Post Trauma - Sleepless review

Year : 2012
Genre : Country Blues Rock Crossover
Label : Independent
Origin : United States
Official site : > - here - <

Post Trauma is a country/blues rock crossover audio attraction from the United States, pioneered and lead by project mastermind Billy Ulrich. 2012, November marks the release date of the first massive portion of the double sided (and highly double barreled compatible) monster LP "Sleepless/Dreamless", weighing in with 25 tracks of bourbon-soaked soulseeking. This review is based on said first segment of the soon-complete project, which is doubtless to be regarded as a full scale installation on its own merits already - the complete installment is scheduled to entertain your receivers and receptors in May, 2013. Read on to know more about this ambitious project.

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ZZ Top - La Futura review

Year : 2012
Genre : Blues Rock, Southern Rock, Boogie Rock
Label : American Recordings
Origin : United States
Rating : 8.2 / 10

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It's been more than a decade since these highly authentic and influential blues/Southern/boogie rock Ancients have emerged to resonate a full length sonic declaration, and the trio brings smoke, chrome and eminent bluesy chops, coming forth with a release that sounds to have a relentless and superbly natural desire to submit to the ZZ Top kind of music with True Love and True Blood, as about 101% of this record would serve more than highly suitable as the eloquent and expressive sonic backdrop to compliment a busy day at Merlott's.

The music of ZZ Top wasn't ever in the need of evolution, IS not in the need for it at all, and won't ever give a dime with two lost holes in it for pondering the possibility of evolution, as ZZ Top always delivered a character of music that has reached its full value timeless potential at day 1, already. The members of this band always have did what they want to do right here, right now, and this is none other than to offer 39 minutes of fresh variation on the music that grew practically immortal the day it first began to connect with the heart, courtesy of its ability to render a woman, armed with a perfect body and sporting the head of a crocodile.

ZZ Top still is ultra-original in the sense that it is sufficient to hear none other than 1.5 seconds of Billy Gibbons' guitar playing to call out : "hey, this is Billy fucking Gibbons riffing!" -second track, "Chartreuse" is a good example of this. By the 1.5th second of the song, you know without any doubt whatsoever that it is a new ZZ Top track, and this equates musical excitement in my book, and I'm pretty sure it equates that in yours, too. Read on to find out more about the spin.

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Mastodon - The Hunter review

Year : 2011
Genre : Blues Rock / Sludge
Label : Reprise / Warner Bros
Origin : United States
Rating : 7.5 / 10

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Mastodon's freshest LP to date has its fair share of moments of rabid beauty, and also moments that reek the sweat of an obese, old circus wrestler who tries to entertain you with "special" moves that simply lack the kind of attraction/risk you would ever want to revisit upon successfully enduring watching those during one miserable sitting.

This band brings you an almost friendly, tender kind of quasi-sludge to encompass the record's omnipresent urge to reveal a natural slickness on bluesy registers, but the compositions show mixed results, as great moments are often interrupted by mildly efficient choruses that sound to fail to topple their preceding occurrences.

Some refrains, as you will see through examples to be given later, sound to come through as desperate attempts to release your attention momentarily from the torment that it gets the weeping slave of when the palette of elegant bluesy vibes have lost all their entertainment value for a second or two, but STILL they come to beat your awareness up in an attempt to force your last, remaining bit of appreciation for them from you. Oh, you would have been so happy and so willing to give it to them later. Sometimes you have to HATE when they want to take away from you what you want to give.

The chorus of the track called Curl of the Burl, - which is one of the most solid songs on the entire album, along with Stargasm, the Depeche Mode sludge titular track The Hunter and a tremendous end sequence composed of the last three pieces - sounds like this : "oh, oooh, oh, oooh!" And the chorus of the follow-up track, called Blasteroid, sounds like this : "ooooh, oh!, oh, oh, oh!" Help me or let me help you, Jesus. Read more to find out how this record rumbles through and stumbles in its own footprints.


Mastodon's The Hunter has solid, traditional sludge/blues rock charms whenever it chooses to be brisk and/or narrative, whereas the "rumble" it tries to produce as yet another primer agenda, simply does not feel to be served sufficiently, courtesy of inconsistent efforts exhibited on the compositional fields of the release. The least efficient segments of this spin reek of sweat of trying to summon a vibe similar to that contained in a vile and filthy fashion on the elegant effort Uncle Acid & The Deadbeat's Blood Lust, but Mastodon's rendition of this particular target-vibe is prone to be bogged down here and there with sequences that seem to have come out of nowhere and seem to serve no particular function. This is not too frequent, fortunately, but when it occurs, it occurs rampantly. The track called Octopus Has No Friends, for instance.

Notice the soul-swallower chorus. "I'm on my way back home!", then repeat. Man, I really really wish you'd reach home. The vibe of the chorus clearly is an aspiration to toll Foo Fighter's There Goes My Hero, only this time, the vibe is squashed by the mighty penis of a mastodon. What can you say beside : aua.

Another strange thing : opening track "Black Tongue". The lyrics go like this :

"I burned out my eyes
I cut off my tongue"

...

This is like : badass! (And, by the way, you are singing pretty well without a tongue, too.)

Fortunately, a good amount of tracks come to you with strong melodic structures to successfully reveal the main ambition of embedding legit blues rock into the mastodonic sludge, and this aspiration emerges solid through both brisk and midtempo segments of the album. Then again, other tracks border on the characteristics of Simon and Garfunkelish lullabies, now supported by incapacitated coffee grinder guitars that sound to prefer to call it a wrap and go home instead ASAP. This is the track called "The Creature Lives". Later on, the song reveals the nature of a Scottish folk song, and, when you realize that the main attraction of the declaration is to soak you into the sear enigma of directionless open power chords being ringed around for two minutes or so into wild space, you truly are left without a clue.

This strange development, fortunately, is assuaged greatly by a particularly strong ending portion, as the final three tracks give you superbly sculpted, eventful and especially melodic content that packs both the rabid sludge-animal and the promise of it being tamed at any moment. A mildly inconsistent spin that sounds to have spent a tad less time in the stove than it has signed on for, but its strongest moments guarantee an intimate, eventful and serious listening experience.

Rating : 7.5 / 10

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Dream Theater - A Dramatic Turn of Events review

Year : 2011
Genre : Progressive Rock Metal
Label : Roadrunner Records
Origin : United States
Rating : 8.0 / 10

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Fanbase enigma Dream Theater comes forward with a release of fervently stacked ambitions, and the resultant stimuli is no doubt eventful enough of a contribution to assuage a secretive - but not exactly "silentive" - suspicion in the finely calibrated ear that a healthy amount of this delivery is soaked into-, and made out of compositional wizardry, exercised for the mere, grandiose sake of it.

Dream Theater's A Dramatic Turn of Events, not surprisingly, has a highly monstrous level of complexity to it, primarily consisting of its valiant will and granite determination to filter all its moods and favorite fixations through an adventurous approach to music creation. Read on to find more about this flamboyant release, or don't.


Many, but not at all of surprising character are the numbers of paths and emotional postures Dream Theater chooses to thread along on this row of statements. The band exhibits a particular interest in addressing their readiness to deliver on the respective fields of a sanely-, but harshly constrained genre palette. The basic vibes of gloom-trodden power metal, neoclassical sonic spellcasting, synthetic noteburst-parade, hell, even metalcorish undertones and odd time signatures are all part of the game, and everything the group delivers to the table, IS decently delivered and elegantly served.

DUDE?? What do you mean "decently"?? Dream Theater is like : my life!

I mean exactly that. From the point of view of ultimate value though, - check the very sloppily concealed irony herein - Dream Theater's A Dramatic Turn of Events fails to bring any dramatic turns of events to the fray. If you need to convince me that your album is a dramatic turn of events : you are failing. Dream Theater's latest is an accessible, and, as noted, doubtless extremely eventful output, yet also is one that never quite leaves you without the suspicion that some elaborate passages of complexity are simply there so you have something to chew diligently on, and serve no particular function in the actual DNA of the track you are listening to.

The band has a noticeable tendency to summon a pleasant, fluid feel via the simultaneous utilization of various devices suitable to cause aural vibrations, - a surprise! - yet, in actuality, these delicate sonic entities have a very limited field of operation if the mission they have been assigned to, is simply is to connect - in heart - traditional exhibitions of power metal/metalcore/I got the gloom again compositional techniques without end. When the group releases the kind-of experimental Animal for the worship of the oh!, so beautiful fractal-complexity, the result is OK enough, but far far far - and not close to - from great, particularly because these segments tend to lack vocal delivery. They are lacking vocal delivery because the agenda herein <> resonating music that has a story to it, the agenda simply is to

overcreate

layered sonic constructs into existence

because we can.

These are instrumental - uhm - "instrumentalizations", and once these sequences sound elaborately chaotic and chaotically elaborate enough, then the band gives the nod, yet, having a musical message you can spiritually decipher, is of no notable interest for the squad. It is not that this approach has limited potentiality, in fact, it has JUST that. But it already has been done much better recently, with vocals reigning in bloom in the chaos, by bands like Unexpect, see here.

The following matter is one that is prone to radical levels of subjectivity, but me, myself and I, along with the dudette who is writing this, find the lead singer's voice relatively uneventful, and when he is over-emoting in the slower declarations of lyrical aspirations of the record, threads of hairs I did not know I have stand still on my shell. These lyrical statements are reminiscent of the Pink Floydish suffering skills, and frankly, they are pretty efficient at annoying the living death out of me.

Dream Theater's A Dramatic Turn of Events still is a full musculature build with a whole lot of luscious sonic portions to bath your existence in, and its ubiquitous proneness of getting caught rabidly masturbating is as much of a likable defining factor of it as it is its relative hindrance.

Rating : 8.0 / 10

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Uncle Acid & the deadbeats - Blood Lust review

Year : 2011
Genre : Doom Metal / Blues Rock
Label : Independent
Origin : UK
Rating : 8.2 / 10

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Uncle Acid & the deadbeats invite you on a ride that does not come with a safety guarantee, as their latest to date audible contribution is a lush, tastily, lively realized tribute to the mere retro charm you could harvest during the restless sitting time of a z-grade exploitation horror / thriller made in the '70s.

Blood Lust is a pretty easily and gratefully approachable project at heart, as it is one that finds elegant reason behind its existence simply by the act of kissing the lips of its own aspirations, and not stopping until there is at least a drop of blood involved. Can't say do not be afraid : be afraid, because Blood Lust wants your soul, and for it, it will cut you down. (As a start.)



Uncle Acid & the deadbeats introduce a central vibe that is the devoted lover, hell, even the devoted sex slave of two primal styles. Imagine a mixture of the ancient, lazily yet dangerously energized dooming of Black Sabbath, combined with the feminine kind of coolness/restlessness declared by the Bee Gees. These nine tracks reek the manic-, and, as such, proper kind of love towards the aforementioned inspirators, yet it remains safe to say that the Black Sabbath vibe-language reigns as the LP's primal intent, while the high pitched head voice singing, that which still keeps dignity and packs the menacing factor no problem, summons and establishes a truly powerful, tasty combination with the instruments being in proper, playful, constant doom in the background.

Wait.

Constant doom is not doom at all.
Or is that the only kind of doom?

Some think - I try to avoid the "I", and I fail - Doom is sexiest when it comes with an urge, and it gets more and more miserable when it scrutinizes its own image. Luckily enough, Blood Lust seems to share this approach for dooming around, as the LP never loses a simple, yet proper kind of drive to express its vile and hateful intentions.

The production is flawless both for what it wants to do, and even when considered as something on its own : a homage to the horroristic side of the entertainment industry of the '70s, and a delivery that has intimate affliction and intimate affection for the dangerous, for the lethal aspects of the era. The sound, of course, is not free of elegant (!!) mud, but it IS free of the will of trying to conceal it. As hinted, a nice kind of mud it is anyway, one that adds a special, cold hearted warmness and intimacy to the experience. The mud this project simply could not work out well without. Blood Lust is a sexy, violent, restless contribution with its focus being placed on the various ways and methods retro doom could affect you by, pointing out the staggeringly obvious : retro doom does not need to "try" to make your soul react - it simply needs the volume, and you will have no choice, but to submit.

Rating : 8.2 / 10

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