Heccubus.Blog

Like most people who download music and enjoy hip hop, I picked up an early leak of Eminem’s “return” album Relapse a couple of weeks ago. Unlike most of these people, however, I was genuinely excited to hear it. I mean, Christ, I actually liked Encore. Sure if you hold it up against Em’s first two albums, it’s absolute garbage, but at its core there was a solid, enjoyable–if a tad imbalanced–record there. It was his usual mix of witty barbs, comic tomfoolery, and searing hatred for all of mankind. Yup, it was, indeed, an Eminem record. And at the time, that hadn’t quite gotten old yet. However, since the release of the underrated Encore, five years have passed. Five years of silence from the Mathers camp, outside of his usual headline-grabbing outrageousness. Five years without a mildly amusing joke track that gets overplayed to the point of being infuriatingly unfunny; five years without an angry, bitter hate track about Kim, his mother, or both; five years without a touching ode to his daughter. For five full years, we heard nary a peep out of the man, aside from popping by occasionally to rain down upon us a shower of news about his glorious return, to be entitled Relapse. In the meatime, all we had from Mathers was a bunch of shitty, boring production for other artists, and a lot of empty promises.
So a year or so passes with the usual shit that we’ve all come to expect from the hip hop industry when it comes to announcing one’s comeback. We were fed delays, excuses, and long lapses of silence for a while, and eventually everyone just sort of stopped caring. And can you blame them? The rumour mill started churning with news of a new Eminem album as far back as fall 2007, thanks to a Cashis-fueled assertion that a new album entitled King Mathers would be out by year’s end. Thank fucking God that it never happened. As Mathers continued to isolate himself from the world, consumed by the death of his close friend Proof and an addiction to prescription drugs (not to mention marrying and divorcing Kim….again), the idea of another Eminem album became a bit of a stretch. Hell, I half figured he’d wind up dead. But no, after all these years of (maybe, I guess) waiting, we’ve finally been graced with the presence of Eminem’s return, the bloated mess of shitty beats and “been there done that” rhymes that is Relapse.
Now I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not exactly what you’d call an expert on hip hop, be it music-wise or culture-wise. What I can say for sure, however, is that I am well aware of the fact that my opinion of this album may not be a popular one. Additionally, I also know that it could very well be a popular opinion. At this stage, it is becoming apparent that Relapse may be the most divisively reviewed album of the year. Frankly, on my first listen, I made it through about 4 or 5 tracks before I just had to shut it off, and hope that my ears would forget what had just been forcibly crammed into them. I suppose I should have seen this coming, but Relapse is just more of the same old shit from Mathers. We get the goofy, “funny” track that will no doubt be played so much on the radio that it just gets driven into the ground. We get all the angry, bitter, “I hate you mom/Kim” tracks. And we get the heartfelt ode to his daughter, I’m sure, though I was not able to stomach enough of the album to get that far into it. Those tracks usually come in a bit later, mind you. It all just sort of leads me to ask “why?” Why would anyone, particularly someone who is as cynical about mainstream music as myself, expect something new from a man who has made millions off of releasing the same album five times now? Why would he bother to mess with what is basically a winning formula? Why would anyone actually subject themselves to listening to this?
Okay that last one isn’t all that fair, in reality. I’ve been finding myself quite surprised to find that the album is receiving some very positive reviews. Allmusic.com even went so far as to give it 4/5 stars. It has also inspired some fairly strong responses to my own opinions of it, which I suppose I find even more surprising. A user on RateYourMusic.com, a record cataloging website that I use felt the need to respond to me directly via a private message. The exchange, I felt, was quite amusing. Here, in full, is my initial review of the album that caused this poor lad so much grief:

I know I know you’re probably all tired of hearing about my mom” he says. Yeah. We fucking are. I made it four songs into this pathetic mess, and can tell you now that I am never putting this album on again.

Okay, it seems pretty…bitter? I’m not sure, but regardless, it is important to note that for a brief, negative record review from me, this is comparatively tame. However, it inspired one of the album’s admirers so that he felt it necessary to try and…I don’t know I guess he was trying to call my bluff or something:

Do you often review albums after listening to less than a handful of songs?

I’ll make sure to ignore all your reviews in the future.

Now, not only is it wise to note that his account has been deleted by an administrator since sending this (I won’t even bother posting my admittedly incredibly dick-ish reply), but also that this album, this flaming pinnacle of mediocrity–which if I recall, he awarded a 4.5/5 rating–inspired such rage in an individual in response to my negative opinion of it, that he felt the need to confront me directly and “threaten” to never read any of my reviews again. Oh horror of horrors, right? The point is though, Eminem is turning into a career failure in my eyes. He hit high so early with his first two records, and the quality of his music has been steadily declining since then. And in despite of all of this, the man still seems to have some kind of lasting appeal, something that I don’t think anyone expected when he burst onto the scene with “My Name Is” in 1999. For someone who seemed so destined for One Hit Wonder status, it’s shocking to think that he is now a multi-platinum selling artist who has been in the mainstream eye for a decade. And why?
Examining Em’s output is like examining a terminal cancer patient’s health. It’s just a steady, remarkably steep downward slope. [Okay, ouch. Sorry, cancer people. --Heccubus] There’s so little hope at this point that it will ever go back up that we might as well just give up on him and let him drift away in peace. [Okay, last cancer joke, I swear. --Heccubus] The quality of his work has dropped off quicker than any other major “what the fuck happened?” artists that immediately spring to mind in my head. Even bands like Black Sabbath, The Misfits or Iron Maiden, bands whose sudden drop in musical quality are almost legendary, enjoyed success over years and years before declining into middling, sub-par material. Em’s slope began almost immediately after his career high, The Marshall Mathers LP. It could probably be argued that he has a lot more mainstream appeal than other rappers because, well…at the risk of being taken the wrong way, he’s white. That doesn’t by any means mean that he’s better for it (he’s not), but it definitely helps the industry sell him. On top of his suburb-friendly exterior, let’s face it, it ain’t hard to market an angry white rapper to a bunch of angry white teenagers. Even though Mathers has been spewing the same ludicrous hyperbole since day one, teenagers still eat it up. “Whoa, you hate your mom? I totally hate my mom too!” It’s easy to see his lasting influence when you consider something that simple.
I digress, however. My problem with Eminem now is with his inability to come up with something new to say. Do we need more songs about how much he hates Kim? No, of course we don’t. Remarrying her was a fucking stupid idea, and as a direct result of this stupid fucking idea, we are now likely going to be treated to another three or four albums of him bitching about how much he hates her. Do we need more songs about how much he hates his mother? Absolutely not. We get it, Marshall. You had a shitty childhood. So did lots of other people. They, however, are not quite so lucky to have made millions of dollars complaining about it for five multi-platinum albums. More songs about your daughter? Ah why not? Most of them are pretty cute, and some go so far as to be touching at times, despite the insane bent that they often dwell on. The “funny” songs? Oh dear God no. I think Eminem’s humour became stale about 8 years ago after we all got fed up with “The Real Slim Shady”. It will never cease to amaze me that he consistently releases the exact same “funny” song as the first single from every album, followed by a string of serious, supposedly hard-hitting singles. And while it’s true that tracks like “The Way I Am” have an impact on the listener (assuming they enjoy his music, I mean) the impact tends to wear off when the message is drilled home repeatedly for a decade.
I don’t know, maybe I’m just a bitter, jaded cynic. Maybe none of what I’ve rambled on about here even makes any sense. Hell, the topic has shifted so many times here that I’m not even willing to scroll back and edit this mess. Regardless of everything I’ve said here, yeah I still like Eminem. I’ll still be anticipating Relapse 2 if it’s actually going to happen. The problem, though, is that much like the last 3 releases, I’ll probably wind up being let down again, and then sitting on the Internet bitching about it to whoever will listen.

You know, the world is kind of a funny place. That’s clicheed as fuck, but it’s true. Anyone who knows me is well aware of the fact that I tend to lean a bit on the misanthropic side of things. I mean, I’ll just flat out say it: I fucking hate people. I hate everything about them. The only time I tend to enjoy the company of another person is when I am so fabulously intoxicated that everything around me starts to become really… Neat. That level of inebriation where everything you see, smell and hear is suddenly a very, very good thing.
Now of course, this is rare for me because I am a cantankerous, bitter bastard about 95% of the time as of late, but it does happen occasionally nonetheless. Outside of this tiny fraction of my waking life, however, I am generally not the most enjoyable person to be around.
So how does this play into my horrendously typical opening line? Well, yesterday, I popped open my Twitter feed to find a post from Owen Pallett (a.k.a. Final Fantasy). In this post he stated:

OK, this Micachu record is the best thing on earth. I am going to buy ten copies tomorrow. Do you want one? (What’s your address again?)

Now this was clearly a ruse. Being the clever bastard that I am, however, I quickly responded with the not-at-all-trying-to-grab-the-attention-of-a-musician-that-I-admire response of:

I do! I’ve been pretty curious about it. Keep hearing great things.

Aha! Surely now I would find a way to engage somebody that I admire as an artist in a brief conversation about music in the year 2009! “What other new albums are you enjoying, Owen?” I’d say, and then he’d marvel at my vast knowledge of what’s out, what’s coming out, and what’s already leaked that I’ve had the pleasures of getting my grubby little mitts on. Of course, no response came. I mean that’s normal, it’s fucking Twitter and these people get mountains of direct contact from fans every day. I shudder to think of what these people’s @ Reply tabs in their Twitter clients must look like. If I myself get more than 4 in a day, I practically fucking wet myself.
So I stayed up all night reading The Walking Dead, passed out for two hours, and then awoke around 9:00 AM. After contacting the person I was waking up early for to find out what was up with our breakfast plans (they were canceled because–surprise sur-fucking-prise–she overslept) I was pretty sure that my day was likely to result in one of two things:

1. I would end up lying on the railroad tracks waiting for the eternal sleep.
2. I would end up tying everyone else to the railroad tracks and getting maddeningly drunk.

It was about 10 minutes later, however, that my day took a rather lovely turn for the better. In the midst of spending the past three months feeling as though my life were in shambles, someone turned around and did something very nice for me for no particular reason. I opened my Twitter feed this morning to find that Mr. Pallett had personally offered to forward me a copy of that new Micachu album in whichever format I preferred. You know, even if it doesn’t happen (he forgets to check his email, doesn’t send it because I just realized 45 minutes after the fact that I forgot to specify the format I preferred, you know…whatever) I don’t think I’d be disappointed too much. The fact that someone I’ve never met just sort of threw me a favour and offered to do something nice just for the sake of doing it…
My day suddenly seems a lot brighter.

Now fuck off, I’m going back to sleep.

Over the years, I have developed a rather…let’s say “massive” collection of digital music. I have also recently become lucky enough to own a lovely little 8 GB iPod Touch. As a direct result of my acquiring this rather nice little MP3 player, I have, unfortunately, also been forced into using iTunes in order to put music onto it. I’m not sure that I can adequately express to you, the reader, just how much I hate this application. More specifically: I hate it in Windows. I’ve never used iTunes on a Mac, but I am told that it is a far more enjoyable experience on OS X than it is in Microsoft’s family of operating systems. This is, however, exactly my problem. Using iTunes on my reasonably well-equipped notebook is an experience that I would liken to having your teeth pulled out one by one. Through your asshole. Sure, it’s a great big universe-devouring behemoth of a media player, but that’s part of what’s wrong with it: it’s bloated and packed full of useless shit that bogs the application down during any and all tasks that it sputters and struggles to perform.
The other day, I reinstalled XP on the laptop in question. This means, of course, that I would have to reinstall iTunes in order to actually use my iPod again. This process is so loathsome and dreaded to me that I spent nearly 48 hours procrastinating and trying to avoid doing it. rebuilding a music library from nearly 500 GB of music is not, in any way, fun with iTunes. In my primary music player of choice, Foobar, it takes literally about 5 minutes to build my entire library within the application. On iTunes, it takes fucking hours. Why? Well for starters, when adding media files to iTunes, it takes for-fucking-ever to do something that it refers to as “processing album artwork.” Why? What are you “processing?” I tag the MP3 files with high resolution album artwork myself. It’s already there. You can easily display it. I also keep a hard copy J-PEG of each cover in the album’s respective folder. So why not do like every other media player ever and scan the album’s containing folder for image files? This takes literally 1 second, and it seems to work for Foobar, Winamp, Media Monkey, etc. Furthermore, it continues after “processing” the album artwork that is already there and does not need to be “processed” by “detecting gapless playback information.” What the fuck does that even mean? And why is this process almost completely exclusive to iTunes? I have never run into this with any other application, and based on my experiences it does absolutely nothing to improve the listening experience on iTunes. I would very much like to turn off both of these completely useless processes, but it is not possible. Much like most Apple products that I’ve used, user customization is kept to a bare minimum so as to prevent enjoyment of the service or product.
So now we know the first reason that I hate iTunes: useless, agonizingly slow processes. We are, sadly however, just getting started. My next major problem is the lack of a dynamically updating library. In every other media player I’ve ever used, I could tell the application to “monitor” my library folders. This means that if I added music to my computer, the software would find it on its own, and I didn’t have to add it to the library myself. Often, these functions could also be triggered with something like “Rescan Library” or “Search For New Files” or something like that. Apple’s pathetic, obese little iTunes has nothing like this. Oh sure, when you first boot the application after install, it will ask you to scan a given folder for audio and video files, but after that “Fuck you, asshole, you can add that shit yourself.” And iTunes then goes, flips on the television and watches “The Hills” for the next seven hours while you try to add an album to its library. It’s things like this that make me question why Apple ever even bothered to port iTunes over to Windows. Microsoft went to agonizing lengths to create a functional, user-friendly version of Office for Apple users to help eliminate compatibility issues, and Apple’s response a few years later was to dash off a half-assed version of their media manager and player that barely functions at times, and refuses to function at other times. That seems whiny, sure, but keep in mind that we’re now on version 8.0.2.20 and none of the problems that have existed since the first Windows version of iTunes have been addressed. At all.
One such problem is the way in which iTunes edit metatags in MP3 files. Often, after starting up iTunes to endure the painstaking hour-and-a-half or so that it takes to sync the bloody iPod, I scan through my library to find that iTunes has totally lost cover art, messed up artist and album artist tags, or just plain fucked my files’ metadata up to the point that I have to scour the entire 500 GB looking for misinformation and correcting data. It does this completely at random, and without warning, so it is often a wonderful, if somewhat unpleasant, surprise to find when I am rushed for time. It quite often results in me pulling out my barely-functioning old RCA player in order to avoid dealing with iTunes again. The flipside to this is editing metadata within iTunes. Quite often, attempting to embed album art in a group of MP3 files results in no change at all. The art is imported and assigned, but does not get written to the files. Meanwhile, starting up Mp3tag and putting it through the same process with the exact same files will get me the results I want. However, I have to restart iTunes because something as simple as a “Refresh” function was apparently completely beyond the developers who cobbled together this abomination.
Furthering my frustration is the complete lack of an ability to simply drag and drop files to a device. I would probably be less critical of this miserable software if, like every device I’ve owned outside of this current iPod, it was possible for me to simply open an Explorer window and drag the music I wanted onto the device. For that matter, even if I had to do so through iTunes. I would rather drag and drop music onto it than have to go through the process of creating a playlist and filling said playlist, then syncing that playlist to the iPod. And God forbid I should just want to add a single album to what’s already on there. No no, in those cases, I’d better fucking pray that I saved the playlist from the last syncing process. Otherwise, instead of iTunes maybe…I don’t know asking me whether or not I want to just add this album, or add it to what’s already on the iPod, it just erases the whole bloody device and sticks that lone album on there. This, and maybe I’m alone here (though I highly doubt it) is fucking insane. I mean whose fucking idea was this? That’s not “syncing” (which means “synchronize”), that’s “replacing” (which means “replace”). To my knowledge, if it were to synchronize the playlist in iTunes and the media on the iPod, it would add the media on the iPod to the playlist, while adding the single album in that playlist to the iPod; thus “synchronizing” the two end devices.
Goodness this has gone on rather long, hasn’t it? I think I’ll stop now before I get myself good and angry. Feel free to tell me in the comments about how stupid I am and that your first time using iTunes was better than the first time you had sex. Assuming, of course, that you have. Otherwise I suppose you can compare it to the first time you heard the Beatles.

I’ve found myself completely enveloped in the works of Glenn Danzig lately. It’s bizarre, I’ve always been a fan, sure, but in the past few days I’ve just been utterly obsessing over the Misfits and Samhain. Oh I like Danzig, sure, but with a catalogue as weak and scattered as that band’s, it’s hard to call myself a big fan of what they’ve gotten up to over the years. Now the Misfits… The Misfits are one of those bands that I–being a completely retarded asshole at the time–got into in high school without ever hearing them play a note. I had a Misfits T-shirt before I had ever heard “Static Age.” I had patches with the Crimson Ghost logo on them pinned to my jackets and bags before I knew what “Horror Business” sounded like. Christ, I even had a patch made from the Bullet single cover before I knew that it was even a song of theirs. I might’ve known who Glenn Danzig was, but I sure as hell had no idea who Jerry Only was. Sure it was somewhat stupid, but can you honestly blame me? I was 15 or 16 and discovering “real” punk rock for what seemed like the first time. The visuals exhibited by that Bullet album cover grabbed my attention instantly then, and still rank among my favourite album art of all time:

All I had to do was see that, and I knew that this band was fucking dangerous. These four guys in leather jackets with skulls all over them, spikes, devilocks… These guys were dangerous. They were a gang of thugs slinking through the shadows at night. They were the people you crossed the street to avoid. They were everything your mother warned you about. And I loved everything about them. Of course, then some wonderful person (I forget who, exactly) was kind enough to loan me a copy of the self-titled greatest hits album, often referred to as Collection I.
From the opening riff of “She” right through to the final chords of “Wolfsblood,” hearing this was comparable to the first time I heard the Beatles. I was, by this time, familiar with bands like Dead Kennedys, DOA, Minor Threat, and some other 80s hardcore staples, as well as the “classics” like the Ramones, the Clash, and the Buzzcocks. The Misfits were different, though. Unlike most of their contemporaries, they had a frontman who could actually sing. And I mean fucking SING. Danzig’s voice has been compared to Elvis, and the similarities are all too apparent even from the first lines of “She.” For someone who was used to hearing nothing but abrasive shouting and screaming in their punk rock (save for Joey Ramone, perhaps) his booming, impressive delivery was a kick in the teeth. Nobody else in punk rock, then or now, sounded like Glenn Danzig, and his voice was so far beyond the realm of your average, run-of-the-mill punk band that it almost makes absolutely no sense that he stuck to the Misfits for the six years that he did. That said, however, the Misfits’ instrumental section was definitely a unique one, to say the least; coupling 50s and 60s rockabilly and pop riffs and rhythms with pummeling punk rock drums, and the Misfits had a sound that was right at home with the burgeoning American hardore scene, but was also completely their own. Mix in Danzig’s macabre lyrical content, running the gamut from horror movies to presidential assassinations, and you had a campy, gory, and above all else fun band that never seemed to be taking itself too seriously. They came across as dangerous and dark, sure, but you always had a sense that their tongues were planted firmly in cheek when they sang lines like “Kennedy’s shattered head hits concrete / Ride, Johnny ride.”
Now all of this is completely well and good, but what happened? Reading this so far, you’d think this was a band that was on a fast-track to superstardom. Well, basically, by 1983, tensions were rising in the band. Danzig had become dissatisfied with the direction they were taking and was writing material for a new project. The whole mess came to a head on October 29, 1983, when the band was performing at an annual Halloween concert in Detroit. A host of problems plagued the show, and as frustration mounted onstage, Danzig announced that it would be their last show together. They returned home to Lodi, New Jersey, and the Misfits were officially over. Of course, Jerry Only would resurrect the band to drag their good name and mountains of respect through the dirt starting in 1995 with a revolving door of musicians filling in the rest of the band, but without Glenn’s intense pipes spitting out those gore-obsessed lyrics, it was never the same. Danzig, on the other hand… Well remember that material he’d been working on in 1983 as the Misfits’ demise grew near? Well something else that I’ve been obsessively listening to lately was born from that too.
Samhain (pronounced “sa-wun,” I am told, not “sam-hane”) was…well it was different from the horrorpunk stylings of the Misfits. The project retains some of those elements, but mixes in metal and pieces of the so-called “death rock” scene that was growing popular among Goth circles in the 80s. If you imagine what would happen if you took someone like Bauhaus and then stuck Glenn Danzig in the vocal spot, you’d be getting reasonably close to Samhain’s sound at times. In fact, an even better description (though it does require the reader being familiar with both bands) would be to say that Samhain is a logical middle ground between the Misfits, and the blues-infused metal of Danizg (the band, not the dude). If I’d discovered them as a teenager, I’d imagine I would have had the same initial draw to them that I did with the Misfits, however. I mean, come on:

What’s more dangerous than having your album cover’s picture taken while completely drenched in blood? It’s fair, however, to assert that not all Misfits fans would be into Samhain. The music is slower, darker, drenched in reverb and feedback… At times they come close to the chaotic Goth rock of bands like the Birthday Party, though Danzig’s punk rock Elvis routine remains firmly in check, lending the only frequently melodic sound to Samhain’s catalogue. At some point during 1987, Samhain became Danzig, and after some minor lineup changes, Glenn Danzig became a household name with the release of 1988′s Danzig, thanks largely in part to the success of singles like “Mother,” a call to arms against Tipper Gore and her PMRC campaigns. I’ve been amused recently at remembering my mother’s disapproval when I brought a copy of Danzig home one day. The Parental Advisory sticker on the front caught her eye. The inclusion of that label has never made any sense to me. The album contains no profanity.
Anyway, by this time, I’m rambling and more or less just indulging in writing about a current musical obsession. However, if you’ve never heard either band, you’re missing out on an important piece of American punk rock history, and the early development of a man who may very well be the genre’s most talented vocalist.

Recommended:
Misfits

• Collection II
• Legacy Of Brutality
• Misfits (a.k.a. Collection I)
• Static Age
• Walk Among Us

Samhain

• Final Descent
• Initium
• November-Coming-Fire
• Unholy Passion EP