The Height of Callousness
The Height of Callousness is the second album by the American industrial metal band Spineshank. It was released on October 2000 by Roadrunner Records; the title is taken from a phrase in A Clockwork Orange. Allmusic gave the album 2.5 stars out of 5 but praised the band's energy, saying that "The Height of Callousness is a super-charged silver bullet of 11 aggressive tracks that will get your blood flowing as if you're engaged in a stock car race gone haywire." CMJ described the album as: "Machine-charged cybercore with computerized samples aligning the band with the likes of Fear Factory and Rammstein". The album has sold over 150,000 units. "Asthmatic" – 3:30 "The Height of Callousness" – 3:02 "Synthetic" – 3:09 "New Disease" – 3:14 " Fixed" – 3:12 "Cyanide 2600" – 3:10 "Play God" – 4:02 "Malnutrition" – 3:30 "Seamless" – 3:44 "Negative Space" – 2:39 "Transparent" – 3:53 "Perfect Ending" – 3:48 "Full Circle" – 3:26 "The Height of Callousness" – 3:20 "Asthmatic" – 4:29Note: On the American version of the digipak release, track 15 was changed from "The Height of Callousness" to "Asthmatic".
Jonny Santos – vocals Mike Sarkisyan – guitar, co-producer Robert Garcia – bass, backing vocals Tommy Decker – drums, electronics, co-producer GGGarth – Producer Ted Jensen – Mastering Andre "The German" Wahl – Engineering Scott Ternan – Assistant engineer Anthony "Fu" Valcic - programming Frank Gryner – Mixing, Additional recording, Additional programming Scott Humphrey – Mixing, Additional recording, Additional programming Amir Derakh - song arrangement Dan Burns – Assistant mixer Ben "Hairy Toes" Kaplan – Digital editing Alex "The Condor" Aligizakis – Assistant digital editor
Album
An album is a collection of audio recordings issued as a collection on compact disc, audio tape, or another medium. Albums of recorded music were developed in the early 20th century as individual 78-rpm records collected in a bound book resembling a photograph album. Vinyl LPs are still issued, though album sales in the 21st-century have focused on CD and MP3 formats; the audio cassette was a format used alongside vinyl from the 1970s into the first decade of the 2000s. An album may be recorded in a recording studio, in a concert venue, at home, in the field, or a mix of places; the time frame for recording an album varies between a few hours to several years. This process requires several takes with different parts recorded separately, brought or "mixed" together. Recordings that are done in one take without overdubbing are termed "live" when done in a studio. Studios are built to absorb sound, eliminating reverberation, so as to assist in mixing different takes. Recordings, including live, may contain sound effects, voice adjustments, etc..
With modern recording technology, musicians can be recorded in separate rooms or at separate times while listening to the other parts using headphones. Album covers and liner notes are used, sometimes additional information is provided, such as analysis of the recording, lyrics or librettos; the term "album" was applied to a collection of various items housed in a book format. In musical usage the word was used for collections of short pieces of printed music from the early nineteenth century. Collections of related 78rpm records were bundled in book-like albums; when long-playing records were introduced, a collection of pieces on a single record was called an album. An album, in ancient Rome, was a board chalked or painted white, on which decrees and other public notices were inscribed in black, it was from this that in medieval and modern times album came to denote a book of blank pages in which verses, sketches and the like are collected. Which in turn led to the modern meaning of an album as a collection of audio recordings issued as a single item.
In the early nineteenth century "album" was used in the titles of some classical music sets, such as Schumann's Album for the Young Opus 68, a set of 43 short pieces. When 78rpm records came out, the popular 10-inch disc could only hold about three minutes of sound per side, so all popular recordings were limited to around three minutes in length. Classical-music and spoken-word items were released on the longer 12-inch 78s, about 4–5 minutes per side. For example, in 1924, George Gershwin recorded a drastically shortened version of the seventeen-minute Rhapsody in Blue with Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra, it ran for 8m 59s. Deutsche Grammophon had produced an album for its complete recording of the opera Carmen in 1908. German record company Odeon released the Nutcracker Suite by Tchaikovsky in 1909 on 4 double-sided discs in a specially designed package; this practice of issuing albums does not seem to have been taken up by other record companies for many years. By about 1910, bound collections of empty sleeves with a paperboard or leather cover, similar to a photograph album, were sold as record albums that customers could use to store their records.
These albums came in both 12-inch sizes. The covers of these bound books were wider and taller than the records inside, allowing the record album to be placed on a shelf upright, like a book, suspending the fragile records above the shelf and protecting them. In the 1930s, record companies began issuing collections of 78 rpm records by one performer or of one type of music in specially assembled albums with artwork on the front cover and liner notes on the back or inside cover. Most albums included three or four records, with two sides each, making six or eight compositions per album; the 12-inch LP record, or 33 1⁄3 rpm microgroove vinyl record, is a gramophone record format introduced by Columbia Records in 1948. A single LP record had the same or similar number of tunes as a typical album of 78s, it was adopted by the record industry as a standard format for the "album". Apart from minor refinements and the important addition of stereophonic sound capability, it has remained the standard format for vinyl albums.
The term "album" was extended to other recording media such as Compact audio cassette, compact disc, MiniDisc, digital albums, as they were introduced. As part of a trend of shifting sales in the music industry, some observers feel that the early 21st century experienced the death of the album. While an album may contain as many or as few tracks as required, in the United States, The Recording Academy's rules for Grammy Awards state that an album must comprise a minimum total playing time of 15 minutes with at least five distinct tracks or a minimum total playing time of 30 minutes with no minimum track requirement. In the United Kingdom, the criteria for the UK Albums Chart is that a recording counts as an "album" i
Music genre
A music genre is a conventional category that identifies some pieces of music as belonging to a shared tradition or set of conventions. It is to be distinguished from musical form and musical style, although in practice these terms are sometimes used interchangeably. Academics have argued that categorizing music by genre is inaccurate and outdated. Music can be divided into different genres in many different ways; the artistic nature of music means that these classifications are subjective and controversial, some genres may overlap. There are varying academic definitions of the term genre itself. In his book Form in Tonal Music, Douglass M. Green distinguishes between form, he lists madrigal, canzona and dance as examples of genres from the Renaissance period. To further clarify the meaning of genre, Green writes, "Beethoven's Op. 61 and Mendelssohn's Op. 64 are identical in genre – both are violin concertos – but different in form. However, Mozart's Rondo for Piano, K. 511, the Agnus Dei from his Mass, K. 317 are quite different in genre but happen to be similar in form."
Some, like Peter van der Merwe, treat the terms genre and style as the same, saying that genre should be defined as pieces of music that share a certain style or "basic musical language." Others, such as Allan F. Moore, state that genre and style are two separate terms, that secondary characteristics such as subject matter can differentiate between genres. A music genre or subgenre may be defined by the musical techniques, the style, the cultural context, the content and spirit of the themes. Geographical origin is sometimes used to identify a music genre, though a single geographical category will include a wide variety of subgenres. Timothy Laurie argues that since the early 1980s, "genre has graduated from being a subset of popular music studies to being an ubiquitous framework for constituting and evaluating musical research objects". Among the criteria used to classify musical genres are the trichotomy of art and traditional musics. Alternatively, music can be divided on three variables: arousal and depth.
Arousal reflects the energy level of the music. These three variables help explain why many people like similar songs from different traditionally segregated genres. Musicologists have sometimes classified music according to a trichotomic distinction such as Philip Tagg's "axiomatic triangle consisting of'folk','art' and'popular' musics", he explains that each of these three is distinguishable from the others according to certain criteria. The term art music refers to classical traditions, including both contemporary and historical classical music forms. Art music exists in many parts of the world, it emphasizes formal styles that invite technical and detailed deconstruction and criticism, demand focused attention from the listener. In Western practice, art music is considered a written musical tradition, preserved in some form of music notation rather than being transmitted orally, by rote, or in recordings, as popular and traditional music are. Most western art music has been written down using the standard forms of music notation that evolved in Europe, beginning well before the Renaissance and reaching its maturity in the Romantic period.
The identity of a "work" or "piece" of art music is defined by the notated version rather than by a particular performance, is associated with the composer rather than the performer. This is so in the case of western classical music. Art music may include certain forms of jazz, though some feel that jazz is a form of popular music. Sacred Christian music forms an important part of the classical music tradition and repertoire, but can be considered to have an identity of its own; the term popular music refers to any musical style accessible to the general public and disseminated by the mass media. Musicologist and popular music specialist Philip Tagg defined the notion in the light of sociocultural and economical aspects: Popular music, unlike art music, is conceived for mass distribution to large and socioculturally heterogeneous groups of listeners and distributed in non-written form, only possible in an industrial monetary economy where it becomes a commodity and in capitalist societies, subject to the laws of'free' enterprise... it should ideally sell as much as possible.
Popular music is found on most commercial and public service radio stations, in most commercial music retailers and department stores, in movie and television soundtracks. It is noted on the Billboard charts and, in addition to singer-songwriters and composers, it involves music producers more than other genres do; the distinction between classical and popular music has sometimes been blurred in marginal areas such as minimalist music and light classics. Background music for films/movies draws on both traditions. In this respect, music is like fiction, which draws a distinction between literary fiction and popular fiction, not always precise. Country music known as country and western, hillbilly music, is a genre of popular music that originated in the southern United States in the early 1920s; the polka is a Czech dance and genre of dance music familiar throughout Europe and the Americas. Rock music is a broad genre of popular music that originated as "rock and roll" in the United States in the early 1950s, developed into a range of different styles in the 1960s and particular
George Harrison
George Harrison was an English musician, singer-songwriter and film producer who achieved international fame as the lead guitarist of the Beatles. Referred to as "the quiet Beatle", Harrison embraced Indian culture and helped broaden the scope of popular music through his incorporation of Indian instrumentation and Hindu-aligned spirituality in the Beatles' work. Although the majority of the band's songs were written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, most Beatles albums from 1965 onwards contained at least two Harrison compositions, his songs for the group included "Taxman", "Within You Without You", "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", "Here Comes the Sun" and "Something". Harrison's earliest musical influences included Django Reinhardt. By 1965, he had begun to lead the Beatles into folk rock through his interest in Bob Dylan and the Byrds, towards Indian classical music through his use of the sitar on "Norwegian Wood". Having initiated the band's embracing of Transcendental Meditation in 1967, he subsequently developed an association with the Hare Krishna movement.
After the band's break-up in 1970, Harrison released the triple album All Things Must Pass, a critically acclaimed work that produced his most successful hit single, "My Sweet Lord", introduced his signature sound as a solo artist, the slide guitar. He organised the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh with Indian musician Ravi Shankar, a precursor to benefit concerts such as Live Aid. In his role as a music and film producer, Harrison produced acts signed to the Beatles' Apple record label before founding Dark Horse Records in 1974 and co-founding HandMade Films in 1978. Harrison released several best-selling singles and albums as a solo performer. In 1988, he co-founded the platinum-selling supergroup the Traveling Wilburys. A prolific recording artist, he was featured as a guest guitarist on tracks by Badfinger, Ronnie Wood and Billy Preston, collaborated on songs and music with Dylan, Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr and Tom Petty, among others. Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number 11 in their list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".
He is a two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee – as a member of the Beatles in 1988, posthumously for his solo career in 2004. Harrison's first marriage, to model Pattie Boyd in 1966, ended in divorce in 1977; the following year he married Olivia Arias, with whom he had Dhani. Harrison died from lung cancer in 2001 at the age of 58, two years after surviving a knife attack by an intruder at his Friar Park home, his remains were cremated and the ashes were scattered according to Hindu tradition in a private ceremony in the Ganges and Yamuna rivers in India. He left an estate of £100 million. Harrison was born at 12 Arnold Grove in Wavertree, Liverpool, on 25 February 1943, he was the youngest of four children of Harold Hargreaves Louise. Harold was a bus conductor who had worked as a ship's steward on the White Star Line, Louise was a shop assistant of Irish Catholic descent, he had one sister and two brothers and Peter. According to Boyd, Harrison's mother was supportive: "All she wanted for her children is that they should be happy, she recognized that nothing made George quite as happy as making music."
Louise was an enthusiastic music fan, she was known among friends for her loud singing voice, which at times startled visitors by rattling the Harrisons' windows. When Louise was pregnant with George, she listened to the weekly broadcast Radio India. Harrison's biographer Joshua Greene wrote, "Every Sunday she tuned in to mystical sounds evoked by sitars and tablas, hoping that the exotic music would bring peace and calm to the baby in the womb."Harrison lived the first four years of his life at 12 Arnold Grove, a terraced house on a cul-de-sac. The home had an outdoor toilet and its only heat came from a single coal fire. In 1949, the family was moved to 25 Upton Green, Speke. In 1948, at the age of five, Harrison enrolled at Dovedale Primary School, he passed the eleven-plus exam and attended Liverpool Institute High School for Boys from 1954 to 1959. Though the institute did offer a music course, Harrison was disappointed with the absence of guitars, felt the school "moulded into being frightened".
Harrison's earliest musical influences included George Formby, Cab Calloway, Django Reinhardt and Hoagy Carmichael. In early 1956 he had an epiphany: while riding his bicycle, he heard Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel" playing from a nearby house, the song piqued his interest in rock and roll, he sat at the back of the class drawing guitars in his schoolbooks, commented, "I was into guitars." Harrison cited Slim Whitman as another early influence: "The first person I saw playing a guitar was Slim Whitman, either a photo of him in a magazine or live on television. Guitars were coming in."Although Harold Harrison was apprehensive about his son's interest in pursuing a music career, in 1956 he bought George a Dutch Egmond flat top acoustic guitar, which according to Harold, cost £3.10. One of his father's friends taught Harrison how to play "Whispering", "Sweet Sue" and "Dinah", inspired by Donegan's music, Harrison formed a skiffle group called the Rebels with his brother Peter and a friend, Arthur Kelly.
On the bus to school, Harrison met Paul McCartney, who attended the Liverpool Institute, the pair bonded over their shared
Industrial metal
Industrial metal is the fusion of heavy metal music and industrial music employing repeating metal guitar riffs, synthesizer or sequencer lines, distorted vocals. Prominent industrial metal acts include Godflesh, KMFDM and Nine Inch Nails. Industrial metal developed in the late 1980s, as industrial and metal began to fuse into a common genre. In the early years of the 21st century, groups from the black metal scene began to incorporate elements of industrial music. Industrial metal did well in the early 1990s in North America, with the success of groups such as Nine Inch Nails; the industrial metal movement began to fade in the latter half of the 1990s. Though electric guitars had been used by industrial artists since the early days of the genre, archetypal industrial groups such as Throbbing Gristle displayed a strong anti-rock stance. British post-punk band Killing Joke pioneered the crossing over between styles, was an influence on major acts associated with industrial metal such as Ministry and Nine Inch Nails.
Another pioneer industrial rock group, Big Black impacted some groups. By the late 1980s industrial and heavy metal began to fuse into a common genre, with Godflesh's self-titled EP and Ministry's The Land of Rape and Honey at the forefront. Godflesh was founded by former Napalm Death guitarist Justin Broadrick. Drawing from a wide array of influences—power electronics forefathers Whitehouse, noise rock band Swans, ambient music creator Brian Eno and fellow Birmingham hard rockers Black Sabbath—the Godflesh sound was once described as "Pornography-era Cure on Quaaludes". Though not a top-seller, Godflesh nonetheless became an influential act, their name mentioned by Korn, Danzig, Faith No More, Fear Factory. Ministry emerged from the scene surrounding Wax Trax! Records, a Chicago label dedicated to industrial music. Ministry's initial foray into guitar rock happened during a recording session of The Land of Rape and Honey on Southern Studios, in London; the band's frontman, the Cuban-born Al Jourgensen, explained this transition: Rediscovering the guitar on this record was like the first day I got my Fairlight.
The possibilities just seemed endless on something. That's funny. I started out as a guitarist, but I hadn't touched a guitar in five years. I heard that first feedback come out of the Marshall stack and all of a sudden it was like there was a whole new parameter within guitar playing itself – in combination with sounds that you get out of a keyboard. Jourgensen seemed fond of thrash metal. After the release of Land, he recruited guitarist Mike Scaccia from Texas thrashers Rigor Mortis. On one occasion, Jourgensen told the press, he expressed the desire to produce a Metallica album. Jourgensen's interest in dance-oriented electronic music did not fade, however. German band KMFDM was another seminal industrial metal group. Although not a metal fan, KMFDM leader Sascha Konietzko's "infatuation with ripping off metal licks" stemmed from his experiments with E-mu's Emax sampler in late 1986, he told Guitar World that, It was just interesting to use it as a kind of white noise reinforcement for our music.
All of a sudden heavy metal was free from all those tempo changes and boring attitudes it always had. What I always hated most about heavy metal was that the best riffs came only once and were never repeated. So the fascination was to sample a great riff, loop it, play it over and over again. A Swiss trio, The Young Gods, brushed with the style on L'Eau Rouge. Prior to its release, singer Franz Treichler declared: We just wanted to hear guitars. We missed the attack of'Envoyé'. That's, pure power. A metal sound that isn't revivalist, isn't biker style, speed metal style, any style, just WHAP! Canadian thrash metal band Malhavoc became another early pioneer of the genre when they began to mix thrash metal with industrial music in the late 1980sPigface, formed by Martin Atkins and including Ministry drummer Bill Rieflin, emerged as an industrial metal collective of sorts, participating with many figures from the noise rock and industrial worlds. Nine Inch Nails, the "one-man-band" formed by Trent Reznor, brought the genre to mainstream audiences with albums such as the Grammy-winning Broken and the best-selling The Downward Spiral, accompanied by their groundbreaking performance at Woodstock'94.
The rivethead subculture developed at this time, along with the so-called "coldwave" subgenre, which encompassed Chemlab, 16 Volt, Acumen Nation. Some electro-industrial groups adopted industrial metal techniques in this period, including Skinny Puppy, Front Line Assembly. British band Pitchshifter, formed in 1989 by brothers Jon and Mark Clayden started as an industrial metal band; the band included elements of drum and bass. Frontman JS mentions: In the early days we were inspired by bands like Head of David and Swans and the like... coming out of punk into the weird, total noise, kind of pre-industrial music. It gets called industrial but I don't know if it is. Industrial metal's popularity led a number of successful thrash metal groups, including Megadeth and Anthrax, to request remixes by "industrial" artists; some musicians emerging from the death metal scene, such as Fear Factory, Nailbomb and Meathook Seed began to experiment with industrial. Fear Factory, from Los Angeles, were influenced by the Earache roster (namely Godflesh
Smothered (song)
"Smothered" is a single by nu metal band Spineshank. It was only released in the United States in CD format; the music video features the band performing in a room while they are filmed by numerous hidden cameras, which they find and destroy. The song was nominated for Best Metal Performance at the 46th Grammy Awards, but lost to Metallica's "St. Anger." Card sleeve singleMaxi single Jonny Santos – lead vocals Mike Sarkisyan – guitar Robert Garcia – bass, backing vocals Tommy Decker – drums, electronics Official Music Video on YouTube
The Best of Spineshank
The Best of Spineshank is a greatest hits compilation album, released by the American industrial metal band Spineshank's former record label Roadrunner Records. It was released on January 29, 2008 and features material from the band's first 3 studio albums presented in reverse chronological order; the album has sold over 10,000 copies as of March 11, 2008. "Violent Mood Swings" - 3:29 "Smothered" - 3:07 "Stillborn" - 4:15 "Dead to Me" - 3:34 "Asthmatic" - 3:30 "The Height of Callousness" - 3:04 "New Disease" - 3:14 "Synthetic" - 3:09 "Cyanide 2600" - 3:10 "Detached" - 3:21 "Where We Fall" - 3:30 "Shinebox" - 3:07Tracks 10-12 are from the album Strictly Diesel Tracks 5-9 are from the album The Height of Callousness Tracks 1-4 are from the album Self-Destructive Pattern Jonny Santos – vocals Mike Sarkisyan – guitar, co-producer Robert Garcia – bass, backing vocals Tommy Decker – drums, programming GGGarth – Producer Ted Jensen – Mastering Frank Gryner – Engineering, Additional programming Scott Humphrey – Engineering, Additional programming Jay Baumgardner – Mixing Mark Kiczula – Assistant mixer Ben "Game Over" Kaplan – Digital editing Jeff Rothschild – Assistant digital editor Anthony "Fu" Valcic – Assistant digital editor Brad Kane – Additional Vocals
