Mass Burial: Squalus, The Great Fish

I don’t remember when, because Life often moves too fast for my mind to grasp the good parts tightly enough to crystallize them into memories these years. There was an announcement that some of the members of the great Giant Squid were putting together a project that would use samples from the 1975 meisterwerk Jaws, the movie that invented the concept of the summer blockbuster, as well as a movie that has clearly been an enormous inspiration for the members of Giant Squid. The initial announcement made it seem that this new band, dubbed Squalus, was going to use sample, samples, like they did on “Eating Machine” from Metridium Fields. So, my understanding of this new project was a bunch of songs like “Eating Machine”. And while “Eating Machine” does appear in altered form on The Great Fish, I was totally unprepared for what this record really was.

Mass Burial: Giant Squid, Minoans

Minoans is the last Giant Squid record, in that it is the last record these musicians would release under this name. This is a good combination of the song composition and content that the band has always offered, but largely loses the sludgy lurch of their earlier works.

And that is a quality of this band that I have always really, really appreciated, so to have it mostly disappear is a little bit of a personal let down. Not to say that the band has lost its magic, as that is something that was always provided by the compositions and their atmospheric moments; but the Giant Squid of Metridium Fields and the heavier moments of The Ichthyologist will always be preferable to me to the cleaner, more polished Giant Squid of Cenotes and Minoans. But enough, lest I become That Guy, eager to disparage the modern output in favor of toasting unnecessarily again the old. It is the absence of sonic density that causes the musical density to be somewhat overlooked, at least by myself somewhat regularly.

Coffin Shaker: Clutch – Earth Rocker

I recently got Earth Rocker on vinyl, so I decided to give it a review. Some bands just sound better on vinyl. I am a big believer that if you haven’t heard the Doors on vinyl, you haven’t really heard the Doors, and while there are other old bands that the same can be said of, Clutch is perhaps the best example for me of a modern band that fits that same bill. I’m 37 years old, so a part of my earliest music listening experiences are associated with vinyl, it being the format my mother utilized, and while I did find the rediscovery of the medium kind of hokey at first, I am pretty glad that it not only stuck around, but that I got in to it as well. There’s something really fun about vinyl.