Yes, Van Halen is back, and we’re not faced with a group of veterans simply trying to make sounds that their old selves would respect; A Different Kind of Truth is almost entirely culled from unpolished, unfinished and unreleased work the band had written in their heyday. Guitarist Eddie Van Halen has said several times over the years that he has over half a dozen albums’ worth of unreleased material in his archives from the band’s career, and former singer Sammy Hagar told Rolling Stone not long ago, “I heard this record is old outtakes from the old days. I mean, stuff from before I even joined the band. Because from what I heard, they aren’t working with new material. Ed and Dave didn’t actually write new songs.”

It’s an arguable copout, but a genius insulation nonetheless – pulling from a song sketchbook more than three decades old provides guidepoints to safeguard against the worn pathways of aging acts molesting their own legacy. Thankfully, these songs do not sound like old men putting on the smelly old spandex and combing over the strays. Fresh is the operative word here, a supremely confident swing for the fences in an understandable progression from the obsessively romanticized pre-Hagar era.

The choice of Tattoo as the lead single may have more to do with its peacocking pop factor than anything else, because despite being the opener it’s the low point for an otherwise fantastic album. Immediately, She’s The Woman taps into the ebullient ’80s spirit, a strong connection to a nostalgia-free strut and sexy, slick riffage – complete with a classic VH solo. A gem from the archives, the track appeared on a 1976 demo the band cut with Gene Simmons on production.

“I wanna be your knight in shining pickup truck,” Roth juts over a mean little chugging guitar line, and it’s all there – the grunts, the little wailing asides, the random background “Whooo!” and “Yeayaa!” accents peppered around Eddie’s volleying squeals. The rev-up to the chorus is short and, like pulling into neutral before slamming into the next gear. It doesn’t really matter that Dave’s not singing “swamp meat salad” in Tattoo – the song just doesn’t connect with the energy found here, the knockout drive that pulled us in so long ago. Woman’s hot groove catches fire and spins out as Wolfgang (who holds his own plenty fine throughout) rises in the mix, punching along to the beat before Dad rips loose with a solo that races the frantic rhythm back into the final verse.

But You And Your Blues creeps up dangerously amid chopping guitar, Roth’s hushed finger-wagging giving way to an echo chorus, casting out the demons with a had-enough-of-you backhand. There’s a sick little changeup at the two-minute mark, a serpentine acceleration before another screaming solo. Truly, the six-string snobs will have their hands full here, as Eddie brings an airtight assault of fretwork that runs flush with the original glory days.

Van Halen’s legendary tapping channels Beethoven for just a flash to kick off a furiously sprinting China Town, and the neckbreaker’s not alone in its frantic pace or celebratory energy; the fast-funk Bullethead blasts through with enough intensity to make the two-and-a-half minutes pass like a heartbeat, while Eddie’s skittering riff carries us through the labyrinthian As Is with a tenacious confidence – we’re fully in the red, the speedometer’s buried, machine gun heartbeat adding internal percussion while fishtailing down the freeway at impossible speeds. But a Thorogood blues-lick breakdown elbows its way in through a vicious dime-stopping halt, Roth dropping into a smooth-talking Satan-bass tone for just a moment… then we’re off again at a spastic gallop, punctuated by bursts of choral screams.

Known for their dramatic opening flare, the band open several tracks with decorative introductions, often led by experimental stringwork. The back-alley acoustic groove of Stay Frosty explodes into a bar-brawl swagger jam (with Diamond Dave seemingly possessed by the spirit of Dr. Seuss), and the medieval harkening of the onset of Big River sparks a curiosity on what would come of further exploration down that path. A somber plucked intro to Blood and Fire turns into a rollerskating-down-the-boardwalk jam right out of 1984, flashing million dollar crocodile grins at the Aqua-Net queens popping gum and swooning.

“Told ya I was coming back,” Roth deadpans in the breakdown, and you can almost see his told-you-so smirk as the beast breaks through the clouds and into a brief clearing. Then it’s back down into the fray, Van Halen losing his shit in what’s arguably the album’s most exhilarating solo.

Anything less would’ve been eviscerated by all but the blind devoted, but A Different Kind of Truth will be remembered as evidence that a band can endure every cliche in the book and return, with the right focus, obsessed dedication and mojo, to a sweet spot of rejuvenation – one that holds the hand of nostalgia but doesn’t go for the full embrace, leaning instead, wisely, toward evolution.

Welcome back, boys.

Preorder A Different Kind of Truth on iTunes.

“I hear the winter will cut you quick,” Lanegan measures in a slow growl on St. Louis Elegy, a handful of songs into Blues Funeral, his seventh solo album. “If tears were liquor, I’d have drunk myself sick.” The clarity in the moment of his spiritual crossing is a troubled awakening, an usher into final, undesired territories: “Here I am earthly bound / said Hallelujah, I’m going down / and the River Jordan is deep and wide / I think I see forever across on the other side“.

Blues Funeral is set for release on February 6th via 4AD, and is Lanegan’s first solo output since 2004’s excellent Bubblegum. Naturally, he’s been quite active in the interim, with stints in and with Queens Of The Stone Age, The Twilight Singers, The Gutter Twins, Soulsavers, Isobel Campbell and beyond keeping his name – and talents – fresh in our minds. Recorded with Queens of The Stone Age/Them Crooked Vultures/Eleven multi-instrumentalist Alain Johannes at his 11AD studios in Hollywood, CA,  Blues Funeral features appearances from numerous friends and collaborators including Jack Irons (Eleven, Pearl Jam), Greg Dulli (Gutter Twins), Josh Homme (Queens of The Stone Age) and, of course, the inimitable Johannes.

While never quite stepping out from under the shroud of lonely-campfire isolation, the album runs a stylistic gamut, leaping between ominous groove-rock and 80s synth-melancholia with casual confidence and varying influence. The night-drive anthem of Grey Goes Black leans on an eerie early Jonny Greenwood riff, enjoying an emotive solo before a drum machine supplants the kit with an understated yet urgent breakbeat.

A vital component of the man’s magic is in his unique vocal and timing arrangements, accentuation anomalies within his gravel-worn leather baritone. Like the onset of a powerful psychedelic, Phantasmagoria Blues sets on the regrets and hangups of the introspectively inclined, a funereal reflection on lost hopes and shortcomings. It’s a fitting accompaniment to Leviathan’s slow-marching burial hymn. “I lay my guns on the table,” he admits, before confiding that the hangman is on his trail. It’s in the end where the hypnosis takes effect, however, with four vocal parts overlapping, and at least three voices in the mix. We hear Mark, of course, as well as Johannes and legendary producer Chris Goss.

The guitar kicks into gear on Riot In My House, delivering a welcome uptempo change to an otherwise true-to-title album. Chaos is blossoming, ferocious dogs are prowling, and Josh Hommes’ guitar serves a squealing counter to Mark’s vocal. It comes unleashed after the two-minute mark, leading the charge into a downright riotous groove over handclaps and pounding high-note keys that would do Natasha Shneider proud.

Ode To Sad Disco leaps with both feet into Erasure territory – yes, the Chains of Love Erasure – with full 80s synth keys, drum machines and a breezy near-falsetto (about children losing their minds) that’s just about the last thing we’d expect from this particular grey wolf. But Blues Funeral certainly confirms Lanegan’s unpredictability, as well as his knack for flashing chameleon colors across the style spectrum. Look to Harborview Hospital for further evidence, where heavily effects-laden guitars lead Lanegan through programmed drums and a heartbeat throb into a feeling of ethereal purgatory, akin to that found at the apex of Puscifer’s Oceans.

But Quiver Syndrome sets us right again, a proper Rock jam with a buzzing lead and snapping percussion that could’ve qualified it for inclusion on QOTSA’s Songs For The Deaf. Sexy, strutting and nightmarishly dangerous on a juggernaut groove with psychedelic frills, it encompasses everything the desert gods do best – and is that Homme we hear again on the “oooh” backups?

Lanegan’s quality consistency leads us confidently through a spectral variety of sound that few other artists can convincingly achieve. His haunted romance and midnight hymns have reached new heights on Blues Funeral, and we’re happily chasing the hearse down that old dirt road, once again.

LOG recruited Wrath producer Josh Wilbur once again to work the knobs, balancing the relentless pummeling with a measure of command on the boards that prevents the sounds from digging into the muddy middles that can (and does) easily befall the band’s contemporaries. The impact is crisp and brutal, with airtight intensity that leaves the listener nearly wishing for a moment’s respite.

When Ghost Walking’s opening acoustic guitar begins to provide a measure of breathing room, it’s deceptively tempting to relax the muscles and set in for a less pulverizing groove. This, of course, is a foolhardy comfort, as the whip-crack spiraling rhythm kicks in and pulls you under. Check out the video for Ghost Walking.

Themes of drug abuse, destruction, escapism, karma and self worth permeate the lyrical spectrum, a tapestry designed by both frontman Randy Blythe and guitarist Mark Morton, who shared lyric duties once again for Resolution. The symbiotic creative trust between the two yields a best-of-both-worlds result, with the finished product being a greater representation of internal struggles the men have faced in recent years.

Check out our interview with Randy Blythe on his run for president (yes, he’s serious) and the creation of Resolution.

If you’re searching for sheer anger in your sonic assault, look no further than The Number Six, an ode to the envious troglodytes that occupy message boards and unleash torrents of anonymous internet criticism without a face of accountability or substance. The chorus chants of “You dug your own grave” bring chills to the spine as Blythe laments the running mouths led by fear-based envy.

Measured experimentation is abundant on Resolution (especially compared to Wrath), with each member intensifying their own performance to add to the greater whole. Blythe doubles down on the guttural nature of his vocals, with a knack for screaming in pitch and in a manner in which you can actually understand the words. Sure, there will always be a few Pantera comparisons plaguing the band, but if stylistic lines are drawn due to the melody in the chorus to a song like The Number Six, they can only be complimentary at this stage of the LOG game.

Morton has turned up the heat individually as well, turning out absolutely ripping guitar solos. The Undertow showcases some of Mark’s finest fretwork on record, with a stylistic nod towards the Swedish metal outfit At The Gates before a holy shit rewind that! kind of solo. On closer King Me, the band’s longest song to date, the riffery goes full-on prog… while backed by an orchestra, no less.

Chris Adler steps up the percussion with shifting time signatures and complexity on songs like the incredible Invictus and Terminally Unique, and it’s his machine-gunning beat pulverization that makes the end of Desolation such a gloriously brutal moment.

With a tightrope balance and a perpetual fist in the air, Lamb of God continues to push the envelope of both technique and style with a sound that refuses to fall victim to its own routine. Resolution is more than a collection of kickass power metal jams – it serves as one cohesive movement, a shining example of the benefits yielded to a group of artists who refuse to settle for “good enough”. Always evolving, always furious, LOG have once again rewarded fans with the first great metal album of 2012.

Raging against the machine isn’t exactly new territory for Rou Reynolds and the rest of the British-rocker crew, but with an amplified sociopolitical urgency igniting around the world, Enter Shikari have responded to their observations with a deep intensification of their message of rebellion. Infusing everything from hardcore to dubstep to punk and techno with gimmick-free ease, the band run the spectrum of sonic assault while fine-tuning a blazing musical fist in the air, aimed at corrupt governments and decaying society.

Listen here as you read:

First single Sssnakepit kicks the doors to hell wide open, setting a breakneck pace that melds a jungle fury with thrash-metal riffery in a buoyant (and damned catchy) assault on the senses, a lyrical declaration of war on the cancer of social distractionism and shameless profiteering of the fearmongering Old Guard. With enough heavy-handed lyrical suggestion to get his name on the ever-expanding list of potential terrorists, Reynolds reminds us on …Meltdown that “Countries are just lines drawn in the sand,” and that fear can only subside when we realize that we’ve been divided deliberately. “Fuck all borders and fuck all boundaries, fuck all flags and fuck nationalities,” he wails amidst an infectious dub-wobble.

Kudos to any band who can seize on the spirit of discontent in our society, the same sense that something is urgently and terribly wrong, particularly if they can convey it authentically rather than via Linkin Park’s faux-revolutionism. But Shikari take it further; They strike the heart of the anger that’s rising measurably in the conscious minds of modern day, decrying the military industrial complex and war profiteering. Such is the case in Stalemate, where words aren’t minced on the specific target: “Money is made when bombs are dropping in Afghanistan / When white phosphorous falls in Palestine” while giving specific encouragement to those walking the high-wire of modern media consumption with a skeptic’s analytical eye.

Nowhere is this more clear or poignantly urgent than in Pack of Thieves, where – amidst a wash of hyper-dance sonics and gang backups – Reynolds issues the powerful charge: “Change cannot be subject to conditional falls, ‘Cos we’re squatting in a system that consistently stalls, Don’t be fooled into thinking that a small group of friends cannot change the world, That’s the only thing that ever has.”

The bombastic assault of Hello Tyrannosaurus, Meet Tyrannicide will send the pits into perilous intensities in a live setting, with Rory Clewlow’s guitars framing a haunting melancholia around Reynolds’ thrashings. You won’t find answers to the world’s problems here, but merely a diagnosis that things are positively fucked, with an unwavering hope that it’s not too late to make a difference. The epically heartfelt closer Constellations is perhaps as understated as the band can get, giving 30 Seconds To Mars a run for their money on high-reaching anthemics. It’s an appeal to our greatest natures, our sense of divinity and connection to one another as humans without borders or grudges.

The shift between the band’s debut album Take To The Skies and their 2009 sophomore release was as divisive as it was exciting, but with continuing nods to their dance-core origins and the dubstep virus, Enter Shikari have found a balance while honing a voice of rebellion – at a time where tearing down boundaries and microanalyzing the current structure is more vital and valuable than ever before in our lives.

So one day, Shooter Jennings comes in. His awesome name was given to him by his parents, country icon Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter. In every official promo picture, he’s smoking and/or drinking whiskey, with a fucking handgun under his belt. His album was called Put The “O” Back In Country. I fucking loved the guy before I’d heard a note.

I still have the album, and even listen to it on occasion. But while it was refreshingly traditional (as the name sort of promised), it wasn’t really anything extraordinary. Just a decent country album for those evenings when hard liquor and a decent country album were called for.

I lost track of Shooter Jennings altogether until Thanksgiving morning, this year. An old friend and reader turned me onto a track from an album called Black Ribbons that he released last year, at which time he was calling his band Hierophant.

I’m not sure where to begin. First of all, it’s a concept album, narrated by Stephen King, playing the role of a renegade radio host, a sort of Alex Jones character, who is standing his ground to do one final broadcast before being forcibly shut down by government censorship. The story is all really just a “masquerade,” as Jennings called it, with the decay of trust in a society providing a sort of inverse metaphor to examine the value of trust and love in a personal relationship between two people.

Not a traditional country album.

In fact, it easily draws comparisons to the likes of Nine Inch Nails, David Bowie, Pink Floyd, and even Kanye West. It’s all over the place, and it all works.

The opening track, Wake Up, starts with Jennings slowly singing a haunting line over a sparse piano melody, singing not like a country singer, but rather like Ziggy Stardust under a single spotlight towards the end of a decadent opera: They say good fences… make good neighbors… for you, my friend… this might be true… And then the rhythm picks up as he twists the knife: …But you still gotta put / bars on the window to the soul inside of you. Synthesizers, of all things, kick in, along with a simple beat as the glam-space-rock song builds up, preaching against the widespread brainwashing of society via the media. Then, suddenly, the sky cracks wide open, and a stomp riff heavier than God, like something off of a Black Sabbath album comes crashing down. The jaw-dropping transition to full-on stoner metal (and back) just makes the slow, smoldering parts just that much more sharply insidious. The outro features Jennings hissing: Life is a movie / we are all actors / Don’t let them edit you out.

After that first track is the first of Stephen King’s transmissions as “Will O’The Wisp,” calling on the “truth seekers,” promising the “last breath of free speech,” and music in contrast to the usual “processed bubble-gum bullshit churned out by the overlords of doublespeak and meant to turn a gray world grayer.” Then he introduces Triskaidekaphobia, a near-perfect hybrid of folk, rock, and pop, featuring a backup chorus. Somehow the track flows seamlessly into Don’t Feed The Animals, a distorted, howling, pissed-off cut like something that clawed its way out of Trent Reznor’s studio. It should contrast like toothpaste and orange juice, but there’s an energy that ties it all together and helps it to come off like a great mixtape. Even as The Breaking Point follows the assault, a bluesy slow jam that’s four parts Hunky Dory to one part Texas Flood.

After another transmission from Will O’The Wisp, Everything Else Is Illusion is the first of the next block of songs, a dirty cross between The Beatles’ Come Together and Marilyn Manson’s Mechanical Animals. Again, pretty much the farthest thing from country imaginable, yet it’s followed by the opposite: God Bless Alabama. By being just what you’d expect it to be, it becomes strange in the way that Marilyn Munster was by being the normal one at home among weirdos.

That set closes with the album’s centerpiece, and the song that I first discovered, All Of This Could Have Been Yours. It was a great place to start, because, while not giving too many surprises away, it encapsulates most of the best the album has to offer. I knew of Shooter Jennings the country singer, yet here he is singing a blues rock ballad over a piano, with squealing guitar leads weaving in and out like something from Wish You Were Here:

Again, despite the wild variation between sounds, Black Ribbons stays anchored not only by the themes of the concept album, but by that energy that seems to replenish itself as each song builds on the one before it. That thread is the X-factor, the elusive “it” that some albums have and most others just don’t. Had this album not come from a genuine place, a truly inspired soul, it would have fallen limp and disjointed, a hodgepodge of mismatched influences without focus. And there are just a couple of parts that sort of seem to have been thrown in just to prove a point, namely the trash-rap-shithead mockery that is Fuck You I’m Famous. But with everything in proper context, the album flirts with masterpiece status, taking the listener on the sort of musical journey that only comes along a handful of times a decade.

In the second half of the album, that journey winds through some strange territory. Lights In The Sky fuses a Doobie-esque groove together with ping-ponging synth bleeps and bloops and auto-tuned backups, while Summer Of Rage sounds like Yeezy producing a Year Zero song with Jennings sneaking in Mark Lanegan impressions. The Illuminated takes all of that and mixes it together with some of those shades of Bowie and Floyd we heard earlier. And in the midst of all of this, you’ll find the title track, a stripped-down, forlorn acoustic number, as well as the straightforward rocker California Via Tennessee, like something off of the Stones’ Sticky Fingers.

Black Ribbons closes its story with When The Radio Goes Dead, and I can’t help but betray my rank as desert rock geek by comparing it to the Alain Johannes obscurity Making A Cross; It’s got precisely the same sort of vocal melody that clearly bids a sad goodbye even if sung in an alien language. Between that and an instrumental reprisal of All Of This Could Have Been Yours that serves as the closing credits, Will O’The Wisp’s final transmission ends, and I’ll say nothing more to spoil that.

Discovering this album a year after its release is disappointing only in the sense that we didn’t get a chance to help Jennings’ first week sales, or recognize it in our obligatory “best of the year” lists. But the album is no less relevant or enjoyable a year later, nor will it be five more years from now. It joins the ranks of Silverchair’s Diorama, the Deftones’ White Pony, and Kanye’s Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy as the sort of great album that surprised everyone, coming from the least likely of places, establishing not only its artist but indeed its very genre of being capable of delivering more than we’d expected.

Front-end loaded by Carney’s best and most aggressive work on the kit thus far, the throttle of El Camino remains nearly constant throughout the record’s eleven tracks, and from the low-swinging shimmy of opener Lonely Boy to the percussive hammer-assault of  Money Maker, the Keys have come dangerously close to making a dance record. On paper that may seem like a pretty fucked up turn, but rest assured, this is no Skrillex collaboration. What Auerbach and Carney have cooked up this time is so damned packed with hard-hitting but lighthearted psychedelia-toned goodness, you can’t help but shake your moneymaker.

The soulful R&B sheen of Brothers is conspicuously absent, replaced with 60s garage charm and Cramps-style rhythmic attitude with rockabilly frills. The melodic parallels between xylophone and vocals in Dead and Gone resurrect that 60s vibration, over extended-vowel sentiments in a verse that gives way to an irresistibly punchy & hand-clapping chorus current.

The hip-shaking retro sparkle is taken even further in the downright psychedelic sunshine of bass-bouncing Stop Stop. Carney’s beat designs are only slightly more impressive than the fact that he simply beats the almighty shit out of his kit, a perfect accompaniment to Auerbach’s invigorated fire.

Auerbach’s guitar is often used chiefly as a rhythmic device, as on the slow-chopping chill of Sister, with only abbreviated solo excursions. With a radio-bait chorus and head-nodding groove, the track’s strength lies in the smooth soul of Motown’s influence rising from the frigid atmosphere.

The shorthand acoustic Stairway design of Little Black Submarines undoubtedly earns deductions among Zeppelinophiles, but the progression is gorgeous beyond the point of absolution – all the way down to the fret vibration on the E note. At the halfway point, Auerbach’s guitar and Carney’s drums break out at a gallop, embracing the feathered hair era and turning the chorus to ten. The splicing of two versions of the song – electric and acoustic – is the perfect intensifying dynamic to truly earn the word epic. Hold those doubts till you see this monster unleashed onstage.

Nova Baby calls back a classic style, a soaring chorus bemoaning a hopeless love, while the garagey grind-surge of Gold On The Ceiling gets a supercharge from the squealing Jack White-ish stuttercraft guitar, given flecks of ethereal color by multiple female backing vocals and handclaps. It’s a blast of beauty, a muscle car ride with the top down on a cold desert morning, blindingly bright with beauty by your side.

That may be the core of El Camino’s magic – the visceral connection, rather than the cerebral eclecticism that drove much of the previous record. It’s a record to bridge genres and generations, with enough rockabilly stomp-funk goodness to be precisely the right album after midnight with a few rolled, a few tipped and some good friends. Sounds like a modern classic to me.

Order El Camino

There is school, there are friends, there is family, television, video games, professional wrestling; a world full of favorable distractions to keep him preoccupied; and years later, when that childhood nostalgia returns to us as it does, we sometimes find it impossible to avoid our yearning to return to it; for life to be simple again with great distractions and little responsibility; that world full of wonders. But again, that unconscious jolt returns. Something, somewhere in our lives, has made us realize that we can no longer live in our cushioned and sheltered lives, and that we subsist among a people that we care for without any comprehensible reason or construct.

It was not because we were all Iranians. It was fully unrelated to our much-talked about “illustrious history” that had absently “kept us together.” No, and even if it was, a 16-year-old child would hardly link these convoluted and problematic explanations to an empathetic response. The vindication to the vicariousness among us all was much simpler than that: “We,” as a group of people, were being hurt by the same system.

We were all from different backgrounds, had different interests – and what is so riveting (and sometimes infuriating) about Tehran – we all lived in different worlds; one had grown up with the poetry of Rumi and Hafez, another was brought up by the teachings of the Quran, while others in more affluent social circumstances grew up watching Johnny Bravo and Dexter’s Lab.

But those distinctions did not exist when we were 16-year-olds walking to school every morning. All of us stood still in the same manner in lines at the beginning of every weekday at 7:30 AM sharp in school, we all cupped our hands and chirruped the Faraj prayer every morning, said a salavat and wished well the spirits of “Muhammad and his kin,” and we all subsequently walked into our classes to be fed with the very same religious propaganda, the very same lessons in Arabic – a language that distanced us even more than our Persian heritage. The school structure ordinarily snubbed the works of classic Persian laureates for even more stories about Hassan and his valorous martyrdom in Karballa; or stories about the pains of Palestine (in the second grade, 7 year old kids were assigned to write fictional letters to Palestinians asserting their hate for Israel and promising to dethrone them); or the evils of the Western world. Thus, it is unsurprising that the teachings of theatre, film, and music were nowhere to be seen in the curriculum of such a school system. To make matters even more interesting: to be caught with an MP3 player or an iPod guaranteed you a trip to the principal’s office with your parents, and an hour-long grating of the evils of the Western influence. “We don’t care what you do at home, but we don’t want you doing it outside.”

So we snuck around. Leaning one side of our heads on the table and sharing a headphone while the religion teacher told us about the Gates of Hell and “the pious woman’s duties;” we’d listen to Pink Floyd, dramatically playing Another Brick In The Wall over and over again as to prove a secret point between ourselves; the two people sitting behind one desk, sharing a headphone: We don’t need no education. Not like this. Not like this.

Much credit to the discovery of new music in Tehran went to the iPod generation, torrenting, and the whole new realm of social networking – YouTube, a fairly new website at the time helped us watch our favorite music videos without having to download it on LimeWire with the typical 128 kbps speed of the just-established Parsonline ADSL initiative. There were also music forums and blogs, both in Farsi and in English, which allowed you to share your interests without having to leave your home, and without the threat of arcane arrest. You’d learn about your favorite band reuniting at Live 8, listen to the new Metallica song, and best of all: learn about artists you had never heard of before. For me, that one sound I found myself most satisfied with, that filled me and then subsequently relieved me of all the pent up frustration of having to listen to bloated mullahs telling us we will go to hell if we do this-or-that, religion teachers preaching about coins being melted on our backs, and “gentlemen” using God to explain the inferiority of women, was the music of Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails.

I recall my eyes opening wide when I first heard those gloriously blasphemous words of Heresy: “God is dead, and no one cares / if there is a hell, I’ll see you there!” (It didn’t matter if Nietzsche said it first.) “Yes, yes!” I would think to myself. This was it. This is exactly what I was feeling, what I knew those around me were feeling – maybe not the exact sentiment, but surely the same anger; at organized religion, at discrimination, at the teachings of hate. Hurt was a favorite among my friends. They listened to it over and over again, shaking their heads, smiling, and nodding. We’d spend “Sports” period by sitting on the stairs at the far corner of the schoolyard. “Give me your iPod,” my friend would say. I’d hand it to him. He would play With Teeth, The Fragile or Pretty Hate Machine until the instructor would find us and force to us to play basketball again – “or ping-pong! The least you could do is play ping-pong!”

We were still children; still sheltered; still hadn’t seen the worst that our country had to offer, but that soon changed. The trigger was pulled. The previously mentioned jolt pierced that sheltered ignorance – or was it just desensitized apathy?

It happened when we were walking home from a day of sitting around at our local shopping mall – a common trait shared between teenagers all over the world. We suddenly heard screams of “Please, please!” coming from the other corner of the mall. As excited teenagers do, we ran to the scene of the happening – less because we were concerned and more because we were fascinated to see what was to occur. At the center of the mall’s courtyard, two young women were being affronted by three officers; two of them were female guards in chadors, and another was a male officer heckling the young women from a distance – we later found out that the women were being jeered due to their excessive make-up. The situation escalated and took a turn for the worse, one of the ladies tried to escape, and was met with unrelenting slaps to the back by the male officer – it is a “sin” based on Islamic values to touch an unrelated member of the opposite sex. The growing crowd began boo-ing; we joined in, and this act alone helped distract the guards, thus aiding one of the young girls to make a break for it. The male guard pepper-sprayed her as she managed to get away. The girl – blinded – still persisted in running, fleeting across a busy street of cars. Nobody honked, nobody shouted or cursed at the runaway; they all understood. Moments later, she was gone.

The other girl was taken into custody.

“They’ll probably beat her and force her to call her friend back. Then they’ll put them both away,” said my friend, as upset and as dejected as the rest of us.

That was the trigger. The straw that broke the camel’s back – or in this case, simply burst the bubble that we had been in since childhood. This wasn’t just a political matter, this was social; and like everybody else, we were at the center.

Iran has never been a violent society. It is instead a society that constantly feels in danger; always afraid of what to do and who to trust. There was a mass desensitization and muddling of values and vocations throughout the nation (there still is); nobody knew what they should want. It was as if an authorial presence eternally looked down upon us, proclaiming: “If it’s not religion you want, there’s nothing else we can help you with.”

Thus everybody was left on their own to construct their own set of values; values that not once were accepted or even tolerated – how many times we had seen teenagers with “punk” attire chased down a street by the authorities, pepper-sprayed and beaten and sent to the back of that dreaded green-striped Mercedes-Benz. Everybody was looking for a diversion, but finding one proved more difficult than living with the lamentable situation.

When Trent Reznor first described the essentials of his forthcoming album, Year Zero – a dystopian world set in 2022 where religion ruled and an unwanted government ruled with an iron fist, it all sounded quite familiar: We had already been living in this world for 28 years.

The months leading up to Year Zero’s release were a wholly interactive affair. The Alternate Reality Game that began unfolding in February is to this day what Year Zero is chiefly remembered for: the excitement in uncovering mysteries on fictitious websites; finding new songs and snippets through heard-about USB flash drives in bathroom stalls; dialing and listening to fake phone conversations that consisted of fragments of forthcoming music; and reading invented posts on forums from a darker, nightmarish future America.

I followed it almost religiously. Like everybody else in my country, I was looking for my own sort of diversion.

The first single from Lulu, entitled The View, had already garnered hatred from listeners, and in the context of the album, it pretty much shows all the things that went horribly wrong  with it. First and foremost, Lou Reed doesn’t sing – he never really has – he basically reads the lyrics to the song, in an often emotionless delivery. While this style has worked in his solo career (and in his glory days with The Velvet Underground), here, backed by Metallica, it sounds instantly unsettling. The heavy metal provided by the band is as inappropriate to Reed’s non-singing as any random musical genre you can imagine, and the juxtaposition of both styles is downright laughable in several spots. The fact that metal and Lou Reed don’t match becomes quickly noticeable, and only becomes more blatantly obvious as Lulu goes on.

Take Mistress Dead, for instance, which is probably the clearest, most basic example of the poor combination of styles. While Metallica play a standard riff that might as well be the dictionary definition of “thrash metal”, Reed moans his usually weird, graphic lyrics, “I wish there was a strap of blood / That you could kiss away / Tie me with a scarf and jewels / Put a bloody gag to my teeth“. And yet, neither element sounds like it belongs to the same song, at any given point, as if both parties were competing to see who could move the further away from a stylistic crossroads. The fact that the instrumentation shows about as little variation as the vocal performance, doesn’t help either. The results, while not always ridiculous, still fail to demonstrate why this collaboration ever sounded like a good idea.

That’s not to say, however, that there aren’t moments where small hints of actual chemistry pop up. On a few cuts, Metallica deviate from their usual brand of metal, and approach something more akin to Reed’s previous solo work. Iced Honey, one of only two tracks that don’t go over five minutes here, contains proper rock arrangements that fit Reed’s voice more appropriately, he makes an effort to actually sing – though within his limitations. James Hetfield helps out on the singing during the chorus, hitting the notes that Reed obviously can’t, and, surprisingly, the song goes by without any embarrassments.

Cheat On Me, which follows, also features Hetfield on vocals, to an even greater effect. After an atmospheric start with dissonant string arrangements and distorted guitars, the song takes form with a relatively slow beat, and Reed does another performance that doesn’t sound alien to the music. As it progresses and gets heavier, Hetfield begins to share vocal duties with Reed, sometimes even taking the forefront, avoiding the stylistic disparity that plagues so much else on this record. Also due to some great riffing, Cheat On Me winds up as a highlight, and shows a mold that could have been adopted on more songs.

Unfortunately, even on those moments where it seems like the project might take flight, they’re still merely less discomforting than the many, many disappointingly bad musical choices made here. Any hope gained from the two tracks mentioned above is quickly dissolved by Frustration, which returns to the unfortunate combination of heavy metal and spoken word. To make matters worse, it features a mid-section with nothing but Reed and drum fills by Lars Ulrich, in something that dangerously resembles Spinal Tap’s Jazz Odyssey. The balladry of closing track Junior Dad, tacky as it may be, comes as a relief, but its ten minutes of string arrangements inevitably serve for the listener to raise several questions about what the hell just happened during the past hour and a half.

Lulu is extremely hard to recommend, and even harder to find out who to recommend it for. Fans of Reed might be able to enjoy his lyrics on some level, for they are, if anything, easily identifiable – there’s the song where he begs to be degraded and eat waste, the one where he yells “JACK” about fifty times, the one where he’s “spermless like a girl”, and, of course, the one where James Hetfield is a table. Alas, little does the poetry matter if the music doesn’t hold up.

As for the four musicians’ contributions, they’re far from impressive, but never get as embarrassing as some of their least-inspired Load/Reload/St. Anger cuts. While James Hetfield’s rhythm guitar is the driving force most of the time, Kirk Hammett barely gets any chance to shine, as there are disappointingly few solos here. Lars Ulrich continues his strength-over-versatility drumming approach, arguably the least appealing aspect of the group for many years now, and Robert Trujillo’s bass remains practically buried in the mix. Sometimes, It’s almost as if the group decided to hold back, and not waste any good riffs here. Except that’s really not the case here, as evidenced by the members themselves.

Metallica, already fully aware of the hatred Lulu was getting, have already stated that it indicates what their future studio work might sound like. With that in mind, it’s also frightening that every party involved shows so much confidence in the quality of this material. Interview after interview, they demonstrate nothing but complete investment into the project, and genuine belief that this is among their finest work. It’s disturbing to think that they don’t see anything wrong with this collaboration.

Metallica themselves are not the real mistake here, as they can still dish out decent thrash metal hooks, and on some occasions deviate from that style, producing arguably better results. The mistake was assuming that their particular brand of music would be a good fit for Lou Reed’s voice. Most of the time, Reed’s non-singing is too prominent for fans of Metallica to just enjoy the music, and, at the same time, the music can be too heavy for Reed’s fans, culminating in something that neither group of listeners can properly enjoy. Considering that this never sounded like much of a good idea to anyone, it’s not a huge loss.

For those of you who haven’t had the chance to check out Ohio’s own Skeletonwitch, the band specializes in modern thrash metal (or blackened thrash, if you wanna take the time to make that distinction). Their signature sound combines the speedy side of thrash with the tones and tremolo picked harmonies of black metal, modern shredding and other extreme metal elements infused into straight-forward thrashers and short epics. This month brings us their 4th major release (third for Prosthetic Records) entitled Forever Abomination.

In the sea of new thrash metal bands the last decade has brought forth, Skeletonwitch remains one of the most distinguishable here in 2011. Gain-y and grainy, the band’s guitar tone itself is somewhat hard to mistake from others. The powerful, gargling black metal growl supplied by vocalist Chance Garnette is surprisingly memorable as well… making the combination altogether unmistakable. That being said, the new songs are just that; new. Forever Abomination stands out on its own while retaining all of the previous albums’ best attributes.

At a total length of 32 minutes, the album is a few minutes shorter than the previous two. Opening track This Horrifying Force starts out with a few bars of acoustic guitar serving as the album’s intro and becomes a sprawling, mid-tempo melodic black metal rocker (reminiscent of Dissection’s Reinkaos) that concludes with the same acoustic guitar. At 4:10, it’s the album’s longest song… and one of the band’s longest as well. The album continues on gaining momentum with each track.

Single Reduced To The Failure Of Prayer (listen above) starts out with a crash and deep growls over a hammer blast, and continues to emphasize the down beat for a time before the riffs move on and set the song’s pace. The song ends rather abruptly, on lead guitar and at it’s maximum tempo… which makes for a seamless transition into the faster Of Ash And Torment. But for the breakdown with its welcomed ringing chords, this song and the next are classic Skeletonwitch thrashers. While the fifth song, Erased And Forgotten starts out quick with blasting and tremolo picking… it smoothes out into a melodic gallop at its midpoint before building its speed back up.

The Infernal Resurrection is another very interesting moment on the album, as it opens on more ringing chords at a mid-tempo and then displays the band’s comfort at speed… then breaks down briefly and rings those opening chords some more in conclusion. Moments like this one supply a measured amount of breathing room for this album, and surely translate into widening the options the band has for their already immense live set. Rejoice In Misery thrashes right out of the gate and maintains a good upper tempo before slowing somewhat halfway through and keeping a brisk melodic pace for it’s spreading guitar lines to ring out fully.

One of the main things that Forever Abomination has over the others is how often big, full chords are allowed to ring out. This combined with a more refined drum sound and more polished drumming from new drummer Dustin Boltjes, makes this release overall the most melodic in Skeletonwitch’s discography. This is most apparent in the next and most varied song on the album, Cleaver Of Souls. It’s latter half is one big breakdown, with all the goods you’d expect from a virtuous metal band.

The last three songs are thrashers, none of which is much of a closer. While the last song, My Skin Of Deceit has ample slow blasting a-la slower black metal, good pace and a moment of the singing dual guitar leads that fans have come to love this band for… it’s also the shortest on the album, with an ending that’s dry and abrupt. The last two albums ended with singing, sprawling epics… top notch closers. However, they started very differently as well… so while some of us (myself at least) may have been hoping for more of the same, it isn’t enough to disappoint.

All in all, Skeletonwitch has managed to put out nothing but refined music. Forever Abomination stands as a good follow-up to the straight-forward Breathing The Fire and in my opinion brings a fresh feel for the band.

Whenever a respectable extreme metal band releases a new album that doesn’t fully impress me (coughMegadethcoughMorbidAngelcough)… I don’t bother to write about it. In my opinion, these relatively unpopular bands we love deserve only our praises or lack thereof. Plus, there is a horde of metalheads that will voice their thoughts regardless. That being said, anyone reading this has my guarantee that I am impressed with any album I review.

Skeletonwitch has delivered greatness yet again, full of speed and furious as always. The black metal tinge is still strong, and with ample legato in the leads and song-writing that isn’t at all stagnant. Forever Abomination is an album that all Skeletonwitch fans should make haste to hear, and all extreme metal lovers should at least check out.

Nasty, Brutish, And Short proves that sometimes simple is better. PUJOL uses uncomplicated yet appealing guitar work and repetitive vocals to craft a sound that mixes classic British punk with contemporary Rock. The artist’s official website describes the EP as “moving at the speed of the 60s,” which is completely accurate.

Songwriter/frontman Daniel Pujol opens the EP with Mayday, introducing new listeners to the guitar-driven raw sound that is consistent throughout the record. Over crunchy and crispy guitar chords, Pujol sings, “I’d rather hear you speak, because I dig the things you say,” an example of the short and straight-to-the-point lyrics heard throughout the record.

The following track, Scully, shows a slightly softer side of Pujol that manages to embody the same rock and roll vibe. With lyrics such as “All I want to do is be with you and hang around, because it’s one of my very favorite things to do,” it’s clear that this is more of a love ballad. The vocal melody during the hook gives the song a catchy feel.

Songs such as Tiny Gods (Singularity) and Stuff showcase more of the 1960’s rock influence that is present on the EP. On Tiny Gods, the listener begins to hear some more guitar solo work rather than just chords.

Nasty, Brutish, And Short packs punky, colorful vintage sounds into a short, two to three minute package. Any fan of classic or modern rock will find an appreciable home here.