What'd you say your name was?

Way back when, when music was cool and Mike D had his own record label (Grand Royal for all the freshmen), the Beastie Boys added a buncha cool bands to their entourage including DFL, the Moistboyz and Ween(!). Also among this eclectic cartel was an all-girl funk quartet named Luscious Jackson. Featuring an ex-Beastie (circa the 1982 hardcore years) named Kate Schellenbach on drums, Luscious made phonophile history by claiming the auspicious spot as Grand Royal's inaugural release. The band spans a mix of styles on their debut 7-song ep, from cool Digable Planets-ish hip-hop to more folkish Indigo Girls-esque rock 'n' roll. You can probably guess I'm a fan of the former. The trip-hop flows real tight and sultry vocalist Jill Cunniff is pretty hot in that geekish sort of way even all these years later. Enjoy.

Let Yourself Get Down

Brutal Death Satisfaction

Yeah, yeah, I know, another brutal death metal post. Going all the way back to 2007, NJ's mean-spirited Waking The Cadaver offers a solid debut album that easily rises above the offal usually floating in their genre. Perverse Recollections... is technically impressive and will competently satisfy even the more jaded riffhounds out there but it also reeks of a cool discordance that has kept my CD in regular rotation years after similar bands have bit the dust. And "Type A Secretor" is probably my favorite brutal track ever - that one alone makes this a keeper.

Pigtails Are For Face Fucking

Look Out Fresno

First off, I fucking hate country music. That being said, it's been far too long since I have seen a decent rip of this seminal lo-fi classic anywhere so I decided it was time to grit my teeth and reintroduce Jon Wayne's half-assed attempt to cut a C&W record to the world. And who am I fucking kidding, the album absolutely rules. A Texas ('natch) friend of mine enlightened me to its existence - according to Austin urban legend the band is actually the Butthole Surfers drunk as fuck in a recording studio playing some improv material. And if you listen closely... it's not too far-fetched imagining a drunken Gibby slurring his way through the setlist and the picture on the back cover kinda looks like Gibby as well. Yet, I've heard from someone who actually saw the band play live definitively state that it was in no way the Surfers, although "I wouldn't put it past those guys to hire a bunch of half-assed musicians to play for them while they stood in the crowd and had a laugh." And shit - there's been a couple live vids on YouTube since then to snuff out all the mythology as well. Regardless, sit back and prepare yourself for a strange trip down a tired, dusty, whiskey-soaked road of off-key, out-of-tune, primitive cunt-ry music that only gets better as the band gets drunker. I'm amazed the pissed-off engineer (who bitches at the band the whole fucking time) actually saw this one through. "Texas Wine" is easily the standout but nearly every track holds its own - the title track, "Mr. Egyptian," "I've Got Texas"... an amazing 50 minutes. Just don't let your truck end up in the drink... Yip.

No Go Diggie Die

Murder Murder Suicide

After years of searching I was happy to finally find Loinen's evasive split CDr with fellow countrymen MurhaMurhaItsemurha. Was it worth the wait? Well, yes and no. Loinen's opener, "God Of Plague" is a raging sixty-second blast of screaming sludgecore - wonderfully lo-fi in extremis. Brilliant shades of their early material. The second track, "Plant" is a strange, quasi-industrial (?) loop-heavy dirge with lots of samples and screams that left me feeling a bit empty. Oh well, making up for it is the hilarous noise/tardcore awaiting on the flip side. MurhaMurhaItsemurha sound like a even more retarded Sockeye and are just as entertaining. Lots of weird screaming, experimentation and nonsense - one track, "Epätietoisuus Eläimistä" (loosely Google translated into "Uncertainty About Animals") is simply the sound of someone eating. Solid stuff. Enjoy.

Shoot Me Too

San Jose Sludgecore

One of the cooler things about split records is discovering the "B-side" band is actually better then the one you bought the record for (a la my Vaginal Massaker post a couple years ago). Such is the case with California grinders Deadbodieseverywhere. Bought the vinyl for the Noothgrush and was instead wowed by the Dystopia-like sludge/crust on the flip side. Great, great stuff. I eventually found another split of theirs (this time with the instantly forgettable Utter Bastard) which isn't quite as good (a bit more grindcore-ish and unfortunately more muddier production-wise) but still completely listenable. Deadbodieseverywhere managed to sleaze out a few more releases before splitting up in the early 2000's but I've yet to hear 'em. Enjoy.

Splits

Alcoholocaust

First off, fucking great band name. Comprised of members from equally bleak sludge acts Offense and Destino/Entierro, this Spanish foursome impress with an admirably discordant demo. Very Eyehategod-ish at points drowning into quasi-brutal death metal - there are also some solid groove metal riffs here and there to keep it interesting. The band has gone on to release a full length which actually sounds somewhat rawer then the demo versions of the songs you'll find here. I'll let you be the judge on which is better - check 'em out here.

P.S. I finally caved and added "sludgecore" to the list of labels, I'll probably go back and update a few older posts for all you neurotic music completists out there.

Get Your Freak On

Anal Rhinoceros?!?!

2005 saw the emergence of the immediately catchy "bulldozer fuckin' grindcore scum band" Anal Nosorog from Moscow. Lo-fi and stupid but oddly addictive with their proto-brutal death metal techno-ish "reeee"s for vocals, the band's first two ep's instantly made a stir around most of the cheapo Eastern European mp3 sites at the time. There's nothing particularly groundbreaking (or talented) on either Fat Putrudity or Beautiful People but AxNx does what they do surprisingly well and have kept with it long enough to carve their own niche in grind history. A solid full-length entitled Condom Of Hate was released in 2007 and the group actually had Anal Cunt frontman and 'Genocide fave Seth Putnam visit the former Soviet capital as guest vocalist for a string of live shows. AxNx picked up a surprisingly good-looking female vocalist soon after and ventured into Burzum-ish pro-white Nordish territory (with a heavy dose of national socialism) for their swansong(?) album, 2009's Gazavat. They've been silent ever since and personally I prefer the "Vagina Says" days so here ya go. Enjoy.

Fat                                                            Beautiful

For Those About To Rock...

Following in the footsteps of the FBA post the other month I thought I would share their final release, Viral Load, a (mostly) live double album showcasing the band in all its sludgecore glory. The first dozen or so tracks are live tunes recorded at the bands' final gig on December 20, 2009 at Church in Boston. Up next are a few new songs recorded sometime in 2010 that are fucking miserably brutal and were most likely just demos but sans lead singer/guitarist are solid enough to make for a gritty split. Minimalist, depressing and arguably better than the retro direction Anal Cunt was going in at the time, it's too bad Putnam didn't stay alive long enough to see this band through. Try to enjoy.

Leech

Women Comics...

Easily the most awkward comedy album in history, Dice's The Day The Laughter Died captures the polarizing comic at his best (or worst depending on your point of view) in front of a completely shell-shocked audience. Recorded in 1989 at NYC's Dangerfield's (owned by the late great Rodney), producer Rick Rubin limited the show's advertising to intentionally attract an unsuspecting audience totally unprepared for the profanity-laden assault that awaited them. It's a two-hour slice of anti-comedy - a perpetually Marlboro-sucking Clay incessantly heckles the audience (many of whom leave), half of the skits are built around the poor shlubs who naïvely sat too close to the stage. There's a great part when a disgusted couple he's busy harassing decide to leave halfway through the show and an unapologetic Dice responds:

"Did you like the jerk off segment, what was it that threw ya? The ass-eating? The uh... I dunno maybe it was something I said that annoyed 'em?"

Fucking classic. Of course the show does drag at times and his improv occasionally falls somewhat flat but there are more gems on this one then all his other material combined. His excited rant about the (sadly definct) smut clubs on 42nd street still gets me rolling to this day.

Hour Back...                                                       Get It?

Fun With Fudge

Man, for like six months in 2010 I had such a hard-on for brutal death metal - absolutely could not get enough of it. Big problem though - it gets real repetitive real fucking fast. There's only so much you can do when your guitar is fucking downtuned to C (strings just danglin' off the neck) and the vocals sound like the last time I ate Taco Cabana. Songs blur into one another without a single noticeable trait and before I knew it I found myself skipping any song on my iPod that started with some token horror movie sample. That being said, The Mung's Splatter Sessions rises a bit above the rest of the clichéd muck - tight riffs and a somewhat mixed approach to the usual excremental gurgling vocals. Solid sick splatter.

Oink Oink Oink Reeeeeee