Thank you for your mediocrity

Undying - The Whispered Lies Of Angels

2011-09-12T03:45:00.005-04:00

I hated alot of the hardcore kids in the 90's for trying to co-opt metal and get away with not calling it metal. They'd call it "metalcore" or whatever, trying to somehow disinfect themselves so they could dress like they were cutting class from a suburban prep school, backpack and all, and go to the In Flames show and "dance hard." I thought it was a pretty thin sham of a style and (much like In Flames,) one of the great failings of the metal scene... and there was SO MUCH of it. There must have been a thousand identical records that came out between 1999 and 2005 that you really couldn't tell if it was Prayer For Cleansing or Soilwork (or Darkest Hour, or Dark Tranquillity...) and for every listenable one, there were 5 shitty ones that came out. I won't name names (*koff koff*Trivium*koff), but if it came out on Tribunal, you were pretty guaranteed it was false metal. There were some shining moments though and the first two Undying releases were all of them. Undying released one EP and two full lengths throughout their career, and the final full length was lackluster. It was another one of those faceless "guitarmony" records that were being spat out at the rate of a hundred a week and I've never made it through a full listen.

This post is in honor of the first full length though, "The Whispered Lies Of Angels," and just because there was still room in the 100mb limit for the upload, I added the EP, "This Day All Gods Die."

Undying featured well written and literate ethical vegan lyrics. Musically though, they were total unabashed Dissection worship. Maybe not in the rhythm department, but definitely in the twin guitar attack. I heard Undying first though, and even now revisiting them, if given the choice between the two, I'd probably still rather listen to Undying. I don't dig breakdowns, but somehow, this band was able to make them work tastefully and they were not cheesy. It was just good songwriting. They played here once. I really don't remember too many people showing up. It was on the "Whispered Lies..." tour cycle. They still had Timmy singing for them, who left shortly due to a diagnosis of throat cancer. At some point in the show, the microphone broke, so he threw it against the wall and ran around the room, grabbing audience members and screaming the lyrics directly into their faces. The performance was vicious and more metal bands needed to take heed of that energy. (that being said, since 2005, many have.) All the corpse paint and spikes in the world couldn't supplant some true piss and vinegar. Neither could passionless hairwhipping, a backline of expensive amps or gravity blasting. These guys killed it without triggered drums, or picksweep arpeggios and even without a microphone at one point. At the time, that was the reason I was more into hardcore groups like Undying and Catharsis rather than Dimmu Borgir or Dying Fetus. The irony is that now, the 'false' hardcore bands are going for the big time marketing blitzes, merchandising and triggered drums and releasing completely uninspired albums on Roadrunner records that sell 10,000 copies, and Cradle Of Filth's last two albums have actually been kinda good. Looks like everyone is meeting happily in the middle.

Before As I Lay Dying, Unearth and The Black Dahlia Murder took an already piss-poor formula and pissed more poor into it, ONE band had it right, and in the process, introduced a lot of people to My Dying Bride through their untitled 'bonus' track.

OK, now that I am listening to it, the final album, "At History's End" isn't nearly as bad as I remembered it. It just seemed to come out at a time when the style was completely (and remains to be) completely over saturated. It's definitely not as raw as the two I uploaded, but it still maintains the same energy.

The Bloodsprayer

2011-08-31T13:49:00.000-04:00

So I'm writing for a horror webzine called "The Bloodsprayer." My buddy Wes contacted me to see if I wanted to do a piece on 70's Italian prog for their 2nd Annual "Italian Week" that they ran at the beginning of August. Shortly thereafter, I was asked to be a contributing writer for them to expand their pallet into music fit for horror movies, but avoiding the usual Rob Zombie/Misfits/Psychobilly schlock that usually passes for a music section in most horror zines. My first piece is sort of a complete rewrite of what I had written some years ago about the 1979 Univers Zero album, "Heresie." Check it out here, and if you are a horror fan, check out everything on the site. They have a lot of great writers and are constantly doing giveaways and contests as some of the writers are pretty tied in to the horror merch industry.

Univers Zero piece

I'm getting married.

2011-07-15T05:19:00.000-04:00

I love this girl and I am marrying her next week. I don't get personal on the internet anymore, but this is a pretty major event and I might as well crow about it a little bit. She doesn't like her picture on the internet, but she'll get over it. This is my fiance. She's wearing my old Darkthrone shirt. She stole it. I had to buy another so I could properly rep. I don't think she is particularly fond of them, but she doesn't mind them like some of the crap I have played around her. The newer stuff is pretty acceptable in the car, as long as it isn't all blast beats. She's not into blast beats. She calls me Bunny. We got an apartment together last August and we've been sweating bullets to pay for it because it is in an upscale suburban area that is 12 miles closer to the University she is attending. I've been working 2 jobs to make ends meet, but it's pretty nice to not have to hear gunfire throughout the night or worry about my car. I make some money during the week as a proofreader in an office about 2 miles from here. I'd like to turn that someday into a freelance skill and actually do it for actual book publishers, but that's a pretty difficult field to crack. It almost feels like a hobby. I'm sick for actually enjoying it I guess. When I was in high school, I had a hobby too. It was playing bass guitar. Now it's my weekend job and it's nearly no fun at all anymore. I never practice. I never touch a bass unless I am playing a professional gig. It's really sad and if my 13 year old self could see my 34 year old self, I would kick me in the balls and call me a fag and a poser. I won't make the distinction about which me is calling the names or who is getting kicked, because it could probably go both ways. I haven't matured much. Derogatory language and testicles are pretty much par for the course at any age. I do still like the gig though. I get to play music and keep my technique tight without obsessing over things. I get to play all kinds of different styles. I get to eat thousand dollar wedding cake every weekend. I'm not in a bar full of trashy people or drugs or having to listen to modern radio hip hop when we are on break. There is usually coffee on hand, good coffee too. It certainly has it's perks, but at the end of the day, it's still a wedding and I am wearing a tie and dress shoes. People hire us so they can point at our song list and go "play that" and "play this" and "learn this terrible Toby Keith song because I love it and I'm horrible!" We get asked if we play the electric slide at nearly every event. Like...live. We get asked if we do any rap. We get asked if we could do that 4 Non Blondes song and Sheryl Crow even though we are all dudes. We get asked to play things that people don't even know the name of, the artist or even know the tune. We get to the hall before the servers show up for work. We get to leave well after they have all gone home. We roll in our own sound system, our own lighting rig and prepare a laser light show and we make that special day THAT much more special.

Next Saturday though, in the spray of Niagara Falls, the tables will be turned. The special day will be MINE. The hunter will become the hunted (or whatever I'm trying to say.) My fiance will take my unfortunate last name as her own and we'll swear some sort of eternal cosmic oath to one another and there will be flying babies playing trumpets and fawns dancing in a meadow made of cupcakes and Lawrence Welk bubble machines and stuff. The wedding guests will slowly filter over to the reception hall where we have hired Darkthrone to play the reception. Yeah, you heard that right. No lie. Fenriz and Ted are flying over to play their only show EVER since 1990 and it's going to be for my fucking wedding. I love her that much that I make the impossible possible. Move heaven and earth? Fuck that, I got Darkthrone to play my wedding reception. What's grandma gonna think? Fuck her. She can think "En Vind Av Sorg" for all I care. You wanna do the cupid fucking shuffle? Fuck you too. You can dance it to "Summer Of The Diabolical Holocaust" just fine. This is a wedding singer's revenge for all the stupid fucking dreck I have had to learn, play or suffer through in the 4 years I've been doing it. They're going to pull that corny "surprise move" and have a "special guest" join them onstage too... and it's gonna be the groom... ME! I'm gonna play guest cowbell on "In The Shadow Of The Horns" and yell NOCTURNO CULTO! real loud right before Nocturno Culto starts singing. I'm really gonna yuck it up too, in exaggerated comic reference to the Saturday Night Live skit. I'll be really drunk and inconsiderate at that point, and will likely fall over onto Ted's microphone stand and it may chip his tooth. People kept asking me "Did you hire your own band to play your reception?" and I've been pretty evasive about answering that question. Well, the answer is no. I hired a band alright, but it's the most important band in the world since the Grateful Dead. It's fucking Darkthrone and they will bring the house down with 2 decades of True Norwegian Black Metal. I've even asked them to play some of the later "punk" stuff and their 2nd set will be a cover to cover performance of "Transylvanian Hunger." I figure since it's all in one tempo, people will just assume it's disco. I had to tell the parents and grandparents that "They're like a cross between the Everly Brothers and the Average White Band." They bit. If anyone's curious, Nocturno Culto chose the prime rib option and Fenriz ordered the salmon for dinner.

I digress. It's been a very good year. My girl and I have both grown by leaps and bounds over the past 2 years and this couldn't come a moment too soon. I am still astounded that someone puts up with me and all my dumb CD's, guitar junk and endless blathering about obscure funk or death metal. If you could all see the state I keep "The Mancave" in, you would know it could only mean love. I have little faith in the concept of "the soulmate." I think there are alot of people in the world and it's all by accident of birth or circumstance to whom we are born to, who we meet throughout life and who works best together. She and I just happened across the best combination in each other and marriage is such an insignificant step in the whole process of life. We've been married for so long at this point, it's just a formality to us... a rather expensive formality. We've both gotten into and out of and back into the spirit of things a few times. I'm just happy to get it taken care of and I am happy that everyone is happy about it. I'm happy she hasn't killed me. I'm happy her cats like me. I'm happy my band hasn't fired me for being an insufferable stress maniac for the past 3 months. I'm happy about all the wonderful developments in the past few years for me. I'm happy my father and I get along and almost understand one another. I'm happy to get to Buffalo and get to meet my newborn niece for the first time. I'm happy my entire family will be at my wedding. I'm happy my fiance's family is actually making the drive as well (we live 5 hours from Buffalo, they live at least 7 hours.) I'm happy all this stuff is working out that I never assumed in my wildest dreams would ever work out for my hopeless clown ass.

...All except that Darkthrone bit, but a boy can wish can't he?

Seance - Saltrubbed Eyes + Fornever Laid To Rest

2011-07-13T00:28:00.000-04:00

Underrated early 90's Swedish death metal brilliance. What more do you need to know really? I don't post alot of this stuff because it's fucking EVERYWHERE on the internet, but this band gets pretty short shrift in the profusion of fanboy jism surrounding (and coating) early 90's SWDM. When I bring them up, dudes always go "Oh yeah, I heard something from them once, it was really killer." No one really brings them up as an influence, you never see any bootleg T-shirts or patches from Mexico, and I don't think their 2009 return really shook anything up, though it WAS rather good.

Seance didn't make it's way onto my radar until after their second album, Saltrubbed Eyes was released. Prior to that, it was pretty tough to make one band out from another in the great deluge of death metal releases that flooded the market between 1989 - 1992. Saltrubbed Eyes, much like Samael's Ceremony Of Opposites, is one of those albums that will always stand alone for it's completely unique production style. The bass is so forward in the mix, you almost can't make out the guitars at times. I don't know if it's a result of EQing, shelving or a distortion pedal or what, but it absolutely works in the mix and makes for a kick ass album that sounds like it is going to rip your throat out 100% of the time. I heard it on the college radio station around here and NEVER forgot the sound of that album. I wore out a cassette copy and by the time I got a CD player, it was pretty hard to find. It was one of the first albums I downloaded when I figured out how and it has always remained at the top of my list. I strive to write riffs as heavy and as gripping as the opening of "13th Moon."

Seance's debut album, "Fornever Laid To Rest," at the time was a pretty unremarkable release, just because it was one of a hundred records that year all trying for the same market share. It featured the same Dan Seagrave cosmic horror thing going on for the cover and in the US it was damn near unavailable. I think I saw one copy of it once and I don't remember seeing anything in any magazines about it. I wasn't able to actually listen to it until I could download it some years later. I eventually scored copies of both CD's on Ebay and they will have to be pried from my cold dead hands. Surprisingly, they were NOT $80, more like $10 apiece. Maybe no one was looking that week? Either way, this album quickly rose to the top of my heap of favorites of early 90's Swedish death. At the time though, it didn't have a weird production job or anything really to make it stick out of the pack, and that's a shame because it is a completely merciless album. I don't think it's as heavy as Saltrubbed Eyes, but it should have been further ahead of the pack than it was. I think it may have had more to do with the fact that Black Mark probably didn't have much in the way of distribution in the US, or much cash to promote it. Around that time, Seance was probably hoping for table scraps from the label in the wake of the release of "Hammerheart." Still, both records (and 2009's "Awakening Of The Gods") are completely unfuckwithable death metal albums that should get WAAAY more attention than they do. I've uploaded both of Seance's 90's albums in one .rar for your pleasure. Hopefully someday they get their fair due, or at least a nice reissue. ...And yes, that's no typo, the first album is actually called ForNEVER Laid To Rest.

Murmuüre - Murmuüre

2011-07-08T04:15:00.001-04:00

Wow, this is shockingly refreshing. I have no idea where I ran across this, because it was several weeks ago and it has been sitting in my ipod for awhile. I finally checked it out expecting either some kind of harsh black metal basement recording or maybe a lost Grateful Dead bootleg as the cover might suggest. I really don't know what to write about it other than it's awesome.

I'll spare you the indignity of re-reading what the Aquarius Records guys had to say about it. For once, they were right on though. This is a fantastic little labor of love on the part of an anonymous auteur He does not identify himself, but he does not keep himself hidden either as there is a blogspot and a website for this project. This lone 2009 release has been in print twice both as a cassette and a CD and is about to be in print again on vinyl. I just discovered it recently and it's a stunner. Somewhere along the way, it got classified as black metal, but it really isn't. It's more along the dark industrial soundscape path, but it's no "dark ambient" snooze either. There is an evident black metal influence, but it's really only through the sparse guitar work which was sourced from a single improvisation that was recorded in 2006. Beyond that, it's just dark music.

I am an avid appreciator of stuff like Einsturzende Neubaten, Throbbing Gristle and early Laibach, but it's not really stuff I can get into on a regular basis. I enjoy the adventurousness of it, but it rarely comes off as "successful" to me. I guess I just don't get it. I'm not ashamed, I just think it goes nowhere and people who really think they understand where guys like that are coming from are just assholes, especially if you were born after 1988. Music like this is not made to connect with an audience, it's there for the benefit of catharsis for the artist. This seems to be successful, at what, I am not sure. There is a sense of satisfaction I get listening to it that I just don't get from many other "sound collage" type artists. I still don't understand it, but I don't have to, I'm just lucky enough to get to enjoy it.

There is a musicality to this project, unlike any of the comparisons that have been thrown at it. The closest musical cousin I can find to it would be early COIL or This Heat, only without vocals. It's a pastiche of dark sounds that work in collusion together to make some of the most gripping music I have heard in a very long time. In total, it's 28 minutes of music and it will probably be the first, last and only thing that Murmuüre ever releases because it took so much for him to complete it. I would not begrudge him that. If this is the only recorded legacy of this project, at least it's brilliant. I would begrudge him, however, if this was never to be released again aside from on the extremely limited run releases. Hopefully it has a long life through the internet.

Murmuüre may be an anonymous project, but it's far from hidden. The album can be downloaded from the bandcamp page and you can provide a donation for what you think it is worth. I found a download link and will be making a donation in kind at some point myself simply because this isn't some faceless record I am only going to listen to once.

listen and download it here, and don't be a dick about it.

Corrosion Of Conformity - Technocracy

2011-07-05T02:16:00.000-04:00

I'll make no secret that I am a huge fan of the metal/hardcore crossover years during the mid-80's. Nothing from that era tops this EP though. Plenty has been said or written about how the mixture of metal and hardcore was the death of hardcore, I like to think of it as a logical continuation of two bloodlines that were so close to one another, it was inevitable. It's all metal to me anyways. Listen to an AC/DC record at 78 and it's basically D-Beat. The Cro-Mags jacked Iron Maiden riffs... and neither punk nor skin nor hessian alike can deny the influence of Motörhead. Before there were blogs or MP3's or streaming audio, your only chance to hear something new was to trade tapes. I was hoodwinked in a shady deal one night by a scurrilous ne'er-do-well and lost my copy of the new FULL LENGTH album from Testament called "Souls Of Black" for this CASSETTE EP that repeated on both sides of the tape. Was I ever a dumb kid. Unwise in the ways of commerce and bartering. I mean... Souls Of Black was a slick new full length and they had a video on MTV! What was I thinking? Since it happened though, I could care less about Testament.

Technocracy was a funny sounding recording where the singer couldn't even keep up with the band cuz there were so many words. I was completely floored by the sense of urgency and the mania of it all. I learned this album on bass inside and out and can still play all 13 minutes of it to this day, all the fills and everything. Mike Dean is one of my favorite bass players of all time and I am super excited that the three piece lineup is touring the early material again. Who knows how long it will last though before Pepper Keenan decides it's time for him to rejoin the band (ugh) and they continue down that sorry fucking path. Of their early "hardcore" years, this was the apex of their powers. I totally lost interest when they went 'alterna-southern metal' but it was cool to see those same playful young lads shown goofing outside their van on back cover getting some very big recognition. (I WILL go to bat for "America's Volume Dealer" being a totally underrated album.) I still have this cassette and for some reason I can't remember, I scanned the cassette cover at one time and still had the jpg on my hard drive. I took these tracks from the out-of-print remastered CD that came out several years ago. I didn't include the bonus "demo" versions of the songs because they were not included on the original release and for some reason, I was just not into the lack of continuity. I'm usually really into all the extra crap that makes its way onto reissued records, but there is an immediacy to the original 5 tracks that I still find totally intriguing to this day. The tone of this record is completely singular. Nothing can be added to it or taken from it, but I sure wish they wrote more stuff like this, or there were other bands that wrote this stuff. It's brutal hardcore punk one minute, then it's Sabbath/Celtic Frost heavy the next minute, then there's a Skynyrd-meets-Greg Ginn guitar solo that you can't tell if it's in tune or not. I still think the recording is one of the coolest sounding records ever.

The hungry child worships... no more

Wayne Shorter - Schizophrenia

2011-07-01T13:19:00.000-04:00

Just listening to this album now. I'm a big jazz fan and people just don't talk about jazz very much anymore it seems, on the internet or anywhere else. I'm sure this will have much less traffic than some weird obscure black metal or something. For people that don't know, Wayne Shorter was Miles Davis's tenor sax player in his second great quintet. If you don't care about that fact, then you need some culture in your life. There was a time when musicians played actual instruments in studios whose job it was to record music, not to make anyone sound any better than they actually were. Back then, musicians were THE BEST. Wayne Shorter was no slouch when it came to playing. He never played a solo where he didn't have something to say, but more importantly, his compositions were spectacular. They went beyond what most of the "hard-bop" scene was doing, which was, for the most part, blues based. Shorter's playing and style is heavily steeped in blues tradition, but his songwriting took musicians to places they were not used to going. The best musicians really LOVE challenge and CRAVE it and back then, music and musicians were still pretty important to the music industry, so when a guy came along and wrote great stuff that both musicians AND the record buying public were into, it was fireworks.

Schizophrenia is a high water mark of the later 60's Blue Note catalog. Blue Note was slipping sales wise by this point. The entire jazz community was losing steam behind the rock output of the era. Jazz, as a whole was also losing face with the record buying public behind the "free" explosion. Albert Ayler and Ornette Coleman had already made their greatest statements almost 8 years before and lots of "legitimate" players decided they would grow their hair out and wear a dashiki and release a few skronky records to keep up with the young lions. In 1968, it was a little risky for Wayne Shorter to be sticking closely to rhythm and chord changes, but he held to what he loved doing rather than jump on some freaknik bandwagon and Blue Note records supported whatever decision their artists made, cuz they were righteous. Not that Shorter didn't have an ear towards the freer, as one could deduce from portions of albums like "The All Seeing Eye" or bits of the last tune on this album, Playground, where the band seemingly flies totally apart at one point, only to slam back together in perfect time. More evidence that musicians back in the day were just THE BEST. I guess when you didn't have video games to play or blogs to tend to, all there was to do was to get super rad at an instrument and then go to a studio where the engineers only had to push record and mix.

I love this guy. I've even own his biography. I could never get behind Weather Report, (and as a bassist, believe you me, I tried. I could go off about how I think fusion sucks, but I'd rather spend my time on this blog writing about what's awesome) but still, his body of work is just amazing. Schizophrenia stands up tall next to his earlier masterpieces like Hear No Evil and Juju. I jacked that link from a google search so if you have to use a password, tough nuts. I have other things to do with my day than babysit Mediafire.

Gathiens - Nesh

2011-07-01T12:19:00.000-04:00

This is an album I fell in love with some years ago. We were making dinner the other night and I got struck by the urge to listen to it again for the first time in a long time. It always has the same affect on me too, it makes me bummed that it's over when the last song ends. It's just one of those records. For my money, that is the PERFECT album length too so I am not complaining. Better than a demo or an EP, but not some 70 minute sprawl that just drags on and on. Brevity is the goal when it comes to instrumental music. This is for fans spaced out math rock like Slint, Tristeza, or maybe some later EARTH or My Bloody Valentine? There is also a heavy black metal influence in the songwriting. Don't expect blast beats, but I know the guy who writes this stuff and he is all over some Alcest/Amesoeurs, Peste Noire and Leviathan. This ISN'T metal though. I was in the band for a short time when the mastermind behind the group moved to town to house-sit over the summer of 2008. An attempt was made to create a live lineup for the group and it failed for various reasons. There is an entire second album of material that has been recorded too that has not been released. It's being RE-recorded now by the original lineup of the group, who also failed for various reasons. At this point, the band hasn't played live in several years. I may have been present at the last actual live performance that was given at a basement show some years back. It was ten degrees below zero outside and said mastermind was loading his equipment into the house and wearing flip flops. How grim is that?

I haven't updated this blog in months. I probably haven't even looked at it in 2-3 months. I just haven't had time. I don't know how some of those blog guys post stuff 3 or 4 times a day. Good for them I guess. I've got alot of stuff on my plate right now. I'm getting married in 3 weeks, so that is keeping me really busy and broke. My 2 jobs are running at full steam right now. I have the first original band I have played with since June 2010 coming together too. Super excited about that. I won't leave you with too many details, but it's headed towards being the best project I have ever been a part of. There's 3.5 songs so far. It's dark stuff and it's not metal. We're hopefully gonna be recording in the next month or so, as soon as we decide we have enough suitable material for a 12" EP. Looking towards pressing vinyl with download and all that rot. Still no band name or anything like that. As soon as we get all that stuff together and a bandcamp page, I'll post all that stuff here.

I keep saying I am going to post more stuff here, and I swear I will work to be a more active blogger.

For now, you get NESH

Steal softly through sunlight, steal softly through snow... R.I.P. Cap'n

2010-12-21T22:30:00.001-05:00

First DIO, now Captain Beefheart? What a bummer year for my heroes, and there's not many left. I'm a week late in this, but life has been in my way. Still, I'd rather be busy as hell and not have a good excuse for blogging, than have 16 new posts a day because I don't have a job. The Captain is dead, long live the Captain. I suppose there is no real reason to be sad. Don Van Vliet was ailing privately and had been for decades now. He had retired from music (and after what he went through, I would too... at least he had some kind of aptitude at something else.) There isn't a unit of measurement large enough to demonstrate to you how much Captain Beefheart had upon my life. Let's just put it this way: My blogger "handle" (nothingwheel, part of the URL of this blog) is from the lyrics of the song "Steal Softly Through Snow." I was BIG into Beefheart around the time I was becoming net-savvy and thinking up names for stuff. As cliche as it is to talk about what an impact Trout Mask Replica had on me (It's always cooler to talk about how much more into Bluejeans And Moonbeams you are) the fact remains, it did. He had as huge an impact on me as reading Vonnegut, looking at my first dirty magazine or the first time I ever heard Run DMC. Safe As Milk is his best album, hands down, but Trout Mask was my introduction and the last album I heard that TRULY blew my mind. When you first start listening to music, EVERYTHING is something new and different, you pick a few favorites and move on to phase two, where you become a little more discerning. By the time you are 25, you have tastes that are uniquely yours and those primordial shocks are fewer and further between. I was probably a little late in discovering Beefheart. It was no rarity to find something good that you can listen to alot, but I was in that headspace where it was VERY rare to find something so new that it pushes everything else aside for awhile. Beefheart took precedence over all other listening for about a year of my life while I decoded what exactly it was he was doing. I read books, I listened to EVERYTHING, good albums, bad albums, crappy bootlegs, box set or otherwise. At his best, Beefheart treated music as his canvas. He used (abused) musicians like different paintbrushes, usually in completely unorthodox manners. Trout Mask was the last trumpet blast in truly original art rock. It came from nowhere. Beefheart had a bastard vision, and short of the delta blues, (to quote Method Man) there was no father to his style. His artistic children are, and will be many. Hopefully my own will be included as I have foresworn to provide my betrothed with 2 pretty babies who will be dressed in Motorhead onesies and will know the lyrics to "Orange Claw Hammer" before they can write.

I'm not uploading anything, but I'm going to hijack a link to Beefheart's lost (and brilliant) 1972 album "Lick My Decals Off, Baby" that a google search just brought up. I usually don't do such a thing, but they posted both an MP3 and a lossless link and that is more than I can figure out how to do. It's very much not in print and is is prized and highly sought after. Here's hoping that Beefheart's passing puts some wheels into motion concerning a reissue of that album of great legend. You can purchase it right now at Amazon for $298 if you feel so inclined, or $99 used. If you do download it, please leave a comment on the beautiful noises blog.

Dropdead - s/t

2010-11-23T13:52:00.002-05:00

Dear Internet; seriously? You're this "great source of all information, true or otherwise." You are the gossip column of the world and this great source of new music for people. Especially punk kids who don't want to pay for music. There is an awful lot of that stuff out there and yet I find THIS fast/grind/powerviolence/punk/hardcore whatever-the-fuck-it's-called-this-week example of perfection to be totally underrepresented. (seriously scenesters, decide on a name, then kindly fuck off and take a shower. It's been around since 1985 and it's called grind, I don't care what they are singing about or what Eric Wood feels about it.)

For some reason, I was searching this and noticed that there were a few download links to it, but for the most part, they were like 128kbps. I have an original Selfish Records version of the CD that I bought from Media Play of all places in 1994 when I was in high school. Here is a fairly high quality rip of it (200 or higher kbps) This is another one of those albums that changed my life. Up there with Black Sabbath - Master Of Reality, Naked City - Torture Garden, or Obituary - Cause Of Death. This is the first time I had ever heard anyone being REALLY pissed about vivisection or factory farming. Bob's vocals are probably the most pissed ever recorded. Unlike alot of guys, DROPDEAD doesn't make it sound like it's a job, they rage from the heart no matter how fast they are playing (though it is usually fast). The songs usually have some kind of structure and thought to their assembly rather than much of this stuff that comes out now and somehow, Dropdead are able to keep it kinda catchy too. When I first heard this, I considered it kin to Terrorizer and I still do. This is punk played by guys with metal skills and smart-missile precision like only dudes could do in 1992 (i.e. before there was a roadmap on how to play and record this kindof stuff.) Dropdead helped to distill and refine the definition of pissed for me. This is also the first CD issue of it, so there is no remastering or studio fuckery going on with the recording, so you will have to turn it up if you are used to listening to corporate embarrassments like Phobia or y'know, Disturbed?

I post this specifically in honor of In Disgust, whose demise I lamented in my most recent post. I considered them kin as well. Dropdead are still out there killing it on occasion. As a bonus, I've uploaded both the original Selfish records version and the Armageddon version that I happened across at the store the other day. The Armageddon Records version is a different earlier mix and is separated only by 2 tracks, one being the A side and the other being the B side. The mix to my ears is absolutely more feral, but it's one of those "Raw Power" kindof arguments. I know the original flawed mixes and like them better, but that's just me.

RIP - In Disgust

2010-11-15T03:09:00.000-05:00

I really liked this band. I just read that they broke up and that depresses me. What a bummer for a first post in several months. I guess that's what happens with good grind/fast bands. With rare exception, they burn out quick. Terrorizer, Discordance Axis, Insect Warfare, Threatener, etc.etc. Napalm Death got it back together after 8 or 9 years of boring industrial rock or whatever the hell that was. Their records would rule everything if the production was raw again. In Disgust was like THEEE band. Reality Choke completely blew me away. There is very little advancement that can occur in such a narrow genre. When it gets too artsy, you get garbage like The Locust. Google search this band. They ruled.

I guess I am posting this as a little update to my "followers." I just happened to look over and notice that there were a few over there. One of them is my mom. Isn't that nice? I haven't found anything really worth blogging about MUSICALLY in a long time, at least nothing that I wasn't a few months behind on anyways. The most I have found to do is that I got an actual CD rip of the Gutted CD I posted several months ago. It sounds better for sure. I keep forgetting to upload it and replace the link. Most of what I have really gotten into is nothing that can't be found on 80 other blogs anyways. More on that in another post I guess.

I moved 3 months ago. My girl and I got a place in a town that is much more sensible for us to live in. We've been taking our time trying to get our place set up and find enough second hand furniture to sit on and eat off of. I have cats now too. My lady cooks wonderful vegan food for me and my waistline has taken a hit. I work 50+ hours a week some weeks between two jobs and barely have time to deal with the internet, which explains why I have been so behind. Domestic life is busy... way too busy for me to be concerned with my narcissistic pursuits that no one really cares about. I have to take the trash out now and clean the kitchen and make coffee and stay home and watch documentaries on my days off. She scoops the litter box. Scooping the litter box is not metal.

This blog is not dead, and I think of it often... then I think that there is really nothing for me to write about that would be of any interest to anyone for the time being. I just haven't worked it back into my life yet. Hell, I still have to find time to start hitting the gym again. Soon enough.

2010-09-02T19:39:00.000-04:00

Mediocrity is on the move. Back shortly once life settles down a little bit. Cleaning out the attic and heading down the highway. Shoulda posted this 2 months ago since it's been about that long since I have had time to touch this thing.

30 Minute Metal.

2010-06-24T04:05:00.002-04:00

There really is nothing better in the world for a musician or an artist to create something that leaves the audience wanting MORE. In metal, this doesn't happen NEARLY often enough anymore. "And Justice For All" has it's many detractors. For me, it was the album that got my 12 year old mind around the fact that there was stuff out there other than Def Leppard and wimpy Desmond Child-era Aerosmith. I find "Justice" fantastic. It's still a worthwhile and rewarding listen after all these years, bass or no bass. My only criticism of it is that it is too long. It IS one of those rare "all killer, no filler" records that somehow exceeds the one hour mark, but I will be damned if I have listened to it in one sitting since Jr. High School. Double albums have their place. Physical Graffiti, Trout Mask Replica and Tago Mago wouldn't be what they are without being a double helping, but they are not metal albums. They are very dynamic albums with alot of ground that they cover and require time to develop. The last thing I really need from Nile is 63 minutes of wall-to-wall blast beats and 3 vocalists gurgling about ancient burial rites. There is such a big deal made about his subject matter and all the hard work and research Karl Sanders puts into his lyrics, but for as many understandable words sung in their albums, they could be reading Finnegan's Wake for all I know.

This post is created to hail those records that really only have one thing to say, and say it quickly and neatly bundled in an almost disappointing length. Ten more minutes of music MIGHT be awesome, but in such a concentrated dosage, it might do more harm than good in the grand scheme of things. These are albums that you wanted to think "rip off" when you realize that you paid $10-$12 for originally, only to find out that they were so short. It took awhile to understand that you hadn't been burned. It eventually dawns on you that these records are POTENT. Occasionally, in some cases, you know what you are getting quality over quantity. Every minute spent listening to one of these albums is worth THREE minutes of listening to a lesser album. I can't tell you how many albums I own where you could take out all the useless shit and be left with 25 minutes of perfection. We're talking FULL LENGTH ALBUMS here. L fucking P's. Full price. No EP's or demos. You were bummed to look at the cassette and see a woefully thin spindle of tape awaiting you. The most famous one, and the OBVIOUS #1 would be "Reign In Blood." It was so short, they put the complete album on BOTH sides of the cassette. Since nothing more can really be said about that album, it is the "representative image" of this post. I've also kinda limited the list to metal albums. Finding super intense punk albums under 30 minutes is like shooting fish in a barrel. Short records are a touchstone of punk. I wanted to concentrate on metal because it can be SUCH a bloated style. Once "And Justice For All" hit town, nearly every album that came out for the next 3 years HAD to be 65+ minutes long and every song had 16 parts with 4 riffs. Anyone else remember the sticker on the original release of "Time Does Not Heal" from Dark Angel? 9 songs, 67 minutes, 246 riffs. I still have my cassette with that very sticker across the back of the case. I guess at the time, it was a wise sales decision, because everyone was into that sort of shit, but I also specifically remember having to remind myself to listen to the second side rather than the first side every once in awhile to maintain some kind of balance. "Leave Scars" was one of those albums that REALLY could have done with some fat trimming too. It would have been such a vicious album if there was no pointless Zeppelin cover, no 7 minute instrumental "Cauterization", and "The Promise Of Agony" could easily have been cut in half.

Ten three minute songs in a row. It's a great average. With punk albums, and especially grind albums having 18, 32 or even 40+ songs, you REALLY run the risk of losing the plot a few tracks in, even on a 30 minute album. Maybe you'll remember a riff or a chorus. I usually don't, and I LOVE grind, but I don't listen to grind for the songs. Metal anymore is such a sonic brickwall even by the time it gets to the mastering house. There are almost no dynamics present and it makes the ears tired to listen for longer than 30 minutes, especially in earbuds.

I skipped some pretty important albums I realize (COC - Animosity, Slaughter Of The Soul) but those albums don't mean very much to me. I like them, and they certainly are important to metal, they just aren't something I listen to alot. In the case of Animosity, I realize I need to spend some more time listening and let it sink in. I skipped over Vulcano - Bloody Vengeance too, probaby my FAVORITE super super short metal album of all time, but only because I blogged about it already and it has it's own post. The only criteria I wanted to hold to strictly was no more than thirty minutes and change. It certainly broke my heart to not be able to include Seance's "Fornever Laid To Rest" because it is 31:03. Maybe another time. In no particular order, and probably lacking a couple I missed because I am tired:

Bathory - s/t 26:55
If you take out the boring three minute intro and the 23 second outro, you are left with 22 minutes-ish. Plenty has been written about this record. In the grand scheme of things, I have only just discovered Bathory. I think I finally heard this in 2005, years after Quorthon died. The first time you listen to this album, it's like jumping in ice water.

Beherit - Oath Of Black Blood 26:06
A high school friend bought this in 1992 or so on tape. JL America. We all thought it sounded weird and terrible. It was passed around the circle of metal friends for a solid year with the caveat "If you like it, you can have it." No one claimed it after a certain point. I don't know who wound up with it. I was 30 before I decided to revisit it for a laugh and became obsessed with it.

Asschapel - Fire And Destruction 21:43
I had heard their name for awhile. A friend turned their T shirt that didn't fit them into a backpatch on their hoodie and I asked them about it. I thought the name was silly, but I really trust this frends taste in music, so I grabbed it when I found it in someone's distro. This record is my reference for bass tone. I have to date yet only failed to reproduce it.

Deadguy - Fixation On A Coworker 30:17
Mid 90's Victory Records metalcore gets pissed. No breakdowns, no tech, no message, no ethics. If Snapcase were the rich kids, and Earth Crisis were the jocks, Deadguy were the trenchcoat mafia.

Deicide - Legion 29:05
That shattering sound at the beginning of "Trifixion?" That's the 2nd Deicide album smashing through the first Deicide album. The self titled album holds a warm spot in my heart, but the second album is always the one I reach for.

Sadus - Chemical Exposure 29:07
Darren Travis shrieks higher and more painfully on this album than any other man should be allowed to do. It's not a pretty thing.

Repulsion - Horrified 29:18
I'm going off the path here by including a "grind" album, and originally a demo recording, but only because Repulsion was not trying to make "Grindcore." They were trying to make the meanest thing ever recorded up to that point, and with very little exception, they succeeded. Initially a demo titled "Slaughter Of The Innocent," it influenced the extreme metal scene far too much to ignore. It also begged inclusion because I spent many hours listening to the Relapse cassette with the blue face on it, and feeling kinda bad about liking it so much because of Dave Grave's Hitler mustache.

Gorgasm - Bleeding Profusely 23:37
I am not a goregrind fan, but this album is really sweet. It's really the only goregrind album I own because we really only need ONE really good goregrind album. If it wasn't this one, it would have been "Inbreeding The Anthropophagi" from Deeds Of Flesh, but I sold it when I found a copy of this album. Didn't want to go over my quota.

Bolt Thrower - In Battle There Is No Law 30:21
I can't express how much I love Bolt Thrower. If you add Crass and Amebix to death metal, somehow you get Bolt Thrower. I don't understand the mechanics of it, but I am sure that is what happened.

Witchfinder General - Death Penalty 30:38
NWOBHM... The start of it all. Ironically enough, alot of the classic doom metal bands cleave pretty close to the hem of Witchfinder General. Is this the shortest doom album ever made? Quite possibly.

RIP DIO

2010-05-26T03:37:00.004-04:00

Apologies for the lack of posts. I don't really have anything to share as nothing has blown up my skirt that people can't just get on a thousand other blogs, or at the fucking record store. You can all look at a picture of DIO, because there really will never be enough pictures of DIO to properly tribute the impact his music had on our lives.

According to my Mediafire numbers, people read this thing, download stuff and occasionally try to post links to their Asian porn sites on here. Oddly, once I decided to make this site google-searchable, what was my least downloaded file became my MOST downloaded file. Il Balletto Di Bronzo's untouchable classic "YS" now leads the pack with the most downloads. I was worried that no one was interested in obscure Italian progressive rock any longer. I guess I have been proven wrong. Maybe I'll post a few more since I have a ton of it and it's just not something you find every day.

My lack of time has extended to my musical life as well, as I had to quit Disconnected. Our boy JC is handling the bass until he gets too stoned. I went and saw them the other night. They were tight and awesome. It was a Monday night, so they weren't as noisy as it usually was when I was playing with them, I think cuz everyone needs to be able to hear the alarm going off the next morning for work, and not tinitus. I'll get into something else eventually, for now, I am just going to concentrate on stacking paper and getting my lady and I the hell out of this town. It's high time.

The "first quarter" of 2010 has been the best few months for metal releases in a LONG LONG time. I don't have the time to post any kick ass downloads right now, but I do have the time to tell everyone to go out and buy the following:

Black Breath - Heavy Breathing
This is the album Entombed didn't make between Clandestine and Wolverine Blues. They should have. These guys are on tour with Converge right now and they are one of the best bands I have ever seen live. Will and I went to see them the other night in Toledo and we were the only people there. WE were the reason they stuck around and played. There were about 11 people in the room by the time they played and they played like there were 1100. Not only that, they played "Sacrifice" from Bathory because Will heard them mention they had practiced it a few times. Early running for album of the year.

Coffinworm - When All Became None
These guys are my Indy brothers. Well, mostly. I still haven't actually met the other guitarist and the bassist, but I am sure they are solid dudes. Despite them being my friends, this album is face crushing. Blackened crust doom? Not too far removed from RWAKE or Neurosis, with a healthy dose of Bolt Thrower's steamroller riffs thrown in. All 6 songs are memorable and the album explores ideas without straying from a unified sound. The thing that gets me is the album is pretty squarely in the doom camp, but it's only 40 minutes long. THAT'S THE FUCKING COOLEST!!! You know what else is only 40 minutes long? Nas - Illmatic. What else do they have in common? They are both perfect albums with ZERO filler. Doom metal would do well to drop the drones and 18 minute songs that meander to nowhere.

Triptykon - Epastawiruoiejeoejoka Daimonndofiejnkas
whatever the hell that is, it's the new Tom G. Warrior project and it damn near blows CF's masterpiece Monothiest out of the water.

Ludicra - The Tenant
I have never been grabbed by these guys in the past. I don't know what it was. I had their Fex Urbis Lex Orbis release a long time ago, but I don't remember a thing from it, and probably just didn't give it a fair chance. This album CONVINCES me that I need to go back and give Ludicra's earlier material another chance. They get pegged into the black metal camp, but that is really unfair. There are strong black metal influences, but there are also strong prog influences, strong NWOBHM influences, strong art-rock influences. This record will be timeless. In a fair world, this band would be as big as Mastodon. They could very easily develop the kind of broad appeal that could take them to bigger stages. Drummer Aesop is a blogging superstar with his Cosmic Hearse blog.

Vasalaeth - Crypt Born and Tethered To Ruin
Murky death metal filth from Profound Lore. 30 minutes of molten lead in your ears. Nothing pretty. 3 of the 5 releases on this list so far have come out on Profound Lore. No label should have that kind of success rate. They must be stopped.

Shit, that's half my top ten list.

Into Another - Ignaurus

2010-02-19T16:20:00.006-05:00

You know how I know when an album I own and love doesn't get enough love on the internet? When the best image you can find to gank for your own hot-air-review based blog is a shitty, grainy scan from the record label that released it like 15 years ago. This is the first request I have ever had for Mediocrity. My friend, Scott Sheridan asked for me to write it up and I am glad he did because my blog was lacking in things that weren't extreme metal.

By the time I had graduated high school (1995), I had drifted pretty far from metal. I was listening to a bunch of crazy stuff. Mostly arty punk and no wave stuff like the Minutemen, and the Swans, Lots of 80's "deathrock" like Sisters Of Mercy, Bauhaus and Siouxsie. There was still a pretty healthy addiction to Sabbath, but I was totally convinced that metal and I were just done. This was to change in the next 5 years, but first, metal needed to flirt with me again. Metal's first re-flirtations with me were through Snapcase, Strife, Harvest and the early metalcore bands. Eventually, I was to hear Converge's "Petitioning The Empty Sky" which sent me running headfirst to the closet to dig out my warped cassette copies of "Clandestine" and "Necroticism," but that was still some years off. I played in a hardcore band for a few months right out of school, but shortly fell out of favor with those guys. In the meantime, I was discovering the "emotional" post-punk sounds. I cringe to use the term that was first used for bands like Sunny Day Real Estate, Texas Is The Reason and Sensefield, but that was what we called it. They had inherited the mantle from the primarily DC based "emo" punk scenes of the late 80's/early 90's, smoothed the rougher edges, and expanded the melodic possibilities of the form to create a style that was part Smiths, part Supertramp, and part spastic temper tantrum.

You could draw a line directly between the sounds of most of those musics I just mentioned (sans the extreme metal.) using the music of Into Another, so they were like tailor made for me to get into. They were clearly heavy metal influenced, but melodically experimental. They each had an obvious restrained virtuosity to their playing, but they were given to dropping in a Sabbath sized throb on occasion to spice things up. Richie Birkenhead's choir-boy range was emotive, but not in the OTT "crying with his back to the crowd" kinda way. There was no equipment destruction at the end of their performances, but they were obviously talented enough, that should they have decided to do so, they would have stayed in key while doing it. They could somehow be both uplifting like the lead off songs to the first two Boston albums, but still be as dark as any goth band out there. So many people just didn't get it. I remember some clueless assclown journalist comparing their first album to Motley Crüe. Into Another set out to do a number of very different and progressive things with their songs, and accomplished every single one of their goals in flying colors, but in a very tasteful and thought provoking manner. Peter Moses is still one of my favorite guitarists to ever walk the earth. Listen to the first 80 seconds of Ignaurus to find out why. Tony Bono opens with one of the most memorable basslines I know of, and Moses lays a modal, quasi-legato solo over the top of it that was slightly flashy, but introduced any who heard it to one of the few guitar players of the 90's that could solo with a unique style and still be a respectable player at the end of it. Moses never sounded masturbatory or self indulgent and his jazz-hippie-metal canoodling was as integral to the Into Another sound as Ritchie's voice.

I was sold from there. Tony Bono is John Entwistle cool in my book. He would literally MAKE the song for me a lot of times. Ritchie has mad pipes, and Peter Moses plays the aforementioned guitar hero/anti-hero swimmingly, but Bono provides the hook more often than not. All involved could outplay anyone in the scene at the time, but they always seemed to take the high road, or at least, if someone WAS getting notey and noodly, it never seemed like it.

Into Another had their fair share of media exposure at the time, but they had terrible marketing. No one was interested in a couple of ex-NYHC straight edge guys and two long haired metal players who all dressed like hippies and played arty, spiritual, mature progressive rock. They didn't wear oversized chinos, or have a rapper, or dreadlocks, or a political agenda, or played 7 string guitars, or gang choruses, or any of those tired cliches (even at that time) that record labels were flogging to drum up sales. The band just didn't have a very good visual hook and they made the mistake of going for the gold and signing to the major disguised as an indie with no obvious marketing savior-faire when it came to any kind of highbrow music (clearly the territory of the indie labels.) For some ungodly reason, Into Another were basically marketed as a metal band, when they were merely metal influenced, and when provoked, only displayed the most thoughtful and well mannered aggression on album. Would they have had a shot had they been marketed differently? Perhaps to a more Soundgarden crowd (I always think of Peter Moses and Kim Thayil as musically kin.) I dunno. It didn't work for Voivod. They lost almost all their early fans by the time they released Angel Rat and were clearly gunning for the flannel crowd. (Moses could also beg a strong comparison to Piggy's playing of that era.) They got a video or two on Headbanger's Ball I think, and were featured numerous times in Metal Maniacs (which is where I first heard of them.) but that was about it. The internet was still in it's infancy at this point and the label was eventually swallowed up in the "great conglomeration" of record labels in the mid 90's and they were one of the bands to get the axe. The record industry were clamoring for the next Nirvana in the wake of the Cobain suicide and had no time for anything they could not hang a sign THEY could be comfortable hanging. It was not for trying though. Into Another got a damned healthy promotional push for a time, during that nebulous time of the 120 minutes "BuzzBin" which I don't believe they ever got featured on.

They split up in 1996. There was no farewell tour, and probably not even an official final show. In 1995 they released "Seemless," which is basically an extension of this album with some smoother edges. I like them both about equal for different reasons. Seemless has some really great moments and is as equally worth tracking down (yr likely to find it in a dollar bin somewhere.) It's as much a work of genius as Ignaurus, but Ignaurus is the darker horse of the two. There was an unreleased album as well. I heard it, it sounded unfinished. There were alot of electronics involved, not much guitar, and it was pretty unclear what they were focusing on. Into Another were shelved by whatever record label absorbed Hollywood Records and they just sort of quietly disappeared.

In 2002, Tony Bono sadly passed away unexpectedly, shocking the metal, punk, hardcore and emo worlds that this band straddled so effortlessly and equally. His work in Into Another influenced my own bass playing heavily. I read in an interview with Ritchie was that the last time anyone knew of Peter Moses's whereabouts was at Tony's funeral. Moses did not keep in touch with Ritchie and Drew after the band dissolved. In this age of "legendary" and underappreciated reforming and playing for the crowds that they never had when they were initially active ("Kyuss Lives?" Without Josh Homme? c'mon.) it's especially heartbreaking to know that this is one act that will never play again.

Ocean - Monument/Fork Lashing Eye 2004 CDR demo

2010-02-04T02:38:00.005-05:00

You know something that is sweet about demos? They are short. Sometimes, albums just go on too long and don't have enough to say. Some of my favorite albums are victims of this. "And Justice For All" really could have done without the 9 minute songs. Demos are graceful and quick to upload and download. No splitting of the archive, or timeouts on the server. Wanna know something that is a fucking DRAG about demos? They are SHORT. I have a 20 minute drive to work and that is not enough time to get into the meat of a good album. No "Forest Of Equilibrium" for me in the morning. I'm a third of the way in by the time I am through the intro. If you are listening to something, you almost want it to be something you are not that interested in, or something that can pert-near complete itself within the time frame granted. So the What The Fuck?!? demo posted a few posts back leaves me driving 75mph on the interstate and rather unsafely removing my eyes from the road while trying to find something else in my iPod to listen to that will interest me for the next seven and a half minutes. ("You know, and I know, I can't live without my radio")

Maine's Ocean really felt the need to write ten (twenty... thirty) minute songs. On their self released 2004 demo, they had it right. Two songs, 25 minutes long. Perfect drive-to-work length. It's before they had figured out how to be molasses slow too, so it's not like it puts me to sleep on the way (another good reason not to listen to "Forest Of Equilibrium" while driving I guess.) Playing tectonically slow really takes some tweaking on the groups's part. It takes a keen sense of time amongst all involved for everyone to stay together.

My old band played with Ocean in Cleveland some years ago. At that time, the only thing they had released was this 2 song demo. It was not terribly indicative of their live sound, but it was crushing nonetheless. They had just re-recorded their entire debut album after being entirely unhappy with what they had recorded with Sanford Parker in Chicago. I don't know how that can be possible, but their reasons I think had more to do with their own performances and they just ran out of time to get it the way they wanted it. (Something about it not being slow enough.) Ocean are obviously perfectionists in many regards. Their second album, "Pantheon Of The Lesser" is an utter fucking sludge/doom masterpiece, probably the last sludge/doom masterpiece that was ever recorded. The second song (Of The Lesser) is like 37 minutes long, it's super super slow and it STILL rules from beginning to end. It's REALLY hard for something super super slow to be able to do that. It took them 2 years of writing to get it right apparently, and when they did, it was a doozie. It doesn't get boring, and I highly recommend you get it if you like it slow. Then again, if you already like it slow, you probably already own it.

You may NOT however, own their highly sought after "Monument/Fork Lashing Eye" 2 song, self released CDR demo. Weep no more, for I do. I finally got around to scanning the cover as well. Ocean were some of the most solid guys I have ever met. They gave me my pick of T shirts, but I was grabby and not thinking and grabbed a small. Sold it some years ago. Still kicking myself. I should have at least made it into a back patch or something cuz I REALLY love this band. They released this on a limited 500 copy run of 12" vinyl with sick, handmade packaging a few years ago. Doubtless, it sold out. Here is your chance to at least have it in some form if you so desire.

Gutted - self titled, self released final album.

2010-01-21T00:12:00.006-05:00

Oh SHIT!!! Lo Res Viscera beat me to it. He always posts about HIS hometown bands, and I like to post about mine. His blog is one of the reasons I do a blog. He does it for the right reasons, not just to spread a zillion files around the internet, or be the first to leak something. His posts mean something to him and his blog is a labor of love. Albums I post usually have some personal reason to them as to why I have posted them, and I am verbose in imparting some inkling of my personal connection to such-and-such album or demo. I was happy to see that SOMEONE knows about Gutted other than the 450 or so Midwesterners that gave a shit about them in 1993, even though I think he was a midwesterner in 1993, which I guess would make him one of the 450. Either way, I am glad he is spreading the good word.

LRV posted the long lost classic "Bleed For Us To Live," which in all honesty didn't make too strong an impression on me after the REALLY classic "Disease" demo. They were brutal enough without a lead guitarist. Gutted was all we had in Toledo. There were no other death metal bands at the time and these guys either opened, or in most cases HEADLINED every extreme metal show in the area. They were the most extreme it got around here, and all without a single blastbeat ever written or played. There was one other band at the time, but they were very openly aryan supremacist (and boring as shit, musically) so I won't even discuss them. You get a bit of that around these parts.

There was a metal show that myself and some friends attended, and the Ditch brothers pulled up in a rusty Chevette. Their band at the time was called Demigod, but because of the Finnish band, were changing their name. (There was a Toledo band named Athiest too, they had to change their name to Corruption. They practiced 2 doors down from me.) Mark Ditch pulled out a little pad of paper with some band name possibilities written on it and asked us to pick one. I don't remember the others, but I voted against "Gutted." It DID make a striking logo in the end. I was never friends with them. They were in their 20's and I was like 14 or 15 and would sneak into shows and not talk to anyone for fear of getting thrown out even though I wasn't drinking and usually tried to pay cover.

The last time I saw them live, it was opening for Napalm Death on the Fear, Emptiness, Despair tour in the basement of The Asylum in downtown Toledo. Sheer Terror played that show too (and ruled!) Gutted was playing their new post-Bleed material on this show, and it crushed. They had returned to their original three piece lineup. There were some new amps onstage too. It was a nastier guitar tone, and overdriven bass and it was gnarly as hell. Unfortunately, death metal was no longer the flavor of the week as it was about 1994 at that point and "alterna-metal" was starting to crown. The only problem with Bleed For Us To Live was that it was released 2 years too late. They would have been kings had they been anywhere but here. Sadly, they had to settle for being kings... here.

I dunno why LRV was worried about them being considered Slam Death. Waking The Cadaver these guys are not. They WERE alot more creative in their rhythmic approach to things than alot of other bands. Gutted hardly ever got beyond "mid paced." What they DID write were hooks. A lost art if you ask me. A car could blow out a tire in some of the pockets they would write. Death metal bands don't play anything resembling a pocket anymore. The later material has a grit to it that was closer kin to Incantation and some of the other "dark" death metal that was busy being forgotten at the time as well. Gutted still kept that midpaced, evil vibe going on, like Asphyx. The keening, whining guitar solos that really weren't much more than moody, reverbed out string bends. The throat lacerating vocals (NOT cookie monster!) Chunky, simple double kick and filthy bass that complimented the guitar tones. Some years after they "broke up" (became permanently inactive? retired? closed the family practice?) This limited released platter came out. It has awful, throwaway cover artwork, bad layout with a crappy font, and they could not have printed up more than 500 or 1000. Total homebrew job, but it has their final recordings on it (including a dope cover of Manitou that I like more than Venom!) The first five songs were the referenced later material they recorded. To make it complete, though, they included their 4 song "Disease" demo at the end of the album. I wore out two copies of that cassette. I never got a chance to buy this CD, so I only have this downloaded copy of it that I have re-upped. I think I got it from one of those Russian sites and I just happened to run across it. I probably still get porn popups from going to that site too.

I kinda doubt if Gutted toured much or played too far out of town. Maybe some East Coast dates. They released Bleed For Us To Live at a point when death metal show attendance was at an all time low ebb. I know they played the Michigan Deathfest more than once and were tight with the Epitaph Magazine people. I vaguely remember them getting a good review in Metal Maniacs, but that never guaranteed anyone any widespread recognition (Shit, one of MY bands had a one page feature done on them! Never even got me recognized on the street!)

I can't find a better pic of the cover than the one from the Metallum, so that is all you get. In all honesty, it's really all you need.

Top Nine of 2009

2010-01-10T22:46:00.009-05:00

This year was a little weak on the new music tip. The good releases were REALLY good thankfully. Even Megadeth released a kick ass record. That fact tickles me especially because I rediscovered them this year. Megadeth was actually the first metal T shirt I ever owned and I wore it to threads. Within 4 years of first hearing them, I was ashamed to own it, though, as the 5 or 6 follow-up albums to Rust In Peace hardly "followed" it at all. (If anyone is selling the "Contaminated" shirt, let me know, I would love to get my hands on another one in good condition.)

I wanted to make this post all fancy with hotlinks and stuff, but we are lucky I got around to putting little pictures next to the entries. Go out and buy these at your favorite local mom and pop record store. They are still out there. I am lucky to live in a city where there are like 6 or 8 record stores and I spend some loot at more than one of them every week. There really is nothing quite like holding the product in your hand and thumbing through the packaging. Vinyl, cassette or CD, it doesn't really matter what format you dig, just don't be one of those clowns with 75,000 MP3s and no physical music collection. Those guys like dogshit like Waking The Cadaver and gave Soulja Boy a career. I quit smoking 6 years ago this January and my vow back then was that I would transfer whatever money I spent on cigarettes to a weekly music budget. I smoked about a carton of cigarettes a week, and as the price of a carton has risen, my music budget has risen as well. Good for music. It is a vice I am happy to support for myself. I can't say I could ever remember being able to rate the cigarettes I smoked in a year, or enjoyed talking about my habit with other geeks. Music is awesome, even if my best of 2009 list is almost exclusively metal this year. I wish something else would have impressed me, but most indie rock has gone up it's own ass and exists only to sell VW's and MP3 players. I would rather listen to the new Nile album (which was surprisingly good) than the new Decemberists (which was a horrifying disappointment.) Hip Hop did exactly nothing this year either, short of that new Raekwon album, and when people tell me about a really great hip hop album they just heard, it usually was recorded 5 years ago. Most of my music purchases this year were catalog purchases, or reissues of awesome shit like Siouxsie And The Banshees, or Discharge. I ordered a ton of shit off eBay too (getting solid copies of stuff I discovered through downloading.)

The best shows I saw were bands that reformed and were doing one more go-round. (Sunny Day Real Estate, Carcass, Jesus Lizard.) The only show that I was really excited about that was NOT some band I was into ten years ago was Dungen, who toured with Fleet Foxes (barf) but played a one off date in my town for about a hundred people. It was amazing and beyond kick ass to see one of the only existing 'non metal' bands I enjoy playing 4 feet in front of me. Sadly, there were only about 30 people from my town at the show, and the majority of the audience was made up of people who drove several hours to see them in a small club setting. The Bone Awl/Volahn/Ashdautas tour was sweet though. I saw that in Detroit and then Cleveland a few nights later. Several of my best of picks, I saw at the Templars Of Doom 3 festival in Indianapolis, which was most assuredly a highlight of my year. I should really make it a point to try and make it to one metal festival a year. Unfortunately, I work and make most of my money on most weekends. I had plans for MDF, but had to cancel for that reason.

I need to move on to the list as this is becoming more stream-of-consciousness blogging, and it really shouldn't be.

I'll spare the mystery and just start at the number one:

1. Iron Age - The Sleeping Eye
Wow... fucking, wow. The first time I heard this was at the record store. The guy sez "You'll love this" and I promptly didn't for whatever reason. It just wasn't the day for it for me. A few months later, a friend of mine tells me they are playing in Cleveland as their only midwest date, with Nukkehammer as support. I went to see Nukkehammer and am glad I did as they crushed. I really didn't care about Iron Age, but they were one of the most pummelling bands I have ever seen live. They were tight and energetic, even after having driven 25 hours straight from Austin to play... really late. Their album has equal parts of Integrity's Cleveland stomp, with Venom's forward thrust in the fast parts. The songs have all the class of Entombed's Clandestine though. Expansive, almost epic qualities meshing seamlessly with expert songcraft. "The Sleeping Eye" is some serious next level shit for me. I got the same vibe from Catharsis' 1-2 punch of Samsara and Passion in the late 90's I wish more bands like that existed. Epic, but getting to the point so their songs weren't 37 minutes long.

2. Argus - s/t
I drove four hours to see these guys. Got there just in time too. They were still tuning up when I arrived. Argus were the second band on day 2 of the Templars Of Doom festival in Indianapolis. Frustratingly enough, they were a month away from having boxes of copies of their albums to sell. One of my old bands played with them some years ago. It must have been their 4th or 5th show with their new vocalist at the time, Butch, who got us on the bill as he was friends with our drummer. Butch has a wall shaking tenor that got him attention as vocalist for the 90's doom metal outfit, Penance. They were "Butch's new band" to us. He was still pretty new to the band though and was not feeling the best about his performance, but it knocked my socks off and I have been waiting for years for a full length to come out. They had just started recording their demo at the time. 3-4 years later and I finally have my hands on their absolutely un-fuck-withable debut self titled full length. Their superior songcraft stood them far ahead of some of the other acts of the weekend. Their twin guitar work compares to ANY twin guitar team in the business. We're talking Roth/Schenker good. We're talking Wartell/Franklin good. If you don't know who those guitar teams are, get googling. Argus are not exactly true doom metal, but add a healthy dose of Witchfinder General and that is probably the closest one could get to pigeonholing them. They are downtuned classic metal I guess. I'm excited to hopefully get to Cleveland in a few weeks to see them play with Pentagram and Gates Of Slumber.

3. Krallice - Dimensional Bleedthrough
Epic, sweeping, cold black metal, played by a bunch of guys from other bands that all live in NYC. They are better at it than most. This record is the shit. I saw them play this entire album from beginning to end just before they joined up with Wolves In The Throne Room for a US tour. It was so loud it was stupid. Everyone was playing through a full stack. I had earplugs in and my ears were still ringing afterwards. I loved the first album and they didn't play a note of it live. I don't know why I latched onto these guys, but I really REALLY like them. I kinda feel that these guys are the torchbearers for good, pure USBM at this point. Great stuff, and they aren't pretentious about it. WITTR strike as the pretentious torchbearers of 'hipster black metal' that they are made out to be. Living in the woods and all that shit. Krallice live in Brooklyn and probably take the subway to band practice. They have no designs on being kvlt by concealing their identities or wearing face paint (a practice that I feel USBM acts have no claim to.) I still like Wolves... and Black Cascade would be in my honorable mentions, probably more because everyone is naming them in their top ten and I think Krallice is gonna get the short end of it by releasing their album later in the year.

4. Deathspell Omega - Diaboli Veritas In Aeturnum: Chaining The Katechon
Unlike Krallice, this band is TOTALLY pretentious about everything. I guess they has every right to be. I find this band to be completely incredible. The way dissonance is used to make melodies that are totally anti-melodic, yet still catchy is like catnip to me and I wish I could do it as well. This is one 22 minute song that actually keeps my attention for 22 minutes without me needing to do something else. I will actually listen to this and stare off into space for 22 minutes WITHOUT cleaning my room or reading a book or reorganizing my music collection or anything. Listening to Deathspell Omega in headphones is one of the most disorienting experiences one can have with music, next to maybe trying to figure out what Portal are doing, which just gets tedious to me after awhile.

5. Keelhaul's Triumphant Return To Obscurity
One of the best bands... ever. They finally put out a new album this year. Caught these guys live too, by total accident. I used to love seeing them back in the early 00's. They ruled everything as far as I am concerned. They made all those Botch clones sound like a bunch of chumps. They made all the tech metal assholes sound like clowns. They still do as far as I am concerned. Thankfully, the Botch worship bands kinda fell away, but there is still lots of Psyopus and Ion Dissonance garbage out there that needs to be shown the door. Keelhaul are totally unapologetic in their delivery. Their insistence on the rhythm is entrancing to me. Somehow, they don't get lost. It's spooky how well they play together too. Judging by the album title, they are hanging it up again for at least another few years after this, so if you didn't get to see them on their tour last September, then shame on you.

6. Zebulon Pike - Intranscience
I hate Pelican, ISIS and Russian Sparrows. It's boring and unoriginal. Neurosis did it when I was in high school. I've seen these guys compared to those bands because they are instrumental and heavy and proggy. That's really sad. I think this is a self released album, and therefore I may be posting it on here before too long because it is pretty effing amazing. I saw them at the Templars fest too. Someone told me they were like Pelican and that made me want to go hang outside (or hang myself) where there were people I didn't know doing things I didn't approve of. I decided to chance it with the band playing music I didn't approve of. I listened for about 20 seconds before deciding that I approved. Enough to buy this album and a T shirt. I wish I would have bought another album from them too. They had all of them for sale. I fucked up. They knocked my socks off. If the guitarists played any tighter, they would have been spooning.

7. Coke Bust - Lines In The Sand
The best hardcore band I have heard in years. This is their new 12". It's fast. I saw these guys live this year and they were intense and tight. I was impressed with how the live feel of this band was captured on recording. Their Fuck Bar Culture 7" was one of the best hardcore releases of the last decade. I felt and this full length is not too far behind. I think it's only drawback is the fact that it IS a full length and the impact of 6 brutal minutes of feedback drenched, but still super-tight thrashcore has been stretched out to 18 or 20 minutes.

8. YOB - The Great Cessation
If YOB releases an album, it is in my top ten for the year. The Great Cessation is no exception. YOB does doom metal like only YOB can. Mike Scheidt twists and distorts his voice and guitar tones in ways that no one will EVER be able to do again, without begging a direct comparison. My girlfriend took me to Chicago for my birthday dinner. I wanted to go to Kuma's Corner. I ordered the YOB. I will never eat another burger again... update, since writing this the first time, my girlfriend has decided to go vegan, which directly affects my culinary decision making and the YOB may very well be THEE last burger I ever eat. I really hope this is not the last YOB album Mike Scheidt decides to do though. YOB reminds me that all that is sacred and holy in doom metal is still important to some, and it isn't all about playing one drone for 65 minutes.

9. Teitanblood - Seven Chalices
I had my doubts about this release the first few spins I gave it. After about a dozen or so spins, it really started to grow on me. I don't spend enough time on the internet to stay up on every noisy, muddy neo "dark death metal" band, but I have a few friends that do. One of them, it's his job to keep up on this stuff. He's a writer and publicist. I ask him about three times a year to hip me to what I am missing by not frequenting the message boards and forums. He sets me on the left hand path pretty successfully, and often. This was his early entry for album of the year. I can't say that is it the best thing I have heard all year, but it is a murky, epic masterpiece in a market share that is getting more and more glutted with one dimensional Blasphemy worship. Seven Challices comes stocked with dark and freaky intros and outros, and a ridiculous guitar tone that creates an oppressive atmosphere. Impolite and evil.

Box Set: MAGMA - Studio Zünd
I don't feel the need to own many box sets as there are very few bands that maintain a level of quality throughout their career. When I caught wind of this being released, I waited a bit before ordering it. I finally grew some sack and dropped the loot over the summer, used off eBay. I totally lucked out and got it for $90. It quickly went out of print shortly after that and is now selling for more than twice that. I can't say it is anything I am ever going to sell though. My copy of MDK cost me $18 6 or 8 years ago. I bought it in NYC too. This is the entire studio output of Magma and it would be worth the $200 just to have all of them together. There is only one musical misstep and that would be 1982's 'Merci,' which is awful. If you ever wanted to hear Magma doing their own personal take on Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing" go for it. Aside from that, it is cover to cover genius. The only REAL drawback to it is the assembly of the separate packages themselves. The plenty thick booklets don't fit the packages very well. Still, it took me like 3 days to read all the liner notes. This was a fantastic effort. The only other box set I could see myself owning is maybe the 1970-1976 Genesis box, which I can get at Barnes and Noble. Where am I ever going to see something like this ever again?

Best reissue: Vulcano - Bloody Vengeance
My last blog post pretty much spelled out my complete and total admiration for this recording. Were it not for file sharing, this album would never have been heard by me and I would not have spent the money on it once I found it. I walked into Magnolia Thunderpussy in Columbus with EVERY hope of finding this, but no expectations. I almost squealed like a schoolgirl when I did. eBay and direct purchases from labels are cool, but I know when I enter "Darkthrone T Shirt" into the search function, I am going to see 18 different Tshirts of varying dubiousness come up. I pay the money and it shows up on my doorstep after a few days. It's a sure bet. The true rush of discovery only occurred when I found a faded Darkthrone logo shirt for $3 at the Salvation Army (true story BTW, it doesn't fit me now that I have a belly, so my girl wears it) I enter with the hopes of finding a true gem, and I kinda say to myself "I really hope I find XX item" but rarely do. I actually did NOT say anything to myself about hoping to find a Darkthrone shirt when I did, I just did and that was sweet. When I walked into Magnolia, I actually was thinking "Maybe they will have the reissue of Bloody Vengeance" and they DID. It was weird. The packaging is so-so. There isn't like useful liner notes or really kick ass biography of the band or anything. Just some fun, old photos and lyrics, but the fact that it exists (and I physically own a copy) rules everything. I will forego putting a little picture next to this since it was my last blog post.

Best Demo: Coffinworm - Great Bringer Of Night
I have gotten to be pretty tight friends with a couple of the guys in this band. That has no bearing on my feelings about this demo. I am a doom metal junkie and this album hits all the bases when it comes to doing modern doom metal right. I already posted this a few months back cuz it blew me away. Download it with all due haste. I've heard an unmastered final mix of the full length due out on Profound Lore in the coming months, and when it is released, I would recommend purchasing it with all due haste as well.

Best compilation: Demented Anthem Harcore Assemblage
Nightbringer has a track on this comp, which is why I got it. This is the only compilation I have purchased this year cuz I usually hate them. This one is sweet though. Every band puts a sick track on it. If you want to hear the best of American and Japanese hardcore, get this. I think Burai Core distro still has a few copies for order. Some crafty googling will achieve you results.

Honorable mentions:
Marduk - Wormwood (almost made it. Edged out by Seven Challices. Marduk didn't hit their stride until Plague Angel)
Beherit - Engram (Nuclear fukkin Holocausto!!! please tour!!!)
Wolves In The Throne Room - Black Cascade
Megadeth - Endgame (just for putting out a record that stands up to the early catalog)
Nile - Those Whom The Gods Detest (FAR better than expected)
Proclamation - Execration Of Cruel Bestiality (what the hell does that even mean?)
Diephago - Filipino Antichrist (roughest shit EVER)
Converge - Axe To Fall
Obscura - Cosmogenesis (I hate tech metal, but damned if this ain't a good listen, fantastic solos and a sense of melody and structure, while still being brutal as hell)
Impetuous Ritual - Relentless Execution of Ceremonial Excrescence (what the hell does THAT mean too?)

Onward to the year we made contact.

Vulcano - Bloody Vengeance

2009-12-25T17:48:00.004-05:00

Happy 25th of December. If you are celebrating something, good for you. If not, I hope you find something to do. I don't have to work today, and everyone I know is doing their thing, so I'm blogging for a change. I went to work on my entry for top ten of 2009, but Vulcano's 1986 masterpiece Bloody Vengeance was playing on my stereo and I couldn't adjust my focus to anything released in 2009. Following my muse:

The 'bestial' thrash of 80's Brazil sounds like they got ONE shipment of metal LP's in 1986 and no instructions for operation. There were copies of the first Bathory album, Obsessed By Cruelty, Pleasure To Kill, Apocalyptic Raids, Welcome To Hell, Dealing With It, Fuckin' Death and Infernal Overkill. Maybe some copies of Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing. The cardinal rule of "When one guy plays fast, everybody else play JUST AS FAST" was completely ignored in music class, as was tuning or the concept of tempered notes at all. Brazil was too pissed to be worried about any of that silly shit. They just HAD to spew forth profane blasphemies in broken English, and they had to do it faster amd meaner than Pleasure To Kill. The oft-blogged-about "Ultimate Bestial Thrash Album" of all time is obviously INRI from Sarcofago, and for good reason. It's nasty. It's REALLY nasty and amazing and amateurish it foresaw just about everything taking place 25 years later with frightening accuracy. Vulcano was nastier. The production was nastier, the lyrics were nastier, the cover makes Exhorder's Slaugher In The Vatican (which was banned in the US for some years) look downright pious. It's a 23 minute long "full length" with 7 proper songs that carelessly and drunkenly careen towards the old nun hobbling across the street with a carriage full of crippled orphan babies. The 7th track is one of those awesome satanic demon ritual chant interludes (or Brazilian kids playing with vocal filters and effects in the studio) and the final title track is the closest they have to a slow jam on the entire album. Bloody Vengeance probably ISN'T as blasphemous as INRI, but I think it sounds a good bit more evil. INRI is almost cartoonish in it's over-the-top hatred of Jesus and all that is good and holy. Venom never sang "Fuck you, Fuck you, Fuck you Jesus Christ!!!!" Morbid Visions was the warning. INRI was the shock and awe campaign... Bloody Vengeance was the full-on attack. BV was much more direct in it's delivery. There is no "Nightmare" to choke the pace after 3 songs. BV does not relent until the last song, where the tempo slacks a bit and some groove comes out for a scant few minutes before the album is over. It's pretty poorly sequenced actually. The first six songs are blistering and one dimensional. They jump the rails immediately and don't allow you to regain your composure for their 19 minute duration. If there was any more of it, the songs would run together as they all have the same raging tempo and rhythm. They may have no rival in intensity from this decade. Maybe Revenge or Deiphago. I would not hesitate to say that it is one of the most violent albums released in the 80's, Brazilian or otherwise. I ripped this from the 2009 Cogumelo reissue with a DVD live show from 1985 I found a few weeks ago in Columbus. It sounds like it has been remastered, but alot of the noise issues inherent in even the best 320kbps vinyl rips I downloaded are still gladly there, and it is NO cleaner, maybe just a little louder.

I bought Beneath The Remains in 1990. I was probably 13. It was kindof a revelation to me that there was such an active scene in South America. I saw "The Emerald Forest" and it wasn't metal. I figured most of South America had never even worn a proper pair of pants or had ever been in air conditioning. It seemed dense, hot, sweaty and humid. It probably still is. It's probably as gross as I could ever imagine it being to try and play intensely fast death metal in an equatorial nation. There are probably giant bugs that bite people, and drug murders occurring every few minutes just outside the rehearsal room in the kind of neighborhoods I would have come from were I birthed to some family down there. I can only imagine that these conditions are what they fed on to make the music as sick as was coming out of the region in 1985-86. I will tell you what I know for a fact though, I PORED over every thanks list from every tape I bought from 1989 to 1992 and got familiar with an awful lot of names of bands that I only ever got to read about back then. Sepultura and Ratos De Porao was all we got from Brazil up here, and aside from thanking each other and a number of Florida death metal bands I already knew, there were bands who got Portuguese shout out's and a number of names that were not familiar. Chakal, Sex Trash, Overdose and Vulcano come to mind immediately. Sarcofago may have gotten some love, but I don't know since Sepultura didn't reprint their thanks lists in the reissues they put out a few years ago (dicks.) Those names were the real deal.

Hundreds of bands currently go to great lengths to make sure their albums sounds are cloaked in bestial mush and filthy fairy dust to try and get that early 80's mystery that made Venom's Welcome To Hell such a punch to the gut when it came out. Never mind that it was a total pisstake. In my own youthful naivete, I was convinced that Welcome To Hell contained codes and secrets in its murk. I thought it was WILLFULLY recorded like that to mask and disguise the keys to Satan's own kingdom, only available to true Venom fans who were hip and got the decoder rings at a gig or something. Some heads in Norway had the decoder ring in the early 90's and kicked up some hellish dust. Cats in mid 80's Brazil never got the decoder ring. Satan knew they couldn't afford to get to see Venom if they ever made it down there, so he hooked them up personally. They went straight for THEE DUST and snorted deep, straight from the baggie. I'm convinced of this.

click that shit and breathe deep.

What The Fuck?!? - demo

2009-12-02T18:34:00.006-05:00

I'll make this one short and sweet as well just to get this demo out there. I already gushed about how ripping they were live. Unlike the Deadmen demo, which is a fine example of the bands songs, but does not represent their crushing presence live, the WTF demo is pretty representative of the live presentation. Noisy and thrashy as hell, except live, they are noisier and thrashier. I guess an easy comparison (because I am too lazy to bother writing an extensive review) would be Haymaker or DS-13... maybe Citizens Arrest? Pissed, hateful, "no slow-all go" hardcore by guys your girlfriend would not be interested in cuddling with. This is right up my alley. Raw and angry with no metalcore, Youth Crew, NYHC, posi, or power violence references. No showoff full sleeve tattoos they got done all at once, no matching lettermen jackets, minimal gang choruses, no bland '77 throwback, no circle pits, but there IS a Dwarves cover. They just start raging and fourteen minutes later, you don't want them to be done raging. This is the most pissed off thing I have posted in a long time. More proof that Indianapolis have some awesome shit going on right now.

too bro, too slow

Deadmen - 2009 Demo

2009-11-30T16:34:00.003-05:00

I'll put the quickness on this one just to get it out there. Out of something like 12 bands that I saw last weekend out with Disconnected, Deadmen probably impressed everyone in the van most. The laundry list of current and ex members of bands the members of Deadmen have occupied seats in is long. Seriously, it's worse than Dimmu Borgir's biography. Coffinworm (one of my favorite bands of the moment right now), Lair Of The Minotaur, Demiricous, Angelville, Suicide Note... Some creative googling/wiki-ing even turned up a stint in Birthright by one of the members. You can do your own creative googling if you really want to connect the dots. This demo does not do any justice to what they come off like live. Opening song "Been There Still There" opens with a shameless bite of "Snakes Of Christ" from Danzig, but when the drums come back, it gets driven into the dirt with an EYEHATEGOD/Crowbar groove. Nate's vocals are pure acid. It's obvious the members of Deadmen know their way around writing a good song and have done it many times as they adeptly engineer the song through pacier double kick parts and a few twists and turns, right back into another 2 ton groove. Both the other two songs, "Whiskey Vs. Wine" and "These Gods Have No Eyes" open with horns-down ramming speed Venom-like abandon while going forward to dismantle and reconstruct further sludge, NWOBHM and Celtic Frost reference points, even a few tastefully under-used twin guitar volleys for spice.

The Deadmen demo is regretfully short, and the songs are constructed in such a manner that compel the listener to follow it through to the end. None of them take very long to say what they need to say and a full length of anything more than 35 or 36 minutes is probably all that will be needed to make a properly devestating debut, should they choose to move forward in that direction. This band needs to be felt live though. This is a great start, but after seeing them live, the demo is merely a souveneir to tide me over to the next time I get to see them. Indianapolis has always had a mid sized, but potent and well developed metal/punk scene that has never really gotten it's fair due. Carl and Garrett have a monster here as well as in the mighty Coffinworm. I should be so lucky to be in ONE band this good before I die. Spread this one far and wide.

Off probation and on vacation

2009-11-24T01:26:00.022-05:00

...was the unofficial title of the weekend in honor of Disconnected's vocalist, Patrick, finally clearing his probationary period of 3 years. He got in some trouble some time ago. He's better now.

After releasing the split 7" and actually printing up T shirts (you'd think we were a real band or something) we were itching to get out on the road. Will335 has been booking DIY punk/hardcore shows sporadically over the past 2 years. They are donation only shows and usually do pretty well for the scene and for the touring bands. Usually it is ONLY to support a touring band and the first couple of shows required some 'gentle coaxing' of the crowd, who needed to be reminded that 'donation' does not mean free. Back in July or August, plans for Will to call in a few favors and get us out on the road began to be laid. Karma paid back in spades this past weekend when Disconnected hit the road with Under Anchor for three days.

Originally it was to be ourselves and Nightbringer galvanting our way out to Cedar Falls, IA where both bands had some connections. Some of the members of NB had some obligations to fulfill and could not afford the time or the money to do it. That trip will be for another weekend I guess. Damned shame, because NB is Disconnected's favorite band pretty much. They are as close as you can get to being near Motörhead, while still being able to maintain your lawn. The righteous vegan brothers in Under Anchor heeded the call though, and we made the weekend with them. We did the bookings footwork, they provided the van, we secured the trailer, Rorik drove, I navigated, Will335 harrassed everyone and mashed up the van when I played World Burns To Death. The UA guys suffered untold miseries. DJ, the drummer had broken his hand the day before and was told by the doctor that he was NOT playing drums this weekend. Of course, being like 20, he told the doctor to eat fuck and played like a MONSTER all weekend. He was pretty swollen by the end of the weekend. Derrick and Jimmy were both sick (and got everyone else sick by the end of the weekend). Rorik twisted his ankle and had some pain from being gored and skinned by a piece of machinery at work a few months back, so he was limping after every set and by Chicago, was NOT stoked to walk very far for anything. By the end of the weekend, Jimmy was REALLY sick and would not get out of the cargo area where they had prepared a futon mattress. Somehow, they still played like monsters every night.

Thursday, we all met at Will's house about 7pm and loaded the trailer. We headed out for the hour and a half drive to the Leathershop in Lima and got there later than we thought was prudent. Thankfully the show hadn't started. The Leathershop is probably one of the best DIY spots to catch a hardcore show in Ohio. The Lima crew are dirty, crude and violent, but any one of them would probably give you the shirt off their back, if you feel like wearing an unlaundered and slept in Coke Bust shirt that is. They are all about getting a good show together, or failing that, gorging themselves on vegan food and driving a hundred miles or so to wherever a good show IS happening. The show that was put together that we played on contained 4 out of town bands and 2 Lima bands. Of the 2 Lima bands, there were a total of 5 members. Of them, I think 3 of them lived at, and curated the Leathershop. I don't know who is responsible for the abundance of hardcore pornography that wallpapers most of the rooms, but it is pretty surreal and gives the place that 'Gummo' vibe that any DIY spot in the middle of Ohio would do well to cultivate. They had us on top billing, headlining the show. We found this odd since we had so far hardly ever played out of Toledo, but we also remembered that a good number of Lima kids had trekked up to see shows that had us on the bill and maybe (just MAYBE) a few people were stoked that we were playing. Coincidentally, the first picture included is the first Disconnected patch sighting. It's one of the guys from Trontor, who broke up this past year. I was kinda stoked about that and trailed the kid for a good 15 seconds unbeknownst to him to get a clear pic. At least someone was stoked. William refused to take his ski mask off the entire night. He made it about 3 songs into our set before he had to do something. I played the first two songs in my gasmask for fun, but I was hoping I could do it for the whole set because kids in Lima smoke PACKS of cigarettes at a time. It was thick. I didn't make it past the 2nd song of our set before I thought I was going to pass out because a gasmask is hard to breathe in to begin with. The lineup was Domestic Dispute, Pizza Hi Five (the locals) Iron Minds from Cleveland, Karloff from Columbus, UA and us. The house was pretty well packed for all on the bill and kids were all rad and friendly. Everyone got the crowd to dance at least a few times. Kids lost their minds for Iron Minds and Karloff. I won't bore anyone with a blow by blow of the live sets. Everyone was solid. If you want to know what the bands sound like, I give you my hearty endorsement to go catch a live show and dig what you hear. Everyone was fast when they weren't playing slow and if their gear was on, they were loud. This is a blog, not a zine. Never confuse the two.

Under Anchor, Iron Minds and ourselves all stayed at the Leathershop. I think people were up partying until 6 or 7 in the morning. I was in the backroom on a futon mattress on the floor. I couldn't sleep for a damn. Two people in the room were making out and stuff. It didn't get very far past that. I was grateful. I had turned my ipod up so if they did decide to take it to that other level of intimacy, I would hopefully be asleep already. When I woke up, I was on track 35 of 43 of my Leviathan collection and I couldn't hear ANYTHING in the midrange. Anyone who has listened to Leviathan, knows what I am talking about. Leviathan rules everything. His albums are all like 58-70 minutes long, so my hearing was completely whitewashed by morning.

We aren't self conscious about our sound PERSÉ, but we are pretty certain we don't sound like many bands on any bills ever. We're not serious enough for metal shows, and we do not blast. We are a little too aggressive for most punk bills, and we aren't posi or crucial. Hardcore bands are a little too clean for us, and we don't have any breakdowns to tell anyone when to bring the sick mosh. Crusties would love our sound, but we are not in the least bit conformist to their strict guidelines, nor are we are not political at all. We play no anthems and do not print our lyrics, so it's rare that there is a singalong. Aside from speed, abusive volume and an inconsiderate use of feedback, there is very little for kids who are used to the usual happenings and flow of most live sets to grasp. If there ever was a bill that we were tailor cut for, it was probably the Indianapolis show. I had my buddy Dave from Coffinworm/Worldeater put his feelers out for a show that weekend. Boy, did he come through. There was already a show happening at the 1511 House, and he was going to try and get us on it rather than book a competing show somewhere else. SMART!!! The night was originally Adam's idea for debuting his new band Kata Sarka. Adam had been a friend of mine some years ago when he played in the USBM band FOG, but we fell out of touch. I was hoping to run into him the last time I was in Indy, but I did not. I went to a doom metal fest and he was stuck working all weekend. I DID hang with guys who worked with him and knew him and got my information to him to put us back in touch. Dave asked him if we could make it a stop as well. Agreements were struck and HOLY SHIT was it a good show. I'm going to continue to keep it diplomatic and reserve the 'live review' since it has been a week and my memory is not very long. I do know that Garrett gave me demo of his band, Deadmen, and it is sick. They were incredible. One of the best bands of the weekend and some awesome guys. They are kind of a supergroup. Members and former members of Coffinworm, Suicide Note, Angelville, Lair Of The Minotaur and who knows what else. Uploading their demo right now. Expect a post dedicated to them shortly. The sick fellas all crashed early in the van. The rest of us wandered over to Adam's house for some late night hang. He gifted me with a disc of MP3's that have been ruling my Ipod for a week (especially the unreleased FOG material and the Ignivomous stuff) 5 of us (and Adam) crammed into his 80's Toyota hatchback so we could get something to eat. We went to Qdoba in Broad Ripple, which is douchebag city on a Friday night. We ate and left and I wasn't even done throwing my drink out (after getting that last final pull on it) before Rorik damn near gets in a fight with some popped collar chachi-boys right outside the door. I think he did something to them to provoke them. We slept and got up early the next day. Pat had no voice so he was up at like 7:30 making tea for his throat. The rest of us got up pretty soon after that. I grabbed a quick shower and we were on the road by 9:30 for Chicago.

I wore the battery down on my iPhone using the Google Maps app to get us to Chicago and routing us through it to get to Soul Vegetarian and Metal Haven. I think we all got giant heaping plates of vegan protein in one form or another for lunch. The fried BBQ seitan was pretty good, but it was WAAAAAY better after the show. I wasn't impressed with the twist sandwich I got and regretted my decision. I had to order that in place of the much more interesting sounding Marcus Garvey burger, which they were out of. There were also vegan tamales on the menu, which intrigued me, they were out of them too.

After that, we went to Metal Haven. I had heard much about this store, but had obviously never been there. It made me want to move in next door. We only put an hour in the parking meter, so I had to cram, but even with giving the racks a cursory pass through, I still bought 6 or 7 CD's. Dead Congregation full length, the new Cremation demos compilation on NWN, Odal - Zornes Heimat (totally underrated raw pagan black metal without the silly folk influence), Midnight - Total Fucking Midnight, which I could have lived without, but it was there. Cobalt - Eater Of Birds... I downloaded this ages ago and loved it, but no one could get it in stock for me around here. Black Witchery/Conqueror split Hellstorm Of Evil Vengeance... probably the greatest split of all time. Black Witchery - Desecration Of The Holy Kingdom, which I had just been outbid for on Ebay. It sold on CD for $29, I got it for $13. Up your ass high bidder: j****p.

After that, we went to the Chicago Diner so the vegans could pay like $8 for vegan milkshakes or something. It was in boystown, which is the gay area of Chicago. I figured if they were gonna be there for a few minutes, I could sneak off to a coffeehouse and called my girlfriend. I did just that. It took me a few minutes to find a place. She was stressed and it made me feel bad that I couldn't be there for her. I wandered for a few minutes and saw some rather interesting costume shops on the way back.

We went to the Albion house where we were playing with Picked Clean and What The Fuck from Indiana, and Poison Planet and Boiling Over from Chicago. Every band pretty much played a sick set. Under Anchor somehow pulled through injury and illness to play their tightest set of the weekend. We played our third incident free set of the weekend. (how?) I missed most of Picked Clean because they only played for ten minutes and we were loading out due to it being in a tiny basement. What The Fuck decimated everyone all weekend though I thought. I got a demo from them and have uploaded it for posting in the next few weeks, whenever I can get the time to write it up. Poison Planet ruled when I saw them at the Tower in Cleveland some months back. They were a little rough from being on hiatus for some months, but they still killed. Boiling Over were as tight as they were when they played in Toledo. We were the odd band out again. Most of the bands on the bill were of the straight edge fastcore variety. What The Fuck even played a song called "Fuck Metal" which prior to playing it, the guy had something to say about there being other things to sing about than dragons and vikings. I can agree with that. It's just when metal bands try and sing about things that aren't fantasy, partying or satan, it just comes off as preachy and people throw things at them. When hardcore bands do it, kids just ignore them. We don't know what Pat sings about. We know some of his lyrics and they are pretty abstract and/or depraved. When we were loading up, Jas tried to blow a snot rocket or something and it became an epic (and blogworthy) booger.

People didn't leave when we played. There were alot of people in the room. They danced hard (surprisingly) We were pretty stoked about the reaction we got because Chicago is a notoriously tough crowd. They are the largest city in the midwest and have probably the most active and strongest hardcore scene not on a coast. Chicago bands are seriously together when we see them in our hometown and when you play their town, you are up against a very spoiled crowd. They have some of the best bands, and anyone else who is awesome in the US is trying to get shows put together like four nights a week in Chicago. If your band is not on top of their game, the crowd will be outside bullshitting with each other. We didn't have this problem. It was the last night of the weekend and we knew we had to rip faces off from beginning to end. We held our own. We know a good number of kids came up from Indy because of the Indianapolis bands, and a few of them were really stoked on us because we were in top form the night before, but I can't say that ALL the kids dancing were from Indy. The show ended, everyone went home. We got arrangements made for where we were staying and I started punching in coordinates on the iPhone.

We headed out to find food. I think I hit the wrong button on or something, because google maps took us to the OTHER end of Clark St. looking for the Pick Me Up Cafe. We turned around like 4 times, then I hit the right button and it got us there, but it was like 5 miles south and we didn't know it was across the street from Wrigley Field... on a Saturday night... at midnight. It was douche city. They were hailing cabs, their cabs were cutting us off. There was no parking. They were wandering drunkenly and vomiting in front of the van when we were at stop lights. It was bad news and we were getting in a seriously bad mood as a result. The sick guys in UA were giving up the ghost at this point. Jimmy was driving, but he was hitting the wall hard in the H1N1 department. Rorik had driven all weekend and was trying to get a break. It was a bad idea. Once we let Jimmy out amongst the population, it was all over and we all woke up the next day with our sinuses full of cement and our throats full of cobwebs. We said fuck it and found where we were staying. Hopes were high that there would be something open at night that we could walk too. Maybe there would be vegan options? FAIL. Pat, Jas and I headed out to find Burger King, which was the only thing open in the admittedly "yuppie" area we were in. Will came along too so he could get some fries. I avoid fast food for the most part, and when I am stuck, I try and get something reasonable. The other band I play in make fun of me for my "fag food" selections but I really can't eat greasy foods anymore without risking losing a day to illness. We were so hungry though, and the dining room was closed. I walked up to the drive through to see if the lady would let us order something. There was already a guy standing there behind a car. We got behind him. There was no menu board there, and the only thing I could remember that BK served was Whoppers... and it was the best damned Whopper I had eaten in my entire life. I love me some vegan food, but damn, I was stoked to eat some actual meat for a change. We couldn't figure out where the place was. We accosted some fixed gear bicyclist to see what their snob/swine answer would be to our enquiry as to where the taco bell and/or burger king was. They refused to tell us and pedaled off saying "We don't know!!! We don't eat DOG!!!" I thought William was going piss his pants laughing. He's been a strict vegan for 17 years and these snarky pitchforkers were looking down their noses at him. Here's a picture of Will with an axe by which he will split the wigs of false vegans.

Lord only knows when Disconnected is going to get out and do this again. Sooner rather than later we hope. It was fun and we proved a point to ourselves kinda validating what we do. Dunno if we will be able to take it for more than a few days at a time, but hopefully, things keep moving forward.

I've been writing this in little bursts all week, more for myself than anyone else. My memory is not long and before I start forgetting things, I wanted to have a document of what happened, and how the band feels about things just at this moment rather than looking back in time and thinking about events in hindsight. Currently, it is one week after we got home and Disconnected just played a rather disappointing set to a surprisingly good sized hometown crowd. Things didn't go our way and we were not in top form. I guess we deserved a little humbling after having such a great weekend. We'll get it back with some practice. A heap of thanks to Jimmy, Derrick, DJ and Rorik from Under Anchor for providing the van. Rorik in particular for driving nearly every last mile of the weekend without complaint. Thanks to Trashy and Mike at the Leathershop for the rad show, the floorspace and the vegan burritos the next day. Thanks to Dave and Adam for the show, Adam specifically for putting us up. Carl, Garrett and Mike for being in the front row and being stoked on us in Indy, and Mike rolling up to Chicago with the Indy bands. Thanks to the dudes in Boiling Over for getting us on the Chicago show, Mike Banks for hosting the show and graciously having us on the bill. Thanks to the guy in Chicago who put us up... Eric? I forgot his name. He was a good guy and we probably stressed he and his roommates out cuz we are verbally abusive, inconsiderate and thankless fucks who make fun of everything and wrecked his neighbors rock gardens.

Death to false bullet belts.

Disconnected Live footage

2009-11-09T02:16:00.005-05:00

This is my band. Pretty wretched sound and dark video, but you get the idea. We have a split 7" out on Idoneum Bello Records with a power violence band from New Zealand called Wasteland. The last song we play is on the split. The split is for sale from Interpunk in the US. The rest of the world can get it from the Per Koro distro. We'll have copies at our next few gigs, maybe through the end of the year depending on how many more gigs we play. We still have a FEW copies of the cassette demo left from last winter. Like, maybe less than ten. The first song we play in the video is off the cassette. The long song in the middle is getting recorded right now. We're getting our shit together to put out a split 12" with a hardcore band from Lansing, MI called Under Anchor. They rip in all the best ways that mid-90's HC bands could rip. Catchy riffs, decent breakdowns (no super slow mallcore style) and a few hooks. I dunno if we are all going to pony up loot for it or if we are going to talk to labels. There may be a forthcoming split 7" with Nightbringer as well.

Disconnected will be playing a weekend November 19th, 20th and 21st with Under Anchor. I still don't have all the details. We may have T shirts by then.

November 19th Lima OH @ The Leathershop (w/Iron Minds and a few other bands)
November 20th Indianapolis IN @ 1511 House (house show with Medusa, Kata Sarka, Deadmen)
November 21st Chicago, IL @ another house show (with 2 of our favorite Chicago bands of the moment: Boiling Over, Poison Planet and 2 other out of towners aside from us and UA.)
November 29th @ Ramalama records, Toledo OH with Expire and one other band (Free show!! 2pm Sunday matinee)

Nightmare mega post

2009-10-25T16:38:00.006-04:00

By no means can I claim to have been any kind of "old schooler" when it comes to the Japanese hardcore. I wasn't hip to it when it was available to me and 90% of the people who claim some sort of OG cred concerning it are full of shit. If they are under 30, they are absolutely bullshitting. I saw Lee Dorrian and Danny Lilker wearing S.O.B. shirts, so I knew of it's existence at a younger age than most. I read interviews where they talked about how great it was. It wasn't until I started leeching from blogs that I actually got to HEAR any of it.

Some time ago, I found uploads of both the Eye Of The Thrash Guerilla and Starving Dog Eats Master compilations. I can't remember where. They both had tracks from bands I was familiar with on them. I figured they would be a good place to start to check out some of the lesser known Japanese bands. Despite all the hype, cult appeal and fetishism the record collectors (see: pretentious assholes) subscribe to when spending $300 on OG Zouo vinyl, Japanese HC is just like any other scene. There are good bands and there are bad bands. It all depends on your tastes. My tastes run to the more aggressive and fast paced side of things. I've scratched the surface and I know what I like. I can't say I like it all, including some very popular and influential acts that I am just not into. I won't start any arguments about who sucks or who rules. One thing pretty much everyone can agree on is that Nightmare is one of the best. They were featured on BOTH the compilations I downloaded and I had to hear more. I dug a little deeper into their legacy and saw how respected the "Give Notice Of Nightmare" LP was on the internet. I couldn't find uploads of it ANYWHERE aside from the defunct "Fight Against The Plutocrats" blog (R.I.P. Dirk, you are one of the reasons I started a blog) where it had long since expired due to inactivity.

I have since purchased these two compilations that pretty much make up their early 90's output, sans their first 7" which they omitted from their discography for whatever reason. The recordings have been remastered and sound fucking awesome. They were SO full of piss and vinegar. They are still together today, but I have heard varying opinions on their more recent stuff. Few bands in ANY scene maintain this kind of energy track after track. Where Deathside fiddled with OTT guitar arrangements and superior song structure (to great effect,) GISM destroyed clubs with flamethrowers and bulldozers, and Disclose buried their Discharge worship in heaps of white noise and feedback (to lesser effect IMHO,)

Nightmare's schtick was to go straight for the throat. I don't think there is one weak song on either of these collections. Nightmare, along with Bastard, Gauze and Lip Cream are what I always imagined Japanese HC to be like. Fast as fuck, consistently tight and absolutely feral in their delivery.

One think you have to love about the Japanese is their penchant for experimentalism. The tracks for the 'Footprints In the Wind' single on the Bloodsucker Years feature a John Zorn-like freakout saxophone player who plays almost constantly over every track. Of the two, I think I prefer the Early Years compilation a little more. It contains the aforementioned Give Notice Of Nightmare recording as well as the tracks from both the compilations I named. No screwball Peter Brötzmann saxophone, just total thrash from beginning to end.

Bloodsucker
Early Years

Blood Of Christ - Demos 1991 - 1993

2009-10-14T19:26:00.010-04:00

When I was a kid and wasn't old enough to get into clubs or had an income or an allowance that would facilitate ordering things from Relapse, I would dream about being in Florida or Stockholm or some other hotbed of death metal and getting to go to shows and stuff. Blood Of Christ were in the Relapse catalog and were from Ohio and that made them basically rock stars to me. I think they had actually broken up before I ever even heard of them. I didn't actually get to hear any of this material until I won this CDR on eBay. When I finally heard them, I was pleased to find that Blood Of Christ were as good as I always hoped they would be. It sounds like early 90's death metal. Heavy, but not tuned to drop A or anything silly like that. They also do not play at 300 bpm either, which is why I find Nile and Hate Eternal albums completely boring. "Usual suspects" influences like Morbid Angel, Malevolent Creation and Deicide come to mind, and maybe even a little Rotting Christ-styled bombast in a few places. Good riffs, good arrangement, good energy. I really like these recordings ALOT and find it pretty criminal that the only true release these guys ever had was their sole "INRI" 7" released in 92, a dribble in the deluge of trend-hopping death metal releases from that year. Had they released anything, it would have been forgotten among a hundred other releases that didn't sound too different from this stuff, even if it was superior to Deteriorate, Excruciating Pain or Morpheus Descends.

This contains all the material ever recorded by the band and it was prepared for a 2007 memorial concert for the lead singer who died some years back. According to Encyclopedia Metallum, this is supposed to be released on vinyl someday, but it hasn't happened yet. In the meantime, you get to download it and spread some early 90's Cleveland death metal gospel.

Blood Of Christ

Tracks 1-4 Taken from 1993 promo tape
Tracks 5-7 Taken from I.N.R.I. 7"
Tracks 8-9 previously unreleased
Tracks 10-14 Taken from 1991 demo

Cease & Desist!

2009-08-07T05:08:00.003-04:00

Holy shit! I got my first cease and desist order in the mail today! I couldn't help but wonder what jackass decided to report me, and WHY of all things. I don't see any reason in posting any current releases from anyone. Most current releases suck anyways. Why should I give a shit about Animal Collective or a John Legend album enough to want to post it? General rule, if you can buy it at Best Buy, someone has their eye on the internet to try and stop dirtbags who want to be the first to leak it. I try and keep this blog centered on stuff you are not likely to find easily...try mind you (like it's hard work or something) Rare shit, demos, and of course the occasional rant (like now). It's my blog. I can post as irregularly as I want and post dumb shit on occasion.

So I'm at a Dungen concert tonight and I get a call from my Dad saying "there is a letter sitting on the thing in the room at home that has something to do with file sharing or something." I get red behind the ears. I fucked everything up and we are both going to broadband prison or something. I know Dad is pissed cuz he doesn't know what the hell any of this means, it's just his son and that confounded internet of his. Dad has his own computer. I am sure it is a porno machine for the most part though. He can't do much else other than check his email and find titties. He has no idea how any of this P2P file sharing stuff works or what I have gotten him tangled into. So I get home from the show and immediately seek out this letter sitting on the thing in the room. It's from the cable company saying that they refuse to disclose any information to the DMCA, unless they are court ordered to do so, but it has been brought to their attention that our IP address has been sharing information of a copywritten nature (Nukkehammer - Pigs All The Time? Death Side? Il Balletto Di Bronzo? The suspense is killing me.) I scan to the bottom of the page and in red it says that the file had to do with "Flash Of Genius" What song is that? It's nowhere in my computer. I get on the horn with a savvy friend and he just says "google it!" So I do and immediately it comes up that it was a movie that came out in 2008 about a stolen windshield wiper or something.

...what the fuck?

I don't even KNOW how to download a movie. I don't even know how to use a torrent for that matter.

Apparently, I don't know how to secure the wireless network at my house as well as I thought I did. My bad.

Coffinworm - Great Bringer Of Night (2009 demo)

2009-06-30T22:19:00.006-04:00

I haven't had time to post anything in over a month. It's been a very busy and sad month for me. As you can see, my dog had to be put down a few weeks ago. That was the sad. On to the busy. A few weeks ago, I went to the 3rd and final Templars Of Doom festival in Indianapolis and made friends with these guys who kindly let me post their demo. I had just missed them at the festival, but wound up bullshitting with their guitarist and drummer and decided to buy a T shirt and their demo sound-unheard based on the fact that they were nice guys, the shirt looked sweet, I was at a fest and planned on hemmorhaging money anyways. Thankfully, the demo rips and I got to see them the day AFTER the fest as I learned that Krallice was playing a show and Coffinworm was opening that show as well. I made sure to get there early where they were the best band of the night. Had I seen them at the festival, they probably would have surpassed all the other bands on the bill At the Krallice show, I wound up bonding with the lead singer of Coffinworm over old death metal cassette demos, of which he owns an extensive collection. It was like an episode of Sesame Street, with everyone being friends and shit.

Pinning Coffinworm's sound with a few words has proven pretty evasive, as evidenced by the fact that I have deleted this very paragraph in it's entirity no less than four times now. Describing their sound would probably just be unfair in general. General overview of the music... It's Heavy Metal. It's closest musical alignment would be doom metal, but they have a pretty healthy love of midpaced death metal and crusty punk. Maybe a dash of late 80's/early 90's noise rock ala Amphetamine Reptile records or T&G records. I'm going to cop out on the rest of this because I have to get ready for work now and have been just trying to get this link POSTED so people hear it. I keep getting hung up on the "review" because I have had writers block. Download it and listen to it and if you think I am wrong, go to hell because I don't care about you or your tastes.

Great Bringer Of Night was recorded with Bob Fouts, drummer of Gates Of Slumber, who slipped a copy to the owner of Profound Lore records just because he thought he would like it. Not only did he like it, but before the demo was even mixed, Coffinworm was offered the opportunity to put out a full length with Profound Lore. They were instructed to complete a full lengths worth of songs and report to Volume Studios before the end of the year for recording with Sanford Parker. They will settle in nicely with the rest of the Profound Lore catalog of well thought-out wierdness. CW thankfully lack the pretention of alot of that label's output. Hopefully, they are able to maintain the raw attitude that this material possesses, and are able to BETTER capture what I saw live, which was ten times as mammoth as this demo.

Permission has been granted to usurp vocalist Dave's own bandwidth and post the link he gave me to a 320 rip of the tracks here, 3 songs in 22 minutes.

Grover 1998 - 2009

2009-06-30T22:01:00.003-04:00

Happily jumping into endless fetid cesspools eternally. The shadows of angels have something to fear.

Best thing I have seen so far this year.

2009-05-20T01:22:00.003-04:00

I couldn't believe this when I saw it at the record store. Shane, my friend who works at the store just gave it to me because I found it so ridiculous. It was in the dollar bin. Someone had to have had a sense of humor when they did this. Pardon the crappy camera phone pic. The vinyl inside is the Simple Minds album from 1979 "Life In A Day."

Reminds me of that Liars EP where they used the Einsturzende Neubauten artwork, but scribbled over it. Comedy gold right there people.

Coolest thing I have heard so far this year:

2009-05-07T01:32:00.010-04:00

I'm not uploading this album because it just came out a few months ago. The way I see it, music is music and if it is out there, listen to it. If it is available, buy it. There is nothing worse than a chump that has a a fat Ipod and like 22 CD's that they only still own because they couldn't get more than a few cents for them on amazon. I downloaded this a week ago from Ongakubaka after someone got me hip to it and found it at the record store today so I PURCHASED IT like a good little consumer. Death were a three piece from Detroit in the 70's. You can find their bio all over the net, and plenty of download links I am sure. This is a record that was shelved in 1974 because they were doing it for a big label who wanted them to change their name. Death took a hike and the tapes were shelved until February 2009. So I'll add my insignificant freight car to the hype train. I am going to gush about this one to anyone who will listen. Short of a few quieter bits, this record is raging and feral from beginning to end in true 1970's Detroit/Creem Magazine style. Hearing this for the first time brings back hearing Search & Destroy for the first time at age 18, thinking I knew it all and realizing that I still didn't know shit. I have never been a very big punk fan. The Sex Pistols were overrated and Black Flag sucked more than they were good. All the 'proto punk' stuff gets my blood going though. This album belongs in the same pantheon with The Sonics, The Stooges, The MC5 and The Monks like all the critics are saying and are going to say in the coming months. Expect to hear a piece on these guys on NPR at some point.

What's a big drag is that everyone is going to make a big deal about these guys being black and playing hard rock in the 70's. That's a bullshit reason to talk about these recordings. That's about as lame and sorry as saying "She's a great drummer for a GIRL" or something nearly as bogus. What's remarkable about this mini-album (26 minutes!) is that the SONGS are remarkable. Excellent songwriting, propellant, energetic playing, interesting arrangements. The reason to talk about these recordings and this band is that this is some harsh shit! Whether it was MEANT to be this harsh as a final product is not to be known. Columbia would have liked to have polished this up to a high shine and it would have been about as hairy and scary as any Tony Orlando & Dawn album by the time they were done with it. Major labels always have been, and continue to be the scourge of music. Sadly, the members of the band missed their shot at the brass ring, but had the album been polished and released, would it be seen as such a special thing now? Would it be as raw and amazing sounding? Would the label have watered down what they did, or fuzzed it up and made them into heavy metal 'also-rans'? Or would the label have done what they tried to do with everything back then and tried to make it into disco or something to try and market it to the 'niche' they doubtlessly would have tried to market it to based on skin color? The upshot is, these guys were righteous and stuck to their guns and what happened happened and now we all have the bounty of discovering this, the musical equivalent of finding a $20 bill left in the dryer at the laundromat.

Thank you Drag City for unearthing this undeniable gem. Thank you to the Hackney brothers for not just sitting on these tapes, dragging them out for show and tell every couple of years for family members who may or may not give a damn (I know my family doesn't care much about all the dumb albums I have recorded) I know I have given a damn at least a few times a day for the past 2 weeks or so. I wish they would have finished a few more tracks before getting on Clive Davis's shitlist. This is still the best 26 minutes of music released so far in 2009, I just wish it were more like 40 some-odd minutes.

Visit Death's official blog here, then buy the album online, or at your local independent record store with all due haste.

Mammoth Volume - ...a single book of songs

2009-04-08T01:37:00.002-04:00

pardon the janky pic I posted of this album cover. It's really not that interesting anyways, but that is part of the appeal of the album. I need to scan it myself and post a good jpg, and maybe I will at some point. Promises promises. This album is rather personal to me as Daniel Gustafsson, the guitarist has become quite a good friend over the years over email. When this album came out in 2001, I was pretty stunned. My drummer at the time owned a record store and played me the promo. We couldn't figure out if they were trying to be stoner rock, prog or emo. I guess it was all three really. This album came out some months before "Songs For The Deaf" from QOTSA, at least a year before that kind of stuff became the "it" sound for a hot minute. There is a lot of Kyuss in Jorgen's vocals, and alot of King Crimson and Canterbury prog when the band gets to show it (which is often) and an equal helping of Fu Manchu/MC5 when they open up and rock. There is a healthy dose of folk prog and a proliferation of mellotrons, organs, glockenspiels and flutes when the band deems it necessary, and apparently they deem it necessary in the strangest spots sometimes. We couldn't figure out what they were trying to go for, and the band seems none too focused at some points as well, but the results were pretty jaw dropping. They get one of the most natural sounding recordings I have ever heard. It's all room sounds and mic placement (Kalle Berlin gets a bass sound I would trade my eyeballs for.) It's not nearly as self consciously "retro" sounding as fellow Swede travellers Dungen, but it sounds sufficiently 'dusty.' I can't tell if that was willful, or if it was out of necessity, but man, this record sounds unique and GOOD! I have most of Dungen's recordings, and I have most of MV's recordings, and MV recordings would go with me to a desert island first. This album is definitely a slept on classic. Why overhyped, mediocre boogie metal like Alabama Thunderpussy and Orange Goblin got all the attention escapes me. For my money, Mammoth Volume were making interesting, well recorded hard rock and most of the rest of the stoner genre was just so much tepid rehash.

Back when I was absolutely obsessed with this album, I went on the bands website and hit the bios of the individual members. The other three guys had rather dry lists of their gear and maybe a sentence or two about their lives, and general things like "I like beer" or something. Daniel's was an exhaustive and detailed list of the gear he used on the recording of the album and a rambling thesis on what he listened to and how it influenced what he wrote for the album. (btw, he wrote my favorite song on the album: "What Happened In Antioch including A Myriad Of Sounds" [song within a song, how Crimson.] How about a parentheses inside a parentheses?) I hadn't heard of SHIT he had named, entire progressive rock genres like RIO, Zeuhl, and Canterbury and I had no idea what I was in for. I emailed him out of the blue and asked for more recommendations. From that, we started a pan-atlantic freundschaft that endures to this day. At some point over the next couple of months, I ran across a copy of the very Henry Cow album I posted some time back - Leg End. I heard it and flipped and from there started ordering his recommendations. I went a little nuts, and I still do whenever I find something from Univers Zero or Thinking Plague, two bands I discovered from his emails and love to no end.

After 6 or 7 years of sparse and sporadic activity, MV decided to finally put it to bed this past year, to the disappointment of probably a few hundred die-hards like myself. They never even completed an LP's worth of material for a suitable follow up and only released a 5 song collection of MP3's from their website over the last year. It's all good stuff, they never released anything that was terrible and it's all worth purchasing, but "...a single book of songs" is a crowning achievement. It's one of those albums that you either have to BETTER with your next album, or spend the rest of your career trying to recreate the magic. This one would be awfully hard to better. It's an epic wad-blow that was obviously painstakingly crafted from beginning to end. I've never gotten to make an album like that. I DO know how hard it is to make an album of tepid stoner rehash be even remotely well received, and I know how draining it was to get THAT much finished, let alone something that a vast amount of thought, time and creativity went into.

I play the bass

2009-04-08T01:11:00.005-04:00

Gently caressing my beloved Rickenbacker. This is footage of one of my bands called The Retrospectres. We play 70's rock songs. I met these guys all about 11 years ago (1998? I'm terrible at math) We feel no need to bother holing up and writing music or anything, so we just play songs that we want to play. If we did take it that seriously, we would probably start to hate each other, so we get together every couple of years and pick another few songs and go out and play some shows. This is the last minute of a Captain Beyond song called "Raging River Of Fear". The ending is very involved and confusing and took us about a month of rehearsals to get it right. Lots of fun to do and a nice sense of accomplishment when we do get it right. This is pretty much the first footage that has ever involved me on YouTube. It would be nice to get an entire song up there though. Our guitarist posted some footage his wife took. If you look for this on Youtube, there are a few other clips. I think one is a Deep Purple song we do, and one is a portion of a Tommy Bolin song we do.

Nukkehammer - demo

2009-03-19T01:01:00.006-04:00

I've been a pretty bad mood for the past couple of days. Let's hear it for negativity. I've got it in spades right now.

In honor of said negative vibes, I present all with one of the most negative sounding recordings ever. Nukkehammer's demo cassette was released recently in a run of about 7 copies or something. Oddly enough (and this never happens, because I don't care enough to pay attention to shit) I got onboard early and actually got a copy of the first run. The Sacrosanct Opuscule was responsible for the amazing packaging job, and it was a doozy. Sprayed and screened case (pictured). Printed cassette, obi strip. Very fancy. It's a work of art. There is a second run as well, for info on that, hit the TSO link.

Nukkehammer are crusty, heavy, noisy and brutal. Perfect shitty mood music. They have a song called "Warheads For Coke" What more description do you need? It's punk crusted metal I would say, and the recording is murky as all hell with lots of feedback and hell going on. Fucking inspirational is what I call it. What inspires an even shittier mood than I am already in is the fact that I have to miss their show in 2 Saturdays because I am booked and most likely will not be able to see their set. Pisser.

Disconnected has a logo!

2009-03-14T02:52:00.006-04:00

there it is in a small pile of patches we got done this week. We have a much larger stack of them, including the back patch I designed. They are all black ink on either light tan or dark red.

New material is getting mastered by Captain Henry in Nashville, TN as I type. If nothing (else) goes wrong, we should be proofing them next week, deciding what songs are getting used and shipping them out to Idoneum Bello records in Germany. We played last night in Cleveland and short of a few missteps, I would consider it a success, unlike the other show we played which was epic fail. Who knew a triple rectifier running a full marshall stack could equal up to epic fail? Well, we found a way. Last night, the volume was once again totally out of control and nothing seemed to work the way I wanted it too on my end, but we only totally trainwrecked on one song, and we played this show with exactly zero practice since we wrapped up recording. People stared at us, some plugged their ears, but for the most part, everyone stayed in the room. I'll update this post maybe with the full story of how the rest of the show went, but I will say it ended up with the co-mingled odors of red bull, paint fumes, fire retardant, vomit and gunpowder in the air. Quite possibly the pallor of hell itself. Disgusting. Epic fail was not ours this time around. Hell of a story. Maybe I'll get around to blogging about it at a later time. For now, I am glad that I got a logo together and everyone likes it and it looks good.

There is a picture of the backpatch I designed too. I am going to be "That guy" and because I designed it and I like it, and it's my band, I am attaching it to MY denim. This is in a preliminary phase using safety pins to hold it in place until such time as I have an hour free to stitch the bastard on officially. I like it. It's got a guy getting stretched out on the rack and getting hot lead poured down his throat. Awesome.

Univers Zero - Heresie

2009-03-02T11:13:00.005-05:00

"redux" story rewritten here, in case anyone's interested:

http://www.bloodsprayer.com/uncategorized/album-of-the-month-univers-zero-heresie-1979/

link removed, buy stuff from Cuneiform instead

Death Side - The Will Never Die

2009-02-19T01:40:00.006-05:00

I had never heard the name Death Side before a year ago. I will admit it. I am a Johnny-come-lately to the world of 80's Japanese HC. If I remember correctly, I got in a conversation with someone about Zeke and how they incorporated sick guitar leads into already hyper-charged punk rock. This particular someone knows alot about hardcore and they pointed me at Death Side and their penchant for incorporating almost POWER METAL guitar melodies and solos into raw-as-hell/fast-as-fuck punk rock. This got me sliding into the world of Japanese hardcore punk. Once I scratched the surface, I dug in a little deeper and found alot of cool stuff. Outo, Lip Cream, and S.O.B. alongside Death Side are now absolute favorite bands of mine. Death Side basically started a little known sub-sub-sub catagory of hardcore punk known as 'Burning Spirit' hardcore, characterized by the combination said NWOBHM guitar heroics and a taste for all things Discharge. I have checked out some other 'Burning Spirit' bands and they really don't do a whole lot for me. Sometimes descending a little too far into their own cliche's for my taste. Deathside had it right. Even some of the bands that formed out of Deathside's ashes leave me cold. It's sort of how Tragedy and From Ashes Rise came out in the late 90's and then all these "Epic Hardcore" bands popped up in their wake and just smothered it.

Japan in the 80's was pretty well isolated from what was going on in the rest of the punk rock world. There was no internet, so news travelled slow and import records were subject to all kinds of tariffs and customs taxes. If an album was not licensed in your country, you had to pay top dollar to get it. Japan couldn't get alot of punk from the rest of the world, so they made their own, and the rest of the world be damned. Death Side obviously did things the way they wanted too. Had an American hardcore band at the time tried some of the stuff that Death Side did, they would have been called out on it in a second. Twin guitar leads? Epic solos? That kinda stuff didn't happen in the US, UK or Europe without some shit hitting some fan somewhere. Death Side broke up in the early 90's and splintered into Paintbox, Forward and Judgement. They and a few dozen other bands picked up the Burning Spirit banner and held it and it holds to this day. Sadly, Chelsea, guitarist for Death Side passed away in August of 2007 of apparent complications caused from heat stroke (or so says the internet.) Very few Japanese bands released anything outside of Japan, and kids like me were left to only see the words on the page in the Relapse catalog with prohibitive price tags placed next to them. That's why the internet is so cool. I'm able to find out if something is ACTUALLY WORTH the money people are charging for it.

I went to a punk show a few weeks ago and someone was selling this in their distro. I paid $30 for it. It's not available outside of Japan. I knew it was worth it because I had already heard it. It's the 2CD version with all their EP's and compilation tracks collected. I just did a cursory check on Ebay JUST TO SEE what this goes for and I couldn't find this particular release. I did however find the original vinyl 7" listed twice. One jerk in Japan is listing it with an opening of $80.00. He has like 25 other listings of original vinyls of Outo, Lip Cream, The Comes and a bunch of other rare records listed for equally ludicrous prices. (up to $120!) The sad part is, there is a whole pool of schmucks that are all gonna pay that and more.

What the fuck? Is it Antique Roadshow? Are you all old ladies who collect Hummel figurines and Beanie Babies? That kindof punk rock vampirism makes me sick. I hate the fact that people like to lord it over each other's heads that they have THIS record or THAT record and then have to compare pressings and colored vinyl and stuff. On one level, collecting is fun and I have a healthy CD collection myself. When it gets to a certain point though, I really do feel that it cheapens the music. I'll see someone creaming about something on some forum and I'll find a download link just to see if it's all that and it just SUCKS. It's cool that it came packaged in a ziploc bag filled with sour milk though. I see people buying albums not because they want to hear them, but because they will be able to flip them in a few years for an outrageous amount of money. HOW PUNK. Does it have anything to do with the music anymore? I have a few neat items that I have picked up over the years that I would not like to part with. Most of them are not worth much, but I don't care because I am not going to sell them. I see more and more people caring more about the FORMAT or the item itself than the music. I am hardly what I would consider a 'punk', but I know it is not punk to be paying $200 for some raggedy ass flexi-disc, and fuck you very much for showing it off on some faceless forum. You got jerked, kid. No punk rock is worth that much. Go spend that on a guitar and MAKE your own punk band for cheaper, or press a 7" for your friends band if you have that much loot to throw around.

Merchandise... It keeps us in line.

rant = over

THE WILL<-- disc one
NEVER DIE<-- disc two

Edit: A friend of mine has mentioned to me that he has had problems downloading the second disc (sadly, the better of the two, it being later material and just better developed in general) I had problems with another upload this week. (rough mixes of the new Disconnected material, not for public consumption) If anyone else is having trouble, let me know in the comments. I log into this thing a few times a week even if I only post something once a week or so.

Disconnected / Wasteland split 7"

2009-02-16T02:56:00.012-05:00

...is on.

We met out at Bottom Of The Lake studios tonight for our 2nd session and got all the mics run and got a sound dialed in. The cassette was tracked out when it was recorded, this time, the instruments are all being recorded live. Pat is going to go later in the week to do vocals. Pat expressed interest in doing the vocals on the cassette, but we wanted to get it done NOWNOWNOW, so Will335 threw down some ad-libbed lyrics and it came out great. We got Pat ready for it this time. Ok, he's not ready at all, but I don't even know the songs I am recording tomorrow. Why should he? That's just how we roll.

The tracks are being released on Idoneum Bello records out of Bayern, Germany as a split 7" with a band from New Zealand called Wasteland and they rip. Here them rip here. We will be ripping on vinyl together in April if things continue to go as planned. IBR is doing a whole series of split releases with bands who have never released anything on vinyl, so bookmark that link and keep an eye out. I am a follower of his "Am I Mean" blog. He likes to post sick shit like Catharsis demos and all things Haymaker (2 of my all time favorite hardcore bands) and when he put out a cattle call for hardcore bands to do this split series with, I contacted him.

Disconnected only formed in October as a reason for Will335 to write everything for a project like White Trash Rob did with Ramallah (not the best inspiration, but inspiration nonetheless). He and I were going to do a black metal thing for the hell of it, and then he found Jas from Full Scale Panic (still waiting for a copy of their demo, I'll probably post it at some point) so they started writing hardcore. The intention was just to get together and see what happened. No live plans. Then it was actually pretty fucking good, so we did the cassette just to see if we could do it. Will335 duped them in his living room himself while watching "America's Got Talent" or something shitty like that. Go to my first post ever and download the demo if you haven't already. We weren't even planning on playing live. Now dudes in Europe like us and stuff, and our cassette is in a bunch of distros all over the US. I likely will only be playing live on a few dates here and there as I work on the weekends and fests never get booked on Wednesdays. We've talked to a number of bassists who have agreed to take it to the stage for me if needs be. Sure, I'm salty about not being able to play, but they gotta do what they gotta do, and I have to make the doughnuts. None of them will have my 'full custom leafblower' tone either. That can only be created in a laboratory by me with my two secret pedals that the paint has been worn off of, so no one knows what they are. I have to remember what the knobs are for on one of them just to use it!) I am a tone ninja.

Bloodpact - As Good As Dead 7"

2009-02-08T03:27:00.006-05:00

I've been looking forward to posting this for a LONG time. This release is why I am doing a blog right now. A year ago I got an ipod and started dumping my music into Itunes. Being the super nerd that I am, I liked to take the discography CDs I have and separate the tracks into the separate releases. I have since decided that this behavior is needlessly annoying and will soon be reconsolidating my OUTO discography, among others, back into single folders. When I put Bloodpact's (a)bastardization compilation into my itunes, I couldn't find coverscans ANYWHERE and realized that one of my favorite bands was TOTALLY unrepresented within the blogs. This was a crime I had every plan of remedying, once I figured out how too. Thusly, after some trial and error, here it is.

I caught Bloodpact at a number of shows and I don't remember being too into it at the time. I was way more into Catharsis and assorted other 'sounds' than the fast stuff back then. Andy's other band, Ruination was much more interesting to me, as were lots of other bands that today I deem far inferior to this release, which I slept on for some years after it's release. I think at the Exclaim show I went to, I bought the (a)bastardization CD in Andy's distro on a whim. It was cheap, I had just been paid and I spend like a pasha at shows if I have the money. Whenever I got around to listening to it, the first 6 songs kicked me in the balls like very little hardcore ever has.

This is my favorite hardcore release of all time. When I saw that it had so little representation on the internet, I actually vowed then and there that I would start a blog at some point to get this record heard, by maybe 8 more people, but heard nonetheless. This record is the reason for the season. Will335 named his band As Good As Dead in honor of this release, and though they are VERY good at what they do, they are a pale shadow compared to the ferocity of this record. This EP is one of the most vicious hardcore platters ever released. Bloodpact were wound tighter than a cheap watch and they were PISSED. Andy's vocals are some of the most focused and intense I have heard since I first heard "Tied Down" from Negative Approach. He has is own trademark rasp that is only marginally related to John Brannon's voice in that they are both yelling. The lyrics I found to be truly remarkable. I am a sucker for some good, well informed social injustice whistleblowing, but tired slogans have never found much of a place in my heart. Bloodpact delivered message lyrics in an odd sort of stream-of-consciousness prose style that didn't question anyone's intelligence, but still made room for hooks and the occasional oddball rhyme scheme without succumbing to repetitive mantra-like gang choruses. Not a tuff guy beat down rhymed couplet to be found, and no fingerpointing or "stabbed in the back" bullshit.

Another gush-worthy point of this record is the drum performance of Dustin Schoenhoefer, who offered his services for some shows and the recording to get the project off the ground. He later rejoined and recorded the final Bloodpact material, which I have never heard. Dustin was playing in Next2Nothing at the time, and went on to be a founding member of Premonitions Of War (where he seriously tore shit up). He plays in Walls Of Jericho now. I'll reserve comment, but I'm glad he's making money and all that. His drum performance on this recording can only be described as unique and propellant. I won't go any further than to say to pay attention to the drums your second or third time through listening to it.

Andy's new band is called Nightbringer, and they are one of my absolute favorite bands right now. Very much more Motorhead/JapHC influenced than Bloodpact, who, though exceedingly fast, were far more thrash metal. I implore you to follow their exploits here or suffer your fate bereft of their influence on your pathetic life.

I ripped these from my copy of (a)bastardization. If you want the scratchy vinyl pops and stuff, tough titty. Go track down the vinyl you snob. In the meantime, enjoy hearing the songs on any format you wish to transfer these to. The original 1999 7" release was only 6 songs. 2 more songs were recorded for compilations. One is a 7 Seconds cover. I put them in too because they were all the same recording session. I borrowed Will's copy of the 7" for the scans I included. This has never been repressed, so even if you have a copy, yours wouldn't look much better, so no bitching about the spot of mold on the front. I think there were only 100 of the red vinyl pressed. 10 were packaged in ammunition cases or something ridiculous like that and a couple hundred came out on regular black vinyl I would imagine. My scanner isn't big enough to accomodate the entire insert at one time, so I had to scan the inside in 2 parts and cobble them together in photoshop. I hope no one can see my splice.

give it up, you suckers

Exclaim - Critical Exploder

2009-02-04T04:07:00.002-05:00

What a kick in the head this album was. Some friends of mine had an extra seat in the car to go see Hellnation back in 2001 (I guess, or at least that is what the Youtube footage of the show says) It doesn't seem to me like it was that long ago, but I guess it was. I had never heard them, but I knew they were a well known name in the power violence/grindcore world and that was good enough for me. They were playing with some Japanese hardcore band too. I didn't know much about Japanese hardcore past seeing the name S.O.B. bandied about in metal magazines in the early 90's because every grind band ever named them as an influence and Dan Lilker wore their T shirts. I figured it would be good shit. I didn't know nothing. Hellnation was totally underwhelming. Sloppy, muddy, one dimensional. Kinda boring really. I spent most of their set digging through distro and spending too goddamned much money. The Japanese guys hit the stage on Hellnation's equipment and proceeded to DESTROY. They weren't necessarily tight, they just sorta hacked away at their guitars, shrieked alot and played the drums super fast. It was just total energy blitzkrieg. I bought this CD and a T shirt and the blitzkrieg continued once I put the album in. This album is the sound of punk chewing it's fingernails off. It's red eyed cocaine anxiety terrorizing a preteen sleepover. This album is the hardcore equivalent of a bandsaw locking up on a piece of sheet metal.

I don't think they even heard each other or cared if they were playing the same song. The crowd tried going apeshit a couple of times, but in grand Midwestern style, did nothing really. Blank stares, jaws agape. Any time a pit was started, it was ignored until it went away. We rustbelters are masters at choking a pit out. Exclaim was underwhelmed with us it seemed. The lead singer pointed at people and said stuff about them to the other band members that made them laugh. We didn't understand what he was saying. It didn't matter really. We deserved to be called whatever he was calling us for being lame. However I have influenced your thoughts, dear reader, I guarantee they have not prepared you for what this album ACTUALLY sounds like. It came out on Sound Pollution, and they are going tits up, so this isn't something you will find anytime soon. This album doesn't seem to have much of a blog presence and that is a shame. I think when it came out, it was a bit of a curiosity. It's shrieking feedback, completely overdriven sound and almost total lack of clarity probably perplexed most. I'm sure it influenced some of the rawer HC bands operating today like Coke Bust and Sex Vid (I know it influenced Disconnected an awful lot). This is fast, noisy and harsh. Comedically harsh. Harsh to an extreme that only power electronics practitioners like Masami Akita and Wolf Eyes take it. Confuse fans take note. This might even be of some interest to some of the Aquarius Records cassette only black metal set due to it's absurdly and intentionally raw nature.

"more scream, high energy"

It's time to celebrate the blastbeat!!!!

2009-01-28T16:16:00.006-05:00

A couple of posts ago, I mentioned it being Blastbeat Celebration day on January 29th. Guess what? That day is today. In honor of said day, I offer what I name as the SINGLE GREATEST GRINDCORE ALBUM of all time. Discordance Axis - The Inalienable Dreamless. All the elements of this band total up to being the greatest grindcore band of all time too. This band's entire catalog is vicious and precise. It's the sonic equivalent of that SUV that travels in the president's motorcade, but has the popup top that a guy strapped into a Gatling gun pops out of. The CD comes packaged in a DVD case and looks like a video on meditation instructions, then you put it in and BAM! 3,000 armor piercing round a minute. Grindcore. Sure, Napalm Death invented it, Carcass added a little melody here and there. Terrorizer and Assuck made it be worth a little more than the ironic one second song. Since then really, nothing progressed the genre until this record. All since this release have either been slavish followers of this albums design (Pig Destroyer, Magrudergrind) or just have not been that good at it (I won't name names) Judging by the prices on Amazon, it's probably still available, so if you download it and like it, buy it somewhere or order it. I know Hydrahead reissued the Jouhou and Original Sound Version albums too, which total up to the entire recorded output of this band. Jon Chang (vocalist) has a new band called Gridlink that adhere's pretty close to what this album was doing. Discordance Axis imploded like six times during it's existence. The final nail went in the coffin when guitarist Rob Marton was diagnosed with a condition where the loud volume he would play at would caused his entire body to be wracked with pain for days after DA would play a show. Talk about an achilles heel. Dave Witte handles the celebrated blast beats on this recording, and they are numerous. He's still one of the greatest in the world. No bullshit gravity blasts, always one foot.

Leg End by the rock and roll musical group Henry Cow

2009-01-28T01:08:00.005-05:00

Continuing in the recent tradition of me making grandiose statements about albums I possess and how they changed my life by being the greatest music ever created, Henry Cow did no less than that about 6 or 7 years ago. I had bought all the REALLY GOOD Yes albums. Being a bass player, I had studied Rush. I had listened to King Crimson and Jethro Tull too. I had even gotten an anthology of Return To Forever. I thought I had nothing left to learn about progressive rock. It was all right there. Prog: Epic songs, silly lyrics, sometimes they used flutes, saxophones and violins, Roger Dean and/or Hipgnosis designed album covers, usually an organ or mellotron was involved. I ran across a mention of the band Henry Cow from the band Swedish band Mammoth Volume. I got into them about 2001 when they released "A Single Book Of Songs". I checked out their website and the guitarist, in his 'bio' dropped the words Zeuhl, RIO and Canterbury explaining about where his inspiration came from while writing the album. I emailed him and asked him to recommend some more to me. Henry Cow is not a band name you forget easily, and when I ran across a copy of Leg End, used, in town for $6, I jumped on it. He and I actually still maintain contact to this day. It's an email 'bromance' necessitated by a mutual love for all things Zappa. Just yesterday actually, I opened up the mailbox to find a DVD he sent me with 38 Swedish prog and psyche albums he burned for me.

This album was music I had been looking for all my life, screwball harmony, neverending arrangements that don't repeat. Leg End was a very weird crossroad where musical improvisation and structured composition met and shook hands. Fred Frith was a name I knew from the band Naked City (Who's album "Torture Garden" I credit for 'weirding' me at a young age.) Henry Cow was his first big endeavor in the late 60's and early 70's. Somewhere along the way, they coined the term "Rock In Opposition" (RIO). RIO isn't exactly a style as it is a group of oddball jazzrock groups from the early 70's who all played a festival of the same name. Over the years, bands who cite Henry Cow and Samma Mammas Manna as influences automatically get tagged RIO. None of them sound the same.

No two Henry Cow albums sound the same either. Some are instrumental, some feature vocalists and lyrics. Leg End is instrumental aside from some wordless choral work buried in the mix at a couple of points. Enough has been written about them on the internet that finding out more stuff about them should not be an issue so I will refrain from misquoting Wikipedia and making this post longer than it needs to be, just know that I LOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVE this album and you should too.

Il Balletto Di Bronzo - Ys

2009-01-26T04:33:00.009-05:00

It's odd that two of my favorite albums of all time are both named 'Ys'. This album and the Joanna Newsom album of the same name. At some point, I'll look up what it is a reference to. For now, I don't care too much. They are both awesome albums. This one especially.

Most who know me, know that I have a deep seated passion for dusty old progressive rock. It's almost as deep an obsession as crusty old death metal. This is the album that started me down the path. My band was on tour some years ago and we had the opportunity to play a benefit show on a Saturday night at the legendary CBGB's. We stayed with a friend of the band who lived 6 blocks from the club. We made it to their place the night before the show, so I knew if I got up early enough, I could go spend the day combing the record stores on St. Mark's Place. I know it wasn't the greatest shopping trip I was going to have, but I essentially only had 4 or 5 hours to find a souvenir or two from my first trip to NYC. I asked Dan where would be good to start (Mondo Kim's was the only suggestion I remember) and what to get. I was just getting into 70's prog at this point and I saw he had some pretty choice selections in his music rack. He said the best purchase I will ever make in my life will be if I look for an Italian band called Il Balletto Di Bronzo, as if I was ever going to remember that name. Lo and behold, I remembered enough of the name to recognize it when I saw it and based on Dan's high praise, the fact that he was a published author, and had an extremely potent CD collection, I bought it without having heard a note.
The album is singular and extraordinary. It has a heavy dose of symphonic ELP bombast going on within it, but a darkness and foreboding that ELP would never touch because it might scare away the investors. Evil, baroque jazz? Italy had some sort of connection with the prog in the 70's that no other country came close to. The bands that came out of that scene were some of the most intense songwriters and players of the era. Banco Del Mutuo Soccorso, Museo Rosenbach, Osanna, Quella Vecchia Locanda, AREA. Each one TOTALLY burning in their own rights (especially AREA). 'Ys' is quite possibly the album that I consider the BEST of the whole Italian lot. Lots of heavy, neoclassical organ work, mixed with an almost jazz pulse at points. Vocals have an opera-like quality without being annoying. The music itself can go from Mars Volta manicness to a simple 3 note vamp in the space of a few measures AND IT WORKS FRIGHTENINGLY WELL.
I don't know what they are singing about, but that never seems to matter to me. Like 60% of my music collection is music where you can't understand the words anyways, so what's it matter if it's in a different language. In the grand scheme of things, Yes, ELP and Pink Floyd were good guy prog. King Crimson, Van Der Graaf Generator and Jethro Tull were bad guy prog. Il Balletto lean totally to the dark side. If you have a thing for minor chords, creepy keyboard sounds, impish backing vocals and an almost occult darkness to the music, this album couldn't be more right.

bronzo

Blastbeat Celebration day is January 29th

2009-01-25T13:28:00.015-05:00

no shit, I'm not kidding, click here for the story

Have you hugged a blastbeat today? If not, on January 29th, go over to your CD or vinyl collection, pick up that copy of 'Horrified' from Repulsion and give it a gentle reminder that you appreciate it's very existence. If you don't own Repulsion, (because you are aimless, stupid and bereft of all that is decent) then figure out what the oldest album is in your collection that contains a blastbeat, or possibly the first time you ever heard one and APPRECIATE it. Since I have a blog, I will blog about it.

Mine was most likely in Maze Of Torment from Morbid Angel off Altars Of Madness. Either that or the opening riffs of Premature Burial from Malevolent Creation. Technically, it may have been something off 'Dealing With It' from DRI, which was also the reference that most of the blast-beat progenitors cite as the sounds that ultimately influenced their own creations. I used to tune into the metal show on the local college radio station and listen in every friday night. It became a ritual by about age 14 actually. I'd go to the mall and look at all the cassettes in the metal section at Camelot and take note of what had the nastiest album artwork. Come friday night, I'd tune in to the metal show, call the station and read off my list and make the decision for how I was spending the next week's allowance.

I didn't have cable back then, so people would call me on Sunday and tell me what they had taped the night before on Headbanger's Ball and I would head over to watch them after school during the week. One day, my friend called me and told me I had to come over and watch a video he had taped. I was a budding bassist and it was the video for 'Jerry Was A Racecar Driver' from Primus. Never saw a bass player do THAT before. After the video was over, he tried talking to me about it, but I was already tranfixed by the grainy, film school shitty footage of a church steeple and the opening drum fill of the next video. It was 'Suffer The Children' from Napalm Death. Everything was heavier, faster, and more intense than anything else I had ever listened too. Barney Greenway's roar was massive and their drummer looked like Squiggy from Laverne & Shirley. After about a minute, I got too SEE my first blastbeat. Everything was a little different after that. I started to live for the blast. The 2 beat thrash polka just wasn't enough anymore, no matter how fast it was played. If it didn't have blast beats, it wasn't worth listening too. Terrorizer's World Downfall ranked for a long time as the greatest grind album of all time for me, bumped out of the top spot by none other than "The Inalienable Dreamless" from Discordance Axis. Arguably, THE perfect grind album.

I'm not much for holidays. If they are a day off work, they are usually an annoyance for me when EVERYFUCKINGTHING is closed all over the area and I can't get shit done, or even get a decent cup of coffee somewhere. International Blastbeat Celebration Day is a holiday I can get behind though. None other than Erich Keller is the guy advocating it. He was in Fear Of God, who created some pretty vicious proto-grind back in 86 on some of the roughest recordings ever made. It could have been grindcore, it could have been a microphone placed dangerously close to a running blender with pieces of silverware in it. Hell, if it wasn't for triggers (the scourge of metal if you ask me) MOST blast beats could be that, and most SHOULD.

Goatsnake - Flower Of Disease

2009-01-25T04:31:00.005-05:00

Apparently, I am in one of those stoner/doom moods today. This is the BIG DADDY doom album for me. If you are a doom fan and have any respect at all for the doom of yore, in your mind you have a throne carved out of solid black obsidian. In that throne sits the ultimate and first doom album (and arguably, the first heavy metal album at all) The self titled Black Sabbath. It is THEE heavy, it opens with THEE riff, it is THEE alpha. The following five Sabbath albums are a royal court of sorts, but we are not discussing them, enough has been written about the Sabbath. Perched atop that obsidian throne with folded wings, holding all around it within it's steely gaze, clinging fast to it's lord's every command, striving for it's master's approval is the doom of now represented by a single album. It's not in the royal bloodline, it's not even the same species as royalty, but it makes sure that the doom of yore is not forgotten. It is the protector and the enforcer.

The album is different for different people. For some it is Epicus Doomicus Metallicus from Candlemass. For some it may be Forest Of Equilibrium from Cathedral. Others may feel it is Sleep's Holy Mountain or Turn Loose The Swans from My Dying Bride. For me, it is Flower Of Disease from Goatsnake.

I don't know exactly why the stars aligned for me on this one. It could have been any of the aforementioned albums really. It just struck me the instant I heard it. Greg Anderson's molasses guitar tone, the way the riffs swung from Greg Roger's drumming. Pete Stahl's incredible voice. The vocal melodies (dare I say, soaring? Celine Dion it's not.) Everything. In some ways, it betters the formula. It never boogie's, but there is a southern rock drawl to it that keeps it just shy of falling straight into the classic doom catagory. It never drones, but there is something strangely reverent about the way the riffs are treated by the vocals, and how the vocals are treated by the riffs. The songs don't often even shamble past the 7 minute mark. They actually keep pretty close to the 5-6 minute range, which for some of the windier doom bands, can be a radio edit. For the windiest, a snippet.

This is hands down, one of the most stick-to-the-ribs doom metal albums of all time. Every song has that payoff, and you don't have to sit through 20 minutes of mournful wailing to get to it. This is doom metal that means business. The songs are as abrupt and complete as Goatsnake's own abbreviated career (2 full lengths, 3 EP's) This was released long before the current doom-chic trends became de riguer for the skinny pants/fixed gear bike hipster set. I blame Isis.

rateyourmusic has an amazon.com feed that I peeked at when getting the cover art for this post. Flower Of Disease is currently going for $49.00. This gets my hackles up. Fucking greedheads. When I got this CD, Southern Lord was literally GIVING it away with every Goatsnake T shirt purchase. High five to me for being proactive. Until such time as the price actually comes down though:
put this in your ipod and smoke it

Pearls And Brass

2009-01-24T17:03:00.005-05:00

Alright, my blog is starting to look like an actual blog that someone cares about. It's been far below freezing this entire winter, so I took what little disposable income I had saved up and sank it into a laptop and some software because I KNEW I was gonna be broke and freezing cold the entire month of January and would need to occupy myself while staying warm by my space heater. I've been dicking around with photoshop, learning some (very) rudimentary tricks as well as figuring out what to do to make this blog function a little more proper.

This album makes me happy. Really happy. There are very few bands in existence today that can apply such a scope of colors to one album using only guitar, bass, vocals and drums. To find a fair comparison to this album, one would have to stretch back a few decades and even then you would not find a good match. Pearls And Brass quietly dropped this album and (for me) flew right past heavy fuzz resurgents like Guitar Hero dandies Priestess and stoner pop princes Queens Of The Stone Age to craft an album much more precious than their vastly more popular contemporaries.

In a perfect world, P&B's output will be remembered with some small reverence not too unlike the early Groundhogs catalog, or Gary Moore's Skid Row. I would be unfair to compare this album to the first Captain Beyond album, but I think of the two as kin in my head because of the acoustic interludes countered against proggy fuzz attack. CB's interludes are more in the classic prog catagory, whereas P&B's lie closer in with doomy modal blues like Robert Johnson and wierdo acid folk like First Utterance from Comus. This album got REALLY popular around here because one of the independent record stores jumped on it and sold something like 60 copies of it within a month because they wore the grooves out playing it in the store. Just about everyone that walked through the door for a year got treated to hearing that album, and just about everybody that walked through the door, if they enjoyed the sound of an electric guitar at all had a good reason to buy it.

Pearls And Brass had it all; acoustic slide jams, early Grand Funk Railroad fuzz guitar attack, well thought out riffs that never ended and sometimes never repeated, vocal hooks galore, and the occasional stomping Sabbath doom-out. They were incessantly sold out and ordering more copies. When Pearls And Brass toured, our dumb city may have been one of the better markets for them to play. I opened for them twice and the shows were both nicely attended (and my bands shows were RARELY nicely attended.) We were out on a weekend roadtrip at one point, had a night off and saw that P&B were playing a bar we were familiar with and went and it was a GHOST TOWN. Had the band all to ourselves. At that point, live, they were already shirking off alot of the first albums material and they were playing the far more manic material off their upcoming second album "The Indian Tower", which is great, but I think all the songs sounded the same, though the lone acoustic track BLEW AWAY the three acoustic tracks on the first album. After they broke up, Randy Huth, the guitarist and vocalist did an acoustic solo album called Randall Of Nazareth. His style of writing and playing is captivating and singular. It would be worth your while to track it down (it's on Drag City I think, so it can't be too hard to get ahold of) if you like any of the acoustic moments on this album.

This recording is natural sounding and highly representative of what one would hear at the show. No processed vocals or 15 layers of guitars or triggered drums. Just good solid playing. I considered these guys the top of the heap of the fuzz resurgence, dusting more popular bands like Priestess and Dead Meadow (but not Dungen, who can do no wrong). After releasing the second album, P&B did their few tours and went on indefinite hiatus. Thankfully, these recordings will never go on hiatus. This is one of my favorite albums of all time, despite the ugly cover artwork. Hell, it's not like I can do any better.

"my bleeding hands, tearing up the ground"

Best of 2008

2009-01-08T00:55:00.009-05:00

This year beats the hell out of last year. Last year I couldn't name ten good albums by the end of the year. This year I keep kicking stuff off this list so I can add stuff I forgot about. I may try and get slick and add pics of these albums, but this is what kicked my ass this year.

1. KayoDot - Blue Lambency Downward
2. Enslaved - Vertebrae
3. Samothrace - Life's Trade
4. Nachtmystium - Assassins: The Black Meddle
5. Ocean - Pantheon Of The Lesser
6. Earth - The Bees Made Honey In The Lions Skull
7. World Burns To Death - Graveyard Of Utopia
8. Black Mountain - In The Future
9. Leviathan - Massive Conspiracy Against All Life
10.Dungen - 4

kinda in that order, and subject to change without notice

edit: James brings up a good point, Burning Witch - Crippled Lucifer is the best reissue this year, runner up goes to the Reek Of Putrefaction reissue for the best packaging. Nothing on the horizon for next year. I give half of a shit about the new Mastodon, what they have been saying about it is pretty intriguing. Hopefully it isn't the same gobbledygook that Blood Mountain was.

NEXT2NOTHING - To Have Courage, But No Conscience 7" +

2009-01-06T00:46:00.007-05:00

1996 and Pants were baggy, mosh was hard, breaks were fast, shit was talked, backs were stabbed, bonds were broken. These were during those years before Hatebreed breakdowns and kids still danced when the music was fast. Our town actually had a scene for a minute. All the Detroit venues got shut down, so N2N started booking the shows at their house and all the Detroit folk would come and it actually seemed like a scene for about a year. I was in the periphery. I still am. I like it that way.

"To Have Courage..." was Next2Nothing's only release. It was a clusterfuck. Among other things, the recording was pretty tinny, the covers didn't get made until a year and a half after the vinyl was pressed, and by that time, the thanks list was totally obsolete. Still, it is what it is and it is a moment in time.

An ex member gave me a copy of the 7" just recently and kicked me some rips of the tracks. There are 4 additional songs from a later recording session that pretty much smoke the 7" tracks. I only have the digital tracks though, and they were ripped at 128 by someone other than myself. The sound can't be helped much really even if they were 320. The band had a couple of recording sessions that never got released and everything I heard was ridiculously good. I wish someone would collect the original masters and get all that shit mastered, if only for people who remember because it was surprisingly good and has held up well over the years. For the time, they got pretty far, playing with most of the second tier metalcore and hardcore bands of the day on numerous tours. N2N had their own thing going on. Speed, breakdowns, hooks, straightforward (yet well written) lyrics, heart, ambition. There really aren't many bands to compare these guys too because once again, they didn't fit in any sub-genre very well. Too fast for metalcore, too hardcore to be POST hardcore, too negative to be posi, too metal to be youth crew, not fast enough to be thrashcore, not political at all, and they weren't ridiculous enough to be "Holy Terror" hardcore. Midwest negative hardcore. You understand if you are from one of these industrial wasteland megapolii that are closing up for business as we speak. It's the same sort of muck and filth that set the Cuyahoga on fire and spawned Cleveland hardcore. N2N ultimately were a footnote, and should have been more

Habitual Coercion 2007 CDR demo

2009-01-05T23:20:00.005-05:00

On to the metal. This is the 2007 CDR demo from Habitual Coercion, a NW Ohio death metal band of whom I have not seen their demo being shared ANYWHERE, and that is a shame. This is in the same catagory as old Cephalic Carnage and Origin and just as good. Brutal, techy, grindy, and occasionally they throw you a hook. Hooks are typically unheard of in death metal today.

Bo gave his blessing to post this so there is some kind of digital presence for their demo since they consistently forget to burn new ones. He's the bass player and he just got endorsed by Spector basses, and for that I am envious. Endorsements are sweet, they have a ton of them. I'd kill for an Ashdown endorsement.

click this

xAs Good As Deadx - Til Death Do Us Part CDR demo 2008

2009-01-05T01:54:00.011-05:00

This is the first CDR demo from xAs Good As Deadx, released earlier this year. The original line up of the band was Scott - vocals, Tommy - guitar, Will - bass, and Graham drums. They recorded this demo which ripped. Aging HC guys with no interest in sounding like anything other than aging HC guys playing HC they liked. Not only was the demo one of the best things I had heard in years, but the layout was INSANE!!! I'm almost certain I included scans of everthing because this was limited to 100 and I am pretty sure it is gone. I can't find the .rar file on my computer though, so I'll probably download this myself just to get the scans back. The lyrics scan is HUGE because they were hard to read otherwise and I know Scott puts alot of care and feeding into his lyrics. Scott had to leave the band over the summer, so Will went to vocals and they got Jeff on bass, who is not old, but likes old hardcore as much as the rest of us.

If you like old hardcore as much as the rest of us, download 10mb of rage here

The packaging deserves a paragraph of it's own:

Snake, of The Sacrosanct Opuscule handled the artwork, screenprinting and the mildly awkward packaging that folds out into an 'X'. It's an impressive piece to look at. Just about everything Snake does is impressive to look at, even his beard. Click on his website again and look at some of the packaging on his other pieces, then buy them because they rule and they're cheap and you should support DIY. Everything he does is awesome and worthy of the term "work of art". The Nukkehammer and Beaurocratic Dysentery cassettes he just released will eat your babies, and as you can well imagine, they're awfully pretty to look at too.

xAs Good As Deadx - Just One Of Those Years cassette demo 2008

2009-01-05T00:55:00.006-05:00

This is Will335's other band, xAs Good As Deadx. This is the cassette they put out a few months ago after the CDR, after Will had moved over to vocals. Unfortunately, the rip was done at 160, but it still sounds good. I did not rip the tracks, and I don't know who did, but since I have the cassette, my contribution is to include front and back scans of the cover. The band doesn't fit nicely into any genre-specific box aside from fast as fuck. It's too dark to be positive, there's not enough sing alongs to be youth crew, it's not fast enough to be thrashcore, there's no bro-core mosh parts, there's no metal, it's not crossover, it's not crusty, there's no blast beats, no death vocals or pigsqueals. This is negative hardcore. It's the antithesis of positive hardcore. It IS fast, unrelenting and intense. I scanned the lyics side of the j card at like a THOUSAND x a MILLION pixels so you can read the lyrics because they are pretty pertinent to the bad vibes of the music. This is recommended if you are a fan of Poison Idea, D.S.13, Victim In Pain era AF, old ClevoHC, sweet shit in general.

get it aqui

and again, Will335 has the cassette in his rather limited distro (of 2 tapes) that he just started last week when the Disconnected demos got finished. This will beef up in the next few months because he is already talking to a bunch of other tape labels around the world about trades. I am sure he will update the list of distros his shit is available in once it's worth updating. There are only about 30 of the AGAD cassette left, so get at him here or support DIY and go to one of their shows if you're within 50 miles.

Disconnected - Isolated 2009 cassette demo

2009-01-04T16:35:00.008-05:00

Ok, this is my first ACTUAL post. It's my bands cassette demo. The band was formed, material was written, and recorded all in under a month and we're pretty happy with it. You will be too if you like Deathreat, Exclaim, Cleveland hardcore or Japanese hardcore, or noisy shit in general.

get it aqui

there are coverscans in there. This is a limited edition run of 100. Will335 is running a cassette label and distro now, and that's where this was released. For a hard copy, contact Will335. All he has so far are THESE cassettes and some copies of his other bands cassette (As Good As Dead) and he really wants to expand, so contact him for trade.

here's the label: sonic fucking seppuku

If you live nearby and could make it to a show, go to a show, make a donation for the touring bands and buy a tape for like $3 you cheap bastard. Don't think that just owning the MP3's makes you sweet, cuz it doesn't. Support DIY everything.