The Misfits

Love them. Hate them. Great musicians. Rip-offs. Sell-outs. Business savvy. Influenced generations. Can't play their instruments. Quintessential punk-rockers. Better with Danzig. Whatever.

I've always liked The Misfits. I own music from various points in their career and enjoy it all.

Going through my iPod at the gym today I thought that The Misfits would be perfect work-out music and found out the following: American Psycho is simply too slow for the gym while Famous Monsters is absolutely fucking perfect.

Battlecross

Battlecross
Distinct moments of early AFI with a hint of Southern metal (like Lamb of God).

Like thrash metal with random punk bass noodling and death metal blastbeats mixed in.

Repetitively engaging and heavy enough to make me want to listen to it more than once.

SpeedWolf

Here's my new music blog format:
stream of consciousness, off-the cuff, first impressions.

Speedwolf
like Motorhead and Danzig had a baby; "a glorious child with a crown of horns." Rambunctious and fun. Makes me want to drink beer and mosh around.

Heavy guitars, rockabilly style bass. Growling, snarling, gravely vocals. Entertaining and enjoyable - probably better live.

Kreator

The $.25 overview
From: Germany
Formed: 1982
Genre: Thrash Metal
More Info: http://kreator-terrorzone.de/


What they sound like & Why I love them

When I was in sixth grade, other kids were listening to things like Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch or C + C Music Factory or DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. They dressed like the cast of 90210 and the girls still styled their hair with the "big bangs."

I was listening to Kreator and Morbid Angel and Megadeth. I wore ripped jeans and combat boots. Half my head was shaved, some hair was dyed blue and I never, ever wore makeup.

Needless to say, I was a bit of an outsider amongst my classmates.

I fondly remember the day that I fell in love with Kreator: my grandmother owned a pawn shop and I was allowed to rummage around in the cassette tapes and take home anything my heart desired.

Even without eye-poppingly awesome album artwork, this tape was what my heart desired. Somehow I just knew it was the greatest album I would ever hear.

You know how people always talk about how a band or an album "spoke to them" and "really changed their life"? Yeah. This album spoke to me.

I plowed through the liner notes. I learned all the words to all the songs. And I listened to it, over and over again, the volume on my little sony boombox turned up as loudly as it would go, singing along until my throat was raw. This album made me want to grow up to be the singer in a metal band.

 I literally wore the tape out.

If you hadn't guessed yet, I love thrash metal. At it's best it's fast and furious; an utterly brutal assault on your senses. A great thrash track makes your head start banging without you even realizing it. Sometimes sloppy and raw, sometimes technically flawless, thrash is everything I want metal to be.

Kreator embodies everything I love about thrash. Angry. Heavy. Fast. Over time their music tightened up (listen to Endless Pain and then Extreme Aggression) but even at their sloppiest they are an incredibly tight band. Their sound is stripped down and while occasionally "complex" it's never flowery or over done. There is nothing extra about their music - even through evolutions in sound and band members.

Sometimes, you need to be nervous when a band's lineup changes. Not the case with Kreator. Somehow they manage to continually bring on board musicians that can keep the pace steady.


Songs to check out
Some Pain Will Last
Phantom Antichrist
People of the Lie
Hoards of Chaos

Life Of Agony

The $. 25 overview
From: NYC
Formed: 1989
Genre: Metal / Hard Rock
More Info: http://www.lifeofagony.com/


What they sound like
Sludgy guitars. Growling, wailing, howling vocals. Pounding drums. Think Type O Negative meets Helmet & Alice in Chains in a dive bar to jam when in walks ...And Justice For All era Metallica followed closely by Danzig.

Interesting to note here is that if you look at this collection of "related artists" - there's an obvious NYC hardcore / metal scene thread running through them all.  To call Life of Agony anything less than a forefather in that scene would be, I don't know, "blasphemous."


Why I love them

It's nearly impossible to listen to River Runs Red or Ugly without wanting to sing along at the top of your lungs - whether you know the lyrics or not. There's something so perfect about the construction of their songs: the power of the music plus the immense emotional outpouring from Keith Caputo creates this need for your own emotional explosion.

To listen to Life of Agony is to have a gut-wrenching sing along experience. I feel exhausted after listening to them. Drained. And it's fucking beautiful and I just want to do it again.


Despite releasing other albums, in my world, Life of Agony stopped existing after their second album. Caputo has said he just didn't have the heart for the music anymore and man does it show; completely ditching their founding sound, they became this generic, radio rock band. Blah.

While many people favor their first album (River Runs Red), to be honest, I've always felt that Ugly was stronger overall. It also has one of my favorite cover songs (of all time)! Both albums are strongly thematic and deal with different sides of painful, dysfunctional family situations but, Ugly feels like a strong kick to the gut whereas River Runs Red feels like an afternoon sob-fest.

Don't get me wrong, both albums are fucking great, I just prefer Ugly.


Songs to check out
Through and Through
River Runs Red
I Regret
Damned If I Do