I have a weakness for making-of videos. They’re like junk food – tastes great, less filling. These days, the slightest movements by bands get magnified into breathless press releases. Hype has replaced mystery. But at their best, making-of videos transcend the commercial forces behind them. They can humanize icons. Performers become people, fallible and vulnerable. Thus, their achievements seem even greater. Like us, our heroes put on pants one leg at a time. Their hands just do so much more than ours.
The making-of video for Dreaming Dead’s Within One (Ibex Moon, 2009) is an example of this. It’s fascinatingly mundane. The band tells unfunny jokes, nerds out on gear, and dotes on the recording studio cat. Guitarist/vocalist Elizabeth Schall swigs beer between takes. She air guitars to herself when tracking vocals. But when she gets down to business – wow. Her picking hand is a marvel of discipline, barely moving in the thrash riffs of “Stairs into the Vortex.” Her fretting hand is likewise fluent and efficient. But mechanical matters are only part of the picture. Strip out the click track, add in mini-universes for songs, cram in awkward enjambments, top with muscular sound, and you have nothing less than the heir to Chuck Schuldiner.
I think Chuck’s uniqueness wasn’t just in his playing abilities (which yes,Elizabeth has in spades…damn!), but mostly in the originality of his playing style and lyrical approach at the time. Sure, Schall is cute as a button, can play with incredible precision and, from the few songs I’ve just scoped after this post, clearly write a great riff, but these things don’t match up with the new things Chuck brought to the death metal template, IMO. With all this said, I’m almost certainly buying this record. Quality stuff. Good to see women in metal that aren’t a) objectified, b) gothic/vain or c) both.
Wow.
Don’t like the music that much but I’d like to see Elizabeth get some press. Has she been written up anywhere?
Not much press on this band yet. Hopefully, it will come. Even their lyrics are Death-like – it’s eerie.
She is definitely an amazing guitarist. I’ve talked to her a few times after shows when she used to play in a melodic black metal band called Winterthrall.
Check them out if you haven’t heard them before. Not sure if they still have a myspace, but that would probably be your best bet.
So painful to watch metal being sung a cappella like that. Or should I say brutal.
Elizabeth is engaged to Charles from Abysmal Dawn. Can’t wait to hear the generation of death metal toddlers that they sire.
Wow, impressive! She is/was in another great band called Manslaughter that I wrote up a few years ago as well. I’ll have to make a note to check this album out…
Errr, just realized via the MySpace page that this band is basically a continuation of Manslaughter under this new name. Yeah, definitely gotta grab this album…
In addition to Winterthrall/Manslaughter, Liz was also in the all-female Iron Maiden tribute act, the Iron Maidens. She does it all.
I did not know about her being in the Iron Maidens.. Kind of amusing for some reason.