Charger

Having temporarily relocated to the other side of the world, leaving all my precious CDs far behind me, I've been experiencing sinister foreign radio stations as I've pootled about in a variety of terrible cars with no ipod connectivity.  This has brought me to the same conclusion I reached many years ago in my homeland; radio is what you listen to when you don't really like music enough to care what you listen to.

I do like music enough to care what I listen to, even if it might occasionally seem to the casual observer to be an earful of foetid shit.  So I've spent the past few weeks burning shiny round mixtapes on my laptop, trying to put together some (relatively) coherent playlists.  In doing so I have discovered that a) I can put together some pretty fine easy listening compilations, b) I don't own nearly enough jazz funk, and c) there are certain bands that I struggle with when it comes to making shiny round mixtapes.  Charger are one such band.  The problem I have is that when I try to pick the best Charger songs to put onto the shiny round mixtape, I eventually come to the conclusion that the best Charger song is ALL OF THE CHARGER SONGS.

The extent to which they clearly don't give a single fuck about anything is evident both in the violently uncaring sludgtality of their vaguely musical output, and also in the way in which they have deftly avoided any sort of tangible success or recognition in the ten years or so that they have been retching up their completely inhuman racket.

They are the perfect antidote to the sort of musical apathy that makes commercial radio a viable proposition; because no matter how little you like music, Charger like you even less.

Fuzzbastards.







Website: http://www.fuzzbastards.com/
Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/charger
Facebook: nope
Wikipedia: nope

Swarm Of The Lotus

They sound like the sort of band that would be fronted by Blackout, the badass Decepticon that transforms into a helicopter and totally fucks up a US military base in the movie.  This is not least because the double-bass drumming on their first record sounds like the blades of a Sikorsky Pave Low helicopter ploughing through a field filled with fat people.


Which is all just another way of saying that I don't know a single useful fact about this band, reducing this whole blog-farce to an exercise in stringing together words and phrases like bludgeoning, throat shredding, mammoth riffpocalypse, filthy grind bastards and ploughing through a field filled with fat people.


Yeah, I reckon that'll do it.











Website: nope
Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/swarmofthelotus
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Swarm-of-the-Lotus/318795770789
Wikipedia: nope

All Pigs Must Die

All Pigs Must Die are a band composed of fellows that play in other bands. The traditional term for such an outfit is supergroup.

The trouble with this term is that it kind of has an all-stars vibe to it; there is an implication that each of the aforementioned fellows is already a world famous virtuoso in his own right, and their combining of talents is the kind of earth-shattering event foretold in Sumatran prophecies and heralded by the death of planets.

Which is almost bang on, except that pretty much no-one has ever heard of the bands that these guys usually play in (Converge, The Hope Conspiracy and Bloodhorse). So supergroup perhaps isn't quite right...

But mundanegroup makes them sound kinda boring, splendidgroup sounds sarcastic and prettycoolgroup is a bit non-committal.

I'm going to go with fuckingsavagefacepeelinghardcoremergeforthekillgroup.

Website: http://shirtsanddestroy.com/all_pigs_must_die

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/allpigsmustdie

Wikipedia: nope

Napalm Death

I'll admit, there have been times when I have questioned why I need more than one Napalm Death record on my shelf. I mean, it's not like they all sound identical; but they do all achieve much the same thing. They reduce your skull to fucking ash. Which is nice.

But that's not the point. The point is, I saw these guys play last week and they were awesome. After a somewhat slightly stressful week at work, the brain flush effect of having every conscious thought eradicated by getting smashed about by like minded thugs whilst savage Brummie death grind comes blasting out of the speakers at around a bazillion dB was really just the ticket.

I don't care that it mostly all sounds the same. I don't care that, like the Sugababes, Napalm Death is band that contains none of its original founder members. I don't care that Napalm Death are, much like myself, old enough to know better.

Napalm Death rule.

Website: http://www.napalmdeath.org/

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/napalmdeath

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napalm_Death

Iron Monkey

I popped into my local second hand record shop the other day. I only went in to pick up an old Sonic Youth record I spotted the previous weekend, but figured that since I was there I might as well have a bit of a poke around...

A few hours later I left with the Sonic Youth record, plus nine others - one of which was the eponymous debut from these guys.

I now find myself wondering how the hell I managed for so long without such unutterable filth in my life. I knew of Iron Monkey by reputation; and much like the mighty Botch, I think I first heard of them when I read mournful articles about their dissolution.

They are now of course long defunct; and having only recently popped my Iron Monkey cherry, there's not a whole lot I can tell you about them. It's all very raw, very sludgy and very noisy; and the world is probably a far safer place without it.

Website: http://www.earache.com/bands/iron_monkey/iron_monkey.html

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/survivaloftheshittest

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Monkey_(band)

Humanfly

These guys were first support for earthtone9 last fortnight. It was the first I'd ever heard of them, but they were good enough that I bought their new record (Darker Later) and then played it more or less non-stop for a week.

It kicks arse.

And I don't know a single other thing about them.

If you like your grind with a thick doomy crust, then you should definitely check these jerks out.

Website: http://totalprog.bigcartel.com/

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/humanfly

Wikipedia: nope

Chronicles of Adam West

Actually, this was the greatest band in the world last week. For a variety of reasons, life outside of the interwebs has been somewhat shambolic, frantic and prone to exploding a bit of late.

Hence Chronicles of Adam West, who were shambolic, frantic and prone to exploding a bit - right up until the point that they exploded a bit. As far as I can tell they only recorded one short EP before calling it quits for reasons that I can't be bothered to research. The bio on their myspace page reads simply "WE'RE DEAD".

Just for your information, the following live performance is almost exactly how they sound on record. Which probably goes some way to explaining way the cast of Glee haven't quite around to raping it yet.

Website: nope

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/coaw

Wikipedia: nope

Mistress

I only got to see these filthy Brummie grind-mongers once, some years ago in Bath. The enduring memories of that gig are;

1. The lead singer of one of the support bands accusing everyone in the audience of being "space dockers"
2. My friend Metal Terry showing everyone how a real man beats down, and breaking some poor kid's nose in the process
3. Nothing else

Mistress called it quits a few years ago, after a long and glittering career playing venues that would shut down almost immediately afterwards and releasing records that almost no-one liked/bought.

The closest they came to commercial mainstream success was when they appeared on a Never Mind The Buzzcocks Christmas special, performing a variety of Christmas classics in a death metal style.

There were no survivors.

Website: nope

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/mistress666

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistress_(band)

Richard Georg Strauss

Well, not really. I generally find classical works to be a bit meh, with the exception of some of the more doom-laden stuff like Wagner and Holst; and even then, it's not anything that I would generally choose to listen to.

But this week, in between feverish bouts of engineering coursework and the occasional mild panic attack, I've been somewhat slightly obsessed with his "tone poem" Also Sprach Zarathustra and it's many cover versions.

Also Sprach Zarathustra is more commonly known as The Music From 2001: A Space Odyssey. For reference, here is what it should sound like.

Even for an uncultured philistine such as myself, it's hard to deny that it's a pretty powerful piece of work. The first version of it that I ever owned was in fact far more appropriate for an uncultured philistine such as myself; it was by Toadliquor, a filthy doom/sludge/grind outfit that I had never heard of and know almost nothing about. The disc came as a freebie bundled in with some other stuff I got from the good people at Southern Records - thanks chaps.

Some years ago, my private braincare specialist/local smutmonger/friend Tim pointed me in the direction of this Deodato Funk Odyssey version from an album full of lounge covers of film soundtracks. Gotta love a bit of funk.

But I think my favourite version is this next one, on account of the sheer eye-swivelling lunacy of the concept.

It's by the Portsmouth Sinfonia, an orchestra for which the entrance requirements were that players either had to be non-musicians, or play an instrument that was completely new to them.

It shows, I think.

Website: http://www.richardstrauss.at/html_e/17_willkommen/0fs_index.html

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/straussoperas

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Strauss

Pig Destroyer

Beauty is, musically speaking, in the ear of the beholder. Yet even I find it hard to find nice things to say about Pig Destroyer.

Brutal, fast, ugly. That's about it really.

But you cannot deny that they have a great name.

Also, nothing compares to the sighs of despair I hear when I tell my friends that I've bought a new Pig Destroyer record.

Website: http://www.relapse.com/artist/artist.aspx?ArtistID=10081

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/therealpigdestroyer

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_Destroyer