Jumping Darkness Parade: Eyal on Bands That Can’t Duplicate Their Album Live
I know you’ve all experienced this. You get into a band. Your friend introduces their music to you, or you find them online, or however it is you discover bands. Their album or songs start to get stuck in your head. You start listening to them on your iPod, in your car, at the gym, wherever. You start reading up on them. You look for tour dates. You get excited because one’s coming up. You go see them. Lights go down. Its go time! AAANNNNNDDDD your dick goes limp, or pussy dries up, whatever the case may be, because these dudes just can’t pull off what you heard on their CDs.
But wait, everything sounds like shit in this club. Maybe it’s the soundguy. Maybe it’s just an off night. Maybe somebody’s mom just died. Who knows? So you give them the benefit of the doubt and you remain a fan. Then a few months later you get a chance to see them again, and same story. Limp dick bullshit. I’ve experienced that soooo much. In fact, I’d say that the majority of bands I’ve heard in this genre give me that feeling.
There are only a small percentage of bands that I think can really stand up to what they put down on CD. It’s not hard to understand why this happens.
Today’s recording technologies and techniques can basically make anything perfect. Pretty much everything short of writing your songs for you is possible. Metal recording for the most part isn’t too off from a dude with a sequencer writing an electronica album. Double bass is programmed in. Guitars are recorded in bite size snippets. Everything is copied and pasted. Clean vocals are pitch corrected to perfection. All drum sounds are replaced with sampled sounds that give them that cannon sound. Layers and layers of vocals are used to make dudes sound like their necks are the size of a grizzly bear’s. I can tell you with utmost certainty that the majority of the “tech” bands that are out there wowing dumbasses who don’t know what real guitar playing is are just revered because of studio trickery. That’s why the albums sound like Castlevania speed death metal on crack with Satan singing and live it sounds like nothing but high end noise and mush with a Neanderthal barking his lungs out. Recording techniques have made bands lazy when it comes to actually getting to the art of mastering their instruments. There are a handful of bands that can pull this shit off for real, and it’s plainly obvious when that’s the case.
Mastodon is a perfect example. That’s a band that keeps it in real in the studio and keeps it real live. And their musicianship is top notch. So is a band I mentioned in my last blog, Opeth. They are the real deal. Live and in the studio.
There’s no mistaking it when a band of REAL musicians get up there. They sound great pretty much in any situation. Here and there circumstance’ll hose them, but they consistently sound amazing.
Back in the day Pantera was like that. That’s why I didn’t get where all the hatred for them came in response to Dimebag’s birthday post. That is a band that could pull off everything they recorded. If you want examples go check some of their live videos on YouTube and tell me what current bands can touch that level of tightness. Some can, but it’s not many and at the end of the day, you can’t judge it by their albums.
Albums lie. I know. I record bands. You need to see the bands live to know what the real deal is. You guys know what I’m talking about?
-EL
Daath always kill it, live or in the studio. Why don’t you visit them on MySpace and find out for yourself?
