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March 2010 Archives
THEIR WHOLE SET! I'd embed the video but it's too large for my site and the size is a prime number so sizing it down would make it look shitty. So, "Third Alternative" just made my day. Sounds of Sagittarius now has a facebook page. Just what you've always wanted! I don't need to hear this song again today. Murder City Devils - "I Want A Lot Now" Sounds exactly like high school, except there was no car. How about: Living's no good in this hick town and/or city Gonna be home and instant message my friend, he's *thumbs up*
Categories:
1990s - late
(Note: This is a skewed re-posting of what I just said on facebook. Add me, assholes.) Zoroaster is recording. They are also "recording". Their channel: terminaldoom One video of the several: I was doing "research" today and came across this band's demo on Shiny Grey Monotone. It has three songs that are also all available on their myspace. Check them out, and try not to be taken aback by the Russian you find... It sounds like awesome whether you understand it or not.
Categories:
2009
My new music folder has gotten out of hand. I should have done the work necessary to make the music in it not in said folder anymore before I took a bunch of random last.fm recommendations and had a downloading spree because of it... but, alas, I didn't. This means I have 3x as much work to do when the time comes. So, this is a month and a half of recently-excessive downloading. I'm going to try to do the unusual thing and delete useless things as I come across them. Let's do this via date, starting with the oldest stuff. It will almost look random. [Start: 66.1GB free space] Fukkk Offf Veracrash S:T Erik Finchley Boys Whitey Hot Chip Gomer Pyle Ok Go King Crimson ASIWYFA The MassaCrista Sleep (live ATP) Rob Zombie Lions - V1 OvO Moses Buzzoven - HB Cosmotron Deadeyejack Mountain of Judgement Threefold Law Isabelle's Gift Lethe Union of Sleep Purple Mercy Sasquatch Delvic 1000mods Ihsahn The Ghost Is Clear Records comp Blackwaves What? Shadow of the Torturer Immolation White Hills Nether Regions The Knife Witch Mountain Melvins Black Sabbath Dragontears Early Man Out Hud Mendozza Pontiak Buried At Sea Pharoah Overlord Dangers Celan Temples more Buzzoven Coalesce Maybeshewill Graves At Sea Glasspack Wizards of Kaos Mountain Goat Morkobot Narrows Orange Sunshine Blood Ceremony Karysun La Otracina and this is where my downloading got really wacky. I will need to take a break and make a part two. Thus far have sorted ~5GBs. [Mid-way: 67.8GBs] Most of this ended up in my new music folder in the last 2-3 weeks, and most of it was part of some last.fm recommendation. [Mid-way Start: 67.9GBs] Godhead Jessamine Dark Buddha Rising Noxagt Struck By Lightning Marble Sheep Pitchshifter Caspain Indian Anthrax Riff Cannon Seven That Spells Blind Dog Thorlock Lunachicks High on Fire Megaton Leviathan Apostle of Solitude Wizard Eye Darkthrone Droids Attack Mookerdam Otesanek Downtrodden Liturgy Cave Dead Luke Blowback RIYL Your Highness Electric The Grand Sluts of Trust Burning Colossus 2 SoSayeth Dirty Power Void Autolux demo Stonehelm JPT Scare Band Ghost Brigade Ten East The Death Letters and I'm irritated now. [Mid-way End: 69.7GBs] 3GBs deleted. Almost a whole disk's life has been saved, and less than 4GBs left to sort. yay.
Vildhjarta - "Shiver" The music on this song is fantastic during the first bit. I wish this song was just that first 40 seconds over and over. However, GENRE BAD. And I apologize for the vocals in advance. They made me gag a little because, here on earth, in this reality, in this decade, someone thought those vocals were "cool" enough to record, and cool enough to record like that. Here's hoping the band's full of teenagers who haven't been exposed to anything better. The good news is, the rest of their songs seem to mostly be just technical metal... so yay for them.
Categories:
2009
Last.fm said I'd like UFO. I was, like, bitch, you don't know me. And last.fm was like, "but E-nudge! I do! You can't deny my superior ways! You gave me Tool and now I know everything about you!" And then last.fm tried to propose, and I said yeah, whatever and screwed around with Soulseek on the side, then broke it off at the alter. Fucking tell me you know me, who does last.fm think it is? Anyway, yeah. I've heard the name UFO before, perhaps as recently as in the Swamp. I don't pay much attention to recommendations of bands that were active before I was even born, however. I think I have the basics down well enough from my couple of years of regular classic rock listening and spend most time lately listening to what's been made in the last 5-10 years save for my favorites. But my recent open recommendations-taking led me in the direction of UFO. I looked at their page, "Doctor Doctor" was the number one played song, so I downloaded the album it came from, Phenomenon. I was expecting nothing of real weight, and I heard: Oh. Well, okay. You got me there.
Categories:
1970s
My list of decent new and new-to-me songs have outgrown my ability to keep track of them, so I made a compilation mix to showcase this moment in time. It has a little bit of variation, but it's mainly doom, sludge, yell music. You'll enjoy it if you have a longer than usual attention span (it's 95 minutes), an affinity for the Portland metal scene (four PDX bands), and/or cockroaches growing in your brain thanks to the radiation.  Tracklist: If you're curious, you can find all but one of these artists on my blog in some form - and many songs have been posted in the last few months. Snailface finally put their new album to the internet. http://wordclock.com/snailface In case you didn't know or you forgot, Snailface is Kowloon Walled City version stoner rock. They put out a pretty nice album last year for RPM Challenge that I've talked about 400 times here already. As for this year's Snailface album, active listening makes it a little better. They put effort into the lyrics, in other words. Have a listen listen. 1:07 of track 3 is the point where I started cracking up laughing.
Categories:
2010
[72] Salvador, The Long and Short of It, Red Fang (2010) I wish this show had been either a few days earlier or later. Nevermind the sub-par sound of the room, it seems Fridays at the venue this show took place at are a social clusterfuck. Aside from maybe a rim of fans close to the stage, the venue was filled with human parasites who hadn't wandered in for the music or at least considered it secondary to their social lives and alcohol abuse. Maybe it's like that most days of the week, and maybe Red Fang's accessibility makes it worse. Either way, with various factors causing me to not be able to ignore negativity (stress from school, sleep deprivation, etc), I did not want to be here. A good thing about this show was that I got in for free thanks to my new job. I even got to smirk at the idea that, on the guest list, my name was written as not my real name. I've never gone by a pseudonym in a real life situation before, so it was my first test as 'that person'. I'm glad I wasn't asked for my ID. I don't think door people have a sense of humor. When I got inside it was relatively crowded for the show not having started yet. As usual, the fliers and such read the show would start at 9:30, but it actually didn't start until 10pm. Most band sets are close to an hour between how long they play and how long it takes to set up, so that meant I was definitely going to be missing large portions of Red Fang. I thought about taking a cab home instead, but after realizing the crowd was full of the usual Friday Night sort and not really feeling like spending $30 on something annoying, I knew I'd have to be "lame" and leave before they were through. Salvador hit the stage and it was immediately obvious something was wrong with the sound. The vocals were way too loud over the instruments. They started with the song "Pyres" which has yelled vocals you've read me make fun of before, and... I wanted everyone involved to die for polluting my existence with this. I like the song, but fuck-N-A. Turn the guitars up or something. Thankfully, someone fixed something between songs as the rest of the songs sounded as good as they could be in said venue. Next up, they played a new song. I didn't write any notes besides the word "new" and at the time of writing this I don't remember what it was like. It sounded like Salvador, though. Who knew? Then they decided to grace us with a song Kirk introduced as a "cover of a cover, if you will", starting to play a song I almost immediately recognized by sound but took a minute to recall by name - the Melvins' "Going Blind". Overall, it was pretty authentic. Following were the two other tracks on their recently released vinyl, "Shaman of Ur" and "Vultures". I am not sure I've heard "Vultures" yet live, but either way I was pleased to hear it. And like the back end of Cleansed Through Fire And Blood they'd just played, they completed their set with the end of Built of Trees and Sludge - "Sattva" and "Dahlia". All in all, a good set I would have definitely preferred to hear in Berbati's, Satyricon, Hawthorne, Doug Fir, almost any other venue. One thing was different about Salvador this round: they had a new, second guitarist. I'm not sure when he joined the band other than it had to have been since October when I saw them open for Fu Manchu. I didn't notice a defining difference in their sound, but it's possible it may have been more full. I will find out another time. As every time I've seen them, though, their drummer was having the time of his life. I hadn't listen to more than 20 seconds of The Long And Short Of It before this show and really didn't have a clue what to expect. I seemed to remember they had a sludge sound, but they turned out to be more hardcore/punk focused than I expected. The singer was very animated and active, much in contrast to the rest of the band - one of whom was literally in a wheelchair. Though they had some obvious fans in the crowd and seemed to do a decent job impressing the room, I kind of tuned out during their set. They had a few okay moments, but overall the style wasn't really for me. Of what I remember, they played "Last Transmission of Ghost Ship Raven", "Turtle Island", "All That Shit's Real", and "No Such Thing". There were probably about three more songs.
Sure enough they played a couple of new ones right away. One of the new songs was pretty doomy, reminding me of the end of "Whales & Leeches" and making me excited to hear what they've put on album. Seriously, I can't wait to hear it. For the songs I recognized by name, they played "Good To Die", "Bird On Fire", and what I've come to know as "Bad Places". Just before I left, Aaron did some thank-yous and they'd just begun some other new, unrecognizable song.
New Bison B.C. song: The album it's on, Dark Ages, is out in less than a month. In the meantime, they're touring with High on Fire, Priestess, and Black Cobra. I just laughed to myself probably way more than is healthy for this corny joke. Isis is playing here on my birthday. Not In Roseland, But In Doug Fir.
A "brutal" interview Akimbo did for a magazine that decided, nope, they weren't going to publish it. "I mean, what's cooler: Eddie from Iron Maiden, or that stupid fucking Grateful Dead bear? Eddie! Eddie is cooler! He would stab that bear in the face and shit on the wound." This is what you have to go on until Zoroaster puts more of their new music on the internet. The new song's followed up by "White Dwarf", so enjoy that. Check out this great interview of Red Fang done by Seattle Rock Guy before their Dantes show two weeks back. There's also a live video of "Good To Die" from the show. Also, they mention their favorite Portland bands. The Ax, Diesto, Salvador, Nether Regions, Mongoloid Village, Black Elk, and Pure Country Gold are mentioned, as well as The Bugs (I didn't know that was them in their Prehistoric Dog video! Learn something new every day.)... Only one band shy of my blog's local band abuse. Also, if you catch this blog entry quick, Black Cobra will be live streaming HERE in an hour. I started writing online 10 years ago today. Instead of reflecting on that in a typical manner since I try to keep this a music blog despite wanting to go off on all kinds of personal tangents, here's a comparison of where I was musically in 2000 versus 2010 by my physical music collection alone. No mp3s, folks. In about March 2000, my album collection looked like this: Gravity Kills Gravity Kills And here's me, today: Ah, jobs. [73] Nether Regions, Burning Leather, Radio Moscow, Pentagram (2010) It looks longer than it is... The last couple of days were my first "real world" participation in the job I have recently acquired. I've been doing little things every week, and I'm sure my work has afforded me a total of three shows in two days. Granted, I didn't see every band and one had technical issues, but otherwise I got to meet a ton of people which made up for any/all musical lack. The first venue was late as usual. The posted time was an hour and a half before when they actually managed to get those doors open. I spent some of this time in the space of the singer from Nether Regions and even more of said time around Miss SubArachnoid Space. All of the first night bands were "satyri-conned". I suppose the venue has okay sound overall, it's not the worst, but certain things just don't sound right. Ultimately I didn't get that much out of any of them, but at least Nether Regions had their moments and Pentagram had a sort of interesting on-stage presence as far as their singer, Bobby. Nether Regions played mostly unfamiliar songs, starting with a quick one, moving into two (I think) long songs that seemed like an appeal to the psych/blues/whatever audience that were there for Burning Moscagram. They closed with "Spanish Werewolves" and then "Out Run The Sun". The last song of the night was definitely the best and most effective for me. As soon as they stopped playing, a girl next to me yelled at her friend that they were awesome. It was good to know that even though some of the subtleties (lol) were lost in venue translation, they had made at least one new insta-fan. OMG THAT'S WHAT IT WAS LIKE FOR ME TOO. I didn't catch Burning Leather at all. We arrived again in time for three and a half Radio Moscow songs. I've heard mainly good things about them from the psych rock/hippie dork crowd... and I've tried to give them a chance but I have this attention span issue working against me. I think I liked one of their songs ages ago during some kind of wandering mood but I don't remember what it was. Either way, I had low expectations and they were basically met. They were okay, but just okay. All in all, they reminded me of Danava - keyboards + blues guitar... a description that fits hundreds of bands. We moved up front for Pentagram. I got a bad feeling about it but I assumed it was just because I didn't want Bobby's nasty crap up in my face. My boss said he was going to get to work after two songs, meaning leave the crowd, so I figured I'd do the same. Instead, I had my free personal space and ability to make decisions about it for approximately the first minute that the entire band was on stage... and that was it. From what I could tell there was a trio of slam-happy kids in the crowd. I was reminded of Against Me, except during that show I had a bar to hold on to... and I came home with far more bruises. And it was worth it so I'd keep that spot for Mastodon... This time, not so much. Don't care enough about Pentagram. Moreso with the fact that I already knew what Pentagram's set was going to be... Their set was essentially what I'd heard it had been back in San Francisco. If not exactly the same, then MAYBE one song different or switched. But yeah. Yeah. They only played four Pentagram songs. The rest was 20 minutes of some blues jam while Bobby visualized the guitar was him jerking off on stage. I was glad I hadn't paid for the show. I imagine some people left feeling cheated. After the show I got to talk a bit to one of the Pentagram guys about how he "wasn't going to be here" for an upcoming Ludicra show (duh) and shook Bobby's girlfriend's hand while she acted disinterested in our garbage. Also worth noting, we walked by the band Danava on the street. I didn't talk to any of them, but it totally fucking made my night. They were on their way to practice. !
I woke up feeling pretty good, but within an hour I was in the usual post-show low, tired state of mind. I had really good luck with my transportation and ended up getting downtown 10 minutes earlier than I planned, 30 minutes earlier than I needed to be. I walked around for a few minutes and then proceeded to wait for a train that never came. At five minutes late, I decided to walk down to the next one where more people were at and more train options available. As I got on the next train there, someone announced the trains weren't going across the bridge... so we were being shuttled across. Well, there went all of my half hour early time and then some. I'm glad I didn't get lazy and leave the house later. We ended up being some minutes early... 15, I think. Lesbian and Wizard Rifle had illogically switched opening slots before the show date, and were switched back last minute. Wizard Rifle had only a couple of pieces of their set in the room when we got there. Nevertheless, they started at 8:45... I had no premise on Wizard Rifle other than that I knew their name and their literal band associations. Apparently they were a drum/vocals + guitar/vocals duo... which seems to be a pattern around here (meaning Sounds of Sagittarius). Once they got playing, I was immediately drawn to the drummer who was looking like the poster child for heart attack prevention. Hol-ee-shit. I had seen a ton of broken drum sticks in their car so I spent the entire set worried that I was going to get broken stick shards piercing my eye at any moment. It never happened. ..... Their set was pretty damn good. I definitely liked them. They reminded me of The Ax and Chinese, but more constant, energetic, and 'on'. The other obvious comparison is Tweak Bird if big Bird gave up smoking and they ditched Sabbath for Flag. Or Meshuggah... heh! (Note: Wizard Rifle does not, at all, sound like Meshuggah.) We skipped Lesbian. 20 minute songs are a bit much for me and why not. White Mice set up as normal human beings and walked out in their crazy/weird mouse head + bloody doctor jacket costumes. Within two minutes of starting their set, they abruptly stopped. I thought the song was suddenly over, but the bass amp or something in that area had died. Apparently something was plugged into the wrong socket. They quickly got going again, same song with the same yell about getting stoned... The idea that their noise broke something made me laugh quite a bit. They got through another full song, sounding pretty amazing considering they almost sound like a hum of nothing. I recognized the song, even, although I couldn't remember the title. I guessed it might be the song I posted recently because it was repetitive in that manner, but... it's gone from me now. Either way, eight thumbs and two fingers to my asshole neighbors up. In between songs, a guy from back stage told the drummer something. The drummer looked to the bassist and drew a line to his neck. I tried to remember if they had any death/killer songs, and during this moment it was becoming more clear that they were being told they were done. What? They had blown a fuse. I don't know where or what the fuck. I still saw lights on, they still had sound, etc... but they were being told to leave the stage. Enh. Some yelled to play more. Sure enough, we got one more song... :'( Unhappy face to only three songs. That was way better than I could have expected. It really sucks they had to quit so soon. Return that little pang of regret for skipping them last year in favor of Red Fang.
Some drive later, we were at Weedeater - arriving just in time to see them setting up. Apparently Black Tusk had to cancel due to "van troubles" elsewhere. Sucks for them. Weedeater was just a bit more effective for me, sonically and emotionally, at the show I saw them do last year opening for Down, the Melvins, and Danava. At that show I was right in front of Dixie and due to the nature of the big shows being full of people who don't really give a crap about openers, it felt far more intimate. The venue also had a much bigger, louder sound - perfect for them. Still, the show they put on was fantastic. Dixie did a whole lot less stomping around than I've seen before (ha). Just what I witnessed, he had three full drinks before they even started playing while drinking beers in between. I was expecting this vomit I've heard about... but it never happened and he seemed pretty lucid. Across the room I got a laugh from watching Keko light one up with an audience member. My guess? Crack. They started with the usual "God Luck and Good Speed" followed by "Wizard Fight" and "For Evan's Sake". I think they've played these three to start with at each show I've seen. I was wondering if it was going to be another focus on God Luck setlist, but then they went into a bunch of unfamiliar songs. The fourth one seemed new based on audience reaction. Five and six might also have been new, but some people were reacting enough that maybe I just didn't know/recognize them. Next up, "Gimme Back My Bullets". After a pause and a bunch of yelling from the audience about playing "3!" or "Freebird!" or "MONKEY JUNCTION!!!", they finally went into "Monkey Junction". They then played a song I didn't recognize that they said they hadn't played in six years. I probably should maybe get their And Justice For Y'All album... but I think it was "Free". Thus came "It Is What It Is", "$20 Peanut", and they closed with "Weed Monkey". He breathed, I snickered. Twelve songs felt like four or five. Before leaving for the night, some random guy came up to me, shook my hand, and told me he loved me. Nice. I love me, too. So that was my fun and exciting and interesting and revealing weekend, condensed for your non-pleasure reading. Muchas gracias to whom made it possible. And yeah, Joe, I knew you know that I know that you know I'm known of whom I'm known, and now you know. Or something like that. Time to go wreathe in pain. I got some music things in the mail the last couple of days. I have one more coming - my first record player. Naturally it has a USB connection so you're going to see a couple of things show up "somewhere" someday soon. And I get to find out if the guy who spilled his beer all over me at Eagles of Death Metal ruined my won vinyl single there. Not that it necessarily matters one way or another. Today I feel much better than yesterday. I'm still foggy, and now newly sore from doing laundry, but otherwise okay. The not having to walk a mile plus having more opportunities to sit helped a whole fucking lot. Nevermind not stressing out about times, being annoyed of sitting through sub-par bands to only have to leave before the good ones have even hit the stage. Ahh. Any bit of star-stricken I had before is now lost in the sea. As a teenager I worried about possibly ever running into some big musician because I had no idea how it'd effect me, assumed it would be a bad thing. I had special tickets to a show once where I was theoretically supposed to have a meet & greet (which never happened) and I remember being nervous about how I'd react, emotionally, to that kind of pressure to be socially present. It's not a strong suit, I'm a nervous/paranoid person anyway, and every little thing adds up. I figured I'd die. Most of those I met were either an expected thing (in the case of the two I mentioned right off in my 2am review) or generally logical. These aren't people I've had a chance to become any sort of weird/obsessive 'fan' of, or don't necessarily care enough in general and I doubt those around me care either considering the flat reactions I've been getting, but yeah... I still thought I might have some kind of heart attack in the knowledge of meeting someone I've seen on stage before. Nope. Same as ever reaction I get from meeting new people. "Oh, okay." And this is, apparently, consistent. You know, when I'm not in a why-even-bother mode of thought. They keep telling me to say hi to them at their shows, but meh. Still, I find it strange. Outside of the blog or as a joke, I wouldn't brag about it, but in context it seems weird that my nerdy bullshit has gone on to do these things. How did I go from being made fun of for being too naive to listen to alternative metal radio (yeah, seriously) to this series of handshakes and blog comments and associates? It's good, though. Definitely. I clearly don't have the social skills available to do what some of these people do on a consistent basis, but it seems rather appropriate that I'm "here", despite years of "What's your favorite kind of music? I bet you listen to [crazy metal bands/Metallica/Tool] - HA HA. YEAH RIGHT". Meanwhile I went home and did just that. (Or, when I was older and more known as musically aware, making fun of me for listening to "that Marilyn Manson" while I was actually listening to Kyuss or Mastodon or something.) I wonder what the end result of this phase shall be. Hopefully it doesn't involve fucking men who are 40 years older than me just so I can profess myself as a "writer" under the financially comfortable guise of being a savior wife. I try but Rennie makes it so hard when he bugs out his eyes like that. |
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