Arkham Witch - On Crom's Mountain

At last, a new release from Arkham Witch!  I'm breaking my own no-new-releases rule once again here due to my excitement over this album.  Straddling the line between the old-school Lovecraftian doom of Simon Iff's other project Lamp of Thoth and the NWOBHM-informed approach of like-minded bands such as Christian Mistress, On Crom's Mountain isn't deep or particularly dark heavy metal.   Instead, it's a fairly upbeat, joyous drunken celebration of crusty rock n' roll, ragged and righteous.  Of course, there's the requisite Lovecraft/Howard lyrical leanings, along with some witch and viking-related material, and some more cryptic sentiments.  It's still gestating in my ears, as I've only listened to it a scant handful of times, but even now I must go crack another beer and loosen up the old neck muscles - It's tough to headbang and type at the same time.

Through Arkham madness, and lunacy

In gibbous frenzy - we are free!

Black Land - Extreme Heavy Psych

Yet another self-explanatory doom album, but keep in mind that the Italians tend to do it weirder than anybody. So, how far out are you ready to go? Some minimal research reveals a mysterious history of typical opaque personal weedian occultism:
"....at the beginning the band started experimenting by fusing sounds of stoner and heavy psychedelic rock with the typical reflexive mysticism of doom, and it’s from those atmospheres and by the convergence of each own personal background that Black Land’s songs took their origin.
The first “confused” exibitions took place mostly in squats, and other underground locations in Rome and in the rest of Italy (without producing any record or demo)."
Gibberish or genius? Remember that Italian metal is famous for both.
Holy Weed of the Cosmos

Roger Miller - Golden Hits

Howdy goddamn do! Hopefully all of my wonderful little Swamplings easily grasp one of the over-arching themes we deal with here in the Swamp: everything you've ever been told is a lie, unless there's a country song about it. Roger Miller was an ambitious young hillbilly who swiped a guitar from a traveling country singer and tried to figure out how to play it, correctly assuming that it was his only ticket out of his little doomed bullshit town.

Sure enough, he got caught and, rather going to jail, chose to join the army, where he simultaneously discovered speed and honed his defense against adversity by perfecting his hilarious but complex brand of country music. After many years of struggle he became Johnny Cash's speed dealer and was thusly capulted into stardom, eventually resulting in the erosion of his sharper, amphetamine-induced edges and then his famous soundtrack for Disney's Robin Hood. One would think that he would've peacefully died when his head exploded while driving a tiger around in his big-ass Cadillac, but he lived long enough to pay for the fifteen packs of cigarettes he smoked every day for fifty years.

Not to belabor the point, but I don't normally traffic in "Greatest Hits" albums in the Swamp. However, every single song on here is awesome and the individual albums tend to be full of filler and covers. Just listen to this, and keep your eye out next time you go out looking for something to help you forget the shame.
Atta Boy Girl

Apocalypse Dudes

This is what happened:
After a series of trials in the real world I retreated meekly back to the Swamp and have spent the last five or six hours alternately listening to Bathory and Turbonegro. Not album by album, but chronologically mixing Bathory's Viking period (Blood Fire Death through Twilight of the Gods) and Turbonegro's Denim phase (Ass Cobra through the sub-par Scandinavian Leather) track-by-track, whilst alternating my usual intoxicant with this ominous 30-pack of sugary-ass cream Ale that was gifted to me.
It's probably counterproductive to try and force some kind of cosmic revelation just by sitting around drinking crappy beer and pounding on the keyboard with your hooves. But if it does happen, if you finally put all the pieces together and your life seems to just snap right into place after all your hard work giving up your former life as a little babyfaced hustler and just listening to NPR and finally brushing your teeth and doing whatever, if that's what it's come to, then do it. Good for you.
Don't think nobody's watching, though.

Wait, what?

Marc Ribot y Los Cubanos Postizos - The Prosthetic Cubans

Los Cubanos Postizos is the abstract Latin jazz combo of longtime Tom Waits and John Zorn guitar wrangler Marc Ribot. Sinister cinematic sambas coexist with mellow, percussion heavy waltzes, with Ribot loosely weaving his razor-sharp guitar throughout. Most of these are fractured covers of famed guitarritsta Arsenio Rodriguez, father of the mambo. Not too much to say about this one, just trying to keep the cold at bay.
Como Se Goza En El Barrio

James Brown - The Payback

Continuing with yesterday's theme, and similarly short on time, I give you James Brown's landmark double album The Payback. One can make the argument that soul and funk were almost exclusively singles-based forms until around this time, when expanding song length, thematic continuity, and sustained groove began to overtake radio readiness and the three-minute cap as artistic parameters. Either way, this is definitely Brown's first real Album, a collection of hard-driving, one-or-two-note riffs, a gaggle of back-up singers, and some cinematic experimentation. This shift also brought somewhat to the forefront Brown's burgeoning social conscience and identification with the Black Power movement, as evidenced by the cover art and the tagline “We got a right to the tree of life”.
link removed

BLO - Phase II

Well, wee one, it's still lashing snow and sleet against my window outside, still bone-chilling and grim, but let's try a different tactic than yesterday. One of psychedelia's earliest worldwide converts, Nigeria's BLO fused Cream-style power trio trippiness, James Brown's brand of lean funk, and their native rhythms into a sweaty, clattering whole. This is their second LP, obviously, heavier and funkier than the airy debut and less weird than the third, although side B does get pretty far out. This is a much different sound than the burgeoning Zamrock scene, nor is it connected to Fela Kuti's transcendental seance-funk or the Nuggets-style garage rock scene rumbling on the southern end of the continent. This is pure sub-Saharan alchemy, high-minded and loose-limbed. Only the funk can keep away the cold.
Whole Lotta Shit

Girlschool - Nightmare at Maple Cross

After a couple of less-than-stellar albums, Girlschool abandoned their more commercial sound and returned to the gritty, booze-fueled badassery of their early years. Nightmare at Maple Cross is their sixth LP, notable for its awesome cover, abundant double entendres, a cover of Mud's glam-gibberish classic "Tiger Feet," and its ferocity and consistency. If you don't like this record you might be dead.
Let's Break Out

Scientist Rids the World of the Evil Curse of the Vampires

Take a long, careful look at that cover: dub wizard Scientist and his monster-hunter crew tooling through the Swamp, blasting strange reggae music from his speakerboat to the horror and confusion of the array of classic Universal monsters that lurk there, doing who knows what. Present on this album are a morbid gallery of musical Frankenstein's monsters, thematically concerned primarily with vampires, mummies, and zombies, with occasional nods to other archetypes. Dub, like much music created on the fringes of cryptic subculture, is nigh-impossible to accurately describe, and similarly daunting to listen to for the uninitiated. Much of it is the aimless noodling of fried-minded headcases, but at its pinnacle it is transcendentally weird and can wreak permanent mental change upon the unsuspecting. If the stars are right, mayhaps this can happen to you.
Your Teeth In My Neck

Spawn Sacs

The one and only vinyl release by Chattanooga/Miami's ferocious blacked out punk maniacs Spawn Sacs (named after some strange fishing apparatus), this six minute seven inch record contains four original tunes full of spite and slobber and one doom-crying apocalyptic Bob Marley cover, which sounds strange, I know, but it works. For years Spawn Sacs were the toughest, pants-shittingest band in the south, hiding stolen cases of whiskey in their van and distributing homemade Spawn Sacs condom to impressionable young children. There are more recordings than this, and once I have them in my sweaty grasp I will surely share them with you; in the meantime enjoy(?) this brief spasm of puke and cowbell, and next time you're in Chattanooga, ask around. Rumors are there's still a closet full of them somewhere. For the record, I've seen other versions of this elsewhere on the internet but these are properly tagged, 320k mp3s.
Congratulations, you're dead.

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

Kvelertak - Westcoast Holocaust

In light of their recent self-titled full length release I feel comfortable pushing this three year old demo out of the nest and into the void. Kvelertak (Norwegian for "Stranglehold") play what can loosely defined as black metal, but they have as much in common with AC/DC, Kylesa, Tight Bros From Way Back When, and Turbonegro as they do with Darkthrone or Satyricon. The new album is astounding but the demos possess a lo-fi hiss that adds immeasurable charm and character to these distinctive, cowbell-heavy songs. The majority of this is sung in Norwegian but the meaning and message behind these songs remains universal:
Mjød

Blood Cult - We Who Walk Behind The Rows

Greetings, loathesome Swamp scum! Hillbilly black metal/southern rock yokels Blood Cult ought to make your night a little more evil! I'm aware that this sounds like a strange combination, and I'll admit that their album from this year, "We Are the Cult of the Plains," is stronger than this 2005 full length, but this is truly some strange fruit ripe for fermenting. The perfect soundtrack to a raging bonfire, a bottle of rotgut, and possibly shooting yourself in the foot with a shotgun.
Pow!

Vangelis - The Dragon

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?
"That's no dragon, that's Cthulhu!"

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!

Glass Prism - Poe Through the Glass Prism

As I ponder, weak and weary, many quaint and forgotten volume of justifiably obscure prog-rock, my internal symbolic raven croaks threateningly for decades of yore. Widely derided for fusing early Beatles bowl cuts with mid-period Beatles foppery, as if that would phase any old simpleton with a bedroom neo-post-prog audio diary in 2010, doomed psych hopefuls Glass Prism lay the gnarly poetry of Edgar Allen Poe upon a soft bed of Deep Purplish proto-pretentious organ rock. Poe isn't exactly known for his romantic poetry, and Glass Prism isn't exactly known for their groundbreaking sound or bold fashion choices, but this record nonetheless remains a throbbing heart buried 'neath the floorboards, eating away at your conscience.
Nevermore, until tomorrow.