Get A Fucking Life

Goddamn, who the fuck are these guys? I found this little ditty of an album at some point a decade or so ago... unlike everything else on the internet at that time all Napstered the fuck up, these clowns actually had a web domain through their record label where you could just download their mp3's for free (I dug that shit up here). And thanks to last.fm the lyrics and bio of the band have been preserved for as long as they exist (check that shit here). 

That being said and the fact that this amazing two-piece has sadly faded into obscurity, this album fucking RULES. Brutal venom-core bitching at most everything, it's amazing most of this was conceived by two drunk dudes deciding to record a full album in 90 minutes. 23 songs later, post-dubs aside, the You Probably Suck is one brutal riff after another with screamo-ish lyrics killing everything in their path. Fans of Eighteen Visions get ready to jerk without repent. Unreal. Enjoy.

Sell Me Something

Bad Trip

Richmond, VA’s Black Cash could not have picked a better time to drop into the city’s local music scene. It was 2005 and the recently-deceased Johnny Cash was basking in massive posthumous career success; not only with his American album series but the huge (and eventual Oscar-winning) crossover box office from the Walk The Line biopic. A completely new generation, tired of the godawful pop country so prevalent on present day radio, was beginning to revisit and appreciate the outlaw country legend’s vast musical catalogue; and Black Cash and the Bad Trips were there to, well, cash in on the hype. Less of a bandwagon grab and simply the result of good timing, Black Cash played a respectable setlist of career-spanning Johnny Cash covers, along with a few Nick Cage and Ween songs if stage time allowed. The brainchild of members from local nü-ish metal acts Eyeshine and Atomizer, the group quickly achieved quite a modicum of national success far outside the River City borders, satisfying the growing demand of the public to hear the classic songs live. The group avoided studio recordings as the Cash estate’s copyright prerequisites were simply too involved to justify anyone’s extended effort towards the thing; as a result one of the few demos that does exist is a promotional 6-song setlist recorded by the original lineup at Richmond’s now-defunct Alley Katz. My clear favorite of the set is “Rusty Cage,” starting off straight-Cash then devolving into the Soundgarden-esque grunge version most of us MTV-generationers are familiar with. The metal roots of the band clearly shine though. Black Cash’s lineup began to change after a few years and eventually show dates began to wane, with the group dissolving in late 2009. Enjoy.

Walk The Line

Draw The Kitten

Go figure, in the cut-out dustbin at the local library I found this long-forgotten Richmond, VA gem. Mixed in with a sorry collection of Celene Dion, Billy Joel and Miley Cyrus beer coasters was a strange photocopied CDr that just screamed for its generic 50¢ "donation" fee. And boy, it did not disappoint. Recorded sometime in the early part of the millennium, this self-released demo (the CDr is hand-written "Rough") is a refreshing lo-fi garage rock dream. Think a slightly bluegrass-tinged Ween with some other assorted Kids Eat Crayons jazz oddity and you'll have a general idea of what to expect. Thanks to some sparse info on Teen Beat Records' website (forever noteworthy as being the label for the debut recording of one Mr. Aaron Freeman and who put DtK on the map with their inclusion on a 2004 compilation), Eternity With Numbers was piece-mealed over several sessions at a few different VA studios and had almost a dozen musicians (both official and non-official band members) contributing. The number of performers explains the somewhat chaotic style of the record which spans genres to the extent it almost doesn't sound like the same album from song to song. The record appears to have been intended for a legitimate 2007 release by Teen Beat but there is no mention if that really happened and I can hardly find anything about the band on the web so me thinks not. Which makes this CD even more rare and kind of even more cool so enjoy this slice of Richmond indie rock history.

Meridian

Smackin' a brick across your crown...

Regardless of how you feel about the short-lived genre that was nü metal or the whole seedy music business selection process in general (and this was years before fucking American Idol), I still have a soft spot in my heart for Fairfax, VA rockers Sev. A local band crushing cities up and down the Eastern corridor, they were the first group signed by Farmclub - a web/TV show/record label hybrid (which back in 2000 was huge). Farmclub was backed by the heads of Interscope and Geffen respectively - Sev got the record deal, a $300K budget and their future was brighter than a thousand IEDs. Amazingly, the WWF of all things destroyed their future. "Monday Night RAW" (originally airing the hour before Farmclub TV) switched networks and the forgotten music show tanked without its drunken redneck regular viewers. Sev got pushed to Geffen which had no interest in the group and put their mainstream debut on hold until 2002 with little to no support whatsoever. Amazingly, an epic lifeline came along in the color of a blue soda - Pepsi was gearing to launch the then-revolutionary Pepsi Blue and picked Sev's "Same Old Song" out of every other song on the fucking planet to helm the worldwide advertising campaign. But lightning does strike twice. Pepsi Blue tanked. Badly. Along with the advertising campaign and any last shred of Sev's musical future. The band changed/lost a few members and tried to record a follow up to Geffen's All These Dreams but it all finally fell apart in 2007. A repectable website is still maintained by the band which offers a whole bunch of unreleased material left over from the post-Geffen days as well as Farmclub-era demo stuff. While a tad dated style-wise, the early 2000 stuff fucking kills, solid nü metal before the genre got agonizingly boring. The late-2007 material struggles - a band trying to come to terms with their extraordinary bad luck. Unbelieveable. 

RC-1207

Local plug...

Chompin' on my Tel-Star burrito the other week at a personal fave mexi-cali joint I was intrigued by a flyer promoting a weekday show by some cooly-monikered band called Hoboknife. Unfortunately the gig was cancelled the day it was supposed to happen but my slightly piqued interest was enough for me to search out their bandcamp page. Amazingly it was worth the visit. A weird death/heavy/black metal amalgam that sounds fresh from the late 90's, Hoboknife play "drunken black-and-roll straight off the rails" (per their facebook bio) and while it's nothing I'd ever kill for it was nice to hear an active RVA band that isn't metalcore. Enjoy.

Straight off the Greyhound

Reinforcing The Stereotype

I'll admit I'm a sucker for offensive shit, especially when it comes to music. Already a guilty fan of Vaginal Jesus and (to a lesser extent) Mudoven, I figured I'd give the off-color death metal outfit Arghoslent a try. While their older material isn't much to speak of (especially the shitty demo compilation album), I did find myself digging 2008's Hornets Of The Pogrom. Typical late-90's death metal with occasional Slayer-ish thrash influences, the band has gained some notoriety thanks to their racially-tinged lyrics. I was almost quasi-digging 'em until I read the LP liner notes proudly proclaiming the record was "recorded South of the Mason Dixon line." Ugh. It's probably not surprising to readers that I'm not a fan of Virginia. Fuck the fact that I've called it my state of residence for the last long-ass thirteen years; I am a hard-headed New Englandah by birth and simply cannot get over the fucking idiotic racist stereotype that so many Southern rednecks seem to embrace as a pitiful tribute to their historical roots. If Arghoslent were more tongue-in-cheek I would be way more forgiving, the fact that living in the Old Dominion seems to give them some legitimacy just makes me bitter. I gotta move...

Clint Z Hilton

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.

Escape The Funk

Let's Eat!

Y'know for someone living here for over a decade I was pretty shocked to discover how significant a sludge scene good ol' Richmond, VA had. Bands like Cough, Captives and Gritter are turning their Eyehategod worship into some really fucking good music. In 2007 the three-piece Food finally got around to recording material they had written four years earlier - their one and only eponymous LP is a meaty slab of southern-tinged granite-rock stoner sludge with enough fuzz box and distortion to clear out the stragglers at your next house party. There's not a whole lot of info out there on the band - according to one press release "Like Haley's Comet, or a rotation of the earth, Food is only in full view once in a long while" but it seems like they're still around. Hopefully we'll hear from them again soon...

RVAgina

NoVA Stoners

Two posts in two days? No the world isn't ending, I've actually just got a couple minutes and figured what the fuck. Driving home from band practice... er... rehearsal... tonight this little gem popped on the ol' iPod. Solid stoner rock from fellow Virginians King Giant. Hailing from Arlington waaaay up nawth state, this six-song demo from 2006 showcases a groovy southern sludge sound that easily benefits from the DIY production. The closer "Mourning" is the clincher - a fucking awesome tune that reminds me of Hail!Hornet or other such swampy ilk. I think as a whole the band would benefit from some better vocals - to me the lyrics seem a tad forced (and kinda hokey) but hey, that's what the fuck a demo is for, no? There's actually a "real" cover to this demo, I just dug their Heineken logo a lot more. If you likey, the band's website is here. Enjoy.

Deathstyle

Currently watching: Mondo New York

Currently listening to: Dead Kennedys Give Me Convenience Or Give Me Death

NoVA Nü Metal

Back a long 12 years ago it was really exciting to have a semi-local band playing the stuff that KoЯn and (sadly) Limp Bizkit were ruling the airwaves with. Sev oozed out of the D.C. suburbs and occasionally made it down I-95 to Richmond for a gig here and there. On stage they rocked, small venues suited their sound perfectly and two vocalists offered a slightly different style from the norm. Studio-wise, a little is lost on Back Rider, unlike their first demo Sunflower (which sounded exactly like anything Ross Robinson was producing those days), Back Rider is bleached fucking clean. Vocals are mixed way too high and the music is really oddly equalized, I mean easy on the treble guys, come on! Oh well, I guess it was enough for the band to get noticed by Pepsi for a new campaign that lasted all of 5 minutes. Y'know, now that I think about it, I guess my problem with this album is that whichever singer of theirs sold me the CD after the show reacted so cocky to the props I gave him it just rubbed me the wrong way. Oh well, lemme just break open this crisp Pepsi Blue and get over it...

Play It

 
Currently watching: Sweet Movie

Currently listening to: The Bloodhound Gang One Fierce Beer Coaster