Tag Archives: music

Classic Songs to Be Discovered, Music, My Stories, Unsung Heroes

Arrows In Words From The Sky

This October, Machine “Fucking” Head will make 30 years!

In the early 90s, Robb Flynn decided to quit the band he was in, to start Machine “Fucking” Head, so he could call the shots and not have to answer to anyone.

Throughout the years he’s had different versions of the band with “The Blackening” line up being the most favored and then the “Burn My Eyes” line up.

Over the last three years, Robb’s motto is simple. If he has a song, or two, he’s going to get it recorded and released. And he’s still calling the shots.

Jared MacEachern on bass is still there, a dedicated right hand man.

In 2019, “Do Or Die” was released.

In February 2020, “Circle The Drain” came out.

In June 2020, the “Civil Unrest” single, featuring the tracks “Bulletproof” and the Jesse Leach collaboration “Stop The Bleeding” came out.

In November 2020, the stand alone “My Hands Are Empty” was released, a collaboration between Robb Flynn and Logan Mader from the “Burn My Eyes” version of the band.

And on 11 June 2021, the 3-Song digital single, “Arrows In Words From The Sky” dropped.

In total 8 songs have been released. They could represent an album that came out today, but we all got to spend time with these songs when they came out and make em special at that particular point in time.

On his blog, Robb said that, “these three songs represent Machine Head better than anything I could ever try to explain here.

The way these songs grew and took shape over time, tells us our future is more exciting than even we would like to admit.

Being able to corral all the chaos, pain, confusion, and yes, hope, into music has never made me feel more alive. These songs will hopefully do the same for you, after all, that’s who they were written for.”

Arrows In Words From The Sky

As soon as the droning open string tones and natural harmonics kick in, I was hooked.

It sounds sad and when the vocal melody comes in, it’s mournful. But all of this is the calm before the storm.

Centuries of pain, under a paper sword
Arrows in words from the sky

When the distorted section with the vocal melody “breaking down (I am reborn)” kicks in, it’s desk breaking stuff. It hits a raw nerve and unleashes a lot of emotions.

Listen to the lead break.

It’s guitar hero stuff from Robb Flynn. His lead work is so underrated.

Check it out.

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Influenced, Music, My Stories, Unsung Heroes

The Week In Destroyer Of Harmony History – June 7 to June 13

4 Years Ago (2017)

I was writing about streaming services and how all of those little streams add up.

Remember when Taylor Swift and Neil Young removed their music from Spotify. The narrative was very strong about poor artists vs big bad faceless tech giving the masses inferior sound quality and not paying enough. Then their music returned to Spotify and there was crickets.

In the end streaming is king. The sales charts had to amend their formula to include streaming and suddenly an artist can controlling the whole Top 10. And artists from the past have now returned to the Charts.

The old certification awards now include streaming in their formula and guess what, artists are getting platinum awards on streams alone. That’s right, no sales. Just listens. What a brilliant concept.

“Good artists copy, great artists steal” is the saying. We can paraphrase it to “Good artists try to sound original by hiding their influences”, while “great artists let their influences show”. It’s how the language of music is learned. We imitate our influences.

If you don’t believe me, what is the first thing a person does when they are learning an instrument?

They start by learning songs created by other artists.

Inspiration is not theft. Theft is taking something and the person who has it, does not have it to use anymore,

So I showed a few examples of artists being inspired.

8 Years Ago (2013)

A new release called “Evolution” from an Australian band called “Burnside” had my attention.

I just checked Spotify and they released an EP called “Rise Pt.1” in 2016, which I haven’t heard yet and a post on Twitter from 2018 had them writing new music, which still hasn’t seen a release.

The lyrics from Brent Smith (Shinedown) had me inspired so I wrote about em. At the time was doing these kind of appreciation series called “What Do Ya Mean I Don’t Write Good Lyrics?”

The title was inspired by the verses from “Peace Sells” from Megadeth.

And I was coming across so much good music at this point in time, like Burnside, Tesseract, The Night FlightOrchestra, Polution and Vaudeville. I was thinking what could these bands do differently to get their brand and music out there.

Well in the case of TesseracT and The Night Flight Orchestra, they kept writing and releasing frequently and for TNFO it certainly helped that the band members had other successful projects.

Anyway I put my thoughts out there in a post called “The New Artist Lesson”.

“13” from Black Sabbath was out. The problem that I have with it, is that it tries too hard to recreate the first four Black Sabbath albums.

Which isn’t a bad thing if that’s how you defined your career. Like AC/DC.

But Sabbath was more progressive minded and pushed boundaries. For an act that was considered “extreme” in the 70s, they played it really “safe”.

However, one thing I do like is that they have stayed away from the Verse – Chorus – Verse – Chorus – Bridge – Solo – Chorus structure.

Which led me to write a post called “Risk Management”. The message of the post was basically this;

If you are not on the bleeding edge of society, you are just part of the fabric of society. You want to be a rock star, you cant do it working a nine to five job. You cant do it if you are beholden to your employer. You cant do it if you are beholden to the family.

The only way you can do it is if you throw all thoughts of risk management out the window.

Prime Circle from South Africa had my attention as I had just heard the 2012 album, “Evidence” and I felt the need to write about them.

And they are still pretty active, releasing studio and live albums.

Check em out as their brand of modern rock is anthemic and infectious.

That’s another wrap of DoH history.

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Copyright, Influenced, Music, My Stories

The Week In Destroyer Of Harmony History – May 24 to May 30

4 Years Ago (2017)

There are a lot of stories of how the recording industry has been transformed since Napster and most of those stories centered around the losses of income to the record labels. They blamed the technology as its never the fault of the record labels.

Then came iTunes and the purchase of mp3’s became legal, putting money into the labels balance sheets. But the labels still complained.

Then YouTube appeared, then streaming came on the scene in Pandora, Grooveshark, Deezer and Spotify and the conversation shifted to the pennies paid per listen. The labels blamed the technology for the low payments because it’s never the labels fault.

In the end if you are signed to a label, creating music which is being listened too and are not getting paid, your issue is with your employer, the record label.

But it’s never the record labels fault.

“We sound like cocaine” said Bjorn Strid, the singer from The Night Flight Orchestra.

If you read this blog, you will know of my appreciation for The Night Flight Orchestra.

It all started in 2012 with the excellent debut. “Internal Affairs” and it continued in 2015, with “Skyline Whispers” and in 2017, we have “Amber Galactic”, which you can read my review here.

Artist Don Brautigam passed away and I wrote about him here and here.

If you’ve seen the Metallica “Master Of Puppets” or the Motley Crue “Dr Feelgood” covers, then you’ve seen his work.

The album cover is a forgotten art form, but man, it’s an important one. Once upon a time, the look of an album cover would be the deciding vote if a person outlaid their money.

It carried the brand of the band.

It was the first thing that spoke to the music buyer. And as time has gone on, the artists who created some of the iconic covers are never mentioned.

8 Years Ago (2013)

I was listening to Vaudeville. They merge the styles from Muse, Deftones and Radiohead with Hard Rock. It sounds beautiful and original.
And if you want an entry point into the band, check out the song “Restless Souls”.

Will you stand up
And fight against their wrath
Or will you run
Until there’s nothing left

Their first album “Dismantle The Sky” came out in 2009. The next album “Vendetta” came out in 2012, and this is the album with “Restless Souls”. In March 2013, they released an EP called “House of The Rising Sun”.

And after I wrote this post they released “Masquerade Part 1” in 2014 and “Masquerade Part 2” in 2015.

Which I didn’t know about. So I have some listening to do.

Daft Punk entered the charts this week in 2013 at Number 1, moving 339,000 copies of their “Random Access Memories”.

And streaming/digital was king as 65% of Daft Punk’s sales came from digital sources. And I was thinking, why couldn’t metal and rock artists get these kind of numbers.

And Victory Records were in the news again about shitting on artists.

It first began in August 2006, when Hawthorne Heights filed a lawsuit against Victory Records, accusing the label of creative accounting practices, unpaid royalties and for damaging the band’s reputation and relationship with their fans.

In 2011, A Day To Remember also filed a suit against Victory Records for unpaid royalties.

And in 2013, Streetlight Manifesto is telling their fans to not purchase the album from any physical and online retailers and to only purchase merchandise from the band’s website because of their dispute with Victory.

After this post, in 2017, another band called “Darkest Hour” said that they never received a penny from their Victory contract.

And to slap the artists in the face even more, it sold for more than $30 million in 2019 and the artists didn’t get a cent from the sale.

TesseracT is one band that really got my attention and you can read my review of their excellent “Altered State” album here.

Dream Theater announced a “Live At Luna Park” DVD/CD release in February 2013 for a May 2013 release. May was almost at its end and no news had been forthcoming.

Well the release finally came out in November/December of that year.

And people were getting arrested and locked away for copyright offenses. Their jail terms for non violent crimes were longer than violent crimes.

And Police Departments were not doing any investigation of their own. They simple took the evidence of the movie studios and record labels as being true and correct.

“Draw The Line” from Disciple was doing the rounds.

This is where I draw the line
This is where the old me dies
Light a match, let it burn, kiss it goodbye
Give it up, what I was, this is where I draw the line

I always like to write posts that highlight how certain songs are inspired by other songs. You can read my post called “The Kashmir Effect”.

And I started a new series called “Classic Album Closing Songs”, thinking it will be a monthly post. And I’ve only done one.

Which actually covered a few albums.

Like “Diary Of A Madman” (1981), “Hallowed Be Thy Name” (1982), “Who We Are” (2011), “S.M.F” (1984), “Shogun” (2008), “Aerials” (2001) and “The Count Of Tuscany” (2009)

And “What About Now” disappeared from the charts and the sales.

Bon Jovi (the band) spent over 5 months recording and writing this album, a few more months promoting it, only to have it do a run of 10 weeks before it disappeared.

From Bon Jovi I went to Megadeth and the lyrics of Dave Mustaine.

And my iPod shuffle was on fire with its selection so I wrote about “Chainsaw Charlie (Murders In The New Morgue)”, “California Morning”, “Crazy Train”, “Caught In The Middle”, “Caustic Are The Ties That Bind” and “Cardiff”.

Well that’s another wrap for another week.

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Influenced, Music, My Stories

The Week In Destroyer Of Harmony History – May 17 to May 23

4 Years Ago (2017)

The thing with blogs and posts is that you try and write something different and creative. Like this post, titled “Dollars And Cents”. At the time I was reading a book on innovations and Charles Goodyear inspired me.

Everyone today knows “Charles Goodyear” as the inventor of vulcanised rubber. But what they don’t know is that he spent his whole life on struggle street, in and out of prison because of his money problems and six of his twelve children died because he couldn’t support them.

And when he perfected his vulcanised rubber, he couldn’t take out a patent because another scientist called Thomas Hancock took out a patent eight weeks earlier. You see, Hancock had gotten a hold of a sample of Goodyear’s final product and reverse engineered it.

Goodyear tried the courts, however the judge couldn’t understand how Hancock could have reverse engineered the invention and awarded all rights and royalties to Hancock.

It wasn’t until his journals were read by others that the following was found: “Life should not be estimated exclusively by the standard of dollars and cents.”

The Goodyear name would be recognised many years later. His achievements are world-changing but he never got paid for it while he was alive.

And the post combined F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ken Kesey, Dream Theater, Metallica and others.

These days, every town has thousands of bands who are recording themselves and releasing their music. And there are artists who have “made it” who are also releasing music. And they all want to be paid for it. Because their hard work and time spent is worth something. It’s all dollars and cents until you have that iconic hit. Only then you will be paid. When the music listening public decides it’s worthy.

Once upon a time my Release Radar playlist was pretty spot. Check out my love for The Night Flight Orchestra, Rise Against, Hell Or Highwater, Adrenaline Mob and Harem Scarem.

And when I was thinking about innovations, I thought about the cassette.

The Cassette tape allowed me to make demo after demo, mix tape after mix tape and it allowed me to copy a lot of albums from people who either had the original album or had a copy of the album from someone else who either had the original or had a copy.

For me it is was a game changer.

The record labels screamed loud and hard to their politician friends to pass new laws and stop this new sharing culture. Remember their headline, “Home taping is killing music.” A more accurate and truthful headline would be, “Home Taping is Spreading Music to the Masses” or “Home Taping Is Spreading Music And This Leads To Increased Sales Later On”.

Progressive Music always fascinated me.

In the Year 2000, the mainstream was ruled by Nu-Metal bands and progressive music was really at opposite ends of the spectrum.

On one side, you had the Dream Theater style of progressive music. This involved a lot of time changes, with the focus on high-octane technical musical workouts and each song exhibited a smorgasbord of riffs.

On the other side of the progressive music spectrum, you had the Tool style of progressive music. This involved time changes, but the focus was on groove and atmospherics, with each song building on a unique riff or bass line or drum pattern. Tool always stood by their brand and never wavered from it.

In between you had Porcupine Tree, merging Tool like aggression with Pink Floyd like atmospherics and on the extreme end you had Meshuggah with their focus on groovy, technical polyrhythms.

The missing link is Fates Warning. Fates Warning released an album called “Disconnected” which merged the Tool and Porcupine Tree progressive elements with the Dream Theater progressive elements and put them through the Fates Warning blender. It’s a fusion of all the best progressive elements at the time into a cohesive piece of work that can be listened to over and over again from start to finish.

Making something technical sound simple to the ear is progressive music to me.

Metallica did it with each album up to “…And Justice For All”.

Rush did it with each album until they reset their career with “Signals”.

Dream Theater nailed it with “Images And Words”.

Fates Warning nailed it with “Disconnected”.

And back in 2013, I was writing that if an artist wants to make money from streaming music, then they should stay independent and don’t sign to a label.

Or if they sign to make sure they own their copyrights. Streaming pays pretty good, provided people are listening. And the more people who embrace streaming, the greater the pool of money to divide.

Remember when AC/DC refused to have their music on iTunes and even streaming services? Now they’re on all of them.

And remember that each release is competing with the history of music

8 Years Ago (2013)

I was watching Eurovision and I came across Eythor Ingi from Iceland. He sang a ballad called “I Am Alive”. The song is average, however his voice, his look and his name stuck in my head.

So I went to YouTube. He was in a Deep Purple cover band and he covers “Child In Time”. If you want to separate the vocalists from the wannabe’s, “Child In Time” is the song.

I just rechecked on him and he’s still doing music in his native language. I would like to hear an English speaking album as well.

And did anyone hear the new (at the time) Five Finger Death Punch song, “Lift Me Up” and how similar the vocal line in the verse is to “The Ultimate Sin” from Ozzy. A perfect example of taking something from the past to make something new.

And I wrote an appreciation post on the lyrics of Jesse Leach.

We are overloaded with people creating something. The Internet has removed the entry barriers to promote creative works have diminished greatly. Artists are writing books, comics or creating art via paintings or photography.

And they create because they want to create. And at the time System Of A Down had three quarters of the band ready to do another album. But vocalist Serj Tankian was not interested.

“Kingmaker” from Megadeth was just released. The first thing that grabbed my attention was the “Children of The Grave” influence in the verses.

Finally, the Richie Sambora saga was ongoing and some serious scalping was happening in Australia, as tickets to the first Jovi shows in Australia were still available to be purchased but the shows are marketed as sold out and second shows are up for sale.

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Music, My Stories, Piracy

The Week In Destroyer Of Harmony History – March 29 to April 4

4 Years Ago (2017)

I was writing about the recording industry trying to rebrand/sell itself as the “music” industry.

The Recording Industry is a section of the “music industry.”

But the Recording Industry likes to sell and market itself as the Music Industry.

The Music Industry is everything.

There is the recording industry who are involved in getting artists to recording and releasing music. The release can be via vinyl, CD’s and mp3’s and streaming.

But there is also licensing, touring (and people involved with touring like drivers, road crew), merchandise, publishing, musical instruments (sellers, manufacturers and buyers), music hardware, music software, video production and many more.

And a lot of movement was happening within governments around internet privacy. So I was asking the question, where is the outrage from artists.

There is a lot of press about outraged artists due to streaming and piracy but when it came to their internet privacy being sold to a corporation, there was nothing. Not even a word.

Governments deny that climate change exists and people scream in protest. Governments take away more of our privacy and there is silence.

8 Years Ago (2013)

I wrote about how DRM in games was hindering the real paying customers and how it really doesn’t stop people from copying the game. But the game makers want stronger DRM and enforcement as they believe they are losing money due to pirated copies.

Circa 2011, the MPAA stated that piracy losses amounted to $58 billion.  

How did they quantify the amount?

They didn’t, but they used it over and over again when they spoke to politicians about getting new laws written up.

I remember seeing that Transformers 1 (T1) and (T2) where the most pirated movies over Bit Torrent. T1 made $710M and T2 made $840M. T3 wasn’t on any torrent list and it made $1.3 Billion.

Maybe because the people that downloaded a torrent of T1 and T2 became fans and paid to watch T3. Maybe those little kids that downloaded T1 and T2 became fans and are now old enough to go to the cinema on their own and watch it.

One thing is certain, piracy is designed by the lobby groups so that they can get stupid legislation passed that puts them back in control of the distribution.

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Classic Songs to Be Discovered, Influenced, Music, My Stories, Unsung Heroes

The Week In Destroyer Of Harmony History – March 8 to March 14

4 Years Ago (2017)

I was writing about 1983.

“Frontiers” from Journey is the response from a band at the top of the charts as the “Don’t Stop Believin” and Jonathan Cain era was in full swing.

“Separate Ways” is the piece d resistance. How good is the opening keyboard lick?

“Faithfully” inspired “Purple Rain”. In This Moment also use this song as an influence for the outro of their song “World In Flames”.

“Troubled Child” is one of those underrated gems on an album.

“Bent Out Of Shape” from Rainbow is how far MTV changed the way bands wrote albums. Suddenly experimentation, longer guitar solos or longer songs in general went out the window. Every band was trying to make that arena rock song.

But the single here should have been “Stranded” instead of “Street of Dreams”.

“Flick Of The Switch” from AC/DC is a solid album.

The producer of their holy trinity albums, Mutt Lange was also out. Their manager Peter Mensch was also out. Angus and Malcolm stepped up to give the world a live and raw version of AC/DC.

There is a lot of groove and swagger. The slower tempo’s make it sound HEAVY. But the songs don’t get played live, and the album remains largely forgotten to the masses.

“Never Surrender” from Truimph showed a band that could write ambitious and melodic tracks along with metal and rock tracks as well.

Yngwie Malmsteen was involved with Alcatrazz and “No Parole from Rock N’ Roll” with Graham Bonnet on vocals and “Steeler” with Ron Keel on vocals.

8 Years Ago (2013)

I listened to Bon Jovi’s new album “What About Now” and had a rant over it. And then I heard “That’s What the Water Made Me”.

Cause devils in heaven
There’s angels in hell

We live in a world of fakes, a world of avatars and the lines between good and evil are blurred these days.  

1994 (27 Years Ago)

“Superunknown” from Soundgarden and “The Downward Spiral” from Nine Inch Nails are released.

1987 (34 Years Ago)

U2 started their world domination era with the release of their fifth studio album, “The Joshua Tree”.

1986 (35 Years Ago)

Rick Rubin got Steven Tyler and Joe Perry to record parts of “Walk This Way” so that he and Run DMC could transform it into a hip-hop jam.

Both acts weren’t enthusiastic about the collaboration but money talks and the track resurrected Aerosmith’s career and pushed Run DMC’s name to a whole new audience as well.

1984 (37 Years Ago)

Ian Gillan’s days in Black Sabbath came to an end, just as Mark II of Deep Purple reformed.

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Music, My Stories

The Week In Destroyer Of Harmony History – March 1 to March 7

4 Years Ago (2017)

This period is always busy for me, with getting the football season up and running in Australia, so as a volunteer to my local club, there’s no time for blogging.

“All The Right Reasons” from Nickelback is certified Diamond for sales of over 10 million copies in the United States. Not bad for a Canadian band who started out as a Metallica copy cat in the garage.

8 Years Ago (2013)

Like 2017, this period is always busy for me, with getting the football season up and running in Australia, so as a volunteer to my local club, there’s no time for blogging.

Also in 2013 an important case happened in a Czech court.

Lamb Of God singer Randy Blythe was charged with manslaughter, stemming from a 2010 gig in Prague in which a fan went onto his stage to stage dive and Blythe pushed him off, which is the norm at these kind of concerts.

In this instance, the fan sustained head injuries during the fall, however he still finished watching the concert, but after the concert he didn’t feel well, fell into a coma and died. When LoG toured Prague again, Blythe was arrested and held in jail.

This happened in June 2012.

After spending more than 8 months in jail Blythe was acquitted of manslaughter and returned home to the U.S.

And here is some other music history.

2003 (18 Years Ago)

Who didn’t hear the “Fallen” album from Evanescence (which came out during this period)?

2002 (19 Years Ago)

“The Osbournes” premiered on MTV which showcased a very high or intoxicated Ozzy trying to work out how to use a remote control and his family at home. In the process it became the most-viewed series on MTV.

1999 (22 Years Ago)

It pisses me off when labels do this to artists, because without the artists the labels would have nothing. In this instance, (and according to Wikipedia) Trauma Entertainment filed a $40 million breach-of-contract lawsuit against the band Bush for their failure to deliver a new album.

1994 (27 Years Ago)

Lemmy wrote some of his best lyrics on “I Don’t Want to Change the World” which appeared on “No More Tears”. And it got Ozzy Osbourne a Best Metal Performance with Vocal.

1991 (30 Years Ago)

“The Doors” biopic from Oliver Stone is released, with Val Kilmer playing the role of Jim Morrison. I watched the movie and I felt like it was the real people, compiled of intimate footage found.

I need to rewatch it and see if it’s stood the test of time.

1986 (35 Years Ago)

Some people call it their greatest album. For me, it’s always “Ride The Lightning”. But during this period, “Master Of Puppets” from Metallica was released.

1984 (37 Years Ago)

“This Is Spinal Tap” is released, one of the best movies I have seen. Well at the time, I thought it was a movie, I must have missed the part at the end that said it was fictional and all that.

1974 (47 Years Ago)

Rush (with no Neil Peart) release their debut album, a blues rock influenced album with some progressive overtones. “Working Man” become the anthem.

1973 (48 Years Ago)

“Dark Side Of The Moon” from Pink Floyd is released. It didn’t set the world on fire initially, but word of mouth kept promoting it and its biggest sales happened between 1977 and 1988.

And that’s it for this week.

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Classic Songs to Be Discovered, Influenced, Music, My Stories, Unsung Heroes

Australian Method Series – Baby Animals

Well, the Australian Summer is over as we move into Autumn. The first day of Autumn was a 33 degree Celsius scorcher and the good folk that is Thunder Bay decided to pack up and leave our shores, taking with em the Australia variant. But the series focusing on Australian artists will not stop. It will continue each week as the Australian Method Series.

The debut Baby Animals album was everywhere in Australia.

Being added to The Angels live show in 1990, when The Angels were the hottest band in Australia, helped build the momentum needed for when the album dropped.

Released in September 1991, the album debuted at number six on the ARIA Album Charts and spent six weeks at number one, eventually going eight times platinum and becoming the highest-selling debut Australian rock album of all time (until the release of Jet’s album, “Get Born” 12 years later).

I saw em live at the Revesby Workers Club on the tour. An up and coming band called Judge Mercy was opening for them, who unfortunately disappeared when the labels started dropping metal and rock acts in a years’ time.

In relation to the live show, the Baby Animals rocked. Drummer Frank Celenza was huge and along with bassist Eddie Parise, they laid a solid foundation for Dave Leslie on guitar and Suze DeMarchi on guitar to shine. Then you had a the bluesy, soulful tones of DeMarchi on vocals.

The album was produced by task master Mike Chapman and engineered by Kevin Shirley, so you know its gonna sound massive.

And my favourite track is “Working For The Enemy”, that whole break down section, lead break and build up is excellent. My second favourite is the metal like “Waste Of Time” with its energetic double kick intro and heavy blues boogie rock riffs.

“One Too Many” is “Rock N Roll Noise Pollution” in spirit and influence, while “Aint Gonna Get” is AC/DC on steroids and highway speed tempos with a Chorus that reminds me of “I Love Rock And Roll”.

And I haven’t even gotten into the singles yet.

How good is the intro to “One Word”?

But DeMarchi didn’t like the song after it was finished and asked the label to keep it off the album. The song went through a transformation, from a country-ish rock feel in the demo (which can be heard on the 25th Anniversary Edition) to the melodic rock beast it became, as Chapman kept asking them to work on it.

Guitarist Dave Leslie is underrated, paying his dues in a Cold Chisel covers band called Swingshift, playing Australian pub rock classics on a nightly basis and he knew what worked with audiences. His chicken finger picked intro to “One Word” is guitar hero worthy.

“Rush You” is the opener as the power chord crashes down and the cymbals ring before it goes into a double time beat and some series riffage and how cool is that “Back in Black” walking chromatic riff just before the verse.

“Early Warning” begins with the drums while a slide guitar plays a rock riff and the music then stops while DeMarchi sings, “Too Young To Know and Too Old To Listen”.

The band kicks in again. Then the verses come and it’s like a Jimi Hendrix song, before it moves into the power of the Chorus.

“Painless” has this funk blues boogie which I like.

If you haven’t heard it, today is a great day for it.

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Music, My Stories

The Week In Destroyer Of Harmony History – Jan 1 to Jan 9

4 Years Ago (2017)

I was writing about the labels and the publishers meeting with newly elected President Trump on Copyright issues under the pretense of helping artists.

We all know that when these organizations meet with government officials it’s for their benefit only and maybe some small change to the artists to keep em quiet.

And based on how all of these investment houses are buying the rights to songs from artists, expect to see a new player in the meetings with government over copyright and its terms.

8 Years ago (2013)

The site was still young and new and I had a few posts in the month of January but none during this period.

But… I’ll cover a bit of history.

Jason Newsted flirted as a band called Newsted and released the underrated “Metal” EP. Interest was high, they played smaller venues and they sold out on the physical CDs for “Metal”.

The plan was for three EPs.

But that got canned and the same year they also released the album “Heavy Metal Music”.

The band was costing Newsted money. He was the investor for the tours and what not. And it was on a tour of Australia that Newsted ended the band for personal reasons.

And Black Veil Brides released the excellent album “Wretched and Divine: The Story of the Wild Ones” which gave rise to their biggest song. “In The End” currently stands at 99.299 million streams on Spotify.

Check em out.

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Classic Songs to Be Discovered, Derivative Works, Influenced, Music, My Stories, Unsung Heroes

November 2020 – Part 6

Gene The Werewolf

“I Should’ve Known Better” appeared on my Release Radar playlist on Spotify. I remember hearing “Rock N Roll Animal” back when it came out in 2012 and liking it, but then I lost track of the band.

But when I went to the Spotify account and saw all these releases since 2012, well I went into a rabbit hole with it. The bands take on ZZ Top’isms, with the AC/DC blues riffs mixed with hard rock and southern rock is interesting.

“Love And Touch” is a single released in 2019 which was a quick save based on the riff.

The following songs are from “The Loner” album, released in 2016.

“Too Kool For Skool” is a ZZ Top like track in the verses. “The Loner” is a 12 bar blues romp. “Fortune And Fame” could have come from an AC/DC album.

The following songs are from the “Rock N Roll Animal” released in 2012.

“Wicked Love” needs to be listened to, to be appreciated. “I Only Wanna Rock N Roll” sounds like a certain song called “Long Way To Top (If You Want To Rock N Roll” and I like it. “Heart Of Steel” is one of those major key pop rock songs that I like. The title track, is a party anthem. “Light Me Up” is one hell of a ballad, a glorious collision between The Cars and hard rock.

“Give It Up” could have come from “Unmasked” or maybe there is more “Beat It” from Michael Jackson than Kiss.

The album closes with “The Ballad Of Gene”, an Alice Cooper, Aerosmith and Beatles mash up, about trying to make it.

It’s perfect.

But there is still more, “Make Love” is an iTunes bonus track, and it could have come from the pens of the Madden brothers.

David Lee Roth

“Somewhere Over The Rainbow Bar And Grill” is Roth’s tribute to EVH. These dudes changed the game for hard rock music and EVH changed the game for all guitarists.

Press play and enjoy.

Doro

Doro is a powerhouse singer and Warlock was the vehicle for her voice to break into the lucrative U.S market back in the late 80’s.

And Warlock did have some success, but she built her career as Doro after Warlock.

I liked “All We Are” back then and when “All We Are” (The Fight Version) kicks off this 56 song, set called “Magic Diamonds – Best Of Rock, Ballads & Rare Treasures” I was all in because I haven’t heard much of Doro’s work after Warlock.

“Haunted Heart” gets me with the riffs, the vocal delivery and melody and the double kick metronomic drumming throughout the whole song.

“I Rule The Ruins” from the Warlock albums appears a few times, as a live version and as a classical version with all the guitars and bass played by violins and cellos. There is an excellent cover of “Egypt (The Chains Are On)” from “The Last In Line” album by Dio. And another bone crunching cover of “Nothing Else Matters”.

Raven

I never gave em a chance back in the day. But in 2020, I gave the “Metal City” album a listen and it was the title track that got me to press save.

And the rest of the tracks seemed interchangeable with each other, which is a good thing as it shows consistency.

And then “When Worlds Collide” started, with a Sabbath like groove as its foundation,

Durbin

From when I saw clips of James Durbin covering “You Got Another Thing Comin’” on American Idol many years ago, I became a fan and have followed his solo career and his time with Quiet Riot with interest. Now he has gone to Durbin, which is being promoted as a Dio like project.

“Kings Before You” is the pre-release track of this project which features, Phil Demmel on guitars and Chris Jericho on backing vocals and second verse duties.

Lyrically, it’s about castles, skies, horizons and wizards.

I’m interested to hear what comes next.

Joel Hoekstra’s 13

“Hard To Say Goodbye” is the first pre-release of Hoekstra’s next album release. This is in Night Ranger territory, which isn’t a surprise considering he spent time with em before joining Whitesnake.

Apart from crafting a great melodic rock song, Hoekstra uses it as a springboard to some superb guitar moments in the bridge before the solo and the solo itself.

I’m interested to hear what comes next.

David Hodges

I went into a rabbit hole with David Hodges.

Hodges, along with Ben Moody and Amy Lee wrote/co-wrote a monster album called “Fallen”. Then Moody and Hodges became a song writing team, writing songs for other artists and for themselves.

While none of these albums came out in November, I did give them time.

AVOX is an instrumental cinematic rock project between David Hodges and John Campbell. The album “The Fragile World” came out in 2010.

Opening song “The War” had this piano riff that kept on repeating while the guitars, drums and orchestra kept building. “The Fuse” borrows from that same template. “The Legacy” gets me thinking of the “Intermission” movie from Christopher Nolan. “The Breach” reminds of the first “Transformers” movie. “The Source” feels sad, yet hopeful.

Trading Yesterday is a band project, like a melancholic acoustic rock with different moods. They released “The Beauty And The Tragedy” album in 2004 and “More Than This” in 2011.

Songs from this project which made it to instant saves are “The Beauty And The Tragedy”, “She Is The Sunlight”, “World On Fire”, “Love Song Requiem”, “Shattered” and the haunting “For You Only”.

And five of these songs (except “World On Fire”) appear on the “More Than This” album.

“Revolution” opens the “More Than This” and this time around, the mood is still slower, but there are rocking guitars and busier drums. Like “Lifehouse”. “One Day” reminds me of “The Calling”.

Arrows To Athens is a band project that I am aware of. The “Kings And Thieves” album from 2011 is an essential rock album for me which I have covered on this blog before. Tracks like “Stars”, “Used To Be” and “Alive” are prefect. And then there is the six song “Exile” EP which was unknown to me.

And finally there are David Hodges albums.

These are made up of “The December Sessions” Volumes 1 to 5 albums, released separately over the years. “Volume 1” came out in 2011, “Volume 2” in 2013, “Volume 3” in 2015, “Volume 4” in 2016 and “Volume 5” in 2017.

And there EP’s. “Passengers: Sirens” and “Passengers: Weapons” came out in 2014. “Discrepancies In The Recollection Of Various Principles/Side A” and “Discrepancies In The Recollection Of Various Principles/Side B” came out in 2019. Also in 2019, a single release called “Waking Up With You” with Armin Van Buuren also came out.

Hodges is one hell of a talent.

Part 7 is coming up.

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