Everyone likes new music by dead people. Look at how many albums Tupac sold after he died. I try not to let the fact that Marco Corbelli is dead have too great an effect on whether or not I like his music, but in a way it def adds something good to the sound. The fact that in his life and in his music he had a strong infatuation with death and hospitals, and then went on to kill himself off, it makes his music all the more creepier. His later music really captured the essence of the feeling of being inside a hospital at night, and the tracks off this 7" from Bloodlust!, one unreleased from 1997 and one reprint from 1995, do this is well. These tracks are a little more professional sounding than other tracks from around those years, and they def made me feel uncomfortable, so in other words they are good. I'm not a huge fan of the over delayed vocals, but the electronics on a whole are just great. Extremely moody and cold, slow and repetitive, it's a top-notch Atrax Morgue release. There's nothing out there quite like Atrax Morgue, and there probably never will be. Also this is in an edition of 500 so you should have no trouble getting your hands on it.
I am not going to go into the debate about how Sasha Grey has used her celebrity status to sell a noise record. I don't really care about the subject. And, I believe SO, SO many noise artists use their "status" to sell tapes, and Sasha Grey is just taking it to an extreme. And it's an "extreme" music, right? (Hell, it's not as bad as her tape, which cost $125, now THAT'S exploitation of her fans, hmm is maybe someone getting back at an industry that "exploited" her...? haha, who cares). Well, this album isn't extreme, I'll say that much off the bat. Even as a fan of Sasha Grey the fuck toy, I'm not impressed by this album. It felt thin, but not in a "reserved" kind of way. It has a few moments, sure, but overall falls pretty flat in my book. Holy shit the last song on the first side needs to die forever, just a repeated bassline prog with partyish room record background. in case youre curious, "I came I saw I departed" is just what you hear in the sample looped for however long it is, and its by far the longest track on the album (and by far the harshest, still not harsh by normal standards). the song "auon (live)" had potential to be being legitimately haunting (all reverb/echo pitch shifted ritualish vocal chants), but in the context of the rest of the album it doesnt come across that way. There's a lot of ambient/easy listening-sounding stuff on here, and thats not my cup of tea so its not really fair for me to judge its quality. i really hate shit-talking music, usually if i dont like something i just wont say anything at all. But i found the arguments on this entire thread interesting and relevant to what a LOT of the artists out there are doing to sell their shit, just in different circumstances and to varying degrees. Another thing I feel the need to point out is I guess because it had Sasha Grey's name attached to the band I was expecting a bigger budget release. Nicer than most releases, but still its kinda pixelated artwork, like it got run through too many computers, and the solid colors are not totally solid, forget what that term's called, when theres tiny white dots between the purply-gray color; theyre not very richly printed i guess. Same goes on the center sticker. I think to a lot of people this would be a big waste of money. I'm very fortunate that the NOVELTY of a porn star i'm into making noise (and i use that term generously with this album, this is kinda almost a dance album or something in a way) is appealing to me, and even I think thats pretty fucked up that thats the only reason i sorta like it, but whatever I think that kind of appeal is ok for me every now and then. It will def be fun to play this for non-noise fans who are into Sasha Grey, just for the novelty.
I decided that today I'm going to make a bunch of posts dedicated to things I think are massively underrated, perhaps well-received but for some reason never successful, or things that were once quite popular but have now unjustly fallen into obscurity. I know the first thing you're thinking: "Ren and Stimpy is not underrated. Everybody knows it rules and knows it had a massive influence on modern cartoons, and it has a huge cult following." All these are true, but there's one little fact we can't ignore: it's not on TV. Not on any channel, satellite and others, not even a single episode a week. For godssake, even "Minoriteam" is still being aired. I would kiss [as] if they added this show to their roster; it would fit so perfectly into their repertoire, and ideally it could replace their constant airing of those fucking tired-as-hell "Family Guy" episodes I have grown so incredibly sick of. So by this standard, R&S is def underrated at this moment in time. Another thing that piqued my interest in writing about R&S is the glorious return of "Futurama." With season 5 coming to a close recently, it made me think a bit about when R&S had made their "comeback," and why it failed. Although not as great as the originals, the new 'Futurama" episodes and the movies before them did a lot of things right: they got all the original voice actors, they kept everyone (mostly) in character, didn't change the animation style aside from adding a bit of detail, and overall didn't really change the show too much. "Adult Party Cartoon" radically altered R&S, didn't have Billy West on board (crucial), had all new artists, and obviously made the show very blatantly "adult," even though many of the new episodes were written back in the early 90s. I think the jump to making the show raunchier was the primary downfall. The show was already very raunchy and very very adult back in the day, it was just more cleverly disguised and subtle. The subtle innuendos and "I can't believe they just did that on a kid's network!" moments were among the best parts of the original show. When I watch classic R&S now, I never for a moment feel like I'm watching a show for little kids. It so masterfully breaks down age-barriers, thanks in no small part to the transcendental themes of the show. Actually, let's talk about the transcendental elements for a bit. As R&S was a major, major part of my childhood, def my favorite show then and still my favorite show now, I was always drawn into the transcendental mentality R&S presented, even if I didn't know it when I was little. I mean just look at this blog; a review of a Bone Awl tape next to a review of "Saved By The Bell" trading cards! This is not something I do on purpose to be "quirky," these are the things that I really like, and I don't care if my interests seem conflicting by other people's standards, I like what I like and I don't give two shits how schizophrenic it makes me look, and I don't give two shits whether something is "cool" and "hip" or whether being into something will never get me laid again (which I think is most people's fear of exploring unpopular territory, but really it's a stupid fear because it's not nearly as true as you'd probably believe). If I want to completely smash up every window and piece of furniture in a college dorm living room with my shit-faced friends one night (true story, that was what resulted in the third school I was expelled from) and then play a quiet game of "Settlers of Catan" board game with some friendly geeks the next night, I'll do it. I can't help liking what I like, and I deny nothing, and I base what I like on nothing other than my gut feeling. I really think that watching VHS copies of R&S over and over and over as a kid implanted this "nothing is off-limits" mentality I have come to embrace, to at least explore every facet of everything, never thinking even for a moment whether or not people will think I'm "cool" for being into something. That would be my nightmare, to live based on the way others perceive me, to me that would be such an unfulfilling life. R&S sometimes live in a 1950s ranch house and are human-sized and are essentially human, sometimes they are a dog and a cat looking for a human owner, sometimes they are 3 inches tall living in a small patch of vegetation, sometimes they live in a boot, they lived inside a cow once, they lived inside a rotten whale carcass once, a spitoon once, they are fireman, rubber nipple salesmen, pro wrestlers, hosts of a nature show documentary, space cadets millions of years in the future, homeless, sometimes they are the main characters, sometimes not, sometimes they are characters from classic stories like Robin Hood, Ren has played Hitler, Stimpy has played Elvis, sometimes they are elderly, sometimes babies, sometimes they play the role of themselves, stars of "The Ren and Stimpy Show" as a show within a show, sometimes they survive things what normally kill someone, other times they are cautious as if death were a very real threat, the way Ren and Stimpy are drawn is unique to every shot, their bodies get distorted and from shot to shot it sometimes looks like completely different artists' interpretations of the same character. Time and eras do not exist, they all blend into one, but primarily the universe of R&S is set in a mix of the 1920s through the 1970s, but never allowing the time period in which the show was produced to ever be apparent. I could go into so much detail about how R&S has influenced pretty much every adult cartoon you see today, but it's too long a list to go into. Instead I'll make some mention of some things R&S did that you don't really see much today. For one thing, shows today rely heavily on stock animation (recycling animations), R&S didn't just hand-draw every single animation, and every animation was unique, but they went so far as to John K inspecting every single facial expression/animation, and if he ever saw an artist draw an expression that looked to similar to any expression they ever used, he'd make the poor guy redraw it. And another "joke" about Spumco was that John K only hired hot girls whenever he hired a woman. Fact is, this is not really a joke, it's totally true and that rules! I'll leave it at that.
Heavy duty is right! This is the kind of tape that you really want to blow your eardrums out to. It sounds incredibly heavy on the scrap and power tools, but I believe they use much more electronics than one might think to replicate the scrap sound. There is so much movement and such a wide variety of assaulting, crashing noises coming at you in rapid succession it's almost dizzying. It must have taken forever to make this nearly-hour long tape. Amazing, one hour and I don't think they recycle a single sound. As for harshness, this is up there, I like a HN album that can makes your ears bleed without resorting to super high-pitched screeches. A lot of source sounds come through, which give it a good concrete grounding. Not really a dark HN, but def a powerful one. This tape is pure fucking power. Take a jackhammer to your forehead and thats what listening to this tape feels like, and I mean that kinda literally as many many of the sounds on here are rapid-fire machine gun blasts of a repeated sound, of course for only a couple seconds and then it's on to the next wacky sound. Highly recommended.
(SOLD OUT)
Abigail has always been a mixed bag for me, they're blacker than most thrash bands but not as black as most black thrash bands. Did that come out right? On this record they are def on the even less blacker side than they normally are, but that's OK because they really fucking shred it! Boosted by a session guitarist to take care of leads, this record is a bit riffier than typical Abigail, and I think it works really well. The solos are fucking sailing, the main riffs on the two songs kill, and they use leading tones to get back and forth from verse to chorus, which strangely lots of black thrash bands forget about. The second song, "Prophecy of the Evening Star," sounds like they were listening to "2 Minutes to Midnight" right before they wrote it, you'll know what I mean when you hear it. Fastkill, one of my favorite non-black thrash bands, bring more Japanesiness to the table on the record, but sadly with only one original song (the second is an Agent Steel cover). I have to say I don't really like Fastkill's track on this record as much as on their LPs. Actually it's about the same quality as their second LP but much much less technical, it's about as technical as the first LP, but it just doesn't have the same relentless killer punk magic of "Infernal Thrashing Holocaust." Yeah, Abigail really took the lead on this one.
It's no secret I'm a pretty big dork. But hey, it's never once interfered with getting hot chicks, so what the hell do I care? And being a big fucking dork, I inevitably fell into the Lovecraftian mythos. True, there is a black metal band named after every single Lord from The Book Of Fifty Names, and every single one of The Seven Gates and every symbol from The Book Of Calling and from The Book Of Entrance and every Zonei Seal have seen their way onto album covers, and the lore of the Magan, Maklu, and Urilia texts have been the basis of lyrics for countless bands for years. Accersitus show a bit more dedication, every song references obscure and not-obscure elements fromt the mythos, "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn" is stamped across the sparse insert ("Cthulhu waits, dreaming," roughly, you think they could have selected a more obscure phrase given the obscurity of some of their song titles), and the only two images present, other than a barely visible photo of the two (at the time) band member, are what I believe is the Seal of Tiamat and the Sigil of Pazuzu. This minimalist approaches only further draws you into the belief that this band takes the occult seriously, whether in reality it's a joke to them or not is irrelevant, because the use of such little imagery only further emphasizes the importance of what they choose to show. This is a very very personal tape. Mid-tempo ERUSBM, very primitive and straightforward, yet dark and evil, driven by 4/4 with some not-so-fast blasting and occasional drumming outside the spectrum of a primitve bm band, heavy reverb on vocals, sloppy, sometimes mildy slow tremolo sections like a slower and sloppier Ildjarn+Nidhogg collab, actually overall in many ways it's like a slower Ildjarn, but then again what isn't a variation of Ildjarn in usbm today anyway? It's not really a good idea to say that Accersitus is for Ildjarn fans, it is still quite quite different, don't put too much weight on my comparison to the Ildjarn+Nidhogg collab, for the majority of this tape it's quite different. Anyway, back to the personalness of this tape, for one thing the insert is photocopied on cheap computer paper, although well put together/laid out, and the insert is nice and "long," 5 tape-widths + the back tab, one-sided, but hardly cluttered. I like a tape that feels like it was made by a pair of dudes in their bedroom, and while this is more often the case than not, it doesn't always shine through, but this tape def takes you there. Actually fairly melodic for primitive erbm, some thought went into the songwriting, it unfortunately slides into some heavy riff-oriented parts which don't always line up properly, but all is forgiven when you take into account the overall mood of this tape. Cheap ass synth intro/outro fits OK, def the most technical aspect of the tape, could have done without it to help boost the on-the-fence degree of primitiveness. Recommended.
It's difficult to really amass a decent collection of early-90s K2 albums because the prices just keep going up, so this one and the "Noise Tournament Vol. 2" 7" are the only mid-career ones I've invested in so far ("Noise Tournament Vol. 2," with De Fabriek, is going pretty cheap now at around $20). This is the 7th release on Kimihide's Kinky Musik Institute label, and it is what he calls a "recreation" of the 6th release, "Autopsy Soundtrakks," which is going for fairly cheap right now. I haven't picked up the 6th one yet, and I probably won't considering I know that the 6th and 7th are essentially one and the same, so I can't offer much insight, or any insight I guess, into the differences between them. From such a legend in the field there are always high expectations, and the early work of these legends will always be heralded as "the better stuff." If HN is judged by its degree of harshness, this tape isn't K2's high point, but if judged by quality alone regardless of how scathing or not scathing it is, it is a damn fine tape. This tape was among the first after Kimihide's hiatus, and was among the earlier to incorporate what would become his signature use of scrap. It still utilizes the delays so common is his 80s work, and has the familiar K2 "gears churning" repetition of that classic "sound like a steel mill in operation" sound. There are plenty of bleeps and bloops, too, as well as some deranged keyboard work. The form is dynamic and gets all over the place while retaining the centricality which is key to creating a cohesive song. Def dark and mean, but by no means harsh if compared to other music makers of that time, very introspective-sounding, typical of K2, but the music def gets in your face, it doesn't sit quietly in the mind. Quality quality quality.
You have to be careful when stepping into the world of non-violent black metal. It's a world I generally avoid, but every now and then I'll hear something I like. English band Sleeping Peonies is def the kind of band you have to be in the right mood to listen to, if you want hatred, chaos, and noise you won't find it here. This is happy person music. In other words, you'll need a fistful of drugs to really get the most out of this. In many ways this is a pop album, it's "feel good" music. What I like about this band is it is very freely composed, there are no laws or rules it follows, and shows a good deal of genuine musicianship and theoretical understanding, which is def not a necessity to making great black metal, but your brain needs to hear some complex and richly detailed compositions every now and then. Then again if that's what you need it's probably a safer bet to throw on some Shoenberg and let your ears run wild with some *true* genius, the kind of genius that comes from pure prodigy talent coupled with decades of studying composition as a craft and allowing the quality of the craft to become the art in itself, but that's not the point here. As for instrumentation, I really wish they used live drums, it's the one thing that kills this album for me. Although the programming exhibits some interesting ideas, and finds a nice balance alternating from speedy blast beats to technical intricate advanced patterns, the executions falls a little on the flat side purely due to the nature of electronic drums. The guitar sounds mix up a lot, it is certainly not a single static tone throughout. Running the gamut from broken arpeggios to suspended chordal sweeps, the distortion of the guitars is all over the map, from soft lo-fi fuzz to clean to chunky lo- and hi-fi. Also somewhat unique to this band in the realm of black metal is there are real basslines pretty much throughout, so if your brain craves a single contour melody it will be pissed off at this. I find the basslines they use to be hit or miss, sometimes greatly adding to the primary phrases and sometimes detracting. And another thing I find it necessary to address is that the layout/font/etc of the insert is just atrocious. I really believe they could not have chosen an uglier font. The pictures inside the insert are just as retarded, some hipster-faggot girl sitting in front of a pink barn? What looks like a run-of-the-mill "indie" college kid's dorm room with little artsy pieces of paper hanging from strings from the ceiling? God, no comment. So do I recommend this CD to black metal maniacs? Probably not, well, I guess it depends on what type of maniac you are. This is def something different, it's probably most accurately described as a happy-sounding Depressive Black Metal with many experimental qualities, so if that idea appeals to you I'd say give it a try. If it's anything it's something a little different.
Kuxan Suum is a rather mysterious, "elite" part of the Black Twilight Circle. I don't know which band(s) in the BTC share member(s) with this band, but if I had to guess I would say Arizmenda because they sound the most similar. Kuxan Suum sounds like a spacier version of Arizmenda, with less emphasis on having a driving rhythm section throughout and more emphasis on creating sweeping aural landscapes punctuated by a more standard Depressive Black Metal form, and Kuxan Suum's melodies use much longer notes than Arizmenda. I should avoid writing this whole post as a "Kuxan Suum is Arizmenda with ____ and without _____" because I do not even have evidence the two come from the same musician, but I would put my money on a bet that they are. The whole BTC is all inbred anyway. In the land of Depressive Black Metal, a sub-genre so oversaturated and so full of shitty bands, Kuxan Suum stand out in many ways. I don't particularly like bands of this genre, and they're really a dime a dozen, but I did like this tape. The drums have a certain brutal quality which is often lost in most depressive bm bands. The tape has a long intro, which I consider to be just as much the meat and bones of the tape as when the drums kick in and start blasting through, and the intro is absolutely spilling with delay. If you get pissed off by excessive delay use, you'll probably hate this tape. Long, ultra-reverbed pained screams scatter across the melancholic-yet-not-harsh soundscape, this tape brings a little but of new light onto the atmospheres possible within depressive bm, it has a bit of that Volahn-esque sort of classical Spanishy-sounding melodies, but again with delays all across it, so it could potentially be a turn off to certain ears. Of the BTC it's not my favorite project, I think I prefer Arizmenda for my BTC Depressive Black Metal needs, and it's certainly not as good as Volahn, but if you like BTC bands you'll like this.
I was fortunate enough to come across this extremely rare tape for pretty cheap on eBay, and I think that with regard to the place we are in now in black metal it is very important to revisit the work of this band. Although their ideologies are both timeless and also outdated by today's standards, the music itself will always be timeless and is extremely relevant to what's been going on in black metal in the last 10 years and today. Absurd exemplifies hatred through aural means, the simple, straightforward message of the chords they select, the pounding march of the drums, and the passionate vocals tie together to make what is still the most hateful-sounding music of all time. Absurd proved that hate comes not from 270 bpm blast beats over pitch-adjusted grunts and palmed tremolos on strings down-tuned to B, but from simple messages and a true belief in what you do. If you were to ask any modern bm band today doing the minimalist/punk thing about what influences their music, you will be guaranteed to hear the name Absurd come up. Granted, Absurd is one of the best-known bm bands of all time and have influenced countless sub-genres within black metal, but the direct link between Absurd and the bands gaining steam today is undeniable. This is no revolutionary fact I am bringing up here, it's common knowledge that the mark of Absurd has returned in a major way, but for those out there who have not made the connection yet, it's never a bad time to reinvest in a classic, especially one that has so much relevance to today's music.
Mexican thrash punk, what's not to love! I wanted to post a few great non-Black Thrash records before really diving into writing about the 8 million black thrash bands I want to write about. Thrash has become a bit of a confliction for me, given it's really a drinking man's genre and now that drinking has given me cirrhosis (which in turn gave me an extremely rare variation of a somewhat uncommon form of hepatitis) I can no longer be a drinking man. Just pop dope. Does dope work with thrash? Hell yeah, fuck you it works with anything! So when it comes to thrash I've found black thrash to be my niche, but, primarily due to extremely low prices because it's not exactly in style right now, I've accumulated a mass amount of non-black thrash, and this is the difference between the two for me: black thrash is about the violence and the morbidity of violence, while non-black thrash and thrash-punk is about the violence and the fun of the violence. Rotten def bring the fun. The lyrics from the third song on the record sum this band up pretty well: "Killer guitars, killer vomits / Necropounding are blasting the empire of man / Give me another beer, give another lick / Alkoholik Rites, c'mon bitch suck my dick." Awesome. Riffs are super trashy, plenty of slimy melodies and finger twisting, super fast and pissed-off, this would be a great soundtrack for riding your rusty hog across a desert highway at 120 mph. It also feels rarer and rarer to find a non-post-apoc throwback thrash punk band, so that's another plus for the band, but who can deny the fun of the post-apoc bands? This band is all about the elitism and anger towards outiders, but they do it in a pretty funny way (this might be in part because English is clearly not their first language), and their seriousness of it makes it both even more funny and even slimier. A great thrash record needs great energy, killer riffs, and bucketloads of filthy attitude, it's all here.
I remember I was with my friend when he bought this tape a year ago when it first came out, and we went right back to his apartment and threw it on, and I remember saying, "I really couldn't sit around listening to this all day," but over the next day or so it occurred to me that my every thought was pervaded by the ridiculously catchy riffs of this tape. I could not get these damn songs out of my head. When my friend left me alone in his apartment for a while, I had to put "Finally Burst..." on just to try to please my brain's constant nagging to do whatever it would take to get the songs out of my head. One thing I really think makes this tape pretty great is the way the bass is mixed in; it def overpowers the guitar, and is extremely clean (distortion of course, but not noisy is what I mean). The guitars have a great thinness to them, slightly out-of-tune to make ordinary progressions sound fresh. To me this is an entirely different listening experience than Bone Awl, which I know many will disagree with, and I can understand why most people would probably disagree with me. It's true that in one way the two bands are slightly different means to the same end, but when I listen I can't help but be taken to a separate place. Obvious differences are RB play with much less energy and have more formally structured and more rigidly structured songs, following a much more traditional structure in terms of layout. The chaos just isn't here, the strumming is rigid, and the repetition is much much less emphasized. I'm not denying the links to Bone Awl, though, and I won't even go through them because any idiot can figure it out for them self, and if you're a fan of Bone Awl and haven't heard this band yet, I'd still def highly recommend it. If you haven't been listening to any truly "catchy" music lately, here you go, this'll do it for you.
I really would like to just be able to talk about this tape and not have to talk about all the fucking nuances of the social status of this band. It's almost like I can't, though, like I have some obligation to defend the shit out of it, because there is so much negativity towards the "ideals" of this band (and whether or not this is a "joke" band, which I think that even if it started out that way, at this point it is irrelevant) and to the whole BTC, that really has no bearing in the grand scheme of things, for instance is it fucking good music or is it fucking bad music, we have come so far away from asking these questions. Well, I guess I'm already getting into the fucking debate/side-choosing, but I think ultimately I'm more pissed off at the debate itself than the actual opinions. If you'd prefer not to have to go through all this stupid bullshit, just skip down halfway through this post and just read about the tape itself, that's what I would probably prefer to do. For those who have no clue what I'm talking about, Ashdautas have earned themselves a dubious reputation as one of the premiere "fake" bm bands, and people tend to either be very for or very against this label. It seems like very few don't really give a shit whether a bm band is "true" or not, which makes perfect sense given the genre's long-running emphasis on tradition and respect, which I believe are qualities that have strengthened the genre more than hurt it, but problems arise when you get a great band like Ashdautas and it becomes the butt of an elitist joke. Black metal needs elitism, it's one of the defining aspects that makes the genre so special to us, but I can't help but be pissed off when that elitist mentality turns against one of the most exciting new things to happen to the genre. We have to accept that things are changing, we live in a world governed by post-post-modern self-important hipsters and art fags who are judged by how good they describe themselves as, and the influence is everywhere whether we like it or not, and change can be a good thing even if the current thought process doesn't appeal to traditionalists, it's the fact that things are evolving that we need to embrace. Why is it people only see Ashdautas for its extramusical faults and totally ignore what's coming out of the stereo speakers? It's disgusting. Also I really don't agree with it. I think this band is black as fuck, that the music totally speaks for itself and the rest should be viewed as a reflection of THIS, not the other way around. I think art in black metal is such a despised thing because it represents a conscious effort and thought process in a genre where apathy and raw emotion, such as unrestrained and unfiltered hatred, have always been key ingredients. Look at 90s bm, it was all made by people who used to play in the bands of the 80s, thrash/death/etc. So now look at the bands of today, it's either gonna be the guys who did the bm thing in the 90s, in which case we're talking aging people, or it's gonna be the kids who were making punk/hardcore/pv/etc. Of course you're not going to get purely goat-fucking maniaks today. Maybe I'm going to deep into this. Maybe people just hate this band because someone said they used Kool-Aid instead of real blood in some ritual and now everyone thinks they're childish. Who the fuck knows. I'm bored of this, I'm gonna just talk about the tape now and ignore all the bullshit. My oxy just wore off, I'm in a bad mood, I wish I didn't waste it ranting on some dumb shit. Whatever. OK so let's see what we got, first thing you see when you buy an album, before you can even pop it in your stereo, is the artwork, so I'll start there. Well, it comes with a patch, the standard BTC runic thing, not as clean a symbol as Volahn's, but still nice and mystical. I gotta say I've always loved the font this band chose, it has a very kind of "pretty" elegance to it, yet retains the necessary griminess and overblown over-photocopied sloppiness. I'm a little put-off by the actual Ashdautas logo itself, not the rune, it just doesn't seem to match the music. It's a little too standard fare death/black "evil" generic illegible. Decent minimalist cover, it def takes me to a sort of strange and creepy place. So this is very much a hardcore-influenced album in a sense, but at the same time that is not a totally fair statement, and you could hate hardcore and still devour this album. The hardcore elements I think that would be most likely to put people off are things like twinkly arpeggiated segments, creating a mood of mournful introspection, found between the bursts of violent enegry. These are what may make or break it for the listener, depending on taste. The "violent bursts" are very well executed to me, they capture a very deep form of anger very unlike the kind of chaotic energy found on bands more along the lines of Bone Awl. This album is extremely melodic, low-ended, and relies heavily on dissonant tremolo leads over chaotic, often dynamic blast beats. There's a lot of creativity and dynamics going on here, and lots of starts and stops, meaning expect to go from interval-switching-rich tremolos over blast beats right into a broken down, softer and subdued arpeggio with no drums, then into a 4/4 with long suspended tremolos, and the form is somewhat in the vein in all the songs. When it comes down to it, it's the mood that will determine whether or not you're into this. There are so many instances on the tape of "elegant misery" presented through calculated aggression, and very few, if any, representations of pure primal rage. Another thing that may make or break it for you is the vocals are throatless high, more anguish-based and strained than angry and hateful. This tape really presents a hatred towards oneself, not towards others. If you have not yet explored the BTC, this would be a good entryway, along with Volahn, and is a stark contrast (while at the same time they're oddly related) to the other things that have become popular in bm nowadays. On that note, I don't know what's going on with the Ashdautas/Bone Awl split, but I really really hope SS gets on that soon.
Yes! Macro, where to begin. Honestly I'm no expert on the subject, but everything I've been told about Joe and Rodger has been so. fucking. cool. These are BAAADD dudes. I've never heard a Macro album I didn't like, and this one is perhaps not their best, certainly no "Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania," but damn is it good. And not to mention for a 1995 Slaughter Prods. tape it's going for relatively cheap nowadays, which is always a big plus for me. The clear tape, stamped with a slender golden sticker depicting a medieval era torture scene of a guy getting his guts pulled out, has been dropped into an oversized shiny silver bag with the cover art barely glued on (if you have trouble telling from the picture, it's two chicks: one lying down spreading her pussy, while the other girl spreads her pussy and squats over the first). God, Macro makes sex SO unappealing, I'm glad my brain doesn't get off from stuff like that. It's amazing how an image as beautiful as a girl giving another girl head can be made so disgusting by these filthy "musicians." I guess that's the magic. I couldn't really live off of pure filth, though, it's better for me to just visit every now and then for the novelty of it all, but I think I would have a panic attack if my life dissolved into the bleak coldness of Macro's ultra-gritty lifestyle. And on that note, I need to address my thoughts on extramusicality and whether or not it should be such a defining factor in the quality of a band. I am quite vocal on my personal opinions that things such as who made the music, where it was made, conceptual approach, and aesthetic all take a big back seat for me, and when it comes down to it I'm either gonna like something or not based purely on what comes out of the speakers. Often, I prefer to know NOTHING about a band, and just let my imagination run wild and craft the music makers into what I fantasize as my ideal for that particular band, elevating the musicians into an almost supernatural, inhuman state, as if the music simply exists because it exists, it wasn't the work of some average guy. And more times than not my opinion of a band is only marred when I learn more about the musicians behind it. This is not the case with Macro. Yes, their music is amazing on its own, and I would still love it even if I knew absolutely nothing about the redneck retards making it, but in this case, rare for me, the band is seriously elevated by the extramusical elements, particularly the fact that Joe and Rodger are such dirtbag trash heaps. And I think the main reason for this is that it all matches up. The artists are sleazy and gritty. The song titles and artwork are sleazy and gritty. The music is sleazy and gritty. It all comes together so fluidly and completely. And it's so fucking dark. The whole package screams out "mentally sick" in a really messed up and disturbing way. It's not, "my mind is sick because I get depressed and have ADHD," it's more like "my mind is sick because I like raping animals." One of the song titles on this tape is called "Having Sex With Mother." Fucking scum low-lifes. Well, I don't know them personally, so I can't really confirm what I'm saying is 100% true, and I do enjoy exaggerating, but we've all read the Banana Fish interview and we all kind of get the gist, right? I remember when my friend first showed me that interview and I thought, "Holy fuck, are these people real? I don't even want to get near them." I'll never forget the first thing he said to me when he described Macro to me for the first time, and it was something along the lines of "Dingbats making incredible music." It's so true, and it's a goddamn confusing miracle of nature that these people make such good HN. Compare it to the other giants, Masonna and K2, people who are clearly intelligent, artistic-minded folk, and somehow you're still getting the same degree of quality. Maybe it's the grit and grime and harshness so intertwined into the Macro lifestyle that gave them the boost and translated so well into their sound, or maybe under all the drug-addiction and apathy there lies a pair of geniuses, but I have a strong feeling the latter can't really be true. But with song titles like "Golden Haired Thrash Fuck," it's hard to imagine that there was really much of a planned out, art-faggy approach to this band. I think ultimately they just love the dirt and bathe themselves in it, and what you get is a peek inside the mind of someone who has the potential to kill you, rape your dead body, and then proceed to go out and score some dope like nothing happened.
(Click pic to enlarge)
