enter the goatlady

Last year I interviewed Dave Wyndorf of Monster Magnet. It was the second time I’d interviewed him, but for various reasons this interview has not yet seen the light of day. I will finish transcribing it and maybe even post it one day, but the most interesting part of the interview was when we discussed the issue of “rock star mystique” and the difficult that rock gods like Wyndorf now face in maintaining their god-like aura in this age of Facebook and Twitter and everyone wanting to know every last mundane detail about everything.

Dave has his own label with Monster Magnet guitarist Phil Caivano, focusing on short run limited edition vinyl releases. They’re releasing a limited edition vinyl EP with three reworked and re-imagined Monster Magnet tunes from Dopes To Infinity, their 1995 album.

Here’s the kicker though, and where I think Wyndorf and Co are working to make rock music a mystical, special experience again:  the Dopes EP goes on sale in November, but for the first month, you will only be able to buy a copy at a Monster Magnet show in Europe. Take that, internet!

I’m sure they would probably make more money if they released these songs on iTunes or sold the EP on CD and through their online store right away. But making it scarce makes it more coveted by obsessive compulsive collector fan. These kinds of releases will be popping up on eBay for years to come. This is how cult-like status builds.

The coolest part is that I will be going to at least one of those shows. Right now, I don’t even have a record player – but that’s not going to stop me from picking one up. I want to own a piece of the legend that is Monster Magnet.

Posted in music
Tags: dave wyndorf, monster magnet

Last year I reviewed Immolation’s Majesty and Decay release for Metal As Fuck. I liked it very, very much. The album gives me chills when I listen to it in the dark.

If ‘decay’ describes the subject matter of Majesty and Decay, the eighth full-length studio album and Nuclear Blast debut from New York’s Immolation, then ‘majesty’ describes their sound: immense, sweeping, thundering and ground shaking. It’s death metal to bring the mighty to their knees.

This month Scion A/V have released a new Immolation 5-track EP, Providence, for free download. Some people are unsure about the concept of “sponsored metal”, and I don’t know the exact arrangements between the band and Scion, but if the band gets an opportunity to record and release without it costing them money and the fans get to download it for free, it seems like a win-win situation. Scion look like good guys – hell, they don’t even want your email address to download the album – and the music gets promoted to a potentially wider audience. Immolation have said themselves that they are not able to support their families with just music (see this interview from late last year).

There’s also a video for the track Illumination. I love the raw string sound in the first 10 seconds.

As for the album, it’s just what you’d expect from Immolation – pounding, boulder-rattling, gritty mid-tempo death metal. Highly recommended.

Download and enjoy.

Posted in metal
Tags: immolation, scion

Photo: Cannibal Corpse demonstrating the clutching of invisible oranges

Let’s not make it goodbye, as I’m sure it’s not. But the day has finally come. Cosmo Lee will no longer be writing regularly for Invisible Oranges.

We all knew it was coming, of course. He announced that he was finding people to take over the site in March of this year, and listed some specific positions he was still trying to fill at the end of August. But still, it’s a sad day. Cosmo is probably the best metal writer in the business, and I’ll miss my regular dose of his intelligent articles.

I completely understand his decision. Even when you love doing something, being successful at it can mean that you find yourself trapped by the obligation to keep doing that thing – something I know all too well can happen (it’s part of the reason why I now live in Poland instead of in Australia running a web development business). By his own estimation, Cosmo put a minimum of three hours ofwork into each post, and in March had published 1400 articles on the blog. That’s a serious investment of time and energy for something that doesn’t earn huge wads of cash.

So this post is to say thank you to Cosmo, who inspired me to strive to write better. He also inspired me not to write unless I had something meaningful and insightful to add – and while that doesn’t help the metal sites I used to write for with their publishing schedules, I think it makes the internet a better place.

Another important lesson I learned from Cosmo is that it’s ok to only write about things that you actually like. In the spirit of that ideal, here are some of my favourite posts from Invisible Oranges over the years.

Interviews

• Glenn Danzig
• Tom Angelripper
• Gene Hoglan
• Phil Anselmo
• Tom G Warrior
• Burton C Bell

Reviews

• Megadeth – Rust In Peace
• Megadeth – Endgame
• Maryland Deathfest 2009
• Motörhead – “Ace of Spades”
• Immolation – Majesty and Decay
• Metallica – The First Four Albums (ongoing series – be sure to click “older entries” and read from the beginning)

Opinion

• “I don’t keep up with new music anymore”
• A Guide To Writing About Music
  • Part 1 – Reading
  • Part 2 – Thinking
  • Part 3 – Writing
• Don’t click on things that look like they just exist for you to click on them
• Love the Band, Hate the Fans 
• To Scion or not to Scion: that is the question

 So thanks and good luck, Cosmo. I hope that whatever you do with your new found spare time is rewarding and fulfilling.

Posted in metal, writing
Tags: cosmo lee, invisible oranges, journalism, writing

It’s been all over the metal news sites in the last couple of days – Tori Amos said some dumb shit about heavy metal and all the metal people are getting all worked up about it.

I was going to ignore it, as jumping on controversial issues is not really my style. But, I think that some of the metal sites and blogs are saying even dumber shit about what Tori said and that’s kinda annoying me. So what the hell, here’s my two groszy (hey, I live in Poland now, that’s the local currency).

Firstly, a lot of metal people are huffing and puffing about “who is she anyway”. The best way I can think of to describe Tori Amos is as an alternative music icon. It’s ok for metal people to have never heard of her (I’m sure she’s never heard of Gojira) but I don’t think it’s ok to dismiss her as “some unknown pop singer”. She’s not popular and she’s certainly not a pop singer. She is a bit avante garde (Blabbermouth described her as eccentric) and she’s been at music-making for a very long time so she deserves some respect. I always thought of her as someone who was intelligent and educated about music, as well as someone who held views and attitudes outside of the mainstream, even if I’m not a big fan of all her work myself.

So, I am genuinely surprised by the comments that she made, that seem to imply that she thinks there’s no emotion in heavy metal music. From Blabbermouth, your source for all news controversial or banal:

Amos said, “Sometimes you don’t know how music affects people. I embrace that because I don’t think that just because I talk about emotional stuff that it’s not motherfucker stuff. I’ll stand next to the hardest fucking heavy metal band on any stage in the world and take them down, alone, by myself. Gauntlet laid down, see who steps up. See who steps up!”

She continued, “I’ll take them down at 48. And they know I will. Because emotion has power that the metal guys know is just you can’t touch it. Insanity can’t touch the soul. It’s going to win every fucking time.”

So there you go. Even someone you thought was musically educated and intelligent can spout dumb-arse mainstream stereotypes to grab a few headlines. I actually feel sorry for her more than anything if her musical experience is so cocooned that she thinks an entire style of music exists without emotion. Its actually kind of laughable, which makes me wonder if it’s just a publicity stunt.

A weird one if it is! What do you think? Dumb shit, right?

Posted in metal, music
Tags: tori amos