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Your Metal
By
David King
The Knife
Silent
Shout (Rabid)
You may have first encountered the Knife the way I did—as
a MySpace featured artist—or perhaps as a review on pitchforkmedia.com
You may have suffered from the same negative initial reaction
I had to the band: immobilizing disgust manifested in hate-fueled
body tremors. Or maybe I’m the only one who suffers from IMPHOS
(Indie Music Press Hype Overdrive Syndrome.) However, one
day I was driving around listening to satellite radio, bobbing
my head to a ridiculously catchy dance tune, happy as a clam,
and then I looked up at the display to see the artist’s name,
and there it was, plain as day: the Knife. My initial reaction
was fear, then denial: “No way I like this song, no fucking
way,” I told myself. (I had an unfortunate youthful obsession
with Ace of Base.) But later, in front of my computer, I collapsed,
done in by the catchy reggae- flavored technopop tune that
was stuck in my head. Silent Shout has since become
my favorite chill-out album of the year. Crisp dance tracks,
distorted bass lines and the absolutely irresistible chorus
of “We Share Our Mother’s Health.”
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Bloc
Party
A
Weekend in the City (V2)
“I’m
trying to be heroic in an age of modernity,” meekly sings
Bloc Party lead singer Kele Okereke, with no backing instrumentation,
on the opening to Bloc Party’s sophomore effort, A Weekend
in the City. Then an urgent bass line picks up behind
him like a rush-hour bus coming up behind you in a tunnel,
and Bloc Party’s dance-punk-rock opera about racism, alienation
and sexual frustration in London is off to the races. A
Weekend in the City is the audio translation of being
an immigrant youth in the mean streets of London, with the
skinheads, noblemen and the average Joe telling you that you
shouldn’t have a voice.
“Hunting
Witches” deals with the riots and tensions that dominate Muslim
ghettos in England: “I’m sitting on a roof of my house/With
a shotgun/With a six-pack of beer/The news copter says the
enemy’s among us.” In “Prayer,” Okereke pleads for wit, power
and the grace to confront his audience. (Okereke has been
harangued in the British press for his ambiguous sexuality.)
Despite all of Bloc Party’s shining nobility and struggle
for righteousness, they barely ever get hung up on message.
Like being out in the city on a Friday night, no matter how
ugly it gets, A Weekend in the City almost always feels
like a party.
 Skinny
Puppy
Mythmaker
(Synthetic Symphony)
Skinny Puppy have rarely, if ever, been described as listenable.
The industrial legends, whose stage act has included fake
vivisections and the burning of American currency along with
their screeching electronics, have made sure that getting
through every one of their past 12 albums is a fight. However,
with Mythmaker, Skinny Puppy combine the ever-too-sweet
sound of the vocoder with grinding, skittering techno and
schizophrenic chattering to create listenable dance pop for
the seriously twisted.
The
Faceless
Akeldama
(Sumerian)
Just how metal are California’s latest metal-core export?
So metal that they might not even need the “core” part of
the label. Avenged Sevenfold they are not. The Faceless play
an inspired type of tech-metal derivative of bands like Between
the Buried and Me, Carcass and occasionally Meshuggah. The
best tracks on Akeldama come hard and fast, with blast
beats raining down along with off-time riffs and gut-belching
screams. Akeldama is tripped up, however, when the
band delve into familiar metal territory. Are their quick
leads In Flames-inspired or Killswitch Engage filler-drivel?
Are the keyboards on “All Dark Graves” a nod to Dimmu Borgir
or pathetic emo-goth tripe, a la Bleeding Through? These are
all question the Faceless will have to answer on their next
full-length. But judging by Akeldama, it will be worth
hearing their answer.
 Psyopus
Our
Puzzling Encounters (Metal Blade)
Our
Puzzling Encounters is wacky —wacky in the way that a
serial killer dressed up in clown makeup is wacky. Rochester
tech-grindcore maniacs Psyopus put together their music like
a puzzle: a scale run here, an arpeggio there, a mind-numbing
lash of über-processed guitar here. The picture you get after
the puzzle is assembled is not a field of flowers or a lovely
windmill. The imagery that goes along with their music is
more akin to an expressionist painting, maybe cubist, perhaps
The Scream. What makes Our Puzzling Encounters
different than any other tech bands’ mishmash of guitar tapping,
distorted screaming and polyrhythmic drumming is the sheer
irreverent joy that soaks the entirety of their work.
Norma
Jean
Redeemer
(Solid State)
Praise the Lord, another Christian-core album! But this time,
its producer is Ross Robinson. At the Drive-In Ross Robinson,
not Slipknot and Vanilla Ice Ross Robinson, silly. Norma Jean
try really hard on this record, really hard to hit the same
chugga-chugga-chord and squealing note over and over again
into eternal redemption . . . er, redundancy.
 TV
on the Radio
Return
to Cookie Mountain (Interscope)
It was the best album of 2006, ac cording to . . . well, everyone
who didn’t feel the need to fellate the cranky one, Bob Dylan.
So why take the time to say what everyone else has already
said? Because Return to Cookie Mountain is simply that
undeniably good. Imagine David Bowie singing over a blend
of funk-driven indie-pop dominated by pinpoint dance drumming,
distortion and pulsing electronics, and you might get a sense
of Return to Cookie Mountain. In fact, the Thin White
Duke makes a guest appearance on “Province,” and Bowie’s vocals
add more soul to an album that already aches with passion.
TV on the Radio’s soul-punk-indie-hop is some of the most
exciting music being made today; Return to Cookie Mountain
is simultaneously an amalgamation of the best traits of popular
music today and a rejection of everything that is wrong with
it.
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