Ygolonac - Strange Aeons

Apologies for the unexplained absence for the preceding fortnight, gentle ones, but rest assured that posting will resume with gusto upon the arrival of the new year.  In the meantime, share with me this horrid lump of coal that I found in my inbox.  Another mad one man metal band in the mode of Brown Jenkins or Aarni, this Ygolonac seems fixated on the fictional grimoires of the Mythos, from what can be deciphered from the song titles and the band name.  Ygolonac is the lord of the perverse and sadistic, the only Old One outside of insidious Nyarlathotep capable of taking human form, and notorious for the ravenous mouths screaming for blood from his palms and groin, traditionally cast in the role of curating the library of suppressed tomes which tend to drive mundane minds into madness.  Ramsey Campbell's brutal and bitterly funny "Cold Print" is perhaps the finest Lovecraftian story produced in the seventies, and while the retro vibe of this nasty debut is probably meant to transcend time and space, I can sense a little disco cokestache under all the noise, maybe just slowed down 800x.

Down at the Bookstore

Necromass - Abyss Calls Life

From deep within the swirling mad vortex that calls itself Italian Black Metal, Necromass mixes in some primitive death and doom sounds with their typically melodramatic hate opera.  The over-the-top foppery of most Italian metal is subdued here, replaced with a cool restraint that makes the wilder moments that much more potent.  Much of the album grooves along at a nice mid-tempo gallop, punctuated by twin leads and unpredictable mood swings.  Vocalist Charles Blasphemy (what a name) growls with gusto as well, more in the style of the Swedish death scene than the typical second-wave tortured wail.  Another forgotten treasure from the underworld, brought to you with nothing but contempt and malice.

A Serpent Is Screaming In The Abyss

Dope on the Scarecrow

I've been an Angry Samoans fan for over fifteen years, and as time grinds on I find myself beginning to understand the later, stranger work of fucked up front man Metal Mike Saunders.  I mean, Back From Samoa is an all time classic, and even the second album STP Not LSD seems less baffling and more amusing and memorably nutty in hindsight.  By the time this weird seven inch record arrived in 1996, the rest of the original lineup was long gone, as were all of their replacements - in fact, this is just Mike on guitar and vocals.  

Saunders was one of those characters too fucked to play drums but charismatic enough to be a "singer," like Joey Ramone or Iggy Pop.  The first Samoans show was as the opening band for Roky Erickson, and his twitchy shadow looms long over their style: surreal, horror-movie influenced lyrics and a complete lack of self-editing, combined with a youthful enthusiasm for weird drugs and fifties pop.  Once Mike's bandmates had jumped ship he was left with the name and without anybody to tell him NO.

So we arrive years later at this thing.  Side one is a loose parody of the John Cougar Mellencamp song "Rain on the Scarecrow," but instead of lamenting the plight of the modern farmer, it's a jab at recently croaked Grateful Dead slob Jerry Garcia.  On the surface it seems like an anti-dope song, but Saunder's long history of drug abuse is obvious not only to those aware of the band's career arc, but also to anyone with a pair of ears and a copy of this record.  The flipside is a similarly warped cover of "Heroin" by the Velvet Underground, likely cribbed from Roky's cover, which fades into another Coug joke. 

So why does this record exist?  Saunders is no stranger to drugs, and sports a giant mane of hair that probably stank worse than The Stooges.  He can barely keep his guitar in tune and both of the songs he's parodying are old news, even in '96.  The answer is in the grooves, though, I can feel it.  Better listen to it again...

They took away my dope

The took away my pride

And now the pigs are chasing me

They think my brains are fried

The Nameless Dread

 

Well, the gateway to Mediafire seems to be closed temporarily, so I must improvise tonight's entertainment.  I thought this timely with the passing of Bil Keane, creator of the widely loathed Family Circus.  Though numerous parodies of his maudlin creation existed, often with his blessing, only the now-defunct Nameless Dread was actively suppressed, presumably after touching some dark nerve in Keane's soul.  Fortunately I have many of them preserved in my private archive and now I shall pass them along to you, dear ones.  Presumably normal transmissions will resume tomorrow. 

Spvcxghsztpvrrp - Blvcklvnd Rvdix 66.6

Miami's teenage horror rapper Spaceghostpurrp has released what may well be the year's darkest and strangest mixtape,  Blvcklvnd Rvdix 66.6.  Sounding like it was recorded on a tiny, busted cassette player and liberally slathered in Godzilla and Mortal Kormbat samples, and as murky and uncommercial as any deliberately obscure black metal kvlt, this bloated monstrosity is a purple smear of ugliness, a robotussin stain on the plush carpet of hipster rap.  It's anti-social, unfiltered, and wallowing in sociapathic obscurity.

SVCK V DICK FXR 2011

Peter Wyngarde - When Sex Leers Its Inquisitive Head

Tonight we have the mad album When Sex Leers Its Inquisitive Head by British TV actor Peter Wyngarde.  Originally commissioned by RCA to cash in on his popularity, it was released and quickly withdrawn a week later.  Presumably nobody had actually listened to it prior to its release.  Instead of the requested set of easy listening tunes, Wyngarde delivered a series of wild, pervy spoken word rants, backed by wild free-form noise jazz, tribal drums, lustful moaning, and shouts of exultation.  It's practically impossible to describe the myriad fragments sufficiently, and it boggles the mind to think of how this got made in the first place.  One of a kind, for sure.

Hippie and the Skinhead

Pussy Galore - Exile on Main St

Partially a sneering repsonse to Sonic Youth's continual threat to cover the Beatles' White Album and partially a genuine love letter to the original from Pussy Galore guitarist Neil Hagarty, Exile on Main St is a nasty, profanity-filled screaming match recorded on a shitty boombox and released on limited cassette (and eventually vinyl), a squealing, out-of-tune hate fuck for your tender ear-holes. 

Turd on the Run

Eibon - Entering Darkness

Eibon, not to be confused with the Phil Anselmo/Fenriz band, is a French doom act named after Clark Ashton Smith's Book of Eibon, a tome of great and terrible power.  Fittingly, the music they play is hypnotic and repulsive, a black tar pit full of bones.  Sludgy vocals alternate with frenzied, barely audible sounds of panic and madness, as if the narrator was slowly losing his mind.  The occasional blast beat/tremolo part crops up from time to time, but only to heighten the weighty slowness of the rest of the album.   A must have, one of my favorite releases of last year.

Path to Oblivion

Abgott - Artefacts of Madness

Proving the old adage about the weirdest of metal coming out of Italy, Abgott's complex, mathy black metal is thoroughly constructed and precise.  There's hints of that Meshugga-derived irregular chug, Enslaved's epic sweep, and the sheer nuttiness of early Voivod, combined with a Lovecraftian lyrical bent.  For all the clinicism of the playing, there's still a nasty heft here, a mad whirl of rage usually absent from today's technical death metal scene.  Abgott are no theoreticians or hipster music school dropouts - this is the real deal, and it is scary.

Diabolical Surgery

Menace Ruine - The Die is Cast

While their debut LP Cult of Ruins would put them squarely in the psychedelic black metal camp occupied by Nachtmystium and Oranssi Pazuzu, this follow-up dialed the tempos down and upped the humming feedback and weird found noises to a degree where Quebec's Menace Ruine begins to explore the wicked droning heaviness of early Earth or something like Thorr's Hammer, while still keeping a cloven hoof in black metal territory as well. This album was widely panned but as I sit awaiting the approaching thunderstorm, with the wind lashing about outside, it sounds just perfect.
The Bosom of the Earth

Oranssi Pazuzu - Muukalainen Puhuu

Alas, a combination of weird occurrences and technical setbacks has once again stifled communication with the outside world. Have no fear, though, I shall take advantage of this brief window in time to leave you with this terrifying and trippy album of psychedelic black metal from Oranssi Pazuzu. I mentioned this album the other day without realizing that I had neglected to post it, despite the heavy rotation they receive here in Swampland.
Grafting the tenets of second-wave black metal - blastbeats, tremolo picking, and spooky keyboards - and grafting onto them elements of surf, kraut-rock, and dub, Muukalainen Puhuu (roughly "The Stranger Speaks") is a terrifying black hole sure to darken up any end-of-the-world soiree or maddening drift through the cosmos.
Myöhempien Aikojen Pyhien Teatterin Rukoilijasirkka

Live From the Depths of Hell

Happy Birthday King Diamond

Be A Man

Well Shit.

Death Grips - Exmilitary

I must admit I don't know a whole hell of a lot about this screaming, scary madman; aside from this album and some stray mp3s there's not much to be heard out there, and he seems deliberately uninterested in any crossover appeal whatsoever. What we have here is lo-fi, homemade, psychedelic, twisted hip-hop with samples from the Ventures, Black Flag, and stranger places. Trippier than the weirdest sizzurp-flavored nightmare and more headache-inducing than cocaine cut with Drano, even at a brief (for hip-hop) fifty minuted running time, Exmilitary feels like a black hole of crazy that you'll never escape from. Don't say you weren't warned.
Blood Creepin

Screaming Lord Sutch and Heavy Friends

Recorded surreptitiously by England's dandy prince of the macabre, Screaming Lord Sutch, and his higher profile "friends" such as Jimmy Page, John Bonham, Noel Redding, etc., this album caused a huge amount of contraversy and effectively ended Sutch's career when it was released. The biggest issue, aside from the sketchy legality, seemed to be sound quality, as the musicians were led to believe these were demo recordings; it's quite raw and red-lined throughout. In hindsight, though, this lends a lot of grit and character to the songs and helps it stand out from Sutch's usual slick novelty-rock sound. Of course the quality of musicianship also elevates it above such middling status as well, producing yet another universally panned album that sounds crucial and forward-thinking half a century later, albeit mostly unintentionally. Drenched in reverb with distorted vocals and torrents of buttery slide guitar, this could easily be any number of modern hipster garage outfits in cheap suits. Sutch himself is all over the place, coming on like Iggy Pop possessed by Screaming Jay Hawkins, and tarted up like Alice Cooper. Dumb, freaky, and sweaty.
One For You, Baby

Daybreakers

Not much clever to say about this recent vampire flick or its accompanying dirge-filled soundtrack, aside from the fact that I enjoyed them both and frequently spin this one in the dark of night to facilitate weird new states of consciousness, which I shall promptly begin now.
Fermentation Tank

They Called Me Mad

The stars have aligned perfectly for another thoroughly Lovecraftian tome of badness, so here's a rotten hunk of metal to sink your choppers into, you gob! Occult one-man death metal from Denver signed to the mighty Razorback Records, Crypticus truly plumbs the depths of black magic and weird science on this album. Maddeningly bereft of a lyric sheet, we can't draw solid lines between the works of old uncle Howard and the abominable experiments here but there is a distinct Herbert West/Charles Dexter Ward/Doctor Muñoz vibe, with writhing things in jars and crackling electrical coils and beings unseen swimming through the air just outside of our perception.
Moat of Blood

The Leather Nun - Slow Death

Plagued with a series of strange dreams and awakening to find my tap water running brown and odorous, it seems appropriate to go ahead and post this nasty little bit of weirdness, as surely my day will only get odder from here on out. The Leather Nun, from future metal hotspot Gothenburg way back in the seventies, played a primitive version of post-punk industrial comparable but not exactly similar to acts like Psychic TV and Throbbing Gristle. This is a seven inch record, with the first song being an anarchic, almost bluesy stomper; the second being a Suicide/Pere Ubu noise scrape; the third being a bass-driven sinister sort of cabaret; and then some primitive drum machine thuds. Fuck, what happens now?
55 Hours to Live

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?

Autopsy - Mental Funeral

Well, as per the usual Swamp policy of listening to gross squishy death metal as a means of dealing with a crushing hangover, here's Autopsy's slobbering classic Mental Funeral, which sums it up eloquently enough. Take two of these and call me in the morning.
Hole in the Head