Sebastian Bach | Kicking & Screaming

by Mark Allen
Staff Writer

Bach is back and he’s still got it, that elusive, spine-chilling “it” that so many singers would sell their spleen and possibly left testicle to possess. A ballsy rock ‘n’ roll bastard, Bach is capable of kicking in your teeth with a raging metal track, punching you in the guts with an in-your-face hard rock anthem, or soothing your troubled soul with a brooding, melancholy ballad. On Kicking & Screaming, his latest concoction, he does all three.

When Bach’s previous album, Angel Down, hit the streets in ’07, fans hoping for something on par with Skid Row were instead subjected to a full-fledged heavy metal album that saw Bach screaming as much as singing. It divided fans like a heavy metal Moses parting a Red Sea of rockers, with some bemoaning the sparse commercial hooks and lack of catchy choruses while others were perfectly happy to hear Bach scream his lungs raw and slam out some serious hammer-down intensity. Kicking & Screaming continues in a similar vein, once again making the lines between hard rock and metal blurrier than an alcoholic’s vision after a three-day bender. On this outing, Bach sings far more than he screams (though he definitely cuts loose with his patented wail from time to time) and the hooks are significantly improved, though nobody should expect to hear anything as anthemic as “Youth Gone Wild.” That said, whether by chance or by design, this album could have easily served as the bridge between Slave to the Grind and Subhuman Race, which means it’s pretty damn good.

What are also good are the skills of new guitar hero Nick Sterling. Barely old enough to (legally) drink, Sterling is a young gun on the scene, but he smokes an axe like nobody’s business. His playing is redolent with the hot-blooded energy of youth, the reckless abandon that is too often tamed the older we get. Whether pumping out power-riffs, laying down licks more wicked than a tongue-job from the devil’s daughter, or scorching the strings with some sizzling solos (that, unfortunately, are generally a bit too brief), Sterling proves he has what it takes to become a household name in the guitar-slinging business.

So you’ve got a legendary vocalist, you’ve got a ripping guitarist, you’ve got a heavy rhythm section—seriously, no pussy percussion on this album—and you’ve got a top-notch production job courtesy of Bob Marlette. So the logical next question is, what about the songs? Well, some of them will kick your ass seven ways from Sunday, some of them are good without being great, and a few will leave you thinking that Bach can do better. But for the most part the quality remains upper echelon, if not quite hyper-stratospheric. You get the tough, nasty, throbbing groove of “TunnelVision,” you get the catchy mid-tempo rock of “As Long as I Got the Music,” and you get the standout track “Dirty Power,” which is loaded with heaping gobs of heaviness as well as the kind of power-hook chorus many folks will wish appeared on every track. And this being Bach, you also get a trio of ballads, and while all are serviceable, they don’t come close to the level of mastery that Bach achieved with “Quicksand Jesus,” “I Remember You,” and “In a Darkened Room” back in the day.

To summarize, Sebastian Bach enthusiasts hoping for a Skid Row clone will probably be a smidge disappointed, though there are certainly plenty of similarities to Bach’s past sprinkled across this release. Kicking & Screaming does a great job of displaying Bach’s inimitable vocal talents and while it skews toward the heavy end of the musical spectrum, the place where hard rock and metal juxtapose, it does so in fine fashion. Few singers combine attitude, aggression, and melody as well as Bach, and if he skimps a little bit on that third component, he damn near makes up for it with extra helpings of the other two.

Genre: Hard Rock / Metal

Band:
Sebastian Bach (vocals)
Nick Sterling (guitar, bass, backing vocals)
Bobby Jerzombek (drums, percussion, backing vocals)

Additional Musicians:
John 5 (guitars on “TunnelVision”)

Track Listing
1. Kicking & Screaming
2. My Own Worst Enemy
3. TunnelVision
4. Dance on Your Grave
5. Caught in a Dream
6. As Long as I Got the Music
7. I’m Alive
8. Dirty Power
9. Live the Life
10. Dream Forever
11. One Good Reason
12. Lost in the Light
13. Wishin’

Webpage: www.sebastianbach.com

Label: Frontiers Records

Hardrock Haven rating: 8.5/10

John 5

by Alissa Ordabai
Staff Writer

How many guitarists do you know who are instantly recognizable not through their tone or use of effects, but through sheer material? The ones you instantly know it’s them, even when they lay off their usual rig and pedals for a moment, or try a different style? The ones where you go, “Oh, it’s Hendrix – his phrasing, his understanding of musical form, his dynamics, his temperament”, or “Oh, that’s definitely Jimmy Page”? There are surprisingly few of those players around, but John 5 has always been one of them.

His new album The Art of Malice to be released next month is certainly very John 5 – the same dazzling technique, the same explosive energy, the same attitude, only this time it’s all happening on a bigger scale – more alive, more spontaneous, more inventive. His songwriting has expanded too – a huge leap forward compared to the air-tight vacuum of the previous record Requiem. On this album John is starting to tell more diverse, more vivid and dramatic stories, opening up not only the guitar’s soundboard, but his view of what can be done if you mix thrash, industrial, bluegrass and whatever the hell else he wants to present his listeners on this most flamboyant, exuberant, outrageous instrumental guitar record to have been recorded in years. John 5 has now raised his game and is scoring goals galore.

“When I first started doing these instrumental records, I have always tried to do something different,” he says. “Because with a lot of instrumental artists, if you mixed up all those songs and said, “Name me the artist”, it would be very hard to do with a lot of rock instrumentalists. They are all phenomenal players, but I wanted to do something completely and utterly different, almost to where it shocks the system, shocks the listener.”

And shock it does. Each track is unique, but together they make for a head-spinning roller coaster going from fretboard fireworks and exhilaration of tracks like “Ill Will or Spite” to lucid subtlety of the likes of “The Last Page Turned”. No track prepares you for what comes next, because what comes next is just as unexpected as what came before, but together this collection of songs makes for a multi-layered mosaic of different themes and moods. To John 5 guitar is an instrument of both seduction and assault, and both come together on this album in as many shades and gradations as one can imagine.

“If you buy a record from the guy who was in Marilyn Manson, you kind of know what you are going to get,” he continues. “So I wanted to really change it up and shock everybody. People who play guitar will buy these records. They will appreciate what I’m doing. It’s like a race car driver but he drives in a different style. People will always have an appreciation for something different, even if it’s not the kind of music you like. If a guitar player will see a guitarist playing somewhere and he’s really good, they will always stop and watch for a little bit. That’s why I did it, I just wanted to spice it up a little bit, change it to make me not sound like everyone else.”

While John says that with the new record he wanted guitar players to pay attention, the impact will surely send wider ripples than just among the guitar community. On The Art of Malice he is dishing out perfect hooks, blistering riffs and instantly memorable melodies by the bucket. An in his new-found vision he is both recognizable and unrecognizable – his technique, which hasn’t stopped developing, is quintessential John 5, but the inventiveness with which he constantly escapes the songwriting pattern takes the new album on another level.

Asked if his songwriting progress came about spontaneously as he went along, or if it was something he purposefully worked on, John is quick to emphasize that this is all result of hard work. “I work at it,” he replies. “I absolutely work at it. I work at it harder than anything else in my life, for sure. Absolutely, it’s like training – I work, and work, and work, and work. Absolutely. It’s not something I pick up, going, “Eh, let me do this…” It’s not like that at all. I train, and train, and train, and train all day. And into the night.”

But rather than a chore, practice to him is a prerequisite for feeling happy. “I love playing the guitar,” he says. “Thank god it’s not something harmful to my health or against the law, otherwise I’d be dead or in jail.” He says his technique requires everyday practice, but this is not something he sees as a burden. “I don’t know what would happen if I stopped for a week or something,” he says. “But I’ve never gone more than two days without playing guitar. So I really don’t know. I think anything that you do, you have to keep it up. But I don’t do it to keep it up – I do it because I love it. I love having a guitar in my hands. It feels safe, just like having a blanket when you are a kid. It feels very safe and very comforting.”

Despite of all the thought and effort which went into crafting this record, it doesn’t come through as labored. Imagination turns John’s craft into art, and he knows how to employ his phenomenal technique on the service of sensation. “Ya Dig”, a swaggering barn-burner on which Billy Sheehan guests on the bass, is one such example. Here it’s all about juxtaposition of tempos and tonal colors, contrasts and connection of harmony and melody, and building up layers after layer of texture without making it too dense or heavy-handed. Its whopping immediacy not only highlights John’s new approach to composition, but both player’s staggering instrumental acumen.

“There is not another Billy Sheehan,” John says. Asked for how long they have known each other, he replies that it’s a small world with musicians, especially in LA. “You see people out, you see people around and you say hello, and after time you get to become closer friends. This guy knows that guy. I love so many artists – it doesn’t matter if someone is a guy from Slayer or a guy from White Lion. I love guitar players and I’m a fan of everybody. And, of course, I have my favorites, and Billy Sheehan is just one of them. I just reached out. He was very kind and agreed to do it. We were both with David Lee Roth, of course, and we know a lot of the same people. It was so much fun, he’s such an amazing talent.”

Childhood memories have also served as inspiration for the record. Take, for example, “J.W.” – a light-hearted, elegant bluegrass-inspired track showing off John’s virtuosic finger picking technique and his sense of melody. “This is how my dad would call me,” he explains. “My middle name is William, so he would call me that: “Hey, J.W.!”

Asked if he was growing up in a musical family, John laughs. “Actually, no,” he says. “But I never did anything else except for play guitar. A lot of people say that, of course, but I really didn’t do much else. I wasn’t into sports that much and I wasn’t… I had friends – I was kind to people and they were kind to me – but was always indulged with my guitar. And there is a thing called “The S Lot”, and that is a part of my high school. And “Fractured Mirror” was a cover of Ace Frehley, and that was one of the songs that I loved as a kid. It was one of the instrumentals that changed my life.”

It’s not just Ace Frehley, however, who John pays a tribute to on this record. “Portrayed as Unremorseful” tips a hat off to Jimmy Page by cunningly playing a close reference to the “Heartbreaker” solo over the harmony of “Rock’n’Roll”, reminding us that rock music has always been about both imagination and imitation, sometimes copying and sometimes inventing.

But did he ever have a clear musical ambition or aspiration when he was growing up, I ask. “I understood at a very early age exactly what I wanted to do,” he replies. “Not like, “I want to be a big rock star and have girls, and cars, and houses, and move to California.” It wasn’t like that. It was so funny because when I was young, I said to myself, “All I want to do is make a living playing guitar, and I want to live in California.” That was my dream. That was all I wanted.”

“I didn’t want fame or anything like that. All I wanted was to make a living playing guitar… and live in California. Because truthfully and honestly I didn’t do that well at school because I was playing guitar that much. It’s so weird how a child understands stuff so early on, but I understood that I was not academically great. I understood that all I could do was play guitar. A lot of people say that, “What else am I going to do?” and stuff like that, but really I was being honest with myself because this was pretty much all I could do. I really focused and just worked, and worked, and worked, and luckily, LUCKILY, I left my home and now I’m here in California. I stayed and pursued it.”

So has being a rock guitarist change in any fundamental way since the time when he was growing up? “One. Thousand. Percent,” John says. “It’s frightening what is going on now. Let’s say in the Seventies it was great. Great, great, great. Then in the Eighties it changed and it was like, “Wow, this is even greater!” It just keeps… People are exploring and expanding their minds. It advanced so much. Players, just players. It advanced so much. Yeah, we had a low in the grunge era – not a lot of people really playing guitar, but still there was amazing music that came out of there. I love grunge era because there was incredible music. But guitar-playing-wise it advanced so much. It’s great, I love it.”

John himself is, of course, at the forefront of these developments, exploring and expanding his approach album after album. His ability to unite different genres within one musical form has always been staggering, and this is what I want to find out about next. “I try and appreciate different styles,” he says. “I don’t learn it just to learn it – I appreciate it. I really enjoy doing what I’m doing and that helps a lot too, when you are enjoying what you are doing, and not just playing some country song because you are trying to impress. I really enjoy that music, and I love Les Paul, and Chet Atkins, and Roy Clark, and Albert Lee, and all these people, I have such a fondness for them. So it’s a pleasure. I’m not trying to be the best, but I love playing the guitar.”

“The Art of Malice” from the new record features John playing a flamenco intro followed by some beautifully improvised country-inspired material, which shows off his ability to shift between the automatic, the spontaneous and the evoked. The story of this track turns out to be almost as interesting as the music itself.

“I was trying a couple of different styles,” he says. “And here is the real story of that song. I was testing my clean tone in the studio. I was going to do a clean guitar part of one of the other songs. I think it was “Nightmare Unravels”. I was going to do a clean guitar part. We were testing the clean sound: “Does this sound good, does that sound good?” And the engineer will always say, “Play a little, play as hard as you are going to play so that we can hear how the sound will come out.” And that is me just checking the sound. And it sounded so good, I was like, “Let’s keep this on the record.” And the story gets better. There is actually a video of me doing this. It’s up on YouTube and it’s just me really checking the sound and that’s the take that we used on the record. If you put in “John 5 in the studio”, you’ll hear it. I added the flamenco part later, but you will hear the take that is on the record.”

How so much fun can be put into so much brilliance is what this YouTube clip shows the best. But there soon will be plenty more chances to see John 5 to match his inner essence to the outward expression in a spontaneous situation – on April 25 he is embarking on a four-month-long US tour. “I am looking forward to this tour because of the fact that I’m getting to be with my friends, and it will be summer time, and I love playing shows in the summer time,” he says. “Because I’m skinny and I love to be warm, and I hate being cold. We usually play around Halloween time or winter time, things like that. It’s always cold, and I’m miserable and stuff. But touring in the summer time just puts a smile on my face. I’m playing guitar, I’ll be out with my friends and it will be summer time.”

So what elements need to coincide, in his opinion, for a truly great show to happen? “I just use experience,” he says. “I make sure it sounds good and everybody is performing up to their abilities. Unfortunately, I feel sorry for the band because I rehearse so much. I just want everybody to be so perfect, because I want it to sound really good. I want it be rehearsed really well and I want everybody to sound as good as possible. And then in Zombie we make sure that everyone stands at a right spot because he’s a perfectionist too. That’s why together we make such a great team. We always, always have great shows. We make sure of that. We want those people to walk away going, “That was awesome!”

And when I hear him say that, I realize that it’s passion that makes a musician, not technique – something that John 5 proves so convincingly on the new record and which rings in his voice as he says those last words. Passion not just for his instrument, but – most importantly – for music. Music where he uses virtuoso execution to advance not only his own, but our collective perception of what is possible in art. Of how it’s possible to dream, move, change, pay tribute, imagine and invent with a purely creative purpose at heart. A purpose beyond vanity, hype and ambition.

John 5 The Art of Malice

by Alissa Ordabai
Staff Writer

If his previous album, Requiem, sounded like it was conceived and executed inside an airless tomb – so dense and taut was the material – on his new record John 5 relaxes his grip, introducing a touch of off-hand splendour to his lab-like modus operandi which has always been all about precision, precision, precision. And this new approach works wonders, as he lets the proceedings unfold on a grander scale, letting in more air and light, and starting to think in bigger, bolder compositional ideas.

The trademark swirls of notes dished out at a neck-breaking speed, his phenomenal chops, and a whacky sense of humour are all preserved intact, but on this release John 5 finally lets things breathe and move on a lighter foot, bringing in his flawless pop sensibility to strike an alluring contrast with his trademark penchant for some spooky fun and his virtuosic inclinations.

Billy Sheehan guests on “Ya Dig”, a racy, raunchy track where he and John trade some lightning-fast licks, but the real standout is “Ill Will or Spite” – an instantly rememberable hard rock anthem, masterfully composed, arranged and executed with some of the most spectacular guitar chops the world has ever heard.

What is also new on The Art of Malice is that here John 5 begins to treat his guitar almost like an orchestra of choice, using it as a vast soundboard to convey his new expansive compositional approach and his free, expanded vision.

There is a lot of shrewd savvy to how this record is paced and how one track is contrasted against the other. Touchingly introspective moments are juxtaposed against ultra-fast passages, letting the album breathe and change colour from delicate dark hues to most flamboyant showers of colour.

Nothing, however, prepares you for the final track titled “The Last Page Turned” – an acoustic piece of magic echoing Jimmy Page’s “White Summer”. Its eerie, brooding, profoundly reflective melancholy reminds us that behind astonishing chops and calculated brutality there had always been a deeply knowing, perceptive side to John 5’s talent. And while he could always somehow intuit the most disturbing and most mesmerising things in music and in the human psyche, with this release it becomes clear that over the last two years he’s managed to learn a great deal more.

Label: 60 Cycle Hum / Rocket Science Ventures

Track Listing:

1. The Nightmare Unravels
2. The Art of Malice
3. Ill Will or Spite
4. J.W.
5. Ya Dig
6. Can I Live Again
7. Portrayed as Unremorseful
8. Steel Guitar Rag
9. Wayne Country Killer
10. Fractured Mirror
11. The S Lot
12. The Last Page Turned

Hardrock Haven rating: 9/10

JOHN 5 TO RELEASE NEW SOLO MASTERPIECE

HOLLYWOOD, CA (March 24, 2010) – THE ART OF MALICE is John 5’s 5^th album to date and will be released May 11^th on 60 Cycle Hum/Rocket Science Ventures. Read more

John 5 Remixploitation

by Alissa Ordabai
Staff Writer

The record’s cover may be a direct reference to Hendrix’s “Electric Ladyland”, but its content owes more to Rob Zombie and Al Jourgensen than to the all-time guitar god. Rather than paying tribute to his hero, on this album John 5 shows that he has not only managed to transform Zombie’s sound once he joined his band back in 2006, but that he also received from his band leader as good as he gave. If anything, this release is where industrial metal meets punk in the best tradition invented by Rob Zombie all those years ago.

The best tracks from John 5’s six-year solo career were chosen for this CD to undergo drastic rethinking and restructuring. Anyone who is sceptical about the idea of paying for a remix album will change their mind with the opening sounds of this opus because here John 5 gives his old material an entirely new latitude and a new angle.

A lot of skill and fire went into weaving the familiar barnburner guitar parts around the punctuating spoken word samples and tying them to pulsating electronic grooves. All this brilliantly confirms how strategically placed dashes of electronica can turn a rock artist into a completely different beast, and how a sampler can give another meaning and direction to your typical rock game. In a way, this is also a sequel to something that Jeff Beck has proven so convincingly back in 2003 with his album “Jeff” – that instrumental rock guitar genre can acquire a wholly new dimension when mixed with electronica. Six years on we see John 5 play out this already verified paradigm on his own platform, the stage of his own little theatre of horror.

Standouts include “Eat It Up” where female voice samples make you wonder if an audio track can be classified as pornographic, groaning and whimpering over firework guitar in a percussive succession of raunchy throbs. “Unbelievers” doesn’t trail off my much featuring spaced-out guitar blossoming against the background of pious classroom chants brining together notions of heaven and hell.

The only musical reference to Hendrix is found on “2 Bullets” where psychedelic guitar passages echo “Moon Turn the Tides” off “Electric Ladyland”, interrupted by break-neck speed of John 5’s signature fretboard pyrotechnics. But a tribute to the greatest guitarist who’s ever lived is not the point of this release. Instead, what we find is the 21st century guitar virtuoso experimenting with fresh approaches, a new language, and an innovative sound. His newly found methods can now be added to his pro-size portfolio of skills he’s been building ever since he’s decided he wanted to be known for being able to do it all. And with each album we see John 5 getting closer to his goal. This time he lets us know that he can now marry rock guitar and electronica the way he could always marry goth chic with superhuman instrumental craft.

Band:
John 5 – Guitars, Bass, Banjo
Tommy Clufetos – Drums
Jeff Mc Donogh – Remixed Tracks 1, 4
Bob Marlette – Remixed Tracks 2, 5, 7, 9
Chris Baseford – Remixed Tracks 3, 6
Sid Riggs – Remixed Tracks 8, 10

Track Listing:
1. Dorsia
2. Monsters and Gods
3. Say Goodnight To Your Soul
4. Sin
5. Eat It Up
6. Unbelievers
7. Shoot the Dog
8. 2 Bullets
9. Plastic
10. How Do You Like It

Hardrock Haven rating: 7/10