In the Pipeline

There’s some upcoming releases that we here at Tapping the Ether are excited about. Keep your fingers crossed that the labels remember to send us a copy so we can put them on the air.

Iron Maiden’s A Matter Of Life And Death is due out on September 5, 2006 in North American (it was released yesterday in Europe, lucky BASTARDS!!). Supposedly the heaviest Maiden outing of recent vintage, we look forward to seeing if they managed to match the awesome quality of Dance of Death.

Running the risk of being overshadowed by Maiden’s release, Blind Guardian’s new CD Twist in the Mythalso comes out on September 5th. Blind Guardian’s always been unpredictable about sending material to the station, so we’ll just have to see if this one shows up. Keep your fingers crossed.

Also of note, September 5 sees the rerelease of three early Nevermore releases—Nevermore, In Memory, and The Politics of Ecstasy. Record companies very seldom bother sending rereleases to smaller radio stations, so we aren’t holding our breath on this one.

Cradle of Filth’s Thornography has been described by bassist Dave Pybus as a natural continuation of Nymphetamine. Since we loved Nymphetamine, more of the same would be much welcome. It’s due out September 11 in Europ and October 11 in North America on Roadrunner.

New Gem and Forgotten Treasure

I've been playing some tracks the last couple of shows by a French Prog-metal band called Spheric Universe Experiment. They response has been good, so I thought I'd give you a look-see at the CD cover and give my impressions so far.

Mental Torment, their debut, has a comfortable Dream Theater vibe to the sound without being a slavish copy. The gravitate toward the more aggressive, rawer sounds of DT. The songs are longer than commercial radio would be happy with, but it suits us just fine--the title track clocks in at a little over 15 minutes!

Although the band is made up of virtuoso players, they do not go overboard with a lot of extended, flashy solos--they do what the song calls for, and leave it at that. A lot of veteran prog-metal bands would do well to take note. If there's a weakness to the album, it's that the lyrics do not stand out that much. They aren't bad, they aren't great. Again this is a failing of a lot of prog-metal bands, and the fact that English is not their first language grants S.U.E a little slack on that score. Overall this is a fine debut that the band can be proud of, and hopefully the first of a long line of great releases.

For our Forgotten Treasure I'd like you to cast your mind back to the late 1980's--a special time for the metal fan. Metal was at it's zenith, and the legendary Alice Cooper was in the midst of a major comeback, recording music that was unashamedly METAL!!. After testing the waters with the so-so ConstrictorAlice hit his '80's peak with "Raise Your Fist and Yell", with a kick-ass band (featuring Kip Winger and Kane Roberts) and some of the best songs he ever recorded. Side one had catchy, radio-friendly numbers (including "Freedom"--possibly the best anti-PMRC song ever recorded) but it was side two that was classic. The absolutely brilliant "Time to Kill" remains to this day one of my favourite Cooper songs. It provides a warm-up to the centrepiece of the album--the "Gail Trilogy". "Chop Chop Chop" "Gail" and "Roses on White Lace"tell the story of a deranged man's descent into homocidal madness. Sick, but in a schlocky, horror movie kind of way, "Roses on White Lace" is such a fantastic song that it is impossible not to forgive it for going a little over the line in terms of nastiness.

Sadly, after the "Raise Your Fist" tour (with the full stage show), Alice moved on to the disappointing Trash and the Kane Roberts years were curiously erased from the history of Alice Cooper. Alice never speaks of or performs the music that he and Roberts made together, and one of Alice's greatest achievements is now criminally neglected.

Playlist for August 26

This week we featured some classic bands along with new music. The second hour was geared more toward straightfoward thrash, rather than the gothic/doom/death metal that we've been playing recently.

As always, the bands in italics are Canadian.

David Lee Roth...........Tobacco Road
Rush.............................Here Again
Rush.............................Crossroads
Chastain.......................Barracuda
Demons & Wizards.....Immigrant Song
Ozzy Osbourne...........Miracle Man
Judas Priest................Solar Angels
Dio................................Rainbow in the Dark
Bruce Dickinson.........Accident of Birth (demo)
Spheric Universe Experiment....Saturated Brain
Spheric Universe Experiment....Moonlight
Pyramaze....................What Lies Beyond
Metallica......................For Whom the Bells Toll
Annihilator..................The Box
Eidolon.........................Scarred
Venom..........................House Of Pain
Slayer...........................Flesh Storm
Voivod..........................After All
Voivod..........................Odds and Frauds
Opeth...........................The Drapery Falls
Evergrey......................The Dark I Walk You Through

We got some good response with the Pyramaze track tonight--another excellent offering from Nightmare Records. The new Voivod is a real grower too.

Okay, NEW Trivia question

Congrats to Wheezer the Cincinnati Metal God for not even breaking a sweat with the first trivia question.

Here's another:

What is the common connection between the two following bands: Skid Row and Vixen.

Good luck!

Trivia Question!

Okay, here's a gimme for this week.

One of our favourite albums of recent vintage has been Circus Maximus' "The First Chapter". What prog-metal legends from Kansas had an album called "The Circus Maximus"?

Leave your answers in the comments section and we'll post the correct one before next week's show.

Good luck!

17th Century Rock Star.

I watched a couple of great movies this week: Malcolm X, and The Libertine.

Both were similar. Both were based on the life of real people. Both were very dark in tone. Both were challenging to watch but well worth the effort.

The Libertine stars Johnny Depp as 17th poet, playwright and all-round reprobate John Wilmot, better known as the Earl of Rochester. Played with a wonderful combination of exuberance and despair by Johnny Depp, Wilmot opens the film with a prologue during which he declares "You will not like me". And he's right.

John Wilmot is portrayed as the 17th Century version of a self-absorbed rock star. Self-indulgent, self-absorbed, self-loathing, with emphasis on the "self". Talented but lazy, intelligent but crude, lionized yet isolated, Depp portrays the dissipated Wilmot like a spoiled rock star in the mold of Axl Rose or Nikki Sixx--an out of control Bad Boy whom no one has told to grow up. As Wilmot's looks and health succumb to the ravages of syphilis, he increasingly resembles Freddy Mercury in his final days.

The movie is not perfect, by any means. It suffers from a certain air of "staginess" and the script occasionally loses focus, resulting in periods that are bordering on tedious. Less emphasis on Wilmot's relationship with actress Elizabeth Barrie and more on that with King Charles II (wonderfully played by John Malkovich) would have improve the plot considerably. Many of the supporting characters are flat and lifeless, and there is no real antagonist to the story.

Reactions to the movie show that there is no middle ground. You will love it, or you will loathe it. Of the negative reviews I've read on Amazon, about 70% seem to be from women who picked up the movie solely because Johnny Depp was in it, and were disappointed to find such a dark and depressing story. Another 20% were from people who objected to the vulgarity of the movie (making me wonder what the hell they were expecting of a movie called "The Libertine"), with the remaining 10% of viewers who knew what they were getting into, and sincerely gave the movie a chance.

Perhaps it's best to think of The Libertine as a very, very dark counterpoint to Shakespeare in Love, a movie that it very much resembles in many ways. Don't let that mislead you into thinking that this is a feel-good movie, however, because that is one thing that it most definitely is not.

Playlist for August 19, 2006

Here's what we played tonight:

1. AC/DC......................Baby Please Don't Go


2. AC/DC.............Nervous Shakedown


3. Steve Vai..................Tender Surrender


4. Lee Aaron................Sex With Love


5. Cinderella.................Blood From a Stone


6. Hammerfall..............I Want Out!


7. Rush..........................Subdivisions


8. Queensryche............Fear City Slide


9. Spheric Universe Experiment.......Now or Never


10. Spheric Universe Experiment.......Burning Box Gala


11. Kaos Moon.................The Eternal Light Avenue


12. Hamadryad...............Alien Spheres


13. Iron Saviour...............Desert Plains


14. Pagans Mind..............Supremacy, Our Kind


15. Pagans Mind..............Entrance to Infinity


16. Paradise Lost............Small Town Boy


17. Within Temptation..........Enter


18. Voivod........................The Getaway


19. Voivod........................Dognation

Spheric Universe Experiment is a prog-power band from France on Nightmare Records who have a decent Dream Theater quality about them. Expect to hear their current album, Mental Torment, quite a bit for the next little while.