My brother and I had unusual childhoods. While we were devoted to metal from an early age, we were also pretty nerdy kids. That word, "nerd" is highly overused these days. Everyone is a "nerd" now, but this was back when it meant something. You see, our idea of fun was watching re-runs of Carl Sagan's Cosmos over and over again. If you're not familiar with Cosmos, it was a TV series devoted to astrophysics, exobiology, physics, astronomy, chemistry and science in general...topics that are usually like kryptonite to kids. Sagan was a Ph D in astronomy and astrophysics. He taught at Cornell. Makes me wonder if he ever met or hung out with Alex Perialas while living in Ithica NY. As I've told you before, Alex lives there, and teaches at Ithica college (Cornell's retarded brother).
What a meeting of the minds of minds that would have been! Can you imagine? Sagan would discuss his work at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, while Perialas would go on and on about how he recorded the snare drum in Pro-Pain's album, versus his early work with Flotsam and Jetsam. My god...to be a fly on the wall!
But back to Sagan. anyone that knows me well will tell you that if you speak to me about a serious topic for more than ten minutes, I will end up quoting Cosmos sooner than later. I'm not necessarily proud of this, but as always, I try to be honest with our beloved readers. Actually, a few years ago, my brother bought the entire Cosmos series...and we watched the whole thing in one sitting. That's 13 hours in one sitting. Now that you know this about me, it should come as no surprise that from the moment I heard Nocturnus and their pseudo-scientific lyrical content I was hooked. You know that Death song "Cosmic Sea"? I love it.
Time travel? Droids entering? Sign me up!
Why am I telling you all this? Well...because I simply just wanted to. But also because I want to explain the title of this post. It's a line from the movie Contact, which Sagan wrote. In that movie, Jodi Foster's character is chosen from all of humanity to travel aboard a spaceship, so she can get back and tell the whole world what she saw. She travels and sees either outer space, or heaven or something..it's unclear. Whatever it is, she feels she's ill-prepared to describe it to the rest of the world, because of its unbelievable beauty...since she's just a scientist. Her response to seeing such beauty and feeling like she's unable to describe it, as you can probably guess is:
"They should have sent a poet."
Sometimes, I see great metal-related clips or pictures online...and I am just as humbled as Foster's character was in the movie Contact. I too, wish they would have sent a poet, since I am unable to describe such beauty to all of you. If you feel I oversold this clip...so be it. Enjoy.
If you want even more, check out the remix.
*Closing note: Credit goes to comedian Artie Lange, from the Howard Stern show. He reminded me of this quote, when he dropped it during the show, as he watched ex-Death and Iced Earth drummer Richard Christy get his balls and asshole waxed.
I can't believe that in the 18 months or so that this blog has been up, we've never actually written about Nocturnus in depth! What a tragedy! "The Key" is a classic of sci-fi death metal, and was highly influential to me as a youngster who loved video games and shred guitar. In retrospect it is mostly only good for laughs, but as the album that brought us the Nocturnus time machine, we would be remiss if we didn't take the time to discuss each song.
1. Lake of Fire I guess this song is about Hell? It's kind of a slow start to the album in my opinion. I mean, the thought of going to Hell is definitely scary, but it isn't really as interesting as droids, time machines, or Jawas like some of the other songs.
Encyclopedia Metallum doesn't say so, but I suspect the guy who played keyboards in Nocturnus went on to jam with Lil John
Musically, though, this is perhaps the definitive Nocturnus song! It highlights two of the elements that make Nocturnus who they are. First, you can tell that the drummer is also the singer because he obviously cannot handle juggling multiple rhythms and says every word on a snare hit. Second, I don't expect lavish, baroque piano passages or whatever, but the keyboard playing is laughably simplistic. Like this song, it goes "Lake! Of! Fire! *weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee*" I seriously think he is just holding down two keys during the entire chorus. It makes Lil John seem like a keyboard virtuoso.
About 10 or 11 years ago, when I was at the height of my Nocturnus obsession, my friend Vince and I would sometimes just blurt out "Lake! Of! Fire! *weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee*" and play air keyboards. I haven't seen that guy in ages but I'd like to know what happened to him, he was a cool guy. Last I heard he was making his living selling jeans on eBay or something??
This is the only Carcass song I like. The rest are boring, un-brutal dinosaur metal.
2. Standing in Blood Aside from the main riff being stolen from "Criminally Insane," there isn't much about this song that's remarkable. I'm just going to skip it, because there are much better songs to spend time writing about.
Instead, I will tell a story about Carcass. Many years ago I was friends with this guy Don who was in a hardcore band called Spudmonsters that were apparently pretty popular in Europe. They toured with Carcass, and Don said "We were really scared, we didn't know what these guys were gonna be like! Then they come out, and they're a bunch of skinny vegans with dreadlocks and pink guitars!"
Along the same lines, I saw Obituary in 97 with Kiss It Goodbye and this post-hardcore band called Stillsuit. I was just standing around with my girlfriend at the time, and one of the dudes (his name was Manny) came up to us out of the blue and said "Uh, hey, what's up? You guys are like the only people here not wearing black death metal shirts so I just thought I'd hang out with you if that's cool?" Turns out that he was an original member of DMS, which was pretty funny, but that he had also never heard Obituary before this tour. "We were stoked to hear them, because we figured they would be like really gnarly technical shit, but then when we heard them play for the first time we were like 'What the fuck, this sounds like 25 Ta Life!'"
3. Visions from Beyond the Grave This is the first song where it starts to get interesting! Up until this point, the lyrics could really be from any run-of-the-mill death metal/thrash band. But once you start getting crystal balls in the mix, it starts to feel like Nocturnus!
Communicate with the dead, after life communicate with the dead, after death asking questions, through my crystal ball now we'll see, what lies, from beyond
The dead will arise when I invoke them through my crystal ball
If I had a crystal ball, the last thing I would be doing is talking to dead people. They would probably just complain, or ask me to say hi to people who are still alive that they miss. Like "Bro, will you say hi to Guy 'Hard On' Sikes for me?? I love that dude!" I would probably use my crystal ball to look at boobies somehow. Like I said the other day, I hope when I die, I come back as the mirror in a Forever 21 dressing room. Maybe Nocturnus could write a song about that?? They seem to be into stuff like reincarnation.
4. Neolithic I'll be honest, I don't really get this song. It's about the ice age or something, and continents drifting apart and stuff. Not really sure how that fits into the whole time machine/Satan theme... maybe Mike Browning had just taken an Intro to Geology class at Dade County Community College and wanted to show off his newly acquired knowledge? Who knows.
You have to admit, this could be a lost Nocturnus track!
Musically, this song is actually pretty decent. It kind of reminds me of the soundtrack for Castlevania: Symphony of The Night, especially that one song "Dracula's Castle." Man, I need to play that game again. The DS and GBA games are great and all, but nothing beats SOTN.
6. Before Christ/After Death Like many people, this was the song that originally got me into Nocturnus when I heard it on "Grindcrusher." In fact, if I'm not mistaken I think I saw them on the Grindcrusher tour with Napalm Death or something?? This would have been like 1990 so the details are extremely fuzzy.
Before Christ no one cared evil was in everyone's heart sins were committed every day of your life there was no wrong from right
Then he came to change it all he really thought he could do some good the son of God sent to this Earth but the Romans showed him what he was worth
Anyway, this song is apparently about how everything was cool and chill until Jesus came along and ruined everybody's fun. So they decided to kill him. They're all "Dude that guy Jesus is hella uptight, what's his fuckin problem? I just wanted to chillax with these false idols, do some gambling, and hang out with those money changers at the temple and he totally freaked out. Not cool!" So then they had to kill him to show him who was boss.
7. Andromeda Strain This song is about chemical warfare. Sort of like the Slayer song "Chemical Warfare." It describes how Nocturnus used their powers to create a powerful biological weapon that they unleashed on humanity:
Modern warfare of today brings forth a new technology
Killing through scientific means destroy the world with technology Now we'll see what is to be inescapability
Cloud masses concentrate osmosis fills the sky, sky
Scattered remains, bodies left to decay on this disease stricken earth, plague of Andromeda Strain
Affected by the gas reduce them to subhuman form
As I glimpse at, swelled up corpses infested with, radiated insects
Now I don't mean to be a dick, but I have to say that the writing is remarkably poor in this song. For example, "Modern warfare of today." Isn't that a bit redundant? And "Osmosis fills the sky, sky": First of all, osmosis isn't a thing that would "fill the sky." Second, it's obvious that they repeated "sky" because they needed another syllable in the line, which is about the laziest solution possible. I think this song would have benefited from another round of editing. Perhaps Dade County Community College has some creative writing classes or something that could help?
This is kind of how I felt when I read the lyrics to "Droid Sector" for the first time
8. Droid Sector Now this is where the album starts to get really good! In terms of lyrical content, this is probably my favorite song on the album (emphasis mine):
Cybernetic crafts approaching through skies lit with fusion discharge androids from the Gamma quadrant moving at the speed of death
Now the human race is so vulnerable invasion set for the attack "Enter The Droids"
Command - Mission - Destroy - Planet - Three - From - Their Sun
Caught within my tractor beam bringing the craft to me disable the robot for my own use to aid in my escape
ENTER THE DROIDS
Fleets of ships are now arriving, overtaking physical evasion is my only demise left to me for my survival
Gaining data from their systems, overriding to complete my invention, the time machine only question is "Will it function?"
God, where do I even start?! Gamma quadrant? Tractor beam?? ENTER THE DROIDS?! Every line is more bonkers than the last. It's sort of like when you try to befriend the weirdo kid in school that eats his own boogers and sits in the back of the room by himself all the time. You're like, "Hey Mike Browning, what are you drawing?" and he's like "It's a droid from Gamma quadrant. It has dual tractor beams, fusion discharge cannons, and a time machine. He's on a recon mission, scouting this sector before the rest of the droids come and destroy your puny race." You really don't know what to say then, so you are just like "Oh... uh, that's cool. Well good luck with that!" and slowly back away. You know it's bad when it's so dorky and weird that it freaks out even socially awkward metal nerds like me.
Things Nocturnus would destroy if they had access to a time machine: baby Jesus
9. Destroying the Manger In case you aren't familiar with it, this song is the origin of the "Nocturnus time machine" meme. It is about using a time machine to travel back to 0 BC and killing Jesus in the cradle:
Mastering the forces of teleportation gaining the secrets to travel through time approaching the vortex, chronometer reading 0 B.C.
What was the past will soon be changed my first priority to destroy the manger crushing the myth of paradox
Look, I understand that music is entertainment and escapism, but this is just embarrassing. In the same way as you shake your head with embarrassment whenever some idiot in a band talks about his dumb "concept album" or whatever, this makes you wonder what it was like when Mike Browning brought this song to practice: "Hey guys, I have a new song, it's about building a time machine, going back to 0 BC, and killing baby Jesus!" I'm picturing an uncomfortable silence punctuated by an awkward cough, then one of the guys who is the nice one that hates conflict is like "Uh, sounds awesome... wanna show us the first riff?" and looks at everyone else, giving them that look like "Come on, be cool!"
Mike Browning is driving this
10. Empire of the Sands I love this one too!! My favorite part is the sounds of whips at the beginning before the song actually starts. I think it is about how after they kill Jesus, Nocturnus builds a fortress on some desert planet where theyrule over their massive empire after summoning ancient gods with their Commodore 64:
computer summons ancient evil forces beyond recognition evoking Gods of Sumerian origin deeply buried in the sands
Obeying the matrix the tyrant commands submissive controller armies of the Empire
For whatever reason, this song makes me think of the Jawas' Sandcrawler from The Empire Strikes Back. It also makes me remember the precise moment I realized I was a huge dork. I had been listening to this song (on my cassette Walkman, of course), then went to hang out with my friend Nick Ganig from Cleveland. We went to the arcade, and on the way there we listened to the Redbook audio tracks from a burned copy of the Japanese version of Ridge Racer in his car. I think we played Die Hard Arcade and Powerstone, then went to his parents' house and played Dreamcast? That was fun, I miss that guy!
Nocturnus meets Queen?!
Closing thoughts Well, I think that's about everything that could possibly be said about this album, and then some! If you haven't listened to it, you really should, if only to get a glimpse into the warped, childlike mind of Mike Browning. It really is unique, and is perhaps the only album in the genre of "time machine metal"? Although the Oxiplegatz record kind of reminds me of it...
Time travel? Droids entering? Sign me up!
