Friday, January 31, 2014

Two Losers



There's not much to day about the redneck mini-city Petersburg except to say that it's about half an hour south of me, has the worst fucking traffic all day long, and has a ridiculously shitty mall that the town still bizarrely thinks is relevant. While Richmond has a relatively well-known underground rap scene, who woulda ever thunk Petersburg could hatch a duo who twenty years later would have their unreleased album heralded as a forgotten classic. Introducing Kleph Dollaz and Deeda, a.k.a. Ill Biskits, who released a couple singles in the mid-90's and got it together enough to record a full-length, only to have it (have we heard this before?) get pulled from release at the last minute. Thankfully, a few leaked promo copies made their way to the public and circulated as a "lost tape" for over two decades before Khari Records finally packaged it all up with some bonus tracks in 2007. Here it is for posterity - a great throwback to days of old hip-hop before it turned absolutely terrible. Sadly, Kleph passed in 2012 from a heart attack. Enjoy his words.


Thursday, January 30, 2014

Mr. Bungle 2.0



OK, it's one thing to be influenced by a band, totally another to sound exactly like them. That being said, if there is one band that deserves to be reverentially copied, it's Mr. Bungle. Introducing Croatian dadaistic mathcore connoisseurs Hesus Attor. According to their press release:

In the harbor town of Rijeka, Croatia a small group of lovers of fast food and the local cuisine with gloomy, dark and fast tunes ringing in their ears has given birth to a surrealistic monster which they have named Hesus Attor. They have equipped it with what they have read in comic books and seen in horror movies, but above all with a classic set of instruments every metal, rock, punk, hardcore or crossover band must have. The outcome is spectacular: a mixture of parody, schizophrenia and the absurd...

Claiming similarities to Boredoms, Dillinger Escape Plan, Melvins and Ruin, the four-piece has fine-tuned their Mike Patton schtick down to a tee. There's also a taste of Ween and Flaming Lips and every other avantgarde band out there in there but when it comes down to it, this is total Bungle worship. That's all I can say. It's really something else, and a fucking whole lot better than California was. Enjoy.


Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Bog



Groovy-as-fuck stoner sludge rock from Utica, NY (of all places), III is an unheralded lo-fi masterpiece of weird post metal random rock goodness. Difficult to properly categorize, the 70-minute record is much like a concept album, just hit [play] and zone out for a good long while. The crunching finale "Destroy The Hive" is an amazing piece of work - perfect way to wrap it all up. The band has relocated to the much more respectable borough of Brooklyn and they urge you to spend some of your hard-earned duckets here. Enjoy.


Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Best. Album. Title. Ever.



One of the more overlooked releases by prolific one-man black noise outfit Gnaw Their Tongues, 2007's epic-titled ...Spasming And Howling, Bowels Loosening And Bladders Emptying, Vomiting Helplessly... features much of the same stuff you've grown to love - brutal, ear-splitting chaos to blister your brain. Fueled by the inner demons of Dutch maestro Maurice DeJong, a slick sense of timing and variety is what elevates Gnaw's bedlam above the usual noise genre tripe. "Horse Drawn Hearse" is my favorite, an amazing 10-minute journey through screeching doom noise feedback hell. Maurice is actively still at it (not only with Gnaw but a handful of other one/two-man outfits), check out his website here and bandcamp here. Try to enjoy.


Monday, January 27, 2014

Japanesludge



Amazing eponymous 2004 EP from these curiously underrated Nipponese doomlords. At one time dot(.) was an active side project for Coffins bandmates Uchino (guitar/vocals) and You (drums); though they permanently left the group almost immediately after this record was rleased. Dot(.) forged on with new members (including an extremely attractive female guitarist) but kept their sparse recorded output limited to splits, compilations and 7-inchers. As far as the status of dot(.) today, their website hasn't been updated in almost a decade but there was an '09 split with SU19B so hopefully the band is still at it. Enjoy.


Sunday, January 26, 2014

Ex-Faith



I'd be curious what most Faith No More fans out there think of the Chuck Mosley years. Like pretty much everyone, I didn't pick up Introduce Yourself and We Care A Lot until after I got a hook in the mouth from Mike Patton and the epic that was "Epic." First thing to notice upon listening to their "lost" first albums wasn't the familiar-ish music but who the fuck was singing? If you could call it singing, it was this weird off-key drunken sort of rap/caterwaul, completely undefinable. Painful at times. Yet this was the time that if you plunked down $13 of your hard-earned dollars for CD (or cassette as in the case of We Care A Lot) you fucking listened to it. A lot. And so I did and over the months between Real Thing and Angel Dust I really became a fan of original vocalist Chuck Mosley's version of FNM. Some of his songs ("The Crab Song", "As The Worm Turns" and "Mark Bowen" especially) are as much classics as anything from the Patton years. Unfortunately Chuck had a rough couple years after his stint (and ugly parting) with FNM - it took until the end of the millennium for him and his new band VUA (Vanduls Ugents Alliderasy) to get an album recorded, only to have it promptly dropped by the engineer and shelved for a decade. Fast forward to 2009, thanks to the internet and all that hi-tech computer shit - Will Rap Over Hard Rock For Food was finally released. It's a surprisingly cool album with guest appearances from Jonathan Davis and Roddy Bottum (in a fucking amazing nü metal retread of "We Care A Lot" that you simply have to hear) and Chuck sounding exactly like his bad self in 1987. There are enough styles on this album to please any genre afficionado, there are flavors of Ween, Toadies and even fucking Limp Bizkit. Check his shit out here, spend some money and get one of his dreadlocks. Enjoy and welcome back Mr. Mosley.


Saturday, January 25, 2014

Fuck yeah RVA



Amazing. Straight out of my backyard comes a tough-as-nails sludgecore act Captives. Elements of stoner, hardcore, even Hendrix here and there keep this relentless 2012 release going like a fucking freight train. The epic "Cairns" is my favorite, a blistering feedback-laden scream anthem to cut yourself to. Awesome. They are recording some new material to drop in February, keep up-to-date on these boys here. Enjoy.


Friday, January 24, 2014

Joyce



What a great band name. Mix some early 90's Fudge Tunnel, Soundgarden, Melvins and Nirvana and let it marinate for 15 years and you got Murdervan. Cool retro-esque grunge or post metal or whatever you want to call it from the hick barrens of Connecticut, their debut full-length is a solid 40 minutes of Shit there's even a song that sounds like the fucking Cure. The band broke up in 2010 only to reform a year later and that's the last we've ever heard from them. The opener "Ten Years" is fucking amazing. Enjoy.


Thursday, January 23, 2014

If Rhymes Could Kill...



As one of the 6 people who actually bought the album, I can definitively say the best track on Vanilla Ice's Hard To Swallow wasn't the Korn-esque remake of "Ice Ice Baby." Instead, it was the catchy jam-session final track "Freestyle" showcasing guest vocalists Cyco and C-Note. While Cyco provides a perfectly adequate caretaker verse, C-Note absolutely shreds the song with some fucking awesome skill and really makes Vanilla look like the rank amateur he is. Sadly though, this post isn't about C-Note; he appears to have vanished into the hip-hop ether, although can you blame the guy? If I knew I was cutting an album with Vanilla Ice I would have used a pseudonym and fled to Mexico too! So who's the other guy, you ask? The one not ashamed to share the mic with Rob Van Winkle? Meet Cyco, the brainchild behind Insane Poetry, a horrorcore rap trio from L.A. who've been cutting their teeth since 1992. Their independent debut Grim Reality, while somewhat primitive, is a fun flashback to early 90's South Central hip-hop where everything was sounding like what Ruthless Records was putting out. It's plodding at times and the raps can get a bit silly but still worth a listen and a dry smile.


Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Lesion



I've seen a lot of sick shit in my forty years, for fuck's sake I actually worked in a morgue for several of them, but the cover to Necrobios' 2008 debut takes the fucking cake. I don't know if it's the half-dozen kielbasas spurting from the blown-out asshole, the glaze of cum on the woman's face (and funnel of it pouring into her vage), or the smug hog overlooking the whole thing - it's just a grim, grim image. Bravo Photoshop, bravo. So how does the music stand up? Surprisingly, Патологические Изменения (which roughly translates into Pathological Changes per most reviews) is top-notch brutal death metal save for the stupid filler intro/outro techno tracks. Most of the tunes barely hit sixty seconds thankfully keeping the entire length of the album just under 15 minutes. Unlike some of their porngrind compatriots (I'm talkin' about you Proctalgia) who feel the need to pad an LP with seventy tracks and half an hour of samples, Necrobios keep it simple. The music is standard late 2000's deathgrind, very Happy Face-esque vocals with a solid breakdown in each song to keep all you bitter fucks content. "Rectal Blues" is the standout - seventy perfect seconds of gurgling slam. Enjoy.


Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Louie Louie



Great live rehearsal/practice/jam session by obscure, long-defunct Danish punkers Redzack. Recorded in 1996, the boys tear through solid covers of Black Flag, GG Allin, The Sods and the Kingsmen as well as toss off a couple originals. Vocalist/guitarist/everyman Lasze went on to form the amazingly good Cherrybombs DK (on GG's Black & Blue label, 'natch) who are equally worth checking out. Top notch old-school punk homages by guys who were as influenced by these bands as you were. Enjoy.


Monday, January 20, 2014

Serial Killer 101



What better soundtrack to start my whining about 2014's Patriots season than this iconic slab of murder music from Chicago's demented speed metal sickos Macabre? Yet another in the long list of Relapse order "alternates" that ended up being better then the record I intended to buy; Sinister Slaughter is so entertainingly well-crafted for a token death metal album about serial killers that you'll find yourself humming the fucking songs for weeks after you hear it. Mix one part nursery rhymes and folk tales with wicked fast speed metal and a smartly snide sense of black humor and you almost got an idea of how good it is. Even the album cover nails it. Nefarious, Corporate Death and Dennis the Menace are such ridiculously talented musicians (especially Dennis the Menace - that guy hands down is the best fucking drummer out there today) I am always amazed these guys didn't end up conducting symphonies. Essential.

Sunday, January 19, 2014

26-16



FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK! 

Yet another fucking loss to fucking Peyton Manning and that worthless fucking shitstain of a caretaker coach John Fox. What a fucking sorry excuse for a fucking leader that fat blowhard fuck is. Way to have the shittiest game of your career Brady, picked a fucking good one to look like a fucking back-up pussy throwing watermelons to the sidelines. Un-fucking-believable.

Even more unbelievable is the fact that Wolfpac got their shit together enough in between the porn, juggalos, wrestling and general overweight idiocy to get another album together which sounds like the second coming of Bloodhound Gang circa 1995. Hilarious, kickin' and highly fucking recommended. Go NFC.