Let's cast a critical eye towards shit we listened to years ago!

Sunday night. Rainstorm. Obnoxious shit. I was really, really wakeful at about 2 AM, which wasn't a good sign since I needed to be up for 9. After about an hour of laying flat on my back, nowhere close to sleep, I give up the pretense of trying to sleep. I'm rummaging around my room trying to find something to distract me, and I notice a pair of burnt CDs on my night table. So I plug in some headphones to my awful clock-radio thing and get listening.

Pretty quickly I realize I burnt these discs like five years ago, and in my wakefulness I resolved that the best way to bring myself out of my "NOT POSTING ANYTHING" slump would be to get some writing done about some old favourites, so here we are.

System of a Down

Then: I bought Toxicity on a whim back in summer '02. I was a really big metalhead for a long time, and about then I was starting to just listen to whatever just because it's metal/tangentially related to metal. SoaD were a pleasant surprise at the time. They've got the grind, they've got the ARGHBLARGH vocals, but they still know how to craft a pretty decent melody. After Toxicity, though, they ended up doing a few really dire albums and dropping off the face of the earth, which was kinda disappointing. I was really fond of the band and I made a point of getting all the non-shit stuff in their back catalogue (including a copious amount of now lost live boots.)

Now: My God. I can still say Toxicity, (and possibly to an even greater extent, their self-titled LP) remains listenable for "alternative metal" or whatever bullshit genre people throw about for bands like this (honestly, they aren't quite TR00 KVLT, but "alternative metal"?), but the lyrics have aged about as well as a seven year old ham sandwich. Full of borderline offensive conspiracy theory claims ("Prison Song" informs us of how drugs seized by the DEA pay for "BRUTAL CORPORATE SPONSORED DICTATORS AROUND THE WORLD", among other things) and blatant Liberalism (see: any track). There's also a healthy dose of obnoxious non-sequitur, although less so than on their later albums. Serj Tankian's vocals are a real love/hate thing, too. He's pretty grating and not good in large doses, but a mile better than Daron Malakian (who also plays a bigger role in the later discs). Musically there's no real showing of much talent, but competent rhythms and nice meaty guitar.

Gorillaz

Then: DAMON ALBARN IS MY HERO AND I WOULD SUCK HIS DICK

Now: Really, of all the early 2000s fad bands, Gorillaz stands out as the one worth the most legitimate praise. Sure, the whole marketing approach was rather gimmicky, but the whole "narrative music" thing is awfully smart, the characters were memorable and the albums themselves are utterly fucking brilliant. Self-titled disc is a delightful piece of pop with Raymond Scott samples (YES!), some great guest vocalists (the late Ibrahim Ferrer in particular shines) and some surprisingly solid genre switches (I don't think I've ever seen a disc nail both rap and punk with this sort of efficiency without feeling like a cheap imitation of one or both). Demon Days is even better, I'd say it's probably one of the few pop albums of the past two decades worthy of being called a masterwork. It takes the successes of the first album and builds on them. The list of guests is astonishing, everyone from Ike Turner to MF DOOM is here and their presence does not detract from the album one bit. DOOM's track in particular, "November Has Come", is simultaneously full of mournful beauty and sheer badassery. The closing combo of "Don't Get Lost In Heaven" and the title track strikes me as the best conclusion to an album I think I've ever heard, they manage to sum up the album lyrically and musically while still standing alone as great songs.

Frank Zappa

Then: Zappa was my introduction to a lot of older "serious" music. I'd heard all the classic rock bands before, but stuff like this was new to me. Frank managed to blend zany humour with a genre-defying mix of simple melody and technical virtuosity to create some of the most memorable songs ever written.

Now: As soon as I put on Joe's Garage, I remembered all the lyrics to every song on the album. I listened to Zappa religiously and I'm astonished that I don't do it anymore. His entire catalogue (even silly little experiments like Cruising With Ruben & The Jets) holds up very, very well and likely always will. I bought Joe's Garage on vinyl lately, and now I'm going to have to track down all the Zappa albums I used to have (as well as the stuff I haven't heard). If I'd never become a fan of Zappa, I most likely would never have been able to appreciate many of my current favourites like Tom Waits, Captain Beefheart or even Sergei Prokofiev. Both avant-garde and classical music were never interests of mine before, but listening to Zappa made them two of my biggest loves.

Dimmu Borgir

Then: TRULY FROSTBITTEN KVLT THAT SATAN HIMSELF WOULD BE A FOOL NOT TO LOVE

Now: From my metal phase, I only have a couple of things left. Cannibal Corpse's discography, a few Slayer albums, a cassette of Anthrax's Spreading the Disease, and some comps with the likes of Opeth and Old Man's Child on them. Really and truly, a lot of what I was listening to at the time isn't good and probably wasn't ever good, but there were a few diamonds in the rough. Dimmu Borgir's discog as a whole is an incredibly mixed bag, and I'd say they're more of a decent black metal band than an excellent one, but when they're on, they're on. They've got the silly frogthroat vocals and pounding double-bass drums, but they use them well. The guitars are a bit flashy for black metal, but seeing them incorporate motifs from Beethoven into their riffs is a real treat as too many acts in the genre seem to have little to no reverence for classical music. Hell, I'd say Borgir are at their best with grand orchestral works. "Progenies of the Great Apocalypse" I feel comfortable in calling a legitimately good song. The massive sweeping strings and vocals (from guest-starring Mayhem singer Abbath's fierce growls to I.C.S. Vortex's absolutely gorgeous tenor) give it a real epic feel without being cheesy (I.C.S. Vortex also had his own band alongside Borgir called Arcturus who I have to say were one of the most brilliant acts to have come out of Europe in the past twenty years).