What I pasted below can also be read in its edited/less-embarrassing formÂÂ if you loiter in a bookstore, flipping through the latest issue of D.I.W. Magazine. ÂÂ
START!!
Check it out, Skank Williams Jr., I’m back with another installment of Pussy Eraser, DIW’s I’m-Not-A-Metalhead-But-I-Play-One-In-This-Column extreme music examination!! I recently started a sluggish day with the 2 CD live Sentenced set, Buried Alive (Century Media). The day remained sluggish. Bless their sort-of black hearts, they spent 14 years (and a lot of albums) trying to be In Flames, but Sentenced started out DECENT (not GREAT), and went BAD (not catchy BAD). Ever wish that Anal Cunt were smarter, less self-destructive, and more musical? Of course you did. That’s why I’m telling you to run into the loving arms of Chicago’s 7000 Dying Rats. Their expansive Season In Hell (He Who Corrupts Inc) assaults with coherent blasts of grind mixed with genuinely hilarious novelty hip-hop and a track that makes fun of free jazz. I love it!! If you’re the gambling sort, go ahead and bet that Jesu’s Conqueror (Hydrahead) will make every top ten list forced upon bedraggled freelancers come December 2007. Unsurprisingly, but good for us fans, it combines the pop of Silver and the pummel of the debut with at least four songs that annihilate anything on those two discs. Continuing the obligatory Hydra Head string (we are, after all, an indie magazine and not Metal Maniacs), let’s recall when Cave In, uh, caved in (HAHAHAHA!!!) to bad radio metal, then tried to get all loud and shit to save face. That’s applicable here because our favorite label has issued not one, but TWO Cave In side projects. Clouds is the effort of Adam McGrath, and it resurrects the LET’S ROCK….WHAT A FUN IDEA!!! movement of the mid-90’s – you know, when hardcore crusties discovered ZZ Top? Too bad he cut class when they were hitting the How To Write A Good Song portion of the course. Zozobra is Cave In’s bassist, Caleb Scofield – a far more experimental in a Melvins-meets-Wax Trax adventure. If you haven’t figured it out by this sentence, that means it sounds like mid-period Godflesh with a touch of Harvey Milk. Midwestern, cargo pants-rocking, meth-blowing fathers of three at age 20 are problematic on many levels, and I wonder if they’d use contraception if someone invented condoms that felt and appeared like the members of Slipknot. Collect all nine and avoid having nine kids!! Are their babies born wearing visors? Voliminal: Inside The Nine (Roadrunner) turned up in the PO Box – it’s a live DVD set – as far as I can tell, cuz I will not be venturing “inside the nine.â€Â The Handshake Murders (Usurper, on Goodfellow Records) just spent an entire song telling me that they’ll “rip my throat out,â€Â which they are attempting with rearranged Prong riffage and your standard issue metalcore throat shred. To conclude with uber-worthy reissue alerts: Snatch up both of the Trouble reissues (Psalm 9 and The Skull…on Escapi Music) and educate yourself on how lonely it must have been to be a an amazing, prescient, and Christian doom band in the early-80’s. Follow that up with Armored Saint’s CLASSIC March of the Saint on Rock Candy….wow, there was never a more perfect combo of thrash and L.A. pop-metal….fans of ANY metal variation will not deny the brilliance of this record. Check please!!!
–Andrew Earles