Patch Over

 Patches have always been a crucial element in underground music of every genre. Metal(in all its forms), punk, hardcore, crust, grind, sludge, doom. Patches are an essential piece of merch for touring bands, just like shirts, CDs and vinyl. One of the best ways to show where you allegiances in music scene, and generally the world around you today are through wearing shirts and sewing patches on whatever you can. It's like wearing a bandanna showcasing your gang affiliation. No one has to ask questions, they take one look and know your stance. Patches are worn by all underground music fans in various ways and designs. Some people use them for their intended purpose, to fix holes in their clothes. It's easy to wear out elbows in your sweatshirt or knees in your pants. I see tons of people with patches over their front and back pockets as well, those go fast when you only own one or two pairs of pants that you have to wear everyday (this is a choice by most of us as it turns out. I only two pairs of pants period. One work pair, one not-work pair. Both are Dickies.)
 Patches come in all sorts of materials, compositions and sizes. Some people choose linen or canvas and silkscreen them. Others use iron ons, some bands have them professionally made at a relatively low cost. Different materials and processes yield different looking patches of various lifespans on your clothes, that is if you patch your shit. I know several people that collect them in an almost archival sense and several people that have patches everywhere, some of which are barely recognizable due to the amount of time worn.I think most of mine are printed on canvas, not many silk screened because that can be very tedious and expensive. Bigger bands have their patches embroidered and sometimes have iron on transferability if you don't know how to sew and don't want to use safety pins. Safety pins work but are quite prone to coming undone and fucking you or the people around you up. But those patches are so big and bulky. They do work well on a denim jacket or vest but can make you look like a posing chump if you're not careful. A surefire way to not make friends is to look like you're trying too hard and showing off eight dollar embossed, appliqued patches of Static-X, Mudvayne or Machine Head. But maybe that's just me being an elitist dick, I don't know. All I can say is that if a band goes on stage and is showing patches of bands I really like or respect then I get more stoked to hear these dudes I've never seen or heard before. That was kind of how i got into No Master among other bands.

Repping OH pride on the OU hoodie

 I'm not really sure where the practice of making patches for bands came from. My first assumption would be patches have deep roots dwelling in the DIY punk community of anarcho punk, hardcore and crust bands from the mid-late 70's, possibly from England though I wouldn't be surprised if it started here in the states. I just keep getting this image of Discharge and the Exploited just hanging out and drinking cheap beer while drawing on pre-cut strips of fabric to fix their clothes and then get the idea of selling them for merch. I know that in the very early American hardcore scene people would make band shirts out of white tees purchased from local stores and just write on them with sharpies before printing became an accepted medium. How much more DIY does it get then that? Well besides way expensive but fucking amazing looking silk screened shirts that you can make yourself.
 Once I get my camera's battery problem figured out I'll take pictures of the wrap pants I wear for fighting in, they have lots of sweet patches too, except my Bodies In the Gears of the Apparatus patch, it got ripped in half. :(  There are many more bands I want patches for though and I feel like a real dick buying them on eBay so if anyone wants to sell or trade, just let me know!

Not the best overlapping images, but fuck it, you the idea.

Publicity Grunts

"Thank you, Jay Randall for that introduction. And since you got peoples attention, Phobia has a brand new full-length coming out in February/March of 2012 titled 'Remnants of Filth' out on Willowtip Records and produced by non other than the master Scott Hull. And remember, folks ...opinions are like assholes, everybody has one. Cheers!"

Burn?

I loled

Agoraphobic Nosebleed (or at their least singer, Jay Randall) are apparently not too happy with Phobia frontman Shane Mclachlan. Earlier this morning, the ANb Twitter account was enriched with the following diatribe (divided amongst four separate posts):

"Shane Phobia is the Ike Turner of grindcore, long history of beating girls up when he's drunk and if you think that's cool -we ain't... Gave Shane Phobia plenty of time to figure out what he and his brother owed us and to stop bootleggin'/selling our shit on ebay -times up!...Shane Phobia went ahead with doing ANB merch without working a deal with us first and has I guess sold it for years now without paying us a dime... So glad I've been unknowingly contributing to this fuckin' piece of shit crust punks beer fund for years now -fuck Shane Phobia."

People Take Photographs of Things They Can't Forget

Left side of cassette box.

Right side of cassette box.

"Rise of Annihilation" by Magnicide,
re-issue of original Suicidal Tendendies s/t,
HoD discog tape,
4 song EP by Dark Ages

 So I got a real digital camera recently. 3.2 megapixels and 3x zoom, I'm really catching up to the technological world now. First thing I want to use it for is to catalog my physical music collection. All of my vinyl is still boxed away so I broke out my cassette tapes and snapped some pictures. I have maybe a dozen tapes not shown, but they're classic rock or tapes I just don't listen to and still somehow own. These pictures represent tapes I've collected through my time living in Kansas, only a few were bought in Ohio. I got the Death Angel and Misfits tapes for like fifty cents each at a game shop that sold used tapes. I found the Slayer, Metallica and Judas Priest tapes at a yard sale a couple weeks ago, big surprise when I found them. They were in a box with a bunch of country music and bands like Testament, Soundgarden, Accept and Alice In Chains. They tried to sell me Mudvayne CDs when I wanted to pay and leave. Almost all of the others were bought at one of the Lawrence record shops, Love Garden for $1.50 or less. I got a Red Hot Chili Peppers tape, Queen's "Greatest Hits" and a ZZ Top tape all for like two bucks! They even have older music

Three Fugazi tapes, including "13 Songs"
"Hallraker" by the Descendents

related VHS! Too bad I hate Tina Turner.
 I bought the Magnicide tape straight from fucking Malaysia. Took a few weeks to order and a few more weeks to receive in the mail. It was well worth the wait though, that cassette fucking rips! I spent hours playing it on rotation at the bakery I worked at. It's always funny to see co-workers show up at 5 AM to work and you're blasting South-East Asian Grind out of the pastry department. Same with my Hummingbird of Death discography cassette, got it mailed to me from Iowa with the "Goatmeal" 5"(which rules!)  A lot of others were bought when I saw the band play. My Catheter tape was purchased with the same 7", some stickers and fucking awesome night of getting high with Geraldo before going to that 4 AM shift again. I ended up missing all but the last 20 seconds of their set because I woke up

Misfits "Earth A.D",
Catheter/Wojczech split,
Grasseaters 2011 demo

late. I was planning on napping then heading over to the house for the show, but got there late and just spent the night partying. The Grasseaters demo was bought at an outdoor show labeled "All Summer, No Bummer" and it delivered. The clouds were overcast most of the day with very visible lightning and very audible thunder, but it never rained. The weather stayed beautiful, the bands were all good and my friends were all there. Grasseaters are from Omaha, Nebraska so they brought a punch of punks from there with them so it was cool to meet some new crusties.
 I keep all my stuff in a brown tape box a friend gave me, and it was full of tapes! My bro Greg gave me some serious stuff that I listen to all the time. The Suicidal tape and "13 Songs" are the best examples though he gave me some classic thrash that rules (M.O.D. and S.O.D.). Mother fucker even put in an Anni DiFranco tape to throw me off. We had a good laugh and then I sold traded that shit for something good. But I'm super grateful to have the case to utilize as I have some tapes I do not want broken, lost or anything else bad that could happen. Then the obvious fact that I can take lots of tapes with me relatively easy. I wish more cars had tape decks now so I could rock out wherever I go! I could bring mixtapes and shit, and I have tons of tapes not of the fast/loud/short/heavy variety to make everyone happy. And obviously the collection only grows, much like collecting records. Tape collecting is a new thing for me, though I've been buying records for years now, almost a decade. But I know the cassette scene is just as old as DIY music itself. OG punx, grinders, crusties, black metal kvltists and death metal acolytes have all be tape trading and collecting as long as counter culture music has existed. You can't make a mix tape on a 7" unless you're putting out a compilation record, and it's not a mixtape it's a fucking comp your label is selling. Sure, CDs were around in the 80's but they were fucking expensive and no self respecting punk/metal head could afford one. Shit, even Walkman's for tapes were not cheap when first introduced to the market, but whose parents didn't have some sort of audio set up for their old Pink Floyd and Chuck Mangione albums. So it makes sense that tapes became the main food staple of feeding hungry music fans looking for more bands to listen to. What famous band didn't put out demo tapes before stepping up to 7"s?
 In the future I'm going to start taking pictures of my records and posting them with music, and I'm going to go back and add pictures to the records I've already posted. Blog+ has begun.

"Live In Japan" by Judas Priest,
"The Ultra Violence" by Death Angel"
"Live Undead"+ "Season of the Abyss" by Slayer,
"Speak English or Die" by S.O.D.

Obvious tapes are obvious

Thursday Song to Do Bong Rips To

 Metal's version of Willy Nelson, Mike Scheidt, sure knows his way around heavy as fuck riffs. I've been jamming the new YOB album "Atma" for a couple weeks now and I'm coming around to the musical styling of doom metal much more easily then ever before. Especially the first song "Prepare the Ground". This track fucking KILLS and is to me the best on the album. The last three or four songs are much slower paced and emotionally heavy while "Prepare the Ground" is just heavy as fuck. It starts out with down strummed riffs that are chunky and full aurally. The same chord progressions remain prevalent through almost the whole song, building up the whole time. Not in speed but atmosphere and energy. There is a little slowing down before everything explodes at 6:45 into an ultra heavy Hadouken to pummel your face with the bong you are holding. It makes me want to swing a four foot glass bong around Pineapple Express style. This song is long enough to take a couple rips before the song and then one more big one four or five minutes into the song. Not my normal preferred song length but they're a doom band, what do you expect?



Stream the whole album here.

Hayaino Grindsuki

 So "Orphan" came out way back at the end of winter this year. I've been trying to keep it in rotation to fully digest it and get a feel for what's going on. What I like and don't like. The recording method (each song live in one take), production, mixing, all that jazz. At first listen, and reinforced by subsequent listening, I got a huge Hayaino Daisuki(Hi-No Die-Ski(or did I mean Hawaii Daisuki?)) feel. There's just sick speed metal shredding with Chang's high screams and fucking raging blast beats. Obviously faster with shorter songs then Hayaino Daisuki, and some of Chang's older low growls, there's not much of a difference to casual extreme music listeners. I'm not one of those and there's still not much difference. This isn't the Gridlink that fucked my skull a couple years ago, this is Hayaino Grindsuki. Chang and Matsuraba really outdid themselves on this album though. Everything is insane in speed and technicality. Where Hayaino Daisuki win in song writing Gridlink wins in skill and precision. Song lengths have been literally quartered. Gridlink's longest song on here is 1:28 with Hayaino Daisuki's shortest being just under 2:30, but averaging more at three minutes which is twice as long as any Gridlink song. Another huge difference is just production. The Hayaino Daisuki EPs sound crisp with an acute metal sheen of shredding seven string genius. They're the CD quality metal you would expect from Hydra Head circa 2002. Meanwhile this twelve song full-length is just as long as the new HD EP. Like stated earlier this album was recorded entirely live with each song being done in one take, this is very obvious in the four count that precedes almost every track. Think about that for a sec because it's incredibly impressive. Two footed blasting kept in time with staccato shredding riffs. This takes incredible amounts of practice to achieve. This very well may be what sets this LP apart from the previous "Amber Gray". A whole level of confidence and power. This record is several planes above "Amber Gray" in all aspects and it shows. All the hard work these dudes have put in yielded a truly insane piece of grind gold. "Orphan" is quite a fabulous record to sit down to sober or stoned. My favourite tracks are probably "Scopedog" and "I Accept Your Last Wish". I can't express why I like so much this time, but they stick out the most on repeated listens for me.
 A fun experiment to do is listen to the four Chang/Matsuraba collaborations in order. HD, Gridlink, HD, Gridlink. There's an obvious progression one can see and hear.

Demo Shit

 Third in my series is the band Barren Waste. One of the dudes in the band (Scott) sent an e-mail with the subject "Music for review" that only contained a link to Reverbnation and no other info. Upon clicking the link we learn they're from New Hampshire and that's sort of a relief because there aren't enough bands from states like that. Like Utah. How many bands are from Utah? Not enough, that's how many. But I digress. The second thing I noticed was the sweet artwork for their newest EP. Dunno where it came from but it has blasting robots and people fucking terrified, I dig it. Musically it starts off being hardcore and there's lots and lots of shredding that seems out of place, to the point of beeing noodly and annoying. And this coming from a guy that likes bands like Brain Drill and Necrophagist and PsyOpus. After seven or eight songs songs start getting really long and slow and boring. The band tries to start being progressive and free form, but it doesn't work. There is a lot of room for Barren Waste to develop, but they need to write actual songs. A straight grind band(which they are not) can get away with only blasting but when you try to incorporate other styles and genres into your music you need to learn actual songwriting too. I don't know how old these tracks are, but I'd be interested to hear some new stuff to see how it compares, and I'll apparently get the chance later this as the band is recording again at the end of the month.

http://www.reverbnation.com/barrenwastetheband

There will be a two-part final post for the band Guilty As Sin who have sent me two CDs to review, I'm just a lazy hack and haven't listened to them enough to review yet, but I will get to it. Sorry for sucking at life Zach.

Altars of Meh

 Here's the second part of a short series reviewing things I've been sent in my e-mail. I got an e-mail from a dude named Justin Oakey with a link to a music video he made for the band Column of Heaven. They contain former members of Shank(awesome), Endless Blockade(meh) and Slaughter Strike(meh). It appears the end result of this amalgam of power-noise-violence in the vein of Bastard Noise. Not my cup of tea. Too much noise, too many electric gadgets and not enough punk. This band is for sure abrasive and intense, just not my preferred brand. The video Justin shot looks great (as well the rest of his work) I just don't understand the imagery or message it's trying to convey. It's too cosmic and cerebral for me.
 Final summation: Justin Oakey is a talented dude with a sweet future ahead of him. Noisy-violence bands are not what I like. Feel free to check them out yourselves though. Here are links to the EP and video, in that order.

Altars

"Ecstatically Embracing All That We Habitually Suppress"

Never A Cognitive Waste, Not A Post About Municipal Waste

 I got an e-mail today(sent yesterday) from a dude named Corey telling me he likes this blog and the bands I talk about. This makes me super pumped because it's not often people writing blogs get random affirmation e-mails. Unless you're Cosmo Lee. He said he found link from the other site I write on and has been reading mine for a while. I just wanted to give this dude some props for making my day start off fucking legit.
 I noticed at the end of his e-mail a well placed link to his band's Bandcamp page, so I checked it out. He plays bass with a dude in a band called Mental Waste.They remind me of a more hardcore influenced Nails. Less blasts and heavy as fuck riffs but plenty of circle pits and anger. I dig Bryan's vocals and lyrics as well. Bleak observations about humanity. Something interesting is that all the drums are programmed, AnB and Enemy Soil style. Corey and Bryan have been a band since February but haven't been able to keep a drummer due to time constraints and location. Mental Waste is from Califronia, but they're from the central coast which doesn't have a strong DIY scene and is full of kids in metalcore bands so finding a full time drummer has been difficult for them. They don't even have regular practices right now, but that doesn't hinder songwriting. Both dudes have been around a while in various bands (Corey is also in a doom band called Cold Mourning) so recording is an easy process for them according to Corey, "We take about 5 minutes to write some songs, then Bryan works on lyrics, we add vocals and we take a couple months to finish the recordings and get them mixed how we like." They've recorded four other songs and are just waiting to add vocals and mix them, but sort of feel a lack of impetus. So if anyone wants to help them do a 7" or a tape (I'm looking at you To Live A Lie and Last Anthems) get in touch with them so they can record more!
Get into their three song demo below.

Scorned for Ska

 Le Scrawl is not a band for everyone to listen to. They take thrashing, deathy, grindy metal and splatter it with bits of skas more surprising elements such as saxophone, organ and skanking 4x4 beats. This is for sure experimental music, but not in the vein most people think. There's no droning seven minute songs, no keyboards/synth/electro elements, no "atmosphere". Just grindska. Or skadeath. Or skagrind. Or thrashska. I really don't know what to call it besides enthralling and catchy as fuck. Could this be another case of music by location? Le Scrawl are from Belgium, which might have something to do with it. Wedged between France(prominent language in Belgium), Germany, The Netherlands and the English Channel with the UK to the North it makes sense where their influences come from. England was the start of the punky ska movement once it got exported from the Caribbean and Germany is a thrash/death metal Mecca. It all makes sense. I have no clue where their experimental impetus came from but man am I happy they found it.
 The thirteen songs presented here on "Eager to Please" start off with energetic metal that bounces and makes you wanna skank until the death metal slaps your face again. The first six songs do really well at alternating tempos and moods with middle songs slowing down to more mid-tempo and letting the organ and horns really shine through. The first three or four times you listen to this you'll ask yourself and those around you "Is this a joke? Are these guys for real?" The answer is fuck yes. It's for real. You probably will chuckle at what seems to be absurd, but you'll eventually go "Oh shit this is really good!". I personally love the metal riffs with guttural vocals that transition into the ska parts that are more light-hearted, with the sick guttural vocals. This interplay of atmosphere gives me the same feeling power-violence bands that play blasts into breakdowns give me.
 So do yourself a favor and get adventurous and experimental without listening to Boris.

"One by one, you will die"