaker 3: front to back you could call a masterp, isn't it.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 2: I think that's that's the reason I was so baffled
Speaker 2: that it maybe hasn't been done on the show because
Speaker 2: there's been hundreds of album clubs at this point, and
Speaker 2: there are so many lms we haven't done it. It's crazy,
Speaker 2: it's insane, And like, I'm sure there are some alms
Speaker 2: that have solved more than this that maybe you know,
Speaker 2: you know you're gonna find in more recor collections than
Speaker 2: Rust and Peace. But there are a few albums in
Speaker 2: metal ever that are more acclaimed and more influential and
Speaker 2: more important. And I really think if you're if you're
Speaker 2: talking about those, you're e that sort of rolling Stone
Speaker 2: Tops and Metal Albms Echelon. Yeah, it's like Master of
Speaker 2: Puppets maybe comes up more often. Number of the Beast Paranoid.
Speaker 2: This could be like the fourth in that run.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it never gets number one, it won't get top
Speaker 1: three in those places, but this will perpetually be like
Speaker 1: the SIT for seven's best metal album of all time, sat.
Speaker 4: Like This and Raining Blow, aren't you Like?
Speaker 3: They're the kind of like after you get past like Paranoid,
Speaker 3: Number of the Beast, you want to put them as
Speaker 3: the top three in that sort of next rung down
Speaker 3: of like still a top ten album.
Speaker 1: It's in the eleven out of tens, you know, and
Speaker 1: it's one of those album clubs where you know, like
Speaker 1: a Master of Puppets like a Rain and Blood. I
Speaker 1: have heard this album so many times in its entirety
Speaker 1: from my very early days of being a metal head.
Speaker 1: It is complete second nature. It is in my and
Speaker 1: I'm sure many others. DNA writing notes on it was
Speaker 1: a matter of keeping up to type as fast as
Speaker 1: the riffs are moving, But I know how every one
Speaker 1: of these songs goes every beat instinctively.
Speaker 2: The last time that we.
Speaker 1: Spoke about a Megadeth album was a couple of years
Speaker 1: ago when we had James from hellripper on and he
Speaker 1: chose Pece Cells. But who's buying? And that is practically
Speaker 1: peak thrash metal, you know, the spirit of nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: six at its most alive and vibrant, and sam we
Speaker 1: were going like, yeah, you know, megadetha have their pros
Speaker 1: and cons, but fucking hell, and now we are moving
Speaker 1: onto an album that scales honestly miraculous heights. Like if
Speaker 1: Megadeth in the eighties, those first three albums with PCE
Speaker 1: Cells generally seen as like the peak of those if
Speaker 1: that was what megadeth legacy was built on, that would
Speaker 1: be legendary. There are maybe like two three thrash metal
Speaker 1: bands in history with highs as high as those, but
Speaker 1: that they somehow built from that into this and that
Speaker 1: eighties material that is so wild and fast and state
Speaker 1: of the art at the time almost seems low tech
Speaker 1: and like incredibly rough around the edges neck to this
Speaker 1: fucking like star destroyer of an album is one of
Speaker 1: metal's great achievements.
Speaker 4: I think that's been going back to.
Speaker 3: This is kind of like because like Peace Cells, Like again,
Speaker 3: that's another Megadith album. I do quite like even as
Speaker 3: a MegaDEF hater, because you know, Peace cells good album,
Speaker 3: but that's a sort of a rougher like spikier album.
Speaker 4: This is blockbuster.
Speaker 3: This is like big budget cinematic just kind of like
Speaker 3: the biggest scale heavy metal possible, like or frash Malt
Speaker 3: where you want to sort of like that bit and
Speaker 3: it is doing that, and just it just sounds bigger
Speaker 3: and more high tech and more and like and in
Speaker 3: a way it's sometimes with their eyes would say that
Speaker 3: the more kind of like glossier high tech like album
Speaker 3: is the more exciting one. But then there's sort of
Speaker 3: the rougher sort of like frashy one. But haven't they
Speaker 3: just there is something about piece, about a rusting piece
Speaker 3: where that like scope and that kind of like space age,
Speaker 3: like I say, star destroy nature of it. It just
Speaker 3: kind of like gets like your hair's on end. Like
Speaker 3: there's like something just like really cool.
Speaker 2: And if you're listening to the arms in order for
Speaker 2: the first time, there's no reason to expect this would
Speaker 2: come because the one that comes before it is so
Speaker 2: far so good. So what that's divisive among Mega Death
Speaker 2: fans for kind of being a bit rough around the edges,
Speaker 2: particularly even by the standard of the eighties records, kind
Speaker 2: of treblly messy, like you could tell the whole band
Speaker 2: run speed. It's kind of unfocused. I love it like
Speaker 2: I love all the all of the first three or
Speaker 2: obviously the first the first run of Megata Fums, I
Speaker 2: think are basically all perfect in their own way. But
Speaker 2: Rusting Peace is like a genius IQ move from. It's
Speaker 2: almost like an idiot savant moment for this band, where
Speaker 2: like you just think they're insane and then you sit
Speaker 2: down and play chess with them and they wipe the
Speaker 2: floor with you. It just it comes out of nowhere
Speaker 2: in their discography.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I get thinking about where to start with
Speaker 1: this as an album club. I guess I'm drawn to
Speaker 1: the date a little bit. And I do think about
Speaker 1: this sometimes with Rest in Peace and Megaeth in general,
Speaker 1: because they almost seemed like there are a couple of years
Speaker 1: behind the rest of the Big Four, not in terms
Speaker 1: of like radicalness or ability or anything obviously, but just
Speaker 1: time frame, because I guess obviously mustayd have been kicked
Speaker 1: out of Metallica and then he had to like race
Speaker 1: to get his band into gear. So their debut is
Speaker 1: eighty five, when most bands are on album two, second
Speaker 1: album is eighty six, when the restaurant around album three,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And so they are the one of the
Speaker 1: big four who's their most like widely held definitive album
Speaker 1: doesn't come out in the eighties. It's nineteen ninety, and
Speaker 1: they're like widely held classic lineup which assembles here for
Speaker 1: the first time is not the eighties line of Megadeth
Speaker 1: that exists. It's the nineties one and nineteen ninety is
Speaker 1: a crazy year. I mean, we spoke about this when
Speaker 1: I guess the last time we did one of these
Speaker 1: like thrash giant albums on Album Club was Scenes in
Speaker 1: the Abyss a couple of years ago, and we spoke
Speaker 1: about how an album like that it's kind of both
Speaker 1: the album that sets Slayer up for the nineties, but
Speaker 1: also the one that like marks the end and the
Speaker 1: cap on their kind of most classic thrash period nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety as a whole. If you look at the records
Speaker 1: that came out that year, it's almost like that for
Speaker 1: all of the you know, the blockbuster kind of headline
Speaker 1: bands in metal at that time. In one year, there's
Speaker 1: Rust in Peace, Seasons in the Abyss, Painkiller, and Cowboys
Speaker 1: from Hell. You can throw in Persists of Time from
Speaker 1: Anthrax as well, which is like their final like classic
Speaker 1: Joey Belladonna album. They're all sort of that, you know,
Speaker 1: they're the end of the eighties and you know, so
Speaker 1: called like classic heavy metals kind of ear of dominance,
Speaker 1: but also the dawn of the nineties and Elliott, You're
Speaker 1: quite right, I think, you know, for Megadeth, this is
Speaker 1: the last gasp of maybe their most undiluted form before
Speaker 1: the Black Album basically, because after this you get Countdown
Speaker 1: to Extinction, which is, you know, another classic Megadeth album, certainly,
Speaker 1: but you can see they are, you know, they're reacting
Speaker 1: to the direction of the genre around them. And then
Speaker 1: all the other albums you know, come after that one,
Speaker 1: and it's it's kind of crazy to think that this
Speaker 1: lineup here is so celebrated because you know, Davestayne and
Speaker 1: Dave Ellison joined by Marty Freeman and Nick Menza. Here
Speaker 1: they only make one album that's like this, that's the
Speaker 1: lineup that makes Countdown to Extinction and Euthanasia and then
Speaker 1: Cryptic Writings.
Speaker 2: They only make.
Speaker 1: One Ultra tech thrash album in the vein of rest
Speaker 1: in peace with that lineup, and I guess it speaks
Speaker 1: volumes that we remember that as the classic lineup because
Speaker 1: they only do this once. But it is the ultra
Speaker 1: tech thrash album. It's like, undeniably the greatest you know,
Speaker 1: tech thrash album, if you want to call that a
Speaker 1: genre that there's been. I mean maybe if you count
Speaker 1: like and Justice for All, there's at least an argument,
Speaker 1: not even a definitive win, but an argument. But this
Speaker 1: the strand of thrash that megan really like spur into
Speaker 1: rapid evolution just through making these albums or that like
Speaker 1: hyper speed, hyper technical, hyper progressive that we're ever actually
Speaker 1: you know, never actually feeling like progue just because it
Speaker 1: is so coked up and aggressive.
Speaker 2: This album.
Speaker 1: When I put it on next to all of the
Speaker 1: other thrash albums of this era, it's the one that
Speaker 1: just sounds like the future. Like of all of those
Speaker 1: great thrash albums of its golden period, this is the
Speaker 1: one where you go, I actually can't quite believe that
Speaker 1: this comes out in nineteen ninety.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's it is, like I say, it's
Speaker 3: a definitive statement on that kind of that like techie
Speaker 3: thrash or metal way. It does feel like, well, I'm
Speaker 3: throwing away what meganef we're doing in the eighties. It
Speaker 3: feels like it's pushing fresh into kind of like a
Speaker 3: new direction. Is kind of like we can explore new sounds,
Speaker 3: we can play more precisely, more like progressively, but still
Speaker 3: have that shot in.
Speaker 4: The arm kind of like frill ride excitement.
Speaker 3: And it just does that in a way that feels
Speaker 3: bigger and more advanced than anything that's come before it.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, and if we are going to compare it
Speaker 2: to something like and Justice for All, which obviously does
Speaker 2: have some huge songs on it, and songs that translate
Speaker 2: to an arena and have stayed in the Metallica live set,
Speaker 2: the fact that they went and did the blackolm maarth
Speaker 2: is kind of no surprise because those songs are so
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it's my second favorite Metallica record,
Speaker 2: But that's that's an almful of songs. You get lost
Speaker 2: in the mad thing about Rust in Peace is it
Speaker 2: does that, but it also features many of their most
Speaker 2: popular songs that have sayed and set to this down
Speaker 2: and I think that's kind of the genius of it
Speaker 2: and why it's endured and why it still sounds, if
Speaker 2: not contemporary, it doesn't sound dated in the way that
Speaker 2: other albums from that time because they're not just playing
Speaker 2: with these ideas and saying or how far can we
Speaker 2: take this? They also happen to be writing some of
Speaker 2: their best songs. And I think you said about this
Speaker 2: being the classic lineup. I don't think it's just incidental,
Speaker 2: like they happen to be in the right place at
Speaker 2: the right time. It's because the lineup brings it on
Speaker 2: this record more than probably any other Mega Death record.
Speaker 2: I'm a big Mega Death fan, but I get confused
Speaker 2: who plays on what records? Sometimes there's no question on
Speaker 2: this one because they're in some cases like the first
Speaker 2: people you think of, aren't Dave Mustain on this one?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I would argue that Megadeth have two
Speaker 1: different classic lineups, and the first one is the you
Speaker 1: know the guy Samason Chris Polan lineup, when the next
Speaker 1: one is is this one. And then just to draw
Speaker 1: the and justice real comparison to an end, I think
Speaker 1: just for all I would say it is almost kind
Speaker 1: of prog that is like a progressive thrash record, whereas
Speaker 1: Rest in Peace isn't really prog in the same way.
Speaker 1: It's just hyper technical and hyper complicated, you know, just
Speaker 1: a nitpick between kind of what terms we're using. But
Speaker 1: it's a you know, it always a nerdy thing to
Speaker 1: jump to you first, but this is an engineering achievement
Speaker 1: in heavy metal for the time. Like I actually don't
Speaker 1: think I'd ever looked at this before, but it's done
Speaker 1: by Mike Clink, who at the same time was doing
Speaker 1: all the guns and Roses stuff, like he did Appetite
Speaker 1: and then Use Your Illusion, and this album is one
Speaker 1: of those that just needs to sound like a fucking spaceship,
Speaker 1: you know, or like a you know, a nuclear reactor
Speaker 1: or something, because that eighties negative stuff has that like
Speaker 1: street personality, like they're gonna pull a switchblade on you
Speaker 1: at any moment. And uh, you know you were talking
Speaker 1: about so far, so good, so what which You're quite right.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: Historically, when you see listicles of like ranked Meganeth albums
Speaker 1: and they've got that like eighth or something, it's an
Speaker 1: immediate disregard you don't know what you're talking about. But
Speaker 1: the mainstream narrative is that it's kind of a sloppier album,
Speaker 1: and it is, you know, it is harsh, and it
Speaker 1: is kind of like drunken and it's not the easiest
Speaker 1: on the ears for a general metal audience. But again,
Speaker 1: rather than like a Metallica who kind of climb up
Speaker 1: and up and up until they naturally arrive at like
Speaker 1: an and Justice for All, Meganeth kind of go up
Speaker 1: and down and just kind of all over the place.
Speaker 1: But this is so ahead of the curve sonically that
Speaker 1: in comparison to even anything they've done prior to this,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like undeniable in comparison.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think for me the sort of the
Speaker 3: testament of how good this album sounds. It does sound incredible,
Speaker 3: and so Dave must do on fucking vocals.
Speaker 1: Like who this is getting way ahead ourselves, But he
Speaker 1: fucking kills it.
Speaker 3: On this album. This is this is his best performance.
Speaker 3: But it's still I wouldn't go that far. He is like,
Speaker 3: but that's the thing is this album it does sound
Speaker 3: fucking incredible. You have to still take on board it's
Speaker 3: Dave mustname, but you're right, it is his most compelling
Speaker 3: performance and it does actually suit the songs and the
Speaker 3: overall sound of the album, which is kind of like.
Speaker 4: Well, this is again I have to kind of Progredia
Speaker 4: like it works on this one.
Speaker 3: I don't like Dave Mustay will always be my kind
Speaker 3: of like barrier on ever truly love meganeff even at
Speaker 3: like ignoring must say the person as a vocalist. I
Speaker 3: just I can find him very grating a lot of
Speaker 3: the time. None of that on this album, even if
Speaker 3: he's still doing the thing he does. And again I
Speaker 3: don't know if that is you know, the production, just
Speaker 3: the quality of the songs where his vocals just seem
Speaker 3: to lock in with the guitars and all that, but
Speaker 3: it all just comes together to just all of it
Speaker 3: sound excellent and there is not a weak link on
Speaker 3: this record.
Speaker 2: Yeah it is.
Speaker 1: It's one of those complications in the mix that when
Speaker 1: I was a kid and I bought this on CD,
Speaker 1: it was the two thousand and four remaster, which was
Speaker 1: like widely available everywhere at the time, and it took
Speaker 1: me years actually to learn from like older head Megadeth fans,
Speaker 1: that's not actually the proper version of the album, because
Speaker 1: that's where Dave was like fiddling around doing new vocal
Speaker 1: takes and like you know, new drum sounds and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, but it was the one that I knew
Speaker 1: for like several years, so I had to like slowly
Speaker 1: wean myself off the two thousand and four version. I
Speaker 1: just say this because I notice on streams like the
Speaker 1: highest streaming songs of the two thousand and four versions,
Speaker 1: So I think most people actually haven't heard the original
Speaker 1: mix of the album. But anyway, that's the one that
Speaker 1: I do listen to now. And you know, that nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety original mix, still without the kind of tweaking, is
Speaker 1: just like galactic to compareison to most things at the time,
Speaker 1: and it goes in line with basically a real like
Speaker 1: meticulousness on it when it comes to writing and playing
Speaker 1: where you know again, that Gar Samuelson Chris Poland line
Speaker 1: up is just some of the most careening out of
Speaker 1: the realms of sanity playing in thrash metal at the time.
Speaker 1: And then when you get to you know so far
Speaker 1: so could so what and it's like a punk record.
Speaker 1: It is gloriously kind of imperfect, which not rust in Peace.
Speaker 1: Rust in Peace does not have a note out of
Speaker 1: place somehow, and this lineup with you know, Nick Menza,
Speaker 1: who I don't think it's quite as like fucking crazy
Speaker 1: what's he doing as like Gar Samuelson, But he perfectly
Speaker 1: manages to like place these drum hooks all over the record,
Speaker 1: like the Holy Wars fill or whatever, like on top
Speaker 1: of these crazy rhythms and patterns that he's doing. And
Speaker 1: then Marty Friedman, who, as we'll talk about, you know,
Speaker 1: basically with this one record if he ended here, cements
Speaker 1: himself as like one of the greatest metal le guitaris.
Speaker 1: Simple time Rust in Peace is where those you know,
Speaker 1: musical acrobatics combined with just the writing kind of you know,
Speaker 1: second to second note to note perfect songs somehow, but
Speaker 1: then sound light years ahead of the competition, just all
Speaker 1: solidifies into just one of the greatest records ever made.
Speaker 1: I guess, you know, we start with some heavy hitters,
Speaker 1: because this album has gloriously it has one of the
Speaker 1: most mental side a's on any record, and then arguably
Speaker 1: still has its best song Waiting in the Wings on
Speaker 1: side B. But Holy Wars into Hanger eighteen to start
Speaker 1: off with. It's that's basically like one big eleven to
Speaker 1: two minute flex, isn't it? The start of this record,
Speaker 1: like absolutely no one is matching that for the realm
Speaker 1: in which this is operating, no one has.
Speaker 3: I just listen to the opening riff on Holy Wars,
Speaker 3: like again, go back to some words and sampling quite one,
Speaker 3: and I was like, I'm gonna be like difficult, and
Speaker 3: I had I kept playing.
Speaker 4: Like fuck it, you win this round.
Speaker 2: Sometimes haters have to be proved wrong.
Speaker 4: I like, I've always liked this album because again, as
Speaker 4: I said.
Speaker 3: You have something I want to be a bit difficult sometimes,
Speaker 3: but you just you hit play on Holy Wars and
Speaker 3: it's that hinged approach to songwriting and the way these
Speaker 3: like riffs collide together, like but it's just like say
Speaker 3: a tech fresh masterclass, and there's nothing formulaic about it,
Speaker 3: Like there's nothing that feels like playing it safe and
Speaker 3: trying to write a hit. But it's fucking catchy and
Speaker 3: interesting and it is, like I say, I pushing fash
Speaker 3: into new exciting territory.
Speaker 2: This song. I don't know how many times I've heard it.
Speaker 2: I mean, I know this album like my own face,
Speaker 2: like it's it's basically tattooed on the inside of my ears.
Speaker 2: I don't know how many times I've heard Holy Wars.
Speaker 2: It's kind of hard to overstate what an unbelievable feat
Speaker 2: of metal songwriting is. The number of incredible riffs and
Speaker 2: moments you get before Dave even starts singing yeah, like
Speaker 2: and it's you're not waiting that long, but you I
Speaker 2: mean you're you're probably reading them off in your head
Speaker 2: as you're listening to this. It's just sick moment after
Speaker 2: sick mind and some of the only last like two
Speaker 2: or three seconds before disappearing. And when it locks into
Speaker 2: that Dad at that exact second before you started singing
Speaker 2: it mate, it is. It's it's again like all that's
Speaker 2: what you're say about the early records feeling careering and
Speaker 2: out of control. This is like atomically perfect, Like you
Speaker 2: couldn't move it at a plank length whatever, the smallest
Speaker 2: distances in any direction to improve it. And I'm still
Speaker 2: only thinking of the intro. I'm still thinking before like
Speaker 2: the singer comes in with all those hooks as well,
Speaker 2: and then the song completely changes direction again it and
Speaker 2: it's not like you say, I don't think it's the
Speaker 2: best song on the record, maybe even the second best
Speaker 2: song on the record. It's wild like as a way
Speaker 2: to like as as a micro drop as the record starts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's just a miracle riff to start off with,
Speaker 1: just like you know, one of those refs I'll never
Speaker 1: ever get tired of hearing just tech speed metal at
Speaker 1: its apex, the skip on the drums underpinning it. It's like,
Speaker 1: there's so much fun, you know, it's like one of
Speaker 1: the most fun sounds has ever been on a metal record,
Speaker 1: I think. And it is a six minute multisection prog
Speaker 1: metal epic that you can sing every word to, you know,
Speaker 1: brother Will Gil Brother, It's building blood across the land.
Speaker 1: It's like one of the definitive opening lines to a
Speaker 1: metal song, next to generals gathering their masses, just like
Speaker 1: which is that black masses? And the mid section is
Speaker 1: such a one of you have to just stop and
Speaker 1: consider what an eccentric move that is for a song
Speaker 1: to make. And it's it's almost like it's quite trite
Speaker 1: in a way.
Speaker 2: You to just have like.
Speaker 1: Middle Eastern guitars and the chimes and stuff like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're changing scenery. But it works so evocatively and it
Speaker 1: doesn't draw things to a halt or tool despite the
Speaker 1: fact that it literally does stop dead like it somehow
Speaker 1: just builds the mood and the journey even more so
Speaker 1: the lead guitars all through it. That kind of solo
Speaker 1: in the midsection are almost like a just a warning
Speaker 1: shot of what's going to come over the whole rest
Speaker 1: of the record. And then when you're saying all the
Speaker 1: little rifts, maybe I don't even know what you'd call
Speaker 1: this exact trick, you know, the rift transition where the
Speaker 1: song returns from the slow section into the fast bit,
Speaker 1: but it has to build back into the fast bit
Speaker 1: from the stop star.
Speaker 3: Like the little chugs in my notes was like, because
Speaker 3: I love that middle pace where it's like GENI quite
Speaker 3: menacing and kind of like weird and something together. But
Speaker 3: because it's slows on so much, it makes that little
Speaker 3: build up into.
Speaker 2: The far your ears.
Speaker 3: Just that much more kind of exhilarating. And that was
Speaker 3: what I was just going, was like, I'm in for
Speaker 3: the ride again. Like when that fast when the song
Speaker 3: sort of dues back in off the slow bit, it
Speaker 3: is perfect. And I'm like, imagine not liking fresh metal
Speaker 3: metal of any kind of get moments like that that're
Speaker 3: just gonna go like, ah man, this is what like
Speaker 3: it's all about, isn't.
Speaker 2: It When it does slow down, it's that riff. I
Speaker 2: feel like there's gonna be a lot of a cappella
Speaker 2: in this review and so far. But like the way
Speaker 2: it goes on like Dan and Dan Dan aad Dead
Speaker 2: did and then and then opening that up with and
Speaker 2: then and then that is black album level mid temper riffing.
Speaker 2: And it's not even the thing that comes to mind
Speaker 2: when you think of this song, like it's the kind
Speaker 2: of it's it's the it's the middle act that the
Speaker 2: two fast mental eccentric bits sit on it either side of.
Speaker 2: And it's an incredible song in and of itself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And and the way that that ramp up from
Speaker 1: that kind of violent stop start section that I was
Speaker 1: just talking about ushers in the last verse, Like this song,
Speaker 1: it starts the way it does, and it gains intensity
Speaker 1: when you're into the latter part of it, because when
Speaker 1: you are hitting that, you know, next thing, you know,
Speaker 1: they'll take my thoughts away. Mercy killings, Like the song
Speaker 1: just seems to just like peak and peak over and
Speaker 1: over again. It's erupted into this like total manic violence,
Speaker 1: and right at that moment at the end where it
Speaker 1: almost like has this like orgasmic fury fucking Hangar eighteen.
Speaker 1: What the fuck does that just drive forcing itself like
Speaker 1: violently up the threat board, building with every single chord,
Speaker 1: Like I mean, there's a reason, Like both times i've
Speaker 1: seen Megadeth several years apart, they've opened with that song.
Speaker 1: It's not even the opener on the record, but it's
Speaker 1: the perfect set opener because the impact of it. But
Speaker 1: it's even more crazy when you look at Hanger eighteen
Speaker 1: because what we were just saying about Holy Wars Hangar
Speaker 1: eighteen is one of the most mentally structured kind of
Speaker 1: major canonical metal songs because Holy Wars is, you know,
Speaker 1: perfect example. We've got fast beginning, slow middle section, return
Speaker 1: to fast end section. Hangary teen is a verse chorus
Speaker 1: banger for the first half of it, like it's a
Speaker 1: hit for them, and then the second half just becomes
Speaker 1: a war of a thousand guitar solos and it never
Speaker 1: returns to that versaile chorus. It's done that. It's like
Speaker 1: you've had your chorus. Now we're going to do two
Speaker 1: to three minutes of just like you know, telling the
Speaker 1: story musically through the most head spinning duel of guitars
Speaker 1: to everyde it was like, just the fucker last chorus,
Speaker 1: We're just going to dessaorient you instead.
Speaker 3: I mean, this to me might be like the definitive
Speaker 3: Megadeth song in terms of just like when I think
Speaker 3: of what Megadeth something, this is what those going to be. Like, well,
Speaker 3: because you've got that opening sort of guitar melody which
Speaker 3: is like just insanely catchy, like just one of those
Speaker 3: like again just ten out of ten guitar lines. Dave
Speaker 3: even kind of like sinks out of it with tuneless
Speaker 3: croak to just deliver it again in a properly catchy way,
Speaker 3: and it's like and then you're it just goes into
Speaker 3: this like insane like bombardment of like rifts and shadows
Speaker 3: and like it's like five minute song and it just
Speaker 3: flies by in seconds because it's constantly firing something new
Speaker 3: at you and you never can kind of like settle
Speaker 3: down to but you don't kind of remember like how
Speaker 3: catch the first players were just like fucking how that
Speaker 3: solo is like who came up with that? And again,
Speaker 3: like the structure of it is weird and it shouldn't
Speaker 3: feel like it's kind of like one of the you know,
Speaker 3: the big like fist pumping negative bangers because of, like
Speaker 3: you said, that weird structure, but because every part of
Speaker 3: it is just delivered with like such a lot sort
Speaker 3: of like ten out of ten like ferocity and kind
Speaker 3: of conviction, it all like locks into place perfectly.
Speaker 2: I just got again, going back to that first section,
Speaker 2: something that had never occurred to me before is that
Speaker 2: that opening bit is three ascending rifts that are all
Speaker 2: different like and they're just in sequence, which I don't know.
Speaker 2: I can't think of many songs, if any songs that
Speaker 2: do the same thing, where all the rifts just go
Speaker 2: up and up and up, yeah, and build and build
Speaker 2: and build, and then when it gets to the verse chorus,
Speaker 2: thing that tension still isn't released, and then the release
Speaker 2: of it is completely changing the song to the point
Speaker 2: where I mean, the first I heard I really thought
Speaker 2: there was something wrong with my CD. And now I
Speaker 2: can't imagine Hangary teen not transitioning into that second half.
Speaker 1: In a bit like what those videos where it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, it changes key and then it never stops changing,
Speaker 1: you know, keep going up. But they do, and they
Speaker 1: worked it and they've turned it into one of their hits.
Speaker 2: But when it does, when you get that again, you're
Speaker 2: sort of Middle East and flare lead guitar that transitions
Speaker 2: into the next part. It just puts every time, like again,
Speaker 2: how many times I've heard this song? I don't even know,
Speaker 2: Like the smile just spreads on my face against my
Speaker 2: will because it's just like you know that the next
Speaker 2: two minutes it's going to be like one of the
Speaker 2: best guitar duels ever and underpinned by an almighty riff
Speaker 2: that again like the guitars a dazzled. The leads are
Speaker 2: dazzling enough, but the fuck is that you know how
Speaker 2: well you're just gonna throw that in the back half
Speaker 2: of this song and then solo over it. That's not
Speaker 2: the main riff? How how did you have such a
Speaker 2: bank of sick riffs that this is almost an after thought? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And then there's Taken Prisoners, which is a fully fucking
Speaker 1: song that opening canon Like that song makes the previous
Speaker 1: two songs seem like they weren't hard.
Speaker 2: What the fuck?
Speaker 1: Like it just comes in and the opening cannon aide
Speaker 1: is so tight of that just and it's it stretches
Speaker 1: it to a kind of breaking point over the first
Speaker 1: like thirty forty seconds, so when it does break, it's
Speaker 1: just like go time, just the most just thrash metal
Speaker 1: circle pit. I think I remember when I first was
Speaker 1: getting into Megadeth. I think I heard like, you know,
Speaker 1: Holy Wars and Hangar eighteen and Tornado Souls and stuff,
Speaker 1: but maybe not the whole record. And I watched this
Speaker 1: live show on YouTube and when they hit Taken Their Prisoners,
Speaker 1: just thinking like, WHOA, what the hell is that, because
Speaker 1: when you're thirteen, you've maybe not del fully into that
Speaker 1: death metal yet. And they've got the guys on the
Speaker 1: backing vocals either side go and infiltrate them to them
Speaker 1: like a death squad. It's basically like the hardest, scariest thing.
Speaker 3: I kind of forget how good like punk Megadeth me
Speaker 3: because this is one This is again where this is
Speaker 3: like say lean and mean three minute like fore and
Speaker 3: a half minutes of just like punchy, like tight in
Speaker 3: your face Megadeth like and again that like you said
Speaker 3: that the sort the back of I was like, that
Speaker 3: is like that kind of hardcore gang vocal sort of thing,
Speaker 3: but just through the kind of the fresh attack of Megadeth,
Speaker 3: and like the bass feels on this song like when
Speaker 3: like they they're finding them out and again again That's
Speaker 3: why I said that that punk and when I think
Speaker 3: like punk, those kind of crazy bass bits, you get
Speaker 3: them on this and it is just like, say, it's
Speaker 3: still got that sort of dexterous sort of ferocity and
Speaker 3: like super tight plan.
Speaker 4: There's nothing sloppy about this, but it is just like say,
Speaker 4: it is mean.
Speaker 3: It is a bruiser of a track, and I think
Speaker 3: it might be like outside of Hanging eighty, maybe my
Speaker 3: favorite song on the record, Like it's so just like
Speaker 3: punch in tire and fucking go so hard.
Speaker 2: I think, and I guess what good reason. But Megadeth
Speaker 2: has sort of seen as the least punk, certainly of
Speaker 2: the Big four, the least association with it because the
Speaker 2: first thing you think of is the shredding and nowadays
Speaker 2: is like the toy with five figure death punch. However,
Speaker 2: it's it's that they're not tied to that sort of
Speaker 2: culture whatsoever. But Take No Prisoners, Take No Ship as
Speaker 2: a gang vocal towards the end is if I just
Speaker 2: I would love to see like nineteen ninety one Megadeth
Speaker 2: outbreak doing a bit like that and this song is
Speaker 2: so it sounds mad saying because especially after the first two,
Speaker 2: this one is like even more propulsive, Like it almost
Speaker 2: sounds like the the riff is rushing itself. Do you
Speaker 2: know what I mean? It's like that there's a platonic
Speaker 2: idea of what it should sound like. Maybe that doesn't
Speaker 2: exist because the version that we have is going too fast.
Speaker 1: It just sounds like it's it's maddening. The second verse
Speaker 1: they find more notes to put in the riff it
Speaker 1: was just to begin with. And then the second time around,
Speaker 1: after the elephant bass surlo, it's like, like what, it's
Speaker 1: even more frantic than it was at the beginning. And
Speaker 1: so many of the songs end crazily right, like those
Speaker 1: fine like paranoid whales of Holy Wars, the solo wars
Speaker 1: of Hangar eighteen mustain wailing like a murderous, unhinged sergeant
Speaker 1: take no prisoners, and you know, the everything about the music,
Speaker 1: including the lead guitars is going absolutely off the deep end,
Speaker 1: you know, shouting batch and that take no shit, the
Speaker 1: JFK flip right that the total like nihilism, cynicism, Fuck you,
Speaker 1: I'll get my kind of poisoned heart of America that
Speaker 1: he delivers with don't ask what you can do for
Speaker 1: your country, ask what your country can do for you. You know,
Speaker 1: Megadeth like obviously they're generally seen as like, you know,
Speaker 1: the kind of political one of the Big Four, and
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes more recently that has been to their detriment,
Speaker 1: but you know, the kind of branding for want of
Speaker 1: a better word, like when you see Vic Rattlehead on
Speaker 1: an album cover, surrounded by a bunch of men in suits,
Speaker 1: I'm rubbing my hands together, you know, like you know,
Speaker 1: he's in front of a destroyed un building like on
Speaker 1: PCE Cells. It's kind of like a happy place. It's
Speaker 1: just quintessential geopolitical thrash imagery. And this album, you know,
Speaker 1: really congeals a lot of that into its most kind
Speaker 1: of elemental, just sent mad with paranoia that kind of
Speaker 1: like transcends the individual moment in which it was made politically,
Speaker 1: you know, because you look down at and you're right.
Speaker 1: We've got a song about religious warfare in the Middle East,
Speaker 1: Czech we've got a song about kind of military government conspiracies,
Speaker 1: and Hangar eighteen Cooled Check They're always around a song
Speaker 1: about kind of the threat of nuclear holocaust and of
Speaker 1: global warming and environmental collapse, you know, check, and then
Speaker 1: you got a song about fucking alchemy and wizards because sure,
Speaker 1: why not? Like you know, this is the stuff that
Speaker 1: Dave Mustaane was built to embody, and it is. It's
Speaker 1: easy to go Dave Mustaye he can't sing. Megadeth would
Speaker 1: be good if it weren't for his voice or whatever.
Speaker 1: This is an absolutely dominating vocal performance on Rest in Peace, right,
Speaker 1: And don't get it twisted. It's not a Ronnie James
Speaker 1: Dio vocal dominated performance. That's not what I'm fucking saying.
Speaker 1: But when he did still have range and he could
Speaker 1: go into the highs, which is the thing that he can't, like,
Speaker 1: he just can't tap into that register these days, it's gone.
Speaker 1: But when he could do that, and he could do that,
Speaker 1: one of the most magnetic front men in metal of
Speaker 1: this age, I think, because on top of that, like
Speaker 1: twhirlwind of riffs and patterns and stuff, he sounds like
Speaker 1: a wailing siren on this record, and his ability to
Speaker 1: sound totally like manic, unhinged, but while also you know,
Speaker 1: crafting vocal lines and patterns that like, you know, objectively right,
Speaker 1: these have endured for decades. These songs are not good
Speaker 1: in spite of Dave Mustain. They're often good because of
Speaker 1: Dave Mustain and the vicious charisma that he puts into
Speaker 1: every line. There are so many pockets whereas the music
Speaker 1: is like turning and changing direction, he puts the boot
Speaker 1: in on a line and seals it. You know, fucking
Speaker 1: don't look now to it or you know, take their
Speaker 1: prisoners when the song is just whirling out of control,
Speaker 1: and he.
Speaker 2: Does like a playground five haven for those who walked
Speaker 2: and soul. He comes in on this record like he
Speaker 2: has been plugged into a wall socket for the previous
Speaker 2: half an hour. Like it is delirious the energy he
Speaker 2: puts in on it. I we've talked before about like
Speaker 2: bands like Death Tones or the Smiths, whatever, where it's
Speaker 2: bands where you might love them, be I don't like
Speaker 2: when bands cover them. Megadeath are one of the bands
Speaker 2: that's most true of And it's exactly that thing you mentioned.
Speaker 2: Dave Mustaine's wild, paranoid like magnetic nature just isn't captured
Speaker 2: by even vocalists who would get further in American idol.
Speaker 2: Do you know what I mean? Like ones who can
Speaker 2: hit all the notes and have the five octave ranges
Speaker 2: or whatever. It doesn't capture those notes and the bits
Speaker 2: that spring to mind on this record. And I don't
Speaker 2: want to jump too far because I'm sure we'll get
Speaker 2: to these songs, but the sort of bridge in tornadoes
Speaker 2: as say, what's on mad Man? Yeah, it's like you
Speaker 2: could have got like Jeff Take to do that, it
Speaker 2: wouldn't be nearly as good like and he is again
Speaker 2: doing the finger think a better singer. Maybe my favorite bit,
Speaker 2: one of my favorites on the whole record is the
Speaker 2: I spread disease like a dog line or rusting peace
Speaker 2: bad load again, like you give that to anyone else,
Speaker 2: And I'm not even saying someone like Ronnie James Deal
Speaker 2: or Bruce Dickinson, but give it to a Tom Ariah
Speaker 2: or a James Hetfield in his pub I don't think
Speaker 2: they're delivering that line is good because that I spread
Speaker 2: disease like a dog. When he says that you can,
Speaker 2: it's like you can hear the rabies in his mouth,
Speaker 2: like yeah, it sounds like he's actually he's actually snarling
Speaker 2: at you. Like he's such a characterful singer without ever
Speaker 2: feeling like he needs to. You know, he's not adopting
Speaker 2: a role, he's not method acting. Dave Mustaine is just
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 3: I mean, I mean that is it is like again
Speaker 3: from like aspuch as again, I find his vocals can
Speaker 3: just be so great. The charisma when he gets it right,
Speaker 3: I think that is sort of one of those like
Speaker 3: things you can't replicate.
Speaker 4: I mean that.
Speaker 3: That's when it's that's where you said, like you can't
Speaker 3: really cover Megan f because it just because he has
Speaker 3: that one of a mind for better or worse kind
Speaker 3: of charismatic vocal approach.
Speaker 1: I mean, good luck not fucking especially if you're playing
Speaker 1: guitar while doing those local parts.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, no, no, no, I think I get. I mean
Speaker 4: that's all fair.
Speaker 3: But I think on this album in particular, it is
Speaker 3: where all lines up perfectly, where you do get those
Speaker 3: like memorable, iconic kind of lines and again, like members
Speaker 3: so calls the whole album, but those are them lines
Speaker 3: that that that stick with you because he he does
Speaker 3: like transform into something faireral when he has to, and
Speaker 3: it is like just one of those like unique selling
Speaker 3: points that only megad f can have on this record.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we talked, we thought before about like that there
Speaker 2: were people will go with weird more than I think
Speaker 2: people give them credit for. Like I think we talked
Speaker 2: it when we did the Primus album Club. But you
Speaker 2: can watch videos on YouTube people doing like reaction videos
Speaker 2: to Rust in Peace or Tornado of Souls in particular,
Speaker 2: people who don't listen to rock and melt, and when
Speaker 2: that vocal comes in, they do sort of initially pull
Speaker 2: a face like you know, like they've smelt something bad
Speaker 2: that like, oh, that's a okay. By the time that
Speaker 2: the second verse and they've adjusted to it, it's fine.
Speaker 2: Like I sometimes wonder if this because some people will say,
Speaker 2: like oh, megge, that could be so much bigger if
Speaker 2: it wasn't for Dave Mustain's vocals, Like I don't really
Speaker 2: buy it because it doesn't seem to actually be. Again,
Speaker 2: I take the points on that sound's not keen, but
Speaker 2: I agree that it's not. Their popularity isn't in spite
Speaker 2: of him generally. I know he's bad on the other records,
Speaker 2: but at its best it is a selling point, Like
Speaker 2: it looks how.
Speaker 1: Many people cats these songs over the years, right, and
Speaker 1: how many how many fans are there in legions singing
Speaker 1: along to these songs or any of the songs from
Speaker 1: this period, go back to fucking wake Up Dead, you know,
Speaker 1: mechanics anything, right, It's like he's he's clearly he's magnetic,
Speaker 1: you know. And I remember thinking, you know, the last
Speaker 1: time they headline Bloodstock and like, you know, yeah, his voice,
Speaker 1: he can't do that these days. But in terms of
Speaker 1: songs they put together, it's still like, you know, despite
Speaker 1: them being one of the you know, the biggest metal
Speaker 1: bands in the world or whatever, like it's underrated how
Speaker 1: many all timer melodic songs they have and you can,
Speaker 1: you know, you get onto you are too Lemons and
Speaker 1: your Trusts and stuff later. But here, even in Holy
Speaker 1: Wars and Hangar eighteen, which are so frantic, the pockets
Speaker 1: he finds for melody, he's like genuine unbelievable talent, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe the biggest example comes later in the record.
Speaker 1: But you know, if we go back to the track list,
Speaker 1: that crazy energy, isn't it. I thought, I'm amazed about
Speaker 1: this record if you think about the major classics on it,
Speaker 1: and the you know, the opening kind of pairing of
Speaker 1: song particularly really jumps out. There are deeper cuts on
Speaker 1: this album where it gets crazier and more like methed
Speaker 1: up than fucking Holy Wars. Five Magics is an absolute
Speaker 1: freak song.
Speaker 3: It's Almo like because again you've had these first things
Speaker 3: that are like super tight and at it, and then
Speaker 3: five Mates just kind of just like loosens up and
Speaker 3: it gets kind of a bit weird and kind of
Speaker 3: sprawls out in all these different directions as he's singing
Speaker 3: about wizards and virgins and dragons, bit like it's all
Speaker 3: on there like it's it's it's one of those like
Speaker 3: prop just like heavy text with heavy metal stuff, but
Speaker 3: just this kind of like weird explorative way Meganef go
Speaker 3: at it. It's it's super compelling. It's one of those
Speaker 3: MEGAA songs. Again, I don't reach for like as it says,
Speaker 3: like you know, girls like I. Five Magics is really
Speaker 3: fucking good. Actually, Like the hooks on this are really weird.
Speaker 3: I know we've said that there are some eccentric moments
Speaker 3: on the preceding songs, but.
Speaker 2: That mehster yeah, fair like that that being like the
Speaker 2: hook of the song, like the thing that comes up
Speaker 2: like that, give me, how can you give me sorcery?
Speaker 1: Like give me with Adrea, which is massive, by the way,
Speaker 1: but then you're right, it turned into this really skin
Speaker 1: crawling choice. It's like you're hearing him somehow like contorting,
Speaker 1: shriveling up from this magic that he's tapped into or something,
Speaker 1: and that is you know, all the fucking like progressive
Speaker 1: metal stuff of the nineties, but it you know, Death
Speaker 1: or Dream Theater or whatever. The new bar that it
Speaker 1: has to kind of clear is something like five magics
Speaker 1: because the time signatures in it are fucking wild. The
Speaker 1: build from like you know, starting completely autent and then
Speaker 1: somehow them to like spider like crawl itself back up
Speaker 1: from the depths with you know, the kind of bulk
Speaker 1: of the song when it gets there is basically like
Speaker 1: a speed metal song, but the instrumental fucking intro for
Speaker 1: like two minutes he's so sinister and alive at the
Speaker 1: same time and so strange. And then Poison with the cure.
Speaker 1: I think if I'm probably right in saying it's probably
Speaker 1: the fastest song in the negative cannon like in terms
Speaker 1: of those like you know, thousand fingered kind of speed
Speaker 1: metal threat board runs where you go, how is that
Speaker 1: a riff that you have written? Poison with the Cure
Speaker 1: sounds like it comes from the surface of the sun.
Speaker 1: Like if you don't smile at that rift booting off,
Speaker 1: you are hopeless, because you know the little bass intro
Speaker 1: that you just sang, the instrument will kind of fucking
Speaker 1: around parts they do to introduce songs like that. They're
Speaker 1: just so like perfect every time, Like you don't know
Speaker 1: how they come up with those parts in relation to
Speaker 1: the rest of the song, but it would not work
Speaker 1: the same without it. But then the speed, the peer
Speaker 1: speed that here ups into is like absolutely boildery.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think every song on this record is
Speaker 2: notable and earns its place, And I think Poison was
Speaker 2: the cure on paper. You think, is it the more basic,
Speaker 2: straightforward of the songs here, Like, is it the one
Speaker 2: that's most relatable to where they were beforehand? Maybe? But
Speaker 2: the fact it's so technical and so fast means that
Speaker 2: if it is a song more like I say, more
Speaker 2: relatable to what they were doing earlier, it's so much
Speaker 2: more of a heightened version of it. Yeah, Basically every
Speaker 2: technical and compositional way that it could only fit on
Speaker 2: a rust in peace like this would sound insane on
Speaker 2: any preceding Megadeth record purely by virtue of being that
Speaker 2: much more on ten M.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I love that, like the weird, sauntering, quirky
Speaker 1: groove stuff on this as well, Like you know, we
Speaker 1: mentioned the stuff you're talking about in Holy Wars and
Speaker 1: that sort of like perverse mocking skip that it has,
Speaker 1: but like Lucretia after that just fucked up little goblin laugh.
Speaker 1: It's you know, it's the slowest song and that one
Speaker 1: doesn't go crazy speed, but the sheer eccentricity that comes
Speaker 1: out of them doing a mid pace riff like that,
Speaker 1: like no one would do that. Feel like that like them,
Speaker 1: Like what the hell even is that? Even the fucking
Speaker 1: the little tail end bump thing they do for media rounding,
Speaker 1: it's like even on a song like that and then
Speaker 1: completely out on a limb and I am like, I miss,
Speaker 1: you know, a living organism of a band there, Like
Speaker 1: the way Nick Menz's fluid bouncing rhythms in like perfect
Speaker 1: lockstep with Ellison's base on a groove riff like that.
Speaker 1: It kind of like bubbles this record in a way
Speaker 1: that like you know, certainly thrash metal today generally doesn't
Speaker 1: really It's like a next level chemistry on this record.
Speaker 4: You said, like they're like Lucretia. That song bounces exactly.
Speaker 3: It's really fun, it's it's weird, and it was just
Speaker 3: like kind of like I think it's been more like
Speaker 3: a sort of a major key melody to it, like
Speaker 3: the sort of the wrists and that, but like the
Speaker 3: way that song was kind of just looking at this
Speaker 3: like weird bouncing groove and like today's vocal on that
Speaker 3: song is hilariously mental times like.
Speaker 4: The Ends of Lights where you just go, that's a
Speaker 4: bit like those sort of things like that. I'm like,
Speaker 4: this shouldn't work, but it does.
Speaker 3: It was like I feel like this is something where
Speaker 3: like me as a mega fact, I should be ripping
Speaker 3: this this sort of vocal force to pieces as kind
Speaker 3: of like stupid and knaugh but I'm like, no, like
Speaker 3: when you actually are like just locked into it and
Speaker 3: the song is kind of like do all this kind
Speaker 3: of weird playful stuff on it and so of just
Speaker 3: being like a bouncing, fun heavy metal song, it all
Speaker 3: kind of just like synergizes together to be something like
Speaker 3: really great. And again, like I always kind of like
Speaker 3: doing things to be like man album tracks, you know,
Speaker 3: like six songs in on Mega Piece, they're as good
Speaker 3: as a single. This could be a single and you'd
Speaker 3: be like, it's one of the greatest metal singles of
Speaker 3: like the nineties.
Speaker 1: You should expect that because this is a perfect big
Speaker 1: surprise that tracks from Rusted Piece are good. Is I
Speaker 1: mean the ending pair right, you know, going into Rusting
Speaker 1: Piece Polaris, which has again that kind of the stomping
Speaker 1: groove that when.
Speaker 2: Negative that on this record.
Speaker 1: It's not like you know Pantera or you know Metallica
Speaker 1: or you know what they themselves start doing on like
Speaker 1: a Symphony's Destruction or something that kind of four to
Speaker 1: four grinder thing. When they go midpace, it's like being
Speaker 1: like mugged by an octopus or something like. There's something
Speaker 1: mocking and kind of sardonic just about the feel of
Speaker 1: a riff like.
Speaker 2: That Dan Dan a little earlier.
Speaker 1: It's like, how like in the pocket and yet simultaneously
Speaker 1: like live wire loose cannon. It is it's like a
Speaker 1: like a show of intimidation from a soldier who is
Speaker 1: trying really hard to not just pull his gun out
Speaker 1: and shoot you. Like it's really genuinely sinister when it
Speaker 1: holds back and then Dawn Patrol. Is it intro to it? God,
Speaker 1: I love that that's there, because that is the bit
Speaker 1: that I imagine must wind up so many cowards who think
Speaker 1: Megadeth are rubbish, because that's the bit that you know,
Speaker 1: I haven't pulled anyone about this, but if there's someone
Speaker 1: out there going rest in pieces a bit shit, actually,
Speaker 1: that's probably the bit I imagine there thinking. But that
Speaker 1: prowling Ellafson baseline well mustain. Literally he creaks in his
Speaker 1: voice like a diseased devolution of a human reporting from
Speaker 1: you know, the burned up end of the world.
Speaker 2: Now I can only laugh as I read our and then.
Speaker 1: The final noises he makes are literally squeaking like rats
Speaker 1: that you can imagine like crawling over consuming his body
Speaker 1: for the final second it fucking come on, like it's
Speaker 1: so just the eccentricity, the idiosyncrasy, the invention of it
Speaker 1: is like beyond.
Speaker 2: It's This was the one where for a long time
Speaker 2: I struggle with it, even though even when I was
Speaker 2: loving this record, when I was like eight or nine
Speaker 2: hearing it for the first time, but I couldn't get
Speaker 2: my head around Dawn and Patrol, and it really bothered
Speaker 2: me because it's like it's less than two minutes, and
Speaker 2: I was like, this is so weird, and now I
Speaker 2: mean obviously I love it, Like I kind of didn't
Speaker 2: appreciate what a clever, interesting bit of world building it was. Yeah, Megadeth, well,
Speaker 2: they were always the most eccentric and odd ball of
Speaker 2: the Big four, and when they really flex that, I
Speaker 2: think that thing you're saying where some people might go
Speaker 2: is rust and piece actually that good. I think that's
Speaker 2: the thing that those people miss out on, Like they
Speaker 2: kind of think that everything is It's it's funny because
Speaker 2: they play it so straight and totally serious. But there's
Speaker 2: loads of stuff on this record that you kind of
Speaker 2: wonder if they are winking at you. I mean, like
Speaker 2: that that this is so strange. You wonder do they
Speaker 2: know how strangeness is or are they are they that
Speaker 2: warped as an other group of guys.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's the kind of stuff that you
Speaker 1: don't get on, you know, the later albums that are
Speaker 1: kind of in this sort of you know, the big
Speaker 1: thrash masspe type albums like Imagine if the Blackening the
Speaker 1: bit like like a Dawn Patrol, Like it's the kind
Speaker 1: of it is a thing that has been sort of
Speaker 1: lost a little bit because no one has the oddball
Speaker 1: like you know again or like are they winking or
Speaker 1: like what is just like spitting.
Speaker 2: Down on you. It's just the personality negative have is.
Speaker 1: So it's really encapsulated in like I think that one
Speaker 1: two of that into Resting Piece Polaris, like you were saying, it's.
Speaker 3: So funny because it's like sandwiched in between you know,
Speaker 3: Tornado of Souls and Rust plast But I'm like, I'm like,
Speaker 3: I've looked I should hate on Control.
Speaker 4: I feel like I should look at it as like
Speaker 4: the dud on the album.
Speaker 3: But it is kind of just like this, like it's
Speaker 3: not what I like listen to outside of the basically
Speaker 3: that's thing is like, and that's the thing. That's why
Speaker 3: I'm like, I don't see what the problem with it
Speaker 3: is because it's kind of just like this weirdo intro
Speaker 3: to the album's final track, and it is kind of
Speaker 3: like weird interesting And then you say, you get that
Speaker 3: opening drum film on Piece and you're gonna go like, yeah,
Speaker 3: fuck it, like like yeah, I know.
Speaker 2: That Rust and Piece Plas isn't as unusual musically, like people,
Speaker 2: No one goes out that song's a bit weird, but
Speaker 2: it's a song from the perspective of a nuclear bomb, Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: that is a weird idea, and it would take a
Speaker 2: lot to sell it. And again, Dave Mustain is quite
Speaker 2: the character in his own right where he does not
Speaker 2: need to try and capsulate the character of something else.
Speaker 2: But because Megadeth are so eccentric, and because Dave isn't
Speaker 2: a shrinking Violet, and you know, when they're all on
Speaker 2: cocaine's probably even less for a shrinking violet, it totally
Speaker 2: sells it. And as a way of kind of kind
Speaker 2: of capturing the general theme of the record, it's it's
Speaker 2: the weirdest way they could have done it, and also
Speaker 2: the most suitable for Megadeth at this point in their career.
Speaker 1: I think absolutely got to go back to a song
Speaker 1: I've obviously left till till last. All of these things
Speaker 1: about technicality meeting you know, feel and songwriting chops and
Speaker 1: actually like dynamite use of melody on top of bewilderingly
Speaker 1: tightly packed in arrangements, tornehev Souls quite simply takes the
Speaker 1: piss with how perfect it is and It's kind of
Speaker 1: a one of a kind song, right, almost in all
Speaker 1: the thrashmallow because this is pre black album right, and
Speaker 1: this is not a black album hype song in a
Speaker 1: way that you know, even Megadeth would start adopting that
Speaker 1: kind of mind sight from a manzet from Countain to distinction,
Speaker 1: Tornado of Souls is almost like a I had the
Speaker 1: thought today. It's almost like a view of like, what
Speaker 1: is a hypermlogic perfectly made for radio thrash metal song
Speaker 1: in a pre black album world. It's like a type
Speaker 1: species for an alternate timeline that didn't come to be.
Speaker 1: And even Metallica up to nineteen ninety I don't think
Speaker 1: had a song as melodically slick as Tornado of Souls is,
Speaker 1: like they were doing like one in Sanitarium. These kind
Speaker 1: of like Wagnerian songs, but Tornado of Souls. You know,
Speaker 1: Megadeth be in the band where everyone says the singer
Speaker 1: can't sing, they're the first to absolutely perfect, Well, here's
Speaker 1: just a melodically perfect sing along hit that still in
Speaker 1: a like pre black album world, happens to be a
Speaker 1: windstorm of like you know, tight technical thrash riffs. Also
Speaker 1: and you know, maybe it is because it's basically the
Speaker 1: only song in the world that can scratch the itch
Speaker 1: that I want scratched from Tornado of Souls.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which you.
Speaker 1: Could also in fair to say about Holy Wars or
Speaker 1: Hangar eighteen or whatever, because E's only so unique. But
Speaker 1: this is just one of those like crack songs, just
Speaker 1: absolutely one in a million. How on this album that's
Speaker 1: already like sky high quality the whole way? How did
Speaker 1: they write a song this good? It blows my mind.
Speaker 2: It's the only thing you were saying about it being
Speaker 2: a window into where thrash could have gone in a
Speaker 2: mainstream sense. It's maybe the only song which you could
Speaker 2: sequence in a playlist next to Kickstart My Heart and
Speaker 2: War Ensemble, you know what I mean. It's fired up,
Speaker 2: it's melodic, it's still really aggressive in its playing. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there are so many sick riffs which welcome mosh bits,
Speaker 2: but also these sky high singalongus. I feel like recently
Speaker 2: we've talked quite a lot about those ascension metal songs
Speaker 2: where they don't just define the genre there that you're
Speaker 2: listening to it and you feel like it's some sort
Speaker 2: of ballderline religious as religiously like Master of Puppets, how
Speaker 2: be their name Warpigs. I think this album has two
Speaker 2: in Holy Wars and Tornado of Souls, and this is
Speaker 2: the better of the two. I don't think it's an
Speaker 2: exaggeration to say it's one of the best songs ever
Speaker 2: made in any style.
Speaker 1: No, it's not, because every vocal melody is completely on point,
Speaker 1: even still, you know, charged with this sort of like
Speaker 1: manic nervous energy, like how deranged and shrill Dave is
Speaker 1: still going, but the chorus manages to have some kind
Speaker 1: of like stature and grandeur out of that even while
Speaker 1: he's putting that like high pitch Wayland kind of madness
Speaker 1: into it simultaneously, it's actually convincingly quite emotional. That's a
Speaker 1: song about relationships, bizarrely on this ucking record, but this
Speaker 1: arrangement of it where this is ambitious in structure, but
Speaker 1: everything is also totally in place, Like you want a
Speaker 1: perfect example of just like you know, bring the chorus
Speaker 1: in drum fill. Look what Nick Menzer does for that
Speaker 1: first chorus, what he does for the fucking the break
Speaker 1: section in the middle again the elevation trick. Like keep
Speaker 1: going on about this album of like songs that just
Speaker 1: somehow continuously up the intensity and make it feel kind
Speaker 1: of desperate when they hit that with the kind of
Speaker 1: the land of Uppertoon early that part you were talking
Speaker 1: about earlier? Does that and how do they peak that momentum?
Speaker 1: They've built the greatest solo that certainly Marty Freeman ever
Speaker 1: puts the tape which might be in contention, you know,
Speaker 1: next to Hammett's one in the Thing That Should Not
Speaker 1: Be or whatever whatever personal contender you might want to
Speaker 1: mention for the greatest guitar solo in metal.
Speaker 2: I feel like the Tornado so solo it's end. It's
Speaker 2: not just entered the panel like the great metal solos,
Speaker 2: It's entered that panthon of things like free Bird, where
Speaker 2: it's not a remote exaggeration to say that I can't
Speaker 2: think of maybe I'm sort of like one by Metallica
Speaker 2: or something like oh the Painkiller solo even then not
Speaker 2: really where it's ascended its genre and entered that thing
Speaker 2: of these are just the great guitar solos, do you
Speaker 2: know what I mean? I still I still find this
Speaker 2: bit jaw dropping on a on a record which is
Speaker 2: sequenced in such a way where it feels you're doing
Speaker 2: that continuously. This might be the like your your floating
Speaker 2: moment on the record.
Speaker 1: It's just complete, like other worldly god mode. It feels
Speaker 1: about a minute long, but every single like note in
Speaker 1: it and every direction it goes in is exactly the
Speaker 1: right one to make it effortlessly catchy and singable despite
Speaker 1: how complicated it is.
Speaker 2: Like I'm like, for any any fucking.
Speaker 1: Legendary guitarist you want to mention, I don't care. They've
Speaker 1: probably never had an individual moment of brilliance as good
Speaker 1: as that, Like Marty Freeman has earned complimentary boxes of
Speaker 1: Captain Crunch for life because of that fucking thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, pretty good, No, I mean.
Speaker 3: The one so is what it kind of reminds me
Speaker 3: is where it's kind of all built that moment where
Speaker 3: it does all of one like erupts on that solo.
Speaker 3: In particular, the soul feels that similar kind of like
Speaker 3: you truly ascended to the highest peak and you're kind
Speaker 3: of now just like you are blasting off into a
Speaker 3: galaxy that no one has ever been to before. I mean,
Speaker 3: like about the song is like before, it's like chunkier
Speaker 3: and meaner then, like someone associate with Megan, I was
Speaker 3: kind of think of like they're quite wiry and techy.
Speaker 4: This song is like big and it has got that
Speaker 4: kind of like.
Speaker 3: Hic capacity to it, which is when you get this
Speaker 3: like insane kind of like technical guitar sollow as the
Speaker 3: kind of the payoff rather than like a big single
Speaker 3: bit which again it's got a really good chorus and
Speaker 3: that post chorus bit with the whole like who's to say,
Speaker 3: what's for me to say?
Speaker 4: Like all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 3: It's huge, but it is that that that again and
Speaker 3: then ausly that feels like that should be the payoff moment,
Speaker 3: but it is. It's just that fucking solo like just
Speaker 3: being the best of its kind.
Speaker 2: And it's it's it's maybe the best. I think it's
Speaker 2: it's up there with the best, regardless of how you
Speaker 2: measure what makes a great solo, because there's that sort
Speaker 2: of post Nirvana thing where people seem to say they
Speaker 2: don't like solo or one thing that bothers me. People
Speaker 2: say things like I like a tarso is when they
Speaker 2: serve the song as if other people go like, no,
Speaker 2: I like it when it doesn't serve the song as
Speaker 2: I like it. But that's just me Like this solo
Speaker 2: it it does serve the song obviously, like the song
Speaker 2: is so much better for it, but also technically it
Speaker 2: is just so much fun to listen to. It's dazzling,
Speaker 2: and I think that's I don't want to say lost
Speaker 2: art for them because obviously people there's there's a lot
Speaker 2: of shredding, and there's that sort of there's like the
Speaker 2: gent wave of the shred arsen, which is a different
Speaker 2: kind of thing, but there is something to be said
Speaker 2: about listening to a guitar song and going, I don't
Speaker 2: know how they're doing that, Like how is he making
Speaker 2: that noise? And if you can, you know, meet those
Speaker 2: two worlds where it's dazzling to listen to while also
Speaker 2: being melodically satisfying, you're on to winner and this is
Speaker 2: one of the best, Like however where you slice it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I still don't know if the solo in
Speaker 1: the song is just as good and jaw dropping again
Speaker 1: as the arrangement of the riffs around it, because the
Speaker 1: evolution of the rhythms, the different kind of levels of
Speaker 1: intensity with the drums, the bit arthursilo when he just
Speaker 1: starts doing the like just filling in every single bit
Speaker 1: of space with bas and snare hits, the one riff
Speaker 1: after that before the final speed ramp verse.
Speaker 4: But it is.
Speaker 2: What the fuck is that?
Speaker 1: It's like extreme of consciousness, every single brilliant idea they
Speaker 1: had somehow locked into like a perfect skeleton of a
Speaker 1: melodic metal banger. It's another plane of brilliance that song,
Speaker 1: and then again after that you've still got you know,
Speaker 1: rusting peace polarises. I spread as these like a dog
Speaker 1: discharge my payload, which is an incredible like Freudian death
Speaker 1: lust kind of innuendo as well from the perspective of
Speaker 1: a nuclear warhead. I don't know if you know thrash
Speaker 1: or speed metal has ever been kind of more spitefully
Speaker 1: mockingly joyful than this, Like Megadeth are fun in a
Speaker 1: way that you know Metallica or Slayer aren't, or you know,
Speaker 1: Anthrax are fun in a kind of like dorkier, you know,
Speaker 1: cargo short sort of way. Megadeth are sadistically playful, and
Speaker 1: they are like blackly laughing all the way to the
Speaker 1: end of humanity. And those crazy like spider fingered speed rifts,
Speaker 1: they're fucking fun to listen to, Like they're a hoop,
Speaker 1: but they're also cruel and like coughing up a lung
Speaker 1: full of black smokers.
Speaker 2: They go through it.
Speaker 1: And this record just how staggeringly meticulously composed it is,
Speaker 1: and how state of the eye is where every song
Speaker 1: is a juggernall, but it's never like too sanded down
Speaker 1: or like too serious to kind of stop that like
Speaker 1: grinning black soul glinting its teeth back at you think
Speaker 1: that Megaeth have, Like this is a record that just
Speaker 1: never for an instant stopped exciting me since I was
Speaker 1: thirteen years old.
Speaker 2: Yeah, even if you don't like this band, I find
Speaker 2: it hard to believe that if you like mel you
Speaker 2: could listen to this and not recognize it as a masterpiece.
Speaker 2: It's one of those in the things that master's raining
Speaker 2: but master puppets. As great as it is, I don't
Speaker 2: listen to it all that often these days, Like I
Speaker 2: might go back very marvel at it, but it's not
Speaker 2: something that I find myself getting all that addicted to
Speaker 2: rusting pieces. I've listened to it so much this week,
Speaker 2: even though I didn't need to. I could have sat
Speaker 2: down and done my notes without listening to a second
Speaker 2: of it. And I've listened to it four or five times.
Speaker 2: I think there is that thing that separates the classic
Speaker 2: records where something like Dark Side of the Moon right
Speaker 2: is incredible, but I don't listen to it all that often,
Speaker 2: but something like Rumors I will put on very frequent
Speaker 2: because it's just it's a joy to listen to. On
Speaker 2: the metal end of things, this album still scratches that
Speaker 2: itch and still g's me up in the way they
Speaker 2: did when I was, you know, eight nine ten, like
Speaker 2: discovering metal for the first time, this being one of
Speaker 2: the first metal records I discovered it that that sort
Speaker 2: of mad thrill hasn't dulled an iota. And like I said,
Speaker 2: I've listened to it hundreds of times, and I still
Speaker 2: find myself going back and getting excited by the same
Speaker 2: moments again and again and again. I mean, there's just
Speaker 2: there's one some of that just has an aw to
Speaker 2: it that that makes it feel like unique and like
Speaker 2: that only MegaDEF at this moment in time, with this
Speaker 2: lineup could could create like Slayer. In fact, none of the
Speaker 2: other big bour bands could actually do what MegaDEF have
Speaker 2: done here and again, like one of you've gotta take
Speaker 2: Big Day for who he is like, you're gonna just
Speaker 2: take him what he is as a vocalist and if
Speaker 2: you can a vocalist limits all that. And when you
Speaker 2: do that, like all the comers have, man, they do
Speaker 2: kind of like for the forty odd minutes this amazon,
Speaker 2: all of my problems with Dave Mustain and MegaDEF and
Speaker 2: all that they do just completely disappear.
Speaker 3: And I'm kind of in fraued by the manager just
Speaker 3: run through that final like riff right near the end
Speaker 3: of the recipes. Plus like we're like you're saying, like
Speaker 3: a riff is good dying moments of your record, and
Speaker 3: you're kind of going, yeah, we could have.
Speaker 2: Gone through this entire chat without mentioning that riff.
Speaker 3: I wanted to make sure that I was like, how
Speaker 3: I need to mention that it was what a fucking
Speaker 3: flex Like it's so sick and again like like that's it.
Speaker 3: It's just like the aura to this album. Again, I
Speaker 3: don't listen to this album nearly as much as you two,
Speaker 3: just like because how I'm listening going, but I'm like,
Speaker 3: maybe maybe I have been wrong in my ways for
Speaker 3: like and again it's every time I had planets and
Speaker 3: and go like yeah.
Speaker 4: You're wrong, Sam, and then I'll I'm like Megan Foo
Speaker 4: and I'm like, no, Sam, you're wrong.
Speaker 3: We're actually really fucking good at one point in time,
Speaker 3: and this album is just the proof that, like, yeah,
Speaker 3: like fucking classic in it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's worth pointing out that, aside from maybe the
Speaker 1: anarchy in the UK cover, which I still sort of
Speaker 1: like in a kitch sort of way, I don't think
Speaker 1: they really put her foot wrong for the first like
Speaker 1: fifteen years of their career, and then they've still got fucking,
Speaker 1: you know, banger after banger coming through in those sort
Speaker 1: of you know, two thousands, or we get to cryptic writings,
Speaker 1: you got fucking trust and she will, like you know,
Speaker 1: Meganeth isolated both which a brilliance is not isolated.
Speaker 2: Megadeth were brilliant.
Speaker 1: This is the peak of that brilliant it is it
Speaker 1: speaks for itself kind of how much of a touchstone
Speaker 1: for just kind of like technical aggressive metal music that
Speaker 1: is going forward. It's kind of redundant to say so.
Speaker 1: I'm almost more drawn to how one of the kind
Speaker 1: it is, like it is the artistic peak of this
Speaker 1: kind of like intensely million notes a minute thrash metal
Speaker 1: right before the Black Album changed the court of that
Speaker 1: genre forever.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: It's the only album like this that this classic lineup
Speaker 1: of Megadeth actually makes. You've got forty minutes of it
Speaker 1: and that's it. But we're still fucking talking about it
Speaker 1: because thirty five years on, we clearly cannot get enough
Speaker 1: of those forty minutes. So there is an hour on
Speaker 1: Rusting Piece, one of the fucking sickest things anyone's ever made.
Speaker 1: It was about time we gave it that hour.
Speaker 2: Let's move on.
Speaker 1: We've got three more album clubs to go, and speaking
Speaker 1: of intense hours, Killing Jokes two thousand and three, self titled,
Speaker 1: is where we go next. They're one of those funny
Speaker 1: bands with two self titled records. Their first their nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty debut album, also you know, absolute classic, probably their
Speaker 1: most I don't know, icon acclaimed record. This one, then,
Speaker 1: is often known as Killing Joke two thousand and three,
Speaker 1: and obviously with those dates, we're going like more than
Speaker 1: two decades into the career of Killing Joke here. It's
Speaker 1: a band who dominated their field for forty years. Basically,
Speaker 1: let's touch based on Killing Joke a little bit first,
Speaker 1: because there are I think there's basically two groups of
Speaker 1: people out there in relation to them. There are those
Speaker 1: who maybe find them and their large catalog and their
Speaker 1: legacy or whatever quite daunting to get into, you know,
Speaker 1: like where do you start. I think, despite them being
Speaker 1: like one of the most iconic and influential bands of
Speaker 1: all time, we're still talking about almost something of a
Speaker 1: cult band, where like a lot of listeners might not
Speaker 1: really have actually yet had their full Killing Jock expirits.
Speaker 1: And then there are those who you know rightly hold
Speaker 1: them to be simply one of the standard bearers of
Speaker 1: everything it means to be a band.
Speaker 2: Elliott's. We've never spoken by Killing Joke before in this capacity,
Speaker 2: but the.
Speaker 1: Circles where we generally kind of you know, crossover, Killing
Speaker 1: Joke are like a practically biblical event of a band.
Speaker 1: And you know, you're reaction to me whipping this album
Speaker 1: at a couple of weeks ago told me everything that
Speaker 1: I need to know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it took me a long time to
Speaker 2: get into Killing Joke, like probably the best part of
Speaker 2: a decade before I really started to appreciate them. And
Speaker 2: it's like you say, when I started getting into extreme
Speaker 2: and experimental music, they were one of those bands, which
Speaker 2: it was endlessly referenced. Every cool band loves Killing Joke,
Speaker 2: whether it's Faith No More or Napalm Death or Swans
Speaker 2: or whoever, like, they all point to Killing Joke as
Speaker 2: like the thing that put them on their path, and
Speaker 2: they would talk I was like the heaviest, nastiest, most
Speaker 2: oppressive sound ever made. And I went and listened to
Speaker 2: the debut, and this is when I was listening to
Speaker 2: things like worm Rot and like I don't know, you know,
Speaker 2: like total fucking destruction stuff like that. And I didn't
Speaker 2: understand at the time because it wasn't there were no
Speaker 2: there wasn't harsh vocals, there wasn't blast beats, there were
Speaker 2: fairly linear song structures by comparison. I kind of didn't
Speaker 2: understand what it was I was meant to find so
Speaker 2: frightening and oppressive about Killing Joke. And it was only
Speaker 2: years later that I went back and I was just
Speaker 2: staggered by how stark and nasty and frightening that first
Speaker 2: record still sounds. But I'm glad this is the one
Speaker 2: we're doing, because this is the album that when I
Speaker 2: started going through the records, fella, the one that fulfilled
Speaker 2: the promise that had been made to me in the
Speaker 2: first place about what a nasty, horrific, loud, punishing band
Speaker 2: they were. This album, I think more than any others,
Speaker 2: including that at first self titled is the is the
Speaker 2: sound that was set up for me?
Speaker 1: Yeah, funny because you say that about you know, they're
Speaker 1: being terrifying and apocalyptic and one of the things what
Speaker 1: they are, and we're going to say that a lot
Speaker 1: through this. I also won of the great things about
Speaker 1: Killing Joke is that that's just one side.
Speaker 2: Of their personality.
Speaker 1: Essentially, they are broader than that and they cover more
Speaker 1: than that. And I got into Killing Joke it was like, basically,
Speaker 1: you know, I heard you know, Metallica's cover of The Weight,
Speaker 1: and I went and heard that first record, and almost
Speaker 1: at the exact same time, the Absolute Descent album came out,
Speaker 1: which is fucking incredible, one of the best, one of
Speaker 1: my favorites, and I had these two records are thirty
Speaker 1: years apart, and I was like, these obviously thirty year
Speaker 1: a part, they sound different, but they're both amazing. What
Speaker 1: the fuck this band are the best? And then you know,
Speaker 1: from there on I just had to go and find
Speaker 1: everything else. Sam how many Killing Your albums?
Speaker 2: Have you heard?
Speaker 3: So The first Killing Jack album I heard was Absolute
Speaker 3: Descent in twenty ten because I was like getting into like, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, I was coming into my music and it
Speaker 3: was kind of like, oh, Killing Joke back after like
Speaker 3: what four years of a new album, and so I
Speaker 3: checked out because some people are about it, hated it,
Speaker 3: completely bounced off you've been in life, like, we'll get
Speaker 3: into it. Remember me in two thousand and show like
Speaker 3: plant yourself into a person who's listening to metalcore and
Speaker 3: Michael Romance. Of course I'm going to bounce off Absolute
Speaker 3: Descend by.
Speaker 4: Killing Joke eventually, like and then I kind of like
Speaker 4: a couple years, I was like I quite a dull.
Speaker 3: Quite recently, I kind of just like came and went
Speaker 3: mi distance, like Killing Joe's kind of like I heard
Speaker 3: like bits fit, you know, and I was like, okay, cool,
Speaker 3: there there is more, There's something there's and but there
Speaker 3: was just so much I know where's going. I've kind
Speaker 3: of checked in some of like the more the eighties stuff,
Speaker 3: like the really poppy stuff in the eighties, and I'm
Speaker 3: like all in on that now obviously, like nighttime, I
Speaker 3: fucking I think the album is like, yeah, ten out
Speaker 3: of ten, like, and I've kind of like, well, like
Speaker 3: I will work my way through the different eras of
Speaker 3: Killing Joke over time, because again, they've got what like
Speaker 3: nearly twenty odd albums, so I don't come in the
Speaker 3: exact amount. It's a lot of albums to get through,
Speaker 3: but like, I love that kind of shimmering eighties gothic
Speaker 3: dark post punk stuff that that's fucking amazing, and I've
Speaker 3: come back around on absolute descent, like that album is
Speaker 3: very good. I'd not listened to Killing Joke two thousand
Speaker 3: and three, so this was kind of was like, okay,
Speaker 3: so what like you know, this was something like what
Speaker 3: eight years or so something like that between albums, and
Speaker 3: it like yeah, between the one before, so I know
Speaker 3: there was like a big gap, and this is kind
Speaker 3: of like a real turning point in their sort of sound.
Speaker 3: So I was kind of curious to how that all
Speaker 3: lines up, and their headplan was like fucking hell, this
Speaker 3: album like all that apocalyptic, most heavy, most nightmarish dark
Speaker 3: bands and things. Again, this is where I find you
Speaker 3: just so confusing, because like they are that they aren't
Speaker 3: that depending on where.
Speaker 4: You dip in with them.
Speaker 3: But this is I feel like this almost must be
Speaker 3: like the embodiment of that side of killing jokes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you're killing joke, as said, were all the
Speaker 1: roosts for more than forty fucking years. You know, they
Speaker 1: are the band who, you know, in the last kind
Speaker 1: of year or two since Jordie Walker died, and you know,
Speaker 1: they've not like made a statement that they're going to
Speaker 1: retire or anything like that. But we think we just
Speaker 1: all just sort of like, you know, assume it to
Speaker 1: some degree that that's kind of it, or at least
Speaker 1: the end of something. And I find myself just going,
Speaker 1: oh God, I can't believe we live in a world
Speaker 1: without killing joke in it now, Like that this band
Speaker 1: who have so many you know, kind of classic albums
Speaker 1: and album club cans in them from all different decades,
Speaker 1: this could be one of many killing joke album clubs.
Speaker 1: You know. I was close to throwing absolute descent because
Speaker 1: I've a real soft spot personally for that one. But
Speaker 1: I think at the moment, there's just something about this
Speaker 1: two thousand and three self Tattled album that just keeps
Speaker 1: kind of chiming and feeling like it's the right one
Speaker 1: to do and that's something is anger, because Killing Joke
Speaker 1: are many things. More often than not, they're heavy, sometimes
Speaker 1: they're you know, again much more pretty. But I don't
Speaker 1: know if they've ever felt like they were powered by
Speaker 1: pure seething anger more than on this record. And it's
Speaker 1: not even quite really representative to call Killing Joke a
Speaker 1: like socially or politically conscious band, because like that they are.
Speaker 1: But it's again, it's larger than that. Everything they do
Speaker 1: is somehow larger than the base thing you would call it.
Speaker 1: There is so much intellectually involved with the kind of
Speaker 1: the content of Killing Joke music and where it comes
Speaker 1: from that is like probably beyond me. Like, I don't
Speaker 1: know if there's anyone in rock music who I would
Speaker 1: like to interview less solely on the grounds that I
Speaker 1: am too stupid for the job than jazz Coleman, like
Speaker 1: I would just swallowed up by the ground immediately, or
Speaker 1: he's just mental. That's a probable factor as well. But
Speaker 1: you know, there are points where the kind of social
Speaker 1: malays surrounding a particular record of theirs just becomes like
Speaker 1: so tangible and impossible not to pick up on in
Speaker 1: comparison to maybe some of the other ones which are
Speaker 1: a little bit more kind of obfuscated the debut obviously
Speaker 1: the general kind of like thatcher right sort of industrial
Speaker 1: decay that marks a lot of like eighties punk and
Speaker 1: post punk. But I don't think there's a record in
Speaker 1: their catalog really where you can go well, that one
Speaker 1: clearly came out when that was happening more than this one,
Speaker 1: and it's proximity to the outbreak of the Iraq War,
Speaker 1: and there's again there's likely a whole a whole lot
Speaker 1: more kind of going on within it. But you know,
Speaker 1: this is an album directly about US imperialism and kind
Speaker 1: of Western you know, money and power grabs and unjust warfare.
Speaker 1: That's that's what it is. That's what it still is
Speaker 1: and what it speaks to now. And it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: Killing Druck are always kind of speaking about this stuff.
Speaker 1: It's always there in the fabric of what they do,
Speaker 1: but it's like this point, it just it bursts open
Speaker 1: so into plain sight, and there's almost like the Cold
Speaker 1: War that they're always talking about has in this moment
Speaker 1: kind of become a bit.
Speaker 2: Of a hot one.
Speaker 1: And this record is just so direct and so plain
Speaker 1: in its intentions that I think you know, one of
Speaker 1: the albums that would maybe most violently grab a new
Speaker 1: listener by the throat in the way you're kind of
Speaker 1: you know, almost like a rat against Machine or a
Speaker 1: Dead Kennedy's album or anything like that kind of would
Speaker 1: in their own particularly suffocating kind of way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think you can hit play on this album,
Speaker 3: not kind of just like pay attention to every single
Speaker 3: kind of second. But this is again like right, the anger,
Speaker 3: the sort of social political kind of like feeling of
Speaker 3: this album, and like this, you could not have this
Speaker 3: album like what's wise. I think like this ALM is
Speaker 3: so timely now as well, but it feels like it
Speaker 3: had to come out in two thousand and three. It
Speaker 3: had to, you know, at that time, in the wake
Speaker 3: of those like political events and what was going on.
Speaker 3: They had to kind of just like let this kind
Speaker 3: of like sledge hammer, no subtlety, kind of just like
Speaker 3: blunt delivery of this like militant apocalyptic kind of like
Speaker 3: industrial Like I don't know what you call the so
Speaker 3: on this album because.
Speaker 4: It kind of again covers so much.
Speaker 3: But yeah, no, absolutely, but again, this is one like
Speaker 3: the sort of the rhythms and the sort of the
Speaker 3: beats and the regimented to nature of it is it's
Speaker 3: so militant in it sound, and that is not a
Speaker 3: kind of like coincidence, is it is conjuring that, like
Speaker 3: just on the pure.
Speaker 4: Soide that don't.
Speaker 3: Like marching beats constantly across the whole whole album, And
Speaker 3: then you get into the lyrics and the themes, it's
Speaker 3: all just their front and center. And again you're right, like,
Speaker 3: I think like this album as the first it is
Speaker 3: given what is going with in the world right now,
Speaker 3: I hear a planent is gonna like fuck me, this
Speaker 3: is you know, there's a reason we're talking about.
Speaker 4: This album right now.
Speaker 3: I think it does land really like evocatively at that
Speaker 3: at this point.
Speaker 2: I think it's one of the perfectly pitched politically minded
Speaker 2: rock records maybe ever, because it's such a hard thing
Speaker 2: to get right. I think where if you make it
Speaker 2: too like pointed and specific, it could become kind of
Speaker 2: dated or feel sort of it can feel kind of
Speaker 2: cheap doing things like that, And if you make it
Speaker 2: too broad and vague, it doesn't really land like you
Speaker 2: might talk on a larger subject that lasts longer, but
Speaker 2: in the moment, it doesn't feel all that vital or
Speaker 2: sort of direct enough to again to sort of evoke
Speaker 2: anything in you. What's so genius about this record is
Speaker 2: we all know what it's about, but it doesn't have
Speaker 2: to go George Bush is a wanka. Like it's not
Speaker 2: like rock against Bush.
Speaker 3: It's not that sort of like those punk bands do that,
Speaker 3: but this is way more just kind of like it
Speaker 3: cuts into the point like so powerfully.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not profits of Rage doing unfucked the world,
Speaker 2: you know. I mean, it's not like John Oliver rock
Speaker 2: where it just feels sort of like limp and rubbish.
Speaker 2: It's so cutting and so vicious, while still kind of
Speaker 2: managing to occasionally be abstract and talk about larger things
Speaker 2: like I'm sure we'll get to it, like Death and
Speaker 2: Resurrection show as the opening track without ever being too
Speaker 2: explicit about what it's about. There's no question what it's
Speaker 2: dealing with, and I think that is the genius of
Speaker 2: the record and the thing that marks them out from
Speaker 2: other bands, especially of this time, trying to tackle that
Speaker 2: same subject.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's like they've been kind of sort of
Speaker 1: galvanized into action on it because there hadn't been a
Speaker 1: Killing Jack album as you were saying, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think it's seven years and then you know, they have
Speaker 1: had these like little periods occasionally where the band I
Speaker 1: guess technically still exists, but they go in through these
Speaker 1: little creative slumbers. And the last album Democracy in ninety six.
Speaker 1: A lot of bands, you know, flirted with industrial and
Speaker 1: the nineties. At Pandemonium they had like kind of one
Speaker 1: of their stronger albums of that period, and then Democracy
Speaker 1: after that. I don't think Killing Joke really have bad albums,
Speaker 1: but that is one of the ones that's much less
Speaker 1: kind of mentioned, and I think the band themselves weren't the.
Speaker 2: Most happy with it.
Speaker 1: Suddenly two thousand and three they just come back spitting
Speaker 1: blood and it's not an industrial rock record in the
Speaker 1: way that like Pandemonium is. Instead, I think this is
Speaker 1: maybe one of the best examples of just how Killing
Speaker 1: Joke themselves the band play just with a like crushing
Speaker 1: discipline that is basically like it's a trick unto themselves
Speaker 1: that we then compare any other bands doing it to them.
Speaker 1: You know, there is an extra component on this, which
Speaker 1: is Dave roll on drums, because Killing Joke did not
Speaker 1: have a full time drummer upon this particular return. Apparently
Speaker 1: there was a plan and actually they were gonna have
Speaker 1: three different drummers, Dave Grol, John Dormien and Danny Carey
Speaker 1: all record the record, but Dave Groll like wanted in
Speaker 1: on the whole thing. The legend that I have heard
Speaker 1: passed around it it was basically a way of paying
Speaker 1: a debt for a Nirvana nicking the riff from eighties
Speaker 1: for Come as You Are, which is so he recorded
Speaker 1: the album without a fee. I'm sure that that's a simplification,
Speaker 1: but it's a nice piece of folklon under less that
Speaker 1: I would like to to parrots.
Speaker 2: I think this might be not only one of.
Speaker 1: The best albums that Dave Girl's ever played on every
Speaker 1: single band that he's been in, you can throw this
Speaker 1: against it, but almost about as large a proving ground
Speaker 1: as a drummer he could have, because here he comes
Speaker 1: into this already legendary band and you've got to match
Speaker 1: Jordie Walker's riffs as the primal engine in killing Joke.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he does an amazing job where you know
Speaker 2: he's there. You listen to this record and you can
Speaker 2: hear that it's Dave Roll. But this album doesn't just
Speaker 2: fall on the It's the one where you can hear
Speaker 2: Dave Grohl playing the way that some other albums by
Speaker 2: other bands when he comes and features do. And I think,
Speaker 2: I don't know if that's the credit to him for
Speaker 2: slotting in so brilliantly, or if it's just the nature
Speaker 2: of Killing Joke as a band where it's almost like
Speaker 2: a sort of sickness or a parasite that infects anything
Speaker 2: that comes in concept with it. Because Jordie Walker is
Speaker 2: one of the most frightening rift writers and effortlessly frightening
Speaker 2: rift writers ever that even someone who plays drums like
Speaker 2: Dave Grohl kind of sounds like not too intimidating in
Speaker 2: his presence. Yeah, he has to match it.
Speaker 3: Those riffs can like beat Dave Goldin' submission almost whilst
Speaker 3: he's still sounding like as like pulverizing on the drums.
Speaker 4: Is it is that listen to the drumk It's like
Speaker 4: fucking hell.
Speaker 3: That is like again like the whole you know we
Speaker 3: talked about few times, the loud versus heavy sort of thing.
Speaker 4: This album is fucking heavy, Like everything about it.
Speaker 3: Is just again like everyone not playing like sonically heavy,
Speaker 3: like there was just this constant air of menace that
Speaker 3: hangs over this. And so when you get those moments
Speaker 3: where like you've had this kind of like opening section
Speaker 3: of like the defferenstation, that you've had that main sort of.
Speaker 4: Riffman and that's from like changing vocal that kind of.
Speaker 3: Throning along, and then when you get that, listen to
Speaker 3: the drums and Dave God comes in with that. It's
Speaker 3: fucking scary. The first time I heard I was like,
Speaker 3: Jesus fucking cries. Okay, this is the album settling in for?
Speaker 4: Is it? Let's fucking go? Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know when people talking about fucking you know, not
Speaker 1: loose doing the reggaetor and breakdown and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: it's like, this is what anyone hoping to. You know,
Speaker 1: you kind of have to match this, you know, more
Speaker 1: than six and a half minutes practically seven grinding you
Speaker 1: into fucking paste. Like the Death and Resurrection show is
Speaker 1: kind of like an endurance test, but it's also the
Speaker 1: exact evidence of what Killing Joke do that no band
Speaker 1: ever can really match them on, which is that like
Speaker 1: taking of a rhythm and making you fucking delirious with it,
Speaker 1: just like how thick they lay it on how mercilessly
Speaker 1: unrelenting it will be, like I'm kind of demented by
Speaker 1: about two minutes into the Death and Resurrection show and it's.
Speaker 2: Still thought to go.
Speaker 1: You know, and the scale of sound in Killing Joke
Speaker 1: when they just decide to go like, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: gonna be a heavy one strap in and they basically
Speaker 1: got this whole record is kind of unbelievable because, you know, drums,
Speaker 1: we've got the heaviest performance that Dave roll Ever lays
Speaker 1: down to tape just because he kind of has to.
Speaker 2: Cause he's in Killing Joke.
Speaker 1: Now. Guitars from the opening seconds, the tone is legitimately terrifying.
Speaker 1: Those riffs that you know, Jordie Walker may kind of
Speaker 1: reinventing heaviness into this like pounding overwhelming minimalism. You know
Speaker 1: that then is going to be godflesh and swans and
Speaker 1: all these other things like here two decades of experience
Speaker 1: and evolution. The guitar tone that he gets, particularly in
Speaker 1: the twenty first century, I find is some of the
Speaker 1: craziest guitar towns like ever achieved. And then Jazz Coleman,
Speaker 1: who spends much of that first song in this sort
Speaker 1: of like chiming, robotic dandarn dann and then when he
Speaker 1: turns it on I I it's a feat of human evolution.
Speaker 1: How he does that voice. I don't know how he
Speaker 1: does it, Like when he goes ah like it's properly.
Speaker 1: It's like when you see your fucking silverback gorilla beating
Speaker 1: its chef or something and you go, well, that's something
Speaker 1: that a human can't do, except he does it.
Speaker 2: It's nuts.
Speaker 3: It's one of the like and I mean this is
Speaker 3: in the most commonly possibly one of the most ugliest extreme.
Speaker 4: It's like like some harsh vocals a person can ever
Speaker 4: do it.
Speaker 3: Like again, it's so joke because you've had that bird
Speaker 3: bird b bradleep and that there's that just kind of
Speaker 3: hitting you.
Speaker 4: And then when that oh is that where he just
Speaker 4: starts screaming that, it's like fucking what is that noise?
Speaker 3: That is like like genuinely inhuman and just like like
Speaker 3: it sounds like he's hurting himself doing it, Like, I
Speaker 3: don't know how a person can do that savely, because
Speaker 3: again it's that thing where you talk about like there's
Speaker 3: no like rehearsed scream and he's just this primal like
Speaker 3: throaty again, it just adds like it's just one more
Speaker 3: layer to make.
Speaker 4: This song as oppressively heavy as possible.
Speaker 2: When he hits the fucking oh beloved Woman of Liberty
Speaker 2: in your ah.
Speaker 5: And the note just goes like at full yell over
Speaker 5: like the whole next bit it's and it just sticks
Speaker 5: on that whole rhythm the same way basically, but it
Speaker 5: just it feels like it's like, you know when I
Speaker 5: don't know if you remember, the Napalm Death did this
Speaker 5: thing several years ago where they played a show where
Speaker 5: they like it was in like an art exhibition and
Speaker 5: they had to like loosen bricks by playing and like
Speaker 5: just through sound waves, That's what it sounds like this
Speaker 5: song is doing just through jazz Coleman's voice.
Speaker 2: It's christ I've loved this song for years, but this
Speaker 2: song entered a higher echelon for me when we saw
Speaker 2: them a Bloodstock a couple of years ago, and it
Speaker 2: was that I think it was saying that maybe the
Speaker 2: hottest day at a festival in British history. It was
Speaker 2: like forty degrees no shade that it was on and
Speaker 2: then killing joke. Come on and you listen to this
Speaker 2: deafening volume and dead and dead, and we'd be dying.
Speaker 2: You'd be like, you feel like it's the end of
Speaker 2: the world. I kill me now, please. But then and
Speaker 2: you're right, it's that hypnostic And I remember, like Jordi Walkman,
Speaker 2: Jordie was just watching him play guitar and looking at
Speaker 2: his right hand and going, how is he making that
Speaker 2: much noise when he's playing with like the laxa daisical
Speaker 2: like effortless quality. He's not hacking away at the strings,
Speaker 2: I mean the way like Billy jar Armstrong does. He's
Speaker 2: playing it like it's like Creden's clear Water Revival, and
Speaker 2: it's making that noise. And then going back to this
Speaker 2: and just listening to something going this the sound, the
Speaker 2: terror of it. This isn't just impressive for any band.
Speaker 2: It's impressive like these guys are in their forties, maybe
Speaker 2: even early fifties at this point, and they're making music
Speaker 2: that sounds like this. It going back to it for
Speaker 2: this it really made me think of when we did
Speaker 2: the Artist in Chain special. We were saying, imagine here
Speaker 2: and check my brain. As at the first outs and
Speaker 2: Chain song back, you get into killing joke and you
Speaker 2: already know that they can be one of the heaviest
Speaker 2: bands in the world. And then the first song on
Speaker 2: their new record is one of the heavier songs they
Speaker 2: would ever put down. It's it's the sort of stuff
Speaker 2: that like underground circles, it's just the stuff of legend.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then there's the mocking, whispered imperialist demon.
Speaker 2: Voice that he does on this album as well.
Speaker 1: I barely have words to describe what Jazz Colman does
Speaker 1: on that verse in total Invasion, like making every word
Speaker 1: hiss and snarl in all of the wrongest places, like
Speaker 1: he has just become this kind of morally bankrupt oil baron.
Speaker 2: I'll start a war on that song, you know.
Speaker 1: And he has this incredible knack for saying things that
Speaker 1: kind of paint the perspective that we generally see things from,
Speaker 1: you know, that being the kind of you know, the
Speaker 1: Western you know, British American kind of global view of
Speaker 1: the world in the seediest sort of way that like
Speaker 1: cut through any kind of preconceived notions. But he's like,
Speaker 1: you know, we'll close your women in the Western way.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, it makes its skin kind of cruel.
Speaker 1: And then when you get to the chorus, which is
Speaker 1: essentially just a massive declaration of war.
Speaker 2: Right is totally evaded done.
Speaker 1: It just feels like you are kind of past some
Speaker 1: point of no return. Are just masses of you know,
Speaker 1: forms around you, swamping the world. He sounds about like
Speaker 1: fifty foot tall, like an iron god stamping his feet
Speaker 1: across civilization. And it's moments like that where again I've
Speaker 1: rarely been more like legitimately petrified by a vocalist live
Speaker 1: than seeing killing Joke do stuff like that or loose
Speaker 1: cannon as well, which that like mania in the reputation.
Speaker 1: I believe that he has somehow, just in that moment,
Speaker 1: become possessed by the spirit of whatever, like evil military
Speaker 1: official with his finger on the button he's inhabiting in
Speaker 1: that song when he goes bang, he might as well
Speaker 1: like that that's an actual act of violence, you know,
Speaker 1: like that's been like thrust upon me when he shoots
Speaker 1: me with his words like that.
Speaker 3: I mean again, even with the killin joke I listened
Speaker 3: to before this, I like you always jazz common. He's
Speaker 3: an eccentric kind of like out there character as a vocalist.
Speaker 3: So when I when this song came in and that
Speaker 3: that like Gollumn by way of like oh and sort
Speaker 3: of vocals, like it's something with like BEAUNI people players
Speaker 3: like Mike Patten and like how he can do a
Speaker 3: thousand voices and all that sort of thing. It's that
Speaker 3: kind of quality of like, oh, this guy can just
Speaker 3: do fucking anything, Like like the My Painter is like
Speaker 3: there's the darkness where Mike Patten's doing a kind of
Speaker 3: like huss like whispered good voice, and it's that kind
Speaker 3: of something. It's like, oh, he is transformed. He is
Speaker 3: like so convincing in Pain's character. And then again you
Speaker 3: get that chuse, which is like a rallying cry, but
Speaker 3: it's like a horrifying kind of like I don't want
Speaker 3: to be kind of rallied behind this cause.
Speaker 4: Because it's pure like corporate greed and corruption and evil.
Speaker 3: It's so like hard as nails that will change your
Speaker 3: God to the bitch Goddess is one of the most
Speaker 3: like fucking hardest nails lines, and the way he delivers
Speaker 3: it is just so horrible and nasty and like and
Speaker 3: again it's like that we want you all, we want
Speaker 3: your land all of the other sort of like the messing.
Speaker 3: This song is kind of like as in your faces
Speaker 3: you want to get as to what was going on
Speaker 3: with the war in Iraq and like what it was
Speaker 3: all about, and it's kind of just putting it all
Speaker 3: there in the kind of like most horror movie kind
Speaker 3: of like warped contward version of it, and it is
Speaker 3: like terrifyingly captivating.
Speaker 2: I think that the whole opening run of this, that
Speaker 2: this record is just exposes the difference of music that
Speaker 2: plays at sounded angry and music that sounds legitimately angry.
Speaker 2: And I think what's so cool about killing Job, particularly
Speaker 2: on this record, is by inhabiting characters and taking these
Speaker 2: sort of someone like dissociated narrator positions where it's it's
Speaker 2: not necessarily it's not as direct as saying that this
Speaker 2: is just what I think he's like, like say, in
Speaker 2: the case of total invasion, He's encapsulating that whole worldview
Speaker 2: and the horror that comes along with it, and you
Speaker 2: can just tell that the anger is bleeding through. It
Speaker 2: comes through the mix without him having to say, oh,
Speaker 2: this is bad. By the way, there's no need because
Speaker 2: his performance.
Speaker 4: You don't agree with a person who sounds like that.
Speaker 2: Exactly, Like if you write the lyrics down. I'm sure
Speaker 2: there'll be people who go like, yeah, great, sounds good,
Speaker 2: but when he speaks that you know what he thinks,
Speaker 2: and that is so much more affecting, and so it
Speaker 2: gives you so much more to chew on than just
Speaker 2: if it came out and again it was just that
Speaker 2: George Bush is a wanka thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I mentioned louse Canner, which around that
Speaker 1: vocal still has that oh well, which is huge and
Speaker 1: it has it's like a nightmare dub song, you know,
Speaker 1: this kind of taking that just swamping morass and turning
Speaker 1: it into this sort of you know, squelching horror instrumental.
Speaker 1: Apparently louse Cannon a top twenty five UK single in
Speaker 1: two thousand and three.
Speaker 4: What it's got a big woe on it. I get it,
Speaker 4: you know he's got on the radio. But it's so scammy.
Speaker 1: And I guess yeah, speaking about the vocal, you know,
Speaker 1: terror and franticness and stuff. I don't know where the
Speaker 1: hell that intro to asteroid comes from. Like every time
Speaker 1: you hear it, it makes your heart jump out of
Speaker 1: your chest. The unpredictability that he somehow like pushes those
Speaker 1: words out with such like lightning speed the terrifying, you know,
Speaker 1: warped diction. But if it was a you know, it's
Speaker 1: rhythmically insane, like the pattern of where each line goes,
Speaker 1: it's it might it could be the most at it
Speaker 1: start to.
Speaker 3: A song are type like Astroid and Implant both have
Speaker 3: those moments where you can he just goes fucking mental.
Speaker 4: And he goes on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, fucking hell like Astron is like turning the Apocalypse
Speaker 3: into a fucking dance party, like because that's the song.
Speaker 3: It's it is a full on like bouncing End of
Speaker 3: Days can like post punk dance party.
Speaker 4: Jazz Colmen is just letting all of those.
Speaker 3: Darkest parts of him erupt out as a vocalist. But
Speaker 3: that the opening rant is crazy, and then just every
Speaker 3: time the asteroid hook comes back, and I'm just like
Speaker 3: pumping my fist and.
Speaker 4: Bang my head. But I'm just like this is bad though,
Speaker 4: ain't it?
Speaker 1: Like? There aren't many songs ever that fit the description
Speaker 1: rager more than that though, right, because the sheer way
Speaker 1: that makes you move, you know, killing Jokara band who
Speaker 1: excel in this kind of kinetic tension, you know, whether
Speaker 1: it's slow and repetitive like Death and Resurrection show or
Speaker 1: you know, like bull in a China Shop like this
Speaker 1: is they're gonna make you move and your limbs are gonna.
Speaker 2: Become kind of uncontrollable.
Speaker 1: Asteroid is just like three sustained minutes of just physical hysteria,
Speaker 1: you know, just that the Nightmare Banger is a thing
Speaker 1: that they absolutely knock out of the park on this record,
Speaker 1: and you're like, this is why post punk is cool.
Speaker 1: You know, like whatever might have been done to over
Speaker 1: the years, the ability to create that sort of kinetic
Speaker 1: tension or something that's very tight and regimented but forcing
Speaker 1: it outward into this like violent energy, and then you
Speaker 1: happen to have the nuts vocalist going Asteroid. It's umble,
Speaker 1: it's genuinely staggering that song, and it's like maybe one
Speaker 1: of the most simplistic on the record, but just that
Speaker 1: it sounds like that and that it powers like that.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, you remember back at this time, like
Speaker 2: maybe the most popular metal band in the world, or
Speaker 2: certainly one of the system of a down and this
Speaker 2: manally sort of takes a similar principle to something you
Speaker 2: might hear on the self titled or on Toxicity, but
Speaker 2: supercharges it with Swans and godflesh and throbbing gristle and
Speaker 2: doesn't sacrifice any of the catchiness, Whilest sounding absolutely more
Speaker 2: manic than that band, who.
Speaker 1: Are often credited for being one of the most manic
Speaker 1: metal bands to ever become popular. Yeah, and that again
Speaker 1: the nightmare post punk banger thing blood on your Hands
Speaker 1: later on is like just upbeat riff, hell of a
Speaker 1: drum groove, but.
Speaker 2: Five corporations and more. The body signation just.
Speaker 1: Repeating that you've got blood on your hands, that just
Speaker 1: being the chorus. You know, two statements, one not even
Speaker 1: necessarily directly grammatically leading on from the other one, but
Speaker 1: it's just, you know, because one is objective in the
Speaker 1: other is an accusation, but the intent is crystal fucking clear,
Speaker 1: you know, and seeing red as well, like, which is
Speaker 1: this really kind of transparent? Uh, specifically addressed to a
Speaker 1: UK audience being like, hey, you know, the Americans are
Speaker 1: trying to have you on here and pull you along,
Speaker 1: like is do you want to is this what you
Speaker 1: want to.
Speaker 2: Go along with?
Speaker 1: And then centered on that cry of red red and
Speaker 1: everyone feeling like an impact wound. I don't know if
Speaker 1: I've heard many albums that just sound like a fucking
Speaker 1: like burning oil field as much as this, you know,
Speaker 1: and not in a chaotic, you know, a nan athrax
Speaker 1: sort of way, but just a deliberate, this is all
Speaker 1: intentional way, like this is a totalitarian sound and that's
Speaker 1: it is.
Speaker 3: It is that that like organized destruction. It's not like
Speaker 3: chaos and and like frantics or panicle overplace. This is
Speaker 3: this is like saying, like, just mechanize the military industrial
Speaker 3: complex steamrolling over everything. I mean like blowing your hands again,
Speaker 3: like there is sleeves on that rip and pop on
Speaker 3: that drum beat.
Speaker 1: I want hardcore batters to start covering blood in your hands.
Speaker 1: I had that thought today and I was like, someone
Speaker 1: needs to fucking mosh to that.
Speaker 3: When it goes even harder on the chorus and it's
Speaker 3: kind of got this like hip shaking rock and roll thing,
Speaker 3: but it's so venomous.
Speaker 4: It's like that five Corporation and the voice. I was like,
Speaker 4: I hate the world like that.
Speaker 3: That lyric was just gonna like fucking hell, like if
Speaker 3: you can sing that is like that is just the
Speaker 3: most bleak something thing ever.
Speaker 4: But it's like again, like.
Speaker 3: Doing that over a song that fucking rocks, like on
Speaker 3: your hands is so like again, it's such a like
Speaker 3: weird balancing act to pull off, and that they're just
Speaker 3: so masterful at it on this album.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, it's it's it's so well, that's a really
Speaker 1: sticky song. But that again, that's kind of totalitarian sound.
Speaker 1: I was describing implant You've got gross, you know, and
Speaker 1: this like really prominent bassline as well, it's all kind
Speaker 1: of sort of jelly limbed. It's something that you can
Speaker 1: kind of dance to in the rhythm section, but the
Speaker 1: synth background over it, it's like, oh, something is wrong here,
Speaker 1: something really malevolent is.
Speaker 2: A foot here. And then you know jazz, you don't
Speaker 2: want to pretend you don't want to fucking like, how
Speaker 2: does a man someone that?
Speaker 1: It makes the death of retroto a bit sound like
Speaker 1: like he kind of was saving his energy somehow, Like
Speaker 1: it's how does he have that much pure vitriotic lung
Speaker 1: capacity to do that? Like this specific album, I think
Speaker 1: you know you mentioned Pattern earlier. Jack Coleman is on
Speaker 1: that level, if not better, right, And this specific album
Speaker 1: should be mentioned much more often in the greatest heavy
Speaker 1: music vocal performances of all time, Like you just want
Speaker 1: to cower and hide for every second he's opening his mouth.
Speaker 3: No, I a hundred agree again like implant, you know,
Speaker 3: because it starts a bit more like minimalist after Asteroid,
Speaker 3: with the kind of like dark ambient Simpson kind of
Speaker 3: like the bass kind of balancing to be down quite lski.
Speaker 3: But then when he fucking goes off on that chorus,
Speaker 3: and when you time to get to the final chorus, the.
Speaker 4: Gods and stick.
Speaker 2: And his voice when he goes his voice cracks a
Speaker 2: little bit.
Speaker 1: It might be the most like incensed indignant anyone's ever
Speaker 1: sounded on a record that specific moment. It's like he
Speaker 1: can't actually contain the rape.
Speaker 3: Which is like he's playing characters aback the sometime the
Speaker 3: moments where like you can just feel his pure bitterness
Speaker 3: and hatred for forced control kind of like compliance everyone
Speaker 3: more obey all that sort of thing. And again like
Speaker 3: this isn't like fucking obe I hope you have a
Speaker 3: lovely day, kind of like this is like actually like
Speaker 3: cutting into the point being like again I agree. I'm like,
Speaker 3: I'm surprised I don't see this kind of performance held
Speaker 3: in more more frequently outside of the people who like
Speaker 3: could clearly worship the ground killing joke walk On, which
Speaker 3: should be a lot more people evidently, but this is
Speaker 3: one of those.
Speaker 4: IMS was like, God, I wish i'd heard this sooner.
Speaker 3: I got around to this album in particular sooner because
Speaker 3: I'm I'm every second this I think is just masterful.
Speaker 2: Oh I think the song that for me and in
Speaker 2: a very different way, but takes it up so that
Speaker 2: this album has one of my favorite incensed rock performances ever,
Speaker 2: is when he gets to You'll Never Get to Me,
Speaker 2: which has you can tell it's the same guy, but
Speaker 2: the approach is almost unrecognizable, where that fury and anger
Speaker 2: that again we're sort of running out of superlatives to
Speaker 2: describe how insensity sounds for much of this record. When
Speaker 2: that sort of reaches a breaking point and all that's
Speaker 2: left is this, I don't I don't even know. I
Speaker 2: don't know what that feeling is, where it's like that
Speaker 2: sort of pushing back but sort of exhausted and devastated,
Speaker 2: and then capturing that and putting that in the I
Speaker 2: guess what you'd call it. The close Things were ballad
Speaker 2: on the song on the record, it's especially sequenced the
Speaker 2: way it is in the record, It is so powerful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that that kind of flip side of
Speaker 1: you know, to unintentionally quote idol joys and active resistance, right,
Speaker 1: and this sort of booming colleidoscopic sound of like you know,
Speaker 1: rock dub and industrial and stuff. Something that Kevin Drake
Speaker 1: really excelling is making that feel really spiritual and stirring
Speaker 1: as well. And that's an insane jazz coln performance to
Speaker 1: still be at full gurgling bellow and making it sound
Speaker 1: like happy and beautiful at the same time. I love
Speaker 1: like the house that Pain built. At the end, he
Speaker 1: sounds like he's had like a numbing injection at the
Speaker 1: dentists in his mouth and he's.
Speaker 2: Just slurring all over that track. It's really left the
Speaker 2: center great.
Speaker 1: And again what is quite a you know, you think
Speaker 1: about the album, you think it's quite you know, focused
Speaker 1: on primitivism and this sort of like you know, repetitive
Speaker 1: sort of violence. I guess maybe compared to some of
Speaker 1: their other albums, which dart around more, there's still like
Speaker 1: a really out there mix of sound. Dark Forces is
Speaker 1: this really strange mix of like sounds like a PlayStation
Speaker 1: one Final Fantasy soundtrack, but with this like nightmare suffocation
Speaker 1: ooze placed around it, where again jazz is literally like
Speaker 1: gurgling on his fleme at the start and one of
Speaker 1: those like again complete like slap you moment of clarity
Speaker 1: choruses with a girl up, wake up, Someone's taking you
Speaker 1: for a ride part. There's a bonus track Zenen as well,
Speaker 1: which I really like because it has this kind of
Speaker 1: like looping, vaguely Middle Eastern kind of guitar feel that
Speaker 1: makes that sound really booming and heavy where it's if
Speaker 1: heaviness is intent, this is one of the heaviest albums ever.
Speaker 1: If Heaviness is in sonics, this is also one of
Speaker 1: the heaviest albums ever.
Speaker 3: Briefly go back to You'll Never Get to Me like
Speaker 3: just as a kind of like because again like that
Speaker 3: sort of thing that kind of like captures the heaviness
Speaker 3: of the album and makes it because you do get
Speaker 3: this like moment of like beauty in the middle of
Speaker 3: it is the calm in the middle of the storm,
Speaker 3: like where you've kind of like because again you finish
Speaker 3: that and then you get back to fucking seeing Red
Speaker 3: and Seeing Red is again just so much more oppressed
Speaker 3: when heavy, because it's coming off of You'll Never Get
Speaker 3: to me, but like that song where like it is
Speaker 3: like how a song with that vocal promance can be
Speaker 3: described as beautiful is kind of like bizarre because when
Speaker 3: he on that course where he's doing that kind of
Speaker 3: like throaty sort of singing, it shouldn't work, but it is.
Speaker 4: It is genuinely uplifting.
Speaker 3: There's a moment like the middle where feels like it's
Speaker 3: almost too bleak to carry on and you are gonna
Speaker 3: give up, and then it kind of like comes back
Speaker 3: around to find that like final bit of resist that
Speaker 3: it's so stirring and them kind of like, ah, maybe
Speaker 3: it is gonna be all right, And then you get
Speaker 3: seeing Red and it's kind of like, oh yeah, everyone's
Speaker 3: just trying to sort of turn a blind eye to
Speaker 3: the war being raised around you, and you're just going
Speaker 3: to get dragged along for it, and.
Speaker 4: Eventually it's going to you know, consume you, and there's
Speaker 4: like oh yeah, there we go.
Speaker 3: There is that just kind of like devastating heaviness being
Speaker 3: delivered in every intent, and it just again it just
Speaker 3: then carries on through the record and you're through those
Speaker 3: bonus tracks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, like you know, Death and Resurrection Show
Speaker 1: total invasion, asteroid, implant blood in your hands, loose cannon.
Speaker 1: You'll never get to be like that. If it's only
Speaker 1: to say that that is the best, you know, passage
Speaker 1: of killing Joke's career. I could hear the argument, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not even the last time they were that good,
Speaker 1: because you know, the albums they hit really started. This
Speaker 1: one Post from the Basements of Hell. Absolute Descent is
Speaker 1: you know, more kind of dynamic and colorful than this one,
Speaker 1: and it is also basically that good all the way through.
Speaker 1: I really love Pylon, the last one they did when
Speaker 1: that one came out, and it's just staggering that they
Speaker 1: could rock up every.
Speaker 2: Time and do that, you know.
Speaker 1: And I think this one it cuts to the core
Speaker 1: of the matter a little more bluntly and directly than
Speaker 1: the others, and it just kind of forces you, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of just going, you know, fucking look at this.
Speaker 1: But it I mean, there was a rolling stone with
Speaker 1: you at the time. Apparently that gave this two out
Speaker 1: of ten. Saying the doom and gloom gets a little
Speaker 1: oppressive after a while, it's like.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, that's the point. It's kind of it's on
Speaker 2: you to deal with that. It is an overwhelming album.
Speaker 1: I'm so happy that I got to catch them, like
Speaker 1: I've seen them in the past before, but I've got
Speaker 1: to catch them those couple of times again in the
Speaker 1: year or so up to Georgie's passing, because as you said,
Speaker 1: that last time I saw them, which were the Bloodstock
Speaker 1: Slot sat sobbing to Lamb of God and Randy Blive
Speaker 1: was on the side of the stage just like visibly
Speaker 1: awestruck the whole time. The main but I remember from
Speaker 1: that set is as you say, how just overwhelmingly heavy
Speaker 1: the Death and Resurrection show was. And oh yeah, Elliott,
Speaker 1: what's your where would you put this in terms of
Speaker 1: I mean, let's even just say twenty first century killing
Speaker 1: joke albums like other other ones in that.
Speaker 2: Later career run, which are also close to your heart.
Speaker 2: I mean, I do think particularly that three album run
Speaker 2: of this Sandus in the Basement of Hell and Absolute
Speaker 2: Descent is incredible, particularly the book ends. This and Absolute
Speaker 2: Descent would probably be vying for the top spot of
Speaker 2: the twenty first century, but maybe just because I'm be
Speaker 2: listening to this all week, I think This might just
Speaker 2: pip it for the best one because the sheer sensation
Speaker 2: of it is quite unlike not just anything else in
Speaker 2: their career, but maybe any other band I've ever heard.
Speaker 2: It's not quite the same as things like Godflesh or
Speaker 2: Early Swans or like the other touch points we found
Speaker 2: for it. It's I mean, as far as a band
Speaker 2: coming back, that's the other thing we've not really spoken
Speaker 2: out too much like this. This is technically a comeback record.
Speaker 2: And how many times do you a band come back
Speaker 2: sounding as motivated and just fired up as this? And
Speaker 2: it's not their most dynamic record, but the sheer that
Speaker 2: the feeling it gives me at its peaks, which is
Speaker 2: basically throughout, is something that I nearly find anywhere else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and all those huge bands that you're talking about,
Speaker 1: who are again like Ragent's Machine, System of Down or whatever,
Speaker 1: they didn't last forty.
Speaker 2: Years of being that good. That's fucking crazy that they
Speaker 2: were this.
Speaker 1: And more, you know, But for I mean, like fucking hell,
Speaker 1: killing joke, a better four piece British band than the Beatles.
Speaker 1: There's no good reason for you to have said that,
Speaker 1: but I did.
Speaker 2: Let's move on.
Speaker 1: Sunny Day Real Estate Diary is third up in our
Speaker 1: more kind of alternative leaning slots. We are going here
Speaker 1: to I think one of the album's most uniquely synonymous
Speaker 1: with nineties Emo. I guess let's just sort of state
Speaker 1: that up top. I suppose is this like the nineties
Speaker 1: Emo album not necessarily the best or your favorite, but
Speaker 1: like the type species if you will, for what that
Speaker 1: has a scene was.
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess it's kind of seen as like
Speaker 3: is like second wave email whatever, like that sort of thing. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it is one of those kind of like because we
Speaker 3: obviously we talked about American football like last around this
Speaker 3: time last year, and what that was one of those
Speaker 3: people and this is kind of like, I guess the
Speaker 3: sort of precursor, kind of like birthing the Midwestern emos
Speaker 3: ort thing, even though not a Midwestern band, but you know, so,
Speaker 3: I guess it is like in a lot of ways.
Speaker 4: It is one of the sort of the definitive nineties
Speaker 4: EMAO albums. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm probably not enough of an expot on
Speaker 2: this to comment because even at the height of my
Speaker 2: interest in stuff like this, I never really checked out
Speaker 2: some real estate, which I kind of look back now
Speaker 2: and think it's a bit like going, I really like
Speaker 2: this classic rock and I can't be bothered listening to
Speaker 2: led Zeppelin. There's really no point like it does sort
Speaker 2: of seem to be that way, but I always listening
Speaker 2: to other records, But I do think this is probably
Speaker 2: the one of the records from that time that continues
Speaker 2: to be seen as like a touchstone more than any
Speaker 2: of the other records, even the ones that I might
Speaker 2: prefer to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean when I think about that scene,
Speaker 1: for me, the kind of the masterpiece of nineties Emo,
Speaker 1: closest decade in the form of Jimmy World's Clarity.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then that's the same year as well that you
Speaker 1: get American Football's LP, right, So that's five years removed
Speaker 1: from this, those two moments, and again you know, doing
Speaker 1: the American Football one we did last year in the
Speaker 1: kind of similar pre Outbreak festival slot that we're doing here,
Speaker 1: where certain their real estate are going to be marking
Speaker 1: their arrival to the UK this summer after you know,
Speaker 1: god knows how long we're here in nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 1: and when we think about EMO as it was in
Speaker 1: the mid nineties, which is again almost arguably when it
Speaker 1: was kind of becoming like EMO is almost becoming like
Speaker 1: its own distinct scene and culture, the albums that revolutionize
Speaker 1: things and kind of form those building blocks. There are
Speaker 1: lots of names that get kind of passed around a lot,
Speaker 1: you know, that's you know, Taxes, the Reason, the Promise, Ring, Captain, Jazz, Braid, whatever.
Speaker 1: But I don't know if there is one single album
Speaker 1: that kind of acts as your representative bible for that
Speaker 1: as Diaries. I mean, it's literally fucking called Diary, right.
Speaker 1: How much more second wave emo could you get than
Speaker 1: an album being the bible for the scene being very Diary.
Speaker 3: I mean that's one of it's one of it's like
Speaker 3: is it one that you look It's like maybe it's
Speaker 3: not like the best one or that, but it is
Speaker 3: just so pivotal to the development of the sound and
Speaker 3: kind of like it lays down so much that so
Speaker 3: many bands like Becase. I mean, this is the first
Speaker 3: like real emo album like I probably listened to after
Speaker 3: like again being into you know, my two thousands emo
Speaker 3: and then kind of be like, oh, that's not that's
Speaker 3: not emo.
Speaker 4: You should check out this. And I was, and it
Speaker 4: was like I was like, oh, okay, yeah, fair Fox,
Speaker 4: Like fuck, this is this fucking me.
Speaker 3: I mean, the first time I ever heard this was
Speaker 3: seven was on one of the Guitar Hero games. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that was the first exposure. That's a fucking banger, to be.
Speaker 4: Fair, and you're gonna personally.
Speaker 3: It's some long Guitar Hero probably will be that one,
Speaker 3: but this was kind of like my first exposure to
Speaker 3: what proper EMAI is.
Speaker 4: Like then, like like again I.
Speaker 3: Like to meet Order had actually gone into clarity at
Speaker 3: that point and then kind of like got clarity all afterwards.
Speaker 4: But then it does just feel like the kind of like.
Speaker 3: Every band that kind of came after is took something
Speaker 3: from Diary and would continue to do so through the
Speaker 3: two thousands, where there are some things you go like, well, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's you know, is pick any two thousands like fake
Speaker 3: emo wherever you want to sort of like layman band
Speaker 3: as and they can kind of take them from it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I just think I think we need to really zero
Speaker 1: in specifically on the point in time because like that
Speaker 1: the list of other sort of you know, you know,
Speaker 1: cult whatever second wave emo bands I just kind of
Speaker 1: mentioned in passing most of them are releasing their debuts
Speaker 1: around kind of ninety five to ninety six, and I
Speaker 1: think this is an album that you know, It's released
Speaker 1: only about a month after Kirk Cobain died, right, I
Speaker 1: guess recorded while he's still alive. And you know they
Speaker 1: are from Seattle rather than the Midwest like most of
Speaker 1: the band that the un inspire. So we are so
Speaker 1: close here to the kind of the very peak of
Speaker 1: grunt and you know, the kind of alternative rock explosion
Speaker 1: of the early nineties, and it's it's one of those
Speaker 1: fascinating moments in the history of rock where a certain
Speaker 1: chapter of history kind of so clearly comes to an
Speaker 1: end like that, right, you know, the end of Nirvana
Speaker 1: and the end of the Grund Dream and all of
Speaker 1: that stuff, and you're almost you're looking around to like, Okay,
Speaker 1: what is here that is going to kind of grab
Speaker 1: the wheel and move forward? And when that specific moment
Speaker 1: you think about you know, you've got Dookie and you've
Speaker 1: got the Corn debut that year that both kind of
Speaker 1: are going to create huge, like mainstream movements, But what
Speaker 1: about the underground of alternative rock? You know, what does
Speaker 1: that become in the kind of post grunge years, you know,
Speaker 1: and if you're looking around for a template of something
Speaker 1: that exists in nineteen ninety four, for alternative rock that
Speaker 1: is more considered and sensitive. You know, it's not trying
Speaker 1: to just make teenagers jump up and down, but it's
Speaker 1: been kind of more delicate about it and its artistry.
Speaker 1: There's an argument of all those ninety four albums that
Speaker 1: this is the kind of the template, and it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of amazing hearing as thinking it's ninety ninety four
Speaker 1: in a weird way. If it was just one year later,
Speaker 1: if this had, you know, the release date said in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five, I wouldn't question it. But there's just
Speaker 1: something about that weirdier one year difference and thinking about
Speaker 1: them being like part of the Seattle group of bands
Speaker 1: I guess, you know, forming and playing around the same
Speaker 1: area that like I know, the Screaming Tree, Temple of
Speaker 1: the Dog or whatever. About it's kind of brain breaking
Speaker 1: thinking outside of their real estate as it's like isolated
Speaker 1: innovative thing in and around like you know, peak grunge.
Speaker 3: It feels like if like grunge hadn't blown up like
Speaker 3: or like exploded and like all come crashing down, that
Speaker 3: they maybe would have been considered like a grunge band.
Speaker 3: They probably would have been lumved him with that if
Speaker 3: if it hadn't all like collapsed in that year with
Speaker 3: like the end of the Varner.
Speaker 4: So like, I mean, that's one of the interesting things
Speaker 4: about it.
Speaker 3: But I guess because the grunge scene had kind of
Speaker 3: just collapsed in itself, and again, like what is grunge?
Speaker 4: All the bands sounded differently blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 4: We've had that discussion before.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like they kind of like find their own kind
Speaker 3: of niche of like there is the you know, things
Speaker 3: that relate to some of the grunge bands.
Speaker 4: There's also things about this that you can relate to.
Speaker 3: You know, there's bitically like post hardcore and kind of
Speaker 3: you can kind of like kind of through line into
Speaker 3: that and hardcore. This is this is when the sort
Speaker 3: of ninety them bands are like, yeah, this is this
Speaker 3: has links to to Fugazi and sort of like that
Speaker 3: sort of like that that world, as well as as
Speaker 3: the kind of like super delicate soft stuff. So I
Speaker 3: think that's why again, because it has that spiky side
Speaker 3: with the delicate inspection, it becomes a kind of like
Speaker 3: definitive thing for what EMO is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's that question of you know, what is
Speaker 1: that you know what is grunge or whatever? When does
Speaker 1: old rock become emo? When do's post hardcore become emo?
Speaker 1: Because you're right, there are clear links here to obviously,
Speaker 1: you know, the kind of the rights of Spring, you know,
Speaker 1: Embrace stuff. In the early days of emo. There's bands
Speaker 1: around during those grunge years, like I guess, like Jawbreaker
Speaker 1: and stuff.
Speaker 2: It almost like flipped between like yeah.
Speaker 1: They kind of flip between the periphery of those things,
Speaker 1: or even like you know, you go obviously a couple
Speaker 1: of years later, like is Pinkerton an emo album? I mean,
Speaker 1: Diary really believe it on not the same day as
Speaker 1: the Blue album, but it really feels like one of
Speaker 1: those albums is obviously like a a pop culture sensation,
Speaker 1: and one of them is more like a an underground
Speaker 1: kind of bible. I think Diary is maybe the album
Speaker 1: where you just put it on and you go, that's emo.
Speaker 1: You know, like what we in the modern day thing
Speaker 1: is definitively emo, not necessarily even there are ties to
Speaker 1: it to post hardcore, to alternative rock, whatever. The first
Speaker 1: word that comes into your mouth when you hear this
Speaker 1: is is emo. I mean, bizarrely, I think emo almost
Speaker 1: mirrors a little bit black metal in terms of you've
Speaker 1: got the first wave sort of slightly disparate stuff, and
Speaker 1: then the second wave stuff where it kind of consolidates into.
Speaker 2: What we know as the thing.
Speaker 1: And this is like to Emo, what a blaze in
Speaker 1: the northern sky is to secrebate black metal. You know,
Speaker 1: it's the moment where you go, that's the thing, that's
Speaker 1: a movement has arrived unto itself, rather this kind of
Speaker 1: desperately separated stuff. Yeah, I think this is I'm not again,
Speaker 1: I'm not the expert on this field, but I do
Speaker 1: think this is one of the more ahead of its
Speaker 1: time sounding records of the nineties.
Speaker 2: There's a few cases like this. It's like the Violent
Speaker 2: Fems are a band who you listen to their first
Speaker 2: record and you just think, oh, that's ninety ninety two
Speaker 2: when you find it from nineteen eighty three and it
Speaker 2: just doesn't fit in your brain. Yeah, that thing you
Speaker 2: said earlierbout it this being ninety ninety four as opposed
Speaker 2: to ninety five or ninety six. I don't know why
Speaker 2: that still strikes me as odd, but it does. And
Speaker 2: I think it's because it's not some technological marvel. It's
Speaker 2: not something that they were able to do with budget
Speaker 2: or like sort of you know, they weren't free of
Speaker 2: constraints that other bands suffered, but they just sort of
Speaker 2: arrived at the combining of all the influencers who've spoken about,
Speaker 2: like the rights of Spring and the Fugazi rim Smashing
Speaker 2: Pumpkins or all that, the stuff that the post rock
Speaker 2: that I've been around at this time, Combining all those things,
Speaker 2: they seem to just get to it first, which can't
Speaker 2: really be accounted for with anything else other than just
Speaker 2: pure ideas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, for all the significant status this
Speaker 1: album has, it's not one that I especially reach for
Speaker 1: very often or I've spent that many hours in totality,
Speaker 1: you know, listening to I'm not especially a Midwest emo
Speaker 1: kind of guy. And like I said, the stuff sort
Speaker 1: of relates to this now that I really love the most.
Speaker 1: Maybe comes a few years down the line, but you know, Sam, considering,
Speaker 1: you know, your excitement around you know this, and suddenly
Speaker 1: everyone's coming back to the UK and you're suggest to
Speaker 1: do this and stuff, you must be a big fan.
Speaker 2: Of this record.
Speaker 3: I mean, like again, like everyone beyond this album, I
Speaker 3: don't mind. I fucking love this album. I think this
Speaker 3: album is just kind of like again one of those
Speaker 3: like what is nineties emo? And I hit some and
Speaker 3: it gives it gives me a thing again. It's you know,
Speaker 3: it's got those kind of like really soft, quiet, quite naive,
Speaker 3: kind of like introspective kind of like guy writing in
Speaker 3: these diary like sort of moments. It's got kind of
Speaker 3: like spikier, angrier moments. It's like it kind of just
Speaker 3: hits on all the things I want. And like seven
Speaker 3: as an opener, it's kind of just like the perfect
Speaker 3: kind of like entry point into what this kind of
Speaker 3: like new world of second wave, Midwestern night or whatever
Speaker 3: you want to label it as, that kind of world
Speaker 3: of emo where it is got this like really bouncy,
Speaker 3: dexterious rift. There's some actual bite to it. The drums
Speaker 3: clatter about almost hilariously so on this album at times,
Speaker 3: like and it's just like it's jagged and bitter, but
Speaker 3: it's sad and like kind of like soft and tender
Speaker 3: at the same time. And there are all the kind
Speaker 3: of things when I for this sort of album, it
Speaker 3: just hits with those sweet spots for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Elliott, you've kind of said as much a half
Speaker 1: of the times that this is probably similar to me
Speaker 1: an album that you've heard and are aware of, but
Speaker 1: not in heavy rotation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think it's just a matter of getting
Speaker 2: to it slightly. I think that's really the only reason
Speaker 2: for me. The wings of emo that I'm more interested
Speaker 2: in are either the more abstract angular stuff, you know,
Speaker 2: like American football, this Memberment Plan, camn Jazz, that sort
Speaker 2: of thing, or the likes of Jimmy World Gets Up kids,
Speaker 2: who I think have the best emo album maybe ever.
Speaker 2: But what I do like about this one is the
Speaker 2: way they're able to straddle those two things. Like they're
Speaker 2: not strictly a meditative, soft kind of a bit more
Speaker 2: experimental email band like some of the ones I mentioned,
Speaker 2: but they do have that side to them, and they
Speaker 2: also have really catchy songs. And I think that's maybe
Speaker 2: why I was able to get to this sort of
Speaker 2: later in life, because I think there's without talking it down,
Speaker 2: I do think like some of the bands in this
Speaker 2: scene and in stuff like pop punk, it is a
Speaker 2: matter of you can miss the boat on them. I mean, like,
Speaker 2: I can't imagine there many people who get into like
Speaker 2: Blink on eight two in their thirties and they just
Speaker 2: become one of their favorite bands. But it's like, if
Speaker 2: you find them at the right time, they can be
Speaker 2: one of your favorite bands forever. I kind of wondered
Speaker 2: that because I only got into this record maybe like
Speaker 2: five years ago. I think that's when I first checked out,
Speaker 2: which was a while after I initially got into this
Speaker 2: style of music. I kind of thought, oh, maybe I
Speaker 2: just won't have formed the same attachment to it. And
Speaker 2: that's not say I have, but I think I admire
Speaker 2: this record a great deal, even if I don't reach
Speaker 2: for it all that often.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think this is a record where it's one
Speaker 1: of those where it's particularly if you are an emo
Speaker 1: fan and maybe your primary listen to stuff from you
Speaker 1: know that's like, you know, four or five years after
Speaker 1: this and then going forward in the twenty fifth century,
Speaker 1: it's be an alum where you go back to it
Speaker 1: and go, oh, you know, this is almost like the
Speaker 1: genesis of so much of that stuff. The flip sidea
Speaker 1: is you know, you were saying the things you prefer
Speaker 1: are almost like, you know, stuff that's kind of a
Speaker 1: bit more, you know, kind of slightly avant gard leaning
Speaker 1: about it, or stuff that is more direct and catchy
Speaker 1: about it. I think this is an album which pioneers
Speaker 1: things that arguably are improved and certainly advanced by some
Speaker 1: of the stuff that comes after. And that's why again,
Speaker 1: like I said, some of the bands, like you know,
Speaker 1: whether it be a GM Meet World or you know,
Speaker 1: a fucking Apple Sea Cast or whatever, like a few
Speaker 1: years later, I think have advanced some of the stuff
Speaker 1: that is on this record. And it's almost kind of
Speaker 1: a record where I think it kind of like it
Speaker 1: does what it needs to do in like the first
Speaker 1: three four tracks and it's like the first like three
Speaker 1: songs you've almost got like these are templates for kinds
Speaker 1: of emo song going forward, and then the rest of
Speaker 1: the album just sort of like you know, just meander's
Speaker 1: around a little bit, playing with you know, similar kinds
Speaker 1: of ideas. I think this is a record that is
Speaker 1: an undeniable classic record in terms of its like significance
Speaker 1: and place on the timeline. I wouldn't say it's personally
Speaker 1: close to being like the best emo record or a
Speaker 1: mark piece of the genre. It's a landmark more than
Speaker 1: it is a masterpiece, right, is that fair to say?
Speaker 3: I mean that it's considered into its legscyo because mean
Speaker 3: that's correct. There are like things that this album lays
Speaker 3: out that bands do. They go on to write more
Speaker 3: kind of like intricate songs, you know, like like except Miracle,
Speaker 3: They're gonna do Never Meant, which like really plays with
Speaker 3: the melodic guitar texts sort of stuff, and that whole
Speaker 3: album where that goes into the weird kind of like
Speaker 3: expand stuff with the trumpets and then you do get
Speaker 3: you know, Jimmy well To on Cloudy start to get
Speaker 3: there and then kind of like go full and like
Speaker 3: we're writing the pop emo songs that can like and
Speaker 3: like like gab Kids on something to write home about,
Speaker 3: Like that is like that that paving bodyment of like
Speaker 3: pop punk emo kind of just like writing hit songs.
Speaker 3: But for me, this album, like it just feels it's
Speaker 3: so important to like even again like the revival emo
Speaker 3: of the of the tweety Tens, you don't get cover
Speaker 3: without encircles, like like like any of that kind of
Speaker 3: like outbreak adjacent emo sort of revival stuff that like
Speaker 3: all that all of those sort of bands like Your
Speaker 3: Basement g Title Fights sit as a and at that
Speaker 3: point like they all so clearly worship out the order
Speaker 3: of this album in particular and the things they borrow from.
Speaker 3: And I agree, Like if you want to say, you know,
Speaker 3: the first three songs in seven in Circles and Song
Speaker 3: about an Angel kind of like just nail exactly what
Speaker 3: this album is, and then you kind of get just
Speaker 3: variants on those sort of sits themes for this album
Speaker 3: for the most part. I mean, that's you know, a
Speaker 3: fair assessment. But at the same time, I love that sound.
Speaker 3: I can just you know, sit in it and just
Speaker 3: be like, yeah, just give me more of that. Those
Speaker 3: like those guitar parts, those like really lush sort of sounds,
Speaker 3: the vocals where they're barely audible at times because he's
Speaker 3: kind of just like whispering into the microphone. Yeah the boy,
Speaker 3: he's gonna shout something out like a few seconds later,
Speaker 3: like I'll just lap it all up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1: I think I think the first like three four songs
Speaker 1: on this are the essential, you know, landmark ones. But
Speaker 1: the whole record is a like, you know, it's an
Speaker 1: easy vibe because it is nailing I think the almost
Speaker 1: more on the songwriting at times, it's nailing the atmosphere
Speaker 1: and the mood of like, this is an email record?
Speaker 2: Is I think like to compare it to another record
Speaker 2: that isn't Blaze in the Northern Sky. That's why you
Speaker 2: get me to talk about this shit. Well, that thing
Speaker 2: you just said about it being sort of a ground
Speaker 2: zero that you could take in either direction and maybe
Speaker 2: it was improved upon that. It just sprungs to me
Speaker 2: in my head. That's something a lot of people say
Speaker 2: about the first Velva Underground record, which is another one
Speaker 2: where you listen to it and go, how did that
Speaker 2: come out in nineteen sixty seven? But again, it wasn't
Speaker 2: a mega cellabet. There's that famous line where you know,
Speaker 2: fifteen thousand people bought it, every single of them formed
Speaker 2: a band, and it's like, that's either there rare Moones
Speaker 2: and the Stooges, or it's the stuff that like Scott
Speaker 2: Walker would do later.
Speaker 4: Like it.
Speaker 2: There's two pads that go off that fork on that record,
Speaker 2: and you can go either way. That kind of explains
Speaker 2: how I feel about this record in the same way
Speaker 2: where I don't put on that first Vela Underground record
Speaker 2: and go what a bunch of bangers? Or isn't this
Speaker 2: most mind bending music ever? You just go. This is
Speaker 2: like the baking soda that goes into all these different recipes.
Speaker 2: It's the same sort of thing where I go to
Speaker 2: this and I I get a kind of I don't know,
Speaker 2: it's like some sort of subconscious joy from hearing songs
Speaker 2: that sound like other things I love, even if these
Speaker 2: aren't my favorite examples of those songs. No, yes, certainly.
Speaker 1: And I do think, you know, a very significant moment
Speaker 1: in itself for Emo is you know, the lead off
Speaker 1: track seven being like you know, MTV airplayed and stuff.
Speaker 1: Because like I said, this is it's essentially grunge era
Speaker 1: that this is released in.
Speaker 2: Right, People on.
Speaker 1: Masks don't really know what Emo is, right, It's more
Speaker 1: just like this is a part of the alternative rock
Speaker 1: boom where the industry are kind of you know, sniffing
Speaker 1: around anything with a plaid shirt or and a guitar.
Speaker 1: I mean, like this is on you know, zub Pop,
Speaker 1: like the og you know, like Nirvana grunge label, and
Speaker 1: it's a real sort of trojan horse to have, like
Speaker 1: you know, this flagship track for this particular underground movement
Speaker 1: getting in the door there as part of the old
Speaker 1: rock thing. You know, that video must have been so
Speaker 1: many people's exposure to something sounding like this, and then
Speaker 1: god knows how many people who saw that video will
Speaker 1: then be there ready for when like the Promise Ring
Speaker 1: or whatever then drop their debut album.
Speaker 2: Like a year or two later.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I mean I think like it's it's it's a
Speaker 3: great kind of like perpose en capcation of like having
Speaker 3: a like, honest, Sam, it's the only song that sort
Speaker 3: of like it as like pure single material, like you
Speaker 3: can say in Circles as well, but like seven is
Speaker 3: something that you could just sort of sly, Yeah, this
Speaker 3: can slot.
Speaker 4: Into the MTV.
Speaker 3: It could be a bit like yeah, like because it
Speaker 3: is you know, it is bouncy, it's got a chorus
Speaker 3: that you taste it. Yeah, it's got all those sort
Speaker 3: of elements. So it kind of works on that, and
Speaker 3: it's this great kind of like foot in the door
Speaker 3: moment sort of like if you can go on board
Speaker 3: of this comes to some because then I think the
Speaker 3: scenes in the album's brilliant because you get that and
Speaker 3: then you get in Circles, which like that's where it
Speaker 3: gets more into the proper sor.
Speaker 4: Of emo thing. You get that big, bright emo riff.
Speaker 3: It's got that just like perfect low energy vibe of
Speaker 3: like being quite so laid back but sounding Huges and
Speaker 3: I was just like, ah, the nineties it was just
Speaker 3: so good. You get the twinkling guitar parts and and
Speaker 3: and like big answer chorus, and so you kind of
Speaker 3: it's like if you gumble with them, then you're you're
Speaker 3: you're well into the world of the record at that point.
Speaker 3: So that's when you then get to song about an Angel,
Speaker 3: where you're you're fully in on the sort of the
Speaker 3: Emo inspection by that point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean like you're just sort of saying,
Speaker 1: you know, the first three songs are almost like these
Speaker 1: kind of it's a it's a to do step down,
Speaker 1: like it's it's a lesson in EMO. Right, It's like
Speaker 1: these are three kind of templates of songs. But going
Speaker 1: back to seven as the opening one and the kind
Speaker 1: of the the single of the bunch. You know, it's
Speaker 1: a great little song and you can hear, you know,
Speaker 1: the links going back to the kind of again the
Speaker 1: kind of Mackay stuff, you know, that sort of partner
Speaker 1: pass away with Emo. But it also sounds, like I said,
Speaker 1: a little bit like you know, feeder or something that's
Speaker 1: gonna come and the the sort of you know, it's
Speaker 1: not across the record really because it does, you know,
Speaker 1: simmer down a lot more, but it's a kind of like,
Speaker 1: you know, the urgency in that particular song. I can
Speaker 1: hear Likeday's full collapse in that Yeah already like it's
Speaker 1: seven years apart, but that might sort that song might
Speaker 1: as well be the template for something like understanding in
Speaker 1: a car crash, right, you just like you up the
Speaker 1: heaviness of the intensity and it's a similar sort of attack.
Speaker 1: And you've got you know, the unit are quite busy there.
Speaker 1: You've got you know, Nate Mendel of course from the
Speaker 1: Food Fighters is on bass for certainly the real Estate,
Speaker 1: and the drummer William Goldsmith plays I think on some
Speaker 1: of the color and the shape as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you drum for Food Fighters for a litle bit
Speaker 3: after this record when they briefly broke up, like yeah.
Speaker 1: Which is the fun seattle you know, connection there isn't there,
Speaker 1: but you know, and the emo guitars kind of go
Speaker 1: into war with each other a little bit. It is
Speaker 1: again that sort of tangible you know, Discord Records thing
Speaker 1: that's kind of in a song like that it being
Speaker 1: platformed at the same time as like grunge and pop
Speaker 1: punk in nineteen ninety four, but there is Ian mackay
Speaker 1: in that, you know, and that's.
Speaker 2: Kind of it's sort of subversive. Yeah, and I think
Speaker 2: you know, something like Round, which is the fourth of
Speaker 2: the four songs we've sort of mentioned as setting the
Speaker 2: template so far. Yeah, that kind of sets up the
Speaker 2: whole wing of mathy angular email that I'm a bit
Speaker 2: fan of. But in a way that's almost like nursery
Speaker 2: rhyme simple, like it's it's really catchy, but they wrap
Speaker 2: it up in a song that's quite obtuse. And one
Speaker 2: of the most catchy things about the song is also
Speaker 2: that weird Matthew riff that doesn't feel like it makes
Speaker 2: any sense the first time you hear it. It's and
Speaker 2: so many bands would just take that and go, right,
Speaker 2: we'll do a career of that, like, well, we'll do
Speaker 2: six seven albums doing that exact thing, thank you very much.
Speaker 2: And yeah, it's a great example of it, and it's
Speaker 2: really one of the only times they do it across
Speaker 2: the record.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's funny you say that. I can totally hear like,
Speaker 1: you know, like never meant or something coming when.
Speaker 3: You hear the big like melodic, clean lead guitar part
Speaker 3: that is kind of Mathian all over the place, but
Speaker 3: super catchy and infectious like that. I mean, that song's
Speaker 3: great even like like almost kind of like breakdown the
Speaker 3: rift in there. It's again just sort of like type
Speaker 3: back to the sort of like the post hardcore sort
Speaker 3: of roots, but it's it's a really fun song round
Speaker 3: despite being a weird, like kind of out there just
Speaker 3: built on this like funky guitar line sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's a song that adds a little
Speaker 1: bit of kind of necessary pep into the record. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think at that point in time. But again, opening
Speaker 1: with a kind of one two of like here is
Speaker 1: your introduction to EMO. Basically seven into in Circles. Seven
Speaker 1: is almost like an alternative rock banger. In Circles is
Speaker 1: so fucking Emo. It's funny you mentioned cover and songs
Speaker 1: like that because I can hear that you know, the
Speaker 1: country to the circles, the very down troll exactly how
Speaker 1: important is I guess so the vocalist Jeremy, how important
Speaker 1: is it for some of the real Estate's identity and
Speaker 1: also Emo as a whole that he can't really sing.
Speaker 3: I love it those things again, like because he like
Speaker 3: his streams are tuneless and kind of just like like,
Speaker 3: I think it was great is doing this at the
Speaker 3: same time as we're doing our part one Poison the
Speaker 3: World Special. I thought the same again, how much of
Speaker 3: this is on like those first two Poison the World records,
Speaker 3: which again in a ton of like but it's that
Speaker 3: same kind of like the weird kind of like sort
Speaker 3: of timid singing, like awkward screams, and again like that
Speaker 3: is part of it is because I think like emo
Speaker 3: has to have a kind of every man qualities. You've
Speaker 3: got to be relatable, you've got to feel like this
Speaker 3: guy isn't necessarily a rockstay. He's just like an awkward
Speaker 3: person who's picked up a guitar and kind of like
Speaker 3: bearing his soul.
Speaker 4: So when the singing isn't great, I fucking love it.
Speaker 4: I love the angsty chorus, the weird just kind of
Speaker 4: like they're like that God, it's.
Speaker 3: All over the place, like there were songs and something
Speaker 3: that I would describe as like brilliantly tuneless, like and
Speaker 3: it's all part of the magic of the record for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the fact that the call and response
Speaker 1: again imagining seeing this outbreak or something you almost can't
Speaker 1: imagine people singing along to in circles, even though it's
Speaker 1: like one of their you know, very very biggest songs,
Speaker 1: But it does work in that particular instance, you know.
Speaker 1: And then you know, we just took a round off
Speaker 1: the first three because we mentioned them. Song about an
Speaker 1: Angel is where you've had in circles, which is a
Speaker 1: bit more kind of abstract than you know seven. Song
Speaker 1: about an Angel is where you go, okay, like this
Speaker 1: this is its own genre now, you know, like that
Speaker 1: can't be grunged. That's not really post hardcore. It's almost
Speaker 1: wholly excised the kind of urgency of post hardcore, and
Speaker 1: it's excited the you know, immediate sort of rock structures
Speaker 1: of grundeor alternative rock. This is just gonna wander right.
Speaker 1: The guitar on that doesn't even really play a riff.
Speaker 1: It's just going to sort of float around itself. Our
Speaker 1: singer is barely going to form his vocal line into
Speaker 1: anything coherent or driving. You know. It's just a song
Speaker 1: for wistfully staring up into the clouds. And that particular
Speaker 1: sensation is nothing but emo, you know, and that's not
Speaker 1: necessary to criticize the song. It's quite a compelling piece
Speaker 1: of music. It's just a very again nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 1: a very unique kind of idiosyncratic mood at that point
Speaker 1: in time. But you do imagine that if someone had
Speaker 1: bought this album here in seven on the TV and
Speaker 1: then it opens with you know that in Circles, and
Speaker 1: by the time you've read song about an Angel, it's
Speaker 1: like an over six minute long just drawn out kind
Speaker 1: of slowly, you know, just slow bleeding of feeling more
Speaker 1: than really a conventional rock song.
Speaker 2: It's quite a statement at that point in time.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's it.
Speaker 3: I mean, like someone the Angels always like the test
Speaker 3: on this album is like the sort of step towards it.
Speaker 3: But then this a bit where, like I say, softly
Speaker 3: strums are very pretty delicate guitars that you would not
Speaker 3: associate with rock music in the slightest like fuzzed up
Speaker 3: dreamy chorus again, like Job's he's struggling to not go
Speaker 3: mental on this song. He is like trying to play
Speaker 3: as reserved as the rest of the band are, which
Speaker 3: again kind of adds to the slightly ramshackle charm to
Speaker 3: this record that there is at points, but it does
Speaker 3: and then again when it does finally build to that
Speaker 3: big woe and the song actually does pick up, it
Speaker 3: feels like one of those like real like ah, there
Speaker 3: it is, moment after you've kind of like drifted along
Speaker 3: in the kind of like sad introspection. This to me
Speaker 3: is like, well, I'm like, ah, there isn't a better
Speaker 3: sound than this when it is when it's when it
Speaker 3: hits right. And again, I know for a lot of people,
Speaker 3: this might be just boring song that kind of goes nowhere,
Speaker 3: But for me, it kind of just nails so many
Speaker 3: of those sort of things out like what I would
Speaker 3: want this kind of emo.
Speaker 4: To sound like.
Speaker 2: And I think like it sets up the formula of
Speaker 2: like you say, they're kind of wandering, soft thing that
Speaker 2: it does build, but in quite a sussleway. It doesn't
Speaker 2: build these crashing, deafiniting crescendos like other bands would do
Speaker 2: and like they would do later in the record. I
Speaker 2: you know, you listen to a song like that and
Speaker 2: you go, maybe American football weren't that groundbreaking? Like that
Speaker 2: thing we're saying about that record where it's amazing how
Speaker 2: little music there is on it. It's amazing how sparse
Speaker 2: that record is, considering it's so close connected to the
Speaker 2: hardcore scene. Song about an Angel, it sets up that
Speaker 2: style of songwriting. It kind of creates a roadmap for
Speaker 2: that kind of emo, which considering it's also one of
Speaker 2: the most popular songs this band has ever made, and
Speaker 2: that is a deliberately ob choose form of music. Sometimes
Speaker 2: I just find that really interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, although it is just worse dating email as record
Speaker 1: is not interested in, you know, fucking having people skank
Speaker 1: into it or whatever. I'm not really a huge American
Speaker 1: football guy, and I do find it largely just sort
Speaker 1: of like, you know, almost just background music. It really
Speaker 1: some of the red of the State. They do have
Speaker 1: that bit of again, the bits where he goes into
Speaker 1: the yelpie kind of a you know, there are there
Speaker 1: are moments of kind of crunching heaviness on it that
Speaker 1: aren't it's not completely absent of that. It's just the
Speaker 1: songs themselves are not urgent, and the whole album is
Speaker 1: kind of rickety, like it feels almost like skelet to it.
Speaker 1: It's it's like a rock album again, you know, nineteen
Speaker 1: eighth or Seattle whatever that's been like hollowed out and
Speaker 1: left this sort of like awkward droning shuffle, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: Grendel is barely a song. It's almost it feels like
Speaker 1: an instrumental that happens to have a vocal hook in
Speaker 1: the middle of it. Like it's really stripped apart and
Speaker 1: bizarre and quite experimental. And it happens, you know, in
Speaker 1: threequently you have, you know, songs that do feel like
Speaker 1: they almost could be this could be a sunny day
Speaker 1: you know, radio song if you wanted it to be,
Speaker 1: but they've depressed it into this little hole. And then
Speaker 1: that almost loops around to being like the cell and
Speaker 1: the appeal because it is quite pretty and quite heartfelt,
Speaker 1: well I mean.
Speaker 3: Like Brenda wal because that's when it almost it does
Speaker 3: almost get a little darker and kind of like the
Speaker 3: sort of the experimentation, like the sort of the layering
Speaker 3: of the vocals and the atmosphere's syfetuches. Where again that
Speaker 3: is something a little bit different to the kind of
Speaker 3: like quiet minimalism of a bunch of the songs that
Speaker 3: have come before. It's say like Shadows, which is you
Speaker 3: get like really sorrowful, delicate fit and then you get
Speaker 3: this kind of like post hard corruption and that that
Speaker 3: dynamic push and Paul is one of the things that
Speaker 3: I love about the record. But Brenda was kind of
Speaker 3: just like purely just kind of living in this kind
Speaker 3: of like weird, like atmospheric minimalism that that that gives
Speaker 3: it like a very distinct favor on the.
Speaker 2: Song on the record.
Speaker 1: And then you your stuff like the Blankets were the
Speaker 1: stairs as well, which has like acoustic guitars looped in,
Speaker 1: and you can think again, you know, it's the same
Speaker 1: time that Navana and Allison Chains and stuff are doing.
Speaker 1: There's like grungey acoustic songs, but this doesn't feel like
Speaker 1: all apologies or the Jar of Flip or whatever. It's
Speaker 1: almost again a little bit more sort of sitting back
Speaker 1: in the way that you know, the post rock kind
Speaker 1: of stuff that's associated with emo sort of is.
Speaker 2: I mean that song really my mids me of something
Speaker 2: that turns in like the second half of the Siamese
Speaker 2: Dream Like. It has a really appealing melody, the arrangement's great,
Speaker 2: but the thing you were saying about it feeling kind
Speaker 2: of hollowed out. The song does sound slightly broken in
Speaker 2: the in this that it feels like it's players never
Speaker 2: really get their mojo, and I can only assume that's deliberate.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's just part of like Emo, isn't it
Speaker 4: like or they're going for at the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it does. It's it makes it a really
Speaker 2: interesting record because the band sounds shy but almost fearless
Speaker 2: as songwriters and like willing to do weird things. Because
Speaker 2: then you get something like I don't know how you
Speaker 2: say this flirton squirto yeah yeah, which i'd sort of
Speaker 2: as far as an idea for a song goes a
Speaker 2: jazz piano loop that this guy who can't really sing
Speaker 2: mumbles over, barely getting the words out. It's the sort
Speaker 2: of thing that could derail a record, but I think, hey,
Speaker 2: I think it sets up Shadows really well. But it
Speaker 2: plays into that feeling of I don't want to say weakness,
Speaker 2: but that's it's a strange thing this where it sounds
Speaker 2: unconfident and they're willing to try things that are that unusual.
Speaker 1: And then you've got a lot of the following songs
Speaker 1: kind of you know, like shadows or closes sometimes whenever
Speaker 1: they are that kind of slow spinning in circles sort
Speaker 1: of you know Emo days that again, I associate so
Speaker 1: many songs I guess doing that and sounding like what
Speaker 1: they you know, sort of set out I think, you know,
Speaker 1: seven and in circles are you know, great songs and
Speaker 1: those are your kind of era defining songs to a degree.
Speaker 1: In terms of this, having those few that really they
Speaker 1: set up basically everything you need to note about Emo.
Speaker 2: You know, here are the tools. I think it is a.
Speaker 1: Record that then gives those tools to stuff that you
Speaker 1: know kind of runs with it. But this, I think
Speaker 1: this is the definitive nineties EMO record in my mind,
Speaker 1: even if it's not even the best one of that
Speaker 1: particular decade. I think, like, I don't think this is
Speaker 1: one of those inarguable you know, it's not rust in
Speaker 1: peace right, It's not one of those like makes it
Speaker 1: into the cannon of like objects of perfection rock records ever,
Speaker 1: But it is you know, kind of like Elliotts saying,
Speaker 1: being bold enough to go into this sort of unrefined
Speaker 1: imperfection for a fifty two minute record or something. The
Speaker 1: song craft can be kind of quite ponderous, but the
Speaker 1: radical invention of sound and mood is vitally you know,
Speaker 1: important and I think that's what's what's remarkable about this, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not the most listenable rock old rock
Speaker 1: album of this time in terms of, you know, the
Speaker 1: first couple of songs aside, it's obvious that this was
Speaker 1: never going to become a blockbuster like never Mind or
Speaker 1: The Color and the Shape or Bleed American. I mean,
Speaker 1: like even Pinkerton, right, Pinkerton is like probably uglier and
Speaker 1: it's its own weird way, more difficult to listen to.
Speaker 1: But Rivers still knows his way around a melodic has
Speaker 1: more catchy songs than.
Speaker 2: Than most people do.
Speaker 1: That this kind of actively shuns that after it's got
Speaker 1: seven out of the way, and so, like you know, personally,
Speaker 1: my interest does weighing a little bit in the album
Speaker 1: that goes, But it's kind of the radical dir giness
Speaker 1: of it that fields quite anti commercial that helps make
Speaker 1: it really pivotal. It's an album that again it provides
Speaker 1: those tools, and I think like Static Prevails by Jimmy
Speaker 1: World a year or two later is almost like what
Speaker 1: if we had those stargazy vibes of Diary with a
Speaker 1: whole track list of songs that are as catchy as
Speaker 1: seven is, But you know, on like vibes alone, convincing
Speaker 1: an entire subgenre basically to copy them. Yeah, this album
Speaker 1: is mercurial definitely and earns its place in you know,
Speaker 1: the kind of the probably more than they even now
Speaker 1: are actually you know, because they're playing Outbreak they don't
Speaker 1: even headline it, right, that's so important.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think And again I think like a lot
Speaker 4: of that does come down to this album.
Speaker 3: Like again, I like sort of the albums that follow
Speaker 3: because but I think none of them feel always kind
Speaker 3: of like essential to the fabric of the sort of
Speaker 3: the genre as Diary is.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I've heard many people ever speak
Speaker 1: about anything non Diary.
Speaker 3: People do like it, the real like diehard fans will
Speaker 3: tell you that the other stuff is right fucking great,
Speaker 3: But Diary is one where, like again, even like is
Speaker 3: cross through more casual kind of listeners because it is
Speaker 3: just an important kind of like sacred text in the
Speaker 3: formation of what EMO is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the blaze in the northern sky of second wave
Speaker 1: nineties emo, and with that extreme connection in our minds,
Speaker 1: we'll go into our fourth and final album, Club, which
Speaker 1: has not come from nineties Norwegian black metal. It comes
Speaker 1: from Gorguts and their album Colored Sand. We are ending
Speaker 1: on one of the kind of legendary, pivotal, influential bands
Speaker 1: of nineties North American death metal. They're French Canadian this time,
Speaker 1: rather than you know, New York or Florida but that
Speaker 1: era of bands. But rather than one of their og
Speaker 1: classics from that time, as we often tend to do,
Speaker 1: we are looking at a twenty first century masterpiece, which
Speaker 1: I guess just allows us to have a slightly different
Speaker 1: conversation with this one. Elliott, you brought up Gorguts, who
Speaker 1: did suggest we do Obscurer, which is the game changing one.
Speaker 1: I switched in Colored Sand because I think in some ways,
Speaker 1: I think it's even more impressive what they managed to
Speaker 1: put together here, and I think it just it connects
Speaker 1: to our our present a little more immediately, I guess.
Speaker 1: But Gorguts, this album in particular, coming out, I think
Speaker 1: of as being quite a significant moment for I guess
Speaker 1: like our generation of death metal fans. But in general,
Speaker 1: how did you come to them and how do you
Speaker 1: generally sort of rate Gorguts?
Speaker 2: I fucking love Gorguts. I feel like I probably got
Speaker 2: into the way a lot of people have is the
Speaker 2: sort of post goodjear a thing where people in the
Speaker 2: know would say, oh that these these rifts sound like
Speaker 2: Gorguts rifts. I've got here, got hear this bad. And
Speaker 2: then I went and heard Obscura, which I made the
Speaker 2: connection is obviously the name of a very impressive technical
Speaker 2: death metal band from who a real moment at the
Speaker 2: early twenty ten. So it was all it was all
Speaker 2: lining up in my head. And then I heard that
Speaker 2: first rift and I went, what the fuck is that?
Speaker 2: Just in case we do talk about the record another time,
Speaker 2: we're going to it too, which but one of the
Speaker 2: most baffling opening riffs on a metal record, and it
Speaker 2: was I was gonna saying love at first listen, I
Speaker 2: don't know about that. Maybe love at twenty third listen,
Speaker 2: we'll say. Eventually I cracked it, and I became slightly obsessed,
Speaker 2: and we talked about this a lot. But this was
Speaker 2: a good time, like the early twenty tens, for like
Speaker 2: great death metal bands, classic death metal bands either putting
Speaker 2: out some of their best material or coming back and
Speaker 2: being really good, to the point where I just sort
Speaker 2: of took it for granted that I would get into
Speaker 2: a band. And then six months later then have a
Speaker 2: new album out. I was like, oh, this is just
Speaker 2: how it works, man, that's cool. And I look back
Speaker 2: and think I should have cherished it more because it's
Speaker 2: it's such a baffling time, bafflingly perfect time to get
Speaker 2: into it and experience all these things. But of those
Speaker 2: gorg Gots, if they weren't necessary, my favorite, they were
Speaker 2: the one that I was most up on at the
Speaker 2: time of this record coming out.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, so this was this coming out was basically
Speaker 1: sort of around the time that I started to you know,
Speaker 1: become aware of Gorguts, and I think what you were
Speaker 1: saying about the comebacks, this is almost the record that, like,
Speaker 1: I think just started to make people believe that everything
Speaker 1: was gonna work. You know, the Gorguts album is this good,
Speaker 1: Everything's gonna be just we just have no reason to
Speaker 1: question anymore that comeback albums are good. But you know,
Speaker 1: to kind of earlier context or Gorguts, we are looking
Speaker 1: at a band who drastically contributed to kind of rewiring
Speaker 1: the headspace and language of death metal. They are a
Speaker 1: band who we reference a lot when it comes to
Speaker 1: the like technical and particularly kind of more avant guard
Speaker 1: end of death metal, like when we have freaky, twisted
Speaker 1: and dissonant death metal on the show. Gor Guts are
Speaker 1: a name who you know, in that particular realm, they
Speaker 1: will be dropped as much as like Morbid Angel or
Speaker 1: Cannibal Corks would in like any other form of death metal.
Speaker 1: Right Sam, you're you know, you've probably heard us say
Speaker 1: the name a thousand times around albums that you find for.
Speaker 3: Obviously like Shocker, this is the first Gorguts album I've
Speaker 3: listened to. But I was always like, oh, oh my god,
Speaker 3: this is all of those bands, like yeah, like I've
Speaker 3: spent years hating, and twelve or so months, you know,
Speaker 3: started to come round to like Interrama and if you're
Speaker 3: a Triumphant and like all.
Speaker 4: That was like, oh, yeah, no, they're Gorguts rifts.
Speaker 3: They're playing those kind of like weird dissonance, sickly but
Speaker 3: disgustingly heavy rifts.
Speaker 4: So I was like, oh, that's that's the that's the
Speaker 4: Colored Sands little rifts. They're right there, like cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, this is one where you'll hear all of that.
Speaker 1: And obviously this is you know, the comeback album, going
Speaker 1: back to their original run. Their evolution is a really
Speaker 1: interesting one in terms of listening to their albums in sequence,
Speaker 1: they start off in the early nineties very heavily indebted
Speaker 1: to death I think, and then they almost kind of
Speaker 1: like speed run that sort of progressive evolution where like
Speaker 1: the fact that they're called Gorguts immediately makes you think
Speaker 1: that they're like a brutal death mate about a disgorge
Speaker 1: or something, right, But they very quickly on those early
Speaker 1: more old school leaning death metal records, the ones that
Speaker 1: have like the Dan See Grave covers and stuff, they
Speaker 1: make that kind of pretty slippery and pretty technical, but
Speaker 1: it's almost like they get the party slightly too late
Speaker 1: because they're hitting their creative peak in the kind of
Speaker 1: mid to late nineties. When those early nineties death metal,
Speaker 1: you know, it's kind of tailing off culturally, so they
Speaker 1: go quiet for a bit. And then in nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: probably around one of the lowest periods for death metal
Speaker 1: again culturally, they drop Obscurer, which is still to this
Speaker 1: day bewildering, Like it's one of those albums that is
Speaker 1: genuinely a little brain breaking when you hear it, Like
Speaker 1: how in the hell did those rifts come to them?
Speaker 1: You know, it's if you know people thought that death
Speaker 1: metal invention was in kind of short supply and about
Speaker 1: a decade at that point into the genre's lifespan. Everything
Speaker 1: that you could do with those building blocks have been done.
Speaker 1: They just absolutely just fuck it open like these a
Speaker 1: tonal you know, discordant riffing style just breaks open the
Speaker 1: confines of it. And this gives the kind of a
Speaker 1: slightly more art house genre of end of the genre,
Speaker 1: which we're very much again still feeling today, a whole
Speaker 1: new kind of life span on its own. So why
Speaker 1: aren't we doing Obscurer. It's such a headfuck. I think
Speaker 1: it's quite heavy going, particularly for a newcomer. Right again,
Speaker 1: you might hear thank you, Well, yeah, if you were
Speaker 1: to someone Obscure, go have this. It's so complex and
Speaker 1: dissonant and just a pile up of like warped broken.
Speaker 1: It's a record, it's like an hour long when you
Speaker 1: have to really untangle it. That's also true for this one.
Speaker 1: But again there are different factors around this that'll kind
Speaker 1: of come on to. But Gorguts, you know, they had
Speaker 1: it in them to kind of just take that adventure
Speaker 1: that they had an Obscurer and harness it. They make
Speaker 1: one more record in the original run from Wisdom to Hate,
Speaker 1: which is also wicked a little bit more accessible than Gadura,
Speaker 1: but sorry, obscure even. But then they're done, and they're
Speaker 1: one of those bands like at the Gates or like
Speaker 1: Cynic or someone who make a very big impact on
Speaker 1: the genre with a pretty small catalog, just a few
Speaker 1: records that were there to go and be discovered. Then
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen, suddenly we've got a new Gorguts record, and
Speaker 1: what the hell could that sound like? You know, like,
Speaker 1: what could they do with that?
Speaker 2: Sound that?
Speaker 1: And from Wisdom to Hate they already sound like they're
Speaker 1: from the future.
Speaker 2: What can they do with that? In the you know,
Speaker 2: the twenty tens.
Speaker 1: And this is where we come on to what you
Speaker 1: were just saying, Eliot about kind of the hotbed of
Speaker 1: extreme metal comeback albums that the early twenty tens were.
Speaker 1: And there's this little pocket of there's Celtic Frosts in
Speaker 1: the mid two thousands, which is almost like a few
Speaker 1: years ahead of the game, harbinger of kind of setting
Speaker 1: the standard for them. Then there's Autopsy a couple of
Speaker 1: years kind of you know after that, which is just
Speaker 1: a total joy, particularly concentrated around twenty thirteen twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: there's just a flood of them in particularly extreme underground metal,
Speaker 1: where there's Surgical Steel in twenty thirteen, which is like
Speaker 1: the blockbuster one, which it felt like people who don't
Speaker 1: even really mainly listen to extreme metal were kind of
Speaker 1: aware of Surgical Steel and how good it was. There's
Speaker 1: the bunch that we did when our twenty fourteen special
Speaker 1: last year without the Gates and God Flesh and the
Speaker 1: I Hate God one as well, Like I said, Coloured Sands,
Speaker 1: this is a release about a month before Surgical Steel.
Speaker 1: What a fucking what a month that was for old
Speaker 1: death metal. But in my memory, this is almost like
Speaker 1: the album that kind of like it pushed the boulder
Speaker 1: of elation down the hill, but then just kept rolling
Speaker 1: and rolling through their albums like oh then the Circle
Speaker 1: Steal happened, and then fucking you know, the Goldflesh album
Speaker 1: was amazing and then a war reality came. It's it
Speaker 1: just it kept going and going, and this one just
Speaker 1: had this era of like, how in the fuck have Gorgut.
Speaker 2: Has done this? Yeah, because I think Surgical Steel like
Speaker 2: the beautiful thing about it, and one of the reasons
Speaker 2: I love it so much. Is it really feels like
Speaker 2: a victory lap for Carcass, Like just as a comparison
Speaker 2: Swan Song, which is a record which again I love,
Speaker 2: and I know it's not universally aclaimed, then coming back
Speaker 2: very good, very good like them coming back and putting
Speaker 2: out a record that combines so much of their best
Speaker 2: stuff and just this unbelievable level of songwriting.
Speaker 4: It was.
Speaker 2: It kind of felt like, even if as much as
Speaker 2: I'd want another Carcass record after that, if that was
Speaker 2: all they ever did, you'd go fair enough. That's a
Speaker 2: great bookend on that career. The Gorga thing did feel
Speaker 2: a bit like, is there an unanswered question in the
Speaker 2: previous catalog that we might be getting the answer to
Speaker 2: fifteen years later? And I think of all those extreme
Speaker 2: metal comebacks you were talking about earlier, and all the
Speaker 2: classic bands like Dying Fecis, Cannibal Corps, nape On Death
Speaker 2: putting out unbelievably good records, this is maybe the one
Speaker 2: of all of them which seems to have the most
Speaker 2: claimed to be the best by its artist. Where I agree,
Speaker 2: over a decade later, it's not remotely unusual for people
Speaker 2: to rank this as the best Gorgets record in a way,
Speaker 2: where as brilliant as they are, it would be slightly
Speaker 2: odd if someone said Surgical Still was the best Carcass record,
Speaker 2: or Torch is the best Cannibal corpse record, or you know,
Speaker 2: Utilitarians the best nap on death record. Those are some
Speaker 2: of my face by all of those artists. But Colored
Speaker 2: Sand seems to hold this place where it's maybe the
Speaker 2: classic record by a band that already had made its mark.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that this is the best Gorguts thing
Speaker 1: that they've ever done, which is again why I was like,
Speaker 1: that's kind of push the Colored Sands instead rather than
Speaker 1: the you know, the original point of Obscure, which is
Speaker 1: so scrunky and so just like completely innovative. But I
Speaker 1: think in terms of like honing that into the best
Speaker 1: thing in their catalog, and I think again the peer
Speaker 1: in that regard is it's monotheist, right, like this is
Speaker 1: those are the two where the band come back and
Speaker 1: you go like, oh, this is It's not just like
Speaker 1: you're saying a victory lap for at the Gates or
Speaker 1: Carcass or whatever. This is like the album that you
Speaker 1: were meant to make that you never got round to
Speaker 1: do in the in the original run, it's an object
Speaker 1: of genuine magnificence. This album like taking what you think
Speaker 1: of as Gorguts that warped style and personality and baking
Speaker 1: it into something that feels like truly majestic, where it's
Speaker 1: an album that beyond pure discordant weirdness, also just has
Speaker 1: like fucking aura. It's incredible colored sands Sam. Yeah, experience
Speaker 1: with Gorguts, I know, right, I know, I've this is
Speaker 1: the thing for fucking what twelve years now. I don't
Speaker 1: completely understand it. It's so huge you've probably been listening
Speaker 1: to like a few days. It's a lot, but you
Speaker 1: can marvel at it, can't you.
Speaker 3: So I was a bit like I was like a
Speaker 3: twenty tens technical death metal album. Oh no, least favorite
Speaker 3: like clinical Sheeny, lacking in any kind of like human
Speaker 3: spirit personally too. I was so instant to hear play
Speaker 3: and then this was like this was where I'd listened
Speaker 3: to a note of this and knew anything about Gorguts.
Speaker 4: I just was like I just had in my head.
Speaker 4: I was like twenty tens tech deaf album of god. No,
Speaker 4: this album rings of status, This album like it has this.
Speaker 3: Is like majesty is the kind of like word or
Speaker 3: like the great because this is is this slower than
Speaker 3: Gorguts generally were, because like this is like the tempo.
Speaker 4: Technical Death album.
Speaker 3: It is quite a slow and like weirdly graceful album
Speaker 3: while still just throwing at some of the most fucked up, twisted,
Speaker 3: discordant rifts that you can possibly do, like like l
Speaker 3: and like how you said, like immediately heres this like
Speaker 3: barrage of insane rifts and then very quickly kind of
Speaker 3: like moves into a kind of like quite measured and
Speaker 3: progressive sort of sound. When it goes hard this album,
Speaker 3: I'm immediately just get swept up in the sort of
Speaker 3: the frosty of the rifts, and then I'll kind of
Speaker 3: find bit so I kind of like just marvel at
Speaker 3: the kind of like stature and majesty of the record.
Speaker 3: I think it's like a real like again, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: be wrapping my head around this. I'm like I'm a
Speaker 3: couple of listens in and I'm sorry for you two
Speaker 3: who've listening to this album for ten plush years. You've
Speaker 3: like had everything, but like the sheer weight of the
Speaker 3: intro to a nocean of wisdom. It's fucking crazy how
Speaker 3: that song kind of just like you've had this amazing
Speaker 3: opener and then that song just kind of comes crashing
Speaker 3: down around you, and I'm just kind of like, what
Speaker 3: am I fucking listening to here?
Speaker 4: How do I actually like take all this in?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is.
Speaker 1: When you say slower, it's an interesting point because I guess,
Speaker 1: you know, because of it does like blast and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, but in terms of like slowly metering out
Speaker 1: its ideas album and.
Speaker 3: Causing barrage with this contant, it does that in like
Speaker 3: sort of short contained burst, but at hole it feels
Speaker 3: like it kind.
Speaker 4: Of a slower but more measured and like, yeah, like
Speaker 4: not reserved, but kind of like fought four ward. It's
Speaker 4: kind of delivery of that sort.
Speaker 1: Of stuff absolutely, and that again, I think is part
Speaker 1: of what makes this the particular album that it is
Speaker 1: within the Gorguts kind of discography, and it's one of
Speaker 1: the things that you know, we are talking about again
Speaker 1: heavily technical, discordant, twisty death metal here. In the last
Speaker 1: twelve years released since this album, there's been a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff like that that's gained more you know, profile
Speaker 1: or whatever. And I think it's the extremely few elite
Speaker 1: bands who have managed to craft that general discordant, dissonant
Speaker 1: whatever into these kind of larger albums states moments to
Speaker 1: this degree. So I'm thinking obviously, like you know, Bloodynantation, obviously, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know Imperio triumphant On, like an Alphavilla or a
Speaker 1: gold Star Ulcer raight On, like Cutting the Throat of God.
Speaker 1: Those absolutely yeah, those albums where you think about the
Speaker 1: kind of the artistry of the whole and not just like, oh,
Speaker 1: how kind of scrounky and fucked up are these sounds?
Speaker 4: To me?
Speaker 1: That's what again coming back for Coloured Sands, that's what
Speaker 1: Gorguts like took what they had innovated and turned it
Speaker 1: into That's where the texture on this album applied to
Speaker 1: that kind of like warped rotten, you know, weirdo kind
Speaker 1: of death metal thing, and the soul of it as well,
Speaker 1: that really exists in this record. It's it's kind of overwhelming,
Speaker 1: you know, I feel like I'm inside like a millennia
Speaker 1: old ancient temple buried beneath the sand or something. When
Speaker 1: I listened to this record, like having my consciousness warped.
Speaker 1: It's one of the best sounding death metal records of
Speaker 1: the twenty first century. Like the production on this is
Speaker 1: god tea for this kind of thing, Like the depth
Speaker 1: to it, how far back the sound seems to go,
Speaker 1: and how many layers within this really dense thing you
Speaker 1: can find within it is astonishing.
Speaker 3: There it's like such an insane vastness to it, simply
Speaker 3: like the soul I mean it is again it's on
Speaker 3: it's a there's like a bit of thing his voice
Speaker 3: actually like cracks in a way that you don't kind
Speaker 3: of associate with defer there is that those those human
Speaker 3: imperfections are kind of there and it's not again because
Speaker 3: again I'm just thinking tech that thats guy find is
Speaker 3: so clinical and so precise, and again this is you know,
Speaker 3: insanely technical and like like Telldinky proficient. But there is
Speaker 3: a kind of like a humanity to it that I
Speaker 3: sometimes find those albums lack. And that was again what
Speaker 3: I found really sort of engrossing about the record is
Speaker 3: that there was a human sort of soul to it, but.
Speaker 2: Just a combination of things all mixing together. And like
Speaker 2: one of the reasons why you're able to tell when
Speaker 2: someone is inspired by Gorgas is because nobody quite sounds
Speaker 2: like them. You know that their brand of death metal
Speaker 2: is as influenced by like crowd rock as it is Slayer.
Speaker 2: I mean, on this record, bringing in like ancient folk
Speaker 2: music and pendetic and riffs that don't crunch or street
Speaker 2: they're sort of grown at you. It's it's already quite
Speaker 2: a suffocating sound. And one of the most impressive things
Speaker 2: about this record is the ability to harness that and
Speaker 2: yet make it feel so lavish, so like again comparing
Speaker 2: this job Securer, where it just feels that your head's
Speaker 2: in a vice, like it's almost hard to breathe when
Speaker 2: that record's on, and this takes that same thing, the
Speaker 2: stuff that makes that record special and uses it for
Speaker 2: like world building, like for creating this like infinitely vast
Speaker 2: landscape that the record can plain. And it's funny that
Speaker 2: you mentioned absolutely elsewhere. I I've always seen this record
Speaker 2: as two halves, like the first four tracks and then
Speaker 2: the interlude and then yeah, the last four I've always
Speaker 2: seen as a pair of acts with a mission project
Speaker 2: like that. I think, like I don't know too much
Speaker 2: intimately about like the themes or if one song's narrative
Speaker 2: runs into the next. I just think tonally that they're
Speaker 2: distinct enough to feel like deliberately struck, to feel like
Speaker 2: they're deliberately structured in that way. No, they absolutely are.
Speaker 1: And so the main guy in Gorg Sir Luke Lamy,
Speaker 1: he recruited a totally new lineup basically for this. One
Speaker 1: of the key guys in it is Colin Marston, who
Speaker 1: he plays in the really freaky alien BLACKMT band Crellis.
Speaker 1: He as a producer has become basically like the guy
Speaker 1: for that whole like artsy New York tech Death kind
Speaker 1: of thing, Like you know, he does the Emperi Trimphant
Speaker 1: Records and all that kind of stuff. And this album
Speaker 1: coming out was almost this was basically the point where
Speaker 1: I heard that and went what the fuck is that?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 1: And then the following twelve years with all these bands,
Speaker 1: you build on it and take it in their own directions,
Speaker 1: but this was like the benchmark of like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is what progressive. Particularly again, you mentioned the kind of
Speaker 1: the stuff that you thought Tech Death was is maybe
Speaker 1: in the prior a couple of years, the stuff I
Speaker 1: was more familiar with, and then I heard this and
Speaker 1: it's like, this is a different side of a different,
Speaker 1: you know a part. This is what something that's that
Speaker 1: dense and progressive can kind of feel like, and it's not,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of undynamic. You know that the dynamics
Speaker 1: of it and the clarity of it is is incredible.
Speaker 1: The opening rip of Letoire de Monde maybe one of
Speaker 1: the most like ear catching, ostentatious starts to a death
Speaker 1: that a record during this decade.
Speaker 2: I think, just.
Speaker 1: It's so immediate and so crushing, but then tellingly, like
Speaker 1: thirty seconds in it slipped down into this real like
Speaker 1: shadow zone with that kind of creeping jazzy touch. The
Speaker 1: strange bass melodies those really like that, the kind of
Speaker 1: harmonic like pink kind of sound, which whenever I hear them,
Speaker 1: I really associate them with like this, you know, era
Speaker 1: of Gorguts, and it creates this incredible like depth of
Speaker 1: field where again like the low end and the death
Speaker 1: mold is so heavy, but there's this sort of whole
Speaker 1: like mystical landscape within it, and there's these really alien
Speaker 1: melodic passages that bring this sort of like dark majesty
Speaker 1: to it. Like Ember Voice later on has a really
Speaker 1: sort of meditative melody that's been baked into this like
Speaker 1: slithering death metal rift it's such a cool sound, and
Speaker 1: then you know Forgotten Arrows as well, the real like
Speaker 1: the sort of the tendrils of that, the guitar melodies
Speaker 1: and the bas melodies and stuff sort of reach around
Speaker 1: and coat all of this like brutal death metal, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of spontaneity. It's it's kind of incomprehensibly detailed. This album,
Speaker 1: like it is such a again that deconstructing it would
Speaker 1: just take forever. But the stuff that actually kind of
Speaker 1: manages to reach out and grab you is really incredible.
Speaker 3: I mean that the song like the Tar Trucks and
Speaker 3: that kind of really sort of fullish a difficit because
Speaker 3: you have again to have this like slow burn kind
Speaker 3: of build for two minutes and then when that kind
Speaker 3: of like doom riff hits like about two mins in
Speaker 3: and it all kind of bursts. Is the heaviest fucking
Speaker 3: thing ever, and they just like twist and contort it,
Speaker 3: and like like when the drums sort of pick up
Speaker 3: time and the sort of the second half of the
Speaker 3: song and it does just kind of like build this
Speaker 3: mental like you've come from this quite sort of like
Speaker 3: slowly detailed intro into something that is kind of like blasting,
Speaker 3: and this solo that is the most like twisted and
Speaker 3: like mangled guitar solo imaginable, like trying to just sort
Speaker 3: of battle with this riff that is blasting at the
Speaker 3: same time. And again it's like the amount of sort
Speaker 3: of different sounds are pulled from across all these different
Speaker 3: tracks and kind of like seamlessly tied together where you
Speaker 3: feel like they should be quite like disparate elements, but
Speaker 3: they all just become part of this like wider tapestry
Speaker 3: of sounds that just all just kind of like mesh
Speaker 3: together in a really engrossing way.
Speaker 2: And this album, to me, managed to strike that balance
Speaker 2: in fact, fund enough similar to what we say about
Speaker 2: Rust in Peace, where it's technically super impressive but also
Speaker 2: a lot of fun to listen to. I find that
Speaker 2: to be true of this record, even though at times,
Speaker 2: like emotionally, it can be devastating and sometimes it can
Speaker 2: be like tortuous, but the amount of fun, quirky, inventive
Speaker 2: musical ideas, particularly in the first half that just barrel
Speaker 2: a lot, like that bit in to Demond where it's
Speaker 2: there's like that you just you've linked that to the negative.
Speaker 1: Hearing and you know, singing his power ballad over these
Speaker 1: rifts crazy anyway, carry but like the bit in that
Speaker 1: where there's.
Speaker 2: Like a little staccato harmonica frame that keeps coming back
Speaker 2: and it sits in this swinging groove, but then it
Speaker 2: becomes a shuffle each time for what doesn't even feel
Speaker 2: like a whole bar, And I genuinely don't know how
Speaker 2: you think of that. And the first onement, I went,
Speaker 2: what the fuck is going on? But by the time
Speaker 2: I finally got into like the like the nervous system
Speaker 2: of the record, and like I started to understand it.
Speaker 2: It just those moments started to elicit joy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the title track, which Sam was mentioning, uh,
Speaker 1: that creepy clean guitar, it's like, you know, part what
Speaker 1: sort of a Sugar do with their kind of you know,
Speaker 1: jazzy clean sections and part what you know, like again
Speaker 1: ulcer Rate, currently on their most critically acclaimed albums kind
Speaker 1: of do, and that build into almost like a sort
Speaker 1: of death doom.
Speaker 2: Gorgot song like it. It's really slow and really heavy.
Speaker 1: And Forgotten Arrows has that whole latter section which is
Speaker 1: almost like a breakdown for the whole second half of
Speaker 1: the song where they just hammer on a couple of
Speaker 1: notes after all that complexity at the start, and it's
Speaker 1: so suffocating and eye popping, and Sam, you're I'm really
Speaker 1: glad that you picked up about Luke's vocal as well.
Speaker 1: Who I think he has one of the most kind
Speaker 1: of pained roars in death metal, and there's a he's
Speaker 1: always been an element who kind of he offsets how
Speaker 1: chin stroke he maybe some of the music could be
Speaker 1: because he sounds like he's being set on fire, you know,
Speaker 1: and he's just yelling at you to fucking chuck some
Speaker 1: water over him. He's like a real violent urgency about
Speaker 1: him that again really grapples you. In kind of the
Speaker 1: the heart of the record. You have the like the
Speaker 1: jackhammer drum precision of Enemies and Compassion later which is
Speaker 1: kind of head melting, And there's a solo section in
Speaker 1: that song where it's almost like multiple guitars harmonizing by
Speaker 1: the sound of it, but almost like a tonally, like
Speaker 1: they're not really playing a real melody, and it's it's
Speaker 1: it's actively funny as a sound.
Speaker 3: It's so mental, Like Compassion, it is kind of the
Speaker 3: most bruising I guess the song on the record like
Speaker 3: for the first half and there's like a big like
Speaker 3: swinging rift like three minutes in it's.
Speaker 4: Like she'd be hard. But then yeah, I was like,
Speaker 4: oh no, so just and what the fuck is going
Speaker 4: on with that.
Speaker 3: Solo because it's fucking like the way the guitars are
Speaker 3: just sounding like not like guitars or whatever they're doing
Speaker 3: to them, like and there's those of my I was like,
Speaker 3: I'm so glad I've come to this after I finally
Speaker 3: clicked with Imperial Triumph and that I'm kind of just
Speaker 3: like on the weird like fucked up sounds. Now it's
Speaker 3: become like a nice on was like, ah, this is
Speaker 3: this is where it all comes from, and I like
Speaker 3: it now this is good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I'm also glad that you picked up on
Speaker 1: earlier probably like that the thing for me that the
Speaker 1: main riff in the Nocean of Wisdom around like there's
Speaker 1: so much like crazy, the like bizarre what.
Speaker 2: Is this stuff?
Speaker 1: It's one of the most perfect death metal riffs of
Speaker 1: the twenty fifth century. I think it's like again next
Speaker 1: to Scurge of Iron, you know, just the way that
Speaker 1: throws into the boon, those opening drum hits and then
Speaker 1: just dragging you, kicking and screaming down into it like
Speaker 1: it's sickening, but it grooves, you know, like that is
Speaker 1: the drums just roll on that double bass so effectively
Speaker 1: it throws in that little scrape at just the right
Speaker 1: place for the maximum emphasis. Where again it's this is
Speaker 1: much heavier and much stranger and much more kind of
Speaker 1: really tightly wound. But that is the kind of thing
Speaker 1: that Kajea are gonna go like, yeah, you know, that's
Speaker 1: that's what we do again, particularly like the first Gajira
Speaker 1: record has got a ton of gor goes over it.
Speaker 1: And again this is hearing those sounds where Kajeira have
Speaker 1: taken those into like sad but true territory. This is
Speaker 1: that taken into this absolute lightless kind of pit of
Speaker 1: a sound.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean one of my favorite things that
Speaker 2: this style of metal is capable of is when it
Speaker 2: when it does that thing with as you're sinking into
Speaker 2: the ground, where these groaning, dissonant riffs that just they
Speaker 2: almost they almost devote the feeling of falling asleep. An
Speaker 2: ocean of wisdom has that but still manages to be catchy,
Speaker 2: grew like you just compared to Scourge of Iron, which
Speaker 2: is one of the most Caveman Moss songs, reminds me
Speaker 2: bit of like where the Slime Live from Will Been
Speaker 2: Angry in that kind of fil Yeah, exactly. It's in
Speaker 2: that tradition while still feeling like uncomfortable and upsetting, which
Speaker 2: you know, those songs are very heavy, but they don't
Speaker 2: quite have that going for them, and Gorga's just like
Speaker 2: they have an ability to marry those two worlds, which
Speaker 2: you probably count on one hand the number of bands
Speaker 2: that have managed that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think that's almost the a thing for Again,
Speaker 1: I do it today when I'm listening to to Ulcerrat
Speaker 1: or whatever, these kind of bands where it's technical death metal,
Speaker 1: but I'm almost in a kind of fugue drone state
Speaker 1: during the during the records, which is I get a
Speaker 1: part of the key to I think maybe to tapping
Speaker 1: into and really like, you know, loving them and not
Speaker 1: going like you know where at the bangers because Ocean
Speaker 1: of Wisdom is probably the closes thing too that that's
Speaker 1: a fucking groove riff, but there's also like an Eastern
Speaker 1: drone through the center of that song where you're talking
Speaker 1: about the themes of the record earlier. This is a
Speaker 1: concept album about Tibetan history and mysticism, which I am
Speaker 1: not knowledgeable at all, but also like who else for
Speaker 1: the comeback out that's their first time in twelve years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: whole thing's about Tibet. Sure, whatever you say, mate, but
Speaker 1: you know that thing of like death metal as an
Speaker 1: art form, through its innate psychedelia kind of being attuned to,
Speaker 1: you know, twist it away from these sort of more
Speaker 1: conventional Western musicality to then communicating with these other kind
Speaker 1: of ideas. That shit, it's all over death metal today,
Speaker 1: I think, and it's gorgut to one of the big
Speaker 1: like again kind of progenitism monoliths of that particular thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean how many sort of bands. Oh there's
Speaker 3: a kind of like Eastern sort of flavor. Yeah, guitar
Speaker 3: like the momber that that was that the end of
Speaker 3: Notion of Wisdom, where you kind of have this like
Speaker 3: acoustical like some recent soft outro and the way this
Speaker 3: opening riff and Forgotten Arrows kind of just like picks
Speaker 3: up on that and just makes it fucking heavy while
Speaker 3: so sort of like tonally sounding like it's seeking from that.
Speaker 4: And that's again where I.
Speaker 3: Feel like this album like you're out that whole and
Speaker 3: like the two sides to it almost like two kind
Speaker 3: of like flowing pieces of music, because you have a
Speaker 3: like Forgotten Arrows does just kind of blend seamlessly from
Speaker 3: where Wisdom ends, and it just kind of like it
Speaker 3: feels like it's doing these kind of like those Eastern
Speaker 3: ideas without retreading and sort of like sounding uniriginal. It's
Speaker 3: kind of splicing it in in a really interesting and
Speaker 3: like dynamic way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Elliott talking about how the record you felt
Speaker 1: like it was you know, uh deliberately, you know, it's
Speaker 1: kind of segmented the middle again, the Tibetan kind of
Speaker 1: arc of the album. The pivotal point is a track
Speaker 1: called the Battle of Chamder, which is I think meant
Speaker 1: to represent the kind of like Chinese invasion and then
Speaker 1: subjugation of Tibetan. Then that the kind of the aftermath
Speaker 1: of that is what the following song's kind of deal with.
Speaker 1: That track in twenty thirteen blew my fucking mind because
Speaker 1: it would be you know, pretty usual to hear a
Speaker 1: metal record that maybe starts with an intro of like
Speaker 1: the third thirty seconds of that and it goes into
Speaker 1: a metal song. But this is a full blown, meticulously composed,
Speaker 1: just classical strings chamber piece that's about. It's not just
Speaker 1: an interlude. It's a song in its own right in
Speaker 1: the heart of the record. And it's certainly it's one
Speaker 1: of the most incredible orchestral pieces on a metal album
Speaker 1: that I personally have ever heard.
Speaker 2: I almost have it in mind.
Speaker 1: As like, if you can't make it as integral to
Speaker 1: the fabric of the album of the Battle of Chando Is,
Speaker 1: you know, go back and make improvements. This is the
Speaker 1: one because this is.
Speaker 2: Such a swing.
Speaker 1: They hadn't done that on any of their other albums,
Speaker 1: you know, like, oh yeah, here's a fucking full on
Speaker 1: five minute chamber piece.
Speaker 3: So like when this came, I was like, oh, well,
Speaker 3: they're kind of doing a sort of a symphonic death
Speaker 3: metal song there. Having that, and then I was gonna
Speaker 3: like wait for the melts coming I was like, and
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, okay, no, they're just just.
Speaker 4: It's a full of classical sort of chamber piece. Fair
Speaker 4: fuck it.
Speaker 3: It doesn't sound detached from the record or kind of
Speaker 3: like jarring and kills the pace. It is that sort
Speaker 3: of centerpiece to it of kind of like a purely
Speaker 3: like say, classical piece, and I was like, yeah, this
Speaker 3: is this is like this caught me off guard. But
Speaker 3: if you're gonna do it fucking fully commit, don't just
Speaker 3: have it as a kind of like a minute long
Speaker 3: all having a little bit of class music interlude. Have
Speaker 3: it as a fully fleshed out, several minutes long classical
Speaker 3: interlude that fits the.
Speaker 4: Vibe of the record perfectly.
Speaker 1: I used to listen to this track on its own
Speaker 1: sometimes if I wasn't listened to the album, Like it's
Speaker 1: fully it's almost like even sort of John Williams Jaws
Speaker 1: esque at the very start, but then just climbs and like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the actual sonic fidelity of those low, ominous kind of
Speaker 1: strokes of the cello, so like it really is in
Speaker 1: tune with the low end of the death metal on
Speaker 1: the album, even though it's not a death metal piece.
Speaker 1: And melodically it's incredible, and you go, well, they fucking
Speaker 1: wrote and arrange that, you know, and it's legitimately it's
Speaker 1: as good as basically any movie score. It's a valid
Speaker 1: choice to be someone's favorite song on the album, and
Speaker 1: it's the song that most bands would make the kind
Speaker 1: of transitionary interlude.
Speaker 2: Well for most metal bands, even a lot of great ones,
Speaker 2: when they do like, oh, we're gonna have an orchestral
Speaker 2: piece on the record, it's if it's done by the band,
Speaker 2: it's typically by an amateur who doesn't spend much time
Speaker 2: writing classical music. And I'm not an expert on a
Speaker 2: classicalis I won't claim to be, but quite often it
Speaker 2: feels like almost more of a box ticking exercise when
Speaker 2: bands do that sort of thing which just goes, oh,
Speaker 2: this is what classical music sort of sounds like. So
Speaker 2: boom boom boom. Make it sound a dramatic nice This is, like,
Speaker 2: like you say, as good as any movie score. It's
Speaker 2: elite level at a thing which they hadn't even tried
Speaker 2: before in this band. And I'm not in a position
Speaker 2: to say how good this is because I don't know
Speaker 2: all that much about classical music. But I do know
Speaker 2: that it's for all five minutes, it's engaging, it's interesting,
Speaker 2: it's dramatic. It just fulfills its task perfectly. And when
Speaker 2: I was listening to this, I just thought the guy
Speaker 2: from Nightwish is taking up half of his band's records
Speaker 2: doing stuff that is less than ten percent as good
Speaker 2: as this, and this is like dead center on the
Speaker 2: comeback record, and then it's back to what Gorguts do.
Speaker 2: That's almost more impressive than if they'd really really lend
Speaker 2: if they've got the next half is going to be orchestral.
Speaker 2: The fact that it's this good for just five minutes
Speaker 2: is somehow even more baffling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's still to the day, like twelve years on,
Speaker 1: there's not many things really that have been done on
Speaker 1: my record, like the Battle of Chandough in you know,
Speaker 1: metal spheres, and the album after it does, I think
Speaker 1: become even more suffocating and kind of difficult. I think
Speaker 1: that the most grueling song of the album is the
Speaker 1: song Absconders, which is about nine minutes long, and that's
Speaker 1: the most avoid of light or almost like catchy rifts
Speaker 1: or melody. That's really it's really heavy going that song,
Speaker 1: and by the end of the record, you know, reduced
Speaker 1: to silence, it's become really quite apocalyptic, and that you know,
Speaker 1: this whole like avant garde dissonant death metal school sort
Speaker 1: of thing that we talk about on you know, the
Speaker 1: regular review show. Gorgarts are really you know fathers of that.
Speaker 1: But this album coming when it did, I think, really,
Speaker 1: I mean for me personally again, it was kind of
Speaker 1: like the wake up call for that, but just in general,
Speaker 1: it's they provided the musical language and the tools for
Speaker 1: that back in the nineties, and they would be rightly
Speaker 1: you know, mentioned as a touchstone if that was if
Speaker 1: they never reunited. But this happening like right before that
Speaker 1: shit really gained so much steam is really interesting because
Speaker 1: I don't know how, you know, like how pivotal or
Speaker 1: inspirational this particular album was in like forming the direction
Speaker 1: of some of these bands, because you guess a lot
Speaker 1: of them are like, you know, kind of already underway
Speaker 1: or already forming or whatever. But it's just sort of
Speaker 1: poetic that Gorgots come and drop this and then in
Speaker 1: the next couple of years it's like artificial brain and
Speaker 1: you know, like Perion in that kind of you know,
Speaker 1: Colin Master New York scene, they're kind of you know,
Speaker 1: they just kind of go up and not do and
Speaker 1: you how bloody temantations starting up, and Catialist and Imperiotriumphant
Speaker 1: a bit later, and ad Nauseam and ulcer Rate hit
Speaker 1: their peak by kind of again integrating the atmospheres and
Speaker 1: melodies and sort of stuff that this is kind of pioneering.
Speaker 1: It's a really special case of a band who you know,
Speaker 1: had provided a toolbox couple decades before. You know, like
Speaker 1: we were saying something they're doing right, but they come
Speaker 1: back at just the right moment to update it. And
Speaker 1: somehow the band who had like basically pioneered this kind
Speaker 1: of avant garde dissonant death metal thing add this like
Speaker 1: whole new melodic, atmospheric kind of dimension to it, where
Speaker 1: you go, look that we.
Speaker 2: Still can do more with this, there's still more to it.
Speaker 2: Well it kind of again and maybe maybe I'm missing
Speaker 2: something here, but I almost felt this album put to
Speaker 2: bed that wing of technical death metal that earlier It's
Speaker 2: time in the Sun, because because in the time where
Speaker 2: gorgots are away, your necrophages come along and get super
Speaker 2: popular doing that really dazzling, technically impressive form of technical
Speaker 2: death metal, and you know, by by the early twentys
Speaker 2: are obscurer. There's beyond creation. There's like I say, Rings
Speaker 2: of Saturn, which is really taking that principle in taking
Speaker 2: it super super far. And then this record comes out
Speaker 2: and it just felt like the conversation of death metal
Speaker 2: was no longer about that sort of music. Like those
Speaker 2: bands kept tracking on and they kept releasing records and
Speaker 2: they had their fan base or whatever, but that stopped
Speaker 2: being the cool thing in the stuff that felt like
Speaker 2: it was pushing the outer limits of death metal because
Speaker 2: it was like getting faster and getting more technical. That
Speaker 2: was one thing, but this is it moved more into
Speaker 2: things of like what ideas can you bring to it?
Speaker 2: How inventive can you be? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, just how much like how much further can you
Speaker 3: look beyond the horizon of what the genre's offering at
Speaker 3: the moment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it wasn't just like you know, how fast can
Speaker 2: your hands move? Anymore? It was suddenly like what can
Speaker 2: you take from? What can you fall them? What like
Speaker 2: emotional registers? Are you able to hit in your songs?
Speaker 4: Again?
Speaker 2: Like just the final song reduced to silence. And I
Speaker 2: don't know a lot about what the themes of the
Speaker 2: record all they threw, but I do remember luking into
Speaker 2: you talking about this song and it was about how
Speaker 2: the Tibetan culture has this principle of violence and then
Speaker 2: they were subjucated, and the question sort of being asked of, like,
Speaker 2: where did this principle get you? Which is like a
Speaker 2: really haunting, difficult, like moral quandary, And it's just the
Speaker 2: sort of thing that you wouldn't think ostensibly a death
Speaker 2: metal band covers. And it felt like suddenly, at least
Speaker 2: in the underground, the conversation about this style of music changed,
Speaker 2: if not necessarily for the first time in this direction,
Speaker 2: but for the first time in the time I was
Speaker 2: following it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, And I really I think you put it
Speaker 1: well there. And again I think that the bands who
Speaker 1: have come through again, some already existed, but almost like
Speaker 1: it's only the best of the best of this sort
Speaker 1: of generation that been able to come close to that,
Speaker 1: And it's also the ones who have taken the principles
Speaker 1: of that. When you think about whether it be ulcer
Speaker 1: Rates really just fucking like, you know, a dark night
Speaker 1: of the soul thing that they kind of are able
Speaker 1: to do with this sort of thing, or whether it
Speaker 1: be imperio triumphant, you know, trying to tap into larger
Speaker 1: ideas around kind of you know, like fucking like wealth
Speaker 1: and power and all this sort of stuff within what
Speaker 1: they did, the kind of the world building element of
Speaker 1: technical death metal. Essentially, this coming out in twenty thirteen
Speaker 1: was almost like a new foundation for what that could
Speaker 1: be and the next level brains on display here. The
Speaker 1: only way that they could follow up this album was
Speaker 1: to do a one song, thirty three minute EP inspired
Speaker 1: by an ancient library of knowledge in ninth century bag
Speaker 1: Dad that was destroyed by the Mongols in the thirteenth century,
Speaker 1: and it's about the rise and decline of ancient knowledge.
Speaker 2: Sure, throw the horns, Yeah, you've done the Battle of Chando.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's do this fucking thing. And the only time
Speaker 1: I have seen Gorguts was they did a UK run
Speaker 1: playing that Player These Dust EP before it had come out,
Speaker 1: and I was sent to review the show, hearing that
Speaker 1: thirty three minute song for the first time, played live
Speaker 1: right from and they were really late on stage because
Speaker 1: they're like bus had broken down or they'd been held
Speaker 1: up at the Channel Tunnel or something, So they went
Speaker 1: on at about half ten and I basically saw them
Speaker 1: do plear These Dust, hearing it for the first time
Speaker 1: and then left.
Speaker 2: It was very over stimulated. It's fucking mad. Yeah. I
Speaker 2: remember when that came out and it was like, oh,
Speaker 2: gorget some of new opinion, Oh that would be cool,
Speaker 2: and I thought this will be some offcuts from the
Speaker 2: last record. I presume no thirty three minutes single song. Again,
Speaker 2: like it's just a level of ambitiousness and betting on yourself,
Speaker 2: just like single mindedness that I just think it's so cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then Colored Sounds in hindsight almost becomes like, well,
Speaker 1: at least've got Ocean of Wisdom, which is a bit
Speaker 1: of a banger. It's like this fucking over hour long,
Speaker 1: sprawling nightmare thing is almost like the gateway to get
Speaker 1: you into these They're mad and I would love for
Speaker 1: another Gore Guts album to appear. They did go on
Speaker 1: about like a five six year hiatu from playing shows,
Speaker 1: but they have been active again more recently, so I
Speaker 1: hope that's some signs of life and that it ain't
Speaker 1: done the album that set the standard for the following
Speaker 1: twelve years and counting of avant garde death metal. If
Speaker 1: you like any of the records like that that we
Speaker 1: have reviewed in recent times, you owe it to yourself
Speaker 1: to hear the Godfathers Gorguts and their album Colored Sands.
Speaker 1: The next kind of underground album club pick will be snappier.
Speaker 2: That is where we end this one.
Speaker 1: Let's nice that we looked around from Rusting Peace to
Speaker 1: Colored Sands, even though they're not really related records at all,
Speaker 1: which just feels synergetic somehow. Thank you very much for
Speaker 1: being here with us and listening. Please do go and
Speaker 1: check out these records. If you don't know, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure you know a rust in Peace, I hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed our hour of just like getting so excited talking.
Speaker 2: About that fucking thing.
Speaker 1: But if you have not heard Killing Jokes two thousand
Speaker 1: and three cell titled if you've never heard the emo
Speaker 1: again kind of like foundational building block that is diary
Speaker 1: by somebody of real estate, and you better prep yourself
Speaker 1: before going into Colored Sands, but it is worth the dive,
Speaker 1: then we encourage you go and d Thank you very
Speaker 1: much for listening and being here with us. Ever, thank
Speaker 1: you to everyone who is here on the Patreon supporting
Speaker 1: us and keeping us alive doing what we do. We
Speaker 1: will return with you know, another one of these in time.
Speaker 2: We will return.
Speaker 1: Before then, I guess we better pick up on our
Speaker 1: poison the well special that Sam mentioned earlier, because we're
Speaker 1: currently in the middle of that thing. But otherwise yeah,
Speaker 1: take care of yourselves, everybody, we'll be back.
Speaker 2: Cheers, Asteroid