In the Streets on Halloween There's Something Going On: 5 Essential Metal Songs for 10/31

October 31st, regardless of its origins as a holiday, has come to be a night associated with evil. Heavy metal is also a place where Lucifer is typically lauded, so the two have converged with some awesome tunes over the past forty years. What this is that stands before you is a list of the five greatest Halloween heavy metal songs of all time, because top five lists are fun and easy to wrap your head around.

5. Slayer- "Altar of Sacrifice" (1986)

4. King Diamond- "Halloween" (1986)

3. Iron Maiden- "The Number of the Beast" (1982)

2. Mercyful Fate- "At the Sound of the Demon Bell" (1983)

1. Helloween- "Halloween" (1987)


My apologies that the Helloween song is the lame video edit, check out the thirteen minute version as well. And I'm leaving out lots of songs, since there's plenty of awesome metal songs about grim grinning ghosts and satanic rituals, so call me out on it. What songs would you have included?

CD Review: The Red Chord, "Fed Through the Teeth Machine"

As a word of warning to death metal bands everywhere, you should never make your second album a masterpiece that blurs genre lines and leaves critics and fans alike simultaneously scratching and banging their heads. It just makes it that much harder to get the accolades you deserve when your later releases don't live up to your own high water mark.

Such might be the case with The Red Chord, whose 2005 record, Clients, found a balance between old-school technical death metal, the then-just emerging deathcore sound, and moments of sheer melodic beauty. They shoved these influences into what were actual songs, not just parts put next to one another. So when Prey for Eyes was released in 2007 and wasn't one of the best albums of all time, it was a bit of a disappointment. Sure, there were great tracks like "Dread Prevailed" and "Bone Needle", but the effort as a whole fell short of the standard set by Clients.

The brand-new Fed Through the Teeth Machine surpasses its predecessor in terms of consistency and memorability, but still falls shy of 2005's slab of gold. But that shouldn't matter, and the more I realize that, the more I come to like the new record. "Hour of Rats" might be the best song the band has ever recorded, and the entire album has a very cohesive sense of vision about it. There's a sense of subtlety that even Clients tended to lack, and the result is a very enjoyable and easily stomached listening experience.

The Red Chord have always had certain songs on their records that fulfill a certain archetype, but it's been a slap in the face sometimes how obvious that was. The title track from Clients and "Film Critiques and Militia Men" were straightforward, short, heavy songs. So is "Demoralizer", but it's less obvious that that's what's going on. Similarly, unlike the huge, melodic epics "He Was Dead When I Got There" and "Seminar" from previous releases, "Mouthful of Precious Stones" and "Sleepless Nights in the Compound" are sneakier and more clever in their delivery of the massive goods.

Lots of factors contribute to why this might be the best record the Red Chord will ever make not entitled Clients, and it would be in your best interest as a listener to check it out with an open mind.

CD Review: Between the Buried and Me, "The Great Misdirect"

It's not easy to follow up a masterpiece. In 2007, North Carolina progressive metal crew Between the Buried and Me unleashed Colors, which was one of the finest moments in the genre's history: a whirling melee of melody and aggression; beauty and brutality. Two short years later, metal's most challenging band have come to pick our brains once more with the six-track, hour-long odyssey that is The Great Misdirect.

The fear that BTBAM have settled into a formula rears its head during the first track, "Mirrors," which is an entirely cleanly sung, melodic song, not unlike "Foam Born: The Backtrack" from Colors. The approach is completely different however, and when the band launches into the ten-minute lead single "Obfuscation" all trepidation disappears. Angst-ridden verses weave in and out of melodic guitar leads and keyboard histrionics and help build to some well-placed gang vocals and a shredding guitar solo at the song's climax.

The album wears on in typically spectacular BTBAM fashion with plenty of metal and plenty of curveballs until we come to "Desert of Song," which is by far the most unique song the band has ever done. It's begins as an American folk song that wouldn't sound out of place if Woody Guthrie made a guest appearance from beyond the grave and evolves into a mellow Pink Floyd number, complete with a melodic Gilmour-esque solo. Despite its strangeness, the song still has a very Between the Buried and Me vibe about it. It's worth it to hear the record for this song alone.

The album closes on an appropriately epic note with the most ambitious (and longest) BTBAM song yet, "Swim to the Moon". It would be redundant for me to tell you how epic and fantastic it is. Needless to say, they haven't lost even half a step since Colors. It's prog nerd metal at its finest, and as an archetypical prog nerd, I feel safe saying that BTBAM is becoming one of my favorite bands. Don't miss this.

Have Yourself a Metal Little Christmas

A quick Internet search will reveal that the new solo record by the Metal God, Rob Halford, Winter Songs and the new Trans-Siberian Orchestra album, Night Castle, both in stores next Tuesday, have leaked. Rather than review these discs in the traditional manner (both are serviceable, neither are great), I thought I'd do a wildly season-inappropriate blog post sharing my five favorite metal Christmas songs of all time. It's somewhat surprising that a list like this can even exist, since the holiday celebrates the birth of Christ and the genre often celebrates his crucifixion, but who am I to complain? Baby Jesus and Satan alike would approve of all of the following jams. (Sorry for the lousiness of some of the clips. Look up the real songs if you like.)

5. "Oh Come All Ye Faithful" by Twisted Sister (2006)

4. "We Three Kings" by Halford (2009)

3. "Christmas Eve (Sarajevo 12/24)" by Savatage (1994)

2. "Old City Bar" by Trans-Siberian Orchestra (1996)

1. "No Presents for Christmas" by King Diamond (1985)



Are these rad? Do they suck? What are your favorite metal Christmas songs?

CD Review: Russian Circles, "Geneva"

Making instrumental post-rock is a delicate art. There's lots of risks involved. If there aren't enough heavy parts, it'll be boring. If there's too many, it won't be beautiful anymore. If there's too little experimentation, it will demand vocals, and if there's too much, it will be interpreted as "trying too hard." On the first two albums by Chicago power trio Russian Circles, Enter and Station, all of the relevant balances were struck perfectly and veritable classics of the genre were unleashed. On their new record, Geneva, however, the band falls just shy of maintaining their superiority.

The elements are all there, but there's the overwhelming sense that the best parts have already been done, and better (and indeed done better by Russian Circles themselves) and that the new parts are mostly without merit. The title track, for example, starts as a beautiful piece of music, certain to erupt in an Explosions in the Sky-esque crescendo, but instead incorporates an obnoxious bass line and ends with a bizarre drum pattern that sounds utterly manufactured. All would potentially be forgiven if the beautiful intro wasn't notably less beautiful than the beautiful parts of songs on their previous records.

There are some truly enlightening moments, though. "When the Mountain Comes to Muhammad" features a couple of firsts for the band. It opens with lonesome guitar line draped over sample, presumably from some sort of religious broadcast, the first sample that Russian Circles has used. As the song builds and builds and eventually crescendos, beautiful melodies from the guitar and bass weave in and out of melodies played on trumpet and trombone. This is an example of integrating unusual instrumentation into a common song structure to a meaningful end, and many post-rock and post-metal acts could take notes from it. But these wonderful moments are less evident on this album than on the previous two.

Geneva is a pretty good post-rock record, and "When the Mountain Comes to Muhammad" is the finest post-rock song of the year, but for someone looking to get into the genre, there's better starting points, including the back catalog of this very band. Hopefully Russian Circles' members recall how to write songs like "Death Rides a Horse" and "Harper Lewis" by the time they set out to record again.

5 Trends in Metal That Need to Stop Immediately

As long as there has been heavy metal, there have been forces working to take it down from within. In the 1980s, it was glam metal, which sought to convince mainstream America that it was somehow "heavy" to wear profuse amounts of makeup and spandex while strutting around Los Angeles like a bunch of male prostitutes. In the early 1990s, a group of dirty, drug-addled Seattleites thankfully killed this movement, but with Kurt Cobain's suicide and the collapse of most of the other heavy hitters from the era, grunge gave way to rap metal and nu metal, which marked a new low for the genre at large. It didn't take long for Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park to become Slipknot and Disturbed, and suddenly the new standard for angst-ridden music was made even more obnoxious. In this decade, metalcore was born and brought to metal's forefront for a time, and its heavy hitters like Killswitch Engage and As I Lay Dying were even worse than Slipknot. In 2009, it's easy to become complacent. None of the aforementioned trends are very strong. But it doesn't mean there isn't awfulness in metal; it's just better disguised. What follows is a list of five "next big things" that the metal community just doesn't need. Let the flaming begin!

5. Irony: I shouldn't have to tell you that irony is the lowest form of comedy, lower even than the pun, and that it has no place in metal. Unfortunately, it's a very real side-effect of the hipsterization of our beloved genre. Examples of irony's infiltration into metal include listing "hilarious" genres like crunk and afrobeat on your MySpace page, penning "hysterical" song titles, recording "priceless" cover tunes, doing "funny" photo shoots that make you look like children, and mass-producing too-tight t-shirts in every color of the rainbow. Worst offenders: Iwrestledabearonce, The Devil Wears Prada, A Day to Remember, the entire Rise Records roster

4. Tough guy stage presence: This only really applies to the live environment, but since bands that participate in this tomfoolery tour this country like a cancer, it's dire. Because I'm a nice guy, I'll give some tips to heavy metal frontmen who feel the need to engage in macho posturing. First of all, if your music was worth moshing to, the crowd would mosh. Telling them to is lame and annoying. Secondly, your audience is guys who got off at the factory early and want to get out some rage before they go home, put on a wifebeater, and inevitably beat their wife. And that's fine. But stop touring with good, sophisticated bands and hitch a ride with Lynyrd Skynyrd when they're in town. Their audience would appreciate your Neanderthalic chest-pounding a lot more than most of the people you insist on playing for. Worst offenders: Lamb of God, DevilDriver, Dååth, Demiricous

3. Extremely guttural vocals: I shouldn't have a problem with straight up, honest-to-God death metal, but sometimes I do. To bands who feel the need to gargle thumbtacks before they hit the mic, I implore you to listen to your forefathers. Chuck Schuldiner, Jeff Walker, John Tardy, Chris Barnes, and Tomas Lindberg did not vomit while trying to say words and call it a vocal performance, so quit trying to out-brutal one another and find a vocal identity of your own. Worst offenders: Dying Fetus, Job for a Cowboy, Godless Rising, most bands with illegible logos

2. Traditional folk instruments: For some reason, the current "pagan metal" movement is being critically lauded and dominating the U.S. tour scene. In the early days of the scene when bands like Finntroll and Moonsorrow mostly stood alone, I wouldn't have had much of a problem with it, but it's becoming an excuse for a lack of musical vision. "Oh, we're from Scandinavia! We can just play Grandpa's music and scream over top of it!" News flash: it is possible to pay tribute to your heritage without compromising your testicular fortitude. Just ask Amon Amarth. It's even more annoying now that bands with no pagan heritage insist on playing pagan metal. If you're from any state with the possible exception of Minnesota, your heritage is not strong enough to justify a hurdy-gurdy. Mark my words, this faux-Viking crap will be an embarrassing memory within a year or two. Worst offenders: Turisas, Ensiferum, Tyr, Eluveitie

1. Breakdowns: It should come as no surprise that breakdowns take the top spot on a list of what's wrong with metal today. The so-called deathcore movement has taken the one element of thrash and death metal that could ruin otherwise good songs and made an entire genre out of it. I can barely justify listening to anything that makes prominent use of the breakdown, and there's nothing you can say to convince me that they have value. I don't have words for how awful deathcore is and how immediately it needs to die. Worst offenders: Suicide Silence, Bring Me the Horizon, Winds of Plague, Animosity

CD Review: Skeletonwitch, "Breathing the Fire"

There doesn't seem to be much consensus in the metal world on exactly what subgenre Athens, Ohio quartet Skeletonwitch belongs in, but classification shouldn't really matter as long as the music is this awesome. Breathing the Fire, the follow-up to 2007's top-notch Beyond the Permafrost, is stylistically identical to its predecessor but has even better riffs, solos, demonic vocals and horns-in-the-sky, Satan-hailing lyrics. This album is, if nothing else, incredibly goddamned metal.

Things start off a little weaker than the incredible one-two punch of "Upon Wings of Black" and "Beyond the Permafrost" from the last album, but once the record kicks into gear it's a thrashing good time, and it's clear that this is beer metal in the purest sense of the term. Tracks like "The Despoiler of Human Life" and "Crushed Beyond Dust" storm into the room, take no prisoners, and leave sword-filled corpses and crushed PBR cans in their wake. This is music that the listener is almost required to bang your head to, and if that was Skeletonwitch's only goal, then the album is a runaway success.

That said, this band could still stand to tighten the screws a little bit. Very few of the songs feel fully fleshed out, and the album feels somewhat incomplete as a result. Skeletonwitch seem to have a handle on the riff-writing and solo-writing processes, but are still eluded by the songwriting process. Still, there's a lot of promise for the future. The brilliantly titled "Repulsive Salvation" is an honest-to-God song, with a beginning, middle, and end, and there's no compromising of intense riffs and shredding solos as a result. That song is the obvious highlight of this disc, and the 'Witch should try to recreate what they did there (as well as on "Baptized in Flames" from the Beyond the Permafrost album) in the future.

I've sold this album somewhat short by complaining about its shortcomings, because it's still a solid thrash record with a nonstop barrage of riffs and no shortage of moments that demand headbanging. I'm just hoping that the next time Skeletonwitch release a full-length, the awesome riffs and solos evolve into awesome songs somewhat more often. It's not as if I'm going to stop worshiping the 'Witch in the meantime.

CD Review: Baroness, "Blue Record"

The second full-length release by Savannah everything-metal quartet Baroness is a lot like the artwork that graces its cover. It was painstakingly created, it is unparalleled in beauty, and you're bound to notice new things each time you sit down with it.

After guitarist Brian Blickle famously departed to be replaced by Pete Adams, questions hung in the air about whether the band was capable of another record as strong as 2007's Red Album. The sonic result achieved on Blue Record should put those questions to bed. This could be the band's masterpiece.

The effect that the new album has isn't as immediate as that of past records by the group. There's no riff like the attention-demanding intro to "The Birthing", nor is there a two-minute pure metal attack like "O' Appalachia". Instead, Blue Record is the sound of evolution, progression, and a band coming into their own.

Everything that was great about the band's earlier music has been amplified and carefully balanced on the new album. The riffs aren't as immediate, as I mentioned, but they're better. Frontman John Dyer Baizley has finally come into his own as a vocalist, his honey-sweet shouting draped elegantly over complex chord progressions and cymbal patterns that are an anomaly in music this heavy and groovy. Baizley and Adams almost sound like they could become full-fledged guitar heroes, too, with the Mastodon-esque leads in songs like "War, Wisdom and Rhyme" and "Jake Leg". Even the pure beauty has been turned way up. Interludes "Steel That Sleeps the Eye" and "Blackpowder Orchard" make great use of acoustic guitar and provide perfect complements to the heavier tracks.

Perhaps the most significant thing about this album is the fact that there are now songs that sound like Baroness songs. Even in their finest hours prior to this record, it was easy to point out which parts of songs were Mastodon parts, which parts were Kylesa parts, which parts were Melvins parts, and so on. But the instant classics on Blue Record like "A Horse Called Golgotha" and "The Gnashing" sound like Baroness songs, plain and simple. The band is in its own category now, and it's only a matter of time before reviews of young upstarts start to feature the phrase "Baroness worship".

This can only be seen as a good thing for the band, and by the time the inevitable Green LP and Yellow Full-Length are released, I wouldn't be surprised if they're regarded as one of the finest bands in modern metal.

Majoring in Metal: Q&A with Parker Jameson

Unless you're GWAR or Venom, there's nothing terribly metal about going to school. It's a place that typically frowns on the disregard for societal norms that makes metal so attractive to so many kids, and as a result they're stuck wearing their metal shirts, blasting their headphones between classes, and learning about subjects that some old white guy in a suit says are important.

Through Indiana University's Individualized Major Program (IMP), however, students are allowed to choose to major in anything their mind can conceive, so long as they get a faculty sponsor. Parker Jameson, a sophomore at IU and the guitarist for Bloomington death metal act Ballistika, decided to channel his love of metal into a course of study. Interview follows.

Tr00 Media: What is the official name of your major?
Parker Jameson: The registered title was "The Art Of Metal Music" but when you are in the program, it can change multiple times over the course of your studies. Mine is currently taking a more cultural approach to the study and understanding of metal and its people. So probably something along the lines of "The Culture of Metal Music." I'll have to think of something with a little more zazz to it though.

TM: What made you choose this unique major, and what influential figures or events helped inspire your love for this subject?
PJ: I honestly did not want to study anything, and college seemed ridiculous to me. Then I read up on the IMP, and when I learned I could major in practically anything I wanted to study, I knew I could seriously pursue my passion for metal music. I was obviously influenced by my love for the metal genre and how musically it is my favorite thing to listen to. My progression in musical life, from a saxophonist playing jazz and classical in 4th-8th grade, to then guitar from 9th till present, along with my transition from rock, to 80s, to hair metal, to metal, and then touring with my own metal band happened in a short period of time. I was quickly drawn toward metal from a sonic aspect, and it resonates with me. I just wanted to be able to study and pursue a career relating to something I am so passionate about.

TM: What special classes does your major require, and are there any special requirements to get into this major?
PJ: You have to go through all the classes and such and plan out your entire college career, which was a little stressful, but since you know your major, you know what to look for. Obviously, majoring in metal, you look for music related courses, cultural things, and the people who run the IMP program help you with all that. It was recommended that I take classes like Modern Scandinavia and the Baltic States, to better understand the situations of countries where lots of influential metal comes from. They also made recommendations on intensive writing courses, to aid with possibly getting a job writing for metal websites/magazines, and that sort of thing. Taking a class on critiquing poetry was not something I would have initially thought pertained to metal, but with the IMP I looked at it as a lyrical analysis type of thing. You also get to design your own courses. Currently with Mark Deuze I am studying and tracing the causes for the formation of the metal fanbase, as in, why American youth was able to so quickly and firmly grasp onto metal culture. It's a lot of reading and making connections between different books and different authors' theories, but later I'll be conducting plenty of interviews with bands, fans, parents, and a lot of people - and that is something I never would have thought a regular college course could offer.

TM: What role has your sponsor played in the program you've chosen?
PJ: Andrew Hopson was my intro to recording teacher, and I loved his course. We shared a common ground on musical interest, so we had talked a bit about my aspirations. He offered a realistic outside view on my goals, and helped me shift the focus to more of a study, more of a major, than a loosely connected bit of things I related to metal. Andrew Hollinden is another co-sponsor, and he was just a really cool guy who was enthusiastic and encouraging about everything. After beginning my work with Mark I'd like to add him as a sponsor. Your work with them can be as personal as you need it to be. If you're stuck with studies or don't know what direction to go in they're there to help you along.

Welcome to Tr00 Media!

Image courtesy of Peter Beste

If you're reading this and you don't know me (awesome!), my name is Brad Sanders and I'm a journalism major at Indiana University in Bloomington. As you can probably tell by the outstretched arms of Ringmaster Abbath a few inches north, this is the first post of my new metal blog. I decided to call it Tr00 Media as a play on New Media, if that isn't immediately obvious, and this was only after convincing myself that "Scream Bloggy Gore," "Bonded By Blog," and "Blogshyrkh (Mighty Ravendark)" were terrible names for a metal blog.

So what exactly will this blog be used for? Well, a lot of things, I hope. The goal is to do no less than one album review a week, a concert review every time I go to a metal concert (which unfortunately is not terribly often given my current geography and money situation), interviews with interesting metal people as the opportunities arise, along with the random link-sharing and soapbox-whining that blogs usually entail. Of course, this entire operation is just a front for the Heavy Metal Year-End Spectacular that I plan to unleash over two weeks in December, but you'll have to wait for that.

We're gonna have some fun together, reader. I'm going to get to write about heavy metal, and hopefully you're going to comment and argue with me about it. If you like what you're reading, please share this blog with your metal friends and metal family, and we'll get a groovy thing going in no time.

I'll leave you today with the words of the grim and frostbitten man who still looms above: "Come taste a tide/Where demons play the mind/On the wind-rippled steps/The everflowing streams of our enemies' blood run cold."

Please, come taste a tide.