Monday, June 20, 2016

Album Review: Razor Sharp Death Blizzard

Razor Sharp Death Blizzard
'You Will Burn'
(Digital Release)

The thundering apocalyptic serenity of chaos


When a band has been put together by former members of hardcore punk giants Swellbellys and brutal metal band Ridgeback then you can be assured their music will never be heard playing softly in the background of some upper class drawing room on a lazy Sunday morning while an elderly lady relaxes with a cup of imported Italian coffee and the newspapers. Razor Sharp Death Blizzard are as insolently turbulent as their name suggests. They have no hidden surprises (who does that shit anyway?) and are as brutally aggressive as you suspected they'd be...consider a terrain of heavy wasteland where the vitriolic sound carves out trenches and drains colour from horizons.

It's the sheer weight and supremacy of the sound that you become aware of firstly...it's the first thing to reach you..a towering wave of thundering drumbeats and insubordinate guitar riffs stampeding a way forwards on an unstoppable barrage of menacing savagery. Juggernaut sized in both volume and presence...a tirade of head mashing riffs unfolding for war. Yet for all it may appear disjointed and without direction...and in less competent hands I have no doubt it would very easily become just that...when you bring all its parts together in a right way...as is here...it shows how brilliantly well it all work

There are so many catchy moments here...you just don't expect to find them on an album like this. But I'm wrong. Little flourishes of musicianship...from the smallest of unexpected chord changes to the sudden change of tactic/direction in a between verses riff...and it's when those twists and spins and neat turns catch you that you realise it's a much cleverer, structural piece of songwriting than the three chord noise monster people dismiss the products of this genre as being. The lead vocals are a violation of decency...a gore drenched, raw throated abrasive growl of unsettling power-violence that burrows into the floor to prowl caverns beneath us...as mighty at times than the force of nature, the scum eloquence criss-crossing pathways below stirring an ambience of violent intent and nightmares rehearsed.

Definite standout moments on this album...and there are many...like the swaggering guitar of Christian Sun...the complete change of style, pace and tone for the brilliant Right Wing Scum...all out punk rock bluster of Meet Your Maker with guitar and drums meshing together brilliantly...and the melodic riff that dominates Defstein which is almost endearing enough to suit Whitesnake. Maybe Razor Sharp Death Blizzard will unleash a wrecking ball of  fresh air into a scene filled with shitehawk revivalists whose limp wristed symphonies shall implode internally and black rivers of blood will gush from their ears and drown a city forever? Failing that they'll possibly just fucking kill you.





http://razorsharpdeathblizzard.bandcamp.com/





Sunday, June 12, 2016

5 Reasons To Love: HOLE

The most commercially successful female fronted grunge band in the history of music.



1: DOLL PARTS
( from the album Live Through This)

  "and some day you will ache like I ache"

A raw disjointed start/stop ballad where you can almost touch the excruciating self loathing that resonates from the harrowing acoustic despair of unfurled honesty. It almost drops to a whisper...this subdued restraint of a broken spirit...before pleading its way to an end on a vocal of bone-crushing agony. The distraction is cataclysmic...a brooding overflow that hacks out a valley in her voice and renders the life from her bones. Her naked vulnerability.. the most beautiful truth on earth...She ends the song by repeating the line "some day you will ache like I ache" over and over with gaining intensity until she is almost screaming the words.


2: TEENAGE WHORE
(from the album Pretty On The Inside)

 "'Ive seen the things you put me through and I, I wish I could die"
 Her vocal is a howling turbulence of outrage battering an exit through the thrashing heap of  heavy grunge-fuelled uncongenial chainsaw fuzz. Distorted guitars add to the wrecking ball of brutal angsty-punk banging against the pile-up of  mangled ear-bursting fuck-ups! This is Hole still very much at the fledgling part of their career...gloriously wide-eyed, rebellious upstarts who weren't intending to be forgotten once they'd been heard. The racketing grunge/rock distortion of this wasn't ever again quite as unchecked as it was here.


3: CELEBRITY SKIN
(from the album Celebrity Skin)

"oh cinderella they aren't sluts like you"
A complete move away from their earlier grunge/punk sound...the instrumentation is more civilized and targeted..and the production is sharper and refined. Celebrity Skin is a brilliantly catchy alternative rock song with shimmering guitar riffs and tons of bouncing energy. Courtney's vocals are lazily tuneful...skipping across the melodic cruise-control pace and structure of the song with perfectly suited relevance. The lyrics are a scathing swipe at the superficiality of Hollywood glamour where celebrity is defined in body shape, skin tone and plastic surgery...and the line  'oh look at my face/ my name is might have been/ my name is never was/ my name's forgotten" is a reference to the impossibility of retaining value when the next 'star' is being manufactured to replace you, This was the band's most commercially successful single as was the album of the same name. And another example of how good a songwriter she really is.


4: VIOLET
(from the album Live Through This)

"Go on take everything, take everything, I want you to"
The greatest song Courtney Love has ever written. The delicate opening chords are a soothing embrace..tender in their manner...a tranquility promised...the poetry of the lyrics sketch serene imagery "and  the sky was made of amethyst,,,and all the stars looked just like little fish..you should learn when to go"and then she has you..you're unready and flatfooted.."YOU SHOULD LEARN HOW TO SAY NO!" like a howled battlecry and suddenly it swivels into a tearing onslaught of rattling hostility "GO ON TAKE EVERYTHING! TAKE EVERYTHING I WANT YOU TO!" volleying forwards, relentless...the shout/scream/howl vocals..the feral snarling of the guitars..."I told you from the start just how this would end" the most ferociously barbaric piece of  creative brilliance

 
5: MALIBU
(from the album Celebrity Skin)
  
"The darkest secret of your heart I'm gonna follow you
  A straightforward mid-tempo romanticised pop song that skips and hops on a catchy hook laden feel-good summertime breeze. Incredibly melodic and beautifully understated.....It was a creative change of direction from the brutal grunge/punk anger of debut album Pretty On The Inside and follow up Live Through This...Criticised by some for what they saw as her selling out to the mainstream in a desperate bid for success this is simply great songwriting ability and creative versatility. Courtney Love is a truly superior songwriter who just doesn't get the recognition she deserves.



Saturday, June 11, 2016

Martha Wainwright

Martha Wainwright casually delivers one of the greatest live performance in the world...just because she can.
 

Friday, May 27, 2016

Album Review: Discharge - End Of Days

Discharge
'End Of Days'
(Nuclear Blast Records)

The unflinching disturbers of the peace return

The "Fight Back" EP released by Discharge in 1980 was the most powerful statement of youthful resent I had ever heard. Nothing else of that time came anywhere near to matching it for fury and aggression. They were the outraged pacifists writing culturally specific protest songs in a thundering vortex of words and noise that became the architecture of their identity. The scrapping backbone of their razor-sharp hostility was a dogmatic anti-establishment venom that voiced the unflinching scorn of their intellectual conceit. Of every era they've been involved in none sums their importance up better than the two year period from their 1980 debut Realities Of War to 1982 single State Violence State Control  the music they released during that specific time defined history, generated it's own sub-genre and instigated a movement that grew up around them. A perpetual echo of shuddering perfection as significant now as it was then. Rebellious malevolence never sounded so good.


It's now almost 36 years since their historic debut and...following several unfortunate line up changes and long periods of directionless inactivity Discharge are back....their recent signing to Nuclear Blast Records has already produced several single releases and now comes a brand new album End Of Days.. their first since Disensitise in 2008. With new front-man JJ Janiak (from Broken Bones) joining drummer Dave Caution and original members Tezz, Rainy and Bones..Discharge are, for the first time in their history..a five-piece band.


Album opener New World Order begins with a stop/start hammer of disjointed buzzsaw guitar that lurches in forward/backward agitation amid a squalor of feedback and pounding drumbeats...poised to charge.. it bristles in a repetitive 20 second distortion of stammering false starts before eventually exploding into a brutal head mashing racket of thrash laced hardcore. and surging double bass drumming, an undeniable heaviness that suddenly veers to a change of pace and reveals a softer centre of guitar solo rock-catchiness. The scathing Raped And Pillaged is a venomous anti-war song railing against the belligerent Islamaphobic Bush regime and their power-crazed invasion of Iraq "invaded in the name of corporate interests" growls JJ with a sneering derision. The title track opens with a sample of dialogue from Patrick Allen's grim nuclear voice-over narration in the public information film Protect And Survive which leads into some shattering  guitar work amid a crushingly powerful drumming barrage.

And onwards they march..the verbal aggressors and their voracious iconoclastic discourse, through...The Broken Law...False Flag Entertainment...Meet Your Maker...with demented intensity and into recent single Hatebomb a catchy lyrically simple detonation of hairtrigger anti-social aggression for the sake of it..frontman JJ's volleying bare boned spite "your opinions make me sick"  as a rollicking  D-Beat drumming thunders its way through..the guitar playing is especially good on this song with some catchy riffs enhancing the entire sound. Killing Yourself To Live is a hard edged viciously fast whirlwind of thrashy guitar/drums while the brilliantly titled Looking At Pictures Of Genocide features a complete change in guitar output. The album hurls towards its end with the frenetic divebomb of Population Control...slightly slower paced The Terror Alert which includes waves of sweeping guitar solos and final track Accessories By Molotov (Part 2)  is a hyperbolic mix of muscular thrash metal and visceral guitar driven buzz punk.

Discharge have always been capable of accurately representing a mood by being in tune with the mindset and here is no different. This is their best album since Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing and a glorious return to form. The volleying sociopolitical agit-prop sermons backed up with..furiously heavy thrash/punk/metal guitar riffs.. pounding D-Beat drumming artillery and rumbling bass chords..all deployed at breakneck speed...is a powerhouse of uncompromising contempt. From simmering frustration to screaming outpourings of vicious anger...they are still the vocal subconscious of  non-conforming nihilists..That this 15 track album takes just 33 mins from beginning to end is another 'typically' Discharge trait....they've always been very good at putting all their strengths into the smallest of spaces. JJ Janiak has slipped instinctively and without fault into a role so ingrained in nostalgic regard it must have been easier to get things terribly wrong than it ever would be to achieve something even close enough to being acceptable.  Discharge haven't just continued, they've intensified.

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Saturday, April 30, 2016

New Album: Mother Feather.

Mother Feather
'Mother Feather'
(Metal Blade Records)
 
The debut album from New York's flamboyant pop cock rockers. Too creatively versatile for the confines of a specific genre Mother Feather are a compendium of styles....they are glam rock and they are dance pop...they are grunge and they are jangle indie....thundering rock and club funk. They are all that...and more.
 
Their self titled debut is released May 13th on Metal Blade Records
   

 
 

Saturday, February 13, 2016

Looking Back.....The Dogbones




Some of you may never have heard of them...and for those who may have forgotten,,,,

From the ashes of consequential alt-punk/goth-disco sleaze trash glam squalor they came..and it was a mightier breed of consequential alt-punk/goth-disco sleaze trash glam squalor that did emerge…and the sneering symphonies of chaotic discord they brought were proficiently crafted and remarkably tuneful. This resurrection of sorts…. for The Dogbones were all former members of Daisy Chainsaw and Queenadreena....Nomi Leonard (vocals and guitar) Michael Vakalis (bass) and Johnny Orion (vocals and guitar) were all in Queenadreena...with Johnny also in Daisy Chainsaw alongside drummer Vince Johnson.

Their 2010 self titled debut album was a brilliant converge of gritty rock, dark glamour grunge and muscular garage/punk…..with walls of fuzzy distortion, ragged, grit-edged guitar riffs, solid bass thrum, tribal drumbeats and the schizophrenic vocal style of Nomi Leonard veering from brain shredding grunge power to post-punk howls and unhinged broken harmonies….it was unconventionally beautiful….

Wherever have they gone?



(Original unedited photograph of Nomi Leonard found at http://dollhouse-massacre.tumblr.com)

THE DOGBONES FACEBOOK PAGE

Saturday, January 23, 2016

Remembering: Therapy...'Diane'


So much better than the Husker Du original..and is surely the only ballad that contains the line ‘But I think I’ll just rape you and kill you instead’.  Therapy? make such a brilliant job of this song from beginning to end. Far superior on every level to the original which pales so badly into insignificance it should never have been written first. Andy Cairns expressive vocals plunder the ground between menacing (hey little girl wanna go for a ride) and psychotic (You're the cutest girl I've ever seen in my life/but it's over now with my knife) to echo across the tender string arrangement that drops to an earth scraping  bass tone before climbing upwards on bursts of tormented cello staccato. The song is about the abduction and rape of Diane Edwards from a shopping mall in the USA and is sung from the perspective of the abductor which, in this case, is brilliantly voiced with sinister edginess.

The song was written by Husker Du drummer Grant Hart and featured on their Metal Circus EP (1983)

The cover by Therapy? is featured on their 1995 album Infernal Love and was also released as a single by the band on 6th November of that year, 



Hey little girl wanna go for a ride ?
There's room and my wagon is parked right outside
We can cruise down Rober Street all night long
But I think I'll just rape you and kill you instead.

Diane Diane Diane
Diane Diane Diane

I hear there's a party at Lake Cove
It'll be much easier if I drove
We could check it out,we can go and see
Come on take a ride with me

Diane Diane Diane
Diane Diane Diane

Lay down together for a while
I'll put all your clothes in a nice neat little pile
You're the cutest girl I've ever seen in my life
But it's over now with my knife

Diane Diane Diane
Diane Diane Diane

THERAPY? HOMEPAGE

Saturday, January 09, 2016

A Thought On Karaoke.

Nobody gets it tighter than the karaoke singer and rightly so. As a member of the crowd it is your responsibility to commence heckling about 30 seconds into the song, regardless of how good or bad they may be, and continue the unprovoked verbal slaughtering with a relentless determination  to send the tuneless loon on a humiliating ride aboard the public shame train! But of course by the end of the night, rattling with reckless alcohol-fuelled stupidity, you will make an idiot of yourself by bounding onto the stage beside them, ignoring their attempts to carry on in spite of you trying to wrestle the mic from their grasp mid-song, bringing the entire performance to a sudden end as a scuffle breaks out and the DJ switches everything off!!! As if filling in the request slips all night in other people's names wasn't sabotage enough, eh!