08/29 – 09/02:

Mastodon, Call of the Mastodon

This is a collection of material released before Mastodon’s first proper album. It’s a somewhat different band here. They even had a dedicated singer instead of Brent and Troy trading off like they do now, although his vocal style and theirs are very similar. This material sounds far more unhinged than they did on Remission, and certainly much more extreme than they’ve become in recent years. It’s an interesting time capsule.

Mastodon, “Deep Sea Creature”



Sparta, Austere EP

Yeah, talking about that Mars Volta album awhile back inspired this. I still like this material. It reminds me of middle period At the Drive-In. Not as aggressive as the album that broke them (Both in terms of publicity and band member relations, ha). It’s not exactly like that old ATDI stuff, it’s got a little of its own flavor, especially the remix track at the end. It’s familiar and different at the same time, making it a pretty good time.

Sparta, “Mye”


Noun, Holy Hell

Noun is the solo project of Marissa Paternoster, the singer/guitarist of Screaming Females. Noun and Screaming Females came into being around the same time, but the latter takes up most of her time, obviously. The songs of Noun vary dramatically in style and tone, from slow, dirge-y kind of songs to rockers that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Screaming Females album.

Noun, “Holy Hell”


The Dillinger Escape Plan, Miss Machine

I think this is the DEP album I listen to least-often, and I don’t know why. I really like it. That’s not true, actually, Irony Is A Dead Scene get sin my ears even less frequently (Even though I love Mike Patton. What’s the deal there?) It just doesn’t seem to be what I reach for. I either go back to their older sound or their two newest albums. This is where they really started to mutate, though. A lot of purist-types won’t listen to anything from here on out, but whatever, that’s dumb. I like early DEP, but if they kept doing just that forever, you (and they) would be so bored. Miss Machine saw them start trying a lot of new things while maintaining that crazy-yet-precise mathcore thing. “Unretrofied” is even a first run at an “evil pop song” (An idea I think they perfected on Ire Works’ “Black Bubblegum”). They’re all over the map here, and it makes for an adventurous, surprising listen. I should listen to it more often.

The Dillinger Escape Plan, “Unretrofied”


Kool AD, Hyphy Ballads EP

Another day, another Kool AD release. That guy seems to have a million things going at once. Kool AD (or Victor Vasquez or Kool Kwiet Emerson or whatever else) is an unpredictable rapper. Sometimes he writes mind-bending, stream of consciousness, free associating rhymes as clever as they are complicated. Sometimes it sounds like he’s just messing around. He’ll often hit both extremes in the same song. Hyphy Ballads falls mostly in the latter category. It’s fun, funny stuff, but seems sort of tossed off compared to other things he’s done. But he chooses to end it with an extended clip from a Malcolm X speech about doing what must be done to achieve what’s best for your people. It’s a pretty random coda to the material.

Kool AD, “Hyphy Ballads”


Misfits, Static Age

The first album that never really got released until decades later. Most of the material saw release in some form or other in the intervening years, including some of their most-known songs, but it’s cool to listen to the record in its intended running order and whatnot.

Misfits, “Attitude”


Buddy Guy, Sweet Tea

A strange, singular moment in Buddy Guy’s lengthy catalog, Sweet Tea is one of my favorite blues records of the modern era sort of against all odds. I have a pretty purist attitude toward the blues. Not because I’m a snob or something, I don’t think, but it’s more that the blues, as a genre, can be very limited. You know, the structure, timing, even subject matter are almost dictated for the artist by the genre. And as such, more than many other music styles, it feels like the best stuff has certainly already been done a long time ago. You can’t top Charlie Patton, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Robert Johnson, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Blind Lemon Jefferson, etc. They defined what “the blues” means. They were actually living the things that have become mandatory genre cliches today. You can only follow in their footsteps. If you deviate too far, you’re not even making blues anymore, in the strictest sense.

That said, Sweet Tea is a weird album. It has this sound both monolithic and paranoid. Huge and dangerous. It embraces technology in a way I usually don’t like in blues music, fairly drenched in reverb and effects and technical wizardry to create a very specific mood and tone, and man, does it work. This album feels so heavy. Heavier than metal music. The drums are explosions, the guitars come shredding out of the ether like a monster in a horror movie, while Buddy wails over it all. He takes all kinds of material and fits it into this format easily. Love songs, ruminations on aging and death, an Otis Redding cover, you name it, he’ll make it work. It’s so strange, not just in the context of blues music or what I like in blues music, even, but in Buddy’s own history. He never made a record like it before or since. I just happened to hear it working in a record store back when it came out, and I’m really glad I did.

Buddy Guy, “Baby Please Don’t Leave Me”


Yup.
--D