The View From Hear - A Heavy Metal Family Values Column by Paul Hanson

At my day job, I belong to several technical writing email lists. Occasionally, maybe 20% of the time, the posts stray into subjects other than technical writing. The other day, I mentioned that I was a freelance music writer. That sparked a thread on the list about what CDs people had in their drawer at work.
Randy Paske, a member of the list, volunteered his list of CDs:

Buzzcocks - Beating Hearts
XTC - Wasp Star
Reflector - Where Has All the Melody Gone?
The Figgs - For EP Fans Only
The Figgs - Couldn't Get High
The Jayhawks - Tomorrow the Green Grass
Kelly Hogan/Pine Valley Cosmonauts - Beneath the Country Underdog
Flop - & the Fall of the Mopsqueezer
The Strike - Shots Heard 'Round the World
Squeeze - Domino
The Micronotz - Volume 2, 1985-86
Sleater-Kinney - All Hands on the Bad One
Pegboy - Earwhig
The Fly Seville - Carousel
Leatherface - Horsebox
Billy Bragg & Wilco - Mermaid Avenue Vol. II
Paul Westerberg - Suicaine Gratifaction
Reggie & the Full Effect - Greatest Hits '84-'87
Elliott Smith - Figure 8
Built to Spill - There's Nothing Wrong with Love
and the new Bloodshot Records compilation.

Another member, Stephen Wertzbaugher, commented that "What's really scary is that I didn't recognize the name of a single group on this list. Do I need to get out more often or am I just getting old?"
I replied with the following: "There are so many bands on so many labels that I think listing every single band/CD that is available is impossible. I consider myself hip to the music scene, but I regularly have no idea who these people are on the pop radio charts. I wouldn't say it's b/c you're old. There's an oversaturated market (easier and easier to record a CD) so 'everyone's doing it.' Kind of like there will never be a comprehensive list of websites because people are adding new ones everyday." (And as an aside, the only CD I have on Randy's list is Leatherface's "Horsebox" release and, quite honestly, I don't like it.)

This is so true, the more I think about it. The DIY wave of self-made labels is enormous, and definitely overwhelming for fans of music. Napster and other similar products make it even harder for fans of specific genres to find the best bands in their genre. In my opinion, someone who proclaims Pantera as the best thrash band around today would like a relatively newbie band like Pissing Razors. Someone who proclaims to like Tool would dig the lead vocalist Maynard James Keenan's new band, A Perfect Circle, whose current single "Judith," with the catchy lyrics "It's not like I killed someone," is making some noise on my local rock stations.

And where does that leave someone like me, a music columnist. Over the last nine years that I've written music reviews, I've come to realize that I will never be able to listen and know every single band that has a CD or tape or vinyl available. A casual glance at a site like The Top 100 Metal Sites (www.topsitelists.com/area51/phassel/topsites.html) proves my point. I found a link to http://members.xoom.com/scaffoldband/scaffold.html which is, of course, "the official Scaffold website" According to their website, a scaffold is "a platform from which criminals are executed (hanged or beheaded)" and their site is best viewed "Side (sic) is best viewed at resolution 800×600 pixels or higher and DARK enviroment (sic)." This band features drummer Robert Kovacic, guitarists Gorazd Macek and Aljosa Orlovic, bassist Sebastjan Skupek and vocalist Ales Drolc. The band mentions, on its news page with a date of January 10, 2000, the following: "Scaffold will finally hit the studio and record their first demo. Demo will be available as soon as possible for low cost." There is no other mention of a demo being completed. The band also has MP3s to download but when I attempted to do so, I got hung up at the Xoom sign-on page. Give them an email address to download a song? I don't think so: I get enough SPAM as it is.

But back to the point. On this band's links page, they offer links to the following:

Cannibal Corpse
Deicide
Hate Eternal
Immolation
Malevolent Creation
Morbid Angel
Pessimist
Suffocation
Nile
Deeds of flesh

Of the above list, I've never heard of Deeds of Flesh, though I admit I've never listened to Hate Eternal, Immolation, Pessimist, or Nile. My familiarity with those bands are through either reading CD reviews of their releases, from online metal zines I read like Ill Literature (http://www.illliterature.com) and Ballbuster (http://www.ballbusterhardmusic.com, which is a site to which I submit reviews) or from print zines I read like Metal Maniacs. (http://www.metalmaniacs.com). Are these the 'best' sources to get metal news? They are the ones I have found and I am satisfied with the information I want to know about.

But back to the band Deeds of Flesh. If I click this link, I get to http://www.deedsofflesh.com. This website (considerably better designed than Scaffold's) boasts the following: "We are releasing our 4th CD entitled Path Of The Weakening which is due out this July on Unique Leader Entertainment. With 9 songs of ear-punishing torture in the Deeds vein of constant, always changing, mayhemic songwriting, watch for us to kick the scene in the ass once again." That may be true, but that leads us to a paraphrasement (all my tech writing buddies will tell me whether this is a real word or not, or if you know, email me at mailto:prhmusic@hotmail.com) of Stephen Wertzbaugher's statement, "what's really scary is that I didn't even know this band existed, much less that they have three prior releases. Do I need to get out more often?" My answer is no. There are just so many bands available, especially now with the internet, that there's no way to know every single band.

And, to carry this example yet another step further, the Deeds of Flesh links page includes a link to the cyber home of Carcariass, http://www.loria.fr/~couturie/carcariass, a Death Metal band created in 1991 that originates from Besançon (France). From their page, you can go to Dismal's website, (http://perso.infonie.fr/site_dismal/anglais/anglais.htm) who I had never heard of. Dismal, by the way, have a new CD out called "Bewitched by the Moon." The Dismal site can take you to the French Connection website (http://home.nordnet.fr/~lbocquet/index2.html), which includes links to other bands that I haven't heard of.

Another source of this oversaturated market is the number of labels that are at least partially funding these releases by publicizing them, if not through financial support. One of my favorite places to browse is Ari's Simple List of Record Labels at http://guxx.com/recordlabels. It is probably one of my favorite sites on the web. Simple design, simple to find where you want to go and the webmaster doesn't fall into the trap of saying "this is a metal label, this one is folk, this one is jazz." The webmaster lets the surfer figure it out by going to the website that looks interesting and going from there. Just look at this list for just the A's: http://guxx.com/recordlabels/labels/a.htm. How many record labels are there? 239. And that's just the As!

Another website to check out to feel like a mere grain of sand in the world of music is Mega's Metal Asylum at http://start.at/mega. This guy from Suomi, Finland, has one of the most comprehensive lists I've seen on the web. Looking at his statistics page at http://www.lut.fi/~mega/muzac/albums.html generates envy from me. He has a total of 3174 titles in his music collection. (I have 2556 in my collection.) If you do the math, that's 618 more than me (so BSS, I do NOT have too many CDs! <grin>). He has bands in his collection that I don't have, like Abigor's Verwüstung/Invoke the Dark Age, Orkblut - The Retaliation, Nachthymnen (From the Twilight Kingdom), Opus IV Apokalypse, Supreme Immortal Art and Channeling the Quintessence of Satan, Abramelin's Transgression from Acheron and Absurd Existence's Angelwings releases while I, on the other hand, have Acid Bath's Paegan Terrorism Tactics, Ashes to Ashes's Shapes of Spirits, and Ashes You Leave's Desparate Existence and The Passage Back to Life. So right there is an example of two metal fans having large collections (okay, his is huge, mine is large) and having different bands.

Which leads to the idea that can be extracted from Stephen Wertzbaugher's exasperation: how can anyone, including myself, who gets promos on a daily basis, or Stephen Wertzbaugher, who didn't recognize any of the band's on Randy's list, keep up with all the new bands?

Answer: you can't. It'd be like trying to make a list of every single internet website available. Everyday, someone creates a new website. Everyday, someone creates a new band. Everyday, someone releases a new CD, whether its metal, jazz, classic rock, folk, country or rap. Everyday, someone changes the internet's landscape much in the same way that everyday, someone changes the music industry's landscape.

Part II of this column will include some reviews of other bands that you probably have not heard of like Boulder, Iron Fire, Disassociate, Impaler, Phantom Black, Alphavox, local heroes Measure, Red Harvest, Hypnos, Orth, Shaft, Mist Enticer, and Deathless. In the meantime, check out http://pandomag.com/featurestext/10TheViewFromHear.htm for some more bands you probably haven't heard of.

Click below for
TOO MUCH MUSIC PT. 2 * TOO MUCH MUSIC PT. 3

The View From Hear #25 - TOO MUCH MUSIC!

The View From Hear #24 - What "Smells Like Teen Spirit" Did to Our Culture

The View From Hear #23 - Life Ain't Fair

The View From Hear #22 - Pando 22

The View From Hear #21 - Metallica's S&M

The View From Hear #20 - Dokken, Def Leppard Live, Jeff Pilson Interview

The View From Hear #19 - All Hail the Mighty Zeppelin

The View From Hear #18 - Dokken, Slaughter, Metal Church

The View From Hear #17 - Guy's Night In

The View From Hear #16 - Christian Punks

The View From Hear #15 - Iowa Labels