HYLI Vol. LXVIII - Whitechapel and The White Stripes
Andy sends Patrick some SEC-conference Deathcore and Patrick sends Andy maybe the last good guitar band
Hello, Andy here, the only sport on at the moment is the college baseball world series and my Florida Gators are currently 2-0. Go Gators. Two great wins by the boys last weekend. Both games could have really gone either way. When the actual game matters, baseball is so fun (Patrick: boomer boy andy). You don’t need … jesus, 162 games in a MLB season. That is outrageous. Okay Patrick I wrote the intro that everyone loves and definitely reads (Patrick: I have a newborn baby and this dude can’t help me with the bare minimum without being a pest)!
Whitechapel - A New Era Of Corruption
Andy: Patrick was so mean to me through texts because I didn’t love Bon Iver. Pretending that I haven’t grown significantly since starting this newsletter. He was all like “with every folk album you’re like ‘it’s fine but I hate this and it sucks.’” Like, whatever, my guy. Give me some damn credit (Patrick: I have given you credit about sooo many different albums/genres in this newsletter’s archive but I genuinely do not think you deserve folk credit lol). He’d say the same thing if I’ve been giving him deathcore albums every other week (Patrick: I give you so little folk lol but yes this is Objectively True). So I went and did it. Here is a Deathcore album. You did it to yourself, you jerk. Even so, because I am a great friend, I picked a pretty easy album that is much more “death” than it is “core” in my opinion. So I’m out here giving him an easy one and he’s probably gonna talk shit the whole time. Whatever! Maybe I’ll give him Deathcore albums until he likes one. See how he likes it (Patrick: I will quit the newsletter, I’ve given you, as a conservative number, like four folk albums lol).
For the record: I like Deathcore. It isn’t my favorite genre but it is very fun for me. I think part of it was being very involved in the scene as it was growing. Seeing what Job for a Cowboy, All Shall Perish and Bring Me The Horizon (this isn’t a debate, complain all you want but they were instrumental in growing the popularity of the genre) did to advance the groundwork laid by Despised Icon and The Red Chord was awesome. The mid to late 2000s was a huge time for Deathcore, mostly spurred by MySpace. Suicide Silence, The Acacia Strain and Whitechapel took on that Warped Tour Deathcore™ spot to further push the genre into the mainstream. It was fun to be so involved with the “1st Wave” of something. I could honestly write a book on Deathcore if I had the time.
Anyway, A New Era of Corruption is Whitechapel’s 3rd album and a bit of a departure from their influential first two albums. Phil Bozeman is an all-time vocalist (Patrick: be serious). The breakdown riff during “Single File to Dehumanization” is very ‘riff face’ for me. “End of Flesh” has a great acoustic section. I love the “I am a machine” bit at the end of “Necromechanical.” Some great stuff here. A shame Patrick will poop all over himself and be a baby about this. Wish You Could Open Your Mind And Like It!
Patrick: Yep, no beating around the bush here, this fucking sucked shit. I have a running “media diary” type thing like what Steven Soderbergh publishes on his website every year, where I track all the movies, TV shows, podcasts and albums that I consume during the year (Andy: fuckin dork). Each album gets a little “score” from me that is hardly set in stone but is more informative for albums I’ve heard for the first time than it is for repeat listens. We’re more than midway through June, basically halfway through the year. I won’t say it’s the “worst” but this is certainly the album I have liked the least so far this year.
Let’s be nice for like two seconds. What did I like here? The drums don’t sound as bad as I expected. I figured they’d be the super fake-sounding shit that Deathcore sometimes sinks into. It sounds like this was actually played by a non-robot. Congrats to that man. “End of Flesh” has a cool little acoustic guitar section that lasts all of, generously, ten seconds. “Necromechanical” has a sick riff. “Reprogrammed to Hate” has the part in the middle with vocals that kind of verged on Black Metal sounding, which was appreciated (No, Andy, I am not referring to the Chino Moreno part, which was also sick). Thank you for these brief moments of respite in this cold, dark world where I had to listen to the rest of this bullshit.
The vocals fucking suck, dude. They are so bad (Andy: psychotic shit from you, you absolute dweeb). What are we doing here? (Andy: idk maybe having fun?) Is nothing sacred? For real, why do this? I am looking at the Wikipedia dot org page for this album and it seems that, outside of the obvious guest spots on vocals, all the backing vocals are from the same guy who does the leads. So, like, he deliberately chooses to sound like this (Andy: Yes he has great deep growls) when he can do the Black Metal-sounding vocals as well? Why???? Get a fucking life! Per the wiki, it seems like this record didn’t really get great reviews in general, other than from fucking dorks who like this absolute horseshit like Andy. I refuse to believe I deserved this because I sent you Bon Iver. I do not think it’s possible for me to send you something I disliked as much as this. I’m gonna send you Captain Beefheart because of this. I did not like it one bit! Fuck!!!
The White Stripes - White Blood Cells
Patrick: I would like to apologize to the readers for filling my diaper up above. I am not going to apologize to Andy, ever, for this. But y’all deserve an apology. Let’s cheer up and listen to some fuckin’ blues rock played by a Midwestern white boy, brother.
I tweeted the other week, posing the question if there has been a rock band since the White Stripes quit that has achieved their level of commercial and critical success, hand in hand. A few people brought up some legitimate contenders (Paramore, My Chemical Romance, Tame Impala) but I think you can probably stop counting pretty quickly after that. Not that those two metrics mean everything, but they certainly mean something. There’s a fair argument that the band has one or two of the best rock records of the 2000s and they also happened to be records that millions of people were buying immediately. That’s fucking sick! People tried to mention Turnstile as a recent example of this and, respectfully, put down the weed. Maybe a more charitable way of saying it is Turnstile is the closest a band in 2023 can get to something like what the White Stripes achieved in 2003 but we are talking at a fraction-of-a-fraction of the size.
I love this record. It is better than Elephant. I don’t think that’s a particularly spicy take anymore but it would have been once upon a time. Every track on here rips. With 16 songs, that’s no easy feat! White Blood Cells even manages to make the acoustic guitar sound like a non-useless instrument on “Hotel Yorba” and “We’re Going to Be Friends.” I’d rather hear “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground” more than pretty much any other song with a guitar. What a fucking riff. The concept of making a song that’s lyrics are basically 100% ripped from Citizen Kane (not an exaggeration) sounds … like an idea that should be rethought but, somehow, “The Union Forever” is so fucking sick (Andy: I didn’t know this but that is awesome). “Fell in Love With a Girl” is perhaps the best song here, somehow. “Expecting” and “Aluminum” put the amount of feedback in Andy’s metal albums to shame (Andy: does it tho). “The Same Boy You’ve Always Known” kinda lays the groundwork for some of the softer sides that the White Stripes would explore on the (very good) later albums. I love all that shit. Jack White is a fucking David Lynch character come to life and maybe (definitely) seems like a dweeb but jesus christ he can play guitar and the vocals are Great IMO. Meg White is the reason they’re an interesting, incredible band that lives on 20 years later. If you don’t believe me, compare “I Think I Smell a Rat” with, like, anything on a Jack White solo record and rethink your take. I love this shit. Hope You Like It Since I Care About You and Send You Things I Know You’ll Like (Andy: do you tho).
Andy: Congratulations. I like one of the most popular and successful bands ever. Wow. Good Job. Really reaching deep into the bag here (Patrick: this is more on you for never listening to The White Stripes than it is on me lol). Jack White is great on guitar and Meg White is great on drums. It is catchy, it has great melodies, the riffs are riffy! Hot take alert here!
Being real, I did really enjoy this. Probably in the upper echelon of picks I’ve had from this newsletter. I’ve heard a bunch of these songs just by virtue of being alive and consuming media but I’ve never really listened to a White Stripes album in full. I feel like this is a hard album for me to write about because it is great and everyone knows it is great? What can I even say really? I love breakdowns and I love blast beats but Jack and Meg do a great job of going hard without using either. Jack White is really great at that guitar instrument huh? I don’t really know anything about him other than he looks like a supporting character in a Tim Burton movie, he is/was in a band with his wife/sister, and he has a yellow record store in Nashville that we took Patrick to on his bachelor party in Nashville. The last few weeks have really shown that feedback is the best sound in music.
“Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground” is fun as heck. “We Are Gonna Be Friends” (aka the Napoleon Dynamite song) kinda stinks but maybe that is because of an oversaturation in random commercials or whatever - I don’t even know if that’s true just my brain deciding it is. “The Union Forever” is fantastic, especially with that Citizen Kane trivia bit. "Hotel Yorba" is an interesting diversion. It is a tad more country than the rest, but still fits well within the overall garage rock vibe. Some of these songs feel a bit filler-y but when they’re good they’re like… all-timer good.
Coulda used some more blast beats but regardless, I Liked It.