ABOLISH ALL YOUR IGNORANT THOUGHTS NOW !

Stick this in your pipe and smoke it. There is so much shit going on in the world, especially my world, right now; people fighting for what we assumed too long to be our given rights and getting tear gassed. Students on strike because they've learned something from school and those that haven't opposing to keep blindly feeding into the business model that will make our Universities into men-in-suits-with-briefcases factories and leave the concept of class mobility and personal betterment through public education in the dust. We need this kind of apocalyptic idealism right now, or I do anyways. Take a bite out of that Crunchy Bar guitar tone and the bludgeoning drum machine gun precision of Mick Harris, who bashed buckets on Scum the very same year this came out. Be confused by the 20sec-1min tributes to the band's favourite cartoon cat and friends. Be astonished by the nihilistic brutality that accompanies them. Look into your nuclear crystal ball and see the end times. Abolish all your ignorant thoughts now!

Uninformed

Jungle Love

This comes as a reminder that even on Valentine's Heavy Shit still goes down. Similarly this disc would seem to have come as reminder to the world in '61 that Heavy Shit still goes down in jazz. With the move towards the public adoption of jazz as a foundation of North American cultural identity by the end of the '50s, all but the acknowledgement of the continuing opression of its originators had been accepted into mainstream (read: white) media. This, no doubt, posed itself as a challenge to those great minds of jazz to push the extremely progressive idiom into the stratosphere of experiential composition and performance. No group could be more apt to do this than this colossal meeting of minds, the original Power Violence power trio. As with much of the rest of their catalogue, Duke and Chaz set about recontextualizing and reconfiguring the older musical forms from which jazz sprung with the disintegration of post/hard-bop as backdrop. Max goes about doing what he does best: drop innovative rhythm bombs over everything. The opening drum lick of the title track(and track in its entirety) was arguably the most brutal moment in jazz at that point. What makes this record destructively brilliant is that none of these musical muscles hold back whatsoever. The full-on audio assault of the album's rockers as well as the floating serenity of the ballads are all treated with the same tastefully immersed participation (or lack thereof) of each musician featured here. Money Jungle is an atmospheric stew of the physical substances of jazz's underbelly - hooch, prostitutes, switchblades, drug money, session joints - distilled into a freely interpretive and rhythmically liberated landscape.

DIG

Canadian Metal Classics Pt. 4 - Winter Metal

It is that magical time of year when the thick, fluffy head of condensation spills from the heavens and covers my part of the world. It is a time of howling winds, hail that whips the earth like chains and engines stalling as their drivers accelerate into white death. It is the season where nature and technology alike go to die. What better mascot could it have than some spikey, spaghetti-mopped, webbed-mouthed, killing technology wielding stormtrooper???! And what better sound track than one of Canada's earliest contributions to international stereo grimness. Voivod are, to me, our Celtic Frost or Venom. From the get go, with this debut, they set about blurring the jagged lines of speed, thrash and heavy metal and punk. Owing about as much to Charged GBH or D.O.A. as Hellhammer or Slayer, Voivod were one of those fearless acts, like CF, who knew that one could crush just as easily at sludgey, slothful tempos as blazing fast ones. It is their similarly idiosyncratic style to the Frost's, which sacrifices no heaviness in maintaining a chilling atmosphere throughout, that set Voivod apart upon release of this criminally underacknowledged record and eventually gained them international appreciation. From the icey church bell hits that open the album to the ashen desolation of closer Nuclear War, War and Pain is a long, blackened trudge through Quebec winter replete with hulking snow drifts of doomy riffs and frigid frenzies of guitar violence at whirlwind tempos. Easily one of the most important records to the development of Thrash, Black and Death Metal as well as Crust Punk, this demands your worship. R.I.P. Piggy, forever.

Your Sky is Black Today

GET ON YOUR KNEES AND WORSHIP, WORSHIP, WORSHIP

Don't let some philosophizing USBM bull-shit artist sweet talk their way into your studded leathers with their false second-wave Scandinavian scholasticism. Don't be fooled when they expound about how their band's bloated drumming, ooey gooey choclate-chip guitar tone and cookie-cutter shrieks are really some existential distillation of "true Norwegian black metal". Don't let them get away with idiotically professing "De Mysteriis Dom Satanas is the best thing Attila ever did". Instead put this on and watch them cringe at the acoustic intros, the keyboard bridges and major-scale riffs played over top thrashing proto-blast gallops in fluctuating tempos. Then watch the stupid blank look they get when they ask "who is this?" and you tell them it's Tormentor, Attila's first band, and their 1988 debut Anno Domini. It is the only CD Mayhem sold on their 2007 North American tour when you had yourself entranced by the dark master himself, hypnotizing you with a noose from the stage and convincing you that any evil command he made of you, you would follow. Apparently Mayhem are on tour again. Go see them, if not for the aforementioned experience then at least to get yourself a physical copy of this under-praised masterpiece of first wave black metal. This is beyond transcendence, this is perfection.

Beyond

Canadian Metal Classics Pt. 3

Alright, so it would seem that much more metal is in order this month as we didn't get to cover that much in the past while and I'm sure many of you have catching up to do, especially when it comes to the underappreciated and essential contributions that my country made to the international scene in the '80s. Today we have a hacked up corpse of cross-genre mutilation a la Sacrifice and their 1985 debut Torment In Fire. This is probably one of the most porgressive releases of its day, managing to seamlessly weave together the unhinged chaos of later speed metal, the caveman destruction of early death metal and frenetic thrash metal riffing, all together with an HC-informed "we don't give a fuck" approach. Sacrifice's sheer disregard for metal's growing conformity to subgenre stereotypes at the time makes them indispensible in the carving of the jagged void from which later death metal and second wave black metal would spew forth. In many senses this is to me one of the very first Black/Thrash/Death records as it so liberally blurs it's wide range of influences. One facet that literally screams this are Urbinati's completely ludicrous vocals. Along with an audible Tom Araya in his raspy rapid-fire verse delivery, we can hear one of the first death growls developing in some songs (such as 'Burned at the Stake') while it is his high-pitched shreiks that clearly place Rob in a far darker universe from us. Perhaps the most provocatively morbid sounds suggested on this record are those of the cacophonous rhythm section who not only bring a scraping and frantic punk feel to the performances but also seem to foreshadow the militaristic rhythms found in later Canadian 'War metal' acts like Revenge and Conqueror. See the openings to songs such as "Homicidal Breath" and "Infernal Visions" or the bridge of "Necronomicon" for examples of this. While these are only suggestions of the blackened insanity that my country would unleash unto the world in the coming decades, you will see the aesthetic even further developed in a later post of this retrospective series. But for now, dim the lights, draw the pentagram in chalk on the floor, grab a beer and bang your head as you're possessed by this piece of killer-canuck carnage!
  

 TURN IN YOUR GRAVE

FUCK WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM

Venom's debut shook the foundations of rock n roll so violently the musical idiom has never been then same since. All ascension to the realm of high art for this genre and culture was lost, at least for a time, when these swineherdly blokes rolled on the scene with blown amps, bad hair and reeking of Newcastle Brown Ale. What makes this record so compellingly influential is it's paradoxes: a band of untrained musicians trying to make rock n roll while satirizing occultism giving birth to a genre of intentionally untrained musicians trying to make occult-inspired walls of noise. This is indeed the truest of black metal albums because it can't possibly appeal to anyone who is looking to it for artistic merit. Or can it? Either way I recommend you put this on  tonight and crank it up when some friends come over and see how long it takes for conversation to turn to "what is this fucking shit we're listening to?" then drink 40s until no one wants to listen to anything else.

 Poisoned!

Canadian Metal Classics Pt. 2

Ok, so I am posting this to grab y'all's attention for BIG JESUS TRASH CAN's CANADIAN METAL NIGHT, TONITE ON 89.5 CIUT.FM, WITCHING HOUR TO 2AM; an in-depth retrospective of Canada's historic and present thriving metal scenes.

Slaughter were a 1980s Death/Thrash Metal band from Toronto, ON Canada, OK? NOT an American Glam Rock shit show of cocaine indulgence. Slaughter, in a very first-wave death metal visionary way, set out to create the loudest most destructive skull-cracking bludgeon ever to come from three dudes in a basement in Toronto, at the time. They succeeded, and they did it without Evil Chuck Schuldiner, who they kicked out of the band mere months before recording this little piece of crushing sonic sludge. In '86 these bloodthirsty canucks entered the studio with Brian "Rubbish" Taylor, TO punk vet and premier Ontario thrash record engineer, and carved out a solid slab of death punk destruction to lay in the foundation of brutal musick. The end product is a tour de force in sheer insanity and blistering speed; dense, lumbering layers of guitar ooze and spine-shattering percussive rumblings. Strappado, like the medieval torture from which it's name comes and cover depicts, is a twistedly primitive indulgence in pain. There is nothing methodical about Slaughter's approach to metal. The utter simplicity but effectiveness of the half-speed jackhammer drums in Fuck Of Death sort of sum it all up: it's about raw intensity and catharsis. This kind of testosterone fueled reckless noise is hard to come by these days in metal and may have purely been the result of anxious and frustrated teens not hearing the macabre in music that they saw in the world. In a day and age where everyone is looking for something old and untapped to copy, sit back, drink a two four and bang your motherfuckin head to this timeless original!

OneTwoFuckYou!

Canadian Metal Classics Pt. 1

Inspired by a recent Cosmic Hearse post, I've decided that its totally necessary that I submit to my one nationalist passion and wax boneheaded on the essential contributions my homeland has made to the development of extreme metal.
EVIL INVADERS

While not the first band to emerge from the Great White to make a dent in North American steel, Razor seems a great place to start when documenting historic Canadian Metal.  It is their sophomore effort Evil Invaders that holds a very special place in my heart. Upon first hearing the opening chords to the title track - whilst being mystified by the footage of fist pumping hosers in the music vid - I fell deeply in love with these Guelphians' Ontarian bludgeon. This album transports me to a time when leather-clad, poofy-haired teens braved their town's cold, bare streets to warm-up by headbanging arm in arm to the fiery sonic assault of their local Speed Merchants. Razor, on this record, ignites that warm and cold feeling of metallic brotherhood in any thrash maniac. From Stace's opening "Up your ass, right here, right now!!!" to Iron Hammer's heartfelt pledge of keeping metal alive and the declaration that the "Speed Merchants live for pleasure, live for pain, live for understanding and the sparks to start the flame" one can hear the honesty, authenticity and dedication with which Razor set out on a path of aural and physical destruction here. Guitars as graceful as meat-cleavers, drums soothing like jackhammers and Stace's shrieks soaring over it all, Evil Invaders weighs in with nearly as much heart and soul as muscle and metal. Also, is that not the best air-brushed album cover ever? 

THRASH!

 Oh, and here's some post-Stace Mclaren insanity fer ya!