BeatRoute Magazine B.C. print e-edition - January 2017

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JANUARY ARRIVAL D.A. Stern, Aloha Hola Machinae Supremacy Into the Night World Self-Released It is not uncommon for power metal bands to incorporate video game sounds into their music, but Sweden’s Machinae Supremacy takes this influence to a new level. The quintet, avid video gamers, choose to incorporate the SID chip from the Commodore 64 with their power/industrial metal riffs, creating a very unique and instantly recognizable sound. Their latest album, Into the Night World, is their seventh studio album and it is another consistent installment of retro, throwback sounds coupled with auto-tuned falsetto vocals, piano interludes, and heavy metal riffs. For better or for worse they have been following the same formula since 2004, and while some may see their lack of evolution as a hindrance, they have become masters of their particular genre. Typically focusing on traditional power metal themes of fantasy and sci-fi, Machinea Supremacy follows the grain. However, on this album, they do deviate slightly to give a nod to themes of love, loss and personal accomplishments. The second last, and possible highlight track on the album, the instrumental, “SID Metal Legacy,” is the pinnacle of the fusion between the distinctive SID chiptune and standard heavy metal. All in all, the album is well done; going forward it can be reasonably expected that Machinae Supremacy will continue to put forth similar sounding, but high caliber albums. • Kaje Annihilatrix D.A. Stern Aloha Hola Twosyllable Records With easy, catchy choruses, and that pop style guitar we all love deep down, the sound of D.A. Stern will secure a spot in the soft part of your heart, but also keep you emotionally hooked for the heart-aching and terribly relatable dark lyrics in many of his songs. Recorded and produced by Stern in his mother’s New Jersey basement, Aloha Hola is the artist’s debut full-length. The 11-track album is a lyric-to-sound contradiction that you can’t help but listen to over and over again. With soft odes dedicated to heartbreak, melancholy pop melodies about booze, and tunes about bright light cities, the album in its entirety is the perfect anthem to youth and growing up. While bringing you on a woeful lyrical adventure, the instrumental accompaniment gives you some Sepultura, Machine Messiah kinder, lighthearted leeway. With a sound reminiscent of the Beach Boys, but also bringing a ‘60s style surf rock finish, this album is the perfect psych pop record to remind you of why music is your best friend. • Jackie Klapak The Rolling Stones Blue & Lonesome Promotone/Universal Lost in the shift to urbanized, musical virtuosity through the past four decades, was the essential thrust of what made the blues what it is: Groove. Unrelenting groove, that swing that was immediately danceable for anyone who could bend their knees, move their feet, and shake their hips at the same time in a deliriously sweaty flail to the unsophisticated sounds of a band standing within feet of each other. The co-mingling scents of sex, smoke, liquor, and possibly gunpowder lingering through the air in a conspiratorially dangerous and subversive mélange that both excited, and frightened, the people who lived through the first rise in popularity of Black American music. There’ll always be the caveat that white musicians took the music of their black heroes and brought it to the masses, at times even through theft, but The Rolling Stones were always purists. The Stones revered this music, and treated their heroes as near deities. They may have moved away from the blues to develop their own sonic signatures – ones which have been template rock ‘n’ roll for 50 years - but to hear the Stones let rip on the classic forms as they do on Blue & Lonesome is to hear a band which has digested 100 years’ worth of blues styles and songs, and distilled it down to its essence. Blue & Lonesome is the album Stones fans have wanted for years: to hear the band unencumbered by the excesses of ego and production, and in some way, to feel what the kids in 1962 must have felt, shaking and screaming to the sound of the one band that was getting it right the whole time. • Mike Dunn Sepultura Machine Messiah Nuclear Blast Records With much steam still in the engine, Brazilian heavy metal monarchs Sepultura, keep chugging along with their fourteenth studio album. Using a very cohesive writing and recording process as a self-credited tool, they have released what they consider to be their most complete album yet. The Sohn, Rennen engineering quality by highly touted producer, Jens Bogren (Opeth, Kreator), is a huge plus factor throughout. The title and intro track is a completely mesmerizing segue into what is a layout of classic Sepultura-sounding tracks. The next number, “I am the Enemy,” quickly brings back that thrash feel the band was known for during their inception. We then immerge into “Phantom Self,” which begins with an orchestral addition but is filled in immediately with driving vocals and powerful axe chugs. While the overall sound generally remains the same throughout, each track has a different feel and tempo. Machine Messiah appeals to the true heavy metal lover with no surprises, just solid riffs, tasty solos, and toasty, guttural vocals. The album finishes off with the wonderfully demonic “Cyber God,” which properly accents why these well-seasoned veterans are still spearheading the metal scene with hard charging, unwavering force. • Jay King Sohn Rennen 4AD Rennen, the sophomore release from South London producer and singer Sohn, essentially follows the same shtick as his 2014 debut Tremors. The good news, however, is that this is one of the more formidable shticks out there. For those unfamiliar with his sound, it probably would have been grouped in with the “post-dubstep” label when he first emerged at the start of the decade. In 2014, when Rolling Stone listed him as an “Artist You Need To Know,” he was drawing comparisons with fellow Londoner James Blake for fusing R&B with left-field, atmospheric electronica. According to the press release, Sohn tried to limit each track on the album to three main elements. In electronic music this is a surefire sign of an artist wanting to refine their sound and mature, and it definitely shows on the album. Tracks like the gripping vocally-driven “Still Waters,” and the percussive “Falling,” showcase an artist who’s becoming more daring and bold. Other standout tracks include “Proof,” with its pitch-shifted vocal chops, the album opener “Hard Liquor,” which apparently set the texture for the entire release, and “Primary,” a song that showcases Sohn’s prowess as an electronic producer. • Jonathan Crane 6 7 8 11 12 13 14 19 21 22 25 27 29 2 8 BLADE RUNNER THE FINAL CUT DEAD SNOW FRIDAY LATE NIGHT MOVIE HAYAO MIYAZAKIʼS HOWLʼS MOVING CASTLE PAUL THOMAS ANDERSONʼS THERE WILL BE BLOOD STANLEY KUBRICKʼS A CLOCKWORK ORANGE THE GOLDEN GLOBE AWARDS Live and FREE on the big screen TRIVIA, GAMES, PRIZES AND MORE! THE GENTLEMEN HECKLERS PRESENT BIRDEMIC ULTRAMAN DOUBLE FEATURE! ULTRAMAN X: THE MOVIE AND ULTRAMAN: GINGA S THE GEEKENDERS PRESENT UNCAPED CRUSADERS A ʻBatlesqueʼ Tribute To Batman KITTY NIGHTS PRESENTS A LIVE ROCK TRIBUTE TO DAVID BOWIE MISCHIEF MANAGED HARRY POTTER BURLESQUE “Like Harry Potter... But Way Hotter!” HARRY POTTERTHON! Movies 1 - 4 Jan 21 Movies 5 - 8 Jan 22 DAY AND WEEKEND PASSES AVAILABLE THE CRITICAL HIT SHOW AN IMPROV COMEDY SPECTACULAR #DNDLIVE IN ITS FIFTH YEAR THE GEEKENDERS PRESENT PORTAL 2: THE UNAUTHORIZED MUSICAL PAUL ANTHONYʼS TALENT TIME First Thursday Of Every Month THE FICTIONALS COMEDY CO. PRESENTS IMPROV AGAINST HUMANITY Oh, the humanity! #IAHatRio 32 reviews VISIT WWW.RIOTHEATRE.CA FOR A COMPLETE CALENDAR OF EVENTS. January 2017
live reviews Photo by Darrole Palmer Aesop Rock December 19th, 2016 Venue Queens rapper Homeboy Sandman started the show off strongly with a set of tracks ranging across his discography that showcased his finely crafted writing and diverse set of flows. Punch lines were delivered with humour and his sometimes self-effacing, light hearted sense of humour came across well. The incredible fast rap of “The Carpenter” impressed with its velocity and set closer “God” from his latest album Kindness for Weakness impressed for its joie de vivre. Upon ending his set Homeboy Sandman made a point to tell the crowd that they were at a show that night that was akin to seeing Mozart or Beethoven; that Aesop Rock was a one of a kind artist; a virtuoso that is up to that level. At the moment it felt a touch silly; a fun complimentary piece of hyperbole meant to hype the headliner and get the crowd amped up. But it was clear from the moment Aesop Rock took the stage that this was a rap show on a whole other level than we’re used to. While focussing mostly on tracks from his latest album The Impossible Kid and performing on a rural themed stage design that seemed mostly to exist due to a few lines from his song “Rabies,” he gave the crowd almost two hours of rap in its most concentrated form. Bar after bar, line after line of intricately written raps without losing syllable, and with a clear and joyous delivery. It was astonishing to witness. Whether rapping intimate stories about his brothers (“Blood Sandwich”), his cat (“Hey Kirby”), or therapist (“Shrunk”), or delivering some of his greatest hits to close out the show (“Daylight,” “Lucy,” “None Shall Pass”), there was never a moment he didn’t seem in complete control of his craft or out of breath and it really felt like Homeboy Sandman (who joined him on stage for a riotous encore featuring tracks from their joint EP Lice 2) was right. • Graeme Wiggins Neurosis/Yob/Sumac December 20th, 2016 Venue Nightclub When December 20th’s lineup was announced, it was every post-metal fan’s wet dream come to life – so it wasn’t surprising that in Vancouver (a city that seems to suit the genre better than most), Sumac, Yob, and Neurosis sold out completely. One unfortunate problem was that the venue seemed pretty unprepared for this volume Photo by Milton Stille of people, and a lot of us who came to see all three bands wound up waiting outside in line, listening to a muffled Sumac even though we’d arrived well before their posted set time. It seemed that the staff were trying their best, but I had already missed half of Sumac’s set before I got in. Which is even more of a shame because what I did get to see from the sludgy supergroup that includes Aaron Turner (ex-Isis... the band, not the militants), local Nick Yacyshyn (of Baptists) and Brian Cook (of Russian Circles) was impressive. Their orchestrated dissonance kicked off the night and ended with a message from Turner, saying that “There’s one thing I want to say. It’s that this is about love.” An apparent juxtaposition with their music, but you could feel it in the crowd even at this point. Even at a show like this, the music doomy and tuned below any reasonable earthly boundaries, I didn’t detect a shred of hostility. So, below the oddly placed Christmas decorations (having your view blocked by a Christmas tree at a metal show is strange to say the least) we prepared ourselves for fellow Pacific Northwesterners Yob, out of Oregon. Yob stole the show for me personally, and were the most entrancing band of the night, and the most classically doomy. During “Marrow,” it seemed that the usually constant stream of people in the crowd pushing to get to the bar, the bathroom, their friends – whatever – was suspended for the duration of the song. Frontman Mike Scheidt’s guitar repeated a mantra that seemed to captivate all of us for that segment of time, and was a bit of a shocking end to the set. By then the venue was allowing ins-and-outs, so we could all go outside for a bit and collect ourselves for Neurosis. Californian post-metal legends Neurosis are not for the faint-hearted, this is even more so when being present for one of their live performances. “Lost” off of their 1993 release Enemy of the Sun kicked off their set with a favorite, setting the energy levels high for the rest of their set, and keeping it up by following with “The Web.” Live and in person, their songs have an almost industrial feel and energy coming from the stage, keyboardist Noah Landis beating the shit out of his synthesizers with almost more enthusiasm than drummer Jason Roeder - while frontman Scott Kelly played like any second now he was going to throw his guitar over his shoulder and go rampaging through the crowd. The middle of the set had more long and contemplative pieces that took the energy down a few notches with a few songs from their latest release Fires Within Fires. The crowd seemed to reanimate when the voice-over interview for “Takehnase” began, another crowd favorite which once it was launched into made it feel as though the vibrations throughout the venue would make it collapse upon us (I picture a nervous live engineer trying to keep decibels at just-below lethal levels) and from where I was standing near the front I wasn’t sure that I would hear anything ever again. Though, I’m pretty sure it would have been a worthy way to go. The first half of “At the End of the Road” served as an intermission but made the crowd a bit restless – even we can only listen to white noise guitars for so long. They finished on “The Doorway,” and Neurosis did a great job of the set list. With a band where each album is pretty distinct it’s not an easy feat to put together a coherent performance. By the end of it all, it felt like we had all gone through some bizarre meditative ritual, on the edge of a bad trip without quite falling in. You think you know what you’re getting into when you attend a night with a lineup like Sumac, Yob, and Neurosis – but you really don’t until you’re at the end of it, faced with the jarring silence of an emptying venue. • Ana Krunic January 2017 reviews 33
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BeatRoute Magazine B.C. print e-edition - January 2017

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