One of the most underrated bands of the 90s and a big loss when they split. They used to talk about the AIC comparisons in interviews, usually with a bit of a laugh. They were still amazing in their own right and I wish they’d reform.
Well done, Andrew! I thought your analysis was spot on (or "dead on" as we say in the US). Heavy more often means slow, with a lot of forward bass (think War Pigs and Into the Void, etc.). It's hard to imagine having more obvious influence on a band than marrying the lead singer and even writing a song for a band, so it astonishes me that back in the 90's the press dummies didn't pick up on that. (Another interesting parallel between the bands is that the music press despised Sabbath and Iommi and despised Drain STH, which was a great recommendation in my book!) My top three bands who have captured the right idea of what "heavy" means (while still being melodic with good songwriting) are Sabbath (the root of the tree), Drain STH, and Benthic Realm (which we are lucky to have still active with the great Krista Van Guilder still making great heavy music). My understanding of what happened to them was that Maria and Tony Iommi met and got married, and she retired from music.
i have a love/ hate relationship with percussion. when i was a boy to teenager i had one loosen big conga, and i played with my fingers, exactly like the classes i took of olivetti writter machine, in the middle 80's. i always imagined that each finger would be a sound, as in the pianos. i thought the piano buttons of my synth toy yamaha portasound pss-30 wasn't as ergonomic as the leather of this drum. i never bought any drum. i chose the path of the guitar player/singer but then when home music recording started around 2010 i embraced the virtual instruments, and that was a letal wound to the guitar, obsolete by comparison. somehow my rhythm accuracy skills improve thanks to dancing in discotheque, improvising guitar on looper ( korg kaoss pad 3), and nailing spanish raps on daw. it is a growing experience realizing how much you suck. the newbies cannot tell the difference, it's the dunning krueger effect. then when i embraced virtual instruments, before i had a midi piano i just had a laptop so i made songs by just pushing one button, in the fashion of the morse key of a walkie-talkie. those early songs of classical mixed with electronic dance and hip hop beats had way more musicality than the previous 2 decades of boring guitar improvisations. eventually the next decade my steve vai style was substitued to a more ethnic medieval fantasy, the sky is the limit, hoarding over 25 teras of kontakt variety of timbres, checking combinatories way more interesting than listening to the same instrument over and over. i ended up building a piano that i invented in the 90's but took me 25 years to make it a reality, it is arcade buttons with a logical distribution of the notes, that makes more sense, the harmony is easier, it's simply the 12 notes in the x and the octaves in the y axis. with arcade buttons, which are 3 milimeters, so almost as fast as the loosen drum that i had as a boy. but now i could play realistic drums on this, or the piano, or anything. why would i choose samplers of loosen leather if now each finger can become anything without imagination, but softwares, like the sampler from stradivarius violin taken momentarily from the museum, turned into a computer program. so i don't have real drum experience per se, but i have my own sense of the syncopation, a timing accuracy of a human metronome, a taste similar to michael jackson. i listen to drummers on internet and i disagree where the notes should land. i have a love/ hate relationship with drums. the metal hurts my ears, actually, i can listen to ultrasounds, so i prefer the virtual instrument, which lacks ultrasounds, has tamed narrow bandwidth high end.
One of the most underrated bands of the 90s and a big loss when they split. They used to talk about the AIC comparisons in interviews, usually with a bit of a laugh. They were still amazing in their own right and I wish they’d reform.
I loved Drain STH in High School.
Agreed… heavy is usually slow. Fast is more “hard”. It can still be heavy feeling, but not quite the same thing.
Damn this takes me back!! I gotta dig out my copies of their albums
DO IT!
Well done, Andrew! I thought your analysis was spot on (or "dead on" as we say in the US). Heavy more often means slow, with a lot of forward bass (think War Pigs and Into the Void, etc.). It's hard to imagine having more obvious influence on a band than marrying the lead singer and even writing a song for a band, so it astonishes me that back in the 90's the press dummies didn't pick up on that. (Another interesting parallel between the bands is that the music press despised Sabbath and Iommi and despised Drain STH, which was a great recommendation in my book!) My top three bands who have captured the right idea of what "heavy" means (while still being melodic with good songwriting) are Sabbath (the root of the tree), Drain STH, and Benthic Realm (which we are lucky to have still active with the great Krista Van Guilder still making great heavy music). My understanding of what happened to them was that Maria and Tony Iommi met and got married, and she retired from music.
Might be "Angry Chair" from _Dirt_ you're thinking....
Do an “I Prevail” video!! Bow Down or Gasoline
Good ol droning Drain...
i have a love/ hate relationship with percussion.
when i was a boy to teenager i had one loosen big conga, and i played with my fingers, exactly like the classes i took of olivetti writter machine, in the middle 80's. i always imagined that each finger would be a sound, as in the pianos. i thought the piano buttons of my synth toy yamaha portasound pss-30 wasn't as ergonomic as the leather of this drum.
i never bought any drum. i chose the path of the guitar player/singer but then when home music recording started around 2010 i embraced the virtual instruments, and that was a letal wound to the guitar, obsolete by comparison. somehow my rhythm accuracy skills improve thanks to dancing in discotheque, improvising guitar on looper ( korg kaoss pad 3), and nailing spanish raps on daw. it is a growing experience realizing how much you suck. the newbies cannot tell the difference, it's the dunning krueger effect. then when i embraced virtual instruments, before i had a midi piano i just had a laptop so i made songs by just pushing one button, in the fashion of the morse key of a walkie-talkie. those early songs of classical mixed with electronic dance and hip hop beats had way more musicality than the previous 2 decades of boring guitar improvisations. eventually the next decade my steve vai style was substitued to a more ethnic medieval fantasy, the sky is the limit, hoarding over 25 teras of kontakt variety of timbres, checking combinatories way more interesting than listening to the same instrument over and over. i ended up building a piano that i invented in the 90's but took me 25 years to make it a reality, it is arcade buttons with a logical distribution of the notes, that makes more sense, the harmony is easier, it's simply the 12 notes in the x and the octaves in the y axis. with arcade buttons, which are 3 milimeters, so almost as fast as the loosen drum that i had as a boy. but now i could play realistic drums on this, or the piano, or anything. why would i choose samplers of loosen leather if now each finger can become anything without imagination, but softwares, like the sampler from stradivarius violin taken momentarily from the museum, turned into a computer program. so i don't have real drum experience per se, but i have my own sense of the syncopation, a timing accuracy of a human metronome, a taste similar to michael jackson. i listen to drummers on internet and i disagree where the notes should land. i have a love/ hate relationship with drums. the metal hurts my ears, actually, i can listen to ultrasounds, so i prefer the virtual instrument, which lacks ultrasounds, has tamed narrow bandwidth high end.
The lead singer is married to Toni Iommi, so there is you Sabbath influence...
Tony also co-wrote and played on their song "Black".
No matter who Alice was influenced by, you can still hear the Alice influence on Drain 😂
could you do a song review cheap for me for the holidays @AndrewRooneyDrums