TMNT

 

New Day Rising

Fucking around with a new format for this site where I write a little more informally and stop pretending that this is ever gonna be “proper” music site… Think of it as equal parts journal, newsletter for our various bands, and webzine? I dunno. We’ll see if it sticks.

- Wound up jamming around on that idea from the other day and smashed out two semi-promising drum parts (if I do say so myself) that we might be able to work into proper songs.

- I’m pretty into the idea of only doing two song EPs from here on in. That feels like a very sane workload at any given time. Once we finish five or six EPs maybe we’ll comp them together onto a CD.

- Need to start writing lyrics again so the new songs can be “about” something.

-Fell off writing SUPER HARD about six years ago when label/ scene drama took a runny shit all over my self confidence and desire to engage with anyone. Need to get the fuck over it.

- Gotta mail our rent check today, that’ll be a long walk in 90+ degree heat... Not stoked, but trying to think if we need anything over at Home Depot since the post office is right over there.

- Been obsessed with this Geko CD for the past couple of months. Reminds me of a post-punky version of early Godflesh with goth chick vocals. What’s weird is that I was googling around about the label that released this the other day and it looks like the only other things they ever put out were a Heresy 7” and Assuck’s “Blindspot” EP.

- Also find myself listening to a lot of Ancient Chinese Secret lately. Weird ass power pop/ violence that reminds me of Man is the Bastard with Melt Banana vocals. Great fucking bass tone.

- The rabbit hole the led me to Ancient Chinese Secret also reminded me of soihadtoshoothim who I hadn’t thought of in kind of a while. Utterly fucking bizarre/ unique female-fronted pop/ noise/ grind/ prog. It’s a shame their guitarist passed away right around the time this CD came out ‘cos I would have loved to see how this stuff evolved on subsequent albums.

- I kinda wish there was more shit that sounded like this Total Fucking Destruction track. Full on Husker Du “New Day Rising” vibes, but with blastbeats.

- The newest Genghis Tron album honestly didn’t grab me at first, but I find that I’ve been listening to it a lot lately and it’s cool for what it’s is even if I do kind of miss the grind parts.

- My PTSD has been kicking the absolute shit out of me lately. Worst it has been in years. Daily panic attacks. No fun whatsoever. I think half of the problem is lack of sleep, and the other half is the entire rest of the fucking world.

- I find myself really wanting to pack up and move to a new city. Unfortunately, I suspect the panic is not something that a simple change of scenery is gonna fix. But who knows, maybe a change would do me good.

- Justin Sullivan is a hell of a songwriter.

Thinking Out Loud Again

- I really wanna start a band that sounds like Godflesh/ Legion of Andromeda industrial crush meets the abject psychedelic gloom of "Pornography" era Cure with moments of Ramleh "Hole In The Heart" style noise but I've got a feeling I might be the only person on earth who would even listen to something like that let alone want to play it.

-I had a dream the other night that DD and me were at a party chatting with this really cute nerdy redhead chick about WOLD, Bone Ritual, Plague Organ and a bunch of other weirdo black/ death metal bands and she was super excited we knew about that kind of shit and mentioned that she played bass and did weird laptop ambient noise and asked us if we wanted to jam with her some time.

-That dream made me realize it's been almost 20 years since I talked about music "in person" to ANYONE who didn't immediately glaze the fuck over at the mere mention of all the stupid shit I like... Seriously, I think the last person was literally DD, though to her credit she was so stoked on it that we eventually wound up married and in like six bands together.

-I kinda hate how the world has "emptied out" over the past 20 years. I think some of it is my age, and some of it is "our age" of technological isolation and desperate self absorption, but whatever the fuck it is, it's a massive fucking bummer.

-I really do have doubts about this little webzine being of any value whatsoever, especially when compared to some of the larger metal sites, but I dunno... I remember the 90's geocites/ angelfire/ xeroxed webzine days with a surprising amount of fondness and I kinda miss when there were tons of totally casual "off the cuff" little metal zines where some internet rando just kinda fucking rambled about shit they liked.

-I've been trying to remember the name of this super weird Finnish death metal/ sludge/ doom/ noisecore band for like a year and a half... Too bad for me all I remember is that the band name begins with a K and the name is really fucking Finnish sounding. It's driving me insane. I kept thinking it was something like Kotsumet, but no, that's a youtube channel about two super cute pet otters... Not disappointed I found it, but not exactly what I was looking for.

-I'm like stupid fucking excited for getting a big square cinder-block slab of Sicilian pizza tonight and I don't know why.

-Forcing myself to read a couple articles in the book I'm reading everyday and man my attention span is fucked up... The book is fun though. A bunch of old newspaper articles about monster sightings. Worth a look here.

-The Pantera dude has said some stupid fucking shit over the years but the lyric "No one to point at, question, or even talk to" has been running through my head lately and I gotta admit that one is surprisingly on point here in 2022.

-That new TMNT game is fucking killer, I love that Slash, Rat King, Leatherhead, Metalhead, Tokka and Rahzar all make appearances.

-Stoked on the Capcom Fighting Game Collection too. Hadn't played Darkstalkers in absolute ages, fun to jump into that with DD.

-Kinda want to pick up DNF Duel tonight cos it looks pretty fun. We'll see.

Vous Autres

Blackened lysergic dirge equal parts Godflesh, Blut Aus Nord, and Amenra. I was somehow completely unaware of this stuff until about a week ago but I think they might be my new favorite band.

Also kinda reminds me of C R O W N before C R O W N started sounding like Depeche Mode.

Random Blah Blah About Bands, Life, etc.

- Tossed pretty much everything we’ve ever recorded up on our bandcamp so it’s all in one place for what might be the first time ever. Only things missing are a Static Towers CD that I might have on a shelf somewhere (no promises, but I’ll keep an eye out for it), the DOTS demo that I prefer to leave alone due to bad blood with a couple former bandmates, and a couple of Rusteater demos that I’m pretty sure are gone for good.

- Currently working on a new Six Billion Light-Years EP which will probably be called “Liminal.” Should be a handful of longish tracks… Psychedelic low-BPM techno/ shoegaze/ kraut-ambience for an increasingly isolated world.

- After the 6BL-Y EP I personally wanna work on a couple of Inverted Tower tracks.

- Infestation Ritual and THNGRVD are currently in the “who knows” zone. Never quite dead, but never really “here” either. Most I can say is that there will be new stuff whenever there is new stuff.

- The world outside is ever more fucked, current headspace demands icy ambient zone out.

- Ran into some friends of ours we hadn’t seen since before the pandemic and had a couple of real nice conversations, It was a welcome change of pace after the weirdness with that other dude.

- Looking at buying a house up in Canada maybe? DD is a Canuck and we’re pretty serious about trying to get out of the US before the next civil war pops off.

Blast Furnace

Monstrous grind/ hardcore/ death metal from Boston... Gonna keep this brief because most of these songs only barely reach the one minute mark, but if you wanna kick your Sunday morning off with some fucked up ugly violence this demo has definitely got you covered.

 

Weekly Roundup #15

Blah Blah:

Thinking of moving to the burbs and getting a place with a yard so we can get a dog and build out a more fleshed out recording studio. We'll see what happens.

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Muzak:

Vomitory - I loved Vomitory back when I was in high school and just happened across a new copy of "Raped In Their Own Blood" the other day so that's been in pretty heavy rotation this week. Burly 90's scandi-DM with a nasty crusty/ punky vibe and a real gnarly "rusted out" guitar tone that sort of reminds me of mid-era Dismember. Cover is NSFW/L but definitely not the worst I've seen.

https://youtu.be/NHfWfqMAtac

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Warrior Soul - If you can imagine a middle ground between Queensryche, and Soundgarden you're pretty much in the ballpark of Warrior Soul... Been a huge fan since I was about 12 years old and "Jump For Joy" has some of my favorite lyrics ever written.

https://youtu.be/uoN25Ho-69w

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Infestdead - I remember having this CD waaay back in the day and remember it being really good, but aside from that that I honestly remember sweet fuck all about this band. Were they a Dan Swano side project? Probably? Well, I just ordered the 2CD Anthology of all their stuff so I guess I'll know soon enough.

https://youtu.be/7ULlfD5eHSM

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Agressor- Riffy early 90's French death/ thrash. I somehow totally missed this band when I was younger which is a shame because they're really good. FWIW: I didn't misspell their band name, they did.

https://youtu.be/zaYd4WI3-KU

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Dyingrace - Ultra fucking heavy death metal tinged HC from late-90's Japan. If you have even a passing interest in 90's metallic hardcore or "deathcore" in the 90's sense of the word this stuff is an absolute must hear. 

https://youtu.be/q8ZSA96z41s

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Love and Rockets - Ex-Bauhaus psychedelia... Reminds me of "Burning From the Inside" as played by The Rolling Stones which works well for me in certain moods. Makes me wanna be zoned-out/ mellow/ drunk while watching the sun set and having a cookout on a roof-deck in New Orleans. Fuck that'd be nice...

https://youtu.be/pyAWwWkGi98

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Video Games:

Pocky and Rocky Reshrined - I loved the SNES Pocky and Rocky back when I was a kid so I was really looking forward to this. Unfortunately my day wound up being way to fucking busy to actually play it... Hopefully I'll have a bit more time tomorrow.

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TMNT: Shredders Revenge - Sooooo fucking good.

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Books:

Monsters in Print by Adam Benedict - Heard this dude on a podcast I like and his book seemed interesting so I picked it up. Massive compilation of totally weirdo cryptid reports from old-timey newspapers. I love stuff like this.

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Movies/ Tube/ Podcasts:

Cryptonaut Podcast

The Exorcist II

Doomed Megalopolis

Godmonster of Indian Flats

Octoman

Blood & Flesh: The Reel Life & Ghastly Death of Al Adamson

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All Out War

Well, on the bright side, you may not be able to abort that fetus anymore but the way things have been going there's every chance the kid will die in a school shooting and it won't be your problem anymore.

"Give Us Extinction" is a pretty apt sentiment for today.

Pushbutton Warfare

Metallic and vaguely "tough" HC of the variety that seemed to be omnipresent at various small town VFW shows between about 1994-1999 but seemed to die out completely as soon as the year 2000 hit... I actually saw this band a bunch of times when I was younger, but I hadn't thought about them in ages before this video popped up in my youtube recommendations this morning.

YMMV, but this was a welcome hit of nostalgia.

Sanity's Dawn

Super heavy, if somewhat less than completely "serious" goregrind/ death metal from Germany circa 2001... If you dig shit like Regurgitate, Gronibard, early Exhumed, and Utopie you probably already know of Sanity's Dawn, but if not, they should be right up your alley.

Xurganuuth

Oh boy! more Xurganuuth! This stuff is absolutely fucking ridiculous. And whaddaya know it's another whirlwind warrrgarrrbl of wasteland war (noise) metal.

Afterneath

Picked up an Earthquaker Devices Afterneath reverb after wanting one for almost a decade… and man, that is a really nice sounding pedal. Very dark in tone, which is perfect for what we’re using it for.

Xurganuuth

Take war metal, swap out any semblance of "music" for brain-scouring harsh noise then clip the shit out of the recording so all that's left is a slagged out heap of irradiated wharrrgarbl that sounds a bit like Confuse, Uranium, and the Incapacitants teaming up to reinterpret cuts from Blasphemy's "Fallen Angel of Doom"

I'm honestly not sure if I'm obsessed with this or just terrified.

Diuretic

Quick demo of sloppy, punky, old-school grind bordering on noisecore featuring a girl I sorta know from around town on vox. Reminds me of early Napalm Death, Agathocles, Ripcord, etc.

Definitely worth a spin, especially since it'll only cost you about 5 minutes of your day.

Weekly Roundup #15

Blah Blah:

I might update this with more of a preamble at some point tomorrow but right now it's like 4am and I don't have a whole hell of a lot to say. Just kinda hanging in there and trying to weather the brain-chemical hurricane until things (hopefully) calm down again.

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Muzak:

Deathwhite - If Type O Negative and Katatonia had a child that decided it really liked mid tempo double-bass kicks under gothy doom riffs it would probably sound something like Deathwhite. This caught me in the right mood the other day and I wound up really liking it.

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Foscor - Depression has been kinda kicking my ass lately so Foscor's brand of gloomy atmospheric metal has been really hitting the spot.

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Gore - Crushingly cyclical hypno-metal from The Netherlands. Think an instrumental Godflesh with live drums, raised on a steady diet of "My War" era Black Flag and you've got a pretty good idea of what's happening here. Their "Mean Man's Dream" LP is a big favorite of mine.

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Obsidian Kingdom - If you threw Neurosis, Cave in, and Pink Floyd in a blender it would probably sound a little like Obsidian Kingdom. This stuff has also been working really well with whatever reverse seasonal-affective malaise has been glooming me the fuck out over these past couple weeks.

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Video games:

Ok, I keep meaning to branch out and write a little more coherently about the games I've been into on any given week, gonna try to make that happen starting now.

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Neon White - First person shooters have never been my go to genre, but every once in a while one really grabs me. From DOOM's brutal gore and full on death metal aesthetics, to Superhot's stark visuals and weird strategic gameplay, and now to Neon White which seems to reconfigure the genre into thirty second doses of high-speed platform puzzling madness... I'm not deep into this yet, but I'm already pretty hooked.

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Mario Golf: Super Rush - I had a weird pang of nostalgia for this long-defunct mini golf place I used to go to when I was a kid and picked this up to hopefully scratch that itch without having to golf around other people. It's fun so far... Even if I'm rather bad at it.

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Reading:

Not much this week, just skimmed a couple of comic books and plowed through some dumb cryptozoology/ ufology stuff.

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Tube:

Zardoz

The Killing of Satan

The Mystics in Bali

Bastard!!

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Legion of Andromeda

Basically the sound of Corrupted teaming with Big Black's trusty drum machine to jam out a completely borg-assimilated version of the final track on Eisenvater's "III" backed by the sound of a planet sized steam hammer. Endless. Mindless. Soulless. Inhuman. Fucking. Pounding.

Fermento

Chunky "brutal" DM with probably the craziest sounding vocals this side of Sanity's Dawn. This stuff is pretty fucking braindead so I'm not gonna waste a whole lot of words on the write up, but I always kinda liked this album.

Tim Sale

 Damn… Tim Sale died. RIP.

https://www.dccomics.com/blog/2022/06/16/dc-is-deeply-saddened-by-the-loss-of-tim-sale

Suicidal Tendencies

When I was a kid I used to look at my parents and wonder what the fuck happened to them and how they became basically flesh and blood automatons locked in an endless cycle of work/ food/ sleep with no friends and no social life. Now I'm about the age they were back then, give or take a couple years, and find myself in a pretty similar situation. Well, except that I remember "how it was" just enough to keep me raging against the dying of the light, which I'm beginning to suspect actually makes it hurt worse than just shutting down and going numb the way they did.

Needless to say I've been l feeling this tune HARD lately.

Mutha's Day Out

Early 90's "Headbanger's Ball" style alterna-metal from Arkansas. Kinda sounds like a Danzig/ Paw/ (early) Life of Agony/ Rollins Band mashup... Probably not gonna be for everyone, but I dig stuff like this so it woks just fine for me.

Found this down the same rabbit hole as that Copsodomy demo which make sense since as far as I know they shared at least one member.

When I first stumbled across this stuff I thought I had never heard them before, but now I'm wondering: Were they on the fuckin' 1995 Mortal Kombat soundtrack? I was just talking about that movie the other day.

Copsodomy

Oh shit! I've been looking for this Copsodomy demo for close to 25 years! Christ, it might even be more than 25 at this point... Heavy as fuck sludge from Arkansas that, as far as I remember, had at least one member that would go on to play in Rwake.

Abuse

Obscure-ish down-south grind/ sludge/ hardcore/ death circa 1997. Equal parts Starkweather, Soilent Green, and Acid Bath. Definitely worth a spin if you're unfamiliar.

Scala

Ghostly ambient electronica from more or less the exact point where sexiness meets cold pit of the stomach dread... Think HTRK reinterpreted by SPK and you've got a pretty good idea of what to expect here.

I believe the main guy behind Scala is (or was?) also involved with Seefeel and this other project called Locust whose "Truth is Born of Arguments" album is one of my all time favorites within the realms of left-field electronica.

Anthrax

Woke up with this song stuck in my head this morning which is sort of weird 'cos I don't think I've listened to the album in well over a decade. Great riff and surprisingly on-point lyrics.

The comic nerd in me wonders if that's an Alex Ross painting on the cover, but, as is often the case, I'm way too fucking lazy to google it.

Weekly-ish Roundup #14

Blah Blah:

Still sorta reeling after a rough couple of weeks but I think I might finally be starting to feel the ground under my feet again...  We'll see.

In other news, we ran into that friend of ours who ghosted us a while back while we were up at the bottle shop. It was uncomfortable and awkward... Dude didn't acknowledge us or say hey just silently did his thing and left.

Did a quick bit of mental accounting trying to remember if we had done something to offend him but came up nothing so I guess this one falls solidly under under the auspices of "I don't fucking care."

Seriously, at this point I'm "officially" middle aged and I have less than zero patience for bullshit high school "Guess why I'm mad at you" drama, especially from another grown man... I try not to be a dick to anyone, and if I inadvertently hurt someone's feelings I'm man enough to talk about it and apologize if I did something wrong, but if you decide you don't like me out of the blue one day that's your problem, not mine.

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Muzak:

Deinonychus - Deranged suicidal black metal/ doom circa 1995. Membership ties to Bethlehem. I've always had a wicked soft spot for this album.

https://youtu.be/wWks-esuOuQ

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Murmuüre - Ostensibly a black metal album, but most of the sound-field here honestly sounds more like the Tim Hecker/ Ben Frost/ Final/ Fennesz brand of distorted ambient music. Awesome.

https://youtu.be/JeUZkn3GA9I

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Egregore - First Impression is that they remind me of a grindy Morbid Angel with lots of reverb and some spaced out synth parts. Some of the fastest parts remind me of a more melodic/ less unhinged Gravesend. All told I'm really enjoying this, will see if it becomes a favorite.

https://listen.20buckspin.com/album/the-word-of-his-law

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Video Games:

Mario Strikers: Battle League - Reminds me of NBA Jam but soccer and with Mario characters. A little but light on content, but pretty fun if you have someone to play it with.

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Drainus - New horizontal sh'mup with really pretty graphics and a vaguely Ikaruga-style bullet absorption mechanic.

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Reading:

Couple books of Celtic Folklore

Slaine

Andraste

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Tube/ Podcasts:

Cryptonaut Podcast

Euphomet/ Night Drive

Doomed Megalopolis

Ultraman

Kamen Rider

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Low

We're probably gonna cover this.

Alive Or Just Breathing?

Fuck man... This has been a long week. In a long month. In a long year. Here's the Cliff's Notes version to get some of it out of my head and down on paper.

-Lost my uncle Mike recently and it hit hard because he was like a father to me. Only member of my immediate family that ever encouraged my art or music when I was a kid, and that was probably the one of the main reasons I kept on keeping on with any of it.

-Mike was also a totally lovable wild-man that I now realize was a huge influence on my personality and I find myself wishing I could give him a hug and have a cookout with him one more time and just kinda tell him thanks for everything.

-DD collapsed this past weekend and wound up in the hospital it was scary as fuck but after tons of bloodwork and tests it looks like it was nothing particularly serious. Something called a vasovagal syncope which I'm pretty sure is just medical jargon for "I dunno."

-If we hadn't wound up in the hospital on Saturday there's every chance we would have been up on South Street when that mass shooting popped off? 'Cos we were heading that way when she collapsed. Scary as fuck.

-She was down with a headache yesterday, probably 'cos we had a couple late nights in a row and she's still recovering from all the blood they took at the hospital, but it fucking rattled me 'cos all I could think was: "did they fucking miss something?"

-DD is my wife, my bandmate, and my best friend and if she was gone I literally don't know what the fuck I would do... At this point in my life I have no friends, no family, and my world is pretty much just her, a room full of music gear, and a small handful people I email about music every once in a while... The rest of the world feels empty, hostile.

-I was gonna quit doing this webzine because it honestly kind of feels like a waste of time sometimes, but now I'm thinking I might as well keep going because it gives me something to do that takes my mind off the other bullshit.

-I've been missing a lot of dead friends lately. To the point a random memory of playing the Darkstalkers arcade machine with my friend Anthony almost made me cry yesterday.

-All of this shit has hit my sense of well being like a ton of bricks and left me feeling really fucked up and off balance, but I guess I'll just grit my fucking teeth and keep fighting through it.

-One foot in front of the other. Keep Breathing.

Weekly Roundup ??? Possibly 13? Who the fuck knows.

 Blah Blah:

-Coherence at low ebb, you get bullet points this week.

-DD is home, recovering... Thank fuck.

-We bought an Alesis SR-16 mostly 'cos they're super cheap and pretty much THE weapon of choice for 90's bargain basement industrial metal/ spastic digi-grind/ and one man black metal skuzz.

-Chipping away at the "leftover" Infestation Ritual tracks... I honestly feel kinda bad calling them "leftovers" because the only reason they didn't wind up on the demo was down to time and some sucky family stuff that derailed the recording process.

-Working on a couple tracks that add drums and guitar to our wasteland drone/noise rituals and kind of wind up sounding somewhere between Chu Ishikawa, Emit, Demoncy, Megaptera, Troum, Fabio Frizzi, Legion of Andromeda, Godflesh, and Beherit... And yes, every bit as fucked as that sounds on paper.

-I think I've slept like 14 hours in the past week. My brain is fucking mush right now.

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Muzak:

Uranium - Blackened power-electronic barbed wire machine-rape nightmares. If you survive even the first half of this album you're made of stern stuff indeed.

https://sentientruin.bandcamp.com/album/wormboiler

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Realize - It might be just me but I kinda think realize Sound like the singer of Brawl Park fronting Streetcleaner era Godflesh. Pretty killer.

https://realizeindustrial.bandcamp.com/album/machine-violence

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Pink Turns Blue - Ultra dramatic machine driven post punk from Germany. I'm guessing Eremite probably isn't the first album most people think of when they think Pink Turns Blue, but I think it might be my overall favorite of their records... Super weird and cold sounding. Distant. Wintry. Whacked out.

https://youtu.be/j3KjfGAIVlY

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Chrome - Unpopular opinion: The later-era Chrome stuff fucking Rules. Totally fucking wrecked psychedelic electro-punk spew.

https://youtu.be/PVXWaSCbKhg

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Hawkwind - Same deal with Hawkwind, their late era stuff is awesome and super slept on. Chronicles of the Black Sword might even be my favorite of their albums, maybe tied with Choose Your Masques.

https://youtu.be/7qSGSOlihHo

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Beherit - Still on a wicked Beherit kick. Was just sitting in the dark with DD, drinking a beer, and listening to Engram while a thunderstorm raged outside, recommended.

https://youtu.be/S7o9J2ZpBQ8

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Video Games:

Chop

Drainus

Steel Vampire

SFIII: Third Strike

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Reading:

The Elric Saga Vol.1 by Michael Moorcock

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Tube:

Ultraman

Jigoku

Wolfen

Fear City

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Visions of Yokai

Thirty minutes of lo-fi dungeon murk that is so completely washed out sounding that when I initially threw it on I thought that one of my speakers had blown... Seriously, imagine Abruptum, Wold, Tangerine Dream, and Trollman Av Ildtoppberg competing for volume on a derelict stereo system located a quarter mile down an abandoned silver mine and you're still not even close to how mangled this sounds.

Put another way: If you dug that Funereal Moon track I posted you're probably gonna lose your fucking mind over this.

Funereal Moon

Imagine Abruptum, Jesus Chrust (the really fucked sounding one from MA, not the pre-Disassociate one from NYC, though they're cool too), or Black Mass of Absu jamming with a completely acid-damaged low-budget approximation of early Dead Can Dance and you have a pretty good idea where these Mexican weirdos are coming from.

Spooky

So, DD collapsed and had to go to the hospital yesterday and in a crazy moment of WTF synchronicity there was a mass shooting within a block of where we usually go when we decide to take a walk, which is what we were on our way to do when she passed out?

Fuck, I guess it was a good thing we wound up in the hospital.

DD is doing ok now, thank fucking god. The doctors ran a fuck ton of tests and chalked it up to something called a vasovagal syncope? I guess it's a pretty minor thing but the last time she fainted it was something really serious so we weren't gonna "wait and see" and find out we were wrong.

Fragda

I once described Fragda as sounding like the Doom 2016 soundtrack as played by Anaal Nathrakh and I'm sticking with that for this newest album... Monstrous industrialized chugs meets million-MPH blackened blasts meets an inorganic sheen equal parts Meshuggah, Fear Factory, and Red Harvest.

And yeah, it's pretty "modern sounding" or whatever, but if you avoid this one due to a slight whiff of "deathcore" that's on you for being a moron.

One of my favorite albums of this year so far.

Dread

Fucked up ugly sludge-core from Boston MA circa 2009. I'm guessing that these guys are no relation to the Dread from Rockland MA that was around when I was a kid, but they do seem to feature at least one member of the almighty Upsidedown Cross... Overall vibe here reminds me of Indian/ Lord Mantis/ Buried At Sea topped off with vocals that sound like Seth Putnam having his scalp peeled back with a belt sander.

Pretty fucking killer.

Weekly Roundup #12

Blah Blah:

Bummed, but dealing with it.

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Muzak:

Bodies On Everest - Thuggish, knuckle dragging caveman dirge from the UK. Like I said yesterday: Equal parts Brainbombs and Rusted Shut with lengthy passages of greyscale industrial noise. 

https://bodiesoneverest.bandcamp.com/album/a-national-day-of-mourning

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Despise You - Finally just replaced the totally scuffed-up copy of "West Side Horizons" I've had since I was in high school.

https://fuckyogarecords.bandcamp.com/album/west-side-horizons

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Mortal Decay - Of all the amazing DM bands that came out of the general NYC/ LI/ NJ area in the 90's Mortal Decay might be my overall favorite. Especially their first three demos and the "Sickening Erotic Fanaticism" full length.

https://uniqueleaderrecords.bandcamp.com/album/sickening-erotic-fanaticism

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Deteriorot - Another underrated slab of 90's/ 00's east-coast DM. Manages to sound super gross and doomy without being standard "death doom." Closest comparisons in terms of style are probably Immolation and Incantation but I gotta be honest and say out of the three I probably like Deteriorot best.

https://xtreemmusic.bandcamp.com/album/in-ancient-beliefs

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Inexorum - Label blurb references Dawn, Sacramentum, and Mork Gryning and the recommendation was kicked my way by Andrew over at the ever reliable Aversionline.com so you know this is pretty much guaranteed to be fire (as the kids say)... Can't wait for the full album, which I guess should be out later this month.

https://gileadmedia.bandcamp.com/album/equinox-vigil

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Ossuary - Chunky, hardcore-tinged DM from suburban Pennsylvania circa 1994. I don't think this is the same Ossuary as the one that released the "Supreme Degradation" demo but honestly I'm not sure and I'm way too lazy to google it... At any rate, what you get here sounds kinda like Cold As Life gone full-on death metal with what sounds like at least three different singers trading off vocals. Absolutely devastating.

https://youtu.be/WW9tjPebIFw

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Video Games:

Espgaluda II - I've been super busy lately which means video games have kinda fallen by the wayside a bit, but I'll usually try to take like 20 minutes after dinner to sit down and blast through a quick SHMUP. Espgaluda II "Black Label" has been my go to for the past couple weeks, pretty fun and a reasonably easy 1cc as far as bullet hells go.

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Reading

A bunch of weird news stories from a town where I used to deliver pizzas when I was in my late teens/ early 20s... UFO sightings. Huge black dogs. Bodies found in the woods. Reports of giant snakes in the swamps. etc. etc.

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Tube:

Wolfen

Super Infra-Man

Horror of Dracula

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Bodies on Everest

Like Brainbombs, The Body, Air Conditioning, White Suns, and Rusted Shut? Like lengthy passages of greyscale industrial noise? Boy I sure fucking hope so 'cos that's about the only chance you've got of surviving this mess.

Side note: I'm pissed I didn't think of that band name first.