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

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

Rev. Gary Davis - Live at Newport

The Reverend Gary Davis was a legendary and long-lived performer who claimed to have written hundreds of public domain songs from "Baby Let Me Lay It on You" to "Cocaine Blues" to "Samson and Delilah." His cavernous barn of a voice and jaw-dropping guitar playing were compounded by a wry sense of mischief and ego and hubris to match his talent. He was a favorite of a late friend of mine taken from us far too young. This is for her.
JCA RIP

Warning - Blessed By the Sabbath

An early demo from Britain's traditionalist doom-mongers Warning. Truly epic, and glacially slow, but with a fine sense of song-craft and melody largely absent or suppressed in most works of the genre. A crushing, exhausting, purging experience later perfected on their full length Watching from a Distance. Three songs here, twenty five minutes.
Bend under the weight of your guilt.

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?

Bllleeeeaaauuurrrrgghhh!

I'm posting on a quick break from other realms with but precious minutes to spare, which is probably what made me think of this, the pinnacle achievement of powerviolence-mongers Slap-A-Ham. 84 songs in 12 minutes: grind, noise, sludge, poop.
Go Human Not Ape

Dead Moon - In the Graveyard

This is the first release by Dead Moon, the longest-running (so far) band led by punk lifer Fred Cole, a veteran of the sixties and seventies scenes who's staked out his own little plot of land and will seemingly hold it down forever. For those new to his style this is dark blues-burdened rock n' roll punk with demons on its shoulder and hellhounds on its trail. Covers of Elvis, Blue Cheer, and "Hey Joe" and several originals revolve around the ominous theme of love turned sour and crimes of passion. If you enjoy this one there's about 6 million other Dead Moon records and then there's the fifty other bands the man's been in as well.
Where Did I Go Wrong?

RIP

Gary Moore R.I.P.

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

Scorpions - Fly to the Rainbow

It's no secret that the first album by the Scorpions, Lonesome Crow, is widely regarded as a classic 70's heavy psych record, quite different than their later, more famous eighties doofus rock. For some reason (perhaps it's that awful cover) this follow-up gets much less attention, despite its weird exuberance and catchy forward momentum. Despite the loss of prodigy guitarist Michael Shencker to UFO there's a lot of interesting stuff going on; the Scorps still hadn't settled fully into the hard rock fondue that would begin to solidify on their next record. I really could dissect this one at length but alas I must exit the Swamp forthwith, so strap some planes to your feet, put on your toaster helmet, and
Fly People Fly

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

The Lamp of Thoth - Portents, Omens & Dooms

Having recently been informed of our being awarded the coveted Trappy Award for best new blog and seeing as how this is our 300th post together, let's return to Swamp favorites The Lamp of Thoth and their magnum opus Portents, Omens & Dooms. I've posted their more recent EP Sing as You Slay and the demo from side project Arkham Witch to little fanfare, but The Lamp of Thoth remain a shining of example of many things I find dear: Lovecraftian dread, doomish swagger, stoicism and sense of purpose but not at the expense of a sense of humor, broad-minded scholasticism, epic riffment, etc. Ignore them at your own peril, gentle reader!
This is the house of doom
The only ghosts are the one who came with you

Wreck of the Hesperus - The Sunken Threshold

Tonight's invocation is a hefty slab of funereal doom courtesy of Ireland's literary-minded Wreck of the Hesperus on their only full length. While not quite the squishy amorphous ooze of Tyranny or Catacombs, this is certainly a far cry from the relatively upbeat stylings of your traditional doom ensemble. It's foul and raspy and stretched nigh to oblivion, and despite the sub-aquatic theme I get a dry dusty bone-rattle ambiance from it, but it still sounds like a live band playing in a room together. There's a distinct death/doom hue in keeping with the style all the wee ones are so in tune with these days as well - not exactly normative songwriting but not a random lump of squirtly noises either. Not that there's anything wrong with that...
A tomb won't be immune