You should see it around here, man. It’s all exploding hearts and raging boners and hot sparks, which kind of sounds like a sweaty Saturday night at the steel mill, but really it’s just me on cloud nine in the rock n’ roll sky that opened up above me the second I dropped the needle on this glorious slab of coke bottle clear wax. A new C’mon record can, without much effort at all, make your entire life worth living, so the fact that it’s been three years since their last full-length, Bottled Lightning of an All Time High, means we’ve been comatose for quite awhile now. But here comes our heroic power trio, Sir Ian Blurton, Katie Lynn Campbell, and Dean Dallas Bentley, riding in on this pale horse to save the fucking day, to shock us back into coherence with their brilliantly boss fuzz n’ roll. Beyond the Pale Horse, then, is like a shot of adrenaline right into your balls, like most C’mon albums are, naturally, and like previous albums, its beauty lies in its beastly nature, its ability to shift and deviate while still remaining furiously savage. The play this time is that the electric noise is saturated in dreamy effects, and C’mon mixes some foggy, psychedelic magic in amongst their usual motor-driven madness. Dig the catchy title track and the majestically groovy – and unusually long – “Fortress of the Night” for the freakiest examples. But for sheer riffola, “Midnite is the Answer,” with its stoner crunch, is the one that pumps my blood. C’mon prove, once again, that they are almighty and untouchable.
*That’s not the record I own, but it looks just like it. Courtesy of whomever took the pic. It might’ve been Tony.
Ok, I don’t have an mp3 from the album to share (I just got it in the mail), so go buy the album from Yeah Right! to hear it for yourself. In the meantime, enjoy an older C’mon video of them washing their van and kicking it live!
No disrespect to Cathedral’s recent double album, The Guessing Game, but Avantasia’s monumental box set featuring two new albums, The Wicked Symphony and Angel of Babylon, is easily the most impressive release so far this year. When I say impressive, I am of course referring to the scope and magnitude of Avantasia’s symphonic power metal, which is at once audacious, indulgent, theatrical, and fantastical. We’re usually only presented with Avantasia’s larger-than-life heavy metal fairy tales one album at a time, but Tobias Sammet must be feeling awfully courageous these days, finishing off the last two parts of The Scarecrow Saga/The Wicked Trilogy (the first part being the 2008 album, The Scarecrow) in one fell swoop. But I suppose if anyone can pull it off, it’s Sammet and his cast of usual suspects, who have gathered once again to fill their roles in this epic and evil installment of Avantasia’s latest production(s).
White Wizzard (double Z!) are a throwback denim n’ leather LA outfit hellbent on resurrecting chugging NWOBHM riffs, soaring melodies, and the Dungeons & Dragons (or is it World of Warcraft now?) culture of 666′s, evil witches, and mindless fun. You know the score: METAL must triumph over everything else and the only way that will happen is if you throw on your three-quarter sleeve Judas Priest shirt, crank it up to twelve, and party harder than you ever have before. You have to puke lightning, soldier! You have to bark at the moon! Go find a goddamn parking lot and a girl in stone wash named Tammy and make it happen! You have to live the album title, got it?
C’mon
Avantasia
White Wizzard