ALBUM REVIEWS I - Music - http://maxpages.com/aeazine/ALBUM_REVIEWS

King Diamond The Puppet Master Metal Blade
Since I’ve been a major fan of Mercyful Fate and King Diamond for the longest time, and many things happen with this album meriting descriptions that would take up this full column, we’re going to spend a lot of time discussing The Puppet Master. I should warn the reader in advance of a couple things. First, if you’re easily sickened by graphic detail, this album may be more than you can handle. Second, while I don’t intend to reveal every detail, what I write would probably be the equivalent to “spoilers” in film reviews. So for those braver Diamond bangers who can stomach what they know to expect already from interviews, you’re still better off having the most shocking moments sprung on you without warning.
By now many fans know about what Diamond and his band experienced this past year. It should be no secret if you’ve kept up with interviews and updates at the official Mercyful Fate/King Diamond website that their touring and recording schedules were severely affected by internet downloading. If you haven’t heard about this, go visit covemworldwide.org to learn more. Those fans that do know will rejoice learning they braved the setbacks which stood in their way and emerged from the other side, to coin a phrase, to release an album King promised would make up for missed tour dates. As they consistently manage to do themselves one better every time, The Puppet Master surpasses everything they’ve done.
As always, you can expect the heaviest, most relentlessly intense music to hear since great care went into the making of this album. I made the reference to “spoilers” because I was thinking of something I read in an interview with Diamond from a long time ago. I think he and the interviewer discussed the possibility of turning Them and Conspiracy into a movie. If this was done with The Puppet Master, it would mark a return to the old school horror of The Exorcist and Dawn of the Dead with a vengeance, and moviegoers weaned on Scream would get the shock of their lives if they saw it. Diamond has already been called metal’s answer to Stephen King, so maybe this could still happen at some point?
The Puppet Master certainly opens like a movie. Someone known only as The Unfortunate Man recounts traumatic experiences where he experienced deep, unbearable loss. Under the anguish put across, a sense of tension builds until it overtakes all else, and with the announcement from an eerie, disembodied voice, the “opening scene” becomes the most bizarre puppet show you’ll ever see. After watching the whole picture and seeing how it ends, it may do for puppet shows what Friday the 13th and The Blair Witch Project did for camping trips, and you’ll likely stay away from any puppet show you should happen upon. While you’re at it, don’t try to track down any mysterious figures walking the streets at night.
Diamond and guitarist Andy LaRocque went through a painstaking process writing and arranging what would become a story that would impress itself upon the listener in a way they wouldn’t likely forget, where darkness overshadows the light with horrible finality. Equally painstaking were the efforts of Diamond, LaRocque, guitarist Mike Wead, bassist Hal Patino and drummer Matt Thompson to record and mix the material. The months of hard work were worth it as this album has an entirely new personality. The band experiment with new directions in the spirit of taking their songwriting farther. Gloomier keyboards and what sound like dissonant chords are added to smoother transitions between time changes and subtler atmospheres in Diamond’s vocals, building on their work on Abigail II so naturally they sound meant to work together.
The Puppet Master is Diamond’s first disc to incorporate female vocals, giving it more of an operatic atmosphere. This doesn’t take away from Diamond’s presence as his vocal harmonies have more subtlety between the low pitched and high pitched parts. In many cases, like during “The Puppet Master” the high pitched vocals are added to lines where Diamond sings lower, then come to the front of the verse, then fade into the background again. Livia Zita’s vocals give him a wider framework to exercise his efforts to stress key moments in the story with more weight. Trading verses to represent the interaction between The Unfortunate Man and Victoria, Diamond and Zita funnel all the emotions into a wider spectrum in a way that King’s vocals and the accompanying music benefits from as it all pierces you deeply with horror and isolation.
That’s the other thing about this album; how it projects everything that happens into your consciousness as if you were the one experiencing it yourself. If you’re faint hearted you’ll pray this is just a dream as fervently as The Unfortunate Man finds himself doing during his ordeal, only to find out it ain’t so. But it’s all the worse for him since after the story’s over, there’s no putting the CD away and coming back to reality. It goes on forever with no salvation, when the fate of he and Victoria may have been more merciful, no pun intended, if he had gone with her to the puppet show the second time.
“Midnight” is more like a short song than an intro, setting a tone of coming to the end of a long journey in hell with only profound loneliness waiting at the end. The vocal harmonies of Zita and Diamond, rising from beneath as he prepares you for the start of the show promise interesting possibilities for what she will add when we hear her next. Before that, the title song establishes the setting of the horror that takes place, offering foreshadowing when we learn the puppets can move on their own when their strings are dropped, and one of them looks straight at the Unfortunate Man who got close enough for a good look. Zita returns with “Magic,” “Emerencia” and “Blue Eyes” as instead of tapering off, the horror grows until it reaches “No More Me,” perhaps the goriest, most intense song King ever wrote. Wait until you hear “Darkness” and “So Sad” where the previous horror is followed by agony and hopelessness overshadowing all else.
While most of the details should be left to you, The Puppet Master has the most graphic descriptions of any Diamond album to date, and that is not even mentioning the psychological horror you’re bound to experience. What interested me is that not only are the two mentioned above besides the Puppet Master and his wife Emerencia presented as characters, but so are the puppets they created, the blood used to keep them alive, the scalpel used in the ritual, even the setting of Budapest, Hungary the tale is set to. Everything is presented as living entities, which makes the presence of death all the more difficult to bear for the ill-fated lovers in the hands of the baddies. When you hear what happens to them you might feel those sympathetic pains you get in your body when watching something your mind registers as too much to absorb.
One thing to be certain of is after you hear this all the way through you’ll be thankful there’s no such thing as a Puppet Master in real life, hopefully. The limited edition digipak release of The Puppet Master includes a bonus DVD of Diamond in full makeup and costume, sitting at a table lit with candles inside what resembles an ancient castle, telling the complete story of the Puppet Master. You can preview a clip from the DVD at covenworldwide.org.

Morbid Angel Heretic Earache
Morbid Angel devised an interesting deterrent to Net bootleggers with Heretic. Which will likely prove a pain in the ass for those of us who actually pay for our music, but we know who’s to blame for that. Bearing this in mind, you’ll have to buy this CD and load it into your stereo to see what I mean (no pun intended for the Metallica reference), ‘cause that’s all I’m mentioning about it. Anyway, while I have to admit it hasn’t exactly been the same Morbid Angel for me since David Vincent departed, Steve Tucker continues to learn and grow with Trey Azagthoth and Pete Sandoval, who in turn perfected the book they themselves wrote on death metal years before it became firmly entrenched in every country you can think of and a few you wouldn’t expect death metal bands to hail from. Tucker’s voice has grown lower-pitched and more commanding through his work on Formulas Fatal to the Flesh and Gateways to Annihilation. Hate Eternal’s Erik Rutan helped round out Morbid Angel’s sound on Gateways as second guitarist, but Heretic sees Azagthoth hold court on his own, experimenting with tricks he hadn’t attempted previously. One thing he had in mind to surprise the fans with is adding subtle textures to the classical shades the band have incorporated into their music since Covenant. Some of these are more obvious during the solos and harmonies, but others you have to listen a little more closely for in songs like “Beneath the Hollow” and the oddly Immortal-esque “Curse the Flesh.” Adding this to an already complex style should further establish Morbid Angel as one of the best bands in their genre. As always, their professionalism is top-notch, making the work that went into these songs undeniably clear.

Sick Of It All Life On The Ropes Fat Wreck Chords
Life On The Ropes is Sick Of It All’s first studio album since Live In A Dive captured the essence of their live show. For this I won’t say something run-of-the-mill like “they’re staying in touch with the scene” because that’s already a given for a band that’s done so for sixteen years. I will say the music sounds weathered from experience but more dead set than ever on being heard. No explanation deemed necessary as to why they’re speaking out about what they see around them. Sick Of It All hope to visit as many stops as possible while touring to support this album, which Armand said will be the focus of their show (see sickotitall.com), hinting that whether older classics will be played depends on audience participation. The traditional anthemic verse and chorus patterns in the songs will present many opportunities to join in from the dance floor. If “For Now” is one of the songs that made it onto their set list, it will receive a huge fan response as it’s a heartfelt call for hardcore kids everywhere to remember why they devoted themselves to hardcore, what keeps them going to the shows, the changes they hope to see. That may sound suspiciously clichéd, but as the band consistently set the same example you can tell it’s honest. The opening cut “Relentless” is getting airplay on some college radio stations; this is a good thing because it addresses the acquisition of cash at the expense of the working stiff. It’s more direct than “Injustice System” off Blood, Sweat and No Tears while leaving more room for interpretation as to whether it’s the rich or the government that’s exploiting the less well-to-do. Placing this song next to “All My Blessings,” “The Land Increases” and “The Innocent” is appropriate because the band make it clear there are still problems to be addressed regardless of how good things appear to be on the surface. John Joseph of Cro-Mags and Both Worlds makes a guest appearance on the second verse of “Fakin’ The Punk,” which reminds us of the true meaning of hardcore according to those who have lived it since it first began as a movement. Is the look or the values more important? Is saying the words or meaning them more important? Sick Of It All would be the first to tell you it’s the latter in most cases, and they are still dedicated to what it all means. This is what makes Life On The Ropes worthwhile. Perhaps this is also why Sick Of It All are as respected as they are.

Dave Brockie Experience Songs For The Wrong Metal Blade
Although I always knew GWAR’s frontman as Oderus Urungus, I knew the band’s bassist/vocalist of the Dave Brockie Experience was the same guy before reading the bio provided by Metal Blade. I remind you a few of my comments should be absorbed with a modicum of tongue-in-cheek humor. The first time I heard “Damn That Money” it wasn’t long before I recognized the slightly nasal, faux-melodic inflection from my GWAR albums and concluded this is the same guy singing here. And lo and behold, joining Brockie in the only trio who can get away with naming themselves after Jimi Hendrix’s band are guitarist Mike Derks aka Balsac the Jaws of Death, and drummer Brad Roberts nee Jismak the Gusher. GWAR aren’t ready to disband, however; after a break Brockie and the boys are taking they’ll continue their ongoing saga as the Scumdogs of the Universe. As we’re waiting for the next chapter to be unleashed, we have an album’s worth of songs that were too silly, cheese-laden and simply awful to release on a GWAR album. Metal Blade says the purpose of this band is “to suck as badly as possible” while skirting the edges of what is acceptable subject matter by politically correct standards while discussing the war on terrorism in the same breath, or in most cases just writing the most inane and meaningless stuff the band can think up (and wait til you see the pictures they put in the liners). In many places this is a bit more punky than what GWAR have done for the past few albums, in others there is the nuttiness we’ve become used to, only a bit nuttier in its own way since there’s no storyline limiting lyrical direction as DBX sing about squirrels, compare music to beer, advise you to make money off your friends, and sing some more about boys falling off logs and becoming dogs. If you’re thinking by now there’s nothing that’s particularly relevant about what I’m describing, outside of Brockie making a fool of himself (back to tongue in cheek humor) while his bandmates watch, you’re probably right. But “Shatilla” made me remember “No Turning Back” from S.O.D.’s Speak English Or Die as the only serious cut in a sea of jokes. “Medieval Wwrewolf” has a surf-punk atmosphere that might appeal to Misfits fans.

Attila Csihar The Beast of Attila Csihar Southern Lord
I gave a hard listen to “Heaven,” one of the songs Attila Csihar borrowed from Tormentor’s debut Anno Domini for this compilation, and considered how differently death metal might have evolved had it been more easily accessible to the US and England. From what I recall, this song doesn’t sound too dissimilar to what the earliest death metal bands did before the inevitable moment when Napalm Death paved the way for the use of blast beats. The song, recorded all the way back in 1988, has the same chaotic guitars, high-flying percussion and progressive expansion from thrash that the early death metal bands made sicker. The only difference besides the higher pitched vocals is the production is more abrasive; that’s why I suddenly find myself doing a 180 and wondering if labels would have signed Tormentor or found them too extreme even for their target audience. At any rate, the Hungarians ended up a lasting influence on trailblazing Norwegian bands like Mayhem whose De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas established Csihar as one of black metal’s most instantly recognizable vocalists. Outtakes from Mayhem’s recording sessions, besides songs collaborated on with Limbonic Art, Anaal Nathrakh and Emperor who covered “Funeral Fog,” are part of this retrospective of all the bands Csihar has worked with, which I’m glad Southern Lord had the courage to release since we need to be reminded of how black metal was before it became a more widely accepted expression. From the painstaking effort of compiling this CD you can tell how seriously Csihar takes his fifteen years as a vocalist. The liner notes have a brief history of how each song came to exist, and he covers as much ground as possible between metal and other styles he’s dabbled in. As Aborym are likewise helping maintain Csihar’s cult status it’s appropriate “Out of Shell” and “Here Is No God” are featured here, but the most interesting songs, at least from my perspective, are from his side projects. Plasma Pool’s “Chanceless Religion” and Professor Fate’s “Ghost Dance” offer cryptic takes on trance and techno, which many black metal artists were known to experiment with. All we need now is a collaboration with Charmand Grimloch of Tartaros if Csihar were ever to express interest in working with him in the future. This would prove interesting between Grimloch’s otherworldly songwriting and the pure evil Csihar projects in his vocals.

Destruction Metal Discharge Nuclear Blast
I remember Destruction had a falling out with Sodom once they started gaining notoriety in America, which supposedly started some war of words between the two bands. They seem to have buried the hatchet today since they embarked on a world tour with Kreator after resurfacing a few years ago. Successfully demolishing each stop must have inspired them to stick around, because they’ve unleashed two more albums. Metal Discharge as a title may sound generic but the album is more in touch with Destruction’s classic days. Nuclear Blast saw fit to release it in a double album format a month prior to its U.S. street date, so European fans will have one extra CD to brag about before most of us on this side of the Atlantic hear the album. That is with the exception of those lucky journalists who got an advance copy. Mine didn’t come with the additional CD so I can’t tell you what’s on it. What I can tell is the rawness Peter Tagtgren gave All Hell Breaks Loose has toned down enough that you can hear all the instruments more clearly, especially Mike’s guitars, which have always been the most recognizable part of Destruction’s demonic, streamlined style. His intricacy as we heard it on Eternal Devastation and Release From Agony has been stripped to its basics so most of Discharge sounds like Destruction did on earlier discs with a few more time changes thrown in than Infernal Overkill packed into one song. New drummer Marc sounds more like Tommy on the releases mentioned above, his beats and frenzied fills calling back memories of a more chaotic Destruction that didn’t concern itself with subtlety. Founding bassist/vocalist Schmier vocalizes in a similar way to those days, but his presence is probably the most “modern” aspect of Destruction’s sound as he elevates his voice into the screams we heard 2000 and onward. If you log onto www.destruction.de you can download their video for “Desecrators of the New Age.”

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Page Updated Thu Jul 22, 2004 8:40pm EDT