Stadium Arcadium

Well, here is it, the double disc epic that I have been waiting for! Sadly, thats where the excitement ends. This album has simply failed to surprise me. There are freaking 28 tracks on the album! Unfortunately, a sizeable number of them sound like filler. The playing of both Frusciante and Flea sadly comes across as lazy. I miss those freak-out bass gallops of Flea which are nowhere to be found on this album. That said, a few songs are actually good, the kind of stuff you'd expect from RHCP, although as already said, a majority of the songs simply pass by. The sound is too bland for my taste and to add to it, all the songs are either mid-tempo (by rhcp standards) or beloew mid-tempo! I don't know if its just me, but a few songs on this "epic" sound like rip offs of earlier RHCP material. OMFG, I should stop typing now before I get depressed.. I just wanted to love this album :((

I'm going to keep listening to it though, hoping that it'd get me going at some point.

Goodbye To Romance:Standards For A New Generation

That's the name of Alex Skolnick Trio's first recording. For those you who don't know Alex Skolnick, he was the guitarist in Testament during The Legacy/The New Order era. This on the other hand is a total guitar driven jazz/funk record! It'd be a shame not to mention the amazing rhythm section, which completes the trio. I guess, this could well be an introductory jazz lesson for most newbies (and I am one). Its interesting to see a metalhead, who has played in one of the thrash monsters play jazz. We also get to hear an amazingly funky jazz rendition of the great War Pigs (by Sabbath, you dumbass!) and also a beautiful version of Dream On (Aero-fuckin-Smith :) The other songs could also be renditions of other artists, but I'm not familiar with them. Give these guys a try!

Apart from Goodbye to Romance, I've been listening to Usfret (by Trilok Gurtu) atleast a couple of times daily. This is the first time I've heard Gurtu's work and man, its just out of this world. This is a funk meets indian classical meets jazz album. Shobha Gurtu's hindustani vocals are intense. There are lots of awesome intstrumental interludes, lots of jams with saxophones, guitars, bass, tabla, drums, flute etc. So, those of you who want to take a break from teh hedbanging can go ahead and listen to these bands.

An other band that has been blowing my mind is Mahavishnu Orchestra.. but more on them later. Until then, meh.

Textures - Polars

Very few albums leave you mind-fucked after just the first listen. This is one such album. The band is called Textures and the album, Polars. It is very difficult to put into words what we have here. It won't take too long before you realize the quality of the musicians in question. At first Textures might seem like a Meshuggah clone. But according to me, this band is everything Meshuggah can and can't be, and more! Meshuggah albums are never so easily appreciated. This is not to take anything away from the Swedish metal gods, but its just that one has to spend a lot of time listening to the albums again and again to get a hang of the music. I couldn't imagine falling in love with a Meshuggah album after just the first listen. Anyway, coming back to Polars, there are a lot of ambient sections in the album, which perfectly compliment the heavier sections. The album infact ends with a 14 mins long ambient track, which is probably one of the best "calm" endings ever composed.

The talent of the band shines through in the extremely awesome title track which is 19 mins long. Its definitely not an album for everyone, but those of you into bands like Meshuggah, Tool, Strapping Young Lad and the various side projects of Devin Townsend will immediately identify with the music. This 8 track, almost an hour long mammoth of an album is like a dream come true for me and thousands of extreme-metalheads. Such refreshing and exciting metal is very rare to come by and please please listen to this! I have read comments and reviews on the net which claim Polars to be the best album to have ever come out of The Netherlands. I really cannot back that up, but I agree that this is one of the most beautiful albums I've heard in a while.