Rolling 2006 Metal Thread

I've been listening to Mirand Sex Garden's "Fairytales of Slavery" lately, and it sounds like something out of the world of "post black metal." Last time I heard the album, some years ago, it never occured to me that it was a bit on the metallic side, but hearing it again it sees pretty metal. I suppose at the time it would have been considered Swans influenced, but now I can't help but to think it sure sounds a lot like Beyond Dawn. Not terribly surprising.

BM is stuff i've never been into but for some reason I like the above bands. Same with th BM influence of the new album by Sunn o))), I like that too. Then again I do like Sunn o))) anyway.

Oh and I liked that Lurker Of Chalice album.

angelblood's got good songs here and there on their first two, their last real cd release was great and more consistent (i'm attributing it to the orthrelm dude playing guitar, even though orthrelm irritates the shit out of me).

as for the rest of the "ha ha let's dress up and play black metal" stuff like the 'funeral folk' collective, haven't heard them. don't think i want to.

Messiah's vocals have always been the best part of the Candlemass sound. That album was probably the nicest surprise (for me, anyway) of 2005.

http://sammath-naur.blackmetal.it/modules/catalog/images/hellhammer-sh.JPG

I hope Nortt will do something as well, tour for instance

There are only two choices:

http://www.blastitude.com/6/pettibon-elvis.jpg

or

http://www.ebtm.com/content/ebiz/ebtm/invt/mastp0026/mastp0026_l.jpg

Also, Angelblood is a really bad joke. They're the reason I don't do drugs, because I wouldn't want to accidentally find them interesting. There's one song where they open with "I AM THA HUNTA!" but it's not the Bjork song. Like, why?

And Lucifer's -666- which is an amateur's work from the voluminous catalog of desparation administered by CD Baby. The title song is excellent, along with "Crush Your Enemy" and a love ballad.

I liked it.

also, who is who on this pic http://www.decibelmagazine.com/features/jan2006/twilight.aspx

great article about twilight. some hilarious quotes

Damn, George, I need to hear this (and Copperhead too.)

I'm experiencing a metal drought so far this year, I think. (I guess Lullacry's new Finnish goth-pop metal album is tolerable, though. Whether it has anything to do w/ metal is another question entirely.)

And I guess I don't hate the EP I heard by these guys:

http://yearlongdisaster.com/

Can't get more enthusiastic about anything than that yet, though.

The Onkel Tom is done by some guy who is in Sodom, a thrash band I never listen to. Half of it is recorded at Wacken, that place where everyone in a US classic metal band wants to play because it's the go to festival gig for audiences that like it. The kind of omnibus show that makes Rose Tattoo kings for a week or a day or an hour or something. Everyone is shouting "Onkel Tom! Onkel Tom! Onkel Tom" which reminds me of the Bose Onkelz, a kind of average Deutsch oi band from way way back. Whatever happened to Slime! I had two of their records. When they were in storage my mom threw 'em out when she lost her mind to dementia, just before she had to be put in a place for the middle-class decrepit. "You told me to do it," she said.

Speaking of RT, also have Doomfoxx which I haven't had a chance to allot attention. Must be slang for Dumbfucks, I suspect, and it's the thing of one of the guitarists from the Tatts. Might be good, could also be wretched. I'll let you know. Claims to have played a few times in NYC.

Others to listen to on the digital pile this week -- Nikki Puppet, Weinhold and Saeka, all of whom seem to be fronted by vimmen. All 2005 or older prospects who just made it to me, again generally only reviewed in foreign language Euro pubs online and off. Saeka's a hot-looking Japanese girl looking like (or maybe not) fronting an Accept-like band of Deutscher ringers.

That's what I like best about the album, there seems to be an even balance between the various styles. Fans bitterly complained that their last album was more mainstream-oriented (I liked it), but the new one dips into the late-90s melodic death riffs more.

Not being able to compare it to the previous album I can't get a sense of what mainstream complaints there were but personally I'm glad as heck they let wossname the singer step back from hyperscreech at least part of the time.

Yeah, the singer took the more clean, melodic approach, which annoyed the fans who still cling to the band's mid to late-90s albums, as well as going for the goth/industrial/nu sounds you mentioned. I thought Soundtrack to Your Escape was a rather daring departure, but I remember the reaction of fans online was split, they either loved it or despised it.

samples here: http://www.absolutesteel.com/

(The "Opus Suite" is some fun, lemme tellya.)

In other news, The Ocean's Aeolian is much better than Ocean's I Forget The Title, so I think they oughta have exclusive rights to the name from now on. (Just like Esoteric, the UK doom band, oughta cease-and-desist the shitty metalcore outfit The Esoteric right out of existence.)

Seen HoF twice and the answer is a resounding YES.

I prefer Ocean - 'Here Where Nothing Grows' myself.

Another top moment is the song about the plan to drug her, fuck her and pass her to your brother, I'm starting on a career of evil, or something. The one right after it, "Abandon All Hope," is the philosophy of having promiscuous sex with all the girls he can while sponging off their assets. He's over the top in trying to convince he's the world's foulest rock 'n' roll dirtbag. And it's more often than not entertaining, although not always for the right reasons. Not a classic by any means, but good for a few weeks and you can remember the song titles and the songs that go with them.

Weinhold's From Heaven Through the Earth To Hell is Deutsch. It's the bag of Jutta Weinhold, someone not at all like Doro. She is said to have once sang back-up for Amon Duul on tours. This, though, is valkyrie muzik, loud and vigorous German power rock. Songs -- "Blues Metal," "Rock of Metal," "Black Bone Song," "Wounded Pioneer" -- so you know they don't give a shit about English language cred und verstehen Sie, although it's all auf Englisch. "Black Bone Song," whatever it's about, is great. Es ist nicht schrechlich, Jutta! Sie sind eine grosse fraulein!

Aborym
Agalloch
Age of Silence
Anata
Anathema
Ancient Rites
Battered
Bloodbath
Burnt by the Sun
Callisto
Carpathian Forest
Cave in
Celtic Frost
Cult of Luna
Dark Fortress
Darkthrone
Daylight Dies
Dead to Fall
Decapitated
Dimmu Borgir
Disillusion
Dissection
Dødheimsgard
Drudkh
Dysrhythmia
Enslaved
Entombed
Epoch of Unlight
Eyes of Fire
Frantic Bleep
The Gathering
Head Control System [Garm's new band]
Illdisposed
Into Eternity
Isis
Kataklysm
Katatonia
Kayo Dot
Keep of Kalessin
Lacuna Coil
Legion
Madder Mortem
Mastodon
Mayhem
Mercenary
Misery Index
Moonspell
Negura Bunget
Neurosis
Nightingale
Norther
Novembre
Queensrÿche
Red Harvest
Rush
Saturnus
Satyricon
Scar Symmetry
Scarve
Sepultura
Solefald
Textures
Thorns
Thundra
Tomahawk
Tool
Devin Townsend
Type O Negative
Unearthly Trance
Unexpect
Virgin Black
Voivod
While Heaven Wept
Winds
Woods of Ypres
Yakuza
Yyrkoon

also according to link above from Jaxijin

Trouble
Simple Mind Condition (2006)
AVAILABLE MARCH 2006!
The first release from pioneering doom metallers Trouble in 10 years!! Hopefully Eric Wagner and co. will deliver the goods!!

What else is due out in 2006?

What are your top [10] most anticipated releases?

Right now, it's Trouble, The Gathering, Voivod, Into Eternity, Amorphis, Kataklysm, Decapitated...

I have a morbid fascination with the upcoming Queensryche. Mindcrime 2 could be a trainwreck.

hmm, those do sound promising (though are the gathering even remotely metal at all anymore? they crossed a line at some point in the past couple years. don't want to say they've jumped the shark, but that's possible too.) (also, is voivod sans piggy still voivod?)

by the way, please do not construe my uncle billy's smokehouse post above to imply that i have any use at all for either nickelback or alice in chains, because i don't. but there's *something* in these guys' sound (the low vocal notes? the melodies?) that reminds me of that sort of despised (by me and others) post-grunge crapola. except...they're really really good at it. and again, they don't *sound* grunge. press materials compare them to led zep (which makes no sense) and black crowes (which might, but i like this album more than anything i've ever heard by black crowes.) and i'm not kidding about the CMT viability thing; it's as if they've imagined mid 70s hard rock and 1991 power ballads as a way toward, say, rascal flatts fans. and yeah, rascal flatts suck too. but i bet their fans, and nickelback fans, would like these guys. which is a neat and difficult trick, to make good music that could lure an crowd whose favorite music othetwise stinks. good luck to them.

i'll believe that new celtic frost album when i see it.

i can't wait for katatonia. i'll look forward to isis. and enslaved.

and oh yeah, george is gonna hate this, but hard as i try, i can't bring myself to hate The Sword.

I haven't heard the entire album yet, but I ecpect to like this one more than early Man. The three songs of theirs I've sampled from their website are good (especially "Iron Swan"), it's more in the vein of High on Fire/Sleep than the NWOBHM stuff that Early Man does.

Trouble kind of got heavy psychedelic, which I liked. Among my favorite things by them were covers of "The Porpoise Song" and "Atlantis."

Weinhold's "Wounded Pioneer" was also grooving me this afternoon. Jutta sings "I was a pioneer!" over a kind of grandiose AOR cock rock lick and you know, she means or meant it. A way overproduced metal record, just what it needed, it seems. This week I'm Deutschland-philic for sure. It cracks me up on the one live cut on the record, Jutta combines English and German in every sentence, like "Ein bischen louder?!?"

(and probably nobody will hear it)

Well, I was intrigued by the blurbs you've been furnishing. But their promo distribution is probably dreadful, right?

That Onkel Tom schlagermetal album is the law. Sodom were in New York last Sunday, part of their exhausting five-date north american tour. They're shameless crowd-pleasers, showering a devoted metal purist crowd with songs about wine, wenches, vietnam, and masturbating to kill yourself. But they're awesome! They're the PlayStation to Immortal's PlayStation 2, and the Seinfeld to Darkthrone's Curb Your Enthusiasm. And between lyrics like "Black metal is the game I play" and "Napalm in the Morning," they fucking cover "Surfin' Bird!" I guess they made their mark in 1985, and it's been a gravy life ever since. SODOM!!

I forgot Early Man wasn't called Girly Man.

Deicide are putting out a DVD on Earache.

Well, on their long-lost debut EP on Rabid Cat they did, I guess (and the "Damned for All Time" cover on the followup).

"One Good Man" by Uncle Billy's Smokehouse appears to concern Noah, of Ark fame. So yeah, Christian hard rock, apparently.

Red Swan, huh? You're saying they're good?

"The Sweater" on the Uncle Billy's Smokehouse CD (chorus hook: "ice is always better than soaking in sweat") sounds pretty eccentric; reminds me of Crack the Sky, actually (and not just because they sang about ice too.) So not all the songs are Christian, at least not in a way I can recognize. And "Takes That Much More" has another great guitar solo. And there's plenty of boogie. And the GnR parts are more Use Your Illusion than Appetite--too bad, but I can live with it.

Haha. I read that and that got me interested in playing The Sword again so I did but it didn't help. The point of the story was that they now have something or had something that appeared to look exactly like an auroch but they couldn't tell if it actually was an auroch and thought it probably wasn't because it didn't act like the ones in the historical record. Which is why people were getting excited about the recovery of some elements of quagga DNA, something they could never have for the auroch.

Anyway, seems to me quagga and aurochs make good subject matter for metal tunes. Probably, usually.

almost every song on the new TNT album would have been perfect for Roxette.

Hey xhuxk (and anyone else who cares) - You check out this new Sigh disc Shadow Gallery? I like it and it almost made my Top Ten of last year... It sounds like Fraggle Rock doing Power Metal (to be fair, a friend used this description but it works).

40 Taint - The Ruin Of Nova Roma
39 Arch Enemy - Doomsday Machine
38 Every Time I Die - Gutter Phenomenon
37 Arcturus - Sideshow Symphonies
36 System Of A Down - Mesmerize/Hypnotize
35 Pelican - The Fire In Our Throats Will beckon The Thaw
34 The Black Dahlia Murder - Miasma
33 Clutch - Robot Hive
32 Napalm Death - The Code Is Red, Long Live The Code
31 Strapping Young Lad - Alien
30 Ulver - Blood Inside
29 Unsane - Blood Run
28 Capricorns - Ruder Forms Survive
27 Nevermore - This Godless Endeavour
26 God Forbid - IV: Constitution Of Treason
25 Municipal Waste - Hazardous Mutation
24 Reverend Bizarre - II : Crush The Insects
23 < code > - Nouveau Gloaming
22 1349 - Hellfire
21 Primordial - The Gathering Wilderness
20 Sunno))) - Black One
19 Gojira - From Mars To Sirius
18 High On Fire - Blessed Black Wings
17 Earth - hex (or Printing In The Infernal Method)
16 Judas Priest - Angel Of Retribution
15 Blut Aus Nord - Thematic Emanation oF Archetypal Multiplicity
14 Sigh - Gallows Gallery
13 Bolt Thrower - Those Once Loyal
12 Witchcraft - Firewood
11 Nile - Annihilation Of The Wicked
10 Red Sparowes - At The Soundless Dawn
09 Akercocke - Words That Go Unspoken, Deeds That Go Undone
08 Candlemass - Candlemass
07 Burst - Origo
06 The Axis of Perdition - Deleted Scenes From The Transition Hospital
05 Opeth - Ghost Reveries
04 Deathspell Omega - Kenose
03 Cathedral - Garden Of Uneearthly Delights
02 Jesu - Jesu
01 Meshuggah - Catch Thirty Three

How do the urban slum metal trades only focus on a certain few labels that issue rigidly within the subgenres stylemuzik and miss all the hundreds of records that come out each year that are also metal or at least half so, or which rock just as much, sometimes less, sometimes a lot more? I can't figure it out.

On the other hand is there really a band called < code >?

http://rateyourmusic.com/artist/code

joint Norwegian/ British black metal group

...but the brackets are closer to the band name

You mean they should just be called < > . A wee joke.

Its [sic] time again to get your dancing shoes on &
prepare to shake that rump for the Eagles of
Death Metal are set to release their much
anticipated sophomore full-length "Death By Sexy"
on April 11th, 2006 via Downtown Recordings.

Eagles have just completed a video for their
first single "I Want You So Hard (Boys Bad News)"
in Los Angeles. Directed by the hotter than hell
"Lonely Island" (think Narnia rap/SNL writers)...
With Jack Black, Dave Grohl, and other Eagles
member Josh Homme also starring in the video,
this is one for the whole family to enjoy!

Looks even worse to me. Though the Hives inclusion is kinda cute. (Actually, I don't really mind the Terrorizer one above. But I agree with George that its metal definition seems pretty rigidly defined.)

Another thing fucked about these lists is that they're self-reinforcing. They ask you to entertain the stupid idea that the 'zines are right at the cutting edge of something, while in practice they're reviewing and interviewing a couple hundred bands per year who are recorded within a bubble of specialty labels characterized by a micro-brand name within the genre and narrowly shared tastes. If you get the promotional materials, it's often
baldly obvious. You get a thin phonebook sheaf of blurb and mag
copy in which the same people and publications say the same thing
over and over. Now a certain degree of repetition is always around, even acceptable, but really, to make it a benchmark is ridiculous.

Anyway, from the inside, it looks like there is a lot of
variety. From the outside, it looks like there is very little.
(Practically speaking, "metal" isn't the only genre that suffers from this type of thing.) "No Depression" and "punk rock," anyone?

>Riverside, *Simple Life* ("formerly called 'Riverside Avenue', cdbaby says; I do believe that's an REO Speedwagon reference), four burly beer-bellied middle-aged guys from Missouri who look like roofers or plumbers, including one in an AC/DC shirt and one African American; mainly do a choogle that boogie-woogies at times but that'd kick more if actual money could be spent producing their album, but they also take stopoffs in Sabbath-via-Joan Jett metal ("I Got This Funny Feeling")... By "Sabbath via Joan Jett metal" I mean that they're clearly trying to make the music apocalyptic a la Ozzy, but the riff reminds me more of "I Love Rock and Roll" than "Ironman." As opposed to the opening riff on the album, which reminds me of "Summer of 69" by Bryan Adams... And duh, to increase the stamina and kick quotients, all I had to do is turn the volume up. These old guys kick fine. Riff in "We've Been Rockin" comes from AC/DC's "It's a Long Way To the Top.")

And I would have mentioned the next item for They Phoned It In but it was too short. Anyhow, last weekend, the LA Times Sunday section prints the howler that Kerrang has more "women" as readers than guys. I'm not sure what the purpose of it was. Either of the following (1) to insult the intelligence of readers, (2) to serve as notice that even the most ridiculous quotes could be published verbatim as long as it comes from a business interest, like the owner, (3) to insult the intelligence of readers, (4) because faleshoods in print are the spice of life.

http://www.decibelmagazine.com/features/feb2006/top50.aspx

Most metal tracks on the (imminent) new Shooter Jennings: "Electric Rodeo," "Bad Magick."

Why are Cult of Luna (whose previous album was an utter bore) in the headline of that Decibel link anicipated album list piece but not on the actual list? I'm confused.

do you agree with what i wrote above about the tnt album, chuck? that a lot of the songs would be perfect for roxette? i really did think of them when i listened to that album.

http://www.absolutesteel.com/

that Himsa album is fucking GREAT if you digs the hawudkowah, probably awful if you don't, I wouldn't know: anyhow it's been rocking me all January long

Scott, they're so committed to success they done dropped off the 'net. Their domain website name expired on the 11th and reverted to Network Solutions. 'tis gone if the furnished link is correct.

hey, hey: for neophytes like myself who are still getting their heads round this whole wonderful world of metal that for so long they wrote off, the terrorizer list is a godsend. some of us still have to walk before we can run ...

Don't overlook the value of winging it. Good things sometimes accidentally present themselves to the flailer.

not sure yet. hopefully. you've reminded me to speak to my pal about this tomorrow.

http://gritz.net/

er..just noticed above that Kerrang named this goofy (though kinda entertaining) Cathedral thing the THIRD best metal album of last year?? Do people really think it's *that* good?? That's kind of nuts.

My favorites were the first, Forest of Equilibrium, Ethereal Mirror, the Hopkins, the Witchfinder EP and the anthology, which duplicates a lot but covers it all pretty succinctly.

Was laughing at another CD Baby thing today, Norselaw -- Viking rap black metal. Stupefying, hilarious descriptions, though I haven't had a chance to listen to it.

More time being spent on Heart Full of Dirt which is fullbore US biker rock, obviously so when you see the cover.

The hip-hop buyer in my store and myself agreed that this and the Necro album where he did songs with guys from Obituary and Nuclear Assault had no target audience to speak of because most of the people who got the inside black metal jokes of Norselaw would hate anything that involved humor or rap and anyone who liked '80s underground metal would hate anything that involved rap and... well, that's enough, really.

This says it all, really...

ihttp://www.reflectionsfilms.com/norselaw/001.jpg

(the one you saw earlier chuck was infact the 2004 one with The Hives in it)

Anyone know about the apple scented "sniffle discs" that come with the special edition of this album? Apparently there's some kind of dealy on the CD that unleashes an apple scent when heated by the CD player.

No, Phil. Don't usually see any Drag City stuff so it's news to me. From Nazareth, a very Pennsylvania Dutch town. Do the Dutch. Wait, that's Steve Brosky (a little joke if you know the area).

There were always metal bands from these little one horse stations. Generally, they made their own records and the vinyl died there.
However, they would sometimes have the moxie to send their stuff to Kerrang which would review bands like the Sterling Cooke Force -- who were from Tamaqua, I think, and another trio, and Vicious Barreka, who -were- from Allentown/Bethlehem. They'd get four or five stars and that still couldn't get them arrested anywhere, unfortunately.

I used to be a student of the sociology eastern PA yokel bands. Live weren't metal but they fit in with poverty-stricken, too, when they were called Public Affection and much less pretentious.

I put locals in my Top Ten last year. A metal band from Hummelstown, Full Moon, who rocked. And my name was even on the cover of a Northampton metalcore band, The Russian Meatsquats. They did the theme from some horror movie, the one with the flying silver ball with knives sticking out of it that went into your head. On Whoopsie-Kerplunk records or something like that.

There's a major Eastern PA presence in this thread [Boyertown chapter].

although not too impressed

Was also playing Doomfox loud last night at which point the AC/DC and Rose Tattoo-like parts really slam. That's about .450-.500 percentage-wise, at least.

And I can report Heart Full of Dirt's American Road is a good bookend to Copperhead. A Jim Dandy-like singer carries the tuneage. "Bitch Slap" is a song everyone should know, bitch-slapping idiot SUV drivers, giving them impacted wisdom teeth with a blow upside the head, for hogging the road and blocking your view, is something a lot of people could get behind.

"Innocent Bystander" is about America's aptitude at breeding assassins and "Registered Sex Offender" could be the theme song of O'Reilly or any news show that likes to lead with the latest story of outrage. There's also a tune about a guy who steals gas, so the Harley rider wants to track him down and give him a beating.

All of it is tune-oriented with heavy classic rock guitar and some organ, lots of catch chorusing, so you lurker fans of biker rock will want to look this one up.

Anyway, "Abandon All Hope" and "Look Ma No Hands" are great. "Boyfriend," the second song, is where it really starts cranking. The drummer has the same grooves as the guy in Rose Tattoo and Phil Rudd.

It's on Vai's label, F/N, which has specialized in guitar instrumental albums, strong to the hard rock and metal side of things. You know, the consitantly fair to good records that are always ignored when it's time to trot out the cyclical this-isn't-your-dopey-older-brother's-dumbo-metal-no-buddy-this-metal-is-for-smart-people-like-you-so-getta-loud-o-what-I-found-at-Aquarius meme.

Lotsa fusion, lotsa Reid shredding, NO vocals (OO-RAH, good!!), blues-based riffs, reggae-riffs, a couple quieter things to break it up, weird string dragging and bumping on the pickup cover effect that makes it sound like a record skipping, a Tony Williams Lifetime tune covered that fits in well with everything else not stinking up the place or sticking out like a sore thumb. It will get its share of play the rest of January and at least half of February, I think.

>Alligator Stew, *Welcome to Monticello...Live!!!*: Funky Louisiana Southern hillbilly swamp semi-metal cdbaby.com discovery with a singer who sounds like Jim Dandy Mangrum and four other guys with long scraggly hair and mustaches and floppy black turkey-shooting hats. Live tracks are a little loose, being live, where people are probably drinking heavier than one should; I need to listen more to the studio CD they also sent, but that's at work and I'm at home with the live one instead now. "I Know You Too Well" somehow makes me flash on "You Got That Right" by Skynyrd; "You Gotta Give" somehow makes me ditto on "Hot Rod" by Black Oak Arkansas, though with both of em that's more due to the groove than anything else. In fact, though the vocals/guitar/piano are good, what really kills here is the rhythm section. (Though soon as I typed that it went into "The Heist," with a more expansive guitar jam opening than anything on Shooter Jenning's new album, into ballad-tempo words about factories closing: "There's a bank in Lafeyette where we get a loan," by robbing it apparently, just to get what they're rightly owed, but they're caught and wind up on death row; breaks down into parts where there's just singing over sparkling Purple/Uriah organ.) Covers of Seger's "Turn the Page" and CCR's "Green River/Susie Q." Good natured as hell. A keeper for sure, but more time required to gauge just how good it is.

>(Actually turns out the album basically winds down to a few slower spookier tracks than the whiskey party funk it starts out with; theme seems to be My City Was Gone. Last track "Far Beneath the Rubble" ends it all, talks of people lying in pools of blood and rats in the street. Could also be rememberances of a distant battlefield; hard to tell. Same mood as Nazareth's version of "The Ballad of Hollis Brown", though not as noisy.) (And by the way, Copperhead remind me of Nazareth the more I hear them as well, for whatever it's worth.)

I wonder if the airport will have Decibel. Never got a chance to pick up the January issue..

McLaughlin should have never let him and the rest of the band write matierial for Mahavishnu. Those new agey pop tunes on Inner Worlds are freakin' terrible, a sad end to a great band.

Anyone seen Electric Frankenstein live? They are playing around here weekend after next and I am going to see them. I've got How to Make a Monster, but have never seen them live.

Brent Heath's Boog is another for the lovers of Copperhead. And if you haven't heard Copperhead, it's a must for the heavy classic rock guitar fury in service to catchy tunes. It burns throughout. I can see myself playing it all year.

Anyway, Heath kicks off with "Who Damned the Man," which is stoner rock if stoner rock bands could generally write tunes that might have been on classic FM without the application of liberal doeses of wishful thinking. It's hard, has real grind on the riff, the man plays a mean wah-wah, plus he can sing as good as the song requires to be catchy. You can sing along with parts of it today, or shout. That works good, too. "S.I.N." comes next and it's a potent protest tune that we should stop scorching the earth so our kids, yours maybe, not mine -- I don't have any, will be able to respect us. That's a nice sentiment, great for the number, but I don't see it happening anytime soon.

I'll probably write more Brent Heath's most excellent Boog -- and the songs I'm playing so far are definitely not boog -- later. Another outside the very small box thinker found in the weeds of CD Baby.

Very Sabbath, that sentiment.

This week, a big feature on a hair metal theatre production in LA -- yes, that's right, hair metal -- the musical. I guess it makes a little sense, the city being once the capital of hair metal although one recognizes that the newspaper assiduously avoided saying anything nice about it when it happened. Anyway, HAIR METAL MUSICAL IN 2006 == GOOD at LA Times, BUT, HAIR METAL IN 80's = BAD!!.

The howlers: "To most pop historians [ha-ha, that's like saying "used car salesmen" with a straight face], the bands heard in 'Rock of Ages' [the writer of the piece seems not to pick up the straight reference to Def Leppard] were pea-brained dinosaurs that fed ravenously through the self-indulgent 80's, when they sold tens of millions of albums, but eventually had their comeuppance and extinction from the pop charts in the irony-laced 1990s.

"Millions of dollars in record sales and concert tickets -- as well as countless radio/TV hours -- are wasted on the cartoonish bravado like Motley Crue and Ratt," Times critic Hilburn wrote in 1986, [lamenting] that with 'meaningless pop banality ruling the marketplace, the result is that for the first time since Presley's arrival, serious, hearfelt, radical rock is a minority force."

Ha-ha, I can't stop laughing, help me, please, I've fallen and I can't get up! HAIR METAL MUSICAL = GOOD. REAL HAIR METAL = meaningless, pop banality.

So anyway, HAIR METAL THEATRE for the upper middle class = great, vitamins for your brain! And it even has something to do with Hedwig & the Angry Inch, who were sub-mediocre glam hair metal disguised as something else but loved by the theatre crew. Plus it's a smirking guilty pleasure and they don't slaughter the Nightranger song! Next up, syndication of "Prey for Rock 'n' Roll." Oh, wait.

One of the prime-movers of 'Rock of Ages," or HAIR METAL THEATRE 3000, unnamed because it was so phoned in, at 28 "has established herself as an in-demand LA director of rock musicals both poignant ("bare" about gay teens coming of age at Catholic boarding school [WHAT THE FUCK IS A CATHOLIC BOARDING SCHOOL?! I'M A CATHOLIC AND THE PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS IN ALL THE COUNTIES I GREW UP IN DID NOT BOARD, STUDENTS RODE THE FUCKING BUS JUST LIKE PUBLIC SCHOOL KIDS!!]) and raunchy, "Pussy Cat Dolls" live...

Gonna listen to Weinhold again tonight. Doomfox, more Brent Heath. Shooting Star's Leap of Faith which is two years old but beats the shit out of Bon Jovi's Have A Nice Day. Man, you have to impressed by JBJ's unabashed and relentless shilling of it, first on country channels, then on award shows, and now in ads for videos to your rinky-dinky cell phone.

Hmmm, sounded pretty good to me. One of the Tatts is actually the prime guitarist in the band on the CD I have. The humor is pretty sly, but often drier than the progenitors, so it's easy to miss it. That, or it's often hard to tell when the vocalist is kidding, which only adds to the experience. Maybe the lyricist is too smart for his own good? In any case, the Doomfox CD rocks and packs great Aussie boogie heft when turned up to the same level you'd listen to the Tatts or the Young Bros.

Ha-ha. This phrase is an extra-fine howler. Anyone who thinks Eighties metal bands lacked a sense of humor, or the very human capacity to appreciate the comedy of diametric opposites occupying the same space, is essentially ... a moron.

persephone's dream earlier CD (also mentioned above) *moonspell* (from '99) isn't as rocking as the later one, but is maybe weirder -- lots of moody dead can dance atmospherics, but also parts resembling early '80s rush, an extended drum solo, and folkier ballad stuff toward the end. the woman singer has the new aginess of gathering or lacuna types, but her band looks like they're old prog-metal guys, not death metal guys, a nice change of pace for this kind of stuff.

And Alligator Stew's ballads intersperse the gunslinger laments with plenty of factory-closing/bank-foreclosing laments, often in the same song. The gunslinging is just a part of the economics of it all.

That's brilliant! Need to relisten to that.

No way. Doomfoxx come way closer to Rose Tattoo than Wolfmother (whose EP I'm listening to right now) come to Sabbath. I don't think I even would have guessed Sabbath is what Wolfmother were aiming for if you hadn't said so. They sound like a weedy little indie rock band to me - say, Secret Machines wannabees with a Jack White wannabe singing. And Secret Machines aren't even that good. And yeah, I guess a "stoner riff" (trademark symbol here) comes in now and then, but it's like some joke "'70s show" version or something, to my ears. They seem not to know how to rock, just to zoom their churn in the air a bit. Or I got it -- they're part of that Black Mountain/Gris Gris/Warlocks "Hawkwind with the rocking parts taken out" genre maybe?

"Who Damned the Man" is definitely Xtian, and one of the best, if not the best, lead-off/single metal track I've heard this year so far. Not hard to do, it being only January. Plus there's even a song about the value of "Family."

I'll have to listen to it straightaway when time presents later today.

Here's a fine history of Chicago's very own M&R Rush. What a name...

http://www.midwestbeat.com/ezine/june%202003/mr_rush.htm

If you read the story, that's eggz-ackly what happened! And I have access to one of the albums by Alligator Stew, but it's untitled, BUT appears to be the studio LP. It doesn't have the Seger and CCR covers, but does have two versions of another song mentioned.

"You're the Only Woman" has the guy singing about he was burned to a crisp by love, can't see, but still loves her. CD Baby strikes! This would also be great on teenpop because it's sure full of pep and big guitars.

http://cdbaby.com/new/97?skip=10

Example:

JØE: Rock'n'roll Man

Best rock and roll ever. Think Ted Nugent and AC/DC

Wow, I had no idea that was her. Weird how the press info doesn't mention that.

But back to M&R Rush. First half of album I downloaded was over-the-top twin guitar bubblegum and glammy hard rock. Didn't let up for a second with the songwriting. Second half reveals local band bowing to what was expected of it, maybe at the time in the clubs of Chicago. Turns into a power pop version of Wang Chung or something. The guitars mostly disappear although some of the songwriting remains intact.

The first half is still a major arena-ready blowout though.

Brent Heath's Boog -- the title tune of which I think is about a friend who commits suicide -- grows in stature. Has the same influences as the psychedelic side of Trouble. Trouble were from Chicago, too, right?

Now don't go running off thinking you're getting The Skull, Boog is more Plastic Green Head and Run to the Light. But, anyway, it's not Trouble cloning but it is good songwriting in service of power rock and "Who Damned The Man" has great lyrics, from the protagonist as the sent to Earth saviour, who is asked to take everyone's "broken plans in his broken hands."

Thanks for hangin in with us, and, we will see you soon.
Eric, Rick, Bruce, Oly, Chuck

As for M&R Rush, George is right about the album getting a little wimpy in its second half, though "Good-bye Baby" and "Good-bye City Lights" both seem bazooka-rock enough to my ears. Interesting, too, that so many of these guys' most endearing songs (i.e., the ones about Chicago, selling a million records, da Cubs, Christmas, and John Lennon) are also musically their clunkiest. Or maybe it's just they sound dorkier when they move away from absolute cliches in their lyrics. Anyway, my point is that I enjoy their clunkier stuff, too.

http://cdbaby.com/cd/mandrrush

which was their first album. Had "Rock & Roll Chicago" on it, so I thought I had the right one. Didn't see the second which is what you have. Anyway, listen to the song "#1" on the first one. That's damn great and bubblegum glam bazooka f'r sure.

Dorky or not, I really like the original version of "Rock & Roll Chicago," too. My impression is the first half of the premier CD was originally a vinyl EP they'd made and which sent the lead-off song into rotation at a Chicago classic rock station.

Then, if you listen, you'll see how it goes MTV Eighties danceoid Viceoid around "Surgery" and after.

jeezus, xhuxk, check these euro reviews of the M&R Rush CD.

http://www.mandrrush.com/homepage/contentview.asp?c=127217

Howcum the enthusiasm?

I'll answer: Go to this month's edition of Guitar Player. In it, there is a feature on shredder Michael Angelo. Now, everyone laughs at this in general music journo circles but Angelo actually notes an interesting thing. He says he controls his publishing and now it makes a reasonable living in sales from Europe and the rest of the world.

Quote: "One difference between America and everywhere else is that we got sidetracked by grunge and nu metal. During the 90's, the rest of the world seemed more interested in Dream Theatre than Godsmack, and Kurt Cobain became the poster child for American guitar."

Michael Angelo was in Nitro in the '80's.

So Europe likes different American stuff and if it's swayed by fads, it's way different fads. Jives with me finding reviews of US classic rock and metal homegrown vanity CDs only in foreign language Euro-zines.

And I was not expecting to like the new Eyes of Fire album as I do. I didn't like their debut very much, but this one is a massive improvement.

Anyway, outside of the second album -- Strength -- often, their best stuff came later. Annoyingly, the next album I really like was close to the last one, if not the recent last one, done before Frigo up and died. I think it's entitled ?, um, really. In between there's lots of stuff, usually fair to good although a couple clunkers, with substituted lead guitarist and drummers.

Anyway, what you have sounds good. I don't suppose I'll see a copy.

Downloaded Chach's To Destroy Your Boyfriend's Confidence EP. Four songs, starts poor gets better, is best on last tune. From California, slight Roxy Musik into heavy hard influence, glammy and Goth, too. Reminds of Living Things without quite the oomph. It's average but the title of the EP is A plus-plus-plus.

email 'em!

http://www.sciencefictionidols.com/contact.htm

Looks like they're from Pittsburgh, according to the website (just like Povertneck Hilllbillies *and* Persephone's Dream, howbout that?)

Obligatory Link

(Note: He's a college kid, as are all of my writers, so bear that in mind.)

I never said that! First album was self-released, I think, and this one may be, too, unless there is actually a label called Monkey Trash Music that I never heard of before.

Anyway, the a write-up from one of the Pittsburgh dailies makes me think they sound like the Hollywood Brats, which -- coincidentally -- I was just listening to over the weekend.

Beginning excerpt, the heart of it sans the needless interview, actually:

Idols' 'ragged guitar rock' comes home
Science Fictions Idols
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, December 1, 2005

In a perfect world, the Science Fiction Idols would take a time machine back to the late 1970s. They'd be regulars at CBGB's in New York and the Whiskey A-Go-Go in Los Angeles. They'd hang out with the Rolling Stones and David Bowie, grace the covers of Creem and Trouser Press magazines,
There's only one problem with that scenario: Despite a band name that inspires visions of Isaac Asimov penning a story about a rock band, time machines don't exist.

More realistically, the Science Fiction Idols are too young to have tapped into the late '70s rock scene.

"I was 10 in the late 1970s," says drummer Angelo Amantea.

===
I'm convinced it's not necessarily to anyone's advantage to be signed, even to a piss-poor indie. The indie gives you distribution, only if you're lucky, and it can connect you with a promo person who sends out review copies that, even if reviewed, probably won't sell any CDs. Plus, you'll get hooked up with a booker who can put you into a thirteen-date across the nation in dives tour with wildly inappropriate acts. You'll show up in town, no one will attend 98 percent of the gigs, and you'll throw your money away on overhead.

Explains why CD Baby is a pretty good place to go to find things. No one is signed.

In a nutshell, I have hard time following why anyone would actually prefer to write about or buy major label and indie releases over vanity pressings considering what now constitutes "state of the art." The stigma is now the other way. A vanity pressing shows some guts. An indie pressing served by a label that hires an outside p.r. firm to put your shit together is intelligence-insulting, an affront. It shows your good at ass-kissing, networking and calling in introductory favors.

"Live at Leeds 71" is also excellent through and through. It's just very tightly played heavy rock noise with good improvisation by McPhee. It was also known as "Hoggin' the Stage," but the new version has an improved mastering job.

Those are two fine places to start. If you like either of them, then it's time to go to "Who Will Save the World?" and "Thank Christ for the Bomb."

==
And now, before I forget, I should mention The Vacancies. They're on Blackheart Records and produced by Joan Jett and although it pains me to say this, why is she so interested in a very mediocre English-sounding stock punk rock band from Cleveland? Said to be good live although going to see a stock punk rock band in 2006 is like saying you'd like to catch a nose cold because you've forgotten momentarily what it felt like.

Actually, the rep is that xhuxk is well known for liking over the transom and unescorted stuff. It seems obvious to me that quite a few bands in NYC know it, judging by the bleedthru that gets sent to me in LA.

You have to go back somewhat farther than that. Like when he lived in Michigan.

And oops, duh, Tesco IS Tesco Vee. The studio stuff was recorded at Touch & Go studios, produced by Corey Rusk, and obviously the Meatmen (who I've never listened to much) were on that label too. Which obviously explains why the reissue is on Touch & Go. Damn I'm slow.

I always thought Nebula were pretty average, but I liked their last album okay (better than anything before), and as I recall the one before that had one (lead?) track that was an okay rip of "Train Kept a Rollin" or, um, some other train classic. Haven't heard the new one, though I gotta admit Mudhoney comparisons tend not to entice me.

Broheems, You Do Need A Copy Of Black Diamond! A.K.A. The Groundhogs Thread

Maybe because it's not 2005 anymore? Anyway, even if you change it to 2006, I do think the above statement is basically true, though I'm sure there are a few noise bands now who are better than Blight were. I just can't think of their names right this very second. (As for hardcore bands, I don't know when I last heard a good one of those.)

There were a lot of noise bands that were better or equivalent to Blight, which was a kind of Tesco Vee joke which I seem to recall getting a line on from his 'zine. At least that was the impression. It didn't occur to me sooner, but the different Chainsaw 'zine reviewed a lot of them. We even had three cassette releases that were about 40 percent noise band acts. The most popular was called Annoy Your Neighbors With This Tape. Coincidentally, it did a lot to further the circulation of the Angry Samoan's right after the release of their Queer Pills EP and well before Back from Samoa became semi-popular. I still have an original copy.

I should make you a burn of Senseless Hate's Mechanical Death. Thurston Moore bought a copy and I swear when I heard Sonic Youth after their first LP and EP, he copied from the "tune," "We Destroy the Ants" on Mechanical Death, which was in an odd tuning and had that resonant character Sonic Youth was so fond of. There were Joisey noise bands, noise bands everywhere. Remember Mr. Epp & the Calculations? No? Well, from Seattle, it was another example.

I guess at some point I should compile some of this, particularly the Senseless Hate things that are tuneful. There's stuff like this laying about everywhere. It hurt more to make it then. Now it's accepted, even though it's still marginal. Shouldn't No Trend be part of this discussion?

Now playing the *Sonic Cathedral - Sirens* compilation ("an exclusive sampler celebrating the female voice in metal", by which they mean "dark gothic metal that often has no metal in it", which is fine with me), and I like a lot of it, especially the GREAT GREAT GREAT I FUCKING SWEAR HOW COME NOBODY LISTENS TO ANYTHING I SAY ABOUT THIS BAND Subterranean Masquerade, whose last CD had beautiful smooth jazz guitar parts and whose song "Suspended Animation Dreams" here is more blues psychedelia than goth metal. Other highlights include tracks by Peccatum, the Gathering, Star of Ash, Madder Mortem, and Lilitu. Also I just noticed that the song by Cirrah Nava, "Le Parade," starts with a weird Balkan organ-grider rhythm. Cool! So who the hell are they?

In other news, I never noticed until yesterday that the opening part of Rush's "Tom Saywer" blatantly ripped off the opening part of 10cc's "The Worst Band in the World," from like six years earlier. Is this common knowledge? Has it ever been documented before at all?

The Mastodon demos collection...sounds like just that. It's good, though. Will be more interested in the DVD.

Speaking of which, I had to review labelmates Green Carnation's new EP (came out Tuesday). I don't mind the tranquil nature or psychedelic undertones. I surely don't mind the complete lack of metal (they've had less metal every time anyway and it's supposed to be acoustic even though I'm pretty sure they plugged in and just played without distortion)... But the disc doesn't effect me on any level despite repeated plays. Is unexciting a word? Yeah, it is. And yeah, it is.

I like the new Green Carnation album quite a bit. It's a rare instance where a metal band makes the transition to acoustic quite smoothly...acoustic records by metal acts are usually recipes for disaster, but like the last CD by Antimatter, this one is quite lovely. Accessible, yet deeply rooted in the prog that the band specializes in. It's all about restraint, and their ability to avoid too much theatrics (strings, percussion, etc.) is impressive.

(I do agree, though, The Quiet Offspring is better)

http://www.absolutesteel.com/

Went down to Amoeba to sell some serious crap -- they wouldn't even consider taking The Sword or The Vacancies (!) -- but was able to come away with Sugrarcreek's box set. First time on CD, marked early 2005 or so from the band's vinyl pressings in the mid-80's.

On Beaver Records out of Charlotte, NC, it's right in there with M&R Rush's mix of bar band glammy AOR pop metal. Same clothes, the going bald dudes rockin' on the Jackie Stewart-style UK-country gentleman's cap initially patented by REO Speedwagon's first bass player, Greg Philbin.

The Virgin Encyclopedia of Heavy Rock (Larkin) proclaims Sugarcreek "top class pomp rock." First three albums get three and four stars. Fortune and Live at the Roxy, Charlotte, NC are the best. Since they earned their keep playing short point bars from Virginia Beach to Myrtle Beach, they had to be loud and rocking.
"Conquest for the Commoner" is even a mini-epic, being pop rockin' heavy prog, if such a thing can be imagined. Twisting Ed McMahon's Starsearch version of the Beatles' "Slowdown," too, before Zebra put it on a major label album.

Starcastle?

Sugarcreek even do Queen and Lousianna Le Roux covers -- the former, a very good take on "Dragon Attack." The latter, can't tell, I no longer remember Le Roux that well. The guitars are chopping throughout which makes them heavier than the standard AOR. For the three CDs, no one ever said turn it down, now we have to have a radio friendly mix.

There had to be a Sugarcreek or M&R Rish in every US metropolis, one that offered hard rock show bars where the level of showmanship and professionalism was required to be high. With Sugarcreek, they made their own records and as with M&R Rush, had enough of a following that they never seemed very moved by the idea of a relentless pitch to a major label. Actually, the probably made more money regionally than a major could have ever done for them.

As per usual with the genre, Euros archive more enthusiasm for the original Sugarcreek vinyl and CD reissues.

And, xhuck, did you listen to Grouchy Rooster? I haven't yet, but it appears to be a subset of the people in Alligator Stew.

Ah, clarity. PDF's comment provides more and makes total sense. Hey, gots to build up the back catalog.

This made me laugh:

Listen closely and you can hear the strain of a band struggling to sound as big as its aspirations. Listen even more closely and you can hear something else: the quiet sucking sound of a rock 'n' roll vacuum, waiting — still — to be filled.

A rock 'n' roll vacuum waiting to be filled. Savor that.

Now back to talking about all the hard rock 'n' roll regional recordings at CD Baby.

"And, xhuck, did you listen to Grouchy Rooster? I haven't yet, but it appears to be a subset of the people in Alligator Stew."

http://www.black-lotus-recs.com/mindex.html

Anyone hear the new In Flames yet? It will be interesting to see how this one does with the new label and the fact that the Gothencore that they pioneered is now all Hot Topic-al.

I'm nto a huge fan of the band's later work, I'll concede, but I'll listen with an open ear when it comes in.

Got Leviathan's Howl Mockery At The Cross in the mail today, and Krisiun's new one, AssassiNation, yesterday. Also Chris Barnes's empty-headed new thing, Terror Killer - four jagoffs who started a Six Feet Under ripoff band and did their job so well they got the man himself to front them. Ya hoo.

Obligatory MySpace Link:
http://www.myspace.com/deadsea

"Salem" is a personal favorite however the band split it up on the MySyace page which renders it not as cool as the ten-plus-minute-epic that it is on the disc they self-released. Maybe it's a MySpace limitation... Still, a decent representation. And their live shows kill.

If anyone is interested in securing a copy of the disc, email me off the list and I shall forward the request to the band.

Maybe Deadsy will be defunct by the time Deadsea get signed. And do they want to get signed and why?

Which circuitously led me to Deadsy's Internet entry, of standard Wiki-aptitude for unintentionally comical distortion. You'd think they were popular instead of an unlistenable, neo-German general staff uniform-wearing offspring of celebrity charity-case signing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadsy

It works so well, they should hire Lisa Miskovsky as their full-time lead singer.

I didn't even know Deadsy was still around...

I'm betting the lead singer was in his early-teens where his voice is/was still changing. Some of it is in a less "young-sounding" register. Lucifer's arrangements and song-writing, however, are definitely fully grown.

The new Cathedral definitely has moments that get just as wacky as Cold Lake...

Actually, it's a remastered version of their first nine-song demo...Lifesblood had only five of those tracks, while the other four were released on 7-inch singles. So yeah, while it's a money grab (can you blame Relapse?), it's a good compilation of early material for the fans.

Sugarcreek continues to astound. "Lonely Blue" from the second disc of the box set is must hear glam rock. Many bands would kill for such a song in the armory.

>Electric Boogie Dawgs, *Sloppy Fast & Loud,* barbandboogiecowpunkbilly cdbaby.com band George mentioned somewehere above: I totally approve. Catchy, rocking, good sense of humor, not ugly. Pretty much what you'd hope a band with songs called *Rock and Roll Barbecue" and "Dead Toad Boogie" and "See Y'all in Hell" and "Rockasaurus" would sound like. (In the latter, the singer goes to a bar where the DJ is playing crappy techno music.)

-- xhuxk (xedd...), January 28th, 2006.

i'd say electric boogie dawgz (with a z, oopz) sound like a funkier and funnier and more kicking version of the first 12-inch jason and the scorchers EP (praxis OR major label version -- a compliment either way), but here's their own description from their cdbaby page, which I don't totally buy: "Imagine walking into a smoky, beer-soaked roadhouse with ZZ Top, Supersuckers and George Thorogood grinding out a relentless boogie groove together onstage. Meanwhile, David Lee Roth, Ted Nugent and Ween play poker in a corner booth while Slash and Chuck Berry shoot pool. You go to the bar to order a drink and the ghost of Waylon Jennings pours you a double bourbon ..."
-- xhuxk (xedd...), January 28th, 2006.

I don't hear no Ween, Supersuckers or Slash in Electric Boogie Dawgz. They do an amusing number, however, that mocks guitar solos. As said, I liked the album way more than the Shack-Shakers' Pandelirium. It's more direct, gets down to rocking out without the baggage of goofball mythos the Shakers' now tote. Better sense of humor for the LP, less gimickry, none actually. Plus they'd like to be a red state hard rock bar band a roots rock band in altie-land at the 9:30 clubs.
-- George the Animal Steele (70743.171...), January 28th, 2006.

actually turns out electric boogie dawgz dance a pretty decent heavy boogie, especially in the zz styled "chicken on the bone" and maybe the early flaming groovies (brownsville station?) styled "won't stop rockin." but mostly they have plenty of good jokes, like the title cut george mentioned, where they name a ton of guitarists they apparently respect (starting with stevie ray vaughan and angus young) and at least one they don't (eric clapton) and keep taking the same sloppy non-solo after every namedrop. and the one where they keep counting to nine but have the blues 'cause they can't make it to ten. a good solid silly swinging party CD. and if i had to choose, i'd still say they belong on the country thread more than the metal thread.
-- xhuxk (xedd...), January 29th, 2006.

Brownsville and Cub Koda whether they know it or not. But only Teenage Head comes close to being as crunching while any style from the first five or so BS albums is in the same area. Standard but always astute observation in "Stone Cold Sober" that the object of assessment was more lively, intellectual and fun when a drunk, as opposed to a teetotaler. A band that could do justice to "The Martian Boogie."

"1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9" is also a fair Van Halen/DLR rip, only superior.

-- George the Animal Steele (70743.171...), January 29th, 2006.

Pearls and Brass' The Indian Tower is rockly rocker's rock

The Indian Tower by P&B has arrived to take the Gold Medal in Non-Cheesy Hard Rock. Rarely, if ever, does a contemporary band come along that balances cock-rock with artistic experimentation this well.

[a graf or two snipped]

Now we must produce the provenance of the fossil.

"The band's authenticity makes me want to hear Mudhoney again."

=====
That's it, let me up, I've had enough. Is it hard rock for people who don't like hard rock? It's being packaged like it.

From Nazareth, PA, where Earl Bud Hossler of the Kings used to live, so I know it well. Very nice town in a region largely devoid of them (visit Palmerton sometime, hoo-boy, and look at the purple-zinc-salt encrusted mountain, a superfund site denuded by New Jersey Zinc), home to the racing Andretti's and their speedway.

>Is it hard rock for people who don't like hard rock? It's being packaged like it.

I know it is, but it's really just basic hard rock. Like I said upthread, it's poorly mixed (the bass and guitar are an indistinguishable roar, where they should have been separated like any 70s power trio would have done) and the drummer can't swing. I think their stealth religiosity (like what you were talking about w/r/t Trouble upthread) is becoming part of the marketing campaign, too - the NY Times' "metal for meditation" comment may have been a hint in that direction. P&B are gonna get labeled red-state savages transcending their Neanderthal-ness through amplification.

Arrghhh, I like red-state rockers better, though. I don't want things transcended for special intellectoisie rock critical dispensations.

I'm burning a copy of Grouchy Rooster's Real and Raw this afternoon. I thought it could be neat because it has songs called Southern Fried Snake, Louisiana Man and Poor Man Prayer on it.

Shit, at least half the stuff on this thread is either flat out red state or philosophically so. I mean Electric Boogie Dawgz are from California, but the only parts o California that are blue are LA, SF, Berkeley, Eureka and a couple other towns. The state goes blue because way more people live in those parts than the geographically more expansive red parts.

They're to Grand Funk what Will Oldham is to Johnny Cash, or something like that.

Urgh. In other words, one fault as Phil said = no funk in the Funk.

** - *Engine Room* is only typed on a piece of paper insert inside the cardboard sleeve, not on the disc or the sleeve itself. weird!

I know what you mean with the swing aspect though. They're looser live.

On the other hand, I don't get Early Man. I expected them to have a DFA remix track out already.

This morning I listened to Diecast for the first time in awhile. They capably massaged the part of my brain that needs generic metalcore to live.

Charles McNulty, who came from the Voice in 2005, reviewed it.

"Still you've got to hand it to a decade that considered guys with painted-on jeans, heavily appliqued belts and fried Farrah Fawcett butch."

"So when the conveniently named Sherrie Christian leaves Kansas to make it big in Hollywood, her parents belt out Night Ranger's 'Sister Christian.'And after she convinces her cute co-worker, Drew, at the 'Rock of Ages' club on Sunset to go for his dream, he hammers out Twisted Sister's 'I Wanna Rock.' Needless to say, when life reaches a crisis point for our heroine, she'll be serenaded with a rendition of Steve Perry's 'Oh Sherrie.'"

"...When Lonnie falls in love with the last person you'd expect [this must be a crypto-gay reference], the two break out into REO Speedwagon's 'Can't Fight This Feeling'..."

"For those whose skin is starting to crawl right now, be warned that you might find it hard to resist the infectious head bobbing which reached epidemic proportions in the audience during Whitesnake's 'Here I Go Again' and Quarterflash's 'Harden My Heart.'"

Another CD Baby special, Shotgunn's We Go Way Back. Not southern, not Sunset strip, but trio stuff on their own label, which is where the best material I've been listening to has come from in the first quarter in my quarters. 2006 rule: If it's an indie and has a press agent -- inhouse or outhouse, it's for the toilet.

Consider, you're on an indie, the label serves the record through it's p.r. contractor, like the Departments of Defense or Homeland Security shilling something or someone they want want written about to Federal Computer Week. The Federal Computer Weeks all line up to write that which is peddled by the peddlers because it's on a schedule, it's product and it's the way of things.

Anyway, you're the band -- and you get the press in the Federal Computer Weeks of indie music, and you're granted a booker who puts you on a thirteen date whirlwind tour of the US. You get to every town but two -- one on the east coast and one on the west coast, both with over 4 million people living in them, and there are no copies of your CD in stores and no more than twenty people at the gig if it's not a Thursday-Friday-Saturday and Thursday is pushing. (The example that breaks the rule: Occasionally there will be one copy of your CD in town, but no one will know which store it is in.)

Wow, wasn't that fun. Now you're ready to be in a musical or a parody where people with money will actually pay to see you perform other people's music!

Trio -- heavy don't step on the grass sam heavy bar band rock from Denver. Take your time, break the rules, have a woozie party or something like it on "Give In."

Heavy white rhythm & blooz on "Heart Attack" -- mumbling but tuneful vocals by someone who wishes the object of desire, she, was older. Is he smacking his chops for jailbait? "This is serious," he sings. Then there's a chopping solo with a bit of the snake thrown in, working off the rhythm, which is in the pocket.

"We Go Way Back" more white boy blooz shouting, only the guy's not quite a shouter. Doesn't matter, the rhythm section supports it with hard rock shuffling, funky strides and monkey beats. Tricone national or country dobro or tinny metallic acoustic used to back up the electric riff, a technique you'd think would be used more often because it sounds neat.

First three songs, three solid crunchers.

"Drunk Babies," next tune, falls flat because the singer tries to sound sensitive, which makes him come off like the dude in the Black Crowes doing his Gram Parsons thing. "Drunk babies burning hisself," yurgh.

With that out of the system, "Bad Night Bar Blues" goes back to the good stuff. More chopping grooving white boy rhythm & blooz.

"Fine Wine" -- here comes brother Chris and the Black Crowes' southern home companion almanac again. Found Jim Dickinson or Jai Winding or somebody to play electric piano. This is where they light up the cyalume sticks in the audience except this band never plays in places where the kids can buy 'em.

Two more songs, both fair to good. Band writes about what it knows, a mix of crunching hard rock, heartland midwest stuff, the riff on the last tune, "Hey Kids" is trad and kills. Not enough cowbell. That's a compliment.

From:

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/2669/Lucifer.html

"LUCIFER and Church of Satan member David Powers wins first prize at talent show for 'Hump Day' celebration during Mediterranean Deployment. As representative of the Legions of Darkness, Powers performed mostly LUCIFER material for nearly a half an hour (plugged and unplugged) to the ecstatic crew.

Powers currently serves in the United States Navy on board a Guided Missile Destroyer in the Harry S. Truman Carrier Battle Group."

OBD's Minister of Musick & Knight of The Infernal Empire, Mr. Powers is also currently composing music for the next LUCIFER unleashing.

The Order of The Black Dragon congratulates Mr. Powers in this accomplishment, and we look forward to his safe and victorious return. Hail United Satanic America! HAIL SATAN.

====
And I think we can all agree that "Crush the Enemy" is a good song to play if you're in the US military.

So success in this manner of music does come down to a sheer lottery. Practically speaking, anyone can win. It's all a matter of astounding good luck. Networking, connections, bribes, quid pro quos and calling in favors help a bit to get the ball rolling.

The entire series of Leslie and Corky's home tapes of Mountain playing at various venues just went on-line. Arghhh -- MississippiQueenNantucketSleighrideMissippiQueenCrossroaderMississippiQueen.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110007902

Alas, the Cookie Monster school of death metal is dying

Sorry, more kids listen to Slipknot, System of a Down, and Melissa Cross bands than watch PBS.

lots of cookiemonster around though, he just ain't looking

It's a bug story, something put together with simplicity and baby talk about biting insects/weird animals/poisonous plants/fatal diseases to vaguely entertain the WSJ's readership, which mostly would never buy Scum or have heard of it.

Lots of newspapers do 'em. It's called "look at the queer stuff I found today." Interviewing Frank Oz would be a coup if Stuttering John or Ali G had done it. Y'know, some operation with an obvious sense of humor. Since the WSJ has no funnybone, it's just laborious busy work.
From the editorto the reporter: "I think we need a sentence from the Muppets guy. Can you call him to get his side of the story?"

What the heck did anyone expect the guy to say? "Yes, they pay me a good royalty and it's an artistic peak of which I am most proud."

Next week: Classic rock [or any type of fill-in-the-blank rock] is dieing. The kids prefer computer games and running websites devoted to the exchange and sale of backyard wrestling home DVDs.

>I finally figured out that Copperhead's probably-catchiest and most rousing song "Keepin' On" basically IS "Keep On Rollin'" by REO Speedwagon -- same hook and everything, and no that is not an insult. Also, "Stricken" on their album turns into "Black Betty" by Ram Jam for a couple seconds, and they cover "Drift Away" (better than Uncle Kracker) which somehow I never noticed before but which makes perfect sense given their soul-country side project Southwind, and "Free Man" has a cool acid-rock organ break and like all great free-man songs reminds me of South Side Commission's great early gay disco classic "Free Man," though usually when hard rock bands sing about being a free man I think they're singing about getting out of prison whereas when gay disco bands sing about it they're more likely singing about the entire prison of LIFE. Unless I am completely wrong.

The Radio 1 - Rock Show, http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/rockshow/

has a Norwegian Black Metal music special. [Now on Listen Again - 2 Hours]

We meet the legends of Norwegian black metal in Part 2 of our Scandinavian special.

Includes interviews with Emperor, Darkthrone, Dimmu Borgir and 1349.

After living with the album for a while, I've found the album's first half is a touch on the pedestrian side, but then really takes off on the last four tracks, when they start singing about iron swans, extinct cows, and whatnot.

Metal Blade Records will release a deluxe box set by the acclaimed '80s Atlanta thrashers HALLOWS EVE, entitled "History of Terror", on March 10. This box set includes all three of the group's Metal Blade albums (all remastered!), piles of bonus material and a bonus DVD (with a playing time of 200-plus minutes!). Liner notes will be included as well.

"History of Terror" track listing:

Disc 1:

"Tales Of Terror" (remastered)

01. Plunging To Megadeath
02. Outer Limits
03. Horrorshow
04. The Mansion
05. There Are No Rules
06. Valley Of The Dolls
07. Metal Merchants
08. Hallows Eve (including Routine)

"Death & Insanity" (remastered)

09. Death And Insanity
10. Goblet Of Gore
11. Lethal Tendencies
12. Obituary
13. Plea Of The Aged
14. Suicide
15. D.I.E.
16. Attack Of The Iguana
17. Nefarious
18. Nobody Lives Forever
19. Death And Insanity (Reprise)

Rehearsals June 1984

20. The Mansion
21. Metal Prisoners (WARRIOR)

Total: 75:29 min

Disc 2:

"Monument" (remastered)

01. Speed Freak
02. Sheer Heart Attack (QUEEN)
03. Rot Gut
04. Monument
05. Pain Killer
06. The Mighty Decibel
07. The Righteous Ones
08. No Sanctuary

Rehearsals May 1984

09. Scream In The Night (EXCITER)
10. There Are No Rules
11. Eighteen (ALICE COOPER)
12. Hallows Eve

1st Demo "Tales Of Terror"

13. Hallows Eve
14. Metal Merchants

Live 8/17/85 The Montreal Palladium, Canada

15. Nefarious
16. Horrorshow

Total: 77:48 min

Disc 3:

Live 9/22/85 CBGBs, NY (Soundboard Recording)

01. Plunging To Megadeath
02. Valley Of The Dolls
03. Suicide
04. Attack Of The Iguana
05. Lethal Tendencies
06. Evil Offerings (prev. unreleased)
07. The Mansion
08. Metal Merchants
09. Hallows Eve

LIVE 11/24/85 Essex, MD

10. Plea Of The Aged
11. Horrorshow

Live 11/27/85 CBGBs, NY

12. Evil Offerings (prev. unreleased)
13. The Mansion
14. Metal Merchants
15. Hallows Eve

Live 12/18/86 Swizzles in York, PA

16. Goblet Of Gore
17. Nefarious
18. Death And Insanity
19. D.I.E.

Total: 78:25 min

Disc 4 (DVD):

Live 12/5/86 (?? -87- ??) Poughkeepsee, NY

01. Pain Killer
02. No Sanctuary
03. Goblet Of Gore
04. Rot Gut
05. Monument
06. D.I.E.
07. Speed Freak
08. Drum Solo – Rob Clayton
09. The Mighty Decibel
10. Death And Insanity
11. Valley Of The Dolls
12. Metal Merchants
13. Sheer Heart Attack (QUEEN)
14. Riff Raff (AC/DC) – CUT

Live 12/12/86 Middletown, NY

15. Intro: Obituary
16. Goblet Of Gore
17. Valley Of The Dolls
18. Suicide
19. Plunging To Megadeath
20. Horrorshow
21. D.I.E.
22. Attack Of The Iguana
23. Death And Insanity
24. Lethal Tendencies
25. Plea Of The Aged
26. Metal Merchants
27. Hallows Eve

Live 12/18/86 York, PA

28. Goblet Of Gore
29. Nefarious
30. Valley Of The Dolls
31. Suicide
32. D.I.E.
33. Attack Of The Iguana
34. Death And Insanity
35. Lethal Tendencies
36. Plunging To Megadeath
37. Metal Merchants
38. Hallows Eve
39. Encore: Evil Offerings (prev. unreleased)

Live 11/18/86 New York, NY

40. Goblet Of Gore
41. Nefarious
42. Valley Of The Dolls
43. Suicide
44. Death And Insanity
45. Lethal Tendencies
46. Plunging To Megadeath
47. D.I.E.
48. Metal Merchants
49. Hallows Eve

Total: 206:44 min

(DVD 9) PAL / Region Code: 0

Not hearing that. If it did, I'd have liked it more, a lot more. WG had a sense of humor of which there is none obviously coming off the Sword. Death Penalty also wasn't recorded like a stoner rock album with stereophonic monolithic sound. Plus, you didn't get the armchair D&D thing. As for the last four tunes, I never get that far. I might have once. Maybe I ought to try again or just plain start there.

Or I could go back to Cargun which has been enjoyable on almost all cuts. Tonight might also go to Regenesis, but that's over on the prog thread.

The riff from "Lethal Tendencies" is still in my head and it has to have been at least ten years since I last threw it on.

"Out of foooooooooooooood, out of time..."

Title track: Aborym - Generator
http://www.myspace.com/aborym666

This Aborym track is impressive powerful black metal, 1 minute 15 seconds into the track sounds like vintage Emperor, then the big looping progressive rock spacey sections of guitar work ala Enslaved - circa 2 minutes into the track are sublime, so majestic.

hey, george, or whoever, have you ever heard Seven Witches? With Jack Frost on guitar? Crash Music sent me two reissues of theirs. One is from 1999 and i can't remember when the other one is from. Anyway, really cool NWOBHM priest/maiden mayhem. highly entertaining.

new relapse ecard for forthcoming: unearthly trance
http://www.relapse.com/ecards/unearthlytrance/

unearthly trance - the trident

due april 4th

Heh...same here. Some great Metal Blade stuff on there, Fates Warning, Slayer, etc.

The 1994 reissue came today. It's on Rock Candy, is pushed by a couple Brit metal critics, was never in CD land previous. Jack Douglas-produced band that was formerly the LA Jets with Karen Lawrence. The LP took off on the second side into amazing woman blooz singer fronting band doing stoked Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin-styled heavy rock. The closer, "Anastasia," is volcanic even down to the imitation balalaika. Another prime cut is "Radio Zone." Lawrence wrote a song made into a hit by Barbra Streisand, but couldn't collect on it because as a youthful member of the LA Jets, had signed away her publishing in exchange for a record deal.

She also sang backup for Aerosmith and is now in a reasonably well known blooz band in California. Comes with some extra live cuts -- raw and fuzzy from cassette, showing she could sound incredible, like an air raid siren on some tunes.

And the Gooz, my old pal from the Highway Kings, went to see Early Man at the Khyber Pass in Philly last night. Toted a full band and two Orange stacks and rocked, says he, finishing with "Death Is the Answer." A good time was had by all. He even liked The Sword muchly -- on the undercard and whom I still can't abide.

Played In Flames's new one yesterday, and it also seemed listenable but undistinctive. They're still melodic enough, I guess; what most struck me about the album so far is how *sceamo* its vocals sound. Usually that would totally turn me off; here I don't mind, really, but I can't say it especially grabs me either. I think I found them more interesting when they had more Thin Lizzy guitar interplay or were doing industrial version of '80s Genesis hits. Jeanne, are the screamo vocals what you mean by "very apparent just how much hardcore has 'borrowed' from metal in recent years"? As someone who has no idea what bands are supposed to be "hardcore" now or why, since much of metal and hardcore have basically been mixing up genes for the past quarter century and have basically been exactly the same thing for most of that time, I'm not sure I get your point, to be honest!

I think my definition of hardcore is warped because a lot of the NYHC bands that I associate as "hardcore" were more of a punk hybrid than a metal hybrid. I haven't been exposed to many older bands who were mixing metal and hardcore until the past 10 or so years except maybe Black Flag and Cro-Mags (who I don't think are that good to begin with and therefor never really bothered with), maybe even later.

xp - Most all of the NYCH stuff - Cro-Mags, Agnostic Front - was metallic. Which was funny because the bands got crap for getting *too* "metal" on subsequent albums. AF actually derisively called Victim In Pain their "metal" abum relatively recently. Although the Cro-Mags got more crap on album #1 which was their *prog* album.

NOSCE TEIPSUM/ZERO DEGREES FREEDOM *Split CD* from Australia via cdbaby.com -- I like the Gregorian/Carol Orff/whatever spooky gothic bombast fanfare they start out with and that slips back in now and then, hate the gratutiously ugly and unlistenable on purpose death-by-vomiting vocals by both bands throughout. Others might like this more.

Okay, I will take a deep breath....

(sorry, Jeanne, no offense to you! This has always just been a pet peeve of mine, sorry.)

So yeah, xhuxk, metal and hardcore (and metal and just about everything else) was mixed up before the New York scene, but when you compare the music of their *contemporaries* in other regions, the New York stuff had a lot more metallic bombast than other scenes.

I mean, I loved Minor Threat (and still do) but even as a kid I knew that there was a huge sonic difference between them and AF/Cro-Mags even though I lovged that stuff too.

Not for nothing, the first time I ever saw Sick Of It All, they were opening for Exodus. It was an odd bill. Blood, Sweat No Tears hadn't come out yet and all the metalheads were hanging in the back. I was up front with a couple of baldies. The band was quite surprised that one of the long-hairs in attendance knew them from the track on the Revelation comp "New York Hardcore: The Way It Is". And this wasn't *that* early for such things (or so I thought).

(Oh, in my post above, Warzone got crap for going "prong" with album #3, not 1.)

Prong got crap for a lot of things though... ;)

Actually, the music of that scene was a lot more varied than I give it credit - it's just that the stuff I latched onto at the time was the meathead mook-core stuff. At the same time you also has (as was mentioned before) Gorilla Biscuits and No Redeeming Social Value. You also had Murphy's Law who were interesting. I remember them for their embrace of ska and the like but maybe that was later?

xp - Yeah, Crumbsuckers were from NY.

xxp - I liked Leeway too! I especially liked their album that everyone hated Desperate Measures because it was so damn catchy. Maybe that's why people hated it... Their loss.

Ludichrist begat Scatterbrain and Crumbsuckers begat Pro-Pain.

Proletariat is on-line now. I had all that stuff and they weren't very hardcore, more Euro and mid-tempo. Big swathes of guitar, rigid beats, attention-getting.

Murphy's Law were a really stupid band that played in the Lehigh Valley at the Airport Music Hall regularly with Mucky Pup, who were equally dumb. Lost of people fighting. Fighting in front of the stage, fighting in the parking lot and after a few minutes there would always be a couple of squad cars to take the worst of them off to jail. ML's Jimmy Gestapo would be drinking beer piped into his mouth from a big funnel and hose. By the end of the set he'd be so anesthaetized, he'd leap into the air, stretch out his legs and come down flat on his back. I bet he has serious ruptured disc and laminar problems now.

Since the newspaper features section covered these shows I saw just about everyone. They were beyond wretched.

NYHC affiliated bands I liked: Cro-Mags, Judge, Breakdown, Gorilla Biscuits, Sick Of It All (actually saw all of these except Breakdown on the same bill one time at City Gardens in Trenton). I still have Cro-Mags and Judge in my iPod as I type this, and if I ever remember to buy the CD with Breakdown's demo tape on it (they never had an official release) I'll probably blast that for a week straight, too. Never liked Bold or Youth of Today or Warzone (who I saw open for the Ramones at the Ritz on 54th Street in 1989 or so).

xhuxk, it's a show on A&E that inspired the "punching and kicking rollerderby girls" reference with regards to Hank III. White trash-ville redneck goyls do humiliating rollerderby which is about no rules fighting and hair-pulling, thinking they're going to be big pro sport stars instead of the publicity desparate trailer park tintypes they will always be. Catfights, vulgarity, people being ruthless and mean to each other for the sake of entertainment.

i liked all the east coast straightedge shit, and i was in danbury for it, which was sort of ground zero for the CT factions. but i liked the metal stuff from new york (everything already mentioned) AND all the peacepunk stuff like false prophets, a.p.p.l.e., etc.

okay, fine, i liked everything.

I'm amazed how far you guys got into an 80s metal vs. hardcore hybrid without mentioning Suicidal Tendencies or SOD. From where I sat, ST's first record (1983) was the Tigres-Euphrates of hc/metal hybridization (listen to the guitar solos!). There was no going back after that djinn was out of the bottle.

Although NYC was late to that party, they put it over the top - SOD completely joined metal and hardcore at the hip (the music as well as the audience). 3/4 of Anthrax playing hardcore will do that I guess.

By the time Suicidal Tendencies released their second album in '87 "crossover" was in full swing - "going metal" was a career move. Agnostic Front, DRI, Gang Green, Fear, Murphy's Law, hell, even I Against I reflected the change. Man, did I hate all that shit. Sorry, Scott.

One gig that didn't make the Music Hall was DRI/Sick Of It All, or maybe the second act was Biohazard, I forget. It had been scheduled for one of A-town's "upscale" rock clubs and at the very last minute the owner got cold feet and unilaterally cancelled, afraid the place would be trashed. It was immediately rescheduled for a dive. The bands arrived, the show went off, and the place was trashed. The ceiling, being low, was torn down. Pictures ran in the newspaper's weekend edition.

Just got back from Pasadena Tower were I declined to part with any cash money. Did see the current issue of Revolver on the stand. It caught my eye because of the goods promised inside. "Girl on Girl Antics" and "Naughty Interviews" with the sexiest women in metal. Of course, none of it was true although a good photographer took the full page pictures. Scott's ol' pal Liz Buckingham was there.

I remember Revolver being touted on rockcritics.com at one point, a magazine where the editor or editors insisted only the finest quality music writing was accepted and if you spelled one name wrong and the copy editor caught it, ya were dismissed. To which comes to mind, again, the high brow intellectoisie of "Girl on Girl Antics" and "Naughty Interviews."

Did get a chance to listen to Morningwood. Originally had asked on teenpop but it might as well go here, too. Did one song, "Easy" that kind of sounded like bad AC/DC. Loud guitars on a good number of songs. They did a lot of different things, none memorably. Not good. Not awful, just ehh.

'm amazed how far you guys got into an 80s metal vs. hardcore hybrid without mentioning Suicidal Tendencies

Hey, I'll mention it. More beloved cannon fodder for fighting gigs in the Lehigh Valley. Always supremely reliable for someone getting hurt, cop cars, girls being beaten up, trash fires -- like urban blight. A totally worthless sociopathic act with a surprisingly large Valley audience of completely contemptible, at least for one night, dolts.

Ha, I told Xhuxk it was a bad Paybacks song. Still, it's my favorite on the album by far.

I was definitely late(r) to the NYHC party, mostly because of my age and the fact that I got into the scene by default -- a younger brother. But I always thought it was so f*cking cool how there would be a handful of mega-tough chicks beating the shit out of everyone in the pit. For such a mook genre of music, there were *always* chicks representing.

Speaking of Murphy's Law, they opened for Andrew WK at his last show in NYC at Irving Plaza.

And Morningwood's "Easy" was the stand out for me. If the entire album had stuck to that vein a bit more I would have been tempted.

is this where we talk about kinghorse?

I re-purchased Suicidal Tendencies' How Will I Laugh Tomorrow When I Can't Even Smile Today, Controlled By Hatred/Feel Like Shit...Deja Vu and Lights...Camera...Revolution a month or so ago. They hold up well.

what did y'all think of this review?

Here's a teaser:

And they are quick to cut to the heart of the matter, offering chilling new angles on the Drei-Reiche-Lehre concept, sweeping up gristle and blood from History’s meat market, and considering Charlemagne’s Holy Roman Empire, Hegel, Sade, and logocentrism

i really don't like this metal thread, at all :(

Then don't read it. We'll still have a merry time.

Back to regular transmission: The next one could also be on thudrock or rolling prog threads, Nektar's we're-back-together in 2004 live CD is over two hours of their show. Contains most of Remember the Future, Recycled and A Tab In the Ocean plus a lot of stuff I don't remember. Albrighton's guitar is up front and as metal prog, they wrote chugging riffs punctuated with bursts of acid-fried lead. Startling how good it is for -- oh, no [!] -- old people. Possibly satisfying to the lovers of space rock, hard rock, math/prog all at the same time, although I've always prefered the simplicity of prog over math.

it was too long for me to read, but i dig it! Very goth. my review of that album was way goth too:

http://www.decibelmagazine.com/reviews/nov2005/deathspell_omega.aspx

Okay, see you in 2007...

Yeah, I was right to skip grad school.

a) when i wanna read about metal, i head for stylus.

b) stewart voegtlin (who also writes highfalutin' reviews for dusted) needs to lay the metal on the floor and back away slowly.

i really like this album, but this guy voegtlin -- who someone else mentioned also brings the post-structuralism over at dusted.com -- he just ... words fail me. i have never come across someone who can so completely take a dump in print all over my enjoyment of music I otherwise adore. he ruins without equal. obvs i should just stop reading him, but it's like a bruise I can't help but touch.

Or possibly overcompensation for getting beaten up by the Prussians too many times.

The Black Angels, *Passover*. Also indie guys with borderline metal credentials, but I like them a lot more. From Texas, five guys. Clear Velvet Underground (not VU's second album) influence, filtered near as I can tell through early Dream Syndicate, first Echo and the Bunnymen album, maybe debut EPs by Flaming Lips or Raveonettes or somebody. But louder than that seems; they've got a girl credited with "drone machine," even. Their own debut EP came out last year, and so far as I can tell two of the album's better songs ("Black Grease" and "First Vietnamese War") led it off. "Call to Arms" is a good nine-minute closer with a lovely raveup guitar climax; a couple minutes after it ends, there's a hidden track about letters from people fighting in Iraq, more singer songwrterly than the rest of the album, which is bearable until the ending where the guy keeps saying "stop the war" over and over and I kept saying "stop the song." Album's listenable all the way through, though in this case like many similar cases it may well turn out that the EP is still the one to keep.

..partially because most people probably don't *remember* (if they ever knew in the first place) how loud dream syndicate or flaming lips could be early on. but also i mean that the vietnamese war song REALLY reminds me of something off the first and best echo and the bunnymen album *crocodiles,* but rocks louder than echo and the bunnymen ever did.

But yeah, Red Swan are great. Which reminds me I just saw Ted Nugent on TV, working in a Michigan hunting store in some pre-Superbowl skit, and he shot some guy who came in with his crossbow. There was a stupid laugh track, but it was still nice to see him on TV.

Ted's usually witty but if I watch to much of him and his wife going on about their wholesome family, their wholesome American dream, soldier and the holy sanctity of hunting and grilling your own food, I get a headache. It never seems to occur to Ted that some people, not necessarily leftists, Commies and anti-America types, have bad memories associated with riflery and the military.

backup vocals in this track remind of the jesus and mary chain (which is probably what i meant by "raveonettes" too, come to think of it.) so throw them into the equation as well.

Who knew death metal could be this vital and impressive in the age of deathcore?

"Deutsch"! Really?

Big Business: bass and drums ruled that High on Fire gig I went to last Thursday! Thx Decibel!

I'm going to put this on thud or prog or something, but the digital copy of the first album by Audience from '69 is pretty cool, very rocking, weird-ass pop and hard-sounding for a band with a bass player, a saxaphone on half the tunes, and a singer/guitarist who played a nylon-stringed instrument.

Wasn't that LaMonte Young / John Cale's pre-VU marathon drone ensemble?

george, you should check out the seven witches stuff. same guitarist (jack frost) as the bronx casket company albums.

A song on Audience's first album was said to be the basis for "Stairway to Heaven," Howard Werth claiming Jimmy Page took it after his band opened for LZ in a club date that earned them a contract. Werth also takes credit for Dylan's "Knockin' On Heaven's Door." For the former, re Page and "Stairway," I'm not hearing it. But Audience is one of those totally weird but still pop song writing acts that would have been inspiration to a lot of Brit peculiars, and by extension, US peculiar hard rock. Like Skafish and Cheap Trick. The delver owes it to himself to look into Audience.

El Tri were originally (until they cleaned up their act, a la Eric Clapton post-Cream) called Three Souls in My Mind, who were a great, fucked-up Mexican psych band that sang about Drugs and Satan.

They also sang the INTREPIDOS PUNKS theme song.

Is this the one they're pushing with the DVD at Tower Records. If so, I didn't see that song in the list of titles. Or something else? In any case, the 2 CD set is also in stock.

Opinions differ. It's one of the Federal Computer Weeks of music journalism. If you haven't ever read or heard of FCW, you'll be blank, but if you do know what it is, the analogy is apt. FCW is devoted to the process, people and bureaucracy of federal agencies, the Department of Defense, it's multitudes of operations and the corportions and people that do business with them. It's mind-numblingly full of jargon and infrastructure as journalism. It appears complicated and full of information, but it's information of almost zero value. It is as dull as dishwater and devoid of any obvious sense of humor.

If Federal Computer Week had a sense of humor, like most music pubs that follow its way of journalism, it would be one that its fans thinks is acidic and clever but which appears to everyone else on the outside as long ream of toilet jokes.

It's natural that music mags, including metal ones, would duplicate Federal Computer Week-style journalism. The reviewing and interviewing of the microgenres is all about process and promotional schedules, and the production of laudatory copy that is convincing to absolutely no one except those profiled in it. Drink your own Kool-Aid or being a believer in propaganda is a requisite, if only for time you don the hat of particpator in it.

Jargon, styles and classifications of bureaucracies and bureaucrats were codified by Federal Computer Week. The metal 'zines and a lot of other similar music magazines have extended the same techniques and tools to covering their respective beats.

Federal Computer Week is a magazine for a club. The club is corporate information officers, government IT workers, apparatchiks and all the conventions and seminar they go to as well as the speakers and vendors at the same cons. Wholesale, it's been duplicated by the music trades. Metal 'zines are a club. Every time I've picked one up for the last fifteen years I've been always been entertained by the multiplication of microgenres and eagerness to coin new jargons. The astonishingly many and grandiose reviews of CDs that move more promotional copies than they actually sell is like reading profiles in FCW of the CIOs and assorted of vice-presidents of Pentagon Machinery, Inc. or the corporate descriptions of new businesses offering something for government contracts.

If you don't know the club or the rules or the rigid tenets of metal microstyles, then anything outside that "is just not metal." As a process invented by Federal Computer Week it was if you don't know the terminology for the latest in productivenetworkwares, or the current hot fad in efficiency auditing and tigerteaming, you're on the outside.

Hey, when someone shows up and whines "I really don't like this metal thread" then we know our job is done.

As to the new indie rock. Hmmm, who needs a new indie rock? It's like saying we need a new strain of flu. What's good about obscure signed bands represented by the same run-on-automatic booking agencies and p.r. agencies?

http://www.thesatanicinquisition.cjb.net/

"This is a cutting-edge publication like none other. Since both editors are incarcerated, scene, show and album reviews are strongly desired. While interviews with musicians and interesting persons are also of interest, passionate writing about nearly any subject will be considered — especially with a Satanic-slant. Complete manuscripts as well as queries are fine. If you have clips of previous work, they are welcome, but not required. What is more important is a strong cover letter or query explaining why you are qualified or suited to write the piece or pieces. Payment comes in the form of a by-line, courtesy copies and Satanic salutations. E-mail queries and manuscripts to: lord_morder@yahoo.com"

* - my Voice review of which (along w/ other '01 metal EPs) is here:

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0113,eddy,23384,22.html

"10 songs into 99 tracks"

this is an anti-filesharing thing they do on promos now. surprised you never noticed it before.

i've noticed it before, scott! (mainly on dropkick murphys CDs, for some reason.) but it's still *rare* on promos. and it's still stupid.

so phil and scott, what do you like about akercocke? i don't get it.

My reasoning is that if you don't take a stand, you just get pushed around by p.r. types and the labels more. One good idea is to devote the review to the anti-copy protection scheme instead of the music, mentioning the act only in passing. You should do that with Ackercocke, xhuxk, in one of your one-liners. "Extreme metal band that hit trash because of copy protection," or "Copy protection not cost effective in promotion," or "Band killed by dumb label tracking trick -- steal their music, anyway, on principle."

It's another example of Federal Computer Week-ism. Fifteen years ago, FCW and pubs like it would sometimes review software. Some of the companies were so nuts over software pirates they come up with a scheme called the "dongle" to stop it. You'd get a copy of the software along with a little gadget that you had to screw onto one your PC's outside ports. If it wasn't there, when the software fired up, it would quit, thereby supposedly detering you from copying it to a BBS where other people could steal it.

You heard it here first: Eventually, a really stupid record company will try to float this idea again, distributing a dongle-like (buy it once, and you're finished [!] they will proclaim] thing to screw onto an out on your stereo, your PC and anything else you wish to play their music on.

As far as what I actually like about Akercocke, I like that their black metal is intricate, with the same kind of faux-Middle Eastern prog breaks Led Zeppelin occasionally wallowed in, and long songs which make a half-hour train ride from home to work more enjoyable. Not for home listening, but excellent while blasted through headphones en route to someplace that promises to be disappointing. And I like the guy's vocals. And their suits.

Often the band isn't worth the copy protection if you sit down and do a tough-minded evaluation of their audience and sales potential. Copy protecting a band that, at best, could only hope to sell a few hundred to three or four thousand copies is pointless. It's like protecting a bag of dirt. It certainly doesn't help the act as they'll never see any significant royalties past whatever paltry advance they were granted.

I like the ambition of the Ackercocke album. Or what ILM's Siegbran would call the "half-assed experimentalism" of the Ackercocke album. And I like their metal soundz as well. I think I might prefer the new Solefald album though. as far as art projects go.

My promo of the new Decapitated is like that. The publicist promised me a finished copy, though, so I have to e-mail him today (it came out yesterday) and bug him about that.

I don't care anymore, since I'm usually playing the CD on a computer anyway. Pointing and clicking at track 38 in iTunes is no biggie.

Plus 99-track Dillinger Escape Plan and Morbid Angel CDs on shuffle are AWESOME.

The new Ephel Duath is actually improved quite a bit by playing it this way.

When stuck with lemons make lemonade.

"Checks & Balances," US Secret Service ready, catchy in the way of Elton Motello's first record.

http://myspace.com/jaikwillis

I friggin' hate those CDs. The recent Gamma Ray album had the fadeouts. Next time that happens, do a Decibel review where every 20 words, it's either cut off by blank space, or is interupted by, "YOU ARE READING A REVIEW OF..."

I don't mind the 99 track dealies as much, though my un-labeled 99 track version of last year's Leng T'che album was so confusing, I couldn't review the album at all.

On a side note, I heard some stuff from the new album by The Gathering today, and it sounds pretty great.

Or just download the record like everybody else. It's practically your journalistic duty, unless you'd rather be in Iraq chasing bombs.

Earache seems to be the main metal proponents of this type of copy-protection. Century Media/Nuclear Blast still use cardboard-sleeve promos. Candlelight sends me burned discs in little black sleeves. Both methods disuade from promo-selling (we don't even try and sell anything not in normal packaging; do they have resale value in any retailers in your areas?)

I put up no less than 30 new CDs into the "New Metal Arrivals" wall the past two days. Some are actually new while some are just new to me (imports and the like). Let's see what I can recall from my home computer...

* In Flames
* Mastodon old shit compilation
* Dimmu Borgir re-recording (the import vinyl has a 7" single in it)
* Burst
* Edguy (import digi)
* Behemoth (limited edition EP)
* Candlemass (the first of the reissues - I need these big time)
* Thyrfing (with a couple of reissues)
* A bunch of Black Lotus stuff (Greek label mentioned above)
* A bunch of Galy stuff (Canadian label rarely mentioned)
* Eyes Of Fire
* Insense & Satariel (both Candlelight)
* Century (Tribunal Records)
* Satyricon reissues
* Hammerhead (NWOBHM retrospective; I would like to hear this one)
* Charon (Spinefarm)
* Neuropathia (album cleverly entitled Satan Is a Cunt)

There are a few DVDs too... A couple of splits - one with Birdflesh and someone else, another with Sabbat (Japan) and Desaster, another with Regurgitate and Suppository... Even more I can't think of. No doubt something that'll piss me off I forgot.

We have a big in-store on Saturday - In Flames dropping by. If anyone is in Columbus, drop by. 5:00.

Relapse -- a lot of it although there often seems to be no rhyme or reason to what will be copy-protected and what isn't. I spent a review of Dillinger's last one beating them over the head for it. After that, not all of them came copy-protected. The Leng T'che was one that did and it made the decision, after listening to it once and actually liking it, to toss it in the trash. The Journey DVD was a spectacular ly annoying example of it. The p.r. company then had the nerve to ask me if I was going to cover it after sending the damned thing.

My position's well known on this after the Sony debacle. I might not be so aggressively down on it if I didn't no computer and data security so intimately. If you don't draw the line with corporations
fiddling with various protocols and make them see their is a cost to it, they simply go ahead with their wretched plans and demean the experience for everyone.

It's well known that a lot of people will become accustomed to being put upon and inconvenienced by paranoid or stupid technology and consequently brush it off as no big deal.

Epitaph's Dropkick Murphy's was also, as mentioned, a 99-cuts-of-death promo. It contributed to the band getting a poor review, except for one song. Listening to it with the aim of evaluation was an exercise in arithmetic and put me in a bad mood everytime.

The copy protection schemes simply make no sense for the myriad bands on the metal labels that specialize in the margins. They don't sell enough. While there may be people who make them available on slsk or some other file-sharing network, you'll never convince me there's much lost. And of the few that copy the newest CDs to their computers obsessively, the accumulation of stuff is what they are after. It's an "audience" -- a really small one -- that would never buy the CDs in stores anyway, no matter how successful your copy protection. You can't squeeze money out of that demographic no matter how hard you try.

they have resale value in any retailers in your areas?)

At Amoeba, no. This is contributed to by the phenom that LA is a town where there's a good collection of people receiving promos. And by observation, you can deduce that they all bring in their new releases in for redemption as soon as they arrive. Or at least within the week.

* Decapitated
* Vital Remains (remastered debut)
* Gates Of Slumber (Excellent Indiana doom)

Storage? Storage?!! Geez Xhuxk, you're really a Volz guy, aren't you? Some of the Schlitt stuff, like "All Fired Up" and "Get On Your Knees and Fight Like a Man", is really good in a poppy Van Hagar sort of way (which I suppose means Volz=Roth, which is weird). But yeah, your pix are good, except I never dug "Shakin'" and "GGRARTY" that much.

Petra>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Test Icicles, yes?

The LA Times, of course, Phoned It In for it's Grammy coverage. Way too much ink, a special section. Robert Hilburn as his most phoned-in handwringing and sincere on the injustice of Kanye West only winning three awards. He was shut out of the what he deserved! The injustice and implied calumny of it! The Grammy voters ignored the best album of the year, the one Pazz & Jop made king of the hill!!!!! And we're all -- make that me -- yes, I'm sick of the all the woman singers who sound the same, their lips quivering as they look to the sky, their throats warbling out their facsimiles of overwraught tremolos and vibratos. (Mary Blige, the Edge should have bashed you over the head with his guitar.) The paper lamented Gretchen Wilson not winning. An unexpectedly excellent development because the redneck shtick, the midgets in bars video, the spitting chaw into a cup, was all wore out and nauseating months ago. But McCartney's guitarists did a good job with the descending riffage of "Helter Skelter."

However, buried inside was a freelance piece on the Les Paul tribute in town, which was sparsely intended and dominated, make that ruined, by the heavy metal and hard rock types who think they have something to do with Les only because they play a guitar with his name on it.

Some good excerpt, not PHONED IN:

"It's hard to imagine what the organizers were thinking in choosing [Stephen Seagal] -- an aspiring blues musician who has suddenly developed a southern accent -- to open the show with former Muddy Waters guitarist Hubert Sullivan...At least he mumbled his way through actual songs..."

"The rest of the night was mostly a spectacle of screaming fretboard pyrotechnics, courtesy of Toto's Steve Lukather who drained the nuance out of Jimi Hendrix's 'Little Wing' ... and Joe Satriani, who got the award for loudest and longest solo without melody." Actually, the Satriani show is amusing because Joe -- one of the most annoying men in rock and roll -- quite obviously almost never uses a Les Paul. It would get in the way of his endorsements for whatever -other- guitar he shows up holding in the guitar mags.

This next one is choice, Suicidal Tendencies at a Les Paul tribute...

"Punk band ST were also called in at the last minute and somebody decided it would be a good idea to invite along Christian power-rockers Switchfoot. It wasn't.

Magrudergrind/Shitstorm grindcrud EP does not appear to be a vanity release, though I've never of its record label (Robotic Empire in Richmond, Virginia) before. Has anybody else?

(Much of the Citay CD thing is instrumental, which is better than when the guy sings. Who knows, maybe guitar players would be less bored with it than I am. Maybe they'd be less bored with Fucking Champs, too.) (Actually, I have two guitarist friends who *like* that band, come to think of it. To me they just seem completely cold, clinical, and pointless.)

Journalistically, I've never seen anyone explore it.

You'll never convince me that slsk and its user ilk are lost sales. They're the standard pirate demographic. They would never buy the stuff even if file-sharing of these CDs didn't exist. They'd be stealing something else.

I'm sure it is frustrating. The guy from Bona Fide records, which has just started up again after quitting during the end of the age of vinyl, how hard it is just to get distributed.

But the explanation doesn't take into account a lot of factors. One of the bigger ones is glut. There simply isn't enough talent to justify the many records which are made. It's a limit of the human condition.

Now everyone wants to make a record. And maybe they should be encouraged to make records or have the opportunity to do one, or at least botch it up, even more than once. But I don't get the reason for an entire infrastructure of label, booker, pr parasite, trade magazine that has grown up around it.

The answer isn't to make more records on the backs of people who would be better off doing everything themselves. Indeed, even if you really suck, there's more nobility and honor to it. There's little that says worthless more loudly than an unlistenable act in any microgenre, on someone else's label, with a p.r. firm servicing their goods to the journalists.

Now the T-shirt deal makes sense to me because I've seen it in action. The Angry Samoans' Mike Saunders has made his California show merch table into an astonishing operation that brings in a substantial amount of money at each show. More T-shirts sell than CDs -- which he also prices exceedingly low -- five to seven dollars, usually five, and at that cost, they move. But the clothing is the real engine.

Now for bands that don't command any guarantee -- and the Samoans do command a significant one -- the merch table is a good opportunity.
But even then it comes with thorns. If you want to make money and move quantity, you'll want to play venues where the club doesn't take a cut of the gross sales, so you can price economically. The Samoans don't do gigs where the clubs take a piece of the action. But not everyone has the clout to do that, can afford to do it, or are always given the option of doing it.

So the label can make money on T-shirts. Good, I'm buying that. And the implication is that many or some acts sell a lot more T-shirts than they will ever sell records. So why even make the record? Just make the T-shirt and play live.

You can make the record on your own dime. You can even make on demand CDs through a number of outlets. You can buy them at slightly above cost of manufacture for sale at shows as needed. Or your fans, IF YOU HAVE ANY INCLINED TO BUY A CD, can buy them and they are burned on demand. This, too, is complicated, in that the Federal Computer Weeks of music journalism don't like to review on-demand CDs -- that is CD-R burns -- if a more "professional" product isn't promised at some point, or at least convincingly look like it's guaranteed. And that's
a laughable distinction but that's my perception.

So from that standpoint, I guess at a label you have to go the trouble of actually having your CDs stamped so as to at least get in the door of having promo copies potentially reviewed. Then everyone can review them, and still they won't sell enough to make a product profitable. Which tells you, there's too much product, among many other things.

Don't get me wrong. I have a lot of sympathy for the small business trying to survive on making new music. But using merchandise to underwrite it, while it may work, sure looks like it's only putting off the inevitable.

Circle Of Dead Children gets my endorsement too.

yeah, but as someone who writes for a publication you've labeled thusly (dB), this simply isn't true. in fact, the bulk of what i've reviewed has been cd-rs in an unmarked sleeve with no expectation whatsoever of packaging.

not everything fits beneath your Federal Computer Week's analogy you've trotted out this week.

I get CD-R burns. The last Fireball Ministry was a Radio Shack disc in a white paper sleeve. And which of these is a strictly homemade job? I didn't check them all individually. Hey, why do the promotional materials I get for material of this nature generally always include some fine print on who is doing radio, who is the distributor, who is doing everything to assure you it's a professional product, not something else inferior.

Albums
Burst
Akercocke
August Burns Red
Biolich
Bleeding Through
Cathedral
Cripple Bastards
Dark Funeral
Deadboy and the Elephantmen
Divine Empire
East West Blast Test
Fireball Ministry

I know your offended by the urban slum metal 'zine/Federal Computer Week thing. Heck, the people at FCW would be offended. I apologize and if you think it sounds personal, it's not. It's one observation of trade 'pub phenomena.

I'm not personally offended by it really - I understand your frustration with popular magazines and their publishing imperatives. I'm just pointing out that we're not all beholden to those imperatives as contributors.

More importantly, am I alone in my appreciation for Thyrfing's latest?

Big in Boston, right? At ritual beatdowns and crucifixions of NYC HC. Dropkicks couldn't exist without 'em. Battling Mick Punk with a big F for Fighting. Now why couldn't this have won a Grammy for cover art/design instead of Aimee Mann's phony thing about with the boxer's arm?

Perfect music for putting on while watching "The Chiefs" on Pay-Per-View. You know, that documentary that makes the characters in "Slapshot" look like graduates of a Dale Carnegie seminar on how to make friends.

This is as OI as it gets. I'm surprised more people are not all over this. It's so bad it's really good. I'm serious. I could be delirious over the first song so my judgment might be warping more than usual.

"Music: Agression, Alice In Chains, Amebix, Annihilation Time, Babyland, Berlioz, Bjork, Black Sabbath, Blu Aus Nord, The Chameleons, Charles Mingus, Chopin, Cinematic Orchestra, Cocteau Twins, The Cure, Cynic, Dead Can Dance, Dead Kennedy's, Deep Puddle Dynamics, Del Mar, Dismember, Disrupt, DJ Shadow, Don Caballero, Dysrhythmia, Echo and the Bunnymen, Entombed, Explosions In the Sky, From Ashes Rise, Godflesh, Gorguts, High On Fire, His Hero Is Gone, Jesu, John Coltrane, Lisa Gerrard, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Massive Attack, Mastodon, Meshuggah, Miles Davis, Ministry, Mr. Bungle, Mum, Municipal Waste, Nasum, Neurosis, Pendereki, Portishead, Primus, Red Sparrows, Rotten Sound, Rudimentary Peni, Skinny Puppy, Slayer, Sleep, Sonic Youth, Squarepusher, The Swans, Tchaikovsky, Terrorfakt, Terry Bozzio, Thomas Hakke, Trance To The Sun, T.S.O.L, UK Decay, Virgin Prunes, Xploding PlastiX"

Except for Mr.Bungle, I am with him all the way!

Choke really does sound like Dick Manitoba on all the Dictator/Wild Kingdom Manitoba-typical tunes like "I Am Right." Good for Choke, not so good for the Dictators.

Has anyone mentioned the Ark album yet? They're opening for the Darkness's Euro tour.

I just got this today...man, those voiceovers burn me. Especially when an album sounds as great at this one does!

When the real album surfaces on Oink, I'll just burn that, and toss this promo in the trash.

And in this afternoon's most You've Got to Be Kidding Me moment: A promo copy of Richard Butler's solo album. "Singing softly and having the vocals out front felt very daring to me...'

Choke, bash this guy in the teeth with your hockey stick.

Now, amazingly, I've had an opp to listen to The Darkness. The mark
of Roy Thomas Baker is strong upon it. They or someone must've dragged him out of retirement with the promise that he could go to town. Anyway, I'm still with the conviction they've waited too long but the title cut and "Knockers" right off the bat give the label things to work. The title cut is slightly better -- it has a wonderful chorus hook -- and a sitar break in it not played by a sitar, but probably by a Variax guitar. It's a guitar with a computer in it that emulates vintage instruments, and it works, and it has sitar algorithms in it...
===

Anyway, it sounds real Asian and it goes where the guitar solo usually goes on a good song, so it really gives the thing an air. I suppose it could actually be an old Coral Sitar gee-tar, which sounds the same, but you really don't even need 'em anymore.

Sky High doesn't really sound anything like what I reviewed for a couple years ago. It might be a different band. Then they were in the stoner club but no longer. That's good, it shows progress, or the realization that if you're a stoner band you've chosen to live in a landfill, so to speak.

Sky High has a nice mainstream hard rock production which makes the guitars sound terrific. I like that. And the title track, while not catchy (and I think it's supposed to be catchy), is exciting. But Bad Wizard singing is ... they just shouldn't sing. They should chant or declaim or shout emphatically. That means the songs that are supposed to be songs with a singer aren't that great. But the tunes that are hot jams and comps that bite down on one riff are pretty good. "Pass It On," which closes the album and is the longest tune is like that. The band really chomps on it. And "Black Navigator," a mood piece, is fine, too.

Now that guy Choke in Slapshot, there's a vocalist.

Though I don't know either band very well, I am wondering if saying the Test Icicles aren't as good as the Blood Brothers conforms to your Pink Guitar Principle?! Test Icicles photos:

http://blog.verbosecoma.com/archives/test%20icicles.jpghttp://www.rockfeedback.com/images/testicicles_bandwatch.jpg

Which band is more fun? (I don't know the answer to this; I am just WONDERING.)

>Derail, *Engine Room,**:...* - *Engine Room* is only typed on a piece of paper insert inside the cardboard sleeve, not on the disc or the sleeve itself. weird!<

Actually, it IS on the [cardboard] sleeve. It is just on the back, upside down.

Ah, you're right; my apologies.

About half is ear-splitting in a bad way. The other half is ear-splitting in a good way. "Pesante," title cut, is one of the few with a vocal, and has the guy growling how "pesante" is his "musica" or something like that over a good rhythm machine beat. "Dark Angel Libido" is the longest track and the best along with the title cut. Probably good for a rave. Brutal and very frequently
clumsy acid-fried guitar, often piercing feedback, with the neat concussive sounds that a six-string can make always coming in and out of the background. "La cucaracha" theme -- you know, the quote people get their car horns to play only this is on guitar, is a recurring motif on "Libido." (I'm not ruling out it's coincidental.) The guy indicates his love for Hendrix but doesn't even sound remotely close. Funny title of song not worth hearing, "I'm Not Satriani" and, indeed, Metaliano isn't.

Bats about .500 and it's definitely art instro metal noise but not the kind most like to say they're going nuts over. I'm not nuts over it but it's good for repeat listens.

So what's the deal, xhuxk mentioned this was a shuck band upstream, right?

greatdayforup has good momentum--rocking in general in fact--foiled by a shitty singer. makes me think of corrosion of conformity, superjoint ritual, clutch, i forget who else. put nebula and greatdayforup on the CD changer with ten years after's latest and the live album by hypstryrz from late last year, and nebula and greatdayforup were left in the dust.

http://www.citypages.com/databank/27/1314/article14109.asp

downsized...

http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110007902

* - who are superwolf? i am getting all 496 wolf bands mixed up now.

Leaning toward my favorite Watts Passage songs being "The Legend of Shifflet Hollow" (which sounds like Oneida when they used to rock and concerns the people of Shenandoah forests, apparently; "life beyond the gravel road, you get the feeling that you've been here before") and the epic five-and-a-half-minute "Blind" (where the vocals most do the high-pitched glam-slimey Axl thing.) The title track is just a fat chant hooked to some Naked Raygun woagh woagh woaghs. Entire CD has only eight songs, lasts less than half an hour. A smart length.

it's horrifying if there's a knockoff, even though i kinda liked that album more than anything oldham had done recently.

"Soft and subtle, Superwolf is the kind of record that unwinds slowly, and is best enjoyed over multiple listens and, unsurprisingly, many glasses of wine. Oldham and Sweeney mew coquettishly, stroking their guitars, cawing bizarre stories about love, death, and body parts: theirs is a rancid and beautiful landscape."

Appears to be serious crap, xhuxk.

I kind of really like the Oceansize cd. It moves really fluidly. It reminds me slightly of Alice In Chains but maybe more like something Jerry Cantrell would do solo. Either way, it was a nice surprise. And Xhuxk, that Sword cd sounds like one long highly-combustible Queens of the Stone Age song but without swinging.

Plus, on the second disc is a 1998 show, which is fair to good, one of my favorite parts being "In the Beginning." And piano blooz, which isn't a surprise if you listen closely to what Emerson used to play, but would be a surprise to the people who've written them off as the worst excess of prog.

Powerful band at a real budget price. Nice packaging, too. I would have put this on the art metal thread but it's too difficult to take seriously what with the citations of Sleepytime Gorilla and other cabaret acts that don't rock.

You gotta be kidding me. They backed David Allen for a Gong record -- Acid Mothergong, I think -- and he made them stick to mostly three and four minute numbers.

Now technically, there are a couple twenty minutes numbers on Emerson, Lake & Palmer's Then & Now but they're really not one long number, but a series of shorter tunes, some of which got passed off as pop on the radio. Like twenty minutes of "Take a Pebble Suite" has "Still You Turn Me On," "Lucky Man" and a couple other things in it.

alien 8 (out of, uh, quebec i think.) doubt i'll listen to it again, to be honest. life is short.

Got the 2nd Toxic Holocaust record the other day. Best MD-based one man trad thrash band I've heard. Nice Ed Repka cover too.

What's the racket with getting promotional copies? Just don't say even remotely indifferent things?

you can give them to me if you want! i don't think i've ever heard mott the hoople on cd.

That's the administrative plan of a certified dumbass. Those who would be the most able to address a copy of a Mott reissue are for want of a better term, older. And they're the people who are most likely to not have the time or the inclination -- or even the desire -- to fiddle around on the Internet downloading a digital image of the LP.

Anyway, it's a good record. Ariel Bender is on it. I descratched a digital copy of my vinyl a few years ago and made a good CD-R of it. "Crash Street Kids" is my favorite but "The Golden Age of Rock 'n' Roll" and the song Overend Watts sings that began the second side are also real good.

I don't hear Living Color. Maybe a little King's X. There was a Brit band I have buried in my piles somewhere that sounded like this but damned if I can pull 'em out right now. (Ha-ha, yeah, I know, piles.)
Might've or might not've been Baker-Gurvitz Army. They were totally hookless but very tight and funky.

And when I first put it on I thought the singer was sort of sounding like Eddie Vedder but the more I listened, it was just a minor coincidence. Nothing in common with Pearl Jam for which I am greatly grateful.

If the hard rock numbers, of which there are about three, are supposed to be great, in 1975 these boys easily get stomped by second and third tier white boy blooz bands in the arenas. "Alice in My Fantasies" is the best of them, but it's brief. "Red Hot Mamma" has way too much George Clinton cough syrup and speed freak vocal bullshit at the beginning. "Jimmy's Got a Little Bit of Bitch In Him" is average -- probably seemed audacious at the time because it was about the down low -- but Frank Zappa & the Mothers were doing a lot like it a few years earlier. "Good Thoughts, Bad Thoughts" is sub-Hendrix guitar wank from Eddie Hazel who I assume often did better and more George Clinton theology through cough syrup recitation. Album art is great, so are the liner notes. Title cut is OK but the funk ain't THAT funky and the best part again is Hazel's guitar. It's better as the single edit on the bonus tracks because it's shorter. And "Vital Signs" is a funky hard rock instro which is fair, included as a bonus cut.

Title of songs, I've noted in the Funkadelic catalog, are often actually better than the songs themselves, what I've heard of them, anyway.

I liked when Dirty Tricks did it to, which was usually in the long parts between the beginning and the end of the tunes where they tacked on semi-pop bits to satisfy the record company or the producer or someone.

I was gonna blow off Opeth because I do not like Opeth (please don't yell, I gave them many, many opportunities to blow me away, live and on disc, and it never seems to happen) however I think I'll go to see Devin at work. I wonder if Gene Hoglan is still playing with him...

Just so happens my copy wasn't stuffed away in a box somewhere so I checked. I see what you mean. I used to have Funkadelic on vinyl. I think I traded it because it was really aimless and psychedelic in a piss poor fashion. Kept Maggot Brain which I haven't listened to in a decade. Standing On the Verge is entertaining with the silly voices rhyming about being a tree, so if you'll be my dog pee on me and the hoary "the angle of the dangle increases with respect to the heat of the meat" or whatever in the homosexual tune. But it's funny once or twice and then turns into a novelty record. It's like an X-rated version of Crazy magazine.

It just never really rocks or funks as much as you think it might oughta and Clinton's Ayn Randian goes hippie and god-believin' philosophy of life in cough syrup screwed vocals grated after two listens, irrespective of Eddie Hazel's guitar. FZ did that stuff better, did better R&B when he wanted to, and really played a much more flaming axe.

The cover art on those things is terrific. I'm glad I didn't get sucked into buying two of them. Was thinking of going for Let's Take It to the Stage because the title, "No Head, No Backstage Pass" stuck out.

My other question has nothing to do with reappraisals of Funkadelic.

Has anyone noticed the creeping trend of putting music mags in sealed bags and stuffing a CD in with them that you don't want to jack up the price and make them unbrowsable? Jeezus, it happened to Guitar World which I occasionally bought and won't forever now. I thought this was only a practice of English mags that I see on the rack in Tower. The idea is to jack up the mag to the price of a mid-list CD by adding a CD of new artists, gimmicks or total rubbish you would never buy and don't want, and glue it to the cover or put it in a sealed bag with the publication. What kind of strategy is that?

This follows last Sunday's entry, You Know That Just Ain't Right:
Blurb in Amoeba's ad in the Sunday LA Times on an instore show by Wolfmother -- "Like the bastard son of Uriah Heep and Jimi Hendrix..."

Uriah Heep, Jimi Hendrix, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin. That about cover's it. Wolfmother, the magic elixir of heavy rock, including everything for all people who don't like hard rock, have to write about it once or twice, and have this to glom onto.

In the 99 cent bins at the used store in Pasadena was a promo copy of the Big F's debut from the late Eighties-early 90's on Elektra. It was amusing because it came packed with all the hype from the various slum pubs. Lonn Loves It! That was one claim, apparently stemming from a review of Lonn Friend. Was he in A&R or still doing RIP or was RIP R.I.P by then? Good review from Kerrang. I'm amazed they were signed to a major at all. There isn't even a shred of a tune on this thing. It sounds great while it's playing though -- hard rock/metal jam rock and incomprehensible stream of consciousness singing while it's going on. You just can't remember most of it once it's gone past. "Dr. Vine" is about the most memorably, mostly because of the title.

Good match-up with Cargun who are philosophically in the same place. Only Cargun is a lot better, funkier, more solid. But for 99 cents it's impossible to go wrong with the Big F's debut. Did anyone ever see this band? It kind of looks like they may not have been entirely a southern California fiction that scored a record deal. When I was at the newspaper I got a cassette EP with them on it, although I can't remember the songs, naturally.

And last, Focus's 8. Now, if you liked Focus at all originally, you'll like this. It's only Thisj van Leer and a backing band, but the backers were a Focus tribute act in Holland or somewhere, and they sound exactly like the originals. Even the guitarist sounds like Jan Akkerman, which is a pretty good trick. The CD sticks to the Focus formula of van Leer yodelling, humming, whistling and handclapping over instrumental work. His flute's in their and they quote from old themes, you particularly hear "Hocus Pocus" coming in and out of the mix and the first tune, "Rock & Rio," really does rock. In fact, over half of it does, the rest being prog jazz fusion and aerobatic guitar.

The Big F certainly got the full measure of review from the Brits. Three different pieces from their Marquee show alone, which seemed to have been a disaster. Obviously, no one was buying the Big F anywhere. But I still think it's a good record, just one that would have been impossible to sell to a hard rock audience in 89-93. Grunge didn't do them in. It wouldn't have mattered what was the dominant fad.

Anyway, someone has to make hard rock that sounds great but you can't remember five minutes after it's been on the turntable. I'm joking a little, but it's a valid style. It certainly exists in jazz but for hard rock bands doing the same kind of improvisation, it's a no-go zone. I'm glad I have the Big F vinyl.

So question - what do I need from Uriah Heep, if anything at all? Demons And Wizards seems like the default pick, but is there a quality best-of that adequately summarizes all their other records, the way there is with Atomic Rooster?

Jasper and Oliver compare Dirty Tricks (who I've always mixed up in my head with Dirty Looks, not sure if I've ever even heard the former actually) to "heavy metal Bad Company."

Popoff seems to slightly prefer Dirty Looks to Dirty Tricks.

Uriah Heep made a few solid albums, which I'll let George detail, but there actually IS a good two-disc CD comp: *Classic Heep: An Anthology* (came out on Mercury, 1988).

http://www.google.com/musicl?lid=-WVQzC3cWrL&aid=Hu6LI5Ei5WN

and it's cheap, i say go for it. very 'eavy...very 'umble and look at yourself are both great and salisbury is good too. if you like those, then you can go further. Castle did the remaster/bonus/live treatment to a bunch of their records. i would buy those cd versions. again, on vinyl you are talking 30 bucks tops for their entire catalogue :)

Dirty Tricks didn't sound like Bad Company. Their singer and Cargun's are similar, with the soul man thing going on. DT were veddy British, weren't good with writing discernible songs, but they had the heavy riff vibe. Their material churned, stopped and started, went thump thump in all the right places. They were blocky and tough-sounding, did a Cat Stevens cover in a way that you wouldn't recognize it, and I really like their songs "Night Man" and "Hire Car," the latter which is about them getting to go down the motorway to the next gig in a hired car, a damn sight better than the usual no car or beater that they had, I think. And unlike most songs about going down the highway, it is not fast. Dirty Tricks were able to make slow and slow medium tempo stuff sound good.

Uriah Heep: immediately go for Very 'eavy as it has the killer "Gypsy" and "Dreammare" on it. Look at Yourself is a mostly guitar and organ fast boogie shuffle record, and it is as quick and aggressive heavy rock and roll as they ever made. "Love Machine" is the standout cut. Salisbury, as Scott said, is also a good one but different than standard Heep. One side was their collection of singles for the time -- "Bird of Prey," etc., the remaster included "Simon the Bullet Freak" which is simply OK but was supposed to be thought of fondly when it was issued. The reason to listen is the whacked out symphony prog piece on the second side with blaring horns, wah-wah guitar and the kitchen sink thrown in.

Demons & Wizards is fair because of "The Wizard" and "Easy Livin'" although I don't listen to it anymore. It was their breakthrough record in the States. I immediately bought "Live in '73" or "Heep Live" or whatever it was called and liked that a lot more because it had all the songs on it, songs which had been albums that weren't in the local shops when Heep broke. As Heep sold more, the back albums were once again stocked. The Magician's Birthday is fair. It has poor production and the "opera," The Magician's Birthday, is the only good reason to listen. Why? Again, because it's totally ridiculous and over the top in the way only Heep was doing. It's the last of Heep's good albums.

Wonderwall -- yechh, except for "Suicidal Man." The album with "Sweet Freedom" and "Stealin'" on it, double yechh. Surprisingly, the tours were still good. "Return to Fantasy" -- biggest selling album at the time, people buying it out of wishful thinking and hopefulness the slide would reverse. Christ, it's awful. The only more awful is "High & Mighty," the last album with David Byron before they kicked him out for being a raging cokefiend and boozer, as opposed to being only the half-assed cokefiends and raging boozers the rest of them were. Firefly is the first album with the lead singer from Lucifer's Friend, who were the poor man's Uriah Heep. It's the best of the trio he did with them and I have a fondness for it but usually the Heep fans have no use for it or anything from that period.

It was Big F's EP. I checked and it's one of those the Amazon merchants sell for around ll cents. Actually, it's not really 11 cents, the profit it made in the postage, but it still comes out to pretty cheap. Maybe not as totally cheap as the 99 center in the bin at Penny Layne or the 25 centers and carry it out at Canterbury, both on Colorado, but still pretty damn inexpensive.

Back in high school, we were able to convince a classmate that Dirty Looks' "Oh Ruby" was a long-lost AC/DC song...

But back to Big F. They don't have a singer really, but a ranter. The formula was to seize on a phrase, like the title, and curse it out over the backing din, which was real good, again and again. "Don't kill the cowboy! "Lies, lies, lies!!!" "Hey monkey boy!" "Walk away, walk away walk away!!!!" Listening to it again this afternoon. It's entertaining.

And I've not found anything on Authority's "Are You Authorized?" which seems like a play on "Are You Experienced?" A drive-by download, it's an unusual record that about halfway through flips into Eighties ZZ Top-land. The first half is Pink Floyd-y crypto-metal with some nu-metal flourishes. But the second half, anyway, equals ZZ Top. "I Take the Zero" is almost indistinguishable and may in fact be a direct rip of "I Got the Six" from Eliminator. It's not actually direct but I'm hearing it as clever attribution.

My choice was Early Man and the Sword at Spaceland in Silverlake. Wow! I stayed home and listened to ELP and Sugarcreek on TEN which you can do in Pasadena if you live in a house. I'm sure it was louder than anything in Silverlake. When "Tocatta" came on, the cats' tails frizzed out and they ran for cover. I even played Pictures at an Exhibition TWICE, and if that's not metal, I don't know what is.

In keeping with Scott's frugal recommendations: Like the Uriah Heep "three-for", there is an ELP "three-for" (ELP/Tarkus/Pictures at an Exhibition") remaster from Castle for 22 bucks that is a goddamn steal and relentlessly attacking and pastoral prog metal with keys mostly in place of guitars, '71-72. With Then & Now for 11 bucks at BestBuy, you have the essentials of the catalog for a little over thirty dollars, which is a little more than you would pay for really clean vinyl of the functionally same material.

ELP, Best Of (the one with the white cover that has the full-length "Tarkus" on it)
Atomic Rooster, Heavy Soul: The Anthology
The Groundhogs, Split, Thank Christ For The Bomb and Live At Leeds '71
The Big F, s/t (three cents plus $2.49 for shipping)
Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Essential Lynyrd Skynyrd (2CD set marked down to $14.97, and it has every song I'll ever want to hear)

Cowboy Mouth's *Voodoo Mouth* has a song called "I Told Ya" on it that vaguely reminds me Electric Six, though Joe McCombs will compare a couple tracks to Kiss and the Flamin' Groovies in the *Voice* soon, and I don't know if that was one of those or not. Most of the CD seems to alternate between Barenaked Ladies and pop-punk, though: pretty wretched. (I never heard the band before myself, and doubt I will again. They're from New Orleans, whose current plight they're also said to address on this album, though I haven't noticed.)

from the world music thread:

Playing the two-disc (including live disc) Columbia/Legacy reissue of *Santana III* (an album I don't remember actually ever hearing before) again this morning, after playing it a lot over the weekend. It kicks ass. Not sure if this is their most metal album or not, but it's got to be up there -- it's sort of a crime that I put so many Funkadelic albums in *Stairway to Hell* and no Santana ones. Plus: Reissue has THREE versions of "No One to Depend On" (album, single, live), and I *still* don't get tired of hearing the tune -- right now it just went into a riff that Babe Ruth later bit, in "Joker" I think. (And didn't some rap hit sample the chorus a few years ago? I forget what. One more thing reggaeton should be doing.)

not from world music thread:

ELP didn't make *Stairway* either, which was pretty stupid. I need to catch up with them someday. (I did tape their King Biscuit Flour Hour special off the radio once, however.)

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0531,smith,66384,22.html

http://www.leisureclass.net/glenn/photo/sirens.jpg

xhuxk, you're not the only one to overlook ELP. Popoff seems to have a total blindspot. There's nothing in his metal book, or in his 70's book on hard rock -- even in the appendices, on ELP. ELP were a lot more direct and harder sounding than Yes when they wanted to be. The first album, the one with the dove on the cover, really rocks on the songs you think it will -- "The Barbarian," "Knife-Edge," and the last band ensemble part of "Tank."

In fact, I don't quite understand now why they got such a lathering. A lot of it is pure classic rock, with keys in place of the guitar, usually with Emerson's velocity and oomph filling in for the axe power chord. They did piano boogie, straight boogie and surprisingly often, snuck the Led Zeppelin "How Many More Times" riff into parts of their "prog" tunes.

Anyway, in Tower yesterday I noticed Mojo of Metal Hammer or some Brit mag had a "Classic 70's" issue. I paged through it, was fairly good. I'd have bought it if I didn't have all the stuff in it, but it's good for people who don't. The only thing I had argument was their section on Power Pop where they throw in Big Star. Big Star was never big in or even semi-obscure in the 70's. They were just nowhere no matter how many times you watch "That 70's Show." At least it seemed that way to me. No one was playing the street song. Critics writing about Big Star after the 70's, usually in the 90's, made Big Star seem influential in the 70's.

And ELP wasn't properly represented in the prog part. Their first few albums all charted and sold millions. They were way bigger than Genesis. They headlined California Jam in '74 over Deep Purple, who was second, and Black Sabbath, who was third. Distantly at the same gig were the Eagles and Earth, Wind & Fire.

You really don't get more metal than "Karn Evil 9": "Let the bridge com-pu-ter speak! Guardian of a nuclear dawn!" Then the "Bridge Computer" speaks: "STRANGER! LOAD YOUR PROGRAM! I AM YOURSELF!"

Anyway, with the Giger cover and all the techno-war imagery (The Tarkus, a giant armadillo grown out of a tank, the Manticore and the Karn Evil 9 thing), you'd think more people would have gotten the metal connection. It must be that they were so trashed by journalists after 75 or so, a practice that has never let up. Christ, the band even had a sense of humor. If they were pompous, I missed it, must have happened when "Works" came along, which I never signed on for.

Mr. Trucks uses a slide on his fretting hand and picks the strings with his fingers.

No shit, Sherlock. Guitarists use the slide on their "fretting" hand and pick strings with their fingers. Wow. Spell it out for the ET's in your readership, who maybe don't have hands and are unfamiliar with guitarists in bars and on TV because they're from Alpha Centauri.

And this, well there's just no equal:

One example is in "Sahib Teri Bandi," a nearly 10-minute qawwali piece from Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's repertory, built on a steady drone.

Derek Trucks, nope he doesn't rock. And that sentence tells ya all ya need to know. It's so Timesian arts section, it's a parody of its own style. You just know those upper middle class intellects are hanging on the latest news about reuse of qawwali from Muskrat Fateh Ali Khan.

Since there is apparently (and bizarrely) no "Rolling 2006 hip-hop thread" on ILM, I will note here that I really like the apparent '70s hard rock riff in "My Favorite Mutiny," track #4 on the new Coup album *Pick a Bigger Weapon* (due out 4-25). At first I was thinking the riff might have come from the Stories' version of "Brother Louie," but now I am leaning toward "maybe something by Redbone." (I own one Redbone album, which I bought cheap a couple years ago, but I sadly have far from an encyclopedic knowledge of their riffs.)

And which bands are you talking about here?
I think I shall disagree mightily with you anyway somehow..

Funkadelic's Standing On the Verge of Getting It On, from '75.
For one, Foghat smoked Funkadelic's feeble stabs at hard rock. They
had a way better singer, too. Deep Purple. Anyone with a white Hendrix imitator generally did better than Eddie Hazel, in this case Trower comes to mind. Even Come Taste the Band -- which is Purp's explicity funk record -- is better than Standing. Frank Zappa smoked Funkadelic, and they seemed to be copying from him quite a bit in term of committing weird and zany to vinyl. But if you need some
barrel-scrapers, Tin House, the And part of Johnny Winter And, Stretch, Hustler, REO's first and second album when they were still
barrel-scraping...

I think I shall disagree mightily with you anyway somehow..

It goes without saying.

ha ha, I do this with books ALL THE TIME. Sometimes with just 20 pages left! Most recent ones: *Middlesex* and *A Confederacy of Dunces.* Maybe ending books is just hard for *authors*; I don't know.

A clue:

http://villagevoice.com/pazzandjop05/ballots.php?mid=2125

Just got this via email by the way:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

February 22nd, 2006
New VOIVOD album title revealed
Canada’s pioneering metal band VOIVOD have set “Katorz” as the title of their forthcoming album due out late spring on THE END RECORDS in North America.
VOIVOD, who just finished mixing the album with producer Glen Robinson (Tea Party, GWAR) at Multisons studio in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, are now mastering the album in New York.
The follow-up to 2003's "Voivod" is the first album in the band's 20-plus-year career that did not feature founding guitarist Denis "Piggy" D'Amour working alongside his bandmembers in the studio. D'Amour died August 26, 2005 in a Montreal hospital from complications of advanced colon cancer.
In order to record “Katorz,” drummer Michael "Away" Langevin, singer Denis “Snake” Belanger and bassist Jason "Jasonic" Newsted utilized all of the guitar parts that Piggy had recorded for the record on his laptop with ProTools before his death.

I was surprised recently when visiting youtube.com that Mille of Kreator is wearing a Bad Religion shirt in the "Betrayer" video, something I didn't recall from when I last saw the video, well over a decade ago...

Ah, right!

And apparently, Voivod recorded enough stuff from piggy's finished tracks for two albums. so, another album of that stuff will come out next year or whenever. not tupac territory, but still, not something that happens every day.

Someone should have brought them to the States and paired 'em with Early Man. The title cut, "Dead Gone," another mercilessly hammering purist metal riff that uses dynamics, going from raging and kick-ass to chopping rhythm and cantering snare groove, no one messing it up with any vocals. Then silence and power guitar and drum chomps and back to elephants trampling the pygmies stupid enough to go into the jungle in the afternoon when they start jumping out of trees, or however the old pachyderm joke went from my grade school book of one thousand elephant jokes.

"Breakdown," second tune of Gone Dead also raging.