Freak-When-See 101: Part 1 – Maggot Brain (1971)

As someone who is a die-hard music fan the most difficult (and often most common) question I get asked is “What sort of music do you like?” I try to listen to a bit of everything but I can’t just say “everything” and expect to be taken seriously as a fan. Sure I enjoy metal, funk, blues, jazz, rock, hip-hop, prog, dub and much more but just spouting off a bunch of genres is not much good to anyone. No, I look for a certain feeling in music. It has to be adventurous, dangerous, powerful, and preferably freaky. To this end I have coined the term “Freak Music”. Since it is damned hard term to define I intend to demonstrate what Freak Music is by exploring the music that shaped the idea. Freak-When-See 101 is my love letter to the great, bizarre albums of the world that helped inform my taste in the unusual. Part 1 sees me confronting one of my all-time favourite records: Funkadelic’s Maggot Brain.

“Mother Earth is pregnant for the third time for y'all have knocked her up. I have tasted the maggots in the mind of the universe. I was not offended for I knew I had to rise above it all or drown in my own shit”

With those ominous words one of the greatest psychedelic trips known to man begins. The year was 1971 and funk master George Clinton’s Funkadelic outfit had released their third album, Maggot Brain. It was a record that dug deeper into the trippy territory explored on their previous records and took another stab at what people were calling “funk”. As a piece of music terminology funk was still a new concept and many people were scrambling to define it. Sly & The Family Stone defined it as soul with guitars but that just wasn’t funky enough for Clinton and co. His idea was to smash James Brown and Frank Zappa together to make something fun, energetic, and trippy as hell. And thus, Maggot Brain was born.

Naturally when one thinks of Maggot Brain the legendary title track leaps to mind. Aside from the spoken word passage at the beginning what you have is ten minutes of sprawling, emotive guitar solo. Even today, a mere 41 years after its recording, it still sends a chill up my spine. There are conflicting stories about how the song came to fruition which adds to the overall mystique. The one is subscribe to is that it was performed under a copious amount of LSD when guitarist Eddie Hazel was told to imagine that his mother had died. If this is how you play while tripping and grieving then I suggest some more musicians should give it a go¹. Speaking of Hazel, he pulls his weight and a half all across the whole record. His molten solos on ‘Super Stupid’ is easily enough to put him at Hendrix-ian levels of awesomeness, let alone the vocal performance. As far as I am concerned Eddie Hazel is one of the world’s great unheralded guitar heroes even though he may not have lived up his full potential. Outside of his dabbling in the origins of P-Funk he had only one album that wasn’t released posthumously².

The song draws you so deep into its funk – to use the word in another way – that the arrival of ‘Can You Get To That’ is unexpectedly jubilant. Big sing-along verses, tight drums and Ray Davis’ almighty baritone and all of that is followed by the whacked-out ‘Hit It And Quit It’. This one-two hit is Clinton’s brand of funk in full flight. Picture the craziest 70s party imaginable; bizarre costumes, dancing girls, alien motherships descending from the skies. Funkadelic might melt your brain but they still wanna make you dance. The only problem you get with an experimental album made under the influence of early 70s drug culture is that it must have been hard to tell when you had gone too far. Case in point is the nonsensical ‘Wars of Armageddon’. It is a long, rambling jam filled with garbled voices, sounds of a domestic disturbance, and thoroughly pointless lyrics (the key lyrical motif is “More power to the people / More pussy to the power / More pussy to the people / More power to the pussy”.

Sure, Maggot Brain was not their first album (that honor goes to their 1970 self-titled album) nor is it their most diverse (that would be 1970’s Osmium, released under the name Parliament). As the years went by the Parliament-style good time music would eclipse Funkadelic’s unstable psychedelia and open the way for Clinton’s solo electro-funk recordings. Maggot Brain represents a high-water mark and the band at their potent mind-opening best and in my opinion reigns as one of the greatest records of the golden age of psychedelic rock. Have you tasted the maggots in the mind of the universe?

Maggot Brain in all its glory

¹ This is clearly a joke.

² Check out Games, Dames, And Guitar Thangs from 1977. It includes a stellar cover of The Beatle’s ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’

Album Review: Ministry - Relapse

Coming back from what seemed like a permanent break up at the time, Ministry are back to their old tricks – hence the album’s title, Relapse. The question is can Ministry maintain relevance in the post-Bush era considering he was the square focus of their last three albums. The answer is a resounding “Hell yes”. Opening track “Ghouldiggers” rides the repeated refrain of “I’m not dead yet” in a song that references the music industry’s knack for selling the deceased piece by piece to consumers. It is a tightly wound, furious number and that is a damned good thing considering that Ministry has always run on vitriol. You can expect wall-to-wall snarling riffs, jackhammer drums, and of course the deranged ramblings of old ‘uncle’ Al Jourgensen. Everything about this record screams “aggression” at top volume. Their bloody-knuckled assault is as blunt as it has ever been; nobody ever need accuse Ministry of going soft on us. The title-track is the album’s beating black heart, with Jourgensen crying “I’m filthy rich and I’m horny” amidst quotes from Vietnam war veterans. It is a line that is as poignant as it is plain daft. Aside from the occasional dalliance with retirement, Ministry are becoming one of the music world’s constants – that is, they are constantly pissed off. When it comes to political nihilism look no further than these industrial stalwarts and they are as agitated as ever.

Country: USA

Recommended Tracks: Ghouldiggers, Relapse

Rating: B-

Album Review: Grinderman - Grinderman 2 RMX

Remix albums are tricky propositions, doubly so for anyone who is a fan of the original material. Will a series of remixes shine any new light on something you enjoy or will it create an endless stream of inferior versions? I have been a Nick Cave fan for years and also thoroughly enjoyed his rock and roll diversions in Grinderman, so how would myself (and others like me) feel about Grinderman 2 RMX, an album full of remixes from 2010’s excellent Grinderman 2 record.

For this record Grinderman have gathered a diverse array of remixers and collaborators such as Nick ZInner, Matt Berringer (The National), Cat’s Eyes, and Silver Alert. They are a strange group to be sure and the results are also appropriately strange. “Hyper Worm Tamer” (by UNKLE) is a revelation, transforming what was arguably one of the original album’s weaker songs into a full blown James Bond theme. A Place To Bury Strangers on the other hand amplify the song to haggard neo-punk levels of sonic intensity. Obviously not every reinterpretation is a resounding success. “Mickey Bloody Mouse” (by Queens Of The Stone Age’s Joshua Homme) is toothless and frustrating as it squanders that song’s primal scream down to a muddled twitch. Perhaps Cat’s Eyes seductive rendition of “When My Baby Comes” is more your speed, all cooed vocals and feedback.

The album is bookended by unremixed tracks. The first is “Super Heathen Child” which finds Grinderman joined by King Crimson mastermind Robert Fripp on guitar. As an enormous King Crimson fan nothing could warm my heart more than these esteemed gentlemen laying down a dark, heavy jam that rivals the original track in sheer awesomeness. The new solo in the outro is utterly goose-bump inducing. At the other end of the record is a demo version of the song “Evil” called, what else, “First Evil”. Is Grinderman 2 RMX essential, even to a die-hard fan? Not really but does offer a series of thought-provoking remixes by a motley crew of cult heroes and musical luminaries.

Country: UK / Australia
Recommended Tracks: Super Heathen Child, Hyper Worm Tamer

Rating: B-

Album Review: Soulfly - Enslaved

American / Brazilian metal mainstays Soulfly seem to be reconnecting with their heavy roots step-by-step with every album that passes. Dark Ages rediscovered frontman Max Cavalera’s love of American thrash, Conquer indulged in epic doom metal fantasies, Omen had dalliances in modern hardcore. So with Enslaved, their eighth album in total, what we have is their heaviest record to date, one that owes a debt to death metal and grindcore while still being quintessentially Soulfly. That is what makes them so damned endearing; you want to hear what new landscape that Soulfly find themselves in with any new release.

With the garbled ramblings and pneumatic beats of “Resistance”, the album starts on a strong note. From there every track bleeds attitude and kicks like a heavy metal mule. Longtime guitarist Mark Rizzo has yet another star-making turn on “Plata o Plomo” (“Silver or Lead”), his rubbery leads meshing beautifully with flamenco guitars on this volatile Latino thrash-fest. As has also become customary there is a new line-up and a slew of guest appearances on board. New to the group are Borknagar drummer David Kinkade and ex-Static-X bass player Tony Campos. The vocalist cameos are also very telling of the album’s overall tone. DevilDriver frontman Dez Farfara is at his throat-shredding best on “Redemption Of Man By God” and deathgrind figurehead Travis Ryan (Cattle Decapitation) out-heavies the already heavy “World Scum”. “Revengeance” also has some interesting personnel involved namely Richie, Zyon, and Igor Cavalera Jr; Max’s three sons. 

Ultimately Soulfly is all about the venerable Max Cavalera. At this point in his career he knows exactly what the people want from him and he delivers it in spades. Between the new Soulfly album that inevitably comes out every two years and Cavalera Conspiracy (Max’s band with his famous drummer brother, Igor) being an active band as well it would be very easy to get Cavalera fatigue. Max argues his case with his music which is always to a high standard. It sure helps that Enslaved is one of the heaviest albums he has been involved with since Sepultura’s late 80s heyday. If you are in desperate need for a serious headbang throw on Enslaved and do your stuff!

Rating: B

Album Review: Pallbearer - Sorrow And Extinction

Arkansas may not be the first place you would associate with heavy metal but Pallbearer might just make all of that change. Their debut album Sorrow And Extinction is making waves throughout the music world for being a breath of fresh air in the musty world of plodding doom-centric metal. The album consists of five long passages; no track is under eight minutes and each is an epic ballad in its own right. The gentle acoustic intro to “Foreigner” (which is thankfully a lot better than the band Foreigner) teases the arrival of the electric guitars. Opening your debut album with a twelve-and-a-half-minute metallic slog might seem a little unfriendly but Pallbearer start out the way they intend to finish: heavy as hell. Some songs devolve into long sub-Sabbath grind fests (“Devoid of Redemption” in particular) but the fact that they can return from these passages to tunefulness is all a part of Pallbearer’s glum charm. See how the sweet vocal harmonies on “The Legend” drag you back out of the mire. Uplifting doom metal? Has the world gone mad! Ok, so it isn’t uplifting in a traditional pop music kinda way but every time they pull out of a tailspin into darkness the melodic levity is palpable. Never fear, bludgeoning heaviness is never far away – at the end of the day they are still all about the heavy fucking metal. The album closes on the gothic “Given To The Grave”, an almighty ten minute jaunt that ends proceedings on a high note. Sorrow And Extinction is a strongly realized debut album from this quartet from Little Rock.

Rating: B+