The
delicate sound of beautifully engineered death metal.
Finland’s
Corpsessed wheel out a new maggot-filled slab of 90s death metal on April 22nd.
On Succumb to Rot, the band adds to its catalog eight more songs
of the writhing dead. Hear the guitar picks flick up and down mightily;
register the restless-leg syndrome of the drummer thumping down the seconds
that lead you closer to the grave. But what registers for me most is the
intestinal vocal, belching sequences of words that are more reminders than
thought. What do they remind you of? Death. And metal.
I enjoy the
production and guitar tone on this album. Succumb to Rot comes
out via Dark Descent Records, and the band anticipates releasing a vinyl
edition later in the year. Vladimir “Smerdulak” Chebakov created the
artwork—the cover depicts a vaguely human abomination meeting his gruesome
demise on the tar sand wasteland. And that reminds you to have a little fun.
First thing every morning—but especially Monday
morning—I hear the bus flatulate to a stop 30 feet outside my bedroom, and I
know the world is back at it. And through my window I watch garbage trucks
collect piled trash behind the restaurants and bars and dump glass bottles,
sucked empty, into breakage. The workers use bins, bags, and boxes to
gavage-feed the truck until it pulls away, stuffed stupid, the engine howling
hollow wind.
Listening to the brilliant album What Life
makes me feel alive—like I want to catch every bus and all the garbage is a
celebration. Club Night released What Life in April 2019, but I
heard it only recently. The music often sounds high-spirited but contains
multitudes. The songs convey spontaneity, as if Club Night is experimenting
with changes and rhythms, but the band’s idiosyncrasies are masterful and the
musical sum captures a contagious, noisy energy of hooks and melody.
What Life
opens with “Path”—the drummer counts off 16 beats as the bass guitar insists on
the note, then the drum rolls through fills while the guitar strings pull off
and hammer on, wheedling notes, and the vocal—charged and high—cries out to all
and sundry. The lack of inhibition speaks volumes. The music sweeps through
emotions—joy, restlessness, righteousness, desperation. Even the quieter
moments carry energy.
Club Night takes all the noise of daily life and
filters it into music. What Life feels a little like the
perspective grief can give you.
“Cough” opens with a brief mellow passage, then the
restless drumming and guitar figure in. The song segues into a faster
heartbeat. The vocal swallows water, as if drowning under reverb and the mix,
but its expressiveness and pitched cry allow it to pierce the bonds of the
surface.
The bass guitar starts “Cherry” with a head-nodding
pulse. Then guitar harmonics ping a melody. Tumbling drum fills hold the
momentum, and the volume grows, the rhythm quickens, the angles sharpen until
the song drops into a nice and easy playout.
Club Night’s blend of fragility and ferocious
animation reaches near-perfection on “Trance.” Take just the moment of one
lyric: “I let out a howl so unspeakable.” Josh Bertram’s vocal starts as a
hoarse, tortured scream, then slides into his melodical caterwaul. The song has
incarnations, taking on different rhythms and paces. The vocal pierces, the
guitar phases, the drums roll to a bass alive with inspiration. At 3:00, the
song hits a triumphant coda.
And within an album full of highlights, the best among
them is the last song, “Thousands.” I probably will play this song from time to
time the rest of my life. I love it for the crescendo at 3:30—the snare drum
starts cracking, the feedback sings, synthesized skies whistle as they fall—and
then it all resolves with the lyrics, “What if we wanted more? Not waking up to
the taste of bad news again. I dare not ever ask though I bawl at the
splintered sunlight alone… What if we wanted more? Are you happy with the life
that you chose?”
Club Night’s frontman, Josh Bertram, was previously in
Our Brother the Native. What Life, and Club Night’s previous EP,
Hell Ya, are far less experimental than Our Brother the Native and sound more
like early Animal Collective and maybe Mae Shi. What Life
captures something—a time, a storm of influences and events, maybe. But what if
we wanted more?
Roger Ebert was a talented, Pulitzer Prize-winning
film critic and writer who worked for the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death
in 2013. In 1975, he and Gene Siskel, film critic for rival paper Chicago Tribune,
began co-hosting a weekly movie review show in Chicago. The
no-frills program was picked up for national syndication and eventually moved to commercial network
television. The odd couple—plump, mop-haired Roger wearing glasses next to tall, thin Gene—having tense, insightful arguments and giving thumbs-up/thumbs-down
movie reviews became
a pop-culture phenomenon in the 1980s and 90s. After 53-year-old Siskel died in 1999, Ebert continued the show format with other critics.
Ebert was diagnosed with cancer of the thyroid and salivary glands in
2002, and his treatment and surgeries later led to the removal of his lower jaw.
Ebert, disfigured and no longer able to speak, continued to write, and his blog attracted a loyal audience. He reviewed movies for the Chicago Sun-Times for 46 years and was on
TV for 31. Ebert was 70 when he died.
His patient, careful autobiography, Life Itself, is traditional and lovely. Ebert describes his
parents, his childhood (including Catholic school), his career, his alcoholism
(and then his pain-killer addition during cancer treatments),
and his relationships, including the close, competitive relationship he had
with Siskel. Ebert's writing about his disfigurement and condition is touching.
I also enjoyed reading his views on the evolution of film promotion over the years
and his descriptions of his interviewing habits.
And one passage early in the autobiography sneaks in this gut-punch.
The optometrist had me read the charts and slowly straightened up. "Has
Roger ever worn glasses?" he asked my mother. "No. He hasn't needed
them." The doctor said: "He's probably always needed them. He's very
shortsighted." He wrote me out a prescription. "Wasn't he ever
tested?" It had never occurred to anyone. My parents and my aunt Martha
the nurse monitored my health, which was good; I was in the hospital only
twice, to have my tonsils and appendix removed, and had monthly radiation
treatments for ear infections (they were probably responsible for the salivary cancer
I developed in my sixties.) I'd never complained about eyesight, and no one
noticed any problems.
In sixth grade, my friend popped in his older
brother’s cassette single of “One.” I was immediately drawn in by the song’s tense
simplicity and perfect storytelling. And then came the compressed, poured-on
layers of heavy-metal guitar tracks. That is what music should sound like, I
thought. When I got an electric guitar and Metal Zone distortion pedal, I tried
to get that sound: the shoosh of distortion—as much as possible—with the high and
low maxed on the equalizer, the mid turned way down. It
took me a long time to stop seeing that sound as the peak and to develop an
appreciation for a heavy sound where each guitar string is alive.
Long before he was a clicks-generator for ESPN, Skip Bayless was a well-regarded, award-winning journalist. He
started at The Miami Herald, moved on to the Los Angeles Times, then, in the late 1970s, moved to Dallas to
be lead sports columnist covering America’s Team during the Cowboys' peak celebrity.
In 1989, after several years' of writing Cowboys columns, Bayless tried to cash in and published God's Coach: The
Hymns, Hype, and Hypocrisy of Tom Landry's Cowboys. The book streaks
through the times and personnel behind the Cowboys’ rise to national
prominence, the team’s decades-long winning run, and the organization’s disillusioning
decline and cold-turkey break with legendary coach Tom Landry.
God's Coach is not
flattering for Landry or the organization. Influential general manger Tex Schramm, the team's front
office, and some big-name former players all get sacked in Bayless’ book. And he describes Landry—"the man in the funny hat," as was affectionately known—as a deeply religious man coaching in a corrupt organization, withholding emotionally to keep players working
for his approval, and, eventually, getting passed by as the game evolved and
times changed.
I enjoyed reading parts of God's Coach, including the opinions of Landry's great assistant coaches and some long-forgotten background bits on former players. Plus, Bayless' sport-column-writing style, with its dumb wit and constant motion, works well in longform here. But,
overall, I found the book distasteful largely because Bayless engages in a lot
of suggestion and innuendo, frequently framing accusations as
questions. Bayless' premise—that Landry the man was not as good as Landry the legend—is a straw man. Did anyone in 1989 believe Landry
and the Cowboys were perfect? No. But many believed that the iconic coach deserved respect.
Bayless does not know the meaning of the word.
Finding someone with a bad word to say about the Cowboys will never
be a problem—especially when the team is down, like it was in '89. But Landry and the organization did not have a losing season from 1966 to 1986. And, in that time, the Cowboys won
13 division titles and made five Super Bowl appearances, winning twice.
The team owner, Bum Bright (who was losing a bundle in the savings and loan crisis at the time), sold the team to a 40-something Jerry Jones for $140 million in 1989, and Landry was fired after 29
seasons. Bayless writes that Bright and Schramm intended to fire Landry whether or not the team was sold. I do not doubt that they would have looked for a way to offer Landry a dignified exit; and I need not doubt that Jerry Jones was one key source for the book. Many Cowboys fans still associate Jones with Landry's undignified dismissal.
Hats off to Tom Landry.
Note: Landry was 6’2” and fit as hell his
whole life. He wore a suit on the sidelines, but, in practice, he was poppin' in t-shirts and shorts. The man died in 2000.
Biographic details on Salo, the noise-rock band
responsible for this punchy new release, are hard to come by. But the album, From
Melmac With Hate, makes a fine statement on its own.
The first of these 11 confrontational songs is
“Guillotine,” which zigzags a trail of noise buoyed by a hairy bass guitar tone
under crashing cymbals and a vocal that seeks abandon. Salo’s musicianship
comes through especially on “Jay” and “Speed Missile,” two of the most
energetic performances on the album. The tremolo effect on the guitar breaks
through at 1:35 on “Jay”—the notes cut noise like the bent, serrated edge of
the junk-drawer knife. And the swinging drumming style, accompanied by that
hairy bass, propels a lot of this album. “Jay” and “Speed Missile” exude a punk-inspired
sound that is confrontational, spiteful, and desperate for attention.
Salo is a trio based in Lyon, France. Funny how small
bands can make such big sounds. Social media suggests Salo is about five years
old. The band cites as influences The Fall, Thee Oh Sees, and METZ—the last
band being the most directly comparable. Halfway through From Melmac With
Hate comes “Bring Back Medieval Plague.” This song, with its provoked
vocal and damaging low-end rhythm section, approaches a blend of The Jesus Lizard
and Young Widows. It is a clawing scramble up a mountain.
Salo slow the pace later in the album with “Tasmanian
Tiger (for Nikita).” The bass guitar remains imposing, but the drums,
especially the hi-hat, become stilted and self-conscious, almost uncomfortable.
Arpeggio-style guitar notes smolder. The measured cadence of the vocal sounds
borrowed from the tune of some Scottish folk pub song. The tone on the opening
and closing guitar figure is a change-up, too. It is a stadium-ready sound from
a guitar that spends the rest of the album cutting through back alleys.
