Törr - Armageddon

Behold, Swamplings!  Tonight I bring you another classic from the first wave of black metal, Törr's Armageddon.  Unsurprisingly there is a large debt to Venom, from the primitive stomp of the music to the horny cheeseball sense of humor.  All of the lyrics are Czech, but it doesn't take a genius to tell what they're singing about: Sex, Satan, and Doom.  A wide variety of songs, abundant sampling and experimental noise, and a lecherous leer give the album a distinct personality, and the thrashy heaviness it counterbalanced with catchy songwriting. Its' the kind of album that makes you want to sing along, even the if the words are in a foreign language and probably terrible anyway.

Žal

Jag Panzer - Tyrants

This classic first EP from Jag Panzer contains a Nam-as-apocalypse anthem, two songs about the crushing power of heavy metal, a song about Conan battling iron statues come to hideous life, and another sword-and-sorcery romp about besieging a citadel.  The epic "When Metal Melts the Ice" is, without a doubt, one of the Most Metal Songs of All Time.  Musically, Jag Panzer would evolve into slick power metal, but this first release is raw, thrashy, and wildly over-the-top no-modifier metal from a time before sub-genres walked the earth.

I'm a vicious tiger Roaming across the land

Satyricon - Volcano

Satyricon is another one of those wildly divisive bands that seems to split people into two camps with very few occupying a middle ground. If you think black metal should all look and sound like Mayhem in 1994 forever and ever, you've probably despised everything Satyricon's released since, well, 1996. If you're more of a mind that black metal is framework with which to build and expand upon at will (or strip bare, or burn to the ground), there's a chance you'll still hate it. I, for one, quite like the paring down of several essential elements into a distilled liqueur of venom and spite. While not quite squarely in the Motörhead/crusty mountain troll mode of recent Darkthrone or Carpathian Forest, 2002's vicious Volcano is still a groovy, forward-marching war machine, flattening poseurs and internet kvlt police in its horrible wake.
Fuel For Hatred

Armageddon

Not to be confused with the chubby nazi black metal band, this nutty German psych group gleefully grooves along in a Captain Beyond/Atomic Rooster style, cushioned on a cloud of hockey rink organ and distinct because of the singer's hilarious/creepy croon. You can practically hear he mustache slithering all over the microphone. Lots of varied tempos and Dust-like mood swings, and hey, a version of "Better By You, Better Than Me" several years before the Judas Priest cover so awesome that suicide pacts were the only logical response. Plus we have the killer instrumental "Rice Pudding" and, y'know, armageddon - that's what we're here for!
Oh Man

Helpful Soul

Here's a bluesy, stoned psych record from Japan's Helpful Soul, who would go on to a wilder sound and change their name to Too Much. Notable is the ten-minute freakout "Peace for Fools" and the 14 minute cover of "Spoonful."
You got me floatin'

H.C. Minds - The Beginning of the End

Like many of you, I have been basking in the dark radiation of the new Yob album repeatedly for the last several days. I'm not going to post it, but I will unleash this monstrosity from H.C. Minds, for which Mike Scheidt and Travis Foster of Yob once played. While HCM trades in a crusty doom style not dissimilar to Yob, it is nonetheless more filthy, nasty, and preoccupied with apocalyptic matters, making it right at home here in the Swamp. Elements of the nastiest Amebix-worship hardcore creep in around the edges too, lending a particular stink to the proceedings. Lots of ugliness, nihilism, and pessimism here, oh joy.
Land of the Wargoat

More Fun In The New World

As the seventies wore on into the eighties, many punk bands either faded into irrelevance or burned out in a whirlwind of drug abuse or tried and failed to cross over into the New Wave. For me, this is the album that best represents that tipping point: the coke-comedown of Reagan's election night, the moment where androgynous art punk was kicked in the cameltoe by all the manly hardcore, and the reason we must endure those jokey disco songs as filler for side B. This is easily my favorite X album, but the deeper I get into it, the more I wish I could punch you.
I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts

Armored Saint - Delirious Nomad

Notorious these days mostly for being the band John Bush fronted before 90's-era Anthrax, Armored Saint kicked out some solid traditional metal back in the day, appropriating many of thrash's fixations on nuclear war and the apocalypse and encasing them in homemade Road Warrior leather and NWOBHM-influenced mid-tempo chugs. This album isn't perfect - far from it - but it does contain meaty end-times jams like "Aftermath" and "Conqueror." While the lyrics generally range from abstract to outright stupid, Bush's instantly recognizable hoarse bellow really sells it, even when the guitars are a bit underwhelming. What is it with 80's bands having to stick one stupid joke song at the end of every album, though? The unfortunate icky come-on "Released" drags the tail end of the record down into no-makeup Kiss territory, so be warned.
While the faces stare
At the hideous glare

Winds of Genocide

I have returned from beyond! Apologies for the unexpected interruption, but it wouldn't be properly Lovecraftian without a few mysterious vanishings from time to time, now would it? Anyway, I come bearing strange fruit: some brutal death/crust from the UK, exclusively themed around the collapse of civilization. There's a good bit of Discharge-styled d-beat and some Autopsy-like primitive gurgling, but I also get a nice Aura Noir/Midnight black'n'roll vibe as well - all in all a swirling black cloud of nihilism shot through with lightning bolts of doom.
In The Shadow Of The Scythe Of Death

Sodom - In the Sign of Evil

Straddling the razorwire line between first wave black metal and the burgeoning thrash movement, this early classic finds the band exploring purer Bathory/Venom territory than the nuclear-war-themed albums they would soon release, pure occultism. As much as I like those later works, and ignoring from the fact that they would fit better within the thematic orbit of this blog, I just love this one too much not to post it. Far more primitive than the sound Sodom would come into eventually, this possesses a croaky, echoing ambiance that whispers sweet blasphemies to my dark and mutinous little heart. Plus, we get a nuclear anthem at the end, the immortal "Burst Command Til War."
I turn the cross upside down
and read Satanic Bible with fucking grown [sic]

D.O.A. - War on 45

Possibly my favorite record from one of my favorite punk bands, this no-filler 12 inch EP is a focused blast of righteous anti-war venom (and, uh, "Let's Fuck"). Eight songs, including covers of the Dils and Edwin Starr's classic funk monolith "War," which sounds surprisingly non-dorky in the hands of these pasty Canadians.

Absolutely Nothing - Say it Again!

Wasteland - Warriors of the Wasteland

Usually when one is discussing post-apocalyptic metal, the conversation revolves around "extreme" subgenres like funeral doom, or crusty thrash, or what-have-you; less often do we find a modifier-free metal record charting the end of civilization in the Manilla Road mode. Here's a good example, a polar opposite of all those sludgy, filth-caked doom cookies - one could call it "power metal" is one were an asshole, but here in the Swamp we just call it heavy. Germany's bombastic combo Wasteland, and their collected demo recordings (named after a questionable Fred Williamson movie), while still nicely raw and lo-fi, sound thick and trot along at a brisk head-nodding gallop. They're no Manilla Road, obviously, but they're enough to make even the saddest kvlt pandapuss smile a little whilst awaiting Armageddon.
Can't Wait

The Dickies - Eve of Destruction

Originally written for and rejected by The Byrds by one P.F. Sloan, "Eve of Destruction," which aimed for anthemic Cold War righteousness but landed closer to goofy, gloomy cheesiness, was first popularized by Barry McGuire and subsequently covered by scores of other artist, few of which succeeded in making it listenable. The Dickies did it best, in my opinion: playing at breakneck speed, slurring the half-baked Dylanisms of the lyrics into multi-syllabic and profanity-laced gibberish, and wrapping it all up in just over two minutes. Better yet, they often slotted it into their live set between theme songs from cartoons, further deflating the pretentious wind-baggery yet somehow still conveying the sense of impending catastrophe that perpetually looms over the head of our self-destructive, petty little race of monkeys.
Yeah, my blood's so mad feels like coagulatin'
I'm sitting here just contemplatin'

Doble Zero - Abre Tu Mente

Apologies for my absence yesterday, little ones, and welcome to our many new seedlings. To make it up to you I've brought you this killer Spanish language psych album by the mysterious Doble Zero. It's a burly slab of swagger, dripping with sweat and menace, towered over by the ominous spectre of the mushroom cloud. The occasional foray into English yields results like the hilarious Chuck Berry bite "Yankee Go Home," at once an homage and a spit in the eye. Enjoy!
Open Your Mind.

Oi Polloi - T.H.C.

Please enjoy this 7 inch record from Scottish punk hippies Oi Polloi responsibly. Aside from the essential title track we have songs celebrating anonymous sex, satirizing burnt British soldier Simon Weston, and one in German about mustard gas or something.
Meine augen!

Queen & Michael Kamen - Highlander Soundtrack

Bafflingly, the soundtrack to 80's swordplay classic Highlander was never officially released. Numerous fan-made versions have been circulating for years though, with varying degrees of complete Queen songs, Kamen's score, and the incidental (and instrumental) music, mostly written by Brian May. This fairly straightforward version has six Queen originals, mostly culled from sub-par late period albums, about the same number of Kamen tracks, and two inevitable dance remixes. The compleatist may wish to seek out the two-disc version containing every little scrap, but for most this should be more than enough. The Queen songs are mostly killer, too, especially "Princes of the Universe," anti-nuclear war song "Hammer to Fall," and "Gimme the Prize," which features choice samples from that most metal of 80's villains, the Kurgan.
Don't Lose Your Head

Anaal Nathrakh - When Fire Rains Down from the Sky, Mankind Will Reap as It Has Sown

Here's a good example of a band that I truly love, but only turn to in times of great desperation and grimness. Anaal Nathrakh plays a rabid blend of black, death, grind, and assorted other metals so violently and hideously that only it can make the impending end of the world seem comforting. Lyrically they concern themselves almost exclusively with apocalyptic matters, from the occult to the stupidly self-inflicted, and musically they sound like it's already upon us. Which it well might be, judging by recent events.
We Can Never Be Forgiven

(((link fixed)))

Ammit - Armageddon Cobra

It's nice in a way to see that in the first week of 2011 we have received so many ill omens, so many harbingers of certain doom. You'd think that with time growing ever shorter, Chilean apocalyptic thrash gnomes Ammit would want to get to the point a bit sooner, but: first we have a disposable ambient intro. Then, eventually, the amazing song "Triple Headed Demon" (which contains its own, separate intro) concerning some sort of biblical seal opening, or something, with the immortal chorus: "Carnage! Fight! Triple Headed Demon!" Then, bafflingly, another ambient intro track, "Intro: Satan is this Real." Then, a G.G. Allin cover. Then two more ballistic Ammit originals, then an interlude, then a couple more songs, a W.A.S.P. cover, two more songs, and two outros. It's like a deck of ugly tarot cards and a stack of 3x5 English-as-a-Second-Language flash cards shuffled together and set on fire. For fans of idiot savant music like Von, The Shaggs, or Old Skull.
Birds lurking the prey
No glory for the deads

Darkthrone - Too Old Too Cold

Still buried in the snow here in the Swamp, and the whiskey is running out. The mood is right for this EP by the mighty Darkthrone, which marked the first threads of punk weaving through their sound. Desperation, dehydration, cabin fever, and righteous indignation are the order of the day.
Second to none
Like an angel unfucking born
Down with people

Massaker - First Attack

A charming little demo from Brazilian retro thrash unit Massaker - lots to like here. Shades of Nuclear Assault, Bathory, Sarcafago, The Accused, Septic Death maybe...
I can't determine from the burbly lyrics and vague Metallum page but I believe these young lads might be Christians as well, which would just be the icing on the comedy cake here, believe me. Even if it's not true, this is a primitive and ugly chronicle of adolescent war on society (complete with theme song), exactly as it should be. Take a look at this photo and judge not, lest ye be judged...
Massaker Attack!