September 23, 2015

Even Lesser Slayer is Still "Slayer!": Spinning "Repentless"

Let’s just say you listened to this album blind.

You were a fan of metal and thrash or other loud aggressive music.

What would you say about it?  

Maybe that it was a bit derivative, with a couple of good songs.

It’s hard to say, with the name on the cover. I saw them this summer for the Mayhem Fest, and loved the whole experience as they went over their career hilights that the crowd wanthed to hear. They mixed in the lead single here, “Repentless”. It might be the best song on the disc.

But there’s nothing that stands out as comparable to what they were thirty years ago. It’s not horrible. Most of us aren’t who or what we were 30 years ago. We all grow an evolve. There’s just a mythology behind Slayer that means that they have to consistently live up to Reign in Blood or Seasons in the Abyss (fill in your favorite here). The band is different, and they still rock.

I called listening to this blind as derivative, but is derivative of Slayer. The history cannot be denied, in spite of the line-up troubles, and they still rock live. This disc just didn’t find a permanent place in my car’s player, and that disappoints me with how much anticipation I had for the album, Maybe my expectations were too high. Or maybe “Cast the First Stone” sounds too much like “Head Like a Hole”.

The Good, The Bad, and the Smug by Tom Holt

Are you trying to fill the hole that Terry Pratchett left in this universe?

Maybe you were more into Doug Adams. Guess what? He’s gone too.

Vonnegut? Long passed. My tears for him are dry.

You know who we do have? Tom Holt!

He likes to mix a fantasy and science fiction universe with jokes and magical doughnuts.

His books feel familiar in your mouth, light and fluffy with a bit of meat thrown in there - cut my own throat!.

What happens in this one? Well, an extended joke about Rumpelstiltskin and hard money monetary policy for one. Some other stuff too. Read it!

The Fire This Time: Coates's "Between the World and Me"

Reading this was like reading
the Fire Next Time.
It’s the world I live in.
But so unfamiliar.

Wanting to say eloquent,
knowing it is back
handed. Expecting nothing
less from the Author,
needing him so much
to keep writing.

And in a generation,
There won’t be the need
for books
That remind that reader
of Between The World

And Me