SOUNDTRACK: PALLBEARER-“Legend” (2012).
For the past several years, NPR has been one of my favorite resources for new music. They feature a new song every day, they play first listens of new albums, they have downloadable concerts and much more. And every year their best albums picks invariably feature and album or two that I hadn’t heard of which prove to be amazing.
But this first half of the year’s album picks are really kind of disappointing. It’s a diverse mix (Leonard Cohen, Sharon van Etten, Bobby Womack, fun., some rappers I don’t know, a little classical, Spiritualized). I’m not saying these choices are bad, I actually haven’t heard most of them. But there was nothing that made me jump up and say, how did I miss that?
But then there was this cut from Pallbearer. It’s a dirgey death metal song, slow and heavy. Lately I’ve enjoyed death metal but I’ve been disappointed by the vocalists. Pallbearer has a guy who can sing and whose voice rings through the sludge. And there is sludge–some of the notes sound like the guitar is completely de-tuned. But what’s cool about the recording is that it doesn’t sound sloppy or mushy–you can hear the sludginess in all its clarity. The guitar solo is interesting too. It also soars above the sludge, but it’s not a shredding solo, it’s melodic and quite pretty.
I’ll check out more from Pallbearer. I’m always excited to see NPR promoting death metal. It’s as good juxtaposition as the parts of this song itself.
You can see the NPR choices here.
[READ: June 10, 2012] Ghostopolis
Sarah gave me this book after reading it quickly and raving about it (this after our friend Megan gave it to her and raved about it). And I read it quickly and will rave about it now too.
The book opens with an airplane that is having engine trouble. The airplane, it turns out, is being flown by a little boy name Garth Hale. Because it’s a toy plane (the reveal is great). He’s being gross (barf bags everywhere) until his mother can’t take it anymore. But she has reason to be gentle with him. She has just found out that her son’s disease is incurable.
Meanwhile Frank Gallows is a special agent whose job is to send ghosts back to the afterlife. He has a cool handcuff-like device that he has to attach to the ghosts’ arms or legs. He then pushes a button and poof, back they go. His first assignment today is to get Benedict Arnold (who plays a big role later on) out of the world. Then he goes after a horse–a skeletal nightmare horse–which is overpowers for him. As it floats through a wall, Frank manages to shackle its legs and poof. Only after the poof does he realize that the horse was on top of a little boy. A boy named Garth Hale. Frank is in big trouble. (more…)
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I’m more or less done with going to heavy metal shows. There are still a few bands I’ll go to see, but overall, there’s not much left that I’m curious about.
I Just Read About That... 