Outrageous fortune cookie

Whoo. This is what I did last Saturday: woke up, cleaned the entire condo, took a shower, cooked and ate some pizza, watched more "Six Feet Under," went to The Wizard's and enjoyed the ridiculous "Alien Predator", started the racially sensitive "Slam Dunk Ernest" just as Amy's little brother showed up, booked down to Ravenswood, met up with yeti betty and Turbo, drove with betty to Ukrainian Village, said hello to Funk Dracula, got into the Empty Bottle in time to see a chunk of ass rocking by The Sword (thanks again, sista), bought a Red Stripe from the ever-personable Bruce Lamont, stepped out during the bland Priestess (who for some reason sounded much better upon our return), got totally blown away by Early Man, dropped off betty, booked back to Arlington Heights to see Patch and (a sleeping) meredith, returned home, put some clean sheets on the bed and passed out. Now, that was not boring. I'm guessing this weekend might be like that, too. Hooray!

Here's a look at some recent musical diversions I've enjoyed. Keepers only, obviously.

Early Man - Closing In: You're not a poseur if you at least know what the hell you're "supposed to" be doing; this logic has kept Manowar afloat in Europe for decades. Now, here comes Early Man, this way-hyped band from Austin, TX, hipster capital of the freaking universe. Their debut full-length came out on indie rock powerhouse Matador Records (Sleater-Kinney, Yo La Tengo, the mighty Interpol, my MySpace friend Cornelius), who apparently did well enough with Dead Meadow to take another stab at retro metal. So when I went to their show at the Bottle Saturday night, I was expecting bluesy butt rock with bong-rattling bass and uncommitted vocals, which admittedly can be good if done right. Holy crap, was I wrong. I'm watching this Early Man and I'm thinking of Diamond Head and Angel Witch and Savage and Holocaust (thus Sabbath, UFO, young Maiden and teenage Metallica, too), with not an ounce of smug we-all-know-we're-smarter-than-this-music irony to be found. I bought this CD right after they finished, for no other reason than they had a bunch of hooky NWOBHM riffs that I wanted to hear again and I really wanted to support what they are doing - furthering an open-minded cross-breeding of metal and indie rock that has produced some intriguing results over the last half-decade or so (see Pelican, Giant Squid, Hammers of Misfortune, Tarantula Hawk, The Fucking Champs... bless California). Closing In is not a letdown, either. How many times have I seen a wicked song title like "War Eagle" on the back of a CD, only to be disappointed by some bland, plodding crap? Early Man's "War Eagle" gallops away like pub-era Maiden, amateur yet adequate vocal yelps included. "Feeding Frenzy" could be an obscure, long-lost Bay Area thrash band on Vicodin. This pretentious metal-hater thinks "Fist Shaker" sounds like Ratt. Believe me, I've checked it out, it's a facile comparison. It sounds more like Anthrax's "Medusa," and not to speak ill of the dead, but dropping in such an effortless little riff for the bridge seems more the cerebral province of a John Schaffer or a vintage Glenn Tipton than of a Robbin Crosby. Not all the songs are so grabby, and the recording's a bit polite, but even without one of those White Stripes-sounding "naked" productions The Wizard hates so much, you can smell the smoke, cheap beer and sweat Early Man obviously strives to invoke. If they ultimately find the indie community a hard sell, these guys should play at the Alehorn of Power Festival or the Classic Metal Festival (if it's even happening this year), as their sound is sure to be a hit with geezers who actually like and follow old-school metal - once they realize these kids are not poseurs.

Oblomov - The Final Destination: In the fabled days of yore, fledgling metal bands communicated beyond the local scene by snail mail, hauling piles of demo cassettes down to the post office after work and taking out ads looking for traders in all the magazines. Today, fledgling metal bands put their demos up on their web sites for free download, or at least as streaming audio, a relatively cheap and handy way to get your music to people who might be interested. (MySpace trumps even the late, lamented mp3.com for all kinds of music, to the point that while gazillions of independent musicians maintain their own sites, all the big and rich stars - like, say, Big & Rich - have fans loyal enough to devote "tributes" to them.) But this here Oblomov outfit from the Czech Republic doesn't have a MySpace page. They still host their entire 2002 demo on their own site, for those who have heard (or like myself, read about) their recent debut album and are curious to hear their embryonic output. You can download it yourself if you take the link above, along with full cover art. That's effective marketing, because after hearing this and some recent tracks, I intend to buy the amusingly-titled Mighty Cosmic Dances. The Czech Republic has a history of experimental, wrong-sounding black metal going back to the outrageous Master's Hammer (look at those song titles!) and the mystifying Root. Still, I guess I don't expect this level of exploration from a demo-level metal band from the former Eastern bloc... puerile Mayhem worship with recycled neo-Nazi lyrics or unlistenably muddy and misogynistic gore-grind, maybe, but Oblomov instead offers a spacy electronic intro, an "ocean sounds" outro, a guest female vocalist, hummable riffs and considerable promise. The only major problem is the mix, which separates all the instruments into their own cold corners - the snare drum sounds like an empty milk cannister, the loud keys suck out the guitar's impact, the vocals are extra-distorted to the point they're occasionally blown out. But I've heard worse examples of all of that on commercially released albums. Oblomov's got damn ideas. They do a song about the "Twin Peaks" movie, and while not especially deep overall the lyrics are relatively intelligent things about death, the environment, phantasms and whatnot. This is not black metal, more a slowish sort of melodic death with gothy tangents that occasionally launches into black metal blastbeats, which when combined with that inelegant drum sound nearly overwhelm everything (see "Cradle for the Bleeding"). I guess I sound pretty negative, but I like this. It's low-budget Eurometal and the style is not very distinct, but the material is admirably ambitious, and with good sound these riffs could really sink in. A good demo evinces possibilities that let you hear through its faults, while a great demo can make you play it over and over again. This is a good demo.

The Octopus Project - One Ten Hundred Thousand Million: Now watch me try to write about some music I don't know anything about, but pretty much like. I came across the name The Octopus Project a few times in the course of my work and from some perfunctory snooping, they sounded pretty interesting despite their Austin address. Sadly, my album purchases have dwindled in porportion with other expenses rising (I'm getting old), and so my record dollar usually goes to some metal band or otherwise known quantity. Yet I finally got around to checking out The Fiery Furnaces, who I really like, and now The Wizard of Gore has been so kind as to burn me this, The Octopus Project's recent album, along with its predecessor Identification Parade. So, tell me, those of you who know this stuff... is this post-rock? Electronic rock? It's some kind of egghead bachelor pad stuff, no vocals, some samples, light on geetars but heavy on whimsical whoops, whooshes, blips and bleeps. I truly love the live drumming on this, which right from the first track is powerful and lively. The guitars have that warm, fuzzy indie rock sound, all echoey and blissed-out. "All of the Champs That Ever Lived" could be a pretty straightforward snippet of one of those live electronica/jam rock acts, basically a pleasant bit of dance rock, but for the funny noises buzzing around. "Six Feet Up" sounds like a spy theme, riding a groovy jazz bass line, and the guitar even thrashes out a bit. Some of the tracks are a sort of IDM-with-instruments affair, which from my limited perspective reminds me of the quieter, clickety-clack stuff Aphex Twin does mixed with the more tangible style of múm. There's a lot of texture in The Octopus Project's electro-acoustic mix, and it's generally very bright, with processed beats and chirping birds and static and swirling guitars and cool keyboard noises all spinning around each other. In comparison, Parade is more subdued, thus to me a little more tedious, although it has a number of fun, creative tracks equal to the caliber of One Ten... Check out The Octopus Project if you're at all curious, especially if you're into weird laptop music. This stuff is not my forte, but it's very engaging.

Amorphis - Eclipse: As far as I'm concerned, Amorphis never fell off. A lot of people who followed them from the time they were teenagers banging out Suomi-tinged Entombed/Dismember riffs got scared off by the Finns' living up to their name, changing gradually record by record into a heavy psychedelic/folk/prog rock band. But I came in somewhere in the middle, and while The Karelian Isthmus is still one of my favorite death metal albums ever (despite the bad drumming), I'm really an Elegy man, and Amorphis' recent "mainstream" prog-lite albums have held plenty of appeal for me although they occasionally veered into modern radio rock. So I was an easy sell for this, album number seven, the one where they slink back to a metal label after a run through the Virgin Records meat grinder and try to win back old fans by roughing it up a bit and going back to Finnish folk tales as lyrical fodder. A new singer is also in place, proving his abilities throughout by pulling off heavily-accented brooding goth metal vocals, blustery chorus hooks and full-on death growls with equal enthusiasm. The kickoff track is immediately distinguished by a peppy little prog keyboard line and a quick tempo, breaking with the Amorphis tradition of starting slow and trippy. But it's track number two, the single "House of Sleep", that's the first real revelation, an utterly infectious (and utterly Finnish) hybrid of Sentenced's latter-day gloom pop and classic Amorphis atmosphere. Its brilliantly tragic chorus and haunting keyboard solo recently drove "Sleep" straight to the top of the Finnish singles chart. From there, it's a reversion to folky intros and guttural bellows on "Leaves Scar," and the rest of the record follows suit with a host of strong riffs, rich textures and lots of small melodic moments that beg for repeat listens. I'll admit that some of the stuff on the last two Amorphis records was relatively bland, which I (and many others) assume was the product of these guys seeking wider fandom from loud rock fans who passively rely on what the mass media hands them. Well, fuck those clowns; they deserve hacks like HIM or Avenged Sevenfold. Eclipse is a step backward, a blatant channeling of the heady Elegy and Tuonela days, but it is ultimately more a return to "type" than a return to "form," since as good as these tracks are, they do not overflow with the unbridled passion and emotion that made those albums so beloved. But it's easily the strongest set they've released in a while, Holopainen and Koivusaari resigned to - but somehow liberated by - once again making an unabashed metal record. Now let's get them back over here for a headlining tour.

Bonus review: Dilated Peoples' 20/20. See ya soon, comrades.