[ aquarius records — Rock Pop Punk Hardcore ]

IMPORTANT (Please read to avoid confusion): Some items below may be tagged with a bold, red, all-caps OUT OF PRINT/UNAVAILABLE notice. This does NOT mean that all other items not so tagged are, in fact, in stock — or for that matter, in print and available, though there's a good chance they are. Some folks get confused on this point, and we can see why, so please read this for further clarification and other important before-you-order information. Unlike some mailorder websites, we don't have an electronic inventory system linked to our site, so you can't be sure of what we actually have or don't have in stock at any given moment without asking us — please email our mailorder department for availability status — or better yet, just go ahead and place your order using our shopping cart function and we'll get back to you with the status of each item. If you have general non-mailorder questions, email the store.

Showing results 1051 through 1100 of 1362.

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SORRY.

These irrepressible SoCal stoner skate punks come ripping and raging back with their 2nd album for Tee Pee. Not unlike the self-proclaimed "primitive blast" of their debut, it's again an explosive concoction of high energy rock 'n' roll, sure to catch your ears and show 'em a good time, even as these tracks speed by in full on party mode. Part metal, part punk, The Shrine are both heavy and hooky, mixing up some Kill 'Em All era Metallica riffage with SST/Black Flag 'tude too (and in fact, one song features lyrics by Chuck Dukowski originally written for an unrecorded Black Flag tune from '83). Lest we forget, some other longhairs named Soundgarden got their start on SST, and The Shrine probably say, Ultramega OK to that. Among this album's highlights, we'll single out the remarkably poppy shred of "Tripping Corpse", you just gotta love lines like "he combs his hair / he doesn't care / he's living free / acid casualty", as sung over some suitably tweaked Voivoid-esqe chords. The sheer no-fucks-gven rock power of that track is fairly representative of the whole dang disc. No sophomore slump here! No slump of any kind. Indeed, this is pure anti-slumping music for sure. It's get up, get going, skate and destroy music!

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The Shrine to what? The gods of high energy rock n' roll action, we assume. Such a shrine, we're imagining, would consist of one or more big ass amplifiers, probably draped with an Amerikkkan flag (upside down?), ringed with empty beer cans and broken bottles. Oh, and skateboards, a bunch of skateboards. Musically, that's what we're gettin' here, the three hairy dudes in heavy, punked out power trio The Shrine mainlining such influences as Black Flag, Black Sabbath, and the MC5. They don't hold back, with opener "Zipper Tripper" defining The Shrine's style of speedy SoCal "psychedelic violence" pretty plainly from the get-go. Furthermore, as the disc spins, The Shrine soon make it obvious that their particular primitive blast is in fact a damn catchy one, yeah! They rip it up with snakey riffs and plenty of 'tude on all nine tracks here, a little over a half hour of gnarly shake appeal for stoner punks & skate metallers; this is definitely for anybody who was into another, sorta similar Tee Pee band, Annihilation Time (R.I.P.), recipients of a T-shirt shout out from The Shrine on this album's back cover band pic. Another good comparison would be to the 2nd, more SST-ish album from J. Mascis doom project Witch. For us, what really seals the deal is that track four happens to be a cranked-up cover of "Run The Night", originally by '70s heavy psych British biker band Wicked Lady, whose reissues we just highlighted. We were like, hmmm, this sounds familiar, then figured it out. And it fits right in with the vibe of the whole album. Killer!!!

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This review comes courtesy of former Outpunk label head, current A.C.R.O.N.Y.M. label mastermind, gay gangsta and AQ pal Matt Wobensmith! First time ever on CD, after being out of print for over a decade! Before "emo" was a noun, it was an adjective used to describe the sensitive, post-hardcore stylings of artistic DC punkers, who weren't afraid to cry in public and dedicate songs to trees. Some say Rites of Spring's 1986 self-titled debut album (Dischord Records) is the holy grail of emo. However, this album may well be that genre's defining document. The operatic wailings of Craig Wedren's falsetto -- not unlike Pere Ubu's David Thomas -- were a peculiar contrast to the band's more aggressive punk leanings. Says Craig of this era: "I joined a 'hardcore' group, we did not like each other's sound, they banged, I screeched ... [it] came out sounding, a little like, Ozzy?" From a time when "US hardcore" was mired in socio-political aggression and macho posturing, STT were perhaps a reaction -- ironically from within the ranks of DC bands that were so influential to that movement in the first place. This is a beautiful and enthralling album, impossibly melancholic, with perplexing lyrics from someone who's "heart is filled with 'All May Rise' and 'X Ray Eyes'". Lots of people know Shudder to Think's bizarre, dramatic alt-rock material from subsequent recordings for Dischord and later, Epic, from which most of their fan base is likely drawn. But this record -- while technically inferior and unpolished from a production standpoint -- is still many fans' favorite STT release.

MPEG stream: A Vampire's Proposal
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More limited edition noisy guitar dissonance from SF's Sic Alps. Four gnarled songs including the title track which also appears on their most recent full length Pleasures And Treasures. Limited to 300 hand numbered copies.

So many grind/metalcore/hardcore bands over the years owe more than a few pennies to Boston's hardcore/grind pioneers Siege. In fact, a lot of those bands owe them EVERYTHING! Much like the length of their songs, their time as a band was brief, but in just two short years they laid waste to many with their intense sound and energy. Bands like Napalm Death and a whole slew of early Earache/Noiseville acts made pretty decent careers for themselves taking that Siege sound and running with it, some of them continuing to do it even now, in fucking 2007! This cd collects all their compilation tracks as well as all the "official release" stuff, and while this ain't a very long player, Siege managed to get to the point REAL QUICK, without wasting much more than some picks, some guitar strings, a bunch of drumsticks and last but not least YOUR GODDAMN EARDRUMS! One of the greatest and heaviest punk (metal?) bands ever!

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Local noiseniks the Yellow Swans hipped us to this band, describing Silentist as a classical pianist, with a drummer playing blast beats behind the piano. Hell, we were sold without even hearing it! Their descption was not all that far off the mark, although we might have described them as a grindcore band with a pianist instead of a guitarist. Either way this is pretty weird stuff. Manic twentieth century free jazz piano, angular and melodic, occasionally picking out mournful minor key melodies, sometimes pounding out chords and riffs, all kept in check by an incredibly kick ass drummer who swings from ultra complex, polyrhythmic jazz freakouts, to blurry lightning fast blast beats. Occasional shrieked vocals and downtuned guitars add some more typical 'heaviness' to the proceedings, but to be honest its the interplay between the drums and the piano that has our head spinning. Imagine Matthew Shipp jamming with Dave Lombardo, backed up by Brutal Truth here and there! Woah! Free jazz grind? Um, how about grind jazz? Or twentieth century grind? I know, modern free grind! Whatever it is it's fucking amazing!

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A customer came in the other day and was looking for something new that was "spazzy and punky and weird" while we thought it might be easy to rattle off a bunch of suggestions to them we realized that we have been lacking any really good punk spirited albums as of late. This debut by the L.A. group Silver Daggers fills that void perfectly! Combining the eccentric nature of the early SST roster (Saccharine Trust, The Minutemen) the fierce intensity of Euro art-punk like Dog Faced Hermans and The Ex as well as the all out spazz attack of the 90's San Diego post punk scene (Swing Kids, Antioch Arrow, Clikitat Ikatowi) Silver Daggers incorporate distorted sax blasted throughout their short and sweaty anthems that hit a no-wave sweet spot of strange & spastic energy channeled in all the right ways. Finally some new punk sounds we can totally get behind!

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Thirty or so years after first blasting off, the band known as Simply Saucer soars into view once again. Truly a twisted gem of the '70s pre-punk art-rock underground, the *Canadian* '70s pre-punk art-rock underground no less, this Hamilton, Ontario band was freaking people out back in 1974 with the material you'll find on this spiffy new cd reissue. The lucky and enlightened among you might already have the long out of print early-'90s cd version of this album, or even the original LP posthumously released in 1989, but this new edition of their half-studio, half-live "Cyborgs Revisited" adds 8 bonus tracks, including lo-fi demos, additional live stuff, and both sides of the Saucer's lone 1978 single. With or without these bonus tracks, it's a great fuckin' record, boldly owing allegiance to (early) Pink Floyd and the Velvet Underground and The Stooges. They've also got much in common with the likes of the Pink Fairies, Faust, NYC no-wave a la Von Lmo, and the contemporaneous crazy Ohio underground scene of the '70s (Rocket From The Tombs, Electric Eels). Yep, all these inspirations are immediately evident, not too far into side one of "Cyborgs Revisited": witness the the lengthy amazing repetitive Floydian effects instrumental "Mole Machine" as it segues into the acoustic intro of "Bullet Proof Nothing", Simply Saucer's idea of a love song, with lyrics like "Treat me like dirt/drive me insane" delivered in a sloppy Lou Reed drawl. S.S. (unfortunate initials, hopefully nothing to do with their song "Nazi Apocalypse"!) were formed in '72 by a bunch of Canuck weirdos, notable among them lead guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Edgar Breau, and Sun Ra/Eno inspired electronics dude John LaPlante, aka "Ping Romany" -- Ping being a good stage name for the guy playing the primitive oscillators, tone generators, and theremin! They fought the good fight for a few years, cranking out freakish, space-fx laden proto-punk rock n' roll with sci-fi titles like "Dance The Mutation", eventually dabbling in Toronto's nascent "new wave" scene. It's certainly no surprise that the Saucer never "made it" -- though that '78 single seems like a stab at poppier (or at least goofier) sound -- and, with no successful commercial career in the offing, they eventually disbanded. Dunno if they could ever be cited as an influence by anyone 'cause they were so obscure, but hypothetically anyway S.S. could be the warped template for today's garage artisans -- Comets On Fire, especially -- totally punk *and* psych, with skronked out guitar, snotty vox, oscillating noise waves and tumbling drums. Glad to have this back in print, and it's certainly a timely reissue considering how well this fits in with some of today's art-punk retro-electro trends! MPEG Download: "Nazi Apocalypse" [/audio/simplynazi.mp3] MPEG Stream: "Nazi Apocalypse" [/audio/simplynazi.m3u]

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John Wiese (Bastard Noise) and his pal Cory Ronnau deliver what is probably the world's first plunderphonic grindcore record. Although in this case all of the plundering is self inflicted and self directed as the two record their own two piece (guitar and

RealAudio clip: Track one

Before Skullflower became a blissed out free drone, psychedelic raga outfit which would eventually morph into the ultra dreamy Sunroof!, they were trolling much darker, much harsher waters. When IIIrd Gatekeeper first came out way back in 1992, it fell right in alongside its sonic brethren, Swans, Godflesh, Pitchshifter, Terminal Cheesecake, Ramleh and all of those industrial dirge rockers. Originally released on Justin Broadrick's hEADdIRT label, IIIrd Gatekeeper is definitely one of Skullflower's finest moments (and quite possibly both Andee and Allan's favorite SF record EVER), a slow murky trudge through a blinding squall of psychedelic guitar freakout, dense swirls of which lurk behind a lurching slow motion bass dirge and pounding near industrial drumming. Each track picks a riff and pounds it into the ground, repeating and repeating until you can't help but be drawn in, while white hot streaks of guitar skree and low end rumble spin around the relentless plodding. SO much heavier and scarier than almost any other record. A bit like a heavy metal Whitehouse, or a more psychedelic Swans. A muddy, filthy, drug drenched metal club to the side of the head. So fucking awesome. THIS WAS A WAREHOUSE FIND. THIS RECORD IS SOOOO OUT OF PRINT, BUT ONE OF OUR DISTRIBUTORS FOUND A BOX SO WE TOOK AS MANY AS THEY HAD. ONCE THESE ARE GONE IT'S BACK TO eBAY WITH YOU...

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We don't list a whole lot of PUNK rock, and it's not cuz we don't love punk rock, everyone at aQ has iPods full of Crass, Flipper, Die Kreuzen, Misfits, Didjits, Amebix, Channel 3, Spazz, Sore Throat, Naked Raygun, Rudimentary Peni, Man Is The Bastard, Black Flag, well, you get the idea, but modern day punk just doesn't often do it for us. Every once in a while something kicks our ass and usually it comes out of nowhere. Such is the case with Norwegian aggro grind punks Slaxxmaal, this being their first ever vinyl release and it's a doozy. 7"s, 19 songs, many clocking in at 15, 10, even 2 seconds. Furious thrashing grinding chaos, vocals that shriek hysterically one second bellow monstrously the next, guitars more angular and obtuse than most punk rock riffing, and drums like an avalanche of percussion, all wound up TIGHT, into short sharp bursts of blinding deafening fury. Some tracks slow things down, like the opener, with it's almost sludgey groove, Greg Ginn-ish guitar freakouts and howled demonlike vocals, but the band typically explode back into super aggressive blasts of grindpunk destruction. Awesome. Comes with a printed lyric sheet, all in Norwegian, tons of photos and a bad ass skull cover.

You have to make sure when you're crafting comparisons you don't get too carried away. We're WAY into hyperbole, as by now you probably all realize, but sometimes hyperbole can backfire. We get so many records that get described as sounding like the Stooges crossed with Nirvana mixed with Black Sabbath and on and on, until you arrive as something that could not possibly be true. We weren't super familiar with the Sleepers, other than knowing they were a legendary psychedelic goth punk outfit from SF, which featured members Crime, Tuxedomoon and Toiling Midgets. But before we even heard this reissue, we read this quote from Joe Carducci in his book Rock And The Pop Narcotic, where he wrote: "The Sleepers were an awesome powerhouse live. They were an appropriate refinement of The Stooges, and what Joy Division might have developed into had they the balls." What? He had us until that last part. And we can see why Superior Viaduct would go with that quote, who wouldn't? "Like Joy Division with balls!" Sadly, as we all know, Joy Division most definitely had the balls, and while the Sleepers did aspire to the same great heights, they were definitely a whole different sort of beast. Their sound was more gloomy and gothy, more pop than punk for sure, gothic West Coast style, the sound that would later define places like the Scream Club, and would spawn bands like the Abecedarians and Kommunity FK, it's a sound we dig for sure, but a whole different thing. This record was The Sleepers' only album, and definitely tends toward the woozy brooding side of the sound, even a track like "The Mind" that starts out all crunchy and fuzzy and punky, quickly morphs into something more poppy and psychedelic. Weirdly, we ended up digging the second half of the record more. After the brief industrial rhythmscape "Intro", "Forever" unfurls as a strident slab of post punk psych pop, all tribal drumming, swoonsome guitar textures, low slung basslines, and dramatic crooned vox. "Zenith" might be our favorite track here though, with it's swirl of guitar harmonics, the opening few minutes sounding like Durutti Column, all hypnotic psychedelic guitar swirls, which are soon joined by martial snare and swirling string like chords, before launching into a dark driving gloom punk groove. The rest of the record unwinds similarly, noisy, gloomy, gothy, dark and dramatic. As with all Superior Viaduct reissues, fantastic heavy vinyl, the record sourced from the analog originals, nice thick covers, this one with a 12"x24" insert, old band flyer on one side (featuring Cabaret Voltaire and Young Marble Giants, which also gives a good idea of the Sleepers' sound), the other with liner notes from Joe Carducci.

MPEG stream: Zenith
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We still can't figure out how the hell we missed this band when they were still a going concern. Ex-members of the mighty Man Is The Bastard, a sound that is so aQ at times it sounds like they made this record just for us. Super rhythmic, hypnotic, krautrocky, heavy, noisy, squalls of analog noise, walls of feedback, buried distorted vocals, heavy and mesmerizing, like a power violence This Heat for sure. Sound familiar? It should. We described former aQ record of the Week honorees Geronimo similarly, which makes sense since basically, Sleestak eventually morphed into Geronimo shedding some of the grit and noise, but not all of it, tightening up their sound into something almost machinelike. Sleestak also sonically predated/predicted another aQ Record of the Week outfit, French post kraut noise rockers Aluk Todolo. So anyone who went nuts for either of those discs, or loved the Sleestak disc we listed a few lists back, you're probably gonna need this one too. Another mind blowing collection of mangled avant krauty noise rock, that is both brutal and abrasive, as well as weirdly repetitive and seriously heavy. The drums are the core, and the heart of the sound, locked into seemingly simple grooves, the belie surprisingly complex arrangements, the drums are dense, hard hitting, the recording lo-fi but still thick and crunchy, swinging from doomy plod, to tripped out and space rocky, to totally abstract and spacious. While the drums pound away, the rest of the band wrap the rhythms in thick clouds of buzzing analog crunch, all manner of glitch and grit, squealing synths, rumbling downtuned bass, streaks of malfunctioning electronics, strange sound bites and snippets, and vocals, that range from howling guttural roar, to hysterical shrike, to hushed whisper. The band lets the drums drop out, sometimes for long stretches, the electronics and synths spread out swirling and churning, changing shape and sound, building all sorts of tension so when the drums do crash back in, it's super intense. The Power Of Gemini(a was the first Sleestak record, originally released in 1997, and as such, it's definitely much more raw, more noisy, more lo-fi, the connection to MITB and various other post Bastard projects much more pronounced, but even back then, the band were already forging a super fucked up and gloriously idiosyncratic path, creating a sound, that managed to fuse the crushing heaviness and DIY roots of the members' previous bands, with a near maniacal future vision of some twisted, off kilter, and rhythmically obtuse post-everything sound. Gorgeously packaged in a silkscreened letter pressed fold up origami style cardstock sleeve.

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It's been a while since we've heard from Slim Cessna, whose Auto Club remain to this day one of our favorite bands of country punks, along with Munly, Slim's partner in musical crime. We were under the impression that maybe SCAC were no more, which could still be true (and which would make us very very sad) as this is in fact not a new record, but is a collection of B-sides, unreleased tracks and odds and ends, from the beginning of this century. But these guys are so good, even their castoffs and never-weres are better than most bands' best. And yep, these jams are indeed killer, dark and twangy, catchy, brooding and mysterious, like a more wry and less end-of-the-world Woven Hand or Sixteen Horsepower, no surprise that they hail from the same place. But yeah, if you like that sort of apocalyptic grim folk, or dark twangy swampy country, the sound of SCAC should definitely hit the spot. Then the only consideration is whether you dig these guys' irreverence, which is not difficult as for the most part it's pretty subtle. The weird thing is that a lot of this stuff here sounds like the Old 97's, the -OLD- Old 97's, when they were great, mostly due to the vocals, but the same sort of twangy country rock, and wry twisted lyrics, also folks into the Decemberists might find a lot to like here. Not a bad place to start, we might suggest getting The Bloody Tenent Truth Peace first, but some of the tracks here definitely rank among their best, and for the most part Buried Behind The Barn is a much more serious and straight up country record, the humor and 'punk' much more subtle than on some of the other Slim Cessna records. Regardless, another great collection of songs from these guys, and here's hoping this is just to hold us over for a forthcoming brand new full length...

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Attention all headbanging nerds!! Look out, here's a brand new song from San Francisco's weird metal lords Slough Feg, a propulsive sci-fi themed rocker entitled "Laser Enforcer", sounding, especially in this rough-and-tumble demo version, a heck of a lot like some long lost NWOBHM single. We've heard it played live as well, it's a good one! It's slated to appear, in re-recorded form, on their upcoming studio album Digital Resistance, due out sometime next year on Metal Blade, but why wait? This raw rendition was originally intended for a split with cult Canadian doomsters Funeral Circle, but somehow that fell through, so here it is, self-released by the band on 7" vinyl, and paired instead with another, older recording from their vaults. We're especially taken with the groovy instrumental breakdown, with brief drum break and chicken scratch guitar pattern, that happens at about the 1:30 mark of "Laser Enforcer" and then recurs again a bit later on, both times segueing into emotive twin guitar leads, with lots of zip-zip-zap-zap sound FX swirling 'round. Elsewhere, the superbly melodic verse/chorus vocal parts find Slough Feg mainman Mike Scalzi's distinctive tenor in fine form, as he tells you the fantastical facts about what metaphysical effects his regime of laser enforcement will bring about. Despite the song's driving groove, it also has a sort of moody, melancholy vibe to it, interestingly enough. Definitely makes us look forward to the upcoming album, as if we weren't already. Then, for something completely different, the B side, from a previously unreleased 4-track recording that dates back to the Atavism era, is a Government Issue cover! Yep, the '80s DC hardcore band. Slough Feg do a dead-on job with their raging version of GI's "Blending In" from the 1984 album Joyride. It's a nod to Scalzi and fellow Slough Feg guitarist Angelo Tringali's roots in the punk scene back then; after all they've always cited the likes of Black Flag as an influence alongside Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden and Thin Lizzy. Limited to 500 copies.

With a name like Slug Guts, you might expect some ugly ultradoooooom from this band, but they express their misanthropy and disgust in another genre, as these punks Slug Guts are in fact Aussie underground garage rock wranglers, swampy and sinister in the grand tradition of Nick Cave & The Birthday Party, also sharing deviant DNA with the likes of Bird Blobs, King Snake Roost, Lubricated Goat, The Scientists, and other degenerate Down Under gutter crawlers of that ilk, from over the years... We'd first heard 'em on their import-only debut Down On The Meat a couple years back, and are stoked that Sacred Bones have added them to their fine roster for this sophomore outing. Even if we hadn't heard of 'em before, the SB seal of approval (and the band name!) would have gotten us onboard. Plus we love this sort of thing, being big fans of the bands mentioned above, so we're primed for Slug Guts' insidiously catchy caterwauling and late night, whiskey soaked dirgery. Perhaps not quite so noisy/nasty as Down On The Meat was, here Slug Guts show off their pop side, such as is, the record being a rollin' and tumblin', slow drunkard's stagger consisting of eerie guitar jangle, low-slung bass, and deep, drawled vocals, all bathed in loads of reverb, and menace. Opener "Howlin'" has a bit of a sinuous "Painted Black" vibe and indeed the entire album is cloaked in damnation and darkness.

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So what's a band to do when they're not playing their particular brand of crushing metal flecked noise rock brutality? Well, take on new identities of course. Offer up their masked visages and craft a whole new set of songs, under a different name, with an ostensibly different sound, but one that really is just a way poppier, stonier, spacier version of their band proper. Which is fine with us. So the mysterious Snailface, who hail from right here in SF, are in fact, the alter ego of aQ faves Kowloon Walled City, and traffic in a sound that has more in common with Kyuss and Queens Of The Stoneage and Torche and other heavy pop combos than the AmRep-y sludge that KWC specializes in. And the funny thing, which happens with lots of side projects / one offs / joke bands, is that the band is super relaxed, having fun, no pressure, none of the big band worries that come with a 'real' band, so whether they mean to or not, they end up ruling, and writing killer songs, and coming up with songs that are not just fun and funny, but that totally rock and are catchy as fuck, and if that band was their actual main focus band, it might even end up being super popular. Which is the case with Snailface. Sure, the songs have goofy titles, and silly lyrics, they're called Snailface, they wear costumes in the band photos, but you sort of forget all about it when you throw it on, big stonery riffs, super melodic vocals, catchy choruses, the sound epic and heavy and hooky, psychedelic and spacey, some killer leads, plenty of weirdness too, fucked up production, backwards vocals and guitars, field recordings, bizarre samples, but all that stuff just sort of decorates the songs proper, which RULE. The first record is way more blown out and desert rock, stonery and drug-poppy, while the second record, a concept record about Yetis. is way more classic rock / big production epic heaviness, with shades of Thin Lizzy, Blue Oyster Cult and Kiss added to the mix. But together, this doubleshot two-fer is fucking awesome. Fans of any of the above mentioned bands, as well as anyone into catchy groovy heaviness, this stuff will definitely hit the spot. Comes packaged in a hand screen printed cardboard box, the tapes both with full color printed inserts, one of 8 different buttons, all nestled on a nice bed of Yeti fur (3 different kinds!). LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES!!!

MPEG stream: Dancing On Landmines
MPEG stream: Drug School
MPEG stream: Toxic City Of The Sea
MPEG stream: Yowie Wants A Piece
MPEG stream: The Almasty (Kelermes Mirror)
MPEG stream: Triangle Visage Of The Hibagon / Skunk Ape

Nobody makes real punk rock anymore it seems. Sure, there's pop punk, or screamo, or generic 3 chord bash and thrash, but we miss the gnarled grinding ugly punk of SST or Amrep, the sludgey slithery guitars, the sheets of feedback, the plodding drum damage, the clouds of amp buzz, and the howled reverbed vocals, the Stooges-y stomp, the damaged groove, the atonal angular riffage, the slippery squiggly leads... Well thankfully Providence punk rockers Snake Apartment are doing their best to change all that. We've been eating up everything we could track down from these guys, which up until now was just a split 7" and a split lp, and as far as we know this is their first proper full length, at the very least, the first one we've managed to carry, and it's a killer.� Every sone starts off with a squall of feedback, the scrape of pick on strings, thick swaths of ungrounded amp buzz, before the riff kicks in, usually some sort of Ginn-ish tangle that manages to be thick and heavy, but still atonal and damaged (as in Black Flag's Damaged), the drums lurch and swing, the guitar and drums dueling to the death, getting all wound up in each others bizness to glorious result. The bass is just a huge gooey low end throb, permeating every inch of the proceedings, the vocals a drawled laconic lazy shout, sometimes slipping into Nick Cave-ish croon, sometimes turning into a harsh howl, but draped over the jagged punk like a bloodied corpse tossed in a copse of black rose bushes.� Imagine some unholy union between Black Flag, the Brainbombs, The Stooges, Tad and some old SST doom stuff, then have them take lots of drugs and record a record for Amphetamine Reptile... as if that didn't already say it all, this fucking rules.� Killer garish, eye popping drug tripping cover art too!

MPEG stream: Paint The Walls
MPEG stream: Pigs is Pigs
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THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SORRY. Super limited split between two new (to us) bands, Snake Apartment and Work / Death. The Snake Apartment side is a side long track, a murky Brainbombs-y dirge, blown out and gunky, thick and corrosive. A plodding slab of sticky syrupy sludge rock, mixed with haunting disembodied lounge singer vocals, the whole thing a sort of moaning sea sick stumble. Work / Death offer up their own druggy dirge, theirs is a noisy abstract drone, crowd sounds, room ambience, footsteps and muffled conversations are eventually sucked up into a vortex of thick rumble, peppered by blasts of fuzzy murk, the whole thing sounding like a damaged recording of a roomful of amps with guitars leaned up against them. Intense and abstract and pretty fucking cool. LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Six different covers, by six different artists: Will Schaff, Ben Barnett, Mike Taylor, Merdith Stern, Scott Reber and Mat Brinkman!

Not sure why, but it's been SO impossible to get enough of these to list, which is a huge bummer, cuz it's definitely turned into one of our favorite records of the year (and yeah, we know it didn't come out this year, but so what!). Our distros never have it, emails to the label never get returned, so fuck it, we decided to just list it with the 10 or so copies we have. So at least a few of you can check this out. The weird thing is we were expecting something much more generic and garagey and run of the mill, but from the first song (a definite contender for jam of the year) we knew this was something WAY more. Fuzzy, and buzzy, and stoney and groovy and spaced out, crunchy guitars busy burbling basslines, some bad ass drumming, and some super wicked scowly vox, somewhere between the Lyres, Monster Magnet and the White Stripes. "Flight Of The Navigator", the aforementioned jam, encapsulates pretty much everything we love about these guys and gal. A sharp jagged jangly main riff, with a killer stop start descending verse, a woozy soaring chorus, and then a total Monster Magnet bridge with weird processed vocals, and the guitars all space-y and stretched out. Some wild leads here and there, and HOOKS THAT KILL. We literally listened to this first track so many times, that it was weeks before we got any further into the record, but when we did, we discovered that the rest of the record was pretty much just as bad ass. The Lyres vibe can't be underestimated, but Monster Magnet is all over these tracks, as is Hawkwind, plenty of fuzzy poppiness too, classic garage infuses everything here, but it's way more poppy, and space-y and heavy and hooky. We could go on and on and on and on, but since the availability of this record is a bit up in the air, we'll just sum it up by saying this kicks ass big time, and if favorite records were indeed judged entirely and soley on how many times and how often it gets listened to, then we're pretty sure there's no other record this year that would even come close (if you ask Andee).

MPEG stream: Flight Of The Navigator
MPEG stream: Talk About It
MPEG stream: I Woke Up In A Dream

This one came out of nowhere and kicked our asses. And to be totally honest, as is often the case, we ordered it almost entirely because the band had an awesome name, heck, they're called the Snivelling Shits. Fingers crossed we threw it on, and what do you know? The sound was as snotty and snarly and snarky and catchy and punk as fuck as the name implied. The 'Shits were a joke band, formed by music journalist Giovanni Dadamo in 1977, designed to take the piss, but they ended up whipping up a batch of songs as good as if not better than any other groups at the time. Some impossible blend of the Buzzcocks, the Undertones, the Modern Lovers, The Sex Pistols, the Damned and the Velvets. Propulsive drumming, looped hypnotic riffing, and Dadamo's high pitched invective over the top. Take "I Can't Come", a bawdy sex tale about bedroom misadventure, with an insanely long list of other luminaries who couldn't come, culminating in the classic "Jesus Of Nazareth, heeeeeee can't come!" delivered in a snotty nasal whine. The rest of the tracks are just as funny: "Only 13", "Terminal Stupid", "I Wanna Be Your Biro", the all in French "Et Moi, Et Moi, Et Moi" and the impossibly catchy "Bring Me The Head Of Yukio Mishima". Every song here is a stone cold classic. Why these guys weren't huge it's hard to say. Might be because they didn't take it all that seriously, or the fact that they only ever recorded EIGHT tracks in their whole brief career, all collected here, along with some demos as well as the holiday chestnut "There Ain't No Sanity Claus" with the Damned (Dadamo also wrote a couple songs for those guys) and the previously released "isgodaman?" which was included on a comp under the pseudonym Arthur Comix because the record label didn't want the word Shits on their record cover. Bottom line is this stuff is amazing. Hooky and haughty, frenetic and so bad ass. If you dig ANY of the above mentioned bands or have been digging on the current crop of snotty punk rock: the Catheters, the Thermals, Times New Viking, and the like, this will DESTROY YOU!!

MPEG stream: I Can't Come
MPEG stream: Et Moi, Et Moi, Et Moi
MPEG stream: Bring Me The Head Of Yukio Mishima

How's this grab you? Drew Daniel (one half of famed SF electronica duo Matmos and a good friend of ours) doing a record of mostly punk/hardcore covers: Die Kruezen, Crass, The Swell Maps, Minor Threat, The Angry Samoans, Rudimentary Peni...and Carol Channing? Well it wouldn't be The Soft Pink Truth if gay camp wasn't an ingredient. Hence the show tune. Actually, hence the whole album. Drew's previous solo effort under the Soft Pink Truth moniker was a celebration of gay house/disco culture, and here Drew indulges again in the disco thing, perverting these carefully-chosen punk nuggets into electroclash dance-floor fodder with lots of beats, synth, and samples. He's certainly having fun, and chances are you will too if this concept appeals to you at all. We wonder what's in store for future SPT albums...is he going to move on to his death metal favorites next?

MPEG stream: Out Of Step
MPEG stream: I Owe It To The Girls

Now we can perhaps prove that old adage that one YouTube clip is worth a thousand words! Go watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o49KyJQl-Og Ok, you're back? Now just try to tell us you don't want to buy that band's record! After seeing that clip of Soggy kicking out the jams live on French TV in 1980 (thanks to our pal Brian Turner at WFMU for turning us on to it) we knew that if they had an album, we had to have it! A bit of research and we learned that indeed they did, newly reissued as a vinyl-only, limited edition. And now here it is, while they last. It's an expensive import, but it's also a deluxe gatefold package, with the super-thick LP in one pocket of the sleeve and a freakin' HUGE Soggy poster in the other (now when other records claim they come with a 'poster' they'd better step up!). And who cares how much it costs, didn't you just watch that video??! For those for whom YouTube is somehow forbidden, we'll just say that Soggy (what a name!) were a French band circa 1980-82 who sound a lot like a more metallized version of The Stooges, obviously their biggest influence (end of side one here is cover "I Wanna Be Your Dog"). The skinny, shirtless singer is about as Iggy as you can get, with the added shake appeal of sporting a giant Rob Tyner (MC5) style Afro! Though they're about ten years after the Francais Metal de Proto scene we've obsessed over lately, they're more like Francais Metal de not-so-Proto, they'd fit right in, all heavy and punk and psychedelic. And they're even more obscure than those other French Stooge worshipers Angel Face, but just as badass. In fact, before they broke up the were supposedly slated to open a Judas Priest tour. What else do you need to know? Oh yeah, before they were Soggy, in the '70s some of these guys were in a band called the Hardfuckers! All right, why are we still writing this? We don't need to, just watch that YouTube clip!! And yes, that song ("Waiting For The War") is included here. Act fast though 'cause this is limited to 500 copies and while we got a bunch we're sure they'll go quick.

It's hard to believe, but it's true. SOLAR ANUS IS HERE! It took almost 5 years, but it was well worth it! But what exactly is Solar Anus? An essay by French writer/philosopher Georges Bataille... a burst of plodding pummel from UK freedrone outfit Skullflower... but also, and as far as we're concerned more importantly, a band whose music conjures up a mysterious land of legendary monsters, ancient customs, cult beliefs and ritualized incest, all hidden just below the surface of our everyday world, a place only accessible through Matsuri, a group trance during which music and sound, lights and pictures help transport participants back to those mysterious other worlds and ancient times. Such is the strange world of Japan's mighty tranced-out psychedelic doomlords Solar Anus, whose sound most definitely exists as Matsuri, a music designed to lull us into a trance and carry us off...Ô mesmeric, hypnotic and HEAVY. Here, for the first time ever readily available outside of Japan, is the entire recorded output of the legendary Solar Anus, all collected into one massive head crushing, mind melting double cd. Skull Alcoholic chronicles the band's dizzying trajectory, from stumbling, buzzing, bloody-stumped, sludge doom behemoths to druggy, tranced out psychedelic outer space visionaries, swinging wildly toward both extremes the whole time. An impossible blend of Black Sabbath, Hawkwind and the Boredoms, Flower Travellin' band, Pink Floyd, Boris and the Melvins. Beginning life as a dizzy and druggy, slow motion stoner doom outfit, with their 1997 album On, Solar Anus channeled both the garagey spacestomp of old Monster Magnet, the epic miserablist doomscapes of Candlemass, and the purposefully obtuse sludge riffery of the Melvins, taking all of these disparate but distinctly heavy sounds and incorporating all manner of primitive percussive rituals, drifting dronescapes, 16 rpm Krautrock groove, dreamy angelic female vocals, massive fuzzed out guitars, huge in-the-red monster drums and swirls of creepy crawly dirge into a truly epic dronedriftdoomgroove sound. The band's blend of propulsive tripped out krautrock, dizzying drum jams and glacial stoner sludge is at once ominous and swoonsome, crushing and psychedelic, lurching wildly from tripped out tribal Can worship to massive bulldozing metal grooves to super abstract druggy dreamscapes, often within the same song. Album number two, 1999's Trance!! found the band trudging even more resolutely into a bleak and blown out world of dark doom, sounding more and more like classic doomsters, My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost and Cathedral, but completely tweaked of course, and confusingly blended with epic stretches of lurching lo-fi psychedelic Krautrock blow outs a la Amon Duul II. By the release of their final album, 2000's Next World News, the band had stretched out yet again, dragging their druggy doom into a head spinning world of cracked skull outerspace trance, spinning even further into the void, not so much heavy as blissed out and psychedelic. Lots of abstract rhythmic workouts, like a more demented, damaged version of Finnish dronerockers Circle, a swirl of confusionally dense and relentless FX drenched Krautrock spacejams rife with belching foghorn brass, squawking birds, dizzyingly dense tangles of hippy drum freakouts, chanted vocals, as well as all sorts of studio fuckery, chopped up tape loops, warbly pitch shifts and layer after layer of fuzz and buzz and psychdrone blur. Each languorous stretch of fuzzed out metallic groove is swathed in blown out clouds of Hawkwind bongsmoke, but broken up by bleary expanses of chilled out 4am trancemusic, but instead of a post-rave laid back Ecstasy come down, it's like crashing and burning in some dirty back alley from an all night PCP binge, silvery streaks of electronic glitch laid over a pulsing techno throb, surrounded by thick washes of processed tribal drums, the whole thing a very Boredoms like primitive percussive ritual, hypnotic and heavy, sprinkled with all kinds of sparkling sonic twinkles and drifting chimes, and underpinned by a wasted moody muted sixties psychedelia. A quick look at the band's convoluted thanks/inspiration list gives another glimpse into their twisted musical world: German Oak, Crash Worship, Twink, The Electric Prunes, Stooges, Nebula, Pungent Stench, Timothy Leary, Monster Magnet, Ash Ra Tempel, Sodom, Sleep, Amon Duul II, Exit-13, Cathedral, Joel Peter Witkin, Saint Vitus, Church Of Misery, Corrosion Of Conformity, Romain Slocombe, Jimi Hendrix, Gong, Funkadelic, Budgie, Guru Guru, Electric Wizard, Brutal Truth, the Beatles and more. Phew. And for all you Asian psychrock obsessives: The Solar Anus track "Dear Mother Coral" is actually a cover of a classic tune by Japanese psych legends JA Ceasar! One of the weirdest, wildest, heaviest collections of druggy, dreamy, dirge-drone-doom-kraut-space-noise-sludge rock EVER! Mind blowing psychedelic collage cover art, housed in a super deluxe die-cut 'solar anus' slip cover. Includes a massive 12 page booklet, with the original album art and liner notes. These two discs contain every single bit of Solar Anus ever, including their final recording, the previously unreleased nine minute title track, "Skull Alcoholic"! 2006 truly is the year of the anus! SOLAR ANUS!!!! ONE TIME PRESSING OF 2000 COPIES!!!

MPEG stream: Skull Alcoholic
MPEG stream: Dear Mother Coral (JA Ceasar)
MPEG stream: Don't Run
MPEG stream: Conceive Bang
MPEG stream: Die In The Space
MPEG stream: Nightfall New Year
MPEG stream: The Extreme North

Another slab of crushing doomy filthiness from the Choking Hazard label, who we first heard about via that kick ass Ghast / Yoga split, and who also just released the Moloch cd reviewed elsewhere on this list. Choking Hazard definitely have their niche, barring the anomaly of the Ghast / Yoga, it seems to be sludgey stonery crusty downtuned distorted drenched doom, whether it's groovy Eyehategod churn and crush, or pounding relentless ultrasludge, they got it covered. Hard to tell where Midwestern quartet Sollubi fall, they veer chaotically from super slow sludge, to pounding almost AmRep style noiserock, even a bit of drugged out space rock, often careening back and forth between the three in a single song. There's only there songs, but two of them clock in at over twenty minutes, the songs lock into pounding head banging grooves, seemingly looped, so hypnotic and heavy, "The White Witch" even adds some squiggly space-y effects, making it like the HEAVIEST space rock outro ever, and the outro lasts nearly 10 minutes. The title track is nearly a half hour of slow burning lope, the first half almost pretty, like a sludgey Low, until the song slips into some filthy slithery Killdozery chug, totally channeling old school Midwest thudrock, before spacing out and getting more and more abstract, slower and doomier, until the track finally, and begrudgingly, lurches to a halt. Awesome.

MPEG stream: In Violation
MPEG stream: The White Witch

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SORRY.

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SORRY. [/cat/experimental165.html]

A rollicking group-authorized live artifact from arguably the best period of Sonic Youth's 30+ year history. This live set at Chicago's Smart Bar from 1985 made between the albums Bad Moon Rising and Evol was performed just as Steve Shelley joined the band and includes many tracks from the eps of that period such as Kill Yr Idols, Death Valley '69 and the Flower/Halloween single. Including songs from the self-titled ep and their debut Confusion is Sex, there's also a little known track called "Kat 'n' Hat" from a limited magazine release that serves as a twangy instrumental palette cleanser between the first half and the second half of the set. This is one of the best examples of SY's early live sound with lots of their most vital songs freeforming hard into noisy, beautifully dissonant sheets of sweaty adrenaline-fueled feedback and no-wave-ish industrial din. Vinyl version comes with download card. Nostalgic Youth!

MPEG stream: I Love Her All The Time
MPEG stream: Kat 'n' Hat
MPEG stream: Secret Girl
RealAudio clip: Expressway To Yr Skull

Okay, Sore Throat are one of our favorite bands. EVER. But for ages their shit has been impossible to track down. Crusty, heavy, fast and furious, stupid, goofy, political, pissy, snarky, clever, wasted, and musically unbeatable. They were cramming hundreds of songs on to 7"s before Anal Cunt was even a bad idea. BUT, and this is the big but here, we tried to get a ton of these to list, and managed to only get 5. But we wanted to give at least a few folks on the list a chance to experience the fucked up grindcrust joy of the mighty Sore Throat. So be prepared to be disappointed. Only the crazy dudes up at 2am on Friday maniacally watching the aQ site for the update will probably be able to snag these, but you never know. Fear not though. There are some upcoming reissues, which we'll be able to get plenty of, enough for everybody. But for now, 5 of you are in luck, get ready, get set go... Oh yeah, the record. A cd compilation of some super rare demos, 83 songs in all, furious crusty metallic anarcho grind. Comes with an extensive booklet, some inserts and a Sore Throat patch!

We were originally trying to track down enough of these to make it Record Of The Week, arguably one of the greatest records from one of the greatest, most ridiculous and utterly genius crust / grind / noisecore bands EVER. Maybe described as Anal Cunt crossed with Napalm Death, or early Carcass via Lawnmower Deth, or Amebix crossed with Electro Hippies, or something equally ridiculous and nonsensical. Andee bought a copy when he was in Japan, and considered the whole trip a huge success, based on his procurement of said cd, which should definitely give you an idea of the sort of high regard we hold this glorious piece of sonic filth in around here. Sore Throat were born of the same scene that produced Carcass, Napalm Death and the various other legendary early Earache bands, but the group were extremely opposed to commercialism in all forms and took great pains to musically talk shit and call bullshit on bands they considered to be sell outs, even bands on their own label. Frontman Rich Walker, who would later go on to play in doom metal outfit Solstice and runs the Miskatonic Foundation label, was a legendary shit talker, who purposefully alienated bands, labels and whole scenes, which only made Sore Throat that much more fun to listen to, and fun to see piss of all the bands around them, in that way they were sort of like a proto Anal Cunt, and in fact, the A side of this, their final record, Disgrace To The Corpse Of Sid, definitely set the template for Anal Cunt and other noisecore outfits, short sharp blasts of chaotic noise, many as short as a few seconds, 90 songs in 22 minutes, so many that they're all clumped together so as to not exceed the limit of 99 songs on the cd, all these brief blurts and blasts laced with weird buzzes and bleats, strange effects, processed vocals, bizarre samples, the sound often drenched in effects and reverb or totally dubbed out. It may be noisy and brutal and blown out, but it's also weirdly listenable, and we often find ourselves listening to the whole of side A, a twisted fragmented noise grind songsuite that NO band since has come close to matching. In fact if this disc was just those 22 minutes, it would still be worth it. But this disc also includes the rest of the Disgrace To The Corpse Of Sid record, which displays the band's other side, longer songs, midtempo, crusty doomy punk rock, more like Amebix or Doom (which featured members of Sore Throat) or Antisect, churning and heavy, dirgey and crusty, swaggery and snotty. As if that weren't already enough grinding crusty noisy bliss, the rest of the disc is filled up with Sore Throat's equally ruling first full length Unhindered By Talent, which is way more punky and thrashy, pounding d-beats, grinding riffage, bellowed vox, wild squiggly guitar solos, but the band was already well on their way to being grind/noisecore legends, with Unhindered featuring tons of sub 30 second songs, with 14 or 15 not even cracking the 10 second mark, plenty of goofy stuff too (a killer, warped reinterpretation of Sabbath's "Iron Man" called "iron Lung"), but also some seriously fierce heaviness, some of it easily some of the best punkmetal crust EVER. Needless to say, TOTALLY RECOMMENDED, cool artwork with extensive liner notes and lyrics, and be warned, it took us ages to get enough copies to list, so when we run out, it might take us a while to get more, if we even can.

MPEG stream: Disgrace Side A (excerpt 1)
MPEG stream: Disgrace Side A (excerpt 2)
MPEG stream: Different Sides... Of Same Coin
MPEG stream: Horrendous Cut Throat System
MPEG stream: Straight Ahead (Narrow Mind)
MPEG stream: Alcoholics Unanimous

"Way beyond speed!! / Spazztic Blurr!!!! / There is no cure!! / For The Spazztic Blurr!! ... Let There Be Spazztic! -- Let there Be Blurr!" Holy hell. We never thought that Earache would reissue this out of print record on cd! This 1988 LP of absurdist metal has been long sought after by Allan, 'cause he just loves the Spazztic Blurr song found on that classic Earache label "Grind Crusher" compilation. That song ("He-Nota-Home-Me-Marco") is found here along with 13 other examples of their brilliantly (?) mindless, stream of consciousness, dadaistic thrash songwriting. Ok, normally Allan doesn't approve of overtly silly joke bands. But these guys totally take their jokes into a shaggy dog realm of utter nonsequiturship. Lyrics about Burger King, boardgames, the Flintstones, the alphabet, hardcore punks and rappers...yes it's childish. But it's also 1988. And then there's the way they include descriptions of what's going on musically at each point in a song on the lyric sheet (some examples: "Distorted Guitar, Acoustic Guitar, Distorted Guitar, Acoustic Guitar...", "Total Speed Metal Ending", "Weird Effect", "Surf Part", "Isn't It Neat How This Songs Jumps Right In?"). They were probably a huge influence on John Zorn! Kinda like Dead Milkmen meets the Suicidal Tendencies, for fans of Ludichrist, Lawnmower Deth, S.O.D., 7000 Dying Rats, that sort of thing.

RealAudio clip: He-Nota-Home
RealAudio clip: Def Metal
RealAudio clip: Mexicalli

We had never really heard The Spits before. Pretty sure we just assumed they'd be super generic boring punk rock. But one aQ staffer who'd been living in Seattle until recently was shocked that the rest of us had never checked these guys out, and talked them up as being one of his favorite bands, which was enough of a recommendation for us, and holy shit, do these guys rule. This is full length number 5 (we think), all self titled, and all, we presume, packed to overflowing with killer jams that meld Ramones style three chord punk with blown out Devo-style electro-punkpop, and the results are pretty mindblowing, hooks galore, but often buried in murk and buzz, the vocals slipping from a Joey Ramones style yelp to a mush mouthed heavily effected drawl, with even the most straight ahead jams wreathed in weird streaks of processed guitar buzz or twisted electronics, opener, "All I Want" is a pretty perfect pop song, and yeah, total Ramones worship, but the whole track is underpinned by killer sinister sci-fi guitar sounds and lots of buzz and drone, the result is punky pop, but sort of tense and intense. And "My Mess" is all curdled guitar crunch and tripped out doped up vox, wild drumming, and some rad psychedelic effects drenched breakdowns, and while there's not a proper chorus, somehow the whole goddamn song gets stuck in our heads like crazy. Oh and did we mention the bizarre falling apart interlude replete with dialed telephone tones and all the instruments sounding like they're melting before your ears. Then there are jams like "Tomorrow's Children", with muted muddy riffage wrapped around motorik programmed rhythms, and some druggy Hawkwindy vox, with a distinctly electro vibe throughout. We could go on track by track, but it's hardly necessary. 13 tracks, 21 minutes, short sharp, hooky, heavy, buzzy, fuzzy, catchy and totally ruling, these guys might just be our new (old) favorite band!

MPEG stream: All I Want
MPEG stream: My Mess
MPEG stream: Tomorrow's Children
MPEG stream: Electric Brain

"You get a donkey and you get a baboon and you feed 'em a diet of chili and custard for thirty days and then you get 'em to fuck. Their children would be the Germs." -- Kim Fowley That's just one of the choice quotes in this book, which chronicles the LA punk scene in much the same oral-narrative way that the wonderful Please Kill Me did for the NY punk scene of the '60s and '70s. This book starts in the mid-'60s with the Doors, and covers the Runaways, the Screamers, the Weirdos, X, Germs, the Cramps, Black Flag, SST, Slash magazine, etc etc etc. Everyone is mean and says that Belinda Carlisle was fat and ugly -- aw! The authors went straight to the source, if the sources were still living, so this is a story told from the horse's mouth -- the narrative smoothly constructed from the interviews. While not as perfectly-executed as Please Kill Me, this book is nonetheless highly recommended. COOL BEANS "#14 'The Drugs, Alcohol and Sobriety Issue'" magazine + cd 5.95 New issue of everybody's favorite caffeinated, truck driving, taxi cab, bicycling, indie-rock-music-and-life magazine. This time we've got an interview with our own Andee, on his label, his straight edge lifestyle, and his illogical and unfettered love of drug and booze soaked rock. Also Lee Ranaldo interviews William S. Burroughs, Rob Crow (Thingy, Heavy Vegetable, Pinback), Hood, and much more! CD includes tracks by Circle (2 really short, unreleased tracks), Burmese (doing a Brainbombs cover), Daniel Johnston, Hood, Xiu Xiu, Rob Crow, Mono Pause, Shut Up Little Man! and more. THE WIRE #216 magazine 7.50 Latest dispatch from the UK's preeminent avant rock magazine with Richard Hell (!) on the cover, Gordon Mumma, Rhythm And Sound, a cool primer on music's lunatic fringe (Skip Spence, Wild Man Fischer, etc.), and our own Jim Haynes explores Maurizio Bianchi's Sacher-Pelz box in even greater detail than on a recent AQ list. BROKEN FACE #13 magazine 5.98 Newest issue of one of our new favorite zines. Following a similar path as the Ptolemaic Terrascope, but with a much less hippie, more 'avant' bent, but with lots of love for space rock, psych rock and beyond. Issue #13 has a great interview with Vibracathedral Orchestra wherein Neil Campell fesses up to listening mostly to Dr. Dre, an interview with the reclusive Omit, a piece on the Road Cone label, Marrianne Nowottny, 2001 top tens and tons or reviews!!! ----* ----* In Stock, No Chance to Review : ----* AGATHODAIMON "Chapter III" (Nuclear Blast) cd 15.98 AKITA, MASAMI & ZBIGNIEW KARKOWSKI "MAZK (3)" (Naim) cd 15.98 ALVA NOTO / SIGNAL / BYETONE / KOMET "Mort Aux Vaches" (Staalplaat) 2cd 16.98 AMBARCHI, OREN "Mort Aux Vaches: Song of Separation" (Staalplaat) cd 16.98 ANAKSIMANDROS, THE "Life Is A Skullbow" (Veglia) lp 14.98 ANODYNE "The Outer Dark" (Escape Artist) cd 14.98 BEWITCHED "Rise Of The Antichrist" (Osmose) cd 14.98 BIRCHVILLE CAT MOTEL "Blankangelspace" (Celebrate Psi Phenomena) cd-r 10.98 BIRCHVILLE CAT MOTEL "Creeping Frost Onset" (Celebrate Psi Phenomena) cd-r 10.98 BIRCHVILLE CAT MOTEL "Crop Circle Empires" (Celebrate Psi Phenomena) cd-r 10.98 BIRCHVILLE CAT MOTEL "Long Vanished Spirals" (Celebrate Psi Phenomena) cd-r 10.98 BIRCHVILLE CAT MOTEL "September" (Celebrate Psi Phenomena) cd-r 10.98 BIRCHVILLE CAT MOTEL "Shapeshifter" (Celebrate Psi Phenomena) cd-r 10.98 BOBBITO & DJ SPINNA "Wonder Wrote It Part 2" (Self Released) 2cd 17.98 BOUNTY KILLER "Next Millennium" (TVT) cd 17.98 BRYSON, P. MILES "Alejandro's Carneceria" (Illegal Art) cd 14.98 COIL "Time Machines" (Eskaton) 2lp 25.00 COLECLOUGH, JONATHAN "Cake (version 2)" (Siren / Robot) cd 15.98 DARKNESS REMAINS "To Touch The Depths of Sorrow" (Tribunal) cd 14.98 DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE "Stability" (Barsuk) cdep 8.98 FREESTYLE FELLOWSHIP "Sex In The City" (Ground Control) 12" 6.98 FRITH, FRED "Freedom In Fragments" (Tzadik) cd 16.98 FU MANCHU "California Crossing" (Mammoth) cd 11.98 GILES / GILES / FRIPP "The Brondesbury Tapes (1968)" (Voiceprint) cd 14.98 GUNTER, BERNHARD "Redshift" (Trente Oiseaux) cd 16.98 HALO "Guattari (From the West Flows Grey Ash and Pestilence)" (Relapse) cd 14.98 IDIOT O'CLOCK "(Original First Album)" (Alchemy) cd 19.98 JURADO, DAMIEN AND GATHERED IN SONG "I Break Chairs" (Sub Pop) cd 14.98 LAPORTE, JEAN-FRANCOISE "Mantra" (Metamkine) 3" cd 9.98 LICHT, ALAN "An Emotional Memoir of Martha Quinn" (Drag City Books) book 11.98 LOPEZ, FRANCISCO "Untitled #123" (Alien 8) cd 14.98 MISS KITTIN & THE HACKER "First Album" (International Deejay Gigolo) cd 16.98 MUMMA, GORDON "Live-Electronic Music" (Tzadik) cd 16.98 NATE DOGG "Music & Me" (Elektra) cd 17.98 PEANUT BUTTER WOLF "The Best Of..." (Copasetik) cd 16.98 POISON THE WELL "Tear From The Red" (Trustkill) cd 14.98 PRAM "Owl Service" cd ROOT "Black Seal" (Redblack) cd 14.98 SAXON, SKY SUNLIGHT "Golden Vaults Volume 1" (Timeless) cd-r 12.98 TOWN AND COUNTRY "C'mon" (Thrill Jockey) cd 14.98 V/A "Czech Assault" (Relapse) cd 14.98 V/A "Kosmos: Soundtracks of Eastern Germany's Adventures in Spaace" (All Score Media) cd 16.98 WORKSHOP "Es Liebt Dich Und Korperlichkeit Ein Ausgerflippter" (Blue Chopsticks) cd 14.98

A few weeks ago we listed the debut, limited edition 7" single from Finnish/American hardcore hypno-punk supergroup Split Cranium. That was the teaser for this here Hydra Head full length, which includes that single's A side (the B side was a Daniel Menche remix) "Scepters To Rust", along with seven other (mostly) short sharp shocks of this band's noisy, gnarly, D-beat driven loud/fast attack. Featuring our pals Aaron Turner (Mamiffer, Isis, House Of Low Culture, etc.) and Jussi Lehtisalo (Circle, Pharoah Overlord, Steel Mammoth, etc. etc.) along with another of the guys who plays with Jussi in Steel Mammoth. Here's what we said about that track on the single: "Cranium splitting heaviness for sure. Pounding drums, kick ass riffs, massive HEAVY production, some seriously crusty punk blowouts woven into more metallic chug and crunch, peppered with wild squiggly metal shred freakouts, and bizarre echo drenched vocals, that make this sound very Circle-like indeed." Well, a Circle-like version of aggro crusty HC punk anyway (if you've got Circle's Panic cd from a while back, you've had a taste of this). And that pretty much goes for this whole album, starting from the 1:47 blast of "Little Brother", Split Cranium cranking out the raw distorted punkrock in race-to-the-finish, fist-in-your-face fashion. None of the first three tracks break the 2 minute mark, in fact, they get shorter and shorter. But then, with "Blossoms From Boils", the band starts to groove a little more, that's where the Turbonegro-doing-NWOFHM comparison we made in our 7" review comes in. They stretch that one out to almost 5 minutes, and as cranium-splitting headaches go, it's a darn catchy one. A couple tracks further along, we come to "Black Blinding Plague", a track that's about 50 percent just feedback, before the crush and churn and sore throat vokills come in and the party really starts. No wonder they got noisician/droneologist Daniel Menche to do that remix! (Though we wonder, was Merzbow not available?). And then a song called "Yellow Mountain" gets to gallopin', upping the "New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal" quotient while also bringing in some soaring, clean, chant-like vocals (mixed under/above the gruff shouty ones). Beginning to hear some early Circle here, circa Meronia, but more punked out for sure. That awesome headbanger is followed by the album's grand finale, the 8+ minute "Retrace The Circle". It takes the sound of "Yellow Mountain" and gets more epic and Isis-y with it, building into grand spaced out drone heaviness and ending with a totally distorted noise flourish. Wow. We're sold. For a project such as this, with key members living many time zones apart, who probably spend more time emailing each other than they ever get to spend jamming together in the same practice space, it's damn convincing. But then, we'd expect nothing less from Jussi and Aaron, et. al. And while Circle and Isis fans should of course be interested in this, we feel Split Cranium is good enough to garner fans on their own merits. If we'd never heard of Circle or Isis or Steel Mammoth, we'd still be digging Split Cranium's freaked out HC. Cd version comes in a nice oversized digipack sleeve, & there's also vinyl but we weren't able to get enough to list this week, hopefully more will show up soon...

MPEG stream: Blossoms From Boils
MPEG stream: Scepters To Rust
MPEG stream: Yellow Mountain

More super limited vinyl-only, French reissue goodness from the folks at Memoire Neuve, the same label that brings us the mighty Soggy LP reissue featured elsewhere on this list! Stalag are rumoured to have been the first punk band from Bordeux, and Denier Cri tracks their recorded works from their inception in 1978 to their break up in early 1982. Included is the band's one and only release (the hyper-limited 1981 single "Date Limite de Vente" b/w "Secrets," which has become something of a grail among French punk aficionados) as well as unreleased studio tracks and a few live recordings. Stalag deliver an appealing mix of earnestness, melodicism and snottiness that fits nicely with the recent Perfect Un-Pop and Rubble collections of DIY power pop scrappiness. Picture Buzzcocks/Damned-style punk swagger mixed with a touch of Gallic, cold wave cool and you're in the ballpark. Denier Cri is limited to 500 copies worldwide and we have less than 10 in stock. Once they're gone, they're gone, so act fast! Allons-y!

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

MPEG stream: Love You
MPEG stream: Dead Metal City Blues
MPEG stream: (I'm) Alive!
MPEG stream: Grado Zero

Killer reissue of the collected recordings of the -OTHER- legendary-drug-addled-shirtless-drunk-stumbling-rocking-LOUD-punk-as-fuck-Texas-combo (other than the Buttholes that is). And while the Stickmen have a lot in common with the Butthole Surfers (see above) their sound tends towards the noisy rocky end of the spectrum, rather than the tripped out space jam the Surfers were so fond of. And you may recognise the name as the Stickmen were one of the standout bands on the recently reissued Texas punk comp. Cottage Cheese From The Lips Of Death. Been listening to this like crazy. So great! Fans of the Butthole Surfers, Scratch Acid, punk rock and early Homestead records, should really check this out.

RealAudio clip: Christian Rat Attack
RealAudio clip: Gave City
RealAudio clip: What Am I?

High-adrenaline, deliriously complex, hard-hittingly heavy multidimensional power trio music that's part metal, part jazz, part punk, part prog. Gorgeous stuff played with supreme power and passion. Telepathic precision, improv awareness, and hella guitar heroics. They've been around forever and just get better and better. But they started off pretty good in the first place, as you'll hear here!! That's right, one of our favorite bands, the ever-touring, ever-incredible Stinking Lizaveta (name taken from Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov), have themselves reissued their first album of f'n amazing drums/standup electric bass/electric guitar instrumental action. Post rock, metal, jazz, hardcore -- these terms don't matter, it's Stinking Lizaveta from Philadelphia and they rule. One of the best live bands we've EVER seen. They've done two AQ instore performances in the past, two of the best. And when they played in SF and Oakland last year, they destroyed. Don't fail to see them if you get the chance. If you like Gone, King Crimson, AC/DC, Mahavishnu, The Fucking Champs, Don Cab, Melvins, Gore, Breadwinner, Ruins, etc. get with the program and get anything and everything you can find by Stinking Liz. Especially including this, the new reish of their debut disc. It looks pretty much the same as the original release on Compulsiv, but it's got an unlisted, hidden bunch of previously unreleased tracks tacked on!! Five songs from the same Steve Albini overseen sessions as the album proper. They got left off the album's original release back in '96, but now the band can't figure out why (and we can't either, they're prime Stinking Liz awesomeness), so they've been added on for your extra listenin' pleasure.

MPEG stream: Wheaton
MPEG stream: Schuylkill
MPEG stream: LBJ

We've been waiting for this for a loooong time, the new, third (duh) album from one of our favorite bands, the amazing Philadelphian power trio Stinking Lizaveta. The first thing to say is that we like how the front cover shows band members seated For those who need to know more, let's give you the basics: This is ROCK. Goddamn. An instrumental trio of godly Les Paul guitar, hard-hitting mathrock drums, and virtuoso upright electric bass. It's not exactly metal, it's not jazz, but it's heavy and tight and blows away most other rock outfits on the planet, live especially. And "III", with somewhat fuller production than past efforts, reminds us that Stinking Liz kick ass in the studio too. Imagine Black Flag/Gone mixed with King Crimson, or AC/DC playing Mahavishnu instrumentals, or The Champs falling in love with each other, moving to the country, and practicing yoga. Those are woefully inadequate comparisons, of course, but that's cause this band is its own incredible thing. With "III", they've added some synth and violin to the mix -- and even some half-buried vocals on the very first song -- but primarily what you're going to hear is the basic guitar/bass/drums trio, simply cookin'. With gas. Fuckin' huge propane tanks of it, exploding left and right. Whoops, but then let's not forget the moments of delicate, Eastern-tinged post-rock bliss to be found here as well. Lizaveta's multi-genre rock synthesis results in a unique and varied album, from the tension-buildup of a slowburning track like "Tenuous" to the Frippian ambience of "Diana" to the psychedelic soulshiver of "Naked And Alone" with its doomy Black Sabbath bassline and Yanni's lengthy Fushitsusha style blues-psych guitar blowout. The brothers Papadopoulos (Yanni, guitar and Alexi, bass) and drummer Cheshire Agusta do all this and more, with sincerity, passion and might. Joe Lally (Fugazi) released this on his label Tolotta, best known as the home of stoner rock heroes Spirit Caravan. I'd really like to see both SC and SL go on tour together, that would be something...

RealAudio clip: The Sentence
RealAudio clip: Revelationary
RealAudio clip: The Hanged Man
RealAudio clip: Naked and Alone

The classic record remixed 25 years later by Iggy Pop! Much heavier and cleaner than the original, notoriously not-quite-right David Bowie mix. Hear it again for the first time. Liner notes include a longish interview with Iggy about the remix project. Also many sexy, sexy photos of Iggy and crew.

Hmm. We really should have gotten these listed a few months ago when they first came out, but we were debating with ourselves about whether we really needed to write a review that explained how awesome the Stooges are or not. I mean, we figure most AQ customers are hip to these punk rock pioneers, right? So basically, our recommendation boils down to this: if you don't have these albums, BUY THEM NOW. If you don't like 'em, we can't help you. But we think you'll like 'em. Some of the most primal yet avant-garde heavy garagey punk metallic rock n' roll ever made. Of the two albums, debate can rage as to which is most essential. We don't need to answer that question here. Get 'em both. "I Wanna Be Your Dog" is on the debut, whereas you get all the crazy saxophone freakouts on Funhouse. Now what about if you do have these albums? Should you buy 'em again 'cause they're now "deluxe"? Well, yeah. They've got an extra disc apiece of alternate takes and unreleased material. Damn!! For instance, the full version of "Ann" on the second disc of the s/t package is awesomely super sleazy -- we love it. And don't you wish you could buy a "new" Stooges album every week? Take this historic opportunity! With one caveat: if you happen to be a lucky owner of the Rhino Handmade Funhouse Sessions box set, you might not need the deluxe version of that album, as we're pretty sure (though we didn't do any exhaustive research) that all the extra material on the second disc also must have appeared somewhere on the many discs of that amazing (and long out of print) box set.