Ministry – AmeriKKKant


Ministry is extremely stupid. Al, if you’re reading this, I think you’re insanely talented. You crafted one of the most unique sounds in Industrial and left most Metal bands in the dust. At their average, they captured the rusty, nihilistic, borderline satirical tone that Industrial music always aimed for. You don’t need their best tracks to hear metal that does sound dangerous and threatening to destroy the world along with itself.

The Bush trilogy is stupid, but it was powerful. The lack of insight into politics or the stupidity didn’t stop tracks like “Gangreen” to have power in how much bile and hatred they express. “Worm”, a fantastic display of depression could only come from a political record that’s full of fear and paranoia. The last album in that trilogy was surprisingly good. If the Bush triloy lacked any insight, it was powerful in capturing the emotions of living in such constant fear and hatred of the government.

Oh, but how stupid is Ministry! They can’t write songs. They create loops which beat you over the head for five minutes. That’s why Ministry were always a Dance act more than a Metal act. Verses and choruses are alien creatures to their music. It’s all about the loop that can keep people dancing, but often that loop didn’t change. So Ministry’s songs tend to exhaust themselves after 2 minutes. Exhaustion is another central theme of Ministry’s later works, so overall perhaps it fits.

Seriously, though, how stupid can you get? How stupid can you get with such a fantastic talent and sound design? AmeriKKKant is a moronic album. I mean, look at the title. It still thinks it’s clever to spell ‘AmeriKKKa’. Al is definitely late to identity politics, but hey it might sell records! The songs still consist of endless loops of the same thing. This time, it works a little better – thanks to turning to sludge – only there are so many terrible ideas in between it’s easy to forget that pretty awesome guitar solo that closes the album.

Why oh why did we need “I Know Words”, which is Trump’s vocals scratched and chopped to some fiddling in the background? It sounds like a Nurse With Wound B-side, or at best a stolen section from one of his songs. As an intro, it’s too long. As a 3-minute experimental piece, it goes nowhere and has no reason to take up so much space. Later on we get another interlude with the wasted title of “TV 5/4Chan”, which juxtaposes right-wing vocals with some noise. What does it mean? I don’t know. Right-wingers are pretty bad and are on 4chan. Ministry writing a song about the idiots of 4chan would’ve been actually nice. Maybe someone should take an axe to that meme culture, but sadly Ministry missed their change.

As for songs, the first singles are the worst. “Antifa” has been beaten to the ground and it will never get old. The song chugs along with indifferent riffs. The chorus is Al roaring “We’re not snowflakes, we are the antifa” without any hint of passion or anger or fury or anything. Even in terms of pure sound the song is bad with how dry and hollow the production sounds. “Wargasm” isn’t as stupid and it has a chorus – rare in Ministry’s catalogue. Sadly the song also chugs along with little passion or fury. Al sounds tired. At least at their dumbest, Ministry was furious. “Wargasm” lacks all that. Shouldn’t he be excited to make something other than Thrash metal?

What makes all this more frustrating is that there are hints of a bright future for this band. Although the highlights don’t have Ministry’s fury in the Bush era, “Twilight Zone”, “Game Over” and the title-track are all borderline excellent. Moving to more sludgy metal, sampling like hell and DJ scratches all help to create a suffocating sense of apocalypse, paranoia and general depression from the end of the world. It separates itself from the Bush trilogy by having zero hope. If the Bush trilogy had a warlike spirit, a character to direct anger at this has none.

“Twilight Zone” would’ve been a closing track in past Ministry albums. Now it’s the first actual song. It doesn’t even have a proper riff, but a slow, crumbling sound design that plays like the apocalypse. Sure, Trump is sampled and make fun of, but it’s no longe the direct hatred of past albums. Everything is bad and there is no light. It is a direct sequel in spirit to “Worm” and “End of Days”, combining the depression and the apocalypse. Time will tell how strong it will stand, but it just might enter into Ministry’s greatest hits. “Game Over” and the title-track aren’t too different, but they do the job right and added some much-needed melody.

These are only 3 tracks out of 9. Then again, 2 of the 9 tracks are just interludes. So we’re left with an odd feeling of a very short album that runs for too long that has few ideas and not enough time to work on them. “Victims of a Clown” is a 4-minute catchy rocker that’s stretched for no reason for 8 minutes. The most telling track is “We’re Tired of It”, a return to Thrash that really does sound tired with a horrible, toothless production job. The walls of sound in “Rio Grande Bloode” were enough. This one has none.

People continue to beat Ministry for their stupidity and perhaps we should continue. Stupid ideas flood this album, from stretching “Victims of a Clown” to the interludes, to the first singles and the overall production job. Yet the solo at the end of the title-track and “Twilight Zone” prove Al still has talent in him and it’s a talent no one can capture. Most Industrial Metal bands either replicated KMFDM or Marilyn Manson and Ministry could continue with all the changing members because Al does have a unique vision. I only want him to finally be able to realize it without all the stupidity clogging up their albums. At least this gave me 3 tracks to add to the Industrial playlist.

2 k’s out of 5 k’s

Rag’n’Bone Man – Wolves


It seems fans of Soul music have annoying purists. I know, it sounds weird. Soul music at its best is so warm and welcoming. Whether you’re bumping the aimless, hook-free stuff of Marvine Gaye or Stevie’s more melodic works, Soul is never high brow, never patronizing the listener. In complete opposition to the rock of the 70’s, Soul music is just an ordinary man with a prettier voice. Clearly, in listening to it nothing should matter much besides having good melodies, a good voice and an all-around charm.

This is too much to ask apparently, so we’re back to questions of ‘authenticity’ and ‘real Soul’. Since Rag’n’Bone Man – the most Bluesy name you can come up with since Seasick Steve – doesn’t have a Funk track going on for 10 minutes and endless falsetto without a tune, this is ‘bland Soul’. Come to think of it, Marvin Gaye was just showing off his vocal acrobatics over lightweight Funk. If that is ‘real Soul’, I’ll take Rag’n’Bone’s version any day. He has better hooks and his music is something more besides beating you over the head with how wonderful the world is because you’re a singer with a pretty voice.

Speaking of beautiful voice, writing off Rag’n’Bone as generic is odd. The last time such a gloomy, pessimistic artist hit the chart was, well, the Weeknd or Melanie Martinez. His music is actually not that close to Charlie Puth. He’s not a revivalist, churning out the old love songs with some horns and a more coherent song structure. His roots go way back, to the earliest of Folk music back when all there was to sing about was death.

This album is such a gloomy, death-obsessed thing. Rag’n’Bone sounds either at a funeral, on the verge of dying, after killing someone or before killing someone. Of course his low voice is the main attraction but it’s also how he uses it. His style of singing is the opposite of vocal acrobatics. That’s why comparing him to Soul singers is a bit odd, since he rarely takes those flights Marvin Gaye is famous for. Althoug falsetto occasionally leaks, it’s never dominant. What is dominant is how low his voice is, so low it might as well be buried.

The best expression of that is in the title track where he truly sounds dangerous. On the verses he’s frantic and almost loses the melody, but on the chorus the voice is so low you can imagine him trying really, really hard to contain himself form whatever danger is inside of him. It’s obviously about something inside of him that’s he’s scared of. The da-da-da voices in the backgrounds aren’t helpful. They are the voices in your head encouraging you to hurt or to cause mayhem. To think such a song will top the charts is uncanny. Such a song is too gloomy, too dangerous and too scared of itself to be comfortable. All the brutal screams Death Metal bands come up with, and they can’t reach the fear of the self in that song.

On the other side you get “Guilty”, which is a breakbeat-laden Blues thing where Rag’n’Bone claims he’s not guilty for feeling about hurting the lover he just woke up next to. Already in the opening lines we get death, because somewhere in this ‘million ways to hurt’ there must be an element of violence. Two lines later he writes the lover off completely. Although the rest of the song is simply about leaving a person, the first lines and those hard drums did their thing. Again, his low voice contributes a lot. It adds a layer of toughness and darkness to it all. Any other singer couldn’t evoke the image of death.

Death includes the loss of others, and “Life in Her Yet” is a more subdued number where he tries desperately to cling to someone who’s dead or lost all their memory. The repetition of the title is him trying desperately to convince himself you can defeat death, but saying that he ‘can’t let go’ isn’t a sign of strength but of weakness. He needs her. He cannot live with someone dying. In this song there is no incredibly low voice, but soft and defeated singing.

These are the main attratctions, but every song has the spectre of death hunting them. After all there’s a song called “Lay My Body Down”. Whatever “Reuben’s Train” is about, he sings it like a dirge at a funeral. From the singing alone, low and stretching into infinity you can deduce that the subject of the song must be dead. “No Mother” transforms the stomping work songs (that were all about death) with bass wobbles. Despite the EDM influence, it doens’t add any joy to the song.

He achieves this atmosphere successfuly because he understands how old Folk music works. He’s closer to Dock Boggs than anyone contemporary. The brand of ‘serious music’ he’s been grouped with, the bland wailing of Adele and Ed Sheeran are nowhere to be found. Always he’s a slave to the melody, but in the old days where all you had was a pickaxe and a banjo you couldn’t wail like you’re on the X-Factor. Sure, his voice is more polished and he has a greater variety in tone. Most Folk singers couldn’t pull off both “Guilty” and “Life in Her Yet” since they’re completely opposite characters. Now this may seem inauthentic, but by being aware of the overall theme of death he connects these two. They become two different expressions of the same theme.

3.5 wolves out of 5

Papa Roach – Crooked Teeth










3.5 crooked teeth out of 5

Linkin Park – One More Light












4 battle symphonies out of 5

Brother Ali – All The Beauty in This Whole Life

Some time ago, Brother Ali had vitality and passion. It was a time everyone hated Hip-Hop made for partying, so some did bland, unmusical Boom Bap and others decided Hip-Hop could be about things other than killing and fucking. Nowadays it’s not mind-blowing anymore and that’s okay, since that era gave us Atmosphere whose followers – like Grieves and Sadistik – are the future. Brother Ali had his sure of fantastic tracks.

When I say ‘vitality’, I don’t mean that Brother Ali gone soft or any of that crap. The best song here is “Out of Here”, and his best song overall is “Faheem”, a heartbreaking song for his son that’s arresting from the first note and the moment Ali opens his mouth. There is vulnerability in his voice, one of an everyman who struggles with everyman issues that despite being common they’re still so huge we need music to deal with them. For a long time, it was one of the first songs I offered any time someone went off on ‘Hip-Hop is not music’ rants.

This album continues with the more introspective, less political nature. Nothing here goes hard like “Whatcha Got”, and that’s okay. The problem is, Ali doesn’t sound like he’s really into making music. Many of these songs ramble and don’t go anywhere. When they do, these are messages we’re familiar with and their delivary isn’t interesting or adds something new.

I’m not even sure if Ali is capable anymore. Like any rapper in this style, he had a tendency to make songs that are too dense to be interesting, but “Out of Here” should’ve been more powerful, darker. It should’ve brought the same vulnerability that made “Faheem” so arresting, yet it just coasts along. If it never sends a comforting message like how life goes on, it also doesn’t provide much insight into the topic. Losing someone to suicide is confusing. It shifts paradigms. We don’t just realize someone is gone, but it was death by choice. Someone actively decided that this whole project called life isn’t worthwhile.

According to the story, Ali took a break from music and went on a trip around the world to learn a bit about the beauty and love and life. Just look at the title. This kind of optimism leads to two things. Either there is a madness, an untamed desire to live and experience and contain everything which often leads to gender-bending music or you get dull, non-confrontational Zen bullshit. As if being complacent, or passive or placid, or whatever bastardization of Buddhism we invent is somehow profound.

Ali’s new found optimism isn’t mad and engrossing. All it does is make him less confrontational, with less desire to jump fully into his ideas. “Before They Called You White” reeks of tokenism, not of anger or of intelligence. Ali wants to take on the invention of whiteness. That’s an interesting topic that people don’t say interesting thing about. I can’t even get angry at Ali missing the cases and histories of racism not done by whites. Nothing is more West-centric than pretending whiteness is the great evil, but at least the idiots who spew that are passionate about it. At his most passionate in his song Ali says ‘Post-Traumatic Slavemaster Syndrom”, which is kind of cool. As for the final hook, it’s ironic. If the eye can’t see itself and needs critique, can I do it to all cultures?

Don’t get the impression that this album provides insight into the racial struggles. Nothing here is like Macklemore’s “White Privilege”, an abomination that was at least interesting. The second time Ali talks about race with focus is on “Dear Black Son”, but since race is everywhere in contemporary discourse the song is not interesting. I don’t mind songs about the Black experience, but don’t expect a “The Blacker the Berry”, something that shows the pain of being marginalized, of being always afraid a random cop will shoot you or that everyone still gives you funny looks despite claiming constantly they’re not racist. There is genuine pain to explore here, but this song is nothing but ‘you’re beautiful and don’t let anybody tell you otherwise’. Considering Ali experienced losing someone to suicide, I think if anyone needs this message, they are people who don’t an identity to give their life meaning.

I digress. This review should talk about how dull Ali’s rapping is on this album. Whatever interesting thing he has to say on “Never Learn”, the best thing about is the bluesy beat. Mostly, it makes me wish I was listening to Grieves who is so talented even when the songs are about nothing he imbues them with emotion. “Never Learn” is just cookie cutter serious Hip-Hop, pleasant on the ear and nothing else. Most of the songs are like this. I don’t get it. Ali is a talented rapper and the first single, “Own Light”, has some life in it. In fact, it does hint that the album might be necessary, taking introspective Hip-Hop to a more optimistic direction and creating the antithesis of Sadistik.

Sadly, the end result is introspective Hip-Hop without much going for it, either in subject matter, atmosphere, tone, wit or anything. The impression is that Ali found peace, and now he doesn’t have much he needs to let out in music besides some joy in “Own Light” and sorrow in “Out of Here”. In the title-track which closes the song, he praises God and overall existence. Forget, for a moment, Ligotti’s pessimism and how existence is always bad. Is that how the passion and love for life should sound like? Isn’t happiness and love wild, untamed emotions which we just can’t contain? Aren’t the best smiles those we can’t control? I’m happy for Ali that he’s at peace, really, but if his heart isn’t in music then he doesn’t have to make music.

Anyone remember “Fresh Air”? Now that’s a song that could cure depression.

2 out of 5 here

Ed Sheeran – Divide

Reviewing an Ed Sheeran album only takes two sentences. Any song where isn’t trying to lure a girl to sex disguised as a romance is excellent. Any song where he pretends to feel deep, serious emotions is obviously bad. Of course, two sentences isn’t a review and there’s more going on here. Ed Sheeran is a star and his love songs are especially popular, so we need to figure out how exactly this crap works and why cheesyy love songs are still pumping out when he should be putting a backwards baseball cap and collaborate with Eminem.

I said this a thousand times before and it dawned me. It’s hypocritical to claim Ed Sheeran comes off like an asshole, even a dangerous one when Lostprophets is one of my favorite. These guys are a classic case of music as acting, when the front is completely different than the real person. Solution to this conflict is easy. Fist off, acting is all that’s important when judging music. Ed Sheeran can be a fantastic person for all I know, but I review his character here. Second, Watkins never broke character. Sheeran does.

“Shape of You” is the most interesting song here since it merges Sheeran’s two sides, and reveals all I said about him. He courts a lady with soft, sensual singing and sounds romantic. Yet listen to the chorus. It’s all about the girl’s body. Imagine if the song was sung by a heroin junkie homeless in the street or an overly obese dude with glasses and anime dakimakuras. The song is quite creepy in how it goes on and on about how Sheeran desires a body and not the person.

There have been countless songs about sex, but the key is that they sound authentic. When 50 Cent made “Candy Shop”, it was all about having fun sex. He never tried to sound romantic – only more into sex as having fun instead of status symbol. “Shape of You” has a fantastic melody, but it’s equivalent of a hot guy going on a date with a girl and only telling her how beautiful she is. Something about its bluntness and how Sheeran still sings romantically makes him sound like a person trying to lure girls desperate for romance to easy sex.

Everything else here is easy to digest. There are the ballads, and they’re all quite bad. Sheeran can’t seemt to find a bit of vulnerability in him. Every ballad is sung with confidence. A slightly low voice doesn’t equal vulnerability, especially when “Dive” and “Perfect” explodes into choruses. The latter actually has a decent melody that would be good in the hands of a different singer. He can’t even fake sincerity like Coldplay.

It’s too clean. When he sings that hearts don’t break around here, it’s more believable – only it must be Sheeran’s heart since women come back to him anyway (See “New Man”). It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what is it about him that makes his ballads sucks so much. Wisely, he doesn’t do any vocal acrobatics like Adele and his voice is quite beautiful. In style, he’s closer to the Weeknd, who is the model when you want to be both a sex icon and a mess. I guess it’s because Weeknd always lets darkness in, even when he brags. “Perfect” never touches on the possibility of heartbreak. It’s music for the end credits of a bad romantic comedy, as if once a romance starts it never ends and the story’s over.

Previously, he could sound more sincere (if unimaginative) when talking about things other than love and how awesome he is. “Happier” should be his moment to show heartbreak. The guitar strums in a defeated way, not trying to produce a melody and it aims for the warmth of an early Dashboard Confessional. Everything is hushed, the singing is lower and the piano is pushed back. Yet it doesn’t work. You can still see the stage behind him. Where is the bitterness of heartbreak he is so good at showing at “New Man”? The falsetto at the end is a joke, a gorilla beating on its chest, sounding more macho and confident than a Groove Metal band who are hell-bent on beating Pantera.

Then again, even with better acting these songs will most likely suck. They don’t contain a melody, but all lead to an explosion, like Coldplay that’s more readily available to stadiums. It’s not the source of the bad acting since it was present in his earlier songs. When he gets personal, the only reaction to it is ‘why the fuck should I care?’. Many artists wrote songs like “Eraser” (quite good) and “Castle on the Hill” (awful), but none of them sounded so self-centered as he is. Why should anyone of us care about Sheeran’s life, considering he made so much money singing pretty ballads?

‘Privilege’ is a word I didn’t want to use. After all, a lot of my favorite rappers are white dudes whose albums are psychotherapies with the listener. Grieves and Atmosphere come off as humble, sharing their stories with the listener with hopes of relating. “Eraser” has a toughness in it, Sheeran trying to convince us he’s tough because he survives the pain of being famous. Considering on later songs he brags about fucking – and sounds happy about it – I’d say it’s another attempt to impress us. The song is good, though. As for “Castle on the Hill”, it has the same idea as Adema’s “All These Years” without the darkness. Nostalgia is a painful thing. I know that since I spent 3 years in a military home and seeing a distance growing between me and my old self, me and my friends and all I’ve known is quite hard. “Castle on the Hill” paints it like it’s all happy and nice, taking a trip down memory lane. Don’t say ‘privilege’, don’t say ‘privilege’.

So it’s all crap so long as Ed serious. Smack in the middle of the album you get “New Man” and “Galway Girl”, two brilliant songs that will easily rank as among the best of the year. Switching up his demeanor, now he’s a playboy who fucks women and women call him up – despite having boyfriends – to fuck. It’s believable for once, actually has spirits and Sheeran is into it. The latter is about picking up a girl at the club but there’s none of the creepiness of the lead single. Instead, it’s just about how she fell in love and they had sex. The former is a bitter break-up song about how the ex-lover’s new man isn’t that good. The confidence, the venom in that song is fantastic. It’s not a rant or a plea for the lover to return. Condescension is the dominant emotion, with Sheeran sneering all the way to next  one night stand. It’s not a song to sing to convince yourself you’re over the break up, but to celebrate how you moved on. No coincidence that both of these are Hip-Hop driven.

Nothing here is too different than previous albums by him. His sound is expanding a bit and there is more than acoustic balladry now, but overall the man remains the same. He cannot break free of being a performer, he cannot get into the act. The difference between him and the horrible Watkins is that Watkins remained in character. Having “New Man” and “Happier” in the same album is jarring, since they’re opposites but there’s nothing to connect them. Eventually, one side takes over and the most convincing one is the braggadio and macho bullshit. It’s funny how that song take shots an ultramacho new boyfriend, because that’s exactly how Sheeran sounds like. I have no problem with that, since “New Man” is actually brillaint. I only wish he would let go already. “Galway Girl” has more spirit than any song here.

2 new men out of 5

Korn – The Serenity of Suffering


So Korn has turned into Sevendust.

The problem hearing albums like The Paradigm Shift when they come out, is that their role isn’t clear. Parts of it point to Korn still experimenting, just unsure what to do with their sound. There are still bassdrops in “Never Never” and “Spikes in My Vains” had something like rapping in it. The new edition also had “Hater”, their poppiest and catchiest song yet. On the other hand, a song like “Love & Meth”, as good as it was, had nothing going for it but the melody. Many tracks showed no interest in sound but just kicking melodies.

In an ideal world, Korn would work on both directions. They would have some weird tracks, some poppy tracks and continue to insert new genres in unexpected places. What the new album proves is that they weren’t confused at all in The Paradigm Shift. Rather, they were lacking inspiration so they couldn’t do anything with the rapping in “Spikes in My Vain”. They have seemed to lose almost all interest in their music.

What’s so disappointing about The Serenity of Suffering is how familiar it is. Nu Metal should never sound familiar. It was always about mixing genres but being catchy at the same time. That’s why silly metalheads and serious critics couldn’t make sense of it. You can stop many of these songs after the first chorus. Sometimes, you can stop them halfway through the chorus. Korn exhausts their ideas within a minute into the song.

I stopped listening to “Rotting in Vain” as soon as the hook kicked in. Korn repeats the same chorus structure for “Please Come For Me”, “Die Yet Another Night”, “When You’re Not There” and so forth. “Take Me” merely repeats its title. It was released as a single and I have to wonder what motivated them to do it. The song barely makes it to B-Side status with how lazy the chorus is. Frankly, I can’t imagine anyone wanting to write such a dull hook, not even a songwritier strapped for cash. Someone should’ve reminded them they already had a song called “Hating” back in Untouchables.

Untouchables is a reference point for many reviewers, but what people praise about is exactly what’s wrong with it. Back then, it was necessary. Korn had a bizarre sound but few hooks. “Freak on a Leash” sounds great because of the bass-heavy hook. Its melody exhausts its ideas in the first second, just like most hooks here. Now, I’m not sure what the purpose of this album. Korn proved they could write straightforward rock, so what’s the point?

Yet, there are a lot of hints here of Korn, of their unique personality. “Rotting in Vain” is as generic as you can get until the middle, where Davis breaks into his skat singing. “Insane”‘s hook may sound like a melodic carbon copy of “Let’s Do This Now”, but the band thrashes and adds some aggression to an otherwise ordinary song. Many of the songs also sound way better in the album’s context than standalone. Even “Take Me” sounds better here, since it’s surrounded by other Korn sounds and what dominates is their personality.

Speaking of their personality, it’s not adjusted for this material. Nu Metal was always shallow, so the best Nu Metal was always aggressive, angry and with an edge of fun it. The best Korn songs are “For No One” or “Right Now”, where the band was allowed to boast a little. Davis is an unimaginative lyricist, so much so that “Rotting in Vain” begs to be parodied (Only it’s not attention-grabbing enough for this). So all these songs are only about hooks. There’s no emotion here. The band has nothing interesting to say and in shows. That’s why the album often feels like above average ordinary rock. It’s being played by people who are more fun at parties, but not one you’d share your emotional troubles with.

Two tracks do stick out. “A Different World” is absolutely brilliant. It’s one moment where the emotion is convincing. Davis has a lyrics focus, and the song doesn’t just hurry to the chorus. That little build-up with the rolling drums contrast with the hook, which is itself a contrast. Davis sounds distresses, lashing out but literally backing against the wall while guitars smash behind him. They deliberately chose a steady rhythm. Corey’s guest vocals are used brilliantly, becoming more present with every appearance of the hook. It has a guarantee in the next Greatest Hits package. There’s also “Next in Line”, which proves that Korn can sometimes conjure a beautiful melody. If every song had such a hook, I’d be more forgiving.

On the one hand, I’d rather hear Korn playing a bunch of ordinary rock songs than other bands. On the other, I’d rather hear Korn playing anything but ordinary rock. They still stick out like a sore thumb. You have to do when your guitars screech and Davis’ voice is still one of a kind. It’s not a bad album and it has “A Different World”, but it has no purpose. It doesn’t add anything new to their sound and its set of songs isn’t particularly strong. Korn just goes through the motions, which is fine but I don’t want Korn to be ‘fine’.

2.5 different worlds out of 5