The Mummies - Tales From the Crypt

I probably haven't posted enough Mummies records yet, considering the massive back-catalog they have out of print, so here's a festive little one for you. Recorded for Sympathy for the Record Industry at some point in the 90's, this album was rejected by the Mummies as sounding too good, and never officially released. Fortunately many anonymous bootleg editions appeared in record stores immediately afterwards, properly tinny and warped. My original copy of this was on vinyl so thin that it was translucent in daylight and peeled off in slivers from the pressure of the stylus. In keeping with that downward momentum, here's some shitty mp3s and a jpeg.
You're so full of shit your eyes are brown.

Satanic Verses

1. Tech N9ne - What’s Yo Psycho?
2. Jedi Mind Tricks - Suicide
3. Geto Boys - Chuckie
4. Insane Poetry - In The Mouth Of Maddness
5. Gravediggaz - Graveyard Chamber
6. Esham - 666
7. Jay-Z - Lucifer
8. Brotha Lynch Hung - Dead Man Walking
9. Cage - The Soundtrack...
10. Bone - Hell Sent
11. Canibus - Layered Prayers
12. Ganksta N-I-P - Horror Movie Rap
13. Flatlinerz - Satanic Verses
14. NATAS - Like A Spirit
15. Big L - Da Graveyard
16. Ras Kass - Interview With A Vampire

Obligatory Halloween Mix

Vault Dweller - Messenger of Doom

Salem, Oregon's crusty dread-mulleted doomsayers Vault Dweller unleash this sludgy behemoth of an album out into the arid wastes, radiating deadly hate and face-melting tongue-in-cheek humor. The music is a hybrid of stoner mid-temp swagger and chaotic blastbeat hardcore, with lyrical subjects such as mutation, human extinction, and the hilariouly to-the-point "Thunderdome." Not the most distinctive or memorable album, as most of the songs sound interchangeable, but there's a good bit of wit and panache on display for those willing to listen.
Two men enter. One man leaves.

Cthulhu Coloring Book

Eyeball it here.
Buy a real one here.

Evil Damn/ Toxic Holocaust/ Chainsaw Killer - Blasphemy, Mayhem, War split

Madness, I tell you! Some days have passed since I have set hoof in the Swamp, and upon my return I can sense the malignant verdancy seeping slowly up my spine, bleeding out of my pores. Down to business: here we have a pleasingly repugnant menage a trois between two Lovecraft-leaning South American metal entities and the ubiquitous American carpetbaggers known as Toxic Holocaust. Peru's aptly monikered Evil Damn open the gates with a brief chant invoking Mighty Cthulhu before firing off several ferocious blackened wads of poison (including a Sarcafago cover). Toxic Holocaust in turn hand out a smattering of tinny-sounding rehearsal material. Rounding things out is sketchy-looking Colombian combo Chainsaw Killer, who turn in the most distinct and memorable section of the album with their low-budget Mercyful Fate/Motorhead hybrid sound and boundless enthusiasm (and delightful ESL song titles).
Death, Blood... Insane

The Devil'z Rejects - Necronomicon

A collaboration between Jus Allah of Philly's notorious Jedi Mind Tricks and Boston rapper Bomshot (yeah, I've never heard of him either), The Devil'z Rejects is an aggressively nasty affair, alternating between seemingly deep meditations on heady esoteric topics and homophobic/homoerotic genital torture scenarios. Must of this is the work of Jus Allah, notorious for anti-gay lyrics so cartoonish and obsessive that they seem like thinly veiled come-ons from that sweaty guy in the men's room at the Greyhound station (he also repeatedly threatens to give your moms AIDS). Likewise, his aspirations toward intellectualism are belied by the song seriously dissecting the Da Vinci Code (which, charmingly, features a guest rapper named Evildead). A third blow to its credibility is the constant referencing to the eponymous Rob Zombie movie, a steaming turd of mediocrity. Still, the album throbs with a malevolent life of its own thanks to the bluesy samples and scratchy, 36 Chambers-style layers of needle hiss, and some guest spots by less anti-social MCs.
I'mma turn everything man makes to pancakes

White Medal - Agbrigg Beast

A remarkable demo by Yorkshire's White Medal, centered around some sort of local werewolf legend, posted here in celebration of the looming full moon. Some truly terrifying sounds here: frenzied lyrics croaked opaquely in thick Yorkshire brogue, with the guitars swirling and bobbing like will-o-the-wisps on a peat bog. This cassette seems to be out of print but it has been re-released by Seedstock in expanded LP form. I recommend you take heed; hear the distant howls.
Threap an she'll bite thee no mistake
Thoil thus burden an break fert wood

Lalo Schifrin - Black Widow

Primarily known as a film composer whose works range from Mission: Impossible to Enter the Dragon, Argentine Lalo Schifrin also sporadically released strange albums of futuristic horror disco funk, sinister jazz, and further madness. This one, an especially dark and trippy album, features remakes of world-music standard "Quiet Village" and a startling funk version of the theme from Jaws dripping with wah guitar, among many percolating originals and cinematic snippets. Surely the heavy disco trappings will alienate many of you, but if you're willing to tolerate a little slap bass and hi-hat abuse there is much dark material to be mined here. The perfect soundtrack to a cocaine-induced heart attack and out-of-body experience.
Con Alma

Trouble - Dallas Texas Alive! 3/12/90

Hm, it's been a bit quiet in the Swamp lately, eh? I blame myself. As the advent of my spirit journey formation anniversary approaches, posting has become sporadic and, odds are, will continue to be so for some days to come. No that it's necessarily a bad thing when the seedling falls silent; we all need time for personal reflection and growth, to rediscover our roots, as it were. Still, it's a complicated ecosystem and Uncle Abdul can't always just sit down and bounce you on his knotty knee. Take heart, wee one, I'll try and provide shelter and comfort for you as well as I can during the upcoming week of bizarre rituals and cruel, inventive hazing.
Let's begin with this shockingly good bootleg recording of notorious Catholic doom choir Trouble, who achieved apotheosis on some sweaty night in Dallas in 1990, well before you or I were on board the skeletal Gospel ghost train. Trouble represents one prospective evolutionary branch of the Iommi School of Heavy Metal Lyric: three albums of brutal Christian guilt coupled with equally brutal down-tuned jubilant cacophony, followed immediately by three more albums of robo-trippy Hendrix exultation, condensed with clear hindsight into a solid hour-long set. Skeptical listeners may yet be swayed by the promise of lucid recording quality and hoarse PG-rated mutations of Paul Stanley's infamous stage banter. Still not convinced?
You mofos must be f'ing going crazy.

Insane Poetry - Blacc Plague

Here's another fine example of early horrorcore from L.A. hip-hop ensemble Insane Poetry, although they called their particular sound "The Terrifying Style" and distanced themselves from that already waning sub-genre. Full of strange pitch-shifted samples (a decade before Kanye West), crunchy junkyard percussion, layered vocalizations, and horror movie references, particularly "Angel Heart" and John Carpenter's "In the Mouth of Madness," the album is further distinguished from its horrorcore brethren by a G-Funk organ vibe and a merciful minimum of stupid skits. Frontman Cyco (hey, it's L.A.) vividly and hilariously paints himself as a more verbose Jason Voorhees, stalking the streets, picking off wack MCs who have wandered stupidly into "the wrong neck of the woods." Also of note is the Steven Seagal-themed "On Deadly Ground," a real treat for the careful listener. After some squabbling in '96 with Nastymix, the label home to Sir-Mix-A-Lot and The Accused, this album was suppressed and only properly released twelve years later. Fortunately Insane Poetry, unlike virtually all of their peers, continue to record and release Juggalo-free horror-themed rap, like the recent collaboration with DJ Sutter Kane and the upcoming "Dead Sea Scrolls".
I hang nerds from they scrote sacs

Om - Live at the Empty Bottle

Quickly, then, here is a bootleg live performance by drone superstars Om live in Chicago in 2007. Beware of speaker-shredding bass levels on this recording! Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to post something more in depth and obscure but time is short tonight.
Hrmmmmmmmmmmmm

Ydintuho - Demo

Look at that cover! How could I possibly resist? Finland's Ydintuho (which translates at "Nuclear Destruction") crank out some thrashy crust spasms of radioactive hate centered lyrically (I would assume) around that icon of the twentieth century, the almighty mushroom cloud. Beautiful ugliness, gurgled in rapidly dissolving throats.
Ughrlrghl

The BellRays - Let It Blast

This is another album that stays in rotation constantly here in the Swamp. California soul punk group The BellRays inevitably end up described in lazy critical shorthand as "Tina Turner singing for The Stooges" or "Aretha Franklin fronting the MC5" or some such variation, and the band has publicly denounced this line of thinking as the product of feeble minds, but here's the thing: it's true. Not to be reductive, but that really is the basic formula - stop/start bluesy freakouts glazed in molasses vocals and fired in the heat of a nuclear warhead. The record itself, like much of the early BellRays work, is off the cuff and sounds as if it were recorded in one take, with lots of attendant hiss and rattle. The audio equivalent of six glasses of sweet tea and whiskey.
Future Now!

Tyranny - Tides of Awakening

Greetings, Swamplings! I was going to throw together something special for this, our 200th post together, but as usual time has been short and your humble host extremely busy in his solemn scholarship. However, we shall post this fine Finnish album of funeral doom, which encompasses both kinds of music: Lovecraftian and dystopian. Similar to that Catacombs album posted some time back, this sludgy mound of plankton moves along at a glacial pace, gurgling and spewing sludge merrily, content to inhabit a plane seldom visited by ignorant humanity. Parts of this record distantly resemble traditional doom metal, but over time it descends into pure squall and squirt, undecipherable to the untrained ear. This slippery album can be difficult for puny minds to grasp, but attempts in that direction will surely stretch your consciousness enough to gaze into the yawning abyss without, perhaps, snapping your sanity in half.
Entreaties To The Primaeval Chaos

Rites of thy Degringolade/Portal - Our Dreadfull Sphere / The Sweyy

A somewhat strangely formatted split LP between Swamp alumni Portal and Canadians Rites of Thy Degringolade, and certainly a mouthful of a title. Portal, as you may know, are one of the most esoteric and bizarre-sounding death metal bands currently operating. Rites of Thy Degringolade, whom I know only from this split, seem to play a more straightforward style but offset this by having a different vocalist on each of their tracks - an interesting strategy, but their contribution simply doesn't hold the same faceless menace as the Portal side, which was soon released as a free-standing EP with live bonus tracks, also included here.
Drones Of Inequity
Servile Of The Manors Steer
Knell Of Antiquate Tide

Tear Gas

Glaswegian Heavy Prog in the thuggish, juvenile-delinquent-who-discovered-acid-and-Marxism-at-the-same-time sense. There are bits of heady noodling here and there, but this album works best when it embraces the four-on-the-floor boogie of countless pub bands and bludgeons the listener with beefy riffs and trippy-bordering-on-stupid lyrics like the now-famous "Woman For Sale," currently recognized by the cognizenti as a vital and primal piece of early heavy metal history. Embracing a pseudo-revolutionary shtick similar to their peers across the water, the MC5, and changing their name from the less-threatening Mustard, Tear Gas released two albums before finding greater fame backing Alex Harvey as The Sensational Alex Harvey Band once glam exploded in a flurry of feathers, coke, and bodily fluids. This album is their sweaty testament to the times, though, genital warts and all.
Lay it on me.

Chubby Checker - Chequered!

It was fairly common by the beginning of the seventies to see surviving blues artist experiment with psychedelia and heavier sounds to varying degrees of success. More surprising is this slab by Twist enthusiast Chubby Checker, both in the fact of its mere existence and in the fact that it's pretty damned good. Backed by a group of anonymous hippies, Chubby branches out from his usual cookie-cutter dance rehashings and gets far out, mostly in soul territory but occasionally bordering on the heavy stylings of Blue Cheer or Captain Beyond. The album has been disowned by the man himself, not only for its content but also because he was ripped off by the sketchy producer, Ed Chalpin, who made a living recording anonymous young bands performing covers of popular songs in various styles (such as the Thin Lizzy "Funky Junction" album of Deep Purple covers). It was all a big scam, but it sometimes produced good records anyway. Still, Checker probably didn't write any of these songs, and judging by the majority of his output he's no authority on the subject anyway. He sure as hell sounds like he means it, though, especially the numerous songs about drug use, such as the killer album centerpiece "Stoned in the Bathroom." Also notable is the Swamp Dogg-like dystopian future dirge "If the Sun Stops Shinin'."
My Mind Comes From A High Place

Christian Mistress - Practice tape 5-24-10

Zounds! I intended to return from the tavern before the stroke of midnight, lest my shoes turn back into hideous decorative squashes, but I have arrived mere minutes too late.
Ever since I was introduced to Christian Mistress by the Illogical Contraption, they have been in steady rotation on the Swamp jukebox - even more so now that I have acquired the stellar LP "Agony and Opium" (available here). As much as we tend to dwell on obscure sub-genres around these parts, there is much to be said for straightforward, honest heavy metal, and this band delivers it in spades. After a promising demo and too-brief 7 inch record, I have nothing but superlatives to heap upon them, and they are currently engaged in a full scale tour; I heartily recommend you go see them. Unfortunately for me, their only foray into my neck of the Swamp coincides with a day in which my musical project shall be performing elsewhere, and I am thusly unable to attend. Fortunately for you, I have acquired this practice tape through mysterious channels and, after some hesitation, I present it to you now. Apologies to the band if this is verboten, but it sound awfully righteous to these weary ears right now. I will surely remove it if this post offends. If anyone has mp3s of the full demo or soon-to-be-out-of-print 7 inch, please do share them.
Behold

Prosanctus Inferi - Pandemonic Ululations Of Vesperic Palpitation

Here's another disgusting new album for you, you creep! Prosanctus Inferi is a one-man extreme metal project blending all the worst parts of black metal, death metal, and grindcore into a blurry dreamlike smear. Crudely recorded, relentlessy bleak and lyrically foul, this album is a prime specimen of what is referred to by the phrase "old school," right down to the multisyllabic song titles ("Pontifical Undulations of Blasphemic Gesticulation") and the three-minute cap on song length. As always with new releases, I strongly suggest you purchase a copy here, and get a load of that logo!

Lips of Plasma Vomiting Sanctimonious Pyx

Blood Storm - Death By The Stormwizard

It's been a bit since we had a feral and ferocious album of Lovecraftian black metal to drool and excrete all over, hasn't it? The raging wind outside and the constant flickering of lights makes this album seem appropriate for the moment, and how can one resist that album title? Philly's Blood Storm (two words, no hyphen, thank you) play straightforward and fairly orthodox black metal in the oldest sense: bits and pieces of Celtic Frost and Venom sprinkled with early Mayhem and Emperor, with perhaps a twist of thrash metal in the vocals and the more mid-tempo songs. Most of the album is blastbeat/atonal riff/ semi-intelligible blasphemy though (and some well-placed spooky organ) - no surprises, but no clean vocals or banjos either. Aside from the excellent Lovecraftian "Yoggothian Slayers," we have primarily songs either directly and plainly about wizards or obliquely delivered in forgotten tongues (these, too, probably concern wizards). Yes, this sounds just about perfect right now - let's hope the power holds out...
Unseen in the midst
Of the seven evil winds

Southern Death Cult

There's a bit of a tangled history behind this one, so bear with me. Southern Death Cult was a predecessor of 80's "hard rock" combo The Cult, and featured leather-piped front man Ian Astbury; they existed for only a few brief years and released only one seven inch record ("Fatman") and twelve inch EP ("Maya") of the same songs, both of which were also nominally titled "Southern Death Cult." This album, also called "Southern Death Cult," contains demos and unreleased songs culled from Peel Sessions and live shows and such. Musically, they are quite distinct from The Cult - spidery bass lines, post-punk guitar squeaks and stabs, Bauhaus-style wailing, tribal tom tom rhythms inspired by their naive Native American fetish, etc. Interestingly, when the band split and Astbury formed his rock star group, other members went on to projects as diverse and unfortunate as horny new wave wizard-pop Into a Circle and militant Islamist hip-hop outfit Fun-da-Mental.
THE FATMAN AN UNHAPPY MAN
AND ALL HIS FRIENDS ARE FATMEN TOO

Deadbolt - Haight Street Hippie Massacre

Normally I'm not a "best-of" type of listener, preferring the album format and so on, but this collection of songs seems to work well together, and makes this a decent place to start before one dips into Deadbolt's vast array of releases. Deadbolt, you see, is a burly and bizarre hybrid of surf rock, death punk, early rock n' roll, and hints of Morricone-esque spaghetti western flavor. If that sounds uninteresting, consider also their live show in which power tools collide and sparks reign down on the audience, and their tongue-in-cheek themes of revenge, voodoo, violence, freight train gang war, and speed-addled truck driver misanthropy. Add to this the fact that there's two bass players and everyone in the band is a big fat bastard, and you've got a recipe for flaming disaster.
Watongo!

Dr. Phibes' Burning Illusion

Have you been practicing your Manson stare, wee one? Can you stare into the swirling abyss and maintain your human facade? Here's a little secret: It's all in the forehead. Focus your eyes just slightly beyond whosoever speaks unto you, knit your wizened brow, and act like you know what the hell you're doing. Take a long summer break to hitchhike around the American south with a photo of Franz Kafka in place of a "Will Work for Whatever" sign, and, if you survive, start a doom metal band where you're the only member, and I'm your audience of one.
You are getting sleepy...

Angel'in Heavy Syrup - II

Named after a can of tinned peaches, Japanese all-girl psych outfit Angel'in Heavy Syrup pull back the tab on some sugary sweet psych pop that leaves a strange metallic aftertaste, as the dark undercurrents and desperate wailing sink deep into the psyche. This, obviously, is their second LP, a scaling back of the full-on fuzz spasm of their first and less featherweight than their future work. It twinkles and sparkles in my headphones, lulling me siren-like into Stygian resinous repose.
Naked Sky High