ACID BATH Paegan Terrorism Tactics (Rotten) cd 15.98
Man, does this record rule! Not entirely sure how we all managed to miss this one when it came out a few years back. It was actually (re)discovered on the recommendation of a not-so-entirely-trustworthy source. Go figure! But now that we know, so must you...Imagine the sheer brutality of Eyehategod, the bluesy grind of fellow bayou residents Soilent Green, the stoned sabbathy swing of Trouble, and the melodic flair of late era Corrosion of Conformity or Alice In Chains, all forced onto one cd. Sound confusing? It is. But somehow, it gels perfectly, striking a pefect balance between catchy and heavy. This has become an absolute favorite of Andee, Allan, Elisabeth, and a handful of customers who have seen the light. Interesting non-music related facts: amazing cover art by Dr. Jack Kevorkian, one band member dead, one in jail...HIGHLY recommended!

BENIGHTED LEAMS Astral Tenebrion (Supernal Music) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Wow. Possibly the most fucked up, ridiculous black metal "band" ever, with their (his, actually, it's one guy) newest disc, some kind of pseudocerebral spacemetal epic with *amazing* songtitles like "Aurora of Despondence on Valles Marineris" and "Hermetically Leering As Frigid Blores Obumber" and "Sinister Demurral Estranged The Seductive Looming". Seemingly produced at home by someone probably not entirely familiar with how to work his four-track, and definitely struggling to operate his drum machine properly! Thus, so great that both Andee and Allan have purchased one. Also, recommended by Josh from the Champs.

BLIND GUARDIAN Nightfall In Middle-Earth (Century Media) cd 15.98
Wow. This first domestic release by veteran German pomp-prog-power-metallers Blind Guardian kinda blew us away (Andee and Allan that is). Expecting ultra cheese in the vein of Hammerfall, we instead found this to be immense, amazingly produced (like, 124 track) epic concept album, at once lush, melodic and aggressive. Imagine a more metallic Queen doing a record about J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion, and that's what you get here! No wonder they're so huge overseas.

BURZUM Filosofem (Feral House Audio/Misanthropy) cd 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
By now, unless you've been living underneath a VERY big rock, you know all about Count Grishnackh aka Burzum, Euronymous, Bard Faust, Mayhem, Emperor and all the killing and church burnings and suicides. If for some reason you don't know about all this stuff, go buy yourself a copy of The Lords Of Chaos, a book that covers all that stuff in great detail. The problem with all this drama, murder, satanism, whatever, you forget that the whole reason these guys knew each other, and the only reason any of us cared, was the music they made. And that music they made was black metal. A black metal that thanks to the decidedly non-musical drama, would soon make black metal a household name.
So when folks ask us to recommend some classic black metal, we always recommend Satyricon's Nemesis Divina, Immortal's Battles In The North, Emperor's Anthems To The Welkin At Dusk, and of course Burzum's Filosefem. Filosefem, originally released in 1996 holds a special place in our outsider music hearts, as the first black metal record to turn the whole black metal formula completely upside down. Count Grishnackh was the only member and played all the instruments, even the drums, which gives the whole thing a weirdly damaged droning swing. A rhythm that would define the rhythmic sound of later black metal legends like Graveland and Woodtemple. The guitars are a thick suffocating buzz, razor sharp and totally blown out. And the vocals are an anguished wail, some sort of primeval demonic incantation. But where Burzum stands out most is the addition of a creepy synthesizers that hover in the background of several of the tracks, a haunting melody buried beneath the swirl of fuzz and ultradistortion. Unlike other BM bands, the keyboard isn't a huge wash of strings to add some sort of epic quality, these tracks are already epic enough, here the keyboards are much more spare, a simple minor key melody is picked out, almost childlike, hovering briefly, before the next note follows. Except for one blazing blast of a track, Filosefem is mostly midtempo, lurching and heaving, stumbling down dirt road into a smeared grey landscape. But as the record nears the last few tracks, the record changes, beginning with the nearly half hour long "Rundgang um die Transzendentale Saule der Singularitat", a track that eschews any hint of metal, stripping away the guitars, the drums, everything, and leaving just the synthesizer, as it unfurls a seemingly endless Aphex Twin like four note melody. Forlorn and strangely compelling. And in the context of the whole record, as emotionally devastating as anything we've heard. The final track "Gebrechlichkeit II", brifngs back the guitars, but makes them nearly static, an endlessly blurry vacuum cleaner like riff, slowly shifting, as another haunting melody drifts wraith like in the background. Definitely one of the most essential and unique metal records of all time.

CARDIGANS Gran Turismo (Mercury) cd 15.98
When Yo La Tengo went to rock school in their video for "Sugarcube", they were instructed that their third album must follow the ELP Rule -- it must be double live! Well the Cardigans, in their recent matriculation into rock school, have followed a different rule for their third album -- the Radiohead Rule -- that if a band is in danger of being written off as a one-hit-wonder, they must make a third album of dark yet sugar-coated pop gems. Hence, OK Computer and now, for the Cardigans, Gran Turismo.
OK, it is unfair to compare this album to OK Computer, but the Cardigans have realized their best album of bittersweet pop songs. (Sadly, however, there are no Black Sabbath covers on this album.) An Aquarius pop fave.

CARNIVAL OF SOULS Original Soundtrack (Birdman) cd 13.98
This one's a long time fave! Gene Moore's creepy organ soundtrack of eerily offkey, slowed down carnival music for this low-budget 1962 cult classic by producer/director Herk Hervey set a lot of standards for the use of these sounds in future horror films. According to the liner notes by screenwriter John Clifford, the idea was for the music to take up as much of the soundtrack as possible, in order to save money on having actors read lines! So it's close to being a silent film, with the organ music music actually being integral to the plot of the film, which involves a talented young female organist, um, haunted by her involvement in a car accident. The music perfectly complements the film's striking black & white visual imagery, the hordes of dancing ghouls that increasingly inhabit her waking nightmare world... it's like she's lost in her very own, very goth, Day Of The Dead celebration. This soundtrack reissue consists of 37 tracks over 49 minutes, including some snippets of the film dialog, given titles like "First Trip To The Carnival", "You Can't Live In Isolation", "Church Is Just A Place Of Business", "Dark Entry", etc... 4 of 'em are cues that were actually unused in the film, and all were apparently sourced from slightly scratchy old acetates, which just gives this even more creepy atmosphere.
MPEG Stream: "Introduction"
MPEG Stream: "Departure"
MPEG Stream: "First Trip To The Carnival"
MPEG Stream: "Church Is Just A Place Of Business"

CHAMPS, THE III (Frenetic) cd 11.98
San Francisco's Champs (or C4AM95 as they prefer to be called for silly legal reasons) are an amazing two guitars and drums no bass, sometimes three guitars no drums, very rarely any vocals, trio that on this their debut album crank out over seventy minutes of catchy, complex, mostly instrumental metal in indie/math-rock clothing. Kind of like the indie-prog of Don Caballero or Breadwinner, with touches of Trans Am (the bombast and occasional "techno electronica" interlude) ...and healthy helpings of Iron Maiden, Thin Lizzy, Metallica, Carcass, Motley Crue, Priest, etc. I could go on. Mesmerizing live, they're on tour now but will be back soon so I hope y'all went to their shows. For what it's worth, there's a former member of Nation of Ulysses in their ranks. Rec-o-f'n-mended.

DESTINY'S CHILD The Writing's On The Wall (Columbia) cd 16.98
We actually toyed with the idea of making this 'record of the week' (indie-rock cred be damned!) on the strength of their top-ten single 'Bills Bills Bills' alone (I saw the video for this at a friend's house and it was almost enough to make me want to sign up for cable! I mean the music, not just their outfits). That song, and a couple of others like it certainly make this a record that all those down with the the last, ex-cel-lent TLC disc will love. Indeed, the intro to TLC's 'No Scrubs' is all over this album. True, there's a few of those obligatory urban r&b slow jams that you'll probably want to fast forward past (unless you're in the right 'mood'), but the rest is well worth it. Guest appearance from Missy Elliott.

DEUTER D (Kuckuck) cd 15.98
We finally got a hold of this reissue of electronic home-recording Krautrocker Deuter's first album. Subsequent releases devolved into New Age lameness, but this one, from 1971, is quite brilliant, a hallucinatory affair of studio experiments, tape effects, and guitar explorations. For fans of Sand, early Kraftwerk, or most of the Kranky contingent.
MPEG Stream: "Babylon"
MPEG Stream: "Der Turm/Fluchpunkt"
MPEG Stream: "Krishna Eating Fish And Chips"

FUSHITSUSHA The Caution Appears (Les Disques du Soleil et de l'Acier) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Housed in a handsome (black!) foldout "digipak" (oh this ugly new jargon), this is heavy duty gtr noise sans vocals from Keji Haino and Co.

GORGUTS Obscura (Olympic) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Rarely do bands completely reinvent themselves, especially metal bands. But Canada's Gorguts have done it (firing all but one member of the band in the process...) on this, their third album. Nobody was expecting it (nobody was really expecting a new Gorguts record at all, to be honest), but on Obscura generic deathmetal becomes super aggressive, completely unmelodic, stop/start math metal with the most bizarre guitar playing (totally "no-wave", like they have the guitarist from the Scissor Girls or something!) possibly ever heard in a "metal" band. Highly recommended!

ILK Zenith (No Fans) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The first release on Richard Youngs' No Fans label since the early '90s is quite a surprise -- it's not experimental noise stuff like much of his work with frequent collaborator Simon Wickham-Smith, this is actually the debut album by Young's one-man progressive rock band Ilk. Yup, '70s style prog rock -- but not really. Young has constructed mock-suites of beautifully intricate rock structures that include classical guitar, flute and sleigh bells. (No mellotron though.) Actually, the "prog" aspect of this seems kinda conceptual. I mean, there IS a Roger Dean-eque painting of a floating island of monoliths (that spell I-L-K) on the cover, and there's some portentous introductory narration by someone (Youngs' dad?). But the music isn't full of weird time changes or bombastic instrumentals to show off his chops -- it's simply beautiful, focusing mainly on Youngs' haunting vocals, and/or (in song "Nocturnal Path Flow" for instance) the mesmerizing sheets of eerie, shimmering sounds from his keyboards. It's elemental in its majesty -- you can understand how the album was inspired by his travels on the coast of Scotland. If you've gotten into Young's much more recent and equally gorgeous (if mellower) collaboration with Kawabata Makoto on vhf, you should definitely check this out! Allan LOVES this album.

IN EXTREMO Weckt Die Toten! (Metal Blade) cd 15.98
In our continuing tradition of bringing you the weirdest metal around, we now present to you: In Extremo! Nobody describes a band better than their press release: "Menacing and enraged, the band performs dressed in historically correct costumes from the middle ages. Dancing and wildly carousing, presenting their songs, you can imagine how our ancestors must have celebrated. Bagpipers tread madly back and forth across the stage in front of head-banging guitarists. Wildly manic tribal drum rhythms enhance the happenings." Essentially, In Extremo are an above average power metal band (ala Blind Guardian or Hammerfall) fronted by bagpipers and a vocalist that sounds like either Popeye or a Tuvan throat singer. Pretty excellent actually.

IRON MAIDEN s/t (Sanctuary / Metal Is) cd 16.98
After being out of print for the last year or two, all these classic Iron Maiden titles (and a few, later, not-so-classic ones) have been reissued domestically in remastered, repackaged (big booklets of photos, artwork & lyrics, slipcovers) and cd-rom enhanced (with videos!) form. We've got Iron Maiden, Killers (that's a metal must-have sez Allan), Number of the Beast, Piece of Mind, & Powerslave (those are the good ones...well okay, maybe Seventh Son of A Seventh Son also). Anyway, it's time to get rid of your old scratchy vinyl or cassette copies and pick up some of these new cds. And is it just me, or did they somehow make the cover art look even better? The cd-rom stuff is really well done, too. Up the Irons!

KATATONIA Discouraged Ones (Century Media) cd 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Brilliant melancholy not-even-really-metal-anymore music from this boundary-pushing Swedish outfit. Originally inspired by British melodic doom-death act Paradise Lost, Katatonia on Discouraged Ones is equally influenced by the likes of The Cure, Pink Floyd and the Red House Painters!

KEEP OF KALESSIN Through Times Of War (Avantgarde Music) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Norwegian black metal, very much in the style of heavyweights Emperor, Enslaved, Immortal, and Satyricon (the later most of all). A very impressive debut, very heavy stuff indeed. Recommended! (Allan and Andee both took one home...)

KIX Midnight Dynamite (Atlantic) cd 11.98
Kicks ass is more like it! Super catchy high energy hard pop. This is their third record, from 1985 and is the perfect blend of Cheap Trick's pop hooks and AC/DC's heavy groove. Allan and Andee both love this band. In fact, if you buy this record and love it, we will have no problem ordering you their other three records, all amazing. Oh yeah, Allan wants me to make sure you realize we aren't joking. Because we aren't.

KIX s/t (Atlantic) cd 11.98
Look, people, we really weren't kidding about how much we (Andee and Allan to be precise) love Kix! The response to our listing of their Midnite Dynamite on the last AQ-list was less-than-overwhelming (although Brian at WFMU did email to let us know that his covers band does a Kix song--way to go Brian!), so we're trying again. This is Kix's first album, from 1981, and it is also quite representative of their blend of Cheap Trick and AC/DC (no Def Leppard-ish ballads to be found on this one, although they're good at those too). Someone, anyone, take a chance, take our word on it and order one. A great hard pop record with even some new-wavish moments (it being 1981 and all). Don't you wanna rock? C'mon!

KREIDLER Appearance And The Park (Kiff) cd 16.98
Second album by these To Rococo Rot-connected neo-kraut-post-rockers, better even than their debut Weekend.

MAGMA Kobaia (Seventh) 2cd 32.00
Amazing Magma debut. Magma mastermind Christian Vander comments:
"After the death of John Coltrane (41) in 1967, I composed 'Kobaia' (=eternal) in front of the musical chaos and the misunderstanding of mankind; and then I created Magma and the 'Zeuhl Wortz' (=music of the universal might). To Life, to Death and after... It brought me to my real work on earth. My unique and true function. this album was a renewal, a complete rebirth. Many enjoyed it. This allowed the birth of many new groups in France, creating a new musical trend: the zeuhl music."

MASADA (JOHN ZORN) Bar Kokhba (Tzadik) 2cd 29.00
Small ensembles of strings, keyboards, and clarinets playing klezmer/jazz tunes. This brief description must be augmented with the declaration that this is an ALL TIME AQUARIUS FAVE!!!

MELVINS The Bootlicker (Ipecac) cd 17.98
#2 in the Melvin's 3-album summer plan. This is the self-proclaimed 'quiet' one, and, while not near-silent like a Bernard Gunter record or anything, it is quite restrained by the Melvin's usual loud-and-pummelling standards. Rather hypnotic post-rock is what you get, with strange almost-Gothic vocals from Buzz. The first 'wacky' Melvins album that Allan has liked, because the so-called wackiness is limited to a single (successful!) concept that they stick to throughout the record, instead of trying to surprise/annoy with each and every song like some other Melvins discs of which I could think. No, 'The Bootlicker' doesn't possess the classic heavy Melvins sound that previous disc 'The Maggot' recaptured, but is much better the sort of indie-rock/Mr. Bunglized sound of other recent full-lengths like 'Stag'. So, two down, both pretty good, and one to go. (The next one, 'The Crybaby', we'll admit to being a bit afraid of...seeing as it's the 'wacky guest star' album or something, with contributions from the likes of Leif Garrett and Hank Williams III!)

MELVINS The Maggot (Ipecac) cd 17.98
The first in their three part summer album series recorded for Mike Patton's new Ipecac label. This one is their "metal" record. Supposedly album number two is "slow" and part three is "experimental". Includes a rendition of Fleetwood Mac's "Green Manalishi With The Two-Pronged Crown" (a live favorite at Melvins shows for the past few years). Not as good as the Judas Priest version, but good. Anyway, The Maggot should satisfy those for whom the last couple of Melvins' records were too deliberately weird or "indie-rock".

O.A.D. Daytona (FMN) cd 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Incredible improvising rock/funk/freejazz combo - "club music of the 21st century." Members of Ground Zero, Ruins, Omoide Hatoba, Children Coup d'Etat participate. With turntables and psychedelic rock guitar. The live tracks are absolutely killer. One of Allan's top ten for 1995.

OPETH My Arms, Your Hearse (Century Black) cd 10.98
Third & perhaps best (yet) album from this Swedish band worshipped the world over for its combination of heavy death/black metal and epic progrock (i.e. they're no strangers to ten-minute plus song lengths). Note title derived from a Comus lyric!

OXBOW Fuckfest/King Of The Jews (Crippled Dick) 2cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Double cd collecting the first two utterly amazing Oxbow lps from '89 and '91, which previously were available on cd as The Balls In The Great Meat Grinder Collection on the UK's Pathological label, now out of print--but that was only one disc, which meant a whole song was scrapped, and another faded out. Those have been restored here, plus you get an unreleased track called "Pannonica" from the King Of The Jews sessions. Guests on these albums include Lydia Lunch and Klaus Floride. Recently returned from a tour in Japan, Oxbow have always langushed in relative obscurity here in the US (current domestic label=SST, argh) when they really deserve to be ruling the whole damn world. Essential, intense, heavy, dark, weird, artful, aggressive, fucked genius with few peers.

PAINKILLER Collected Works (Tzadik) 4cd 44.00
4 cds collecting the almost-complete works (plus some previously unreleased pieces) of the collaboration among 3 of the biggest egos in contemporary music: John Zorn, Mick Harris, and big bad Bill Laswell. Nicely presented, with all the original (banned-in-England in one instance) artwork. Includes "Guts Of A Virgin," "Buried Secrets," and "Execution Ground" (with the bonus live in Osaka disc from the import Japanese version, featuring guest Eye Yamantaka of Boredoms). And then there's the previously unreleased track with Keiji Haino on guitar (doing a Jacks cover!). Makigami Koichi also guests on vocals.

PAN-THY-MONIUM III - Khaooos & Kon-Fus-Ion (Relapse) cd 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Instead of worshipping Satan, these bizarre Swedish metallers made up their own pantheon of gods, foremost among them "Raagoonshinnaah," the mythology of whom they celebrate on the four epic tracks of this release. The music ranges from bluesy psychedelic rock, to grunting grindcore, to free jazz, to ambient synth-scapes...A few spins of this and you too might find religion.

PROSCRIPTOR The Venus Bellona (Cruel Moon) cd 17.98
Incredible, Magickal, Historickal ritual soundscape new-wave solo concept album, created by the drummer for the Texas occult metal band Absu. A beautiful digipak with music unlike anything else. It tells a story set in Medieval Scotland but is influenced less by Black Metal than by the Art Bears (so Proscriptor claims) and Flock of Seagulls (the album closes with a cover of their hit "I Ran", paradoxically the most metal moment on the disc...) Highly recommended! Listen to this alone at night with candles burning.

PROSCRIPTOR The Venus Bellona (Cruel Moon) lp 18.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Incredible, Magickal, Historickal ritual soundscape new-wave solo concept album, created by the drummer for the Texas occult metal band Absu. Red vinyl with music unlike anything else. It tells a story set in Medieval Scotland but is influenced less by Black Metal than by the Art Bears (so Proscriptor claims) and Flock of Seagulls (the album closes with a cover of their hit "I Ran", paradoxically the most metal moment on the disc...) Highly recommended! Listen to this alone at night with candles burning.

PUZZLE PUNKS BuduB (Time Bomb) lp 21.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We can never get enough Boredoms. But unfortunately, there's never enough Boredoms. We hate waiting years between releases. Thankfully there are plenty of side projects and offshoots to hold us over. One such Boredoms related outfit is Puzzle Punks, featuring Eye from the Boredoms, along with his PP partner Shinro Otake. We carried the limited picture disc of this release years and years ago, but for some reason were never able to get the cd. We recently discovered that there is a NEW Puzzle Punks record (we're not sure if it is indeed new, or just a new collection of old material, but we'll hopefully have it in time for the next list) and at the same time we discovered we could finally get this, the cd version of the Puzzle Punks' 2nd album Budub.
And we forgot just how great this stuff was. Even after a decade the sounds on Budub sound fresh. Weird and fucked too (it is Eye after all) but fresh enough that you could be forgiven for thinking this was some weird Excepter record or No Neck side project. Which just goes to show you how much influence Eye and his gang had and still have on modern music.
The sound of Budub is less caustic and spastic than the first Puzzle Punks records, or the Boredoms records released around the same time. Instead it's a series of experiments in rhythm, maybe hinting at the direction Eye would take the Boredoms on late albums.
Imagine some impossible jam session between the Boredoms and This Heat, or a lobotomized Hawkwind left to jam with the infant versions of the No Neck Blues Band. Or even a room full of musical toys, possessed and allowed to run amok. Dark and deliriously playful. Sometimes creepy and dark, but more often sort of strange and hypnotic. And always some bizarre world of rhythm and rhythmic wonder. Every track a strange sonic trip: analog synth squelches over dreamy chimes and tinkles, processed fuzzy krautrock grooves beneath strange chanted and muttered vocals, murky percussive plod and thud, over which a tiny sped up voice drenched in reverb mews and warbles, haunting vocal and percussion duos, very tribal and mysterious, thick washed out expanses of fuzzy spacerock FX and distant feedback, skittery almost techno shuffles, with bizarre vocalizations, deconstructed melodies played on a toy guitar, accompanied by a slowly wound jack in the box, a grinding wash of super thick distorted throb, a wall of low end whir, a murky world of jungle sounds like a lo-fi Perry And Kingsley and every random rhythmic stop in between.
Boredoms freaks who never picked this up NEED THIS BAD. And all you modern free folks and random rock weirdos into No Neck, Excepter, Sunburned Hand and the like might just dig this a lot!
MPEG Stream: "Ouck Nuff"
MPEG Stream: "Unlimited Toothpicker"
MPEG Stream: "Pep & Kep"
MPEG Stream: "Xicotepecker"

SENSATIONAL Loaded With Power (WordSound) cd 14.98
Former member of the Jungle Brothers goes solo, sounds like Wu-Tang with a head injury!

SLAP HAPPY HUMPHREY (Public Bath) cd 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The domestic issue of previously Japanese-import-only album. Jojo Hiroshige of Hijokaidan, the girl singer from Angel In Heavy Syrup, and one other guy (from Subvert Blaze). La la la...Quiet...Pretty...CRASH!...SCREEEECH...La la la...Mellow mellow...

SLOUGH FEG, THE LORD WEIRD Twilight Of The Idols (Dragonheart) cd 16.98
Now on cd, as an Italian import. Supreme true metal from San Francisco, for those who find The Champs too "indie-rock" (just kidding). Slough Feg is a cult band that takes their influences not from other cult bands but direct from the masters: Sabbath, Maiden, Thin Lizzy, Queen. Celtic folkisms collide with doom metal riffs, guitar leads run rampant over epic song structures, and the heroic vocals tell stories fantastic and weird...a metal masterpiece! We still have the domestic vinyl version on Doomed Planet as well, both have the keen Erol "D&D" Otus cover art.

SLOUGH FEG, THE LORD WEIRD Twilight Of The Idols (Doomed Planet) lp 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Full-on epic Heavy Metal from this San Francisco "celtic fantasy" power trio, in the tradition of Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden, full of Iommi-worthy riffs, complex arrangements, real (not death-grunt!) vocals (kinda halfway betwixt Ozzy & Dio), and massive amounts of lead guitar! This is their second album, appropriately vinyl-only for now...their first album got a 4-out-of-5 rating in the UK's Terrorizer mag, and this one's better. Also, it includes perhaps one of the most obscure cover tunes ever chosen, "The Wizard's Vengeance," a track from an absurdly rare private-press 1979 lp by a bizarre American progressive rock act called Legend. This makes the perfect soundtrack to your next Dungeons & Dragons session, and indeed Twilight Of The Idols looks like a D&D module, with a fantastic cover painting by cult early-80's D&D artist Erol Otus!

SOLSTICE New Dark Age (Misanthropy) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY. NEW VERSION AVAILABLE, THOUGH, SEE ELSEWHERE ON OUR SITE.
From England, the second album by these champions of true, epic DOOM metal. Very metal indeed, with guitar harmonies, sad Celtic-folk motifs, clean vocals, and lyrical themes of weird fantasy. Massively heavy, sombre, and melodically grand. This totally grew on me, becoming one of my favorite metal records of the past year (sez Allan). In fact, Allan would go so far as to say that this is one of the best metal albums EVER.

STARFUCKERS Infrantumi (Drunken Fish) cd 12.98
First domestic full-length release from this strange & mysterious Italian group that specializes in minimal, experimental noise and sometimes Stooges-style freak rock (not really the latter on this album though)...

STARFUCKERS Sinistri (Undercover) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This is a great record from a band recently profiled in the last issue of Bananafish magazine (and they cover "Dear Prudence" on the accompanying cd, remember?). For those who didn't happen to read that, the Starfuckers are an Italian group who combine krautrock, Stooges and experimental new music influence into a radical new aesthetic. As AQ-mascot John Whitson succinctly dubs them: "Funhausen."

STINKING LIZAVETA Slaughterhouse (self-released) cd 10.98
Supremely awesome instrumental rock trio of guitar/drums/upright electric bass from Philadelphia. Last weekend they played a beautiful and energetic show to a lucky crowd at the TipTop bar a couple of blocks from here. And last year they did a great Aquarius instore performance. This is their brand new disc. If you like old Gone, or Fripp, or previous AQ-list Record of the Week honorees The Champs, you must bow down to Stinking Lizaveta. Meditative virtuoso impassioned metal/jazz explosive bliss!

SUPERSILENT 4 (Rune Grammofon) cd 16.98
A little bit more jazzy & readily "listenable" than their amazing, overwhelming triple-cd debut, this sophomore release by the mysterious Nowegian group Supersilent continues to explore the limits of hyper-rhythmic free jazz, mixed with elements of ambient, musique concrete, noise and instrumental rock. If somewhat undefinable improv-ish bands like Starfuckers, Skullflower, Nels Cline Trio, etc. interest you, here's another one to add to that august roster. Parts of this sound like a live band (out)doing the most intense studio work of an Autechre or Squarepusher! Excellent album from an as-yet underappreciated band (although a recent feature in The Wire magazine signals a possible change in that status).

TARWATER Silur (Kitty Yo) cd 14.98
Germans Ronald Lippok (of To Rococo Rot) and Bernd Jestram are Tarwater, and this is the follow-up to their fine 11/6 12/5 album which seemed to bridge Nick Cave and Portishead. Here's some of what Forced Exposure's email list has to say about the new disc: "DJing (loops, breakbeats, cut-ups, speeches), electronic experiments and classical song structures lay next to each other in Tarwater's music, which leads them in the direction of artists as DJ Shadow or Tricky...and one can find a long list of other references: early 90's East Coast Hip Hop, the Coil of the Horse Rotovator Phase, the Crooklyn Dub Consortium, the minimal electronic sets of DJ Kazi Lenka and Taschensound, and the compositions of Carl Wilson. Still: the intuition kicks out the strategy and gives this music a rather mysterious pop-appeal."

TRANS AM Futureworld (Thrill Jockey) cd 12.98
Trans Am keeps getting better, their sound keeps maturing, and they keep surprising us. Rumbling analogue synths, vocoder, disjointed drum beats mixed with Kraftwerk electo beats, strung-out Tubeway Army guitars, just the right amount of emotive distortion, tha funky bass, Six Finger Satellite ass-kickin', cheesey low resolution Apple II cover art. The ingredients of a perfect record.

TRANS AM Futureworld (Thrill Jockey) lp 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Trans Am keeps getting better, their sound keeps maturing, and they keep surprising us. Rumbling analogue synths, vocoder, disjointed drum beats mixed with Kraftwerk electo beats, strung-out Tubeway Army guitars, just the right amount of emotive distortion, tha funky bass, Six Finger Satellite ass-kickin', cheesey low resolution Apple II cover art. The ingredients of a perfect record.

TRANS AM Surrender to the Night (Thrill Jockey) cd 9.98
Second full-length meanders from pretty amazing (if completely derivative) boomin' electro lowrider themes to distortion-happy techno. Way less 'rock' than previous album.

TRANS AM Surrender to the Night (Thrill Jockey) lp 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Second full-length meanders from pretty amazing (if completely derivative) boomin' electro lowrider themes to distortion-happy techno. Way less 'rock' than previous album.

TRANS AM The Surveillance (Thrill Jockey) cd 13.98
There's a wonderful track on this album that sounds just like "The Song Remains the Same."

TRANS AM The Surveillance (Thrill Jockey) lp 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
There's a wonderful track on this album that sounds just like "The Song Remains the Same."

TRANS AM s/t (Thrill Jockey) cd 13.98
...can't decide whether it wants to be guitar- or synthesizer-based rock but all things considered this debut album generates a decent wall of sound. The boys of Aquarius give it the thumbs up.

TRANS AM s/t (Thrill Jockey) lp 9.98
...can't decide whether it wants to be guitar- or synthesizer-based rock but all things considered this debut album generates a decent wall of sound. The boys of Aquarius give it the thumbs up.

ULVER Nattens Madrigal (Century Media) cd 13.98
Strange Norwegian Black Metal band's third album, subtitled "Eight Hymnnes to the Wolf in Man". Unlike their previous record, which was an entirely acoustic folk music, this is an almost all-electric onslaught, recorded in such a (demented?) way as to make the guitars sound like giant bees. The electricity of this record is highlighted also by the way each and every track seemingly stars with the sound of their instruments being plugged in. Utter Darkthrone worship, but better!

V/A Love, Peace & Poetry: Latin American Psychedelic Music (Shadoks Music) cd 15.98
Ignore the cheesy pinup girl cover art and instead give thanks that someone finally compiled someof the best tracks from Latin American psych pop groups of the '60s, most of whose original LPs now change hands for hundreds of dollars, and whose cd reissues even seem overpriced. We're talking bands like Traffic Sound, Laghonia, Kissing Spell, and Kaleidoscope, etc. A great intro to this scene, provided you have a very strong stomach for Beatles ripoffs; it sounds very much Of Its Time.

VILLAGE OF SAVOONGA Score (Kollaps/Communion) cd 12.98
Murky drama played out on guitars, tapes, electronics, and samplers, with a heavy dose of clanky percussion to remind you of their roots, Germany's Village of Savoonga possesses an enviably original sound that owes much to their krautrock forefathers, not the ultra-structured Kraftwerk, but the loose sound experiments of Faust. Spacerock fans will find so much to like, too, but expect more than just easy ambient layers, this record climbs mountains and fords streams. Totally excellent. This is their third album, and the record we've been recommending people buy if the new Tortoise just doesn't do it for ya...

VILLAGE OF SAVOONGA Score (Kollaps/Communion) lp 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Murky drama played out on guitars, tapes, electronics, and samplers, with a heavy dose of clanky percussion to remind you of their roots, Germany's Village of Savoonga possesses an enviably original sound that owes much to their krautrock forefathers, not the ultra-structured Kraftwerk, but the loose sound experiments of Faust. Spacerock fans will find so much to like, too, but expect more than just easy ambient layers, this record climbs mountains and fords streams. Totally excellent. This is their third album, and the record we've been recommending people buy if the new Tortoise just doesn't do it for ya...

WELCH, GILLIAN Hell Among the Yearlings (Almo Sounds) cd 12.98
Lauded alt.country singer's second album produced by T-Bone Burnett. It's Allan's favorite of her several fine albums so far.
MPEG Stream: "My Morphine"
MPEG Stream: "Honey Now"

YAHOWHA 13 God and Hair (Captain Trip) 13cd 140.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
For 13 discs you better get the complete recordings... and here on God and Hair that is what you get. [well, this was true until recently when The Operetta was released...but you do get plenty!] Led by the late, legendary Father Yod (who supposedly died in a hang-gliding accident in the late 70s... just like Icarus!) YaHoWha 13 "epitomize the insanity of highly-personalized psychedelic exploration via the fringes of rock music and its subsequent private documentation better than anything else produced by the human race to date." (a glorious if over the top description from the fine folk at Forced Exposure)... This collection ranges from the tribal acid pound with weird noises floating in and out of aural spaces alongside Yod's megalomaniacal vocal output (as on the unbelievable masterpieces "Penetration" and "I'm Gonna Take You Home") to the cult-guru sermons over simple acoustic guitar (which give the uncanny resemblance to Charles Manson's folk). Warning: it's VERY hippie. The huge 13" x 13" heavy duty box houses the 13 discs and a 50 page booklet (which is unfortunately only in Japanese). So fucking cool.
(If anyone out there has any more information about this band (in English) please direct us to it.)
Please Note: Due to the sheer cost of this thing, AQ will only have 1 or 2 in stock at any given time. We will certainly do our best to fill any orders that come in, but please be patient with us! And it's a limited edition, too, of course, so don't delay...

YOSHIDA, TATSUYA A Million Years (Magaibutsu) cd 14.98
Ruins drummer Yoshida's third very strange solo album -- and when he does a solo album, it's really just him, drums, guitar, keyboard, voices, etc. (AND, he can play it all live, by himself.) This one starts off maybe kind of like This Heat trying to play the Simpsons theme, and just gets weirder.

ASTATKE, MULATU Ethiopiques Vol. 4 (Buda Musique) cd 15.98
Ethiopia was the site of some of the most beautiful yet sadly forgotten music in the '60s and '70s. This compilation takes some of the best tracks from the enterprising Amha Records. This label specialized in recording unusually catchy and groovy pop songs that are not dissimilar to late '60s Jamaican rocksteady fused with jazz signatures and Ethiopian folk, plus plenty of James Brown funk.
This disc features the all instrumental "Ethio Jazz" by Mulatu Atatke. We don't know of anyone who's heard this and not fallen absolutely in love with it. Recommended without reservation! Probably the most popular of the entire 25 disc (so far) Ethiopiques series, a good one to start with, easiest for the uninitated to get into due to its instrumental nature.
MPEG Stream: "Yekermo"
MPEG Stream: "Metche Dershe"

YONKERS, MICHAEL WITH THE BLIND SHAKE Period (S-S) lp 16.98
AQ fave, garage rock outsider singer/guitarist Michael Yonkers is baaaaack, with another whomping, stomping blast of his uniquely eccentric heavy duty distortodelic grunge, again in the company of relative youngsters, The Blind Shake, a quite suitable backing band for Yonkers at his most electric and energetic. Yonkers himself, as you probably know, is, like, in his 60s. And his magnum opus, Microminiature Love (so recommended!!! plz read our review if you haven't) dates from over 40 years ago. But you'd think it was just yesterday, the way the man kicks out the jams here. No surprise, he's wowed us on several other records in recent years, with The Blind Shake and Plastic Crimewave and GR and solo. So now, wow again. With his homemade geetar howl landing square on your skull, and his elder Iggyish yodel singing strong o'er it all, Yonkers RULES and so does this record, raw and direct, the Blind Shake shakin' it up with gusto behind him, the whole thing a throbbing good time, catchy and noisy and gnarly and blown out, with pounding drums and whooshing wind tunnel guitars n' effects... these songs n' sonics are the stuff that freeks for such bands as The Heads, High Rise, White Hills, and The Stooges should dig. Best punk-psych outing on our list this week fer sure, and would probably qualify as such almost any other week as well!
Includes a killer, updated take on their signature tune, the title track from a few albums back, "Carbohydrate Hydrocarbons", here called "Carbo Hydro".
MPEG Stream: "Carbo Hydro"
MPEG Stream: "Hey Hey What"
MPEG Stream: "Period"

MY SOLID GROUND s/t (Second Battle) 2lp 53.00
Achtung! Now finally back in stock on vinyl!
We've been fans of this krautrock record for years, ever since we first encountered Second Battle's original cd reissue, but that's been out of print for ages, we thought Second Battle had gone out of business, but no, they're back, with a gatefold double vinyl version (definitely expensive, but fancy, and an import of course).
We envy those of you as yet uninitiated into the krautrock awesomeness of My Solid Ground. How awesome is that awesomeness? Well, the very first track is called "Dirty Yellow Mist" and is over 13 minutes long, featuring a relentlessly repeating distorted guitar riff ceremonially intoning over and over and over as wordless female vocals, droning organ and tribal percussion build up around it. If you're like, "cool!" then this record is for you, it's as good as that sounds. This 1971 (aha, 1971! says Allan) album exemplifies druggy, downer spaced-out psych, being very reminiscent of Pink Floyd circa Meddle (another awesome album that we really should properly review some day!) and Amon Duul II - along with other krautrockers like Siloah, Necronomicon, Agitation Free and early Guru Guru. And the Floyd feel isn't just 'cause of the cartoon pigs that adorn the cover art either. But there's also a side to the band that's more along the lines of garagey hard rock, with several Kinks-riffed attacks to shake your shack. As primitive heaviness goes, this is a classic. Hazy and weighty and often ominous (check out the mumbling vocals on "The Executioner"). Includes seven bonus tracks, including the original 24 minute version of "Flash"!
MPEG Stream: "Dirty Yellow Mist"
MPEG Stream: "Flash Part IV"

HILLS Master Sleeps (Transubstans) cd 17.98
We imagine the master sleeps soundly, if THIS is the music loudly vibrating in his dreams! He may never wish to wake up. Here's the 2nd album from (to be sibilantly alliterative) this spacey Swedish psych band, the first we've listed - though if this proves as popular as we think it really should, we'll try to get more of their self-titled 2009 debut to review as well. Plain old Hills are not to be confused with WHITE Hills, though they almost could be - their brand of mantric, mesmeric, FX laden, krautrocking groove is definitely in the same druggy realm as White Hills, and that of other AQ faves like Circle, Salvatore, and especially Wooden Shjips. No doubt they all share many of the same influences, from Can and other krautrock to Hawkwind to Spacemen 3. So if that sort of stuff is your bag, Hills comes highly recommended!
While mainly instrumental, there's more singing here than on the debut, but the echo-effected vocals are just another part of the throbbing wash of sound, riding waves of heavily phased guitar, motorik drums, and insistent organ (that specifically reminds us a bit of Circle relatives Itavayla). While we KNOW we're always saying stuff is repetitively hypnotic, Hills really do it to perfection, locking into to inescapable, all-encompassing grooves you never want to end. They also delve into instrumental electric, folky passages with melodies that perhaps draw upon their native Nordic traditional tunes, a la Kebnekajse back in the '70s, though they can sound somewhat Eastern-inflected as well. And final track "Death Shall Come" is a spaced out droning ritual, getting into OM territory there...
We'd love to see these guys (and gal) play live, do a US tour soon please please please! In the meantime, this disc will be in heavy rotation 'round here, and should be required listening for anyone into SF's Wooden Shjips for sure...
MPEG Stream: "Rise Again"
MPEG Stream: "Bring Me Sand "
MPEG Stream: "Master Sleeps"

NOCTUM The Seance (reissue w/ bonus tracks) (Transubstans) cd 17.98
We've listed Noctum's The Seance previously, when it came out domestically on the Stormspell label, in 2010. Subsequently, the band put out a vinyl-only 12" ep on the High Roller label called The Fiddler, with two new songs and a Pentagram cover.
Unfortunately, we never were able to pick up any of those eps, but now the Swedish psych/prog label Transubstans has put out an import edition of The Seance that includes 2 of the 3 tracks from The Fiddler as a bonus! (They left off the Pentagram song.) So, if you missed this before, here's a bigger better version, and if you're a big fan, now's your chance to upgrade to this expanded edition...
What we said about the original limited edition Stormspell pressing:
Woah. Witchcraft fans, listen up!! There's gotta be something supernatural in the water over there in Sweden, 'cause they've somehow conjured up ANOTHER band that channels the swinging riffage and occultic vibe of early '70s Sabbath (and Pentagram) so perfectly, a la Witchcraft. We had thought that Burning Saviours (RIP) were Witchcraft's closest doppelgangers, but these young guys do a damn good job of it too. Other bands in this vein include Graveyard, Horisont, Troubled Horse (well they're mostly all Witchcraft members, that one), and Dead Man... now add Noctum to that list and put 'em at the top! Not what we were expecting, with its cover art and logo, this looks a bit more like black metal, but these Swedes are definitely practicing an earlier form of witchcraft for this seance of theirs... Quite a nice surprise, if something that sounds so familiar can be called a surprise.
Probably if the singer didn't have that particular Swedish-accented lilt to his voice (all songs but one, "Den Onda Trollpackan", are sung in English), and did more of an overt Ozzy, we'd be calling 'em Sabbath clones (first 3 albums!) rather than Witchcraft ones, but the combination of Pentagram/Sabbath stylings and the emotive, melodic, sincere-sounding vocals definitely spell Witchcraft. (Though "Lucifer's Way" also reminds us of a song by heavy progressive krautrockers Dies Irae!).
We thought of trying to review this without playing up the Witchcraft-iness of it, but really, if you like Witchcraft (and who doesn't?) you'll find this a pleasure - and if you aren't yet into Witchcraft, you should probably start with one of their own albums anyway. Though this would do in a pinch! Sabbath fans, too, queue up. Noctum possess a very Iommi-ish guitar tone for sure. Goes great with their undeniably catchy, and heavy, riffs. Throw in crashing cymbals, bellbottomed lope, and urgent-sounding songwriting infused with portents of doom, and you've got something that's more authentically 1971 proto-metal than most things from 1971!
...So, pretty awesome, and now even better, with bonus tracks "The Fiddler" and "The Serpent Bride" both pretty groovy, bringing the cowbell and sounding like Led Zep was as much an influence as Sabbath.
MPEG Stream: "Fortune Teller"
MPEG Stream: "Mistress"
MPEG Stream: "Lucifers Way"

ATOMIC FOREST Obsession (Now-Again) cd 21.00
Talk about obsession! That's what produced this, a super deluxe collection of the fuzzed-out greatness that is Atomic Forest, the premier hard rock/psych act from India in the '70s (and the only one to make an album - in fact, they made two).
Some of you may already be aware of Atomic Forest from their track on an international fuzz-psych comp called Obsession that came and went a while back (yep, that comp took both its title and its cover artwork from the Atomic Forest's debut lp, Obsession '77). More likely, you've heard the brilliant Deep Purple cover "Mary Long" that they contributed to the Psych Funk Sa-Re-Ga! compilation of vintage sub-continental grooviness, seeing as we made that particular item a Record Of The Week and sold a ton of 'em.
Really, their name alone is almost reason enough to be obsessed with Atomic Forest. Also that their music is just so much fuzz-filled fun. So we're stoked that the Now-Again label, blessings be upon them, decided that it'd be cool to do a full-on Atomic Forest archival reissue, collecting ALL their extant recordings, from both their Obsession '77 album (recorded circa 1977, natch, but released in 1981) and their other one, Hit Movie Themes, recorded at the same time and also released in '81, under the name of bandleader/bassist Keith Kanga. Plus six previously unreleased bonus tracks (including an intense 7 minute live version of Hendrix's "Foxy Lady"), amounting to 17 tracks in total.
Of those 17, there's lots of covers - a weird wide variety of 'em in fact, ranging from tracks by the disparate likes of The Beatles, Osibisa, the aforementioned Deep Purple, to such "hit movie themes" indeed as the "Theme From The Godfather" and "Windmills Of Your Mind"! And that's no surprise, 'cause like so many bands of the era, Atomic Forest earned their bread - and their rep - on the live circuit, where you had to play the hits... As well as playing gigs at hotel discotheques, the Atomic Rooster guys also honed their chops in an Indian production of Jesus Christ Superstar, by the way. So they were versatile, to say the least. And thus the material here ranges from the heavy (Jethro Tull's "Locomotive Breath", Atomic Forest's own "Obsession '77" in either fast or slow versions) to somewhat softer stuff - like, well, "Windmills Of Your Mind"! But ALL of it is super groovy, and dosed with killer fuzz guitar and distorted tabla beats, and sometimes wild theremin-like electronics. That it's all by the same band at first seems a bit unlikely but then it all begins to come together, Atomic Forest (a bit like Indonesia's badass AKA) as fluent at playing moody jazz-funk as they are kicking out heavy rock jams, and no slouches at catchy pop psych either. And while this collection consists of mostly covers, their originals fit right in alongside these better known tunes, including two takes of a track called "Butterfly" that's a bit of a riff on the riff from "Freddie's Dead" by Curtis Mayfield, but infused with freaky synth.
This package represents the fruits of Now-Again head honcho Egon's obsessed quest to find out more about - and hear more of - Atomic Forest. And the packaging is deluxe, all right. Much like Now-Again's equally elaborate collection of Indonesian psych rarities, Those Shocking Shaking Days, where we first heard AKA, this comes slipcased, containing a thick, miniature-lp style sleeve holding the cd, tucked in there alongside a super thick, square bound 44 page booklet, its bright orange pages full of vintage newspaper clippings, rare photographs, and other ephemera - along with lengthy, extensively researched liner notes, discussing the history of the band and its members, the result of much diligent work tracking down the musicians and their relatives to share their stories. So this is really like getting a cd AND a book. The double vinyl version, likewise, is fancy, packaged with a similarly huge booklet in a sturdy sleeve. Nice!
MPEG Stream: "Obsession '77 (Slow)"
MPEG Stream: "Locomotive Breath"
MPEG Stream: "Theme From The Godfather"

RHYTON s/t (Thrill Jockey) cd 14.98
So, sure, "experimental/improv/psych" bands based outta Brooklyn are probably a dime a dozen these days, so what makes the debut from this new Thrill Jockey signing worthy of glorious Record Of The Week status here at aQ? Well, for one thing, Thrill Jockey have had a pretty good track record in that area lately, with aQ fave bands like White Hills and Barn Owl, and fans of either ought to check out Rhyton. At least, we had to give it a listen, and when we did, WOW! Totally tripped out and hypnotic, stonery psych explorations embraced our ears - and we think gently tingled any mystic sixth or seventh senses we may possess. Their jamming has a fuzzed-out edge, and a definite exotic, Eastern vibe, buzzing with electric saz for one thing... as if they're not from Brooklyn, they're from Brooklynistan!
The mesmeric music of Rhyton is a mind-melting mind-meld involving three well-matched musicians, a supergroop of sorts, the trio consisting of D. Charles Speer from the No Neck Blues Band, Jimmy SeiTang of Psychic Ills, and Spencer Herbst from some bands we confess we've not heard of before. Speer is on the strings, playing electric saz, electric mandolin, and baritone guitar. SeiTang is on bass and tape delay. Herbst is on drums and percussion (and videocassettes, we read somewhere?). A good set up for playing something that's rock, but not.
Over the course of the five, mostly long, mainly instrumental tracks here, Rhyton easily convinced us to make this Record Of The Week, or maybe hypnotized us into doing so! We just couldn't say no to their repetitive, reverby bath of shuddering soundwaves, sub-bass pulsations, meandering raga-like "split stereo, dual amped" leads, and loads of oscillators, loops, n' effects.
Relatively mellow opening track "Stone Colored" eases us in, giving us a sense of, if not where Rhyton is going, at least how they're gonna get there. And, as the cliche says, the journey is the destination. That's before the 12+ minute "Pontian Grave" heavies things up even more, and the raw side of Rhyton's experimentation is revealed. And so it goes, Rhyton getting into outre modes of instrumental psychedelic possession, centerpiece "Teke" being the perhaps the most druggily dubbed-out of the album's varied transmissions...and then, on the fantastic final cut, "Shank Raids", we REALLY hear the Middle Eastern influence come to the fore. It's not just the electric saz they've been making use of, on this one the rhythms n' melodies sound straight out of the Turkish psych songbook, stately and spacey, but also gnarly, warped and distortion-damaged, almost what it would be like to Greg Ginn's Gone, or Black Flag circa The Process Of Weeding Out, attempting a Mogollar or 3 Hur-el cover, yeah! There's a whiff of Sun City Girls to this as well.
Eastern aspects aside (or not), Rhyton's unique vibrations are on roughly the same wavelength as those of such outfits as Carlton Melton, Davis Redford Triad, White Hills, Titan, Bardo Pond, etc., and thus this should appeal to quite a few of you. So we say, get it! And get it quick, as the compact disc edition, packaged in a slim handmade sleeve (abstract art glued on front, hand-stamped text on back), is ultra limited to only 200 hand-numbered copies!! We got a bunch, but that bunch is probably all we'll get. Meanwhile, the similarly-appointed vinyl version is just a bit less limited, 500 copies made, and it comes with a postcard insert and free download code.
MPEG Stream: "Pontian Grave"
MPEG Stream: "Teke"
MPEG Stream: "Shank Raids"

RHYTON s/t (Thrill Jockey) lp 15.98
So, sure, "experimental/improv/psych" bands based outta Brooklyn are probably a dime a dozen these days, so what makes the debut from this new Thrill Jockey signing worthy of glorious Record Of The Week status here at aQ? Well, for one thing, Thrill Jockey have had a pretty good track record in that area lately, with aQ fave bands like White Hills and Barn Owl, and fans of either ought to check out Rhyton. At least, we had to give it a listen, and when we did, WOW! Totally tripped out and hypnotic, stonery psych explorations embraced our ears - and we think gently tingled any mystic sixth or seventh senses we may possess. Their jamming has a fuzzed-out edge, and a definite exotic, Eastern vibe, buzzing with electric saz for one thing... as if they're not from Brooklyn, they're from Brooklynistan!
The mesmeric music of Rhyton is a mind-melting mind-meld involving three well-matched musicians, a supergroop of sorts, the trio consisting of D. Charles Speer from the No Neck Blues Band, Jimmy SeiTang of Psychic Ills, and Spencer Herbst from some bands we confess we've not heard of before. Speer is on the strings, playing electric saz, electric mandolin, and baritone guitar. SeiTang is on bass and tape delay. Herbst is on drums and percussion (and videocassettes, we read somewhere?). A good set up for playing something that's rock, but not.
Over the course of the five, mostly long, mainly instrumental tracks here, Rhyton easily convinced us to make this Record Of The Week, or maybe hypnotized us into doing so! We just couldn't say no to their repetitive, reverby bath of shuddering soundwaves, sub-bass pulsations, meandering raga-like "split stereo, dual amped" leads, and loads of oscillators, loops, n' effects.
Relatively mellow opening track "Stone Colored" eases us in, giving us a sense of, if not where Rhyton is going, at least how they're gonna get there. And, as the cliche says, the journey is the destination. That's before the 12+ minute "Pontian Grave" heavies things up even more, and the raw side of Rhyton's experimentation is revealed. And so it goes, Rhyton getting into outre modes of instrumental psychedelic possession, centerpiece "Teke" being the perhaps the most druggily dubbed-out of the album's varied transmissions...and then, on the fantastic final cut, "Shank Raids", we REALLY hear the Middle Eastern influence come to the fore. It's not just the electric saz they've been making use of, on this one the rhythms n' melodies sound straight out of the Turkish psych songbook, stately and spacey, but also gnarly, warped and distortion-damaged, almost what it would be like to Greg Ginn's Gone, or Black Flag circa The Process Of Weeding Out, attempting a Mogollar or 3 Hur-el cover, yeah! There's a whiff of Sun City Girls to this as well.
Eastern aspects aside (or not), Rhyton's unique vibrations are on roughly the same wavelength as those of such outfits as Carlton Melton, Davis Redford Triad, White Hills, Titan, Bardo Pond, etc., and thus this should appeal to quite a few of you. So we say, get it! And get it quick, as the compact disc edition, packaged in a slim handmade sleeve (abstract art glued on front, hand-stamped text on back), is ultra limited to only 200 hand-numbered copies!! We got a bunch, but that bunch is probably all we'll get. Meanwhile, the similarly-appointed vinyl version is just a bit less limited, 500 copies made, and it comes with a postcard insert and free download code.
MPEG Stream: "Pontian Grave"
MPEG Stream: "Teke"
MPEG Stream: "Shank Raids"

SOFT CELL The Bedsit Tapes (Some Bizarre) cd 23.00
We managed to miss this one when it was released a while back in 2005, but we figured we weren't the only ones to let this import cd slip through the cracks. The Bedsit Tapes is the officially released collection of the early demos, escapades, and excursions from the megawatt new wave pop stars Soft Cell. These DIY recordings date back to 1978 when David Ball was attending Leeds Polytechnic, where he made full use of a makeshift recording studio consisting of a couple of reel-to-reel tape decks and a mixing board. Upon wiring up a Korg synth and primitive drum machine, Ball started to make "weird little tunes," one of which caught the ear of fellow student Marc Almond who asked if he could use one of those songs for his performance art shows. The two began refining those electronic blorps and bleeps into arty synth-pop numbers, snarling with contemporary punk energy and technological primitivism. Almond already had developed a charismatic persona, which he jubilantly expressed upon the wide vistas of grandiose theatricality, from the crooning balladeering of "L.O.V.E. Feeling" to the switchblade slashes on the uber-ironic "Bleak Is My Favorite Cliche" to the ominous bark of "Occupational Hazard" and onto the fucked-up delirium of their frenzied cover of Black Sabbath's "Paranoid." Yeah, you heard us right: Soft Cell covered Sabbath!
Given the stripped down arrangements and trial-by-fire approach to the technology at hand, Soft Cell certainly benefited from Almond's larger than life persona. Such is what gave the 'pop' elements of Throbbing Gristle and Reproduction era Human League their iconic status, and it certainly set the stage for the anthemic '80s hits that Soft Cell would produce later on. While many ordinary Soft Cell fans might be put off by the roughness of these tracks, it's precisely that fucked atonality, that avant-punk electricity, that giddy nervousness, those warbled, sci-fi effects and those ominous drones which make us totally dig this collection. Anyone into the whole "Messthetics" scene, and/or the current revival of retro new wave electronica old and new, should also dig.
MPEG Stream: "L.O.V.E. Feelings"
MPEG Stream: "Science Fiction Stories"
MPEG Stream: "Paranoid"

VEKTOR Black Future (Heavy Artillary) cd 14.98
1st proper album from this amazing sci-fi thrash unit.

MORE Blood And Thunder (Rock Candy) cd 14.98
Hard rock and metal reissue label Rock Candy is one we always keep our eye on... While a lot of the stuff they reissue is of perhaps marginal interest to most AQ shoppers we'd imagine, often being on the obscure AOR, pomp rock, and hair metal side of things (although a lot of that has found its way into Andee and Allan's personal collections, ahem), once in a while they bring us something truly killer that we know our discerning, headbanging customers will be into. Like, for instance, the '70s albums from jammin' Japanese metal pioneers Bow Wow that we've reviewed recently.
Well, here's a new reish from Rock Candy that we deemed worthy of review here too. NWOBHM act More (as in, "more! more!" we'd assume, thereby making it even easier for 'em to come out for an encore when fans at the show are chanting their name) is a semi-forgotten fave, one of the few of the NWOBHM hordes to gain major label backing (they were on Atlantic) but still only chalking up two albums in their career, both of which benefit from that major-label production budget. This one, from 1982, is their second and best. (Though their '81 debut, Warhead, is good too, and has also been reissued by Rock Candy, we'll review it too eventually).
One listen to opening track "Killer On The Prowl" pretty much oughtta convince you, it's old school metallic badassery that simultaneously evokes classic acts like Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, and early Iron Maiden. (By the way, what is it with the idea of "prowling" that is so totally metal?) And the rest of the disc pretty much keeps it up at that level, totally rollicking n' ripping, both melodic and energetic, with an aggressive street-level vibe that at times even reminds us of early Metallica (by way of Budgie). They also successfully venture into more atmospheric, epic territory on the likes of album-ender "Nightmare", and make a cursory attempt at radio-ready rockin' with the Zeppish "Rock And Roll".
Replacing More's original vocalist Paul Mario Day, one Mick Stratton takes a star turn at the mic, his vox at the edge and over (the top), capable of both a triumphant soar, and fists-clenched snarl, that kinda reminds us of the great Ian Gillan circa his stint with Black Sabbath on Born Again, and that's a damn good thing. Not to be outdone, More's six stringer Kenny "Mad Axeman" Cox kicks ass as well, supplying the heavy riffs and guitar heroics left, right, and center. He also gets pictured on the cover - not sure what they were thinking there, was he really the best looking guy in the band? Although possibly the most beefy and bearded and biker-y, it would seem. But who cares what he looks like, his guitar tone is what it's all about... However, as you can see, Rock Candy decided to provide this with a new cover featuring the More logo on a blood-splattered background, though the original Cox cover is still to be found inside the booklet.
Quality, solid stuff, and we're saying that as people who collect a lot of obscure metal from the era - this one stands out. If this hadn't been their last album and they'd stuck around, they might be better known now, like say Saxon or Raven, to name a couple of their comparable NWOBHM contemporaries... But despite having had their chance on a big label, More didn't "make it" for reasons expounded upon in the detailed liner notes found in the cd booklet (which is packed with photos too, this whole reissue being quite nicely done, as per the usual with Rock Candy's releases).
MPEG Stream: "Killer On The Prowl"
MPEG Stream: "Blood And Thunder"
MPEG Stream: "I Just Can't Believe It"

MIDNIGHT CHASER Rough And Tough (Heavy Artillery) cd 14.98
Braggadocious San Francisco metallers Midnight Chaser unleash their album debut, brought to us by the same label that put out the Vektor album we highlighted last list. But while Vektor blew minds with their advanced thrash tech, Midnight Chaser are much more retro and rockin' than that. They play sleazy hard rock steeped in the sounds of the late '70s/early '80s New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, a la Diamond Head, Blitzkrieg, Chateaux, and Tank. And we know they know their stuff, they covered Tank on the limited edition ep that preceded this, and are named after a song by obscure NWOBHMers White Spirit (the band that Iron Maiden third wheel Janick Gers got his start in). Combine that with their native Californian good time rock n' roll roots and you've got a party... in fact, the lead off track here, entitled "Awesome Party" (actually Midnight Chaser's original name before wiser heads prevailed) tells you pretty much all you need to know. Super catchy chugging riffiness, in support of the singer's spirited contention that he's "got nothing to lose", "really need(s) to cut loose" and is "looking for an awesome party tonight". And it would be an awesome party, if Midnight Chaser were playing...
The whole rest of the record is similarly rockin' and fun, including their cover of "Dynamite" from Blackout by the Scorpions. Other things to like about 'em: the singer has short hair, wears aviator shades, and thus kinda has a Graham Bonnet thing going. The disc's cartoonish cover is pretty rad/ridiculous, depicting a sexy woman of indeterminate age (possibly the protagonist of track 5, "Cougar'd") riding a mechanical amplifier beast with electric guitars for legs, galloping across a hot pink landscape. Yeah they're not very grim and kvlt, are they? But take a break from the black metal and rock out for once! Seems we've got a little New Wave Of San Francisco Old School Awesome Partying Heavy Metal happening here, with the likes of Space Vacation, Hot Fog, and now these guys! Cool.
MPEG Stream: "Awesome Party"
MPEG Stream: "Rough And Tough"
MPEG Stream: "Hotshot"

V/A Bollywood Bloodbath (Finders Keepers / B-Music) cd 15.98
We were already sold on this before we even heard it, just based on the title alone, and likely you are too! And having heard it, we're all the more into it. This latest Finders Keepers/B-Music release is not just another Bollywood - or even Lollywood, or Kollywood - compilation, not that there would be anything wrong with that. Their recent Pakistani picture house collection Life Is Dance is still in heavy rotation 'round these parts, as are others of its ilk. But Bollywood Bloodbath is even better, thanks to its specific, scary theme. Cooler 'cause these songs, as you may have guessed, are all taken from the soundtracks to Hindi horror movies! Ghost stories, killer thrillers, zombiethons, that sort of thing... but unlike American slasher flicks and Italian giallo from the same period (the '70s mostly, though this disc ranges as far back as 1949, and up to the '80s), these Indian fright films are, of course, like other Bollywood productions, elaborate musicals. So the bloodbath sounds like it's taking place at the discotheque!! It's a perfect mix of the over-the-top pop groove-a-delica of the best vintage Bollywood stuff, infused with the even weirder, wilder, and wiggier sounds demanded by the horror movie genre, like shocking screams, stabbing cacophonous chords, and impassioned female vocals pleading for mercy.
Yep, it's pretty brilliant the way this collection combines two of our favorite soundtrack genres into one. Gotta give it up to compiler Andy Votel and his diligent research (involving hours and hours of viewing cheap old VHS tapes found at the Indian grocery store, no doubt), as he's dug up a delightful 'best of' from a hybrid cinematic genre we've yet to explore ourselves. And even if these songs were sourced from Z-grade movies, there's for sure some top talent involved on soundtrack side of things, including even the legendary RD Burman.
Although there's a modicum of ominous, atmospheric creepiness to be found in most of these cuts, moments that are mystical and mysterious, truth be told it's not all that frightening, as the spookiest stuff always gives way to urgent uptempo beats and zipp-zapping "seance fiction" synths, lively rock/disco orchestration and spirited singing, i.e. typical Bollywood bombast! If anything, rather than, say, John Carpenter or Goblin (our usual go-to's for suspense/horror soundtracks), some of what's here reminds us more of stuff from far out Spaghetti Westerns.
Since we're making this Record Of The Week, we should pause to state that if you're not already into Bollywood soundtracks, you need to check 'em out! And this, despite its specific slant, would certainly give you a good idea of what you've been missing - total WTF kitchen sink psychedelic percussive song-and-dance Eastern-inflected rock opera funked up madness.
22 tracks, 78+ minutes. Complete with cd booklet of copious, obsessive, expert liner notes from Votel. And lots of cool creepy colorful graphics of course. (In addition to this domestic cd release, there's also import vinyl available, but we're pretty much out, hoping to have some more from overseas next month, FYI.)
MPEG Stream: HEMANT BHOLE "Sansani Khez Koi Baat"
MPEG Stream: BAPPI LAHIRI "Meri Jaan"
MPEG Stream: SAPAN JAGMOHAN "Sote Sote Adhi Rat"
MPEG Stream: SONIK OMI "Main Theme From Andhera / Darwaza"

SAVAGE DAMAGE DIGEST Issue 2, January 2012 magazine + button 5.50
Whoo-hoo! SDD #2!! Well, in "zine time" getting 2 issues done in as many years isn't that bad. At least, at last, it's here: the 2nd issue of Savage Damage Digest, a 'zine that with but one issue became one of our faves in the realm of enthusiastic dead-tree rock n' roll writin'. As good as the first issue was, this one's maybe even better, it's got great stuff about a wide variety of long-lost legends... '60s UK popsyke geniuses July, '60 NZ garage gods Chants R&B, '70s pub rockers Ducks Deluxe, and more... The cover story, especially interesting for those of us located in the Bay Area, is about '70s San Francisco proto-punks La Rue. No, never heard 'em, but boy do we want to now.
What we love about SDD is that it's the sort of thing that really puts the FAN in fanzine. We mean, they even devote two pages to some non-musical fandom - about the special San Francisco ice cream sandwich known as an It's It! And, most amazingly, there's pages and pages about guitarist Ross The Boss and his various bands over the years: The Dictators, Shakin' Street, Manitoba's Wild Kingdom, and... Manowar!! The Manowar stuff, especially, makes this issue required reading. We just tend to think that a lot of "typical" SDD readers and AQ customers might not already be Manowar fans, but this is the sort of thing that just might covert 'em (you?).
And, this issue comes with a free button, bearing the Vertigo records label swirl design! With accompanying label appreciation essay for anyone not already aware of just how cool UK '70s prog imprint Vertigo was.
Hopefully it won't be another 2 years before issue 3 of Savage Damage Digest comes out, though we won't be holding our breath. But we will be looking forward to it. And, let's say, the highest form of praise we can give a 'zine like SDD is that it makes us want to get to work on our own 'zines, like some of us used to do back in the day.

PICCHIO DAL POZZO s/t (Goodfellas) cd 28.00
The prog-fiends at AQ (and everyone at AQ is a prog-fiend when it comes to Picchio Dal Pozzo) were stoked to find a new reissue had just come out of this awesome Italian prog album, and on vinyl now, too!!!
Here's what we said a while back about the previous, cd only reish:
Perhaps you're familiar with that kick ass Prog Is Not A Four Letter Word compilation? It's sure been a big seller hereabouts. One of the bands that compiler Andy Votel introduced us to via that collection was an Italian group by the name of Picchio Dal Pozzo. Their track "La Merta", in all its gently gorgeous glory of tinkling, buzzing, and wordless vocal "aaaah-aaaahhing", made us curious to hear more by them! Turns out "La Merta" was taken from this, their self-titled debut originally released in 1976 on the Grog label. And indeed it was indicative of the mellow and mysterious delights of this album, a work of cosmically spacey, jazz-inflected, psychedelic chamber-prog inspired by the Canterbury sounds of Robert Wyatt era Soft Machine (indeed, it bears a dedication to "Roberto Viatti" aka Robert Wyatt). They were probably into Terry Riley too. Yet nothing prepared us for track three, this record's ten-minute masterpiece, the suite entitled "Seppia" that freakin' blew our minds with its droning, throbbing, Magmoid, synth-sizzling heaviness. Wow! Have the Boredoms heard this?? So, a very nice record indeed, with at least one track that just takes things to another level entirely. Seriously, if you're like us you'll being playing that one over and over again. Instantly a new Italian prog fave here - half the AQ staff bought copies for themselves!
MPEG Stream: "La Merta"
MPEG Stream: "Seppia"
MPEG Stream: "La Bolla"

B.T. EXPRESS Do It ('Til You're Satisfied) (Scepter Records) lp 12.98
Vinyl reish of a '70s funk/disco classic. Comin' atcha out of Brooklyn, the B.T. Express got a lot more disco as the decade progressed, but you can't go wrong this this debut from '74. Best known for the title track, this groovy platter is chock full of chicka-chicka-chicka guitars, funky brass, some heavy-handed synth, and lyrical wisdom like the messages delivered by "Everything Good To You (Ain't Always Good For You)", "If It Don't Turn You On (You Oughta' Leave It Alone)", and the aforementioned title track, ferinstance.
For fans of Kool and The Gang, The Jimmy Castor Bunch, Bootsy, Parliament, etc.; this record definitely belongs in any self-respecting funkateer's collection.
MPEG Stream: "Do It ('Til You're Satisfied)"
MPEG Stream: "Once You Get It"

LES GOTHS Reve De Silence (Shadoks Music) cd 17.98
We have to say, that lots of the time, when a band is touted as being some lost heavy psych or proto-metal classic, it often eventually turns out to sound sonically more like blues rock or bar rock, with merely HINTS of that psychedelic heaviness that lured us in, in the first place. Such is most definitely NOT the case with obscure French psychedelic rockers Les Goths, who within one track, establish themselves as a serious sonic juggernaut, obviously beholden to Hendrix and Cream and Blue Cheer, and yeah, with hints of sixties blues rock, but with a tendency for wild super distorted guitar playing and wicked bombastic drumming and dramatic vox, not to mention a raw, in-the-red production which only enhances the band's fierce sound. Some of us were definitely reminded of sixties Swedish psych trio Baby Grandmothers, and anyone who bought their now out of print reissue on Subliminal Sounds (and that was a whole lot of you!) is for sure gonna want this. Check out the first song and see if you're not totally sold, a four minute non-stop blast of buzz drenched riffage and effects soaked garage psych pound, the guitars thick and distorted, the drums WAY up in the mix, the vox too, everything reverbed and echoey and a little blown out, some wild psychedelic leads, a total lost classic garage psych classic for sure. We've probably listened to this track a hundred times since we first got this in, it's the sort of track that would steal the show on any vintage psych comp, in fact it's the sort of track that would inspire someone to CREATE an obscure psych comp. The song gets more and more distorted and druggy as it goes, we dare say worth the price of admission alone. But once you get over being obsessed with that track (if you ever do), there's lots more here to dig into.
Tracks like "I Remember" are bluesy groovers, displaying the band's love of groups like the Animals, but even here, the sound is a little twisted, the arrangements a bit off kilter, with a little bit of that girl group vibe, cool soaring harmony vocals, with some super intense about-to-crack lead vox, all hazy and dreamy, and then the band slip right back into something a bit heavier and more propulsive like "Out Of The Sun" with its low slung bass groove, wild tangled guitars and chaotic super busy drumming, the whole thing sort of sun baked and druggy, with some cool churning chuggy riffage surfacing throughout.
The rest of the record offers up more of the same, long stretches of brooding bluesiness, groovy psychedelic shuffles, and pounding garage-y stomps, in equal measure, always with some killer guitar work and easily some of the best drumming we've heard, which had us wishing there was a way to nominate Les Goths drummer Bruno Frascone as should have/could have been drum legend. Consider him so nominated! One of our favorite new garage / psych reissues for sure!
Like with all Shadoks releases, plenty of rare photos, lyrics and liner notes.
MPEG Stream: "Turn Over"
MPEG Stream: "I Remember"
MPEG Stream: "Out Of The Sun"
MPEG Stream: "Le Jour Etait Gris"

LOINCLOTH Iron Balls Of Steel (Southern Lord) cd 13.98
Wuz all set and excited to write a review of the eagerly anticipated (by Allan here in particular) new album by technical sci-fi thrash wunderkinds Vektor, entitled Outer Isolation, which just came out last week. Unfortunately, our suppliers dropped the ball and we couldn't get enough to list this time, but hopefully will next time - remember the name! However, totally making up for that, guess what suddenly shows up early, giving us our technical math metal mega fix? The long awaited debut full-length album from Loincloth! And by "long-awaited", we mean since 2003!!! Yep, it's been years and years since Loincloth debuted with a two-song 7" on Southern Lord, so we weren't really expecting this full-length to ever materialize, yet here it is. And we're as stoked now, as we were when that 7" came out. Why were we so stoked? 'Cuz, if you didn't know, Loincloth was formed by members of both ex-Earache tech-doomsters Confessor (drummer Steve Shelton, bassist Cary Rowells) -AND- brilliant math rock pioneers Breadwinner (guitarist Pen Rollings, also ex-Honor Role, ex-Butterglove)!
Now, Richmond, VA's Breadwinner, were only one of thee most significant bands of the '90s, for some of us anyway. According to Encyclopedia Metallum (where were were sorta surprised to find an entry for 'em), they coined the term "math rock". Dunno if that's true, but it could be. Meanwhile, Confessor, from Raleigh, NC, they're the band that The Fucking Champs ritualistically listened to a tape of in the van before every show they ever played...
And yes, Loincloth basically does sound like a hybrid of Breadwinner and Confessor. It's an all-instrumental, massively heavy prog-doom riff fest for sure. This album packs sixteen mind-jarring tracks into a little over 39 minutes, each one a chunky, chuggy, see-sawing, stop-start, on-off attack of wicked sick sludge tech. You wouldn't even know that Pen Rollings ISN'T in the band anymore (though he's thanked for "contributions" so perhaps he penned some of these riffs?). On the original 7", Pen was in one channel, with 2nd guitarist Tannon Penland in the other, now it's all Penland's show, and he takes care of the six string biznez just fine by himself.
You DO kinda have to have iron balls of steel to name your album Iron Balls Of Steel, but they pull it off, of course. Plus they're having some fun with macho manly metal tropes too, in the manner of their band name. But this ain't jokey when it comes to the music. Gloomy, grim, grindy, this is like the music of a more ordinary death or doom band that's been fractured and fragmented, pasted back together with post-rock glue... or just falling down the stairs, but with exquisite precision. We're talking jazz chops. As for vocals, who needs 'em? They'd only get in the way here. And if the interplay of the guitar riffs and intricate drumming weren't enough, there's also some quirky production shenanigans keep things interesting... Loincloth, with or without Pen Rollings, are still an underground instru-metal sensation, for fans of Confessor, Breadwinner, Gorguts, Electro Quarterstaff, Stinking Lizaveta, etc.
PS Kinda hoped they'd include the songs from the out of print 7" and Swami comp, but they didn't, oh well.
MPEG Stream: "Underwear Bomb"
MPEG Stream: "Hoof-Hearted"
MPEG Stream: "Angelbait"
MPEG Stream: "Elkindrone"

LOINCLOTH Iron Balls Of Steel (Southern Lord) lp 14.98
Wuz all set and excited to write a review of the eagerly anticipated (by Allan here in particular) new album by technical sci-fi thrash wunderkinds Vektor, entitled Outer Isolation, which just came out last week. Unfortunately, our suppliers dropped the ball and we couldn't get enough to list this time, but hopefully will next time - remember the name! However, totally making up for that, guess what suddenly shows up early, giving us our technical math metal mega fix? The long awaited debut full-length album from Loincloth! And by "long-awaited", we mean since 2003!!! Yep, it's been years and years since Loincloth debuted with a two-song 7" on Southern Lord, so we weren't really expecting this full-length to ever materialize, yet here it is. And we're as stoked now, as we were when that 7" came out. Why were we so stoked? 'Cuz, if you didn't know, Loincloth was formed by members of both ex-Earache tech-doomsters Confessor (drummer Steve Shelton, bassist Cary Rowells) -AND- brilliant math rock pioneers Breadwinner (guitarist Pen Rollings, also ex-Honor Role, ex-Butterglove)!
Now, Richmond, VA's Breadwinner, were only one of thee most significant bands of the '90s, for some of us anyway. According to Encyclopedia Metallum (where were were sorta surprised to find an entry for 'em), they coined the term "math rock". Dunno if that's true, but it could be. Meanwhile, Confessor, from Raleigh, NC, they're the band that The Fucking Champs ritualistically listened to a tape of in the van before every show they ever played...
And yes, Loincloth basically does sound like a hybrid of Breadwinner and Confessor. It's an all-instrumental, massively heavy prog-doom riff fest for sure. This album packs sixteen mind-jarring tracks into a little over 39 minutes, each one a chunky, chuggy, see-sawing, stop-start, on-off attack of wicked sick sludge tech. You wouldn't even know that Pen Rollings ISN'T in the band anymore (though he's thanked for "contributions" so perhaps he penned some of these riffs?). On the original 7", Pen was in one channel, with 2nd guitarist Tannon Penland in the other, now it's all Penland's show, and he takes care of the six string biznez just fine by himself.
You DO kinda have to have iron balls of steel to name your album Iron Balls Of Steel, but they pull it off, of course. Plus they're having some fun with macho manly metal tropes too, in the manner of their band name. But this ain't jokey when it comes to the music. Gloomy, grim, grindy, this is like the music of a more ordinary death or doom band that's been fractured and fragmented, pasted back together with post-rock glue... or just falling down the stairs, but with exquisite precision. We're talking jazz chops. As for vocals, who needs 'em? They'd only get in the way here. And if the interplay of the guitar riffs and intricate drumming weren't enough, there's also some quirky production shenanigans keep things interesting... Loincloth, with or without Pen Rollings, are still an underground instru-metal sensation, for fans of Confessor, Breadwinner, Gorguts, Electro Quarterstaff, Stinking Lizaveta, etc.
PS Kinda hoped they'd include the songs from the out of print 7" and Swami comp, but they didn't, oh well.
MPEG Stream: "Underwear Bomb"
MPEG Stream: "Hoof-Hearted"
MPEG Stream: "Angelbait"
MPEG Stream: "Elkindrone"

BLACK TRUTH RHYTHM BAND Ifetayo (Soundway) cd 16.98
The killer, groovy music from around the world, out of the past, just keeps on coming... and more often than not we have the fantastic Soundway label to thank for such vintage international reissue discoveries. Here's their latest, a rescuing of the sole release, circa 1976, from a group with the promising name of the Black Truth Rhythm Band. It's an album rife with soulful call-and-response chants, polyrhythmic percussion, some spacey synth, funky horns, whistling flute, and sprightly kalimba melodies... We'd have thought the BTRB were an Afrobeat band from West Africa, but it turns out they're from Trinidad, so this is Afro-centric funk with a bit of mellow Caribbean, calypso flavor as well. Though, Africa is their main thing, and and we're not just talking the jungle noises heard on the track "Kilimanjaro".
The BTRB has both a gentle touch, and deep, DEEP groove. So good, why the heck has it been out of print for so long? And why did they only make the one album?
The occasional synth squiggles remind us of the JB's, like James Brown getting down on "Blow Your Head", but the real big influence here was probably Fela Kuti - and BTRB leader Oluko Imo (bass, kalimba, conga, flute, percussion, lead vocals, whew!) indeed did get to record with Fela later on in the '80s.
This first-time reissue includes a bonus track on the cd version, while the 180 gram vinyl comes with a bonus 7" single, and includes a download code for the entire album as well. Damn fine stuff, highly recommended. Using those terms "killer" and "groovy" with regard to this album is NOT in any way hyperbole.
MPEG Stream: "Ifetayo"
MPEG Stream: "You People"
MPEG Stream: "Save D Musician"

YONKERS, MICHAEL WITH THE BLIND SHAKE Period (S-S) cd 14.98
AQ fave, garage rock outsider singer/guitarist Michael Yonkers is baaaaack, with another whomping, stomping blast of his uniquely eccentric heavy duty distortodelic grunge, again in the company of relative youngsters, The Blind Shake, a quite suitable backing band for Yonkers at his most electric and energetic. Yonkers himself, as you probably know, is, like, in his 60s. And his magnum opus, Microminiature Love (so recommended!!! plz read our review if you haven't) dates from over 40 years ago. But you'd think it was just yesterday, the way the man kicks out the jams here. No surprise, he's wowed us on several other records in recent years, with The Blind Shake and Plastic Crimewave and GR and solo. So now, wow again. With his homemade geetar howl landing square on your skull, and his elder Iggyish yodel singing strong o'er it all, Yonkers RULES and so does this record, raw and direct, the Blind Shake shakin' it up with gusto behind him, the whole thing a throbbing good time, catchy and noisy and gnarly and blown out, with pounding drums and whooshing wind tunnel guitars n' effects... these songs n' sonics are the stuff that freeks for such bands as The Heads, High Rise, White Hills, and The Stooges should dig. Best punk-psych outing on our list this week fer sure, and would probably qualify as such almost any other week as well!
Includes a killer, updated take on their signature tune, the title track from a few albums back, "Carbohydrate Hydrocarbons", here called "Carbo Hydro".
MPEG Stream: "Carbo Hydro"
MPEG Stream: "Hey Hey What"
MPEG Stream: "Period"

VEKTOR Outer Isolation (Heavy Artillery) cd 14.98
Six words: Insane Technical Sci-Fi Thrash Metal Mastery. (Or is that seven?) Two more: Dizzying Genius. Another two: Buy This!
We were terribly remiss in not ever reviewing this band's previous album and first proper full-length, Black Future, 'cause it was one of the very best metal releases of 2009. Unfortunately, we discovered it a bit after the fact. But we are gonna try to make up for that by heralding the release of this Arizona based band's new one, Outer Isolation, also mindbogglingly awesome. Though it's hard to review, 'cause listening to it we're either stupefied by the mental strafing we receive via their hyperspeed metallic acrobatics, or possessed to headbanging mania by their catchy quantum riff logic, neither state conducive to sitting at a keyboard and calmly typing out our thoughts...
Actually, this came out in December - and thus instantly found a spot in Allan's 2011 top ten - but our suppliers miscalculated the demand for this and under-ordered, so were weren't able to get more until now, direct from the label.
What's the deal? The thrash of the past meets dramatic advanced metal math, kinda like a tripped out Absu taken on a futuristic journey into the stark outer reaches of space. The vokills are a crazed dog whistle shriek, or nasty black metal rasp. The guitars rip out utter absurd flight of the bumblebee shred, and sometimes moody moments of lovely, classical melody. Their are many moving parts in Vektor's technically complex song structures.
Unlike a lot of their peers in the still burgeoning "retro-thrash" genre, youngsters Vektor aren't just all about simply being as nostalgically, generically retro-thrash as they can be, instead they're about utilizing their considerable talents to make cool music, following their own alien vision. Sure, they pay some homage to their '80s forebears - their logo looks like it was designed by Away from Voivod - and you could certainly compare 'em to such great '80s proggy tech-thrash acts as Coroner, Watchtower, Obliveon, and yep, Voivod. But, it's more than that, this is its own impressive forward-thinking thing. We highly recommend getting lost in space with Vektor.
FYI, a vinyl version, with different cover art, is forthcoming at some point later this year says the label. Also, you will find the Black Future cd elsewhere on our website, sans review, and it's quite recommended too, obviously. (And If you already have it, then you know what to expect on Outer Isolation!)
MPEG Stream: "Tetrastructural Minds"
MPEG Stream: "Venus Project"
MPEG Stream: "Fast Paced Society"

MIRI Okkar (Kimi) cd 16.98
Surveys show that, like, 25 percent of Icelanders believe in elves. And we're pretty sure the other 75 percent fervently believe in post-rock. Actually, there's probably a lot of overlap there... Here's the first album from Miri, "four guys from the remote east fjords of Iceland" who play a mostly instrumental form of indie pop post-rock, with a knack for pretty melodies amidst their moody mathiness. What we weren't expecting - and what immediately grabbed us - was how the very first track is chock full of dubby attacks, everything suddenly all awesomely echo-effected out. Love that!!
Other interesting production twists exist throughout the album, courtesy of Icelandic electronica artist Curver, who similarly also added a lot of cool glitch to a disc we liked long long ago by metalcore act Minus. And in addition to the electronic studio trickery of Curver, this is graced by guest musicians, among 'em members of Mum and Benni Hemm Hemm, who expand the group's instrumentation to include harmonica, vibraphone, flute, and marimba. Also, we noticed Brooklyn's Scotty Hard (of WordSound fame) namechecked in the credits, we don't know what he had to do with this exactly (since we're not fluent in Icelandic) but were were surprised to see him there, or maybe not, what with that aforementioned dubbiness!!
Sometimes noisy yet sunshiney, mildly mathy yet melodic, often calming but also rhythmically compelling (do Icelandic elves dance to stuff like this?), Miri's Okkar is definitely a contender for post-rock record of the month. Heck, let's declare it post-rock album of the winter (it's not even winter yet, but they're from Iceland so it's appropriate... plus this will keep us warm then, with its bright, mesmeric grooves).
MPEG Stream: "Goda Konan"
MPEG Stream: "Draugar"
MPEG Stream: "Drekar"

NETTLE (DJ /RUPTURE) El Resplandor: The Shining In Dubai (Sub Rosa) cd 16.98
Been a while (8 years?) since we've heard from Nettle, or DJ /Rupture for that matter. Nettle is the live band project of DJ /Rupture, the amazing mix master (and self-described "border-crossing bass visionary") responsible for, as we put it, "plunderphonic dancehall turntable mashups" on his various rad mixes (2001's Gold Teeth Thief being THE classic). We know he's got a show on WFMU, still does music and mixes, but we didn't know that his band Nettle was still active, or rather that it had been reactivated. So this new Nettle album is unexpected, but nevertheless awesome.
El Resplandor is a concept album, the quite cool concept pretty much revealed in its subtitle: The Shining In Dubai. Yes, we're in imaginary soundtrack territory here - what if, Stephen King's The Shining were set in an abandoned luxury hotel in the Arabian emirate of Dubai, on the Persian Gulf? Musically, this turns out to be an excellent idea... you keep the spooky psychological horror stuff (family moves into isolated empty hotel, things get weird, dad loses his shit, etc.) and add an ethnic Middle Eastern music element as well.
DJ /Rupture, credited with "electricity, mudd", works with an ensemble of musicians, including guitarist Andy from The Ex. So there's guitar, cello (x2), violin, and guembri (an African 3-stringed skin-covered lute) - along with lovely, wordless female vocals, something that's always perfectly suspense soundtrack worthy!
While in the past, this outfit sounded something like a beat-heavy, uber-distorted Muslimgauze, with hiphop elements even, El Resplandor is more restrained, atmospheric, and eerily evocative, in keeping with the concept. There's much somber shimmer and string pluck, and of course tape manipulation and electronic glitchery, with DJ /Rupture applying his mixing/editing skills to what may have been improvised solos from the various instrumentalists - we're not sure of the compositional method, but it certainly involves some measure of computer processing. The eleven varied tracks all individually contribute to the haunted, alienated, edge-of-the-desert vibe of The Shining in Dubai idea... From the stately exotic dance of "Espina" to the buzz, crackle and chaos of "Simoom (Wasp Wind)", this is a beautiful and dramatic disc. One that makes for a good late night listen, excepting the presence of that "Simoom" track, where thing get a bit... disturbed... that might wake you up from your reveries!
The digipack packaging features scene-setting liner notes by none other than imaginative architectural essayist Geoff Manaugh of BLDGBLOG fame (great blog, check it out if you haven't before) and equally appropriate photographs by Lamya Gargash. Quite recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Radio Flower"
MPEG Stream: "Empty Quarters"
MPEG Stream: "El Resplandor: In The Marsh"

NECKS, THE Mindset (ReR) cd 17.98
Looking back on reviews of other Necks records, we find ourselves either struggling to describe the Necks' unique sound, or gushing uncontrollably about how goddamn great they are. More often than not, some mix of the two. And we realized that wasn't likely to change here, with the latest record from these Australian modern jazz minimalists, who do indeed have a sound that's difficult to describe, but that is precisely why they are one of our favorite bands EVER. Jazz or otherwise. And they are most definitely jazz, drums, upright bass and piano, and many jazz music tropes are present in their music, it's just that their music takes the idea of jazz, and stretches it way out, and turns it into something much more about tension (and no release), about timbre and mood... Their songs are generally 20-60 minutes long, most of their records are in fact a single track, and they slowly build a gorgeous lush jazzscape that on the surface appears jazzy, a quick glancing listen and an unsuspecting listener might think, "oh, nice, jazzy", but had they bothered to keep listening, that wasn't just a part in a song they were hearing, it WAS the song, and the Necks masterfully take that part and nurture it, from a hushed whispery skitter, occasionally to an all out roar, but just as often, just a much more dense and intense hushed whispery skitter. The three players impossibly and organically linked, sounding less like a band, and more like pure sound. Like we said, it's hard to explain. In some ways, their music sounds like it could be the result of some sort of audio manipulation, as if some audio alchemist took jazz samples and stretched and layered them into these droned out hypnotic jazz ragas, which in itself is a testament to these guys' skill.
On Mindset, the Necks offer up two 21+ minute tracks, the first might be their darkest yet, starting out immediately with some deep low end thrum, some minimal drum skitter, the band immediately locked into a dark almost dirgey groove, and when the piano comes in, it's noisy and surprisingly atonal, the pedals depressed, the tones all bleeding into each other in a thick swirling angular sonic cloud, while the bass and drums remain locked tight. The bass gradually grows more active, and more melodic, as does the piano, the sound impossibly lush and dense, sounding like a way heavier Lubomyr Melnyk, swirling flurries of notes over layered drones, the drums subtly propulsive, it almost sounds like a jazz Godspeed You Black Emperor, so epic and majestic, and darkly moving. Eventually the drums too begin to be more active, and deviate from the groove, the sound building to a cathartic climax, before jettisoning much of the jazz, and turning into a dark droned out abstract psychedelic dirge, with what sounds like effects everywhere, although we're pretty sure they don't use much in the way of effects, there even seems to be what sounds like a guitar, offering up fuzzy squalls of high end buzz, the second half doesn't sound like jazz at all, more like some heavy droney psychedelic post rock outfit. So good. One of our favorite Necks jams for sure. And definitely a good gateway for those aQ-ers who tend toward the jazz-phobic.
The second track is a lot more subdued, starting out super abstract and spacious, tinkling melodies, mysterious sound effects, minimal percussion, spacey little glitches, streaks of high end skree, it's not until 5 or 6 minutes in when the song really starts to coalesce, the bass bowed, unfurling lush slow-mo melodies, and then finally, the drums drift in, another motorik shuffle, the sound remaining ethereal and washed out, glimmery and shimmery, very cinematic too, the drums crazy busy, but still holding things down, the track growing more and more frantic, and frenzied, while on the surface, the piano remains languid and tranquil, while beneath it, the rest of the band grows more and more agitated, the sound so dark and tense, and growing ever darker, hints of funkiness are blurred into something more abstract, the groove nearly swallowed up by the bands swirling sonic churn. Maybe THIS one is one of our favorite Necks jams ever. Hell, who needs to pick? Another Necks record that will no doubt rank as one of our forever faves, and again, Mindset definitely seems like the kind of record that could very well convince some folks out there of what we already know, that the Necks are one of thee best bands out there!
MPEG Stream: "Rum Jungle"
MPEG Stream: "Daylights"

SPEEDWOLF Ride With Death (Hell's Headbangers) cd 14.98
There are different kinds of heavy for sure. There's the grim black corpsepainted buzzing heaviness, there's the lurching lumbering knuckle dragging doom sort of heaviness, there's also the face melting noise rock sort of chaotic heaviness, and of course there's the conceptual heaviness, like "ooooh, that's really heavy, maaaan", and there's about a million different sorts of heaviness in between, all strains, some heavier than others, but then there's the mightiest heavy of them all, just a classic, pure, heavy metal heaviness. Few bands can achieve that sort of heavy purity, a rare confluence of killer riffing, howling throat shredding (but still melodic) vox, blasting pounding drums, shredding guitar leads, hooks galore, catchy choruses, all woven into a metal blowout that causes immediate headbanging, that could start a pit in a stuffy office, the power of the riff, the power of real metal.
This is a power Denver's Speedwolf wield like a bloodied mace. Before we even get to the music, all the signs are there. They're called Speedwolf to begin with. Their record cover is a badass binder art / side of a seventies van black and white drawing of a huge scythe and hourglass wielding cloak-ed skull headed death, hovering in the sky above a gang of Speedwolves, wolf headed toughs on motorcylces, cruising down the highway, there's also a naked woman wearing the skin of a wolf, looking sexy and howling at the moon, their logo is a wolf pentagram, and they have song titles like "Up All Night", "Out On Bail", "I Can't Die", "Death Ripper", "Ride With Death", "The Reaper" and of course "Speedwolf" cuz any heavy metal band worth it's salt has a namesake 'theme' song. So yeah, all the signs point to pure heavy metal heaviness, and the sounds inside do not disappoint. We've raved about past Speedwolf records, they even played our South By Southwest showcase last time, and blew EVERYbody away, we have been dying for a proper full length ever since, and finally here it is, with a handful of our old favorites re-recorded, as well as a clutch of new jams, with a massive production, the sound is crushing, and the songs of course kill.
Like a supercharged Motorhead, or a tighter heavier Venom, or like a cranked and kick ass version of our faux metal heroes Bad News, these guys kick out the jams, relentless and punishing, furious and frantic, but at the same time with that weird sort of positive heavy metal party energy that few bands can conjure without diluting their heaviness. We were most excited to see two of our favorite Speedwolf jams revisited, "I Am The Demon", which still sounds like a more metal Danzig, and includes a drum solo, complete with cowbell (which shows up here and there elsewhere on the record, and is another signifier of pure heaviness!), and of course "Speedwolf" which after a creeping ominous almost Maiden-y intro, really does sounds like a Motorhead 45 at 78rpm, and the rest of the tracks too, everyone sounding like some lost early heavy metal classic, but delivered with a ferocity that is undeniable. These guys have been toiling away in relative obscurity, it's about time the rest of the metal world took notice, and bowed down before these masters of metal. And while the vibe is definitely speed/thrash metal, this totally destroys all those other retro thrash revivalists, and transcends any mere metal classifications, and ascends to some sort of true metal pantheon on high. Where they belong.
MPEG Stream: "I Am The Demon"
MPEG Stream: "Speedwolf"
MPEG Stream: "Death Ripper"
MPEG Stream: "Denver 666"

OBRERO Mortui Vivos Docent (Night Tripper) cd 16.98
If you've been reading this week's New Arrivals list in alphabetical order, you've already come across many interesting items, lots of cool stuff to sate your drone jones, get your indie pop fix, etc., right?? But, you might also want sumthin' that just simply kicks out the jams, in a badass heavy rock n' roll / metal kind of way. Of course you do. Like, the list before last's Danava for instance, or Children Of Doom not long before that. This time 'round, a record we discovered recently and immediately knew we just HAD to order in and review, that's just the thing for all you denim clad longhaired Satan worshipping beer swillers (or at least for your INNER denim clad longhaired Satan worshipping beer swiller, as the case may be).
Mortui Vivos Docent is the debut from Swedish stoner/doom outfit Obrero (and as an aside, we're beginning to wonder if the international community is gonna have to consider placing musical export restrictions on Sweden, as it's unfair to other countries how many amazing bands they produce, though of course we're not complaining!!!).
It offers up eight awesome trax of ripping, rollicking riffage, doomed-out atmospheres, and fists-clenched vox. The singer's ballsy, rough wail is one major component of this band's appeal, he's got a shrill edge that, in combination with the music, makes us think of Trouble (the band) some of the time, maybe Metal Church too. Meanwhile, the riffs are up there with those on the first Witch album, which we think you know we like a lot. So, yeah, Sabbath inspired sonics for sure, also early Judas Priest is probably an influence. To mention some of them Swedish bands who this is at least as cultishly cool as, well, imagine a combo of Graveyard and Grand Magus, perhaps. But with more umlautish umph even than that. Americans Ogre could be another comparison, as would Pharaoh Overlord with their recent Out Of Darkness lp.
This is one of those albums wherein every component moment contributes to the baddassitude of the whole, and will have you throwing the horns the whole time it's on. We're finding it hard to pick the tracks to mention in particular 'cause we're digging 'em ALL, but definitely "Son Of Tutankhamun" is an utter epic rockin' classic, and we're partial to the good time groove and stoner stomp of "Santovit". Reverend Bizarre fans will be happy with the hammering metal of "Charles The Hammer". And how can you not love a song, "Exterminate", that's about Daleks!?!? (And comes to a rather transcendent, musically uplifting conclusion, too).
Basically, one of the best heavy metal bands writing actual rock n' roll songs we're heard in a long while... Damn catchy, weird in a cool geeky way (heck they're into Dr. Who), with plenty of proggy light and shade amidst the out 'n' out headbanging material, of which there's plenty. Probably not for everybody, but what on our list is? If this is something you "get" though, you'll be glad you got it!!
MPEG Stream: "Son Of Tutankhamun"
MPEG Stream: "Exterminate"
MPEG Stream: "The Lost World"

VOIVOD To The Death 84 (Alternative Tentacles) cd 13.98
The far out French-Canadian sci-fi metal institution Voivod, legendary geniuses at both raw punkish thrash and advanced psychedelic prog, recently brought us an excellent live album, Warriors Of Ice, their first recording without the presence of late, great guitarist Denis "Piggy" D'Amour - although of course he'd had a hand in writing the songs, all old Voivod classics. It gave us reason to look forward to their future (studio) endeavors with Piggy's replacement, Daniel "Chewy" Mongrain.
Looking in the other direction, though, we've got this blast from the ancient past, featuring their original lineup of Piggy, Snake, Blacky, and Away. Alternative Tentacles, as if to celebrate the continuing legacy of Voivod, have just done an official reissue, on cd and vinyl, of one of the band's earliest demo tapes. As the title indicates, the year was 1984. Dystopian thrash was the primal order of the day. Light years from the technical and melodic extremes that they would eventually achieve - yet of course utterly "extreme" in its own right, and definitely already imbued with Voivod's trademark strangeness.
This release consists of 15 tracks, including such destined-to-be-well-known headbangers as "Voivod", "War And Pain", "Blower", "Suck Your Bone", "Nuclear War", and "Iron Gang", amongst others you'll recognize from Voivod's first few albums. Plus, they do a couple of cool covers that indicate Voivod aligned themselves with the "black metal" bands of their day: "Evil" by Mercyful Fate, and "Buried Alive" and "Bursting Out" by Venom! Also, worth the price of admission for any Voivod fanatic, there's the otherwise unreleased (except on other demos) track "Condemned To The Gallows", very cool and very Voivod, dunno why they never recorded it for any of their albums proper.
Sonically, the production is actually not that bad, it really sounds pretty darn good for a DIY demo done so many years ago!! No complaints there. Nor with the material, needless to say, it's killer stuff, as anyone into early 'Vod would expect - though you may be at bit surprised at Snake's harsh vocal style here, much sicker and screechier than what you may be used to, interesting indeed.
We can only hope that Alt Tentacles will follow up this historically significant release with a reissue of the Voivod's debut demo, the one that preceded this, 1983's Anachronism tape, which consisted mostly of covers by the likes of Judas Priest, Motorhead, Budgie, and various NWOBHM acts... we'd love to hear that too!
MPEG Stream: "Condemned To The Gallows"
MPEG Stream: "Black City"
MPEG Stream: "Evil"

VOIVOD To The Death 84 (Alternative Tentacles) 2lp 15.98
The far out French-Canadian sci-fi metal institution Voivod, legendary geniuses at both raw punkish thrash and advanced psychedelic prog, recently brought us an excellent live album, Warriors Of Ice, their first recording without the presence of late, great guitarist Denis "Piggy" D'Amour - although of course he'd had a hand in writing the songs, all old Voivod classics. It gave us reason to look forward to their future (studio) endeavors with Piggy's replacement, Daniel "Chewy" Mongrain.
Looking in the other direction, though, we've got this blast from the ancient past, featuring their original lineup of Piggy, Snake, Blacky, and Away. Alternative Tentacles, as if to celebrate the continuing legacy of Voivod, have just done an official reissue, on cd and vinyl, of one of the band's earliest demo tapes. As the title indicates, the year was 1984. Dystopian thrash was the primal order of the day. Light years from the technical and melodic extremes that they would eventually achieve - yet of course utterly "extreme" in its own right, and definitely already imbued with Voivod's trademark strangeness.
This release consists of 15 tracks, including such destined-to-be-well-known headbangers as "Voivod", "War And Pain", "Blower", "Suck Your Bone", "Nuclear War", and "Iron Gang", amongst others you'll recognize from Voivod's first few albums. Plus, they do a couple of cool covers that indicate Voivod aligned themselves with the "black metal" bands of their day: "Evil" by Mercyful Fate, and "Buried Alive" and "Bursting Out" by Venom! Also, worth the price of admission for any Voivod fanatic, there's the otherwise unreleased (except on other demos) track "Condemned To The Gallows", very cool and very Voivod, dunno why they never recorded it for any of their albums proper.
Sonically, the production is actually not that bad, it really sounds pretty darn good for a DIY demo done so many years ago!! No complaints there. Nor with the material, needless to say, it's killer stuff, as anyone into early 'Vod would expect - though you may be at bit surprised at Snake's harsh vocal style here, much sicker and screechier than what you may be used to, interesting indeed.
We can only hope that Alt Tentacles will follow up this historically significant release with a reissue of the Voivod's debut demo, the one that preceded this, 1983's Anachronism tape, which consisted mostly of covers by the likes of Judas Priest, Motorhead, Budgie, and various NWOBHM acts... we'd love to hear that too!
MPEG Stream: "Condemned To The Gallows"
MPEG Stream: "Black City"
MPEG Stream: "Evil"

CAN Tago Mago (40th Anniversary Edition) (Spoon ) 2cd 19.98
Nice!! One of our favorite Can, nay krautrock, nay any-kind-of albums ever (that is if you don't ask Andee, who for some insane reason doesn't like Can at all), given a fancy 40th Anniversary reissue! What's so fancy about it you ask? Well, first the packaging, it's in a nice gatefold miniature lp style sleeve, with the original art of the German lp edition that came out back in 1971 (yay, 1971!). That's nestled inside a cardboard wallet-like folder which bears the cover from Tago Mago's UK release in 1972, a movie still of singer Damo and drummer Jaki on stage, in action, dramatically lit. For some reason they made big deal about this alternate cover being used on this reissue, it's cool to have it but we're happy the original art is also present and accounted for on that gatefold sleeve. Also inside the folder, a thick booklet with vintage photos and plenty o' detailed liner notes, including some by the guy from Primal Scream.
More importantly though, what makes this so special is that it includes a whole extra disc, a previously unreleased, 48 minute live performance from 1972! They do "Mushroom" and "Halleluwah" from Tago Mago, as well as "Spoon" from that year's equally amazing Ege Bamyasi, that song here stretched out to almost a half hour in length! Any true Can fan will want this just for the live disc, even though you probably already have one or more remastered versions of Tago Mago proper. But yeah, with the live set and the nice packaging, this is definitely worth getting, it's an upgrade all right.
For those of you who aren't big Can fans already, this would be a fine place to begin your love affair with this amazing band (c'mon, Andee!). Here's what we wrote about Tago Mago when it was last reissued:
1971's Tago Mago double album was Can's third full-length release, and their first with expatriate Japanese singer Damo Suzuki (whom they discovered busking on the street outside a club). It's truly a sprawling masterpiece of krautrock. Witness the weird noise/drone stuff on the 17 minute "Aumgn", or the totally hypnotic rhythmic psych groove of the equally side-long "Halleluwah". Again, we probably don't have to say much more, you already have this, right? But if Can's new to you, we'd recommend this (as well as Monster Movie and Ege Bamyasi and Soundtracks) as among their best efforts. PS: If you like Circle and you don't have this record, get it!!
MPEG Stream: "Mushroom"
MPEG Stream: "Oh Yeah"
MPEG Stream: "Spoon (Live 1972)"

WOUNDED KINGS, THE In The Chapel Of The Black Hand (I Hate Records) cd 14.98
Bow down doom hounds, the third full-length opus of spaced out sludge trudge from these British heavies is here! In most respects, exactly as expected, slow and low and psychedelic. But, they've changed up one (big) thing. Get this: in our review of their previous disc, The Shadow Over Atlantis, we suggested that the many fans of their labelmates Jex Thoth might dig the The Wounded Kings too, due to similar sonics and aligned atmospherics. Well, now that's even more the case, as on this album suddenly the Kings have a female singer, a la Jex Thoth! Not sure why they made this move (the popularity of Jex Thoth, The Devil's Blood, Blood Ceremony, et. al. in the "New Wave Of Female Fronted Occult Metal" trend couldn't possibly be the reason, could it?) but it was a good one, really. Not that we didn't like their original singer (former bassist George Birch, now out of the band) but we're really digging new singer Sharie Neyland's haunting, yet commanding, presence on this platter. Also, it makes perfect sense, considering that The Wounded Kings already had the spooky-proggy organ sound of Italian horror movie scores as a big influence upon their sound. Female vox fit in quite well with that vibe, and, as those other aforementioned bands also have demonstrated, sound good in conjunction with dirgey, lumbering, Sabbath-derived riffage.
And they're not just "female vox" anyway, there's an eccentric personality here. With her wavery, witchy, fairly low for a female voice, Neyland sounds something like a weird hybrid of Jex Thoth and Manilla Road's Mark "The Shark" Shelton... really! Now that's cult. Take that voice and let it range o'er epic effected hypnotic heaviness along the lines of early Cathedral or Electric Wizard (with a dash of Blizaro), and you've got In The Chapel Of The Black Hand.
So. Not just another Wounded Kings album (though that would have been fine too) but one that stands apart, if not above. Phantasmagorically recommended.
MPEG Stream: "The Cult Of Souls"
MPEG Stream: "Gates Of Oblivion"
MPEG Stream: "In The Chapel Of The Black Hand"

KIM JUNG MI Now (Lion) cd 14.98
All of you who loved Light In The Attic's career-spanning collection of music by Korean psych guitar maestro Shin Joong Hyun, that we recently made Record Of The Week, should be happy about this. It's an brand new official reissue, the first in a series, of Shin Joong Hyun related albums. As you perhaps recall, soothing psych-pop-folk singer Kim Jung Mi, backed by Shin Joong Hyun and his group The Men, appeared on that Beautiful Rivers And Mountains anthology with a song called "The Sun", which we said reminded us of Galaxie 500!
This 1973 full-length from Kim Jung Mi, as masterminded by Shin Joong Hyun, is also quite special. "The Sun" is just but one of the ten dreamily melodic tracks found here, including a four minute version of the song "Beautiful Rivers And Mountains" itself, a signature Shin Joong Hyun tune. Other titles include "Wind", "Blow Spring Breeze", "It's Raining", and "Lonely Heart", and although the lyrics are all in Korean, we get the idea that love and nature form much of the subject matter here (actually, the thick cd booklet provides English translations of the lyrics, along with EXTENSIVE, ultra-laudatory liner notes and lots of full-color photos of the sexy young chanteuse). In those liner notes, Shin Joong Hyun is quoted as having said: "There is no person who can sing Psychedelic music as well as Kim Joong Mi".
Kim Jung Mi's lovely voice will go straight to your heart, and the emotive music accompanying her is moodily lush, majestically melancholic... it's not really about hard-edged fuzz guitars, though they surface occasionally, as more often do propulsive psych "beat" grooves, but for the most part this album seems to hover on a higher, more heavenly pop plane of psychedelia than that suggests... The groovier stuff, though, reminds us of Serge Gainsbourg's Historie De Melody Nelson at times (on "Your Dream" especially). And it's no stretch that the liner notes call Kim Jung Mi the "Francoise Hardy of Korea". Recommended to any fan of the Forge Your Own Chains comp, in addition to those who already heard her on that Shin Joong Hyun collection. Gorgeous!
Comes nicely packaged in a miniature lp-style sleeve, with that aforementioned info/photo packed booklet. There's a vinyl version forthcoming as well, fyi.
MPEG Stream: "Wind"
MPEG Stream: "Your Dream"
MPEG Stream: "Beautiful Rivers And Mountains"

ARCHITEUTHIS REX Urania (Utech) cd 14.98
Ah, Utech! Always bringing us something good. And dark. And difficult to describe. This is the first of a brand new batch of autumn Utech releases to see review here, and it's quite excellent indeed. 2nd album for this resonant experimental outfit centered on an artist from Italy (now based in Berlin).
Circling, shimmering drone pulsations start this disc off with a ominous build up of dark density, that sounds like it's somehow made not with conventional instruments, but with specialized scientific measurement equipment. Ten minutes in and you're thinking this is what this album's all about, and that wouldn't be a bad thing at all, mesmerization complete... but then the very next track introduces ghostly female vox, over quietly drifting, echo-effected bliss, and it becomes evident that Urania (named for after a venerable Italian science-fiction magazine) is deeper yet... the echoing rhythmics continue as the disc progresses, it's almost some sort of sci-fi dub-drone music, trance inducing, spooky and spaced-out. The sort of thing we KNOW a lot of you are going to love. Highly, highly recommended.
Packaged with the usual Utech care, in a slim black-on-black sleeve with fold out insert bearing inscrutable art by Reuben Sawyer.
MPEG Stream: "Urania"
MPEG Stream: "Basilicus "
MPEG Stream: "Spacemetal #2"

MULK Putrilogie (Suprachaotic / Dan's Crypt) cd 13.98
From the same label that brought us the amazing electro-metal / glitch-grind of Whourkr (whose debut is reviewed elsewhere on this week's list, and whose newest records we made our Record Of The Week a while back), comes this equally baffling and brilliant chunk of glitched out electro deathgrind hypermetal from the oddly monikered Mulk, a one man band who basically makes some of the most twisted, complex and convoluted metal ever. With head spinning drum programming, wild gouts of lightspeed blasts and inhuman flurries of beats, chopped up and sliced and diced and reassembled into furious bursts of outsider deathmetal weirdness, laced heavily with strange effects and electronics, the sound constantly stuttering and skittering and transforming, the beats splintering into weird blasts of buzz, the sound glitching out almost as if your cd player were melting, or imagine playing a Morbid Angel record and an Immolation record at 78rpm on two tapes that were recorded on a busted up boombox on old tapes that had been left on the dash in the sun. It's like a futuristic cybergrind Faxed Head! Theres definitely a big drill and bass electronic component, but instead of mixing beats and riffs, this guy mashes them together into a single raging sound. It almost sounds like a death metal record made by Venetian Snares. It's hard to describe, if you dig Whourkr, you definitely need this, and if you're after the heaviest, weirdest most fucked up death metal / deathgrind record EVER, this is most definitely it.
MPEG Stream: "Putr&fact I - Part 2"
MPEG Stream: "Putr&fact I - Part 3"
MPEG Stream: "Putr&fact I - Part 15"
MPEG Stream: "Putr&fact I - Part 16"

SKULLFLOWER Carved Into Roses / Infinityland / Singles (VHF) 3cd 21.00
We had long been dreaming about a singles compilation from long running UK noise rock / psych dirge combo Skullflower, who are not a 'singles' band by any stretch, but somehow, peppered throughout their lengthy career, and a clutch of classic albums proper, lurk some of the most iconic singles ever, FOUR of which are gathered here, on cd for the first time ever. And the fact that those singles are essentially just the bonus tracks here, should give you an idea of exactly why this was a shoe in for Record Of The Week.
Two of our favorite, classic Skullflower jams, long out of print, now available again together along with the aforementioned singles: Carved Into Roses, originally released in 1994 on VHF, and Infinityland, released a year later on HeadDirt, with the classic SF lineup of Stuart Dennison and Russell Smith (of beloved nineties psychedelic scuzzdub heavies Terminal Cheesecake), two guitars and drums, no bass, both records featuring Simon Wickham Smith and Philip Best of Ramleh as guests. At first we were wondering why exactly these two records were being re-released together, similar lineup of course, and listening to them again, they are sonically very similar, marking the band's shift toward a somewhat different sound, shedding some of the pummel and thud of their earlier releases for something a bit more abstract and tripped out, still heavy and noisy of course, but edging a bit closer to the murky muddy psychedelic drift and gauzy blurred noise-psych drift of their sonic brethren in the Dead C, the sound here in many ways sounding very much like classic NZ noise rock of the era, the tracks lengthy headtrip blissouts, everything wreathed in feedback, the drums and vox buried in the mix, while the guitars writhe and swirl, droned out and raga like one second, fierce caustic squalls the next. SO already it makes sense to bundle these two records together, even more so though once we discovered that they were originally conceived of as one epic sprawling double disc set.
The opener of "Carved Into Roses" pretty much sets the scene, channeling vintage Dead C, and thus finding Skullflower at their very poppiest, reminding us a bit of Dead C offshoot Gate, a sort of meandering Velvets-y drift, lazy and laid back and lugubrious, the sound druggy and droney, a pop song swaddled in thick sheets of wild guitar and smeared psychedelic freakout, almost like some sort of super abstract and seriously drifty space rock, definite foreshadowing some of the sounds of today (White Hills, AMT, etc), the dirgey lope like one of those modern psych bands slooooowed waaaaay down, all swirling washed out guitar skree, ethereal buried-in-the-mix vox, it's downright meditative in its own heavy softly noisy way. The whole record isn't so blissed out and hazy, "The Rose Wallpaper" explodes into a tangle of free jazz freakout, the drums wild and octopoidal, what sounds like some sort of Middle Eastern horn bleats and skronks, the sound growing ever more noisy and chaotic, a seriously heady chunk of OUT-noise jazz if there ever was, which leads right into "Shiny Birds Of Doom", another dark dirge, this one laced with what sounds like organ, or maybe more horns, the lumbering industrial sounding drumming, pounding away through thick swirls of hum and buzz, some howled vocals drift in and out, surprisingly catchy melodies appearing now and again, but more often then not dissipating into the creeping abstract gloom, fans of Gnaw Their Tongues and similarly cinematic black doom will definitely dig.
"Silver Glove Puppet" is a hissy high end stretch of noise pop rendered in shades of grinding crunch, and fractured chaos, sounding a bit like a WAY noisier unhinged Swans, the song getting noisier and noisier, those tangled guitars unwinding thick barbed streaks of effects drenched buzz, but simultaneously becoming more and more song-like as impossible as that seems. Then there's "Metallurgical King", which brings back the horns, and lays them over a cool looped guitar, and some almost krautrock like drumming, super hypnotic, and cyclical, it's only 12 minutes, but you can totally picture this stretching out to fill up a whole live set, totally mesmerizing noisejazz krautdrone hypnorock bliss. And finally Carved Into Roses finishes the way it started, with a stretch of murky out-pop moodiness, the strangely titled "Ge4050" unfurls thick slabs of coruscating guitar buzz, warm washed out melody, never quite coalescing into a proper pop song, instead, seeming to blossom into some sort of psychedelic supernova, all blown out guitars and glimmering sonic blur. Another track that's way to short at seven minutes...
Which leads directly into Infinityland, which starts off with the epic nearly 13 minute long "The Idiotsburgh Address", which opens with a long stretch of layered guitar, blurred and buzzy, droned out and raga like, it's not until about 90 seconds in when the drums kick in, and those guitars coalesce into something again, almost poppy, dirgey, buzz drenched doom-pop creep, woozy and washed out, the guitars soaring and fierce, wrapped around a lilting minor key melody, some wailed wordless vocals, the drums occasionally explode into bursts of delirious drum damage, and of course the guitars are constantly splintering into wild blinding squalls of crunch and howl, but for long stretches, much of that heaviness peels back, again revealing a sort of dirgey industrial almost krautrock sounding meander, haunting and meditative, but still plenty heavy and noisy, and again, hard not to compare this to vintage Dead C. Which leads directly into "White Fang", which is one of the classic Skullflower jams, short by comparison, but the only track that really recalls the Skullflower of old, a pounding almost industrial rhythm, some chugging churning riffage, wild squiggly psychedelic leads, basically the freakout heart-of-the-sun space rock final finishing jam transformed into a whole song, one sounds like staring into the sun, blown out and gloriously blissfully heavy.
"Pixie Dust" is another favorite, darkly haunting, and creepy heavy, the opening riff seriously haunting and ominous, the sound immediately locking into a serious sprawl of noise drenched space-psych mesmer, the sort of thing that would have modern day psych rockers bowing down in reverence, as would follow up "Abraxas", which sounds a bit like Wooden Shjips with a heavy noise makeover, a tranced out groove pounding away within a constantly shifting cloud of psychedelic swirl. "False Magic Kingdom" offers up stretch of serious trip out, the 'free'-est track here for sure, a sort of psychedelic ambience, lots of random rhythmic skitter, pulsing looped buzz, streaks off feedback, clouds of cymbal shimmer, a total outrock freeform epic, before finally finishing off with the comparatively brief closer, "Blood Orange", a gorgeously noisy coda, which melds melancholic clean guitar melody to chaotic rhythms and blown out guitar buzz, yet another track which would have benefited from another 10 or 15 minutes...
And if that wasn't enough, there's a whole 'nother 50 minutes of glorious Skullflower skree, the aforementioned 7"s tracks, "Choady Foster" / "Spent Force" originally released in 1994 on Helter Skelter, "White Fang #2" / "Glassy Essence", also originally released in 1994, on Freek, the Village Sorting 7" originally released in 1995 on Self Abuse (featuring Tim Hodgkinson of Henry Cow), and finally The Art Of Skullflower, originally released in 1996 on Way Out Sounds, which features Bower solo as Total on the B side. Definitely some of our favorite SF jams, and we're so psyched to have them on cd finally. "White Fang #2" is a wild unhinged, super lo-fi, in-the-red, psychedelic dirge rock blow out, that is the most 'rock' SF has ever sounded, while "Glassy Essence" is a thick undulating sprawl of corrosive blackened drones, drifting on a muted chaos of drum stumble and cymbal sizzle. "Choady Foster" sounds like it could have come from the same sessions the produced Carved Into Roses", a murky, psychedelic space rock, motorik groove and thick gouts of frenzied guitars, over a totally mesmerizing stripped down hypnorock framework. "Spent Force" strips away the rhythm, and most of the low end leaving a strange stretch of minimal buzz and glitch and hiss, underpinned by minimal muted drumming and loads of tape hiss, not to mention the occasional super dramatic and cinematic sonic swell. The live version of "Metallurgical King" from the Art Of 7", finds SF in full on abstract trip out drift mode, the drums less a driving force and more another texture floating amidst billowing clouds of feed back and effects drenched sonic swirl. The Total track from the flipside, is similarly drifty, but somehow much darker and heavier, with more heft, and a more serious low end, but still all tangled up in feedback and crumbling distortion, although the main guitar unfurls a thick, SUNNO))) like thrum. And finally, the epic Village Sorting 7", which finds the track "Village Sorting" split into two halves and spread out over all 14 minutes available on that original slab of wax, a plodding drum beat, a fog of insectoid buzz and jagged shards of atonal melody, all blurred and smeared into what sounds like some sort of lo-fi slowcore dirge melting before your very ears, the song laced with some serious free jazz style skronk, the second half / flipside eventually sheds the drums and lets the grinding guitars and bleating horns freakout over a shimmering bed of rumble and buzz. SO GREAT! Here's hoping the rest of the SF singles find their way onto cd, but for now, we've been spinning this disc nonstop, at least when we weren't spinning the other two. Definite contender for reissue of the year, and absolutely essential for fans of all things heavy and psychedelic, abstract and spaced out, noisy and rhythmic.
The packaging is pretty gorgeous too, a super deluxe 6 panel digisleeve, all full color textured paper, with something we had never seen before, the abstract oil painting from the cover printed on the jacket and then the paper sleeves affixed over the top, so parts of the painting our visible around the edges, it's really striking, and inside the various records and 7"s are reproduced in miniature, with extensive track notes, all that and a Japanese style obi too!
MPEG Stream: "Pipe Dream"
MPEG Stream: "Metallurgical King"
MPEG Stream: "White Fang"
MPEG Stream: "False Magic Kingdom"

WATSON, CHRIS El Tren Fantasma (Touch) cd 15.98
Preeminent field recordist Chris Watson returns with a bit of a twist on El Tren Fantasma. Pretty much all of his work up to this point (outside of his contributions to Cabaret Voltaire and The Hafler Trio way back when) has been audio verite. Even such albums as Weather Report, which edit field recordings from the African savanna (for example) into a condensed journey, are pristine, realist documents codified through the exquisite, lush details in Watson's enviromental sounds such as that of a lion panting after a successful hunt. El Tren Fantasma is much more engineered, imagined, and processed than anything else in his solo career; and this fictionalized Watson is no less compelling, no less dramatic, and no less awesome.
El Tren Fantasma - The Ghost Train - traces a now-defunct passanger rail line which ran from the Pacific Coast of Mexico to Veracruz on the Atlantic Coast. Watson had the opportunity to make this journey while working as a sound recordist for the BBC for their Great Railway Journeys. His compositions work with extracts from that excursion travelling across Mexico along with archival recordings whose origins are not specified. As he's stopping throughout the Chihuahuan Desert, Watson does capture the stunning chorales of chirping frogs, buzzing insects, and the blaring call of a California Quail (whose syllabic chortle is often mnemonically transcribed as "chi-CA-go" as if it were seeking a more temperate climate); but it the train's power and mass that provides so much of the impact for Watson's album. By the fourth track "El Divisidaro," Watson captures a series of loops of the train - with the bellowing horn pitched back and forth into a sustained symphonic tone and the clatter of the train's engine becoming an ersatz rhythm track, which in turn gets tricked out with some Martin Hannett styled, phasing delay work. It's easy to get lost in the majesty of this track, much like the expressive electronica that Wolfgang Voigt produced on Konigsforst as Gas. What a brilliantly simple transformation executed to perfection! "Mexico D.F." reprises this strategy with rhythmic churns building out of the grinding brakes and the roiling tumult of steam blasting through the train's pipes, becoming an almost militant thump on a lone drum. The train's horn drifts suitably in a cloud of reverberation at the end of the album, dissolving into the ghostlike apparition Watson intended it to be. As brillliant as this work is, we should also point out that Watson is not alone in composing such fictionalized scores purely through environmental sound. We would be remiss if we failed to point out the work of Australian composer Tarab, whose deft psychogeographical albums share the scope and execution with Watson's El Tren Fantasma. So great!
MPEG Stream: "Sierra Tarahumara"
MPEG Stream: "El Divisidaro"
MPEG Stream: "Mexico D.F."

DWARR Starting Over (Drag City) cd 14.98
Gotta give it up to the folks at Drag City, they're (weird) music lovers after our own hearts, all right. Not only did they reissue the eccentric 1986 outsider "doom" "metal" "masterpiece", Animals, by one-man-band Duane Warr aka Dwarr (an album that we at aQuarius had previously made a Record Of The Week, back when we were ordering an earlier, self-released cd version directly from Dwarr himself, we might add), they have now reissued that album's predecessor, 1984's privately pressed Starting Over - which, despite its title, was in fact Dwarr's debut. Thereby proving that they didn't just put out Animals for a lark! They're serious about their love for Dwarr, and really think people should hear his stuff - and people should, we agree. Maybe not all people, but certainly people who appreciate the finer things in, well, wacked out, downer DIY psychedelia, occasionally dosed with Eddie Van Halen style guitar shred. It's the '60s in the '80s, the dark sides of both decades distilled down to a unique, entertainingly demented essence. And not just entertaining, but truly affecting.
Now, we hope you already have Animals (go read our rave review of that right now, if you haven't!). If you do have it, we probably only need say you want this too. If you don't, well, while we would have to say Animals is the #1 best Dwarr, this one comes close, certainly possessing a similar vibe, and since it was the man's first album, there's no reason not to start with it if you wish to delve into the weird world of Dwarr. In fact, depending on your inclinations, this one might just be a bit more accessible, as it's not so overtly metallic, but perhaps even more sparse and psychedelic (if possible). Super slow but for the soloing. Black Sabbath is perhaps less of an influence on this one, than Pink Floyd... Or at least, rather than riff monsters like "Iron Man" and "Electric Funeral", this one takes its cues from the mellower, pot-wreathed Sabbath numbers like "Solitude" and "Planet Caravan". This is a gentler, folkier Dwarr, sort of. But definitely druggy and proggy (like Captain Beyond, circa Sufficiently Breathless), very odd and home-brewed, and certainly sometimes heavy too. Well, always "heavy", maaaann.
The songs are moody and melancholic, with hushed, woeful vocals. The production is lo-fi, of course, with tinny, trebly guitars indulging in widdly, effect-drenched soloing. Heck, there's a gnarly two-minute instrumental called "Christmas Shopping" that sounds like something Mick Barr might do, overdosed on cough syrup! Or anyone remember the '90s Mexican prog/psych band Humus? Probably not, but it totally could be them. And is that a genius song title or what? We also like "Lonely Ecstasy" as a title, that's another one here. Well, he's got a lot of interesting ideas, that Dwarr. And, as with Animals, this has an amazing piece of album cover artwork, to match the music in outsidery strangeness.
Along with Sabbath and Floyd, another "ordinary" comparison we could make would be to, maybe, solo Steve Hillage in the '70s. And Hendrix is a likely influence (Dwarr's vocals on "I've Been Thinking" kinda remind us of Jimi). Uli Jon Roth's solo stuff, too?? But given an even more eccentric, living-in-his-mother's-basement makeover. Then there's the pantheon of other outsiders we love, with whom Dwarr totally belongs... Michael Yonkers, Bobb Trimble, Todd Tamanend Clark, and more recently, and possibly more precisely too due to the doom metal element, Tony Tears.
Ok, enough said really. Either we've piqued your interest, or your life will stay sadly Dwarr-free. And again, if you're already a fan, you'll want this for sure!
Hmmm. Maybe 25 years from now Drag City will be reissuing Fastest albums too...
MPEG Stream: "Starting Over"
MPEG Stream: "Screams Of Terror"
MPEG Stream: "Christmas Shopping"

RUINS ALONE s/t (Skin Graft) cd 14.98
Fans of the Japanese underground progcore "Zeuhl" two-piece Ruins have been waiting... and waiting... it's been a while since the last Ruins album. Probably 'cause mastermind (and drummer) Tatsuya Yoshida, busy with a million other projects, has apparently never found a suitable replacement for the other half of the duo, bassist number four Sasaki Hisashi having left after 2002's Tzomborgha. But now, he's decided, he doesn't need another bassist. He doesn't need anyone. That's right, he can simply (or rather, complexly) play all the parts his own self!!! Now, we'd not have thought it possible if we hadn't seen him perform solo before, octopoidally attacking drum kit, bass pedals, keyboard, headset microphone, guitar, etc. But he's a maniac, and he can do it. Sure, presumably this studio recording utilized overdubs (it must have) but we wouldn't be at all surprised if he's able to do pretty much the same thing live, Thrones style, somehow.
So, here's the record. 23 tracks, about half of 'em brand new, utterly over the top compositions, the other half being "alone" versions of earlier Ruins tracks (including such old faves as "Grubandgo", "Cambodia", "Dharskrive", "Hyderomastgroningem", "Stonehenge", and "Sanctuary")... plus, as bonus tracks, two of the Ruins' now obligatory medleys - a "Prog Rock Medley" and "Hard Rock Medley", both gleefully ADD insane. Oh, and as another bonus, the surprisingly lovely & placid piano piece "Notturuno".
So, we're not sure if Ruins Alone is the way Ruins will be from now on, or if he's still just waiting for the right bass player to turn up, but for now anyway, if you want Ruins, this is it. And Yoshida (of course) pulls it off! Pretty freaking amazing. Y'know how Ruins already sounded like way more than just 2 people? Same goes here, dude's a one man multitude. While hyper-spastic as always (doing it all by himself sure doesn't slow him down!), Ruins Alone IS a wee bit different sounding than most previous Ruins, in that instead of heavy 5-string bass you get shredding, sizzling keyboards, and that's what makes the many tracks here that are renditions of past Ruins numbers especially interesting to hear for those familiar with the originals. The sound is still quite heavy and fuzzy but also uniquely synth-y, it's like some sort of crazy new wave, Nintendo version of the Ruins here, retro-futuristic in a remarkably "now" sounding way.
IF you're new to Ruins, you certainly could start with this, but we'd recommend checking out the proper duo recordings as well (Burning Stone, if you can find it!!). This as a taster, though, would help determine if you're crazy enough to become obsessed with this "band" or not. And longtime fans, YES you want this. More proof that Yoshida rules, even alone! Which we've known since his solo debut, Magaibutsu, back in 1991...
MPEG Stream: "Equesspaldho"
MPEG Stream: "Ixzelgriver"
MPEG Stream: "Sanctuary"
MPEG Stream: "Grubandgo"

UGLY THINGS Issue #32 Fall / Winter 2011 magazine 8.95
Oh boy. Editor / expert in chief Mike Stax and crew have done it again. Here's a fat new issue (176 pages) of our favorite magazine of ye olde rock n' roll (garage, punk, psych, power pop, and maybe a side of prog). This time 'round, there's typically in-depth, heavy duty features on a whole lot of interesting artists, some more obscure than others... Them, The Vibrators, Finchley Boys, The Sloths, Creation Of Sunlight, The Contrasts, freakbeat faves Wimple Winch, and plenty of others - including one REALLY obscure group with the amazing name of $27 Snap On Face, some Sonoma county weirdos circa '77. Along with a look at the psychedelic side of Paul Revere & The Raiders, the usual vast array of reissue reviews, the regular columns, et cetra. Oh, and a page devoted to "The 20 Worst Hard Rock Obscurities" to be avoided. And really that's just scratching the surface, as always an issue of Ugly Things requires a few solid hours of devoted study. For anyone who loves "wild sounds from past dimensions" this is sheer manna in magazine form.

ELDER Dead Roots Stirring (MeteorCity) cd 11.98
Despite being called Elder, the guys in this stoner/doom trio look pretty young! Nevertheless, this is their 2nd full length for the quite reliable MeteorCity label. We actually never listed Elder's first, self-titled album, from back in 2008, that one somehow slipped by, for whatever reason, but hope to make up for that by highlighting this new one, which we do dig big time, particularly 'cause of how it possesses a blissful lightness within its considerable heaviness.
And it's worth pointing out that, like a lot of things we list, it's by choice, we didn't have to list it y'know, there's lots of other things we could have listed instead, but it's something we liked enough to go to the trouble of ordering in and writing up to share with you 'cause we think you'd really like it too - well in this case, especially if you're into the stoner/doom sounds like we are.
They traffic in extended bouts of churning, blown-out heaviness, sludgey and psychedelic, with lumbering riffs, wailing guitars, hypnotic rhythms, and some nice, almost folky melodies (the 12 minute title track has some bits in it that remind us of early Wishbone Ash!). Theirs is not exactly a groundbreaking style, but boy do they bring it all together and do it right. And even though they're from Massachusetts, they've got the desert-y vibe down (these kids obviously having consumed much Kyuss), heavied up further to swing with the likes of Electric Wizard, Yob, Sleep, UFOmammut, and Boris (note the similar Roger Dean inspired logo). The vocals here are mostly an echoed afterthought, with the urgent instrumental unfurling of that desert-y doom being their main mode of mesmerization.
While the whole disc delivers those goods, they perhaps save the best for last, "Knot", another epic at 11:56 (well, all their songs are pretty darn long), which somehow seems to channel the essence of some of Elders' elders - ye olde '70s proto-metallers that is - into its bulldozing rifferama.
MPEG Stream: "Gemini"
MPEG Stream: "Dead Roots Stirring"
MPEG Stream: "Knot"

ORTHODOX Baal (Alone Records) cd 18.98
At last!! It's been a while since we last caught up with entirely UN-orthodox Spanish dooooooooooom mongers Orthodox. Yeah, doom with so many o's that we're surprised they had any left for the 3 in their name. But also doom that takes a lot of strange twists and turns into the furthest far out zones of the genre.
This band's first two outstanding albums, Gran Poder and Amanecer En Puerta Oscura, were issued stateside by Southern Lord back in 2007. Now, six years later, we have the Spanish release of the their fourth opus, Baal. (Their third album, 2009's Sentencia was MIA at aQ, but maybe we'll be able to get some now that we tracked down an import supplier for this new one.) Billed as a return to their heavy doom Gran Poder roots, after the psychedelic, almost jazz-like experimentation of the last couple, this IS hellishly heavy, though still quite avant-garde, as well.
Lead off instrumental track "Alto Padre", despite its deep distorted low-end, is definitely more psych than doom, in fact... skittering percussive pitter-patter and chiming guitars conjure a hazy, mellow mood. It's a woozy ritual that could easily appeal to Six Organs Of Admittance fans, for instance. But then the band brings the doom hammer down, big time, on the next song, "Taurus", quite a surprise for some of us here who didn't know what we were listening to... Crushing, crashing chords and peals of feedback begin the jagged death march that continues over Baal's remaining four tracks. You don't listen to this for conventional "songishness", nor really even for riffs (though there are RIFFS), more for the totality of the experience of Orthodox's tectonic rumble and psychedelic sickness... It's a combo of lumbering sludge bulldozing, twisted gnarled leads, and alien, underwatery atmospheres. And vocals - with a weird, wavering effect on 'em, very much like OM meets YOB, intoning grim and desperate chant. With those vocals, one starts to think about the band inhaling from a balloon filled with, not helium, but some other, psychotropic gas... actually maybe not sucking on the balloon, but being sucked INTO it, the entire band inhabiting some impossible, drug-filled inner space. Which also sounds like it could be deep under the earth. Soon you'll be trapped there too, possessed by the churning metallic attacks, spacious drones, and proggy freakouts found throughout the demonic Baal...
The grande finale, 14 minute "Abrase Le Tierra" sums it up, explosions of distortion detonating over drum clatter and organ drone, then the guitarist goes offffff and it's a doomed out Earthless... before a wild, heavily effected finish. Imagine a mix of Yob, Gallhammer, Earth, and even Comets On Fire, here!
If the well-used terms psychedelic and heavy, which have been cited umpteen thousand times on this list alone, have any relevance to your listening habits, especially at their extremes, then we suggest you get this Orthodox album (and The Wounded Kings also this list, and the Elder reviewed last time, too, for that matter, if you haven't already), you'll be happy you did!
MPEG Stream: "Taurus "
MPEG Stream: "Iatromantis"
MPEG Stream: "Hani Ba'al"

HAMMERS OF MISFORTUNE 17th Street (Metal Blade) cd 14.98
Ripping heavy metal infused with ornate Queen-like pop smarts, in support of lyrical concerns that 99 percenters could rally around? Hmm, that could only be the new album from San Francisco's Hammers Of Misfortune! It's interesting to think, that 17th Street might be the very first record by these guys (and gals) that lots of people will be exposed to, on account of 'em now being on a "big" label, the venerable Metal Blade, who besides putting out this new record, also reissued Hammers entire back catalog last year. What will those newbies make of it, a bold, brash, bombastic, very very "musical", progged-out opus that's part power metal, part pop, part political commentary??
However, most folks reading this are probably already familiar with Hammers, perhaps possessors of the preceding four entries in their discography (or 5 or maybe even 6, actually, depending on how you count 2008's double album Fields/Church Of Broken Glass, as well as the archival release of their early material recorded under the name Unholy Cadaver). So this review is mostly directed those Hammers fans, AQ customers who have been following 'em over the years like we have, and are aware of all the various the lineup changes, and stylistic shifts (raspy black metal influences out, '70s Hammond organ driven prog in) that have become part of the Hammers saga. (If you are a newbie, we suggest you get The Bastard first, then check out their others.)
But, while 2001's The Bastard remains our favorite HoM release (heck, Andee here originally put it out on his label tUMULt, right?), we are definitely finding a lot to like about what Hammers have turned into ten years on. They remain a brilliant band, if an indulgent one - but then that's one of the perks of prog, isn't it?
As Hammers fans have come to expect, this is chock full of intricate, incredible guitarwork. Lots of vintage sounding Hammond organ in there as well, those ivories tinkled by a classically trained pianist, juxtaposed with technical thrash velocities. And soaring, quasi-operatic vocals of course, too... speaking of which, that's one of the most significant aspects to mention about this new album, that among the lineup changes since the last one, they have a new male vocalist who might finally fill the void left by the departure of Slough Feg's Mike Scalzi after 2006's The Locust Years. New frontman Joe Hutton is a more than capable singer, in fact he's quite good, and while he doesn't sound exactly like Scalzi, there's a quality to his voice that old fans who miss Scalzi in the band will appreciate.
He's not their new 2nd guitar player though, that'd be Leila Abdul-Rauf, formerly of blackened death metallers Saros, also of Vastum - who in addition to being a shredder who can hold her own playing those harmonies with Hammers founder John Cobbett, turns out to have a nice "clean" singing voice (she did the cookie monster thing in Saros!), filling the female 'diva' role now in Hammers - though these new songs, with Hutton up front, definitely place more emphasis on the male vocal part, a good thing we think. And he's certainly given some infectiously melodic material to wrap his pipes around, as it were.
We're probably notorious for finding buried 'poppiness' in all sorts of not very overtly poppy music, but don't think we'll get much argument here when we say that while Hammers have always been melodic, this is definitely their poppiest outing yet. To the point that we can almost imagine 'em being played on the radio, and could even kinda compare some of this to the likes of, uh, Journey, at times. Ferinstance, "The Grain", the album's first "single" (or at least, leaked YouTube track), is something that WILL definitely get stuck in your head, the chorus catchier than a really catchy thing, though it's over 7 minutes long, so forget the radio idea... Elsewhere on this album, Queen (and the many-layered guitars of Brian May) are a good comparison. You'll hear that on the heartwrenching piano ballad "Summer Tears", a moody one... Going beyond Queen, the sprightly likes of "The Day The City Died" gets almost into Sparks territory, even! Lest that not sound very "metal", don't worry, the frantic charge of "Romance Valley" amongst other stormers here should be enough to demonstrate that 17th Street is totally deserving of having the old school bloody axe Metal Blade logo emblazoned on its sleeve.
Conceptually (and being Hammers, you know there's concepts!), well, all their other albums came out during the heinous reign of George W. Bush. Now the class warfare is more the focus than the so-called War On Terror. And guess what? This is thus the first, and doubtless only, protest prog-metal album aligned with the Occupy Wall Street movement (Occupy 17th Street!?). One of the songs, "Staring (The 31st Floor)", is about the collapse of Lehman Brothers, for gosh sake.
With the demise of Ludicra, Hammers are now lead guitarist and main songwriter John Cobbett's only going concern. And there was a lot of pressure on, but we think Cobbett & Co. rose to the occasion. Though it's hard to gauge what other folks will think of this, as no other bands really sound anything like Hammers do these days.
Available on both cd (digipack) or deluxe double gatefold vinyl, 180 gram, 45rpm for maximum fidelity!! The vinyl version features an extra 7 minute track, "Salt", right in the middle of the first side. And furthermore, the mastering job on the vinyl is said (by the band) to sound better, though we haven't yet made that determination ourselves.
MPEG Stream: "17th Street"
MPEG Stream: "The Grain"
MPEG Stream: "The Day The City Died"

DANAVA Hemisphere Of Shadows (Kemado) lp 17.98
It's not really all that much fun writing a review of this new Danava album. What's fun is listening to it, turned up loud... and maybe getting buzzed on a substance of choice whilst doing so. Whoo-hoo! Granted, that's the case with lots of albums, classics like say Deep Purple In Rock or Alice Cooper's Love It To Death. The kind that require, nay inspire, such behavior. Those, though, weren't just released, but this was, so all the more an occasion for drunken loud listening. They don't make 'em like this all that often anymore, so kudos to Kemado for bringing us the real deal (ironic, isn't it). Though its exactly what we've come to expect from Portland psych-prog-stoner rockers Danava, and are happy to hear once again.
Since the time we checked in with these boys, they've undergone some lineup changes. They now rock to the beat of a different drummer, for one thing. And the guy who only played synths is gone now... but in his stead, way better yet, they've added a 2nd guitarist for extra twin axe attackin', so that's a win. The bassist and the singin' lead guitarist are the same, and that's what really matters in this band, those dudes. They slay.
Needless (at this point) to say, this new album is a killer, replete from the very get-go with rollicking, riff-rockin' badassery. These new Danava jams are seriously being kicked, way out. And they're, y'know, real songs too, with real vocals and everythin', like it's back in 1973 or so and they've got something to prove, those twin guitars givin' with the glorious harmonies (think Thin Lizzy, on the song "I Am The Skull" here especially). They sound like old time Pentagram too, but galloping like they wuz in the Preakness. The Preakness of freakness. Danava are doin' it, here. They're gonna out rock, out prog, out psych, out retro-proto-metal all comers. Speedy and sinuous, no doubt a bit of stress on all the wrists and necks involved in the making of this music. And there's still the usual embellishments of spacey synthy FX sprinkled about, even with that one guy gone. It's all almost a bit overwhelming, which is why it's nice that the very last track, the instrumental "Dying Into The Light" winds things up on a calming, eerily pretty note. Whew...
And, it should be noted that they further pay tribute to their '70s forebears by covering a song, "The Last Goodbye", by obscure UK blooze bashers Slowbone, not that you'd think it wasn't one of their own.
So, yep, getting ripped and listening to these guys rip (rollercoaster style, like they do) is of course way better than writing or reading this review. The response should be obvious. We, or well at least one of us anyway, is gonna kick back and crank this right now. You, should buy a copy and do the same as soon as you can.
By the way, all that drink/drug stuff is meant metaphorically, for all we know the guys in Danava, and their intended listening audience, are super straight edge, not stoners, let alone beer drinkers and hell raisers - though we doubt it.
MPEG Stream: "Shoot Straight With A Crooked Gun"
MPEG Stream: "The Last Goodbye"
MPEG Stream: "I Am The Skull"

SILVER BULLET Bring Down The Walls No Limit Squad Returns (Original Dope) cd 16.98
Not long ago, we hope you recall, we highlighted a pretty rad release on the Rephlex label, a double disc compiling the entire recorded output of early '90s "Britcore" rappers The Criminal Minds. They had been billed as being something akin to a "UK Public Enemy", and we agreed! In our review we made mention of some of TCM's contemporaries, that we were now also quite curious to hear: Hijack, Silver Bullet, the Demon Boyz...
Well, we just discovered that emcee Silver Bullet's debut full-length from 1991, Bring Down The Walls The No Limit Squad Returns, was recently reissued by a new label called Original Dope, an imprint of Cherry Red that's focused on UK hiphop. Cool beans! 'Cause on eBay, original copies of this Silver Bullet cd were going for like 40 bucks - plus this is remastered, with worthy bonus tracks and brand new liner notes.
And hearing it, it's for sure something that anybody who liked TCM will dig. Fast, funky, and frantic, with a definite dark vibe. SB's rough, raw, rapidfire flow is well matched by the uptempo beats of his DJ Mo, the disc is energetic and intense from start to finish, and dense with sampling. Like TCM, this has got that PE/Bomb Squad feel as well, but especially apocalyptic and adrenalized. In fact, Silver Bullet was hand picked by PE to open a European tour of theirs, and one of the 4 bonus tracks tacked onto this reissue is a Bomb Squad remix of SB's "20 Minutes To Comply" (a track built around a sample of ED-209's "dialogue" from the movie RoboCop, by the way).
Movie soundtracks, particularly horror movies, were a big part of the Silver Bullet sound... you'll hear John Carpenter stuff, the Twilight Zone theme, etc.; in some sense Silver Bullet could also be said to have pioneered the "horrorcore" subgenre of rap (a la Gravediggaz), lyrically too. Just check out signature cut "Bring Forth The Guillotine"! Which, of course, is also political, as are tracks like "Undercover Anarchist", which also probably attracted PE's attention.
This reish is nicely done, with detailed Silver Bullet bio provided in the cd booklet, wherein we learn that his career derailed after this album due to run-ins with the law (as he admits now, he was young and dumb, and is lucky that in living out his gangsta rap fantasies, playing around with guns and stuff, things didn't turn out worse for him than they did). He should have paid attention to his own tune, "Guns Of Mind Alone"...
MPEG Stream: "20 Seconds To Comply"
MPEG Stream: "Rough Carnage"
MPEG Stream: "Bring Forth The Guillotine"

ELECTRO QUARTERSTAFF Aykroyd (Willowtip) cd 14.98
All right! We've been waiting for this, at long last a new album of mathy mania from our favorite Manitoban instru-metal nerds, who rip it up like an unholy hybrid of The Fucking Champs and Gorguts.
So, we threw this on as soon as we got it in earlier this week, and as we were listening to it in the store, a dizzying display of complicated instrumental triple-guitar metal pyrotechnics, completely ridiculous stuff, Andee remarked to Matt that THIS must be what it sounds like inside Allan's head all the time. To which Allan says, "I wish!"... And Allan's wish is Electro Quarterstaff's command. All he (or anyone) has to do is strap on some headphones and hit "play", and your brain can start doing somersaults and backflips to the tricky tunes of these tech-metal masters!
Yes, it's a fun ride. Somehow the Electro Quarterstaff boys make their music crazy technical and also utterly rock out at the same time. In fact, on some of the tracks here, we declare EQ may have invented the hitherto unknown subgenre of "technical boogie"!!
The Willowtip label is of course known for uber-technical death grind, bands like Arsis, Capharnaum, Gorod, Necrophagist... serious, brutal stuff, though they do have their "humorous" side (remember, uh, Crotchduster?). Electro Quarterstaff certainly have a quizzical sense of humor, witness song titles like "Waltz Of The Swedish Meatballs" and "Unholy Gravy" (though others are less overtly absurd, to be sure). But that's not why we like 'em so much. Any band can come up with silly song titles, but NOT just any band can play like this, nosiree. Grin-inducing MUSICALLY 'cause it's so damn complex, yet catchy too. Reminds us a bit of An Albatross, but not so spastic and noisy, way more METAL, their hectic shred conversant with classical-sounding melody. In fact, first track "The Wolf Shall Inherit The Moon" is a disarmingly beautiful semi-acoustic piece, setting any unsuspecting listeners up for a shock when frantic next track "McNutty" erupts into their ear-space.
Once again, they've named this after a famous Canadian (Gretzky was their debut). And once again, this cd is graced with really awesome artwork. This 2nd album was worth the five year wait, but we hope EQ don't go back into lengthy hibernation right away... what would be really rad would be to see 'em play live, how 'bout a West Coast tour, guys? We'd be in the front row for that, along with any fans of Scale The Summit, Suzikiton, Pegataur, The Champs, Gorguts, etc.
MPEG Stream: "Waltz Of The Swedish Meatballs"
MPEG Stream: "Descent By Annihilation Operator"
MPEG Stream: "Stroganoff"

HOLLOW MIRRORS s/t (self-released) lp 12.98
We have to say, anything that we could mistake for Pink Floyd one moment, and Freedom Hawk the next, is pretty darn cool. And thus, this is! The vinyl-only debut release from a local San Francisco groop whose hypnotic, propulsive neo-kraut rhythms are wedded with muscular rock riffery in a kind of stoner rock meets retro prog blend that should appeal big time to folks into the likes of Wooden Shjips, Moon Duo, White Hills, Lumerians, 3 Leafs, and Circle.
The guitars sprawl psychedelically, the drums (played by the former drummer of trance-inducing Bay Area black metal legends Weakling, also ex-Saros) lock into endless grooves, and upon occasion cleanly-sung melodic vocals soar up and over those mesmeric beats and churning, chiming guitars... There's also heck of analog synths put to traditional good use here, especially on the album's big finale, the nearly quarter hour "Fading Twilight", an epic track, both gorgeous and powerful, that you could play alongside your favorite, most spaced-out, pot-perfumed '70s album sides for sure. Hollow Mirrors really display their authentic love for real old school prog (a la Atomic Rooster, Eloy, Far East Family Band, ELP, Steve Hillage, and anything Roger Dean ever painted an album cover for, probably) on that one! And elsewhere too, although overall Hollow Mirrors are a modern, original band, not a retro exercise to the extent of say, an outfit like Astra or BigElf (cool as they are).
If we had to make any (hopefully constructive) criticism at all about these killer spacegothkrautstonerjams from Hollow Mirrors, well, maybe we'd like to hear a bit more dirt and grit in the production next time, it's almost a bit too clean, and could possibly be heavier too, considering the metallic pedigree of some of the folks involved (like the aforementioned drummer!). But that's not really a criticism, just an observation. They can do their thing their way and we're happy to hear it. 'Tis fine stuff we think a lot of you will like. A lot.
MPEG Stream: "Red Hot Rat"
MPEG Stream: "In A Convex Labyrinth"
MPEG Stream: "Fading Twilight"

SCIORTINO, PATRICE Chronoradial (The Omni Recording Corporation) cd 17.98
Last time, we reviewed The Omni Corporation's reissue of a wonderful rare "library music" album entitled Omega 2000 by German composer Peter Thomas and his "Orchestra". Those diligent diggers at Omni Corp. have another one along those lines for us this week, again a '70s library music collection, from the much less well known name of Patrice Sciortino. Can't believe this is the first we've heard of the man and his music, considering that this stuff sounds something like the more outre of Morricone efforts, pretty darn cool. And apparently, there's plenty more where this came from. Wow, thanks Omni!!
Sciortino is classically trained French musician, born in 1922, who eventually established a career in the '60s/'70s as a prolific and somewhat peculiar composer, with, eventually, many obscure recordings to his credit. He's also a poet and playwright. With an interest in both non-Western musics and the most avant-garde of electronics (he studied at GRM), his musical vision, as displayed here, is unusual and otherworldly.
Where that Orchestra Peter Thomas disc was groovy and funky, all about the big bombastic beats, this Sciortino stuff is much more atmospheric and academic sounding... it's like 20th century classical gone soundtrack wacky. Imagine Bernard Herrmann (of Psycho fame) meets Carl Stalling (of Warner Bros. cartoons fame). Or Luigi Nono writing music for TV shows. His music is sometimes ominous, sometimes uplifting, offering plenty of percussive exotica, chimings and tinklings, with shuddering, sawing cello and eerie wordless female vocals. And occasional echo effects intensifying the rhythms.
This disc comprises Sciortino's entire, intriguing 1970 album Chronoradial, plus extensive selections from three different 10" records of his belonging to a library music series out by the Musique Pour L'Image label circa 1967-1968. There's 36 tracks here in all, many of them jittery and unsettling, suspenseful and nervous - but others lively, joyous and beautiful.
Nicely done, in typical Omni fashion, the cd booklet full of informative liner notes, and awesome freaky black and white artwork from the original lps - love that raccoon-like creature with the clocks for eyes!! Quite recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Kuklos I"
MPEG Stream: "Horizons Roses"
MPEG Stream: "Tumulte"
MPEG Stream: "Forage"

ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE & THE MELTING PARAISO U.F.O. Live In Occident (Essence Music) cd 14.98
This long out of print slab of heavy Japanese psych from aQ faves Acid Mothers Temple (or more accurately, Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O.), originally released on vinyl, via the Detector label, WAY back in 2000, is one of a handful of new reissues from Brazilian label Essence (along with two Circle cds, reviewed elsewhere on this week's list), and is presented in a super swank mini-lp style gatefold sleeve, with the original sound of the lp, totally remastered, and revved up, heard for the first time the way it was meant to be heard. 'Cause according to the band, the guy who originally mastered the vinyl said the sound was "too heavy" to be mastered for vinyl, hence the sub par sound. And while the cd version definitely does sound better, it's still plenty murky and muddy and lo-fi, raw and in the red, with the band a wild chaotic squall of psychedelic sound, with lots of buzz and feedback, you can hear people in the audience talking here and there, the band offers up some funny between song banter, all of that non musical stuff woven into some of the band's fiercest rocking ever.
The record starts off all drifty and shimmery, the band unfurling lush layers of whirling sound, wreathed in clouds of sci-fi swoops and bleeps, it doesn't take long for them to launch into it, and they never let up. Channeling High Rise and White Heaven and all the Japanese psych greats that came before, Kawabata Makoto and company tear it up, the guitars a constant barrage of wild Hendrixian blow outs, and tangled sprays of furious shred, the drums pound desperately in the background, the bass is nothing more than a low end thrum, and EVERYTHING is doused in effects, rendering all the sounds washed out and woozy and druggy. Occasionally the band do lock into some more krautrock like grooves, and its then that the bass comes to the fore and definitely drives the group, but most of Live In Occident is spent in full of freaked out psych-noise blow out mode, sounding like a modern version of the avant Japanese jazz noise of folks like Takayanagi, albeit run through a million fuzz pedals and transmitted from the furthest reaches of the galaxy.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
MPEG Stream: "Acid Milk Milky Way Also Jupiter 888"
MPEG Stream: "Rising From The Cool Fool Inferno"
MPEG Stream: "Astrological Overdrive"

DUST Hard Attack (Repertoire) cd 26.00
Dust's two early '70s proto-metal classics had been out of print on cd for far too long - and even the last time we had 'em, YEARS ago, we could only get a few drilled, cut-out copies. But now, huzzah, import cd reissues are available, packaged in those slim digi-wallet sleeves. Definitely feels good to have 'em back in our vintage heavy rock section once more, were they belong as essentials in that genre.
Of Dust's two albums, this 1972 lp is generally considered the harder of the two, the more metal. Though that may be in part 'cause of the cover art, and album title! But perhaps it is somewhat more Sabbathian. "Downer rock" they called it back then (we're told). Their song "Suicide" (the penultimate track on side 2 of the original vinyl) - whooah, that could be Pentagram! That song alone makes this an essential purchase for any true doom/psych fan. It's an all time classic. Between that and the awesome Frank Frazetta cover painting, what more could you want?
But it's not all doom n' gloom n' barbarians - Hard Attack has its lighter side, but unlike a lot of their peers, the poppier and/or less rockin' stuff Dust do is actually really great. Sure, a song like "Thusly Spoken" features strings and a Beatlesy melody, but the lyrics still name-check Satan and speak of dancing demons. Lush, gorgeous downer-pop that sets you up to be crushed by the following, urgently hard-rockin' track "Learning To Die". They do that throughout the album, alternating gentle - even acoustic - numbers with the proggy proto-metal workouts that the headbangers of 1972 must have loved.
It's hard to understand why Dust didn't "make" it, as this stuff is certainly the equal of big sellers from their era by Deep Purple or Uriah Heep. Great singing, riffs, melodies, and that "feel" - it's all here.
We mentioned Pentagram above - if you've got that awesome Relapse label anthology of Pentagram's original seventies recordings, First Daze Here, you should definitely check out the work of Dust, who were both contemporaries of, and an influence on, the Ram's Head boys. Yes, Dust are an important name on the list of forgotten but godlike '70s hard rock bands that make today's so-called stoner rockers sound like punk/grunge wanna-bes. That '70s pantheon includes, besides Dust, bands like like Lucifer's Friend, Highway Robbery, Jerusalem, Orang-utan, Toad, Budgie, Sir Lord Baltimore, Captain Beyond, Bang, Stray, Leafhound, etc. In a word (again): classic. Too bad you'll never hear 'em on your local "classic rock" radio station...
Oh, and Dust featured the future Marky Ramone on drums, by the way, before he decided punk was the way to go (or even had that option)...
MPEG Stream: "Walk In The Soft Rain"
MPEG Stream: "Learning To Die"
MPEG Stream: "Suicide"

DUST s/t (Repertoire) cd 26.00
Dust's two early '70s proto-metal classics had been out of print on cd for far too long - and even the last time we had 'em, YEARS ago, we could only get a few drilled cut-out copies. But now, huzzah, import cd reissues are available, packaged in those slim digi-wallet sleeves. Definitely feels good to have 'em back in our vintage heavy rock section once more, were they belong as essentials in that genre.
So, for those who need to know: the American hard rock trio known as Dust are another of those legendary early '70s bands that get mentioned in the same breath with heavies like Captain Beyond, Sir Lord Baltimore, The James Gang, Bang, and the like. They cut two excellent lps of late-psychedelic-era proto-metal back in '71 and '72. This the first, self-titled one, and of their two albums, this one's swampier, with a lot of slide and country/southern rock moves on tracks like "Stone Woman" and "Chasin' Ladies". But then there's the lugubrious and weighty 10-minute epic "From A Dry Camel", and conversely, the gentle acoustic dreaminess of "Often Shadows Felt". Mostly, though, the album kicks ass with uptempo hard rockers, including the ripping, rollicking instrumental "Loose Goose" that closes the album quite frenetically.
Maybe Dust could be considered the American version of Nazareth (with vocals somewhat less soaked in whiskey). And they're a lot like Highway Robbery, whose lp reissue we raved about recently. What we're saying is: pretty great! And also: any Danava fan oughtta check 'em out!
Oh, and Dust featured the future Marky Ramone on drums, by the way, before he decided punk was the way to go (or even had that option)...
MPEG Stream: "Stone Woman"
MPEG Stream: "Love Me Hard"
MPEG Stream: "From A Dry Camel"

MORLY GREY The Only Truth (Sundazed) cd 17.98
Dunno how we missed it when the Sundazed label put out this sweet reissue last year, but better late than never to list the early '70s heavy psych awesomeness of Morly Grey - any psychedelic rock freaks out there who didn't know about it should be super stoked!
This Youngstown, Ohio band's sole, privately pressed lp came out in 1972 and has long been considered a desirable underground artifact of hippiness and heaviness, the sort of thing that actually lives up to the collectors' hype, with original copies being relatively rare and expensive (and bootlegs prevalent). It's a blend of fuzzy acid rock guitars, mellow West Coast-y folkiness, and proggy ambition (the trippy title track, which incorporates an instrumental arrangement of "When Johnny Comes Marching Home", takes up a whole album side, at over 17 minutes in length). Plus a healthy dose of flowers and beads bedecked pop that harks back to the '60s sounds of the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, and Jefferson Airplane, all acts no doubt influential upon the Morly Grey guys, even as they display nascent headbanging riff rock inclinations as well. So while a song like "Who Can I Say You Are" may mostly be all delicate and melodic (with vocals worthy of Bobb Trimble), it also kicks in with the heaviness at times too. That song, by the way, you may have heard already on that great Forge Your Own Chains: Heavy Psychedelic Ballads and Dirges compilation that came out a couple years ago.
Elsewhere, there's parts that remind us of krautrockers Agitation Free, and spacerockers Hawkwind... while lead-off cut "Peace Officer" could almost be early Blue Oyster Cult at their most psychedelic and proto-metallic.
We remember a long time ago, this was available as a compact disc reissue via Italy's Akarma label, but this nicely digipacked Sundazed reish is much superior, being totally legit and more than complete, as it includes a bunch of rare (and excellent) bonus tracks, totalling an additional 28+ minutes of music! There's also enlightening liner notes, based on interviews with surviving band members, by Doug Sheppard of Ugly Things magazine.
MPEG Stream: "Peace Officer"
MPEG Stream: "You Came To Me"
MPEG Stream: "The Only Truth"

PAINTING PETALS ON PLANET GHOST Fallen Camellias (A Silent Place) cd 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We love, love, loved the cd that Japan's PSF label released by Painting Petals On Planet Ghost, 2009's Haru No Omi, a disc of hushed hazy psychedelic semi-acoustic drones backing delicate female vocals, themselves often gently looped and layered. Although on PSF, and despite those vocals being in fluent Japanese, PPOPG is the work of Italy's Ramona Ponzini, joined by the ever-industrious Opalio brothers from My Cat Is An Alien, and is probably our favorite thing the Oplaio's have been involved with.
Now, we knew of an earlier Painting Petals album on Time-Lag, the vinyl long out of print, but had somehow missed out on this one, a 2008 release from the A Silent Place label. Well, as you may have noticed elsewhere on this week's list, we just managed to acquire an assorted quantity of A Silent Place "product", at a "nice price" too, including (yay!) a handful of these lovely discs. It's totally along the lines of the PSF release, being another album of gorgeous, near-ambient driftworks, apparently recorded in "mystic locations" in the Italian Alps, with Ponzini's dreamy vocals once again set amidst melodious shimmering drone, and tinkling bells... there's both wind chimes, and what sounds like field recordings of actual wind, along with guitars, glockenspiel, antique accordion, mini-keyboard, and harmonica. Utterly entrancing and relaxing.
So, if you liked the more recent Haru No Omi as much as we did, you should act fast and try to grab one of these. We won't be able to get more, and only have a few...
MPEG Stream: "Kari"
MPEG Stream: "Yume No Hanashi"
MPEG Stream: "Kyoto No Mizu"

LAWRENCE, TOM Water Beetles Of Pollardstown Fen (Gruenrekorder) cd 17.98
If you haven't already decided to buy this just 'cause of the title (which is indeed indicative of what this is - field recordings of water beetles!!!), we suppose we should provide something of a review. Though, if you're like us, there's not much more you need to know besides that it's WATER BEETLES - and a release on the great German sound-art label Gruenrekorder...
The liner notes in the cd booklet here begin with a very apt quote from composer David Dunn: "All of the sound we hear is only a fraction of all the vibrating going on in our universe". And while it's probably good that we can't hear it all, all the time (boy that would be noisy) it's also cool once in a while to experience some of the sounds that we're usually missing out on. In this case, a sonic glimpse of another, secret world, what it would sound like if you lived in a marsh, and got your ears up close underwater next to some talkative, chit-chattering insects... which, interestingly, is a lot like some stuff in our experimental/drone section. Turns out the water beetles of Pollardstown Fen make mesmeric mad-scientist "music" that would fit in with the clicks and cuts on Raster-Noton! Abstract, ambient, but not exactly beatless - there's rhythmic pulses to the seeming electronic transmissions from these beetles. From track to track it's quite varied, these tracks teeming with all manner of bleepings and burblings, chirpings and cracklings... constantly changing, constantly fascinating, the noises these waterbugs make with their microscopic mating "cries" is AMAZING. Buzzing drones, sferic-like swoops, sawing sounds, gurgling grind, morphing and modulating in pitch... And it's not just them, there's other sounds found in their aquatic environment - did you know that photosynthesizing plants made sounds?
The ten tracks here, all recorded at locations within the Pollardstown Fen, an ancient alkaline marsh in County Kildare, Ireland, might somehow suggest mechanical sources, but are all indeed natural and organic (the liner notes take pains to specifically state that there's no electrical interference to be heard here, nor were any mechanical devices in operation upon the Fen at the time of these recordings). And yes, though we are quite happy to let our imaginations make the most of these recordings without any further information, for the curious the cd booklet does contain detailed notes, getting all technical and scientific about both the recordings and the insects in question, which should convince any skeptics suspicious about the actual origin of these sounds! Let's quote an example here, the description of track ten, just to give you the full flavor of the text, and also some idea of what you're in for, when you listen:
"This recording is a protracted performance given by a single waterbug (Water Scorpion) in heightened antagonistic stance. The hydrophone has been positioned about one inch from the insect. The insect stridulated in this way for approximately nine hours. In the background the communicative songs of the wider ecosystem can be heard. Towards the end of the recording an interesting oscillation technique takes place."
On that track, they only let that antagonistic waterbug go on for just about 13 minutes, but the whole disc itself is well over an hour and always interesting, and for us ultimately meditative.
If you liked another recent waterbug cd we listed (yes, we've had more than one!), Thomas Tilly's hydrophonic field recordings from a castle moat in France, this is maybe even more "immersive" and pleasantly evocative of its watery natural world... Recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Seven Springs"
MPEG Stream: "Moore's Well"
MPEG Stream: "Hawkfields"

SWIFTUMZ Don't Trip (Holy Mountain) lp 15.98
If you read our in-between list last Friday, the one where where highlighted some of our favorite things on the Holy Mountain label, you may remember us mentioning this new, soon-to-be-reviewed Holy Mountain release, the debut album from Swiftumz. As promised, here it is, and it's awesome. But, those of you you familiar with Holy Mountain's usual output might be expecting something deeply psychedelic, acid folky, or even experimentally abrasive... so Swiftumz might throw you for a loop, 'cause instead it's quite poppy. Hum-along, stick in your head, lalala-ishly poppy, wow! But it's lo-fi bedroom indie pop, of course, kinda on the Ariel Pink or Art Museums tip, delirious and distorted enough to find favor with the Holy Mountain mystics. REALLY distorted on opener "Don't Cha Want Me Back?" in fact.
It's the work of a local fella, super nice guy and man about town, Chris McVicker. Who until now, we hadn't realized was such a hidden pop talent. Perhaps we should have known, apparently he wrote a hit single for Hunx & His Punx, but we tend to think of him as the guy who hangs out with Oakland heavies Pigs and brings us their records (and one of the Pigs guys plays on this, as does Myles Cooper and some other folks). So, surprised were we that this was such a catchy affair, inspired by the '80s British stuff from the C86 scene, but also reminding us of all kinds of other good ol' underground indie faves like Dinosaur Jr and The Supreme Dicks. There's plenty of strummy guitar jangle, shimmering FX, tick tockin' drum machine beats, and gentle vox to lift these tracks to the top of the pops in your heart. Really good stuff, it was tough to pick which songs we liked best out of the bunch to make sound samples of, 'cause they're all so good. Some mellow and dreamy, others uptempo energetic, all hooky and hazy and full of heartache.
By the way, that cute name, Swiftumz, is that McVicker's secret nickname or something? Sounds kind of like a term of endearment - or perhaps the opposite. "Good one, Swiftumz!" one could say, sarcastically. But we will say it sincerely, this IS a good one, Swiftumz, we're impressed!! Enthusiastically recommended. And by the way, the phone number that's on the sticker on the front cover, below where it says "call me", that IS McVicker's phone number! And he really doesn't mind if you call him.
Though unfortunately vinyl-only, this does include a mp3 download code.
MPEG Stream: "Angelita"
MPEG Stream: "Tuff Guy"
MPEG Stream: "More Than Sleep"

PUSSY Invasion (Vintage / Rockadrome) cd 14.98
We know a LOT of you are familiar with the band Jerusalem, one of thee ultimate holy grails of '70s proto-metal, thankfully reissued by Vintage/Rockadrome a couple years ago. We made it our Record Of The Week at the time, and still sell 'em steadily, every week!! And this list, you'll also find the vinyl version of that reissue, repressed. One of the heaviest, doomiest proto-metal finds ever, coming closer to the gods Black Sabbath than most, but with their own primitive, almost punk charm!
Jerusalem only put out that one rare lp, but that's not the end to the story. Rumor had it that there was a second album in the can, never released. Well, as we mentioned in our Record Of The Week write-up, the actual fact was that when Jerusalem broke up, sometime in 1972, 3/5ths of the ex-members immediately formed another band, Pussy, and what we've got here is Pussy's entire recorded output, finally seeing the light of day!!
Not to be confused with another British band called Pussy, a psych pop outfit from the '60s (what's with these young men liking Pussy as a band name so much? Cat fanciers, huh?), this Pussy were a power trio, consisting of Jerusalem's rhythm section plus their lead guitarist. Apparently, the lead singer and 2nd guitarist from Jerusalem had wanted to go in a more progressive/polished direction, which lead to the split, and resulted in the formation of Pussy, by those who wanted to keep things rather more raw and rockin'. However, Pussy do sound somewhat different from Jerusalem, and not just 'cause bassist Paul Dean took over on vocals (on the other hand, he was also always the main songwriter in both bands).
While their songs are full of throbbing rhythms and crunching distorted guitar riffs, Pussy don't come across quite so doomy and dark as did their previous incarnation. There's a bit more of a poppy "glam" thing going on here, Pussy sounding something like a heavier T.Rex at times! Banging a gong, getting it on, boogying down, complete with handclaps and cowbell. Slade and The Sweet could be other influences/comparisons, which means this has something in common with the proto-metal treat we listed last time, by Incredible Hog... Some songs remind us of Stray ("I Keep Remembering You"), others of early UFO ("Moonshine"), and one ("Pig Mansion") even hints at a proto-metal version of early Brian Eno. There's even a number on here that Andee thought sounded like something from the first Duran Duran album, though we're not sure if anyone else thinks so. These rollicking tracks are all energetic and fuzzed out, with lots of bouncy, rubbery riffing. Definitely a good time, and thus getting played in heavy rotation here at the store ever since it showed up!
There's a total of 16 tracks on this cd, including both sides of their only previously released record, a 7" single from 1972, the great "Feline Woman" (inspired by Sabbath's version of "Evil Woman"?) backed with "Ska-Child" (definitely NOT a ska number, though it does feature groovy hard rockin' horns!). Then there's four more songs from demo sessions circa '73, plus the ten tracks, with a new guitarist, from what was meant to be their full-length album, all produced (as was Jerusalem) by Ian Gillan of Deep Purple, who also sings some backup. So cool that this long lost gem is finally available! The 20 page cd booklet includes lyrics, photos, and detailed liner notes about the Pussy story...
MPEG Stream: "Feline Woman"
MPEG Stream: "Pig Mansion"
MPEG Stream: "Take Me Home"

INCREDIBLE HOG Vol.1 +4 (Rise Above Relics) cd 16.98
Proto-metal fiends, give praise to the fine folks at Rise Above Relics. They've been doing a great job lately reissuing some crucial obscurities from the early '70s - Necromandus, Steel Mill, that Bang box set - and now here's another one we were excited to get in. The one and only, and quite collectable, album from 1973 by a band of heavy rockers from England who went by the somewhat silly name of Incredible Hog (apparently a porcine variation on the Incredible Hulk??). There's been songs of theirs included on a few comps we've had (A Visit To The Spaceship Factory, The Electric Asylum Vol.4) but this is the first ever proper cd reissue of the full album, authorized and remastered and all.
The first track is called "Lame" but the 'Hog definitely ain't. If you like your psychedelic blues rock big and burly, raucous and rollicking, the 'Hog are the seventies heavies you're looking for. That lead-off cut, "Lame", is an excellent intro to the album in general; a stomping, distorted rocker with loads of swingin' riffage and wailing vox, that sounds a whole lot like Led Zeppelin mixed with a bit of glitter/glam a la Slade (with the hey hey hey's and handclaps). The next track, the dazed 'n' confused dirge "Wreck My Soul" is even more on the Zepped-out blooze rawk tip, with some blues harp blowin' showing up. They venture into folkier territory on the following cut, "Execution", one of a few quite affecting, mellower melodic compositions found on the record. But mostly they're about banging out the heavier stuff, and they're back at it with the next number, "Tadpole", an uptempo stormer laced with sound FX samples (crashing thunder, crying babies, crazy laughter) giving it a bit of a proggier vibe, which is followed by the cowbell-knockin', Eastern-tinged "Another Time"... and so it goes, Incredible Hog kicking ass all up and down this album, one that any fan of the Led Zeppier side to '70s heavy rock oughtta lay their ears upon pronto. So if you dig bands like Leaf Hound, Budgie, Granicus, Lucifer's Friend, Jerusalem, Possessed (UK), Tucky Buzzard, and Stray, then prepare to add Incredible Hog to that list of proto-metal awesomeness. Bands today can't compare (although, Rise Above's Gentlemans Pistols come close, and no doubt are big 'Hog fans).
As always, Rise Above Relics does a bang-up job with the cd packaging, it's ensconced in a slipcover with fat 40 page cd booklet full of detailed notes and vintage pics, all put together with the help of the original band members. They've also managed to dig up four long lost, unreleased bonus trax (hence the "+4" in this reissue's title), recorded back in the day, some of which were meant for a second 'Hog album that never happened. At least one of 'em, a rip snorter called "Burnout", is easily up there with anything on the album itself in terms of sheer proto-metal power, and the others are worthy bonus trackage too.
All hail the 'Hog! Incredible, indeed.
MPEG Stream: "Lame"
MPEG Stream: "Execution"
MPEG Stream: "There's A Man"
MPEG Stream: "Burnout"

YOB Atma (20 Buck Spin) 2lp 23.00
Dooming ever onward, Oregon's re-activated Yob are back with their 2nd Profound Lore release, the 6th full-length overall from this heavier-than-thou trio, and all Yob and/or doom fans (like us) should be well chuffed! After several years hiatus (during which singer/guitarist Mike Scheidt stayed doomy in his ill-fated Middian project), Yob's 2009 comeback album The Great Cessation emphasized the darker side of Yob, black metal influences to the fore, Yob still spacey and sludgey to be sure, but sounding way more EVIL and nihilistically negative than ever. They haven't brightened up much on Atma, either. There's something primal about these proceedings, Yob calling upon ancient powers with their heavy sonic rituals. It's serious business.
Scheidt still busts out his best, very metal, strangled shriek (a distorted blend of Ozzy, Geddy Lee, and the gargly Dan McCafferty of Nazareth) when he wants to soar (yay, that's what we came for!), but he also goes for a diversity of sore-throat wretched vokills as well; his melodic guitar leads likewise occasionally are heard, snaking out from the murky mire of rumbling riffage, the tarpit black hole in which Yob make their crusty cosmic home... the band's lumbering swing always buried beneath dirty piles of steel-wooly abused amp torture, Atma's production far from clean, instead filthy and cruel.
It's like some unholy combination of the Sabbathy sludge of Eyehategod, the brutal/beautiful bombast of Neurosis (whose Scott Kelly shows up as a guest on a couple of these songs), the most malevolent and monolithic of Melvins, and hint of the denim and leather of old school metal as well. The five loooooong songs here weave atmospheric gloom (the rainy forest field recordings found on the title track ferinstance), fist-in-the-air metallisms, post-rock dynamics, and angsty artiness into their sheer crushing DOOM, and do it all damn well. Make no mistake, this is hellishly heavy, including album-ender "Adrift In The Ocean", even with its semi-acoustic passages and whooshing ambience. Epic, awesome, utterly everything we expect from Yob and then some.
Atma is availabel in either a digpack cd version on Profound Lore, or double gatefold vinyl, via 20 Buck Spin.
MPEG Stream: "Prepare The Ground"
MPEG Stream: "Atma"
MPEG Stream: "Upon The Sight Of The Other Shore"

CHILDREN OF DOOM Doom, Be Doomed, Or Fuck Off (Emanes Metal Records) cd 14.98
These filthy French freaks are back!! A while ago we listed their self-released 4 song demo cdep, and it kinda became a minor sensation among AQ customers into, well, doom, but doom of the most psychedelically fucked, primitive rock 'n' roll variety. In that review, we mentioned "magical dirtbag psychedelic metal anarchy... wasted heaviness, psychomaniacal alcoholic sludge". And yeah, that, um, description would apply to this their debut full-length as well!! So queue up and get ready to guzzle CoD's high octane, wah wah crazed, Vitus-worshipping, greasy hippie biker brew.
Doom, Be Doomed, Or Fuck Off consists of six new songs, filling 42 minutes with this trio's unique, over the top onslaught of hypnotically crude riffage, distortion, widdly guitar, and wailing vox (not quite so strange as on the demo, but still...not normal). And these songs are fairly hooky, too. Drugged out and doomy, but rockin'. Also, they show some signs of musical progress since the demo (not that we were hoping for any!!), getting just a bit more sophisticated sounding in their playing and compositions. Maybe. One sign of this: according to the credits, somewhere, supposedly, there's even some saxophone on this disc!! Ah, must be in the final track, the album's longest, a 12 minute excursion into tripsville, called "...Mia's Desert...", Children Of Doom sounding more like Children Of Krautrock here, all cosmically synthed and sinister, though there is guitar fury unleashed around the halfway point... oh, and then, there it is, some melancholy saxophone over krauty drum beats, how 'bout that? An interesting and unexpected ending to this eccentric album, nice.
Also nice is the cover and other artwork here. We said before that CoD reminded us a bit of Julian Cope's Brain Donor band, and definitely JC would approve of the artwork on the lyric sheet/poster in the cd, a drawing with all sorts of psychedelic biker shit growing up out of an upsidedown helmet, one of those German WWII bucket style ones that outlaw bikers like to wear (if they're gonna wear helmets at all). And you'll be happy there's a lyric sheet, they're quite amusing, once again, a lot of talk about who they are ("we are evil, old school, and brutal") and plenty of swearing in the process. You gotta suspect it's all a bit tongue in cheek, but we're not gonna say that to their faces, you never know...
Oh, and the one song here sung in French, "1916", is not in fact a Motorhead cover, despite the title - though these guys are in their own way, a Motorhead for psychedelic doom lovers. And like Motorhead, they love their umlauts too (our website, having apparently been programmed by posers, won't support umlauts easily, so we left 'em off, but there's supposed to be one over the "o" in "or", of all words, in the album's title...).
MPEG Stream: "Mr. Nasty"
MPEG Stream: "Technophobia"
MPEG Stream: "Bottle Ben In The Streets"

STONE COAL WHITE s/t (Cali-Tex) cd 14.98
Some years ago, we were all freaking out about a compilation called Chains And Black Exhaust, a killer mix consisting of obscure, '70s heavy funk music, all from ultra hard to find singles and such, none of which was even identified, though curious folks have since figured out the tracklist... One of those mystery tracks, "You Know", turns out to have been by this outfit, Ohio's Stone Coal White. It's from one of their two rare 45's, circa 1972, and a's and b's of which are compiled together on this archival release, along with "four previously unissued tracks, found in the basement of a now-condemned motorcycle gang hideout in Dayton, Ohio." Which is a good story we'll happily choose to believe! It sure SOUNDS like music from a black motorcycle gang's basement, super raw stoned blaxploitation grooves full of wah wah chicka chicka guitar, with almost dubby sounding lo-fi production, lots of distortion and psychedelic echoey effects. They do a couple badass covers, both Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine" and Curtis Mayfield's "Hell Below" (with their singer doing a spot-on Curtis impersonation on that one!), and their own jams have some of the early drugged-out Funkadelic feel. Yeah, good stuff! Fans of another C&BE alumnus, Black Merda, ought to love Stone Coal White. You can thank uber-digger Josh "DJ Shadow" Davis for doing the archeology on this one, and releasing it via his Cali-Tex imprint.
Oh, and we can't resist mentioning something we noticed, if you look up Stone Coal White on YouTube, this is the top rated comment under one of the tracks that's been posted: "I've just made love to my wife with this playing. What a great artifact of black rock."
MPEG Stream: "You Know"
MPEG Stream: "Stone Coal White"
MPEG Stream: "Move Your Hand"

OBSEQUIAE Suspended In The Brume Of Eos (Bindrune) cd 12.98
Though we spend a lot of time toiling over our carefully worded, expertly-informed, well-thought out (ahem) reviews, we realize that a lot of folks probably just scan 'em looking for a few keywords that might jump out, and to see whether we are giving something the thumbs up or not (and furthermore, if we seem particularly enthusiastic in doing so, by like, using all-caps or something). So... here's some keywords for you: CELESTIIAL, FOLK-METAL, AWESOME. Working those terms into sentences, results in the following: this blackened but not necessarily black metal (they say "melodic dark metal") band from Minnesota, who started back in the '90s as a demo-only band under the moniker Autumnal Winds, is a duo featuring guitarist/vocalist Blondel de Nesle, aka Tanner Reed Anderson of fellow Bindrune recording artists Celestiial. Suspended In The Brume Of Eros is Obsequiae's debut full-length, and while we don't know what Obsequiae means (help, Heavy Latin blog!) nor are we sure what a "brume" is, let alone just who or what "Eos" might be, we do know we like this. A lot. And we didn't even know they were related to AQ frosty, forest-y funeral doom faves Celestiial when we first heard this and dug it, though we did know it was on Bindrune, almost always a sign of quality pagan metal with a weird or avant garde bent.
We said Obsequiae play folk-metal, that's right, it's real medieval /madrigal sounding for sure, but with the emphasis on METAL, despite an assortment of minstrel-like acoustic interludes. So the melodic, intertwined twin guitars are heavy with fuzz, and their harmonies more twisted than twee. Likewise, the vocals are harsh, and rhythmically the band gallops like true metal ought to, propelled by the other half of the Obsequiae duo, drummer/bassist/guitarist "Neidhardt von Reuental".
In other words, it's something that even those of us a bit burned out on "another grim black metal band" found quite compelling. Lots of (autumnal) atmosphere, lots of actual music, Obsequiae doing justice to both halves of the folk-metal equation, mixing acoustic guitars in with weird, killer riffage and soloing for an album that's epic and interesting and, as we said, AWESOME.
There, 'nuff said?
MPEG Stream: "Altars Of Moss"
MPEG Stream: "In The White Fields"
MPEG Stream: "Suspended In The Brume Of Eos"
MPEG Stream: "Estas Redit"

DRAKAR Let Draka / The Flight of The Dragon (I Hate Records) 2cd 19.98
So, maybe you're like us, we get curious when we learn about a reissue of some obscure metal band we'd never heard of before, especially if they're from, say, Eastern Europe, and have a cool album cover/motto like this one does ("Dragon music of Prague / Mystic metal" it says on the cover, below a painting of a bug-eyed Oriental dragon). But, even then, we don't expect it to be anything THAT great, just, well, a curiosity. But, turns out that late '80s/early '90s Czechoslovakian band Drakar are more than a mere Iron Curtain metal novelty, they're actually pretty good, this is a legit contender, on par with much better-known Western metal classics, seriously. Ask anyone (who has heard it). And yeah it's a bit weird, too!
This release is a reissue of their debut album from 1990, two versions of it actually (hence the two discs), one in Czech, the other an English-language version. Despite the year, this isn't generic thrash or speed metal, though it is often speedy - and it's certainly not death metal or black metal, either, though fans of Root and Master's Hammer might well enjoy it. Drakar have obviously got '80s (and '70s) classic, melodic heavy metal roots, sounding even a bit like Thin Lizzy at times, but also incorporate unexpected usage of sampling; collages of commercial radio broadcasts and snatches of classical music and the like are woven in here and there. Also especially of note are the whining, wailing guitars. The guitar work is awesome, though they don't let the shred get in the way of the songs, it's just one element, likewise with the chunky riffs and gruff, sneering, sometimes soaring, vocals.
Speaking of vocals, the stand out song might be the one where they seem the silliest, on "Crazy Boy", the title/chorus being in English, in both versions. Can't get the way he sings "crazeee boohoy" out of our heads. It's a bit funny, yes, of course we like it 'cause of that, and even the mostly-non-metal-inclined among us here at AQ found this interesting/amusing as well. But that song, and the rest of the record, are also worthy 'cause the melodies are strong, and the harmonies are plentiful and lovely.
Ok, probably that's enough, we've made it clear this is quite recommended, and also it's limited to 500 copies, and our suppliers are all out already... when we contacted the label in Sweden to get some to list, they were down to their last 25! We got a bunch of those from them, but this handful will be gone soon, and then it doesn't look like we'll be able to get any more, so be warned.
Lovingly packaged by I Hate Records, the thick cd booklet including lyrics, liner notes about the band, and old photos. Also the cd contains a video clip for one of the songs, that you can watch on your komputoor.
MPEG Stream: "Dvojnik"
MPEG Stream: "Crazy Boy"
MPEG Stream: "Posledni Krizova Vyprava"

BORBETOMAGUS Buncha Hair That Long (Agaric) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Couldn't have an all-saxophones list (like we're doing this week) without Borbetomagus on it!! So we've found a couple copies of this out of print fave to review. Here's how we've described this New York noisejazz outfit before:
Take any crazy, noisy free jazz you've heard (minus the drums, but with extra feedback), multiply it by a thousand, and voila. We dare you to turn it up. Saxophonists Jim Sauter and Don Dietrich lock horns (literally) while Donald Miller's guitar grinds away in the lower registers, the trio together manufacturing a dense wash of drone-skree that will pleasantly numb your brain, if you're partial to this kind of noise/jazz/noise. Beautiful.
That's what we said about another album of theirs, but it applies to Buncha Hair That Long too, for sure. One of the first Borbetomagus discs to which we were first exposed, this 1992 release contains five long tracks of their dense n' intense squall, utterly enveloping and mesmerizing stuff. Two of the tracks were recorded at an art museum in Chattanooga, two of 'em in Cleveland, and the last one at CBGB's in NYC - and that one's a cover of Beatle George Harrison's "Blue Jay Way", believe it or not (and it's easy to not)! Includes liner notes by Peter Margasak of Butt Rag (remember that 'zine? One of our favorites ever!).
Important note: this cd is out of print as far as we know, it's a warehouse find we dug up at one of our local distributors the other day. And we only found two, that's right, TWO copies. So, act fast if you want one - and list an alternate just in case!
MPEG Stream: "Friendly Fire"
MPEG Stream: "Blue Jay Way"

IL BALLETTO DI BRONZO Ys (Polydor) cd 10.98
Got some more of this Italian prog classic in, much cheaper than before. Here's some of what we said about this a long time ago when we first listed it...
Every now and then we like to spring some crazy '70s Italian prog on y'all just to see who can take it. We're not just talking Goblin (though we love Goblin), or any of the more "mainstream" Italian prog acts of the period (PFM, Le Orme, Banco), who were cool but didn't go far beyond the Yes/Genesis/King Crimson template. We're talking weirder stuff like Osanna, Museo Rosenbach, New Trolls, Osage Tribe, I Teoremi, and Area.
Sure, Il Balletto Di Bronzo's nutzoid sci-fi keyboard attack will bring to mind ELP, but you'll also think of Magma (and their descendants Shub-Niggurath and Koenjihyakkei as well). Complex, powerful, heavy, precise yet darkly psychedelic, Ys (from 1972, the band's second album) is one of those timeless pieces of rock n' roll art that's definitely very '70s yet not entirely dated: you could imagine a Laddio Bollocko or Tarantula Hawk kicking out these jams, that is, except for the occasional operatic vocal chorus. This album's five long songs (plus a bonus track), with their acid guitar action, haunting female vocals, droning keyboards, martial drumming, baroque/classical motifs, and weird changes, are just about as good as over-the-top Italian prog can get, and that's pretty damn good. That is, if you are willing to get into it like we are. A top ten prog album (if Aquarius had a prog top ten, and please don't ask us for one, we'll be arguing for weeks).
MPEG Stream: "Introduzione"
MPEG Stream: "Primo Incontro"
MPEG Stream: "Epilogo"

YONKERS, MICHAEL BAND Microminiature Love ( Sub Pop / De Stijl) lp 15.98
This long time AQ fave, a former Record Of The Week, is finally again reissued on vinyl! De Stijl first did it on wax about 10 years back, which quickly went out of print, then Sub Pop did the cd version which we still sell steadily to this day. But now, Sub Pop have done a new vinyl reissue! Here's our review from before, our first taste of Michael Yonkers' unique rockin' dementia, and if you're gonna have just one Yonkers album, this is the one:
Every so often a gem will get dredged up out of the murk of history that is so unlike anything else it can only give us hope for the future of music. An obscure late-sixties rock n' roll visionary, Michael Yonkers' stuff was like nothing anyone had heard back then (or even now, really): fucked up garage psych with dementedly genius lyrics, unhinged vocals and crazy acid-fried guitar. Yonkers, a legendary Minneapolis-area figure, built his own effects pedals, cut his Fender Telecaster down to a plank, and played like no one else ever. It's hard to describe this. It's sort of like a damaged fusion of stripped down Black Sabbath, The Troggs, Pere Ubu, and The Cramps?? Or something like that. When this was unearthed on vinyl last year by the Destijl label, we heard it and freaked out. It became a big favorite 'round here. So we were thrilled to find out that Sub Pop was gonna do a cd version of that now out of print lp, with pretty much a whole 'nother lps worth of bonus tracks tacked on! Definite Record Of The Week material - as psychedelic proto-punk goes, if anything it's even more raw, original and insane than that wonderful Simply Saucer reissue we raved about recently. Yonkers recorded these tracks in 1968 and they've been sitting in the can more-or-less unheard these past 35 years - Microminature Love being shelved by its original label back in '69 we'd assume 'cause it was just so ahead of its time. Listening to it today it sounds not only fresh, but as if it could have been recorded in, say, 1981 or this year as well. Music seems to have grown up around it in its Rip Van Winkle state of hibernation. While part of what makes Michael Yonkers' sound so unique was his obsessive electronic tinkering - making custom delay, distortion and vibratto units (some of which he successfully manufactured on a commercial level) - it was also shaped as much by accident. The story goes that during a live performance in an earlier group, Michael's guitar fell to the floor and was knocked into an open tuning. Playing out the rest of the set with this off key tuning, Michael was inspired to pursue this course further, both with his guitar sound and, seemingly, his vocals too! All over Microminiature Love he exploits these semi-out-of-tune drones which make his music all the more heavy and wigged out. Imagine the Stooges playing with a water damaged electric sarod, then replace Iggy with Jello Biafra pitched down a minor third and you get an idea of the beginnings of the Michael Yonkers Band. While some may find Michael's singing a bit hard to get used to at first, its well worth giving him a couple listens because I can guarantee it'll grow on you. Once again, we hail Yonkers as a brilliant "outsider artist" of '60s garage rock. Not like the Shaggs, though - this is killer rock n' roll, make no mistake.
MPEG Stream: "Microminiature Love"
MPEG Stream: "Kill The Enemy"
MPEG Stream: "Hush Hush"

YOB Atma (Profound Lore) cd 13.98
Dooming ever onward, Oregon's re-activated Yob are back with their 2nd Profound Lore release, the 6th full-length overall from this heavier-than-thou trio, and all Yob and/or doom fans (like us) should be well chuffed! After several years hiatus (during which singer/guitarist Mike Scheidt stayed doomy in his ill-fated Middian project), Yob's 2009 comeback album The Great Cessation emphasized the darker side of Yob, black metal influences to the fore, Yob still spacey and sludgey to be sure, but sounding way more EVIL and nihilistically negative than ever. They haven't brightened up much on Atma, either. There's something primal about these proceedings, Yob calling upon ancient powers with their heavy sonic rituals. It's serious business.
Scheidt still busts out his best, very metal, strangled shriek (a distorted blend of Ozzy, Geddy Lee, and the gargly Dan McCafferty of Nazareth) when he wants to soar (yay, that's what we came for!), but he also goes for a diversity of sore-throat wretched vokills as well; his melodic guitar leads likewise occasionally are heard, snaking out from the murky mire of rumbling riffage, the tarpit black hole in which Yob make their crusty cosmic home... the band's lumbering swing always buried beneath dirty piles of steel-wooly abused amp torture, Atma's production far from clean, instead filthy and cruel.
It's like some unholy combination of the Sabbathy sludge of Eyehategod, the brutal/beautiful bombast of Neurosis (whose Scott Kelly shows up as a guest on a couple of these songs), the most malevolent and monolithic of Melvins, and hint of the denim and leather of old school metal as well. The five loooooong songs here weave atmospheric gloom (the rainy forest field recordings found on the title track ferinstance), fist-in-the-air metallisms, post-rock dynamics, and angsty artiness into their sheer crushing DOOM, and do it all damn well. Make no mistake, this is hellishly heavy, including album-ender "Adrift In The Ocean", even with its semi-acoustic passages and whooshing ambience. Epic, awesome, utterly everything we expect from Yob and then some.
Atma is availabel in either a digpack cd version on Profound Lore, or double gatefold vinyl, via 20 Buck Spin.
MPEG Stream: "Prepare The Ground"
MPEG Stream: "Atma"
MPEG Stream: "Upon The Sight Of The Other Shore"

ZOMBIE ZOMBIE Plays John Carpenter (Versatile) cd 14.98
Ok, lately it seems like we're ALWAYS saying stuff reminds us of the suspenseful soundtrack synth music of film director John Carpenter - who, along with collaborator Alan Howarth, is known for composing the propulsive, sinister scores for his own movies. Music that's become a big influence on a lot of our favorite artists today. How many recent releases have we tagged with a Carpenter comparison? Umberto, D.A., Gatekeeper, Zombi, Xander Harris, Majeure, Roll The Dice, Steve Moore, Twins, Dylan Ettinger, Blizaro, Jonas Reinhart, Hyetal, Arrow Kleeman, Lazer Crystal, Maserati, Nightsatan, and more... Of course many of those are overt imitations of the master. Goblin is the other influence we usually cite for a lot of these too, but the future-disco, fright flick, sci-fi SYNTH sound is more about Carpenter.
So, this release makes perfect sense, the obvious next step in the current wave of Carpenter worship. Zombie Zombie is a French synth duo, 1/2 of which is in fact former AQ Record Of The Week honoree Etienne Jaumet (for his album Night Music), and they have decided to pay tribute to John Carpenter in the most direct way possible: a disc of all Carpenter covers! This 5 track, 28 minute mini-album includes their takes on the main themes from JC classics Assault On Precinct 13, Halloween, Escape From LA, and The Thing. Hmm, the latter of which was actually composed by Ennio Morricone, right? Though that's cool too. You also get ZZ's version of the music from the bank robbery scene in Escape From New York.
When we learned Jaumet was part of this, we knew ZZ would know their stuff and do JC right, and they sure do. All the skittery machine beats and eerie melodies, urgent shuffling chase-scene rhythms and ominous thick bass heavy synth burble, moody atmospheric drone and creepy tick-tock-ery of the JC originals is lovingly recreated via ZZ's not-far-removed but definitely updated, dancefloor/DJ friendly versions, which come across as somewhat heavier and a bit more tweaked than actual soundtrack recordings, also more "band-like" and less soundtrack slick. We haven't heard ZZ's other album, but we bet these sound like their own songs, y'know. Basically, if you like John Carpenter, or any of the stuff we're always mentioning JC in conjunction with, you will dig this! The only thing that would have made this better is if they'd made it a longer disc and also included cues from The Fog, They Live, and a few other of our JC faves. But these themes are pretty much the best of the best. And we'd LOVE to see 'em play this stuff live, which we hear they're doing. Come to think of it, we'd love to see Carpenter himself perform live, we wonder if he's ever even considered the idea, he'd probably be surprised at how many people would come out to see that, don't you think?
MPEG Stream: "The Bank Robbery (Taken From Escape From New York)"
MPEG Stream: "Halloween (Main Theme)"
MPEG Stream: "The Thing (Main Theme)"

BULLET The Entrance to Hell (Angel Air) cd 22.00
Our proto-metal pick of the week! Bullet were an early '70s UK power trio led by guitarist/vocalist John DuCann, previously a member of The Attack, Andromeda, and Atomic Rooster. A while back, when we reviewed a reissue of Atomic Rooster's classic Death Walks Behind You, we talked about DuCann, calling his post 'Rooster band Hard Stuff "one of proto-metal's best kept secrets", and guess what? The existence of these recordings by Hard Stuff precursor Bullet were an even bigger secret...
After being booted from Atomic Rooster (despite having written several of that band's biggest hits), DuCann formed this new group, Bullet (briefly before that called Daemon), with a fellow former 'Rooster, drummer Paul Hammond, along with bass player John Gustafson (ex-Quatermass), who could sing and write as well. The idea, it seems, was to play music even harder and darker than Atomic Rooster did... and the results were some high energy, riffy, rippin' stuff indeed, with song titles like "Sinister Minister" and "Hell: Demonic Possession". Distorted, fuzzed out jams for sure, but with a pop side to 'em too. They soon changed their name (for legal reasons) to Hard Stuff, and produced two excellent albums full of heavy-duty "hairy funk", Bulletproof (1972) and Bolex Dementia ('73), before a near-fatal car accident on the German autobahn involving 2/3rds of the band ended their career prematurely.
But it turns out that while they were still called Bullet, back in 1970-'71, they'd privately demoed this rough disc-ful of music, now properly released for the first time (sort of, see below) after resting for decades in DuCann's vaults. Since, currently, there don't appear to be any reissues of the Hard Stuff albums available to us, this is the next best thing. Now, if you already have yourself some Hard Stuff, you might not need this...but you'll probably want it. Many of the best songs did wind up being re-recorded by HS for their debut, but there's also lots of other cool jammy tracks on here where you get to hear DuCann really go off on his guitar, plus it's certainly rad to hear the raw early versions of catchy Hard Stuff staples like "No Witch At All". There's 17 tracks total (well, 15 really, as two of 'em, "Door Opens" and "Door Closes" are both but brief sound FX), that remind us of other proto-metal faves like Dust, James Gang ("Taken Alive" in particular), Stray, Leaf Hound, and Granicus...
The cd booklet contains extensive liner notes, in the form of an interview DuCann himself, getting in depth into the whole Bullet/Hard Stuff story. Though he doesn't have a lot to say about Daemon, who at one point had a singer named Al Shaw who perhaps appears here too. And FYI, this same material was once previously reissued on cd (a bootleg?) under the Daemon name by the Kissing Spell label.
MPEG Stream: "No Witch At All"
MPEG Stream: "The Orchestrator"
MPEG Stream: "Time Gambler"

BOSSE-DE-NAGE s/t (II) (The Flenser) cd 9.98
Record number two from this mysterious Bay Area black metal horde, a group whose sound is as heavy on the Louisville math rock is it is on the black buzz, and on record number two, they stretch out even further, exploring their math/post rock tendencies in ways that were only hinted at on the first record. And as one might expect, the mix of black buzz and meandering post rockisms sounds much more organic this time around, where as the first time the separation between the two sounds was more jarring. The production is much improved too.
Just take the opening track, "Volume Two Chapter One", with its darkly dynamic opening, all start stop minor key minimalism, a melancholy minor key melody played out over a series of chords, left to ring out, the drums crashing in time, the only hint of the blackness to come is a howled vocals way way off in the distance, it's two minutes before this crashing moodiness segues fairly smoothly into some frantic blackened blasting, the drums not your typical blastbeat, instead offering up all manner of unlikely fills, the result a little off kilter, and a good balance to the otherwise more traditional back buzz guitar and shrieked vox. And then with about 2 minutes to go, the buzz seems to dissipate leaving just a churning, chuggy chunk of palm muted math rock, that sounds more like Don Cab than Darkthrone, pounding out the final minute in a tangle of mathy rhythms.
The post rockisms are much more subtle in "Marie In A Cage", which plays more like your standard buzzing blackness, but there are those wild chaotic drums, not to mention a killer part midsong where the band switch into a brief bit of proggy mathiness that KILLS, but it's brief and soon the band are galloping along again, never fully shedding that mathiness, but instead incorporating it into the black buzz. "The Lampless Hours" is another track that starts out sounding like some lost mid nineties Touch And Go record (minus the flurries of double kick drum), before launching into a stretch of 'proper' black metal. "The Death Posture" is a churning doomy plod, peppered with burst of blasting black metal, and again here, the band are much more subtle with their deployment of post and math rock elements, which ultimately makes for some truly idiosyncratic black metal. And finally, the record finishes off with the 11+ minute "Why Am I So Lovely? Because My Master Washes Me.", which again sounds on the surface traditionally blackened and buzzy, but the post rock undercurrent seems to seep through every chance it gets, finally shouldering the blackness out of the way at about the midway point for a stretch of gnarled mathiness, that manages to not sound out of place, instead, it's drawn in shades of black, that make it that much easier for the band to slip back into the furious buzz that finishes off the record, until the last minute when the recording seems to go haywire, everything blown out and distorted finishing off in a wild squall of Merzbowian white noise.
Definitely less post rocky than its predecessor, but again, the trade off is that the post rock element doesn't sound as much like a gimmick, instead sounding more an actual intrinsic part of BdN's sound, and while black metal dabblers may not be so inclined this time around (although they should be), true grim metalheads might just find their horizons being expanded, whether they realize it or not.
MPEG Stream: "Volume II Chapter I"
MPEG Stream: "Marie In A Cage"
MPEG Stream: "The Lampless Hours"

BOSSE-DE-NAGE s/t (II) (The Flenser) lp 14.98
Record number two from this mysterious Bay Area black metal horde, a group whose sound is as heavy on the Louisville math rock is it is on the black buzz, and on record number two, they stretch out even further, exploring their math/post rock tendencies in ways that were only hinted at on the first record. And as one might expect, the mix of black buzz and meandering post rockisms sounds much more organic this time around, where as the first time the separation between the two sounds was more jarring. The production is much improved too.
Just take the opening track, "Volume Two Chapter One", with its darkly dynamic opening, all start stop minor key minimalism, a melancholy minor key melody played out over a series of chords, left to ring out, the drums crashing in time, the only hint of the blackness to come is a howled vocals way way off in the distance, it's two minutes before this crashing moodiness segues fairly smoothly into some frantic blackened blasting, the drums not your typical blastbeat, instead offering up all manner of unlikely fills, the result a little off kilter, and a good balance to the otherwise more traditional back buzz guitar and shrieked vox. And then with about 2 minutes to go, the buzz seems to dissipate leaving just a churning, chuggy chunk of palm muted math rock, that sounds more like Don Cab than Darkthrone, pounding out the final minute in a tangle of mathy rhythms.
The post rockisms are much more subtle in "Marie In A Cage", which plays more like your standard buzzing blackness, but there are those wild chaotic drums, not to mention a killer part midsong where the band switch into a brief bit of proggy mathiness that KILLS, but it's brief and soon the band are galloping along again, never fully shedding that mathiness, but instead incorporating it into the black buzz. "The Lampless Hours" is another track that starts out sounding like some lost mid nineties Touch And Go record (minus the flurries of double kick drum), before launching into a stretch of 'proper' black metal. "The Death Posture" is a churning doomy plod, peppered with burst of blasting black metal, and again here, the band are much more subtle with their deployment of post and math rock elements, which ultimately makes for some truly idiosyncratic black metal. And finally, the record finishes off with the 11+ minute "Why Am I So Lovely? Because My Master Washes Me.", which again sounds on the surface traditionally blackened and buzzy, but the post rock undercurrent seems to seep through every chance it gets, finally shouldering the blackness out of the way at about the midway point for a stretch of gnarled mathiness, that manages to not sound out of place, instead, it's drawn in shades of black, that make it that much easier for the band to slip back into the furious buzz that finishes off the record, until the last minute when the recording seems to go haywire, everything blown out and distorted finishing off in a wild squall of Merzbowian white noise.
Definitely less post rocky than its predecessor, but again, the trade off is that the post rock element doesn't sound as much like a gimmick, instead sounding more an actual intrinsic part of BdN's sound, and while black metal dabblers may not be so inclined this time around (although they should be), true grim metalheads might just find their horizons being expanded, whether they realize it or not.
MPEG Stream: "Volume II Chapter I"
MPEG Stream: "Marie In A Cage"
MPEG Stream: "The Lampless Hours"

CROSS, SANDRA (AND VARIOUS BUFFET CAR ATTENDANTS) The MMs Bar Recordings (Trunk) cd 10.98
This one's for all you weirdo found sound and field recording obsessives out there. Not sure where this one would get filed, somewhere between the Conet Project's mysterious numbers stations, rutting red deer, the sounds of drag racing cars, the beeping of a life support system and the collections of voices of the dead via EVP recordings (all things we've stocked!), The MMs Bar Recordings captures something much more mundane, but somehow, just capturing these sounds on tape transforms those original sounds, here removed from their original context, into something strangely fascinating.
In a nutshell, these are undoctored recordings of announcements on a particular train line in the UK, recorded between 2006 and 2007, when the artist Sandra Cross was taking said train line weekly, and working on a project called "What Did You Eat Today". Funnily enough, on every train ride, the bar on the train, which served various foods and drinks would announce exactly what it was they were serving, always a slightly different announcement, always a different voice, and always at random times. So Cross became obsessed and recorded them, and Trunk Records on hearing these recordings became equally obsessed, and now it's our turn.
And it's not just the actual announcements, the sounds that surround them are equally mesmerizing, the muted rumble of the train, the murmur of voices, the static of the overhead speakers, but it is the MMs Bar announcements that are the core of this collection of recordings, and they are presented here unaltered, as they were captured, so the edits are rough, and there are long stretches with no announcements, just rumbles and whirs, and there are stretches that are a jumble of voices and announcements one after the other, the whole thing IS surprisingly mesmerizing, conjuring up memories of traveling, as well and just sonically interesting. Fans of our found sounds section will no doubt be as obsessed with this as we've become. It's like a Conet Project that makes you hungry, for Anglophiles. Needless to say, way recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Excerpt 1"
MPEG Stream: "Excerpt 2"
MPEG Stream: "Excerpt 3"

GERE, DON Werewolves On Wheels (OST) (B-Music / Finders Keepers) cd 16.98
It'd normally be enough that Finders Keepers / B-Music decided to reissue a soundtrack, we'd assume it was awesome just 'cause they gave it their stamp of approval. That's true. But this one, though, well how could it NOT be good, with that title/concept?? Awesome music aside, heck we wanna see the movie. Werewolves On Wheels, for reals? As one of the radio adverts included here as a bonus track puts it: "Here comes the most eerie, the most chilling, the most terrifying motorcycle horror film ever made... Werewolves On Wheels - in color - is the most unusual bizarre film yet... Werewolves On Wheels is the ghoulish story of a wild motorcycle gang lost in the desert, mocking the supernatural... one by one they die... unnatural unbelievable deaths... they are afraid of nothing but they cannot fight what they cannot see and do not understand!" Sounds good, doesn't it? As lovers of another Satanic psychedelic '70s motorcycle horror film, Psychomania, we're sold. And like Psychomania, this has a way cool soundtrack. Which can also be filed alongside another biker B-Music release, Billy Green's Stone OST.
This 1971 low budget chiller thriller's "Main Theme" is 5+ minutes of percussive rhythms adorned with flashes of fuzz guitar, simple and effective, as hypnotic as it is haunting. Groovy! That's followed by the hippie country rock of "Mount Shasta Home", and there's another cool slice of country tonk later on with "One Foot In Heaven", but the majority of the soundtrack is devoted to more abstract, weirdly stumbling, atmospheric stuff, perhaps trying to evoke a tripped out Native American desert vibe, with ringing and rattling and what sounds like wrasslin'... there's sudden stabs of synth and the occasional line of campy movie dialog. Several of the tracks (the three spooky "Ritual" ones in particular) could be sinister krautrock jams, full of thumping hand drums, crackling fire, and synthesizer sounds. Other tracks are more groovadelic, yet creepy too, with propulsive rhythms, acid guitar licks, droning FX, and of course revving motorcycle engines and screams of terror.
For all we know, the movie, the directorial debut of Roger Corman/Russ Meyer associate Michel Levesque, isn't even so bad it's good. But the soundtrack, it's for sure fantastic! If The Byrds had teamed up with Goblin to do a soundtrack, maybe this is what the results would have sounded like!?! We're also reminded of Ry Cooder's Cyleib People - if they jammed with Sylvester Anfang, perhaps. The label suggests a Sandy Bull/Amon Duul team up, and we won't argue with that idea either. Another winner - of course - from the Finders Keepers folks!!
MPEG Stream: "Werewolves On Wheels (Main Theme)"
MPEG Stream: "Ritual 2"
MPEG Stream: "One Foot In Heaven"
MPEG Stream: "Burning Grass"

RODEN, STEVE ...I Listen To The Wind That Obliterates My Traces: Music In Vernacular Photographs 1880-1955 (Dust-To-Digital) 2cd + book 49.00
With the first track on this anthology being a recording of wind from a 1935 sound effects record, AQ beloved sound artist Steve Roden makes a very literal introduction to I Listen To The Wind That Obliterates My Traces. Released by Dust-To-Digital, this beautifully constructed hardback book filled with images both from and ephemeral to Roden's collection of 78s, as well as two discs worth of sounds from that antique vinyl. Yeah, the idea is pretty much the same as what the Climax Golden Twins presented via Dust-To-Digital on their also-awesome Victrola Favorites anthology a few years back; but Roden's collection trends more to the mid-part of the 20th Century and is focused on Americana (including a couple of Hawaiian tracks made before the islands were granted statehood). Following that crackled recording of the wailing wind from that sound effects record, is the unmistakable voice of John Jacob Niles, the 'mountain tenor' whose spooky falsetto and maudlin melodic wanderings predated Devendra Banhart by a good 60 years... Afterwards, there's plenty of bluesmen, blueswomen, gospel belters, Appalachian balladeers, and barbershop crooners, many of which seem quite world-weary in singing their tales of lust, money, and liquor (or the lack thereof). Some of the names are familiar to us (e.g. Clara Smith, Roy Smeck, Sol Hoopii), but there are plenty of anonymous recordings from home-cut discs as well. The arrangements for many of the songs tend to be very sparse, just voice and guitar is pretty much all you get on every track; and the album is dotted with tracks from antique sound effects records of birds, ice, and even "night noises!" For those of you aware of Roden's own compositions of understated field recordings, quiet ruminations on found objects, and soft looping techniques, this shouldn't be a big surprise.
The vintage photos inside this 184 page book are completely lovely, with all of their rumpled edges, ruddy patinas, and cracked surfaces, with some far more poignant - such as the shot of a bunch of violas suspended outside in the sun perhaps to allow a coat of shellac to dry. There's the silhouette of G.J. Jessup decked out in his one-man drum and bugle corps regalia, and the glum looking fellow with the unkempt mustache leaning against his Funnygraph contraption (sadly, there's no corresponding recording for either photograph). Pages and pages of interesting images to provoke curiosity and evoke reverie. Altogether, Roden has compiled over 150 photos and 51 tracks for this stunning document of sonic obsession from Dust-To-Digital! Hard to imagine NOT wanting this.
MPEG Stream: HMV WEATHER EFFECTS "Wind"
MPEG Stream: JOHN JACOB NILES "John Henry"
MPEG Stream: ANONYMOUS HOME RECORDING "Mandolin"
MPEG Stream: GENNETT SOUND EFFECTS "Rainfall And Thunder"
MPEG Stream: CLARA SMITH "My Good Fur Nuthin' Man"

AYLER, ALBERT Love Cry / The Last Album (Impulse) cd 16.98
We have a trifecta of free jazz "twofers" this week from way deep down in the Impulse catalog. Check out the reviews elsewhere on the list for Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders. While the Coltrane features two of our favorite titles from her, the Ayler and Sanders releases are from albums we're less familiar with, or at least hadn't reviewed before, but have been psyched to (re-)discover. While perhaps not the best place to be introduced to these artists, these records reward those seekers of the overlooked deep cuts without the hefty collector/import price!
Love Cry from 1967 was Ayler's first release on Impulse. Like the Impulse recordings of John Coltrane, Ayler's signing to the label did not mean a shift towards commercialization, though the music is perhaps more accessible than his ESP recordings. Yet Love Cry is still a weird record. It was the last recording he made with his younger brother Donald on trumpet, before Donald was fired from the band and committed for a short time to a mental institution. So their horn interplay has a tempestuous yet strangely sullen vibe given the fact that most of the music stems from militaristic bugle calls and marches and nursery rhyme fugues. The baroque dirge quality is emphasized further with the odd inclusion of harpsichord in sometimes sallow expositions of New Orleans funeral music. Yet despite all of the chaotic atmosphere, there is a tight focus and flow.
Not sure that can be said for the other record, The Last Album from 1969. Though it wasn't technically Ayler's last ever album, it came out of the same sessions as Music Is The Healing Force, though that album was released first, plus if you really want to get technical, there were two other records released from a live concert performed a year later... Yet The Last album has the feeling of something ending, as it contains a lot of experimentation that didn't venture as far out as a lot of his other recordings. Yet the odd musical pairings continue with opener, "Untitled Duet" featuring Ayler on bagpipes cutting angular phrasing with Canned Heat guitarist, Henry Vestine. Sun Ra-like cosmic vocal excursions mark the poetic "Again Comes The Rising of The Sun" and the strange "Desert Blood", a heady dirge featuring plodding piano cascades and scattershot rhythms. Though perhaps not regarded as his best outing, paired together with Love Cry, both albums provide a shored up visionary quality of range and mystique than they would yield as single releases.
MPEG Stream: "Love Cry"
MPEG Stream: "Zion Hill"
MPEG Stream: "Again Comes The Rising of The Sun"
MPEG Stream: "All Love"

QUARTZ Stand Up and Fight (Metal Mind) cd 16.98
This great NWOBHM album was reissued a few years ago on cd, then went out of print. Now it's been reissued again by another label, as a limited, numbered digipack, and we're glad to have it back. Here's more or less what we wrote about it before, if you missed it:
...we've got two words for ya: Black Sabbath! Quartz were pals of the Sabs, hailing from the same industrial city in England's grotty midlands, Birmingham. And their self-titled 1977 debut was in fact produced by Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi, helping Quartz create what amounts to a great lost late '70s (pseudo-) Sabbath album: same guitar sound, same songwriting vibe, same riff magistery. The same holds true on this, Quartz's second studio album, originally released in 1980. It's definitely another slab of classy bashing from this shoulda-been-big, Black Sabbath meets New Wave Of British Heavy Metal sounding bunch.
The title cut is an vigorous, must-hear NWOBHM classic if there ever was one. That's followed by "Charlie Snow", which we'd be forgiven for thinking was song stolen from Sabbath's Born Again sessions! And we should also mention the grinding "Wildfire", which you could slag for being re-write of "Megalomania" from Sabbath's Sabotage album (yeah, the riff is certainly similar!), but while it's playing you'll certainly be banging your head - and besides, Sabbath seemingly borrowed one of Quartz's tunes themselves on another occasion. Then there's the bonus track, a B side called "Circles" that features uncredited guitar work from Queen's Brian May, and uncredited vocals from Ozzy Osbourne!! That's some b-side! Heck, everything on this disc is pretty killer, driving metal rockers with few peers outside of Sabbath's albums of the era. "Can't Say No To You" is the only sorta skippable track here, veering dangerously close to Foreigner or Bad Company territory. Not to say that's bad, but their Black Sabbathy stuff is way better... and this album is indeed recommended to all who appreciate the brilliance of later '70s, early '80s (end of Ozzy era through Dio and Gillan) Black Sabbath! And also the best melodic n' heavy NWOBHM stuff as well, of which this is a prime example.
MPEG Stream: "Stand Up And Fight"
MPEG Stream: "Circles"

VENDETTA s/t (Retrospect) cd 11.98
Retrospect, the label that put out those 3 awesome Pandemonium reissues (the '80s Alaskan rockers whose Heavy Metal Soldiers disc we made a Record Of The Week recently, the other two highlighted this list) has done a lot of other '80s metal and hard rock reissues too, many of 'em leaning towards the hair/glam/AOR side of things though. Lots and lots, it's kind of insane. Especially since, most... well... we hadn't heard of them, and probably for good reason! Atomik Cocktail? Bad Candy? Ginger Roxx? Nasty Nasty? Sidekixx? But, in scouring their catalog, we did turn up a few gems. Cubic Zirconia, perhaps, but still gems! Here's one we had to share, originally released on Epic Records in 1982, the only album ever from Detroit's Vendetta, a trio led by African-American vocalist/guitarist Niki Buzz.
Certainly it's one for all you Citay fans (sort of) - 'cause the very first song, "Night Time", goes something like this: "Night time, is the right time, in the citaaaay!" And it's damn catchy, we like how Mr. Buzz throws in a sudden little screech when he sings the word "night". Yep, totally cheesy stuff but fun fun fun. The exuberant second track is even cooler, it's called "Jet Eye Knight", and we're pretty sure that's an intentional pun (or whatever) referring to the Jedi knights from Star Wars, then a quite current pop culture reference (Return of the Jedi came out in '83). Even though the song otherwise has nothing to do with Star Wars, it's more or less nonsense. But again, good times. The other songs here follow suit, with titles like "Deadly Like A Rose", "Bite Your Lip", and "Babylon Rocks". With powerful wailing vox, big beat '80s production, and some really rather heavy riffs & shredding leads for this sort of melodic quasi-metal stuff, this is total cruising around in the car, summertime in the citaaaay music - and we've done just that! Plus, if you're gonna listen to some '80s guilty pleasure cock rock glamminess, why not make it something super obscure like this to keep yr music nerd cred up? So you can still be all snobby with fans of Foreigner, Billy Squier, Sammy Hagar, etc.
Bottom line: we're reviewing and recommending this 'cause we can't stop listening to it, and we're not afraid to admit it!
MPEG Stream: "Night Time"
MPEG Stream: "Jet Eye Knight"
MPEG Stream: "Babylon Rocks"

TRIMBLE, BOBB The Crippled Dog Band (Yoga) cd 14.98
Wonders never cease. About four or five years ago, the Secretly Canadian label did a big favor to obscure music lovers everywhere and brought out deluxe, at long last legit reissues of the two rare private press albums that obscure DIY psych pop genius Bobb Trimble released in the early '80s. We love those two so much, we made both reissues Records Of The Week. Trimble's Iron Curtain Innocence (1980) and Harvest Of Dreams (1982) are timeless, cult artifacts, of which we said: "...you have just been handed the key to a secret realm, an alternate rock n' roll universe of dark despair, fragile hope, and gossamer beauty, a haunting personal soundworld that will always stay with you, within you...", and favorably compared to everyone from Lennon/McCartney to Pink Floyd to Roy Harper to Marc Bolan to Richard Youngs to Ariel Pink.
Well, we had no idea that those two albums weren't the entirely of Trimble's discography. But now, happily we learn that there was a THIRD even rarer Trimble lp, and it's just been reissued as well!!! And it too is a doozy.
Turns out that a year or two after Harvest Of Dreams was released into an uncaring world, the 20-something Trimble teamed up with a local Worcester, Massachusetts gang of teenagers (some of whom we think had been in the even younger group, The Kidds, who are heard on some songs on a song or two on Harvest Of Dreams) called The Crippled Dog Band, named after the three-legged dog seen on the cover of this album, presumably. Who doesn't love a three-legged dog? Together, they played shows - and, better yet, for us today - made an album, this one, in '84, which captures the outsider psych-pop brilliance of Trimble's songwriting in exuberant collision/collusion with youthful rock n' roll energy.
Yeah, compared to Trimble's two "solo" albums, this could be considered to be more rockin', more "punk", more band-like. And more '80s as well, if only 'cause of the sci-fi video arcade game sounds that appear here on the intro and outro tracks! The songs, while typically Trimble-poppy (and graced with his delicate, high and whispy vox) are also often loud and raucous and awash in feedback and FX. At times we're kinda reminded of The Dickies.
Most are in the 2-3 minute range, though they do a version of one of our favorite Trimble songs, "Armour Of The Shroud", that stretches out for over six minutes, as per the epic original that appeared on Harvest Of Dreams. They also do "Galilean Boy", a demo of which appeared as a bonus track on SC's reissue of HoD. The other "cover" here is a reinterpretation of The Beatles' "All Together Now", which Trimble and The Crippled Dog Band really make their own, converting it into a theme song of sorts, near the beginning of the album: "Singin' the Crippled Dog anthem / ruff ruff / ruff ruff!"
There's something so wonderfully charming about that, eh? And the teenage spark of Trimble's cohorts here is infectious, the band tearing it up, gritty garagey psych stomp style across much of this disc. Ferinstance, there's the distortodelic Eastern vibe of "Camel Song", and "Angel Eyes" is another that offers up some pretty heavy-duty, driving psych gunk for your earholes. And those are only a few of the punked up Pepperisms to be found on this delightful disc. Some songs are darker ("Undercovers Man"), others, pure fun ("Poker Game Of Life").
Apparently, the story goes, The Crippled Dog Band came to an end shortly after this was recorded, for whatever reason, and with no hope of selling 'em, almost all of original pressing of 500 lps was unceremoniously disposed of by Bobb in a dumpster! Good grief. Thankfully, the actual recordings weren't lost, and this reissue has finally arrived to allow The Crippled Dog Band to be heard again - it's certainly getting a lot of play here at AQ! Recommended, ruff ruff!!
MPEG Stream: "All Together Now"
MPEG Stream: "Live Wire "
MPEG Stream: "Angel Eyes"

V/A Lukk Opp Kirkens Dorer: A Selection Of Norwegian Christian Jazz, Psych, Funk & Folk 1970-1980 (Plastic Strip Press) cd 17.98
Maybe this will make up for all the Satanic Norwegian church-burning music we sell! A compilation of, as the subtitle puts it, "A Selection Of Norwegian Christian Jazz, Psych, Funk & Folk 1970-1980". And it's quite fantastic. Quasi-kitschy Xtian funky and folky fun, with an acid-rock edge, really good stuff indeed, and 'cause the lyrics are all in Norwegian, those of us with an aversion to God-talk can comfortably listen to this without feeling like we're being preached to! Well you can tell when they sing "Hallelujah" and "Jesus" but the accent makes it cool. Apparently, there was quite a burgeoning youth-oriented Christian music scene and attendant recording industry in Norway in the '70s, kickstarted in the late '60s by something called the Ten-Sing or Teenage Singing movement, a kind of Norwegian version of Up With People!, further powered by the whole Jesus Freak thing that came along when hippies everywhere started to find God. So, this music, while Christian, isn't exactly square. It's full of fuzz guitars and fuzzy analog synth, gorgeous female vocals and bombastic brass, and is moving not just in spiritual way, but also movin' in more of a GROOVY kind of way. And is very delightfully very seventies sounding, from jazzy disco fusion to rock opera to delicate singer-songwriter stuff. There's 20 tracks in all on this import cd (13 on the vinyl version), sunshiney testifyin' from the following artists: Joyful Singers, Good News, That's Why, Arnold Borud, Keryx, The Crossing, Angelos, Sky Sing, The Heralds, Jan Simonsens, Kari Hansa & Gregers Hes, Grete Salomensen, Soli Deo, Reflex, and Presens. The digipak cd comes with a 36 page booklet, and the lp too has a printed insert, featuring extensive liner notes and vintage photos.
Hip '70s Norwegian groovy gospel music, who knew? Hallelujah! Highly recommended.
MPEG Stream: JOYFUL SINGERS "Kort Appell"
MPEG Stream: GOOD NEWS "Konklusjon"
MPEG Stream: THAT'S WHY "Dyp Av Nade"
MPEG Stream: GRETE SALOMENSEN "I Ham"
MPEG Stream: SOLI DEO "No Smoking"

FUSIOON Absolute Fusioon (B-Music / Finders Keepers) cd 16.98
Another awesome find from the diggers at Finders Keepers / B-Music! This '70s Spanish (Catalan) band, as their name implies, plays freaky fusion jazz/rock, kinda like a (more) wacked out Return To Forever! It's psychedelically groovy stuff, high on classical gasses, that at times even reminds us a bit of Bollywood, and much else besides (a goofier Goblin, anyone? Le Orme? Wolfgang Dauner?). Fusioon is for sure fun.
Ferinstance, the buzzy, bouncy synth and Spanish-languge chant of the quirky, rhythmic "Farsa Del Buen Vivir" is utterly delightful, deservedly drawing comparisons to old kid-friendly funk fave Stark Reality.
The dozen selections here, drawn from Fusioon's singles and lps for the Belter Progressiva label in the early/mid '70s, are percussively propulsive, sometimes soundtrack-suspenseful, and always packed with surprises, including symphonic-sounding bits and electronic blitzes...
And as always, the Finders Keepers folks fit this cd out with a booklet full of colorful photos, graphics, and extensive, expert liner notes (by Cherrystones and Andy Votel) delving into the details of Fusioon's career, and in general schooling us about the psych/jazz scene in Franco's Spain.
MPEG Stream: "Dialogos"
MPEG Stream: "Farsa Del Buen Vivir"
MPEG Stream: "Contraste"

YOU Electric Day (Bureau B) cd 17.98
Ok, we figured it was about time we made YOU the Record Of The Week, after all, you've been such a loyal customer for such a long time, haven't you, so it seems like it would be a nice gesture...hahaha. No, the band is called You, and they're our latest krautrock love affair. When we got an advance copy of this disc a few weeks ago, we were immediately intrigued, just by the awesome cover art (is that a cosmic tuning fork?), brilliant basic band name, and also by the band photo (long haired guy in shades, new wavey dude in even bigger shades, stoned looking guy with 'stache) that struck us as looking so much like a hip new band from here and now (like, say, the Jonas Reinhardt fellas, with a Ripley from Wooden Shjips clone in there too) but upon closer inspection, we found it was indeed a reissue, brought to us by the excellent German label Bureau-B, known for their krautrock archaeology (Cluster/Moebius/Roedelius stuff especially) as well as for putting out newer albums from the scene, including the latest Kreidler.
Originally released in 1979, Electric Day was the first album from You (their other one, 1983's Time Code, has also been reissued, and is really just about as great, you'll find it highlighted elsewhere on this list - we came close to making 'em both Records Of The Week). On Electric Day, You consisted of synth mavens Udo Hanten and Albin Meskes along with guitarist Uli Weber and, on drums, under the alias Lhan Gopal for some reason, Harald Grosskopf (a name you might know if only 'cause his own, concurrently recorded Synthesist album was recently reissued on vinyl and highlighted here not long ago). Grosskopf had played drums with Klaus Schulze, and was in Manuel Gottsching's Ashra band at the time. Producer Conny Plank hooked him up with Hanten and Meskes, and we can hear here that they all got along famously, being "Berlin School" mates as it were.
Together on You's debut, this cosmic quartet unleashed much glorious spaced out, spooked out, futuro-zone synth shiver, with psych guitar tripping, electronic pulsations, and Grosskopf's tight percussion, no pussyfooting about it! Seriously, they really do sound quite a bit like Jonas Reinhardt (or rather, the other way around), and could also easily have been the template for a lot of other current bands we love doing the kosmic kraut/John Carpenter-y electronic rock thing, like Zombi, Majeure and Maserati, most definitely! So it's not just for completist krautrock collector types that we recommend this album, nope. And did you catch our Fripp/Eno reference? Others to cite in the "recommended if you like" realm: Heldon, Cloudland Canyon, Michael Rother, Sensations Fix, Moebius & Beerbohm, the previously mentioned Ashra, etc.
All instrumental ('cause in space no one can hear you scream), You's Electric Day begins with the title track, a busy burbling rhythm soon washed over with waves and waves of electronics, while remaining upbeat and snazzily sizzling. The 2nd track, the moodier "Magooba", gets darker and more intense, letting rip with zips and zaps and plenty of freaky guitar. Then the focus shifts back to the shuffling machine rhythms on "Son Of A True Star". That's followed by the two-part "Sequential Spectrums" which sees You setting the controls for deep dark outer space, drifting in shimmering, fizzing electronic ambience, having a bit of a Tangerine Dream, before the almost twelve minute long "Slow Go", the original album's penultimate track, kinda sums up all that came before into one epic journey, the beats tingling propulsively, waves of synth-sound building and building, in one big ecstatic celebration of "this kind of thing" for sure. But don't get too smiley and relaxed, 'cause You have a nervous-making finale in store, the jumpy, uber-distorted "Zero-Eighty-Four" being an active, sinister, suspenseful closer to the album proper...nice! And then, if you get the cd, that's followed by 4 bonus tracks (not on the vinyl, which is 180 gram however), totalling another 33 minutes of music! "E-Night" is blissful, but ultimately pretty heavy. "H.Rays Identity" features some strange sampled chanting amidst its electronic excess, while "Hallucination Engine" is sorta proto-ambient techno. And then "Yousless" sounds like it was written by/for R2D2 the Star Wars droid! All are quite worthwhile, and the whole disc is super solid stuff, making us wonder why we'd never heard about You before (that's why we love this job, the buried treasure out there seems endless, wow). This has gotta be the best unknown-to-us krautrock reissue since Riechmann's Wunderbar (also from Bureau B), at least.
There's really no other way for us to wind up this review other than saying, You rule!!
MPEG Stream: "Electric Day"
MPEG Stream: "Magooba"
MPEG Stream: "Slow Go"
MPEG Stream: "Zero-Eighty-Four "

YOU Time Code (Bureau B) cd 17.98
Ok, we'll assume you already just read our Record Of The Week review of You's newly reissued Electric Day album. That was this instrumental "Berlin School" of krautrock band's 1979 debut, followed up further into the Eighties by Time Code from '83. Great stuff, we like this one a lot too, you should get 'em both. And we're not just excited about these 'cause we're keen on obscure krautrock reissues (though we are). If You were a new band we'd be all over 'em too! And they really could be mistaken for a new, current band, as we alluded to in our Electric Day review. Where that one really really sounded like local fave SF synth groovers (and krautrock enthusiasts, of course) Jonas Reinhardt in their propulsive live formation, this one is even more electronic and atmospheric, some moments more like Oneohtrix Point Never, Emeralds, and Arp, to cite some other modern comparisons. That's 'cause by '83, You had parted ways with guitarist Uli Weber and drummer Harald Grosskopf, and slimmed down to the founding synths and sequencers core duo of Udo Hanten and Albin Meskes. So it's even a bit more retro-futuristically Eighties computery/mechanical, with percolating robot rhythms and shimmering synths and some extra sci-fi bleepage... but, it's really not all THAT different than their earlier incarnation, Hanten and Meske's machines doing a fine job of filling in for the humans no longer in the band. There's nine tracks here (or 11 if you get the compact disc, it's got two excellent bonus cuts, about an extra 10 minutes), nicely varied, some songs more pretty and placid, others droning further into deep space than before. They can be quite melodic, for instance "Future/Past" is one of those lovely lovelies that makes us think of our favorite Cluster jams (with sequencer patterns calculated to send you into a blissed out trance, getting into proto-Aphex Twin territory). And then they also bring the John Carpenter style suspense film disco grooves on the likes of "Live Line", too. So, like Electric Day, super recommended!
You will like You, if you are at all like us.
MPEG Stream: "Future-Past"
MPEG Stream: "Deep Range"
MPEG Stream: "Live Line"

PHARAOH OVERLORD Out Of Darkness (Ektro) cd 19.98
It's "NWOFHM" in overdrive overload this week, with not one but two new albums from key exemplars of that Circle side project "scene" up there in Finland. The new vinyl-only offering from Steel Mammoth called Radiation Funeral, you'll find reviewed elsewhere this list, and then there's this, Out Of Darkness, the new cd from Pharaoh Overlord. With fists in the air (and tongues possibly not in cheek?) these two releases have really upped the ante regarding the METAL part of the NWOFHM equation.
Quick recap for those out of the loop: Finnish space prog neo-Kraut band (and massive AQ faves) Circle like to dabble in the metal realms, on their own albums and also by means of various side projects, enough of which exist to populate a self-proclaimed, quasi-parodic New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal movement, NWOFHM for short. These bands usually use metal "signifiers" for their own twisted purposes, making music that's as much experimental and pop and prog as it is metal, but done up in leather and spikes basically for fun.
Circle offshoot Pharaoh Overlord was originally more of a stoner rock take on Circle's motorik mesmerism, dark and psychedelic and heavy. But not "metal". Then they did the album entitled #4, which was NWOFHM almost to the point of being "actual" metal (though still totally repetitive and hypnotic a la Circle of course). But #4's follow up, their previous disc to this, Siluurikaudella, was, while we liked it quite a bit, a definite departure, more of a freakout/improv thing, definitely not remotely metal (or NWOFHM).
So for anyone a bit confused by Siluurikaudella, you'll be happy to hear that Out Of Darkness returns PO to headbanging territory, and then some!! Definitely a metal album, and a rockin' one. Well, it starts off with a lovely acoustic guitar intro, "Eyes Of The Pharaoh", but starts rockin' about 43 seconds later, when the title track erupts, total classic metal riffage with Danzig meets Hetfield vocals courtesy of the singer from US stoner metal band Night Horse, who also appears on the disc's killer final track "I Am The Light". He's not the only guest, as Circle's big hero Bruce "Jesters Of Destiny" Duff and his bandmate Frank Meyer from LA sleaze rockers Angus Khan have cameos too, providing some guest vocals and lead guitar on a few of the cuts here as well.
The nearly ten minute "Devastator" demonstrates that Pharaoh Overlord haven't abandoned the "Circular" style of minimalist repetition, that track devastates indeed with its seeming endlessness (which is awesome). Somewhat poppier is the next track, the chugging "Doomsday Mourning", that's got some psychedelic Uriah Heepishness to it, laden with synths, psych soloing, and dramatic vocals. And that's more the norm, this album being really pretty darn catchy throughout, Pharaoh Overlord mixing their '80s metal obsessions with some Teutonic '70s proginess, and whatthefuckever else they desire. Our heads aren't just banging, they're spinning. Turns out they weren't kidding with the song title "We Came To Rock"! Ok, it gets a bit goofy on the two Bruce Duff sung tracks (especially "No Speed Limit") but that's entertaining too, however for the most part this is a REAL metal / hard rock album, or at least sounds that way, being strange rather than silly when it's not full on metal. For fans of Circle, Queen, krautrock, Thor, La Otracina, Blue Oyster Cult, Accept, Judas Priest, Metallica, Steel Mammoth, Destruction, Anvil, Alice Cooper, Lucifer's Friend, White Boy And The Average Rat Band, uh, and everything else that's awesome.
Oh, if this wasn't cool enough already, love the outer space neon lazer tiger cover artwork!!! Purrfect for the tight ripping soundz within. The cd booklet also contains an interesting quote from R. Buckminster Fuller. Didn't know he was a metalhead.
FYI, there's another new PO album too, vinyl-only effort called Horn, that we're hoping to get soon too. Haven't heard it yet, don't know where it falls on the NWOFHM spectrum...
MPEG Stream: "Out Of Darkness"
MPEG Stream: "Devastator"
MPEG Stream: "Doomsday Mourning"
MPEG Stream: "I Am The Night"

ZEBULON PIKE Space Is The Corpse Of Time (Unfortunate Music) cd 11.98
All kinds of awesomeness here on this new Zebulon Pike album, their fourth, and the Minnesota instrumental math metal stoner doom post-rock space-rock (whew!) combo's first full-length in like three years. It's also their first ever to be released on (double lp gatefold) VINYL as well as compact disc. If you're already a big ZP fan like us, and we know lots of AQ customers are, then you're automatically super stoked at this news and we should just get outta the way and let you "add to cart" without further ado. But, we realize that (for some strange reason) not everybody in the whole world knows who ZP is or just why they're so great. So unfair (for them) and unfortunate (for all their potential fans), 'cause as we've said before, they should be HUGE... at least signed to Hydra Head (instead of their own label) and touring with bands like Baroness, hyped by all the cool magazines and blogs and whatnot. Not sure why that hasn't really happened yet, but if we have anything to say about it, someday it will.
Soooo... this album, being to our ears arguably their best yet, would be a great one to get into for the first time, for those who haven't yet been exposed to that special "Zebulon Pike radiation" we've referred to in the past. Not sure we can out-do any of our previous reviews in the hyperbole dep't., we've raved about 'em before for sure, and it will be hard for us to come up with anything better to say here, of course we'll pull out the old standby that they're kinda like Pelican meets The Fucking Champs, combining lumbering sub-bass heaviosity, surging melodicism, and stunning dual guitar harmonies - definitely a band playing music for music's sake ("Hats Off To Music" as the Champs would say, paraphrasing Led Zep's feelings about Roy Harper).
With spiralling leads and chugging riffage, ZP is definitely into metal, but also 20th century classical (Steve Reich?), and prog, that's more from whence their extended song structures arise - the five tracks here are mostly long, all the double digits except one. Crucial for an instrumental band, they not only come up with good riffs, but also concentrate on interesting, extreme sonic textures, getting into avant garde areas at times. Like, what's up with the crazy chorus of "wheee wheee wheee" sounds (somehow produced by the guitars, we assume) cacophonously closing track one, "Spectrum Threshold"? We don't know, but we like it. The drummer gets into the avant-action too, there's stretches of percussive soundscapes, dense drum storms and spacious skitter. You definitely don't miss there being a vocalist, this definitely keeps your attention, as long as the songs are, with twists and turns, first hypnotizing with crushing riff repetition, then plunging into a droning abstract celestial otherworld or a quiet jazzy pretty passage, like the tinkling music box midsection dropped into "Echoic Worlds" that sets you up for the heavy angular riffage set to surge forth immediately afterwards. And this album never bogs down, there's always a sense of strong, propulsive forward motion, even with the ambient detours.
Compared to earlier albums by these guys, we sense even more emphasis here on the '90s post rock part of the ZP equation. Lots of that loud/soft stuff a la Slint and Mogwai, but way more metal... some other bands that come to mind while listening to this, from moment to moment, include Don Caballero, Yob, Iceburn (circa Hephaestus, an underrated classic we'd love review someday, if it ever comes back into print!), Megaton Leviathan, forgotten AQ faves Fuehler, early Pharaoh Overlord, Isis, Boris, Conifer, Sardonis, and more... but they sound like ZP and only ZP at the end of the day.
One sign of a good album is that it immediately compels repeated plays from the sometimes jaded, overwhelmed listeners here at AQ, this one sure did and that's why we made it Record Of The Week. Space Is The Corpse Of Time is pushing our buttons for what we like in "this sort of thing" while also springing plenty of surprises.
So if you like your post rock to be heavy and sludgey, and you like your sludgey heavy rock to be instrumental, and you like your sludgey heavy instrumental post rock to be both super melodic and sonically adventurous, almost scientifically advanced, well heck then you sound like our sort of customer and we highly recommend this Zebulon Pike album to you! It's an epic feast of might and majesty and MUSIC.
FYI, if you get the vinyl, it comes with an mp3 download card. Obviously if you get the cd, you don't need that.
MPEG Stream: "Spectrum Threshold"
MPEG Stream: "Echoic Worlds"
MPEG Stream: "Trigon In Force"

SUPERCONDUCTOR Heavy With Puppy (Boner) cd ep 6.98
We've long been fans of Canadian 'supergroup' Superconductor, long before Superconductor member Carl Newman went on to front Zumpano and then New Pornographers, but don't be expecting any sort of pop here, although those pop sensibilities do seep into SC's twisted experimental noise rock. Infamous for their seven (7!) guitarist lineup, these guys kicked out some seriously kick ass jams, heavy, rhythmic, dynamic, walls of guitars, pounding octopoidal drums, howled vox, but somehow, catchy as hell too. We reviewed their classic Bastardsong a while back, their last, and poppiest record, but we just discovered that our distributor still had copies of this, SC's 1991 debut ep, which still kills, and sounds heavier and hookier than most of the bands today, and includes one very aQ jam that knocked us for a loop.
It had been a while since we heard this, but got one in and threw it on, and wait a second, we recognized one of the songs, riffy and heavy, and then the vocals, a super distinctive wail, and it dawned on us, it was a cover of Japanese '70s hard psych gods Flower Travellin' Band's "Satori Part One", and it was awesome, not that far removed from the original, the vocals spot on, just a bit buzzier and heavier. And we were struck again by what amazing music nerds these guys were. The cover of Bastardsong was a parody of Iasos' new age classic Inter-Dimensional Music which we just listed a while back, and here they were covering Flower Travellin' Band WAY before any of us had heard them. And it's that music nerdery that informed the music of Superconductor and elevated their sound WAY beyond bash and crash noise rock. So yeah, the FTB cover here is worth the price of admission. But the rest of the songs rule too, "Bushpilot" is ridiculously hooky and catchy for being a weirdly mathy chunk of noise drenched indie rock, a should have been nineties underground hit if there ever was one. "Ride The Big Penis", besides having an amazing title, also boasts some serious churning riffage, and some skull caving drum pummel, which leads directly into "Clamhammer" (these guys had a way with titles), another melody infused slab of noiserock, that sounds a bit like Sonic Youth mixed with Unsane mixed with Polvo, angular and buzzy and sludgey and blown out. Finally, the group finishes off with "Riffmania", which is as advertised, chugging, buzzing riffage wrapped around some BIG drums, with the multiple guitarists adding all sorts of psychedelic squiggle and layered buzz, not to mention some seriously distorted in-the-red vocal howls (about as far removed from the New Pornographers as can be), the song gradually splintering into crumbling slabs of disembodied riffage, swirls of feedback and wildly loosening drum damage.
Oh did we mention the amazing confusional cover art, how about the names of the band members: Dream Whip, It's On You, Thighmaster, He Who Is Named, Flying Fist, Noise Annoys, El Impacto, Sweet Bitch, Delicious Warm, and weirdest of all... Alan Smithee (the pseudonym movie directors use when they don't want their own name on a film!).
We love these guys, and this might be their finest moment, heavy and hooky in equal measure, tongue lodged firmly in cheek, but seriously ruling!
MPEG Stream: "Satori Part One"
MPEG Stream: "Bush Pilot"
MPEG Stream: "Riffmania"

LICH KING Super Retro Thrash 8-Bit Metal Album (Stormspell) cd 11.98
8-bit, Nintendo, thrash metal. We're putting those keywords up at the start of this review to grab your attention, just in case you've never heard of Lich King before. Or even if you have, 'cause this ain't anything like the usual record by 'em. Massachusetts' zombie-lovin' Lich King are a New Wave Of Old School Thrash band, one of many these days (there's quite a glut), and they're pretty good. Although we've never felt compelled to actually review any of their albums before, some of the metalheads here do own a couple Lich King discs themselves. Even moreso than some other current retro thrash revivalists like Gama Bomb and Municipal Waste, Lich King are probably best known for their overt sense of humor. They write songs with titles like "Black Metal Sucks", "Behaver", and (they deserve an award, or at least a chuckle, for this one) "Attack Of The Wrath Of The War Of The Death Of The Strike Of The Sword Of The Blood Of The Beast". There's a tradition of fun and humor in '80s thrash metal after all (Anthrax! S.O.D.!), so their silliness makes 'em all the more authentic, especially since it doesn't stop 'em from spitting out some totally legit riffage, in the vein of Slayer and Nuclear Assault and Exodus, et. al.
With this release, for their own amusement mainly, the boys in Lich King decided to get even sillier, and recorded a bunch of their own tunes 8-bit chiptune '80s video game style!! Perhaps they were inspired by the internet-only fan band 8 Bit Mayhem's black metal covers (whose "De Mysteriis Dom Supernes" album is well worth Googling). Or maybe AQ fave Xexyz (if you liked that, you want this!). Certainly they were inspired by their own childhoods, playing Nintendo. In any case, a cool idea. With Super Retro Thrash, it's revealed just how catchy Lich King's songs really are. Stripped of vocals and guitar distortion, here it's all about the "riffs" and rhythms. And they're relentless, mind numbingly mesmerizing, we're lovin' it.
There's 9 songs here, including two unreleased as yet tunes from Lich King's next, upcoming proper album. And yes, among the "hits" they've selected, you get an 8-bit version of "Attack Of The Wrath Of The...", along with chipped-out takes on "ED-209" (their Robocop themed song), "Combat Mosh", "Toxic Zombie Onslaught", and more, including also the aforementioned "Black Metal Sucks".
The ironic thing is, not only is this the first Lich King album we've ever reviewed, we're also honestly more into it than any other of their "actual" albums, having listened to it lots more already (it's addictive!), AND surely will sell lots more of these than we would of any other Lich King release ever. We pretty sure it will be a big AQ hit like the Xexyz, or the Iron Maiden electro album. Meanwhile, it's something THEY thought only a few fans would want, it's limited to just 299 numbered copies!!! We got a bunch, but dunno if we'll be able to get (m)any more. The graphics are great, parodying an actual NES cartridge (we love the little lo-res Lich King guy depicted on there, rushing around Mario-style), photographed like it's sitting on a shaggy green carpet in someone's family room back in the '80s.
MPEG Stream: "Lich King III (World Gone Dead)"
MPEG Stream: "Black Metal Sucks"
MPEG Stream: "Attack Of The Wrath Of The War Of The Death Of The Strike Of The Sword Of The Blood Of The Beast"

WILL OVER MATTER 9 To The Moon (Bestial Burst) cd 14.98
As hopefully you fondly recall, just a few weeks back, we made a double cd entitled Might Of The Planet Eater, by this eccentric Finnish outsider blackened industrial / electronica act, our freakin' Record Of The Week. 'Twas a sprawling and utterly bizarre set, part Pan Sonic, part power electronics, part (ir-)rhythmic occult ritual, apparently what happens when a Finnish black metal weirdo does DIY industrial experimentation. Weird and primitive and (to us) utterly awesome.
While we absolutely LOVE Will Over Matter, we'll readily admit they're, uh, possibly a difficult listen (but then, compared to some other things we sell, maybe not really). And fortunately a lot of you folks seemed to dig it! So, of course, we thought you'd want us to list this one too, an earlier album from Will Over Matter, also on Bestial Burst.
This disc is actually the first WOM we ever heard, preceding Might Of The Planet Eater by a couple years. What happened, is not long ago one of us came across a Will Over Matter track on the internet somewhere, got kind of obsessed, and was happy (and amused) to find that we actually already had one of their albums in stock!! That was this one, 9 To The Moon, which we'd apparently ordered from Bestial Burst a couple years ago (2009) when it came out, but never reviewed. The next time we did a Bestial Burst order, we also got the newer double cd, and, our obsession growing, decided to make it Record Of The Week. So all of you who liked that one, you want this too!
Again, outsider electronic electro-dirge, chock a block with squeaky squelchy static-y sounds, stuttering irregular rhythms, noisy glitchy distortion damage. Bloop zwoop zip zap. Buzzing electricity. Sinister analog synth. Computers gone haywire. The occasional disembodied, drugged out voice buried in the mix (heard on the plodding "No Waste Of Sorrow" and elsewhere). Yes, the blown out, black and white, lunar landscape (?) cover art is so appropriate for these alien, bleak, brutal sci-fi sounds, that are both confusional and compelling.
To recap, WOM is a one-man band, a project of Harald Mentor from equally insane AQ faves Ride For Revenge, allegedly a "black metal" act. WOM is not black metal (though Beherit did dabble in this direction once upon a time) but anyone who really appreciates Ride For Revenge, as well as anything totally fucked up, ought to enjoy it. And the esoteric themes of these songs (they ARE songs) are as out there as any black metal weirdness ever. The song titles aren't even provided, but the internet knows what they are.
While it's not a double disc like the other one we listed, there's 9 tracks, all of 'em long... with grand finale "The Burning Logic" building and building for over 8 minutes of crinkum crankum, industrial electro-dirge hypnosis. The whole thing is possibly dangerous headphone listening all right!
MPEG Stream: "No Waste Of Sorrow"
MPEG Stream: "Geometric Law Of The Psyche"
MPEG Stream: "The Burning Logic"

STARFUCKERS Metallic Diseases (Holy Mountain) lp 15.98
Wow, exciting times at our shop. Even several of the Starfuckers' biggest fans here at AQ had never heard THIS before, this crucial Italian band's debut lp originally released in 1990. As promised in our Record Of The Week review of the Starfuckers' Ordine '91-'96 collection just a few lists ago, the Holy Mountain label (who know their secret history of rock and roll all right!) has now done a reissue of this early Starfuckers platter, a dark slab of Stooges worship containing a dirty dozen tracks so trance inducingly raw n' powerful we can only imagine the entire band were stripped shirtless, bare torsos smeared with peanut butter, Iggy Stooge style, whilst recording this. The blurry black and white cover photo suggests as much, though the peanut butter is not visible...
If, at our recommendation, you picked up the Ordine cd (which is out of stock at the moment - we have more copies coming from Italy soon, never fear) then you have already heard a handful of early Starfuckers rockers from before they went totally gonzoid experimental. The six songs from the band's 1991 Brodo Di Cagne Strategico mini-lp included on Ordine demonstrated that despite their ultimately unique, counter-intuitive, almost "anti-rock" sound for which we consider the band geniuses, they surely had their roots in "actual" rock and roll, very much Stooges influenced (hence the "Funhausen" tag that Holy Mountain head honcho JW likes to apply to 'em). If you liked the Brodo Di Cagne Strategico stuff, then Metallic Diseases is for you. And anyway, how can it not be great with that title?
Relentless punked out noiserock riff repetition that's fuzz laden, feedback filled, with drawling English language vox all sneered and snotty, and song titles like "Dead Metal City Blues", "Western Man", "Cold White Cancer", and "U.S.A.". Godly garagey stuff for sure, loud and pounding. There's maybe a jangling, poppier side to some of it ("Shake Off" in particular), and that's a real cool time too, but what you've got mainly here is a down on the street death trip, Starfuckers on a search and destroy mission to be your dog... this left hand path eventually leads them to the inclusion of some Funhouse style saxophone squawk, skronk, squall on the penultimate track "Flower Lover", and thence to the seven and a half minute final cut, "Grado Zero", the only song sung in Italian, and heavily laced with wiggy electronic FX, which of the trax here most strongly foreshadows the Starfuckers' later experimental direction, it could have appeared on Sinistri alongside "Ordine Pubblico" for sure.
So, it's as if the Starfuckers guys got together in 1990, and decided, ok, sure, we'll make rock and roll, yeah, let's channel the Stooges, 'cause we want to START at the END, and then push past those limits. So, once they had manifested themselves as the apotheosis of "rock" at its punkest and rockest, on Metallic Diseases and Brodo Di Cagne Strategico, they then moved on to the next phase of their career to utterly DECONSTRUCT "rock" on the Sinistri album and beyond... Why they did this, how they decided these things, what happened? We don't know, we can only wonder.
But, while cool and interesting and all, that doesn't even matter. Let's put it this way, if Metallic Diseases was the only record that the Starfuckers ever did, its reissue would/should still be hailed as the discovery of a long lost gem of timeless Stoogified psychedelic ugly-noise-punk-rawk that belongs up there with the output/outbursts of such acts as Union Carbide Productions, The Heads, Spacemen 3, High Rise, Brainbombs, and (more recently) Vincent Black Shadow. That it was only the beginning of the Starfuckers' sonic explorations, a program of experimental rock n' roll reinvention that took them somewhere that no other band has ever gone, makes it even more special...
Totally recommended, as if you couldn't tell. Sadly for those of us who happen to prefer cds, this reissue is vinyl-only, although it does include a download code for mp3's, including the aforementioned "Grado Zero" which as it turns out is a bonus track, not on the actual vinyl (whoops, wrote this review away from the turntable!).
MPEG Stream: "Love You"
MPEG Stream: "Dead Metal City Blues"
MPEG Stream: "(I'm) Alive!"
MPEG Stream: "Grado Zero"

GENTLEMANS PISTOLS At Her Majesty's Pleasure (Rise Above / Metal Blade) cd 14.98
Hey, all right! This British band is back, at long last, with their 2nd album, and once again sound like a blast from the past (the past circa 1972 or so) even though they're from this day and age. We're almost sorta surprised they're not from Sweden, usually it's Swedish bands like Witchcraft, Graveyard, Horisont, and Noctum who do the bellbottomed retro-rawkin' thing this damn well, but heck the bands Gentlemans Pistols most sound like - Sabbath and Zeppelin - were from England, so it's in their blood after all. We wuz big fans of their self-titled debut a few years back, and are damn happy to hear 'em kicking out the jams once more, this time with new axe slinger the one and only Bill Steer (Carcass, Napalm Death, Firebird) on board, GP's upping the ante on all others in the realm of '70s styled stoner rock with their wailing vox, crunchy fuzz guitar riffage, and hard to beat bouncy energy. They're delivering the goods here, is what we're sayin'. A dozen new songs, all catchy and heavy and authentically '70s proto-metal sounding, they could hold their own with Pentagram and Hard Stuff and Leaf Hound and Highway Robbery, etc.... and they've got a sweaty muscularity to 'em that makes 'em more of a powerful proposition than just some kind of imitation or approximation. They're real, and rockin'. A ripping good time. Another one of those bands, in our view, that should be HUGE, and would be if we ran the rock n' roll world! F'ing recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Comfortably Crazy"
MPEG Stream: "Midnight Crawler"
MPEG Stream: "Some Girls Don't Know What's Good For Them"

TWISTED TOWER DIRE Make It Dark (Cruz Del Sur) cd 17.98
Q: What album contains the best heavy metal song ever written about a snow leopard? A: This one!!
Virginia's TTD has been around for a long time, in the "true metal" underground, with releases going as far back as 1996 (a split 7" with cult doomsters Cold Mourning in fact) but this is the first album of theirs that's really blown us away. Maybe it's their new, improved vocalist. Maybe it's the injection of seemingly arena-ready '80s metal POPPINESS that he's brought with him, y'know, catchy choruses, even amidst all of TTD's usual OTT speedy shred action. Or maybe it's the inspired cheesiness of the cover art (featuring that aforementioned snow leopard) and the "Snow Leopard" song itself. You gotta love a song with lines like "I'm a snow leopard, I live a wild and crazy life" and "I'm calling all cats to sink some claws in some backs", not to mention the soaring chorus that goes "Snow leopard run! Run snow leopard run!"
With this unabashedly bold, bright and energetic album, TTD catapults into the top of the "New Wave Of Old School Heavy Metal" pack, next to the likes of Cauldron and Enforcer, where maybe they belonged all along. Pick it up and revel in the power and the glory. The vocals, an in-your-face falsetto. The guitars holding hints of classic Thin Lizzy, and of course Iron Maiden. Total singalong power metal, gallant and galloping. We're lovin' it.
MPEG Stream: "Mystera"
MPEG Stream: "Snow Leopard"
MPEG Stream: "Make It Dark"

JACKS, THE Vacant World / Super Session (Shagadelic Records) cd 21.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Fans of current underground Japanese psych stuff (Acid Mothers Temple, Keiji Haino, Ghost, Nagisa Ni Te, etc.) who'd like to delve into the early psychedelic era precursors of those acts have been lucky lately, what with that Les Rallizes Denudes double cd finally having some availability, and the Flower Travellin' Band disc we recently recommended too. As we mentioned in our Rallizes review, The Jacks were the other crucial home-grown Japanese psych band, an admitted influence on Fushitsusha certainly, who once covered The Jacks' classic "Marianne". And we just managed to get a few imported copies of this 2-on-1 disc by 'em, released last year on the Japanese Shagadelic label. Not only does it have the ten tracks of their legendary "Vacant World" but also another 11 constituting their follow-up album "Super Session" (both 1968), plus three rare bonus tracks (two from singles, one live). The booklet provides discographical information and album/single art.
With stinging Quicksilver psych guitar leads and melancholy vocals, "Vacant World" is a truly gorgeous album of darkness and murk that words like delicate, dramatic, and timeless well describe. Its sparse, sad beauty makes it one of Allan's favorite '60s psych artifacts ever, though not everyone else here is so moved. Unlike other noted Japanese 'GS' bands like The Mops or The Challengers, these guys were not mainly, merely doing covers of the current rock hits of the day from San Francisco and London. While Western garage and blues and psychedelic rock certainly shaped their sound, The Jacks seem uniquely Japanese, uniquely Jacks as well.
Now for two warnings: The second album on here, Super Session, unfortunately does seem to delve into a more commerical, less special sound. It's as if some producer or record exec told 'em they had to be more like the competition. As a result, this does venture into a bar rock zone that's not at all on par with "Vacant World". And if you like saxophone, they get into that here too. A very different mood from the debut indeed. Oh well. But it's still cool to have, kitschy fun.
Ok, here's the second catch: we ONLY have 6 of these in stock right now, so if you need this, act fast...dunno when/if we can get more, unfortunately.
MPEG Stream: "Marianne"
MPEG Stream: "Vacant World"

OXBOW King Of The Jews (Hydra Head) cd 17.98
If someone had never heard San Francisco's Oxbow before, and knew nothing about them - or for that matter knew nothing about Sammy Davis Jr. either - we wonder what they'd make of that album title/cover art? Definitely wouldn't help 'em guess what sort of music lies within, some of the earliest and insanest stuff by an AQ fave band we lovingly call "fucked rock geniuses". If you are one of those innocent souls who have never heard Oxbow before, well, dive in here and see if you can take it. And needless to say, if you are already an Oxbow fan, of course you NEED this if you don't have it already, which you might not, since until now Oxbow's 1991 sophomore album King Of The Jews has never been available as a domestic compact disc release. It has been paired previously with their 1989 debut Fuckfest as an abridged single cd, and then later as a double, both imports long out of print, as are of course the original vinyl lps on Oxbow's own label CFY Records. And this new Hydra Head reissue is the most deluxe and definitive, packaged in a nice paste-on mini lp-style sleeve, and enhanced with four bonus tracks, three of 'em previously unreleased.
Back when we reviewed Hydra Head's similarly presented, equally essential reissue of Fuckfest in 2009, we said that when they did King Of The Jews, we'd probably just write more or less the same review, that is, saying that this record also displays all the elements of Oxbow we appreciate: primal swampy skree and atmospheric loud-soft dynamics, lumbering slide guitar sickness and singer Eugene's regression therapy vocal histrionics... it's part Scratch Acid (or Jesus Lizard), part Butthole Surfers, part Birthday Party, part Cormac McCarthy novel, part primal psycho-sexual cabaret, part utterly alien WTF?!
This album's special guest star Lydia Lunch joins the madness on 2 of the cuts, "Daughter" and "Angel", utterly subsumed into the crazy, kecak-y, confusional handclap chaos of the former (what an album opener, damn!!), adding extra drama to the latter. Not that Oxbow needs much help in the drama department; Eugene's bedlamite mewlings and mutterings amidst the band's desolate atmospheres and sudden rock spasms are both bizarre and intense and go way beyond mere music-as-entertainment that's for sure.
Oxbow has been keeping rock weird for a long time now, and this is one of the most crucial documents in their entire discography. It'll clue you to the Oxbow formula of lots of tension, not so much release, though there's more of the latter here than on some other Oxbow outings... Highly, highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Daughter"
MPEG Stream: "Angel"
MPEG Stream: "Cat And Mouse"

31 KNOTS Trump Harm (Polyvinyl) cd 12.98
Portland's 31 Knots are one of those bands that just keeps plugging away, making amazing albums, to the great pleasure of their loyal fans of course, but we wonder why they don't in the course of things also, you know, get BIG. More fans, more pleasure. They should, or would, be huge if rock n' roll was a meritocracy (which it obviously isn't). This is their sixth full-length release, since their debut about a decade ago, and once again it's a enjoyable example of their trademark "Fugazi-meet-Yes", indie rock gone no wave prog sound. Hmm, maybe that explains why they aren't BIG... that's too weird of a formula. But then again, Radiohead, Muse, Mars Volta, Coheed and Cambria, they're popular, so folks who like the likes of them, should check out 31 Knots for something maybe knottier (though in no way naughtier, they're not that sort of band). Out of the 31 Knots discography, Trump Harm is as good as any (though maybe the cover art isn't), it's assuredly poppy, yet complex and bombastic, offering up ten new tracks that satisfy all our 31 Knots expectations, of earworminess and angularity, mathiness and melody, electricity and emotion. It's thinking (and feeling) man's pop music, that kicks ass too, with arty post-punkish power and precision. If just one person reading this review who has never heard 31 Knots before, decides to check 'em out and becomes a fan, we'll be happy. 100 people, that'd be even better!
MPEG Stream: "Onanist's Vacation"
MPEG Stream: "Candles On Open Water"
MPEG Stream: "Get Gone"

KATATONIA Discouraged Ones (Century Media) cd 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Brilliant melancholy not-even-really-metal-anymore music from this boundary-pushing Swedish outfit. Originally inspired by British melodic doom-death act Paradise Lost, Katatonia on Discouraged Ones is equally influenced by the likes of The Cure, Pink Floyd and the Red House Painters!

CLINE, NELS TRIO Silencer (Enja) cd 15.98
One of the great things about doing our list, is reviewing reissues of stuff we LOVE that we never got to list before. Old faves from the pre-list days. Of course, it's always tough too, when you want to explain just WHY something is so amazing and essential. When it's a record you've loved for years and years, there's a lot of pressure to do it justice. This list, for instance, you'll find our review of Oxbow's King Of The Jews, These Trails, and surely a few other old faves, this Nels Cline album most definitely among them, and its hard not to just say, in all caps, BUY THIS DAMMIT, YOU WON'T BE SORRY, IT'S THE BEST!!!
That's our feeling about this for sure. The very first Nels Cline album we came across, and the first by his Trio, originally released on Enja in 1992, out of print for ages, now finally reissued in a spiffy new digipack. Nels Cline then was an underground jazz guitarist, who has since become an alt-rock guitar guy too, playing in Wilco, and with Thurston Moore, Mike Watt, Carla Bozulich, and others, amassing a diverse and impressive discography.
Silencer is "jazz" all right, and jazz too, without the quotes. Ten tracks, epic and exquisite instrumentals, full of out-there skree and sublime beauty, performed by Nels on guitars, with Michael Prusser on drums and Mark London Sims on bass.
This album eases the listener in, beginning with a take on Gil Evans' "Las Vegas Tango" (all the other tracks are Cline compositions), that's just lovely, Cline's guitar with soft edges on it... then as the album progresses, the "dangerous" side of his playing is revealed. The soft edges remain, but there's jagged ones too. But even when things get tangled and noisy, it's gorgeous, and still swings. The trio has great chemistry, it's not just all about Cline's guitar (though he's definitely the star). Some highlights: the bumptious "Broasted" (which gets heavy/distorted enough to almost pass for a Stinking Lizaveta track!), the spacious 14+ minute "Lapsing (Part 1&2)", the subtle skronk of "Silencer", and the moody hum/hush of "Exiled" (one we think Bohren fans would appreciate)...
This came out not long after the late, great guitarist Sonny Sharrock's final, brilliant album Ask The Ages (which really needs to be reissued too!!), we'd probably just discovered him about the same time we got clued into Cline. If you like Sharrock, Cline is certainly one of his spiritual descendants, in the realm of "free" "jazz" "fusion".
Maybe 'cause it was our first Nels disc, but also 'cause it's so good, this has always been our favorite, though you can't go wrong with anything the man has ever done as far as we're concerned. So very recommended, as if you couldn't tell already.
MPEG Stream: "Mags"
MPEG Stream: "Broasted"
MPEG Stream: "Silencer"

WILL OVER MATTER Might Of The Planet Eater (Bestial Burst) 2cd 14.98
The awesomely titled Might Of The Planet Eater is the latest from mysterious Finnish one man band Will Over Matter, which just so happens to be the work of a fella by the name of Harald Mentor, who you might know better as the maniac behind avant outsider not-quite-black-metal weirdos Ride For Revenge. So if the low end rhythmic weirdness that is Ride For Revenge is one step removed from black metal, imagine Will Over Matter as about 5 or 6 steps past that. Not black metal at all, but more like some sort of outsider electronica.
Our obsession with Ride For Revenge stems from the fact that over the course of their career, their sound has changed to the point where they are now totally subverting and transforming the idea of black metal into something much more primal and rhythmic, forgoing the buzz and blast and replacing those obvious BM tropes with looped mesmer and tribal pound, stripping the sound down to its essence, and then slowing it down as well, sounding more to us like Aluk Todolo than Beherit. Although the mention of Beherit, another Finnish black metal institution seems particularly apt here, in that Beherit are infamous for their non-black metal output, their experimental electronics, which is precisely what Will Over Matter is. If Ride For Revenge is Mentor's twisted take on black metal, well then Will Over Matter is his skewed attempt at power electronics, or industrial music, channeling the spirit of Throbbing Gristle, SPK, Whitehouse, and all the rest, but filtered through some sort of cracked and damaged blackened Finnish lens.
Will Over Matter combines the stripped down rhythmic minimalism of Ride For Revenge with experimental industrialism, melding lumbering beats to fields of spaced out static, wrapping sheets of Merzbowian noise around shuffling low end thrum and machinelike beats, adding distorted alien vox to squalls of glitched out electronics, or winding multiple streams of electronic information into strangely twisted sonic barrages.
The opening track here is a bizarre soundscape of chittery electronics, of twisted feedback and growled super distorted vocals, pelted by grinding crunch and skittering squelches, a strange array of bleeps and bloops, and buried within, a sort of almost rhythmic bit of ever shifting static, which leads directly into the next track, a droned out stretch of pulsing electronic shimmer, which manages to sound spaced out and sinister at the same time, the tone and timbre switching constantly creating, again, it's own sort of psychedelic rhythm. It's not until "Read The Signs", track number three, that the various elements coalesce into what is really the core of WoM's sound, another fluctuating field of static, of strange space-y electronics, bits of glitch and hiss, but wound around a lumbering, skeletal beat, some sort of alien krautrock, before switching gears, and becoming a weirdly propulsive throbbing electronica, but with elements of kraut/post/space rock, at it's most propulsive sounding a bit like Bastard Noise offshoot and former Record Of The Week-ers Geronimo, and at its least, like nothing you've ever heard before. The track offers up strange electronic squiggles, sinister high end buzz, all in the surface of trailing behind that motorik beat, which itself is in constant flux, cymbals popping out of the mix, processed and all dubby, while the various electronics get more and more tangled and frantic.
Then there's the sprawling 24 minute "Stone Cold Heart", a super spare and abstract stretch of blackened rhythms, and distant buzz and shimmer, that buzz, growing ever more insistent, the vocals here not so distorted, more ominous and intense, intoning some sort of ritual, over what almost sounds like a black metal Pole, minus the barrage of wildly buzzing synths, and primitive analog electronic tones.
One of our favorite tracks is the gorgeously droned out and hypnotic "Forever Nameless" that seems to inadvertently channel John Carpenter and Goblin, into something much more dark and sinister, a totally mesmerizing rhythm, wound up in a thick, corrosive buzzing low end melody, while way off in the distance, a Burzum like synth melody plays out, again reminding us of a less noisy Aluk Todolo, totally hypnotic, the vocals here are almost sung, wrapped in a weird warped distortion, the end result like some sort of doomy drone pop slowcore or something.
Throughout the remainder of these two discs, WoM stretch out strangely stiff rhythms, or pull apart robotic electro beats into weirdly metallic anti-grooves, which unwind lazily beneath hazy streaks of static, creating a series of tarpit crawls, often swallowed whole by heaving walls of electronic sound, that seem to emulate the sheer crumbling power of SUNNO))-like doomdronedirge, but are more often left to pulse, and pound, and throb, a strange alien death march, as the label describes these rituals, each ritual an "epic journey through inner knowledge, lunar madness and cosmic superpowers of satanic possession", the twisted bastard child of some dark forest, outer space ritualized mating of industrial music, black metal, power electronics and krautrock, brilliantly baffling and maddeningly mesmerizing, by now, it should be easy for you to tell if this is your cup of seriously spiked tea or not, and for most of you, we imagine it must be. Fans of Ride For Revenge, Aluk Todolo, Geronimo, Mammal, Bastard Noise, This Heat, spaced out ritualistic blackened electronics and fucked up Finnish weirdness, this one's for you...
MPEG Stream: "Precautions"
MPEG Stream: "Read The Signs"
MPEG Stream: "Superficial Solutions Collapse"
MPEG Stream: "Led By Instincts Alone"
MPEG Stream: "Forever Nameless"

PROCESSION Destroyers Of The Faith (Doomentia Records) cd 14.98
Eagerly awaited, at last it's now here, the new import disc from South American doom overlords Procession - and we say overlords without a doubt, even thought his is just the second cd from this crushing Chilean underground act, and in fact can be considered their debut album - since the one we highlighted previously, The Cult Of Disease, was technically an ep, with bonus tracks from an earlier demo. One of those demo tracks, to these ears already a doom classic, "The Road To The Gravegarden", reappears here, redone (with special guest guitar leads/harmonies courtesy of Peter Vicar, ex-Reverend Bizarre). The five new tracks are equally awesome, Procession trudging forth resolutely into eternal darkness, bearing aloft their hymns of glorious despair.
What we said before about Procession certainly applies to this album as well. It's magnificently heavy, the majestic, morose vocals and fuzz laden guitar work are world class (both provided by the same talented gentleman, obviously a doomed soul). Destroyers Of The Faith is possessed of such a serious, sorrowful, doom feel. All the songs except the intro are long (and slow!), but never dull, being both moody and moving. Procession may just be today's truest torchbearers of utter, epic doom, certainly they're way up there with The Wounded Kings, Lord Vicar, Black Oath, Griftegard, and fellow Chileans Condenados, among newer bands well versed in the old ways, carrying on the tradition of Candlemass (who are still at it as well), taking things to an emotionally effecting extreme... defending the (doom) faith, really, not destroying it. And incorporating some interesting, darkly psychedelic textures too, so that this might be the "epic doom metal" band fans of sludgier/artier fare like Cough and Orthodox could really get into as well. Join the procession, and doom on!
MPEG Stream: "Destroyers Of The Faith"
MPEG Stream: "Chants Of The Nameless"
MPEG Stream: "Tomb Of Doom"

CAESAR, J.A. Kokkyou Junreika (Phoenix) cd 17.98
Woah. Only previously available in the form of expensive Japanese imports, this is the first time we've been able to stock and list this amazing album, and we've wanted to for a long time. It's one that anyone into weird heavy '70s psych / prog, particularly of the Japanese variety, should add to their collections posthaste. Seriously. You perhaps have heard of J.A. Caesar (variously, J.A. Seazer, J.A. Ceaser), a Tokyo based playwright and composer, responsible for many wild, psychedelic theatrical productions that we can only imagine were utterly mindblowing to witness, judging by their soundtracks. This disc, reissuing a 1973 record, contains the highlights of his dramatic score for a 5-hour play called Kokkyou Junreika, here about 54 minutes of music. And it's an intense 54 minutes, this album being the best, and heaviest, J.A. Caesar release we've heard, with ceremonial-sounding Buddhist chant and fuzzed out guitars and doomy organ and heavy riffs and moody female vocals out the wazoo. Wow. Magical Power Mako meets Magma would be one good (if potentially puzzling) description. Or perhaps imagine Flower Travellin' Band participating in a freaked out rock opera / ritual, with the fate of mankind hanging in the balance. For krautrockier comparisons, Amon Duul II and Necronomicon are obvious ones, and should suffice as an excellent recommendation. Another would be that this album was highly rated by Julian Cope in his Japrocksampler book (ranking at number 5 of his top 50). This reissue says it's remastered, and is limited and numbered to boot, packaged in a gatefold sleeve.
By the way, one of the tracks here was later covered by druggy doomsters Solar Anus, you can hear it on their tUMULt double disc, Skull Alcoholic...
MPEG Stream: "track 1"
MPEG Stream: "track 3"
MPEG Stream: "track 6"

OSBOURNE, OZZY Blizzard Of Ozz (Epic / Legacy) cd 13.98
Remember, that's right, we made an earlier reissue of this a Record Of The Week way back on list #134! And deservedly so, it's one of the greatest heavy metal albums ever, the 1980 solo debut from the former Sabbath singer, quite a comeback in his career. Teamed up with the ill fated guitar whiz Randy Rhoads, Ozzy waxed a total timeless classic, for metalheads and non-metalheads alike.
What we didn't realized when we ROTW'd this back then, was that that 2002 reissue edition had been tampered with - the bass and drum parts had been totally re-recorded!! Weird. And wack. Apparently due to some sort of monetary dispute with the original rhythm section of bassist Bob Daisley and drummer Lee Kerslake, Ozzy (or rather, his wife/manager Sharon Osbourne) elected to have his then current bassist and drummer (ex-members of Suicidal Tendencies and Faith No More, respectively) redo the rhythm tracks, which seems kinda fucked up, right? We learned of that later, and mentioned it in our subsequent review of the reissue of Ozzy's 2nd album, Diary Of A Madman, which also had been purged of Daisley and Kerslake's contributions.
Well, thankfully, now they've (of course) finally re-reissued these, with the original rhythm tracks restored! Presumably all parties have buried the hatchet, or perhaps Ozzy & Sharon just decided to do the right thing, we don't know. From reading Ozzy's recent autobiography, I Am Ozzy, which is highly recommended by the way, we get the idea that he was a bit embarrassed / ashamed about the whole affair. Or maybe it was all a ploy to get us to buy these several times (though they've also added a couple extra bonus tracks to Blizzard, and the new cd reissue of Diary Of A Madman, also in stock, comes with an entire bonus live disc!).
Here's some of what we wrote about Blizzard back when we first listed it...
In the same spirit as listing My Bloody Valentine's Loveless a few lists past, it occurred to us that like Loveless there are probably some of you who don't own Blizzard Of Ozz. Or perhaps some of you probably had it when you were 15, but haven't thought about it in years or bothered to pull out that dirty old cassette and throw it on. And if you're anything like us, you've become mildly obsessed with MTV's The Osbournes, and you've been getting a good laugh at doddering, senile old Ozzy, who is perplexed by the TV remote control, his dogs that shit all over the house, his truly bizarre children, and who occasionally loses control and throws a log through his neighbors' windows. The show is so popular, the BBC reported that President Bush is a fan and has asked Ozzy to have dinner with him at the White House. Never thought I'd see the day. (Neither did Ozzy, who said "I thought I'd be on a wanted poster on the wall, not invited to his place to tea.") And if I did see the day, I imagined it with a much hipper president. But with all this media hype, it's easy to forget that Ozzy (in Black Sabbath and solo) is responsible for some of the best heavy metal ever! The first two Ozzy records (Blizzard Of Ozz and Diary Of A Madman) are total classics, melodic, heavy and completely kick ass, with some of the best riffs ever committed to tape, as well as some ridiculously catchy songs (it's strange to look back now and realize how much poppier Ozzy was than we remember, closer to Van Halen than Slayer)... While both are great, we figured we would focus first on Blizzard Of Ozz as probably the best place to start for the uninitiated and since it holds a special place in [former AQ staffer] Byram's heart, who had the following to say about it:
"I would certainly never claim to be an expert on metal and my eyes fairly glaze over shortly after Andee and Allan begin one of their 'which album by _____ (random metal band) is the best' arguments. Having identified with punk rock in my formative years (though my appearance and actions made me look more like an effete and dorky new-waver at best), I was scared of the big hairy guys who I associated with metal in high school. But long before all that nonsense of cliques and fitting in, I used to ride around the suburbs on my BMX bike and listen to music regardless of its association to a particular fan demographic. With my Walkman strapped on, "Blizzard of Ozz" was my soundtrack while I made my rounds checking the pay phones and newspaper machines for change. And I'm certain that I wasn't the only young suburbanite who wandered the streets plugged into Ozzy. As his first solo album away from Black Sabbath, the million-plus-selling Blizzard of Ozz demonstrated that Ozzy had a broader appeal than his earlier efforts with the group had. Over 20 years later, after people get over their ironic chuckling, this album still holds its ground. Those of you who've now lost or worn out your old cassettes and those of you who never gave the post-Sabbath Ozzy a chance should pick this 24-bit remastered and low priced classic up immediately!"
As mentioned, the cd has not one, but 3 bonus tracks (B side "You Lookin' At Me Lookin' At You", which was included on the previous reissue, and is both poppy and kick ass enough to have fit perfectly on the original album, plus there's a 2010 guitar and vocal mix of "Goodbye To Romance", and the brief "RR").
And, this is also now available on the vinyl format, picture disc in fact!! No bonus tracks there. But of course way cool.
MPEG Stream: "Goodbye To Romance"
MPEG Stream: "Mr. Crowley"

BORIS Attention Please (Sargent House) cd 15.98
Ah, BORIS! The band that everybody loves (or if they don't love 'em, they probably love to hate 'em...). The Melvins-worshipping Japanese "heavy rock" band that started off in the '90s as an import-only cult fave, and eventually got picked up over here by Southern Lord. The next thing you know, they turned into an unstoppable juggernaut of super limited edition releases and unlikely collaborations, and got BIG. For a while, they were definitely a band that could do no wrong, combining that Melvins-y sludge, and equally Melvins-y weirdness, with their own, innate Japanese "WTF?" aesthetic... In addition they boast the presence of a female singer/guitar player, Wata, who is both cute and talented. And making themselves even more potent proposition, they also recruited noted psychedelic guitar whiz Michio Kurihara (Ghost, White Heaven, Stars) more or less permanently into their ranks.
Yet, in recent years, Boris has also been courting a backlash, the way we see it, as anything hyped to the skies usually does. Those aforementioned ridiculously limited editions have something to do with it... and what can come off as a too ironic attitude to everything... and when we've seen 'em live, well, memo to drummer Atsuo: the gong is cool, but the headset microphone maybe isn't so much.
So, we've been Boris fans for a long long time, and still are, but we'll confess to wondering if it could be said that Boris finally (?) "jumped the shark" with last year's BXI ep, wherein they, oddly enough, teamed up with rock star Ian Astbury of The Cult (who is presumably still "big in Japan"). That disc was probably the first Boris release in history that didn't merit highlight status on our list... but hey, nobody's perfect.
But now, as if rising to the challenge, and/or making said challenge all the harder for themselves, Boris are back with not one but TWO* new albums for new US label Sargent House.
There's Attention Please, which undoubtedly will get a lot of attention, and not just 'cause of the glamor shot of Wata on the cover. She also sings on all the tracks, to this is definitely one for all you Wata fanciers out there! The other one is called Heavy Rocks, not to be confused with the earlier Boris album, that's also titled Heavy Rocks. Huh, what's with that, Boris? Why give two totally different albums the same name? Obviously to invite comparison (and for the record, while we're definitely digging this new purple 2011 one, if we had to choose between 'em, we'd pick the original, orange 2002 Heavy Rocks). Naming an album Heavy Rocks in the first place is a bold move, having two of 'em is just silly. Or ironic. Or something. Brilliant, perhaps. Oh, and this Heavy Rocks features another guest appearance from Ian Astbury, doing backing vocals on the track "Riot Sugar". There's other guests on the album as well: Aaron Turner (Isis, Mamiffer) and Faith Coloccia (Mamiffer), and regular Boris collaborator Kurihara. Heavy friends for Heavy Rocks!
First up, let's talk about Attention Please. Of the two albums, possibly more interesting to us as it's really quite a departure for Boris, plus we've always found Wata to be their most appealing singer anyway. Her delicate vocals are accompanied by some of the band's softest, most mellow material yet. There's acoustic guitars, and electronica elements, and it's all really quite nice. At times dramatic, dancey, dreamy, and/or rockin', one thing it's not is sludgey. Not that it doesn't get loud and noisy at times - shoegazing explosion of "Spoon" could probably have gone on the accompanying Heavy Rocks just as easily. But for the most part, if you didn't know it was Boris, well you wouldn't know it was Boris! The nervously rhythmic "Tokyo Wonder Land", with its stabbing psychedelic guitar sizzle, and glitchy tic-tic-tics of drums and electronics, is the highlight here for us, but we're pretty into the whole disc. Utterly captivating. Wata and Boris sound like they're channelling every dreamy girl fronted band from the nineties and beyond: My Bloody Valentine, Blonde Redhead, Adult, Amp,ÊNoriko Tujiko, and even Grouper, and it works. Hopefully we'll hear more from this incarnation of Boris in the future, with Wata on the mic... we suspect we will! We think open minded Boris fans will indeed like this album - and it just might make 'em a lot of new fans too, who didn't have any idea Boris could or would sound like this.
Then, to Heavy Rocks (2011)... Drop the needle on track one, and you're greeted by a mean, heavy chugging riff, and it almost seems like, hey, they've gone full-on metal here, but that track, "Riot Sugar", becomes more of a howling psych stoner rock song, with hushed vocals. Off to a good start. The next track isn't nearly as heavy, it begins with some jangle, then a tangle of guitar soloing from Kurihara in his Quicksilver/Cippolina mode, there's also more of those hushed vox, and a general loud/soft songwriting dynamic, this track having echoes of both Nirvana and Can! Kinda sounds like something Kurihara's band Stars would do. Track three "GALAXIANS" is a more energetic, uptempo attack, lots of whoops and hollering going on, with thrashing drums, noisy guitar and electronic FX...
And so it goes, the album a mix of race-with-the-devil rockers and much moodier, shoegazey stuff. "Missing Pieces" is an example of the latter, a slow build from quiet ambience to almost Merzbowian jet-engine noise. The two final tracks are well worthy of mention, the penultimate, nearly 13 minute "Aileron" (greatly expanded, and of course heavied up, from the brief acoustic guitar version of the same track found on Attention Please), is another of the shoegazier pieces, super heavy, lumbering and lovely, reminding us a lot of Codeine, then after that there's "Czechoslovakia", at the very end of the album, a brief instrumental thrash metal number with electronic embellishments, sounds like something Circle would do in their NWOFHM mode, pretty killer, but of course we have to assume Boris sorta meant it as a joke, oh well, in any case it unfortunately fades out at 1:35, just as it's really gettin' good... if another five or ten minutes of this song as we imagine it actually existed, and were included here, that would definitely make Heavy Rocks even radder. Who knows, though, maybe it will continue on a forthcoming album entitled, Heavier Rocks?? (Our idea, but Boris you're welcome to it, sounds like something you'd do - well actually probably what Boris would do is release ANOTHER album also called Heavy Rocks.)
Anyway, to wrap up, these two new discs from Boris are both pretty darn good & satisfying overall. And both emblematic of the band's dabbling in an almost alt-pop, quasi-commercial (on their own terms, though!) direction, while staying HEAVY as they wanna be.
*There's actually a 3rd new Boris full-length as well, out in Japan only, the cleverly (?) titled New Album, which includes some of the same songs found on these two domestic US releases, though we'd imagine they're different recordings/versions, Boris being who they are (confusing!).
MPEG Stream: "Attention Please"
MPEG Stream: "Tokyo Wonder Land"
MPEG Stream: "Les Paul Custom '86"

BORIS Attention Please (Sargent House) lp 24.00
Ah, BORIS! The band that everybody loves (or if they don't love 'em, they probably love to hate 'em...). The Melvins-worshipping Japanese "heavy rock" band that started off in the '90s as an import-only cult fave, and eventually got picked up over here by Southern Lord. The next thing you know, they turned into an unstoppable juggernaut of super limited edition releases and unlikely collaborations, and got BIG. For a while, they were definitely a band that could do no wrong, combining that Melvins-y sludge, and equally Melvins-y weirdness, with their own, innate Japanese "WTF?" aesthetic... In addition they boast the presence of a female singer/guitar player, Wata, who is both cute and talented. And making themselves even more potent proposition, they also recruited noted psychedelic guitar whiz Michio Kurihara (Ghost, White Heaven, Stars) more or less permanently into their ranks.
Yet, in recent years, Boris has also been courting a backlash, the way we see it, as anything hyped to the skies usually does. Those aforementioned ridiculously limited editions have something to do with it... and what can come off as a too ironic attitude to everything... and when we've seen 'em live, well, memo to drummer Atsuo: the gong is cool, but the headset microphone maybe isn't so much.
So, we've been Boris fans for a long long time, and still are, but we'll confess to wondering if it could be said that Boris finally (?) "jumped the shark" with last year's BXI ep, wherein they, oddly enough, teamed up with rock star Ian Astbury of The Cult (who is presumably still "big in Japan"). That disc was probably the first Boris release in history that didn't merit highlight status on our list... but hey, nobody's perfect.
But now, as if rising to the challenge, and/or making said challenge all the harder for themselves, Boris are back with not one but TWO* new albums for new US label Sargent House.
There's Attention Please, which undoubtedly will get a lot of attention, and not just 'cause of the glamor shot of Wata on the cover. She also sings on all the tracks, to this is definitely one for all you Wata fanciers out there! The other one is called Heavy Rocks, not to be confused with the earlier Boris album, that's also titled Heavy Rocks. Huh, what's with that, Boris? Why give two totally different albums the same name? Obviously to invite comparison (and for the record, while we're definitely digging this new purple 2011 one, if we had to choose between 'em, we'd pick the original, orange 2002 Heavy Rocks). Naming an album Heavy Rocks in the first place is a bold move, having two of 'em is just silly. Or ironic. Or something. Brilliant, perhaps. Oh, and this Heavy Rocks features another guest appearance from Ian Astbury, doing backing vocals on the track "Riot Sugar". There's other guests on the album as well: Aaron Turner (Isis, Mamiffer) and Faith Coloccia (Mamiffer), and regular Boris collaborator Kurihara. Heavy friends for Heavy Rocks!
First up, let's talk about Attention Please. Of the two albums, possibly more interesting to us as it's really quite a departure for Boris, plus we've always found Wata to be their most appealing singer anyway. Her delicate vocals are accompanied by some of the band's softest, most mellow material yet. There's acoustic guitars, and electronica elements, and it's all really quite nice. At times dramatic, dancey, dreamy, and/or rockin', one thing it's not is sludgey. Not that it doesn't get loud and noisy at times - shoegazing explosion of "Spoon" could probably have gone on the accompanying Heavy Rocks just as easily. But for the most part, if you didn't know it was Boris, well you wouldn't know it was Boris! The nervously rhythmic "Tokyo Wonder Land", with its stabbing psychedelic guitar sizzle, and glitchy tic-tic-tics of drums and electronics, is the highlight here for us, but we're pretty into the whole disc. Utterly captivating. Wata and Boris sound like they're channelling every dreamy girl fronted band from the nineties and beyond: My Bloody Valentine, Blonde Redhead, Adult, Amp,ÊNoriko Tujiko, and even Grouper, and it works. Hopefully we'll hear more from this incarnation of Boris in the future, with Wata on the mic... we suspect we will! We think open minded Boris fans will indeed like this album - and it just might make 'em a lot of new fans too, who didn't have any idea Boris could or would sound like this.
Then, to Heavy Rocks (2011)... Drop the needle on track one, and you're greeted by a mean, heavy chugging riff, and it almost seems like, hey, they've gone full-on metal here, but that track, "Riot Sugar", becomes more of a howling psych stoner rock song, with hushed vocals. Off to a good start. The next track isn't nearly as heavy, it begins with some jangle, then a tangle of guitar soloing from Kurihara in his Quicksilver/Cippolina mode, there's also more of those hushed vox, and a general loud/soft songwriting dynamic, this track having echoes of both Nirvana and Can! Kinda sounds like something Kurihara's band Stars would do. Track three "GALAXIANS" is a more energetic, uptempo attack, lots of whoops and hollering going on, with thrashing drums, noisy guitar and electronic FX...
And so it goes, the album a mix of race-with-the-devil rockers and much moodier, shoegazey stuff. "Missing Pieces" is an example of the latter, a slow build from quiet ambience to almost Merzbowian jet-engine noise. The two final tracks are well worthy of mention, the penultimate, nearly 13 minute "Aileron" (greatly expanded, and of course heavied up, from the brief acoustic guitar version of the same track found on Attention Please), is another of the shoegazier pieces, super heavy, lumbering and lovely, reminding us a lot of Codeine, then after that there's "Czechoslovakia", at the very end of the album, a brief instrumental thrash metal number with electronic embellishments, sounds like something Circle would do in their NWOFHM mode, pretty killer, but of course we have to assume Boris sorta meant it as a joke, oh well, in any case it unfortunately fades out at 1:35, just as it's really gettin' good... if another five or ten minutes of this song as we imagine it actually existed, and were included here, that would definitely make Heavy Rocks even radder. Who knows, though, maybe it will continue on a forthcoming album entitled, Heavier Rocks?? (Our idea, but Boris you're welcome to it, sounds like something you'd do - well actually probably what Boris would do is release ANOTHER album also called Heavy Rocks.)
Anyway, to wrap up, these two new discs from Boris are both pretty darn good & satisfying overall. And both emblematic of the band's dabbling in an almost alt-pop, quasi-commercial (on their own terms, though!) direction, while staying HEAVY as they wanna be.
*There's actually a 3rd new Boris full-length as well, out in Japan only, the cleverly (?) titled New Album, which includes some of the same songs found on these two domestic US releases, though we'd imagine they're different recordings/versions, Boris being who they are (confusing!).
MPEG Stream: "Attention Please"
MPEG Stream: "Tokyo Wonder Land"
MPEG Stream: "Les Paul Custom '86"

SEIJAKU Mail From FUSHITSUSHA (Doubtmusic) cd 24.00
FUSHITSUSHA! No, that wasn't a sneeze. We're trying to get your attention, if you're into that band, Fushitsusha. Those of us here who are big Keiji Haino fans (and we're talking BIG fans), will readily admit that while we love all of the Tokyo psych shaman-in-shades' multi-instrumental solo outings (including solos for guitar, hurdy gurdy, percussion, and electronics) and various collaborative efforts (with Pan Sonic, KK Null, Boris, Sitaar Tah, Tatsuya Yoshida, Merzbow, etc.), it's really his best-known band, the legendary Fushitsusha, that got us into Keiji in the first place, and that we love the most. Avant-garde, free-rock, garage-psych heaviness taking off from obvious sonic/spiritual '70s inspirations Les Rallizes Denudes into the realms something even more experimental and "outsider", a la the Dead C. Unfortunately for us, Fushitsusha disbanded some years ago. But at long last, we've got these, the simultaneously released TWO debut albums from Haino's new "permanent band", Seijaku. Like Fushitsusha, an improvisational power trio, led by Haino's amped up guitar. He's also on "blues harp" on one of these discs, steel guitar on the other, and of course trademark anguished vocals (or should we borrow the metal term vokills?). Besides Dark Lord Haino, the Seijaku trio consists of Nasuno Mitsuru (Altered States, Korekoyjin, Sanhedolin) on bass, and Ichiraku Yoshimitsu (Acid Mothers Temple, Nishinihon, ISO) on drums.
And yes, the "blues harp" does mean that the idea here is Haino & Co. playing "the blues". Or what the label suggests is a fusion of Delta blues, and Noh theater. But electric, very electric. And, well, Haino sure sounds like he's got the blues, bluer blues than any blues EVER, judging from how his guttural cries sound like each word is being tortuously torn not just from his throat, but from his very soul, as if it's the last thing he's ever going to be able to say, or scream, in this world. A striking contrast to his relatively calm and trad harmonica playing. But quite in keeping with sheets of feedbacky guitar skree, utterly Fushitsusha style, that Haino often unleashes. At other times, his guitar is a chiming, slashing, distorted twang, part of the fractured "blues" vibe, along with the plodding percussion and low end rumble that gives this an apocalyptic atmosphere indeed. Would Robert Johnson recognize this stumbling, staggering, scrabbling music as the blues? Well, he knew about dealing with the devil, right, so the vocals wouldn't faze him, and yeah we think might well appreciate the improvisational and spiritual aspects of the Seijaku sound. But beyond that...
Of the two discs, Mail from FUSHITSUSHA (bless you!) (it really is all caps in the disc's title) is the one that, according the Haino, represents "21st century blues". The title obviously makes the connection clear to Haino's earlier outfit, they're apparently "adhering to the Fushitsusha method", and the back cover credits Haino as the "originator". There's ten tracks, with titles like "Forced To Think You Love" and "Please Send Me A New Heart"... this one has a sheet of lyrics provided, in Japanese though, but we think we might get already have gotten an idea of what Haino is so down about.
Meanwhile, the 2nd of the two discs (by catalog number), You Should Prepare To Survive Through Even Anything Happens, with the whiter/lighter cover, is dedicated to "Albert King, The Doors, and Steppenwolf"! It's meant as Haino's tribute to the SPIRIT (if not exactly the sound) of 20th century blues, and is the one with his occasional harp blowing. It features four (long) tracks, titles include "Keep On Fighting" and "Look Over Here From The Other Side".
While each is a bit different, Mail From... with more short sharp shocks, You Should... stretching out soulfully, rollin' but mostly tumblin' hard, we're pretty certain that if you want one, you'll also want the other! Both come in handsome digipacks, like all Doubtmusic releases, of course.
MPEG Stream: "Forced To Think You Love"
MPEG Stream: "Not Too Bright (#1) "
MPEG Stream: "Humiliation To Be Selected To Come Down From Elsewhere"

URTHONA Urthona 3: Super-Heavy Hamoazian Reverie (Further) cd 13.98
Time once again, we're honored to announce, that we all are enabled to plug directly into the Earth's own Ur-Drone, 'cause we've got the new album from England's Urthona, psychedelic drone warriors heavily inspired, or even empowered, by the mythic natural landscapes of their rural West Country home, a green and pleasant and pagan land...
Previous Urthona missives have all contained long, epic tracks, but this one takes things further, as it's but one single piece, clocking in at 47 minutes, 59 seconds, conceptually concerned with the "elemental cyclic seasons" and patterns of weather in the Southwest of England. "Super-Heavy Hamoazian Reverie" lives up to its title, and you don't even have to know what "Hamoazian" means (The Hamoaze is a stretch of river in Devon and Cornwall, it turns out). There's field recordings from the area's moors and ancient tors woven into/buried under the hazy, echoing guitar distortion, feedback and assorted electronics of the main Urthona dude/druid Neil Mortimer - whose usual amped up, windswept guitar and synthesizer is augmented by more modular synth from prior Urthona collaborator The Asterism, as well as for the first time on an Urthona recording, drums! Though we feel like we've heard some subtle hand percussion on other Urthonas, before. The drums here, though, are more to the fore, when unleashed - while much of this is droning, drifting drumlessness, when they do start pounding the skins, additional krautrocking power is manifested, and maybe it's no surprise that one of the guest drummers here is longtime Urthona associate Julian Cope, who knows a thing or two about ritualistic rock n' roll. The other two (!) drummers are Mr. E from Cope's band Braindonor, and one Albert Snazz. We're beginning to think of the Boredoms, say circa Super Roots 5. And as always, we'll mention Ulan Khol, Keiji Haino, and maybe Neil Young a la Arc.
Cope you may remember once appeared on a SUNNO))) album, spouting pagan poetry... and while this is all-instrumental (they confine the poetry to the text found on the cd's sleeve and its inserts), Urthona could definitely (again) be compared to a pastoral SUNNO))) of sorts. This album is a sometimes blissful, but often blistering, trip, certainly meant to be played LOUD for full submission/submergence. There's feedbacky frenzies and quieter, calmer stretches too... sometimes The Hamoaze is flowing strongly, water roiling, other times it meanders gently, into an estuary with "strange eddies and weird tides", where you could certainly still slip beneath its placid surface and drown, down among the "conger eels and U-boat nets"... we're quoting here from the text that accompanies the cd, which is packaged, as with previous Urthona releases, in a handsome, eco-friendly cardboard tri-fold sleeve, with lovely photos/art, including two card inserts bearing quotations from William Blake and Fredrick Douglass.
MPEG Stream: "Super-Heavy Hamoazian Reverie excerpt 1"
MPEG Stream: "Super-Heavy Hamoazian Reverie excerpt 2"

AKA Hard Beat (Strawberry Rain) cd 16.98
Whoo-hoo! Here's a whole disc (or double lp) of music by a band from that great Those Shocking Shaking Days compilation of Indonesian '70s fuzz/funk/psych/prog we made Record Of The Week not long ago... one of the bands we liked so much we picked 'em for one of the sound samples accompanying our review of that comp. This best-of AKA collection is the first release on the Strawberry Rain label, formed by the very fellow who compiled Those Shocking Shaking Days, to reissue more vintage Indo-rock treasures. We're already salivating at the prospect; with this anthology Strawberry Rain is off to a pretty darn badass beginning. We imagine you'll agree, if you're into the international language of screaming vocals, acid rock guitar, swirling synth, and seriously funky grooves. Hard Beat is aptly titled.
According to the liner notes provided here, AKA started off in East Java, giving wild live performances playing material by such Western artists as James Brown, Jimi Hendrix and Grand Funk Railroad... and listening to this, we'd guess that some Deep Purple was probably part of their repertoire too. Eventually they started writing their own stuff, got signed to a label, and made eleven albums between 1971 and '77, selected songs from which are presented here - including the two tracks comped on TSSD, "Do What You Like" and "Shake Me", along with 12 others (13 on the cd, it's got a bonus track), all of 'em equally awesome, but varied between ants-in-the-pants JB's style funk (including their #1 in Australia hit, "Crazy Joe"), groovy psych-pop, and Purplish heavy rockers... several songs somehow managing to combine all of that, all at once, in fact!
For fans of sundry other purveyors of hairy funk freak rock from around the world, say like Los Dug Dug's, Speed Glue & Shinki, Modulo 1000, Black Merda, Bunalim, Ngozi Family, Juan De La Cruz, etc. Highly recommended; good grief this is good. Here's hoping Strawberry Rain do a Hard Beat volume two someday, though of course there's other bands from Those Shocking Shaking Days we'd like to hear more of too!
Compact disc packaged in gatefold mini-lp style sleeve, the double vinyl also in a gatefold, both limited editions.
MPEG Stream: "Reflecton"
MPEG Stream: "We've Gotta Work It Out"
MPEG Stream: "Cruel Side"
MPEG Stream: "Shake Me"
MPEG Stream: "Skip Away"

STARFUCKERS Ordine '91-'96 (Sometimes Records) cd 15.98
There are very few bands we can think of who have so fully and utterly invented a sound for themselves, sounding like nothing else on earth before, and possibly since. Italy's Starfuckers are such a band. And it's a sound that fascinates us. Unique, true originals. One of our favorite bands (and by "our" we mean us, and anyone who belongs to the secret club of possibly demented Starfuckers lovers). Which goes a long way to explaining why we're making this Record Of The Week, a disc by a band with such incongruous and impolite name, and a perhaps problematic sound as well, for some. This disc consists of a reissue of their best / most definitive albums, 1994's Sinistri, and a never-before-on-cd mini-lp that preceded it, plus other, extra rare tracks. 16 tracks in total, almost 70 minutes of music. Or since it's the Starfuckers, should we say "music"? One definition of music is organized sound, and this stuff is organized in its seeming DIS-organization. Deconstructed music. Counter-intuitive rock n' roll. Genius. Here's what we've said about 'em before, in a review of their final album, 2002's Infinitive Sessions, currently out of print:
"Starfuckers...play an abstract, sparse, and totally unique brand of what they term 'rock concrete', something that kind of sounds like This Heat falling down the stairs, but trying to be really quiet about it. Percussive and full of near-silences, their almost-randomly-improvised-sounding music uses guitar, drums, and electronics to take the 'glitch' aesthetic out of the laptop arena and into that of the live band. It's as if they played 'normal' songs, then removed about 70 percent of the music, and shuffled the remaining sounds around. It's counter-intuitive, disjointed stuff, yet every dissonant chord played on the guitar, every bassy electronic rumble, every drum hit seems to have meaning, unknowable meaning. Attentive listening will reveal compelling rhythms and structures."
Yes, indeed, but that's only part of the story, and why this disc is THEE Starfuckers disc to get, if you're ever gonna get any Starfuckers, and you should. We said they established their own sound, but they built up to it from a more familiar basis. The earlier tracks here demonstrate that, while the Sinistri stuff is the best example of the special qualities of Starfuckers alluded to above.
Those earliest tracks, the first 6 here, come from the band's 1991 mini-lp, Brodo Di Cagne Strategico. They're indicative of the band's roots in all things Stooges-y, being totally badass, driving, dark post-punkish numbers laced with shards of noisy, "out" guitar and free jazz saxophone squall... This is the sort of Starfuckers splooge that our pal JW, now head of the Holy Mountain label, once so succinctly dubbed "Funhausen" (i.e. the Stooges' Funhouse meets experimental composer Karlheinz Stockhausen). Spacemen 3 fans should dig as well. And that avant-garde, Stockhausen side of the equation comes more and more to the fore as this disc progresses...
The Bordo Di Cagne Strategico tracks are followed by two compilation appearances, both "covers". You get their utterly unrecognizable (what did you expect?) version of the Beatles' "Dear Prudence" from a cd that came with Bananafish magazine #11, and also their appropriately monomaniacal take on "Mechanical Man", from a Charles Manson tribute upon which they appeared alongside the likes of Skullflower, Controlled Bleeding, and Eugene Chadbourne, among others. We'd like to think that John Lennon would have dug the Starfuckers (if any Beatle would, Yoko Ono's husband would). Maybe Charlie would too, he's crazy enough.
Then, tracks 9-15 are from Sinistri. The main course. The masterpiece. The Starfuckers aesthetic, fully realized, celebrates 'asynchrony' and minimalism, and that's what you get here. Are you ready? It's a mysterious, compelling soundworld, one that stokes the imagination and seems somehow unassailable in its avant garde gravitas. Serious stuff, but still somehow rock n' roll. In spirit, more than anything else. Anti-rock too (with the slogan printed here: "new music means destruction of ego"). These songs/sounds are quite curious, cryptic... Blats and bursts of chiming, chunking guitar. Blips and bloops of eerie electronics. Sudden percussion, sudden silence. Feedback. Suspenseful rhythmic passages. Much moody rumble and hiss. Bassy detonations, chaotic jumbles of piano. And, crucially, the calm, semi-spoken vocals, deadpan declamations in Italian, like we're being poetically lectured by one of the Starfuckers while the rest of 'em disassemble rock n' roll as we know it. How can we describe the Starfucker's Sinistri further? We don't even understand it. But we love it.
Oh, towards the end, Sinistri's got the Starfuckers "hit single" (as far as we're concerned!), the song "Ordine Pubblico", also released on a Drunken Fish 7" back in the day... harking back to the Brodo Di Cagne material, "Ordine" is a sinister, cyclic, claustrophobic rock song, the brilliant last gasp of their Stooges-ness, hypnotic and handclap driven, with subversive lyrics that go something like this: "Criminale / Comunisti / Vagabondi / Terroristi / Prostitute / Extremisti / grazie / grazie..." You don't need to know Italian to know what he's saying.
That's all followed by Sinistri's final track, "Macrofoneie Ia", which sounds like what might happen in the studio after the musicians had all gone home or passed out, if the machines then started "playing" themselves. Clicks and buzzings, as of patch cords being unplugged, or plugged in. Or, you could say it takes the Starfuckers "Eternal Soundcheck" (a song title of theirs on another album) notion to an extreme, as if you recorded not the soundcheck at a show, but the band just setting up beforehand, in near silence but for when electrical connections are being made. Then, the disc ends with a previously unreleased track from 1996 that certainly wouldn't have been out of place on the original issue of Sinistri.
Hearing Starfuckers for the first time isn't just like hearing music you haven't heard before. It's also like hearing an IDEA of music that you've never had before. And, better yet, listening to Starfuckers for the 100th time, it remains fresh/strange, you still are piecing together the hidden structures of what's going on...
While we said that they sound like no-one else, we HAVE referenced 'em in various reviews, to say that other bands maybe remind us a bit of them, usually due to their fractured and confusional compositional ways... Radian, US Maple, Supersilent, Sim+Otomo, even Tony Tears, have all garnered comparisons by us to Starfuckers for some reason or other, but still none of 'em (and nobody) really does what the Starfuckers do. Or ever will.
If you've never heard Starfuckers, and are at all curious (you should be, if we're doing our job) this is the disc to get, as we said. And even if you are a fan, who already owns the long out of print Sinistri cd, you probably need this anyway for all the other rare tracks included. Record Of The Week? Reissue Of The Year! Well, maybe not for everyone, but those select few who 'get it' will really be grateful. And this, with the inclusion of their earliest, most rockin' material, is the most 'accessible' Starfuckers we could suggest.
Italy's Sometimes Records (who were thrilled that we appreciate the Starfuckers as much as they do), have packaged this with a cd booklet containing everything we could expect in the way of photos, graphics, credits, lyrics, and liner notes... the latter in Italian, though we glean references to the Stooges and Demetrio Stratos of '70s Italian proggers Area, possibly another inspiration to them.
FYI, btw, Holy Mountain will soon be doing a vinyl reissue of the Starfuckers rare 1990 debut lp Metallic Diseases, so watch out for that as well!
MPEG Stream: "Saturazione"
MPEG Stream: "Freddo Cancro Bianco"
MPEG Stream: "Mechanical M."
MPEG Stream: "Derivazione/Attesa"
MPEG Stream: "Mutilati"
MPEG Stream: "Ordine Pubblico"

TORLESSE SUPER GROUP s/t (Rebis) cd 10.98
We've long been fans of New Zealand guitarist Roy Montgomery, his guitar sound so distinctive, able to conjure up whole other worlds with his music, having cut his teeth in legendary groups like Dadamah and Dissolve, it was really as a solo artist where Montgomery finally unleashed his full potential. A sort of reverbed minimalism writ large, Montgomery takes simple melodic phrases, fragments, riffs, even just a few notes, and transforms them into mesmerizing landscapes of sound, hazy and spacey, multitracked expanses of melodic mesmer, his playing fluid and lyrical, all of the edges smoothed out by a battery of deftly employed effects, transforming the guitar into some sort of alien psychedelic sound generator, able to fashion strangely inviting sonic worlds for the listener to explore, and get lost in.
So we were curious to hear this, the oddly named Torlesse Super Group (a reference to some NZ geology apparently), which is (or was, this was actually recorded back in 2004-2007), Montgomery's new group, or duo to be more precise, and finds Montgomery teaming up with Nick Guy, who we had never heard of before, for a strangely haunting, and surprisingly rhythmic bit of hazy, psychedelic, post industrial, dreamlike guitarscapery.
The record opens with the three part, 16 plus minute "Erewhon Sentinel", the first part of which is a super abstract stretch of looped skeletal rhythm, a barely there bit of staggered static, distant melodic swells, twisted flecks of glitchy electronics, eventually a deep low end thrum surfaces, as well as some creepy soundtracky chimes, not to mention some ven creepier bits of distorted crunch, the low end beginning to pulse, all cinematic and a little bit ominous, honestly we would have been happy if this was ALL the record did, but then we would have missed out on part two, which might be our favorite new jam, beginning with more rumbling low end, laced with some cool super distorted melody, the result is very ghostly and otherworldly, and then a beat comes in, a slow, slithery, downtempo skitter, and suddenly this sounds like some post Portishead, post Bowery Electric sort of electronic ambient creep, now THIS definitely could have continued for the rest of the record, hypnotic and low slung, woozy and warped, a sort of subterranean underwater lope, very soundtracky, evokes all sorts of super striking images, rain slicked streets, dark abandoned cities, low lit late night speakeasies. The sound continues to develop, additional melodies, more layers, harmonies, distant lo fi chimes, looped electronic high end squiggles, all drifting on that low thrum and hypnotic shuffle. Part three is something else entirely, sounding like a lo-fi melding of Autechre and Seefeel, a little bit glitchy, but warm and organic, swoonsome and woozy and dreamily looped, wound around some serpentine melodies, and plenty of fuzz and thrum.
Definitely a surprise, if Montgomery is playing guitar over all this, then he's even more of an alchemist than we already thought, cuz nothing here sounds distinctly guitar-like, at least in this opening salvo, all textural and ever shifting timbres, and layered loops, and swirling atmospheres, and propulsive rhythms and dark sonic swirl. It's not until the fourth track, where the guitar finally makes its presence obvious, with Montgomery unfurling a looped bit of repetitive riffage, eventually joined by a super skeletal beat, and then an avalanche of guitars, all buzzy and psychedelic, warm and washed out, creating a heady, hazy sprawl of mesmerizing drone rock shimmer, definitely more reminiscent of past recordings.
The rest of the record plays out in a similar fashion, with Montgomery laying down some spare, sparse guitar, sometimes lacing it with muted feedback, or woozy folky strum, while his partner (we presume) wraps these delicate bits of melody with streaks of glitch, fragmented rhythms, even seeming to add some dub to the sound, letting various elements careen and drift before settling back into their original druggy drift, the sound is super hypnotic, fantastically lysergic and dreamy, the sounds tapping into a psychedelia akin to Spacemen 3, repetitive, cyclical, a core droned out loop, but surrounded by crumbling distortion, sonar like pings, but with Montgomery's melodic reverby strum at its core.
The final track in fact begins with that reverby strum, hear letting a single strum repeat, ring out into the ether, before gradually, various other sounds creep in from the periphery, streaks of pulsing buzz, hushed shimmery swells, it's almost like the dreamiest, prettiest, softest doom ever, which weirdly enough is more like the Montgomery of old than anything else here, it's late night drift off dreamdrone psychedelia, strummy and shimmery, it's not really until about 9 minutes in that some crunch and heft are added to the mix, but subtly, so they don't overwhelm, instead, they just add density, and Montgomery's strummy grows more urgent as well, and added layers of melodic counterpoint and guitar harmonies, only make the sound blossom into something both lush and lovely, crunchy and a little bit dark, before finally fading out into a sweetly melancholic softly psychedelic haze. Gorgeous!
MPEG Stream: "Erewhon Sentinel Number 1"
MPEG Stream: "Erewhon Sentinel Number 2"
MPEG Stream: "Erewhon Sentinel Number 3"
MPEG Stream: "Evening"

BONG Beyond Ancient Space (Ritual Productions) cd 19.98
The return of Bong! We may have had the amazing Live At Roadburn disc to tide us over, but what we were really hankering for was a brand new full length from these UK psychedelic space doom heavies, and we're not and here it is. Beyond Ancient Space is three loooooong tracks, titled "Onward To Perdondaris", "Across The Timestream" and "In The Shadow Of The Towers" respectively, and described on the cd sleeve as 'unsere kosmischen musik', and after a creepy deeply intoned, reverbed spoken word intro, delivered over a glimmery spacescape of twinkle and shimmer, we are suddenly sucked into the strange world of Bong, as massive guitars come cascading down, a plodding ultra heavy doomic lumber, the drums spare and loose, the churning rumble and thrum laced with some sitar like buzz, which is no doubt the Shahi Baaja, an electrified Indian zither / drone harp with typewriter keys, that figures prominently in Bong's sound.
"Onward To Perdondaris" is a sinister creeping crawl, a nearly 25 minute, tranced out buzzing space doom mediation, the guitars not so much riffing as unfurling sheets of rumbling low end, a sprawling layered expanse of thick blackened thrum, a spaced out dirge, the buzzing Shahi Baaja transforming the sound into something exotic and alien, the vocals too, a monk like chant, long low tones, all very mesmerizing and meditative but still heavy and buzzy and droney, like Hawkwind covering SUNNO))), or Ravi Shankar jamming with Earth, or maybe some blurred confusional mix of the two.
"Across The Timestream" is another 25 minute epic, beginning with a crumbling, rumbling bit of corroded guitar buzz, it's not until nearly 3 minutes in that the drums surface, and even then, they're barely there, a skeletal rhythm underpinning the group's smoldering blackdrone, finally, the Shahi Baaja begins to buzz, and the track locks into a mesmerizing, motorik space psych dirge that will carry us through the whole 25 minutes, this is not headbanging music, this is blissed out drug drone music, a zoner cough syrup space rock soundtrack to some serious innerspace exploration, the track does build gradually, growing more intense, but subtly and slowly, they're called Bong for a reason, it's 25 minutes, but it could be 2500, or 2.5, time does not exist, once you're lost in these sounds, time becomes liquid, it's the perfect sonic tranceout, drifting off, alternate plane, next level, ur-drone ur-dirge bliss out.
Finally, there's the nearly 30 minute final movement, "In The Shadow Of The Towers", which begins with a SUNNO))) like riff, all foghorn moan and blurred slo-mo melody, the drums way more up front here, a slow, meandery lope, pounding away, the rumbling guitar a lush backdrop, the cymbal sizzle spilling over, a slow burning space rock dirge, blurred and bleary, hypnotic and lysergic, druggily monochromatic, it's not until about 20 minutes in that things get seriously intense, the drums wild and chaotic, the sound blown out and in the red, a sonic squall climax, that quickly gives way to a smoldering blackened slow fade outro.
Like all the Bongs that have come before, a heady chunk of krautrocky psychedelic dirge-y doom recommended for fans of SUNNO))), Gnod, The Heads, White Hills, Grails, Sylvester Anfang, Electric Wizard, Trollmann Av Ildtoppberg, Monster Magnet, Black Sabbath, Bohren & Der Club Of Gore and their slow and low doom dirge alchemist brethrenÉ
And it's not just us, our customer Glenn was so blown away by the new Bong he felt compelled to send HIS review which is way more succinct than ours:
"Album of the year so far.Ê Absolutely fucking amazing.Ê Imagine if Hawkwind had taken downers rather than acid and you played their albums at 16rpm.Ê A total kosmische trip into another dimension."
Fuck yeah! Bong on!
MPEG Stream: "Onwards To Perdondaris"
MPEG Stream: "Across The Timestream"

PANDEMONIUM Heavy Metal Soldiers + Hole In The Sky + The Kill (Retrospect) 3 x cd 30.00
We're making Pandemonium's Heavy Metal Soldiers our Record Of The Week, but as we mention in the review (reprinted below), we originally wanted to list all three of their just-reissued records together as a bundle, cuz they all rule, so for folks who dig that sort of thing, or are just willing to take the plunge, this right here is a specially priced 3 cd bundle, containing all three of Pandemonium's albums, Heavy Metal Soldiers, Hole In The Sky and The Kill, just add this to your cart and you'll get all three. And you won't be sorry. Worth it for the rad cover paintings alone! Read more about Pandemonium, and their Heavy Metal Soldiers record in particular, below:
The history of music is littered with could have been's and should have been's, and of course what ever happened to's? We all have a favorite band, that for whatever reason never quite made it, or perhaps did make it, but never got nearly as popular as the hundreds and thousands of seemingly less talented bands that did. Unfortunately, it's never just about the music when it comes to critical and commercial success. But it is ONLY about the music when it comes to the joy of creating that music, and the pleasure of listening to it, and the fun of mixtape making, and DJing and all the various other ways we share the music we love. But sadly, that love does not always coincide with the ever important 'right time, right place', and of course, there's so much going on behind and beyond the music. Bands poised for greatness often implode, creative differences, arguments over money, tragic accidents, lack of support from a label, then there's the fickle winds of change, the ever shifting tastes of the public, and well as cultural shifts, be they MTV or grunge or radio or downloads. In some ways, we're lucky, that folks are constantly looking back, and rediscovering music that was overlooked the first time around, or simply giving people a chance to discover something that perhaps happened before they were born, or when they were too young to enjoy it. There's also the regional aspect, there was a time before the internet (did such a time even exist???), where a band could be hugely successful in their hometown, but literally unknown a town or state away.
Back in the eighties, THEE place to be a band, especially a metal band, was Los Angeles. The Sunset Strip. Motley Crue and Poison and glam and hair metal. Los Angeles was the epicenter, and spawned band after band, Guns And Roses, Faster Pussycat, L.A. Guns, Great White, and if you lived in Southern California, there were about a million other bands you could see and hear, all trying to make it big. And bands would come from all over the country, and the world, to Los Angeles, where they could find fame and fortune (oh, and girls and booze and drugs!). Which is precisely what a band of brothers from way up in Alaska did, moved to LA, made a handful of records, achieved moderate success, and then called it quits. That band was Pandemonium, and for us, they were THAT band, the one we were discussing in the first paragraph. A band that looked great, sounded amazing, wrote incredible songs, were ready, willing and able to go for it, who seemed poised for the big time, ready to sign to a major, play stadiums, tour the world, but for whatever reason, it just never really happened for them. And yet, they were always one of our favorite bands of the time. Their three album rank amongst our favorite eighties metal records, so much so, that when Andee and Allan, were planning on starting an eighties metal reissue label, with Pandemonium being one of the first releases (Rogue Male being the other!), Andee even got in touch with the band, and things were in the works, and it looked like it might actually happen, but then alas it did not. But at last, the band DID finally end up reissuing all three on hard rock reissue label Retrospect (who were responsible for that crazy hair metal festival Rocklahoma), and finally, these three records are available again, with new liner notes and even BONUS TRACKS, so after years of playing these records to death, and making tapes for everyone we know, and buying every copy we ever came across used to give to friends, we can now express out undying love for these records, so hooky and heavy, and like we said, some of the best eighties metal records you've probably never heard (or even heard of!).
Initially we wanted to make all three our Record(s) Of The Week, selling them as a bundle, since in our minds, they were sort of one epic collection of songs that we had been listening to all together for the last nearly 30 years, but then we figured we wanted folks who might not be that inclined to check out some obscure eighties hard rock, to give Pandemonium a chance, so we picked the first one, the one that made us lose our minds for these guys in the first place, the catchiest of the bunch, and while the band did get heavier, and less glammy, it's their first record that still might just rank as our favorite of the three, and really how could a record called Heavy Metal Soldiers NOT be our favorite??
Originally released in 1983, Heavy Metal Soldiers, their debut, and their first for Metal Blade, almost immediately catapulted them into the limelight, playing all the L.A. hotspots, with all the cool bands of the time, London, Ratt, Y&T, Bitch, Cirith Ungol, Steeler, Slayer, Warrior, White Sister, Leatherwolf, Great White, Wasp, in fact at one point, Metallica was opening for Pandemonium, which definitely spoke to their bright future. As did the songs, which were amazing! The band fusing the heaviness of '70s bands like Black Sabbath and Budgie with those hard rocking Sunset Strip bands with total pop hooks, a sound that immediately endeared them to the scene, the guys digging their heavy riffing, the girls digging the pop hooks. The title track with its haunting slow build intro, all shuffling snare and low slung bassline, and when it finally kicks in, the main riff is a killer, with a wicked galloping rhythm, and an awesome vocal melody, not to mention a drop dead chorus, which really pretty much describes all their songs, they really were like classic pop songs metal-ed up, heavied up, transformed into something super rocking, and while they looked super glam, their sound wasn't as fluffy and light weight as most of the other glam bands at the time (Poison, etc), and even with this first record, their desire to be heavy still managed to shine through, with the songs definitely striking a perfect balance, "Little Lady Lier" starts off with a woozy classical guitar intro, wreathed in hazy falsetto vox, before a quick build to a super chuggy riff, and more killer vocals, and another bad ass chorus. "The Prey" might be one of our favorites, total power pop in hard rock's clothing, the chorus an awesome slow build with a background vocal hook that will get stuck in your head like crazy. And then of course there's the sprawling apocalyptic epic "Radiation Day", about as doomy as these guys get, the song surprisingly dark, a super dynamic arrangement, and hooks to die for, definitely sounds like this must have been their big live set closer, epic and heavy and dark. And the thing is, even the poppiest jams, often explode into classic old school hard rock jams, with some amazing leads, shredding but also super melodic. And it's not just the guitars, the bass is super busy, and WAY melodic, often adding all sorts of texture and countermelody in the unlikeliest of places. And of course the vocals, super distinctive, powerful and melodic, with a keen sense of melody and arrangement, so much so that the verses are often as catchy as the choruses.
This reissue tacks on a handful of demos and alternate versions, as well as Pandemonium's track from the first Metal Massacre compilation. Also included are liner notes, tracing the history of the band by guitarist David Resch, loads of photos too. And sadly, vocalist Chris Resch passed away in 2007, even as the band was gearing up to maybe record new material. But what a legacy this record, and the other two are to him, his brothers, and the dream that almost was. And the records that were such a huge part of our lives, as a teenager, but also an adult.
Not sure what else to say, for 3 decades we've been listening to these guys, and we have yet to get tired of these songs, in fact the second the reissues showed up, we threw them on and have basically been listening to nothing else since. After all that, do we even have to say it? TOTALLY AND ABSOLUTELY RECOMMENDED! If you dig eighties metal and hard rock, or wonder what a NWOBHM band like Witchfinder General would sound like if they were from LA (via Alaska), this is a no brainer, but if that has never really been your thing, think about giving this record a try anyway, it's just poppy and catchy enough that you might be surprised. Check out the sound samples too, if you're anything like us, you might become equally obsessed.
MPEG Stream: "Heavy Metal Soldiers"
MPEG Stream: "Road I'm Traveling"
MPEG Stream: "The Prey"
MPEG Stream: "Radiation Day"
MPEG Stream: "Eye Of The Storm"
MPEG Stream: "Look Of Death"
MPEG Stream: "Boys In The Bright White Sportscar"
MPEG Stream: "Imprisoned By The Snow"
MPEG Stream: "Your Evil Ways"
MPEG Stream: "Cold Night"
MPEG Stream: "Radar Love"
MPEG Stream: "Snowblind"

ILAIYARAAJA Solla Solla: Maestro Ilaiyaraaja And The Electronic Pop Sound Of Kollywood 1977-1983 (Finders Keepers) cd 15.98
If any album on this week's list is gonna put a smile on your face and spring in your step, this is the one! First off, we love Bollywood stuff to begin with, and then that this was curated by the Finders Keepers / B-Music folks, you know it's gonna be good... And indeed the stuff they've dug up for this compilation is so fantastic, fun, energetic, absurd, over the top, and catchy, yeah it's Bollywood at its best. Well, except that actually to be precise it's KOLLYWOOD not Bollywood, 'cause this is is all music from films produced by the Tamil-language film industry, based not in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) but in the South Indian city of Chenai (formerly Madras), in a neighborhood called Kodambakkam, thus "Kollywood" (and remember, there's also Pakistan's Lollywood too, based in Lahore, and Nollywood in Nigeria...).
In any case, there's 16 tracks here, each more groovy and insane than the last. Furthermore, they're all the work of composer Ilaiyaraaja (meaning, Prince), aka The Maestro, a very creative and hard working fellow indeed, responsible for the scores to over 900 films in his long career!!! Thanks to Finder Keepers, who've selected these gems, sourced from rare 45 rpm singles and such, we're now big fans. Reminds us A LOT of one of our very favorite Bollywood and/or Kollywood collections ever, an all time AQ fave disc in any genre in fact: the long out of print Vijaya Anand "Dance Raja Dance" cd on Luaka Bop from years ago, another amazing batch of songs from South Indian musical cinema.
Solla Solla, like Dance Raja Dance, Dance, is simply irresistible. A lively, genre defying mash up of Eastern and Western, kitschy pop and chaotic exotica, psychedelic sometimes intentionally, sometimes otherwise, full of sudden surprises and sweeping melodies, crazy rhythms, wild vocal outbursts, funky fat synths, big bands doing disco beats... Wow!!
These songs, presumably for whirling, ADD action sequences / dance numbers, often feature quasi-orgasmic murmurs and squeals from the female lead vocalists, giggles and screams as well. Along with plenty of lovely singing, too, of course. And from the men, lots of "Huuh!!" and "Hey!!". Quite bombastic, and ecstatic, and definitely dance-floor DJ fodder for when you really want the party to get goin'. Absolutely delightful!!!
Again, all music composed, produced, and arranged by Ilaiyaraaja. Various veteran "playback singers" like S.P. Balasubrahmanyam and T.M. Soundararajan appear on here. The liner notes by Doug Shipton go into depth about Ilaiyaraaja's career, and plenty of photos/graphics are provided.
FYI, we also have (or can get) this on import vinyl, in two volumes, $24.00 each. Vol.1 contains a bonus track.
MPEG Stream: "Kholapurase Kudasathrivasi (Featuring S.P. Sailaja & Chorus)"
MPEG Stream: "Thanimayil (Featuring Vani Jairam & Chorus)"
MPEG Stream: "Solla Solla (Featuring S.P. Balasubrahmanyam)"
MPEG Stream: "Sorgam Madhuvile (Featuring S.P. Balasubrahmanyam & Chorus)"

GALLHAMMER The End (Peaceville) cd 17.98
This ultra kvlt (and, we must admit, quite kvte!) all-girl Japanese band who play the blackened "metal of death" in a most dirgey and crusty stylee, inspired by (no duh) '80s death/doom pioneers Hellhammer, have returned after 4 years with a new album - titled with some finality The End, though let's hope it ain't. If you're an AQ customer with a pulse, at all into the doomy and dank, you're probably already a Gallhammer fan and are 'adding to cart' as we speak. If at all hesitant, the abysmal buzz and clank of going nowhere not so fast opener "The End" ought to convince you! With that title track out of the way, the Gallhammer gals (now the duo of bassist/vocalist Vivian Slaughter & drummer Risa Reaper, former guitarist Mika Penetrator having left after 2007's Ill Innocence) pick up the pace a bit on the next even more brutal number "Rubbish CG202" (one of several weird, partly numeric song titles on the album, btw), and vary between a flashing stroboscopic throb and molasses creepy crawl throughout this disc, the rhythms more a function of fluctuation in the overlaying distortion field than anything else. The vokills vary too, from rasping guttural anguish to some disturbing yelps (on "Aberration") and even almost actual singing (on "Sober").
The truth is, Gallhammer aren't really so much a metal band, as they are purveyors of nihilistic noise rock, having as much or more in common with the likes of Kevin Drumm, Wolf Eyes, Prurient, Sister Iodine, Aufgehoben No Process, Brainbombs, etc. as they do with the aforementioned Hellhammer, and other old school metal/punk artists whose T-shirts they're often seen wearing, like Amebix. The final cut, the ten+ minute "108=7/T-NA" is perhaps the weirdest, most WTF?, featuring some frightening saxophone textures, played by Ms. Slaughter... but don't worry, this is neither smooth nor jazz!! Just more grinding terror, the end of The End going to the utter extreme of experimental yet primitive doomdrone metal. Damn. We're falling in love with Gallhammer all over again.
MPEG Stream: "The End"
MPEG Stream: "Rubbish CG 202"
MPEG Stream: "Aberration"

PANDEMONIUM Heavy Metal Soldiers (Retrospect) cd 11.98
The history of music is littered with could have been's and should have been's, and of course what ever happened to's? We all have a favorite band, that for whatever reason never quite made it, or perhaps did make it, but never got nearly as popular as the hundreds and thousands of seemingly less talented bands that did. Unfortunately, it's never just about the music when it comes to critical and commercial success. But it is ONLY about the music when it comes to the joy of creating that music, and the pleasure of listening to it, and the fun of mixtape making, and DJing and all the various other ways we share the music we love. But sadly, that love does not always coincide with the ever important 'right time, right place', and of course, there's so much going on behind and beyond the music. Bands poised for greatness often implode, creative differences, arguments over money, tragic accidents, lack of support from a label, then there's the fickle winds of change, the ever shifting tastes of the public, and well as cultural shifts, be they MTV or grunge or radio or downloads. In some ways, we're lucky, that folks are constantly looking back, and rediscovering music that was overlooked the first time around, or simply giving people a chance to discover something that perhaps happened before they were born, or when they were too young to enjoy it. There's also the regional aspect, there was a time before the internet (did such a time even exist???), where a band could be hugely successful in their hometown, but literally unknown a town or state away.
Back in the eighties, THEE place to be a band, especially a metal band, was Los Angeles. The Sunset Strip. Motley Crue and Poison and glam and hair metal. Los Angeles was the epicenter, and spawned band after band, Guns And Roses, Faster Pussycat, L.A. Guns, Great White, and if you lived in Southern California, there were about a million other bands you could see and hear, all trying to make it big. And bands would come from all over the country, and the world, to Los Angeles, where they could find fame and fortune (oh, and girls and booze and drugs!). Which is precisely what a band of brothers from way up in Alaska did, moved to LA, made a handful of records, achieved moderate success, and then called it quits. That band was Pandemonium, and for us, they were THAT band, the one we were discussing in the first paragraph. A band that looked great, sounded amazing, wrote incredible songs, were ready, willing and able to go for it, who seemed poised for the big time, ready to sign to a major, play stadiums, tour the world, but for whatever reason, it just never really happened for them. And yet, they were always one of our favorite bands of the time. Their three albums rank amongst our favorite eighties metal records, so much so, that when Andee and Allan, were planning on starting an eighties metal reissue label, with Pandemonium being one of the first releases (Rogue Male being the other!), Andee even got in touch with the band, and things were in the works, and it looked like it might actually happen, but then alas it did not. But at last, the band DID finally end up reissuing all three on hard rock reissue label Retrospect (who were responsible for that crazy hair metal festival Rocklahoma), and finally, these three records are available again, with new liner notes and even BONUS TRACKS, so after years of playing these records to death, and making tapes for everyone we know, and buying every copy we ever came across used to give to friends, we can now express out undying love for these records, so hooky and heavy, and like we said, some of the best eighties metal records you've probably never heard (or even heard of!).
Initially we wanted to make all three our Record(s) Of The Week, selling them as a bundle, since in our minds, they were sort of one epic collection of songs that we had been listening to all together for the last nearly 30 years, but then we figured we wanted folks who might not be that inclined to check out some obscure eighties hard rock, to give Pandemonium a chance, so we picked the first one, the one that made us lose our minds for these guys in the first place, the catchiest of the bunch, and while the band did get heavier, and less glammy, it's their first record that still might just rank as our favorite of the three, and really how could a record called Heavy Metal Soldiers NOT be our favorite??
Originally released in 1983, Heavy Metal Soldiers, their debut, and their first for Metal Blade, almost immediately catapulted them into the limelight, playing all the L.A. hotspots, with all the cool bands of the time, London, Ratt, Y&T, Bitch, Cirith Ungol, Steeler, Slayer, Warrior, White Sister, Leatherwolf, Great White, Wasp, in fact at one point, Metallica was opening for Pandemonium, which definitely spoke to their bright future. As did the songs, which were amazing! The band fusing the heaviness of '70s bands like Black Sabbath and Budgie with those hard rocking Sunset Strip bands with total pop hooks, a sound that immediately endeared them to the scene, the guys digging their heavy riffing, the girls digging the pop hooks. The title track with its haunting slow build intro, all shuffling snare and low slung bassline, and when it finally kicks in, the main riff is a killer, with a wicked galloping rhythm, and an awesome vocal melody, not to mention a drop dead chorus, which really pretty much describes all their songs, they really were like classic pop songs metal-ed up, heavied up, transformed into something super rocking, and while they looked super glam, their sound wasn't as fluffy and light weight as most of the other glam bands at the time (Poison, etc), and even with this first record, their desire to be heavy still managed to shine through, with the songs definitely striking a perfect balance, "Little Lady Lier" starts off with a woozy classical guitar intro, wreathed in hazy falsetto vox, before a quick build to a super chuggy riff, and more killer vocals, and another bad ass chorus. "The Prey" might be one of our favorites, total power pop in hard rock's clothing, the chorus an awesome slow build with a background vocal hook that will get stuck in your head like crazy. And then of course there's the sprawling apocalyptic epic "Radiation Day", about as doomy as these guys get, the song surprisingly dark, a super dynamic arrangement, and hooks to die for, definitely sounds like this must have been their big live set closer, epic and heavy and dark. And the thing is, even the poppiest jams, often explode into classic old school hard rock jams, with some amazing leads, shredding but also super melodic. And it's not just the guitars, the bass is super busy, and WAY melodic, often adding all sorts of texture and countermelody in the unlikeliest of places. And of course the vocals, super distinctive, powerful and melodic, with a keen sense of melody and arrangement, so much so that the verses are often as catchy as the choruses.
This reissue tacks on a handful of demos and alternate versions, as well as Pandemonium's track from the first Metal Massacre compilation. Also included are liner notes, tracing the history of the band by guitarist David Resch, loads of photos too. And sadly, vocalist Chris Resch passed away in 2007, even as the band was gearing up to maybe record new material. But what a legacy this record, and the other two are to him, his brothers, and the dream that almost was. And the records that were such a huge part of our lives, as a teenager, but also an adult.
Not sure what else to say, for 3 decades we've been listening to these guys, and we have yet to get tired of these songs, in fact the second the reissues showed up, we threw them on and have basically been listening to nothing else since. After all that, do we even have to say it? TOTALLY AND ABSOLUTELY RECOMMENDED! If you dig eighties metal and hard rock, or wonder what a NWOBHM band like Witchfinder General would sound like if they were from LA (via Alaska), this is a no brainer, but if that has never really been your thing, think about giving this record a try anyway, it's just poppy and catchy enough that you might be surprised. Check out the sound samples too, if you're anything like us, you might become equally obsessed.
And for those of you who think you might as well in fact want all three (which should really be ALL of you), look elsewhere on this week's list for a special three-fer bargain, and you'll find sound samples from the other 2 records as well.
MPEG Stream: "Heavy Metal Soldiers"
MPEG Stream: "Road I'm Traveling"
MPEG Stream: "The Prey"
MPEG Stream: "Radiation Day"

GOUDE, JEAN-PHILIPPE Drones (Lion Productions) cd 14.98
Moogs. Magma. Need we say more? All right, we will. This reissued 1980 album is both very Moog-y and very Magmoid. Mostly instrumental, it was the work of classically trained French pianist Jean-Philippe Goude, who was also interested in jazz, rock, and minimalism, and who had played keyboards with the Magma offshoot band Weidorje in the late '70s. So though this is a solo album, he got a lot of help from various heavy friends... usual suspects from the French prog-synth-rock underground, including members of Magma and Heldon (Klaus Blasquiz, Bernard Paganotti, Patrick Gauthier, Richard Pinhas, Francois Auger, and many more, what a lineup!). Thus this fits in snuggly with the Magma-inspired, jazz meets prog "Zeuhl" movement, especially tracks like opener "Les Saturnales" (with Blasquiz on vocals) or the exciting quadruple-guitar heaviness of "Dies Irae". But this is a varied album, and despite all the guests, two tracks feature no one but Goude alone, including the quite strange and effective soundscape piece "Coma". He also does a piano/synth duet with Heldon's Pinhas on the original album's final track "Cantiliene", which has that sort of Romantic, classical vibe we associate with Cluster's Roedelius. We say original album's final track, 'cause this cd reish closes with a bonus cut, the relaxed, loping, rather happy-sounding "Trio Des Mini-Moogs". Another track we should mention is the fantastic "Machine", wherein the melancholic strings of a chamber music quartet are overtaken by bleeping, burbling mad scientist synth and chugging mechanical beats.
The entire album is a delight, being both experimental and avant-garde, AND mesmerically melodic. Like we said, interestingly varied, but always with an aura of refinement, elegance and careful composition. It makes sense that Goude would go on to make a career out of library music and soundtracks for film and television. Indeed, if we understand the liner notes correctly, several of the tracks here were rearranged from pieces Goude had previously written for a pair of privately pressed lps, commissioned for the use of the French national gymnastics federation (???).
You'll find those extensive liner notes, vintage photos, etc. in the cd booklet. Lion has done their usual thorough labor-of-love job here, although this could have used one more round of proofreading, as we noticed a few insignificant typographic errors. The only potentially confusing one, being that the tracklist on the back cover has the songs numbered 1-12, omitting 5 though, as actually there's only 11 tracks... whoops. But other than that minor glitch, this is nicely done, with the original album's retro-futuristic graphics carefully reproduced. Love the neon-looking script for the text!!
Definitely glad they reissued this, having never heard it before, many of us here at AQ are digging it, even the not so Magma obsessed. And while perhaps "warmer" than some French coldwave, fans of that sort of thing should check this out, it certainly has something in common (including personnel) with Bernard Szajner's stuff, for instance.
MPEG Stream: "Machine"
MPEG Stream: "Dies Irae"
MPEG Stream: "Tintinnabulum"

JON AD Mega-Plaskweeebo (Grand Cooley) cassette 6.98
SKWEEE!! DJ Jon AD (who runs the LoDubs and losonofono labels as well as the kick ass Anthem Records store in Portland) claims responsibility for the "first skweee mixed cassette in the known universe". Yep, that's probably correct. Kudos to him, and as skweee connoisseurs ourselves, we can tell you it's a damn fine mix, dense with percolating glitch and electronic future-funk freakiness from some of the best in the biz.
And you're reading this and wondering what the heck this "skweee" is of which we speak, well first off this tape will school you, and secondly, just do a quick search on our site and you'll find reviews of previous skweee comps like Skweee Cruise and Skweee Tooth that should explain it.
Jon wanted to demonstrate that skweee can rock a (dance) party, and definitely succeeds. We like how he mixes in a few ringers - non-skweee, or perhaps we should say pre-skweee (?) tracks by the likes of Boogie Down Productions and the Beastie Boys, to give the listener a sense of skweee's hiphop, b-boy roots. The tape is also crammed, of course, with the work of such Scandinavian skweee luminaries as Limonious, Daniel Savio, Spartan Lover, Mangrove, Uday, Rigas Den Andre, V.C., Randy Barracuda, Slow Hand Motem, Beem, and Joxaren. The new wave of American skweee is represented too, with Portland's Lazercrotch leading off side A...
Over the whole tape, there's nearly 30 individual skweee cuts seamlessly mixed together, in quite a dense and frenzied fashion. Each side of this C-60 cassette was recorded in a single take, with two turntables, mixer, and effects ('cause skweee can always use MORE video game zipps and zapps).
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!! Comes with download code, so you don't actually need a tape deck...
MPEG Stream: "excerpt side A"
MPEG Stream: "excerpt side B"

V/A Fairlights Mallets And Bamboo (Tsukiji) cd-r 6.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We can't remember the last time a compilation so captivated everybody here, but this collection is really something else. A gorgeously compiled cd-r of tracks sourced from Japanese lps circa the years 1980-1986, featuring at least a few names we'd heard, like Yellow Magic Orchestra, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Inoyamo Land, but so so many we hadn't: Mkwaju Ensemble, Yasuaki Shimizu, Seigen Ono, Masahide Sakuma, Geinoh Yamashirogumi, Danceries, Dip In the Pool, we could go on, but we're guessing these are all new to you too. It's a single 74 minute continuous mix, that slips dreamily from synth and percussion minimalism, to mysterious electronic laced rhythms, from new agey krautrock to dreamy clouds of percussive melodies, from playful childlike toy piano melodies to synthy sci-fi drones, haunting electronic flecked Asian ballads to fluttery flute folk, from mesmerizing vibraphone melodies underpinned by haunting drones to loping jazzy almost prog, from hazy washed out kosmische electronics to lush layered chorales and on and on and on.
The tracks are so perfectly combined, and so seamlessly mixed, it almost sounds like it could be the coolest, weirdest record ever by some impossibly brilliant single artist, who somehow crafted one epic sprawling sonic exploration, a series of sounds that manage to be at once warm and familiar, yet also strange and mysterious, strange looped birdsong lays atop distant choir like vocals, and a strangely mechanical rhythm peppered with strange symphonic bursts melts into soaring strings, chamber music devolves into some fantastically dada-ish assemblage of voices and sound effects, thick sitar like buzz underpins deep foghorn like melodies, the vibe strangely melancholic, deep, dense new age swirls hover above a super minimal dripping faucet rhythm, warm, muted melodies unfurl over distant bells and deep reverberating tones, vibraphone melodies are layered atop a groovy, almost jazzy rhythm, and a mournful brass melody before gradually disappearing in a washed out woozy sonic hazeÉ
So fantastic, and so cheap too! Besides being just about the best mix/comp/collection we've heard in forever, odds ar