This just in from Ipecac...

Peeping Tom will debut on Conan Friday, May 26. Along with Mike Patton will be Dub Trio, Rob Swift and Miho Hatori. They will be performing the album's first single "Mojo."

I might...faint.

Daily Affirmation

Reading Henry Rollins' daily dispatches on the 2.13.61 website. This guy is truly one of my heroes. I just think it's so cool to see a person as insightful and...useful as he is to take time to write about his day just because people were curious enough to ask him to do it.

The small venue Tool shows sold out in ten minutes today and, no, I did not acquire a ticket. I am half relieved about this. As we all know, 10,000 Days is set to release next Tuesday the 2nd. The show in Oakland is on the 4th. This would only give me a total of two measly days to get comfy with the album before hearing the songs live. I already made that mistake with Lateralus in high school and I won't do it again.

Why not just download the album now like everyone and their mother is doing? I'm not against downloading. I pirate music from the internet. Yes, I am a pirate. But I've got plans for the 2nd that shan't be spoiled. These plans consist of buying the album, taking it into my den and not coming out for at least 4 hours. One hour listening. Three reflecting. As a rock critic, I am a creature of habit. While I am listening to the material, I research, I examine, I determine. If I don't know a lot about the band, I get online and gather what I can. I download past work to make comparisons. But one of my most essential habits is the careful inspection of liner notes, lyrics and album art/packaging. I am a dictionary of names so liner notes can usually help me make connections between artist collaborations. (For example, did you know that Josh Freese did the drums on Tracy Bonham's The Burden of Being Upright? Rad).

Looking at album art has often inspired me with a theme for longer reviews. Honestly, I need all the inspiration I can get. Music is such a broad category and there are so many subjects out there. It's easy to get jaded and start thinking that everything just sounds the same therefore how can you describe it since you already have? Bands like Tool awaken me from ruts like that.

Pumpkins to smash again

Pillars of grunge The Smashing Pumpkins are supposedly regrouping and recording soonly. So far on board is Jimmy Chamberlin and Billy Corgan. D'arcy and James are as of yet not confirmed allthough Melissa Auf De Mar is ready and willing to take bass if needed.

Where does the inspiration lie for this??? It may have something to do with the fact that Billy's Future Embrace and the whole Zwan thing were utter flops and the only other member of the original line-up is in another currently dead band, Maynard James Keenan's project, A Perfect Circle. It's gonna take a lot to resurrect this band because think about it. How do you remember them? Is the first album that comes to mind Machina? Ava Adore? Hell no. It's Siamese Dream. It's Gish. I look back fondly on the Corgan that had hair.

True, the Pumpkins did evolve into a completely different band and fans still embraced them. But that evolutionary period was cut short. Long before it could have any impact therefore scrapping the whole thing. The band now has to start from scratch as their only hope. I'm curious but not hopeful.

Janis Joplin Biopic

Possible persons to play Janis Joplin in a biopic: Pink, Brittany Spears, Scarlet Johansen, Linsey Lohan.

Pink dropped out of the project supposedly because she didn't agree with the It Girl contest it created and I respect that decision. And despite the fact that her music sucks and she might kinda suck, I cocked my head at the thought of her playing Janis. She definitely has a good wail face for lipsyncing (because NO ONE will ever sing like Janis) and I bet they could make her ugly enough.

As far as the other candidates, I exclaim a monumental WHAT THE FUCK??? I'm not opposed to putting a big name in this picture. Fine. Whatever. Just make sure she is fucking worthy for fuck's sake!

Daily Affirmation

This weekend I bought Fantomas' Suspended Animation and Dillinger Escape Plan's Miss Machine. The former is scrumptious and I hope to have every Fantomas album in the near future. Can Mike Patton do any wrong??? I seriously doubt this. The latter is an album I have heard before and was an impulse buy. This is the latest album with the new singer who I hate. The whole project sounds more like fucking Thrice than Dillinger. And I like Thrice. Therefore I don't mind the album. This doesn't change the fact that it's not Dillinger and it should be and it is still a failure of an album. But oh well.

On average, I buy two CD's every pay period. This last pay period I bought Tomahawk's Mit Gas and Mr. Bungle's self titled which I am currently addicted to. Such a monster chameleon that band is. A genre shape shifter. Usually, bands like these are too much for me. Too much sound to process and too many emotions and energies aroused so I am in constant flux and cannot find a groove. But this album is the most metal out of all Bungle albums and that melds it together. It almost constantly rocks. Not to mention that I haven't heard Mike Patton's voice so whiny and nasally since FNM's The Real Thing and I love that. It's sexy.

Mit Gas is a good but bizarre album at times. Definitely a lot more rockier than the first album but there is this one song Captain Midnight...TOTALLY DREDG it's scary. Watery fucking guitars, little, tiny techno trimmings smashing into a singy/screamy chorus. Fucking what??? I've never heard Patton conform to the pop rock song template. I still like the song though. I just think it's funny.

I signed up to interview Fat Mike for the magazine this month. But I haven't heard anything back yet so I prolly didn't get it. Not surprised. I'm an amateur and a young one at that so I'm sure they wouldn't go out of their way to give me a shot at a big interview. I also signed up to review the new Cannibal Corpse which I am positive I won't get. But oh well. I also asked for some shit I have never heard of: The Drogues and The Ditty Bops. Let's hope I get fucking something.

VARIOUS ARTISTS - METAL=LIFE unpublished

A compilation called Metal=Life centering the newest wave of the genre wouldn’t, repeat, WOULD NOT be complete without an Into The Moat selection. For a second I expected to see Dillinger Escape Plan on this collection but then I remembered that they suck now.

But it’s good to see that Madball still sucks ass and that my current and 14 year old self would at least have one thing to agree on. And I heard a solid buzz about Vena Amori so I was disappointed to find that they sound like The Chipmunks covering Thursday. Ugh. Even saying that made me want to gag.

The best thing about this included DVD is that it will make you hate bands you already hate just a little bit more. Thanks to Avenged Sevenfold for yet another video showing us all your cool little high school fans getting A7X tattoos right before your show. That’s so fucking original. And whoever did Into The Moat’s video deserves to be shot in the face for making such a tacky, Nickelodeon Kids Club interpretation of metal. No point in showing the crowd when it’s a bunch of assholes doing ballet in empty pits.

Daily Affirmation, May 2005 Livejournal

The highlight of my day was spent at my local Tower studying up on all the new releases. Spoon just came out with a new album which is very delicious and I would have bought it if I had enough money. Self meets new Wilco minus a half pound of tech. Mellow with a swagger.

The first work I investigated was With Teeth and although I was apprehensive at first from the disappointing single and the negative feedback I have heard from other loyal NIN fans, I still bought it. That fact alone says little, however. Cuz yeah, it's still Nine Inch Nails. It's STILL whining and screeching laced in industrial grit, it's still smash riffs and rolls bundled together with a silk ribbon of electronic ditty yet there are two big factors surrounding With Teeth that separate it negatively from all previous albums. One, yeah the single blows. But radio release or not, I have never heard a NIN song I absolutely loathed until I heard The Hand That Feeds. Two, NIN songs have always been so dramatic in pure sonority, capturing human thriving and suffering so precisely that they have been ideal for usage in movie soundtracks. Case in point: Natural Born Killers, The Lost Highway and my favorite sampling from The Fragile in Man On Fire in every scene Denzel Washington is hunting down mutherfuckers. Considering this, I cant picture one song from With Teeth suitable for such purposes. It lacks not technique, angle or experience...just power.

I also dug my teeth into System of a Down's Mesmerized. When I first heard BYOB, the first thing I noticed was that Daron was not only singing more, his vocals overshadowed Serj's even when harmonizing. So I wasn't surprised when I saw that Rick Rubin and Daron produced the album as opposed to Rick Rubin and SOAD. Daron's extra vocals aren't necessary. Serj is a better singer/screamer. The vocals were fine just as they were in Toxicity and the self titled so like they say, if it ain't broke...

SOAD's always been a playful band but they may have let their innerchild run rampant on this one transforming their ragging ruckus into a toddler's temper tantrum. Yet songs like Question! revitalize their dynamic function within the Nu Metal community that has always set them aside from the pack. And where SOAD sporadically lacks in groove they have always more than made up for in sharp, politically charged lyrics.

Weezer's newest is STILL WEEZER. I fucking hated the green album so fucking much. Loved Maladroit. And although this is a far cry from Maladroit, it is a progression from it. Yet, think of Weezer. It's a simple sound that is seemlingly allowed little room to advance in without gutting out completely, hence the resulting green album. That wasn't Weezer. So...its hard to be Weezer. You gotta stay you but you gotta keep doing what you do but you can't keep doing the same thing over and over again. What gives? But I think they found the answer. With no lack of follies, though. In atleast one song, they seem to be doing the retro 80's chic thing that killed No Doubt and continues to slowly butcher Gwen Stefani. The arcade synth The Strokes dug up from six feet under and failed to question why it was burried in the first place. Oh yeah, CUZ IT WAS BEATEN TO DEATH AND THEN SOME. Oh well. Let's do it again. doo do do do do. Whole nother can 'o' worms.

ULTRA DOLPHINS - WHY ARE YOU LAUGH? published April 2006, Zero Magazine

If it were up to me, any new band that wanted to be good would have to register at some DMV type place, define their style and list their influences. If their style was something to the effect of nuts or crazy or totally, wicked hyper and they didn't listen to Hella, they would be required to. What am I getting at? I think Ultra Dolphins listen to Hella and I give them a high-five for that.

The fact that craziness like this can be birthed from Virginia is mind-boggling. Ultra Dolphins is made from the same stuff that makes new pop bands so exciting. This is not to say that they perfectly fit the mold. Take the ADDarific structure of The Blood Brothers and add to it a delicious dissonance factor and riffage nostalgic to classic Smashing Pumpkins (circa before Billy Corgan bic'd his dome-piece). What is most reassuring to a promising band like this is to be taken in by a good label like Robotic Empire who have worked with bands such as Crowpath, Ed Gein and Opeth. Together, band and label have produced a nicely done, swanky, EP.

THE SAMMUS THEORY - MAN WITHOUT EYES published April 2006, Zero Magazine

Here's how you know a debut album is good and it's simpler than you would have thought. If you are allowed to feel or in some way sense the blood, sweat and tears that went into making the record, it's worth your time. The album in question can even slightly suck but if that doesn't get in the way, you know you've got a decent work on your hands. On this criterion, Man Without Eyes squeaks by but makes it all the same.

A definite asset to these guys is their collective musician's resume. Drummer Joe Morris tours with Esteban and has done a handful of TV show themes. Guitarist/bassist Gary Pozner has also worked with various big artists. All the members are definitely solid players with the weakest link being singer Sammus. This guy had at one point reminded me of Layne Staley and Scott Weilan's love child and at another: Amy fricken' Lee. But something in you halts when the words "this guy sucks" creep into your throat. Bottom line, it boils down to potential and you can just smell it when listening to this album. If Sammus Theory comes out with another album, I'd be intrigued to see how they have polished up.

SEPULTURA - LIVE IN SAO PAULO published February 2006, Zero Magazine

There are few words in the English language that sound sexier when put together than these three: Brazilian, death-metal. And now the god-fathers of this movement in world music have put together a monster of a live album that proves after 20 years of rocking, they are still very alive and kicking.

Singer Derrick Green's vocals are as blunt and hazardous as a metal mallet. It is more than a relief to hear him pushing it to the limit during a live show. Most great singers tend to perform while preserving their voices, pacing themselves for the long tour. This is totally understandable so we can only conclude that Green is superhuman.

Who else has a weakness for the didjeridu? Not only is it a bitch to play, it just sounds amazing. Every element of Sepultura is crystal clear in the live show. The brisk, afro-cuban drums, the chunky guitars. Nothing is held back. Even Green's speaking voice touches a nerve deep in your stomach that convinces you if he talked to you face to face, you would vomit all over his shoes and he would have to kill you.

Daily Affirmation

Today I happened to hear a song on the radio and I immediatly thought that the singer sounded like a slightly British version of Tom DeLonge. Then the DJ said it was Angels and Airwaves, the Tom DeLonge solo project. On a negative note: gross. On a positive note: damn, I'm good.

SLEEPYTIME GORILLA MUSEUM - OF NATURAL HISTORY published February 2006, Zero Magazine

Editor's Note: This review was a pick of the month so it was enlarged and boxed in print. Pretty cool, huh?

"Here we go" is what you may think when you set eyes upon this album with its entomology charts and endless history text. You're a busy person and a concept album doesn't quite fit into your life that already has its share of concepts. And what the hell do you know about insects in the first place?

Relax. Of Natural History is enjoyable without annotation. You can get to the futurists vs. the Unabomber later. If you painted the picture of an SGM fan, they would be thick-skinned, satisfied with difficulty, affectionate of the insane. In other words, they love Bungle, Black Heart Procession, anything sweetly off-kilter, borderline silly, and for the love of god, different.

A common complaint about avant-garde music (at least that I have) is that it seems afraid to rock. It has a fear of being too melodic or too heavy and structured. But some of these songs are slightly metal. And the fact that Carla Kihlstedt sounds like an American Bjork is a plus, too. This band can probably do anything. If someone told me tomorrow that they could fly, I might believe that as well. Save yourself and get this album.

ION DISSONANCE - SOLACE published December 2005, Zero Magazine

The all too familiar heartbreak. We've all encountered it. A band debuts, you love them, you follow them, they come out with the second album, you're stoked, you hear it…it sucks.

If Ion Dissonance gave you extremely high expectations with 2003's Breathing is Irrelevant, they have been shattered albeit in a slightly unconventional way. Usually, the sophomore rule of thumb is that the first album is raw energy un-harnessed and the following album is that energy further explored, now polished and organized which in most cases results in a less moving product. Yet here, Solace carries the same dynamic presence which lacks no dimension or structure and instead is missing…what? You don't know. You'll get halfway through the album before it finally hits you that this band used to be a whole lot more colorful. It seems simple enough but it's easy to take for granted how pitch and tone can lift and plummet your spirits as if they are merely riding the wavelengths.

The one comforting thing about sophomore syndrome is that some bands escape falling into this new direction, realize they had a great sound before they tried to improve on it, rediscover that sound and go on to make better records. So, Ion Dissonance isn't worth giving up on just yet.

GIZMACHI - THE IMBUING published November 2005, Zero Magazine

First of all, it shouldn't be a disclaimer to listeners that The Imbuing was produced by M. Shaun Crahan, the #6 member of Slipknot who is known as Clown. If you are at all familiar with Slipknot, it is comically obvious. By the fourth track, you will already hear guitar wines and drum rolls which are identical to ones found on Slipknot's self-titled. But hey, at least they chose the best of all Slipknot albums to emulate.

So this is strike one. Strike two, this guy's scream at times feels more like Bobcat Goldwaith than any singer I've heard. But I don't know what's more annoying, the fact that it happens at all or the fact that it doesn't happen all the time. The rest of the time, Sean Kane can wail decently enough. And this is the essence of Gizmachi. One minute, you are tired of being reminded of the nu-metal everyone loved in highschool, the next you are drooling over fluttering solos, cracked-out structure and, what's this, vocal harmonies! The Imbuing is rooted on the borderline between Ozzfest, commercial metal easily sold out at your local Hot Topic and evolutionary, virtuoso, intelligent metal. Gizmachi could end up on either side of that line but if we lose them to the high school kids, it would be a waste.

CRYPTOPSY - ONCE WAS NOT published November 2005, Zero Magazine

What do most metal bands have in common? They all love Cryptopsy. This band, having been around for more than a decade, can and damn well should be known as a seminal metal outfit. Yet don't think ten years plus has in any way wore down the intrinsic energy of their special brand of sound bombardment.

Once Was Not is an eleven track heart attack. No, scratch that. Heart attacks aren't as sadistic. A coronary for the most part will not allow you little breaks to catch your breath just to sustain you from passing out. This album likes its victims live, aware and blown away.

It's so nice to hear a metal band that doesn't neglect tone color. Chunky guitars, crazy time signatures and blast beats are fun and hard to get tired of when brutally arranged. Yet actual notes, solos and harmonies can end up neglected. Cryptopsy fulfills this with splendid guitar that would only be silky if slowed down. Not that we would ever want them to slow down, right?

Because their influence on all kinds of great bands, you can say that Cryptopsy is a platter of all your favorite things metal. Take the crazy structure of Dillinger Escape Plan, the gruff vocal styles of Cannible Corpse and Gwar, and the ambience of Meshuggah.

TERMINAL - HOW THE LONELY KEEP unpublished

Let’s not mince words. Finding out these guys were youngsters (ranging from 18-21) was not surprising. In fact, it relieved me a little as it seemed to be a decent excuse for the excruciatingly bland sound that is Terminal. How many times will I hear these watered down versions of bands like Thrice and Thursday? Those guys walk the emo line with an added edge that keeps them teetering and interesting while bands like Terminal just haven’t figured out what makes them distinct. It’s the same prattling beat over and over and prolonged exposure to it could only be equated to a full day of Chinese water torture.

Terminal seems to be a project reaching in the dark and this album’s attempts to find their niche in this genre have failed. The song “Dark” could exemplify such attempts with its opening electronic beat. Again, how many times will I see bands adding such garnishes at an endeavor at diversity? It takes something truly unspoken to make a band not “just another band.” But who knows? Maybe they will find it. Fuck, like you knew what you were doing at 18.

IRON MAIDEN - THE ESSENTIAL IRON MAIDEN published September 2005, Zero Magazine

Is it just me or do most best of’s start off with their first hits and go forward chronologically? It’s safe for most bands, I suppose. Here, the songs you like are first and we snuck in the new, shitty songs you don’t give a rats ass about at the end. Just please buy it. But this isn’t most bands. It’s Iron Maiden who will rock until death and not just look dead while trying to rock, much like skeletal icons Aerosmith and the Stones.

The Essential Iron Maiden’s first track is “Paschendale” off 2003’s Dance of Death. Ballsy, yes, to open up with the new shit yet hardly a gamble. It’s a statement that Iron Maiden have always made. They won’t apologize for aging. They will only apologize for sucking and it is a sorrow they will never have to express.

From this point, the collection goes backward, reminiscing with songs like “Fear of the Dark” and “Aces High” until finally reaching the trio of songs you would have to be born under a rock on Mars not to have known (since birth, in my case) “The Trooper,” “Number of the Beast,” and “Run To The Hills.” Jesus, if the opening riff of the latter doesn’t take you back to simpler times, check your pulse to see if you are still living.

ARCH ENEMY - DOOMSDAY MACHINE published September 2005, Zero Magazine

Admit it. Metal, in all its splendor and beauty, has a mandatory quotient of corniness. If you want to debate this, try watching Visions of the Beast without cracking up just a little. If you succeed and aren’t a high school drop-out gas station attendant, we’ll talk. Metal has a grandiosity from its upbringing that is hard to abandon. Hard if you are not Arch Enemy.

In Doomsday Machine, all metal cheese is melted away and scorched a crispy black. The unfathomably androgynous vocals of Angela Gossow are undoubtedly a key role in this. Joining Arch Enemy in 2001, Gossow gives the band one of the rarest assets in music and opens the door for the female population of wailers. Her grit and strength will rattle the cartilage right out of your knees and is literally unlike anything you have heard.

Doomsday Machine is captivating from intro (which giddily reminded me of the opening theme from X-Men and what is cooler than that?) to end. The oh so chunkiness of the brothers Amott guitars is basically orgasmic. The tracks are relentless and the only breather you are allowed is during a little undistorted Floyd homage in “My Apocalypse” Overall, very un-disappointing.

Sleater-Kinney, Mary Timony @ The Warfield, published July 2005, Zero Magazine

I remember Mary Timony. I remember her first not as the singer of Helium, one of the 90s girl empowerment vehicles more on the Murmurs side of the spectrum than the 7 Year Bitch end. No, I remember Mary Timony being ridiculed for her large nostrils on an episode of Beavis and Butthead. While the size of said nostrils is a subjective matter, the size of Mary Timony’s sound is a lot bigger and deceptively so. Timony’s act consisted of only herself and a drummer. This two-piece recipe is usually a thin mix yet other bass-less bands like Hella and Mates of State have formed their own way to make it cook and this is also true for Timony. However, someone neglected to tell Miss Mary that just because you tour with Sleater-Kinney doesn’t mean you have to sound like Corin Tucker. That was annoying.

This was nowhere near the band I met almost a decade ago yet everything essentially great about it remained the same: Corin Tucker’s wailing voice stronger and sharper than adamantium claws, harmonious guitars reflecting the perfect chemistry between Tucker and Carrie Brownstein that could only be further illustrated by the goo-goo faces they made at each other the entire show. This was the performance of a band that no longer needed to prove they could play. No longer needed to tell the entire world that women could hold their own in male-dominated rock. They’ve already done it and they continue to answer the question that others couldn’t: "now what?"

WALKEN--published July 2005, Zero Magazine

It is undeniable fact that the three greatest bands to come out of Half Moon Bay in the past five years have been Under A Dying Sun, Insignia, and of course Walken. Anyone familiar with the former is most likely in love with their brand of hyper-gasm, melodic weirdo metal. Walken has always had a vast range of sound that managed to make them genre-less yet still distinct which is true of some of the best bands out there.

So why they went in whatever direction they did to produce their latest self titled is beyond me. This new work is only at times a shadow of the Walken we know and love. Robust breakdowns carry this album yet they are cruelly sparse. There are even points while listening where you can easily convince yourself that 311 got together to cover a few Walken songs and this is some sort of a joke. And if only that were true.

Instead, the reality faced is that Walken have taken some steps into an abyss most likely the result of changes in line-up. It’s forgivable for loyalists and even enjoyable to those who aren’t familiar with the glory days of this band. Only time will tell whether this is in fact a solid version of Walken or a transitional funk.

FEERSUM ENNJIN--published July 2005, Zero Magazine

Over a decade ago, Paul D’Amour wrote a bass line that made my heart swell three sizes larger exactly like the Grinch’s when he realized he couldn’t steal Christmas from Whoville. It was in the song "Sober" that D’Amour produced the first gurgles of a rock baby that would grow up to be a goddamned rock monster. Yet, D’Amour shortly thereafter left Tool to pursue his own…interests. His latest is the solo project Feersum Ennjin.

Immediate reaction, this five song EP doesn’t waste time breaking any promises of ferocity that a name like Feersum Ennjin would possibly make. The expectations of a smooth roar are shattered with the delivery this stale, diet Nine Inch Nails, kitten mew. Even the very first notes sound like a cheesy, ring-tonesque report of Third Eye which is only made further appalling by misplaced Cure synth.

The most annoying thing about this album is that you can come really close to liking it until you realize that D’Amour was a bass player for a reason. His voice sucks. Maybe back in the day, when D’Amour was the prettiest member of Tool, someone approached him and told him he was too good looking to be a faceless bassist and he should do his own thing. I’m hoping this is true instead of someone actually telling him he could write better songs on his own.