Album of the Month: Bwncath, III

I bought this CD because I heard it playing in a shop in Carrnarfon last summer as a brand new release. I took an instant like to it and bought a copy that was sitting next to the till. 

It's the first album I've ever bought recorded entirely in Cymraeg. I've chosen it as my album of the month this month because I've been listening to it while revising for my arholiad Lefel Sylfaen (Foundation level exam), which I'm taking on Friday.

This is the band's third album, released after they dropped from being a four piece to a trio. 'Bwncath' is the Cymraeg word for 'buzzard' and the album art is of three stylised buzzards reminiscent of Celtic art.

There are 10 tracks on the album and they are all pretty short. The band have a folk-rock sound, lots of harmonies, with most songs played at a tempo towards the rockier end of the scale. They bring in a children's choir for a slower song called 'Castell Ni', which is about Caernarfon castle. The kids sound like they're having fun and they turn a slow song into a singalong.

I really like the opening track 'Dy feddwl' (which I think means 'you think', could be 'your mind'). But my favourite track is 'Prydwen', which is a reference to King Arthur's ship in the Welsh legendarium, here used as a metaphor for being young and adventurous. The song has an echoed refrain 'Ddown yn ol, ddown yn ol, ddown yn ol at y gwir' ('we come back... it's the truth') before kicking into a key change and the chorus. 

Overall, it's a great album and accessible even with limited (or no) Cymraeg - Cathy doesn't speak Cymraeg and she says she likes it. (Which is just as well as she's been in the room while I've been revising!)

Details

Year of release: 2025

Tracks: 10

Favourite track: Prydwen

Track to skip: this is a very lean album, with short tracks that make their point with a minimum of fuss, so no need to skip any tracks.

Album of the Month: The HU, Rumble of Thunder

Another band I discovered through Planet Rock and another CD I got for Christmas. The song I heard was their cover of Iron Maiden's The Trooper, which caught my ear. Sometimes I can tell from just one song that I'm going to like a band. I added the album to my wishlist even though The Trooper wasn't on there. It was a gamble that paid off.

The HU are Mongolian. They formed after heavy metal music was legalised in Mongolia, only a few years ago. Rather than trying to ape Western metal, they use electric versions of traditional Mongolian musical instruments combined with Mongolian throat singing, which works well in the metal genre. There are pictures of the trad instruments made metal in the CD booklet.

They also sing most of their songs in Mongolian, which I also like about them. I admire their authenticity as they try to make heavy metal that reflects their Mongolian culture, instead of just copying a narrow version of "metal" as it has developed in the UK and USA. 

As a fan of physical format media, I was very pleased with the bonus trading cards of the band members that came with the CD. You don't get this sort of thing when you just ask your smart speaker to play something. It was a nice surprise to discover them when I opened the CD. 

On the backs it gives the instrument the band member plays.

Musically, several tracks are quite nicely heavy. They tend to be up-tempo and almost aggressive. But Triangle is brilliantly melodic, while Mother Nature is a soft piece, befitting it's topic. 

This is the deluxe CD with three bonus versions of tracks that include guest artists singing lyrics in English. I didn't feel that added much and preferred the Mongolian original versions, but it's good to see artists like William Duvall (Alice in Chains) and Serj Tankian (System of a Down) embracing the HU and working with them.

Details

Year of release: 2023

Tracks: 15 (including 3 bonus tracks with guest musicians singing English lyrics)

Favourite track: Triangle - this regularly gets repeated when I play the CD in the car

Tracks to skip: clicking in at 8 minutes and 59 seconds, Black Thunder is a bit long. 

Album of the Month: Creeper, Sanguivore II

A new feature for the blog, mainly because I got some new CDs for Christmas and I thought it would be fun to review them a bit like my Book of the Month posts. I'm not sure how I'm going to format these posts so I can't promise there will be consistency in how I rate the albums if it does turn into a monthly series.

My first album of the month is Sanguivore II: Mistress of Death by Creeper.  

It's an unusual concept album in an emerging genre called "horror metal". The story arc is supposed to be about a vampire rock band on tour leaving behind them a trail of victims, and hunted in turn by an avenging dark angel, the Mistress of Death (who I presume is pictured on the album cover). The band dress as vampires for their live shows. 

I must admit, the first time I heard one of their songs playing on Planet Rock I thought it was a joke. The song was Blood Magick (It's a Ritual) and when the lead singer, William Von Ghould, intones "Drink the Blood!" at the end of the chorus, I burst out laughing. But then I heard the song a second time and realised this wasn't just a silly spoof. There is some real musicianship behind the speed metal riffs in that song and it was catchy. Vampire lore generally is a fine line between gory and silly and, in a way, I was impressed how much they committed to the bit.

Then Planet Rock played the title track Mistress of Death and I got the soaring chorus stuck in my head. By the time Prey for the Night was on the Planet Rock playlist, I decided to add the album to my wishlist and my sister-in-law, Abby, bought it for me for Christmas. 

There is plenty of ambiguous wordplay throughout the album, reflecting how vampirism is often metaphor for sex. The gap between 'so give us head' and 'stones' in the chorus of Headstones, feels deliberate. Even more blatant is the command to "Suck" Suck! Suck!" in Parasite. The incredible chorus of The Black House includes this couplet

Come night fall, I want to hold you like a hammer in my hands

I want to nail you on the cross at your command

It might just be me hearing the double meaning of nail there, but I doubt it. I feel what shines through on this album is a group of accomplished musicians who know exactly what they are damn well doing, lyrically and musically.

This is theatrical rock metal. The story canters along, layering riff on riff before cutting away into a fuzzy lounge number (Razorwire), and a final confessional track that starts off as a mournful song of regret and climaxes with an operatic sign off for the album (Pavor Nocturnus). 

Like all successful vampires, Creeper are very much playing with their audience. The tunes for all the songs are mesmeric and strangely uplifting when played at high volume. This isn't gloomy goth music, it's life-pumping bloodrush music designed to get your heart rate up and your vigour fizzing. 

It's a short album too, romping through at less than 45 minutes. Which means, you can hit repeat on your favourite tracks as the album plays without extending the run time too much. I like to listen to The Black House at least twice each time it comes on. 

Details

Year of release: 2025

Tracks: 12 (including a narrated introduction to the album and a short interlude at track 9)

Favourite track: The Black House

Tracks to skip: none, although I have been known to skip the narrated intro and get straight to Mistress of Death, which is the first proper song on the album.

In praise of the physical format

This blog post is a response to an innocent question from Connor a while back that got me thinking. Here's the Q:

Now, a bit of an odd question: Why do you still buy CDs? Do you not have any music streaming services?

And here are some reasons.

Tangible items are nice to have. I've mentioned this before when comparing cardboard baseball cards with non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and I was reminded of it recently when I bought a new box-set CD retrospective released by 90s shoegazer band Thousand Yard Stare.

The set contains four CDs and a book, all housed in a sturdy slipcase. It's a thing of beauty.

(I was one of the first people to buy it and got a free bonus 7" single as well!)

(Some) physical format items retain their value as well. We recently cashed in some old console games, which have become a bit collectible. If you just download a game, then it's not as easy to sell on. 

(I also find it frustrating when I can't just turn on a console and play a game any more. I found the PlayStation particularly bad for this. There were so many administrative steps before I could start playing, I actually gave up.  The same dynamic happens with music. I don't want to have to log in to anything to play music.)

Generally, I don't like the idea of streaming services deciding what I can access. If you rely on Disney Plus for watching Star Wars you can't see the original versions of Star Wars before they got monkeyed around with (and, in the case of Return of the Jedi, ruined!). But while you can't watch them, I can, because I still have the DVD box set released 20 years ago.

Similarly, Disney insisted on several cuts to Bluey episodes and for a long time didn't have the episode 'Dad Baby' available. This reflects the strong small-c conservative, easily offended, quick to complain American market. Which is why you can't see a male cartoon dog pretending to be pregnant or ponies at a fete do a poo like ponies do. (Seriously.)

Why should I surrender control over what I can watch to a corporation? I'm aware that my online activity is feeding the algorithm because the machines are listening. But I want to retain control over my playlist as much as possible. 

And that's before we get to the one line modern horror story: What happens if the wi-fi goes down? 

(Well, I'd have something still to watch.)

Even if the wi-fi stays on, streaming services don't hold content forever and they can drop stuff without warning. In effect, while you aren't limited to the content you own, you are limited by the content they own. We end up paying for another person's library and they decide what's in it.

As an example, this year Cathy and I have started watching the show Manifest. The problem was Netflix only had the first, second and fourth seasons available. The third season was on another streaming service. What to do? We opted to buy the series on DVD. (And then, after we bought the physical format that Netflix reached a deal with the other streamer. However, at this rate, we will have finished the fourth and final series before season 3 arrives on Netflix.)

I realise this sounds like a regressive rant by an irritable Gen X old man who is reluctant to surrender control and autonomy. But I don't care. I'm going to keep buying CDs and other physical format items and, in the long run, I think I'll be proven wise to do so. There's safety in being a late adopter. 

Lastly, I'm Generation X. I remember the 20th century. I lived a pre-Internet life. Nostalgia is the weapon pointed at me most often. Having the physical artefact is a reminder of back when I was more innocent and less cynical. And is that a bad thing?

Book of the Month - A History of Heavy Metal

This book was a makeweight in a 'buy two for £7' deal in HMV, which used to be a record shop but now is a more general emporium of random things. Including books. (I bought Slaughterhouse Five and The Boys from Brazil in a previous deal - both reviewed back in September.) It felt sort of suitable that I would be buying a book about music from HMV despite the company's drift away from selling music.

A History of Heavy Metal by Andrew O'Neill is based on a stand up comedy show about heavy metal. Without wishing to be too rude, that's pretty apparent from the way it's written. The narrative goes off on tangents. There are a lot of opinions. And it gets quite repetitive after a while, like he's forgotten what he has previously told you (twice) about a particular album or how he thinks Metallica declined in greatness when they went commercial. 

The thing is that heavy metal is inherently ridiculous. Andrew sort of recognises this, but rather than let the stupid excesses of the movement speak for themselves, he feels the need to put his own gloss on it by telling you they were stupid. And fair enough, if you despise 'glam metal' as much as he does, maybe recounting stories from those bands is tedious. I did like his comment about forcing himself to watch a documentary about Motley Crue as research for the book. I understand how painful that must have been - but really it did feel like the minimum amount of effort in terms of actual research. 

But although Andrew is willing to admit that metal is often just very silly, he also tries to paint it as an important movement, uniting outsiders and providing a community for people who don't feel they fit in. Which is all fair, I suppose. He tells his own story of getting into metal a couple of times in the book and that was more interesting than being told, again, how his favourite Death Metal albums were amazingly innovative and genre-defining.

Overall the book could have done with more stories, more nuggets gleaned from research and fewer opinions (or at least just being told those opinions once). There was plenty left out and glossed over - the entire Satanic Panic in the USA in the 1980s, for example. But maybe he didn't know much about that because I'm aware that religious moral panics are often opaque to people outside the religion. 

Several times he alluded to stuff, but didn't return to the topic to explain it further. The reader is just assumed to know what went wrong with Celtic Frost, for example. That's the one that really stuck out but there were several others. It feels like the book is aimed at people who don't know much about heavy metal; the interrupted explanations wouldn't be helpful.

He also has a very annoying authorial habit of putting jokes and tidbits of information in footnotes. These really interrupted the flow of reading. A long time ago I was told that if a point (or a joke) is worth a footnote, then you should really think about including it in the main body of the text. The continual footnoting did make me wonder if he doubted his ability to land a joke. Truthfully, many didn't land. They just got in the way. 

Although I wouldn't particularly recommend the book, it did have some highlights. I liked this comment on page 84 so much I read it out loud to Cathy:

"Def Leppard's enormous success in the States is what the other... bands were aiming for, though none went for it with quite the same ferocity, plus of course they possibly lacked the shark-eyed commercial killer instinct and pop chops to write the sorts of songs that millions of people want to hear. Bear in mind that most humans are awful, and so if millions of people want to buy your art... it's probably not good art."

That final sentence really made me laugh. 

And towards the end of the book (p.271) this rather astute comment caught my eye:

"One of the major advantages of cassette tapes was the lack of random access - you just started it where you'd left off. As a result albums and mix tapes got listened to more evenly. Records and CDs favour the beginnings of albums, and MP3s lead to the universal experience of listening to someone dj-ing at a party and skipping tracks halfway through. Being spoiled for choice means many people give albums less time to grow, and fewer listens in general."

I remember listening mainly to cassettes in my formative musical years in the late 80s and early 90s (when, I admit, I really liked Def Leppard) and I think he is on to something here. There are a lot of album tracks I listened to in order to get to the bits I liked because fiddling about with fast forward or rewind was annoying. Even the few albums I had on CD got taped onto cassettes because I didn't have a CD played in my bedroom, but I did have a succession of tape-players.

(It's strange, because at the time there was a big movement saying 'home taping was killing music' but I got introduced to a lot of bands whose albums I have subsequently bought and rebought in different editions because a mate taped me a copy to listen to.)

There's a certain level of nostalgia at work there, and that is a theme for the book. The chapter titled 'In the Late Nineties Every Band I Loved Went Shit' gives it away. The following chapter slagging off Nu Metal feels a bit like an old guy complaining the music the kids are into is rubbish. The nasty comments about Linkin Park felt awkward given Chester Bennington's suicide - which was actually in the same year this book was published. I'd have taken them out for the paperback release because it really comes across as punching down. 

The book ends with a rather silly series of predictions that heavy metal will eventually take over the world, which mainly seems to be a rather long gag about the heat death of the universe arriving before the release of a new Guns & Roses album. It felt like unnecessary filler when the previous chapter about the current state of heavy metal had ended on an optimistic high point. 

And a note on indexes - the book really needed two, an index of bands and artists and an index of topics. 

So, this is 'a' history of heavy metal. I think 'the' history is probably still waiting to be written.

Rediscovering Garbage

This past Christmas my brother and sister-in-law, Dave and Esther, picked a CD off my wishlist and gave me Anthology, a collection of 35 Garbage songs drawn from their seven studio albums (plus some extra tracks like the James Bond theme song they recorded). 

It's the second 'Best of' compilation the band have released. I thought I owned a copy of their first one, but I can't find it on the CD shelf with the other Garbage CDs. When I read my blog post about it from back in 2007, I realised that I probably never bought it. That came as a bit of a surprise, as I'm a completist when it comes to certain bands but it seems I'd grown a bit disenchanted with Garbage back then.

On a recent long trip to North Wales (blogged here) I listened to the 'Best of' several times. Disc 2 introduced me to some of Garbage's more "recent" material. By recent, I mean from 2012 onwards, when they released Not Your Kind of People. 

I own Not Your Kind of People. It was a Christmas gift off my wishlist back in 2015, from my other sister-in-law, Abby. I had put it on my wishlist after going to see Garbage that year, on their tour celebrating the 20th anniversary of their debut album, and not recognising one of the songs in the encore. I'm pretty sure, now, that the song was Automatic Systematic Habit, which is the first song off Not Your Kind of People. 

It was the third time we had been to a gig in Manchester. I really remember Shirley Manson was wearing a gorgeous leather kilt with metal stud patterns on it. And also looking round at the crowd and realising that as a generation we had grown old together. 

I must have listened to Not Your Kind of People when I first received it, but clearly it didn't penetrate. But after hearing the singles from the album on the Anthology, I have been playing it the last few days. The first four tracks were released as singles and they are all absolute bangers. The song Control is potentially up there with my all time favourite Garbage songs.

Discovering an album ten and a half years after it was released, and seven years after receiving it shows that sometimes the best music is sitting on your shelf all along. It's also a better reason for owning a 'Best of' than just because I'm a saddo completist. 

It's also triggered my completism about the re-released deluxe editions of Garbage's early albums. In the weeks since Christmas I've ordered the special anniversary editions of the first three albums, with their bonus discs of b-sides and remixes. My stack of Garbage CDs has grown considerably. I might even have to get a copy of their first 'Best of' just for completeness's sake. 

Live at the Roxy - The Tragically Hip live in 1991

I took delivery of a new CD a few days ago. It's a live album released by The Tragically Hip, of a concert recorded in 1991 - on the 3rd of May 1991, to be precise, at The Roxy in Los Angeles. (They aren't the first band to release a live album recorded at The Roxy, others include Bob Marley, Frank Zappa and Bruce Springsteen. It seems it's the place to record live albums. It was also where Guns'n'Roses played a lot of early gigs.)

This album was released last year in a large box-set commemorating the 30 year anniversary of the Hip's third album Road Apples. The box set also included Saskadelphia, which was salvaged from some 30 year old session tapes. (I reviewed Saskadelphia last autumn.) For a while Live at the Roxy was only available in that box set, but it was released as a standalone album last month. 

There was a sticker on the front of the CD digipak, saying it contains the "killer whale" version of the song New Orleans is Sinking. This refers to a mid-song ramble that the singer, Gord Downie, goes on, while the band play on. In it, Gord tells a story of being a maintenance guy in the killer whale tank of an aquarium who becomes the unlikely focus of a killer whale's romantic interest, and jealousy from the other whale in the tank. It includes a few lines where Gord pretends to speak 'whale' and makes suitable noises. Yes, it's as bizarre as you might be thinking.

The set list is a mix of songs off Road Apples, their second album Up to Here, and there are two songs from their debut eponymous 8 track mini-album. Intriguingly, there are three instances of Gord going off-script during songs and saying or singing lyrics that later appeared in songs on Fully Completely, which was released the following year.  

Highway Girl includes a chunk of lyrics that ended up in Locked in a Trunk of a Car - about hiding a body where police helicopters won't spot it. There are two songs that include lines that later appear in At the Hundredth Meridian, with several lines repeated in the version of All Canadian Surf Club, which closes out the performance. 

Fully Completely was the album that really defined The Tragically Hip, so much so they spent the next few albums trying to write songs that sounded different. The change in pace between Fully Completely and Day for Night, released in 1994, is remarkable. What I find interesting is the way that the band were clearly working with those lyrics well before Fully Completely was released. 

As a final point, that may reveal my level of completist nerdery, I recognised the way Gord said "This is a song called 'Blow me'" to introduce the song Blow at High Dough. It sounded like a bonus track I'd listened to on a CD single. I went and checked my single of Little Bones, and, yep, the live version of Blow at High Dough was recorded live at The Roxy on 3rd May 1991. 

I've always liked that live version, and now I have a copy of the whole concert!

Picking up litter on a bright sunny day

The weather this past weekend has been glorious. I got roasted watching a football match on Saturday and on Sunday joined the Keep Grangetown Tidy monthly litter pick. As ever, I am going to blog about some of the more interesting stuff I found. I started out well with a shiny £1 coin!

Then I got a jolt of nostalgia. Remember when bands used to issue CD singles with bonus tracks like live recordings? Well, this is unplayable now, but it's a throwback to life before streaming.

We had a visitor from Wales Online for the litter pick. I don't know if this photo that I grabbed off the Keep Grangetown Tidy socials will be on the website or not.

One other person came prepared for sunshine and wore sunglasses. The journalist disappeared before I could offer some opinions and observations on litter picking. 

One of the main things I've noticed has changed since I first went on a litter-pick is the amount of pandemic-related litter. I picked up eight facemasks, two empty hand santiser bottles, two disposable gloves (in different streets - not a pair together), and one of the solution dropper things from a lateral flow kit. This is all garbage that wouldn't have been part of a litter pick three years ago!

Another observation is that smokers who switch to vaping are still inclined to discard items relating to their addiction in the street. I lost track of how many empty boxes of vape juice I picked up. This observation has informed my opinion that smokers are inherently dirty people. Because even if they switch to a less damaging means of self-poisoning, they still don't clear up their smoker's trash. 

Anyway, on with the "finds".

I do have some "found Lego" in my Lego stash. However, this Duplo went in the bin bag.

It amused me that this glass still had a straw in it. Were they really drinking Carling through a straw?

Someone had decided to start an impromptu street library. Unfortunately the books in the plastic bag had got wet and ruined. Charlie and Lola ended up in the bin bag too.

And this also got chucked. I have no idea what it is. 

Another weird thing was a frying pan in a carrier bag. I found a security tag like the kind you get on clothing. There was McDonald's trash with the Deliveroo stickers stuck on the hamburger boxes. I also found evidence that people buy and consume those awful-looking Weetabix drinks because I picked up an empty bottle that someone had chucked over a gate when they had finished chugging it. 

All that trash ended up in the pile of rubbish at the end. This picture wasn't the final heap of stuff but it gives an idea of how discarded items and rubbish mounts up when it's gathered altogether. 

Lots of people said thank you as I was walking around collecting rubbish. More people say thank you than actually pick up a grabber and join in. But at least they see people taking action to tackle the problem and maybe that will encourage more people to act that way. 

(And I kept the £1 coin!)