Shihad: Beautiful Machine

Shihad were my backbone ever since I was born. I am waiting for the Australia/New Zealand tour as of next month. The Rockumentary was extremely fantastic. The 11 September 2001 attacks was quite a shock due to changing the band name all because of too many bloody people dying on that day particularly the death of my maternal Godmum.

I hope they will return for a new album soon or otherwise if not they will disband.

R.i.p Peter Kippenberger,Gerald Dwyer and of course Michael Toogood.

I'm not a hardcore fan of Shihad, though I was aware of them pretty early on as they got a bit of press in Kerrang! in the early 90's and they were featured on a few different magazine's cover CDs I picked up. 'Home Again' was on one of these, and a few others stood out (Earthtone 9 did a great cover of 'You Again' too) - but I never picked up an album I don't think. I did sort of remember them changing their name around 9/11 but I'd moved on by then.

I watched this documentary hoping it would serve as a gateway into liking more of their stuff (as have done numerous excellent band docs - Mastodon, Cannibal Corpse, um, Anvil). It fails on one hand because there's lots of music but few tracks are heard fully or long enough to latch onto - that said most of what's here sounds good, maybe aside from the industrial stuff but that whole scene was always a mixed bag for me.

Nice to see a bunch of down to earth and personable dudes who've grown up and can look back on their flirtation with fame with a wry smile - although you can tell some people still remember that joke at the showcase (the undoubted highlight of the film) with a little bitterness. The depth with which it goes into the family relationships does have both rewards - the drummer's (grand?)father still hitting every gig fearlessly in his 80's is great - and also feels almost slightly intrusive sometimes, like a professionally filmed home movie for family only. But it's honesty does make it stand proudly aside from the prolific "documentaries" that some "bands" release in theatres these days.

So, I would've dug more tunes, but I heard the ones I knew and liked, and I'll probably download an album or two finally from itunes and give em a spin. Job accomplished.

The ending was a bit abrupt. Are they still active or what? Wikipedia will tell me but whatever. Also - John Cusack called, he wants his head back.

"Beautiful Machine" had no reason to exist upon release, and less after seeing it. Essentially the story of Wellington, New Zealand's most successful post-grunge/radio metal band who produced four non-crappy albuns before 1998, then lo and behold became pretty crappy. If you define the Shinedown, Alter Bridge etc market as "crappy", well these macho show boys later made an album with Nickelback's producer.

The film also changed director due to a disagreement.

My main issue with the film is that NZ arts funding bodies supplied some $980,000 to produce what is essentially a series of found-video excerpts, home interviews and some in concert clips - some of it about the quality level of a student film. Where the money actually went I can't say, but possibly the band's ever-declining recording sales was the main motivator for this NZ music nostalgia flick; fans should be aware of their plans to recently try and sell their live performances as pay-per-view broadcasts to bars, part sponsored by NZ house paint company Resene. (note: a musical act is not a rugby or cricket team, but Shihad always supplanted NZ's charmless, macho jock culture for "musical attitude" anyway.)

Shihad were originally a high school metal band, based around comfortably-middle-class drummer Tom Larkin's heavy drumming chops. Frontman Jon Toogood's cartoonish stage energy helped engage an audience often indifferent to local releases in the countries tiny commercial music market.

What happens in reality is not what happened in this doco. The band's early alt. Metal gigs were surprisingly sharp and self-assured, but later radio-friendly singles made the same strengths weaknesses because their robotic sound may have suited industrial-tinged metal, but sounded like generic radio rock on air years later.

Warners NZ music manager James Southgate is responsible for the somewhat "meh" state of commercial pop-rock between about 1998 and 2012, Southgate is an ex-pat Brit that liked overproduced, American accented radio bands with a single, the type that people will pay to see in a pub somewhere, but aren't terribly distinctive audio.

The film's raison d'être is ostensibly that they could have been huge in the US, but the stigma of the 9/11 attacks on US soil was too much of an issue for music managers at the time. In reality, dozens (in fact thousands) of bands were submitting their albums, promo kits and demos to US record labels, trying to be the next "modern rock" band, a kind of macho, heavy-handedly earnest format that took hold circa 1996-2013. Macho bluster with four chords and midi-replaced drumming, sans humour or any fancy musicianship.

The group initially started playing in high school circa 1988, and if they'd been documented in the mid-nineties, the nostalgia of seeing the item today would be relevant. As I suggested above, this 2012 offers a pretty mediocre retelling of their story to the public. The main problem with the movie is that with some 1300 gigs played, and a fairly inflexible sound, local audiences tired of the group long before the film was made, which made back much less than it cost in NZ theaters.