CD Review: Duran Duran - A Diamond in the Mind - Live 2011


CD Review: Duran Duran – A Diamond in the Mind – Live 2011
Eagle Vision and Eagle Records
All Access Review: A-
Duran Duran - A Diamon in the Mind - Live 2011
It was the ideal marriage. Sculpted cheekbones, glamorous fashions, a cinematic sensibility equaled only by their ability to craft stylish, slickly produced disco-fied synth-pop that had all the sophisticated, intoxicating bite of a dry martini – Duran Duran was MTV’s soul mate, and the network fell hard for these international playboys.
The face of the UK’s 1980s New Romantic movement, Duran Duran’s rakish charm and obvious sex appeal steamed up arty – and sometimes erotic – music video fantasies that MTV was addicted to for years, playing them in a rotation schedule that went way beyond heavy. They needed each other – MTV providing Duran Duran the wide-ranging promotional machinery needed to sell scads of CDs, and Duran Duran’s looks and visual wiles sucking in a bigger audience for a network hungry to expand.
In recent years, however, MTV has hitched its wagon to the exploitation of unwed pregnant teenagers and the purely academic study of those primitive tribes of the “Jersey Shore.” And while the swashbuckling days of “Rio,” where a youthful Simon LeBon and all those Taylor boys were seen cavorting with leggy, swimsuit models aboard sail boats that cost more than the average factory worker makes in a lifetime, may be behind them, an older and wiser Duran Duran, always a vital and compelling force onstage, proves they still have the ability to captivate and thrill concert audiences on A Diamond in the Mind – Live 2011.
Out also on DVD and Blu-ray as visual documents of the experience, the 14-song CD version of A Diamond in the Mind is Duran Duran’s first live release since 1983’s Arena, and it is an exhilarating carnival of sound that feeds a crowd unabashedly singing along in unison when the moment calls for their full-throated, joyous participation, as it does on the flashy, delightfully debonair James Bond-theme “A View to a Kill.” Not that LeBon needs the assistance, his voice still so richly expressive and melodically agile after all these years. LeBon’s dramatic reading of the haunting “Before the Rain,” enveloped in all the mystery and wintery atmosphere of Cold War Russia, is a powerful introduction to what is a vibrant, widescreen performance from a band still bristling against the suggestion that they've always been more concerned with image than substance.
Any lingering doubts as to whether age has diminished their capacity to command a big stage are put to rest when Duran Duran launches into a full-fledged gallop on “Planet Earth,” its syncopated electronic rhythms charging ever forward through delicate little whirls of synthesizer. And when the candy-coated, lusty pop funk of “Notorious,” “Girl Panic” and “The Reflex” – all colorfully toned and percolating brilliantly, nodding ever so reverentially to Duran Duran’s heroes in Chic – come dancing in, and their stomping medley of “Wild Boys” and Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Relax” struts and preens about like a New Wave peacock, it feels as if Duran Duran hasn't aged a day. But, they have, and they've matured gracefully. In the quieter moments of the effervescent A Diamond in the Mind, the liquid dreaminess of “Come Undone,” with its undercurrent of rolling rhythms, spills its anguished, panoramic beauty all over MEN Arena in Manchester, where this live outing was recorded, while nostalgic longing resonates throughout the beautifully rendered “Ordinary World.”

Having slipped comfortably into adult-contemporary middle age, Duran Duran may now be hanging with the less youthful VH1 Classic, but they've lost none of their potency. A Diamond in the Mind – Live 2011 brings the down house with a rousing, energetic romp through “Rio” to close the show, and the bouncy grooves of “Blame The Machines” are undeniably infectious. On the other hand, “Hungry Like The Wolf” – which should be a highlight of the show – seems a bit off and sags exhaustedly, and it’s also hard not to notice the absence of Duran Duran favorites like “Girls on Film” or “Save a Prayer.” Nevertheless, with Nick Rhodes’ elegant keyboards assuming pleasing shapes and John Taylor’s rubbery bass serving as the strong connective sinew that ties everything together, Duran Duran appears to have found the fountain of youth. And they still know how to throw a party.
-            Peter Lindblad

Whitechapel's new era of devastation

Deathcore titans return with powerful new LP
By Peter Lindblad
Whitechapel in 2012
Losing drummer Kevin Lane in late 2010 certainly took the starch out of Knoxville, Tennessee deathcore doomsayers Whitechapel. As hard as that pill was to swallow, Ben Savage would experience worse between the release of A New Era of Corruption in the summer of that year and the difficult birthing of the band’s latest self-titled LP, a fiery blast furnace of hostility and rage that burns so hot it threatens to consume anything that dares creep near it.
“My best friend died during that time, and he was a real amazing piano player,” admits Savage, one of three architects of the savage, thickly layered guitar onslaught wrought by Whitechapel on its immense new sonic undertaking, released June 19 by Metal Blade. “That’s why we put piano parts in the songs. He was an amazing piano player and a songwriter. When he sung, it was beautiful. His name was Andrew Bledsoe (the son of veteran Knoxville music writer Wayne Bledsoe) and … yeah, he was a great piano player and we felt his arm around us.”
The melancholy that resides in those purposefully struck keys is palpable. Unchecked violence and vehement invective almost buries them on Whitechapel, a bloody war of brutally heavy riffs, fire-breathing vocals and punishing, seismic rhythms all caught up in a powerful maelstrom of surging emotions and oppressive darkness. And yet there are sinewy vines of strange and beautiful melody found in the ruins of these massive, shape-shifting structures of sound. From the scathing, anti-conformist rant “(Cult)uralist” to the crushing devastation and bleak outlook of “Possibilities of an Impossible Existence,” Whitechapel is a furious condemnation of a society gone horribly awry, as the crazed, chaotic beatings of “Section 8” and “Hate Creation” so viciously illustrate.
Now boasting a lineup of Savage, the growling, roaring lion of a vocalist Phil Bozeman, guitarists Alex Wade and Zach Householder, bassist Gabe Crisp, and drummer Ben Harclerode, Whitechapel, formed in 2006, is primed to stomp its way through the heavy metal community like Godzilla on bath salts. This fall, Whitechapel is touring with Hatebreed. In a recent interview, Savage relayed the story of how Whitechapel survived drug addicted booking agents and anxiety over a change of drummers to record its fourth album in a house abandoned by a couple that apparently fought like cats and dogs. Here’s what Savage had to say:
What do you remember about hearing the new record in its totality for the first time?
BS: I was just really stoked. I guess I look at it in a different way, because I could see all the elements coming together, like how all the riffs kind of just fit into place and how all the ideas came to be. I mean, it was like that one was put together in a month, but we had ideas and parts for like a couple of years. We had riffs from before the last album and stuff, so I could see it all coming together, and I thought it couldn’t have come together in any better way. I try to think about what else we could have done, but I can’t really think of anything major that we could have done differently. So that’s a good sign, I guess.
In sitting down and thinking about recording the new record, what elements of the Whitechapel aesthetic did you want to retain in making this album and what new features – like perhaps the piano intro to “Make It Bleed” or that really affecting quiet guitar outro in “Dead Silence” – did you want to add?
BS: I wanted to be as different as possible, without coming off too tacky I would say. I wanted the songs to be well – I mean, we all did – in a live setting, to be just really powerful. And that’s basically what we tried to do, make it as cool sounding as we could and still be able to pull it off live, but make it cool sounding so that it intrigues people that listen to it for more than just the music, to give them like another perspective – a musician’s perspective, but still have like a nice live feel to it. So we messed around with tempo changes and stuff, like dropping the tempo down. I still wish we could record an album without a click track, because our first two were like that and they sound real blah. We tried to make it as live as possible, basically.
Listening to the new album, you can hear an increased complexity – both sonically and lyrically – to this new record. But, it also has an expansiveness that is quite remarkable. Do you feel like this is your most ambitious record to date?
BS: Yeah, I’d say so. We’ve all been through a lot the past couple of years since the last record, just in our home lives and everything. You try to find inspiration in like the down times – I mean the hard times and everything. It really came together I think because the record is real dark sounding, too. A lot of the riffs were written under not very ideal conditions. Yeah, it’s definitely way more vicious, because for the most part, we didn’t want to overthink it. That was the main thing. The previous record, we tried to – especially the first two albums – fit like 10 riffs into one song. On this record, it’s more like three or four riffs per song, but those riffs go on different tangents. It’s definitely way more dynamic, and it’s definitely like we didn’t just write a riff with the first idea, you know. If we wrote a riff that was cool, we’d just see what else we could do with it and see what other avenues we could take rather than just stick with the first idea that came to mind. Phil did an amazing job, too. Like, he’s just … it’s like we make the beats. We’re like Dr. Dre and he’s Eminem just laying vocals down over it, and it just makes it awesome.
It does seem like he tried to sing a little more on this record instead of just all growls all the time.
BS: I know, I know. It’s good, it’s good. It’s like you can almost sing over the choruses. Whenever we first started listening to the final version it occurred to me to make joke-like songs over the choruses, just like singing them instead of just growling them. We’d sing them. It’s real melodic like that. And also I just want to … like the big thing recently I’ve wanted to be able to do is be able to play our songs on an acoustic guitar. When we write the songs, we try to mess with the riffs as much as possible so they’d sound good on an acoustic, because that’s how you know a song is good if it rocks on an acoustic.
Is there going to be a Whitechapel unplugged album some time?
BS: I’d be down if people didn’t think it was too tacky. I could totally do it. We’ve already done an acoustic version of a song from the last EP, but that’s the only thing. We could do a lot of acoustic renditions on this one.
“Section 8” comes from the EP you guys released last fall, and I love how it grows and evolves into something that just keeps gaining speed, and then, it has slower, brutally heavy finish. Working on that EP, did it at all point the way toward the results of the new full-length?
BS: It did, it did. The EP was definitely a good idea, although I think some people in our band would disagree. But, I think it was a good idea in the fact that we were on tour for so long, and we hadn’t had much time to write anything together since we’d been on tour. It’s hard to get inspired when you’re doing that. So we just basically … we wrote “Section 8” as a band, because like the last album, A New Era of Corruption, that was more like, we toured a lot … we still tour a lot, but we were touring a lot back then, so it was more of like we all kind of wrote our own songs. Everybody still had an opinion on it, but it was more like, we’d already come in with pretty much full songs, whereas this one … with like “Section 8,” when we starting working on “Section 8” we just kind of went back to what we used to do and start with the first riff and work your way till the end. And then everybody throws in ideas, everybody worked together. I think “Section 8” really helped the process for this record writing-wise, like how to go about the writing part.
In what ways has the band changed the most since The Somatic Defilement?
BS: Well, I don’t know. We have a new drummer, so that’s definitely a change. Everybody’s really been like the same, it’s just like we have a different perspective on like the music industry and how we should go about writing our songs. It just comes with experience, but we all haven’t really changed that much. I mean, we have a new drummer who can actually play our stuff perfectly, and we can actually make tempos faster, we can make riffs groove harder … that was the hardest part. Like, finding – especially in a band like ours – a well-oiled machine of a drummer who can play the fast parts perfect and then be able to groove. Usually, it’s one or the other. It’s hard to find a guy who is well-rounded, in the middle sort of, and so we found the new guy … we also call him “new guy,” so I’ll just call him “new guy” from now on in this interview. We got him like a year ago, and when we got him, he just wanted to go fast. He was real fast and we always pushed him to be like … well, he still had groove, so we were just like, “You know, man, just groove harder man, just don’t be afraid of the groove.” And you’re thinking about putting a double-bass part, a straight double-bass, 16 double basses in one part; instead think of what else you can do, like with the high-hat or something, that makes it groove harder other than that. So that was another cool thing that came about.
Did it change the dynamics of the band having him come in?
BS: Definitely … in the studio and live. Like live, it’s tremendous, because that’s where you’re showing off for the people to see. Live, you’ve got to have somebody that’s on it. But, yeah, it definitely changes the dynamic, and because before we found him, we all were just kind of like, “Oh sh*t, are we going to find a guy?” We have a tour coming up in like a month or something. We need to … it was not a good time in the band trying to find a drummer, because Kev had just left, but when [Ben] came around, our spirits just shot up.
What guitar parts are you most proud of on the new record?
BS: I’m real proud of the guitars in “Hate Creation,” because those two riffs … basically, the riffs in that song are like real old-school sounding. It’s like some parts you listen back and you go, “Oh, that’s really cool, like that Tool part in the middle, I’m so glad we did a part like that,” because I used to love Tool when I was a kid. My first metal show was Tool and Meshuggah, and I was really stoked to have that part in the song. And those riffs are like really old, too, so it was cool that we finally got to use them. And I’m proud of “Make it Bleed,” the riffs in that, because it’s pretty straightforward riffing, but they all flow really well. And “I Dementia” … “I Dementia” is real brooding and heavy – yeah, just happy with most of them or all of them.
I guess it feels this way with every album a band makes, but do you feel that this is the album that’s going to put you over the top?
BS: Yeah, I hope so. I hope so, because … well, I don’t know, because every time I look back, everybody was happy with the songs. It was like all of us were happy with the material. So, yeah … I don’t know what better situation there could be.   
You mentioned the collaborative nature of this album, as evidenced by the naming of it. Did that make the writing and recording of this record a more satisfying experience for you, or did it in some ways make the process easier or more difficult?
BS: Um, it’s all three. In the end, it was satisfying, but during the process … f**k man, it’s like everybody’s stuck on a part, and you’re like, “I don’t know what you did there, but it shouldn’t be that.” And I’m like, “Well, can you give me an idea? Just something you don’t ever want to hear (laughs).” Patience is the key and Alex, our guitarist, he has a new house. So, it was really easy just to go over there, drive 10 minutes down to his house and just work and then drive home. It was a really easy process. Alex’s house definitely has a lot more to do with the writing process, because it was a comfortable setting.
Was the house finished when you were working on it?
BS: Yeah, he got it off like this couple. They had an argument and they broke up. There were like holes in the walls throughout the whole house (laughs).
You’re kidding …
BS: No, they had an argument. I guess the wife or the husband just went through punching holes in the walls, and … I don’t know. And then, after that was fixed, it was all set up and then from January to February, we were there pretty much every day working. But, from halfway through January and February, we went to NAMM because we have signature guitars, so that was a real kink in the writing process. I think up to that point we only had two songs done and that was January 15. And we had to go into the studio like Feb. 3, so that was a real kink in the chain. But it gave us time to reflect on the material, and I went through my hard drive while I was there. And I have like a catalog of just riffs that I went through, just listened to them. So, it was all building up to something good.
Most of the band is from Tennessee. What was the environment like and how did it inform your sound?
BS: Well, I mean … the schools are kind of … I don’t know (laughs) … I went to this magnet school, when I was in middle school, and I met some friends and that’s when we started a band called Psychotic Behavior. There wasn’t really like a music scene, or if there was, I was too young to really go out to shows. I was just out there listening to metal in my car … I mean, not my car but at home, you know. After a while, I started going out to shows and it was cool. That made you want to start your own band and do that whole thing. So it was just ambition to do something other than just living here, ‘cause there’s nothing there that really intrigued me. I just wanted to be in a band.
It seems like culturally barren areas really influence people to start bands. I’ve heard Slipknot talking about how it was growing up in Iowa …
BS: Yeah, I don’t know what else you do in Iowa (laughs).
What were the early days like for Whitechapel? Was it a struggle financially?
BS: Yeah, we all had equipment before … we all had like day jobs. I was going to community college and working at a deli. Phil and Alex were working at this screen-printing shop. Phil also worked at this place answering calls for jewelry television and stuff. He also cleaned the interior of cars for Jaguar. Zach worked at a paint shop. I mean, we all had jobs. We’d save up enoughto buy gear off people that we knew in town. We all bought our own equipment. We never really had a sugar daddy (laughs) doing it for us.
What did it mean to you to sign to Metal Blade a year later?
BS: I think that at that point, we signed to Metal Blade and it was definitely just a confidence boost. It was just like, “Wow! We can actually be optimistic with the band.” So, I think that pushed us right on into our first release on Metal Blade, because a lot of energy went into doing that and also a lot of stress. A lot of the songs are really like riff sandwiches all throughout the songs … I’m still happy with it. Oh, just signing to Metal Blade was just a huge confidence booster. It was like, “Wow, we might actually be able to make a career off this and do something cool.” Before that, we were just doing our own stuff with tours and with like shady booking agents.
You got to know the dark side of the business …
BS: Yeah. Aw man, this guy was like a heroin addict. He booked the tour and then he just didn’t care. Halfway through the tour, he just stopped advancing shows … he just stopped halfway through, and I think it was like our second tour ever in 2007. And he just stopped caring halfway through. He wouldn’t show up. There wouldn’t be any promotion. It was like, “Oh, what the hell …” And then after we signed to Metal Blade, you could actually feel people starting to care about you. The management we have now, it’s like … well, people care about you when you’re on a label.
A New Era of Corruption seemed to up the ante so to speak, sounding more brutal and intense. When you look back on that record, how do you feel about it?
Whitechapel has a new LP out
BS: I’m real happy with it. I mean, a lot of the songs were written individually. The songs I wrote I’m more self-conscious about … you know, I’m like, “Sh*t, maybe it would have been better if we’d worked together.” But when we released the record I was proud of it, and I’m still proud of it. I mean, it is what it is. At the time, we thought that was a necessary step. And I’m still proud of the record. It was definitely what we needed at the time, and it did what it did. And I’m proud as hell of the songs. The only thing is I’m not really like a lead guitar player. I like writing riffs, so I’m really self-conscious about my leads. That was probably the biggest part, like the leads on the record could have been a little better … but, whatever.
I wanted to talk to you about some of the tracks on the new record specifically. One of my favorites is “Faces.” The intensity and speed just blows you away, and yet it might be the most straightforward track on the record. What went into making that one?
BS: Oh, there’s a funny story behind that one. Our bass player, Gabe, whenever we’d come up with like a cool riff, we’d e-mail each other. We’d like record it and e-mail it to each other. And then people would reply back: “Oh, that’s cool,” or “Aw, it’s cool you did this.” But sometimes you don’t get replies back. And then you’re like, “Okay, I guess this riff sucks (laughs).” Gabe actually took a liking to the first riff in that song. And we were like at Alex’s house like writing and stuff, and Gabe and I were going to work on the song. We went out back to the back porch and Gabe had like this Kentucky blueberry weed, and we smoked a bowl of it, went inside and finished the song in an hour. It was like, “Bam.” Gabe and I had never written a song before, so it was cool because Gabe just really directed the song, “Yeah, and then there should be a part like this.” And it went on like that, and we’d do that, and then, “Okay, we should bring it back to this,” and the end of the song was done in about an hour. I think Alex and “new guy” went to go get Chinese food, and then by the time they came back, the song was done. And we were just stoked on it. It was a pretty cool moment. I don’t know if we could have caught it at a better time.
Is “The Night Remains” the most melodic track to you?
BS: I’d say so. I mean, earlier on, everybody thought that song would be kind of a dud or whatever, like it’d kind of be just all right. Then, I knew that song could be real special; it just needed effects added to it. So we really focused on … like in the song, if you don’t listen to the effects, it’s just real like straightforward, like chugging … just real straightforward. But, with the effects added to it and the layers and the atmosphere adds a new vibe. I still think we named the song perfectly, “The Night Remains,” because it kind of has a nighttime, Halloween type of feel about it.
“Hate Creation” is the first single, and the breakdowns and changes in tempo are so unpredictable. I quite like the dual guitar parts as well. Why did that track seem the perfect one to release first?
BS: Probably because it was different, but it wasn’t so different that people would be like, “Oh wow! I’m just not going to care about this band anymore.” It was different enough that it was like Tool, you know. It was like everything wasn’t like awkward at all or … it was just like an anthemic song. I don’t know. It just felt right. I don’t know, it’s heavy and basically, it’s just classic Whitechapel. 
What are you most looking forward to in touring this summer?
BS: Yep. Um, looking forward to seeing High On Fire, Slipknot, Slayer, Motorhead … all those cool bands. I don’t know … just looking forward to playing all the new songs.
Have you played the new songs live and if you have, what’s been the reaction?
BS: The only one we’ve played live is “Section 8,” and the reaction has been great for that. I want to start playing some of the slower songs live, like “I Dementia” and the closing track on that record ‘cause it’s going to add a different contrast to the songs we have. It’s going to have like a slower, groovy thing to the live show that’s going to be real cool.

'You've got the gig': Motorhead 1976-1982


‘Fast’ Eddie Clarke looks back on his time in the band
By Peter Lindblad
[Ed. note - Please forgive the lack of umlaut]

The classic Motorhead lineup
Accustomed to sleeping in and not receiving unexpected visitors in the morning, as is the way with most rock and roll artists who do not subscribe to the “early to bed, early to rise” ethos, “Fast” Eddie Clarke had no intention of getting dressed to see who was calling on him at such an ungodly hour.
One Saturday well before noon in the winter of 1976, the guitarist, irritable and cranky, got up to see who had disturbed his rest. Had he known who was waiting for him on the other side, his mood would have brightened considerably.
“There’s a knock at my door, and I say, ‘What the f**k is this?’” recalls Clarke. “And so I go to the front door, and Lemmy [Kilmister] is standing there, and he’s got a bullet belt in one hand and a leather jacket in the other. And he hands them to me and he says, ‘You’ve got the gig.’”
Clarke was as surprised as anybody to hear those words come out of Lemmy’s mutton-chop framed mouth. Just like that, he’d been hired to play alongside Larry Wallis as a second guitar slinger for Motorhead, then a dirty, brash wild bunch of rock and roll outlaws dead set on building the fastest, loudest chopper of grimy, rumbling, vice-ridden proto-thrash metal nastiness that anyone had ever seen, and nobody would dare categorize it as street-legal. Before Clarke could recover from the shock, however, Lemmy was gone.
“And then he turns around and walks off (laughs),” said Clarke. “So I’m standing there in me underpants holding a bullet belt with this leather jacket, and I just say, ‘Oh, f**king great!’ I mean, I really was over the moon."
A week earlier, Clarke’s mood wasn’t so elevated. His audition for these holy sonic terrors had ended rather unceremoniously with him slipping out the door before things got worse.
“I did the audition with them,” remembers Clarke. “And Larry came down, because Larry, who was in the Pink Fairies, was the guitarist then. And he wasn’t getting on with anybody. He didn’t even talk to me. He just came in, plugged in and played the same song for half an hour. And I said, ‘Oh, bloody hell. I haven’t got this gig, have I?’ And he and Lemmy went outside and they were having words, and it’s all getting a bit tense. So I packed up me guitar and I went home, and I left Phil [“Philthy Animal” Taylor, the band’s drummer] and them there to play on. I paid the bill on the way out, though (laughs) for the rehearsal. And then I didn’t hear anything.”
That is until Lemmy showed up on his doorstep. Soon after, Wallis would leave, having rejoined a reunited Pink Fairies lineup that intended to get back to touring. All that remained then was Lemmy, “Fast” Eddie and “Philthy Animal” – the classic Motorhead lineup that would shake the earth from 1977 through 1982 with rumbling, fire-breathing touchstone LPs Motorhead (1977), Overkill (1979), Bomber (1979), Ace of Spades (1980), No Sleep ‘til Hammersmith (1981, a live album that reached #1 on the U.K. album charts) and Iron Fist (1982), the threesome’s swan song.
“Those were great days, man. They were great. I mean, there were some tough times, obviously. Motorhead was a special time for me. I mean, we were like brothers. We went through so much shit together,” said Clarke.
As siblings often do, the three had their differences, and in 1982, as Motorhead was touring America, simmering tensions bubbled over and Clarke was dismissed. Shell-shocked by the turn of events, Clarke took the first plane back to England. Back on his native soil, the exiled Clarke, still reeling from his abrupt firing, attempted to regroup, even as a growing substance abuse problem was threatening to consume him. Unbeknownst to Clarke, his next project was waiting for him at – of all places – Motorhead’s office, and it would yield an under-the-radar classic heavy metal album, Fastway’s self-titled debut.
Still, although Clarke would later experience a rollercoaster ride of emotions with Fastway, it was nothing compared to what awaited him as a member of one of the most notorious acts in metal history, Motorhead.
Life Before Motorhead
A child of the 1950s, Clarke was born in Twickenham, London to a family that immersed itself in music and did what it could to see that Clarke took an interest in it.
“My parents played a lot of music,” said Clarke. “I was lucky because they played all the old 45s they used to get, but my sister also, she was playing things like ‘Cathy’s Clown’ and Paul Anka’s ‘Diana.’ And my parents were playing a lot of the MGM stuff. So they were quite musical. There was always music going on, even though I wasn’t particularly involved in it. My dad did take me out when I was about eight or 10, he took me down to the little record shop down here, and he said, ‘Right, pick yourself out a tune.’ So the guy in the record shop played some singles, and the one I picked was Jerry Keller, ‘Here Comes Summer.’ I remember that, going back to the ‘50s.”
Near where Clarke grew up, the musical scene of the West London area exploded with vibrant creativity and an adventurous, hedonistic spirit in the 1960s.
“As I got older, living where I was in west London, well, of course, we had the Rolling Stones kicking off here up the road,” recalled Clarke. “We had Eel Pie Island just down the road here, where John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers were playing and Pink Floyd played there. Then the Cream started up over here and Fleetwood Mac – all going on in this area. So I got to walk out the door and there was a gig to go to. And I think that helped a lot. You know, I was on the front door of it all, and of course, when I realized how much people liked that, I thought, ‘Well, I’d fancy doing that.’ And I got really heavily into Eric Clapton when he was with the Yardbirds, and we used to go to the Rolling Stones, but we’re going back a few years now (laughs). That’s going back to ’63 or ’64. And the Yardbirds, of course … Eric Clapton is playing his Telecaster up there, and all this great stuff like ‘Smokestack Lightning’ and all these great blues, and I loved them to bits. And so of course, I wanted to play like that, so I started learning those tunes.”
Through the prism of the British blues boom of the ‘60s, Clarke got an education in American blues. “I was actually learning American blues tunes, but I was learning them third-hand, because they liked to copy the guys in America and I was copying them. So I was kind of like the third generation, and I had my own take on it, which I think gave me my  … I like to think I had a little bit of my own style, and I developed out of that.”
A quick study, Clarke cycled through various local bands – the Bitter End being one of them – by the age of 15. The neighbors were not so accepting of Clarke’s musical escapades.
“I was very fortunate, and then of course, there was a little band at school … we had a little band together,” said Clarke. “We used to play in me dad’s garage, and all the neighbors used to throw stones on the roof to get us to shut up (laughs). But I loved the guitar. I used to get up in the morning before I went to school, and the first thing I’d do is get clean out of bed, put my feet on the floor, and grab the guitar and have a quick five minutes on the guitar.”
Clarke’s development allowed him a chance to turn professional with Curtis Knight’s band, Zeus. As lead guitarist, Clarke helped Zeus record the album The Second Coming at Olympic Studios. He even wrote the music that backed Knight’s lyrics on a song called “The Confession” and continued on with Zeus through the making of Sea of Time. But then, Clarke got together Allan Callan, a guitarist friend of his, and keyboardist Nicky Hogarth and drummer Chris Perry for a jam session at Command Studios in Piccadilly that resulted in a record contract with Anchor Records. Calling themselves Blue Goose, Clarke, Hogarth and Perry abandoned Zeus, and Knight, to concentrate on their new project. It wouldn’t last.
Arguments erupted and Clarke left Blue Goose, going on to form another band called Continuous Performance that went nowhere and another act with Hogarth, bassist Tony Cussons and drummer Terry Slater that also flamed out. Frustrated by what seemed like a stalled career, Clarke went to work re-fitting a houseboat as he attempted to get his solo career off the ground.
“I was working and I was doing my solo album,” said Clarke. “I was working building a houseboat on the river Thames. And the money I was earning I was putting into my solo album, to record my solo album.”
Through various jobs, he had gained other skills, some of which would make him a more attractive candidate for hire than simply his guitar-playing ability.
“The reason why I started working was I had to get an amplifier became my little one use to blow up all the time,” said Clarke. “And I used to stick a screwdriver in the back and go bang! And then it would start working again. So I went to get this job fixing televisions. And the guy said, ‘Why do you want this job?’ I said, ‘We’ll, I’ve got this amplifier that keeps blowing up and I need a new one,’ and being in Motorhead, we didn’t have any money for repairs. Well, I’ll tell you, it did come in handy. It did come in handy. It helped me to no end. So, it was a great career move at the time. I didn’t realize what a great career move it was, but later on in life, it turned out to be a winner, you know.”
So was the gig working on that houseboat, through which he made a contact that would lead him to Motorhead. It was Phil Taylor.

Getting Stiffed
Lemmy, having played in Hawkwind, was certainly well-known around the haunts Clarke used to frequent. He remembers seeing Lemmy once at a party before the days of Motorhead, though Clarke didn’t get an introduction.
“So, he came in. Nobody spoke to him,” said Clarke. “But he plugged in and started playing … and I thought that he was playing rhythm guitar. I thought, ‘Oh, he keeps it together well,’ because he keeps the songs up, where other bassists are just jamming. And then I started to [see him] a little bit about, because where we started hanging out, Lemmy was always around. He’s one of these guys who’s always around. He was always around the scene, you know.”
But, it was Taylor who first made contact with Clarke.
“What happened was, I met Phil first,” recounted Clarke. “And I met Phil and Phil had gotten into Motorhead. And then Phil contacted me, and he said, ‘Look, we’re looking for a second guitarist. Would you fancy it?’ I said, ‘Yeah,’ because I wasn’t doing anything. I was working and I was doing my solo album. So, I said, ‘Yeah, fine.’ And I didn’t hear any more from Phil.”
Communication having broken down between him and Taylor, Clarke kept plugging away at finishing up the houseboat, while also taking in some of the local nightlife.
Lemmy Kilmister, Phil Taylor and 'Fast' Eddie Clarke
“Quite by chance, I picked up this bird at [this place] called the Greyhound in Fulham,” said Clarke. “It was a real big gig back in the ‘70s. I picked up this bird there, and she stayed over with me that night. And I brought her to work the next day, and she happened to work at the rehearsal room in the King’s Road in Chelsea. So I took her to work that morning. It was 11 o’clock. She had to open the doors. And who walks in? Lemmy (laughs). I said, ‘Hey, Lemmy. I’m supposed to be auditioning for your band.’ He said, ‘Oh, are you?’ I said, ‘Yeah, yeah Lemmy.’ And he said, ‘Oh, yeah, yeah.’ So I said, ‘Well, can I put it together?’ And it all seemed to come together. He said, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’ So, he gave me his number, and I had to organize the rehearsals. I had to pay for them, because they didn’t have any money. And I had a car, so I went and picked them up, put all their gear in the car and then dropped it off and went back to get the rest of the gear. So that was the first time I ever really had a chat with Lemmy. He seemed fine. He was one of these guys who, because he liked a bit of speed, wouldn’t sleep much. He was always on the go. Not to put too fine a point on it, and of course, I became a speed freak as well after that. He was already a speed freak. So we were speed freaks together.”
Before the sharing of drugs commenced, however, there was the little matter of Clarke’s audition. Having passed the test, Clarke soon took over as sole guitarist for Motorhead, with Wallis quitting. What Clarke wasn’t prepared for was the struggle that lay ahead.
“It was like that, it was like that, because nobody liked us,” said Clarke. “Of course, we were all wearing bullet belts and a lot of Hell’s Angels used to come to our shows. People were generally a bit scared of us. They never knew what was going to happen, you know. Although we were fine, everything was fine, but people conceived us as being … and they didn’t like our music either, because they didn’t conceive it as music. It wasn’t considered music. It hadn’t happened yet. We were sort of breaking new ground with this (makes loud guitar-like noise) and so people were actually working against us all the time. And it was difficult the first year, but the thing was solid, man. The plans were there. We’d turn up in Shitsville, Birmingham or wherever, and there’d be 30 kids there, but they were diehard fans. And Lemmy said to me, ‘Don’t worry, man. Those kids are going to go away and the next time, they’re going to bring their mates with them. The next time there’ll be 60.’”
Kilmister’s confidence was a calming influence on Clarke, whose patience was tested by the band’s poverty and a troublesome incident with Stiff Records after recording the single “Leaving Here” in December, 1976 for the label.
“Lemmy kept us all going on that, and it was true,” said Clarke. “We had quite a following in a year. But then we had this deal with Stiff Records, and we did a recording for Stiff. We didn’t have any money, so we borrowed the money and we got into all sorts of trouble, and then Stiff Records didn’t put the f**king record out. They said we’re not putting the record out because we want to put it on this Stiff compilation, which f**king finished us. We were f**king done. We were relying on that to give us a bit of a profile and get us some shows, ‘cause we didn’t have a pot to piss in. We were living off porridge and pancakes. It was one of them. And so, Stiff Records really f**ked us over. I f**king hate that label – we all, the three of us do. It was supposed to be an independent label, and sh*tsville. They really did bad by us.”
‘ … On Our Way’
“We are Motorhead … and we play rock and roll!” growls Lemmy, the way he usually does when introducing a Motorhead show. In 1976, Motorhead wasn’t playing rock and roll for very many people, and the sparsely attended gigs were demoralizing to Clarke and Taylor. In fact, it got so bad that breaking up the band seemed the only logical option.
“We were on the verge of breaking up, and we had more gig to do,” said Clarke. “It was the Marquee, and Phil said, if nobody turns up, we might as well break up after this gig. And I said, ‘Shove off.’ And he said, ‘Well, what’s the point of going on?’ I said, ‘What are you going to do anyway?’ (laughs) It wasn’t as if we had anything else to do, you know what I mean. Phil was adamant, though.”
If this was to be the end for Motorhead, they wanted to go out in a blaze of glory and record this final sendoff for posterity. “So what we tried to do was, we tried to get a mobile (recording studio) down to the Marquee,” said Clarke. “Well, it turned out, the Marquee had a recording studio linked up to the gig and they said they would do it, but it would cost … I don’t know, a thousand pounds or something, which was like the f**king king’s ransom. So Lemmy knew this guy, Ted Carroll, from Chiswick Records. He said, ‘Look, how about recording the band at the Marquee, ‘cause we’re thinking of breaking up. It’d be nice to have something to remember us by.’ And he said, ‘I can’t do that. It’s too expensive,’ because nobody had any money in the ‘70s. Those were poor times. He said, ‘But, I’ll pay for you to do a single.’”
That offer turned out to be a stay of execution of sorts.
“So after the f**king Marquee gig, we got Speedy Keen from Thunderclap Newman. He was going to produce it. He drove us down to this studio in Kent (Escape Studios), with a budget to do it … we had two days in there,” said Clarke. “And I said to the guy – ‘cause I’d done some stuff with Curtis Knight, and we’d done an album in 24 hours – ‘Look, we can do an album in this time.’ I said … ‘cause I noticed when we’d done stuff back at the pub, we’d only have to play it once. And they all go, ‘Okay, okay.’ So we laid all the backing tracks down, and then we did all the guitars and the vocals … you know, we had 24 hours and we had the whole thing down.”
When Carroll visited Motorhead to get a listen to what was supposed to be a single, Clarke and company presented all that they had done – 11 raw, unfinished tracks of cyclonic rock and roll fury, to be augmented later by two more cuts. “So when the record guy came over to hear it, we said well, we’ve got a bit more than a single,” said Clarke. “We’ve got an album. And of course, he said, ‘Wow!’ And when we played it to him, he loved it. He loved it. That was the first album, the black one [1977’s Motorhead]. And he loved it, this guy loved it. He was over the moon. And then of course, he put in a bit more money. We remixed a couple of tracks in Olympic Studios, and then we were on our way. We were on our way. There were some things that were to happen later on that would almost sidetrack us, but that’s what saved us from breaking up.”
Any thoughts of throwing in the towel were now erased completely from their minds. “It was a great thing, because we had nothing better to do … nothing” said Clarke. “And we really worked hard at it. People had pissed on us so much that we were like, ‘Well, f**k ‘em. We’ll show ‘em. We’re not going to die. We’re going to stay here and dig in.’ You’ve got to get that kind of mentality going, that sort of siege mentality.”
Clarke wasn’t the sort to throw up his hands and walk away. His background as a laborer would suggest he’d stay until the job was done. And as it turned out, Clarke was the perfect fit for Motorhead for that reason and many others. One was his look; the other was his take-charge attitude.
“Well, I had long hair and tight trousers and boots,” said Clarke, talking about the clothes he wore before joining Motorhead. “I used to wear boots and all that. But the leather jacket always eluded me. I never had enough money to buy one. And the bullet belt was a new thing for me. I didn’t know anything about the bullet belt. But I wasn’t a pansy. I was a pretty tough guy anyway, so the clothes were helpful. I think Phil had already assessed that, that I would fit in, because I was running things with this boat we were building. I was running the show. So, of course, I had to tell people what to do and people got a bit short with me. I had to deal with them, you know. And I think Phil thought that was something that would be good … I wasn’t a pansy, you know.”
The word “pansy” is not one that comes to mind when describing anybody in Motorhead. Still, there were cracks in their sneering veneer that implied a weakening of the bonds between them. After the untamed and savage Motorhead LP shot up to #43 on the U.K. charts, the band toured with Hawkwind, before embarking on the “Beyond the Threshold of Pain” tour with the Count Bishops. At home, management issues would rear up, with Tony Secunda taking over the reins. Meanwhile, as turmoil swirled within Motorhead, Clarke and Taylor branched off and formed The Muggers with Keen and Billy Rath.
Nobody was playing taps for Motorhead, though. In the summer of 1978, the band changed management again, opting to return to Douglas Smith. It was Smith who brokered a singles deal with Bronze Records that would lead to Motorhead recording “Louie, Louie.” The track charted at #68 in the U.K., giving them more momentum. In fact, it lead to their initial performance on the “Top of the Pops” TV show in England, the first of many.
“Well, we did that seven times,” said Clarke, who was not exactly comfortable doing the program. “We became the BBC’s pet band. Yeah, we were always on ‘Top of the Pops.’ Never sold any records, though, because of it, but we were always on ‘Top of the Pops.’ I think it’s because they liked to show that they could have a moody, ‘out there’ band, you know, to get a bit of credibility. What do you do? So, yeah, we did it. I mean, ‘Top of the Pops’ is the worst show. I mean, however much I drank, I could never do it without feeling like a complete prick. You stand there, and there’s an audience, and you’re miming it, and you’re thinking, ‘God, I’m f**king miming this.’ – yeah, really difficult stuff. I hated all that, you know. Lem and Phil didn’t mind so much, ‘cause Lemmy’s a real showman. I don’t care about all that, but I used to love Lemmy for that.”
Emboldened by the success of “Louie, Louie,” Bronze gave Motorhead a little more rope, extending their deal so that the band could record an album at Bronze’s studios. As Motorhead is wont to do, they left their mark there and they fought like brothers while doing so.
“Well, Overkill was our first time in a proper studio with an album deal,” said Clarke. “And we had a studio, Bronze Studios in London, and we were like, ‘Oh.’ And of course, we were just trying to get our band sounding great. We had a few bashes there. One of the bashes we had was we were so f**king drunk that Phil got sick on the ceiling – in the corridor. It was quite funny. You had these little couple of steps you had to go down, and when you went in the door, you went up again. Well, he managed to throw up and it hit the ceiling (laughs). We did have some fun. We had a few fights, me and Phil. We had our differences. We had our moments. But it was just that thing when we played Overkill, man, you know on the big speakers, with the double bass drums … I mean nobody had really done that then, not in that way. That’s why we did three endings. We did it with three endings, you know. I said, ‘Hey, let’s f**king do three endings here,’ you know. ‘We can’t do that.’ I said, ‘Why not? We’re Motorhead. We can do anything.’ And we did, and it was brilliant.”
With help from producer Jimmy Miller – whose resume had included the Rolling Stones’ Beggars Banquet, Let it Bleed, Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main Street and Goats Head Soup LPs – Motorhead birthed the explosive, unrelenting Overkill, the first Motorhead LP to rocket into the U.K. Top 40 album chart and what many consider the band’s finest hour. In anticipation of the record’s release, the group … well, they mimed the flying-at-unsafe-speeds single “Overkill” on “Top of the Pops.” Those were heady days, indeed, for Motorhead.
“See that was finished in the beginning of ’79,” recalls Clarke, “because we started it in the end of ’78, end of Christmas. And then we did the show at Hammersmith November the fifth. That was also a great time, that Hammersmith Odeon [performance]. That’s like Mecca, do you know what I mean? And it was fantastic making it there. And then we did Overkill. And then straight after that … that was ’79, the beginning of ’79, we toured with Overkill, with the Girlschool thing and all that, and did some gigs in France and all that. But the record company wanted another album by the end of the summer.”
The beast had to be fed, after all. More food would be thrown down its gullet in the form of Bomber, Overkill’s hastily thrown together follow-up. Luckily, Motorhead was a well-oiled machine at this point, and with the threesome on fire in the studio, Bomber, when released, dropped a devastating payload of thermonuclear proto-speed metal on a world that had already been blown away by Overkill. Few bands have ever had a hot streak like the one Motorhead was on.
“For once, we sat down and we went into the rehearsal studio, and came out about a week later and said we’ve got all the tunes,” said Clarke. “It was brilliant man. Things like ‘Stone Dead Forever’ … I mean fantastic. So that has another thing going for it. It was just there. It was right in front of us and we just grabbed it – just fantastic.
Last bombing run
Ask Clarke to choose which album he favors, and he’ll answer with a shrug of the shoulders.
Bomber and Overkill are my favorites,” said Clarke. “I don’t know. Between the two, I’m not sure which one. I mean, there are some fabulous tracks on Bomber. Don’t get me wrong, Ace of Spades is … well, Ace of Spades is Ace of Spades. But, you know, I’m looking for something else, because that was kind of a hit record. I mean, Overkill had that … it was one of those that was just blown out. And so was Bomber. I have difficulty choosing between the two of them. They were my two favorite albums.”
And that period of the band’s history – including, of course, the Ace of Spades album – is considered by many as Motorhead’s golden age. In live settings, Motorhead took no prisoners, thrilling audiences with visceral, explosive performances and a bit of theatricality.
“The fans definitely did take to it, ‘cause the bomber … we put the bomber up in the truck, the lighting truck, the bomber came down,” said Clarke. “So, of course, the kids really appreciated that. It really was picking up speed now. It was actually on a chain hoist that would come up and down and it looked fantastic. It was an old World War II bomber, you know, come right down and touch the top of our heads and then it would go back up, and it just looked fantastic. And the kids just couldn’t believe it. I mean, the kids loved it.”
Not everyone was convinced of Motorhead’s brilliance, however. “Obviously, the critics were still telling us we were the worst band in the world, that we were f**king noisy,” said Clarke. “And if you’re a muso lover – you know what I mean – you won’t like Motorhead because we’re just so noisy and awful. But the fans loved it. But of course what happened was – it was really quite funny actually – when we did No Sleep ‘til Hammersmith, that same band that was titled ‘the worst band in the world’ … the same journalists, for the same paper said it was the best f**king live album ever. Now how is that possible when six months ago you were telling us that we were the worst band in the world? But it’s funny how people’s attitudes change, isn’t it?”
So it was within Motorhead as well. Where ideas flowed during the accelerated recording sessions of Overkill and Bomber, Clarke remembers Ace of Spades being a bit of a chore to complete.
“We were flowing,” said Clarke. “I mean we went from Overkill straight into Bomber, and we had the bomber itself, and it was just flying along. And then Ace of Spades just followed onto that. Ace of Spades was the first … well, it was the first time we had to think a little more. What we did were rehearsals. We did a sort of demo recording, an 8-track demo recording of the rehearsals. And then we worked on those, so more work had to go into the writing of that, whereas with the other ones, we just went in and banged it out. So that was the first sign that ideas were starting to get difficult, because you get a band like Motorhead, you don’t have many options. So it’s quite difficult coming up with new material all the time because you tend to be standing on your own toes. But we got through Ace of Spades, we got through it, and it was great. The “Ace of Spades” track just killed everybody, everything’s going great … it was just another step up the ladder. We did four Hammersmith Odeons, and it was f**king brilliant.”
Motorhead - Ace of Spades cover
Even the photography sessions – which can sometimes be tedious – for the cover of Ace of Spades were a blast. “Well, I loved it. We all loved it, because before that, we’d done the thing with Girlschool, the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (EP), where we dressed up like Al Capone. You know, we had machine guns, and it was brilliant,” said Clarke. “And we loved that, because we were sort of in the groove then. Photo shoots are normally a horrible thing to do, like videos. When you’re playing another part, it’s actually great, so we were really ready for it. We got all our stuff, we were all grooming beards for a few days to get a bit of stubble, you’ve got the cape out like Clint Eastwood, you’ve got the tablecloth out, you know what I mean? And we really prepared for it, and it was quite lucky because we did it in a place in north London. And it’s a sand quarry. Fortunately, the sun was shining. It all came out rather well. A lot of people say, ‘Where did you do that?’ And they think it’s like New Mexico or something. No, we did it in the north of London. And they go, ‘You’re f**king joking.’ It was one of those. It really was.”
The good times would, however, come to an end. Iron Fist was a bit of step backward for the band, and Clarke was eventually left to fend for himself on the fateful North American tour that ended so abruptly for the guitarist. Clarke went back to England and eventually formed Fastway, which released its first album in decades earlier this year. 
Looking back on it all, he still feels great affection for Lemmy and fondly recalls the heady excitement of Motorhead’s success.
“Lemmy was my friend for a lot of the time, especially in the beginning,” said Clarke. “In the beginning, I remember he said to me once … we did the first couple of shows we ever did in ’76, and we had some bad reviews, and I was teed off a bit. And he said to me, ‘Look, man. You’re going to get a lot of this. You really just have to ignore them and carry on. I’ve had loads of them in my lifetime,’ he said. ‘You just have to ignore them and carry on, ‘cause people are going to write that shit.’ And that was the nice thing about working with Lem, because I was a bit of a greenhorn, so having Lemmy give me a few pointers here and there was quite helpful. It got you through the hard times when people are putting you down and you go and do a bad gig and you feel like hanging yourself, you know. Lemmy was always there.”
It’s hard to imagine a world without him … and Motorhead, of course.

CD Review: Lita Ford - "Living like a Runaway"


CD Review: Lita Ford – “Living like a Runaway”
SPV/Steamhammer
All Access Review: B+
Lita Ford - Living like a Runaway 2012
The recent upheaval in Lita Ford’s personal life certainly has tongues wagging. And while gossipy fishwives may prattle on about the details of her messy divorce from Jim Gillette, former singer for the glam-metal dandies Nitro and a one-time Ford collaborator, the rest of the metal community better not sleep on what is undoubtedly the most personal record of her career, Living like a Runaway.
Coming off 2009’s delightfully sinful, and uncharacteristically heavy, Wicked Wonderland, Ford casts aside the S&M trappings and sexual bravado of that record to unburden the heavy emotional baggage she’s obviously been carrying around for way too long. Living like a Runaway is the best kind of therapy, comprised of some of the strongest and most daring material of her career. Nowhere to be found is the cute, cuddly pop-metal of her breakout 1980s hit “Kiss Me Deadly.” Instead, the defiant Ford – never a shrinking violet – works out her issues in a clutch of fierce, swaggering rockers like the blazing single “Branded” and its slithering, nastier cousins “Hate” and “The Mask” that, for all their righteous anger and seductively metallic grooves, still boast gripping hooks galore. Lighter and more introspective is the autobiographical title track, which features a nimble-fingered guitar lead and wistfully nostalgic lyrics that speak to Ford’s restless nature. And the soul-baring “Mother” is such a frank and affecting acoustically-sketched letter from Ford to her children that it’s almost hard to get through. But, it bears out, in stark detail, how the wounds of divorce heal so slowly.
The bandages are ripped off on Living like a Runaway, and yet for all its bluster and ballsy attitude, “Relentless” ought to have a chorus that isn’t so feathery and disappointingly lightweight. Still, for the most part, producer and co-conspirator Gary Hoey, Ford’s secret weapon, helps her stay focused on grinding out the kind of tough, meaty riffs and high-flying solos that make “Devil in My Head” such a brawling and candid exploration on the dual nature of man … or, in this case, woman. Though Ford can’t help dipping her toes in the somewhat clichéd and dated piece of ‘80s metal that is “Asylum,” its spandex-sporting kin “Love 2 Hate You” embeds wonderfully melodic hooks in a sparkling, yet bittersweet, chorus that serves to remind everyone that Ford still knows her way around a pop song.
In the past, Ford may have lived her life like a runaway, detached and isolated like a troubled young girl who’s left home and hasn’t a clue where to go or what to do next. Perhaps her time in the raw, adolescent punk girl group The Runaways was, in and of itself, a similarly confusing exile. Whatever the case, Ford, who’s been smashing her pretty blonde head against heavy metal’s glass ceiling for years, has turned her present inner turmoil outward and it fuels some of the edgiest, most provocative music she’s ever produced.
-            Peter Lindblad

CD Review: Whitechapel - Whitechapel


CD Review: Whitechapel - Whitechapel
Metal Blade

All Access Review: A-

Whitechapel - Whitechapel 2012
Someday, a happier Phil Bozeman might be moved to pen a charming children’s book full of goodness and light-hearted mirth. That’s not likely to happen anytime soon, however, as the superhuman, almost bestial lead vocalist and resident wordsmith for deathcore warriors Whitechapel has a spleen full of hate-filled bile built up inside that is just begging to be vented. And he expels gallons of it on the Tennessee band’s hotly anticipated new June 18 release for Metal Blade, a seething emotional cauldron of intensely hostile and dense, aggressively dynamic metal that’s saturated with starry atmospherics and resigned to the idea that “the world will rot from the inside out,” as Bozeman demonically growls in the brutally heavy chorus to “Section 8.”
As the decomposition eats away at mankind, Whitechapel will serenade the apocalypse with darkly melodic passages, a dizzying array of riffs and violent, death-obsessed imagery. A parade of exquisite misery and pain, expressed so vividly in Bozeman’s full-throated roar, this scary self-titled effort signifies just how anxious Whitechapel is to escape the restrictive extreme music ghetto they’ve been locked up in since their screaming, agonized birth. “Section 8” is their cry of freedom. A nightmarish frenzy of angry guitars and furious blast beats – courtesy of clever new drummer Ben Harclerode – that pummel and attack from all angles, “Section 8” shifts tempos seamlessly, slowing to a bulldozing crawl and then accelerating to breakneck speeds before exhaling its last breath. Similar in how it switches directions, the expansive first single, “Hate Creation,” does a swan dive into a swirling vortex of guttural, hellish vocals and layers of evil-sounding guitars created by Ben Savage, Zach Householder and Alex Wade. Regaining its footing, Whitechapel floats through little mystical episodes that vanish like mirages when a blazing sonic holocaust – stoked by Sepultura-like tribal percussive chanting from Bozeman – scorches the song’s sacred earth.
More curious, however, are “The Night Remains” and the epic closer “Possibilities of an Impossible Existence,” the former a mysterious, shadowy presence bringing destructive grooves and oddly intoxicating guitar hemlock and the latter a burnt offering of relentless heaviness and decayed beauty. Punctuated by a morose piano outro that serves as an exhausted epithet for this asylum of insane thrash, paralyzing breakdowns, and vigorous, charging rhythms, “Possibilities of an Impossible Existence” is the last monolithic structure standing on Whitechapel, an album that survives massive, devouring conflagrations like “Make it Bleed” and the politically-charged screed “Faces,” while also absorbing the booming guns of the chugging battleship “I, Dementia.” If this record is any indication, Whitechapel may just be deathcore’s greatest hope for crossover success … and Bozeman would be its messiah.

-            Peter Lindblad

CD Review: Rush - Clockwork Angels

CD Review: Rush - Clockwork Angels 
Roadrunner Records
All Access Review: A-
Rush - Clockwork Angels 2012
Revolution is in the air again for Rush, lo these many years since the people of the Solar Federation were freed from 2112’s dystopian, artless existence and the fascist Priests of the Temples of Syrinx were removed from power. Flexing his literary muscles, Neil Peart spins an epic yarn of adventure and wonder throughout the new Rush sci-fi concept album Clockwork Angels, a work of grandiose progressive-rock architecture that’s suffused with steampunk imagery and traffics in many of the same themes that dominated 2112 – namely, the insidious nature of repressive, totalitarian rule and the subtle erosion of individual freedoms that occurs under such governance. Somewhere, Ayn Rand is … well, barely cracking a smile.
Peart’s protagonist is a boy who fantasizes of escaping a peaceful, idyllic rural paradise to explore the world and find the famous City of Gold: Cibola. “I can’t stop thinking big,” the child exclaims in the mystical chorus to “Caravan.” Neither can Rush, apparently. A wonderfully constructed maze of rampaging, complex riffage, melodic magic and quick-shifting rhythms and tempos that introduces Clockwork Angels, “Caravan” rolls on into the roaring maw of “BU2B.” One of the heaviest tracks Rush has ever produced, along with the grotesquely sinister and oily “Carnies” that also inhabits the record, “BU2B” introduces us to the Watchmaker, the supposedly benevolent dictator whose orders are carried out by the Regulators, the suppliers of energy to a populace taught to “believe in what we’re told.” Is the narrative starting to sound familiar? It should.
As our hero encounters a dangerous anarchist, joins a carnival, finds love and loses it by idealizing “a goddess, with wings on her heels” in the tender and reflective “Halo Effect,” and then survives a desert of extreme cold and snow only to narrowly avoid death in a disaster at sea, Rush builds strong citadels of sonic grandeur and intricate machinery on Clockwork Angels. From the sublime acoustic artistry and sweeping, gorgeously arranged strings – erected by arranger/conductor David Campbell – of “Halo Effect” to the swirling mystery and renegade guitars of “Seven Cities of Gold” and the big-hearted emotions and dramatic swells of “The Wreckers,” Clockwork Angels is both beautiful and majestic.
Alex Lifeson’s fretwork is breathtakingly here, balancing expressive solos with the desire to sculpt the muscular, driving riffs of “Headlong Flight” and weave acoustic gold in the delicate, affecting dreaminess of post-Roger Waters Pink Floyd in “The Garden.” Pushed to the forefront, Lee’s bass is propulsive and elastic, contorting itself into impossible shapes, all the while never letting the integrity of the song be compromised. And as for Peart, his wizardry has never been more potent or as unpredictable, that technical precision of his always one step away from devolving into controlled chaos. Witness the dizzying instrumental passage near the end of “Caravan” to get an idea of just how incredibly powerful and dynamic the trio’s interplay can be when Rush is at the top of their game. If not for the overwhelming production values actually weakening the sound quality and clarity of the record rather than strengthening it, Clockwork Angels might be deemed one of Rush’s finest albums, even if the threesome, on the rarest of occasions, appears slightly tentative and uncertain as to how to take songs to the next level. As it is, Clockwork Angels is still undeniably a classic.

-            Peter Lindblad

CD Review: Bachman & Turner - Live at the Roseland Ballroom, NYC


CD Review: Bachman & Turner - Live at the Roseland Ballroom, NYC
Eagle Records
B+
Bachman & Turner 2012
Hard hats in hand, Randy Bachman and Fred Turner went back to work a few years ago after a long layoff. The driving forces behind ‘70s blue-collar rockers Bachman-Turner Overdrive had mothballed BTO in 2005, before reuniting as Bachman & Turner with a self-titled album that turned back the clock to 1973 and displayed the kind of industrious riffs, lovably gruff melodies and tight, rugged hooks that made workingman’s anthems of “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet,” “Let it Ride,” “Roll on Down the Highway” and “Takin’ Care of Business” – all of them steeped in Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, bologna sandwiches and blind optimism. The hit factory they’d shut down was back up and running, and they didn’t need a bailout to get the assembly line running at peak efficiency, as it did at the Roseland Ballroom.
If only the rest of the world gave a damn about good, honest songwriting and no-frills, guitar-driven rock and roll. Rolling up their sleeves, Bachman & Turner rumbled into the Roseland in New York City on November 16, 2010 and stubbornly plowed through a slew of hard-hitting classics and new sonic brawls without regard for what’s trendy or fashionable these days. And they do more than just punch a clock on this warm-sounding double-CD live recording – a DVD/Blu-ray release is also scheduled – of that comeback show. Starting with a rigorous, triumphant run through “Let it Roll,” Disc 1 pounds away at a brick wall of indifference with swinging sledgehammers “Rock is My Life” and “Not Fragile,” two of the toughest, most defiant songs in their catalog. Feeling bluesy, Bachman & Turner add just a touch of jazzy sophistication to “Moonlight Rider.” One of the pair’s more recent concoctions, it slides smoothly and effortlessly into the light neon glow and cocktail-hour meditation of “Lookin’ Out For #1” and the soulful, closing-time feel of Disc 2’s “Blue Collar,” while the understated pop brilliance of “Hey You” – its chorus building into something unexpectedly heady and exhilarating – shines perhaps even brighter than it did in the ‘70s.
Although their slinky, low-down reading of Johnny Kidd’s “Shakin’ All Over” wins points for its restless energy, there is a sluggishness that hits Bachman & Turner at precisely the wrong time. Just as they’re about to go out in a blaze of glory with “Roll on Down the Highway” and “Takin’ Care of Business,” the band – comprised also of drummer Marc LaFrance and guitarists Brent Howard Knudsen and Mick Dalla-Vee – struggles to get on the same page and maintain a lively pace. All of a sudden, they’re running in quicksand and drowning in it when they should be galloping toward the finish line, too eager to settle into that mythical pocket and never quite finding that open stretch of road to let the engine out.
It’s not age that’s slowing them down. Bachman still nestles those economical, searing guitar leads of his perfectly within the open cracks of a song and Turner’s booming bass sounds as vigorous and powerful as ever when they grind their way through the punishing “Four Wheel Drive” and the piston-pumping dynamo “Slave to the Rhythm.” And their spitfire version of the Guess Who classic “American Woman” snarls with primal energy. In a sense, BTO is a bit like AC/DC, doing what they do so simply that they seem to hit the spot every time they pick up their instruments. Maybe they’ve lost some of their relevance, but that’s only because the music industry is wandering in the wilderness. If there were more bands like BTO, it might not be in the mess it’s in today.

-            Peter Lindblad