TOO MUCH FUCKIN VUH

LOL @ this picture

I was re-watching Herzog's Nosferatu (yes, AGAIN) just the other night, and, once again, I was completely bowled over not just by the dismal/beautiful cinematography and natural wonder of the whole goddamn thing, but by the creepy, hypnotic score contributed by everyone's favorite Teutonic prog-jockeys Popol Vuh. As usual, brief ponderance morphed into lingering obsession, and today, I present you with two more droning Vuh/Herzog collabos, namely 1972's Aguirre, The Wrath of God and 1982's Fitzcarraldo. If you are looking to be utterly bummed/mind-blown by either a movie or a movie soundtrack, I can heartily suggest each of these entries--both films are super crushing in a depressive yet visually stunning way, and the swirling Vuh tapestries which accompany them are their perfect audio marriage.
Forget what you know about these two flicks. Forget Klaus Kinski completely losing his shit and driving everyone on set nuts with each successive role. Forget Herzog accidentally killing off, like, half of his crew with each movie he made from 1970-1985. Forget the fucking critical acclaim and forget the jungle diseases and forget that episode of Metalocalypse where they go all "Dethcarraldo" on the Amazonian natives.
Just soak in the dark, bummer vibes Popol Vuh is laying down for you on this rainy Tuesday afternoon, and thank sweet, sweet Odin that Hollywood still hasn't started on Aguirre 2: Pizarro's Revenge (starring Tom Hanks!) just yet... Nor Fitzcarraldo, Shot In 3D!
Some things are still sacred.


AGUIRRE OST (1972)

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FITZCARRALDO OST (1982)

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Purchase HERE



Also, LOL @ guy playing one ride cymbal

Popol Vuh Last.FM

Van Der Graaf - Vital (1978)

What the fuck is the matter with people? One of the best bands of the prog era make one of the heaviest live albums ever and the critics at the time completely shit on it so it remains in obscurity forever. Stupid! Let us not forget that these are the same critics that were telling us how worthless Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin were all the while touting the genius of The J. Geils Band and Toto. Fucking puke.

Van Der Graaf Generator were difficult to most listeners. They are not "tight" in the way King Crimson or Genesis are known for. They were way more punk and experimental in their approach to "progressive" music of the time. Jazz influenced in theory only, not in the academic way, say, Henry Cow or Gentle Giant were. There are no frolicking elves and faeries in Van Der Graaf music. This is why they rock a thousand times more than their peers.

Vital is the only official live album of the 70s released by the mighty Van Der Graaf (they dropped the Generator by this time) and it is a fucking ripper. Not ripping in the sense of Thin Lizzy - Live and Dangerous per se, but more in the way of Sleep's Holy Mountain or something. Singer/main songwriter/keyboardist Peter Hammill is brilliant at making music that's both beautiful and horrific at once and he honed that skill perfectly within the group of insanely talented musicians in VDGG. This release highlights my favorite aspects of their music. The contrast between Hammill's angelic and demonic vocals, disgustingly distorted thumping bass, intense drumming and David Jackson's sax. Yes sax. Don't be scurred. It works.

This is prog at it's best. It's absolutely madness. Play loud.

download here


Evil

Osanna - L'uomo (1971)

Hey, all. I'm going to take over Prog Blog Wednesday for a while so if you hate bloated 70s rock music or my writing STAY AWAY ON HUMP DAY. Minimal metal will be discussed in these pieces as prog metal is usually shit and brings up images of six string basses and Dream Theatre shirts that I would rather forget existed. There are some kind of cool bands doing the 70s thing now like Danava and Titan, but they also come off as a bit false to me. Fashion haircuts and tight jeans included. I don't know. If I'm wrong please let me know and if there is some great current prog metal I am happy to be schooled.

Today I bring you the first record by beloved Italian prog band Osanna. This thing "rocks" more than it takes you on a magical journey through a Roger Dean painted landscape (this is a good thing). Osanna were awesome. They had a flute player and they wore corpse paint. The riffs are rad and the drumming is intense. Here's a video of them being all black metal-y.

Pretty cool! But yeah they mystical quality of video is kind of ruined by the excavating equipment. lol

Download here

Frippin' Out Part 2 - After Crimson

Robert Fripp disbanded King Crimson the first time in 1974 after making an ambient record with Brian Eno called No Pussyfooting. I have to assume the name of said record is in reference to Eno and Fripp's serious appetite for groupie strange. No shit. Check out this excerpt from a 1973 column in the NME by Ian MacDonald (who was in KC and fucking FOREIGNER!).

Excerpt from Robert Fripp: The Sexual Athlete

"What was the best lay you ever had?"

Fripp stroked his chin, reflectively. "There are about four chicks involved in that – not, in this case, simultaneously. I have to admit. However, return with me if you will to my earliest days as a rock musician. I used to get complaints from Greg (Lake). Not directly, but I used to hear about them.

"You see, we shared this flat which was basically one room divided into two by a thin cardboard screen. It was, as you can imagine, not fit to live in. Anyway, Greg used to complain about the gasps and screams coming from my side of the partition and, I must admit, his women used to get on my nerves too. No comment on Gregory, just his women – but I decided to move out.

"The ensuing period of my homelessness in 1969 was one of the most rewarding of my life. I was continually thrown on the mercies and generosities of tender maidens. Oh those lovely situations. It was quite awful in one way – but quite beautiful in another."

...

"Of course, when one is young one has all these delusions of being the great stud and one is not interested in a harmonious relationship of giving and taking. But, I'm happy to say, those days for me are now long past and I have spent many fulfilling hours, even on this very lawn upon which I now recline, not only copulating but involved in various other activities.

"In fact I was lying here naked one day, a young lady in attendance, when my next-door neighbour, the chairman of the Rural District Council, popped his head over yonder hedge to inform me that I had Dutch Elm Disease.

"But America is the place for numbers really. We've just done all the sunshine areas. Now sunshine, what ever it does to anyone else, has the most alarming repercussions within me. Things happen to my body. I undergo chemical changes.

"I find myself drooling, my tongue hanging out, my mouth snapping together involuntarily, twitchings – obsessive thoughts – the lewd imagination develops.

"In fact, I've never seen so many delightful young bodies, both quantity and quality, within such a short space of time as the last month in America. I was overwhelmed. By the end of the tour, I came back unfit for anything, completely exhausted on every level of my being. Oh! Oh!

"Nowadays I say to the rest of the lads: Take my name off the list, lads, put me on the reserve list – only to be called up in dire emergency. Then, after an afternoon in the sun by a swimming-pool with all these young bodies hanging in and out of bikinis, I say: Lads, you've got to put me back on the list. And I'll be called up to action. Oh! Oh! The battles that are fought throughout the Holiday-Inns of America! Delightful."

...

AND ENO? What of the man that the groupies of three continents have come to know as The Refreshing Experience?

"Yes," nods Fripp, his glazed expression returning. "We're both incorrigible womanizers, both wonderful examples of young Taurian virility. It may interest you to see a certain picture which will be the cover for our joint recording effort, The Transcendental Music Corporation, featuring us both in a state of undress.

"We were intending to have with us certain similarly unclad females – but, on reflection, decided that this was but a feeble excuse to gaze upon the works of the creator made manifest in the flesh.

"So we decided that it was a far nicer idea to have Eno and myself in the nude as a small way of saying thank you to those ladies who have done what they can in the past to enable us to develop as men – and, hopefully, as an invitation to all those ladies in the future who'd like to help us develop even further."

Sheesh. Only a dandy UK bro could talk about getting poon in such a dull flowery way!

So Eno and Fripp fuck lots of groupies, do lots of drugs, invent crazy tape looping machines and create a method of sound manipulation now known as Frippertronics that is so important to the evolution of electronic and ambient music that it, yes, has it's own Wiki page.

Bob breaks down Frippertronics

Eno and Fripp release one more ambient album called Evening Sun that is really good and you should listen to it. 1977 was a big year as Fripp then moves to New York's Hells Kitchen, starts hanging with the punx, plays guitar on Bowie's Heroes to much acclaim, and produces and plays on albums for Peter Gabriel and Daryl Hall. Yes, that Daryl Hall. From the Oates and Hall Rock n Soul Revue. These two albums along with his own solo release "Exposure" have come to be known as "The NYC Trilogy" and it's some of my favorite music ever made. Especially Hall's Sacred Songs so let's talk about that first.

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First, It should be known that this album was recorded in 1977 but not released until 1980 due to RCA claiming it being "not commercial." Sacred Songs starts normal enough. Glammy 70s soul in the style of Bowie with those signature Hall & Oates harmonies that we all have grown up to love (or hate) so well. But something really weird happens halfway through track 3. The album is not normal anymore. Something alien occurs. Something takes it over and brings it to some other-worldly level of heaviness, beauty and weird that is ultra rare in music nowadays. Was it due to the undeniable influence majik and the occult had on the recording and writing process?

From Wiki:

Both the lyrics and musical sounds of Sacred Songs reflected Hall's personal philosophy. The lyrical content alludes to some of Hall's interests in esoteric magic (or "magick" as it is sometimes spelled). Rock music author Timothy White interviewed Hall for the book Rock Lives. In that interview Hall indicated that in 1974 he began a serious study of esoteric spirituality reading books on topics like the cabala, the ancient Celts, and the traditions of the Druids. He also became interested in the life and beliefs of Aleister Crowley. Crowley coined the concept of Thelema, magick concerned with harnessing the power of the imagination and willpower to effect changes in consciousness and in the material universe. For example the album track "Without Tears" is based on Crowley's book Magick Without Tears (published in 1973).

Fripp shared similar interests in mysticism; he had studied with John G. Bennett, a disciple of G. I. Gurdjieff.

These dudes were really mucking about with the majik for this album and it shows.

Download

Peter Gabriel's 1978 self-titled second album, known to fans as "Scratch," was considered the second part of the trilogy. With its heavy use of Fippertronics throughout, the album finds the former Genesis front man finding his way to that dark, paranoid sound he mindfucked us with throughout the 80s. Highly underrated and unpopular among the public, the record has a super raw production style in the vein of King Crimson's Red but with Larry Fast playing wacked out synths. Gabriel himself has dismissed the album as dry and unimaginative but I beg to differ. Lots of jams on this sucka.

Download

Part three is Fripp's own 1979 solo album Exposure. This monster is essential in any progger dork's library. Featuring Hall and Gabriel on vocals (PG's version of Here Comes The Flood on here is absolutely fucking beautiful) as well as Van Der Graaf Generator's Peter Hamill. I've included the original demos too. Lucky you! Sonically brutal and gorgeous at the same time, Exposure has some songs that could be found on the previous albums of the trilogy but with "improved" production and performance.

PG destroy's on the 1979 Kate Bush Christmas Special

--

Oh! Legendary noize terrorist Genesis P-Orridge is going to be on Illogical Contraption tomorrow night! Check out Cobra's in-depth write up on Gen here. I'll be taping an interview with her tomorrow afternoon so if you have any questions you want me to ask post them in the comments please!

Listen live tomorrow night 10pm-Midnight Pacific time on FCCFREERADIO.com in studio 1a! Or grab the podcast on iTunes.

Frippin' Out Part 1 - Before Crimson

Warning: This post contains no metal and barely any prog.

Another Warning: I HATE whimsical boopty doopty Black Adder-Downton Abbey-Harry Potter British school boy BULLSHIT but this shit fuckin' rules.

It would be pretty lame to make a King Crimson megapost on Ill Con, especially in light of their recent battles with Spotify. Every dork on the internet knows and loves KC. You would be hard pressed to find a techy guitar player that doesn't worship Red and I know I've fallen into a YouTube rabbit hole or 3 watching old Crimson footage. So hey let's not be lame, let's be awesome and post these pre-Crimson all-killer-no-filler little known recordings by one of the greatest psychedelic rock outfits ever: Giles, Giles and Fripp.

Their first and only release, 1968's "The Cheerful Insanity Of..." is exactly that. Totally drugged out, blissful, trippy and silly. A bit Bonzo Dog Band, a little Beach Boys, A LOT of Monty Python, all Fripp'd out with his jazzy shreds all over. Just a complete awesome (non-brutal) listen.

here

I'm not going to get into a whole bio and life story on these guys because British people are hella boring. Basically these two bros (actual brothers) wrote a buncha songs and needed a singer and keyboard player. They took out an ad and this awesome guitar player that couldn't sing answered instead. They let him live with them and proceeded to produce a ton of home demos. Their demos kicked so much ass that they got a record deal and put out that thing I just posted up there ^^. These demos circulated in the underground prog dork circles for years and now I present to you THE BRONDESBURY TAPES for your listening pleasure. I like these a lot. Better than the actual album.

here

These songs are pretty much the polar opposite of the cold, bleak paranoia one feels when listening to early KC. Some say this has a lot to do with the poor reception/sales of "The Cheerful Insanity Of..." Fripp was essentially beaten down by the music industry his first go 'round. A lot of that negative energy was channeled into his new band a year later and is one of the reasons those first albums are so fucking magical.

Next time: PART 2 - After Crimson! The NYC Trilogy and lots of cocaine with Eno and Bowie!

WHAT'S THE STORY, WISHBONE?

COOL STORY BRO.

Too much fucking metal on IllCon these days. Anyone remember Prog Blog Wednesdays? Fuckin' A. That shit was chill as fuck. I think everyone just needs to light up a giant hooter and tune in to some of this shit:



"Metal". Psshhht.


WISHBONE ASH (1970)

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Purchase HERE


PILGRIMAGE (1971)

Download HERE
Purchase HERE


ARGUS (1972)

Download HERE
Purchase HERE

Website/Last.FM

PS: Did you idiots know that Stephen Hawking himself visited Illogical Contraption Radio last Friday? Or that he was chair-pitting at an Anal Cunt concert at Gilman in '88? Get caught up:



Almost as good as that time Michael Dorn called in, right?

CADUCITY - THE WEILIAON WIELDER QUEST (1995)

1: Caducity come from Belgium, home of the almighty Univers Zero.
2: Caducity blend the seemingly disparate but ultimately IC-friendly elements of epic fantasy and proto-tech mid-90's death metal, sort of like the music of 1993 Cryptopsy violently sodomizing the mind-set and aesthetic of 1988 Brocas Helm.
3: Caducity curry the favor of the nerdier denizens of the Hessian Kingdom by giving their songs titles such as "Impassible Are the Amber Runes of Silken Illusion" and "Gymbrea's Enriching Wisdom, Part I: The Sorcery of Chaos Hanzwarin/Part II: Savouring of the Tricorn Flesh/Part III: The Spirits of Crystallyne Faith".
4: Caducity's debut full-length, the oddly titled Weiliaon Wielder Quest, contains one of the most off-putting and weirdly "outsider" intro tracks since Killer Fox.
5. Caducity occupy the same high-quality/little-known 90's death metal niche as previous IC wank-targets like Brick, Welt, and Lubricant.
6. Look at the fucking album cover.

I rest my case.

Download HERE
Purchase HERE

Metallum/Last.FM

DARK QUARTERER - THE ETRUSCAN PROPHECY (1988)

Nearly two and a half years ago, our old pal Aesop described Dark Quarterer's first album as such: "Really only Italians could pull off something as bizarre and grandiose as the proggy cult doom of Dark Quarterer. The band was formed way back in 1974 by eccentric bassist/vocalist Gianni Nepi, but didn't release their amazing self titled debut album until 1987. And while I wonder what these guys must've sounded like in '74, this album shows them sort of treading the same path of backward-thinking eccentricity as Cirith Ungol and Slough Feg... Truly epic cult metal filtered through the Italian psyche with all the melodrama and pageantry that we've come to expect from the country's metal bands."

Epic indeed, but the hazy ESL present on Dark Quarterer's very own Last.FM page ups the ante even further: "The original group was formed in 1974 in Piombino and was called “Omega erre”. Eight years of playing cover followed with no concerts or performances, but a continuous effort to capture the sounds and colours of the hard and progressive rock of those years...

It was an absolute imperative for the band to reproduce the songs faithfully - they played dozens of covers of Black Sabbath, Thin Lizzy, Iron Maiden, Krokus, Grand Funk Railroad, Led Zeppelin, Uriah Heep, Gentle Giant, Genesis, Jethro Tull, Van Der Graaf Generator, Deep Purple, Ten Years After, Cream, Manowar, Michael Shenker, Colosseum... Their first composition was too light-weight harmonically and too commercial, boring even on first hearing. Fulberto Serena experimented with classical sonorities (Bach), arpeggios that were also veritable riffs, almost exclusively in the minor aiming to achieve the darkest colour possible...

So it took a lot of instinct but also many corrections and radical changes in order to achieve a final result that could not be improved upon. Only when everyone firmly believed in it was the result considered definitive. The introverted and moody personality of Fulberto contributed to disturbing pieces like the self-titled Dark Quarterer, The Entity, Gates of Hell, in which the protagonist actually wanted to live and die in the name of evil to dethrone Lucifer in the underworld!"

Are we clear on all that?
Good. Here's their second album.

Download HERE

DQ on Encyclopaedia Metallum

EDGE OF SANITY - NOTHING BUT DEATH REMAINS (1991)

Back in September of last year, I posted Mr. Dan Swano's solo project Karaboudjan, and for any folks who were not familiar with the guy, added this quick explanation:

"You know, the Swedish dude from Bloodbath and Brejn Dedd and Darkcide and Demiurg and Diabolical Masquerade and Edge of Sanity and Godsend and Incision and Infestdead and Katatonia and Maceration and Masticate and Nightingale and Odyssey and Overflash and Pan.Thy.Monium and Ribspreader and Route Nine and Star One and Steel and Total Terror and Unicorn and Sorskogen and Frameshift and Another Life and Stygg Död and Obliterhate?"

To my own extreme embarassment, I totally forgot to add that he played live with Necrony for awhile. My bad, sorry.
Anyways, here's some super early Swano noodlings, before he got all "Opeth" on everyone's ass. Nothing but straight-up Swedeath, no frills or pretensions, with the Boss HM-2 cranked to 10 accross the board. Haterz gonna hate, but I'll take this little slab over Crimson any day. Serious.

Download HERE
Purchase HERE

Metallum/Last.FM

Weeeeeezy... The Jeffersons/Gong connection

This is the greatest thing I have ever read. I had to share. (via Magnet Magazine)

Ten years ago, writer Mitch Myers profiled prog-rock legend Daevid Allen (Soft Machine, Gong), who told us of his strange encounter with actor Sherman Hemsley (a.k.a. George Jefferson). Here is the story of Hemsley’s obsession with flying teapots and his alleged den of iniquity that housed an LSD lab, a harem of naked girls and crack/freebase depots on every floor.

In 1999, I interviewed musician Daevid Allen for MAGNET at a small recording studio in San Francisco. Allen was an odd sort, with plenty of old stories to tell. Back in the 1960s, he was a founding member of wonderfully creative British band Soft Machine. But Aleen didn’t stay with the Soft Machine for long and ended up forming another psychedelic rock group called Gong.

“Movin’ On Up” (The Jeffersons theme):

In his life, Allen has hung out with everybody from William Burroughs, Jimi Hendrix, Bud Powell and Paul McCartney to Syd Barrett, Keith Richards, Richard Branson and a whole bunch of other famous people that he can’t remember. One famous person Allen does recall spending time with is Sherman Hemsley, a.k.a. George Jefferson of ’70s sitcom The Jeffersons. Hemsley had been a jazz keyboardist before portraying Jefferson on television, and his progressive sensibilities led him to appreciate the offbeat sounds of Allen and Gong. Apparently, cosmic Gong compositions such as “Flying Teapot” and “Pot Head Pixies” resonated with the TV star’s psyche. Years after Allen’s encounter with Hemsley, the actor would go on to collaborate with Jon Anderson, lead singer of hugely successful prog-rock group Yes. The Hemsley/Anderson production was called Festival Of Dreams and supposedly described the spiritual qualities of the number seven.

Here is Allen’s verbatim account of his sole meeting with certified Gong fanatic Hemsley:

“It was 1978 or 1979, and Sherman Hemsley kept ringing me up. I didn’t know him from a bar of soap because we didn’t have television in Spain (where I was living). He called me from Hollywood saying, ‘I’m one of your biggest fans and I’m going to fly you here and put flying teapots all up and down the Sunset Strip.’ I thought, ‘This guy is a lunatic.’ He kept it up so I said, ‘Listen, can you get us tickets to L.A. via Jamaica? I want to go there to make a reggae track and have a honeymoon with my new girlfriend.’ He said, ‘Sure! I’ll get you two tickets.’

I thought, ‘Well, even if he’s a nut case at least he’s coming up with the goodies.’ The tickets arrived and we had this great honeymoon in Jamaica. Then we caught the plane across to L.A. We had heard Sherman was a big star, but we didn’t know the details. Coming down the corridor from the plane, I see this black guy with a whole bunch of people running after him trying to get autographs. Anyway, we get into this stretch limousine with Sherman and immediately there’s a big joint being passed around. I say, ‘Sorry man, I don’t smoke.’ Sherman says, ‘You don’t smoke and you’re from Gong?’

Inside the front door of Sherman’s house was a sign saying, ‘Don’t answer the door because it might be the man.’ There were two Puerto Ricans that had a LSD laboratory in his basement, so they were really paranoid. They also had little crack/freebase depots on every floor. Then Sherman says, ‘Come on upstairs and I’ll show you the Flying Teapot room.’ Sherman was very sweet but was surrounded by these really crazy people.

We went up to the top floor and there was this big room with darkened windows and “Flying Teapot” is playing on a tape loop over and over again. There were also three really dumb-looking, very voluptuous Southern gals stoned and wobbling around naked. They were obviously there for the guys to play around with.

[My girlfriend] Maggie and I were really tired and went to our room to go to bed. The room had one mattress with an electric blanket and that was it. No bed covering, no pillow, nothing. The next day we came down and Sherman showed us a couple of [The Jeffersons] episodes.

One of our fans came and rescued us, but not before Sherman took us to see these Hollywood PR people. They said, ‘Well, Mr. Hemsley wants us to get the information we need in order to do these Flying Teapot billboards on Sunset Strip.’ I looked at them and thought they were the cheesiest, most nasty people that I had ever seen in my life and I gave them the runaround. I just wanted out of there. I liked Sherman a lot. He was a very personable, charming guy. I just had a lot of trouble with the people around him.”

Wow! Who knew Daevid Allen doesn't smoke w33d!?

Also of note:

(via Wikipedia) Sherman Hemsley is a self-proclaimed fan of 70's progressive rock including bands Gentle Giant and Nektar. On his appearance on The Dinah Shore Show, Hemsley performed a dance to the Gentle Giant song "Proclamation" from The Power and the Glory. After his dance, the host was laughing and asked what kind of music that was. Sherman then proceeded to give a 5 minute speech on Gentle Giant. Sherman can also been seen wearing a Nektar T-shirt during his interview with Norman Lear when Lear hosted Saturday Night Live from Season 2 Episode 26.

Gong - Angel's Egg

FAUN FABLES - FAMILY ALBUM (2004)

Consider this the closest I'll ever come to condoning rampant Burnerism.

The Faun Fables story goes something like this: At some point in the late 90's, the Burner-esque NYC-based freak-folk singer/songwriter Dawn McCarthy moves west, relocating to the San Francisco Bay Area to seek her fate amongst the burnouts and weirdos who reside therein. There she meets up with the bizarre and hugely-talented (if not somewhat Burner-esque) Nils Frykdahl, acrobatic vocalist and driving force behind such groundbreaking performance art/musical acts as Idiot Flesh and Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. The combination of their talents proves to be a unique and multi-faceted journey into the medieval and the disturbing--Faun Fables is born with the release of their first album Early Song in 1999.

Yes, yes. I hear the voices rising in protest already.
Guilty Pleasures Week is over! Isn't "folk" music the antithesis of what IllCon stands for? Isn't this in fact the type of stuff we usually aim to destroy?

Indeed it is, and Family Album's only downfall is its occasional propensity for plodding along in folky gloom for a bit too long at points (see the first track, "Eyes of A Bird"). But stick with it for a bit, and if you aren't hooked by the album's finest track, "Lucy Belle" (a Frykdahl-centric ode to his dog which quickly spirals out of control, cascading into lyrics about "riding the animal down to the kingdom of stone" and vague references to the "final battle" between man and beast), you will be by the distinctly Eastern-European tilt of the whole thing, or the haunting quality of the lyrics, or, failing all that, the all-encompassing CREEPINESS of atmosphere contained herein.

Not standard IllCon fare by any stretch, but there are amazing songs to be found everywhere on this 15-track epic, not only the aforementioned "Lucy Belle", but other schizophrenic gems as well, such as "Fear March", "Still Here", and the deceptively bouncy "Carousel With Madonnas", which Sonic Asymmetry describes thusly: "This is Zygmunt Konieczny’s astounding masterpiece from the early 1960s. Originally Ewa Demarczyk’s most famous anthem, the knock-out staccato is reproduced here perfectly by Brian Schachter on piano. But what is truly stunning is the fact that Miron Bialoszewski’s poem is so ardently expressed by McCarthy’s uncanny, polysyllabic diction. She makes it appear easy, but it is not. Who would have thought that this song would be translated, much less sung so distinctly in another language? The rectilineal form is only slightly softened by Osanna-like flutes and decorative percussion. Nonetheless, it will remain a demonic stop-go waltz, fully dependent on emphatic piano attacks. " Got it?

Download HERE

Purchase HERE

FaunFables.net/Last.FM

DEATHROW - DECEPTION IGNORED (1988)

Third album from Düsseldorf, Germany's own technothrash magicians Deathrow. Deception Ignored was arguably their finest hour, surpassing the musical weirdness of 1986's Satan's Gift and 1987's Raging Steel by leaps and bounds, finding the band at their creative zenith before the inevitable disappointment of 1992's Life Beyond. Forget the album cover. Forget the shitty logo. Forget the somewhat middle-of-the-road, standard-issue thrash vocals. This album is a cornucopia of totally next-level compositional ideas, placing Deathrow firmly alongside like-minded acts like Voivod and Coroner in the canon of pioneering extreme/technical/progressive metal acts of the 1980's.
Not for the squeamish or the stupid. Prepare to be chuffed!

Download HERE
Purchase HERE

(Strategically-placed white sneaker prevents scrotum flash. Thrash metal wardrobe malfunction avoided.)

Metallum/Last.FM

ANTONIUS REX

An Italian prog classic and favorite of mine, I present Antonius Rex. Antonio, who comprised this band I believe (I don't do wiki or research before I post, I'm just assuming that this was his prog-ject:Antonio=Antonius DUUUUH) was briefly in Black Widow, an excellent band if I do say so myself, as well as contributing to the occult prog soundscapes of Jacula.


(Antonio Bartoccetti-Satan's right hand man)



I'm into witchy shit with lots of organs and ladies singing chants and violins and flutes and shit. Here's their album from 1977, ZORA. Rather proggy and classical, with a satanic twist. My favorite song on the album? Morte al Potere- It's the soundtrack to your first bong hit of the night.


Stonin' and Bonin'.

METAL-SPLOITATION SIX-PACK

Two posts ago (Killer Fox), I made passing reference to the utterly baffling Metal Enterprises label out of Germany, in particular their brief run in the late 80's and early 90's releasing some of the most absurd, disturbing "heavy metal" ever known to makind. Founded by the young entrepeneur (?) Ingo Nowotny (who also played on several of ME's most notorious releases), the label was a true study in anomalous high weirdness, at worst a scam and exercise in the worst type of consumer fraud, at best a Kaufman-esque excursion into highbrow art via insult comedy. I linked to THIS excellent article regarding the Metal Enterprises phenomena over at The Corroseum the other day, and I highly recommend checking it out if you haven't already. Author Dan Edman is a seeming expert in all things 'ME', including Mr. Nowotny's heinous practice of releasing "fake" albums by established bands, i.e. recording an album under another band's name with no original members involved, slapping the Metal Enterprises label on it, and sending it off to stores, copyright infringement be damned. This petty theft would be unremarkable at best, had several of these albums not been in all actuality quite superior to the originals! I mean, yes, they're all pretty awful, but Jesus Christ, there are some seriously captivating, off-the-wall ideas at work here.
More from Mr. Edman:

"The finest/worst examples of this very special "ME-sound" are to be found on their infamous Fake Follow-ups. They contain what is probably the most retarded music ever released under the banner of Heavy Metal (which doesn't necessarily mean that the music itself is Metal.) They never bare (sic) any resemblance to the original bands or projects, but are pretty similar in-between themselves, especially the "2nd" KILLER FOX, GODZILLA, THRASH QUEEN, KALASCHNIKOV and FUCKER albums, and could very well have been recorded on the same occasion. It's really hard to describe the sound on these abominations. If you've ever experienced how comedy-shows on TV or radio sometimes can parody Metal music it will give you a faint idea idea of what we're talking about here. It's the music of someone who might have heard a few minutes of Metal at one point in their life and years later trying to recreate it with gleeful intent. Drum-machines, ultra-generic riffing, strange vocal effects and/or improvised singing. Any dumber than dumb idea you can think of and more, it's in there. Like the sudden burst into whistling in the intro of KALASCHNIKOV's "Czarewitch". A venture so terrible and eerie it honestly made me jump out of my chair in terror the first time I heard it. Or the improvised, operatic wailing/screaming, atonal female vocals with a heavy French accent on THRASH QUEEN's "Ashes To Ashes". Or the haunting robot-voices on many a KILLER FOX-cut, or etc etc... On several records they fill up space with strange, lengthy experimental pieces and sound-collages, often sounding like cock-eyed, hapless versions of CELTIC FROST's old cult-pieces of weirdness, "Danse Macabre" and "Tears in a Prophet's Dream". Listening to these specific tracks you get the impression that these guys didn't find it enough to lure innocent people into buying crap music, they really had to rub salt in their wounds by exposing them to pure, torturous noise. Evil, evil men be the men of Metal Enterprises."

So here we go...

First off, we have Kalaschnikov:


Kalaschnikov was a German band basically composed of two members, one Simon Sobkowiak on guitar and one Patrice "T-Bass" Jones on bass and vocals. While they have their charming moments (Jones' voice is unique and pleasing in a weird sort of way), Kalaschnikov are mostly interesting due to the fact that they were one of few bands still playing generic, rehashed NWOBHM in 1988 (for fuck's sake!), when just about everyone else had moved on to thrash, black, or even death metal. In spite of the cool haircuts, there just ain't much to love about this band... That is, until Nowotny stole their name and put out Desert Storm. Don't get me wrong: the "fake" Kalaschnikov album is still fucking terrible. The songs are waaaay too long (4 out of 6 jams surpass the 8-minute mark), the production value is ASS, and the cover art... Well, have a look at it.
But the whistling. Why, Mr. Nowotny, WHY?!?!!?

REAL:
THE TORTURE NEVER STOPS (1988)


Download HERE

FAKE:

DESERT STORM (1990)


Download HERE


Next up, we have Thrash Queen.

Billed as the "first all-female thrash metal band" and hailing from the uber-metal realms of suburban New England, Thrash Queen were no credit to their gender, as the lackluster, primitive Motorhead worship present on Manslayer will prove. If you're into bedroom demos recorded on broken microphones by brain-damaged 8-year-olds, this might be just your cup of tea. But really, this band is awful. Just awful.
Enter Nowotny's Thrash Queen revival Ashes To Ashes, which arrived six years after their sole release. Edman summed it up nicely in his write-up, which I agree with for the most part. The music on the "fake" Thrash Queen album is undoubtedly superior to the clumsy fumbling on Manslayer, but man, the vocals! Seriously, they sound almost exactly like this:



REAL:
MANSLAYER (1984)


Download HERE

FAKE:
ASHES TO ASHES (1990)

Exposed tit: insult to injury?

Download HERE


Lastly, we have Godzilla. Fronted by the infamous (?) Gary Wheeler (also from such well-known German acts as Blind Petition, Break Point, Blowin Free, Stahlhammer, Lady, Stalynn, Simon, and Oliviera), Godzilla' self-titled debut album, like Kalaschnikov, is naught but born-too-late NWOBHM leftovers, from the Iron Maiden-biting intro riff to the final notes of the last track. It's listenable, yes, and not much more--another completely disposable 80's "hard rock" album which has its moments, but not many.

But HOLY SHIT, the "fake" Godzilla. I don't even know where to start: the kabuki-esque New Wave space prog of "Cinderella Rockefella"? The Dread Zeppelin-ed out psychedelic shred-reggae of "I Followed The Zombie"? How 'bout the heartfelt ballad "Ass of The Prophet" or the too-long cover abomination of "Helter Skelter"? There are no words. If you take nothing else away from this post, please at least download Godzilla II, and expose yourself to some classic Metal Enterprises brain molestation. But be careful, madness lies therein...

REAL:
GODZILLA (1989)

Best album cover EVER?

Download HERE

FAKE:
II (1990)


Download HERE


I apologize in advance for everything you're about to hear.