Roky Erickson - The Evil One

Counting down to my 500th post and perusing the archives lately has brought to light some glaring oversights, albums I haven't posted yet that form the backbone of my musical taste.  Many of these (this one included) have remained un-posted because I listen to them so much that I can't imagine life without them.

The first one that came to mind was The Evil One, the most well known and arguably the best album by Roky Erickson.  I have posted many Roky albums here before and casually assumed that anyone perusing my little Swamp would at least have a passing familiarity with the man.  A huge percentage of albums on here are directly influenced by him, and many others have a spiritual kinship in their themes of paranormal phenomena, struggles with madness, and weird gibberish.

Lyrically, Roky draws from vintage horror movies and urban legends as much as he uses early rock n' roll's predilection for mantra-like refrains and cribbed blues motifs.  Musically, it's basically Buddy Holly and Bo Diddley squeezed through a proto-punk meat grinder.  Creedence Clearwater Revival's Stu Cook played bass on and produced much of this album, lending a layer of cosmic hillbilly mystique to a record already doomed to obscurity.

Of course now Roky is known as an essential part of any rock fan's collection and he continues to produce new material, against all odds, but this is the pinnacle.

I Walked With a Zombie

Antonius Rex - Zora

While we're on the weird outer rims of heavy metal, let's stop over in darkest Italy, home to many truly bizarre bands of all sub-genres.  Antonius Rex, the brainchild of Jacula leader Antonio Bartoccetti and vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Doris Norton.  Of their many simultaneous projects, this is the darkest and most explicitly occult, enough so that they were dropped by their label and forced to self-release it in limited quantities some years later.  Mixing the baroque organ fugues and jazzy psych of Jacula with a cinematic adventurousness influenced by Goblin and Morricone, with the pair's sometimes distracting vocals and breathless narration kept to a minimum.  This version is a recent reissue containing the extended track listing of later versions but with the original, suppressed cover art intact.  One can hear influences on occult rock modern bands, especially Blood Ceremony, but nobody has the freeform batshit wildness of this monster.

Morte al Potere

Shub-Niggurath Please

Vader - Out of the Deep
Morbus Chron - Red Hook Horror
Necromandus - Nightjar
Arkham Witch - Dagon's Bell
Briton Rites - A Meeting in the Woods
Orchid - Eyes Behind the Wall
Noctum - The Seance
The Wounded Kings - Return of the Sorcerer
Innsmouth - The She-Goat Quandary
Portal - Omnipotent Crawling Chaos
Abgott - Book 3-The Eye of Yog-Sothoth
Vasaeleth - Wrathful Deities
Necronomicon - Dreaming of the Old Ones
Thergothon - The Twilight Fade

Happy Halloween

Downer Rock Genocide

Here's another comp of British proto-metal, vaguely themed around an end of the world scenario.  I picked it up because I recognized a couple of bands on it: Necromandus, whose Lovecraftian "Nightjar"  is a staple on these sorts of compilations, and Bram Stoker, the spooky organ-heavy psych band responsible for the classic "Born to Be Free."  There's lots of other tasty bands here, like Red Dirt, purveyors of noisy blues-thud with a vocalist who sounds like a talking dog, and the cosmic weirdness of the Flying Hat Band.  This the perfect soundtrack for a cold grey day of whiskey drinking and teeth gnashing.

Long Live Man Dead

Salem Mass - Witch Burning

Greetings, toad people!  Returning from a rock n' roll sabbatical, I bring you this lump of red-hot occult proto-metal from Idaho's Salem Mass.  Released in 1971, this strange hybrid of the Manson Family vibe of Coven or Black Widow with the groovy psychedelic thud of Captain Beyond.  Soulful, over-the-top vocals and the trippy organ percolate over a surprisingly funky foundation of rubberlegged bass and cowbell-happy drums.  This is another in the long line of occult rock that gave birth to today's crop of mystic longhair bands dancing naked in a circle, praising the dark forces of the universe.  

You're just a dream.

El Ritual

El Ritual is arguably the first and most important Mexican psych band.  I don't know much about them and I'm too sick to fake it, so just enjoy the groovy satanism, heavy drums, and soulful Spanglish.

Peregrinacion Satanica

Do What Thou Wilt: The Satanic Rites of British Rock 1970 -1974

I can't seem to track down too much solid information regarding this mysterious vinyl-only compilation of early British psych and proto-metal bands so obscure they might have otherwise vanished from memory altogether. Limited to a mere 200 pressings, each with hand-painted covers, Do What Thou Wilt retains an aura of occult intent without especially living up to its own premise. Few of these songs are explicitly satanic; in fact the majority seem to address the usual concerns of the thuggish freaks who generally play this sort of music: sex, wanderlust, drugs, introspection, and misanthropy. I suppose these themes can be lumped under the "Do what thou wilt" motto, but so could, well, everything else.
Still, there's plenty of buried gems here: Shado's "Evil City," Grind's punkish "Rip Off," Wooden Lion's Alice Cooper-ish "Rise of the Moon," the legendary "Fuck You" single from Lucifer, and bands with names like Pony, Heatwave, Yellow, and Unicorn. Plus Tonge's Crushed Butler dead-ringer "Looking at the Moon," a recent repeat play for your host. A refreshing antidote to the proggish frilly-shirt-and-codpiece pomposity that began to infect British rock around this time, file this one alongside America's Nuggets or Back From the Grave series.

Do What

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

Babe Ruth - First Base

Today's special is another groovy slab of proggish proto-metal, from England's Babe Ruth. Staking their own unique little plot of sound with singer Janita Haan's Joplin-howl and some surprisingly pretty and lush strings in between more traditional bluesy skronk, this album is most notorious for the heavily-covered "The Mexican," but about every other song is a total killer rock number, and even the quieter ones tend to pick up steam towards the end. Plus, dig that crazy cover!
Have you seen a black dog's eyes
Staring in the fire?

Yonin Bayashi - Isshoku Sokuhatsu

Fusing the sounds of the wildest prog with the burgeoning movement that would become known as heavy metal, Japan's young quartet Yonin Bayashi would carve out a strange niche for themselves on the fringes of the music world. By turns melancholy or thunderous, Isshoku Sokuhatsu is their first and strongest album and flows from my speakers like warm sake. Stare into the eyes of the hypno-sloth:
Ping-Pong Dama no Nageki

Moses - Changes

Bad vibrations rattling around in my skull tonight, tamed only by the sweet Danish thugs in Moses. This is dirty brown acid and homemade speed for slack-jawed fans of Blue Cheer, Crushed Butler, or Speed, Glue and Shinki. Caveman brows furrowed in frustration, beady eyes staring into the void, these subnormal hair farmers mix in some menacing jazz breaks and blues shuffle owing more to John Lee Hooker than Hendrix, but there's plenty of psychedelic weirdness for those late nights too. Refreshingly these all appear to be original songs, too, with nary a honkified Chuck Berry or Bo Diddley to be found.
Everything is Changed

Back From the Grave vol. 2

Well then, seeing as how lately the weird psych records get about ten times as many downloads as the heavy metal records that usually end up as seat-fillers here in the Swamp, I can only assume that they must be striking a chord with a greater percentage of my darling Swamplings. Far be it for me to deny the silent whims of my little ones, so let's get this one right on out there. I posted the first record in this crucial Crypt Records series some time ago, but I must admit this one might be my favorite.

Less explicitly horror-themed than the first volume, the songs on this one tend to skew more towards drug-induced paranoia and general social rebellion than the previous entry; still, there is nonetheless a wide variety of ugly, anti-establishment punk sentiment to abrade up against delicate sensibilities. Highlights include motorcycle anthem "Willie the Wild One," the similarly free-wheeling "Wild-Man," and "City of People," a genuine immortal classic full of teenage sneer and delirious hate. This is not to diminish the other twenty-something tracks: there's plenty of soured love, bad trips, and 'Nam-era cynicism to go around, too.
What in the World

Tapiman

I don't know a whole lot about these Spanish psych-thugs but I sure as hell know that this album is a flat-out scorcher. Hints of Blue Cheer power-trio blues, sweet harmonies that remind me of The Move, some tasteful piano boogie, and a few genuinely strange moments all come together into one tight, slightly ESL platter providing a soundtrack equally suitable for fucking, fighting, or spiritual exploration.
Gooseberry Park

Shinki Chen and His Friends

Japanese guitar mutant Shinki Chen has appeared here before with his band Speed, Glue, and Shinki, but this is his first album, recorded under his own name while he was working on a Japanese production of the musical "Hair" (think about that for a second) with some help from his colleagues and associates. The opening number is a bit of a tease, an ambient drone number that could've been an Earth b-side; after this the album fully lurches into motion, rattling out of the speakers like a transmission from a lost colony of funky, acid-fried androids driven mad from an eternity drifting in a derelict space helmet with nothing but Hendrix records and millions of cigarettes to pass the time. Look into his eyes, people - do those crimson orbs look like windows into sanity?
Freedom Of A Mad Paper Lantern

Cold Fact

Mysterious 60's hate-folkie Rodriguez put out two albums in the early seventies that rivaled Dylan at his pissiest in their sneering aristocratic contempt for both the establishment and the fading flower-power counterculture. As peace and love give way to madness and burnout, and the American populace learns to hate its leaders, Rodriguez hovers over it all in his black bubble of spite, singing songs of subtle disdain, barely-disguised loathing, and finally outright screaming profanity (not necessarily in that order, but it is possible to re-align the tracklisting along this arc if one needs to angry up one's blood). Sonically, this album is about 10% heavier than Cat Stevens for 70% of its length, 30% heavier than The 13th Floor Elevators 20% of the time, and 50% heavier than Blue Cheer's Outsideinside for the last 10%, the seething volcano of proto-metal "Only Good For Conversation." Got that, hippie?
My statue has a concrete heart
But you're the coldest bitch I know

Captain Beyond - Sufficiently Breathless

Rough week last week here in the Swamp, little ones, but we soldier on. Today's special is proggy proto-metal courtesy of Captain Beyond. Bits of Hendrix, Black Sabbath, and Trower sparkle through on this second LP, but it is assuredly its own beast. According to that cover, in fact, it's a psychedelic robot clown with a corkscrew for a dick!
Everything's a circle

Poe - Up Through the Spiral

Snatched from out of the ether, here is a heady little slab of Texas psych from the group known in the sixties as Playboys of Edinburg. In 1971 they changed their name to Poe and released this album. Based on the life and writings of psychic and astral projectionist Edgar Cayce, it's a trippy ride through the spheres of existence, grounded in bluesy grit and Little Richard-style piano but constantly swerving into strange tangents and weaving short song fragments into a weird tapestry of occult exploration and transmissions from the neighboring planes.
Your prayers have been answered little boy

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.

Irish Coffee

Thick and creamy proto-metal slop from these Belgians on their only long player, this album floats on a layer of hockey rink keyboards and Quaalude delirium. The guitar chases its own tail in great flaming loops as the muffled rhythm section choogles on behind a thick, nasty fog. Of special note are the vocals, which range from hoarse gospelish bellowing to syrupy multiple harmonizing to mushmouthed mumbling, often in the same song. I like my coffee the way I like my rock and roll:
Fucking weird.

Back From The Grave volume 1

This was the first in a series of LPs released by Crypt Records in the Nuggets mode - that is, collections of forgotten 45 rpm records by forgotten sixties punk bands. Back From the Grave gravitated towards the most brain-damaged, nasty, weird end of the spectrum, generally eschewing pretty psych in favor of bludgeoning stupidity and atavism. In other words, Swamp material for sure! All of these collections are excellent but naturally a lot of primo slop ended up on this one. Notable entries include surf combo The Novas performing "The Crusher," widely recognized as the first example of what would become death metal vocals, covers of genre-defining horror tales "Jack the Ripper" and "Psycho," and some originals eventually covered by the likes of The Mummies, Dwarves, and many more.
That's the Bag I'm In