The Goslings - Grandeur Of Hair

Label: aRCHIVE
Year: 2006

Try playing the following records simultaneously and at top volume: Melvins "Bullhead", Bardo Pond "Amanita", Butthole Surfers "Rembrandt Pussyhorse", Khanate "Things Viral" (Khanate's James Plotkin mastered this record, coincidentally enough), Earth "Earth 2", and Spacemen 3 "For All The Fucked-Up Children Of The World". See what happens.
Or play this album by itself. Also at top volume. Away from children or pets. It's a warm bath of all enveloping heavy noise, and it's fucking righteous.
On this record husband and wife duo Max and Leslie Soren augment their sound with a cast of drummers and additional guitars. Joined by Adel Souto (Timescape Zero/Hangman, Violent Deed, None Dare Call It Treason), Neddal Ayad (The Does), Brendan Grubb, and Paul Leroy, the band manage to humanize the pulsing overloaded drone of their music. With a lo-fi approach there can be no taming sounds this large and wild. Rough edges are not only encouraged, they become part of the instrumentation. Not that these are shapeless jams mind you, all of the compositions on this record harken back to distinctive musical mileposts, like riffs, refrains, and harmony. Noise is wielded over top of mammoth low end churns to amass the grit and grime into a vaguely recognizable blackened smear across your speakers. Pretty music twisted into a gnarled ball.

DL

Danzig - The Lost Tracks Of Danzig

Label: Evillive
Year: 2007

I have returned from vacation, which means I survived another year without being taken to my death in the mouth of a prehistoric killing machine (shark). Congratulations to me.

Today is Independence Day in America, and I can only assume, the rest of the world. And who better than Glenn Danzig represents the promise of freedom, liberty, and justice that this great nation stands for? Answer: mother fucking nobody, that's who.

In lieu of an inverted cross shaped Danzig box set, Danzig instead culled two discs worth of songs that were not included on studio albums due to "not fitting the feeling" of said studio album, and were otherwise left as potential b-sides, but mostly just laid around unreleased. Tracks that span from the 1987/88 Chung King House of Metal recording session for the Danzig 1 record, all the way through to 2003/2004 Ocean Studios sessions that yielded the Circle Of Snakes record. Good fucking tracks. Now, I'll grant you, the further away from AC/DC black boogie Danzig gets, the more polarizing his recorded out is, and I don't fault people for only really liking the first 3.5 albums and then only partially liking the next 2, and finally not really liking the most recent ones at all. I get that. I don't necessarily agree, but I understand. Personally, I'm riding with Danzig into the blood red sunset, waiting on the Samhain of our collective souls...but that's me. I do think that if you listen all the way through from top to bottom you may gain a new appreciation for the later material, as it's presented in smaller doses rather than full albums, but then again, the black mesh and rubber gloves could scare you away. Don't let it.

God bless America, and praise Danzig!

DL

Fugazi - Live 04-04-95 - Irving Plaza, NYC

Label: bootleg
Year: 1995

I am off on vacation in about two hours, so the posting here will go from a slow trickle to absolutely zero for the next week. I hope you all survive in my absence, and I'll see you on the other side.

Since I'll be gone, I do feel obligated to leave on a high note, and what higher note is there than Fugazi at the top of their game ripping through over an hour of water tight, fully loaded, high caliber Fugazi music? There isn't anything much higher, that's what.
If you own the Instrument video then you've seen some of this performance as it's featured there. For good reason...it rips.
So, for the next week, please enjoy this and we will reconvene soon. Unless I am taken to a watery grave in the mouth of a man-eating shark...which is entirely plausible, and my absolute worst nightmare. Pray for me.

DL

Overkill - Overkill 7"

Label: SST
Year: 1982

It should go without saying that a 7" released in 1982 on SST Records is going to be pure, unadulterated gold. Shouldn't even have to say it. But, maybe this one slipped through the cracks in the wake of Black Flag and Minutemen and Husker Du and everything, so maybe you missed it. Somehow.
It's basically DOA styled first wave US hardcore (and yes, I am aware that DOA are Canadian), with the beginning tinges of heavy metal creeping in. Metal like Motorhead, not Iron Maiden. The opening track "Hell's Getting Hotter" is an all time favorite of me personally, so I can only assume it's a favorite of you too.
Members were: Ron Cordy of Bitch, Kurt Markham of DC3, Merill Ward of SWA and the Nig Heist, and Jeff Dimick, who apparently had enough after Overkill.

DL

Gallows - Orchestra Of Wolves

Label: In At The Deep End
Year: 2006

How are you feeling about that Refused reunion? What about the Planes Mistaken For Stars one? Cause that might have a bearing on how you will feel about hearing this record again. Or for the first time, I don't know.
There was a brief window of time when post-Refused hardcore bands were taking the vigor and venom of the genre and injecting both the Nation Of Ulysses-isms (even if they didn't realize that's what it was) that Refused had borrowed, and the Botch-isms of the start/stop noisecore world and layering a rock-n-roll swagger atop the whole mess (again, Refused had flirted with that as well). Cancer Bats was one of those bands. The Bronx did some of that. Every Time I Die evolved into something of that ilk. And Planes Mistaken For Stars morphed from scream basement hardcore into something along those lines (and predated Gallows by a good 5-6 years).
If you can handle it, it's fun. If the occasional chugga chugga turns you off, and that's ok if it does, then you might not go for it. I suppose it was just another milepost in the evolution of hardcore, so your predilection towards the genre will certainly make or break your desire to get into it.
Personally, I can dig it.

DL

Identified - I

Label: self released
Year: 2007

Lots of instrumental music lately, which is weird since I don't often listen to music sans vocals (the simpleton in me), but here we are again. This time a band from Boston who have taken some of the mathiness (not a word, but should be) of Don Cabellero, some of the swelling epicness (also not a word, but also should be) of Kinski, some of the subtleties of Explosions In The Sky, and  mixed them into eight songs that easily can play as one long composition. There are moments of spaced out openness, and moments of dense, highly charged driving riffs, which ebb and flow together as good instrumental music of this ilk should.
Quality.

DL

Hey Colossus / Dot(.) - Split ep

Label: Shifty / Blind Date / Jonson Family
Year: 2006

Two songs, one from each band, total length: 37.2 minutes. 'Nuff said?
Slow building dense heaviness from Hey Colossus, a band championed in these pages for their ability to rock out in myriad ways. Love them, love this jam.
Dot(.) come correct with the over saturated doom blow out that they do. Everything is distorted and drenched in a thick coating of grime. Hopefully you have no problems with that.

*originally posted 11.23.11, reposted 06.22.15

DL

Collapsar - Integers

Label: Escape Artist
Year: 2007

Knotted, dense, instrumental metal and post rock combination. That's the short version.
Slightly longer version is, two guys from Icepick Revival hook up with another guy and proceed to write a complex strain of math-metal in the bowels of Louisiana, but with zero of the sludgy dirt of their southern kinfolk. Taking cues from gut punching metallic hardcore, post rock, math rock, and a dash of prog rock and you get weirdness that has elements of: American Heritage, Keelhaul, Pelican, Locrian, Cauldron, and The Fucking Champs. Big, sprawling songs that twist and turn and then twist and turn back onto themselves, and conceivably you, the listener.
If you like to get weird with a mechanical pencil, then by all means, get weird with this.

DL

Thug / Greenmachine - Split 7"

Label: Bovine
Year:1997

Speaking of unheralded and unabashed...let's listen to Thug,ok?
The Bovine Records house band, they managed to sound heavier an uglier than almost anybody else at the time deploying thick bursts of feedback-soaked hatred. Everything about it was recorded in the red. Just gross. Thug also knew their way around a little grind and metal, which they sounded like a noise rock band flirting with powerviolence...which is fine by me.
Greenmachine was posted a couple months back on this very blog, and I believe I described them as "the Japanese Eyehategod", which, was pretty right-on. Sabbath riffs overdriven with venomous spite and rage...pretty much like Eyehategod. Not a thing the matter with that.

Can't express how much the Bovine label is missed.

DL

Mama Tick - Action City 7"

Label: Three Little Girls
Year: 1994

Previously posted some years back as part of a Mama Tick discography, but I was listening to the 7" and thought it deserved it's own day in the sun. Plus, that discography link has long since been deleted (the great Mediafire purge of 2011 [or whenever]).
Two songs, one of which is a cover of Motley Crue's 'Shout At The Devil'. But it's Mama Tick, and Mama Tick are one of those "best band you never heard of" kind of bands, up there with La Gritona, Craw, and probably a bunch of bands I never heard of. And now maybe this record isn't as monumentally punishing as their 'Horsedoctor' 7", but it's still a gloriously messy, noisy, raw slab of destructo-rock. It's a great, great 7".

DL