Bill's Hyperbolic Music Reviews #10- The Melvins- Ozma

I always liked the idea of early Melvins- the alternating plodding and punky tempos, the constipated vocal caterwauling, the song structures that folded in on themselves in a fucked-up fractal of quirky time signatures, et al.- but, aside from loving the hell out of certain indisputably classic songs ("Eye Flys", for example), I never really got into their first few records to the extent I felt I should have.

That all changed today.

I put the group's sophomore effort Ozma on as I was raking leaves today, and, because raking leaves requires no mental effort whatsoever, I was able to devote more or less my full attention to the songs therein. What I discovered was, I had made a mistake in the way I had listened to this album and their other efforts from this era in the past- I had thrown them on while I was browsing forums and things like that, actions that took my focus away from the music and onto how much I disagreed with Pitchfork's new batch of reviews or whatever. The reason this was a mistake is because these songs are jam-fucking-packed with information. Most of them are really, really short (11 of the 17 are less than 2 minutes long) but there's about 500 different parts crammed into them, and the complexity is compounded by the fact that drummer Dale Crover plays a solid backbeat like 3 times in 35 minutes. So, of course, if you aren't listening closely, this stuff seems to get really samey, really fast. However, if you are, this shit's bananas. It's crazy how many killer riffs guitarist/mastermind Buzz Osborne throws out here, how utterly unique the songs are, how talented the players are, and how weird it is that Shirley Temple's daughter was the band's bassist at the time (well, OK, you don't have to listen closely to know that one) (also, I'm not kidding, look it up). I'll have to go through the catalogue again to see how this and their other early elpees now stack up to me against my old favorites like Lysol, Hostile Ambient Takeover, and (A) Senile Animal, but I have a feeling I'll be ratin' 'em much higher than I useta.

Some highlights include "Oven" (which I saw them perform live- it kicked ass! Also, Helmet later did a cover of it that was really good), "At A Crawl", "Let God Be Your Gardener", and "Ever Since My Accident". Also, they cover a Cars song, and (I think) a KISS song, but they just end up sounding like OK Melvins songs.

Bill's Hyperbolic Music Reviews #9: Helmet- Strap It On

Now that my sabbatical (read: period where I couldn't be arsed to write any new reviews because I suck) is officially over, I thought I'd get back in the swing of things with a review of one of my favorite albums of all time. This is not the review. Look below the --- for that.

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People often say that Meantime is the best Helmet album. Well, people also voted Rick Perry into an unprecedented third term as Governor of Texas, so maybe it's time to stop listening to those assholes, eh? (except me, because I'm right) Fact is, Strap It On is half an hour of Helmet at their noisy, grimy, 3-chord peak, and anyone who tells you otherwise is a fucking pansy whose copy of the Page Hamilton solo record Size Matters probably has cum stains all over the CD booklet.

Strap It On opens with some guitar skronk followed by a pounding 6/8 pattern that lets you know this band is not fucking around. The track this introduces, "Repetition", is full of Helmet's trademark syncopated, bone-crushing drop-D riffs, and is capped by a ferociously atonal Page Hamilton solo. So is every track on here. Helmet at this point was not concerned with variety, but rather with kicking your head in. Sure, they essentially had the same goal in mind on Meantime, but that record was made with a major-label budget and a slicked-up sound. Every snare hit on that album was a simulation created by the mixing engineer, for Chrissakes! There is none of that here. Half the time, you can't discern that the guitars are playing chords, because their tone is calculated for sheer volume and impact, and nothing but. The drum sound is full of industrial-esque gated reverb that makes each THWACK of the snare resonate through your skull, and the bass is like 50000 volts through your intestines. This is a record that is meant to be listened to LOUD.

The songs here are so focused on rhythm that some critics (and apparently former drummer John Stanier) have called Helmet's music math rock. I dunno about that- if a few quirky phrasings and the occasional 7 or 15-beat pattern makes you math rock, then Superunknown by Soundgarden is a math rock record too! What this really is, if anything, is proto-nu-metal, but before you send me angry letters for lumping Helmet in with Papa Roach or something, let me stress that this is free of the fake angst, rap-rock trappings, and lifeless production that current nu-metal is ruined by. But the focus on riffs over solos, shouts over vocal melodies, and white-funk drum patterns (though that does sell the killer drumming on this record short) certainly led to that atrocious brand of music, for better or for worse. Again, though, would fucking Linkin Park or whoever have done a song like the song that closes this record, "Murder"? Seriously, listen to this shit-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zPGtXnTjVk

I rest my case.