Thursday, January 15, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Listening Station

The Crystal Method

Legion of Boom

The Crystal Method's one true contribution to modern music--aside from introducing the raver culture soundtrack to mainstream America via car commercials--has been its balance between digital crunk and rock chuggery. Rather than focusing on the beat and sequencing paler elements around it, or burying it among digital effects, Ken Jordan and Scott Kirkland have found a way to divide their listeners' attention among steadily paced breakbeats, rumbling bass foundations and aggressive, radio-ready components--be they subversive synth lines, catchy guitar samples or guest vocalist one-liners. This latter, infiltrating pop apparatus brings to mind the work of AC/DC, Public Enemy, New Order and even Led Zeppelin, detectable in nearly all of the Method's compositions.

Legion of Boom is evolutionary from the 1997 debut, Vegas, and 2001 follow-up, Tweekend, because of the duo's ever-perfecting boundary-straddling. Just as a track like "Starting Over" threatens to become little more than cosmic trance, a guitar-like, buzzing strain and indecipherable vocal mantra surfaces. Meanwhile, in the first single, "Born Too Slow," Jordan and Kirkland actually have to rein in the crossover parts--former Kyuss singer John Garcia's snarky, raspy cheerleading; ex-Limp Bizkit axeman Wes Borland's pleasantly invasive boogie loops--with a rise-and-fall keyboard melody reminiscent of Depeche Mode. Hip hop gets plenty of airtime here, too. Rahzel, from the Roots, allows for some urban commentary in the lurking "American Way," as does freestyling San Francisco pop poet Hanifah ("Wide Open"). Taken together, it's not exactly diverse in tone--a common casualty of dance-oriented albums--nor is it necessarily groundbreaking, but the variety of sounds and styles here is more bountiful than on any of the act's previous efforts. Legion is also superiorly arranged and written, furthering the claim that the Crystal Method remains at the forefront of mainstream American electronic music.--Mike Prevatt

Slayer

Soundtrack to the Apocalypse

"Pumped with fluid, inside your brain/ Pressure in your skull begins pushing through your eyes/ Burning flesh, drips away/ Test of heat burns your skin, your mind starts to boil." Unflinchingly exploring the horrors of Dr. Josef Mengele's medical experiments at Auschwitz, Slayer's "Angel of Death" should have been enough to turn the entire world off to the Orange County gorecore quartet. Instead, "Angel of Death" popped up everywhere from Public Enemy's "She Watch Channel Zero?!" to the Jackass soundtrack and single-handedly launched Slayer's brutal two-decade reign over American death metal.

In fact, "Angel of Death" proved such a significant achievement for Slayer that it opens the band's new four-disc retrospective, Soundtrack to the Apocalypse. Consisting of three audio CDs and a live DVD, Soundtrack draws heavily from the Rick Rubin-produced speed metal masterwork Reign in Blood but picks and chooses from Slayer's entire song catalog--the vast majority of which explores some combination of death, suicide, rape, disease, violence and/or hell. The compilation also includes oft-overlooked movie cuts such as Slayer's cover of Iron Butterfly's "In-a-Gadda Da Vida" (Less than Zero) and the Ice T-fronted "Disorder" (Judgment Night). And like any good retrospective, Soundtrack devotes an entire disc to unheard rarities (highlights: early home recordings of "Raining Blood" and "South of Heaven").

Performed with a technical virtuosity otherwise unmatched in death metal, Slayer's collected output is imposing and impressive--proof of the potential of music to convey candid emotions (even if those emotions are essentially evil). And this perhaps gives the best insight into Slayer's continued popularity. While doom-and-gloom posers like Metallica and Megadeth were raising the devil horns and counting their royalties, Slayer was unleashing sonic slaughter like "Necrophiliac," "Dead Skin Mask" and "Sex Murder Art." If nothing else, it makes Soundtrack an interesting listen. Just make sure you lay down a drop cloth before you give it a spin. Otherwise, you'll spend the entire day trying to scrub blood and guts out of the carpet.--Newt Briggs

Okkervil River

Down the River of Golden Dreams

Only in the depths of mysticism and rock 'n' roll can one find transcendence while pursuing a melancholy muse. Once a generation, an artist releases a song cycle that embraces the bewildering troubles of ornery characters who eventually earn a listener's surprised empathy. Down the River of Golden Dreams joins Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, Rickie Lee Jones's Pirates and American Music Club's Mercury as landmarks of spiritually uplifting despair.

Fronting a mini-orchestra (with brass and string accompaniment, "band" seems too quaint a term), vocalist/songwriter Will Sheff has constructed a haunting collection of dissolute reveries, whimsical tragedies and tearful exultations. Blending the musical ambitions of Kurt Weill with the literary sensibility of James Joyce, Sheff yelps, purrs and wails about the broken dreams of unlovable romantics, the bittersweet tenderness of unfaithful spouses and the sorrowful regrets of war criminals.

Flaunting unorthodox titles like "The Velocity of Saul at the Time of His Conversion" and unleashing cryptic couplets like "The heart wants to trail away from `alone'/ So the heart turns a sale into a well-worn milestone" Sheff threatens to implode on his own garish ambitions. But his talented supporting players elevate his jaunty, stream-of-conscious ditties into dynamic pop anthems and his melodramatic verbal excesses into epic ballads of savage warmth and icy beauty.

Down the River of Golden Dreams showcases Sheff's remarkable talents as an alchemist: He turns the narcissistic ennui of the prematurely jaded into a thrilling revelation, and he transforms the grubby, dissonant words of the forsaken into mad bursts of poetry.--Robert Chancey