Obscure and worth it

Today I'd like to introduce you to a fun little band that, unfortunately, never really took off: Dark Hall. Dark Hall is, or rather was, an instrumental jazz fusion group from the late 90's. They released a total of three demos, one with their original lineup and two more after changing guitarists. In the end, Dark Hall never actually released an album, and I've only been able to track down their last demo (their self-titled effort from 1998) and one track from their 1994 demo Solace.

You might be wondering why I'm so interested in this non-starter of a band from the 90's. One answer is that Dark Hall was simply great at what they did. For demos, the five tracks of theirs floating around are well mastered and impeccably performed. This wasn't exactly amateur night, and Dark Hall had a rather noteworthy cast of talent. Dark Hall started as a trio with Steve Di Giorgio on bass, Chris Dugan on drums and Flamp Sorvari on flute and saxophone, adding Eric Cutler on guitar in time for their first demo. Now, I haven't been able to find much information on Flamp Sorvari or Ken Schultz (the band's replacement for Eric Cutler on guitar in '95). However, the rest are associated with some fairly high profile acts of their own. Chris Dugan is known less for his musicianship and more for his work as an audio engineer, working with Green Day from American Idiot to Revolution Radio. That probably goes a long way towards explaining the high audio quality of the demo. Founding guitarist Eric Cutler (not to be confused with the opera singer of the same name) is also a founding member of Autopsy, a rather legendary death metal band. Steve Di Giorgio is probably the most prolific of the bunch, playing bass guitar for a slew of metal legends, from Autopsy to Death to Testament to Control Denied.

On the video I've embedded in this post, the first four songs are their 1998 demo Dark Hall, with the last track being from their 1994 debut Solace (meaning Eric Cutler is on guitar, rather than Ken Schultz). You can pick them up for free at the band's ReverbNation page here: https://www.reverbnation.com/artist/downloads/3622154. According to the band's write up, they're "in the planning stages for a new recording." I, for one, wouldn't get your hopes up too high, though. They've been in the "planning stages" since 2013, and we haven't heard a peep from them since. They could actually be making something new, but I dunno. It's quite possible that we'll have to content ourselves with their killer demo in the meantime.

By the way, if you have some obscure band that you think deserves a little more coverage, let me know so I can feature it. I can be reached at my email, askguitarman@gmail.com. Until next time, Guitarman out.

The Mighty Few

Things have been hectic over here. With grad school applications, job hunting, classes and persistent health issues, my plate has been fairly full as of late. Thankfully, I've finally found enough time to shine a spotlight on one of the more delightfully strange releases of last year. Introducing "The Mighty Few," by The Grand Astoria.

Hailing from Saint-Petersburg, The Grand Astoria is a Russian rock outfit that combines a stoner aesthetic with progressive fundamentals to great effect. Or was it a progressive aesthetic with stoner fundamentals? In either case, their opus The Mighty Few is a paradoxically easy and challenging listen. No, I'm not just speaking in riddles for the sake of pretentious pseudo-intellectualism. I get enough of that from college freshmen trying to debate continental philosophy. Allow me to explain what I mean.

You may have noticed that the embedded track is a full twenty-eight minutes and nineteen seconds in length. No, your eyes aren't deceiving you. Yes, that's the first track of the album. The Mighty Few is a full-length album (actually a fairly long one at nearly fifty minutes), but has a mere two tracks. Furthermore, these tracks are repetitive enough that listening to them all the way through isn't an easy task for the ADHD music fan. It's also somewhat difficult to just allot twenty-plus minutes of your time to listening to a single song. That's what I mean by The Mighty Few being a challenging listen.

On the other hand, the actual music being played here is extremely accessible (despite its format). The Grand Astoria play a hypnotic blend of stoner rock, jazz, progressive rock and classic metal. To quote the blog Heavy Metal Textbooks, "if Pink Floyd and The Mars Volta had a baby, and that baby grew up listening to heavy metal and punk, and then formed a rock band, that band would be The Grand Astoria​." It's a bit of a roundabout description, but roundabout descriptions seem oddly apt when talking about music of this sort. My advice would be to listen to the first few minutes of the second track, The Siege, to see if this album is right for you. Opener Curse of the Ninth takes a good two minutes of tease and build before the distortion kicks in, while The Siege fires on all cylinders right out of the gate. Either way, they're both great songs. You have excellent vocal harmonies and glorious walls of fuzz juxtaposed with subdued psychedelia and restrained classical elements, and the end product is a quite compelling (if arguably overlong) slab of music.  Give it a spin; for twenty-plus minute songs, they're quite addictive.

Guitarman out.

Blackjazz

Well, it's a little later than planned, but better late than never. It's time for another music spotlight. Introducing: Shining, with their 2010 album Blackjazz!

Shining is a bit of a tough nut to crack, so let's start with the basics. First off, it would be helpful to clarify that I'm talking about the Norwegian band called Shining, not the Swedish band called Shining. The Swedish Shining is a black metal band ostensibly concerned with making listeners as suicidal and likely to self-harm as possible. On the other hand, the Norwegian Shining (hereafter referred to as just Shining) is...well, for starters it's far more difficult to describe via pithy statements.

Shining is, for lack of a simpler term, an avant-garde metal band. Avant-garde, however, is itself a fairly empty description. It would be better to call Shining's music the ungodly fusion of industrial and progressive metal with free-form jazz and electronica. On Blackjazz, Shining have created something that you aren't likely to fully appreciate on your first listen. My first time through, I found Blackjazz to be more exhausting than exhilarating. Part of that is likely a result of the album's run-time falling just short of an hour. Add to that an incredibly dense sound, manic tone, lengthy songs (particularly on the album's back-end, where a nearly eleven-minute song is followed by two songs just shy of nine minutes each), and counter-intuitive design choices ("The Madness and the Damage Done" is track one; "The Madness and the Damage Done, part one" is track six) and you get an album that's potentially draining for the uninitiated listener. I assure you, however, that Blackjazz is worth the extra effort required in its appreciation.

Do you like your music progressive and full of surprises, yet with a strong sense of groove? Does the idea of music made by madmen, for madmen, appeal to you? Do you think Meshuggah would be a more interesting band if they hired a saxophonist? If you answered yes to any of those, then you (like me) might be the target audience for Blackjazz! The album is funky, brutal and strangely satisfying. It's filled with intricate compositions formed around the simplest groove riffs. Ultimately, though, it's nearly impossible for me to describe Blackjazz without resorting to hyperbole and metaphor. At times, it's the sound of the apocalypse (a trite metaphor, but a fitting one regardless). At times, it's the sound of a jazz orchestra and a metal band attempting to bludgeon each other with their instruments. Either way, it's great fun for those of us able to appreciate music of this level of insanity. Don't take it from me, though. This is one of those albums that, love it or hate it, you owe it to yourself to experience.

The Protomen

I had planned to do this feature on the 17th, actually, but real life started hitting hard and fast. That weekend, one of my cousins from California visited. The next weekend, I went to see one of my brothers who flew over from his post at the Pentagon. I have also been desperately making vacation preparations. Next week, I'll be flying off to Dublin to go stay with my sister for a week. Since I won't have much internet access over there, I figured I needed to get something out ASAP. So, here I am. Let's get down to business.

This week, I'm featuring The Protomen. Oh boy, where do I even start with these guys. Well, they're a rock group hailing from Nashville, Tennessee and have been active (in some form or another) since 2003. The band currently contains a whopping nine members whose real names are unknown. Their claim to fame? They've crafted a rock opera inspired by the original Mega Man games on the NES. The Protomen have released two parts of the planned trilogy (their eponymous debut, and its follow up "The Father of Death"), and are working on the third. Each album forms a coherent story (The Father of Death is a prequel) with the musical genre shifting as appropriate. The apocalyptic Act I plays out like a lo-fi, punk rock, chip-tune take on Queen. Act II opens as a Western musical but closes as an 80's rock concert (the transition occurring during the instrumental "How the World Fell Under Darkness," and symbolizing the mechanization of society under Dr. Wily's rule).

I'll grant that the band is far from perfect in terms of technical skill. Some of their guitar leads in Act II are uninspired at best. There are moments where the vocals in Act I are uncomfortably off pitch. Act I also contains some audio artifacts (including a particularly jarring one somewhere in the middle of "Due Vendetta") that should have been eliminated somewhere in the process. Additionally, while Act I is intentionally lo-fi, the audible peaking (especially with the drums) can be headache inducing at sufficient volume.

Despite their flaws (which are certainly fewer in their recent output), The Protomen have created a convincing and emotionally compelling dystopian imagining of freaking Mega Man. Why? I have no idea, but I'm glad they did. Even in tracks where their musicianship falls a little short, their vision manages to still shine through. It's the strength of the band's vision and their storytelling that makes their epic such a captivating listen. You don't have to be a fan of Mega Man, driven by nostalgia (like me), to enjoy this. You just have to be interested in hearing a story told through songs. It's a tale of a man whose noble aims end up the undoing of all that he loved. It's the tale of cynicism versus idealism, of hope versus pessimism, of brother versus brother. At the end of the day, it's a tale that asks if humanity, jaded and indifferent, is truly worth saving. Give it a listen, and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Thunder Down Under (round 2)

Yes, I basically just reused one of my older titles. No, I don't care. I promised an update this weekend, and I have to wake up in about eight hours to go to work. Not ideal writing conditions, but I'll roll with it.

Remember that band Blackwater Fever I featured a while ago? They were the slow, dark blues band hailing from Australia. Well, tonight's band is basically their foil. Introducing The Fumes.

Hailing from Sidney, Australia, The Fumes are a blues rock band with a very special place in my heart. They three albums under their belts at this point, but their debut opus, "Guns of Gold," is what I'd like to talk about today. The Fumes started out with a fairly simple plan of attack: use delta blues as a foundation, play with a punk rock attitude, and turn the fuzz and distortion to eleven. It's a winning formula that keeps Guns of Gold relevant a decade after its initial release. Guns of Gold is quality blues-based hard rock from start to finish, sprinkled with a refreshing amount of variety. You get acoustic numbers like Postman's Inn, the nearly-seven-minutes-long heavy stomp of Tell Your Story Walking, the long-lost ZZ Top crunch of Down River, and the epic closer Johnny the Lion Slayer. The album does get a little long in the tooth, with a total runtime over an hour, and with three of the fourteen songs going for more than six minutes. They definitely could have made more of an impact by trimming some of that fat, but I'm not going to complain too long about too much of a good thing here. Guns of Gold is certainly worth your time, as is the more "mature" follow up, Sundancer. I haven't listened to the third album, Bloodless, yet, but I'm a little hesitant after the stinker single "Dance in Costume," released after their second album. Then again, I didn't see that song on Bloodless, so I think the coast is clear. Think they learned their lesson (the song was really quite bad).

Anyways, so that's The Fumes. Go check them out if you like blues and/or hard rock. There's plenty of both in their catalog. I'll see if I can get another feature out next weekend. Wish me luck!

Guitarman out.