I hate exhortations to dance. Its not the job of the audience to provide affirmation for the performer. If a band's got what it takes, they don't have to ask.

The Art Of Headbanging.

Blue Cheer, Iron Butterfly and Vanilla Fudge are thought to be, by people who think of such things, the first “heavy metal” bands. Their music consisted of a loud wall of guitars and a big bottom, grounded by a Neanderthal thud. And riding on top: vocals by men who sounded like their balls were caught in a threshing machine. While I dug those ’60s bands, I missed out on the metal/glam wave of the early ’70s. Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Uriah Heep and Bowie came out with records at a time that I was listening to jazz and blues. For the most part, I was bored by the rock and roll that came out in the first half of the ’70s. Art rock bands like Yes, Genesis, King Crimson, Pink Floyd less Syd Barrett and Tommy era Who represented everything that I had come to loathe about rock and roll: bloated egos playing self-important sludge. So, I wasn’t listening. Well, three decades later and there is a new wave of heavy metal and this time I’m paying attention.
Killswitch Engage (from New England) and Mastodon (Georgia) are nu-metal bands whose sound doesn’t owe much to the metal bands of the ‘70s. For one thing, their music isn’t blues-based like Zeppelin and they play a lot faster. But lyrically they do delve into the same hippie dippy mystical crap as Sabbath and Zep, a mashup of Aleister Crowley, LSD and Tolkien. And yet, lyrics like these from Mastodon roll off a tongue firmly in cheek:

“Elephant spirits
Tower of ivory
Story of ancient deities
Seizure of the fleece
Protector of its place
Fly thru dreamscapes
Of valleys gullies and spires
Herd across suicidal slopes
Changeless moonshines
Circle cyclops image
A race of one-eyed beings
All feared and shunned”

Killswitch and Mastodon are tighter, rhythmically more inventive and less florid than their forebears. Modern production and the bands’ musical dexterity leave the metal bands of the ‘70s in the dust. Perhaps it’s a result of more discipline and less drugs, but these two bands have pushed a dinosaur genre into the future. For those unfamiliar with nu-metal bands, the assumption is that the music is dumb, crude and marketed to moronic headbangers. Not so. These bands experiment with tempo, polyrhythm, complex arrangements and improvisation that often rivals the work of free jazz geniuses like Ornette Coleman and Miles Davis. They may be metal, but they ain’t heavy. They’re fast, loud, aggressive and highly experimental. This music has an intellectual aspect, an artfulness, that the uninitiated might be surprised by.
On the other hand, Australian trio Wolfmother is a neo-metal band with a primitive retro style that would make Jimmy Page and Ozzy proud. These guys love the melodrama of metal, its operatic bombast and epic silliness. Wolfmother, like Zeppelin, weave a certain delicateness into their music, embellishing big riffs with soaring melodies. These 20-something longhairs fancy themselves bards, poets, folkies. While most metal bands celebrate the dark side, Wolfmother come on like the Incredible String Band on steroids. Their sunny utopian fantasies smack of sixties idealism:

“Say goodbye to your sorrow,
And hello to tomorrow,
Well I hear the fiddlers call,
Say that love is here for all,
Lower your guns even if love turns to spite,
We may find the enemy waiting inside,
Light the candle to see what may unfold”

So, as the rest of the world burns, Wolfmother is busy lighting candles and dreaming of a world that never was and never will be - poetry powered by 50,000 watts. If Mastodon is a musical H.P. Lovecraft, Wolfmother is William Blake.

The idea of a 55 year old guy listening to music that has traditionally been the domain of shoe-gazing, longhaired, mouthbreathers could be construed as a desperate attempt at reviving his lost youth or some form of seriously arrested development. But,that ain't the case. Bands like Killswitch Engage really do deserve the respect of music fans, regardless of age. As rock fans have grown up, so has the music. The bands may be young, but the music is forever.

Recommended listening:
Wolfmother’s self-titled debut.
Mastodon - “Blood Mountain”
Killswitch Engage - “As Daylight Dies”

Brilliant piece, Marc.

The only small standout I noticed was this line about Wolfmother...

"These 20-something longhairs fancy themselves bards..."

Physically, none of them have long hair, unless you count Andrew Stockdale's 'fro when it's wet.

Let's just say if were possible to "wear out" the portion of my iPod where Wolfmother and Killswitch Engage reside like I used to wear out my often played cassette tapes and LPs, I'd need to replace my iPod months ago.

ehle,

TV ON THE RADIO's RETURN TO COOKIE MOUNTAIN is a strong contender for my favorite album of 2006.

I hate exhortations to dance. Its not the job of the audience to provide affirmation for the performer. If a band's got what it takes, they don't have to ask.

I haven't heard the new Mastodon or Killswitch Engage albums yet. I will have to listen to them.

I've heard of the band before. I haven't heard their music before though. It's a catchy song. I like it.

Way to write off the entirety of James Brown's catalog.

Way to write off the entirety of James Brown's catalog.