This is a hell of a noisy and contorted release, but a quite brilliant, terrifying and hypnotizing one. And once again, Throatruiner Records give away the digital version for free, “name your price” and download/eventually buy the album or use the direct link from Mediafire – everything is there on the label’s Bandcamp page. We all love the free stuffs, but still, artists are also humans and have to fill up their refrigerators, have to pay their debts, rents and utilities, isn’t it? Not to mention the costs of playing music. And well, never thought about, don’t you? – running a record label, helping bands to go on and eventually break through might be done with love and passion, but still, it’s also a quite honorable job and it must be paid too. As I said before and I will keep on telling this: if we do not support the underground it will disappear eventually and we will be left exclusively with the so-called mainstream s*it delivered by the global corporations.
Throatruiner Records and other indie/DIY underground labels bring to the surface exciting and excellent bands as Comity are. Listen “The Journey Is Over Now” and buy the vinyl, nothing sounds like an authentic record spinning on your pick-up. Read more Comity – The Journey Is Over Now (2011)
rock
Dub Trio – IV (2011)
Their 2004 debut album “Exploring the Dangers of” was literally recorded as a live-dub experiment and the band managed to deliver their own unique interpretation of dub and push it further to the another level of an art form. DP – Dave Holmes (guitar & keyboards), Stu Brooks (bass & keyboards) and Joe Tomino (drums & Melodica) break down the walls between raggae, dub, electronica, rock, punk and heavy metal to bring to the surface their own powerful and breathing music.
Although I’m generally avoid any instrumental rock album because I consider them usually kind of meaningless and boring, Dub Trio have some kind of secret magic power, have that primal, ancient and natural force to keep your interest constantly high, to crush you down with their massive sound and expressive compositions. Read more Dub Trio – IV (2011)
Lou Reed and Metallica – Lulu (2011)
Metallica got a new lead singer or Mr. Lou Reed hired a metal band? This might be the clash of the titans, the collaboration of the millennium or a collision and disaster. The first sing released on YouTube, “The View”, in late September 2011, got up to date (and counting) 856,775 views from which 11,433 are dislikes and only 4,050 likes. One user wrote: “You’re know what I can’t wait for ? Willie Nelson and Slayer!!!!!!!!” Clash of the generations and styles? It’s kind of odd, after all these years and attempts of eliminate the genre limitations (in music I mean 👿 ), the audience seems to deliberately refuse any “violation” of the comfortable boundaries. I hear pretty much recently that idiograma “think outside of the box” while our parents, teachers, friends, politician, economists, priests and preachers, bosses and co-workers, the media, the internet (if someone consider it the closest person to him 😀 ), in less words, everybody and everything, pushing us back inside the box. The most obvious example is the Facebook. Instead taking advantage of the multitude of the internet (outside the box), most of the people are staying more and more captive exclusively on Facebook (inside the box). Talking with ex high-school lovers, growing sheep at virtual farms, read the news, giving likes to stranger’s cats or listening music, Facebook took over and for many becomes the internet itself, even further, the home and the family, the whole universe. Our feelings resume to giving – or not – likes superficially to “things” because we’re never leave that place, never dive beneath the surface. Any box is a prison and ladies and gentlemen, don’t matter what, I won’t imprisoning myself by free will ever! Read more Lou Reed and Metallica – Lulu (2011)
Tom Waits – Bad As Me (2011)
It’s been seven years since “Real Gone” (2004) and ladies and gentlemen, Tom Waits are back and he’s brutally fresh. “Chicago” is a noisy opening track with garage rock pulse and horn-fueled cabaret rock after-taste and the whole album flows glowing and pumping, it’s like a radiography of Wait’s whole career and his best moments projected into the future. If “alternative” and “avant-garde” rock actually means something, then Tom Waits makes sense. Nowadays nothing means anything and nothing make sense, except commercials and music is nothing, but ultimately additional accessory to our iPods. And this is the world we use to say we’re against, but we’re accept it. Tom Waits said sometimes ago: “Apparently, the highest compliment our culture grants artists nowadays is to be in an ad ideally, naked and purring on the hood of a new car”, and he added: “I have adamantly and repeatedly refused this dubious honor.”
There’s no room for artificial intellectual bullshit, for faking alternatives. If you don’t actually feel it, better… “Get Lost”. 😀 Read more Tom Waits – Bad As Me (2011)
Jane’s Addiction – The Great Escape Artist (2011)
Nothing’s shocking: Perry Farrell at age 52 is not that restless, rebellious rock and roll singer anymore as he was almost three decades ago when his band, Psi Com. metamorphosed into Jane’s Addiction. Original bass player and former member Eric Avery rejoined the band in 2008, but departing again in 2010, so he was replaced by Chris Chaney, after initially they worked for nine months on the new album with Velvet Revolver and former Guns’N’Roses bass player Duff McKagan. McKagan joined enthusiast and seems to left disappointed. Dave Sitek of TV on the Radio was brought in to writing and recording the album and the result is kind of TV on the Radio featuring Porno for Pyros – Farrell’s post Jane’s Addiction band between ’92-’98… Unfortunately. But it might work quite alright as a soundtrack for a movie about an aging rock star or lonesome mid-age unemployee.
Farrell said: “It’s a strange mixture of that post-punk Goth darkness that Jane’s had, with what’s going on today with groups like Muse and Radiohead. As much as I want to appease fans and make old Jane’s fans love me, I just can’t help myself from moving forward.” And “The Great Escape Artist” actually sounds like a toothless Jane’s Addiction lost into a cinematic post-rock soundscape with few sparking reminiscences of tasteless, so-called alternative rock cliches collected. Kind of exactly what against Jane’s Addiction was about. Minimalist and gloomy, Farrell seems to delivered a possible self-portrait and the portrait of the confused man caught in the midlife crises and lost in the strange and desperate times we’re living nowadays. Read more Jane’s Addiction – The Great Escape Artist (2011)
Magazine – No Thyself (2011)
Listening “No Thyself” it’s like a time capsule, a trip back to the late 70s, early 80s. And surprisingly, Magazine sounds fresh, this post-punk mixture with psychedelia still sounds authentically, have the right vibe and that particular glowing, deep groove. Once again, when everybody sweat to be more futuristic, more avant-garde and post-everything and post-whatever, the returning pioneers proves that some good ideas are more meaningful that the sophisticated sound, all the digital shit and eventually some fancy producer. I’m some freak nostalgic? Maybe, but I don’t really think so. I’m just sick of everybody sounds just the same. Sick of all those post, alternative and so-called core – actually fake plastics the industry lately delivered. Magazine are kind of dinosaur? Possibly, but while it seems we lost the direction, we might need them now more than ever. Read more Magazine – No Thyself (2011)
Steven Wilson – Grace For Drowning (2011)
Steven John Wilson is a self-taught, yet twice Grammy nominated producer, audio engineer, guitar and keyboard player, playing other instruments as and where required, including bass guitar, concert harp, hammer dulcimer and flute. He is involved in many bands and projects such as Altamont, Karma, No-Man, Incredible Expanding Mindfuck, Bass Communion, Blackfield and not at least he is best known as the founder, lead guitarist, singer and songwriter of progressive rock band Porcupine Tree. Wilson appears on several other albums by artist such as Mick Karn, Indigo Falls, Fish, Marillion, Richard Barbieri, Anja Garbarek, Opeth, Yoko Ono, Dream Theater, Jordan Rudess, Orphaned Land, Anathema among many others as musician, sound engineer or producer.
“Grace For Drowning” is Wilson’s second solo album released on September 26th, by Kscope Records. The special edition of the album is going to release on Blu-Ray video disc with the music playing in 5.1 surround sound and accompanying visuals and videos for each track, making it the first-ever rock album released primarily as a Blu-Ray video disc.
The album features contributions by artist such as Nic France on drums, Steve Hackett, Robert Fripp, Tony Levin, Nick Beggs and Trey Gunn on guitar, Theo Travis and Jordan Rudess, and some jazz musicians. Touring members will include Marco Minnemann on drums, Nick Beggs on bass, Aziz Ibrahim on guitar, Gary Husband on keyboards, and Theo Travis on flute and saxophone. Read more Steven Wilson – Grace For Drowning (2011)
Wednesday 13 – Calling All Corpses (2011)
“I Wanna Be… Cremated”. Sounds familiar? Well, if you’re into punk rock and The Ramones means something for you, it should.
Joseph Poole, better known as Wednesday 13 and mainly famous for his role as the frontman of the Murderdolls, are delivering his new solo material and it sounds exactly as the perfect blending of The Ramones and Alice Cooper. Horror punk? Eventually a twist of Misfits is mandatory and always part of the formula, but don’t take those horror things too seriously, this is dirty, good-old rock and roll and even the fake blood was replaced with humor. Just like “sedated” with “cremated”. 😀 Anyway, at the end we all gonna die, don’t really matter if we were good little boys and girls and avoided downloading this or that, isn’t it? Don’t looking for trouble: mp3 to mp3 and dust to dust! 😆 Read more Wednesday 13 – Calling All Corpses (2011)
Sebastian Bach – Kicking & Screaming (2011)
Bach is back. 43 years old, eventually heavier with a few pounds or “just” wiser, but still and stubbornly wild. Skid Row had sold 20 million albums worldwide in the beginning of the 90s and Bach was one of my favorite singers along Mike Patton and Devin Townsend (mainly for his brilliant vocal performance from Vai’s “Sex & Religion”). Bach was kicked out of the band in 1996 when he booked a show where Skid Row would have opened for KISS while the other band members told Bach that Skid Row was too big to be an opening act. Ironically enough, four years later, Skid Row was one of the opening acts for the 2000 Kiss Farewell Tour with new lead vocalist Johnny Solinger. About a future reunion with his formal band Bach recently said: he’s not “youth gone wild” any more.
Well, fortunately “Kicking & Screaming” sounds pretty wild and Bach seems to be the same energy full heavy metal singer who he ever was. Read more Sebastian Bach – Kicking & Screaming (2011)
The Duke Spirit – Bruiser (2011)
Alternative rock. It might sound boring, but The Duke Spirit seems to find their own way to blending the sound of the alternative noise rock/garage bands both with psychedelia and rock and roll and as bonus they also added a smooth taste of R&B, soul and Motown. The result is something like a scratchy and raw collision between The White Stripes and Blondie. Old obsessions dies slowly, still, almost every woman singer wants to be the next Debbie Harry or dreaming about becoming the next Alison Mosshart. And well, Liela Moss actually do a great job.
“Bruiser” is simultaneously honey and dust, raw rock and bitter-sweet melancholy. Read more The Duke Spirit – Bruiser (2011)
