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Some of the members of Bloodjinn are in Vanisher now, and Vanisher is an excellent band, so I don’t mean to sound ungrateful or nuthin’, but – I am so fucking ready for Bloodjinn to get back together. I feel like I hear rumblings that it’s gonna happen at least twice a year, but so far, zip, zilch, zero. And our world is still in some dire need of Bloodjinning*.
There are basically three things I care about in this world: fighting, metal, and video games. And of those three, it’s video games that I REALLY care about. I’m not talking about Halo, GTA, Call of Duty, and whatever else your little cousin plays. I’m into some really embarrassing, truly hardcore nerd shit — if names like Darius, Fire Emblem, TwinBee, Tactics Ogre, Front Mission, Parodius, Super Robot Taisen, and Famicom Disk System mean anything to you, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. 1997′s Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (for Playstation) is not only one of my favorite Metroidvania games, but has an incredible soundtrack that combines the best of J-rock, cheesy gothic metal, a dash of techno, and symphonic classical/baroque. Think of it as what Type O Negative might sound like if they were all weird computer programmers from Japan instead of metalheads from Brooklyn.
While I think of their later albums as he absolute epitome of dull, redundant, riff salad that puts me to sleep faster than an Ambien and a gin & tonic, Deeds’ 1996 LP Trading Pieces is one of the finest technical, brutal death metal albums ever recorded.The drummer for the excellent Cleveland death metal band Odious Sanction gave me a cassette dub of this at a show back in 1997 or so, and I’ve listened to it on the regular ever since.
Full confesstion: I had never even heard of Uphill Battle before this summer, when Empyereon/Meek is Murder drummer Frank Godla turned me onto them after this past August’s Cynic/Intronaut/Dysrhythmia show. I think what happened was, I said something about how much I love Danny Walker’s drumming in Intronaut, and Frank said, “Oh, you’ve heard Uphill Battle, right?” Turns out Walker was in Uphill Battle before Intronaut ever existed. Needless to say, upon learning this information, I told Frank I needed to hear something ASAP. Wreck of Nerves (Relapse, 2004) has been, like, wrecking my nerves pretty consistently since that night.
Sacramento, CA-based hooligans Hoods have been making seriously heavy toughguy hardcore since the 1990s, though their records for Victory Records and subsequently Eulogy Recordings garnered them the most attention. Their latest album, Pit Beast, was released in the summer of 2009 on I Scream, though I only started listening to it this year. With crushing breakdowns and Mike Hood’s fearsome roar, the record has rapidly become a favorite when I’m doing cardio work at the gym or beating the shit out of strangers who don’t show me proper respect.
Hoods released a whole mess of videos for the album, though the title track — which you can watch above — is one of the highlights. It’s what you’d expect being bludgeoned to sound like.
-GS
To understand Downset, you really need to understand the context in which they came up. Back in the 90s, the graffiti scene was no fucking joke. There was a huge influx of what we called tagbangers — crazy kids who were basically gangsters who also tagged, and they scared the shit out of everybody, graffiti writers and citizens alike. Even the legit, non-tagbanger graffiti crews were pretty rough — I grew up with the guys who started the infamous BTM and 3A, who still scare the fuck out of anybody who crosses their path and are currently crushing NYC. The whole West Coast was pretty wild, but Southern California was by far the sketchiest when it came to graffiti. If you lived there in the early to mid-90s, you know what I mean: all the freeways were absolutely covered in graffiti, and people like CHAKA and OILER were pretty close to household names.
I’m not old enough to have seen Black Flag in any incarnation, including the tenure of the tormented Henry Rollins. Yet like many angst-ridden teens in the 90s, I eagerly digested whatever “buzzworthy” videos MTV had in their bin, and that of course included Rollins Band’s breakthrough clip for “Liar”. A brilliant fusion of his spoken word diatribes with the band’s unabashedly bluesy and grim hard rock, the track captured the attention through its harsh, cynical narrative and sinister imagery.
Fortunately, Weight followed that formula quite closely and sonically the record was as cohesive as they come. Throughout, though most present on cuts like “Fool” and “Shine”, new addition Melvin Gibbs added a heretofore missing funk bass element to the howling, seething miasma present on prior records like Life Time and The End Of Silence. Highlights of this stellar record include “Alien Blueprint” and the chillingly isolationist “Disconnect”.
So if it’s been awhile, pull your copy Weight out of its jewelcase and pop it into the nearest bit of music-playing hardware you can find.
-GS
Cobalt are known for one thing. That thing, sadly, is not balls-out, epic black ‘n’ roll. No, it’s that frontman Phil McSorley is in the Army, brought to the attention of many by his appearance on Fox News’ (um, surprisingly metal-sympathetic) Red Eye. And I’m obviously not knocking that — writing CD reviews in my underwear while drinking beer makes me 100% less selfless than the ladies and gentlemen of our armed forces according to ten out of ten people — it’s a shame that THAT has to be what Cobalt‘s defining feature is for most, seeing as their music is so goddamn forceful and fucking HEAVY in a genre not necessarily known for either. And while Gin, their last album, was more cohesive and ultimately easier to sit through, 2007’s Eater of Birds is the band at its best: endlessly propulsive, varied but never vulnerable, and chock motherfucking full of riffs, riffs, riffs, riffs, riffs, and additional riffs. Hopefully in the end, this will be what Cobalt’s gimmick, if one could consider being awesome a gimmick.
In my 20+ years of listening to metal/hardcore/etc, there are few records that have made a bigger impact on me than the “Cry Now, Cry Later” compilations. For those who aren’t familiar, this series of four double-7″ compilations collected some of the mid ’90s most brutal and important grindcore/power violence bands, and I still listen to it on the regular (although nowadays that’s usually on my iPod while I’m at the gym).
Before I dig into the tracks themselves, a little background: You may know Pessimiser as the label who put out some great records from bands like 16, Despise You, Excruciating Terror, Grief and Phobia, but it was originally a zine. The brains behind the zine, label and Despise You is Chris Elder, who is not only hilarious, but among the world’s most cynical human beings (as you might be able to tell from the name of his band and label). Chris is born and raised in the sketchy town of Inglewood, which has its fair share of cholos (Mexican gangsters), and the name of the record is a parody of the famous cholo saying “Smile Now, Cry Later.”
Suicidal Tendencies’ 1983 self-titled debut album is universally regarded as an absolute classic. And rightly so — it’s without question one of the definitive 80s hardcore records, and required listening for any would-be fan of the genre. It’s fucking untouchable; anybody who says otherwise is your enemy and you should punch them in the face immediately. But it’s not the only classic in the Suicidal catalog: my pick for the most underrated gem in their career is 1988′s Controlled By Hatred/Feel Like Shit/Deja Vu EP.
“Master of No Mercy” is my all-time favorite Suicidal song, yet in all the many times I’ve seen them they’ve never played it :(
I <3 Butch Walker! He’s about as brilliant a songwriter, producer and lyricist as there is in the entire world!
But before he got all indie/modern of late (and way after he was all glammed up in South Gang) he was all about power-crunch guitar pop, and hotdamn was he good at it. Following the breakup of Marvelous 3 in 2001 he released his first solo record Left of Self-Centered in 2002, an album with which I walked hand in hand down memory lane a few days ago. So excellent!
I’d forgotten about the little sketch, above, that opens the album. It’s funny how it’s even more relevant now than it was in 2002 when it was recorded. And for good measure, the album’s first actual song is included in the clip too since there’s a nice little segue there that’d be odd if it was just cut off.
If you’re questioning the validity of this post on a metal site, a) fuck you, b) do some research.
-VN
Back in the late 80s/early 90s, you could usually figure a band was good if their name was a 3 or 4-letter acronym: DRI, SSD, JFA, SOD, SNFU, and DYS, to name just a few of the many awesome hardcore/thrash bands who I grew up on. Of all the alphabet-soup-core bands, the one who stood out among the rest to me was MDC, whose name stood for Millions of Dead Cops, Multi-Death Corporation, Millions of Damn Christians, Missile Destroyed Civilization, and a bunch of other awesomely 80s-hardcore phrases.
It’s rare when I hear a black metal band these days that really makes me sit up straight and listen intently; so many recent bands in the genre are repetitive and boring. I’m not even a particularly big of a fan of black metal. However, Sear Bliss‘ performance on The Arcane Odyssey certainly has rekindled my hope and love of black metal. It combines symphonic, melodic, and raw elements to create a truly epic album – in terms of both songwriting and expert instrumentation.
Girl metal fans kind of have to work harder to gain credibility. We get scoffed at for trying to be “cool,” and (allegedly) not really liking the music, are accused of being posers who couldn’t name a non-“Ace of Spades” Motorhead song if our lives depended on it, and just plain using metal to get guys. (And I have to interrupt myself with an “Are you freakin’ kidding me?!” I’ve loved metal since I was seven, and my first boyfriend came about thirteen years later.) And the first couple of bands that popped into my head for this piece were all set to be platforms for my incredibly high horse, from whence I would preach about the wonder that is genuine female metal fans. And no, I do not mean Juggalettes.
But then I changed my mind. There’s one other thing us girls have to put up with, and that’s defending our right to like “girly metal.” Hair, glam, power, those bands with guys in full tattoo bodysuits and stupid hair, and some other genres are accused of being not “metal” enough. which is (again, allegedly) “why girls like them.” Which is true to some extent, I guess; I mean, ask me to name all the members of Ratt and I’ll counter with, “Which incarnation?” and then give you all of them anyway. But I honestly can’t distinguish between Bring Me the Horizon or Bullet for My Valentine. I’ve only heard of the latter because I went to a Maiden show where they opened and got booed (and it was amazing), and the former from stuff on this site. But I have come to accept my taste in “girly metal,” and to put it simply: Fuck you, I can listen to whatever I want. My pick for album of a day is from a band I’ve had a love-hate relationship from the age of seven on.
Bon Jovi. I liked Bon Jovi just because my older cousin did, and she was awesome and I wanted to be just like her. On the night of my seventh birthday, my parents took me to a Bon Jovi concert. It was my first concert and I only knew “Living on a Prayer” (which I will argue is the best arena-metal song ever), so for most of the concert, I was pretty damn bored… until they played that very song. I was awed into a stupefied state of wonder. I mean, I had heard the song before, but it was completely different live, with an entire stadium of people screaming along to it. That song is an institution, and it sort of bugs me that it’s now a dumbass frat guy anthem at bars, but hey, at least people are enjoying it ,right? From that night on, I made it my business to own every Bon Jovi album I could find. My family totally supported me, as Bon Jovi has been one of two bands that we can all agree on (the other is Queen). We were pretty devoted for a while.
Last week I saw a friend I literally have not seen and have barely spoken to in several years. I was a little worried that things might be awkward; after all, we had some catching up to do, and people can change an awful lot in a few years. And yet, within moments of sitting down together, it was as though no time had passed whatsoever; we picked up exactly where we left off, and by the end of the night, we vowed not to let so much time pass before we hung out again.
Skunk Anansie’s Wonderlustre, which comes out today, is the band’s first offering in more than a decade. Luckily, it is the musical equivalent of chilling with that old friend and finding that your relationship hasn’t missed a step. Skunk Anansie still sound just like Skunk Anansie, and they still rock.
Back in 1993, music had not yet been ruined by the internet. Since information traveled through word of mouth and the postal system, it was much easier for a band to seem mysterious and larger than life than it is today, when you can see Jesse “Ripper” Owens’ Twitpics of him flying model airplanes with his daughters or whatever. The most notable example of that is, of course, the Norwegian black metal scene, but that never held much interest to me. For me and my friends who grew up on the West Coast listening to Suicidal Tendencies and Ice T, our cherished mythological metal band was Brujeria, and their 1993 LP Matando Gueros (literally means “Killing Honkeys”) was our version of Transylvanian Hunger.
I got into Black Sabbath — and subsequently metal — through Paranoid. This is to be expected: I was thirteen and Paranoid is the album with all the “hits” (the title track, “War Pigs,” “Fairies Wear Boots,” and that song that has criminally only been in one of the Iron Man movies). It’s generally considered by the fairweather metal enthusiast crowd (or n00bs, if you will) as the gateway Black Sabbath album, and thus gets most of the critical love thrown its way. Among actual, flesh-and-blood metalheads, their debut gets the OG respect (seeing as it kind of kickstarted the whole metal thing almost singlehandedly), Masters of Reality gets the stoner metal cred, and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath has “bloody” in the title, so right there, that’s like sixty points. Sadly and seemingly most often left out of this equation is Vol. 4 (or Snowblind, for you rock history nerds), an album that stands shoulder-to-goddamn shoulder with the rest of Sabbath’s early triumphs. And my question is: why is it so often snubbed?
You can’t talk about 90′s hardcore without devoting a substantial part of that conversation to the boys who put the sleepy town of Syracuse, NY on the map: Earth Crisis. For anybody who wasn’t in the hardcore scene back then, it’s hard to describe the impact they had or how controversial they were. You either loved them or hated them for bringing both metal and veganism into the hardcore scene, and I definitely loved them. I’ll save the discussion of their politics and all that for another time, and focus on what’s more important to me these days: their music.
This propulsively driving, tribally beating sludge monster slays me from the first track, and won’t let go the whole way through. Bombastic rhythm section, piercing guitars, thick manly screaming (rawr), and melodic singing sections set the stage for a no-bullshit, ass-kickin frenzy of wonderfully simple songwriting that blends together seamlessly with the thunderous production. I don’t love their second album (although it’s definitely time for a re-listen), but this one is truly a winner.
-KW
Speaking of power-crunch-pop, remember Diffuser?
Diffuser’s brand of heavy pop rock was very specific to a time and a place, their mix of hard rock riffs with pure pop-punk songwriting and attitude something that could only exist in the late ’90s / early 2000s when both genres were peaking and could only be spawned in a prototypically homogenized suburban place like Long Island. While this blend has undoubtedly caused 75% of the MetalSucks readership to stop reading this article immediately, Diffuser wrote positively perfect songs that could get your head banging, get your girlfriend singing along and get lodged in your head instantly. I suppose in a way they were proto-emo; these days they’d definitely be labeled emo, but 10 years ago no one really used that term, certainly not in reference to music with this much balls.
