Tales from Endian Project – The Rothbauer Curve

Now that Behind the Bitmask is confirmed for November 1st, there’s no need to label this a mere preview. Endian Project’s universe continues to expand unabated, with the assistance of today’s installment. Please note it’s a nominal sequel to “Dark Pact“. You shouldn’t need to read it to understand this one, but you should read it anyways for the pleasure of reading fiction.

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Imagine that you had a machine that could perform one billion computations per second. The only caveat is that your options for each computation are very limited — arithmetic, logic gates, barrel shifting, and so forth. You have to break down your task into the smallest possible pieces; only then can you program a computer to do your bidding. Now imagine you’re a wizard, like Gandalf in Lord of the Rings. Through an unseen force, you bend reality to your whim. Gandalf’s powers must have come from years of training and careful study. Perhaps he didn’t have time to learn other things, but the hobbits at least respected his wisdom. When I read fantasy literature, I often find wizards ostracized and even attacked for their strangeness, their seclusion, and their knowledge, even if it so turns out they’re powerful enough to fend off all attackers. There’s a certain mindset in our society that fears expertise in all its forms and refuses to accept anything it can’t learn the hard way, and I’m certain the treatment of wizards on and off paper is this mindset made manifest.

This made me less optimistic about my discoveries at DARPA — that you can literally perform reality—bending magic with a fast enough computer and the right software. I knew something was up when Abe changed his username on our server to “Merlin”. This alone demonstrates that humanity should not be trusted with these powers, but when has anyone ever withheld a technology from their fellow humans because they weren’t ready? I digress, though. I’d already lost one skilled colleague to rampant magic, and I didn’t know how to prevent future deaths. Poor Dan Morgenstern. Even so, our team was the best you could get in the free world. DARPA hired anyone skilled enough and willing to advance the goals of the US government. My ID card didn’t say “Maureen Rothbauer, Ph.D.,” for nothing. I’d studied long and hard to be allowed to be this arrogant, and I was sure it was the only way to keep everyone alive and doing science.

It was a cold April day in the middle of 1976. Things had cooled down from the shocks of the oil crisis, at least in the USA, but the 3rd world was still home to interesting (read: chaotic, dangerous) events. More than one government declared itself a Marxist people’s republic in those days… which they promptly demonstrated by, you know, repressing the people. For the people. We used the same rhetoric, but for very different purposes.

When I arrived at my office that day, the first thing I saw was a lengthy document in my inbox. I picked it up; it had some heft to it, and it looked like one of the girls in the secretarial pool had been conscripted to prepare this on my typewriter. I wondered how she’d gotten the security clearance to read and perceive what she was typing — was she on the verge of moving from an administrative to an engineering track? Only time would tell. It’d be a large gob of time, too — this was a detailed, 50 page analysis of a recent battery of tests we’d done in the last two months. This was mostly boilerplate, though, so hopefully it wouldn’t take too long to read. Some context — about two years ago, we’d isolated routines in our code that caused quantum fluctuations, allowing us to reliably accumulate mana (the energy reserves that fuel all magic. I was later able to cut the code required in half with some well placed optimizations. The next step was to use our growing understanding of mana to cast some spells. Figuring out how to cast a meaningful spell was a feat in and of itself; I’d doused more than one terminal with coffee trying to learn the ropes.

“What did you even do, Alice? Our minicomputer is literally swearing at us!” I’d snarled on a particularly trying day.

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Animosity – Animosity & Drumcorps: Altered Beast (2008)

Okay, at three tracks and ten minutes, this is one of the briefest recordings I’ve featured here on Invisible Blog (it even beats out Wolf’s Lair Abyss). Still, Anatomy of the Beast is jam packed with content. In short, you’ve got an IDM/breakcore musician (Drumcorps) remixing and recontextualizing the caustic and violent deathcore of Animosity. The cores are strong with this one, I suppose, but it hits all the checkmarks I like – fast, loud, abrasive, heavy on the electronica (though that’s primarily from sound convolution as opposed to, for instance, synthesizers). It’s got to be a fun way to spend a spare sixth of an hour, right?

In practice, it is. I listened to this before I made any effort to go back and figure out where Animosity was coming from. I’d looked only perfunctorily until recently, so I guess this also constitutes a partial review of the studio album this recording was based on (Animal). I don’t have a lot of listening antecedents for this sort of music, to be fair. The first that came to mind was The Red Chord‘s debut, which is substantially more splatterbrained. Ephel Duath is too jazzy, SikTh is too melodic (and polyrhythmic, to boot), Gridlink leans too far into the grind, and from then on you’re just getting further and further from what Animal is supposed to be. Still, I can feel the appeal of Animal and understand why someone would want to play with it.

The key here, though, is the remixing. After my listening experiences, I can recognize the Animal whose Anatomy informed this album, and that’s a sign that the guy at Drumcorps didn’t change all that much. The most important bit is that he rearranged the songs, moving chunks around and cutting things out as he saw fit, but Animosity’s arrangements are still broadly recognizable even after they’ve been hit with the Protools equivalent of a hacksaw. Soundwise, he relied on a couple of reliable convolving tricks. The percussion section’s been massively warped and is hardly recognizable from its shape on Animal; even when drum patterns haven’t been replaced wholesale, they’re distorted, sped up and slowed down, and otherwise rendered complex and weird. The rest of the band gets that part of the treatment as well, but they haven’t been, as far as I know, completely replaced. This concept of taking one element of a recording and completely overhauling it has some power, though. Maybe I should try it today?

Long time fans of Invisible Blog probably anticipated I’d enjoy Anatomy of the Beast, but the how of it is still interesting, right?

Highlights are disabled for albums without enough tracks. You monster.

Arch Enemy – Rise Of The Tyrant (2007)

I don’t think I’ve given this recording much attention in quite a while. Here’s the story for those of you who aren’t me – I discovered Michael Amott-era Carcass very early in my extreme metal listening days, and followed his work over to Arch Enemy because it seemed like a logical followup. Add a decade of evolution and one Angela Gossow, and you’ve got Rise of the Tyrant, for better or worse. The Gossow era of Arch Enemy seems… divisive, to say the least. I remember describing her to friends and metal fans at the time as “abrasive as hell”, before clarifying that it was a good thing in extreme metal. But is there a thing as too abrasive for this genre?

For all that Rise of the Tyrant is undeniably an extreme metal album, it’s a card carrying member of the Gothenburg-derived “melodic death metal” movement. If you’ve got synesthesia, you can probably taste the traditional/power/thrash metal influences, but you’re still getting a fast, loud, and reasonably technical metal experience. It’s the songwriting that helps make this obvious – it’s built of consonant (dare I say melodic?) riffs arranged into predictable verse-chorus structures that, at this point, I’ve heard again and again. I guess it works on some level if composers keep using it, and there are occasional deviations to help make things more interesting, but at this point, I’m pretty sure that’s not enough to keep my attention.

Ultimately, I think that’s the problem with Rise of the Tyrant – it’s not bad, but in a world with Darkane or Carcariass or even Desultor, it just seems bland. This is basically the sound of admittedly very skilled musicians phoning it in. I think past historiographic trends in metal focused on blaming Angela Gossow for many of this album’s problems, but there’s some issues with that hypothesis. Angela’s good at what she does (though you have to be okay with her specific register), but I don’t feel like she has much in the way of interesting material to work with here. The rest of the band does try to break the mold a little, as previously mentioned, but for everything they do well here, I can name a band that does it better, or at least in a more interesting fashion. At the same time, there’s no real flaws for a more spiteful version of Invisible Blog to mock. This album is, in a few words, skull-crushingly okay, and if you listen to it, you’ll probably find it enjoyable for a little while and discard it soon after.

Highlights: “Blood on Your Hands”, “I Will Live Again”, “Vultures”

Re-Review: Therion – Ho Draken Ho Megas (1993)

Symphony Masses, back in the day, was the reason I didn’t give up on Therion after the disappointment that was Theli. At the time, it seemed like the perfect midpoint between the band’s death metal past and its symphonic power metal futurepresent (though I’m not sure exactly what to make of the material from Les fleurs du mal onwards), and it gave me reason to believe you could combine both. Mind you, this was before I discovered Septicflesh. Even then, Symphony Masses has a lot going for it – even though it simplifies and softens things compared to Beyond Sanctorum, it’s still an aggressive and musically sophisticated work, a sign of what was lost and later partially regained…

If you’re familiar with Therion’s first two albums, the first thing you’d notice here is the increased emphasis on melody – there’s far more synth here than before, though the brief cameos of of operatic vocals from Beyond Sanctorum won’t be back for a while. The riffs here, though, simply aren’t as consistently atonal and grim as before – in fact, there’s a good chunk of melodic songwriting here, reminiscent of nascent melodeath. It helps that this incarnation of Therion has an active and prominent basis – Andreas Wahl, who seems to be otherwise condemned to obscurity. That’s a shame – his parts on here are creative and full of flair without completely overwhelming the rest of the ensemble. If there’s one thing you take from the instrumentation on Symphony Masses, it should be the art of bass guitar in death metal.

All of this sonic expansion, though, comes at a price. Symphony Masses is the first Therion album to have substantial amounts of jank, ushering in a problem that would dog them at least until they wrote and released Vovin. I guess it’s a result of how rapidly the band experimented and tried to incorporate new things into their sound during these years – not everything they tried was going to be a success, and sometimes budget constraints must’ve come knocking. Also, at some point, band frontman Christofer Johnsson joined the Dragon Rouge order, ushering in a sudden shift in Therion’s lyrical content and aesthetics. I’ve read that this album was essentially intended as worship music; I don’t know how much truth that holds. To my ears, this album occasionally comes off as self-conscious “mystic cults and forbidden knowledge” music – the interludes don’t particularly help with that. But what am I going to do? I can’t just run off to Stockholm and join the order, can I?

…I’m pretty sure I won’t do that. But I at least have a better understanding of how Symphony Masses fits into Therion’s career than I did 9 years ago, so that’s good.

Highlights: “Dark Princess Naamah”, “A Black Rose”, “Dawn of Perishness”

Strapping Young Lad – Heavy as a Really Heavy Thing (1995)

It’s 1995. Devin Townsend was already an experienced musician who’d performed with big names like Steve Vai and Front Line Assembly. I’m not entirely sure how Strapping Young Lad came into existence, but I’m lead to believe it was some sort of youthful exuberance and rage thing. If there’s one thing I can say with absolute certainty about Heavy As A Really Heavy  Thing, it’s that it sounds like youth and rage bundled into a loose, anarchic death/thrash/industrial blast. A primal scream, even, or perhaps an overextended metaphor? Whatever it is, it’s loud, fast, and it might just rule.

Strapping Young Lad’s debut, in short, is sophomoric at best. Take a listen to the first track (“SYL”), where Devin Townsend alternates between screaming at us about how his previous life at A&W fucking sucked and offering us a vague utopian vision rising from collective action towards… something? It’s easy to know the world’s got some structural problems, and a little harder to death-thrash, but solving these problems takes more planning. No matter – the future seeds of Devy’s musical planning are mostly present. Big dynamics, walls of sound, charismatic vocals. With everything here turned up to 11, though, there’s not a lot of room for Townsend’s other love – musicals. I think we can safely say this is the least theatrical SYL ever was, though even City is a reasonable contender for that austere throne.

After many years of listening, I’m thinking that Heavy As A Really Heavy  Thing‘s pros and cons are entirely a result of its primal, yet somewhat disorganized and scatterbrained sound. The main problem is that a lot of the tracks here feel underdeveloped – they repeat themselves a lot and still sometimes manage to end before they’ve said all they need to. On the other hand, the wall of sound production plus the kitchen sink approach Wikipedia insisted this album has (and as you know, Wikipedia never lies), you get a lot of fun asides and otherwise unexpected ingredients in your songs. The occasional piece of industrial influence doesn’t hurt, like the Jazz Jackrabbit tier “Tubelectric” beat that girds whatever “Cod Metal King” is. Finally, this album just lets loose in that psychoacoustic noise in a way that even City didn’t, preoccupied as it was with SYL’s budding musicality. Sometimes, you just want that in your life.

I mean, the end result here is corny and cheesy at the best of times, but I don’t see metal fans dissing nachos, do I? Heavy As A Really Heavy Thing is a (musical) plate of loaded nachos. It tastes great, it feels great, it’s terribly unhealthy, and you’ll feel guilty once you finally relent, bloated and queasy from your gluttonous feast.

Highlights: “SYL”, “Cod Metal King”, “Happy Camper”, “Satan’s Ice Cream Truck”

Captain Beefheart – Trout Mask Replica (1969)

Here’s a legendarily difficult recording. Some background – Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart himself) was a painter and sculptor who turned into a blues and rock enthusiast, and joined a band that became increasingly experimental (and abusive…). Trout Mask Replica is, as a strange result, a relentlessly avant-garde recording laced with the aforementioned blues-rock, a few hints of folk music, and just enough relatively normal music to make the end product extra unsettling. It’s also a double album of 78 minutes, with mostly short, concise songs broken up by interludes and outtakes, and believe me – 78 minutes of modern classical influenced insanity mixed with residual white boy blues is a challenging listen.

Between all of these musical influences, Trout Mask Replica is a pretty abrasive album. The vocals (mostly Beefheart) are a perfect example – even his sung vocals are loud, racuous, and gritty. Beefheart’s also got his signature hoarse howl – sometimes he just needs to scream over a track. Furthermore, he also conscripts his lungs in the service of brass – the horn solos here are some of this album’s most memorable moments, for better or worse. Their atonality almost crosses the threshold into psychoacoustic noise, which makes for an odd effect when it appears in the more accessible tracks. Add to this an occasionally very low fidelity recording job (read: “China Pig”), and you’ve got one part of why Trout Mask Replica is so harsh and uninviting. Then again, I’ve got an appetite for harsh and uninviting music – it can be rewarding, and there’s some depth to savor here.

The other half is the compositions, admittedly. If ever there was an album that I’d praise for avoiding standard verse-chorus-verse structures like the plague, it’d be this one. To put it in my preferred metal terminology, many of these songs are pretty much riff salads – the band grooves on one thing for a while and then moves to the next idea. This is more obvious in the album’s more dissonant moments – the takeaway is that a relatively orderly track like “Moonlight in Vermont” has more for your brain to glom onto than, for instance, “Neon Meate Dream of an Octafish”. On the other hand, you also have to deal with Captain Beefheart’s surreal, beat-flavored poetry. I’m guessing the sound of the phonemes escaping his lips matters more in this style than the actual contents of what he’s saying, but I also have to square that with Trout Mask Replica‘s deepest delves into Americana, such as the weird hobo/gingham fetishist anthem that is “Orange Claw Hammer”. It sure is odd seeing these Depression era tropes trotted out in 1969 (in the sunshine), but what are you going to do?

Actually, let’s leave it at that. “It sure is odd” kind of summates Trout Mask Replica, and I’m having trouble deciding whether it’s better when it’s strange or when it’s not.

Highlights: “Ella Guru”, “Pachucho Cadaver”, “When Big Joan Sets Up”, “Ant Man Bee”

(P.S: I think the more normal side won out by a hair…)

Agalloch – The Mantle (2002)

I’ve taken to calling this album a prime example of “Bed, Bath, and Beyond” metal. Listening to The Mantle makes me want to look at vintage furniture and burn sandalwood incense, even when its tinges of vestigial black metal somehow drift to the surface. I’ve read scattered comparisons to post-rock and neo-folk, and while I’m not enough of an expert to gauge how accurate those comparisons are, it paints a tempting picture, doesn’t it? Just imagine – old black-doom tropes stripped of their former grimdark and evil, in favor of the soft rains of Cascadia. Agalloch isn’t without their detractors, but you can hear their influence on many a band from the region.

Now, Pale Folklore wasn’t exactly a burning example of blasting, feral black metal, but The Mantle emphasizes the gentler aspects of Agalloch even more. In between the metal (and sometimes alongside it) this album is splattered with clean guitar, woodblocks, the occasional ambient soundscape. The ratio of clean singing to mid-range growls has tilted further in favor of the former, too. Either way, this is some solid semi-ambient musicianship; nothing especially out of the ordinary or technically virtuous. The key point here is that you should go into The Mantle looking for a relaxed, ambient, slightly pine scented experience. Anything else would betray a fundamental lack of research on your part.

The songwriting is about what you’d expect – laid back, slow moving, gradually shifting, consonant and melodic when it doesn’t give way to sound effects. I often complain about these drawn out albums needing some editing to cut out the filler, but I was surprised to find that isn’t the case here. For all that these tracks meander (they are basically slow, lazy rivers, to keep the nature metaphors going), the mood building here is strong enough that you want Agalloch to keep a track going for as long as possible. Think of it as riding the ambience – there’s a lot of power in that if you know how to do it. To put it concisely, The Mantle does.

As for whether a “Bed, Bath, and Beyond” metal album is what I want? Well, by asking, you’re piercing deeply into the vagaries of my shifting moods and desires. I highly doubt I’m going to listen to much Agalloch when I’m in, for example, a tech-death mood. But if I want to be mentally transported to headspace of nature and organic products and fresh-caught salmon on a bed of kale, this is about where I’d look. If that’s not enough, there’s always the Berkshires.

Highlights: “I Am The Wooden Doors”, “You Were But a Ghost in My Arms”, “…And the Great Cold Death of the Earth”