Nine Inch Nails: 7 Of The Best

So we're now officially one week away from the much anticipated Nine Inch Nails release 'Hesitation Marks'; their first since 2008's 'The Slip'.
Personally, I can't wait, its up there with AFI and Burn Halo as being one of my most anticipated albums of this year, so I thought it'd be pretty cool to do a list of my favourite NIN tracks and do a small review on them.

To start off, this is MY list, if you have a different one (you most probably will), don't fret, heck post it in the comments either on this article or on the Facebook page (link at the bottom).  I've not always been a Nine Inch Nails fan, fuck to be perfectly honest I thought they were a rap band and I'm pretty sure I had them confused with Cyprus Hill for years (for real.....seriously).  It wasn't till a friend told me she was really into them that I started to take notice of them, sure though this was late 2011 so there wasn't much to notice of them.
But yea, here's the list, its less formal and more of a personal review (I think I may have even invented a word; is "bassier" a word?)



"La Mer"
The first song that I ever really listened to was “La Mer”, and even then it was only because of a friend of mines had said about it. It wasn’t even till a few months after being told about it that I even attempted to listen to it, when I finally did though I was in awe. Such an incredibly beautiful track, different to the normal NIN track this one doesn’t rely as much on synths but is driven by a piano melody. With little words being said during the 4+ minutes, the only ones that are are spoken in French, it plays out the same role as an instrumental would but with these soft-spoken words, it makes the song even more striking.

"Discipline"
After having listened to “La Mer” I decided to get the entire Nine Inch Nails discography; feeling that even if I didn’t like any of their full songs (lyrics and stuff) I felt I could at least rely on instrumental tracks. After listening to it all in one night, which was NO easy feat, I can honestly say that though I discovered a lot of really good songs, there was just nothing that I would say was ground-breaking for me, until I heard “Discipline”.
This would have been last summer; which was the exact time I was really getting into metalcore and ditching punk, so synth laden songs just wasn’t something I could get on-board with. Buuuuut “Discipline” had this incredible bass line and thumping drum going pretty much constantly during the entire song. Man I loved it, I had found the NIN song that made sense, and it made the other songs make sense too!!
Add in the piano and BAM, here was this song that I fell in love with instantly and could honestly just get lost in (as queer as that sounds).

"Ringfinger"
When listening to my newly acquired discography I obviously started off at the beginning, which happened to be the 1989 album ‘Pretty Hate Machine’. Now remember I was JUST getting into metalcore and had drowned myself for months in a wash of Eighteen Visions and Every Time I Die, so this electronic-heavy album really kinda freaked me out to be honest, though two songs really stood out to me; “Something I Can Never Have” and “Ringfinger”.
“Ringfinger” had this, like “Discipline”, awesome bass line and drum beat that was hypnotising, plus the dirty-sounding guitars during the chorus probably reminded me of ETID. But the song was something new to me; I really liked Reznor’s vocals and the instrumentals were awesome too, and the electronic stuff kinda fit, it certainly wasn’t a rave, and the guitars did sound pretty heavy. Or hey, maybe I felt like I had to like some of their stuff after spending the time getting all their records so I told myself I loved it at first…..

"Something I Can Never Have"
For someone that writes a lot about metalcore and hardcore, I sure do like myself them slow songs haha. Yea, I’ll admit it, I love this song!
The entire song is just so chilling to me, that ambiance in the background, behind all the instruments and vocals, is this hum that makes parts of the song seem like it’s been cut out of Donnie Darko or something. Again, Reznor’s vocals are something that made me gravitate to this track; the pain and feeling in them sound so damn real. Plus again there’s piano, this simple tune that comes and goes, but adds so much to what is quite honestly, a real sombre-sounding song.
And I don’t know why, but I really do love the ending with the birds chirping (I’ve said enough times in other reviews about how I love songs that end in different ways).

"Sunspots"
Now this one has a similar sound to it as “Discipline”, it has this heavy bass and drum thing going on through most of the song, but set on a slower pace. Plus the synth is a lot more noticeable and more of a weapon on this track than “Discipline”. I’m not too sure when I first listened to it; I know for sure that it took a while for me to really get into it, I don’t know I think as I listened to more of Nine Inch Nails and got into stuff like Blaqk Audio I got a little more into the electronic stuff, so this one slowly crept into my favourites list.

*Sorry for the shitty lyrics video, but there was no other video of the song that I could use :( *

"Pilgrimage"
Another instrumental song, well the only true instrumental track on my list, “Pilgrimage” is just a song that I automatically loved straight away. I’m a real big fan of when bands use instrumentals, I love when an album has a short pause of such to let the listener get their breath back and get ready for the next song. This does that so well, sure it’s very electronic-ridden and quite honestly, does have a big build-up so maybe it doesn’t let the listener breath as much as some other instrumentals. Either way, it’s a real good track, and a great showing of what NIN can do without Trent Reznor’s vocals.

"Came Back Haunted"
The first track released after their 5 year (it was 5 right?) hiatus, this was the first time that I had ever heard a ‘new’ NIN track and gotten to experience that feeling you get when a new track from one of your favourite bands is released. It certainly came as a surprise to me, I didn’t expect to hear from them ever again if I’m honest, but then again I didn’t know the story or anything really about them apart from their music.
But the track is great; it’s an amazing melding of their older, more synth-centric material and their newer, more mature, guitar and vocal driven work. It’s got this pulsing beat going on at all times, similar to “Ringfinger” just bassier, that just builds up each second of the song until the chorus hits, and the song hits a simpler and more melodic sound.
What’s also pretty amazing is that it holds both the instruments and the synth-elements in perfect balance, neither get overshadowed by the other and neither take the forefront for too long, this is a trick that Reznor has obviously picked up from his years of working on the band.

There it is, my Top/Favourite Nine Inch Nails tracks, sure I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve not been a lifelong fan of theirs or anything, but in the last year I have found them steadily becoming one of my favourite bands.

So yea, got something to say about this list; hell how about letting me know what your favourite NIN tracks are?
Post in the comments and let me know what you think, post your own list or head on over to the Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/theghostchant).

Thanks for reading!!

Track Of The Week: AFI - "I Hope You Suffer"

This week’s Track Of The Week is gonna focus on a recent single by goth punk legends AFI, “I Hope You Suffer”.
After a lengthy hiatus since their last release (4 years to be exact) AFI have come back with a smash and with a track that’s reminiscent of the earlier gothic tones the band used to be known for and the synth they started to incorporate during 2006’s ‘Decemberunderground’.

Since the release of 2009’s ‘Crash Love’ and subsequent touring, lasting till around 2010, the band have been quite, like super quiet. To the point that many were starting to think that AFI had called it a day.
In this gap Davey Havok (lead singer) took to Broadway, taking the lead role in the worldwide musical hit ‘American Idiot’, along with actually appearing in a number of small movies on the big screen also. To go along with these theatrical roles Davey also released his first novel (in what is rumoured to be a planned trilogy) earlier this year, ‘Pop Kids’, to what has been great success so far.
The thing you can probably notice is neither of these successes are in the music realm, in fact the only real music-based thing any member has done in this 4 year gap was the Blaqk Audio release from last year, ‘Bright Black Heaven’, which features both Davey and Jade (guitarist). Fans of this band will know that this is nothing like AFI however, Blaqk Audio are more akin to the synth-pop/New Wave of the 80’s; so fans of AFI’s punky sonics and gothic lyrics may not be totally on-board with this alternative band.

This bout of silence came to an end on the 17th of April, when a mysterious viral video was unveiled which showed a lone Davey Havok walking through a corridor to the haunting sounds of a distorted voice reciting a bible passage. The video ends with him reuniting with the band in a small rehearsal space and appearing to get ready to scream his lungs out.
This got people talking, excited and wondering; this video was darker and the background track obviously confirmed this, what were we to expect on the new record? For months different, more mysterious videos were uploaded to the AFI official site, getting people’s appetite wetter with each one but also confirming this theory of a darker AFI, and on the 18th of July the title track of new album ‘Burials’ (released September 22nd) was released.

“I Hope You Suffer” is a song that’s wrapped in dark glamour, the lyrics, the sound, even the music video shows a Davey Havok that looks as gothically glam as maybe he has ever looked. The track seems to take its cue from the earlier material lyric-wise, with the sound being something different, sounding like a darker version of ‘Decemberunderground’ with its crisp sounding synths and yells of Havok.

 

The lyrics tell of a love song that’s been told hundreds of times in every form of media; guy loves girl, girl cheats on guy, guy hates girl from that moment on. What’s interesting and captivating about this track and its lyrics is the line “I Hope You Suffer”; this isn’t a guy that is grovelling to a girl anymore, and this isn’t a happy ending song either. He wants nothing but hurt for the victimiser, he has nothing but contempt and even hate for her; unlike almost every song about this subject matter, this guy doesn’t love her anymore and it’s not going to resolve in the last chorus with some smart word-change.

Another noticeable thing about this song is the yells that come from Davey, something that was absent from the majority of ‘Crash Love’ he brings them back for the chorus’ on this song, and they add so much depth and feeling to this song and what’s being said. You also remember just why AFI got big in the first place, when Davey yells/screams; he’s one of the best.

One other thing that really hits me and is something I personally love in songs is this small instrumental at the end of the song. It’s nothing major, just a short piano and xylophone song-closer but at least to me it makes the song seem so much more, it makes it feel like an epic happening and again adds more to the song.

To return after a hiatus of 4 years is gonna be tough for a band, so you have to make sure that the song that they return with is a hit; a showcase of what to expect as well as holding a sense of what the fans loved years back. With “I Hope You Suffer” AFI have done this, it pulls in the gothic tones of their days as a hardcore band and keeps a hold, and even strengthens their grip on the use of sharp synth layers. If the rest of Octobers ‘Burials’ keeps this trend going, and by the sounds of “17 Crimes” it very well may, this album could be exactly what the fans want and maybe just a little bit more.

Below is a link to buy "I Hope You Suffer" which will be released October 22nd on 'Burials', which will be available on iTunes as well as pretty much ever other place that sells music.  Keep an eye on the AFI website for pre-order bundles for the album too.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/i-hope-you-suffer-single/id672869455

 

 

If anyone is interested in taking the reigns for next week or any week, hit me up on the Facebook page.

https://www.facebook.com/theghostchant

Interview with Bobby Schubenski

So yeah, this has been an interview I have been pursuing since the very first day I started this; Bobby was actually the very first person to agree to do an interview, 48mintues into me having started this page, I asked Bobby and he said sure.
Because of his insanely busy schedule it took some time, but finally we can post up this amazing interview with a truly amazing person.
Bobby is known for being co-owner (along with Jim Somers) of what has become one of the most popular underground clothing lines today, BlackCraft Cult.  A company whose slogans are positive and rely not on God or on any religious beliefs, but on a person's positivity and the belief that if you can visualise it, if you can dream it, you go for it.  This isn't just a slogan, Bobby is also very known for regularly using social media for showcasing his own positive message, posting multiple slogans a day based on human perseverance and overcoming bad times and triumphing.
Bobby has also had a successful music career, having been a member of bands such as Monkeys Are MachineGuns, The Witch Was Right and Suffer Well, and in these bands working with some of the biggest names ever in metalcore and industrial music.

I hope this was worth the wait for those reading, I know when I first read it I loved it.

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I am a huge fan, and have been ever since I first heard Monkeys Are Machine Guns and it blowing my mind cause I'd never heard anything as brutal as that before, then with the start-up of BlackCraft I became addicted to it, buying way too many tees haha.
Again, thanks for letting me do this and helping me get this music blog project off the ground, and in return I will make sure to share any and all BlackCraft news on it.


Questions;


What were some of the bands/music that you listened to when you were younger, and have they help inspire you in later projects (musically or with BlackCraft)?
I grew up listening to bands like eighteen visions, bleeding through, AFI all of these bands were a huge part of me and definitely shaped me into who i am today.

 One of the most important things about you is your positive outlook and how you use and promote The Secret; can I ask how you discovered The Secret?  I actually bought and read the book shortly after I found out about you and your positive message and I have to be honest, it’s amazing, such a great and powerful way to live.
Yeah…just one day i woke up and said i want more in life and i was about to start this clothing line rusted horse at the time so i was looking at tons of different books and magazines to get inspiration and i came across the secret ever since i found that book i own like 5 different copies of it….i will even buy it randomly for people and send it to them just in hopes they will read it :)

As well as having dabbled in music, you’re probably most known for being the Co-Owner (along with Jim Somers) of the hugely successful clothing line BlackCraft Cult; how did this begin, and where (if anywhere) do you find your inspirations for the designs?
HA! dude me and jim started blackcraft with $100 a year ago and we were shipping shirts out of trevors attic at his house….it's pretty crazy to see what it has turned into in a year.

BlackCraft Cult is really starting to seriously take off, I am seeing them regularly at gigs here in Scotland now, most recent being at a Bring Me The Horizon show where this chick was wearing the MIW collab shirt (I was in awe haha). Did you ever think it’d be so successful?
yeah i always believed it would be a success…..the secret taught me that haha :)

Recently you guys have started doing band collaborations, namely Motionless In White and Asking Alexandria; are there any bands that you'd like to work with too, or any bands that are no longer that you wish you could have worked with?
hmmm i would of loved to do one with eighteen visions.
*personal note, yea if this was to ever happen, I'd be first in-line to buy it ;) *

Now that BlackCraft has become what it is, do you have any plans on creating more clothing lines in the future?
yeah actually….funny as I'm typing this I'm working on 2 other lines with some friends one is going to be called ED PARTY

What plans do you have for the future of BlackCraft? What would you like to see happen; more stores, expanded apparel selection?
so excited on the future of BC we will be having a lot more collaborations with bands, artists, etc…..we are going to be expanding into more cut and sew like denim jackets, beanies, shoes!! and hopefully open more stores across the US!

Last question; is Lydia the biggest diva in Orange County (haha)?
hahah well she is the 2nd biggest diva next to me haha…i mean lydia goes to the spa and gets massages 2 times a week.

<3


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I loved doing this, Bobby has personally helped me a good few times, and for this I can't say thank you enough.  So to get to interview such an amazing man, someone who actually helped get into the PMA (positive mental attitude) way of life, its just another great experience I've had with this blog.

Below is a link to BlackCraft Cult, go along, browse their selection of items (leggings, tees, hoodies, crop-tops, patches, snap-backs and even coffee!!) and pick-up a thing or two.  Great clothing line, great quality too, I'm proud to walk around wearing BlackCraft.
http://www.blackcraftcult.com/

Also, here's a link to Bobby's new clothing line, Ed Party, very different from BlackCraft, but still very nice!  Items aren't up to buy yet, but you can see what is to come and be the first in line when they are released.
http://www.edparty.bigcartel.com/

Track Of The Week: Eighteen Visions – “Vanity”

After having so much genuine fun writing last week’s edition, I felt it’d be quite cool to again review a song that I love, and have been listening to a lot lately; this week’s Track Of The Week is Eighteen Visions’ “Vanity”.

Being the title track from 2002’s ‘Vanity’ album, the album opener and the lead single, it’s clear that 18V saw a lot of potential in this song, and saw it as something more than just the beginning of an album; they saw a hard-hitting track that would go on to shape not only their career but music as a whole (for real).

First off, time to get the personal stuff out the way; for me this may be my favourite song ever recorded. I remember when I first discovered it, it was during an amazing time in my life, and hearing this song will always take me back. Now this wasn’t the first Eighteen Visions track I had ever heard, heck it wasn’t even the first ‘Vanity’ song I’d heard, for years I had been rocking out to “Victim”, and about 6 months prior I had actually began looking back at Eighteen’s back catalogue, only being interested in some of ‘Obsession’ and ‘Until The Ink Runs Out’ (mainly for its stark opposite nature compared to the later 18V material).
No this sadly can’t claim to be the first Eighteen Visions anything for me, however it can claim to being the first time I had ever heard a song that beautifully melded heavy, thrashing hardcore with a soft, almost pop-like tone.
Now bear in mind, at this point I was still a ‘punk-kid’, the days when Rise Against ruled my life, and bands such as Thursday and Anti-Flag were constants on my iPod, not like now where I look like I’ve been plucked straight out of the Chain Reaction during a show circa 2003. To hear such a tempo change take place during a song blew my mind, and for it to happen more than once, it just opened my mind to music and literally changed what I look for in a song.

Now I may have been new to this style of music in late-2011, but after actually listening to metalcore and delving into a lot of different bands from the genre, this tempo change style of music recording has been done by others and has become somewhat of a played out and stale mechanic if I’m honest.
Thing is, sure (many) bands have taken the tempo change thing and ran with it, BUT how many bands did it before 2002’s ‘Vanity’? How many bands changed tempo and went with slower, clearer vocals in different parts of the song, and slammed out guttural screams on the other parts. You’ll find very few, if any, and then when you add the question of who did it right and well, your list diminishes down to zero.
Eighteen Visions were the first band to have songs that used both clear vocals and screams, there I said it!

One of the most impressive aspects of this song, for me, is the lyrics. This is undoubtedly James Hart’s best set of lyrics he had ever written up to this point, and if I’m honest I might even say ever. The lyrics tell a story of a guy that’s madly in love with this girl, where he idealises her, she is everything to him but this feeling isn’t reciprocated in her, where she continues to “make midnight drive-by’s” whilst leaving him alone and one night she stands him up, deciding to leave him for good. The guy begs her to reconsider, to change her mind, even threatening suicide but finally instead realises that he didn’t actually love HER; what he loved was the idea of her, her “plastic perfection”, her “vanity” and so goes out to eventually shoot her dead. He then puts on “her Sunday dress, laced with pink and white”, where it becomes evident that he loved this idea of her so much that he ended up actually wanting to be her, that in his mind she was perfection and he wanted to be just as perfect as she was.
I’m not sure why, but once I actually read about the meaning it conjured up this sense of intrigue in me, I started reading the lyrics to this one song on an almost nightly-basis. The story told was just something I was fascinated in, it was a real story that was compressed into a 5 and a half minute song. Again, like its sound, I had never heard any song to actually present a song that had such a vivid and heart-wrenching tale to it. For the first time ever, I cared about the lyrics to a song, and actually felt them pull strings inside of me.

Though this is a review on the specific song “Vanity”, I do feel like I should talk a bit about the album (though expect a full review at some point in the future). The album ‘Vanity’ has a much different sound compared to previous effort ‘Until The Ink Runs Out’ from 2000, like the song “Vanity”, a number of the tracks on the album tinkered with the changing of tempo and replacing screams and thrashing with clear vocals and melody-driven strums. It ended up being a sigh of what to expect from next release ‘Obsession’ which was mostly the clearer vocals from James with his screams being toned way down.
The album flows, with the use of instrumental interludes “The Notes Of My Reflection” and “There Is Always” (an instrumental rendition of 1962’s controversial movie The Manchurian Candidate’s theme) a number of the songs actually run into each other without a break or stop. For the times that audio silence does take place in-between tracks, sampled movie quotes often lend a helping hand (something the band actually had started incorporating into their live shows around this time).
These uses of film excerpts help make the album feel like something much more than just another release; they make it feel like an epic happening.

Back to the track, it actually saw release in the form of a 7inch vinyl that was seen as a means of promotion for the upcoming album (it also featured what was originally supposed to be the big show-stealer of the record “I Don’t Mind” on the B-side). The vinyl was pressed on three colours and in different, limited numbers; 1000 on clear red, 1000 on white and 300 were pressed onto pink marbled vinyl.
All vinyl’s were released in a sleeve featuring the same artwork as the album (the first editions of the ‘Vanity’ album, the rereleased version used a similar but different image). This artwork was an image that embodied the feel of “Vanity” (both album and song); a lone bikini-clad woman reworked into different shades of pink. This woman, the woman that is sought after so much in the lyrics of the song, is beautiful and alluring, a modern-day temptress; this beauty, this sense of attraction and temptation is something this is obviously a main point of the song “Vanity”, but it also comes up many times during the entire album. This sense of vanity would actually go on to help create the term “fashioncore” and in-turn follow Eighteen Visions around until the day they called it quits in 2007.

The song “Vanity” isn’t talked about much these days, though to be honest it could be one of the most important tracks ever created, without it there wouldn’t be nearly as many hardcore bands as there are now. Would anyone have dared delve into the mix of clear vocals and screams? Who knows, but even if they did, would they have pulled it off as well as Eighteen did with this track; I don’t think so.
“Vanity” tells a tortured story in the form of a song, and for me personally this was something I had never experienced before, group that with the incredible instrumentals, the sound and the general feel of the song, this is something that I truly hold dear to myself.

 

"Vanity" was released on the album 'Vanity' and is available below for US readers via iTunes, and for those in the UK, an Amazon link is below as well.  The CD, along with the 7" vinyl are also pretty easy to find, using Discogs and other record specialist sites.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/vanity/id252383423

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Vanity/dp/B001QQ7MYO/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1376866481&sr=8-2&keywords=eighteen+visions+vanity

If anyone is interested in taking the reigns for next week or any week, hit me up on the Facebook page.
https://www.facebook.com/theghostchant

The Chariot: All's Well That Ends Well

*Click the above image to access the super emotional video*

Last night (UK time) The Chariot released a video that showed love to everyone that had ever given a damn about them, then announced that they were over; disbanded.

The Chariot were one of the most promising bands to come out of hardcore since the first-wave during the mid-late 90's. Every song had melody, they thrashed and created chaos but there was always this sense of tune, of melody and of emotion.

The amount of emotion from the posted video is incredible, that short almost instrumental track strips The Chariot back to what they have always been.
A band about emotion, and about feeling.
Every night they performed they put every ounce of heart they had into it, every scream Josh Scogin let out, he did so like it was his last breath on this Earth.

In the end, the music world has lost another great band, whether it’s due to personal problems in the band (doubtful), problems with record sales, or even if it’s just a case of the members being burned out and over the band.

Though they’re no longer a band, it’s clear that they will always be alive.

The Chariot

2003 - 2013

Track Of The Week: Every Time I Die - "Underwater Bimbos From Outer Space"

For this week’s Track Of The Week I’m going to review the lead single off of Every Time I Die’s 2012 album ‘Ex-Lives’, “Underwater Bimbos From Outer Space”.

Being the bands 7th album, this was the last shot that ETID had of grabbing that brass-ring, breaking through that glass ceiling and reaching the beyond, something most hardcore bands never get to do (look at Poison The Well, Eighteen Visions, Anti-Flag, Bleeding Through, ect).
To do this, they needed a track that summed up everything; that summed up the previous 15 years, the fury that is ETID, the lyrical genius that is Keith Buckley, the feel and tone of the band. Simply put, Every Time I Die needed a killer track or else they risked being the big fish in the small metalcore pond.
With “Underwater Bimbos…” they had this track, the second this track was released to the world on the 2nd of January 2012, it was clear that ETID were not fucking around on this record; it was balls to the wall, do or die.

The 154 seconds of chaos starts off with the chilling screams of Keith Buckley; “I want to be dead with my friends!”. No instruments in the background, no prologue, the first thing the listener hears when they play the song (and the album) is Keith screeching these harrowing words.
To most this is a dark, twisted lyric, but to those that understand Keith Buckley’s mind and how his lyrics come about and how much meaning is actually in every word, its actually not. In fact it’s something of a positive note; it scribes the struggle Keith himself is having being around everyone he knows, seeing them follow this set path of life (get a job, get married, grow old, ect.) and how he just isn’t sure it’s for him. Frankly the song tracks his struggles with life and being at the stage in life is now, can he really still follow a life of his own pleasures or should he conform and pursue this idealistic dream of what life is supposed to be.

“Underwater Bimbos…” may just be the heaviest ETID song ever, sure they’re known for their own unique brand of metalcore and have been since debut EP ‘Burial Plot Bidding War’, but they have never had a song that was this dark in sound, never has one of their songs been this brutal; the constant chugging of guitarists Jordan Buckley and Andy Williams and the ear-ringing drum smashes of new recruit drummer Ryan Leger, along with Keith’s visceral vocals, all add up to create a song that is as heavy as any track that’s ever been produced by a metalcore band.

Written during Keith’s World tour with 2009 side project The Damned Things, this placed the entire band out of their comfort-zone, never had there been such a geographical gap between them during the writing process. Add in factors such as the loss of old drummer and long-time member Mike Novak, the loss of bass player Josh Newton and two members of the band actually getting married and all of them reaching the ripe age of 30, this all took a toll on the writing process and added more hurdles to overcome.
Also, as said above, ‘Ex-Lives’ was the bands 7th studio release; this was a make or break album, they had to succeed with this and breakout or they’d forever be the grandfathers of the current generation of hardcore. Since the release of 2003’s ‘Hot Damn!’ the band had sort of floundered around the scene, they were always touring and always just seemed to release great albums but not really get much notoriety outside the same critics and insiders from the scene. The album needed a hook, something to pull in everyone, from hardcore dudes, to metalcore fans to punks, if you liked rock, this song popped up on your Facebook wall, or your Twitter feed account, or your YouTube account. The song was so advertised, to the point that if it hadn’t been such a great track, it could and probably would have caused the album to fall-flat.

The key to this advertising was its music video. Directed by lead Keith Buckley, the music video is a barrage of hard-to-watch imagery; splices of horrific clips and twisted flashes of still pictures, the video is something that could easily cause nightmares. From injured soldiers from Wars, to mentally and emotionally traumatic scenes, though the video maybe doesn’t fit the song 100% lyrically the video does go along more than well with the brutality of the song itself.

In the end, this track proved to help propel the album and existence of Every Time I Die to the next level; no longer were their shows packed full of middle aged men with long scruffy hair and overflowing facial hair, but you got girls and younger guys that wanted to go to enjoy the music as well to have a great time.
“Underwater Bimbos From Outer Space” has already became a staple in the live set of ETID, with shows going crazy the second the words “I want to be dead with my friends!” are screamed (believe me, I know from experience).
Where the band goes from here is unknown, with just how much this one song changed everything for them, you really can’t count Every Time I Die out at this point, and with the touring for ‘Ex-Lives’ starting to wind down a new album can’t be too far away; here’s hoping they can drain the well for another magical track.

"Underwater Bimbos From Outer Space" was released on 'Ex-Lives' and is available below from iTunes and pretty much any other music store/website too.

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/ex-lives/id504200886

 

 

If anyone is interested in taking the reigns for next week or any week, hit me up on the Facebook page.

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Interview with Mike Egan

Obviously I'm a massive music fan, I wouldn't be doing this blog if I wasn't, but one of my other obsessions in life is graphic art.  I've always been interested in art and always tried my hand at it, though not being massively successful, I admire those that are and love different, more gothic styles of art.  When I discovered Mike Egan's work, I was in awe, the gothic style was something I was interested in immediately and his style, though simplistic, appealed to me.  Since discovering him a few months ago I have worked my way through his back catalogue and simply love it, so getting to interview him was something I thought about, even if its not directly music-related, there is undoubtedly a musical influence and feel to his work.  
This is the first time I've interviewed someone that isn't a musician so obviously the questions vary and are more about Mike's profession and less to do with music, however I tried to keep a sense of music-focus going in the overall interview.

I hope you all enjoy it, and below I'll add a link to Mike's website so you can keep up with his progression and check out his other work.

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I’m a big fan of punk music, and through-out social media I found Chris #2 from Anti-Flag being a big supporter of your work, so after a while I decided I’d check it out and I was in love from the second I saw it. The gothic style was something that really caught my attention straight-away as well as the simplistic nature of it all, not to mention just how different it was from literally anything I had seen before.
I’m also really into graphic art; band artworks especially, but your work although not being directly connected to music, I feel does have a music-inspired quality to it, and is something that sets it apart from the a lot of the other art out there today.


Questions;


First off, with this being a music based blog I just wanted to start by asking what are some of the bands/songs that you’ve been listening to lately?
I've been listening to Defeater, Touche Amore, Goodtime Boys, Tom Waits, Modern Life is War and Dad Punchers a lot. Also, Run The Jewels, those dudes are amazing.

I’ve seen people describe you as a “punk-rock artist”, does music (or the genre of punk in general) inspire your work at all?
Yeah, I love punk music. I think the rawness and the energy of music is something that I try to bring to my work. Punk is stripped down and simple and that's how I feel about my work. Punk music kind of feels like folk art to me.

If you could ever do some sort of music/band related piece(s), what bands would you like to work with? 
I'd love to do a huge project with a big band like Queens of the Stone Age, Nick Cave or Mastodon. I really like when bands/musicians have artists they like work on the album art. Kanye West and Pharrell are good for that as well

In your artwork you have a very unique style; using bold, thick lines you create these surreal gothic-like characters. When did you develop this style and decide that it was what you wanted to primarily work in and what were some of your inspirations for this? 
I took a printmaking class in 97 and started doing woodcuts. After college I didn't have access to a print studio so I started painting at home. The bold line work of the prints eventually spilled over into my paintings giving them a graphic quality. I really took to the German Expressionists like Max Beckman, Otto Dix and Kathe Kollwitz. I also love Jose Guadalupe Posada, he's a big influence.

As opposed to the conventional use of paper or canvas, most of your work is actually painted onto wooden panels or wallpaper, is there any real reason for this, do you feel it adds to the piece or is it something that adds to the uniqueness of your work? 
I really like to work on wood, it's a great surface to work on. The gives my work a "folk art" feel that I don't think I would achieve with canvas. Painting on wallpaper is really fun to do, I love that there is a pattern to work with and the paper is nice and thick.

Recently for the Comic-Con you did a series of pieces based on famous pop-culture inspired characters, ‘DEATH GOES POP’, if you were to have continued this, what other characters would you have liked to tackle?  Have you any plans on doing similar projects?
Doing this series definitely got me thinking about doing more icons. I'm looking to focus on doing more of the horror/monster characters in my work. I recently did King Kong and another Wolfman. I'm also kicking around the idea of doing some bands like Misfits or The Beatles.

Having created many different pieces over a number of years, which are you most proud of?
I'm proud of everything that I've done, I keep building off of every new body of work. I'm extremely proud of the vinyl toys and making the transition from 2-D to 3-D

And lastly, what can we expect to see in the latter half of the year? Have you got any big plans?
I have a solo show in Portland, OR at Breeze Block Gallery in October. Also in October I have group shows in Albuquerque, Oakland, Cincinnati, and Rochester, NY. I'll be doing to custom toys and plenty of small painting sales on my site as well. Busy busy bee.

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I really enjoyed getting to interview someone outside of the core of music, it was slightly daunting when I had to write questions, wanting to keep it music-based but make his artwork the main point, hopefully I done that or didn't do too bad of a job.

Below is Mike's website where you can view all his work from 2011 and another link to his webstore where you can buy prints, wooden originals and even coffins(!!).

Website;
http://www.eganpaintings.com/

Webstore;
http://mikeegan.bigcartel.com/

Track Of The Week: Rise Against – “Grammatizator”

 

 
 
For the second instalment of Track Of The Week I’m going with a track by a band that I used to love, but due to their change in style and growth in popularity (and my own changes) my enjoyment has admittedly fallen.
Anyway, the band is Rise Against, starting off with a hardcore sound on debut album ‘The Unraveling’, Rise gradually transformed into what they are now, which is one of the biggest punk bands of the modern era, maybe ever, alongside acts like Green Day and My Chemical Romance.

Initially released on the Fat Wreck Chords exclusive 7" titled simply 'Rise Against' along with fellow b-side "Voice Of Dissent", “Grammatizator” is quite easily Rise Against’s hardest, most ferocious track to date, drawing the same sort of intensity that was heard on ‘The Unraveling’ and ‘Revolutions Per Minute’, it’s the musical equivalent of a head-on car smash!
Clocking in at 2 minutes and 9, this song is not a short one, for such a hard-hitting song taken from the same vein as 80s hardcore legends like Black Flag and Minor Threat, you’d expect the song to be short and snappy. What Rise have done is take the rawness from their early years and meld it what with Tim McIlrath (lead singer/founding member) has become one of the best in punk music at, melody. This song has tune, it has structure and purpose; it isn’t just thrashing noise, no on multiple listens and to the musically educated, you can see that every beat, every guitar chug and every bass slam is precise and is where it’s at for a certain reason.
Frankly, it may be the most polished hardcore song ever.
Something that’s worth to note is the fact that this song was written during the ‘Appeal To Reason’ sessions in 2007/8, the album which many believe to be the start of Rise’s assentation (or decline depending on your taste) into the mainstream where their sound seemed more inspired by what was considered ‘punk’ by the radio and television (i.e. Green Day, Sum 41, ect), and less inspired by what is considered ‘punk’ by purists. This certainly explains the polish of the track, but the rawness, honestly I’m not too sure where it fits in, heck sounds like it was lifted straight from the 2003 ‘Revolutions Per Minute’ album.
 
Now actually more onto the song itself, another thing to point out is the title, I for one love it but like maybe everyone ever, I have never been 100% with how to pronounce it; taken from the Roald Dahl short story “The Great Automatic Grammatizator” this track pretty much compresses this 21 page short story into a musical marvel. It details the struggles of a small-time writer/inventor who is stuck in writer’s block until they devise a plan to invent a machine that would create the perfect story. With this invention the writer’s fortunes turn, making him the richest and most powerful writer in the world, at which point the writer begins to buy-off the struggling writers’ names for use on his machine-created stories. These writers then must decide whether to give in to these “golden contracts” or continue to struggle in life.
The story, though having an almost child-friendly nature to the majority of it, the ending themes totally change it into a dark tale about how much is enough for someone to sell their soul.
The lyrics of the song make multiple references to the story and these darker themes, as well as actually using lines directly from the book (“God grant me the strength to let my children starve”). This was the perfect subject matter for Rise Against to tackle, a band that is known for being very politically driven, the topic of selling out was ripe for the band to address, and to do so by referencing this short story shows that they are a band that does their homework and that aren’t afraid to bring in help from outsiders if it gets their message across.
 
One of the most appealing aspects of this song is the bands return to a heavier sound, though it didn’t rub-off on other tracks since, this track does go to show that Rise Against can still produce a heavy train-wreck of a song when they want to, and with a new album on the way (hopefully) sooner rather than later, we can all hope that maybe we might see “Grammatizator” influence some future tracks.
 

"Grammatizator" will be released on the upcoming B-sides and covers album 'Long Forgotten Songs', which hits stores on the 10th of September, but you can pre-order the album digitally on iTunes via the link below, and you can buy it physically on pretty much any music webstore, with RiseAgainst.com having exclusive numbered bundles.

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/long-forgotten-songs-b-sides/id676053561

 

 

If anyone is interested in taking the reigns for next week or any week, hit me up on the Facebook page.

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