Today I’ve got a few pretty macho reviews to put up for two CDs and a movie.
CD reviews
CTGG
Cathedral, “The Guessing Game”: The new Cathedral release is their first double album, and it’s been getting great reviews. Of course, as a true-in-the-wool Cathedral fan, I had to check it out. It doesn’t impress greatly at first, but it appeals more on repeated listens. It is, like so many Cathedral albums, a consistent diatribe against religion and questions the voyage of life, with some witches and warlocks stuff thrown in, and it is very much of the same mind as the Dave Pratchett cover art (which folds out to a poster version of an illustrated question mark twelve times the size of the CD cover). The first song, “Immaculate Misconception”, is an instrumental, and it starts off with the sound of a woman moaning (in intercourse? in labour?), and then there are smashing guitar, cymbol and keyboard sounds, topped off by the cry of a newborn child. The next song “Funeral of Dreams” is a wild old drudger that goes into weird tooting sounds a la the experimental stuff heard on the “Statik Magik” EP. It has all the familiar elements of a mid-pace Cathedral (they only have doom-, slow- and mid-paced songs), with some passages of psychedelic vocals. “Painting in the Dark” starts off with a soundbite from Ruth Gordon in the film “Harold and Maude” (“Well, if this is reality, you can stick it; I’m off to do some painting in the dark.“) and the song sneers and heaves. The song has a poppy chorus, great drive and a cool solo. “Death Of An Anarchist” starts off with a sad, Metallica-type acoustic intro, then gushes over with sloppy, broad chords and riffs. Come to think of it, the whole song sounds very Metallica. The lyrics, however, are straight out of a Survivor anthem. “The word ‘love’ people say with shame / but in this heart there’s a burning flame / I take a look at society / A misfit, I guess that’s me.” Of course, after a while, the song gallops, and then it starts to sound more like an Iron Maiden song… until the wah-heavy solo kicks in, and it sounds more like a Metallica song again. Â Metallica, Maiden, Survivor, Metallica. Â The title track “The Guessing Game” starts off with trippy Yes-like orchestral strains and medieval harmonies and toots and tweets, it’s an instrumental that rolls along happily, but with a tinge of doom. “Edwige’s Eyes” starts off with a scary movie sample from some sort of black mass, the song is a torrid tale of witches (regular territory for Cathedral). The horror, the horror… Â The song pays tribute to Ewige Fenech, the actress of Italian Gallio films. “Cats, Incense, Candles and Wine” is a trippy and boring scary song that is not heavy (except for one part) at all – change things up a bit with a bit of weird, whistling psychedelia (of course, ditto, it’s all been done before on Statik Magik). “One Dimensional People” is a cool, trudging doom masterpiece that has slight industrial tinges (and wicked bass attack) and some great noodly guitar interplays between slow and mid-tempo in its monstrous opening progression, it’s followed quickly by “Casket Chasers”, a punchy, raw rocker – the singing is wild and angry and comes in three flavours: shouted, whispered and singalong. Yeeeeee-hah!! “La Noche Del Buque Maldito (a.k.a. Ghost Ship of the Blind Dead)” starts off with a cool bass boom that sounds like the heaving of a ghost ship before launching into a fun, sizzling rocker that slows right back down to a doomy trudge by the end.
The last three songs on the release are the longest on the album, and they get progressively longer and longer. I’ve marked “The Running Man” as the best song on the album, probably because of the monstrously trippy, washed out bass sound that recalls the best moments of Rollins Band’s “The End of Silence” that can be heard throughout the last two minutes of the song. It starts off funky, with keyboard, and then the sledgehammer verses of Lee Dorrian kick in. The lyrics are also warm and hateful towards some deluded doom-head. The song grabs you by the throat and doesn’t let go – there are no lite moments in this one. It is also very long – 8:56. It is followed by another winner, “Requiem For The Voiceless”, which is about cruelty to animals – the lyrics are angry and righteous, and the song thundrs in holy manner. It starts off with a weirdly distorted soundbite, then goes into a weird droning lilting verse series, sweeping up eventually into a cool bridge that goes long. “I cannot hate you, I have not the energy.” It’s a sweet call to action and a return to the Cathedral tour de force of earlier years. Beautiful. “Set me free, humanity/ I have no voice, won’t you please help me.”
“Journey into Jade” is a corny piece of music, where Lee Dorrian runs through the history of Cathedral, from album to album. Â ”Twenty year it’s been, what does the future bring?” The music is hard and crunchy, it goes on and on. Very nice. The band here plays a “hidden song” trick, so the timing of the last song isn’t really 10:37, it’s more like 6:30, with four minutes of silence, and then Dave Pratchett is to be heard talking about his album art for one minute.
I see this as the usual Cathedral theme of life beginning and life ending… with religion in the middle fucking things up… but we manage to survive despite the abuse of the ideas of religion. So you have the beginning of life, with all of the hopes and aspirations; and all the insects protecting a baby, which represents the beginning of life, and then you gradually evolve into the mess we’re in now. But fortunately, when the apocalypse comes along, nature will take over yet again, and we’ll begin again, and a whole new evolution of spring’s life. We’ll have a start, a middle, and an end, and then we’ll do it all over again, probably; but I’m not going to live to see it.
Yay, Dave, go go!
EWBM
Electric Wizard, “Black Masses”: The opening track, “Black Mass” is crazy heaviness, with insane singing and beautiful dirge-like fuzziness. “Venus in Furs” is a much better track (it has nothing to do with the Velvet Underground song, by the way, other than the title, seemingly inspired by the same book), with the warped fuzz stoner sound, the clinging riff, the insane sneering vocals, the haunting, sweeping solo guitar crunching across soundscapes of stoner grunge, with strange voices floating and sweeping. Wild, crazy, intense and beautiful. Definitely one of the best songs on the album. “Night Child” wafts and wails, but it’s nothing special. Â ”Pattern of Evil” is wicked, stuttering soundfulness, shimmering and shammering off the walls of my mind. Next. “Satyr IX” boogies with weird bass doodlings, before building up to a freaky and insane buzz-out that just goes on for ages and ages and ages. It’s total rock ‘n’ roll. “Turn Off Your Mind” has a wicked mid-paced riff that just gouges and tears at your brain until it’s stripped bare. Strange, heavenly, the end is a sweet stereo swirl. What a crazy track!! “Scorpio Curse” is a wicked rocker that rolls and rolls and roll and rolls, with sweet flanging effects. Great stuff. “Crypt of Drugula” is a sort of weird sound-out that just goes on and on and on and on. With “Black Masses”, Electric Wizard simply just delivers and delivers and delivers and delivers and delivers and delivers and delivers and delivers and delivers and delivers and delivers and delivers and delivers and delivers and delivers.
The album art is full of nudity and occult images, it’s kind of creepy actually…
If you don’t feel like buying it, you can listen to the whole album online.
Movie reviews:
T
Thor – Great fun! And who cares if Kenneth Branagh has lowered himself to doing Marvel Comics adaptations after having once been in the lofty heights of producing Shakespearean theatre – the film has everything you’d find in a Shakespeare production, including battle helmets and cod pieces. Chris Helmsworth makes a great Thor (blonde, big, lots of doughy muscles and a bit dopey to match), Anthony Hopkins makes a great Odin (grim, imperious and iron-hearted), and Tom Hiddleston makes a great Loki (sneaky, slinky and possessed of a wicked grin). Like most other Marvel Comics movie adaptations, this one bears a lot of similarity with the original comic, while also diverging from it. Sure, Jane Foster was Marvel’s most boring character in the original ’60s comics, while in the year 2011 she’s become an astrophysicist played by Natalie Portman (?!?), and we can skip (for the most part) that whole Dr Donald Blake thing – make fun of it, even – and just carry on with our day.  Hooray!  Thor gets banished to Midgard (our muddy old Earth) and he makes friend (and lovers) with his charm. He confronts some sort of destroyer drone, then goes nutso on heaven and earth in a war on sneaky ice demons. Great fun. Still, though, I don’t know who the actor Stellan SkarsgÃ¥rd is, nor the film character he plays called “Erik Selvig.” Is he important? And why does he seem to have such a crucial role in the upcoming The Avengers movie, as seen in the brief mini-scene that follows the credits where he (and Hiddleston) appear with film legend Samuel Jackson? Don’t get it, not really.