To my amazement, the last week has turned out to be extremely prolific in terms of surprise releases on the most unexpected fronts. It feels like Christmas has come early this year, and that's not necessarily a coincidence, since Halloween is apparently turning into the new Christmas for hard rock and heavy metal fans.
Naturally, none of this extends to Metallica, who are still not willing to release any new material whatsoever till Hell freezes over. But that's something we're all used to living with at this point. And, if you're too hungry for Metallica releases, you can always order that $400 live box set. You can just as well pre-order one for me, if you have $400 to spare and feel like doing me a favor LMAO But who the fuck am I talking to, if I don't even have readers in the first place?
Never mind.
This lucky string of releases began on Monday, when I woke up (at whatever time that might have happened LOL) to discover that there was a brand new Marilyn Manson song out there. I had a certain suspicion that something like this might happen after his website was recently updated to reveal a new MM logo, but I wasn't expecting him to strike so quickly.
I was obviously wrong.
The track in question, interestingly titled Third Day of a Seven Day Binge, is meant to serve as a first taste of his yet untitled ninth album, due to come out in early 2015, and to prove that, once you've done having record label trouble, things can start to move way, way quicker.
Because, ovbiously, the time has come for a new Marilyn Manson record to drop. I hadn't even taken the time to sit back and realize it's already been about two and a half years since Born Villain came out. It honestly didn't feel that long, perhaps because I've had plenty of stuff to keep myself entertained. Or perhaps because Manson has somehow managed to not disappear from the public eye during most of that time, which is not a small achievement in this day and age.
His media presence has been especially strong during the last few months, mostly thanks to his recurring role in the final season of Sons Of Anarchy (which is being aired in the States as we speak), so it's not surprising he has chosen this specific moment to launch the pre-campaign for his album release - whatever the hell that means now.
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Far from the brutal aggression of I Am Among No One (the bizarre 30 second snippet that preceeeded the release of Born Villain), Third Day is a melancholic mid-tempo song with a certain new wave-ish High End Of Low feel, much in the spirit of Leave a Scar, only somewhat more depressing. It's a pretty classic Manson tune, but still beautiful.
Marilyn seems to be finally finding comfort in what I've come to designate as his DIY period - which encompasses all the works he has released since his relationship with Interscope started going sour, about ten years ago. As the budgets started shrinking (along with the media attention they bring) and his larger than life public persona started losing value in the middle of an increasingly disperse cultural landscape (with some help from the back PR team at Cherrytree Records *cough*), it became clear that it was time for him to become a different type of artist. And that's exactly what happened, eventually.
It wasn't always easy, going from being one of the most recognized (and feared) personalities on the planet (one powerful enough to make the kids pass on Marilyn Manson stories in the school playgrounds) – a gigantic pop culture superproduction – to operating with the means (and getting the recognition) of an obscure niche underground artist, but he did it, and the result seems to be paying out.
Now that he no longer has to play the second coming of the Antichrist, the androginous alien transplanted to Hollywood or the satirical embodiment of the American society, he can finally focus on being the poet of doom; a 45-year-old artist with human thoughts and human experiences, who operates more as a singer-songwriter than as a creative director. He has pretty much given up political commentary in favor of introspective observation, and he seems to be enjoying himself in that role – and so is his audience.
Against all odds, Manson seems to have finally found a place for himself in this post-cultural society. And I personally celebrate that.
If you're interested, the song is available as a free download on marilynmanson.com in exchange for your e-mail address. There might be some big data conspiracy there, but who cares... I don't really mind them having my e-mail address (I mean one of my many e-mail addresses *cough*) if they really use it to send me updates on MM activity. I kinda like the idea of resurrecting the newsletter as a concept, as old-fashioned as it might sound. However, if I start getting Cheap Viagra offers in my inbox, I'll know it was you, Brian Warner.
You have been warned.
But not even the release of a new Marilyn Manson song, along with the surprise announcement of an upcoming Marilyn Manson album, can compete with the astonishment caused by the premiere of a brand new Alice In Chains video.
That's right – from out of nowhere, Alice have come up with a music video for Phantom Limb because why the fuck not.
After reading an interview Mike Inez did this summer (which, by the way, included some hilariously self-deprecating depictions of his domestic life) where he explained how they all need to take some time off between album cycles to do some normal people stuff, and knowing that they are not exactly media-loving people, I was morally prepared to not hearing from the band AT ALL until their next record came out... sometime in 2016 LOL Imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon some actual Alice news only a couple of months after their tour ended. My eyes almost popped out.
The announcement was accompanied by a new picture of the band which, unfortunately, turned out to be a Photoshop composition, because photographers don't even know how to just take a goddamn picture anymore... and also because the guys who run your marketing can never be trusted, and because the four band members probably aren't even in the same city right now.
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| What is Photoshop? |
It's always weird when people you care about get the Photoshop treatment, but hey... at least they don't have a creepy gang of German pedophiles sampling their voices and putting them into shitty disco songs they did not write, which is more than some other bands can say *cough*
We should just call it Artist's Conception – Sketch of what might have been an actual photograph.
But that's not even the point.
I had somehow assumed that their final 2014 tour date also served as the final nail on the coffin of the Dinosaurs era, but it seems like that's not necessarily the way things work for Alice.
Answering to a fan who had asked him what was the ideal number of songs to put in an album (quite a freaky question, IMO LOL), Will once said that, given the current state of things in the industry, it could be four or twenty-four, or whatever the hell you want, because it doesn't really matter. I guess that pretty much sums up the band's view on the music industry game. In the current climate, there's no real way to suceed – therefore there's no way you can fail. So, if you want to make a seven-minute-long music video for the heaviest and most radio un-friendly song you can think of one year and a half after the actual album came out, then do it, 'cause You got, got / Nothin' to lose.
With this move, the band is basically showing the world that they have completely run out of fucks to give. And, damn, man... I'm really thankful for it.
Just like I'm thankful for the fact that they've chosen precisely Phantom Limb as their next sort-of-single. I can't say that it's one of my favourite tracks on the Dinosaurs album, because that would be like stating that I have some least favourite songs on it – which is totally unconceivable LOL It is, however, one of the three first Alice songs I ever liked (along with Hollow and Hung On A Hook), and that is bound to create a special bond for life.
It's also the only song on the record co-written by Will, and the only one to feature his vicious soloing along with his killer vocals.
The video is built around a mindfucking paradox, exactly like I was expecting it to be (well, I might have not necessarily predicted its paradoxal nature, but I definitely expected it to be mindfucking, because that's what Alice do best LOL): a young intruder breaks into an old man's house, they put up one hell of a fight, the old man gets killed... and then mindfuck happens – all pretty much in the spirit of the song.
Like all previous music videos for this album (except for the title track), the visual companion to Phantom Limb was directed by Robert Schober (a.k.a. Roboshobo), who is also responsible for Metallica's All Nightmare Long (among tons of other stuff I'm not that familiar with).
It's funny because, when I found out that he counted Metallica anmong his clients, I knew he had to be the director of All Nightmare Long straight away. And the reason why I identified his style so quickly is because, for me, All Nightmare Long had exatly the same problem as Hollow and Phantom Limb. I'm calling it problem because it's not a real PROBLEM, but rather a personal issue.
At the height of his idealistic days, Edie Vedder explained his strong dislike of music videos by saying: "Before music videos first came out, you’d listen to a song with headphones on, sitting in a beanbag chair with your eyes closed, and you’d come up with your own visions, these things that came from within. Then all of a sudden, sometimes even the very first time you heard a song, it was with these visual images attached, and it robbed you of any form of self-expression." Well, even though I can't subscribe to his total rejection of the music video as a format, it's undeniable that he did have a point.
And so, my issue with the Robo-man is not that his visuals for the songs differ from the ones I have, but rather that his approach to how these visuals should interact with the music sometimes enters in conflict with mine. So, what happens is that, whenever he has a video with a complex storyline (like in the case with the three aforementioned videos), as opposed to a more general/abstaract concept, is that he tends to use the music as a backdrop for the dramatic action, instead of treating the song as the central character and let its structure set the pace for the unfolding of events. Or that's the way I perceive it anyway.
So, my thing with the Hollow video, for example, is that, even though I think it's really good, whenever I see it all I want to do is close my eyes and look away, just because I don't want to be distracted from the song. I really like the video – I just like the song more.
But I guess that's a problem you face when working with songs this big.
That said, however, it's undeniable that the the first impression of seeing Hollow (song and video combined) is one that never leaves you, just like it's undeniable that the Robo-man really has a talent for coming up with strong and original concepts, as well as a special sensitivity to detect certain elements that are present in the music and incorporate them into his set of visuals: the weird sense of ingravity in Hollow (thus the action being set in space), as well as the limping nature of its 6/4 riff (the main character actually starts limping half-way through the footage); the hilarious Cold War-themed horror/sci-fi fantasy extravaganza of All Nightmare Long (which seems to have been made up by twelve-year-old Kirk Hammett); the quarry in Stone (because obviously LOL); the depth of Jerry's love for Seattle in Voices (I assume Jerry is not the only Seattle-loving member in the band, but he's the one who wrote the song anyway, so the merit goes to him LOL), or the concepts of mutual damage and supernatural revenge in Phantom Limb (which he preserved in his storyline, with a paradoxal twist), as well as the blank TV screen... I can't really say what's the deal with that. All I know is that my own personal vision of the song also included blank/malfunctioning screens. Guess that must have been encoded in the music somehow...? O.o LOL
To make the release even more original, the video comes as a BitTorrent bundle (i.e. a download), which means you can't find it online. Well, you can now, because fans are not stupid and some of them have already uploaded it, but you definitely won't find it on any of the band's official accounts. Or, at least, not yet.
I have spent many hours mentally debating the potentially evil connotations of this type of partnership, but then again, partnering with an entity like BitTorrent is not that different from partnering with YouTube or Vevo, which they have also done. And it's also not that different from posting my thoughts on a Google-owned platform, like I'm doing right now.
When walking through a swamp, there's only a certain amount of steps you can make before you hit some mud – and no one here is a fucking lotus flower. It's all good, as long as you don't get sucked into quicksand. I guess.
While I was putting myself through the not-so-immediate process of installing the BitTorrent software and downloading the actual video, I realized the degree to which file sharing has become a retro concept of sorts. In a time when pretty much everything is available on (and controlled by) YouTube and/or Spotify, there's a certain outlaw-ish feeling to using file sharing as a form of distribution. Knowing that you have that obscure file somewhere on your hard drive gives you an old-fashioned sense of intimacy with the band you don't really get through streaming, and it also allows you to bypass the hateful tirade of "Jerry Cantrell is old" "that black guy is a fag and a poser" "they'll never make another record as good as Dirt" comments, which is nice for a change.
It all reminds me of the time when kids would sit on MSN Messenger (RIP) all day, sending music files back and forth, not for the sake of piracy, but because music still had a hint of cultural relevance, and, back then, that was the only way you had of discovering music that was under the hit industry radar (which was pretty much all of it). Some of those files came from records people had actually bought. Others, of course, didn't. But, at least, people talked and exchanged impressions, which is so much more than they do today.
The problem is never in the channel – it's in the culture... or the total and absolute lack of it.
And there, my friends, is where we're really fuked up.
By the way, if you're still curious about those Mike Inez quotes, I dug them out just for you:
Oh, marriage, sweet marriage. Who wouldn't want it? ;)"I have a wonderful wife. I walk in the door and she hands me a dogshit shovel and says, 'The dog yard is over there, rock star. Get to work.' It's funny. And, 'Here's some light bulbs and get the ladder out. You've got work to do.' She slaps me down pretty good. So [we] just need to get home."
Tuesday was a great day under the shadow of the Space Needle (that is assuming that the Space Needle ever does project a shadow, given Seattle's usual weather conditition LOL), not just because of the surprise release of the Phantom Limb video, but also because Soundgarden dropped a brand new song. Just like that.
I have been getting into Soundgarden lately as a part of my ongoing grunge education, and I've really come to like the band so far. They are much more on the psychedelic side of things than Alice (and are even more 70s influenced... if that's even possible LOL), but when they get heavy... man, they do get heavy. Their love for Zeppelin, Sabbath and even the *sigh* Beatles is very palpable throughout their work – just as much as their fondness for low tunings.
Their songwriting is not as grandiose as Alice's, but that's just because Cantrell's songwriting is the size of classical music, and that's definitely not something you can expect to find every day. I could feel tempted to say that their sound is stronger than their actual songs, but that's exactly what I thought of Alice after I first heard Dinosaurs... and look at me now.
And then again, my knowledge of the band's work is by now limited to their best known album (their iconic 1994 release, ironically titled Superunknown), so I can't exactly talk like I'm the biggest expert.
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| Flaming youth gonna set the world on fire |
This new song, however, doesn't stray too far from the Soundgarden I know.
Storm is a heavily psychedelic number with some serious Superunknown vibes. It features some nice harmonized vocals made in Chris Cornell and tons of weird Soundgarden guitars, which is pretty much everything you'd want to hear in a Soundgarden song. Its progressive, atmosferic and somewhat mystic nature is underpinned by a very muscular rhythm section (definitely one of the band's biggest strenghts), which creates a certain urgent feel, and therefore qualifies it as a road song – the type you'd like to hear while driving down a stormy desert highway (apparently, my ideal driving scenario LOL)... or that's the way I see it, anyway.
It feels like time hasn't really passed for Soundgarden... and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Interestingly enough, Storm wouldn't sound out of place on a playlist with Alice In Chains' 1993 track A Little Bitter, which, on the other hand, is not that surprising, if you consider how close both bands have always been. They have given and taken a lot from each other through the years, and that's bound to show every now and then :)
This surprise release, by the way, comes in advance of Echo Of Miles: Scattered Tracks Across The Path, which, as its brief and totally un-pretentious *wink* title indicates, will be a compillation of rarities and B-sides. It doesn't sound like a type of release I would be especially interested in – at least, not at this point anyway. I still have to get through a lot of Soundgarden normalities before moving on to the weird stuff ;) Hardcore grungers, however, will most definitely celebrate the news.
Just like I'm celebrating this Third Day of a Phantom Limb Storm.
Whatever the hell that is.
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