Don't discount the dollar bins. This is an album I've seen lurking in cutout bins everywhere across North America, but it's one that I like a lot and have gotten a lot of mileage out of over the years. Slow, downtrodden alt-country with a singer who creaks and croaks with a love-it-or-hate-it voice. Great stuff.
Behind Closed Doors were part of the whole Moss Icon - Universal Order of Armageddon - Convocation Of... lineage. Pretty sure they shared members with some or all of those bands, can't remember for sure. They released this one-sided LP on Vermiform and then disappeared forever. It's quite an excellent slab, firmly in the vein of the above-mentioned bands but with an extra dose of Botch-like aggression. Recommended!
Before they released DOOM CULT, which I only semi-jokingly refer to as "the only good album ever made", these New Zealanders released this EP of bestial violence that was damn near as good as DOOM CULT. This is what I wish CONQUEROR sounded like, great though they are.
I think my best "Record Store Day" score was the huge stack of plastic LP sleeves that I snagged out of the free bin somewhere. Sleeving all those unsleeved records is one of those things that you always say you'll get around to, but you secretly know that you'll never do it. Now... well I'll get to it someday at least. Probably.
Did you ever get a grip of records you were excited to get, but some random jam that you threw in as an afterthought ended up stealing the show? That's what this 7" did to me. What a rager! Divisions were from Florida and only released this 7" and a couple of tapes. Ripping thrashy hardcore that, while the playing is tight, has so much furious energy that it feels like it could careen out of control at any second. There's also just a touch of real Black Metal influence in their visual and musical aesthetics, a claim which many make but very few honestly back up.
So you're seeing the band's name and the album cover and you're thinking "oh boy, this is gonna be a weird one", and you're absolutely right. What are these guys doing? This shifts madly and without warning from angular indie rock to bizarro '70s prog to free jazz freakouts and back again. It's like Dilute on a crazy bender jamming with Magma and Archie Shepp. This isn't for everybody; I haven't decided for certain whether it's even for me. But it is definitely interesting, so here you go.
Bluesy, acid-drenched psych rock that groooooves and burns and jams across the plains and over the horizon, dig? This compiles the band's material from 1973 - 1976. I want to listen to this on a highway in the desert.
Yeeeeeah, it's finally here! New LP from these German monsters. This finds them expanding their sound a little bit from the demo and the split 7" but it's still the brutal, grinding hardcore you'd expect. Head on down to IFB Records and pick one up before they disappear.
I don't really know much of anything about Japanese hardcore, but I'm interested in the people that are really into it. When I hear people talk about Gai flexis and Confuse singles, I'm all ears even though the music isn't really to my taste. Maybe that why I snagged this 7" from Morpheme, a band of Bay Area ragers who really wish they were Japanese, right down to the singing in the language. It's a burly little EP, I love the energy and I love the massive delay on the vocals. Like I say, I'm not the best person to try and compare it to things. I'm pretty sure they like Bastard and Gauze or something like that, but it obviously goes way deeper. Check it!
A classic. Branca was operating in the "no wave" scene in the late '70s but by the time of this 1981 release he had already transcended anything else that came out of it. This record features four guitars, bass and drums weaving sinuously around each other with metallic, menacing machinelike clamorings giving way to lusher, broader more cinematic fare. If you have any doubts whatsoever, the monolithic title track will quell them. If you're into Sonic Youth, Lee Ranaldo plays guitar on this record. If you're into GYBE, they ripped a couple parts of this record off pretty much note for note. Having heard it, who could blame them?
