MUSIC REVIEW: Mullmuzzler - Keep It to Yourself

"Great vocals with lots of diverse tracks."

James LaBrie's excellent solo project shows that he's more than just a phenomenally talented singer, but he's decent songwriter as well. He has some Magna Carta fellow travelers joining him to help write some of the tunes, and of course Trent Gardner still struggles to write decent vocal melodies. With Dream Theater, LaBrie's songwriting is rather undervalued among his virtuoso peers, but here you really see another dimension of him.

LaBrie sounds excellent, visceral and strong and confident, far better than Dream Theater's Falling Into Infinity, which was released not-so-long before this. His emotional expression is also impeccable, which is one of the reasons I love Dream Theater so much. Nowhere is this more evident than on the nondescript ballads. Mullmuzzler's trips into the tunnel of love may have been awfully banal had the vocals not brought them up a few notches.

The impassioned opener "His Voice" shows the album's principal feel: melodic metal/rock with a progressive leaning. There's some great quirky moments, like the Zappa-esque "Beelzebubba," with its use of brass, and the audacious "As a Man Thinks," which features melody shifts aplenty, bombastic vocals, and thoughtful lyrics. The sentimental rocker "Guardian Angel" and the mini-epic "Shores of Avalon" are also highlights. Each song offers something different thanks to considerable variety and tight musicianship. Overall, a great disc for James LaBrie fans.

MUSIC REVIEW: Tori Amos - To Venus and Back

"Good and/or great."

Tori Amos' studio work on this 2CD set is somewhat polarizing. With From The Choirgirl Hotel, Tori fleshed out her sound by adding denser arrangements with the rest of her band. With To Venus And Back, she sticks with this formula but meets with less success. Some of the songs feel overproduced, which handicaps the level of intimacy usually associated with her music. With Choirgirl this worked, but here the results are iffy. Tori doesn't cut loose with her voice as much, there's way less piano balladry, and some of the songs are a little 'ehhh'. However, the album does have its share of highlights. The ethereal, dreamy "Datura" is wonderfully enigmatic. It's to her credit that Tori somehow manages emotional expression with a fairly detached voice. Also, "Concertina," "1000 Oceans," "Bliss," and the provocative "Lust" are almost as good as anything she's ever put to record, I think. My problem is that sometimes she waxes the techno sound a bit too much.

But then we come to disc 2. The live album included is incredible. I've never seen her live, and I'll take for granted that this album is no replacement, but it's great for a live recording. It's full of revelatory moments as Tori radically rearranges many of her songs and boosts the energy level. For some reason, I don't like most live albums on my first listen, but this is my one exception. The haunting "Bells For Her" is entirely different on a piano that isn't all busted. I don't know where "Cooling" comes from, but it's an incredible showcase of Tori at her best: an emotionally intense piano ballad with utterly beautiful vocals. The violent "The Waitress" is extended by six or seven minutes, and it totally rocks. Overall, the setlist (you can see it above) is basically perfect, and Tori's onstage charisma is remarkable. The b-side "Purple People" is one of her best songs so that's good to hear. "Sugar", cut from Under the Pink if I remember correctly, is f'ing awesome.

The studio album is not her best, but the live album is one of the best things she's released. So really, the album on the whole rules.

MUSIC REVIEW: The Flower Kings - Flower Power

"Prog rock. Lots of it."

The obvious highlight of this 2CD set is the massive suite "Garden of Dreams." Normally, this would be enough to satisfy the material for one album, but the Flower Kings better the package with another 80 or so minutes of music. A great deal, at the very least.

The 60-minute epic "Garden of Dreams" is divided into eighteen parts, and they run the aural gamut with countless musical styles. Gothic orchestral moments, straight ahead crass rock n' roll, virtuoso insanity, even some light opera (!), and way more. The suite is easily faulted for a lack of focus...even after several listens you won't pick up any musical or lyrical themes tying it all together. It just seems to disjointed overall. Nonetheless, taking each part on its own, the bits are pretty good. Recall every progressive rock cliché in the world, and you'll see that "Garden of Dreams" exemplifies all of them. Whether that's good or bad is up to you. Personally, I would have preferred a bit more unity or natural 'flow' to give "Garden of Dreams" the feel of a cohesive song.

To many "Garden of Dreams" will be the highlight, but the rest of the album's material is good enough to capture one's attention. Disc 2's eclectic collection of tunes has a lot of great stuff, but I suspect that some people won't like everything that's offered. It's plain to see that the Flower Kings are a peppy bunch, going for positive, happy progressive music over the turgid drama of some other prog artists. The silly ballad "Magic Pie" is delightfully serene (completely weird lyrics though), "Deaf, Numb & Blind's" tempo changes and Eastern chord progressions are fun, while "Stupid Girl" features a great jam moment at the end of song. These are just some of the highlights. There are countless more, but I don't want to get carried away.

As with most prog bands, all of FK's musicians are very tight. Main songwriter, vocalist, and guitarist Roine Stolt excels in the art of songcraft. He has a prog musician's knack for complexity and a pop producer's sense of melody. The album is brimming with catchy moments. Even though the lyrics are generic, even silly, in the context of the songs they work. One unique point about the Flower Kings is their use of two lead vocalists, Stolt and Hans Froberg. While Froberg is certainly the better singer, Stolt's vocal stylings are more suited to rock music, while Froberg's voice fits better for the mellower moments (like "Magic Pie" and part 8 of "Garden of Dreams"). I feel that this mix makes certain moments of the Flower Kings' music much more effective.

A good album, but it's very tough to take it all in...after all, there's a lot of material here. For those who love prog-style excesses, great playing, and catchy songs, The Flower Kings have your number. If you're trying this band out for the first time, I recommend starting with one of the band's shorter albums, like Space Revolver or maybe Retropolis. Or just go hardcore and check out my favorite of theirs, the other double-album Stardust We Are.

MUSIC REVIEW: Queensryche - Promised Land

"The last great Queensryche album."

Queensryche has evolved considerably over the past 20 years of their prolific careers. They've gone from fiery heavy metal in the days of their EP to the lush rock-opera of Operation: Mindcrime, to the sublime perfection of the commercially successful Empire, to their current status as a more-or-less generic rock band. In the middle of these last two phases comes Promised Land. Compared to the remarkable accessibility of Empire, Promised Land is a little more unusual, and difficult to appreciate. Living up to the amazing success and quality of Empire is nearly impossible, and I do not envy Promised Land for what it tried to do.

The problem lies in the fact that Promised Land's excellent songs are not as densely packed as those on Empire. Most of the songs are good, but not all the songs are excellent. There are moments of mediocrity that drag the album down from levels of excellence. The superlative production alleviates some of the boredom associated with the passable tracks, as do the thick wall-of-sound arrangements. However, interspersed amongst the middling pieces are some of the best tracks they've ever recorded, including some of the finest lyrics. The acoustic balladry of "Bridge" made for a lucrative single that deserved all its enjoined success. The sad, thoughtful "Out of Mind," the ominous "Lady Jane," and the hard rock trappings of "Disconnected" are all great. The true standouts are the stormy title track, with those monstrous arrangements and the harrowing tone, and the moving closer, "Someone Else?" The latter is the most un-Ryche song they've ever done, consisting only of piano and Geoff Tate's emotive vocals. The memorable piano lines, thoughtful lyrics and Tate's passion are what makes this one special. Tate even strains on a note...guess he's human after all! Without the songcraft to elevate it to pure greatness, the production helps.

A good Queensryche. Mostly great, even. Still, it can't touch the monolithic status of Mindcrime and Empire. In terms of songcraft, those albums are the band's best. But this is still awesome enough for you to care, and wish the band was still churning out this level of quality in its newer material.

MUSIC REVIEW: Iron Maiden - Live After Death

"Live heavy metal at its finest."

A live recording cannot capture the intensity of a heavy metal concert. Comparatively speaking, however, Live After Death does it better than any other live metal album. The raw sound quality belies the fact that this album was recorded in the mid-80s (it sounds better than 99% of all modern live metal recordings). Even better though, is the fact that this concert comes from a time when Iron Maiden, the quintessential metal band, was young and full of energy. I wasn't there, but I can tell that this show was a blast.

Song selection is perfect, encapsulating most of the band's best songs from their preceding studio albums, and each one is impeccably performed, often with greater intensity than the studio counterparts. The mini-epic "Powerslave" definitely gains something special when the crowd screams at Bruce's stylish entry. "Hallowed Be Thy Name"'s tempo is jacked up a bit and the song gains more intensity as a result. This version of "The Trooper" makes the studio version seem tepid in comparison. Then there's "Phantom of the Opera," which is simply incredible with Bruce's sinister intonations.

It's awesome. If you don't buy it, you suck.

MUSIC REVIEW: Pain of Salvation - One Hour by the Concrete Lake

"Awesome."

Pain of Salvation is a breath of fresh air beyond the smog of Dream Theater clones. These days, when you pick up a progressive metal album, you can expect some hints of Dream Theaters Images And Words. Most new progmetal bands try so hard to impress that they somehow fail, but Pain of Salvation succeeds by offering a fresh approach. Their debut album, Entropia, was breathtakingly original, but the band's ostensible drive to experiment sometimes made for a disjointed record on the whole. One Hour by the Concrete Lake is -- in terms of songwriting -- the better of the two, but similarly delivers a powerful shot of originality.

In stark contrast to many other progressive metal bands, PoS' music is not presented in a way that the members are showcased as individual stunning musicians. It is their flair for dynamic and innovative composition that makes them progressive, not technique. They establish originality by weaving a plethora of styles and seamlessly shifting between them. This is strongly illustrated by how vocalist Daniel Gildenlow will switch from a vicious metal growl to a quiet, delicate voice with an appropriate musical accompaniment. Sound strange? Indeed, but it works. Over the course many listens, you come to understand the band's frequently switching demeanor, and you get a feel for the band's originality. It can be ruthlessly heavy at times, and can be wonderfully soft and melodic at others. The beautiful chorus of "Water," for instance, juxtaposed with those heavier moments, makes for an engaging listen.

One Hour is another concept album...err, theme album, I guess. It is based more on individual songs and less on the musical unity found in Entropia and their newest [Chimp Note: This review is old], The Perfect Element. There is no story, rather the album is tied together by three chapters making us aware of world issues such as war and environmental concerns. Daniel Gildenlow, the band's principal songwriter, generally works his ideas effectively into the lyrics, but a few overwrought moments border on being silly. For example, in the song "Water": "I never saw the relation | Between myself and world starvation." Dear god that's awful. Cheesy lines like this are impossible to ignore because of singer D. Gildenlow's habit for oversinging. I have seen reviews on the Internet that rip into Gildenlow's political beliefs expressed on this album. Really though, environmental destruction and violence in the third-world are serious problems. Although I disagree with Gildenlow's politics, the lyrics here work for me because Gildenlow presents them fairly evenhandedly. Still, he could use some economic lessons from the Austrian school, har har.

Despite that criticism, Gildenlow is probably the most impressive facet of Pain of Salvation's sound. He's a great singer, and he's improved HUGELY over Entropia. The reason is that he has much more control over his range. Still, he sometimes injects the songs with needless frills that hurt his performance. He often sings unnecessarily high and it just doesn't sound good. Nowhere is this more evident than on "Pilgrim," a lovely ballad (complete with cello), but hurt by the fact that he over-sing the refrain. More tasteful restraint would have benefited the song considerably.

Wow, I sure am critical. After all that, would you even believe me if I said Gildenlow is one of the most amazing singers I've heard? Hmm. It's great that he has refined his vocal stylings almost completely for the band's third album, The Perfect Element, and the fourth album, Remedy Lane.

This is a great CD for progressive metal fans. From the serene opening "Spirit of the Land," to the intense progmetal trappings of "Inside," from the gorgeous "Water" to the exciting thematic development in "Home," from the gloomy, intricate complexities of "Black Hills" to the outstanding "Inside Out," with its blinding piano riff and fervent guitar interplay, this disc has something for anyone who digs the genre...and maybe for someone who doesn't but wants something different.

MUSIC REVIEW: Pain of Salvation - The Perfect Element I

"Terrific, unique."

Pain of Salvation is one of progressive metal's most promising bands. While I consider myself a pretty big fan in general, I think The Perfect Element (Part I) is probably their most defining album. Entropia was extremely original and mostly solid, but much the album's is kind of all over the place (which works for me, but I like that kind of eclectic stuff). One Hour By The Concrete Lake was an improvement, with better production and songs overall, but it was, dare I say, a little more more "straightforward" progressive metal (relatively speaking, of course! this is no Dream Theater clone!) and it lacked the striking originality of Entropia. Clearly, there was a balance that could be achieved.

With The Perfect Element, PoS has refined their sound, synthesizing the remarkable uniqueness of Entropia and the stronger songcraft of One Hour. Gone are the sometimes awkward herky-jerky musical passages, the needlessly embellished vocals, and turgid lyrics. Here, everything works. No, it's not perfect. But it's damn good.

The band's nature is very eclectic, for they change musical bearing unpredictably. The first tract, "Used," best exemplifies this. It begins with the harrowing coupling of heavy guitars and synths, with vocalist Daniel Gildenlow's dark, fierce intonations. With the chorus, the song undergoes a complete change as it suddenly shifts into a harmonious melody with sharply contrasting "lighter" vocals. (Sound familiar, PoS fans? It's like "!" from Entropia, but better.) "Used" is a pretty extreme example, for the rest of the album is more cohesive from song to song, but the fundaments of this versatile approach remain intact. For those who are new to PoS, this might sound almost annoying. Let me aver that the polarizing course of the music is one of its greatest merits. Why? Because the they does it incredibly well. When a band can blend so many musical ideas so seamlessly and naturally, taking you from hell to heaven and back again, it's definitely stunning.

More so than any other Pain of Salvation record, this one has the most equal balance of strident heaviness and balladry. Soft piano leads, clean electric and acoustic guitars are used as often as heavy guitar riffery. This dichotomy may irk those who favor the aggression to ballads, but this album is best thought of as a whole (it is a concept album, after all). In that respect, the balanced qualities work well.

Daniel Gildenlow's vocals have improved much since One Hour By The Concrete Lake. He still reveals some weaknesses in the higher octaves, but he seems to have a better understanding of his strengths and weaknesses. He has also improved his lyricism. On previous albums they were almost too cheesy and, I don't know... blatant? But now they are mostly just plain good. The poetic aptitude he shows in conveying this deeply emotional story about childhood is pretty impressive. As for the concept itself, the specifics are obscure, but this ensures that a lot of time will be spent unraveling this intricate story. For those listeners who don't care much about the lyrics, the album can be enjoyed simply by riding on the dynamic musical waves...

The album's only fault is its production. The production is actually good overall, but PoS' sound contains myriad textures, many of which are difficult to dissect because the production splatters everything into a blob of keyboards and guitars that is difficult to distinguish if your sound system isn't at least somewhat formidable. The guitar tone often makes it difficult to distinguish individual notes. When Gildenlow sings softy with a dense background of instrumentation, his words can be unintelligible. Similarly, when multiple vocal lines are concurrently sung, making out individual words his needlessly hard. The production is imperfect, for certain, but in other ways the band has never sounded better. The keyboards in particular sound stronger, and the crunching guitars are more raucous, and the vocals are strikingly visceral.

In the end, the production doesn't detract from the listening experience too much, because it is so strong on the whole. Hopefully, The Perfect Element Part II will retain all of this one's merits and tweak the production.

(Final note: If you see this in a store, don't get apprehensive about the band's photo on the back. Sure, they look like Korn or some other "nu metal" band, but the looks are where the similarities end. Enjoy!)

MUSIC REVIEW: Tori Amos - Boys for Pele

"Opaque, confusing... beautiful and perfect."

Is this, the most difficult Tori Amos album, actually the best Tori Amos album? Concurrently seducing and frustrating, Boys For Pele is Tori Amos' easily most complex and enigmatic work. With her previous albums, Tori showed an unashamed pretentiousness in songwriting. Even so, she was consistently able to isolate and preserve the emotional element, making for stirring music that generated a throng of fervent fans. It was her alternately accessible yet eminently deep songs that people loved.

Boys For Pele isn't quite the same. It's confounding, confusing, and challenging. Here, the music is very experimental compared to what we expect, with traditional song structure generally often eschewed, and arrangements are highly varied. There are pianos and rock instruments, but also lots of harpsichords! Tori's idiosyncratic lyrics are complex and strange, heavy on puzzling imagery and surrealism. For many people, the album doesn't seem to work. The level of intimacy ascribed to Tori's previous work is awfully obscure, which may alienate some fans.

Fortunately, this album is worth the work to make it "stick." It is indeed intriguing, and its mystique implores exploration. Analysis reveals that the songs are deeper than they first appear; Tori has crammed enough peculiarities under the surface that it succeeds in making her relentless experimentation highly satisfying. Many moments positively shimmer with genius (particularly on the first two-thirds of the disc), and others are more subtle in their brilliance due to stylish quirks. But it's all good; there's not a single song I don't like. Some songs, like "Professional Widow", are just freakin' nuts. Tori also proves that sometimes all you need is a piano and a voice (and what a voice!) to create some of the most beautiful music around.

MUSIC REVIEW: Tara MacLean - Passenger

"Rather gorgeous vocals with a flat production."


Frequently compared to Sarah McLachlan (who I absolutely cannot stand at all), Tara MacLean is a way better singer and a better songwriter. MacLean's vocals are really quite beautiful, and when performing live she really belts it out and shows her chops. However, this studio album suffers from the lifeless production. The lack of vivacity in the arrangements (too many amort electronic rhythms) doesn't complement the simple charm of MacLean's expressive, ebullient, and clean vocal styling. With just acoustic guitar and drums in live performances, she has a lot more breathing room without some jack-wad producer trying to make her "cool" and "hip". On this album, while she's a lovely singer, it sounds like she's restrained, or holding back. One definitely gets the impression that the producer was putting too much emphasis on a stifling atmosphere. On the haunting slow-tempo tracks this a more tasteful choice, but this aural quality persists on the lively songs and it just bogs down the music. It may seem as if I'm lingering on this complaint. The production isn't TOO bad, it just frustrates me as a listener. The lyrics are decent, not that it's all that important to me anyway, and gives even this bitter listener a thing or two to ponder. Lots of charm in the vocals and songwriting, but the arrangements bring down the overall quality.

PSEUDO-BOOK REVIEW: Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged; The Virtue of Selfishness

As I was importing old Amazon reviews I came across a few reviews for Ayn Rand novels and philosophy books, specifically Atlas Shrugged and The Virtue of Selfishness.

These reviews were written by a younger, less sophisticated me from years bygone, back when I thought Objectivism as a philosophy was very flawed yet at least somewhat plausible. As time passed, I came to understand just how fundamentally flawed Objectivism really is.

So rather than reproduce these old reviews which fail to represent my current views, I will simply offer an overview of why Objectivism is totally unacceptable. But please note that this repudiation does not mean that I don't really like her novels. Atlas Shrugged, We the Living, and especially The Fountainhead are still great novels, whether you accept the underlying philosophy or not.

That said, for the philosophy itself I must emphasize that I am a harsh critic. Like I mentioned a moment ago, it seemed intuitively plausible to me when I didn't know any better, but ultimately I realized that its a tissue of all the most classically fallacious doctrines. You see, Ayn Rand is often said to be a "rationalist" and she talks a lot about the importance of man's ability to reason. But it is important to note that she is not: she is an empiricist to the bone. The entire backbone of her philosophy depends on a rather crude form of empiricism, one that had been satisfactorily refuted utterly by rationalist philosophers over the centuries in many incarnations. So if you accept rationalism, you basically have to reject Ayn Rand's philosophy by default.

Here are Objectivism's core principles in technical philosophical terms, and their explication:

1) Metaphysical realism - that reality exists independent from consciousness.
2) Epistemological empiricism - human beings beings attain knowledge of reality through perception.
3) Ethical egoism and/or eudaemonism - just actions are those where one pursues's one's own happiness ("virtue of selfishness" was one of her books).
4) Political Minarchism - the state should exist, and should provide only military, courts, and police. Everything else should be laissez-faire capitalism. Basically accepts the Hobbesian thesis about a Sovereign being required to ensure people will cooperate so mankind won't kill itself completely.

Now I don't accept any of this at all. I am firmly in the hardcore traditional libertarian-rationalist camp, which has, one way or another, refuted all these arguments long before Ayn Rand ever showed up to say she basically solved every philosophical issue after reading a couple of Aristotle books.

My response:

1) false. The basic argument is this -- If the rationalist thesis is correct, then Ayn Rand's crude form of realism cannot be correct. The rationalist thesis is correct that we attain objective knowledge about reality using our reason. Therefore crude metaphysical realism is false. Metaphysical idealism -- basically the idea that consciousness and matter are really the same 'stuff' -- is correct instead.

2) false - empiricism is ultimately contradictory, and rationalism is vindicated. Rationalism is correct about knowledge being attained by reason -- that is, the ability to grasp necessary connections.

3) false - the philosophical case against ethical egoism is pretty severe. Suffice to say rights are ultimately incompatible with this. I believe the Rothbardian/Hoppean (libertarian) theory of rights is correct. So ethical egoism is rejected.

4) false. As you may know, I am a libertarian-anarchist. The state, even Ayn Rand's ideal state that is limited to the role of protecting people's property (military, courts, police) must be rejected. This is because a) morally, the state depends on coercion to exist, and coercion is a rights violation, and b) economically I believe that Mises' socialist calculation argument ultimately applies to everything and anything the government does. So even military, courts, and police as functions of government cannot be justified on grounds of economic efficiency claims. The free market would provide better security and better judicial decision-making as a matter of economic law.

If you come from a substantially different philosophical viewpoint, however, you might not accept my criticism of Objectivism because you might not share my premises. In which case, I would say you are in error but I suppose I would need to elaborate with more than what I have offered in my little review-thing here.

If you think my assessment of Objectivism is mistake, contact me.