Tenacious Z

I don't know what I was searching for when I stumbled upon this lo-fi gem but it raised enough of a dry smile to earn a spot in my somewhat selective music library. Recorded at some point in 2011, Best Songs Ever compiles several (each entitled Best Songs Ever 2, 3, etc. etc.) short YouTube recording sessions into a full-length LP (and many thanks to the person who had the patience/tolerance to rip said videos). Obvious comparisons to Tenacious D aside, some of the songs are pretty funny, some of the more offensive ones ("Ever Since I Fucked My Sister (She's Been Acting Kind Of Strange)" and "Remember That Time That Your Dad Molested You?") actually elicited a guffaw from my jaded soul. Based out of New Orleans, the Straight-Eff's consisted of TJ Kinkaid on vocals and Cody Weber on acoustic guitar and while basically a duo there appears a guest bassist as well whose name escapes me. There are also some pretty solid (i.e. professional) remixes tacked on as well but you'll just have to listen to the record to understand it all. Unfortunately it seems the guys had somewhat of a real/fake falling out after a few months and their tethered musical future dissolved just as quickly but both have continued to do online shit here and here. In short, the album works a little bit better in its original 10-minute bursts, after half an hour of TJ screaming it can get somewhat nerve-frying so be forewarned and enjoy. For those who dig, they have a bandcamp page with some extra material for sale - check it out.

Get A Snack

Stimpak Soundtrack

Like the 15 million+ other people out there I am painfully addicted to Fallout 4, just like I was to 3 and New Vegas. Currently on my 28th in-game day or whatever in the post-apocalyptic Commonwealth, there are times I feel like I'm more concerned what's happening in that world then the real one. The commercial is an absolute work of genius and using "The Wanderer" was an ideal choice; fitting in perfectly with the frozen-in-time 50's art deco vibe of the whole game. I was surprised to see that Dion didn't burn out as the teen idol I pegged him to be, he's still churning out records to this day - switching genres through the decades from blues to eventually more religious-themed stuff; impressive for a guy pushing 80. "The Wanderer" was on the second single from his 1961 Runaround Sue album, his first solo LP after splitting with the doo wop trio The Belmonts. Paired with "The Majestic", "Wanderer" ended up with a ton more airplay than its A-side and ended up actually hitting #2 on the Billboard charts. Will all that being said, here's something a little different than my usual posts, an oldies revisit thanks to a game taking place 200 years in the future. Of course you'll know some of the songs on the album, notably the title track but and "Dream Lover" but there are a couple humorous forgotten rock & roll treasures worth a listen. Ironically, "Kansas City" sounds almost exactly like the "Wanderer" and has become my second favorite track on the record. So grab some RadAway and enjoy a trip down memory lane.

Runaround

Old Nü Metal

No folks, this blog's not dead just yet, just been too busy juggling two jobs along with all the other miserable shit in life to get around to this forgotten corner of the web. Oddly, been listening to a lot of music as of late so hopefully there will be some regularity/frequency to forthcoming posts. Regardless, let's jump into the time machine back to the early years of the new millennium where 90% of bands that could have simply gone the way of radio-friendly alternative rock simply downtuned their instruments, added some quasi-witty white-boy rap lyrics and tagged themselves nü metal. Cincinnatti, OH's V-Mob (or V-MOB depending on which website you visit) was birthed in 1997 and released a few demos, ep's and samplers before calling it a day with 2002's Equilibrium mini-album. While it's a huge jump in quality from their rather unlistenable demo from five years earlier, I'm simply not terribly wowed by it. Case in point, the opener "Transparent" (arguably the best song on the record) sounds like a weird remix of Slipknot ("Sic"), Korn ("Need To") and Phunk Junkeez ("Snapped") songs from years before. I guess there was just such a ridiculous demand for this stuff back then that no one called 'em out (or cared). "Mime" is pretty good but devolves into a weird Vanilla Ice-ish bridge at one point which just sounds funny and "Reflection" opens pretty strong. Evidently Equilibrium got the band a legit record contract which they never signed, fired their lead singer, and promptly faded into obscurity. The band has since been compared to Slipknot, I'm not sure if that's due to their very similar sound or the fact that they come from Ohio and people are just confusing that with Iowa (shit, they're basically the same state) but it's probably better than the band deserves. There seems to be a rather strong cult following for V-Mob and the guys have done some reunion shows through the decades but maybe I just missed the bus or by 2002 simply didn't care about the genre any more. Come to think of it I can't remember anything i was doing in '02 so whatever. Long story short, if you're craving some obscure nü metal then you can't go wrong with these 20 minutes. Enjoy.

Snitches Are a Dying Breed

Music To Tag To

Here's a soundtrack snippet by a gang I've mentioned before, the somewhat infamous DayByDay comedy duo of Will Carsola and Dave Stewart. Culled from their 2006 comedy sketch flick Teenagers From Uranus, today's/this months's upload features three-ish hip-hop tracks from the DVD soundtrack. Played over several "intermissions" (a.k.a. run time filler) of graffiti artists running around in what I assume is Baltimore, the tracks are probably local RVA artists and probably demos or unreleased. Couldn't get a whole lot from the credits so best guessing one or all of the artists are local legend Oxen Johnson (with or without his group Luggage), Ali Thieves and maybe some remixes by Kjell. Good old-school gangsta rap for us old fucks out there. As for Carsola and Stewart, I only recently discovered these guys made their way out of the River City towards sunny CA to create the Mr. Pickles show for Adult Swim. Who knew and good for them escaping the tri-cities. Check out some more of their funny sketch comedy shit here.

Sloppy Seconds

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

Bone Crunching Carnage That Will Fuck Up Your Entire Day

Jesus, after dealing with a week of my poor little south-of-the-Mason-Dixon city struggling to deal with the twelve inches of snow dumped on us last weekend it's no fucking wonder some of the most miserable music in the world comes from such frost-addled climes as Norway, Sweden, and the home to today's music lesson, Finland. Thankfully not another run-of-the-mill black metal band (my initial idea for this post), the oddly named Arson Under The Sea spawn from the city of Oulu and play a rather devastating blend of sludge noise which was perfect to be pissed-off and shovel my driveway to (actually, it was the band's no-nonsense self-description I used in the post header that initially hooked me). The band has a few short releases, my favorite is their 2013 demo for an EP which came out a year later. Raw, overdub-free practice space recording which is probably the closest thing to the band live you can get from this side of the pond. If you like what you hear be sure to check out the plethora of websites fronted by this internet-savvy band: fb/bc/tumblr.

Oarfish

That's not noise. That's just my mind blowing off in different directions...

Probably my least favorite release from the ol' Geeg, and that's saying a lot when compared to dreck like the Live Fast Die Fast 7" and the umpteen posthumous live LPs. But it's still essential just, y'know... because. If it was some post mortem cash-grab it would be a lot easier to write off but the fact that there's quite a few interviews out there in which GG freaking extols this record (listen here) demands another listen. M. Physema was the multi-talented lead vocalist/programmer of Pittsburgh, PA lo-fi industrial unit Shrinkwrap (already with a half-dozen indie releases under their belt) who contacted the incarcerated Allin; over mail and phone the two conspired to create the 45-minute opus War In My Head/I'm Your Enemy. So what's it all like? As far as Shrinkwrap goes, listening to their non-GG recordings is a lot like listening to some of Ministry's Wax Trax outtake stuff. Pretty aggressive guitar-heavy industrial, not bad at all, just somewhat redundant at times. With that being said, WIMH/IYE can be a long listen. With most spoken material lifted from the GG/ANTiSEEN Murder Junkies album dubbed over looped music from throughout the scumfuc's career, it just feels too much like you've heard it all before. A trip into GG's mind? Yeah, kind of, I guess, but nothing too shocking for the seasoned fan. War In My Head/I'm Your Enemy would probably have the greatest impact on someone who had no idea what GG was all about - it almost works best as a sampler to the chaotic sociopathy (and discography) of the guy. Highlight is the last 5 or so minutes with an unreleased (by 1993 standards, anyway) spoken word over a bleak-ass noisy maelstrom. I think if anything, because GG and his bands changed sounds and styles so much over the decades it's a little tough to digest WIMH/IYE as a coherent piece. Still a worthy effort though, especially back in a day when it was obvious GG was mid-life crisising what musical direction even he wanted to go in. Ironically, something like this could be pasted together in GarageBand by any amateur mixer with enough time on his hands... a real example of how much technology has changed in the near-quarter century Allin's been dead. For those who are interested, M. Physema resurrected his Toilet Rock Production label in 2006 and re-released over thirty rare and long-lost GG demos, cassettes, live shows, etc on CDr. It's a pretty amazing selection, potential copyright infringements and all. Check it out here.

Highest Power

Aussie Slam

Lets start off 2016 with the first full-length by Melbourne brutal death metallers Whoretopsy. The band caught my eye sinply for the fact they call themselves a blend of deathcore and BDM, two genres which I'm trying to get back into after being out of the intestinal loop for a couple years. So how does the merging of such misanthropic styles sound? Pretty fucking good actually. First off, it is really nice to hear good musicians actually playing together, no drum machines, loops or over produced effects. The riffs and breakdowns are plentiful and absolutely vicious - the kind of stuff I wish there were still huge floor-sized speaker stereos to blast through. The weird deathcore guitar noodling (of which I never understood the popularity) is still there to an extent but it's completely overshadowed by the sheer crush of down-tuned power chord monstrosity. You still got to deal with a token movie sample intro on most of the songs but hey it wouldn't be brutal death without 'em, no? Great shit to nurse a hangover and rip the holiday decorations down to. Happy New Year.

Potty Mouth

Ho Ho Ho

Leave it to Polish conductor Krzysztof Penderecki to suck all the fun out of Christmas with his haunting, almost hellish Christmas Symphony. Recorded in 1981 with the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra and a cluster of evocative of vocalists, the symphony is a exactly the opposite of what one would assume from a holiday piece. Dark and foreboding, the music is actually an interpretation of "Silent Night" though listeners will be hard-pressed to discern any details. Discarding the more minimalist/conservative avant-garde style of his earlier works, Penderecki considers his Christmas piece a turning point in his career, what most classical reviewers mark as his maturation into neo-romanticism (I wouldn't be pretentious enough to claim that analysis as my own). Included in the performance is Penderecki's wonderful rendition of Te Deum ("Thee, O God"), an Ambrosian hymn still quite popular in the Catholic Church (evidently during papal ceremony). Equally as unsettling as it's predecessor, the piece and would find itself perfectly at home in any number of cerebral horror flicks (Shining anyone?). Significantly more choral, the last third of the movement is my favorite, a typical Penderecki tradeoff between soprano and baritone that simply sounds ominous and fearful. Enjoy.

Dóminus Deus Sábaoth

Pathologically Explicit

Ah, nothing creams holiday spirit like a 30-minute dose of Spanish brutal death metal. Straight outta Lleida, Catalonia comes Haemophagia. I don't know what got into me over the last few weeks but man I was getting tired of the pussy shit that kept popping up on my iPod and felt it was time to find a new BDM band. Originally spawned in 2005, the trio began life the sorta-stupidly named Triskaidekaphobia (technical term for fear of the number thirteen), recording a 3-song demo and eventually settling on their current moniker. While the "low" guttural vocals are a tad bit lower than I'd prefer if I was mixing this myself, it's still a great album and one that isn't marred by shitty production, a tinny drum machine or endless movie samples. The breakdowns are heavy and plentiful, the song titles are meaningless and offensive, and while there's nothing you haven't heard before it's performed by a bunch of guys who know their death metal history and play what they like. Break out the egg nog and throw this disc in the CD player for a cozy night of holiday cheer. Enjoy.

Appealing Obliteration