Year of the Goat - Lucem Ferre

There's a ton of this occult doom rock floating around these days, so much so that's it difficult to parse out the primo stuff out of legions of clones.  I have discovered this EP by Year of the Goat (from Sweden, of course), and it's quickly one of my most-spun over the last few months.  Fans of Pentagram, Graveyard, Witchcraft, The Devil's Blood, and Noctum will find much to enjoy here: tales of hedonism and regret, crushing fuzz riffs, flaxen hair blowing in the northern winds, and even a cover of Sam Gopal's "Dark Lord."  Hopefully they will release a full length before the darkness swallows them.

She pours cataclysm from her golden cup.

The Vindictives - Leave Home

Sure, there's lots of knock-off Ramones bands, Ramones cover bands, and bands who cover Ramones songs, but how many people just up and cover a whole album front to back?  Chicago's legendarily neurotic Vindictives do this, and maintain a level of spontaneity and pranksterism that elevates it to the level of Dada Not Doodoo.

You should have never opened that door...

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

Demon Fuzz - Afreaka!

Demon Fuzz is another one of those bands whose freaky, forward-looking sounds were far enough ahead of their time that they achieved little success and remain obscure outside of crate-digging DJs continually in search of more esoteric and obscure grooves.  While ostensibly being a funk band, Demon Fuzz combines jazzy, menacing dissonance with prog and psych tendencies and a soulful backbone that keeps even the strangest moments grounded.  The opening instrumental, "Past Present and Future," opens with a muted guitar figure that could've been lifted from a Fugazi record twenty years in the future, shortly followed by the sly insinuation of horns and a martial rhythm that unfolds into full-on brass band swagger and then dissolves into a Fun House-era Stooges freakout.  The vocals don't arrive until track two, the spidery "Disillusioned," but aptly named crooner Smokey Adams expresses righteous anger over a bed of organ, harmonica, and buzzing trumpet.  There's a few more killer originals and covers of the mandatory "I Put a Spell on You" and a song from the British Invasion combo Electric Flag, rounded out with another expressionistic instrumental capper.  Truly freaky.

Mercy (variation 1)

Melvins - The Undisputed Renegade Spaghetti Garage Pin-Ups

Here's another fairly thorough all-covers bootleg, this time from the mighty Melvins. Flipper, Wipers, Velvet Underground, Pink Floyd, Wendy Carlos, Fleetwood Mac, Malfunkshun, Warlock Pinchers even...something for everybody, mangled and stomped on. Interestingly, though this album is two full-length discs, many of The Melvins' better known covers don't appear here, perhaps assuming that anybody who would bother with
something this weird already owns them. It's a bit difficult to sit through the entire two hours, but there's tons of mixtape fodder and surprisingly reverent treatment, representing the breadth and depth of their influences.
Jerkin' Krokus

Obituary - The End Complete

Greetings, Swamplings! Quickly, you must download this third album of apocalyptic early death metal from one of the pioneers of the genre, good old Obituary. The End Complete tends to be divisive for many fans - some see it as a watering-down of their early sound, while others see it as a bold step forward after the crucial Cause of Death. There are others, like myself, who maintain that it pretty much sounds exactly like the first two albums and those who overthink this kind of thing on the internet ought to get out more, which is exactly what I'm going to do right now.
We're terrified (What terrible fun)

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

Brotha Lynch Hung - Season of da Siccness

It's one of those nights, my dearies, where only the ugliest and most twisted horrorcore can satisfy the dark urges roiling within. Brotha Lynch Hung's pet themes - cannibalism, mysogyny, madness, infanticide, booze - all permeate this miasmal gangsta record like smoke from a funeral pyre. A west coast answer to the New York's burgeoning horror rap movement, this first LP sounds like a hybrid of the G-Funk synth-and-melodica slink and the menacing funk of a John Carpenter soundtrack. This is roughly the rap equivalent to Butchered at Birth. Tread cautiously.
Rest in Piss

James Blood Ulmer - Birthright

South Carolina's James Blood Ulmer has made a legacy out of his fusion of blues, jazz, soul, funk, and wild experimentation, but on occasion he releases a straight, palate-cleansing album of acoustic country blues, seemingly more out of need than choice. Birthright, the most graceful and haunting record of this type, is a concise little masterpiece. Freed of sidemen, Ulmer and his guitar meander down the dark dusty roads of the soul, backwards through time. He wrestles with the devil's influence in classic blues fashion, using his own experience with perdition as a warning to others. Not that all of these are grim morality tales, no sir: there's a few dance numbers, a song or two about girls, and covers of Howlin' Wolf and "Sittin' On Top of the World." Vital.
I Ain't Superstitious

Primordial - The Gathering Wilderness

You may have noticed some gaps in posting happening lately, especially on the weekends. This sort of unexplained gap is not uncommon for your host, but I've decided to shift into quality-over-quantity mode. I am usually able to post throughout the week, and sporadically on weekends, but I'm going to have to try to make the most of my free time and only post when I actually have something to say, at least until the end of summer.

That said, there's no better introduction to this new mode than Primordial, one of my long time favorites and a band that stays in constant rotation in the Swamp, staving off the darkness. Frequently described as Celtic/folk/black metal (a combination of modifiers that would normally cause me to stay far, far away), Ireland's most reliable and perhaps longest running metal act is really an entity unto itself. Beginning with this album, they venture more into Slough Feg-styled epic heaviness unburdened by cheap genre tags or gimmickry. While still venturing on occasion into blast beat/tremolo territory for effect, this is really a study in massive melodic force. Steered by leather-lunged A.A. Nemtheanga (of Blood Revolt) and anchored by a water-tight rhythm section, Primodial's twin guitarists weave Celtic themes and melancholy lyricism into the black metal framework the way Thin Lizzy did for hard rock way back in the day. In fact you can almost sense a sort of spiritual kinship between "The Coffin Ships" or "Cities Carved in Stone" and Lizzy's Irish folk influence.

I chose this album because it's the first one where the mix felt perfectly balanced for me. The earlier albums are crushingly heavy and much closer to standard blackness, and the ones following this continue down this path with increasing focus and steely-eyed warrior spirit. Every single one of them is good, though, especially this year's "Redemption at the Puritan's Hand." Take heart.
Oh god, that bread should be so dear
And human flesh so cheap

No Heavy Petting

Another under-heard gem from the Schenker era of UFO, No Heavy Petting may be in fact their strongest long player and contains multiple songs that stayed in their live set for decades, as evidenced on the fabulous live album Strangers in the Night. Opening with the one-two punch of riff-steamroller "Natural Thing" and schizoid "I'm a Loser," and following with the Motörhead/Stooges-uppercut of "Can You Roll Her," side A is a bleak tour through England's seamy rock-n-roll underbelly. That's a song about addiction (presumably dedicated to the woman on the cover with a monkey on her back), a song about couch-surfing, and a song presumably about sketchy blacked-out sex, right in a row. The rest of the record goes off on a few wild tangents, including the moody, proto-stoner street rumble "On With the Action" and the cosmic homesickness of "Martian Landscape," perhaps betraying a longing for UFO's past as a hippyish, happy-drug space rock band. That's not to say there's no filler on this - the junkie love ballad "Belladonna" and the throwaway cover of "A Fool in Love" could've been trimmed, but how many 70's albums are free of fluff? None!
Home taping is killing the bullshit industry

The Slow Death

Abiding my love for obscure sub-genres and strange hybrids, let's all get dragged backwards through this haunting death-doom variation from Australia's The Slow Death. Beginning with sodden blankets of earthy guitar similar to Warning, and exchanging Patrick Walker's ghost-ridden anguished vocals for some spooky siren whisperings way up at the high end of the register, and some Skepticism-styled funeral growling on the low end, this self-titled LP is their only release. A widely varying pace and sinister internal logic, not to mention the occasional horror movie keyboard melody, give it the air of an ill omen. Interestingly, some of the members of this band are also in the wildly dissimilar Corpsickle and Murkrat.
Dark Days

Tight Bros From Way Back When - Take You Higher

Featuring past members of Karp and Behead the Prophet and future members of Big Business/Melvins and Nudity, the Tight Bros sounded nothing like any of that stuff. Instead they cranked out a sweaty mix of AC/DC and MC5, singing of fire and blood and rock and roll. This particular seven inch EP is included here for the apocalypse anthem "Chicken Little Lied," but I highly recommend both of their albums and split with The Champs as premier examples of hard rock/punk rock done right with zero cheese or smarm.
I'm in luck