My Name Is Really Mud...

No, this isn't a Pork Soda post, it's instead the then-customary early 90's remix single by NYC crossover legends Prong. Hot off the heels of their so-so Prove You Wrong LP, they grabbed Killing Joke (and future Prong) bassist Paul Raven (then a competent programmer in his own right) and Foetus mastermind J. G. Thirlwell for a better-than-most maxi-CD single. Interestingly, as opposed to the bonus stuff Faith No More was releasing at the time, the remixes aren't that much of a variant - they still basically sound like the original, only much more "industrial" - no doubt an effort to cash in on the up-and-coming genre spearheaded by Ministry at the time. Interestingly, a few of the songs work a lot better in their remix version than on the source record - without a doubt both "Prove You Wrong" cuts are far superior. The dry smile inducer on this one is a "previously unreleased" cover of Music Machine/Alice Cooper's "Talk Talk". Sadly though, it just makes the admittedly subpar originals simply sound soooo much better. Enjoy.

Fuzzbuster Harm Dub Safety Xanax

Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! YEEAAHHHH!

While his output with Black Flag is unquestionably a watershed influence on SoCal hardcore, Hank Rollins' most cohesive (and undeniably best) work is his 1988 debut LP by the eponymous Rollins Band. Seriously, Life Time may be the heaviest album ever. Fuck doom and Khanate, Otesanek and all that post metal shit - their efforts may be bleak and miserable but not heavy. Not like this. Causal case in point: track four "Lonely." The perfect bludgeoning opening (thanks to über-bassosaurus Andrew Weiss) is the most sadly minor key dirge-of-a-fuck of a song I have ever heard... even before Henry starts in on his cynical "I hate the world that I think hates me" lyrics. What is so great about Life Time is that I feel what Henry is going through. The nearly nine-minute lament of "Gun In Mouth Blues" absolutely redefined what music can actually be; I wrote a fucking book thanks to that song and would seriously encourage any listener to seriously take a check of one's life while listening to the final audal minutes of a determined suicidal souls' existence. The closer "Turned Out" is unrestrained id gone astray - the epitome of hardcore by the guy who defined it... I doubt there has ever been as much anger compressed into one song as on this fucker. My old school Texas Hotel CD has a couple bonus live tracks from Belgium - later remastered by the man himself but enjoy these raw cuts.

Prepare To Destroy

Long Live The Cock

It's tough to top your debut album, especially when that auspicious release is Fresh White Reeboks Kickin Your Ass but San Fran supergroup Nigel Pepper Cock did exactly that with The New Way. Released just a year after their inaugural EP, their one and only full-length is chock full of old-school nods (Black Sabbath and Crass) as well as simple fucking sludgepunk slam. My favorite song is the metalcore-ish metal "Respect" - it seems so wonderfully unrehearsed and screams for a bloody mosh pit. The rest of it is a psychotically manic joyride of noise - I guarantee you will be pleasantly surprised by this one.

Jailbait Not Allowed

Quick blogosphere shout out...

I just gotta throw it out there that my worthless non-posting drug-snorting ass has been kept alive by the amazing [shiny grey monotone]. Founded by ipecac, then Gray, now helmed by noise rock king Slander Bob... these guys know post metal (Melvins, Unsane, Bungle, etc...) and do the work way better then I ever could. The best music blog out there right now bar none. For fuck's sake the shit is posted fasted than I can read it. If you missed the first link then click here retard. Enjoy.

Laughing As People Die

Recorded in 1991, the debut cassette from these Bakersfield, CA funkers is way more akin to the shit Excel (Venice) or Limbomaniacs (San Francisco) were doing at the time than what the band eventually mutated into (especially Excel - this album is absolutely on par with Seeking Refuge). For those who've been under a rock since then, soon after Who's Laughing Now dropped, L.A.P.D. found a fresh new producer in a guy named Ross Robinson who was looking for something way heavier and harder... at the same time L.A.P.D. shitcanned their singer and hired local vocalist Jonathan Davis who sang for the quasi-heavi industrio band Sexart. Interestingly, it was Sexart's pissy sound the guys embraced and the rest is nü metal history. Yes... I'm talkin' about KORN retards! Still, the funky fun of L.A.P.D. is not lost on the ages - though it's interesting to now watch some of Korn's early documentaries (specifically Who Then Now?) and see Fieldy wax historically on his multiplatinum band when in actuality he's totally talking about L.A.P.D. coming together. Still, this record has its moments, lead vocalist Rick Morrill is no Davis but he sounds like a solid southern Cali thrasher (and even like Tony Chaba here and there - check "Don't Label Me"). The band rocks through the songs - Munky is a way better guitarist then listening to Korn would ever have you believe and there are moments they almost sound like a proto-Vision Of Disorder ("Excuse Me"). I'm not going to give them that much credit so just sit back and enjoy...

Proto Korn

Snail Trail

Adolf Satan's eponymous debut was a wicked awesome slurry of down-tuned sludgecore and frantic ranting by poet/madman Larry Lifeless; easily one of my favorite albums of the last ten years. Their three-song follow-up, 2007's Ooga Booga Cab Company had a tough act to follow but succeeds by being even more lo-fi and crazier than its predecessor. Self-produced, self-released and recorded on what sounds like a tape deck, Lifeless's manic depressive shrieking is is taken to another level on this one. The grooving sludge is there as well, much in the style of their full-length so if you like those kind of scale-progression power-chord punch-you-in-the-fucking-face riffs look no further. Enjoy.

 

Inject The Venom

Shitapple Driving A Shitmobile

One of the first albums I downloaded after discovering Bandcamp, Teeph spawn from the northern Butte County suburb of Chico, CA. Citing influences as far ranging as Converge to Frank Zappa, the band's 2009 debut is a whirlwind of groovy tempo changes, screaming, sick guitar work and the occasional jazz drum lick while not devolving into annoyingly technical mathcore. Tough to describe, the band calls themselves "heavy math rock/post-metal" but I think they're selling themselves short. They are definitely heavy and have a few Mr. Bungle-ish proggy breakdowns but it's still linear, coherent sludgecore with enough extra shit to keep it interesting. "Hipster Killers" is my favorite - and the killer opening chord progression in "Part II" is simply awesome. Check 'em out here and give generously.

So Sic!

Mr. Bungle 2.0

OK, it's one thing to be influenced by a band, totally another to sound exactly like them. That being said, if there is one band that deserves to be reverentially copied, it's Mr. Bungle. Introducing Croatian dadaistic mathcore connoisseurs Hesus Attor. According to their press release:

In the harbor town of Rijeka, Croatia a small group of lovers of fast food and the local cuisine with gloomy, dark and fast tunes ringing in their ears has given birth to a surrealistic monster which they have named Hesus Attor. They have equipped it with what they have read in comic books and seen in horror movies, but above all with a classic set of instruments every metal, rock, punk, hardcore or crossover band must have. The outcome is spectacular: a mixture of parody, schizophrenia and the absurd...

Claiming similarities to Boredoms, Dillinger Escape Plan, Melvins and Ruin, the four-piece has fine-tuned their Mike Patton schtick down to a tee. There's also a taste of Ween and Flaming Lips and every other avantgarde band out there in there but when it comes down to it, this is total Bungle worship. That's all I can say. It's really something else, and a fucking whole lot better than California was. Enjoy.

Volume 1

Bog

Groovy-as-fuck stoner sludge rock from Utica, NY (of all places), III is an unheralded lo-fi masterpiece of weird post metal random rock goodness. Difficult to properly categorize, the 70-minute record is much like a concept album, just hit [play] and zone out for a good long while. The crunching finale "Destroy The Hive" is an amazing piece of work - perfect way to wrap it all up. The band has relocated to the much more respectable borough of Brooklyn and they urge you to spend some of your hard-earned duckets here. Enjoy.

Eggnogg

Ex-Faith

I'd be curious what most Faith No More fans out there think of the Chuck Mosley years. Like pretty much everyone, I didn't pick up Introduce Yourself and We Care A Lot until after I got a hook in the mouth from Mike Patton and the epic that was "Epic." First thing to notice upon listening to their "lost" first albums wasn't the familiar-ish music but who the fuck was singing? If you could call it singing, it was this weird off-key drunken sort of rap/caterwaul, completely undefinable. Painful at times. Yet this was the time that if you plunked down $13 of your hard-earned dollars for CD (or cassette as in the case of We Care A Lot) you fucking listened to it. A lot. And so I did and over the months between Real Thing and Angel Dust I really became a fan of original vocalist Chuck Mosley's version of FNM. Some of his songs ("The Crab Song", "As The Worm Turns" and "Mark Bowen" especially) are as much classics as anything from the Patton years. Unfortunately Chuck had a rough couple years after his stint (and ugly parting) with FNM - it took until the end of the millennium for him and his new band VUA (Vanduls Ugents Alliderasy) to get an album recorded, only to have it promptly dropped by the engineer and shelved for a decade. Fast forward to 2009, thanks to the internet and all that hi-tech computer shit - Will Rap Over Hard Rock For Food was finally released. It's a surprisingly cool album with guest appearances from Jonathan Davis and Roddy Bottum (in a fucking amazing nü metal retread of "We Care A Lot" that you simply have to hear) and Chuck sounding exactly like his bad self in 1987. There are enough styles on this album to please any genre afficionado, there are flavors of Ween, Toadies and even fucking Limp Bizkit. Check his shit out here, spend some money and get one of his dreadlocks. Enjoy and welcome back Mr. Mosley.

What the FUCK Chuck?

Joyce

What a great band name. Mix some early 90's Fudge Tunnel, Soundgarden, Melvins and Nirvana and let it marinate for 15 years and you got Murdervan. Cool retro-esque grunge or post metal or whatever you want to call it from the hick barrens of Connecticut, their debut full-length is a solid 40 minutes of Shit there's even a song that sounds like the fucking Cure. The band broke up in 2010 only to reform a year later and that's the last we've ever heard from them. The opener "Ten Years" is fucking amazing. Enjoy.

Cold Electric

Kill All Redneck Pricks

Swansong album (brilliantly titled at that) from underrated and way-ahead-of-their time Washington state sludgers Karp. Fusing a west coast blend of sludge, grunge and post-hardcore with a smarmy sense of humor, the band evokes Melvins, Sloth, Tad and any other of the late-90's genre-bending bands trying to carve their own niche into heavy music. "D+D Fantasy" is the highlight for me but the whole album rules, a tight 30 minutes of pounding riffs to smash your skull. Highly recommended.

Tumwater

Crayola

Man, still reeling from the 18 heart attacks on Sunday after the Patriots and Red Sox last minute wins (as well as the debilitating two-day hangover which came with it) - allow me to try to get my ass in gear and introduce Mr. Bungle worship act Kids Eat Crayons. Honestly, it wouldn't be hard to convince most folk that this group actually was Patton and his boys performing under a different name. The band plays a ridiculously technical cacophony of experimental jazz, metal, thrash, funk (you name it) to the point that I am amazed the guys can actually repeat perform their songs. "Best Friend Clio" is my favorite track - somewhat reminiscent of Faith No More's heavier riff style - really cool stuff. Enjoy.

Fish Don't Swim

A Small Victory

My previous nostalgic waxing notwithstanding, Faith No More is a band I have so been into at points in my life that to just hear a specific song of theirs can spark really exact memories of my highschool, college and beyond. It still baffles me how they never became the hugest band of the era, the fact that "Epic" a catchy-yet-cheesy raprock anthem is still their greatest Billboard claim to fame still chafes me to no end. Regardless, caught up in the wave that Patton and the boys were forging, I bought every fucking CD-single that the band released. Domestic or import. Australia, UK, Japan, you name it. Buy them for the bonus stuff: live tracks, remixes, occasional outtakes and rarities - some international releases contained the exact same songs as the U.S. version but had different cover artwork - and I tried to get them all. Years later as the realization that a decade of reckless credit card bills eventually have to be paid off dawned on me I dug into my considerable CD collection and wandered down to the local Buy/Sell record store to try and eke out 25% of what I originally paid for them to help in my war against Visa's debt collection department. I sold a lot that day but I remember the guy behind the counter pushing my big stack of Faith No More CD-singles back across the counter to me with the condescending comment: "Can't sell 'em. I have no faith in Faith No More." (like how he did that?) Shit, I thought I was gonna net at least $100 alone for those fuckers! Oh well. Long story short, all these years later I'm glad I still have that stack (and, somewhat more importantly, debt-free but that's another story). Spanning the entire Slash Records era from Introduce Yourself to Album Of The Year, I compiled all the bonus CD-single stuff into a complete album. I ignored the live stuff since it's mostly taken from Live At The Brixton Academy anyway and instead left you with a bunch of cool remixes, extended and radio edits, unreleased tracks, polka covers of Dead Kennedy songs and "Das Schützenfest." Enjoy.

Ashes To Ashes

Mo' Ex-Excel

Just a quickie post here - a couple extra lost tunes from the band of the hour - SoCal's defunct My Head. Two tracks that appeared on Suicidal Tendencies' 2001 compilation Friends & Family 2 as well as one that made it onto another obscure Infectious Grooves album as a "bonus EP" track. Enjoy.

The Beard

 
Currently watching: Morel Orel Volume 3

Currently listening to: Beautiful Mother Vanilla

Don't Waste My Time

Sadly forgotten debut by Excel veterans Adam Siegel (guitar) and Greg Saenz (drums) came too late in a music world being quickly overtaken by nü metal and fucking Sublime. Taking a cue from the way-ahead-of-its-time prog thrash that was The Joke's On You, Siegel added a nice touch of funk, psychedelia and even grunge ("I Don't Want Nothing" really has a Nirvana flavor to it) to their only album, 1996's Endless Bummer. Fans of 311, Chili Peppers, Fishbone and that type of shtick will easily find something to like with My Head - solid riffs with a lighter metal groove to it. Just bad timing - too late to ride the Faith No More funk metal wave and too early to ride the Incubus funk metal wave (ugh... did I just write that?) Now here's your chance to catch up. Enjoy.

Killer Hair

 
Currently watching: Eating Raoul

Currently listening to: Ween Caesar

Jag Har Något Att Säga

Sorry loyal followers, summer's ending in just a few weeks and I've got absolutely no time at all these days to keep up with posts. There's a million records I try to remind myself to upload but just don't got the fucking time, mang! Anyways, I took a few minutes to pull out this classic from the archives, Sweden's own Glanzig. An awesome Misfits/Danzig cover band who either takes themselves way too seriously or not seriously enough. Fuck all those Misfit cover comps floating around on the internet - this is the real shit. Enjoy.

Go Go Gothenburg

Currently watching: Bad Teacher

Currently listening to: Dead Infection The Lethal Collection

Yay For Me!

Well, over the last week I decided to give the blog one final go and re-upload everything I had onto one of the other file hosting sites. Hopefully that one won't be taken down because I don't think I have the patience to do it all over again! In celebration of coming back online I present to you Northern CA supergroup Nigel Pepper Cock and their debut EP Fresh White Reeboks... Kickin' Your Ass! Featuring members of Brainoil, Destroy, Skaven and Dystopia, the band tears through 4 tracks of surprisingly sludgey hard-rockin' metal. Their official bio reads:

"Our story begins with 6 young men who were all college buddies, and members of the fraternity ALPHA KI COCK. The fraternity already had a reputation as being the WORST at Stanford University before these guys enrolled, and when they finally did, the whole campus was reeking of testosterone, stale beer, and dirt weed. One day our heroes decided to head down to Spring Break in Palms Springs, for some pre-summer party action. On their way home, they got lost in the desert, searching for a gas station. This is where their cosmic encounter began that put them on their path today. Call it Kismet, call is psycho kinesis, all that is known is that meeting Rick the Desert Dick changed their lives forever. They now had a purpose, a reason to exist.

Soon after, the dudes dropped out of college and moved to the not so peaceful streets of San Francisco. After a few years saving money by doing “odd jobs” aka working for crooked pimps and political leaders, our boys of summer were able to acquire musical instruments, and with time and patience, they learned to master them as well. And soon that cosmic light was shining and three words fell from the lips of god, NIGEL PEPPER COCK..."

For more write to Mauz at Life Is Abuse and he will hook your white ass up. Enjoy.

Here Comes The Boobies!!

 
Currently watching: The Company Men

Currently listening to: Da Lench Mob Guerillas In Tha Mist

Hate Songs

I remember stumbling upon Fudge Tunnel's video for "Sunshine of Your Love" one night on MTV's painful 120 Minutes and thinking "where the fuck has this band been all my life?" Way ahead of their time, the Nottingham three-piece absolutely destroyed on 1991's Hate Songs In E Minor. While the rest of the world was masturbating to a blonde boy from Aberdeen, Fudge Tunnel was paving the way for countless sludge bands to follow with painfully heavy grooves, fuzzy riffs and lots of minimalist feedback. They released a couple other albums after Minor but non compare to their major debut, a personal fave. Enjoy.

Gut Rot

Currently watching: The Human Centipede 2: Full Sequence
Currently listening to: Murdervan Jaundice

Yeah... I Sweat A Lot...

Y'know that handful of albums you were once so into, but for whatever reason you don't listen to any more? Yet still hold on to? The ones you break out once every five years, listen to straight through (knowing every lyric, chord change, nuance, etc.), then put back away? This is one of those. Junior year in college, I was all about Faith No More. Seeing them live, any appearance on TV, getting all those retarded CD-singles with an outtake or demo or live track, etc. etc. Immensely better then The Real Thing and (somewhat unsurprisingly) rejected by the MTV-brainwashed public, Angel Dust easily holds its own nearly 20 years after its release. Way, way, WAY ahead of its time, it really shows that Mike Patton had his finger jammed up the ass of the music world. Post-metal funk, alternative, anti-grunge, rock nonsense - whatever genre you want to try and classify it - listening to this album literally transports me back to the tiny shithole apartment I lived in. Christ, I can even remember the smell of stale beer and bongwater that stained the piss-yellow carpets. What a year that was and what a fucking album. Fitting for this blog's 100th post.

 Be Aggressive