The Vodka Family Winstons

In case the two people who read this blog haven't been paying attention, I absolutely worship the Butthole Surfers and revere pretty much everything they've recorded. I know there are a lot of fans that are divisive when it comes to the band's "golden years" (i.e. everything before Hairway To Steven versus after) and pretty much write off their post-1990 stuff as pretentious mainstream crap. Of course this happens with most cult bands (please see Ween, Mr. Bungle, 311, any group which has a bunch of semi-popular indie/local albums before getting on a label with some national distribution) when they decide to move out of their shitty apartment, stop recording on a 4-track and gasp! try something new. As a fan I kinda agree, it sucks when a band you love starts sounding... well... different. As a musician I completely understand; it is fucking BORING playing the same shit over and over! And if someone wants to pay you to go into a studio and help you record something then fucking try it because it is goddamn tiring trying to do all that shit yourself! Make some scratch if you get the chance. Instead of the pennies you net when the 2000 homemade 7-inchers you pressed sell out, get a label to fund your tour and put some food in the fridge.* So yes, there is clearly a difference between Butthole Surfer albums when you compare the psychedelia from Psychic... Powerless to the post punk (?) of Electriclarryland but give 'em a break, the guys aged almost ten years between the two! What are you still doing today that has stayed just as new and fresh as it was a decade ago?** Trust me, dropping acid and recording for weeks at a time doesn't exactly have the same appeal at 40 as it does when you're 22 and living in from farmhouse with a bunch of transient musicians.  I guess I'm ranting because I keep getting in the same argument with the same two friends of mine about the 'Surfers and it gets annoying. The fact I even acknowledge Locust Abortion Technician is absolute heresy yet I'd be surprised to know if either of them have ever listened to that album more than once. They're the same way with Ween (nothing will ever surpass The Pod dudemang) but that's another story. Anyways, here are the Butthole Surfers circa 1985 from their Blind Eye Sees All live video. Compiled from two shows in Detroit, the band wallows in their hallucinogenic Another Man's Sac chaos and sleaze out a great performance. The video splices some "interviews" in between the live stuff, they are kinda funny but sort of get old quick so I relocated them to the end. Additionally, I included a couple alternate live versions of "Bar-Be-Que Pope" and "Cowboy Bob" (circa 1985 as well I think) and "Negro Observer" from 1991. Let me know if my friends are right.

* And I'm not calling anyone a "sellout" or any of that shit here - to me that is just a term used by jealous wannabes who feel they have been robbed of their nonexistent "status" that talking about a band nobody has heard of earns them. Do you think Offspring would have been labeled a "sellout" for recording Smash if it hadn't sold a billion copies? No, it would have been "another Offspring album," sold 20,000 copies, they would have continued lounging in Huntington Beach with their local fanbase and eventually broken up over the typical "we've been doing this for too fucking long" feud bands tend to get into. Instead they smartly got with a label that had great distro (by figuring local distribution=lots of local fans ∴ national distribution=lots of national fans) and just happened to be in the right musical place at the right time. Good for them and other bands which have done the same.

** I know there are those few bands which have been doing the exact same thing forever and yep, they can sleep well at night knowing they "kept it real" but you'd be hard-pressed to convince me that those bands haven't had significant lineup changes through the years or that their waning fanbase doesn't acknowledge that "they're still cool but kinda boring now."

P.S. My audio rip keeps getting deleted (as has all my Butthole Surfers stuff) so I've linked to a VHS rip hosted by the good ol' blog Kick To Kill. Enjoy mangs.  

Worm Movies

Currently watching: Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things!
Currently listening to: Corrupted Garten Der Unbewusstheit

Don't Expect It To Tango...

What hasn't been said already about the most enjoyable horror film of the 80's? I speak of course of Stuart Gordon's epic Re-Animator, a roller-coaster of a movie that blew away the rest of the shit that came out in 1985 (and many years after). If you're like me you've probably seen the flick several hundred times (partially due to the fact that luscious Barbara Crampton was a near-constant "alone time" companion of mine during good 'ol puberty) and can recite it verbatim. Revisiting it the other night, I decided to rip it to my iPod and edit in the 20+ minutes or so of extended/bonus footage included as DVD extras. I even tacked on the deleted "dream" sequence which gives some interesting foreshadow to the film's climax (heh). I did the best I could to make the cuts seamless, some work better than others; hopefully if you haven't seen the movie in a while you may not even notice. There are one or two segments which I just couldn't get to cut in without a significant camera or music "jump" but I still think it plays ok. One extended scene I left out since it didn't jive with what was in the flick: Dan asking Megan to marry him when there was already an existing sequence covering that. No real loss. I inserted the dream scene into where I though it fit best, it seems to need a bit more of an outro but you'll figure it out I'm sure. Anyways, the film is a .m4v suited for iPod (320x240) and I was pleasantly surprised by how well it looks. It runs just over 107 minutes and is the most complete version you can find. Let me know what you think and enjoy.

P.S. the movie poster above is adapted from one I found at this guy's gallery - check out his stuff.

UPDATE 9.2.13: Unfortunately, none of the file hosting sites will house my file so I'll direct you to the far superior (and cleaner) cut available on FanEdit - the only real difference is his not intercutting the dream sequence into the actual movie. Enjoy.

 
Currently watching: Fargo 
Currently listening to: Nigel Pepper Cock 
                                    Fresh White Reeboks Kickin' Your Ass!

Ménage À Trois

One of my favorite films of all time is Jörg Buttgereit's super-8 masterpiece Nekromantik. Not sure what that says about me or my celluloid tastes but I have never viewed the contemporary horror film the same way since I saw what a bunch of West Germans were able to create with absolutely no money, no equipment and no fucking shame back in 1987. I'm sure the three people who check this blog out are more then likely familiar with this piece of cinematic corpse-fucking so I figured I'd post one of the more beautiful (?) sides of the flick - the music. The sadly defunct Barrel Entertainment's DVD release of Nekromantik 2 included a CD of the soundtracks for both films. So here I present one of the more twistedly original compositions to ever accompany a film about necrophilia. From the demented abattoir opus "Surprise" to the darkly sweet "At Home" and the suicidal "Drunk," it is a 25-minute joyride through chaos. I think the music to the second film is somewhat derivative so I didn't include it although if I get a comment or two maybe I'll get around to it. Regardless, enjoy.

Masturbatory Suicide

 
Currently watching: Re-Animator
Currently listening to: Windhand Practice Space Demo

Words Of Evil

After last week's Macabre post I thought I'd rip another live DVD, this time showcasing perennial death metal titans Obituary. Performed nearly 5 years ago to the day in Warsaw, Poland; the set features the Cause Of Death-era lineup belting out twenty-one tracks of old school death up to their 2005 Frozen In Time release. The band plays tight and sounds great - of course like most shows they never play all of the songs I want (I would have loved to hear "Intoxicated" or "End Complete") but regardless, the show is long, heavy and brutal. Ninety minutes of Florida's greatest export destroying the Stodoła Klub. Enjoy.

Rot

 
Currently watching: Bully
Currently listening to: Black Sheep Wall I Am God Songs

Murder Metal

Without a doubt one of my favorite bands is Chicago's Macabre. I stumbled upon their ridiculously ingenious version of death metal when I randomly added 1993's Sinister Slaughter as an "alternative" on some token Relapse Records order. Wow, how times have changed, no? Anyways, whatever I initially ordered was (of course) out of stock and via USPS came my introduction to Macabre. Amazing. What still gets me to this day, other than the fact that they're a trio, is the fucking drumming. I am so tired of hearing about Joey Jordison or Jimmy Sullivan... Macabre's Dennis the Menace (Dennis Ritchie) has been at it since fucking 1985! Hearing him absolutely destroy a double bass drum with cunthair precision is easily one the highlights in my music library. And since their Sinister days, Macabre has only gotten tighter and more witty. Because you can find pretty much everything they've ever recorded already online, I thought I'd throw up the live set from Dordrecht, Netherlands in 2005 which made it onto their Live In Holland DVD. Ripped straight from the disc at 256kbps - sound nice and a great setlist too. Here's to another decade and a half of crazy, fucked-up murder metal guys. Shit, the way the news is these days, the damn songs are writing themselves!

Downloaden

 
Currently watching: My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done
Currently listening to: Obituary Slowly We Rot

Preposterous Idiocy

"Wellington was a band for about three and a half years. We spent a whole lot of time together not doing a whole lot and loved almost every minute of it. We recorded a few records, played a whole lot of shows, did a few tours, and met a whole lot of great people..."  - quote from the discography booklet.

Enjoy this ultimate compilation from these sadly (and inexplicably) underrated Arizona sludge lords.

The Toilet Bowl Of Life

Currently watching: Doctor Who The Sun Makers
Currently listening to: Anal Blast Puss Blood Pentagram

Seth And Larry

Yet another side project in Seth Putnam's arsenal, Angry Hate formed in 1998 with fellow Bostonian Larry Lifeless, infamous poet/singer from Upsidedown Cross, Kilslug, The Sickness and Adolf Satan. According to Seth, the band was thought of one morning while he and Larry were getting drunk and putting off going to work while watching "Jerry Springer." Some weird looking guy was on and Larry commented "that guy looks like he should be in an old punk band call 'Angry Hate' or something." They officially started the band two months later. Angry Hate's first "recording" was in January 1999 of Larry hammering a fence against some lady"s garage in typical Boston 0° winter weather (the noise was eventually mixed into the end of "M.P."). In summer '99 they recorded covers of old unreleased Sickness and Kilslug songs for a bunch of split releases with legendary noise mongers Sloth. They played a few shows in 2002 with Siege drummer Rob Williams in tow then basically called it quits. Included in this download is their full 7" split with Sloth, "Hospital Song" from their 12" split with Sloth and "Bad Mood"/"100 Watts Electrified" from their unreleased 7" (maybe someday on Menace To Sobriety Records). Quality is pretty good, so enjoy the crazy noise nonsense.

Full Blast

Currently watching: Frozen
Currently listening to: Suma Ashes

жестокой дэт-метал

Forgotten 2009 demo from Russian brutal death metal fiends Amidst The Bloodshed known some places as Can You See An Exit. Pretty standard slam with some better than average riffs and squeals. Not much else to find or report about the band, but it's one of the better DIY demos I've heard in a while.

Dismember Cadaver

 
Currently watching: Lost Highway
Currently listening to: Mr. Bungle Disco Volante