As far as the album’s actual music goes, what I love about it is the cinematic quality to it. Yes, it’s all very simple music that maybe anyone could have come up with, but it is all put together very skillfully and with feeling. I love to think of the album as a movie, and each song as a very distinct scene. When you hear it, you can get a very clear view of what will happen in each song (and Green Day’s videos for the songs do a great job of affirming these feelings, with the exception of Wake Me Up With September Ends.) You feel the misguided rebelliousness in Jesus of Suburbia, the party spirit of St. Jimmy, the sorrow of Boulevard of Broken Dreams, and the sheer flattened-out addiction of Give Me Novocain. All of these distinct feelings weave a rich tapestry of emotions that honestly feels like a journey through the story that evolves therein.

And then we come to the lyrics, which are what really propel the album so that you are able to contextualize the music into the exact emotions that it represents. American Idiot is the tale of the young American ‘failure’. It’s about the all-too-common youth who is generated from a broken home, bad friends, and too little intelligence. The kid hates everything and drowns his small-town sorrows in drugs and parties. He runs away to the big city, and at first has a total blast, until suddenly the shittiness and sheer darkness of city life gets to him. So he creates an alternate persona and drinks in the whole chaos and insanity of youth and becomes a sort of icon to the underbelly of the city. Of course, anyone who’s seen this kind of lifestyle will tell you that it doesn’t end well. The character finally realizes how much his life sucks when he falls in love with one of the party girls, only for her to eventually get tired of this kind of life and move away. Eventually, the town has lost it’s luster. His friends have left him, some dying, some clinging to their friends, and some becoming successful. When nothing is left for him, the character returns back home, defeated.

This is an inevitability of young life. I’ve had so many friends whose lives I could tie into the album that it’s nuts. I’ve seen those rises and falls, the way that they try to escape only to have it all come crashing down. It’s not pretty and it’s quite powerful, and American Idiot captures the story to an absolute perfection. It is an album that understands the mind, the thoughts, the fakeness, and the reality of the young life of an ‘American Idiot’ in the truest of senses. It ends off with the track ‘Whatsername’ wherein the character, having long been defeated and reclaimed by normal life is looking back on that old love he had, who he knows he’ll always regret loosing to his own idiocy, and will wonder if she found the right road as he did. I can’t think of an ending more real to this story.

Maybe it’s just that I have a soft spot for concept albums, and maybe I wouldn’t care so much about this album if it wasn’t like it had the personality of my good friends. Hilariously, none of them like the album, simply because they aren’t the type to take to a mainstream band as I am. Whatever. I think that as long as there are stupid kids in America, this album will have a real meaning.

Interestingly, the riff comes from a band I don’t even listen to much: Gojira. I’ve only heard a few of their songs more than once, having meant to get into them for a long time. I was never all that into death metal, though lately I’ve been getting more interested in the genre through bands like Nile, Amon Amarth, and Bloodbath. Nevertheless, I first heard the track ‘To Sirius‘ on, of all things, MTV2′s Headbanger’s Ball, years ago. Since first hearing it I knew it was the most brutal thing I’d ever heard at the time and I had to give a few more listens.

It’s a pretty good song with one of the most intense chugging bits I’ve ever heard, but the part that always stood out to me was the riff that plays at the end of the song and as it fades out (it also appears briefly around 2 minutes in). Written down, it looks something like this:

JUH-JUH-JAAAA NAAAA JUGAJUGAJUGA-JUGAJUGAJUGA – repeat

It’s a pretty simple riff and not even very melodious, but it has something that sticks in your head. I think a lot of it has to do with the timing of the spaces between the first four notes and the perfect balance of heavy and spacey that makes you picture the scream of a whale in the chords of the guitar. This has always been the most memorable, awesome riff to me.

TV on the Radio is the first band that I’ve come to enjoy in spite of really never having any experience with anything like it. I can tell there are influences of soul and funk and maybe some kind of electronic music, but I don’t really care for any of those genres, so I don’t know anything about them. You could say that TVotR has post-rock elements, which I could be familiar with, but those elements are totally subdued. They have jam band characteristics, hearkening to the likes of Miles Davis, or more modernly The Mars Volta, but then you hit the fact that TVotR writes regular-length songs that have some sort of formula to them.

It’s a really unexplainable formula if it is one, though. There’s some kind of structure in here somewhere, but I’m not sure what it is. There are songs with a chorus, but the chorus is never catchy, nor even easily identifiable. Some songs use a steady rising style, but they never reach an epic peak or are just so dark and strange that the rising makes you feel increasingly uneasy. Some songs just play through without any structure and leave you asking yourself what the hell just happened.

Where are you supposed to apply a label to a band whose songs are connected solely by style? Sometimes a beat or loop is playing, sure, but sometimes you’ve got guitars and a regular rock setup, and sometimes you straight-up have the guys singing the beats themselves. In no case does it ever sound slightly normal. Are they being self-referential in Netti Fritti when they note a composer’s knack for ‘atonality and dissonance’?

It feels like TVotR knows exactly what it means to write a song and completely disembowels a song from it’s very nature. They take all that structure and form and consistence that you can find in any kind of music and changes it in the most imperceptible way to drastic results. Fuck with the timing a little, the tone, the key, the beat – just tweak what is normal in such a way that it no longer resembles normal songwriting. I have often thought when listening to TVotR, “am I even really listening to music?” simply because I have no frame of reference for what I am hearing.

It strikes me as bewildering that this band has received the immense acclaim it has. You could say the popularity is from their hit song, Wolf Like Me, probably the closest thing they have to normal, but still definitively trippy. However, that would not explain the critical success that has landed their albums at the tops of ‘Album of the Year’ lists for years.

I guess what it comes down to is the unnatural attraction of their music. While you are listening you wonder, “what is this? why am I listening to this?” and then you wonder “why do I like it? Why is it stuck in my head?” It’s like this weird bizarro-music that reaches to something in your brain and tells it that you should just keep listening and not try to think about it too hard.

I would have loved to ask something like ‘why has this received such critical acclaim, and not the many other great offbeat artists like Mark Lanegan or The Delgados?’ and then I realize that I can’t say that, because TV on the Radio isn’t the same. I can define my love of Mark Lanegan and The Delgados. I can’t define anything about TV on the Radio. I’m betting that a critic wouldn’t be able to define a reason not to love it, either.

I went with a pretty large group this time. My good friend Zerodyme is a huge Amon Amarth fan, so he’d been looking forward to it. My brother was there, as well as my guitarist friend who can play most Amon Amarth songs and was also enjoying his first concert ever. My cousin/roommate Funeral was there, and he paid the ticket of this chick who he and Zerodyme are friends with (I don’t like her) that loves the band. We’d all been accusing Funeral of dating this chick, which he denied, but they flirted through the whole fucking show to the point that I’m not even sure where their attention was. As such, I officially stamp them both with ‘concert lameness’ even if Funeral got into a couple mosh pits.

The first band was Lazarus A.D. (who I want to note has a really well-designed myspace and had the distinct knowledge to use Vimeo to upload their music video in insanely high quality.) Their front man had a habit of being borderline-unintelligible between songs and had some gall asking the crowd to drink and smoke him up tonight. Their music was pretty straight-up thrash metal, but it didn’t suck. There were some sweet riffs and solos here and there, with some exhibits of technical skill. Their songs were well-structured and fun and they had good energy, so all around it was a good performance.

Next we had Skeletonwitch who played purely chaotic blackened thrash metal with song lengths all in the 2-3 minute range. There was a sort of duality here – on the one hand, they ripped out some immense riffs and solos through the set, usually once per song (one of the dueling solos was awesome). However, those great parts were bookended by generic riffs of no interest that made every song come out sounding the same. They had some great energy, especially the vocalist, who was all over the place doing mic tricks and other symbols and stuff and generally being a cool and fun guy. Overall a good performance, but I’d hesitate to listen to them on recording.

Then we had Goatwhore (not worth linking), who was one of those acts that made you wonder ‘why the fuck is this shitty ass band popular?’ It must just be their band name. If they played one different note the whole show, I missed it. There wasn’t even enough energy in their music to make me headbang. After a few songs of the exact same chugging riff and top-string bass ‘playing’, my brother and I went upstairs, sat down, and spent the rest of the set joking about how shitty they were. And then those motherfuckers had the gall to at one point call themselves ‘southern black metal’ saying they had ‘taken it from those crazy Norweigens’ and then later claimed to be a ‘crazy mix of black metal and viking metal’. FUCK THEM, especially if they think they have any talent, and they are definitely the most generic kind of death metal. Unlistenable garbage.

Amon Amarth was exactly as amazing as expected. The guys put on a hell of a show, all having an immense stage presence and enjoying the hell out of themselves. The lead singer had a huge, awesome beard, and he spoke with a mighty voice about Viking spirit. He had a beer horn strapped to his side which he drank deep from and at one point the whole band had a toast to the audience and each downed a whole horn in epic manliness.

Their set was excellent, going through all their singles and fan favorites. There was a great variety of sound, though all of it heavy and epic. They tore it open with Twilight of the Thunder God, ripped through a slew of monster tracks with immense power, and had a two-song encore with Cry of the Blackbirds and Pursuit of Vikings, which were the two songs I looked forward to the most for their insanely epic choruses. Zerodyme and I, having sung Cry of the Black Birds together hundreds of times over the past couple years, took heavy metal stances and used every bit of our remaining energy to go as crazy as possible.

The most defining part of their show for me was the headbanging. AA is known for their insanely epic simultaneous headbanging, namely windmills (see the video to Runes to my Memory). As such, my brother and I, known for our endurance and extremity of headbanging, tried to keep up. I think I headbanged harder during Runes to My Memory than I ever have in my life, which is a huge statement for me, and I didn’t let up through the whole show (still suffering the repercussions >_<). Those guys’ headbanging is simply glorious – I hope to one day match up to it.

All in all, it was an amazing performance, even if I’m not a huge Amon Amarth fan. I have a lot of respect for the band’s skilled songwriting, excellent technicality, and huge charisma. If you like the band at all, they are more than worth seeing, even if you have to suffer through Goatwhore.

Now, I had never listened to any shoegaze before M83, so I didn’t really know what to expect, but Saturdays=youth is only as much a shoegaze album as it is an 80s-era synth-pop album. Needless to say, this is quite an odd genre combination, but it works exceedingly well and creates a niche that I’ve ling searched for.

Firstly, I want to talk about post-rock. I’ve been listening to post-rock for a few years now, but I still feel like I’m trying to get into it. I love the emotion that comes from post-rock, but I don’t like how most post-rock songs have to switch between extreme minimalism and bombastic beauty. It creates too much of a conflict of interest with whatever I’m in the mood for. This is why I found Mogwai interesting, since they have a more consistent pace throughout an individual song, but the trouble with them is that the songs on one album sound so different from each-other that the conflict just gets worse.

Saturdays=youth is exactly what I’ve always wanted out of post-rock. It’s got all the walls of noise, twinkling guitars, emotional riffs, and other good stuff that comes with post-rock. However, the sound is consistent through any given song, And while the album’s songs all have different tempos and emotion, they all have the same sort of energy that makes them flow into each-other.

Secondly, I’d like to bring us to 80s synth-pop. I’ve got far less experience with this, but it is another genre with elements that I love, but have always wanted it to sound a certain way. Most of the 80s songs I’ve heard were turn-offs but would often have exactly one element I really loved, or there would be individual songs I enjoyed by artists I otherwise didn’t care for (like Metro or Never Gunna Give You Up). I’ve kind of always wanted a modern take on the genre that didn’t stick too hard to conventions.

Saturdays=youth takes all the elements I love from post-rock and 80s synth pop and merges them together in aa way that flat-out works. The album is a lot of fun and forces me into repeated listens. I kind of wish it weren’t the only album of it’s kind, but that also makes the songs that much more special. For me, the album is irreplaceable.

All that said, my favorite tracks are probably Kim & Jessie, Graveyard Girl, Coleurs, We Own the Sky, and Dark Moves of Love. The whole album is great, though. I even find myself occasionally sitting through the 10 minutes of one note that is Midnight Souls Still Remain.

I am not a big Satyricon fan. Or a fan at all. My mom, however, is a diehard devotee. They were her introduction to black metal a few years back (long before I got into it) and remain among her top 5 or so favorite bands. Satyricon hasn’t been able to play in the States for some 6 years because the drummer, Frost, wasn’t allowed in the country, so my mom’s been very looking forward to seeing them. They finally got to do an east coast tour with Cradle of Filth playing all the mid-large venues as the secondary band, and they did a few headlining shows here and there in smaller venues, one of which was Springfield VA where they brought along 1349, which Frost used to be the drummer for.

I really did not want to go to either show, however my mom was not allowed to go alone. Therefor, she literally dragged me to both. The first time, my cousin came along, and the second a friend of mine. Reluctant as I was, I don’t dislike Satyricon, and knew it would be worth it to see Frost, since any black metal fan can tell you he’s one of the greatest black metal drummers there is. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised by their performances, even if I could have died.

The first show was at the Norva in Norfolk, which is my personal favorite venue and seems to be the same for a lot of bands that perform there. It’s set up well, the sound quality is fucking superb, and the crowds are usually great, considering that it’s a larger venue. The first band to perform was Septic Flesh. I have to say, this band was totally fucking worthless. They pretty much just played chugging riffs the entire time and most of the sound was just reverb. All of their songs were predictable and sounded exactly the same. They had a lot of symphonic background noise, all played through the speakers on a track, and that shit produced more meaningful sound than they were. My cousin noted that they sounded exactly like Behemoth, but worse.

Satyricon went on next, and they were much more enjoyable than I would have expected. All of the songs they performed were from their last 3 albums: Volcano, Now. Diabolical, and The Age of Nero, none of which they’ve been able to promote in the US yet. It’s worth mentioning that Volcano was the album where Satyricon left behind their black metal sound for a more commercial sound that lost them a lot of old fans, but also gained some new ones. The sound works for them, so a lot of people don’t really care about it.

For those who don’t know, Satyricon’s songs are entirely written by Satyr, vocalist and string instrumentalist, with drums by Frost. However, live, Satyr just does vocals (occasionally bringing out a guitar for himself) while 2 guitarists, a bassist, and a keyboardist play alongside them. Satyr’s voice is very excellent live, coming through clear and evil as hell. He’s a cool guy and very nice/polite. It was kind of funny how uncomfortable he seemed without a guitar, though. He did various stage acting, but kind of seemed like he was bored or confused during instrumental parts and sometimes started air guitaring. He was much more comfortable when he had his guitar.

Frost was as amazing as anyone would guess. He played like a madman and headbanged nonstop through the entire show. One thing that was very disappointing was the crowd. Pretty much everyone there was a scene kid or hipster who only came to see Cradle of Filth and most didn’t even know who Satyricon was. They were the most unresponsive crowd I’ve seen at the Norva, and nothing pisses me off more than an unresponsive crowd, so I had to go nuts in their stead. If nothing else, when Satyricon played Fuel for Hatred as their last song, they beckoned a ‘legendary moshpit’ and they got a great one which my cousin participated in. Once Cradle got on stage, Frost was signing autographs near the merchandise counter, and my mom and cousin got pictures with him and autographs. He was very shy and quiet, a short dude who was literally 100% muscle.

Now, as for Cradle, I have only a little experience with the band which many, many metal fans hate. Their cover of “Hallowed be Thy Name” by Iron Maiden is one of my favorite songs ever and is amazing. However, other songs I’ve heard by them pretty much sucked, so I never knew what to think of them. Let me say, after hearing half of their live performance, Cradle of Filth is the single worst band I have EVER heard in my life. What they create cannot be called music. The guitarists and bassist would all play one shitty riff while the drummer played something totally unrelated and Danny Filth jizzed all over the whole thing with his intolerable shrill voice. I won’t even do them the honor of going into detail – we walked out halfway through their show. Worst thing ever.

Somewhere in that show, someone I guess passed a bug onto me (probably thanks to Cradle’s shitty music) and I caught a harsh fever which seemed to be compounded into an ear infection. This was along with my neck hurting already from headbanging so I pretty much felt half dead for a few days. The fever and ear ache only got worse over the coming days, however my mom still needed me to go with her to Springfield for the headlining show. I carried my already half-dead ass into the SUV with my friend for the 4-hour drive to where we’d be staying overnight. The hotel had no mini-fridge, which should be punishable by death. We took a cab to the show (since my mom planned to get wasted) – my first time in a cab (I know, right?)

When we got to Jaxx the doors should have opened 15 minutes before and the line was getting long (we already had tickets, though, but we took a cab, so we couldn’t wait in the car). We ended up spending 30 minutes in the snow. We weren’t wearing coats, either, since we knew it’d be all hot and sweaty inside, so we were in T-shirts freezing our nips off (exception of my mom who was in gaudy goth dress). Finally, we got inside. Jaxx is pretty small, and a lot of it was taken up by the bar 21+ area. The floor by the stage was about the size of my room (which is something like 30-35 by 20-25 feet, yes my room is huge) and the stage was about the same size and maybe 2 feet off the floor.

The first 3 bands to perform were Springfield local bands. By the time any of them went on, my feet already hurt since my dad had pressured me into wearing his fucking Doc Martins. He kept saying how they were cool and totally comfortable. These are lies. Do not go to a concert in Doc Martins. Needless to say, 5 hours with a raging fever compounded with an ear infection, freezing, soaked clothes and shitty Doc Martin foot pain was not something I looked forward to. However, I’ve actually had worse/equally bad conditions at metal concerts (I pretty much fainted at Mayhem festival because I was thrashing too hard while suffering heat exhaustion) so I felt I could make it through.

The first band to play was a pretty decent atmospheric black metal band. They were nothing special, and took a lot of cues from every other atmospheric black metal band out there, but weren’t bad. The drummer kind of sucked. The second band I thought was very good. They played a sort of black metal with death metal influence. All of them were very into it and the lead guitarist and drummer both kicked ass. I could see them getting signed. The third band, and only one whose name I caught (Apothys) sucked a fat dick. They played death metal with no direction in the songs whatsoever. Sometimes it just sounded like they were making shit up. The guitarist sucked ass entirely, to the point it seemed like he hadn’t been playing long or didn’t practice. That guy definitely did not deserve to be playing in live shows.

1349 went on next, and to the crowd’s slight disappointment, Frost did not play with them, but their new drummer. He still cracked out blast beats left and right, but it wasn’t quite the same. I had the misfortune of positioning myself right next to a speaker, and the shrill rasps of the singer were like bullets into my eat. 1349 were great for what they are – totally fucking chaotic black metal – but I’ve never been a big fan of that sound. The chaos is too much for me and it can be hard to get into. That said, I still managed to headbang a lot. When I hear a serious blast-beat, I just can’t help myself. Their performance was all-around pretty nice.

Before Satyricon went on, I drank a full can of Mountain Dew and let my hair down, predicting that I’d go totally nuts during the show. They came out ricking hard and the second or third song they played was Now. Diabolical which I went batshit insane during. However, it quickly became evident that I could not handle any more thrashing after that song and immediately but my hair back up and went to the bathroom to pour water all over my head. At this point another thing took effect – everyone in the fucking club was smoking. I am not a smoker or spend time around smokers and my lungs were getting very full of smoke. It was too the point that every time I sang a lyric I would erupt into long fits of coughing. However, I persevered.

Satyricon did another epic performance. They played all the songs from the other show and a lot more, including some classic tracks. The highlight of the show was definitely when they played my favorite Satyricon song, To The Mountains. It was a song I’d never have expected to hear, and I seemed to know it best out of the crowd. They did 2 encores, and the last song they played was Mother North, which the crowd had been asking for all night. Even though at that point I’d been to the bathroom 3 times to poor water on my head, had struggled not to collapse, and had avoided headbanging, I still said ‘fuck it’ and went totally nuts during the epic performance of Mother North, using my last reserves of strength.

After the show, Jaxx’s ATM was broken so we had to run through the snow to 7-11 to get cash and come back. We stuck around and met Frost again, who signed a bunch of stuff and took pictures with us, being as cool as he always is. Afterward, we went back to the hotel. It took me like 3 hours to get to sleep because there were a ton of noises in my head and raging pains and I struggled not to puke all over the place. I wanted to say that it was stupid to but my body through such insane punishment, but… fuck, it’s metal. If I can’t die for the music I love, I’d rather not live!

So yeah, Satyricon is a great live show, and I’ll definitely go and see them on their next tour this October. Preferably in a less shitty medical condition, though!

I would admit to the idea that James LaBrie, vocalist of my favorite pin-cushion, Dream Theater, has a nice voice. He sings with a high-pitch and lots of long notes, sort of power-metal style. Sure, he’s not excellent, but this is a rock band, so it’s not about how pretty your voice is, but how well it fits the music. Let me take you to exibit A (you don’t necessarily have to listen, the song is 14 minutes long.) This song is an excellent example of his voice at it’s best, however it is also an example of his lyrics and delivery at their worst.

Dream Theater lyrics have a tendency to be very impersonal and un-emotional (just like their music.) The songs lyrics talk about cults and killing in the name of god with the spirit of a news report, opting not to take any side in the matter and offer only facts and questions. LaBrie sings with all of his power, but it’s hard to feel any emotion when the lyrics are so impersonal and un-opinionated.

I probably shouldn’t even need to point out the negatives of a band with great lyrics and poor vocals – pure wasted potential.

This collision of vocals and lyrics is delivery, and when done right, it is incredibly powerful. The lyrics that stick the best are those that carry their emotion straight to the heart with undeniable spirit. Lyrics written about anger should be sung with anger, and lyrics about happiness should be sung happily. This isn’t a restriction, though. The true emotion of the song is up to the singer, and sometimes the backward portrayal of an emotion is where it’s power comes from. Take for instance the Coheed and Cambria song Three Evils (Embodied in Love and Shadow) which describes horrific and desperate emotions in a light, poppy voice that still carries all of the emotions perfectly.

My favorite example of great delivery is all the songs by Circle Takes the Square, most notably Kill the Switch (which you can find here in poor quality) and Non-Objective Portrait of Karma. Their site lets you listen to four songs, that one included (which I recommend you listen to first since the others are pretty overwhelming.) It also lets you read the lyrics while you listen.

For starters, Circle Takes the Square are absolutely amazing lyricists. Their songs have the perfect mix of poetic verse, prose, emotion, and a hint of ambiguity – I’ve honestly never read better lyrics before. But more amazing yet is how the band’s two vocalists perform these lyrics. There are a female and male singer both mixing clean and harsh vocals (harsh are screamo-style) on each track. The vocals are sometimes back-and-forth, sometimes dualized to increase impact, and sometimes singled out or made melodic at parts. The focus is on capturing the perfect emotion for every lyric. As a result, almost every line from each song is memorable, emotional, and moving. I’ve gotten chills listening to their screams many times.

A good vocal delivery can be just as important as any instrument in a band and the difference between memorability and forgetability in a song.