Canibus - For Whom The Beat Tolls

Truly the rarest of beasts in the Swamp: Lovecraftian hip-hop. This ambitious album is peppered with subtle quotes from the old gentleman, notably in the startling eleven-minute track "Poet Laureate Infinity v003" which contains the immortal couplet "That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange aeons even death may die." In addition the album concerns itself with numerology, pyramids, dead languages, sunspots, preparation for the apocalypse, and all manner of interesting subject matter. The scope is astounding and only draws into focus after several listens - many layers must be peeled back to reveal the swirling nuclear star at the heart of it.
Secrets Amongst Cosmonauts

Wild Zero

Ha, no self righteous ranting or anonymous jabs at fragile egos today! Instead, here is the soundtrack to Wild Zero, the Japanese zombie/rock and roll/alien invasion/drinking game movie starring garage icons Guitar Wolf and championing the power of love conquering evil and prejudice. Aside from Guitar Wolf, we have garage punk from both sides of the ocean: Oblivians, Mick Collins, Devil Dogs, Mad3, Phantom Surfers, Teengenerate, and much more.
THE GREAT PSYCHO OF THEM ALL

Finngálkn - Tyranny From Beyond the Styx

Unlike many similar blogs of this ilk, your dreamlike navigator relies on anonymity rather than name recognition. Granted, several blogs operate under this same pretense. However, they tend to be thinly-veiled self-reflective puff pieces at best and glorified (read: boring) fanzines that one doesn't even have to fold and staple (or, y'know, fill with content) at worst. As a non-converstionalist and a constant rider of the sub-par public transit system here in the parallel universe that jostles up next to yours, I understand the stony silence of most Swamp residents (or transients) as the end result of either serious scholarship or skull-crushing fear and tend to proceed without feedback one way or another. However, here's some more Doom Metal and if you have a hard time understanding it you just come talking to Uncle Abdul - don't be shy, but don't speak up if you sleep well.

Wait, what were we talking about?

Better An Old Demon Than A New God

Well, that might be a tiny jpg but left to right: Lydia Lunch, David Johansen, William S. Burroughs, Jim Carroll, and presumably label impresario John Giorno. Giorno's one of those winguts you'd expect to to see over-analyzed on the Illogical Contraption, a failed poet who started his own hip label and ended up releasing many quality-variable LPs of much more interesting artists and wormed his own obnoxious tracks in with the rest of them. Without him many fascinating records of this stripe would not exist and yet he manages to shit all over them and consitently be the most obnoxious part of the collective, which might be strong words considering that he funded the most grating unfiltered gibbering from Diamonda Galas and Einstürzende Neubauten! Nonetheless, Uncle Abdul's favorites on this album are "Uh Oh, Plutonium," a Cold War dance-party meditation by Anne Waldeman, and Richard Hell's self-parody/self-aggrandizement "The Reverend Hell Gets Confused." Not merely poetry, most of this is weird self-conscious "jokes" and typical drug-addict narcissism, exemplified by Jim Carroll's hilarious spoken word sparring match with a blind kimono-clad hunchback chick who mistook him for Iggy Pop.
What it is?

Brian Ritchie - Nuclear War / Atomkrieg

Bizarre 7 inch single from the bass player of the Violent Femmes. One of the obscure and wild rarities from deep within the SST back catalogue. Very 80's, what with the cold-war paranoia, cheesy synths, saxophones, and rapping over xylophones.
Baffling.

Why Are We Here?

A wonderful and seemingly rare 7 inch compilation record of early North Carolina hardcore, featuring Corrosion of Conformity, Bloodmobile, Stillborn Christians, and No Labels. Eleven songs in as many minutes and not a dud among them. The jazzy Stillborn Christians are a popular feature here, as their sound is unique and forward-thinking, but I have a particular soft spot for Bloodmobile, who sadly never again committed songs to tape and about whom little is known. Really top-shelf stuff here all around though.
Find out why you're here.

John Carpenter - Dark Star

In lieu of an intelligent and articulate post allow me to join in the Carpenter party and just suggest you listen to this. Your boss might be some Jewish carpenter but mine's secular and shares the same initials, and yours was a one-hit wonder.

Baby's First Mythos

Not normally one to buy into the cutesyfying of the Mythos, I nonetheless was charmed by this little booklet of ABC's designed to help rear little monsters properly. This is a scan of the old black-and-white handmade edition; the book has recently been re-issued in color (and "now with X!") and is available for purchase elsewhere.
Hmm....

Children of Technology - Chaosmutant Hordes

Primo Italian Buttflap Crust of the post-apocalyptic variety, which of course has its own little niche in your narrator's irradiated double-heart. This is a 7"single; two brief spurts of ugly warlike noise made by ugly warlike people - the kind of thing where verbose descriptions and hyperbole need be left in the gutter and stomped and thoroughly urinated on: either you are already downloading it or you never will. Nonetheless, something good to have in your arsenal in the face of armageddon.
There's a war on! - punctuation be damned;

Ronnie and the Red Caps

Ronnie and the Red Caps "An Angel is Missing / What'd I Say"

Ronnie and the Red Caps "Lover / Conquest"

Ronnie and the Prophets LP

Dio and the Prophets

Ronnie Dio and the Prophets - Dio at Domino's LP

"Gonna Make it Alone / Swingin' Street"

Ronnie Dio and the Prophets

Ronnie and the Prophets - "The Ooh Pah Pah/ Love Pains" 1962

Ronnie and the Prophets - "Where You Gonna Run / Say You're Mine Again" 1965

Razor - Open Hostility

The sound of a police state gone mad. Canadian thrash act distills its chosen form of expression down to its blackened skeleton. Tear gas, flash grenades, tasers, chainsaws, tanks, burning dumpsters, and the fine art of police brutality.
Here's what I think about your peaceful protest.

Part 1 - Pictures of Pain

Speaking of Rudimentary Peni, they are generally regarded as existing more-or-less in their own continuum, among the Crass Records peace punks but not of them. One of the few bands who operated on similar wavelengths and was considered friends with RP was the un-Googleable band Part 1, who shared a taste for the eldritch and macabre. Unlike RP, Part 1 favored long songs and seems to have absorbed some crustier influences from Amebix and the like as well. We are fortunate that Pusmort records had the foresight to release this important LP in 1985 before Part 1 vanished from the face of the earth forever.
Eerie...

Rudimentary Peni - Live at the Venue 12-20-92

Greetings! Today finds your host in much better health and spirits, and he has brought wonderful presents for the little ones. This is a recording of what I believe to be the last Rudimentary Peni show, ten years after their "final" one, in the wake of considerable hardship concerning the mental health of their leader Mr. Nick Blinko. More remarkably, this contains perhaps the only recorded live versions of any tracks from "Cacophony," arguably the most famous and important Lovecraftian album of all time. Although my sickness this week has been more gastrointestinal than mental, this sudden upswing in energy and vitality reminded me of this show and thus I share my germs with you.
Things have learned to walk that ought to crawl.

Dust - Hard Attack

Well, my friends, this is perhaps a few days late, but I feel it still appropriate to post this Frazetta-painted album by classic New York rock band Dust. Perhaps most of you already own a copy, but poor health and cough-syrup induced visions are reducing the effectiveness of my imagination and candor. Notable factoids concerning this album, besides its sheer pounding awesomeness and its vast array of bizarre lyrical topics, include the presence of one Marc Bell, future Ramone and Voidoid behind the drumkit, and that there are (unlike their first, self-titled album) exactly zero songs about fucking a camel.
En garde!

Brown Jenkins - Angel Eyes

The first full-length album by Swamp favorites Brown Jenkins allows me to draw this streak of doom albums to a nasty, buzzing close. Suffocating atmosphere and the strangled heartbeat that pulses beneath the floorboards of this recording create unrest and unease in all who behold its splendid foulness.
Malign wisdom like a sword through planets.

Teeth of Lions Rule the Divine - Rampton

Taking advantage quickly of what seems to be a tenuous connexion to the ether, and continuing our theme, here is all-star doom supergroup ToLRtD (what an acronym!) and their sole release, the happiness-crushing Rampton. Three maddenlingly lengthy tracks of unending, gleeful negativity. Members of Cathedral, Napalm Death, Khanate, Sunn O))), Iron Monkey, and Electric Wizard.
A sure-fire party killer.

If I am not heard from tomorrow I am still battling the demons inside my computing machine and Doom Week (only brought into focus in retrospect after what must have been a sour streak of days) must continue even more slowly than it has been. Keep your tentacles crossed.

Thergothon - Fhtagn-nagh Yog-Sothoth

Well, judging by the overwhelming silence from the cult, Doom Metal Week has been an unparalleled success. Moving right along, here is further evidence of the unspeakable malign destiny crawling towards you as you slumber. Have you noticed time speeding up lately, or is just that the music's getting slower? Thergothon might be a couple of decades ahead of you, little bunny, but they're moving slow enough for you to catch up.
"FEEL THEM PRESENT AT ALL THE TIMES
AND YOU CAN SMELL THEM, SMELL THEIR FOUL PRESENCE. . ."

Eight Hands for Kali - Himalayan Necromantia

One of your humble host's favorite aspects of the outer fringes of metal is the fetishizing of sub-sub-genres; many "extreme" bands exist within one of their very own, as is the case with Eight Hands for Kali. Here we have one fifty-five minute song in the seemingly paradoxical category of "Buddhist War Doom," which, while difficult to picture perhaps, rolls nicely off of the tongue. Say it aloud three times:
"Buddhist War Doom."
This too must pass.

dISEMBOWELMENT - Transcendence into the Peripheral

An all-time classic doom album, trudging along on multitudinous paws, yet punctuated by blasts of chaotic pounding and the whipping of tentacles. Predating the so-called "post-metal" phenomenon by almost a decade, these songs ebb and eddy into each other with little regard for beauty, variety, conventional song structure, or the comfort and sanity of the listener. You'll find no choirs here, no banjos or saxophones or tinkly toy pianos.
It's said, though, that if one listens closely, one can hear the distant flapping of wings.

Paranormal Ichthyology

Behold, foul ones!
Ignore that gibberish posted previously here, I have returned to the land of the lucid. Dagon, represented here, plays a wonderfully icky black/death/doom hybrid that virtually personifies the Fish Metal realms of the Swamp: Unintelligible rasping and howling, long stretches of ringing quarter notes, mood swings as unpredictable as the sea itself, pirates, sharks, pretentious three-part suites...
What's not to loathe?

Fearless Iranians From Hell

Another relic of the Reagan era which still remains timely and offensive to sensitive ears. This is a seven inch record containing, among other gems, the infamous "Blow Up The Embassy." Less polished and more focused than their trio of albums, this filler-free smart missile is aimed squarely at your skull.
You'd better duck.