Tag: Machine Head

Concert review: Anthrax

Posted on by Eric

Anthrax - 2015

Newport Music Hall, Columbus, OH – January 27, 2016

People enjoy and continually return to live music for myriad reasons: they love its immediacy, its intimacy, or, by contrast, they are overawed by spectacle, or love the near unmatchable feeling of being one among many, sometimes among thousands, united in a common passion. Some want to hear a recording they’ve always loved duplicated perfectly on stage, while some explicitly desire to see it taken in new and unexpected directions. Some thrive on the inherent intensity that happens whenever a band is operating in high gear. Some want to literally bounce off of every person they can, while others internalize the music and move in their own deliberate and inimitable ways. Underlying everything is the simultaneous sense of renewal and strengthening of an already powerful bond between artist and listener, quite likely forged far away from the stage, often under the most personal of circumstances. Continue reading “Concert review: Anthrax” →

Post No. 125: Alone in the Dark

Posted on by Eric

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Every 25th post, darkadaptedeye takes a planned break from normal business to plumb the shallow depths of its author’s psyche and/or overtly explore the locked attic of memories it only ever really dabbles in otherwise. You might think of it as a pit stop, or maybe a soft reboot. In “Danse Macabre”, Stephen King termed his own such digression “An Annoying Autobiographical Pause”, which I choose to think was kind of charming. Please know I take seriously the challenge of making patent self-indulgence interesting – actual results be damned – and I appreciate you being game. We’ll return to our irregularly scheduled programming shortly…

There is a point to this: what we see, what we hear…what we experience, and how we feel while doing so. It is a vital and inescapable part of being alive. Not only wouldn’t I have it any other way, such an “other way” simply isn’t an option, or at least not for me. The second weekend in November, as you are no doubt well aware, terrorist gunmen inflicted horrible casualties on a coordinated group of targets in Paris, France, including a packed concert by raucous American desert rock institution the Eagles of Death Metal. Due to the time difference, the eastern part of the United States received the news in the wee hours of Saturday morning. I was stunned, as I’m sure were we all, and took the moment, while devouring whatever breaking information on the shootings I could find, to spin EoDM’s new album, Zipper Down, for what was, shamefully, the first full time since a friend had gifted it to me the previous month. It made for a weird but poignant DIY elegy. Continue reading “Post No. 125: Alone in the Dark” →

Concert review: Machine Head

Posted on by Eric

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The Agora Ballroom, Cleveland, OH – February 7, 2015

Machine Head roared out of the San Francisco Bay Area in 1994 riding a wave of institutional hype that, properly harnessed, could fell a great elk, and possessed of enough obvious, fiery musical potential to roast the sucker on the spot. The institution in question – post-boom, once again underground heavy metal – was a minor one, granted, but the hype, for an ostensibly lucky sub-subset of genre over-enthusiasts like us, was very real, and, in its reach and fervor, inescapable (and, eventually, fairly persuasive). I remember seeing banner ads and full page spreads touting Machine Head’s debut Burn My Eyes in relatively niche publications like Metal Maniacs*, while a younger friend of mine confirmed he first learned of the album’s existence in the pages of Guitar World. First listens, improbably, almost justified the hype. MH frontman/figurehead Robb Flynn cut his teeth as a guitarist in ‘80s thrash cult underdog Vio-Lence, but had an altogether grander plan for his new band, which, ideally, would combine the complexity and musicality of prime Metallica with the muscular groove and seething aggression of Pantera. Continue reading “Concert review: Machine Head” →

My Top 20 Albums of 2014 + supplemental lists

Posted on by Eric

2014

Introduction

The (now officially) annual list of the prior year’s top 20 albums is, and will continue to be, a post that holds extra significance for me. After all, spending the better part of two months researching and writing the 2013 edition, only to find no acceptable place to post it, was the impetus for me to launch this blog in the first place. That was the best snap decision I’ve made in quite some time. Even though I fudged some of the housekeeping around it, for all intents and purposes that 2013 edition was the original centerpiece and first post ever for this blog, darkadaptedeye, 8000+ words long and self-indulgent to a fault. That was exactly one year and, now, seventy posts ago. Continue reading “My Top 20 Albums of 2014 + supplemental lists” →