Wandering Hermit

Good article on the utterly unique sound and style of A7X's Life Is But a Dream: https://www.loudersound.com/features/avenged-sevenfold-life-is-but-a-dream-the-story-behind-the-album

Just watched the long documentary on YT on the making of Hushed and Grim. I assume yins have seen that. It is funny as hell. Now I see more connections, as this film featured producer David Bottrill, who of course brought us the VT remix and Lateralus and ton of other good stuff.

Back to Mastodon and Brann Dailor. Not only is he an insanely good drummer, but now as I get into the band more and realize who is singing what... my goodness. How many drummers can sing this well? Even if he played like Bun E Carlos but kept that voice, I'd still listen. If we designate a metric to capture drumming and singing skill, I don't think he has much competition.

MASTODON. Jeez Loiuse, this Hushed and Grim album is kicking my ass in the best kind of way. What an amazing band, like Molly Hatchet blended with Metallica and plenty of proggy goodness.

La Villa Strangiato - Rush Dogs - Pink Floyd Blow Out - Radiohead Blue Bannisters - Lana Del Rey Rosetta Stoned - Tool Creating God - Avenged Sevenfold Engel - Rammstein Starfuckers, Inc. - NIN Der Ring des Nibelungen - Wagner Symphony #6 - Mahler

Yes, yes, yes, and more yes. Have not been so excited about a thinking person's band in a long time. I'm still blown away by The Stage and the audacity of the final song, the spaciest thing anyone has written since a little something called Cygnus X-1. But CX1 didn't have Neil deGrasse Tyson doing the spoken parts... LIBAD defies categorization as a whole, and many of the songs individually still grab me by the shoulders and shake me and say "Someone actually had the balls to write and release this!" I just cannot imagine what my life would have been life if I judged Rush on the basis of New World Man playing on the radio. Would have missed out on so much.

A couple good articles on the prog cred that A7X has more than earned. https://www.loudersound.com/reviews/avenged-sevenfold-life-is-but-a-dream-review https://www.loudersound.com/features/how-avenged-sevenfold-became-the-worlds-least-likely-prog-stars I honestly cannot think of any other band that has made so much music that cuts through so many genres. Especially now with LIBAD. But the indications were there early when they working with members of Oingo Boingo, fer crissake. And having Portnoy drum on one album.

Love the new disk. I wish we could get a second Crooked Vultures effort too.....

The Pretty Reckless

Years ago (after The Stage was released) I brought up A7X in a thread somewhere here and got tarred and feathered and run out on a rail in response. It was exasperating trying to point out to people that never listened to that album (or anything but a couple of radio songs) that this band has serious talent and creates much unique music of a very proggy nature. They take more chances than anyone else I can think of today, now that Radiohead and SOAD seem to have stopped making music.

Same here. A7X is the best prog band out there right now, IMO. When I first heard Nobody I hated it, hated it, hated it. Now I cannot stop listening to the whole album.

I like Gers in terms of his musical playing. Keep him. Just get him to stop the showboating.

Sorry to get off topic, and I'm not a regular here (I was on Counterparts WAY too much back in the day...), but AFAIK you and I are the only people here to even talk about A7X, which I find unreal. We might disagree about if the old vs new is better / worse, but either way they are an amazing band that you'd think would appeal to many, many Rush fans. But it seems hardly anyone here knows about them, or maybe heard Bat Country back in the day and pigeonholed them accordingly. Someone should start a thread.

Watched the YT video of the first ever live performance of ATG. That was cool. And it was shot so that I didn't have to see Gers hamming it up. Even better.

Random LC thoughts and opinions: After Rush, there is no band I have seen live more often than LC. Five times, and every time from front row. I've met them three times. I created a glass sculpture based on LC lyrics and gave it to Cristina as a gift. I think all the makeup is silly and distracting, but if the music was still evolving and as creative as it once was, I would not care. I wonder why the core three cannot seem to keep guitarists and drummers around. Also, if they are going to keep swapping out guitarists, maybe they should look really hard at getting in some new blood that will give them some new ideas / direction. I wish they would go more prog and take more chances, like A7X is doing.

Count me in with the others that loved Death Mag and Hardwired, but find 72.... disappointing as hell

Regarding the new Lana del Rey... I found it a mixed bag but the good tunes on it are stellar, such as The Grants and the title track. Certainly is not the album I'd recommend someone to start with . That would be Norman f***ing Rockwell.

Comalies XX did nothing for me. I thought every song on the original was far better.

Another good review: https://www.loudersound.com/reviews/avenged-sevenfold-life-is-but-a-dream-review

New Avenged Sevenfold out just now. Even proggier and more original than The Stage was. Doesn't sound like anything I've ever heard before. https://www.revolvermag.com/music/review-avenged-sevenfolds-life-dream-totally-bonkers-totally-brilliant

Yes! It's like By-Tor and the Snow Dog had a love child!

Does anyone on this messageboard like trios that do prog? If they do, they should check out Slift:

My second Rammstein show. Last night. Minneapolis. Holy shit. Still trying to figure out how I learned that Rammstein now makes an offer to blind people to tour the stage before the show. I'm legally blind*. The band had put it on facebook but I have no account and rarely would ever go there. I think it is because I had a twiiter account (that I don't use) but I get emails about the twitter feed and somehow I get Rammstein news and saw something about "blind stage tour" in my email. You had to send them a photo of your tickets along with proof of disability. So I bought some mid-level, not great seats for me and my son Alex, and sent them that stuff. *Just to head off some questions, legal blindness in the USA is defined in one of two ways: either your best corrected vision is no better than 20/200, or you have a narrow field of view ("tunnel vision") that is no wider than 20 degrees. I have a genetic condition that destroys my night vision and which limits my field to about 15 degrees. Hold your fist at arm's length: that is the size of the "tunnel" that I can see through. Put another way, I see about 2% of what a person with normal vision sees. So when you hear the term "blind" - don't think that it means absolutely zero vision ("totally blind"): there is a spectrum of vision loss. And I am super thankful I have my little sliver of vision left, although this progressive disease may destroy that eventually, too. But believe me, this level of restricted vision is NOT fun. I obviously cannot drive a car nor many other things. No response. After 10 days I got nervous and used a different email address to ask if they got my application. They replied and said they would send instructions "a couple days before the show." The show was Saturday, but on Thursday, no email. Friday, no email. Saturday morning, still nothing. I figured it wasn't going to happen. But midday I finally got a note on where to meet the staff, 2 hrs before the show, and that was also the first time that they said Alex could come along. Their staff was a nice German gal who led us down through guts of the stadium, eventially to the area behind the stage structure. I asked her why they were doing this -- perhaps one of the band members had some relatives with vision loss? She said it was guitarist Paul Landers' idea, that it was important to him. I told her "please thank him for us, we really appreciate this." And she said, "you can thank him yousrself, because he will be leading your tour." Holy shit!!!! So a few minutes later Paul was there. Super friendly guy. Funny. He wanted to know about my eyesight issues. Spoke lovely English. He took us to the central area below the stage, near the ramp that they use to enter. Here he showed us their macabre props: the horrible Puppe baby carriage and the Mein Teil pot. It was very dark in there and I didn't see any of this, but I could touch everything. He handed me the smallest of the flamethrowers that Till would be using. Various other crew were around, all of them very welcoming. The operator of the ramp lowered it down flat so we could walk out on it, turn, and see the drums. Our heads were just peeking over the stage. Paul asked us not to wave at the crowd and get them going. Still, a few people were looking and they saw us and they saw Paul, and began chanting his name, One of their staff then took this picture for us... You will be happy to see I carried the Rush colors. Paul, me, and Alex And that was it. We shook hands with him again and were guided back to our seating area. It was surreal. It was the coolest concert experience I have had in my 40 years of attending shows. We drove down to see these guys at Chicago Open Air a few years ago. I had no idea anything like this was in the future. I just wish there was something more I could do to express my appreciation to them. The show, of course, was fire and explosive madness. If you can see this tour, you really should go.

Mark Tremonti

vermin