Pinnacle - Cyborg Assassin

British proto-metal psyche bastards....totally off the chain for '74.

New Zeuhl!

This is awesome, a new Magma album is out...have a Zeuhlishly great 4th guys!

UzJD on WFMU

Live Uz Jsme Doma...the best of Czech! Since when did Miroslav turn into the blonde Gallagher?...and speaking of Gallagher, any updates on that melon crackin' son of a bitch?

Magma - Udu Wudu

My fav Magma release featuring one of the greatest songs of all time....behold the Zeuhls of grandeur!!

Udu Wudu

Ash Ra Tempel - Seven Up

Soundtrack to an LSD trip, featuring the cruise director himself Dr. Timothy Leary.

Heads UP Seven Up

Comus - First Utterance

Definitely one of the darkest hippy albums ever made and definitely a personal fav. Check out these AMAZING lyrics:
Hymen hunter, hands of steel, crack you open and your red flesh peel
Pain procurer, eyes of fire pierce your womb and push still higher
Comus rape, Comus break sweet young virgin's virtue take
Naked flesh flowing hair her terror screams they cut the air
...nice, huh?

First Utterance

Arthur Brown - The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown

The ineffable Arthur Brown --- Evil pyromaniacal occult hippy musick

...and certainly a bigtime influence on the Norwegian corpsepaint aesthetic

cool poster from catesatomicgarden 

The Crazeee Woild

Enslaved - Monumension

My 2nd fav Enslaved album featuring the indomitable Dirge Rep on skins.  Can you spot the 8 items?

Monumenskin

Rowsdower - Demo 2011

I just found out about this stoner-psyche band from the good ol' STL. That they call themselves Rowsdower (after the infamous character Zap from MST3K's riff-tastic treatment of oddball Canadian cult fav The Final Sacrifice) is just the icing on the cake. Great guitar work, really cool stuff!
Download the full demo provided by the band here.

Poppin' A RUSH-Hog

Happy International RUSH day folks!

2/1/12

X-Panda - Flight Of Fancy

Prog mastery from this young and curiously named band that hails from Estonia of all places!!

Flight Of Fancy

Winterblut - Grund Gelenkkunst

So, keeping true to my word, I am delving ass deep into the insidious world of German Black metal...and without further ado, ladies and gentlemen...Winterblut's Grund.
A monumental statement put out by ol L'Hiver almost a decade ago. If the Jesus Lizards ever recorded a black metal album, this would be it my friends...grungy, mathy evilness that grooves on that enviable tin-pan alley swag. Just love that he put a cheering crowd at the end of the album...fucking brilliant!

"Grund"ge

Už Jsme Doma - Uprostřed Slov

Although I've only recently gotten into these guys, they have quickly become one of my all-time favorite bands. 1990's Uprostred Slov perfectly displays their mastery of Gypsy-avant-pronk-RIO-inflected Wagnerian-ska!!

Uprostred Slov

Sad Harmony - Somnabul

What an underrated band!! Their full-length from 2006 reminds me of a more psychedelic version of Cale's magnificent alt-rock album Uncommon Excursion; which makes sense because they were made around the same time and share the vocal talents of Skunky, who is in fine form as always. This one's good for those chill Friday evenings after work when all you want to do is kick back and relax. Go ahead and pour yourself that Krusovice tmavé...Skunkers would approve.

Somnabul

Forgotten Silence - Thots

There is a definitive strain of Czechslovakian death metal that carries romantic sensibilities...I'm not talking love songs exactly, certainly  not emo...heaven forbid that. The Czechs do it up right with a mournful sense of longing and Bohemian je ne c'est quoi. Forgotten Silence is a prime example of this strain with chugging riffs, jangly guitar, church organ, marimba and fretless bass (for some reference, czech out Love History or taking it a step further, Slovakia's Lunatic Gods). Their tumultuous narrative (Thots is based on the novel and movie La Casa De Los Espiritos) corresponds with the progressive qualities that are ever present in most all these Czech bands. An ephemeral, beautiful work.

Thots

Conception - In Your Multitude

Bombastic Norwegian power metal that used to have Mr. Roy Kahn in it's ranks.  Don't expect any cheese on this one...just awesomeness.

In Your Multitude

Adrian Belew - Lone Rhino

Adrian Belew was a simple Kentucky boy who rose to fame as a wild-ass guitarist (and vocalist) for Zappa, Talking Heads and later on the legendary King Crimson. Lone Rhino is his first solo offering full of magical wistful numbers that seem to conjure the pizaaz he would dose out on Crimson discs Discipline and THRAK.... Animal Grace is a hard driving piece with a twisted melody line and bold vocals, Adidas in Heat reminds me of the Seinfeld theme song, while the title track renders a pathos that belies its humorous subject matter. This is definitely a weird album, but it's a grower.

Lone Rhino

Virus - Live in London 3/22/11

LIVE VIRUS!! WOOHOOOO!!!

Live in London

Virus - The Agent That Shapes the Desert

My dreams have come true a new Virus album!  I have professed my love for Czral before, and the ol' boy does not disappoint in the slightest. This new one takes their brand of Voivodian tin pan alley swagger to more arid climes...more of a refinement on past meisterpieces Carheart and Black Flux than a wholesale sonic leap forward, and that is MORE than fine by me.  Oh Czral, don't ever change baby.  Fucking album of the year.

The Agent That Shapes the Desert

Ophthalamia - Via Dolorosa

A twisting tortuous journey through the mind of Swedish midget upstart Tony Sarka aka "It"and his regular sized pal "ALL"...the duo perhaps best known for the psychopathic sounds of Abruptim, and many other lesser black metal acts (Vondur, War, etc...).  Ophthalamia is definitely the most musically interesting of their projects, being a doomy and weird take on black metal (probably more traditional heavy metal than black). Now and then I'm reminded of a cruder version of Root's Kargeras...mostly because both albums deal with telling the story of self-created fantasyworlds. Prog and Folk influences pop up every now and then, but Via Dolorosa maintains a dank and dirty, lugubriously melancholic atmosphere...the perfect soundtrack to this time of year when things are starting to thaw, but everything is still dead.
Speaking of dead, you will be if you spell "Ophthalamia" wrong; a warning from It..."We will kill them so bad that they will probably die.  I am so sick and tired of all the stupid idiots that can not spell right to the mighty word of Ophtalamia...Uppsss...My light saber will cut through their flesh like hot butter through a knife. And they will regret then, when they are dead, that they did not pay more attention."

Via Dolorosa