THE HOOM! YEAR IN METAL 2008: FORTRESS AROUND YOUR HEART

1 PROTEST THE HERO * FORTRESS (Vagrant)

I'm a surprising guy and, as such, I often surprise myself. Like when ranking 2008's Metal to find the three best records each belong to styles I don't really dig. (Today on HooM! It's out-of-mode lingo day!) My bag is neither Gojira's march-metal nor the kinda too intense BDM of Hate Eternal. One's too drony and serious while Brutal Death Metal doesn't exactly make gentle love to the ear. BDM kinda just rams it in, usually without so much as a handshake. So, in the end (sorry), my timid and endless love for Fury & Flames, like the subtle but unmistakable lust in the voice of Lacuna Coil's Cristina Sabbia as I interviewed her brains out on MetalSucks, was a pleasant surprise. 

So talking about unexpected shit, we'd have to mention Protest The Hero, of Canada somewhere. I'd look it up but won't. Hearing Protest The Hero for the first time in 2008 for me was like Mom showing up at school, my forgotten lunch in hand. At first I'm like I told you to never call me here! but on the other hand CHEETOS! I'd prefer to look at that lunch as payment, her gift to the village elder in exchange for safe passage through the forbidden zone where parents were intensely unwelcome and powerless. As if at any moment, I would shriek at her No, lady, don't take me for a ride in your nearly-windowless van again! and an angry mob would throw her down a well. In a way, the melodies of Protest The Hero's Fortress are the Cheetos, my mom is five beardos from Canada, and the well is Heavy Metal Prison. I think I fucked up that analogy. 

 Singer Rody Walker is a heavyweight, no bullshit, but he's what we call 'hard to hear.' Too many polysyllables, too obsure, too much background noise. I am able to sing the words to no more than 4-6 complete lines. Like Big Drill Car's -Type Thing and At The Drive-In's Relationship Of Command, Fortress is sung in gibberish, phonics. Fans like me sound all flobbered on lithium when singing along. It's frustrating, especially since the production is so clinically white. No smudges. Everything locked down. These detail-obsessed prog spazzes, my stars.

The irony is that the ultra-perfect sonics are Fortress'sess only real flaw. It's easy to overlook Walker's fondness for whimpering really melodramatically like a post-Bjork Geoff Tate cuz he's awesome. Plus while his peers do nothing but, Walker won't sing hate songs to girlfriends or strength anthems for the bros. Also forgivable are the guitar players' questionable decisions re: 144 straight measures of two-hand tapping.  They wave their wieners a lot, a compulsion as distracting as it is gross. Yet these are all so-called 'good problems.' 

A great problem is that these hooks are so heavy and effecting that they really THUNDER. But, it's all one-night stands cuz Walker doesn't reprise anything; I'm struggling to word this correctly, but I mean he occasionally repeats lines but never non-consecutively. Some parts consist of the same line more than once, but rarely is any verse or chorus revisited. So to get my fix of the super-hooks, I was forced to spend a lot of time with the more elusive moments. Before long, Fortress had developed in me an irksome habit of lunging at the volume knob before awesome parts, and therefore is the direct cause of lots of kicked-over drinks and startled company. That doesn't sound right. I would never have people over to listen to emo-prog. 

METAL PEOPLE. MAKE 'THE NEGATIVE IONS TOUR' A REALITY IN 2010

It's right that Tool gets lots of respect. But do you what band is Tool's sorta neglected delinquent spiritual step-brother? Type O Negative. Both bands have very identifiable styles that involve repetition and droning and psychedelia. It's just that Tool is up in the brain a bit where Type O struts a bit about the crotchal regions. 

More Lincoln-Kennedy similarities: Both bands pepper their records with little vignettes between songs, sometimes just street noise and heels (Type O) or buzzing (Tool). And what about the inevitable outbursts of vitriol via indigence (Maynard, e.g. "The Pot") and bald immaturity (Peter, e.g. "I Like Goils" ad infinitum)? Spare, integral guitar players huh huh am I right. And Type O has the awesome keyboard guy who's a goddamn genius, whereas Tool's superstar on the virtuosity tip is drummer Danny Carey. It takes a big confident man to bleat 'Why?' (gang vocal: WHY?!) 'Why-ee-ya-ee-ya-ee Why doncha love me-hee? Any! Mo-ho-hoo-whoa-ho-oh?' (Peter) and it's not exactly some kinda lightweight who pulls off a real singable, rocking tune about child sexual abuse (Maynard). Best of all, both bands RULE. The final acts of Lateralus and Life Is Killing Me are like party boats to Boner Town. Where I am mayor.

Great Scott! Those fuckers totally should tour together. Think about it. It'd be the perfect exchange, the soul and the dong. This is my grail. Just imagine the backstage talk, won't you? The cerebral mystics of the higher plane opposite a buncha doorknobs from Queens? This is history in the making; seriously somebody call Scorsese or Demme holy lord. Or how about the little auteur responsible for the Twilight-themed MV featuring Type O's "Nettie" (above, dreamy). Y'know what -- let's really go for it. Get started pestering your local congressman and shit; I'll do an email campaign. I think a good way to generate a buzz is to make the subject line "Don't limp for woman's sex. Your pills are the hardest for her coital arts. FREE SAMPLES!" 

NOBODY DOES THIS TO MRS. RUSS CRANE

OK this is totally apropos of nothing but holy shit I tell ya what. For your Tuesday dollar, you won't get a better bitchfit than what awful, squeaky Reggie Miller's awful, squeaky sister Cheryl perpetrated to poor effect all over Scot Pollard, late of the Indiana Pacers and Boston Celtics, now with NBA TV. Apparently Pollard was late to the set by about four hours and in the Miller tradition we've come to know and tolerate on TNT Thursday nights (poor Marv Albert poor poor Marv), Cheryl piteously and shrilly lets him have it. And the higher-ups at the network get an earful as well. Chill out, Cher. We kinda thought you were too old to be PMSing. Listen to some Metal. It helps with the raaaaage!

O! CAN'T YOU FEEL? THERE'S MAGIC IN THE AIR!

Alright this may be news to some people but I hate hipsters. One particularly irksome tendency of people who wear very snug clothing is to put Power Metal on at the office and then like all ironically rock out. See, Power Metal is silly but it's not funny. OK wait it's both silly and funny, but that doesn't mean that guys with beards can laugh at it. Nope. Not budging on this one. Power Metal is our gay uncle and goddammit call him a queer at peril of getting forkstabbed into a different dimension. 

This particular ditty by Hammerfall, a band found so offensive by some as to spur a surprise broken glass attack, always reminds me of the great Earl Root, host of Root of All Evil on KFAI in Minneapolis. He'd always dip his wings for the Power Metal folks, and the other non-pussies tuned in could occasionally add a galloping glory anthem to their vocab. Word. Good shit is good shit. Keep the ahem flame burning, y'all.

SO HELP ME I HATE THE FUCKING SCORPIONS

Ok I don't know what sort of Faustian fucking deal The Scorpions have made when I let my guard down for a second but jesus tapdancing christ they are all OVER internet radio bots. I love Pandora's hair rock channel, ditto for the deep cut-heavy AOL radio, and fuck it even the rife-wit-mislabeled-songs Last.fm will surprise ya. I can hang for the occasional Great White miss and ugh live Britny Fox but enough already with those rotten "Winds of Change" motherfuckers! I'm turning into a cartoonish '80s version of The Dude and I hate the fucking Scorps, man! They have like 1200 singles and they're all awful and I would know -- I hear eight or nine of them by lunch. As a kid I hated the guy's voice, but to stop there is so selling short their many, many poor qualities. Like say the pictures of sexy models and vaguely creepy nudity on every album cover. Oh and that hot 'n heavy number "Passion Rules The Game"? That song is why your puppy died. 

Here's a fun fact: Did you know guitarist Rudolph Schenker underwent an costly surgical procedure to prevent his mouth from ever closing? Did you know the band released a live version of the ear-punching dirge "Still Loving You" with strings and shit? It's called "Still Loving You 2000" (above, if you can make it through this shit then please go conquer Mars for HooM! cuz you are a christing superhuman). What's this Love At First Sting went to #4 on the albums chart? And wait a fucking second just what the hell is "Hurricane 2000"? Are you hearing this?? Ok fine right I'll calm down but let me just say that if I go and listen to this "Hurricane 2000" and it has industrial beats or something I'm bombing Mathias Jabs' house. You killed him, Meine. This is on your HANDS!