This is the final Mathematical Deathgrind from France blog post. This blog started in October 2013 with the purpose of improving my writing and to spread the word about some cool bands that I liked. One hundred and sixty-six blog posts and nine year later, now feels like the right time to get the hammer out, nail up MDFF towers and catch the bus off into the sunset.
I like writing, and get a real sense of satisfaction from doing so well. However, at times, writing about music is hard work, and at points this blog has been something I’ve really had to force myself to do. If you’ve read MDFF regularly, you’ll probably have noticed a drop off in the number of blog posts over the last year. I don’t want to go through the motions on something that should be delivered with passion; it’s not fun for me and probably not much fun for you either. Perhaps writing about every Yob song has something to do with this, so now that Song By Song is finished, this represents a natural conclusion. Further to the drop off in interest in writing, if I received one pound sterling for every view and this was my day job, I’d be on day 3,021 of fighting the ducks down the local pond for bread crusts.
I first boarded-up the blog in April 2015 when I went travelling, but that was always intended to be temporary, and had a grand re-opening upon my one-legged return a couple of months later (read all about it here). This time around, I intend for it to (probably) be permanent.
I do, however, have my own musical project underway, so in a final, shameless plug, please check out my band, Itself Timeless, here and here, and give us a listen. If you like what you hear, come to a show, give us a like, or go grab that claw hammer again, smash your Piggy Bank into a piece of Cannibal Corpse album art, scoop up those precious pennies and buy our E.P!
Back to the cave blog: despite what I said about having to resort to fighting ducks, I appreciate every view and every read, so thank you very much. In the About page, I go over why I gave this blog a slightly convoluted title. Not everything I will have written here will age without blemish, but I will stand by those particular words: when it’s so easy to churn through music, it’s important to remain excited about it. As touched upon above, not writing about music will make this easier for me.
Thanks again; I hope you have been informed, entertained, and most importantly, found some great music along the way.
Yob: Song by Song is a series of articles that examines each and every Yob song in chronological manner. This one is on Our Raw Heart, the seventh and final track of their eighth album Clearing The Path To Ascend.
So here we are. The end of the line; Our Raw Heart. Picture this: it’s summer. It’s your favourite place to be. You finally knocked out the lumberyard bully. All of your friends are there. You have a cold beverage of your choice* in hand. Yob are on stage and start playing this song. You cry. The end.
Much like when a space shuttle lands successfully and the NASA control room goes mad, or when (spoiler alert) Warden Norton discovers Andy DuFrasne’s escape tunnel, when the band explodes in at 1.19, it’s a special moment. The double-tracked guitars are shimmery and glassy, but also warm, swimming in delay and chorus FX.
In the piece on opening track Ablaze, I said that the album title, Our Raw Heart, sounds very emo. However, Our Raw Heart – the song – sounds very happy, almost like Torche’s Harmonicraft played at 33 instead of 45 RPM. It is in the same vein as Beauty in Falling Leaves; gentle, melodic, yet always powerful. And despite the heavy repetition, Our Raw Heart has an ascending feeling. The two main chord changes that make up the songs only consist of a couple of chords each, rising through a major progression to a create an ascending feeling. Crescendos are more characteristic of post-rock or metal, so in a sense, this is closer to Isis’ Weight, or a Cult of Luna track, than to War Pigs or Psalm 9. Maybe it’s…hmm…post-doom? The lyrics stop short of reflecting the joyous feel, instead expressing a transcendental, at times, wistful, feel:
Ashes within clay Shaped upon an earthen wheel Pour into this vessel Drained and filled again
On an album of big tracks, I get the impression that the album was named after this song not just because it’s the biggest, but also because it is a summation of what Yob seem to what to say – there is a sense of vulnerability, but also positivity.
Besides being the biggest track of the album, it’s also my favourite. I don’t resent one second of its fourteen-minute running time; the length creates a desert rock/psychedelic vibe, and the music video even has an audio visualiser thing going on. This is one hell of a closer, and in the world that Yob create, it really is my favourite place to be.
*
As stated before, the story of Yob is an ongoing one, so I don’t want to draw a line on anything yet, but I feel that Yob’s music has become informed by the scars they have gathered along the way; line-up challenges, mental health issues, lawsuits, physical health illness. It will be interesting to see what they come up with next.
As also stated, as of writing in February 2022, this is the most recent – and thus last – Yob song. No more songs means no blogposts about songs. As such, this is the last Song By Song blogpost, and this is the closer on this series. I wrote the first blogpost – Universe Throb – in June 2016. I really didn’t think it would take me five years and eight months to write 45 blog pieces, but I like to think I always dug deep into each song and found something worth saying. Think of it a bit like The Return of the King – it’s happy, it’s sad, it goes on for a long time. Thanks for reading. Go listen to Yob.
Yob: Song by Song is a series of articles that examines each and every Yob song in chronological manner. This one is on Original Face, the sixth track of their eighth album, Our Raw Heart.
Although it’s not unusual for Yob to play in 6/8 (see The Lie That Is a Sin, Catharsis and All The Children Forgotten), it’s a time signature that metal bands typically tend to drop into,1 rather than write whole songs in2 (as opposed to 4/4, the most common time signature). Original Face stays in 6/8 throughout, and much like how a river can be deceptively fast, it flows along, propelled by some great fills by Travis Foster. This certainly isn’t the plod of your Dad’s doom.
The chord progression is melancholic, rather than super gnarly; the main riff moves from the root to the minor third then to the major second. The last chord is an usual choice – it’s a slightly ‘ambiguous’ mood to end a chord progression on. However you cut it, there is a melodicism to the riff and an anguish to Scheidt’s voice, and the lyrics are, in a general sense, about a narrator fighting through pain in order to find a higher truth – not particularly new material for Yob, but in light of Scheidt nearly dying in a lot of pain, fitting.
What is unusual, however, is the guitar solo! Yob have very few guitar solos, and, fittingly, it’s an unusual solo in itself, alternating every few bars between the traditional approach of a high-pitched melody and the rhythm line.
Next track: Our Raw Heart.
1. Death do this a lot, especially as they got more and more proggy.
2. Agalloch, but also any metal band with any Viking content – Waldruna are a good example.
Yob: Song by Song is a series of articles that examines each and every Yob song in chronological manner. This one is on Beauty in Falling Leaves, the second track of their eighth album, Our Raw Heart.
Tenderness is not a quality often ascribed to metal. Doom metal, in particular, tends to be worrisome by nature. Beauty in Falling Leaves, however, is as gentle as its namesake. Headbangers, worry not – Ultimate Chillout this is not – but instead of doom metal, maybe it’s…hmm…‘life metal’? That sounds a bit hippie-ish – which, to be fair, this contemplative track is.
It’s a song of two halves, rather than of verses and chorus. Standing at 16 and a half minutes long, the albumbuilds up to this track. As such, it feels like a centrepiece, and an unusual one at that. As mentioned, what makes Yob unusual for a doom band is the glimmer of hope they offer up; whereas there is a subset of sludge and stoner bands who eschew relentless pessimism (Weedeater’s deranged sense of humour springs to mind), doom metal tends to live up to its namesake. But here, we have clean, melodic guitar arpeggios, a dub-esque echo on the snare and strong, rich vocals; Scheidt has developed a husky quality to his clean singing, and his quaver stands out on the longer notes. The lyrics are even semi-comprehensible;
As seasons come here to rest Lilting rays aglow Obsidian flow Fire hewn within the stone Life that has come before Looming fears of the wilt Shadows at the door Colors in the mirror
It’s a simple song, but I reckon this is hard to play well – the loud bits are actually louder, the note lengths are well controlled, nor does it build up into a big change into a minor feel at any point; there is no volte face, and in this sense, it is more post-metal then doom.
Yob: Song by Song is a series of articles that examines each and every Yob song in chronological manner. This one is on Lungs Reach, the fourth track of their eighth album, Our Raw Heart.
Lungs Reach is a five-minute interlude, comprised of two movements; the first ambient and the second riff. Initially it’s not clear what we’re hearing – whilst eventually discernible as a guitar, there’s a lot of echo and disconcerting, far-off noises, a bit like hearing orcs skulking around the mines of Moria (before that fool of a Took fucks things up for everyone). Despite the second section (which is a big transition into heavy guitars, with drums and vocals entering), this track really works best as part of an immersive listen to the whole of Our Raw Heart. By itself, it doesn’t feel like much, but if this track was removed from the album, it would it be missed – it quietly bridges the thump of In Reverie into the softly-softly Beauty in Falling Leaves nicely.
Yob: Song by Song is a series of articles that examines each and every Yob song in chronological manner. This one is on In Reverie, the third track of their eighth album, Our Raw Heart.
By itself, In Reverie is not a track that stands out. At nine minutes and 43 seconds long, and at one speed throughout, it is the generic track that each Yob album seems to have one of.
It’s not bad, but I wouldn’t play this to someone if I wanted to excite them about the idea of Yob – after a murky bass intro, it explodes into a riff, slow, sad and thick, and that’s about as exciting as it gets for the next ten minutes. Yob’s propensity to stay with ideas for a long time doesn’t really deliver here.
To be fair, you couldn’t squeeze a piece of paper sideways in between bassist Aaron Rieseberg and drummer Travis Foster, and if you’re willing to go with the flow, you can just sink into this track. In some ways it’s the doom of St Vitus – no frills. I did also get some early Black Sabbath vibes with the horror setting turned up to 10, but whereas Sabbath tended to develop their longer songs, there’s none of that frippery here.
I went to a gig this year (Damnation Festival) and played a gig this year (not Damnation Festival). It’s good to be back.
2021 Releases
Bossk, Migration (Deathwish)
More electronic noises than previously, but just as many riffs per atoms, or however you want to measure space after listening to this. I didn’t think I’d ever see a moshpit at a post–metal gig – hell, Neurosis didn’t get one after Godflesh and Yob in London – but Bossk did.
Delta Sleep, Spring Island (Sofa Boy Records)
I first saw Delta Sleep perform under the name Savlon in pubs around Canterbury when I was a student. I didn’t really know what to make of them – it was clearly quite cool and imaginative, but I didn’t know if it m0shed hard enough for a hesher like thyself. Now we’ve all grown up, it’s actually really cool to see that they’ve take their sound – a bit post–rocky, a bit mathy, even a bit indie – and really made it their own.
Eyehategod, A History of Nomadic Behavior (Century Media)
‘Cerebral music is great and all, but the charm (for lack of a better word) of Eyehategod (besides their name) is that they don’t overthink it. What this translates to is an intensity, and as with their previous five albums, A History of Nomadic Behavior is relentless – straight in with Built Beneath the Lies, it’s off the cuff with a scrappy, punk undercurrent and a grubby blues influence, fast then slow, steady then off–kilter.’
‘I’m not sure that Dream Weapon is, truly, a metal album; although I tend to think of the Tron as a Hydra Head band,a closer comparison would be Zombi’s minimalist Escape Velocity, rather than to bands like Cave In, Pelican or the aforementioned ISIS. If anything, it is more metal–adjacent, heavy without possessing the sonic extremities of Board Up The House.’
I saw Conjurer five years ago and was impressed with their live show. Their EP, bought on the strength of that live show, left me a little cold – it was good, but perhaps it was all too overwhelming. Jump forward five years and their set at Damnation was a case in point of the principle that live shows win fans. Absolutely crushing.
Older Releases
Lorde, Pure Heroine (Universal)
‘…[Lorde’s] music captures a certain window of time and a very specific state of mind. Pure Heroine, her 2013 debut, it is both celebratory and moody, with lyrics that alternate between fretful and too cool for school, juxtaposed against big drums and luxuriously rich synths. Lorde’s voice is both strong and flexible, full–bodied even at moments of softness. There are few real instruments – besides the silky synths, synthetic drums sit under overlapping vocal lines, mixed together in a way that makes these songs sound huge. The melodies are all vocal, with the keys sticking to outlining chords. There’s not a lot packed into these songs (in a good way) – although they all sound huge, there’s no wall of noise, which serves to foreground the vocals. These songs are generally also quite slow, lending them a luxurious, dreamy feel, assisted by the rich synths.’
‘In the pursuit of being extreme for the sake of being extreme, a lot of grind ends up nullifying itself. If it’s all blinding anger, then there’s no insight. Gridlink possess range and go for something deeper than this. However, this album is something deeper than just a blast of noise or energy – and it’s weirder than that too. It helps that that guitarist Matsubara, bass guitarist Teddy Patterson and drummer Bryan Fajardo are technically proficient cats who grind head and shoulders above the pack, and although Matsubara can shred, and does so with lots of screeching, raw lines, he’s able to do so with a well–balanced beauty:beast ratio’.
In The Company of Serpents, Ain-Soph Aur (self-release)
Like Ramesses, In The Company of Serpents play play doom aiming for a vibe – here, folky, echoing guitars with a western–front vibe accompanied by riffs the size of the Grand Canyon – rather than straight–up worship of Vol. 4 tropes.
Makeup and Vanity Set, 88:88 (Telefuture)
A synth adventure that I suspect is a concept album. It’s not obvious what the concept is, but it sounds deeply cyberpunk/Tron–ish, which the synths suit perfectly, sounding simultaneously futuristic and decidedly 80s.
Martha Tilston, Machines Of Love and Grace (Squiggly Records)
We didn’t even get to the end of October this year before the English summer decided it had had enough and told autumn to hurry the fuck up. However, a nice thing about about the turning of the leaves is that it really suits a lot of folk music. I made this case for Dylan’s Blonde on Blondea while ago and have always enjoyed listening to artists like Bert Jansch whilst roasting chestnuts around a fire or trying to remember which way the radiator valves open. Martha Tilston’s Machines Of Love and Grace fits the season well – particularly on misty opening track Stags Bellow, which is a great example of show don’t tell. Tilston has a superbly clean voice, a bit like Joni Mitchell’s but way, way less jazzy, aiming for more of an old–timey feel with reference to more modern elements.
Mountain Caller – Chronicle I: The Truthseeker (Heavy Psych Sounds)
Let’s go on an adventure! 99% instrumental doom metal, but of the fun variety. If I was Conan I would listen to this.
Sumerlands, s/t (Relapse)
Most retro rock/metal is a nice idea, but in practice is a bit light on the goods (particularly when it comes to vocals). Sumerlands have riffs, have songs, compelling vocals and are old school without ever sounding dated. It’s melodic in the same sense as Bark at the Moon–era Ozzy, but also quite dark – Swords and Tequila this is not.
Full disclosure: I am friends with Alifchief. Secondary disclosure: he rocks.
Singer–songwriter Alifchief plays rock in the vein of The Jimi Hendrix experience or Cream, but combines the size and space of these power trios with a touches of funk, afrobeat, uncut psych and folk (and I definitely hear some Santana in those guitar solos). Recalling the days when rock songs were long and you could fucking well like it, the opening (and instrumental) track Neraka sets a languorous pace, taking its time, leaving plenty of space and looping a guitar solo that could strip wallpaper. The vibe is consistently psychedelic, even in nusantarafrika‘s most riff-driven moments of Ready to Go, Night & Day or Buzz Like Flies.
The trumpets on Ready to Go are a particularly nice touch, complementing the Doors-esque guitar line, and the acoustic The Wanderer continues to expand the sonic palette, a bit like an update on Going to California with a few more African influences. Crucially, there is a range of moods on nusantarafrika, even whilst continuity is maintained – one of the things that has allowed Led Zeppelin II, Eat a Peach or Morrison Hotel to last the test of time is that they fit together distinguishable songs, rather than being mood pieces*, and there’s a similar approach here. One of the things that Alifchief does really well on this album is mix up sounds without it becoming an act of dilution. Besides the aforementioned classic rock vibes, Morning Mist is a beautiful, slightly folk-y acoustic track which suits its namesake, and Rumahku is a blissful five minutes, before Jaya took me on an Allman Brothers trip down the river, concluding with Buzz Like Flies making me want to get my overdrive pedal out and indirectly tell everyone to piss off.
Alifchief’s style of guitar playing is old school in that you hear each note – there are no big crunching riffs, but rather, in a guitarist’s parlance, what I think of as a single-coil sound; every note is audible and the dynamics – again, as per classic rock – are wide. You would certainly never call this sterile. I probably would have opted for a bit less reverb on the vocals, but this does create a certain, woozy sound, which psych fans will dig. Although it takes its time and leaves space, it’s a tight, interesting listen and there’s plenty to dig into; eight great songs, one great album.
*Not that the latter necessarily dooms any such albums to insignificance – I like Nails as much as the next guy**, but I can only tell a couple of their songs apart – it’s more of a mood thing, from my perspective.
Yob: Song by Song is a series of articles that examines each and every Yob song in chronological manner. This one is on The Screen, the second track of their eighth album, Our Raw Heart.
The Screen, AKA, The Steamroller.
The Screen reminds me of the horror film It Follows. An entity invisible to all but its prey follows that person at a slow, ceaseless shuffle, never hurrying, never slowing down, until it reaches the hunted person and turns them into a human pretzel : (
Likewise, The Screen never speeds up and never slows down, with bone–crushing, human–pretzel forming density. It chugs along with heavy palm muting and bone–dry distortion, with only three riffs to the whole song. It’s cyclical, moving from riff A to riff B to riff A to riff B to riff C back to riff A and onwards, ever onwards. This is a statement of intent – most bands wouldn’t have the audacity to do this for nearly 10 minutes, which is a wise move, because most bands couldn’t make it work for 10 minutes. But Yob can. The very simple drumbeat would have been easy to overplay, but drummer Travis Foster avoids this in favour of a ‘colossus out for a stroll’ beat, and it’s all the closer to being a horror soundtrack for it. Mike Scheidt’s vocals, deep and inhuman, intensify this sense of lurking horror – whereas just one song ago I was pontificating on how expansive Yob sounded, now they’re writing streamrolling riffs and calling a song The Screen.
Artwork by Orion Landau. Perhaps it’s a sign of Yob’s ascendency that they now have artwork from metal’s equivalent of a laureate.
Yob: Song by Song is a series of articles that examines each and every Yob song in chronological manner. This one is on Ablaze, the opening track of their eighth album, Our Raw Heart.
A couple of things stood out from the initial press release for Yob’s eighth album. Firstly, the title: Our Raw Heart – very emo. Will Pete Wentz be featuring? Secondly, seven tracks? That’s, like, two normal Yob albums. Their first – Elaborations of Carbon – had six, and their six albums since have featured five tracks or fewer, which may not sound like much, but when the average song length is 12 minutes, that’s a big chunk. All in all, it sounds like Yob had a lot to get off their chest. Mike Scheidt’s travails have been fairly well publicised, but as a reminder, he had a severe attack of acute diverticulitis in 2017, which a) sounds really fucking painful b) nearly killed him. Initially, after Clearing the Path to Ascend, I assumed Yob would continue to plough that more melodic furrow, but after this news I wondered if such an experience would push Scheidt the other way, in a terrible, inspirational manner, into utterly br00tal territory.
Instead, Yob have continued to mine the melodic vein of CTPTA; Ablaze comes straight in with an intro that staggers between melancholy and unbearable weight, with that stabbing rhythm unique to Yob and weird opening chords with lots of open strings. It sounds expansive in the same way that shoegaze does. As was the case on CTPTA, Scheidt’s clean singing has gone from strength to strength, having developed a bit of a quaver to his voice. It’s been cool to hear his voice get stronger over the last few albums, and when his roared vocals combine with clean guitar it makes for an interesting mix. The lyrics have a similarly abstract quality to those of Neurosis, but where they differ is where Neurosis tend to look down, at stones, uncovered bones, rivers of blood, etc., Yob tend to look up:
Root
Unknown by time
Within
This ache of beyond
Wings in oceans vast
Swells in azure skies
A lead single this is not – the verses are long and – one thing that’s not changed – it repeats a lot. By the time of the clean break at 7.00, Our Raw Heart is already shaping up to be an epic listen, whereas previous albums tended to take a little longer to grow into themselves. This break actually reminded me of Scheidt’s more delicate solo material on Stay Awake, which, again, was not – as good as it was – lead single stuff.
With that just said, the rhythm section is perfunctory yet thunderous, and sounds massive. The melodic nature remains throughout without the track ever losing its heft. Produced by both Yob and Billy Barnett at Gung Ho Studios in Eugene, Oregon, and mastered by Heba Kadry at Timeless Mastering in New York, the break from Dogwood Studios from CTPTA onwards seems to have marked a bit of a change in Yob’s oeuvre.
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