VNV Nation / Empire
Even my intimate friends wonder why I so willingly go to the show of artists even if I have never listened them before. I don't think it so strange that one begin to listen to some artist with an oppotunity of direct acquitance as a start. Nay rather, I think it is more bizarre that some maniacs are quite crazy about buying up almost every stuffs of artists whom they cannot see directly ever.

As this story, as for this artist I begun to listen with their concert announcement as a start, and the first album I bought pleased me much, so I bought another album which is this album I'm reviewing now. Well, interestingly enough, they do almost same thing in this album too. However one-patern it may be, if one is struck by it, the person become their fan. Then so far so good, maybe. However, even for this level, that is a great one-pattern or a master of just one single art, they lack something slightly, I feel. One good thing is that they don't make a easy reproduction of the style of some former artists as the album I reviewed before.

Angel Corpse / Exterminate
The second full album of a death metal act from Florida, which was reported to be disbanded a half year ago sadly.

Whatever reason and feeling I have, I happend to collect rather many CDs of death metal. However, among them there are really few stuffs which attract my feeling to listen to. And this album is one of such few albums. I'm really big fan of them, but to be more, this album is the best thing they created, I think. However many times I listen to it, it never makes me boring.

By the way today listening to this I found their performances in this album are sometimes rather rough. However, their driving aggression get it down, and this increases the speed of accelerated rush of this album. Every band in first rank has such a period in their history. And this reminds me we missed quite good band. Let me say good luck to the new life of Mr. Pete and hope for the return of Mr. Gene and fellow into the scene.

Vader / Live in Japan
For preparation for their upcoming show on the end of the next month. I happend to make increased the amount of bands of which I knew just the name formerly, but an information of show forced me to rush into a CD store and listen to some albums. And, to be honest, this band in among them. I have to be ashamed, but at that time I comfused them with Venom.

Well, among such bands I immediately became a big fan of some bands just by listening CDs, for some bands by seeing their show, for some they failed to make me their fan even by their show, at last some bands made me an anti by their show. And for a present Vader is among bands I cannot be keen so much. Both their songs and plays are very good so far, but I cannot find something above that. However impolite it may sound, I think this is not so much over the minimal requirement.

Since this album was recorded in Japan as the title says, the frontman speaks some japanese phrases which make me laugh. By the way, I know no polish rock artist other than this band and Niemen (although he is not a heavy metal singer). So I have to wonder if these type of metal music is popular in Poland.

VA / Contaminated v.2.5
A sampler CD from Relapse which seems to be unopposed among rabels of this music genre. I got this at the Milwaukee Metalfest of this summer, and it was free.

Since unbelievably many stuffs from incredibly many atrists of surprisingly many genre are circulated nowadays, it must be extremely hard to be outstanding. And among over 20 bands, which one being familiar with Relapse can distinguish easily (and that is one of outstanding character of this label), some bands are so original that a ordinary people without any deep knowledge of this genre can discern them. In this respect, this label differs from other labels do nothing but make fans waste their money. Of course, the style each band takes is uncomprehensively different each other. But this compilation is still worth to be listened.

I think the former version was free. And slitely different version of this CD (v.3.0) consts still only a few dollers. It is fairly understandable that other labels cannot compete with this label doing this kind of thing...

Hindemith / Mathis der Maler Symphony etc. (New Zealand sym. o., Decker, 1994)
Of course I know the name of Hidemith, but as long as my impression, I've never heard his work at least consciously. I suppose one of the reasons is that: though admittedly Hindemith is one of the composers of 20th century, it is said his style of composition is a kind of romantic or quasi-classic one not avant-garde, and it prevented me from listening. However I was recomended 'The painter Matis symphony' by a classic mania recently, and happend to buy and listen it. I know some maniac classic fans blame some of Naxos CDs. But anyway, it is convenient and reasonable in case like this.

I don't know if it is good or not but, getting older I lost the firm adherence to avant-garde modern classical music. So I can enjoy this type of music far better now. I think Hindemith does quite well, especially in orchestration. Some great composer of musical history cannot sound a big orchestra as a whole but just asigns notes to instruments. Comparing to these businesslike works, Hindemith is quite good of using every instrument of a big orchestra, I feel.

By the way, for the first time I noticed this. A liner notes of Naxos CDs are always written in a few different languages. But contents of each article in each language differs, sometimes quite greatly. Reading and conparing two text in different language, I found that fact. Of course, only few people does such a strange reading...

VA / Random 2
Sadly enough, I cannot understand the reason fully, at least in Japan Gary Numan is a artist of "What? he is still working on music?!""I thought he was dead...". However, things are completely different in other country especially England and North America. And it can be understand from the fact that there is a second album for tribute to him, though the first one was a quite big double album. I heard that the organizer got so many offers from club DJs that they had to make another tribute album. This album has his birth history like this.

To be honest, I hardly like the remix album. The reason is this. Formerly, the remix was just a "Hm... where's the difference from the original???" thing, and after that came the abuse of remix for adding items in catalog. And for the consequence, just few conscientious works were entirely covered by other scum stuffs. I myself have some remix works especially those of my favorite musicians. But even among these, I sometimes incline to break some of them into pieces (for example The Orb remix of YMO, Techno Army feat. Gary Numan etc.).

Then, once I thought even our Gary become the victim of such trend (actually "Random 1" has some 'making our faces twitching' tracks). However, unexpectedly this album pleases me well, at least more than "Techno Army". I cannot grasp well the reason and explain it...

Delerium / Karma
Supposedly the most recent album by a "industrial" act from Montreal of Canada. As always I have to write, I don't know how many albums they have released. And there is another thing I cannot understand, that is, why this type of music is taken as a "industrial" thing, even though one of their members comes from Front Line Assembly. But here I don't want to argue this further .

Among various musical trends which I hate most, there is an abuse of ethnic flavor. Pretty long before there was a 'boom' (say, the band I most hated at that time was The Boom) of so called world music in japan which tortued and irritated me too much. In fact, I like such kind of music which digestes those elements well. However except these rare peculiar cases, the so called 'ethno' music rubbing just the surface of them for adding strange taste on it is a serious blasphemy to the original ethnic culture, as so called 'ethnic' dishes just with much more peppers and chiles. Well then, although fortunately this album belongs to the former group of good examples, but it is still close to the border line. Ethnic abuuses found in later some tracks irritate me.

Without doubt, one of the excellent aspect is an appearence of Mz. Sarah Machlachlan. As always, she works well and make the track she is in so outstanding as to wipe out my impression on other tracks.

Expulsion / Overflow
I think it is a mark of talentless writer to write same thing repeatedly, but I have to repeat: I got this CD at the clearnce section of CD shop I go every few days, and the reason I bought it was the beautiful cover. The booklet implies that this is a Italian band, and this is my almost full knowledge of them.

As typically in the genre of drum'n'bass, not a few musical genre has quite many subdivisions which ordinary people cannot grasp any difference between. And death metal is not an exception, so that by the word "death metal" one can bundle so many and different bands from Amorphis to Dying Fetus. It may be so embarrassing for some people. Well, this band belong to some soft type subdivisions within death metal. The vocal and any other instruments are not so much brutal, and their songs have no unaccessible element without crazy fastness. But strangely enough, they don't play so called melodic death metal.

I know some bands of this type, but almost all of them tend to discharge over boring songs and sounds lacking any peculiarities so that I'm not a serious fan of this (sub-)genre. However, seemingly this band has some exraordinary things as to make them attractive for me. By this album I can relize that, things such as a peculiar sense of rhythm, ability to make original riffs or an atomosphere are big telents and good fortunes for musicians. As for this album, although in fact there is no outstanding originality nor virtuosity nor bizarre lyrics, the fact I repeatedly listen to this album says that there is something special in it.

Paul Di'anno / Beyond the Maiden
Double best album. I bought it for a preparation for his show which I would see yesterday. Since pretty before it was announced the whole tour though north america was cancelled (allegedly due to visa torouble), I have never listened to this album. Being reminded that sad thing, today I salvaged this up from my chaotic desk-top and listened to it.

Ridiculously boring! Attractive tracks for me are just live tracks of past maiden songs added to the end of each disk. Besides them, all other tracks are incredibly tasteless pop-n-metal songs. To make matters worse, although they are still enjoyable if they are well written and played, however they sound no more than poor-quality reduplications of Rainbow after the departure of Dio or MSG at some pop addicted period. I have wondered why Paul couldn't get any remarkable success, but I realised the reason: for there is no sales point other than "ex Maiden".

One consoling aspect is that Paul sings well still, and it is rather unexpected (sorry Paul). All he needs are more powerfull musicial with great talent of writing songs, I assume.

It seems that talking of some ex Maiden guys such as Paul or Clive Barr one must feel sad.

Gore beyond Necropsy / Noise a Go Go
Blunt Force Trauma / Bled out
Sometimes it may be good to review two stuffs at once, I suppose.

I think both artist belongs to the genre "noise" which is, I find today, so vast and diverse that nobody grasp everything of them at once easily, as some other genres as Metal, Industrial etc. (I think one can grasp much easier the genre such as Techno, Punk etc.)

The former is a world famous album of a band which is regarded as the representative of the japanese noise-core scene. First of all, almost all of songs are too short to understand. I think they would better to call them selves "Core beyond Understanding".

However, this album contains drums and bases which makes their sound something like tune so that I can still catch up them even with difficulty. On the other hand, the latter album has nothing but sheer noises from beginning to last. Moreover, every track is so long. I think it's natural that hearing that this album discharges various changing noises for about an hour few people never want to listen this. But, I cannot understand the reason, it's not so much boring. Of course, still I cannot understand what they want to express.

However hard to understand this genre may be, I found my taste is more or less ununderstandable as that. I write this text listening to the former stuff, and it doesn't prevent me from smooth writing. What a bizarre thing the man is...

Danzig / Danzig 4
By some strange chances of fortune I saw the show of Danzig. To be honest, since at that time I have almost no interest except in Six Feet Under which was a opening act for them, as for Danzig I listened to nothing but their most recent album ("666 Satans Child") before the show. However, the show itself was so great, and Mr. Grenn Danzig was so handsome :-) that I became a big fan of them. My friend lent me this CD, of course I like this, of which I can remember clearly some songs played there. The true "song with hook" is like these, I think.

I have no interest at all in problems such as "Is Dangig metal or not?" "How about Misfits?" "Former Misfits with Danzig and recent one without him belong to different genre?". I'm deeply sceptical about whether such an severe hold-on with these vain problems has anything to do with enjoying musics themselves at least for ordinary listeners, unless one has to decide a concept of a magazine or something. I feel even some pity upon these people cannot help fighting on these matters.

Nonthless, without doubt Danzig is one of artists who consistently create hard-to-be-categorized-works. Personally, I think it is artists like them that destroy the border-line struggle which sometimes annoys musical writers and even in some cases listeners. Personally again, despise its name, artists of so called 'mixture' tend to limit their music within small area, I think.

Lustoslawski / Concerto for Cello & Orchastra (Wit + Polish National Radio sym. orch., 1995-6)
I myself cannot understand the reason, but recently I addicted to classical music again. Reflecting my career in listening to music, first I addict to a genre and investigate it rather fully, then next, finding that there are so many stuffs never more than the average and feeling bored about it, I move my main attention to another genre. I suppose I've moved it to classical music recently.

Well, among composers from Poland, in contrast with Penderecki who, I feel, rushed from one extreme point to another, Lutslawski have been working in a moderate point and never dashed into any extreme indecisively.

Then, if his works are just "I just tried to use a technique in vogue unseriously" type things, he is just an ordinary composer, neverthless, however half-hearted his "modern" works may sound, these are great "half-hearted" works surprisingly. In a word, in these works both the easily-to-be-listened aspect and the thrilling avant-garde aspect stay together pretty friendly, I feel. Regarding this, these works may be far better than works of Penderecki after his return to traditional techniques.