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UPDATE: Tori Amos Shows Her Ignorance By Challenging Metal Bands

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Update: After seeing responses on Twitter and in the comments below, I am asking all readers who disagree with Mrs. Amos’ statements to leave the name and artist of a metal song that you feel has emotion and soul.

Spinner.com recently conducted an interview with singer/songwriter and pianist Tori Amos. In this interview, Tori decided to call out heavy metal, saying it can’t touch the soul and that it has no emotion. Before I tell you my thoughts, here are her exact words (courtesy of Spinner.com):

“Well, look, sometimes you don’t know how music affects people. I embrace that because I don’t think that just because I talk about emotional stuff that it’s not motherfucker stuff. I’ll stand next to the hardest fucking heavy metal band on any stage in the world and take them down, alone, by myself. Gauntlet laid down, see who steps up. See who steps up! I’ll take them down at 48. And they know I will. Because emotion has power that the metal guys know is just you can’t touch it. Insanity can’t touch the soul. It’s going to win every fucking time.”

Check after the jump for my response to Tori and her words.

toriamos

Photo Courtesy of ToriAmos.com
Dear Mrs. Amos:
Allow me to begin this statement by saying that I have a great deal of respect for your music and your history as a musician. Your music is indeed powerful, emotional, and has a great deal of soul. That being said, your statement that heavy metal cannot touch the soul is pure nonsense and, more importantly, incredibly ignorant. If this were honestly the case, metal would not be as strong a movement as it is now. If this were the case, then please explain to me why Metallica’s ‘Black Album’ is currently the top-selling album of the Soundscan era. Is it because a vast population is, as you put it, insane?

How about we tackle your statement that metal guys don’t understand the power of emotion. Again, your ignorance astounds me! Listen to Opeth’s ‘Hope Leaves’ and tell me that metal bands do not understand emotion. Listen to Alice In Chains’ ‘Nutshell’, Pain Of Salvation’s ‘Undertow’, Karnivool’s ‘New Day’, Metallica’s ‘Nothing Else Matters’, and countless other songs that come from metal bands whose writers bare their souls and pain as a means of catharsis and personal growth. I cannot tell you the number of times that a metal song has taken my breath away due to it’s sheer beauty. And these songs would not have been able to so had their not been that distortion, that intensity, to push them to such extremes.

To say that heavy metal guys do not understand emotion suggests that other genres DO understand emotion. I can stand here and say that radio bubblegum pop is utterly devoid of emotion. Hip hop is nothing but trivial, misogynistic anthems. Classical is nothing but boring background elevator music. Know right now that I do not actually believe these statements and that they are only examples. But if I were to turn my attention to YOUR style of music, this singer/songwriter genre, do you realize how easy it would be for me to say that you and all other artists in your genre have been saying nothing new for countless years? Your lyrics might be personal to you, but the overarching themes have been said before innumerable times. Your general message hasn’t said anything new since the first album you put out. And yet your music speaks to people. Why? Because your emotion and your feelings come through with the final product. So to does the music and lyrics of heavy metal.

You say the gauntlet is laid down and you challenge any metal band to prove you wrong? Mrs. Amos, it seems you do not realize who you are dealing with. We heavy metal fans are passionate, emotional, real human beings who will defend our culture tooth and nail. Because that is our soul.

Managing editor/music guy/social media fella of Bloody-Disgusting

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‘Lost Themes IV: Noir’ – John Carpenter Announces New Album & Releases New Music Video!

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Lost Themes IV
(l-r) Cody Carpenter, John Carpenter, Daniel Davies - Photo Credit: Sophie Gransard

John Carpenter has been teasing big news for a couple weeks now and all has been revealed this morning. Carpenter is back with Lost Themes IV: Noir from Sacred Bones Records!

Lost Themes IV: Noir is the latest installment in a series that sees Carpenter releasing new music for John Carpenter movies that don’t actually exist. The first Lost Themes was released in 2015, followed by Lost Themes II in 2016 and Lost Themes III: Alive After Death in 2021.

John Carpenter called the first Lost Themes album “a soundtrack for the movies in your mind.”

From John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies, Lost Themes IV: Noir is set for release on May 3 via Sacred Bones Records. The album pays tribute to Noir cinema!

In conjunction with the announcement, they’ve shared a music video for the album’s first single, “My Name Is Death”, a miniature noir film directed by Ambar Navarro, starring Natalie Mering (Weyes Blood), Staz Lindes (The Paranoyds) and Misha Lindes (SadGirl). “Noir is a uniquely American genre born in post-war cinema,” states Carpenter. “ We grew up loving Noir and were influenced by it for this new album. The video celebrates this style and our new song, My Name is Death.”

Sacred Bones previews, “The scene-setting new single marks new territory for Carpenter and his cohorts, propelled by a driving post-punk bassline that is embellished by washes of atmospheric synth, pulsing drum machine, and, at the song’s climax, a smoldering guitar solo.”

“Sandy [King, John’s wife and producer] had given John a book for Christmas, of pictures from noir films, all stills from that era,” Davies says of the lightbulb moment for Lost Themes IV. “I was looking through it, and I thought, ‘I like that imagery, and what those titles make me think of. What if we loosely based it around that? What if the titles were of some of John’s favorite noir films?’ Some of the music is heavy guitar riffs, which is not in old noir films. But somehow, it’s connected in an emotional way.”

Sacred Bones notes, “Like the film genre they were influenced by, what makes the songs on Lost Themes IV ‘noirish’ is sometimes slippery and hard to define, and not merely reducible to a collection of tropes. The scores for the great American noir pictures were largely orchestral, while the Carpenters and Davies work off a sturdy synth-and-guitar backbone. The noir quality, then, is something you understand instinctively when you hear it.”

“It’s been a decade since John Carpenter recorded the material that became the initial Lost Themes, his debut album of non-film music and the opening salvo in one of Hollywood’s great second acts,” the label explains. “Those vibrant, synth-driven songs, made in collaboration with his son Cody Carpenter and godson Daniel Davies, kickstarted a musical renaissance for the pioneering composer and director. In the years since, Carpenter, Carpenter, and Davies have released close to a dozen musical projects, including a growing library of studio albums and the scores for David Gordon Green’s trilogy of Halloween reboots. It helped that they grew up in a musical environment. Daniel’s dad is The Kinks’ Dave Davies, and he would pop by the L.A. studio – the same one the Lost Themes records are made in today – to jam, or to perform at wrap parties for John’s films. That innate free-flowing chemistry helps Lost Themes IV: Noir run like a well-oiled machine—the 1951 Jaguar XK120 Roadster from Kiss Me Deadly, perhaps, or the 1958 Plymouth Fury from John’s own Christine. It’s a chemistry that’s helped power one of the most productive stretches of John’s creative life, and Noir proves that it’s nowhere near done yielding brilliant results.”

Here’s the full Lost Themes IV: Noir track list:

1. My Name is Death
2. Machine Fear
3. Last Rites
4. The Burning Door
5. He Walks By Night
6. Beyond The Gallows
7. Kiss The Blood Off My Fingers
8. Guillotine
9. The Demon’s Shadow
10. Shadows Have A Thousand Eyes

The following physical variants will be available:

  • Sacred Bones Exclusive Red on Clear Splatter vinyl w/ Screen Printed 7” bonus track “Black Cathedral”, a Silver Foil Stamped Jacket and poster.
  • Sacred Bones Society Exclusive on Black and White Splatter on Clear w/ Screen Printed 7” bonus track “Black Cathedral”, a Silver Foil Stamped Jacket and poster.
  • All retail Transparent Red, with a Gold Foil Stamped Jacket and poster.
  • Indie Exclusive Tan and Black Marble, w/ Screen Printed 7” bonus track “Black Cathedral”, a Gold Foil Stamped Jacket and poster.
  • Rough Trade Exclusive Oxblood Red and Black Splatter, w/ Screen Printed 7” bonus track “Black Cathedral”, a Gold Foil Stamped Jacket and poster.
  • Shout Exclusive Black and Clear cloudy, w/ Screen Printed 7” bonus track “Black Cathedral”, a Gold Foil Stamped Jacket and poster.
  • Black LP, with a Gold Foil Stamped Jacket and poster.
  • CD
  • Tape

You can pre-save Lost Themes IV: Noir right now!

Lost Themes IV Noir

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