It was the fall of 1996. I was sitting in a smoky bar up in Washington state late one night when a band named Floater took the stage. What followed was 60 minutes of full-on pure ass kicking rock and roll. To tell you the truth, I can’t remember who they were opening for. The minute the show was over, I kicked back, smiled to myself, and said, “these guys are gonna be HUGE.”

Well, it’s been over five years, and I’m still waiting for them to be huge. To tell you the truth, I don’t know why Floater isn’t bigger than they are today -it’s certainly not due to a lack of originality, balls, or ability to crank out catchy tunes. Despite a record deal with Elemental and almost constant touring in the Northwest, Floater just hasn’t broken through yet. Until they do, I’ll be singing their praises to the masses.

Referred to as the “art-rock” trio of the Northwest, Floater have been putting out albums since 1994. Their music is creative, quirky, progressive, and, of course, heavy. Floater’s songs are riff heavy, combining heavy power chords, unusually soothing bridges and several vocal styles. While the band’s songwriting style could probably be compared to Tool or Primus, the band’s sound is probably closer to a sometimes funkier, sometimes mellower version of Clutch. Confused yet?

On Burning Sobobra, Floater continues their patented complex song writing approach. Each song has so many riffs, parts, harmonies and accompaniments that it must’ve taken weeks to write each song! The lyrics are great as well. This is one band where it seems like the music and lyrics are each 50% of a song – they’re equally important in each compilation.

“King Rabbit” comes away as one of my favorites of the album. Floater’s cover of The Doors’ “Waiting for the Sun” definitely adds a heavy turn to an old classic. “Alcoholic” has an almost Primus feel to it, before it turns really heavy at the end. A couple of the songs, (“Colorblind” and “Equinox”), show the band’s softer side, but they fit the mood of the album and are still interesting cuts.

Floater has recently begun playing more acoustic shows. In fact, “acoustic” Floater has recently been opening for “electric” Floater. This band is a lot of things, but I think the most important thing they are is “interesting.” If you’re tired of the same ol’ drivel, take a chance. Glyph is my personal favorite Floater album, but Burning Sosobra is my second. Both come highly recommended by the Flackster. If I were a millionaire, I’d buy everyone a happy meal, and put a Floater album in each one. So rock on that.

“I pull the trigger.
God is dead.
Now live in fear of
my soul instead.” – King Rabbit

01. Here Comes The Dog
02. Watched Over By Crows
03. I Know
04. Queen of the Goats
05. Exiled
06. Independence Day
07. King Rabbit
08. Milk of Heaven
09. Albatross
10. The Marriage of the Black Sheep
11. Colorblind
12. Waiting for the Sun
13. Alcoholic
14. Equinox

Flaw’s Through the Eyes delivers a nu-metal sound that anyone who owns a radio should be familiar with by now. But it’s not the main course that catches you here, it’s the side dishes; a little Tool influence here, a little Deftones sound there.

“Only the Strong” kicks off the album with a riff reminiscent of Deftones’ “Bored”, one of the best of the disc. That riff along with the one on “Get Up Again” will both have your woofers rumbling. Like other bands of the genre, the bass guitar is loud and up front in the mix. The production thickens up the middle nicely and the album easily stands up alongside the big boys. The vocals involve more singing than screaming, both of which fit the part.

On a few tracks (“Scheme” and “Whole”) the band (and particularly the guitar) edges dangerously close to merely mimicing Korn. Fortunately, most of the time Flaw manages to maintain their own identity by mixing up the heaviness with some moments of melodic goodness.

Those who like a little sing in their scream and aren’t burnt out on the whole nu-metal sound yet should check out Flaw’s debut disc. The band has a new album coming out next month, so it will be interesting to see if the guys have enough to pull away from the pack, or if they’ll end up spinning their wheels in last year’s ruts.

What happens when two Philippino immigrants raised on protests and social activism team up with two “hybrid metal freaks”?

Flattbush happens.

Named after the infamous Philippino political rock band from the 60’s who was, uh, “silenced” (face down in ditches) by the Philippino government, the new incarnation of Flattbush is just as political and, undoubtedly, infinately more aggressive than their namesakes.

As fast as Napalm Death, as frantic as Mr. Bungle, and as violent as Brujeria, Flattbush’s musical attack is as brutal as their lyrics.

In “Death Squad”, Flattbush spits out, “Thrash the pigs!/Local puppets, lynch ’em!/Confiscate the stolen land, build the nation, give ’em!” Although many of their songs are sung in a combination of English and Tagalog, the sheer ferocity of the music leaves little to the imagination — and if you don’t get the band’s message through either the lyrics or the sonic blast, the image of George W. Bush telling a Philippino woman, “you’re my bitch” on the band’s website should fill in any holes you had.

Musically, the band is not only loud and fast, but deceptively complex as well. Tempos and riffs shift so often that it’s often difficult to keep up, crossing the line between noise and music and back several times per song. Similar to Fantomas, listeners shouldn’t get too attached to any one riff; it’s not likely to be around for long.

Producer Bill Gould continues his quest to find and present original musical entities to the masses, and succeeds here by presenting a band with something to say. Armed with a violent music style and burning lyrics, Flattbush ain’t your parents’ protestors.

People are already talking about Fear Factory’s upcoming album, Digimortal. The word on the street is that this album has the potential to break FF into the mainstream. Is Digimortal all it’s cracked up to be?

Sort of.

Both Digimortal and Obsolete, Fear Factory’s previous release, are concept albums. While Obsolete was more of a linear story, Digimortal is a collection of songs describing a future world. In this future world, technology (a constant theme throughout Fear Factory’s albums) has become intertwined with human life. Even though in the future your body is still mortal, your memories can be “uploaded”, and later be redownloaded into a clone of your future self, thus creating a symbiotic relationship between technology and human life – Digimortal.

While nine or ten Fear Factory fans will find this theory amazingly interesting (and if you do, go rent Ghost in the Shell – same exact story, but came out 4 years ago), the rest of us will hopefully see through the technical jargon and get down to the music – and that’s what Fear Factory is all about.

The good news is that Fear Factory hasn’t tried to reinvent themselves on this album. The tight, TIGHT double bass, the crunchy thick laden guitar layers, and Burton C. Bell’s patented vocals laid over techy-sounding keyboards are all still there, in spots.

If there’s bad news to report, it’s that there’s not much new or exciting here.

Demanufacture is one of the toughest albums I’ve ever heard in my life. It’s an hour long sonic assault that doesn’t give you a rest. Each song attacks with an intensity unlike any album I can think of. Obsolete, their previous effort, gives you a break almost in between every song. Heavy song, light song, heavy song, light song. Unfortunately, if you’re looking for Fear Factory for a hard rockin’ fix, this obviously means you have half as many songs to pick from. Digimortal follows this trend. There are a few rockin’ songs, but lots of big, open singing vocals, lots of keyboards trying to sound majestic, and overly long open chords trying too hard to make these songs something they’re not. So, out of 11 songs, you’ve got 4 or 5 rockers, and a lot of filler. This album sounds and feels a lot like Obsolete part II, except whereas Obsolete was based on a big human/robot war (ie: Terminator), this one is based off of the works of William Gibson.

The lowest point of the album is track 8, “Back The Fuck Up,” featuring Cypress Hill’s B-Real. Anthrax and Public Enemy did this years ago – and the result is, neither band has a major label recording deal at the moment – take the hint. I’m a closet fan of rap and an huge fan of extreme music, but just like hanging out with my buds and sloppy sex, some things still don’t mix well.

The most disappointing thing about the whole package is, we know FF is capable of better. No one beats Fear Factory at their own game. No one is tighter. Period. And to hear them wasting their talents playing back up gangsta to B-Real makes me wanna put a “hole in they head.”

01. What Will Become
02. Damaged
03. Digimortal
04. No One
05. Linchpin
06. Invisible Wounds
07. Acres Of Skin
08. Back The Fuck Up
09. Byte Block
10. Hurt Conveyor
11. Never End

Make no bones about it; I went into Fear Factory’s latest album Archetype expecting to hate it. The band’s last several albums have been less-than-cohesive, with the musical rift within the band exploding last year onto the internet into a very public and (one would think) embarassing implosion of the band. Most people thought the online name calling and finger pointing from band members would surely spell the end of the band, but a few press releases later, it was announced that Burton C. Bell (vocals), Raymond Herrera (drums) and Christian Olde Wolbers (bass) would continue on under the Fear Factory name, with Wolbers performing six-string duties in the studio as well. When I heard that the band’s new album would not only not include Dino (ex-guitars, and a major contributor to the writing process) but would also be produced by the band, my guess was that Fear Factory’s latest album would be, at best, St. Anger-ful.

Well, color me surprised. Archetype isn’t that far off from Obsolete or Digimortal. In fact, the first six songs on Archetype give Demanufacture a run for its money. If you’re one of the fans who have been waiting for Fear Factory to release “Demanufacture Part II” all these years, you will be in heaven; or at least for the first half of the album.

When your band is known for a signature sound, your fans don’t want to hear your experiments. No fan of Demanufacture’s machine-gun kick drums and rapid-fire tight riffs ever wanted to hear a Fear Factory/Cypress Hill collaboration, and it seems like, at least throughout the first six tracks, the guys in the band finally got the message.

Archetype feels like two separate two albums. After the first six tracks (all of which pound hard), the album takes a sharp turn from which it never really recovers.

Track seven, “Bite the Hand that Bleeds You”, belongs on an adult easy listening radio station. “Human Shields” is a complete snoozer, and “Ascension” is a seven minute keyboard soundscape that they should put in those little electronic machines that you put next to your bed to make you fall asleep faster. The three songs between those have that “New Factory” sound — lots of open chords and singing, in contrast to their signature sharp, staccato sound. While the first half the album is definitive Fear Factory, the “New Factory” songs might as well be anybody.

The album closes with a cover of Nirvana’s “School”. I don’t know if this an attempt to repeat the success the band had with their last cover tune, “Cars”, but “School” seems too obscure of a song and too heavy for radio play to win over the amount of masses “Cars” did.

I don’t know if the first six tracks of Archetype are left-over Dino-era Fear Factory tracks or if they were just written to sound like it, but in my opinion, they’re worth the price of admission. Besides them, you get three iffy tracks, three throw away ones, and one cover tune. The album immediately following the loss of a major member is always a proving ground, and judging by Archetype it sounds to me like Fear Factory can still hang.

If he cared to, Mike Patton could be the biggest rock star in the world. He has good looks, a sense of humor, an incredibly sharp wit, an uncanny ear for catchy pop, and a true desire to create music. Everything he touches turns to gold. After Faith No More had released out two mediocre albums, Patton joined the struggling outfit and turned them into one of the biggest bands of the late 80’s/early 90’s.

To understand why Mike Patton ISN’T the biggest rock star in the world is to truly appreciate that which is Mike Patton.

Patton is a musical innovator. Albums like Faith No More’s Angel Dust or anything from Mr. Bungle (one of Patton’s many projects) prove this point. Patton often creates music that is beautiful and catchy. He also creates a lot of noise, often by crossing genres (jazz and death metal, or thrash and circus music) that don’t seem to go together. Unfortunately, so far he hasn’t been able to create both at the same time. Faith No More’s most popular material was Patton’s least favorite. When Patton truly expresses himself, the trade off is marketability. Mr. Bungle’s music tough to listen to at first, but it’s a million times more accessable than Fantomas’ self-titled debut album, which was little more than an experiment in noise.

Patton may have finally found the perfect mix between self-expression and marketability on Fantomas’ second album, The Director’s Cut. Fantomas, a supergroup of sorts, have released an album consisting of sixteen movie soundtrack covers. King Buzzo (Melvins/Guitar), Dave Lombardo (ex-Slayer/Drums) and Trevor Dunn (Mr. Bungle/Bass) round out the group’s odd yet interesting take on the genre of film themes.

The music has been retooled into clever works of pop music mixed with everything from strange keyboard soundscapes to death metal. It’s obvious that the boys want you to think about what you’re hearing, but they haven’t distanced themselves as far from the mainstream this time around. True, you’re probably not going to hear the themes to “Experiment in Terror” or “Charade” on the radio anytime soon, but unlike the first Fantomas album these songs have structure. Strange, complex structures sometimes, but structure none-the-less.

A welcome change from their last release is Patton’s vocals. Their debut release only contained screams and grunts and other gutteral noises, but no actual words – The Director’s Cut makes up for that with Patton doing everything from whispering and singing on “Spider Baby” to using his voice as an instrument on “Rosemary’s Baby.” The rest of the band pulls their weight as well. Buzzo’s guitar has never sounded good, and any Melvin’s fan should get a kick out of this album. Dunn’s bass work compliments everything with his almost lounge-like approach, and Lombardo on the skins plays everything from the oddest of time signatures to blast beat moments, switching back and forth flawlessly.

Some of the songs lack pop-sensibility, but you get the feeling Patton wanted it that way. Just a spoonfull of sugar helps the medicine go down. The album builds to a frenzied head during “The Omen (Ave Satani),” and then levels out with the heavy-yet-calm “Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion,” and “Twin Peaks – Fire Walk With Me,” before bringing the listener back down with “Charade.” “Charade” is a perfect ending to the album, mixing both calm and frantic moments of music.

Patton and Fantomas have created some interesting stuff here. It’s doubtful that you’ll recognize many of the songs, (“Oh! Isn’t that the theme from Der Golem?”) but that’s not really the point here. The band has taken pre-existing material and worked it into something original, interesting, and at times, challenging to listen to. The payoff for investing listening time is great, as the album is a terrific example of what Fantomas is capable of. The album has enough easily accessable material to draw in non-fans, but contains a wealth of challenging music as well to keep you listening for a long time.

This could be the album that gets people to quit referring to Mike Patton as “the former lead singer of Faith No More,” and start calling him “the current lead singer of Fantomas.” The band cut enough tracks for two albums, so a third Fantomas album should be out late 2001/early 2002. Better jump on the bandwagon now.

01. The Godfather
02. Der Golem
03. Experiment in Terror
04. One Step Beyond
05. Night of the Hunter (remix)
06. Cape Fear
07. Rosemary’s Baby
08. The Devil Rides Out (remix)
09. Spider Baby
10. The Omen (Ave Satani)
11. Henry – Portrait of a Serial Killer
12. Vendetta
13. (Blank Track)
14. Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion
15. Twin Peaks – Fire Walk With Me
16. Charade

Maybe you’re like me — you like the idea of festivals, but you don’t like attending them. Sure, seeing a dozen bands in one day would be great, but who needs the crowds, the heat, the pushing and shoving, and the overpriced bottled water and T-shirts? So, if you wanted to experience last year’s Family Values Tour but didn’t make it out of the house, crank up your heater, send me five bucks for every glass of water you drink, and pick up this year’s Family Values Tour CD — it’ll be just like you were there!

This year’s Family Values Tour CD contains 12 songs recorded live during the festival. All of the songs on this CD sound great — I have no problem with the quality of the recordings at all. The recordings are loud and crisp, with great mixes and just the right amount of crowd noise throughout the tracks (a lot in between tracks, and very little during the songs).

Stone Temple Pilots win the award for most songs on the CD, taking up 4 of the 12 tracks. STP appears on the CD with versions of “Vasoline”, “Wonderful”, “Wicked Garden” and “Creep”. While all the bands on the CD sound good, STP proves that they can still pull it off live and they sound great doing it. Maybe it was the heat, but every STP track on the disc is slower than the album version for some reason.

Staind appears several times on the compilation. While the whole band performs both “Fade” and “It’s Been Awhile”, Aaron Lewis performs a solo, acoustic version of Pearl Jam’s “Black”. Lewis also jams alongside Stone Temple Pilots during “Creep” and with Linkin Park during the CD’s closer, “One Step Closer.”

Linkin Park appears a second time on the disc, with “Runaway”. Static-X appears twice with their singles “Cold” and “Push It”, and the disc is rounded out by newcomers Deadsy with their cover version of Rush’s “Tom Sawyer”, which is much better than it sounds on paper. Deadsy’s fuzzed out, overdrive guitars combined with clean keyboards and eerie vocals will have kids lined up for blocks for their debut CD, I’m guessing.

The positive? Most of the songs on this disc are things you’re just not going to find elsewhere. Whether it contains cameo performers or just live cover songs that don’t appear on albums, most of the tracks are original in some way. Of course, the negative is that it contains a lot of Linkin Park and Staind.

01. Vasoline Stone Temple Pilots
02. Runaway Linkin Park
03. Fade Staind
04. Wonderful Stone Temple Pilots
05. Push It Static-X (featuring P. Exeter Blue)
06. It’s Been A While Staind
07. Wicked Garden Stone Temple Pilots
08. Cold Static-X
09. Black Aaron Lewis of Staind
10. Creep Stone Temple Pilots (featuring Aaron Lewis)
11. Tom Sawyer Deadsy
12. One Step Closer Linkin Park (featuring Aaron Lewis)

I saw Faith No More live for the first time in 1990, in a little club located in downtown Oklahoma City called Kinetix. According to the fire marshals, Kinetix safely held around 500 people. I held ticket number #612. As a junior in high school I had already been to several concerts, but all of them had been stadium shows. This was my first club show, and I wasn’t quite sure what to expect.

Faith No More rocked the damn club to the ground. At one point, Mike Patton was standing atop a high stack of speaker cabinets which were swaying back and forth; at another, Patton was swinging from the light bars that were mounted over the stage. Both incidents had security, club personnel, and road managers fighting to pull his ass down. Patton was wearing no shirt and a pair of shaggy gray shorts — that is, until some girl threw her panties on stage, at which point he put those on over his shorts for the band’s encore (“Epic”, followed by “War Pigs”.)

Bands that win me over in a live setting usually end up with a fan for life, and if the rest of the crowd felt like I did after the show, then Faith No More walked away with about seven hundred fans that night (Kinetix eventually got shut down for safety code violations). Always pushing the envelope and never content to ride the wave of their old successes, Faith No More’s latest release, This Is It: The Best Of Faith No More, lives up to it’s name.

Fans of the band will probably remember that after releasing 1997’s Album of the Year, Faith No More officially disbanded. FNM’s swan song (er, album) was to be 1998’s double-disc Who Cares A Lot? The Greatest Hits; that makes justifying 2003’s This Is It: The Best Of Faith No More a little hard to justify for big fans of the band. A lot has happened in the past five years, however.

Namely, nu-metal. I’ve never personally been able to make the connection between Faith No More and nu-metal. I guess it points back to the rapping verse/singing chorus of “Epic”, but even that seems a stretch to me. After listening to Faith No More’s The Real Thing, if all you walked away with was “hey, they rapped in that one song,” then you missed the point entirely. From the witty “Zombie Eaters” to the complex “Woodpecker from Mars, from the wistful “Falling to Pieces” to the loyal “War Pigs”, Epic had it all.

This Is It: The Best Of Faith No More spans 12 years and pulls 19 tracks from all seven of the band’s official releases (that number includes the two albums prior to Mike Patton’s arrival and one live album), plus a couple of tracks from the band’s maxi-singles and one from a soundtrack.

You’ll notice the CD’s title doesn’t have words like “rarities”, “obscure” or “unreleased hits” in it. The tracks presented here are basically a chronological history of the band’s videos and singles, which is ultimately the biggest drawback to the disc. Since there’s nothing new here, fans of the band already have all these songs. Half of the tracks here appear on FNM’s last release, Who Cares A Lot? The Greatest Hits. The disc does contain liner notes from the band and an introduction by Metal Edge editor Paul Gargano. Nice additions, not a reason to buy.

However, this CD is a great introduction to the band. The fact that they mention “Linkin Park cites Faith No More as a key influence” in the promo material proves that this CD is being used to introduce Faith No More to a new generation of kids. And for that reason alone, it’s a great collection. If you can’t hum at least half of the tracks listed at the bottom of this review, then by all means pick this disc up immediately.

Bottom line: A chronological romp through one of the most underrated bands of all time. People unfamiliar with the band or just discovering Faith No More should pick this up; old fans will yawn at the set list.

01. Arabian Disco
02. We Care A Lot (Slash Version)
03. Anne’s Song
04. Introduce Yourself
05. From Out Of Nowhere
06. Epic
07. Falling To Pieces
08. War Pigs
09. The Cowboy Song
10. As The Worm Turns (Live 1990)
11. Midlife Crisis
12. A Small Victory
13. Be Aggressive
14. Easy
15. Digging The Grave
16. Evidence
17. Last Cup Of Sorrow
18. Ashes To Ashes
19. The Perfect Crime

Part opera, part heavy metal, and a big part progressive metal, Epica’s debut album The Phantom Agony is an incredibly interesting conglomeration. If that sounds like your kind of bag, read on.

Many of the songs on The Phantom Agony sound like they should be performed on Broadway. Others sound like the soundtrack to a magic show, with frantic drums, female chants, and lots of chants. Never before have I heard metal and opera blended together so tastefully.

“Cry for the Moon” slowly transforms from an operatic piece with a choir-sung chorus into a progressive metal track. Simone Simons’ voice inconspicuously drops from the mix to be replaced first by an earthy growl, followed by high pitched black metal screams. This general pattern continues throughout the disc, with songs continually sliding back and forth in style and tempo between progressive metal and full blown opera. “Facade of Reality” really picks up the pace, with a string section and nearly shouting chorus keeping up with very quick and precise kick drums.

Musically, The Phantom Agony is incredible. “Seif Al Din” in particular reminds me of a cross between Dream Theater and The Project Hate in execution. I’d love to see this band live — the musicianship on this disc is phenominal, and I’ve love to see if the band can recreate it in a live setting. The production doesn’t fail the band, adding to the “important” feeling of the tracks.

While not for everybody, Epica’s The Phantom Agony is a unique blend of rock and opera that will blow you away should you give it the chance. It’s a little more dramatic and a little less fun than I normally like my music, but the grand scale on which it is presented warrants attention.

Ensoph’s Opus Dementiae is the musical equivalent of a David Lynch film. It’s disjointed, even confusing at times, and yet it repeatedly falls together in an enjoyably chaotic sort of way.

Drawing from equal parts goth, doom, and black metal, with a little pinch of progressive rock and folk music thrown in for good measure, Opus Dementiae reminds me of a dream world. If you’ve ever had one of those dreams where you’re visiting with an old friend one minute, flying over your house the next, and talking to dolphins a few minutes later, you know exactly what I’m talking about. While you’re in that dream world, everything seems to make complete sense; it’s only afterwards when talking about it that it seems so strange. Ensoph’s album is exactly the same way. While listening to the album, it makes perfect sense how a track can go from goth to black metal and back several times. Unlike bands like System of a Down and Mr. Bungle, the transition between musical styles is quick yet smooth, not abrupt.

Considering the amount of musical styles jammed into each track, the songs flow well. Most of the tracks don’t have a discernable chorus — to have one, the band would have to repeat something they’ve already done before. Don’t get too attached to a particular riff or sound while listening to Opus Dementiae — just as the riffs begin to grow on you they’re yanked away and replaced by others just as quickly. This isn’t top 40 music by any stretch of the imagination. Think of it more as a musical voyage. Like that dream world, you’re never quite sure what’s going to come next. The arrangements are consistantly intelligent and creative.

Ensoph have managed to break every musical mold I can think of. If you’re looking for something original and like My Dying Bride, Emperor, My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult and The Cure, then this is for you. With vocals ranging from hushed whispers to all-out black metal screaming, this probably isn’t a disc you’ll find yourself singing along to. Give it a spin though, and I guarantee you’ll be thinking along to it.