Topic: Celldweller + Klank

[Quemaqua]

I've been on a dark music streak lately, which includes basically... anything.  I haven't been very picky.

Anyway, found Celldweller tonight, who it turns out has done a ton of licensing.  Apparently he's had every single track from his first self-titled album licensed to some sort of TV show or movie.  Generally this isn't the kind of stuff I'm a huge fan of, especially if it ends up seeing a lot of commercial use, but for some reason I'm liking some of it.  I have to be in a very specific kind of mood to listen to stuff like this, but... it's interesting.  Got kind of a Nine Inch Nails sort of vibe to it, though it does some rather different stuff.  A bit too produced for the masses maybe, but some of you guys might dig it.

However, that's not really what interests me so much.  This guy (calls himself "Klayton" now, which is sort of gay) and his music is cool here and there (the multiple layers on the first "Own Little World" remix on the MySpace page are really memorable, and the song "Frozen" does pretty well for an NIN-ish thing), but isn't anything I'm going to jump up and down over.  What I find interesting is that this guy apparently produced and did some work on Klank's first album.  On top of that, he was also the head member of Circle of Dust, a band that Klank belonged to as well.  Klay also did some work with Chatterbox as well.  I remember liking a song or two of theirs a long time ago.

Anyway, I'm sure none of you know who Klank is, but... he's weird.  He was basically labeled as a Christian artist (and I guess still is given his appearance at Cornerstone 2007, which makes sense since Circle of Dust was a Christian outfit), but his music really isn't.  Kind of at all.  Still Suffering, his first release, is 100% self-loathing, world-hating decadence.  You can hear some of it here.  This really isn't earthshaking stuff in terms of content, or really even in terms of overall sound, but this was one of the first really heavy bands I got into when I was younger, and a lot of it packs a punch.  Greater than the sum of its parts, I guess.  There are some pretty catchy hooks, and the production is good stuff, which is what made me pay a little attention to this Celldweller kid.

Oddly enough, though this album got a lot of press and popularity in its release year of 1995, it didn't get a followup album until 1999, and this was no longer on Tooth and Nail records, but on SmokeDogg, Klank's own label.  The sound changed drastically, and it was a huge disappointment to me at the time.  It went from super-heavy industrial stuff with an occasional NIN-twist to... well, shit, IMO.  For some reason they actually managed to get a lot of popularity from that album (as far as small, indy releases go), and I guess they recently released another EP, but I can't understand  how anybody could listen to the garbage.  It just sounds terrible.  The production sucks first and foremost, but the style of music is completely different as well, and while they advertise it as multi-genre music (and are apparently somewhat respected for it), it sounds to me like it just can't make up its mind about what it wants to do and proceeds to fail on all levels.  But maybe that's just me.

Anyway... what's the point of this thread?  None.  I'm depressed, feeling like total garbage, angry as fuck at my stupid neighbors from hell, and I'm tired like I haven't been tired in ages.  All this on the cusp of a huge writing day where I spent a ridiculous amount of time working on my novel, and for the first time in months felt I really, really connected with my characters and engaged them on an emotional level.  It also happened to be a depressing period for several characters, hence this connection really dragged on me.  By the end of the day I just wanted to crawl into a hole and die.  Writing fiction can be a lot more difficult than people give it credit for, and sometimes for different reasons than you'd expect.  Having to craft the form and function of a person's agony is not an easy task when you feel an emotional bond with them.

What the hell was I saying?  Oh... right.  Music.  Yeah, so I posted this for no reason.  I just stumbled upon internet things tonight and thought I'd share.  Hooray for random facts nobody gives a shit about!

EDIT - Actually, spending a bit more time with this Celldweller album, I'm actually rather enjoying it.  It's actually got some pretty good shit on it.  Crazy to think that the old Circle of Dust guy turned himself into some big commercial success, too, but one can definitely see that his lines were drawn somewhat like Trent Reznor's.  An interesting industry this music thing is.

[TheOtherBelmont]

I like parts of some of the stuff, especially the Klank album Still Suffering.  Some of the tracks on Klank's MySpace page are kinda mediocre though when compared to Still Suffering.  The Celldweller stuff has some good instrumentals, but the vocals that are in some of the songs are kinda not needed.  I'll have to give some of their albums a listen to sometime.  This is something I can see myself listening to every now and then though.

[Quemaqua]

I think my favorite Celldweller song at this point is one he actually didn't do.  It's the "Drop" remix of "Own Little World", which is awesome as crap.  Apparently this guy has huge remix contests, the first of which was for that song.  Drop didn't win, but a little searching on the internet indicates it was quite the fan favorite, hence being featured on his MySpace (it's the first of the two remixes).

And yes, most of what's on the Klank MySpace is crap because it's from his newer stuff (which sucks), not the first album.  The thing I linked to with the first album's clips is decent, but you really don't get to hear a lot of the more memorable hooks and stuff.  I'm sure you could find the album for ultra-cheap at this point.

 ...

Yeah, there you go.  Not quite as cheap as I thought, but not a bad price for it.

[W7RE]

A while back I started getting into what I called "industrial metal". I have no idea what you'd really call it though. I was sticking with Christian artists/bands mostly, and Chatterbox, Klank, and Circle of Dust were some of them. Just sifting through my MP3 collection real quick, here's what I found:

AP2 - like 3 songs
Chatterbox - full CD "Despite"
Circle of Dust - full CD "Disengage"
Klank - "Downside" CD, 5 tracks of remixes of the songs Downside and Animosity. Also a few random tracks I downloaded
Wyrick - a few random tracks I downloaded

I probably could have dug more, but that's about all I could get my hands on back then. I remember hearing about Celldweller and never being able to get my hands on anything but a couple random songs. I don't remember seing it in stores either.

[Quemaqua]

So I've spent a good amount of time with this album now, and I have to say its a winner.  The tracks on the MySpace are okay, but there's a lot more good stuff on the disk.  Only a couple downers, and even those aren't really that bad.  It's a good chunk of music too.  I've been listening to it pretty obsessively the last few days, and there are some really killer tracks.  The guy's influences are pretty far and wide.  You've got some Maynard (from Tool) vocal influence on several tracks, lots of NIN stuff but with a lot more dance and metal influence.  It's both eclectic and standard at the same time, but uses a solid base to build off of and just layers lots of interesting sounds on top of that.  And for this kind of music, most of it is really memorable.  Definitely give it a shot if you're curious, I think it's really a great album.

Listened to Klank's Still Suffering album a bit for old time's sake as well, and man... it's a really dark, sick thing.  You could take it as just kind of emo and whiny if you wanted to, but I think it's really much better than that when you get to the roots.  It presents the notion that it knows it's gone off the deep end on some levels, that it's plainly just being self-destructive and narrowly focused, and it's just dark and decadent in all the ways that a guilty pleasure should be.  It's like... metal chocolate cake.