The Mosh Pit 11.21.08: The Mosh Pit

Posted by Dan Haggerty on 11.21.2008

This week the Mosh Pit has a contest to give away a free CD from a choice of four classic albums. Plus we take an indepth look at those albums: Boston, Megadeth, Carcass, and Emperor!

[Banner Moved]





Don't fear though, the banner has merely moved below for reasons that will become self evident. Or maybe you're glad that giant thing is taking a week off of the poll position…I should shrink it down but then you'd lose detail on the people. I've already lost detail shrinking it to that size (the original was twice as big).

Anyway, I'm taking the week off of the normal writing to just hit you up with four classic albums. More importantly, you'll have a chance to get a free copy of one of those albums. That's right, the four featured album are up for grabs to someone who knows their classic and metal music.

On a fun note, I've added a new feature to run with. Something I''ve intended for awhile that doesn't quite fit with the other album reviews I do, and really needs to be done here on 411. So check out my banner of the extreme metal section below and let me know what you think. Big time thanks goes to Ben again for helping me learn how to do banners. You've unleashed a monster.

Otherwise, what can I say? I run the trucking division of a company. They service grocery stores. This week is the second busiest week of the year, so life is entertaining to say the least. If you show up here next week and you get just a bunch of nonsensical babble, then I'll have finally snapped.

Enough with the intro. Let's get to the good stuff.

An article called THE MOSH PIT...and it's about Britney Spears and other female pop singers...the fuck? - AndrewCrow

Bad news Andrew Crow, but occasionally I'm going to get a wild hair and discuss some odd stuff in the music industry. Sure, Diva's are a stretch from the metal format, but I do truly believe it's all related at the end of the day. For example, maybe if pundits just didn't up and treat any female singer as a "Diva" maybe that same press wouldn't treat any loud band as "Metal". It's all about recognizing music for what it is, and more importantly quality. I'm sure that is something you would certainly agree with when it comes to nu-metal and metalcore in the metal scene.

But hey, you get extra reviews this week so hopefully that helps!


this is the first time i got around to reading this article, and its a good one... i like the section on rush, best band ever. - justin

Thanks man and welcome the Mosh Pit! Drinks are in the back. And damn straight on Rush. If I get a long enough run with this column you'll likely see about 11 more albums eventually get covered, Plus I refuse to take Cleveland serious until the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame puts them in.

In all fairness though, I can think of about five bands I can say that about…

Dan, you're correct about the YYZ/morse code info, however there is a little more to the story - Rush didn't just choose it because it's morse code but because:

YYZ is the IATA airport identification code for Toronto Pearson International Airport, of Rush's native area of Toronto. - the_fiXer

And you don't know how right you are. I actually edited that part out because the trivia box I embedded into the column was way too big and looked funny. I get real anal about formatting at times because I want this column to look good. In this case however, I forget to put it back into the column itself, so thanks for catching that.

For the curious, I also took out another box that dealt with the cover as well, which features movers moving emotionally moving pictures, and the back art shows this is happening on the set of a motion picture. Plus take note of the three arches of that building, each separated by three pillars. Talk about an album cover with complete symmetry!

So thanks for writing in and getting the 411 out.

The First Official Mosh Pit Contest


Well, Ok, it's really not much of a feature content wise. But hey, in terms of substance you can't beat a chance to get a free CD! So here we have it, the first Mosh Pit contest and a chance for you to pick up some free swag. And it is a beauty of a selection I have, and as a bonus you get a preview of each album below in the meat of this week's column (which I guess is the real feature today). Yes, I said "each" because you get to pick one of four CDs. Isn't that pretty sweet, not only can you win a classic album but you get to pick from a list. As I see it, this prevents me from offering up a CD you might already have. Plus you can pick a CD to fill in a gap in your collection or at least try something due to the variety I'm offering.

The CD's you get to choose from are:

1. Boston -Boston [Revolutionized production standards and stadium rock] Classic 70's Rock
2. Megadeth - Killing Is My Business… And Business Is Good [Original pressing with the uncensored version of "These Boots"] Bay Area thrash/speed metal
3. Carcass -Heartwork [Slipcase addition, and it comes with the slipcase] Death metal/melodic death metal
4. Emperor -In The Nightside Eclipse [One of the corner-stones of the original black metal movement] Black metal (First generation. Yes that is important)


That's quite the list, and here is how you get one of those bad boys…


The Rules

The rules are very simple, but the contest is not and will push the limits of your classic rock and metal knowledge. The contest is…


Name each band (or individual without a band) on my banner:










My little take on the Beatles classic album took me a looong time to get together, so I'm going to get as much mileage as I can out of it. The contest will be for the rest of November, then the Friday thereafter I'll announce the winner along with a list of who is in it and why. Here is something to keep in mind:

1. The banner includes mostly bands, and you only need to name those bands and not the members of the band.

2. There are individuals however that are not necessarily part of a band (i.e. Elvis – There, gave that one away for free), and count separately as a pick.

3. Sometimes there is a band with members from multiple eras who didn't actual work together. I did that to tie eras of the band together. I'll count them as a group, but if you can nail the extra person you get credit for an extra pick. Those who know their shit should be able to catch this.

4. Obviously, not everyone in there is a musician, as I also reflected other influences of mine as well. This might catch a few people as some are sadly obscure.

5. The winner will get to pick one of the four CDs! With so many bands and people to pick from I doubt there will be a tie, but if there is then I'll allow both people to pick a CD with preference going to who got theirs in first. More than that and I'll just take the first two in.

6. This contest is open to everyone, whether they are a reader or a writer here on 411.


Finally, I recommend you email your lists to me. If you put them into the comment section you'll only be helping the person who reads your comment to add a missed band to his list.

Good luck and yell if you have any questions!

Megadeth - Killing Is My Business… And Business Is Good


And here we have it, one Dave Mustaine recently fired from Metallica, his termination via bus ticket home blamed on drug and alcohol problems, but in reality the morale of this story is that happy drunks shouldn't party with angry drunks; Mustaine being the angry drunk in the mix. A fact not something of a surprise to anyone even remotely familiar with the history of the band, and more importantly with the nature of early Megadeth - And therein lies the important thing to consider when entering this bare wasteland of a car wreck called a debut album, is that Dave Mustaine was a drugged up angry drunk before he got fired from Metallica, which in turn just made him one pissed-off man. That anger and sneer is projected in the sheer brutal wreckage that bends this album into the master work offering it is: A brilliant case of neck snapping riffage that overdoses into a crash scene. It's something that is at once tremendous yet coldly distant where you enjoy the musicianship as much as you just stop and stare like any other accident.

In a nut shell, this is as much a case of over the top speed and technical chops as it is a study in anger management. Dave Mustaine wanting Megadeth to beat everyone in every way, to basically prove he was the man, so we get more riffs, more twist and turns through time changes and note progressions, and certainly more speed. Add in the really poor production (of the original pressing) and you get an album that stands separate from everyone and everything.

But while I make this sound somewhat negative it has many merits and a sublime virtue to the scrape heap. First, it is one amazing display of speed, and those surviving the whiplash can enjoy the neck breaking change-ups in structure and riff construction. It might be hard to appreciate the axe work when you're ducking it to avoid the head wound, but it is there. And that speed and technical mastery goes to prog lengths in that it completely disregards things like traditional song structures or even such a mundane concept as melody, artful in its high minded ability to produce something few would consider traditional art. If anything, it's a demolition derby performed by cars with first class expensive German engineered engines, a dance of the most expensive parts protected by expendable bodies in primitive sport. It's all about the performance and the mind boggling technique under the hood.

This is the home of "The Mechanix", which is "The Four Horseman" under a new name since Mustaine wrote that song originally, both bands retooling it for themselves on their respective debut albums. Fans are split on which one is the better version, but really both are separate enough statements in the end to stand of their own accord. Although that blazing solo tells you that there is only one man who could have wrote that solo, and he's playing it on this version.

Megadeth has always been called a thrash group, but really they employee many styles outside of thrash, just in total so fast the total frash was simply seen as violent and extreme. The title track being a splendid example where riff building change-ups and dizzying solos exemplify a more traditional style just done at the speed of over-dose, a little groove to the step offsetting any thrash riff construction; oh it's there, but to call the song thrash is to simplify the statement. It has an almost classic take on music construction before throwing the whole mass at the wall in one fluid motion.

But don't let that fool you, songs like "Rattlehead" still shake with thrash slamming, even if Mustaine is too busy dropping leads all over the place before settling into finger frying solos. Chris Poland adding his own driving rhythm on the guitars to change up the whole damn shooting match, a dumb'd down version of that part being dragged out to five minutes and called groove in a decade. Metallica comparisons are completely unwarranted when this sounds more like a pissed off version of Anthrax.

But big Dave does step back "a bit" on songs like "Looking Down The Cross" where you get a tremendous look forward to when the man would forgo the accelerator some for riff building, hinting at big things to come. Again there is no Bay Area analog here, sound more like Overkill getting shit-faced and doing some fast paced Sabbath covers. Whatever you call it, sign me up, as this one cranks it up big time into one stiff flask of awesome.

Special note should go to "These Boots". Yes, the Nancy Sinatra song covered by the band to scintillating degrees of drug, speed, and verbal abuse. A fun song, but more popular due to the label booting it off of later re-issues of the album due to the original writer being horrified at the band's use and abuse of his baby. Still, I'd love to see Simpson try this version of the song, maybe throw in some windmilling too!

For a debut album in 1985, it really sounds like it should have came out several years earlier. Other bands already jumping forward in terms of the metal underground (and production values), so to compare this to Metallica's or Slayers debut is a bit of a misnomer. Then again, maybe Mustaine makes up for it being a veteran of several bands by this point. Anyway, the time table did little favors for Megadeth at the time, but the believers where there and when Vic and company expanded on this particularly angry but classically complex form of violence that would own the scene.

Killing Is My Business is a good album, even if a bit on the outside looking in. Just buckle the seatbelt real tight and make sure you take the ride a couple of times. It's the only way to see all the sights safely, but you'll be glad you did. Pealing back the sounds being an exercise in discovery that turns this into the place to revisit for smart man's metal.

Carcass - Heartwork

From the brutal and ugly days of hardcore grind moshing (and slicing, dicing, and dissecting if you read the lyrics), Carcass slowly evolved into a more traditional death metal sound (but still included the pile of bodies). By Heartwork the band was a complete death metal outfit and now evolving towards a more mainstream melodic death metal, and honestly one of the progenitors of what would be that sound from the sprinkles and dashes encapsulated within. If anything, this is considered to be the album that was a bridge for the band between their earlier and more brutal music to the mainstream metal of Swansong (an album that is very polarizing in the metal community). But here we get the best of both worlds, a dance of death that also contains melody, neither to dark nor to light, the band firing on the high octane fuel of some great players combining the best of different metallic worlds; the ultimate gateway album to more extreme music that is neither extreme nor looked down upon by the extremist (well, most of them).

The advancement here is that the grindcore has not only given way to a more melodic death, but more importantly there in an underlying thrash and chug that gives the ruckus legs to move and breathe, the band moving to the left and up from the autopsies to a technical mayhem that has a headbang-able gait to frontman Walker's snarl. Although when it comes to membership, the more popularly remembered Michael Amott buries his axe work here before he moved on to Arch Enemy, you can hear his increased influence as the band moves from the brutal to the melodic, a medium where the mans guitar construction is highlighted to tremendous effect. How his leads are offset by those chugging and buzzing riffs is a wonderful thing indeed. Listen hard folks, and you'll find a few nuggets of early Arch Enemy's Stigmata hiding behind the blasting. For those of you unfamiliar with pre-Angela Arch Enemy, do yourself a favor and check it out.

Man, this just rips forward, dueling battles and searing solos that make death metal more accessible while making classical metal more extreme. Thrashing blast beats and rhythmic death, the sort of album that can be viewed as the best of both worlds, or too much of the wrong one for the purists of anyone side. Count me amongst those that saw the divergence from the traditional Carcass brutality as a necessary evolution and a welcome one; the sound a lush, plush, and bold statement on the possibilities of Sweden's metal landscape. Somehow, the guitars just scrape forward like chainsaws while maintaining a melody, even if piled under the growls and blast beats, but still strong enough to carry the music forward under the flag of new dimensions. And man, the leads that are set up and the breaking axe rips just make it fresh and vital.

A good album, but more interestingly a great gateway album from the tough stuff to the extreme stuff, credibility in both circles. Check it out and enjoy what the hardcore folks can do when they go for a true statement on the artistic merits of their related scenes.

Boston - Boston


And with a flick of the switch, a switch that Tom Sholtz had to build for himself, Boston drops upon the music masses of 1976 the ultimate radio album, one destined to redefine the stadium anthem with it's larger than life logo. I mean, how could you NOT go wrong with a record emblazed with a city perched mightily atop a guitar? And the sound ripped through the conscious and preconceptions of a public, rules getting rewritten and standards being raised when the sounds of "More than a Feeling" took the airwaves. A catchy rhythm, sterling guitars, hooks, those high pitched vocals hitting notes unheard of at the time (at least until Priest hit the scene), and choruses so well blended and harmonized the Bee-Gees likely took notice. It might be a cliché now, but then it was new and improved, pundits and fans listening in incredulous wonder.

But above it all was the guitar, melodies and power chords, controlled energy pouring forth that single handedly made hard rock pop music, and guitar rock mainstream for the masses. And despite the catchy choruses and blended vocals, it's those guitars that really make this album sound relevant no matter which two number you slap on the end of the year.

Hits rolled of this bad boy, one of the grand conjurations when everyone got it right – Band, label, and buying public. Be it the seminal "More Than A Feeling" with it's larger than life choruses, the grand harmonizing and made for radio "Peace of Mind", to even the almost balladry of "Rock And Roll Band". But lest we forget, "Foreplay/Long Time" with it's epic redefinition of song intros and it's epic melody, to favorite concert rocker "Smoking", where fans would throw things up on stage - Everything from bags of the real stuff to smoke and the occasional naked chick (The band appreciated both). Even "Hitch A Ride" packs an awesome organ solo. So much music packed into a tight place, let loose by rhythms and power chords, anthems to re-define the term, the whole shooting match one mass of energy with its own self propelled energy and bounce you can still feel three plus decades into it. A thankful public eating this bad boy up, giving it the honor of biggest debit album in history, an honor in later times it dukes it out with Guns N' Roses Appetite For Destruction. Good company to be in, but I'm pulling for Boston on this one. It might be a bit o' classic pop music today, but it became a guilty pleasure by first defining that role through this albums impact on music.

So this is easily one for the books, and really an album any rock fan can enjoy. Be it rock and roll, hard rock, pop, or even your metal fan, this is at the apex of 70's guitar rock, arena rock, and the forward motion of a scene building towards many great things to come. Pop it in, crank it up, and enjoy rock and rolls original album to play your air guitar.

Emperor - In The Nightside Eclipse


From the frozen north of Europe where the sun hides for days on end, comes Emperor to put its iron shod boot-mark into the tundra of first generation black metal. So damn fast in colligates into a glacier of sounds, riffs so fast it becomes white noise and a monolithic wall of cascading natural erosion. There isn't a lick of rhythm or melody here in the traditional sense, unless you dip you head into the wall of icy sounds to the neck and suffer the resulting hypothermia from learning to understand the art behind the noise. No, nothing to jump out and make your head even nod, just a giant monument of cascading textures, like a freezing waterfall of sonics that have to be seen from afar to appreciate. Even the leads don't duel so much as they intertwine into a tapestry. In essence, this is in some ways more ambience than music when looked at in totality, and certainly more atmosphere than rhythm.

That jagged rock strewn tundra might be a harsh and ugly picture to those who don't need the sun to maintain their internal temperatures, but it also hides some grand performance of technical mastery. There is a method to the madness, even if 99.9% of the population is looking at the madness and running the other direction. But then again, that is the point, the meaning behind black metal, the music a subtle wall of technical nuances that is basically the Orc filled land of Mordor's answer to High Art… Dark and evil being the best way to describe the music, be it the deepest night howls of those churning guitars, the haunting wind of the keyboards, or Ihsahn's reptilian shriek of anguish as mankind's final blizzard claims his life, this is not for the faint of heart.

Symphonic is the impression you get from opening "Into The Infinity Of Thoughts". Not symphonic in the use of classical instruments but the sheer dense construction of the songs, eight minutes that rise and fall to emotionally building keys to the haunting angst of twice condemned cherubim in the choir of the damned, carried by the backbone of the ever entwined riffs ripping around the corner of your conscious like Armageddon. Truly, this has more in common with Wagner than Slayer, even if it is the most malicious and terrifying blending of those elements.

It's a journey through peaks and valleys, songs like the carnivorous Maiden blast assault of "Beyond The Great Vast Forest", a shower of melodic riffs and key simulated strings before brutal shifts in magical mayhem. Who new evil could flow and ebb like a lake of the dead during high tide. But it rises and fades like a grand orchestra of extreme instruments and wraps you in it's cold embrace.

But then you dip into the original Viking pillage of "The Majesty of the Night Sky", the original folk pagan extreme metal even if it's more a massacre then battle at this stage. Here is where the ambience returns with the howling winds (the forgotten dead?). This of course leads you into the enticing "I Am the Black Wizard", with an actual riff that is highlighted front and center before the whole Orc horde runs over your soul like the soundtrack to a version of the "Twin Towers" where Helms Deep fell. This actually steps back into a wide and melodic gait, although still symphonic where it chomps forward under Ihshn's shriek. Truly memorable and has to be heard to be digested, and if I want to point to an extreme metal track that is "Epic" then this is my go to point. Dare I say beautiful? Well, hell, then the song breaks down into an almost doomy chug that takes the epic and turns it a tragedy. Add the spoken narrative ends the ride and dare I say black metal can be art?

And really, what more praise can you give these scriptures of the damned in that the foul blasphemy hides an art, a sense of high culture despite the low crawl, and even a terrifying beauty that dares you to see it as such for just a moment, to recognize it, embrace it, so it can claim you for itself. That when you get lost into it, and realize you're lost in the shadow of the land of extreme. Welcome home.

The Set List
What's Playing In My Head Phones

1. Uriah Heep - Wake The Sleeper : Damn. The Heep is back (well, one of them) and this is classic but fresh. I'm digging it.

2. Unleash - Hammer Battalion: Oh yea. Nothing like some new Unleash to hammer out my work aggression. Good death metal.

3. AC/DC - Black Ice: Yea, yea. I'm playing it into the ground. I'm having fun, so enough said.

4. Bloodbath - The Fathomless Mastery: This is turning out to be a great traditional death metal album. Let's hope Mikael Akerfeldt keeps working with this side project. I like Opeth, but this is some really good stuff.

Music Trivia

Ian lived in London and had a flat with bud Noel Redding. He got work with e few bands at the time, but it wasn't until he scored a gig as a roadie for Jimi Hendrix when Redding got the bassist job for Hendrix that doors started to open up for him. Drugs were also a big part of his Jimi Hendix experience as well (pun intended). Both served him in good and bad ways when he later played guitar for a band called Hawkwind. They even had a hit he got to sing on, and he wrote a few tunes for them as well. In fact, the last song he wrote for Hawkwind was an entertaining romp about the use and abuse of amphetamine. Or actually, it was the nickname for someone who uses that kind of drug. But that's when things took a left turn, a drug bust and arrest resulting in the band firing him. Of course, Ian was none to happy since the whole band did drugs and claims they were just pissed because he got caught doing "the wrong drug".

So Ian up and started his own band, and decided its no-nonsense hardcore rock would fit well under the band name Bastard. His new manager kindly pointed out that few big gigs would ever book a band with that name, and he certainly would never "Top of the Pops". Ian, going by his childhood nickname of Lemmy thought he was probably right and decided to name his band after that last song he wrote for Hawkwind: Motorhead.

The rest is, as they say, history.

It's been real everyone, now get out their play something loud. We'll see you back in the Pit in seven.