Taking a break from the mind-numbing of chore of restoring my music library one album at a time - long periods of boredom punctuated by fits of rage - here's some b-level German thrash in the classic mode. Not too much to rhapsodize about here, and not much time, so take it or leave it. Best song:
Well, my precious, we've not achieved full capabilities just yet in Swamptown, but here's a morsel to tide you over whilst we get back on track: suppressed bootleg The Dragon, by Vangelis Papathanassiou. Who bootlegs Vangelis, you ask? Seemingly this weird album was released by the other musicians present, but quickly squashed by the chubby composer as he deemed it too loose and sloppy to be worthy of joining his cannon. Hindsight suggests that this is a matter of taste, as it sounds mighty righteous to these ears at the moment, but I certainly invite you to judge for yourself, as always. How can you not be charmed by that album cover?
Well, my seedlings, the Swamp motherbox seems to have moved beyond these realms, taking a large portion of her music with her. Bear with me in my attempts to cross that threshold and bring her back. I will keep the updates coming when possible and hope to fully return to this plane of existence by Monday. In the mean time, let me put out some tentacles in search of enlightenment - these tomes so far evade my grasp:
Lovecraft - self-titled LP (Crafty Music 1995)
Cthulhus Scorn - Demo 2000
Shoggoth (Mexico) - Evoking The Ancient
The Norman Whitfield era of the Temptations is generally regarded of as the dawn of psychedelic soul music, fueled equally by LSD, Cold War paranoia, the Civil Rights movement, and the young psych rock scene. The Temptations, however, were still under pressure to be hit-makers, and Whitfield could only push the envelope so far while satisfying Motown's commercial standard. Not so with his other project, The Undisputed Truth. Hand-selected by Whitfield from the label's vast legions of semi-anonymous background singers and utilizing the same back-up musicians on the more famous Temps albums, and freed from pressure to make hits, the collaboration reached out farther into space than any had journeyed before. This third album was the first to really embrace the wild energy of the burgeoning psych scene and run with it. The first song, the aptly named "Earthquake Shake," is a monster bass riff, and thunderous drum line, and a chorus of bellowing, whooping aliens. The second is a funktified cover of Neil Young's "Down By the River," all eleven minutes of it. The third song is about UFOs. This album, too, was the debut of what became the group's signature look: Huge silver afro wigs and silver face paint.
Four way French black metal split featuring Malicious Secrets, Mütiilation, Antaeus, and the mighty Deathspell Omega. Behold the blasphemy and stifle laughter at the song title "Tears of a Melancholic Vampire."
For a brief period of time in the nineties there existed a style of hip-hop called horrorcore, which combined the most delightful aspects of cartoonishly violent gangsta rap with the synth-laden musical atmosphere and blood-lust of the darkest horror movies. This style, despite its promising renaissance period, was quickly dated and degenerated into self-parody and the horrid Juggalo sub-culture. Fortunately many of the best albums of the genre have aged well and remain bracing and disturbing. Ganksta N-I-P was a Houston contemporary of Geto Boys and penned their horror-themed hit "Chucky." This album, one of the earliest and most primitive examples of horrorcore, rattles like a burnt skeleton and samples liberally from notable horror scores. N-I-P's rhymes are truly bizarre and menacingly surreal: he explains his sheer insanity by threatening to exchange heads with a moose and marry a dead horse in the lead track "Horror Movie Rap." Careful listening reveals many evil non-sequiturs, more often than not involving members of the animal kingdom that surely exist nowhere near Houston. Evidence indicates Ganksta N-I-P was genuinely, legitimately insane.
Just a quickie post today, and one that was bound to turn up here sooner or later: The first album by the filth-encrusted kings of post-apocalyptic war death/grind. No time for flowery exposition, just download and march forth!
Hmm...here I was all ready to pontificate about a certain album, only to find that Mediafire seems to have deleted it. Well, it wasn't all that great anyway, so let's talk about something really good instead: Crushed Butler. Formed amid the British stench and grime that simultaneously gave birth to Black Sabbath, these three thugs only ever managed to record six songs before splintering off into less interesting acts. All six are present here, and each one is an individual little diamond in the rough, as it were. The story goes that their label gave them the syrupy ballad "Love is All Around Me" to record and blew a gasket when the boys returned with the stomping, nasty pounder found here, equal parts Stooges and Blue Cheer. They were promptly dropped from the label but managed to eke out the other five tunes contained within (over the course of two years), mostly grim tales of smog and claustrophobia like the killer "Factory Grime." I really couldn't recommend this more highly.
Primitive garage recordings of the Waits/Burroughs/Wilson collaboration The Black Rider, even creakier and stranger than the final LP released the same year. This bootleg was quickly suppressed at the time but thanks to the magic of the internet it resurfaces to air out its stinky blow-holes in the sweltering sun. A morbid carnival of tuneless horns, hard drugs, and stomping armies of dwarves.
There certainly are quite a few albums entitled "At the Mountains of Madness," aren't there? One of the perks of this sort of research is discovering strange new records simply out of curiosity and the fear of running out of material. Fortunately for all of us, that seems unimaginable at this point, given the sheer amount of bizarre music that exists on this plane. For example, I might not have ever heard this wild Australian psych band were it not for my obsessive pack-rat nature and and experimental whiskey-fueled Googling. The stars align, though, and I must admit I've been listening to it repeatedly over the last week. I shan't waste words describing it, but it should be noted that it features a young, pre-AC/DC Bon Scott playing recorder and tambourine. 
In celebration of the upcoming 100th post here in the Swamp, your host has compiled these varied fragments from several of the tomes already featured here and from the many more that remain, so far, obscure. Here is a track listing - I will let the yawning infinity of madness speak for itself:
We can't stray too far from the doom metal, though, can we? Ah well, so it goes. Dyed-in-the-wool Italians Black Hole unveiled this dark gem in 1985 and it proved to be their only full length for fifteen years. What we have upon opening the crypt is a glittering artifact of dark beauty and dread. It opens at a fairly straightforward metallic gallop obscured by swirling clouds of organ, but soon enough grinds to a halt and then resumes it forward advance at a sludgy crawl, almost as if the album had been fleeing some horrid beast and, upon the advent of the second song, it trips over a gnarled root and is overtaken. Things continue to spiral outward and downward from there, following the traditional Lovecraftian arc of sweaty descent into madness and finally oblivion. One will often see this band compared to its countrymen in Death SS, but this is probably more due to lazy thinking than true insight. There is not one iota of irony or self-awareness here, lending an atmosphere of true menace and, yes, mystery, qualities mostly lacking on any given Death SS record.
John Zorn's bizarre Masada project stretches over more than 500 songs and several different musical combos. This particular iteration, including Tom Waits alumni Marc Ribot and Greg Cohen, along with Japanese drum guru Ikue Mori, pushes the concept further into noise territory than the other, slightly more musical, variations. Masada concerns itself with explorations of Jewish Classical music from the perspective of a modern and radical member of the community; the songs are intentionally short and playable by small groups. This live recording is from Moscow and Ljubljana.
Dunwich was a short-lived St. Louis speed metal band with three female frontwomen and a mustachioed drummer singing songs of madness and hatred, just the way you like. Proggish experimentation and an abundance of interesting ideas temper the ugliness of this particular demo, but there's still plenty of thudding brutality and snarling venom, don't worry.
In the interest of keeping the Swamp unpredictable and worthy, let's drift away from all the metal into the outer realms of space and time. Egypt's premier jazz drummer and his combo bridge the cosmic gap between big band swing and the wild explorations of Sun Ra and Sonny Sharrock. Prominent throughout are Arabic scales, Islamic prayer, a massive thirteen-piece horn section, and various exotic Oriental instruments.
Interesting, heady black metal based on Q'uaballah mythology - Averse Sefira appeals to the esoteric scholar in your host in both their complex, self-defined mythology and their focused lyrical blasphemy (which subtly smacks of a streak of black humour to the patient student). Rather than extrapolate further, I invite the listener to discover and peel back the layers at his or her leisure.
Wastelander have been making waves in the metal circuit for some time now, based on their distinct black/thrash/crust hybrid and the strength of this reverb-drenched album. Lyrically, they deal with that old Swamp favorite, the bleak Post-Apocalyptic future surely awaiting us all. If you liked that Bloodhammer album posted yesterday, chances are you will be charmed by this as well. Surprisingly diverse and strong songwriting separate this from the mutant hordes, and who among could resist that cover?
Leafing back through the previous weeks, my attempts at posting daily grow weaker and sparser. In an attempt to balance loquaciousness with punctuality and spread the gospel of Armageddon, please accept this primitive, apocalyptic-themed black metal album by the lovable Finnish misanthropes in Bloodhammer. Let's fore-go the usual hyperbole and enjoy some hateful ugliness. I promise not to neglect the Swamp so much, my little dears, my seedlings. The Swamp must thrive.
Several notches above your normal audio book, these tales and songs of Poe are narrated or performed musically by such diverse talents as Iggy Pop, Debbie Harry, Christopher Walken, Dr. John, and many others. A lofty standard by which many forgettable tribute albums fall far short of.
This will be last transmission until next week, horrid ones, so let's make it good one, shall we? I was saving this for a special occasion, but it seems the time has come. Portuguese barbarians Ironsword play traditionalist heavy metal based on the writings of Robert E. Howard, particularly that sweet spot where his Conan tales overlapped with the Cthulhu Mythos. This album gallops along at a brisk pace broken by the occasional doom trance, with gruff shouting instead of singing and ham-fisted gusto in place of subtlety. Obviously a product of the long metal tradition without sounding retro or forced, this album is the perfect soundtrack for the coming ice age.
