the black lips and the bucky rage at the glasgow barrowlands

god the heat, that evil heat, seeping bonewards, sapping strength and character with the grim inevitability of christmas.  i’ll keep it short and sweet; that strange bill, those creeping three hours, the unsettling feeling deep down in guts and blood. 

first there was a band, some youngbloods whose intentions were set out in hair.  they’d read the big book of stodgy mid-nineties brit rock.  read it and rewrote it exactly the same just without joined up writing and the sense of ugly purpose.  they were all weller and gallacher and brown.  like a slick karaoke of second hand second hand influences.  they even sang a song about changing the world.  possibly.  the future.  the future is a boot stamping on a human face.  forever.  which is a damned sight preferable to those daft fucking sideburns and cocksure swagger.  are the kids really doing this these days?

third there was a band, some slightylessyoungbloods whose intentions were also set out in hair.   they’d read the big book of slick american nu-ass-rock.  read it and got their stylist to rework it with sponsorship by ghd straighteners.  they were all lostprophets by way of topshop.  like the mighty boosh but not funny.  i’ll be all over you like a nun sandwich.  with three proper blokes on bass guitar drums and two caricatures being all motley crue and shit.  they sang a song about how fucked the kids were in this world.  possibly.  the future.  the future is a converse shoe lightly flicking a hairdressers ankle.  for five minutes.  somebody smacked the singer with a pint.  idiots - both the pinter and the pintee.  are the kids really buying this fakery these days?

then; a random rumble.  you touched my beer.  you spilled my bird.  you look all tight and shiny and i’d like to homoerotically wrestle you about a sweat soaked rubber floor.  at first resembling a two man mosh pit before realisation dawned that two fellas were attempting to knock lumps out of each other.  one guys watch flew off and landed at the feet of one of our party.  she handed it to the soundman so if it was your watch tyson that’s who’s got it.  an appeal from the hair on stage to calm down was (in)appropriate and humorous.  delusions; headlining the farcical new woodstock and a limp bizkit-esque riot going on.  not a brief punch up.  still it kept me amused.  oh and there was a bouncer manning the polite queue at the bar (a fucking queueing system!) and one to prevent people sitting on each other shoulders.  but some roughhousing in the middle of the room?  not a bouncer to be seen.

second there was a band.  those masked bastards the bucky rage.  again.  everywhere i turn there’s a kabuki mask or bandana.  resplendent and imperious with their camouflage kilts and goddam golden anonymity.  i heard one of them’s on the run from cobb county georgia.  i heard one of them’s a wellhung manwhore.  i heard one of them killed a man for touching his stetson.  i heard one of them’s chuck norris.  you heard right son.  they’re all those things and so much more.  you know that feeling when you turn out the lights and you think there’s someone behind you?  well there is, and it’s the bucky rage with fists full of hate and a psychokiller go-go dancer in tow.  how good are they?  well they play link wray’s rumble.  if that don’t tell you all you need to know then you don’t know shit.  so crawl away and die moron.  tonight those good ol’ boys are on fire.  not literally.  although i did suggest some flame based cabaret to get the crowd going.  in the end there were no need for lighter fluid and matches coz the show was so goddamned hellfire hot my crackpipe melted, my meths evaporated and my masacara ran like a whupped dog.  hell yes.  songs about girls and wrestling and freaks and sometimes all three together with big ass electric solos, frenzied jungle drums from a man who looks like if freddie krueger was a worm and a bass sound slicker than a texan dancing girls greasy pole.  and like the blaggards they are, came quickly and left us feeling soiled.  hot damn!

everyone loves a cocksucker.  so the main act, the big cheeses, those enfant terribles of dirty garage rock, those grimy pissing spewing young upstarts the black lips.  it’s best not to believe the shit you read in the press.  there were no fluids (sweat excepted).  there were no fights (earlier wrasslin’ excepted).  what there was was a shitload of lo-fi garage (and it’s not some garage rock revivalist thing) and rock and roll played with a rattling ramshackledness and fucked up but not totally fucked charm.  imagine the rolling stones exile on main street played by punk kids with junk shop electrics.  imagine the sonics but as young men with metal fucking teeth.  imagine the mummies with the most glorious victorian gentlemans mustache.  occasionally psychedelic, swampy and in amongst the noise and hissing and buzzing and missed chords and frantic thrash there’s some big bloody tunes for singing and dancing and fucking and drinking to.  sure it’s grimy occasionally but it’s played with heart and balls and sweat and tears.  as far as i can remember following a weekends exertions and a few beers beforehand they play a lot off the grand new(ish) record good bad not evil, which is a lot less of a wonderfully semi-unhinged mess than previous records, occasionally bordering on wonderfully skewed skuzzy pop.  i heard bad kids’ ode to well being an bratty little bad kid, katrina sounding like a drunk version of seven nation army played all wrong but just right and ah so many tunes go clattering past it’s hard to keep track.  tthe whole gig feels as if it’s teetering on the brink of collapse and just before they run out of momentum and we get bored by their simple(ish) squall they pack up and bugger off.  top drawer stuff.  although i like to keep all the good shit in the bottom drawer.  

oh and the dude with metal teeth on guitar, how he was able to stand up no matter bang out those chords i don’t bloody know.

they’re still on tour:

6th may sheffield the plug

7th may leeds brudenell social club

8th may birmingham club nme at the place i love

9th may cambersands all tomorrow’s parties versus pitchfork

11th may cambridge the junction

12th may oxford academy

13th may bristol thekla

14th may london 100 club      

blogspot / website

vantage point by deus

huzzah.  it’s only taken fourteen years but there’s a new deus album that’s actually alright.  glowing endorsement or what, huh?  

first things first.  way back when in nineteen ninety four they released worst case scenario which managed to combine captain beefheart’s more straightforward growly madness with the velvet underground’s weird pop and the distorto-bombast of what they used to call alt-rock.  it was a cracker of a record - all skewed and crunchy and warm and sad.  i like it.  a lot.  it whispered sweet sensual promises into my ear…

… and ultimately drifted slowly away like a parting lover, leaving me feeling used and soiled.  yeah.  so they followed worst case scenario with a series of respected but occasionally colourless albums that seemed to gradually water down the abstractions and noise in favour of a more wholesome (bog)standard? ‘indie’ feel.  they all had moments but for me were lacking somewhat.  they took some time off (which in portishead terms was about five minutes) to pursue individual interests and came back with pocket revolution which sounded like a band staggering back to their feet.  i feared the worst to be honest.  for all the talk of mingus and zappa they were becoming yawnsome.

so it came as something of a surprise when hearing vantage point that bitter tears of frustration did not immediately follow.  in fact i felt a cheeky grin creep across my gnarled features.  it’s not that it’s spectacular return to form (© david bowie) but it is very listenable.  it’s about as straightforward and mainstream (whatever that means these days) a record as they’ve released.  not quite rem territory but not exactly trout mask replica either.  it sounds all very clean and polished and a bit american, which isn’t a criticism.  it has the feeling of a ‘band’ record instead of a bunch of people pulling in different directions, which might well be a criticism.       

when she comes down kicks things off and initially, worryingly, gratingly, sounds a bit u2-ish but it gets good if you hang in there.  tom barman does a kind of wonderful half-arse rap through the verse.  it’s all brooding and widescreen and cinematic - all the musical clichés used to describe something big and grand ie a bit springsteen, a bit guitary radiohead, a bit stadium.  but not quite.     

they rock out almost politely on oh your god.  not as rough and ready as lets get lost or hotel lounge but it’s rock none the less. 

the guitars are a bit too heavily processed for my liking.  if for some odd reason i had to describe it in one word (some kind of sinister situationist/terrorist scenario perhaps) it’d be anthemic.  and if that makes it sound all manic street preachersey or elbowey, well unfortunately it is.  guy garvey pops up later singing on the vanishing of maria schneider.  it sounds like an elbow song and i just can’t fathom the appeal of elbow.  i can’t differentiate between them and all those other plodding indies.  i’m sure it’s the same band and they just swap beards and rumpled clothes for their appearances on jools holland.  hey ho.

what proves much more interesting is when they wriggle out of these paint by numbers stylings and get down to some proggy krauty rumblings.  the architect, is a robot and slow (featuring karin dreijer andersson from the knife) manage in fifteen minutes to justify the shiny new pennies used to purchase this shiny new disc.  cramming in electronics, beats, loops, samples, chugging propulsive bass and some danceable punk-funk - perhaps a continuing ripple from tom barmans’ foray into the electronic world with magnus.  it sounds like they’ve tried to cram a whole album into these three songs.  and this would be an album i’d do more than kind-of recommend.  these beasts are best played loud and i’d imagine sound spectacular live.  these beasts groove, and frankly i’m not ashamed to use the word groove.   alan gevaert‘s bass is terrific throughout.  in fact it’s the rhythm and percussion that really shine.  so a big up to stéphane misseghers on drums.  big up?  really? 

slow:

so there you have it.  a record of almost two halves.  one continuing to meander down the almost blah strummy folky road.  the other weaving wildly along an altogether more satisfying but dangerous path.

band / purchase

the vaselines ride again (in mono)

curse this goddam property whirlygig i’m stuck on till the weekend.  another non-attendance.  but i’ll plug it since it’s for a good cause.  eugene kelly and frances mckee will be doing a set of vaselines songs tomorrow night at mono.  in glasgow.  not sure if this constitutes a reunion but it’s still more interesting than clearing shit (not literally) out of my loft.  or attic.  depending.  

the vaselines excelled in the whole scruffy skewed pop genre.  see sex sux (amen).  they released only a single cd full of aural gems.  distilled, like a career worth of genius boiled down to about twenty songs.  and twenty years later it still makes me want to pick up a guitar, bash out a few chords, sing occasionally off-key and maybe chuck in some bike horns or squeezebox.  every fey indie kid in cardigan and messy hair owes these guys a living.  not sure if i hate them for that a wee bit.    

rory rides me raw:

so get along to mono tomorrow, thursday 24th april.  see eugene & frances play solo.  see eugene and frances get together with stevie jackson, bob kildea, richard colburn and sarah martin from belle and sebastian to play some vaselines songs.  see emma pollock do her thang as well.  hear readings by alan bissett and hal duncan.  all for only five measly quid on the door eight pm.  all proceeds go to the orphan support project, zomba, malawi.

here’s a nice video.  no kurt to be seen thankfully.

purchase / chemikals

in between words by christopher bissonnette

what this record is not, is fast, okay.  it’s going to require time and patience but it will reward.  if you’re after something immediate and adrenaline-fueled keep on walking.

in between words is christopher bissonnette’s second album for kranky following twothousandandfives periphery, and it occupies much the same sonic territory as this and his multimedia work.  it’s a record that manages some kind of musical synaethesia, evoking mad concrete imagery with every drawn-out smothering hiss and hum, over its six tracks (or movements).

it opens with provenance; drones, splintering into glitchy, fuzzy, crackle and hissy distortion, sounding like planes coasting across some unwavering infinite white/blue horizon.  strings occasionally bleed in and out of this vast orchestral hum.  it’s ambient, built around field recordings, piano and orchestral sounds manipulated, reconstructed and recontextualised into something dense, immersive and emotional.

this idea of betweeness from the album title is a concept which runs through the compositions and it’s hard to discuss one without the other.  i could bring in my impressive knowledge of architecture and talk of interstitial spaces, of gaps and spaces between walls that don’t really exist as part of a building or room.  i could mention the brief black, used to break up programming and adverts on television.  i may even mention the bits that exist between cells or organs and blood vessels in your body.  it’s a theme that’s been explored recently in novels - mark z. danielewski’s house of leaves, steven hall’s unspace in the raw shark texts - but this is the first time i’ve heard it expressed so well, musically.  the sound of silence, the sound between instruments.

a touch of heartbreak continues in this vein uncoiling inside vast abandoned spaces, conjuring up monolithic churches and celestial choirs before sinking back within itself, to the vague retreating plucking of strings.

there is an oppresive air that billows in and out across the fifty minutes.  orffyreus wheel begins with wind hissing through leaves or rain falling and opens out into some decaying factory of suspended, sibilating organ, rattles and snaps, echoing the weights and balances and disequilibrium of the titular perpetual motion machine.  it has the broken thrum of an empty railway platform or reverberating subway tunnel.

tempest is a bit of a change, moving into the abstract; rattling, clanging gamelan bells, muffled textured thuds and what sounds like a metal pipe being scraped across a concrete floor.  it’s a record that reminded me initially of david lynch’s ear for sounds, in particular the eraserhead soundtrack, echoed in the blurb - inspired by the continuous din, the constant low-level hum of urban background noise, interspersed with all manner of mechanically created sounds.  unlike a lot of modern ambient music which has a pastoral, natural vibe to it, in between words creates this feeling of creeping concrete emptiness; the soundtrack to a city falling asleep or waking.

the gloom smeared across the throbbing drone of the colonnade, with it’s bleary piano chords and hushed strings is soon burned away by the surging light of the final track jour et nuit.  it’s a beautiful piece, drifting with intent, shimmering with the haze of a new morning or fading dusk.  wonderful stuff.

if you want a lazy comparison go for a less excitable christian fennesz or kranky labelmates greg davis, a not so formal stars of the lid or keith fullerton whitman.  it deserves your attention, so go listen.  loud.

him / label / purchase

who the hell are the bucky rage?

the bucky rage in naxi sex dwarf cocaine orgy.  read it here.

i warned them.  i did.  they promised me more whores than i could carry when i wrote this last piece… whores and strawberry crack.  what did i get?  not even a shameless goddam plug.  still it was a madbrained experiment to put my drunken mind-eyes into words.  and i think it worked quite well.  but those masked bastards never paid up.

still i swore to jeebus when he saved me from those rabid mongoloid bears intent on savaging my honeysmeared almost-corpse (it’s a long story) that from this day forward, if i lived, i would spend some of my spare time (and there is a fuckload of it) senselessly mumbling about music i like.  praise jeebus!  go on praise him, fuckers.  tied to this monstrous (un)holy deal i cracked with our saviour for providing me with an anti-bear blunderbuss and electric moped, i find myself once again forced to say some nice things about this lot.

it’s always difficult listening to friends bands.  i say friends, i know one of these guys.  and when i say know him (not in the biblical sense) he’s more of a casual acquaintance.  and by casual acquaintance i mean i met him once.  in prison.  where he earned his name - handsome al.  not that i really met him, more hurled a cup of piss at him as the screws dragged him by the hair towards his cell shrieking ‘i never touched her i never touched her i never touched her’.  anyhoo as i said, always difficult listening to their bands.  mainly coz you know chances are they’re going to be shite (bob’s second law of statistical probability states that ninety five percent of all things are) and you’ll have to plaster on that fake fucking smile and compliment through gritted teeth their awesome licks, powerhouse drumming and totally rad singing.  when really you’d rather jam knitting needles as far into your ear canals as yr palsied fingers can push rather than listen to one more turgidly unenthusiastic goddam second.

so it’s a pleasant surprise to find one glittering diamond in the rough, one perfumed hankie floating in a sea of manure.  yes that smelly jewel is indeed the bucky rage.

• wiped out
• vote for jesus
• satin bow
• jesse james

who are they?  well i’ve textually described them before as follows: walking among us like duane eddys’ stillalive ghost…..they appear from somewhere, drifting perhaps from an old seventies gonzo wrestling movie or the works of russ myer with the tits removed…..the surf thrash continues unabated in a brainfucked mélange of guitar wrestling and sexfiend bandidos…..these bastards are your mothers favourite wet dream…..they’re siphoning petrol from your motorvehicle while you babble unwanted inanities into my headspace…..they’re putting things into yr girlfriend and eating all the red smarties…..they play, these ugly thugs, with the faint crunchy tang of handbag-lost cough sweets and of truths not yet told…..they play like the cramps reimagined by swollen glaswegians…..they play like dick dales’ venereal disease-bloated genitals hammering gently against your face…..they play in the manner of gaol house perverts, shower-room bound in hats and crappy t-shirts.

do i stand by these opiumdreamwords?  darned tootin’.  what am i some kind of limp liberal who’ll back down at the first hint of sobriety?  fuck no.  it’s ten thirty in the morning and i’m typing this on a blackberry waiting on the goddam liquor store to open.  gun in hand.

thankfully they’re still maniacally plowing this same furrow (plowing, heh).  still clinging to those foosty old influences that all the right-thinking wrong-folk know to be pure of heart and soiled of soul: cramps, link wray, sonics, stooges, beach boys, b-52’s etfuckingcetera.  battling on against the tide of ugly fashion bands and angular haircuts and singers with fake northern accents attempting some kind of middle class mike leigh social realism for their overproduced ‘indie’ stylings.  fuck all that shit.  i want a goddam performance.  i want masks and exploitation movies.  i want wrestling; sgt slaughter versus hulk hogan versus macho man versus ultimate warrior versus jake the snake.  i want brian wilson’s damaged and addled brain, in a jar, playing psychik skuzzy garage rock to trashy ladies in too tight clothes.  i want them to write a song called surf zombies from hell.  then make the movie.  i want them to dig up tura satana’s corpse and make her star with mark e. smith in a mexican wrestling mask.  i want roger corman to direct.  i want me to write the goddam script and sleep with every russ myer-esque lady i can find to star in the goddam thing.  i want them throwing fireworks into YOUR face and laughing without breaking stride from their distorto-twang.  this dear friends is how the bucky rage make me feel.

they’re working on their third ep.  right now.  buy some shit from them.  they’re always playing in glasgow or thereabouts.  go see them.  say hello.  ask them who’s peepee handsome al fondled for the goddam black lips slot. go on….

2nd may supporting the thanes @ the ark, edinburgh
4th may supporting the black lips @ barrowlands two, glasgow
31st may supporting the amphetameanies @ the basement, annan

theirspace / purchase

last days of radio (lost and found)

 

ah the hidden treasures, lurking dusty behind shelves and in drawers and cupboards and shinyshinyboxes; in dvd cases, wrong cases, suitcases; used as bookmarks, balancing devices and in one case a stand for muppet toys.  all these lovely treats hidden away for me to find as part of some elaborate logistical orwellian nightmare i call moving house.  you know the book house of leaves?  you know the movie cube (and it’s sequels (but not gleaming the cube))?  that’s my spare room.  honest to christ.  still haven’t found my ted leo cd.  have YOU borrowed it?  maybe it didn’t exist in the first place.  anyhow thought i’d share these lost and founds with y’all.  two things to take note of: a) the smog track is probably the best thing bill callahan has recorded b) if you click on the link for edwin starrs website he speaks to you.  from beyond the grave.  scared the shit out of me this afternoon…

1. i did acid with caroline by daniel johnston & jad fair
2. munchausen by no bra
3. haywire by bedhead
4. one less blues by karate
5. gepetto by belly
6. roadrunner by modern lovers
7. do ya think i’m sexy by revolting cocks
8. vessel in vain by smog
9. the matter (of our discussion) by boom bip & nina nastasia
10. war by edwin starr

(previous)

• noise not music
• folk is a dirty word
• good things when short are twice as good
• anger is a gift
• nice song, where d’ya get it?
• it’s the most wonderful time of the year
• i’m so sick of guitars

ted leo and the pharmacists in glasgow 16/04/08

yep.  what it says up there.  at the beat club.  one of a billion new venues rising up like concrete zombies in glasgow.  it’s tomorrow wednesday sixteenth april two thousand and eight.  i will possibly go.  if i don’t someone will have to take my place.  to restore balance you understand.  you sir.  yes you at the back with the mustache and lazy eye.  it’s YOU.  tunes and guitars all round.

gonna try (so should you) but just in case here’s a nice track to earywigg. 

oh and a video:

now move along.  nothing to see here.  oh wait there is…. 

anyway go get a ticket for tomorrow/today/yesterday/whenever the hell you read this.

and the rest of the tour dates:

belfast - tuesday - 04/15/2008 @ auntie annies

glasgow - wednesday - 04/16/2008 @ beat club

leeds - thursday - 04/17/2008 @ the cockpit

nottingham - friday - 04/18/2008 @ the maze

bristol - saturday - 04/19/2008 @ thekla social

london - sunday - 04/20/2008 @ the borderline

leicester - monday - 04/21/2008 @ the charlotte

brighton - tuesday - 04/22/2008 @ barfly

band / label / purchase 

do it! by clinic

do it sounds much like every other clinic album.  fact.  those who might dismiss clinic as one trick ponies are durrbrained dullards.  fact.  see, what clinic have done is hit upon the mystic key, the magic chord, the zen note.  what they do do and have done done is discovered a trick so brainboggling astonishing and a pony so bewitchingly strokeable that none of these criticisms apply.  we’ve all accepted this fact and moved on.  why can’t you, mr haircut sneering in the corner to whatever fleeting ephemera you discovered this morning on myspace, loved by lunchtime, became disinterested by din-dins and now openly loathe on yr fancydan flash based internet installation the very same evening?  i used to think the nme was irritatingly fickle and pointlessly scratchyeyed bitchy but you internet kids are squatting and fidgeting endlessly atop this everchangng ten second pile.

so those masked bastards are back (not to be confused with these masked bastards who’ll make an appearance later this week, check back).  for thirty three minutes and one lonely second anyway.  foisting their organs, motown records, krautrock meets cramps percussion and dubby surfy garagey guitary rock into our eager ears.

the songs of clinic have the eerie, unsettling, mad beauty of an unloved balloon falling high into the sky, string and ribbon trailingtwirling desperately towards the cold earth, lifting ever higher knowing that only an almost sexual exquisite doom awaits.  or is that just me….

well the blurb describes it thus: a summer album, a warped technicolor celebration.  pop music and severe cut-ups going from melody to acid psychosis to acoustic, usually in the same song.

that’ll do pig, that’ll do.

memories kicks things off with a fuzzy guitar, clubfooted drum stomp, mingling with braindamaged brian wilson harmonies while ennio morricone whoos and whrrrrs in the background.  ade blackburn still murmurs and croons and moans as if he’s constantly on the verge of something - tears, laughter, orgasm, psychosis, unconsciousness….

free not free (is actually free with a whole load more b-sides, downloads and video content when you register at the clinic site here) and its belly full of glee is a schizo beast, flitting between dreamy trebly ballad strumming and dirty riffing.  if hawaii and detroit had a bastard musical baby it’d be this track.

before you know it twenty seven and a bit minutes have passed and the final tracks playing.  coda.  it’s chugging organ, oscillating drone noises and oooh ooohs then a bit of fuzzy guitar solo.  maybe some bells.  in fact definitely bells.  church bells.  and lots of the bloody things.

i realise i’ve missed out pretty much most of the album so here it is in bits:

brittle blues, psychedelia (not the lame mika shit), boogie, swampy rockabilly, eerie croon, foghorns, snarling garage rock, rhythm melody noise (my three favourite things), familiarity but not contempt, jive and jazz, tension and release, whispers and acid sneers, the fall and duane eddie, satanic alchemy, olde england, witchy voodoo, carnies, fairgrounds and freaks, mucho melodica and an ear for twisted pop, the velvet underground and screamin jay hawkins, grammy nominations and a spectorish penchant, fear and maracas and masks masks masks.

it’s like the voodoo soundtrack to the best russ myer exploitation film you never saw starring tura satana and a young marlon brando making sex with motorcycle chains.

and if that don’t make sense to you….

clinic are filled with the joyful unease of being licked by a cow.

possibly the best line i’ve ever written.  fact.

the witch (made to measure):

band / label / previewpurchase

supersonic 2008: or how i learned to love festivals again

well this is quite the line-up.  quite the choice selection of cured meats and smoked cheeses indeed.  all the noise, danish wind instruments, distortion, electronickery, kosmische musik and occasional folkiness you can shake a big bloody black-clad stick at.  following all tomorrows parties slow descent into some incestuous groundhog day love-in (the portishead one excepted) and the apparent cancellation of indian summer i’ve plumped for a trip to birmingham this year.  haven’t been before but goddam am i looking forward to it.  the sensual lure of cakes and oxbows tom waits on crack madness is too much.  too much dammit.  i’m off for a lie down, here’s some tracks (unlucky thirteen) i like.  decide.  if you.  need.  this.  quote me when buying your ticket.  i get commission; cakes and crack.  mmmmm…..

solemne triduo by orthodox

a trap for judges by asva

regions of may by noxagt

anita languishing in solitary pleasure jabbing needles into her buttocks by harvey milk

damn mad by pierre bastien          

men not worth their weight in words by beestung lips

fishermans girl by cath & phil tyler

cutting ice to snow by efterklang 

the planks by guapo

fractured skies by parts & labor

simon by oren ambarchi

shrinking moon for you by wooden shjips

child ballad no. 49 by the owl service

live the storm by disfear

this is a hairy beast of a record.

disfear have in recent years been reborn of an unholy triumvirate of genius that is ex-entombed guitarist uffe cederlund, at the gates / great deceiver throatmeister tomas lindberg and hardcore uberproducer slash converge guitarist kurt ballou.  and lo, following an output and line-up over the past sixteen years that could best be described as sporadic they have a new record.

this is balls to the wall stuff.  it’s where motorhead, discharge, entombed and unsane meet to get angry and drunk and misanthropic over beers at some grimy bar in sweden.  get it off is a statement of intent:

they remind me of entombed when they were the greatest fucking band on the planet, when they had the big brass ones to come on stage to the imperial march and live up to john williams’ wagnerian majesty, when they could cover bob dylan and split a single with the new bomb turks.  ahhhh entombed….

anyway d-beat, deathpunk, hardcore, death n roll, whatever.  the meters flickering way beyond the red here.

the big ballou’s cleaned up the sound a smidgen which does not mean that lindbergs’ behemoth roar is anything but unintelligibly focussed like some vocal exocet missile, that the twin guitar assault of uffe and bjorn peterson isn’t as fast and wild and dangerous as a serbian at an anti-kosovan independence riot, that the drums, those goddam propulsing drums don’t rattle along like a fist off your fucking face to some grim cokeaddled 4/4 beat.

maps of war

as straight forward as music gets, particularly in comparison to most of the brainhurtingly complex tech-metal that’s currenty putting me off the metal/hardcore ’scene’.  it’s not pushing the envelope if that’s what yr after.  and if you are what the fuck are you doing listening to this stuff.  get back to coheed and cambria *hahahahaha*.   it’s honest, abrasive and as raw as… as well… a discharge record.

and it’s dedicated to mieszko talarczyk.

label / band / theirspace / purchase usa