Day Six: Progressive Self-Indulgence
Dream Theater // Train of Thought
Dream Theater came to my attention when they were added to Dave Mustaine’s inaugural “Gigantour” summer festival series. I never made it to one but kept reading good things about Dream Theater in early 2005, so I thought I’d give their Images and Words album a try. I had already heard that half the band was from the Berklee College of Music and that Dream Theater were essentially the gold standard for progressive metal. After my first listen, I liked it but I wasn’t totally hooked yet until getting another album by them: Train of Thought.
This one grabbed me right away and introduced me to all that progressive metal can be. John Petrucci’s taut guitar riffs and solos that seemed to spiral and twist through music scales and techniques beyond count (particularly the last one in “This Dying Soul”) were a completely different animal from anything I’d ever heard from Megadeth, Metallica, or Iron Maiden (sorry guys). And Jordan Rudess’ keyboard wizardry inspired me to get a piano of my own and start learning how to play, even knowing that I’d never in a million years be able to touch his stuff.
The song “Stream Of Consciousness” is a case study on how to write an eleven-minute instrumental and keep the listener engaged the entire time (a lesson Metallica could have applied while recording the Death Magnetic album). The songs on Train of Thought are all impeccably performed and relatively restrained, in a good way (unlike some of their later projects). At only one disc with seven tracks, and reportedly taking not more than a few weeks to write, Train of Thought comes in and shows you what a band full of actual musical virtuosos sounds like.
Honorable mention: Symphony X // Iconoclast
I probably got their Paradise Lost album first in 2008 and it wasn’t until 2011 that they came out with Iconoclast. By this time, the reigning progressive metal champs, Dream Theater, were already starting to lose me with their last release in a trend that would (in my opinion) unfortunately continue through this day.
Enter Iconoclast, the album where possibly the second-best modern progressive metal band managed to “out-Dream Theater” Dream Theater. The album leads off with a title track that’s 30 seconds of electronic effects building up leading into a riff that I couldn’t even wrap my head around. That kicks off a 10-minute long instant classic and a “man vs. machines” concept album which could have been pulled from the best parts of the Matrix. With tracks named “Bastards of the Machine,” “Children of a Faceless God,” and “Electric Messiah,” you know you’re in for something dark and heavy. The album closer, “When All is Lost” starts out slow and builds to an interlude, pre-solo riff, and guitar solo that’s so fast, intense, and technically perfect that every time I listen to it, I always rewind back to the six minute and play it again to the end.
Nature abhors a vacuum and as Dream Theater faded from my regular playlists, Symphony X stepped in to show how it’s done.
Day Seven: Is That Even… MUSIC?
Nine Inch Nails // Year Zero
At least in the studio, Nine Inch Nails has never been a traditional “rock instrument” band. As far back as the mid-nineties, Trent Reznor had said (I’m paraphrasing here) that he didn’t care if he was surrounded by the best musicians in the world; he’d still use a drum machine. Then he went and wrote “The Perfect Drug,” a single which sounds like it’s 90% drum machine.
Anyway, replacing the usual guitars, bass, piano, and drums that make up your typical rock record (though those are still present where needed), Trent has steadily experimented with different electronic rhythms, loops, samples, and more throughout the years leading up to 2007’s Year Zero. Not only was this a concept album envisioning a paranoid and dystopian United States living under a semi-autocratic government and its partner in crime the religious right (referred to as “Bureau of Morality”), but the marketing campaign accompanying the release was one of a kind. Among other things, it utilized USB drives containing MP3s hidden in bathrooms at concerts, vague coded messages on t-shirts at the merchandise tables, and a compact disc with a thermal-sensitive CD face that is black when cool and changes color to white with hidden text after generating heat from being played. All this tied into an online alternative reality game which in itself was ambitious and creative as hell.
Back to the music, the album is shot-through with electronic dissonance which to the untrained ear can sound in certain places (COUGH COUGH “The Great Destroyer”) like the extended mix of a 56K modem dialing into the Internet and then going absolutely batshit insane with distortion, glitches, warbles, and other computer-generated noise FOR THE SECOND HALF OF AN ENTIRE SONG. And I highly recommend that one!
Year Zero takes you on a dark and creative journey into electronic music that isn’t written to sound “pleasant.” It’s a form of art that’s meant to be jarring and fit a similarly dark and creative journey into an alternative America which isn’t too far away from a reflection of our own times. To think that the song “Another Version of the Truth” was written a full decade before “alternative fact” entered our national lexicon…
Honorable mention: Mick Gordon // DOOM (2016) Soundtrack
There were a lot of ways that 2016’s reboot of the DOOM franchise could have gone but “total success” wasn’t one I had been anticipating. But it was and it took the world by storm with its brutality and return to some of the traits that made the original games so beloved. One of the new additions which received unexpected praise was the soundtrack by Mick Gordon. The original DOOM and DOOM II had 90s MIDI rock songs which served their purpose with the limitations of the technology. DOOM 64 and DOOM 3 had more ambient soundtracks, save for a metal main theme to the latter from Chris Vrenna (formerly of Nine Inch Nails, coincidentally).
The DOOM (2016) soundtrack, however… was nothing like ANYTHING that came before it, either in the DOOM series or any other games that I can think of. Whenever a fight would start, ambient background music made way for one of many pulse-pounding and über-heavy mixtures of metal riffs, chords, blast beats, and electronic bleats to match the savagery of pumping demons full of firepower then then literally ripping them apart for a “glory kill.” It’s certainly not for everyone and there are some parts of the soundtrack that even I had trouble actually… liking during my first playthrough. So if unprecedented intensity, eight-stringed guitars, and all the electronic distortion that you can shake a shotgun at are your jam, “Rip and Tear” and “BFG Division” are as good a place as any to start.
Day Eight: The Growlers
Epica // The Divine Conspiracy
While not, in my opinion, a Nightwish clone, Epica is a “beauty and the beast” style metal band from the Netherlands who I found on Pandora around 2010. I mentioned earlier that for the longest time, death metal vocals really weren’t my thing. Nightwish started opening the door a crack with a few brief verses or passages here and there but the lyrics were for the most part, female-fronted and clean.
Hearing “The Obsessive Devotion” from Epica’s The Divine Conspiracy took that cracked door and opened it a lot wider. All of the male parts, totaling maybe even 50% of the lyrics sung on the album, are in death- and black metal style and if you can’t get past that, then this band really isn’t for you. This took me a bit out of my comfort zone to start but I kept on listening because at the time, I REALLY liked the music and Simone Simons’ voice. And it wasn’t long before I liked the gruff vocals as well. Since then, Epica have never really disappointed and I was lucky enough to see them live when they were touring in the US a few years ago.
Nowadays, I really don’t bat an eye (or an ear?) when the clean vocals stop and the rough ones begin. Though I would say that I still have my limits that I don’t see being crossed anytime soon. Like, I don’t know… an entire album being sung entirely in black metal style or deathcore, grindcore, or anything else in the extreme metal direction. I’m good without any of that for now, thank you.
Honorable mention: Wintersun // Time I
I don’t know too much about Wintersun and wouldn’t call myself a superfan by any stretch. But what I do know is that according to my iTunes library, I’ve played “Sons of Winter and Stars” a total of 220 times as of today. And it’s a thirteen and a half minute-long song! Most of this album is sung death metal style with occasional cleaner breaks throughout and there are only five tracks on the album: three epics and two instrumental intros to tracks 2 and 5. It’s a perfect example of a concise record of a few songs which progress through several movements before each coming to an epic finale.
The first Wintersun album was very different by being a more traditional collection of eight death metal tracks. Their third CD, The Forest Seasons, was similar to the second and contained only four songs (a concept album for the four, you guessed it, seasons). While I liked Spring and Summer, Fall and Winter never really caught on for me. But whether or not we ever get a Time II in the future, Time I was my introduction to the band and brought some phenomenal material to my attention that I clearly like very, very much.
Day Nine: Ladies’ Night
BAND-MAID // New Beginning
Today’s entry on the ground-breaking albums list was a tough one, since I kind of wanted both bands to be in the top spot. But in the end, there can only be one and I chose BAND-MAID for the album cover. After going down a rabbit hole of popular all-female Japanese rock and metal acts and after listening to New Beginning, I found them to be the most catchy, talented, and consistently good across all the material I’d heard. Even BABYMETAL (see below) has their misfires and head-scratchers on each album but New Beginning is nine excellent rock tracks over 34 minutes.
Two of my personal favorites are “Real Existence” and “Beauty and the Beast,” the latter of which I’m convinced samples a riff from, of all things, the Quake II soundtrack. Seriously, listen to right around the 2:50 mark and tell me that doesn’t sound like 0:30 from “Kill Ratio.” But obscure old gaming soundtrack references aside, New Beginning is a high-energy disc that doesn’t overstay its welcome…
…AND OH BY THE WAY, the band dresses up as Japanese “maid cafe” servers for all of their group photos and concerts. The drummer even has a tiny little hat which somehow miraculously manages to cling on for dear life as she pounds away at the skins. You want style? You want substance? BAND-MAID’s got both.
Honorable mention: BABYMETAL // Metal Resistance
I think we all knew this one was coming. It took a few years for the metal world to wrap their heads around BABYMETAL and decide if they were A) a lucky fluke, B) an artificial musical experiment created in a lab, or C) GASP! maybe even the real deal.
From the start (after first hearing “KARATE” on the Metal Resistance album), I’ve been in the real deal camp and continue to be amazed at what these young ladies and their backing band of super heavy metal pros have pulled off. Su, Moa, and Yui (who departed from the band in 2017/2018) may not play any instruments themselves on stage (except maybe one of them on special occasions, I believe) but having seen them in concert or in any of the promotional videos, you know that they can dance their asses off and have an infectious enthusiasm that will melt any skeptic’s heart of ice.
Now three albums in and with showing no signs of stopping, even some of the doubters are beginning to soften. The girls may have been born well after heavy metal’s heyday in the 1980s, but that doesn’t mean they can’t freshen things up for us and have an absolute blast while doing it. PA PA YA!!
Day Ten: The Grand Finale
Metallica // Metallica
Metallica’s self-titled fifth album, AKA The Black Album, is their best-selling one and depending on who you talk to, in a tie with Master of Puppets for their best. And while It isn’t my favorite of theirs, it’s impacted me in a way no other album ever has. I bought it on CD probably in 1996 and listened to it religiously throughout high school, but it wasn’t until the summer of 2000 when I was in Los Angeles on vacation that two life-changing things happened:
- I went to a Starbucks for the very first time
- I walked into either a Guitar Center or a chain store just like one
The Starbucks story has been well-documented already and isn’t what I’m here to talk about today. But at that guitar store… I want to say that I had been looking for the debut A Perfect Circle album and hadn’t found any record shops yet, so I thought it was worth a shot. I remember slowly walking around the guitar store, just taking the whole place in. To my knowledge, I had never even held a guitar in my life, at least not in a serious way. Had I picked one up sometime in the nineties and made a bunch of ugly random noises? Eh, possibly… Anyway, as I moved through the store, I came to a large open space where there were small practice amps for customers to plug into and try out a guitar or bass from the wall. There was a guy probably not too much older than me who was sitting on one and tuning whichever floor model he had grabbed. When he was done with that, he turned up the volume and the distortion and started playing the intro riff to “Through the Never.”
So even though Metallica aren’t my top band, the Black Album isn’t my top CD, and this song isn’t even up there in my top 100, I cocked my head and stared at him. Right then and there, I quietly said to myself, “I could probably do that.”
That would have been in early August. By the end of the month, I was starting my first semester at Penn State and in September, I had my first guitar: A grey Ibanez AX120. Being a complete newbie, I started taking lessons with a local teacher in Hazleton and also found the perfect place to practice on campus… down in the South Hall laundry room. I’d haul down the guitar, the amp, a mini CD boombox, and either printed out or hand written guitar tablature. At the time, I was learning almost entirely Metallica material from the Black Album since, hey let’s face it, they’re the biggest and most legendary metal band in the world, despite my various nitpicks they’re exceptionally good, and because I couldn’t even touch any Megadeth stuff yet.
During that first semester, I practiced more than any other three month span of my life and eventually played my first song: a crude, stripped down version of A Perfect Circle’s “Judith” which my guitar teacher helped A LOT with. The fingerings weren’t totally right and I wasn’t even playing it in the right tuning but it still sounded close enough for me and I was thrilled that I could play one thing from start to finish.
Since then, I may have never gone on to superstardom and most of my playing is just for myself, but I’ve also done my share of college talent shows, open mics, and even twice after hours at work parties. You may even have heard that I once paid a ton of money for a private lesson with Dave Mustaine, which was worth every penny. It’s my instrument of choice and it all started back in that store in California with some random guy I’ll never see again playing Metallica. That’s what makes this song and this album the most influential out of everything I’ve discussed over the last ten days. A song that makes you FEEL is one thing, but one that makes you DO is quite another.