Albums for Eternity with Bottle, the Curmudgeon

Oh wow, i was not expecting Winter Ethereal by Arch/Mattheos to be anything in particular, but Vermillion Moons pummeled my eardrums like Dio wandered through the wrong door in B-Space and ended up at a Queensrych gig instead of his own.  I guess it shouldn't be surprising, it's John Arch and Jim Matheos and the rest of the current Fates Warning lineup, and therefore basically an incestuous Fates Warning album without all the corporate/emotional baggage of an actual Fates Warning album. But, and i can't stress this enough, it's 2019 not 1985, so aesthetically speaking it sounds really freakin' good as opposed to being recorded in an Airstream Travel Trailer. That's not really a fair comparison, but it really does take some brain reformatting to jump around among the various generations of recording equipment. If you're accustomed to now music, old stuff sounds like the reverb chamber was an empty green bean can, but once you get back into that sonic world ne...

It's hard not to compare Hammers Of Misfortune to Mastodon. Of course they're different in many respects, female background vocals and a tendency toward celtic fiddle tune like melodic NWOBHM double leads guitars stand way out in front, but they very much sound like they snuck into the studio at 3am and plugged straight into Mastodon's signal chain. The guitars are sludgy, the vocals have that unmistakeable reverby Troy Sanders vibe, and just like Mastodon every album is a completely different kind of thing.  But wowzers is their 2011 album 17th Street a completely enjoyable listen. I of course love death growls, Black Metal shrieking, Slavic Chant, and all the extreme stuff, but i know a lot of people desperately just want "regular singing," so Hammers of Misfortune definitely have you covered.  Actually, they sound almost exactly like The Sword if you removed any trace of Stoner/Desert Rock influence and replaced it with sludgy, grungy, Corrosion Of Conformity s...

Last week, Metal Blade had some truly insane clearance deals, and here's a totally out of left field piece of amazing. Grave Pleasures is a Finnish Goth/Post-Punk band, and Dreamcrash is their 2015 intertextual ode to stumbling across the flight recorder from Rammstein's Reise, Reise.  Originally the band was called Beastmilk due to  Johan Snell's fascination with how liquids affect society. Strange as that is, Grave Pleasures is a much better name for their The Cure and Bauhaus have a midnight surf party of doom within earshot of a Misfits garbage barrel fire style. My goodness is it gloriously gloomy and delightfully disheveled.

Sweet! Records from my siblings in law. Good ones, too, from the Instrumental Prog-Metal section, Polyphia and Animals As Leaders. In all seriousnees, if you were going to make me choose between Tim Henson and Tosin Abasi, i'm probably going to pick Tosin and Animals As Leaders every time, only because Tim's guitar stylings tend to edge a little too close to Sandal Core for my personal liking, whereas Tosin just bashes you across the face with a shovel, but in reality all 4 people (Tosin, Tim, Javier, and Scott) are phenomenal guitarists with exceptional melodic sensibilities and an unwillingness to phone anything in. I'm quite enjoying Polyphia's Rennaissance, but there is a thing i do not like upon first hearing. There's a fair bit of digital manipulation on the leads, not surprising within a Metalcore framework, but i can't think of any other way to express it, it sounds like the guitar is gargling; all the more disconcerting against the spanky and luscious m...

I managed to afford a few records before Sub Pop closed for the year, and they arrived today. I'm still working on the whole making it possible to buy from me without me making no money thing, but i wanted to share K-Holes' 2nd album, Dismania, with you. My goodness is it awesome. So, you know how Hole's first album Live Through This is absolutely fantastic, but then Courtney Love went all Pop with her second album (think Malibu and the cover of Gold Dust Woman)? Yeah, that's a pass for me, i wanted an alternate reality where she moved to NYC and developed a suicidally monumental Ketamine addiction. Great news! That's exactly the void in my soul Dismania just filled. K-holes are of course intense dissacociative experiences that lead shitbags to capitalize on the money making possibilities of microdosing anything because it's "safer." Matthew Perry is of course dead now because he wasn't under $400 an hour professional supervision, but i'm of co...

If you're just joining us, we're listening to the 16 albums i got from Rhymesayers during their Mystery Box sale. This is LP number 4, and it's another straight up banger. Hail Mary Mallon is Aesop Rock, Rob Sonic, and DJ Big Wiz. Mary Mallon is more commonly known as Typhoid Mary, so the whole project has that ironic soupçon of "helping people makes things worse." Tonight we're listening to Are You Gonna Eat That?, and yes, absolutely, it's delicious. But first, if you'd like a history refresher from Canada's foremost sweary Historian, by all means check out James Fell's authoritative post of the subject:   https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=780277396998752&id=100050494959334&mibextid=Nif5oz Now, where were we? Ah, yes, pursuing your own passions without regard to anyone else is a sure recipe for disaster. Aes and Rob's passions appear to be mostly drugs, porn, and reckless driving with a side of Mailbox Baseball, so that...

Ha! Second 6, i told you something from MF Doom would be in here. Vaudville Villain is the second MF Doom album after the infamous Madvillainy demo leak, under the pseudonym Viktor Vaughn. It's about the mundane situations a time traveler stuck in 1990s NYC experiences as he tries to make enough money to fix his time machine and get the hell out of there. Now that, my friends, is a concept. It occurs to me that maybe you don't know that back then he was a young NYC rapper named Zev Love X, and he was 1/3 of KMD. He adopted the persona of MF Doom a few years after his brother, Subroc, died crossing the Nassau Expressway. Now you know. I think everyone can agree MF Doom is one of the greatest rappers of all time, but he can be an intimidating listen. One, his rhyme schemes and wordplay are incredibly complex and draw heavily from pop culture, cartoons, sci-fi, and character backstory/mythos. Two, the beats are often bombastic, densly layered, and extremely experimental. Usually h...

Ug, Brother Ali's 2019 album entitled Secrets & Escapes. At least we're getting the shock of point 6 out of the way early (now that is a truly coincidental My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult reference). Don't get me wrong, i don't actually dislike anything about Brother Ali, but everything i've heard from him feels so steeped in preachiness that my reaction is almost immediately "yes, i know, stop automatically assuming i disagree with you!" I'll fully admit that i'm unfairly biased against any overtly faith-based message, but i don't think it's entirely unfair of me to expect more than dogma from musical expression, and i am completely willing to give this album fresh ears on that account. The album is a collection of California recordings with producer Evidence, improvised as they made them for fun with no larger goal or concept in mind. Secrets & Escapes is a perfect title for it, so let's just hear what he has to say. I'l...

Now it's time to pull out our Brad Pitt on the edge of a complete mental breakdown impressions and intero-bang-bang Kevin Spacey: what's in the box, man? What's in the box?!! What'd i tell you? Right on top of the stack is the first of at least several Atmosphere albums, 2014's Southsiders. That's points 2 and 5 of my preamble, if you're keeping score. The title brings up an interesting question. What is it about the south side of any large or small metropolis? Why is it always rough? Why is it usually less affluent? The answer my friends is not coincidence, the answer is geography. Specifically, rivers. You see kids, all the rivers we got here on the continent we call North America flow south, all the major cities spring up along rivers, and all the people factories that dump their waste don't want to be down-river of it.  But, but, but Bottle, i can assemble a list of examples that defy your hermeneutic conspiracy theory and prove it's a silly coin...

Back around Thanksgiving, Rhymesayers Entertainment offered 4 mystery boxes: 4 LPs for 30 dollars. That's a deal and a half no matter what they turn out to be, but Rhymesayers is a dedicated underground Hip-Hop label in Minneapolis, with an accordingly narrow roster. Now, i'm not going to try to convince you to like Rap if you're one of those people who "hates Rap," but i am going to assume you've only ever heard terrible mainstream Rap and have no basis for intelligent comparison. What are you actually going to get for 7.50 a record? Are they real albums or junk?  That's basically what everybody commented on the facebook ad. Well, let's find out. But before we open the box, let's do my typical absolutely honest predictions based on actual research and see how they stack up.  1 - these will be real albums published by Rhymesayers. Any schmuck with a computer can go look at their website to see their roster.  2 - pre covid they had their own retail ...

Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie. The lead off track, Front Row, isn't actually about Kevin Smith, it just contains a list of reasons why Alanis Morissette and Kevin Smith never dated even though they were infatuated with each other. That shouldn't be surprising, the same confusion arises with You Oughta Know (which isn't actually about Dave Coulier, it just contains a couple real life details from their relationship). Believe me, i've had it happen to me, and i just quit writing songs at all. That's why artists don't/shouldn't date people who actually care about their art. Are you going to enjoy Alanis Morissette's second album? That depends on how much you like pessimistic cynicism with a side of self-loathing. I like it a lot, if that helps. If you demand the late Taylor Hawkins on Drums you'll be disappointed, but Gary Novak is fine. If you don't like her voice then it'll be a rough ride, but i love it. If you want a completely on point...