Enough has been said about Alice in Chains’ comeback minus the late, great Layne Staley – over the past year the band have done more than enough to be judged on their current merits alone. A sold out Brixton show seems to demonstrate this.

First up, a quick note on support bands. Surely a band of AIC’s calibre would warrant some slightly more heavy hitting or at least suitable support? What we got were two unknown British acts that seemed disastrously out of place on the same bill as these legends. We started with a spirited performance from Little Fish – a 3 piece with a lady vocalist who can really belt it out – sounding sounding somewhere between PJ Harvey and The Datsuns. Entertaining but somehow inappropriate. Then the truly dismal Healthy Minds Collapse – somewhere between Foo Fighters and McFly. Their performance was competent, but supporting Alice in Chains? Really? I can think of a dozen local doom/grunge acts more appropriate/deserving then these acts. The promoter should be shot.

Alice in Chains, on the other hand, are not in the business of disappointing. Kicking off with a medley of Dirt stompers – Rain When I Die, Damn That River, Them Bones – the crowd were ecstatic. And so the mood remained throughout the show. The set spanned almost their entire back catalogue (only Sap remaining unrepresented), and contained little in the way of surprises. This is just fine, at least for the moment. The fans starved of an AIC fix for a decade would have expected a greatest hits set, and that’s largely what they got.

Perhaps the only surprise was William Duvall, finally being allowed to show of his vocal skills, belting out a convincing performance of Staley set-piece Love, Hate, Love. Both Duval and Cantrell seeming exceptionally pleased with themselves about this, and so they should be; it felt like the extra present that you missed at the bottom of your stocking.

The show was bisected by a 3 song acoustic set comprising of new track, Your Decision, live favourite No Excuses, and a muted performance, dedicated to Staley, of Black Gives Way to Blue which culminated with images of the great man himself projected on the big screen drawing solemn applause from the audience.

This was not a case of a band relying on former glories though. The new album was well represented here, with at least half the tracks off of it being included in the set. These were received well, but with nothing like the rapture of the old classics.

After being treated to live favourites We Die Young, Angry Chair and Man in the Box, the band disappeared to return minutes later with the second highlight of the show – a stunning version of the beautiful Nutshell culminating in an extended signature Cantrell solo. Perennial favourites Would? and Rooster are delivered with gusto and the crowd bounce out of the auditorium, throats raw and once again convinced that Alice in Chains are still truly legendary.

I’m not ready to publish my top 10 albums yet – I have to torture myself over this for a little while yet, plus there’s some bits and pieces that I’ve not heard yet that I wish to hear before making my choice.

These are my favourite tracks recorded this year as they stand right now. I have no doubt that this will change within minutes of me hitting publish, but I’ve got to stick a stake in the ground somewhere. They are in no particular order, as attempting to do so would certainly prove too much for my fragile musical sensibilities.

Here we go:

• Pelican – Glimmer (What We All Come To Need) – A gorgeous instrumental slow burner
• Om – Thebes (God is Good) – Hypnotic, epic, looooong
• Alice in Chains – Looking in View (Black Gives Way to Blue) – Like being sat on by a house
• The Devil’s Blood – The Anti-Kosmic Magik (The Time of No Time Evermore) – A guitar duel to die for
• The Devin Townsend Project – Heaven Send (Ki) – Wacky, but in a mature way
• Griftegard – Charles Taze Russell (Solemn Sacred Severe) – The album title pretty much describes this perfectly
• Photonic – Customer Loyalty (Recorded Contact) – Randomness from New Zealand
• Mastodon – The Czar (Crack in the Skye) – Epic, schizophrenic, progressive and loud
• Middle Class Rut – I Guess You Could Say (25 Years EP) – It’s shallow but cheerful
• No Made Sense – The Epillanic Chorigi (The Epillanic Chorigi) – Neurosis style progressive heaviness

Notable omissions:

Various other tracks from both Black Gives Way to Blue, Recorded Contact and Crack in the Skye could have made it in there, but I didn’t want to clutter it with multiple tracks from a single band. Baroness’s Blue Record deserves a mention – as a whole it’s a brilliant album, but individually none of the tracks stood out enough to warrant inclusion. Other top tracks include:

Lamb of God – Reclamation
Extreme – Run
Pixie Lott – Boys and Girls
Dycian Maze – The Hand Inside
TrippyWicked – Movin On

This is all very nice, but the fact is, I’ve had a year of musical discovery, so much of the stuff that I’ve loved this year wasn’t recorded this year, which is why I don’t feel very satisfied with this list…but I’ll save those for another post.

What I spent my hard earned cash on recently.

Completely failing to do the honourable thing, Alice in Chains released the controversial comeback-after-loosing-a-key-member album and managed not to offend everyone, in fact, anyone. Black Gives Way to Blue is nothing short of stunning. Dark, brooding, sludgy but with lashings of gorgeous melody and soaring vocal harmonies that evoke the spirit of Layne Stayley without kicking his corpse. William Duval does an impressive job of stepping into giant, baggage laden shoes and even manages to shine in places. However, Cantrell with his devastating riffs and sound defining harmonies is the star here…and perhaps he always was?

Megadeth never went away. Some (including me) wish they had. Mustain may have reinvented my Megadeth’s sound many a time, but he’s never managed to come close to capturing the magic of the first 5 albums (and most specifically Rust in Peace). Endgame is no exception. It maybe a tour de force of modern thrash, but it’s not hard to stand out from that particular crowd, and Endgame fails to really excite or challenge. Comparisons with Death Magnetic are beside the point (I happen to think that Metallica’s is the better album, as untrendy as that my be to admit), Megadeth are hiding their lack of creativity behind an (admittedly dazzling) array of technical expertise. Entertaining but not essential.

Ever wanted to un-hear an album so that you could fall in love with it all over again? This is what I felt about Baroness’s Red Album. Since no technology has been invented to enable this (other than perhaps a carefully applied cricket bat to the head) my only hope was that their follow-up The Blue Record would have the same affect on me. Sadly, I was disappointed. Despite the fact that Baroness are still at the top of their game, The Blue Album just doesn’t pack the same punch as its predecessor. All the ingredients are still there, but the exhilarating instrumental flourishes that really define their sound manifest as more traditional prog meandering. Although I’m still in this for the long haul the romance just isn’t there anymore.

I picked up on Every Time I Die with their last record The Big Dirty. I was charmed by their lyrical satire and swaggering grooves. Expeditions into their previous works failed to excite me in the same way. So I wasn’t particularly pleased on discovering that their new album New Junk Aesthetic was a return to the older, more hardcore sound. They obviously lost their bottle. Unadventurous and uninteresting.

Om’s groovy repetition and monotonous chanting generally either sends you to sleep or into a nirvana like transcendental plain. I generally just find it soothing. God is Good is no great departure in terms of overall intent, however the sound has taken on a cinematic feel perhaps making it more accessible to the masses. This is nice, but it actually detracts from the minimalist, hypnotic groove that really defines their sound. That said, I quite like the eastern flavourings in their own right, but I think it will leave most Om fans feeling like they only got half an album.

I’m not sure what to say about the new Pelican album What We All Come to Need. More of the same as the last album. Unchallenging but pleasant enough.

Grind Madness at the BBC documents the legendary Peel Sessions with Napalm Death, Extreme Noise Terror, Bolt Thrower et al. It’s a tonne of fun and has some great packaging. As a historical document it is nigh-on genre defining. Utterly recommended for all fans of extreme music.

AIC+CRM=WIN

There was an excellent example of CRM building up to the release of Alice in Chains’ new album Black Gives Way to Blue. Here’s what they did:

1. Introduced some teaser videos onto the internet for the their new track thus creating buzz
2. Several days later they made the full video available
   At roughly the same time they made the track available free online for fans once they submitted their email address
3. Several weeks later these fans were sent correspondence regarding the release date of their new album, plus info about merch available
4. Soon after they advertised that the album would by available for pre-sales, and that anyone who purchased the album on pre-sale would receive another track off of the album immediately for free
5. When the album was release they sent more email with details of where to get the album and more merchandising links

The buzz around Black Gives Way to Blue was immense. Before the album was released they had sold a bunch of albums and load of merch, and fans suspicious of a band returning without their revered frontman are now singing along with the new singer and material at gigs.

Make no mistake, this is exemplary music marketing – marketing of ANY kind. AIC had a hard job ahead of them, after being away for over a decade, to convince a bunch of fans already suspicious of the whole venture that they were still relevant. Well they certainly took the risk out of the situation!

This approach was clearly tailored for the needs of a massive band, but the same principles apply to any band. The 3 basic steps are:

1. Announce your presence
2. Locate your fans
3. Talk to them

Step 1 and 3 I’ll cover off in a later article. Here I’ll concentrate on step 2 as you need to give it a little forethought before you plough into this endeavour.

So when people turn up at your gig, or website or Myspace, you need to be ready to try and grab some information about them.

Now, I’m going to talk explicitly about email in this article. In theory, any detail you can get about your fans is useful (for example Twitter/Facebook/Myspace account, address, phone number, favourite bands, shoe size, propensity to put out) but email is still the most versatile, powerful and easy to exploit, plus pretty much everyone has an email address.

Ideally you want email address and name (first, and preferably full), but just email address is fine. There are various ways to grab this info.

• At gigs. Put a sheet of paper on the merch counter to get folks to sign up for your mailing list. Consider offering an incentive for this, perhaps a free button badge, or a discount voucher for the next gig.
• Folks you run into. You’re always banging on about your band to whoever will listen, at parties and stuff, right? Folks sound interested? GET THEIR EMAIL! Wake up next to that random chick who’s wearing nothing but your AC/DC socks? Decided you never want to see her again? I don’t care, GET HER EMAIL!
• Collect it online. I saw a particularly good example of an unsigned band doing this recently. The most excellent prog-metalers Stone Circle announced via Twitter that they are giving away a free MP3 from their current EP, and more free stuff to come, to anyone who will sign up to their mailing list using a service called FanBridge. This site exists for the explicit purpose of collecting an managing email lists for bands. They offer a bunch of tool to manage your email campaigns and I’ll be referencing them a LOT in upcoming articles. Do go and sign-up to Stone Circle’s FanBridge list by the way – they will get signed soon and will probably stop giving away their excellent music.

So you’ve got a bunch of email addresses, what do you do with them? This I will cover in more detail in later articles, but for the moment, you need to store them somewhere. The first thing to do is transfer details collected in the real world to you computer, preferably into MS Excel (if you or your folks don’t have a copy, try Google Docs which has a free online spreadsheet) and save somewhere safe. FanBridge will let you upload lists of fan detail from Excel, so if you have an account this is a good idea.

For details collected at gigs, note the town that the gig was in as part of the details you collect. Later, when you’re telling folks about your tour, you won’t need to spam people in Brighton about your gig in Glasgow; you can create a separate email for each town or area.

Now, before you get too excited and start spamming your list with random photos of the band getting drunk, beware the evils of excessive email. If people don’t like what you send them, they’ll simply mark your email address as spam, and all further mails from your email address will be relegated to the junk mail folder. Before you send out any email at all, you need to plan your email campaign based on what you need to get out of it. This we will discuss in the next article. In the meantime, get collecting kiddies!

CRM for Bands – Turning fans into Fanatics

iPhone - making people seem smaller the world over (in this case, Alice in Chains)

I wasn’t sure whether I’d bother going to Sonisphere, it all looked too commercial to me, like V festival. It was also ridiculously expensive. However, since I couldn’t get to Download or Bloodstock I decided to give it a whirl. The line-up on the Sunday was also hard to resist.

The sun had mad an appearance for the first time in weeks and not even the police with sniffer dogs arresting skunk-laden youths and the ridiculously long wait for the festival bus could dampen genial my mood.

Walking past the campsite, was an eerie experience. It was like a ghost town. You usually expect to hoards of youths wallowing in beer cans and piss sodden dirt attempting to dampen their hangover with stale beer. Not here. It even looked fairly tidy!

I turned just in time to catch Lamb of God (7/10). LoG are heavy hitters in the modern metal arena. With over a decade of experience behind them, and some highly acclaimed albums, they should be pretty good at their art by now. The ferocity of their music translates well to the festival environment, and their performance is tight. Randy Blythe has real presence, but his incessant intra-song posturing wears thin after a while. Yes we know you are real metal and your music stimulates circle pits. Yes, the idiots at the front will continue to beat each-other up for your gratification. Shut up and get on with the music!

No sooner had LoG finished than Mastodon (9/10) lumbered onto the other stage. Now, I recently threw my toys in this post about Mastodon’s performance at Islington Academy. I was expecting an abridged version of Crack in the Skye, so I wasn’t particularly looking forward to their set or surprised when they kicked off with album opener Oblivion. I’d also resolved not to be such a cancerous old git this time, so I stuck around. What we were actually treated to was a spirited set that, although was largely derived from Crack in the Skye, also contained some classics from previous albums (although Blood Mountain was entirely absent). Flying through Megalodon and Blood and Thunder, we were then treated to a note perfect performance of this year’s best metal track The Czar: Usurper/Escape/Martyr/Spiral – the whole bloody thing. Crack in the Skye’s title track was an absolute pleasure, followed by the brutal Iron Tusk and March of the Fire Ants from Remission.

Mastodon are on flying form. I saw them a few years ago at Wembley arena supporting Tool and they really seemed like they felt out of place in such a large venue. The band I witnessed on Sunday seemed like they owned the place. Not only are Mastodon recording some of the most original and high quality music in any genre, but they are one of the coolest bands around – these guys a really starting to look like rock stars.

That left me with a smile on my face and wondering if anyone could top such a gargantuan performance.

Metal fans amuse themselves by making themselves dizzy while Machine Head play

The crowd now meandered back to the main stage – the subject of everyone’s conversation: who are the mystery “Special Guests”. The subject of much media speculation since Machine Head acrimoniously pulled out of the festival when (infinitely more successful) Limp Bizkit usurped them out of their original slot in the line-up. Randy Blithe had previously let the cat out of the bag but obviously no-one was listening as they all seemed surprised when Machine Head (5/10) took the stage. Confusing? The word you’re looking for is demeaning. The Brits, never known for their likelihood to forsake a little ironic taunting, were chanting ‘Limp Bizkit’ while MH vocalist gave his speech about “doing it for the fans”. Also, the boasting about the 28 circle pits, or whatever, formed by obviously bored fans during their set, made him sound like a ego bruised 12 year old.

MH’s set was uninspired at best. They never sound good live. Their set was punctuated by long, uncomfortable silences and self-aggrandising rhetoric. Robb Flynn has since been demeaning himself further online by continuing this one-sided war of words, while (somewhat ironically) Limp Bizkit remain commendably reticent. This isn’t David and Goliath, it’s Goliath and some irritating little fly that needs swatting.

Feeder were up next so I wondered off and bought an Alice in Chains t-shirt and got increasingly drunk while I waited for them to finish. The only tracks I saw them play were an ill-advised cover of Nirvana’s Breed, and a rendition of their only good song Just a Day, which was very enjoyable in the sun with a pint of cider.

Next up were the mighty Alice in Chains (9/10). Here’s an occasion that was making many folk nervous. The legendary Layne Staley replaced by some unknown bloke with an afro? You better be sure about this Mr. Cantrell!

Going straight for the nuts with Angry Chair merging into Man in the Box the crowd’s tension dissipates. AIC sound massive – heavy and assured. New guy William Duval gives his own spin to these classics. He’s no Staley, but then who is? He sings the tunes faithful to the originals but doesn’t try and ape his distinctive predecessor. He’s got a strong voice and is very much his own man. He still lacks a little of the stage presence needed to really command a festival stage, but he’s strutting his stuff with the best of them.

4th track in and Duval broaches the subject of the new album before launching into Looking in View. Several folks around me (who clearly hadn’t heard this new track) were audibly nervous about hearing new AIC tracks, but were blown away by the tracks slow, heavy doom genius. AIC are really back!

The band saunter effortlessly through Dirt’s Them Bones and Dam That River and the crowd are getting really animated. We’re then treated to a second new track, the much jauntier Check My Brain. Like a perkier Again, this track has a really memorable chorus.

The closing salvo of crowd pleaser Would? and the haunting Rooster has the crowd singing at the top of their voices as the sun sets. Perfect.

So, fired up and raring for more top grade metal, the crowd once again makes the merry trek up to the main stage for Nine Inch Nails (3/10). This supposedly NIN’s last ever tour. They’ve had a long and distinguished career, and countless, memorable tracks that the majority of the crowd would surely know. So did they rattle of a greatest hits set for this rapturous audience? No, like the petulant and self indulgent tosser he is, Trent Reznor ‘treated’ us all to a set comprised of mostly ambient and barely audible arty numbers. I can’t even be bothered to track down what was actually played. Every time a track finished (it was kind of difficult to tell one track from the next) you could hear an audible intake of breath from the crowd hoping that the next sound would be the first few notes from Closer.

They closed the set with a note for note version of their (now) best known track Hurt. This seems entirely out of place as the crowd mumble along dispiritedly with the Jonny Cash version in their heads.

I’m a big fan of NIN, but this display was nothing short of offensive. Not appropriate or impressive, just shit.

I’d like to tell you all about Avenged Sevenfold, but they’re shit, so I didn’t watch them. I got through about 3 songs of Metallica’s set before James Hetfield, clearly taking notes from Robb Flynn’s earlier waffle, decided to indulge in some sycophantic crowd wooing. I saw then live, and much closer, a few months back, and I had a long journey home ahead of me. There was no way they would top AIC and Mastodon, so I left Hetfield wittering on and went home.

Currently doing heavy rotation on the interwebs – Phil Anselmo making a complete dog’s arse of Alice in Chains’ sublime Nutshell. He seems a little drunk, and guitar clearly isn’t his instrument, but it must of sounded like Stairway to Heaven through a haze of booze and weed.

This first single on the new Alice in Chains’ new album Black Gives Way to Blue is a 7 minute long sludgefest and can be downloaded for free from the bands website. The dense harmonic undertones are reminiscent of their later work and see new vocalist William Duval’s voice largely obfuscated – there’s scant chance here to see what he’s really made of. Slow, brooding and heavy in every sense of the word, this has an understated chorus that has the potential to grow and grow.

I’m feeling a little less uneasy about this enterprise. Alice in Chains seem neither to be reliving past glories nor forging into new territories – this feels like an evolution.

Unlike the somewhat more lo-fi teasers for the next instalments of the Devin Townsend Project, the Alice in Chains teasers aren’t giving away much. The forboding content backed with heavy grooves are enticing indeed. Only 3 more months of anticipation and creepy ‘teasers’. Comeback albums of this sort rarely live up to expectation; bets on folks.