Death To False Metal

We've been out of communication so as to finish as much of our day job as possible before skipping over to the Roseland for the Lamb Of God show. Some of you might be sceptical about our commitment to metal, and we understand that. Can one be a minion of Ted, and the Children Of Bodom at the same time?

Now, we are not saying that we are Of The Renaissance, but it is possible to follow metal simultaneously with less energetic genres, if only because of metal's extraordinary ability to absorb outisde influences without compromising its core principles. Namely, hella loud guitars and guttural screaming.

So, we had Finland's Children of Bodom first. We has assumed that the Bodom was an inaccurate transliteration of "Sodom", or part of the same unfortunate typsetting flaw native to metal that gave the Jewish-fronted Kiss an SS-inspired logo. But the 'Bodom, as we shall now refer to them, are actually inspired by Finland's Lake Bodom, where four teenagers were murdered in the 70s (more information here). Anyway, the 'Bodom's music is therefore about death and rebirth, and not about seeing how extreme metal can get while still including highly cheesy yet gothic synthesiser skronks. But they did have the tunes, as well as some inarticulate, curse-laden between-song banter in sing-song Scandinavian accents.

Fear Factory were much more to the point - brutal, fast, and utterly, pitilessly, disciplined. We remember, plugging their electronic remixes back in the late 1990s, and thinking that their Ministry schtick was very, very derivative but pretty effective. They lost Dino Cazares, who loved the beats, but Burton Bell's growling-to-crooning is still there.

Lamb Of God were utterly terrifying. There's a term used to describe some music, "mathy", that often connotes the aimless or inaccessible. In metal, it means you have no idea what is going to come next, and when it's good you'll be amazed and disoriented at the same time. Lamb Of God basically are the new establishment in metal, and when you hear Randy Blythe say that "nu-metal's dead, we're here to bring bad traditional metal", you realise how much room for growth in the genre there is.

In other news, Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds imediately decided to punish us for writing admiringly about his columns for the Guardian by writing a lamentable effort this week. Why don't the liberal journalists write about the good news? Maybe, dear Glenn, because your judgements about "good" and "bad" where elections are concerned should concentrate on fairness, stability, and potency, and not endlessly pointing out that no-one got blown up. It may be normal in Baghdad, but it shouldn't be.