NOTE: I always listen to the music readers send but sometimes it takes me a while to listen to the album. Here's some of the cream of the crop.
Mayyors “Marines Dot Com” 7” (MtStMtn, 2008): This single bounces around in the same threatening but goofy area that the Butthole Surfers once dominated. The tunes sway like a drunken elephant with forceful, shimmying vocals echoing amidst a barrage of guitar shrieks and corpse parade drumming. “Fatigue” morphs from a vaguely normal tune into this parallel universe of decaying Ford Pinto blues wherein the Buttholes commandeer the vehicle and drive into a cornfield. “Metro” blazes through an urban jungle of filth, catching cocaine speed as it builds. I think it scorched my turntable.
Francis Harold and the Holograms “The Eagle Can’t Fly with only One Right Wing” b/w “Two Faggots, One Cunt” (Going Underground Records, 2008): Nasty, crass hardcore played through an echo tube and fueled by cheap beer and hatred. The shouted vocals alternate between a drunken lecture and an impassioned cry from the depths of Gary Heidnik’s underground chamber. Guitars’ metallic edges thunder along with Mack truck power and pierce with white noise when parked at a rhythm rest stop. The bass keeps a steady, menacing thud along with the drums, underscoring the lingering danger. Explosive stuff in the Unabomber sense.
Cadaver in Drag “Raw Child” LP (Animal Disguise, 2007): How’d I never get to this one last year? Thick as a brick bass lines that rattle walls and a zombie march pace open this masterful death rock album. “Walking through the Gates of Hell” keeps the IV drip crawl of late-period Sleep and add throat-scraping howls and distorted voodoo guitar. As the tempo slows and speeds up again, splinters of slanted guitar blast from the rhythmic platform and explode into violent bursts of electricity. The opus ends with a barrage of dissonant guitars a la early Sonic Youth then a meditative void of krautrock synth. Side B begins with a tempo change but forsakes none of the gloom and fuzz with the crust punker “Fuck This Place.” During the song, the band’s electrified chemistry comes to light when they add a weird tone here and amp up the discordance there but stay in synch with one another. The riff on “Fuck this Place” eventually sucks the listener into a void and never loses his attention. The tune ekes out a motorix rhythm from some heavy bass and a whirlwind axe burn. The band veers into an epic metal slant with “Secession ‘61,” which apes the intensity of Neurosis’ Through Silver in Blood, albeit with a brown psychedelic curve. The songs warped synth lines coalesce with the doom metal bass and flickering flame of the dirty distort-strings to lead the soldiers back to the line and lend perfect symmetry to the experience.
Gasoline Gathers Hands, Gathers Friends “Our Hearts are on Fire” CDr (Unknown; maybe Cloud Valley?): I don’t know where this CD came from or how it landed on top of my stereo. Due to the beige-and-black ancient Japanese-style artwork, I figured the breeze guided some kind of Suishou No Fune album into the window. Instead a crooked soul/neo-folk album glided out of the speakers. The band mimics the psychedelic folk of mid-period Tower Recordings, painting the future-past mood with a late-20th century-sounding recording captured on a scratchy 78. But, in this case, the imitative aspect of the band’s sound fails to sink into a mere soulless tribute to the aforementioned woodsmen. The band succeeds by sketching domestic dread through the projection of a fading sepia toned abandoned mansion image onto the mind’s eye. Guitarist Jag’s play captivates by evoking industrial scenery through constant movement. Early on, Track 2 trudges through the repetitive finesse required to affix hands to small custom clocks. Track 3 maps out a passenger’s thoughts as the train wheels chug beneath his compartment. Scott Johnson’s vocals alternately build off of PG Six’s creepy, breathy whisper and Thom Yorke’s wavering falsetto, a pairing that seems annoying and hipsterish on paper but works wonders for the dreary atmosphere contained on the album. His piano work falls from the upper portion of stereo speakers like lightly flowing droplets of rain. In all, a surprisingly refreshing nest of sorrow and ghosts.
Craft Bandits “zzz” CDr (Breakdance the Dawn, 2008): Continuting the poltergeist vibe, Craft Bandits lurk in an abandoned asylum, thrashing about in a dusty playpen of slanted murk riffs as the sound bounces off walls. The strained screams of abused former patients float around the dilapidated castle. Sounds like a chopped and screwed tape of space aliens with a backbeat of retard drums and broken guitar. All form together to make take the listener into the disturbed mind. What it must feel like to turn into a glass of orange juice after drinking massive quantities of bug spray.
Gonna start doing short reviews here and there to up my game. Peace
