Phoenix Best Music Poll: Into The Weird (6/10/10)

A BLAST! Gaga has covered Madonna’s first decade in a tenth of the time.

No, it’s not your imagination: things are getting smaller. Or at least, it seems that way in the funhouse-mirror world of modern music, where the semi-demise of the major-label factory has colluded with the anti-star obsession of the underground to produce a chasing of microgenres into mazes of musical self-selection. The result? An ever-narrowing list of stadium-striding superstars as we replace our pop demigods and worship at the altar of thousands of obscure deities, each with its own bizarre rituals and rites. Granted, the ridiculous excess of the rock-and-roll era was one whose time may have come. After all, it’s hard to build a mythology of trashing hotel rooms and other assorted debaucheries when you’re Twittering the whole thing. But are we all really ready to let go of the whole music-biz machine and adorn our teenage walls with the likeness of any minstrel who managed to shift a few thousand virtual copies last week?

Even with their mastery of both hooks and hype, newer acts like MGMT (this year’s Best National Act) must be all too aware of the already crowded market they’re entering. That said, the overcrowding is also a by-product of the music biz’s growing efficiency — bands no longer need to stagnate for years before hitting the big time. Both MGMT and fellow National Act nominee (and Best National Album winner) VAMPIRE WEEKEND were barely ideas in their members’ minds half a decade ago. Now they’re blowing up stadiums, just like rock’s royalty of yore.

Speaking of marketplace hegemony: this year, we threw a bit of a curve on the ballot by creating the category “Best Pop Shit,” but you, dear readers, in your infinite knowledge, understood — correctly — that this was not a pejorative and rushed to do the right thing. Thus, Best National Pop Shit: LADY GAGA. A mere two or three years ago, she was just a struggling NYC boho playing piano bar, but since then, in just a tenth of the time, she’s condensed Madonna’s first decade — pop hits and fashion bits alike — into a blast on the popular consciousness. And let’s not even get into the strange career of Adam Young, a/k/a OWL CITY (National Pop Shit nominee), who took just two years to turn his basement synth-pop project into a #1 single and album — and all by pilfering the sound of the not-yet-cold corpse of the Postal Service.

So the underground is now the mainstream, with its domination in metal (Best National Metal winners MASTODON, and indeed all of the runners-up, are decidedly non-Ozzfest material) and rap (MOS DEF and the runners-up: “Jay-who?”). And few acts in recent memory have gone as far with as few concessions to what’s expected of an above-ground rock sensation as the dour, minimalist xx (Best National Breakthrough).

So, as the old gods are unmasked and made human thanks to 24/7 technology and splintering genre wars, we must come to grips with a change in scale in our pop mythology. Sure, you could put together all the outrageous rock-star antics of ALICIA KEYS (Best National R&B Act), WILCO (Best National Roots Act), and KINGS OF LEON (WFNX Song of the Year), count them on one hand, and still have some fingers left to play “Use Somebody” with. But in the new economy of pop, those old antics just don’t have the same currency. And if the concern is that everything is getting smaller, rest assured that it’s also getting far weirder than even the fevered psychedelic dreams of previous generations. Here’s to facing the strange for years to come.

Phoenix Best Music Poll: National and Local Results (6/10/10)

Best National Act: MGMT

“You’ll never be as good as the Rolling Stones” is an actual line from “Flash Delirium,” the lead single from MGMT’s new headscratcher, Congratulations(Sony). It’s an odd moment of self-depreciation, but you’d be forgiven for having missed it, since it gets whispered atop the distorted bleats and aggressive zaps of the song — which proved to be as purposely inscrutable as the rest of the hotly anticipated follow-up to 2007′s Oracular Spectacular. Perhaps most of the votes in this category come from fans of MGMT’s earlier, peppier singles, like “Kids” and “Time To Pretend,” which were hammered into our skulls by commercial radio and movie trailers for a good two years. But even when they try to be the opposite of what people want, MGMT’s talent for a sharp hook and a jaunty mood unzigs every zag they try to pull. So they win the crown despite themselves.

Runners-up:
2. The Decemberists
3. Vampire Weekend
4. Phoenix

Best National Electronic/Dance Act: Hot Chip

Machine-made music designed for dancing often plays down the real-live-flesh artists behind the scenes. Which means that those who hang on long enough to assert their individuality often wind up shedding the very electro/dance trappings that made them notable in the first place. Such is the case with Hot Chip, who’ve turned quite a few heads with the success of One Life Stand (Astralwerks) — a collection that sacrifices the giddy whumping pleasure principle of older hits like “Over and Over” and “Ready for the Floor” for the vulnerability and seriousness of “Thieves in the Night” and “Take It In.” As the evolution of the genre pushes onward and outward, it’ll be acts like Hot Chip — with memorable tunes and demonstrable heart — who’ll rise to the top.

Runners-up
2. La Roux
3. Four Tet
4. Fever Ray

Best National Female Vocalist: Neko Case

Cast your mind back to a time when it was commercial poison to put a female voice on the radio, and contrast it to now, when female artists are everywhere. And yet, at least according to you all, none of those newcomers could dethrone the force of nature that is Neko Case. Last year, she had just released Middle Cyclone(Anti-) when she took this category. Since then, Ms. Case has been touring and riding a wave of accolades for that song cycle, which has seen her branch farther from the roots rock of her past into torch songs, pop, and pure banshee weirdness, all with the same confident grace.

Runners-up
2. Annie Clark [St. Vincent]
3. Florence Welch [Florence and the Machine]
4. Victoria Legrand [Beach House]

Best National Metal Act: Mastodon

Mastodon might seem an unlikely act to be sitting atop the metal heap, what with their arty leanings and un-metal concept-album approach. Then again, their brutal reassemblage of the best moments of the discographies of Neurosis, Melvins, and assorted stoner/sludge-rockers amounts to a realignment of what is considered good metal after the doldrums of late-’90s/early-’00s nü-metal. Like Vikings hitting virgin shores, the bearded burly-men of Mastodon have been rampaging through the world of metal, taking the aggression of more underground acts and polishing it to a sheen in a way that endears them to year-end lists — as well as the car stereos of heshers worldwide. The result is a band who can rock international stadiums without having to wear stupid top hats or dress like clowns —thus earning the gratitude of serious metalheads everywhere for elevating the genre to within a fraction of respectability.

Runners-up
2. High on Fire
3. Sunn O)))
4. Baroness

Best National Pop Shit: Lady Gaga

Kings of Leon and Black Eyed Peas both scraped their way to the top through a long process of refining their appeal — but neither has captured the lightning-in-a-bottle combination of weirdness and newness that is the international pop-shit phenomenon Lady Gaga. At this point, her two-year campaign of shock and awe is beginning to wear out even her most faithful followers — but that only means that she’s dug past the topsoil into the deeper ground that is the casual music listener. Last year, said listeners were snapping their fingers inattentively to a radio hit; this year, they’re dressing up like maniacs and following her around. Eventually, the world will tire of her unbounded need to impress — but that doesn’t seem likely to happen any time soon.

Runners-up
2. Kings of Leon
3. Black Eyed Peas
4. Owl City

Best National Roots/Americana Act: Wilco

Truth be told, Wilco haven’t really played anything resembling the standard idea of “roots” or “Americana” since their 1995 debut album, but their unpretentious, low-key demeanor has defined a new post-alternative roots movement. Americana for a more . . . suburban America, perhaps. In any case, last year’s typically understated Wilco (The Album) (Nonesuch) kept fans flocking to their shows and celebrating the band’s rep as a formidable live act (with the crucial involvement of guitar hot shot Nels Cline). Perhaps BMP voters recognize that this Chi-town act have a certain fondness for our area — their North Adams Solid Sound Festival is coming in August, with not only multiple Wilco (and Wilco-side-project) sets but a line-up that offers, uh, pretty much everything but roots and Americana.

Runners-up
2. The Low Anthem
3. Avett Brothers
4. Monsters of Folk

Best National Video: Lady Gaga feat. Beyonce: Telephone

Two years past the demise of TRL, you’d think that today’s kids would be tugging their parents’ apron strings at the sight of this category, asking, “What’s a ‘video’?” Except, that is, for this thing called the “Internet,” which is currently rewriting the rules of the form, encouraging boundary pushing in a much more exciting way than MTV ever did. Gaga’s collaboration with Swedish professional oddball Jonas Åkerlund is a match made in video-weirdness heaven: nearly nine minutes of iconic images that introduce the proverbial Peoria newb to the world of Matthew Barney–lite. Whether it’s a pair of sunglasses made from lit cigarettes or a revved-up Beyoncé visually stuttering along with the song’s glitches in a homicidal rage, the video pushes arty buttons that people didn’t know they had.

Runners-up
2.  Bat for Lashes, “Daniel”
3. Girls, “Lust for Life”
4. Raekwon, “House of Flying Daggers”

Best Local All-Ages Act: A Loss For Words

All-ages, a/k/a pop punk, could be the most disrespected genre this side of contemporary country. Meaning that when a band stick around in the all-ages trenches for years and years, they will inevitably have to reach for respectability. For Abington’s AL4W, that meant following up the success of 2009′s The Kids Can’t Lose (and touring the record with a grueling trek around the States and then through the UK, Russia, and Japan) with a new EP of Motown classics called, uh,Motown Classics (Paper + Plastick) that is nowhere near as ironic-pop-punk-cover cringe-worthy as it might sound. Whether they achieve said respectability remains to be seen, but throwing a spirited run-through of the Jackson 5′s “I Want You Back” into their otherwise moshtastic set of slamming, fun-time sweat inducers can’t hurt — unless you get landed on by some XXL crowd surfer.

Runners-up
2. Boys Like Girls
3. Four Year Strong
4. Vanna

Best Boston Rock Club Night: Born Of Fire (O’Brien’s)

Metal fans in Boston are tired of getting the proverbial shaft — reading the regional listings and seeing all the sickest metal shows skipping the Hub in favor of Wormtown and (boo!) Connecticut is enough to make your average Slayer acolyte retire his filthy denim vest. Fortunately, the past year has seen the explosion of Boston metal that is the Born of Fire night at O’Brien’s. The brainchild of erstwhile headbanger Zack Wells, BOF has brought us pairings of the region’s slaytanic best twice a month — so you no longer need to drive an hour or more each way to get your fix of Howl, Rat Corpse, and Sexcrement. This town is already a hotbed for some of the region’s (and the nation’s) top metal acts — it’s about time they got to play a club show in their own town.

Runners-up
2. Primitive Sounds at River Gods
3. This Is Why They Hate Us at Alchemist Lounge
4. Rescue Nite at Model Café

Best Local Metal Act: Converge

Converge had a great year. Their latest LP, Axe To Fall (Epitaph), found them breaking through to a more mainstream metal audience, thanks to the massively heavy thrum of walloping killdozers like “Slave Drive” and album opener “Dark Horse.” It’s actually been a top-notch year for metal in general, and that’s made the competition at the top even more insane. But “insane” is the environment in which Converge thrive, whether it’s the room-exploding fury of their live show or the claustrophobic intensity of their music (not to mention the howling screech of lead heckler Jake Bannon). The band’s relentlessly racing tempo is almost un-metal in its punk zip, but the arch weirdness of guitarist Kurt Ballou’s chugging ax is far too pained and brutal to be anything but capital-M metal. As long as Converge are still stalking the earth, it’ll be a tall order for any other band to take this category.

Runners-up
2. Doomriders
3. Gozu
4. Big Bear

Best Local Punk Act: Razors In The Night

The past decade has seen the myth of working-class Boston explode onto the national consciousness — be it through Dennis Lehane’s novels or Martin Scorsese’s films. Boston punk has been a similarly popular export, with its peculiarly trad take on disheveled anti-authority, and Razors in the Night have the attitude and the songs to represent their city. Vocalist Troy Schoeller would be an intimidating neck-vein exploder if he weren’t fronting such a fun band, with every glottal scream backed by anthemic gang shouts and catchy guitar melodies. Although Razors might seem somewhat reined in by their worship of early ’80s UK Oi! punk (their name itself is a song by street-punk legends Blitz), they find ways to mix up their sound, whether it’s the whiplash fury of humorous thrashers like “Hipster Holocaust” or catchy fist-pumper anthems like “Carry On.”

Runners-up
2. Dead Cats Dead Rats
3. Kominas
4. Refuse Resist

Best Local Roots Act: Kingsley Flood

If you consider rootsy Americana to be a dour yoke worn by groups of dreary Luddites afraid to cut loose and join the modern world, then you haven’t heard Kingsley Flood. Their roots cred owes to the masterful fiddle and mandolin playin’ and the whiff of Appalachia found on their debut, Dust Windows, but the music’s sheer exuberance is beyond time or genre. And though they’re capable of quiet introspection and moments of majestic solemnity (as on the organ-heavy “Cathedral Walls”), their fans ticked the ballot for the hip-shaking enthusiasm of their more boisterous moments (imagine a shotgun wedding gone off the rails). Lead Flooder Naseem Khuri has the authority in his voice to keep the whole thing from coming off like po’-faced creative anachronism, and the band’s boundless giddiness is enough to make you never want to hear a synthesizer again.

Runners-up
2. Joy Kills Sorrow
3. Tim Gearan Band
4. Tony the Bookie

See the rest of the winners here: http://thephoenix.com/BMP/Boston/2010/

New England Metal & Hardcore Festival: Baroness, Municipal Waste, Holy Grail (Boston Phoenix, 4/21/10)

HEAVY MIDDLE: “Sometimes at festivals we feel like the proverbial turd in the punch bowl,” says Baroness’s John Baizley (second from right), “whether it’s because we’re too metal or not metal enough.”

Let’s cut to the chase — metal is back. And not just as a popular musical style, but as a subculture, freely seeping into the mainstream in a variety of strange ways, from the bullet belts you see on a dance floor to the devil horns being thrown by everybody and your uncle’s band. It’s hard to believe that, not long ago, mainstream America girded itself against the Satanic threat of heavy metal, combing record grooves for backward messages and blaming teenage suicide on innocuous Ozzy lyrics. I guess when the world around us starts to look more and more like a mid-’80s Nuclear Assault album cover, it becomes harder for the Man to crush metal — especially when, in 2010, the Man probably grew up with his parents throwing away his Twisted Sister cassettes.

Scott Lee has a sensible explanation: “People are angrier, and they want angrier music!” Besides being a long-time promoter and booker of (mostly) metal shows in Massachusetts, Lee is also co-founder of the annual New England Metal and Hardcore Festival. Now in its 12th year, the fest takes over the Worcester Palladium this Friday and Saturday for two all-day multi-stage shows. And Lee and company have outdone themselves, bringing in enormous-venue fillers like Mastodon, Cannibal Corpse, Baroness, Municipal Waste, and Holy Grail. “Not only are people angry,” he elaborates, “but the marketing of metal has gone through the roof, and it’s just far more accessible now.”

Part of the key to metal’s accessibility of late (aside from the usual talk of technology and social networking and whatnot) is the way the underground has gradually surfaced. Instead of trying to refine their sound for the mainstream, bands are seeing their respective niche styles attracting flocks of diverse new fans. “A band that we might have booked as an opener seven years ago can now headline,” Lee concurs. “When bands like All That Remains and Killswitch Engage get played on the radio, it opens up a bigger picture for other underground bands. Moreover, metal fans are loyal. They get behind a band the way people get behind the Red Sox.”

With the major-label star system rapidly failing, and access to new music easier than ever, getting into metal for a fan means entering a dizzying barrage of bands and sounds, with new strains and trends constantly hitting their stride. Anyone who complains that there’s nothing new or nothing good going on in metal is not paying attention.

Baroness singer/guitarist John Baizley agrees, though he suspects there might also be something more philosophical at work. “Since the turn of the millennium, there’s been a new movement that has been hesitant to have a strict adherence to metal, because that would limit them to that orthodoxy. These are bands from a punk or hardcore background with a greater open-mindedness in terms of music styles.”

In other words, metal bands are declining to admit they’re metal — in the same way that many grunge and emo stars of prior decades rejected the orthodoxy of their genres. Baroness and Mastodon have shown that an outfit can climb damn near the top of the metal heap without entirely being a metal band: both create dense polyrhythmic soundscapes fitted into intellectually rigorous thematic frameworks rich with crushing riffery and vicious breakdowns. This high-wire act has allowed them to stand out amid the metal masses. “Although sometimes at festivals we feel like the proverbial turd in the punch bowl,” says Baizley, “whether it’s because we’re too metal or not metal enough.”

But if Baroness can seem guilty of overthinking metal, others are taking quite the opposite tack. “There are a lot of know-it-alls in metal, people who try to put us in a corner, in terms of what they think we can or can’t do,” says Tony Foresta, vocalist of thrashmasters Municipal Waste. “It forces us to punch our way out, and in a way, that shit drives us. When people put us down, it makes us more creative. Spite can be a hell of a motivator.”

SPITE MOTIVATES: Municipal Waste lurched away from the drink-and-puke mentality toward something darker and meaner.

Foresta knows whereof he speaks: for nine years, the Waste have been cranking out slab after slab of increasingly taut jams that meld metal, hardcore punk, funny party rock, and dead-serious bummer metal. They hit the big time with their third album, The Art of Partying (Earache), only to lurch away from the drink-and-puke mentality toward something darker and meaner. “We probably would have made a lot more money if we just did songs about beer and whatnot,” Foresta allows, “but if we didn’t progress, we’d end up hating it. We didn’t want to be a band that relies on gimmicks.”

James de la Luna was trying to avoid a career full of gimmicks when he quit his happening retro-metal outfit White Wizzard to form the progressive metal juggernaut that is Holy Grail. “Wizzard was very passionate about a traditional movement,” he points out. “We are into that — we didn’t just like old-school metal. We wanted metal that was broader.”

A comparison between de la Luna’s old and new bands may reveal a shift from British Steel–era Priest metal to, uh, Painkiller–era Priest, but in a world of metal microgenres, Holy Grail’s inclusiveness is refreshing. (So is the jaw-dropping lead-guitar work on their Prosthetic-issued debut EP, Improper Burial, which is meant to tide us over till their full-length debut, Crisis in Utopia, hits in the fall.) The band’s not-so-secret weapon is de la Luna’s pipes, which hit castrato highs that would put Ian Gillan’s Deep Purple glass shattering to shame. “My singing style is not very conventional,” he allows, “and it might not be the popular way to sing right now. But it’s the only way I know how, so I have to go for it. Because, right now, we’re just really in for the kill.”

Trends and styles come and go; what remains timeless in metal is the desire in fans and bands alike to push it to the limit. Give Scott Lee the last word: “Making metal people happy is tough. Ultimately, though, metal fans are hardworking people who want hardworking music. These bands deliver, this festival delivers, and everyone is psyched! When it works, it’s such a beautiful thing.”

NEW ENGLAND METAL AND HARDCORE FESTIVAL | Palladium, 261 Main St, Worcester | April 23-24 | All ages | $40 Friday; $46 Saturday; $80 two-day pass | 800.477.6849 or metalandhardcorefestival.com

Dethklok/Mastodon/High On Fire: Brute Forces (Boston Phoenix, 10/21/09)

When you get down to it, most music is an attempt to create auditory allegories for our life experiences, whether they’re joyous Maypole dervishes or nightmarish St. Vitus’ dances of doom. As a subgenre of rock and roll, heavy metal leans in the latter direction, and in its nearly four decades of existence, it’s managed to create its very own idioms. Favoring instrumental mastery and dark themes writ large across well-worn jean jackets, metal has always risked ridicule from other rock forms in its unbending desire to remain true to its ideals of chaos and tribal loyalty.

But what is it that makes a certain band or song or album or riff “metal”? Lyrical themes? The timbre of the vocals and guitars? Is there a set of rules for how the instruments should interact? Is there some sort of semiotic checklist?

“Naw, it’s just music that’s really fucking brutal.” The voice on the other end of the line belongs to an individual who enjoys some authority when it comes to defining metal. In addition to having affixed “brutal” to “metal” for 13 years with knuckle-dragging sludge Neanderthals High on Fire, Matt Pike also manned the low-tuned guitar in doom pioneers Sleep — a power trio who played a major part in rescuing heavy music from the alt-friendly ’90s’ aversion to long flowing locks and brutal palm-muted riffage. He refines his definition of metal by citing his band’s forthcoming long-player, Snakes of the Divine: “It’s just, you know, hit-you-in-the-face stuff — just heavy and shit.”

Pike and company are currently hitting throngs of young uns in their collective faces as part of a tour that joins High on Fire with fellow down-tuners Mastodon, spazzcore local heavies Converge, and, to top it off, Dethklok — yes, as in the fictitious metal band from the Adult Swim cartoon Metalocalypse. Somehow, this tour, which comes to the House of Blues Tuesday and Wednesday, makes total sense: all three bands not only specialize in face-melting riff runs but are also merchants of metal’s continuously over-the-top allegorical æsthetic — even if the headliners amount to a pit band with animated corollaries projected on a screen that covers the stage.

Mastodon are arguably one of the most successful metal tall-tale tellers of all time. Their first major success came in 2004 with Leviathan, a loose concept based on Moby-Dick. This past spring they hit the Billboard Top 20 with Crack the Skye (Reprise), a dense song cycle revolving around Rasputin, astral travel, and Steven Hawking’s theories on wormholes.

“Our stuff, it’s all personal, you know, but it’s masked in this whole other story,” explains Mastodon drummer extraordinaire Brann Dailor. “We don’t want to be super-literal, because if we did, the audience would be like, ‘Oh, that is just something that happened to him.’ So it’s way better to create a new story with urban legends, Zoroastrian stuff, shit like that. Plus, it’s all great content for awesome metal T-shirts!”Pike likewise confesses to using metal’s fantastical bent to obscure the personal content of his songwriting. “We always inject realism into our songs, but they have, you know, a Dungeons & Dragons thing going on as well. Because all of these songs are fucking metaphors, you know? I mean, yeah, I’m talking about my real life, but there’s dwarves involved!” Amen to that: High on Fire, especially on the seminal releases Surrounded by Thieves (2002) and Blessed Black Wings (2005), created the audio analogue of, say, scenes from Ralph Bakshi’s animated Lord of the Rings: advancing armies of orcs, dark creatures spreading enormous wings and unsheathing unwieldy scimitars. And though the use of this imagery was hardly new in metal (thanks to fantasy-rock pioneers like Black Sabbath, Dio, Judas Priest, Motörhead, and, most especially, Derek Riggs’s iconic Iron Maiden mascot, Eddie), it had been driven far underground in the early ’90s as metalers of all stripes traded in their patchy denim for flannel and threadbare sweaters.

At this point, it’s clear that metal — unapologetic metal, brutal metal, metal full of fantasy and allegory and non-stop bludgeoning heavy-qua-heaviness — is back. The reason could have something to do with the rejection of ’90s post-hair-metal austerity. Or with the burial of the still-fragrant remains of nü-metal. Brendon Small, co-creator of Metalocalypse and guitarist and chief songwriter for Dethklok, started his project when he saw the scrawling on the wall. “For me, when I was noticing metal coming back, I was excited, because I grew up with it. When I was a student at Berklee, they didn’t teach metal, so I was happy to see people being technical and proficient while also doing all of this stuff that hadn’t been done before, advancing in heaviness and what not.”

Dethklok, as the fictional protagonists of Metalocalypse, could have been portrayed with brain-dead music to match the witlessness of the individual band members’ fictional personas, but one listen to either of the subsequent real-world Dethklok albums — 2007’s The Dethalbum and this fall’s Dethalbum II (Williams Street) — reveals not only the attention to detail but also a deep love for metal’s harmonious nature. “Honestly, doing this show is hard work, and every day of my life is about loud guitars and metal — so, obviously, I have to like metal a lot! I guess someone could have done this show with music that was really uninspired, but I really, for some reason, needed it to sound good to my ears.”

Small’s recipe for Dethklok’s mind-throttling chasm-fording riff salad is deceptively simple. “When I started coming up with Dethklok’s sound, I tuned my guitar really low, and then I started just, you know, throwing in Queen harmonies, ripping Brian May off. And then I threw in double kicks and guttural vocals, just trying to make everything melodic but also heavy and scary.”

Although the songs are in service to a comedy show, your average Dethklok tune will pass the Pepsi challenge with the crème de la crème of modern death metal; it might even transcend the genre. If there’s one sonic unifier of the bands on this tour, it’s a tendency toward hugeness. Time turns inward, movements speed and whip into a frenzy, and the lead guitar takes off on a soaring flight of fancy into a concentric void from which, it seems, there will be no return. That sort of thing.Maybe it’s this brutality that unites modern metal. A cursory viewing of any episode of Metalocalypse reveals that “brutal” is a catch-all phrase for all things metal. Dailor concurs: “It’s just a perfect word to describe pounding drums, jackhammer riffs, down-tuned guitars — you know, it’s just ‘fucking brutal’! That word, it’s just so true — we all know what it means — it’s brutal!”

DETHKLOK + MASTODON + HIGH ON FIRE + CONVERGE | House of Blues 15 Lansdowne St, Boston | October 27-28 at 6:30 pm | all ages | $34.50-$45 | 617.693.BLUE or www.hob.com/boston

OUT WITH THE NÜ Metal, in all its spread-winged glory, is now enjoying an unlikely wide acceptance — and Mastodon are one of the genre’s most successful tall-tale tellers.

When you get down to it, most music is an attempt to create auditory allegories for our life experiences, whether they’re joyous Maypole dervishes or nightmarish St. Vitus’ dances of doom. As a subgenre of rock and roll, heavy metal leans in the latter direction, and in its nearly four decades of existence, it’s managed to create its very own idioms. Favoring instrumental mastery and dark themes writ large across well-worn jean jackets, metal has always risked ridicule from other rock forms in its unbending desire to remain true to its ideals of chaos and tribal loyalty.

But what is it that makes a certain band or song or album or riff “metal”? Lyrical themes? The timbre of the vocals and guitars? Is there a set of rules for how the instruments should interact? Is there some sort of semiotic checklist?

“Naw, it’s just music that’s really fucking brutal.” The voice on the other end of the line belongs to an individual who enjoys some authority when it comes to defining metal. In addition to having affixed “brutal” to “metal” for 13 years with knuckle-dragging sludge Neanderthals High on Fire, Matt Pike also manned the low-tuned guitar in doom pioneers Sleep — a power trio who played a major part in rescuing heavy music from the alt-friendly ’90s’ aversion to long flowing locks and brutal palm-muted riffage. He refines his definition of metal by citing his band’s forthcoming long-player, Snakes of the Divine: “It’s just, you know, hit-you-in-the-face stuff — just heavy and shit.”

Pike and company are currently hitting throngs of young uns in their collective faces as part of a tour that joins High on Fire with fellow down-tuners Mastodon, spazzcore local heavies Converge, and, to top it off, Dethklok — yes, as in the fictitious metal band from the Adult Swim cartoon Metalocalypse. Somehow, this tour, which comes to the House of Blues Tuesday and Wednesday, makes total sense: all three bands not only specialize in face-melting riff runs but are also merchants of metal’s continuously over-the-top allegorical æsthetic — even if the headliners amount to a pit band with animated corollaries projected on a screen that covers the stage.

Mastodon are arguably one of the most successful metal tall-tale tellers of all time. Their first major success came in 2004 with Leviathan, a loose concept based on Moby-Dick. This past spring they hit the Billboard Top 20 with Crack the Skye (Reprise), a dense song cycle revolving around Rasputin, astral travel, and Steven Hawking’s theories on wormholes.

“Our stuff, it’s all personal, you know, but it’s masked in this whole other story,” explains Mastodon drummer extraordinaire Brann Dailor. “We don’t want to be super-literal, because if we did, the audience would be like, ‘Oh, that is just something that happened to him.’ So it’s way better to create a new story with urban legends, Zoroastrian stuff, shit like that. Plus, it’s all great content for awesome metal T-shirts!”

HIGH ON FIRE: “I mean, yeah, I’m talking about my real life, but there’s dwarves involved!”

Pike likewise confesses to using metal’s fantastical bent to obscure the personal content of his songwriting. “We always inject realism into our songs, but they have, you know, a Dungeons & Dragons thing going on as well. Because all of these songs are fucking metaphors, you know? I mean, yeah, I’m talking about my real life, but there’s dwarves involved!” Amen to that: High on Fire, especially on the seminal releases Surrounded by Thieves (2002) and Blessed Black Wings (2005), created the audio analogue of, say, scenes from Ralph Bakshi’s animated Lord of the Rings: advancing armies of orcs, dark creatures spreading enormous wings and unsheathing unwieldy scimitars. And though the use of this imagery was hardly new in metal (thanks to fantasy-rock pioneers like Black Sabbath, Dio, Judas Priest, Motörhead, and, most especially, Derek Riggs’s iconic Iron Maiden mascot, Eddie), it had been driven far underground in the early ’90s as metalers of all stripes traded in their patchy denim for flannel and threadbare sweaters.

At this point, it’s clear that metal — unapologetic metal, brutal metal, metal full of fantasy and allegory and non-stop bludgeoning heavy-qua-heaviness — is back. The reason could have something to do with the rejection of ’90s post-hair-metal austerity. Or with the burial of the still-fragrant remains of nü-metal. Brendon Small, co-creator of Metalocalypse and guitarist and chief songwriter for Dethklok, started his project when he saw the scrawling on the wall. “For me, when I was noticing metal coming back, I was excited, because I grew up with it. When I was a student at Berklee, they didn’t teach metal, so I was happy to see people being technical and proficient while also doing all of this stuff that hadn’t been done before, advancing in heaviness and what not.”

Dethklok, as the fictional protagonists of Metalocalypse, could have been portrayed with brain-dead music to match the witlessness of the individual band members’ fictional personas, but one listen to either of the subsequent real-world Dethklok albums — 2007’s The Dethalbum and this fall’s Dethalbum II (Williams Street) — reveals not only the attention to detail but also a deep love for metal’s harmonious nature. “Honestly, doing this show is hard work, and every day of my life is about loud guitars and metal — so, obviously, I have to like metal a lot! I guess someone could have done this show with music that was really uninspired, but I really, for some reason, needed it to sound good to my ears.”

Small’s recipe for Dethklok’s mind-throttling chasm-fording riff salad is deceptively simple. “When I started coming up with Dethklok’s sound, I tuned my guitar really low, and then I started just, you know, throwing in Queen harmonies, ripping Brian May off. And then I threw in double kicks and guttural vocals, just trying to make everything melodic but also heavy and scary.”

Although the songs are in service to a comedy show, your average Dethklok tune will pass the Pepsi challenge with the crème de la crème of modern death metal; it might even transcend the genre. If there’s one sonic unifier of the bands on this tour, it’s a tendency toward hugeness. Time turns inward, movements speed and whip into a frenzy, and the lead guitar takes off on a soaring flight of fancy into a concentric void from which, it seems, there will be no return. That sort of thing.

Maybe it’s this brutality that unites modern metal. A cursory viewing of any episode of Metalocalypse reveals that “brutal” is a catch-all phrase for all things metal. Dailor concurs: “It’s just a perfect word to describe pounding drums, jackhammer riffs, down-tuned guitars — you know, it’s just ‘fucking brutal’! That word, it’s just so true — we all know what it means — it’s brutal!”

DETHKLOK + MASTODON + HIGH ON FIRE + CONVERGE | House of Blues 15 Lansdowne St, Boston | October 27-28 at 6:30 pm | all ages | $34.50-$45 | 617.693.BLUE or www.hob.com/boston

Boston Phoenix Best Music Poll: National Results (7/30/09)

Here are some blurbs I wrote for this year’s Best Music Poll National Winners; the complete list can be found here:

http://thephoenix.com/BMP/National/2009/

Best Act, National: MGMT
Sometimes we’re so busy looking for the next big thing to appear in the form of the last big thing that we miss those crucial behind-the-back baton passes that happen in pop culture. Which explains to some degree how a few years can turn a couple of upstate dorm-room knob-twiddling dorks into MGMT, the global hit-making factory that now has Paul McCartney begging for a shot at a collaboration. Mega-viral smash “Kids” sounds like childhood dredged up and filtered through late adolescence, its ringtone chirps and cresting waves of kiddies at play somehow reigniting the satisfyingly deep wisdom of your first brush with inebriation. It’s hard to tell whether this is MGMT hitting a stride or enjoying a Peter Pan moment — the question now is whether the world will let them live in Neverland forever.

Best Hard Rock Act, National: Mastodon
With the release of Crack the Skye (Reprise), the deep-fantasy maniacs of Mastodon marched the fine line between relentless thundering barrage and ridiculous high-concept pretense. (You have to have some pretty bitchin’ flame-retardant stage backdrops to sell Rasputin, astral travel, and Stephen Hawking’s wormhole theories to metal’s great unwashed.) As it turns out, either the competition is really thin or the intelligence of Metal Nation — especially its recently ascendant D&D faction — has once again been cruelly misunderestimated. That would explain why Crack the Skye debuted at #11 on the “Billboard 200” album chart, and why Mastodon duly ax-slapped both Metallica and Iron Maiden in our poll. As long as the grooves are deep, the bass is bowel-looseningly low, and blastbeats reliably rise and fall in the mix, even brainiac wizard metal can find a way to trump the old masters in the hearts of the faithful.

Best Male Vocalist, National: Caleb Followill, Kings of Leon
Anglophile-rock enthusiasts have always favored male voices that can soar anthemically over the fray. Thing is, the UK-first mega-success of Caleb Followill’s Nashville family band Kings of Leon can seem like a real headscratcher at first, if only because the music he and his kin make is so bloody ’Mur’can. But the Followills have learned a thing or two about their foster fan base, and they’ve finally hit paydirt at home with their fourth album, Only by the Night (RCA), wherein all sorts of synthy tricks are deployed in their relentless effort to reach the punter at the very back of the footie stadium. The result, especially on worldwide smashes like “Use Somebody” and “Sex on Fire” and barnburner “Notion,” sounds not unlike, ohhhh, Steve Perry channeling Ronnie Van Zant while fronting the Killers. Whether you take that as a harbinger of doom is irrelevant — it’s evident that this pond-crossing spit swapping is here to stay.

Best Punk Act, National: The Gaslight Anthem
If a band can state unequivocally that (a) they prefer speedy tempos, (b) they accept abandon as an MO, or (c) they subscribe (at least in part) to a strain of musical conservativism that keeps the proceedings lean and stripped down, then said band will be “punk” to someone. New Jersey’s Gaslight Anthem satisfy all three of these maxims while somehow owing a greater debt to the Boss than to Dag Nasty or the Exploited. Then again, at a time when punk is nothing more than anachronistic dress-up to some, it’s refreshing to see a band rock hard while still looking switchblade sharp. Penning songs with a legitimately swingin’ ’tude that tips its fedora to fintail gas guzzlers as well as to the drunk punks who steal them to race over cliffs is no small feat. If that sounds like your kind of retro-punk, then, as the band sing, “Here’s Looking at You, Kid.”

Best Roots Act, National: Bob Dylan
One has to wonder, deep down, what Robert Zimmerman thinks of his status as the 600-pound gorilla in the room anytime someone investigates roots in America. The new kids (even scraggly wizened ones like Steve Earle) can try any new tricks they like, but with Dylan cranking out new works like Woody Allen lately, and with his Never-Ending-Tour moving way past the point of being a victory lap, anyone even thinking about nodding toward the Old Weird America has to do so in his shadow. That said, his legacy will always be more vital than his current output: the zydeco-meets-Chess endurance test that is his most recent, Together Through Life (Columbia), will probably never rate on most Zimmophiles’ top 30 or 40 favorite Dylan discs. Doesn’t matter though: whether you’re an oddball eccentric like Chan “Cat Power” Marshall and Will “Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy” Oldham or a Muscle Shoals traditionalist like Drive-By Trucker Jason Isbell, trying to elude categorization with an unexpected zig or zag just further classifies you as Dylan-esque. When it comes to mixing profundity and inscrutability, the Bard of Hibbing will always have everyone beat.

Mastodon: House Of Blues, Boston, MA, 5/7/09 (Boston Phoenix)

My Zen moment with Mastodon hit at about the point where the maelstrom of “The Czar, pt. I: Usurper” receded only to be replaced with the falling-down-stairs drum battery and faux Southern-rock riff twang and intentional pick squeals of “The Czar, pt. II: Escape.” It was the realization that both what is awesome and what is bogus about this band rest on their ability to fashion dense prog/stoner metal that refuses to be ridiculous, ever. Keeping it classy is a tall order when you come out on stage to play the dense, swirling, epic, 50-minute entirety of your new Crack the Skye (on Reprise), an album that purports to tell of a paraplegic and his adventures with wormholes, astral travels, Rasputin, and Satan.

The band cut a bold figure — especially monstrously tall and hirsute bassist Troy Sanders — but the music was often confoundingly agile, complex, and winding. The obvious comparison here would be Rush, and it was definitely true that (a) the rich synth work that tied together the new album’s fugues was very “Tom Sawyer”–esque, and (b) this show was as much of a sausage fest as any time I’ve seen Geddy and company. I’m assuming that all across the Greater Boston area, thousands of patient girlfriends and wives got a much-needed night off as their SO’s donned black XL band T-shirts and crammed themselves into the House of Blues.

What’s fascinating about Mastodon is, in part, what’s not going on: zero audience interaction. No “How y’all doing tonight?” Nothing. As the projector behind the screen blasted retinas with a bewildering collage of nature and space footage and exotic loops from sword-and-sorcery epics, the band kept their attention on executing the high-wire trickery of Crack the Skye‘s dense jams. Especially impressive was a knotted series of turn-arounds at the halfway mark of album closer “The Last Baron,” a flourish of spindly guitar runs and drum fills blooming like fractals from other drum fills that conjured the over-complicated jazz breakdown of King Crimson’s “21st Century Schizoid Man.” The sum was often bewilderment, and with good reason, as riffs and beats stopped and started at jarring intervals that contributed to the surprising dearth of horn throwing — and also made for one of the most frustrated-looking pits I’ve seen in quite a while.

It all makes you wonder how a band this idiosyncratic are able fill the cavernous House. The answer is that though their music rewards close listening with its perplexing musical and lyrical themes, it also performs on the surface as dizzying, enveloping, swelling, utterly hypnotic rock. Like the swirling celestial vortices on screen, the music itself defies metal’s objective of always galloping forward and shifting the focus of the riffs farther and farther inward. Does this sound like “stoner metal” to you? Because at the end of the set proper (later, they played almost an hour’s survey of their older work), as the band walked off stage to the fading last note of “The Last Baron,” I felt barely able to stand or speak.