Casualties Of Jazz - Kind Of Black (2004)

It doesn't really get any simpler than this. Instrumental jazz trio cover Sabbath classics. That's nine Black Sabbath standards filtered through drums, double bass and Hammond organ. Its a superbly laid back listen with a ton of groove and some ingenious instrumentation. Well worth your time.

Casualties Of Jazz - Kind Of Black

Satanic Threat - In To Hell (2008)

We all have a love for the head banging fury that masters like Nunslaughter and the mighty Midnight obviously rule at. Now take members of both those mentioned acts and let them loose on some 80's hardcore records and you have this EP by Satanic Threat. Solid, US, 80's hardcore. Think Uniform Choice, Minor Threat, SSD and Youth of Today if they wrote songs about hating Christ and blaspheming. Solid, evil stuff.

Satanic Threat - In To Hell

Alejandro Jodorowsky - El Topo OST (1970)

Writing about the work of Jodorowsky is a task in itself. Everyone has varying opinions on his work. So instead of getting hung up on what its all about lets just enjoy the jazzy, funk, acid trip score to his Surrealist, spaghetti western classic, El Topo.

Alejandro Jodorowsky - El Topo

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.....

Cult Ritual - S/T LP (2009)

 

Despite the meagre number of followers on here, I can pretty much garuantee that most of you have a pretty good knowledge of music and know something good when you hear it. Of those I pesonally know, sorry, I can pretty much wager that you are going to like this post.
I missed this album first time round, not suprising really, part of the Youth Attack Records stable, limited vinyl release, talked up across the boards and copies fetching upto 200 sheets on Ebay ( Christ!). Despite all this, its done the rounds online and across the blog networks and reached quite a few more people than anyone (including the band) probably intended.
To cut a long story short, Cult Ritual have pretty much found the perfect middle ground between AmRep noise rock, Sub Pop whistle and screech and good old hardcore punk and fashioned an immensly noisy and enthralling album that doesn't hold back in its screaming feedback and broken glass guitar sound while never compromising dynamics or forward thinking. Essental doesn't really do this justice but its far more venomous and angry than a million identikit chugging hardcore bands and posseses more energy and chaos than any number of so called punk rock clones. Cult Ritual are a pretty good definition of genuine hardcore thinking.

Cult Ritual - S/T LP

Dial - S/T EP (2010)

Noise rock.  As much as I hate genre classification and pigeon holing ( despite my some what convoluted way of describing some of the bands featured on this blog), the term noise rock does a wonderful job I think, of describing to people aware of this awesome area of music just what to expect.

New Zealand's Dial are what I would call noise rock. Big, dirty, distorted guitar noise, wild screaming and huge pounding drums. I didn't realise its all just one guitar making this racket. This is a demo they put out themselves ( or they didn't) and the quality control board at Robotic Empire decided it was more than worth banging out on a CD. So go there to buy an actual copy, if I had Paypal myself I would.

Dial - S/T EP

Just listen to this song below while it downloads. You won't regret it.

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

 

Smoke And Smoke - Love Suffers Long (2004)

You like Godheadsilo and Enemymine? You like The Murder City Devils? Now, a combination of those worlds would be a pretty good thing to listen to wouldn't it? Well your in luck, such a thing does exist. Created by these three salty dudes below, the awesome, bass heavy, fuzzed out, misanthropy rife rock out that goes by the name Smoke And Smoke and an album called "Love Suffers Long".

Combining the unstoppable rhythm section of Mike Kunka and Dan Haugh and the acidic croon of Spencer Moody, Smoke And Smoke differs from Godheadsilo/Enemymine/Dead Low Tide in its stripped down structures and more to the point force. The bass is monstrous on here. Kunka always knew a thing or two about creating a wall of sound with one instrument but the levels of distortion and range of sounds he whips up from one fretboard and some pedals is pretty mind boggling. You don't really hear it as a bass, more as this wall of distortion/synth devastation washing over everything.
The vocal side is some of Spencer Moody's best work I do believe, far more unhinged than his work in The Murder City Devils. His lyrics seem to switch from finger pointing aggro to stream of consciousness absurdity and nihilistic abandon from line to line.
Now, that's either going to sound like the biggest load of rubbish or the best thing ever, but as they claim on here.... " You're gravely mistaken if you think for a second that Smoke and Smoke give a fuck-fuck-fuck!" Awesome band.

Smoke And Smoke - Love Suffers Long

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

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".

Gene Page - Blacula

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

Pine Barrens - Demo 2010 (2010)

Some nasty, local noise right here. Pine Barrens have been slowly getting there shit together for a while now, a few gigs, few mentions. They completed this demo late last year. I say demo, its a self released 4 track affair really. I don't know how to describe this other than its a very dark sounding, black tinged, thrash laced barrage of desperate rasped vocals and minor melodic riffage. Does that make sense? They even throw in sax and violin on the closer. Nearest thing I can think of is maybe Crestfallen ( I proper used to love that band, got that to post soon) with the core toned down and the BM turned up? Maybe? Dan Shaw is involved which means brutality is more than guaranteed over any sort of labelling or niche. Get it downloaded.

 

Pine Barrens - Demo 2010

Those nice folk at Power Negi and Big Mountain Tapes are making it available on the trusty C90 sometime soon. Sweet.

Albums that influenced Oliver #2 : Bloodlet - Entheogen/The Seraphim Fall (1996/98)

It was a hard choice to make as I have always, ALWAYS, insisted on The Seraphim Fall as the most important Bloodlet album to myself. But then after several months reacquainting my ears with Entheogen I realised that they both had pretty important reasons for being on here and finally after wussing out I decided to post both.

Bloodlet became known to me through those Victory Records sampler CD's, number 3 to be exact ( same place I discovered Integrity, Snapcase, Earth Crisis and Deadguy ). It was "Dogman With Horns" of Seraphim... that I first heard. I didn't understand it at all. The production was so lo-fi and murky, the vocals didn't seem to suit the music, it had this weird allover the place groove that I just couldn't get my head around. It didn't make much of an impression on me. Then on a trip to Vinyl Exchange in Manchester I picked up the album they did prior, Entheogen, out of interest wondering if it was going to be any different. That's when it clicked.

Bloodlet - Entheogen

I loved everything about this album. The vocals had this nasty, twisted atmosphere to them that at first seemed odd but perfectly suited the way these songs lumbered out the speakers. Still heavily indebted to the whole metal/hardcore chug that Victory was renowned for in those days (before it went) but spiced up with twisted pinch notes and odd timings and a whole load of dissonance. But the single most important thing about this record for me was the fretless bass playing of Art Legere. That is what sealed it in the hall of fame for me. The bass just seemed to snake under the chugging and harmonies, the intro to "Eucharist" still gets me these days.
It was about a year later that I managed to get hold of The Seraphim Fall. After listening to the track of the sampler on repeat for what seemed like weeks I thought I was ready to face this album. Having spent so long with Entheogen I felt I had a good enough understanding of Bloodlet to give it a second chance.

Bloodlet - The Seraphim Fall

It was the production that hit me at first, it was so murky and lo-fi. Almost sounding like it had never been mastered properly. Being the geeky and stubborn minded fan I was, I stuck with it for weeks before one morning when due to a delayed train I had time to listen from start to finish with no interruptions.
All of a sudden the production made sense. It snared you in with the quietly mixed acoustic parts before the almost, subliminal heaviness of the guitars came crashing down and all the while that translucent bass tone was scaling up and down the fretboard like crazy. All the odd chords, strange lyrics, dissonance and weird interludes just made it so much more important to me than anything else I was listening to at the time. I knew no one who was into this. It was my find. I absorbed as much as I could from that album. Hunted for any more information on Bloodlet that I could find. I wanted to know everything about it. Still a very under rated album and certainly one the band never managed to better in my opinion. There are links to both above. Two very important and influential albums to me.

 ( These where the fashions of the time. Blond dreads and shelltoes.)

Vaccine - Demo (2009)

A short Sunday post. My current favourite discovery. Aggro as fuck, nihilistic, pissed off straight edge hardcore. Angry at everything including other straight edgers. Some dudes from Ampere, Relics and Orchid playing fast and short. This demo clocks in just over two minutes with 5 songs. Superb stuff.

Vaccine - Demo

In Cold Blood - Hell On Earth (1997)

We ain't had any Clevo appreciation yet on the blog. So instead of posting my favourite Integrity albums ( which I more than likely will at some point) like everyone else does I thought it more interesting to leave you this one. Integrity off shoot, In Cold Blood.
I came across this originally on a Victory Records comp in a record store in Orange County, CA about 10/11 years ago. They had the song "Lost In Doubt", which kicks in after an acoustic refrain with a shredding guitar solo before the bellowing and doom laden guitars start crushing. It made quite an impression on me. I heard this before I was aware of Integrity ( who where also on that comp) or any of the Clevo sound.
You can read all about the history of this band at other places on the Internet so I won't bother, suffice to say if you dig Integrity then you will like this. Its all part of the same sound really. Maybe ICB have a more old school approach to hardcore than Integrity did but still with plenty of lead heavy, metallic muscle to back it all up.

In Cold Blood - Hell On Earth

Its all over with inside of 25 minutes. Plenty of solos and fierce breakdowns that put to shame most stuff these days and it ends with a nuclear explosion. Holy Terror lives.

Needle Sharing - My Kind Came First (2001)

I don't know why, but this is really hitting the spot right now. Dark drum & bass. Lots of bass clipping and fractured signals. I don't really have anything more to say about it seeing as its an area of music I have no clue about. Enjoy.

Needle Sharing - My Kind Came First

Lay down please.