C Average - C Average

Year: 1998

Label: Kill Rock Stars

Well, that Karp post down below got my dander up to post some C Average, so thar she blows.

In the incestuous Pacific Northwest music scene of the 1990's, C Average were a duo (occasionally a trio when assisted by Joe Preston, or backing Eddie Vedder(?!)) dedicated to the mission of returning rocknroll to nerds. Let fantasy reign supreme! This record is riddled with orcs, warlocks, wizards, and trolls, a veritable treasure trove of Dungeons and Dragons ribaldry. And the counterpoint to all this geekdom? How about some sludgy cum epic metal? Mostly instrumental, rife with technical prowess, and owing much to the Blue Cheers and Black Sabbaths of the world, this record avoids the tongue and cheek "irony" of a band like Fucking Champs. C Average aren't trying to pull one over on you, as much as they're trying to pull you in. Join them in their tree fort (no girls allowed...duh) and listen to old ZZ Top, Sonics, Pink Floyd, and hell, why not the Queen "Flash Gordon" soundtrack? 

If you like Karp, Big Business, Melvins, Rush, obscure 70's heavy prog, and acne, peep this. And if you like this record, let me know and I'll get their other album up here too.

DL

KARP - Self Titled

Year: 1997
I have not posted here in a good while.

Anyway...this is KARP's final, and my favorite, of all their releases. KARP has been remarked (very stupidly in my opinion) as a 'metal band that even indie rockers can love'. Fuck that. KARP was not metal. They were a noisy cacophonous bundle of confusion, humility, and pure-fucking-exuberance. Song after song is an orgy of cochleatic-grinding that continues to pummel you across your skull long after the record ends. 'KARP' is an ear-raping experience you will never forget, nor never WANT to forget. You will cherish the moment you had with the band...reminisce fondly on Scott Jernigan (drums) breathing heavily over you as Jared Warren (bass, vox) holds you down by the midsection and Chris Smith (gits, vox) penetrates balls deep into your cerebral cortex. Your wounds have healed...but the emotional trauma has stamped itself upon your soul.

KARP is really good! Heavily influenced by the Melvins! It's like a grungy Big Business or somethin!

KARP - Self Titled

Metroschifter - Capsule

Year: 1994

Label: Conversion / Slamdek

Remember this band? I had almost forgotten about them until I happened upon this cd in an old binder of stuff I never listen to anymore. Too bad really, because this was a cool record, I probably should have kept up with this band a little closer. They were the brainchild of K. Scott Richter who was a linchpin in the fertile Louisville hardcore/punk scene of the early nineties, and wanted to do a band that emulated the math rock lineage of his hometown (Rodan, Crain, etc.) , and marry it with the still not maligned emo hardcore of the other side of Louisville...mainly Endpoint. 

For their first record, Richter wrote demos and mailed them out to drummer Mario Rubalcaba, and bassist Patrick McClimans. They had the album for sale before it was even recorded, and booked their first tour before they had ever been in a room before. But that was the diy spirit back then...fuck it, it'll work out somehow. And oddly enough, this is a very cohesive album, you would  never have guessed the circumstances under which it was recorded (had I not just told I suppose).

Here's a list of bands that are represented by the members of Metroschifter; Rachels, Sunspring, 411, Thingy, Black Heart Procession, Hot Snakes, Rocket From The Crypt, Clikatat Ikatowi, Earthless, Endpoint, and Falling Forward. Later incarnations of the band had members of; Coliseum, National Acrobat, Black Cross, and Shipping News. Point is, there's some real talent in this band, and in the songwriting. 

Sonically, it's late 80's math rock as filtered through early 90's hardcore. You'll probably like that. One unfortunate sidebar, for some reason they decided to break the 15 tracks up into 99 parts, which still plays seamlessly, it just just seems kinda retarded. Hey man, diy. Also, this is the Conversion Records re-release with a couple extra tracks not on the vinyl pressing.

DL

Mount Shasta - Put The Creep On

Year: 1994

Label: Skin Graft

There's a pretty decent chance you already own this record, and for good reason. Because if you were alive and operating within the confines of heavy music in the early 1990's, almost everything Skin Graft Records was putting out got snatched up. 

Two members of this band had just relocated from Atlanta to Chicago once they disbanded their Georgian band Dirt (who's discography has been posted over at Beyond Failure, and should most definitely be picked up), and quickly got to work as Mount Shasta. They hooked up with the fairly new Skin Graft Records who were making a name for themselves with lavish packaging and impeccable taste. The band did what all noiseniks of the time did, they booked studio time with Steve Albini, and out popped this little doozy (they did have a 7" before this album). Rumbling, tumbling, gnashing of teeth music. A perennial favorite of mine.

If you missed it the first time around, or maybe your vinyl copy is scratched, do rekindle your love affair with Mount Shasta.

Sorry about the run-on sentences, the poor grammar, and general lack of cohesion on this post...there's a good chance I am/was drunk when it was written.

DL

Last Of The Juanitas - In The Dirt

Year: 2005

Label: Wantage USA

More knotted, tangled, dense uber music from the Juanitas. If you dug the sludgy math rock of the Hawaii album posted earlier, then you'll be fine with this one too. In fact, the production on this one is better giving an air of colossal crushing to the record. The songs twist and turn on a dime, but always remain intense...and heavy. Not Floor heavy, more like Unsane heavy. In fact, I think this one sounds pretty much like Unsane covering Drive Like Jehu. 

A sidebar, and something I neglected to mention in their last post, but the guitarist of Last Of The Juanitas used to play in Shiny Beast who were from my home state of North Cacka, and released an awesome split lp with the equally cool Regraped from Chapel Hill. Regraped played my house in Athens, Georgia, but I never got to see Shiny Beast. If I ever figure out, or show the imitative to hook my turntable up to my computer I'll post that split.

Also, listen to track 7, "Human Cannonball" and tell me it doesn't sound like the Mondo Generator song "Another Tension Head".

DL

Void - Potion For Bad Dreams

Year: 1983

Label: unreleased

You can thank the James Joyce archives for this one, cause I had never heard of it until very recently, much less heard it.

The story is, the band recorded this album for Touch And Go as the follow up to the split lp with Faith record, but after it's completion they were unhappy for whatever reasons, and blocked it's release. My hunch is that they were trying to follow some other first wave hardcore bands into their "mature" stage (i.e. allowing metal to creep in) and weren't happy with the results. Remember, at this time Black Flag was bumming people out with extended dirge jams, DRI was embracing metallic thrash, and bands like DYS and Gang Green were going full-on arena metal. The hardcore landscape was changing, and people were starting to think about "careers", thus ending the short blast of the original hardcore epoch. 

Void are still raw and manic, but they've slowed the tempo, crammed in more guitar solos, and begun to morph into a Corrosion Of Conformity clone (but not as good...of course, you have to understand that being from North Carolina means COC are basically a hair behind Black Flag in the "greatest band of all time" competition continually racking my every waking moment...fuck they're good).

I'm not just posting this as a historic relic, I genuinely think it's good, definitely different than the harDCore version of the band from a couple years prior, but still worth a listen.

DL  

Cows - Daddy Has A Tail

Year: 1989

Label: Amphetamine Reptile

By request...more Cows weirdness. The opposite of easy listening. Ugly music for ugly people.

This record comes in chronological order after Taint Pluribus Taint Unum posted yesterday, so I suppose you could begin charting their "progression"...from what to what I can't say. They never let up, even when they play slow, it's still chaotic and fucked.

Enjoy.

DL

Fluid - Roadmouth

Year: 1989

Label: Glitterhouse / SubPop

What you got here is your European version of the Roadmouth record which is only different from the domestic SubPop version in that it contains one extra song (from their Punch and Judy album) for some reason. Weird.

Did you know that The Fluid were the first non-Seattle band to be signed to Subpop? That's pretty good for a band for the rock megalopolis of Denver. Did you also know this record was recorded Jack Endino? Also, not a bad stat for the Rocky Mountain rockers. Did you also know that when you release your album around the same time Nirvana releases "Bleach" nobody is going to pay much attention it? Of course by "everybody", I mean "everybody" who was buying Nirvana records in 1989. Those people were all, "Fluid who?". Then the band would come to their local college town and lay waste. Full on, bar band, grunge, loud ass waste, with more wah wah pedal then you were probably expecting. This band slayed live, they were really good, the songs were big and catchy, but still kinda sludgy and gnarly (I guess that was what made "grunge" grungy huh?), and they were loud as fuck. I used to have one of their shirts, the one with the Ford logo, and the back said "Volume is job one". No shit.

This is as close to cock rock as you're allowed to get and still pull it off.

DL 

Cows - Taint Pluribus Taint Unum

Year: 1987

Label: Treehouse

Thar she blows, the debut record by Cows, the record that launched a bizzaro band on a bizarro journey. They injected a warped since of humor into some seriously distorted noise rock. They came across as somewhat "backwoods" in their approach, as the music was certainly blues based, it also had hints of country. Also, lead singer Shannon Selburg's antics onstage ended to upstage the bands music (at least in the early days) and also lend an air of "redneck retard" to the festivities. The one time I saw them was in 1992 in Athens, Georgia, and he was wearing a blow-up doll...like, the whole doll. It was really hard to get a boner over this nude doll when every so often a dudes parts would pop out. Of course, it's really hard to get a boner to Cows music anyway. This is not "sexin" music. In fact, I defy you to make sweet sweet love to your old woman/old man with this as the soundtrack. Unless you're repertoire involves such lines as "it puts the lotion in the basket", I doubt you'll be getting much action so long as this jam is blasting.

If you don't know this band, try Butthole Surfers + Mudhoney. 

DL

Chokebore - Black Black

Year: 1999

Label: Punk In My Vitamins

Quick, name one musical export from Hawaii, that's not Don Ho. 

Dude, that's sooooo easy, it's Chokebore. I also would have excepted their previous moniker, Dana Lynn. 

If you skated in the late eighties you may have known of Chokebore as Johnee Kop's band, the guy more famous for his cryptically perverted paint pen on grip tape ramblings than his actual skating. I mean seriously, how was that dude even pro? Granted he was on the Vision team the same time as Ken Park, who made a career out of invert variations, so it seems like almost anyone in a pair of Jimmy'Z clamdiggers and a Maui and Sons muscle shirt could ride for those buffoons, put dang.

Alright, so anyway, Black Black is Chokebore's kinda "comeback" album. They started off on Amphetamine Reptile, and progressively got less wild and more introspective and somber. The constant though has always been the vocals. If you ever have heard Chokebore, you'll never confuse them for another band. No other vocalist sounds like Troy Bruno Balthazar. His words are strung out, slightly distorted, and in a pitch that's hard to describe. Sometimes it's a mumbling drone, other times it's a soaring bird (did I really just say that?). On this record the music is pretty subdued, but on occasion they bring the rock, it's got a little bit of a later Unwound feel (and by the by, Vern Rumsey of Unwound runs the record label Punk In My Vitamins), not that they sound like Unwound, but it just has some of that steez. It also reminds me some of Bluebird (who I should post something by...note to self).

DL