King Crimson’s In the Court of Crimson King is, without a doubt, one of the most influential albums of the 1960s. No, it isn’t Pet Sounds or Rubber Soul, but in essence a denial of everything The Beatles, The Beach Boys, and other pop groups represented. Removing the blues influence and instead putting a jazzier spin on rock, King Crimson revolutionized the fledgling progressive rock genre. As Shining closes its latest album, Blackjazz, with Crimson’s classic “21st Century Schizoid Man,” it is important to note the influence of King Crimson on Shining and the style of this album. But there is something else that makes Blackjazz special.
Author and journalist Greil Marcus published a book in 1989 entitled Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century. The book attempts to essentialize the rebellions of the Twentieth Century by connecting the Dadaists, the Surrealists, the French avant-garde artists known as Situationist International, and most importantly, The Sex Pistols. He explains the importance of songs like “Anarchy in the U.K.” as such: “[The song] is a joke - and yet the voice that carries remains something new in rock ‘n’ roll . . . a voice that denied all social facts, and in that denial affirmed that everything was possible.” This strict denial of norms, propagated by King Crimson and the Sex Pistols alike, forms the philosophical basis for understanding Shining’s music. It is a denial of sonic norms, a combination of the most complicated, artistic progressive rock and the pure fury and gusto of the Sex Pistols.
Shining titled its album 'Blackjazz' in an attempt to describe the sound of the album: a combination of black metal and jazz that it has been developing through albums such as In the Kingdom of Kitsch You Will Be A Monster and Grindstone. And the band has finally created its most focused album yet. It is relentless, powerfully heavy and intense at its loudest moments, and disturbingly dissonant at its quietest. Yet in that barrage of darkness lies the album’s weaknesses as well.
Though the album’s closer, “21st Century Schizoid Man” is the best place to start analyzing Blackjazz, as that influential song forms the basis for the album’s sound. Melodically and harmonically, Shining essentially stick to King Crimson’s version. The dark, jazzy saxophone riff appears in full form, though spoken in more of a growled tone to complement the distorted sound of Shining. The band has slowed the main riff quite a bit, and drummer Torstein Lofthus gives the song a more metal feel. The vocals, provided by Grutle Kjellson of Enslaved, lend a more metal growl than the sung-but-distorted vocals of Crimson’s Greg Lake. Shining has taken the jazz of King Crimson, but painted the blue feeling black.
Interestingly, things that Shining edited out of its cover of “21st Century Schizoid Man” appear in other places on the album. For example, the aforementioned distorted vocals appear in “Fisheye,” in an almost Slipknot-style breakdown. The comparison may not be flattering, but Shining makes even that alt-metal influence fit into the sound well. King Crimson closes “21st Century Schizoid Man” with a free jazz breakdown, but Shining does not. Instead, that free jazz influence worms its way into “Omen,” easily the most avant-garde song on the album.
Overall, the album’s sound takes King Crimson’s jazzy prog and filters it through a technical black metal aesthetic, and the title Blackjazz is very fitting. To connect back to Marcus’ theories on the Sex Pistols, Shining’s album certainly, at least sonically, creates that shock effect, but instead of doing it through the Sex Pistols’ purely noisy sound, Shining composes its music intelligently to achieve much of the same means. Unfortunately, the album has no flipside to this, and the intensity is grating. Even the fifty-seven second “Exit Sun” is a quick, accented drum and bass jam. Yet despite this unrelenting attack, the sound it does provide is quite excellent and worth a listen.
-Tyler Fisher