Darkscorch Canticles

The Budos Band, “Ghost Walk”

The Budos Band are brilliant, always worth listening to, but they don’t always do cool. This song, though, is so smooth and cool, a standout from their brilliant first album.

Squarepusher, “Nux Vomica”

Burningn’n Tree is a collection of Squarepusher’s earliest EPs (one not even credited as Squarepusher), along with a few new tracks for the album. As a result of being a collection, as well as being from when Tom Jenkinson was still kind of sorting out what he wanted to sound like, it’s uneven. So it’s interesting stuff if you’re a Squarepusher sicko, but you have a lot of records to get through before you should get to this.

Here is today’s music. Some real ugliness, in the cover art of the first album and the lyrics of the last one.

Unsane, “Organ Donor”

I could have sworn we had hit Unsane before, but the theoretically infallible Five Songs Index says otherwise, so here we are. Unsane were a noise rock trio from New York, part of the same general underground as bands like Helmet, Cop Shoot Cop, and others. I was huge into that entire scene, and really liked Unsane a lot. That, however, wasn’t really what they were known for with most people. No, what they were known for was the cover art on their debut album, depicting a decapitated person on subway tracks. They would continue with the violent album covers, covers which set the mood for the dark music within. And that dark tone affected the band as well, with their original drummer dying of a heroin overdose.

From a musty 70s basement to the sound of future rap, today’s Five Songs has you covered.

Space Rock, “Dark Days”

So, here’s a true oddity for you. Numero Group, a record label primarily doing reissues (and doing a great job!), released Cities of Darkscorch, a fantasy board game where you’re playing as a hard rock band, traveling around the world defeating monsters and questing. It was accompanied by a double LP, Wayfaring Strangers: Darkscorch Canticles, which was full of Sabbath and Zeppelin inspired heavy rock from a variety of acts. It all kind of tries to function as a time machine back to the early days of gaming, and ends up being a pretty unique package. I’m not sure it’s all good, exactly, but I’m sure glad I own it.