Album Review: Porcupine Tree - Nil Recurring

Out of the ashes of last year’s recording sessions for their latest opus, ‘Fear Of A Black Planet’, rises a new mini-album, ‘Nil Recurring’, a self-contained work in its own right totalling just shy of a half-hour. Regarded as one of the most impressive experimental prog-rock band ever to emerge from the UK, Porcupine Tree have enjoyed a successful recording career spanning fifteen years but there is still a worry that this new offering may just be last year’s cast-off tracks. This fear is quickly allayed by the monumental title-track with its bouncing bass funk rhythm with guest axeman Robert Fripp giving us a chugging, cutting guitar which opens out into full roaring overdrive. Shorn of vocals the track makes a feature of the groove where notes are cleverly selected, lovingly toyed with, and then scattered like confetti.

The band create slowly shifting patterns and are often eager to link tracks together allowing the whole menagerie of songs to segue slowly and organically along. ‘Normal’ follows this pattern with its matching riff but becomes something more melodic, soft and sweeping. There’s an almost poppy feel with simple drum/bass patterns and catchy lyrics but the guitars break out with contrasting bright electrics falling out to reveal subtle, gently repeating acoustics. The last two tracks provide a similarly accessible sound; ‘Cheating The Polygraph’ has big, busty drums and wailing lead riffs through psychedelic pedal effects, whilst ‘What Happens Now?’ has Ben Coleman stepping in on acoustic violin, and sweeping keyboard parts, finishing in a reversed, yelping series of feedback. The lyrics have a tendency to enter very dark and disturbing places - ‘I could be boarding an aircraft with a bomb concealed in somebody’s briefcase’ - but this trend belies the overall uplifting feel of yet another accomplished and ornately carved piece of Porcupine Tree craftsmanship.

Also online @ Subba-Cultcha = http://www.subba-cultcha.com/album-reviews/article.php?contentID=5005

Album Review: The Cast Pattern - The Cast Pattern

Chris Hess, explaining about the Kansas quintet’s moniker, said ‘When the band was named it had no real significance. However, then we saw on C.S.I. that a cast pattern is the direction of blood on a wall after someone is shot’. Listening to what they’ve got on offer here their name fits them perfectly. They play savage, splattering hardcore and combine it with stabbing, groove-laden technical metal. ‘We like technical and chaotic bands but after awhile your brain is spending more time figuring what is going on than enjoying the sound, so we aim to have parts that you can lock into without being simple’, says Hess
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‘Die With Your Boots On’ features scrambling guitars which jar sharply against the drum breakdowns and growling, corrosive vocal. The stick-work of Spencer Bates is exemplary with a feisty snare attack, cracking rim-shots, pummelling double-kicks and battering sequences of cymbal crashes. ‘Infant Stomper’ is a chaos of cascading venom with a middle-section of stop-start attack that takes it to another level of violence. The album ends on ‘Shut Your Homeless Mouth’ and is clearly split into two halves. ‘It’s about working a crappy day job and having to work with people who you would never socialise with otherwise‘, explains Hess. The first-half of the track features the vocal talent of The Red Chord front-man, Guy Kozowyk, with his abrasive, stylized vocal mash-up. It’s a torrent of abuse that forms a punishing opening assault. The second-half is a long sequence of melodic guitars and surprisingly simplistic drums which serves to release the music from its strict pattern of hardcore breakdowns.

It’s an impressive debut and the final track shows they have more tricks up their sleeves to follow in the future. The Cast Pattern are currently touring and I have no doubt that the mosh-pits will boil over in whichever venue they choose to leave their bloody mark across.

Also online @ Subba-Culcha = http://www.subba-cultcha.com/album-reviews/article.php?contentID=5305

Album Review: The Drift - Memory Drawings

It’s been three years since The Drift released their debut album, ‘Noumena’, but this is purely down to the number of pies that each band member have had their sticky fingers embedded in - one of these includes Danny Grody’s ultra-prolific post-rock band, Tarentel. The boys did, however, manage to fit in an extensive tour across North America and Japan which has inspired a ruthless efficiency for song-writing that is apparent on this new release. Recorded directly to analogue tape with producer Jay Pellicci at the helm, the mix is used as another instrument to shape each song, channeling the mythos of late 60’s jazz and late 70’s dub classics.

Full of ethereal charm and sweeping instrumental soundscapes ‘If Wishes Were Horses’ features a soft, fluttering trumpet, replacing the need for a vocal, rising and falling to form the track’s heartbeat. ‘Uncanny Valley’ introduces shades of afro-beat and disco-soul that weave their way to the surface injecting new life to a recurring pattern. Much of what is on offer winds its course down the same eroded river bed and considering its gentle nature it could easily be viewed as repetitive ephemera. For me, however, it could just be the perfect album to wash away the stresses of a hard day as it floods your senses with its miasma of intertwining strands of ambience. All you have to do is simply allow yourself to drift along.

Also online @ Subba-Cultcha =  http://www.subba-cultcha.com/album-reviews/article.php?contentID=5416

DVD Review: Iron Maiden - Live After Death

It’s taken Iron Maiden a whopping twenty-two years to release visuals to accompany what is regarded by many fans as the finest live metal album of all time. ‘Live After Death’ was recorded over four sold-out nights at Long Beach Arena, California during the middle of their epic World Slavery Tour. The tour itself was to promote the 1984 ‘Powerslave’ album and took in 193 shows and took the best part of a year to complete. Included is the second part of ‘The History Of Iron Maiden’ (the first part is on ‘The Early Years’ DVD release) providing excellent insight into the details of the tour; ‘Behind The Iron Curtain’ charting the remarkable story of how Maiden became the first major Western band to play the Eastern Bloc at the height of the Cold War; ‘Rock In Rio’ where they played a gig to a staggering 300,000 people; and tour programme artwork, photo stills, videos from the album and other tour-related ephemera. It’s quite a package then!

From the very beginning and the opening lines of Churchill’s famous war-speech the hairs on the back of my neck are going haywire. Comparing what the band are doing now with what they were doing back then it’s amazing to see how little has changed. The current line-up is virtually the same with only guitarist Janick Gers missing. It’s lycra and leather, studding and sweatbands - check out drummer Niko McBrain’s garish ‘Flash Gordon’ gym kit - and is all looking a bit glam, with vocalist Bruce Dickinson sporting an 80’s school-girl fringe, but once the band blasts into ‘Aces High’ and he starts belting out that soaring, vibrato vocal this all pales into insignificance.

The lighting rig and rest of the stage set has been superbly designed to fit equally well into a stadium or a small club and comprises richly-coloured hieroglyphics and pyramids to match the album’s Egyptian theme. At one point Dickinson appears on the amp-stack wearing a feathered-mask, which he confesses to having bought from a shop selling homo-erotic paraphernalia! There is flames and fireworks, dry ice and sweeping spotlights and whenever their mascot, Eddie The Head, makes an appearance, wrapped in bandages, it whips the crowd up into a frenzy.

Bassist Steve Harris spends most of the gig in a classic metal pose, one foot up on the amp, determinedly gunning down the crowd with his bass-head. Guitarists Dave Murray and Adrian Smith trade mind-melting solos whilst jumping about the stage, but it’s Dickinson who’s the most active, running tirelessly around like a maniac. Drum-riser to crowd to amp-stack, he introduces each song with a roar, yelling out alternately the name of the city, the state or the venue - “Scream for me Long Beach, screeeeam for me Long Beach!” Compared to the album, there are small additions to Dickinson’s interplay with his audience between songs which only serve to increase the feeling of actually being there. There’s also an extra track, ‘Sanctuary’, to enjoy.

The cameras have total stage access with front and back shots, a drum camera and a sweeping arm that swings back and forth over the fans. Close-ups, long panoramic pans and views from the pit, it’s all there. The epicentre of this awesome show is the 13-minute masterpiece, ‘Rime Of The Ancient Mariner’, adapted from the drug-addled mind of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Somewhere mid-song the stage is flooded with a swirling mist which rises to waist-height before pouring off the stage-front. The three guitarists stand motionless centre-stage, captured in beams of moonlight, gently picking out the rhythm as a deep spoken voice intones the poem’s lyrics to the sound of creaking timber echoing off the walls of the arena. The bass lifts, Dickinson returns to the stage and the crowd roar their approval at the ultimate combination of theatrics and heavy music.

The only things I can fault the DVD for are the occasional repetition of visuals, due mainly to the sheer volume - four hours worth - of material on offer, and the differences in quality between the main show and the extras which throws the poorer product into a harsh light. Without these extras though you wouldn’t know about the time Dickinson got a face-full of guitar; you wouldn’t know that the band played ‘Smoke On The Water’ at a Polish wedding; and you wouldn’t know about the time when McBrain went swimming mid-song before returning to his kit dripping wet. I could go on about why you should be parting with your hard-earned cash but, to put it in simple terms, you simply won’t find a more compelling chronicling of a band on tour, a band so at ease with themselves, and a band at the ultimate peak of their powers.

Album Review: Motion Picture Soundtrack - The Shapes We Fear Are Of Our Own

With Motion Picture Soundtrack’s last release, the 'Departure EP', appearing late last year it‘s no surprise to find that this debut album 'The Shapes We Fear Are Of Our Own', features the same haunting, nihilistic approach to songwriting. This time round, though, the band have not one, or two, but three producers on board. Paul Schroeder (The Stone Roses, The Verve), Bob Ludwig (Rage Against The Machine, Tool) and Cenzo Townshend (Editors, Bloc Party) - I don’t know about you but that sounds like a case of too many cooks to me. I think we can safely assume that certainly Ludwing’s input has resulted in a heavier product whilst Schroeder and Townshend (both who featured on the EP as producer and mixer respectively) would be the ones wrestling their sound back towards the contemporary.

In essence, MPS are an eclectic mix of Editors, White Lies and Placebo and who come across as both disarmingly sincere and simpering at the same time. With lead single ‘Glass Figures’, for instance, there is an attack that invigorates as it crescendos, yet resorts to falling back into line along a well-trodden path, far too readily. Strikingly clean, yet lazily repetitive guitar sits beneath Alastair Blackwood’s urgently emotive, morbid musings with the damaged whole echoing climactically from beginning to embittered end.

Often the band seem happy pounding away at a few repetitious chords, perhaps to engender a poppier sound, but when they do flick about between song parts they manage to create luxurious layers of rhythm and texture. Simultaneous fierce undercurrents, jangling mid-range and falsetto peaks feature within tracks like ‘Make It Through The Night’ or ‘Whiterooms’ which tug upon a Coldplay/Keane loose seam until the whole thing happily disassembles itself. Heartier fodder sweeps in with tracks like ‘I Clipped Your Wing’ or ’On Earth (As It Is In Heaven) which are anchored down to a bruising bass and thunderous piano combo whilst all around piercing vocal crashes at the listener in cresting wave upon cresting wave.

The real disappointments here hide within the lack of momentum and the dearth of stop-gaps. Each song keeps to the same vague pattern that echoes the others around it. The last three tracks fight desperately to escape the familiar arrangement, but that wavering vocal drags it all kicking and screaming back into line. Sure, there are peaks and troughs on show here, but in the end it just feels like one big featureless ocean of sound. Whilst you’ll crave the sight of an iceberg or an island, I was simply finding it a struggle to stop from drowning.