a review of Aerosmith's debut

Be a blues-rock band first, and get that right

 
Aerosmith peaked commercially from the late 1980s through the 90s. "Get a Grip," released March 1993, is the band's best-selling album. Joe Perry’s thresher of a guitar and Steven Tyler's highly animated vocals mix with huge pop hits like "Cryin'" and "Crazy." It was Aerosmith's eleventh studio album.

My favorite Aerosmith record, the 1973 self-titled debut, sounds nothing like it.

The music's punch comes not from showmanship—Tyler's yawps and Perry's lavish guitar—but from the sound of good bluesmen vibing.

Compared to other early 70s hard rock bands, the album's dusty production—especially the low gain on Joe Perry's guitar—softens the blow a bit. In his memoir, Perry says, "… because I lacked the studio chops to prescribe a remedy, I kept quiet. It pained me, though, that my guitar was not cutting through."

But compared to Aerosmith's later work, the album sounds raw, and I like it.

Maybe what I like most is Tyler's straight-ahead vocals. They shine more for his timing than his affectations.

I grew up with classic rock radio and heard Aerosmith's hits and how the band's sound changed over the decades. You have the raw, early classics like "Dream On," "Sweet Emotion," and "Walk This Way." Then comes bigger production on hits like "Dude (Looks Like a Lady)," "Angel," "Rag Doll," "Love in an Elevator," and "Janie's Got a Gun." And, finally, the full-on pop hits like "Amazing," "Livin' on the Edge," "Cryin'," and "Crazy."

I always liked the early songs best, so to get past the hits, I went back and listened to Aerosmith's first four albums. The debut is easily my favorite.

Here's "Make It," the first song on the first album.

 

about another hardcore band's debut

French hardcore band Cleaver wreaks havoc on debut

The chaotic and crude-sounding "No More Must Crawl" debuts the hard-shove hardcore of Cleaver. Songs grind and scrape by in an Adderall-fueled turn, switching impatiently between sludge, choppy heavy metal, dissonant sidesteps, and chord-rolling hardcore.

The sound is a spasming relapse of American hardcore from the late 90s, like Botch and maybe early Converge at a time when Converge's epic album "Jane Doe" floated still on the hazy horizon.

The title track of "No More Must Crawl" echoes the eponymous closer of "Jane Doe." I liked “The Plight,” which opens with loud, dissonant detonations amid chunky power chords before slowing to a bleary slog. And the album’s eruptions of grindcore, like on “Thudding Stares” and “Kyg,” add vitality to these hastily stitched-together episodes of frustrated sonic violence.

Cleaver formed in France in 2018 and consists of Franck Fortina (bass and vocals) and brothers Mathis Garelli (guitar and vocals) and Léo-Paul Garelli (drums). The music shows a lot of promise amid the debut’s rough edges.

Note: This is from a while back.

a review of some other dumb band

Wild Beyond bargains with a lying, writhing serpent of thrashy black metal. The band pursues chaos and finds itself in a lovely mess on its self-titled debut.

The opener, “In the Footsteps of Mars,” is exemplary: the guitar crashes ahead and the cymbal stands teeter as the bass shakes the burning ground under your feet. Everything in a frenzy, everything in constant motion.

The Goddamn thing is reckless.

“Detonation of Secret Works” shows the same disregard for safety. I found its manic, climbing riffs inventive and colorful. The vocal crawls between growls, snarls, and wretches, leaning more toward black metal than death.

Songs do relent, but only between all the dungeon-defiling cutting and squealing.

And the band will explore. “Frenzied at the Skull” almost recalls classic British metal. On "Antichrist Coronation," the maniacal drumming momentarily loses touch with the guitars, losing each other in the dark they create.

The album remains dynamic through its eight songs. Some moments lack inspiration, and some songs perhaps go too long. But what beeswax can long withstand the heat of the sun?

This Philadelphia trio took shape amid peak 2020 covid. "Wild Beyond" was released April 14, 2023, on Gates of Hell Records.

 

something about a progressive post-hardcore album

Over Opiated in a Forest of Whispering Speakers, the new album from Seven Nines and Tens, introduces vocals to the Vancouver band’s blend of progressive post-hardcore and shoegaze. The vocals debut on album opener “Popular Delusions” and sound like a softer version of an Alice in Chains-style harmony over thick, cotton-sonic waves of thunder.

“Throwing Rocks at Mediocrity” again rolls out a controlled, tapered vocal harmony, but this time over picked-out single notes that sheen over a stuttering beat. Then a dramatic guitar and bass figure diverts the song into a confident strut that sets your head nodding yes. The song slows, expands, explores until it finds enough room to explode in slow motion.

I wondered if the vocals were too consistently restrained. But, with a little time, “Throwing Rocks at Mediocrity” turns its attention outward, then upward, reaching cruising altitude after 3:35. The drum work rounding out the song’s finale not only sounds great, it feels great.

The album’s promotional copy notes that, when writing the record, Seven Nines and Tens performed live with bands like Alcest and Pinkish Black. I can hear those bands’ influences, and I hear the influences of bands including Tool, Alice in Chains, and Black Sabbath.

The fourth song, “Let's Enjoy the Aimless Days While We Can,” starts softly, “You’re everywhere and nothing. Don’t tell me we can’t pull this off. It’s a far cry from a factory life. Permanence of the firmament.” These fever-dream lyrics lead to a churning riff overdriven with fuzz, a tentative, plodding bass and drum fall in behind, and the song labors, barely able to lift its lids. Heavy reverb blurs the edges of the vocal, which struggles under the subsea tones of the guitars. The song is a sailing stone.

But “Edutainment” offers a dramatic lift. The rhythm section engages with a syncopated beat and challenging bass line—together, they complement the even, chanting vocal harmony. The verse returns with guitars added to the arrangement. Then the song transforms, and by Jove, at 3:15, the album hits a second high, lifted by the surrender in the lyrics and vocal, “It’s going to end just like it started.”

Over Opiated in a Forest of Whispering Speakers was released January 7 and is the third album from Seven Nines and Tens. For this release, the band signed to metal label Willowtip Records.

 

something about Beach House's "Superstar"

 

Beach House is releasing an album, Once Twice Melody, in "chapters." The four songs comprising the first chapter were released in November. One song was "Superstar."

"Superstar" offers sentimentality. Sentimental songs always have a chance with me. I like sentimentality. I like to remember good times from when I was younger because otherwise I just worry about everything that is happening now or might happen in the future. I like to think about the good times in past relationships.

    When you were mine
    We fell across the sky

 

Then the song (and I with it) turns maudlin for a moment.

    Something good
    Never meant to last

 

something about last year's album from Plants and Animals, "The Jungle"

 

Here is an album that did not get enough attention last year—The Jungle, by Plants and Animals. It was released in October 2020 and is Plants and Animals’ fifth studio album and first in four years. The Montreal indie-rock band broke through with its 2008 album, Parc Avenue, which featured the glorious kiss off, “Bye, Bye, Bye.” But coverage of subsequent albums dwindled. High-profile music site Pitchfork had reviewed every Plants and Animals album since 2008, but not this one. I do not know why: the band self-produces wonderful, beautiful-sounding records, and The Jungle is no exception.

 

The title track features a restless bass and head-nodding beat. Plants and Animals has always captured this kind of nervous cool. The last 90 seconds jams out. The song sounds casual, but that belies its precision. The good ones can make it sound easy. Then comes “Love That Boy” with its acoustic layers, electric guitar shimmering out alien, submerged little notes, and trippy, translucent lyrics: “Is the moon following us? Is it moving at exactly the same speed? All experience connected, holding on its fingertips.” The floaty sounds complement the tight drumming and loudly churning bass.

 

What follows are the album’s best parts. “House on Fire” is fucking great. The hi-hat riding atop a throbbing, plucky bass; the synthesizer that comes in at 51 seconds like the air horn on a semi-trailer truck; the programmed synthesizer that darts through scales; and then the verse—delivered with ebullient focus and clarity: “Your house is burning—your home is on fire!”

 

Plants and Animals capitalize on that intensity with “Sacrifice.” This song includes sudden rhythm changes. Insistent tom drums and gained-up guitar hack away through several chippy bars in the verse, then chords splish as the singer implores, “Hold on to yourself / Don't you want to die?” Then the song abruptly downshifts into a dependency-shedding chorus: “I gave you the best years of my life, volunteered on your behalf / sacrifice—it doesn't matter—for dopamine and lots of laughs.”

 

A cassette tape that sounds like it was left in the car all summer plays a recording of an acoustic guitar picking out a chord. Jangly, slightly warped. That is “Get My Mind.” At 21 seconds, the hi-hat opens up, the drummer raps on the snare, and the music tumbles into a song. A guitar slices off a thick, fuzzy riff of single, heavy notes, and the arrangement builds into a spiritual experience.

 

And it is here that The Jungle pulls back. “Le Queens” steams. A woman sings, “Sous les lumières dans le Queens / Tu t'embrasse avec moi / Ton visage blanche sous les fars / Pour la premiere fois”; then a switch to English: “Baby, don't you laugh ‘cause hearts get broke like that.” On “In Your Eyes,” a heavy phaser with subtle wah-wah effect produces underwater tones. And then the finale: “Bold” walks in quietly. But at the chorus, it cries out for your attention: “Waiting for you to be more bold / The drama rising, running out of time / Okay, what's next?” I first heard The Jungle two months ago. I have listened to it over and over, and I know what is next. I will return to The Jungle as time runs out.

 

 

 

 

something about Black Ink Stain’s debut album, "Incidents"

Guitars lumber, vocals bellow, drums exorcise still spirits: this is Incidents, the debut from Black Ink Stain.

The French noise-rock trio sounds like Unsane, and this album is like a used cargo van overloaded with deep-groove riffs bowling down the freeway.

“I See You Dead” opens with a continuous track of bass and drums along with a dissonant guitar. Then the song rounds into a steel-chain groove accompanied by a flat, shouted vocal. A vacant, moody section comes at about two minutes in, and, after that, everything condenses again loudly into the groove.

“Pont Des Goules” is the most dynamic song on Incidents. It starts with a soft-focus riff, fuzzy notes soon accompanied by another steel-toe beat. Then comes a clean vocal—a rarity for Black Ink Stain. The song flows between parts like lava and recalls the soft-loud-soft-loud style so prevalent in the 1990s. On “Frozen Stance,” a bass riff rumbles and jabs through the opening minute. Restless drums and a dissonant guitar join, and this leads into a loafing, bottoming-out chorus.

Most songs fit this pattern: trunky grooves power ahead, find pockets of noise, then get back in gear. Black Ink Stain also takes advantage of the loads of momentum it builds in songs to add in breakdowns or syncopated high-knee jogs and not lose the groove. I guess once you build up that inertia, the easiest thing to do is keep going.

 

something about the Jars album, ДЖРС III

Jars moves you with a mix of dangerous grooves and hardcore punk on its latest album, ДЖРС III. The first song, “Заебало” (“Sick”), hammers out snaking riffs with a mallet. The guitars cut a dissonant, high-end whine, and the anxiety is eased only by the yelling vocals (“Oh!”) and driving drums and bass guitar. The tension grows over the song—and over and again on these nine tracks of ear-filling discontent.

Jars is a Moscow-based noise rock trio. It has existed in some form or another since 2011. The band has a handful of albums and EPs, and in December 2020, released ДЖРС III (a Russian translation of the band's name plus III).

Find the dialed-in inebriation of “Черное прикосновение” (“Curse Curse Curse!”), the five-minute musical equivalent of bashing in car windows in a convenience store parking lot. The song features a bass-driven groove below guitar notes that crunch and jangle while the vocal yells behind the din.

Jars want you to recall the 1990s and record label Amphetamine Reptile. I hear Shellac and Drive Like Jehu. And on “Спидкоп” (“Speedcop”), I hear even a little Converge. This compact, powerhouse of a song opens with a moment of feedback, then explodes into hardcore. Everything sounds good: the screaming vocal, the way the guitar strings ring out rather than shoosh a wall of distortion, and the penetrating bass and crisp drums. Nicely done.

The album ends with “Москва слезам не верит” (“Moscow does not believe in tears”), a half-marathon in a pocket groove. Nasty guitar streaks color and vocals shout out—but all succumb to the flexing rhythm of the bass and drums. The song retools after five minutes, escalates, slows—the sound of a band sharing consciousness—and drives on, passing 10 minutes, with gobs of mud thrown off with each turn of the wheel. The album’s song lengths vary, but the volume stays the same.