My lust for crust most gross,
Conceivably the first punk band in Alabama, The Knockabouts cover the usual topics that early hardcore bands concerned themselves with: Nuclear War, Reaganomics, alienation, boredom, etc., with a justifiable focus on the terrible redneck hellhole they grew up in as evidenced by a reworking of a certain popular ditty as "Shit Home Alabama." Surprisingly eloquent lyrics filled with distinct imagery and poetic detail elevate this from the vast number of 7 inch records around this time, as do a willingness to eschew hardcore lockstep for more chaotic song structures and tempo changes. Still, there is something very punk about an eight-song record that plays in less time than it takes to type a paragraph describing it.
Legendary Japanese noisemonger takes the croaking and guttural exhortations of the humble toad and crafts them into an album of pure flesh-searing skronk. The polar opposite of Soothing Sounds of Nature tapes, this is designed to perforate your eardrums and shred your psyche into thin slivers. Audibly gleeful in its ugliness.
Presenting a 3-cd compilation of various Lovecraftian metal songs, seemingly originating from one of several Spanish-language metal sites concerned with this sort of thing. Contains tracks by Metallica, Celtic Frost, Rage, Nile, Dimmu Borgir, Entombed, Mercyful Fate, and many more. Quite an excellent selection and obviously a labor of love produced by sick and tormented minds.
War, death, pestilence, plague: Bazöoka's got all the bases covered on this album. Taiwanese thrash/death revovling around some sort of apocalyptic variation on the Vietnam War with zombies, what's not to like? Song titles: "Airborne Troops of Dead," "Raw Noise Attack," "Combat Warfare," etc. A must for all fans of ESL evil.
Well, loathsome ones, we've finally become a real blog! Our first threatening letter has arrived today from the presumably corpse-painted team of lawyers representing Bal-Sagoth, demanding the removal of their album from the Swamp. In humble acquiescence I have closed that portal, only to have another orifice open further south, deep in the mountains of Appalachia. In the long tradition of isolated hillbillies stumbling drunkenly upon things too large and abstract for their own comprehension, Yog Sothoth, the foul and primitive squealings of one mysterious individual, creeps forth and drunkenly splays itself on the shore for baffled fishermen to puzzle over. Devoid of shape and squawking in alien tongues, this monstrosity is surely too crusty and maddened to bother with a lawsuit.
Rudimentary Peni's Cacophony is widely regarded as the most important Lovecraftian punk album, but few seem aware of this forgotten 80's gem by Missouri punkers Lurking Fear, who claim to be inspired by not only H.P.L. but by Poe, Ambrose Bierce, and Alan Moore. This last manifests itself in the the song "Swamp Thing," which morphs from a crazed hardcore stomper into a spacey death-rock groove with Moore's words recited over it, and then bizarrely shifts into the "Wild Thing"-styled theme from the 80's cartoon. Other tracks include "Born in Fear", "Werewolf" in the which the singer howls wildly, and "Innsmouth Bay." The sounds range from caveman pounding to moody, swirly goth, played at the far fringes of competence and traditional notions of what constitutes a song.
A well-worn classic of the Lovecraftian genre, the Chthonic Chronicles is the third entry into Bal-Sagoth's Mythos trilogy, presented here in defiance of traditional Euclidean mathematics and conventional notions of chronological coherence. For those unfamiliar with the works of Bal-Sagoth, they perform bombastic, baroque, and mind-altering pretentious Black Metal backed by a symphony and choir, with traces of T.S. Eliot's inspired gibberish in the lyrics. This is the total opposite of one's homemade one-man black metal music, obscure in both meaning and origin. Bal-Sagoth lays every note and whisper bare with its razor-sharp crystalline production and elaborate self-created mythology. Nonetheless, this remains an imminently likable and charming album, seemingly unaware of its own ridiculousness and therefore free of artifice and sneering irony.
Have you been feeling alienated from society lately? Are you baffled by the downaward-trending oxygen-to-nitrogen ratio, the increasingly unpredictable weather, and the staggering variety of things beyond your ken? Do you grow furious at the upswing in phonies, posers, and worm-food milling around you, making small talk? Have you ever dreamed of hijacking a school bus and steering through a wall of televisions only to be rescued by a helicopter mere moments before impact?
Apologies for my abruptness, but once again time is of the essence. In lieu of my usual loquaciousness I suggest listening to this live set from the punk rock combo Born Against, as their front man tends to similarly be of the verbose variety. Much humor and pathos to be had here, oh yes.
Mysterious levitating black metal seemingly of the intentionally inscrutable school, but recorded clearly enough so that it is not just a mad spiral of sound. These songs and the instruments playing them are separate and distinct - whether or not this is a desirable effect depends upon the tenderness of one's ears. Your humble host is not too jaded to enjoy lo-fi squall or pompous hubris, and this contains veins of both. My limited French helps none in translating these distant howls, but the subject matter is maddeningly apparent.
In anticipation of my journey towards this cosmic Japanese spacerock collective in the near future, here is the thematically appropriate long form album Recurring Dream and Apocalypse Of Darkness. Two massive half-hours slabs of triple-heavy astral projection through strange and swirling planes of existence. Travel sideways in time and outwards into the void.
No music today, deaf and dumb ones, but another variety of morbid treat awaits you, burbling up from the depths. This is a picture-book adaptation of Clark Ashton Smith's short story Hyperborea, featuring the first appearance of the Mythos's loathsome toad god Tsathoggua. Apparently this was printed in a very small run and thus remains below the threshold of public consciousness, making prime material for the Swamp.
Thanks to the attentions of my scholarly colleague Shelby Cobras, I was recently informed that Fungoid Stream, esoteric Argentinian cinematic doom explorers, have released a new album.
The rarest of three Lovecraftian LPs narrated by veteran Scottish genre actor David McCallum, fittingly a story (the middle part of a trilogy) dealing with the power of the number three. A personal favorite here in the Swamp, at three in the morning.
Any album with two multi-syllabic adjectives in the title automatically peaks my interest, but few are as truly malevolent and purposefully ugly as this beast. Recorded in 1993 but unreleased until years later, this forward thinking monstrosity predated the wave of strange, angsty, nihilistic heavy metal that gained some momentum in the nineties before splintering into horrid rap hybrids, numerous forms of "industial music," slack-jawed crossover fodder, et cetera. In all honesty I cannot say that I love this record in the way that I do my other children but I certainly do listen to it often at the end of a long black day.
