Log #221 - Spotting Haken From The Panopticon

The heavy rock/metal band Isis are a surprise to me... because I really like them. Why do I like them when I have previously written about how I don't much like "post rock" instrumental bands like Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Explosions In The Sky or Mogwai? I can only put it down to a significant difference even if I can't quite put my finger on what that difference is. To be fair I heard the band name mentioned in despatches in connection with Tool and Opeth, who I do like. 

Anyway right from the very first power chord Panopticon is a tremendously exciting album. The sound is full on wall of sound - rather like My Bloody Valentine (who I don't know much to be honest - I used to have Loveless but fell out of love, if you excuse the pun, with that possibly overrated album quite early on). The pace of Panopticon is much slower and more ominous than the musically more dynamic Tool and Opeth. In fact some of the music is verging on ambient or drone. But boy is it heavy! 

Melodies are provided by repeated simple four or five note guitar sequences supplemented by long drawn out chords drenched in feedback and sustain, rather like Neil Young's languid playing on Zuma's longer tracks. There are very few vocals - singer Aaron Turner growls but the voice is so low in the mix it is really used as just another instrument in that very thick wall. The other distinguishing feature is clear sharp down tempo drum taps which at first sounded a bit out of place to my ear: these remind me of some of the "shoegaze" bands from the early '90s, particularly Ride. Now Ride had that famous album Nowhere which I, again, had at the time but never really got (notice how the album artwork is similar too). More on that later.

Isis only produced 5 studio albums. The final one Wavering Radiant in 2009 broadened their instrumental palate with more keyboards, without, I'm glad to say, reducing their raw power. 

Generally the music on both albums is simple and goes where you expect in a satisfying way. There are less of the sudden mindbending U-turns you get with bands like Opeth and Tool - hence the drone descriptions. The tracks tend to shift and build gradually usually over 7 - 10 minutes. 

Will I ultimately find this music unsatisfying? I don't think so. Like pure ambient music there is more to discover the more you listen. I think Isis will have staying power at Bamyasi Towers.

So on to the Ride album Nowhere. Was my initial impression from 30 years ago wrong? Well, actually no. I still don't like it. This has got to be one of the most overrated albums in history (were the band just lucky in time and place)? I'm not going to spend much time writing about it here. The 40 minutes or so I spent listening is long enough suffice to say the out of tune singing doesn't help - painful - better off growling. 

There were quite a lot of new rock bands emerging around the turn of the 80s/90s decade weren't there, combining traditional guitar led rock instrumentation with a shuffling dance beat - most disappeared as quickly as they came - Jesus Jones, The Farm, The LAs, Inspiral Carpets, The Wonder Stuff, Charlatans etc. Did any have staying power other than The Happy Mondays and The Stone Roses?

Isis - Panopticon
Isis - Wavering Radiant
Ride - Nowhere
Opeth - Sorceress
Opeth - Blackwater Park
Haken - The Mountain

I thought the Opeth trajectory would continue upwards but I was left slightly underwhelmed with Sorceress (their 12th album from 2016). It has several tracks which are right out of the early Love, Jethro Tull and Pink Floyd catalogues. It also has classical guitar, bongo drums and strings. 

Mmmm, what did the trad. Opeth fans think of this release? Had they finally taken their prog influences too far? One easy listening instrumental is actually entitled The Seventh Sojourn which is a Moody Blues album title - a rather too obvious homage. I hope it's a grower. Either way it's the first album from Opeth I haven't been hugely impressed with so they are allowed an off day.

Last new album this week and continuing my discovery of nu prog metal I tried The Mountain by London prog band Haken. Honestly this is a whole new world to me. I thought prog music died in 1974 (apart from a tiny revival in the early '80s with Marillion). I had no idea. But of course, every other type of music has been revived so why not prog? I'm just surprised at myself, having been a keen fan of prog back in the day, I had not discovered this vibrant current scene. I guess, good music, like cream, will eventually rise to the surface irrespective of any current trends or fads. 

Opening track is a gentle piano ballad in the style of The Cinematic Orchestra around the time of Ma Fleur. This gives way to the exceptional Atlas Stone - a sort of combination of Rush and Yes. Think that is exceptional? Then hear Cockroach King! Here the band throw in Queen on top of Rush and Yes - in particular the operatic Queen of Bohemian Rhapsody: 

The Cockroach King sits on his throne
With the Midas touch and a heart of stone
An empire built on guile and greed
A bleeding ground for those who heed

In Memoriam is on the face of it a 4 minute rocker, but there is so much packed into this modest timeline it really needs to be heard to be believed. There's a whole Genesis album in this track. 

Because It's There starts with acapella harmonies before moving into skittish jazz percussion and guitar. There are also some distant glitchy effects giving the song a Radiohead flavour, but ultimately it's a beautiful ballad with a moving chorus.

Falling Back To Earth is the longest track on the album at a more traditionally proggy 12 minutes. It's an epic number containing multiple shifts and the deepest metal riffs on the album. Similarly Pareidolia allows Haken to display all their Opeth chops.

The musicianship is amazing throughout but it's the vocals that really standout as on As Death Embraces and the slowly building closer Somebody - singer Ross Jennings resurrects the high clear enunciation of classic prog vocalists Jon Anderson, Geddy Lee and Rodger Hodgson.

The whole album is blindingly technical, but the beauty of what has been crafted here is that The Mountain doesn't feel like an exercise in how to get the most notes out of any given instrument.

Steven Reid 

I realise I've thrown around a lot of casual comparisons and influences here which could lead to a dog's breakfast of a sound. But fear not, Haken offer a unique perspective on the metal prog scene and The Mountain, albeit constantly shifting across a myriad of styles, presents a very cohesive whole. I'm looking forward to hearing more from this talented band.

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Log #220 - Animals Is Pink Floyd's Best Album

My recent listening to the likes of Opeth, and Eloy in particular, plus a spin of Atom Heart Mother last week, has led me back to some more Pink Floyd this week. 

Wish You Were Here was my favourite album of theirs when I was younger (in fact, my favourite album of all time by anyone for a while). It's still excellent with the centrepiece of Shine On You Crazy Diamond of course, the futuristic Welcome To The Machine, and the rock of Have A Cigar. Objectively the title track is undoubtedly a great song too with brilliant lyrics and a catchy acoustic progression, but now a tad over familiar. 

Meddle is a little aged but quite a step up from its predecessor Atom Heart Mother. The celebrated side long track Echoes is more fully formed than the bombastic Atom Heart Mother Suite and the acoustic songs are better than that album's comparatives.

But actually I now think Animals is the best Pink Floyd album. It's just well, so cool. It's one of the band's heaviest albums, and angriest... pointing the way to the more bloated The Wall which followed, but with only 3 long songs simply bookended by a matching acoustic intro and outro it's a lot more focused. One senses Roger Waters was really beginning to take over the song writing with some of his most politically charged lyrics:

You got to be crazy, gotta have a real need
Got to sleep on your toes, and when you're on the street
Got to be able to pick out the easy meat with your eyes closed
Then moving in silently down wind and out of sight
You got to strike when the moment is right, without thinking

Johnny Rotten in his I Hate Pink Floyd T-Shirt

In the face of political and economic turmoil and the burgeoning punk movement (in actual fact there was mutual respect between quite a few of the old dinosaur rock bands and the new wave of young punk bands - Johnny Rotten actually said some years later that he loved Dark Side Of The Moon) this powerful album released in January 1977 and described by NME as...

one of the most extreme, relentless, harrowing and downright iconoclastic hunks of music to have been made available this side of the sun

...couldn't have been better timed.

 ~

Van Morrison - Hard Nose The Highway
Van Morrison - Veedon Fleece
Pink Floyd - Meddle
Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here
Pink Floyd - Animals
Opeth - Damnation

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The famous Pink Floyd pig still floating over Battersea Power Station during the 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony

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Log #219 - New Pleasures With Others Remaining Unknown

OPETH'S STILL LIFE AND DAMNATION

A continuation of my discovery of Swedish group Opeth this week proceeds with one of their classic early albums - their fourth Still Life (from 1999). As an early record from their "death metal" days I wasn't expecting to like it so much as their later work. But actually it was great. The growl vocals are used relatively sparingly and I didn't mind them too much once I'd tuned in. 

Furthermore when lead singer Mikael Åkerfeldt sings cleanly he has a great voice. And the music (and the musicianship) is amazing. Most prominent is the super fast guitar riffing. 

This has got to be one of the band's most powerful albums (but then again there are plenty of gentle acoustic guitar interludes too including the lovely Benighted which has that gentle interlude feel of the quiet tracks on Black Sabbath's massive Master Of Reality album with its reverbed vocal and jazzy finger picking). 

The cover would also indicate a certain Black Sabbath influence and I guess if you played a Sabbath album on 45rpm it could sound like this - Sabbath on speed if you like!

The Damnation album is an odd entry in the Opeth catalogue even in the history of a band not afraid of change. Apparently originally conceived as part of a double album recording sessions were eventually released as two separate albums (Damnation following 5 months after Deliverance in 2003). 

The split made sense as both albums are very unlike each other - the former (which I haven't yet heard) more metal, the latter more mellow prog (you might have thought the titles of each might have suggested the opposite). As such the latter album is a revelation with In My Time Of Need the most beautiful Opeth tune I've heard and the whole album my favourite by the band to date. 

Considering this album came out nearly 20 years ago it is a surprise to me to still read about Opeth fans bemoaning how the band have gone soft relative to their metal days; it would seem they've been "progressive" for a lot longer than they've been "death metal". To be fair it's not like the early albums were devoid of progression (far from it) and the later albums are certainly not soft!

THIS WEEK'S FULL SELECTION:

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Opeth - Still Life
Opeth - Damnation
Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures
The Enid - Something Wicked This Way Comes 
Eloy - Silent Cries And Mighty Echoes
Pink Floyd - Atom Heart Mother

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JOY DIVISION'S UNKNOWN PLEASURES

It's not a massive jump from Opeth to Joy Division. They are equally dark, well even darker actually. JD were a band I held in a lot of contempt when I was at school in the late '70s for no good reason apart from I thought they were laughably bad musicians (in that respect you couldn't get further poles apart between Joy Division and Opeth). But of course I was missing the point entirely. I was coming from a point of view of liking (or more to the point admiring) the fancy musicianship of prog bands like King Crimson and Yes. The tuneless singing of Ian Curtis, the one note bass playing of Peter Hook, and a guitarist who had to look at his right hand to pick out feeble 3 note leads, therefore didn't do it for me. 

However seeing old footage of the crazed elbow dancing Curtis fronting the band is pretty mesmerising. How did they come over on record though? I'm about to find out with a spin of Unknown Pleasures.

Mmmm, not sure I've been missing much. Save for a few more fleshed out songs on side 2 of the album like Wilderness where the band approach a Doors sound (Curtis was a fan) and the atmospheric I Remember Nothing the majority of the record sounds very basic almost to the point of amateurish. That's not necessarily a bad or unexpected thing (think Velvet Underground) but it just doesn't sound like the band particularly had much chemistry together: It sounds like four young guys jamming in their bedroom each playing slightly different tunes in slightly different keys and time signatures on cheap instruments they've only had a few weeks. It begs the question whether Joy Division would have become so iconic without Curtis's death.

The drummer sounds pretty good though which is no mean feat at a time when electronics were just starting to infiltrate drum beats. I know this album (and band) is a bit of a sacred cow but here I am 40 years later and I'm still not really feeling it. Christ, if I ever come back to this record again I could be 90 years old! That's a grim prospect too. 

Were New Order, who rose from the ashes of Joy Division in 1980, any better? Different as I understand it, not knowing much from them save for Blue Monday of course.

Oh, by the way, the film Control is excellent. The lead actor really pulls off Curtis. It's pretty grim as you'd expect, and just had to be shot in black and white. And one other thing, I saw Peter Hook's current band a few years ago at a festival and they were a highlight of the weekend.

Iconic cover too of course (see top) which is now much more famous than the actual music. A classic of minimalist artwork and fitting for the contents. Those contours make me think of the Misty Mountains in Lord Of The Rings.

THE ENID'S SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES

Apparently The Enid's Something Wicked This Way Comes was the band's first album with vocals (and their fifth released in 1983). This makes their mostly instrumental music even more "stageshow". The album's lyrical content is apparently about a post apocalyptic reality and not based on the well known Ray Bradbury 1962 novel although the carnival setting for the latter would fit well with the music. 

ELOY'S SILENT CRIES AND MIGHTY ECHOES

The most remarkable thing about Eloy's Silent Cries And Mighty Echoes from 1979 is how similar the opening is to Pink Floyd's Shine On You Crazy Diamond (1975). I mean, really similar! Give it a listen. Is it a deliberate homage? It seems too similar to be a coincidence.

After the opening guitar sequence Astral Entrance jumps into that galloping sort of rhythm also favoured by Pink Floyd (particularly on Animals I'm thinking but also think of One Of These Days). Eloy to be fair are often compared to Pink Floyd. Or Pink Floyd with Arnold Schwarzenegger on lead vocals I read from one online reviewer (perhaps a little unfair). The Acopalypse continues the Floyd sound with Clare Torry (The Great Gig In The Sky) like vocals and long Rick Wright synth string chords.

PINK FLOYD'S ATOM HEART MOTHER

To complete this little tangent final record of the week was a revisit to Pink Floyd's Atom Heart Mother. This came out in 1970 and was already the band's fifth album. It's still Pink Floyd in development: The sound moving slowly towards a fuller fruition on the follow up Meddle. Indeed the side long title track could be viewed as an Echoes forerunner. However Atom Heart Mother is more baggy round the edges. It has a nice main theme but with it's brass section and choir is somewhat overblown. The best part is a central section where the core band groove (as they do in the central part of Echoes).

Side two, like Meddle's side one, contains some catchy more acoustic numbers - a rock song, an acoustic picker, and a piano track (with some more brass), plus a classic early Floyd piece of avant garde whimsy in the literal form of Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast complete with "found sounds" from Alan's kitchen. Who was Alan? He was Pink Floyd roadie Alan Styles as pictured (left) on the back of the Ummagumma album cover.

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Log #218 - Moving Through The Prog Metal Gears With Opeth

My recent listening to King Crimson and Tool (and a facebook post extolling their virtues) has led me to Opeth. They are a Swedish metal band. Sounds unpromising doesn't it, and this initial reaction was confirmed as I listened to the opening track of their 2001 Blackwater Park album (as recommended by some Twitter fans as possibly their best) but bear with me as Opeth just could be my greatest discovery of the year! 

~

Opeth - Blackwater Park
Opeth - Heritage
Opeth - Watershed
The Enid - Invicta
Manu Chao - Clandestino
Cornershop - When I Was Born for the 7th Time

~

The first impression from opening track The Leper Affinity is off putting to my ear due to the frankly scary thrash/death metal growl vocals. But... I'm so pleased I persevered as the vocals are not exclusively "growl" aka "cookie monster". Some tracks are part "cookie" part "clean" and some are fully "clean". Apparently this was a gradual change for the band that started out firmly in the death metal camp and have gradually over the course of a long career (they were formed in 1989) moved more into prog rock. Of course many of the legacy fans remain perturbed by the change and won't entertain the later albums accusing the band of selling out. 

For a new fan like me it's the other way round: What I've heard of the newer stuff I really like. What I've heard of the old stuff I'm not so sure about on account of the singing (the music sounds great throughout however) - I can't imagine there is a better exponent of metal in terms of musicianship and melody. These boys can certainly play, even if their music isn't your "tea" (as Damo Suzuki once said).  

The Leper Affinity is powerful chugging riff metal, follow up Bleak contains Rush like guitar passages, and the attractive Harvest showcases their frequent use of acoustic guitar strumming with a gorgeous slow distorted guitar lead over the top. The Drapery Falls is simply epic reminding me of the entire Journey To The Centre Of The Eye album by Nektar. It also fits in some Jethro Tull acoustics and latter day Frippertronics on distorted guitar.

Full of gorgeous melodies but still thunderously heavy, Opeth’s breakthrough album is widely and rightly revered as both a classic and a progressive metal benchmark.

Dom Lawson (Classic Rock) 

However it is fairly misleading to single out individual tracks as most contain multiple dynamic changes across a generous length (many tracks are in the 10 minute range). In fact most of the songs could be defined as epic and almost any one of them would be a centrepiece on most rock albums.

Jump forward ten years and we have Heritage which I gather is a real marmite record in the Opeth catalogue. Apparently this is the first album where Opeth went full on prog leaving behind their heavy metal roots (and more pertinently the cookie monster vocals, entirely). 

I love it. I think it's a superb record. Subtle expressive brilliant prog rock employing many of the traits of classic '70s rock (organs - damn, hammond and mellotron no less!, acoustic guitars, banked vocals, jazzy guitar) but with a very modern sound. I can hear many bands in this music (King Crimson (especially in Famine), Camel, Rush, Nektar, Black Sabbath, Jethro Tull etc) but probably the one that comes through the most is Radiohead.

I've always seen Opeth as a band without boundaries.

Mikael Åkerfeldt

The whole record sounds like a concept album - more so in the musical themes than any lyrical content which I haven't paid much attention to (aside from his growling roots singer Mikael Åkerfeldt is actually a very nice singer).

For my third forage into Opeth I listened to Watershed, the band's 9th studio album from 2008, and the one before Heritage. 

Goodness there is so much to take in from these records. The first two tracks on Watershed alone practically cover the whole spectrum of prog and/or death metal. Opener Coil is a gentle acoustic guitar piece with female vocals (the acoustic guitar is very good throughout the Opeth records I've heard). Are the band going to serve up a mellow album? Not at all, second song Heir Apparent is full on heavy metal with that growl... but not always, there's clean singing and classical guitar and flute too. It shouldn't work, but it does. It's amazing what this band pack into 8 minutes. They do it immediately again on the identically lengthed The Lotus Eater.

Indeed the band have been accused of a lack of continuity in a lot of their song writing with seemingly unrelated parts being randomly strung together to form a whole. But isn't that what a lot of prog was like back in the day anyway? I'm sure Foxtrot or Close To The Edge could have gone off in any number of different directions on a whim.

Akerfeldt's clean vocals soar on this record never more than on fourth track Burden which is an epic stadium filling ballad. He so reminds me of another singer but I can't figure who that might be [It could be Tim Smith from Midlake, or Roye Albrighton from Nektar, or is it one of the old King Crimson singers Greg Lake or John Wetton? Ed]. These sorts of more restrained one paced songs are easier to take in, stripped of the trademark sudden structural changes. But even this one finishes on a bizarrely unusual detuned acoustic guitar passage (there is lots of acoustic guitar on this album too).

More acoustic guitar (and strings) drives the first half of the 11 minute Hessian Peel. Then there's some electric guitar, then a quiet piano passage, and then death metal growls and heavy riffing. Just a typical Opeth number then, although this could be the last ever Opeth song with death metal cookie monster singing? Is that actually the case? - I don't know yet.

The final track is perhaps the best of all. It's a little different from the rest of the album. The pace is understated, the guitar is jazzy, with a rising Fripp like scale chorus, and the whole piece is framed by mellotron keys. I've said it before but, again, this multi part track is like a whole album all of its own, yet it's "only" 7 minutes long. There aren't many bands that can create such "efficient" prog, perhaps Rush in their mid period around the time of Permanent Waves were one. Sadly most of the prog pioneers of the '70s floundered after that decade. If they had been able to adapt to making music like Opeth they may have survived longer (perhaps King Crimson have bucked that trend remaining relevant for longer than other contemporaries with two significant shifts in style in the '80s and '90s). Similarly what's particularly impressive about Opeth is they aren't afraid to experiment or change, even at the risk of alienating existing fans (who have generally stayed loyal to be fair). Each album sounds different and a progression from what came before. 

So lots of future listening sorted for the blog there with Opeth having produced at least a dozen albums themselves and having opened the door to more "prog-metal" bands I've never heard like Porcupine Tree, Dream Theater, Mastodon, and Isis (and maybe even old skoolers like Metallica and Iron Maiden?). 

The Enid record is very different. Not only from the previous Enid album I played last week, but pretty different from almost anything I've heard. I can't quite decide if it's a non entity or brilliant. 

Much of the character is given by the vocalist. Originally I thought the vocals were female and/or a choir but it's actually (for the most part) singer Joe Payne. His high falsetto voice makes some of the music sound like Queen or Sparks.

There are passages of outright beauty on this record. Unfortunately it's not consistently maintained across the whole 9 tracks and 53 minutes. But there's enough there to provide a fascinating album which could become a major grower at Bamyasi Towers.

The stunning opening track The One And The Many provides an almost religious experience with some gorgeous chord changes over its ten minutes of orchestral opera. Actually you know what its like - that famous (and much used in adverts and the like) song from the Dido and Aeneas opera.

Heaven's Gate is the sort of track I don't really get. It's just a pure classical piece, quite bombastic. Classical pop really. Villain Of Science is a bit stageshow - Andrew Lloyd Webber, albeit with some rare electric guitar.

But these are the weaker moments only. Overall it's a curious, yet ultimately satisfying mix of classical and rock. Symphonic pop if you like but in this edition with much more depth and gravitas than I found on that Aerie Faerie Nonsense from last week.

Finally two fillers in the back end of the magazine this week (which someone else slipped in there without me noticing) with the Cornershop album (this was briefly of interest to me when they had that hit Spoonful of Asha or something which is on this album), and the Manu Chao album (this was briefly of interest to me when he had that hit King Of The Bongo or something which is on this album). 

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