I was cleaning up this page about Dr. Zoltan (trying, anyway) and remembered that the Why I Am So Wise album had gotten a pretty outrageous review in Decibel Magazine ten years ago. I wasn’t able to find it in their online archive, so I have scanned and transcribed it here, as if you needed more explanation. The ending of it makes a statement of praise I find hard to accept as truth, but I appreciate it. Thanks, Rod Smith!
(By the way, you can click the image below to see it in higher resolution.)
Dr. Zoltan Øbelisk
Why I Am So Wise, Why I Am So Clever, And Why I Write Such Good Songs
Self-ReleasedRating: 8/10
Headline: Take a good look, granny — he tore your shit up
While it makes colorful interview filler, the “metal is to classical music as the bird to the dinosaur” memelet holds less water than a snowflake. Nowhere near extinction, the classical tradition is flourishing: evolving and infiltrating other realms at a rate close to metal’s, while nourishing with shades of its older selves. Hence, the case of mistaken identity. Can we really expect the dudes in Holy Grail to realize their being fed by phantoms?
At the very learn, Dr. Zoltan Øbelisk knows what side his ghost pterodactyl is buttered on. On Why I Am So Wise, Why I Am So Clever, And Why I Write Such Good Songs, the Angelino auteur and veteran YouTube trollbait provider formerly known as Sir Millard Mulch (real name: Carl King) ventures far beyond the musical equivalent of message-board Beethoven worship, dropping perceptively metallized renditions of Sergei Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata No. 8, Movement III, and Bela Bartok’s Piano Sonata, Movement III among a slew of his own (mostly) instrumental compositions.
A master drum programmer and able-multi-instrumentalist, Øbelisk often gets justifiably compared to Frank Zappa (check out edutainment epic “Lost Philosophical Technology of the 19th Century” to find out why), and resolutely identifies metal.
Still, his music’s overarching psychic imprint most resembles those of cartoon soundtrack giants Carl Stalling and Raymond Scott. Why any number of filmmakers and / or video game developers haven’t already snapped this fucker up is anybody’s guess. King could out-compose Danny Elfman with both frontal lobes tied behind his scrotum.
-Rod Smith
Decibel Magazine, April 2010 Issue