Gone is Gone

Gone is Gone

Usually, I’d be leery of any metal group that I’d feel inclined to call artistic. It feels like metal is a universe where artistry ought to be servant to anger, or at least to noise. It shouldn’t be included in the major praise points for a band. If they’re turning the fuzz up on their guitars and torching the dreams and really howling, you want to feel like you can rip loose to their music and, I don’t know, have a fight.

You don’t want to feel like sitting still, perhaps with a dry shiraz, waiting for the act breaks to applaud. That jus’…ain’t doing the thing right.

That said…

Okay, before I go much further than that, I’ll just say that I’m whispering into my hat here. One of my favorite bands is Coheed and Cambria. They definitely rewire the elements of metal to serve a more, shall we say, elegant purpose than the background beat to moshing. Their lyrics don’t rhyme, their guitar is immensely intricate, and I think their studio albums are better music than their concert performances. Claudio Sanchez and Travis Stever celebrate everything intricate about their genre, and they raise it to the highest place they can manage.

I have always forgiven them that — that encouragement of many of the attitudes left out of the rest of metal (patience, curiosity, attentiveness). I’ve forgiven it, because Sanchez is a storyteller. Once all, now only most, of the albums from Coheed and Cambria constitute the Amory Wars Saga. There are characters and conflicts, and listening to their albums in order is an intricate, singular experience.

I always felt, though, like that was a logical extension of the concept album. So even though Coheed and Cambria stretch the fabric of metal — the escapist, purity of aggression nature of it — to include aspects that it was never expected to include, I still feel like what they do is, as it were, okay. They don’t have to be ejected from metal into the art rock scene.

The important thing is that I’ve never expected to happily compare anyone else to Coheed and Cambria for that exact reason. Because Coheed and Cambria can, I think, be allowed to remain metal while they break many of the rules.

I think that I shall have to wait for a few albums before I will permit, in my own mind, that Gone is Gone might be as intelligent as Coheed and Cambria.

After one album, I will concede that saying that Gone is Gone is allowed, in my judgment, to be kept on the Map of Metal. My blessing upon them, thrash on, wreckers. Melt everything.

Simultaneously, I am going to laud everything about this phrase: They’re worth sitting down with a dry shiraz and truly listening to. These dudes are doing something artistic. I’m not yet sure if it’s good art or bad art, but it’s art.

Their clay is metal. The sculpture is there. It’s available for your judgment.