Friday 5: Code Red Coda
Happy Friday, MetalSucks reader! Welcome to MetalSucks Friday 5, our awesome series that appears every Friday (duh) on MetalSucks (duhh) and involves the quantity of five (duhhh).
Here’s how it works: A list of best/worst/weirdest/whatever five somethings is posted by one of your beloved MetalSucks contributors or by one of our buds (like you!). Then you, our cherished reader, checks it out, has a chuckle, then chimes in with a list of the same. No sweat, just whatever springs to mind, k? (Just like that movie about those losers working at a Chicago record store!) After all, it’s Friday — the day dedicated by the gods to mindless, fun time-wasting.
Here we go!
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THE FIVE
Some jams finish with an awesome original section (aka “coda”). Which five blow you away!!
THE LISTER
Anso DF, MetalSucks senior editor
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“Captain Bligh” by Filter
from Title Of Record
1999 | Reprise
coda: 3:56
It’s not that common: a song whose final “act” rolls out a new, self-contained section. It’s common for a jam to conclude with a bunch more of its known and loved parts, maybe with a change to key or tempo. And no small number of tracks end with a vamp on its main themes. But don’t you love the gift of a whole new thought to offset its precedents? Fuck yeah you do.
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“Disciple” by Slayer
from God Hates Us All
2011 | American
coda: 2:52
Dismiss from your list of “coda classics” the ones that appear in the guise of a real afterword. Take “Bleeding Me” by Metallica or Anthrax’s “Big Fat”: Each song stops completely, then rebuilds from scratch on the same already-beat riff that was hardly interesting the first time around. It’s a bluff, a salesman’s insinuation that this boring, tuneless workout can carry a song, let alone another three minutes of “jamming.” Ugh. Be like Slayer’s “Disciple” — a new tempo, another great groove, a mosh exclamation point to a thrash sentence.
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“Return To Serenity” by Testament
from The Ritual
1991 | Atlantic
coda: 6:21
Slayer isn’t the only big thrash band with a deft touch with a “post script”: fucking Testament. In one case, their coda is only a little flutter, a effects rack tinkering, but it pulls listeners all the way through six minutes of rather bloodless balladeering. Special.
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“Pale Sister” by Coroner
from Mental Vortex
1991 | Noise
coda: 4:01
You wonder if a band relegates a new groove to parentheses because it doesn’t quite represent their trademark vibe. If this type of riff populated an entire song is tantamount to, say, a hulking bruiser attempting a sexy strip tease. Maybe that’s just my image for the coda to this noodly, jazzy ripper that transforms into a brief soundtrack to amp-humping, fans-and-fog hair metal fuck scene. Weird, awesome.
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“Women” by Def Leppard
from Hysteria
1987 | Mercury
coda: 4:39
If we’re talking the wonders of unpredictable, ear-grabbing song construction, let us give due to one of the masters: Mutt Lange, producer of ageless, giga-hit albums. More than one of Hysteria’s evergreen jams seems to sprout new limbs just when it seems that it’s about to tumble to the ground. It’s the end of the night and you’re standing in the doorway, but the dinner party’s host hands you a cupcake for the road. Lovvve you Mutt Lange.
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Your turn! Have a great wknd!
