Sunday 27 March 2011

Sho'nuff Grooves Vol.1

Mondo joints from the Sho'nuff repertoire. 

Gene Page
The Blasters
Genesis
Rick James
Goblin
Breakwater
Steely Dan
The Pointer Sisters
Fred Wesley
Grand Funk Railroad
Stacey Q
Betty Davis
ELO




Wednesday 16 March 2011

Gene Page - Blacula OST (1972)

Some solid, hard funk for tonight. This is Gene Page's complete score for William Crain's classic Blacula. Page managed to get The Hues Corporation to help out with some of the music and they appear in the film in the night club scenes as the house band. This obviously makes it clear that this isn't just some standard, orchestrated, strings and horns horror score. Obviously with the setting being funky LA and the fact they where tapping into the Blaxploition market, the accompanying music is pretty groovy. Plenty of smooth bass, flute and staccato horn work. You can't really imagine Nosferatu grooving up that stair case to this can you? William Marshall  brings a certain dignity to the role. I really think it's a combination of his turn as Dracula's "soul brother" and this soundtrack that lift Blacula above the tepid waters of 70's explotation films. In fact, if you didn't know what the album was you would never have this pegged as the soundtrack to a black vampire movie. "That's a baaaaaaad cape".



The awesome theme tune and opening animation is really good......................



Tuesday 15 March 2011

Withdrawn - Seeds Of Inhumanity (1998)



Sadly it has turned out to be nigh on impossible to track down any pictures of Withdrawn, let alone much information on them. That is why you get a flier rather any sort of exciting live picture. ( edit : changed) As far as this goes, I had this Household Name Records comp back in 1998/99 that opened my eyes to a lot of good stuff. Out of everything on it, Withdrawn stood out the most. Nasty, straight edge, vegan inspired metal. Hardcore in attitude but not in sound. Sort of like crossing Carcass, Integrity, Merauder and Slayer into this angry, militant ball of fury. They even got Leckie from Voorhees to lend his bark as full time vocalist. Most of the songs deal with the popular issues of the time such as drugs, smoking, animal rights and the sort. Now, this attitude wasn't for everybody. I know my old guitarist got into a fight with Leckie when they played together on some all-dayer once. Alongside a lot of the H8000 lot in Europe I always found it funny that they managed to create music that was way more metal than a lot of the "real" metal labels where putting out.



After this album they got a different vocalist and changed names to Evanesce. Sadly some other bigger band with the same name took offence and they had to change it again. Leckie carried on with Voorhees and the rest have done time in Walk The Plank, SSS and numerous other bands. If you hunt out you can find this massively convoluted family tree that stretches across the country and nearly every band that was kicking around in the late 90's.

Monday 14 March 2011

Movie sickness



I don't do being ill, but at least I can catch up on doing some movie viewing.
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Tuesday 8 March 2011

Necrophagia - Holocausto De la Morte (1998)

Yes. You would be right in thinking that the dude on the far right is indeed that tool from Downtera. Now, I know how well liked Pantera are by most knuckle dragging metal fans but I have no love what so ever for them. Not after paying a small fortune as a teenager to see them be kneecapped on stage by Anselmo's drunken and stoned ranting many years ago. What I do have love for is this album he was involved with back in the late 90's. Necrophagia had been knocking about in one form or another since the early 80's.
As far as I could gather they had actually split up by the late 90's but reassembled with Phil Anselmo ( or Anton Crowley, as he goes under on here) handling all guitars. This line up recorded this album and a couple of Ep's before it all changed again.
This is really the only period of the band that interested me. The band where hitting this sludgy, Autopsy punk like groove and possessed a really harsh guitar sound.  This album was released at the same time as a video compilation featuring the current band playing in the infamous House Of Shock. Each track had a different video involving band members. I mean, one look at the cover art tells you where they are coming from cinematically.
As such, there is some complete Fulci/ Bava worship going on here as well as a huge slab of rotting, low budget gore. Witness drummer Wayne Fabra masturbating into the hair of a girl he has recently shot.

See Anton Crowley huff glue and get drunk with a big boobed lady in a graveyard.

See Killjoy sacrifice a woman with a huge fake muff.
All pretty cool. Add to this lot a video paying homage to Fulci masterpiece The Beyond and another track with footage from Jim Van Bebber's classic Roadkill : The Last Days of John Martin and its a pretty creepy, repulsive death metal classic.  You can't argue with some of the riffs on here, or the nasty atmosphere it creates.



Behold............the sickness.......................