RANTS & RAMBLINGS

This is a far cry from the Chris we knew in Soundgarden or Audioslave. It's acoustic heavy and plays like any other frontman's solo project: it doesn't have any radio-friendly tracks worthy of a single.

Chris has a wonderful voice and he's very soulful, but it's not an album that sticks with me, despite a few heavier tracks. If you're a fan of Chris at all, you'll absolutely find some merit in this one, but you'll long for a return to the grungier roots. Just be thankful that he hasn't sold out and made a hip-hop album.

THE VERDICT: Adjust your expectations.

Dave Mustaine is still the most bitter man in heavy metal, and honestly, thank God for that. United Abominations is the best thing he's put his name on since the mid-90s.

Is it perfect? No. The production has a little too much of that modern digital compression that every studio is obsessed with this year, and the re-recording of "A Tout Le Monde" with the girl from Lacuna Coil feels completely unnecessary. But when Mustaine just shuts up and lets the riffs do the talking on tracks like "Sleepwalker" or "Washington Is Next!", the speed-metal precision is absolutely lethal. The solos are jagged, the lyrics are paranoid, and it actually sounds like a guy sweating over a guitar neck instead of some kid pasting loops together on a laptop screen.

THE VERDICT: Buy the double-LP on heavy wax. It's a solid return to form for a guy who refuses to lay down and die.

Total radio-friendly, committee-written consumer bait. Kids come into the shop asking for the vinyl version just to put it on a shelf without listening to it. I can't stand the pretentious whiny drama of a band making millions under the pretense that they may off themselves at any minute.

THE VERDICT: Spare yourself from this miserable bunch.

Some guy comes in this morning, orders two large dark roasts and a couple of day-old pastries. Total comes out to exactly $11.17. He hands me a twenty, I give him his change, whatever.

Literally two minutes later, the next person in line orders a pound of whole bean. They hand me a fifty. I punch the register, look down at the little green digital readout to see what the change is, and what do you know? $11.17.

I’ve been running cash registers since the mid-70s. I know how probability works. That's a statistical fluke, fine. But that's the third time this week those exact four digits have popped up on a receipt or a printing log. I’m starting to think the software on these new digital registers was coded by a malfunctioning calculator. If it happens again tomorrow, I’m bringing my old manual mechanical cash drawer back from the garage.

Turned on the local rock station during my drive into the shop this morning and within ten minutes I wanted to steer my truck directly into a concrete bridge abutment. It's all the same over-produced, pitch-corrected, corporate-funded garbage designed by a committee of marketing suits to sell cellular ringtones to middle schoolers.

Music used to have dirt under its fingernails. It used to have mistakes. Now, these kids think an "indie" band is something they saw on a car commercial.

The girls spent all afternoon yesterday cleaning out the back storage closet, and I found a box of mid-90s garage punk 7-inches that actually have some sweat and blood in the grooves. They're sitting on the bargain shelf. Do your ears a favor: turn off the radio, buy something pressed on cheap wax, and remember what a real guitar amplifier sounds like when it's about to blow up.

Reznor hasn't just gone back to his old, familiar fatalistic tendencies; he's taking on the whole world's downward spiral. This record plays out like a radio signal from a country locked in a religious war, with our own government feeding us sedatives to keep us docile. The music sounds like it. It's greasy, it's noisy, it's glitchy, and it hits like a bunker buster.

"Survivalism" has got this twitchy, marching drum beat that puts you right on edge, while "The Great Destroyer" totally loses its mind and descends into a wild, screeching mess of hacked-up electronics. It's harsh and intense, but it hooks you right in.

Now, I've spent years running the record store, spinning vintage wax, and serving up coffee and renegade social views to the rest of the Java Hole crew. I know totalitarian, oppressive BS when I see it, and Year Zero captures that perfectly. Reznor is turning his anger outward at the authorities, the fanatical zealots, and the broken systems that rule the day. It's an absolute must-listen for anyone who questions authority and sees right through the establishment's smoke and mirrors.

THE VERDICT: Fans? Buy it. 9-to-5ers? Stay asleep at the red lights.

Peter Steele has delivered another monolith of beautiful, depressing, slow-motion doom. It's heavy, it's green, and it feels like walking through a graveyard in a downpour. The production isn't polished to a plastic sheen like everything else on the radio this year—it feels alive, raw, and deeply unhinged. If you don't buy this on physical wax to hear that bass guitar rattle your floorboards, you're doing it wrong. A masterclass in goth-metal filth.

THE VERDICT: BUY IT.

Raw Power was such a perfect proto-punk album that the band literally quit because they couldn't top it. Call me nostalgic, but I've waited 34 years to see them even attempt a follow-up, and what we got here is a mixed bag. The tracks are passable at best, but I give them kudos for never maturing and having fun. The day Iggy Pop puts on a shirt will be the day I close the shop.

THE VERDICT: BUY EVERY STOOGES ALBUM NO MATTER WHAT.

Good news. According to this week's survey, most of you possess at least the minimum level of functioning brain activity required to enter a record store.

Bad news. Thirty-two percent of you apparently think vinyl records and CDs are interchangeable technologies.

This explains why I spend half my life answering questions that would have gotten you laughed out of a room in 1978.

Progress remains slow.

A group of long-hairs came in at the break of dawn to see if we had this record in stock. I'm not one to jump on the high-fantasy train, but I know plenty of D&D geeks out there who would eat this up. Strip away the operatics and dumb down the symphonics and I'll play ball. The technical prowess is through the roof, but I prefer a little less polish. There's definitely an audience for this epic lore-ridden genre of metal, but I'll stick to the barrage of riffs and minimal downtime from a band like Iron Maiden if I want to endure a history lesson.

THE VERDICT: For European metalheads only.