Gonnamaketheponyhop Mixtape (2012)

I recently did a hip hop mix just for fun and as a chance to mess around with some new editing software. It's just short of an hours worth of  beats from Onyx, NWA, Big Juss, Dead Prez and loads more. I thought I might share it here with you. Feel free to download and share around all you want.

John Holmes - El Louso Suavo (1999)

I wrote about John Holmes and posted up their final album a while back here, so I am not going to patter on about this awesome bands legacy and lineage again. All you need to know is that El Louso Suavo is a monster of an album. A ugly, crust influenced monstrosity of hardcore smashing its way through Deadguy and The Jesus Lizard style noise rock with a suitably British sense of nihilism.

John Holmes - El Louso Suavo

This originally came out on Flat Earth Records who have recently put their entire back catalogue up for free download. This is a label that introduced John Holmes, Hard To Swallow, Manfat, Ebola, Sawn Off Drop Dead, Witchknot and tons more to my young ears. They made an impression on my musical education.

Flat Earth Records

Kiss It Goodbye and all the other good things.

By now you will have probably heard the news, despite being only half the original line-up, Kiss it Goodbye have reformed for some select US shows. The band responsible for one of the most important albums to my musical growth as a youngster. Even now, over 10 years since I first heard it I still get a buzz every time I listen to it. In honour of this and my love for the melodramatic howl of vocalist Tim Singer, I have posted up some choice cuts from the dudes discography.
She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not is still, to this day, one of the angriest hardcore records I have ever heard. Tim Singer sounds like he is going through a complete mental breakdown, his vocals a mixture of mumblings, shrieks and roars complemented by the berserk, twisted instrumentation. I still struggle to get my head around some of the ideas and riffs on this album. You can draw a definite line from Black Flag to the KIG, sonically and lyrically they both possess a crazy, wild anger that not many bands achieve. Stone cold classic.

Kiss It Goodbye - She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not

Prior to KIG Singer and guitarist Keith Huckins where part of the Deadguy line up responsible for Fixation On A Co-Worker in 1995. The New Jersey group, along with Bloodlet where the black sheep of the Victory Records roster. A superb album in its own right. Combining noise rock, hardcore and a ton of negative attitude.

Deadguy - Fixation On A Co-Worker

After KIG, the other members took part in Playing Enemy and Nineironspitfire. The demo below surfaced about 1999/2000 and whetted a lot of appetites for a future that never came. Family Man was KIG without Huckins and sounds for all intents and purposes like Black Flag smashing into Unsane's practise room. Sadly these two songs are all that ever seemed to exist.

Family Man - Demo

There was talk of other recordings over the years, internet gossip and so forth but nothing has come out yet.

P.S. My Mediafire account is on the fritz so the links on this page are courtesy of the awesome folk over at The Living Doorway and Counts Of Arson. Sweet stuff.

Ol' Dirty Bastard - Return To The 36 Chambers : The Dirty Version

1995 saw the release of this album, probably one of the most well known and commercially successful offshoots of the Wu-Tang empire. From then onwards, its creator, Ol' Dirty Bastard ( Tyrone Russell Jones to his mother) went on to have a fair few adventures :

Around this time, Jones gained notoriety when, as he was being profiled for an MTV biography, he took two of his thirteen children bylimousine to a New York State welfare office to pick up his welfare check; his latest album was still in the top ten of the US charts. The entire incident was filmed by an MTV camera crew and was broadcast nationwide.

In February 1998, Jones witnessed a car accident from the window of his Brooklyn recording studio. He and a friend ran to the accident scene and organized about a dozen onlookers who assisted in lifting the 1996 Ford Mustang—rescuing a 4-year-old girl from the wreckage. She was taken to a hospital with first and second degree burns. Using a false name, Jones visited the girl in the hospital frequently until he was spotted by members of the media

The evening following the traffic accident, Jones rushed on-stage unexpectedly as Shawn Colvin took the stage to give her acceptance speech for Song of the Year at the 1998 Grammy Awards, and announced that he had recently purchased expensive clothes in anticipation of winning the Grammy Award for Best Rap Album that he lost to Puff Daddy. As Colvin took the stage to a round of applause, he asked of the audience, "Please calm down, the music and everything. It's nice that I went and bought me an outfit today that costed a lot of money, you know what I mean? 'Cause I figured that Wu-Tang was gonna win. I don't know how you all see it, but when it comes to the children, Wu-Tang is for the children. We teach the children. You know what I mean? Puffy is good, but Wu-Tang is the best, Okay? I want you all to know that this is ODB, and I love you all. Peace!" This incident was widely covered in the mainstream media.


In February 1999, he was arrested for driving without a license and for being a convicted felon wearing a bulletproof vest (the first person arrested for this infraction under a new California law). Back in New York weeks later, he was arrested for drug possession of crack cocaine and for traffic offences. With multiple cases in the past and present, he was arrested with marijuana and 20 vials of crack. After his arrest, Ol' Dirty Bastard reportedly asked the police to "make the rocks disappear". During a court hearing, he once called a female prosecutor a "sperm donor."


Its a top class album. It has that East Coast dissonance that RZA's production always lends. Alongside Liquid Swords its my favourite Wu offshoot.

Ol' Dirty Bastard - Return To The 36 Chambers

Busta Rhymes - When Disaster Strikes..... (1997)

So while I was left reeling by the announcement that Busta Rhymes wouldn't be playing Shonuff in the upcoming remake of Berry Gordy's, 1985, cinematic milestone The Last Dragon ( the part is taken by Samuel L Jackson! Why? Of all people?), I got listening to his albums for the first time in years as a way to console myself over this blow. Busta always had a different angle to most of the other turkeys in the mainstream rap game. Up until the early 2000's you could always rely on him for something odd and slightly left of the game. The album below, When Disaster Strikes.... and its follow up Extinction Level Event were the soundtrack to a full year of my misspent college adventures when I was younger. The version below is the repress that removes the slightly lumpen Survival Hungry track and replaces it with the Knightrider sampling, floor filler Fire It Up. In turn, a reworking of the album track Turn It Up.

Busta Rhymes - When Disaster Strikes.....

more RAM - S/T (1996)

A brief but beautiful little burst of noise. Post-Hammerhead, Paul S knocked out this 7" with fellow noise traveller Matt Entsminger. The four tracks contained revel in their stripped down. clanging, noise rock glory. Its basically a given that if you like any of the guys previous bands ( once again I don't trust anyone who doesn't like Hammerhead or Janitor Joe) you will dig this long lost treat.

more RAM - S/T

War - Total War (1997)

Bank holiday blasphemy. All out, hate filled, bestial black metal war machine War, and the first EP "Total War" released back in the hazy late 90's on Necropolis Records.

Settle down Tony..I mean IT.

War was the result of a drunken night deep within the Abyss studios, home of Peter Tagtgren. His friends from Abruptum and Dark Funeral spent the night ranting about how they should pay to have Varg killed. They would make a album of primitive, hateful Black Metal with any profits going to The True Satanic Horde ( a hobby of IT's) and to finance the murder of Vikernes.
So if you like hateful, angry BM with lyrics about Satan, war and Satan ( plus some questionable, PC baiting lyrics in the track "I Am Elite") then this should be right up your alley. I like it for its single minded hatred and refusal to slow down. I think that's a fair reason.

War - Total War

Helmet - Wilma's Rainbow EP (1994)

Page and his lads doing what they did best back in the 90's. The second single from "Betty" just hammered home the Helmet sound to all those pricks watching MTV. You can argue all you want about its influence and its fault for various other "genres" but you can't deny the groove.
The EP is backed up with a few decent quality live tracks including "Just Another Victim", the collaboration they did with House Of Pain. Which funnily enough both groups tend to play live, but separately.

Helmet - Wilma's Rainbow EP

Onyx - Bacdafucup (1993) & All We Got Iz Us (1995)

The angry, foul mouthed, Biohazard collaborating, Spike Lee acting group known as Onyx made a pretty big impression back in the 90's. Here are the first two albums they did, Bacdafucup and All We Got Iz Us both classics zipped up together.

Onyx - Bacdafucup/All We Got Iz Us

 

Sigh - Ghastly Funeral Theatre (1997)

Need to get back on the blog trail. A catalogue of life fails and problems have persisted recently. The bonus is I have managed to stock pile some good stuff for future posting.
The first will be this '97 offering from Japan's Sigh, the avant garde black metal group that have been confusing and alienating thicky metallers for over a decade. From the early black/thrash output on  Deathlike Silence ( you know ran that don't you?) right up to today's genre spanning amalgamation, they have always seemed to follow what ever the hell they fancied doing. I do remember the rumour that 2005's Gallows Gallery album used sonic warfare equipment perfected by the Japanese military in WWII to harm the listener. Sadly that was just a daft rumour to disguise the crap production job.
Ghastly Funeral Theatre marked a definitive change in the bands evolution. The Celtic Frost like guitar worship is still here but tempered and with an equal amount of keyboard and piano tinkling. Huge orchestral swathes of them open and close the album while the track Imiuta separates the more metal elements with a further piano interlude. Throw in a ton of folk and odd, almost classic rock moments and you have Ghastly Funeral Theatre. You might be thinking you have heard keyboard driven black metal far to much before and in all fairness I wrote this off first time around. I remember the album Hail Horror Hail in the same year, more for its striking cover art, receiving quite a bit of press. This EP and that album are where Sigh began to get interesting for me.

Sigh - Ghastly Funeral Theatre

Breach - It's Me God (1997)

Solid gold, bulletproof classic. The dark, Swedish hardcore machine known as Breach have never really set a foot wrong. This album is my favourite and one of my biggest influences. I couldn't ever really describe how good this is, just get it listened to.

Breach - It's Me God

They ended the final show by smashing up all the instruments and then the guitarist did this little interview......

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.

Withdrawn - Seeds Of Inhumanity

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.

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.

Necrophagia - Holocausto De La Morta

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

Altered Beast - Toshio Kai - OST (1988)

How many of us got this free with the original UK Megadrive bundle? Yep, and how many actually completed this? Thought as much. You took the easier option of Sonic or Golden Axe didn't you? Well, I really don't blame you. Altered Beast was one of those games that people do remember. But its usually for everything other than the game play. It was a combination of the frustrating lack of extra credits, the wacky attack patterns, the assumption that you must be able to mind read the enemies movements and the fact if you missed all 3 blue power up balls you where fucked when it came to the boss. Think about it!

Despite all those bad points, Altered Beast was still pretty bitchin'. Come on, you could change into a beast that flew around the screen and fired lightning! That was pretty sweet. Plus you can't ignore the intended-ominous-but-shitty-soundboard-issues-caused-it-to-be-distorted legend "Wise fwom youw gwave".
I always remember the soundtrack. Toshio Kai, the man responsible for the Pac-Man theme, managed to compose a pretty memorable score, in fact its my most solid memory of this classic. So here we go, Toshio Kai's soundtrack to Sega's gateway classic Altered Beast.............

 

Toshio Kai - Altered Beast OST

Soundgarden - Live at Brixton Academy (1997)

You shouldn't need much of an introduction to Soundgarden. 90's rock legends. If you do then your not welcome. Superunknown is on the stereo on a regular basis at Pony Trot Towers. Amongst the slew of live sets knocking around online, I have realised that Cornell seems to be lacking the ability to hit those high notes these days. While musically spot on his voice seems to have taken a beating doing James Bond themes and rapping some one else's songs. This is a sound desk recording from the last documented UK show before they disbanded in 1997. It was the Brixton Academy and the setlist is pretty solid ( despite omitting "The Day I Tried To live"). The crowd seem pretty into it and do in fact sing along louder than Cornell at points which does disguise his sometimes off key warbling. But hey, its Soundgarden. You can't and won't complain.

Soundgarden - Live Brixton Academy 97

Only thing its missing is this masterpiece....................

Unsane - The Peel Sessions (1994)

The awesome, pummeling sound of Unsane is one that has been much copied but never bettered. If you don't know who Unsane are then you really should not be reading this blog. Along with The Kittens album I posted a while back, I don't trust anyone who doesn't like either. I remember there being a point when I was a kid, my friend had a compilation he got from somewhere. On it where a selection of bands that would dictate our musical paths. My three friends followed the mundane sounds of The Wildhearts and Honeycrack while I was introduced to Unsane with the the song Scrape. Never looked back since.
This is a compilation of two separate sessions they recorded for John Peel ( a total of three where recorded over the years but the third has never been made available) back in May and November 1991. The live medley and "Bath" feature original drummer Charlie Ondras as well. Download this and bathe yourself in that crushing tone.

Unsane - Peel Sessions

* Listen out for the string drop as Chris Spencer tunes down for Exterminator on the live medley.

Toadliquor - The Hortator's Lament (2003)

Having spent all weekend under the influence of illness, I have fallen back on my usual tactic of getting over any bug or virus. Its a very simple but effective policy. Bombard your insides with all manner of drugs and potions, watch horrible revenge films like The Horseman, Dead Mans Shoe's and The Embodiment Of Evil and listen to twisted, horrible music. Of which, Toadliquor is most certainly very horrible indeed. Eschewing the melodic aspect of a lot of other doom, these Californian oddballs instead layered so much filth and noise on top of the standard doom framework and in doing so created one of the most claustrophobic and horrible things ever, ( I usually hate using overly dramatic phrases but in the case of this its justified ) an album that makes you want to have a bath after its finished. You do feel like you have just been wading through some industrial quality sewage.

Toadliquor - The Hortator's Lament

Albums that influenced Oliver #3 : Cryptopsy - None So Vile (1996)

Hands down, the finest example of technical, brutal death metal going. Not only was it unbelievably fast but so precise with its song writing. I was sat in my friend Solon's house as was the custom at least 5 nights a week, when he put this on. Straight away, that sample from Exorcist III and then the berserk opening blast of Crown Of Horns ( which is still one of the best intros on any death metal album) smashed out of the speakers with Lord Worm's howl over the top.
That is reason enough in my mind, but then the album continues as it starts. More blasting, more crazy riffs, tons more guttural rumbling and high pitched screaming and then the bass. That is what still stays with me on this album, and the next two they followed this up with, the bass work of Eric Langlois. That is a huge influence on my own style and as far as finger style playing in extreme music goes, no one beats Langlois. Of course there is the piano and bass lead into Phobophile that everyone remembers and there is no denying the power when that blast rips in but Langlois brings quite a few of his own tricks to the table. Subtle little string pops and twangs. Tiny little dynamic shifts that benefit the album fully. This was the first album he played on and you can see the huge difference his style brought to the table. Listen to Blasphemy Made Flesh then this. No contest. They did follow this up with Whisper Supremacy and ...And Then You'll Beg which are both pretty solid albums and even more technical. They lost Lord Worm, had a few other vocalists, Lord Worm returned then left again, they recruited new members, changed direction as bit ( pretty shonkily if you asked me, they invented this style) and continue to tour and record. I sorta lost interest after ...And Then You'll Beg. I still blast this out all the time tho. The ultimate in technical death metal without sacrificing brutality and speed for technique. Something a lot of so called tech bands could do with taking note these days.

Cryptopsy - None So Vile

Here they are in there rehearsal space in 1996.............

The Jesus Lizard - Peel Sessions (1991/92)

Its The Jesus Lizard. I shouldn't have to say anymore really. This is a mix of two separate sessions they did for John Peel (god rest his soul) back in 1991/92. A nice bass heavy mix. They don't have the Albini clarity to them but I love how you can hear Sims bass thundering away behind Denison's guitar screeching. Don't think these ever got officially released other than being passed around the Internet. The Peel sessions where good.

The Jesus Lizard - Peel Sessions

Creation Is Crucifixion - In_Silico + Antenna Builder (1998)

Famed for ranting for ages, devolving Gameboys, erasing supermarket bar codes, releasing stuff on obscure and obselete formats and annoying all and sundry with subversive lyrics. Creation Is Crucifixion always seemed at odds with there chosen path in my eyes. Playing ripping, technical death/thrash/jazz/grind hardcore influenced metal and avoiding using half decent studios seemed a little odd. But it is saved by the fact In_Silico kicks much ass when it comes to removing your face not just with the brutal musicianship but also with the interspersed noise tracks (something they would go onto explore a lot more). You can read all about there funny little ways elsewhere online so here is there best album in my opinion with the added bonus of the unreleased Antenna Builder session tracks. Recorded on tour while in Germany. I remember seeing fliers for the brief UK leg of that tour. Never made any of the gigs, a fact that a friend always rubs in my face. Never got released, but there is talk of a long overdue discography. I got them over at the pretty sweet Robotic Obscurities blog. So here is a lost but very important piece of underground music history.

Creation Is Crucifixion - In_Silico