…

Cosmo Lee founded this website in 2006. He has not written about music since his departure in 2011. He remains a celebrated writer in some circles of metal enthusiasts.

Lee would also probably shy away from such praise or such introspection on the site’s part, but anniversaries are a time for recollection and reflection. There is no better way to reflect on the site today than to consult with its originator.

…

My guess is that some people reading this have become Invisible Oranges readers since you left, or will be otherwise unfamiliar with your work. For those people, will you tell me the Invisible Oranges origin story?

The story behind the creation of the site is not glamorous at all. It’s about as mundane as it could be. Basically, ten years ago I was living in Berlin, Germany. I was a freelance music writer at various music publications and I simply had too much music to write about. That problem existed back then as it does now, except back then people sent me real CDs instead of streams and whatnot. I was sent all this good music that I couldn’t possibly cover across all my outlets, so I thought about putting it into a site. Blogs back then were a fairly new thing. This is prehistoric, before social media, and in the time when you would actually go directly to a website. That is, as far as I can tell, pretty rare now, where you would type a URL directly into a browser and hang out there, but that was the way you did it back then.

So I went around looking for examples to follow, because I didn’t have much web experience. I found there really wasn’t anything out there. The closest thing that I could find was a blog called Aversion Line, which is one of the greatest blogs ever made. Its editor, Andrew, covered hardcore punk and metal about equally. There were definitely metal websites out there, but none in the format what I was looking for, which was a blog with content that would be updated fairly regularly and would look new each time you visited it.

I literally went into Andrew’s code and stole it. Well, stealing was a strong word because we might have been both using Blogspot, but I looked at his html and figured out what he was doing. The very first version of Invisible Oranges looked like Aversion Line, just with a different banner across the top. The site grew to take on its own look and identity over time, but that was the start. I was simply getting too many CDs. I thought that the world should know about them, and there wasn’t any place that existed for that purpose, at least for heavy metal. There were websites which covered music that way, but not specifically metal.

At no point in time did you see it lasting ten years did you?

Absolutely not. The me of ten years ago did not look ten years into the future for anything, unlike the me of today. That wasn’t something I concerned myself with at that time. Back then I was just concerned with learning html, learning how to write, and getting music out there. Back then there weren’t streams, you had to actually download the mp3s. I was learning those skills and not looking past whatever I was working on at the moment.

When I started reading Invisible Oranges, around January of 2008, you still employed the rolling column format of Aversion Line. Not long thereafter, you shifted to the more classic ‘grid’ layout, and also around that same time content shifted away from record and more toward, for lack of a better term, ideas. Can you explain that shift to me?

I couldn’t point to any one factor that led to that shift. That was just experimentation. In an ideal world and if I were a better writer, I could probably make record reviews about ideas.

Just recently I was reading Lester Bangs reviewing some BB King records. These were reviews from the 70s. He certainly was reviewing the records, but he was talking about these rather important and big ideas in ways that most music writers don’t do. That’s very hard to do nowadays and increasingly harder to do as people’s attention spans grow shorter. Lester Bangs was able to do that because people weren’t distracted by the internet and they were only reading print. So they were sitting with their Rolling Stone, or whatever publication he had written in, and they were a captive audience for that time. As long as he had an editor that gave him the space then he could talk about more than just the artifact. “Here are some songs, are they good or not?”

Nowadays, with attention spans being atomized, if you put in a title that the content is a record review, people are just going to take that at face value. They are probably going to click and expect a stream first and foremost, and then some words about basically if the songs are good or not, and then they will go about their day. I think that our reader expectations are much lower. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I think maybe was I was coming upon at that time was the first wave of that.

In the original incarnation of Invisible Oranges, I probably noticed that the few times that I did write about stuff that wasn’t records, that got the best reactions in terms of healthy commentary and a sort-of life of the content beyond the 30 seconds it took to read it.

That is what drew me in from casual reader to dedicated reader to someone being involved in the project to now running the project.

Yep. And for someone in your position I don’t envy the job that you had. I think it would be much harder for you than it was for me. I think I grew up in a time when records mattered. Hopefully that’s not just teenage nostalgia speaking. List any number of classic metal records and those are all potentially life changing.

I don’t think music has gotten worse, but I think that the sheer volume of music being produced makes it harder for the really epic and life-changing stuff to be recognized, picked up, talked about and given their due. So for a music website to survive you almost have to start talking about ideas in a really bald-faced way, as in make sure that the title carries the idea and that SEO captures that. You’re not going to survive for very long by being subtle and being Lester Bangs and placing your insightful social commentary at the bottom of a record review.

In your absence it’s been a balancing act. One thing that I have done is pretty much abandoned the review as a format, at least for inexperienced writers. I don’t think music has gotten worse, but I think music writing has gotten worse, and my task with new writers usually is to break them out of thinking about music as a commodity and get them used to thinking of music as a manifestation of the world around them. It’s a tough piece of mental acrobatics but it usually winds up producing the best material on the other end of the process.

I think that’s the right way to go, given what music considers a commodity now. Back when I did Invisible Oranges, especially where it started, I was looking at Aversion Line not just for html code but for ethos, since Andrew is about as pure as they come. He never sold out to anyone for anything. His heart was always in the right place, and one thing I got from him was the links at the end of a post to buy the album. Back then it would have been CDs, but I started to add some links to mp3s. I honestly thought, back then, that I was trying to help bands out economically, that if I could get eyes upon the content then people would enjoy what they heard and buy the record. I think that impetus has largely disappeared as music has shifted from physical to digital and thus almost essentially worthless monetarily as a commodity. If you want to support a band now, you might buy the mp3 if you’re older, but no one really does that now. More likely you’re going to stream it and then the impetus would be to get people into the band period so they go out to a show, buy things at the show, tell people about the band and create a buzz around them. So, I believe that thinking holistically about a band and thinking of it as more than just a record is the way to go when it comes to supporting music these days.

You don’t read the site anymore do you?

I occasionally do but I’ll add that I hardly read anything on the internet now. I do read Invisible Oranges occasionally and I’m always pleased at what I see. I’m glad that it’s still kicking, and covering relevant things. I feel no ownership towards it. I feel towards it as someone might think of an alma mater. I’ve graduated from it, it continues doing its thing and I observe from a distance.

Certainly many of the people whom you appointed and who have been appointed after that have become music writers of some import, if a music writer can be considered important – writers at Stereogum, Rolling Stone, Noisey and other such places. Justin Norton has become quite important to the content of Decibel Magazine. I enjoy that metaphor. Speaking somewhat selfishly, you’ve got kind of a legacy among our older readers, who really craved your return for a long time. I think you did leave us something to uphold.

That’s very kind. I certainly don’t worry about anything like that. As you probably know from working on the site, the work is very day to day, pretty much hour to hour and sometimes minute to minute. That’s no time to be thinking about legacy.

Analogizing to the things that we write about: music. You could probably argue that most of the great recordings were conceived of that way. Once you start thinking that you’re important and that you have something to lose then you start getting self-conscious and not doing what instinct says. I think that’s what metal does best is instinct. Once you start thinking about things you lose the intensity and drive that pulls people in.

Kill Em All is the Metallica record that I return to most. It’s probably not the highest in that pantheon, but it’s the one that grabs me the most at this point in my life because it’s probably the purest. Those guys just wanted to kick ass and make a record. That very much comes out. You don’t get acoustic guitars or epic song structures or whatnot. And I like all that stuff in later Metallica, but there’s something about very pure music that’s compelling and timeless.

That’s a long way of saying that if you want to create a legacy it’s probably best not to think about doing that. Just make each piece of work the best that it can be. If that adds up to something that other people consider something, that’s cool, but you shouldn’t expect that.

It wouldn’t be a conversation with you if Metallica didn’t come up. Kill Em All isn’t the best Metallica record, but it’s probably the best example of a first record in metal that I can think of for the reason you mentioned. It explodes out of the gate and has a fully formed identity right at the start. People deify first albums, but the first Black Sabbath, first Judas Priest, first Iron Maiden – they didn’t hit their stride at go. I actually like the first Slayer album but that’s probably not their peak either.

I think those kinds of discussions are like, “do you prefer your dog as a puppy or as it is now?” There’s no right answer. I mean with Metallica some answers are clear: After the black album is pretty negligible.

That’s not true! I know I’m the only one, but I like Load

[laughs]

Right, but if you look at the words we’re using, they’re ‘like’ or ‘prefer’. But that’s what matters, actually – whether or not we like a record. The only test for a record in our personal lives is whether or not we like it. Extrapolating ‘best’ from that makes for spirited discussion but I’m not sure how productive it is. It makes people click on links, that’s for sure. And I was guilty of that too. Best this or that. I certainly don’t discourage that as a tactic. It works. But you need to take that with a grain of salt. There really is no such thing as a best when it comes to personal preference.

This is something that I figured out while reading Invisible Oranges, specifically Chris Dalton’s list on great records with bad drums. I realized that lists don’t exist to create a canon, they exist to kick hornet’s nests.

I would agree with that, or I would say that’s one of the more productive uses of lists. I honestly find the typical year-end best of list not-very exciting for that reason, because the premise is not new. If the premise is new, like the drumming list you mentioned, that will perk up my ears. As far as I am concerned as a listener, I don’t like to look to anyone else for guidance. Certainly we’re all interested in what each other has to say hopefully, but I think couching a list as something other than an absolute from on high, more as an opening to discussion, is the way to go.

You don’t look to other people for listening, but what are you listening to now?

You asked two questions there, sort of. What am I listening to and how am I getting there. I can answer them both at once by saying my listening is very functional. I am almost never sitting down, listening to music, and not doing anything else. That’s sad but currently that’s the state of my life. If I listen to music I am doing any number of things from driving, to folding laundry, to work, to paying bills and whatnot. So the music that I listen to is very much oriented along those lines. At work I listen to mostly ambient music because I need sonic wallpaper that won’t distract me. If I’m driving for any length of time and it’s sunny and nice out then I will usually put on some form of American roots music like blues or country music. If i’m coming home late at night from work and it’s dark and gloomy outside I may put on some Unleashed. So there isn’t really any one thing. I think part of the beauty of the cornucopia of music that we are afforded now is that it wasn’t available twenty or thirty years ago. You tuned into the radio. You had a limited budget with which to buy recordings and beyond that you didn’t have access to anything. Now I can go to YouTube or any other streaming service and pull up basically anything I want.

As far as what I’m listening to now, I’ll admit that it’s not much metal in the sense that I don’t keep up. I have no idea what the hip bands are now. I still do listen to metal on occasion. There’s a certain time in the afternoon that just calls for stoner metal; probably between 3 and 5pm. That’s just how my body clock works. There are some bands for that time that will never ever go away and for me those are Sleep and Eyehategod. I’ll probably be listening to those bands until I am dead.

The one way that I discover new music now is probably recommendation algorithms. So on YouTube that would be the videos on the righthand side of the screen. Or, I’ll just go to Bandcamp and search by tag and see what comes up. Through those I discovered two contemporary bands that I really like. They are Beelzebong and Monolord.

You like Monolord.

Yeah, I do.

Oh god. I think that band is very mediocre.

Yeah. I mean, I can see why you would say that, because they are very derivative. But if I want Electric Wizard that… isn’t Electric Wizard, with maybe a little Yob in there, then I go to Monolord.

Well, you just hit the nail on the head.

Yeah. I did. They aren’t very ambitious. That conversation that you and I just had I’ve had with myself. “That’s sort of derivative. But I like them so much. Why do I like them so much?” I’ve pinned it down to them being very efficient at what they do. I don’t think there’s a lot of fat in the riffs and the songs, and I appreciate that. There’s another band that falls into the same category and that’s Harm’s Way.

Yes.

They’re an extremely derivative band, but they take me back to late high school to early college and jean shorts and chains with wallets. But they’re also efficient.

So those are some bands that I’m listening to, but it’s hard to give you a list of say ten or fifteen contemporary bands that I like.

You wrote a series of articles on how to write about music, and in those articles you said that you don’t read music journalism. After that, I all but stopped reading it as well. So if that’s what you’re listening to, what are you reading?

I think that’s a good question. First of all, I think it was pretty presumptuous of me back then to have put up such a post. I’m glad that some people found value in it. I look back on that as an act of incredible chutzpah, for me to tell people how to do something.

It’s a good tool. I still use those posts as a style guide today.

Totally. So what I read now is pretty functional also and incidental. I’ll read pretty much anything that crosses my path, so my reading is about as mixed as it could be. So I just finished Michael Lewis’s ‘The Blind Side’. He wrote ‘Moneyball’ and ‘The Big Short’. I bought all of his books and am making my way through them all. That’s also something that I’ve started to do is read all of something. Some books will come in a series and I will read the entire series, or some authors will have a body of work and I will try and read it all. He’s one of those authors. I read some books by Caroline Paul. She writes both fiction and nonfiction. She’s extremely funny, and it’s the kind of writing that will make you have faith in humankind. She’s very empathetic regardless of what she writes about. I also read some pure trash. Right now I’m going through the ‘Bourne’ books. Last year I read all of the ‘Jack Reacher’ books by Lee Child. That was pretty trashy, but enjoyable. I was training for some triathlons earlier this year, so I read a bunch of triathlon training books.

I guess in terms of music and reading I feel as though I’m wandering in the world and feeding on whatever is in the country I am in at the moment.

I’m a little envious of that. Doing IO has focused me which is good, but I’m also aware that there are whole galaxies that are passing me by which could probably also be fun.

That’s true.

It’s tough.

It is tough, and that’s a big reason why I stopped doing it. I don’t think you or anyone should stop doing it for the same reason, but I think personally I feel more comfortable in life as an outsider. It was interesting when I became an insider in metal. You really get to know the pulse of what’s going on, but over time that tired me out. I’m very much a classic introvert, so I decided to remove myself and I like where I am at now. There was a time where it bothered me that I didn’t keep up and I felt like some old person listening to Meshuggah as if no other band has come along since. But then I listened to the bands that have come along since Meshuggah and I still prefer Meshuggah. I don’t think I’m missing that much.

You’re not.

Sure. But even if I am, I am at ease with that. It sounds silly but I think it’s true: If I only listened to recorded music from before 1980, I could still listen to all new music for decades. From that perspective there’s not a huge reason for me or anyone to try to keep up because you can’t.

I understand why you quit. But what you have done that is cool is that, perhaps unintentionally, you’ve built a community, and as stupid as this sounds, most of the good things that have happened to me in my life have come out of being involved in the metal community. I just wanted to reiterate that there is an upside.

Oh sure. I certainly believe that, and that was very much an upside for me, as well. It does pain me a bit now while having this conversation to think of the people I haven’t spoken to in a while because I don’t do this work anymore. Literally as I’m saying these words in front of my eyes I see fast forwarded images of these shows and merch tables I’ve been at and people that I’ve met. I’m glad to have been there, and at the same time I need to be at peace with where I am at now. You can’t regret anything. There is a time and place for anything. And I’m pretty glad that you’re doing the work right now and not me. I don’t mean that selfishly. I mean I think the content would get boring if I were at the helm for so long.

I think it’s interesting when there are new Batmen. Michael Keaton was a good Batman. Probably the best was Christian Bale. So, it’s good to breathe new life into things every once in awhile.

I have one last question. What is your favorite article on Invisible Oranges?

Man. that’s rough.

Yeah. I know! I show no mercy!

Two things come to mind and they’re pretty incidental, in the sense that they’re the two things that literally spring to mind, but maybe that means something. The first is Justin Norton’s interview with Dan Fante, the author. That was a weird piece of content for Invisible Oranges by any standard. It would be a stretch to call that metal related but I felt that somehow it fit. I would like, just as a consumer of content, to see more stuff like that in the sense that: metal can be a lifestyle where you wear a jacket with patches, or metal can be a lifestyle where you hold yourself to certain ideals. You remember what Sabbath is talking about in “War Pigs” and don’t ever forget because it will always be relevant, and to be questioning everything. I think that’s one of the things that metal does best. So you can listen to music of absolute violence and be a pacifist in real life. How can that be? Those are interesting dynamics.

As far as stuff that I wrote, I liked the posts about the Metallica songs. I felt a certain amount of freedom in doing those posts that I didn’t have all along, and that was the freedom to re-examine myself and bring my personal experiences to bear on music writing. That’s always tough to negotiate. You don’t want to read the record review where the writer is talking about what he or she had for lunch. That kind of personal experience is not productive in that context.

But I do feel like I reached further in those posts and felt more vulnerable that I previously had with any writing that I did. So I’m looking back at my experience with writing that stuff as probably my most interesting on the site. Because you run the site you’re in a position of authority, you tell people what to do, you make stuff happen. That doesn’t normally go hand in hand with a position of vulnerability. I’m not sure if I was successful at that, but looking back that was the main feeling for me. So I don’t know if that was a greatest hit for sure, but it was one of the more salient experiences for me.

…

Not long after his retirement from writing about music, Invisible Oranges’ founding father, Cosmo Lee, was contacted by the excellent blog Cryogenic Husk and asked to create a mixtape that might help illustrate how this site came to be. And like Michael Jordan lacing up for the Washington Wizards, Cosmo temporarily came out of retirement to fulfill that request. (Unlike Jordan, Cosmo can still ball.) We’re posting Cosmo’s intro here, along with a link to the full post (and downloadable mixtape) at Cryogenic Husk. Enjoy!

…

It’s strange to do this mixtape because I started Invisible Oranges solely for myself. What you’ll hear probably only has meaning for me. The site has grown to mean something for many. But in 2006, it was just another writing outlet for me. I was writing for print and web zines, including PopMatters and Stylus. I got more promos than I could review for others, and I wanted to write more about metal. It was also the season for MP3 blogs (remember them?). From what I could tell, there wasn’t any MP3 blog for metal. So I started one.

[A bit of trivia: The inspiration for Invisible Oranges’ original logo header was Yngwie Malmsteen’s Trilogy. I wanted its cover’s fiery sky, but couldn’t find a sufficiently large image. So I settled for a stock sky image. The Internet now yields a gloriously large scan of Trilogy‘s cover. So this mixtape’s cover reflects my original vision for Invisible Oranges’ look.]

This mixtape is a snapshot of my music tastes in fall 2006. They were products of circumstance. I had moved to Berlin, DE earlier that year. I was tired of working and had some money saved up. Berlin was cheap and allowed me time to write. I was going to techno clubs a lot. You could go clubbing any night in Berlin and have a good time. Clubs there open at midnight, no one gets there until 2, peak time is 4, and you leave at 6 or 7. Breakfast after clubbing is typical. So my hours flipped. I went to bed at 7 a.m. and got up at 3 p.m. Not knowing German, I had no friends. It was a weird time.

My tastes reflected my lifestyle. I listened to a lot of dark ambient and depressive black metal. (That was probably the “golden era” for the subgenre.) MySpace was how I discovered new music. Much of Invisible Oranges’ early content came from reaching out on MySpace and getting artists to send me CDs. Due to my location, I got lots of European demos. Berlin’s record stores were great for scoring used and obscure metal CDs. And, of course, I got promos from labels.

Because everything was on CD then, I remember much more about releases then than I do now. For example, I still remember the paper quality of Insomnium’s CD booklet, and Mick Kenney’s liner notes artwork for Napalm Death. Paper and plastic packaging is wasteful, and I don’t think we should go back to it. But I think we should rediscover — or discover — how to treasure music. That means knowing every note, every word, every detail of artwork. Alone in Berlin, I had time to do that. My memories from then are still strong. You can hear some of them here.

. . .

To download The Roots of Invisible Oranges and read Cosmo’s extensive song-by-song breakdown of the mix, go to Cryogenic Husk!

. . .

This exercise has had several purposes. It’s a celebration of Metallica’s music. It’s a natural byproduct of my masochistic nature. And it’s a project so crazy that, once spawned in my head, it couldn’t not be done. Fitzcarraldo comes to mind.

But one reason stands out above the others, even above Metallica themselves. It’s the importance of songs. Metallica became the biggest metal band ever by having the best songs. They did so with remarkable consistency over four consecutive records. A few songs are arguably duds, but not only do all the songs belong, they are all memorable. On their first four albums, Metallica’s weaker moments are so strong that they stand out in our consciousness more than most bands’ greatest successes.

“Dyers Eve” is a good example. On an almost excruciatingly baroque album, it’s almost tossed off, a picking hand exercise in the form of high-octane thrash. Compared against other Metallica songs of similar energy – “Fight Fire with Fire”, “Battery”, “Damage, Inc.” – it’s lesser by far. It just goes rat-a-tat-tat; it doesn’t have the sweep that makes those songs so devastating. Many thrash bands matched or outpaced Metallica in terms of intensity. But intensity is just one front in the war called time. Metallica won that war by winning multiple fronts: vision, execution, having better songs.

“Dyers Eve” isn’t a great song, but it’s a good one. What makes a song good? Well, many things that could probably form a 35-part series on their own. But it all boils down to the song having an existence of its own. It’s not just a bunch of shredding, or a catchy riff or hook. It’s when everything adds up so that the song becomes a world. The world doesn’t have to be huge or detailed, but it must be a defined place. The parameters are the song’s duration, and the structures that give rhythm and trajectory to action within the song.

. . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8exKESdm1PM

“Dyers Eve” (live, France, 2009)

. . .

The world of “Dyers Eve” is painfully small. Its duration almost doesn’t matter, because “time has frozen still what’s left to be”. The narrator is so paralyzed by rage that his existence grinds to a halt. He can’t grow up; he “cannot face the fact I think for me”. He’s dependent on his parents and enraged at that fact. Few bands, metal or otherwise, address parent-child relationships; it’s not a sexy topic. To do so with such searing focus is an accomplishment. (Interestingly, the next song in Metallica’s discography is “Enter Sandman”, which at points adopt a parental perspective, if not a particularly meaningful one.)

“Dyers Eve” captivated me as a teenager. Towards my parents I felt great rage, some of which was justified, and the rest of which was hormonal. I still sympathize with the song’s narrator, because being a metal fan means suspending, to a degree, the adult need to squash fantasy. During adolescence, the mind wanders freely. Heavy metal rewards that, but adulthood doesn’t.

Admittedly, that’s not the conflict here; in fact, the narrator says, “I’ve outgrown that fucking lullaby”. He wants to find a reality outside the constructs his parents built for him. Still, there’s a push-and-pull between authority figure and subject, and between truth and falsehood, that runs throughout …And Justice for All. “Dyers Eve” works on a personal level; unlike the songs that precede it, its scope isn’t the environment or the halls of justice. But it’s definitely another brick in the wall of AJFA‘s edifice of tension.

The album isn’t good at releasing that tension, which frustrates those who want metal to be a Dionysian experience. (See Deena Weinstein’s dichotomy of metal into Dionysian and Chaotic themes.) But as music, as art, and simply as something that affects us, …And Justice for All is more than effective. It’s the most polarizing of Metallica’s good records, which perhaps makes it the most interesting one. Universal love and universal hate aren’t that interesting. But, as the saying goes, you’re doing something right if people both love and hate it. In Metallica’s case, that “something” was writing songs that people talk about for years afterwards.

. . .

“Dyers Eve”
[audio: METALLICA_DYERS.mp3]

. . .

METALLICA: THE FIRST FOUR ALBUMS

“To Live Is to Die”
“The Frayed Ends of Sanity”
“Harvester of Sorrow
“The Shortest Straw”
“One”
“Eye of the Beholder”
“…And Justice for All”
“Blackened”
“Damage Inc.”
“Orion”
“Leper Messiah”
“Disposable Heroes”
“Welcome Home (Sanitarium)”
“The Thing That Should Not Be”
“Master of Puppets”
“Battery”
“The Call of Ktulu”
“Creeping Death”
“Escape”
“Trapped Under Ice”
“Fade to Black”
“For Whom the Bell Tolls”
“Ride the Lightning”
“Fight Fire With Fire”
“Metal Militia”
“Seek & Destroy”
“No Remorse”
“Phantom Lord”
“Whiplash”
“(Anesthesia) Pulling Teeth”
“Jump in the Fire”
“Motorbreath”
“The Four Horsemen”
“Hit the Lights”

. . .

. . .

Some are born into metal, but most enter it from outside. The before/after dynamic is so strong that as a subcultural initiation story, “when I became a metalhead” is, for many, as significant as religious conversion or coming out of the closet. But one brings one’s past into metal; that’s one of the ideals of folk metal. You don’t become a metalhead and lose your identity, hopefully. Beneath that metal uniform is your own self, right?

I was raised on classical music, including classical guitar. So when I discovered metal, I gravitated towards acoustic guitars and clean tones; Anthrax’ “A.D.I.” was probably the first metal riff I ever tried to play. On …And Justice for All, “To Live Is to Die” caught my ear with its deceptively pastoral intro. It sounded like music I’d heard before; it wasn’t alien.

But what followed it most definitely was. If you’re coming from outside of metal, “To Live Is to Die” is very, very strange. A medieval-sounding acoustic intro gets steamrolled slowly by a distorted march in an unrelated key. After a few minutes, the march waxes melodic, then drops into a clean tone section (which feels a lot like the one in “Master of Puppets”). Distortion comes back, then seemingly peters out before launching into a spoken word section. Then the song un-steamrolls and returns to its initial acoustic passage. It’s a mess.

. . .

“To Live Is to Die” on cellos

. . .

In the context of the otherwise monolithic AJFA, “To Live” is a little odd. (Thematically and musically, it’s sort of a bolted-together Frankenstein prototype of “One”.) But in the context of Metallica’s first four albums, it’s apt. So many threads have tied into Metallica at this point, from NWOBHM to classical music to Hemingway to various films. The addition of a 17th century Germany writer (Paul Gerhardt, half of the spoken word section) and the simultaneous presence of two Metallica bassists (Jason Newsted, Cliff Burton on the other half of the spoken word section) make sense as much as any of the aforementioned influences.

Metallica has many entry points – hence the band’s wide appeal. Unlike a lot of other metal, the thing called Metallica is very inclusive. Perhaps it got too inclusive later, when country music and orchestras muddied the waters. But those first four records were a big tent that attracted countless newcomers. Like me, they heard something of themselves in the music. For them – us – past became present became future forever more.

. . .

“To Live Is to Die”
[audio: METALLICA_TOLIVE.mp3]

. . .

METALLICA: THE FIRST FOUR ALBUMS

“The Frayed Ends of Sanity”
“Harvester of Sorrow
“The Shortest Straw”
“One”
“Eye of the Beholder”
“…And Justice for All”
“Blackened”
“Damage Inc.”
“Orion”
“Leper Messiah”
“Disposable Heroes”
“Welcome Home (Sanitarium)”
“The Thing That Should Not Be”
“Master of Puppets”
“Battery”
“The Call of Ktulu”
“Creeping Death”
“Escape”
“Trapped Under Ice”
“Fade to Black”
“For Whom the Bell Tolls”
“Ride the Lightning”
“Fight Fire With Fire”
“Metal Militia”
“Seek & Destroy”
“No Remorse”
“Phantom Lord”
“Whiplash”
“(Anesthesia) Pulling Teeth”
“Jump in the Fire”
“Motorbreath”
“The Four Horsemen”
“Hit the Lights”

. . .

. . .

…And Justice for All sounds like it looks: cold and gray. It’s wall-to-wall grim, which didn’t jive with the Metallica I read about as a kid. That Metallica wore shades and maniacal grins, and was sometimes called Alcoholica. James Hetfield’s “More Beer” Gibson Explorer was often on display. Nuclear scientists on record, party animals in real life – it didn’t quite compute.

“The Frayed Ends of Sanity” is the closest AJFA gets to solving that equation. It’s actually kind of fun. It makes me smile – not in a derisive way, but because it’s “so grim, so true, so real” that, like with many hopeless situations, my ultimate reaction is to laugh. Black jeans and black humor go together well. I imagine James Hetfield mentally high-fiving himself as he finishes writing, “Height, hell, time, haste, terror, tension / Life, death, want, waste, mass depression”. That rolls off the tongue so nicely. Yet it’s ridiculously ambitious; most of us don’t go to work each day tackling these topics. That Hetfield bought these ideas and resold them at a profit – both commercially and artistically – is a feat.

Then there’s that intro chant, lifted from The Wizard of Oz. That’s a genius non sequitur on one hand, and completely appropriate on the other. Was Hetfield slyly referencing his Cowardly Lion appearance at the time? I doubt it, but it worked, it works, and it always will.

. . .

The Wizard of Oz – The Castle of the Wicked Witch

. . .

Finally, there’s 4:04. That’s a turning point in the song, which has built up to it with chewy chromatics spurred on by Lars Ulrich’s jaunty downbeats. Anything could happen at that point, which is one of the beautiful things about heavy metal. With most other kinds of music, when change is a-comin’, you know what it’ll be. Typically it’s a guitar solo or a bridge with a key change; in the early-’90s, it was often a rap coming out of nowhere. Metal’s not immune to these things, but Metallica in their prime bucked trends; every song on their first four records has its own identity.

So what we get is yet another riff. It’s a wrist-snapping gallop tossed off with deceptive ease, and it’s absurdly bad-ass. It’s not really necessary, but it feels great and adds more possibilities. The band runs with these possibilities, harmonizing the riff and modulating it while Kirk Hammett does his typical whammy bar/triplet routine. Then, another left turn: a NWOBHM riff executed with utter precision (a very Megadeth move, incidentally), which eventually backs down into the main riff.

This is quite the ride: fun to hear and fun to play. But what’s that? Metallica have never played this song in its entirety live??? Clearly they don’t favor it for some reason. But that just means that their Metallica is different from my Metallica, which is different from every one of yours. That’s frustrating for fans who like to canonize things – but it’s also why Metallica has so many fans in the first place.

. . .

“The Frayed Ends of Sanity”
[audio: METALLICA_FRAYED.mp3]

. . .

METALLICA: THE FIRST FOUR ALBUMS

“Harvester of Sorrow
“The Shortest Straw”
“One”
“Eye of the Beholder”
“…And Justice for All”
“Blackened”
“Damage Inc.”
“Orion”
“Leper Messiah”
“Disposable Heroes”
“Welcome Home (Sanitarium)”
“The Thing That Should Not Be”
“Master of Puppets”
“Battery”
“The Call of Ktulu”
“Creeping Death”
“Escape”
“Trapped Under Ice”
“Fade to Black”
“For Whom the Bell Tolls”
“Ride the Lightning”
“Fight Fire With Fire”
“Metal Militia”
“Seek & Destroy”
“No Remorse”
“Phantom Lord”
“Whiplash”
“(Anesthesia) Pulling Teeth”
“Jump in the Fire”
“Motorbreath”
“The Four Horsemen”
“Hit the Lights”

. . .

. . .

“[A]boutness is all but terminal in fiction. Stories aren’t about things. Stories are things”.
– Bret Anthony Johnston, “Don’t Write What You Know”

Substitute “fiction” with “music”, and “stories” with “songs”, and I’d agree 100%. “Aboutness” is why most political music is dull. It’s also what makes me distrust strong authorial intent. I support art, and I support artists insofar as they are vessels of art. But unless artists are actual people in my life, i.e., friends, I care about them as much as other people not in my life: not much.

So it’s both interesting and immensely boring to see people try to grok James Hetfield’s lyrics in “Harvester of Sorrow”. Websites exist for this: songfacts.com, songmeanings.net. Do people realize that once they figure out – or think they figure out – what something’s “about”, that they’ve killed its magic? You feel smug when you think you know what something’s about. You stop engaging with it. You move on to the next object of magic-killing. You acquire great taste and become insufferable company.

I’m happy not to know exactly what Hetfield’s singing about. Getting not the gist, but a gist is fine. “Harvester”, as with the rest of …And Justice for All‘s latter half, dives into a very disturbed psyche. “One” hit that bulls-eye through craftsmanship; “Harvester” does so with air. On a record that feels like a futuristic dust bowl, the song offers, if not lushness, at least some layering. 25 seconds in, a wind noise whooshes through, which is a big deal considering the album’s oppressive dryness. Production! Imagine that! And the outro weaves clean tones amidst the distortion; the intro to Slayer’s “213”, another soundtrack for a tortured psyche, comes to mind.

“Harvester” was the first single from AJFA, which makes sense. It’s the second shortest song, and it’s groovy as hell. Riffs on upbeats: that’s totally a groove metal thing, except groove metal hadn’t been invented yet. So instead we get a relentless push-push-push, bracketed by the serpentine main riff. “Harvester” is the Metallica song my body responds to the most. “Sad but True” has a similar hulking groove, and I’m partial to that song, too. It’s a trip, it’s got a funky beat, and I can commit atrocities to it.

. . .

“Harvester of Sorrow”
[audio: METALLICA_HARVESTER.mp3]

. . .

METALLICA: THE FIRST FOUR ALBUMS

“The Shortest Straw”
“One”
“Eye of the Beholder”
“…And Justice for All”
“Blackened”
“Damage Inc.”
“Orion”
“Leper Messiah”
“Disposable Heroes”
“Welcome Home (Sanitarium)”
“The Thing That Should Not Be”
“Master of Puppets”
“Battery”
“The Call of Ktulu”
“Creeping Death”
“Escape”
“Trapped Under Ice”
“Fade to Black”
“For Whom the Bell Tolls”
“Ride the Lightning”
“Fight Fire With Fire”
“Metal Militia”
“Seek & Destroy”
“No Remorse”
“Phantom Lord”
“Whiplash”
“(Anesthesia) Pulling Teeth”
“Jump in the Fire”
“Motorbreath”
“The Four Horsemen”
“Hit the Lights”

. . .

. . .

If you think about it, it’s amazing what heavy metal has become: a beast with thousands of tentacles, some decades long. That Black Sabbath can lead to both Burzum and deathcore is a testament to virality. Ideas spread and mutate, taking on unimagined forms – often to the chagrin of champions of earlier forms.

…And Justice for All is one such unimagined form. It’s a long, long way from “The Wizard” to “The Shortest Straw”, which is about as extreme as “AJFA-ness” gets. As with much of metal, a weaponry metaphor is illustrative. If “The Wizard” is a confident old-timer with a shotgun, “The Shortest Straw” is a neurotic assassin who’s deadly at long range with a snubnose. He practices incessantly, can’t shake a few bad habits (including poor rhythm), and has no friends. He’s the bad guy revealed 3/4 into a Friday night “thriller” rental.

So he has “nerd rage”, or, more accurately for our purposes, “mute rage”. For metal in 1988, this is novel. Metal has always been about power, including showing it sonically. Sure, “Black Sabbath” started with Ozzy scared out of his mind; but with a little help from his friends, he more than prevailed. A few mutations later, studs and leather entered the picture. Stage sets grew moving parts; arenas filled with hair. Metallica touched on mute rage with “Ride the Lightning” and “Welcome Home (Sanitarium)”, but those songs roared.

In contrast, “The Shortest Straw” gasps for air, with James Hetfield chopping out hard, angry syllables. Kirk Hammett dribbles out a mini-divebomb at 3:59 that’s basically premature ejaculation. Lars Ulrich putters in the background with small, busy d-beats. Jason Newsted, of course, is out of the picture. So we get what sounds like a rehearsal by three worried scientists.

But scientists have always had reason to worry (see Galileo). Perhaps the illogic bothering Metallica was Dalton Trumbo’s blacklisting in the McCarthy era. Trumbo wrote Johnny Got His Gun, the inspiration for “One”, so following that song with one about a witch hunt made complete sense, intentional or not.

I don’t think Metallica intended to sound like mute rage. I think they, like 99% of metal bands not playing black metal, tried to rock. But they ended up making an airless choke – the throat kind, not the sports kind – that lasted six and a half minutes. Metal’s old guard probably thought this was a choke of the sports kind. But in a perverse way, it was perfect. It sounded exactly like it read – “unending paper chase”, “behind you, hands are tied” – which made it even scarier. No triumph, no overcoming, just pure, weapons-grade neurosis. It’s a potent, if strange, achievement by the world’s biggest metal band.

. . .

“The Shortest Straw”
[audio: METALLICA_SHORTEST.mp3]

. . .

METALLICA: THE FIRST FOUR ALBUMS

“One”
“Eye of the Beholder”
“…And Justice for All”
“Blackened”
“Damage Inc.”
“Orion”
“Leper Messiah”
“Disposable Heroes”
“Welcome Home (Sanitarium)”
“The Thing That Should Not Be”
“Master of Puppets”
“Battery”
“The Call of Ktulu”
“Creeping Death”
“Escape”
“Trapped Under Ice”
“Fade to Black”
“For Whom the Bell Tolls”
“Ride the Lightning”
“Fight Fire With Fire”
“Metal Militia”
“Seek & Destroy”
“No Remorse”
“Phantom Lord”
“Whiplash”
“(Anesthesia) Pulling Teeth”
“Jump in the Fire”
“Motorbreath”
“The Four Horsemen”
“Hit the Lights”

. . .

. . .

Obsequiae’s Suspended in the Brume of Eos (Bindrune, 2011) is one my favorite metal records this year. It’s esoteric yet inviting, intimate yet robust. Current metal rarely feels “hidden”, but this record feels like a tromp through some mythic forest. It turns out that this feeling comes from a medieval influence – not from ren fairs, but from sitting down with musical scores and translating olden times into modern metal. Via email, I asked band members Blondel de Nesle and Neidhard von Reuental about this. They seemed touchy about revealing their identities, even though the Internet and their own publicist did this readily. It’s tough to hide in 2011 – especially when your music is this good.

. . .

Imagine my disappointment when I removed the shrinkwrap, opened up the digipak, and found no liner notes! (The images are pretty, though.) Why deny listeners knowledge of what you’re singing about?

Blondel de Nesle: I wouldn’t say we’re denying listeners anything by choosing to not reveal everything. We did include lyrics with the previous cassette release and we had the option of an insert for this album. Ultimately we decided that an abundance of text would have distracted the visual aesthetic we achieved with the layout. With all the castles and stuff.

Neidhart von Reuental: You are disappointed because you don’t like castles. Be gone, false.

What are you singing about, anyway?

BDN: Mainly themes regarding animals, wheat, ritual and dawn for this album. The lyrics contain dreamlike fantasies which attempt to illustrate simple tasks, observations, or notions and carry their symbolism into greater realizations beyond what they are at the surface: often times predictable and often times not extremely profound. Many of the songs are written from the perspective of being out-of-body or as an audience/spectator of a scene that exists outside of time or reality. Other [songs] are more straight-forward. “The Wounded Fox”, for example, is pretty evident. To never take for granted how easily deceitful prey can become the hunter. The fox is also significant in medieval folklore. This is an excerpt from that track:

Here lies deception sheltered by wounds
With tainted fur the impostor rests
Nestles the mire and only here infests

Calm are the woods and fortified
To the wounded who live without bane
Echoes recall their suffering
For the living to acknowledge pain

Calm are the woods and fortified
To the wounded who rest without grace
A fervent hunger grows within
And death now marks his face

Here lies treachery hidden by grass
With stillness and composure
Those who would feed upon carrion
Willing leave their enclosures

Evidently, the word “obsequiae” comes from the Latin words for funeral rites and religious submission. Why did you choose this name?

BDN: I’m pretty sure you just answered this question for me.

NVR: It is an excellent name for a Heavy Metal band that sounds like us.

“Brume” is such a wonderful word. It is French, and “Eos” is Greek. What made you bring these words together?

BDN: To illustrate the idea of being captivated and completely surrendered to the approaching dawn. This “brume” represents a state of mind and describes the scenery before dawn – when only the fog at the horizon is illuminated.

The album cover is the Touch tapestry from The Lady and the Unicorn French tapestries from the 15th century. Why did you pick this particular tapestry?

BDN: We originally used the Sound tapestry for the cassette. This time around, and for the sake of continuity, we used Touch because we found it suiting given the context of the album title and the images we wished to portray: The anticipation of greeting new sunlight, basking in its warmth, and becoming lost in it all – touching the world beyond.

. . .

. . .

In ethos, this record reminds me of early In Flames, when the band was trying to mesh folk influences with death metal without making “folk metal”. Did you draw any inspiration from this?

BDN: That’s a fair comparison but, no, we were not inspired by In Flames. We are inspired by many of the same influences that inspired bands like In Flames. I know that because I remember reading interviews with bands like Dark Tranquillity prior to them (or any of those bands like Ceremonial Oath, In Flames) releasing albums. Personally, I always preferred the chaotic phrasing/melodic passages and raging atmosphere of the earliest DT material to anything like In Flames. I think I still have an early issue of No Glam Fags where Niklas Sundin was interviewed and talked shit about the commercialization of death metal and cited influence from ’80s German Thrash, NWOBHM, and (early) Greek stuff like Varathron and Rotting Christ. Those genres are absolutely the heartwood of my metal influence.

There are always exceptions of course. There were bands in the early/mid ’90s that I loved and took influence from. I could start listing them off, but I know the list would be endless, so I’ll keep it short and to-the-point: non-Gothenburg sounding melodic black/death (Eucharist, early Dawn, Miscreant (SWE)), older death/doom in the vein of stuff like Ceremonium, Phlebotomized, Dissolving of Prodigy, Czech/Greek/Swiss black metal (with an emphasis on METAL and not overly-dramatic cheese that most of those countries were producing), and tons more from that era. When I’ve given this Obsequiae record to old friends of mine that share my tastes, I’ve described it as “Ophthalamia covering Fall of the Leafe’s first album in Hades’ rehearsal room using only the Dorian mode”. I think that’s a hilariously accurate description.

NVR: My drumming has nothing to do with In Flames, and the bass, well, that doesn’t either. I don’t listen to anyone who would label themselves Folk Metal. I like Bathory, early Enslaved, Hades, Agatus, Dark Millennium, Solstice UK. But the way I play drums and bass has nothing to do with those bands. The same is true for him. We do things that are unique to us. The rest we have in common is really no huge coincidence in that its all heavy metal.

Tanner, I’m a big fan of your other band Celestiial, whose music is much slower and seemingly intended as an extension of nature. In contrast, Obsequiae has speed (at times) and clear metal roots. How do you see these bands in relation to each other?

BDN: No relationship exists between Obsequiae and Celestiial. They’re completely removed from one another. Both NVR and I have our respective bands/projects outside of Obsequiae. Obsequiae is a collaborative effort with more approachable and immediate goals in songwriting than something like Celestiial which is, simply put, a response to experiences within nature.

Wintry Minnesota seems to be an overt influence on Celestiial. Does it provide any inspiration for Obsequiae?

BDN: It does not. Our music is not a response to environment.

Where does your fascination with medieval things come from?

BDN: I’m not fascinated with “medieval things”. It’s strictly musical. I’m the polar opposite personality of someone into medieval history, fantasy novels, role-playing, video games, weapons, Renaissance Fairs/dress-up stuff, etc. I hope those people like our music. But I’m just really into instruments, instrument-making, and the musical aspects of medieval music. Even in that regard, I feel shadowed as a novice by composition instructors or musicians who play in Ensembles of Early Music. The only common ground I share with the “all things medieval” stereotype is likely the belief that anyone who dislikes castles is probably a dick.

NVR: It’s just good Heavy Metal sense to write about things in olden times. What are we going to do? Write about politics? The best heavy metal has always been mired in escapism and mysticism.

How would you compare your bringing medieval music into metal with “neo-classical” attempts to bring classical music into metal?

BDN: We’re not composing sterile, advanced exercises. Also let’s hear a “neo-classical” metal band consider approaching Messiaen or Scriabin. Windham Hell was the rare exception by succeeding in composing atmosphere and introducing tasteful, dark influences to classical music.

NVR: We’re not strictly medieval by any means, but our music does have a lot in common with it. Tanner was already writing homophony in Dorian mode before the medieval thing came into play, so when he thought of calling it a Latin name and the tapestries came along, it just made sense to make the rest fit from there. Enter thundering, clanging, and crashing drums and cymbals, pentatonic Baroque bass, mythic vocals, and it works pretty well, don’t you think?

Why the pseudonyms? And why simply take other people’s names? “Blondel de Nesle” was a 12th or 13th century French troubadour, and “Neidhart von Reuental” was a 13th century German minnesinger.

BDN: Right. They’re also reportedly deceased. It’s sort of tongue-in-cheek. I apologize if our sarcasm doesn’t translate in text. We didn’t want to use our names. I have tomes of sheet music by the Trouveres/Troubadours/Minnesangers including the named composers. This is how we decided to be the respective metal incarnations of them for the band. It isn’t intended to be a joke as much as an honest tribute to great metal pseudonyms. I mean that in the most un-ironic way possible. We’re not trying to imply [we are] wandering metal minstrels or anything so brilliant. These characters have an obvious connection to what our music is about. It’s not like we claimed “Minnesotan Minnesinger Metal” or credited “Angelo Sasso” on drums. We take this band seriously. So don’t go telling the friar. We would implore women in our chambers to call us only by our Christian names in the throes of passion.

NVR: Well, you just rendered his pseudonym useless by your mentioning of Celestiial. Thanks a lot. You will never know my true name!

. . .

. . .

I interviewed Nightbringer and asked them the following questions:

Arguably, heavy metal is completely dependent upon electricity. Could something like Nightbringer have existed in, say, the Middle Ages? If so, what would it have been like?

Nightbringer’s answers were as follows: “Well, I’d have to say that most of heavy metal music as such, the actual sound of it, is a purely modern phenomenon, dependent on modern devices. However, black metal often has an abrasive and droning quality that could be said to have affinities with certain aspects of what we know of ancient folk music. Could something in the spirit of what we are doing have existed in the Middle Ages? To a certain extent I think it is possible, though it is difficult to speculate. In the East, certainly, there were esoteric orders devoted to the very things we are trying to approach, though I don’t know in what way they may have made use of music.”

How would you answer these questions for Obsequiae?

BDN: That really isn’t an easy question to answer plainly. I agree with Nightbringer’s response regarding the droning quality of genres like black metal as well as noise/ambient, drone/doom, etc. There is a relationship there. We do tend to associate “drone” with “ancient” because archaic music derives from plainchant and drone. This has evolved and been preserved in so many musical forms. Listen to the music of the Baka people for another lesser-known example of primitive yet complex harmony and drone. My point being that drone itself is less exclusive and more universal than we give due credit. And Medieval/Early Music is not defined through drone alone but rather the concept of Organum.

The fact is, no one knows the precise rhythms or stylistic flourishes of the melodies left to us from many of the Codices or Cantigas, etc. To interpret written medieval music is to put color to a black and white photo. No one does it the same way. And we have no way of knowing how the originals sounded when they were composed. Everyone colors this sound differently. We paint medieval music within the “style” of heavy metal if that makes sense. We’re not a “medieval metal” band. We don’t use period instruments and, simply put, our performance is rooted in metal. We’re just inspired by medieval music and themes of medieval art.

It might sound insulting to even hear someone dare mutter that they are composing “modern medieval music”. But if you look at more popular composers who have done this in some of their works, like Arvo Pärt, or bands like Extra Life, you can see how this is possible. Personally, I’m using the influence of phrasing by ensembles or instrumentalists/vocalists who I believe interpret the works with the most true, vibrant colors. And I’m not writing one linear melody that depends on itself. Every melody you hear in Obsequiae exists with its counterpoint. A constant dual-guitar voice. Which you’ll also recognize in harmonized leads running rampant in the likes of Iron Maiden. Except I’m not writing in all thirds or other straight-harmonies. The guitars come together to create one intended voice and the bass compliments this voice with its own counterpoint – sometimes deviating and other times completely sympathetic. When I write, I think of the melodies as voice first – not guitar. That should be obvious to the attentive ear. As lovers and listeners of medieval music and true metal, it just makes sense to us to marry the two to explore and expand the common ground that exists between them.

Nightbringer mentions that there were “esoteric orders devoted to the very things we are trying to approach”. This is absolutely true. But not exclusively regarding “medieval music”. The majority of works survived BECAUSE OF THE CHURCH. Not because Templars who worshipped Baphomet buried them beneath a crypt in hopes that a metal band would use them 700 years later. The majority of these works were written with prayer to God. And so their very rhythms follow the syllables of Christian prayer, not of a time signature. Keep that thought in mind when listening to vocal music in particular. Those breaths between melodic phrasing are why people don’t understand what time signatures are being used. There are none. Every musical phrase depends on the pulse and language of prayer. If you think about it, implementing medieval phrasing in a metal context then mocks the very breath and pulse of “God”. It perverts his praise in a smartass sort of way.

To finally answer your question – No, Obsequiae would not have existed in the medieval period. We would have likely been employed scrubbing boats somewhere. All the better.

. . .

HEAR OBSEQUIAE

. . .

BUY OBSEQUIAE

Amazon (CD)
Bindrune (CD)

. . .

. . .

This is my last new post at Invisible Oranges. I have some posts, including the rest of the Metallica series, in the queue that will go up later, but otherwise, this is it for me. The new editor is Mike Nelson, who heads a great staff that will take the site to new heights. Please give him a warm welcome.

It’s been an honor to have worked on Invisible Oranges. To this day, I’m still amazed that people read it, much less follow it consistently. Having an audience is never something to take for granted.

To this end, thanks are in order.

. . .

Thanks to the naysayers and negative people. You only inspire me to fight harder and get better.

Thanks to people who stay positive through negative times. You also inspire me to fight harder and get better.

Thanks to my original metal writing influences, Andrew Aversionline and Adrian Begrand. They inspired me to start writing about metal; they are still holding it down.

Thanks to all the editors who hired me and put up with my weaknesses.

Thanks to all Invisible Oranges staff, past, present, and future. Your energy is refreshing and invaluable.

A thousand thanks to all you readers. You are the community that makes this worthwhile.

Finally, thanks to the musicians who bring us metal music. It is a thankless task, and the best ones do it without complaint.

Rock hard, ride free.

. . .