Tag Archives: Century Media

Body Count – Carnivore (2020)

Posted by valleyofsteel on

Body Count – Carnivore (Century Media, 06 March 2020)

 

In these strange days of isolation and distancing, we’ve all had to make varying degrees of adjustments to our normal routines and how we do things in our daily lives. While it might not be as significant or essential as some other aspects, entertainment and keeping ourselves mentally occupied is still an important part of everyone’s hierarchy of needs, and how we manage to entertain ourselves has been drastically altered as well. No more movie theaters, no more live events, everything is either premiering on televisions or streaming online nowadays.

And then of course there’s still social media, which is pretty much the only way anyone can be social right now, and between the anxiety and the frustration of being cooped up inside, you can tell things are getting a little nutty out there. One place where this is plenty evident is on Twitter, which lately has been featuring that guy from Tr**t desperately shouting from the void of irrelevance at anyone who will give him or his one-hit-blunder band any amount of attention. As much as I hate playing into this charade by giving it any press, I have to admit it has been pretty amusing to watch. Especially about two weeks ago when it blossomed into a pseudo-feud with the Original Gangster himself, Ice-T:

 
Anyway, while we’re on the subject of media and entertainment and such, that seems like an ideal segue into a look at what Body Count, Ice‘s hardcore/crossover/thrash band of the past three decades, has been up to lately. Specifically, why don’t we go listen to brand-new album Carnivore, their seventh overall and the first since 2017’s Bloodlust…

 

Continue reading →

Advertisement

Body Count – Bloodlust (2017)

Posted by valleyofsteel on

Body Count – Bloodlust (Century Media Records, 31 March 2017)

 

Some of our younger readers may recognize Ice-T as the curmudgeonly old guy in the “It’s Lemonade” commercials, or maybe they’ll recall his stints as a reality tv star (here and here). Perhaps he’ll even seem familiar from his portrayal of a police officer on Law & Order: SVU. But before he was gracing screens small and big (and by the way, his acting career has included roles as cops dating back more than a quarter-century), the man born as Tracy Marrow in New Jersey (and then raised in the Crenshaw district of Los Angeles) made quite a name for himself as a hugely influential part of the music industry.

Known primarily as one of the innovators who helped to shape the gangster rap genre, with songs like “6 ‘N the Morning,” he later formed the group Body Count with some high school friends who shared an affinity for hard rock music — introducing the band on a self-titled track on his 1991 album O.G. Original Gangster before they came out with a full-length self-titled album the following year.

They have been heavily influenced by fellow Californian contemporaries in the worlds of thrash (like Slayer) and especially crossover (like Suicidal Tendencies) — but for years I’ve seen a lot of negativity expressed towards these guys within the so-called “metal community,” from some of its more closed-minded individuals. Whether that’s a refusal to acknowledge rap or hip hop artists as genuine musicians, or a xenophobic reaction to a perceived “outsider” tresspassing into the “scene” — well, Ice-T‘s spoken-word intro to the original “Body Count” song can be applicable in both directions: “You know, as far as I’m concerned, music is music. I don’t look at it as rock or R&B, all that kind of stuff, I just look at it as music. […] But I do what I like, I happen to like rock ‘n roll. And I feel sorry for anybody who only listens to one form of music.”

 
Continue reading →

Two Reviews: Eyehategod and Enabler (2014)

Posted by valleyofsteel on

ehg-cover

Eyehategod – Eyehategod (Housecore Records, 27 May 2014)

enabler-cover

Enabler – La Fin Absolue du Monde (The Compound, 27 May 2014)

 

I will not be getting any sleep tonight. I’ve already accepted this as an unfortunate but unavoidable truth, and am now working on moving on. Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve discovered that since about age 30, it has become way more difficult to function on litte (or no) sleep, and now that I’m hitting the halfway point of that decade, getting enough rest has become a very precious commodity. It isn’t ever easy, especially when my two-hour (each way) commute necessitates that I leave home at 5:00 in the morning, meaning I have to wake up around 4-4:30. That wouldn’t be so bad, if I were able to fall asleep around 10:00 each night, but that’s a rare occurrence — and tonight in particular it will be completely impossible.

I’m going to the Eyehategod/Enabler/Ringworm show at The Rex Theater in Pittsburgh (part of the tour I wrote about last week). The show is scheduled to start at 7:00, but in addition to the three touring bands, there had been two local openers scheduled (Under Everything and Hericide), and then somewhere along the way the Dune sandworm-named band Shai Hulud got thrown into the mix (I guess they are currently on their way home from a tour and just happened to be passing through town today and so now apparently they’re playing at this show as well). Naturally, with six bands, even if things kick off exactly at seven, there’s no way it’ll end anywhere before midnight — and that’s the absolute best case scenerio. Add in an hour drive to get home (that two-hour commute I mentioned involves bus-riding and walking), and I probably won’t be able to be in bed any earlier than 2:00. Falling asleep that late and waking up at 4:00 would probably make me even more tired and miserable than if I didn’t sleep at all. So here we are.

But, shit, what am I going to do — NOT go see Eyehategod in their first appearance in this area since …… well, the Bandsintown archive goes back more than seven years and doesn’t have a single Pittsburgh date listed. Neither does Setlist.fm have any mention of them playing here. In fact, the only thing I could find after an extensive five minutes of web-searching was a couple YouTube videos from a show in the summer of 1998. Basically the point I’m trying to make is, this is a pretty monumental event, and if I don’t take advantage of this chance to see one of the most important bands in the history of sludge metal, I might never have another opportunity.

 

Continue reading →