Old is the new...new?

I was about 14 when I first caught the metal bug. Sure, it was the nerve-paralysing 'Nu' strain that infected me first, but hey, that's just an unavoidable side-effect of being a post-millenial teenager. My tastes soon evolved and passed through many stages-metalcore, death, thrash, prog, etc, but there was a pretty consistant thread running through them all-no matter the sub-genre, I was only listening to new bands. Though it's hard to be into extreme metal and be completely unaware of the genre's history, I had no time for classic bands and bought only the hottest new releases, in a pointless game of 'I heard that band before you' one-upmanship. Yes, I was naive, and it was only in my early twenties that I finally bit the bullet and dived into the heady back-catalogue of metal's past, never to return.

I'd say it was Slayer, and more specifically 'Reign In Blood', that showed me that the best bands of yesteryear were by no means hackneyed or irrelevent by today's standards. That album is as vicious and cut-throat as anything you can find lurking about today, and it started a fire in me to seek out as much 'classic' metal as I could find. Within 6 months, new music seemed pointless. Why bother trudging through more turgid deathcore tripe when I could be thrashing out to 'Left Hand Path' or 'Heartwork'? Why waste my time trying to decipher differences between identikit Killswitch-clones when I could slam on 'Master Of Puppets'? Obviously, within time I realised that there was still plenty of great new music around, and that no-one likes a retro-snob. But these discoveries taught me to appreciate that the forefathers of the scenes we inhabit now are not just owed respect for laying foundations, but for being kick-ass bands that wrote neck-snappingly awesome albums.

Since then I've tried to couple the old and new and as a result have discovered some amazing music on both ends of the musical timeline. I also love tracing specific bands' sounds back to their very roots. Love Baroness? Check out some classic Sabbath. Mastodon? Try Thin Lizzy. Like party metal? Stick some Van Halen down your tailpipe. Basically, I think the point I'm trying to get to is that awesome music is awesome music, and it being 'old' or 'new' is largely irrellevent. Sure, the oldies deserve the props for laying the all important groundwork, but what has been built upon them is entirely the newbies' doing. And remember, there is also really shitty music from all eras!

Peace out.

Top Ten Music DVDs...yeah, that's right.

So, seeing as how I just love making lists so much I decided I'd come up with another for your reading pleasure. Music DVDs seem to be something a lot of people treat as a 'one watch' kind of deal, and that spins me out a little. Sure, an average one may only be worth one viewing, but a really great music DVD can have as much re-play value as a favourite movie, or dare I say, even album. So, without further ado, the best ten music DVDs (in my humble opinion, at least)...

Slayer - 'Still Reigning'

I don't think I need to explain too much why this is awesome-it's Slayer, playing 'Reign In Blood' live. Sure, Slayer have awesome songs on all their albums, and some of those albums are entirely great in their own right, but you'd have to be a pretty finicky douch to not agree that 'RIB' is the definitive document of the band, and thrash metal as a whole. So what isn't to like about seeing them playing the whole thing live? Filmed only a year after reuniting with original drum-god Dave Lombardo, 'Still Reigning' is a perfect example of why this band still garners so much respect after so many years. The extras on the disc stand up to multiple viewings too, with bonus tracks from the main concert and a 'Slayer on Slayer' documentary that, while nowhere near as funny as the Slayer Fans doc on their 'War At The Warfield' DVD, is still a thoroughly entertaining watch. If you don't have it, fucking get it.


Killswitch Engage - 'Set This World Ablaze'

A proper value-for-money package, 'Set This World Ablaze' is a DVD of two halves. In the red corner, we have a full live set from Worcester, Massachusetts filmed at the peak of the 'End Of Heartache' tour cycle. For anyone (aka EVERYONE) who felt that KSE went off the boil following '...Heartache', this setlist is a metalcore wet-dream, with all the best songs (read: pretty much all of them) from 'Alive Or Just Breathing' and '..Heartache'. Debate all you want about who was the best KSE frontman, but Howard Jones fucking owns the crowd here, tackling both his own and Jesse Leach's songs with vim and vigour. Over in the blue corner, meanwhile, is towering, full length documentary 'From The Bedroom To The Basement', a no-holds barred journey through KSE's career, covering their initial inception through to '...Heartache's mainstream success and subsequent Grammy nomination. It's a funny, well put together doc that is endlessly charming and rewatchable, which isn't something that can be said about many of it's kind.

Sigur Ros - 'Heima'

A music documentary like no other, 'Heima' is as much a cinematic tribute to the vast and unique natural landscapes of Iceland as it is to the blissful music of Sigur Ros. The film follows the band on a homeland tour around tiny and unusual venues following the gigantic success of the band's 3rd full length record 'Takk...', and is a spectacle in all senses of the word. Featuring some of the most lush cinematography ever of Sigur Ros playing versions of their songs in locations ranging from open mountainside plains to disused chemical plants, it is an intimate portrait of a band who are renound for keeping the press at arms length, and as such it feels like an incredible privelege just to see it. The DVD extras feature scenes cut from the final movie, and an option to watch just the band's performances alone, which make almost as captivating viewing as the main feature, especially an explosive rendition of 'The Pop Song (Untitled #8)'. Fans of the band, or just keen film dorks wishing to see something beautiful need 'Heima' like they need lungs.

Botch - '061502'

Released approximately 6 years after the band's untimely demise, '061502' is the visual documentation of Botch's final ever live performance, and boy did these guys go out on a high. As manic and energized as you would expect from one of 'mathcore's pioneering acts, the show is a masterclass in putting all the sterile and safe metalcore bands that followed in their place. Acting as an overview of Botch's entire career, the setlist was clearly engineered by the band to be the ultimate fanboy wet dream, swaying from early cuts like 'Thank God For Worker Bees' and 'Oma' through tracks from 'We Are The Romans' and the swansong 'An Anthology Of Dead Ends', and even squeezing in their much loved mangling of The B52's 'Rock Lobster'. The extras are fairly light on the ground, but are worth anyone's time, especially the band's commentary on the show itself-hearing them rip into the bands that followed in their wake is a shameful but guilty pleasure for sure. Plus you get a bonus disc of the whole show's audio, so you can take the lunacy with you wherever you go! Until The Dillinger Escape Plan and Converge put out proper live DVDs that accurately capture their amazing shows, this remains the best noisecore DVD available.

Pelican - 'After The Ceiling Cracked'

It was a toss-up between this and Isis' 'Clearing The Eye' as to which post-metal stalwart got their dues in my list, but I went with Pelican because, though you could understandably argue that Isis are the more important band, for me Pelican write much more captivating songs and connect a little more on a human level. 'After The Ceiling Cracked' catches the band delivering a legendary performance at the Scala, London, taped in '05 but not released until a good 2 years later. I particularly love the show on this DVD as it captures Pelican at the hight of touring 'The Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw', my favourite of their releases by a country mile, and as such they play tracks here that had been retired from their setlist by the time I caught them myself in '07, such as the mesmerizing 'Autumn Into Summer'. The atmosphere is thick and hazy throughout, and the crystalline sound-mix courtesy of Godflesh/Jesu's Justin Broadrick is a treat for the ears. Extras include footage from various shows across the band's career at that point, including an early performance of 'City Of Echoes'. The double disc set also includes a 3" CD of the 'Pink Mammoth' EP, which was previously only available on vinyl, making this an awesome and value-for-money package.

Beastie Boys - 'Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That!'

Talk about an original concept for a concert film-In 04' the Beastie Boys handed out 50 camcorders to randomly selected members of the sell-out crowd at a Madison Square Garden homecoming show, with only one simple instruction-'Once the show begins, you do NOT turn the camera off. You can leave the arena, film whatever you like, but that camera must stay on until the very end'. What emerged from this is an entirely unique and completely awesome viewing experience. Intercut with lots (LOTS) of different angles of the Beastie's ripping it up you will see everything from people desperately trying to find the bathrooms to, I kid you not, Ben Stiller rapping along in the crowd. Just a bog-standard Beastie Boys show would have been awesome, but this is an ingenious way to experience the spectacle. I can't talk about this DVD without mentioning the accompanying short film, 'A Day In The Life Of Nathaniel Hornblower', a mock-doc following my comedy hero David Cross as the tiular character, going about his lederhosen-clad business around new york. It is amazingly funny and captures both Cross' and the Beasties' brands of left-field humour. It is almost worth buying the DVD for this alone, but it never overshadows it's parent feature.

Between The Buried And Me - 'Colors_Live'



















'Colors' was one of the most adventurous, mind-bending albums to come out of the metal scene in the last few years, and to imagine that said album could be accurately re-created in a live setting without the aid of about a zillion additional musicians and/or a heavy reliance on backing tracks seemed almost laughably absurd. And yet here it is, Between The Buried And Me delivering 'Colors' live in it's entirety, flowing from song to song exactly as on the record, not taking a moment out of it's 60+ minute running time for breath, other than Tommy Rogers' brief interruption in the intro to 'Foam Born' to declare "We are Between The Buried And Me..and this is 'Colors''. To witness such an astounding feat of musical dexterity and, hell, endurance, is to stare into a deep vortex of awesome. That the band finish up, take only a couple of minutes to regroup, then return to play a second set of fan-picked classics is almost unthinkable, and does bring one to question the likelyhood that sometime in the near future BTBAM will be outed as cybernetic beings from the future. It wouldn't be unreasonable to suggest that Between The Buried And Me aren't the most visually enthralling band around, unless you like watching guys standing around shredding their instruments to pieces, of course. However, the display of sheer mind-bending musicianship here is so astonishing that you become enthralled regardless.

Slipknot - 'Disasterpieces'

Slipknot are a band that sit only just on the happy side of 'guilty pleasure' for me-a leftover from my youth that remains musically daring enough to stay in favour with my more 'educated' musical tastes. That said, there is nothing guilty about my inclusion of 'Disasterpieces' on this list, as simply put this is one of the best heavy metal shows ever recorded and pressed onto a shiny plastic disc. Filmed in London on the 'Iowa' tour, 'Disasterpieces' captures the 'Knot at the pinnacle of their career (at least in terms of popularity-04's 'Volume 3:The Subliminal Verses' being the unquestionable highlight of the band's discography) infront of a few thousand rabid fans, tearing shit right-the-fuck-up. At this point Slipknot's stage show was pure spectacle-from the hydraulic drum platforms to Joey Jordison's rotating/elevating drum riser, everything was designed to dazzle. The highlight of course isn't watching the stage production, but the band itself, and Slipknot are nothing short of savage. Playing everything you could want to hear from 'Slipknot' and 'Iowa', including big hitters like 'Spit It Out', 'My Plague', and relatively rare cuts like 'Scissors' and 'Eeyore'. A band and a DVD unlike any other, and not to be ignored by any metal fan, however 'above-it' you may think you are.

Mastodon - 'The Workshorse Chronicles'

Mastodon are pretty much my favourite band, so I'd have to be a big ol' douche to leave this off the list. Not that it doesn't completely deserve it's place here, as 'The Workshorse Chronicles' is an incredibly in depth look at Mastodon, both on and off-stage. The DVD features what may be one of the most comprehensive collections of live footage ever amassed, showcasing a live performance of every song (bar the 'elephant man' instrumentals) from every Mastodon release up to the time the DVD was compiled. Quality of footage and sound varies from track to track, but even so it is nice to see the progression from their early 5-piece days to the world tours for 'Leviathan'. Particular attention must be drawn to a singularly astonishing festival performance of 'Mother Puncher', my personal favourite live performance of, well, anything ever. The DVD also features a 45-minute 'history of Mastodon' documentary which, whilst being a little looser in tone and less comprehensive than the Killswitch Engage doc, is still well worth multiple viewings. Rounding out the package is a collection of all of the 'Don's videos up to that point, along with making of's for each. 'The Workshorse Chronicles' is a well-packaged, jam-packed DVD and worth anyone's time and money, go fucking get it, yeah?

Now, I try to remain easy as far as ordering goes with these lists, it's hard enough even picking ten of anything, let alone putting those ten into any kind of order. However, as wonderful as the 9 DVDs above are, there is one music DVD so awesome, so re-watchable, so abso-fucking-lutely sweet that it has to be singled out from the pack. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you...

Every Time I Die - 'Shit Happens'

Let's face it, it couldn't have been anything else, could it? I will go on record as declaring that I have probably watched this DVD more times than I have listened to any one of ETID's albums, and I listen to Every Time I Die a fucking lot. What we have here one of the most awesome filmic tributes to partying, rock and roll, and being unflinchingly awesome ever created. There is no real structure, simply a shit-ton of tiny escapades compressed into 2 hours of fun. Though the band are the stars of the show here, it's worth giving music DVD auteur Doug Spagnenburg his due-this guy knows how to coax the funniest shit from this band, and his editing is masterful in wringing every last ounce of comedy from each scenario. 'Shit Happens' is the filmic equivalent of hanging out with your buddies, shotgunning lots of beers, and getting arrested for playing your Metallica records way too fuckin' loud. It also comes with some of the best DVD easter eggs ever, in the shape of 'At Home With Every Time I Die', a short film shot in '03 and originally a bonus DVD in it's own right, given away with limited copies of 'Hot Damn', and a so-sketchy-it's-hilarious Keith Buckley stand-up routine, where all borders between decency and taste become horribly blurred. It's kind of cheating, but I feel it's worth mentioning ETID's two other DVDs, 'The Dudes And Don'ts Of Making An Album' and 'Party Pooper', both of which are generous freebies with the band's last two albums, 'The Big Dirty' and 'New Junk Aesthetic'. Rather than just churning out run-of-the-mill makin-an-album documentaries, Every Time I Die and their trusty compatriot Doug Spagnenberg created what feel like follow on chapters to 'Shit Happens', both full of the same party-dudes attitude and carefree, effortless humour that ETID seem to exude as easily as they do bad-ass rock and roll. 'The Dudes...' is worth viewing just to see Andy Williams' herculean taco-eating feats. In short (which I know this hasn't been), Every Time I Die are the ultimate DVD band, pumping out entertaining viewing as consistantly as awesome albums, and in a perfect world their DVDs would be eligable for Oscars.


So, another list down. As with my 'albums of the decade' I feel like there should be some honourable mentions to DVDs that didn't quite make the cut, through no fault of their own other than beign not as fucking awesome as the ten above:

Unearth - 'Alive From The Apocalypse'
This sucker follows basically the same format as the Killswitch one-disc 1 has a fun and comprehensive documentary charting Unearth's rise to metalcore power, disc 2 has a live show from '08 and all the band's videos. Notable for featuiring ETID's Keith Buckley spluttering in confusion upon being told he was being interviewed about Unearth, not Underoath.

Converge - 'The Long Road Home'
An incredibly comprehensive archive of Converge's live shows from way back in '94, right up to '02 and the 'Jane Doe' tour cycle, and even includes 3 full live shows! Only missed the cut from the main list beciase almost all of the footage is terrible in both audio and visual quality (or as the band themselves warn at the beginning, 'very punk rock')

Cave In - 'Planets Of Old'
Technically just a bonus DVD with their new EP, this gets a nod because, hey, it's a fucking Cave In live DVD! A weird setlist that leans heavily on new, untested material, it still rocks to see tracks like 'Luminance', 'Moral Eclipse' and 'Big Riff' being played in the flesh. On a DVD. *cough*

As I Lay Dying - 'This Is Who We Are'
Again, another that follows the same format as the Killswitch disc, this sprawling effort covers 3 discs and has as much As I Lay Dying as you could ever need. Though they're hardly one of my favorite bands, they are a kick-ass live band and seem like cool guys, God-fixation nonwithstanding.

The Black Dahlia Murder - 'Nocturnal'
OK, so these guys are waaaaaay less funny than they think they are, but the tour documentary on this double disc set is still mostly enjoyable, and the live footage shreds all over the place.

Various - 'Sounds Of The Underground-Live At The Starland Ballroom'
The only reason this didn't make the main list is that I wanted to concentrate on individual bands' DVD output. However, being from the ever trustworthy Doug Spagnenberg, this is almost up there with 'Shit Happens' in the 'mixing awesome music with backstage hilarity' stakes, obviously due in no small part by ETID's ever-looming presence. Almost all of the bands are fucking awesome, and pretty much everyone comes across in a really awesome light, with the exception of From Autumn To Ashes, who are conspicuous in their apparent unwillingness to appear in any behind-the-scenes japery. Worth it for Jordan Buckley's Lamb Of God crowd-surf antics alone!


See you all next time I feel like listing some shit
DD x

Searching for a metal-themed Easter pun, failing.

This is going to be a short one, I'm at work and it's retardedly empty because every smart business in London is FUCKING CLOSED for the bank holiday. So with no customers to serve, I figured I'd take it upon myself to talk about a band I only discovered yesterday called Black Breath...














I mean, just fucking LOOK at these guys!? I wish I was in this goddamn band so hard my legs might fall off. They sound a whole helluva lot like Entombed, which is always a good way for a band to get my blood pumping, y'know, 'down there', they have a Kurt 'Master Of The Universe' Ballou-recorded album about to hit our shores in a week or two, and rip super hard. Make no mistake, THIS is the band you should be chonging beers to for the next six months