Lost Tribe - LP

I've been doing a lot of intensely personal writing lately, mainly about abuse, spiritual growth, and existing both in subcultures, and on the planet as a gender non-conforming individual.  I'm not really ready to share that yet, so here we go. 

Lost Tribe - LP

I know this record topped tons of peoples year end lists.  It definitely made it on mine.  Richmond, Virginia's lost tribe play post punk, but with jagged punk teeth.  I almost hate to bring it up, but I can hear a little Joy Division influence in the songwriting, but if Joy Division had been listening to Crass, Discharge, and other crust punk favorites.  Out on Blind Prophet records,  you owe it to yourself to grab a copy of this.  

White Noise

In Which Re Remember Rozz Williams

Christian Death - Only Theatre Of Pain - I somehow missed out on this one in the early nineties when I was getting into Gothic, and death rock.  That's a shame, because this record is really good.  I remember seeing Christan Death Shirts around a lot, in the brief, glorious era when I was getting into punk, and we were all less concerned with genre and subculture loyalty, and you would see punks, and goths hanging out at the same shows.  My experience may have been unique having grown up in a small town, surrounded by scary rednecks on all sides, but I'd like to think that weirdo loyalty has always been around, and there will be a resurgence of it someday. 
This record has been written about countless times over the last thirty(!) years.  Only Theatre Of Pain more or less ushered in the beginning of gothic rock in the united states.  Rozz Williams took the stage like a terrifying, gender bending, nightmare swooping down over the sunshine and picket fences of Southern California in the early 80's.  He had a gift for disturbing imagery in lyrics, that dripped with pain and anguish, and were arguably him trying as hard as he could to exorcise some serious demons before they would bring about his end, which they ultimately, sadly, did.  I think that's what speaks so strongly to me about this record.  the genuineness of the angst, grief, and despondency.  It could be argued that mainstream shock rockers like Marilyn Manson took the formula that bands like Christian Death created, watered it down, and found mainstream success.  Something that seemed to always elude Rozz Williams, if indeed, it's something he even looked for.  It may be at times overwrought, or dramatic, but it's not fake.  Just look at the lives in individuals in this band led.  I don't know if there is what you'd call a happy ending for anyone involved.  This is utter the utter self annihilation suburban Southern California in the 1980's. It's chipped black nail polish, it's self injury, locked in your bedroom at your parents house, it's waking up day after day to the dry, sunny heat, and knowing that you'll never fit in the world, and there very well may be no future, and no hope.  It's not finding a place to call home even in the completely seedy underbelly of Los Angeles, sleepless nights, and hazy days.  It's trying as hard as you can to escape from the constraints of a life not of your choosing, and creating something tragic and beautiful in the process.

Rozz Williams took his own life on April 1st, 1998.  Until our children and loved ones no longer see only one way out...

Lest We Forget 

Anasazi - Demo

This has been on heavy rotation lately. More punks playing punk deathrock.  I can't get enough of this demo.  Think Pornography era The Cure played by punks, and you sort of have an idea.  These folks take the moody, haunting leading guitar work pioneered by folks like the aforementioned The Cure, and Christian death and execute it seamlessly.  At first I thought the drums were too loud in the mix, and now I think they sound perfect, cold and almost hollow. The bass fits in the music perfectly, and doesn't just play along.  The vocals are powerful, evocative, the singer howls madly at an insane world.

This is the soundtrack of dark nights in the loneliest parts of your city.  The wind blowing through pants full of holes.  Inherited memories of a cold war, fear of nuclear fire making twisted metal structures set against a grey sky, fear of theocratic fascism, phantom jackboots on your steps, finding escape in subterranean clubs with other misfits, making beautiful and passionate art in a world gone numb, or mad, or both, because to do anything less, would be to give in to despair.

Burn Everything.

Addaura - Burning For The Ancient

Addaura - Burning For The Ancient Fans of Cascadian Black Metal bands such as Alda, Fauna, Wolves In The Throne Room, Skagos - take note.  This is probably your cup of tea.  I know it's mine.  I enjoyed this band's 2010 demo, and have eagerly been waiting for more ever since.  This was well worth the wait.  Melodic, hypnotic, haunting, this record is repetitive in a mesmerizing way, rather than a boring way.  The recording does the songs justice.  Not to muddy, or underproduced. The vocals are a majestic mix of screaming and growling that accent the epic nature of the music perfectly.  This is supposed to be available on vinyl, but I cannot figure out where.  The band apparently self released this little gem.  I'd recommend getting it into your grubby little hands, and on to your turntable as soon as possible. 

Here.

I'm still here!

Sorry it's been a minute to the folks who read this.  I've still been settling into my new place.  I've also been doing a lot of intensely personal writing, that as always has a soundtrack, but I'm maybe not ready to share with the world yet.

I've been feeling inspired the the resurgence of DIY post punk and deathrock.  It's about fucking time!  I turned 31 the other day.  I found gothic rock before I found punk when I was 13.  That's 18 years of carrying the torch for a genre that has been dragged through the mud, and commercialized and bastardized just as much, if not more so than punk.  Punk may have had bands like Green Day, and Rancid to help drag it back into mainstream consciousness in the early nineties, and one could argue the merits of what Green Day and Rancid have given back to DIY punk. Most importantly,  does punk have something as embarrassing as Marilyn Manson that average joes associate with it?  No, no it doesn't. 

So what have I been excited about?

 Dekoder - Demo  This four song cassette tape has been making the rounds on blogs all over the interwebs.  I've even seen it on multiple year end lists.  It definitely made my own.  The song writing is solid, catcthy, infectious even.  My only problem with this demo, is I just want more of it.  You can definitely hear a lot post punk influence with the melodies woven through the songs.  Think if Joy Division met a punkier Sleater Kinney with more political sounding lyrics.  At least that's what I get.  I've been listening to this over and over.

Here.

Cemetery- Demo  I first heard tell of this band when another friends' band played with them on a trip through Chicago.  I looked up a grainy, too dark video of them playing on youtube.  Kids who look like they could be from the back of a Finnish punk EP circa 1982 playing distorted, moody sounding deathpunk.  I was ecstatic to find the demo on Drug Punk a few months later.  I was not let down.  Moody, morbid, solid songs.  Think a punker, faster, Christian Death, without the disturbing genius that was Rozz Williams.  I especially dig "Voices In The Ceiling" and "State Ward" Hearing those songs I'm transported to the bleak, hopeless, grey winters of Chicago.  Wandering, the deserted, lonely wind-blasted streets to a cold, and empty house, or maybe your friends are there and you huddle together for warmth, finding what joy you can in the small things.

Here.

Deathcharge- Love Was Born To An Early Death Do you like Discharge?  Motorhead?  The Sisters Of Mercy?  Did you ever wonder what would happen if all three bands collaborated on a project together?  This might be it.  I am waiting for my vinyl copy of this from my life long best friend Molly, over at Growler Distro.  I plan on writing a more in depth review then.  I actually remember reading a review for one of this band's EP's in Profane Existence waaaaaay back in 1997, or 1998.  I believe it was the laughably titled "A Look A Their Sorrow" I was especially skeptical because at the time I didn't like discharge.  Blasphemy, I know, but it was before things like filesharing, and torrents existed.  I found a used CD copy of Never Again at a local record store in rural Pennsylvania, and found it to be mediocre at best.  It would be a number of years before I would finally hear Discharge's early EPs, and Hear Nothing, See, Nothing, Say Nothing, aka their relevant material.  Suffice to say, I simply did not understand the legions of disclone bands, especially back in the nineties when they were fewer and farther between. 

I'm getting off track here.  This record rocks.  These folks have found their sound.  The music lurches on, like a vicious war machine set against, greasy, grey skies.  I'm working of an advance copy here, with no lyric sheet, but what I can make out is some of the most darkly intoned bleak lyrics I've heard in a punk record in a while.  Almost bleaker than I can really handle.  "bullet holes look best on foreign children" "there is nothing I love in this world" It's like a soundtrack to the angst us aging punks feel against an insane world.  I sincerely hope these folks don't feel like this all the time, because if they do, I would worry for their emotional and physical well being.  For me, some of that "there is no future, and everything is a lie, so fuck it" defiance is embodied in this record. 

People all over have been singing the praises of this record, and rightfully so.  I was definitely skeptical at first, but after a few listens, it has grown on me, and more.  Get this!

Unseen Forces

Here.

Alda- ::Tahoma::

Alda - ::Tahoma:: - This record is remarkably beautiful.  This also made my year end list for 2011.   I guess in a sense, this record is Cascadian Black Metal, through and through.  Some folks would probably be quick to lump this in with Wolves In The Throne Room, or Fauna, but this record has a power and originality all it's own. 

This record is filled with sadness and rage at our mechanized, lockstep, spiritually bereft, technological death culture, but also a deep sense of awe, and wonder at the natural world, and a deepset belief that some semblance of sanity, and return to a sense of respect and reverence for the natural world could still save us.  Five songs, and not a single one of them misses anything.  The power in this little cassette is undeniable.  I had the pleasure of seeing this band live in the Pacific Northwest at the beginning of this year, and it was one of the finer shows I've been to in recent memory.  It underscored the amazing, transformative power that music can have for me. 

Here.

New Year, New House!

Apologies all around, to the few people who read this blog for the hiatus in postings.  I've been wrapped up in moving to a new house, and remodeling it.  A time consuming task, for sure.  Unseasonably warm weather has set in here, in Western North Carolina.  Sunny and 60 degrees in December?  Believe it or not, I'm not so into it.  One can't help but wonder, what is going on with mother earth, that she's acting like this.  Winter is supposed to be cold, goddamnit, at least here in the mountains, it is.

Don't get me wrong, some mornings in this house, when the temperature outside drops, and the temperature inside drops even further, it's hard to not feel a little doom and gloom squalor.  When it's cold I can see my breath, and just can't seem to get out of bed, and even the roaches scurrying for cover when I go to the kitchen to make my tea, and scramble my eggs seem like the cold has them a little sluggish. 

I tell myself that tribulation just makes me more of a badass. 

What has been the soundtrack to all of this?  Black Metal and Deathrock.  Astute readers, or those who know me would observe that I can make those two genres of music my soundtrack to almost any situation.  It is of course, partially true, but making this cold house home has called for some of my favorite, dark and romantic tunes.

One of my favorite parts of 2011, has been that the goth and death rock culture have been becoming punk again.  Goth and Deathrock started out as an offshoot from punk in the late seventies/early eighties.  The music was slower, prettier, more romantic, but still filled with the same hopelessness, and alienation that found voice in punk.  The scene was a safe haven for the artistic, sensitive, misfits who were being driven out of punk with the advent of hardcore.  (Don't get me wrong, I love hardcore too, but I think few people can argue some of it's detrimental effects on punk, the upswing in violence being one of the biggest.)  Goth, deathrock, and post-punk, were a perhaps a little more marketable for corporate labels looking to cash in on youthful alienation and despair, but there was still a vibrant D.I.Y., underground scene full of dour, yet passionate, black clad misfits.

Then the early nineties changed all that.  It's hard to say what happened.  First Nirvana became huge, then bands like The Cure, and Nine Inch Nails, and then Marilyn Manson  broke into the mainstream,  While they may be entirely dissimilar musically, they all had their roots in D.I.Y. scenes.  Suddenly angst, alienation, and rebellion,  were cool and marketable and could be made into so many commodities to be marketed and sold to a willing public.  Stores like the dreaded Hot Topic were soon in every shopping mall in America, providing you a one stop shop for your "alternative" consumer driven needs.  You could buy complete ready made outfits, be they "punk", "gothic", or some other form of alternative subculture, along with cookiecutter bands who often copied, and then watered down the innovative, and creative individuals that came before them, taking from the scenes that created them, and gave them vision and voice, and giving little back.  This isn't to say that every band who has flirted with signing to a major label, or gotten bigger is a soulless, greedy, backstabber, but one cannot deny the impact (in this writer's opinion, negative) that corporate influence has had on D.I.Y. Punk, Metal, and Gothic subcultures. 

So, all that said.  Let's take it back to the beginning of American Deathrock. 

Los Angeles:  1982.  Hardcore is rearing it's ugly head, violence is ever prevalent, and meatheads and jocks are cutting their hair and invading the scene.  Los Angeles is till a hellish, crowded, metropolis with plenty to feel alienated about.  There is still a seedy, sleazy underbelly to it all, and this record is part of that underbelly:

Christian Death - Only Theatre Of Pain - I somehow missed out on this one in the early nineties when I was getting into Gothic, and death rock.  That's a shame, because this record is really good.  It's been written about countless times over the last thirty(!) years.  This record more or less is the beginning of gothic rock in the united states.  Rozz Williams had a gift for disturbing imagery in lyrics, that were arguably him trying as hard as he could to exorcise some serious demons before they would bring about his end, which they ultimately, sadly, did.  I think that's what speaks so strongly to me about this record.  the genuineness of the angst, grief, and despondency.  It may be at times overwrought, or dramatic, but it's not fake.  Just look at the lives in individuals in this band led.  This is utter the utter self annihilation suburban Southern California in the 1980's. It's chipped black nail polish, it's self injury, locked in your bedroom at your parents house, it's waking up day after day to the dry, sunny heat, and having nothing to smile about, it's knowing you come from a city that people around the world come to looking for success or a new life, and that could be full of potential, but still having nothing to look forward to.  It's trying as hard as you can to escape from the constraints of a life not of your choosing, and creating something tragic and beautiful in the process. 

Here.