#so he was thinking the first album wasn’t v bluesy

[bookwormonastring]

played my dad some songs from wasteland, baby! and he decided he needs to get that album but not the first one… wait til i play him angel of small death and the codeine scene, or to be alone, or it will come back

[shriekbackmusic]

1000 BOOKS: track-by-track by Carl & Barry (see previous post for credits and lyrics)

SPACE IN THE BLUES (CARL MARSH)

Very often - well, almost always, actually - my first step in building a Shriek song is injecting lyric fragments from a notebook into a sympathetic host groovelet. In this case, I had a few lines, including ‘be not afraid of beauty / do not avoid the light’ and ‘I am shimmer and glare / I am vanishing rare’, both of which made it to the final draught, and the over-arching - and, indeed, over-arch - working title, ’the sum of all our follies’, which didn’t, though it kinda tells you where I was at. So I clearly needed something pretty epic, quite downtempo, dramatic - or even melodramatic - and, the lyrics seemed to be suggesting, something in a 6/8 or 3/4 rhythm. Listening through the 20-30 grooves we’d spawned in our 2-day jamming session in October 2020, I think there was only one candidate with the required 6/8 feel, and, luckily, it fit - sometimes it’s great when there’s no choice: it saves so much time.

The improvisation had been given the working title ‘Space Blues’ because it was, well, spacey and bluesy, with a fair bit of Dave Gilmour-esque echoey guitar noodling. That was soon stripped out; I asked Martyn to send me a cleaned-up version of the drum groove and I started structuring the song over that. However, by the time we were in the rehearsal room in May 2021, I still wasn’t sure where the song was going - I had three distinct sections evolving, all quite promising, but not really unified lyrically or melodically: it sounded like there might actually be two separate songs there. It took a few hours in my hotel room in Eastbourne to get the three melodic/lyric parts to sit together as a unified verse/chorus and then expand the lyric to three verses. I ended up with this big, torch-songish thing where each verse surged unstoppably towards a cliff edge where our overwrought narrator would fall off… or through… what, exactly? I had no idea what that would be until I realised - either through desperation, luck, synergy or the benevolence of the Shriekback über-spirit - that, with a minor tweak, ‘Space Blues’ could become ‘the space in the blues’ and I could fall through that. Yippee: demo vocal recorded on phone, job done.

Except… I had no guitar or keyboard with me that night, so I couldn’t hack out the chord progressions. So the next day I sang it to Barry as we sat around the piano, old-school stylee. Which we hadn’t done for a long time… if ever, come to think of it.  Barry’s first take on it was full-on Berlin/Paris cabaret, which was a hoot but unfortunately didn’t quite work with my melody, so we got it down to the verse/chorus you hear on the record .Barry wrote the middle eight later.

UNHOLINESS (CM)

Like several tracks on the album, Unholiness began as an improvisation in a writing session at Echo Zoo i October ’20. As is a fairly standard practice for us now, - WFH veterans that we are - I sent Martyn some edited clips from the jam which he used to build a drum track which formed the bedrock to develop the song (no change there, then). I put down a rhythm guitar first, for groove and vibe; the next thing to go on, oddly perhaps, was the multi-tracked ‘yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah’ vocal - it was a clear idea I had in my head and defined a certain part of the character of the song, so it went in early, as did the brassy synth part, which picked the bones out of some of Barry’s keys from the improvisation to make a hook. That was enough to sketch out the core vocal/lyrical ideas; I thought these might have to be extensively revised later, but as it turned out they survived pretty much intact. Finally, I had great fun putting on a nifty bass part - so much fun I even posted a video of it (it’s here, should you be following the trail - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkVTWuOqc3M).

So far, so funky. My only reservation was whether I was too far back in the Shriek-funk comfort zone when we had an intention to explore a new landscape of glitchy loops, unpredictable fx and a plugged-in electro-Mart. Hmmm…

Christoph and Martyn excelled putting the drum track together in the studio - the former obsessively swapping snares, changing mics and tuning the kit between practically every take, Martyn playing with impeccable technique and feel. Bang. Christoph was also particularly smitten with a little bit of rhythm guitar I’d left hanging around on the outro of the demo, for its groove and attitude (whatever, dude): that became the source of the dual rhythm guitar parts. Barry put down fabulous keys, mainly some Hammond that managed to both push up the rhythm and swirl into nooks and crannies in the groove. Apart from my disappointment at having my bassline voted out in favour of Scott playing it (“it’s a no-brainer” - bloody cheek!), all was going well.

So, an easy one, right? Well, not quite. Christoph was on a quest for the secret key to unlock the track, whether it was in a rhythm guitar phrase or a Hammond riff, so there was quite a bit of tidal flow. He requested a guitar solo NOW, so I did one, which I wasn’t allowed to redo, so hey, a one-take wonder. That’s what happens if you give someone a Producer hat - great responsibility is handed over, great trust is required. And we got there in the end, sassy Sids’ vocals an’ all.

The track sits in the album either as a funky outlier or as a sort of link back to Shriekback’s core DNA. Either way, it grooves like a mofo.

PORTOBELLO HEAD (Barry Andrews)

'I'm gonna have to dissect my own head'

Well yeah, I think we've all been there. Heads are good - Celtic heads, Riddley Walker (sorry but I insist) 'hedds on poles and ripe for telling'  (also ‘The Head of Orpheus’) and, more geographically apposite - the head of Bran the Blessed who guards London against the oncoming of enemies - now, they say,  buried under Pentonville ('pen' in welsh means ‘head’) Road. And, let's not resist the line of least resistance - the squishy hippy mind set of the pre-Julia Roberts inhabitants of Notting Hill - Portobello Head is a real condition, man..

A comic book thing perhaps - anyway, the point is our hero's sheer abjectness: cock block him, infect him, cuff him to the radiator - truly the dude is on his belly, rolling around on the leatherette in the fumes of burning rubber. What a fucking rotter.

The multi-synth/sampled, mad-as-a-balloon ending was my attempt to respond to Christoph playing us a Franz Ferdinand tune (forgot which) where the standard rocky instrumentation morphs into a technology-driven smeltdown.

In our version I like how a gazillion squirming plastic snakes burst out of the guts of the song and slither off into the night. WTF happened there?

Slowly at First Then All At Once (BA)

…was Hemingway’s reply to the question: ‘how did you go bankrupt?’ Then I heard it applied to the HBO show about Nazis taking over America (no, silly, it was a ‘what-if’ thought experiment set in the 40’s) and I thought that this template - a slow ramp up then a swift ascension, followed by a long decline culminating in a rapid plummet, is the pattern for a whole bunch of things. 

I guess also I was thinking of the Pareto curve - the savage law (or maybe more of a guideline - a savage guideline) that obtains in the pitiless game of Monopoly and, indeed, Life - it explains why most of the vinyl in the world is used by Adele, for instance.

It struck me as interesting that there can be mathematically coherent laws which govern human behaviour just as they define the parameters of physics.  I like maths, I think,  because I really, really don’t understand them (qv. ’37’).

So it’s a very intelligible song for us, I think.  Nice and clear. The music also is pretty trad: those straightforward chords with their hymn-like progression.

Its first encounter with the band had Mart going full-fat Power Ballad on its ass - massive drum sound wreathed in reverb and tubular bells - was it overegging the old pudding, I wondered? Christoph curated the present version, distressing further the already pretty lived-in loop the song was built on (from the Chase Bliss Mood pedal, since you ask, my new bff) and reducing the drums to Mart’s reined-in, best-behaviour brush/soft-beater combo.

The verses, rather like Nemesis, have a bullet point, issue-based organisation to them: 

 V1 is Love: falling/not falling in.. I question the metaphor. Isn’t it more that we suddenly notice it’s there and, heartbreakingly, when it’s not anymore?  As in all these examples there’s usually a catalytic, propulsive event - the Reichstag Fire of Romance, if you will. 

V2 is Nature - in particular the phenomenon of the Last Tree Standing - usually in November in the UK - one lonely, brave-looking fellow has somehow retained a lot of its leaves when all the others have succumbed to winter - clinging poignantly onto the summer as if to say: ‘nothing’s changed really, look - leaves! It’s still kinda August, right?’ Genetically talented or just aerodynamically lucky, he’s on borrowed time, that tree… Winter is, as they say, coming. 

And suddenly, and with one last decisive storm, it’s here.. and all the trees look the same.

V3  - and here come the fascists - I pick a pair of representative tyrants: Ubu Roi - the fictional fat dude with the spiral on his stomach  (merdrrrre was his catchphrase (Eng Trans: 'shitttrrr'). And Mu’ammar (Gaddafi). 

A pair of right little charmers. 

The point, I tried to make in as non-inflammatory way as possible (for after all it is just a pop song) is that - well, you know it by now, if you're ever going to - look after your democracies - they're not, by any means, a given and there are those who are (and how best to say this?) just cunts and we should really try and keep ‘em in check, before they get out of hand.

V4 - this time it's personal - our narrator foetally curled and thumbsucking in the terrible presence of these inexorable laws - contemplates the 'Ultimate Decline': these days very much along the Slowly at First model - you get old, then you get sick, then you go into hospital and you recover but not quite back to where you were before. Repeat for a few times until one day.... it's usually a Fall isn't it? - and then one condition which has tenaciously (albeit precariously) maintained - Being Alive - is instantaneously replaced with... you know - the Other One.

Good Disruption (CM)

This didn’t get its title for a while - it started off as the rather prosaic New Recording 16 - but I did want to try a couple of different things. The twangy, picky, surf-ish guitar tone isn’t one that I use a lot, and I haven’t really pulled out that whiny singing voice since, I dunno, Jam Science? Well, not as a lead vocal, anyway.

I don’t want to go into the lyrics too much here, but I suppose a note would be useful. I had noticed that ‘disruption’ had become a become almost a generic (and generally positive) term for ‘shaking things up’ in almost any context - business, politics, art - and ‘disruptor’ was being self-proclaimed as a title by  those fancying themselves as being on the cutting edge of radical change; I’ve even seen it used in peoples’ LinkedIn profiles. However, it also seemed like a lot of real disruptors weren’t working for the general good, ‘disruption’ in these cases meaning ‘wilfully vandalising existing stable paradigms’ through self-interest, ignorance or hey, just for the hell of it. Yes, I’m talking about you, Donald Trump, amongst others.

Then I found the little parable about the ants in the jar which had sprouted on the internet. Essentiall, it goes:

‘If you put 100 black ants and 100 red ants in a jar, they will co-exist peacefully. However, if someone shakes the jar, they will fight to the death, the black ants thinking the red ants are the enemy and vice versa, when in fact the real enemy is whoever shook the jar.’

You can find this trotted out all over the place to illustrate different conflicts - Black/White, Male/Female, Right/Left etc.. It’s such a neat little picture that no-one seems to care whether it’s actually true or where it first originated. I think I first saw it on a website called The Good Republican, which no longer seems to exist (maybe unsurprisingly), but it’s been attributed to all sorts of people, notably David Attenborough (it definitely wasn’t him). I just found it interesting as an example of how things are spread and appropriated and how the dissemination process becomes a kind of disruption in its own right.

Anyway, back to the studio and, in this case, a relatively straightforward build on Martyn’s once again excellent drums. The guitar sound posed some issues for Christoph, however: he loved the sound on my demo version, which was built in Logic, recreating the pedalboard sound I’d created in the writing room, and he in turn recreated it (ish) in the studio for me to play and expand the parts. I think I liked the result, although the sound was harder and brighter, but Christoph elected to use the parts from the demo, favouring sound over performance, arguably. Somewhere in the mixing process we also effectively lost a synth part I’d put on; having now lived without it for a while, I think that was a mistake, as it leaves the chorus vocal somewhat exposed and unsupported. (You just get a taste of it right at the end, pretty much the last thing you hear.) It’s that Producer trust/responsibility thing again…

To make up for that, we get some fabulous keyboards - squiggly synth and groovy, atmospheric organ: Barry’s not a Manzarek fan at all, but he gets his Doors on here. And of course The Sids, gamely chanting along to the, erm, disrupted middle vocal section, straight-faced but flexible. An interesting tangent, then, but worth pursuing further…? We’ll see, I suppose…

EVERYTHING HAPPENS SO MUCH (BA)

'That might as well happen' says Ryan George the Youtube comic as his Hollywood script writer pitches plots at his (thinly disguised doppelganger) movie executive. Every far fetched and arbitrary thing that happens might as well (happen).

https://youtu.be/PrAT_ncXr7M

Reality, of course, does not flinch from arbitrariness or ridiculously impausible content. A commonplace comment over the last few years has come in these variations: 'if this was in a film you'd say it was too over the top/on the nose/ downright unbelievable.' 

I mean check this out:

‘The conspiracy theorists behind Frazzledrip believe that Hillary Clinton and former Clinton aide Huma Abedin were filmed ripping off a child’s face and wearing it as a mask before drinking the child’s blood in a Satanic ritual sacrifice. Supposedly, the Hillary Clinton video was later found on the hard drive of Abedin’s former husband, Anthony Weiner, under the code name ‘Frazzledrip’.

So yeah. The wheels have come off on the Crazy Train, people. So, it’s no wonder that our poor narrator is driven to consult (in the bridge section) his spirit guide or an oracle to get a bit of perspective.

The whole tune was extrapolated from the little Mood pedal loop with which it begins - started off as a piano, as I recall. Really is paying for itself, that thing..

Different Story (CM)

This, the most ‘pop’ song on the album, started from Barry’s catchy little piano riff. It’s essentially a boy-meets-girl ditty, about how that’s a timeless story and yet different for everyone. What’s been different during the past couple of years, of course, is that boy couldn’t meet girl. That lack of personal contact has left story arcs hanging, and it’s become apparent that that narrative is not only a description of reality but somehow part of its fabric, so removing it has left a bigger hole than we perhaps would have expected. We have filled it in remotely, by Zoom and social media and by creating our own internal stories, but the lack of human face-to-face interaction has left a huge disconnect for some. In this song it’s the young: I can’t imagine what it would have been like to be so isolated when I was, what, 20-21 - there may not have been a Shriekback, for a start!.So the pop song is followed by a reflective passage about the ways we create and modify our stories and, through those, our realities, with a respectful nod to those we’ve loved and lost in these strange times.

Musically, the initial groove was developed into a loping, rattling thing that for a while clattered along so happily that it was the longest track on the record, until it was reeled in to an appropriate length for its pop status and is now the shortest track on the album. Still, there’s always a remix…

There was some sparring around the bassline - whenever Barry worked on the track he took out my bass guitar and used the keyboard bass; I did the opposite. Eventually we worked out the plot for a hybrid, switching between the two for different sections: a risky strategy, but it works. For the big chorus chord progression I decided not to do my usual Big Chord trick, but went for sharp chords cutting across instead. I sort of wish now that I’d done both: there’s a reason I always use that trick… oh well. The Sids are on point, of course - quite unusual choices, intriguingly dodging the obvious.

Now the story starts again…

1000 Different Books (CM)

This trippy thing emerged from improvisations using loops and atmospherics generated by the battlestar of new hardware that Barry auditioned, accumulated and harnessed during lockdown (quite obsessively, really, but someone’s gotta do it). From the start, it seemed to resist the structuring that we imposed on other tracks, going a different way every time we played it, so much so that we decided to let it be the only one that would continue to be developed through improvisation in the studio. If I may quote myself from a recent interview (indulgent, perhaps, but I think this nails it): “I’m usually fine with this idea, but in this case I sort of lost my nerve, mainly because it was too hard to develop a lyric and vocal over such a random piece… and, unlike the early days, we didn’t have unlimited time to follow ideas through. So it was structured, although there was more improvisation and layering than on some other tracks. At various points we had extensive piano sorties, a fair bit of feedback guitar, then it got reeled into what you hear. I really like the organic shifts in tone and rhythm, and how the drums work in a way you might not immediately think of as a Shriekback groove.”

1000 Different Books clocks in as the longest track on the record. I thought about shortening it, but again the organism resisted - I tried editing out the second verse (“rolling back the mind…”), the only lyric I considered potentially expendable, but a simple edit damaged the organic development of the track underneath: an actual remix would have been required, and we’d gone beyond the time and budget for that, so we have 5:19 of sonic evolution to live with forever. Nice.

The title, as you may already know by now, comes from a quotation from Andrei Tarkovsky’s Sculpting In Time - “A book read by a thousand different people is a thousand different books”, which seemed appropriate not only for the alternative realities of our fractured times but for the multiple interpretations that any Shriekback release inevitably attracts (me reading reviews: “oh, so that’s what I was on about”). In this case, it’s a reflection along the lines of ‘what have we done with all this time, why are we still here, what’s next?’, a coda of sorts to Space In The Blues: we cry into the future, but at least there is a future.

WILD WORLD (BA)

Wild World was a bit of a turn-up - right at the end written very quickly with no big struggles (see also: Exquisite Corpse, Bernadette, Hubris) - like it just wanted to burst out. So weird how that happens and yeah, a gift. From.... our boiling interiors, the Universe? She-Ra? Wotan?

We may never know..

The use of the vocoder - completely unplanned - was just from improvising with the Big Rig (the coral reef of quirky musical equipment accreting and mutating constantly in my living room) and the way it lets me sound prettier than I can can usually sound (v much as on 'Evaporation' from Care). It was the prosthetic I needed, clearly.

How it becomes alien and impersonal like Laurie Anderson's answering machine was not really intended - I worry that it's a screen to hide behind but I wasn't about to fuck around with it since it obviously - on one level anyway - 'worked'.

My son Finn's song 'One Piece at a Time' was an influence - that idea of a beneficent, forgiving world - and the Martin Amis notion (from 'The Information') that pretty much everywhere in the Universe would kill you in seconds if you went there but this place doesn't - that's a very elemental kind of love isn't it?

'God's World' by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) should also get a shout-out:

O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!

   Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!

   Thy mists, that roll and rise!

Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag

And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag

To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff!

World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!

Long have I known a glory in it all,

                   But never knew I this;

                   Here such a passion is

As stretcheth me apart,—Lord, I do fear

Thou'st made the world too beautiful this year;

My soul is all but out of me,—let fall

No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.

(btw does everyone collect pebbles? I reckon they do...)

[jamiefairfaxisntcool]

/mu/core album review | Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

/mu/core album review #1

this week on /mu/core album review, we look at:

Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

Ah yes, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. The album that’s mostly known as either, “that one weird album from the 90s,” or, “/mu/ basic bitch meme music.” If you’re anywhere past a casual music fan, you have most-likely heard some songs off this project, if not the whole thing, doubly so if you’re into 90s culture, Indie, or any sort of Art-Rock or Folk movements. As I type this, the most popular YouTube rip of the album has about 4.3 million views, a playlist separating each track stands at 500,000 views, and the title track has a remarkable 40,733,956 plays on Spotify. Holy shit, to put that into perspective: AV Club writes that, “In The Aeroplane Over The Sea was originally slated to sell about 7,000 copies,” that’s roughly 5,819 times the predicted sales numbers of the album on just that song. This also means that this song has been listened to for approximately 131,163,338 minutes, a total of around 131,163,299 more minutes than the actual album length. Humanity has spent a collective 249 years listening to In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. Oh, and that’s just the title track.

If I couldn’t spell it out so clearly there, this album is fucking outrageously popular.

Even if you haven’t heard any material off the LP, this album is memed pretty heavily in the music corners of the internet. I don’t think I can find a single music meme page or forum that hasn’t jumped upon the ITAOTS or NMH bandwagon.

At this current point in time, ITAOTS has became a permanent resident in the zeitgeist of internet music culture. NMH, and by extension, it’s creator, Jeff Mangum have been elevated to a cult of personality status. The band and this project are accompanied by a never-ending choir: 15-25 year old sad white boys who cry while sing-screeching about semen and Anne Frank and poorly play open chords on their detuned Ibanez acoustics.

It’s oddly beautiful.

The album is so deceptively simple, so creatively cryptic and has all the elements of a slog faux-folk fest filled with whining that would bore me to so many tears that they could rival the sad boy indie kids who lose their e-girls to their more socially active explore-page bait counterparts. To a person not familiar with it, ITAOTS could look like an over hyped, masturbatory depression tape. It looks boring. It looks like it should be boring.

If it should be boring, then why have I only listened to it and absolutely nothing else for the last two days?

This isn’t a joke, I revisited the album of course to refresh myself before sitting down and writing this review. I kept listening, over the course of a school day, in-between production and songwriting sets, while playing games, and as I write this, I just finished my eighth spin of the record. Before those last two days, I had only listened to the album probably twice. 

I remember listening to it back in seventh grade and not particularly disliking it. I was really into Yes and a lot of other Prog and Psych bands, but I wasn’t particularly impressed with the almost yuppie voice that Jeff had used on the record compared to vocal beasts like Freddie Mercury, Bowie, and Jon Anderson. Later on, I listened in freshman year, and I appreciated it much more, and had a few songs come up in my shuffle play, but thought nothing much of it.

Now, war had changed.

part 1: i’m the fucking carrot king

As I plopped down in my computer chair, my window crackled and banged like a distant firecracker with the smack of heavy rains on a Summer afternoon. I placed my headphones firmly atop my ears, closed my eyes and leaned back in my chair. I heard the opening chords of The King of Carrot Flowers Pt. 1 and tried not just to hear the instrumentation, but also pay attention to the lyrical content of Mr. Mangum.

When you were young, you were the king of carrot flowers And how you built a tower tumbling through the trees In holy rattlesnakes that fell all around your feet

Okay, so what the fuck is actually happening here?

Upon my listens, I inferred that Jeff is speaking to another party here, most likely a female love interest, in what seemingly starts in a nostalgic tone. This sounds almost like a picturesque, coming-of-age, Americana film. Maybe one starring Molly Ringwald and River Phoenix, with a surprise cameo from someone famous back then like Jack Nicholson. Maybe John Candy, with a John Hughes script. Everything would have those faded out, classic colors, a hearkened back era. Quickly, by halfway through the first act, the tone shifts. A darker mood, a stark, grim reminder that life wasn’t always sunny and shinning in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.

And your mom would stick a fork right into daddy's shoulder And dad would throw the garbage all across the floor As we would lay and learn what each other's bodies were for

The Mang informs us of a horrific family life, specifically about what seems to be his dad’s, stepmom’s, and stepsister’s interpersonal relationships. The lines are obvious and straightforward, the life of our protagonist was rife with unhealthy familial and sexual relationships, and a sense of love and sweetness was not found there. Keep that in mind when thinking about later songs such as Oh Comely.

After the somber intro of Carrot Flowers Pt. 1, we reach my personal least favorite track on the album: The King of Carrot Flowers Pt. 2 and 3.

Look, I know the meme. “I LOOOOOOOOOVE JESUUUS CHUHRIEEEIISSSSTT,” and all that shit. I’m not even worked up about that line in particular, I just dislike Pt. 3. It’s the weakest of the upbeat songs on the album, with the weird yodel-screech voice that Gumman performs with really takes me out of the experience, which sucks because the buildup and atmosphere of Pt. 2 felt pretty amazing. Luckily, Pt. 3 is fairly short, so we don’t have to worry about it too much.

part 2: earth angel’s thesis

The title track for this album is one of the best songs on this album, no fucking contest. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, Oh Comely, The Fool, and Two-Headed Boy Pt. 2 are top contenders when discussing this album. If you like the faster, fuzzier, upbeat songs you could probably substitute The Fool for Holland, 1945.

The title track has a familiar sounding chord progression and we can hear Gum from Jet Set Radio’s saccharine but yelp-y voice belt out from atop the mountains his undying love and admiration for... Anne Frank?

What a beautiful face I have found in this place That is circling all round the sun What a beautiful dream That could flash on the screen In a blink of an eye and be gone from me

In the first verse, Geoff mentions meeting or viewing a beautiful person on this fleeting rock circling round the Sun. He also matches this with the idea that it’s truly futile for him to chase after this beauty, as it is only a dream that could escape him when he awakes. El Jefé has actually mentioned that some of his surrealist lyrics are derived from dreams. Perhaps these lines could imply a more literal dream fading? I don’t exactly know, all I know is what I interpreted.

The instrumentation of this piece is nothing straying from NMH’s usual repertoire: Mandrake on Guitar and Vocals, Scott Spillane on the Horns, Robert Schneider on Bass and Production, Julian Koster playing... something. What is he playing? Wait, give me a second.

He’s playing the Singing Saw? I thought it was like, a Theremin. What the fuck is a Singing Saw?

Oh.

Okay sure, you can play that, however the fuck you do that.

And finally we have Jeremy Barnes on Drums.

The personnel handle the music with a light, bouncy feeling, and the tone and timbre remind me of a faded, old, seaside town on the east coast. Another thing to mention is that the chord progression is G-Em-C-D; I-vi-IV-V. A funny thing I noticed is that this song shares a chord progression with tons of songs from the 50’s and early 60’s, which adds to the waning Americana feeling, but it more specifically shares that progression with Earth Angel by The Penguins. In the 80’s film, Back To The Future, Marvin Berry covers the song with his band for the Enchantment Under The Sea Dance where Marty’s dad and mom have to dance to ensure that the future stays intact. There’s no further real connection, but I thought that was kinda cool to mention.

After looking through the lyrics for In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, I will admit, as a brainlet Two-Headed Boy Pt. 1 eluded me. Patrolling through Genius and some other reviews, I guess the consensus about this track was that it was about Anne Frank again? Manta Jeff’s cryptic lyricism continues to fool me. Besides the lyrics, this track mostly remains a piece of really good filler.

part 3: stop the military occupation of my brainwaves

The Fool is amazing, anyone who says it’s filler is wrong. I know I might anger some people by literally implying that Two-Headed Boy Pt. 1 was filler, but seriously The Fool just makes me a feel a way. My brain creates a scene reminiscent of a depressing diesel-punk Les Misérables. Even though Scotch Spillage’s fantastic piece for horns is beautifully imperfect, it lacks lyrical content and is short and length. So, let’s instead talk about Holland, 1945.

This awesome, uptempo, almost punk-like piece of fuzzy brass is groovy son. It’s probably the song you could show someone not familiar with this project and they’d be like, “Oh, is this Cake? Why is the lead singer singing so high now?”

Holland, 1945 is a song that you can just listen for the instrumentation. Holland, 1945 is a song that promotes peace and love. There’s so many great things I can say about Holland, 1945. How it’s theme is so perfectly fitting for today’s political climate, how it manages to blend these psychedelic and bluesy timbres with a fast and loud sound and how well it continued the semi-conceptual narrative of Joff’s admiration and love for... Anne Frank.

Okay, fuck it, I have to say it. It’s bothered me ever since I discovered it.

Why Anne Frank? Like, I know why Anne Frank, but I mean like, why, y’know? I’ll say I admire Anne Frank, she was trying her best to live a normal life in a terrifying time to be alive, but I never wanted to fuck her. xxJeffxx’s mentions of Anne kind of make me raise an eyebrow. Especially because the album’s not just about her either. When he gets sexual, it’s difficult to determine whether he is mentioning a third party or Anne, which would be pretty weird, as she was 15 when she died and Heff was 28 when he wrote this. Maybe this is just some patrician music shit that I’m too plebeian to understand, like heated toilet seats or drinking for fun rather than to drown the pain. Maybe I haven’t sat down and watched enough flowery-squarespace-sponsored-lofi-hip-hop-muzak-using-pretentious video essayists to understand it, but what do I know.

part 4: the proletariat cries

To wrap on the second half of the album, this is the half that I cried in.

Communist Daughter is a good song, but with how short it is, it left me wanting more. This track is one of the few that actually features a soft-spoken Jeffen, and its open and dark but dreamy atmosphere left my jaw agape. The mountaintops weren’t the only thing stained.

Oh Comely, Oh Comely. Oh Comely is a song that deserves its own review. The lyrical chops of The Mangum Magnum are on full display as he belts somber, brutal verse after verse, with plenty of juxtaposition between sickening, sexual and vile situations alongside a description of a sweet, innocent young girl, just trying to survive with a guitar by her side. This beautiful, lovely girl gets taken advantage by someone, some people, perhaps even Yeff himself, only seen as an easy lay, a whore, like the ones her father visits often. He disgustingly describes semen in the garden, and her making miracles with her mouth, but I didn’t get a tone similar to so many songs about “sexual-empowerment.” The song is about self-deprecating depression leading to her being used, perhaps even abused. A situation all too real, too close to many of us. As I type this, I don’t know what to think. A woman should of course have individual sexual freedom, but this song doesn’t describe that. It describes trauma, emotional, psychological trauma. Meaningless sex, a rotten smell, staining the flower of a woman, all of this language that could be simply described as gross. This isn’t a happy song about fucking bitches. This song is about how a girl wanted to play music, pluck vines and was taken advantage of, reduced to her roots, and deflowered. Fuck. I wish I could save her. In some sort of time machine.

Two-Headed Boy could refer to a number of things. I have a head canon. This girl, Comely, is being used by the Two-Headed Boy for sexual favors. The Two-Headed Boy then “repays” her in friendship and music, playing their silly little songs. On the surface, Comely assumes the Two-Headed Boy trusts her and cares for her, but really all he wants is sex. Comely, living in a broken home and without a proper male figure in their life, is conned by the Two-Headed Boy, and just wants to live a normal life. Comely is trapped. She’s living in a place that is surrounded by the texture of scum and she knows it, she just can’t call upon the strength to leave. She’s trapped in a home, a ghetto, wanting to live a normal life, but she’s been placed here by the Two-Headed Boy, who knew her mother and father were broken, and she would be too. The Two-Headed Boy broke in, claimed to be her friend, and supports her, before defiling her. Comely was pretty, bright, and intelligent. She was just in a bad situation.

Comely was Anne Frank.

Not to say that they were literally one in the same, but I mean J. Mangum (private eye) is comparing two children, ripped from their lives by this awful world, and intertwining them, blurring the lines.

Who’s the Two-Headed Boy? As I said, it could be a number of people. Nazis, Peter van Pels, hell, even Jeff Manga himself could be the Two-Headed Boy. It doesn’t matter as long as we realize the relationship between oppressed and oppressor.

There is a glimmer of hope for Comely though. Read the closing words from Two-Headed Boy Pt. 2:

Two headed boy, she is all you could need She will feed you tomatoes and radio wires And retire to sheets safe and clean But don't hate her when she gets up to leave

Comely and the Two-Headed Boy split away from each other. Comely leaves the Two-Headed Boy, and the narrator says not to hate her when she leaves. On a deeper level, this could be an introspective Jeff Mangum relating on his past. I don’t really know.

outro

Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

9/10

What did you think? Was I way off the mark, or do you agree? What should I have covered? What did you like, what did you dislike, I’m all ears. Leave a follow and a like if you liked it and I’ll see you on Wednesday.

[machinehead]

CYPRESS HILL

Anybody remember these lyrics…? "Say some punk try to get you for your auto, Would you call the one-time, play the role model? Nooooo, I think you play like a thug Next hear the shot of a magnum slug Hummin', comin' at cha yeah ya know I'm gonna gat ya” Or this one? "Time for some action, just a fraction of friction I got the clearance to run the interference into your sattelite, shinin a battle light, swing out the gat, and I know that will gat ya right? Here's an example, just a little sample. How I could just kill a man!” Or this one "Do my shit undercover Now it's time for for the blubber Blabber To watch dat belly get fatter Fat boy on a diet Don't try it I'll check your ass like a looter in a riot” And that ends with: "Happy face n***a never seen me smile”. Always loved that line! Been on a serious Cypress Hill kick lately. I forgot how good their debut S/T record is!  Maybe that it’s just that it takes me back to that time (1991)? Regardless, I can’t get enough of it right now. I saw that Billy from Biohazard is jamming’ with Cypress Hill’s Sen-Dog in a new band called Powerflo, and that sent me back down the rabbit hole. I first heard about Cypress Hill from a local Bay Area magazine called BAM. It had a hip-hop column that was pretty small, but was often on the pulse of all the new stuff.  I checked ‘em out solely on the advice of the columnist (whose name eludes me) but got hooked instantly. The music was so fresh for the sound at the time, which relied heavily on 60’s psychedelica (sampling Hendrix and a plethora of cool guitar licks for their hooks) and 60’s pop yet with an almost bluesy major key undertone throughout. It sounds crazy to say now, but back then there weren’t a whole lotta’ people singing about weed like these dudes were. That was the surface; party stuff, but there was a real dark feel to the lyrics. The album opener ”Pigs” (about crooked cops) sets the dark tone and then track #2 was, (which ended up being the hit single) “How I Could Just Kill A Man” (which sampled a guitar lick from Jimi Hendrix's “Are You Experienced”) and “Hand On The Pump” (of a shotgun…) taking it even darker, melding the post-Rodney-King-era of Los Angeles, with their South Central, blunted out state of mind. Something about the bluesy feel of the music mixed the B-Real’s nasally almost nursery-rhyme delivery made it all so goddamned catchy you could not get the songs out of your head. One thing I always loved that the main music-crafter DJ Muggs did was he almost always brought in a bridge/key change at the halfway point of each song.  It doesn’t sound like much, but hip hop at the time (and even now) kept the same beat/melody almost entirely the same. They brought terms like “gat,” “blunted,” to the public consciousness. Soon enough every rapper and pop group from Ice Cube to TLC was taking a crack at the Cypress Hill sound with bluesy riffs, and major keys at a time when hip-hop was primarily atonal and noisy (think - Public Enemy). By the time I got into them, I had pretty much stopped smoking weed, but I just loved the vibe that they brought. Genevra and I went and caught them live on this album, they were headlining a small club in San Francisco with a fairly eclectic bill for the time. There was Money B of Digital Underground opening, and pro-African, uber-black-power, also-rans X-Clan (who were never really that good, but dressed so crazy and militant that they stuck out) as main support.  Cypress Hill came on and played a short but inspired set that got the crowd going nuts.  I actually met B-Real before the show, who was just chilling’ in the crowd.  I said “what up B-Real?” He took one look at Genevra (who looked ridiculously hot), gave me a completely dead-fish handshake and started chatting her up.  I was “all right, we're outta here!" It was a great fuckin’ show, the energy, and buzz in the audience was palpable.  Not sure if I would do that now (go to a hip hop club), but I was 20-something and fearless back then. And while the hits from the debut album still resonate with me, it deep album cuts like “Pyschobetabuckdown" and "Latin Lingo" that truly set "the kids from the Hill" apart.  The latter blending english and spanish to form the bi-ligual “Spanglish” that flowed so good when you heard rapper Sen-Dog’s baritone with lines like "Troop like a vacuo, who said I was baracho, had an attitude, tried to play me macho, Just relax, calmado mijo, Sen Dog with the funky bilingual.” I still don’t know what most of it means, but it somehow made sense. I followed them through the next couple records with 2nd album “Black Sunday containing the massive smash hit “Insane In The Membrane,” and the very metal-sounding “We Ain’t Going Out Like That” (which sampled Black Sabbath’s harmonica intro for “The Wizard”).  Overall the album wasn’t as strong.  It seemed rushed with a lot of the exact same lyrical content, though with that said, it still contained one of the most random / awesome lyrical gems with “like a chicken wing, pa-cock, so you can just suck my cock!” in the track “Lil’ Putos.” So fucking random, but every once in a while, I still hum it! Temples Of Boom was the last record I really delved into and it had a few gems like “Throw Your Set In The Air” (as in: your gang set), and the brutally dark Ice Cube diss track “No Rest For The Wicked,” but other than that it was a little all over the place. I didn’t even hear the next album “IV”, but then they came back stronger than ever with 2000’s “Skull & Bones” and the rap/rock cross-over double hit “So You Wanna Be A Rock/Rap Superstar” which they did 2 versions of (a Rap and Rock version) that worked equally strong.  Great storytelling mixed with the realities of being in the music business. They have gone on to become a southern California staple with an semi-annual festival (I think) called The Cypress Hill “Smokeout” (Machine Head played it back in 2000, but we were way out of place).  Last I saw them Cypress killed it, putting on a really good show that showed them evolve into a full live backing band playing along with them. Since I listen to all of my music solely on Spotify, I’ve been playing the latter day tracks and checking out what they’ve been up to (Spotify is GREAT for music discovery, I cannot tell you how many bands / songs I’ve found since going purely Spotify!) and they definitely continued to evolve a bring in some cool new tunes. But if you want to go back in time to 1991 and check out a record that changed shit, a record that hit so hard when it dropped, that was pissed off, a record that even inspired a few of my own lyrics on Burn My Eyes (“Blood For Blood" in particular) check out Cypress Hill’s self titled. Spotify:  Cypress Hill – Cypress Hill YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQ7DOkfbgpQ

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[a-patheticapathetic]

Nine Inch Nails/Yaggenhimen - The Downward Spiral: Review

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bY3GGfqp7g

Alright, I think I’ve had enough time to reflect on this album. Time to do a review. And not just one review; I want to go over the original album, as well as an incredibly impressive full cover done almost entirely by one person. Linked above is the cover version. I assume that you can find the official version yourself. I recommend that you get a version with no gaps in between songs, nor risk of ads playing and breaking the flow.

Before you listen to either version of the album, you need to know a couple of things. This album is incredibly dark in both tone and sound. It is at times abrasive, angry, and totally devoid of hope. Depression and suicide are the main themes of the album. If you don’t think you can handle this, don’t risk hurting yourself. If you think the actual sound of this album will be too harsh for your tastes I would recommend listening to these songs, in this order: Closer, Heresy, Reptile, and March Of The Pigs. If the things you heard interested you and did not hurt your ears too badly, you can probably make it through the whole album.

I’ll be reviewing these albums in two parts: First, I’ll go though the NIN version like usual. After that, I’ll go through the Yaggenhimen, but instead of stream-of-consciousness writing, I’ll note down the differences and decide whether the cover is better, worse, or somewhere in between.

Alright. For those who are ready, let’s begin. 

(Also, fair warning: The loudest and most abrupt this album gets is at the very beginning and the very end. I’ll put a warning before the last song and tell you exactly where it happens.)

Mr. Self Destruct - 7/10

We begin the album with a looped audio clip of a man being beaten, taken from the movie THX 1138. Fairly fitting, given the journey ahead. Immediately following this is the second-most violent noise on the album, and the start of the song proper. I still can’t tell how much of this is physical instrumentation and how much is synthetic. Things go about as you’d expect up until the end of the second chorus. At this point the volume plummets in an instant, and the strange and eerie noises buried in the background hint at the subtlety NIN is hiding underneath all the violence. Trent is also showing off some serious vocal talent here, managing to sing quietly but still maintaining that feeling of insurmountable rage. When the anger comes back, it does so with more graduality. Listen to how the response vocals (”and I control you”) are distorted; they’re barely even recognizable. As the chorus repeats, a layer of static slowly rises, eventually all but drowning out the rest of the song. This too drops in an instant into the outro, a strange and unintelligible spaghetti loop of distorted guitars. This goes on for a bit, before cutting to the next song.

Piggy - 8/10

After a pronounced sigh, hey pig. The silence of this song relative to the cacophony of the previous is almost shocking. It also gives us more time to bask in all these little samples hidden in the background. The production on this album, despite how dirty it sounds, is unbelievably meticulous. Listen to the drums now; they’re about to change. After chorus 2, a pause, then a second, much louder drum track comes in. This is a solo performed by Trent himself. While it shows mercy at first, it quickly devolves into tempos and random beatings that have little rhyme or reason. And as the mantra “nothing can stop me now” is repeated, a gentle synth line begins, way up high in the background. This is the first appearance of the Downward Spiral motif. Pay attention moving forward; it will appear several times over the course of the album. Lay back as everything but the motif fades away. The spiral has begun; now, down is the only way to continue.

Heresy - 7/10

Instantly we’re hit with a wave of 80s synth, then a punishing programmed drum beat. Trent’s recorded double vocals here; one for each ear, and neither is quite right. More noises appear and we hit the chorus; while it may seem edgy today, this was released in the mid-90s. It drove conservatives absolutely insane because back then not many people were saying things like this so unabashedly. Also, while it’s hard to hear, the rhythm guitars are playing the motif during the chorus. There’s also a sample of a cheering crowd during the solo. Still not sure if it’s a guitar solo or a synth, or something in between. As the last chorus comes around and another, more distorted Trent comes out from beneath the mix, the synths give up and make way for the distorted guitars.

March of the Pigs - 9/10

The beat here is the fastest NIN have ever written, and it fits the panicked mood of this song. This is made clear when the rest of the instruments suddenly jump in, and the screaming crowd is back in full force. Trent is basically just yelling commands through a megaphone here, and there are also stranger voices creeping in the prechorus, seemingly talking about him in the third person. This all then fades as we approach the chorus. The distortion echoes and recedes, giving way to a sinister synth bassline. Then, the chorus. All the pigs are all lined up. And then...

Yeah, it was pretty clear that wasn’t going to last. This time, there is no mercy; the song kicks back with full force, and repeats in the same way through to the chorus. This time, the piano stays for the ride. Somehow this is even more threatening than the loudness of the rest of the song.

Closer - 9/10

The one everyone knows. This iconic drumline is actually sampled from Iggy Pop. The introduction of the vocals and synthbass essentially turn this song into the dictionary definition of sex. Then the chorus, which for better or worse, everyone can sing along to. It’s after this that things begin to get really interesting. A strange, ominous, distorted string line floats just out of reach for the next verse, and Trent’s delivery gets much more desperate than sexy. The next chorus is the same as the first, but the bridge is notably more barren and atmospheric. A heavily distorted guitar line slowly wades in, then vanishes as the final vocals come in. Trent is buried deep in the mix and devoid of emotion, and is essentially delivering prose rather than singing. Afterwards things begin to build up, with more aggressive synths, guitars and drums adding in. Then, the motif appears again, calling out like a hellish chorus line before everything else drops away. The motif is now more like a single string, high up in the sky, under so much tension that the slightest touch could break it. An odd wind spins around your ears as we cleanly transition into the next song.

Ruiner - 8/10

As the last note rings out, we get one of the coolest drumlines on the album combined with some strange, ghostly samples. A quick synth accompanies Trent on the verse, and distortion joins him in the more angry pre-chorus. Then, we get a great wall of shredded synth, almost like the devil’s brass section. Trent is almost muttering here in contrast to the noise around him, but he’s crystal clear above it. The verse and prechorus after are slightly more unkempt, leading into the last chorus. Here Trent has lost his composure and is now shouting along with the world around him. Both he and the song then trail off into a calm bassline and crying synthetic wind. And then... an honest-to-god guitar solo. A pretty fucking good one too, with a very nice bluesy distortion filter. At the end it ramps up into the outro section, a marching drumline, driving bassline, and open synth. As the ending mantra begins, the wall of hell trumpets return. This repeats several times, with Trent getting cut off at the end. 

The Becoming - 6/10

Sharp samples are used in this intro as percussion over a menacing piano line. These are replaced with straight synth as some very punchy drums come in. Also, the screaming. That’s gonna be happening for a while. By this point in the album the noises are getting more industrial, as noted by the percussion. We continue in this discomfort through a couple verses and choruses, until the screaming and drums are replaced with a nice little acoustic guitar and strange warped noises that may at one point have been human. This doesn’t last too long until we’re dropped back into the song proper with a nasty distorted synth solo. Then this song’s mantra begins, and it’s not the most uplifting thing either. Which gets even worse when the vocals are suddenly pitch-shifted super high up, almost making a mockery of the message. Then, of course, we end the song by going back to the nice acoustic chords, although some heavily mutated noises are still flailing around. This fades into the clicking beat of the next song.

I Do Not Want This - 6/10

The true beat replaces the clicking heard in the last song, and a somber piano line plays while Trent sings. The verse-prechorus here is much more restrained than we’ve heard for most of this album. Then, after a refrain, the NIN we know comes back. Through the next cycle the drums begin to get more intense. The drop here keeps hitting us with the drumline before we get a “solo” that’s pretty much just distortion beyond the point of instrumentation. Makes some pretty cool noises though. Then, through the remains of that, another mantra crawls out. Increasing in volume with each repetition, a guitar joins in as Trent’s voice gets more and more distorted. Then, the most controversial song.

Big Man With A Gun - 6/10

Right off the bat we’ve got the most unsettling sample over a gunshot drumline. Huge chorded waves of distorted synth come in as Trent gets louder and more violent. Everything starts going off the shit end, and

A Warm Place - 7/10

No, your album didn’t break. That’s actually the transition. Amazing. Here we have the calmest song Trent had anything to do with in the 1990s. There are no lyrics here to analyze; just close your eyes and float away. You’ve reached the eye of the storm.

Eraser - 9/10

This is the point in the album that makes it a masterpiece. This song. The build and pacing here is absolutely impeccable. I hope you enjoyed the respite of the previous song because we are now reaching for the bottom of the spiral. There is no peace to be found here. Need you. Dream you. Find you. Taste you. Fuck you. Use you. Scar you. Break you.

Reptile - 7/10

Here is where NIN puts the “industrial” in industrial metal. Half of this song is basically just machinery to music, especially the percussion. The main message the sound of this song gives off is dread. Dread in musical form. Something terrible is ahead, and behind, and around. Trent’s voice is the only human or recognizable thing left in this soundscape, and even he is becoming robotic. It’s like wandering a mid-fallout wasteland at sundown, with no knowledge of what may come out at night. The bridge here is a cruel joke. A sample of what sounds to be a girl in distress, and the hint of a calming piano, snatched away. This is essentially the sound of the last act of Spec Ops: The Line. At the last repetition of the chorus, another version of Trent can be heard screaming from behind a wall, before...

The Downward Spiral - 9/10

Here we are. This is the end of the spiral. Over a weeping machine and the buzzing of flies we hear the motif, one last time, on an old acoustic guitar. Then some oddly warbled chords come in. After that, we reach the bottom. 

Okay. This is your warning. At the end of this next song, the last song, is a jumpscare that turned me away from NIN and all of their works for several years. It comes at the final verse, on the final line. The lines before it are, “If I could start again / A million miles away / I would keep myself...”. Then, exactly at the start of the next line, a sound that was engineered to be the scariest sound on the album plays at the highest volume they could reasonably push. Fortunately the rhythm is consistent and it’s relatively easy to predict when the noise will happen. Hopefully I can lessen the shock for those that continue on. I’d still recommend you turn your volume down at the line “If I could start again”, if not before even starting the song.

Hurt - 7/10

This is what lies beyond the spiral. A song you may know by a different artist. While it may seem calm on the surface, it is designed to prevent true peace. The sound echoes between each ear at the verses, almost as if it’s spinning very rapidly around you. The chords sound wrong, somehow. This is much more apparent in chorus 2, as they seem to whine like insects. Then, the ending. Brace for impact, everyone. 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Alright. It’s quite a bit later than I expected and this has taken a lot longer than I thought it would. Still, I don’t want to stop for the night and give myself any more opportunity to procrastinate. Let’s finish this now.

Yaggenhimen (BassistBob) Cover Review:

Destruct: +,-

He actually didn’t copy that intro from NIN: He took the same sample and remade it himself, in the same way Trent did. The verse/chorus here is actually WAY different from the original and I think it sounds cool as hell. It’s much more subdued instead of in-your-face, and feels more threatening and insidious as a result. Great work there. The bridge is a very good recreation of the eeriness of the original. After this point it falls flat a bit. He just doesn’t have quite the edge Trent does in the buildup. Also, the distortion wave at the ending is missing, and the guitar loop doesn’t sound as demented. Still I’d love a version of this song that’s the Yaggenhimen version at the beginning, and switching to the NIN version at the bridge. 

Pig: ~,-

Very nice work here. There’s some good spooky sampling going on in verse 2. Before that, it’s close to equal to the album version. However, the drum solo kinda loses here. It’s nowhere near as loud and overpowering as the original. Although, he adds a distortion effect to his voice near the end that I think adds a nice bit of foreshadowing. The use of a guitar for the motif at the end is cool.

Heresy: ~~

A really cool rendition of the synths here as what appear to be sampled acoustic guitars. The recreation of the percussion is also top-notch. The break is more minimalist, which really allows the bassline to shine. I do wonder how he got that sound; it sounds sick as hell and apparently came from a plastic flute, of all things.

March: -

Unfortunately, this one doesn’t go so well. Bob’s voice just can’t measure up to the edge required to match Trent’s delivery. The choice to switch the piano in the break to acoustic guitar is interesting, but it really doesn’t have the same effect. The piano in the original is essential in making that drastic shift from NIN violence to safe, contemporary pop song. Nice harmonics at the end though.

Close: =

I mean, it’s just Closer. He almost perfectly and exactly matched the NIN version in every way. It’s absolutely incredible. From the same Iggy Pop sample all the way to the blank tape noise. Every detail is remade. 

You know, it’s kind of a shame how this song has come to be known. Even though the chorus is pretty infamous, it’s for the wrong reason. This isn’t meant to be a “sexy” song. When you listen to the lyrics, it’s about the use of depravity to try and fill a soul. But then again, if you didn’t want the song to be sexy Trent, you probably shouldn’t have made the sexiest fucking drum/bassline in the history of music. Anyways.

Ruin: ~

Interesting that he chose to close the transition after Closer. In any case, the synth is a very good recreation, and as are the drums. Verse vocals aren’t quite there unfortunately. Apparently, the hell-brass in the chorus here are actually fucking harmonicas. I admit, they sound a little cheesier, but I can’t knock the man for having the balls to use a goddamn distorted harmonica. The solo is just as dirty as the original, despite apparently being played on an acoustic! Very nicely done. The outro percussion also sounds very grimy.

Become: ~+~

There is some SHIT going on in this version. At the start it sounds kinda silly because the acoustic used for the intro sounds almost like MIDI, but then the screaming starts. This is WAY more fucked up than the NIN version, it sounds like someone poked a microphone into hell and grabbed some samples. There’s one “NOOOOOOOO” that’s just a bit over the top though. The samples used during the acoustic breaks are also very interesting. At the end of each measure, it sounds like a couple of people are just kinda cheering, but in an insane, cannibalistic way. Also the distortion on the ending mantra is much more drastic than the NIN version and I think it works really well.

Want: ~,-,~

The switch from piano to acoustic guitar here works a lot better than it did in March of the Pigs. It feels just as natural as the original. The vocals and distortion during the chorus aren’t nearly as abrasive as the original though, and I think that works to Yaggenhimen’s detriment here. Though I was never a huge fan of this song in the first place; while I think Heresy doesn’t deserve judgement for the aging of the message, this song’s theme just kinda feels overdone. The strange samples before the mantra are done nicely here. 

Gun: -,~

The lack of the woman screaming sample here kinda loses some of the momentum the original had. It also spotlights the drums being programmed. Scott provides some good screams for the outro though. Nice work Scott.

Warm: ~

Solid recreation here. The choir-like “aaah”s are a great touch. It really only lacks some of the softness of the original’s production.

Erase: =,~,-

It’s hard to match up to the original, but I think Yaggenhimen really pulled it off here. The fact that he made the buzzing noises with a plastic cup is hilarious. I hope it was a red Solo cup. It is missing the distortion effect as “Kill me” is repeated though.

Reptile: =,-,~

Once again, he used the same sample Trent did for the intro here. The industrial sounds were apparently taken from Robocop but almost sound like the door sound effect from DOOM. Either way, it sounds excellent. Not sure about the sample used during the bridge though, it almost sounds like Elmo. At the end, instead of the muffled yelling from the original, he uses a strange time-distortion effect on another take of his own vocals. A really cool idea.

Spiral: -\+

This version overall sounds markedly scarier than the original. Whether that’s good or bad is probably subjective. For me personally, I like how the NIN version is much more sad than ominous, only really getting unsettling at the ending. Still, this version is very impressive.

Hurt: +

Oh yeah. A straight plus. Blasphemous it may be, I think this version is just better than the original. Hey, Johnny Cash already did it anyways. This one is somehow sadder and scarier than the original. The effect on the vocals during the chorus is such a good addition. Also, somehow the ending is even scarier than the NIN version, and even adds more meaning for me.

Overall this is just about the best cover album I have ever heard and am likely to hear, and it was done almost entirely by one guy. I hope he gets more credit for this because right now the video is only at 36,000 views and deserves so much more. 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Okay, that’s it. I guess I’ll wrap up with my thoughts on the album as a whole.

The Downward Spiral is one of the most profound and important albums I have ever heard. It is so full of Trent’s blood, sweat, and tears that I can practically taste it. He suffered for this and that suffering is audible in ever second in this hour and 5 minutes. While I still cannot rate albums numerically, this album is undeniably a masterpiece. Thank you for those that made it to the end with me. For those who are now here at the bottom of the spiral and wish to go back, go listen to Lateralus for instructions on how to ride the spiral back up.

On a scale from “I lost my shit because of you”, to “I’m hard as fucking steel, I’ve got the power”, The Downward Spiral (predictably) gets a “Nothing can stop me now.”