Aussie Gore-core

Since I had all the lo-fi apparatus set up to pull A.C.'s pregap track off of CD, I thought I'd go ahead and do the same for Aussie grinders Blood Duster. Both Relapse releases of Yeest and Cunt have a techno-remix pregap monstrosity that is almost as annoying to listen to as it is to scan backwards without resetting the CD. Drop some X, get out your platforms and rock the dance floor. Enjoy if you can.

Crikey

Currently watching: Irreversible
Currently listening to: 2 Skinnee J's Volumizer

Lowering the bar...

Paul Ledney really had a tough act to follow after 1993's amazing Dethrone The Son Of God. His 1994 The Black Mist 7" came closest to the aura DTSOG attained; sadly, excrable production and the typical imperfections of a vinyl-only release kept that one from being a real gem. 2000's Man And Jinn was heralded as a profane return to form - in my opinion it's anything but. I guess I just don't get black metal, why does sounding like absolute shit mean you have the edge on being unholy? It's one thing when Abruptum are ad-libbing as more of a performance art thing - it's another when Ledney, who's proven he's a talented musician takes the easy way out with the typical grinding blastbeat wall of noise punctuated by a vocoded "aaaaaahhhhhhh" every now and then. The cover of Impaled Nazarene's "Goat Perversion" is really the only reason this EP made it onto the blog - and that's just because it's a great song in it's own right. Jehovah fo nruter eht rof gnitiaw llits.

Burn

 
Currently watching: The Freakmaker 
Currently listening to: Sister Souljah 360 Degrees Of Power

I'm Glad Sid's Dead

Like most people, I caught wind of good ol' Bloody F. Mess via his GG Allin worship zine "Hated In The Nation" back in '86 or so (I actually still have ish #2!). At the time he was fronting the Illinois punk trio Hate which managed to shit out some cassette-only albums (ahh, the 80's) dubbed over freebie Mormon tapes. Touring with GG and contributing both a steady stream of drugs and opening spoken word performances (much of this is documented on Insult & Injury Volume 2 - The Bloody Years), Bloody disbanded Hate and formed the Skabs in 1988. The result is a somewhat uneven 22 minutes of punk. A couple good songs here and there ("Mammogram Days" is a personal fave) but nothing really special. I guess I was expecting some more Allin-esque obscenity-laden smutcore but you can't blame the guy for trying to do his own thing outside the shadow of his quasi-hero that helped give him a career. Speaking of which, while I don't really know much of what Mess has done since 6th Grade Field Trip (save some oh, so tired pro-marijuana bandwagoning back when Cypress Hill were blowing up), I gotta say I think he got a bit of a raw deal in regards to the posthumous Allin legacy that peaked a decade or so ago. So what that Allin supposedly disowned him - this from the guy who preached "I Love Nothing"? And yeah, so Bloody released some kinda shitty-sounding live recordings to try and cash in on the cow - who cares? At that time everyone with a grade-Z video of the Public Animal was dubbing the shit and selling it through MMR. And lots are still doing it and they don't get half the criticism he did back when the iron was hot. Bloody was there when hardly anyone outside of New England knew who or what GG was, and he probably had as much to do with introducing the world to the late scumfuc genius as anyone.

Peoria Punk

 
Currently watching: Generation Kill
Currently listening to: James Brown The Payback

Portland Sludge

Ex-North Carolinians who brought to the West Coast their brand of southern fried dirt metal, a raw, sludgy canker sore of sound in the diseased vein of Eyehategod and Soilent Green. Nothing Positive Only Negative is the band's first major label release - ugly riffage that really got me hooked on the sludge genre. Big highlight of the album is the epic "Rough Sleep," the piss-in-your-face anthem for every sour relationship you've ever had. Unfortunately, NPON was also the band's last slab of sound, they broke up in 2009.

Pass The Time

 
Currently watching: Kichiku: Banquet of the Beasts
Currently listening to: Slipknot Slipknot

U R A FKNG LSR

Per their Myspace page: "Since 1992 Bile has been a festering globule of audio terrorism; A bastardized synthesis of subversive values and deviant sophistication completely devoid of the mainstream pop culture." Fueled by his disillusionment with thrash metal bands, lead singer Krztoff released Suckpump in 1994, the first audial assault from his ultimate "anti-band". It created quite a buzz in the band's hometown of NYC and the band continues to chug along "under the radar and off the grid" over fifteen years later with some significant notoriety under their belt ("banned from major American cities, cancelled tours, hotels ablaze, military smoke bombs, electrocution, tornadoes during NYC S&M block parties, arrests, denied access abroad or re-entry, prescription drug use, wrongly attacked by the ACT UP anti-violence to gays coalition, a Cherry Coke radio commercial, deaths, etc.") Yow. With all that being said, I can't get past considering Bile much more than just a poor-man's Ministry. It's the same socio-political vitriol in front of guitar-heavy industrio-metal, just sounding like it was recorded in a garage. Still, Bile was way ahead of most of the Al Jourgensen clones out there during the 90's and Suckpump holds its own to this day. If you dig it, check out 1996's Teknowhore as well - solid shit.

Get Out

 
Currently watching: Autumn
Currently listening to: Ministry The Land Of Rape And Honey

Hello, I Hate You

Probably A.C.'s tightest fifteen minutes, a blistering snapshot of the band's crossover from old-school blur to a more palatable grindcore. Well-produced and loud, it sounds far better then that 1995's muddy Everyone Must Be Killed, which this E.P. was actually the demo for. Since most A.C. stuff is pretty much anywhere you look on the internet, I thought I'd instead upload the annoying-to-find "pregap" bonus track found on Relapse's 10th anniversary re-release of the album. It's a perfectly ironic 'Cunt cover of the Doors' "Hello, I Love You," recorded for some Relapse compilation back in the day which I'm not sure ever saw the light of a jewel case. It ripped OK and I tried to get the levels consistent with the rest of the album, so enjoy. Interesting side note, then-guitarist John Kozik was out with kidney stones when Morbid Florist was recorded so Seth and Tim overdubbed the whole album as a 2-piece. As of now, they're still the only members in the band. Just sayin'.

Spin Jim, Spin

Currently watching: The Simpsons Movie
Currently listening to: Jane's Addiction Nothing's Shocking

Resurrection

To my dismay, Boston's excellent nü-metal outfit Reveille broke up in 2002, a split spawned from the typical "creative differences" that left a (recorded?) third album on the shelf. Soon after, however, vocalist Drew Simollardes and guitarist Greg Sullivan got back together to create Genuflect. Boasting a sound similar to their previous band, Genuflect released Rough Mix Demo in 2005, a septet of songs planned for their future album, 2007's The End Of The World ("Move" doesn't seem to have made the cut so it's an exclusive on this album). In my opinion the tunes sound much better then anything that made it onto World, they are raw, underproduced and angry.  A little more rap then metal but still listenable - I doubt Genuflect will ever put out a record as good as Reveille released but you can't have everything I guess.

Check It

Currently watching: A Perfect Getaway
Currently listening to: Jimi Hendrix Electric Ladyland

Random plug...

I don't know how I stumbled upon this webpage but I'm glad I did. A great collection of one-sheet comics done by the talented Matty Boy Anderson detailing the fall from grace of so many bands. Witty, well drawn and all-too-true, I even enjoy reading the ones about bands I couldn't care less about. And I gotta respect the guy for admitting he was a Meat Shits fan!

Funny Shit...

 
Currently watching: Survival Of The Dead
Currently listening to: Spore Gaia's Grasp

Live Shellfish

Another oddity from the brothers boognish, a live jam from July 15, 1991 playing as the Green Lipped Mussels. There seems to be some ambiguity between Ween fans as to the true moniker of the band; what little info I did find seems to suggest there already existed a jam band called the Green Lipped Mussels (composed of Dreiwitz, Guzda, Di Gesu and Harford) and the addition of Gene and Dean technically morphed the whole thing into the Jimmy Wilson Group (supported by the fact that everyone calls each other "Jim" during the gig). Regardless of what you want to call them, the guys on stage that hot Monday night two decades ago were Gene and Dean playing with Dave Dreiwitz (bass, duh), Matt Guzda (drums), Greg Di Gesu (guitar) and Chris Harford (guitar, vocals). Bassosaurus Andrew Weiss guest stars during Ween's "The Stallion Pt. 3". Recorded at New Brunswick, NJ's famous Court Tavern, the Mussels rip through a bunch of covers, Ween tunes, Harford tunes and Mussel originals with the same tenacity and humor you'd find in any Aaron and Mickey performance. My guess behind their pseudonym is this was some unannounced/surprise/private show for friends and for whatever reason (record label) they couldn't advertise themselves as "Ween". Deaner called the band "a white version of Kool And The Gang" and they supposedly reunited in 2009 for a couple shows with Harford (whether they actually played as the 'Mussels is anyone's guess though). With all that being said, my only gripe with this recording is the crappy mp3s. I originally pulled them from some random FTP site nearly a decade ago so the fact they are 128kbps isn't all that surprising but there is a LOT of hiss and compression noise, even for a bootleg. It doesn't take that much away from the performance but fair warning. I also discovered a CD cover I created way back in the day that I think looks pretty cool. It's included in PDF format with the music file.

8/20/14 update: A solid reupload with the most complete recording of the show I could find - culled from old Lostwave mp3's, FLACs from archive.org and a few other sources. Sadly the lossy limitations are still evident but it sounds as good as it probably ever will. I also updated the above post with some more factual info. Enjoy.

Jim, Jim, Jim, Jim, Jim and Jim

Currently watching: Redacted
Currently listening to: Electric Wizard Black Masses

Noisecore Nonsense

Sheesh! No sooner did I drop the Boredoms side project Z-Rock Hawaii then I was awash in another piece of Japanese noisecore phlegm - Osaka A.C. rip-offs Cunt Decide. Actually my introduction to the band was lead singer/screamer Manabu sending me the demo tape for his then-blurcore band, Senseless Apocalypse. I don't know if he thought I was a record label or fanzine or what, he sent the cassette completely unsolicited - side 1 was S.A., side 2 was a previous blur band of his called Cunt Decide. Kind of a Senseless Apocalypse 1.0 (less produced and more noisy), Cunt Decide blast through a hundred or so twenty-second tunes in 35 minutes. A few grooves here and there (á la Anal Cunt) but mostly a sheer wall of blastbeats and howling. I went ahead and sent him $5 for the demo - two bands spewing 500 songs in 90 minutes is worth a fin in my book. Senseless Apocalypse has since gone on to become a more typical (but definitely more listenable and talented) grindcore band and Manabu's still running the iconic Blurred Records so give 'em a listen!

579116952348

 
Currently watching: Married With Children (Season 9)
Currently listening to: No Fraud Love And Massmurder