Sa : RISS&ENTERTAINMEN Opeth at the Commodore Brady Ehler, OP Contributor To all you metal-heads out there who didn’t go out to see Opeth last Friday, let me say this: Shame! Shame on you all! Sure, the two opening acts were nothing special. Sure, the show started at nine. Sure, the weather was grim, and sure we had to drink beer out of plastic cups, but this is Opeth, damnit, one of the best metal acts on the fuckin’ planet, and you decided to stay at home and watch movies with your friends. Shame! Why am I so irate you ask? I’ll tell you why; the Commodore wasn’t even close to being filled to capacity. Yep, try explain- ing this to your kids when Opeth will have become legends, and only play sta- diums, and charge $75 for tickets. For those of you who don’t know what you missed, Opeth is, as I said, one of the best metal acts running. They aeditor@gmail.com combine elements of thrash, death- metal, black-metal, and classical, which they channel into well-constructed epic songs that both rock the socks and stir the soul. By the way, they won a Grammy...a Swedish Grammy (they are Swedish), which is well deserved. Opeth have managed to pump out eight excep- tional albums in the course of only ten years, The newest release, Ghost Reveries, is perhaps their best album to date. Though it is no departure of form, Ghost Reveries shows the band continuing to evolve. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it), the Swedes did not give the new album the spotlight at the show. Instead, they played fan favourites from throughout their sizeable back-catalogue. Highlights were “Blackwater Park,” “The “Drapery Falls,’ and the encore, “Demon of The Fall.” My only beef with the show is that they only played eight or nine songs. That, and they took forever to come on. But on the bright side, the songs aver- aged about ten minuets in length. They did put on an excellent show, and Mikeal Akerfeldt is one of the funnier front men I can remember seeing. During one of the pauses between songs he was growling into the mic and having the audience mimic him. Then, he wails, “ahhhhhhhh!” When the audience mir- rors the glam-rockism, Mikeal responds, “Thank you, Devon Townsend.” screw Noise Rock Kevin Lalonde, OP Janitor There are certain things in life that I don’t understand. Cubist art, reality television, women, none of these things make any sense to me. But the one thing that bothers me the most is, quite simply, noise rock. I just don’t get it. Now before you grab your pitchforks and call for my head, I should clarify. I never thought of early Sonic Youth as noise rock, for example. I mean, when was the last time you heard someone say, “Oh my god, man I LOVE Shellac?” or, “Dude, the new Butthole Surfers is SO amazing!” Alright, to be fair, a lot of people proba- bly did. But that’s not what I want to talk about. ’'m talking about new noise rock. Deerhoof, Xiu Xiu, all of it. It makes no goddamn sense to me. People describe noise rock as big and cacophonous, abrasive, an onslaught of noise meant to shatter the eardrums. The genre is highlighted by distorted, ama- teurishly-played guitars and heavy, crashing percussion, often lacking a cohesive rhythm or melody, or a melody altogether. Reading that description back, it sounds like I'm describing math rock. Well, fuck math rock too, but we'll get to that another time. Right now, I’m pissed about how good people think the new Deerhoof is, or the new Xiu Xiu, or the new whatever. Again, I just don’t get it. When I threw in Deerhoof’s new LP App O’ this week, I was excited. I had never really listened to Deerhoof before, aside from a few tracks that some friends had played for me, and the new album was get- ting hugely positive press from all points. Clearly, it had to be good. My excitement, however, quickly melted into aggravated irritation. Not surprising for a guy whose idea of a good time is a bottle of wine, a pan- fried trout, and some old Decemberists while reading Harry Potter. What the fuck was this shit? Why do I hate noise rock so much? It’s usually dis- cordant and unpleasantly unmelodic. It’s annoying, You can’t sing along to the words (if there are any), and even if you can understand the lyrics, they rarely make any sense. It’s so dissonant and harsh, and you can’t even get high to it because it just agitates you and freaks you out. Case in point: the song “Saturn” by celebrated noise rock ’innovators’ Xiu Xiu. Theoretically, you should be able to light a joint and listen to damn near anything. But that? I don’t fucking think so. Again, I just don’t understand it. That said, not all noise rock is so unlistenable for me that I can’t stomach it. However, it is kinda sad that the only half-melodic tracks on La Foret sound unmistakably like Depeche Mode. What does that say about the genre? Indeed, the term “noise rock” has been thrown around like an old pair of socks so much recently that it’s hard to make distinctions as to who is actually play- ing noise rock and who isn’t. No, I won’t try to give any clarity in that regard; remember, I don’t understand it. However, it frightens me when I hear people labeling bands like Wolf Parade as noise rock. Sure, for the first 12 seconds of “You Are a Runner,” you might think the song a bit grating. But then, seemingly out of nowhere, you hear...what’s that, a melody? Jesus, is that so fuck- ing hard to play? It’s cohesive, it’s pleasant, and it’s god- damn catchy is what it is! And it causes me to say to myself, “yeah, I really want to put that on,” and don’t have to suffer through it in any way. So the real question is, why the hell do people who like noise rock like noise rock? Is it because they’re angry? Were they not hugged enough when they were little? Have they been drinking too much? Frankly, and I know someone is gonna hit me for saying it, I think it’s because they have a metal plate in their head or some- thing. Either that or they’re deaf. Otherwise, I simply car’t explain it.