Music Sucks

20 years after they invented a musical genre with their inaugural 88 Song EP, Mike Mahan, Seth Putnam and Tim Morse dusted off the cobwebs and re-recorded the twenty-minute blast of blur that started their (in)famous ride as one of the most polarizing bands in heavy music history. Per Mr. Putnam:

"Since 2008 was the 20th anniversary of Anal Cunt, we got the original lineup back together and only did shows with this lineup all year and only did songs from the 1988-1990 period. This CD was recorded the way original Anal Cunt stuff should be recorded. We just borrowed a recorder from someone, pressed play and didn't stop until we were done. We didn't stop the recorder to take any breaks, or re-record mistakes or anything gay like that. What you get here is over 21 minutes of pure, raw Anal Cunt style blurcore. We tried recording it a couple of days earlier on some gay computer recorder which Tim assured me would be fine, but ended up sounding like Richard Simmons trying to pick which Polyphonic Spree song he wanted to hear on the jukebox at a gay bar. So we threw that recording away, and tried again 2 days later with a different recorder that Tim borrowed from someone else. It sounds exactly the way the original lineup of Anal Cunt is supposed to sound, like a ferocious, violent, holocaust. The only thing that sucks about it a little is the little recorder couldn't handle my vocals like it should, so it's a little weaker than it sounded in the room when we recorded it, but it came out good enough. If you like the sound of Anal Cunt's Another E.P. then you'll love this - because it is much heavier, and more like an audio sledgehammer to your face.  If you didn't like the sound of Another E.P. then go inject some more of Bruce Vilanch's cum into your veins, faggot."

I'm fine with admitting I was a pretty hardcore A.C. fan back in the day, I was one of those sorry souls who slapped down three bucks at Newbury Comics every time they released a new 7" even though I knew it was going to be the exact same power chord noisecore. Sure, the 7MON split was over-produced, Another E.P. was under-produced, the Meat Shits split interspersed some surf rock riffs and the Unplugged E.P. was, well, unplugged, but all in all it was the same ol' noisy stuff. So at least I knew what I was gonna get with 110 Song CD. Not quite a feedback-laden lo-fi assault as Another E.P. (my personal fave from the blur era), it's still a respectable throwback to the good ol' days by guys who were pushing 40 at the time for chrissakes. Tight and fucking insane as ever, it's too bad there will probably never again be a band who randomly mashed two dozen riffs together and made a career recording it over and over again. Enjoy.

Wicked Sick

REPOST: C(o)untless Songs!

Here are a couple new uploads of some old Anal Cunt cassettes I've had collecting dust. Their story is documented here - the new rips are significantly cleaner and much better quality. I also equalized the levels somewhat and sutured a lot of clip errors in the recording (especially the Club Baby Head show which had a ton of stop/starts). Finally, I also tightened the sequencing and added the extra 30 seconds of Incantation accidentally left on the end of tape #1 as a bonus. Enjoy.

Live 1991                                                       Split w/ Nut Screamer

Unlucky Charms

Imagine if Anal Cunt had a bassist and Seth Putnam had a really deep voice. You pretty much got New York's Iron Butter. Here are some early demo recordings (circa 2005) unearthed from the 4-track graveyard for you listening displeasure. Inconsistent blur noise nonsense with an occasional groove here and there. Actually, now that I think about it, reminds me more of 7000 Dying Rats.

Split 7" w/ AxMx

Six Songs (take 2)

On the opposite end of the musical spectrum from the previous post is 'Genocide fave Anal Cunt. While most of A.C.'s blur releases have found new light on various CD compilations, one has escaped the public for far too long. Originally recorded in 1990 and released on Slap-A-Ham's 1991 Bllleeeeaaauuurrrrgghhh! -The Record- compilation, Six Songs showcases what these guys were best at. Enjoy these 32 seconds of fastcore genius.

Untitled x 6

Hard Drive Deadbeats: BLUR

Oh man, did I laugh out loud when Butt Auger's side of their split with the Meat Shits hit the record player. Inane blurcore in the sophomoric style of an even more retarded Anal Massaker, played in front of a confused live audience. The Van Halen parody on the cover is the best thing about this one, the rest is better left unsaid. In short, Crap! is the most apt record title I've seen in a while. Buyer beware.

54 Songs

Currently watching: Der Todesengel

Currently listening to: Arson Anthem Arson Anthem

Catastrophe

I wrote about the Meat Shits' contribution to this incredible compilation last year and finally decided to get off my lazy ass and upload the whole shebang. A prize of my LP collection, five of my favorite bands during what I feel were the high points of their careers. Mincecore, blur, pornogrind and noisecore. Essential.

C(o)untless Songs!

 
Currently watching: Rest Stop
Currently listening to: Redman Whut? Thee Album

All Togethah Now

Solid compilation CD released in 2000 by the mighty Fudgeworthy Records out of Woburn, MA; the brainchild of Charlie Infection whom you may know as the other half of the seminal Ax/ction Records and drummer for Bay State mainstays Psycho, Bulge, Gonkulator and Cancerous Growth. Admitting to the loss of all his master tapes in the liner notes, nearly everything on the comp is ripped directly from vinyl so don't expect any hi-tech digital remastering here. Scratches, cracks and pops abound which only add to the charm - there is some rare ass shit showcased here and is without a doubt some of the best transfers you'll find of this material. Included are a few batches of Anal Cunt songs, GG Allin's "Legalize Murder" from his Freaks, Faggots days, Bulge's "Fartmaster," some obscure Meat Shits tunes, fast Boston hardcore, black metal, grindcore, noise, etc. etc. ad nauseum. A bunch of great music from a great label. Enjoy.

If It Ain't Fudgeworthy... It Ain't Shit

 
Currently watching: The Rite
Currently listening to: KoЯn The Path Of Totality

18 Years Ago Today...

June 19, 1993. Anal Cunt performing 11 classic minutes of blur at Wilmer's Park in rural Brandywine, MD. Featuring both John Kozik and Fred Ordonez on guitar accompanying Tim Morse on drums. Seth is drunk and hilarious, Tim wants to pick a fight with the crowd while John and Fred jerk off their guitar necks in perfect harmony. And then you get the token Cletus redneck sound guy (in cut-off jean shorts and a big ass mesh tractor cap) who cuts them off at the end. Video was ripped from a pretty good VHS source tape and is better resolution then most of the copies you'll find on YouTube. In m4v format ready for Quicktime or your iPod. Happy Father's Day.

One Two Onetwothreefour!

 
Currently watching: Last House On Dead End Street

Currently listening to: Rollins Band The End Of Silence

Out Of Band Experience

Happy New Year Everyone! Thought I'd start 2011 off right, an amazing compilation by Boston producer extraordinaire, Bill T. Miller. The guy behind the board on such legendary albums as Disrupt's Unrest and Anal Cunt's It Just Gets Worse, Miller also fronts a multitude of his own (mostly noise) music projects. Among them are Out Of Band Experience (OBE), the industrio-metal Kings Of Feedback (KOF), King Of Slack and Orgy Of Noise. His 1995 Heavy Hardcore Headroom D.I.Y. comp showcases the best of the bands he's worked with; among them New England hardcore faves Dropdead and Disfuse as well as Bah-stun sludge gods Grief. What a fantastic bunch of bands shitting out 37 tracks of crust, blur, hardcore and noise. As for Miller, he's still running a million projects, including BTM Television, blogs, record labels - the list is endless. The guy's got a huge website that seems to link on and on forever - definitely check it out!

Kill BOB

 
Currently watching: Attack Of The Giant Leeches
Currently listening to: Masta Ace SlaughtaHouse

Hello, I Hate You

Probably A.C.'s tightest fifteen minutes, a blistering snapshot of the band's crossover from old-school blur to a more palatable grindcore. Well-produced and loud, it sounds far better then that 1995's muddy Everyone Must Be Killed, which this E.P. was actually the demo for. Since most A.C. stuff is pretty much anywhere you look on the internet, I thought I'd instead upload the annoying-to-find "pregap" bonus track found on Relapse's 10th anniversary re-release of the album. It's a perfectly ironic 'Cunt cover of the Doors' "Hello, I Love You," recorded for some Relapse compilation back in the day which I'm not sure ever saw the light of a jewel case. It ripped OK and I tried to get the levels consistent with the rest of the album, so enjoy. Interesting side note, then-guitarist John Kozik was out with kidney stones when Morbid Florist was recorded so Seth and Tim overdubbed the whole album as a 2-piece. As of now, they're still the only members in the band. Just sayin'.

Spin Jim, Spin

Currently watching: The Simpsons Movie
Currently listening to: Jane's Addiction Nothing's Shocking

Noisecore Nonsense

Sheesh! No sooner did I drop the Boredoms side project Z-Rock Hawaii then I was awash in another piece of Japanese noisecore phlegm - Osaka A.C. rip-offs Cunt Decide. Actually my introduction to the band was lead singer/screamer Manabu sending me the demo tape for his then-blurcore band, Senseless Apocalypse. I don't know if he thought I was a record label or fanzine or what, he sent the cassette completely unsolicited - side 1 was S.A., side 2 was a previous blur band of his called Cunt Decide. Kind of a Senseless Apocalypse 1.0 (less produced and more noisy), Cunt Decide blast through a hundred or so twenty-second tunes in 35 minutes. A few grooves here and there (á la Anal Cunt) but mostly a sheer wall of blastbeats and howling. I went ahead and sent him $5 for the demo - two bands spewing 500 songs in 90 minutes is worth a fin in my book. Senseless Apocalypse has since gone on to become a more typical (but definitely more listenable and talented) grindcore band and Manabu's still running the iconic Blurred Records so give 'em a listen!

579116952348

 
Currently watching: Married With Children (Season 9)
Currently listening to: No Fraud Love And Massmurder

And If That Ain't Enough...

No sooner had I published the previous post that I discovered another Anal Cunt rarity in the haven't-listened-to-in-a-while department, a rip of a couple cassettes furnished to me by Ohio noizegeek Steveggs back in the mid-90's. Himself the founder of a couple noize bands including Minch and Nut Screamer, the reason we got in touch escapes me, though I'll best-guess that it was related to horror video trading. Regardless, through whatever correspondence/business we had, the topic of A.C. arose and in the mail the cassettes came. The recordings feature A.C.'s 1991 tour with Incantation from Rhode Island down through Texas - some of the shows made it onto A.C.'s Live E.P. but these here are raw, unedited versions. Recorded by Incantation's buddy/roadie(?) Roy Fox, the sound quality varies across the six shows but all in all it's not too bad. There are also some pretty cool rehearsals (to which the band obviously objects to being taped) as well as a couple interviews with Seth. Lastly, a hilarious interview (i.e. someone recording people talking in a van) with A.C. and the Meat Shits' Robert Deathrage. Awesomely offensive stuff, you can barely hear Seth and the guys laughing along because it's really Robert running the show. Recorded right after his seminal Ecstasy Of Death was released, the guy doesn't leave any stone unturned. What a riot of vulgarity.

Hare Krishna

A couple nuggets...

Well, ever since the Richmond mayor closed downtown's Alley Katz in early June (bullshit tax code violations) there's been a void of good hardcore shows coming to the city. Most notably, the heralded Anal Cunt show last Friday which had the plug quietly pulled at the last second. No reschedule, no venue switch, no nothin'. What a fucking drag. And I guess the day before guitarist Josh Martin was kicked out of the band (so it's now a two-piece) but that's another story. Well what can ya do but go back and revisit some of the rarities from a band that invented a genre but will never see the respect they deserve. First on the list is the "Stayin' Alive" single from 1994's Top 40 Hits. Probably what I'd consider the band's first significant step away from the 20-minutes-of-blur repertoire (yeah, I know Everybody Must Be KILLED had 50 or so "songs" but it's really all the same ol' blur given song titles mixed in with some new blur), the single has a few tracks from the album as well a bonus track. Titled "Schnauf", it's a take on Tear For Fears' "Shout" and is probably(?) a goof on Germany's Schnauf Records who at the time was releasing A.C.-clone Anal Massaker's stuff. And the album cover is absolutely priceless. Following that IS the 20-minutes-of-blur we all know and love from A.C.'s Very Rare Rehearsal From February 1989 CD. Who knows if they were preparing for a show or simply practicing, it's a great look back to the early days of the band. Interestingly, to those critics who call such music "talentless noise" or whatever, the rehearsal shows how tight the band had to be to pull the whole thing off. Seth's liner notes on the CD are almost touching, he speaks with a real sense of nostalgia to the days when A.C. was fun and everyone was best friends, before the drugged-out mess it became. Enjoy.

Grind                                                       Blur

A Is For Anal Massaker!

After putting up an Anal Massaker 7" the other week, how could I not go ahead and upload this one as well... I bought this split almost twenty years ago and now I got little Cookie Monster toys lying around every room in the house. Hopefully my son won't grow up to be in a knock-off German blur three-piece but you never know...

Nachladen

Bootleg Boston Blur

Since my last post had me putzing around the "Anal" section of my CD case, I decided to revisit this rarity. From a watershed blur band who hates bootlegs, Harmonized Noize doesn't sound too bad, I'm lucky to have gotten it on an actual CD(!) before the glut of iffy mp3's and blogs oversaturated the web. As far as I can tell it's ripped from the soundboard, yeah there's some tape hiss and all but overall it's OK. Track 1 (live in Germany) sounds a bit cleaner than Track 2 (live in Holland) but there's a lot more audience banter taking up time (as well as Seth playing harmonica and doing his best/worst black face impressions). Contradictory info abounds on the actual sources of the material, some argue both shows are in Germany; regardless, both are from 1991 when Anal Cunt was supporting their (awesome) Another E.P. release. They mostly play their classic blur material we all know and love but throw in a few surprises such as the "Riverbottom Nightmare Band" cover from Another E.P. and "Shit Scum" from Seth's other musical(?) project. For the completists out there, Mike Mahan's live banter from Everyone Should Be Killed's "Shut Up Mike" ("we'd, um, like to thank, uh, Satanic Malfunction....") is from the Holland show - kinda cool to hear it unedited. Solid gigs, funny banter, and you gotta laugh at the confused German guy yelling "Scheiße! Scheiße!" throughout the set.

Guy Lombardo

German nuttiness...

Anal Massaker are the less-produced, more retarded, not as witty German version of Anal Cunt (they even have a song called "Another A.C. Song") - they surfaced around 1989 and thanks to Schnauf Records got a few 7-inchers released to solidify their status as early blur pioneers (or plagiarists depending on which side of the Atlantic you are on). I can't tell if the record is recorded live or in a room with a bunch of friends, there is definite applause but it seems too sparse to be from a live gig. Or maybe that was the extent of the grind audience back then. While terribly recorded, mixed and rehearsed, Bis Wir Schielen has a definite charm, a good groove starting off each 30-second blast of noise. During this recording they were a 3-piece; guitarist/founder Toni Mastropaolo has since converted the band into a more annoying noisecore solo project (y'know the ones with the one-track 948 Songs releases). Too bad, a throwback old-school A.C. vs. A.M. 7" record would have really started the 2010's off right.

Blah!!