|
Well, I'm listening to Rare Trax, the new Meshuggah album, right now, and it's pretty great and all — I'd probably end up recommending it on its own brutal merits — but the album itself is not my point here. (I have a slightly fetishistic fondness for rarities compilations by bands I don't know much about, so I like the record quite well, as it happens; it's exceedingly competent, extremely hard rock that matures as it goes along into an odd, lively hybrid of throat's-on-fire vocals and John-McLaughlin-meets-Blue-Cheer-in-a-welding-shop metal, with a few thrash flourishes for show. Some Metallica damage in the earlier stuff, but whatever. Generally pretty good stuff. Occasionally great stuff. Worth a listen for sure.) My point, rather, is the multimedia content that's on the disc. You know and I know what "multimedia content" means: a file full of hypertext links and some QuickTime videos. And we both know that what that usually means is a hefty serving of So What for everybody. Not here, friend. Oh, no. Here, to put it bluntly, we have one of the few rock videos worth watching since the form's inception. I really hate to spoil it for you, but you're not likely to drop 15 bucks just to find out whether I'm exaggerating, so get this: the video, for a song called "New Millennium Cyanide Christ," was shot in an RV while the band was on tour. I assume the tour manager shot it with a digital video camera, I don't know. Anyhow, with a verisimilitude that's either completely unaffected or wildly brilliant acting, the members of the band lip-sync the song. The drummer plays sticks on the air. The guitarists play air guitars with expertly projected comic wit. The bassist is wearing a Buffalo Sabres jersey. And the singer — well, friends, singer Jens Kidman leaps like a surfacing porpoise about the RV as it drives through Ohio carrying its cargo of headbanging Swedes, and he mouths the words of "New Millennium Cyanide Christ" into the capped end of a red ball-point pen. He's wearing sunglasses. So's the rest of the band. There's not much room on the floor of the RV, so the drummer sits on the edge of his bunk bed. Long hair flies, and five heads rock forward and snap back in unison, taking care not to bang against the kitchenette table at which they're seated. A guy in a different jersey (the New York Rangers alternate jersey, if you want to know) gently mugs for the camera. It goes on for six incredibly funny, brutally loud minutes. It is the single closest thing to the heart of rock 'n' roll that I've seen since Prince kicked over his mic stand at the American Music Awards in 1984, and that, folks, is saying something.
|
