I don’t know about you, but I am PISSED OFF about this oil spill. It’s been a month and British Petroleum has done a pretty lousy job (certainly P.R.-wise) of containing the problem, the impact of which now stretches 150 miles from Alabama to Louisiana. You don’t have to be a Phish-lovin’ environmentalist to appreciate how fucked this situation is.

If, like me, you’re frustrated that we can’t do anything to stop this other than pressure the Obama administration to take some harsh fucking measures towards those fucking fucks at BP–and maybe take alternative energy seriously–you might want to do your part in supporting this really cool benefit show meant to support the victims of this catastrophe. Awesome noise rock weirdos Zs and Child Abuse are at the top of this June 2nd bill at D.I.Y. Brooklyn venue Shea Stadium, with sets by Walter Weasel’s Cellular Chaos and acclaimed industrial/experimental act Controlled_Bleeding. All proceeds go to the Greater New Orleans Foundation, “one of the oldest and largest philanthropic organizations in the region.” For more information on what this organization is doing in response to the oil spill, visit their site.

Though these days I spend most of my time on this site writing about hardcore, I haven’t forgotten about all the weird, wonderful noise rock that I used to cover consistently on this site. So for those of you who have been missing that coverage, I’m hoping you’ll be just as excited about this upcoming show as I am.

-GS

Child Abuse are nothing if not different. Like, seriously different, as in I’ve never heard anything like them before, ever. Their crazy blend of metal, grind, prog and electronica will likely send a lot of our close-minded metal community readers running but, well, too bad. It’s not often that you find bands of any genre who truly think outside the box musically, and though it’s sometimes grating (heyo Psyopus) when those rare bands do come along that are truly doing something to push their genre(s) forward in any way you just can’t ignore them, even if it’s a challenging listen. Child Abuse’s three-dimensional polyrhythmic grind freakouts beneath keyboard blips and boops and tortured psychiatric experiment vocals are definitely challenging… but ultimately worth it.

Elise at Reign in Blonde wrote a fun piece this morning about her first encounter with Child Abuse a few years back and her subsequent love affair with these New York gentlemen. I won’t steal her thunder because Elise is a good writer and you ought to check out her story, but let’s just say it involves a small Brooklyn club, ninjas and a giant orgy. Or maybe just one of those things, but it’s still a great read.

Check out Child Abuse on MySpace and their new album Cut And Run, which is out now.

-VN

After the antics of the first day of the festival, I felt more than ready to get into day two with a healthy dose of music from the beginning. Unfortunately, that was not to be so for me, as at the time I thought I would be continuing on after SXSW into further ridonkulousness, all the way to a family vacation during Spring Break in Mexico….and today was the day that my renewed passport was meant to be FedExed to the flophouse where Vince and I were crashing.

When I had returned to said flophouse the night prior and to my surprise found an open couch in the living room right by the front door (where I was told FedEx homeboy would appear bright and early), I figured it prolly made the most sense to sleep right there on the ground floor as opposed to the stank upstairs sweat lodge where I would be sure to miss any sounds of door knocking.

Sadly, no FedEx arrived in the morning as promised — I was actually awoken by a phone call from Vince around noon wondering where the hell I had ended up last night. After a couple more hours my passport finally arrived, at which point I had to wait at least another hour for a cab to take me down to the action.

HOLY SHIT.

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