MEDIA
Preview
as immediate and unsettling as Syd Barett’s
Opel or any of Robert Johnson’s hazy nether-world transmissions.
Apart from a hired drummer, Warr played
and recorded all the instruments to a Tascam
8-track. Timpanis, cymbals, bells, and gongs
borrowed from a local high-school marching
band help build an ominous, doomful wall of
clang around psychedelic- and prog-tinged
metal riffs and acerbic lead lines that sound
like Ummagumma-era Gilmour, Fripp, and
Iommi cut to pieces and glued back together
as some garage-spawned Frankenstein.
Amazing, eerily inspiring, and super scary!
—Charles Saufley
Middle Class Rut
No Name No Color
Bright Antenna
MCRut’s debut is one of
the few recent releases
whose raucous abandon
has a serious chance of
jolting you out of your
chair. But it’s not just
about Sean Stockham’s bombastic drums
and Zack Lopez’s tattered vocal chords
and bristling tones. Lopez (who favors Les
Paul Juniors, Oranges, and Marshalls) and
Stockham (who also sings via a headset
mic) do pack these 12 tracks with attitude
and bombast, but it would all be for naught
without the dynamic arrangements and the
soaring vocal melodies and harmonies—
which sound like a cross between Jane’s
Addiction, Rage Against the Machine, and
the Beastie Boys. “Are You on Your Way”
serves up ethereal, delay-soaked leads,
taut, subtly dissonant rhythms, and a wistful, ghostly outro, while “Cornbred” has
swampy, lo-fi acoustic work, and “New Low”
is driven by a tense ticking-time-bomb palm
mute, corpulent chords in the chorus, and a
quirkily beautiful Whammy solo. Throughout
each track, the deft guitar layering somehow
sounds airy while busting your chops like a
brass knuckle. —Shawn Hammond
Tom Petty and the
Heartbreakers
Damn the Torpedoes
Eagle Rock Entertainment
Classic Albums – Damn the Torpedoes
DVDs
“Everything about this
album was difficult,”
says Mike Campbell,
lead guitarist for
Tom Petty and the
Heartbreakers. But
to the listener, Damn
the Torpedoes flows
smoothly like the
Mississippi carving
through the Midwest.
The organic groove of its rock ’n’ roll core
embodies what this quintet from Gainesville,
Florida, was all about—Southern blues and
’60s British rock. Its rockin’ guitars, catchy lyrics,
and solid rhythms created a lasting impression
that feels as fresh today as it did in 1979. With
the help of Eagle Rock Entertainment’s Classic
Albums series, we get to explore the story
behind Damn the Torpedoes.
The documentary opens with a mix of ’70s
performance footage and contemporary commentary from various band members on the
context of Damn the Torpedoes. It was their
third record and they needed a smash to survive after two lukewarm releases. Then band
members, producers, and engineers pile into
a studio to dissect seven of the album’s nine
tracks. Seeing Campbell walk us through the
creation of the “Refugee” riff with one of his
’burst Les Pauls is one of the more special
moments. “F#m is the best key for a guitar
sound,” he begins, “I was stuck on that note
because of the Albert King riff in ‘Oh, Pretty
Woman.’” Co-producer Jimmy Iovine, Petty,
and Campbell then tear away and add each
layer of instrumentation on “Refugee.” They
end up all agreeing that Jim Keltner’s shaker—recorded in the hallway—made the song.
With 98 minutes of footage, this is a no-brainer buy for anyone looking for insight
into an album Rolling Stone called one of the
greatest of all time. —Chris Kies
Slayer
Live Intrusion
Columbia
For metalheads, seeing
Slayer live for the first
time is a cathartic experience. Their concerts
are legendarily intense,
with a non-stop barrage of punk-infused
thrash that the band
pioneered decades
ago. Until recently,
getting to see Slayer
live had been easier than tracking down their
long-out-of-print live DVDs, 2003’s War at the
Warfield and 2004’s Still Reigning. Slayer fans
have long suspected video footage of the
band’s March 12, 1995, performance existed,
and the notion was reinforced by statements
from fellow metal bands Machine Head and
Biohazard. The band has decided to reissue these coveted videos with an additional,
unreleased volume entitled Live Intrusion,
which shows the band during their 1995
Divine Intervention tour.
The video shooting style here, while paying equal attention to each member of the
band, is frustratingly typical of mid-’90s rock
videos—there are way too many viewpoint
changes to focus on anything, including the
great set list. As annoying as that is, you
could argue that it represents the chaotic
nature of the band’s live show. Both the video
and sound quality stand up well, especially
for a recording made over 15 years ago on
a high-end VHS master tape. One of the
disc’s real treats is the cover Venom’s classic
“Witching Hour,” which finds the band being
joined onstage by Machine Head’s Robb
Flynn and Chris Kontos. That performance is
almost worth the price of admission alone.
—Jordan Wagner
