Time to finish off the Members' Top Ten list from Frownland, but first, disclosure: Due to some confusion on my part it seems I chose an older list Frown had compiled, and in association with him that list has been amended, to feature this at number 8.
All the Waters of the Earth Turn to Blood --- The Body --- 2010
In fairness to Frown, seven tracks, just shy of fifty minutes: that’s almost short by his standards. I’m not too familiar with sludge metal, but I can guess from the description that there ain’t exactly going to be any blistering guitar solos or keyboard runs, and everything I expect to be at a slow, doom metal pace. The Body is just two guys, so they have to get respect for that. Kicks off with “A body”, and I’m told they collaborated on this album with the Assembly of Light choir, which you can hear right away in the choral vocal that cleverly part of it sounds like keyboard chords, and it’s very soft and sepulchral for the moment. Have to admit,it’s nice and all but there’s nothing even vaguely Metal about this, at least so far. And I have a feeling the whole ten-minute track is going to be just this
acapella chant.
Ah, okay: I’m wrong. In about the seventh minute powerful guitar punches through and now we’re headbanging! The choir continues while the singer sort of shrieks or moans; it’s a little odd and not a tad offputing. Still, at least it’s rocking now. “A curse” is much heavier, mostly riding on a punchy drum line until about a minute in, then the guitar comes in with some sort of phasing or distortion or something. This is much shorter, thought it might be an instrumental but now there’s singing, and I use the word very loosely indeed. I have to admit, I absolutely hate these vocals. I came across something similar while researching for Metal Month, and I remember remarking how much I hated them. It’s like a morbid kind of desperate shriek, like the wail of the damned, like the cry of someone who knows something awful is happening but can’t stop it. Terrible. The music is not bad, but no more than that, so far anyway. Nothing has really stood out, except for the choir, and as they’re not part of this band I can’t really include them.
“Empty hearth” reminds me of that Quantum Leap song, “The Lone Ranger”, with some sort of fast native chant or something going on before Chip King comes in with what passes for a vocal and just basically ruins what could have been a good track. Guitar work is okay and the progamming is interesting, but nothing more than that. I’m not now looking forward to the closer, all thirteen minutes plus of it! Percussion is good, very powerful and striking, but the chant gets a bit annoying after a few minutes. Nice slow punching guitar intro to “Even the saints knew their hour of failure and loss”, and the choir are back, which is actually welcome. Looking into the lyrics doesn’t help: most are a few sentences and that’s it. Interested to see that Yeats’s “The Second Coming” is referred to in this one, not that you’d be able to make out the words.
The British TV Sci-fi comedy show “Red Dwarf” had a phrase: “Remember, it’s Rimmer’s mind out there: expect sickness!” I’d paraphrase that to “Remember, it’s Frownland’s music! Expect weirdness!” I don't think the guy has given me one simple metal album yet. Everything has been weird with an extra helping of strange and this is no exception. There’s a lot of squealing feedback guitar in “Sarin the brave” and now some sort of recorded conversation, maybe a clip? Who the fu
ck knows? This is terrible. Not just terrible, but Frownland terrible. Jesus. And the lyrics don’t help, unlike with good old Exhumed. They’re just full of hate, anger, despair and doom. Nice, guys. Nice. The only good thing about “Ruiner”, so far, is that there’s been no attempt by Chip to sing. The guitar is plodding, predictable and boring but at least I don’t have to listen to his wanker screeches. Ah, pox in a bottle! There he is! Can’t he take a f
ucking fa
g break or something? Jesus H Fu
cking Christ.
Frown, do you deliberately pick out albums you know I’ll hate, out of some sadistic desire to make me suffer? I swear, this is worse than the fu
cking Torture Chamber! And now were up to that fuc
king epic. Christ on a unicycle! Almost fourteen minutes of “Lathspell I name you” to drag myself through. If I drank, I’d need a drink to get me through this right now. And there are a lot of lyrics to this --- I mean, comparatively. Whereas other songs have had two or three sentences this has well into the double digits, which means I guess I’m gonna have to hear Chip try to sing. A lot. Is that a violin? Hey, that’s nice. Doesn’t last of course, but it was a nice reprieve for a moment or two. Okay, I’ll admit there’s a nice sport of hypnotic rhythm coming into the song now (about minute seven) and a melody of sorts is developing, but it’s taken all that time to get here, and now of course they kick it apart and it dissolves on hard guitar with a lamenting voice chanting in the background. Nah, not my thing.
I understand they’re trying to say something here, create an ambience, foster a mood, but in the same way that not everyone would accept or appreciate a long keyboard passage on a prog album to represent a journey or whatever, this does nothing for me. Just … nothing. Never listening to this again. Not by choice anyway.
Hopefully we’ll have better luck with what now becomes his number four…
Disco Volante --- Mr.Bungle --- 1995
I see the album is described as “the musical equivalent of a David Lynch film”. This is not good news for Trollheart. I don’t know why, but I never thought Mr Bungle were a Metal band; I assumed they were up there with Beefheart and his ilk. Maybe, in a Metal way, they are. With track titles like “Duet for guitar and oxygen tank” and “Desert search for techno Allah”, I may not be far off the mark. Starts off with a kind of doom metal groove with people just more or less chanting across it. This is, apparently, “Everyone I went to High School with is dead”. Indeed. Meh, it’s not the worst and at least it’s short. Doubt I’ll get away so easily with the rest of the tracks. I see some are over ten minutes. Frownland doesn’t do short, unless it’s apocalyptically-blow-your brains-out-short, as we shall see shortly. “Chemical marriage” has a nice organ line, sort of salsa rhythm or something, with the lyrics complete and absolute gibberish; most of them don’t even have vowels! DWV will love that. Kind of like listening to devils at their Christmas party. Pretty good actually.
The next one seems to be a lot of noises --- things crashing, breaking, Tarzan yell --- then a sort of spooky organ with a sax going off somewhere, This is the first one with proper vocals, the lyric even references a quote by Poe, and there’s some rather funny stuff about someone who doesn’t get to play in the band and is, quote pissed off unquote. Crazy guitar, weirder percussion, very wild and chaotic, and this is going to be a while as this one is nine minutes long. Well it’s almost over now, but a little hard to take seriously; I’m not entirely sure you’re meant to. Next is that “Desert search for techno Allah” I mentioned. Weird moves to higher levels, and as I feared, Frown is bending the meaning of the term “Metal” into shapes it was never meant to be contorted into. This is in no way Metal and it’s quite annoying. Like listening to arabs having a rave or something. Just downright stupid. All right this is bollocks. I’m skipping through this.
The next one is in fu
cking Italian! Lord almighty! Well at least there’s a big heavy guitar, which gives me some hope this might actually be some shade of Metal, though I wonder as it’s fading down now. Christ! Jew’s harp! And orchestral strings. Tell you what, Frown: anything I don’t believe is Metal I’m skipping through. I asked for your top ten METAL albums, not your top ten fu
cking EXPERIMENTAL ones! If I ever do Experimental Music Month I’ll feature this all you want, but for now, on I go to see if there is anything even vaguely Metal about this, which I’m beginning to doubt.
Okay, I've had it with this.
Fuck this crap. I’m not listening to any more of this. I have a new Iron Maiden waiting to be reviewed. Consider this a fail, consider it me cheating, consider it whatever the f
uck you like, but do not consider it Metal but it fu
cking is not.
To quote the mighty Batlord:
fuck this
shit. On to number three we go.
I should love Sun O))) as I drone on so much, shouldn't I? Pi-
tish! I'm here all month, folks! Seriously though, I've already suffered through I mean heard one of their albums and was not much better for the experience, so I'm not expecting big things from this. Be that as it may, it's in Frownland's top three, so here we go...
Black One --- Sunn O))) --- 2005
Seems that for one of the songs here the guys purposely locked a guest singer in a coffin, knowing full well he was claustrophobic! Nice chaps, huh? Think I'll probably feel like I wish I could have locked them all in once this is done! Oh well, let's get this over with... Oh look! On to track three already and all I've heard are some vague growls and a guitar that sounds like it's slowly being dragged into a black hole. I feeeellll sooooo strrrrrannnngggge......
Um, okay, what the f
uck! GPM has THREE tracks for this album! Three! Now, while I would consider that a blessed escape, that's hardly listening to the whole thing, so what the hell happened? Spotify? Not even one fu
cking song! Crap! So it's YouTube for me, eh? Not that it'll probably make that much difference... Okay, well now someone is screeching and there's rain falling but no music
per se. Oh here comes a guitar. This is called “Cursed realms (of the winterdemons)” apparently. No wonder they're so pissed. Actually, in fairness this is at least interesting. Like listening to a badly-tuned radio in the rain. Hmm. There's also some tunish melody in “Orthodox caveman”, almost listenable. Again I'm getting very little out of this.
Oh here comes the last track, and it's that one with the guy in a coffin. Should be good for a giggle, the only one I'll have had while listening to this album. Well all I hear so far is a low bass and bells chiming, but the song is fifteen minutes long so we'll see how it goes. Alright, I think I hear guitar now and there's a voice howling (unless that's the neighbour's dog again) and it does sound confined. I suppose if you're looking for the sound of someone buried alive, and the terror evoked thereby, you can't get better than this. I, however, am not, so it just sounds ... weird.
Nah, Sun O)))'s weird, dark, glacially slow rhythms and melodies (such as they are) will never be for me. I think I'd rather listen to anything else really. Just mind-numbingly boring for over an hour.
So if that's in his top three, what else is there? Well, glad (maybe) you asked.
Fantômas amenaza al mundo --- Fantômas --- 1999
When I first look at the tracklisting for this album I almost faint, as there are
thirty tracks! Then my heart starts to slow a little as I realise that the vast, vast majority of them are a minute or even less, so it's not so bad. Unlike Sun O))), I know absolutely nothing about this band, have heard nothing and only know of them through the conversations being held, mostly in Batlord's Avant-Garde Metal battle within the Metal Album Survivor thread, but they seem to be very highly regarded, by those who are into that sort of thing. Me? I'm about to tread paths unwalked and enter
terra incognita, so it'll all be new to me.
I get why Frown like this. It's as if he himself had written a metal album. Noise, effects, guitar riffs that start then stop suddenly, sound of a cat squealing (?), no real melody or tune to speak of. Lots of possible tuning of instruments. Wank, in other words. Bit of singing there on track three, now someone's roaring their head off while someone else tries out a drumkit. Jungle rhythm now which is at least interesting, then it's a death metal scream, then someone walking on a seesaw with springs on their shoes, and then someone doing DIY before dropping their drumkit down the stairs and cursing in Serbian as they run after them and try to get them before they hit the bottom. That's track nine, and I guess he didn't make it as I hear an ambulance pulling away.
You know, this album is a lot more enjoyable if you imagine the scenes engendered by the crazy sounds on each. Someone just went through a plate-glass window there and now a cat is moaning. Another broken window, or someone hurled a bottle at the cat. Someone having a fit now on track twelve and suddenly --- unbelievable surprise! --- there's actual singing and, yes, yes! A melody! Track's only a minute long though so it won't last. The next tracks is FOUR SECONDS LONG! What the hell can you fit into four seconds? Absolutely nothing it would seem: total silence. I suppose Frown thinks that's the best track on the album!
I'd be inclined to agree.
Well, at least it's giving me a lot to write, which I didn't think I would be able to. Somebody fallilng down stairs again on track fourteen, followed by a bag of cats, there's actually a guitar riff in track fifteen and we're halfway through the album. Ambulance is back for track seventeen and then the next one is five minutes long! Wonder what they can do with five minutes? Lot of messing and noise, it would seem, with added screams and some sort of mad choral effect. I tell ya, this is worse than listening to Beefheart! Now we have a woman crying in fear and the sound of heavy doors closing, maybe? Oh, now donkey has wandered into the studio. Now on track twenty-five, where again oddly we get a melody of sorts, which of course does not last. Not long to go now.
It's hard, nay impossible to write seriously about any of the tracks, as they all seem like snippets out of one song, then an extract of another, mixed in with some shrieks, wails, other noises --- none of it makes sense to these ears. So now we have a hard guitar riff and someone sighing on track twenty-eight, which only last a minute and a half, thankfully, and we finish off with some screechy guitar feedback and then the guys jump on a steam train it would seem, and steam the f
uck out of my life, and good riddance to them.
Jesus, what a ridiculous and pointless album! Exactly though what I'd expect Frownland to wet himself over. Just don't get it. At all. The worst album I've listened to since Merzbow!
And so we finally come to his number one, and god only knows what awaits us at the summit of this mountain of madness...
Torture Garden --- Naked City --- 1990
Oh well thanks a lot you c
unt! FORTY-F
UCKING-TWO tracks??? What the f
uck is it with you and these gargantuan albums? Oh yeah: you're a pretentious dick, I forgot. Well, even though most of the tracks are only seconds long it's still going to be something of a slog. Oh, and I see this is one of Zorn's prjects. Even better.
And it's not on Spotify or GPM. Great! So I have to go YouTubing. Jesus! Well at least in total it only runs for just over twenty minutes, so be thankful for small mercies I guess. Just noise and screaming with some extra horns thrown in, of course. It's just all blurring together, somewhat even worse than the previous album, with fast guitar, think I heard a bit of organ, screams, roars, effects. Meh. Just a mess. I can't write anything about this.Some discernible guitar and sax there, but at this point could not tell you what track. Maybe, I don't know, track nineteen? Twenty? Who knows? Or, indeed, cares?
Batty, you should have chosen this for the Torture Chamber. Not only do I fu
cking hate it, not only is it more than forty tracks long, but I can't make out or latch onto anything and it's just setting my teeth on edge. Information for next year, perhaps, should we decide to continue? Well, that was the worst twenty minutes I ever spent, and I can think of a hundred better things I could have done with that time. Oh well, it's over now. And so is Frownland's top ten. Thanks for that.
You bastard.
To paraphrase Marvin the Paranoid Android: The first track was the worst. And the second. The third I didn’t like at all. After that, I went into a bit of a decline.