[ aquarius records — Rock Pop Punk Hardcore ]

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Passenger is the debut full length from this Oakland based crusty melodic black metal project, comprised solely of onetime Deafheaven touring guitarist Gary Bettencourt; it's also the debut release from the label All Black, founded by current Deafheaven singer George Clarke. So with that sort of pedigree you may be expecting a platter of glorious soaring shoegaze tinged black metal / black metal tinged shoegaze, but Passenger is in fact a much grittier affair. After a brief intro of looming grinding noise pulsing over ominous shortwave radio static, this record launches into a pummeling, overdriven assault of blown out blast beats, anguished d-beat crust punk and mournful melodic black metal. At first one might be forgiven for thinking Black Monolith are yet another band in the orthodox Sargeist mold (albeit a very good one), but as the album grinds along other elements start creeping in - a driving uptempo punk rock beat provides a rigid spine to a hammering bittersweet riff, which in turn leads to a moment of throbbing ambient calm, before launching into the kind of crust punk / black metal hybrid that would make latter day Darkthrone proud. But then those haunting melodies start to seep in again, and as the blast beats re-emerge and the guitars pile on top of each other, the song shifts into something much more poignant and morose. The beauty of this album seems to blossom more and more as it progresses. By the album's midway point it seems to have accomplished the strange and dangerous task of morphing very subtly from some filthy black crust into an ethereal flurry of bittersweet melodies, driving hypnotic drums and buried muffled howls. And although those dirt-flecked HxC riffs are never far away, lending a genuine vitriol to the moments of comparative serenity, by the record's end the grit has given way to a complete immersion into gorgeous heavy post rock, like the heartbreak gleam of Deafheaven's Sunbather filtered through a much more huddled claustrophobic spectrum. The beauty hidden under layers of decay. Fans of the crustier side of melodic black metal (i.e. Panopticon, Ludicra, Lluvia) would do well to check this out. Highly recommended!

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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!).

MPEG stream: Fly On The Wall
MPEG stream: 1000 Years
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It's been a while, more than a year in fact, since we last got a batch of TRUE SHEFFIELD BLACK PSYCHEDELIA, but it's finally that time once again. We were beginning to jones pretty hard. For those of you who can't quite figure it out from the name of the genre, this stuff is black metal, and psychedelic, and most (if not all) of the bands hail from Sheffield in the UK. Beyond that, this stuff is pretty hard to describe, from blown out grinding blackened psychedelic post rock to chugging in-the-red blacknoise to glistening soft focus krautdrone to pounding distorted sludge to processed machinelike buzz and stutter, and we're not even just describing the genre, most of the bands somehow manage to incorporate all of those elements into one fractured fucked up and seriously and gloriously schizophrenic sound. We'd been waiting for a proper real cd (non cd-r) release from any of these guys, and while there have been rumors of a new Ice Bound Majesty full length on tUMULt (!), it was Black Vomit who were ultimately immortalized in aluminum and plastic first, thanks to those twisted freaks at Rusty Axe. But even by Rusty Axe's already freaky standards, Jungle Death is some seriously twisted avant heavy black weirdness. The sort of stuff that will have your standard black metal knuckle dragger scratching his head and reaching for the nearest Dimmu Borgir cd. The metal component of black vomit is a sort of metal that sounds like it was cooked up by Tim Hecker, Philip Jeck, Aidan Baker and Justin Broadrick would have conjured up in some underground lair, with no small amount of black magic. Guitars that roar and howl, piled on top of one another until they're so thick, they threaten to collapse your stereo speakers like miniature black holes, the riffs grind and buzz, blurred and smeared into huge heaving walls of blown out white hot sound, usually weirdly processed too, so buried beneath the roiling surface, lurk all manner of electronics and glitch and hiss and static. Sometimes the heaviness stumbles into streaks of sonic black tar, slowing the sound down into some blown out glacial trudge, and even then, it's no ordinary doom, the sound glistens and glows, it's heaviness more a function of staring into some alien sun, the beams of light transformed into sound, wrapping you in thick sheets of effulgent buzz and black hued shimmer. The various bits of skull crushing heaviness are balanced by some of the coolest drone and ambient music we've heard, from the rumbling, muted and melodic low end intro, that sounds like some creepy krautrock bassline slowed waaaaay down, to the glistening glitched out sun dappled shimmer of "Conderlint5", with it's mysterious alien voices and skittery crystalline textures, to the moaning lonely spidery guitar drift of "Last Cries Of The Lost". The record starts out damaged, and just gets more and more fucked and freaked out as it progresses, looped tribal drumming wreathed in swirling static, laced with strange samples, gives way to stuttering processed electronic grind, which slowly transforms into a sea of warped drones and Oval like glitches, all smoothed out into an undulating underwater soundscape, wrapped in jagged shards of distorted crunch and sonar like beeps. A brief bit of indie jangle, all minor key strum and sad lilting melody, explodes in a flurry of crumbling stumbling ultra distorted post rock pound, before slipping into some almost Pop Ambient sounding drift, only to again transform into some impossibly twisted bit of cinematic mood music, complete with haunting strings, and dubbed out drums, finally opening up into "Dark Beloved Cloud", the longest track on the record, all Burzumy and murky and buzzy and blackened, woozy and off kilter, with more processed vocals, tons of effects, long stretches of tripped out psychedelic minimalism, before the pounding D-beat climax, and then a soft focus shimmery fade out, which leads directly into the record closer, a warm warped swirl of deeeeeep thrum, and slow moving melodic murk, again shot through with echo drenched voices and bits of electronic twinkle and glimmer, fading out into nearly 5 minutes of near silence. Weird. But so fucking mind blowing. Totally wiping out any boundaries between drone music and black metal and ambient noise and electronic grind and whatever other fucked up sounds these freaks fuse into their totally genius and totally unique TRUE SHEFFIELD BLACK PSYCHEDELIA!!

MPEG stream: A Premonition Of Inevitable Doom
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Ok, so they're called Blasted Canyons, the record is on John Dwyer's (Thee Oh Sees) Castle Face records, and has eye popping rainbow lazer psychedelic-smash cover art (courtesy Castle Face art dude William Keihn), one member of Blasted Canyons also does time in garage pop masters Bare Wires, so we were pretty much already sold, but then we threw it on, and well, we were definitely expecting some cool kick ass garage rock, but were totally unprepared for the tripped out psychedelic garage-prog synth-punk space-pop radness these guys and gal kick out. The first track, awesomely titled "The Artist Formerly Known As Satan", should pretty much seal the deal, huge bombastic crashing distorted chords, almost metal sounding, but more like a fuzzy space rock dirge, swirling effects-drenched boy girl vocal harmonies that turn it it into some sort of twisted pop, pounding drums, druggy and dreamy, but heavy and fuzzy and catchy as hell, and when the track shifts gears, and they launch into some buzzy distorto garage pop crunch, with echo-y vocals, and woozy sweetly melodic background vox, not to mention some wicked melodic hooks, it's a total head banging hip swinging sonic bliss out, and then bam, it's right into that strangely epic and bombastic garage pop dirge which leads to one final buzzy blast. Might just be our jam of the year so far. Fuzzed out swaggery lowslung Stooges-y stomp fused to power pop jangle and lo-fi space-synth-prog, so good we can barely bring ourselves to listen to the rest of the record, but once we did... The second track, "Blood On The Wall" is a synth driven chunk of angular garage-y new wave crunch, with a killer chorus, the howled distorto female vox and buzzing synth definitely reminding us of Black Bug, while "Consider Drowning" is a primo slab of surfy garage groove, with the vocals all deep and echoey reminding us of Crystal Stilts, but the chugging murky guitars, swirling spacey synth and pounding drums transforming it into something way more tripped out and primal. And so it goes, the whole record a wild ride through Oh Sees style sweat-soaked distorto-garage jangle pop, tripped out murkscapes of pulsing crumbling synths and pitch shifted vox, fuzzy classic post punk power pop laced with hazy oooh's and aaah's, noisy sci-fi-synth-wreathed punky pound, dirgey 4-tracked rhythmic experiments, wild, reverbed, feedback soaked girl group noise pop groove, twisted angular synth driven new wave, and finally finishing off with another bit of sonic weirdness, a perfect bookend for that opening blast of garage prog bombast, a swirling, dirgey, lysergic FX heavy synthswirl outro. So goddamn good. Record Of The Week for sure, but we're thinking maybe Record Of The Year too...! Vinyl-only for now, here's hoping they'll also press up some cds soon as well...

MPEG stream: The Artist Formerly Known As Satan
MPEG stream: Blood On The Wall
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Blight was a short lived and misunderstood band that came out of the vibrant early 80's Midwest (more specifically Michigan) hardcore scene along with better know groups like Negative Approach, Necros, Crucifucks, Meatmen, The Fix, etc. Blight was made up of former members of The Fix, along with Tesco Vee of The Meatmen doing vocals here as well as "playing" trumpet! Yeah, these guys all held Ph.D's in "Hardcore 101" but Blight was about branching out from what had become a confined attitude/scene and thus the racket these guys created together as a band was more akin to Flipper or the Germs or Throbbing Gristle. There's even a bit of NY No-Wave going on with all the repetition and discordance and skronk that that entails. During the time Blight was active they released one 7" EP and played out only a handful of times. 23 years later, Touch and Go finally does this band justice in releasing this long lost (and hard to find) EP along with five unreleased songs from that same session, a pair from an earlier demo and the disc closes with a short live set from 1982 in Detroit. Fucking killer! Anyone into Butthole Surfers, Stickmen With Rayguns, Scratch Acid, Flipper and all of those bands who trafficked in gloriously abrasive thud and chaos should hear this. Great packaging and extensive liner notes help make this exactly how all posthumous releases SHOULD be, an amazing, well researched, perfectly assembled reissue designed to preserve the past and expose folks today to a band who should definitely not be forgotten. A truly unique band that stood out in a sea of clones even back in the day...

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New abrasive sounds from the predominantly abrasive San Diego label run by The Locust's Justin Pearson. Severe punk-thrash ranting and clawing. Their music is a highly volatile substance that spits out caustic, barbed tentacles aimed at your vital organs. Time

RealAudio clip: March On Electric Children
RealAudio clip: Kiss Of The Octopus

It takes a LOT for a joke band to impress us. First, the joke has to be really funny. Second, the music STILL has to rule. Or at least be good enough to make the joke worthwhile. Nothing worse than a joke band that relies totally on their gimmick. No need to worry about the mighty Bloodhag, the very heavy masters of all things Edu-Core. For those new to the 'Hag, imagine four nerds, white collared shirts (tucked in of course), totally obsessed with science fiction, so much so that each song is the name of an author, and of course the lyrics discuss the authors and their finest works, live the band hurls sci-fi paperbacks into the audience, and they even did an entire tour playing only in libraries!! It stops being a joke when it's this well researched and executed. Check out the cover too, a headless demon, laying atop a pile of books, the band dead with an 'overdue' notice stuck to one of their corpses, a warrior librarian, wielding a sword, clutching the demon's head, wearing sexy librarian glasses and of course with her library ID still around her neck. Awesome. Plus it's called Hell Bent For Letters! Fuck yeah! Check the Cavalar review elsewhere on the list for a rant on punny band names. What do they sound like? Sort of like a thrash metal Karp, sludgy guitars, galloping drums, shouted vocals, sometimes thrashy and noisy, sometimes gloriously epic, sometimes sort of grunt and death metally. But pay close attention, you might learn something. The tracks this time around (and Andee's take on the books by the authors referenced): "Gene Wolfe" (you must read his Book Of The New Sun series, so massive and dense and epic. One of the weirdest worlds ever written) "Robert Silverberg" (just read Book Of Skulls on the recommendation of AQ pal Barbara D., disturbingly racist and misogynistic and homophobic (like many books written in the seventies) but if you can get past that, it's really intense and fucked up and so strangely mysterious. Being made into a movie which seems like a bad move) "Douglas Adams" (recently re-read the Hitchhikers Guide 'trilogy' and it's still pretty darn funny. The movie was pretty good too) "Orson Scott Card" (the Enders series is the series that made me love science fiction, just don't read any of the introductions or you'll realize what a Mormon kook he is and it might ruin it for you) "Greg Bear" (The Forge Of God and Anvil Of Stars: one of the best sci-fi one-two punches ever. So epic and amazing!) Okay, we could go on and on, the rest of the tracks / authors: "James Blish", "Anne M. Caffrey", "Iain M. banks", "Edgar Allen Poe", "Philip Jose Farmer", "Michael Swanwick", "Frederik Pohl", "Thomas M. Disch", "Franz Kafka", "Madeline L'Engle" and "Jack Womack". If you like metal, you'll like Bloodhag. If you like science fiction, you -might- like Bloodhag. But if you love metal AND love science fiction, then pick up this slab of crushing edu-core, you just might learn something!

MPEG stream: Gene Wolfe
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In our review of the recent archival release from Seattle/Aussie garage rockers Bloodloss, we went on a bit about the later years of Bloodloss, after their move to the states, when Mudhoney's Mark Arm took over on vocals, and then we realized we had never reviewed any of those Arm-fronted Bloodloss records, and then whaddayaknow, in drops this, the long lost final recordings from Bloodloss, in their final incarnation, still featuring members of Aussie noise rock legends Lubricated Goat, but firmly Americanized at this point with Arm up at the mic. Recorded way back in 1996 (we didn't realize they had broken up so long ago) and only unearthed and mixed last year, this is a healthy dose of swampy, punked up garage rock, still laced with some of the jazzisms (plenty of sax) that so defined the early years of Bloodloss, but for the most part, this sounds more like a grungier, scuzzier, swampier Monkeywrench / Mudhoney, although on opening track, someone else takes the mic, and delivers his lines in a Beefheart/Waits like raspy growl, but when the second track kicks in, we're off, propulsive tribal drumming, throbbing bassline, distorted buzz and crunch guitars, and that distinctive Arm wail, and from there on out, the record sort of flits back and forth, between slithery swaggery Beefheartian swamprock and post grunge Stooges-y stomp, with some wild drumming, gnarled guitaring, and plenty of twisted arrangements tangled up in both. Sorta forgot how much we dug these guys, both pre and post Arm, but holy shit is this kicking our asses, and inspiring us to revisit all those Arm led Bloodloss records! Includes a digital download of the album too!

MPEG stream: A Bottle & A Grin
MPEG stream: Another One Of You
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When most people think of Bloodloss, they probably think of the Seattle based "supergroup" which included members of Lubricated Goat, Monkeywrench, and Mudhoney, Mark Arm of Mudhoney lending his oh so distinctive vocals, forever making Bloodloss a 'Mudhoney sideproject', but long before Mark Arm joined the band, Bloodloss were a Australia-based junk jazz / dirge blues juggernaut who totally destroyed. Scenemates with such Aussie post punk luminaries as Lubricated Goat, Scientists, King Snake Roost, Feedtime, the Scientists, Bloodloss fit right in, their sound swaggery and low slung, noisy and bluesy, punky and slithery, fitting perfectly right between King Snake Roost and Lubricated Goat, two of our favorite bands EVER. To be fair, their Seattle era sound was not all that removed from their classic early sound, the big change being their ditching of the jazz element which was a big part of their early sound. Hell, their record is named after an Albert Ayler song, and they have a song about Archie Shepp, they've got sax on a handful of tracks, their songs are loose and wild, and while not necessarily 'free' (although a few tracks most definitely are), they definitely have the jazz spirit, a sound occasionally abstract and improvised, lots of jamming, killer freakouts alongside dense grooves and gnarled riffage, murky and low slung, the vocals seriously kick ass, deep and ominous one second, snarly and scowly the next, the guitars are dense and tripped out, wreathed in wah wah one second, all slippery slide the next, and the songs kill, catchy, noisy, heavy, wild and wooly, fans of all of the above mentioned bands, and that era of Australian post punk, who have yet to hear this stuff, holy shit are you in for a treat. The first disc contains The Truth Is Marching In album from 1990, along with a handful of bonus tracks from their never released Hair Of The Future album from 1991, while the second disc contains highlights from their self-titled 1986 cassette, their 1987 lp Human Skin Suit and a bunch of unreleased tracks and rehearsals, and the older tracks feature vocalist Sharron Weatherill, who left before The Truth Is Marching In, and her distinctive vocals definitely give those older Bloodloss jams their own unique vibe, besides the fact that they're all noisier and way more lo-fi. Super nice packaging with extensive liner notes and lots of photos. Memorandum continues to mine amazing gems from the Australian underground. Now we're just waiting for them to reissue all the old Lubricated Goat and King Snake Roost albums...

MPEG stream: Cold & Alive
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Besides having an awesome band name (that perfectly suits their sound), and killer song titles ("My Ice Cream Fell On The Ground And Someone Ate It!", "Rotten Demon Shit", "Boo Boo Halloween"), these NY knuckle draggers specialize in the sort of down tuned caveman creep we can't ever seem to get enough of. Thick, gristled guitars that ooze, loooong songs that rumble and lumber, the sound lo-fi but still heavy, shrieked almost black metal sounding vokills, landing somewhere between the Body, Noothgrush, Megaton Leviathan and Prizehog, or like a way more home brewed punk rock Corrupted, these guys deal in abject doom sludge misery, but one that's shot through with all sorts of sonic weirdness, be it long stretches of hushed drift, weird breakdowns of barely there drums and distant guitar twang, or wild almost psychedelic squalls of swirling feedback and black noise skree. Oh and did we mention the creepy monk like vocals, or the strings, the free jazz drum splatter? At times sounding like No Neck Blues Band, at others like some strange minimal experimental soundscape, and at others sounding like some slow core dirge gone haywire. Twisted, trippy, heavy and KILLER. Super limited of course, swank packaging too.

MPEG stream: My Ice Cream Fell On The Ground And Someone Ate It!
MPEG stream: Rotten Demon Shit

Finally, the very first cd release from Northwestern blacknoize terrorists Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, not a proper full length exactly, more a collection of odds and ends, a selection of out of print tracks, culled from various 7"s and 12"s and tapes, as well as a couple previously unreleased jams. Those new to Blue Sabbath Black Cheer should definitely beware, the sound this dastardly duo conjure up is more noise than music, more drone than metal, yet it manages to be all of those things at once. They described their sound as "black acid bog death, blackened noise volume assault", and it most definitely is that, it's the sound of SUNNO))) and Wolf Eyes and Organum, mixed with black metal and dark ambience, power electronics and minimal dronemusic, and somehow molded into harsh and harrowing blackened buzzscapes, veering from full on caustic assault, to hushed mysterious creep, often in the same song. One of the tracks here is from the Borre Fen lp, and of the various micro-releases represented here, that was the only one that we ever managed to get in the shop, which means for many folks, ourselves included, this is practically a new record. From the opener "Untitled" (most of the tracks are titled "Untitled"!), a swirling buzzing cacophony of crumbling industrial whir, peppered with buried percussion, howled voices lost in the mix, keening sheets of feedback, and a fierce white noise blow out, to the follow up "Untitled", a much more minimal, bit of cinematic drift, still pretty ominous and spooky, but here it's about the drone, and the strange processed gurgling sounds underneath, the heartbeat like pulse, the fragmented melodies and the overall hellish vibe, to another "Untitled", another wash of minimal scrape and creak and groan and grind, shot through with minor key moodiness, and wreathed in warm layers of deeeeeeep whirring rumble. The record's centerpiece is the 17+ minute track from Borre Fen, which oozes to the surface, a long death march trawl some bleak black underworld of sound, a roiling pit of blackness and despair, thick layers of black drone, processed tapes, field recordings, disembodied voices processed into still more drones, distant streaks of feedback, gurgled grunted 'vocals', rumbling, grinding stretches of abstract sound, fragments of melody drifting in a churning black sonic sea, creepy and dark and desolate and downtuned and very very evil. Besides the above mentioned bands, we also hear bits of Lustmord, Stalaggh, Wolf Eyes, Za Frumi (mostly for the Orc like vocals), Abruptum, Anenzephalia, MZ412... The record finally finishes off with another "Untitled" track, which eschews all that low end for a 5 minute stretch of horror movie high end, stretched to its breaking point, some definite difficult listening, like some sort of boiling teapot / dog whistle dronejam, all over a grinding bit of crunchy rumble, finishing off the record, if not with a bang, then an ear piercing shriek. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES! Housed in super cool black on black cardboard sleeves, and for those that care, mastered by Herr Hans Grusel, of das infamous Krankenkabinet!

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We're not entirely sure where we first heard about Body Hammer, we're not really sure if it's a band or a guy, what we do know, is that this is some seriously fierce and fucked up hypergrind / math metal / black drone weirdness. 18 songs, all but 6 less than a minute long, some of those as short as a matter of seconds, every one an awesome chunk of sonic mayhem. The 1:41 opener is all creep and creak, moan and drift, downtuned guitars and tinkling melodies, some sort of Wolf Eyes / Goblin hybrid, which leads right into 31 seconds of ultra technical, super distorted, gnarled and chaotic noise drenched metallic grind, that should hit the spot for Discordance Axis fans and anyone who digs all that drummachinegun grind. The 14 second follow up is a brief white hot squall of harmonized guitars and malfunctioning drum machines, which leads directly into another industrial drone drift. The first 2/3 of the records pass in a blur, lurching from haunting droney ambience to chugging churning grinding metal madness and back again, stopping for brief forays into blacknoize, dreamy lo-fi ambient drift, as well as some under 20 second hypergrind workouts, all tweaked FX and lightspeed blast beats, high end feedback laced dronescapes, and rumbling guitardronebuzzandblur. With 5 songs to go, Body Hammer lets the songs sprawl, and pushes the sound in even more fractured and fucked up directions, a super distorted in-the-red, lurching black doom trudge through a haze of glitched out distortion and howled vokills, thick crumbling post industrial dirgescapes, all reverbed clank and clatter, thud and pound and crunch, hypnotic static guitar drifts built from layered drones and laced with clean guitar twang, warped bass, and buried vox, until the final 7+ minute track, a harrowing blackened doomic dirge, groaning guitars, and distant vocals, which leaves 5 minutes of silence, before a minute or so of white noise hiss and intercepted voices from the ether. Fucked up and fucking awesome. Packaged in a dvd case, with a printed insert, and while they last we have the super limited deluxe version that comes with a bunch of extra goodies and is wrapped in a sumo cloth and sealed with a sticker.

MPEG stream: Severe Aural Torture
MPEG stream: The Bystander Effect
MPEG stream: Red Pyramid
MPEG stream: When Mental Anguish Exceeds the Physical Capability For Pain

The return of the Body! We've been chomping at the bit, waiting for these sludgelords to come up with record number two, might still be a while, but in the meantime we've got this super limited 20 minute cd-r ep to tide us over. Four tracks of abstract sludge doom. Think a more skeletal Khanate, with dubbed out drums, and replace Alan Dubin's vocals, with a hysterical shriek bordering on Bathtub Shitter territory. Weird but so fucking cool and creepy. Massive sheets of blacktar guitars, sometimes a grinding trudge through a viscous cloud of noxious grime, at others, a slow motion stumble through stark post rock territory, one track features a doom dub breakdown, where the snare sort of carreens lazily in a wide open spce before eventually being stomped flat by a wall of anvil guitars, another track is peppered with creepy soundbites, adding to the paranoid creepiness. The final track, a Judas Priest cover (!) is a blown out white noise drenched dirge, crumbling and crushing. Fuck yeah. Packaged in a cool hand stamped cardboard sleeve. SUPER LIMITED so act fast!

MPEG stream: Even The Saints Knew Their Hour Of Failure And Loss
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A while back we reviewed an amazing record by a band called Tides. What was equally amazing was the circuitous route it took to get to Aquarius. In a nutshell, it was sent to a certain publication who deemed it too punk to review, a friend at said publication grabbed it from the reject box thinking we'd like it. We did. And well you can read that review on the AQ site. And that record ended up being a huge hit around here. The thing is, that record wasn't alone on its perilous journey. No, another record was right there along side the Tides cd making its way to AQ. That record, was this record. The Body. But The Body had a bit farther to go, before making it to the list you have right here in your hands. First, many emails with the label, then much waiting. Then finally a box of cds arrived, but somehow they had all become unglued and ruined in the mail. More emails followed, and still more waiting. FInally we had pretty much just given up. Then just a few days ago, a couple of big bearded guys with tattoos were sort of lurking around the store. You guessed it, they were The Body. Phew. So was it worth it? Hell yeah it was. That is if you like massive, pummeling, downtuned slow motion sludge metal with little bits of ultra doom and lots of post rock in there. And you know we do. So yeah, The Body. This will definitely hit the spot for all you folks into Conifer, Pelican, Isis, The Ocean, Mouth Of The Architect, Tides and all that metallic post rock doom stuff. The first track is a crusher, a plodding doom riff spread out over eight minutes, with freaky garbled vocal samples and the whole thing building in intensity and slowly becoming more and more blown out until it's a fuzzy slab of white noise doom drone. Woah. The rest of the record trudges alternately between slow motion chugging and poundiing, moody mathy rhythmic workouts, and some truly dense tangles of chaotic riff rhythm mashup. All strung together with some seriously harrowing shrieked black metal style vocals buried WAY down in the mix. The final track is a fifteen minute long, relentless midtempo pipe to the skull, with a main riff that is repeated over and over, almost looped sounding, completely mesmerizing, before it all breaks down into a spacious plodding doom coda. So awesome. Packaged in hand glued cardstock digipaks. This came out a while ago and was limited to 1000 copies so we can't be entirely sure how long we'll have these.

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You might not expect a band featuring former members of Whitehouse and Sutcliffe Jugend to sound a bit like some twisted noiserock hybrid of old Today is The Day, the crushing bombast of the Swans, and the ominous brooding doom and gloom of Joy Division, but that's precisely what Bodychoke conjure up on this, their long out of print final album, circa 1998, now reissued by Relapse. We always assumed we didn't like Bodychoke all that much, the other records we heard we really not that good, and their version of "Painted Black" was even left off the tUMULt comp featuring multiple version of that iconic song, but holy shit has this record knocked our fucking blocks off. There's plenty of noise for sure, jagged and processed and crumbling and crunchy and blown out, but noise is just one element here, the band in full on noise rock / post rock. Unfurling low slung bass lines, jagged riffing, some cool complex drumming, the arrangements super dynamic, the vocals slipping from ominous deep Michael Gira like croon, to strangled punkish wail. Opener "Control" pretty much has it all, beginning with a weird cacophony of fractured fragmented noise, the band soon slip into a minimal bass groove, before the guitars kick in and lock in with the snares, the song transformed into a brooding almost Angels Of Light sounding jam, until the chorus, which EXPLODES, and the noise from the beginning returns, wrapping the churning loping crush in a swirling field of feedback and crumbling grit and grime. It's just so intense and heavy and weirdly catchy, and so much better than we ever remember Bodychoke being. And so it goes, the rest of the record continues to display a sound that's almost more slow building post rock than noise, but most of the tracks are laced with heaping doses of caustic crunch. There's also a cello player in the band, who offers up some gorgeously moaning ambience, and subtle strings here and there. Many of the tracks spread way out, sprawling lugubriously, expansive minimal post punk soundcapes, skitter and whisper, burning slowly until the song is engulfed in tangled riffage and wild tribal pounding, and even the noise, it's so deftly crafted and well placed, it's hard to imagine anyone into heavy music being put off at all, it's just like another layer of heaviness, another level of dynamicism, it's weird, we all had the exact same response when this record came on. "Oh I don't like Bodychoke", but gradually, it seemed everyone was listening to this, ALL the time, even now, as this is being written, not only is it playing on the stereo in the back room, but also in the store, this record just slays. So dark and heavy and brutal and melodic and epic and AMAZING. Based on nothing but how often this gets played in the store and how often we've listened to this since it came in, we're beginning to think maybe we should have made this Record Of The Week, so consider this an EXTREME highlight, and thus overwhelmingly recommended!

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We just got a few copies of this kinda-hard-to-find cd reissue of a much harder to find (only 200 copies pressed!) 1972 lp by a hard rock band from Florida who are kinda legendary for their song "Dead Meat", a over-15-minute opus of proto-doom metal, which appears here as the album closer. Combining sub-Cooper schlock horror stage theatrics and sub-Sabbath riffage, "Dead Meat" was

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What is it with stoner rock, and its seemingly unending appeal to those of us who don't smoke pot. Perhaps it musically induces a similar mindstate and headspace as getting totally blazed, but how the heck would we know. Yeah, it's heavy and brutal, downtuned and crushing, groovy and brutal, but there's something else going on in there, it's gotta be the pot! And if smoking pot DOES actually sound/feel like this, then we're totally kicking ourselves for abstaining for the last 30+ years. If any one band truly embodies the sprit of stoner metal, it would have to be Bongzilla. C'mon, they're called BONGZILLA after all!! And while the name might have you thinking these guys are some kind of joke, this shit is deadly serious. These guys may love their weed, and sing about it incessantly, but they totally destroy, wielding their skull crushing stoner doom riffage like stoned cavemen atop prehistoric dragons, bong in one hand, bloodied axe in the other. Similar to how Japan's serial killer obsessed stoner rockers Church Of Misery lace their songs with news snippets and sound samples of all their favorite killers, Bongzilla tracks are packed with news and propaganda, radio broadcasts and snippets of conversation, all about pot and smoking pot, the value of pot, the legal issues, facts about harvesting, police reports, sometimes replacing the vocals all together, the band will lock into a killer groove and just pound it into the ground, over a constant litany of pro pot propaganda. But hell, it fits perfectly. And eventually that stuff becomes just part and parcel of Bongzilla's sound. Which in other hands might be overbearing, cuz if a band doesn't have songs, and RIFFS, then nothing else would matter. But these guys kill, the riffs thick and distorted, groovy and weirdly catchy, some tracks a plodding ultra doom dirge, others furiously rocking sludge, the vocals a near black metal screech, the drums pounding and massive, but it's ALWAYS all about the riffs (and the weed). And the riffs here are massive and hooky, super distorted and blown out, hypnotic and so so so heavy. This reissue compiles Bongzilla's smoking debut, Stash, and their follow up ep, Methods For Attaining Extreme Altitudes, a three song chunk of ultra sludgy stoner doom, culminating in the nearly 14 minute stoner metal epic "Smoke / I Love MaryJane", which begins at a pretty serious clip, before slipping into spaced out bleary eyed smoke drenched ultra doom, a minimal plodding trudge, bordering on Khanate territory, building gradually to a chaotic Hawkwind meets Monster Magnet stoner space rock freak out, all swirling distorted guitar, washes of keening feedback, more snippets and samples, the whole thing eventually blissing out into a buzzing droning tribal outro. We can only imagine how good this stuff must sound stoned, or maybe if you were -actually- stoned, they would cancel each other out and you would hear nothing but silence. Whatever... Needless to say, this shit is WAY recommended, for stoners and straight edge stoner sympathizers alike...

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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. There hasn't been a Boris record yet that has made people this angry in ages. And it's not for lack of trying. Super limited releases, multiple version, each with slightly different artwork, or subtly altered music. By the time you read this, Vein will already be out of print, and if you want one, it'll cost you $80 or so on eBay. In a nutshell, 1500 copies pressed, after a botched and discarded first pressing, 300 copies to the band, 400 sold on the label's website, leaving 800 copies to go to stores and distributors worldwide. 800 copies when they could have sold 3000. We ordered 100, and got 50, so it never even made it on our email list. And because of the botched pressing among other things, the price is exorbitant. As if that weren't enough, there were TWO ENTIRELY DIFFERENT VERSIONS OF THE RECORD. A twelve track punk rock version that went to the US, a 2 track noise version that went to Europe. And as Boris fans tend to be incredibly obsessive completists, fans freaked out when they realized they only got one of the two Vein's. Sigh. Boris need to learn that with popularity comes responsibility to the fans that have made them popular, and the more popular a band gets, the more artistic sacrifices have to be made. A band that routinely sells 5000 or 10,000 copies of a record, can not make 7"s or eps or lps and limit them to 500 or 1000. All that means is that the -majority- of your fans, the ones who just love your music, the ones who buy all your records and buy tickets to your shows, the ones who through their support enable you to play music for a living and tour and rock, will NOT get to hear those records, will become increasingly frustrated and eventually stop being fans. It happened to Stereolab as they continued to do stupidly limited releases, it could happen to Boris. let's hope it doesn't. Cuz we love this band. And their music. And music this good was not meant to be heard by so few. -Obligatory record review portion: Pretty cool stuff. Furious grindy punk rock. Pretty surprising coming from these dirgey behemoths. Beautiful packaging too. Silkscreened insert, silkscreened filigree on the outside of the actual vinyl. Too bad almost no one got to see or hear it....

Not sure what happened recently, but for a while there, there was a serious dearth of heavy bands in the Bay Area. And we mean HEAVY. Not just regular old metal bands, but bands doing something new with that heaviness. Prizehog, with their post Harvey Milk sludge, guitar synth and drums whipped up into a heaving black wave of crush. Wildildlife, who did call the Bay Area home for a while, their fractured psych pop metal weirdness, equal parts Butthole Surfers, Gaye Bykers On Acid, Black Sabbath and Adam Ant. Then there's Pigs, reviewed elsewhere on this list, who do their own sort of Melvins meets Motorhead thing. And now Borneo. Who are not nearly as heavy as any of those groups, but who infuse their considerable heft with some serious poppiness. The guitars are thick and crunchy and distorted and just slightly blown out, the drums pounding and propulsive, but where other bands might go for something more metallic, or totally chaotic, these guys tap into their indie rock roots, and the result is a super hooky hybrid, Jesu betwixt godheadSilo, with vocals, that less distorted and buried in the murk, could have been plucked right from a Pavement or Polvo song. It's a killer combo too, the music thick, and muscly and intense, with plenty of chug and grind, but all wrapped around some total classic indie rock. It's almost like Harvey Milk or Jesu covering Lync or Seam or even Codeine. The heart of these jams is melancholy and melodic, wistful and emotional, but that sound is given a serious facelift, and the result is, well, THIS. A kind of shoegaze-y metallic indie post rock that we are digging big time. Not sure what to call it, but usually, the harder it is to describe something, the cooler it is. And Charismatic Megafauna is indeed super cool...

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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.

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Hardcore emo stylings from Boysetsfire with nods to Hot Water Music or even Jawbreaker, but if the guy from Refused were singing.

A two-song single from this project featuring Julian Cope (the former The Teardrop Explodes guy and self-proclaimed Krautrock expert) and two guys from Spiritualized, playing propulsive, heavy Stooges-style punkrock (Iggyish vox, loads of distorted

Brain Donor is the latest musical offering from Krautrock aficionado Julian Cope, who qualifies this Stooges / thug rock outfit as his 'stuporgroup.' Along with longstanding collaborator Thighpaulsandra (who is also a member of Coil and Spiritualized), Cope has

RealAudio clip: She Saw Me Coming
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Stooges. That's not what these guys are, but it's who they'd like to be! As in Iggy and the. They wanna be your dog and do a damn good job of it. A couple years ago we reviewed an import album and single from this band, the "stuporgroup" brainchild of psych rawk aficionado Julian Cope (of The Teardrop Explodes, now equally well known for his expertise in such subjects as krautrock and megalithic Europe), featuring Cope plus collaborators Thighpaulsandra (of Coil) and some pseudononymous guys from Spiritualized (Doggen and Kevlar). This domestically released cd compiles the key tracks from Brain Donor's 2001 Love Peace & Fuck album (the one we listed) and their Too Freud To Rock'n'roll, Too Jung To Die album from 2003. As we said before, they play propulsive, heavy Stooges-style punk rock (Iggyish vox, loads of distorted psychedelic/metal guitar skree), packing a lot of rock action into these tracks. Pure Detroit worship, done by guys who know what they're doing! With amps set to 11, titles like "My Pagan Ass" and the band done up in full glam regalia, it's hard to say this is more than dumb, good fun, but really that's enuff isn't it? Hopefully they'll follow up this release with a new album soon (supposedly being recorded here in San Francisco with members of Monoshock!)...otherwise we'll be left waiting for the next Mudhoney, or a Thee Hypnotics reunion, to get our Stoogey rock fix.

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Four new tracks from everyone's favorite filthy Swedes. Dark, disgusting murky sludge rock with titles like "I Wish I Was Dead She Said" and "Cum In Blood" grace side one. Side two features the highly anticipated and lengthy remix of "It's A Burning Hell" by the one and only Destroyer himself, Alec Empire. Don't think this will make it onto cd anytime soon, so don't delay.

A NEW FUCKING BRAINBOMBS RECORD!! And it rules. Heavy and droney and hypnotic and dirgey and AMAZING. Too bad it was limited to 630 copies, of which we only got 8 copies the first time around, when we tried to order 50. Somehow, it's available again, not sure if they found a bunch or pressed up some more, but this time we managed to get a whole TWENTY copies, and again, if we had our way we would have gotten at least twice that many, so needless to say, Brainbombs freaks, and we know there are more than 20 of you out there, you're gonna have to be quick on the trigger, as these might be the last copies we can get, and most likely if they're not gone already, they will be by the time you finish this sentence. (We can only hope there will be a cd version soon...)

What really needs to be said about the Brainbombs? Other than they totally fucking rule! Happy to report that rumors of their demise were greatly exaggerated, this is the second 7" in the last year from these demented Swedes and it's another killer. Two tracks of gritty, grimy, sludgy Stoogesy garage stomp. Murky and lo-fi, thick and abrasive, bleating trumpet skronk and strangled whiney vocals are buried within a massive roiling blast of divine scuzz rock. Blown out, sloppy and sick, a single badass riff pounded into your skull over and over and over and over, while some lunatic rants about his need for speed and how you'll just end up dead. Completely godlike!

Don't let the jaunty little Lawrence Welk ditty that opens Obey lull you into any sort of peaceful state, you'd best be prepared for the hateful murderous mayhem that Obey has in store for you. Then again, that's probably precisely what the Brainbombs had in mind. A gentle voice luring you into a dark alley, a shiny trinket distracting you while the burlap sack goes over your head and you're dragged kicking and screaming into the woods, a sweet piece of candy draws you just close enough so you can be knocked unconscious, tied up, and stuffed in the trunk. Those of you familiar with the brutal musical world of Brainbombs will know exactly what we're going on about. The rest of you, be very very careful. They traffic in a sludgey, jazzy garage rock scuzz stomp, repeated riffs, simple pounding drums, a lurching leering fuzzed out psychedelic dirge underpinning tales of murder and mayhem, murder and rape, death and dismemberment. This is probably their most overtly harsh record. Mostly because unlike the rest of their releases you can actually hear what these Swedes are singing about. All delivered in a sort of fey, heavily accented English. As if the song titles weren't enough,"Kill Them All", "Die You Fuck", "Anal Desire", "Lipstick On My Dick", "Fuckmeat", the lyrics are misogynistic, misanthropic and just plain messed up. The sound is like Melvins meets Whitehouse filtered through the fuzzy garage stomp of the Stooges but with a maniacally repetitive looped quality, that cranks up the tension, while the vocalist slowly unravels and gets meaner and meaner, more and more insane. And let's not forget the occasional warbly warped trumpet (!). What can we say? We love Brainbombs. We've never listed this one before, as it has been seemingly out of print for ages. Thankfully a distributor managed to scrape up a bunch, but we can't be sure how long we'll have these.

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Who would have thought that the joyous occasion of the first tUMULt 7" vinyl release would also bring such sadness and despair. But sadly it's true, the Brainbombs are no more. But thankfully, they've gone out with a bang. The bang being this grungy, scuzzy, pummelling 45 rpm, two song farewell kick in the face. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Sweden's Brainbombs, think prime Stooges, recorded in a smelly sweaty basement, on a boom box, amidst scattered porno mags, corpses, weapons and human excrement. While a whining vocalist spits up mysogynistic and misanthropic tales of hyper violence. Then add in the occasional bleat of a demented-jazz trumpet and some fucked up fuzzy blown-tweeter bass. So good. And these two tracks are some of the best Brianbombs material ever. The A side starts with a stuttery, super distorted beat before the sky collapses and you're buried in a pile of violently squirming barbed wire guitars, while a ghostly, sort-of-Eastern melody weaves surreptitiously through the melee. Track two trawls similarly dark territory, a 'Fun House'-ish dirge with a warbley trumpet melody desperately trying to keep from being sucked under by the muck and grime. While the Brainbombs may be dead, they have not entirely ruled out the possibility of more mayhem in the future. But for now, this is a suitably brutal and brilliant epitaph. On thick white vinyl. And we mean THICK. Maybe the thickest vinyl we've ever seen!! Seriously, it's like a ceramic salad plate or something! ----* ----* Selected New Arrivals : ----*

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

SORRY. Holy fuck! The return of the Brainbombs! We thought they were dead and gone, but thank the gods of misanthropic sludge, these Swedish masters of the vile, ultra-violent, vicious, grungy garage-sludge-jazz dirge have returned. Two short blasts of Stooges-ish fuzzed out and filthy garage rock, filtered through the misanthropic lyrical lens of Whitehouse and the sludgy sieve of the Melvins. Or something like that. Who cares? You know the Brainbombs rule and you know you need this record and you know we should be on our knees begging for mercy at the feet of one of the best bands ever!

Oh lord, are we ever in filthy, crusty, demented, depraved, misanthropic, sludge rock heaven! That's right, FINALLY, it's the second collection of 7"s from Sweden's mightiest musical export (well, if you ask us, at least!) THE BRAINBOMBS! Everything we love about these musical miscreants is in full affect, the pummeling trash can percussion, the downtuned fuzz drenched ultra distorted guitars, the bizarre, sort of fey, sort of scary vocals, regaling tales of murder and mayhem, rape and torture, death and destruction, the warbly dented drunken trumpet, all wrapped up into a stumbling, hypnotic, and seriously fucking disturbed package.� It's like they took their favorite Stooges riff, stole a bunch of instruments from the music store, and set up in the basement of the local highschool, where in between kidnapping and torturing students, they would record these slabs of abject musical horror, each one a single riff, pounded and pummeled into submission, sometimes flecked with bits of slide guitar, or that damaged trumpet, but always dripping and oozing with all manner of pestilence and putrefaction. And we can't get enough.� Folks who love Bone Awl and Akitsa and other primitive droning black metal outfits, will probably hear lots of that foul blackness all tangled up in the Brainbombs primitive garage stomp, and folks who have bee digging stuff like the Violent Students and Clockcleaner and Shit And Shine and Rusted Shut and other similar noisy bastards absolutely need this!! Includes the single that came out on Andee's tUMULt label, the most recent Stinking Memory 7" on Anthem, as well as the Wabana Gun Court single, the Ken Rock single as well as the Big Brothel single. Easily some of our favorite BB tracks ever, "Stigma Of The Ripper", "The Grinder", "I Need Speed"... fuck! If only more bands could do so much with so little. Stripped down and blown out, catchy as all get out but still grimy and brutal and very very very fucked up.�� Also included are some rare live tracks, all time BB classics, "Urge To Kill" among them, recorded live in Norway way back in 1993, the sound appropriately distorted and low fidelity, and don't miss the hidden last track, a minute long, post performance Brainbombs sign off, with some demented crowd action, chanting for more... Essential!

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Class is now in session with the much anticipated vinyl reissue of Glenn Branca's seminal 1980 debut of post-modern no-wave composition, Lesson No.1. The first release on legendary New York label 99 Records (who also introduced Liquid Liquid and ESG to the world), Lesson No.1 combined the New York school of minimalist composition (Terry Riley and La Monte Young) with the burgeoning ferocity of dissonance and feedback prevalent in no-wave and punk of the time (Sonic Youth, Theoretical Girls, and The Static). While Branca was not the first to combine modern composition and rock tropes, or lead bands with multiple guitarists (Rhys Chatham was doing that first, though his Guitar Trio recording was released much later), Branca's compositions tended to wield much more sonic power and hefty brutal dynamics than Chatham, leaning more toward heavy ear-shattering club performances at CBGB's than respectful art-spaces like The Kitchen. This reissue includes an extra one-sided 12" of the 16 minute bonus track, "Bad Smells", originally on a John Giorno compilation, Who Are you Staring At? which was commissioned for a Twyla Tharp dance piece. It also features the guitar work of Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo who played in many of Branca's performing bands before forming Sonic Youth. You can hear the churning origins of Sonic Youth's trademark chiming dissonance in every one of Glenn Branca's early big bang epics. Essential!

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Head's up! The riot grrrrrrandmas are back! More spunky punky female-empowering punk rock.

We've raved about these damaged metal weirdos in the past, from their band name (with its constantly shifting spelling), to the always garish and usually puerile cover art, from the amazing song titles (always "Something OF Something Else") to the amazing warped take on classic metal, and that's not even mentioning the twisted lyrics and ridiculous vox. As we mentioned before in a past review, we first discovered these guys on a split with faux handicapped metal outcasts Faxed Head, which makes perfect sense, these guys seem like Faxed Head's more earnest, equally drug addled little brothers, and their half of that 7" consisted of nothing but metal song intros, repeated over and over and over. Twisted but genius. The lps are not so high concept, in fact if anything, they're extremely LOW concept. This lp is not a new one, in fact, it's a reissue of an early record, but even back then, all the Breathilizor parts were in place. Album name: "For The Ultimate Pain Of Medusa's Love a.k.a. Evil Grotokhan VI". Check. Cover art: a drawing by the infamous Mike Diana (of Boiled Angel infamy) of a snake headed, Old Crow drinking, satellite crashing (?), limb severing monster lady. Check. Song titles: "Baby Of Witch", "Graveyard Of Night", "Nuclear Of Power", "Sombrero Of Doom", "Dracula Of Hell", and of course "Something Of Something Pt. IV". Check. The music: total classic metal riffing, with harmonized lead guitars, occasional bursts of blasting thrash, but usually more sort of eighties style riffery, and the vocals, ridiculous and over the top, sorta raspy and metally but also goofy and almost cartoonish, ridiculous over the top lyrics, shit, what's not to love. Total classic weirdo whatthefuck outsider metal radness! Includes a printed insert with all the LYRICS!!!

These guys have to be the dumbest, most brilliantly demented and damaged metal band ever. Which we know, is saying a lot, cuz as a genre, you'd be hard pressed to find a more concentrated selection of dumbness and ridiculousness, but then there is Breathilizor, tangentially linked to Midwestern retardo punks Sockeye, these guys first came to our attention via a split single with the legendary, and legendarily silly Faxed Head, the Breathilizor side was basically an epic metal intro played over and over and over and over. Every time, just when you thought the song was about to kick in, they'd play the intro again. And again. Sounds annoying, and it sort of was, but it was also funny as fuck, and the thing was, the metal was AWESOME. It didn't even occur to us that they might still be a band, but the man behind black metal weirdos Cloak Of Displacement decided to put us in touch with them and are we ever glad they did. Apparently, they've released an lp, and a clutch of cd-r's, but this here, is their latest, the ridiculously titled Metal Dump Of Outer Space's Confusion AKA Hamburglar's Toast. And it rules. And it's totally dumb. Let us count the ways we love Breathilizor. One: They change the spelling of their name seemingly arbitrarily from Breathilizor to Breathilizer and back again, whenever. Two: Every song is called "Something OF Something Else". Every song. On every record. This time around it's "Creatures Of Prehistoric", "Pirate Ship Of U.F.O.", "Monster Of Loch Ness", Count Chocula Of Blood", "Demon Of Ice", "Ghost Of Cowboy", "Gnome Of Entrapment" and "SLC Of Death Metal". Three: The music rules. They lay down some killer classic sounding metal, chugging hooky riffs, wild leads, pounding drums, somewhere between slowed down death metal and classic New Wave Of British Heavy Metal. Four: That classic timeless metal is balanced by totally goofy insane and ridiculous vocals, a whiney nasally Venom-y voice that more speaks than sings, cramming way too many words into each line, and spitting out some of the most ridiculous shit ever. Tales of monsters and demons and space and aliens and basically anything they think of. We could go on, but by now, you know if you need this or not. The dumb factor is through the roof, but goddamn it's funny, and the songs rule, and there are lyrics too so you can follow along, which only makes it that much funnier and stupidly brilliant.

Last list we had the deluxe reish of Baltimore guitarist George Brigman's long-lost Jungle Rot album, a self-released obscurity from '75 that seemed to be one man's tribute to The Stooges and the Velvet Underground. Fuzz-punk-blues-psych from way underground. Well, turns out that as a blues guitarist, George Brigman's biggest influence was probably Tony McPhee of British blues rockers The Groundhogs. So his late '70s outfit was called Split for a reason -- it's the name of (imho) the best Groundhogs album. And Brigman's blues bag is bigger on Split's 1977 album for sure. But if you've been diggin' Jungle Rot like we have, you might want to check this out too. We can't say it's quite as good, but it surely has its moments and many fans of Jungle Rot will like it too. The messed up downer punk attitude, and the fuzz, of Jungle Rot is prevalent here as well. At its worst, decent bar band blues rock with a great guitarist. At its best, really freaking awesome and weird bar band blues rock with a great guitarist. 19 tracks, some previously unreleased bonus cuts included.

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This is one of the coolest, weirdest takes on the metalcore sound we've heard. Broken Promises are from Belgium, and their sound is equal parts full on metalcore mayhem, and dynamic restraint (read: space). The first song is epic, with a repeating, muted

RealAudio clip: Preparation: The Ultimate Drug
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When we reviewed the debut full length from The Bronx way back in 2003, we described them as alternately sounding like a metalcore Strokes, a poppier Coalesce, or some bastard offspring of Rocket From The Crypt, Quicksand, and the Hives. And come record number two, not too much has changed. This is supercharged, sweat soaked, furious, foot stomping wild and wooly, heavy and groovy rock and roll. The only real difference is that their sonic palette has definitely expanded a bit. Some tracks are full on blown out near grind metalcore, others are all slithery swagger like some Aerosmith / Stooges mashup. Still others are some sort of stadium ready Southern rock all big choruses and plenty of distorted twang. A couple tracks actually remind us of long gone aggro rock faves Barkmarket, and once in a while we hear some At The Drive In, and the fact is, that the Bronx are a little bit of all of those things. But they take all of those bands, whip the various parts into a serious frenzy and go fucking nuts. And it's pretty damn irresistible. The songs are catchy and fun, heavy and fucked up, but like all the bands they borrow from, they're probably even more lethal live. But for now, if you're in need of some seriously freaked out RAWK, this should definitely hit the spot.

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MPEG stream: Shitty Future
MPEG stream: History's Stranglers

Most folks probably know Bobb Bruno as the guitar player in sunshiney retro poppers Best Coast, although some aQ-ers no doubt know him as the man behind ultra heavy guitar/drums duo Goliath Bird Eater, and still others might remember him as a member of late great nineties indie rock weirdos the Polar Goldie Cats, so with all that in mind we weren't sure what to expect from this long in the works solo record, on which Bruno plays everything, but has some notable guests along for the ride (including Nels Cline, and Josh Klinghoffer from the Red Hot Chili Peppers!). The title is your first clue, as these are in fact mellow sonic dramas, the opener is a dark, dreamy gloom pop gem, all murky chordal whir, shimmery organs, and some gorgeous torch song vocals, courtesy of Kandyce Lynn Crane, the song smolders and slithers, peppered with pizzicato strings, sounding a bit like a moodier creepier Best Coast actually, the music could maybe be a Best Coast 45 spinning at 16rpm, but regardless it's so lovely. The second track is another dark pop gem, this one more orchestral, sweeping and grand, a dreamy softly fuzzy epic, laced with some cool droned out buzz, it's the sort of sound you might have expected from Cardinal back in the day. "Loveletter" is another symphonic pop number, all swirling soaring strings, swaddled in mysterious electronic chitter, the melody theremin like, hazy and lush and again so lovely, the guitars warm and buzzy, and when the drums finally kick in, the song slips into a Mazzy Star like shoegaze drift, all dreamy slowcore, and again, the song features a cool, weirdly effected super melodic guitar solo. The vocals return on "We Know You Know" which is all low slung, electro-skitter, which quickly blossoms into a sort of dubbed out Portishead-y downtempo shuffle, but with lush squalls of super distorted guitar and some gorgeous wordless vocals, the sound dark and dramatic and a little bit gothic, sounding like a more post punk shoegazey Zola Jesus, which is not at all a bad thing. "Loners" is all murky lysergic slow jam, with James Blake like distorted slo-mo soul vox, the sort of track Balam Acab or Clams Casino might conjure up, woozy and washed out, warped and warbly. "Near Ecstasy" starts off all minimal and fuzzy, with some sweetly crooned vox, again sounding very goth, almost Kate Bush like at times, all over an almost krautrock sounding groove, wreathed in flanged synths and swirling gauzy thrum, and then finally, the record finishes with "Over", a strange bit of experimental synthscaping, that sounds like it was modeled after some Beach Boys outtake, pounding chords, overlapping, all over a hushed shimmer, finally coalescing into a fuzzy chunk of dream pop, with a sweet tinkling chime melody, only to seemingly melt into a warped stretch of druggy murk, that sounds more like the Skaters than anything, but a gorgeously tripped out finish to a pretty fantastic record. Not at all what we were expecting, but all the more exciting for that. Definitely for fans of dark, lush pop and hazy electronic dreaminess, we're actually digging this like crazy! Cool bloody panda bear sweat sock cover art!

MPEG stream: Building
MPEG stream: Look Out The Window
MPEG stream: Loveletter

Not only do the Grey Daturas kick up a serious noiserock ruckus, they also run their own cd-r label, the mysteriously titled Diagnosis... Don't! There are three new releases, and we managed to get a handful of each. These guys have a soft spot in their little black hearts for NOISE with a capital N, as do we, and here comes Brutal Snake to give it to us. BUT, this isn't shrieking hissing facemelting noise, no, this is dark and ominous, creepy crawly, rumbling dronelike noise, which just happens to be our favorite. Lengthy expanses of black ambience, slow burning swells of muted guitar fuzz, deep cavernous tremors rumbling in the background, like watching black clouds drift by, each a gauzy wisp of low end shimmer, slowly changing shapes and spreading out across the sky. Totally and gorgeous and foreboding. SUPER LIMITED cd-r (aren't they all?) ONLY 50 COPIES!!! Packaged in a cool stiff textured paper sleeve, with a complicated folded over Japanese style obi holding the disc in place, with the liner notes printed on the inside.

MPEG stream: Tiny Stubborn Lights Vs. Clustering Darkness Pt. 1
MPEG stream: Arrows/Decades

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. SUPER LIMITED single sided 12" of massive, hyperviolent, downtuned stoner doom sludge. Corrosive and sinister, slow and unbelievably brutal. We raved about the cd a few lists back, and this 12" does not disappoint. Cover art and etching on the non-playable side by Stephen O'Malley (Sunn 0))), Khanate, etc.). One original, and a blistering cover of Eyehategod's "White Nigger" with Brutal Truth's Kevin Sharp guesting on vocals.

MPEG stream: Time As Ideology
MPEG stream: Time As Methodology

Smashed drum kits, blown bass amps, band and audience, drums and guitars, mic cords and stands, tables and chairs, all in a bloody, sweaty, writhing pit in the middle of the club. The return of the four headed hydra, Burmese, San Francisco's grind/noise/sludge behemoth. Cutting a swath of mayhemic brutality and entropic dissonance through the stale SF scene, Burmese make their table-tossing, audience-baiting, tantrum-throwing peers look like charm school graduates. Punk rock Gallants to Burmese's skull crushing, soul poisoning, ear shredding Goofus. Now with an extra drummer and a renewed, dangerously unhealthy obsession with Whitehouse, Burmese have slowed things down a bit. Gone are the hyperspeed blast beats and in their place are midtempo dirges, stumbling drunkenly through nihilistic, grinding sludge, spewing bile and ultraviolence. Pounding militaristic beats demarcate vast expanses of throbbing feedback, guttural growls, tarpit washes of bowel loosening low-end and 16 rpm grindcore. Things do speed up occasionally into blurry bursts of static and skree, but even then, they eventually devolve back into some sort of primordial and glacial caveman stomp, all murky thud and swampy roar, thick and suffocating and massively heavy. This is some seriously scary shit. Grinding and pounding. Punishing and pummelling. Relentless and brutal. MPEG Stream: "Ladykiller" [/audio/burmeseladykiller.m3u]

MPEG stream: Ladykiller