Sunwheel Psychedelic’s Burning Doves albums is an interesting journey into unique territory.

Sunwheel Psychedelic is the one-man project of G.W. Miner, former guitarist for the Electric Hellfire Club. Don’t let the reference fool you; the two couldn’t be further from each other on the musical map. While EHC is Satanic electronica, Sunwheel Psychedelic’s sound might be described as “adult contemporary rock”, dishing out a vibe nestled somewhere in between the Cult-lite and Dave Navarro.

The more I listen to “Burning Doves”, the less I would even classify it as a rock album. Sure, there are a few rock riffs, and the drums have enough echo on them to make Led Zeppelin jealous, but the majority of the songs here come off as extremely mellow. It’s the kind of concert you go to where everyone ends up just standing around, staring at the stage.

Miner’s guitar work shines on tracks like “Lilies of Vice”, which has one foot planted solid in the blues. It’s obvious throughout the album the guy is really gifted on the six string, so it’s too bad that he doesn’t let us hear more of it. Instead, moments of goodness are sprinkled throughout the entire journey which near the end left me yawning. “Burning Doves” could have really used an upbeat rocker around track 8 or 9. Instead, the album seemed to get more quiet and more acoustic as it went on. Combine this with repetitive riffs, and the album feels about twice as long as it really is. Track 10, “Temple in My Heart”, repeats the same chorus and riff over and over, dragging the album on way too long. The last track of the disc (“Loaded”) tries to push the tempo back up, but its generic (and familiar) rock riff offers too little too late.

Miner is an awesome guitarist, but like many one-man projects, seems to have lost his way a bit on Burning Doves. Most producers would have cut the fat from this disc and pushed Miner back into the studio to crank out more material to match the finer moments of this disc. As it is, Burning Doves is interesting, but not that enjoyable.

The 1970’s brought us punk rock music. Bands like the MC5, the Clash, the Sex Pistols and the Ramones defined what punk rock is — not only the musical style, but the lifestyle itself. Everything from mohawks to safety pins can be traced back to here.

The 90’s brought us pop-punk. Bands like the Offspring, Rancid, and Green Day took the three chord attack made famous by punk rock, dabbled in the “bad boy attitude” and mixed it all with a bit of pop sensibility, and came up with a style of music that seemed dangerous enough to keep kid’s interest, while keeping it all safe enough to swarm MTV’s airwaves.

S.T.U.N., (short for “Scream Toward the Uprising of Non-Conformity”) would love for you to believe that they’re a member of the former group rather than the latter, that they’re punks with an attitude and a penchant for protesting against “the man”. Upon closer inspection, however, the truth begins to emerge.

S.T.U.N. hates the man. While comparing themselves to both the Clash and the Sex Pistols in their bio material, they strut around in their Converse shoes and Ramones shirts, talking about their revolution against the man.

In fact, these guys hate the man so much that they … signed to Geffen and joined the Vans’ Warped Tour. Gone is the hand-drawn, crude DIY punk marketing graphics of old. Along with the band’s debut CD, I also received a DVD of the band performing several of their songs live. If that doesn’t get you to join the revolution, maybe their flash-heavy site will, which is packed with enough java, windows media and real video clips to choke even the fastest internet connection. Gone are the clip art cut and pasted flyers for advertising — they’ve been replaced by links to the band’s MTV.Com A-Z page, notes about their M2 appearances, tour e-cards, and of course the S.T.U.N store which has all the S.T.U.N. merchandise.

Also gone is the old punk tradition of trading underground tapes with friends. S.T.U.N.’s Evolution of Energy is copy protected, meaning you won’t be sharing this punk CD with your punk friends (or listening to it on your punk MP3 player or your punk laptop, which is how I do most of my reviews these days).

So when you get down to the bottom line, the music is … pretty good. While the opening track “Movement” sounds eerily like Rage Against the Machine, the band switches gears pretty quickly and it’s pop-punkville all the way from there. The music does exactly what it’s supposed to do — despite the fact that I don’t really like what this band stands for, I found myself tapping my feet and nodding my head along song after song. And song after song, S.T.U.N. tells you about the revolution, in songs like “Here Comes the Underground”, “We Want You”, “The Future is Now”, and “We Will Come To You”.

S.T.U.N. spends a bit too much energy trying to convince us they’re punk. Their DVD is packed with clips of band members destroying instruments and jumping off tall stacks of speakers (and that damn Ramones shirt, which is featured so often it’s almost like a fifth member of the band).

I don’t know if the corporate music world helped form S.T.U.N. or just hitched their wagon to them and packaged their essence. Either way, the glossy coat sprayed over the whole project ruins it for me. It’s like getting money from the tooth fairy after you already found out she was really your parents but didn’t tell anybody — while you feel a little dirty for keeping the dollar, a buck’s a buck. The irony of this band recording a bunch of songs about being original is amusing.

Those of you who put safety pins in your clothes as a fashion statement will probably love Evolution of Energy. Those who have used safety pins to hold your clothes together probably won’t listen long enough to even snicker.

It always fascinates me when a unique song or album launches a genre. Apocalyptica’s 1996 release Plays Metallica by Four Cellos introduced to the world the “guys covering heavy metal on classical stringed instruments” genre, whether we thought we needed one or not. Before long, cello-playing dudes everywhere were churning out orchestral versions of Tool, Iron Maiden, and Led Zeppelin. Vitamin Records has made an entire career out of it, releasing close to 1,000 string tributes to every popular rock and metal band you can think of. One of their most recent releases is The Evil You Dread, a tribute to the mighty Slayer.

The Evil You Dread contains ten tracks — nine cover tunes and one original (“Midless Death”) — performed via violin, viola and cello. The versions presented here are often slower in tempo (especially the earlier tracks), but the spirit of Slayer is still somehow present. I’m not saying that the album will have you headbanging along, but the music does sound somewhat more frentic than the average classical compilation.

The only major annoyance is that the violin is often used to simulate a vocal track. They also used to use violins to simulate bugs and insects talking in old cartoons. The whole time I was listening to “South of Heaven” I couldn’t help but imagining a large mosquito standing at the mic stand, throwing up the devil horns (if a mosquito’s arm/leg can even do that) and rocking out with his two big buggy eyes. It’s probably just me.

If you have ever been in an elevator listening to bad musaz/instrumental versions of songs and thought to yourself, “Boy instead of Billy Joel I wish they were playing string versions of Slayer songs in here, Jesus Christ I would buy that and listen to it for hours at a time!” then Vitamin Records has your fix. And if Slayer’s not your bag, they have string tributes to Nine Inch Nails, Disturbed, Jennifer Lopez, and Limp Bizkit too. Run, don’t walk.

I doubt the guy who carved “SLAYER” into his forearm with a razor blade is spinning this CD, but if you’re looking for a calm version of “Mandatory Suicide” to play at your next tea party, this is for you.

01. Expendable Youth
02. Bloodline
03. Dead Skin Mask
04. Divine Intervention
05. Mandatory Suicide
06. Postmortem
07. Die By The Sword
08. South Of Heaven
09. War Ensemble
10. Mindless Death (Original)

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Parents have begun their Christmas shopping, children have begun dreaming of toy trains and candy canes, and beautiful Christmas music has begun to fill the air.

Ok, who am I kidding. Parents shop on eBay and Amazon these days. Kids could care less about toy trains; their e-mails to Santa ask for things like “bling-bling” and “mo’ toys, fer shizzle”, and the Christmas music we all grew up with has been replaced by an onslaught of greatest hits albums just in time for the holiday season — the latest of which is Stone Temple Pilot’s Thank You.

As is the current rage, Thank You is available either as a stand alone fifteen track audio CD, or packaged with a bonus DVD.

And, as is the current rage, the audio CD pretty much is what it is. The fifteen tracks cover most of Stone Temple Pilot’s singles over the years, starting with “Sex Type Thing” and ending with the recently released “All In The Suit That You Wear”, with the acoustic version of “Plush” from Headbanger’s Ball tacked on to the end. Unlike most of the other greatest hits packages hitting shelves, the songs are not presented chronologically.

Fans of Stone Temple Pilots will be much more impressed with the DVD than with the CD. With over three hours of footage, the DVD is the real “thank you” to their fans. With over 30 tracks of videos, live performances, and bootleg material, this is THE quintessential video collection of STP video material.

If nothing else, Thank You reminded me just how good Stone Temple Pilots actually were, and for that, I thank them as well. The CD is a sugar-coated treat containing most of their hits, but the real treasure here is the comprehensive DVD. Pick it up now before the rush hits when Scott Weiland finally overdoses.

Tracks:

01. Vasoline
02. Down
03. Wicked Garden
04. Big Empty
05. Plush
06. Big Bang Baby
07. Creep
08. Lady Picture Show
09. Trippin On A Hole In A Paper Heart
10. Interstate Love Song
11. All In The Suit That You Wear
12. Sex Type Thing
13. Days Of The Week
14. Sour Girl
15. Plush (Acoustic)

Natural Born Chaos, Soilwork’s 2002 release, was the band’s most commercially successful album to date. And, no wonder — the band, while remaining heavy, began dabbling in nu-metal circles, breeding aggression with pop sensibility. In that respect, Soilwork’s fifth album, Figure Number Five, is a logical progression.

While brutal verses still reign supreme, the choruses contain more singing and harmonies than ever. When combined with musical breakdowns, light keyboards, and the lost art of guitar solos, many of Five’s tracks take a radio format without being particularly radio friendly.

After wading through the predictable “Rejection Roll” and the keybord-heavy “Overload,” the album begins to come into its own on track three, the title track. Soilwork proves that when they want to rock, they can. The heavy parts are definitely heavy, as proven on “Figure Number Five”. On later tracks however, the keyboards and layered vocals get a little thick, sometimes to the point where when you hit the chorus you feel as though you’ve shifted into a completely different song — only to shift back songs once the chorus is over.

Songs like “Cranking the Sirens,” “The Mindmaker,” and “Downfall 24” show the band’s best side by blasting ahead at full speed. More often than not however, the band drifts ever closer toward the cleaner side of metal.

Figure Number Five is to Soilwork what the black album was to Metallica. Five is probably the most accessable and fan-friendly album Soilwork has recorded to date. As is the eternal gamble with evolving bands, it remains to be seen whether the band will gain more fans than they lose with their shift to a more accessable sound.

Tracks:
01. Rejection Role
02. Overload
03. Figure Number Five
04. Strangler
05. Light the Torch
06. Departure Plan
07. Cranking the Sirens
08. Brickwalker
09. The Mindmaker
10. Distortion Sleep
11. Downfall 24

As far as urban legends go, the story of how System of a Down’s latest album leaked to the internet is a pretty good one. After the Toxicity sessions wrapped up, the band ended up with close to 30 songs recorded. The strongest ones made up the album, but the remaining songs were shelved, to be used at a later date. According to the rumor, vocalist Serj Tankian slipped a copy of the tracks to a few fans at a California show on CD-R, which is how the unreleased tracks supposedly hit the internet. The band’s camp has since strongly denied that this ever happened, and instead claims that “hackers (may have) broke into computers in the studio and pilfered the material.” A much more likely scenario is one where an unscrupulous engineer, janitor, or friend of the band ended up with the tracks on CD-R and eventually leaked them online.

Regardless how, soon over a dozen new System of a Down tracks were floating around on every file sharing program known to man, and the band was forced to react. After finishing mixing and mastering 16 tracks, Steal This Album, a tongue-in-cheek reference to the entire internet debaucle was released in November of 2002, barely a year after Toxicity, their sophomore release, hit stores.

The tracks that appear here don’t sound like outtakes or throw away tracks to me. In fact, I think you could throw these tracks together with the Toxicity tracks, jumble ’em all up, and divide ’em into two CDs randomly and no one would notice. There’s no big themes, formulas, or sounds that seperate these tracks. It’s just more of the same — which is great for those of us who like SoaD, and bad for those who don’t.

“Chic n Stu” starts of the madness with Serj screaming out pizza toppings at the top of his lungs. “Innervision” contains SoaD’s trademark bouncy guitar riffing over huge vocal choruses. “Bubbles” reminded me of “Sugar”, changing volume and guitar sounds on a whim. “Highway Song” and “Fuck the System” both attack the establishment in typical System fashion. “Ego Brain” and “Mr. Jack” are both more straight forward rockers, with most of the band’s trademark gimmicks pulled out (although there would be no confusing these with any other band). Describing SoaD’s songs are like talking about a bag of jellybeans. “There’s a red one, a blue one, a purple one, a kinda deformed orange one …” You either like jellybeans or you don’t. You get the idea.

For what’s little more than a compilation of songs that the band has been working on over the past five years, Steal This Album fits together pretty well. There’s a few tunes that stick out and slow the momentum down a bit (“Roulette”, a Serj-crafted acoustic track, for one), but for the most part the disc feels like a genuine studio effort, and that’s not bad for a bunch of songs intended to be “b-sides and soundtracks”.

System of a Down fans should definitely steal, er, buy this album. As with most bands with established fan bases and unique sounds, there’s not much here to win new fans or turn old ones away.

Tracks:
01. Chic n Stu
02. Innervision
03. Bubbles
04. Boom!
05. Nuguns
06. A.D.D. (American Dream Denial)
07. Mr. Jack
08. I-E-A-I-A-I-O
09. 36
10. Pictures
11. Highway Song
12. Fuck The System
13. Ego Brain
14. Thetawaves
15. Roulette
16. Streamline

In the 80s, Hair Metal was as much about the costumes as it was the music. Motley Crue, Poison and Whitesnake all rocked back in the day, but none of them would have ever been caught dead on stage without mile-high hair, a pound of makeup, and one or more items of clothing made of either leather or spandex. Bands like Guns and Roses, Megadeth and Metallica shied away from clothing gimmicks. They wore black t-shirts and blue jeans and rocked without dressing up in womens clothing. If there were any doubt that playing dress up was a fad, grunge came along and made wearing, well, whatever you were wearing at the time in vogue. Flannel shirts and cargo shorts replaced leather jackets and feather boas, and that was the end of that. In the early 90s, most of us looked back and said, what were we thinking? Its supposed to be all about the MUSIC, man!

Thats why I really want to dislike Slipknot; I mean, really, really, really. Costumes went out with Hair Metal, God rest its soul, and for a band to base so much of its success on their costumes makes me inherently want to dislike them. But I cant. Not after watching Slipknots Disasterpieces DVD. Do I want to be known as a maggot (how Slipknot refers to their fans)? No. Am I secretly one now? Maybe.

Disasterpieces was filmed in London in February of 2002 after their second album Iowa had just gone platinum. The band was excited about playing, the crowd was excited about seeing them, and that excitement carries over onto the DVD something that often gets lost in the conversion from big stage to small screen.

The first disc of the dual-disc package includes the entire concert performance. Nine members on-stage or not, Slipknot sounds incredibly tight, and the audio mix is awesome. There are several camera angles to choose from if youre in to that sort of thing. The band members even wear cameras on their heads so you can jam along playing air guitar and pretend like youre on stage with the band (not that cool cats like us would ever do such a thing, right?). Along with all the footage, several times throughout the program viewers also get clips of backstage footage autograph signings, backstage wackyness, pre-show jitters, and more. The second disc includes the bands complete music video collection (videography?) and a few other extras.

I hadnt heard much of Slipknot (intentionally avoiding them) until tracks from their third album Vol. 3: The Subliminal Verses began infiltrating air waves. Unfortunately this DVD predates that album, so I wasnt familiar with any of the songs on the DVD (sans the popular Christmastime ditty, People = Shit). Still, the bands earlier work is heavier and catchier than I had expected, and despite all the theatrics they musics not bad. I dont know why I had such an aversion to this band; KISS, Alice Cooper, Marilyn Manson and even Rob Zombie did it all before and I like them.

When I rented Disasterpieces I expected to see a bunch of guys standing around in makeup. Instead, what I found was a group of guys who obviously love what they do and have tightly honed their craft. Who knows, maybe itll make a maggot out of you, too.

No matter how heavy or brutal a band claims to be, Slayer is the yardstick to which they shall all be measured. It is doubtful that any band will ever be able to take the “evil” crown away from Slayer. It’s like no matter how old you get, you can never kick your dad’s ass. So I guess in reality Slayer is like your dad — if your dad was actually the Dark Lord of the Netherworld.

Christ Illusion reunites former Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo with original members Tom Araya, Kerry King, and Jeff Hanneman, reforming the band’s original lineup responsible for such albums as Hell Awaits, Reign in Blood, South of Heaven and Seasons in the Abyss. This is the first time in sixteen years that Lombardo has recorded with the band, and his presence appears to have pulled the group together tighter than ever before.

Lyrically the band covers familiar ground: war, politics, and Little Nicky’s dad, Satan. On songs like Skeleton Christ, Jihad and Black Serenade the band blasts hard, with song structures falling somewhere between Reign in Blood and God Hates Us All. The style feels a little “nu”, but the brutality is familiar.

Everything that made Slayer “Slayer” is here, and anyone accusing them of mellowing in their old age will get the band’s answer through the multiple chants of “Hail Satan!” and “666” that appear throughout the disc. Hanneman and King’s fretwork chug as heavy as ever, and Lombardo’s drumming feels updated and fresh.

Christ Illusion is the band’s best work in a decade and a half, and proves that the evil ones can still rock twice as hard as kids half their age.

01. Flesh Storm
02. Catalyst
03. Eyes Of The Insane
04. Jihad
05. Skeleton Christ
06. Consfearacy
07. Catatonic
08. Black Serenade
09. Cult
10. Supremist

SkinKrawl’s new self-titled five song EP is about as far from either of those two bands as one can get. More along the lines of a cross between Pantera and Vision of Disorder, SkinKrawl delivers the most brutal attack of metalcore I’ve heard in quite a while.

The tuned down aggression expodes in your face within seconds of the album’s opening track, Self-Inflicted, and never lets up. Each song on the album has several riffs and tempo changes that tie them together – these guys do NOT sound like beginning song writers, that’s for sure. The songs are held together with a serious metalcore backbone, with short bursts of death metal and melodic moments strung throughout to change things up.

Usually bands of this genre write fairly simple “chorus/verse/chorus” songs, but SkinKrawl spends most of their time mixing things up – and they pull it off well. “Nothing Left” starts building as a metal sounding song, meanders off into a death/thrash section that eventually drops the listener off into a heavy, doom-ish riff. Somehow, it all works.

I feel like I need to take a moment and talk about the amazing production of this CD.
As a part-time studio dabbler, take it from me, the sound here is great. The drums set the sonic boundaries of the CD with deep thick kick drums and crisp, clear cymbals. The bass is perfectly balanced, with just enough volume and tone to be in the forefront and not disapper in the background. Any fan of palm-mutes and barre chords will love SkinKrawl’s fretwork – no solos here! The vocals cover the entire spectrum, from yelling, to singing, and back to screaming. And two words for everyone out there – “NO RAPPING”, which makes me give any band one thumbs up right off the bat.

The only unfortunate thing about the band is that there’s at least one more SkinKrawl. While this one is located at SkinKrawl.NET, there’s already one at the .COM address – bad news for one of them.

While most new metal bands come out sounding like bad nu-metal clones, SkinKrawl conveys true emotion through their music. Hard, heavy, punchy metal music that’s enough to make your skin cra … nah, the joke’s just too obvious.

Tracks:
01. Self-Inflicted
02. Once Again
03. Don’t Look
04. Nothing Left
05. Looking Glass

In 1987, Napalm Death’s album Scum did two things: it defined a genre (Grindcore) and it introduced the world to the blast beat. And, for the past seventeen years, the majority of death metal bands have been simply re-recording that album. There’s been little innovation, little creativity, and very little effort to analyze those early death metal albums and determine just what it was that made them so heavy, other than simply laying down blazingly fast single string riffs over blast beats. Bands heard that musical forumla combined with lyrics and artwork about death, and an army of copycats were born. At least half of the death metal bands out there today might as well call themselves Napalm Death tribute bands.

But not if you’re Chris Barnes. First with Cannibal Corpse and now with Six Feet Under, Barnes has continued to churn out brutal and original music. On Bringer of Blood, he carries on the tradition without using a single blast beat.

Even before the music ramps up, Barnes’ pitch-shifted vocals on “Sick in the Head” let you know Six Feet Under is serious. Throughout the chorus, Barnes chants “dead to me, you’re dead to me” repeatedly before screaming “oh my fucking God!” in his patented high-screech voice.

The vocals, while prominent, are not the only source of the band’s heavyness. Thick, muddy chords fill the low end and mingle with the bass, while the drums hold the songs together instead of threatening to run off and leave them. Bringer of Blood is full of songs, not just “recorded moments of noise where everyone happened to play their instruments at the same time.” The tracks have intros, verses and choruses — some of which you can even sing (or at least growl) along to.

While many of the songs (“Murdered in the Basement”, “When Skin Turns Blue”, and “Escape from the Grave” for examples) cover familiar lyrical ground, a few of the tracks venture out into more political avenues; particularly on “Amerika the Brutal”, in which Barnes comments, “Fake president, I’m not here to do your dirty work. Alone I think I’m fighting this losing battle, worth dying? No war! Amerika the brutual!” It gives Six Feet Under an entirely new dimension of heavy. Unfortunately, as quickly as it enters, it exits — on “My Hatred” (the next track on the album), Barnes presents his “cure for your Christian disease”, which involves choking on crosses …

Death metal purists will probably snub Bringer of Blood, an album which not only doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel, it doesn’t even try to use them. By shedding the usual musical cliches found in death metal, Six Feet Under continues to crush with their own style of music. While lyrically the majority of the album deals with murder, being murdered, and buckets of gore, Barnes appears to be testing the water for other lyrical subjects.

Heavy, and listenable.