My conformist holiday post

I fucking hate Halloween.

(mp3) The Misfits - Halloween
(mp3) Dropkick Murphys - Halloween (Misfits cover)

Songs That Get My Juices Flowing #34

(mp3) Mastodon - Emerald (Thin Lizzy cover)
Available on Remission (limited edition, 2002)

(mp3) MC5 - Skunk (Sonically speaking)
Available on High Time (1971)

(mp3) Bigelf - Crazy
Available on Closer To Doom (1998)

(mp3) Crowbar - The lasting dose
Available on Sonic Excess In Its Purest Form (2001)

(mp3) Mary Beats Jane - Nail me
Available on Locust (1997)

Mastodon album update! Woohoo!

From Mastodon.com:

MASTODON REVEAL NEW ALBUM DETAILSEUROPEAN DATES WITH METALLICA CONFIRMED

Oct 27, 20008 – (Burbank, CA) – Atlanta-based heavy rock masters MASTODON have confirmed details behind their upcoming Reprise Records album scheduled for release in early 2009.

The seven-song strong, 50 minute tour de force entitled CRACK THE SKYE, was recorded at Southern Track Studios in Atlanta and produced/mixed by Brendan O’Brien (Rage Against The Machine, Springsteen, Pearl Jam, AC/DC, etc.).

CRACK THE SKYE follows their massively acclaimed 2006 epic BLOOD MOUNTAIN, which was voted the #9 in Rolling Stone Magazine’s “Top 50 Album’s of 2007” and the #1 album of The Year in Decibel Magazine. Greater accolades were bestowed upon them last year when MASTODON were named “Best Metal Band” in Rolling Stone Magazine’s Annual poll, and “Best Band On The Planet” by the UK’s Kerrang! Magazine.

Tracklisting for CRACK THE SKYE is as follows:

1. Oblivion
2. Divinations
3. Quintessence
4. The Czar
(I) Usurper
(II) Escape
(III) Martyr
(IV) Spiral
5. Ghost of Karelia
6. Crack The Skye
7. The Last Baron

FUCK! YES!

The best album of 2009! You heard it here first!

Metal Bastard's Death Prediction Part 1: Andy Dick

David "Metal Bastard" Snusgrop hereby predicts the mummified corpse of comedian/actor Andy Dick will be found in a shady area of southern California within 12 months.

Plausible causes of death:

1. Annoying someone bigger than him (actually, strike that - someone much smaller than him) and getting beaten into marmalade.
2. His lack of talent smothering him with a pillow.
3. Thinking he can fly during a heavy duty bender and jumping out of a window. To everyone's surprise he can fly, but gets wiped out by a cropduster.

A lament for The Hellacopters 1994-2008

Today The Hellacopters played their last two gigs ever.

I'm not gonna get into the whole history of The Hellacopters (that's what Wikipedia and search engines are for, and if you care enough you'll go do your own investigating anyway), but it's safe to say The Hellacopters had a major impact on my life and my listening to music would be vastly different had it not been for the mighty 'Copters.

They formed in 1994 and I discovered them two years later, the same year their debut LP Supershitty To The Max! was released. I got it for Christmas that year (at the wee age of 15), and I haven't stopped listening to it since.

The album kicked in a huge door, and introduced me to a world of rock music I had no idea existed. I read every interview I could find and made note of every band the members of The Hellacopters said they liked. Within months my shelves were full of New Bomb Turks, The Stooges, Motörhead, MC5, The Dwarves, Powder Monkeys, The Saints, Radio Birdman, The Nomads, Union Carbide Productions and many many others.

The following year Entombed (the band in which The Hellacopters' frontman Nicke Andersson played drums and wrote most of the material) released their forth album to glowing reviews. I didn't know much about Entombed except that they played death metal and I didn't like death metal. But the Hellacopters connection and the fact that nearly all reviews said it sound more like Nicke's "other" band than traditional death metal, made me go out and buy it. And lo and behold, Nicke Andersson had kicked open another door and made me appreciate death metal. And soon thereafter grindcore, black metal and god knows what.

I proceeded to buy every Hellacopters album, and watching the band's evolution was exciting. From the noisy, lo-fi chaos of the first two albums and the early singles, to the cleaned up, professional rock 'n' roll of their subsequent releases, The Hellacopters have over and over again proved just how magical and important rock music can be.

There's a good chance I wouldn't even be as nerdily obsessed with music as I am today without The Hellacopters. Maybe I would have remained just another casual listener, and what a terrifying thought that is.

On this sad, sad day I compiled what I chose to name Metal Bastard's R.I.P. Hellacopters Box Set. The title is a little cumbersome, I know. But I'm not very imaginative, it was the best I could think of. Orginally I was just gonna do one mix, but it was impossible to narrow down the number of songs I wanted to include.

I ended up with 72 tracks (I could have included twice as many tracks, but my Snapdrive account only had 200 mb of space left), and split them up into three volumes. The songs are taken from the albums Supershitty To The Max! (1996), Payin' The Dues (1997), Grande Rock (1999), High Visibility (2000), By The Grace Of God (2002), Rock & Roll Is Dead (2005) and their swansong Head Off (2008).

There's also a healthy dose of cuts from their two rarities compiliations Cream Of The Crap volumes 1 and 2 (2002 and 2004), as well as two tracks from the split EP with The Flaming Sideburns (2001) and a couple of B-sides. If you want to know from which release any given song is taken, the album covers are included in all of these mp3s. They oughta get you on your way.

All in all, over three and a half hours of premium rock 'n' roll.

The first person that tells me I didn't include enough songs from Payin' The Dues gets dickslapped and pistolwhipped.

Disc 1:

1. (Gotta get some action) Now!
2. 24h hell
3. Ain't nothin' to do (Dead Boys cover featuring Blag Dahlia)
4. The devil stole the beat from the Lord
5. Toys and flavors
6. Monkey boy
7. Random riot
8. I only got the shakes
9. The electric index eel
10. On time
11. I want a lip (Nino Tempo cover)
12. No salvation (Turpentines cover)
13. Down on Freestreet
14. Leave it alone
15. No song unheard
16. (It's not a) long way down (featuring Mattias Hellberg)
17. Crimson ballroom
18. Colapso nervioso
19. 1995
20. Her strut (Bob Seger cover)
21. Bring it on home
22. It might mean something to you
23. Gimme shelter (Rolling Stones cover)


Disc 2:

1. Action de grâce
2. Electrocute (Demons cover)
3. All American man (Kiss cover)
4. The exorcist
5. Before the fall
6. A heart without a home
7. A house is not a motel (Love cover)
8. Another turn (Maharajas cover)
9. Welcome to hell
10. All new low
11. Soulseller
12. Dirty women (Black Sabbath cover)
13. Get ready (Smokey Robinson cover)
14. What'd ya do? (Ramones cover)
15. Go easy now
16. I wanna touch
17. I'm in the band
18. Such a blast
19. You're too good (to me baby) (Silky Hargreaves cover)
20. Where the action is
21. Move right out of here
22. It's good but it just ain't right
23. A cross for Cain
24. You left the water running (Otis Redding cover)
25. Time got no time to wait for me


Disc 3:

1. Ghoul school
2. Like no other man
3. Tilt City
4. What are you
5. Bullet (Misfits cover)
6. By the grace of God
7. Make it tonight
8. Paul Stanley
9. Hopeless case of a kid in denial
10. I got a right (Stooges cover)
11. Twist action
12. Born broke
13. Alright already now
14. Whole lot of shakin' in my heart (since I met you) (Smokey Robinson cover)
15. Cold night for alligators (Roky Erickson cover)
16. Pride
17. Venus in force
18. Makes it alright
19. Rescue (Dead Moon cover)
20. 16 with a bullet (featuring Scott Morgan)
21. Truckloads of nothin'
22. Rainy days revisited
23. No angel to lay me away
24. Darling darling (Royal Cream cover)

(zip) Disc 1
(zip) Disc 2
(zip) Disc 3

For fuck's sake, buy all things Hellacopters @ Amazon.com.

P. Dwiddy

Twelve long years since its inception, and still no one has invented a better way to kill 74 seconds.

(mp3) Integrity - Vocal test
Available on Humanity Is The Devil (1996)

The White Zombie boxset is (almost) upon us!

An update from the biggest gathering of retards and misfits the internet has ever seen. Of course they get several facts wrong, but that's expected. Either way, this box set is decidedly spank-worthy and an essential purchase:

WHITE ZOMBIE. The musical horrorshow that mixed dark pop culture with metallic hard rock has been resurrected on the 4-CD/1-DVD box set Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (Geffen/UMe), released November 25, 2008. The CDs bring together for the first time all 64 original studio recordings released by the band led by Rob Zombie during its 1985-1996 career. The DVD offers nine music videos, 10 live performances, and some hidden gems.

Disc One of Let Sleeping Corpses Lie includes all of the tracks released on the New York City band's own Silent Explosion label — the four songs on the 1985 Gods On Voodoo Moon EP, of which only 300 copies were pressed; the two songs on the 1986 Pig Heaven EP, which had only 1,000 made; and the seven on 1987's Psycho-Head Blowout EP, which NIRVANA's Kurt Cobain called one of his favorite albums.

Disc Two encompasses WHITE ZOMBIE's first two full-length albums, 1987's Soul-Crusher, which began on Silent Explosion but was re-released by Caroline Records the following year, and 1989's Make Them Die Slowly.

Disc Three offers the three-selection God Of Thunder EP and the band's 1992 major label debut, La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Vol. 1, which broke the band into the Top 40, earned double platinum and spawned the Best Hard Rock Performance Grammy-nominated Thunder Kiss '65 and Black Sunshine (with Iggy Pop). Also heard is I Am Hell from the soundtrack to the 1993 animated flick The Beavis & Butt-head Experience.

Disc Four opens with Children Of The Grave from a 1994 BLACK SABBATH tribute album and Feed The Gods from that year's Airheads soundtrack album. The centerpiece, however, is 1995's Astro-Creep: 2000, Songs Of Love, Destruction And Other Synthetic Delusions Of The Electric Head, which ranked in the Top 10 for two months, was certified triple platinum and spun off the Modern Rock Top 10, Grammy-nominated More Human Than Human. The 64 Let Sleeping Corpses Lie recordings conclude with 1996 soundtrack contributions to Escape From L.A., Beavis And Butt-head Do America and The Crow: City Of Angels, with its Grammy-nominated cover of the disco hit I'm Your Boogieman.

Among the DVD's videos are those for More Human Than Human, winner of the MTV Video Music Award for Best Hard Rock Video, as well as Thunder Kiss '65, Black Sunshine, Super-Charger Heaven, I'm Your Boogieman and The One. Live performances include Soul-Crusher, Spiderbaby (Yeah Yeah Yeah), I Am Hell and Creature Of The Wheel.

WHITE ZOMBIE officially disbanded in 1998 after the release of the Hellbilly Deluxe, the triple platinum solo debut for Rob Zombie, who has since enjoyed continued success both on record and as a film director with his vision of the dark side.

Let Sleeping Corpses Lie track listing:

Disc 1:

01. Gentleman Junkie
02. King of Souls
03. Tales From the Scarecrowman
04. Cat's Eye Resurrection
05. Pig Heaven
06. Slaughter The Grey
07. Eighty-Eight
08. Fast Jungle
09. Gun Crazy
10. Kick
11. Memphis
12. Magdalene
13. True Crime

Disc 2:

01. Ratmouth
02. Shack of Hate
03. Drowning the Colossus
04. Crow III
05. Die, Zombie, Die
06. Skin
07. Truck On Fire
08. Future-Shock
09. Scumkill
10. Diamond Ass
11. Demonspeed
12. Disaster Blaster
13. Murderworld
14. Revenge
15. Acid Flesh
16. Power Hungry
17. Godslayer

Disc 3:

01. God Of Thunder
02. Love Razor
03. Disaster Blaster 2
04. Welcome to Planet Motherfucker / Psychoholic Slag
05. Knuckle Duster (Radio 1-A)
06. Thunder Kiss '65
07. Black Sunshine
08. Soul-Crusher
09. Cosmic Monsters Inc.
10. Spiderbaby (Yeah-Yeah-Yeah)
11. I Am Legend
12. Knuckle Duster (Radio 2-B)
13. Thrust!
14. One Big Crunch
15. Grindhouse (A Go-Go)
16. Starface
17. Warp Asylum
18. I Am Hell

Disc 4:

01. Children Of The Grave
02. Feed The Gods
03. Electric Head Pt. 1 (The Agony)
04. Super-Charger Heaven
05. Real Solution #9
06. Creature Of The Wheel
07. Electric Head Pt. 2 (The Ecstacy)
08. Grease Paint And Monkey Brains
09. I, Zombie
10. More Human Than Human
11. El Phantasmo and The Chicken-Run Blast-O-Rama
12. Blur The Technicolor
13. Blood, Milk and Sky
14. The One
15. I'm Your Boogieman
16. Ratfinks
17. Suicide Tanks and Cannibal Girls


Disc Five (DVD):

Videos:

01. Thunder Kiss '65
02. Black Sunshine
03. Welcome To Planet Mf
04. Feed The Gods
05. More Human Than Human
06. Super-Charger Heaven
07. Electric Head - Pt. II (The Ecstasy)
08. I'm Your Boogieman
09. The One

Live:

01. Soul-Crusher
02. Spiderbaby (Yeah Yeah Yeah)
03. Thrust!
04. Black Sunshine
05. Cosmic Monsters Inc.
06. Thunder Kiss '65
07. Electric Head - Pt. I (The Agony)
08. I Am Hell
09. Welcome To Planet Mf
10. Creature Of The Wheel

(mp3) White Zombie - Thrust!
(mp3) White Zombie - Feed the gods
(mp3) White Zombie - Creature of the wheel
(mp3) White Zombie - I'm your boogieman

Pre-order Let Sleeping Corpses Lie @ Amazon.com.


Electric Head Pt. 1 and Super-Charger Heaven live in 1995:

Memfis - "The Wind-Up" (2006)

News reached me today that Sweden's Memfis have two new songs up on their MySpace page.

Good news indeed, and the new material sounds great.

No better time to share some shit from their first album, The Wind-Up. Upon its release many compared them to Opeth, but to be honest I hear just as much Burst and Gojira in Memfis' twitchy, labyrinthine prog metal soundscaping. One thing that definitely sets them apart from Opeth is the brevity of the songs - no song on The Wind-Up is longer than 5 minutes.

But what do I know? I couldn't play a guitar lick to save my life, so comparing one band to another is hardly my forté. At least I'm not calling them "metalcore" or "melodic Gothenburg metal" like some morons have.

It might just be the crisp, powerful production that reminds me of Gojira, since Memfis has none of the Morbid Angel influences (some would say Morbid Angel rip-offs) of our favorite frog metal heroes. Yes, frog metal is a ligitimate genre, and Gojira is its master. They slap frog metal like a bitch and piss on it.

It's hard to pick out individual tracks from The Wind-Up, since the album at times feels like one long song broken into eleven tracks. So if you for example think Breathless cuts off in the middle of the song, it doesn't. That's just were it transitions into the next track.

I guess you'll just have to buy the album to get the whole experience. And a wonderful experience it is, from start to finish. And just look at that pretty album cover. That's some slick shit.

I also seem to recall having some of Memfis' demos lying around somewhere. I'll upload those too when (and if) I find them.

(mp3) Memfis - Breathless
(mp3) Memfis - Eternal failure (highly recommended!)
(mp3) Memfis - Save the day

Buy The Wind-Up @ Amazon.com.

The video for The Wind-Up:

Hole - "Live Through This" (1994)

Today I was listening to self-titled 1991 debut album by The Nymphs (their only album by the way, and seeing how brilliant it is I'll probably post about them too in the future) and couldn't help but be reminded of Hole, and by the post I made on this their second album on my old blog, Monkey Bastard's MP3 Blahg, on July 6th last year.

It's nothing special, just one long ass quote. But it's a long ass quote that sure hits the nail on the head. Thanks for expressing what I couldn't, Andrew Michael Parodi. Whoever the hell you are. Take a few minutes to read the whole thing, because he makes many excellent points.

So here it is again, a wee blast from the past for the two of you out there who visited my old blog:

---

Here I was gonna write something about Hole's fantastic 1994 album Live Through This. Luckily, I found this spot-on review on Amazon so I'll just copy and paste to save me the trouble:

It seemed that Live Through This was written specifically to address the tragedy of Kurt Cobain's suicide. Released only about a week after Cobain's death in April of 1994, such a perception was inevitable. It was the perception I had when I turned on MTV one day in early 1994 and saw Courtney dressed as a stripper in torn netted stockings, screaming at the camera, "Go on, take everything!" Over and over, like a chant, like a battle cry, but an odd one, one that called for victimization.

That's that woman everyone hates!' I thought, astonished by her aggressive stance in light of the tragedy of Kurt's death and the resulting hatred hurled toward her. (In 'Courtney Love: Queen of Noise' biographer Melissa Rossi writes that shortly after Kurt's death, Courtney was receiving hate mail from all over the world, some of it addressed simply to, 'Courtney Love, Seattle, Washington.')

It was at that moment that I fell in love with Courtney. I felt she had a right to yell, to scream that everything had been taken from her, so much so that she had become accustomed to it and even started to like it. She seemed like a mythological archetype. And I was very attracted to the notion that a widow, albeit the most notorious rock widow since Yoko Ono, would very publicly and shamelessly share her rage and grief with the world.

Of course, the truth is far more complicated. Live Through This was completed a few months before Kurt Cobain's suicide, and the opening song Violet, where she screams that she wants you to take everything, was actually a response to a letter Courtney Love once received from former flame Billy Corgan, lead singer of The Smashing Pumpkins. He had written to Courtney, 'When you get what you want will you ever want it again?' Courtney promised a response in the form of a song.

Last minute adjustments had to be made to Live Through This so as to not seem disrespectful to Kurt's memory. For example, the last song on the album is identified as Rock Star, when its true title is Olympia. At the time of Kurt's death, the CD inserts and labels had already been printed, but the actual musical tracks on the CDs hadn't. The track Rock Star was thus changed to Olympia, though the inserts remained the same. You see, the real Rock Star song, which is available on any number of bootlegs, is a mockery of the whole notion of being a rock star, containing the lyrics, 'How'd you like to be a rock star? How'd you like to be Nirvana? Barrel of laughs to be Nirvana. Say you'd rather die!' In light of Kurt's recent death, releasing such a song was unthinkable.

Olympia, the song you actually hear on the CD, is about the Riot Grrrl movement that sprung up in Washington state's capital city. Courtney was affiliated with them briefly, but claimed they were too elitist and that in their quest to not conform to society's norms they were ironically creating their own type of conformity, hence the lyrics, 'I went to school in Olympia. And everyone was the same.'

So if Live Through This is not primarily about Kurt, what is it about? Well, in my opinion it is primarily about good music. And the critics agreed. Live Through This was voted best CD of the year by many industry magazines from Rolling Stone to Spin to Village Voice. The success of the album propelled Courtney Love to star status, earning Hole a place on the Lollapalooza tour the following summer, and getting them on the covers of Rolling Stone and Spin. Live Through This went platinum, meaning that Hole was the biggest selling act that year on the Lollapalooza stage.

Sorry if all of this background history seems a little much. It's just that I can't really confront Live Through This without all of this coming to mind. I can't just give a review of the music itself, because Live Through This is an era defining album in my life, an album that has meant a lot to me for years. Shortly after the release of Live Through This, I found out that Courtney was from the city I was living in at the time, Portland, Oregon. I would soon cross paths with people who had known Courtney in her Portland days, even finding that a friend of many years is related to Courtney's friend/enemy Kat B'jelland, co-writer of a track on Live Though This. And I found that Courtney Love's favorite Portland band had been Dharma Bums, a band started by friends of my friends. (Dharma Bums' album Haywire is available on Amazon. In the late 80s Dharma Bums were expected to be the big breakthrough. Instead, it was their opening act that became the breakthrough act of the genre. That opening act, of course, was Nirvana. Courtney Love met Kurt Cobain at a Dharma Bums concert in Portland, at the now closed Satyricon nightclub.) At the time, I got very caught up in the excitement of knowing that people from Oregon, which is usually seen as a cultural backwater, had made an impact on the international music scene. (The picture of a young Courtney on the back of the CD was taken in Marcola, Oregon, which is a suburb of Eugene. Courtney's mother and stepfather moved to the Eugene area at the end of the 1960s and set up some sort of hippie commune.)

Anyway, I hope this review has been of some help to someone. My main goal in this review is to offer more insight into this album than is provided by the official 'Amazon Editorial Review' at the top of this page. I was a bit upset that what is for me a very important album was simply brushed aside as being too much like early Heart and late Joan Jett -- like that's a bad thing anyway. I like Heart and Joan Jett.

---- Andrew Michael Parodi

---

(mp3) Hole - Violet
(mp3) Hole - Jennifer's body (highly recommended!)
(mp3) Hole - Credit in the straight world
(mp3) Hole - Softer, softest

Buy Live Through This @ Amazon.com.

Those were the days

Ah yes... Those were the days indeed.

I saw an ent today

He told me Death Magnetic was the best album of the year. I said it's a really, really good album, but it doesn't beat Opeth's Watershed.

He didn't say anything else after that.

(mp3) Howard Shore - Treebeard

Witchery - "Symphony For The Devil" (2001)

Fun, stupid thrash.

Not fun and stupid thrash as in "Municipal Waste", more like fun and stupid thrash as in "We have a singer who looks like a cross between Dani Filth and a douche nozzle and it's on purpose, wink wink".

Featuring (among others) Jensen from The Haunted on guitar and Martin Axenrot from Opeth on teh dwums. Good shit.

Dani Filth or douche nozzle?
As soon as I figure out the
difference, I'll let you know.

(mp3) Witchery - The storm (highly recommended!)
(mp3) Witchery - Wicked
(mp3) Witchery - The one within

Buy Symphony For The Devil @ Amazon.com.

V/A - "Sub Pop 300" (2008)

1986: Sub Pop releases the Sub Pop 100 compilation.

1988: Sub Pop 200 is released.

2008: Mojo Magazine does a big special of the Seattle scene past, present and future, and includes the third compilation in this series. Entitled Sub Pop 300. Brainstormed!

Yeah, so some of this is hardly metal. But it's Sub Pop, that's good enough for everyone. Including you.

1) Green River - This town
2) Mudhoney - Sweet young thing ain't sweet no more
3) Tad - Wood goblins
4) L7 - Shove
5) Screaming Trees - Change has come
6) Afghan Whigs - Retarded
7) Red Red Meat - Braindead
8) Eric Matthews - Fanfare
9) Iron & Wine - Southern anthem
10) The Shins - New slang
11) The Postal Service - Such great heights
12) Kelley Stoltz - The sun comes through
13) Flight Of The Concordes - Bowie
14) Pissed Jeans - Caught licking leather
15) No Age - Eraser

(zip) Sub Pop 300

Songs That Get My Juices Flowing #33 (with apologies to BigFuckingJon)

(mp3) Taint - Days of the basilisk
Available on Split w. Blacke Eye Riot (2003)

(mp3) Charger - Cult vs. cunt
Available on Spill Your Guts (2007)

(mp3) Black Eye Riot - The cunt
Available on Split w. Taint (2003)

(mp3) Chickenhawk - Kerosene
Available on God Helmet (2008)

(mp3) The Mirimar Disaster - Control.Alter.Delete
Available on Volumes (2008)

Volkspolizei - "Neue Schwedische Härte" (2008)

This is a band I can't claim to know much about. They have a bio on their MySpace page, but I'll praise George W. Bush before I believe a word of it. The same page (as well as the title of this album) claims them to be Swedish, despite all the German they toss around. Your guess is as good as mine.

I was first contacted by them about a year and a half ago when I worked on my old blog, and was asked if I'd write a post about them.

Their instrumental noise didn't exactly fit that blog, so I declined. I downloaded some of their songs though, and have posted them here in the past (in the "Juices Flowing" posts). Last month I got another email, saying they have a new album out and will I write about it. I gave it a listen and... Yeah what the fuck. Why not?

Although not knowing what to expect, and having only heard a handful of their tracks in the past, Neue Schwedische Härte left me a little confused.

The half of the album sounded sort of as I anticipated (lo fidelity digital noise that cracks your speakers), while the other half was more ambient and moody. Reminded me vaguely of the strange tracks on David Bowie's Berlin-albums, or perhaps Radiohead's Threefingers, with a little bit of Lustmord thrown in. Still very lo fi and with that distorted twist though.

I found this half to be infinitely more interesting and spooky than the noisy stuff which works just fine in small doses, but gets old pretty quick. The only track on the first half I cared about was Ich Liebe Dich because it samples the old Joakim Thåström song of the same name.

If this new ambienty, minimalist thing is an indication of where this band will take their music in the future, I'm definitely keeping my eyes open.

I'm fucked at German, any krauts out there who feel like translating these song titles?

(mp3) Volkspolizei - Ich liebe dich
(mp3) Volkspolizei - Die ränder (das leben ist nicht kurz) (highly recommended!)
(mp3) Volkspolizei - Wo aufklärung genuss trifft

Volkspolizei @ MySpace.

Super$hit 666 - "S/t" (EP, 1999)

O supergroups, benevolent supergroups... O how I love thee.

Super$hit 666 = Ginger from The Wildhearts, Nicke from The Hellacopters and Dregen from Backyard Babies.

How luscious. How beautifully wonderous. How divine. What glorious fucking racket.

(mp3) Super$hit 666 - Wire out
(mp3) Super$hit 666 - Crank it up (highly recommended!)

Buy S/t @ Amazon.com.

For fuck's sake, America

Srsly.

Mia Zapata 1965-1993

You may know the tragic story of Mia Zapata, lead singer of The Gits. If not, you should go to Wiki and read up on it. I still haven't seen the movie about The Gits that was made a while back, but I'm aching to.

In honor of Mia, here's my three favorite Gits tracks:

(mp3) The Gits - Here's to your fuck (highly recommended!)
(mp3) The Gits - Second skin (highly recommended!)
(mp3) The Gits - Absynthe (highly recommended!)

Trailer for The Gits movie:


Buy all things Gits @ Amazon.com.

While we're at it, here's some more awesome early 90's Pacific North Western rockage:

(mp3) Pond - Rock collection
(mp3) The Supersuckers - Coattale rider
(mp3) Mudhoney - Dicks hate the police

Links And Ass Shakes

Lo-Res Viscera offers Obituary's classic Slowly We Rot.

T.U.B.E. offers a Black Sabbath show from 1975.

Digital Meltdown has not one, not two, but three entries on H.P. Lovecraft audio books.

While not metal in any sort of way, Time Has Told Me has the brilliant 1970 Michael Chapman album Fully Qualified Survivor. Stunningly beautiful album. In fact, all of Time Has Told Me is amazing. The list of great shit I've downloaded from there reach from here to hell.

World Of Soundtrack has the music from the cult film Airheads.

A Day Without A Record shows good taste by praising Slint's masterpiece Spiderland.

And the best saved for last:

An awesome Thin Lizzy show from 1977 over at Captain's Dead.

Death Breath - "Let It Stink" (EP, 2007)

I said everything there is to say about Death Breath in the post I did on their album Stinking Up The Night. So I'll just quote myself:

The story of Death Breath (extremely short version):

Nicke Andersson, years after leaving the drum stool in Entombed in 1997, decided he wants to play drums in an old school 80's style punky death metal band.

He gets together with some dude (Robert Pehrsson, vocals/guitar), and they make a single, then this album.

They invite Repulsion singer Scott Carlson to sing on some tracks. Former Entombed bassist/former Grave singer Jörgen Sandström also sang on a couple. The Let It Stink ep was released the following year.

Okay, that's it. Pretty short.

http://metalbastard.blogspot.com/2008/08/death-breath-stinking-up-night-2006.html

Well said, David. Why thank you, David. You're welcome, David.

(mp3) Death Breath - Giving head to the dead (highly recommended!)
(mp3) Death Breath - Maimed and slaughtered (Discharge cover)

Buy Let It Stink @ Amazon.com.

Dropkick Murphys - "Sing Loud, Sing Proud" (2001)

On this their third album, Celtic Boston sort of-Irish folk rock punk dudes changed their line up a bit.

Original guitarist and founding member Rick Barton took a hike, and was replaced by not only a new guitarist, but two of them. They also added a dude on tin whistle & mandolin and stuff, as well as the legendary Spicey McHaggis on bagpipes.

The result? Dropkick Murphys' magnum opus, that's what. People always tend to think the follow up, 2003's Blackout, is the best Dropkick Murphys album. Those people are drunk. Don't pay any attention to them.

I worship everything DM has ever done, but this is the one where everything clicked; this album has the best songs, the best production, the best party atmosphere, the best shout-along choruses, the best everything. On the albums before and after this one the combination punk vs. Irish folk music has always tipped over in either direction. Not so here, the two styles mix perfectly.

This album rules. Rules, rules, rules. It's the kind of album that makes you wish you were Irish. Or at least from Boston.

Or at least any sort of Celtic affiliation so you wouldn't feel like such a tool when you stumble around with a scally cap on St. Patrick's Day with green beer on your shirt.

(mp3) Dropkick Murphys - For Boston (highly recommended!)
(mp3) Dropkick Murphys - Heroes from out past (highly recommended!)
(mp3) Dropkick Murphys - The gauntlet (highly recommended!)

The Gauntlet live in 2002:

Buy Sing Loud Sing Proud @ Amazon.com.

Songs That Get My Juices Flowing #32

(mp3) The Hellacopters - It might mean something to you
Available on Rock & Roll Is Dead (U.S. version, 2006)

(mp3) Foo Fighters - F.F.L.
Available on Five Songs And A Cover (ep, 2005)

(mp3) Masters Of Reality - Take a shot at the clown
Available on Welcome To The Western Lodge (1999)

(mp3) Thin Lizzy - The rocker
Available on Vagabonds Of The Western World (1973)

(mp3) The Scorpions - Send me an angel
Available on Crazy World (1990)

Breach - "It's Me God" (1997)

Breach started as a pretty uninteresting hardcore band, of a kind typical to the region (Sweden) and the time (early-mid 90s). Not bad, but nothing to get worked up about. Sweden was full to the brim of hardcore bands back then and nothing about Breach made them stand out.

It wasn't until they enlisted Fireside guitarist Pelle Gunnerfeldt as a producer that they achieved the noisy, rattly sound that become their trademark. I recall a review of this album in Stereo Magazine (short-lived music mag, but it's was fucking ace) that described it as sounding like an old rusty V8 running at 200 mph without oil. Pretty dead on, actually.

Breach split up in 2001 and has since gained a reputation similar to that of Refused. They're seen as pioneers within their genre, and no one has been able to top them since. Unlike Refused though, Breach reunited for once last gig in 2007.

Why is it people only realise how good bands are after they split up?

(mp3) Breach - Clot (highly recommended!)
(mp3) Breach - Centre (highly recommended!)
(mp3) Breach - Replenish the empty (highly recommended!)

The video for Replenish The Empty:

Buy It's Me God @ Amazon.com.

Pearl Jam - "Trinaural" (2003)

I absolutely love Pearl Jam and every album they've put out.

However, one or two of them have been a bit... uneven. Binaural (2000) and Riot Act (2002) come to mind.

But it's not a question of the band hitting a creative slump every now and then. No no. Looking into the studio outtakes it seems as though the band simply picked the wrong tracks for the album, leaving some of the best songs off.

So in 2003 I removed the less-than-great songs on Binaural (the three shallow punky opening tracks for example... What the fuck was up with that?) and replaced them with the outtakes on the rarities compilation Lost Dogs (2003) and burned a cd with my own version of Binaural. Very simple. I also moved the last couple of tracks around to make the huge epic, anthemic Sleight Of Hand the final track.

So instead of a so-so album with potential, you get is an album that's just as good as anything they've ever released. I dare say that Trinaural (see what I did there?) is the best Pearl Jam album since Vitalogy (1994). But then again, I worship No Code (1996) and the underrated Yield (1998) as well...

Aw fuck, I can't make up my mind. All Pearl Jam albums are essential listening in their own way.

Either way, I don't think I've listened to the "real" Binaural album since I made this version. No reason. Trinaural is just that good.

Fucking hell, I'm a genius. I should get an award.

(zip) Pearl Jam - Trinaural (45 mb)

1. Sad
2. Hitchhiker
3. Light years
4. Nothing as it seems
5. Thin air
6. In the moonlight
7. Insignificance
8. Of the girl
9. Education
10. Fatal
11. Sweet lew
12. Soon forget
13. Sleight of hand

Buy Binaural and Lost Dogs @ Amazon.com.

Deftones - "Around The Fur" (1997)

During the course of the last eleven months of posting on this blog, 1997 has been shaping up to be a damn good year in music. I have no idea why, and I offer no theories. Just one of those coincidences that struck me just now.

Anywho, this was Deftones' second album, a major improvement from the first one (at least productionwise), although their greatest moment was still ahead of them - White Pony from 2000 is better than this one in my opinion.

Many Deftones fans regard this as the best one, and they are completely wrong. But being the second best Deftones album isn't too shabby either. Their new album Eros Ramazotti will be out soon, and it might be good. I'm not that eager to check it out to be honest.

Apart from the singles I haven't anything from their last two albums either. Dunno why, I guess I've just moved on. But between '97 and '00 Deftones were the shit!

(mp3) Deftones - Mascara
(mp3) Deftones - Be quiet and drive (far away)
(mp3) Deftones - Lotion (highly recommended!)

Buy Around The Fur @ Amazon.com.

Songs That Get My Juices Flowing #31

(mp3) Dismember - Europa burns
Available on S/t (2008)

(mp3) Mustasch - Double nature
Available on Latest Version Of The Truth (2007)

(mp3) Machine Head - Alcoholocaust
Available on The Burning Red (limited edition, 1999)

(mp3) Death - Mutilation
Available on Scream Bloody Gore (1987)

(mp3) Dio - Holy diver
Available on Holy Diver (1983)