Rants - Metal : A Malaysian Headbanger's Journey Part 2 no comments

Metal : A Malaysian Headbanger's Journey

Being a very naive and somewhat dormant kampong (rural community far from the outskirts of the city) boy, I was so thrilled about this new “satanic” music, so thrilled that I went out and bought my first record soon after. Instead of scaring this naive 13 year old (which the tabloid is still trying to do till this day to boost the sale of their crappy tabloid), that bloody tabloid converted me to Heavy Metal. Haha in your face assholes.

I saved my daily allowances (which was not much), took a bus ride to the city and head straight to the record store with a mission to buy me a “satanic” heavy metal record. My first heavy metal record was Helloween’s Keeper of the Seven Keys Part 2 and that fucking Kiske blew me away. It was quite an old release since the record itself was released way back in 1988 but I had no time to give a damn. I was on a mission to be a headbanger and a headbanger I have been ever since.

The supercool "black metal" album! haha

My second record was Kreator’s Endless Pain. I bought it because it had a super cool cover artwork and Kreator had a super cool heavy metal logo. I hurried home and put the cassette tape (ahh those were the days) into the player and got myself my first dose of Teutonic Thrash fuckin Metal. Unfortunately being a naïve 13 year old still with the ears for singing birds and late night lullabies, I hated the record. Petrozza’s growls were so alien to me and I couldn’t figure out the riffs because it was too fucking loud and it was too fucking fast. “This must definitely be a black metal record” I said to myself.

It was from this point on that I started to learn to appreciate band’s logos. I think it is an under rated art. Look at those early Norwegian black metal bands, you need to have a very imaginative head to come up with those wicked logos. It was fun trying to decypher the name of the band just by looking at the logo. Back when I first started buying my own metal cassette tapes, if it aint got a cool logo, it aint heavy freakin metal and I aint buyin it.

to be continued...

Read Part 1

Bands - Irotori: 4 comments

I have been browsing the net again keeping my eyes and ears open for any talented Malaysian metal bands in the rough. Lo, seek and I shall find and look what have I found. I kept my ears opened every now and then for the bands with promising skills on their respective instruments. It is not just about promoting Malaysian bands; it is also about promoting the quality of Malaysian instrumentalists. Behold.

IROTORI

Wow! Irotori is one promising melodic death metal band ever to come out from the muddy banks of Kuala Lumpur, the capital city of Malaysia. First of all I have to admit that I was totally captivated by the vocals when I first listened to their song “Winds of Pain” on youtube. The singer’s high pitch black metal-isque growl has that robust grimness quality and it was executed perfectly by the vocalist.

In that one song alone featured an impressive three sets of vocal styles; the high pitch growls for the main verses, harmonized clear vocals for the choruses and some angry hardcore screams at the end. The brilliantly constructed flow of emotion was all over the place. Well done. Yeah, everybody can do multiple styles of vocals but how many have you heard doing it nowadays?

As a drummer myself, the first thing that I would try and appreciate when I listen to a particular song was the drums. I can seriously say that I felt that the drummer had fun recording his part, flawless tempo changes showing the faultless musicianship of the drummer, executed beautifully through the song.

3 second after the drum intro, waves of keyboard riffs, which was a bit high in the mix, were thrown into the song giving the listeners some ideas on what will they be getting next. Needless to say that guitar parts, although unfortunately were a bit low in the mix, were also beautifully done. The band even gave a few slots here and there for the low end guy to show off some of his skills behind the four strings. A perfect song indeed.

I felt the sincerity in the song and I have nothing but positive words for this band. I highly recommend this band. Try and give them a listen, they will blow you away with their powerful brand of melodic death metal. Untowardly, my review was only based on one song, the only song they had on youtube as well as on their myspace. Hopefully we can here more songs from them soon.

IROTORI MySpace

Book Review - To Live Is To Die: The Life and Death of Metallica’s Cliff Burton: 2 comments

To Live Is To Die: The Life and Death of Metallica’s Cliff Burton, Joel McIver, Jawbone Press, 2009.

With out any shadow of a doubt, Cliff Burton can be considered the most influential heavy metal figure out of the 80s Thrash Metal scene. Yes, Geezer Butler (Black Sabbath), Phil Lynott (Thin Lizzy), Steve Harris (Iron Maiden) (with the former two, each being a major influence to the playing of the mighty Burton himself), just to name a few, were all great bass players but the legend, momentum and impact that each and everyone of these legendary bassists have had on the underground metal scene, in my honest personal opinion, is incomparable to those of Cliff Burton’s.

With Metallica being the most successful heavy metal band of all time, the legend of Cliff Burton is not just some second page yesterday news.

This book was written by the mighty Joel McIver (the author who brought you the 2004 “And Justice for All: The Truth about Metallica” and 2008 “The Bloody Reign of Slayer”) with Metallica’s Kirk Hammet penning the foreward. Now that I am quite familiar with McIver’s methods in constructing the contents of his books, I have managed to finish this 272 page book at one go. One heavy metal biscuit for me, cheers.

This book can be considered as the most complete autobiography of Cliff Burton (none had ever been written anyway, except for the chapters written about him in every book written about his band). Covering in detail the journey of Cliff Burton, from his days playing in EZ Street with Jim Martin to his days in Trauma to his days in Metallica detailed down to his last days in September of 1986.

It felt like it was an off shot read to Justice And For All, McIver’s book on Metallica, since in And Justice For All, McIver had already dedicated a spread of 16 pages on the mighty bassist alone. If you have already read And Justice For All, reading through the pages of this book will give you a stint of déjà vu, if you get my drift.

What ever it is, this one is a must for all you Metallicats out there. RIP Cliff Burton.