I’ve never hidden my love of this Alabama-based collective. Their mix of traditional southern music styles – from raging rock to blues to country to soul – with the fury and honesty of punk drew me in from the first time I heard their opus Southern Rock Opera.
Over the years, the band has gone through a number of lineup changes and stylistic shifts, but the underlying brilliance has not faded. Coming off their stellar support performance on Bettye Lavette’s The Scene of the Crime, Brighter Than Creation’s Dark finds the Truckers in another epic mood, crafting a long, complex and more-often-than-not, thrilling musical ride.
With three songwriters and vocalists, the band’s eclecticism is its calling card. What binds it all together is the excellent playing throughout, including contributions by legendary keyboardist Spooner Oldham, who helps to anchor the diffuse music into a cohesive whole.
Songwriter/vocalist Patterson Hood calls this album a “grower.” Which is more than encouraging. I already love Brighter Than Creation’s Dark. How will I feel after it “grows” on me?
Disfear Live the Storm
I could really do some shorthand with this review and just say: "Excellent Scandi-crust D-beat hardcore fronted by former At the Gates frontman Tomas Lindberg." Now, for those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, I'll take this one step at a time.
"Scandi-crust." Scandinavian-based "crust" is a particular style of punk rock that is based on heavy, metal-style riffs. The guitars are usually downtuned, which makes the music more menacing. Crust was an offshoot of the anarchist hardcore of the 1980s, with England's Amebix usually cited as the style's ground zero. Scandinavia (in this case, Sweden) has spawned tons of extreme punk and metal bands over the years, from the church-burning black metal acts to a legion of pissed-off punk rockers.
To jump ahead a bit, Tomas Lindberg seems to have been a member of all of the Swedish bands in the last decade, though it really is "only" half a dozen. At the Gates took death metal (the intense and technical style that emerged out of the 1980s thrash scene) and added enough melodies and harmonies to give the style a fresh kick. Since then, millions of bands have copied the style, but few have managed it as well as At the Gates. After the band imploded, Lindberg went off into punk rock (with occasional forays into metal, such as The Crown) while the bulk of the band became the Haunted. At the Gates will reunite for the first time since the middle 1990s this summer for a string of concerts.
To move back, "D-beat" is another sub-strain of hardcore punk rock. In this case, the name is drawn from the signature drum beat, which is powerful and quite easy to hang a couple of chords and riffs on and make memorable hardcore. It started mainly with angry Brits Discharge, though there is also a Scandinavian school that started around the same time, followed by others around the world (Japan has a particularly good dis-scene). Like At the Gates, millions of bands have followed in Discharge's footsteps, utilizing the beat, a riff or two and a few lines of lyrics to spread their message of, er, war is bad and we're all going to die horribly in a nuclear war and, oh, the cops aren't really cool either (OK, it does beyond this, but sometimes it's hard to tell).
So what makes Disfear (note the "dis" prefix) such a great purveyor of the style? Well, Lindberg sings for all those bands for a reason -- his vocals are distinct and powerful, even when he's just yelling his head off. The band is made up of seasoned pros who have plied this kind of music for years and no how to take the seemingly limited tools and make it fresh. The 10 songs here are loaded with raw, raw power, but power that is molded into something focused. The band hits a number of highs here, including longtime live favorite "The Furnace" and the punishing album closer "Phantom." So, yeah, excellent Scandi-dis-crust. And in the middle of winter, what else does a hard rock fan want except something so intense it melts away the snow and ice?
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