Spooky Fingers 01

Getting free shit isn't necessarily all it's cracked up to be. When things get overlooked, put off or simply become lost in the pile they eventually wind up here. Every week we'll be tearing down the stack and looking at what's there alongside some old favorites and other releases we're spinning or would rather get out of the way. A few thoughts purged through insomnia and warm mugs drunk deep after hours. Enjoy.

I piss on your “tour only” schwag, ye guileless lot. Case in point: this goofy head-shop soaked Earth/Sir Richard Bishop ultra-limited wax featuring two very aesthetically ultra-limited tracks that mine that whole mugging the lava-lamp, fiber-optics flowers thing, which yields a wholly unfortunate experience not unlike simply decaying within the stall of a barren Indian restaurant whilst the hours tick away and still no Vindaloo. That the painfully aloof waiter is only too interested in ignoring your repeated call for mucho Taj Mahal is sorta the gravy here… Note to Carlson: Plz stick it with the Frisell shtick. Climb up on that stomp box, pardner. Them boots were made for walkin’.

In this here general locus is Earth’s latest, affixed with too-long title referencing some strongman Samson episode within the Holy Bible. I admittedly spent way too much time with this one; sorta ducking the eyes in the sandbox when the melodies sweated saccharine; just babbling abreast when those horns and ivories tickled nothing so fancy within my soul. Actually that’s what I felt like I was listening to: some new-fangled Un-Joyful Noise. Yup, the whole Carlson’s-found-his-messiah-in-a-Petri-of-fossilized-fructose. Yea! Lawd, gimme sermons on high! Buckets ah ass monkeys. Roaring Jolt Cola fountains. Babbling creeks washing away the smut from the teats of aluminum seraphim, of cherubim. Whatever. Gimmie Hex or give me Deth. I stomached the shift from unadorned picking and even quickly grew to love it. But I ain’t slipping in that sonic church pew for all the Assam in London. Fact, Jack.

Gaul’s corner on the nihilistic front, Antaeus, has allowed mouthpiece and self-mutilator extraordinaire MkM out of his urban cage for a bit of fun with Aosoth, which is a helluva lot more restrained and straightforward—see: Destroyer 666—than the gent’s main crush. MkM actually seems to enjoy and/or benefit from the lack of “musical” chaos, and it’s truly interesting to hear his vocals upfront and rolling without the whole of humanity despairing in his wake. And while this shit sometimes veers much to close to Behexen’s latest impotent outing, some MkM is better than none.

Lithuanian war hound behind Fuck Off and Die! has relocated to Lazio, Italia. The vino rosso must be sitting well—as is his Broken Bones LP collection. The latest, Anti All, is a gob of over-focused silly-puttied loathing which sounds absolutely killer when backed with the dude’s hyperactive drum machine. War hound guy gets bombed on whatever he can find and basically tracks these three to four minute diatribes about leveling the world and other sorts of things dealing with hilariously bogus omnipotence. HATE! INDIFFERNCE! ALCOHOLISM! OK, OK. Dude was likely a bed-wetter, but I can’t find fault with wanting to move to the Boot and get it the fuck on. Totally and unabashedly recommended.

When I haven’t been lamenting the state of demo recycling and all the “limited edition” artifact worship via online houses of ill repute, it’s been nothing but prayer to the Nativity In Black, especially Black Sabbath’s unofficial and wholly excellent Behind The Wall of Spock. The music is fucking stunning. But I’d almost rather have video. There are lots of Ozzy-free moments, which Gazer and Tone and Bull make up for with fulltilt cock-rockin’ boogie, sailing the seas of processed cheese adorned with little more than giant yellow foam cowboy hats. Instrumentals? Yes. They are fucking on, man! Dead fucking on! And Bull’s “Drum solos are borrrrr-innng!” admission is worth the e-hunt, bitches. “Is ev-reee-bod-eee hiiiiii?! Sooooo ammmmmmm iiiiiiiiiii!”

[Stewart Voegtlin]

Suzhou’s rain season has begun. Late in the evening I hear bats squeak past my apartment window, followed by a group of cats mewing drunkenly on the rooftop of the water closet outside. Then the first patter of a storm to last through the week. By 5am I’m roused sweating from my half-sleep and begin swatting at mosquitoes with a rolled up copy of Snakepit magazine. It’s okay; I wasn’t much interested in learning more about why the fourth song on Possessed’s "Fallen Angel" demo didn't make the cut. Voegtlin says that whiskey repels them. “Irritant Frenchies?” Maybe. Come morning and the counter tops will be wet with moisture, the food will have gone stale, the cigarette boxes will be emptied and the white-washed exterior of the buildings lining the street will look indistinguishable from the overcast sky. In the midst of all this, I can’t think of a more perfect soundtrack than Brown Jenkin’s Angel Eyes.

The rain outside continues, growing louder as the first track, generically titled “Black Procession,” begins. Thirty seconds in and I feel seasick listening to the lines of notes crashing together discordantly, strings that scrub and chug angrily against one another. Pained. In here it makes sense. Here in the box with nowhere to go and the insects feeding off my blood. He’s actually “singing” this time, not just wordless growls, but thoughts strung together in a continuously coded scrawl. “All the hosts give in to anathema,” “Denying us, blessing us, erasing us,” “…tear this world away.” I look at the adjacent photograph inside the booklet and completely believe whoever created this would have his fists plugging both eye sockets. Amtey has hit his stride here. I think to myself that if his next offering is really the last under this or any other moniker, it will have been a worthy endeavor. The sound continues to move in ebon waves. I smile while reading the dedication inside: “To sunshine.”

It’s not always this good. After a string of solid to damn near incredible new releases over the past year, NWN finally put out a dud. The debut LP from Australian death thrashers Nocutrnal Graves, Satan’s Cross is not for the uninitiated. Ironically, I can’t picture someone who doesn’t own Destruction’s entire catalog and in every format paying out for a copy. Likewise for the Canyon Country trio of Merciless Death, making waves as part of the new wave of American Thrash Metal. Although less annoying than the cult built up around bands like Toxic Holocaust and Municipal Waste, compared to even a minor act like Colombia’s Witchtrap, the riffs on Realm of Terror aren’t much to get excited about. Mainman Andy Torres may slur his vocals and growl like some bastard spawn of Max Cavalera and Tom Angelripper (with the Randy Savage sunglasses that are as “not Emperor” as you can get), but I’d still feel like a sucker for laying money on the counter.

And is there a proper insider-term for that thing bands do  when the sound is real low in the background at the start of a track and then kicks in after about a minute? Retire that shit, please.

In the midst of all the chiding on Internet forums following the news of Kristian Vikernes parole denial, one could almost forget what an equally touchy lot is the worldwide community of Opeth fans. The Swedes' 10th album has been greeted with routine acclaim for being the progressive Metal album that it simply is not. Let’s call a spade a spade here, folks; almost everything that stands out about the album has to do with its decidedly un-Metal sound and approach, with the group’s long-standing inclination to rock and prog finally taking center stage. But I’m less concerned in preserving the accuracy of names than with how bland and contrived Watershed still is despite its cut and paste method. How each piece of the album is wrought in such stale precision and sentimental glut; how unimaginative it is when pivoting between acoustic guitar and a heaviness forced through inert riffs and lame vocal growls that fail at offering up a much desired change in the dynamics. Granted, this is the first Opeth album I made it through in one sitting, but even for a Burzum fan, it’s just too fucking vanilla.

The thing to remember about "experimental" music is the implied risk in moving forward or, more appropriately, away from one's foundations and the preconceptions of others. As a capital E marketing term, it is but a timid flirt with the imagination rather than a full descent into strange and unknown territory. Which brings us to Nachtmystium’s Assassins, an album which gives psilocybin a bad reputation. Sure, the band sounds different, but within a very conventional and often contrived framework bolstered by shrewd marketing, which many critics are only too happy to play foil to. But results are what matter, not intentions. I don't care if Blake Judd really was accidentally conceived to the strains of "Careful with that Axe, Eugene"; his music doesn't sound like Pink Floyd. Doesn't even aspire to it. Not even close. Psychedelic? Only if you consider what Sabbath did in the 1980s as "trippy." Still, those boys knew what to do with drugs and guitars.

Such attributes as heard on Assassins go only 1/3rd of the way and are relegated to your basic spaced out pedal effects, robo synthesizers and organ playing in the background, just barely enough to warrant mention. The rest of the album is pretty straight commercial metal ("Ghosts of Grace," "Your True Enemy") tinged with AFI brand punk rock (title-track). On top of that, there are some well played but inconsequential Santana-esque leads as well as some cheesy, neon-blaring saxophone solos (courtesy of Yakuza's Bruce Lamont) that turn the last three tracks into a grating clusterfuck. As a Black Metal band Nachtmystium were a third-tier Judas Iscariot clone that got noticed because of Judd's candor and approachability. Now even as they expand they're still playing it safe. "Black Meddle." Riiiight. But now it's time to shit or get off the pot. And what's with the new 40-something tranny look?

Although it’s too early to break down Judas Priest’s latest album entirely within this space, the first impressions were positive. First, there is the obvious attraction of hearing Halford recorded through multiple vocal tracks, not all simply screaming and bleedin’ on top of one another, and none of which disappoint. Taking into account his past recordings, age and habits (Halford, at 56, was known to still be a heavy smoker), his performance on Nostradamus is nothing less than the work of a still unrivaled master. While at times the record falters in balancing all of the bright lights, chintzy keyboards and pompous libretto, the group’s vision overcomes the few technical flaws. The numerous interludes generally work well and on tracks like “Exiled,” “Prophecy,””Alone,” “Death” and “Future of Mankind,” Priest proves capable of tapping into and then expanding on their classic sound inside a larger format. The title track’s open note, pinch-riffing falls in nicely with the band’s later (though lesser) Painkiller material while a potentially sappy rock ballad entitled “Lost Love,” is made credible by Halford’s genuinely weary and heart-aching delivery, followed up by Priest closing the first disc strong with a track reminiscent of Sabbath’s “Megalomania”(The upbeat part). More to follow, but in the meantime there is no reason to keep waffling on this point. Nostradamus is fuckin essential.

[Todd DePalma]