Children of the grave

Where has all the militancy gone? The youth of today are docile and weak-spirited. Lured by the forbidden fruit of pop music, clubbing, alcohol, marijuana, video games, Netflix, and pornography. That's where they've gone. Instead of being out there on the front lines being [fighting] as people of means, respectability, and importance. 

You know what I think of most young people my age? As Susan Sontag said of her day in the 1960s, they're a bunch of barbarous yahoos. They don't read, they go out in packs, they buy alcohol at the check out line every day, they drive mommy and daddy's nice expensive cars, depending on them even in their late 20's.  

What we really need is a return to militancy. We need to set some guidelines. There are requirements. People need to do real things in the real world and not be so obsessed with the internet. We need more people to spend less time on the internet. They need to be more productive in the real world instead.  Productive in hobbies, work, and relationships.

The internet has become a master tool of the elite [the tech industry] to make the young docile, weak, creatures of a low nature. All the things that are addicting about the internet are not good for people, yet everybody still thinks its the greatest thing ever made. News flash, it's making you, your family, and all your friends stupid. 

There's a caveat of course. We still need online news for example. That 24/7 news cycle would be ruthless without it. But don't use the internet for everything. Millennials have become so stupid because of their reliance upon this newfound, so-called, great tech. Have you ever heard of something called books? 

You've got to read actual books of substance. Classics of the western canon, philosophy, history, fiction, nonfiction, technical manuals, maps, those sorts of things. Just random articles about things you're interested in are cool but you'll never be satisfied with one article about one particular subject, so what you're going to start reading tons of articles all the time in your free time? Leaders read books. Keep that in mind. 

People might think this is tough and I'm cruel for saying most of the entire youth to thirty age gap in this country are all mindless babies but it's damn true. Without militancy, their minds are easy prey by their parents, their bosses, and their sick, twisted Republican-controlled government. 

The youth of today, if you don't change, you're completely fucked. For some of you its already too late. 

All you children of today are children of the grave.

Electric Funeral

Here's Electric Funeral by Black Sabbath played at the open jam I play at regularly, on 9/19. We have Jim X (Ouii3) on drums and a jammer on bass, the bass player kills it here.

Enjoy!

https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/electric-funeral-x-drums

Electric Funeral, Music Politics

Here's our rendition of Electric Funeral with my buddy Martin on drums, and Thelma on groans :D https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/electric-funeral
I did a bit of vocals but not the full song. Enjoy!

I've been pretty busy practicing a lot of music, working on jazz guitar, jazz standards, as well as piano. I'm mostly just improvising on piano but I'm getting much better pretty quickly and I've only been playing since October.

The band situation is either getting worse or getting better depending on how you look at it. The drummer has improved a lot and I look forward to continue working with him for a long time. However, the singer might be leaving to join another band, depending on if he gets accepted after the audition process.

In the meantime we're still practicing together with the current singer. However, Martin (drummer) has found a new guitarist (named Stan) that also plays guitar and sings. I sing and play guitar too so if Alex (current singer) ends up leaving we have a good back up plan for the band.

I'm teaching my friend rudimentary rock bass and I'm hoping he can get good fast enough to play with us (our riffs aren't that difficult, just fast mostly).

As if that wasn't enough our current bass player can't play the songs the same way, he just improvises and changes it every time so we're going to have to let him go.

As you can see I'm dealing with a lot of politics! Me and the drummer are the unofficial leaders but man am I glad that he found another guitarist that can do vocals, that will make things a lot easier if Alex ends up ditching us.

Its a lot of pressure and I'm trying to stay positive about the whole metal band thing. One could take a look at my band and just say those guys are just fucking around.

As if that wasn't enough I'm also looking and talking to jazz musicians to play in a jazz setting. Hopefully I can do that soon because my heart is way more into jazz than metal, even if I do have a 7-string Jackson as my current main guitar. 

I'm going to continue to work hard and improve my chops, increase my repertoire and keep playing live at the open jam at Petie's Place, the bar on Reseda. I've got to keep pushing myself. 

New original track, Spirits of the Dead

This is a new track I recently made for my recently formed band. The lyrics are really cheesy but I tried to do like a black metal style vocal with some doom/Sabbath undertones with my 7-string. I think it ended up sounding pretty heavy. The main riff is a riff I played at the bar last week when we were just jamming. Its cool to see it used in a song. The bass line in the chorus sounds like a Black Sabbath song can't remember which one though. Enjoy!
https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/spirits-of-the-dead

Black Sabbath and The Sword, The Classic Metal Sound

The other day on my off work day I went for a nice walk. I decided to hit up the local record shoppe (CD Trader) and I picked up Black Sabbath's Mob Rules and The Sword's Low Country. Sabbath is the classic English metal band we all know and love and The Sword is this newer doom/stoner rock band from Texas.

I can easily see how The Sword got a lot of their style and sound from Sabbath. The idea that you can play one super heavy catchy riff and just keep pummeling your listeners with it with lyrics and song structure behind it. Black Sabbath was the first real rock group to do this and many metal groups have followed in that idea. Even technically the newer metal bands, death metal, and black metal bands follow that pattern.

Low Country is an all acoustic album by The Sword that is an acoustic remix of their album High Country, which is a standard metal album with heavy guitars and a massive drum sound. After listening to both so recently I have to say that they did an amazing job on Low Country. Somehow even though it's all acoustic it still sounds pretty much identical to the electric versions, its uncanny.

I'm listening to High Country right now and I like it a lot. One thing that separates The Sword from other typical American doom metal/stoner rock bands is the fact that most of their lyrics are from books, fantasy, and folklore. It doesn't like something Ozzy would sing about. Dio maybe. This is more something that Mikael Akerfelt from Opeth would be singing about.

Which leads me to my next point. The Sword is a band like Black Sabbath that can get progressive. They've actually toured with Opeth. How I wish I could've seen that tour. All their riffs are simple and catchy but the fact that their lyrics aren't the usual metal norm gives them a bit of a progressive edge, even if its not too proggy like Opeth.

Low Country and High Country are two great new metal albums. I'd recommend them to any who's a fan of that classic 70s metal sound and sludgy distorted metal riffs. They get pretty bluesy too. When they get bluesy they can almost enter that Hendrix territory. Low Country has a very strong delta blues sound. High Country gets progressive, even has a Steve Howe acoustic blues tune with synthesizers. Great stuff!

The Sabbath album I got was Mob Rules. Great freakin' album. This was recorded with Ronnie James Dio, Vinnie Appice on drums, Geezer Butler, and Toni Iommi. It was produced by this guy Martin Birch, who previously worked with Deep Purple and Iron Maiden among others. This album is pretty damn well executed and orchestrated. Very heavy, heavy metal music.

This is one of those great records of the 80's, in this case 1981. Dio can carry any metal riff with his powerful voice but when he's being backed by some of the best metal musicians in history the music can get pretty damn powerful and good. This is real metal before all the glam phase. This album was so great that after it was made Warner Bros asked Dio if he wanted to make a solo album. And the rest, as they say is Kisstory.

Metal music is great but sometimes I find that the fans want the bands to just play the same old style and songs for their entire career. Look at bands like Metallica and Slayer. Metal heads aren't keen on change and I think that sometimes hurts the music for the worse in the long run.

New metal music that my friends like (mostly metalcore) is actually not bad. But it all sounds so similar that there's nothing interesting or new going on even if you listen to multiple different bands. It's like okay we've produced a formula and now every band copies it and tries to get big using that strategy. Metal is such a corporate sounding style of music even though its awesome. The singer from my old band used to call metalcore "scene metal" and he liked making fun of the kids who liked that style. But sometimes playing what's popular can get the job done and get your bills paid.

Nothing wrong with that. Can't begrudge a musician from trying to make millions. But some people build their entire careers like that. What I'm trying to say is that I wish metalheads had a more open mind and expanded their taste of music, as well as accepting when bands do new things in metal.

Like how Opeth has pretty much changed from a death metal band with prog elements to pretty much a progressive rock bands with barely slight death metal elements. I think the current metal scene is changing for the better right now.

Right now the sound is going back to the more proto-metal 70's sound of bands like Sabbath and Judas Preist. Clean vocals are coming back and cookie monster growling is becoming less cool, at least I see it that way. Songwriting has gotten better and more catchy songs are being produced. In a sense, people are playing like the old bands from the glory days. It's cool to see and hear the influence and styles in different bands. Bands like Ghost, Tribulation, Opeth, and The Sword are some examples of this.

But I'm sure at some point the more harder edge black metal and death metal riffing won't go away. There's a place for all styles somewhere, including my living room CD rack. I don't think metalcore will change all that much though. Although I went to the Warped Tour this past summer with my friends I just can't get past the fact that most of all those bands sounded the same. I enjoyed it as a social party event but musically it was very tiring.

But that's enough for a rant on metal. Go listen to some Sabbath or The Sword. Dig that classic metal sound!