Australia: a land of untrustworthy, scheming authoritarians?! (The Spectator)

Once upon a time, in high school, our politics teacher asked us what the Australian national identity was.

To wit, we were stumped.

He then asked us what the Chinese national identity was. We rattled off all kinds of things – a common ethnicity, perception of oneself as the ‘Middle Kingdom’, Confucianism, and a few other spicy things teenage boys no doubt cacked themselves with.

Today, in 2023, what is the Australian national identity from a global point of view?

Read the rest at The Spectator Australia.

The Six Stacker - Troika

Melbourne’s weather (booooo) is more schizophrenic than usual these days, thanks to La Nina or El Nino or whatever it is. One day will be shiny and bright and the next gloomy as any black metal record you’d care to mention. It does mean more dependence on the ol’ automobile - which means more time spent listening to tunes. Fuck walking, right?

My usual process for choosing records in the six stacker is as follows - first delivered, first in. Except…I break this rule all the time, because I am an adult and can do what I like. Case in point is this Paramore album. I really like it.

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Paramore - This Is Why

Atlantic (2023)

When’s the last time you heard a pop song - an honest to God pop song - with a guitar in it? If we’re not counting Coldplay (and we aren’t) Paramore are pop-rock’s final torchbearers in a world where hip-hop and EDM derivatives rule the airwaves - wi-fi encrypted or Marconi wireless, take your pick. Where St. Vincent channelled David Byrne (who she eventually collabed with) to express the absurdity of human feeling, Paramore kind of does the opposite. They take on acts like Television or Gang of Four by way of the confessional-pop of the 90s; think Friends with Benefits coining, Dave Coulier teddy bear bashing Alanis Morissette or the chamelonic and still brilliant Savage Garden. Instead of being totally un-relatable (Can’t say I ever went down on Dave Coulier) Hayley Williams breezes through jangly and raucous riffage to emerge at the other end in pain, Millennial style: “I hit the snooze on my alarm twenty times/I was just so tired,” she says, sighing. (Running Out of Time) The heartrending continues in a sultry, jazz inspired Liar, Williams lamenting the lies she made in order to love, something that wouldn’t completely sore thumb a Fleetwood Mac record. Sick of bad news? Me too - just turn it off, Hayley shouts as big drums back up her argument. (The News)

There’s some fun in there with Big Man, Little Dignity reminding one of the “nuts to the boys” songwriting of Cyndi Lauper (god, she really is great) or the brightly bashed out “nanananas” in C’est Comme Ça’s chorus, a slight return to Roxette although on a bit too much red cordial. The punk in their pop is post, sure. It’s a damn fine pop record - who knows when we might ever get another?

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Sermon - The Birth of The Marvellous

Prosthetic Records (2019)

When some dude ambles up to you and says “there’s this band you gotta check out, it’s a mix of X and Y” it’s usually a derivative of two generic (in the best way) bands - like Dream Theater and Helloween, because those two are the poster children for progressive and power metal. It’s not that hard, right? You know when things might be special (or a shameless derivative) if they namecheck two bands you adore - Katatonia and Tool. Two bars into opener The Descend and we’re treated to an brooding off-beat riff accompanied an angry baritone who’s making vague allusions to menacing patterns in the distance - this is 100% Katatonia meets Tool, in the best possible way. On this album at least, their chimera takes on a religious, near-Orphaned Land quality. The singer (anonymous on purpose) is a pitch-perfect blend of Jonas Renske and Maynard James Keenan - and instead of getting in your face like good metal is supposed to, it pares itself back to wide, expansive shots and subtle manoeuvres - think of it like Villeneuve’s Dune rather than Miller’s Mad Max Fury Road. Immersed in the black fluid of metal that it is, though it does rise out of the murk. As it breathes, rainbow swirls of prog emerge on its blessed head as if Steven Wilson had their ear at some point (he seems to haunt it through the ethereal choirs of Chasm.) It’s poignant, immersive stuff - if you enjoy any of the bands mentioned here, you’ll love it.

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Xenobiotic - Mordrake

Unique Leader Records (2020)

I was convinced this was released this year. Nope. Three god damn years ago, during the times we’d rather forget. Xenobiotic carry that Aussie death metal sound - you can’t mistake it these days, but it’s that death that verges on core and some will insist that it is ‘core. Think of bands like Thy Art Is Murder or Aversions Crown, possibly the finest practitioners of this weeping meaty art. (It is CORE you ASSHOLE!) A balance of brutality and introspection (Pianos? What the fuck?), Mordrake uses the vessel of death metal to espouse what cannot be spoken by words alone in a dissonant, off-kilter, and sometimes rapid-fire riff delivery (Archspire comes to mind.) When you’re in the pit, firing off poetry doesn’t matter too much because it’ll land somewhere in between heads going up and heads going down. The riff pummels it into us, and we’re thankful that it does. We won’t notice the sentiment, but our brains will.

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Kamelot - The Awakening

Napalm Records (2023)

When I heard the news today, oh boy - that being the sublime voice of Tommy Karevik leaving “prog” power metal act Seventh Wonder - I suppose it had to be done. Vampish OTT metallers Kamelot are kind of a big deal (outside of the US) and are touring most days out of the year. How can one clear-as-a-bell opera-adjacent singer like Karevik maintain himself as the master of two worlds? AND be a firefighter?

Kamelot is gothic in the same way the Twilight series is gothic. They’re cheesy in the same way Interview with the Vampire is cheesy. It’s like The Phantom of the Opera is a world that they alone inhabit and broadcast from. The result is high metal melodrama. It’s black eye make-up, leather pants, and constant chest beating on stage. If you aren’t on board, you will hate this. If you are, you will absolutely fucking love everything they do. The pomp, the pageantry, the pizzazz.

One More Flag In The Ground is built for arenas; announcing itself with the chorus, guitars and keys marching towards certain oblivion - but don’t worry, we’re the hero in this story. We always are, which makes it so endearing. You can’t deny their musicianship and the fact they defy power metal convention just enough to keep fresh. There aren’t many exceptional Kamelot albums among their body of thirteen discs (The Fourth Legacy and The Black Halo) but there are seldom any shit ones (Sorry, Ghost Opera). If you play the game. Which I tip you don’t.

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Black Royal - Earthbound

M-Theory Audio (2022)

Just like how antipodes worship the same thing - the Welsh and the Chinese both revering dragons, for one - here enters Black Royal, Finnish retro stoner death n’ roll to make up a convoluted PR genre. I had thought, like a FOOL, that Aussies had cornered that market with stellar acts such as Black Rheno, Goat Shaman, and Colossvs. Black Royal burst on the scene with 2020s’ implacable Firebride and continue their descent into madness in Earthbound. Guitars boulder down stoner mountainsides emulating the lurch of swampy muthas Eyehategod (Earthbound) and amp up the energy when needed in a double-time swing - songs like 13th Moon could even give Kvelertak a run for their krona. Don’t worry, my Suomi lovers, you get your god damn Hammond-drenched Amorphis clone in Phoenix Ascending. Light a doob and have a toke - it’s what the bear on the front would have wanted.

The Six Stacker: Second Strike, Strike Deadly

After over two decades reliance on public transport, cars are absolutely worth the cost. I can jump in at a moments’ notice and get somewhere in comfort. No more braving the cold and wet, the late and farty, the cancelled and never rescheduled. Fuck PT, fuck it to the moon. Anyway, here’s where my tunes come in:

ENCHANTMENT - COLD SOUL EMBRACE

Cosmic Key Creations/Transcending Records (2022)

If someone told you that just after Yorkie down-in-the-dumps Paradise Lost released Gothic and before the lads in Anathema wrote Eternity they both did a collab with My Dying Bride during the Turn Loose The Swans sessions, you’d call them a god damn liar, and rightly so. Enter Enchantment, which is such a pitch perfect blend of the OG Peaceville Three circa 1992-93 it has you believing that it really is a long-lost supergroup cut. Death/doom still lives on in smouldering pockets of depressed resistance, about that blighted Norf. If things went only shades different, we’d have an honourary Peaceville Fourth. You’d even swear that the singer was the bastard child of PD’s Nick Holmes and MDB’s Aaron Stainthorpe. Did I end up buying more MDB records to fill out my collection after this? I’ll never tell.

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Cryptic Shift - Visitations from Enceladus

Blood Harvest (2020)

A pickup from the recent Into The Fall death metal festival, Cryptic Shift are either on heavy drugs or heavy doses of Robert Heinlein. Either way, their tripped out, spacefaring technical death metal cribs from all over the weird and wonderful musical spectrum. Funky lines aren’t shy, nor are Atheist or Gorguts style jazz fusion passages. It’s all wrapped up in a bleeding crimson guttural growling bow. Cryptic Shift, if they were Canadian and chill, would probably be akin to Rush. They are not akin to Rush.

This also came with a second disc of offcuts and snippets, which was really weird, therefore taking up two slots in the stacker.

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Carnosus - Visions of infinihility

Independent (2022)

The Black Dahlia Murder lives! Wow, what a contradiction in terms. Swedish slightly melo, highly death peddlers Carnosus, if you didn’t know any better sound like that Phoenix arising out of the ashes of the dearly departed TBDM (RIP Trevor Strnad), wound tight around all the good bits of metal - headbang-worthy riffage, noodly weedlies at the top end of frets, and guttural grumbles heralding the end of all creation. If TBDM never come back (and really, let’s leave the legacy of Strnad to the Gods) Carnosus are inheritors of their own infinihility. I don’t know how to pronounce that either.

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Be’lakor - Stone’s Reach

Riot! Entertainment/Prime Cuts Music (2009)

I’d be one to venture that the Scandinavian sadboi melodic death movement’s heyday started with Insomnium releasing Above the Weeping World and ended after Omnium Gatherum’s New World Shadows, with these Aussie parallel imports releasing a very, very good - but not quite great - entry into the pantheon in 2009. Pensive, longing acoustics are plucked throughout alongside frosty piano lines. Plunging riffs dive right into the heart of snow-capped darkness. It isn’t boilerplate Scandi-sadboi, but it doesn’t stray too much from the formula that’s served so many of their contemporaries (the forementioned, Kalmah, Mors Principium Est, In Mourning) so well. The twists come thick and the turns are tricky enough to discover new ones on repeat listens. If this is one surefire route to drinking out of a shoe in downtown Gothenburg in front of black clad Swedes, I really can’t judge.

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Obscura - Diluvium

Relapse Records (2018)

Another pickup from Into the Fall festival, Deutschland’s Obscura are one of those technical death metal bands that are too fast for rational thought to parse - you definitely heard it but your brain didn’t. It isn’t all just fast shouties and 22/7 time signatures, though. Rattling off robotic laments (Emergent Evolution), travelling to the epic side of death metal town (Ethereal Skies) and even trying their hand at resurrecting the good ship Opeth (The Seventh Aeon, one track before punisher The Conjuration. Cheeky!) Though all the band except leader Steffen Kummerer would leave to form ahem, Obsidious, who released the biggest fuck you to Steffen last year with Iconic, because it was.