MY DAD IS DEAD- THE TALLER YOU ARE, THE SHORTER YOU GET

This is good. 80's home-recording project with a drum machine. Layers of awesome guitar playing, super depressing lyrics, vocals that kind of sound like early REM and really good songwriting. If you like anything lo-fi, indie-rock, kind of weird or depressing then this is a little gem of a record for you. Oh yeah, this was on Homestead, so you know it's some 80's indie goodness.

HERE

CAP'N JAZZ- SCHMAP'N SCHMAZZ (the actual title is 27 words long)

A beautiful Saturday. Coffee in my cup, played an awesome basement show last night, had good talks with old friends and slept in until the early afternoon. The sun is shining through my window, NCAA basketball is on in the background... And I feel optimistic about the future for this brief moment. What this has to do with Cap'n Jazz? Your guess is as good as mine. I sat down at my computer just now and felt like posting something...

This seemed to be the only album that satisfied the feelings running through me at the moment. What is it? Poppy, sloppy, innocent Midwestern emo from 1994. Based on that description you either can't wait to hear this or you've already left... If the weather is nice wherever you may be, put this on your portable-listening device and go for a long walk. It'll make you think about romance, growing up, nostalgia and all those other wonderful, post-adolescent experiences that only seem to have meaning for that brief, amazing period of our lives.

HERE

NEW ORDER- BROTHERHOOD

Yes, everyone likes Joy Division and most music-obsessed people will tell you that New Order is nowhere near as good as Joy Division... those people also voted for Bush in his second term. Seriously.

This album is where New Order finally gelled as a BAND while simultaneously discovering that they had GUITARS! Obviously synths still colour every song on this album but for the first time there is a discernible guitar or bass-hook on every track. Not to mention that it has several gems that seem to fall out of "classic" status come compilation time. If you've never dug the band or synth-pop but want to give it a serious shot, this is as good a starting place as any.

Unfortunately, this seems to have been taken down from any reputable file-sharer so all I can give you is this track:

Noose - the War of All Against All

The worst part of getting hit by a car (Aside from the swelling) is not being able to bedroom mosh. Imagine the immense bitter sweetness of Noose posting their new 7" The War of All Against All the day after I stopped an SUV with my butt.
I remember the sheer excitement I felt before I listened to their demo: a philosophy professor fronting an east coast-style hardcore band. UGH! I was not let down. It's so refreshing to see and hear some challenging lyrics and PC baiting imagery from people who understand what their talking about and are willing to discuss any issues raised by detractors. Soundwise this recording is raw as fuck. So raw it's dripping (Sweat, that is. From moshing). Think Antidote's "Thou Shalt Not Kill". Mining the creme de la creme of the North East hardcore sounds. From Negative Approach to Siege, and the aforementioned Antidote. All the crucial aspects of scary, righteous hardcore are thrown into the mix. From the philosophical references being used to serve hardcore to the bulldozing riffs, this EP has something for everyone. One day I'll see Noose again, and I'll watch in amazement as a bunch of hardcore kids pile up to yell "Conceptual gerrymandering"



VEGANISM... OR TOTAL ANNIHILATION.

before you download this, please consider grabbing the real deal from their big cartel or react!'s webstore. support the moral law.
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13th FLOOR ELEVATORS- THE PSYCHEDELIC SOUND OF

This album is a perfect example of why garage-rock has already been done to death and why you and your skinny-jeans-wearing, trust-fund-living bros really shouldn't start a garage-rock band. This came out in 1966 and was already turning conventional garage-rock on its head by adding all the acid-fried weirdness of Roky Erickson and his band to the mix. That's right, 1966. It was that long ago that people saw garage-rock as something stale enough that a new direction was warranted entirely. In case you haven't read other posts on the blog, I hate garage-rock and especially the thousands of shit eaters who have decided in the last ten years that they should start a garage-rock band. It's FUCKING OLD. Seriously. Even if you just want to pay tribute to the genre, a real rarity these days since most schmucks' idea of classic garage is the Black Lips, the Gories did it better than anyone else ever could have so maybe it's time everyone stopped trying???

Anyway, I don't want to take away from the greatness and innovation that is this LP. This is one of the first psychedelic albums and it's awesome! The songwriting is incredible, the guitar playing is the catchy little bit of sugar that keeps it from descending into absolute weirdness and Roky Erickson's voice is perfect for these songs. If you don't like music from the 60's as a rule or if you like garage-rock and haven't heard this then you must click the link!

HERE

Hermetic-Civilized City / Painted Youth discography

Eric Axen is a good dude, and all the bands I'm aware of him playing with are great. From Hermetic, who just released their debut LP (peep their bandcamp) to Sightlines, Paper Lanterns (he only played guitar for them on their last show. Whatever...) and finally: Painted Youth, who easily land in my top 3 BC bands ever. Loud interesting punk with great lyrics. I wish I got to see them when I was younger, I wish I got to see them at all. (Keep your ear to the ground about the possible Alf House anniversary reunion...)

Photo by Erin Green

Because I don't want to throw Hermetic's brand new album online for free, here is the Painted Youth discography as complete as I have it. Apparently there are a few splits floating around. A 5 song demo and their full album, which never got released, unfortunately.

check out Hermetic's "Civilized City" HERE

DOWNLOAD the Painted Youth stuff

DEATH- LEPROSY

Death. Not the Detroit proto-punk band that recently had all their material from the mid-70's reissued but the Florida band from the late 80's that really, if they didn't invent it, gave the genre of death-metal it's name. The argument over who was the first real death-metal band rages on and always will: Possessed, Death Strike, Sadus, Morbid Saint... but with all of those bands there was still a clear allegiance to the tendencies of thrash. Obviously Death couldn't have made the music they did without those bands or all of thrash metal's innovations but there was something mysterious on those first two Death LP's that just sounded so much heavier than everyone else making metal in the late 80's.

This, their second LP, is my favourite metal album of all time. It's not hailed as a masterpiece in most circles and it's usually near the bottom on most people's Death depth-chart but it's their last LP before the more progressive tendencies (which I also love) started to show up. This is raw, heavy, evil and masterfully composed death-metal. The riffs are crushing, the drum sound is amazingly heavy while still sounding raw in the way early death-metal should and this is the only Death album with second guitarist Rick Rozz. For those who know, Rozz was a notoriously lazy guitarist who was sacked from the band for his refusal to help write more progressive material but his playing style works in perfect harmony with main man Chuck Schuldiner on these songs. Chuck is an amazing soloist who has a flair for finding the melody within the dissonance of his compositions, turning his solos into their own internal compositions. Rozz is a thug with a floyd-rose who's solos consist of an endless barrage of dive-bombs, ascending legato-runs with no real purpose and they all end with a big dive or a big pull. Having these two styles on the record is what makes it for me. It really is the perfect mix of first-wave death-metal and what would become progressive death-metal.

If you play guitar, like, or are even curious about death metal then you owe it to yourself to check out this band.


HERE

The Chain - Demo 2012

Jock this band before the real hype starts. 80's NY revival hardcore for fans of Warzone and Youth of Today. I love that this demo has all the modern mosh parts and breakdown bases covered while the recording is still nice and raw. Bands like Backtrack and Minority Unit are tight and all but hardcore is still hardcore, and that super produced sheen just feels weird. Their singer Dereck played/plays guitar in alot of bands in Calgary and so does their drummer Stu, notably (for me anyway) were Runaways, who played their last show a few months back. Not before they were able to make a trek out west and play the Vancouver Island Hardcore Fest. we crashed at the same house and watched Death Race way too late into the night. Tight dudes, tight jams.
Catch them at Van Isle Fest this year!

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Wrought: Ironsmile discography

A long search is finally completed because a Russian filesharing website finally translated the "download" button.

 All three 7"s are here PLUS a fantastic split with a country-emo band called the Warsaw Union, who were from Duncan, Vancouver Island. It just might be the only listenable folk-punk recording ever.

A hugely underrated Victoria emo band, one of the last in the first wave that spanned the mid-90's.

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