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Personally, I love Spotify, because it has allowed me to find a bunch of bands I’d never heard of. I mean yeah, like most other sources, you have to sift through a bunch of crap to actually discover something worthwhile. But when you do, why, you can spend the rest of your day listening to a delightful mix of thrash and death metal.
That’s where Deathchain come in.
I’d say I don’t get why Sexcrement don’t get enough love, but… well, it’s right there in the name, in that it is their name. Then again, it’s not exactly false advertising: their sole (for now) full length is called Genitales from the Porno Potty, and just look at the title of the EP above. But fecalphilia and secretion obsessions aside, they’re a great fucking band. And with loose, groovy, mid-paced death metal done right, XXX Bargain Bin, Vol. 1 sinks its hooks deep in you for the seventeen minutes it manages to stick around. Then it hurls some bus fare at the dresser and heads out, leaving you wanting more. They get the ratio of filthy to formidable right, in that they don’t feel the need to tone down the former to compliment the latter.
Though it’s technically just an odds and sods EP (two studio tracks, three live ones), it’s not a bad place to start with Sexcrement. The studio tracks (“Well Hungover” especially) show off the band’s tightness and relative polish, while the live tracks (and they’re a GREAT live band, by the way) are a well-documented expression of their chemistry. The riffs are fierce and the grooves are deep; it’s like a stench you can’t wash off (partially because you don’t want to). The thin coat of grime that seemingly covers everything gives it an alluringly dingy quality. In the end, XXX Bargain Bin, Vol. 1 may not be something you recommend to polite company, but deep down, you know it’s better than another squeaky-clean prog-metal album about Xibalba or whatever. It burrows deep, catering to your senses of both joy and shame. So, you know, a good fucking time. Now, where’s Volume 2?
-SO
New York’s Cro-Mags are best known for two arguably unimpeachable hardcore classics, 1986′s seminal The Age of Quarrel and its far more metallic 1989 follow-up Best Wishes. Constantly in conflict, the Krishna-conscious lineup remained in flux so much that the group has never managed to have the same line-up on any album, so much so that when original frontman John Joseph returned for 1992′s Alpha Omega, it was only after guitarist Parris Mayhew left following a falling out with bassist Harley Flanagan.
Evil Empire might not’ve had the non-stop song-to-song momentum that its self-titled predecessor did but it still packed one hell of a motherfucking punch. “People of the Sun,” “Bulls on Parade,” “Down Rodeo” and “Without a Face” are all classics in the Rage canon, and the comparatively raw production of Evil Empire gets right up in your face and serves to up the impact. The rhythm section of Brad Wilk and Tim Commerford absolutely pulsates on this one; it’s like you’re standing in the room with them and Zach de la Rocha, who’s as fired up and angry as ever. These songs sound just as important now as they did in 1996.
Funny story: I bought Evil Empire when it came out in ’96 but decided to trade it to a friend a couple of years later for Beastie Boys’ License To Ill because I didn’t like it as much as Rage’s first record. That was silly! I should’ve just bought both. But thanks to the modern wonders of Spotify, I now have it back again: stream it here.
God bless Tom Morello and the rest of the Ragers for never compromising their ideals. Morello has flown to New York City on his own dime to seranade the Occupy Wall Street protestors TODAY at 12 noon. Be there, and RAGE IT UP.
-VN
I was trying to think of a good excuse I could use as to write about Ratt ,since I’ve been having kind of a Ratt week. Warren DeMartini’s birthday? No. Apparently, that was in April. Anniversary of Robbin Crosby’s death? Nope, that was back in June. Then it hit me! The always useful ALBUM OF THE DAY.
My favorite Ratt album is Reach for the Sky. Come on — “Way Cool Jr.,” “What’s It Gonna Be,” “I Want A Woman?” All great classics. But recently I’ve been sticking to songs strictly from 1986’s Dancing Undercover. Especially “7th Avenue.” It’s got a slow-but-hard intro that I absolutely adore. It might possibly be because it’s the exact same one as on “Between the Eyes,” from the band’s previous album, Invasion of Your Privacy. If you’re going to rip someone off, it might as well be yourself.
If anyone remembers the Completely Unreadable Logo of the Week for July 6, 2007, then you’ll actually know who Misericordiam already. I hadn’t started writing for MS at that point, but I was thrilled to see the band represented on the site when I later went looking through the archives. Unfortunately, the group then proceeded to break up; fortunately, they’ve been back together for a while now (albeit with a completely different lineup). So I thought it would be prudent to rewind back to their most recent EP, 2007′s Unanimity and the Cessation of Hostility.
If memory serves, the Spawn movie which came out in 1997 was pretty terrible, but we did get one great thing out of it: the soundtrack. It was pretty much like the Judgment Night soundtrack, only instead of combining metal bands with rap acts, it teamed up metal bands with electronica acts. And every song on it was innovative and amazing.
No, I’m totally kidding. The soundtrack sucked almost as bad as the movie.
As much as I bitch about summer and hot weather, I have my yearly tradition to hail in the dread season. I get myself a cold drink, usually a nice wheat beer, and blast Brave New World and the air-conditioner. I’m not a complete sociopath; I’ll have the shades up so my apartment is light and sunny. It’s like the most comfortable igloo with the best ambiance.
But I decided to switch it up a bit this year. Summer is also the time for kitschy, joke meta,l and while Lordi’s last release, Babez for Breakfast, was unbearably mediocre, I have my arsenal of equally campy bands to make up for it. Some might protest to my inclusion of Witchery under this banner, but, come on now. The album is called Dead, Hot, and Ready, for God’s sake.
Like everybody, I got a good laugh from CBS L.A. news correspondent Serene Branson’s gibberish-packed meltdown/report from the Grammys in February (watch it here). But unlike most, I understood exactly what she meant by “heavy burtation.” It may have been seizure-induced mouth mutiny, but it’s a term that I wish existed back in 1998 when I interviewed Fear Factory frontman Burton C. Bell about their then-new, very burtatious record Obsolete. Over twenty minutes, I lauded his icy clean singing, his dystopian themes, and his big-balls performances on side B’s smashing (and alliterative) openers, “Hi-Tech Hate” and “Freedom Or Fire” (best FF jam ever, here). I pointed out that his vocals bound and accented the album’s ripping single-note riffs, mushrooming chords, and uber-violent snare drum. I blabbed at length about Obsolete’s intra-album dynamics, i.e. the way its snappy, pressurized first half sets up the crush and dispersal of its second half. But what a waste of breath, cuz here in 2011, we have a term to express all of those things: Heavy fuckin’ Burtation.
-ADF
Get heavily Burt-ated with Burton C. Bell & Fear Factory on tour starting June 1 in Tempe.
Earthship‘s name is a funny thing, because the music the band makes takes us exactly away from Earth, not towards it. It’s strange to hear such otherworldly sounds these days, but it’s also quite refreshing. Like the best music should do, it creates vivid mental images. And that’s not something I often hear.
Exit Eden is one of numerous recent projects involving The Ocean mastermind Robin Staps, present in this band as rhythm guitarist. Like most of Staps’ projects, Eden is really good; in this case, however, the entirety of the songwriting is done by his bandmate, Jan Orberg (former drummer for The Ocean.) Orberg emplys a wide variety of techniques for his compositions. His style is far removed from Staps’ musical tendencies, even though there are definite similarities. Sadly, the album doesn’t have a whole lot to offer vocally — Orberg and drummer Dennis Bottcher sound an awful lot like The Ocean’s Mike Pilat used to sound — but that’s almost insignificant considering the musical prowess of the rest of the record.
So, I don’t like all the Celtic Frost albums I’m supposed to as much as I should. I mean, don’t get me wrong: To Mega Therion? Awesome. Monotheist? Excellent return to form. Triptykon’s debut? Motherfucker’s still got it, gym pants, eyeliner and all. But they don’t hit me like a great album’s supposed to hit you. What does, though, is Morbid Tales. Raw and primitive but not apathetic and sloppy, it rides that line between doom, black metal, and thrash on a fleet of mammoths (well, mostly because none of those things really existed in earnest yet). So while they would go on to do more interesting things as well as hilarious things (Cold Lake, of course), to my ears, none of what the band did (and, who are we kidding, are doing with Triptykon) is nearly as fierce or, arguably, as satisfying as Morbid Tales.
I was mindlessly channel surfing, as you do at the end of a long day, when I saw a flash of blond hair that could only be Sebastian Bach. Naturally, I had to go back to see if it was true. Lo and behold, I was right. Now, I don’t know what’s sadder; that I recognized him in a split second or that he was on… GILMORE GIRLS. Yep, old Sebastian was part of some cool indie band on the show, and he was singing, uh, “Holla Back Girl.” My reaction was threefold; 1) Why did no one tell me this existed? 2) What the fuck is he doing?! 3) Man, how good was old Skid Row?
Though I do enjoy Slave to the Grind as the heavier follow-up, 1989’s Skid Row is, in my humble opinion, the best Skid Row release. For a first album, just look at all the amazing songs that came out of it.
Lately melodic death hasn’t been impressing anyone, including myself. And so I thought I’d take a look back at a record that never fails to give me that warm fuzzy feeling inside. Sure, everyone has a big ol’ boner for Tales from the Thousand Lakes, but the Amorphis album I prefer is the less-favored Eclipse. No offence to Lakes — I could muster a pretty impressive showing of lady wood for that album, too — but Eclipse? Ah, Eclipse!
There’s nothing I shouldn’t like about 1349′s latest album, Demonoir: it’s the band at blazing black-metal-at-grindcore-speed again, and its experimental parts feel appropriate, even necessary. But something feels about it hollow: the flesh, bones, and organs are all there, but is there any soul (even a black one) beneath them? How could an album with so much in common with one of my favorite black metal albums ever — the band’s 2005 eviscerator Hellfire – leave me cold?
Then it dawned on me: Revelations of the Black Flame, the album between the two. A dull, pointless affair with experimental black metal (and I even LIKE the genre from time to time: Wold’s Screech Owl and Leviathan’s A Silhouette in Splinters got quite a few spins back in the day), I tore it a new asshole back in ’09 and still stand by that action; after the straightforward destruction of Hellfire, it was a confoundingly sharp left turn for a band doing so much right. The parts on Demonoir that I would usually enjoy felt empty because of this, in that perhaps they were being employed to get back into the good graces of the fans they’d possibly alienated. There’s nothing tangibly wrong with Demonoir, but I can’t help but feel its revived sense of purpose is cold and calculated.
Though best known for her bass work in Hole and The Smashing Pumpkins, Melissa Auf der Maur is a formidable solo artist in her own right. In 2004, she dropped her self-titled debut Auf der Maur, a clamorous yet thoroughly melodic effort. Guests on the record read like an alt. rock primer: Eric Erlandson, James Iha, Mark Lanegan, and John Stanier played on it, along with pretty much everyone who was in Queens Of The Stone Age at the time. Lead single “Followed The Waves” (video above) showcases heavier tendencies merely hinted at on Celebrity Skin and singularly puts to shame that gothic schlock that passes for female-fronted metal these days. Auf der Maur is the real deal, devoid of gimmicks and gaudy glamour shots, and it frustrates me that it didn’t get more traction post-release.
Tonight, Auf der Maur plays a special one-off concert at New York’s Highline Ballroom. I cannot stress enough to anyone familiar with her work how rare an opportunity this is. I sure as hell wont be missing this one.
-GS
Shining’s V-Halmstad is over the top, even for black metal. But there’s a point where going over the top transcends tone-deaf cheesiness and ridiculousness and becomes admirable — and even enjoyable — for its complete and total lack of self-awareness and self-consciousness; it goes past the train wreck factor and manages to loop back around to become pleasing and exciting. Like Con Air — a movie so absurd in its construct and execution that its fetish for doing everything to the max makes it impossible not to enjoy — V-Halmstad takes a particularly histrionic subgenre — suicidal black metal — and plays every element to its most hyperbolic extreme. In theory, it’s a package that should be hilariously pathetic. In fact, it’s so brazenly ridiculous that it’s better than most albums of its kind. The feel-good suicidal black metal album.
Every once in a while I get the urge to have some punk in my life. You know how they say, “If you used to be punk, you never were?” Well, I guess there’s a small part of me that will always have a soft spot for mohawks and anarchists (see: The Young Ones, Vyvyan and Rick). When it comes down to it, punk was my real gateway into metal, and when I hear elements of it pop up in some of my favorite metal bands’ songs, I feel like I should exchange knowing glances with them or acknowledge it in some way. Like, “Ahh, I know what influenced that.”
I love this band. I love this band so much. Every time I see the word “wolf” in music magazines or hear it on whatever station I’m listening to, my heart thuds until “mother” inevitably follows suit. I don’t care for Wolfmother — they’re fine for faking music in Rockband — but if you want real metal (for “true bastards” — their words, not mine), Wolf is it.
2011 marks the 10th anniversary of metallic hardcore band Ringworm‘s Birth Is Pain LP. Their first for Victory Records, the album remains a essential entry in the Clevo hardcore discography, and a decade later it still retains its ferocity. So it seems only appropriate that Ringworm would celebrate this auspicious occasion with a series of tour dates during which the band plays the entire record live. (There was a rumor that Ringworm would be playing this year’s United Blood fest in Virginia, but the organizers put that one to rest on the B9 board.)
Before this tour goes down, you’re going to want to re-familiarize yourself with the record, so check out live footage of album track “Amputee” from 2006 and peep the announced Birth Is Pain dates below. These are only a handful of the anticipated gigs, so don’t get too upset if you don’t see your city just yet!
Mid ’00s Las Vegas hard rock outfit Magna-Fi were pretty much doomed from the start. Too smart for hard rock radio and too light for acceptance in fickle metal crowds, Magna-Fi were yet another example of a band who learned the hard way that there’s no money to be made or career to be had in smart, well-written hard rock; there simply isn’t a place for it in the modern heavy music landscape.
But Magna-Fi were a fucking fantastic band and Burn Out the Stars is their magnificent hour. Smart hard rock isn’t easy to come by; all too often hard rock is dominated by lowest common denominator mooks writing lowest common denominator riffs for lowest common denominator, knuckle-dragging fans. Magna-Fi took a different approach with songs that had musical substance and merit and had hooks for the ages. Mike Szuter’s less-than-perfect, slightly gravelly voice was the perfect match for the band’s saturated, crunchy double mid-range guitar attack and powerful, hard-hitting, snugly in-the-pocket drums. Listening back to Burn Out the Stars some years later, I’m still impressed; every single fucking song is a winner.
