So hypnotic and pleasant.
Goddamn, this rules. I need to find more experimental drummers. I’m sure there are others. Listen to all that brushing! So exciting!
One, “Sex Breath” is an incredible song name. Two, a band named Maggot Heart should really be a lot more discordant. It should be filthy, squalid, with the kind of skronks from a guitar that I can’t really describe.
[Read More]I’m sorry, nothing I’m going to say is going to change anybody’s mind here. Either you were 100% in when you heard the name “Goblin Cock” or you were not.
As Helmet moved further away from their Amphetamine Reptile days, their sound just progressively got cleaner and cleaner. I mean, it’s still distorted guitars and all, but it was all kind of clockwork stuff eventually. Whether it was triangulation to try and capture a bigger audience or not, I think it didn’t serve them too well. This song is a pretty good example, this would have been much noisier in earlier days, with maybe a big squalling guitar solo or some wild screeching or something. Instead, there’s just kind of a few yells from Page Hamilton, and that’s more or less it. I can’t exactly call it tame, not really, but it’s…domesticated?
[Read More]I’ve got bad news folks. You’re stuck with me again. Sad times! If anybody out there wants to have a whack at this thing, I guess just let me know.
This song, with the distant, buried vocals and deliberately thin drums, sounds a lot like an old Crystalized Movements track, which is something nobody else is going to care about. But I think it’s neat! And if you like this, hit up that link and see if you like their stuff.
[Read More]Have we had Claw Hammer before? I think we have. The tags say we have. Whatever. Anyway, Claw Hammer sort of had a blues-y take at punk, like if you took Mudhoney and dialed up the blues end by a bunch. And, of course, they had Jon Wahl’s idiosyncratic vocal style powering things. This tune comes from their final album, their second for a major label of all damn things. That Interscope thought something as offputting as this was worth signing is one of the clearest signs that the mid-90s saw some very stupid behavior from the labels.
[Read More]Hey, y’all! I’m going to be in Vancouver this weekend for SHUX! If you happen to be going, say hi!
Criminal Minded is at the root of so much of New York rap. It’s really one of the foundational documents of the East Coast scene. There are so many echoes of this album in so many other records that it’s almost hard to even pick them out. At this point, the original sounds like a cliche, which is unfair, as this record is where all that stuff comes from.
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