Ben Richardson

Five stars for the doom metal miracles of Pentagram

John Elberling
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Five stars for the doom metal miracles of Pentagram

Given Pentagram singer Bobby Liebling’s gargantuan drug intake over the last forty years, the fact that the diminutive, goggle-eyed rocker continues to croon cult doom metal hits onstage — Pentagram will be at DNA Lounge on Wed/24 — is nothing short of a miracle.

Finally clean at 56, Liebling is back on the road with a talented new incarnation of the band he founded in Arlington, VA in 1971, brandishing a surprisingly intact larynx.

The muscular, down-tuned hard rock hasn’t changed either, not that anyone would want it to. Last fall’s Pentagram show at DNA sold out – don’t sleep on this one!

PENTAGRAM
With Ludicra, Slough Feg, Orchid
Wed/24, 8:30pm, $22
DNA Lounge
375 11 th St., SF
(415) 626-1409
www.dnalounge.com

Bay Area black metal: Ludicra’s gripping new “Tenant”

Sue Vaughan
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Bay Area black metal: Ludicra’s gripping new “Tenant”

It’s hard to believe, but black metal is around 20 years old. During its second decade, the music has been gradually subsumed into the metal mainstream, cannibalized, recombined, and reinvented. Pulled in one direction by the commercialization of bands like Dimmu Borgir, and in the other direction by the hermetic inaccessibility of solo studio acts like San Francisco’s Leviathan, fans and metal taxonomers have circled the wagons around arbitrary criteria, judging bands on whether or not they use a keyboard, or whether or not they’re from Scandinavia.

Thankfully, in the Bay Area, we’ve got a black metal band who couldn’t care less what the guarantors of kvlt (sic) purity have to say. San Francisco’s Ludicra hit stores with their fourth full-length today, and Tenant (Profound Lore Records) showcases an act at the height of their considerable powers, churning out organic-sounding, progressive black metal mixed with affecting, punk-rock humility. In place of frozen Norwegian rivers or blood-soaked Vikings, the album derives its themes from the eerie, uncanny, and horrifying aspects of urban living, as its title eloquently suggests.

Guitarists John Cobbett (also of Hammers of Misfortune) and Christy Cather favor warmer guitar tones of the type that won Wolves in the Throne Room so much critical aplomb, and they’re buttressed in this choice by the throat-shredding vocals of Laurie Sue Shanaman, which give the music a visceral, catharctic potency. Drummer Aesop Dekker is nimble if understated, and brings a welcome humanity to a genre that is generally so chops- and blast-beat-heavy.

The scything 6/8 riff that begins album opener “Stagnant Pond” is a harbinger of things to come, ascending into meditative chaos before giving way to the stately, mid-tempo blast that opens “A Larger Silence.” “In Stable” is the LP’s barn-burner, with its pulsing, black ‘n’ roll verse and massive ending build.

All of the album’s seven tracks are longer than five minutes, and two top nine, so it’s a testament to the Ludicra’s arranging talent that the songs breeze by as fast as they often do. Whether it’s a stop-on-a-dime meter shift or a clever bit of pagan-folk filigree, its hard not to be impressed by the band’s songwriting acumen. “Clean White Void” displays a notable NWOBHM influence, a stark contrast to the relentless blast beats on “Truth Won’t Set You Free” and the meditative chanting in the album-closing title track “Tenant.” Taken as a whole, the album is a gripping evocation of anger, fear, and sadness – what’s more black metal than that?

Riff evangelists

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Riff evangelists

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC "I felt pretty much the day Wino called me up that it was a really important, really essential thing." Speaking by phone from Los Angeles, Shrinebuilder bassist/vocalist Al Cisneros makes the founding of his new band seem inevitable, like some sort of astronomical event. "Wino" is the nom de rock preferred by legendary guitarist/vocalist Scott Weinrich, cofounder of a new collaboration between musical luminaries that also includes guitarist/vocalist Scott Kelly and drummer/vocalist Dale Crover.

For fans of a certain kind of slow, heavier-than-lead music called "doom metal," these are all household names. Cisneros played bass in the mythical South Bay trio Sleep (with High on Fire’s Matt Pike) before founding drone metallers Om. Wino’s is the most impressive pedigree, one defined by stints with Washington, D.C.-area doom pioneers the Obsessed and L.A. cult heroes St. Vitus. Kelly is well-known in the Bay Area for his work with Oakland experimental titans Neurosis. Crover cut his teeth in Seattle, drumming for the Melvins.

The towering reputations and wide-ranging commitments of the musicians involved made creating the first Shrinebuilder album a scheduling nightmare. Rehearsals took place in multiple locations, often with only two members present — those absent participated by swapping riffs over the Internet. Despite these logistical difficulties, Cisneros insists, the process couldn’t have been more natural. "The in-person rehearsals really just confirmed the songs that we had going." Confined to only three days of studio time, they nevertheless crafted a self-titled album that exudes a confident coherence across its five lengthy tracks.

Even the lyrics, often a point of contention in other, lesser bands, benefited from this uncanny natural understanding: "Without explaining anything about the song, or the vibe, we just all knew what went next — how to proceed," Cisneros recalls. "We had a common understanding of the lyrical theme between all of us. I’m not sure that’s common in bands. We didn’t really need to say anything, we just all finished the lyrics as each other would have."

As can be guessed from the band’s name, the lyrical theme is one of religion, and construction, and the marriage of the two. Song titles like "Solar Benediction," "Pyramid of the Moon," and "The Architect" exemplify this fascination. More than just singing about worshipers, however, the members of Shrinebuilder are worshipers themselves, crafting a temple of their own design. As Kelly explains in an interview with Decibel magazine, "I think we’re just laying more bricks on the foundation that has been laid previously … it’s really an homage to sound, to music, and to its infinite wisdom, you know? The power of it. The religion that is sound. The electric church. All of that. I think that that’s been our lives."

The members of Shrinebuilder, then, are the four riff evangelists, and the album, like the New Testament, is a coherent whole that allows significant leeway for the individual tendencies of its creators. Each of the album’s five songs is a concatenation of different parts, many of which bear the tell-tale fingerprints of their authors. Wino’s bluesy howl makes his sections easy to identify; so too Kelly’s muscular, mammoth riffs and Cisneros’ syrupy bass lines. The album’s most liturgical passage occurs halfway through "Pyramid of the Moon," when an epic, reverberant riff suddenly culminates in haunting, euphonic chanting, which Kelly insists was entirely improvised by Crover and Cisneros in the studio.

Preparations have already begun for another, longer album, one that will involve more rehearsal and more studio time. But even if conflicts arise, the members of Shrinebuilder can rely on the natural affinity that results from their canonization as doom metal apostles. Have you heard the good news?

SHRINEBUILDER

with Harvestman, A Storm of Light

Sun/7, 8 p.m., $17

The Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1421

www.theindependentsf.com

High on Fire’s latest is divine

Sue Vaughan
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Wielding his custom-made nine-string axe, churning out tone so thick it could flaunt hot pants in a rap video, and crafting an ever-expanding arsenal of neck-snapping riffage, High on Fire guitarist Matt Pike has done it again.

His playing on the Oakland trio’s new album, Snakes for the Divine (Koch Records), surmounts a new, fiery height. That the things he already did well (effortless, legato hammer-ons, heavy-handed, scything chords) are done better is hardly surprising – it’s the expanding versatility of the snaggle-toothed shredder’s songwriting and technique that impresses, along with his ever-improving vocals. Though Pike’s work in Sleep will inevitably serve as a preamble, it is likely that the virtuosity and creativity of his High on Fire output will reverberate longer, and heavier, in posterity.

The album’s production, courtesy of Slayer knobsman Greg Fidelman, strikes an agreeable balance between Steve Albini’s uncompromising, abrasive work on 2005’s Blessed Black Wings (Relapse Records) and the enveloping warmth of Jack Endino’s Death Is This Communion (Relapse, 2007). Fidelman’s task is made easier by the fact that High on Fire are a power trio that sounds like a power octet. Nevertheless, he replicates the commendable work he did on Slayer’s World Painted Blood (American/Sony, 2009), wringing vast, organic-sounding potency out of the drums and amplifiers without sacrificing instrument separation.

Bassist Jeff Matz deserves plaudits for his reverberant, foundation-shaking appearance in a supporting role, anchoring crucial chord progressions and driving thunderous grooves as Pike ascends into the sativa stratosphere. One-guitar bands often lose momentum during leads and solos, and the fact that High on Fire never does is a testament to Matz’s quality, along with that of drummer Des Kensel. One of the hardest hitters in the business, Kensel’s truncheon-like approach is complimented by the exorbitant circumferences of his cymbals and toms. He and Pike have long enjoyed a striking musical understanding, exemplified by the lockstep concordance of the former’s riffs and the latter’s barbells-in-the-dryer tom runs, and the connection has rarely born riper fruit than the meter-bending wallops of album’s title track, along with the drummer’s effortless shifts into double-bass driven double-time later in the song.

Following immediately after the eponymous opening salvo, lead single “Frost Hammer” kicks off with cascading drums before settling into a propulsive, downbeat-heavy groove, delivering an arena-ready shout of “frost ham-mer!” at a number of key junctures. “Bastard Samurai” starts as a doomy, meditative plod before erupting into strident, lost-face anguish during the choruses, and is soon followed by reckless, frantic thrash of “Ghost Neck.”

Closing track “Holy Flames of the Firespitter” begins with a riff that hearkens back to the band’s previous albums, reminding old-school fans that even as High on Fire evolves, they remain relentlessly true to their hard-scrabble roots. Don’t expect them to be changed by a new label, a big-name producer, or last year’s arena tour — they’re a band that eats Motorhead, drinks Sabbath, and bleeds Slayer, and Snakes for the Divine proves that they are at the absolute pinnacle of their game.

Nothing’s shocking

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Nothing’s shocking

BioShock 2

(2K Games/Digital Extremes/Arkane Studios); Xbox360, PS3, PC

GAMER The original BioShock (2007) was a revelation in game design, inviting players into a living, breathing world that simultaneously awed and terrified, an undersea metropolis at the bottom of the Atlantic, undergirded by a surprisingly deep treatment of Objectivist philosophy. In the game’s stylized 1950s, the city of Rapture is conceived and built by its founder Andrew Ryan as a libertarian paradise. Developer Irrational Games rendered it as a gorgeous ruin, filled with Art Deco filigree, cascading seawater, and haunting period music — the soundtrack to a uptopia’s devolution into Hobbesian chaos.

There were many who balked when the sequel was announced, and the concerns of the naysayers seem justified in light of a game that cannot muster the watertight coherence of its predecessor. BioShock 2 puts you into the clanking dive suit of one of the original’s iconic “Big Daddy” characters, genetically modified brutes who protect creepy, glowing-eyed “Little Sisters” as they harvest ADAM (the game’s magical, chemical MacGuffin) from the ruined corpses strewn liberally about.

Big Daddies were panic-inducing adversaries the first time around, so it serves as an interesting inversion to step into their weighted boots and impale crazed “splicers” (Rapture’s mutilated, gene modification-addicted denizens) with a drill-bit the size of a traffic cone. Your character’s ability to breathe underwater enables the introduction of brief traverses outside the city’s pressurized buildings — a novel exercise in the eerie, aquatic sublime.

The player’s Big Daddy is one of the original models, codenamed “Delta,” and the action of the game is driven by your attempts to reunite with your Sister sidekick. In your way is Dr. Sofia Lamb, a sort of Stepford Stalin who replaces the Randian exhortations Andrew Ryan provided via radio in the first game with a lot of religious, communitarian claptrap. Unfortunately, Lamb isn’t half the adversary Ryan was, and the game’s story has none of the careful calibration or bold engagement with questions of individual freedom that made its predecessor so affecting.

Instead, in classic video game sequel fashion, the title throws a bunch of zany “bigger and better” ideas at you, in the form of new weapons, ADAM- derived pseudo-spells, and the “Big Sisters,” spindly, hyperkinetic murderers who are mostly notable for their tinnitus-inducing screeches. A frantic new multiplayer mode is likely the cause of the item overload and short single-player campaign, and though serviceable, those in search of frags are likely to find satisfaction elsewhere. Like Rapture itself, the BioShock franchise began as a grand, noble idea — only to descend into internecine, leaking disrepair.

Galaxy quest

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Galaxy quest

MASS EFFECT 2

(Bioware/Electronic Arts) PC, Xbox360

GAMER It took a piece of state-of-the-art hardware and a team of abundantly talented animators and programmers to get me back to the gaming basics. I’d assumed control of Commander Shepard, hero of Mass Effect 2, and I needed to weigh my many options; making the wrong choice would have disastrous consequences. As the Xbox hummed and guzzled power from across the room, the back of a takeout menu became its newest pen-and-paper peripheral — a list of pros and cons.

The first Mass Effect introduced us to Commander Shepard and the galaxy he inhabits: our familiar Milky Way, but teeming with alien species, political intrigue, and the casualties of interstellar capitalism. It, too, was a game of choices. The series’ developer, BioWare, specializes in role-playing games built around these choices, allowing players to make their own decisions while navigating intricate dialogue trees and labyrinthine, branching plots. Moral quandaries and rhetorical pickles are almost as frequent as futuristic gun battles in Mass Effect 2, and an instinct for the right choice of words at the right moment can be more valuable than a hyperactive trigger finger. The characters you encounter can be made to do your bidding, but only if you cajole those who need cajoling, and threaten those who can’t be cajoled.

It’s a system that cannot be sustained without top-notch writing, and BioWare’s well-honed dialogue, careful storytelling, and limber imagination can be felt in every aspect of the game. Though the subject matter takes full advantage of a “Mature” rating, it avoids the schlock or ham-handedness that plagues similarly calibrated titles. The shocking crimes of Mass Effect are the product of a science fiction universe built painstakingly from the ground up, and as Shepard journeys across the galaxy, he encounters crises mundane and mythic.

Though some troublesome complaints persist, the sequel improves on the original in most important areas, boasting a fleshed-out side-quest system, refined galactic exploration methods, and a host of other changes designed to make life as the savior of the galaxy just a little bit easier. The farther into the game you get, however, the less these mechanical concerns matter — the staggering ambition of the designers, along with the depth and nuance of the fiction they created, dwarf more pedestrian concerns. As an inhabitant of a dangerous, space-operatic world that feels more alive than most video game representations of existence on Earth, your survival will depend on your decisions. Choose wisely.

Watching the detective

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Watching the detective

FILM Like many movies to come before it, and surely many to come after, Sherlock Holmes is completely misrepresented by its trailer. The producers were understandably eager to get butts in the seats on Christmas, and for modern audiences, butts in the seats means fists in the face during commercial breaks.

There is some perfunctory ass-kicking in director Guy Ritchie’s big-ticket adaptation of the venerable franchise, but old-school Holmes fans will be pleased to learn that the fisticuffs soon give way to a more traditional detective adventure. For all his foibles, Ritchie is well-versed in the art of free-wheeling, entertaining, London-based crime capers. And though Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s legendary characters have been freshened up for a contemporary audience, the film has a comfortingly traditional feel to it.

Ritchie is lucky to have an actor as talented as Robert Downey Jr. in the title role, and the pair make good use of the American’s talents to create a Holmes resplendent in diffident, pipe-smoking, idiosyncratic glory. Though the film takes liberal creative license with the literary character’s offhand reference to martial prowess, it’s all very English, very Victorian (flying bowler hats, walking sticks, and bare-knuckle boxing), and more or less grounded in the century or so of lore that has sprung up around the world’s greatest detective.

Jude Law’s John Watson is a more charismatic character this time around, defying the franchise’s tradition, and the byzantine dynamics of the pair’s close friendship are perfectly calibrated. Holmes and Watson join forces with Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams), a Yankee femme fatale who has also been fleshed out from between the lines, and take on the sinister Lord Blackwood, played menacingly by Ritchie veteran Mark Strong.

The script, by Michael Robert Johnson, Anthony Peckham, and Simon Kinberg, suffers a little by borrowing from other Victorian crime fictions better left untouched, but they get the title character’s inimitable “science of deduction” down pat, and the plot is rife with twists, turns, and inscrutable skullduggery. Holmesians have suffered since the death of Jeremy Brett (whose portrayal of the sleuth Downey can rival, but never outstrip), and it is a pleasure to inform them, along with the rest of the nation’s holiday moviegoers, that the game is once again afoot.

SHERLOCK HOLMES opens Fri/25 in Bay Area theaters.

Some kind of mastodon

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Some kind of mastodon

119-metal.jpg
Guardian illustration of Mastodon’s Brent Hinds, Dimebag Darrell, and Metallica’s Lars Ulrich by Matt Furie and Aiyana Udesen

DECADE IN MUSIC When Limp Bizkit took the stage at Woodstock ’99, its sophomore album, Significant Other (Interscope/MCA), had been in stores for a month, debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard charts. For a group whose previous apex was the metaphorical perfection of its "band emerges from giant toilet" set design at the ’98 Ozzfest, this was a huge accomplishment. The album would go on to sell more than 16 million copies.

Despite this gargantuan haul, something changed forever that night in Rome, N.Y. Having whipped the crowd into a frenzy while performing the band’s hit single "Break Stuff," Limp Bizkit singer Fred Durst bore the brunt of the criticism in the aftermath of a concert that devolved into chaos, arson, and rape. The justice of these allegations was dubious, but the damage had been done. The red-capped rap-rocker and his band never recovered, and a new decade began, one that had no time for Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water (Interscope), or the entire genre of "nü metal," which had begun an inescapable demise, coughing out System of a Down’s bizarre masterpiece Toxicity (American) in 2001 like the final contrition of a dying sinner.

Having survived the deteriorated septums of the 1980s and the deteriorated JNCO hemlines of the 1990s, metal was finally afforded a fresh start. There was an explosion of post-hardcore and "screamo" artists, of varying quality. European imports that had weathered the U.S.’s fallow period enjoyed new-found appreciation; the Gothenburg death metal sound stormed across the Atlantic, though it was soon to be done to, well, death by a crop of Second World imitators. Seeds were also sown in these early years for two trends that would suffuse the decade to come. The release in 2002 of Isis’ Oceanic (Ipecac) and Killswitch Engage’s The End of Heartache (Roadrunner) fomented an explosion of glacial, Neurosis-inspired instrumental "post-metal" on the one hand, and mall-friendly, screaming-to-crooning metalcore on the other.

Tragedy struck in 2004, and metal fans reeled as they learned that Damageplan guitarist "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott had been shot and killed while performing at a Columbus, Ohio, nightclub. The Texan’s groundbreaking sounds had given many a headbanger hope during the nü metal years. And though the breakup of Abbott’s band Pantera in 2003 had been a heavy blow, the senseless crime perpetrated by schizophrenic ex-Marine Nathan Gale (who killed four in total) threw an entire musical community into mourning. The untimely death of one of the genre’s true geniuses will be a unmistakable blot on the decade when the historical long view is taken.

While the wounds of a recent passing were still healing, multi-putf8um Bay Area thrashers Metallica picked at older scars, releasing the introspective documentary Some Kind of Monster (2004), to critical acclaim. An unfettered look at a band with more than 20 years of emotional baggage to work through, the film was unswervingly painful to watch. Nevertheless, the publicly humiliating therapy proved effective, and Metallica emerged with more purpose than it had mustered in years. It is matched in its renewed vigor by a growing crop of classic metal bands that have staggered out of the ’90s with new tours, new albums, reunited lineups, and a new generation of fans, including their Bay Area peers Testament, Exodus, and Death Angel.

These graying warriors have been introduced to younger audiences by a proliferation of national package tours, which bundle large stables of artists to appeal to the widest possible audiences, leading in turn to widespread temporal and subgeneric cross-pollination. The venerable Ozzfest franchise led the charge before succumbing to economic privation, though not before a 2005 spat between the members of Iron Maiden and Ozzy Osbourne’s wife-cum-manager Sharon culminated in the indefatigable Irons being hassled onstage by her egg-throwing minions.

The release of Guitar Hero II (Harmonix/RedOctane/Activision) in 2006 was similarly instrumental in the revitalization of metal and guitar-driven music more generally. Though the first installment sold well, it was the sequel that ushered in the phenomenon as we know it today, and an unimpeachable track list opened the ears of the video-gaming public to a world of distorted possibility. It was as adept at resurrecting older artists as it was at breaking younger ones, and metal mainstays like Mastodon and the Sword owe the tastemakers at Harmonix a debt of thanks.

Mastodon’s rise to prominence as America’s premier young metal band marks a fitting end to this decade of destruction. Raised on ’70s prog, ’80s thrash, and the hardscrabble underground music of the ’90s, its music is as aggressively technical and high-brow as Limp Bizkit’s was simple and mookish. 2003’s Leviathan (Relapse) and follow-ups Blood Mountain (Relapse, 2006) and Crack the Skye (Relapse, 2009) encapsulate an era hungry for music that is simultaneously heavy, challenging, and as ambitious as the output of metal’s resurrected masters. Now we must await the riffs of this century’s teenage years.

No escape from Azeroth

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No escape from Azeroth

World of Warcraft
Blizzard Entertainment (PC, Mac)

Most games don’t celebrate anniversaries, nor do they last long enough to celebrate five. World of Warcraft is so unlike most games that its recent milestone seems like just a pit-stop on the way to its 10th, or 15th year. Produced by Blizzard Entertainment in Irvine, the Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game (MMORPG) has rewritten the rules of the possible when it comes to computerized entertainment, smashing records of size, scope, and popularity with every new press release.
Since it debuted Nov. 23, 2004, players have logged cumulative years of their lives into the game, creating characters and venturing forth into a vast world filled with ax-toting foes and ravenous, mythical beasts. Their progress is driven by the accumulation of experience (doled out for vanquishing enemies and completing epic missions); reputation (among fellow players and also the computer-controlled “nonplayer characters” that pepper the vast, living world); and loot, the not-so-secret lifeblood of the MMORPG enterprise, which pumps through the endless “my sword is bigger than yours” status grind at the heart of the game. Thanks to the $15 subscription fee that each player ponies up each month, Blizzard has raked in around $1 billion in revenue each year.
With 11.5 million subscribers, World of Warcraft is now more populous than that titan of central African geography, Chad. Drawing on huge user-bases in China, Korea, and Europe, along with its North American stronghold, Blizzard has strangled the MMORPG market with both fists. The game is so popular and so time-consuming, furthermore, that it is in direct competition with virtually every other game released. Those caught in the icy clutches of “WoW” must decide whether they can afford to take time off to enjoy the new console shooter or world-building strategy fest.
In other circumstances, the overweening success of a single game would prove frustrating to its competitors: other developers trying to get their products in the hands of receptive audiences. Except in this case, most of those developers are themselves addicted to what some call the “World of Warcrack.” Far from resenting the pixelated equivalent of smokeable cocaine, these designers, some of them genuine gaming nobility, are just as starving for new content and phat lewts as the next Cheeto-stained WoW-head.
This kind of unquenchable hunger for the game will surely serve as the focus for much of the mainstream fifth-anniversary coverage. Bound up in WoW’s immensely popularity, unending structure, and time-sucking nature is a good deal of human iniquity. Five years of endless questing have given us “Warcraft widows” — significant others spurned in favor of virtual breastplates. A blind item on popular gossip site Gawker.com implicated the game in the breakup of a prominent celebrity couple. There have been murder plots and accidental deaths. Sweatshop-style “gold farms” in places like China force teenage employees to spend endless hours accumuutf8g virtual currency to sell on the Internet black market, much to the consternation of Blizzard.
Despite its addicting foibles, World of Warcraft shows no sign of slowing down. Cataclysm, the third expansion to the game, will reap huge profits — on top of the monthly subscription fees — when it comes out next year, promising new areas to explore and new characters to inhabit. In case you thought you had any hope of avoiding this magical, alternate world, be warned — a feature film directed by Sam Raimi is already in the works.

Merry mayhem

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Merry mayhem

arts@sfbg.com

Though gamers will have plenty to choose from, 2009’s holiday shopping season is defined in part by the titles that won’t make it to store shelves in time. Starcraft II (Blizzard/Activision), Bioshock 2 (2K Games), and Mass Effect 2(Bioware/EA) have all been pushed into 2010, and the list of notable upcoming games reads more like a "best of the rest."

Assassin’s Creed II (Ubisoft)

Xbox360, PS3, PC

The first Assassin’s Creed took place in a Crusade-torn Holy Land, giving players control of a medieval master killer who used subterfuge and his considerable gymnastic talents to surprise and dispatch a number of deserving 12th-century tyrants. The sequel shifts the setting to Renaissance Italy, and would-be assassins will have full run of Venice, Rome, and Florence when they take command of Ezio, a wronged nobleman seeking acrobatic revenge. The series’ core mechanic — unfettered parkour-style urban exploration — will return, along with lovingly recreated environments and an expanded arsenal of weapons. Those who complained about the original’s repetitive structure have been placated, as the game promises a new, diversified mission system, and Ezio’s methods of assassination will be similarly varied, thanks in part to the participation of a young Leonardo da Vinci, who uses his engineering genius to help the historical hitman pwn noobs with scientific alacrity. (Now available)

Left 4 Dead 2 (Valve/EA)

Xbox360, PC

Valve touched off an Internet firestorm when it announced this title. The company has a long history of providing robust post-release support for its games, and fans of the original were outraged that they would have to pony up for a sequel so soon after the first Left 4 Dead hit shelves in November 2008. Though the embers of the debate still smolder, most of the naysayers have been swayed by the obvious attention paid to the forthcoming product, which features new characters, a new game mode, a creepy Southern-fried setting, and a wealth of new additions to the zombie-slaughter toolbox. The "AI Director" — a groundbreaking piece of technology that coordinates the actions of the shambling, brains-starved hordes — has also been completely overhauled. (Now available)

The Saboteur (Pandemic/EA)

Xbox360, PS3, PC

Even if you only have a passing affinity for video games, you’ve probably killed a Nazi or two at some point. World War II is notoriously well-worn territory, a fact that makes Pandemic’s unique approach all the more interesting. You play as Sean Devlin, an Irish ex-pat living in Paris during the German occupation. Initially neutral, Devlin’s loyalties are thrown in with the Free French when some of his friends are murdered, and he embarks on a mission of resistance and, well, sabotage. The game’s most interesting feature is its use of color: at the outset, neighborhoods living under the yoke of the jackboot are depicted in black-and-white, blossoming into full color the more your character’s actions harry the Third Reich. If Red Faction: Guerrilla (Volition/THQ) meets Grand Theft Auto (Rockstar) meets Medal of Honor (Various/EA) is a description of your dream game, consider the jackpot hit. (Dec. 8)

Gun-derful

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Gun-derful

Borderlands

(Gearbox, 2K Games) XBOX360, PS3, PC
Video games are a remarkably derivative medium, recycling old tropes and exhausting cliches. This is made more frustrating by the industry’s relentless hype machine, which trumpets newer, better, more unfamiliar games, only to deliver tired titles bound up in a patina of pretty, cutting-edge graphical distraction.

Borderlands is one of the rare games that inverts this paradigm. A hybrid of shooter mechanics and RPG-style progression, it wears its influences proudly on its sleeve, borrowing unabashedly from the best to deliver a combination of the loot-hungry avarice of Diablo (Blizzard), the apocalyptic milieu of Fallout 3 (Bethesda), and the user-friendly set-up of World of Warcraft (Blizzard). With a few clever tweaks, the game becomes a Frankenstein of fun, delivering exuberant shoot-em-up gameplay and an avalanche of enticingly ever-increasing numbers.

To call the story icing on the cake is to be a little over-generous. Four adventurers arrive on the planet Pandora, thought to be the home of a mythical vault full of alien treasure. Violence ensues. Exposition is doled out courtesy of the game’s lone adaptive failure, a retread of the angelic "mysterious female voice on the radio" bit that was played out by the second Halo (Bungie/Microsoft).

Such sour notes are quickly forgotten once the action begins. Taking command of one of four archetypal classes — the brawling Berserker, the stealthy Siren, the head-shooting Hunter, and the stolid Soldier — the player is quickly thrown into a desolate world filled with bloodthirsty enemies, simple but not onerous fetch quests, and oceans of loot.

It is in the acquisition of exorbitantly powerful digital swag that any action-RPG lives and dies, and Borderlands delivers with aplomb, paying homage to Diablo’s seminal embrace of procedurally generated items. Nearly all the game’s weapons exist as random concatenations of statistics, gaining potency and usefulness by stringing together adjective-modifiers that mete out verbal hilarity as well as they deliver fiery death.

Want to wield a gun named the "Malevolent Thumper"? Have you dreamed of mowing down cannibalistic midgets with a sniper-scoped shotgun that fires rockets filled with acid? The game provides all this and more, and the player is inexorably egged along by the prospect of bigger, badder firearms with which to kill bigger, badder bad guys.

The developer’s commitment to levity is refreshing in a climate of increasingly self-serious titles. In comparable games, rare, powerful enemies are "elite." In Borderlands, they’re "badass." The voice-acting, though sparse, is littered with satisfying moments, from the exaggerated Southern drawls adopted by Pandora’s natives to the Hunter’s soft chuckle whenever a critical hit turns a rampaging adversary into a pile of bloody goo.

Though the game is at times gorily realistic, its most unique feature is its art style, which blends comic book techniques and cel-shading to add visual spice to what would otherwise be a drab, dusty wasteland. By swathing their adapted gameplay in this inimitable guise, Gearbox performs the important task of creating a game that’s familiar, but not too familiar.

Single-player and two-player splitscreen are both viable options, but the focus is clearly on online co-op, which allows up to four players and adjusts the difficulty on the fly to allow for the profusion of gunslingers. With no built-in loot allocation system, partying with trusted friends is recommended, cutting down on disputes as much as it increases the potential for social, frag-filled fun. While it is likely to be overshadowed by some of fall’s more high-profile titles, Borderlands gleeful gameplay, distinctive look, well-executed homages, and generous dispensation of big guns might just give the big guns a run for their money.

Saviours

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Saviours

Saviours had their backs against the wall. Their new album was languishing without a title, and their record label was threatening to banish its release date to the wilds of 2010 if they didn’t think of one — by the end of the day. Suggestions like "The Shlong Remains the Same" went nowhere. In these dire circumstances, it took a snippet of half-remembered conversation to germinate the perfect name, one that would encapsulate the band on-stage and off. On Oct. 26, Saviours released Accelerated Living (Kemado Records).

Sitting in the back booth of a Valencia Street bar, guitarist Austin Barber explains the accelerated lifestyle: "The world might view it as a negative, but it’s just fucking partying hard, fucking getting some — as much as possible." Though the band draws extensive musical inspiration from the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, the title speaks most directly to the way they emulate these road warrior forbearers, hewing to the life of rock ‘n’ roll kings with an almost philosophical dedication.

The music itself has also accelerated. "That’s why it was the perfect title," drummer Scott Batiste chimes in. The group’s previous full-length, Into Abaddon (Kemado, 2008) had the feel of a classic stoner metal record, with massive, reverberant riffs and hypnotic grooves. Accelerated Living introduced better songwriting, better musicianship, more complicated arrangements, and above all, faster tempos. "I like the idea of the band getting more and more aggressive, instead of wussing out like other bands do," continues Batiste. "They get weaker and weaker, and more and more accessible. I feel like the more we play together, the better we get, the more potential we have."

At this point, the potential is practically limitless. The new record captures a band resplendent in its newfound ability — even the most jaded metalheads would be hard-pressed to find a dud riff, let alone a dud song. From the propulsive downbeat attack of "Acid Hand" to the titanic opening riffs of album closer "Eternal High," all you hear is Saviours picking up speed, with the pedal to the metal.

www.myspace.com/saviours666

>>GOLDIES 2009: The 21st Guardian Outstanding Local Discovery awards, honoring the Bay’s best in arts

Brütal odyssey

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Brütal odyssey

>>Read Ben Richardson’s full interview with Tim Schafer here

arts@sfbg.com

GAMER "The first time we pitched it, they wanted us to change the genre, to make it about country or hip-hop or something."

Game designer Tim Schafer is sitting in his SoMa office, in his favorite chair — appropriately, a rocking chair — and talking about his masterpiece. "They were saying, ‘Why don’t you open it to all music?’ We said, ‘Look — this is a game about epic battles, good vs. evil, Braveheart-type moments. And heavy metal is the musical genre that focuses heavily on folklore. It sings about medieval combat. It’s really the only genre that makes sense for it.’"

The game is Brütal Legend (Double Fine/EA), and in the end, Schafer got his way. Taking control of Eddie Riggs, a grizzled roadie voiced by Jack Black, the player journeys through a metal landscape inspired by the album covers the designer studied in his youth. Wielding a massive battle-ax and a magical guitar, Riggs encounters righteous friends and fiendish foes, including characters voiced by luminaries like Lemmy Kilmister, Ozzy Osbourne, Rob Halford, and Lita Ford. The soundtrack is a carefully compiled list of headbang-inducing classics.

Schafer agrees that the game is his most personal creation to date. "All games are wish fulfillments. All games are about fantasy. This is a game where I’ve been able to make my own wish fulfillment. I would like to go back in time with a cool car and a battle-axe while listening to heavy metal."

THE TROOPER

Growing up in Sonoma, the designer escaped his suburban life by rocking out to Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, and Iron Maiden. He would drive down to San Francisco for shows, catching sets at Mabuhay Gardens or the Stone. The music introduced him to a mythic world of horned hell-monsters, glistening chrome, and mortal combat, a world he never quite left behind.

He attended both UC Santa Cruz and UC Berkeley, dividing his attention between computer programming and creative writing, two talents he would later fuse. At Berkeley, he took a class on folklore from Alan Dundes, a provocative professor whose belief in the power of folklore influenced Schafer’s work tremendously. In 1989, he got a job in San Rafael at Lucasfilm Games, now LucasArts. He was assigned to The Secret of Monkey Island, a comedic adventure game by designer Ron Gilbert. Monkey Island was the perfect vehicle for Schafer’s talents, taking full advantage of his boundless imagination, storytelling sense, and biting wit. It is best remembered for its "insult sword fighting" section, in which dueling buccaneers trade verbal jabs in lieu of physical ones.

Mitch Krpata, game critic for the Boston Phoenix and author of the blog Insult Swordfighting, identified the defining quality of Schafer’s LucasArts output via e-mail: "Character. There are a few archetypes that most games go to again and again: silent man of action, easygoing everyman, tormented soul out for revenge. Schafer’s protagonists aren’t like that. They’re individuals. They’re good guys, but they have flaws, and their flaws aren’t things like they just care too much, dammit."

BE QUICK OR BE DEAD

After finishing the biker-themed Full Throttle in 1995, Schafer hunted inspiration. It came to him as an unlikely combination of themes, both closely tied to his San Francisco home. Initially, he was devouring classic noir films at the Lark and Castro theatres. A trip to the Day of the Dead parade in the city’s Mission District delivered the epiphany. The higher-ups at LucasArts had been agitating for a game with 3-D graphics, a prospect he did not relish. "I really hated the look of 3-D art back then, because it looked like a nylon stretched over a cardboard box," he remembers.

Picking through a table of Day of the Dead ephemera, the idea came: "I saw those calavera statues. Instead of modeling all of the bones in papier-mâché, they’ll just make a tube and paint the bones on the outside. I was like, ‘This is just like bad 3-D art. This is great!’"

Additional fodder was provided by doctor visits to 450 Sutter — a building that combines Art Deco architecture with Mayan motifs — and Schafer began work on his most ambitious project to date. Drawing on his collegiate folklore training, he and his team wove together elements of Day of the Dead tradition, Aztec folk tales, and noir cinema to create 1998’s Grim Fandango (LucasArts), a sprawling epic of crime and love in which all the characters were stylized, calavera-style skeletons "living" in the Land of the Dead. Featuring a labyrinthine, affecting story, delectable hard-boiled dialogue, and stunning art direction, it is still ranked among the best games of all time.

RUNNING FREE

Schafer left LucasArts in 1999, concerned that the company would exercise its ownership of his beloved characters without his participation. He wanted to found his own studio in San Francisco. As he told me over the phone, "Working at a company where you can look out the window and see the city outside is just so inspiring. It’s not just about having great restaurants at lunch, though that’s part of it." Starting in his living room "in a bathrobe and flip-flops," the nascent Double Fine Productions — named after a "double fine zone" sign on the Golden Gate bridge — jumped from location to location, including an unheated warehouse with a rodent problem and a toilet that often unleashed an "ocean of human waste" into the office.

The first Double Fine game was 2005’s Psychonauts, an ambitious project about a summer camp for psychic kids that failed to reach the wide audience it deserved. Even in this rarefied setting, Schafer included bits of the city’s lore. A character named Boyd was based on a homeless man who hung out near the team’s offices, doing odd jobs and enlightening the Double Fine crew with his extensive conspiracy theories.

"Sometimes he would just be on a rant about [how] the government would be trying to read his mind using satellites, or using the broken glass in the streets to bend their optics around," Schafer recalls. "He just produced great quotes: ‘I don’t want to be liquid, I want to be a turtle with rockets strapped to my back!’" Deciding to include him in the game, the designer painstakingly created a flow-chart that would procedurally generate conspiracy theories for Boyd to spout onscreen. "He constructs it by coming up with a conspirator, what their plan is, what the victim of it is, and strings it all together with a bunch of coughing and stuff."

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY

Brütal Legend, Double Fine’s latest game, was released Oct. 13, and gamers across the country will have the opportunity to play through the piece of San Francisco folklore most familiar to Schafer: the one based on himself. By making a game about a character transported from our familiar world into an ax-happy metal battleground, the designer has turned his story, the story of a misfit headbanger from a city steeped in metal history, into a new kind of 21st century myth.

Gooooaaaallll!

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FIFA ’10

Electronic Arts (XBOX360, PS3, PC)

GAMER Soccer is the world’s most popular sport, so it follows that soccer video games are among the world’s most popular games. With such a mammoth amount of cash on offer, the battle to be the planet’s premier publisher of simulated footy boasts extremely high stakes. For more than a decade, two of gaming’s biggest names, Electronic Arts (U.S.) and Konami (Japan) have fought tooth and claw for the affections of the vast soccer-gaming constituency, releasing yearly versions of their dueling mega-franchises, FIFA and Pro Evolution Soccer.

For years, the Americans came in second best, using their financial clout to secure licensing agreements with leagues and players, but delivering poor gameplay. The reasons at the time seemed obvious — Americans don’t like soccer. Americans don’t understand soccer. EA’s glossy licenses played into a narrative of U.S. imperialism, in which a rapacious corporation strip-mined the world’s game and its gamer devotees, backed by its Madden millions. Embattled "Pro Evo" was the preferred product everywhere, attracting tournament players, couch-bound amateurs, and quarter-hoarding arcade addicts alike. Even the pros themselves played it.

This lasted until 2007. A new class had matriculated at EA’s Montreal substation, led by producer David Rutter and programmer Gary Paterson, a Scot and a lifelong football fan. A talented group of designers, they were sick of living in Pro Evo‘s long shadow, almost as sick as the higher-ups at EA, who were perennially No. 2 at the gaming box office. Recognizing that only serious change would get FIFA back into the profitable sun, the team rebuilt their game from the pitch up. Instead of constantly chasing Konami’s innovations with ineffective imitations, they would produce something completely unlike Pro Evo — new, different, and worthy of being judged on its own merits.

When FIFA ’07 was released, the differences were obvious. Paterson, realizing that the excitement of soccer lay in its unpredictable outcomes, spearheaded the redesign by throwing out all the canned animations. Instead of player and ball interacting in a scripted, predetermined fashion, player and ball became realistic objects, coming together in a simulated physical world that obeyed Newtonian rules like gravity, momentum, and acceleration. Shots on goal, which previously resembled shots you’d see coming from a gun in an action game, now hinged on a complex combination of variables, like ball speed, shooting angle, and player skill.

Seemingly overnight, the FIFA team had a game that felt more like real soccer than Pro Evo ever had. Fans and critics were stunned — the world’s soccer-gaming hierarchy had been abruptly turned on its head. FIFA ’08 and ‘09 continued in a similar vein. The team in Montreal, not content to rest on their laurels, incorporated the massive strides made in realistic physics modeling to make the games better, more realistic, and much more exciting. Taking advantage of EA’s huge marketing budget, they recruited marquee players and tapped consumers neglected by Konami, particularly Spanish-speaking game buyers in the U.S. FIFA ’09 smashed sales records, and powered more than 275 million individual online matches. The franchise, often the bridesmaid, was finally the bride, and it was marrying rich.

On Sept. 17, EA released the demo version of FIFA ’10, which hits stores Oct. 22. The game boasts a number of improvements, including a new dribbling system, which finally frees players from the strictures of eight-way movement — one of the most transparently "game-y" elements of simulated soccer, but also the most intractable. Sales are expected to calcify EA’s dominance. Ensconced on its newfound throne, the massive publisher would do well to heed the lesson that got it there: when the gamers are opening their wallets, you’re only as good as your last game engine.

Autumn with Xbox

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GAMER The fall release schedule lacks the marquee names and rabid hype that defined the previous year in gaming, but thumb-callused consumers everywhere should have much to look forward to following a summer of ho-hum titles.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Infinity Ward/Activision), PS3, Xbox360, PC After farming out a by-the-numbers semi-sequel, Call of Duty: World at War, to developers Treyarch, Infinity Ward has redeployed. Bridging the treacherous divide between immaculately choreographed single-player campaigns and frenetic, repayable multiplayer, Modern Warfare the first was a smash hit and remains an XBox Live staple. Activision will count on its tent pole FPS to hit another one out of the park, with the help of snowmobile chase firefights and all manner of shit that goes "boom!" (Nov. 10)

The Beatles: Rock Band (Harmonix/MTV Games/EA), PS3, Xbox360, Wii Not just another rhythm game; more like a labor of love. Unlike, say, "Guitar Hero: Aerosmith" (Activision), the Fab Four’s name comes first for this title. Early reviewers have heaped praise on Harmonix, honing in on the attention paid to visual detail. Beyond recreating the band’s distinctive instruments and best-known gigs, the developers worked closely with Apple Corps. to animate "dreamscape" sequences that will set the scene for the group’s late-period, psychedelic tunes. Three-part harmonies and the ability to download the Liverpudlian quartet’s entire catalog (which is still not possible on iTunes) are just gravy. (Sept. 9)

Borderlands (Gearbox/2K Games), PS3, Xbox360, PC Gearbox’s twitch-based postapocalpytic RPG made early headlines by effecting a complete change in art direction, resulting in its idiosyncratic, cel-shaded look. More important is the promise of a huge open world, four-player co-op, and the Diablo (Blizzard)–baiting siren call of procedurally generated loot. (Oct. 20)

Brütal Legend (Double Fine/Electronic Arts), PS3, Xbox360 The long-awaited masterpiece from San Francisco’s resident game royalty, Tim Schafer. The Grim Fandango (Lucasarts) creator and his team at Double Fine have ridden a rollercoaster to get this game in stores, but a bevy of celebrity voice talent, a head-banging soundtrack, and Schafer’s boundless imagination are sure to make it worth the wait. Also enticing are Ocarina of Time (Nintendo)-style spellcasting via electric guitar, a so-crazy-it-just-might-work RTS option for multiplayer, and enough heavy metal-themed mayhem to fill a few hundred macabre record sleeves. If you can only slay $60 worth of bloodthirsty demon between now and the holiday game glut, this is your surefire pick. (Oct. 13)

Happy trails

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Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood

(Techland, Ubisoft; PC, XBOX360, PS3)

GAMER Though the cowboy is a quintessentially American hero, the Western genre has flourished in the hands of foreigners. Famous for his "Dollars" trilogy, Italian director Sergio Leone was one of the many European filmmakers who reinvented and preserved the form, even as it became unfashionable in the U.S. With this in mind, the efforts of Polish developers Techland in creating Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood are impressive, but less surprising. Replicating the distinctive look and tone of many gun-slinging classics, the team tiptoes the split-rail fence separating homage from imitation, crafting a first-person shooter with enough escapist, six-gun fun to counterbalance its many faults.

The game is a prequel to 2006’s uneven Call of Juarez, providing back-story for the original’s two protagonists — Billy Candle, a kid with a knack for getting trapped in nigh-unplayable Thief (1998) — style stealth levels, and Ray McCall, a Bible-toting psychopath who could harangue his enemies with scripture at the press of a button.

Ray is back, swapping his good book for a brace of Colts, and he’s joined by his brother Thomas, who favors a long rifle, a lasso, and a waistcoat full of throwing knives. Each sibling has a distinct playstyle, and you choose to control one or the other at the beginning of most levels. This is a welcome elaboration on the first game’s alternating setup, in which players would clear each level twice, first as Billy, then as Ray, hot in pursuit. Having the choice in Bound in Blood adds some needed variety, and invests the player in the brothers’ increasingly fierce rivalry.

Their enmity revolves around Marisa, the femme fatale astride a convoluted plot that draws on a number of Western tropes. Buried gold, rogue Confederates, angry Apaches, wisecracking banditos — it’s all there. Ray and Thomas blast their way through reverent, set-piece shootouts, trading gruff jibes as competition for Marisa’s affections heats up. With two playable characters, the lack of split-screen or online co-op is a glaring oversight, as irksome as the aggressive auto-aim or the brain-dead, shooting-gallery AI. Pistol-duel boss fights comprise the game’s best moments, switching the camera to holster-eye third-person and requiring the player to slowly circle their opponent before quick-drawing and firing at the toll of a bell.

Class-based multiplayer will keep some cowpokes coming back, but this seven-hour game is probably better as a rental. Though it’s not bad, and certainly not ugly, "good" would be too kind.

Clutch

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PREVIEW To survive two decades in the music business, a band must learn to tolerate change. Clutch has prospered by embracing it. Since its beginnings as a shotgun marriage between East Coast hardcore and Southern rock, the Maryland four-piece has constantly retooled its elastic, blues-metal sound. Easily bored and eager to explore their prolific, improvisatory talents, the band members never perform the same set twice — they take turns surprising each other.

This year’s Strange Cousins From the West (Weathermaker Music) abandons the harmonica and keyboard accents that proliferated on 2007’s From Beale Street to Oblivion (DRT Records). Though the band has been on a bluesy, mellow trajectory since 2004’s Blast Tyrant (DRT), the pendulum is now swinging in the other direction, back toward the muscular guitar rock that comprised its definitive mid-1990s output.

The stand-out track "Abraham Lincoln" sounds appropriately like a funeral march, and the lyrics showcase singer Neil Fallon’s talent for making American history into motor-mouthed rock and roll genius. The album’s lead single "50,000 Unstoppable Watts" boasts a trademark non sequitur sing-along ("Anthrax/ham radio/and liquor"), underpinned by one of Tim Sult’s inimitable guitar leads. Neither shredding nor chugging, the licks glide along with the assured, unpredictable grace of a hopscotch expert.

On tour, Clutch is supported by Lionize, Sult’s reggae side project — bored, prolific, remember? — along with Baroness, a group that rivals the headlining godfathers in combining distorted guitars with Southern flavor and a vast range of influences. Extemporaneous and explosive in concert, Clutch is only skipped by the unwise.

CLUTCH With Lionize, Baroness. Wed/22, 8 p.m., $23. Regency Ballroom, 1290 Sutter, SF.

(415) 673-5716. www.theregencyballroom.com

Who ya gonna call?

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Ghostbusters: The Video Game

(Atari/Sony Computer Entertainment/Terminal Reality)

XBOX360, PS3, PC, Wii, PS2, Nintendo DS

GAMER Before survival horror, pwnage, and musclebound men cursing at each other in 1080p, video games were pretty funny. The mid-’90s saw a slew of comedic adventure classics, released when low computing power made witty writing more valuable than dynamically plasma-rifled gobbets of viscera. Now, it seems, the jokes are slinking back. Aging titles like LucasArts’ Monkey Island series and Sam and Max Hit the Road have been resurrected by Telltale Games. Tim Schafer, creator of the tragicomic noir masterpiece Grim Fandango, has Brütal Legend, starring Jack Black, slated for release this fall.

Ghostbusters: The Video Game is a worthy example of this humorous trend. With a script by original Ghostbusters (1984) writers Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, the game demonstrates the immense value of providing characters with amusing, engaging, human dialogue. While most developers will probably stick to the monkeys-with-typewriters approach (yes, you, Gears of War 2), Aykroyd and Ramis flesh out an enjoyable new Ghostbusters tale, nailing the atmosphere, repartee, and goofy sarcasm that made the movies such big hits.

All four lead actors are back in the fold for voice work (plus Annie Potts as the secretary), and familiar ghosts and locations will give fans of the films much to revel in. Though the plot is not spectacular, casting the player as the anonymous, mute "rookie" member of the team, the action ramps up quickly. And having Bill Murray’s laconic Peter Venkman on your six is probably more than enough for some people anyway.

Terminal Reality did yeoman work on the level design, replicating recognizable movie environments and surrounding the team with destructible, physics-based junk just dying to be zapped with a proton pack. Cutscenes bring the four actors (and their ’80s hairlines) to life, although the lip syncing and motion-capture animation is decidedly substandard.

When the gameplay sticks to a classic "bust-’em, trap-’em" formula, playing is a breeze, and a variety of "experimental" weapons add some spice. Ill-considered design decisions abound, however, and the game can quickly become frustrating. The AI Ghostbusters are good for an impressive number of hilarious quips, but can’t bust ghosts or stay alive worth a damn. The difficulty spikes and ebbs, skewed by the fact that most enemies can take you out in one or two hits, and the environmental puzzles are lame when they aren’t sort of obtuse. Boss battles tend towards the tedious. I’m glad people still remember how to build a game around great writing, but someone should hook them up with creators of fun, invigorating gameplay. It could get ugly, though. I hear the monkeys have a union.

Summer Slaughter Tour

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PREVIEW Summer metal tours, notably Ozzfest, operate like feudal hierarchies. As night descends and the stages get bigger, lesser known vassals doing fealty in the parking lot give way to the landed headbanger aristocracy, who in turn cede the stage to some anointed monarch of metal.

In recent years, package deals like Summer Slaughter have taken a more republican approach, recruiting bands of middling stature to represent a vast array of black-hoodied constituents. Though the ticket buyer is not snared by the ermine-furred eminence of a Maiden or a Priest, a large number of quality upstarts can cast a wide net. Throw in three or four majority whips with reliable fanbases and good reputations, and you’ve got yourself a Congress of carnage.

Suffocation is the biggest name on the bill, and the veteran New York City death metal band will cater to the "never-too-brutal" crowd with its bludgeoning low-end assaults, including cuts off a new full-length, Blood Oath (Nuclear Blast). Death-heads will also be there for cult German tech outfit Necrophagist, whose impossible chops and mind-bending arrangements justifies its headlining spot.

D.C. thrashers Darkest Hour is embarking on its first U.S. run without departed lead guitarist Kris Norris, and will be eager to show its many detractors the fighting fitness of a new lineup and a new, Norris-less album, The Eternal Return (Victory Records). Folk-inflected Finnish battlers Ensiferum round out the tour’s Big Four, promising the best in war-kilts and anthemic, epic barrages. Whatever your particular poison, slaughter is imminent.

SUMMER SLAUGHTER TOUR With Winds of Plague, Dying Fetus, Born of Osiris, Origin, Beneath the Massacre, After the Burial, Decrepit Birth, Blackguard. Wed/1, 2:30 p.m. $30. Regency Grand Ballroom, 1290 Sutter, SF. (415) 673-5716. www.regencycentersf.com/grand

Arm race

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Bionic Commando

(GRIN/Capcom; PC, XBOX 360, PS3)

GAMER Reading faithfully from Hollywood’s remake-happy script, the game industry has learned to cannibalize its history. Bionic Commando is the first in an ever-expanding series of big-budget 8-bit retreads; Splatterhouse (Namco Bandai) is due out later this year, and more are sure to follow.

Bionic Commando slots you into the futuristic combat boots of Nathan Spencer, voiced ably if bombastically by Faith No More’s Mike Patton. Spencer is equipped with a bionic arm, a telescoping grappling hook of a limb that enables him to cling to his surroundings and swing, Tarzan-style, through the game’s various levels. The arm is the game’s defining feature, imbuing an otherwise unremarkable third-person action title with a giddy, kinetic thrill.

Physics-based acrobatics are a passable reason to resurrect a moldering NES franchise, and it’s too bad Swedish developers GRIN couldn’t revamp the production values as well. The game is rated "M," for mature, which means the characters curse like it’s going out of style, but the story is insulting to anyone with intelligence even approaching maturity, when it makes sense at all. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a scientifically-augmented super-soldier is released from prison in exigent circumstances, made hostage by withheld knowledge of his missing wife-slash-daughter-slash-favorite toy, and charged with saving the world by sinister higher-ups who are totally not going to stab him in the back at a crucial moment.

Despite its free-swinging promise, the game’s lushly designed levels are disappointingly linear. Wide-open areas are liberally slathered with "radiation," an ugly blue texture that acts as a wagging finger of disapproval every time you try to go somewhere the level designers didn’t want you to. Swing too high? Death by radiation. Too low? Radiation. Too far to the left? You get the idea.

Also frustrating is a profusion of tepid, gun-based combat, and when you’re not using your arm to throw cars at things, you’re frantically trying to put bullet-shaped holes in the helmeted henchmen of Gottfried Groeder, a cartoon fascist with a German accent that would make Major Toht blush all the way down to the Headpiece of Ra-shaped scar on his palm.

Given these drawbacks, multiplayer proved to be a refreshing pleasure. Radiation-free and adrenaline-heavy, the game’s death matches make you feel like Master Chief crossed with Spider-Man, and the bionic arm provides all sorts of invigorating possibilities. There are possibilities of a sequel too, judging from the post-credits teaser. If someone makes the rounds at GRIN headquarters installing bionic brains, I might be interested.

Pagan fest

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Pre-Christian religion is all the rage in metal these days, and the second of two high-profile "Pagan" tours is rolling into town, along with Thor, Hecate, and various henges, stony or otherwise. Pagan Fest 2009 is headlined by the Finnish folk-metal outfit Korpiklaani, a group that puts the polka back into heavy music’s thrashing "polka beats," levying a relentless kick-snare attack with traditional Finnish melodies. Unlike many of their folk-metal brethren, the band was folk first and metal second, making the transition from obscure bar band to globe-trotting headbanger coalition by adding distorted guitars to its ancient hoedowns.

Irish black metal outfit Primordial is in direct support, mixing orthodox razor-wire riffing with jaunty, Emerald-isle rhythms and an epic feel. Finns Moonsorrow hew similar sounds, coupling frostbitten guitars to the thematic roots in Finnish folklore that give them their pagan bona fides.

Pirates are apparently honorary pagans these days: Alestorm played the Pagan Knights tour back in March, and New Jersey buccaneer-thrashers Swashbuckle round out the Fest bill with some plundering aplomb. Versed in all the freebooting lingo and boasting a number of mizzenmast-ready guitar licks, the trio is readying a new album that is sure to go triple-putf8um on the Spanish Main.

Montreal’s Blackguard is the odd band out — its tinkling keyboards occasionally flirt with folky scales, but they’ve also got a decidedly post-pagan symphonic thing going on. Thankfully, they like drinking stuff out of old-timey mugs, so they’ll fit right in with everyone else. So will anyone who likes rock-worship, of either kind. Praise Odin!

PAGAN FEST 2009

With Korpiklaani, Primordial, Moonsorrow, Swashbuckle and Blackguard

Sat/16, 6 p.m., $30

DNA Lounge

375 11th St., SF

(415) 626-1409

www.dnalounge.com

Metal militia

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Guitar Hero: Metallica

(Neversoft, Xbox 360, PS3; Budcat Creations, Wii, PS2)

GAMER Metallica were recently inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which they surely had in mind while writing their 1983 debut album Kill ‘Em All (Megaforce). Back in the spotlight and riding high on the release of 2008’s Death Magnetic (Warner Bros), which many have optimistically heralded as a return to form, the Bay Area’s most famous thrash band returned to store shelves this spring with Guitar Hero: Metallica. The latest in a burgeoning string of rock ‘n’ roll rhythm titles, the game is the second to focus on an individual artist, following on the heels of Guitar Hero: Aerosmith but predating the upcoming Beatles collaboration with Guitar Hero competitors Rock Band.

The game’s catalog spans 49 songs, incorporating 28 Metallica master recordings from all phases of their career, in addition to 21 hand-picked songs by band-approved rockers like King Diamond and Kyuss. Its now-familiar format enables four people to get together on drums, bass, guitar, and vocals, following candy-colored prompts onscreen to crank out high-voltage facsimiles of classics like "Hit the Lights" and "Master of Puppets."

The band appears in the game as motion-captured metal titans, and Neversoft’s animators render them right down to the mole on Kirk Hammett’s face. Songs are performed in the venues of Metallica lore, including their legendary 1991 concert at Moscow’s Tushino Airfield, where a free show drew a million-odd frenzied Muscovite headbangers. A profusion of pyro onscreen does make you worry a little bit for the health of pixelated James Hetfield.

The intricate, speedy compositions are not for the faint of heart. And while beginners are afforded introductory difficulties to hone their skills, Guitar Hero vets will be surprised by the challenges they face, including double kick pedal support for the drumset. Stumbling blocks aside, Metallica’s music is rife with satisfying riffs, and recreating Lars Ulrich’s heavy-handed drum fills or the bands rapid-fire thrash is laden with lots of ineffable plastic-instrument delight.

If you like metal, and Guitar Hero, the game is a must buy. If you’re into the former, but not the latter, you might be surprised at the way the deceptively simple transcription enables a deeper enjoyment of the music. Conversely, if your fingers are already toughened by those five magical buttons but you don’t care for Metallica, you might just change your tune once you’ve nailed the guitar solo in "Orion." If you don’t like either, why didn’t you just skip to the next page?

Astral peaks

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

If not for High on Fire, Mastodon might never have existed. The flame-bonging Oakland trio swung through Atlanta in 1999, playing what was presumably an eardrum-destroying gig in the basement of local musician Brent Hinds. At the show, Hinds and his friend, bassist Troy Sanders, met drummer Brann Dailor and guitarist Bill Kelliher, who had both recently arrived from Rochester, N.Y. The four were knit together by a love of the Melvins and Bay Area metal experimentalists Neurosis, and a decade later, they are a metal band of towering stature.

Mastodon’s Crack the Skye (Warner Bros./Reprise, 2009) is an appropriately mammoth undertaking, the final chapter in a four-album arc that ties each disc to an Aristotelian element. With fire (Remission, Relapse, 2002), water (Leviathan, Relapse, 2004), and earth (Blood Mountain, Warner Bros./Reprise, 2006) accounted for, Crack the Skye centers around ether, which (in the band’s typical fashion) serves as a jumping-off point for the story of a quadriplegic astral traveler who zooms through space and time only to arrive in tsarist Russia in time to warn Rasputin of his impending assassination.

Spanning only seven tracks but clocking in at roughly 50 minutes, the album is Mastodon’s most cohesive to date, its songs flowing into each other like the movements of a heavily distorted prog-rock symphony. With this in mind, the band will play the album in its entirety during its April 19 date at the Great American Music Hall, augmenting the performance with visual spectacle courtesy of an LED screen and Neurosis member Josh Graham.

Mastodon, “Iron Tusk”

Crack the Skye‘s title has a deeper meaning for drummer Dailor, whose contributions to the record are a tribute to his sister, Skye, who committed suicide at age 14. This multivalent phrase is an illuminating example of the band’s densely layered art, which combines the diverse songwriting of its members with a wealth of thematic and musical allusion.

It was Dailor who showed up in London after an exhausting plane trip clutching a copy of Moby Dick. Though the group had toyed with high- and pop-cultural references in the past, the drummer’s suggestion that their next album be centered around Herman Melville’s 1851 classic took a while to sink in. When I interviewed Kelliher recently by phone, he explained how it caught on: "We kind of saw ourselves in the same boat, literally, leaving our families and friends behind and jumping into this quest … going out in the world trying to make it, searching for our own white whale."

The album that resulted, Leviathan, was Mastodon’s defining work, mixing easy-to-grasp themes of harpooning and high-seas adventure with oceans of metaphorical extrapolation. The band has mined other allusive veins, modeling riffs from Blood Mountain’s "Crystal Skull" off tribal drum patterns in Peter Jackson’s 2005 take on King Kong and shooting a video for the Crack the Skye single "Divinations" that’s an uproarious tribute to John Carpenter’s 1982 version of The Thing.

Between the nods to other works, the narrative lyrical themes, and the complex, progressive songwriting, Mastodon’s music can be overwhelming. Kelliher cops to some early writing conflicts with guitarist Hinds that involved a refrain of "No, man, it doesn’t go like that, it goes like this" in response to his opposite number’s deconstructive playing style. Soon, though, they learned to fuse their disparate riffs.

After four albums, it is possible to point to this relentlessly inclusive artistic tendency as the key to the band’s success. Mastodon has a rare kind of talent that suggests a pseudo-aphorism: more is more. Saddling their listeners with the full weight of their wide-ranging inspiration, the band’s albums are cohesive against the odds, rewarding careful, long-form listening sessions and a lot of revisiting. Beneath each layer of discovery lies another, and this feeling of excitement and expectation is crucial to the enjoyment of their music. Who knows what abstruse surprises they will conjure up in the future? We can only wait and hear. *

MASTODON

April 19

With Kylesa, Intronaut

7:30pm, $25 (sold out)

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.gamh.com

Undead again

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Resident Evil 5

(Capcom; Xbox 360, PS3)

GAMER With sales hovering around the 35 million mark, Capcom’s Resident Evil series has become less of a cash cow and more of a cash elephant. If I explained to you that Resident Evil 5 is in fact the seventh game in the main series, you might care, but suffice to say that between a bookshelf’s worth of games, novelizations, comic books, and feature films, expectations for the most recent installment are running high.

The new title takes place in Africa, where franchise stalwart Chris Redfield has arrived to be gruff and kill things in the name of the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance. The world is beset on all sides by misanthropes with syringes full of tentacle-rich zombifying megavirus, and only the BSAA can keep us from being turned into creatures that look like a walking combination of ground beef and motor oil.

Redfield is joined by his hard-bodied counterpart, Sheva Alomar, a local operative who accompanies the player throughout. Cooperation is the name of the game this time around, and you’ll have to pool resources and abilities to survive. Sidekick A.I. is one of gaming’s greatest deficiencies, and though Sheva’s is certainly passable (read: not a constant frustration), simple online and same-room co-op features make two-person play the optimal approach.

The game retains Resident Evil’s infuriating "stop-and-pop" controls, rooting you to the spot every time you aim your weapon. This is ostensibly to preserve the series’ survival-horror roots, although you would be hard-pressed to find anything scary during the game’s paltry 12 hours of gameplay. RE5 plays like an action title, with streamlined item-management and save utilities and a lot of relentless gunplay.

Visually, the game is stunning, creating an atmospheric and detailed world for the player to riddle with bullets. If only the other aspects of the game’s presentation had received even half as much attention — the writing is horrifically stilted, and the story is incomprehensible. Sometimes it seems like the designers are purposefully insulting the players’ intelligence — "The power is off. Maybe there’s some way to turn it back on" — and every single point is made with a sledgehammer. Early trailers for the game brought accusations of racism (white cop mows down herds of bug-eyed Africans), and while this charge loses potency in context, the appearance of grass-skirted "tribal" zombies who literally throw spears at you is extremely problematic. Thankfully, when your back’s to the wall and you’re running out of ammo, it doesn’t really matter if the zombies are black, blue, or green.

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