Monthly Archives: July 2012

Now Available: Undersmile – Narwhal

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Undersmile – Narwhal (Future Noise Recordings, 28 May 2012)

 
If you spend any amount of time poking around this blog (and I highly encourage you to do so!), you’ll quickly notice that I have a fairly broad range of musical taste. Most of the stuff that I listen to would be classified under some metal genre or other, although not all of it. Everything else would usually fall into one or more categories of punk, hardcore, hard rock, or pretty much anything that’s heavy, but once again, you still couldn’t fit all that I listen to in such neat little boxes. Even just looking at the metal music, you’d find me all over the spectrum there as well, touching upon (at least to some degree) practically every subgenre ever invented.

However, one recurring theme you might discover, is that I’ve always had a certain affinity towards the sludgey, the grimey, the filthy, and in particular, the mind-numbingly slow. If it sounds like it was recorded with an hourglass instead of a metronome, chances are I’ll be all over it like zombies attacking a MENSA convention.

So naturally, when I first discovered Oxfordshire’s Undersmile (courtesy of American Aftermath including one of their songs on last summer’s Summer of Sludge compilation), I instantly fell in love, because they just totally hit all the right buttons for me.

Late last year when I heard the news that they were in the process of recording their debut full-length album, I was delighted, and later, when more details and some preview tracks started to emerge, I got even more excited.

Did you ever have something you were anticipating so much that you almost felt nervous about whether it would ultimately live up to the hype? Even if it turns out to be really really good, could it possibly be as good as you were expecting? Or even worse, what if the thing you were so convinced was going to be amazing — and that you’ve been telling everyone around you how amazing you think it’ll be — turns out to be terrible? Of course, you wouldn’t be looking forward to something that much without having some prior knowledge or some sort of basis on which to establish those expectations, so there’s a very small chance that it would, in fact, be awful — but there’s still that remote possibility. Isn’t that just nerve-wracking?

Well now that I’ve gotten my copy of Undersmile’s Narwhal and listened to it a few times, I’ve discovered that I didn’t even know the meaning of the words “terrible” or “awful”…

 

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Upcoming Shows: Sangre – Devastation Across the Nation Tour 2012

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If you aren’t familiar with the So-Cal metal band Sangre yet, you probably missed my review of their album The Great Tribulation back in February. Even if you did read that before, you should totally check it out again, because the post was recently updated with the band’s second video, for the title track from that album.

Anyway, hot on the heels of their performance at the Rockstar Mayhem Festival in San Bernardino, Sangre are all ready to kick off their Jägermeister-sponsored “Devastation Across the Nation” tour, which begins TONIGHT in Arizona, then runs nonstop all around the USA for the next few weeks!

 
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Upcoming Shows: Michale Graves – War of Information Tour 2012

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If you’ve ever studied the family tree of people who’ve either been in the Misfits over the years, or at least played in bands with former Misfits members, then you know there are more characters there than in the cast of most soap operas.

Without going into too much detail (or doing any research, so any factual errors are due to my own faulty memory)…

After the original band dissolved in the 80s, singer Glenn Danzig went on to form Samhain, which evolved into Danzig, with a number of different people. Meanwhile, the Misfits were later reformed by bassist Jerry Only. Here again there was a rotating line-up of members, but one of the best-known was the foursome that put out a few albums in the late 90s, which included Only’s brother Doyle von Frankenstein (who I believe had also participated in the band’s earlier incarnation for a time) on guitar, a drummer named Dr. Chud and vocalist Michale Graves. All of those folks have left the band at various times, leaving the bassist once again as the sole original member (and now, as I understand it, also handling vocal duties himself). Von Frankenstein was last seen as a member of the Danzig Legacy tour, which also featured the titular singer. Graves and Chud had set out on their own prior to this, working together in a band called Graves, if I’m not mistaken. Then the two parted ways, playing in other bands, and eventually the singer embarked on a solo career, which finally brings us to the present day.

Michale Graves has been performing solo acoustic shows for the past few years, in addition to releasing the album Illusions Live/Viretta Park via Screaming Crow Records in 2008. Now he’s back with a full band and kicks off his “War of Information” summer tour TONIGHT in New Jersey…

 
UPDATE – 18 September 2012 – click here to see the latest additions to the War of Information Tour dates!
 
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Out Today: Icarus Witch – Rise

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Icarus Witch – Rise (03 July 2012, Cleopatra Records)

So way back in the dark ages (i.e. the 1990s), when I was in high school, Cleopatra Records was my favorite record label. I’d snatch up all of the compilations and tribute albums I could find at my local store, of their bands’ gothic and industrial cover songs, as well as CDs by Electric Hellfire Club, Mephisto Walz, Melting Euphoria, and lots more.

Eventually, my musical interests expanded in different directions, to include a lot more extreme metal genres, and inadvertently I had completely lost track of Cleopatra.

Fast-forward several years later, and it came to my attention that there was a band from Pittsburgh who had signed to that label, called Icarus Witch. Now, I didn’t know anything about that band (at first), but remembering the styles that Cleopatra was most closely associated with, I was very surprised when I learned that the label had also expanded its musical horizons far beyond where they used to be. Icarus Witch, for example, do a more traditional heavy metal thing with, some power metal influence. And, as it turns out, they’re pretty good at it.

 

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Out Today: The Cheats – Pussyfootin!

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The Cheats – Pussyfootin! (03 July 2012, Screaming Crow Records)

 
So I’d just like to go on the record as stating, holidays in the middle of the week are kinda stupid. Basically it’s like having a weekend, but it’s only one day: all day long there’s that feeling of dread that’s usually associated with Sundays, where it feels nice because you aren’t working, but you know you can’t really do anything especially crazy because you have to be up early the next morning to go back to work.

Lots of holidays are specifically designed to coordinate with your weekend — Memorial Day and Labor Day are on Mondays; Easter is on Sunday but most people get off work the Friday before it; and Thanksgiving is always a Thursday, but if you’re lucky that ends up turning into a four-day weekend.

Some of the other major holidays that could fall on any day of the week (because they have a specific date) can be flexible too: there’s New Years Eve, New Years Day, Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day, and usually it works out to where those holidays end up adjacent to a weekend, or you at least get both days off so it’s like having a second weekend anyway.

However, tomorrow (Wednesday) is the 4th of July, when we Americans celebrate our Independence Day because that was the date (two-hundred-thirty-some years ago) that some folks had signed the Declaration of Independence from Britain. While that was generally regarded as a good thing (people weren’t real happy about the way they were paying a whole bunch of taxes to the king while feeling like they weren’t really getting much in return), as a holiday it’s only significant enough to justify one day off work. That means, when it ends up being on a Wednesday, I get to be all excited to leave work on Tuesday (today), knowing that I’ll get a break the next day… but that excitement will be short-lived because Wednesday (tomorrow) I’ll realize that there’s still two days left in the week and I have to come back.

But all that seems pretty depressing, and I guess I should try to think positive: no matter what day of the week it is, it’s always better to have one day off than zero days! So, fuck it. I’m going to resolve to take advantage of the time I have, however short it may be, and enjoy myself tonight and tomorrow.

But, in order to have a good time, that would also require some good music, right? Naturally. Well, I’ve got just what the doctor ordered, and I’ll gladly tell you all about it…

 
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Hey Look: A New Beastwars Video! Plus, Album Update!

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Good afternoon! Here are two pieces of good news all rolled into one news update. Both of them concern those disciples of the “tune low/play slow” philosophy, Beastwars, who (to be perfectly honest) also happen to be the only band from New Zealand I can name off the top of my head (unless you count The Flight of the Conchords).

Anyway, I’ve learned that their self-titled debut album — which has been available online since early 2011 — will see an official U.S. release in September of this year. Additionally, they’ve just announced the release of a video for “Empire,” the closing track on that album. Just like the rest of the songs on Beastwars, “Empire” is deliciously sludgey and grungey and noisy, as well as giving me the impression that one or more of the band members may possibly have owned (or at least listened to) a copy of Masters of Reality at some point in their lives.

 
Here is the new video, directed by Hamish Waterhouse (full credits available here). They say this took five months to put together, and looks to be worth every minute of it!

 
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Free Music Alert: Azoic – Gateways

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Azoic – Gateways (Self-released, 20 June 2012)

 
Hello readers! Since it’s been 90-whatever degrees here in Pittsburgh lately, and I’ve been sweating my ass off, sometimes it’s nice to think about people who live in other parts of the world, where it isn’t so infernally hot and humid this time of year. Now I’ll admit, I don’t really know that much about the climate in Iceland, but c’mon! They’ve got “ice” in their name! Even just thinking about that makes me feel better.

I don’t know what the weather is like wherever you are right now, Dear Reader, but in any case, wouldn’t your week start out a lot better if you had some new, FREE music to listen to?

Yeah, I thought so. I can help you out with that.

 
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A short while ago, I was contacted by a nice Icelandic gentleman, who kindly pointed me in the direction of the band Azoic. Right around the same time, our friend Ben who maintains the Church of the Riff blog also contacted me, mentioning that I should check out this great band. If that wasn’t already enough, right after that I discovered that Phro, who writes short fiction on his own blog PhroMetal, had written about this same band in a guest post over on No Clean Singing!

Well with that many endorsements, I became really curious and had to check these guys out for myself. I’m glad I did, and I think you will be too. Late last month they announced that they were releasing the album to be freely downloadable, so keep on reading and I’ll tell you where to get it.

 
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