Amorphis: Am Universum

AMORPHIS: AM UNIVERSUM (2001)

1) Alone; 2) Goddess (Of The Sad Man); 3) The Night Is Over; 4) Shatters Within; 5) Crimson Wave; 6) Drifting Memories; 7) Forever More; 8) Veil Of Sin; 9) Captured State; 10) Grieve Stricken Heart.

Not only is this no longer «death metal», it is no longer «metal» at all, period. The new sound de­veloped on Tuonela stuck, and Am Universum adopts it for almost all of its tunes. Gone comp­letely are the death metal vocals, along with those deep hewn, pitch black riffs that could some­times challenge Tony Iommi, replaced throughout with Koskinen's sharp-edged singing and rif­fage that mixes New Wave-style echo-based phrasing with the alt-rock drone. And that's how it is, song after song after song.

Two things save Am Universum from sucking. First, although the guitar tones are extremely si­milar, the band varies the arrangements by bringing in saxophones (contributed by Sakari Kukko on about half of the tracks), diverse types of keyboards (the keyboardist spot is once again occu­pied by a new arrival, Santeri Kallio), and even a musical saw on one of the songs. Repeated lis­tens bring out these nuances fair well enough.

Second, the progressive melodies are still okay. Somehow, almost without noticing, as the band progressed from growling to singing, they became quite good at writing catchy vocal parts. Try to deconstruct the sonic layers of 'Alone', and behind all the roar lies a fairly decent prog-pop song with dark overtones (well, the day Amorphis start writing songs with light overtones is probably the day they start growing bananas in Finland). So it may begin a bit too uncomfortably close to Pink Floyd's 'Run Like Hell', but then it meets up with the heavy guitars and with the power cho­rus and with the psychedelic guitar solo and... well, it's not really as dull as the first paragraph of this review could possibly hint.

I am also a big fan of 'The Night Is Over', where it is not even clear which of the two is more res­ponsible for the song's deadly snarl — the overdriven wah-wah guitars or the apocalyptic organ. The heart-crushing shifts between the more «romantic» middle eights, replete with dreamy slide guitars and stuff, and the crashing power chords of the main verse/chorus melody have a char­ming retro spirit to them, as in several guys getting together and deciding to simply put out a good old art-rock song in the old, time-tested way. Cute!

Now that I keep relistening to bits and pieces of this for the sake of nurturing extra ideas, I keep liking the songs more and more, almost to my amazement, considering how much I normally de­test generic alt-rock lashing, of which there is so much on this album. It's just that every song has tons of layers in it. So I never paid any attention to 'Captured State' first or second time around — just seemed like a so-so mid-tempo piece of rock ballast to me. But in reality, even at its most deafening, the song has at least one or two extra melodic lead parts tucked away in the speakers. And the keyboard accompaniment is a Hammond organ (or something), so far removed from the usual cold-blooded synthesizers. And it is still easily the weakest, or one of the weakest, contri­butions on the entire album.

I just like this groove the band has developed — it does not work wonders for catchy melodies, but it's perfectly adequate, and the album grows and grows in stature with each new listen. Oh, and its subject themes? Uh, lost love, loved loss, failed memories, memorized failures, whatever. It's dark, but too melodic and dynamic to be significantly depressing. Angry, wrathful, epic, ro­mantic, but never foolish enough to pester you with its overbearingly fake emotions. Good stuff — a step down from Tuonela, perhaps, but with so much experience and success behind their backs, Amorphis could allow themselves plenty of steps down before hitting dirt.

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Agnostic Front: Last Warning

AGNOSTIC FRONT: LAST WARNING (1993)

1) Undertow; 2) Your Mistake / Victim In Pain; 3) One Voice; 4) Infiltrate / Strength; 5) United Blood; 6) Public As­sis­tance / Over The Edge; 7) Blind Justice / Last Warning; 8) Crucified; 9) Toxic Shock / United & Strong; 10) Fascist Attitudes; 11) Anthem / The Eliminator; 12) No One Rules; 13) Final War; 14) Last Warning; 15) Traitor; 16) Friend Or Foe; 17) United Blood; 18) Fight; 19) Discriminate Me; 20) In Control; 21) Crucial Changes.

I like this, but let us keep it brief and up to the point. This is yet another live album recorded at CBGB, in December 1992. Although there are 11 tracks altogether, they frequently splice two songs in one whole (perhaps keeping up that way with their newfound metallic image and distan­cing a little from classic hardcore), which brings the total up to 17. The setlist depends quite hea­vily on material from One Voice, apparently quite a treat for fans of all of their stages, because they seem to have been downplaying that period after the next reunion. However, all of the three «classic period» albums are also sampled with proper respect.

As usual, everything blurs together, but I like the overall sound they have going. Metallizing the «classics» transforms the band from a formerly drunk, blundering Godzilla, pulverizing skyscra­pers at random, into a stone cold sober and meticulous Godzilla, demolishing the neighbourhood according to a carefully structured plan. Chaos and confusion remains to be sown by Miret and his usual trachea-style vocalization. In a few million years, I could even learn to love this.

Until that time has arrived, I will just remark that the mix here is totally excellent. The crunch of the rhythm guitar pours out of the speakers, and the speed metal leads wail and whine on top of that in such crisp, clean tones you'd think this was so doctored in the studio... hey wait a minute... oh never mind, I don't even wanna know. Also, this is the first time on record that we hear Miret give out long rants — and his spoken voice is actually quite nice, especially when he talks about helping «abandoned children with AIDS and other terminal diseases» etc. (For some reason, such announcements coming from Agnostic Front sound nowhere near as annoying as when you hear them from Bob Geldof or Bono. Maybe it's just the rich man / poor man effect).

As a bonus, you get to hear, in its entirety, United Blood, the band's debut EP from 1983. For the info, the entire EP consisted of songs that rarely exceeded one minute in length ('Fight' is over in 15 seconds) and is, consequently, considered a lost classic. But if you ask me, there was a reason they still decided to switch to two-minute length on their LPs. For die-hard-core fans only, and historians of the genre.

Ash Ra Tempel: Seven Up

ASH RA TEMPEL: SEVEN UP (1972)

1) Space; 2) Time.

The most famous bit of info here is that Seven Up was a collaboration between Ash Ra Tempel and Timothy Leary — and that the title honours a particularly memorable experience of spiking the band members' 7-Up drinks with acid (no idea if it is true). It is also the most useless bit of info, because little good usually comes out of collaborations between musicians and their non-mu­sical gurus (who normally happen to be tonedeaf), and Seven Up is no exception.

Not that I have a clear understanding of what Leary's exact contributions to the album actually con­sisted. He is supposed to «vocalize» on some of the extended passages, and he may be respon­sible for some or all of its «concept»; but other than that, putting his name on the front sleeve alongside the band's own moniker must have been more of a general homage thing than anything else. If the concise message is that, without Timothy Leary, there would have been no Ash Ra Tempel, I can understand it. At the very least, even if Seven Up is quite far removed from the greatest Ashra experience ever, at least the acid guru's guest spots do nothing to ruin it.

The first side of the LP is, overall, more accessible, but also slightly less interesting. It is a spli­cing of several «normal songs», recorded in a rather generic blues-rock vein, but sewn together with psychedelic noises, cosmic announcements, and electronic stardust. 'Downtown' is almost pure 12-bar blues, whereas 'Power Drive' is more like your average ga­rage extravaganza, and 'Right Hand Lover' is Canned Heat-style boogie-blues. The idea may have been to play all this stuff while being on acid all the time and see what happens.

Well... if so, there is no better con­firmation to the fact that the best psychedelic music actually comes from a completely drug-free conscience, rather than a chemically altered one. Because the psychedelic processing is mostly boring, and, sacrilegious as it may sound, I'd rather just hear Göttsching play straightforward blues-rock, because already the self-titled album showed how competent he was in that department.

Or, perhaps, considering the titles of the tracks, this is an intentional sly hint at how utterly un­fascinating the concept of «space» is next to that of «time». Because Side B is where it's all really at — a long, drawn-out, half-raga-like, half-ambient meditation, not as otherworldly magical as 'Suche & Liebe', but very much in the same vein, like a series of interchanging lullabies, each disseminating its own mood: some scary ones, to frighten you off to sleep, some majestic ones, to awe you into sleep, and some trance-like, to freeze you with your eyes open when all else has fai­led. Then it all ends in a fizzly cloud of white noise which may symbolize the relativity and the true sta­tic nature of time as such. Or it may simply be a case of somebody forgetting to turn down the controls at the end of the session.

Göttsching's playing skills are not as well displayed on this record as they are on the ones that surround it; Leary's presence is not annoying, but hardly necessary; and whatever idea could go­vern the building of 'Space' wasn't a very good idea. For all these and possible other reasons, Se­ven Up is a relative failure, a bit of a misguidance in an otherwise well-designed program of con­quering the world. But even as one of those big whoppin' question marks, or silly dead ends, it remains curious enough for me not to want to downgrade it.

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Amon Düül: Paradieswärts Düül

AMON DÜÜL: PARADIESWÄRTS DÜÜL (1970)

1) Love Is Peace; 2) Snow Your Thirst And Sun Your Open Mouth; 3) Paramechanische Welt; 4) Eternal Flow; 5) Paramechanical World.

An almost unpredictable surprise: Amon Düül's first, and only, attempt at establishing themselves as a real band — perhaps, spurred on by feelings of jealousy towards their musically more ambi­tious brethren in Amon Düül II (a couple of which still ended up guesting at the sessions, because the entire collected musical talent of Amon Düül proper would not even reach the level of the Monkees, let alone real Krautrock competition). Predictably, it did not work, but at least it's (a) GROWTH, (b) not as awful as it could easily have been. I mean, in 1970, an underground band of poorly trained «musicians» could release an entire album of running up and down any basic scale, and it would still sell — a little — as the ultimate mind-expanding experience. Fortunately, Paradieswärts is slightly better than that.

Slightly. The entire first side is occupied by one 17-minute track, consisting of two parts: first, a folk-bluesy electric part, pinned to a trivial looped riff, then a raga-style acoustic part, pinned to even more trivial acoustic strumming, with some electronic noises forming a bridge between the two. There is some overdubbing (bass, extra guitarwork, including what tries to pass for baroque acoustic flourishes, etc.), but overall, you can only think positively of this track if the atmosphere happens to be to your liking — enough to make you enter a peaceful realm of sleep.

On the second side, 'Snow Your Thirst...' is another Grateful Dead-ish experience, but expanded with a lengthy and, surprisingly, not too atrocious electric wah-wah solo; 'Paramechanische Welt' is another raga that sounds quite similar to the second part of 'Love Is Peace'. Furthermore, CD editions also include two shorter tracks that were released as a single slightly before the LP, of which 'Eternal Flow' could be moody and melancholic if it weren't so goddamn minimalistic — and with Amon Düül, the feeling never passes that their minimalism is due not so much to their intentional love for minimalism as it is to their formal inability to practice maximalism.

In short, it is all quiet, atmospheric, «pastoral», as some would claim, and utterly irrelevant in the face of so many much better albums out there. But apparently, Amon Düül themselves believed this music could get you to paradise (see the album title), and, since it is hard to scientifically fal­sify that belief, you might as well join in, to avoid frustration. Still a thumbs down, though, from a voluntarily frustrated non-believer.

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The Beach Boys: Today!

THE BEACH BOYS: TODAY! (1965)

1) Do You Wanna Dance?; 2) Good To My Baby; 3) Don't Hurt My Little Sister; 4) When I Grow Up; 5) Help Me, Ron­da; 6) Dance, Dance, Dance; 7) Please Let Me Wonder; 8) I'm So Young; 9) Kiss Me, Baby; 10) She Knows Me Too Well; 11) In The Back Of My Mind; 12) Bull Session With "Big Daddy".

Let me put in a few kind words for Mike Love. Whatever he did for the Beach Boys' reputation starting in the mid-Seventies and onwards — we'll get to it eventually — is inexcusable. But as for his infamous clashes with Brian over the band's direction in the «classic» era of 1965-67... well, it would be one thing if the Beach Boys wrote and recorded their surf/cars/girls songs like any generic teen pop band. But by 1964, Brian had already learned to keep such gems as 'I Get Around' coming on a regular basis — songs that were, at the exact same time, artistically inno­vative and commercial. So... if you can write music that is loved both by the critics and the pub­lic, what's your problem?

No wonder Mike got so infuriated when he saw Brian concentrating, first and foremost, on com­plex, not-so-easily-accessible ballads. He might not have been railing so much against innovation and progress as he was upon what he perceived as an incomprehensible haughtiness, an out-of-nowhere desire to go and lock oneself up in an ivory tower. And, to a certain extent, I get that feeling. By concentrating exclusively on his «pet sounds», which could, medically, be interpreted as giving in to the call of autism, Brian, want it or not, would lose some of the versatility and fle­xibility that he showed off so well in the early years. In a way, paradoxical as it may sound, his music, with Pet Sounds and whatever ensued, became more predictable — more complex, more profound, more spiritual, but less diverse and adventurous.

Which is why The Beach Boys Today! has eventually become my favourite Beach Boys record. For a very simple reason — it contains everything one should know and understand about the Beach Boys, a perfect demonstration of all of their capabilities and almost none of their flaws. On Side A, it has songs tailor-made to send Mike Love into waves of ecstatic frenzy, and yet, at the same time, impenetrable to criticism unless one just hates pop altogether. And on Side B, you have a bunch of ballads whose lyrical subjects may not reach the depths of thought that Tony Asher or Van Dyke Parks would soon bring in... who knows, perhaps that's a good thing... but whose musical layers and heavenly vocal arrangements would never truly be surpassed; I am, in fact, arguing, that, even if Brian would be still writing music every bit as beautiful in the follow­ing years, Today! already finds him at his accomplished peak.

Four words: 'Please Let Me Wonder'. The most perfect synthesis of romanticism and realism that the band had created up to that moment — and when you think that Mike Love is actually credi­ted for the lyrics, it also becomes an acutely band-like thing, more so than Pet Sounds and Smile that were more like «Brian Wilson solo albums with invited guests supplying vocal harmonies». Not that the lyrics are great, but they're okay, a nice rendition of a perfectly believable situation. The poor protagonist guy is smitten, but hasn't really got the nerve and/or courage to come out with it, so he is just content with asking to "please let me wonder if I've been the one you love, please let me wonder if I'm who you're dreaming of" — ah, what the hell, most of us have, at one time or another, asked this question, no matter how macho some of us may try to seem in every­day life. (If you haven't, you must at least be Che Guevara or something).

The music, owing quite a bit to Phil Spector's wall-of-sound, is not stunning on its own (but then I have also never been a big fan of the instrumentals on Pet Sounds, either), but it acquires stun­ning power in conjunction with the vocals — even before the chorus comes in, with Brian's lead line "Now here we are together..." as the most gorgeous verse melody the man ever wrote and sung. There's such a delicate mix of loving tenderness (his inner voice is addressing the invisible heroine as if she were made of china), fearful insecurity, and down-to-earth realism — not one single note is overcooked — that I can only express pity at the fact that so few ballad-makers took serious notice. This is how these things ought to be done, period.

The magic of 'Please Let Me Wonder' has always obscured the solid qualities of the other ballads for me — perhaps they should have placed the song last rather than first — but there is no getting away from the fact that musically, 'She Knows Me Too Well' and 'In The Back Of My Mind' are more thoroughly developed, and presage the psychedelic/baroque qualities of Pet Sounds. 'In The Back Of My Mind', furthermore, has been donated to Dennis — a questionable decision, see­ing as how he was always the least technically accomplished singer of the whole bunch, but, on the other hand, his «painful» delivery is also a quirky precursor to his later career; you can easily trace a straight line from the experience of singing it on this album to the aching confessions on Pacific Ocean Blue twelve years later.

Then there is no forgetting the first side, either. 'Do You Wanna Dance' does away with Bobby Freeman's silly bongo sound, cranks up the speed dial, and becomes a rip-roaring anthem to the powers of dancing, with yet another lead vocal from Denny, this time far more confident and col­lected. The original creation 'Dance, Dance, Dance' that bookmarks Side A on the other edge, has all that and terrific vocal harmonies, rising and going in circles according to a pattern that has its direct precursor in 'I Get Around', but may be even more tricky this time. For 'When I Grow Up (To Be A Man)', Brian hauls out the harpsichord — still a fairly rare instrument in late 1964/early 1965 — and trades a set of commonplace, but always relevant teen-philosophy questions with Mike ("will I love my wife for the rest of my life?" — nice question to ask, Brian, I'm sure Mari­lyn was only too happy to hear that one). Only the early, rushed, version of 'Help Me Rhonda' sounds underdeveloped, a mistake the band would soon correct on their next LP. Elsewhere, no trouble with anything whatsoever.

Oh yes, a brief reminder of the fact that the LP medium is not allowed to exist without filler is still there in the form of the last track: 'Bull Session with Big Daddy', which tries to pass for abo­ut two minutes of civilized interviewing, but is constantly getting derailed with complaints about stepping on one's French fries — and that one immortal quote: "Of all of Europe the only thing that stuck out in my mind is the bread" (I don't quite understand who exactly said that, and I don't think I want to know) — granted, American bread does suck, but just how patriotic is it to rub that fact of life in our faces? Anyway, two minutes of humiliation for us all here to remind that listening to perfection may be dangerous, since it makes us forget that we are still living in the real world, where people not only write and perform beautiful music, but also behave like silly clowns and eat cheese sandwiches.

As a beautiful, well-balanced, and (for a bunch of young kids in early 1965) intelligent album, Today! has few peers — in fact, even a «Beatles person» like myself must admit this was the on­ly time when Brian Wilson clearly was in the lead; and I do not mean the formal richness of the sonic texture, which Brian, ever the trustworthy disciple of Phil Spector, would always excel in, but simply the realization — the conscious realization — that his mission here on the planet was to create something bigger than just «pop music». The Beatles would slowly gravitate towards this realization over the course of 1965; Brian must have been thriving on that mindset as early as late 1964, and maybe even earlier than that. Sensitive soul, that Brian. Thumbs up.

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