Definitely buy this record. But whatever you do, for chrissakes, SKIP THE FIRST TRACK. At least for now. Both Allan and Andee had written this band off completely, having only made it about 2 minutes into the first song, which is sort of limp wristed, east village, white dude soul brother, Beck meets the Velvet Underground with saxophone bouncy call and response lite rock. Ugh. It makes morse sense in the context of the record. Sort of. First, skip to track two and prepare to be blown away. A totally stoned, seventies metal groove with flanged fuzz guitar, playing that sort of riff that you just can't help bob your head and rock out too. And then there's the vocals, sort of Queens Of The Stoneage rasp mixed with Palace style falsetto warble. The whole thing is perfect, like it's 1975, and you're high as a kite, sitting in the corner of a filthy Village squat, and the band playing is just blowing your fucking mind. Flares and frizzy long hair and probably even a smoke machine. Either that or the room is full of smoke already anyway. The next track is just as good. A funky boppy bass groove, that just sort of shimmies lazily for a few minutes, with minimal vocals ("uh huh....uh huh huh") and simple drumming, Until a truly Zeppelin worthy riff drops, with weird soulstyle vocals, male vs. female, hard to explain but they just sound perfect. And evoke that weird seventies burnout, White Panther metal vibe. Strangely, the rest of the record sort of drifts off in all directions, Bowie-ish glam rock, moody folky ballads, drum heavy Santana-ish psych rock, slow and moody prog rock, and almost Eagles-ish country, which is just about when that first track starts to make at least a little more sense. A little. Although we do find ourselves playing track 2 and 3 over and over and over, the whole record has really grown on us. Had this just been a 7" with those two tracks, it would have been the single of the year. SINGLE OF THE CENTURY! But as it is, it's just a big ol' beautifully druggy, slightly schizophrenic seventies style hard rock, rhythm and soul record that just happens to contain two of the heaviest grooves in recent memory!
Way back before Black Oak Arkansas became the wild, liquored up, Southern fried hard rocking musical party we all know and love, and well before James Mangrum strapped on a washboard and transformed into wild Jim Dandy, the ringmaster of the BOA traveling sideshow, there was a little band called the Knowbody Else, who barely hinted at what was to come.
Instead, the sound of the Knowbody Else, essentially the proto Black Oak, is more more laid back and groovy, druggy and stoney, lots of twang and jangle, the drums loping and lazy, lots of slippery slide, and Dandy's, er, Mangrum's vocals are awesome, scratchy and rough, a throaty ragged croon, melodious but still raw, a bit wild and slightly unhinged, like a cross between the guy from Nazareth and the guy from The Monks, basically even though he's super young, he sounds like some crazy old man with a beard fronting a hippie rock combo, which isn't all that far off, minus the old bit.
The opening track is so great, a killer hook, weirdo lyrics about candy bars, some awesome lightning fast slide guitar leads, lots of twang, and a killer shuffling swing rhythm, plus a wicked hook that sticks fast in your head and is damn difficult to get out.
The rest of the record follows the same sort of sonic path, groovy sixties hippie rock, a little like the Allman Brothers meets the Grateful Dead mixed with a little Canned Heat maybe, guitars unfurling dreamily, muted tribal percussion, some flute flutters in the background, warm warbling organ swells, gentle minor key strum, slide guitar melodies, soft swirling twang, occasional bursts of wild lead guitar, it sounds like we're describing some super limited freek folk cd-r, and folks who are into that stuff should definitely check this out, but for the most part, the Knowbody Else is dark and doleful country rock, most of it sounding like just a guy and his guitar, or maybe at the most a couple folks, not the massive outfit pictured on the cover. The songs though are slightly off kilter, a bit trippy and weirdly mysterious, the unique vocals and brooding moodiness, turning the music into something much more 'out there and dark' than most of the stuff from that era. Minus the first track, which is just a killer Southern rock jam!!
It's not hard to imagine, walking down some long stretch of buckling asphalt, nothing but fields and cows in every direction, stumbling upon some old dilapidated roadhouse, pushing open the door, dark inside, except for the dim lights from behind the bar, and the stage against the back wall, filled with a bunch of shirtless longhairs, kicking out these mellow jams. Awesome.
But then there are the bonus tracks from a few years latter, which feature Tommy Aldridge on the drums, who would go on to drum for Ozzy, Whitesnake and Pat Travers, and sound WAY more like the Black Oak we're used to, big heavy proto hard rock party grooves, heavy blues, with crunchy guitars, and big beats, the first of the two bonus tracks is a killer, sounding even more like Nazareth, or maybe Blackfoot, with some super heavy guitar, and Dandy's wailing vox. The second bonus track, titled "Jim Dandy" is a bit cheesy and is sort of skippable, but that first one definitely has us hankering for more of the BOA heavy stuff!
Comes in one of those weird new fangled rounded corner style cd cases, and while they last, includes a button and a patch for your fringed leather vest!
Doom metal bands aren't exactly uncommon these days - which is a good thing, as we can remember when there were only like five or six of them, really! - but we know that I Hate Records can be counted on to bring us the best. Also, this band, Italy's Black Oath, we already were familiar with due to an earlier, self-titled cdep that we never could get enough of to list (though we might still have a copy or two in stock if you ask). We liked that, and we like this. What's not to like? Ultra heavy, fuzzy guitar chords surge solemnly forth like black rays from some sub-Hell, weighty riffs churn and crunch, with mournful, melodic vocal lamentations rising up over it all. Black Oath incorporate additional church organ atmospherics as well, adding to the idea that doom metal monks are making this music (and also giving us a suggestion of '70s prog a la Jacula). The album is strong throughout, coming to an epic close with the eleven minute title track, that manages, within the confines of their monkish aesthetic, to really "rock out" at the end, while also bringing in rainstorm sounds and classical strings.
Most simply put, Black Oath manifest themselves like sludgier version of Candlemass, with plenty of Italy's occult metal tradition (Jacula, Death SS/Paul Chain, Black Hole, and AQ fave Tony Tears) prominent in the mix as well. This sombre, majestic album ought to find favor with fans of the aforementioned, also Griftegard, The Wounded Kings, Fall Of The Idols, Thunderstorm, and maybe Moss too, though this isn't so "ultra" doom as the latter. A delectable, despairing dose for all discerning doom hounds.
This Montreal quartet gets its inspiration from traditional European Jewish music. But this is not schlocky watered down bar-mitzvah klezmer. Instead, it's a really nice melding of Jewish folk music, klezmer, and an appropriate amount of darkness in its solemn delivery. With touches of free jazz and post rock up their sleeves they tastefully bring the sounds of traditional Jewish music to a modern place without resorting to cliched samples or overtly electronic cop outs that scream 'hey we're so modern'. At times they almost sound like if The Dirty Three were from the old world and had a direct line to a vast and varied Jewish heritage. Black Ox Orchestar stay true to the roots they're paying homage to while also breathing new life into an old sound. Very nice.
From Constellation, the label that brought us Godspeed You Black Emperor! and Silver Mt Zion, among others, comes the Black Ox Orkestar. But this Montreal group (with membership ties to the abovementioned bands I believe) isn't about epic post-rock. Rather, they specialize in music from the Old Country: Eastern European Jewish folk music interpreted with respect and youthful energy. Some of these tunes are stately, heavy with the weight of ancient tradition, some are swirling, passionate and outspoken. Unconstrained by klezmer orthodoxy, they draw on appropriate eclectic influences (Greek, Middle Eastern and Gypsy music) but don't attempt to hybridize with anything Godspeed-like either. If you like Davka, or Hala Strana, or suchlike, check this out.
We've got a couple copies of this lp, released last year on Dangerous Age, a new label run by John Elliott of Emeralds. Black Past is one guy from Cleveland, putting his synths to use to live out some dark kosmische krauty motorcycle groove fantasies (the alternative title for this is "A Soundtrack for a Deranged Motorcyclist"). Drums and guitars etc. are also employed for these minimal motorik one man jams. Simple but effective, repetitive and hypnotic. Limited to 300 copies, vinyl-only.
The debut from Bay Area indie rock foursome The Black Plastics reveals something of a split personality. The band jumps back and forth between two distinct styles -- ramshackle lilting jangly post-rock songs and much more angstful, harder edged numbers. The former brings to mind bands such as Modest Mouse or Built To Spill, whereas the latter is more akin to Unwound, Cursive or Doug Martsch's pre-B.T.S. band Treepeople. Perhaps there's two different members handling the songwriting duties? Can't really tell from the liner notes as all the songs are credited to the band as a whole. Nonetheless, they execute both styles with ease, making for quite an enjoyable listen. One thing we do know though is that this album was recorded by the more than capable folks at indie rock studio heaven Tiny Telephone Studios. Way to go!
Most long time readers of the aQ list are familiar with the stumbling weirdo surf guitar flecked outsider black metal of the German horde Varghkoghargasmal, whose peculiar brand of 'wooden metal' was a huge hit around here. So much so that our very own Andee released Varghkoghargasmal's Drowned In Lakes on his tUMULt label. Varghkoghargasmal mainman Avenger has more up his sonic sleeve, including not one, but two other projects on this week's list, one of which is this twisted blackened duo, appropriately monikered Black Priest Of Satan, which finds Avenger teamed up with the also awesomely named Molestor Kadotus, the two conjuring up a sound that's not all that far removed from Varghkoghargasmal actually. The drums are murky and stumbly, the guitars fuzzed out, the whole sound is loose, off kilter and home brewed, some seriously raw primitive satanic black doom, which is only further twisted by the crazed vocals, multiple vocal lines, some growled, others almost chanted, and still others soaring into shrieked falsettos, with voices overlapping, getting all tangled up, drenched in reverb and delay, giving the vokills, and the whole sound, a seriously dubbed out, almost psychedelic vibe. The music itself lurches from slo-mo black metal buzz, to sludgey Sabbathy doom, to lumbering chaotic thrash, always on the verge of collapse, and always wreathed in a seriously fucked up occultic ritualistic vibe, that makes this sound like some lost tape traded artifact from the late eighties or early nineties! Awesome.
As much as we love the manic bass and drum craziness of Lightning Bolt, for whatever reason, we had never reviewed any records by Black Pus, Lightning Bolt drummer Brian Chippendale's solo project. It's not that we didn't like it, it was just that to our ears it sounded a lot like Lightning Bolt, and maybe, like a slightly sloppier, noisier version, missing the other Brian in Lightning Bolt's insanely dexterous bass playing. But ultimately, the formula was the same, Chippendale bashing away an insane rhythm, accompanied by all manner of home brewed noise and his microphone-mask distorto-vox. And while this new one is essentially the same, it's also maybe our favorite one yet, and the closest we think Chippendale has come to capturing the manic energy and weirdly warped songcraft of Black Pus on record.
Imagine a more melodic, slightly slower, less crazed and chaotic Lightning Bolt, and you might be getting close, although to be fair, it's really not all that less manic or even that much slower, but what it is, is Chippendale making a glorious rhythmic racket, and somehow making that racket into sort-of-songs. The opener could actually be a Lightning Bolt song, but with the bass replaced by thick swaths of low end buzz, synths maybe? or some sort of noise generator (or heck, it could still be bass), but instead of insane melodies, it's just a heaving wall of sound, churning and roiling, while Chippendale continues to bash away on the drums, an insane flurry of wild, octopoidal chaos, his vocals a weird Jello Biafra like croon, wreathed in distortion and buried in the mix. There's an actual chorus of sorts, that some noiseniks could get stuck in their head, and stick around for the insane effects flecked glitched out drum solo finale. Phew. Totally exhausting to listen to, still mind boggling how someone can play this. But really, it's the second track, "Fly On The Wall", that's gonna win you over, a dense, roiling slab of post punk via Lightning Bolt's noise rock crush, deep dramatic vox, a throbbing pulsing chordal bass throb, the vibe is reminiscent of recent aQ Record Of The Weekers Pinkish Black, a sort of gothic metallic crush, but here it's droned out and trancey, gothic and post punky, but all driven by an insane relentless drum churn, and the amazing vocals. We're reminded of Lubricated Goat or some other Aussie post punk combo, but rendered as something more primal and frenzied. We've listened to this song about a hundred times, there's even a cool psychedelic melodic noise freakout midway through, draped over that blown out bass throb, so good.
And while nothing else quite reaches the same sonic heights, most of the record comes darn close. "1000 Years" unfurls a rock drum rhythm, or about as close as Chippendale comes, then in swoops the bass, distorted and blown out, a belching low end beast, while over the top, Chippendale tries on a different voice, this one high and reedy and keening, the song laced with damaged electronics and all sorts of fractured effects, Chippendale processing the drums, the bass and his vocals, the result dizzying, exhausting and seriously psychedelic.
And so it goes, like the LB mothership, each Black Pus is essentially one or two parts, driven by some seriously insane relentless drum damage, the bass or synth or whatever that is laying down thick swaths of buzz and howl, and over the top, the vocals soar, spit through a distorted megaphone, or mouth-held-mic, distorted and blown out and a bit garbled. In some songs those elements coalesce into surprisingly catchy ditties, in others, they remain a wild exercise in noise rock endurance, often landing somewhere right between the two. The results are extremely satisfying, occasionally headbangable, once in a while sing-along-able too, but always a furious, blown out barrage of wild rhythmic sound that is some of the coolest stuff we've heard from Brian Chippendale, and should hold everybody over until the next Lightning Bolt record, or at least until there's another new collection of Black Pus jams!
And while they last, which won't be long, both the lp and the cd versions come with a super limited Brian Chippendale 11"x11" comic/print. And be warned, if you're a cd person, you'll have to upgrade shipping to lp price, unless you want us to fold up the print (which you don't!).
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
As you can guess from the title, this is the second album by Massachusetts psychedelic sludge doomsters Black Pyramid, sequel to their self-titled full-length from 2009, also on the MeteorCity label. We somehow missed that one, much like we did with the first Elder, another MeteorCity act from the Bay State that we recently highlighted the 2nd album by... and boy are these bands kinda similar in other ways, yep both stoner sludge trios, both kicking out the double digit length jams, both (like a lot of MeteorCity bands) worshipping at the altar of Sleep and the like, and worshipping 'em well. If you like Elder and WhiteBuzz, you oughtta check out BP!
The disc starts off with the very metal "Endless Agony", one of those galloping, triumphant, leading-beserker-troops-into-bloody-battle sort of songs. And that's the vibe on a lot of this record, storming stuff that fans of Sleep's aggro offshoot High On Fire should cotton to. Certainly the first couple of tracks take no prisoners... then they get REALLY Sleep-y (but not sleepy), on "Night Queen" which has that swinging Sleep-like lope, a la "Dragonaut". (And a la Black Sabbath too of course.) That then leads into the disc's first true epic, the 12-minute plus "Dreams Of The Dead", which interweaves Black Pyramid's crushing riffage with introspective psych explorations and milder melodic moments. They follow that with a brief, beautiful instrumental acoustic number, "Tanelorn", as if to serve as an intermission of sorts, a quick, quiet break before the rest of "side two", the second half of the album mirroring the first, containing both raging metal ("Sons Of Chaos") and lumbering doom ("The Hidden Kingdom"), culminating in another double digit epic, "Into The Dawn", complete with classic riffing, gruff but glorious clean vocals, Melvins-y grind, delicate guitar bits, and spacey synth drone over the course of its nearly 16 minutes. All kinds of awesome there. BP could be likened to a sludgier Saviours, in fact, when we're not hammering on the Sleep comparisons. Again if you liked the recently-reviewed Elder on the same label, you should give Black Pyramid a go!
The up and coming local metal/punk/experimental label Catastrophic Sound releases its second cd, following the debut by death metallers Sangre Amado. This one is a four-song ep by another local band, Black Queen, who have perfected a black metal influenced, somewhat weird and skronky assault. Choppy rhythmic complexity and a near-constantly deployed guitar squeal are the band's most obvious trademarks, but these four tracks range from raging death metal brutality complete with guttural vocal growling to some quieter, textural instrumental passages. "The Anthropocalypse" is heavy, varied and quite interesting. I've yet to see 'em play live but if this disc is any indication they must be pretty great on stage. On the other hand, I hope they spend their free time in the recording studio so we will someday have a full-length album to behold.
We've been super obsessed with this killer slab of grim, blackened, nocturnal, techno minimalism, a dread fueled sprawl of bleak electronica and droned out sci-fi industrialism that's even more remarkable as it's the first Black Rain release in 18 years!!
Black Rain mastermind Stuart Argabright is hardly a household name, yet the man has an impressive catalog of high-caliber recordings along an axis of futurist / cyberpunk / darkly post-punk electronica dating back to the late '70s. His first fruits were in the form of the Factory sponsored Ike Yard, whose gloomy electro-dirges followed in the wake of the No New York contingent, followed by some far more club-oriented projects including the one-hit wonder Dominatrix and the eccentric Death Comet Crew (working with the pioneer of Afro-futurism, Rammellzee). Black Rain was the band that Argabright began with fellow DCC-member Shinichi Shimokawa in 1992 or thereabouts, and was originally commissioned to draft the score for a film version of Johnny Mnemonic. Despite his long-standing friendship with Phillip K. Dick, the Black Rain tracks were scrapped in favor of a high-budget Hollywood score after Keanu Reeves was pegged for the lead. After Blackest Ever Black pressed up a short-program lp 2010 of that soundtrack work from the early '90s (all of which had appeared on the Fifth Colvmn cd entitled 1.0), Argabright returned to the Black Rain moniker, possibly with Shimokawa at his right hand again.
Dark Pool continues the thread of tense cyborg-electronica crafted through those nixed Johnny Mnemonic soundtracks. The introductory track features a spoken word preface from Sean Young (best known as the android Rachel from Blade Runner) amongst a flurry of electrically screeching birds, extending the P.K. Dick allusions. Dystopian electronic shadows and hauntological drones brace much of Dark Pool, with Black Rain snapping into rhythmic passages of taut pneumatic samples and polished-machine drum programming. "Xibalba Road Metamorph" is a track that Dominick Fernow could only dream of producing as Prurient or Vatican Shadow, hammering its electro-static pulses with iron-fisted brutality and cold-blooded precision. The aptly named "Data River" spills out clinical beeps and drill-hammer rhythms on par with the sterility of Mika Vainio's Metri or any of the Raster Noton folk, with toxic drones of any villainous techno track lurking in the distance. Black Rain does pull the rug out from under us on the final track which rockets forward with a modern-day Moroder-esque tension, all dynamic arpeggiation and teeth-gritting electronic suspense only to abruptly cut the power, marking the end of the album. If we were to apply the cinematic, gothic / sci-fi allusion that this albums begs for, then this coda marks the unexpected termination of the android protagonist. Achtung! Bang! Click. End.
For the 35th anniversary of Black Sabbath, Rhino unveils this massive box set collecting in their entirety the eight studio albums by the original Ozzy Osbourne-fronted Black Sabbath line-up. And that's just great, fantastic. But actually I (Allan) personally think something even more substantial is in order for the band that, more than anyone, invented heavy metal -- a physical monument, perhaps a Gothic cathedral to be built in Birmingham England, where their music could be constantly playing on hidden loudspeakers 24-7? Something like that. But then again, they are pretty much my favorite band of all time. There's not room here to explain why, but I'd say Sabbath are in a large part responsible for my fanatical interest in music of all kinds and thus my job here at Aquarius Records. Seriously. The heaviness, the riffs, the emotion, the sincerity, the originality, the love, the darkness, the mystery, the humanity... Black Sabbath stand above all others.
So... anyway this box set gets a hardy recommendation from me. Basically, if you don't already have all the remastered cds of the Ozzy-era albums, then you should BUY THIS. It's a deal. 12 bucks an album, plus a felt-covered 78-page hardback book and a bonus DVD! And we're talking about some of the BEST ALBUMS EVER. Black Sabbath, Paranoid, Master Of Reality, Vol. 4, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, Sabotage, Technical Ecstasy, Never Say Die. Ask me to list the top 20 heavy metal albums -- nay, rock and roll albums -- of all time and at least the first six of these will be on it! (Actually, please don't ask me, but you get my point.) The DVD consists of four songs performed live on the German Beat Club TV show, with that great psychedelic early '70s video effects processing. You've probably seen "Iron Man" or "Paranoid" from this before, they show 'em on VH-1 or MTV sometimes. But there's also "Black Sabbath" (dig the extreme close-ups on Ozzy's anguished face as he sings) and their rockin' cover of "Blue Suede Shoes"! Sabbath fans might already have these, though, as they've been available before. The book contains lots of great pictures, a detailed Sabbath timeline, two lengthy essays about the original Sabbath's rise and fall, and (at last!) printed lyrics from all eight albums...the surreal drugged-out poetry of the Sabbath Bloody Sabbath lyrics in particular are brilliant. Lots to pour over here, and even a Sab fan like myself learned somethings (like, it's Tony Iommi, not Ozzy, coughing in the intro to "Sweet Leaf"). Maybe the one unnecessary thing in the book are the celebrity blurbs that litter the pages -- Sabbath don't really need the endorsement of Beck or Henry Rollins, do they?! And I also must complain that nowhere in the band history or timeline does the post-Ozzy Sabbath even get a mention: Ronnie James Dio at least deserves better than that!
The whole set is packaged smartly in, of course, a black box. There's two smaller cardboard slip-case style boxes (labeled 1970-1972 and 1973-1978 respectively) that fit in there with the book, each of 'em holding four digipack cds, with the original album art. The cds themselves are remastered. Sadly, there's not much in the way of extras -- no bonus tracks to speak of (the only one being "Evil Woman" from the UK edition of their debut). But Sabbath weren't a band that recorded a lot of throw-away b-sides or un-issued song demos. After all, these eight albums were from a span of eight years, the first four from just 2 years. So they were quite prolific but it all ended up on their albums -- and what's so amazing is that there's no filler. For the first six albums at least, almost EVERY SONG is great, and contains a riff eternal. That's why they're gods. However, I do think that they could have dug up some live material (there's bootlegs of lots of good stuff) or the rumoured demos from pre-Sabbath incarnation Earth. Too much to hope for I guess. And the DVD could have included more than the Beat Club footage: what about the California Jam or Don Kirschner's Rock Concert or their promotional videos? Oh well. Again, that's only gonna matter to extreme fans like myself, everyone else should be more than satisfied with just the timeless, legendary music from the albums anyway.
Previously hard-to-find on cd, the last great Sabbath album, 1983's "Born Again" sees Ian "Deep Purple" Gillan stepping up to the mic, replacing Ronnie James. This lineup only lasted one album, but it's one of our favorites.
First post-Ozzy outing, Dio's Sabbath debut.
Live with Ozzy in '74 or so. Finally remastered and available on a non-shoddy label.
Totally legit Italian-label LP reissue of Black Sabbath's third album, from 1971. And it's really swank, the nice plastic sleeve housing the properly-embossed record jacket, which contains a poster and of course, the record itself, a 180 gram purple-colored vinyl pressing! Nice. We probably don't have to tell you that Master Of Reality is one of Black Sabbath's best, heck one of the best elpees EVER, with Tony, Geezer, Ozzy and Bill whumping out such classics as "Sweet Leaf", "Children of the Grave", "Into The Void", "Lord Of This World" -- good grief every track on here is brilliant!
We probably don't have to tell you that Master Of Reality is one of Black Sabbath's best, heck one of the best elpees EVER, with Tony, Geezer, Ozzy and Bill whumping out such classics as "Sweet Leaf", "Children of the Grave", "Into The Void", "Lord Of This World" -- good grief every track on here is brilliant!
Their second album with Dio, and despite the absence of drummer Bill Ward, it's an all time metal classic with some of Sabbath's best songs.
The final Ozzy-era Sabbath disc.
Essential.
Forget about the Ozzfest reunion tours, this is live Black Sabbath (the BEST BAND EVER, sez Allan) from their '70s heyday, with the original, Ozzy-fronted line-up. Two discs worth of the heaviest of metal from the originators of the form. Super-exciting but for one thing: many Sabbath fans probably already have disc one, formerly known as the "Live At Last" album (recorded in 1973, released in 1980 against the band's wishes at the time -- 'cause they'd fired Ozzy and Ronnie James Dio was now their singer. Now, of course, they've got no problem with it). Still, one whole disc of previously (officially) unreleased live Sabbath is worth more than the 24 bucks this is going to cost you. And it comes with (while supplies of this handsome limited edition digipack version last) a poster and guitar pick, plus three bonus tracks too that aren't on the regular jewelcase edition.
Here's the track listing:
(Disc One) Tomorrow's Dream, Sweet Leaf, Killing Yourself To Live, Cornucopia, Snowblind, Children of the Grave, War Pigs, Wicked World, Paranoid, (Disc Two) Hand of Doom, Hole in the Sky*, Symptom of the Universe, Megalomania*, Iron Man*, Black Sabbath, N.I.B., Behind the Wall, Fairies Wear Boots. (Asterisks indicate bonus tracks only on this digipak verison.)
As a live band, Black Sabbath kill -- absolutely charismatic, energetic, and creative. And of course, HEAVY. Plus, you get to enjoy Ozzy's stage banter ("Are you high? Are you high? So am I!"), and variant, improvised lyrics/solos. In the middle of "Wicked World" on disc one, Tony Iommi gets a melodic, medieval solo, then they go into a jazz break, then jam on a whole 'nother riff, with Ozzy making up lyrics, that could have been a great song but never made it into the studio in this form, and then charge into "Supernaut", followed by a Bill Ward drum showcase, then back to "Wicked World"...
So, "Past Lives" is pretty incredible, from a musical standpoint. Of course, they could have included a lot more -- there's lots of pics from Sabbath's appearance at 1974's California Jam but as far as I can tell, no tracks from it. And where's "Blue Suede Shoes"??
Further complaints: although there's plenty of cool old pics of the Ozzy and the boys, and it's a nicely designed package, they should have gotten a Sabbath fan to proofread the liner notes (their third album is Master of Reality, not Masters of Reality, for instance -- and I think it's the Birmingham Town Hall they played at in 1972, not Burmingham Town Hall) but that's a quibble. What really does suck is that the tracks on disc two are given no specific dates and venues of recording -- it just says "recorded live at various locations & dates during the seventies". Lame! It seems from the track selection and Ozzy's between-songs comments that the majority of the second disc dates from around 1975, right before the release of their Sabotage album (they do "Megalomania"!!). Is this from the Philadelphia show recently bootlegged as a triple LP box set? Other songs are from their December 20th, 1970 show at the Olympia in Paris. I've got a bootleg of that and the tracks here certainly sound better than they do on the boot. Now, why the people who put this together didn't think we'd want to know where and when the tracks were from I can't imagine... But anyway, especially if you don't already have Live At Last and probably even if you do, this is an essential purchase for Sabbath fans.
Essential.
Remastered version of the Sabs' most "prog" album, the masterpiece known as "Sabotage". Essential.
Really good, but perhaps not absolutely essential.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Essential.
Essential.
Only one of the most important debut albums in the history of rock and roll!!! Essential.
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
Ok, dunno much about this one, except that it's "inspired by the 1963 film, Matango! by Inoshiro Honda", and the cover was painted by Bobby Beausoleil, and there's a LOT of synth and Moog on here along with guitars and percussion. Also Cotton Casio of Acid Mothers Temple fame is the guest vocalist on one of the tracks, and Jon Theodore, drummer extraordinare (Mars Volta) plays on another. Take a chance on these 'shrooms...
We first heard from Salt Lake City black ambient technicians Black Seas Of Infinity on�The Trinity Of Non Being, a killer three way split with�Kaniba and Ugegi Aoiveae A Aer, released on Autumn Wind, the same label that brought us multiple releases from AQ faves Vomit Orchestra. All three bands' contributions were amazing, bleak and barren, dark and drone-y, since then we'd been on the lookout for any other releases by all three.�Amrita - The Quintessence is the latest full length from one man band Black Seas Of Infinity, and the brief glimpses we got of his dark universe on that split are allowed to sprawl here, to spread way out, an inky black cloud of roiling industrial whir and crumbling abstract drones wrapping everything within earshot in dense swaths of sonic shadow.�
Every track here is a dark missive from some lost world, a barren soundscape of deep resonant swells, of epic cinematic ambience and strange percussive glitch and rumble. Like the best ambient music, the sounds here are not sonic or simple, instead, constantly shifting and�changing shape, tonal color, rhythms surface like flotsam on some mysterious sea of sound, disembodied voices drift like ghosts, melodies are broken into fragments, the bits and pieces tossed into the abyss and carried like dead leaves on some vile black wind, crumbling shards of buzzing synth intertwine with strange found sounds and bits of simple percussion, massive billowing sonic ripples spread slowly out, shimmering in greys and blacks...
Think Wolf Eyes, Nordvargr, Vomit Orchestra, Lustmord, Anenzephalia, Wolfskin, MZ412, Hlidolf, Ruhr Hunter and the like... another ultra intense trawl through the mysterious blackened underworld, lurking beneath, around and behind all things pretty and happy...
From the same label that brought us the amazing Vomit Orchestra discs comes this killer 3 way split, an exploration of black ambient, dark ritual, ambient drone music....
Up first is Black Seas Of Infinity from Salt Lake City. Having started life as a black metal band, they now find themselves, exploring a much more minimal dark ambient world of haunting melodies, mysterious vocals and muted industrial percussion. The first track is based around a mesmerizing melodic fragment, a bit of minor key melody that is looped hypnotically over a strange rhythm that sounds like someone trudging through snow or old brittle branches, while over the top, a slowed down, slightly distorted voice intones a strange litany, making the whole thing sound like some sort of liturgical rite. The next track is a dense martial soundscape of grinding industrial drones and distant distorted drumming, a simple militaristic march, like Wiseblood meets Death In June, before eventually transforming into a roiling wave of low end rumble and whir. BSOI's final track is a 12 minute epic, a series of haunting low end sonic occurrences, situated around a strange rhythm that sounds almost like the wheeze and clatter of an iron lung, the sounds around it constantly crumbling like the tape had decayed, very textural and creepy, like a more industrial Jeck or Tim Hecker almost...
Next up Is Kaniba, who offer up their own creeping crawling blackness. A rumbling soundworld of thumps and bumps, distorted and wrapped in dense sheets of black buzz, there are rhythms, but they don't drive the music, instead they are small creatures that scurry amidst it's black folds. The second of the two tracks is much more spacious and possibly much more harrowing. What begins almost serenely quickly becomes a monstrous moaning living black shadow of sound. Listening is almost like cowering amidst the ruins as some unseeable shape soars above, it's shadow cloaking you in darkness every time it passes. A symphony of low end, almost sounding like an orchestra slooooooowed waaaaaaay dooooown, its epic fanfare twisted into a shapeless squirming blackened thing.
Finally, the strangely named Ugegi Aoiveae A Ser wrap things up with a 16 minute drone coda. Much more minimal than the other contributors, but just as bleak and oppressive. A ringing harmonic shimmer slowly slips further and further into darkness, the high end peeling off like flayed skin, revealing a murky cloudy expanse of dark sound underneath. A slow moving swell, a static, barely shifting wall of sound, layers upon layer, like some hellish Phill Niblock composition. Ultra spare and quite intense.
Plenty here for the drone obsessed, lovers of weird music, and all the black souls in need of dark musical mystery...
Achtung! UK's Black Sheep are another wonderfully indulgent Julian Cope related heavy psych rawk unit (a la Brain Donor), not to be confused with the '90s hiphop group. If you're a regular at JC's Head Heritage website (you should be) you know all about the man's expert obsession with underground '70s freakrock, The Stooges, Faust, Hawkwind, all that good stuff. That's the idea here, two sprawling discs, Black Sheep jamming away giving musical expression to such political / subversive / revolutionary / radical chic topics as "Underground Resistance" and "Che".
It all begins (of course) with disc one, track one, "Ernesto": urgent strum, field recordings of rain and thunder, it's like an Amon Duul acoustic ritual mashed up with the intro to Black Sabbath's "Black Sabbath". The track reaches a screaming peak, then settles back to a simple throb... The throbbing continues on the more drum based "Protest-Underground", a tribal chant of that channels Ya Ho Wha and Edgar Broughton. The disc's third and final track starts off as a sparse voice/acoustic guitar ditty before pounding tom-tom drums join in to accentuate the song's apocalyptic character. Disc two boasts another three, long tracks, again full of chanting and strumming and drumming and gobs of droning spacey synth FX... There's some quite nice mellow parts mixed in, and it all really does sound like something recorded no later than 1976.
Probably coulda/shoulda highlighted this, but we do have to admit that unless you're totally hooked on Cope's Kool Aid, you might find, ferinstance, that someone chanting the phrase "underground resistance" over and over again (signifying what exactly?) IS sorta dumb... though that doesn't stop us from digging it. The title (also one of the songs) "Kiss My Sweet Apocalypse" is also a mite too clever, meaning dumb as well. Sounds like something Acid Mothers Temple would come up with, but of course we like them too, and if you also like Acid Mothers Temple, chances are you'll enjoy Black Sheep, their music and mindset are fairly well aligned.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
A Japanese improv trio featuring the prolific Keiji Haino (vocals, 6 & 12 string electric guitars, flute Samples collection (which we still have in stock and look how inexpensive it is!). There are three long tracks; the first establishes an often delicate and complex mode of group playing, perfect for a night-time listen. The second continues in this vein, adding Haino's trademark anguished vocals to the mix, while the final and shortest track (at 9 min+) gets a lot heavier. Really impressive and gorgeous stuff, even if you're suffering from Haino-glut this is worth it. Import.
In recent years we've had a geyser of dance punk, dance pop and dance rock, but dance metal? Naw, not really. The record label's description of this French duo gave us cause to brace ourselves. Mentions of Norwegian black metal fascinations, song titles like "Brenn Di Ega Kjerke" (Norwegian to English translation: burn your own church), acid house, '80s synth pop and My Bloody Valentine's Loveless piqued our twisted interest. However, dance metal it's not. Although heavy axe wielding machismo and well-oiled flexing do factor in throughout the album, this is more akin to the fevered techno industrial stomp of Primal Scream. More metallic than metal per se. And making just as strong an impression are the gentler moments when they fall more in step with the suave dramatics of Jarvis Cocker and Pulp. They also borrow a bit of lewd swagger from garage rawk trashies like The Cramps, the glammy bloat of Gary Glitter and Sigue Sigue Sputnik and the over the top vocal intonations of Laibach. No, it's nothing really new, in fact a lot of this sounds absolutely dated, but it sure is fun and a bit silly in an Andrew W.K. kind of way... but French.
What the heck's up with Glasgow these days? Until recently, Glasgow was all sunshiney jangle pop and brooding epic post rock. Or so it seemed. Maybe we haven't been paying attention. Maybe it's been a while since we took a good hard look at the seedy underbelly of Glasgow's music scene, but something sinister is definitely going on over there, cuz all sorts of filthy, brutal, heavy, sick sounds are oozing across the sea and into our cowering frightened ears. Next list we'll probably be listing a record by another Glaswegian crew called De Salvo, who are scary as shit, and here we've got the latest from Black Sun.
Black Sun is a bit of a name over there, but they're a new name to us, although it only took a few minutes of this filth for us to realize folks over here, especially the ones into massive dronedirgedeathcrush and slow motion ultra doooooom will likely be freaking out big time.
Three tracks, all 'versions' of the same song, the first, 19+ minutes taking up the whole of side one, is all lurching downtuned lumber, squealing harmonics, all locked into step with the pounding drums, the vocals tortured and anguished and WAY up in the mix, the sound somewhere between Khanate, Eyehategod, and Neurosis. About halfway through the sound simmers down a bit, a low slung softly churning bass rumble, clean minor key guitar lines all spidery and skeletal, warm whirring keyboards, that eventually slip into a groove that sounds uncannily like a slowed down Three Mile Pilot. Clean crooned vocals, laid over the woozy rhythm, before exploding back into stuttering metallic stop start lurch, gradually growing more and more noisy and unhinged.
The flip side takes the same track and jacks up the industrial vibe, way more low end crunch, a bit murkier and muddier, the vocals buried in the mix, little streaks of feedback peeking out from behind thick caustic slabs of rhythmic pound. Very reminiscent of Godflesh or Pitchshifter, relentless and machinelike, but wreathed in swirls of strange keyboards, and mysterious effects and all manner of fucked up guitar filigree. In some ways superior to the A side, at least to these ears. And finally, the second half of the B-side offers up the 'dub' version, which takes the more industrial version of "Paralyser" even further, the rhythm stripped down, the guitars processed and clipped, the vocals twisted and doused in effects, the arrangement all spaced out, the drums pounding one second, careening from speaker to speaker the next, the whole track actually is panned pretty hard, making headphones essential for experiencing the full dizzy drift. Definitely left us wanting more...
Essential listening for the usual suspects. If your favorite sounds are most often described with the adjectives doomy, crumbling, blackened, pummeling, crushing, heavy, crusty, metallic, slow motion, glacial, filthy, then my friends, you should prepare to kneel in supplication, and stare directly into the Black Sun...
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, housed in a very Godflesh looking sleeve, with a heavy cardstock insert, liner notes on one side and strange bloody symbols on the other.
The return of Matthew Bower's latest project, Black Sun Roof - post Skullflower, post Sunroof!, post Total. We've yet to pin down exactly what it is that BSR was sonically designed to do, other than kick up a fantastically psychedelic skree, which this new double disc most definitely does, and if anything, of all of Bower's recent releases, and even the last few Black Sun Roof records, this one is definitely the most varied, and most musical. Harkening back to that very first cd-r. There's still some of Bower's recent black metal obsession lurking around in the shadows, and of course elements of all those previous projects are still definitely present, but on these two records, Bower and his musical partner Samantha Davies, have cooked up some ultra fried, zoner psych of the highest order.
It's varied enough, that if any record deserved a track by track breakdown it's this one, but that's a whole lot of tracks, so let's just pick some highlights.
The opener definitely sets the stage, with some murky processed vocals, buried under heaving slabs of crumbling sound, distorted buzz, and squealing feedback, and then, slowly surface, some skittery drum machine, the guitars blossom into a weird grinding tangle of distorted melodies, as the drum machine unfurls a lockstep groove, the whole thing strangely loping and mesmeric, the main 'riff' sounding almost like burst of shorted out static, or black buzz chopped into weird grooves, the second half of the two part opener is more of the same, just cranking everything to 11, the vibe sort of folky, reminding us like a way more bleak and black take on recent Record Of The Weeker Dan Friel, or even Dan Higgs. A tranced out noise-dirge mantra that we could listen to forever.
And while a casual glancing listen to most any of these tracks might reveal nothing but bursts of noise, headphones help get lost in Bower's impossibly dense soundscapes, from grinding, looped locomotive buzz, soft noise drifts, to melting black metal slo-mo dirges, to dense, feedback drenched Sunroof! style ur-drone raga blow outs, all keening shards of jagged noise and heart of the sun howl, to downright post industrial prettiness, all woozy and warped, buried melodies, and slow shifting textures, haunting and seriously cinematic.
The second disc starts off as if to begin blasting black metal style, but instead, the insectoid riffing seems to ooze into a black swirling cloud, while the blast beat slows to a skittery dubbed out crawl, and over the top, a dark ominous cloud of low end bleat drifts in and out, might be our favorite track of the bunch! But then the rest of the second disc makes that an even tougher pick. From weird glitchy, swirls of dub-noise drift, croaking frog squelch and blurred blackbuzz shimmer, to glistening blasted shoegaze noise pop blurred into a near white noise blowout, to a murky industrial creep fused with some spaced out new wave, sounding a bit like Skullflower covering Soft Moon, to the final two part closer, a churning, droned out gloom-punk noise dirge, that's more hypnotic and trance-y than noisy, and again driven by roiling rhythms, before finishing off with a two minute blast of paint peeling skree, which close listening reveals to have a hidden hear of warm melody and lush texture. Fuck yeah.
Matthew Bower (Skullflower, Hototogisu, Voltigeurs, Total, etc.) returns under his Sunroof! guise, now seemingly expanded to Black Sun Roof (unclear if it's due to his interest in the black metal arts), and while much of the blissy drift and droned out ragas of past Sunroof! records is still present, it's been augmented with much of the noise that defines his other projects. The record opens with thick, buzz drenched, grinding drones, laid over looped mechanical melodies, which soon expand into full on shimmery blissout, heaving clouds of shimmering buzz over buried drums, keening melodies, all dense and darkly chaotic, murky and washed out, peppered with stretches of smeared psychedelic noise, the A side finishing off with a sprawl of churning murk-pop, sorta in the Dead C style, a minimal noise rock on the edge of total collapse, wreathed in static and hiss and hum, and glowing from within, lit by buried melodies barely obscured.
The flipside opens with another grinding stretch of noise drenched dronemusic, this time underpinned by wheezing ominous chordal swells, peppered with clanging bells, and all manner of buried percussion, swaddled in blown out guitar buzz, heavy and noisy, but as is the way with Sunroof! still impossibly blissful. Most of the side is taken up by an epic groove/dirge, loping caveman drum pound, garbled vox, clouds of whirring soft focus guitar noise, mesmerizing and almost meditative, the end of the song flecked with space-y synth shimmer, which gives the sound a definite cinematic vibe. The record closes with a short but sweet slab of lush, looped woozy murk, sounding like some lost Philip Jeck jam, a bleary, blurry symphony of muted turntable warble. So great!
And as if a new Sunroof! / Black Sun Roof wasn't enough, the lp comes with a bonus cd, of rare tracks hand selected by Matthew Bower himself, culled from various releases and comps, most rare and long out of print: Cloudz, Silver Bear Mist, Wings Over America, Optional Ingredients From A Vile Recipe Volume II, Splat!, Fatcat Split series #19, as well as a Total track from Glassy Warhead, and one brand new previously unreleased track, which is a gorgeous 8+ minute expanse of tangled, layered noiseguitar, keening feedback, fragmented riffage, and dense swirls of buzz and skree, all woven into a weirdly gorgeous slab of psychedelic freeform noise. The rest of the disc is all over the map, but all different shades of that sort of droned out dreamlike noisiness that Bower has mastered as Sunroof!, from the tinkling gauzy piano driven shimmer of "Machine", to the grinding low fidelity industrial noise drift of "Latex Unicorn", to the sci-fi bleep flecked churning almost doomy dreamy slow-mo space dirge of "She Is The Darkness / The Argument", to the hazy noise drenched swirlscape of "Marijuana Suicide", to the impossibly gorgeous, almost M83-ish bliss-noise / psych-pop dream ambience of "Trampled Dawns".
Essential for both the new lp, and the retrospective cd (from which all the below samples are taken), fans of Bower's many projects will be in psych / noise / bliss heaven!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
One of two new releases from Mr. Matthew Bower (Skullflower, Total, Sunroof! etc.), the other a killer blast of hypnotic blackbuzz reviewed elsewhere on this week's list, which, as several recent SF records have done, hints at Bower's growing interest in black metal, which is precisely why assumed that this new project, Black Sun Roof!, must be a black metal version of Bower's long running psychedelic ur-drone project Sunroof! Which while we have to admit sounds pretty goddamn good, is not in fact what Black Sun Roof! sounds like. Instead, it takes the blissy kosmische shimmer of Sunroof! and seems to meld it to the tripped out psychedelic jamminess of SF's Exquisite Fucking Boredom. Just check out the opener, "Crystal Docking Station", with its heavily flanged primitive riffing draped over simple soft focus chordal squalls, all wreathed in a druggy dreamy haze, and everything tethered to a super spare, skeletal, mostly buried in the mix rhythm. It's a glistening lo-fi sort of krautpsych mesmer that is seriously mesmerizing, one of those jams that definitely could have continued on well past its 6:40 termination point. "Fans Of Ego" is up next, and adds some industrial clatter, and low fidelity noisiness to the mix, a clattery stumbling rhythm surrounded on all sides by hiss and whir, and howl and hum, the effect is very much like some strange Dead C outtake, although Bower crafts it into something a bit more psychedelic and spaced out, a gorgeously heady feedback drenched blown out soft noise dirge, that like the opener, we could listen to forever. And finally, the disc finishes off with "Glassy Penetralia", which is the toughest of the bunch to describe, a swirling chunk of almost symphonic noisiness, the foundation a blown out riff, blurred and smeared into a bed of woozy washed out melody, while over the top, a tangle of jagged guitars, that sound more like strings, like some hellish string section, swaddled in blackened streaks of guitar noise, which sounds strangely like some impossible Kronos Quartet / Skullflower mashup. Awesome!
EXTREMELY LIMITED! As in 25 or 30 total made EVER. We have about 10 left and unless we can convince Bower to whip up more, these are the last copies we'll ever see. Housed in cool handpainted minisleeves with pasted on liner notes.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
From Tony Dale's Australian Camera Obscura label (http://www.caber.net/obscura [http://www.caber.net/obscura]) comes this wonderful cd and the following description:
Camera Obscura is proud to bring you The Late Music (Volume One), a full-length CD of experimental/ambient tape manipulations by Olivia Tremor Control side-project Black Swan Network. In the unlikely case that you wondered what those strange interludes between the four-part harmony pop gems of OTC's Dusk at Cubist Castle would sound like developed into pieces in their own right, here is your chance to find out. The Late Music on conceptually from the two and four channel extravaganzas that can be found on the bonus disc of sound experiments shipped with early copies of the Dusk at Cubist Castle CD and also on OTC's The Opera House and Jumping Fences EPs. Any attempts to describe the seven pieces that make up this release are bound to fall short of the mark, because this is not much like anything we have ever heard before. The sounds created for this release only occasionally give any kind of clue about what was used to create them. For one track, Elephant 6 collective member Eric Ledford contributes an oblique cello improvisation. For another, the voices of infants laughing and crying are brilliantly multiplied and sequenced and processed for an effect that has been observed to create near hysteria in the listener. But on most of the seven tracks here, Black Swan Network have used the source material as an abstract resource to be sculpted into dreamlike Musique Concrete.
Now available on vinyl! And super limited. Each record hand designed and painted by handicapped adults in an art program, much like Creativity Explored here in San Francisco. Gorgeous, ultra personal one of a kind designs for a super pretty record. Here's our review of the cd:
The Black Swans third stop in the land of indie record labels is the appropriately named La Societe Expeditionnaire. Their music traverses the shadowed terrain between Tindersticks and Bob Dylan -- particularly in Noel Sayre's slow moody fiddle creep and Jerry DiCicca's vocal inflection. More rugged than the former, less travelled than the latter, and more raw and fierce than either. You might recall this Bay Area band's last two fine pit-of-despair releases the full length Who Will Walk In The Darkness With You? and the Sex Brain cdep which came out on Delmore and Bwatue respectively, but are unfortunately now out of print.
But you shan't despair too much once you get yer paws on this new one because Change! packs its own deep, dark, earthen wallop. The electric guitars slash at the handwringing of the strings, then melt into snaking melodic streams. A gripping listen.
