Prog-Core Is Sweeping The Nation!

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You may remember that I started a thread on the new Gospel album, an album that you will never ever hear, because you would probably never ever buy it in a million years if you saw it for sale:

the new album by Gospel on level plane is really cool. if you like that prog-core kinda thing.

Which is fine. I understand. Life is short. I probably wouldn't either. I got mine FREE. In the mail. The mailman gave it to me! (he hates me by the way. When we went away to have a baby, we forgot to have the mail held and he was very worried about us. Not worried enough to actually check and see if we were dying inside the house because of a gas-leak or something, but worried, and it pissed him off. I felt just terrible. But I had a lot on my mind at the time! I am only one person and I can't think of everything!!)

So now comes the new album by The Fall Of Troy called Doppelganger on Equal Vision. It's great. Guitar efx, whiplash YESSONG time-signatures, punk furor. There is a new day dawning, my friends.

I still have not heard The Mars Volta. (who i heard stole the show with their 3-hour set at Bonnaroo. Said Dave Schools of Widespread Panic: "They proved that you can get hard and psychedelic at the same time. It doesn't always have to be "happy, happy mushroom afternoon on the California coast" stuff." Yeah, man! My favorite sentence in Rolling Stone's write-up of the event - which actually sounds pretty cool. Herbie Hancock and the Headhunters doing "Frankenstein"!! I'd pay to hear that. - was this one: "...in the weekend's nost bizarre hookup, Hasidic reggae dude Matisyahu joining Trey Anastasio for a cover of Bob Marley's "No Woman No Cry"." hahaha! That is BIZARRE! The guy from Phish and a reggae dude doing a Marley tune!! The world has gone all topsey turvey, I tell you.)

so, anyway, all those indie-rock dudes "dabbling" with prog and talking up their old Gentle Giant records? Fuck 'em. The hardcore kidz have it covered.

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 18:57 (twenty years ago)

despite being an ex-phish follower, it's still pretty weird to see Matisyahu in full Hasidic garb performing reggae...

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 19:13 (twenty years ago)

scott, i love you

i listened to a Gentle Giant a few times this week

― Ridin' through the Galaxy, All I wanna do is drink a Pepsi (jaxon), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 19:14 (twenty years ago)

god, i hate silly names.

― plain ol' jaxon (jaxon), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 19:15 (twenty years ago)

Who ARE these fuckin' indie fuck dabblers of whom you speak?

― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 19:16 (twenty years ago)

Blame Cave In.

― - (smile), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 19:16 (twenty years ago)

everybody like prog now. i'm all in favor of it....

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 19:35 (twenty years ago)

THE GOSPEL ALBUM SLAYS.

― ddb (ddb), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 19:36 (twenty years ago)

Maloy came to this ambitious concept after originally planning to record a conventional EP. “I’d just been reading part of Thomas Kinsella’s translation of The Tain and it just struck me as something that would be perfect to write a long, epic song about in the vein of ’70s prog rock,” he said. “And we’d been working on this EP and we were just going to put a collection of about five normal Decemberists pop songs, but decided that it would be a good opportunity to explore something risky. So I ended up writing the whole thing in a weekend and the band worked on it for a week and we were ready to record.”

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 19:40 (twenty years ago)

"risky"

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 19:41 (twenty years ago)

rofl at dat.

what does it slay, deebz, dragons? (Hahaha ... )

― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 19:43 (twenty years ago)

I’d just been reading part of Thomas Kinsella’s translation of The Tain and it just struck me as something that would be perfect to write a long, epic song about in the vein of ’70s prog rock,

The wages of Horslips records being available only as imports in the States. Now I'm interested.

― George Smith, Wednesday, 27 July 2005 19:45 (twenty years ago)

IT SLAYS PHOTOSHOPED KITTY HEADS ON SNAKE BODIES TIM.

ITS AN AWESOME ALBUM...SUPER PROGY. HEAVY. AWESOME.

IM SURPRISED I MISSED SCOTTS INTIAL THRD.

― ddb (ddb), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 19:48 (twenty years ago)

SCOTT U SHOULD CHECK OUT BARONESS IF YOU HAVENT ALREADY.

RULES.

― ddb (ddb), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 19:51 (twenty years ago)

"despite being an ex-phish follower, it's still pretty weird to see Matisyahu in full Hasidic garb performing reggae..."

lol Dan, I think Matisyahu actually gives a shout-out to his kidz from '96 Fall Tour.

― Suzy Creemcheese (SuzyCreemcheese), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 19:52 (twenty years ago)

― plain ol' jaxon (jaxon), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 19:58 (twenty years ago)

I fully support your prog-core campaign, scott. For me, the biggest prob with Mars Volta, and, say, Tool before them, has been: not enough choons. I desperately want Mars Volta to be as awesome as they conceptually are, but they've yet to produce the A1 killer songs this movement needs. I'm gonna check Gospel and Fall of Troy with high hopes.

― Anti-Pope Consortium (noodle vague), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 20:15 (twenty years ago)

fall of troy are poppier than gospel. but in a good way. not in a dreadful melo-core way. (melodic hardcore doing its best to destroy the good name of hardcore punk in much the same way that nu-metal tried to destroy the good name of right and proper metal everywhere.) fall of troy are just kidz. and a power-trio! the guitars are nuts. supersonic noodle rock. kids in love with at the drive-in and yes playing their asses off.

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 20:33 (twenty years ago)

Does this mean the damn "brutal prog" name has been buried?

― Øystein (Øystein), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 20:42 (twenty years ago)

brutal prog

that's right. that's what Flying Luttenbachers called their stuff, not prog core. all of it sux. like why the fuck does my local record store have a "lounge core" section? wtf does that even mean?

― plain ol' jaxon (jaxon), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 20:50 (twenty years ago)

i always liked what the band Origin called their stuff: Core-core. as in the earth's core. cuz they were so deeply heavy, i guess. prog-core makes sense to me. it's prog mixed with hardcore punk. just like metal-core is metal mixed with hardcore punk. i don't know what lounge-core is. weren't the luttenbachers jazz-core?

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 20:58 (twenty years ago)

Who does rotten-to-the-core?

― George Smith, Wednesday, 27 July 2005 21:00 (twenty years ago)

I think we've had a "core" debate before. It's all just funnin', right?

― Anti-Pope Consortium (noodle vague), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 21:01 (twenty years ago)

yeah, it's for fun.

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 21:07 (twenty years ago)

i don't really care what people call stuff.

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 21:08 (twenty years ago)

Neoprog

― Marillion and Siege World Tour! (Øystein), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 21:13 (twenty years ago)

surprised that Dan was a Phish fan! not that it'll matter, but I actually think that's really cool (even if I'm not a big Phish fan)

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 21:18 (twenty years ago)

Where do I go to get more info (and possibly samples) about this band? My google-fu is failing me.

― Øystein (Øystein), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 21:19 (twenty years ago)

weren't the luttenbachers jazz-core?

scott, you heard 2002's "Infection and Decline"? it's like this really tinny, instrumental, sorta black-metal heavy prog album. sounds like magma w/the distortion turned up to like a gazillion. they even do a cover of De Futura. they called their own stuff Brutal Prog.

― plain ol' jaxon (jaxon), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 21:24 (twenty years ago)

i went to buy the Pawn Hearts reissue the other day and cute indie girl informed me that "everyone has been buying Van Der Graaf Generator lately!" and that until the past three months no-one ever ever bought anything by them and she had no idea who they were, but now she says "I have to say I quite like them" but I don't know if she only said that to make me feel like she was flirting with me when I know she wasn't.

― kyle (akmonday), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 21:46 (twenty years ago)

Origin has the fastest drummer I've ever seen perform live.

― - (smile), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 22:20 (twenty years ago)

oystein, check out the song whacko jacko steals the elephant man's bones. but listen to the whole thing. it starts out kinda emo:

http://www.purevolume.com/thefalloftroy

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 22:52 (twenty years ago)

it sounded kinda shitty on my laptop compared to the cd (duh), but i think you'll get the idea. and hey, maybe you will hate it anyway. i was seriously digging it today.

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 22:53 (twenty years ago)

supposedly you can hear gospel here, but i couldn't get it to work:

http://www.level-plane.com/gospel/

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 23:00 (twenty years ago)

one of the guys from gospel was in a band called helen of troy, not to be confused with the fall of troy, who were once known as the thirty years war.

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 23:02 (twenty years ago)

Probably people are buying VDGG stuff now because it's all been re-mastered recently, in England - "Pawn Hearts" is rather good, and definitely not neo-prog - it's 'real' progressive rock, as it were.

― SoHoLa (SoHoLa), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 23:39 (twenty years ago)

Didn't like that Fall Of Troy song you mentioned too much (although I only gave it one listen) but the stuff on that Gospel page is quite nice. I don't see all that much "Progginess" in it, barring a few odd rhythms and some nice syncopation, but it seems like a nice logical merging of "Jane Doe" and recent Isis. Definitely going to listen to this a bunch the next few days and see if it hooks me. First time in a good while that I've heard a new metal or *core band not immediately been bored or revolted, so that's very promising! Thanks!

Also, it's always nice to hear a metal[-ish?] band that's willing to be a bit loose. Metal has always been somewhat defined by rigidity, but I feel it went a bit too far in the 90s, in that it now seems like nearly every band wants to have that Meshuggah-precision (and maybe Watchtower techiness) To what extent this is due to a) triggers and b) pro-tools, I won't try to guess. It's really took a toll on my interest in paying attention to genres like death metal though. Of course,t he black metal scene has a number of labels and bands specializing in going as far in the opposite direction as possible, but they rarely swing like Celtic Frost did!
This looseness be my favorite thing coming out of this whole hardcore-guys-going-metal thing.

― Øystein (Øystein), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 23:47 (twenty years ago)

One of the reasons I liked the new album by the band Swarm of The Lotus (also recorded by kurt ballou, like Gospel's album) was the isis-like sludge mixed up with an almost jesus lizard-like elasticity in the grooves and guitar-work. and yeah, that looseness is what i dig about Gospel and the Fall Of Troy album (i think the whole of the fall of troy album is more impressive than any one song. the whole thing just swings all over the place in some surprising ways. and they are young, so i would give them time to grow too.) the tech-metal stuff can obviously get boring in a hurry. And it's probably the reason why i have ended up listening to the new immolation and hate eternal records so much this year, cuz the emphasis is on big riffs and just plain old metal godliness. i think it was refreshing! Also the Mistress album and the Raging Speedhorn album. They aren't SLOPPY, you know, but they have a punch and a swagger that computer-metal, as impressive as it can be, will never give you. the tech stuff can take all the risk and danger out of your music. you are left with something that is very shiny and also quite dull. but this is the curse of the virtuoso. (at least noodly power metal is FUN to listen to. i'll take the new demons & wizards album over the new aborted album. although i do enjoy blood red throne and the new circle of dead children album. okay, it's official. i have NO taste.apparently, i will listen to anything. i still say that the new nile album is COMPLETELY boring, and if they are the future of anything, you can count me out.)

― scott seward (scott seward), Thursday, 28 July 2005 01:31 (twenty years ago)

Loose syncopated metal sounds like something I should check out. As Oystein can testify, I too am bored senseless by the monotone, rhythmically straight monotony a lot of metal bands are pumping out nowadays. I shall have to look into Gospel.

― James Slone (Freon Trotsky), Thursday, 28 July 2005 14:51 (twenty years ago)

Is this like... Chrome Hoof or something?

― dog latin (dog latin), Thursday, 28 July 2005 15:15 (twenty years ago)

I seriously dig this Gospel material. I dig the groove.

― James Slone (Freon Trotsky), Thursday, 28 July 2005 15:22 (twenty years ago)

I second the love of Baroness. I can't wait to pick up their new EP after work tonight. Their album cover artwork is so cool, I'm tempted to get a copy on vinyl even though I have no turntable to play it on.

― ugly and mean, Monday, 8 August 2005 20:48 (twenty years ago)

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