Only now, at the ripe age of 37, am I experiencing the fusion of progressive rock and metal in a way that makes sense for me. Although there is currently a slew of bands mining the intersection of complexity and heaviosity, there are two groups that embody the best of this integration: Opeth and Mastodon.

Both bands have new albums out (actually, Opeth’s record was released yesterday; Mastodon’s drops next week), and both have stirred up controversy among their core audiences for moving away from their metallic roots. NPR (!!!) is hosting a full-length stream of Opeth’s Heritage; Mastodon’s The Hunter can be heard in its entirety at their YouTube channel.

Analyzing a band’s motivations is a favorite pastime for music obsessives, but it is ultimately a pointless endeavor. Especially in this case, as both groups have telegraphed their stylistic shifts over previous releases.

For those not familiar with either act, here’s a bit of background.

Opeth is a Swedish band that came out of that country’s technical death metal scene. Early on, they distinguished themselves from their peers by combining the pagan mood of black metal with the more chops-oriented death style. Throw in the occasional acoustic guitar and vocals that alternate between growl and croon, and you have something approaching original. Over the years, Opeth adopted an even more progressive stance, becoming increasingly sophisticated in arrangement and execution. By the time Blackwater Park was released in 2001, the band had become a juggernaut, with a devoted international fanbase. Fast-forward to 2011 and the release of Heritage — an album that loses nearly all of the metal trappings, instead fully embracing a 1970s progressive rock aesthetic. Message boards are lighting up with comments from heshers who think the band sold out, wussed out or both. Actually, they simply became more themselves.

Mastodon sprouted from entirely different soil. Heavy-drinking, hard-drugging miscreants from Atlanta, Georgia, the band was originally as much a part of the hardcore scene as the metal community. Like their sludgy forbears Neurosis, Mastodon trafficked in crushing riffs peppered with fuck-all attitude. If you’ve spent any time in the hardcore trenches, you know the type: dirty black Carharts, full-sleeve tattoos and a kind of freewheeling nihilism. What made these guys stand out was their combination of go-for-the-throat aggression and enlightened musicality. It wasn’t long before they began incorporating elements of other styles, namely progressive rock. Their last album, Crack the Skye, is likely the high water mark of their prog odyssey, but The Hunter brings even more melody to the fore. Some of the songs even utilize — gasp! — major keys.

I could probably spend another couple thousand words describing why these bands’ latest records are worth your consideration. But what I really want to get across is that there are still acts that are willing to defy fan expectation while producing music that is ostensibly for a commercial marketplace. These aren’t avant-garde bands. They aren’t hipster noise. They aren’t irreconcilably retro (although both make fine use of older styles). They will never be featured in prime time TV shows or car commercials. Yet both records will sell, and concerts will be packed. I’d like to think it’s because the music is actually interesting.

If I were just starting out as a musician, I’d be incredibly inspired by Opeth and Mastodon. Hell, I am now. I’m not sure that Lux Eterna Records will be releasing any comparable records anytime soon, but I’d like to think that we share a commitment to musical exploration and sonic quality. That and a killer ’70s prog collection.

David Fincher‘s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has its trailer in theaters now. Tagline: “The Feel Bad Movie of Christmas.” It’s a well-put-together montage of scenes that look more like what I pictured in my head when I read the book than what appeared in the Swedish version.

You probably know that Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are doing the soundtrack (the two won an Oscar for Fincher’s previous flick, The Social Network). Well, this trailer features a cover of Led Zeppelin‘s “Immigrant Song” performed by Reznor and Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. I don’t love it, but I certainly admire it.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yUwXwrR35U

Definitely looking forward to the film…

This is one of those silly Facebook exercises where someone “tags” you, and you come up with a list of favorite whatevers. I got poked by this one a couple of times, and, since it involves the expressing of contempt, I figured I’d give it a go. It was actually kind of fun to take my music critic knives out of the drawer, which have retained something of their former edge.

At the end of the day, all I really care about is that Casey Niccoli — muse extraordinaire and fabled “Classic Girl” of Jane’s Addiction, whose unclothed effigy graced the covers of two of the greatest rock records in history — liked my list. I can now lay these tired bones to rest.

But I’ll stick around just for you.

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Bands I Can’t Stand

Some of these are pretty dated. I used to keep a “nut-kicking list” with acts upon whom I would, given the opportunity, inflict testicular trauma. I’ve softened somewhat in my old age, but I still hate their music.

1. Live
There’s nothing more irritating than people pretending to be enlightened. Ed Kozwhaterverthefuckhisnameis is guilty of that and more. The “more” being an adenoidal singer in a third-rate alternative band. Live’s pseudo-revelatory twaddle belongs in the spiritual supermarket right next to the yoga pants and The Secret audiobook.

2. Soul Asylum
Fugly bastard dated Winona! That’s an unforgivable offense right there. Have you ever listened to the lyrics to “Runaway Train?” So bad it actually causes the part of my brain that processes poetry to seize up. Their music is terrible, too. No, I don’t need to hear about their Midwestern punk days. Shut up and listen to Gun Club, twerps.

3. Collective Soul
Clearly, I carry a lot of residual anger concerning radio rock from around 1992-1998. Collective Soul earns a sizable portion of my outrage. You know this band is worthless by the fact that  they haven’t been licensed for a truck commercial more than a decade after their “prime.”

4. Widespread Panic/Government Mule/moe.
Nothing worse than a blue collar jam band. I love the original Allman Brothers, but they had soul, chops and a fuckin’ fire under their asses. These half-assed classic rock noodlers have none of those attributes. And their fans are dumb as rocks (in my experience, anyway).

5. Styx
Worst rock band in history. Annoying on every conceivable level.

6. Ted Nugent
It’s not the politics, but that doesn’t help. It’s the fact that he’s a shitty guitar player and worse songwriter. He drifted in on the fumes of far greater talents, most of whose names the public has never heard. Nuge is like KISS but without the makeup and flash pots. Which is like Courtney Love without the drugs: totally forgettable.

7. KISS
I like the song “Detroit Rock City.” Well, compared to the rest of their catalog, anyway. To all of you fellas in suspended adolescence who still pathetically exalt these greedy no-talents: put the Gene Simmons doll on eBay and help your long-suffering wife get the kids ready for school.

8. James Taylor
Bangs said it best. No need to elaborate.

9. Iron Maiden
If only they’d kept their first singer, that cokehead UK pub punk. This particular wave of NWOBHM never should have never made it to shore.

10. Bruce Springsteen
I actually like a lot of his stuff, but he makes my list just because all of those sycophantic dinguses who can’t seem to understand that, taken in the aggregate, his work is MERELY AVERAGE. At least Dylan can suck profoundly. Bruce is even dull at that.

News Flash: rock ‘n’ roll music — that hip-gyrating, innocence-robbing, beat-driven racket that ate the world — is really an ecstatic heathen ritual.

Tell us something we don’t know.

Author Christopher Knowles aims to do just that in his new book, The Secret History of Rock ‘n’ Roll, which investigates the historic correlation between the pantheistic priests of yore and the gender-blurring, mutilation-prone avatars of rock. Everyone knows that Jim Morrison was the Lizard King and David Bowie the Starman, but were you aware that the Greek god of debauchery Dionysus “was also closely identified with various groups of long-haired, armored priests, whose thrashing musical performances were the headline act of Mystery rituals from Phrygia to Samothrace, from Eleusis to the Vatican Hill”?

OK, maybe some of you did.

And there’s even more to this ancient analog of glam and metal. Knowles has some persuasive evidence that tight trousers, trashy makeup and high decibels are hardly new under the sun (which you may or may not worship). From the author’s recent blog post at The Daily Grail:

The Kouretes — who the historian Nonnus described as being “sane in their madness” — derived their name from their androgynous hair and clothing, much like any number of early heavy metal bands from the late 60s and early 70s. Greek historian Strabo:

‘(T)he Kouretes of Aitolia got this name because, like ‘girls’ (kourai), they wore women’s clothes, for, they add, there was a fashion of this kind among the Greeks, and the Ionians were called ‘tunic-trailing,’ and the soldiers of Leonidas were ‘dressing their hair’ when they were to go forth to battle.’

As with Little Richard in the 50s and the glam rockers of the early 1970s, it seems that crossing gender boundaries unleashed something primal in these performers. And just like the metal bands of the late ’70s, the Kouretes evolved from a violent androgyny to a hypermasculine image and pose.

Strabo wrote that “the war-dance was first introduced by (the) Kouretes, and that this dance afforded a pretext to those also who were more warlike than the rest and spent their life under arms, so that they too came to be called by the same name.”

The Korybantes dressed in full hoplite leather armor for their performances, a few dozen centuries before Kiss and Judas Priest. Strabo described their act in terms that could just as easily describe Slayer or Iron Maiden: “(one) fills full the fingered melody, the call that brings on frenzy…stringed instruments raise their shrill cry, and frightful mimickers from some place unseen bellow like bulls, and the semblance of drums, as of subterranean thunder, rolls along, a terrifying sound.”

Here I was thinking that Manowar were just an over-the-top metal act. Now I see that they’re astute students of history.

The Secret History of Rock ‘n’ Roll is available now.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBPvMRJMOnQ

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-Ozm4ZJXwU

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzVKnQDXn2M

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zo9Rj6SQzbU

www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5cSK-J75j4

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XYwryZVSyw

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yU1Qz8AlN6g



www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxDFBQ7qzho

Is it me or does her singing actually get a smidgen better by the end?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSLRHvrOe6U

www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYNOhqvNoS8

Today my heart is broken. Ronnie passed away at 7:45am [on Sunday] 16th May. Many, many friends and family were able to say their private goodbyes before he peacefully passed away. Ronnie knew how much he was loved by all. We so appreciate the love and support that you have all given us. Please give us a few days of privacy to deal with this terrible loss. Please know he loved you all and his music will live on forever.

I honestly thought RJD would beat this thing. You might have seen our previous video post showing Ronnie at the Houston hospital where he was receiving treatment. “Cancer, I’ll kick the hell outta you!” Dio said in the clip.

Then there was this April appearance at VH1′s Revolver Golden Gods awards. He talked about how difficult chemo is, but he looked pretty good:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nk4V0aKMTI

Dio is my favorite metal singer. The guy was 666 kinds of ridiculous, but utterly unmatched in conviction and unadulterated rock power. He was a nice guy, too. I find it somewhat bizarre that I’m performing my first “band” gig in a decade on the same day that RJD shrugs off his mortal coil. I’ll have to dedicate a song to him.

Ronnie’s last release, as a member of Black Sabbath Heaven & Hell was a shitload better than it needed to be. So were the live performances from recent tours. You’d be hard pressed to find another 67 year-old rocker who could belt it out like RJD.

So raise your fist in a full devil’s horn salute to the grand master of metal. We’ll miss you, Ronnie.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=frtJQFe9apw

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEV4Tov1GBM

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUXSTY9AW-s

The “Henry Rollins hearts Glenn Danzig” meme predates the internet — I remember giggling over the idea of R&D shacking up back in the early ’90s. But it’s even more timely in the light of California’s high-profile gay marriage debates. I’m assuming Rollins and Danzig are both still residents of the state.

Apparently, the back of the comic has a pullquote from Rollins that says, “Has Glenn seen this? Trust me, he would not be impressed.”

Description:

The premise of this Cantankerous Titles-released comic is explained at the front of the zine: “Henry and Glenn are very good ‘friends.’ They are also ‘room mates.’ Daryl and John live next door. They are satanists.” What follows is ultra-metal violence and cryfest diary entries, cringing self-doubt and mega-hilarious emo-meltdowns. Who knew Danzig was such a vulnerable, self-conscious sweety-pie? Who knew Rollins was such a caring spouse? Who knew Hall and Oates were so infernally evil—yet so considerate?

You can order this awesome title from Atomic Books for a mere 4 bucks.

[Hat tip to Shane of the Government and Carolyn of the Canines]