A prime slice of British thrash metal for you tonight. I will admit I wasn't sold on Acid Reign first time around. In fact, until I picked this album up in a charity shop some years ago I never really gave them much of a chance. Shame on me I know. Here's a full live set from 1989 in London......
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.
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.
Faltermeyer nails it again despite only being responsible for about half of the tracks on here. But come on! Its Chase at his best. You can't argue with that. Bit by bit.
From the dope addled mind of Black Flag and SST head honcho, Greg Ginn, came Gone back in '86. A vehicle for his complete wig out, free-jazz obsessed, hippy rock dreams. This is early 70's stadium jams transposed to 1980's van tours and shitty basements. Its awesome. I have always been a fan of Flag's "The Process Of Weeding Out" and after watching the Reality 86'd documentary I was reminded of how much fun this record is. So I dug it out, spun it in the car to work a few times this week and am sharing it here now. Bonus note, until recently I had no idea it was the almighty rhythm section of Andrew Weiss and Sim Cain. YES!
I have been debating over this one since before Christmas. Should I post it or not? Not down to any sort of loyalty to DIY or underground music ( it saw a very limited tape release) more down to the fact that it is pretty clear this is the work of hipsters. I love Swans as much as the next gay so a band that sound pretty much bang on as early Swans worship would be right up my street wouldn't it? Yes they would. Bodycop obviously love Swans but I just can't get away from that whiff of uber-cool exuding from this. I think its the video evidence here, the complete lack of any Internet presence and the ultimate cool sign, a limited release C90. Am I wrong? Please folk, help me out here, I want to like them. Download it below and make up your own mind.
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.
Yes, yes. I know its a bit shady but I am so chuffed with the end result of this recording and the fact it seems quite topical in recent announcement's. Its my band, The Ergon Carousel doing "Allen's Wrench" by Kyuss paired with our friends in the awesome Throats covering "Odyssey", also by Kyuss. This is lovingly pressed onto a single side 7". Some very tasty artwork done by the lovely Holly Lucas.
Its limited to 300. The first 50 had a secret, stencilled B-side. they might have some left, they might not. Holy Roar do some pretty sweet stuff so have a mooch around the store while you are there.
In the other Ergon news the album is finally nearing completion. Re-mastering is being worked on now, artwork as well. its all coming together.
Fast is back.
Once again the archives have been raided. This was the haul. Some fine, fine grinding from Baltimore courtesy of Triac.
I came into possession of this CD when my old band toured with Pig Destroyer. They had a merch guy called Blake, who at the time was the vocalist in Triac ( and, coincidently enough now plays in PD doing noise and electronics). We would talk each night, sat behind the merch table while we tried to sell our wares about music and stuff. This usually boiled down to talking about Conan The Barbarian, Mad Max and old Carcass. Blake surprised me one night by handing me this CD and telling me it was his grind band. He had made a small number of them, compromising of tracks from the 7" splits they had with Medic and The Karma Payment Plan, to hand out to folk in the UK. So when I got home it was the first thing I listened to and it blew me away.
Triac are a very dynamic and chaotic take on grind influenced hardcore. I know for a fact the wide ranging influences they pull from and they do manage to fit them all in here somewhere. They swing from frenzied blasting ( check the opening track The Worm That Gnaws ) to slug slow discordance and into thrashin fastcore effortlessly. Turning-on-a-penny dynamics and vocal acrobatics abound. Plus, any band that references Mad Max is fine with me.
I do believe they have had some line up changes since this. They followed it up with an album called Dead House Dreaming which is pretty good. Give them a go.
Any in the know hardcore kid nowadays could easily reel of love for Coliseum. Easily. Maybe some would mention Black Cross, Lords, Breather Resist (very soon) and Christiansen. But not many could recall or claim to have heard of the very band that spawned all these musicians and laid the foundations for the rulers of the current Louisville, Kentucky indie scene. Criminally under appreciated by most hardcore kids during there far to short life span and still passing under the radar of most folk nowadays. Here we have a very important album for me, For All Practical Purposes Is Dead by The National Acrobat.
I remember hearing the name mentioned in a few magazines years and years ago when there second Ep, Can't Stop Caspar Adams was released. I really liked the description and stuff I was hearing about this band but could not for the life of me get hold of a copy. Obviously this was before the Internet was as wide spread as it is nowadays. None of the mail order distro's stocked it so I consigned myself to putting it on the list of bands I would never get to hear ( that was a mighty big list back then). Then browsing through Manchester's Vinyl Exchange one day a year or so later and to my barely contained surprise this Ep popped up for 6 sheets. That is what started my love for The National Acrobat.
I could waffle on for ages about the intricacy of the guitar work and forward thinking song structures. How its a nearly perfect fusion of DC math rock, snotty mid west punk and burly east coast muscle. How vocalist Caspar Adams voice draws a line across your opinion or even how cohesive while still pulling in every direction each track is. It would be doing a great disservice to them. You just need to hear it.
Besides the Ep's they released a couple of 7"'s and appeared on a few comps. Initial Records did put out a complete discography some years ago that as far as I know is still available. Its worth the tracking down.
Digging through the archives the other day i came across this. Having not listened to it for ages it got thrown on the stereo and once again I was immersed in the surreal and chaotic world of Japan's Swarrrm, trust the Japanese to do it.
You see, while they fall under the genre title of grind, they are really left-field within its confines. I first came across them when my old band Narcosis, did a split 7" with them.They only had 2 songs on it but there was no denying there power and scope. This was the next thing I got by them and it further widened my appreciation for these far east nutters.
What other grind band starts a album with a mandolin playing something that sounds like The Godfather theme tune? Then proceeds to use that melody in the same song? Swarrrm that's who. Coupled with some immensely crazy guitar playing and an all over the shop rhythm section you pretty much have the Swarrrm sound. But to top it all off, and this is the best thing about them, is the vocal performance.
They always changed vocalists. It seemed like it was a part of there sound. Every release up until Black Bong had a different vocalist. They had no lyrics either. You get the idea that it was a case of turning up and doing whatever came out. Thus you get insane high pitched squealing and gutteral grunts but delivered with something that could only be described as "melodramatic". It sounds pretty naff on paper but you need to hear this to fully understand the description.
