Artist: Kingdom of Sorrow

Album: Behind the Blackest Tears

Year: 2010

Label: Relapse

        Hard rock “supergroups” rarely have produced albums greater than the sum of their parts (see: Temple of the Dog, Damn Yankees, Chickenfoot).Yet somehow Jamey Jasta (Hatebreed) and Kirk Windstein (Crowbar, Down) have created a monster of a album, which, despite its flaws, may be one of the better records of the year.

As a fairly recent convert to metal, I haven’t listened to any Hatebreed, Down, or Crowbar.  Despite the handicap, it’s easy to see the influences both parties bring to the album.  Jasta delivers his vocals in his trademark hardcore metal bark.  Love it or loathe it, Jasta is one of the better shouters out there, enunciating clearly throughout, which is a huge flaw in many of his peers.  His lyrics range from the typical chest pounding power of With Barely a Breath, to the more introspective, and even soul-baring From Heroes to Dust.  Windstein has an excellent metal howl, tuneful but weathered, and delivers punishing sludgey, groove-soaked riffs throughout.

The album announces its ferocity from its opener, Enlightened to Extinction and rarely lets up.  With one foot planted firmly in sludge, Kingdom of Sorrow manages to deliver its own brand of hook-laden metal that shows off the considerable chops of Windstein, as well as session players Charlie and Nick Bellmore.  Drummer Nick, in particular, provides rock steady, heavier than uranium beats, and manages to be versatile without being too showy.

          I must say, however, that KoS are at their weakest when repeating hardcore breakdowns that are sure to excite black hooded hooligans to pummel each other in mosh pits, but become stale for a casual listener.  Thankfully, Jasta and Windstein branch out, offering NWOBHM leads on several tracks, and even throw in some thrash and punk, specifically on album closer Salvation Denied.  This eclecticism makes me hope for bigger, even better things for Kingdom of Sorrow in the future.  Behind the Blackest Tears is further proof that after years in the wilderness, American metal is proving to be one of the most fertile grounds for modern rock music, with something to offer even the most jaded critics.

NOTE:  I snagged a copy of the “special edition,” which includes a slipcase with alternate artwork and two bonus covers, Running Wild’s “Soldiers of Hell” and Motorhead’s “No Class.”  They are very well done, though I haven’t included them in my assessment of the album.  Windstein takes lead here, and demonstrates an uncanny Lemmy impersonation on the No Class cover.  They are quite good, but that’s about it.  Please don’t get price gouged looking for this online, as I’ve seen sellers on Amazon boosting the price to over 20 bucks.  I bought mine new at FYE for 9.99.

Bonus note:  I’ve gotta say the artwork in many newer metal releases has been stellar, from Dyer’s covers for Baroness, the covers for both Skeletonwitch full-lengths, and of course the mind-altering artwork of Mastodon’s albums.  Kingdom of Sorrow has some excellent enhanced photography on this album, courtesy of Orion Landau and Jeremy Saffer.  I especially like that they’ve included artwork in the lyric book as well, as it gives the whole package a nice, cohesive feel.  Jasta also provides brief commentary on each track in the lyric book, though I’ve avoided it thus far to come to my own conclusions.

I often joke that I graduated high school in 3 years, and that’s almost true.  I was out a lot my senior year, owing to some serious mental health problems, and now I’m absent a lot at my job, owing to some ongoing health problems.  And I’ve been absent from here, and in all honesty, most of my relationships because I’ve been stuck in limbo, both from my health issues and because I have spent the last few months awaiting replies from 5 schools, agonizing over my future.  All schools declined to accept me to their Ph. D. program, but SUNY Albany accepted me into their master’s program.  Come August, it’s goodbye New Jersey, hello Albany.  I’m excited, nervous, overjoyed, and kind of sad all at the same time.  And in the last few months, I’ve felt more wistfully nostalgic than a bad country song.

I found myself thinking about sleepovers with my best friends, all-night horror and sci-fi marathons with family and all alone, getting dropped off at punk shows, scaring myself while making up stories about things that lived in the woods near my house, playing in shitty bands in parents’ basements.  Even before I knew I was leaving, I felt these pangs of sadness over what, I believed, can’t be captured again.  The present, it seemed, was too filled with uncertainty and cynicism, and paled in comparison with those wonderful, beautiful childhood moments, even the ones beautiful in their sadness.

Rejection by a girl, self-loathing, lost friendships, disappointment.  Apparently, others have felt this way recently as well.  While I have had more mixed feelings lately about their columns and reviews, the A.V. Club had an excellent post titled Childhood Entertainment We Still Love (located here http://www.avclub.com/articles/childhood-entertainment-we-still-love,39766/ ).  When lists like this appear online or in a magazine, the best thing they do is capture the universal feeling of melancholy and fierce defense of the media that shaped us, or that we believe shaped us.  We’re all entitled to that melancholy, I believe, when it comes to our childhood.  We won’t ever be as excited about things we find mundane as adults, as intense in our emotions, or trusting of those who we love.

Tonight I rediscovered one of my keystone childhood entertainments when I queued up Paul Simon’s “Kodachrome” on my iPod.  If you haven’t heard it, Google it now.  Listen, then join me back here in the 3 minutes it takes to hear the song.

Back?  Great.  Kodachrome hit me in several profound ways tonight.  Hard enough that I had to get back on here and share.  Instantly and personally, the song resonates as a childhood entertainment because Paul Simon was one of the few pop artists I heard on a regular basis as a kid.  My dad owns several Simon CDs, but most often it was the simple “Greatest Hits” that found its way to the CD changer in my dad’s car.  I associate Simon’s voice with key events in my childhood, from visits to the Bronx Zoo to the post-fight fallout between my eventually-divorced parents.  In my teenage years, I viewed the collection of baby boomer hits with disgust, because it wasn’t “punk rock” enough for me.  Now, I view Simon with similar suspicion, but for his shoddy treatment of uncredited co-writers (I’m a grown-up now, get it?).  But the music remains immaculate, and Kodachrome a song that cuts deep on many levels.

I realized tonight, as I choked up remembering those moments Simon served as soundtrack to my childhood, that this silly-sounding pop song I’d sung along to was actually about the allure of nostalgia and facing the reality of our pasts.  “If you took all the girls I knew when I was single and brought them all together for one night, I know they’d never match my sweet imagination, and everything looks worse in black and white.”  If there was a time I needed a song to hit the nail on the head, it was tonight.

I’m going to miss New Jersey.  I’m going to miss the proximity to those keystones of childhood.  I’ll miss Split Rock Road and the Montville 7-11 and a hundred people who made me feel worthwhile for nearly 25 years, many of whom I haven’t spoken to in years and will likely not see again.  I’m going to miss the consistent dedication to a band I’ve kept alive for six years and nearly a hundred shows now.  I’m going to miss my bandmates and friends and family that will be a bit further away.  But the truth is I can’t succumb to wistful sadness about a lot of times that, frankly, were sad or disappointing or infuriating just as often as they were fun!  The truth is I have to push forward and value those things of the past as shapers, not definers.  I’ll celebrate those times by telling my friends and family those great stories, but won’t be crippled by them, or remain absent from the present because I’m too busy mourning the past.

I may be frantic and doing a lot of work in the coming months, but I swear I won’t be absent for anyone if I can help it.  I want to make new memories, live in the present, and keep anyone interested enough to be reading this a part of my life as it changes for the better.

I may sometimes long to be that kid singing along to Kodachrome, blissfully unaware of its melancholy message, but I’m thankful that I’m grown up enough to finally get it.

Despite boasting a cast including Seth Rogan, Adam Sandler, Jonah Hill, and many of Apatow’s regular players, Funny People was a movie destined to fail.  Advertised as a bromance/romantic comedy, in the same vein as Apatow’s previous efforts, Funny People is really a comic meditation on death.  It is deeply flawed, sporting a 2 1/2 hour runtime, a needless subplot involving Seth Rogan’s love life, and too many standup sequences.  Within the bloat, however, is a touching and unconventional story about death and human selfishness.  Apatow himself called Funny People a story about what happens when you survive a near-death experience and react in the most selfish way possible.  I’m paraphrasing, but you get the drift.

Sandler’s character, George Simmons, is basically Adam Sandler minus the guts to do anti-Sandler movies like Punch Drunk Love and Spanglish.  After a promising early career as a stand-up comedian, Simmons becomes the poster boy for the terrible family-friendly comedies Sandler pumped out throughout the 90s and 2000s.  One of the movie’s standout running gags is scenes from Re-Do (in which Simmons is turned into a baby with a grown-man head) and Mer-Man (where Simmons is a … Merman).  Simmons lives the opulent, semi-relusive life all mega-stars seem to live in movies about mega-stardom.  Until he is diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia.  You know the rest from the trailers, etc., so I’ll skip to my reactions.

Funny People has too much of everything.  Rogen’s love-interest side story adds 30-40 minutes that the movie cannot spare.  It feels like Apatow wanted to atone for accusations of misogyny in Knocked Up by throwing in a very funny love story where the girl is right and the guy is actually being way too possessive way too early.  He should have saved that for another movie.  The same could be said for the ongoing feud between roommates Rogen, Hill, and Jason Schwartzman over their varying degrees of success.  Just way too much time is dedicated to scenes from “Yo, Teach!”

What strikes me still is that, despite being a frustrating movie, I’m still drawn to the most compelling parts of it, rather than the sections that had me checking my watch.  Funny People succeeds where other stand-up movies fail, in that the stand-up bits are actually funny.  Go ahead and rewatch Punchline and make it through 5 minutes of Sally Field’s bits without fast forwarding in disgust.  Rogen’s later bits in particular, and Aziz Ansari’s take on “populist comedy” are excellent.  It is no small feat to encapsullate stand-up in 1-2 minute chunks, yet Apatow captures it well.  Again, there’s too much of it, but of all the parts to cut, this seemed the least crucial.

What Apatow does best is flip the conventions of redemptive arcs.  When Simmons tries to win back his ex (Leslie Mann, who is quite moving and funny), he proves that he has learned nothing.  In beating death, Simmons believes he has been given carte blanche to satisfy his own desires, at the expense of his friends and Mann’s entire family.  Apatow further confuses things when cheating husband Eric Bana (who manages to steal every scene he’s in), turns out to be a decent, if misguided guy.

Death is not magic in Apatow’s movie.  Death, and the way we react to it, is the final, most personal experience we can have.  Sometimes that reaction can be ugly and pitiful.  Even assholes survive cancer, and people just don’t change that easily.

Funny People earned mixed reviews, but among online commentors (on the always coherent and never insane IMDB message boards), Funny People was “the worst movey EVAR.”  With his previous efforts, Judd Apatow managed to tell stories about immature losers who needed to grow up.  Unfortunately, Apatow is writing for a generation he and many of his fellow comedians helped create: the eternally youthful, endlessly ironic generation. 

Pop quiz: which Apatow quote are you more likely to hear?

“You know how I know you’re gay?  You like Coldplay.” OR “I threw out my bong.” 

Apatow makes a bold statement with this film: all the jokes in the world, all the ironic detachment, all the money, and all the celebrity in the world does not change for an instant the fact that you and I are all going to die.  Enjoy!

Funny People seems to have a problem deciding what it really wants to be.  Is it a movie about friendship?  Love? Celebrity?  Scratch that.  It knows what it wants to be: a movie about ALL OF IT.  Unfortunately, grand gesture movies (and, to a lesser extent, novels) rarely work.  I suspect Funny People will become a sort of cult classic.  It’s the sort of movie that benefits from home viewing, skipping, etc.  I just hope the poignant statements on death don’t get lost in all the dick jokes.

Are you serious McDonald’s?

Since when was a Double Big Mac a legitmate option for a meal?

First, let me acknowledge the hilarious attack Patton Oswalt has already made on that other sad bit of fast food atrocity, the KFC Famous Bowl.  Makes me cry tears of laughter every time I hear it.

But there’s a difference between food for the lazy and the Double Big Mac.

Just think about the Big Mac for a minute.  Already an atrocious “meal.”  Two low-grade beef patties, several opaque slices of cheese, runny special sauce, wilted lettuce, onion chunkettes, and flaccid pickles on a commonly stale, sugar coated sesame seed bun.  A Big Mac, alone, contains nearly 600 calories.

Congratulations America, we now have the 1000+ calorie value SANDWICH.

I give up.  Who the fuck wants or needs this?  NO ONE.  Is there a demand for this?  YES.  In fact, I found a posting recently ( http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080616170258AAbtMe3 ) asking “Why does Canada have the Double Big Mac and not the USA?”  Sleep easy Benjamin D, you tragic, anonymous bastard, your prayers have been answered.

“But Mark,” you ask, “haven’t there been obscenely large burgers, steaks, and the like on restaurant menus for years?”

Please.  Orders like the “10 Pattie Bear Burger!” and the “Old 96 oz. Choice Cut Steak” cost $20-50 each, but are “free if you finish it,” because they’re a joke!  An outrageous dare for the compulsive eaters and attention-starved to disgrace themselves for the chance at a t-shirt and a polaroid on the wall, forever enshrining them as some of the sickest, saddest fucks on the planet.

A Double Big Mac makes the assumption that people all want to eat a 10 Pattie Bear Burger like it’s standard human consumption.  A Value Meal with a regular drink and medium fries is more than a healthy, active human being should consume in a day!

If you eat this, you have given up.  If you want it, you are desperately ironic, or you may as well be shoving this monstrosity up your ass, because you, my friend, have lost all dignity and self-respect.

So this will be a blog for whatever the hell I’m thinking about, be it pop culture miscellanea, my road to entering grad school in 2010, trips, music I’m writing, or Double Big Macs.  I look forward to hearing your thoughts and sharing my own.