Triptykon: Eparistera Daimones (and the Shatter EP)
Triptykon is Tom Gabriel Fischer’s new band. For those of you who don’t know the name, he’s more famous as the main guy from Celtic Frost. And, to get it right out in the open, I’m not really that big a Celtic Frost fan. I like, “Circle of the Tyrants” and a couple other old songs OK, but I never cared much about “Dying God Coming Into Human Flesh,” or any of the new stuff. First of all, I found that song boring, and second, it didn’t make a lot of sense to me. Like, isn’t that title kind of backwards? Anyway, so this isn’t like a nostalgia thing, where I’m just saying it’s good because the guy that writes the songs is old and influential. I’m saying it’s good because holy fuck is this record awesome. First of all, it’s really subtle and varied. What I mean is that it isn’t about just strapping on some guitars and playing some cool riffs and yelling. Don’t get me wrong, they do that, but the range of expression on this record is much wider than you might expect. There are very quiet moments, very loud moments, very slow moments, and some almost death metal-paced moments, which is good. Nothing keeps a record from being boring like a change of pace and/or intensity. You have to really listen, or the contrasts’ll be meaningless, and you’ll have a very poor listening experience, but if you do listen closely, it’s very intense, and just flat out startling. Another thing about that is the sound of this record is in-fucking-credible. In order to get the full experience, you have to listen to it on big speakers, and turned up relatively loud. It relies a lot on bottom-end sound, so if you listen to it on little speakers, particularly the speakers of your computer, it’ll probably either suck or just not be that great. For instance, “Myopic Empire” (excellent track, by the way) right around the 2:13 mark, sounds pretty boring and bland on my little computer speakers, and probably on yours, too. But if you turn it up [man] while listening on big-ass speakers it’s one of the coolest, most powerful moments of the record. And that’s the point here – if you listen to it correctly (closely, loudly, and on big speakers) it’s awesome. The songwriting is. . . good but overt. Tom Fischer comes right out and says what he thinks in a very straightforward way, and that may be this record’s biggest weakness – there are no clever turns of phrase, the subject matter (as with all extreme metal) is not great, and there’s not much in the way of satisfying or challenging filling in of gaps to keep your brain working. But that being said about the lyrics, each song has an interesting and not overly-simple structure, the vocals are varied (there are like four people who do vocals for Triptykon), the music is varied (from distorted to acoustic & c.), and I already mentioned other stuff that’s varied. All told, this is one of the most complex and interesting records I’ve heard this year. I’m including the Shatter EP (sold separately) as part of the record because the studio tracks on it were recorded at the same time, and they were both released during 2010. I’m going to highlight a song from the EP (which consists of two real tracks, a programmed track, and two live Celtic Frost covers performed by Triptykon at recent shows) because it’s the track that’s most likely to sound OK on your shitty little computer speakers, but there’s no shortage of excellent tracks on the full length record. “In Shrouds Decayed,” “A Thousand Lies,” and “Descendant” are the best in my opinion. But listen to Shatter below. The video is great, and the song is representative – if you don’t like that, you don’t like the record.

Harvey Danger: Dead Sea Scrolls
Most of you probably don’t know Harvey Danger (which is a band, and NOT a guy), or if you do, you probably know them as the one-hit wonder responsible for the 1998 hit “Flagpole Sitta,” and that’s fine – that was their one moment of fame, and then they disappeared. The thing is, though, that they shouldn’t have disappeared. Their debut record, Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone? was excellent almost from start to finish. “Private Helicopter” is wack, yo, but otherwise it’s a damn good record. Unfortunately, they got caught in a crossfire of bureaucratic nonsense. Their record company was sold, and then they were forced to wait forever before they could record their follow-up, and by the time they did everyone had forgotten about them. Another issue was that they weren’t really the same band anymore – they had matured a little. That is, instead of pretending they were still snotty power-pop kids, they wrote songs that sounded like they were written by slightly older guys, which meant that they needed a sort of re-introduction to the public (which they never got). The result, The King James Version, was pretty good, but it went unnoticed. They toured behind it, and then dropped off the map. Singer Sean Nelson became a sort of session musician for various Kill Rock Stars acts, wrote a book about a Joni Mitchell record for some incredibly weird reason, wrote for and edited The Stranger for a while, toured as keyboardist and backing vocalist with The Long Winters, and did some other not-very-frontmanish stuff. And then in 2005 they got back together, without a record deal, and recorded Little by Little, which was just fucking amazing. Seriously, awesome record. You know how you’re a failure because you completely failed to do any of the cool things that you wanted to do, and honestly believed you could do, when you were young, loud, and snotty? And you know how now that you’re a failure, you’re kinda bitter about it, and wish that you had done something productive with your youth even if that only meant having a respectable and lucrative vocation? Now, imagine that the exact same thing happened to the snotty power-pop band that you loved during those wasted teen years, and that they then got back together and wrote a record about it – that’s Little by Little. (And if you’re some kinda la-de-da non-failure, then FUCK YOU, you fucking bastard. Don’t you dare rub it in my face. Who the fuck do you think you are, anyway? The fucking president?) Melancholy, mature, articulate, reflective, insightful – it totally deserved to be album of the year in ’05 – and they gave it away FOR FREE. But it also went unnoticed. That sunk ‘em, and little by little, a little later, they broke up. The last hurrah was The Dead Sea Scrolls, a collection of B-sides and hard-to-find tracks that, as a physical CD, was only ever sold at live shows, but that you can now download for nothing, just like Little by Little. And I like it. It actually came out in 2009, but I like H.D. so much, and I feel so bad that they got shafted again and again and again, that I’m including it anyway, essentially as a commercial for all their records. Buy ‘em. Except the free ones. Just download them. But buy the other two. The Dead Sea Scrolls has some really cool stuff on it, too. “Big Wide Empty” (no YouTube vid) is really a departure for them in terms of the production and what Nelson does with his voice; their cover of Hall & Oates’ “Maneater” is pretty damn good, and fucking hilarious to boot; “Sometimes You Have to Work on Christmas” is the only Christmas song I’ve ever actually liked; and “Plague of Locusts” has long been one of my favorite Harvey Danger songs. Hail Harvey Danger. Peace to Sean Nelson. I hope that positive things happen. I have no idea what video game the below video is for, or why someone would make something like that and put it on YouTube, but the song is “Plague of Locusts.” Listen. It’s good.

Autolux: Transit Transit
Autolux is a band that I do not know. Honestly, longtime BZ reader Margaret James (who looks a little like Carla Azar. . .) threatened Decanus Picto with a pistol, and said that if we didn’t review this record, she’d, you know. . . do it. So, here we are, reviewing a record under duress. I know nothing about Autolux other than that they wrote a song about me, so I can’t give you any significant background. This is their second record, but I never heard the first so I can’t tell you whether they’ve gotten better or worse, evolved or stayed the same. All I can tell you is what I hear when I listen to the record, and that is surprisingly good music. By that I don’t mean astonishingly good or anything, I just mean that this isn’t my kind of band. It gives the impression of being electronic music even though it’s mostly not electronic, the singer sounds kind of like Kid A-era Thom Yorke but with less personality, it’s sort of postmodern, and I went into the process of listening to this record with a bad attitude. So, when I actually wound up liking the record, that was surprising. But the fact remains – I do like it. For the most part it’s drum/bass/guitar music, but there are piano/keyboard moments, effects, synth & c here and there. The production is kind of hollow, and the guitar has that weird tone that’s somewhere between the clean channel and the dirty channel on the standard amp – all of which is kind of unremarkable. These are qualities that are neither good nor bad in themselves, but instead depend on what you do with them. Where Autolux really get you, though, is with the songwriting. As I listened to it the first time, my impression was essentially this doesn’t sound like anything I’d care about, but then later that day I found the second track, “Census” (YouTube vid removed, but that’s OK, because it sounds kind of like this song) playing in my head. I went back and listened to the record again, and other songs had a similar effect. Though I described the vocals as being somewhat without personality, at least one track, “Spots,” was pretty affecting, too. This may be because it is weirdly redolent of the Beatles’ “Because” and/or “You Never Give Me Your Money,” but for whatever cause, it works. “Highchair” kinda sounds like a Radiohead outtake (there’s that comparison again – I’m trying not to dwell on it), but the rest of the record works as well. The best tracks seem to be (again, I’m not that familiar with this band) “Census,” “Supertoys,” “Spots” (my fav, I think), “The Bouncing Wall,” and “Kissproof.” Though I never heard of these people, and though I admittedly went into this record with a bad attitude, it’s something I’ll listen to again.

These are the last three records on the list. Listen to the samples, make your choice, and vote for your favorite by emailing sexcult@BlueZer0.net! In a few days, we’ll count up all the votes, announce the winner, and post a list indicating how each band finished in the voting.

NB: By popular demand, there will be a write-in vote, though use of pistols is, as always, discouraged. We at BZ find this to be superfluous as our data mining contractors have assured us that they know which records you people like best, but whatever. Go ahead and pretend you can surprise us. Continue doing what you were doing, and absolutely do NOT delete any cookies, reset your browser, or anything.