HYLI Vol. LVII - 3 Inches of Blood and Bad Religion
Andy sends Patrick a Canadian Power-Metal band and Patrick sends Andy a classic from the seminal SoCal punk band
What’s up. My (Patrick) wife is in the final month of being pregnant and we are starting to get the early signs that the little rascal will probably be popping out sooner than her due date, so any one of these newsletters could be my last for a few weeks. Isn’t that exciting? One week I’ll be here and the next I’ll be gone and you’ll be getting Andy unedited. Horrifying concept. We watched the Oscars last night. What is your take? Did you enjoy Everything Everywhere All At Once being the most dominant Oscars movie in a decade? That’s so wacky to me but I enjoyed the film so I’m not mad. Babylon Hive will never die, long live Babylon Hive. Hope You Like It.
3 Inches of Blood - Advance and Vanquish
Andy: I guess I never really realized how important MTV2’s Headbangers Ball was during my teen years. Does anyone who reads this know where I can find any episode from like 2005-2007 (Patrick: have you consulted youtube dot com)? Just pivotal in forming my brain wrinkles. Like so many bands, I discovered 3 Inches of Blood from their “Deadly Sinners” music video that had playtime during that era. Really just solid, good, fun, who-gives-a-shit power metal.
I used to listen to this album (alongside Blind Guardian and Dragonforce) while playing World of Warcraft as a teen. I feel like I don’t associate music with a specific ‘place and time’ much in my older age, but I love listening to songs and having them just transport you back in time. When I listen to “Deadly Sinners,” I’m 17 exploring the Outlands in the first WoW Xpac (Patrick: jesus christ). A happier time when my biggest worry was if I could get my homework done quickly enough to try and get as much leveling in as possible. Good times.
I love Power Metal, man. Just really fun stuff. Guitarists are just having a blast here. Jamie Hooper and Cam Pipes share vocal duties, with Hooper handling the harsh screams and Pipes delivering the cleans. Pipes has pipes. Think he’s ever heard that joke? Now I’m wondering if that is his real name.
Also, this is so metal. Like…just metal in every single aspect. The album art (Patrick: doesn’t matter but it’s terrible), band name, the old school Heavy Metal-isms, the goofy lyrics and song titles and over-the-top vocal performances are all representative of a band that just gets it. They’d be right at home during the 1980s. Hope You Like It.
Patrick: Power-Metal is so fun, dude. It is undoubtedly the dumbest sub-genre of metal but that is part of what makes it fun. Metal as a whole is camp and dumb and more bands should take advantage of leaning into that. This seems like peak “turn up the radio while playing Dungeons and Dragons with the boys in 2006” music (Andy: or World of Warcraft, same thing). It’s fun!!
There’s some great guitar here. The riff during the verses of “Revenge is a Vulture” is a lot of fun. The intro to “Axes of Evil” sounds like something that wouldn’t feel out of place on South of Heaven before somehow becoming more gallop-y than anything from Slayer. And I love the vocals. A lot of Power-Metal I’ve heard (really just Dragonforce)(Andy: I gave you Blind Guardian…) kinda sounds like dudes shredding on guitar and drums but vocals that are … like, closer to Journey than anything I consider heavy. But the vocals on Advance and Vanquish really bring it and get aggressive with the black-metal sounding screaming at points. I can see why Andy likes this a lot. I didn’t love the stretch from “Lord of the Storm” through “Swordmaster,” but the beginning and end of this album were just fun smooth-brained shit that rocked me. I Liked It!
Bad Religion - Stranger Than Fiction
Patrick: Phew. One of my favorite bands. This isn’t my favorite album of theirs (1992’s Generator - I acknowledge this is a bit take-y) or one that would probably be considered their “best” (I’d imagine 1989’s No Control would take that) but it’s objectively their hookiest and I wanted to choose it because I wanted to emphasize how hooky and melodic Bad Religion and punk itself can be without veering into pop-punk.
The story behind Bad Religion is that founding guitarist Brett Gurewitz started Epitaph Records - now one of the biggest “independent” rock labels out there - as a means of having a label to release material for Bad Religion and their friends. That lasted from their 1982 debut, How Could Hell Be Any Worse?, through to 1993’s Recipe for Hate, before the band did the dreaded deed of signing to a major and “selling out.” I love Dan Ozzi’s book, Sellout, and the concept of a punk band selling out and how dumb it is as a concept as a whole. Stranger Than Fiction is Bad Religion’s “sellout” record, released on Atlantic Records. Does it sound different than their other records? Not really! It’s still fast as fuck, has tons of power chord riffs, and features Greg Graffin just kinda hollering with the diction of the collegiate professor guy he is (Andy, he has a doctorate in Zoology and teaches at Cornell, is that punk to you?) (Andy: anything is punk if you’re punk enough). It’s, as I stated earlier, maybe their catchiest record but it isn’t quite as stark of a jump as say going from Kerplunk to Dookie (Andy: hm?) (Patrick: I guess we’ll have to do a Green Day week lol).
I love this album. Not my favorite by the band but top 5 for sure. “Hooray for Me” is my favorite Bad Religion song. Just an absolutely out-of-this-world eternal chorus. They’ve never played it live!! Insane to me! They tour a ton and have been a band for nearly 40 years and even did concerts focusing on songs from each decade they’ve been a band and never have played it. I need them to play this song live, man. “21st Century (Digital Boy)” is about as close to a “hit” as this band has had. “Infected” basically has blast beats with how fast the drum groove is. “Slumber” is a nice mid-album downbeat punk track with a cool mini-solo and Graffin sounds great on it. I love this album. Selling out is fine. Hope You Like It.
Andy: Punk music is good, man (Patrick: I agree). I totally get people being ‘mad’ that a punk band sold out (on paper it does go against the punk ethos but that is an essay for another time) but at the same time I think it would be more punk to not give a shit that they sold out and just enjoy some good music (Patrick: I agree again). I like this style of Punk significantly more than most of the “pop-punk” I’ve consumed.
"Stranger Than Fiction? Isn't that the name of that Will Ferrell movie?" Yes, you're right. You love Will Ferrell I bet. He’s fine. This album is way better than that movie (Patrick: did you play this out in your head before writing it?). Although to be fair, that's not a very high bar to clear. I knew “Infected” from Guitar Hero and Bad Religion songs from Crazy Taxi. Video games are fun.
“Infected” and “Stranger Than Fiction” are some good songs. I’d argue great? I don’t have my PHD in Punk yet so I can’t make that statement for sure. I actually had no idea that Epitaph was a Bad Religion origin label. I always saw them as the Pop-Metalcore Label of the late 2000s dropping heaters like I Set My Friends On Fire’s debut You Can't Spell Slaughter Without Laughter (are you triggered Patrick) (Patrick: I am but it’s because I’m still shook from your Will Ferrell tangent)?