Rolling 2005 Metal Thread

Ummm..what else would they be?

Shoutouts for High On Fire and, although I haven't heard their new one yet, Stinking Lizaveta.

http://www.metalstorm.ee/bands/new_releases.php?coming=yes
Including confirmed front cover artwork.

i second the high on fire love. i love the sound of it. and i wasn't a big fan of surrounded by thieves. i think albini is just getting better with age!

My own nomination for this thread is the new Daft Punk single. (And the High on Fire album, o' course.)

isn't he though? they don't call him the death-metal Jandek for nothing! (oh wait,i'm the only one who calls him that.)

and ned, try and scam an AMG copy of the upcoming katatonia black sessions comp. all cool album tracks and single b-sides from discouraged ones on and a live dvd!

Odd, since I had really modest expectations for it.

When Mommy is a Headbanger

DALLAS - They're housewives, workaholics, PTA members and ... rock stars?

Women fighting to shatter the stay-at-home-mom stereotype and rediscover their youthful voice are forming bands, such as Housewives on Prozac in suburban New York, Frump in Dallas and Placenta in Oakland, Calif.

These moms are rocking the house and the cradle, singing about breast-feeding, exhaustion and making kids do their chores.

"I feel like what we do is remind people about their passion and that sense of importance and that sense of vitality," said Joy Rose, a 47-year-old mother of four who founded Housewives on Prozac in 1997. "Life is really short, and it's important to live colorfully."

Mothers have struggled for identity and fulfillment for decades, growing more exasperated with their increasing career and child-rearing demands, said University of Michigan professor Susan Douglas, who co-authored the book "The Mommy Myth."

She said those feelings may explain the growing number of mom rock bands. (Rose estimated there are about 50 active mom bands across the country, with 20 of them having been formed in the last year.)

"In our cultural common sense, what could be more opposite from the icon of mom than a punk rocker?" Douglas said.

Suzie Riddle, who has three children aged 19, 12 and 6, started Frump in 2001 as a gag for her 40th birthday party. A punk rocker in her youth, then a librarian, Riddle hounded other mothers at her church and her daughters' school until she found three women willing to play along.

At first, they performed five songs, including "Suzie Is A Headbanger" by the Ramones and "We're Really Beat," a song Frump guitarist Frances Peterson wrote to the tune of "We've Got the Beat" by the Go-Go's.

"See the mothers driving down the street, see their makeup melting in the heat, straight from work, the pantyhose are tight, it's take-out tonight," the song begins.

Three years later, the band has grown to five, adding new members as others have moved away. Frump practices every Saturday night and performs about once a month at parties, churches and community events such as the Punky Mamas Christmas Bazaar in Dallas.

The band members even encouraged their daughters to get involved, and the girls formed their own band called Spawn and have played at two gigs with their moms.

"It is the best feeling in the world," said Frump lead guitarist Diane Harris, whose 11-year-old daughter Anna plays drums in Spawn.

Frump is still trying to forge an identity, teetering between being a novelty and a serious band, Riddle said. She'd like to add a second weekly practice and focus on cultivating a unique sound.

But any group that bills itself as an all-mom garage band is going to get a few chuckles, she conceded.

"I am really proud of this, and I'm proud of the attention that it's gotten us," she said. "It's kind of a silly idea, and a lot of people have taken notice."

At the Punky Mamas Bazaar, an audience of mostly middle-aged women and their children clapped and tapped their feet to Frump's music, even getting up to dance to "Twist and Shout." A few young couples on a Saturday evening date watched from the back of a half-full dance hall.

Julie Hougland came with her 6-year-old daughter, her 55-year-old mother and her 35-year-old sister. She said she was surprised by how much fun they had.

"How many venues are there where I can take my daughter and dance?" Hougland said.

Rose hopes the movement soon will catch on commercially as more people see mom bands in concert. Housewives on Prozac has recorded two CDs and a holiday CD single, which is available on Amazon.com.

Several mom bands will converge on New York City throughout May for the fourth annual Mamapalooza festival. The festival, founded by Rose, will feature at least five days of events, including a free outdoor concert and a poetry and jazz night.

========

This having been said, the fragment of the song "Pick Up Your Socks" made me laugh. Chuck Eddy to thread. Fly me into NYC and I'll cover Mamapalooza and do a MommyMetal review. Placenta, jeezus. All the best jokes get overtaken by real-life. Too bad no one would know the meaning of "Miltown" anymore.

man, more jpt scare band - excellent. i have to pick up "past is prologue," i didn't even know that was out.

i really didn't like the new mastodon until i found myself walking around humming the riff to "iron claw." which compelled me to download it again. and buy it when i've got some cash.

That'll do as a spurious segue into mentioning that Earl Shilton, who used to be in Bolt Thrower, has remixed Alter Ego's 'Rocker'. Which is a genius piece of lateral thinking. The mix itself I cannot comment on as yet

-- DJ Mencap0)))

I merely pointed out that a 13 minute metal song about the Loch Ness Monster could only be brilliant. How could it possibly be bad? Even if it were a child banging on a plate for 13 minutes with a guitar solo (even a KK Downing guitar solo) over the top and Rob Halford going 'waaaaaaaaah! Hot rockin'', the fact remains that it would _still_ be a 13 minute metal song about the Loch Ness Monster, and therefore it would _still_ be brilliant.

But if you are right, if the impossible happens, and it turns out to be not brilliant, I promise you you will receive an apology from me sir.

Enemy of God is great.

Right now I'm nuts over Behemoth's Demigod, which surprised me how catchy it is for a black metal album. "Conquer All" totally rips off Anthrax's "Be All End All", but in a good way.

Also, I can't get enough of the new Cursed album. They start out sounding kind of Converge-y, but then a really cool sludge influence starts to pop in, and the album winds up sounding like early Mastodon. It's the best Canadian metal album I've heard in a while (though I expect the new Strapping Young Lad album to top it in a month or so).

Agree about Demigod; my review should be running in the East Bay Express in the next week or so. That guy's vocals sound like a blast furnace.

"Shitstorm" is pretty killer...that's the only new SYL track I've heard so far.

Send a copy. Fast opinions guaranteed.

Samael's pretty much off on permanent tangent, but it's interesting. The new one is Rammstein + Egyptian music + the Dimmu Borgir black orchestra thing Samael invented. Pretty much hits the Satanic side of Soft Cell in a couple choice moments. Also remarkably mid-tempo -- some kind of Swiss timing thing.

Napalm Death's THE CODE IS RED...LONG LIVE THE CODE totally rages. Lots of simple hooky riffs at a faster speed than usual, it improves over the last two already good Napalm CDs. Not a bad Jello B. guest spot, either -- ie he does more than warble "yo yo yo" into the mic a couple times.

I also heard most of the new Hypocrisy over the weekend -- with Horgh of Immortal now on drums, it sounds like the shoegazer death metal of The Arrival landing over the tumult of Sons of Northern Darkness pt. II. Pretty powerful and vicious.

Even with the hiring of regional doom manager Joe Preston, can't work up the enthusiasm to listen to the new High on Fire. Well, there, I said it.

I also heard most of the new Hypocrisy over the weekend -- with Horgh of Immortal now on drums, it sounds like the shoegazer death metal of The Arrival landing over the tumult of Sons of Northern Darkness pt. II. Pretty powerful and vicious.

I am intrigued, very deeply.

But you would be.

Can't wait to hear this one. Their recent covers album was one of the more underrated CDs from last year.

I'm liking the High on Fire album a lot. Albini has Kensel's drumming sounding monstrous.

Yeah, the Mercenary's good, if a little samey, and it gets deeper and darker around "Sharpen the Edges." And shortly after that, there's this total crossover Bon Jovi/ Duran Duran sounding thing that I dug.

Samael seems VERY samey, though not always in a bad way.

Hmmmphhh, I must have a differently mixed/mastered copy. You couldn't blow your speakers in the Sixties easily. Much bass was usually mastered -out- of the recordings with high pass filtering either when going to tape or on the mastering lathe.

People try to recreate this so much now that there are '60's presets' that hack the bass to psychedelic garage band and Japanese transistor radio levels in digital mastering software.

Does Blue Cheer's "Vincebus Eruptum" have much bass? I just recall it as being loud and screechy. My memories of speaker excursion bass start tuning in around Grand Funk "black album" and Cream Live.

I think old time mastering fogeys had to be persuaded at gunpoint not to cut the bottom and balls off rock and roll records. They'd get a rash at the idea of the needle on the lathe cutting too big a groove and the pressings developing a skip.

I'm really enjoying this one. Like Ian said, a cool combination of styles. Can't get enough of that bizarre vocal cadence by Vorph (especially in "Moongate")...makes Tom G. Warrior sound articulate in comparison. Is it a Swiss thing or something?

Why didnt Billy Anderson do it? anyone know.

Maybe a Swiss villager thing, but Samael are francophones and Tom G. speaks schwyzertütsch. They'd probably speak english to each other if they met on the ski lift.

"...and of course Darkthrone"

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6881422/

But last year I joyfully screamed "Cannibal Corpse!" in Sen. Joe Lieberman's face, so we'll just see how it goes.

Some recommendations. A heavy metal album that is loud. And the drums, too.

I know if I were in a heavy metal band I'd rush to have the label work up this advertising copy: "The drums are GREAT! Boy, they're loud!" Now, for the songs...

You just know people drop everything and rush to the store when they hear the drums on a metal record are stupendous.

I do. Drum sound is extremely important in metal. Look at St. Anger (just don't try to listen to it). A lot of death metal records (Vital Remains' Dechristianize is a good example) would be much better than they are if the drums didn't sound like practice pads.

Well it looks like we're almost even, then.

Anyway, on the other thread someone pointed me at Aquarius for Lugubrum. I thank them, Aquarius Records had all I needed to know. Belgie death metal, big on carrots, beer and corncob pipes. It's a coin toss whether I send for the most recent CDs. Art looked good but should I wait for a newer one in 2005? Decisions.

I don't have to bend over backwards. I really enjoy it! And the drums just "sound" really cool to me. And loud as hell! I listen to a lot of metal and hard rock and it's easy to notice when something jumps out at you like that. I'd love to hear what Albini could do with someone like Amon Amarth.

and there is an easy explanation for why i say it's so loud: I have to turn the volume up a lot higher on the new Immolation and the new Blood Red Throne to make them as loud as I like loud music to be. I don't have to turn up the volume on the new High On Fire nearly as much to make it as earsplittingly loud . IN FACT, twice I actually had to turn it down because, like I said before, I thought I might break my speakers. Some Cds are louder then other CDs.

I'm for that. Last time out, the Vatican and pedophiles. Lynndie is so equally worthy of anti-iconography, I had to put her photo in "Iraq 'N' Roll." I'm surprised there isn't already a tribute record revolving around her. It would be a fine curio, something with which to menace friends who already think you are somewhat icky.

Brick wall limiting and/or extreme compression tricks. Opinions differ, often explosively, on whether it makes things better than actually just leaning over and giving the volume nob a twist.

I've gotten so used to new CDs blaring at me straight out of the folder that I set the level back about half from the average ten years ago.

HoF are different, not all of it a consequence of Steve Albini's knob job. They do sound a lot cleaner because the amps are vintage circuits and the EQ hits the heavy guitar sweet spot -- good mid presence. That said, there are lots of Seventies-style hard rock records that sound clearer. Matter of taste, I suppose.

Was going to start a thread but to obscure and old. Is new to me __ I thought I remembered most of it but didn't: Neil Merryweather and the Space Rangers. Bought at a CD store's going out of business sale in Pasadena yesterday. Only printed in Deutschland!

Hair band stripper metal a little before stripper metal and science-fiction hard rock. "Kryptonite!" Of course, it's no Judas Priest but for a lazy afternoon, pretty good. Neil backed up Lita Ford when no one else thought she was so hot, I think.

In other matters, RPG reissued on Arclight. Supposed to be recommended by Lamb of God or others who wear their T-shirts. I wouldn't have picked LoG dudes for liking RPG, perhaps it is because they invite them to steak barbecues or something, a matey thing. RPG play the same two or three riffs real fast, over and over, to a mostly rock and roll feel. A good idea capitalized on with good execution! Often there are actual hooks and songs, like on something called "Crash Bam Boom," "Early '72" or "20 Year Old Idiot." Comes with a DVD that will remind you of the BunnyBrains home movie DVD.

There was something else on Arclight last year that I liked, too. A Texas trio from the drug jungles of Colombia or something playing Link Wray riffage and homages to Johnny Winter And and Nitzinger. But I can't remember their name.

A Forum performance by ... Lamb of God has been canceled after the venues' owners, the Faithful Central Bible Church, learned that the band formerly went by the name Burn the Priest.

The April 9 show would have been a stop on the band's 43-city tour as one of several supporting acts for Slipknot, the cartoonish band that performs in masks and has songs such as "Pulse of the Maggots" and "Heretic Anthem." As of Wednesday, Slipknot and its Subliminal Verses tour...will go on as scheduled.

Lamb of God's members railed against their exclusion Wednesday. Drummer Chris Adler said in a statement, "The word from the powers that be is that Lamb of God is not the wholesome family fun that the good people of LA deserve."

Marc Little, CEO for the church's business dealings, said that the operation walks a difficult line as a part-time player in the concert business.

"This is a building that is owned by the church, and we are sensitive to our congregation and to our obvious religious beliefs. At the same time, we have to balance that with being a business. This is a band that was formerly known as Burn the Priest, so it's a fair assumption that some of the stuff they are signing may be antithetical to our beliefs."

The Forum has pulled in some major acts in recent years, among them ...Metallica and Linkin Park, whose music might give a pastor pause. But Lamb of God's former name was apparently too religiously hostile to accept.

"The situation in LA can only be described as ridiculous," Adler said. "It's already been a huge waste of energy [bummer] trying to turn this around. The powers that be aren't interested in budging -- or doing their research, apparently [Adler does not clarify why "researching" Lamb of God is germane] -- ad we've never been a band to placate anyone to get our way, smooth things over or make anyone feel better."

[One could also make the case that a name evolution from Burn the Priest to Lamb of God renders it impossible for you to argue convincingly about principles.]

Burn the Priest formed in 1990 at [some university] and changed their stage name to Lamb of God soon after they released their self-titled album. Their follow-up album, "New American Gospel," was released in 2000. It included dark, thrashing songs with titles like "In the Absence of the Sacred" and "The Subtle Arts of Murder and Persuasion."

=========

Actually, if I were a Lamb of God publicist I'd be thrilled. Doing LA is easy but you can neve plan for the gift of a painless public slapdown based on religiosity.

The 69 Tribe 12" single -- originally on Feralette in '84 or something, never seen in most stores -- is discovered on eMusic. "Bikers," a cover of a then unrecorded original by the Neighborhood Texture Jam, easily fits on the first Godz LP, maybe next to "Under the Table." Over the top biker-metal probably done by not-bikers, and I oughtta know. "Doing chicks! Doin' 'ludes! Fuck those chicks and their dudes!" Bikers hangin' out in the bottom of the canyon singin' 'Born to be Wild.' Said to have a Stooges "Raw Power"-like attack, an assessment with which I rarely agree. Except sort of this time -- "Raw Power" if it had been recorded as a well-balanced metal record and with a guitarist who sounded more like an arena-rockstar than James Williamson.

Neighborhood Texture Jam's "Funeral Mountain" also available. Never saw it anywhere except reviewed in Rolling Stone by Robert Palmer who gave it a rave but completely missed the boat on what it sounded like.
Twin guitar hard rock and metal, very classical in orientation, but with a nuts vocalist prone to ranting critically about the south and whatever else was bugging him at the time, like his girlfriend, to whom he professes his "love" which is like a "borax factory" across the "alkaline plain." Some heavy boogie, not suvvern rock-sounding, spazzed-out heavy. Perhaps a Terry Knight Grand Funk-like sound if they had recorded the live "black album" properly and without going for the staticky transistor radio sound. Contains a version of "Bikers" which isn't real similar to 69 Tribe's rendition but equally jacked up.

And the Cherry Red 12" single. Two heavy glam rock slices. Never heard of them but were supposed to be from NYC.

I know 69 Tribe got airplay at college radio for that single. Yet one can scarcely find a trace of them in the electronic record.

really, who "bikers" kinda sounds like to me, by the way, is the angry samoans! (or at least stevie stiletto and the switchblades or somebody like that.)

So, does anybody else think Isis, Mastodon and Lamb of God were all competing for the same bloc of voters in Pazz 'n' Jop? (Hip-hop tokenism - roundly scorned year after year; metal tokenism - alive and well and A-OK.)

I do hear an Angry Samoans "Inside My Brain" thing. Maybe that's another reason why I like it so much.

My thinking is the B-side of 69 Tribe was a studio track laying around that was made for a local movie or sumpin' and they needed filler. Really, the Feralette singles are a mystery to me. I should make you a CD copy of some of that stuff, particularly Cherry Red.
How did an allegedly NYC-based all girl heavy glam band wind up on a primarily southern boutique label as a single offering?

Punget Stench's "Ampeuty" comes with arty CD pamphlet containing photos and drawings of radically photoshopped of beautiful women in scanty underwear, often shot bottoms up, all with legs, arms, hands and feet missing in some way. Their is truth in their advertising.

Lamb of God got virtually no support this year -- it only showed up on 4 ballots and placed at #362. By my count, at least 9 metal/extreme records placed higher, so that record was a total non-factor.

I think the only records that showed up on 5 or more ballots were:

Mastodon (#60) 218 pts/ 21 ballots
Comets on Fire (#63) 203 pts/ 20 ballots
Isis (#126) 103 pts/ 12 ballots
Converge (#156) 86 pts/ 7 ballots
Wolf Eyes (#231) 61 pts/ 8 ballots

Converge actually generated the most enthusiastic support from its voters (or, rather, had the highest points/ballot average). And with Isis and Mastodon, it was pretty much a case of metal people voting for their own with some additional votes from folks like Greg Kot (who always places Isis in his top-10s at the Chicago Tribune) and Jonathan Cohen. Also, half of the people who voted for Isis also voted for Mastodon, so the whole idea of tokenism is pretty moot. As you alluded to, Phil, it's just that the voting bloc is very small.

>From: Pieter [mailto:Pieter@platenworm.nl]
Sent: Sunday, February 13, 2005 7:56 PM
To: editor@villagevoice.com
Subject: LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Hi,

I'm collecting all the records of Chuck Eddy's Stairway To Hell book. And I have a question for Chuck Eddy. Can you help me to the music of some impossible to find records? I'm almost there. Just missing about 8 records of which 3 are cassettes. It would be great if you can help with some of these. Hope to hear from you.

Cheers, Pieter

As for Judas Priest, I'm not sold on it yet. 'Revolution' really, really turned me off. Chorus (vis. the whole song) sounds like T-Rex, which is just too weird. It's so berloody repetitive I can't get past being annoyed by it.

(from M'et al-M'aniacs July 2005)

BRODEQUIN
METHODS OF EXECUTION
UNMATCHED BRUTALITY RECORDS
Named modestly after an archaic type of half-boot, this Tennessee grind trio on its third outing kicks up a continuous 30-minute cloud of pollution with continuous blast beats, braying stabbed pig vocals, and dissonant disorienting guitars. By this point in the story of extreme music, fucked-up gore-grind is such a formula that the intensity has faded, but Brodequin distinguishes itself with constant intensity and a cool foggy production perforated by screeching guitar squeals and the occasional drum thunk. The Brodequin body falls far from the antiseptic side of the grindcore operating table, rolling away from the sharp edge of the scalpel towards the dark corner where the bloodstains and the rusty nails lay.
Their execution may be flawless, but the CD seems permeated with filth – a messy psychedelic side that extreme Southern bands have explored from F.U.C.T. to Soilent Green. Even the bonus video for the bizarrely catchy “Slaves to the Pyre” is hypnotic, and there’s nothing to see but two bald guys and a dude with a baggy neck getting sweaty in a room with trash bags taped to the walls. The mind-altering title track, the final song on the album, weighs in at seven minutes of splashing sound effects and slowed vocals over a bottom sea of death metal double bass drumming. After mastering the blasting core qualities of their sonic exhumation, maybe Brodequin can up the dose next time and point the way towards more of these fresh mental hazards. Bands like Isis and Neurosis could use the unsettling scare of something like this.

>>Hi Chuck,

Thanks for getting back to me. Well it started as a joke. I thought your book was so funny and since I'm always fighting with myself not to become a terrible record collector but most of the times I can't help myself. Your book sounded like a great idea to collect while keeping it fun. But as always those things go somewhere you wanna finnish it and I'm at that stage right now. The stuff I'm missing is (no, not the Rocket from The Tombs because I have a great bootleg from about 10 years ago that has all the stuff that was also on the tape, I think):
241
Destiny, Dick And The Highway Kings
Brutality
Destination


375
Goddo
Goddo
Fatcat
I'll probably find this some where

447
Gone
Gone II - But Never Too Gone
SST
I'll probably find this also some where

289
Half-Life
Half-Life
Quadruped Cassette


182
Human Zoo
Human Zoo
Hospital


272
Left
Its The World
Bona Fide


469
Motorhome
Double Live...Bozo!
Soso Cassette


411
V/a
All Guitars
Tellus Cassette

It would be great if you can help me with some of these because then I can finally listen to your book one by one. And that's gonna be something else.

Cheers, Pieter

I remember I asked you Chuck a long time ago if you still had that Motorhome thing. I asked Phil Durr once and he said he'd try to get me a copy but I never saw him again. Maybe Mike Rubin has one??

I've never seen any remnants of The Left on the Net. They were on a Bona Fide Records, a Pennsy indie. I've asked around about it in the past and Bona Fide is apparently a curse word in collector circles because it went out of business owing people records and money. But isn't that how everyone goes out of business?

The album's considerably better, for the most part..."Hellrider" and "Worth Fighting For" are the best songs they've done in a very long time. That said, "Lochness" is the worst song thay've done in a very long time.

http://williamweber.com/HumanZoo.html

http://williamweber.com/WGWDisco.html

It's also a dead ringer for "Pounding Metal," Exciter anthem circa 1983.

Sorry for late reply: Conspiracyrecords.

"But when I come to Terre Haute, I actually have a bunch of military and law enforcement specialists that, whenever I'm in that area, I shoot machine guns [with]. So that's why my performances are a little more lively. I think the more machine guns you shoot before the concert, the better your music."

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0507,eddy,61067,22.html

And whatever happened to 16? Did anyone like them? I have some pretty roasted-sounding things from "Scott Case," "Blaze of Incompetence" and "Drop Out." Let me guess: They were considered mediocre derivative swine and didn't network enough to sustain.

I have both Gones (assuming they stopped there?) but theyve sorta been on loan to a friend for the the past 13 years along with a whole bunch of 2nd-rate SST. Not *bad* stuff actually, and NOT ONE BIT like the awful DC3. Quite a funky power trio, who really play well together as a unit, but the material is just not all that memorable and its not quite a jagged as I (for one) would like. But hey, whatever lights yer pipe...

scandinavianmetal.info alert to a new download mp3 track [Murky Waters] from Denmark's Saturnus: New Saturnus track!

Danish melodic doomsters Saturnus have made a track from the upcoming available to download at their site.
The song is called "Murky Waters" and may be downloaded from this link.

I found this song to be really atmospheric and beautiful, finally some new stuff from this band.
Saturnus last release was in 1999.

Saturnus are aiming to record the album with producer Flemming Rasmussen [ex Metallica producer] and are currently looking for the right label deal.

Saturnus have been compared to Denmark's answer to My Dying Bride, this new track also has that sublime churning atmospheric guitar sound of Katatonia or Opeth. Massive arcs of stretched out glacial guitar work, this A + material.

Official website: Saturnus

Kind of similar to the Times review of one of their shows a year or two ago. Relapse sent it around in the press pack.

"...glass ships of fear, marauder's path."

"...Deity's crotch, scary crag..."

Too easy a punching bag.

I've been compiling a listener's guide to stoner rock and while there's a lot of sub-mediocre bands in the genre, there are also quite a few acts with LPs that were better than anything HoF has done.

Southern biker rock-wise, I was really suprised by Dixie Witch. This isn't new but there are two simply fine numbers/performances on their first album. "Into the Sun" and a cover of the James Gang's "The Bomber" in its entirety. It really invokes the imagery of the "the closet queen" and the leather jacket guys in shades looking out over the Z-bars.

Yeah, the all "white" album with the gold-embossed figure is the one I liked. Ron Goedert! He was ortho-gone-al. True story: The White Witch reissue would have been my first review in the Voice a few years ago, except I -lost- it. I had tossed something off and sent it to Chuck. And he wanted to run it but had misplaced his copy, too, and I could no longer find mine. Gone is a mass erasure. Next!

I'd love to see figures on how many CDs of Frump or the Housewives on Prozac sell. It started in the Wall Street Journal, was identikit copied by AP -- which didn't do as good a job -- and is winding up in all the venues where you -know- the readers or listeners just view it as a man-bites-dog thing or novelty.

Now I liked the Frump MP3's -- even truncated as they are, boo [!] --
but the value of it as placed by the "mommies who headbang" stories for people who'd never be caught dead listening to hard or heavy rock is just irritating beyond a certain and very low point of exposure. You can just imagine bands like Evil Beaver, AC/D-She or Cheap Chick saying to themselves, "Why can't we ever have a slice of this pie?" Or the hundreds, maybe thousands, of other women playing in rock bands who now have kids. [The Angry Amputees!]

Not that it matter much in the long run. I can't imagine a recommendation as good stuff in the Wall Street Journal gets 'em running to the record stores or clamoring on-line for more.

Yep, that'd be "Spiritual Greeting" which also had strong Christian overtones. Also on Capricorn, certified ticket into the heart of the south. Avoid the self-titled album.

Fozzy's 'All That Remains."

http://dev.villagevoice.com/music/0511,eddy,62065,22.html

other recent metal (and/or metallish I've been liking of late:

ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE Born to Be Wild in the U.S.A. reissue
AMARAN Pristine in Bondgae
AT WAR WITH SELF Torn Between Dimensions
CALLISTO True Nature Unfolds
DARK TRANQUILITY Character
FRANTIC BLEEP The Sense Apparatus
HUMAN ZOO Zoophilia reissue
MERCENARY Eleven Dreams
NOVEMBERS DOOM The Pale Haunt Departure
PLACE OF SKULLS Place of Skulls EP
RISING MOON They Are As Us
SEARING MEADOW Corroding From the Inside
THE SOUNDTRACK OF OUR LIVES Origin, Vol. 1
SUBARACHNOID SPACE The Red Veil
WOLF EYES Fuck Pete Larsen reissue
YYRKOON Occult Medicine

Ugh that damn dual CD is a bitch. CD side only plays on some CD players, DVD side so far plays on nothing.

YYRKOON Occult Medicine LOVE for Cirith Ungol fans take note of Moorcook confluence.

Husband returned his in disgust because it was so tempermental. Got the regular version instead. It's growing on me a lot, I hated "Revolution" but I like "Angel of Death" and "Locness"

The special two-disc version of the album is pretty snazzy. The DVD's excellent, though I still wish it had the full concert like what was originally promised past fall.

The new Strapping Young Lad album is loads of goofy fun. Phenomenal production.

Much more worthy but NOT if you're a rigid metal purist:

Eyeball Skeleton's #1 == fine Seventies-derived hard rock and boogie with nine year-old kids singing the songs. Not really cute, I thought I would hate this, but it conveys honest raunch. Even better, it furnishes the ridiculous element in heavy rolling hard rock while still focused on songs and grooving beats.

It's faster than Nothing, but whereas that album lumbered along menacingly (I loved those long, drawn-out notes), and the I EP combined speed and sludge brilliantly, Catch 33 merely sleepwalks, never wavering from the same tempo. It's like a Porsche 911 in neutral...it's good and all, but kind of a waste.

I guess I'd give it a mildly disappointed thumbs-up. After the I EP, I was hoping for so much more.

seconded. i'm still trying to hear the alleged shoegaziness.

Cool... but where exactly is yer blog?

New Jesu has some great moments, but on the whole is a bit interminable. And I've said this before, but it sounds a lot like Codeine in places.

Oh shit, you saw me coming didn't you?

I was noticing that. There a band called the Grey Mouser yet?

Not much chance either, I think, of Jherek Carnelian showing up as a band name.

Jul. 15 - Boston, MA - Tweeter Center
Jul. 17 - Hartford, CT - Meadows
Jul. 19 - Camden, NJ - Tweeter Waterfront
Jul. 21 - Buffalo, NY - Darien Lakes
Jul. 23 - Pittsburgh, PA - Post Gazette
Jul. 24 - Washington, DC - Nissan
Jul. 26 - New York, NY - PNC
Jul. 30 - Chicago, IL - Tweeter Center
Jul. 31 - Indianapolis, IN - Verizon Wireless Music Center
Aug. 02 - Columbus, OH - Germain Amphitheatre
Aug. 04 - Detroit, MI - DTE Energy Music Theatre
Aug. 06 - East Troy, WI - Alpine Valley
Aug. 07 - Minneapolis, MN - Floatrite Park
Aug. 11 - Seattle, WA - White River
Aug. 13 - San Francisco, CA - Shoreline Amphitheatre
Aug. 14 - Sacramento, CA - Sleep Train
Aug. 16 - Salt Lake City, UT - USANA Pavilion
Aug. 18 - Phoenix, AZ - Cricket
Aug. 20 - Los Angeles, CA - Hyundai Pavilion at Glen Helen
Aug. 23 - Albuquerque, NM - Journal Pavilion
Aug. 25 - Dallas, TX - Smirnoff
Aug. 27 - Houston, TX - Cynthia J. Woods Pavilion
Aug. 28 - San Antonio, TX - Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre
Aug. 31 - Nashville, TN - Starwood Amphitheatre
Sep. 02 - Charlotte, NC - Verizon
Sep. 04 - West Palm Beach - Sound Advice

Not only that, but a Dance of Death tour double live album, and Part Two of the History of Iron Maiden dvd deries, which will include the long-awaited dvd debut of Live After Death, both due out this fall.

The Volume One dvd is absolutely phenomenal. They've raised the bar as far as dvd retrospectives go...the live footage is unreal, and the documentary is incredibly well-made, rounding up practically every single person who played in the band (and there were a lot).

ta da:

http://villagevoice.com/music/0512,eddy,62289,22.html

Keep in mind you're listening for the sound of a commercial breakthrough by a long-laboring visionary band. This is love thy neighbor pedestrian love, not screwing on a pile of discarded office furniture on spring street love.

seconded. i'm still trying to hear the alleged shoegaziness.

??? Isa (and M83) look longer at more shoes than anything in 10 years, donnit?

I wish Sharon paid At the Gates to reform and ditched a half-dozen of the other preposition metallers on that bill. Ozzfest looks puny by last year's mammoth standards, especially considering you can fly to Europe for the price of 5 beers and a BLS vest and catch Inferno Fest or Party*San or something.

Yrkoon vs. Zip Coon. Discuss, where we are there's daggers in men's smiles.

I enjoyed a couple songs from Crash Kelly's glammy "Penny Pills" tonight but no one here would probably like them because they don't shit enough masonry nails.

Instead you'll want to listen to Collapsar. Loo-siana death math metal CD with no vocals and where you can't tell where one song leaves off and another begins. (Dysrythmia fans will defecate in their undertrousers. How this didn't wind up on Relapse is totally beyond me, much like the new Nile CD.) ) Or you could really get into the Isis double CD remix by people with names like "Hemorrhoid." Which, of course, is something to be liked because it's like receiving a very fancy layer cake in the mail. Fone up Girlie and ask for a copy because it's a led pipe cinch absolutely no one will pay cash money for it. And they are all fools!!!!

Beats the shit out of Yyrkoon, YOB, Zip Coon, your neighbor's death metal band, the Ozzy box, of the same magnitude as "Family Jewels."

TS: The New Kylesa -vs- The New Transistor Transistor -vs- The New Raging Speedhorn

The new Nile is on Relapse, according to Nile & Relapse - whatcha mean?

It's on the Relapse publicist's micro-indie label. I tried playing it once, but I got the new Pelican the same day, so it had no chance.

Yyrkoon sound like background music by sad monsters to me -- as much beauty as gratuitous ugliness in the grrrr and blur. They don't rock but I don't mind. Music to read the paper or wash dishes to. Had no use whatsoever for that new Nile or those Isis mixes or (sorry, Scott) Kylsea, though.

Whoa, they're still going?

I talked briefly about Nile on their separate thread -- the new one is mostly *shrug* aside from quick ambient bits.

----

It's bugging me that I can't think of the name of those no-riff/no-swing/no-punchline Bad Company-wannabe Canuck (Toronto, I think) dumbasses I refer to above, though. Miccio started a thread about them here a couple months ago. He didn't like them, either. They may even be a hit above the border. Guess it's no surprise they're forgetttable, however.

Thor's rock opera was called Beastwomen From The Center Of The Earth. It's based on/tied in with a comic book, too. It doesn't live up to its title, though. The music is kinda weak and cheesy. The new album (Thor Against The World, on Smog Veil) is much, much better.

>Not sure whether *Car Wash* by the Howling Diablos (from Detroit, apparently Kid Rock pals whose previous album struck me as too stodgy or minstrely or something) belongs on this thread or the metal thread, but there is no badass early-ZZ/John Lee boogie thread, so I will plug it here regardless. Title track is the best song about working at the car wash since the one by Rose Royce. My other two favorite tracks so far are "Mean Little Town" and, bizarrely, "Elvis Lives." I wish their singer had a smidgen more personality in his voice, but given the guitarist and drummer, I can live with it.

Crash Kelly: First song, "Penny Pills" and the cover of "ELO Kiddies" which is done fine even though the guy has no voice. They slaughter "Since You've Been Gone," which does fall into the category of -good choice but they still had no business doing it-. The Sirens, of course, grease everything on the Crash Kelly disc, easy.

Thor rocked at The Knitting Factory in Hollywood. I've still yet to be able to sit through a showing of "Murder at the Presidio" with Lou Diamond Phillips on USA Network, though, to see where "Glimmer" fits in. Thor bent a steel pry bar with his teeth to one of the songs. More heavy metal bands should bend pry bars with their teeth, I think.
If they fail, they can't make a record for a year. That'd be the rule.

Danko Jones.

Ah-ha-ha. Ratzsinger is teh pope. That's as good as the one about teaching your neighbor to plant tulips. After a week you'll have him planting tulips on your cock.

The coming months hold (for me) anticipated new discs from Dream Theater and Opeth, and hopefully Queensryche will finish and release the sequel to Operation:Mindcrime. New Children of Bodom would be nice too, not the EP they just put out, which btw is worth getting.

...I was pretty sure I wasn't going to off myself or kill Mom or Dad," he said...

...It's the way the information gets conveyed and used that's the key," he said...

A horse is a horse, of course, of course, unless it's a talking horse, of course. Have you ever heard of a talking horse? Talk to Mr. Ed! Mr. Ed conveyed information to Wilbur and that was the key, you see.

...that of Zell Kravinsky, a Pennsylvania philanthropist who donated one of his kidneys to a stranger, enacting the exhortation "give till it hurts" in a very literal way...

I heard this was a script in production by Rob Zombie.

"a glue-sniffer's apotheosis of Burke's sublime"

Which Nile should use for a song title on its next CD. Or something from Goethe, like "You provide me with the fatal implements, precious Lotte."

Agreed, I just heard the album today myself. I focused more on the music and was rewarded.

Don't necessarily disagree with this, but in that case maybe we should also take Thor to task for making all his lyrics sound like something a junior high school kid in midwestern suburbia would have yelled along to in 1972. (Though he's much better singer than the Diablo howler, so yeah, maybe he deserves slack cut. I could live without his biceps, though.)

Always worked for Dave Wyndorf.

Proof!

"Gonna have a hard, hard time getting rid of my love for you. [Backup singers behind the phrase: "Gonna, gonna, gonna, gonna, gonna."] Gonna have a real hard time getting rid of my heart."

And on another:

"Girl, I wouldn't give you away for free." What a compliment!! And he's being sincere!

(0 stars)

"The cover features the muscle-bound singer fighting off attack dogs. Listeners my be excused from hoping he loses. Unlistenable."

Early albums on SST are underrated. I'd say the 90s albums are more consistent but each of the early albums have 4 or 5 gems on them.

"The cover features the muscle-bound singer fighting off attack dogs. Listeners my be excused from hoping he loses. Unlistenable."

Ha-ha. Dave Marsh, when it comes to hard rock not even as twice-a-day reliable as a busted watch.

http://www.thorcentral.com/mp_redesign/html/discography.html

Note photos of "Keep the Dogs Away." Thor's not fighting off attack dogs, he's restraining them. But I'm not entirely sour on the idea of not letting reality get in the way of a good one-liner.

Hmmm......Well, in my 1987 4000 word *Voice* SST roundup (where my other two favorite bands were Dinosaur and Blind Idiot God!), I compared *Even If and Especially When* to the Seeds, Love, and Amboy Dukes. Which may well have been completely full of baloney, but the '90s stuff on this new comp sure sounds a lot more proto-Creed than Seeds/Love/Dukes to me. They used way less organ (Farfisa or whatever) as they got heavier, right? They also seemed to have turned a lot less graceful over the years. But maybe I'm wrong.

Now all that's left is for them to cover Mick Ronson's "greatest non-hits," maybe "Angel No. 9," which sounded like Def Leppard were -going- to sound like.

xp

My better half tells me Mark Lanegan sounds more proto-Josh Homme than proto-Scott Strap (or however you spell his name) on that Screaming Trees CD. Probably true, but I still don't' like it much. God I hate grunge music. Though I'd forgotten, when I'd written above that I can't stand his voice, that he is some kind of "intensely emotional alt-country hero" or something now. Which explains a lot.

Yes. Was probably a better album than "Play Don't Worry" and a lot better than "Slaughter."

Speaking of grunge, anyone remember The Fluid? Added geeks playing sub-Stooges flavoring to the basic formula. Was there anyone Sub Pop didn't publish that was grunge/sub-Stooges? And what happened to Tad? Wasn't Tad going to be the next god at some point?

Save Marsh-ism: Tad -- Someone who thought Leatherface from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre would have been great in a sludge metal band. If you bought it you were on the hook for ten dollars.

Murky sounding mix adds to the oomph. Put them in leather jackets and they look like the Hell's Angels, Ventura chapter. Better album than the Boyzzz "Too Wild to Tame," a song they could have also covered.

Saw the Fluid, Steelpole Bathtub, and Mudhoney on the same bill one night in Trenton, 1989 or so. They were opening for GWAR. (Where they all belonged, culturally speaking, I believed then and still do.)

Saw Tad at the same club, same year, opening for Primus. For at least the length of the Salt Lick EP, Tad was a god.

"Rocker Ron Keel, the ex-lead singer for Black Sabbath, has teamed up with the Bullet Boys's ex-lead singer Charlie Wayne to form one of the newest and most exciting country duo acts to come out of Nasvhille in a long time.....info: www.keelandwayne.com"

From the BS page:
Ron Keel
Started in Band: Summer 1984
Left Band: A short while later
Album appearances: None

Heck, it does sound better than Ron Keel, the ex-lead singer for Keel.

Iron Horse was his country band.

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0523,dozen,64668,22.html

So any other NYers going to the Hate Eternal/Krisiun/Incantation/two other bands show at BB King's on the 26th?

i'm getting the new ulver in the mail. i can't wait! they iz my wacky heroes.

stuff i want to hear: that new buzzov-en comp. that new nihilist demo comp. that new vio-lence reissue. new orthrelm. new infidel?/castro!. um, there is probably more.

stuff i want to hear: that new buzzov-en comp. that new nihilist demo comp. that new vio-lence reissue.

i'm not in the know and wound up buying a cheap cd-r bootleg of the nihilist demo stuff (which actually has more tracks than the official release), it's damn nice to hear. only shreds remain was constantly in my tapedeck back then.

which vio-lence album's being reissued? please say eternal nightmare!

For some reason, I've found it hard to get into the new Immolation. The new Nile album is the best death metal album I've heard in a long while, and the production is so superb, the Immolation album sounds too muddy in comparison.

The new Darkest Hour is pretty decent, too, and is helped greatly by Devin Townsend's production. Above average metalcore.

I'm really looking forward to hearing Primordial's The Gathering Wilderness...the one track I've heard (I think it's the first one) is pretty great, epic doom mixed with some Celtic influences.

Oh, and the new Leng Tch'e album is a riot.

I'm very interested to hear the new Darkest Hour.

Just got the new As I Lay Dying in the mail. Haven't decided whether I'm going to listen to it anytime soon, though, because I got the new Coldplay today, too, and the massive Cafe Tacuba live box (three CDs and a DVD for $18.97 plus tax).

the primordial is great, a.! really deep, dark, and epic. the first track IS my fave too.

"which vio-lence album's being reissued? please say eternal nightmare!"

you are correct! megaforce is putting it out.

i got an e-mail about combat records putting out old and new stuff. i wonder what they are gonna reissue first? i should google for info. (i didn't actually read the e-mail.)

There are no immediate plans to re-issue previously out-of-print [Combat] catalogue titles, the joint venture will focus entirely on new releases.

Dud.

No "Let Them Eat Metal" and "Live Rods" by The Rods!

I'm not sold on the cover of "Since You're Been Gone," a great song, but real hard to do without the throat of someone like Graham Bonnett.
Title track is excellent and the instrumental delivers as hyped, it's Aerosmith cops which is what the band indeed says. Second is extremely fine, too. Is it also a cover?

Beat the heck out of the Black Halos, which just came out on Liquor 'N' Poker. Ramalama street punk rock, emphasis on the band and supporters calling it "rawk," which is also a cue phrase for me that phrase is: No songs, not many riffs, either, just energy. Best tune is an old Tom Petty cover, which surprise, surprise, is a bona fide song.

And Cheeseburger just came in complete with faux Harry Nillson cover art. Completely disguises what's in it. My congratulations! No pandering to the rockers! Could trick an indie nerd into buying it
thinking it was sensitive and arty or something.

Contents are cheeseburger loud AC/DC riff but kind of awol on the rhythm section for the sake of attitude. Verdict's not in, could easily be one of those boom-bang-crash short recipes -- it's an EP -- that get's out of town just at the right moment.

Hard to figure how Crash Kelly could top "Penny Pills," so get it now. Very glam -- and I be telegraphing some stuff -- it's their career statement, like Suzi Quatro's first two records, alos really recommended for people who thought Cheap Trick went south after the first album, although not sounding much like that. A Canadian band worth ranking in with Max Webster, "Penny Pills" is much better than "Hangover" which none of you would know because you're NOT OLD ENOUGH, and high praise, too, having nothing to do with Rush.

Cheeseburger's "Gang's All Here" gets a the thumbs up, now, too. Noisy, blocking, hard rock tumbling into metal. Like any good heavy hard rock CD, the slope on it is positive after first listen. Simply produced, crashing, intentionally contemptible but accurate lyrics. The tunes are economical, crashing and full of holes -- momentary silences -- the way good hard rock always is. Things said upstream still apply.

More basically, they can develop a groove, the rhythm section isn't tied up trying to prove something that will look good in print in a metal 'zine.

Soilent Green came along for the ride. Listened to half before being interrrupted. No verdict. I did like "Deleted Symphony for the Beaten Down" which was their last from a few years back.

Curious about the Leng Tche

I'm blown away by the recent Primordial album. I can't stop playing the thing.

And another bump for Cheeseburger's "Gang's All Here." Where did they come from? Is it just blind luck?

Got the Nightingales EP in today's mail - death metal drumming, downtuned guitar, occasional low-in-the-mix urp vocals, and the lead instrument is Matt Shipp-style piano. Four songs, 19 minutes. I think they've got another record coming out this year. I hope so, because this one is fantastic.

No enthusiasm for Meshuggah. Collapsar hung around longer before heading to the stow box.

Stang, a Philly trio, has a live CD/DVD out that sounds like Return to Forever's "Romantic Warrior" without Chick Corea and with all the mood stuff removed. Or the latest Electrick Band L. Ron Hubbard-tribute thing without CC and the guitar way up in the mix. Or if you remember the first Automatic Man record, it sounds similar. Heavy guitarist plays fusion, sells it as virtuoso power rock.

No, but my friend Jamie just finished recording their newest CD. And Brad will be sporting a fancy new Ibanez Iceman w/Giger graphics on the front of it as soon as we get it shipped to us.

Nicest bunch of blood-spewing maniacs you could ever hope to meet, BTW. Sort of like GWAR without all the stupid. Or perhaps the right kind of stupid...

Yeah, I can't get into the Meshuggah cd, either. The band wakes up during the last third, but the rest of it sleepwalks too much. As an experiment in pro tools editing, it's not too bad, and the programmed drums sound okay, but it sounds far too mechanical, even for Meshuggah. Plus, when you have one of the genre's best drummers in Tomas Haake, it's a complete waste not to have him perform on the record.

Got a 3-song sampler from the upcoming Black Dahlia Murder disc in today's mail. I like those guys a lot.

New Accüsed is a killer.

The reformed Nuclear Assault's new CD might be their best.

Blood Duster's nu metal parody video is great!

Who asked for Rods reunion show pics?

Pornstorestiffi!

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0525,eddy,65091,22.html

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0525,eddy,65091,22.html

Good to see some love for the new Candlemass...that one's easily the biggest surprise of the year. I couldn't believe my ears when I heard it...it was as if the last 15 years didn't even happen.

Oh, and I officially love the new Clutch album. Much more consistent than Blast Tyrant (and amazing album artwork, too). I'm looking forward to seeing them at Sounds of the Underground...their southern jam metal is going to be a fun contrast with Opeth, Lamb of God, SYL, High on Fire, and all that metalcore.

And if you're going to take Chuck seriously, and you should, then digging up the entire Gentle Giant catalog is something for you to get started on. I recommend "Octopus," to begin, particularly "Knots." And if you're feeling like a sissy, the first album, which is in the same space as first album Blue Oyster Cult.

And if you're going to the recent reissues, set the laser needle down at the halfway point on "In a Glass House." The bonus cut is particularly tasty when turned up LOUD.

And if (is there an echo in here) if pdf is saying something is cool than I probably agree that it is indeed so because we have similar tastes even though we don't get along, but should get along, because we have much more in common that refuting and confuting.

1http://thisisyourworld.com/archive/images/content/1-21_1-28/shit.jpg

...er, "since you been gone" is actually NOT a .38 Special song, come to think of it, is it? Is there some .38 Special song I am confusing it with? I have no idea. Maybe I just always *assumed* it was by .38 Special, when in fact (correct me if this is wrong, George or any other '70s AOR experts out there) it was (according to one website I just checked) Head East's highest-charting top 100 hit ever. Which is REALLY weird, because I always would've thought Head East's biggest hit by far was "Never Been Any Reason" (known to "Baba O'Riley" fans as "Saved My Life Going Down for the Last Time.") How could I have been mixed up about that all my life? Or DID .38 Special cover it once? (In other Crash Kelly news, I love how the guitar instrumental on their CD keeps turning into Aerosmith's "Same Old Song and Dance.")

Also: Why did Head East love pancakes so much?? Weird!

What are the other Head East songs I heard on the radio that aren't the usual perps...hmmmm, seems to me "Jefftown Creek" gave them some mileage too.

Head East iconography: flapjacks, haywagons and road signs. Obviously, they knew their AOR middle American hard rock audience.

I meant "Teenage Wasteland fans! Totally fucked up my own dumb joke.

Crash Kelly "Since You Been Gone" vs. Kelly Clarkson "Since You've Been Gone"

-- a. begrand (abegran...), June 20th, 2005.

otm, i have to agree its really disappointing, especially after the "I" ep which was incredible.

Got the third edition of Rock and the Pop Narcotic today, and the only change from the 2.13.61 edition is a two-page preface in which Carducci states he made no changes between versions 2 and 3 because he didn't want to come off like some kind of obsessive.

Disc 1
Paschendale
Rainmaker
The Wicker Man
Brave New World
Futureal
The Clansman
Sign Of The Cross
Man On The Edge
Be Quick Or Be Dead
Fear Of The Dark (Live)
Holy Smoke
Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter
The Clairvoyant

Disc 2
The Evil That Men Do
Wasted Years
Heaven Can Wait
Two Minutes To Midnight
Aces High
Flight Of Icarus
The Trooper
The Number Of The Beast
Run To The Hills
Wrathchild
Killers
Phantom Of The Opera
Running Free (Live)
Iron Maiden (Live)

Personally, I'm holding out for the upcoming live CD/DVD this summer...

Relapse to reissue complete Atheist catalog

The NRA board member, [infrequent] Fox News talking head and author of books [almost no one has read] such as Gods, Guns, And Rock 'N' Roll, Blood Trails 2 and Kill It & Grill It: A Guide To Preparing And Cooking Wild Game And Fish recently moved his family — his wife, Shemane, and the four kids — to Crawford, Texas because he liked the school system there.

"I share campfires [with] soldiers who have given up their legs and arms and eyes so that I can go hunting, so that you can have a career and I can have a career and we can go barbecuing and we could be the best that we can be and travel across state lines without the Gestapo and the French stopping us."

"There's nothing more pure and organic than critters of the hoof... If I've been smart about anything in life, it's that at the tender age of 57, there's not a city in America where there isn't one of my fellow brothers with something dead and fresh over mesquite waiting for me. Is that beautiful or what?"

"(The botanists) come to my ranch in Michigan every year, where I have a wonderful specialized wetlands known as a fen... the only piece of ecosystem in North America where the Mitchell's Satyr Butterfly is thriving, an endangered species everywhere, except on Ted Nugent's property."

On what he would do in the event of a "War of the Worlds"-like alien invasion: "I'm privy to some firepower dynamics that your average civilian is not and we would just wipe the (expletives) out. And then we'd probably sauté them and use them for bait and kill some bear over their carcasses."

"Since the Motown greats, I don't think I've ever seen such soul, such virtuosity in every one of those gals and every one of those musicians to the point that I was stunned and genuinely chilled by the soul and dynamic of that Destiny's Child operation."

the primordial one is growing on me a lot.

i wish absu would release something new soon.

but i'm recommending everyone check out deathspell omega's kenose cd. 3 tracks, 36 minutes, sorta progressive black metal sans musical theater bits or synthesized orchestra hits. friend of mine said it sounded "too neurosis."

On another topic, I recently picked up an Australian import CD of Randy Holden's Population II, which is possibly the greatest late-60s/early-70s power guitar album on the planet. It's got eight bonus tracks, which are apparently another whole lost album called Guitar God. Anybody know about this? They're almost as good as the Population II stuff, but not quite as heavy. Any bio info anybody can offer would be appreciated. George?

there's a good interview with randy here.

btw, same label (progressive line) did the silberbart four times sound razing reissue, which is heavy as hell and absolutely freaked out.

http://www.furious.com/perfect/randyholden.html

The Gizmos are playing in Brooklyn tonight, one zip code away from the Villians/Khanate gig. rock rules, soul sucks.

The one with Rob Halford on the cover? Was that 1981? If so (as I remember) that was GREAT, Ian! They even called the Dictators, Runaways, and MX-80 Sound metal bands. And made fun of EVERYTHING. A big inspiration on my impending career. And everything the humorless maroons at most other metal magazines could never dream of being.

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0529,eddy,65956,22.html

And everything the humorless maroons at most other metal magazines could never dream of being.

Ahhh, the rapid rise and eventual fall of RIP.

also, the new beecher, which i'm digging. And yet more NeurIsis type stuff from Deadbird. lotsa distortion and maybe more of a longhair doom vibe to it than those other sweeping desert vista art-metal bands.

Currently I'm loving the first two albums by the Mass, an Oakland quartet whose vocalist is also a saxophonist. Shades of Yakuza, but these guys are less thrashy and more harmolodic/funky - they get into some almost No Wave shit at times. Really solid stuff, both discs on Crucial Blast.

Got the new Skullflower recently too - wanted to like it, but it sucked.

haha. i'm so glad someone else uses that tag...

how can anyone hate DRI?? yoo r crazy, chuck. they were my boyhood idols.

Oddly, though, I apparently have no problem with dime a dozen NeurIsis bands, at least so far. I call them "ambient thrash," myself. Being generic is fine, as long as I like the genre. (At least for now. Dime a dozen Gathering/Lacuna Coil type bands finally started getting on my nerves last year.)

here is my zatokrev review:

Zatokrev – Zatokrev (Earache/Codebreaker)

It takes a band to fuck a village. Wait, no, it takes four bands. And wait, it’s not a village, it’s modern metal. And those bands aren’t fucking modern metal as much as they are “inspiring” it, for better or worse. And those four bands are At The Gates, Neurosis, Dillinger Escape Plan, and Converge. 73.8 percent of all new bands sound a little like one of those bands. Most of the rest either sound like a combination of those four or a combination of Darkthrone, Slayer, Napalm Death, and Gentle Giant. Zatokrev – which loosely translated from the original Czech means “all the best names were taken” – sound, at times, like very heavy Neurosis combined with very heavy Godflesh. And if you are anything like me - and if you are, you would be stoned right now - the idea of this combination has your shorts as soiled as your grandma’s bloomers after an all-nighter at the Polish-American club. Repetitious hypno-sludge riffs are a dime a dozen. As are down-tuned thru the floorboards bass players who miss your face by a mile. As are stuck-in-a-beartrap caterwauling garglepusses. As are doped up drummers forced at gunpoint to play four beats per minute. But, as any suicidal day trader will tell you, it’s all about synergy and the different ways that unforeseen market forces can make everything come together. That last Cult Of Luna album? As Neur/Isis knock-offs go, it didn’t do much for me. But the new Callisto album? Groovy like in the movies. Go figure! And I’m adding Zatokrev to my all-star doom squad. These Swiss misters have got the plod that keeps on giving. And their slow motion stomp and mock pain is definitely my gain.

true dat, as the kids say, scott, true dat. ditto better than my bloody valentine, tortoise, whoever. if you're going to play meaningless non-rocking background elevator kitsch (which i will fully concede that neurois, isis, pelican, and their followers absolutely do), at least have some GRAVITY about it. which is to say be HEAVY. which is to say FILL UP the flucking background so i can read the paper or wash the dishes in piece. go all out, dudes (and dudesses).

Manowar was able to fill the TLA in Philly. Startling, I would've though 100-150 at best. "Hail to England" is in BestBuy for $10.99 which is -----finally----- a reasonable price for it. It's a short album, about the highest point of -effective- Manowar death to false metal camp. Was produced by Jack Richardson, which means a lot if you were into hard and metal in the 70's, and -he's now, Jim- for a long time now, I thin'.

Krokus to tour in the US, as is Saxon, apparently skedded in places that hold about 150-200. And, I am informed, Metal Church live still is more than adequate, although principles are either dead or doing other things.

What we need is for the reunited Accept to tour North America, not just Europe.

Go see for yourself and cut that sentence in half -- they're playing the Continental this month.

How about Old Man Gloom?

Saint Vitus "Live" on Southern Lord, was originally issued on a German label in 1989, or thereabouts. At some theatre outside Munich across from a jaegers' lodge/restaurant. Of the CDs I have, Saint Vitus is one of the few that owns codeine-spiked -cough syrup- as an adjective. And they even play semi-fast, for them, on this one. Weinrich on vocals for this, not Reaghers. I preferred Reaghers but Weinrich turned Saint Vitus into more of an instro band, which was OK, too. Although this crap is now common, it was more effective when it was performed by total pariahs.

References: Highway Robbery, Bang, Bull Angus, some Stray Dog, most Stray, Hard Stuff.

http://www.whiplashmag.net/clanky/images/dabluv_hlas.jpg

Second, "Blood & Thunder," guitarist Kenny Cox sacked the entire band and replaced with new guys, who sounded much the same as the old guys, except with rougher production. The rougher production made the album better by degrees. Good instrumental, "The Eye." Title cut again leads the way.

Usual generation gap caveats apply to fans of current things.

http://villagevoice.com/music/0532,eddy,66650,22.html

Oh, and the new stuff sounds great live.

The new Agoraphobic Nosebleed double-disc (only 77 minutes of music total, but 136 songs, so impossible to fit on a single CD unless you hid a bunch of 'em as backwards tracks) is great. A collection of all their early split singles, 7"s, comp tracks, and demos. Also, if you go to their website (www.agoraphobicnosebleed.com) you can download a track they did with Isis - a version of the Melvins' "Boris." It's pretty great; I'm certainly enjoying it more than any Melvins song I've ever heard.

I was looking forward to recommending the new Between the Buried & Me; the last one was awesome mash-up of metalcore and pure technical death metal. The latest is much clearer, so it lapses into power metal territory more befitting the musicial proficiency. Still more interesting than the 2nd Necrophagist, which pulled a similiar clean-up act.

I'm into the two Byzantine songs I've heard. Great that this is what passes for commercial metal these days; technical Testament/Meshuggah inspired Appalachian tales.

Was Countdown Cafe a Dutch tv show? I just got a live audio of Mercyful Fate from that series. Mercyful Fate circa 1983 is terrifying and great.

I've been in awe of this guy all day, Harris Johns, the producer behind Dimension Hatross, the guy who gave Away a drum sampler and Piggy a guitar sound. Yes, that's a Sodom platinum award he's holding:

http://www.spiderhouse.de/english/HARRIS/platino250.jpg

Chuck, you'll be sad to hear that Carlo Little (once of Screaming Lord Sutch and the Roman Empire) has died. Here he is in a photo with Blackmore in the mid-60s:

http://www.deep-purple.net/othernews/savages.jpg

New Turbonegro produced by one Redd Kross' McDonald brothers still sounds exactly like the Didjits.

The Impaled Nazarene live CD woke me up -- I feel asleep on this amazing hyperspeed wall of noise about five years ago. There's also a great video on their web site featuring precision facist American-style cheerleaders doing fast routines with machine guns. I'm renewing my subscription.

Forget about Horna, will ya? There's a big world of crappy, low-end black metal out there, mostly with ten times the spirit. There's a Black Witchery / Conjuror split, a new Belfegor, probably 10 shitty Xastur releases... save your spit for the new Sunn black metal album.

http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0526/050629_music_earth.php

http://www.myspace.com/byzantum

and there's a new lugubrum album! heilige dwaze, their most dire, murky, sloppy one yet - with saxophone here and there, but i think the banjo's out.

Forget about Horna, will ya? There's a big world of crappy, low-end black metal out there, mostly with ten times the spirit.

exactly.

Wino's spreads himself thin, so I have to pick and choose and the "wino" fix for this year was the reprint of Saint Vitus "Live." It ain't great but it doesn't stink up the place, either. Easiest place to get a version of "Born Too Late." I had the first Place of Skulls, liked it, but then sold it anyway. Hmmmm.

As for additional biker rock, not metal but metal fans should surely like it, there is none more chopper than David Allan Coe's "Penitentiary Blues," mentioned over on the Country thread. "Walkin' Bum" is the bestest and mostest supercilious thing I've been given repeat listening to this year. Comes complete with Coe's advice on making it through prison. The year this originally came out he is said to have been taken on tour as opener for Grand Funk Railroad.

I got sent a promotional copy of the sleeve. Hooray! Great CD sleeve!

Has been said many times with gusto about LATE FOR AN EARLY GRAVE, using the "LP" in place of your nu-fangled descriptor.

Go for the Villians 7" -- that's a given.

New ambient-thrash CD at least as dull as Red Sparrowes or Cult of Luna (but a lot easier to listen to than Agorophbic Nosebleed): Life of Agnony

New York indie boys and Siren Fest vets pretending to be the Darkness and/or Queen and/or Van Halen, getting a catchy riff in here and there, but winding up sounding way too thin nonetheless: Diamond Nights

Ohio-turned-New York indie boys (just two of 'em, allegedly former pentacostals) whose new CD rocks in a halfway decent kind of stoner-metal/power-metal/speed-metal hybrid despite being on Matador: Early Man

Woops, I got their name wrong; it's Angel of Decay. (I have no idea who Life of Agony are; I'm pretty sure they're *somebody* though.)

And the novely grindcore jokers (sans punchlines) are AGOROPHOBIC Nosebleed, duh. (I think somewhere in the booklet it says they cover a Voivod song, but maybe I wasn't reading closely enough. And since all their "songs" last about 8 seconds, I doubt it really matters.)

I may be sending you something on the new Avenged Sevenfold, Chuck. It fits right into the whole "New Old Metal" thing I started talking about in the Trivium review. Might even be worth a longer piece, incorporating Black Dahlia Murder and Darkest Hour. Have to see how it shapes up in my head.

You can start talking that way about Byzantine, while you're at it.

Ambient thrash? That was classic 80's noise band, technically -- noise guy since it's really one person -- recorded on multi-track cassette machine stuff but with much better cover art. The stuff is right in there with the Mnemonists, who were also big on cover art, so as to distract you into thinking you were getting real art, rather than just plain old noise. Sure you don't mix this up with Disembowelment?

I find it impossible to hate the Black Dahlia murder album, but the more I listen to it, the more I think it seems to underachieve a little. Darkest Hour does the same death/thrash thing just a bit better.

And holy crap, is the new Grand Magus album ever good. Comes close to matching the great Candlemass comeback album.

Google "Sharon Osbourne" "Bruce Dickinson" "prick" for soundclips from Saturday's send-off/piss-off of Iron Maiden on Ozzfest.

Maiden, by the way, currently holding down the #5 singles spot on the UK Top 40.

heh. spot on. first song i ever heard by them was literally about how the singer's father "had time but didn't have time for me!" awful, awful band - i believe the drummer from type o negative quit that band to join LOA. good career move.

Nah, weird -- I don't even think I read the press release; the cover art sure looks metal. All of which goes to show that "NeuroIsis" style metal muzak whatsis and "classic '80s noise" might be closer categories than they've ever been before. So, hmmm...maybe I should listen to thing more. I didn't even know it was just one guy! Though I'm not sure how much more classic '80s noise type stuff I need. Unless they wind up sounding like Smegma or Amor Fati, which might be cool, since I haven't had those weirdos in my house for 15 plus years.

Way closer to this than NeurIsis. Map to early SPK, Monte Cazazza, some Throbbing Gristle, said Mnemonists, maybe Whitehouse, some selections from Smersh.

Hilarious stuff. And real classy behaviour by Sharon, too.

Cutting power, tinkering with the mix, having the band egged...the lady is a lunatic.

I totally have Smegma and Smersh mixed up in my memory now, too. Were they related? Either way, I probably thought of them as the exact same band.

MARE – "Nightgoat"
THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN - "Honey Bucket"
MASTODON - "The Bit"
STRAPPING YOUNG LAD - "Zodiac"
PIG DESTROYER - "Claude"
HIGH ON FIRE/KEELHAUL - "Oven"
MEATJACK - "Shevil"
* STRAPADON FACTORY – "Joan of Arc" *
ISIS/AGORAPHOBIC NOSEBLEED - "Boris"
ABSENTEE - "Revolve"
EYEHATEGOD - "Easy as It Was"
DOG FASHION DISCO - "Anaconda"
DISENGAGE - "Raise a Paw"
BLESSING THE HOGS – "Hogleg"
CKY/GNARKILL - "Laughing With Lucifer At Satan’s Sideshow"
MARITIME MURDER - "Copache"
MADE OUT BABIES - "Bar X and The Rocking M"
PINCER 2 – "Echohead/Don’t Piece Me"

* featuring members of FEAR FACTORY, STRAPPING YOUNG LAD and MASTODON

Anyone heard this yet?

For that matter, what do people think of KOVENANT? They may or may not be the band I'm confusing earlier Hypocrisy CDs with. (Actually, I think that band started with "C." But they weren't COVENANT, who are a decent goth-industrial act not a decent goth-metal one.) (I am also pretty sure that band were Germans. Or Scandinavians. They put out a two-CD career retrospective a couple years ago. Who were they??)

>Country-associated album of the week though is *The Mighty Jeremiahs* (Paradigm Shift/Ear X-Tacy Records), which is Kentucky Headhunter guitarguy Greg Martin's covers-and-originals gospel-metal side project, and George and Frank and Don HAVE to hear this thing: "Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego" and "Testify" for starters kick as hard and heavy as anything on *Big Boss Man* (maybe even its title cut), there's a beautiful Southern Rock guitar solo version of "Revelator" toward the end (before the more bleh last cut "It's Been a Good Day."), and all in all it may be the hardest rocking Christian rock I've ever heard -- and its more wall-to-wall heavily boogiefied than the Headhunters' album, too. I actually think it's the better CD of the two.

Can't wait to hear this.

http://www.darkfuneral.se/skivomslag/RR070_preview.jpg

On a scale of 1 to 100 how METAL is this front cover ?

Just finished transferring Borbetomagus's Live In Allentown cassette to CD. I think this might be the rarest item in their catalog; it's not even listed in the discography in the back of their Live In Tokyo disc, and that one's got everything right down to old 7"s. I've had the tape for 18 years or so, ever since I read about it in Byron Coley's Spin column and made a special pilgrimage to Bleecker Bob's (my first time there!) to get it. It's not metal, exactly, though there are some almost-riffs from the bass player, but whatever it is, it pretty much embodies the phrase "ass-rapingly great."

I'm liking the album quite a bit, a cool bit of metals black and power. It seems to be going in the kind of sirection that Angela Gossow apparently wanted Arch Enemy to. AE's got the solos, but Virus has the songs.

The Opeth album just keeps getting better the more I hear it...

The execution is great if that's any positive consolation. Of course, that has to be a given with the form.

i'm intrigued - where can i find more info?

Since it's on their own label distribution may be scant. I haven't seen it in stores out here although I presume it will be at Amoeba. I will probably make the record release party or get e-mail from Jonathan Hall, the guitarist, and I'll ask him how copies can be secured if you're outside LA County.

Don't need to hear Khanate any more though. Never tried before; just attempted *Capture & Release* and didn't make it through the thing. What a suckass wicked-witch routine that singer has. And I don't get it; they're supposed to be mega-heavy droners like Sunno)))))) or whoever? I don't hear a groove; what are you supposed to grab onto?

http://pw1.netcom.com/~chrisp/Backbiter/order_info.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/4185168.stm

Chuck, I'll give Jonathan Hall a head's up. In the same seam as Backbiter is Motorcycle Black Madonnas new CD, which is Jonathan Hall's girlfriend as front person for Backbiter-like band, featuring Backbiter guitar. It's more art but basically the same kind of rock. Thrown down virtually live in the studio, very mid-70's particularly as the band warms up.

Went down to Amoeba and it was a banner day. I'm gonna report more but suffice to say George Brigman & Split have finally made it to CD age with "I Can Hear the Ants Dancing," which isn't quite the same as the original "I Can Hear the Ants Dancing" (I think) or "Human Scrawl Vagabond," but is a good collection. And it's on Bona Fide, so I'm guessing The Left will get a reissue job too, maybe. So if you're into heavy Groundhogs, you're going to want to look for George Brigman.

And reissue of J. D. Blackfoot's "The Ultimate Prophecy," Stoney Curtis Band's "Acid Blues Experience" through wall of Hiwatt stacks, and Jericho Jones (Israeli proto-metal ca. 72 ? I thin') "Junkies, Monkey and Donkeys." Going to be a burnt chrome and cindery Thursday night. Oh, my back's aching already.

-- xhuxk (xedd...), August 25th, 2005.

i think they sound more like shit, personally.

jericho jones! great album!

There were a bunch of things I was looking at but saved for a differnet trip. One was a record by Golgotha. Know anything about 'em?

The Brigman CD is less Groundhogs-like than "Human Scrawl Vagabond," exceptionally high on fuzztone hard sludge jazzoid and psychedelic instrumentals.

also they don't like celtic frost's great *cold lake,* metallica's great "whiskey in the jar," and ufo's great first couple albums, the ingrates.

Although it's one of the most reviled albums in metal history, I've alway been weirdly fascinated by "Cherry Orchards".

Also: No entries for Hawkwind, Helmet (but who cares), or Black Flag (though Rollins's pointless novelty/spoken-word/stand-up/bad-jazz-fusion career gets an entry, weirdly.) The Almighty (who I like a lot) get an entry, but Therapy? don't (but Terrorvision do, and they sound like I might like them. Would I? Didn't Therapy? have an album *called* Terrorvision once? Or am I confused as usual.) Mortiis gets one! Killing Joke do not. Almost every big-name late '90s rap-metal band gets one (Papa Roach, Disturbed, Linkin Park, Alien Ant Farm, Mudvayne, even Kid Rock) (but not the Beastie Boys or Run DMC -- too early I guess), and the entries for everybody from Def Leppard to Papa Roach list demo-style indenpendently released rare early EPs that nobody ever actually heard, but the Queens of Stone Age entry does not list their early Man's Ruin split EP with Beaver; does that mean my copy is highly e-bayable? I dunno. Also, oh yeah, Lemmy also dissses Kiss and Twisted Sister at the beginning of their entries, but not Skunk Anansie, who he apparently loved. Were they actually any good? I think I heard 'em once and decided no.

I could do a Rolling Stone "red book" synopsis of them.

Came to fame through ubiquity of annoying take on a Michael Jackson song and accompanying video. If you're someone who believes in a supreme being, he or she decided to take revenge by running their tour bus over a cliff, striking them with much more force than a smooth criminal.

Then proceed directly to "The Fourth Dimension" which shows them at their slowest and most brooding (try to get the version with the "The Abyss" bonus track which is a fantastic song).

In other news, some thoughts on the new Khanate.

xp

Playing the new Fireball Ministry now. It sounds okay so far. But it seems maybe more Soundgarden than '70s; possibly not a good move...

xp

Track #8 has some semblance of a Sabbath groove maybe. Sort of.

It was and, since I haven't actually heard the new one, the old stuff wasn't trudging. They released excellent versions of Alice Cooper's "Muscle of Love" and a couple Aerosmith songs. "King" was their best song and they released it on "FMEP" which was brief by stoner band standards and better for it. They rerecorded it for the last album. Live they were always very good, much better than the acts they tended to be paired with -- standard stoner fair like Men of Porn, Drunk Horse, Altamont (something Dale Crover had going), etc.

Since I haven't heard the new stuff, all bets are off.

i hated it. so bad. i even warned people about it on my warn people thread. even in comparison to other comparable forgettable drunken "joke metal" or drunken " joke punk" albums it's horrible.

Oh, believe me, Dale Crover should never be allowed near a guitar. When I saw them they were all you said and more. High low point was a song about fucking chickens or something.

New Modey Lemon sucks. They probably always sucked from what I can tell. "Loud hard stuff" for the crowd that hates loud hard stuff, you know, those who read daily newspapers and take it seriously when a band from Pittsburgh in 2005 is compared to the MC5 in 1969 by some staff yahoo. Couldn't even make it through the entire thing. Something generates bass sequences that all sound the same. In fact, every riff is about the same, aimlessly pounding -- not tight, except when the guitar player starts up his shitty toy synth to break the monotony.

Yeah, ten months later, this sucker is not only still hanging around, but sounding better and better. I agree, this is Albini's best work in ages.

George Brigman's "Jungle Rot" from 19745-75. More later.

And Buster Brown's only Aussie release from '74. Formative Heavy boogie band for Phil Rudd and Rose Tattoo's Angry Anderson, when he had a slight bit of hair. It's the band that invented the bib overalls "look" for Rose Tattoo.

Yeah, ten months later, this sucker is not only still hanging around, but sounding better and better. I agree, this is Albini's best work in ages.

Great album. Great sound. Definitely Albini's best work in a long time. Perfect for High On Fire. Man those drums are KILLER.

I saw the video for that song a couple of months ago and I can definitely understand the odd fascination. It looks like hair metal video shot by Godard. The singer for Celtic Frost is so disconnected and drained out looking in the video, it reminded me of the scene with Peter Cook as the pop singer in the original Bedazzled. The band looked all glammed out, but the song is really cold and distant sounding. It was bizzaro hair metal. I vaguely remember hearing some Celtic Frost back in the late 80s and it was way too weird for me at the time. Even though this record is supposed to be completely unlike anything else they did, it was so odd I have been curious about that band ever since.

Outside of the metal community, there seems to be absolutely zero consensus of what's good. That makes it a challenge for me -- I've delved deep into metal at a few stages in my life, but the last few years I kind of burn out after absorbing about fifteen new albums. I get in the mood to hear metal about a couple days every month. So I'm not too confident that I've heard a large enough sample when I list my top 13 at the end of the year.

I'll certainly check out the recommendations on this thread. I'm about to listen to the new Opeth for the first time. Wish me luck.

yep: "jane doe" b/w "russian roulette," 7-inch 45, 2000. i liked that one.

Decibel!!! (and not just cuz i write for it, although that is certainly reason enough to subscribe.) (And Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles is good too for a wide range of stuff. i have to subscribe to that one cuz they don't sell it here where i am.i have missed a bunch of issues.)

Yep. On Aztecmusic or something, an Aussie label, naturally. Not as crunching and freight train as Rose Tattoo -but- they kind of wrote better rock and roll songs. Great cover of "Roll Over Beethoven" and Angry Anderson is already everything he would be in Rose Tattoo. The guy was born ready to rock.

Euclid's "Heavy Equipment" is pretty crushing. There's not really a weak cut on it. "It's All Over Now" is as decent as "Gimme Some Lovin'" which actually starts with the arrangement Chicago Transit Authority used for their live version of "I'm a Man." If you're a fan of "Vincebus Eruptum," you need Euclid, In fact, I know I'll listen to Euclid more than Blue Cheer.

Albini'swork with Living Things, Red Swan, and Cordelia's Dad is better, to my ears. But yeah, good drum sound, at least right when the album starts. Beyond that, I'm not so sure.

I like Modey Lemon and Drunk Horse more than George does. Never thought to compare the former to the MC5, and don't really think of the latter as stoner rock (at best, Drunk Horse hit me more like a west coast version of Oneida's more rocking moments, albeit with Stonesier guitars.) Basically though, they're both loud art-rock bands. I guess Modey Lemon have grown artsier over time and maybe Drunk Horse less so, and I liked them both more a few years ago -- Modey Lemon's self-titled A-F Records 2001 debut and Drunk Horse's self-titled Man's Ruin Records 1999 debut (I think it's their debut) are where to start. But honestly, I've had nothing against the stuff by both of them I've heard since. Not even close to top 10 candidates (neither were the debuts, in fact), but keepers nonetheless (at least until I purge my collection again in a few years and decide to sell them after all.)

First cut is something that would be at home on Outlaw Records with the Godz, or actually Eric Moore's Godz, with the substitution that Rota has a much better voice.

"Just found your bit about the all-mom rock bands. I agree that it's a bit of fluff, except for my band. We did fly out to New
York. we wiped the floor with the other bands. Check it out:

http://www.placentamusic.com.

beautiful creatures' album, which i like a lot regardless, turns out not to be a grunge record, either. basically, it's a bang tango record, a really good one.

and i will check out placenta (who i'd never heard of before now.)

living things' *ahead of the lions* on jive/zomba has a real shot at my top ten. i like every song (12 of them). best, i think, are "bombs below," "i owe," "bom bom bom," "end gospel," "no new jesus," and "monsters of man," a couple of which i'm pretty sure never ever appeared on either their previous geffen album (which never came out) and their two previous EPs (which barely did.)

They have said they will furnish me with a CD.

Still haven't heard to Living Things. Last thing I saw was an import and a lot of hoo-ha that it was censored in the US because of anti-Bush fervor, which I wasn't quite buying, but didn't feel like spending the money to determine 'twas true.

Oh yeah, and Montgomery Gentry did indeed do a cover of Blackfoot's "Train, Train" on CMT and it smoked.

Laughs of the day, from the LA Times, on a jag about Modey Lemon:

"...stun level garage blues..." which is closer to what the Blue Cheer CD is and "....Hendrix and beyond blast..." Ha-ha, the Modey Lemon like Hendrix, such jokers. Oh course, the same article tries to convince Yoko Ono doing "Dont Worry Kyoko" for about the first time since Frank Zappa called it "A Small Eternity with Yoko Ono," was "expression of a wide range of emotions."

and in case you missed this:

You Finally Get To Hear My Favorite Metal Band!

Interviewed Scott Ian tonight - he swore up and down that despite releasing two live albums, a best-of and an old-songs-rerecorded disc in the past two years, plus bringing their previous lead singer back, they have not become a full-time nostalgia act.

MX-80, formerly MX-80 Sound, has "We're An American Band" in the slot. It's not "Out of the Tunnel" or anything as ferocious as "Someday You'll Be King" but Bruce Anderson, guitarist, retains excellent heavy tone and a multitude of styles. It's 60 percent dream
and mysterioso mood metal, 38 percent attack. Two or three songs given over or in line with Angel Corpus Christi, female artist who've I've never heard but who is longstanding art-wise.

Out in front of art metal including semi-pop tunes that will never be played on radio. After 30 years, MX-80 Sound has gone from an attacking super dissonent jazz metal band out of Indiana act to a very arty heavy pop band from California.

Euclid is still on the top of the play list. Man, thanks, El Sabor.
You must get Euclid if you're into heavy riff grunge with no equal from 1970.

And Dave Marsh's review of Grand Funk "live" for Creem magazine in '70 is the apotheosis of worthless snob rock critic prose. No one has ever topped it. Without Marsh's name attached to it, it reads unintentionally as satire. It's about the worst piece of writing by someone who thinks he's sophisticated I'ver ever seen, period. Paradocically, hardly anyone has ever seen it because no one read Creem before it became a slick, and this was just before that transition.

Photocopied from the original mag, if it had been in wider circulation without the guy stifling himself, Creem wouldn't have made it past 1972. In fact, the mag might have actually done better without him as an editor.

For Pete's sake, Marsh couldn't even spell the name of the lead guy in the Loving Spoonful for the cover of the issue correctly. But in the same issue he could spell "Hermann Hesse," who had nothing to do with rock and roll.

Fuck Dave Marsh, a pompous ninny, racked up as the George Tenet of rock critics, so to speak, someone who had a lot to say, all wrong, but still awarded points -- a Medal of Freedom -- for it.

I can't describe how shitty and hilarious Marsh is for ILM. Send me a request and I'll either send you a Xerox (this was written in 1970!) or slot it for addition to a webpage I'm designing on the genesis of proto-metal '69-'72 and how totally out of it top dog rock critics were on the genre.

"...Jagger's chilling slaps at traditional
masculine roleplaying became mundane in a thousand others who took
bisexuality for mere faggotry..." Mere faggotry, in a review of
GFRR's "live" black album. And what's "mere faggotry" anyway? It's not in Webster's, but this gives you the impression that it's superior to be bi rather than a mere homo. Fucking A.

Another howler: "([the Beatles] descent into putrefied prissiness),
the flower music, the solo bash-em-in-the-ass jams and British
pretty-boy-bisexual rock came as the most crunching letdown since
Cannonball Adderly and Sonny Stitt gave up free-form for funk."

You'd never know the guy is reviewing a hard rock record. It's over 200o words and he doesn't get around to even mentioning the band's name until about 1500 have gone by.

Kinda love the new Ewigkeit album so far, too. (But then, I would.)

Also like the pseudo-Satantic early-Venom-style stoner-thrash EP *Warship* by Saviours. That it has only three songs helps a lot!

And "Lights Out" is about blackouts and brownouts, all over town.

http://www.perfectpitchblack.com/

Track: Down the Drain sounds like My Bloody Valentine !

Also his work on the new Gogol Bordello.

http://www.ephelduath.net/newsmain.htm

Anyone heard their new album ? Memento Mori

Being compared to High on Fire and Mastodon

ecard available:
http://www.lifeforce-america.com/witheredecard.htm

"Is art conscious or unconscious? Up until now, there was art in metal, but there wasn't for the most part a self-awareness about it."

More of this conversation should infect my brain.

"It's simple to talk about Satan as a symbol, but it's important to consider the deeper meaning of the symbol."

The fount of wisdom that makes small brooks to flow.

"Perhaps more than any other genre, metal has historically been exceedingly tribal."

Can you spell h-a-r-d-c-o-r-e? Can you spell p-u-n-k r-o-c-k? Can you spell [fill in the blank]?

"But there are signs that even traditional metal bands are becoming more eccentric. Recent metal albums have paid tribute to authors from Melville...to Tolkien...to Blake..."

Boy, if we tried to tally up the "eccentricities" of metal bands from '72 onward "paying tribute to authors" we'd be here for fucking weeks.

"...its members, who perform in druid-style robes and typically use industrial smoke machines, actually alter the feel of the room."

They change the space and time, the warp and woof, the Higgs boson, the quark, strangeness and charm flavors. Black Widow dressed in robes and I heard they undressed a girl on stage at all their shows.

"The result is audiences for whom a Def Leppard T-shirt could only be a sign of irony, though there may be hope for further indoctrination."

"This is not your older brother's metal crowd."

"Metal in general has long been unjustly maligned as solely the province of knuckle-dragging meatheads...That said, there's never been a group of musicians like there is now, who are helping to advance the form."

There you go, the usual meme, furnished by source quote, that the new blood has evolved beyond the limited DNA of all who have come before.

"Some fear, though, that the self-conscious positioning of art-metal bands has done a disservice to worthy acts who stick closer to tradition, and who are often ignored, if not scorned, by outsiders."

Ya mean like for the New York Times? Ha-ha. Fear not the arch pushing out the meat-and-potatoes on the pages of the big Sunday paper, it's the way of things, the ISO 9000 standard.

"Experimenting with a lighter side, including free jazz and even modern classical music."

My pate bows to such rich garments.

The metal album displayed by the cash registers at BestBuy audience (which is where I see the Opeth record every week) is not the Sunday Times audience.

Well, just look at all this fucking metal in the stuff being pimped on the first page of the AR website. It's just a damn horn of plenty of heavy metal and hard rock.
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PAAVOHARJU Yha Hamaraa

In many ways Paavoharju can be likened to fellow enchanting Finnish artists Lau Nau and Fonal labelmates Islaja, but their finely detailed yet loosely strung music is considerably more melted and collaged and electronic. Listening to Yha Hamaraa is almost like eavesdropping on a dream... or having someone else's heartbreaking memories come back to hazily haunt you. Sounds, voices and melodies drift in and out of focus, occasionally overlapping and seeping into one another. Sometimes it seems like you're listening to a rickety old radio with the dial set between stations so that the sounds somehow magically fit together. Odd faintly familiar elements make their presence felt such as in the ninth song where the male vocal melody brought to mind a twisted folk (and of course very Finnish) version of "Stairway To Heaven". The swooping, trebly female vocals find their own special place between Indian film music singers and the Southeast Asian voices

BANHART, DEVENDRA Cripple Crow (XL Recordings) cd 13.98
For his latest full length, Banhart has taken a marked departure from the mystical woodland art-folk kingdom he conjured and inhabited on his first three albums. This is evident even before you hear a single note -- he opted for a Sgt. Pepper style collaged crowd photograph on the front cover rather than another of his illustrations

BARDO POND Selections : Volumes I-IV (All Tomorrow's Parties) 2cd 19.98
Hard to believe Bardo Pond has been around for over 15 years, and even harder to believe that they continue to create slab after slab of gorgeous drug soaked psychedelia far better than their more well known and more prolific psychedelic brethren.

CHALK, ANDREW Shadows From The Album Skies (Faraway Press) cd 22.00
It remains to be seen if the duo of Andrew Chalk and Christoph Heeman will ever collaborate again, after rumors surfaced describing an acrimonious falling out in the wake of an ill-conceived Mimir / Mirror performance. Sure, Mirror has certainly produced some amazing recordings; Eye Of The Storm, in particular, is an impeccable document of droned-out environmental eerieness.

CORTES, LULA E ZE RAMALHO Paebiru (Shadoks Music) cd 15.98
Oh boy. Now here's a real "holy grail" psych album, at last reissued on cd and widely available!!! You've heard a taste of this if you've got the Brazilian edition of the Love, Peace & Poetry compilation series.

GAULT, THE Even As All Before Us (Flood The Earth / Amortout) cd 9.98
By now everyone should be familiar with SF black metal legends Weakling. A brief existence, a handful of shows, and a single amazing record (released on Andee's tUMULt label, we should mention). Members of Weakling played in and/or went on to play in Amber Asylum, the Champs, Drunk Horse, Asunder, Sangre Amado, Saros and the short lived but now totally cult blackened gothic doom outfit The Gault. Recorded way back in 1999 by Tim Green, The Gault's Even As All Before

SPEKTR No Longer Human Senses (Appease Me) cd 12.98
Not a list goes by without a review declaring some record THE WEIRDEST EVER. So, okay, we can be a little hyperbolic at times, but it's just cuz we get so damned excited. But since we're always on the lookout for the weirdest records ever, it's not really all that strange that we might actually keep discovering some new weirdest record ever! They just get weirder and weirder. AND, as you probably could tell, it just so happens that we have a definite thing for bizarre black metal, the more fucked up and strange the better! And again, always being on the lookout for weirder and weirder metal records, we manage to stumble across quite a few

VENETIAN SNARES Meathole (Planet Mu) cd 14.98
The more recent Venetian Snares albums (all of which we've loved) from Canadian electronic wizard Aaron Funk have fallen muchcloser sonically to the maudlin minor key string soaked IDM sound of Boy / Girl era Aphex Twin

WOODEN WAND & THE VANISHING VOICE Buck Dharma (5RC) cd 14.98
Okay, so did we warn you a couple of lists ago or what about an imminent abundance of Wooden Wand releases?! It's already become pretty much impossible to fully digest one of their cds or lps before another one sprouts up, but don't get all stressed out trying to keep pace

ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE & THE MELTING PARAISO U.F.O. Goodbye John Peel: Live In London 2004 (Dirter) 2lp 24.00
Super limited (500 copies worldwide, we got about 20) double live album recorded in London in 2004 from the Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso

BATES, TYLER The Devil's Rejects - Original Motion Picture Score (La-La Land / Lion's Gate) cd 16.98
Some of you may be tired of us going on and on about that Devil's Rejects movie (we listed the Banjo And Sullivan and the killer soundtrack recently). Well tough luck! We finally got the score in and it's amazing,

BLACK DICE Broken Ear Record (Astralwerks) cd 16.98
Nothin' like starting off your morning with a big ol' cup of coffee and a big ol' earful (well, 37 minutes or so) of Black Dice.

CALEXICO & IRON AND WINE In The Reins (Overcoat) cd 10.98
Ooooh, does that sound like a splendid combination to you or what? Two of our absolute favorites together on one release, performing seven songs penned by Iron & Wine's Sam Beam?!

Okay.

I like reading the album descriptions on Aquarius's site, though I've yet to buy anything from them. But it seems to me that the biggest problem they exemplify (and so does the Times piece) is the self-congratulatory nature of "smart-guy" metal fans-come-lately. "Looka me! I'm into metal!" Sure, as long as it's at Tonic or the Knitting Factory. But you won't see 'em at the basement gigs in Queens, with five Satanic death metal acts straight from Bogota.

Yes, I see, at the "disservice to worthy acts who stick closer to tradition." Plenty of Argoba Teenage Riot and the CD-R of that stupid kid singing karoake lyrics to his dad's band performing Van Halen's "Hot for Teacher." Weird metal, the weirder and weirder the better, in their words. So, in fairness to readers, the New York Times should have said, "a retail store that specializes in weirder and weirder heavy metal." We don't do no Jake E. Lee solo album.

No, no, no, not at all Jeanne. You made me curious, I haven't heard of Goat Horn.

Couldn't have said it better. It's fairly obvious they're into metal as "arch" and "stilted." The equivalent of the newspaper man bites dog story.

Also, thanks for the Backbiter info -- waiting for it to come in the mail.

Did you look at anything but the new arrivals page? Aquarius lists a lot of arty stuff, but they've also got positive write-ups for Wishbone Ash, Hanoi Rocks, Iron Maiden, Pentagram, Buffalo etc.

In terms of newspaper articles, how -- if you're writing a story on metal in a paper in NEW YORK CITY -- does one come to select a talking head out of a storefront in SAN FRANCISCO? It's so damn obvious it kicks you in the head. Hey, no record stores that specialize in metal in NYC or metro-Jersey, no way no how.

And why pick one, anyway, without going around to the trouble of finding a number of stores that "specialize" in metal, assessing their catalogs at a glance and -- then -- asking their buyers what sells for them rather than some profundity on art-metal? You know, it would take less than an afternoon to find a handful and, I'm betting, spread out among the buyers assessments ranging from, "Neorisis bands don't do too bad" to "That shit don't sell."

yo, that's jada pinket smith fronting a funkmetal band

I think so. I haven't really liked Neurosis in years (Cult of Luna does 'em better than they do themselves) and Isis peaked with Oceanic and its follow-on remixes, to my ear.

Can't agree with you on the new Exodus, though. They should have stayed retired.

And this is lame, too. The only two records in the Wishbone Ash catalog that most typical metal fans -might- like are the "eponymous" LP and "Argus," but only if the copy of "Argus" comes with the "Live in Memphis" cuts. Everything else is pretty much Brit Grateful Dead, and real hard folk rock with intertwining twin leads, even the "Live Dates" record, which includes the key "metal" cuts, all of which are not as good performances as on "Live in Memphis" or "Wishbone Ash."
You could pass Wishbone Ash off as art jazz metal, too, because they were -- umm - just listen to "Argus" or "Pilgrimage." Art rock. They probably read books to0.

Caveat emptor: Newcomers to the thread. Be very careful when inspacting the Wishbone Ash catalog on your dime. Big soft jam band.

Plus it's just easier and cheaper to get them at BestBuy and other chains.

Christ, Aquarius Records and heavy metal/hard rock. I recommend
a copy of "The Virgin Encyclopedia of Heavy Rock" by Larkin.

Yep. Ha ha, in fact, here's the show preview blurb I wrote up a few days ago, for next week's Voice (they play North Six week after next):

"MINSK -- The spacious grumble-growl of this "Byelarussian" ambient metal quartet's *Out of a Center Which is Neither Dead Nor Alive* isn't audibly as Hawkwind-or-Uriah Heep (or maybe even Dead Can Dance)-steeped as At a Loss Records insists, but it still makes for one of '05's coziest wraparound thrash experiences: past mere Isis or Neurosis blur, into gorgeous caverns of morose gunk last excavated by Switzerland's Bloodstar in the early '90s."

See up the thread re record store as source in ridiculous Times metal feature.

were stocking metal several years before any other comparable store

Ah yeah, the metal for people too smart for metal thing because, as the story said, "it is the province of knuckle-dragging meatheads," that is UNTIL the new and intellectually enriching MFA-possessing art metal bands showed up. Sort of like my hard rock for audiences that don't like hard rock peg. Or an allegedly sophisticated audience that don't like hot dogs because they're ordinary, have bad meat
in them and come with French's and relish but who like hot dogs if you take out the bad meat, put in a fancy variety of olives, change the mustard from French's to Grey Poupon and sprinkle garlic shavings on them.

you're cracking on also runs a label that puts out records by Pelican and that fuckin' Hammers of Misfortune thing that kicked a fair amount of ass.

Well, that being so, it's another thing the Times didn't mention in the story that belonged in the story, as in, "...said Andee ... [underwriter of Pelican] and co-owner of Aquarius Records in San Francisco, a retail store that specializes in metal..."

So if someone is provided to furnish a glowing pronouncement on the new art metal and we know they have a financial stake in one
art-metal band prominently cited in the article, it's the maker of the new brand of hot dog saying his hot dog has a new manner of hot dogness that no previous ordinary hot dogs have. That's the appropriate wrapper but that's not how the feature story delivered it.

No, refer the assortment of memes and media scripts tossed on the readership by the Times. When I dragged Aquarius into the thread I thought it would prick. It's good that their honor is defended.

likes-metal-while-looking-down-their-noses

Which was the entire thrust of the Times article. And again, always being on the lookout for weirder and weirder metal records, to reuse a few good lines because [Up] until now, there was art in metal, but there wasn't for the most part a self-awareness about it because there's never been a group of musicians like there is now, who are helping to advance the form because it's not your older brother's metal crowd.

What's wrong with sappy? Many of my favorite records, perhaps all of them, are sappy. Sappy is really elastic, it's everything and anything you want it to be.

Unbylined Voice blurb says Waltham are in the Babys/Nightranger way of doing things, and send The Darkness back to Blighty. I say, OK! The Darkness have waited so long since their first LP in the good 'ol USA, one that didn't do the great flapjacks in sales commensurate with press, that they might as well skip the second here, it couldn't possibly live up to even the feeblest expectation after two years spent squandering momentum.

The byline would've said "Eddy" had they included it (another show preview blurb.) The EP is great, to my ears. "Fast Times at Waltham High", yes! Also great were the Waltham demos (or whatever) that Dan from Boston's Medea Connection compiled on CD-R for me a few years back, which is when I first heard of the band -- that was about seven songs, something like five of which had girls' names as their titles! I think they're lying, though, about not wanting to be sappy -- they do sappy as well as just about any hard rock band out there lately.

"So Lonely" definitely makes it into the my P&J singles list among others similarly bursting with hook. And the homemade video of it is silly and charming because it has a girl in it who actually looks like someone you would see in one of Boston's blue collar suburbs, not someone on TV. The tattoo parlor stuff is creepy. I think all tattoo parlors are creepy but it's amusing that this band's audience includes a bunch of guys addicted to tattoo parlors as well as the RS crowd.

From new Anal Cunt EP: "You like Coheed & Cambria, You're Gay" b/w "Wigs are Gay"

I'd like to know, too, because even though I skipped their first three records, I liked their live CD/DVD quite a bit and am considering buying up the catalog.

I saw the new Disturbed video on Headbangers' Ball last week, and it's the best thing they've ever done, I think. I liked their second album a lot, even wrote a cover story on 'em for Alternative Press, and the single doesn't sound like a big change from back then, except now (since power metal is this year's secret ingredient) they've added guitar solos. Which is great, because I always thought they would have been arena huge if they'd had 'em to begin with.

Yes, but by this same logic I should be going to sf/fantasy conventions and Ren Faires. Wild horses could not take me to those locations.

Iced Earth is really up and down. About little over half the catalog is pretty duff. However the good stuff smokes. The first record even put a fairly obvious BOC lick into the mix -- the head guy, Schaeffer, being a fan. Their CD of covers was decent, particularly the BOC tunes. Even a couple clinkers, there, too. Iced Earth has business doing AC/DC.

>Listening to a promo copy of Opeth's latest CD I got from Steve Smith and these guys are FAGS!

ARe there ANY good metal bands out there?

Yeah, Opeth has chops, but so does Celine Dion. So what?

You can tell these dorks have listened to King Crimson and other prog, but what's the point if they don't have any originality at all? (The whole POINT of prog rock was to INNOVATE and do things no band had ever done before.)

These fags do the generic growl vocals and then go into postQueensryche faggery vocals.

The record should be called "FAG SANDWICH".

These worthless putzes almost make me miss VoiVod.

You all need to stand up to these lemmings and tell them to

a. stop plagiarizing their predecessors

b. realize that you can be complex, but STILL have hooks.

(ELP / YES/ Crimson / Genesis / Magma / fIREHOSE et al's complexity was never gratuitous.)

(60-year old ELP can STILL play circles around these metal mooks!)

The Tapedeck did blisteringly complex math-rock and prog-metal but it was always stunningly original. (Listen to "This Is Not Supermetal" or "Eat SHIT, Meshuggah" again.)

We were the greatest art-metal band ever and you killed us off with your blacklists.

AQUI are also a great example that complex metal doesn't have to be unmusical or personality-free. (Your ignoring them helped break up the band last month! Nice going!)

I know Wolf still wants to hate Sleepytime Gorilla Museum but he should see them when they return soon. They ape the past [pun partially intended] but still add tons of new shit and Carla all by herself is superior to almost every metal act or musician in rock history.

ANd if XAR! wasn't such a lazy shithead, his "majestro" (majestic-electro) (aka operatic electronic prog metal) could take metal twenty years ahead.

SMITH! BOSLER! Tell us about CREATIVE metal bands!

And ATTACK unoriginal acts.

WHY is that too much to ask?

(Oh shit... this Opeth cut on now is a post-Kashmir rip off!)

sincerely perturbed,
Touching You
guitarist of Thank You For Not Screaming
ex-liquid tapedeck [Fast Forward Flood]

I did not! Everyone knows I am a Tapedeck fan! "Run Thru the Wind With Your Hands on My Timmy Tim Tim" is one of the prettiest pop metal songs ever.

Fast Forward Flood/Tapedeck Rejects & Bad Demos

AQUI are also a great example that complex metal doesn't have to be unmusical or personality-free. (Your ignoring them helped break up the band last month! Nice going!)

Didn't know that.

Yes, it's the mellowest Opeth album I've heard - but I didn't hear Damnation, which I'm guessing was mellower. At first I was a bit disappointed because I was hoping for something that would rock as hard as Deliverance. But once you start listening to the pretty chords and intricate riffs and symphonic structures, you forget about that, and just start enjoying it.

it's not really hitting me like the last one. i keep waiting for it to grow on me. i tried playing it louder and that didn't really work either. i don't know what's wrong with it. it's not horrible. i like the paint it black rip-off. some of the songs i can see being better live as smokey strobe-light jams. i dunno...hey, i'm supposed to write about it, but if you think it isn't worth the time, i might have to agree with you.

this is why my Decibel year-end list (due today! yeesh!) is so relapse-heavy

this is why mine is so earache heavy!

But Jeanne, show us your top 20!!!

Wow, I wish I wrote for metal magazines so I could make a cool list.

Anyway, he sent me a couple comic strips and a review or two he had done for a Voice competitor, (NY Press?) showing the same sense of disrespectfully rude humor which might have been too tough for the pub that was running them.

And this seems to be the old other member of the Tapedeck, Soy Bomb, the guy who got up and danced beside Bob Dylan years ago at one of the big awards shows. And I'd not heard of him again until now.

And here's my list of stretched extremities (heh heh)

[deleted by request - wait and see Decibel readaz]

ha I don't want Albert gettin' pissed at me

I am SUPER pissed that CM didn't send me the God Forbid in time! 'cause their last one was my #1 pick last year, or was it the year before - don't remember, but Gone Forever still rules my world completely, I feel like it practically justifies the screamed vocal + clean vocal school of metalcore

just out of curiosity, did they actually define the word on the ballot? if so, i'd be curious how..

I think what this means = "you probably aren't reading this is you don't already have a fairly good sense of which albums belong on this ballot and which don't"

although, and this is not news, the best "extreme" albums to my ears anyhow are either 1) the ones consciously, openly playing with their own boundaries or 2) those so ridiculously pure that they give me that kick of purist pleasure that's my own particular opiate

10 New(Ish) Albums That Are Better Than The New Nile Album

i'm not sure whether i would include blues-based hard rock albums (for example, the supagroup one a la jeanne, though that's not my favorite this year) or not if i was voting in the decibel poll. either way would be fun. who knows, maybe i'd make two lists.

i don't think any extreme-so-called-metal-per-se has any shots at my actual pazz and jop ballot. subterranean masquerade (who i may well be the only person on earth to love, apparently) and minsk might come closest, i'm not sure. (i'd have to go back and check over a year's worth of eddytor's dozens before i wrote this in stone.)

ulver. it will probably be my pazz & jop number one as well. god, i haven't even thought about pazz & jop yet though. i know deanna carter and ulver are in my top ten. that's all i know at this point. when does the o-solo album come out?

Makes me want to put on Men of Porn's Experiments in Feedback, also from Small Stone, but a few years older.

How 'bout Ackercocke? Should I inspect, they are -s0- 2004. Fuck it, I am doing a real retro listen and doing Grief tonight. And none of the stuff I have laying around from Candelight except Witchcraft is any damn good. What is that, a joke label???? ICE was a good joke, but where are they in 2005? And what about Liars in Wait?

I don't get it. What is it with the thing of here today gone tomorrow metal? Where is the longevity, where is the spine? Where is the we're going to stick with this worthless band we just signed until they turn in a classic or rupture trying gumption?

"The Porpoise Song" -- Goffin/King to the max, with a killing floor outro and wah solo. Click, clack -- the porpoise is waving goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.
"Tales of Brave Ulysses" -- one of their singles or comp things
The song from Manic Frustration that breaks into Atlantis
"Till the End of Time -- not the Plastic Green Head mix, but the single mix.

http://heatherband.com/

Today I'm listening to the Black Army Jacket comp Closed Casket. These guys should have been as "big" as Discordance Axis, but I have no memory of anyone giving a shit about them back when they were around. Maybe it's me. Anyway, they're grindcore, but they slow down a lot and you can often figure out the words. I like 'em.

If you've got anything around by Khold, George, you should check 'em out. I think their last one (they broke up, too) was on Candlelight. I liked it, though I'm not sure you will; black metal with occasional hints of groove and/or heaviness.

they later went on to do time in Celebrity Murders....who played a pretty ripping set the other night.

Anybody else heard the new Paths of Possession on Metal Blade? It's a side project for George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher from Cannibal Corpse - more melodic, but still basically death metal. Erik Rutan produced it, and I like it better than the new Hate Eternal.

THE NEW M.W. DOESNT REALLY SOUND ALL THAT MUCH LIKE DRI, ITS WAY TIGHTER, SUPER FUN W/AWESOME LYRICS....WITTE KILLS ON IT.

And yikes, is the new Animosity album ever great.

Burst - Origo (Relapse)

ecard featuring two tracks from the album
http://relapse.com/ecards/burst2/

BLOWN AWAY ! this is A+ grade sublime !

complex
commanding
epic riffs
multidimensional production
explosive energy
stunning dynamics and twists
cathartic intensity
hypnotic engulfing and evolving power
versatile vocals

sure you can hear varied vintage sound inspirations: Neurosis, Killing Joke, Botch, Tool, Cave In, Paradise Lost and Isis .... but who else in 2005 can match the complex dynamics and musical ambition of Burst?

When music this brilliant comes along - you just know it ! you experience it !

Burst have once again reached out, experimented and delivered.

The new Premonitions of War thing is pretty good. An old EP paired with some new tracks. Not as good as their album, but pretty good. And nice cover art.