Phil Anselmo and The Ilegals, Author & Punisher, Hymns and Proven @ Hawthrorne Theater 1/18/2014

I don't have a whole lot to say about this show other than the Author & Punisher set because I just don't really care about any of the other acts. I know it's metalhead sacrilege to be indifferent to Pantera and/or Phil Anselmo, but you have to understand my taste. It's all about vocabulary: I like my metal heavy and weird, not so much fast and hard. I certainly understand the enormous influence Pantera has had on pretty much all metal at this point, but it's just not for me. I don't generally care for hardcore music as a whole.

It was a strange lineup, the first two bands were not particularly interesting by any stretch. They each had a handful of dudes trying to start pits without much luck, but the people surrounding me seemed to be bobbing their heads because it felt strange not to. I know I felt weird just standing there waiting for these dudes to finish their sets and typically I'd have gone outside or sat down in the back, but I knew if I moved, I'd lose my spot for the act I went to see.
The crowd was pretty unpleasant too. There were plenty of alright people, teenage dudes who seemed a little cautious about the whole thing and lots of older people who have calmed with age, but they were all outdone by the droves of Pissed Off White Guys. I'm not exactly a peaceful zen-like soul myself, but dear god. I can only handle so many aggro sweaty bald men. I usually love angry bald dudes, that's kind of my "thing" but this particular breed of them is off-putting and there were many who I suspect are or were at some point, tweakers. I caught one outside trying to pick a fight with the bouncer who was ejecting him for reasons unknown. Brodude proceeded to call the bouncer "pussy" and "faggot" and other such endearing terms and chastised him for not fighting him "like a man". I was not the only person who noticed the intense hypocrisy of the aggressor because he wasn't throwing any punches himself. Now, that's a good tactic in most cases when violence is a possibility. Never throw the first punch, but don't egg people on to do it either because you look like a fool. Watching people get wound up is entertaining, but i most definitely feel bad for the bouncers and I understand why many of them turn into dickheads.

First up were Proven, a hardcore band from... somewhere... They had... some guys in the band. They yelled a lot. The singer was so busy demanding the audience give respect to Phil Anselmo and Pantera that the band could hardly get a note in edgewise. He was also wearing a Pantera shirt and a Pantera ballcap. We get it, bub.
I usually try to enjoy whatever it is that I happen to be seeing when I go to shows, but it's getting harder and harder and it was simply impossible for me to enjoy this. My friend Yousef from Faces on The Radio and concert cohort pointed out that the singer actually tripped and fell down and looked rather embarrassed about it. I didn't catch it myself, but I'm pretty sure that if you fall on stage, you take it in stride and own it, especially at more violent shows.
I don't remember a damn thing about their music otherwise. They were't bad, they were just totally uninteresting.

Next up were Hymns. Just so you know, that's spelled H-Y-M-N-S.  Their singer spelled it out for us twice and I think at one point he also told us that he loves us. "I love you" mumbled into the microphone. That became the main joke between my sister and I for the night.
They were kind of a trip though. I think they might have potential if they developed their sound a little (lot) more and figured out what exactly is is they're trying to accomplish. They had a slightly Chimera-era Mayhem vibe going which is a generous comparison, but nowhere near that level of quality. They did not seem at all comfortable on stage. The singer managed to move around a bit, unlike the rest of the band, but his mannerisms were kind of off-puttingly depressive and self-consciously theatrical. At one point he sat down on a monitor to sing and I think he was aiming to look like a weeping angel gravestone or something.  Theatrics are a given in black metal, which is the closest genre I can pin on this band, but this was just silly and unintentionally so.  They might come to be pretty good if they gain more confidence and direction.

One of my sister's many stupid jokes. 

Finally, Author & Punisher was up. Once the first two bands' gear was off the stage, the crowd was able to see the wild setup Tristan Shone has built for himself. It was to hear people talking shit when they realized there were (gasp) keyboards but  once he began playing, they didn't have diddly squat to say. People were visibly stunned. There was a little group of booers in the back by the bar who were pretty vocal, but I kept looking back at the crowd and every time, more and more people had come up to watch whatever the fuck was going on. Last time I saw Tristan play, it was at an industrial music festival and people were used to seeing keyboards and lots of wires and weird shit thrown together, but at a metal show, this was quite out of place. I love watching people get confused by off-genre acts at shows. I also enjoy taking my sister to concerts and watching her get her socks knocked off. Last year I took her to her first metal show, Napalm Death. She had a blast and last night I think her world turned upside down. She also was not wearing any socks to get knocked off because she was wearing sandals. she's lucky she didn't get any TOES knocked off. Every time I looked over at her, she was slack-jawed and absolutely loving it. I guess I'm just doing my job as the older sibling.

This time around, Shone had a slightly different setup that included a rack of 3 microphones made of ventilators which had moving parts. I was not in a good spot to get a good look at them, but one seemed to have a sort of trumpet-mute effect, one made a bizarre clattering sound that gave a gapper kind of effect and you could see the front piece moving back and forth. The third was attached to a long piece of dryer hose, but I didn't see him use that one. Using these and what I assume was a handheld electronic drum pad, he played  a piece that I didn't recognize. I'm hoping it's a new song! He also had a mic attacked to his throat like a voicebox for people who are mute,  which generated insane elephant-like sounds.

Having seen him before, it's exciting to hear the differences in songs each time he plays them. Given the almost completely live nature of his music, there's almost no programming, human error is a big player and I believe it adds a lot of character to the pieces. Terrorbird and Lonely (which seem to be the big "hits") sounded a little slower than last time or on the albums. In Remorse and Melee (one of my favorites) were totally fantastic. "Extremely extreme" was used to describe his music somewhere once and it cracked me up, but it's absolutely true. I've said it before, I'll say it again: Author & Punisher is the most exciting current  act out there. The sheer creativity that goes into the machines is out of this world. This ain't no washtub bass of shopping cart with contact mics stuck to it. These are thoughtfully engineered pieces of industrial art and the music they make is so absolutely brutal yet also incredibly organic. The word that many people use to describe it, independent of one another, is 'erotic' and it's perfect. The truest sense of the word conveys visceral physicality, passion and humanity. The music is so absolutely brutal, gnarly and frightening. It's everything I look for and more.
Yousef and I bumped into Tristan and his label manager whose name escapes me before the show and he was as cool and upbeat as usual. It's great how he's just such a nice normal dude who happens to make the most freakishly disturbing music I've ever heard. Covert weirdos are the best, especially in the music world because people who are content to stand on their music alone rather than padding themselves with some kind of strange wardrobe and subcultural image make me feel like they're insecure about themselves or their art, which is not an appealing attribute.

He was projecting clips from some of my favorite movies, seen here is Andrzej Zulawski's Possession. 

We didn't stay to catch Anselmo because neither of us were really interested enough to deal with the crowd in order to watch an act that we're not really fans of. Instead we sat outside smoking for a little while and went home. I'm old and need to be home in time to catch the 11o'clock news and go to bed with my jar of icy-hot. Since I have nothing to say about that part of the night, I'm going to shareu some thoughts on social interactions, which I will place behind a jump because they're not standard content for this blog.

Alcest - Shelter (Prophecy Productions, 2014)

My favorite way to review new albums is to do a song-by-song first impression format, "live blog" so to speak. I usually do this on facebook, but I think I'm going to start doing it here instead because it allows me to go into detail without it being a chore due to my less-than-stellar english/composition skills. Writing about music ought to be nothing but fun, especially if it's a hobby and not your day job!
So here we go, let's listen to the new Alcest album.

Wings - The intro, therefor there's not a lot to say here. Some elvish choir shit. Still stuck on the elves, huh? But it builds nicely an if this is setting the tone for the full album, i'm a bit more hopeful than i was.

Opale - This was the teaser. I was not impressed with it. It's pretty upbeat and it has no traces of metal or any kind of heaviness in it at all. I knew that was going to be the case with this album and I had my period of mourning BEFORE hearing the album, and it was nice to get that out of the way and be prepared when the thing actually came out. The thing I love about Alcest's earlier material was the metal aspect. I like shoegaze, not as much as the next guy at this point in time, but it's definitely disappointing to hear one of the more exciting and original metal bands stop being a metal band. Quite frankly, when it comes to shoegaze I only listen to the first 2 Catherine Wheel albums because they've got some weight to them. They're strong and sound passionate whereas with most other shoegaze bands, they have a very indifferent, spaced out vibe and I don't find that appealing. One might argue my love of Spiritualized and they're as indifferent as it comes but there's a dark edge to it because they apathy is a result of heavy drug use instead of just floating around in nowhereland of jingly reverby guitars. I like it when there's a reason for that careless vibe, not just because yo man we're free spirits, ok?

La nuit marche avec moi - Like the last track, this is rather upbeat and it sounds pretty much exactly like one would expect Alcest lite to sound. I will give them much credit for crafting a very recognizable sound.
This song is quite sweet and whistful, neither of which rae my bag. I'm beginning to think I'm not suited to give a fair review of this album, but perhaps I'm best suited to because I love their older stuff so much and am willing to give this a spin. Not every review can end with the writer on their knees with their mouth open, patiently waiting their turn to suck the dick of whatever band they're discussing.
Hard truths! That's what S.O.S is about!
The outro of this track is lovely. It takes an ominous turn, and hopefully this will indicate the vibe of the next song...

Voix Sereine - Nope, more of the same but this is more stripped down. It has a lovely, subtle vocal melody. I'm almost excited about this. It's go ta nice, steady build-up and it actually pays off! That's one of my big peeves in music, when they create anticipation for something big to happen, but do not deliver. This song  is probably going to end up my favorite. The fadeout is fantastic. It reminds me a bit of the outro to Isis' Weight. I have a little boner for really great fadeouts. I also can't get through a single article without using the word 'boner'.

L'eveil des muses - This is a little darker than what we've heard so far, therefore I'm pleased. This has a nice weighty beat to it and it's quite danceable which is one of my few complaints about their prior material. It's difficult to dance to and one of my little missions in life is to bring more variety to the goth/industrial scene by strong-arming DJs into playing me off-genre songs. I've had some lucky with it, but most of the time the songs i plead for are not dancey to the masses because the masses are bad at dancing.
Bit I digress, this song is quite nice, but it doesn't feel long enough, it feels incomplete. It ends on a somewhat awkward note as if there was supposed to be another burst of something, but no. Nothing. Otherwise, this is another quite good song that has potential to be my favorite.

Shelter - Ah, the title track...  We're moving back to laying in the fields of flowers watching clouds drift past and being beautiful and ethereal and and not having hayfever or getting bugs in our underwear and we have not stumbled into patches of poison oak on the way here. Look out our lovely wicker basket of fine cheese and wine. Look at our hair, gently moving with the breeze. Nobody is getting greasy or sunburnt, and there is a fox curled up with a deer next to us.
EH. I'm just not into this kind of atmosphere.

Away - This is starting out quite promising. Neil Halstead of Slowdive is on guest vocals here, and I'm sure Neige was peeing in his jeans, being in the studio with him. He seems to own just one t shirt, and it's a Slowdive one. I must admit that the lower, more masculine tone of his voice grounds the music a little and I like that. It sounds like Neige come in to sing along toward the end and their voices sound very good together.
This is another stand-out track. It seems just right in structure, it's all-around rather good.

Delivrance - Ah! Finally! A 10 minute epic! One of the things about the older epics is that they tended to have a lot of sections or movements, if you will. They went lots of places and changed thing sup flawlessly. This song stagnates around a hypnotic central sound and doesn't really depart fro it for the duration. While this song doesn't feel like it's 10 minutes, long, it probably didn't need to be 10 minutes long. That said, it IS the final song on the album and it drops off into a string and vocal section that closes the whole thing out quite nicely.

Like I said, I was "getting my hopes down" for this album because I'm so deeply attached to their older, heavier stuff. It's so exciting to hear heavy music, almost black metal, sounding so beautiful and otherworldly. This album didn't disappoint me anywhere NEAR as much as I was expecting it to, but it doens't do it for me the way their prior releases do. It's also a little short, around 40 minutes. I've listened to it nearly 3 times while writing this review! It's also worth noting that I'm absolutely not in the mood for Alcest. I've been listening to a lot of Alice In Chains and early Strapping Young Lad recently and I went to see Author & Punisher play with Phil Anselmo last night and the other openers were boneheaded fast "angry white guy" music (I'll be writing about that next). So jumping right into something like Alcest is kinda jarring!

Also as I mentioned before, Alcest has a rather distinct sound that flows through every one of their albums, save for that first black metal album which they released while still getting their footing and figuring out who they really are. In fact, I think it's more that Neige has a distinct sound because everything he's involved with has a particular tinge to it. Les Discrets, Lantlos (my favorite of the other projects he's involved with), Amesoeurs, they're a genre unto themselves.
I'm not fond of this current shoegaze trend, or of the visuals exemplified by the album art. It's like tumblr.com has come to life and is walking the earth with it's pastel hair and floral boots. Call me a jerk or a South Park goth kid, but I'm not into hype, nor am I into trends. It seems a little weird that Alcest have not really changed their basic sound, but the artwork on Shelter looks like tumblr stock. In the past they've had a distinct and coherent look to their packaging. This is an extremely petty complaint though because I don't actually care at all about the packaging if the content is good. It does somehow seem like some kind of trick to suck people in with trendy images. I cannot fault them for that, because ultimately musicians want to sell albums. It's just a little odd that they would sacrifice their otherwise unique art and fitting style for a silhouette of some hippies standing in front of the sun. I think the reason I even took so much room to discuss this is that I think tumblr-hip stuff is particularly dumb and lacking in soul and personality, I'm using my music blog as a bit of a soapbox for my opinions on other cultural things. My point is that it's not particularly becoming for a group like Alcest to give in and use that sort of imagery. It doesn't do them justice.

It's a little sad to lose them from the arsenal of French metal that's been coming together in recent years because it's producing some of the best new music out there. Gojira, Blut Aus Nord in particular. But hey, I really can't complain because I dislike it when artists never change, stick to a certain formula and keep making the same album over and over because they know it sells (coughDEAFHEAVENcough). So all in all, I'm nowhere near as mad about this album as i expected and that pleases me greatly. I don't give numerical ratings, but maybe I ought to start because this isn't the first time I've said "I don't usually do this but I'd give the album" a 6 out of 10. That is based on the actual quality of the music which is rather high, but tempered by my personal taste and the fact that I'm just not down to hear this kind of thing at the moment. Can I go back to 1995 now please? Thanks.

http://www.alcest-music.com/
http://www.prophecy.de/